Star Wars - The Clone Wars - Secret Missions #3 - Duel at Shattered Rock

by Ryder Windham

  Cad Bane faced the two Gammorrean guards and said, “I'm here to see the Hutt.”

  The Gamorreans were stationed at their post, a wide, vaulted doorway that was the private entrance to their boss's headquarters on the largest asteroid in the Bilbringi system. They fixed their beady eyes on Bane and looked him over.

  Bane, a blue-skinned Duros bounty hunter, had artificial breathing tubes embedded in his cheekbones and wore a broad-brimmed hat and long coat. The coat was pushed back to reveal twin blaster pistols bolstered against his thighs, and he carried an old leather satchel in his right hand. Neither Gamorrean seemed impressed by the sight of the Duros or his weapons, but Bane noticed them shift their bulky forms slightly, getting ready to swing their heavy axes at him if he made a wrong move.

  Slowly, carefully, Bane lowered the satchel to the stone floor, leaving it beside his right boot. Rising to his full height, he dipped his blue fingers into a coat pocket and removed two chips of precious metal. He placed one in each hand, then slowly extended his arms so the Gamorreans could see the chips that rested in his palms.

  The nearest guard glanced at the offered chips while the other kept his own gaze fixed on Bane’s holstered blasters. The nearest guard shifted his ax to his right hand, then snatched the two metal chips with his left. He lifted both chips up against the end of his broad snout. His nostrils flared as he sniffed at them. With a grunt of approval, he handed one chip to his partner, who took it greedily.

  Bane smiled politely, waiting for the guards to step aside and let him pass through the doorway. Neither guard budged. The nearest guard held up his newly acquired metal chip and grunted what sounded like a question.

  Bane’s brow wrinkled upward. He said, “You want … more?”

  The guard nodded.

  Bane’s red eyes flicked to the other guard, whose jowls twisted back info a stupid grin that revealed sharp, yellow teeth. “Very well.” Bane sighed. “If it’s more you want…” He tilted his head back, casually distracting the guards with the small motion of his hat’s brim.

  Neither guard saw the bounty hunter’s hands flash to his holsters or the silencer-capped blasters leap into his waiting hands. Muffled pops sounded simultaneously from both barrels as Bane fired at the center of each guard’s forehead. He rapidly returned his blasters to their holsters before he launched his hands forward and yanked the guards’ axes from their suddenly slack fingers. The Gamorreans teetered, then collapsed dead upon the floor.

  Bane dropped to a crouch and quietly placed the axes beside the guards’ bodies. He pried their fingers back and quickly recovered the valuable metal chips that he had never meant for them to keep.

  Pocketing the chips, he grabbed his leather satchel, then rose and stepped over the bodies, moving fast through the vaulted doorway to enter a dark corridor.

  The official designation for the asteroid was Bilbringi VII. Its primary settlement was Bilbringi Depot. Although the Bilbringi system was located along a well-traveled hyperspace route, few traveled through the asteroid-choked system unless they had business with Drixo the Hutt, who owned the depot. Bane did in fact have business to discuss with Drixo, but believed it would be best if he arrived unannounced.

  Bane held his satchel as he strode forward through the corridor. As he neared the corridor’s end, his olfactory glands perceived a strange oily smell—the distinctive scent of roasted two-headed Effrikim worms.

  The corridor emptied into a cavernous, shadowy chamber. A ring of yellow glow rods dangled from the black-rock ceiling and illuminated a wide, circular pit at the chamber’s center. Smoke trailed up from the pit along with the sound of two high voices that were singing a lullaby in Huttese. The smell of roasted worms became more pungent.

  Bane had expected to encounter more guards. so he was not surprised as a dozen rushed at him from the shadows. Two guards were spear-wielding Klatooinians with olive skin and canine muzzles who jabbed at the sides of his coat. Behind Bane, an unseen guard pressed the tip of a blaster rifle’s barrel up against the base of his skull. Bane had no doubt that the unseen guard was a Rodian. Only Rodians smelled that foul.

  “I don’t want trouble,” Bane said, keeping his grip on the satchel while he raised his free hand. “I just need to see your boss.”

  The two singing voices stopped suddenly. A loud yawn rumbled from the pit, and then a deep, feminine voice bellowed, “An intruder? Let me see him before I have him skewered.”

  The Klatooinians removed Bane’s blasters from their holsters and tucked the weapons into their own belts while the Rodian took the satchel. Bane slowly raised both hands in the air as the cluster of guards nudged him toward the edge of the pit.

  Bane looked down and saw the singers he had heard. Two Theelin females, their pale skin mottled with crimson spots that matched their hair, snuggled against the curve of a massive Hutt’s tail. The Hutt herself was a green-skinned sluglike creature with a pair of bulbous eyes and stubby-fingered arms. She was nestled beside a portable cooker, over which an assortment of two-headed worms sizzled on a slowly rotating spit.

  The Hutt tilted her head back and gazed lazily at Bane. “Unless you have a remarkably good explanation for breaking into my private quarters and interrupting my snack time, I’ll be eating Duros steaks for dinner.”

  Bane kept his hands raised. “I am a courier,” he drawled. “Hired to bring one thousand peggats to Drixo the Hutt. The money is in the satchel that the Rodian took from me.”

  “Peggats?” Drixo’s eyes glittered in the light of the glow rods. “Inspect the satchel!”

  Bane heard a shuffling sound from behind, and then the Rodian moved up beside him at the edge of the pit. Facing Drixo, the Rodian said, “The bag’s full of peggats, Your Hugeness.”

  Drixo looked at Bane. “I suppose that’s how you got in here? By bribing my Gamorreans?*

  Bane shrugged. “Good help is hard to find.”

  “Who hired you?” Drixo said suspiciously. “And what exactly does your employer want from me?”

  “My client wishes to remain anonymous.” Extending his fingers to gesture at the walls and ceiling, Bane said, “He wants to purchase Bilbringi Depot.”

  Drixo laughed. “My property is worth more than one thousand peggats. Much more.”

  “My client is very determined … and very generous. If you name your price, I am sure he will—”

  “Your client means nothing to me. My asteroid is nor for sale.”

  “I see,” Bane said. “In that case, I shall take my satchel and leave you in peace.”

  Drixo sighed. “You may leave, but with an empty satchel. The peggats stay with me.”

  Hmm. Bane grimaced.“I don't think my employer will like that very much.”

  “He doesn’t really have a choice. Nor do you.” Drixo bit off both heads of a roasted worm. “Consider yourself lucky that I don’t order my men to flay you alive from here to the Comra system, and then do something really awful to you.”

  Drixo’s guards had a good laugh at this. Bane glanced at the two Theelin and saw they were laughing, too. He wondered if the Theelin laughed out of fear or loyalty to their Hutt master. Returning his gaze to Drixo, he said, “Perhaps there is another possibility. Perhaps I might . . .”

  “Yes?” Drixo said impatiently. “You might what?”

  “Kill everyone in the room.”

  A roar of blaster fire exploded from the entrance of the corridor behind Bane. Having followed the Duros’s path, three IG-86 sentinel droids with cylindrical, drumlike heads and lean, gray-metal bodies lurched
into the chamber with their weapons blazing, spraying energy bolts at every life-form above Drixo’s pit except for Cad Bane.

  Bane stepped back from the edge of the pit and watched his sentinel droids mow down the guards. The Rodian squeezed off a single shot of return fire before a droid cut him in half. The two Klatooinians were so distracted by the sneak attack that they did not notice Bane reach to their belts to retrieve his blaster pistols, Bane fired two precise shots at point-blank range. Both Klatooinians dropped their spears and crumpled to the floor.

  The sentinel droids stopped firing. Bane’s red eyes swept over the chamber to confirm all the guards were dead before he returned to the edge of the pit. He aimed one blaster at Drixo’s head and the other in the general direction of the two Theelin.

  Seeing Bane’s blaster, both Theelin hissed loudly as they reached for their own concealed weapons, a matching pair of curved-blade throwing knives. One Theelin managed to fling her knife up at Bane, and the other was about to do the same, but Bane—realizing the Theelin were loyal to Drixo—ducked fast and let his blaster spit twice. The thrown knife whined past Bane’s head at the same moment that both Theelin dropped and flopped against the Hutt’s tail.

  Drixo looked at the bodies slumped beside her. Lifting her gaze to meet Bane’s, she said, “You didn’t have to kill my pets.”

  “And they didn’t have to throw knives at me,” Bane answered dryly as the three sentinel droids moved up beside him. “All your guards are dead, Drixo. Most unfortunate. If only you had not insisted on keeping Bilbringi Depot.” He gave a slight nod to the three droids. The droids aimed their own blasters at the Hutt in the bottom of the pit.

  “Wait!” Drixo said. “I … I will gladly sell Bilbringi Depot to you!”

  “Sell?” Bane shook his head. “Sorry, Drixo. I should have told you. The peggats were a one-time-only offer. My client was most insistent about that.”

  “Did I say sell?” Drixo said. “Sorry, I meant to say I will gladly give Bilbringi Depot—and the entire asteroid—to you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes! You can take everything!”

  “But I already have,” Bane said. “Fire at will.”

  The droids obeyed as usual.

  “Bilbringi Depot is secured,” Cad Bane reported.

  “You have done well, bounty hunter,” said the Sith Lord Darth Sidious. With his hooded head facing the hologram projector, he was seated in his secret lair in an industrial district of skyscrapers on Coruscant. As the flickering three dimension of image of Bane returned to his gaze, he continued, “I trust you left no evidence of your work.”

  “I never leave a mess unless I’m paid to leave a mess,” Bane replied curtly. “I’m a professional.”

  “Payment has been transferred to your account. I shall contact you when I next require your services.” Darth Sidious broke the connection, and Bane’s hologram vanished. He pressed a button on the communications console, and a different hologram appeared before him.

  The hologram represented Count Dooku, a former Jedi Master who had become the leader of the Separatists and the Confederacy of Independent Systems. An older man with a piercing gaze and immaculately groomed beard and mustache, Dooku was secretly Darth Sidious’s Sith apprentice, Darth Tyranus. Dooku’s hologram bowed, then said, “What is thy bidding, my Master?”

  “We have Bilbringi Depot. Is the Techno Union ready to transport ship-building materials?”

  “Yes, my Master. I shall contact Overseer Umbrag and instruct him to deliver the materials to Bilbringi immediately.”

  “And what of your captive Jedi?”

  “Ring-Sol Ambase is still recovering. But he will soon be ready to carry out the next step of our venture.”

  “Excellent.”

  “All is proceeding as you have foreseen,” Dooku said with admiration. “Republic forces have liberated the planet Kynachi and established tentative diplomatic relations with Chiss space. Bilbringi Depot is ours, and the once neutral Kynachi intends to ally with the Republic.”

  “And as we speak,” Darth Sidious added, “Langu Sommilor, a representative from Kynachi, is bound for Coruscant. His ship is scheduled to refuel on the planet Vaced. And not by coincidence, the freighter that carries Nuru Kungurama and Breakout Squad is traveling the same hyperspace route. It would be advantageous to have Kungurama and Sommilor meet on Vaced.”

  Dooku smiled. “Our plans for Bilbringi can he accelerated.”

  “Kungurama’s visit to Vaced should be … unfortunate.”

  “Master, this is a perfect opportunity to enlist our associates on Mandalore.”

  “Yes,” Darth Sidious hissed. “Yes. Contact the Death Watch. Tell them you require their best sniper.”

  Holding a battle club high over his broad head, the stony-muscled monster with a face in the middle of his torso dodged the long-limbed desert-predator’s spear as he jumped over a small four-legged creature’s spiked tail to land beside a giant savage with leathery skin and a snakelike head. The snake-head savage turned fast and seized the monster’s club. The furious monster tried to grab its club back but stumbled into the waiting claws of a vicious beast with a lashing tail.

  Then the hulking savage did the unthinkable and swung the stolen club at his own ally, a hook-nosed insectoid. The powerful swing sent the insectoid flying into the clawed beast, which shrieked before it vanished, along with the insectoid and the stony-muscled monster, from the hologame table. “That’s against the rules!” said the clone trooper Knuckles as he slammed his bare fist onto the edge of the game table, making the smaller holographic monsters jump. “You’re not supposed to steal weapons and sacrifice your own holomonsters to win like … like that!”

  “I made a fair move,” replied the reprogrammed droid commando named Cleaver. “Screaming about it won't help you.”

  “But you can’t!”

  “Sir, I admit I possess only rudimentary knowledge of the game dejarik,” Cleaver said patiently, “but I believe the combination of the tri-sector sidestep and the carnivore volley is entirely acceptable according to the rules in the Corellian edition of Dejarik for Amateurs and Children”

  Knuckles and Cleaver were seated on opposite sides of the hologame table in the main hold of the Hasty Harpy, a Corellian YT-1760 transport that was presently traveling through hyperspace along the Namadii Corridor, on course for the planet Coruscant. On the other side of the hold, the Harpy’s captain, Lalo Gunn, sat beside the clone trooper Chatterbox. Gunn was teaching Chatterbox how to play sabacc, a card game. Hearing Cleaver’s remarks, Gunn chuckled and said, “Tough luck, Knuckles. You just got beaten by a droid.”

  Knuckles tapped the hologame table with his index firmer. “Care for a rematch. Cleaver?”

  “If it would please you, sir.”

  “Hang on, you two,” interrupted another clone, Breaker, who was hunkered in front of a nearby engineering console’s lower access cabinet. “Don’t start the next game until Sharp and I finish this systems check.” He glanced up at Sharp, who stood beside him. “Press the three switches now.”

  “Okay,” said Sharp. He pressed the switches and held them in place. Like Knuckles, Chatterbox, and Breaker, Sharp was not wearing his helmet at the moment. All four men were identical and resembled Jango Fett, the notorious bounty hunter who had served as the genetic template for the Kaminoan-produced clone soldiers of the Republic Army.

  Breaker looked away from the console’s cabinet to face the Harpy’s one remaining passenger, a boy with red eyes, blue skin, and black hair. Breaker said, “We should he done in a moment, Commander.”

  The young Jedi Nuru Kungurama, a Chiss who had been raised in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, responded with a nod. Seated with his back against a padded bulkhead, Nuru maintained a passive expression as he watched the others. But his mind was hardly relaxed.

  Nuru had never imagined he would find himself in command of a squad of Republic clone troopers fighting Separatist forces on distant worlds. But ev
er since he had left the Temple to follow his Master, Ring-Sol Ambase, on a secret mission to the planet Kynachi, his life had taken many unexpected turns.

  Becoming separated from his Master in orbit of Kynachi. Meeting the former smuggler Lalo Gunn just before they encountered a mysterious Duros bounty hunter. Learning that the Techno Union had conquered Kynachi and secretly occupied the world for a decade. The destruction of Gunn’s navigation droid, Teejay, whose brain was utilized for the construction of Cleaver. The formation of Breakout Squad. Fighting the Separatist Overseer Umbrag and his Techno Union droids. The liberation of Kynachi. The recovery of Ambase’s lightsaber.

  What happened to my Master?

  And then the mission to distant Chiss space, and Nuru’s first encounter with another Chiss. The sneak attack by Overseer Umbrag. The bizarre encounter with the Black Hole Pirates …

  How did we wind up near that uncharted black hole?

  Sharp had confided that he suspected their unexpected detour to the black hole sector had not been an accident—that an unknown enemy might be manipulating their movements across the galaxy. Even more troubling, Sharp surmised that the Harpy’s navi-computer had been rigged to alter the ship’s course. And if Sharp was right…

  We may have a traitor on board.

  Because clone troopers were engineered to serve and obey their Jedi leaders, Nuru had a hard time with the idea that any of the clones could be traitors. As for Lalo Gunn, he could not imagine any reason why she would have deliberately flown her ship to that wretched black hole sector.

  Are we really being manipulated? Is someone playing a dangerous game using us as pawns?

  A fresh set of holomonsters appeared on the table before Knuckles and Cleaver. Knuckles said, “Hey, Breaker. When you refurbished Cleaver’s brain, you didn’t program him to be a dejarik grandmaster, did you?”

  Breaker shook his head. “No, but Cleaver’s a fast learner.”

  “Just my luck,” Knuckles muttered as one of Cleaver’s holomonsters began clobbering another.

  Nuru was struck by a sudden thought. If Breaker is a traitor, could he have reprogrammed Cleaver to tamper with the navi-computer? What if—?