Shatterpoint

Shining like a vibro-ax.

Vastor touched down in the middle of the compound and rolled out of his fall without slowing. He flashed into an inhumanly fast sprint toward the very steamcrawler atop which Mace lay. Vastor's sprint became a headlong dive that carried him sliding between the treads.

The steamcrawler's armor hummed under Mace's hands, and a harsher squeal joined the chorus of snarling shields; he had to bite back an obscenity he'd learned from Nick.

Vastor was cutting through the 'crawler's undercarriage.

Had he stolen that dark dream right out of Mace's head?

Mace popped to his feet and both his lightsabers hummed to life. He felt Vaster in the Force: a torch that flared with darkness. He was almost through the undercarriage; once inside, he'd be loose among the wounded. The Force showed him how the wounded men and women inside the crawler had already pressed themselves away from the shining blades that sliced upward from below.

Mace decided it was time he introduced himself to this lor pelek.

He sprang into the air, flipping high over the steamcrawler's turret to land on its flat mid-deck armor directly above Vaster. A twitch of the Force reversed his grips so that the lightsabers' blades projected downward from his fists. Then he dropped to his knees, twisting to swing the blades in a circle around him.

A vibroshield is not the only thing that can cut steamcrawler armor.

A disk of that armor-edges still glowing from the lightsabers' cuts, Mace still kneeling in its center-dropped straight down like a free-falling turbolift.

Mace heard one explosive obscenity from below before he and the disk of armor flattened Kar Vaster like a fusion-powered pile driver.

The interior of the steamcrawler was crowded with wounded men and women. One of them brandished a heavy blaster; Mace slashed it in two with a flip of his lightsaber. "No shooting," he said, and the Force made his words into a command that sent several other blasters clattering to the floor.

Vaster lay pi

Mace leaned close to his ear. "Kar Vaster, I am Mace Windu. Stand down. That's an order." A twitch of the Force was his only warning, but for Mace it was more than he needed. He threw himself into a back flip a quarter of a second before the disk of armor slammed upward to smash against the ceiling with a deafening clank. Before it could fall again, Vaster was on his feet. Then as the disk dropped, an ultrachrome flame licked through it, slicing it in half.

The pieces rattled back down through the hole Vaster had cut in the undercarriage.

Vaster faced Mace across the hole. Darkness pulsed at Mace through the Force, but on the,'orfe,'ek's face was not anger, but instead inhuman focus: a primal ferocity like a krayt dragon surprised over the corpse of a bantha.

The way he had shrugged Mace off, the slicing of the armor disk: a predator's dominance display.

He raised his shield-clad hands in salute and rumbled something in a language that Mace didn't recognize-it didn't even sound like language at all: more like the growls and snarls of jungle beasts.

But as Vaster spoke, some power of the lor fe,'ek's unfurled his meaning inside Mace's mind.

Mace Windu, the lor pelek had said. An honor. Why do you interfere in my kill?

"There is no kill," Mace said. "Do you understand me? No kill. No more killing." Vastor's smile was disbelieving. No? Then what do you propose? Shall we lay down our arms? He beckoned invitingly with one sizzling shield. You first.

The zings of blaster ricochets and the roar of steamcrawler turret guns came clearly through the gaps in the 'crawler's armor. "No u

Massacres are necessary, doshalo.

"You and I are not doshallai." Mace angled his lightsabers in a defensive X. "You are no clan brother of mine." Vaster shrugged. Where are Besh and Chalk?

"In the bunker," Mace answered without thinking, his mind still whirling around the concept of a necessary massacre.

Vaster swept the wounded men and women in the steamcrawler's cabin with a contemptuous glare. These will keep, doshalo. They ca

That same rush of the Force tugged at Mace's will, inclining him to follow without thinking- but he understood now the power of this place, and of Vaster himself.

"You'll have to do better than that," Mace muttered.

He turned his attention to the terrified Balawai around him. He gestured, and all the discarded blasters flipped from the deck to hang in midair; with a single swift flourish he sliced every one of them in half, then cast their pieces out the hole. "Listen to me, all of you. You must surrender. It is your only hope." "Hope of what?" a man said bitterly. His face was gray; he wore a bacta patch over a chest wound and clutched the stump of his wrist just above a wad of spray bandage that served him for a tourniquet. "We know what happens if we're captured." "Not this time," Mace said: "If you fight, they will kill you. If you surrender I can keep you alive. And I will." "We're supposed to just take your word for it?" "I am a Jedi Master." The man spat blood on the deck. "We know what that's worth." "Obviously you don't." In the Force, Mace felt the dark flame that was the lor pelek fighting his way upslope toward the bunker. For an instant he was almost grateful-he'd be happy to leave the defense of Chalk and Besh in Vastor's hands-but then he remembered the children.

The children were still inside.

Where Vastor was going.

Massacres are necessary.

"I won't argue." Mace moved to the rim of the hole Vastor had cut, and looked up through the one he'd cut himself, judging his clearance. "Fight to a sure death, or surrender to a hope of life. The choice is yours," he said, and threw himself upward into the burning night.

The whole compound was on fire: choking black smoke swirled above blazing lakes of flame-projector fuel. Blaster bolts flashed through every angle, their bursts an arrhythmic drumbeat under the howling chorus of the Korun shield-weapons. Vastor bounded up the slope toward the bunker in erratic zigzagging leaps, his shields flashing: catching stray bolts, carving metal, slashing flesh.

Mace dived from the top of the steamcrawler, flipped in the air, and hit the ground ru

His blades wove a green and purple corona of power that splintered blasterfire into the sky.