Vastor’s breath began to return in great whooping gasps, and Mace knew his time was running out. He shook the stars out of his head and reached down to his ankle to unwrap the severed gripleaf trailer. Limp now, dying, it was unresisting as an ordinary rope; Mace took one end in each fist, and as Vastor rolled over and gained his hands and knees, Mace slipped a loop of the trailer over the lor pelek’s head from behind and tightened it around his throat.

Vastor straightened and his hands went to his throat, clawing at Mace’s improvised garrote, but not even he was strong enough to break a gripleaf trailer with his bare hands. His face darkened, swelling with blood; the back of his neck bulged; veins writhed across his temples and forehead.

Ten seconds, Mace thought, hanging on, wedging his knees into Vastor’s back. Ten seconds and out.

Vastor got one foot under him.

Mace swallowed, gasping for breath as he tried to tighten the trailer around the lor pelek’s throat.

Pure will powered Vastor to his feet. He didn’t even seem to notice the weight of a large Jedi Master hanging down his back.

Mace thought: Here it comes.

In an eyeblink, Vastor’s grip shifted from the gripleaf trailer to Mace’s wrists. He threw himself forward, bent at the waist, and with a surge of incredible strength yanked the Jedi Master over his head and slammed him bodily to the dirt.

The impact replaced the stars in Mace’s head with billowing black nebulae; he’d never gotten his breath back properly after landing on the akk dog, and now he couldn’t breathe at all. The jungle above faded into a black haze; through the darkness descending inside his skull, he barely caught a glimpse of Vastor leaping into the air to drop a body-slam that would finish him. With a gasp, he rolled aside, and Vastor landed hard on the ground beside him.

Mace dizzily tried to pull himself up to his hands and knees; Vastor was still down, his hands clawing weakly at Mace’s flanks. Mace pushed him off and made it to his knees. Vastor rolled onto his side, found a tree trunk, and pulled himself up it, leaning on it drunkenly.

Though Mace couldn’t breathe—could barely see through the black-and-red haze inside his head—he could draw upon the Force to throw himself upright, and he lunged at Vastor, whirling, hands clasped together to deliver every erg of power at his command into one last thundering punch that lifted Vastor bodily off the ground, flipped him over backward, and dropped him on the back of his neck.

Mace swayed, almost out on his feet. The jungle hazed in and out of focus. All he could clearly see was the lor pelek climbing to his feet.

Vastor was smiling.

Is that the best you have?

“I’m just—” Mace gasped for breath. His arms came up slowly; each one felt like it was made out of collapsium. “Just getting started—”

One of those open-handed slaps flashed out of the darkness; the next thing of which Mace was aware was a bell-like ringing in his ears, and the grip of Vastor’s huge hand around his neck, holding him up off the jungle floor.

Mace’s eyelids fluttered open. Vastor’s blood-smeared grin was the only thing in the world.

Vastor growled, How many arms do you see?

Mace didn’t answer.

He certainly didn’t see the one attached to the hand that snuffed the world like a blown-out candle.

In the darkness, a smell of ammonia and rotten meat: predator breath.

A dry rough tongue the size of his lost kitbag licked him back to consciousness, and Mace opened his eyes.

The Akk Guards were crowded around him, leaning over, their faces in deep shadow, haloed by the pulsing light of the glowvines in the canopy; one now pushed the nose of the akk dog who’d been licking Mace’s unconscious body so that the great beast backed up.

Kar Vastor stepped into the gap. He squatted on his haunches at Mace’s side. His face was lumped up, and blood still trickled from his split cheek, but his grin was fiercer than ever.

He barked something, and one of the Akk Guards stepped away for a brief moment. Mace heard Nick say, “Hey, cut it out. Hey, ow, huh? Come on, lay off the arm, you know I’m good for it—”


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 12