Shatterpoint

Tan pel'trokal. Jungle justice.

Mace leaned alongside the grasser's neck, to speak softly for Vastor's ears alone. "How do you know they won't double back along the line of march? Some of your wounded are barely walking. These Balawai might think it worth the risk to steal weapons or supplies." Vaster gave a grin like a mouthful of needles. Can you not feel them? They are in the jungle, not of the jungle. They ca

"Then why are they still here?" It's light, Vaster rumbled, with a wave of the wrist at the green-lit leaves above. The day belongs to the gunships. We give prisoners tan pel'trokal after sunset.

"In the dark," Mace murmured.

Yes. The night belongs to us.

Mace remembered the recording of Depa's whisper:. I use the night, and the night uses me. It gave his chest a heavy ache. His breath came hard and slow.

Nick was down with the prisoners, leading by the reins a mangy, underfed grasser. This grasser had another dual-saddle setup like the one that had been blown to bits on Nick's grasser back in the notch pass; each saddle was big enough to hold two children. Urno and Nykl rode in the upper, forward-facing saddle, gripping the heavy pelt of the grasser's ruff, peering out from below its ears. Keela and Pell rode in the lower saddle, facing the rear and clinging to each other in mute despair.

Seeing those four children reminded the Jedi Master of the child who was not there, and he had to look away from Kar Vaster. In his head he saw the lor pelek holding the corpse of a boy. He saw the gleam of the shield through the wet streaked sheen ofTerrel's blood. He could not meet Vastor's eyes without hating him. "And the children, too?" The words seemed to swell up Mace's throat and push themselves out at the other man. "You give them to the jungle?",'/ is our way. Vastor's growl softened with understanding. You are thinking of the boy.

The one in the bunker. Mace still could not meet his eyes. "He was captured. Disarmed." He was a murderer, not a soldier. He attacked the helpless. "So did you." Yes. And if I am taken by the enemy, I will get worse than I gave. Do you think the Ealawai will offer me a dean, quick death?

"We're not talking about them," Mace said. "We're talking about Y you.

Vaster only shrugged.

Nick caught sight of them and gave a sardonic wave. "I'm not really a baby-sitter," he called.

"I just play one on the HoloNet." His tone was cheerful, but on his face the Jedi Master could read the clear knowledge of what would happen to these children at sunset. Mace's own face hurt; he touched his forehead and discovered there a scowl. "What's he doing here?" Vastor stared past Nick, as though to look upon him would be a compliment the young Korun did not deserve. He ca

"Because he left me behind to save his friends? Chalk and Besh are veteran fighters. Aren't they worth the effort?" They are expendable. As is he.

"Not to me," Mace told him. "No one is." The lorpelek seemed to consider this for a long time as he walked on, leading Mace's grasser. I do not know why Depa wanted you here, he said at length. But I do not have to know. She desires your presence; that is enough. Because you are important to her, you are important to our war. Much more important than a bad soldier like Nick Rostu.

"He's hardly a bad soldier-" He is weak. Cowardly. Afraid of sacrifice.

"Risking his mission-his life-for his friends might make Nick a bad soldier," Mace said, "but it makes him a good man." And because he somehow could not resist, he added: "Better than you." Vastor looked up at the Jedi Master with jungle-filled eyes. Better at what?

FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I don't see Vastor as evil. Not as a truly bad man. Yes, he radiates darkness-but so do all the Koru

He does not live for power, to cause pain and dominate all he surveys. He simply lives.

Fiercely. Naturally. Stripped of the restraints of civilization.

He is less a man than he is an avatar of the jungle itself. Dark power flows into him and out again but it does not seem to touch him. He has a savage purity that I might envy, were I not a Jedi and sworn to the light.

Black is the presence of every color.

He doesn't make the darkness, he only uses it. His i

As Depa might say, he didn't start this war. He's just trying to win it.

And that was it, right there: my Jedi instincts had made a co

The war itself.

Only later, when I would spend a full day riding alongside Depa's howdah on the dorsal shell of her immense ankkox, when I would have to lean close to the gauzy curtains to catch her half- whispered words, would I understand where my instincts were leading me.

There are times when her voice is strong and clear, and her arguments lucid, and if I close my eyes and ignore the rocking of the ankkox's gait, the insect stings and rich floral rot of the jungle, I can imagine us chatting over a couple of cups of rek tea in my meditation chamber at the Jedi Temple.

In those times, she makes a terrifying sense.

"You still think like a judicial," she told me once. "That's your fundamental error. You still think in terms of enforcing the law. Upholding the rules. You were a great peace officer, Mace, but you're a terrible general. That's what cost so many lives at Geonosis: we went in like judi-cials. Trying to rescue hostages without loss of life. Trying to keep the peace. The Geonosians already knew we were at war-so only a few of us survived." "And if I thought like a general, what should I have done?" I asked her. "Let Obi-Wan and Anakin die?" "A general," murmured the shadow through the curtains, "would have dropped a baradium bomb on that arena." "Depa, you can't be serious," I began, but she had stopped listening to me.

"Win the war," she went on. "Win at the cost of two Jedi, one Senator, and a few thousand of the enemy." "At the cost of everything that makes jedi what we are." "Instead, a hundred and more Jedi died, and you have a galaxy at war. Millions will die, and millions more will end up like that boy Kar killed: twisted, angry, and evil. Gather a million corpses, and tell them your ethics outweighed their lives." To this I have no easy answer, even now.