There was nothing else left.
But the spaceport had a different feel entirely. 'Depa, what have you doneT The comm panel chimed to announce an incoming voice-and-visual. Numbly, Mace reached past Nick and Chalk to hit the receive key. Scanning lasers in the comm unit traced a blue-lined image shadow on the windscreen: an electronic pre-echo of the larger-than-life holo-image projected into the burning night outside.
An image of a huge Korun with a shaven head and a smile like a mouthful of bone needles.
He growled, and Mace wondered how Vaster could expect to be understood-his Force- powered semi- telepathy wouldn't modulate a comm signal-but this little mystery instantly solved itself.
When the lor pelek growled, the dark storm that had swallowed Pelek Baw growled with him.
Thank you for giving us the city, doshalo. His smile spread like flames on oil. We have decided to redecorate.
Mace opened his mouth to ask for CRC-09,'571-and closed it again. The commander had been warned not to take orders from them.
They must have killed him.
'Kar, where's Depa?' Mace held his desperate horror locked deep inside his chest. 'Let me talk to her.' She doesn't want to talk to you. She doesn't want to see you. Ever. I have arranged matters so she won't have to.
'Kar, stop this. You have to stop this!' And I will. Vastor's lips pulled back from those needle teeth, and there was no longer even the pretense of a smile. When everyone is dead.
'You don't understand what you're doing-' Yes, I do. And so do you.
Mace's stare burned like the city around him.
He did understand. Finally. Too late.
He had no words for what he felt. Perhaps there were no words.
I called to say good-bye, doshalo. Depa will remember you fondly. As will we all. It is a hero's death you go to, Mace of the Windu.
Mace showed his own teeth. 'I'm not dead yet.' IlLfT OIU V Ll't't Vastor's blue-imaged head tilted a centimeter to the right. What time is it?
Mace froze.
A metallic clank echoed in his memory.
A clank that might have been deactivated vibroshields hitting the nose armor of a Sienar Turbostorm.
Or- Not.
'Nick. 1' Mace's sudden shout shocked the young Korun like a shot from a stun baton.
'Hang onf 'Hang on to whatTT't'ti& arming levers on the seat ejectors flipped up; Nick swore and threw his arms around Chalk half a second before the triggers pressed themselves and explosive bolts blew the windscreen up and out and her chair shot toward the rooftops, out of balance and tumbling into the night sky as the time fuse on the proton grenade Vaster had mag-clamped to the Turbostorm's nose precisely where its shaped charge would blow a dozen kilos of shredded armor plate through the cockpit sideways- Detonated.
Mace found them by following his Force-link with Nick.
Double-loaded and out of balance, Chalk's ejector chair had carried them only as far as a black rooftop, flat and sticky with tar, before crashing to spill them across it. Flames from other buildings around lit its walls and cast its square shadow toward the stars.
Nick's silent silhouette knelt with bowed head beside her. His hand gently stroked bloody tangles of hair away from her face; tears from his eyes fell to her cheeks, as though death had finally allowed this tough girl to weep.
Mace stood at the roof's rim and looked out across the city.
His chair had carried him a dozen blocks away. He had come here on foot.
The streets were a nightmare.
Cannonfire rained at random. Missiles that had lost their targets blasted groundcars and streets vendor stalls. People ran and screamed. Many were armed. More carried bundles of valuables saved-more often looted- from burning buildings. Bodies lay sprawled on the pavement, ignored except for the curse they would get when someone tripped over them in blind panic.
He'd seen a little girl clutching the bloody tatters of a corpse's dress while she tried to scream life back into its body.
He'd seen a Wookiee and a Yuzzem locked together, clawing and biting and shredding each other, howls of terrified rage muffled by mouthfuls of each other's flesh and fur.
He'd seen a man not two meters in front of him chopped in half by a blasted-free hull plate that had fallen from the sky like a tabletop-sized cleaver.
From the rooftop, the capital of Haruun Kal looked like a night-shrouded volcanic plain: a vast dark field pocked with calderae that opened on hell. Clone-piloted ships streaked and spun and rolled, desperately dodging starfighters that swooped and dived and spat flame. In those contests it didn't matter who won; the city lost.
Pelek Baw had always been a jungle, but only in a metaphoric sense. Vaster had brought the real one.
He was the real one.
And he was eating this city alive.
