Star Wars_ Shatterpoint - Matthew Woodring Stover [90]
Didn't sound bad at all, Mace thought.,' should probably write that down.
Nick blinked silently. His eyes looked glassy, and he licked his lips.
Mace leaned toward him. "Say I do, Nick."
"I-I guess I do," he said in a tone of wondering discovery, as though he had just learned something astonishing about himself. "I mean: yes. I do."
"Come to attention, and salute."
Nick had snapped to in very creditable fashion, though he still looked a bit dazed. "Hey-hey, I feel something. In the Force-" His daze was replaced by open astonishment. "It's you."
"A soldier at attention does not speak, except to answer direct questions. Is this understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"What you feel is our new relationship: it has a resonance in the Force not unlike the bond of an akk to its human."
"So I'm your dog, now?"
"Nick."
"Right, right, shut up. I know. Uh-sir."
"At ease, Major," Mace had said as he finally returned the young Korun's salute. "Move them out."
Now as the departing Akk Guard disappeared into the rain, Mace carried the wounded Balawai back to the group of exhausted prisoners. He couldn't find anyone among them who even looked strong enough to support this man's weight over the jumbled tree roots and through the calf-deep mud, so he just shrugged and joined the march, holding the Balawai's arm around his neck.
Heads down, shoulders hunched against the icy downpour, they slogged on.
They broke out of the trees on a small promontory that ended in a sheer cliff. Jungle swarmed its base a hundred meters below. They had been sidestepping down a long switchback, heading for the canyon floor. Half a klick behind, a ribbon of waterfall steamed down a thousand-meter drop; the far canyon wall was a riot of greens and purples and bright shining red that eclipsed half the sky. The thunderstorm swept to their rear as Mace and Nick broke out from the trees, and in the near distance through the canyon's mouth ahead, only a klick away-glowing now with afternoon sun blazing red-slanted from a crystal sky-lay the broad bare-dirt curve of the steamcrawler track.
Mace and Nick were both on foot. The feverish Balawai was tied into the grasser's saddle.
"There it is," Nick said. His voice was low and grim. "Pretty, ain't it?"
"Yes. Pretty." Mace stepped around the grasser. "Pity we didn't make it."
Any Force-sensitive could have felt the menace that lay across their path; to Mace, it felt like an arc of forest fire ripping through the trees. He couldn't feel exactly what was down there, but he knew it was Vaster: whatever forces he had brought after them now sealed the mouth of the canyon.
Nick nodded. He unslung his rifle, checked the clip, and cocked it. "Just couldn't move fast enough." He glanced back to where the Balawai were now struggling out to the fringe of the undergrowth. He shook his head. "Only needed an hour. That's all. One more hour, we woulda been clear."
"What's going on?" The boys' father joined them near the rim of the cliff. "Is that the track? Why have we stopped?"
The Akk Guard with the bruised face Came out of the trees; the six dogs and the other guard were fanned out behind the prisoners. He nodded toward the thick arc of danger that all but the grassers and the Balawai could feel ahead. "Hard luck, huh? Told you Kar would come, me."
"Yes." Mace folded his arms. "It was too much to hope that he might let us go." He turned to the Akk Guard. "You can go to him, if you like."
"Maybe will, us." The Korun had recovered some of his former swagger. His chest swelled out, and he looked down at Mace with an air of contempt that might have been convincing, if he hadn't been so careful to keep himself