Shatterpoint

"We should bury them." "We should get out of here!" "What?" "Mount up! We're leaving." "If we can't bury them, at least we can cut them down. Burn them. Something." Mace caught at the mounting rope as though his merely human strength might hold back the two-ton grasser.

"Sure. Burn 'em." Nick sputtered a mouthful of the drenching rain down the grasser's flank.

"There's that Jedi sense of humor again." "We can't just leave them for the scavengers!" "Sure we can. And we will." Nick leaned down toward him, and on his face was something that might have even been pity. For Mace, that is. For the dead, he seemed to feel nothing at all.

"If those are Koru

He lowered his voice, but Mace could read his lips. "If they're Balawai," he muttered, "this is already better than they deserve." Night.

Mace woke from evil dreams without opening his eyes.

He wasn't alone.

He didn't need the Force to tell him this. He could smell him. Rank sweat. Drool and raw thyssel.

Lesh.

Barely a murmur: "Why here, Windu? You come here why?" The wallet tent was pitch black. Lesh shouldn't even have known Mace was awake.

"What want here, you? Come to take her away from us, you? Said you would, she." His voice was blurry with the drug and with a childlike weepy puzzlement, as though he suspected Mace might break his favorite toy.

"Lesh." Mace pitched his voice deep. Calm. Assured as a father. "You have to leave my tent, Lesh. We can talk about this in the morning." "Think you can? Huh? Think you can?" His voice thi

Now Mace smelled machine oil and portaak amber.

He was armed.

"Don't understand yet, you. But find out, you will-" Mace reached into the Force. He could feel him: crouched by Mace's ankle. Mace's bedroll was pi

A less-than-ideal combat position.

"Lesh." Mace added the Force to his voice. "You want to leave, now. We'll talk in the morning." "What morning? Morning for you? Morning for me?" Mace couldn't tell if he was saying morning, or mourning.

Something was still strong enough even in Lesh's thyssel-addled mind that he could resist Mace's Force-pushed order. "Don't know anything, you." His voice went thicker, hitching, as if he wasn't breathing well. "But teach you, will Kar. What you do, he knows. Teach you, will the akks. Wait, you. Wait and see." Kar? There'd been a Kar Vaster mentioned in several of Depa's reports. His name had come up as a particularly capable leader of a commando squad, independent or semi- independent; Mace was unclear on the ULF's command structure. But Lesh breathed the name with a sort of superstitious awe.

And had he said akks? or ax?

"Lesh. You have to go. Now." Questions notwithstanding, Mace was not so foolish as to engage a bark-drunk man in conversation.

"Think you know her. Think she's yours. Teach you better. Maybe. Live long enough to learn, you? Maybe not." That was enough of a threat for a flick of the Force to bring his lightsaber to his hand. The sizzling flare of its blade cast purple-fringed shadows. But Lesh was not attacking.

He hadn't moved. His rifle was tucked crosswise into his lap.

Tears streamed down his face.

That was the blur in his voice. That was the thick hitch.

He was crying. Silently.

"Lesh," Mace began in astonishment, "what's the ma-" He stopped himself because Lesh was still bark-drunk, and Mace was still not a fool. Instead, he offered a hand towel from his kitbag. "Here. Wipe your face." Lesh took it and smeared the streaks below his eyes. He stared down at the towel and knotted it between his fists. "Windu-" "No." Mace held out his hand for the towel. "We'll talk in the morning. After you sober up." Lesh nodded and sniffled against the back of his fist. With one last beseeching look at Mace, he was gone.

The night rolled on, slow and sleepless. Meditation offered less rest than sleep would, but no dreams.

Not a bad bargain.

In the morning, when he asked Lesh if he still wanted to talk, Lesh pretended he didn't know what Mace meant. Mace watched his back as he walked away, and a flash of Force intuition took him and shook him and he knew: By nightfall, Lesh would be dead.

Day.

The akks' Force yammer was almost painful. They'd given this call often enough that Mace knew it now.

Gunships. More than one.

Mace could feel that Nick was worried. In the Force, dry-ice tension rolled off him. It was starting to affect Mace, too: breathing it in off Nick tied knots in Mace's stomach.

Air patrols had been dogging them all day long. Spiral routes and quarter-cutting: search pattern. It wasn't safe to assume they were looking for anything but the four Koru

Tension twisted those knots in Mace's guts. How could people live their lives under this kind of pressure?

"Bad luck," Nick muttered under his breath. "Bad, bad luck." They were exposed in a notch pass through a razorback ridge: some long-ago groundquake had knocked a gap here. A broad fan of scrub-clutched scree made the ramp they'd climbed up to the pass. They'd been picking their way through a jumble of boulders a few dozen meters wide, akks ranging before and behind; the sides of the gap were towering cliff faces hung with flowering vines and epiphytic trees that clung to the rock with root-fingered grips. The spine of the ridge was shrouded in low clouds. Only two or three hundred meters away, the slope on the far side led down into dark jungle beyond. They might be able to reach the trees before the air patrol overflew them- But Nick reined in their grasser. "Lesh is in trouble." Mace didn't have to ask how he knew: these young folk shared a bond almost as profound as the one they had with their akks.

Mace thought of his Force-flash from the morning. He said, "Go." Nick wheeled the grasser and they galloped back through the notch. From Mace's rear- facing saddle, he watched Chalk overtaking them on her way back from her position on point.

Her grasser was the fastest of the four, and it carried only half the load of Nick's.

As they cleared the crest of the pass, Mace used the Force to lift himself up so that he could stand on the saddle facing forward, his hands on Nick's back, leaning to see past his shoulder.