Star Wars Shatterpoint

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 Padme 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. But to find these shatterpoints, to use them to shape the Corusca gem into beauty and utility, requires years of study, an intimate understanding of crystal structure, and rigorous practice to train the hand in the perfect combination of strength and precision to produce the desired cut. Unless you have a talent like mine. I can see shatterpoints. The sense is not sight, but see is the closest word Basic has for it: it is a perception, a feel of how hat I look upon fits into the Force, and how the Force binds it to itself and to everything else. I as six or seven standard years old well into my training in the Jedi Templebefore I realized that other students, full-grown Jedi Knights, even wise Masters, could sense such connections only with difficulty, and only with concentration and practice. The Force shows me strengths and weaknesses, hidden flaws and unexpected uses. It shows me vectors of stress that squeeze or stretch, torque or shear; it shows me how patterns of these vectors intersect to form the matrix of reality. Put simply: when I look at you through the Force, I can see where you break. I looked at Jango Fett on the sand in the Geonosian arena. A perfect combination of weapons, skills, and the will to use them: an iStover, Matthew is the author of 'Star Wars Shatterpoint', published 2003 under ISBN 9780345455734 and ISBN 0345455738.