Fourteen landers reached the Korunnal Highland. Pursued by fifty-eight starfighters.

None of the gunships survived.

By the time they were within sight of the Lorshan Pass there were twelve landers, of which five were heavily damaged. Forty starfighters trailed them with relentless electronic persistence.

And streaking across the curve of the horizon in front of them came three more wings of starfighters, on course to intercept.

The trio of gunships ignited the mountainside. A wall of flame rolled downslope toward the battlefield at the tunnel mouth.

Militia regulars fled in all directions, slipping on blood and skidding through shreds of trees and grasser flesh. Wounded grassers screamed and thrashed, akk dogs snarled and leaped and bit, and the ankkox opened its huge armored throat to unleash a roar that knocked loose rock down the mountain above. Several of the regulars tried to dive for cover under the ankkox’s shell, only to be smashed to sprays of pulp by the ankkox’s tail mace.

At the crest of the dorsal shell, Chalk growled a continuous stream of curses as she struggled to swing the heavy repeater’s barrel in a direction it had never been designed to point: nearly straight up. From his position tending the EWHB’s fusion generator, Nick looked at Mace and pointed an accusing finger up at the incinerating flood washing down upon them. “Was this part of your plan?”

“Of course.” Mace tucked his lightsaber back into its holster and looked up, measuring the approach of the gunships. “Everyone down!” he shouted. “Take cover under the shell!”

Depa threw herself forward over the ankkox’s crown shell, flipping in the air to land beside the creature’s immense head, one hand on the nostril flap beside its mouth, on the opposite side from Kar Vastor. The Akk Guards abandoned their expended torpedo launchers and slid down the shell’s curve to leap from its rim. Nick said, “This is the part you didn’t want to tell me, huh?”

Mace said, “Help Chalk.”

Chalk was still struggling with the heavy repeater, lying on her back with her legs beneath the tripod; Nick had to pry her hands off it and drag her free. “Can I just say I hate your plans? All of them. How did you figure this was a good idea?”

Mace nodded to Kar, and the ankkox’s tail swung over its back; Mace grabbed it with both hands, just below the huge knot of armor at its end. “Because if I’d tried this during those transsonic strafing runs,” he said calmly, “all that would have been left of me is a red smear on a windscreen.”

At the Force command of Kar Vastor, the ankkox snapped its tail into a wide whirl, yanking Mace into the air and spinning him once around the outer rim of its shell to get the feel for his added weight. Then with a whipcrack that blurred the world, it fired him straight up the side of the mountain as though he’d been shot from a torpedo launcher.

Hurtling into the path of the descending gunships, Mace reached through the Force to seize the support strut that divided the windscreen of the gunship in the middle, and pulled. He twisted in the air, whirling through a whistling arc, and reeled himself in as though he were on a towline. His boots thumped solidly to either side of the strut and stuck there, cemented by the Force, facing forward and looking down between the toes of his boots at the twin dumbstruck gapes of the gunship’s pilot and its navigator.

The navigator just stared, unable to comprehend this inexplicable apparition. The pilot had better reflexes: The gunship lurched as he released the control yoke and clawed at his sidearm, clearly prepared to sell his own life and the lives of his crew for one shot at the Jedi Master through the hole the pilot assumed Mace’s lightsaber was about to slice in the windscreen.

But Mace only shook his head as though mildly disappointed. He waggled an admonitory finger, as though they were schoolboys caught playing a naughty game.


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 18