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She passed a hand before her face, and her gaze sharpened for a moment, but then she sagged, holding herself up with one hand while the other pressed against her temple. "I-I think so, Mace-but it's too, too-there's so much..."

The ragged exhaustion in her voice twisted in his stomach like a knife.

"All right. Stay here."

"No-no, I can fight-"

"Perhaps you can. But I can't, while I know that you're about to collapse. You're staying. That's an order."

He turned away. "Nick: you're with me. Get Chalk and meet me at the gunship."

Nick jumped for the door, then jerked to a stop, whirled, and made a credible attempt at a salute that he ruined with a smirk and a one-armed shrug. "Sorry: forgot." Mace acknowledged his salute, and Nick vanished through the bunker's doorway.

"Mace-" Depa struggled toward him, and reached out as though to take his hand from across the room. Kar Vaster strode up behind her, arms out to catch her if she fell. "You can't-you won't have a chance... They'll shoot you down before you clear the landing field."

"They won't shoot me down. I'm not going up. That gunship is about to become Haruun Kal's largest landspeeder. Nick knows the streets. He can get us where we need to go."

She half-fell toward the nearest chair; Vaster caught her and low ered her gently into it. She winced a rueful thanks up at him, and placed her hand on his before turning back to Mace. "You're going after the Colonel-

?"

"I don't need him. I need that datapad."

"What will you..." Her eyes drifted closed, and she had to force the words out. Kar squeezed her hand, and a half a smile flowed across her lips before draining into the burn scar at the corner of her mouth. "What will you do... with Geptun?"

Mace stared at them: Depa Billaba and Kar Vaster.

He had to go. He had to leave her behind. Let her stay. With him.

He might never see her again.

He couldn't make himself say good-bye.

In the end, all he could do was answer her question. "Colonel Geptun is a dangerous man," he said. "Exceedingly dangerous. I'll probably have to kill him."

He frowned, and tipped his head in a Korun shrug. "Or, possibly, offer him a job."

INFERNO

Twilight.

Turbolaser batteries cast building-sized shadows across the darkening plain of permacrete. Silent clones sat behind the plated shields of antistarfighter duals and quads; the only sound was a soft whine of servomotors as computer-tracked cannons traced the motion of droid starfighters still too high to be more than bright specks in the setting sun.

A tiny noise-a half-swallowed whine of pain and frustration-brought Mace's attention up from the gunship's preflight checklist. Chalk was struggling with the nav chair's seat straps; her tightly bandaged wounds wouldn't let her twist far enough to reach the length control. Her face had gone so pale that her freckles stood out like grease-splatters, and a streak of blood reddened the sheath of bandages around her chest.

"Here, let me." Mace adjusted the strap length and buckled her in. He frowned at the blood on her bandages. "When did this happen?"

Chalk shrugged, avoiding his eyes. "On the jump, maybe. At the Pass."

"You should have said something."

She pushed his hands away and busied herself with weapons checks. " 'M

okay. Tough girl, me-"

"I know you are, Chalk. But your wounds-"

"Don't have time to be hurt, me." She nodded up through the oval lightsaber-cut gap in the windscreen. Far above the city, the setting sun struck sparks from the impossibly complex shimmerfly dance of the droid starfighters. "Are in danger, people. People I love. Can hurt later, me."

The fierce conviction in her voice gave Mace pause. An inventory of his own wounds flickered through his mind: his concussion that was giving him this headache, his cracked ribs, his sprained ankle that had him limping, the infected blaster-burn on his thigh, the spray-bandaged bite wound that Vaster had given him, not to mention all his minor cuts and the bruises that covered so much of