Shatterpoint (звёздные войны)

by Matthew Stover

  Fourteen landers reached the Korunnal Highland. Pursued by fifty-eight starfighters.

  None of the gunships survived.

  By the time they were within sight of the Lorshan Pass there were twelve landers, of which five were heavily damaged. Forty starfighters trailed them with relentless electronic persistence.

  And streaking across the curve of the horizon in front of them came three more wings of starfighters, on course to intercept.

  The trio of gunships ignited the mountainside. A wall of flame rolled downslope toward the battlefield at the tunnel mouth.

  Militia regulars fled in all directions, slipping on blood and skidding through shreds of trees and grasser flesh. Wounded grassers screamed and thrashed, akk dogs snarled and leaped and bit, and the ankkox opened its huge armored throat to unleash a roar that knocked loose rock down the mountain above. Several of the regulars tried to dive for cover under the ankkox's shell, only to be smashed to sprays of pulp by the ankkox's tail mace.

  At the crest of the dorsal shell, Chalk growled a continuous stream of curses as she struggled to swing the heavy repeater's barrel in a direction it had never been designed to point: nearly straight up. From his position tending the EWHB's fusion generator, Nick looked at Mace and pointed an accusing finger up at the incinerating flood washing down upon them. "Was this part of yonr plan?" "Of course." Mace tucked his lightsaber back into its holster and looked up, measuring the approach of the gunships. "Everyone down!" he shouted. "Take cover under the shell!" Depa threw herself forward over the ankkox's crown shell, flipping in the air to land beside the creature's immense head, one hand on the nostril flap beside its mouth, on the opposite side from Kar Vaster. The Akk Guards abandoned their expended torpedo launchers and slid down the shell's curve to leap from its rim. Nick said, "This is the part you didn't want to tell me, huh?" Mace said, "Help Chalk." Chalk was still struggling with the heavy repeater, lying on her back with her legs beneath the tripod; Nick had to pry her hands off it and drag her free. "Can I just say I hate your plans? All of them. How did you figure this was a good idea?" Mace nodded to Kar, and the ankkox's tail swung over its back; Mace grabbed it with both hands, just below the huge knot of armor at its end. "Because if I'd tried this during those transsonic strafing runs," he said calmly, "all that would have been left of me is a red smear on a windscreen." At the Force command of Kar Vaster, the ankkox snapped its tail into a wide whirl, yanking Mace into the air and spinning him once around the outer rim of its shell to get the feel for his added weight. Then with a whipcrack that blurred the world, it fired him straight up the side of the mountain as though he'd been shot from a torpedo launcher.

  Hurtling into the path of the descending gunships, Mace reached through the Force to seize the support strut that divided the windscreen of the gunship in the middle, and pulled. He twisted in the air, whirling through a whistling arc, and reeled himself in as though he were on a towline.

  His boots thumped solidly to either side of the strut and stuck there, cemented by the Force, facing forward and looking down between the toes of his boots at the twin dumbstruck gapes of the gunship's pilot and its navigator.

  The navigator just stared, unable to comprehend this inexplicable apparition. The pilot had better reflexes: The gunship lurched as he released the control yoke and clawed at his sidearm, clearly prepared to sell his own life and the lives of his crew for one shot at the Jedi Master through the hole the pilot assumed Mace's lightsaber was about to slice in the windscreen.

  But Mace only shook his head as though mildly disappointed. He waggled an admonitory finger, as though they were schoolboys caught playing a naughty game.

  The puzzlement this inflicted upon them was cleared up when they heard a pair of crisp clicks, which were the sounds of the safety levers of their seat-ejectors flipping to "armed." They had barely enough time to register what was happening-not nearly enough time to react-as the activator plates on both seats pressed themselves, and explosive bolts blew the transparisteel windscreen up and out a millisecond before their helmets would have done it for them.

  Mace caught the barest flashing glimpse of the identically outraged looks on their faces as the repulsorlift pods on their ejection rmi intvv oiuvcn chairs shot them spinning out over the jungle. One of them howled something obscene. The other just howled.

  Mace kicked off from the rim of the roof and dropped into the empty cockpit. A gesture toward the nav console deactivated the belly-mounted Sunfire flame projector. A similar gesture toward the pilot's console engaged the soft-touchdown failsafe on the autopilot, then he opened the cockpit door and walked calmly into the troop bay.

  The bay was littered with leaves and mud and food wrappers, as well as bits and pieces of miscellaneous equipment forgotten or discarded by departed militia regulars. The access hatches to the port and starboard ball turrets were directly across from each other in front of the turbine mounts, two thirds of the way aft.

  Mace passed between them, then turned and folded his arms.

  He could hear, faintly through the sealed hatches, the honking of the ejection-alert klaxon, and he didn't need to touch the Force to mentally see the gunners in either turret frantically unbuckling the safety straps that secured them to the turrets' fighting chairs. The manual dogs on the hatches clacked sharply, but the desperate gunners found both hatches unaccountably jammed until they started putting their whole weight behind slamming their shoulders into them.

  Which is when Mace's Force-hold went from keeping them shut to yanking them open, so that the two gunners practically flew into the troop bay, collided helmet-to-helmet with a gunshot crack! and collapsed. One of them, tougher than his counterpart, held on to consciousness, struggling dazedly to find his feet until Mace's foot found him.

  To be precise: Until the toe of Mace's boot found, crisply, the point of the gunner's chin.

  The unconscious man fell on top of the other gunner. Mace took two short lengths of scrap wire from the litter on the floor and bound their hands thumb-to-thumb, then unhurriedly stepped over them and walked back to the cockpit just as the gunship settled on the broad corpse-littered killing zone about ten meters in front of the ankkox.

  Outside, the other two gunships from the flight were heeling around, turrets sparking as their laser cannons tracked toward him. Depa and Kar crouched in front of the head of the ankkox, battering away a flood of blaster fire; Chalk and Nick lay flat in the shadow of one of the ankkox's massive side-curved legs, returning fire with chattering assault rifles.

  Mace hit the release for the troop bay doors, and as they fell open, he poked his head out the hole left by the missing windscreen. When the others saw him, their mouths fell about as far open as the doors.

  "What are you waiting for?" Mace's deadpan was flawless. "Flowers and a box of candy?" Depa sprang into the open, blade flashing faster than the eye could follow, making herself a standing target to draw fire that she splashed back at their attackers while the others scrambled to their feet. Nick sprinted past her, assault rifle chattering from the hip. Kar dived under the ankkox and rolled up and ran with Chalk cradled like a child in his massive arms. Fire from the surrounding trees tracked away from Depa, clawing for the bounding lor pelek.

  Mace frowned. "That's about enough of that" he muttered as he reached into the Force to flip a bank of switches and key an initiation sequence that ganged the targeting servomotors for the ball turrets through the nav console, and gave him fire control.

  Twin Taim & Bak quad laser cannons roared to life, hammering thunder into the jungle.

  Trees exploded like bombs, filling the air with a cloud of flying splinters and wood dust that made an impromptu smoke screen to cover Kar and Chalk's run to the gunship with Depa sprinting hard behind them.

  Nick appeared in the cockpit door behind Mace. "We're in!" "Good. The gunners?" "The tied-up guys?" The younger man shrugged. "They're out." Mace nodded. "Hang on." This was the only warning they got before the gunship leaped straight
up, rising like a volcano bomb on screaming overdriven re-pulsorlifts. Cannonfire from the other two gunships blasted the ground where it had been and tracked upward to pound the gunship sideways, dents popping up like boils in the side armor.

  Mace slewed the gunship through a rising turn, but the other gun-ships had him bracketed, closing in from either side. Through the roar of impacts and shrieking near-misses, he heard Nick shouting, "The door! Close the doori" He twisted to look over his shoulder. He saw Depa on her feet in the middle of the troop bay, swaying, eyes squeezed shut as though the battle had brought on one of her headaches.

  Nick huddled in the doorway, arms around his head; Kar had Chalk tucked into a corner, and he crouched in front of her, shields raised to catch stray bolts that shot in through the open bay door and zinged in hot splintering ricochets around the compartment.

  Mace said, "Depa." Her eyes opened.

  His lightsaber leaped from its pocket within his vest and shot toward her like a bullet.

  Her empty hand met it in midair; her pain-glazed eyes lost focus. He felt her in the Force: a sinking surrender like an exhausted swimmer drowning in a rising tide.

  Slipping into Vaapad.

  Eyes closed once more, she gave one slight nod.

  Mace keyed a sequence on the pilot console. The open door stayed open. The troop door on the opposite side dropped open as well.

  Particle beams streaked into the troop bay.

  Both blades flashed.

  The gunships outside bucked under the impact of their own can-nonfire. On one, a turbojet engine blasted loose of its mount and tumbled away, bouncing down the mountainside trailing smoke and white-hot shreds of its cowling, and the gunship spun half out of control. The other gunship took its cannon blasts directly in the cockpit.

  The transparisteel windscreen of a Sienar Turbostorm was thick and very durable; most kinds of shrapnel or fragments wouldn't scratch it. Even heavy-caliber bullets would leave only dents. A quad laser bolt could make a hole. One did.

  The next five went through that hole.

  The gunship spiralled into the jungle, its cockpit full of shredded flesh.

  Depa opened her eyes.

  They smoked with darkness.

  SHIP TO SHIP M

  uscle bunched along Mace's jaw as he forced himself to turn away and focus on his flying. A glance at the short-range sensors showed him gunships all over the place: the computer counted fifty-three in the zone of engagement, with more curving toward them over the horizon. He keyed the troop bay doors shut and cut in the turbojets. "Nick. Take nav." "Sure. Er-yes, sir." Nick glanced at the empty sockets left behind by the ejected chairs.

  "Urn. where do I sit?" "Monitor sensors. We should be seeing the HallecKs landers any second. Kar! Chalk! The emergency repulsor-packs are next to the turret hatches. You have thirty seconds." Nick wedged his feet under the chair-socket struts and gripped the nav console's split-yoke controls, squinting against the stiffening wind that whistled through the empty gap in front of him.

  The gun-ship's aerodynamics shaped the wind blast past the cockpit instead of into it, but even the minimal back-eddy leakage was enough to stagger him. His eyes lit up as he took in the array of screens on the console-especially the twin screens with targeting reticules displayed at their centers.

  "Hey, what's this do?" He twisted the split-yoke in opposite directions, and the images on the screens spun wildly to match.

  "Don't touch those." Nick hit the thumb switches on both controllers. The screens filled with parallel bursts of cannonfire as the quad lasers roared. "Yow! Fire control? For me} Oh, General, you shouldn't have!" "I realize that." "It's not even my name-day." "Nick." "Yeah, I know: sensors." "And-" '-shut up, Nick. Yeah, whatever. Hrr." The wind whipped wisps of breath-fog from his mouth. "Starting to get cold in here. Out here. Are we inside or outside?" "We're approaching seven thousand meters. Check those sensors: red hits are friendlies, blue are hostiles." "Well, shee," Nick said. "What are you so worried about, then? There's like fifty-some friendlies already here, and another hundred and ninety-two on the way-I mean, they're like everywhere-and there are only thirteen hostiles, and the friendlies are all over them-whoa.

  Now there are twelve. oh, wait. I get it. Whoops." "Whoops is one word for it." "Sorry. I'm a little dopey." "Yes." "Uh-there's a flight of o't'tx friendlies trying right now to climb our butts-whoa, what's that?" A lock-on alert flashed; the accompanying buzzer was half-buried in the wind noise.

  "They lit us up! Missiles incoming! Six count, closing, dead astern!" "Back-trace the missile lock and feed it to the computers for counter-fire." "Great idea! I'll get right on that,'rtf thing as soon as I graduate from gunnery school" "Fine then," Mace said through his teeth. "You said you can shoot. Let's see it." "Woo-hoo! Now you're talking? The ball-turrets rotated and the quads blazed to life; the gunship was now climbing straight up, shrieking for space like the starship it once had been.

  "Yes indeed! Come and get it!" One of the missiles intersected a stream of cannon bolts and detonated in a burst of black smoke and white fire. "How was that?

  "Not bad," Mace said. "Try not to shoot our tail off." "Some people are never satisfied-" "Nick. The other five." "Yeah, yeah. If you wanna be that way about it-" He flipped the arming levers on all four aft missile-tubes. "Onetwothree,'owr!" he shouted, triggering them in order, and the gunship bucked as a staggered flight of four concussion missiles kicked to life and spun twisting white ropes of rocket-smoke down to meet the five missiles behind.

  The first impact-burst drew the next missile, and the next, expanding into an immense fireball fed by all nine.

  "Shee," Nick snorted disgustedly. "That was hardly any fun at all." "It's not supposed to be fun. Save those missiles." "What for?" "Depa!" Mace called, shouting over the wind shriek. "Are you ready?" She appeared in the doorway, leaning on it for support as though the gunship's artificial gravity were too strong for her. "Ready enough," she said. "I can fight. I can always fight. Take your blade." Mace shook his head. "You'll need it," he said, and cut all power to the gunship's engines.

  Its momentum kept it climbing, but slowing now with a lazy twisting barrel-roll as the pursuing ships shot past. It hung poised at its apex for a stretching instant.

  The pursuers peeled away from each other in matching ellipses, two of them curving down to dive toward them once again while the third held back for high cover.

  Mace worked the controls grimly to hold the ship nose-up as it slid backward toward the ground. "Right or left?" Depa said, "Left," and then she dived straight up into the sky through the cockpit's open front, tucking into a ball to tumble through the falling gunship's slipstream turbulence.

  "Yow!" Nick said. "Why doesn't somebody warn me about this stuff?" "Lock cannons on the right-hand ship. Continuous fire. No missiles." "I'm on it." The right side quad turret tracked briefly, then roared a chain of energy into the clouds.

  Mace twisted the control yoke to angle the falling gunship's nose to the right so that the portside turret could join the fun, then re-ignited the repulsorlifts at full power and kicked on the turbojets' afterburners. "Hang on." "I'm on that too." The ship jounced and fought the controls, and the gunship diving toward it suddenly bloomed with fire that pounded them like giant particle-beam fists. Mace got a glimpse of Depa, straightening her tumble into feet-first plummet with both lightsabers naming at full extension above her head.

  Mace slammed the control yoke sideways and the gunship shrieked into a rising corkscrew that lit up stress-warning indicators all over his console; it got them out from under the rain of cannon-fire, but their targeting computers couldn't process the constantly changing vectors, and their own fire went wild as well. Nick looked over the indicators and his eyes went huge. "Hey, is this bucket designed to do this?" "I hope not," Mace said through his teeth as he fought the controls. "Put fire back on that ship." "Who, me? The computer's not fast enough-" "The computer," said Mace, "can't use the Force." "Uh, yeah. Okay. Sure." J
ust before he overtook them, Mace saw the left-hand gunship spearing downward against the thrust of reversed engines, twisting into a spiral evasive action to avoid colliding with Depa- And he felt the surge in the Force that drove her directly into its path.

  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.