General Windu, as far as CRC-09,'571 could determine, was ordering the clones to die. But CRC-09,'571 could no more disobey a lawful order than he could walk through armor plate.
As they hurtled down from the stratosphere above the Korunnal Highland, the guns on all the Republic ships fell silent.
Droid starfighters swarmed over them, weapons blazing.
As his lander was pounded from all sides by multiple cannon hits, CRC-09,'571 noticed an odd thing on his command-scan screen: some of the gunships below seemed to be firing on other gunships.
To be precise: sixty-seven of the gunships below seemed to be firing on the two that were in the lead.
These two did not return fire. They streaked at full power in a steep climb, scissoring side- to-side, heading straight for the mass dogfight so that the cannonfire which missed them-nearly all of it-blasted upward into the cloud of DSFs. Most of it passed harmlessly through, of course, not being aimed at the small agile craft, but several DSFs took blasts squarely, and exploded.
CRC-09,'571 frowned. He had a good feeling about this.
Not far below, in the open cockpit of one of the two gunships that were the targets of those behind, Mace Windu said, "All right, Nick. Light them up." "Yes, sir!" Nick Rostu flipped a single switch, and the droid brains of twenty-six different droid starfighters-one for each of the missiles remaining in the Turbostorm's launchers-felt the sudden internal alarm-buzz of sensors detecting a missile lock.
Coming from a friendly ship.
The droid brains found this puzzling, but not overly distressing; they were still focused on their primary mission, which was to destroy any and all Republic craft attempting to orbit or land on Haruun Kal. But they were programmed to monitor possible hazards, and each of them set some of their spare capacity to searching memory banks for any response programs that might be indicated in the event of missile-locks from friendly craft.
There weren't any.
This, the droid brains did find distressing.
And there was the issue of those laser blasts.
Only one second later, thirty-two additional droid brains among the swarm of starfighters had exactly the same experience.
Because all four of the Krupx MG3 mini missile launchers on Depa's gunship were fully loaded.
As the two gunships penetrated the perimeter of the sprawling dogfight, Mace said, "Fire." A Krupx MG3 tube could fire one missile every standard second; each MG3 had two tubes, which carried magazines of four mini-missiles apiece. The Sienar Turbostorm close-assault gunship had four Krupx MG3s: two forward and two aft. On Mace's command, both ships emptied their magazines. The gunships blossomed with fire and rocket exhaust.
Sixteen missiles per second roared twisting through the sky.
The dogfight became a tangled web of vapor trails.
In the gunship's open cockpit, Nick watched his widescan, whistling. "Wow. Those starfighters are quick." Mace said, "Yes." "Two thirds of our missiles are gonna miss altogether. No: three quarters. More. Damn, they're fast." "It doesn't matter." "What do you mean, it doesn't matter? It's just our butts, that's all! Not to mention those poor ruskakks in the landers." Mace Windu said, "Watch." Nick's estimate proved to be overly optimistic: of the fifty-nine missiles fired, only six found their targets. Three more were accidentally intercepted by DSFs which they were not locked onto. The rest were destroyed by the droids' inhumanly precise counterfire, or were simply evaded by the nimble craft; dozens flashed away into the sky until their propellant was exhausted and they began the long slow tumble to the surface.
However-as Mace had pointed out, down in the battered cavern base-droids were stupid.
That was not to say that they could not adapt to changing circumstances. They could, and did: often with a speed and decisiveness that no organic brain could match. These droids had comprehended they were under attack by "friendly" vessels before the initial flight of sixteen missiles had fully engaged their engines. An attack from a single friendly vessel might be a mistake, an accident, no more. But two vessels, both of whose transponder codes identified as friendly, had opened fire on them in a coordinated attack.
Without warning.
The droids would not wait for further attacks. They adapted with lightning speed, and remorseless droid logic.
And Nick Rostu, staring down into his widescan screen, didn't even notice his own jaw dropping farther and farther as first one, then a dozen, then a hundred and more, red scan-hits changed to blue. "They're going hostile," Nick murmured in awe.
"Yes." "All of them." "Yes." Two hundred and twenty-seven DSFs peeled off from the landers-whose silent guns had dropped them below the droid brains' threat horizon-and fell upon the sixty-nine Turbostorms in a tornado of destruction.
Gunships began to burn, and fall.
"You planned this?" "T^l? Iheres more.
"Yeah? What do we do now?" A dozen starfighters converged on them.
"Now," said Mace Windu, "we bail out." He took hold of Nick's belt. Nick stared at him in open horror. "Don't tell me."; "All right." A Force-pushed leap yanked them both out of the cockpit a full second before the gunship began to crumple under hundreds of cannon-hits; two seconds later it exploded, but by then Mace and Nick were already fifty-eight meters below and gaining speed, hurtling without benefit of repulsor-packs down through the dogfight's flame and smoke and airbursts.
Nick's shriek sank unheard under the windrush and explosions.
Mace mouthed, You told me not to tell you.
Nick spent much of the ensuing fall complaining in a loud-though inaudible-voice about having to end his young life as "some fraggin' niklde nut-brained Jedi Master's straight man." Free-falling, one hand keeping a tight grip on Nick's belt, Mace reached into the Force and felt for his lightsaber.
He found its familiar resonance far below. Nick stayed locked in a fetal ball, hugging his thighs to his chest in a white-knuckled death grip and shouting obscenities between his knees.
Though he had a tendency to tumble, his tight "cannonball" made him close enough to aerodynamically neutral that Mace could direct their fall by angling his own body.
They soared toward a target he could barely see: two kilometers below and a quarter-klick to the west, a gunship whirled toward the jungle in a flat spin, spewing thick black smoke. The DSFs were ignoring it, concentrating instead on the gunships that still fired and twisted and dodged in frantic attempts to evade them.
Depa was doing a fine job of appearing crippled and helpless.
Now and again some chunks of smoking durasteel or a hunk of re-pulsorlift would overtake Mace and Nick on their long, long fall, seeming to drift down past them at variously leisurely paces, according to their individual quotients of wind-resistance. No bodies passed them, though; Mace and Nick fell already at close to the terminal velocity of the human form.