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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