'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.
Besh lay stretched out, motionless, barely breathing, on a ledge near the ragged curve of the cavern ceiling. Vaster knelt beside him, eyes closed, one hand above Besh's heart. The medpac tissue-binder that had closed the wounds left by Terrel's knife had lost its glossy transparency, blackening and curling like dead skin, and the wounds had erupted into cruciferous bulbs of fungus that floresced faintly, iridescent green and purple pulsing in the shadows cast by Chalk's glow rod.
Chalk sat cross-legged on Besh's other side, her own chest bulky with spraybandage; head low, she sponged at the growths on Besh's chest with a damp rag. Even from meters away, Mace caught a strong odor of alcohol and portaak amber.
Nick stopped a couple of meters short and gave Mace a significant look, nodding toward the others as if to say, This was your idea. Leave me out of it.
Mace approached slowly, staying on the next ledge down. He stopped when he reached them and spoke softly to Chalk. 'How is he?' She wouldn't look at him. 'Dying. How are you?' She dipped her rag into the bucket, brought it out again, sponged, and returned it to the bucket with numb mechanical persistence: doing it to be doing something, though she showed no sign of hope that it might help.
'Chalk, we need you to come with us.' 'Not leaving him, me. Needs me, him.' 'We need you. Chalk, you have to trust me-' 'Did trust you, me. So did Besh.' Mace had no answer.
Nick came to Mace's shoulder. 'The Archives are starting to look pretty good right now.' The Jedi Master squinted at him.
Nick shrugged. 'Hey, it's the only immortality any of us can hope for, right?' 'And how do you achieve immortality,' Mace murmured, 'if my journal is buried under a mountain on Haruun Kal?' 'Uh. Yeah.' Nick looked like his stomach hurt. 'That could be a problem.' 'Forget about immortality. Let's concentrate on not dying today.' Vaster's eyes were closed, and the Force shimmered around him. Mace could feel some of what the lor pelek was doing: searching within Besh's chest for the essential aura of the fungus that was killing him, focusing power upon it to burn it out spore by spore.
Another shockwave rattled the cavern. Loose rock clattered from the ceiling.
'Kar,' Mace said, 'this is not the way. We don't have time.' Vastor's eyes stayed closed. His expression did not so much as flicker. Is there something better for me to be doing right now?
'As a matter of fact,' Mace said, 'yes. There is.' Does it involve killing Balawai?
Mace said apologetically, 'Probably not more than a thousand. Maybe two.' Vaster opened eyes filled with pelekofan's darkness. Chalk lifted her head, rag hanging forgotten from her fist.
'So,' said Mace Windu. 'Are we on?' Smoke and dust clouded the huge cavern; it reeked of grasser fear- musk, of dung and urine and blood, and with each new DOKAW-shock the smell got worse.
Torchlight flared and blazed and vanished again. The stinking fog swirled with gigantic shapes: grassers bucking and clawing at each other, some with jaws panic-locked on their own or others' limbs. They charged at random, slamming into each other, trampling the injured and their own young. Korunnai darted among them, appearing from the smoke and vanishing again, hands full of sharp goads and blazing torches as they fought to separate the knots of shrieking, honking, fear-crazed beasts.
A swirl opened a gap: a looming akk dog paused to stare into Mace's eyes, measuring him with saurian malice as a thick rope of bloody drool looped from its jaws, then it ponderously turned aside and slipped into the murk, tail tapering so smoothly it might have been dissolving.
Mace threaded through the chaos.
Behind him followed a pair Korunnai, carrying a stretcher that held the EWHB and its generator. Two more
