"Vaapad?" Palpatine repeated, eventually. Perhaps he'd grown tired of waiting for someone to explain. "Isn't that some kind of animal?" "A predator of Sarapin," Yoda supplied gravely. "Also the nickname it is, given by students, for the seventh form of lightsaber combat." "Hmp. I've always heard there are only six." "Six there were, for generations of Jedi. The seventh. is not well known. A powerful form it is. Deadliest of all. But dangerous it is-to its master, as well as its opponent. Few have studied. One student alone to mastery has risen." "But if she's the only master-and this style is so deadly-what makes you think-" "She's not the only master, sir." He lifted his head to meet Palpatine's frown. "She is my only student to become a master." "YoRr only student." Palpatine echoed.

"I didn't study Vaapad." Mace let his hands fall to his sides. "I created it." Palpatine's brows drew together thoughtfully. "Yes, I seem to recall now: a reference in your report on the treason of Master Sora Bulq. Didn't you train him as well? Didn't he also claim to be a master of this Vaapad of yours?" "Sora Bulq was not my student." "Your. associate, then?" "And he did not master Vaapad," Mace said grimly. "Vaapad mastered him." "Ah-ah, I see." "With respect, sir, I don't think you do." "I see enough to worry me, just a bit." The warmth of Palpatine's smile robbed insult from his words. "The relationship of Master and Padawan is intense, you said; and I well believe it.

When you faced Dooku on Geonosis." "I prefer," Mace said softly, "not to talk about Geonosis, Chancellor." "Depa Billaba was your Padawan. And she is still perhaps your closest friend, is she not? If she must be slain, are you so certain you can strike her down?" Mace looked at the floor, at Yoda, at the agent, and in the end he had to meet Palpatine's eyes once more. It was not merely Palpatine of Naboo who had asked; this question had come from the Supreme Chancellor. His office demanded an answer.

"May the Force grant, sir," Mace said slowly, "that I will not have to find out." PART ONE THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL T

hrough the curved transparisteel, Haruun Kal was a wall of mountain-punched clouds beside him. It looked close enough to touch. The shuttle's orbit spiraled slowly toward the surface: soon enough he would be able to touch it in truth.

The insystem shuttle was only a twenty-seater, and even so it was three-quarters empty. The shuttle line had bought it used from a tour company; the tubelike passenger fuselage was entirely transparisteel, its exterior scarred and fogged with microbody pits, its interior bare except for strips of gray no-skid laid along the aisles.

Mace Windu was the lone human. His shipmates were two Kubaz who fluted excitedly about the culinary possibilities of pinch beetles and buzzworms, and a mismatched couple who seemed to be some kind of itinerant comedy act, a Kitonak and a Pho Ph'eahian whose canned banter made Mace wish for earplugs. Or hard vacuum. Or plain old-fashioned deafness. They must have been far down on their luck, to be taking a tourist shuttle into Pelek Baw; Haruun Kal's capital city is a place lounge acts go to die. Passenger liners on the Gevarno Loop only stopped there at all because they had to drop into realspace anyway for the system transit.

Mace sat as far from the others as the shuttle's limited space allowed.

The Jedi Master wore clothing appropriate to his cover: a stained vest of Corellian sand panther leather over a loose shirt that used to be white, and skintight black pants with wear patches of gray. His boots carried a hint of polish, but only above the ankle; the uppers were scuffed almost to suede. The only parts of his ensemble that were well maintained were the supple holster belted to his right thigh, and the gleaming Merr-Sonn Power 5 it held. His lightsaber was stuffed into the kitbag beneath his seat, disguised as an old-fashioned glow rod.

The datapad on his lap was also a disguise: though it worked well enough for him to encrypt his journal on it, most of it was actually a miniature subspace transmitter, frequency-locked to the band monitored by the medium cruiser Halleck, onstation in the Ventran system.

The Korunnal Highland swung into view: a vast plateau of every conceivable shade of green, skirted by bottomless swirls of cloud, crisscrossed by interlocking mountain ranges. A few of the tallest peaks were capped with white; many of the shorter mountains plumed billows of smoke and gas. The eastern half of the highland had already rolled through the terminator; when the shuttle passed into the planet's shadow, gleams of dark red and orange specked the world like predators' eyes beyond the ring of a campfire's light: open calderae of the highland's many active volcanoes.

It was beautiful. Mace barely noticed.

He held the recording wand of the fake datapad and spoke very, very softly.

FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU [Initial Haruun Kal Entry]: Depa's down there. Right now.

I shouldn't be thinking about this. I shouldn't be thinking about her. Not yet. But-She's down there. She's been down there for months.

I can't imagine what might have happened to her. I don't want to imagine.

I'll find out soon enough.

Focus. I have to focus. Concentrate on what I know is true while I wait for the mud to settle and the water to become clear.

A lesson of Yoda's. But sometimes you can't wait.

And sometimes the water never clears.

I can focus on what I know about Haruun Kal. I know a lot.

Here's some of it: HARUUN KAL (Al'har I): sole planet of the AL" HAR system. Haruun Kal is the name given to it in the language of the indigenous human population, the Korunnai (uplanders). It translates to Basic as "above the clouds." From space, the world appears to be oceanic, with only a few green-topped islands rising from a restless multicolored sea. But this is deceptive: the sea that these islands punctuate is not liquid, but an ocean of heavier-than-air toxic gases, which plume endlessly from the planet's innumerable active volcanoes. Only on the mountaintops and the high plateaus can oxygen-breathing life survive-and not on many of these; unless they rise far above the cloudsea, they are vulnerable to Haruun Kal's unpredictable winds. Especially during Haruun Kal's brief winter, when the thakiz baw'kal-the Downstorm-blows, the winds can whip the thick cloudsea high enough to scour lowlands free of oxygen breathers within hours. Its capital, PELEK BAW, is located on the sole inhabited landmass, the plateau known as the KORUNNAL HIGHLAND, and is the largest permanent settlement on this primarily jungle-covered planet. The indigenous humans live in small seminomadic tribal groups called ghosh and avoid the settlements, which are maintained by offworlders of a wide variety of species. The Korunnai lump all offworlders and settled folk under the somewhat contemptuous category of Balawai ("downfolk"). There is a long history of unorganized local conflicts.

L This doesn't help.

I can't fit what I know of Haruun Kal into a guidebook description. Too much of what I know is the color of the sunflash and the smell of the wind off Grandfather's Shoulder, the silken ripple of a grasser's undercoat through my fingers, the hot fierce sting of an akk dog's Force- touch.