Star Wars_ Shatterpoint - Matthew Woodring Stover [54]
Mace matched Nick's pace, close by his side. "Talk to me."
Nick's eyes stayed on the jungle ahead. "Why should I?"
"Because I want to know what you have in mind."
"What makes you think I have anything in mind? What makes you think anything I might have in mind can make a difference?" His voice was angrily bitter. "We have two people about to go into second-stage wasp fever. No grassers. One akk. A handful of weapons, militia on our tail.
And you and me."
His gaze slid sideways to meet Mace's. His eyes were red and raw.
"We're dead. You get it? Like that tusker in the death hollow: a few meters short of where we needed to be. We didn't make it. We're dead."
"For dead men," Mace observed, "we're making good time."
For an instant he thought Nick might crack a smile. Instead, Nick shook his head. "There's a lor pelek who travels with Depa's band. He's... very powerful. More than powerful. If we can get Besh and Chalk to him before they start the twitches, he might be able to save them."
Lor pelek: "jungle master." Shaman. Witch doctor. Wizard. In Korun legend, the lor pelek was a person of great power, and great peril. As unpredictable as the jungle. He brought life or death: a gift or a wound.
In some stories, a lor pelek was not a being at all, but was rather pelekotan incarnate: the avatar of the jungle-mind.
Mace made a connection. "Kar Vaster."
Nick goggled at him. "How'd you know that? How'd you know his name?"
"How long before we reach them?"
Nick trudged on a few paces before he answered. "If we still had grassers, and akks for warding? Maybe two days. Maybe less. On foot? With only one akk?" His shrug was expressive.
"Then why march us so hard?"
"Because I do have something in mind." He flicked a sidelong glance at Mace. "But you're not gonna like it."
"Will I like it less than having to do to Besh and Chalk what I had to do to Lesh?"
"That's not for me to say." Nick's gaze went remote, staring off into the gloom-filled tunnel ahead. "There's a little outpost settlement about an hour west of here. Ones like it are strung out every hundred klicks or so along these steamcrawler tracks. They'll have a secure bunker, and a comm unit. Even though we-the ULF-don't use comms, we still monitor the frequencies. We get in there, we can send a coded signal to them with our position. Then we put Chalk and Besh in thanatizine suspension, sit tight, and hope for the best."
"A Balawai settlement?"
He nodded. "We don't have settlements. DOKAWs saw to that."
"These Balawai-they'll take us in?"
"Sure." Nick's teeth gleamed in the jungle twilight, and that manic spark kindled in his eyes. "You just have to know how to ask."
Mace's face darkened. "I won't let you harm civilians. Not even to save your friends."
"No need to scorch your scalp over that one," Nick said, trudging onward.
"Out here, civilians are a myth."
Mace didn't want to ask what Nick meant by that. He came to a stop on the rugged track. He saw again the holoprojected carnage spread across the Supreme Chancellor's desk; he saw again images of huts broken and burned, and nineteen corpses in the jungle. "You were right," he said. "I don't like it. I don't like it at all."
Nick kept walking. He didn't even look over his shoulder as he left Mace behind. "Yeah, well, as soon as you come up with a better idea," he said into the darkness ahead, "you be sure to let me know, huh?"
CIVILIANS
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU
In this bunker, the air is closer to cool than any I've felt since the interrogation room in the Ministry of Justice. The bunker is set into the igneous stone of the hillside-mostly just a durasteel door across the mouth of a bubble some pocket of gas or softer stone once left in the granite here. Though