One fracture terminated at an orbiting satellite that whizzed across the face of the planet at almost twenty-eight thousand kilometers per hour, and through the fracture he could feel a silicon brain make an electronic connection. He could feel the execution of a simple command program, and he could feel automated clamps releasing huge durasteel bars layered in ablative shielding, and he could feel primitive guidance jets driving them into the atmosphere at an angle too steep for any spacecraft to survive.

But these were not spacecraft, and they were not intended to survive.

Vastor was still in the air, and Nick was still twisting to track him with his blazing pistol, when Mace Windu whipped his arms straight and shouted, “Stop!”

The Force blasts that accompanied the Jedi Master’s command clubbed Nick to the ground and sent Vastor spinning against the mountain’s face above the cave.

“What are you doing?” Nick rolled to his feet and snapped the pistol back into line. “He just tried to frag you—kill him!”

Vastor crouched above, clinging to the rock like a krayt dragon. No more talking. It is time to fight.

“Yes,” Mace Windu said. “But not each other. Look around you!”

He swung his arm toward the jungle below the pass.

All the patrolling gunships, the dozens that had leisurely crisscrossed the jungle all these past days, now traced converging streaks that would intersect at the Lorshan Pass.

Nick swore, and Vastor’s growl lost meaning.

“And there,” Mace said, pointing to what seemed to be a slowly developing dark cloud, high above the mountains, but was in fact the smoke from ablative shielding burning off in the atmosphere.

The center of the cloud grew red, then orange, then pale as a blue-white star: ion thrusters kicking in.

Nick frowned. “That can’t be the lander—the angle’s all wrong, and it’s coming in way too fast.”

“It isn’t,” Mace said. “I should say, they aren’t.”

“I’m not gonna like this, am I?” Nick passed a hand over his eyes. “Oh, nuts. Ohhh, nuts nuts nuts. You’re about to tell me those are DOKAWs.”

“At least five. More to follow.”

YOU! Vastor’s explosive roar seemed to yank him off the rock face and carry him raging to the meadow. He shook a sizzling shield at Mace. This is YOUR fault! YOU have brought them here!

“There will be time later to argue blame.” Mace let the lightsabers’ blades shrink to nonexistence. “There’s something we need to do right now.”


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 15