A huge white fireball knocked it rearing back like a startled grasser, and black smoke poured from the twisted gap blown in its nose armor. Its turbojets roared, and smoke whipped from its screaming repulsorlifts as its pilot fought for control. The third gun-ship slewed, yawing wildly as it reversed thrust and dived to avoid ramming the other's rear end.
Mace and Galthra raced straight toward them.
As they passed the shuddering hulk of Chalk's grasser, Mace reached for the Thunderbolt. It flipped from the ground into his arms, its power pack nestling between his feet. He cradled the massive weapon at his hip, angled the barrel at the third gunship, and held down the trigger.
Mace surfed through the flames and black stinging smoke, over the slag of melting rock, through the thunder and shrapnel shrieks of bursting stone on the back of three-quarters of a metric ton of armored predator, firing from the hip, hammering out a fountain of packeted energy that ripped its way up the side of the gunship. The Thunderbolt didn't have the punch to penetrate the gunship's heavy armor plating, but that didn't matter; the roaring repeater was merely Mace's calling card, Galthra shot down the slope beneath the gunships and Mace turned to face them, riding backward, spraying the air with blaster-fire until the Thunderbolt overheated and coughed sparks and Mace cast it aside. The third gunship fired a pair of missiles, but Mace could feel their point of aim before they squeezed the triggers, and Galthra was so fast in response to his Force commands that neither of the missiles came close enough for its detonation to have so much as mussed his hair.
If he'd had any.
Now the gunship's side-mounted laser turrets rotated to track them, and through the Force Mace felt their targeting computers lock on. The two damaged ships reached firing position, and they also locked on. They were coordinating their fire: he could not hope to dodge. So he didn't bother. He brought Galthra to a halt beneath him.
He stood motionless, empty-handed, waiting for them to open fire.
Waiting to give them a brief tutorial on the art of Vaapad.
Their cannons belched energy and Mace threw himself into the Force, releasing all but his intention. It was no longer Mace Windu who acted: the Force acted through him. Depa's lightsaber snapped into his left hand while his own flipped into his right. The green cascade was a jungle-echo of the purple as they both met clawing chains of red.
On Sarapin, a Vaapad was a notoriously dangerous predator, powerful and rapacious. It attacked with its blindingly fast tentacles. Most had at least seven. It was not uncommon for them to have as many as twelve. The largest ever killed had twenty-one. The thing about a Vaapad was that you never knew how many tentacles it had until it was dead: they moved too fast to count. Almost too fast to see.
So did Mace's.
Energy sprayed around him, but only splatters of it grazed him here and there; the rest went back at the gunship. Though the Thunderbolt hadn't the power to penetrate their heavy armor, aTaim 8c Bak laser cannon is a whole different animal.
Ten bolts reached his blades. Two apiece went back at the dam aged ships, bursting against their armor and knocking them reeling to break their target lock. The other six hammered the cockpit of the third gunship, blasting a gaping hole in its transparisteel viewport.
Mace dropped the lightsabers, swung the over-under forward on its sling, and fired from the hip. It belched a single grenade that the Force guided right through that hole into the cockpit.
The grenade made a dull, wet-sounding whump inside the gunship. A fountain of white goo splashed out the hole.
Mace grunted to himself; he thought he'd loaded Nytinite.
Then he shrugged: Eh. Same difference.
One of the forward turbojets sucked strings of hardening glop through its intake, squealed, and chewed itself to shrapnel. The gun-ship lurched wildly; with the crew glued fast in the grenade's glop, there was nothing they could do except watch in horror as their ship careened into the face of the ridge and detonated in an impressive explosion that splashed flame three hundred meters down the slope.
Mace thought, And now, for my next trick.
He released the over-under and extended his hands and both lightsabers hurtled back to his grip- But the two damaged gunships had peeled off and were already limping away into the smoke-stained sky.
He watched them go, frowning.
He felt oddly distressed.
Unhappy.
This had been. strange. Uncomfortable.
His rigorous self-honesty wouldn't allow him to deny the actual word that described the feeling.
It had been unsatisfying.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I don't know how long I stood there, frowning into the sky. Eventually, I recovered enough of my equanimity to slide off Galthra's back and release my hold on her Force-bond. She bounded off, searching for Chalk upslope among the burning rocks.
Nick came stumbling down the slope, picking his way through the dying flames, avoiding the half-slagged rocks that still glowed a dull red. He seemed most impressed by the fight.
Adrenaline drunk and childishly giggly, he seemed deliriously happy, bubbling over with jittery enthusiasm. I don't recall much of what he said beyond some nonsense about me being a "walking one-man war machine." Something like that. I'm not sure the word he used was walking.
Most of what he said was lost in the roar that lived inside my head: a hurricane-whirl of the thunder of my heart, echoes of the battle's explosions, and the tidal surge of the Force itself.
When he reached me, I saw that he was wounded: blood washed down his face and neck from a deep gash along the side of his head-probably a graze from a rock splinter. But he just kept on about how he'd never seen anything like me until I stopped him with a hand on his arm.
"You're bleeding," I told him, but that dark gleam in his bright blue eyes never wavered. He kept going on about "Alone against three gun-ships. Three. Alone." I told him that I hadn't been alone. I quoted Yoda: " "My ally is the Force.'" He didn't seem to understand, so I explained: "I had them outnumbered." What happened next I remember vividly, no matter how much I wish I could wipe it from my mind. I couldn't tear my eyes from the two damaged gunships that by then were mere specks of durasteel soaring into the limitless sky.
Nick followed my gaze, and said, "Yeah, I know how you feel. Shame you couldn't roast all three, huh?" "How I feel?" I rounded on him. "How,' feel?" I had a sudden urge to punch him: an urge so powerful the effort to restrain it left me gasping.
I wanted-I needed-to punch him. To punch him in the face. To feel my fist shatter his jaw.
To make him shut up.
To make him not look at me.
The understanding in his voice-the knowledge in his cold blue eyes- I wanted to hit him because he was right. He did know how I felt.
It was an ugly shock.
As he said: I'd wanted to destroy those other gunships, too. I wanted to rip them out of the sky and watch them burn. No thought of the lives I'd already taken in the first gunship. No thought of the lives I would take in the other two. In the Force, I reached out toward the burning wreckage on the ridge face above, searching among the flames; for what, I can't say.