Shatterpoint

by Matthew W. Stover

  The weight in Mace’s chest lightened, just a bit. He swallowed, and found that his breath came more easily.

  She was afraid for him. She had not fallen so far that she no longer cared.

  That was his victory right there.

  “We won’t be going through the jungle,” he said. “I have a ship onstation with a battalion of troopers. My comm’s damaged, or we’d be on our way right now. Nick says you have subspace at the Lorshan Pass caverns. We can be out of the system less than a day after we get there.”

  She lifted her head again, and there was still no hope in her eyes. “It’ll take two days to get there. If you’re still here in two hours, Kar will kill you. Two minutes.”

  “Leave Vastor to me.” Mace leaned forward, resting his forearms on the howdah’s polished rail. “I am not leaving without you.”

  “You have to.”

  “Let me put it another way.”

  Mace took a deep breath. “Master Depa Billaba: by my authority as a Senior Member of the Jedi Council, and general of the Grand Army of the Republic, you are hereby relieved of command of Republic forces on Haruun Kal, uniformed and irregular. You are relieved of all duties and responsibilities in the action on this planet. You are suspended from the Jedi Council, pending investigation of your actions on Haruun Kal, and you are ordered to proceed with all due speed to Coruscant, where you will present yourself to the Council for judgment.”

  Depa shook her head. “You can’t—you can’t—”

  “Depa,” Mace said sadly, “you are under arrest.”

  “This is ridiculous—”

  “Yes. And absolutely serious. You know me, Depa. How many arrests did we make, all those years? You know I will deliver my prisoner, or die in the attempt.”

  She nodded slowly, and she found a smile once more: a sad, quiet smile, edged with bitter knowledge. “Will you accept my parole? If I give my word not to… attempt escape?”

  “I will always trust you, Depa.”

  Sudden tears sparkled again in her eyes, and she turned her face away. “How many times are you going to make me save your life?”

  “Just this once more,” he said. “You can come with me, or you can watch me die. Your choice.”

  Her shoulders twitched, and shook, and Mace for a moment thought she might be sobbing, but then her soft dry chuckle reached his ears.

  “I have missed you, Mace.” Her eyes sparkled with tears. “I can’t tell you how I’ve missed you. Of course you knew exactly the spot where my defenses would crumble. But I’m not your real problem,” she said tiredly. “What are you going to do about Kar?”

  “You’re my only problem,” Mace told her. “I found your shatterpoint; do you think I’d miss his?”

  “I think he doesn’t have one.”

  “That,” said Mace Windu, “remains to be seen.”

  “You and your shatterpoints.” Her sad smile was dazzling on her tear-stained face. “Who but Mace Windu would think to take himself hostage?”

  Mace’s head twitched to the right in a Korun shrug. “I was the only one available.”

  Mace leaped lightly down from the ankkox. “Kar Vastor. We need to talk.”

  We do not. Vastor did not meet his eyes. As you said: the next time we meet, there may be a fight.

  “What I said was,” Mace replied lazily, “the next time we’re alone together, there may be a fight. But I gave you too much credit. I mean, that is why you brought all your puppies along, isn’t it? You certainly didn’t seem interested in standing up to me without them.”

  Vastor’s head turned like a steamcrawler’s gun turret. What?

  “You have a problem with me?” Mace spread his hands. “I’m right here.”

  Tendons in Vastor’s neck cranked his head down a centimeter at a time. She doesn’t want you hurt.

  “Depa? Do you plan to hide behind her forever?” Mace folded his arms. “Always find a reason to back down, don’t you? I admire your… creativity.”

  The Akk Guards stared.

  All twelve akk dogs hunched and coiled their haunches, tails whipping forward past their shoulder spines: ready to pounce. Vastor snarled and lunged convulsively past Mace. He snatched Nick’s arm and hauled the young Korun to his feet, holding him out toward Mace.

  “Hey, y’know, ow, huh?”

  I have grassers saddled and supplied. Take them and the boy and go.

  His filed-sharp teeth seemed to glow in the vine-lit gloom. Take them and live.

  “You know,” Mace said, “I don’t much care for your tone.”

  Vastor’s eyes widened. His mouth worked silently.

  “And take your hand off my aide. Now.”

  Vastor found his voice: a roar of black rage. A violent shove sent Nick stumbling forward. Only a grab at Mace’s shoulders kept him on his feet. He looked up into the Jedi Master’s eyes and gave him a sickly grin. “Remember that question I wasn’t gonna ask anymore?”

  GO. Vastor’s roar carried tectonic power. Go before I forget my promise to spare you.

  Mace turned to one of the Akk Guards. “Does he always yammer like this? He’d quiet down if you got him fixed.”

  The guard went pale. He shook his head urgently. “Really, really don’t want to talk to Kar like this, you. Really really really.”

  “Oh, right. Sure. He’s not so good with Basic.” Mace hooked his thumbs inside his vest.

  Tendons stood out like cables in the lor pelek’s neck. His shimmering rage went scarlet, glowing in the twilit gloom, as though his skin were lava pouring from a volcano’s mouth.

  Slowly, deliberately, his left hand tucked behind the shield on his right arm. He pulled it down into fighting position, carefully avoiding its razor edges. Just as slowly and deliberately, he did the same with the other.

  Muscle rippled in his arms as he squeezed the handgrips, and the shields whined to life. He brought them together back to back, generating an earsplitting squeal that made even the akk dogs flinch.

  From behind Mace’s shoulder, Nick whispered, “Are you sure I’m not allowed to wet myself?”

  Mace walked calmly out of the center of the ring, straight toward Vastor, thumbs still hooked inside his vest. “You do that a lot. No doubt your puppies find it pretty scary.”

  Looking straight up into Vastor’s eyes, Mace swung his vest open to display the handgrip of his lightsaber.

  Then he shrugged out of the vest, folded it once, and tossed it over his shoulder with effortless accuracy, right into the hands of an astonished Nick Rostu. With his lightsaber still inside it.

  “That’s how much you scare me.”

  Vastor’s shields parted, and the jungle went silent.

  “Everybody here knows this has nothing to do with Depa,” Mace said. “This has to do with those Balawai you were too stupid and weak to hold.”

  Vastor’s legs coiled like the akks’ haunches. They were mine! MINE! Mine to kill. Mine to spare. They were MINE to give to the justice of the jungle—

  “Until you met me. Then they were mine,” Mace said. “Mine to let go.”

  I’ll show you stupid and weak—

  “You already have.”

  Vastor shifted his weight to throw himself into a leap, but then froze as though an invisible leash had snapped tight around his neck. He glanced back at the shadow behind the curtains of the howdah for a moment. When he turned toward Mace once more, his lips were drawn back in a predator’s grin, and his eyes burned like twin calderas.

  Depa prefers that you live. But she doesn’t mind if you get hurt.

  Mace shrugged. “As long as she won’t mind when you get hurt.”

  Vastor began to unbuckle his shields. Mace turned his back on the lor pelek contemptuously and strolled toward the center of the ring of akks and people.

  There was nothing either slow or deliberate about the way Vastor shook the shields off his arms: a whipping snap of the wrist that flung them down to clatter against the rim of the ankkox’s shell.

&n
bsp; Nick held the bundle of Mace’s vest and weapon uncertainly. “Um, guess I should have told you: that big-dog stuff doesn’t work on Kar.”

  “On the contrary,” the Jedi Master replied softly. “It’s working perfectly.”

  Nick blinked.

  Mace said, “As for you, though—”

  “Don’t worry about me. I know exactly what to do.” He tucked Mace’s vest under one arm and trotted toward the nearest Akk Guard. “A hundred credits says the Jedi makes Kar cry like a baby! Who’s in?”

  The lor pelek crouched and lowered one hand to the ground, digging in the leaf mold, his sweat-glistening chest heaving, breath pumping darkness into him and out again. Gathering rage. Gathering power.

  The shimmer around him had gone from red to black.

  Mace shook his arms loose. “Rules?”

  Vastor’s reply was the snort of a hunting akk. Jungle rules. A burst of power launched the lor pelek as a human missile, clawing his way through the twilight toward the Jedi Master.

  Jungle rules it is, then, Mace thought, and leapt to meet him in midair.

  Chapter 12: Jungle Rules

  They collided with a crash that shook the jungle around them. The collision was not just of two human bodies, but of two node-channels of the Force: invisible energy crackled, and vivid blue gap-sparks arced from leaf to leaf in the canopy above. For a moment, they hung in the air, supported by power, grappling, tearing at each other’s flesh. The akk dogs lunged and whirled and slashed the air with their tails. The guards clashed together their shields, roaring with ferocious animal exuberance.

  Vastor seemed to be all teeth and claws and fierce snarling assault. Arms like girders of durasteel caught Mace in an unbreakable hug, pinning the Jedi’s elbows to his creaking ribs. Mace answered swifter than thought with an instinctive head-butt that split the skin on one of Vastor’s cheekbones. The lor pelek lowered his head to Mace’s shoulder as though to snuggle in like a lover—then sank his needle teeth deep into Mace’s neck, chewing for his carotid artery.

  Mace jerked a knee up to slam the inside of Vastor’s thigh; Vastor only grunted and bit down harder, twisting his head from side to side like an akk worrying off a tusker’s leg. His jaw pressure on the artery was restricting its blood flow; billowing clouds of darkness gathered in Mace’s brain—but when Mace fired the knee again, Vastor jerked his legs out of the way.

  Mace’s knee caught him a decimeter below the navel.

  This brought a sharper grunt and a snarl that vibrated in Mace’s neck, but instead of withdrawing his knee for another strike, Mace dug it in harder, forcing Vastor’s body away from his own. This created just enough space that Mace could slip one arm up between their chests, and could stab his stiffened fingers into the notch of Vastor’s collarbone.

  And shove.

  With a convulsive gasp of astonishment, the lor pelek released Mace’s neck. Mace kept on shoving, jamming his fingers into Vastor’s windpipe. Vastor gagged, and his massive arms loosened.

  They fell together, tumbling, and as Mace finally pushed Vastor off him he managed to sneak in a quick snapping kick to the point of Vastor’s chin that sent the lor pelek whirling like a topspun ball.

  Mace recovered his Force-touch in time to flip upright and land in a balanced crouch; Vastor landed on all fours, absorbing the shock as effortlessly as a vine cat.

  They looked at each other.

  Blood ran from the bite wound on Mace’s neck, painting his shoulder and part of his chest scarlet, but it was only a trail, not a jet: the artery must have remained intact. A similar trail rolled from Vastor’s split cheek and dripped from his jaw.

  Neither man appeared to notice.

  Vastor’s growl resonated in Mace’s chest. Not many men can break my grip. You won’t do it twice.

  Mace didn’t answer. Vastor was probably right.

  He was suddenly, acutely aware that he hadn’t slept since the night before the fight in the notch pass. The night when a bark-drunk Lesh had come to him in tears, to tell him what Kar and the Akk Guards would teach him, if he lived long enough.

  It seemed like years ago.

  He wondered briefly if the lor pelek would have gone ahead and torn out his throat despite what he claimed Depa had told him, or if he would have settled for the strangle.

  He decided he could live without knowing the answer.

  That is, if he lived at all.

  Vastor stalked toward him on all fours. Was that Jedi fighting? Poking and pinching? A little jab to stop the big dog? I am not impressed.

  Mace stood motionless except for the heaving of his chest. He knew already he could not match Vastor for raw power. With each breath, he stripped away another layer of restraint and inhibition. Another layer of serenity. He had to move his inner peace out of the way to let in the joy. The thrill. The sheer okay-why-not-let’s-FIGHT. Because Vaapad was more than just a form of lightsaber combat.

  It was a state of mind.

  Night had deepened upon the jungle, and around them glowvines began to pulse faintly. To use Vaapad now, out here, was incredibly dangerous—almost as dangerous as not using Vaapad.

  The ultimate answer for power is skill.

  “Want to be impressed?” Mace said. “Let’s see the impression my boot makes on your face.”

  Without warning, Vastor’s stalk became a lightning lunge, fingers hooked like talons, his arms sweeping wide to close on Mace once more—but Mace wasn’t there anymore. A slight sidestep and a weave of his head snuck him to the outside of Vastor’s lunge, and his fist whipped backhand to snap Vastor in the base of the skull as he passed: a knockout blow.

  But Vastor must have felt it coming; he pitched forward, rolling with the punch so that it flipped him end for end. He landed in perfect balance and sprang again, straight up; the kick Mace had aimed at his kidneys only grazed his calf muscle. He used the impact to whirl in the air so that he could fall upon the Jedi Master like a branch leopard taking a tusker.

  But what he fell upon was Mace’s fist, driven upward into his solar plexus by the combined power of the Force and nearly fifty years of Jedi combat training.

  Mace’s hand sank in to the wrist, and Vastor’s fighting snarl became an agonized struggle for breath. Mace used the Force to hurl him off and send him tumbling through the air to slam into the flank of an agitated akk dog. Eyes glazing, half stunned, the lor pelek slid bonelessly down the akk’s armored ribs, and staggered as his feet skidded over gnarled roots.

  Before he could find his balance, Mace was on him. “Impressed yet?”

  Standing toe to toe, the top of Mace’s head barely came to the level of Vastor’s chin, and you could have tucked Mace’s whole thick-muscled upper body inside Vastor’s chest with room to spare. And even hurt, lurching drunkenly, Vastor still could whip his arms in blindingly fast raking slaps at Mace’s head and wounded neck.

  But where Vastor’s speed was blinding, Mace’s was invisible.

  Not one of those slaps connected.

  Before Vastor could even focus his eyes, Mace had hit him six times: two thundering hooks to his short ribs, a knee slamming hard into the same thigh he’d hit before, an elbow snapping up to the point of his chin, and two devastating palm strikes to either hinge of his jaw.

  An ordinary man would have been unconscious. Vastor seemed to be getting stronger.

  Vastor fired another of those blinding slaps. This time, instead of ducking, Mace countered with a whirring hook that met the lor pelek’s swinging arm directly on the nerve that ran up the inside of the biceps. Vastor threw the other even harder—which only made the inside of that arm connect that much harder with Mace’s counterhook.

  Vastor’s mighty arms spasmed and dropped limply to his sides.

  “This is called Vaapad, Kar.” A fierce light burned in Mace’s eyes. “How many arms do you see?”

  Then he hit Vastor twice in the nose before the lor pelek could even blink.

  Vastor howled in pain and raging disbelief, f
alling back against the akk dog’s flank once more, twisting and turning to try to find some way to avoid the Jedi’s flashing hands.

  Mace stayed with him, pinning him to the akk’s flank, fists whirling through Vaapad flurries, striking not to disable or to kill, but instead to hurt: stinging flicks to soft tissue, smashing ears and nose, stabbing up under the chin.

  The akk dog suddenly lurched away from them, giving Vastor half a meter of clearance. The lor pelek sprang sideways, diving away.

  Mace let him go. “Go on and run, Kar. This is over. You lose. I’m the big dog here—”

  Vastor turned his dive into a roll and spun to face the Jedi Master from one knee, and before Mace had even finished speaking the Force whirled around him and Mace found himself wrenched off the ground, hurtling backward through the air to slam against the smooth-barked gray trunk of a meter-thick lammas tree. The whole tree shivered with the impact, and a spiral galaxy birthed itself inside Mace’s head.

  He thought, I was wondering when we’d get to this part.

  Vastor’s face tightened. Strength must have been returning to his nerve-punched arms already, because he managed to raise one and gesture as though throwing a stone; Mace was whirled forward from the tree to crash against the skull of an astonished akk dog.

  The impact folded him over the dog’s head and blasted the breath from his lungs; the dog’s crown spines gashed Mace’s abdomen, and when it tossed Mace aside with a twitch of its head like a Nymalian water-ox, his blood ran down the black outer shells of its eyes.

  Jedi Padawans learn to counter Force kinesis before they even begin lightsaber training. Still in the air, Mace sensed the flow of power that held Vastor’s grip upon him; with a sigh, he allowed his center—Vastor’s point of Force contact—to relax and ground Vastor’s power back into the jungle around them…

  And that jungle came to life.

  A gripleaf trailer snaked down from above and seized one of Mace’s ankles in its unbreakable clutch. His airborne tumble became a wide-swinging head-down arc.

  Gripleaf trailers only grew tighter as their victim struggled, and their fibers were nearly as strong as durasteel cable; they could not be broken by mortal strength. This one squeezed his ankle, drawing blood with the edges of its sharp waxy leaves. Another trailer reached toward his other ankle, and from his upside-down vantage he could see a thick blade-thorned length of brassvine curving toward his neck.