Shatterpoint: Star Wars Legends

INTRODUCTION

DANGEROUSLY SANE



From THE PRIVATE JOURNALS of Mace Windu

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 Padmé 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 are 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.

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 hole 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 eave, 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 as the shatterpoint.

I knew it.

That is my

Matthew Stover is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: The New Jedi Order Traitor, as well as The Blade of Tyshalle, Heroes Die, Iron Dawn, and Jericho Moon. He is a student of the Degerberg Blend. This jeet kune do concept is a mixture of approximately twenty-five different fighting arts from around the world. He lives in Chicago with artist and writer Robyn Fielder.