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“Or—” The agent sniffled, and coughed apologetically. “—just, er, y’know, tied up.”

Mace stared at him. Yoda closed his eyes. Palpatine lowered his head as though in pain.

“There is, uh, a history of, uh, I guess you’d say, recreational torture in the Haruun Kal conflict. On both sides.” The agent flushed as though he was ashamed to know such things. “Sometimes, people—people hate so much, that just killing the enemy isn’t enough …”

A fist clenched in Mace’s chest: that this soft little man—this civilian—could accuse Depa Billaba of such an atrocity, even by implication, grabbed his heart with sick fury. A long cold stare showed him every place on this soft man’s soft body where one sharp blow would kill; the agent blanched as if he could count them all in Mace’s eyes.

But Mace had been a Jedi far too long for anger to gain an easy grip. A breath or two opened that fist around his heart, and he stood. “I have seen nothing to indicate Depa was involved.”

“Master Windu—” Palpatine began.

“What was the military value of this outpost?”

“Military value?” The agent looked startled. “Why, none, I suppose. These were Balawai jungle prospectors. Jups, they call ’em. Some jups operate as a kind of irregular militia, but irregulars are nearly always men. There were six women here. And Balawai militia units never, ah, never bring their, ah, children …”

“Children,” Mace echoed.

The agent nodded reluctantly. “Three. Mm, bioscans indicate one girl about twelve, the other two possibly fraternal twins. Boy and a girl. About nine. Had to use bioscans …” His sickly eyes asked Mace not to make him finish.

Because a few days in the jungle hadn’t left enough of them to be identified any other way.

Mace said, “I understand.”

“These weren’t militia, Master Windu. Just Balawai jungle prospectors in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Jungle prospectors?” Palpatine appeared politely interested. “And what are Balawai?”

“Offworlders, sir,” Mace said. “The jungles of Haruun Kal are the galaxy’s sole source of thyssel bark, as well as portaak leaf, jinsol, tyruun, and lammas. Among others.”

“Spices and exotic woods? And these are valuable enough to draw offworld emigrants? Into a war zone?”

“Have you priced thyssel bark lately?”

“I—” Palpatine smiled regretfully. “I don’t care for it, actually. I suppose my tastes are pedestrian; you can take a boy out of the Mid Rim, but …”

Mace shook his head. “Not relevant, sir. My point: these were civilians. Depa wouldn’t be involved in something like this. She couldn’t.”

“Hasty, your statement is,” Yoda said gravely. “Seen all evidence, I fear we have not.”

Mace looked at the agent. The agent flushed again.

“Well, er, yes—Master Yoda is correct. This, uh, recording—” He twitched his head around at the ghostly corpses that filled the office. “—was made with the prospectors’ own equipment; it’s adapted to Haruun Kal work, where more sophisticated electronics—”

“I don’t need a lesson on Haruun Kal.” Mace’s voice went sharp. “I need your evidence.”

“Yes, yes of course, Master Windu …” The agent fished in his travelcase for a second or two, then came up with an old-fashioned data wafer of crystal. He handed it over. “It’s, uh, audio only, but—we’ve done voiceprint analysis. It’s not exact—and there’s some ambient noise, other voices, jungle sounds, that kind of thing—but we put match probability in the ninety percent range.”

Mace weighed the crystal wafer in his hand. He stared down at it. There. Right there: the flick of a fingernail could crack it in two. I should do it, he thought. Crush this thing. Snap it in half right now. Destroy it unheard.

Because he knew. He could feel it. In the Force, stress lines spidered out from the wafer like frost scaling supercooled transparisteel. He could not read the pattern, but he could feel its power.

This would be ugly.

“Where did you find it?”

“It was—uh, at the scene. Of the massacre. It was … well, at the scene.”

“Where did you find it?”

The agent flinched.

Again, Mace