Shatterpoint

Her blades took it just below the windscreen and drove in to the handgrips, and the rushing airstream around the gunship's nose flipped her over and whipped her up across the cockpit, dragging her blades through the transparisteel to slice free a huge gaping arc.

"Woo!" Nick shouted from beside him. "Love them easy-openin' cans: "Kar! Chalk! Time to go!" The Korun girl climbed into the cockpit between Mace and Nick; she looked pale and in pain, but still fierce. The lorpelek shouldered in behind her. They both wore emergency repulsor-packs strapped across their backs. "You know how these work?" Chalk nodded silently in reply; Vaster slapped the graphic instruction card sewn onto his harness and snarled at him.,' can read.

"Urn, are we bailing out?" Nick said. "Because, y'know, somebody forgot to get me one of those-" "Nick." "What?" "Shoot." "Right. Right. Sorry. Here, watch this." Nick let the port turret go silent, while the starboard quad clawed at the militia ship; the battered ship jinked aside to evade the pounding-directly into a stream of fresh fire from the port turret. "See? That's shooting-" "With real shooting," Chalk told him, "wouldn't be shooting back, him." "Shee. What does it take to please you people?" Mace nodded to Vaster and Chalk. "Ready?" Without waiting for an answer he cut power to the turbojets and flicked the repulsorlifts into reverse; overstressed metal squealed in the gunship's every joint as it blasted down toward stall speed. Mace wrenched the yoke and flipped the gunship upside down. Kar Vaster wrapped one arm around Chalk's shoulders and with the other grabbed the empty rim of the windscreen gap, then pulled them both smoothly out onto the roof. With one explosive kick to clear the gunship's artificial gravity, he and Chalk fell away, tumbling toward the jungle thousands of meters below.

"On second thought," Nick said, "I guess I don't mind staying with the ship." Hammers pounded the gunship into a bucking spin as the militia ship that had stayed back on high cover finally joined the dogfight, and the one they had left behind rose beneath them. Mace worked the controls savagely, whirling the gunship through evasive gyrations more suitable for a starfighter than for an antique blastboat; the port turbojet took a pair of ca

"Take it easy!" Nick shouted.

Mace muttered, "I don't do easy" "What?" "I said, shoot back?

"How? I can't even see them!" "You don't have to," Mace said as he pulled the crippled gunship into another corkscrew climb, trailing smoke and shredded durasteel. "Forget about aiming. Just decide" "Decide what?

Mace reached into the Force and sent a wave of calm down his co

"Don't aim," he said. "Decide what you want to hit. Fire where you know it is about to be!' Nick frowned thoughtfully. He turned deliberately away from his screens, and looked Mace in the eye. Bemusedly, absently, casually, he nodded, sighed, and triggered the gunship's ca

He was still wearing that same thoughtful frown when his ca

He said, "Wow." His calm vanished as quickly as it had come. "I mean, wowl Did you see that?" Mace kicked the limping gunship out of its climb and into a steep power-dive away from the last one. Slowed by their missing turbojet, they swiftly lost their lead as it dived to pursue them, and ca

The lock-on alert screamed, and Nick's voice almost matched it. "Missiles incoming!" Mace didn't even bother to look. "Take care of them." The perfect confidence in his tone steadied Nick instantly. He flashed his brilliant grin. "Don't mind if I do." As the turrets rotated to the rear and roared back to life, Mace sca

There-a thousand meters below, maybe more, the distress strobes flashed on the repulsor- packs that Kar and Chalk wore. A single gun-ship streaked to intercept them, then slowed.

And stopped, hovering.

And the minuscule figures of Chalk and Kar landed lightly on its roof.

A moment later its nose came up, angling straight for him. Mace nodded to himself and let the Force guide his dive into an interception course. He checked his screens. "Missiles?" "Handled." Nick's tone was so like the Jedi Master's that it might have been deliberate mockery.

Mace didn't mind. "There won't be more. He won't endanger that friend of his coming at us." "Urn, shouldn't we endanger that friend of his?" "No need." "How come?" "That's not his friend." Turret quads on the rising gunship blazed to life, and Mace gave the repulsorlifts a kick that jerked the Turbostorm a dozen meters above the line of dive so that the twin streams of particle-beam packets passed harmlessly beneath him to take the pursuing gunship full in the cockpit.

The explosion was impressive.

The rear two-thirds of the gunship trailed smoke on its way down to the jungle. The front third was the smoke the rear two-thirds trailed.

"That," said Mace Windu, "was shooting." Nick made a face. "Oh, sure. Chalk. I told you she can handle the heavy stuff. But you should see her in a gun fight. Pathetic. Just pathetic." "Get Depa's transponder code off your widescan, then get her on comm. We need to coordinate our next move." "I'm just glad to hear you have a next move." "How many friendlies do you count?" "Scan count on the droid starfighters. Woo. Sure you really want to know?" "Nick." "Two hundred twenty-eight." "Good." "Good? Good?

"To the lower left of your widescan, you'll find a joystick the size of your thumb. That's your designator control. Start designating droid starfighters as targets for our missiles. One missile per star-fighter, and don't save any. Do not-repeat: DO NOT-light them up until I give the order.

And do not designate anything other than a droid starfighter." "Not even, say, one of those sixty-seven gunships in our zone of engagement?" Nick pointed to the swarm of "friendlies" in a different part of the screen. "Because they seem to be taking a little interest in us, if you know what I mean. They are coming at us. In a hurry." "Sixty-seven? How many are on intercept vectors?" "Was I not clear on that? Maybe I should have said: By the way, have I mentioned that we're about to get our butts shot off?" "How many?" Nick gave a weak, half-hysterical giggle. "All of them." Mace Windu said, "Perfect." The regimental commander was designated CRC-09,'571. Haruun Kal was his third action in combat, and his first as regimental commander. At Geonosis, he had taken part as a battalion commander in the airborne infantry; his group had led the frontal assault on the Trade Federation battle globes. He had served, again as battalion commander, at the disastrous skirmish on Teyr. On board the Halleck, as the days awaiting action stretched toward weeks, he had drilled his brother troopers relentlessly, sharpening their considerable skills to the highest perfection that could be achieved, absent blooding his regiment in actual combat.