couldn't even use comm units, because the Balawai government had geosynchronous detector satellites in orbit that could pinpoint comm transmissions instantly. They coordinated their activities through a system of Force communication that was hardly more sophisticated than smoke signals.
By the time Nick was old enough to fight, the Summertime War had become a tradition, almost a sport: late in the spring, when the winter rains were long enough gone that the hills were passable, the more adventurous young men and women of the Korunnai would band together on their grassers for their yearly forays against the Balawai. The Balawai, in turn, would load up their steamcrawlers and grind out to meet them. Each summer would be a fever dream of ambush and counterambush, steamcrawler sabotage and grasser shooting. A month or so before autumn brought the rains again, everyone would go home.
To get ready for next year.
Some of Depa's dazzling success was now explained, Mace realized: she didn't have to create a guerrilla army. She'd found one ready-made.
Blooded and hungry.
'This Clone War of yours? Who cares? You think anybody on Haruun Kal gives a handful of snot who rules on Coruscant? We kill seppies because they give weapons and supplies to the Balawai. The Balawai support the seppies because they get stuff like those gunships. For free, too. They used to have to buy them and ship 'em in from Opari. You follow? This is our war, Master Windu.' Nick shook his head with amused contempt. 'You guys are just passing through.' 'You make it sound almost like fun.' 'Almost?' Nick grinned down at him. 'It's the most fun you can have while you're sober.
And you don't really have to be all that sober; look at Lesh.' 'I admit I don't know a lot about war. But I know it's not a game.' 'Sure it is. You keep score by body count.' 'That's revolting.' Nick shrugged. 'Hey, I've lost friends. People who were as much family to me as anyone can be. But if you let the anger chew you up inside, you're just gonna do something stupid and get yourself killed. Maybe along with other people you care about. And fear is just as bad: too cautious gets people just as dead as too bold.' 'Your answer is to pretend it's fun?' Nick's grin turned sly. 'You don't pretend anything. You have to let it be fun. You have to find the part of yourself that likes it.' 'The Jedi have a name for that.' 'Yeah?' Mace nodded. 'It's called the dark side.' Night.
Mace sat cross-legged before his wallet tent, stitching a tear in his pants left by a brush with a brassvine. He had his fake datapad propped against his thigh; its screen provided enough light that he could do the needlework without drawing blood. Its durasteel casing showed black mildew and the beginning of fungal scarring, but it had been adapted for the Haruun Kal jungles, and it still worked well enough.
They'd finished their cheese and smoked meat. The Korunnai field-stripped their weapons by touch, reapplying portaak amber to vulnerable surfaces. They spoke together in low voices: mostly sharing opinions on the weather and the next day's ride, and whether they might reach Depa's ULF band before they were intercepted by an air patrol.
When Mace finished patching his pants, he put away the stitcher, and silently watched the Korunnai, listening to their conversation. After a time, he picked up the datapad's recording rod and flicked it on, fiddling with it for a moment to adjust its encryption protocol.
When he had it set to his satisfaction, he brought the recording rod near his mouth and spoke very softly.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I've read war tales in the Temple archives, from the early years of the Republic and before.
According to these tales, soldiers in bivouac are supposed to speak endlessly of their parents or their sweethearts, of the food they would like to eat or wine they wish they were drinking. And of their plans for after the war. The Korunnai mention none of these things.
For the Korunnai, there is no 'after the war.' The war is all there is. Not one of them is old enough to remember anything else.
They don't allow themselves even a fantasy of peace.
Like that death hollow we passed today- Deep in the jungle, Nick turned our grasser aside from our line of march to skirt a deep fold in the ground that was choked with a riot of impossibly lush foliage. I didn't have to ask why. A death hollow is a low point where the heavier-than-air toxic gases that roll downslope from the volcanoes can pool.
The corpse of a hundred-kilo tusker lay just within its rim, its snout only a meter below the clear air that could have saved it. Other corpses littered the ground around it: rot crows and jacunas and other small scavengers I didn't recognize, lured to their deaths by the jungle's false promise of an easy meal.
I said something along these lines to Nick. He laughed and called me a Balawai fool.
'There's no false promise,' he'd said. 'There's no promise at all. The jungle doesn't promise.
It exists. That's all. What killed those little ruskakks wasn't a trap. It was just the way things are.' Nick says that to talk of the jungle as a person-to give it the metaphoric aspect of a creature, any creature-that's a Balawai thing. That's part of what gets them killed out here.
It's a metaphor that shades the way you think: talk of the jungle as a creature, and you start treating it like a creature. You start thinking you can outsmart the jungle, or trust it, overpower it or befriend it, deceive it or bargain with it.
And then you die.
'Not because the jungle kills you. You get it? Just because it is what it is.' These are Nick's words. 'The jungle doesn't do anything. It's just a place. It's a place where many, many things live. and all of them die. Fantasizing about it-pretending it's something it's not-is fatal.
That's your free life lesson for the day,' he told me. 'Keep it in mind.' I will.
I have a feeling that his lesson applies equally well to this war. But how can I avoid pretending this war is something it's not? I don't yet know what real war really is.
So far, I have only impressions.
Vast. Unknown, and unknowable. Living darkness. Deadly as this jungle.
And my guide cannot be trusted.
