Shatterpoint (звёздные войны)

by Matthew Stover

  "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 cannon-blasts, and Mace's next whirl proved too much for its damaged mounting. It tore free in a scream of tortured metal. The ship roared through an uncontrolled spin.

  "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 connection with Nick.

  "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 cannons.

  He was still wearing that same thoughtful frown when his cannon blasts shattered the starboard turret of the gunship below, then penetrated the inner hatch and blew the ship in half.

  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 cannonfire raked their stern. Mace worked the repulsorlifts madly, making the ship jerk, leap, and spring in random directions like a monkey-lizard on raw thyssel. Fire from above pounded them, but Mace's wild maneuvers were preventing it from laying in the multiple precision hits needed to blast through the Turbostorm's heavy armor.

  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 scanned the jungle toward which his limping ship dived. It was hard to get a sense of scale-he might have been only hundreds of meters above it, or as many dozens of kilometers. Then the swarming gun-metal specks of the balance of the militia fleet that swarmed above the canopy snapped the scene into perspective.

  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.

  There had been blooding enough today, as a hornet cloud of droid starfighters swirled around his tiny fleet.

  He had watched a third of his regiment die.

  Some of the landers had been disabled rather than instantly destroyed, and they had been able to eject survivors: meteor swarms of space-armored troopers floating into low orbit, repulsorpacks sparking as they slowed and angled their minutes-long fall toward Haruun Kal's atmosphere. The surviving landers had not been able to keep all the droid starfighters engaged; there were plenty of starfighters left over to slaughter the men, as well.

  They had flashed among the falling troopers with cannons blasting: silent streaks of scarlet lancing the black void with robotic precision, each hit leaving a broken corpse floating in the middle of an expanding globe of twinkling crystals, white and pink and blue-green: breath and blood and body fluids flash-frozen in the vacuum, shimmering and lovely in Al'har's light.

  But the other troopers had not panicked; with polished fire discipline and plain raw courage, the falling troopers had turned upon the starfighters the weapons they carried upon their persons, coordinating their fire for greater effect. Three light repeaters, when turned upon the same starfighter, could break down its shields so that a single shot from a blaster rifle might disable an engine; groups of grenadiers scattered proximity-fused proton grenades in improvised mini-minefields; and when their weapons were exhausted, in desperation, men used their own bodies as weapons, manipulating their repulsorpacks to shove themselves into the path of starfighters whipping past at dogfight speeds. In such collisions, neither could hope to survive.

  The troopers had not been fighting to defend themselves; they knew their lives were over.

  But they had never stopped.

  They were fighting for the regiment.

  Every starfighter they took down was one less that might attack their brothers. CRC- 09,'571 was not particularly emotional, even for a clone, but he had watched their sacrifice with a hot swell in his chest. Men such as those made him proud to be one of them. His only drive was to discharge his duty; but he also nursed a secret desire to do something, to achieve something, that would be worthy of his men's astonishing heroism.

  To hit back.

  Which is why he felt a sting in his guts-what an ordinary man might call anger and frustration, but which CRC-09,'571 only barely noticed, and immediately d
ismissed-when his comm lit up with orders from General Windu.

  Orders that his ships were to immediately cease fire.

  Cease fire despite close pursuit by DSFs.

  Despite three additional droid starfighter wings-192 units-closing on them from beyond the planetary horizon.

  Despite sixty-nine Sienar Turbostorm gunships streaking up from the surface to intercept them.

  His anger and frustration showed only in a certain hopeful tone when he demanded General Windu's verification code-perhaps this was an enemy, impersonating the general-and in the slight reluctance he felt to confirm, when the general's code came through correct.

  General Windu, as far as CRC-09,'571 could determine, was ordering the clones to die. But CRC-09,'571 could no more disobey a lawful order than he could walk through armor plate.

  As they hurtled down from the stratosphere above the Korunnal Highland, the guns on all the Republic ships fell silent.

  Droid starfighters swarmed over them, weapons blazing.

  As his lander was pounded from all sides by multiple cannon hits, CRC-09,'571 noticed an odd thing on his command-scan screen: some of the gunships below seemed to be firing on other gunships.

  To be precise: sixty-seven of the gunships below seemed to be firing on the two that were in the lead.

  These two did not return fire. They streaked at full power in a steep climb, scissoring side- to-side, heading straight for the mass dogfight so that the cannonfire which missed them-nearly all of it-blasted upward into the cloud of DSFs. Most of it passed harmlessly through, of course, not being aimed at the small agile craft, but several DSFs took blasts squarely, and exploded.

  CRC-09,'571 frowned. He had a good feeling about this.

  Not far below, in the open cockpit of one of the two gunships that were the targets of those behind, Mace Windu said, "All right, Nick. Light them up." "Yes, sir!" Nick Rostu flipped a single switch, and the droid brains of twenty-six different droid starfighters-one for each of the missiles remaining in the Turbostorm's launchers-felt the sudden internal alarm-buzz of sensors detecting a missile lock.

  Coming from a friendly ship.

  The droid brains found this puzzling, but not overly distressing; they were still focused on their primary mission, which was to destroy any and all Republic craft attempting to orbit or land on Haruun Kal. But they were programmed to monitor possible hazards, and each of them set some of their spare capacity to searching memory banks for any response programs that might be indicated in the event of missile-locks from friendly craft.

  There weren't any.

  This, the droid brains did find distressing.

  And there was the issue of those laser blasts.

  Only one second later, thirty-two additional droid brains among the swarm of starfighters had exactly the same experience.

  Because all four of the Krupx MG3 mini missile launchers on Depa's gunship were fully loaded.

  As the two gunships penetrated the perimeter of the sprawling dogfight, Mace said, "Fire." A Krupx MG3 tube could fire one missile every standard second; each MG3 had two tubes, which carried magazines of four mini-missiles apiece. The Sienar Turbostorm close-assault gunship had four Krupx MG3s: two forward and two aft. On Mace's command, both ships emptied their magazines. The gunships blossomed with fire and rocket exhaust.

  Sixteen missiles per second roared twisting through the sky.

  The dogfight became a tangled web of vapor trails.

  In the gunship's open cockpit, Nick watched his widescan, whistling. "Wow. Those starfighters are quick." Mace said, "Yes." "Two thirds of our missiles are gonna miss altogether. No: three quarters. More. Damn, they're fast." "It doesn't matter." "What do you mean, it doesn't matter? It's just our butts, that's all! Not to mention those poor ruskakks in the landers." Mace Windu said, "Watch." Nick's estimate proved to be overly optimistic: of the fifty-nine missiles fired, only six found their targets. Three more were accidentally intercepted by DSFs which they were not locked onto. The rest were destroyed by the droids' inhumanly precise counterfire, or were simply evaded by the nimble craft; dozens flashed away into the sky until their propellant was exhausted and they began the long slow tumble to the surface.

  However-as Mace had pointed out, down in the battered cavern base-droids were stupid.

  That was not to say that they could not adapt to changing circumstances. They could, and did: often with a speed and decisiveness that no organic brain could match. These droids had comprehended they were under attack by "friendly" vessels before the initial flight of sixteen missiles had fully engaged their engines. An attack from a single friendly vessel might be a mistake, an accident, no more. But two vessels, both of whose transponder codes identified as friendly, had opened fire on them in a coordinated attack.

  Without warning.

  The droids would not wait for further attacks. They adapted with lightning speed, and remorseless droid logic.

  And Nick Rostu, staring down into his widescan screen, didn't even notice his own jaw dropping farther and farther as first one, then a dozen, then a hundred and more, red scan-hits changed to blue. "They're going hostile," Nick murmured in awe.

  "Yes." "All of them." "Yes." Two hundred and twenty-seven DSFs peeled off from the landers-whose silent guns had dropped them below the droid brains' threat horizon-and fell upon the sixty-nine Turbostorms in a tornado of destruction.

  Gunships began to burn, and fall.

  "You planned this?" "T^l? Iheres more.

  "Yeah? What do we do now?" A dozen starfighters converged on them.

  "Now," said Mace Windu, "we bail out." He took hold of Nick's belt. Nick stared at him in open horror. "Don't tell me."; "All right." A Force-pushed leap yanked them both out of the cockpit a full second before the gunship began to crumple under hundreds of cannon-hits; two seconds later it exploded, but by then Mace and Nick were already fifty-eight meters below and gaining speed, hurtling without benefit of repulsor-packs down through the dogfight's flame and smoke and airbursts.

  Nick's shriek sank unheard under the windrush and explosions.

  Mace mouthed, You told me not to tell you.

  Nick spent much of the ensuing fall complaining in a loud-though inaudible-voice about having to end his young life as "some fraggin' niklde nut-brained Jedi Master's straight man." Free-falling, one hand keeping a tight grip on Nick's belt, Mace reached into the Force and felt for his lightsaber.

  He found its familiar resonance far below. Nick stayed locked in a fetal ball, hugging his thighs to his chest in a white-knuckled death grip and shouting obscenities between his knees.

  Though he had a tendency to tumble, his tight "cannonball" made him close enough to aerodynamically neutral that Mace could direct their fall by angling his own body.

  They soared toward a target he could barely see: two kilometers below and a quarter-klick to the west, a gunship whirled toward the jungle in a flat spin, spewing thick black smoke. The DSFs were ignoring it, concentrating instead on the gunships that still fired and twisted and dodged in frantic attempts to evade them.

  Depa was doing a fine job of appearing crippled and helpless.

  Now and again some chunks of smoking durasteel or a hunk of re-pulsorlift would overtake Mace and Nick on their long, long fall, seeming to drift down past them at variously leisurely paces, according to their individual quotients of wind-resistance. No bodies passed them, though; Mace and Nick fell already at close to the terminal velocity of the human form.

  On Haruun Kal, that was slightly less than three hundred kilometers per hour.

  The gunships rate of fall was considerably slower; it only looked like it was going in out of control. Which was why, when Mace had towed Nick to within a few hundred meters above the gunship, a considerable exertion of his Force-strength was required to slow them enough to avoid a catastrophic splatter.

  Nick had lifted his eyes only once, as they plummeted toward the roof armor of the gunship: just long enough to recall vividly what
Mace had said about leaving a red smear on a windscreen. His head was tucked back securely between his knees when Mace brought them to a thumpingly unceremonious landing that sent them bruised and bouncing along the top of the spinning ship.