Star Wars 096 - Shatterpoint

by Matthew Stover

  Mace said, “I won’t tell you again.”

  Nick mounted up.

  “Kar Vastor,” the Jedi Master said, looking again into the jungle, this time up the line of march where the lor pelek had vanished, “is not the most dangerous man on the Korunnal Highland.”

  Nick shook his head. “You only say that because you don’t really know him.”

  “I say that,” Mace Windu replied, “because he doesn’t know me.”

  The prisoners limped along in ragged knots, holding each other up and nervously eyeing the pacing akk dogs. Mace forced his way through the tangled undergrowth toward them, Nick close behind on the grasser.

  “Am I missing something here?” Nick leaned over to speak softly, one arm bent across the back of the grasser’s thick neck. “Last night these ruskakks were trying to carve off a hunk of roast Windu.”

  “This tan pel’trokal.” Mace’s voice was equally low and far more grim. “You approve of it?”

  “Sure.” Nick glanced at the grasser that the children rode, and swiftly looked away. “Well, in principle, anyway…” His vivid eyes went narrow and cynical. “Wasn’t too long ago Kar used to just kill them all. Can’t afford to feed ’em. What else should we do? Givin’ them the justice was Depa’s call.”

  “Oh?”

  “Makes sense, don’t it? If the Balawai think we’ll kill ’em anyway, why should they surrender? Every one of them’d fight to the death. That gets expensive, y’know? So we give ’em to the jungle. At least they got a chance.”

  “How many survive?”

  “Some.”

  “Half? A quarter? One in a hundred?”

  “How should I know?” Nick shrugged. “Does it make a difference?”

  Mace Windu said, “Not to me.”

  Nick closed his eyes and leaned his head against the grasser’s ear as though exhausted, or in pain. “You’ve gone bats, haven’t you,” he said. “You’re completely insane.”

  Mace stopped. A twitch of frown drew a vertical crease between his eyebrows. “No. Just the opposite, in fact.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  But Mace was already walking away.

  Nick muttered a curse on all fraggin’ Jedi who used nikkle nuts for brains, then goaded the grasser along after him.

  When the prisoners saw them coming, a man’s voice said, “It’s the Jedi…No, the other one. The real Jedi.” Mace thought this voice might belong to the man he’d spoken to in the steamcrawler this morning: the gray-faced one with a chest wound and a missing hand, who would not believe in a Jedi’s word.

  Mace chose not to ask what he meant by the real Jedi.

  Some few of the prisoners clustered toward him, straightening their clothing and forcing their faces into expressions of hope; most just stopped where they were, swaying with exhaustion or stumbling against the great gray trees. Some grabbed handfuls of vines to lower themselves slowly to the ground.

  A few tens of meters downslope, the two Akk Guards stared up at Mace with undisguised hostility. Two of the six akk dogs on prisoner duty slouched sullenly nearby.

  The children’s grasser was led by a man whom Mace recognized as Urno and Nykl’s father. The only clean spots on his dirt- and blood-smeared face were the twin tracks from his eyes to his chin, rinsed white by tears. He dropped the reins and threw himself on the ground at Mace’s feet. “Please—please, Your Honor—Your Highness—” he sobbed, facedown into the jungle floor, “please don’t let them kill my boys. Do what you want with me—I deserve it, I know, I’m sorry for what I done, but my boys…it’s not their fault, they didn’t do nothing—please, I don’t—I never met a Jedi before—I don’t even know what I should call you—”

  “Stand up,” Mace said sternly. “Jedi are not to be knelt to. We are not your masters, but your servants. Stand up.”

  Slowly, the astonished man pulled himself to his feet. The back of his hand smeared a streak of mud below his nose. “Okay,” he said. “All right. What’s coming to me—I can take it like a man…but my boys—”

  “What’s coming to you is your life, and possibly your freedom as well.”

  The man blinked, uncomprehending. “Your Honor—?”

  “Call me Master Windu.” Mace swept past him and opened his arms, beckoning to all the prisoners. “Gather ’round. I’ll need you all to stick closer together. There will not be enough of us to look after stragglers.”

  “Sir?” Keela said as the children’s grasser caught up. She had twisted sideways in the lower saddle to stare at Mace with damp, bloodshot eyes. “Sir, what are they going to do with us? Where’s Mom? Are you gonna let them put us out in the jungle?”

  Mace met her tear-blurred gaze squarely. “No. I’m going to send you back to the city. You’re going home. All of you.”

  Nick muttered, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  “I never do.”

  “You don’t think Kar and those Akk Guards down there are gonna have something to say about it?”

  “I’m aware of their opinion already. I have my own.”

  “The tan pel’trokal—”

  “Means nothing to me,” Mace said. “I don’t care about jungle justice. I care about Jedi justice. And I will see it done.”

  “Jedi justice, my weeping saddle sores. You still don’t get it, do you? Jedi anything doesn’t mean squat out here—”

  “I understand the rules now. You read them to me yourself; then Kar Vastor taught me what they mean. Now I can start to play.”

  “That’s just it,” Nick insisted. “You’re in the jungle, now. There are no rules.”

  “Of course there are. Don’t be an idiot.”

  Nick blinked. “You’re kidding, right? You’re making a joke.”

  “Stay here and watch,” Mace told him, working his way down toward the guards. “Then tell me what you think of my sense of humor.”

  The same Akk Guard whom Mace had kicked now moved to block the Jedi Master’s path. The swellings Vastor’s fist had left on the man’s face had gone as purple-black as the thickening clouds overhead. Muscle bunched like blocks of duracrete under the skin of his bare chest. “Where going, Windu?”

  Mace had to tilt his head back to meet the Korun’s stare. “I don’t know your name.”

  “You can call me—”

  “I didn’t ask your name,” Mace cut him off. “I just don’t know it. I don’t need to. You should get out of my way.”

  The guard’s eyes looked scalded, and more than slightly crazed. “Out of your way, little Jedi?”

  “I am taking the prisoners to the steamcrawler track.” Mace nodded in that general direction. “I can go past you, or I can go over you. You pick.”

  “Over me? Can fly, you?” The vibroshields strapped to his forearms snarled to life. He raised them to either side of Mace’s face. “Draw your toy weapon, little Jedi. Go ahead. Draw.”

  “My lightsaber? Why should I?” Mace raised a finger to tap his own forehead. “This is the only weapon I need.”

  “Yeah?” A sneer: “What, think me to death, you gonna?”

  “You misunderstand.” By way of explanation, he splattered the Korun’s nose with a sharp head-butt.

  The Korun staggered backward. Mace moved with him in perfect synchronization as though they were dancing, hands gripping the man’s massive biceps. When the Korun started to recover his balance, his head naturally coming forward once more, Mace yanked on his arms, pulling him into another head-butt that brought Mace’s forehead and the point of the Korun’s chin together with a crack as sharp as a breaking rock.

  Mace stepped back to let the semiconscious man collapse. The other guard snarled and lunged at Mace’s back, only to find himself facing the business end of a sizzling purple lightsaber.

  “He’s alive,” Mace said calmly. “So are you. For now. The next one of you pathetic nerfs who raises a hand to me will die for it. Do you understand?”

  The Korun only stared at him with murde
r on his face.

  “Answer me!” Mace roared. With a convulsive snarl, he threw his lightsaber on the ground at the Korun’s feet. Faster than the eye could follow, his hand flashed out, his thumb hooking the Korun’s cheek while his fingers dug in behind the hinge of the man’s jaw. He yanked the Korun’s face to within a centimeter of his own, and there was open raging madness in his eyes. “DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

  The Korun’s mouth worked in speechless shock. Mace howled into his face, “YOU WANT TO DIE? YOU WANT TO DIE RIGHT NOW? MAKE A MOVE! DO IT! DO IT AND DIE!”

  The astonished Korun could only blink and mumble and try to shake his head. Mace released the man’s face with a contemptuous shove that sent the guard stumbling backward. Mace opened his empty hand, and his lightsaber flipped up from the ground and smacked into his palm. He tucked it back into the holster inside his vest.

  “Never get in my way.” His voice was again icily calm. “Ever.”

  He turned his eye to the pair of akk dogs, who were up and growling like looming thunderheads, spines bristling across their armored shoulders.

  Mace stared at them.

  First one, then the other, lowered its head and flattened those spines. Tails tucked low, the akk dogs backed away.

  Mace looked upslope, where Nick stood gaping in blank wonder. The captives huddled even closer together, none daring to make eye contact. Mace beckoned.

  By the time Nick and the grasser that carried the children arrived, the downed Akk Guard was stirring. But when he opened his eyes to find Mace still standing over him, he decided to stay on the ground.

  “Okay, I admit it,” Nick said as they passed by the guards and the dogs. “That was pretty funny. And a little scary: I’ve never seen you angry before.”

  “You still haven’t,” Mace said softly. “Remember those rules of the jungle I was talking about? You just saw one in action.”

  “What rule was that?”

  “When the big dog’s walking,” said Jedi Master Mace Windu, “little dogs step aside.”

  Icy rain splashed down through the canopy, and thunder rolled like turbojets of gunships passing overhead. Though the day had reached only midafternoon, the storm wrapped the jungle in late-twilight gloom. Mace walked a few paces behind Nick’s bedraggled grasser. Raindrops tapped his skull, and a chilly rivulet twisted along his spine. In places where the leaf mold gave way to bare ground, mud sucked at his boots with every step. Sometimes he sank in deeply enough that the mud leaked over his boot tops. Only by drawing strength from the Force could he keep moving.

  He could not imagine what the march must be like for the wounded prisoners.

  Every once in a while, a hunk or two of the hail that the thunderhead above spat down would bounce all the way through the layers of leaf and branch and vine and give someone a knock. By the time they reached ground level, most of these hailstones had melted down to about half the size of Mace’s fist: too small to be dangerous, though still large enough to raise stinging welts on his head. The Balawai prisoners gathered ones that fell nearby, sucking on them to melt them in their mouths. With a bit of wiping, these hailstones made the cleanest source of water they were likely to find—they carried only the faintest sulfurous traces of volcanic smoke and gases.

  In the Force, Mace felt the hot fierce sting of an approaching akk dog; a moment later he felt a Force-nudge on his right shoulder blade. He reached up to tug on Nick’s ankle. “Keep them going,” he said, raising his voice over the hiss of the rain. “I’ll be right back.”

  A few steps off their line of march, a man’s shadow began to take shape through the rain-blurred gloom. Mace walked toward it, weaving between trees and moving vines aside with a gesture, to find the bruised Akk Guard heading for him carrying one of the Balawai. Behind the guard, the great akk Mace had felt made a gray silhouette.

  “Fell out, this one. Think he’s fevered, me.” The guard set the Balawai on his feet. It was the wounded man with the missing hand. “Better keep someone with him, you.”

  Mace nodded as he looped the man’s good arm over his shoulders. “Thank you. I’ll look after him.” The Balawai gazed at him without recognition.

  The guard frowned down at them. “Gonna kill you for this, Kar is. Know that, you?”

  “I appreciate your concern.”

  “No concern. Just tellin’. That’s all.”

  “Thank you.”

  The guard frowned a moment longer, then gave an elaborate shrug before he turned away and faded once more into the gloom.

  Mace thoughtfully watched him go. The two Akk Guards hadn’t been hard to co-opt; while Nick wrangled the Balawai into something resembling marching order, Mace had worked his way back upslope to where one stood watching him, while the one he’d knocked down still sat on the ground massaging his broken nose.

  Mace squatted beside him. “How’s your face?” he’d asked gravely.

  The guard’s voice was half muffled by his hands. “Why care, you?”

  “It’s no dishonor to lose to a Jedi,” Mace had said. “Here, let me see.”

  When the astonished Akk Guard took his hands away from his face, Mace put his hands to either side of the man’s nose and popped the bones straight with one brisk twisting squeeze. The sudden sharp pain made the Korun gasp, but it was over so quickly he didn’t even have time to yelp.

  After that he could only blink in wonder. “Hey—hey, feels better, that. How’d you—”

  “Sorry I lost my temper,” Mace said, standing to include the other Akk Guard. “But I can’t back down from a challenge. You understand.”

  The two Korunnai exchanged a glance, and they both nodded reluctantly, as Mace had known they would: Vastor had trained them like dogs, and like dogs their only answer to the pat on the head that followed the kick was to wag their tails and hope they weren’t in trouble anymore. “I think you’re both solid,” Mace went on. “Strong fighters. That’s why I went at you so hard: respect. You’re too dangerous for me to play games with.”

  The Korun with the broken nose had said in a tone of generous concession, “Got a stone-sweet head-butt, you.” He chuckled, crossing his eyes to look at the bloodied swelling between them. “Best I ever ate.”

  Now the other Akk Guard could not resist chiming in. “And that grab on my face—was a Jedi thing, that? Never seen it before, me. Maybe teach me, you?”

  Mace had no more time for pleasantries. “Listen: I know taking the prisoners will cause trouble with Kar. And I know you’ll be in trouble for letting them go with me. Why don’t you stay with us? Bring your dogs. Keep the Balawai in line, and don’t let any of them get lost. It’s not like Kar won’t know where we’re going. I told him myself. And if you’re along, he won’t have any trouble finding us: you can feel each other in pelekotan. Right?”

  Again they had exchanged glances, and again they had nodded.

  “If Kar wants these prisoners, he can take them from me himself. How can he blame you for losing if he’s afraid to step up?”

  To a dark-soaked Korun, this was undeniable logic.

  “Right,” the bruised guard said happily. “Right. Thinks you’re a tumblepup in vine cat skin, him? Let him yank your tail. Will find out quick enough, I think.”

  And so Mace Windu had acquired a pair of Korun shepherds for his flock of Balawai.

  Mace had cemented Nick’s assistance with a similar technique. As they were about to turn aside from the ULF column, Mace had stood thoughtfully alongside Nick’s grasser. “Nick,” he’d begun, “I’m going to need an aide.”

  The young Korun had squinted suspiciously down from the saddle. “An aide? What for?”

  “Like you said when you picked me up in Pelek Baw: I’m not from around here. I need someone who can look after me, give me advice, that kind of thing—”

  “You want advice? Flush the fraggin’ Balawai and shag your Jedi butt back up the column. Make some kissy-face with Kar and Depa before they chop you into sausage. Any other advice you want, fee
l free to ask.”

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Huh?”

  “I need someone who knows his way around out here. Someone I can trust.”

  Nick snorted. “Good fraggin’ luck. I wouldn’t trust anyone out here—”

  “I don’t,” Mace told him. “Except you.”

  “Me?” Nick shook his head. “You really have gone bats. Haven’t you heard? I’m the least trustworthy guy in the ULF. I’m the weak coward, right? I’m the useless butter-brain who couldn’t even get you out here from Pelek Baw without screwing it up—and now I’m screwing up again by playing along with this whole nikkle-nut Free-the-Balawai parade—”

  “You’re the only trustworthy man I’ve met on Haruun Kal,” Mace had said solidly. “You’re the only man I can trust to do the right thing.”

  “Hoo-fraggin’-ray. Look where it’s gotten me.”

  “It’s gotten you,” Mace said, “a chance to join the personal staff of a general of the Grand Army of the Republic.”

  “Yeah?” Nick began to look interested. “What’s it pay?”

  “Nothing,” Mace admitted, and Nick’s face fell, but the Jedi Master went on, “Though when I leave this planet, I’ll be taking my staff with me.”

  Nick’s eyes recovered a little spark.

  “With a brevet rank of, let’s say, major? And once we get to Coruscant, I’ll be needing staff instructors to train officers in guerrilla tactics. A few months as an urban- and jungle-warfare consultant affiliated with the Jedi Temple should make you pretty attractive to all those mercenary captains out there. You might even get your own company. Isn’t that what you want? Or am I confusing you with some other Korun whose fondest dream is to travel the galaxy as a mercenary?”

  “You bet your sweet—I mean, No, sir. General. Major Rostu at the general’s service. Sir. Uh—is there any kind of swearing-in, or anything?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” Mace admitted. “I’ve never inducted anyone into the Grand Army of the Republic before.”

  “I feel like I should raise my right hand or something.”

  Mace nodded thoughtfully. “Put your left hand over your heart, raise your right and stand at attention.”