Star Wars - Shatterpoint (by Matthew Stover)

Star Wars - Shatterpoint

Author: Mathew Stover

FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU

In my dreams, I always do it right.

In my dreams, I'm on the arena balcony. Geonosis. Orange glare slices shadow from my eyes. Below on

the sand: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Senator Padme Amidala. On the rough-shaped stone

within reach of my arm: Nute Gunray. Within reach of my blade: Jango Fett.

And Master Dooku.

No. Master no more. Count Dooku.

I may never get used to calling him that. Even in dreams.

Jango Fett bristles with weapons. An instinctive killer: the deadliest man in the galaxy. Jango can kill me in

less than a second. I know it. Even if I had never seen Kenobi's report from Kamino, I can feel the

violence Jango radiates: in the Force, a pulsar of death.

But I do it right.

My blade doesn't light the underside of Fett's square jaw. I don't waste time with words. I don't hesitate.

I believe.

In my dreams, the purple flare of my blade sizzles the gray hairs of Dooku's beard, and in the critical

semisecond it takes Jango Fett to aim and fire, I twitch that blade and take Dooku with me into death.

And save the galaxy from civil war.

I could have done it.

Because I knew. I could feel it.

In the swirl of the Force around me, I could feel the connections Dooku had forged among Jango and the

Trade Federation, the Geonosians, the whole Separatist movement: connections of greed and fear, of

deception and bald intimidation. I did not know what they were-I did not know how Dooku had forged

them, or why-but I felt their power: the power of what I now know is a web of treason he had woven to

catch the galaxy.

I could feel that without him to maintain its weave, to repair its flaws and double its thinning strands, the

web would rot, would shrivel and decay until a mere breath would shred it and scatter its strings into the

infinite stellar winds.

Dooku was the shatterpoint.

I knew it.

That is my gift.

Imagine a Corusca gem: a mineral whose interlocking crystalline structure makes it harder than durasteel.

You can strike one with a five-kilo hammer and do no more than dent the hammer's face. Yet the same

cystalline structure that gives the Corusca strength also gives it shatterpoints: spots where a precise

application of carefully measured force-no more than a gentle tap-will break it into pieces. But to find

these shatterpoints, to use them to shape the Corusca gem into beauty and utility, requires years of study,

an intimate understanding of crystal structure, and rigorous practice to train the hand in the perfect

combination of strength and precision to produce the desired cut.

Unless you have a talent like mine.

I can see shatterpoints.

The sense is not sight, but see is the closest word Basic has for it: it is a perception, a feel of how what I

look upon fits into the Force, and how the Force binds it to itself and to everything else. I was six or

seven standard years old-well into my training in the Jedi Temple-before I realized that other students,

full-grown Jedi Knights, even wise Masters, could sense such connections only with difficulty, and only

with concentration and practice. The Force shows me strengths and weaknesses, hidden flaws and

unexpected uses. It shows me vectors of stress that squeeze or stretch, torque or shear; it shows me how

patterns of these vectors intersect to form the matrix of reality.

Put simply: when I look at you through the Force, I can see where you break.

I looked at Jango Fett on the sand in the Geonosian arena. A perfect combination of weapons, skills, and

the will to use them: an interlocking crystal of killer. The Force hinted a shatterpoint, and I left a headless

corpse on the sand. The deadliest man in the galaxy.

Now: just dead.

Situations have shatterpoints, like gems. But those of situations are fluid, ephemeral, appearing for a bare

instant, vanishing again to leave no trace of their existence. They are always a function of timing.

There is no such thing as a second chance.

If-when-I next encounter Dooku, he will be the war's shatterpoint no longer. I can't stop this war with a

single death.

But on that day in the Geonosian arena, I could have.

Some days after the battle, Master Yoda had found me in a meditation chamber at the Temple. "Your

friend he was," the ancient Master had said, even as he limped through the door.

It is a peculiar gift of Yoda's that he always seems to know what I'm thinking. "Respect you owed him.

Even affection. Cut him down you could not-not for merely a feeling." But I could have.

I should have.

Our Order prohibits personal attachments for precisely this reason. Had I not honored him so-even loved

him-the galaxy might be at peace right now. Merely a feeling, Yoda said.

I am a Jedi.

I have been trained since birth to trust my feelings.

But which feelings should I trust?

When I faced the choice to kill a former Jedi Master, or to save Kenobi and young Skywalker and the

Senator. I let the Force choose for me. I followed my instincts.

I made the Jedi choice.

And so: Dooku escaped. And so: the galaxy is at war. And so: many of my friends have been

slaughtered.

There is no such thing as a second chance.

Strange: Jedi I am, yet I drown in regret for having spared a life.

Many survivors of Geonosis suffer from nightmares. I have heard tale after tale from the Jedi healers who

have counseled them. Nightmares are inevitable; there has not been such a slaughter of Jedi since the Sith

War, four thousand years ago. None of them could have imagined how it would feel to stand in that

arena, surrounded by the corpses of their friends, in the blazing orange noon and the stench and the

blood-soaked sand. I may be the only veteran of Geonosis who doesn't have nightmares of that place.

Because in my dreams, I always do it right.

My nightmare is what I find when I wake up.

Jedi have shatterpoints, too.

Mace Windu stopped in the doorway and tried to recover his calm. An arc of sweat darkened the cowl

of his robe, and his runic clung to his skin: he'd come straight from a training bout at the Temple without

taking time to shower. And the brisk pace-almost a jog-he'd maintained through the labyrinth of the

Galactic Senate had offered no chance for him to cool off.

Palpatine's private office, in the Supreme Chancellor's suite beneath the Senate's Great Rotunda, opened

before him, vast and stark. An expanse of polished ebonite floor; a few simple, soft chairs; a flat trestle

desk, also ebonite. No pictures, paintings, or decorations other than two lone statues; only

floor-to-ceiling holographic repeaters showing real-time images of Galactic City as seen from the pinnacle

of the Senate Dome. Outside, the orbital mirrors would soon turn their faces from Coruscant's sun,

bringing twilight to the capital.

Within was only Yoda. Alone. Perched solemnly on his hover-chair, hands folded around the head of his

stick. "On time you are," the ancient Master observed, "but barely. Take a chair; composed we must be.

Serious, I fear this is." 'I wasn't expecting a party." Mace's boot heels clacked on the polished floor. He

pulled one of the soft, plain chairs closer to Yoda and sat beside him, facing the desk. Tension made his

jaw ache. "The courier said this is about the operation on Haruun Kal." The fact that of all the members

of the Jedi Council and the Republic High Command, only the two senior members of the Council had

been summoned by the Chancellor, implied that the news was not good.

These two senior members could hardly have appeared more different. Yoda was barely two-thirds of a

meter tall, with skin green as Chadian wander-kelp and great bulging eyes that could sometimes seem

almost to take on a light of their own; Mace was tall for a human, less than a hand's breadth short of two

meters, with shoulders broad and powerful, heavy arms, dark eyes, and a grim set to his jaw. Where

Yoda had let his sparse remnants of hair straggle at random, Mace's skull was smooth-shaven, the color

of polished lammas.

But their greatest difference perhaps lay in the fee! of the two Jedi Masters. Yoda emanated a sense of

mellow wisdom, combined with the impish sense of humor characteristic of the true sage; but his great

age and vast experience sometimes made him seem a bit removed, even detached. Nearing nine hundred

years of age led him to naturally take the long view. Mace, in contrast, had been elevated to the Jedi

Council before his thirtieth birthday. His demeanor was exactly opposite. Lean. Driven. Intense. He

radiated incisive intellect and unconquerable will.

As of the Battle of Geonosis, which had opened the Clone Wars, Mace had been on the Council for

more than twenty standard years. It had been ten since anyone had last seen him smile.

He sometimes wondered privately if he would ever smile again.

'But it is not the planet Haruun Kal that brings you in a sweat to this office," Yoda said now.

His tone was light and understanding, but his gaze was sharp. "Concerned for Depa, you are." Mace

lowered his head. "I know: the Force will bring what it will. But Republic Intelligence has reported that

the Separatists have pulled back; their base outside Pelek Baw is abandoned-" 'Yet return she has not."

Mace knotted his ringers together. A breath brought his voice back to its customary deep, flat

dispassion. "Haruun Kal is still nominally a Separatist planet. And she's a wanted woman. It won't be

easy for her to get offworld. Or even to signal for extraction-the local militia use all kinds of signal

jamming, and whatever they don't jam they triangulate; whole partisan bands have been wiped out by one

incautious transmission-" 'Your friend she is." Yoda used his stick to poke Mace on the arm. "Care for

her, you do." Mace didn't meet his eyes. His feelings for Depa Billaba ran deep.

She had been onworld for four standard months. She couldn't communicate regularly; Mace had tracked

her activities by sporadic Republic Intelligence reports of sabotage at the Separatist starfighter base, and

the fruitless expeditions of the Balawai militias trying-and failing-to wipe out Depa's guerrillas, or even

contain them. More than a month ago, Republic Intelligence had sent word that the Separatists had pulled

back to the Gevarno Cluster, because they could no longer maintain and defend their base. Her success

could not have been more brilliant.

But he feared to learn at what cost.

'But it can't simply be that she's missing, or." he murmured. A dark flush spread over his bare dome of

skull when he realized he'd spoken his thoughts aloud. He felt Yoda's eyes on him still, and gave half an

apologetic shrug. "I was only thinking: if she'd been captured or-or killed-there would be no need for

such secrecy." The creases on Yoda's face deepened around his mouth, and he made that tchk sound of

mild disapproval that any Jedi would instantly recognize. "Frivolous, speculation is, when patience will

reveal all." Mace nodded silently. One did not argue with Master Yoda; in the Jedi Temple, this was

learned in infancy. No Jedi ever forgot it. "It's. maddening, Master. If only. I mean, ten years ago, we

could have simply reached out-" 'Cling to the past, a Jedi cannot," Yoda interrupted sternly. His green

stare reminded Mace not to speak of the shadow that had darkened Jedi perception of the Force. This

was not discussed outside the Temple. Not even here. "Member of the Jedi Council, she is. Powerful

Jedi. Brilliant warrior-" 'She'd better be." Mace tried to smile. "I trained her." 'But worry you do. Too

much. Not only for Depa, but for all the Jedi. Ever since Geonosis." The smile wasn't working. He

stopped trying. "I don't want to talk about Geonosis." 'Known this for months, I have." Yoda poked him

again, and Mace looked up. The ancient Master leaned toward him, ears curled forward, and his huge

green eyes glimmered softly. "But when, finally, to talk you want. listen, I will." Mace accepted this with a

silent inclination of his head. He'd never doubted it. But still, he preferred to discuss something else.

Anything else.

'Look at this place," he murmured, nodding at the expanse of the Supreme Chancellor's office. "Even

after ten years, the difference between Palpatine and Valorum. How this office was, in those days-"

Yoda lifted his head in that reverse nod of his. "Remember Finis Valorum well, I do. Last of a great line,

he was." Some vast distance drifted through his gaae: he might have been looking back along his nine

hundred years as a Jedi.

It was unsettling to contemplate that the Republic, seemingly eternal in its millennium-long reign, was not

much older than Yoda himself. Sometimes, in the tales Yoda told of his long- vanished younger days, a

Jedi might have heard the youth of the Republic itself: brash, confident, bursting with vitality as it

expanded across the galaxy, bringing peace and justice to cluster after cluster, system after system, world

after world.

For Mace, it was even more unsettling to contemplate the contrast Yoda was seeing.

'Connected with the past, Valorum was. Rooted deep in tradition's soil." In the wave of his hand, Yoda

seemed to summon Finis Valorum's dazzling array of antique furniture gleaming with exotic oils, his

artworks and sculptures and treasures from a thousand worlds. Legacies of thirty generations of House

Valorum had once rilled this office. "Perhaps too deep: a man of history, was Valorum. Palpatine."

Yoda's eyes drifted closed. "A man of today, Pal-patine is." 'You say that as though it pains you."

'Perhaps it does. Or perhaps: my pain is only of this day, not its man.

'I prefer the office like this." Mace half nodded around the sweep of open floor. Austere.

Unpretentious and uncompromising. To Mace, it was a window into Palpatine's character: the Supreme

Chancellor lived entirely for the Republic. Simple in dress. Direct in speech.

Unconcerned with ornamentation or physical comfort. "A shame he can't touch the Force. He might have

made a fine Jedi." 'But then, another Supreme Chancellor would we need." Yoda smiled gently. "Better

this way, perhaps it is." Mace acknowledged the point with a slight bow.

'Admire him, you do." Mace frowned. He'd never thought about it. His adult life had been spent at the

orders of the Supreme Chancellor. but he served the office, not the man. What did he think of the

Supreme Chancellor as a person? What difference coukl that make?

'I suppose I do." Mace vividly recalled what the Force had shown him while he watched Palpatine sworn

in as Supreme Chancellor, ten years before: Palpatine was himself a shatterpoint on which the future of

the Republic-perhaps even the whole galaxy-depended.

"The only other person I can imagine leading the Republic through this dark hour is. well-" He opened a

hand. "-you, Master Yoda." Yoda rocked back on his hover chair and made the rustling snuffle that

served him for a laugh. "No politician am I, foolish one." He still occasionally spoke as though Mace

were a student. Mace didn't mind. It made him feel young. Everything else these days made him feel old.

Yoda's laughter faded. "And no fit leader for this Republic would I be." He lowered his voice even

further, to barely above a whisper. "Clouded by darkness are my eyes; the Force shows me only

suffering, and destruction, and the rise of a long, long night. Better off without the Force, leaders perhaps

are; able to see well enough, young Palpatine seems." 'Young" Palpatine-who had at least ten years on

Mace, and looked twice that-chose that moment to enter the room, accompanied by another man. Yoda

stepped down from his hoverchair. Mace rose in respect. The Jedi Masters bowed, greeting the

Supreme Chancellor with their customary formality. He waved the courtesies aside. Palpatine looked

tired: flesh seemed to be dissolving beneath his sagging skin, deepening his already hollowed cheeks.

The man with Palpatine was hardly larger than a boy, though clearly well past forty; lank, thinning brown

hair draped a face so thoroughly undistinguished that Mace could forget it the instant he glanced away.

His eyes were red-rimmed, he held a cloth handkerchief to his nose, and he looked so much like some

minor bureaucratic functionary-a clerk in a dead-end government post, with job security and absolutely

nothing else-that Mace automatically assumed he was a spy.

'We have news of Depa Billaba." Despite his earlier reasoning, the simple sadness in the Chancellor's

voice sent Mace's stomach plummeting.

'This man has just come from Haruun Kal. I'm afraid-well, perhaps you should simply examine the

evidence for yourself." 'What is it?" Mace's mouth went dry as ash. "Has she been captured?" The

treatment a captured Jedi could expect from Dooku's Separatists had been demonstrated on Geonosis.

'No, Master Windu," Palpatine said. "I'm afraid-I'm afraid it's quite a bit worse." The agent opened a

large travelcase and produced an old-fashioned holoprojector. He spent a moment fiddling with controls,

and then an image bloomed above the mirror-polished ebonite that served as Palpatine's desk.

Yoda's ears flattened, and his eyes narrowed to slits.

Palpatine looked away. "I have seen too much of this already," he said.

Mace's hands became fists. He couldn't seem to get his breath.

The shimmering corpses were each the size of his finger. He counted nineteen. They looked human, or

close to it. There was a scatter of prefabricated huts, blasted and burned and broken.

The ruins of what must have once been a stockade wall made a ring around the scene. The jungle that

surrounded them all stood four decimeters high, and covered a meter and a half of Palpatine's desk.

After a moment, the agent sniffled apologetically. "This is-er, seems to be-the work of Loyalist partisans,

under the command of Master Billaba." Yoda stared.

Mace stared.

There-those wounds. Mace needed a better view. When he reached into the jungle, his hand crawled

with the bright ripples of the holoprojector's scanning-matrix lasers. "These." He passed his hand through

a group of three bodies that gaped with ragged wounds.

"Enhance these." The Republic Intelligence agent answered without taking his handkerchief away from his

reddened eyes. "Uh, I'm uh-Master Windu, this recording is, er, is quite unsophisticated- almost, uh,

primitive-" His voice vanished into a sneeze that jerked him forward as though he'd been slapped on the

back of the head. "Sorry-sorry, I can't-my system won't tolerate histamine suppressors. Every time I

come to Coruscant-" Mace's hand didn't move. He didn't look up. He waited while the agent's whine

trickled to silence. Nineteen corpses. And this man complained about his allergies.

'Enhance these," Mace repeated.

'I, ah-yes. Sir." The agent manipulated the holoprojector's controls with hands that didn't quite tremble.

Not quite. The jungle flicked out of existence. It reappeared an instant later, spread across ten meters of

the office's floor. The tangled upper branches of the holographic trees had become glimmering scan

patterns on the ceiling; the corpses were now almost half life- sized.

The agent ducked his head, scrubbing furiously at his nose with the handkerchief. "Sorry, Master Windu.

Sorry. But the system- .¯ ¯ its- 'Primitive. Yes." Mace waded through the light-cast images until he

could squat beside the bodies. He rested his elbows on his knees, folding his hands together before his

face.

Yoda walked closer, then crouched as he leaned in for a better view. After a moment, Mace looked up

into his sad green eyes. "See?" 'Yes. yes," Yoda croaked. "But from this, no conclusion can be drawn."

'That's my point." 'For those of us who are not Jedi-" Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's voice had the

warm strength of a career politician's. He rounded his desk, on his face the slightly puzzled smile of a

good man who faced an ugly situation with hope that everything might still turn out all right. "- perhaps

you'll explain?" 'Yes, sir. The other bodies don't tell us much, between decomposition and scavenger

damage. But some of the mutilation on the soft tissue here-" A curve of Mace's hand traced gaping

slashes across a holographic female torso. "-isn't from claws or teeth. And they didn't come from a

powered weapon. See the scoring on her ribs? A lightsaber-even a vibroblade- would have slashed right

through the bone. This was done with a dead blade, sir." Revulsion tightened the Supreme Chancellor's

face. "A-dead blade? You mean just-like a piece of metal? Just a sharp piece of metal?" 'A very sharp

piece of metal, sir." Mace cocked his head a centimeter to the right. "Or ceramic. Transparisteel. Even

carbonite." Palpatine took a deep breath as though suppressing a shudder. "It sounds. dreadfully crude.

And painful." 'Sometimes it is, sir. Not always." He didn't bother to explain how he knew. "But these

slashes are parallel, and all of nearly the same length; it's likely she was dead before the cuts were made.

Or at least unconscious." 'Or-" The agent sniffled, and coughed apologetically. "-just, er, y'know, tied

up." Mace stared at him. Yoda closed his eyes. Palpatine lowered his head as though in pain.

'There is, uh, a history of, uh, I guess you'd say, recreational torture in the Haruun Kal conflict. On both

sides." The agent flushed as though he was ashamed to know such things.

"Sometimes, people-people hate so much, that just killing the enemy isn't enough." A fist clenched in

Mace's chest: that this soft little man-this civilian-could accuse Depa Billaba of such an atrocity, even by

implication, grabbed his heart with sick fury. A long cold stare showed him every place on this soft man's

soft body where one sharp blow would kill; the agent blanched as if he could count them all in Mace's

eyes.

But Mace had been a Jedi far too long for anger to gain an easy grip. A breath or two opened that fist

around his heart, and he stood. "I have seen nothing to indicate Depa was involved." 'Master Windu-"

Palpatine began.

'What was the military value of this outpost?" 'Military value?" The agent looked startled. "Why, none, I

suppose. These were Balawai jungle prospectors. Jups, they call 'em. Some jups operate as a kind of

irregular militia, but irregulars are nearly always men. There were six women here. And Balawai militia

units never, ah, never bring their, ah, children." 'Children," Mace echoed.

The agent nodded reluctantly. "Three. Mm, bioscans indicate one girl about twelve, the other two

possibly fraternal twins. Boy and a girl. About nine. Had to use bioscans." His sickly eyes asked Mace

not to make him finish.

Because a few days in the jungle hadn't left enough of them to be identified any other way.

Mace said, "I understand." 'These weren't militia, Master Windu. Just Balawai jungle prospectors in the

wrong place at the wrong time." 'Jungle prospectors?" Palpatine appeared politely interested. "And what

are Balawai?" 'Offworlders, sir," Mace said. "The jungles of Haruun Kal are the galaxy's sole source of

thyssel bark, as well as portaak leaf, jinsol, tyruun, and lammas. Among others." 'Spices and exotic

woods? And these are valuable enough to draw offworld emigrants? Into a war zone?" 'Have you priced

thyssel bark lately?" 'I-" Palpatine smiled regretfully. "I don't care for it, actually. I suppose my tastes are

pedestrian; you can take a boy out of the Mid Rim, but." Mace shook his head. "Not relevant, sir. My

point: these were civilians. Depa wouldn't be involved in something like this. She couldn't." 'Hasty, your

statement is," Yoda said gravely. "Seen all evidence, I fear we have not." Mace looked at the agent. The

agent flushed again.

'Well, er, yes-Master Yoda is correct. This, uh, recording-" He twitched his head around at the ghostly

corpses that filled the office. "-was made with the prospectors' own equipment; it's adapted to Haruun

Kal work, where more sophisticated electronics-" 'I don't need a lesson on Haruun Kal." Mace's voice

went sharp. "I need your evidence." 'Yes, yes of course, Master Windu." The agent fished in his

travelcase for a second or two, then came up with an old-fashioned data wafer of crystal. He handed it

over. "It's, uh, audio only, but-we've done voiceprint analysis. It's not exact-and there's some ambient

noise, other voices, jungle sounds, that kind of thing-but we put match probability in the ninety percent

range." Mace weighed the crystal wafer in his hand. He stared down at it. There. Right there: the flick of

a fingernail could crack it in two. ,' should do it, he thought. Crush this thing. Snap it in half right now.

Destroy it unheard.

Because he knew. He could feel it. In the Force, stress lines spidered out from the wafer like frost scaling

supercooled transparisteel. He could not read the pattern, but he could feel its power.

This would be ugly.

'Where did you find it?" 'It was-uh, at the scene. Of the massacre. It was. well, at the scene." 'Where did

you find it?" The agent flinched.

Again, Mace took a breath. Then another. With the third, the fist in his chest relaxed. "I am sorry."

Sometimes he forgot how intimidating some men found his height and voice. Not to mention his

reputation. He did not wish to be feared.

At least, not by those loyal to the Republic.

'Please," he said. "It might be significant." The agent mumbled something.

'I'm sorry?" 'I said, it was in her mouth." He waved a hand in the general direction of the holographic

corpse at Mace's feet. "Someone had. fixed her jaw shut, so scavengers wouldn't get at it when they.

well, y'know, scavengers prefer the, the, er, the tongue." Nausea bloomed below Mace's ribs. His

fingertips tingled. He stared down at the woman's image. Those marks on her face-he had thought they

were just marks. Or some kind of fungus, or a colony of mold. Now his eyes made sense of them, and

he wished they hadn't: dull gold-colored lumps under her chin.

Brassvine thorns.

Someone had used them to nail her jaw shut.

He had to turn away. He realized that he had to sit down, too.

The agent continued, "Our station boss got a tip and sent me to check it out. I hired a steamcrawler from

some busted-out jups, rented a handful of townies who can handle heavy weapons, and crawled up

there. What we found. well, you can see it. That data wafer-when I found it." Mace stared at the man as

though he'd never seen him before. And he hadn't: only now, finally, was he truly seeing him. An

undistinguished little man: soft face and uncertain voice, shaky hands and allergies: an undistinguished little

man who must have resources of toughness that Mace could barely imagine. To have walked into a

scene that Mace could barely stomach even in a bloodless, translu cent laser image; to have had to smell

them-touch them-to pry open a dead woman's mouth.

And then to bring the recordings here, so that he could live it all again- Mace could have done it. He

thought so. Probably. He'd been some places, and seen some things.

Not like this.

The agent said, "Our sources are pretty sure the tip came from the ULF itself." Palpatine glanced a

question. Mace spoke without taking his eyes off the agent. "The Upland Liberation Front, sir. That's

Depa's partisan group; 'uplanders' is a rough translation of Korunnai-the name the mountain tribes give

themselves." 'Korunnai?" Palpatine frowned absently. "Aren't those your people, Master Windu?" 'My.

kin." He made himself unclench his jaw. "Yes, Chancellor. You have a good memory." 'A politician's

trick." Palpatine gave a gently self-deprecating smile and waved a dismissive hand. "Please go on." The

agent shrugged as though there was little more to tell. "There have been a lot of. disturbing reports.

Execution of prisoners. Ambushes of civilians. On both sides. Usually they can't be verified. The jungle.

swallows everything. So when we got this tip-" 'You found this because somebody wanted you to find it,"

Mace finished for him. "And now you think-" Mace turned the data wafer over and over through his

fingers, watching it catch splinters of light. "You think those people might have been killed just to deliver

this message." 'What a hideous idea!" Palpatine lowered himself slowly onto the edge of his desk. He

appealed to the agent. "This can't be true, can it?" The agent only hung his head.

Yoda's ears curled backward, and his eyes narrowed. "Some messages. most important, is how they are

framed. Secondary, their content is." Palpatine shook his head in disbelief. "These ULF partisans-we ally

ourselves with them?

The Jedi ally with them? What sort of monsters are they?" 'I don't know." Mace handed the wafer back

to the agent. "Let's find out." He slotted it into a port on the side of the holoprojector and touched a

control.

The holoprojector's phased-wave speakers brought the jungle around them to life with noise: the rush of

wind-rattled leaves, skrills and clatters of insect calls, dim dopplered shrieks of passing birds, the howls

and coughs of distant predators. Through the eddies and boils of sound drifted a whisper sinuous as a

riversnake: a human or near-human whisper, a voice murmuring in Basic, sometimes comprehensible for

a word here or phrase there, sometimes twisting below the distorting ripples of the aural surface. Mace

caught the words Jedi, and night-or knife- and something about look between the stars.

He frowned at the agent. "You can't clean this up?" 'This is cleaned up." The agent produced a datapad

from his trav-elcase, keyed it alight, and passed it to Mace. "We made a transcript. It's provisional. Best

we can do." The transcript was fragmentary, but enough to draw chills up Mace's arms: Jedi Temple.

taught (or possibly taut). dark. an enemy. But. Jedi. under cover of night.

One whisper was entirely clear. He read the words on the data-pad's screen as the whisper seemed to

come from just behind his shoulder.

,' use the night, and the night uses me.

He forgot to breathe. This was bad.

It got worse.

The whisper strengthened to a voice. A woman's voice.

Depa's voice.

On the datapad in his hand, and murmuring in the air behind his shoulder- ,' have become the darkness in

the jungle.

The recording went on. And on.

Her murmur drained him: of emotion, of strength, even of thought; the longer she rambled, the emptier he

got. Yet her final words still triggered a dull shock inside his chest.

She was talking to him.

I know you will come for me, Mace. You should never have sent me here. And I should never have

come. But what's done can never be undone. I knowyou think I've gone mad. I haven't. What's

happened to me is worse.

I've gone sane.

That's why you II come, Mace. That's why you'll have to.

Because nothing is more dangerous than a Jedi who's finally sane.

Her voice trailed off into the jungle-mutter.

No one moved or spoke. Mace sat with interlocked fingers supporting his chin. Yoda leaned on his cane,

eyes shut, mouth pinched with inner pain. Palpatine stared solemnly through the holographic jungle, as

though he saw something real beyond its boundary.

'That's-uh, that's all there is." The agent extended a hesitant hand to the holoprojector and flicked a

control. The jungle vanished like a bad dream.

They all stirred, rousing themselves, instinctively adjusting their clothing. Palpatine's office now looked

unreal: as though the clean carpeted floor and crisp lines of furniture, the pure filtered air, and the view of

Coruscant that filled the large windows were the holographic projection, and they all still sat in the jungle.

As though only the jungle were real.

Star Wars - Shatterpoint (by Matthew Stover)

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