This outpost settlement was built at the crest of a shoulder sloping down from the ridge. The ridge here isn’t a razorback anymore, but rather a sine-wave wall of volcanic mounds. The settlement stands on a green-splashed outcrop; to either side of this jungle-clutched fist of stone are blackened washes where lava occasionally flows down from a major caldera, which is about six hundred meters above where I sit and record this. If you listen closely, you might hear the rumble. This microphone may not be sensitive enough. There—hear that? It’s ramping up for another eruption.

These eruptions come regularly enough that the jungle doesn’t have time to reclaim the lava’s path; heat-scorched trees line the washes, with leaves cooked off on the lava side. Eruptions must not be too serious in these parts. Otherwise, why build an outpost here?

Well—

I suppose it could have been for the view.

The bunker itself is slightly elevated above the rest of the compound. From where I sit in the wreckage of the doorway, I can look down over a charred mess of tumbled and broken prefab huts and the shattered perimeter wall. Pale glowvine light shows gray on the steamcrawler track that switchbacks up the side of the shoulder.

Out across the jungle—

I can see for kilometers up here: ghost-ripples of canopy spread below, silver and black and veined with glowvines, pocked with winking eyes of scarlet and crimson and some just dull red: open calderas, active and bubbling in this volatile region. It’s breathtaking.

Or maybe that’s just the smell.

Another of the ironies that have come crowding into my life: all my worry about civilians, and battles, and massacres, and having to fight and maybe kill men and women who may be only civilians, innocent bystanders, and all my arguing with Nick and everything he told me—

All for nothing. Needn’t have worried. When we got here, there was no one left to fight.

The ULF had been here already.

There were no survivors.

I will not describe the condition of the bodies. Seeing what had been done here was bad enough; I feel no urge to share it, even with the Archives.

I will grant Nick this: the Balawai at this outpost had clearly been no innocent civilians. The Korunnai had left the bodies draped with what must have been the most prized pieces of the jups’ jewelery: necklaces of human ears.

Korunnai ears.

Based on the limited scavenger damage and the low decomposition, Nick guessed that the ULF band who’d done this might have passed through here no more than two or three days before. And there were certain, mmmm, signs—things done to the bodies—and echoes in the Force that don’t seem to fade away, a standing wave of power, that suggests this had been the work of Kar Vastor himself.

The ULF guerrillas had also thoroughly looted this place; there is not a scrap of food to be found, and only useless bits and pieces of technology and equipment. The wreckage of two steamcrawlers lies tumbled downslope. The comm gear is gone as well, of course, which is why I alone am here to watch over Besh and Chalk.

When we found the comm gear gone, Nick’s spirits collapsed. He seems to alternate despair with that manic cheerfulness of his, and it’s not always easy to guess what will trigger either state. He let himself flop to the bloodstained ground, and gave us up for dead. He returned to his mantra from the pass: “Bad luck,” he muttered under his breath. “Just bad luck.”


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 6