• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

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

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 probaly had no idea about that upcountry team; he'd wanted Mace to go 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. Gunship 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 kilometers per hour, and through the fracture he could feel a silicon brain make an electronic connection. He could feel tl execution of a simple command program, and he could feel aut

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