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By Root 390 0

chin to her chest, as though she could no longer think of a reason to hold it up. "How does a blind man know the stars have gone out?"

"But they haven't," Mace said. "They still burn as bright as ever. And as long as people live around them, they will need Jedi. Like I need you now."

"I am... I'm not a Jedi anymore. I quit. I resign. I withdraw. I thought you understood that."

"I do understand it. I don't accept it."

"It's not up to you."

He pulled his hand from her shoulder and rose, looming above her. "Get up."

She sighed, and once again a smile struggled onto her tearstained lips.

"I'm not your Padawan now, Mace. You can't order me-"

"Get up?'

Reflexes burned into her by more than a decade of unquestioning obedience yanked her instinctively to her feet. She swayed dizzily, and her mouth hung slack.

"Minutes from now, nearly a thousand clone soldiers of the Republic will reach this position."

New light kindled in her glazed eyes. "The Halleck-they can save us-"

"No," Mace said. "Listen to me: We have to save them."

"I-I don't understand-"

"They are coming in under fire. This entire system is a trap. It's been a trap all along. The Separatist pullback was bait, do you understand that?"

"No... it's not true, it's not truel" But the flash faded from her eyes, and she sagged. "But of course it's true. How could I have thought otherwise? How could I have thought I would win?"

"They've caught a medium cruiser. Not to mention two members of the Jedi Council. The Halleck may already be destroyed. The clone soldiers are coming in aboard the surviving landers. They will be pursued by Trade Federation droid starfighters: faster, more maneu-verable, and better-armed than the landers. If our men are pinned between the starfighters and the militia, they won't have a chance. Whatever chance those men will have, we have to give them. You have to give them."

"Me? What can,'do?"

He opened his vest. Her lightsaber floated out of its inner pocket. It bobbed gently in the air between them.

"You can make a choice."

She looked from the lightsaber to his eyes and back again; she stared at the handgrip as though her reflection in its portaak amber-smeared surface might whisper the future. "But you don't understand," she said faintly. "No choice of mine can matter here..."

"It does to me."

"Have you learned nothing on this world? Even if we do save them-it doesn't matter. Not in the jungle. Look around you. This isn't something you can fight, Mace."

"Of course it is."

"It's not an enemy, Mace. It's just the jungle. You can't do anything about it. It's just the way things are."

"I think," Mace said gently, "that you're the one who has failed to learn the lessons of Haruun Kal."

She shook her head hopelessly.

"Don't tell me you can't fight the jungle, Depa," he said. "That's what Korunnai do. Don't you understand that? That's what their whole culture is based on. Fighting the jungle. They use grassers to attack it, and akks to defend themselves from its counterattacks. That's what the Summertime War is about. The Balawai want to use the jungle: to live -

with it, to profit from it. The Korunnai want to beat it into submission.

To make it into something that is no longer trying to eat them alive.

Now, think: Why do Korunnai do that? Why are they enemies of Balawai? Why are they enemies of the jungle?"

"A riddle for your Padawan?" she said bitterly. "A lesson."

"I am done with lessons."

"We are never done with lessons, Depa. Not while we live. The answer is right before your eyes. Why do Korunnai fight the jungle?"

He opened his hand as though offering her the answer on his palm.

Her eyes fixed on the handgrip of her lightsaber, floating between them, and something entered them then: some faint whisper of breeze from a cool clean place, a breath of air to ease her suffocating pain.

"Because..." Her voice was hushed. Reverent.

Awed by the truth.

"Because they are descended from Jedi..."

"Yes."

"But... but... you can't fight the way things