Star Wars: Join the Resistance, Book 1

by Ben Acker

  Unfortunately, AG hadn’t yet been able to tell them what he’d witnessed. The commanders who’d spoken—sternly—with each of them didn’t seem to care what Jo had done, only that a calamitous breaking of rules had transpired. They’d told Mattis to “leave Jo Jerjerrod to Ackbar, per the admiral’s orders.” Mattis accepted that, but he hadn’t yet seen Admiral Ackbar confront Jo about breaking into the communications center. Mattis was only seeing Admiral Ackbar now, as he yelled at them all. It didn’t seem like the appropriate time or place for AG to catch them up.

  “You could have killed an entire squadron of fighters!” Admiral Ackbar shouted, throwing his hands in the air in exasperation.

  None of them spoke.

  “You got lucky,” Ackbar continued. “Due to quick thinking, there wasn’t much damage and, thank the Force, no loss of life, but that does not mean there won’t be consequences! There will be consequences!” He banged on a table. “I’m sending you away,” he said, more softly.

  Mattis felt like he had been struck. They were being kicked out of the Resistance. He’d finally found a home, and he was being expelled from it. He felt like the floor had disappeared under him, like he was free-falling. He couldn’t catch his breath. Stars appeared in the periphery of his vision.

  Dec’s hand on his shoulder brought him back to land. The stars fell away, and the room was clear and quiet again. Each of them looked gut-punched. The room had an airless quality. Every sound was muted.

  Admiral Ackbar cocked his head at Mattis like he was an oddity. “Mattis. You were breathing funny, son.”

  Mattis looked up at Admiral Ackbar, his hero. He nodded because he was afraid that if he tried to speak, he would cry.

  “This is a punishment,” he said. “But it’s still a mission. Make no mistake about that. I’m sending you to Vodran.”

  A mission? Vodran? They weren’t being kicked out? Mattis couldn’t help smiling in relief.

  Admiral Ackbar shook his head. “No. No smiles,” he said. “Vodran is a terrible place. It’s murky; it’s dank. It was the stronghold of Harra the Hutt. She and her collection of scum and troublemakers abandoned Vodran during an Imperial incursion, and as far as we know, the settlements were reduced to rubble by the Empire years ago. The swamp has taken back most of the planet.” Admiral Ackbar pushed some buttons on his console and a holomap was projected above them. “It’s fetid and unfit for civilized life. It’s bogs and muck. So no smiles.”

  He twiddled some dials on his console, and image after image of buildings turned to wreckage appeared. What remained of them was choked with black-and-green overgrowth. Mattis felt like he could smell the planet’s wretched stench from the images alone.

  “The rest of J-Squad will be disbanded and incorporated into other units. You are going to Vodran, and you’re going to scrounge for usable weaponry, vehicles, and parts. Anything that might be useful to the Resistance. You’ll stay there for as long as it takes. While you’re there, maybe you can learn to work together as a team. Maybe you can prove yourselves useful to and worthy of the Resistance. I do believe in all of you. But hear me clearly: you all have a lot of trouble to dig yourselves out of. Grab your shovels. You’re going to need them.”

  AN ANCIENT CARGO ship, too cavernous for its load of two short-range transports and seven young Resistance recruits, took them to the Si’Klaata Cluster. Even the black space around those planets felt filthy to Mattis. They could see Vodran through their viewports. A weak green light glowed through a murky fog of burnt-toast-colored cloud cover. They boarded the two short-range transports: Mattis, Dec, and Klimo in one; Jo, Lorica, Sari, and AG in the other. It didn’t escape anyone’s notice that Jo kept AG close to him and sequestered from the rest of them. Dec seemed to be biding his time for a confrontation.

  The transports carried them to Vodran, the cargo ship growing small in the distance. At a certain point, it would leave the cluster and return to the Resistance base. It would return periodically so J-Squadron could retrieve supplies, but they were otherwise alone. They’d be making camp in the muck of Vodran, pitching tents and attempting to build fires in the fetid swamplands.

  As bad as it was, Mattis was excited for one aspect of the detail: speeder bikes. There was too much marsh to go very far on foot, so they’d been issued some extremely used speeders. Mattis didn’t care about the dings or dents or sputtering engines. Mattis’s favorite training exercise had been on those speeders. No matter how lousy of a detail it was supposed to be, he was going to get to open up a speeder bike’s throttle to see how fast he could go. Each bike had a detector strapped to it to locate inorganic objects in the swamp or in the brush that had overtaken the buildings.

  Dec landed his transport on nearly solid land. The ship sank slightly into the ground. They set down in distant sight of what used to be Harra the Hutt’s stronghold. They were meant to sweep the intervening landscape, day by day, scavenging for usable gear. They would load whatever they found onto the transports and take it all to the stronghold. The Resistance would send a larger ship there to transfer the salvaged junk off-planet. But that was days, maybe weeks, away. For the time being, that mud-sunk quagmire was their home.

  Dec stepped off the transport ship, his boot sinking into the sludge. “Swamp, sweet swamp,” he said, grinning.

  Lorica, deboarding the other transport, glared at him.

  Dec called over, “It really is like comin’ home, ain’t it?” AG nodded and whistled.

  Mattis didn’t think they were funny. “You’re not funny,” he said.

  Dec sloughed through some more mud. “We’re not being funny. This isn’t far from our home planet, and Ques looks a lot like this. Only…on Ques there’s more domiciles sticking out of the mud.”

  AG joined them in the muck. “And, y’know, people,” Dec continued, moving in closer to AG.

  “It is like home! Taste that air!” Klimo yelled.

  Dec told AG, “We gotta talk.”

  AG chirruped cryptically. Dec shook his head, lost.

  “Anybody understand this beeping droid language?” Dec asked the group.

  Jo was on them immediately. He hovered on his speeder bike. “I do. Now form a line.” Jo ordered them to spend the day scavenging in one direction, with several meters between them. They would encounter grasping, overgrown plant life. He warned them to be wary of dianogas. The one-eyed cephalopods were indigenous to Vodran and probably hungry. Jo didn’t want any of his charges being eaten; it would reflect poorly on him.

  “Nice to know you care,” Lorica said. Mattis was surprised to hear her snap back. She must be really angry about being there.

  They spread out as ordered and began cruising over the marshes. Klimo cheered. He loved the speeder bike drills even more than Mattis did. Sari wobbled uneasily, too big for her bike. For Dec and AG, it was old hat. Lorica kept her distance from the rest of them. Mattis took off, and for just a moment, he felt like he had in his dream the night before leaving Durkteel, like he had Admiral Ackbar commanding him and he was taking on the whole Empire.

  “Mattis!” Jo snapped him back to reality. “Ride with your eyes open! That’s rule one. Rule two is to stay in sight of the others. You know how fast you were going? You ride this bike into a tree, and you better not survive. It’s worth more to the Resistance than you are.”

  Mattis tried to think of something cutting to say back, but Jo wasn’t interested. He was already riding away and into formation. Jo yelled back, “Prove me wrong,” as if there was no way Mattis ever could.

  They scanned the swamp, occasionally dipping in to retrieve a piece of a ship or building. They kept mechanical items and left structural ones. Occasionally, a hill would emerge from the mire like a breaching beast, and one or another of them would be able to scan dry land. But mostly they were in dank swampland. A canopy of gnarled, foreboding trees blocked out any brightness Vodran’s covering of brown clouds allowed. As they moved deeper into it, the vegetation clustered closer and intertwined; w
oody limbs hooked woody limbs, and low trees bent their spires together as if whispering wet secrets. It was slow going.

  It wasn’t long before Lorica on one end and Klimo on the other had disappeared behind brush. Jo split off after Lorica and told AG to find Klimo and bring him back. The group needed to stay in formation. Mattis figured Jo didn’t want to leave AG with any of the rest of them.

  As soon as they lost visual contact with Jo, Mattis and Dec veered off after AG, who was waiting for them. Sari had strayed a bit beyond them. She was at the foot of a tall twisted tree, staring into its great umbrella of foliage. They couldn’t get her attention, so they got off their bikes and went over to her.

  “What are you looking at?” Mattis asked her.

  “Birds,” she said distractedly. “I love birds.”

  “Me too,” Mattis said, scanning for the birds she saw. “Anything that flies, I like.”

  “All the variety of life in the universe in just one species.” Mattis wasn’t exactly sure what Sari meant by that, but she clearly meant to mean something, so he just nodded solemnly.

  Mattis told Sari about his big book of birds at the base and said he’d loan it to her if they made it back. She had two to swap with him. Finally, Mattis saw the birds she was looking at. Tufted cackys. Four of them, in multi-hues of brown to camouflage themselves but with bright pink spots on their chests. Now that he saw them, he couldn’t believe he’d ever missed them. They were splashes of brightness in the muck. They were a family. The parents were showing the babies how to fly.

  “Can we break up this tea party? I didn’t bring no scones,” Dec drawled. “Lookit that, Aygee. Your works’re gonna get muddied something awful.” He shook himself down a bit, spraying wet grit everywhere.

  Dec took a tool out of his boot and popped AG’s chest open, working quickly. “Let me know when you can talk right again.”

  “Maybe it isn’t so bad, what he saw,” Sari offered.

  “Maybe there’s an explanation.” Mattis hoped that was true.

  “Then why am I trying to restore Aygee’s language setting? Why’d Jo put a clamp on it?”

  “You want me to try?” Sari offered. “I’m good with clamps.”

  “He’s my brother, dosh it!” Dec growled. He softened. “Sorry.”

  “I understand,” Sari said, and scanned the surroundings for Jo.

  Dec pulled another tool out of his boot. It sounded to Mattis like he was scraping at something inside AG. “Almost got it…Just…just a little bit more…

  “Got it!” yelled Dec, and with a cracking sound so loud it set the tufted cackys squawking angrily, he popped a restrainer bolt out of his brother’s chest and into the swamp, where it sank. “Aw, I was gonna shove that down Jo’s throat,” Dec said in disappointment.

  “Much better,” sighed AG, closing his own chest plate. “I’ve had so much bottled up. First of all, in case this happens again, Dec, you need to learn beeping language. Second, for units that talk too danged much, G2’s sure ain’t got nothin’ to say. That’s what I meant when I pushed that G2 off me. Been holding on to that for a while.”

  “Yeah, yeah. What did you see? What’s Jo’s secret?” Dec asked, replacing his tools in his boot.

  AG couldn’t meet Dec’s eye. “You’re better off not knowing. He stole language from me. Who knows what he’d do to the rest of you?”

  Dec spat. “If Jo’s up to no good, it’s no use keepin’ his secret. If the Resistance doesn’t see that we’re on the right side of things and Jo ain’t, then I don’t want to be a part of the Resistance. Tell us what you saw and let’s handle it, or else what good is it that we’re each other’s people?”

  AG looked from Dec to Sari to Mattis. It was as if he’d read instructions on his friends’ faces. They were there for each other. He had to tell them the truth. Behind him, the family of birds flew away together. Mattis and Sari couldn’t help smiling.

  “All right,” AG said. They leaned in, and the droid started telling them what they were so eager to hear. “Jo Jerjerrod is—”

  AG didn’t get to finish, because that was when the dianoga took him.

  A DIANOGA WAS ROUGHLY the size of a large dinner table. Its body was generally submerged underwater, so only its single eyestalk was visible, but somehow this cephalopod had flopped itself onto the squishy hummock on which the group had paused. A dianoga possessed seven suckered tentacles, two of which wrapped around AG-90’s torso and started to drag him into deeper swamp. They could hear the gnashing of the spiked teeth that surrounded its pulsating maw.

  “It’s chewing on my foot! Get the danged thing off!” AG howled before his voice processor got jammed into the dreck.

  Mattis grabbed hold of AG’s upper arm. The dianoga pulled hard and made high-pitched squelching sounds. Mattis feared he’d pull AG’s arm off. He wasn’t strong enough to free the droid.

  “Sari,” he said, snapping her to attention. “Grab his torso.”

  She was on AG in a moment, flopping down in the mud and hugging him around the middle while the dianoga squalled and shook the droid. Dec batted at the creature with a chunk of wood, and the dianoga simultaneously pulled AG off the mound toward subaqueous wetland and slapped away Dec’s attacks. The creature went into a slippery roll, turning AG over and over, but Sari didn’t let go. The dianoga was strong. They needed a new tactic.

  “Sari, can you get this thing off of him?” Mattis shouted.

  “Can’t do that and hold AG at the same time,” she yelled back.

  AG lifted his head from the muck. “Keep holding me!” he cried.

  Mattis got into a crouch and launched himself at AG, grabbing him around the waist beside Sari. “Okay,” he huffed. “I can try to hold him here. You get the thing off.”

  Sari hauled herself up. Sheets of mud dropped from her body. Dec hacked again at the dianoga with his piece of wood; he had no effect. It snatched him with another of its tentacles and pulled him into the mud toward its puckering mouth.

  For someone who didn’t like to be the team muscle, Sari sure knew how to fill that role when it counted. She roared like something wild and pressed her body into the rot-stinking dianoga. She lifted it high, and it squealed and gnashed. It dropped Dec but still clung to AG.

  Sari squeezed the creature tight. It didn’t like that at all. It wailed a high-pitched complaint. Dec and Mattis worked the tentacles until they finally pried them off AG.

  “I’m out!” AG shouted. Sari let go. The dianoga splashed down and swam away.

  Dec lifted his face out of the viscous guck. “You were telling us something?”

  Mattis rolled AG onto his back. The droid was banged up but functional. His eyes flashed a couple of times, and he lifted himself to a sitting position. “Yeah,” AG said. “Jo Jerjerrod is a traitor.”

  WHEN THE SECURITY door had slid closed, separating AG from his friends, he had found himself in darkness. He stopped moving. He didn’t want to make any noise. He dimmed his eye-lights. He was at the end of the long corridor, and he shuffled quietly toward the one room with lights on.

  He heard muffled voices even before he reached the open door. AG peered inside.

  Jo sat hunched forward, intensely listening to the man and woman on the holo-comm. They were both middle-aged. The man’s face was drawn and serious. His hair was cut short like Jo’s. The woman looked vaguely amused. She nodded when she spoke.

  “Great progress has been made, Jo,” she said. “We have the location of a map that will lead us to Luke Skywalker. Finding Skywalker will change the course of things.”

  AG wasn’t certain exactly what was happening. He knew the Resistance was looking for Luke Skywalker, so maybe those people were on a mission for General Organa? But why report to Jo? Why didn’t J-Squadron know about Jo’s mission?

  It wasn’t until the conversation had continued a bit and the man stood up for a moment that AG comprehended what was happening. The man wore a military uniform, slate gray and severe-looking. It was
n’t a uniform AG-90 had seen on any Resistance personnel, and he was fairly certain the insignia on the chest didn’t represent anyone in the New Republic.

  Which could only mean one thing…

  The woman spoke: “Jo, the Supreme Leader believes in tradition. He, and everyone here, believes in greatness passed through generations. You come from a long line of loyal warriors who have tried and succeeded in changing the order of the galaxy. When you come home to us, Jo, you shall join your rightful place in the First Order.”

  Hearing the story from AG, in the swamps of Vodran, Mattis was physically revolted. He doubled over and put his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Jo was sneaking around at night, making secret holo-calls to First Order military personnel? Jo was a jerk, but Mattis hadn’t thought he could be a traitor.

  “I knew it,” Dec said.

  “You did not.” AG waved him away.

  “Well, I knew something was up with Jo. He’s so strict and by the book, y’know? No one acts that way unless they’re overcompensating for being a double-crosser.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Sari said.

  “We have to tell Admiral Ackbar,” Mattis said, but he was disappointed. Jo was far from a friend, but he was someone Mattis had admired. It had always seemed to Mattis that Jo wanted to do good.

  How could a person betray the Resistance? How could someone see what General Organa and Admiral Ackbar and the others were doing, as Jo had taken Mattis to see that first day, and then decide to stab them in their backs? Those people, their leaders, were heroes. History had proven that.

  “There are comms on the transports,” Sari reminded them.

  They got on their bikes and sped solemnly back the way they had come.