That was the only chance they would have had.

But the sensor techs’ attention was caught up in the drama of waiting to see if the crippled gunship could possibly struggle in for a landing before it blew up.

Not to mention the fact that a second or two before it would have touched down, it opened fire on the guardhouses surrounding the spaceport’s control center, and an instant later seven immense half-naked Korunnai with shaven heads leaped from it, landing on the permacrete like pouncing vine cats, and charged toward the control center with their hands full of blaster rifles spitting fire.

And that these unexpected Korunnai were followed by a man and a woman bearing what was unquestionably the single most conspicuous and instantly recognizable type of personal weapon in the entire galaxy, and the type least welcome when it appeared on the opposing side.

The Jedi lightsaber.

So flustered were the spaceport’s crew, that not a being among them even bothered to look up until the very moment the light of Al’har upon their positions was eclipsed by the shadows of hovering Jadthu-class landers.

Then they did look up: in time to see ten durasteel clouds burst in a rain of armored clone soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic, whose arrival was so swift, efficient, and disciplined—and in such overwhelming force—that the antiship emplacements were taken without the loss of a single trooper.

The same, however, could not be said of the militia crewmen.

The clone troopers, being unsentimental about such things, did not even bother to wipe the blood off the walls and floors before replacing the crews with their own men.

The fighting at the control center was hotter, and lasted a few seconds longer, but the outcome was the same—because the attackers were Akk Guards and Jedi, and the defenders were, after all, only ordinary beings.

The capture of the Pelek Baw spaceport took less than seven minutes from the instant the gunship opened fire, and resulted in the capture of 286 military personnel, of whom thirty-five were seriously wounded. Forty-eight were killed. Sixty-one civilian employees of the spaceport were detained unharmed. All of the spaceport’s aerospace defense units were captured intact, as were all spacecraft then on site.

Taken together with the Battle of Lorshan Pass, the capture of the Pelek Baw spaceport would have been considered one of the masterstrokes of General Windu’s distinguished career, if only the rest of the operation had gone as planned.

But it is a truism that no battle plan long survives contact with the enemy.

This one was no exception.

Mace didn’t even have to leave the command bunker to watch everything start to go wrong.

The command bunker was a large, heavily armored hexagon in the middle of the spaceport’s control center, filled with angled banks of consoles. The only illumination in the room was spill from the console monitors and the huge rectangular holoprojector views that dominated each of the six walls; the general gloom thickened below console-height so that everyone inside waded hip-deep in shadow. Dead space below the wall screens was currently serving as a holding area for prisoners, as well as a makeshift aid station where wounded men and women sat or lay while clone troopers dispassionately tended their injuries.

Kar Vastor and his Akk Guards paced the perimeter of the room, restless as the wild animals they so nearly were. The Force swirled around them as they stalked among the terrified prisoners; Mace could feel them drawing on the prisoners’ fear and pain and anguish, gathering it into themselves, storing it like living power cells.

Mace hadn’t asked what Kar was planning to do with that power. He had a more pressing problem.


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 20