Mace brought up his blade. He moved cautiously around the ruins of the monitor bank closest to the doorway.

Aren’t we on the same side? We’ve won the planet for you, haven’t we?

Mace reached into the Force, feeling for the emptiness below that would contain the transceiver. With each step, he worked his feet down, seeking solid footing on the floor before taking the next.

Do you really want to fight us? We are kin, you and I. We are your own people.

“You were never my people.” Mace spoke without emotion. “A man like you will always be my enemy, no matter whose side you’re on. And I will always fight you.”

Why do they name you a Master? You have mastered only futility. You cannot possibly win.

“I don’t have to win,” Mace said. “All I have to do is fight.” A low snarl was the only warning he got.

Nick’s guns roared flame at a hurtling dark shape that leaped from nowhere. Sparks clanged in the gloom as Mace whirled instinctively and slashed at the shape and it vanished in a dive that carried it over the console bank. Before he’d even seen what it was.

He’d never felt it coming.

Dark power swirled around him.

He let his blade shrink away and crouched between two console banks, his heart hammering. “Nick!” he called. “Did you get him?”

“Don’t think so.” Nick’s voice came out thin and tight. “Sounded like he took both on the shields. You?”

Mace smelled smoke: charred flesh. “Perhaps. A piece of him, anyway.”

“See where he came from?”

“No. I think—” Mace’s breath hissed through his teeth. “I think they’re hiding among the bodies. Stay ready.”

“You better believe it.”

The low snarling growl became mocking. Your Force can’t help you here. Here there is only pelekotan. And we are only pelekotan’s dream.

Mace crept his way silently along the console bank.

You didn’t feel me coming at you. You can’t.

“That wasn’t you,” Mace said, low.

But it was. One-seventh of me.

Your pardon: one-eighth.

He could feel the transceiver chamber now: two meters away on the far side of this console bank. Its ceiling began a meter and a half below the floor.

You have lost her. Lost her to pelekotan. Lost her to pelekotan’s dream: a world free from Balawai.

Mace muttered, “We are all Balawai here.”


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 23