Mace Windu leapt from the flaming wreckage of his starfighter. As he soared through the air, he looked down. He thought that if he fell, he would either snap his spine on the hard forest floor, break all his limbs and starve to death, smash in his skull, or be ripped apart by branches on the way down. Mace had looked many forms of death in the eye before and walked away unscathed. Compared to any one of these forms of death, to die here seemed downright merciful. Mace tried to stop thinking negatively. He had done that a lot since his mission to Haruun Kal.

Instead he looked ahead at the rough tree trunk and concentrated on grabbing it when the time was right. Mace put his arms forward. He grabbed the trunk and held on.

Just then, Mace heard a boom and looked down to see his Jedi starfighter, as well as his R4 droid, go up in a ball of orange flame. The massive explosion rocked the tree and sent a blast of heat up to greet him in the face.

When his visage had cooled, he looked at the ground and guessed that he was about two hundred standard feet up from the forest floor. 'Sithspawn.' Mace thought. 'How am I supposed to get down from this thing?' Without warning, his question was answered as the branch he had a foothold on suddenly snapped, sending him sliding down the trunk of the tree to the forest floor below.

When his feet landed with a thump on the soft leaves of the forest floor, his arms were bruised from encountering hundreds of small branches on the way down. He fell onto his knees, gritted his teeth, and rubbed his injured arms.

When he finally stood, the pain in his arms was throbbing. Mace looked around at his surroundings. He was in the middle of the forest, with dense bushes all around him. He could see, off to his left, smoke and could hear explosions. He headed off toward the chaos.

Soon, the noise had intensified and Mace could hear screams, too. But as he listened, he heard another sound- a low humming. It was coming from the direction of the city.

As Mace crept closer, it became louder- much louder. Suddenly, a clump of trees was mown down in front of Mace and a massive Commerce Guild spider droid stepped out in front of him. His eyes widened and a frown crossed his face. Not that frowning wasn't something he did every day.

As the metallic behemoth fired its dish-shaped laser cannon, Mace Force-leaped up and landed on its spherical 'head'. He pulled out his lightsaber and with a snap-hiss the violet blade awoke. He drove the saber deep into the droid brain of the durasteel arachnid. Mace leaped off the metal sphere just before sparks started flying from it and it imploded upon itself in a flash of white light. When Mace looked up from the tree root he had hid behind, the only remains of the droid were a few large pieces of smoldering shrapnel.

'A job well done.' he thought to himself as he once again headed off toward Belkadan's sole city.