“I have,” Mace said. His voice was cold, but the thought made a hot knife twist in his belly.

Nick stopped in his tracks. He said weakly, “Have you considered that neither of us might live that long?”

He said this because of the twelve snarling akk dogs who had materialized around them as though the jungle had birthed them from the twilight.

*   *   *

Fury chuffed into the Force like the steam from their nostrils.

Moving out of the gloom-haunted trees came all six of the Akk Guards. They wore their vibroshields pushed up over their biceps, freeing their hands for the assault rifles and grenade launchers they carried.

Weapons for hunters stalking human prey.

All six wore the human equivalent of the akks’ snarls.

None of them spoke.

It was possible, at that moment, that none of them remembered how.

The Force hummed with anger, as though every one of them resonated on a single harmonic. Mace felt, then, the power of the Force-bonds that linked them—but not to each other. Not one of the Akk Guards had a link with a dog like the one Chalk had had with Galthra.

All eighteen of them, dogs and men alike, were Forcebonded not with each other, but each with one single other, as though they were spokes on a wheel of which he was the hub.

The anger Mace felt was Kar’s.

He recognized its distinctive flavor.

He said, “I think Kar might be a little upset about those prisoners after all.”

Nick stood with his back against Mace’s: where once Depa would have been.

Where Depa should have been.

Where, in any sane universe, she would be right now.

Mace heard the familiar snap of an igniting blade and turned to Nick. “Give me that.”


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 10