Shatterpoint (звёздные войны)

by Matthew Stover

  Even so, when Kar laid the still forms of Besh and Chalk facedown on the mossy floor of the cave and tore open the backs of their tunics, Depa stirred and sat forward. Though she continued to shade her eyes, firelight gave them glitters of silver and red. She watched raptly, her small white teeth fixed in her lower lip, worrying the corner of her mouth near the burn scar.

  Kar simply squatted beside the two, humming tunelessly under his breath, while a Korun I did not recognize injected them with the antidote. Vastor's humming deepened, and found a pulsing rhythm like the slow beat of a human heart. He extended his hands, and closed his eyes, and hummed, and I could feel motion in the Force, a swirl of power very unlike any I've felt from a Jedi healer-or anyone else, for that matter.

  A streak of red painted itself along their spines, and a moment later this red suddenly blossomed into the glistening wetness of fresh blood oozing through their skin-and details, I suppose, are unnecessary. Suffice it to say that Kar had somehow used the Force-used pelekotan-to persuade the fever wasp larvae that they were in the wrong place to hatch: using the same animal tropism that draws them from the site of the wasp sting to cluster along the victim's central nervous system, Kar induced them to migrate- Out of Besh and Chalk entirely.

  And such was his power that the entire wriggling mass of them-nearly a kilo all told- squirmed its way straight into the tyruun blaze, where the larvae popped while they roasted with a stench like burning hair.

  In the midst of this extraordinary display, Depa leaned close to me and whispered, "Don't you ever wonder if we might be wrong?" I didn't understand what she was talking about, and she waved her fine-boned hand vaguely toward Vastor. "Such power-and such control-and never a day of training. Because what he does is natural: as natural as the jungle itself. We Jedi train our entire lives: to control our natural emotions, to overcome our natural desires. We give up so much for our power. And what Jedi could have done this?" I could not answer; Vastor has power on the scale of Master Yoda, or young Anakin Skywalker. And I had no desire to debate with Depa on Jedi tradition, and the necessary distinction between dark and light.

  So I tried to change the subject.

  I told her that Nick had shared with me the truth of the faked massacre and her message on the data wafer, and I reminded her that she had yesterday alluded to having some plan for me: something she wanted to teach me, or to show me. So I asked her.

  I asked what she had hoped to accomplish by drawing me here.

  I asked what are her victory conditions.

  She said that she wanted to tell me something. That's all. It was a message she could have sent on a subspace squawk: a line or two, no more. But I had to be in the war-see the war, eat and drink, breathe and smell the war-or I wouldn't have believed it.

  She told me: "The Jedi will lose." There in the cave, as fever wasp larvae snapped and crackled in the tyruun flames, I countered with numbers: there are still ten times as many Loyalist systems as Separatist, the Republic has a titanic manufacturing base, and huge advantages in resources. the beginnings of a whole list of reasons the Republic will inevitably win.

  "Oh, I know," was her response. "The Republic may very well win. But the Jedi will lose." I said I did not understand, but I now believe that is not true. The truth, I think, is what the Force said to me in the image of Depa back at the outpost: that I already understand all there is to understand.

  I just don't want to believe it.

  She said that I had foreshadowed the defeat of the Jedi myself. "The reason you freed the Balawai, Mace," she said, "is the same reason that the Jedi will be destroyed." War is a horror, she said. Her words: "A horror. But what you don't understand is that it must be a horror. That's how wars are won: by inflicting such terrible suffering upon the enemy that they can no longer bear to fight. You cannot treat war like law enforcement, Mace. You can't fight to protect the innocent-because no one is innocent." She said something similar to what Nick had said about the jungle prospectors: that there are no civilians.

  "The innocent citizens of the Confederacy are the ones who make it possible for their leaders to wage war on us: they build the ships, they grow the food, mine the metals, purify the water. And only they can stop the war: only their suffering will bring it to a close." "But you can't expect Jedi to stand by while ordinary people are hurt and killed-" I began.

  "Exactly. That is why we cannot win: to win this war, we must no longer be Jedi." She speaks of this in the future tense, though I suspect that in her heart-in her conscience-the Jedi are dead already. "Like dropping a bomb into the arena on Ceonosis: we can save the Republic, Mace. We can. But the cost will be our principles. In the end, isn't that what Jedi are for? We sacrifice everything for the Republic: our families, our homeworlds, our wealth, even our lives. Now the Republic needs us to sacrifice our consciences as well. Can we refuse? Are Jedi traditions more important than the lives of billions?" She told me how she and Kar Vastor had managed to drive the Separatists off this world.

  The CIS had been using the Pelek Baw spaceport as a base for the repair, refit, and resupply of the droid starfighters they used to picket the Al" Har system. These operations required large numbers of civilian employees. Her strategy was simple: she proved to these civilian employees that the Separatist military and the Balawai militia together were powerless to protect them.

  There was no pitched battle. Nothing heroic or colorful. Just an unending series of gruesome killings. One or two at a time. At first, the Separatists had flooded Pelek Baw with their forces-but battle droids are as vulnerable to the metal-eating fungi as are simple blasters, and soldiers of flesh and blood die just as easily as civilians. The essence of guerrilla warfare: the real target is not the enemy's emplacements, or even their lives.

  The target is the enemy's will to fight.

  Wars are won not by killing enemies, but by terrorizing them until they give up and go home.

  "That's why I brought you to Haruun Kal," she said. "I wanted to show you what winning soldiers will look like." She pointed past the fire. "That is the Jedi of the future, Mace. Right there." She was pointing at Kar Vastor.

  Which is why at this black hour, long after midnight and long before dawn, as the glowvines weaken and predators go quiet, when only sleep has meaning, I lie upon my bedroll and stare at the black leaves above, and think of tomorrow.

  Tomorrow we leave this place.

  Back to worlds where showers are just clean water, instead of pro-bi mist. Back to worlds where we sleep indoors, on bedrolls, with clean bleached-fiber sheets.

  Back to worlds that still lie, however temporarily, within the Galaxy of Peace.

  FINAL ENTRY T

  he air above the Lorshan Pass was so clear that the sky-colored peak Mace could barely discern in the distant south might have been Grandfather's Shoulder itself. There was a pall of brown haze down in that direction that he suspected was the smog over Pelek Baw. In the nearer distance, tiny silver flecks of gunships patrolled the jungle canopy below the pass. A lot of gunships: Mace had counted at least six flights, possibly as many as ten, weaving among the hills.

  The occasional silent flash of cannonfire, or curling black smoke from flame projectors, he actually found comforting: it meant the militia thought the guerrillas were still down among the trees.

  He sat cross-legged on the shadowed dirt of the cave mouth's floor, his datapad slung on his shoulder. Only two meters away, brilliant late-afternoon sunlight slanted across the cliffside meadow: a grassy sward, relatively flat for a few tens of meters before it curled over the lip of the cliff and dropped half a klick to the pass below.

  Easily large enough for a Republic Sienar Systems Jadfhu-clzss lander.

  Mace determinedly avoided staring up into the sky. It would get there when it got there.

  Only minutes to go, now.

  He found himself tallying the list of injuries Haruun Kal had inflicted upon him, from the stun- blast bruises through flame burns, cracked ribs, a concussion, and
a human bite wound. Not to mention innumerable insect bites and stings, some kind of rash on his right thigh, and blistering around his toes that was probably a persistent fungal infection.

  And those were only the physical injuries. They would heal.

  The nonphysical injuries-to his confidence, his principles, his moral certainties. to his heart- Those couldn't be treated with spray bandages and a bacta patch.

  Behind him, Nick's pacing had scuffed a path through the thin layer of dirt to the stone of the cave floor. He picked up his rifle from where it leaned against the wall, checked the action for the dozenth time, and set it back down again. He did the same with the slug pistol holstered at his thigh, then looked around for something else to do. Not finding anything, he went back to pacing. "How much longer?" "Not long." "That's what you said the last three times I asked." "I suppose it depends on what you mean by long." "You sure she's coming?" "Yes," Mace lied.

  "What if they get here before she does? I mean, we're not gonna have time to lag around waiting for her-not with gunships and who-knows-what-all tracking the lander through the atmosphere. If she's not here-" "We'll worry about that if it happens." "Yeah." Nick started pacing from the back to the front of the cave, instead of side to side.

  "Yeah." "Nick." "Yeah?" "Settle down." The young Korun stopped, winced an apology at Mace, adjusted his tunic, and ran his thumbs around the drawstring waistband of his pants as though they were chafing him. "I don't like waiting." "I've noticed." Nick squatted alongside the Jedi Master and nodded at the data-pad. "Got any games on that thing? Shee, I'd even play dejarik. And I hate dejarik." Mace shook his head. "It's my journal." "I've seen you talking into it. Like a diary?" "Something like that. It's a personal log of my experiences on Haruun Kal. For the Temple Archives." "Wow. Am I'm there?" "Yes. And Chalk, and Besh, and Lesh. Depa and Kar Vaster, and the children from the outpost-" "Wow," Nick repeated. "I mean, wow. That's really cool. Do all Jedi do that?" Mace stared out over the rugged terrain below the pass. "I don't think Depa has." He sighed, and once more stopped himself from checking the sky. "Why do you ask?" "It's just-well, it's weird, y'know? Thinking about it. I'm gonna be in the Jedi Archives." "Yes." "Twenty-five thousand years of records. It's like-like I'll be part of the history of the whole galaxy!" "You would be, regardless." "Oh, yeah, sure, I know: everybody is. But not everybody's in the Jedi Archives, are they? I mean, my name'll be there forever. It's like being immortal." Mace thought of Lesh, and of Phloremirlla Tenk. Of Terrel and Rankin. Of corpses burned to namelessness, left on the ground at the outpost.

  "It is," he said slowly, "as close to immortality as any of us will ever come." "Could I listen to some?" Nick tried an encouraging nod. "Not like I'm nosy or anything. But it'd pass the time-" "Are you certain you want to know what I think of you?" "Sure I'm-why? Is it bad?" he asked with an anticipatory wince. "It's really bad, isn't it." "I am teasing you, Nick. I can't play it for you. It's encrypted, and only the archive masters at the Temple have the code key." "What, you can't even listen to it yourself?" Mace hefted the datapad in his hand; it seemed such a small, insubstantial thing, to carry so much doubt and pain.

  "Not only does encryption keep its contents secure, it protects me from the temptation to go back and edit entries to make myself look better." "You'd do that?" "The opportunity has not presented itself. If I had the chance. I can't really say. I hope that I would resist. But Jedi or not, I am still human." He shrugged. "I should make a last entry, preparatory to my formal report to the Council on our return to Coruscant." "Can I listen?" "I suppose you can. I have nothing to say that you don't already know." FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU [FINAL HARUUN KAL ENTRY] Major Rostu and I wait in a cave at the Korun base in the Lorshan Pass; Depa- [Male voice identified as NICK ROSTU, major (bvt), GAR]: "Hey, is that on? So they can, like, hear me?" Yes. It's- [Rostu]: "Wow. So some weird alien Jedi a thousand years from now can pull this out and it'll be like I'm saying Hi to him from a thousand years ago, huh? Hi, you creepy Jedi monkeyhunker, whoever you-" Major.

  [Rostu]: "Yeah, I know: Shut up, Nick." [sound of a heavy sigh] Depa is to meet us here.

  She has some strategem to get Kar Vaster and his Akk Guards far enough away for us all to make a clean extraction; she did not offer details, and I did not ask.

  I was afraid to hear what she might have told me.

  The signal was sent early this morning, using the same technique her sporadic reports had.

  Instead of a straight subspace transmission-which would be intercepted by the militia's satellites and allow them to pinpoint our location-she broadcast the coded extraction call on a normal comm channel, using a tight beam that they bounced to the HoloNet satellite off one of the mountains within our line of sight; the comm signal also contains a Jedi priority override code that hijacks part of the local HoloNet capacity, and uses that to send the actual extraction code to the Haileck. It is very safe, though there is always data loss from beam scatter.

  I heard the acknowledgment myself, in the base's comm station.

  The Haileck is on its way.

  We arrived at this base about a standard hour after sunrise. The Haileck is probably insystem by now. The base itself is. not what I was expecting.

  It's less a military base than an underground refugee camp.

  The complex is enormous, a randomly dug hive that honeycombs the whole north wall of the pass; a number of access tunnels extend well downslope, to concealed caves deep in the jungle.

  Some of the caverns are natural: volcanic bubbles and water channels eroded by drainage from the snowcapped peaks above. The inhabited caverns have been artificially enlarged and smoothed. Though there is no mining industry on Haruun Kal, and thus no excavation equipment to be had, a vibro-ax cuts stone almost as easily as wood; many of the smaller chambers have pallet beds, tables, and benches of stone cut and dressed by such blades.

  Which would make it relatively comfortable, were it not so crowded.

  Thousands of Korunnai cram these caverns and tunnels and caves, and more trickle in every day. These are the noncombatants: the spouses and the parents, the sick and the wounded. And the children.

  The global lack of mining equipment means that ventilation is necessarily rudimentary, and sanitation virtually nonexistent. Pneumonia is rampant; antibiotics are the first thing to run out in the captured med-pacs, and there is nowhere in the caverns one can go and not hear people wheezing as they struggle to pull their next breath into wet, clogged lungs. Dysentery claims lives among the elderly and the wounded, and with sanitation basically at the level of buckets, it will only get worse.

  The largest caverns have been given over to the grassers. All the arriving Korunnai bring whatever grassers survive the trip; even in wartime, the Fourth Pillar holds them in its grip.

  These grassers spend their days crowded together with no food and little room to move; they are all sickly, and restive. There have been fights between members of different herds, and I am told several die each day: victims of wounds from fighting, or infectious disease from the close quarters. Some, it seems, simply surrender their will to live; they lie down and refuse to get up, and eventually starve.

  The Korunnai tend them as best they can; improvised fences of piled cut rock separate the various herds, and they are driven out the access tunnels in turns to forage in the jungles below the pass, under the watchful eyes of herding akks. But even this half measure is becoming problematic: as more and more grassers arrive, the Korunnai must take the herds farther and farther afield, to avoid thinning the jungle so much that it might reveal the base's location.

  I do understand, now, why Depa doesn't want to leave.

  We rode her ankkox right up one of the concealed tunnels. When we left the gloom of the jungle for the deeper darkness underground, Depa pulled back the curtains of her howdah and moved forward to the chair mounted on the beast's crown armor, and she seemed to inhale serenity with the thick stinking air.

  Everyone we passed-everyone
we saw- There was no cheering, or even shouts; the welcome she got was more profound than anything that can be expressed by voice.

  A woman, huddled against a sweating stone wall, caught sight of Depa, and pushed herself forward, and her face might have been a flower opening toward the sun. Depa's mere presence brought light to her eyes, and strength to her legs. The woman struggled to rise, pulling herself up the tunnel wall then leaning upon it for support, and she stretched a hand toward us, and when Depa gave her a nod of acknowledgment, the woman's hand closed to catch Depa's gaze from the air; she pressed that closed hand to her breast as though that one simple glance was precious.

  Sacred.

  As though it was exactly the one thing she needed to keep on living.

  And that's what our welcome here was: that woman, multiplied by thousands. The warriors and the wounded. The aged. The sick and the infirm, the children- Depa is more than a Jedi to them. Not a goddess-Force-users themselves, they are not easily impressed by Jedi powers. She is, I think, a totem. She is to them what a Jedi should be to everyone, but writ so large upon their hearts that it has become a form of madness.