That same rush of the Force tugged at Mace's will, inclining him to follow without thinking- but he understood now the power of this place, and of Vaster himself.
'You'll have to do better than that,' Mace muttered.
He turned his attention to the terrified Balawai around him. He gestured, and all the discarded blasters flipped from the deck to hang in midair; with a single swift flourish he sliced every one of them in half, then cast their pieces out the hole. 'Listen to me, all of you. You must surrender. It is your only hope.' 'Hope of what?' a man said bitterly. His face was gray; he wore a bacta patch over a chest wound and clutched the stump of his wrist just above a wad of spray bandage that served him for a tourniquet. 'We know what happens if we're captured.' 'Not this time,' Mace said: 'If you fight, they will kill you. If you surrender I can keep you alive. And I will.' 'We're supposed to just take your word for it?' 'I am a Jedi Master.' The man spat blood on the deck. 'We know what that's worth.' 'Obviously you don't.' In the Force, Mace felt the dark flame that was the lor pelek fighting his way upslope toward the bunker. For an instant he was almost grateful-he'd be happy to leave the defense of Chalk and Besh in Vastor's hands-but then he remembered the children.
The children were still inside.
Where Vastor was going.
Massacres are necessary.
'I won't argue.' Mace moved to the rim of the hole Vastor had cut, and looked up through the one he'd cut himself, judging his clearance. 'Fight to a sure death, or surrender to a hope of life. The choice is yours,' he said, and threw himself upward into the burning night.
The whole compound was on fire: choking black smoke swirled above blazing lakes of flame-projector fuel. Blaster bolts flashed through every angle, their bursts an arrhythmic drumbeat under the howling chorus of the Korun shield-weapons. Vastor bounded up the slope toward the bunker in erratic zigzagging leaps, his shields flashing: catching stray bolts, carving metal, slashing flesh.
Mace dived from the top of the steamcrawler, flipped in the air, and hit the ground running.
His blades wove a green and purple corona of power that splintered blasterfire into the sky.
A knot of Balawai huddled on their knees a few meters to the left of Mace's path, their hands finger-laced on the backs of their heads. Eyes closed against the horror around them, they screamed for mercy to a gore-smeared Korun whose face held nothing human. The Korun raised twin shields shrilling over his head, and with a roar of dark exultation he plunged them toward defenseless necks- But before he could land the blow, the sole of a boot slammed his spine so hard that he flipped completely over and landed on his head.
The Korun sprang to his feet, unhurt and raging. 'Kick me? Gonna die, you! Gonna die-' He stopped, because to move another centimeter would have brought his nose in contact with the rock-steady purple lightsaber blade poised in front of his face. At the other end of that blade stood Mace Windu.
'Yes, I will,' he said. 'But not today.' The Korun's expression curdled like sour grasser milk. 'Must be the Windu Jedi, you,' he said in Koruun. 'Depa's sire.' The word gave Mace a twinge; in Koruun, sire could mean either 'master' or 'father.' Or both. He spoke in his rusty Koruun. 'Don't kill not-fighters, you. Kill not-fighters andjyow die.' The Korun snorted. 'Talk like a Balawai, you,' he spat in Basic. 'Don't take your orders, I.' Mace twitched his lightsaber. The Korun's eyes flickered. Mace returned to Basic as well.
'If you want to live, believe what I say: what happens to them will happen to you.' 'Tell it to Kar Vastor,' the Korun sneered.
'I intend to.' Before the Korun could reply, Mace whirled and sprang for the bunker's door.
Mace didn't trouble with the distractions that had made Vastor's path jag like a bolt of lightning; he went straight for the door's shattered gape as though launched from a cannon. He reached it only steps behind the larger man.
And froze.
Froze despite the chilling whine of those teardrop shields, despite Vastor's rumbling snarl like the hunting- cough of a hungry vine cat. Despite a sound Mace could no more ignore than he could reverse the rotation of the planet: the shrieks of children screaming in terror.
The burning compound below lit the bunker's ceiling with shifting light the color of blood, casting Mace's shadow huge and wavering, indistinct but utterly black: a shadow that shrouded all within. The only light that fell upon the core of his shadow was the unnatural wash of mingled green and purple glare from his lightsabers.
Vaster stood within, hunched like a gundark, his right arm drawn back to strike. Dangling from hair tangled in Vastor's left fist, feet kicking above the floor, sobbing uncontrollably about how all you stinkin kornos have to die, was Terrel.
'Vastor, stop!' Mace opened himself to the full flood of the Force, and used it to hammer at the lorpeleKs will. 'Don't do it, Kar. Put the boy down.' He might as well have not bothered; Vastor's answering snarl translated in Mace's mind as When I am done with him. The shield strapped to Vastor's left arm made a mirrored halo over Terrel's head, but now the other angled toward where Besh and Chalk lay. Look there, and see what sort of creature I hold.
'He's not some creature,' Mace responded with reflexive certainty. 'He's a boy. His name. his name is.' His voice trailed away as his eyes finally made sense of what Vastor was pointing at. 'Terrel.' Besh and Chalk lay on the stone floor midway between where Vastor stood holding Terrel and where Keela, Pell, and the two younger boys cowered. The clothing of the thanatizine- bound Korunnai appeared inexplicably rumpled, even tattered, and over their torsos it glistened a wet oily black. A full second passed before Mace realized that it was the light from his blades that robbed color from the wet gleam on their clothes; he figured it out by the smell, strong even through the reek of the burning compound outside.
It was the smell of blood.
Someone had been hacking, inexpertly but with considerable enthusiasm, at the two helpless Korunnai.
Hacking at two human beings Mace had sworn to protect.
Hacking at sad Besh, who could not speak. Who'd lost his brother only yesterday.
Hacking at fierce Chalk, the girl who had made herself strong enough to survive anything.
