This Akk Guard had been a man Nick knew, as he knew them all. This one's name had been Prouk. He'd liked to gamble, and he once lost sixty credits to Nick on a bet, and he'd paid it.
Another nudge from the Force and another shot took out the knee of an Akk Guard. He crumpled on top of a dying trooper, who still had enough life left in him to hold down the trigger of his carbine and blow the akk to rags.
This was the Guard whose nose Mace had broken. His name was Thaffal.
Nick was waiting for his next shot when a massive shadow rose up right in front of him; intent on the Force, Nick hadn't seen him coming. He said, "Whoops." This one's name was lolu. He had saved Nick's life during a fire-fight, once. A long time ago.
"Hello, Nick," lolu said, and drove his shield's sizzling edge toward Nick's neck.
Depa's blade was everywhere.
Mace backpedaled, parrying frantically, absorbing the shock of her attacks with bent arms and a two-handed grip. He was taller than she, with more reach and weight, and vastly more muscle in his upper body, but she drove him backward as though he were a child. Green flame struck through his guard, and only a frantic jerk of his head turned what would have been a brain-burning thrust into a line of char along his cheekbone.
Still he did not strike back.
"I will not kill you," he said. "Death is not the answer to your pain." Her reply was a scream louder and more savage and an onslaught to match. She broke through his guard again and scorched his wrist. Another stroke burned a slice through his pants leg just above the knee.
Power roared around her, a rising storm of darkness.
Mace got it now: as each Akk Guard died, his share of pelekotan backflowed through the bonds Vaster had forged among them.
She was getting stronger.
And with each stroke of her blade, he could feel himself slipping into the shadows. He had to. She was too strong, too fast, too everything. The only way he could survive was to give more of himself to Vaapad. To give all of himself.
To sink into pelekotaris dream.
He felt it: he had reached his own shatterpoint. And he was breaking.
The vibroshield flashed toward his neck.
Nick's knees buckled and he bent backward like a drawn bow. lolu's fist grazed Nick's nose as the horizontal vibroshield passed over the young Korun's upturned face and bit into the wall so smoothly that the Akk Guard's knuckles hit as well; the unexpected shock loosened his grip on the vibroshield's activator and its hum died, leaving it stuck fast in the wall.
Before lolu could pull it back out, Nick flipped his pistol's muzzle up against the Akk Guard's extended elbow.
The slug didn't quite blow his arm off. lolu swayed, stunned.
Chalk's gun in Nick's other hand came up under lolu's chin. "Never liked you anyway," Nick said, and pulled the trigger.
The corpse fell against him. Its shattered arm slipped free of the shield's retaining straps.
Nick pushed himself sideways out from under, looking for another target, and the dead Guard slid down the wall.
Geptun was nowhere to be seen. He was either dead or down with the transceiver. Either way, there was nothing left to do but fight.
A knot of clone troopers stood back-to-back, firing desperately at one lone Akk Guard who leaped and spun and slaughtered with demonic precision.
No: not an Akk Guard.
It was Kar Vaster.
Nick leveled Chalk's gun. "This is for her, scum-packer," he muttered. "Never liked you either." But her pistol was too heavy for him to hold steady. His own seemed to have gained a dozen kilos as well. "What the frag-?" His knees turned to cloth.
He looked over at lolu's corpse. The other shield, one that still hung silent along his dead arm, was stained bright red. Dripping.
Nick said, "Oh." He looked down. A huge diagonal gash opened his tunic across his abdomen, and his legs were soaked with blood. He sagged back against the wall.
"Oh," he said again. "Oh, nuts." And, in the end, he was just too tired. Too old.
Too wounded.
Through the trace of Force connection he had with Nick, Mace felt the young Korun collapse. Something broke inside his head, and all his own wounds crashed upon him.
Every cut and bruise, every cracked bone and sprained joint, the man-bite on his shoulder and the hole through his guts: all of them blossomed into silent screams.
His lightsaber went heavy, and his arms went slow. She burned a stripe across his chest, and he staggered.
His fighting spirit wasn't destroyed. It wasn't even far away. He could feel where it had gone.
He could reach out and touch it.
It was waiting for him in the dark.
Lorz Geptun quivered uncontrollably. Crouched in the cramped chamber that was filled with the refresher-sized tranceiver, he tried not to listen to the steady diminuendo of the blaster fire above. Each gun that fell silent was one less man up there to protect his life.
His hands trembled so badly he could barely punch the keys on the codelock that sealed his datapad's armored shell. When he finally got it open, he had to fumble in the inky shadows for the linkport on the transceiver. His shaking hands made inserting his pad's datalink resemble threading a needle with his feet, but he got it done.
With a gasp of triumph, he keyed the droid starfighter recall sequence.
Nothing happened.
A moment later, his datapad's screen announced: ECM FAULT. UNABLE TO EXECUTE. ECM FAULT. ECM: Electronic Counter- Measure. The signal-jamming was still on.
In the Force, Mace felt Geptun's despair. It felt like a gift.
Another man might even have smiled.
He took one last look at the darkness that called to him- Darkness within mirroring darkness without- And turned away.
He let his blade vanish. His arms dropped to his sides.
Depa moved in for the kill.
Mace backed away.
She leaped for him, slashing, and he slipped aside. She pressed her attack and he retreated, over bodies and through blaster-riddled wreckage of console banks, until he came hard up against a console that still had power: indicator lights flashed like droid eyes in the gloom.
The blade of green fire whirled up, poised, and struck.
He let himself collapse.
He fell to the floor at her feet, and instead of cleaving his skull, her blade slashed the console behind him in half. Cables spat blue sparks across the burned gap.
This was the console that controlled the spaceport's signal-jamming equipment.
Down in the transceiver chamber, Geptun stared at his datapad's screen with astonished reverence, conscious of having been unexpectedly granted undeserved grace.
It read: COMMAND EXECUTED.
In the skies over Pelek Baw, as the snowcap on Grandfather's Shoulder kindled with the first red rays of dawn, droid starfighters disengaged from clone-piloted ships and streaked back into the depths of space.