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"Hang on to what?!"

Then arming levers on the seat ejectors flipped up; Nick swore and threw his arms around Chalk half a second before the triggers pressed themselves and explosive bolts blew the windscreen up and out and her chair shot toward the rooftops, out of balance and tumbling into the night sky as the time fuse on the proton grenade Vaster had mag-clamped to the Turbostorm's nose precisely where its shaped charge would blow a dozen kilos of shredded armor plate through the cockpit sideways...

Detonated.

Mace found them by following his Force-link with Nick.

Double-loaded and out of balance, Chalk's ejector chair had carried them only as far as a black rooftop, flat and sticky with tar, before crashing to spill them across it. Flames from other buildings around lit its walls and cast its square shadow toward the stars.

Nick's silent silhouette knelt with bowed head beside her. His hand gently stroked bloody tangles of hair away from her face; tears from his eyes fell to her cheeks, as though death had finally allowed this tough girl to weep.

Mace stood at the roof's rim and looked out across the city.

His chair had carried him a dozen blocks away. He had come here on foot.

The streets were a nightmare.

Cannonfire rained at random. Missiles that had lost their targets blasted groundcars and streets vendor stalls. People ran and screamed. Many were armed. More carried bundles of valuables saved-more often looted-from burning buildings. Bodies lay sprawled on the pavement, ignored except for the curse they would get when someone tripped over them in blind panic.

He'd seen a little girl clutching the bloody tatters of a corpse's dress while she tried to scream life back into its body.

He'd seen a Wookiee and a Yuzzem locked together, clawing and biting and shredding each other, howls of terrified rage muffled by mouthfuls of each other's flesh and fur.

He'd seen a man not two meters in front of him chopped in half by a blasted-free hull plate that had fallen from the sky like a tabletop-sized cleaver.

From the rooftop, the capital of Haruun Kal looked like a night-shrouded volcanic plain: a vast dark field pocked with calderae that opened on hell. Clone-piloted ships streaked and spun and rolled, desperately dodging starfighters that swooped and dived and spat flame. In those contests it didn't matter who won; the city lost.

Pelek Baw had always been a jungle, but only in a metaphoric sense.

Vaster had brought the real one.

He was the real one.

And he was eating this city alive.

"I always used to..." Nick's voice was soft. Almost expressionless. Just slow, and faintly puzzled. He still knelt over her. "I used to, y'know, kind of think... y'know, maybe someday, when I leave this fraggin'

planet..."

He shook his head helplessly. "I always kind of thought she'd be coming with me."

"Nick-"

"Not that I asked her, you understand. No. Not that I ever had the guts to say anything to her. About that. About-" He lifted his face to the cold distant stars. "About us. It just... it was just, y'know, just never the right time. And I kind of thought she knew. I hope she knew."

"Nick, I'm sorry. I cannot tell you how sorry I am."

"Yeah." Nick nodded slowly, pensively, as though each motion of his head welded another layer of armor around his grief. Then he sucked air through his teeth and shoved himself to his feet. "Lots of people are sorry tonight."

He had her gunbelt in his hands.

He moved to the roof rim to stand beside Mace and look out across the burning city. "They're all against us now," he said softly. "Not just the militia and the droids."

"Yes."

He buckled Chalk's gunbelt around his waist, and tied her holster down to his left thigh, to match his own on his right. "They've turned on us. All of them. Kar and his Akks. Depa. Even the clones."

"The clones," Mace said distantly, "are only following orders."

"Orders from our enemies."

Now it was Mace's turn to