So did Mace's.

Energy sprayed around him, but only splatters of it grazed him here and there; the rest went back at the gunship. Though the Thunderbolt hadn't the power to penetrate their heavy armor, aTaim 8c Bak laser cannon is a whole different animal.

Ten bolts reached his blades. Two apiece went back at the dam aged ships, bursting against their armor and knocking them reeling to break their target lock. The other six hammered the cockpit of the third gunship, blasting a gaping hole in its transparisteel viewport.

Mace dropped the lightsabers, swung the over-under forward on its sling, and fired from the hip. It belched a single grenade that the Force guided right through that hole into the cockpit.

The grenade made a dull, wet-sounding whump inside the gunship. A fountain of white goo splashed out the hole.

Mace grunted to himself; he thought he'd loaded Nytinite.

Then he shrugged: Eh. Same difference.

One of the forward turbojets sucked strings of hardening glop through its intake, squealed, and chewed itself to shrapnel. The gun-ship lurched wildly; with the crew glued fast in the grenade's glop, there was nothing they could do except watch in horror as their ship careened into the face of the ridge and detonated in an impressive explosion that splashed flame three hundred meters down the slope.

Mace thought, And now, for my next trick.

He released the over-under and extended his hands and both lightsabers hurtled back to his grip- But the two damaged gunships had peeled off and were already limping away into the smoke-stained sky.

He watched them go, frowning.

He felt oddly distressed.

Unhappy.

This had been. strange. Uncomfortable.

His rigorous self-honesty wouldn't allow him to deny the actual word that described the feeling.

It had been unsatisfying.

FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I don't know how long I stood there, frowning into the sky. Eventually, I recovered enough of my equanimity to slide off Galthra's back and release my hold on her Force-bond. She bounded off, searching for Chalk upslope among the burning rocks.

Nick came stumbling down the slope, picking his way through the dying flames, avoiding the half-slagged rocks that still glowed a dull red. He seemed most impressed by the fight.

Adrenaline drunk and childishly giggly, he seemed deliriously happy, bubbling over with jittery enthusiasm. I don't recall much of what he said beyond some nonsense about me being a "walking one-man war machine." Something like that. I'm not sure the word he used was walking.

Most of what he said was lost in the roar that lived inside my head: a hurricane-whirl of the thunder of my heart, echoes of the battle's explosions, and the tidal surge of the Force itself.

When he reached me, I saw that he was wounded: blood washed down his face and neck from a deep gash along the side of his head-probably a graze from a rock splinter. But he just kept on about how he'd never seen anything like me until I stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"You're bleeding," I told him, but that dark gleam in his bright blue eyes never wavered. He kept going on about "Alone against three gun-ships. Three. Alone." I told him that I hadn't been alone. I quoted Yoda: " "My ally is the Force.'" He didn't seem to understand, so I explained: "I had them outnumbered." What happened next I remember vividly, no matter how much I wish I could wipe it from my mind. I couldn't tear my eyes from the two damaged gunships that by then were mere specks of durasteel soaring into the limitless sky.

Nick followed my gaze, and said, "Yeah, I know how you feel. Shame you couldn't roast all three, huh?" "How I feel?" I rounded on him. "How,' feel?" I had a sudden urge to punch him: an urge so powerful the effort to restrain it left me gasping.

I wanted-I needed-to punch him. To punch him in the face. To feel my fist shatter his jaw.

To make him shut up.

To make him not look at me.

The understanding in his voice-the knowledge in his cold blue eyes- I wanted to hit him because he was right. He did know how I felt.

It was an ugly shock.

As he said: I'd wanted to destroy those other gunships, too. I wanted to rip them out of the sky and watch them burn. No thought of the lives I'd already taken in the first gunship. No thought of the lives I would take in the other two. In the Force, I reached out toward the burning wreckage on the ridge face above, searching among the flames; for what, I can't say.

I'd like to think I was feeling for survivors. Checking to see if there were any people, merely wounded, who might be saved from the wreckage. But I cannot honestly say that is true.

I might have just wanted to feel them burn.

I also cannot honestly say I'm sorry for the way the fight turned out.

Though I took their lives in self-defense, and the defense of others, neither I nor those I defended are innocents. I cannot honestly claim that my Korun companions are any more deserving of life than were the people in the gunship. What I did in the pass, I cannot call my duty as a Jedi.

What I did there had nothing to do with peace.

One might call it an accident of war: it happened that this small band of murderous guerrillas accompanied a Jedi Master, and so the spouses and children of a gunship crew have suffered a horrible loss. One might call it an accident of war. even I might call it that- If it had been anything resembling an accident.

If I hadn't been trying to bring that ship down. If I hadn't felt the fever in my blood: blood fever.

The lust for victory. To win, at any cost.

Blood fever.

I feel it even now.

It's not overpowering; I haven't fallen that far. Yet. It's more a preference. An expectation.

An anticipation that has been disappointed.

This is bad. Not the worst it can be, but bad enough.

I have long known that I am in danger here. But only now am I beginning to understand how dark and near that danger is; I never guessed how close Haruun Kal has already brought me to that fatal brink.

It is a side effect of the Force immersion of Vaapad. My style grants great power, but at a terrible risk. Blood fever is a disease that can kill anyone it touches. To use Vaapad, you must allow yourself to enjoy the fight. You give yourself to the thrill of battle. The rush of winning.