Mace felt, then, the power of the Force-bonds that linked them-but not to each other. Not one of the Akk Guards had a link with a dog like the one Chalk had had with Galthra.
All eighteen of them, dogs and men alike, were Force-bonded not with each other, but each with one single other, as though they were spokes on a wheel of which he was the hub.
The anger Mace felt was Kar's.
He recognized its distinctive flavor.
He said, "I think Kar might be a little upset about those prisoners after all." Nick stood with his back against Mace's: where once Depa would have been.
Where Depa should have been.
Where, in any sane universe, she would be right now.
Mace heard the familiar snap of an igniting blade and turned to Nick. "Give me that." The young Korun's eyes flared green with the blade's glow. "What am I supposed to fight with, then? My rapierlike wit?" Which would do him as much good as a lightsaber against twelve akk dogs, but Mace didn't tell him that. "You won't be fighting." "Says you." Instead of arguing, Mace reached over the blade and finger-snapped the end of his nose as though flicking away a fly.
Nick blinked, flinching, blurting a reflexive obscenity, and by the time he remembered that he'd had a lightsaber in his hand, the lightsaber was in Mace's.
"Vastor is a predator, not a HoloNet villain: they're not holding us here so that he can gloat.
If he planned to kill us, we'd already be dead." "So why are they holding us here?" A massive shadow approached through the trees: low and huge, with side-bent legs and immense splay-clawed feet.
Nick breathed, "Oh, I get it. He's bringing Depa." HOSTAGE I
he immense shadow crashed closer, its walk a symphony of splintering trees.
It was an ankkox.
A massive armored saurian, the ankkox was the largest land animal of Haruun Kal.
Ankkoxes were twice the size of grassers-more than half again the mass of a full-grown bantha-but built low and wide, with a broad dorsal shell like an oval soup plate turned upside down. The dorsal shell of this one was nearly three meters wide, and well over four meters long.
A drover's chair was bolted to the top of the ankkox's crown shell, a convex disc of armor that capped the beast's head; when an ankkox retracted its head and legs, its crown shell and all six knee shells fit into gaps in its armor as snugly as air locks, enabling the ankkox to survive washes of volcanic gas that it couldn't outrun.
This drover did not sit, but stood wide-legged on the crown armor behind the chair, brandishing a long pole that ended in a sharp-looking hook, to use as a goad in directing the ankkox's path. Two teardrop-shaped shields of ultrachrome were pushed up onto his biceps.
Kar Vaster.
He moved only to direct the ankkox. His face held no expression. He did not even look at Mace and Nick.
The air around him shimmered with his rage.
Smaller trees the ankkox shouldered aside; underbrush it simply crushed beneath its speeder-sized feet. To get the ankkox through tree gaps too small to pass its huge shell where the trees were too large to overbear, Vaster would reach out with his goad, indicating specific points on their trunks-which would be struck by some whirring object, invisibly fast, that impacted with enough power to shatter the trunks and let it pass: the creature's tail mace.
The only part of the ankkox's body that was not armored was its extensile, muscular, surprisingly flexible tail. The tail was tipped with a thick round ball of armor, and an adult ankkox could snap its tail faster than the human eye could see, using that mace to accurately strike targets up to eight meters away with enough power to stun an akk dog or shatter a small tree.
There was a time, before the reopening of Haruun Kal to the civilized galaxy, when a mace taken from a juvenile ankkox was the traditional weapon of Korun herders: dangerous to acquire. Difficult to use. Deadly in effect.
On the central bulge of this ankkox's dorsal shell had been built a howdah: a small curtained cabin framed with lammas wood, two meters by three, barely larger than the long padded chaise within. The draped canopy stood slightly higher than Mace was tall, bounded by a polished rail perhaps a meter above the shell. The curtains, not to mention the fine-worked wood itself, were probably spoils looted from some Balawai's home. Multiple layers of gauzy lace, the curtains were translucent as smoke.
With the sunset behind, Mace could see her silhouette.
The ankkox crunched to a ponderous stop, settling onto its ventral shell with a long hiss through its teeth like gas venting from pneumatic landing jacks. Vastor tucked the goad into its holster bolted to the ankkox's crown shell, then stepped forward over the drover chair and folded his thick-muscled arms.
He stared down into the eyes of the Jedi Master.
The akk dogs started to growl low in their throats, a sound more felt than heard, like the subterranean precursor of a coming groundquake.
The wind died; even the rustle of leaves went silent.
In the hush of fading day, the Force showed Mace a shatterpoint.
The darkness of the jungle, not of the Sith.
Life without the restraints of civilization.
"We're done," Nick said. "You get that, don't you? We're as done as a week-old roast.
What do they call it in the army? Aid and comfort to the enemy?" "Be quiet. Don't draw attention to yourself." "Great idea. Maybe they'll forget I'm here." "This isn't about aid and comfort to the enemy," Mace said. "If this were going to be anything military, they'd put us under arrest. We'd be taken back to have some kind of show trial witnessed by the rest of the ULF. Instead, we're out here in the jungle, and the only witnesses are Kar, Depa, and these akks-human and saurian." "So they're just gonna kill us." "If we're lucky," Mace said, "it's going to be a dogfight." "A ^ogfight? If we're lucky? Okay, sure. Let's not even try to make sense. Just tell me what I'm supposed to do." "You're supposed to remember that you are an officer of the Grand Army of the Republic." "I just took the fraggin' oath three hours ago-" "Three hours or thirty years. It makes no difference. You have sworn to conduct yourself to the credit of the Republic as its commissioned officer." "So that kind of rules out wetting my pants and sobbing like a baby, huh?" "Stay calm. Show no weakness. Think of Vastor as a wild akk: do nothing to trigger his prey drive. And shut up." "Oh, sure. Is that an order, General?" "Will making it an order help you do it?" Above on the ankkox's shell, Vastor had been staring silently while an aurora of rage built in the air around him. Only now did Mace meet the,'orpelek's gaze.
Mace allowed his lip to curl with a hint of contempt.
Nick whispered, "What are you doing?" Mace's gaze never wavered. "Nothing you need concern yourself with." "Urn, maybe I should have told you," the young Korun muttered nervously. "Kar doesn't like to be stared at." "I know." "It gets him mad." "He's already mad." "Yeah. And you're makin' him madder." "That's my intention." "Y'know," Nick said, "I'm gonna give up asking if you're crazy. Let's consider it a standing question, huh? Every time you open your mouth, go ahead and assume I'm wondering if nikkle nuts have started falling out your earholes. "Good morning, Nick.' Are you crazy? "Nice day, isn't it?' Are you crazy?" Mace hissed from the side of his mouth, "Will you be quiet?" "Are you crazy?" Nick ducked his head. "Sorry. Just a reflex." Vastor's jaw worked, and a wordless growl escaped from his tight-drawn lips.