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They bounced and swayed through a part of town Mace didn't recognize: a tangle of shabby stone housing blocks that rose from a scree of wood-frame shanties. Though the streets were far less crowded here-the only foot traffic seemed to be surly, ragged-looking men, and furtive women peering from doorways or clustered in nervous groups-the groundcar still spent valuable minutes stopped at this corner and that bend and another angle, waiting in the blare of the steam horn for the way to clear.

They'd have made better time in an airspeeder, but Mace didn't suggest it; flying, on this world, struck him as a chancy undertaking.

Though he couldn't say for certain that it would be any more chancy than spending more time with these young Korunnai. They worried him; they had enough Force-touch to be unpredictable, and enough savagery to be dangerously powerful.

And then there was Nick, who was at best marginally sane.

Back in the alley, standing among the corpses with the militia on the way, Mace had asked where their transport was, and why they weren't hurrying to meet it; he didn't want to get caught in another firefight.

"Relax. Neither do they." Nick had smirked at him. "What d'you think those sirens are about? They're letting us know they're com ing."

"They don't try to catch you?"

"If they did, they'd have to fight us." He'd stroked his long-barreled slugthrower as though it were a pet. "Think they're gonna do that?"

"I would."

"Yeah, okay. But they're not Jedi."

"I've noticed."

Several of the weapons the Korunnai had left on the ground. Besh had picked up Mace's Power 5, frowned at it, then shrugged and tossed it back among the bodies. Mace had moved to retrieve it, and Nick had told him not to bother.

"It's mine-"

"It's junk," Nick countered. He picked it up. "Here, look."

He'd pointed it at Mace's forehead and pulled the trigger.

Mace managed not to flinch. Barely.

A wisp of greenish smoke had trailed downward from the grip.

Nick had shrugged and tossed the blaster back to the ground. "Fungus got it. Just like that second speeder bike. Some of those circuits are only nanometers thick; a few spores can eat right through

" em.

"That," Mace had told him, "was not funny."

"Not as funny as if I'd been wrong, huh?" Nick chuckled. "What's the matter, Windu? Depa says you got a great sense of humor."

Through clenched teeth Mace said, "She must have been joking."

In the car, he looked from one to another of the Korunnai. He could trust none of them. Though he felt no malice from them, he'd felt none from Geptun, either. But he did feel knotted around them a strangling web of anger and fear and pain.

Korunnai were Force-users. But they'd never had Jedi training. These radiated darkness: as though they came from some reversed universe, where light is only a shadow cast by the darkness of the stars. Their anger and pain beat against him in waves that triggered resonance harmonics in his own heart. Without knowing it, they called to emotions that Mace's lifetime of Jedi training was supposed to have buried.

And those buried emotions were already stirring to answer...

He recognized that he was in danger here. In ways deeper than the merely physical.

Now, sitting in the groundcar, waiting for his lightsaber to recharge, Mace decided that he should get some things straight with these four young Korunnai. And there'd never be a better time.

"I think we'll all speak Basic now," Mace said. "Any being will soon enough tire of listening to conversation in a foreign tongue." Which was not even a lie.

Chalk gave him a dark look. "Here, Basic is foreign tongue."

"Fair enough," Mace allowed. "Nonetheless: when I am in your company, that is what we will speak."

"Shee, pretty free with the orders, aren't we? No murder, no looting, speak Basic..." Nick said. "Who said you're in charge? And if we don't feel like doing what we're told? What's it gonna be, Mister There-Is-No-Emotion? Harsh language?"

"I