They had to tread carefully to climb the levels of ledges without stepping on people in the gloom.

Besh lay stretched out, motionless, barely breathing, on a ledge near the ragged curve of the cavern ceiling. Vastor knelt beside him, eyes closed, one hand above Besh’s heart. The medpac tissue-binder that had closed the wounds left by Terrel’s knife had lost its glossy transparency, blackening and curling like dead skin, and the wounds had erupted into cruciferous bulbs of fungus that floresced faintly, iridescent green and purple pulsing in the shadows cast by Chalk’s glow rod.

Chalk sat cross-legged on Besh’s other side, her own chest bulky with spraybandage; head low, she sponged at the growths on Besh’s chest with a damp rag. Even from meters away, Mace caught a strong odor of alcohol and portaak amber.

Nick stopped a couple of meters short and gave Mace a significant look, nodding toward the others as if to say, This was your idea. Leave me out of it.

Mace approached slowly, staying on the next ledge down. He stopped when he reached them and spoke softly to Chalk. “How is he?”

She wouldn’t look at him. “Dying. How are you?”

She dipped her rag into the bucket, brought it out again, sponged, and returned it to the bucket with numb mechanical persistence: doing it to be doing something, though she showed no sign of hope that it might help.

“Chalk, we need you to come with us.”

“Not leaving him, me. Needs me, him.”

“We need you. Chalk, you have to trust me—”

“Did trust you, me. So did Besh.”

Mace had no answer.

Nick came to Mace’s shoulder. “The Archives are starting to look pretty good right now.”

The Jedi Master squinted at him.

Nick shrugged. “Hey, it’s the only immortality any of us can hope for, right?”

“And how do you achieve immortality,” Mace murmured, “if my journal is buried under a mountain on Haruun Kal?”

“Uh. Yeah.” Nick looked like his stomach hurt. “That could be a problem.”

“Forget about immortality. Let’s concentrate on not dying today.”

Vastor’s eyes were closed, and the Force shimmered around him. Mace could feel some of what the lor pelek was doing: searching within Besh’s chest for the essential aura of the fungus that was killing him, focusing power upon it to burn it out spore by spore.

Another shockwave rattled the cavern. Loose rock clattered from the ceiling.

“Kar,” Mace said, “this is not the way. We don’t have time.”

Vastor’s eyes stayed closed. His expression did not so much as flicker. Is there something better for me to be doing right now?

“As a matter of fact,” Mace said, “yes. There is.”

Does it involve killing Balawai?

Mace said apologetically, “Probably not more than a thousand. Maybe two.”

Vastor opened eyes filled with pelekotan’s darkness. Chalk lifted her head, rag hanging forgotten from her fist.

“So,” said Mace Windu. “Are we on?”

Smoke and dust clouded the huge cavern; it reeked of grasser fear-musk, of dung and urine and blood, and with each new DOKAW-shock the smell got worse.


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 17