Star Wars_ Shatterpoint - Matthew Woodring Stover [79]
The other memory is a silent image of walking calmly at Depa's side through the rain of blasterfire, conversing with calm unconcern, as oblivious to the gunships as we are to the jungle, and to the sunlight of the dawn. In this dream or memory, Depa turns her blindfolded face toward me, her head cocked as though she can see into my heart. Why have you come here, Mace? Do you even know?
I don't hear these words: again like a dream, it seems we merely intend our meaning, and somehow make ourselves understood.
Why did you send for me? is my answer.
That's not the same thing, she reminds me gently. You have to define your conditions of victory. If you don't know what you're trying to do, how can you tell when you've done it? Why have you come? To stop me? You can do that with one slash of a lightsaber.
,'suppose, I somehow reply, lam trying to find out what has happened here. What is happening. To these people, and to you. Once I understand what's going on, I'll know what to do about it.
The only thing you don't understand, says this blind dream-image of my beloved Padawan, is that you already understand all there is to understand. You just don't want to believe it.
Then the veil thickens, and deepens toward night, and I remember no more until sometime later-not too much later-when I was running helter-skelter down through the jungle, quite alone.
Bounding down a long, long slope half barren with old lava where it wasn't burned with new, I could feel the guerrillas somewhere ahead by the dark pall like smoke they trailed in the Force-and I could track them by the blood spoor their many wounded left on ground and rock and leaf.
And I remember skidding down the rim of a dry wash, and finding Kar Vaster waiting for me at the bottom.
Kar Vaster-I have much to say of this lorpelek. Of the powers I have seen him wield, from the drawing of the fever wasps out of Besh and Chalk to the way the jungle itself seems to part for his passage and tangle itself behind. Of his followers: those six Korunnai he calls the Akk Guards, men he's made into lesser echoes of himself. How he has trained them in their signature weapons-those terrifying "vi-broshields"-that he had designed and built. Even the smallest details: the primal ferocity of his gaze, the jungle-noise growl of his wordless voice, and how you hear his meaning as though it were your own voice whispering inside your head-all deserve more depth of comment than I can give them here.
I'm not sure why it took me so long to understand that he and I are natural enemies.
The lorpelek stood on the slope below Mace, holding the reins of a saddled grasser. The grasser kept one of its three eyes fixed warily on Vaster, and when he spoke, the grasser trembled as though it would shy away were it not held in place by an invisible force that overpowered its instincts.
Jedi Windu. You are sent for, doshalo.
Mace did not need to ask by whom. "Where is she?"
An hour's ride ahead. Resting in her hoiadah. She no longer walks.
Mace felt dizzy; the world shifted focus as though he looked at its reflection in a rippling pool. "An hour... no longer walks-?" It made no sense, but in the Force it felt like the truth. "She was here-she was jus'there-"
No.
"But she was-she greeted me, and-" Mace passed a hand over his skull, checking for blood or swelling: searching for a head wound. "I returned her lightsaber-we fought-we fought the gunships-"
You fought alone.
"She was with me..."
I sent two of my men to check on you, when you did not join the march.
They watched from below, hiding from the Ealawai ships. They saw you: alone in the compound, your blades flashing against the blasterfire. My men say you drove them ojf single-handed, though they did not seem to be damaged. Perhaps you have taught Balawai to fear the Jedi blade. He showed Mace his sharp-filed