Mace looked upslope: there he was, standing on the rock above the bunker’s door.

A Korun.

In the Force, he burned with power.

[...]

Oh, no, Mace thought.

Oh, Depa, no …

On the rock above, the lor pelek spread his corded arms, leaning out over the drop, toppling as though he thought he could fly—then at the last instant he sprang forward into a dive that carried him toward the center of the crowd of Balawai, where they massed around the steamcrawlers.

The killing began.

[...]

The Korunnai waded in without waiting for Vastor to land. They sprang among the mass of Balawai and swung those teardrop shields in short, vicious arcs, angled flat as though to cut with their edges—

And cut they did.

Their sizzling edges bit through blasters with tooth-grinding squeals; they slashed through flesh with a meaty squelch, and the blood on them shivered to mist. Scarlet clouds trailed them like smoke. Mace saw a man cut in half, and the shield came out his other side still shining like an ultrachrome mirror.

Shining like a vibro-ax.

Vastor touched down in the middle of the compound and rolled out of his fall without slowing. He flashed into an inhumanly fast sprint toward the very steamcrawler atop which Mace lay. Vastor’s sprint became a headlong dive that carried him sliding between the treads.

The steamcrawler’s armor hummed under Mace’s hands, and a harsher squeal joined the chorus of snarling shields; he had to bite back an obscenity he’d learned from Nick.


- Shatterpoint, Chapters 7-8