Nuru looked at the computer console and said, “This probably controls the locks for the cell doors.
Knuckles said, “I’d bet that Breaker could probably hotwire it.”
“But he’s not here!
Gunn snorted. “I’d bet that Breakers not the only one handy with technology,” she said as she stepped over a shattered droid to examine the console. A moment later, she was pressing buttons while watching numbers flash on an octagonal monitor.
Just then, Knuckles and Chatterbox heard a voice via their helmets’ built-in comm units. “Breaker to Knuckles and Chatterbox. Do you copy?”
Knuckles raised a hand to the side of his helmet and said, “We copy.” He turned to face Nuru and said, “Its Breaker.”
Surprised, Nuru said, “I thought the comms were inoperative.”
“Breaker disabled the frequency jammer,” Knuckles said as he removed his handheld comm unit from his utility heft and gave it to Nuru,
“Breaker?” Nuru said into the comm. “Can you send a signal to Coruscant?”
“Already done, Commander,” Breaker responded. “Is the bounty hunter still with you?”
“No. He pulled a vanishing act, but his schematics led us to the cell block. We’re trying to release Master Ambase and the other-”
“Sir!” Breaker interrupted. “I’m in view of a landing pad outside the factory. A large ship is lifting off.”
“What ship?”
“A Metalorn yacht.”
Before Nuru could comment, a yellow light winked on the computer console in front of Gunn. “That was easy,” she said. “Fifty cells, all occupied.”
Nuru said, “Open them all.”
Gunn pressed a button and a loud pneumatic hiss sounded down from both corridors as the doors opened. A moment later, several golden-haired prisoners peered cautiously out from their cells. Nuru was about to call his Master’s name when a violent explosion shook the entire cell block.
The enormous blast wracked the upper levels of the KynachTech factory, and, a moment later, the explosion’s shock wave struck Breaker. He had left the disabled tower and had been moving stealthily along an access ramp near the landing pad, watching the Metalorn yacht ascend rapidly into the sky, when the shock wave launched him off his feet.
Breaker’s lower body slammed against a metal guardrail at the edge of the ramp. He heard an ugly snap and felt a sudden, terrific pain shoot up through his left leg as his weight carried him over the guardrail and onto the ground below. He landed hard, his armor biting into him as he struck the ground and came to rest at the bottom of a ferrocrete wall.
Everything hurt. Breaker shifted his neck to look up and saw bright yellow flames and dark gray smoke rising from the factory. He tried to push himself up and immediately wished he hadn’t.
“Breaker!” Knuckle’s voice cried out over Breaker’s helmet comlink. “What happened?”
“Big explosion,” Breaker said through clenched teeth. “Don’t know … what caused it. Factory’s on fire.” Bleaker concentrated, pushing his pain out of his mind so he could focus on his memory of the bounty hunters schematics. “Looks bad from out here. Don’t leave by the lift tube. Take the emergency exit.”
“We’ll meet you outside.”
Before Breaker could reply, there was another explosion directly overhead. Breaker’s eyes were still open as the ferrocrete wall came crashing down on top of him.
Dust and small bits of mortar fell from the cell block ceiling as the next blast shook the building. Some of the prisoners ducked back into their cells while others leaped out into the corridors. Nuru had hoped to see his silver-haired Master, but there was no sign of Ring-Sol Ambase.
Knuckles positioned himself so he could see down both corridors, then said, “We’re Republic Army troopers. If you’re against the Federation, then youre with us!”
One of the prisoners said, “Republic Army?”
“That’s right,” Knuckles said. “Just call us the Breakout Squad,”
A dark-haired man lumped out from one of the cells. Although he was clad in a simple, gray tunic and pants, his swarthy features betrayed his identity as a clone trooper. The clone called out, “Knuckles?”
“Trueblood!” Knuckles said. The last time he’d seen Trueblood was when he’d glimpsed him inside the escape pod with four other clones and General Ambase. “I’d know that face anywhere!
Trueblood shouted, “Come on, men. It’s not a trap. It’s Knuckles!”
Three more gray-clad clones poked their heads out of other cells. Knuckles recognized them as Close-Shave, No-Nines, and Sharp, who had been in the same escape pod as Trueblood. At the same time, mote golden-haired prisoners, all natives of Kynachi, came pouring out of the other cells and shuffled past the clones, making their way toward the antechamber.
Knuckles looked at Trueblood and said, “Dyre didn’t make it?”
“Killed by droids after our escape pod crash-landed and - look out!”
Knuckles turned fast, saw Cleaver moving in the antechamber, then turned back to the four startled clones and said, “Relax, fellas. That’s Cleaver. He’s on our side.”
“A friendly droid commando?” Sharp said. “That’s a new one to us!”
Nuru pushed his way past the Kynachi natives until he arrived at Knuckles’s side. He looked up at Trueblood and the other gray-clad clones and said, “I’m Nuru Kungurama, Master Ambase’s apprentice. Is he with you?”
Trueblood shook his head. “Sorry, we don’t know where General Ambase is. There was a gas leak in our escape pod. Knocked us all out before we landed. The General was still unconscious when the droids overwhelmed us and killed Dyre. They took your master along with our armor after they brought us here.”
Nuru grimaced, then bolted away from the clones. “Master Ambase! Master Ambase!” He darted into one empty cell, and then into the next, searching for any sign of the missing Jedi.
Another explosion sounded overhead, sending more dust and larger chunks of mortar down from the ceiling, and prompting several prisoners to cry out in alarm. Desperate to find his Master, Nuru ran back into the corridor and was about to enter the next empty cell when Knuckles grabbed him by the arm.
“Commander Nuru,” Knuckles said, as dust rained down on his helmet. “We can’t stay here. The ceiling’s starting to buckle.”
Despite the ceiling’s impending collapse, Nuru calmed himself and reached out with the Force, hoping to sense his Master. Only then did he know the truth with certainty. Ring-Sol Ambase was gone.
Nuru pulled away from Knuckles and they both quickly followed the rescued clones to the antechamber. As the four liberated clones arrived, they snatched up the blaster rifles from the floor beside the fallen droids.
“Move along, everyone!” Gunn shouted at the fleeing prisoners. “Don’t worry about the droid commando, he’s with us! Move, move, move!”
Despite Gunn’s remark abut Cleaver, the prisoners eyed the refurbished droid warily as they moved past it and followed Trueblood. Standing beside the droid, Chatterbox waved everyone toward the emergency exit, a doorway to a flight of stairs that led to an escape tunnel.
As Sharp hefted his newly acquired weapon, he saw the trooper who was directing the escapees to the exit. “Chatterbox!”
Chatterbox said, “Hi, Sharp.”
Gunn’s head turned as she heard Chatterbox’s voice for the first time, and she said, “Quiet, you!” As she moved toward the exit, she saw Nuru and Knuckles were right behind her and said, “You’re the last. Come on, move!”
Nuru and Knuckles ran for the exit. Knuckles saw Cleaver and said, “Don’t just stand there! Run!”
A moment after Cleaver followed the others through the exit, the ceiling collapsed behind him. Dust blasted up the stairway, and Nuru found himself once again holding his breath with Knuckles by his side. They finally reached the escape tunnel, where the air cleared and Nuru was able to breathe again.
As they proce
eded through the tunnel, Nuru said, “Knuckles, tell me what happened with the bounty hunter.”
“I’m not sure,” Knuckles said. “Breaker, Chatterbox, and I were suspicious of him from the start. But when he said there wasn’t time to disable the frequency jammer, and also claimed that his pass codes were only good to get his ship through the blockade, we were certain he was up to something. Disabling the frequency jammer was the only way that we could summon help. And although it’s generally illegal to transfer pass codes from one ship’s transponder to another, it’s not impossible.”
“So, when did you work this out with the other troopers?”
“Remember what Breaker said when I asked him what he thought of the bounty hunter’s plan?”
Nuru thought back. “Yes. He said it would be a ‘walk in the park.’ I thought that meant he thought the plan would be easy to pull off.”
“It meant that Breaker saw an opportunity to break away from us so he could tackle the frequency jammer. And that’s what he did. We couldn’t tell you without alerting the bounty hunter. I don’t know where he went, but one thing’s for sure. He didn’t bust anyone out of prison. We did that.”
The tunnel’s exit was an open bulkhead beside one of the factory’s outbuildings, not far from the landing pad where Umbrag had fled in his Metalorn yacht. Trueblood, Close-Shave, and No-Nines led the golden-haired natives and assorted allies out of the tunnel.
Although the outbuilding was a good distance away from the larger factory building, the factory was such an inferno that the heat was almost unbearable.
Nuru, Knuckles, and Cleaver stepped outside. They had expected to encounter more battle droids, but the only ones they saw were lying on the ground, totally deactivated.
“What happened to the droids?” Nuru said.
“Breaker said he saw a ship taking off,” Knuckles said. “My guess is the whole Trade Federation blockade is gone, and they took their droid control ship with them. Without the control ship, these droids are just scrap metal.”
Nuru glanced at Cleaver and said, “Then why are you still working?”
Cleaver pointed to his metal chest. “Breaker made me independent.”
Nuru looked around. “Where is Breaker?”
“Hang on.” Speaking into his helmet’s comlink, Knuckles said, “Breaker? Breaker? Where are you?”
There was an awful moment of silence, then Breaker answered, “Knuckles … I’m done for. Get out of here.”
Knuckles looked to Nuru and said, “Breaker’s down.”
“Do you know where?”
Knuckles consulted a sensor in his helmet, then pointed to a flaming pile of ferrocrete rubble below a wall near the vacant landing pad. “There.”
Nuru looked at Cleaver, and saw that the droid was following Knuckles’s gaze. Nuru said, “Find him.”
Still carrying his shock-stick. Cleaver sprinted off, running toward the rubble. Despite Knuckles’s training, he yielded to some basic instinct and bolted after the droid commando.
“Stop, Knuckles!” Nuru shouted as Gunn and Chatterbox moved beside him. “It’s too hot!”
Knuckles kept running. Cleaver arrived at the site first, but it was Knuckles who spotted Breaker’s hand sticking out from under a ferrocrete block.
“Cleaver!” Knuckles said, ignoring the incredible heat. “Over here.”
The droid drove his shock-stick into the ferrocrete and the block shattered. Knuckles plunged his hands into the rubble and began digging, tossing chunks of ferrocrete aside.
They quickly exposed one of Breaker’s armored arms. Cleaver stabbed at the ferrocrete again, and Knuckles kept digging. In less than a minute, they hauled Breaker out of the rubble.
With Knuckles right behind him, Cleaver scooped Breaker up in his metal arms and ran back to the bulkhead. They found that the Kynachi natives had already gone, but Nuru, Gunn, Chatterbox, and the plainclothes clones were waiting for them.
Cleaver carefully placed Breaker on the ground. Sharp said, “Breaker! I didn’t expect to see you ever again either!”
As Nuru knelt and removed Breaker’s helmet, Knuckles saw something move out of the edge of his own helmet’s visor. He turned his gaze from his wounded ally and said, “Well, look who decided to rejoin us.”
It was the Duros bounty hunter. He was walking away from one of the burning structures, moving straight toward Nuru and the others. Knuckles started to raise his blaster rifle at the approaching figure but Nuru reached out and grabbed the rifle’s barrel, pushing it aside.
“Wait,” Nuru said as he stood and moved away from Breaker’s body.
“That bounty hunter’s not to be trusted, Commander Nuru.”
“I want to hear what he has to say.”
Cad Bane came to a stop and said, “Sorry I ran out on you, but I wasn’t getting paid to tangle with that many droids.”
Nuru said, “Where’d you go? We know you never made it to the cell block.”
“The prisoner I was hired to find was never in the cell block,” Bane said. “I'm afraid he was gone before I got here.”
“So,” Nuru said, “does that mean you’re leaving empty-handed?”
“Looks that way.” Bane turned his head and spat at the ground. Then he looked back at Nuru and said, “But that doesn’t mean you have to leave the same way.”
The bounty hunter moved one hand slowly toward the back of his belt. The clone troopers braced themselves, preparing to fire at him if he made one false move. But when the Duros’s hand moved out from behind his back, he was holding something very unexpected. It was a lightsaber.
Bane did not activate the weapon, but took a cautious step closer to Nuru and held it out to him. “I found this while I was searching for my own quarry,” Bane said. “I suspect it may have belonged to the Jedi you sought.”
Nuru Took the lightsaber. It was Ambase’s weapon. He said, “Was there no other sign of him?”
“Only the lightsaber,” Bane said. “For what it’s worth, I hope you find him.”
Nuru bowed his head slightly and said, “Thank you.” As the bounty hunter started to turn and walk away, Nuru said, “What'd you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” Bane said. He sauntered off, moving past the burning structures until he was gone,
Nuru secured his Master’s lightsaber beside his own at his belt, then bent back down beside Breaker. “Breaker? Are you all right?”
“Leg’s broken,” Breaker said. “Three ribs, too. Other than that, I’m good to go.”
Knuckles said, “Let’s get him back to Gunn’s ship.”
Cad Bane guided the gravsled that he’d taken from the factory back to his starship at Docking Bay 21. On the gravsled rested a two-meter-long, black plastoid box with an array of sensors on its side. Bane lowered his ship’s landing ramp and walked alongside the gravsled as he guided it into the main cabin.
Bane raised the landing platform, then went to the ship’s cockpit and initiated the launch sequence. A few minutes later, his ship was rising away from the Kynachi spaceport. When he reached space, he found that the Trade Federation blockade was gone.
Three Republic Navy Venator-class Star Destroyers suddenly dropped out of hyperspace to arrive in Kynachi’s orbit. Bane’s pass codes allowed him to avoid the Destroyers as easily as he had earlier bypassed the Federation blockade.
As the bounty hunter’s ship sped away from Kynachi, Bane set the flight controls on autopilot and returned to the main cabin. Standing beside a console near the gravsled and the black plastoid box it carried, he activated a holocomm unit. Blue light flickered above the holoprojector, and formed into the image of the hooded Darth Sidious.
Darth Sidious said, “You have the body?”
“See for yourself,” Bane said. He pressed a switch on the box’s side, and the upper half of the box slid back silently to reveal a transparisteel coffin. Inside the coffin lay the body of Ring-Sol Ambase. His eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving.
Darth Sidious said, “The Jedi is alive?”
“That’s what you paid me for.” Bane pointed to a life system monitor on the coffin’s side and said, “He may not look it, but all his vital signs are good, even though he’s not generating enough energy for another Jedi to detect him.”
“Then his Padawan does not suspect you of anything?”
Bane grinned. “When I gave him his Master’s lightsaber, he thanked me.”
“Excellent.”
“Where do you want the Jedi delivered?”
“To the fifth moon in the Bogden system,” Darth Sidious said. “You will receive further instructions there.” The Sith Lord broke the connection, and his hologram flickered out.
“Master Ring-Sol Ambase’s disappearance, most distressing this is,” said the small, pointy-eared Jedi Master who appeared as a hologram above a console in Lalo Gunn’s transport. “Also disturbing are your actions, young one.”
Nuru stood before the console, facing the hologram of the Jedi Master Yoda. Behind Nuru, Breaker was sitting on the edge of Gunn’s retractable workbench with tape wrapped around his ribcage and a bacta-filled medpac covering his left thigh.
Knuckles, Chatterbox, Gunn, and Cleaver were also in the cabin, silently watching Nuru’s communication. Gunns transport was still on Kynachi, but now there were two Republic gunships resting on the ground beside it.
“I’m sorry, Master Yoda,” Nuru said. “I know it’s no excuse, but before my Master left Coruscant, I suddenly felt that he was in great danger. I believe it was the Force that guided my feelings. I only hoped that I might be able to help him.
“Informed the Jedi Council, you should have,” Yoda said. “Not left the Temple as you did. A time of war, this is. You were ... careless.”
A second hologram appeared beside Yoda, and Nuru was surprised to see that it was Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.
“Please forgive me for interrupting, Master Yoda,” Palpatine’s hologram said. “But I have just received a report that Separatist forces attacked Ring-Sol Ambase’s ship at Kynachi.”
Star Wars - The Clone Wars - Secret Missions #1 - Breakout Squad Page 8