Into the Force.
"So that's it, then, huh?" Nick's words came distantly to Mace's ears, hollow and faint, as though he spoke from the bottom of a well. "There's no way we can evacuate." "That's it, yes. No way." This was a reflexive echo; Mace was barely aware of what Nick had said, and not at all aware that he had answered. "No way." His consciousness was elsewhere.
"Have I mentioned how much I hate this place? Every time I come here it's like being buried alive." Into the Force- Mace wasn't actually looking, not really; the sense he used was not sight. This sense invaded the Force, touching power and letting the power touch it, shading the power then drawing on the shade it created to deepen its own shade, feeding upon the Force and feeding the Force in a regenerative spiral, gathering strength, spidering outward from this specific nowhere-in-particular-right-now to the general ail-where of every time: from a crossroads inside a mountain that stood in a jungle the size of a continent, on a world that whirled through a galaxy that was rapidly becoming a jungle of its own.
This sense brought to his perception the stress-vectors of reality. It was more than the searching of a shatterpoint, it was as though this single moment existed in a crystal shell, and if he could strike it in exactly the right way, the shell enclosing this one would shatter as well- and the shell enclosing that shell, and on, and on, a single stroke whose Shockwaves would propagate outward to crash through the trap that held not only him and Nick, but Depa and Kar and the Korunnai, the world of Haruun Kal, the Republic, perhaps the galaxy itself: more than a chain of shatterpoints, it was a fountain of shatterpoints. A cascade.
An avalanche.
If he could only find the spot to strike.
Faintly, distantly, resonating from the here-and-now to Mace's everywhere-at-once: "We're trapped in here. The whole fraggin' planetary militia is outside, and there's nobody who can get here to help us, and we're all gonna die. This is a stupid place to die. Stupid, stupid, stupid." "Stupid," Mace echoed. "Stupid, yes. Stupid! Exactly. 1" "Are you even listening to me?" "You," Mace said, his gaze slowly returning from the stone depths he had been contemplating, "are brilliant. Not to mention lucky." "Excuse me?" "Some years ago, the Jedi Order contemplated using droid star-fighters for antipirate work-convoying freighters, that sort of thing. Do you know why we decided against it?" "Do I care?" "Because droids are stupid" "Wow, that's a relief! I'd hate to be killed by a genius-" Mace turned back to the comm unit and keyed the transmit once again. "Commander, this is General Windu. All the troops-get them loaded onto the remaining landers, and get those landers on course for the original coordinates.^,'/of them. The original coordinates. Do you copy?" "Yes, sir. But. no match for DSF. casualties. lucky if half of them make atmosphere." "That's not your problem. Once the landers are away, you will withdraw. Do you copy? This is a direct order. When the landers are away, the Halleck will jump for Republic space." '. landers. only sublight. With no hyperdrive, how will you.?" "Commander, is there so little for you to do right now that you can afford the time to argue with me? You have your orders. Windu out." He plucked the powercell out of the back of the comm unit and returned it to the handgrip of his lightsaber. "Who's the best shooter you know?" Nick shrugged. "Me." "Nick." "What, should I lie?" "All right. Second best." "Who's still alive?" Nick thought for a second or two. "Chalk, maybe. She's pretty good.
Especially with the heavy stuff. Or she would be if she could, y'know, walk." "She won't have to. Let's go." Nick stayed against the wall, shrugging hopelessly. "Why bother? It's not like we can get anywhere, right? With the ship gone, there's nowhere to go." "There is. And we will go there." "Where?" "I'm not going to tell you." "You're not?" "I have had enough," Mace said, "of being told I'm insane." Nick rose warily, eyeing Mace as though the Jedi Master might be a worrt in disguise.
"What are you talking about? You just mid there's no way we can evacuate." "We're not going to evacuate. We're going to attack" Nick gaped. "Attack?' he echoed numbly.
"Not just attack. We are going to beat them," said the Jedi Master, "like a rented gong." SEEKER T, he air in the weapons bunker was thick with the ozone tang of a surgical field and the rank pheromonal stink of human fear. The few heavy weapons that the guerrillas had cached were piled haphazardly outside the door to make room for the endless flood of stretchers carried by grim-faced Korunnai, bearing the sick and the wounded. Mostly sick.
Mostly children.
Mostly silent and round-eyed.
The bearers would stumble whenever another DOKAW shook the mountain, and sometimes dump those they carried; many of the invalids bled from fresh scrapes. Nick threaded his way around them to look for Chalk; the Korun girl had not left Besh's side since they both awakened from thanatizine suspension.
Mace had stopped outside the doorway. His defocused stare gathered the inventory of the weapons there, and plugged them into his calculations: new data that made his image of the coming battle shift and flow and remold itself like a stream of hardening lava. A tripod-mounted EWHB-10 with an auxiliary fusion-generator pack. Two shoulder-fired torpedo launchers, with four preloaded launch tubes apiece. A rack of twenty-five proton grenades, still in its factory- sealed case.
That was all he'd need.
The rest of the weapons were not relevant.
Nick came out the doorway, moving hesitantly, as though in pain. "They're not in there." "No?" Nick shook his head toward one of the stretcher-bearers. "They told me-there's not enough room for all the. So Kar-" He swallowed, forcing distress off his face and out of his voice. "All we're putting in here is people who'll live." Mace nodded. "Where are the others?" "We call it the dead room. Follow me." The dead room was a huge cavern hung with night. The only light was soft yellow spill from a scatter of handheld glow rods. Unlike the other inhabited chambers, the floor of this one had not been leveled with vibro-bladed adzes, but had instead been cut into tiered ledges that followed the natural contour of the rock.
The ledges were packed with the dying.
No surgical field here: the air was thick with fecal stench, and the sickly sweet odor of rotten meat, and the indescribable smell of spores released by fungi feeding on human flesh.
Nick halted a few paces in from the entrance and closed his eyes. A moment later, he sighed and pointed up toward a far corner. "Over there. See that light? Something's happening; I think Kar's with them." "Good. We need him, and we're running out of time." They had to tread carefully to climb the levels of ledges without stepping on people in the gloom.