We arrived at this base about a standard hour after sunrise. The Haileck is probably insystem by now. The base itself is. not what I was expecting.
It's less a military base than an underground refugee camp.
The complex is enormous, a randomly dug hive that honeycombs the whole north wall of the pass; a number of access tunnels extend well downslope, to concealed caves deep in the jungle.
Some of the caverns are naturaclass="underline" volcanic bubbles and water channels eroded by drainage from the snowcapped peaks above. The inhabited caverns have been artificially enlarged and smoothed. Though there is no mining industry on Haruun Kal, and thus no excavation equipment to be had, a vibro-ax cuts stone almost as easily as wood; many of the smaller chambers have pallet beds, tables, and benches of stone cut and dressed by such blades.
Which would make it relatively comfortable, were it not so crowded.
Thousands of Korunnai cram these caverns and tunnels and caves, and more trickle in every day. These are the noncombatants: the spouses and the parents, the sick and the wounded. And the children.
The global lack of mining equipment means that ventilation is necessarily rudimentary, and sanitation virtually nonexistent. Pneumonia is rampant; antibiotics are the first thing to run out in the captured med-pacs, and there is nowhere in the caverns one can go and not hear people wheezing as they struggle to pull their next breath into wet, clogged lungs. Dysentery claims lives among the elderly and the wounded, and with sanitation basically at the level of buckets, it will only get worse.
The largest caverns have been given over to the grassers. All the arriving Korunnai bring whatever grassers survive the trip; even in wartime, the Fourth Pillar holds them in its grip.
These grassers spend their days crowded together with no food and little room to move; they are all sickly, and restive. There have been fights between members of different herds, and I am told several die each day: victims of wounds from fighting, or infectious disease from the close quarters. Some, it seems, simply surrender their will to live; they lie down and refuse to get up, and eventually starve.
The Korunnai tend them as best they can; improvised fences of piled cut rock separate the various herds, and they are driven out the access tunnels in turns to forage in the jungles below the pass, under the watchful eyes of herding akks. But even this half measure is becoming problematic: as more and more grassers arrive, the Korunnai must take the herds farther and farther afield, to avoid thinning the jungle so much that it might reveal the base's location.
I do understand, now, why Depa doesn't want to leave.
We rode her ankkox right up one of the concealed tunnels. When we left the gloom of the jungle for the deeper darkness underground, Depa pulled back the curtains of her howdah and moved forward to the chair mounted on the beast's crown armor, and she seemed to inhale serenity with the thick stinking air.
Everyone we passed-everyone we saw- There was no cheering, or even shouts; the welcome she got was more profound than anything that can be expressed by voice.
A woman, huddled against a sweating stone wall, caught sight of Depa, and pushed herself forward, and her face might have been a flower opening toward the sun. Depa's mere presence brought light to her eyes, and strength to her legs. The woman struggled to rise, pulling herself up the tunnel wall then leaning upon it for support, and she stretched a hand toward us, and when Depa gave her a nod of acknowledgment, the woman's hand closed to catch Depa's gaze from the air; she pressed that closed hand to her breast as though that one simple glance was precious.
Sacred.
As though it was exactly the one thing she needed to keep on living.
And that's what our welcome here was: that woman, multiplied by thousands. The warriors and the wounded. The aged. The sick and the infirm, the children- Depa is more than a Jedi to them. Not a goddess-Force-users themselves, they are not easily impressed by Jedi powers. She is, I think, a totem. She is to them what a Jedi should be to everyone, but writ so large upon their hearts that it has become a form of madness.
She is their hope.
[Rostu]: "It's true, y'know." Nick?
[Rostu]: "You think things are bad here? Okay, sure: they're bad. Not just here here. The whole highland. Bad enough. But you got no idea what it was before Depa-y'know, we're not the bad guys here." No one has suggested that you are. Nor are you the good guys. I haven't seen any good guys.
[Rostu]: "So far? I've seen one. No: two." You have?
[Rostu]: "All that good guy, bad guy stuff goes out the air lock pretty fast, doesn't it? I mean, you know why Pelek Baw withdrew from the Republic? It's got nothing to do with 'corruption in the Senate' and all that political tusker poop, either. The Balawai joined the Confederacy because the seppies promised to respect their sovereignty. Get it? Planetary rights. And the only planetary right the Balawai care about is the right to kill us all. The seppies park their droid starfighters and support staff at the spaceport, and all of a sudden the militia has an unlimited supply of gunships, and the Balawai have made it illegal for a Korun to be outside the city limits of Pelek Baw, and pretty soon they start rounding up Korunnai from inside the city, too-not everybody, you understand, just the criminals. The beggars, and street kids. And troublemakers. For the record, a troublemaker is any Korun who says Word One about the way we're treated.
"They had a camp for us. I was there. That's where Depa found us. You think things are ugly here? You should see what she saved us from.
"So maybe we went from living there to dying here. So? You think there's a difference? You think that was better?
"You go live in a cage if you want. Me? I'll die a free man. That's what Depa is to us.
"That's who you're taking away." She would be leaving you soon, regardless.
[Rostu]: "Says you." She is dying, Nick. The war is killing her. This planet is killing her.
The Korunnai are killing her.
[Rostu]: "Nobody here would ever hurt her-" Not on purpose.
But she is drowning in your anger, Nick.
[Rostu]: "Hey, I'm just mildly cranky." Not you personally. Ail of you. This whole place.
The unending violence. without hope, or remedy.
A Jedi's connection to the Force amplifies everything about us: it invests our smallest actions with the greatest conceivable weight. It makes us more of whatever we already are. If we are calm, it gives us serenity. If we are angry, it fills us with the rage of a god. Anger is a trap. You might think of it as a narcotic, not unlike glitterstim. Even the slightest taste can leave you with an appetite that never fades.
This is why we Jedi must strive always to build peace within ourselves: what is within will be reflected by what is without. The Force is One. We are part of the Force; it will always be, at least partially, whatever we are.
Just as it is too late for Kar Vaster to become a Jedi, it is too late for Depa to become a lorpelek. She is willing to give her life to help your people. Are you willing to take it?
[Rostu]: "Hey, don't look at me like that. I'm onyour side, remember?" So.
The Halleck must be insystem by now; we should be seeing a lander's vapor trail any minute.