Star Wars - The Clone Wars - Secret Missions #4 - Guardians of the Chiss Key

by Ryder Windham

  Ambase said, “I see you have something that doesn’t belong to you.”

  A loud rush of wind blasted across the room, and the walls and ceiling vanished, revealing an expansive view of towering buildings and spires that surrounded Nuru’s position. Nuru suddenly realized he was not in a room at all, but that he was standing on a skyscraper’s roof in an unfamiliar area on the planet Coruscant.

  He became aware of other figures on the roof. Two clone troopers and a skeletal droid were fighting. He thought the clones were attacking the droid, but then one clone hit the other while the droid just watched.

  While the clones continued their fight, the distant clouds behind Ambase began to churn, generating low rumbles of thunder. Lightning flashed, igniting the mirrored windows of a nearby skyscraper that resembled a raised sword. Ambase moved closer to Nuru, extended one hand forward, and said, “The lightsabers. Give them to me.”

  Nuru shook his head. “No, M—” He choked back on the word Master. The man who stood before him was no longer his Master, no longer a Jedi. To Nuru, he was the man who’d blasted Veeren’s ship to pieces. A killer.

  “I’m no killer,” Ambase said. “And I am your Master.”

  Nuru didn’t know how Ambase was reading his thoughts. He tried to calm his mind, to remember his Jedi training, but he was distracted by the fighting clones and his own simmering emotions.

  “I can feel your anger,” Ambase said. He held out both hands, exposing his palms. “I am defenseless. It’s your move.”

  Nuru thought again of Veeren, how he had watched helplessly as her ship exploded. He felt a violent urge of power course through his veins. Baring his teeth, he grabbed for his lightsaber.

  But his lightsaber was gone, along with his Master’s weapon. And as his hand clutched the empty air beside his belt, he saw both lightsabers materialize instantly in Ambase’s hands.

  Ambase ignited the lightsabers. He crossed the humming blades of energy in front of him, swept them across each other, and the blades made a crackling noise as they scissored toward Nuru’s head.

  “NO!” Nuru shouted as he opened his eyes.

  “Are you all right. Commander?” Breaker said.

  Nuru was seated beside Breaker, behind the two KynachTech pilots, Pikkson and Sunmantle, in the cockpit of the Suwantek freighter. Through the cockpit’s window, he saw cascade of luminous streaks that indicated the ship was still traveling through hyperspace. The pilots had swiveled their seats to glance back at Nuru, who had one hand placed firmly across the two lightsabers at his belt. Nuru blinked his red eyes as he removed his hand from the weapons. “Sorry,” he said. “I had a bad dream.”

  “Oh,” Breaker said. “I didn’t know you ever had bad dreams.”

  “I didn’t, either.” Squirming in his seat, Nuru said, “Is everything all right with the ship and passengers?”

  “The ship is operating fine, sir,” Sunmantle said.

  Breaker said, “Do you want a status report, sir?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Commissioner Sommilor is resting in the crew quarters. Chatterbox is still unconscious but stable. Umbrag remains locked up. Cleaver’s guarding him.”

  “Good,” Nuru said. “I guess I’m just… anxious.”

  The pilots returned their attention to the ship’s controls. Breaker leaned closer to Nuru and whispered, “Commander, you really do look rattled. If you don’t mind my asking… about your dream?”

  “I saw Ring-Sol Ambase. He was on Coruscant. He tried to kill me.”

  Breaker’s brow furrowed. “When we were on Kynachi, you said the reason you left the Jedi Temple and followed Ambase was because you had a feeling that something might go wrong with his mission. And you were right. Everything went very wrong. Could your dream be like that feeling you had? A prediction of what will happen?”

  “I don’t know.” Nuru shook his head. “I’m not certain of very much anymore. Nothing has gone as expected since I left the temple.”

  Breaker sighed. “I began my life in a vat in Kamino ten years ago, which makes me younger than you, sir. And I’m just a soldier without special powers, and I’ll never be as wise as a Jedi. But if there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s that everything doesn’t always go according to plan. You have to be ready to improvise. And while you may feel uncertain about many things, Commander, you can trust that the boys and I would gladly follow you anywhere.”

  Nuru smiled and said, “Thank you, Breaker.” He still felt uneasy about his dream of Ambase. He leaned forward in his seat, tapped Pikkson’s shoulder, and said, “When do we exit hyperspace?”

  “Twenty minutes, sir.”

  Breaker said, “I’m sure you’ll feel better when you return to the temple.”

  “You’re probably right,” Nuru said as he rose from his seat. “Let’s check on Chatterbox and the others.”

  Leaving his helmet on a hook at the buck of his seat, Breaker followed Nuru out of the cockpit. Nuru tried to calm his thoughts, but he could not shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen.

  Knuckles and Gizz were sitting with the trooper they called Sharp in the main hold of the Suwantek freighter, a short distance from where Cleaver stood outside the hatch of the chamber that held Umbrag. Because Gizz was in desperate need of a shower but refused to take one, Knuckles had suggested that he and Sharp wear their helmets, which had built-in air purifiers. This was a relief to the impersonator because it was physically tiring for the Clawdite to maintain his appearance for prolonged periods.

  But even after the Clawdite had relaxed his facial muscles, he was not breathing easily. He was worried about Asajj Ventress and what she might want him to do next.

  He had already sabotaged the life pods on the starship that carried Ring-Sol Ambase to Kynachi. On Kynachi Ventress had ambushed Sharp to allow the Clawdite to impersonate Sharp and infiltrate Breakout Squad. The Clawdite then rigged Lalo Gunn ship to go to the Black Hole sector and activated the ship’s hypercomm to enable interstellar communication while traveling through hyperspace. He had done all these things because if he hadn’t, Ventress would kill him.

  When he had last spoken with Ventress, she had told him to contact her in one hour, but that hour had long passed. Traveling through hyperspace without any access to a hypercomm transmitter, he wouldn’t be able to talk with her again on his own holocomm until he reached Coruscant. He knew she would be furious. As for what the clones would do to him if they discovered he were a Clawdite, he could only imagine.

  “Something wrong, Sharp?” Knuckles said. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

  “I’m worried about Chatterbox,” the Clawdite said.

  Nuru and Breaker walked into the hold. Breaker said, “We just checked in on Chatterbox and Quills. Chatterbox’s condition remains stable.” Looking from Knuckles to Sharp, Breaker said, “Why are you wearing your helmets?” But then his nostrils flared and he looked at Gizz, and Breaker added, “Never mind.”

  Nuru said, “We’ll be exiting hyperspace in about ten minutes.” He looked at the droid standing on the other side of the hold. “Cleaver, make sure Umbrag hasn’t tried to remove his restraints.”

  Cleaver opened the hatch for the chamber that held Umbrag. The droid stepped into the chamber and said, “Commander! Something’s wrong.”

  Nuru ran into the chamber and found Cleaver kneeling beside Umbrag, who was lying on his side on the deck. From what Nuru could see, the binder cuffs were still firmly in place around Umbrag’s wrists and ankles. Umbrag wasn’t moving.

  Nuru dropped down beside Cleaver and looked at the green flesh at the top and back of Umbrag’s head. When he couldn’t detect any sign of a pulse, he examined the pressure controls on Umbrag’s metal chest plate. Breaker, Knuckles, and Sharp moved to the chamber’s hatch in time to hear Nuru ask, “Is his breathing apparatus working?”

  “I’m not certain,” Cleaver said. “Perhaps he switched it off?”

  Gizz moved up behind the troopers outsid
e the chamber and said, “What’s going on in there?”

  Ignoring Gizz, Nuru glanced back at the hatch so he could face the troopers and said, “Get a med kit and a tool kit, and also get Quills!” The three troopers shoved past Gizz, who stumbled backward. As the troopers ran off in different directions, Nuru was returning his attention to Umbrag when something hard smashed against the side of his head.

  Umbrag had been faking unconsciousness and had waited for exactly the right moment to swing both arms at Nuru. As Nuru fell sideways to the deck, Umbrag lifted his own upper body fast, clamped his manacled gauntlets around the young Jedi’s head, and rolled away from Cleaver.

  Cleaver prepared to launch himself at Umbrag, but when Umbrag’s back hit the opposite bulkhead, the Skakoan was holding Nuru like a small shield against his chest, his forearms braced across Nuru’s throat. Through his armored suit’s vocalizer, Umbrag wheezed mechanically, “One wrong move and I’ll break the Jedi’s neck!”

  Cleaver froze. Nuru’s eyes were closed, and his body was limp. From the open hatch, Gizz bellowed, “Let go of the kid, you ugly—!”

  Overseer Umbrag twisted his wrists slightly, simultaneously applying pressure to Nuru’s neck while firing a bolt of energy from a concealed blaster in his left gauntlet. The bolt smashed into Gizz’s upper chest, knocking the giant backward into the main hold.

  Cleaver was still poised to attack when he realized Umbrag had twisted his concealed weapon so its barrel was braced against the bottom of Nuru’s jaw. Cleaver heard one of the troopers yell outside the chamber. Umbrag kept his own eyes fixed on the droid as he said, “I’ll kill the boy unless you do as I say!”

  Cleaver said, “Nuru Kungurama isn’t the only Jedi on board.”

  “What?!”

  Cleaver had been hoping to distract Umbrag, and when he heard the surprise in Umbrag’s voice, he knew his bluff had worked.

  The droid automatically calculated the movements of the troopers outside the hatch and simultaneously calculated how he would leap across the chamber, grab Umbrag’s gauntlets, and rescue Nuru. But just as Cleaver sprang toward Umbrag, he heard a second round of blaster fire tear into the chamber.

  The shot came from the hatch. Cleaver was still traveling through the air when he saw the fired energy bolt race toward Umbrag and hit the only unprotected area of the Skakoan’s armored body. A millisecond after the impact, Cleaver grabbed Umbrag’s gauntlets and pulled them toward his own metal body to prevent the gauntlet blaster from harming anyone else. The droid twisted in midair sо his feet landed on the deck as he yanked the gauntlets free.

  Umbrag had been killed instantly. Cleaver checked to make sure Nuru was still breathing, then turned his metal head to gaze at the open hatch. He saw Sharp standing above Gizz’s fallen body in the doorway. Sharp’s feet were braced between Gizz’s sprawled legs, and he held his blaster rifle so it was still aimed at Umbrag’s head. Behind Sharp, Knuckles and Breaker held their own rifles.

  Still facing Sharp, Cleaver said, “You moved faster than I calculated.”

  The Clawdite stammered, “Is the commander all right?”

  Gizz groaned loudly from the deck. As Knuckles knelt beside Gizz, Breaker leaped past Sharp and into the chamber. Dropping beside Nuru and pulling him away from Umbrag, Breaker cupped the back of Nuru’s bead and said, “Can you hear me, sir?” He lowered his ear over the boy’s mouth, then said, “He’s out cold, but breathing fine.” As he scooped up Nuru and carried him out through the hatch, he said, “No one touches Umbrag. Seal the chamber.”

  Cleaver followed Breaker out of the chamber and sealed the hatch. Knuckles said, “Gizz! You still with us?”

  “Yeah,” Gizz muttered as he shifted his bulk against the deck. “Takes more than one blaster bolt to kill me dead. But I think I could use a med kit. How’s Umbrag?”

  “He won’t be needing a med kit.”

  Gizz grinned. “This day just keeps getting better.”

  While Knuckles opened a med kit and began cleaning Gizz’s wound, Cleaver stared hard at Sharp and said, “I calculated I could rescue the commander without any loss of life. How did you move so fast?”

  The Clawdite said, “I don’t know. I just… moved.”

  Knuckles said, “Let’s just be glad Nuru’s all right, that Umbrag didn’t hurt him. I can’t believe how Umbrag took us all by surprise.”

  Cleaver said, “Perhaps if I’d moved faster…”

  “Maybe you should have Breaker check your circuits,” Knuckles said.

  Cleaver shook his head sadly. “Maybe I’m just not cut out to be a Jedi.”

  Nuru was dimly aware of the sound of the Suwantek freighter’s sublight engines kicking in when he opened his eyes to see Breaker and Quills standing above him.

  From the way they were looming over him, he could tell he was lying on an elevated bunk in the crew’s quarters. Quills was studying a small medical scanner that he held a few centimeters away from Nuru’s head.

  Nuru said, “What… where are we?”

  “Easy, Commander,” Quills said. “You were unconscious for several minutes.”

  “We’ve left hyperspace?”

  “Yes, sir,” Breaker said.

  Nuru took a deep breath. “How close are we to Coruscant?”

  “We just reached orbit.”

  Nuru squeezed his eyes closed. He opened them again. “Did Umbrag hit me?”

  “He did, sir. Just before he locked you in a stranglehold.”

  “Oh,” Nuru said, rubbing his neck. “I guess I didn’t stop him.”

  Breaker scowled. “The boys and I did a lousy job of watching your back, sir. It’s my fault. I should have inspected Umbrag’s armor more carefully when we put the binders on him. He had a blaster built into one of his gauntlets. After he knocked you out, he shot Gizz, and—”

  “Gizz?”

  “He’s all right, sir.”

  Quills nodded in agreement. “I slapped a bacta patch on the big fellow. He’ll be fine, but I should go check on him and Chatterbox.”

  Thinking fast, Nuru said, “Tell the pilots to take us directly to the Galactic Senate building. We need to deliver the commissioner there before we bring Chatterbox for treatment at the Jedi Temple.

  “Aye, sir,” Quills said. He exiled the crew’s quarters.

  Nuru looked at Breaker and said, “Why did Umbrag wait until we’d almost reached Coruscant before he attacked?”

  “I wondered the same thing. Maybe he just panicked. If he had a reason, he took it with him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Umbrag had his gauntlet blaster up against your neck, sir. Sharp shot him. He’s dead.”

  “Oh.” Nuru felt slightly ill as he pushed himself up so he rested on his elbows. “That’s unfortunate.”

  “He could have killed you. Sharp saved your life.”

  “I’m grateful for that, but I’m also sure the Jedi Council and Galactic Senate would have preferred Umbrag still alive so he could have been interrogated.” Nuru checked his belt to make sure Ring-Sol Ambase’s lightsaber was still secured beside his own. “Where’s Umbrag’s body?”

  “Sealed in the chamber where he attacked you,”

  Nuru grimaced. “I need to see it. After we deliver Commissioner Sommilor to the Senate, I expect I’ll have to make a full report to the Jedi Council.”

  Breaker followed Nuru out of the crew’s quarters, and they headed for the main hold. “Commander, if what Aristocra said about spies and assassins being everywhere is true, how can we be sure you’ll be safe anywhere on Coruscant?”

  Nuru sighed. “We’ll just have to stay alert and take our chances.”

  “That’s not exactly what I’d call a plan.”

  “No, it’s not. But as you said, everything doesn’t always go according to plan.”

  Breaker shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t reminded me.”

  The Suwantek freighter was still descending through Coruscant’s atmosphere, heading for the Galactic Se
nate building, when a Kuat Corona-class transport dropped out of hyperspace in the Coruscant system.

  Because thousands of other ships were always arriving at or departing from the heavily populated planet at any given time, no one took any special notice of the Corona.

  Inside the Corona the clone trooper named Sharp turned to Ring-Sol Ambase and said, “Do you want to go straight to the Dacho District, General?”

  Ambase nodded.

  Sharp reached for the flight controls but hesitated. “If I may ask, sir… how do you know Dooku isn’t leading us into a trap?”

  “I don’t know,” Ambase said. “But he could have killed us easily before we left his palace, and he didn’t. So take us down, Sharp, and use stealth. We must not alert other Jedi to our presence.”

  Sharp punched the Corona’s thrusters and moved into the shadow of a passenger carrier that was heading in the general direction of the Dacho District.

  While the Corona approached a sprawl of industrial skyscrapers that made up the Coruscant’s Dacho District, a battered-looking Telgorn dropship exited hyperspace and angled toward the night side of Coruscant.

  The dropship’s name was the Sleight of Hand, and despite her appearance, she carried heavily modified weapons and defensive systems. Her owner was Cad Bane.

  Bane sat in the cockpit alongside Robonino. Robonino said, “You’re certain your client hired you to help a Jedi?”

  “If I weren’t certain,” Bane drawled, “we wouldn’t have left Vaced in such a hurry.” He tapped at a keypad, entering data that had been transmitted by his client. A scope displayed a graphic readout of an industrial sector on Coruscant, then a green blip appeared, along with a string of numbers. The blip represented a starship, and the numbers were the ship’s identification code. Bane said, “Got him.”

  Robonino’s fins bent back against the side of his head. “Got who?”

  “The Jedi, Ring-Sol Ambase. He’s traveling in a Kuat transport over the Dacho District. Looks like he’s going to land at Moxonnic Manufacturing, or rather what’s left of the place.” Bane steered the dropship down through Coruscant’s night sky as he plotted a course for the abandoned facility. “It will be interesting to see him again.”