"Matthew Woodring Stover - Clone Wars - Shatterpoint" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stover Matthew Woodring)

I knew it.

That is my gift.

Imagine a Corusca gem: a mineral whose 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 where 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 what I
look upon fits into the Force, and how the Force binds it to itself and to everything else. I was six or
seven standard years old-well into my training in the Jedi Temple-before 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 interlocking crystal of killer. The Force hinted a shatterpoint, and I left a headless
corpse on the sand. The deadliest man in the galaxy.

Now: just dead.

Situations have shatterpoints, like gems. But those of situations are fluid, ephemeral, appearing for a bare
instant, vanishing again to leave no trace of their existence. They are always a function of timing.

There is no such thing as a second chance.

If-when-I next encounter Dooku, he will be the war's shatterpoint no longer. I can't stop this war with a
single death.

But on that day in the Geonosian arena, I could have.

Some days after the battle, Master Yoda had found me in a meditation chamber at the Temple. "Your
friend he was," the ancient Master had said, even as he limped through the door.

It is a peculiar gift of Yoda's that he always seems to know what I'm thinking. "Respect you owed him.
Even affection. Cut him down you could not-not for merely a feeling." But I could have.

I should have.