Star Wars - Shatterpoint

by Shatterpoint (by Matthew Stover)

  An avalanche.

  If he could only find the spot to strike.

  Faintly, distantly, resonating from the here-and-now to Mace's everywhere-at-once: "We're trapped in here. The whole fraggin' planetary militia is outside, and there's nobody who can get here to help us, and we're all gonna die. This is a stupid place to die. Stupid, stupid, stupid." 'Stupid," Mace echoed. "Stupid, yes. Stupid! Exactly.1" "Are you even listening to me?" 'You," Mace said, his gaze slowly returning from the stone depths he had been contemplating, "are brilliant. Not to mention lucky." "Excuse me?" 'Some years ago, the Jedi Order contemplated using droid star-fighters for antipirate work-convoying freighters, that sort of thing. Do you know why we decided against it?" 'Do I care?" 'Because droids are stupid" 'Wow, that's a relief! I'd hate to be killed by a genius-" Mace turned back to the comm unit and keyed the transmit once again. "Commander, this is General Windu. All the troops-get them loaded onto the remaining landers, and get those landers on course for the original coordinates.^,'/of them. The original coordinates. Do you copy?" 'Yes, sir. But. no match for DSF. casualties. lucky if half of them make atmosphere." 'That's not your problem. Once the landers are away, you will withdraw. Do you copy? This is a direct order. When the landers are away, the Halleck will jump for Republic space." '. landers. only sublight. With no hyperdrive, how will you.?" 'Commander, is there so little for you to do right now that you can afford the time to argue with me? You have your orders. Windu out." He plucked the powercell out of the back of the comm unit and returned it to the handgrip of his lightsaber. "Who's the best shooter you know?" Nick shrugged. "Me." 'Nick." 'What, should I lie?" 'All right. Second best." 'Who's still alive?" Nick thought for a second or two. "Chalk, maybe. She's pretty good.

  Especially with the heavy stuff. Or she would be if she could, y'know, walk." 'She won't have to. Let's go." Nick stayed against the wall, shrugging hopelessly. "Why bother? It's not like we can get anywhere, right? With the ship gone, there's nowhere to go." 'There is. And we will go there." 'Where?" 'I'm not going to tell you." 'You're not?" 'I have had enough," Mace said, "of being told I'm insane." Nick rose warily, eyeing Mace as though the Jedi Master might be a worrt in disguise.

  "What are you talking about? You just mid there's no way we can evacuate." 'We're not going to evacuate. We're going to attack" Nick gaped. "Attack?' he echoed numbly.

  'Not just attack. We are going to beat them," said the Jedi Master, "like a rented gong." SEEKER T, he air in the weapons bunker was thick with the ozone tang of a surgical field and the rank pheromonal stink of human fear. The few heavy weapons that the guerrillas had cached were piled haphazardly outside the door to make room for the endless flood of stretchers carried by grim-faced Korunnai, bearing the sick and the wounded. Mostly sick.

  Mostly children.

  Mostly silent and round-eyed.

  The bearers would stumble whenever another DOKAW shook the mountain, and sometimes dump those they carried; many of the invalids bled from fresh scrapes. Nick threaded his way around them to look for Chalk; the Korun girl had not left Besh's side since they both awakened from thanatizine suspension.

  Mace had stopped outside the doorway. His defocused stare gathered the inventory of the weapons there, and plugged them into his calculations: new data that made his image of the coming battle shift and flow and remold itself like a stream of hardening lava. A tripod-mounted EWHB-10 with an auxiliary fusion-generator pack. Two shoulder-fired torpedo launchers, with four preloaded launch tubes apiece. A rack of twenty-five proton grenades, still in its factory- sealed case.

  That was all he'd need.

  The rest of the weapons were not relevant.

  Nick came out the doorway, moving hesitantly, as though in pain. "They're not in there." 'No?" Nick shook his head toward one of the stretcher-bearers. "They told me-there's not enough room for all the. So Kar-" He swallowed, forcing distress off his face and out of his voice. "All we're putting in here is people who'll live." Mace nodded. "Where are the others?" 'We call it the dead room. Follow me." The dead room was a huge cavern hung with night. The only light was soft yellow spill from a scatter of handheld glow rods. Unlike the other inhabited chambers, the floor of this one had not been leveled with vibro-bladed adzes, but had instead been cut into tiered ledges that followed the natural contour of the rock.

  The ledges were packed with the dying.

  No surgical field here: the air was thick with fecal stench, and the sickly sweet odor of rotten meat, and the indescribable smell of spores released by fungi feeding on human flesh.

  Nick halted a few paces in from the entrance and closed his eyes. A moment later, he sighed and pointed up toward a far corner. "Over there. See that light? Something's happening; I think Kar's with them." 'Good. We need him, and we're running out of time." They had to tread carefully to climb the levels of ledges without stepping on people in the gloom.

  Besh lay stretched out, motionless, barely breathing, on a ledge near the ragged curve of the cavern ceiling. Vaster knelt beside him, eyes closed, one hand above Besh's heart. The medpac tissue-binder that had closed the wounds left by Terrel's knife had lost its glossy transparency, blackening and curling like dead skin, and the wounds had erupted into cruciferous bulbs of fungus that floresced faintly, iridescent green and purple pulsing in the shadows cast by Chalk's glow rod.

  Chalk sat cross-legged on Besh's other side, her own chest bulky with spraybandage; head low, she sponged at the growths on Besh's chest with a damp rag. Even from meters away, Mace caught a strong odor of alcohol and portaak amber.

  Nick stopped a couple of meters short and gave Mace a significant look, nodding toward the others as if to say, This was your idea. Leave me out of it.

  Mace approached slowly, staying on the next ledge down. He stopped when he reached them and spoke softly to Chalk. "How is he?" She wouldn't look at him. "Dying. How are you?" She dipped her rag into the bucket, brought it out again, sponged, and returned it to the bucket with numb mechanical persistence: doing it to be doing something, though she showed no sign of hope that it might help.

  'Chalk, we need you to come with us." 'Not leaving him, me. Needs me, him." 'We need you. Chalk, you have to trust me-" "Did trust you, me. So did Besh." Mace had no answer.

  Nick came to Mace's shoulder. "The Archives are starting to look pretty good right now." The Jedi Master squinted at him.

  Nick shrugged. "Hey, it's the only immortality any of us can hope for, right?" 'And how do you achieve immortality," Mace murmured, "if my journal is buried under a mountain on Haruun Kal?" 'Uh. Yeah." Nick looked like his stomach hurt. "That could be a problem." 'Forget about immortality. Let's concentrate on not dying today." Vaster's eyes were closed, and the Force shimmered around him. Mace could feel some of what the lor pelek was doing: searching within Besh's chest for the essential aura of the fungus that was killing him, focusing power upon it to burn it out spore by spore.

  Another shockwave rattled the cavern. Loose rock clattered from the ceiling.

  'Kar," Mace said, "this is not the way. We don't have time." Vastor's eyes stayed closed. His expression did not so much as flicker. Is there something better for me to be doing right now?

  'As a matter of fact," Mace said, "yes. There is." Does it involve killing Balawai?

  Mace said apologetically, "Probably not more than a thousand. Maybe two." Vaster opened eyes filled with pelekofan's darkness. Chalk lifted her head, rag hanging forgotten from her fist.

  'So," said Mace Windu. "Are we on?" Smoke and dust clouded the huge cavern; it reeked of grasser fear-musk, of dung and urine and blood, and with each new DOKAW-shock the smell got worse.

  Torchlight flared and blazed and vanished again. The stinking fog swirled with gigantic shapes: grassers bucking and clawing at each other, some with jaws panic-locked on their own or others' limbs. They charged at random, slamming into each other, trampling the injured and their own young. Korunnai darted among them, appearing from the smoke and vanishing again, hands f
ull of sharp goads and blazing torches as they fought to separate the knots of shrieking, honking, fear-crazed beasts.

  A swirl opened a gap: a looming akk dog paused to stare into Mace's eyes, measuring him with saurian malice as a thick rope of bloody drool looped from its jaws, then it ponderously turned aside and slipped into the murk, tail tapering so smoothly it might have been dissolving.

  Mace threaded through the chaos.

  Behind him followed a pair Korunnai, carrying a stretcher that held the EWHB and its generator. Two more brought the shoulder-fired torpedo launchers and the preloaded tubes on another stretcher. Chalk half-walked, her arm looped over Nick's shoulders as he helped her along.

  Five more pairs of Korunnai trotted around the circumference of the caverns, sidling past all the confusion and riot; one of each pair carried a homespun sack holding five proton grenades apiece, and the others carried torches. Each pair soon slipped down a different one of the five vast passages along which grassers were daily driven to graze.

  Erratic booming shivered the air, sharper and much smaller than the DOKAW-shocks, but still powerful enough to vibrate the floor. Mace pointed toward the source of the booming: a side cave where the great ankkox paced in restless fury. The concussions were its angrily whipping tail mace striking the walls and floor of its pen.

  The nearest Korun stretcher bearer saw his gesture, and they moved in that direction, followed by Nick and Chalk.

  Mace paused, and looked back over his shoulder. At the mouth of an upper passageway stood Kar Vastor and his Akk Guards. Behind them crouched all twelve of Vastor's Force- bonded akks. The lor pelek met Mace's gaze and nodded.

  Mace returned the nod, spreading his hands as though to say, Whenever you're ready.

  Vastor and his akks marched grimly down into the grasser cavern. The akks spread out in huge leaping springs, knocking over panicked grassers on all sides, crouching over them to let drool fall from razor teeth and moisten the fur on their necks. The humans stayed together in a flying wedge with Vastor at the point, moving in to manually separate struggling grassers, intimidating the winners and slaughtering any who had been too badly injured to walk.

  Mace watched, stonefaced. It was wasteful. It was brutal.

  It was necessary.

  He turned once again to his own task.

  He gestured and the mass of struggling beasts and men parted before him, and the smoke and dust cleared, and he saw her.

  She sat on a ledge like a natural gallery that coursed one long-curving wall of the cavern. Her feet hung over the lip, dangling free: a child in a chair too tall for her. Her face was buried in her hands, and even from across the cavern his chest ached with a silent echo of her sobs.

  And when he reached her side, he still did not know what to say.

  'Depa." She lifted her head and turned to meet his eyes, and knowing what to say would not have helped him because he could not speak.

  The rag-the one she had worn across her brow these past days-was gone. On her forehead- On her forehead, where the Chalactan Greater Mark of Illumination should have been- As it had been in his hallucination, days ago at the jungle prospector outpost: on her brow was only an ugly keloid ripple of scar. As though the Greater Mark of Illumination had been carved from the bone of her skull with a blunt knife. As though the wound it left behind had festered, and had not been treated.

  As though it festered still.

  The Lesser Mark, called the Seeker, still gleamed at the bridge of her nose. The Lesser Mark is fixed between the eyes of one who aspires to become a Chalactan adept: it symbolizes the centered self, the shining vision, the elegant order that seeking illumination creates within the seeker. The Greater Mark is called the Universe; it is an exact replica of the Seeker, writ large.

  It is fixed to the frontal bone in a solemn ceremony by the Convocation of Adepts, to welcome another to their company. The two, together, represent the fundamental tenet of Chalactan philosophy: As Without, So Within. The Adepts of Chalacta teach that the celestial order, the natural laws that govern the motion of planets and the wheel of galaxies, regulate as well the life of the Enlightened.

  But for Depa, the universe was gone. All that remained was the Seeker.

  Alone in the void.

  'Mace." Her face twisted once more to tears. "Don't look at me. You can't look at me.

  You can't see me like this. Please." He lowered himself to one knee beside her. He reached a tentative hand for her shoulder; she clutched his fingers and pressed his hand in place, but turned her face away.

  'I'm so sorry." Her head twitched as though she shook tears out of her eyes. "I'm sorry for everything. I'm sorry things can't be different. Better. I'm sorry ,'can't be better." 'But you can." He squeezed her shoulder. "You can, Depa. You have to." 'I'm so lost, Mace." Her whisper could not be heard in the riot of the cavern, but Mace could feel her meaning, as though the Force itself murmured in his ear. "I'm so lost..." The Depa of his hallucination-what had she told him?

  He remembered.

  'It is in the darkest night," he said gently, "that the light we are shines brightest." 'Yes. Yes. You always say that. But what do you know about dark?" Her head sagged, chin to her chest, as though she could no longer think of a reason to hold it up. "How does a blind man know the stars have gone out?" 'But they haven't," Mace said. "They still burn as bright as ever. And as long as people live around them, they will need Jedi. Like I need you now." 'I am. I'm not a Jedi anymore. I quit. I resign. I withdraw. I thought you understood that." 'I do understand it. I don't accept it." 'It's not up to you." He pulled his hand from her shoulder and rose, looming above her. "Get up." She sighed, and once again a smile struggled onto her tearstained lips. "I'm not your Padawan now, Mace. You can't order me-" "Get up?' Reflexes burned into her by more than a decade of unquestioning obedience yanked her instinctively to her feet. She swayed dizzily, and her mouth hung slack.

  'Minutes from now, nearly a thousand clone soldiers of the Republic will reach this position." New light kindled in her glazed eyes. "The Halleck-they can save us-" 'No," Mace said. "Listen to me: We have to save them." 'I-I don't understand-" 'They are coming in under fire. This entire system is a trap. It's been a trap all along. The Separatist pullback was bait, do you understand that?" 'No. it's not true, it's not truel" But the flash faded from her eyes, and she sagged. "But of course it's true. How could I have thought otherwise? How could I have thought I would win?" 'They've caught a medium cruiser. Not to mention two members of the Jedi Council. The Halleck may already be destroyed. The clone soldiers are coming in aboard the surviving landers. They will be pursued by Trade Federation droid starfighters: faster, more maneu- verable, and better-armed than the landers. If our men are pinned between the starfighters and the militia, they won't have a chance. Whatever chance those men will have, we have to give them. You have to give them." 'Me? What can,'do?" He opened his vest. Her lightsaber floated out of its inner pocket. It bobbed gently in the air between them.

  'You can make a choice." She looked from the lightsaber to his eyes and back again; she stared at the handgrip as though her reflection in its portaak amber-smeared surface might whisper the future. "But you don't understand," she said faintly. "No choice of mine can matter here." 'It does to me." 'Have you learned nothing on this world? Even if we do save them-it doesn't matter. Not in the jungle. Look around you. This isn't something you can fight, Mace." 'Of course it is." 'It's not an enemy, Mace. It's just the jungle. You can't do anything about it. It's just the way things are." 'I think," Mace said gently, "that you're the one who has failed to learn the lessons of Haruun Kal." She shook her head hopelessly.

  'Don't tell me you can't fight the jungle, Depa," he said. "That's what Korunnai do. Don't you understand that? That's what their whole culture is based on. Fighting the jungle. They use grassers to attack it, and akks to defend themselves from its counterattacks. That's what the Summertime War is about. The Balawai want to use the jungle: to live -with it, to profit fro
m it.

  The Korunnai want to beat it into submission. To make it into something that is no longer trying to eat them alive. Now, think: Why do Korunnai do that? Why are they enemies of Balawai?

  Why are they enemies of the jungle?" "A riddle for your Padawan?" she said bitterly. "A lesson." 'I am done with lessons." 'We are never done with lessons, Depa. Not while we live. The answer is right before your eyes. Why do Korunnai fight the jungle?" He opened his hand as though offering her the answer on his palm.

  Her eyes fixed on the handgrip of her lightsaber, floating between them, and something entered them then: some faint whisper of breeze from a cool clean place, a breath of air to ease her suffocating pain.

  'Because." Her voice was hushed. Reverent.

  Awed by the truth.

  'Because they are descended from Jedi." 'Yes." 'But. but. you can't fight the way things are." 'But we do. Every day. That's what Jedi are." Tears streamed from her reddened eyes. "You can never win-" 'We," Mace corrected her gently, "don't have to win. We only have to fight." 'You can't. you can't just forgive me." 'As a member of the Jedi Council-you're right. I can't. As your Master, I won't. As your friend-" His eyes stung. The smoke, perhaps.