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Looking straight up into Vastor's eyes, Mace swung his vest open to display the handgrip of his lightsaber.

Then he shrugged out of the vest, folded it once, and tossed it over his shoulder with effortless accuracy, right into the hands of an astonished Nick Rostu. With his lightsaber still inside it.

"That's how much you scare me."

Vastor's shields parted, and the jungle went silent.

"Everybody here knows this has nothing to do with Depa," Mace said. "This has to do with those Balawai you were too stupid and weak to hold."

Vastor's legs coiled like the aides' haunches. They were mine! MINE! Mine to kill. Mine to spare. They were MINE to give to the justice of the jungle-'Until you met me. Then they were mine," Mace said. "Mine to let go."

"I'll show you stupid and weak-'You already have."

Vaster shifted his weight to throw himself into a leap, but then froze as though an invisible leash had snapped tight around his neck. He glanced back at the shadow behind the curtains of the howdah for a moment. When he turned toward Mace once more, his lips were drawn back in a predator's grin, and his eyes burned like twin calderae.

Depa prefers that you live. But she doesn't mind if you get hurt.

Mace shrugged. "As long as she won't mind when you get hurt."

Vaster began to unbuckle his shields. Mace turned his back on the lorpelek contemptuously and strolled toward the center of the ring of akks and people.

There was nothing either slow or deliberate about the way Vastor shook the shields off his arms: a whipping snap of the wrist that flung them down to clatter against the rim of the ankkox's shell.

Nick held the bundle of Mace's vest and weapon uncertainly. "Um, guess I should have told you: that big-dog stuff doesn't work on Kar."

"On the contrary," the Jedi Master replied softly. "It's working perfectly."

Nick blinked.

Mace said, "As for you, though-"

"Don't worry about me. I know exactly what to do." He tucked Mace's vest under one arm and trotted toward the nearest Akk Guard. "A hundred credits says the Jedi makes Kar cry like a baby! Who's in?"

The lor pelek crouched and lowered one hand to the ground, digging in the leaf mold, his sweat-glistening chest heaving, breath pumping darkness into him and out again. Gathering rage. Gathering power.

The shimmer around him had gone from red to black.

Mace shook his arms loose. "Rules?"

Vastor's reply was the snort of a hunting akk. Jungle rules. A burst of power launched the lor pelek as a human missile, clawing his way through the twilight toward the Jedi Master.

Jungle rules it is, then, Mace thought, and leapt to meet him in midair.

JUNGLE RULES

They collided with a crash that shook the jungle around them. The collision was not just of two human bodies, but of two node-channels of the Force: invisible energy crackled, and vivid blue gap-sparks arced from leaf to leaf in the canopy above. For a moment, they hung in the air, supported by power, grappling, tearing at each other's flesh. The akk dogs lunged and whirled and slashed the air with their tails. The guards clashed together their shields, roaring with ferocious animal exuberance.

Vastor seemed to be all teeth and claws and fierce snarling assault. Arms like girders of durasteel caught Mace in an unbreakable hug, pinning the Jedi's elbows to his creaking ribs. Mace answered swifter than thought with an instinctive head-butt that split the skin on one of Vastor's cheekbones. The lor pelek lowered his head to Mace's shoulder as though to snuggle in like a lover-then sank his needle teeth deep into Mace's neck, chewing for his carotid artery.

Mace jerked a knee up to slam the inside of Vastor's thigh; Vastor only grunted and bit down harder, twisting his head from side to side like an akk worrying off a tusker's leg. His jaw pressure on the artery was restricting its blood flow; billowing clouds of darkness gathered in Mace's brain-but when Mace fired