Shatterpoint

In this essential Star Wars Legends novel, Mace Windu must journey to his long-forgotten homeworld to confront a terrifying mystery with dire personal consequences.

The jungle planet of Haruun Kal, homeworld of the legendary Jedi Master Mace Windu, has become a battleground in the increasing hostilities between the Republic and the renegade Separatist movement. The Jedi Council has sent Depa Billaba-Mace's former Padawan and fellow Council member-to Haruun Kal to train the local tribesmen as a guerrilla resistance force. But now the Separatists have pulled back, and Depa has not returned. The only clue to her disappearance is a cryptic recording left at the scene of a brutal massacre: a recording that hints of madness and murder, and the darkness in the jungle... a recording in Depa's own voice.

Mace Windu trained Depa. Only he can find her. Only he can learn what has changed her. Only he can stop her. He will leave behind the Republic he serves, the civilization he believes in, everything but his passion for peace and his devotion to his former Padawan. And he will learn the terrible price that must be paid when keepers of the peace are forced to make war... . 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. 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 gift.

Imagine a Corusca gem: a mineral hose 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 here a precise application of carefully measured force -no more than a gentle tap -will break it into pieces. Bu