Shatterpoint (звёздные войны)

by Matthew Stover

  Nick fired as fast as his finger could jerk the pistol's trigger and bullets clanged off Vastor's flashing shields- And Mace just stood there.

  Staring into his blade.

  In the Force, the world had turned to crystal.

  The purple flame of his blade splintered flaws throughout the planet. Stress fractures spidered from his blade to Vaster, to Nick, into the mountain behind, into the pass below, and to space above, racing in outrippling waves that joined him with what was, but also with what had been, and what would be.

  Triggering his blade here, now: it was a shatterpoint of the Summertime War.

  His consciousness splintered along with the world, flashing instantly along the fault lines and vectors of effect: for a single instant, he was in direct and intimate contact with many different times and places.

  He saw it all.

  As though from some impossible distance, he saw the Balawai prisoners kneeling on the promontory, and how gunships had arrived almost before he'd even lit the wood he'd piled up to make a signal fire.

  He saw the gunships arrive at the outpost, only minutes after he had ignited this weapon to defend the children in the bunker from the hasty fire of their own people's weapons.

  He saw Vaster below the outpost's ruins, and heard again his growled meaning: My men say you drove them off single-handed, though they did not seem to be damaged. Perhaps you have taught Balawai to fear thejedi blade.

  But they did not fear it, he knew.

  He saw the gunships at the notch pass: flying away only seconds after he first flashed his blades. They had been ordered to withdraw.

  Because he'd been alone.

  Because if he was killed before he reached Depa and her guerrilla it wouldn't solve the militia's Jedi problem.

  He saw himself in the Pelek Baw alley, staring in disbelief at h depowered lightsaber.

  He saw the hours he'd spent in the binder chair in that dirty rooi in the Ministry of Justice, waiting; that long wait hadn't been an ir terrogation technique. Geptun had never intended to interrogai him in the first place.

  Following that stress fault back in time, he saw a shielded room i the Ministry of Justice, where technicians made cut after cut with h lightsaber. Where they had shot the blade with blaster bolts and bu lets, and used it to cut thyssel, and lammas, and portaak leave duracrete, transparisteel.

  So that they could measure and record the emission signature this blade.

  So that their satellites would recognize it whenever it was usei No matter what it might be used for.

  That's why his blade had been out of charge. Geptun had prob; bly had no idea about that upcountry team; he'd wanted Mace to g out of Pelek Baw.

  Wanted him to make contact with Depa and the "ULF." Wanted to find where all the missing Korunnai had been hiding Now in the meadow, other stress faults connected his mind ' dozens of gunships that converged on the Lorshan Pass. Gunshi] packed with eager troops, trailing billows of hate and fear and fieri anticipation like the ash plume from an erupting volcano.

  One fracture terminated at an orbiting satellite that whizzt across the face of the planet at almost twenty-eight thousand kil meters per hour, and through the fracture he could feel a sil con brain make an electronic connection. He could feel tl execution of a simple command program, and he could feel aut mated clamps releasing huge durasteel bars layered in ablati1 shielding, and he could feel primitive guidance jets driving them in the atmosphere at an angle too steep for any spacecraft to survive.

  But these were not spacecraft, and they were not intended to survive.

  Vaster was still in the air, and Nick was still twisting to track him with his blazing pistol, when Mace Windu whipped his arms straight and shouted, "Stop!" The Force blasts that accompanied the Jedi Master's command clubbed Nick to the ground and sent Vaster spinning against the mountain's face above the cave.

  "What are you doing?" Nick rolled to his feet and snapped the pistol back into line. "He just tried to frag you-kill him!" Vaster crouched above, clinging to the rock like a krayt dragon. No more talking. It is time to fight.

  "Yes," Mace Windu said. "But not each other. Look around you!" He swung his arm toward the jungle below the pass.

  All the patrolling gunships, the dozens that had leisurely crisscrossed the jungle all these past days, now traced converging streaks that would intersect at the Lorshan Pass.

  Nick swore, and Vaster's growl lost meaning.

  "And there," Mace said, pointing to what seemed to be a slowly developing dark cloud, high above the mountains, but was in fact the smoke from ablative shielding burning off in the atmosphere.

  The center of the cloud grew red, then orange, then pale as a blue-white star: ion thrusters kicking in.

  Nick frowned. "That can't be the lander-the angle's all wrong, and it's coming in way too fast." "It isn't," Mace said. "I should say, they aren't." "I'm not gonna like this, am I?" Nick passed a hand over his eyes. "Oh, nuts. Ohhh, nuts nuts nuts. You're about to tell me those are DOKAWs." "At least five. More to follow." YOU! Vastor's explosive roar seemed to yank him off the rock face and carry him raging to the meadow. He shook a sizzling shield at Mace. This is YOUR fault! YOU have brought them here!

  "There will be time later to argue blame." Mace let the lightsabers' blades shrink to nonexistence. "There's something we need to do right now." "What's that?" The Jedi Master looked from the lorpelek to the young Korun officer, then into a sky at the durasteel missiles streaking through the atmosphere.

  At thirty thousand kilometers per hour, and accelerating.

  Mace Windu said, "Run." They ran.

  PART THREE SHATTERPOIKT SHOCKWAVES A

  fully-assembled De-Orbiting Kinetic Anti-emplacement Weapon (DOKAW)-hardened durasteel spear, ablative shielding, miniature ion drive, and tiny attitude thrusters-massed slightly more than two hundred kilograms. By the time the spear impacted a target at ground level, the shielding, the drive, and the attitude thrusters, as well as a fair bit of the hardened durasteel itself, would have all burned away; the final warhead massed in the general neighborhood of one hundred kilograms, slightly more or less depending on angle of entry, atmospheric density, and other minor concerns.

  These concerns were minor because the DOKAW was not, in it-serf, a particularly sensitive or sophisticated weapon; its virtues lay more in the the realm of being inexpensive to produce and simple to operate, which is why it was found mostly in more primitive back-world areas of the galaxy. It was vulnerable to counterfire from rur-bolaser batteries, for example. It was also largely useless against a target capable of even rudimentary evasive action, and once its attitude thrusters had burned away, mere atmospheric disturbances would be sufficient to push it off course, making it less than ideally accurate against stationary targets smaller than a medium- sized town. Because, after all, it was basically just a hundred-kilo hunk of durasteel.

  Ideal accuracy, though, was also a minor concern, because at the point of impact, this hundred-kilo spear of hardened durasteel was traveling at well over ten kilometers per second, In a word: WHAM.

  Mace, Nick, and Kar had reached the widening throat of the first of the major caverns when the floor dropped out from under them for one astonishing second, then jumped back up and smacked them tumbling through the air toward the jagged rock roof overhead.

  The blast transcended sound.

  Mace controlled his spin instinctively so that he could absorb the impact against the roof with bent legs. His Force-hold caught Nick a meter short of severe head trauma; then as they both fell back toward the floor, the pressure-wave of superheated air that shrieked in through the fissure from the meadow cave sent them skidding and bouncing and rolling over the rough-cut floor in a hailstorm of rock shards and burning dirt.

  Mace kept his Force-hold on Nick; as they skidded to a stop in the nightmare of dust and smoke and screaming, he set Nick on his feet and crouched beside him. "Stay up!" he shouted.

  "Stay low but off the floor?

>   He huddled there, hands jammed against his ears, bounced by another blast-lesser-and another lesser still, the natural inaccuracy of the DOKAWs causing some scatter. A final convulsion of the mountain cracked the roof of the cavern and rained boulders at random. Some screams were crushed to gurgles; others scaled up to shrieks of agony.

  Two seconds passed-two more-and Mace sprang to his feet. Light from glowglobes made luminous spheres that could not overlap through the thick swirl of dust and smoke that stung tears into his eyes; one incautious breath sent him into a paroxysm of coughing. He yanked Nick to his side-the young Korun had an arm over his streaming eyes and he was hacking into his other hand-and Mace grabbed the hem of his homespun tunic with both hands.

  "Hey-hackhagh-hey, what are you-" "We need your shirt." With one twist he ripped the tunic in half up the back; another twist continued the rip from collar to waist in front. He left half in Nick's hands while he tied his own half over his face in a sort of hood. The cloth was coarse enough to see through, and it cut the dust and smoke from intolerable down to merely hellish.

  While Nick imitated him, Mace picked his way around the rubble and over dead and wounded Korunnai toward a gleam of ultra-chrome under a huge slab of stone. He dropped to his heels beside it and gestured, clearing smaller rocks away from the lorpelek.

  "Kar? Can you hear me?" Even hoarse with dust and pain, Vastor's growl had a sardonic edge. Better stand back.

  When you're around, big hard things seem to fall on my head.

  Mace breathed himself into his center, and found the slab's shat-terpoint. "Don't move." His blade flared, bit in, and the slab cracked in two over Vastor's back. A shrug of Vastor's huge shoulders shifted the two pieces enough that he could push himself up to his knees between them. He was caked with dust, and blood trickled from an ugly gash over one ear.

  You could have killed me. You should have.

  "You're no good to me dead," Mace said. "Is there a hardpoint in this base? A hardened bunker, preferably airtight?" The heavy weapon lockup. It can be sealed.

  "All right. Get all the non-ambulatory sick and wounded in there and seal it up. When the militia comes, they'll start with gas." Vaster and Nick exchanged grim looks.

  Mace glanced over his shoulder. "Nick. You're with me. Let's go." We'll never hold them. Not for a day. Not an hour.

  "We don't have to hold them ourselves. I have a medium cruiser in-system that's carrying a regiment of the finest soldiers this galaxy has ever seen." Mace put one hand on Vastor's shoulder, and the other on Nick's, and there was a strange shine to his dark eyes. "We aren't going to hold them. We aren't even going to fight them. With the Halleck for air cover and the troopers holding the ground, those twenty landers can evacuate this entire place within hours." "Grassers and all?" Mace nodded. "We just have to get them here." DOKAWs pounded the mountain. Korunnai ran and screamed and bled. Some tried to help the wounded. Some died. Some huddled shivering against the nearest wall.

  Mace kept moving. Nick trotted at his heels. Sometimes shock-waves knocked them down.

  Sometimes the dust was so bad that Mace had to light their way with scatter from his and Depa's blades.

  "Why do you need me! You were in the comm center this morning," Nick gasped through a mouthful of dust that his spit had turned to mud. "I'm good with a medpac. You go on. I can look after wounded-" "That's why." Bladelight picked up jagged gleams ahead: the corridor was blocked with a sloping wall of tumbled rock.

  "This is the only way I know to the comm center," Mace said. "I'm hoping you know another." Nick muttered a curse under his breath as he leaned on the slope of boulders. "How deep is the rubble? Can you cut-" His eyes widened. "Hey, there are people in there! Trapped! I can feel them-we've got to get them out!" "I feel them too. The fall's not stable," Mace said. "Shifting and cutting will take more time than we have: the first mistake would bring tons of stone down on their heads. We need another way to the comm center." "But-we can't just leave them in there-!" "Nick. Try to focus. Will they be safer out here?" "Well, I." Nick frowned. "Well." "Listen to me. There will be cave-ins throughout these caverns. We can dig survivors out later. We have to make sure enough people live through this to do the digging. Yes?" Nick nodded reluctantly. "Then let's go." The comm center was just a small natural cave with rude plank tables, a few homemade chairs, and some equipment. "Probably not much left of the relay antennas," Nick muttered as they trotted toward it.

  "It's a little late to worry about concealing our position," Mace reminded him. "And subspace won't have any trouble going through rock." Nick squinted at the doorway, cursed, and broke into a sprint. "The surgical field's down!" He darted inside.

  Mace went after him, but stopped in the doorway.

  The subspace comm unit lay on the floor, among the splinters of the plank table; its housing looked like someone had rolled it down a mountainside and dropped it off a cliff. The realspace-frequency units, less durable, were crushed. Nick was cursing continuously under his breath as he knelt over the two Korun commtechs, who lay motionless on the floor as though they were simply taking a nap in the ruins of their post.

  Mace said, "Nick." "They're dead," the young Korun said thickly. "They're both dead. Not a mark on them.

  And-" "Nick, come out of there." Nick prodded one's head with his finger. which gave, deforming spongily, as though the man's skull were soft foam. "And they're squishy…" "We have to leave this place. Now." "What could do that to a man?" "Concussion," Mace said. "Shock transmission. This room must be part of a solid structure that reaches to the surface-" "You're saying." Nick looked at the walls around him with widening eyes. "You saying if another DOKAW hits the same spot, while I'm still in here-" "I'm saying-" Mace urgently extended a hand,"-cover your ears zndjump." Mace took his own advice then drew on the Force to suspend them both, and the air in the comm cave pounded them like they were caught in the palm of a giant's handclap. He let the shock send them whirling back along the passage away from the comm center, them released his Force-hold and rolled to his feet.

  Nick was saying something as Mace pulled him upright, but Mace heard only a distant mutter over the high singing whine in his ears. "You'll have to speak up." Nick cupped one hand to his ear. "What?" "Speak upl" "What? You'll have to speak up!" Mace sighed and shoved Nick stumbling along the corridor; he turned, reaching into the Force as he extended a hand, and the sub-space unit floated out the doorway, down the passage and into his arms.

  He jogged after Nick while their stunned eardrums recovered, i Three minutes' scramble brought them to a a nexus of intersecting passageways, some cut, some natural. "This will have to do." "Do for what? What's left?" Nick sagged against the wall, panting. "And what are you lugging that fraggin' thing around for?" Mace set the comm unit on the passage floor. He pulled off his improvised dust-mask and frowned at the rear access panel; fasteners unscrewed themselves and floated to a neat little pile in a dimple in the rock, joined shortly by the access panel itself. Mace examined the leads and contacts inside the unit for a moment, then nodded.

  He opened his hand and his lightsaber jumped to it from its pocket inside his vest. A flick of the Force tripped the handgrip's secret interior latch; a curved section of the grip popped open, and Mace pulled out the power cell. Another flick of the Force bent a pair of lead-panels inside the comm unit's guts. Mace wedged the powercell between them, and the unit's ready-lights came on.

  "Hold this here," Mace said. Nick held the energy cell in place while Mace keyed the HallecKs emergency channel.

  "Halleck, this is General Windu. This is a priority clear-call, inti-ation code oh six one five.

  Acknowledge." The comm unit crackled to life in a burst of ECM static. A stolid voice came faintly through the buzz: "Response. one nine." "Verification seven seven." "Go a. General." "Captain Trent, I need your status." "Regret to in. Cap. bridge crew. ously wounded. This is Commander Urhal. der heavy. Repeat: We are under heavy DSF attack." Nick frowned. "DSF?" "Droid starfighter." Mace
keyed the transmitter. "Can you hold?" '. gative. Too many. sustained heavy. shields and armor, but." Through the bursts of static and washes of white hiss, the acting captain of the Halleck sketched their situation: An unknown number of Trade Federation droid starfighters had been lying in wait, deactivated and drifting outside the system's ecliptic plane amid cometary dust and debris of ancient asteroids. The commander guessed that it was something about the lander itself that had triggered them; they had attacked as soon as the extraction lander un-docked and made for orbit. The lander had been lost with all hands, and the DSFs had quickly overwhelmed the Halleck's escort complement of six starfighters; they were pounding the cruiser with everything they had. The ship Mace had been looking to for rescue was already fighting for its life.