And Depa is headed up to meet us.
[Rostu]: "She is? What, you can feel her?" Not directly. But-characteristically-part of her plan to keep Kar and his Akk Guards out of our way included retrieving my lightsaber. In details like this-these little considerations, her automatic kindness-I find my hope that she is not wholly lost.
Though I can rebuild my blade, she- There was a sadness- Melancholy resignation: that is the best I can describe her expression, when she promised my lightsaber's return. Though the weapon is itself no great thing, she seemed near tears.
"I could not bear for your journey here to cost you anything more than it already has," she told me this morning, as I left her to come up here to wait.
I can feel clearly the approach of my lightsaber; and now I feel hers, as well. Winding toward us through the natural fissures in the rock that make a passageway from this cave to the interior caverns. It is odd-in an apprehensive, premonition-of-dreadful-tragedy sort of way-that I can feel Depa, the Depa I know, only in her weapon.
[Rostu]: "Urn, does that appre-pre-whatever of dreadful tragedy by any chance translate into Basic as,' have a bad feeling about this? Because, y'know, now that you mention it-" I feel it too-but I have had only bad feelings ever since I came to this planet.
[Rostu]: "I've been wondering-I mean, we've been up here a long time. Haven't you started to wonder if Depa didn't send us up here so she could get Kar out of the way? If she sent us up here to get us out of the way?" This has occurred to me. I have refused to allow myself to consider it. Depa is not like that; she is not given to trickery, much less betrayal. She has said she will join us here. That means she vv,'7,'join us. Here.
She's only steps away- [Rostu]: "Or maybe, y'know: not." You.
[Rostu]: "That's far enough. Stop! I mean it." [The final sound on Master Windu's Haruun Kal journal is a nonverbal vocalization similar to a large predator's warning growl.] [END JOURNAL] THE TRAP N
ick stood in a classic shooter's stance, slug pistol in his right hand, left shoulder forward, right arm straight across his body, left hand cupping his right and the pistol's butt.
His target was a needle-pointed grin just visible within the fissure at the back of the cave.
Mace came to his feet smoothly but deliberately, without any sudden motion. "Don't do it, Nick." "I'd rather not," Nick admitted. "But I will if I have to." "I've seen him block blaster bolts. He can do the same with bullets. You won't have a chance." "Says you." Nick's voice was uncharacteristically calm and flat, and his hands were as steady as the mountain around them. "You haven't seen me shoot." "This is the wrong time to show me." Mace put one hand on Nick's arm and let its tired weight pull the pistol down. "Come on out, Kar." The darkness in the fissure gathered itself into the shape of the lor pelek. His vibroshields were pushed back onto his upper arms.
In his hands he held two lightsabers.
Mace sagged as all hope and faith drained out of him. Only exhaustion remained.
He had been trying so hard, for so long, to believe in her, and in himself, and in the Force.
He had made himself believe: he had ruthlessly disciplined his mind against any dread of failure.
After all, this was Depa, his Padawan, almost his child-he had known her all her life- All but her first few months, and her last few months.
Vaster walked past Nick without a sideways glance, holding the lightsabers on his open palms.
A peace offering.
She asked me to- "I know," Mace murmured.
She said she did not want you to lose anything more by coming here than you already have.
"I haven't." And it was true: he had lost nothing real. Not on Haruun Kal. He had lost her before he'd ever set foot on the shuttle's landing ramp. He had lost her before the massacre and the message on the wafer. He had lost her before he even sent her here.
Depa Billaba was another casualty of his failure at Geonosis.
She was just taking longer to die.
All he had lost on Haruun Kal was an illusion. A dream. A hope so sacred that he had not dared to admit it, even to himself: a fantasy that someday the galaxy would be again at peace.
That everything would go back to normal.
Do you need to sit down, doshalo? Vaster's purr was guardedly concerned. You look unwell.
"So this is the kiss-off, huh?" Nick had his gun back in its holster, but he looked like he was shooting at Vaster inside his head. "Pretty scummy trick, if you ask me." Tell your boy to mind his tongue when he speaks of Depa.
Mace only shook his head silently. He was out of words.
"I mean, that's low. And I know something about low, if you know what I mean. The kiss- off's bad enough, but to send her lightsaber along so you'd think it was her-" "That's not why she sent it," Mace said softly. "Kar's giving them both to me." Vastor's growl was absolute as a vine cat's stare: pitiless but somehow not unsympathetic.
She said you would understand.
Mace nodded distantly. "She has no use for it anymore." Nick frowned at him. "She doesn't?" "It is the weapon of a Jedi." "Oh." "Yes." Mace lowered his head.
"She's trying to tell you-" "Yes." Mace closed his eyes.
He could no longer bear to look at this place.
"It's killing her," he said faintly. "Being here. Doing these things If she stays, she will die." Everyone dies, doshalo. But Haruun Kal is her problem. This is he't't place. She knows it now. She belongs here. The jungle isn't killing her.
You are.
Mace opened his eyes to meet the lorpeleKs concentrated stare.
She never stops thinking of you, Vaster rumbled. What is killing he; is imagining what you must think of her. What she knows you think o what she has done, and will do. She measures herself by your standards that your standards are fatally wrong doesn't make her failure to live uj to them any less painful.
You are her sire, Mace Windu. Do you not understand how much sht loves you?
"Yes." He wished she could understand how much he loved her.. But if she did, would she have done anything differently? Or woulc she only be in even greater pain? "Yes, I do." This is why she sent me to deliver these weapons, and her good-byes. Sh could not face you.
Mace breathed a heavy sigh, then straightened his shoulders "She," he said slowly, sadly, reluctantly, "will have to get over that." Eh?
"I'm sorry this is painful for her. It's not fun for me either; the closest thing to fun I've had on this planet was being beaten into un consciousness," he said. "I told her I would not leave this world without her. And I won't. Nothing has changed." You think not? Step out here, doshalo. The lorpelek walked out of the cave shadow into the brilliant red-smeared afternoon on the cliffside meadow. This is not the only cave on this mountain.
Mace followed him, and Kar waved a lightsaber at the vast mountainside, pocked with shadows. In one of them waits one of my men. Over the past months, we have captured some heavy infantry weapons from the Balawai. One of those weapons is a shoulder-fired proton torpedo launcher.
"Threats will not move me, Kar. I have told her that I will die here rather than leave her behind." You misunderstand. The torpedo is not for you; if I want you dead, lean kill you myself.