Shatterpoint

Especially out here.

This outpost settlement was built at the crest of a shoulder sloping down from the ridge. The ridge here isn't a razorback anymore, but rather a sine-wave wall of volcanic mounds. The settlement stands on a green-splashed outcrop; to either side of this jungle-clutched fist of stone are blackened washes where lava occasionally flows down from a major caldera, which is about six hundred meters above where I sit and record this. If you listen closely, you might hear the rumble. This microphone may not be sensitive enough. There-hear that? It's ramping up for another eruption. i*m't'tu. juni 11.1't't These eruptions come regularly enough that the jungle doesn't have time to reclaim the lava's path; heat-scorched trees line the washes, with leaves cooked off on the lava side. Eruptions must not be too serious in these parts. Otherwise, why build an outpost here?

Well- I suppose it could have been for the view.

The bunker itself is slightly elevated above the rest of the compound. From where I sit in the wreckage of the doorway, I can look down over a charred mess of tumbled and broken prefab huts and the shattered perimeter wall. Pale glowvine light shows gray on the steamcrawler track that switchbacks up the side of the shoulder.

Out across the jungle- I can see for kilometers up here: ghost-ripples of canopy spread below, silver and black and veined with glowvines, pocked with winking eyes of scarlet and crimson and some just dull red: open calderae, active and bubbling in this volatile region. It's breathtaking.

Or maybe that's just the smell.

Another of the ironies that have come crowding into my life: all my worry about civilians, and battles, and massacres, and having to fight and maybe kill men and women who may be only civilians, i

The ULF had been here already.

There were no survivors.

I will not describe the condition of the bodies. Seeing what had been done here was bad enough; I feel no urge to share it, even with the Archives.

I will grant Nick this: the Balawai at this outpost had clearly been no i

Koru

Based on the limited scavenger damage and the low decomposition, Nick guessed that the ULF band who'd done this might have passed through here no more than two or three days before. And there were certain, mmmm, signs-things done to the bodies-and echoes in the Force that don't seem to fade away, a standing wave of power, that suggests this had been the work of Kar Vastor himself.

The ULF guerrillas had also thoroughly looted this place; there is not a scrap of food to be found, and only useless bits and pieces of technology and equipment. The wreckage of two steamcrawlers lies tumbled downslope. The comm gear is gone as well, of course, which is why I alone am here to watch over Besh and Chalk.

When we found the comm gear gone, Nick's spirits collapsed. He seems to alternate despair with that manic cheerfulness of his, and it's not always easy to guess what will trigger either state. He let himself flop to the bloodstained ground, and gave us up for dead. He returned to his mantra from the pass: "Bad luck," he muttered under his breath. "Just bad luck." Despair is the herald of the dark side. I touched his shoulder. "Luck," I told him softly, "does not exist. Luck is only a word we use to describe our blindness to the subtle currents of the Force." His response was bitter. "Yeah? What subtle current killed Lesh? Is this what your Force had pla

"Not a chance. Not a chance, Windu! Drop it." "I'll watch over them until you get back." "I said drop it! I'm not leaving you here." "It's not up to you." I stepped close to him. Nick had to bend his neck to look up into my eyes. "I'm not arguing with you, Nick. And I'm not asking you. This is not a discussion. It's a briefing." Nick is a stubborn young man, but he's not stupid. It didn't take him long to understand that until he met me, he didn't know what stubborn looked like.

We managed to rig an improvised bareback pad for Galthra; Nick and Chalk and I persuaded Galthra, through the Force, to bear Nick on her back as she had me, and carry him swiftly through the jungle on the trail of the departed Koru

We all wait together, in the hope that Nick will win through the jungle, in the hope that he might find and bring back this Kar Vaster-this dangerous lor pelek, this terror of the living and mutilator of the dead-and that this man of no conscience or human feeling might use his power to save two lives.

I wonder what Kar Vaster will think, when he arrives, and finds what I have done to the scene of his victory.

I have spent some hours-between the time Nick left and the time I sat down here to record this entry-giving the dead a decent burial. Nick will no doubt laugh, and make some snide remark about how little I understand, how naive and unready I am for a part in this war. He'll probably ask me if burying these people makes them any less dead. I can only reply to this imagined scorn with a shrug.

I didn't do it for them. I did it for me. I did it because this is the only way I have to express my reverence for the life that was torn from them, enemy or no.

I did it because I don't want to be the kind of man who would leave someone-like that.

Anyone.

I sit here now, knowing that Depa has passed within a few klicks of here; that she stood, perhaps, on this very spot. Within the past forty-eight standard hours. No matter how deeply I reach into the Force-how deeply I reach into the stone beneath and the jungle around-I can feel nothing of her. I have felt nothing of her on this planet.

All I feel is the jungle, and the dark.