Star Wars_ Shatterpoint - Matthew Woodring Stover [70]
Four steamcrawlers divided by one Jedi equals one huge smoking pile of scrap.
The shatterpoints of the 'crawlers were obvious: neither the linked treads nor the traverse gears that rotated the turrets would stand against a single swipe of a lightsaber. In less than a second apiece, he could turn these armored behemoths into nothing more than hollow metal rocks-but he didn't.
Because that wouldn't hurt enough.
He wanted to hurt them worse than this black migraine was hurting him.
These people had attacked him when all he wanted was to help them. When he had been trying to save them. They had attacked him without regard for their own lives, or the lives of their children. They'd almost made him kill one of their children himself.
They were stupid. They were evil. They deserved to be punished.
They deserved to die.
He saw it all in a single burst of image: a memory of something that hadn't happened yet. He saw himself dive headfirst under the steamcrawler and flip to his back, his twin blades carving through the 'crawler's lightly armored undercarriage. He'd come up in the passenger compartment, where one or two armed men might be guarding the wounded; he'd use their own blasterfire to take them out. Then cut his way into the cabin, take out the driver-then he'd wash the compound in flame projected from the steamcrawler's turret gun; the jups on foot would run and shriek as they burned. Then he would use the Force to flip his lightsabers through the air to carve gaps in the armor of the other steamcrawler, gaps through which his turret gun would pour flame, roasting drivers and passengers and wounded-thick meat-scented smoke would billow out the hatches...
They'd all die. Every single one of them.
It wouldn't take him a full minute.
And he'd enjoy it.
He was already running toward the steamcrawler, gathering himself for the headlong dive, when he finally thought, What am I doing?
He barely managed to turn his dive into a spring instead. He flipped upward through the air to land poised on the steamcrawler's outer deck beside the flame-gun turret. He let himself fall prone to the deck, using its bulk to cover him against blasterfire from the Balawai on the ground, and his whole body sagged as he tried to pull his mind back out from the Force.
It was too dark here. Too dark everywhere: thick and blinding, choking like the black smoke plume from the volcano's mouth above. He could find no light at all except the red flame that burned in his heart. His head pounded as though he were the one with fever wasps hatching inside his brain. As though his skull were cracking open.
Fatigue and pain rushed him, barreling him toward unconscious ness; drawing upon the Force to sustain himself drew in rage as well. He clung to the 'crawler's deck, pressing his face into the hot bullet-scarred armor. Every second he could hold himself still was another second for some of these men and women to live.
A howl welled up inside him: a roar of dark fury raised to the level of exaltation. He locked his teeth against it, but it rang in his ears anyway, echoing across the mountainside like akks calling with the voice of the blood fever itself-Mace's breath caught in his throat. A voice inside him-how could it echo?
He raised his head.
That howling was akk voices after all.
They came up from the jungle, climbing the steep lava-cut sides of the outcrop, massive claws gouging furrows in the stone. Five, eight, a dozen: gigantic, armored, cowl spines bristling in full threat display, white foamy ropes of slaver looping from the corners of their dagger-toothed mouths.
Heavily armed Balawai fell back before them. The akks moved with the deliberate speed of creatures who had nothing to fear. Steamcrawler turret guns hosed them down with flame; they ignored it. They shrugged aside the minor stings of blaster hits. When they reached the crown of the outcrop, they began to pace around the outpost's perimeter, circling the shattered huts; their pace became a trot, then a gallop: a ring of armored