Star Wars_ Shatterpoint - Matthew Woodring Stover [144]
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.
Mace's free hand lashed out with effortless accuracy and latched around the widescan sensor dish-mount; his other, still locked on Nick's belt, brought the young Korun to a stop facedown over what was still nearly a kilometer drop to the jungle.
"You... remember... back when we met?" Nick gasped breathlessly into the swirling winds. "When