Shatterpoint

Nobody get twitchy. I don't want to get fragged, okay?" Mace said, "Light will be welcome." Yellow-white glo1 ared behind a slab of tumbled wall, and a cell-powered glow flipping through the air to land not far from Terrel's fee — _ced, and rolled to a stop. Its half globe of up-angled light stretched the surrounding shadows toward the sky, painting them even darker.

Terrel held a hand at his chin to shade his eyes. "Hey, don't make me stand around alone out here, huh?" "Come on over here, boy." A man stepped into view, moving slowly into the light. He held a blaster rifle in one hand, its barrel slanting dowvi, carefi " cted at the ground beside him. His other hand was up and forv,^ ^alm out. His clothing was scorched and stained, and one whole side of his head bore a clotted mass of spray bandage, the foam covering one eye. From his voice, this was Rankin. "Get yourself under cover,'' Terrel looked back up at the bunker. Mace said, "Go ahead, son." The voice of the man who'd claimed to be the boys' father snarled from the darkness. "Don't call him son, korno! You're not his father! Your stinkin' kind killed his father-" "Stow that garbage!" Rankin barked, but too late: Terrel's face crumpled in tragic disbelief.

"Dad?" he said, sounding stu

"Listen," Rankin said, looking up at the dark jagged mouth of the bunker. "I guess you don't want the children hurt. Neither do we. But we've got a serious problem here, okay? We got our butts shot off tonight. O '' homes are destroyed. Half the people I know on this whole planet are dead. Those 'crawlers are stuffed with wounded, and we've got a load of kornos on our tails. We can't just go, get it? We can't. We need a place to hole up till dawn, that's all." "You can't stay here," Mace said. "There are ULF guerrillas on their way here right now.

Look at where you are. This place couldn't stand against them when it was intact." "It doesn't have to. Gunships fly at dawn. We can hold out till then." "You don't understand-" "Maybe I don't. So? Not your problem, is it?" "I have made it my problem," Mace said grimly. "You have no idea what this place is. What it has become." "You know what happened here?" Rankin waved his rifle at the shattered huts. "Where is everybody?" "Dead," Mace said. "Killed by the ULF. All of them." "I don't think so. Where are the bodies? Think I've never seen a ULF action? I know the kind of things they do to our dead." "Forget the bodies." Mace tried to massage the pain from his temple with the heel of one hand. How could the simple decency of burying the dead turn against him? "If you're here when the guerrillas arrive, they'll kill all of you, too. You care about your children's lives? Get them out of here." "Hey, he didn't say us," said the father's voice from the darkness. "You catch that, Pek? "Kill all of you,' he says. You catch that?" "Shut up." Rankin didn't even glance in the father's direction. "Then why haven't you sent out the other kids already?" "Because I don't know when the ULF will get here," Mace said impatiently. "This is the only place I can defend them. And if I had sent them out already, you'd have no reason to listen to me, would you? I'd be just another korno. One of you would have opened fire, and by now people would be dead. That's what I'm trying to avoid. Don't you understand? We don't have time to argue. On grassers, they can move as fast as a steamcrawler. Faster. They could be here right now, watching you from the jungle-" Rankin shook his head. "That's why we need that bunker, you follow? We gotta get our wounded where we can protect them-" "You can't protect them!" Mace's fists clenched until his fingernails drew blood from his palms. Why wouldn't they understand? He could feel the dark closing in upon them all like a strangler's noose. "Listen to me. This bunker couldn't help the people who lived here, and it can't help you. Your only hope is to take your kids and your wounded and run. All of you: run." "Some kinda stinkin' fu

I know exactly where you are. All six of you." He paused for a second to let that sink in. "If I wanted you hurt, we wouldn't be talking.

You'd already be dead." The truth of this wiped Rankin's face clean of expression. Mace watched it hit home, and had just enough time to think that this might actually work- Then streaks of blasterfire lit up the slope below.

The jungle thundered with scarlet explosions, multiple bolts flashing from the cover of steamcrawlers to shatter branches and blow rocks to splinters. The bursts were instantly echoed by smaller, whiter flares under the trees, crackling like a bonfire built of green logs: muzzle flashes.

Slugthrowers.

Shouts and screams from human throats underscored the whine of blasters and the shrieks of slugs hurtling in ricochets off steam-crawler armor.

"What did I tell you?" the father shrieked from the darkness. "What did I te,'/you? He kept us yapping and now we're getting killed down there-,'" "Don't do nothing stupid!" Rankin shouted. He hunched over in the glow rod's spill, his face desperate and frightened: a jacklighted ur-stag. "Look, nobody do nothing-" "Rankin!" The Force gave Mace's voice the thunder of a signal ca

"You said coming up here can't help us-" "It can't. I can. Do it. It's your only chance." Behind Mace, one of the boys had started to cry, and now the other one joined him. Pell said, "Mister? That's my mom out there." Her underlip twitched and her eyes welled. "Don't let them hurt her, okay? Don't let nobody hurt her." Keela gathered Pell into her arms. "She'll be okay. Don't worry. She'll be okay." Her eyes begged Mace to make this true.

Mace stared down at them, thinking that if it were up to him, no one would hurt anyone.

Anywhere. Ever. He said only, "Hang on. Be brave." Pell sniffled and nodded solemnly.

Outside, Rankin was shouting into his comlink."-no, blast it! Up here. Flares and flame projectors. Light 'em up and slow 'em down-and get those 'crawlers in gear!" "Rankin, don't!" the father shouted. "Don't you get it? Once we're up here, he can crossfire our butts from the bunker!" "Don't be stupid-" "Space your don't-be-stupid talk! You know what's stupid? Talking to that korno like he's a human being! Believing one fraggin' word he says, that's stupid! Want to talk to the kornos?