Since we need all our clones simply to defend Republic systems, we have been forced to find ways to attack without them.

The Separatists don't enjoy unalloyed popularity, even in their core systems; and in any society, there are fringe elements eager to take up arms against authority. Jedi have been covertly inserted on hundreds of worlds, with a common mission: to organize Loyalist resistance, train partisans in sabotage and guerrilla warfare, and generally do whatever possible to destabilize the Separatist governments.

This was why Depa Billaba came to Haruun Kal.

I sent her here.

The Al" Har system-of which Haruun Kal is the sole planet-lies on the nexus of several hyperspace lanes: the hub of a wheel called the Gevarno Loop, whose spokes join the Separatist systems of Killisu, Jutrand, Loposi, and the Gevarno Cluster with Opari, Ventran, and Ch'manss-all Loyalist. Due to local stellar configurations and the mass sensitivities of modern hyperdrives, any ship traveling from one of these systems to another can cut several standard days off its journey by coming through Al" Har, even counting the daylong realspace transit of the system itself.

None of these systems has any vast strategic value-but the Republic has lost too many systems to secession to risk losing any to conquest. Control of the Al "Har nexus offers control of the whole region. It was decided that Haruun Kal is worth the Council's attention-and not solely for its military uses.

In the Temple archives are reports of the Jedi anthropologists who studied the Korun tribes. They have a theory that a Jedi spacecraft may have made a forced landing there, perhaps thousands of years ago during the turmoil of the Sith War, when so many Jedi were lost to history. There are several varieties of fungi native to the jungles of Haruun Kal that eat metals and silicates; a ship that could not lift off again immediately would be grounded forever, and comm equipment would be equally vulnerable. The ancestors of the Korunnai, the anthropologists believe, were these shipwrecked Jedi.

This is their best explanation for a curious genetic fact: all Korunnai can touch the Force.

The true explanation may be simpler: we have to. Those who cannot use the Force do not long survive. Humans can't live in those jungles; the Korunnai survive by following their grasser herds. Grassers, great six-limbed behemoths, tear down the jungle with their forehands and massive jaws. Their name comes from the grassy meadows that are left in their wake. It is in those meadows that the Korunnai make their precarious lives. The grassers protect the Korunnai from the jungle; the Korunnai, in turn-with their Force-bonded companions, the fierce akk dogs-protect the grassers.

When the Jedi anthropologists were ready to depart, they had asked the elders of ghosh Windu if they might take with them a child to train in the Jedi arts, thus recovering the Force talents of the Korunnai to serve the peace of the galaxy.

That would be me.

I was an infant, an orphan, called by the name of my ghosh, for my parents had been taken by the jungle before my naming day. I was six months old. The choice was made for me.

I've never minded.

It is the Korunnai that Depa came here to train and use as anti-government partisans. The civil government of Haruun Kal is entirely Balawai: off-worlders and their descendants, beneficiaries of the financial interests behind the thyssel bark trade. Government of the Balawai, by the Balawai, and for the Balawai.

No Korun need apply.

The government-and the planetary militia, their military arm-joined the Confederacy of Independent Systems as a cynical dodge to squelch an ongoing Judicial Department investigation into their treatment of the Korun natives; in exchange for the use of the capital's spaceport as a base to conduct repair and refit for the Al'har fleet of droid starfighters, the Separatists provided arms for the militia and turned a blind eye toward illegal Balawai activities in the Korunnai Highland.

But since Depa arrived, the Separatists have discovered that even the smallest bands of determined guerrillas can have a devastating effect on military operations.

Especially when all these guerrillas can touch the Force.

This was a large part of Depa's argument for coming here in the first place, and why she insisted on handling it personally. Untrained Force users can be exceedingly dangerous; wild talents crop up unpredictably in such populations. Depa's mastery of Vaapad makes her virtually unbeatable in personal combat, and her own cultural training-in the elegant philosophico-mystical disciplines of the Chalactan Adepts-makes her uniquely resistant to all forms of mental manipulation, from Force-powered suggestion to brainwashing by torture.

I believe she may have also nursed a private hope that some of the Korunnai might be persuaded to enlist in the Grand Army of the Republic; a cadre of Force-capable commandos could take a great deal of the pressure off the Jedi and accomplish missions that no clone troopers could hope to survive.

I suspect, too, that part of the reason she insisted on taking this mission was sentimental: I think she came here because Haruun Kal is where I was born.

Though this world has never been my true home, I bear its stamp to this day.

The Korun culture is based on a simple premise, what they call the Four Pillars: Honor, Duty, Family, Herd.

The First Pillar is Honor, your obligation to yourself. Act with integrity. Speak the truth. Fight without fear. Love without reservation.

Greater than this is the Second Pillar, Duty, your obligation to others. Do your job. Work hard. Obey the elders. Stand by your ghosh.

Greater still is the Third Pillar, Family. Care for your parents. Love your spouse. Teach your children. Defend your blood.

Greatest of all is the Fourth Pillar, Herd, for it is on the grasser herds that the life of the ghosh depends. Your family is more important than your duty; your duty outweighs your honor. But nothing is more important than your herd. If the well-being of the herd requires the sacrifice of your honor, you do it. If it requires that you shirk your duty, you do it.

Whatever it takes.

Even your family.

Yoda once observed that-though I left Haruun Kal as an infant, and returned only once, as a youth, to train in the Korun Force-bond with the great akks-he thinks I have the Four Pillars in my veins along with my Korun blood. He said that Honor and Duty are as natural to me as breathing, and that the only real difference my Jedi training has made is that the Jedi have become my Family, and the Republic itself is my Herd.

This is flattering. I hope it might be true, but I don't have an opinion on the subject. I'm not interested in opinions. I'm interested in facts.