Shatterpoint

The landslide built into a wave of its own that filled in the gully as it rolled down toward the steamcrawler and the screaming, sobbing children-and on the very crest of that wave of dirt and rock, backpedaling furiously to keep from being sucked under by the landslide's roll, came Mace Windu.

Mace rode that crest while the wave sank and flattened and finally lurched to a halt, its last remnants trickling into a ridge that joined Mace's position with the corner of the steamcrawler's cabin. Nearly all his concentration stayed submerged in the Force, spread throughout the slide, using a wide-focus Force grip to stabilize the rubble while he scrambled down to the steamcrawler's roof.

On the roof were two young boys, both about six, and a girl of perhaps eight standard years.

They clung to each other, sobbing, terror-filled eyes staring through their tears.

Mace squatted beside them and touched the girl's arm. "My name is Mace Windu. I need your help." The girl sniffled in astonishment. "You-you-my help?" Mace nodded gravely. "I need you to help me get these boys to safety. Can you do that?

Can you take the boys up the same way I came down? Climb right up the crest. It's not steep." "I–I-I don't-I'm afraid-" Mace leaned close and spoke in her ear only a little louder than the hush of the rain. "Me, too. But you have to act brave. Pretend. So you don't scare the little boys. Okay?" The girl scrubbed her ru

Down at the lowermost corner of the rectangular cabin, a boy who seemed to be barely into his teens struggled one-handed to drag a girl not much younger up the steep floor. He had a foamy wad of blood-soaked spray bandage around one upper arm, and he was trying to shove the unconscious girl ahead of him, using the riveted durasteel leg posts of the 'crawler's seats like a ladder. But his injured arm could take no weight; tears streamed down his face as he begged the girl to wake up, wake up, give him a little help because he couldn't get her out and he wouldn't leave her, but if she'd just wake up- Her head lolled, limp. Mace saw she wouldn't be waking up any time soon: she had an ugly scalp wound above her hairline, and her fine golden hair was black and sticky with blood.

Mace leaned in through the hatchway and extended his hand. "All right, son. Just take my hand. Once we get you out of here, then I can-" When the boy looked up, the tearful appeal on his face twisted into instant wild rage, and his plea became a fierce shriek. Mace hadn't noticed the swing-stock blaster rifle slung around his good arm; the first hint of its existence Mace got was a burst of hot plasma past his face. He threw himself backward out the hatch and flattened against the cabin wall while the hatchway vomited blasterfire.

The steamcrawler lurched, the hatch going even higher; his sudden movement had been enough to tip its precarious balance, toppling it toward the precipice.

Mace bared his teeth to the night. With the Force, he seized the steamcrawler and yanked it back into place-but a squeal from above grabbed his attention. In seizing the 'crawler he'd lost his Force-hold on the landslide, and the unstable mound of dirt and rock had begun to shift under the little girl and the two boys, sending them sliding down toward the lava.

Mace calmed his hammering heart and extended one hand; he had to close his eyes for a moment to reassert his control on the slide and stabilize it-but its shift had left it less solid than before. He could hold it for the minute or two it would take the girl and boys to reach the relative safety of the outcrop above, not much more. And now he could feel the 'crawler slowly tilting beneath him, leaning higher and higher toward the point of no return.

From inside the cabin he could hear the boy's terrified curses, and his shrieks about kill all you fragging kornos. Mace's eyes drifted closed.

This filthy war- The boy and the girl in the steamcrawler were about to become casualties of the Summertime War. because when the boy had looked up, he could not see that a Jedi Master had come to his rescue.

He could see only a Korun.

To use the Force to disarm the boy, or persuade him, would break the hold he kept upon the landslide, which might cost the lives of the three children scrambling up its face. To reason with the boy seemed impossible-the boy would know too much about what Balawai can expect at the hands of Koru

Once he got the boy moving up the face of the landslide toward the others, he'd be able to bring the girl himself. But how to get the boy out?

Mace spun the situation in his mind: he framed it as a fight for the lives of these five children.

All of them. A fundamental principle of combat: Use what you're given. How you fight depends on whom you fight. His first opponent had been the volcano itself. He'd used the power of the volcano's weapon-the lava, where it had undercut the cliff-to hold that power at bay.

His current opponent was not the boy, but rather the boy's experience of the Summertime War.

Use what you're given.

"Kid?" Mace called, roughening his voice. Making himself sound the way the boy would expect a Korun to sound, adopting a thick upland accent like Chalk's. "Kid: five seconds to toss that blaster out the hatch and come after it, you got." "Never!" the boy screamed from inside. "Never!" "Don't come out, you, and the next thing you see-the last thing you see, ever-is a grenade coming in. Hear me, you?" "Go ahead! I know what happens if we get taken alive!" "Kid-already got the others, don't I? The girl. Urno and Nykl. Go

Mace said into the silence, "Sure, go ahead and die. Any coward can do that. Guts enough to live for a while, you got?" He was moderately sure that a thirteen-year-old boy who'd load up four other children and set out in a steamcrawler across the Koru

A second later, he was proven right.

FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU From this doorway, I can see a spray of brilliant white flares-headlamps of three, no, wait, four steamcrawlers-climbing the spine of the fold, heading for the broken track.