Lock almost slipped as he pulled the lever, but he clung to it with the last of his strength. There was a loud clacking sound, and then the second escape pod rocketed away. Lock slumped against the blast shield, angling his helmet to peer at a nearby viewscreen. He saw the pod tearing off toward Kynachi.
A moment later, there was one final explosion, and the freighter and everything on it was gone.
Breaker, Chatterbox, and Knuckles didn’t have time to ask the boy to identify himself or explain his presence on the freighter. They were too busy clinging to the belts that held them in place against the pod’s circular seat as they fell fast past the armada of dagger-winged droid starfighters.
Knuckles angled his head to glance through the viewport, which offered a spiraling view of the exploding freighter. The droid starfighters had only retreated slightly to avoid the wide spray of debris from the obliterated ship, but they were already swinging around to pursue the pod.
Knuckles said, “Where’s Ambase’s pod?”
Breaker hastily checked a console that should have allowed them to track the other pod. “Don’t know. The console’s not working,” Breaker said. “Neither is the transponder for the distress signal.” He reached up to whack the side of his helmet. “My helmet’s long-range comm isn’t working. Yours?”
Knuckles and Chatterbox checked their own built-in comms. “Ours are down, too,” Knuckles said. They checked the handheld comms at their belts and found them similarly inoperative.
“We’re cut off,” Breaker said. “Totally.”
Before anyone could comment further, the pod was slammed hard sideways. All four occupants knew that enemy fire had skimmed the pod’s energy shield. Sparks showered out from the useless console near Breaker, then blossomed into flames. Chatterbox pulled an extinguisher off the wall, popped the trigger, and sprayed the fire until it was out.
Breaker tore the thin plastoid protective cover off another console. “Autopilot’s been disabled.” He tugged off his gloves, then began pulling at wires, trying to sort out their connection points to a circuit board.
There was a bright flash of brilliant light outside the viewport as the pod struck and penetrated Kynachi’s atmosphere. The pod streaked downward through thick, gray clouds without slowing, diving straight for the planet’s surface.
Watching Breaker dig into the exposed console, Knuckles asked, “What are you doing?”
“Trying to extend our lives,” Breaker said, his fingers working fast at the wires.
Knuckles glanced again through the viewport to catch a dizzying glimpse of what looked like a wide expanse of rocky terrain.“Try faster.”
A spark ignited near Breaker’s fingers in the console. “Got it.”
A loud blast sounded from outside, the welcome noise of the pod’s maneuvering jets kicking in. The pod began to rotate as it fell, trying to right itself before landing, but the engine made a loud whine that sounded anything but stable. Knuckles threw a protective arm over Nuru and said, “Brace yourself.”
The pod dipped through the air, hit the ground at a slight angle with an ugly, bone-jarring thud, then bounced and rolled. The main thrusters died at the same time as the maneuvering jets broke off.
As the pod tumbled across the planet’s surface, Knuckles said, “What a ride!”
The pod skidded and spun until it finally came to a stop. It lay on its side, and its passengers heard a steady pattering sound against the hull. They looked through the hatch’s viewport, which faced up toward the sky, and saw heavy sheets of rain coming down.
Knuckles looked at the boy. “You all right?”
The boy nodded.
“We need to get out,” Knuckles said as they removed their seatbelts and secured their weapons. “Hurry. Those fighters will be here any second.”
Breaker punched a control stud to open the hatch, but the hatch remained closed. “It’s jammed.” He was about to strike the control stud again when he felt something press down on top of his armored shoulder. It was the long, black barrel of Chatterbox’s blaster rifle, which Chatterbox was aiming at the hatch.
Knuckles said to the boy, “Cover your ears.”
Breaker turned his face away from the hatch but kept his body still. Chatterbox squeezed the rifle’s trigger.
There was a loud blast and the hatch exploded outward. The three troopers and the boy spilled out of the pod along with the blaster fumes, taking their weapons with them.
They found themselves standing on the hard surface of a small, shallow basin, surrounded by short hills that resembled permanently frozen waves. Rainwater spattered and streamed all around them. “Careful,” Breaker said. “It’s slippery.”
The troopers kept their helmets on, but the boy removed his breath mask and flung it back into the pod. Knuckles snapped his macrobinoculars down over his visor to scan the rain-swept area. “126 meters in that direction,” he said, pointing. “Small plastoid structure with trees for cover. No life forms.”
The sound of a sonic boom came from overhead, signaling the approach of the enemy fighters. Breaker said, “Run.”
They bolted from the wrecked pod. Rain pelted the troopers’ armor while the boy’s robes became quickly drenched. Despite his own warning, Breaker nearly slipped on the slick ground.
Knuckles glanced at the boy to make sure he didn’t fall behind, but then the young Jedi had a sudden burst of speed, running so fast that it appeared his boots barely touched the ground.
Knuckles leaped over a wide puddle in his effort to keep up. A few more steps and the ground changed from hard, slippery rock to mud. Beyond the noise of rainfall and their clomping boots, they heard the distinctive scream of incoming fighters, growing louder with each passing second.
The boy was the first to reach the structure, a long hut without windows, situated amid a grove of dark green trees. Drawing the lightsaber from his belt, he activated its brilliant blue blade and drove it through the hut’s thin plastoid wall, then flicked his wrist to make a wide, circular cut.
He switched off the lightsaber and was about to place a kick to the cut area when Knuckles arrived at his side and kicked first, knocking the circular sheet of plastoid into the building.
Following the boy’s lead, the three troopers scurried through the hole in the wall. Inside, they found two narrow aisles of shelves lined with large sacks and variously sized storage containers. A series of small vents in the ceiling were the structure’s only source of illumination, but it was enough to enable them to see a sliding door on the opposite wall.
The smell was awful. Scrunching his nose, Nuru realized it was coming from the sacks. They were fertilizer bags.
Knuckles peered through the hole. “I see five starfighters,” he said. “Wait. One is landing.”
He watched as a droid starfighter reconfigured its wings, unfolding and extending them into long, sharp-tipped legs while it slowed its thrusters. It had barely touched down when its legs began skittering, causing it to slip and collapse against the uneven, rain-soaked ground with a loud crash.
Hearing the noise outside, the boy said, “What happened?”
Knuckles said, “Wait.”
The droid hauled itself up, pivoted on one leg, then fired its thrusters as it transformed back into its flight configuration and sailed up into the stormy sky. The other starfighters shot up after it.
“They’re retreating,” Knuckles reported as he moved away from the wall. “The ground’s too slick for them to land, at least for now.”
“They’ll be back soon enough,” Breaker said. “And if they determine we escaped the pod, this building will be the first place they’ll search. We can’t stay here.”
Just then, a mechanical voice spoke: “Intruder alert!” The group turned to see a small, spherical security droid emerge from one of the aisles to hover in the air before them. The droid was an old model with a bent antenna, and its compact repulsorlift hissed as it drifted closer. Focusing its grimy photo receptors on the trespasser
s, the droid said, “You are not authorized to be in-”
“Stand down, droid,” Breaker said. “We have authorization. Show him, Chatterbox.”
Chatterbox spun his blaster rifle in his hands, seizing it by the barrel and swung it as hard as he could at the hovering droid. The rifle’s butt smashed into the droid, shattering it in midair. Its pieces fell to the floor.
The boy was startled by the clone’s violent action. “Why’d you do that?” the boy said. “The droid might have helped us!”
“We couldn’t take that chance,” Knuckles said. “Officially, we’re not on this planet. That droid might have compromised our mission.”
“This mission is already compromised,” Breaker said. “Think about it. Our freighter’s life pods were sabotaged. And the moment we dropped out of hyperspace, those starfighters were ready for us.”
Unexpectedly, it was Chatterbox who spoke next, “Someone set us up.”
Then Chatterbox slowly turned his helmeted head to face the boy, who was shrugging out of his wet robe.
“I wish I hadn’t left that breath mask behind,” the boy said. It really stinks in here.”
Knuckles and Breaker turned their own heads to follow Chatterbox’s gaze. All three troopers were holding their blaster rifles so that the barrels were aimed toward the warehouse ceiling, but they shifted their weight slightly within their armor, bracing themselves for the unexpected as they studied the boy.
Although the clones were trained to serve and obey their Jedi commanders, they also knew that their greatest enemy, the Separatist leader Count Dooku was a former Jedi. They did not rule out the possibility that Dooku had secret allies in the Jedi Order.
The boy was trying to wring the water from his robe’s sleeves when he realized the troopers were looking at him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
When they didn’t immediately answer; he took a cautious step backward, and accidentally stepped on a fragment of the old security droid that the least talkative clone had destroyed.
Staring hard at the boy through his visor, Knuckles felt his muscles tense.
“By the way you handled that lightsaber of yours,” he said, his voice remarkably calm, “we don’t doubt that you’re a Jedi. But may we ask what exactly you were doing on the freighter?
The young Jedi did not fear the three troopers. He was even confident that he could evade or disable all three of them if necessary. But he was surprised by how quickly their manners had changed.
When the freighter was under attack, they had rescued him without question. Now, even though their helmets concealed their faces, he could feel their eyes boring in on him with intense suspicion. He said, “You think I’m somehow responsible for what happened?”
“I didn’t say that,” Knuckles said, his body still as a statue. “I asked … What were you doing on the freighter?”
The boy kept very still, keeping his eyes fixed on Knuckles’s visor. While rain drummed down on the plastoid roof above their heads, he said, “I snuck onboard the freighter just before you left Coruscant. My Master wanted me to stay at the Temple, but… I had a feeling that something might go wrong. I was hoping to help him.”
Knuckles said, “Can you prove that claim?” He asked the question politely, but it still sounded like a challenge.
Before the boy could answer, Breaker noticed something a short distance behind the boy. Thinking fast, he said, “General Ambase told me his apprentice was Heckle Wiriest. Is that you?”
“Heckle who?” Nuru said, confused. He shock his head. “Sorry, no. I mean… I can’t imagine why Master Ambase told you that. I’m his apprentice. My name is Nuru Kungurama.”
“You just passed the test,” Breaker said as he relaxed his grip on his blaster rifle. Turning to the other troopers, he said, “I'll vouch for him. The General told me Kungurama’s name earlier. Claimed he sensed his apprentice’s presence on the ship.”
But Knuckles was also confused. “Test?” he said. “Who’s Heckle Wiriest?”
Breaker said, “I just spotted the words on that bag over there.” He pointed to a yellow bag marked Heckle Wiriest Fertilizer on a shelf behind Nuru.
Knuckles and Chatterbox immediately relaxed, too. Knuckles said, “That was a clever way to make sure the boy was telling the truth, Breaker.”
“Well,” the boy said, “you could have just asked me my name. I would have told you … Breaker?”
Breaker nodded. “That’s me.” He gestured to the other troopers. “He’s Knuckles. He’s Chatterbox.”
Knuckles said, ”Sorry to question you like that, Commander Nuru. We just had to be sure you were on the level.”
“Of course,” Nuru said somewhat warily. “Now, I don’t know what your mission was, but… Breaker, you’re the one who rewired the pod to save us, right?”
“Affirmative.”
“Is there any way you can contact my Master’s pod or send a message to the Jedi Temple?”
Breaker shook his head. “Our helmets have long-range comms, but they’re not working. Even if they were, they wouldn’t be able to transmit all the way back to the Temple. As for our mission, we were assigned to help General Ambase find out whether a company called KynachTech deliberately supplied parts for a Separatist battleship.”
“But now that my Master is missing,” Nuru said, “you’ll help me find him. Right?”
Breaker glanced at Knuckles and Chatterbox, then returned his gaze to Nuru. “Under ordinary circumstances, Commander, that would be our first priority. But this mission was compromised. We don’t even know whether the other pod made it to this planet. We need to find a way to contact the Jedi Temple and summon reinforcements.”
“My Master, he is still alive,” Nuru said. “I know it.”
“How? Do your senses detect him?”
Nuru was silent for a moment, then said, “No, I can’t sense him. But Master Ambase must have survived. I know he would have found a way.”
“We’ll discuss this later,” Knuckles said firmly. “If we’re anywhere near this building when those starfighters return, we’re as good as dead. But we can’t be seen walking out in the open with our armor on” He looked to Breaker and Chatterbox. “We need to wear camouflage.”
Chatterbox stepped over to the nearest shelf, picked up a bag of fertilizer, and emptied its contents onto the floor. What he did next made Nuru gasp.
It was still raining outside as the four hooded figures moved away from the storage shed on Kynachi. The smallest figure tried to keep his distance from the others.
“Good thinking, Chatterbox,” Knuckles said as they trudged along the edge of a farm that lay beyond the shed. “These cut-up bags make fine cowls and robes. We look just like refugees or journeymen laborers.”
“You look more like three fertilizer sacks wearing clone trooper boots,” Nuru said. Indeed, the troopers remained fully armored under the fetid bags, and openly carried their blaster rifles. “If you’re lucky, someone might mistake you for bulky bounty hunters.”
“Nothing wrong with bulky,” Knuckles said.
Nuru squinched his nose. “You really stink.”
“That’s not a bad thing, either. People will stay away from us.”
“People?” Nuru said, rolling his eyes. “Microbes will stay away from you!”
“Even better,” Knuckles said.
They arrived at the edge of a wooded area and then proceeded into it. Nuru glanced at Breaker and said, “The troopers who were in my Master’s escape pod. Did you know them all well?”
“Chatterbox and I only served with one of them before, the one we call Sharp.”
Knuckles said, “I served with the others. Trueblood, Close-Shave, Dyre, and No-Nines. Ail good men. Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering,” Nuru said. “I do think it’s interesting how you all distinguish each other. I mean, you’re identical. How do you tell who’s who?”
“Very carefully,” Knuckles said, g
rinning behind his helmet.
Nuru couldn’t tell if Knuckles was joking. Before he could comment, he heard a noise from overhead. “The droid starfighters!” he said. “They’re coming back!”
Nuru and the clones ducked and took cover behind a cluster of trees. They peered back the way they came, past the trees that grew at the farm’s outer edge.
Although their position prevented any view of their abandoned escape pod, they could still see the storage shed that had served as their temporary refuge. A moment later, the slaughters came into view, descending from the clouds.
The starfighters leveled off, then circled over the area beyond the shed, where the escape pod had crashed. Looking away from the starfighters, Breaker turned to face Nuru and said, “It won’t take them long to figure out we’re gone. We should keep mov-”
“Look!” Nuru said.
Breaker followed Nuru’s gaze to see the distant starfighters launching laser fire at the planet’s surface. Past the shed, a plume of fire and smoke rose and blossomed. Despite the distance, the explosion’s flash was so bright that Nuru squinted his red eyes. Barely three seconds later, the sound of the explosion reached his ears as a series of crackling bursts.
The starfighters continued circling for another minute, then tore off, leaving thin trails of smoke across the sky as they headed south. When they were no longer in sight, Knuckles glanced at Chatterbox and muttered, “I think it’s safe to say they destroyed the pod.”
Chatterbox nodded.
Rising from his hiding spot behind the tree. Breaker looked back at Nuru and said, “Ready to move on, sir?”
“Yes.” Nuru lifted his gaze to the smoke trails of the departed starfighters. “I just hope my Master is all right.”
“Don’t worry,” Knuckles said. “He’s in good hands.”
“General Ambase?” Sharp said as he blinked his eyes open.
Star Wars - The Clone Wars - Secret Missions #1 - Breakout Squad Page 3