"I've got a better idea. You can throw things around with the Force, right? Well, that makes you our fire cover. If anything comes down this street while we're breaching the building, cream it. Got that?"

Ahsoka frowned. "Yes, Rex."

"Don't look at me like that, littl'un. It's not the soft option. I need you to do it. If those droids kill enough militia, they can just walk over the dead bodies like a carpet and stroll down here."

Callista nodded. "Okay." She wasn't sure if it was the proper thing to call him Rex like Ahsoka did. "We'll do that."

"Move forward on my mark, and keep a comm channel clear for instructions."

Rex checked around him and then darted back to the other side of the street. The office block-three stories, nothing major-was a hundred meters ahead. Rex signaled to move, and Callista bolted.

Three seconds.

Jedi seconds weren't quite the same, but she appreciated the advice. That was how long it took a sniper to get a lock on a moving target. She could hear a distant steady noise, higher-pitched than the artillery fire, metallic and regular like someone hammering a box of rivets, and she watched Ahsoka's reaction.

"They're coming," she said.

Callista sprinted. By the time she reached the intersection, Altis, Geith, and the clones had found cover in a doorway.

Rex gestured. Callista switched to his comlink channel.

"Ready?"

"Yes. Can you switch the remote feed over to our data-pads?"

"Done. Stand by."

Callista tuned out of what was happening in the building because Altis and Geith were more than capable of keeping a watch on that. It still felt like turning her back on a responsibility. Ahsoka looked into her face again. Maybe it was a Togruta habit, not tactless at all, but Callista thought it was high time the Padawan realized they were on the same side, especially now that they had a much bigger problem advancing toward them. But Ahsoka seemed to be more preoccupied by Callista than by the battle droids.

She stared at the images being relayed by the remote as it hovered high above a company of droids. Either it was too small to be noticed, or they didn't care that they were being tracked.

"You're not what I expected," Ahsoka said at last. Her voice was a whisper. She focused on the road again. There were no droids to be seen, just that awful, inexorable sound of their feet hitting the paving in perfect synchronization.

Callista decided to watch what Ahsoka was watching. "What, a Sith?"

"You're mocking me now."

"You're looking at me as if I've got two heads. I know I shouldn't let it offend me, but it does."

"You could stop, you know. You and Geith could just be friends."

Ahsoka was a kid. She probably thought that life really was that simple. Callista tried to explain. "Our sect is made up of families. There's no friends about it."

"It might seem okay now," Ahsoka said earnestly, "but the decisions you make won't be the right ones. It'll cloud your judg-ment. It'll take you down a dark path."

"Are you trying to save me?"

"Yes." Ahsoka still didn't take her eyes off the road, but she felt afraid. And it had nothing to do with the fart that they were in the middle of an invasion. "Please. I know you're a sincere person. I feel it."

"Do you think Ki-Adi-Mundi needs saving? He has wives and children."

"He's Cerean." Ahsoka definitely wavered for a second then. "That's different. They need to increase their population."

"Why? Did the dark side give him an exemption? Not very dark, then, is it, if it lets you off in special cases?"

"He's not attached to them. So it does no harm."

Had Ahsoka any idea how callous-and foolish-that sounded? Callista found a retort forming on her lips, but bit it back. She couldn't blame this child simply because she had swallowed what Callista saw as an intolerant doctrine. She'd probably never known any life but the Jedi Order. Callista had become a Jedi as an adult, fully aware of the options open to her, choosing this path as the best for her because Master Altis made her see the world differently; he showed her how her rare gift could be used for so much more.

"I'm not going to argue with you, Ahsoka," Callista said. "I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. I'm just saying that Jedi aren't the only Force-users on the light side, and others do things differently without going dark."

"What others are there?"

"Talk to Master Altis. He'll tell you."

Ahsoka didn't break her fixed gaze on the road, but Callista felt a little jolt in the Force, as if the Togruta was struggling with something. This was the debate Callista always dreaded: the one where she pointed to the real world around her, the evident benefits of love, and expected an ideologue whose entire life had been consumed by an all-or-nothing dogma to notice the evidence and suddenly agree that she had a point.

Being right didn't matter. I have to be more tolerant. Unless the mainstream Jedi did harm, active harm, then she had no duty or right to argue or oppose them.

Geith, though, felt they were already doing harm.

She glanced down at the remote's output on her datapad. A wall of light brown moving metal, relentless in its pace and uni-formity, marched on.

"Here they come," Ahsoka said. She ignited her lightsaber, transformed from child to warrior in a second. "No more than ten minutes."

Callista opened her comlink. "Rex?" It just slipped out. "The battle droids. Ten minutes, maximum. Get a move on."

"A good explosive Force push can bring down the front two ranks," Ahsoka said. She was suddenly completely in control of her situation, confident about seeing off a company of battle droids. "If they pack the street, they tend to block themselves in. And if you get close enough to use your lightsaber, the heads come off ever so easily."

"Thanks." Callista realized she knew no more about Ahsoka's world than Ahsoka understood of hers. "I've never faced them before."

"We're Jedi," she said. "We can take a bunch of tinnies anytime. That's what Rex calls them, you know. Tinnies."

"Tinnies it is, then," said Callista.

The steady chunk-chunk-chunk of durasteel feet was getting closer by the second.

ONE BLOCK AWAY FROM HALLENA DEVIS, SOUTH ATHAR.

Djinn altis took the lightsaber from his belt and pressed his thumb on the controls. The blade of amber energy was his personal watershed, the line between who he tried hard to be and what he inevitably became.

And now I'm ready to end a life.

And if I wish there was another way-why don't I make one?

He felt the clone troopers tense as the blade ignited-the new clones, beings so raw and young that he sensed them in the Force as children. Their commander, Rex, had obviously seen lightsabers used in earnest many times. For the youngsters, this had to be the first time.

"Okay-Joc, Ince, and Ross-cover the exit." Rex gestured. "The rest of you, with me. We scale the wall, go in via the roof-light. Okay? Usual drill." He turned to Altis. "You know how we do this, don't you? We go in and shoot everyone who isn't a hostage. You can stay here and hold off the tinnies."

Rex was giving him a gracious way out. Too dirty a job for a Jedi. But Altis couldn't back out now.

"There are only three others on that floor apart from Hallena Devis. We might find that much force isn't necessary."

"Force with a small f."

"Yes."

"The aim is total incapacitation of the hostage-takers before they have a chance to shoot their hostage or detonate any de-vices, and to remove the hostage as fast as possible. That means overkill. That's why I've got six men on this and not tasked to fight the droids."

"Let me go in first. Just because I'm older than the Jedi you're used to serving with doesn't mean I'm incapable of defending myself."

I'm still complicit in this if I stand outside, and the enemy will be no less dead. So I'll do it. And perhaps I now understand Yoda's slide into militarism a little better.

"Okay, but we have to make this snappy."

"I'll draw their attention to get past the door," Altis said, switching off the lightsaber. He concealed it in his sleeve ready for action. "Just an old man looking for a lost daughter in the chaos of civil war. Yes?"

Rex gave him a thumbs-up. "Make sure you leave your comlink open so we hear what's happening. Wait for the signal."

Vere fired a grapple over the edge of the roof and tugged on the line to make sure that it would take a man's weight. Reas-sured, they hoisted themselves on individual lines and disappeared over the parapet. Geith peered over the edge and nodded. Then the three clone troopers covering the exit waved Altis in.

Go.

It was a rickety old building, and the only way up was several flights of stairs. The turbolift was out of action; there was no power to the building. Altis antic.i.p.ated a panicky, trigger-happy reception if he startled them, and put on his bewildered-old-man persona.

He made a point of creaking slowly up the stairs, then paused on the first landing to give them enough warning-and enough of something else to focus on beside the noises they might hear from the roof.

"Is there anyone here? Linnie? Are you here?"

He got to the third landing and headed for the office door, feeling Hallena Devis more strongly in the Force than ever. As he reached the door, which was slightly ajar, a woman with a blaster came out and blocked his path.

"I'm looking for my girl," Altis said, wondering if some mind influence might speed things up. But this woman didn't look the suggestible type. "I haven't seen her since the fighting started. Have you seen her? She's..."

The door opened wide now, and a man came out. Altis got a quick glimpse of a tall, dark-skinned woman being hauled to a standing position from the floor. Hallena. Yes, it was her. "Who is it, Merish?"

"Just some old guy looking for his daughter." She seemed distracted by the comlink she held in one hand, as if she wanted to get back to a conversation. "Look, we haven't seen your daughter. We're moving out of here now, so..."

Bang.

The explosion of transparisteel and permacrete above his head was a genuine shock. Boots. .h.i.t the floor next to him. Debris rained down.

His reflex was to draw his lightsaber; all he saw was the woman's blaster lifting to fire-at him, at one of the clones who suddenly landed beside him?-and he simply brought the blade up diagonally in a defensive stroke. It cut clean through her arm and sliced under the chin. Where the blaster fell, he had no idea; the man behind her screamed "Merish! No, Merish!" and someone else tried to slam the door shut before he stepped clear. But Rex and two clone troopers smashed through the door, firing, and Altis followed.

The rattle of blasterfire stopped almost as soon as it had started. In the second-a second, no more-that it took him to enter the room, Rex stood with his blaster to an old man's head; the man in turn held Hallena Devis around the neck in a stranglehold, with a blaster pressed to her temple.

There was a moment's standoff.

"Nice to see the Republic finally showed its face," the man said. Hallena was completely still, hands bound, face impa.s.sive, exuding that tension that said she was looking for a way to drop this man herself. "What do you want-want me to bargain, your spy's life for mine?"

Rex said nothing and simply pressed the trigger.

It was that fast. Altis didn't expect Rex to do that at all.

The blaster discharge knocked the old man backward, but he was dead before he slid all the way down the wall. Hallena fell, too. Rex, completely calm, hauled her to her feet again and ejected a vibroblade from his gauntlet to cut the cuffs around her wrists.

"Time to go, Agent Devis," he said. Outside, the chunking sound of droid feet was getting very close. "The droid army's coming for you."

Rex tried to push her to the exit. But she tried to stop to check the younger man, sprawled on the floor with a ma.s.sive blaster burn from mouth to chest.

"He's not dead..."

"Not our problem. Go."

"But-look, let me get my comlink back, okay?"

She rummaged in the man's coat, but Rex just picked her up bodily and almost threw her to Hil, who ignored her protests and bundled her down the first flight of stairs. Altis went after them. It was a narrow staircase, and they needed a fast exit. Geith-no questions, no orders-leapt down the stairwell and held up his arms. Hil threw her down to him; she yelped. It was as if they'd been drilled to do it all their lives, and yet Geith had never seen the troopers before today, and the trooper could have had no idea how much weight a Jedi could safely take when it was dropped on him. Suddenly there was n.o.body below, the sound of droids was deafening, and Altis realized he was going to be trapped in this building along with Rex, Vere, and Boro.

"Sir! Get out, we'll cover you." Ince's voice was audible over the open comlink. "Move it!"

Rex grabbed Altis's arm. "Nice job, Master. Now run. Can't keep Coric waiting."

As the four of them reached the entrance to the building, the firing started. Altis couldn't see Callista or Ahsoka; he had to get out of there. Rex gestured to wait and adjusted his rifle.

"Ince, are you clear? Is Devis okay?"

The trooper's voice sounded breathless. He was running. "Yeah-heading for the shuttle-she's running-had to put my boot up her backside, though..."

Rex made an irritated huff, an oddly mild reaction with bedlam breaking loose outside. "Okay, get to Coric and bang out as soon as you need to. Don't wait for anyone except the Jedi."

Altis cut in. "No. We take our chances, like you."

Rex seemed to ignore him, took a deep breath, and burst out into the street, straight into a sea of battle droids.

Chapter Seven.

One day, if it pleases some Jedi Master's personal convenience, the Council will abandon the rule of no attachment completely and have families. Then they'll build powerful dynasties.

Their ends always justify their means on any given day.

As do ours-but we admit it, do we not?

-Count Dooku, to Asajj Ventress ATHAR, EN ROUTE TO THE EXTRACTION POINT.