On Haruun Kal, that was slightly less than three hundred kilometers per hour.
The gunships rate of fall was considerably slower; it only looked like it was going in out of control. Which was why, when Mace had towed Nick to within a few hundred meters above the gunship, a considerable exertion of his Force-strength was required to slow them enough to avoid a catastrophic splatter.
Nick had lifted his eyes only once, as they plummeted toward the roof armor of the gunship: just long enough to recall vividly what Mace had said about leaving a red smear on a windscreen. His head was tucked back securely between his knees when Mace brought them to a thumpingly unceremonious landing that sent them bruised and bouncing along the top of the spinning ship.
Mace's free hand lashed out with effortless accuracy and latched around the widescan sensor dish-mount; his other, still locked on Nick's belt, brought the young Korun to a stop facedown over what was still nearly a kilometer drop to the jungle.
"You. remember. back when we met?" Nick gasped breathlessly into the swirling winds.
"When you. just about broke my arm. with that fraggin' docking claw you use for a hand?" "Yes?" "I… forgive you." "Thank you." Mace hauled him up onto the gunship's roof. Nick wrapped both arms around the sensor dish mount. "You go on ahead," Nick told him. "I think I'll just lie here and shudder." Using the Force to steady himself on the spinning ship, Mace worked his way forward on hands and knees until he could peer into the cockpit over the rim of the wide lightsaber-cut that opened it to the air.
Chalk sat in nav; she looked up and swore. Vaster stood behind the cockpit chairs: his stare was cleanly fierce. Depa reached up to him from the pilot's chair with a warm welcoming hand on his. Her eyes were glazed with exhaustion and pain, but no surprise. "I thought you told me I'd only have to save your life once more." He said, "Excuse me." He rolled onto his back and reached behind his shoulders to grab the rim of the cut with both hands, then jackknifed and swung himself smoothly inside feet-first, without waiting to see if Vaster had gotten out of the way.
He had.
"Nick is on the roof," Mace said. "Open one of the bay doors for him." The troop bay doors of a Turbostorm swing out and down so they could be used as landing ramps. Depa keyed the starboard door to open halfway, making it into a kind of chute down which Nick could slide, then worked the controls to cancel the gunship's spin.
Mace nodded to the lorpelek, who now filled the cockpit doorway. "Kar: help him in." Why should I?
Mace was not interested in debate. He gave his head an irritated shake and waved Vaster aside. "I'll do it my." His voice trailed away, because Vaster had stepped aside, and Mace had moved to the doorway, and now he could see into the troop bay.
It was crammed with dead bodies.
Mace sagged sideways; only his shoulder against the jamb seal held him upright.
Depa had chosen a full ship.
His numbed brain couldn't count them properly, but he guessed there must have been twenty corpses in the bay: an infantry platoon. The pilot must have been young, excited, confident, sure of a glorious kill-so eager to get into the fight that he had sailed into battle without discharging his passengers. He had paid the price for that confidence; his corpse lay crumpled on top of what must have been the navigator's, just inside the cockpit door.
Mace's jaw hardened. He found his balance again, and stepped over their tangled lifeless legs to move deeper into the bay.
All of the corpses in the troop bay wore the militia Graylite body armor; most of the armor had been burned through in several places by close-range blaster bolts. Mace could too easily imagine inexperienced militia men-boys-turning their weapons on Depa as she moved from the cockpit into the bay. The effect of opening fire with energy weapons, point-blank upon a master of Vaapad, was mutely testified to by every charred ring around a finger-sized hole in the armor, and by the burned and lifeless flesh beneath.
Between surprise, panic, and cramped quarters, half of them had probably shot each other.
Several of the bodies bore the characteristic blackened gapes of lightsaber wounds, instantly cauterized by the blade that had opened them. Depa's handling of the ball-turret gunners had been more elegant than Mace's; brutally efficient, she had simply stabbed directly through the durasteel of the hatches, killing the men in their chairs.
The corpses still sat there, dead hands locked around the dual grips of their quads.
And, of course, the smelclass="underline" seared flesh and ozone.
There was no blood. No blood at all.
Every single one of these men had been dead before she'd ever picked up Chalk and Kar Vaster. Twenty-four men.
In less than a minute.
Mace turned around, and found Kar Vastor staring at him, fiercely triumphant.
He growled simply: She belongs here.
Mace silently turned away and climbed the half-open door to help Nick into the troop bay.
Sliding down the door into that compartment full of dead men struck Nick speechless. He could only crouch with his back against the slant of the door, trembling.
Mace left him there. He brushed past Vastor and reentered the cockpit. "Chalk. Give me your seat." The Korun girl frowned at Depa. Depa nodded. "It's okay, Chalk. Do it." As soon as he could settle into the seat, he leaned over the sensor screens, studying them intently. He felt Depa's eyes upon him, but he did not lift his head.
"You can say it, if you like," she said after a moment. "I don't mind." Keeping half his attention on the widescan to watch the droid starfighters shoot down gunship after gunship, Mace turned the other half of his attention to the gunship's data logs, calling up flight plans. Control codes.
Recognition codes.
"Really, Mace, it's all right," she said sadly. Half-blind with migraine, her breath coming a little short, she blinked dizzily through the remainder of the windscreen. "I know what you're thinking." Mace said quietly, "I don't believe you do." "It's not that my way is the right way. I know it isn't." A soft, bitter laugh. "I do know it. But it's the only way." "The only way to what?" "To win, Mace." "Is that what you call what you have done? Winning?" She nodded exhaustedly out toward the dogfight that still raged above them. "This battle is a masterpiece. Even after everything I have seen you accomplish, I could never have believed something like this if I hadn't seen it myself. You have done a great thing, today." "Today's not over yet." "And yet it's all for nothing. At this day's end, what will you have done? Destroyed most of the militia's airpower? So what?" Her voice was going hoarse, and her words became labored, as though she could not bear the effort to push them out through her pain. "You have bought us days. Perhaps weeks. No more. When you're gone, we'll still be here. We'll still be dying in the jungle. The Balawai will get more gunships. As many as they need. And we'll go back to killing them. We have to make them fear the jungle. Because that fear is our only real weapon." "Not today." "What? I-what do you mean?" "I have decided," Mace said, still studying the sensor screens, "that you have been right all along." Depa blinked in disbelief. "I have?" "Yes. We used these people for our purposes; to abandon them now, when their only choice is to suffer genocide, or to commit it?" Mace shook his head grimly. "That would be as dark as any night in this jungle. Darker. That is no innocent savagery. It would be active eviclass="underline" the way of the Sith. There is fighting to be done. The Jedi cannot walk away." "You-you're serious? You really mean it?" Disbelief struggled with hope in her pain- wracked eyes. "You're going to walk away from the Clone War? You're going to stay here and fight?" Mace shrugged, still watching the scan. "I will stay here and fight. That doesn't mean walking away from the Clone War." "Mace, the Summertime War isn't something that can be resolved in weeks-or months-" "I know that," he murmured distractedly. "I don't have weeks or months to spare. The Summertime War won't last that long." "What? How can you say that? How long do you think it will last?" "My best guess? About twelve hours. Maybe less." She could only stare.