Star Wars - Shatterpoint

by Shatterpoint (by Matthew Stover)

  Keep his lightsaber yourself. You've shown him he cannot face you without it." Vastor's inhuman stare searched the blank face of the howdah, but now night had fully fallen.

  Glowvine light shimmered off the curtains, and nothing could be seen within.

  Finally he gave an irritable shrug and extended a hand. The Akk Guard tossed the handgrip back to him, and Vastor tucked it into the waistband of his vine cat leather pants.

  He cast Mace's vest to the ground at the Jedi Master's feet.

  Did it hurt even more, knowing she was watching?

  He no longer sounded mocking; this came in the tone of simple curiosity.

  Slowly, painfully, like an old man protecting arthritic knees, Mace bent down to retrieve the vest. He said, "I'm not sure it could have hurt much more." You might remember that this all began because you refused to come when I told you.

  This began, Mace thought, when I was summoned to the private office of Chancellor Palpatine. But he said nothing.

  Because you refused to do what you were told.

  'Yes," Mace said. "Yes, I remember." He picked up the vest and slipped it on. The sting of dirt in open wounds announced that the lammas tree's bark had torn his back.

  If there is a next time, doshalo, it will be your last time.

  'Yes, Kar. I know." He looked at Nick, who was now sitting on the ground staring balefully at Vastor. "Come on," Mace said softly. "I'll need you to help me up onto the ankkox." FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACEWlNDU Vastor was willing to let Nick help me, and treat my more serious injuries with supplies from a captured medpac. He was willing to believe the battering he'd inflicted on me was nearly crippling.

  It wasn't far from the truth.

  Nick was still simmering as he helped me to my feet, muttering under his breath a continuous stream of invective, characterizing Vastor as a "lizard-faced frogswallower," and a "demented scab-chewing turtlesacker" and a variety of other names that I don't feel comfortable recording, even in a private journal.

  'That's enough," I told him. "I have gone to considerable trouble to keep us both alive, Nick.

  I'd prefer we stay that way." I

  'Oh, sure. Nice job on that." His voice was bitter, and he didn't want to meet my eyes.

  I told him I was sorry about his hundred credits, and pointed out to him gently that no one had told him to bet on me.

  He turned on me then, instantly furious, hissing savagely to keep his voice down, as the Akk Guards and the dogs were still milling about. "This isn't about credits! I don't care about the credits-" He stopped himself, blinking, and his familiar smile flickered briefly across his lips.

  "Shee. Did I really just say that? Wow. So okay, sure, that was a lie: I care about the creds. I care a lot. But that's not why I'm angry." I nodded, and told him I understood: he was angry at me. He felt like I'd let him down.

  'Not me," he said. "I mean, come on: Jedi are supposed to stand for something, aren't you?

  You're supposed stand up for what's right. No matter what." Angry at me as he may have been, he still swung his head under one of my arms and held it across his shoulders, so he could help me walk.

  It was appreciated. Only as the adrenaline and concussion shock were wearing off did I begin understand what a beating I had taken; later, with access to the medpac's scanner, I would discover two cracked ribs, a severe ankle sprain from the gripleaf trailer, a moderate concussion, and some internal bleeding, not to mention the bite wound on my neck and an astonishing variety of scrapes and bruises.

  As Nick helped me up onto the ankkox, I discovered what had made him so angry with me: more than anything else, it was that I'd declared we had been wrong to free the prisoners.

  'I don't care what you say," he muttered darkly. "I don't care what Kar says. There were kids there. And wounded. I mean: those Balawai, they weren't evil. They were just people. Like us." 'Nearly everyone is." 'We did the right thing, and you know it." It dawned on me then that Nick was proud of himself. Proud of what we had done. It may have been an unfamiliar feeling for him: that peculiarly delicious pride that comes from having taken a terrible risk to do something truly admirable. Of overcoming the instinct of self- preservation: of fighting our fears and winning.

  It is the pride of discovering that one is not merely a bundle of reflexes and conditioned responses; that instead one is a thinking being, who can choose the right over the easy, and justice over safety. The pride Nick took in this made me proud of him, too-though of course I could not tell him so. It would only have embarrassed him, and made him regret speaking at all.

  I hope I never forget the fierce conviction on his face as he helped me climb the extended leg of the ankkox and clambered up onto its dorsal shell. "Just because Kar beat you like a rented gong doesn't mean he was right. Just because he won doesn't mean you were wrong to challenge him. I can't believe you'd ever say those things." His answer came from within the curtained darkness of the howdah at the top of the curved shell.

  'If you spend much time around us, Nick, you will learn." Depa's voice was strong and clear and as sane and gentle as it has always been in my heart. "You will learn that Jedi do not always tell the truth." Nick stopped, suddenly scowling as though he found himself unexpectedly deep in thought.

  "Don't always-hey." he muttered suspiciously. "Hey, wait one second here-" She pulled back the curtain once more, and pushed open the small swing gate in the rail.

  "Come on in. You look like you might want to lie down." 'I might," I admitted. "This hasn't been my best couple of days." She took my hand to steady me as I stepped into the howdah, and she made room for me on the chaise. "I have to hand it to you, Mace," she said with a softly ironic smile. "You still take a beating as well as any man in the galaxy." Nick's eyes bulged as though his head might explode. "I knew it!" He shook a fiercely triumphant fist in my face. "I knew it. I knew you could take him!" I told him to keep it down, because Vastor and the Akk Guards were still moving through the trees nearby, and I had no idea how sharp Vastor's ears might be. I didn't tell him to shut up altogether because it wouldn't have done any good.

  'I've got you figured. You hear me? I've got your Jedi butt scanned I

  to the twelfth decimal point! I shoulda known you were gonna dive when you started in on Kar like that-you were spinning him up to make the confrontation more personal, like. The more you insulted him, the less he was gonna worry about taking anything out on me. And you kept on taunting him so that booting your Jedi can into next week felt so good that he basically forgave you for letting those Balawai go!" I told him he was half wrong.

  'Which half?" Depa answered for me. "The part about letting Kar win." She knows me so well.

  'You mean he really beat you?" Nick couldn't seem to believe it. "He really, really beat you?" 'We share a bond in the Force now, Nick. Did it,'ee,' like I threw the fight?" He shook his head. "It felt like you were a smazzo drummer's trap skin." 'As you said earlier: Vastor is a difficult man to lie to. He would have known if I was holding back. Then the beating would have been much worse, and he might very well have killed me.

  What I did was pick a fight I knew I couldn't win." 'Couldn't?" 'Vastor is. very powerful. Half my age and twice my size. Training and experience can compensate only up to a point. And he is naturally ferocious in a way that no Jedi can duplicate." 'You're telling me you twisted his nose like that, knowing he was gonna beat you so bad your whole family would bleed?" I shrugged."! didn't have to win. All I had to do was fight." 'Kar's shatterpoint," Depa murmured. "You saw it all along." I nodded. Nick wasn't familiar with the term; when I described shatterpoint as a critical weakness, he shook his head. "I didn't see anything weak out there." With a sidelong glance at Depa's thoughtful frown, I quoted Yoda: "You see, but you do not see.

  'Kar's great strength is his instinctive connection to pelekotan. The jungle lives in him as much as he lives in it. And like I keep telling you: even in the jungle, there are rules." I explained that a fight between Kar and myself was i
nevitable: two alpha males in the same pack. I could smell it on him even during the battle at the outpost when we first met. My only hope of a good outcome was to make it personal and immediate.

  And unarmed.

  If the fight hadn't happened, he and the Akk Guards might very well have killed Nick and me both for setting free the prisoners. If he and I had gone at it blade to shield, I would be dead now-even if I'd killed him, the guards and the dogs would have torn me to shreds-and Depa, too, if she'd tried to save me; we'd only barely survived being attacked by three akks in the Circus Horrificus.

  Against a dozen- Well. It didn't happen that way. Because I knew what Kar really wanted, in the grip, as he was, of his alpha-male jungle instincts.

  He wanted me to submit.

  And like many other pack hunters, once his rival submitted, his instincts led him to allow that rival to peacefully sniff around the fringes of his pack-so long as I did not renew my challenge.

  'That's why you gave him your lightsaber? So he wouldn't feel threatened?" I shook my head, and for a moment I was tempted to smile. "No, I would have let him cut it up." 'You would?" 'If it would make him more comfortable with letting me stay? Of course. A lightsaber can be repaired or rebuilt. But I admit, Depa's idea was a stroke of genius." She smiled at me. "I am a bit proud of myself for that." Nick again expressed his confusion, and I explained. "Even with the Force, I can't pick Kar out from the jungle around us. He is so much a part of it, and it of him, that he is practically invisible. My lightsaber, on the other hand-" 'I get it!" Nick breathed. "As long as he carries it-" 'Exactly." I could feel it even now: I knew without thinking its precise position relative to my own. "It is a bell collar that Depa managed to buckle onto a singularly ferocious vine cat." 'Wow. I mean, wow. Y'know, everybody hears about how scary Jedi are-but those stories aren't the half of it," he said. "Your real powers don't have anything to do with lightsabers or picking up things with your minds." Nick shook his head uncomprehendingly.

  "It's not natural-not just taking the beating, but bowing down like that. and being able to come up with stuff like giving Kar the lightsaber-" 'It requires a certain detachment of mind. When your emotions are not involved, answers are often obvious." 'It's still not natural. Can I just say, here, how much you two creep me out?" 'When I was Mace's student," Depa mused, "he would often remind me that nothing about being a Jedi is natural." 'I thought you guys were all about going with the flow and using your instincts and stuff." 'The difference," I said, "lies in the instincts themselves. It is possible for an untrained Force- user to wield as much power as the greatest of Jedi-look at Kar. But untrained, the instincts he falls back on are those granted him by nature. It is another of the central paradoxes of the Jedi: the 'instincts' we use are not instinctive at all. They are the product of training so intense that they replace our natural ones. That's why Jedi must begin at such an early age. To replace our natural instincts-ter-ritoriality, selfishness, anger, fear, and the like-with the Jedi 'instincts' of service, serenity, selflessness, and compassion. The oldest child ever accepted for training was nine- and there was much debate over that. A debate that has continued, I might add, for more than ten years.

  'Being a Jedi is a discipline imposed upon nature, just as civilization is, at its root, a discipline imposed upon the natural impulses of sentient beings.

  'Because peace is an unnatural state.

  'Peace is a product of civilization. The myth of the peaceful savage is precisely that: a myth.

  Without civilization, all existence is only the jungle. Go to your peaceful savage and burn his crops, or slaughter his herds, or kick him off his hunting grounds. You'll find that he will not remain peaceful for long. Isn't that exactly what happened here on Haruun Kal?

  'Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are.

  Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm.

  'Kar's power comes from natural instinct-but he is also ruled by instinct, in a way no Jedi ever is. A single Jedi who succumbs to his natural drives for power, for respect, for success or revenge, could do damage that is literally unimaginable." 'Mace," Depa interrupted me softly, "are we still talking about Kar? Or is this about Dooku?" Or, I wondered silently, was it about her.

  I sighed and lowered my head, suddenly aware of how exhausted I was. But still I finished the thought, less for Nick's benefit than for Depa's.

  And my own.

  'Our only hope, against beings whose instincts control them, is to absolutely and utterly control our own." -

  JEDI OF THE FUTURE N

  ight in the jungle.

  Korun bedrolls scattered in clumps. Low voices blending into the background mutter of the jungle. Smells of hotpack ration squares and smoke from homemade cigarras of green rashallo leaves.

  Mace sat on a borrowed bedroll a few meters from where Depa's wallet tent had been pitched in an abandoned ruskakk nest under a tangled arch of thyssel bushes. While Nick treated his injuries, he had been watching her vague silhouette cast on the tent wall by the light of a captured glow rod.

  When the light winked out, it was as though she'd never even been there.

  The muddy pastel pulse of glowvine light had Nick squinting at the medpac's scanner.

  "Looks like we took care of your internal bleeding," he said. "One more shot of anti- inflammatory, to keep the concussion swelling in your brain under control." Mace leaned his head to one side as Nick pressed the spray hypo against his carotid artery.

  The Jedi Master stared sightlessly off through the night; he didn't even feel the brief sting of the injection.

  He was tracking his lightsaber.

  'He's not settling," Mace said.

  IL 'Who's not what?" 'Vastor. He's pacing. Circling. Like a rancor staked out in the desert." 'You surprised?" 'I shouldn't be. He probably senses that even though the fight was real, my submission was fake. He's just not sure what to do about it." Nick clipped the spray hypo back into its receptacle. "Unless your idea of fun is quality time with me and a medpac, I'd suggest you stay out of his way." He tapped the bacta patch that covered the bite wound on Mace's trapezius. "You wouldn't believe how many different kinds of lethal bacteria I found in there. I do not want to know what he's been eating." 'I am less concerned with what he's eating," Mace said, "than with what's eating him." 'One easy guess." Nick nodded toward Depa's tent. "How is she?" Mace shrugged. "As you saw." 'No-I mean, that whole dark side crap. Like what we were talking about before I left you at the outpost." 'I. can't say." Mace's habitual frown deepened. "I would like to say she's fine. But what I would like has little to do with what is. She seems. unstable." 'Well, y'know, a few months in the war could do that to anybody." 'That's what I'm afraid of." FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I am not sure what time it is. After midnight, I suspect, with some hours to go before dawn. I cannot be more accurate, as this datapad's chronometer function has suffered the same fate as its concealed transmitter. There is a time of night here when even the glowvines mute their light, and the prowling predators go quiet, and sleep seems the only activity that has meaning.

  Yet here I am awake, though I have slept little in the past three days.

  It was Depa's scream that woke me.

  A raw shriek of impossible anguish, it yanked me from nightmares of my own. It was not fear, that scream, but suffering so profound that it could have no other expression.

  Her scream woke her as well, and her first thought was to open her tent and exhaustedly reassure us that it had been only a dream. That seems always to be her first thought: to reassure the Korunnai, and me. From this I take considerable comfort.

  It's the third time this has happened so far tonight.

  And yet-injured as I am, and unused to sleeping on a Korun bedroll on the open ground- I find I have slept as well
as I have yet managed on this planet.

  Depa's screams are a mercy.

  Because my own nightmares don't wake me.

  My nightmares suck me down, drowning me in a blind gluey chaos of anxiety and pain; they are more than simple anxiety dreams of wounds or suffering or the varieties of gruesome maiming, dismemberment, and death available in the jungle.

  In my dreams here, I have seen the destruction of the Jedi.The death of the Republic. I have seen the Temple in ruins, the Senate smashed, and Coruscant itself shattered by orbital bombardment from immense ships of impossible design. I have seen Coruscant, the seat of galactic culture, become a jungle far more hostile and alien than any on Haruun Kal.

  I have seen the end of civilization.

  Depa's screams bring me back to the jungle and the night.

  A week ago, I could not have imagined that to wake up in this jungle would be a relief.

  FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU Tomorrow we leave this place.