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

by Ryder Windham

  “Hey!” someone roared behind Nuru. He glanced over his shoulder to see the giant himself, stepping away from a tree outside the trading post. “Get offa my bike!”

  Nuru leaped onto a smaller swoop and seized the controllers without difficulty. “I’m just borrowing this,” he said before he punched the ignition.

  He gunned the engine, then zoomed away from the trading post. Unprepared for the swoop’s incredible velocity, he tightened his grip on the handlebars and had to press his thighs against the saddle to keep his legs from flying out from under him. Within seconds, he was racing over the grassy field that lay between the spaceport and the forest.

  Just as he had sprinted across the spaceport, Nuru cut a zigzag path over the field. He believed weaving from side to side was the best way to avoid making himself an easy target.

  But then he swerved too hard. The swoop went into an unexpected half roll that carried him upside down. Blades of grass whipped at his inverted head as he hurtled forward. He adjusted his grip on one of the handlebars, and the swoop completed its roll so he was once again upright. No sooner had be regained control of the swoop when he sensed movement behind him. He risked a quick look back. Four swoops were tearing away from the spaceport, racing after him. Frutchoo and the giant were in the lead, followed by the human bikers, two of whom were seated on a single swoop. Nuru realized the giant must have alerted the other members of the gang, who were swerving wildly. He suspected they were so angry they couldn’t steer straight.

  He doubted Frutchoo’s gang had any interest in his reasons for taking one of their swoops.

  Hudu Shiv brought the Republic trooper’s helmet with him as he climbed down the tree. During his descent, he saw Nuru Kungurama run to the trading post and take a swoop, and now, as he walked toward his own speeder bike, he could hear the swoop’s engine getting increasingly louder as it approached the forest. He glanced at the tree trunk where he had left the clone, who remained bound and motionless.

  Reaching to his own belt, Shiv unclasped the leather utility belt that Dooku had given him. He tossed the belt down so it fell beside the clone’s body, where it would he easily found.

  Shiv heard more swoops roaring across the distance. He trotted past his speeder bike and moved around a tree to see Kungurama steering a swoop low over the grassy field with four swoops coming up fast behind him.

  Shiv considered Count Dooku’s orders. He was not about to let the swoop gang interfere with the mission. He reached to the back of his belt and unclipped a thermal detonator. He set the detonator on a ten-second delay, placed it in the clone trooper’s helmet, and then threw the helmet past the trees so it arced over the field and into the path of the approaching swoops.

  Looking away from the swoops on his tail, Nuru turned his head just in time to see a white helmet ramble through the air in front of him.

  Breaker?

  He pushed hard at the swoop’s maneuvering controls to avoid a collision with the helmet. As the helmet sailed past him, he saw a glint of metal inside it, and his instincts screamed Grenade!

  The helmet bounced off the ground and was still rolling as Nuru pumped the brakes and spun the swoop through a tight turn that left him facing the incoming bikers. Letting go of the controls, he raised his hands and shouted, “Stop!”

  The swoop gang didn’t break or turn, but Nuru saw the giant’s eyes go wide with surprise. And then the grenade detonated.

  The shock wave tossed Nuru’s swoop back through the air and nearly threw him from his saddle. The ground where the helmet had landed was now a gaping crater filled with a raging fireball that rapidly mushroomed into a tower of smoke. The shredded, blazing remains of swoops and bikers flew in all directions from the blast radius.

  A wave of heat hit Nuru at the same time as the mangled remains of one human biker landed below his swoop. A split second later, the giant biker’s body collapsed with a loud thud upon a slope that led up to a cluster of trees. Nuru had to fight back a feeling of nausea. He felt awful that his attempt to warn the bikers about the grenade had failed. Although the bikers had been hostile, he had never considered them enemies, and had never meant to lead them to their deaths.

  But then, he had not been the one who had thrown the grenade. Looking beyond the body of the giant biker to the cluster of trees, he saw a shadowy figure climbing onto a speeder bike. Nuru gripped his swoop’s controls, swung the swoop toward the trees, and rocketed forward.

  As Nuru neared the trees, the mysterious biker sped off into the forest. Nuru was about to give chase when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a thrashing movement at the base of one tree. Turning his head, he found Breaker bound to the tree’s trunk. Breaker was blindfolded and gagged, struggling to release himself. Although Nuru was immediately concerned and disturbed by the sight of Breaker so helpless, he was also relieved, for now he was certain that Breaker was not the man who had shot Sommilor and the others. He also felt guilty. How could I have suspected Breaker?

  Nuru brought the swoop to a hovering stop near the fallen giant’s body. He jumped off the swoop and ran to Breaker’s side. “Breaker! Hold still!” He tugged off the blindfold and gag, then ignited his lightsaber and cut through the plastifiber bonds. In his haste, he failed to notice the leather utility belt that rested on the ground to his left.

  “What hit me?” Breaker muttered, dazed. “Heard a loud bang and—” Breaker’s eyes closed, and then his body went slack as he slid back into unconsciousness.”

  Nuru saw Breaker was still breathing. He switched on his comlink.

  “Commander!” Sharp’s voice came from the comm. “Are you all right? We saw the explosion from the spaceport and—!”

  “I’m fine,” Nuru interrupted, “but Breaker’s down. Come get him.” Leaving Breaker, he continued speaking as he ran back to the swoop. “The sniper fled into the woods. I can’t let him escape.”

  “Sir, you should wait for us to—”

  Nuru switched off the comlink and jumped back onto the swoop. He did not want to leave Breaker behind, but he could not risk losing the sniper. But just as he gripped the swoop’s controls, the swoop jerked suddenly backward in the air, as if it had been snared by a powerful tractor beam.

  Nuru glanced back and was stunned to see the orange-skinned giant standing upright, his arms wrapped around the back of the swoop. The giant’s vest was smoldering, and a freshly blistered wound stretched across his left bicep. Nuru was about to reach for his lightsaber when the giant said, “That guy I saw taking off on a speeder bike. He a friend of yours?”

  Still startled, Nuru shook his head. “He’s a sniper,” he said urgently, “he just shot some people. I took the swoop to go after him.”

  “I got a bone to pick with him, too, so shove over!” The giant swung himself onto the swoop so he was seated behind Nuru, and the swoop shuddered under his weight. Before Nuru could protest, the giant reached past the boy’s arms and seized the controls. The swoop’s engine roared, and they launched into the woods.

  Pressed back against the giant’s chest, Nuru watched the trees whip past the swoop at a sickening speed. Raising his voice so he could be heard over the engine, he said, “I’m sorry about your friends.”

  “Those losers weren’t my friends,™ the giant said as he tore through a small clearing. “I was just passing time.”

  “But … if they weren’t your friends, why do you want to get the sniper?”

  “He wasted my swoop!”

  Nuru did not have to look at the speedometer to know they were traveling faster than he ever would have dared on his own through the densely wooded area. Although the giant steered the swoop with amazing agility, Nuru realized he was somewhat at the enormous biker’s mercy.

  Sharp had used his comlink to alert the other members of Breakout Squad that Nuru had gone after the sniper. Gunn and Chatterbox were already seated in the Hasty Harpy’s cockpit and had the engines up and running. Cleaver stood at the bottom of the Harpy’s boarding ramp at the spa
ceport, waiting for Sharp and Knuckles.

  Against Cleaver’s left thigh clung the magnetic gray-metal cylinder that he had found earlier on the ship’s hull. The droid had hung on to the cylinder for the simple reason that Gunn had told him to save it for later, and his leg seemed like a practical place to keep it.

  Cleaver saw Sharp and Knuckles running toward the Harpy. He said, “The Kynachi ship is secured?”

  “Yes,” Sharp answered as he hurried up the ramp with Knuckles and Cleaver right behind him. Leaving Knuckles and Cleaver in the main hold, Sharp grabbed his helmet and pulled it over his head before he ran to the cockpit.

  The Harpy lifted off the ground, rotated horizontally, then launched toward the column of smoke and fire that rose near the edge of the woods. Sharp arrived, in the cockpit and saw Chatterbox was already wearing his own helmet. Gunn kept her eyes on the small inferno in front of her as she said, “Did the kid tell you how bad Breaker was hurt?”

  “No,” Sharp said. “Just that he was down.”

  Gunn guided the Harpy around the smoke and brought the ship close to the edge of the woods. Chatterbox leaned forward in his seat, pointed to the bottom of a tree, and said, “There’s Breaker.”

  Gunn scowled. “Are you gonna talk all day or are you gonna go get him?” But Chatterbox was already following Sharp out of the cockpit.

  Gunn adjusted the controls, and the Harpy came to a hover. Knuckles, Chatterbox, Sharp, and Cleaver were all carrying weapons as they spilled out of the ship. They ran to Breaker and found him still unconscious. They also found the leather utility belt that the sniper had left behind.

  Cleaver snatched up the belt. The droid and Chatterbox watched for any sign of danger while Sharp and Knuckles lifted Breaker. When they were all back inside the Harpy’s main hold, Knuckles hit the ship’s intercom and said, “All on board, Gunn. Let’s find the commander.”

  Nuru struggled to remain calm as the giant sent the swoop through the gap in a split-boughed tree. Raising his voice so he could be heard over the swoop’s engine, Nuru shouted, “Did you see which way the speeder went?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know we’re going the right way?”

  “Don’t need to see him.” The giant’s nostrils flared above the gold ring that dangled from his nose. “I can smell his bike’s exhaust trail.’

  Nuru saw shafts of light up ahead and realized they were nearing the outer edge of the forest. The giant bellowed, “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Nuru. What’s yours?”

  “Gizman. But call me Gizz. Everybody does.”

  With a loud rush of wind and swirling leaves, the swoop burst out of the forest like a cumbersome missile. A wide, grassy plain yawned out before them, and beyond that, a rocky plateau.

  Because Nuru had lost precious time while releasing Breaker from his bonds and making Gizz’s acquaintance, he feared he had little chance of catching up with the sniper. But as the swoop tore over the grass, he sighted a distant object moving toward the plateau. It was the speeder hike. “There he is!”

  “I’m on him.”

  Nuru locked his eyes on the speeder bike while Gizz accelerated, closing the distance between them and their quarry. They were still too far away for Nuru to have a clear view of the biker himself. Several seconds later, Gizz said, “Well, I’ll be blasted.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s heading for Shattered Rock.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Not what, where. Shattered Rock’s a canyon.”

  “Is it hazardous?”

  Gizz grinned. “That’s one way of putting it.” He twisted the throttle, and the swoop rocketed after the fleeing bike.

  Hudu Shiv knew the Jedi might try to pursue him. But as he rode his speeder back to the canyon where he had left his starship, he was surprised when he glanced back and saw the swoop coming up fast on his tail. He was further surprised to see his pursuer was not Nuru Kungurama, but the largest member of the swoop gang that he had bombed and left for dead. But then he noticed the small, blue-skinned boy seated in front of the giant biker, and he was even more surprised. Not only had the giant survived the blast, but he was apparently allied with the Jedi, if only for the moment.

  Shiv calculated that the more powerful swoop would overtake him in seconds. He popped open a control panel that was built into the left handlebar and pressed a button.

  Nuru and Gizz were less than thirty meters behind the speeder bike and gaining fast when they both saw more than a dozen small objects eject from behind the biker’s saddle. As the objects fell away from the bike and bounced across the hard ground, Gizz muttered, “Aw, poodoo.”

  The objects were compact concussion grenades. Nuru doubted that Gizz would be able to swerve around the explosives, not at their present speed. Without warning, Gizz jerked the controls and launched the swoop into a steep ascent just as the nearest grenades detonated. Nuru squinted his eyes as he found himself unexpectedly facing Vaced’s sun, and then a blast of hot dust caught the swoop’s tail, jouncing the riders as they continued to race for the sky. The remaining grenades detonated in a rippling series of explosions beneath them.

  Gizz struggled with the swoop’s controls, briefly leveling off before he steered into a dive. Nuru saw they were descending straight at the speeder bike, which flew like a dart, close to its own shadow, dangerously low over the ground, heading for the mouth of a ravine. Gizz held his course behind the sniper but stayed well above the ground to avoid traveling into the path of more grenades.

  They followed the speeder bike into the ravine. Nuru had never before seen anything quite like the vibrantly colorful rock formations that lined the walls, but thanks to his education at the Jedi Temple, he recognized them as petrified trees. Most were columnar formations, but some ancient boughs and limbs had transformed into strangely twisted, sharp-edged coils of intertwined tone

  Nuru saw the swoop’s shadow snaking along the rocky wall to his left. As they followed the biker through a bend in the ravine, the shadow began gliding rapidly downward over the rocks, and Nuru realized it was about to slide into the sniper’s visual range. Not wanting to alert the sniper to the swoop’s position, Nuru was about to caution Gizz when he noticed Gizz had just removed one hand from the swoop’s controls so he could draw his blaster pistol. Gizz fired at the same moment that the swoop’s shadow slid across the ravine floor, right in front of the speeder bike.

  Evidently, the sniper saw the shadow because he swerved slightly for no other apparent reason. As the fired energy bolt sailed past his shoulder and slammed into the ground, the sniper held tight to the controls with one hand while yanking his blaster rifle free from its sling, then swiftly tilted the weapon back so its long barrel rested against his shoulder. Without glancing back, he squeezed the trigger, launching an energy bolt straight at Nuru and Gizz.

  Nuru saw the incoming bolt and calculated that it would strike Gizz’s upper body. Because Gizz only had one hand on the swoop’s controls, Nuru had just enough elbow room to draw and ignite his lightsaber. He extended the blade forward at a sharp angle, and the fired bolt smacked into the blade and rebounded into the ravine wall.

  “Don’t kill him, Gizz!” Nuru said. “I need to question him!”

  “Son of a nerf herder!” Gizz roared at the sight of the lightsaber. Still holding his blaster, he said, “You’re a Jedi?”

  “Look out!” Nuru cried as he deactivated his blade and pushed against Gizz’s left wrist. The swoop tilted hard to the left just in time to avoid striking a broad overhanging limb of a petrified tree.

  “You got nothing on me!” Gizz said as he bolstered his blaster. Returning both hands to the control bars, he continued, “I wasn’t anywhere near the Zygian Savings and Loan on Treylon II three months ago!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re both after the sniper, remember?

  “Oh. Right. The sniper.”

  As Gizz steered around a bend and the
swoop hurtled past more stony limbs, Nuru said, “I’ve lost him.”

  “My nose hasn’t.” Gizz lifted a thick finger away from a handlebar and pointed downward. “Look there.”

  Nuru followed Gizz’s gaze and saw the sniper racing across the bottom of the ravine, deftly steering his speeder past a cluster of immense boulders. The sniper zipped into a dark chasm. Nuru said, “Where does that gap lead?”

  “Nowhere!” Gizz snorted. “We’ve got him trapped!” He kicked the foot pedals and descended after the speeder bike. Nuru felt his stomach clench as Gizz took a steep shortcut through a tangle of rock formations before he leveled off fast, barely three meters off the ground.

  They were zooming toward the chasm when Nuru sensed danger, and then a sudden pang of dread. A moment later, the sniper launched out of the chasm, heading straight for the swoop, with his rifle held forward. Nuru was still registering the fact that the sniper must have circled back within the chasm when the sniper fired.

  Gizz was hunched forward on the swoop. Both hands gripping the control bars, his body practically wrapped around Nuru, leaving the Jedi unable to draw his lightsaber without harming the monstrous biker. All Nuru could do was duck as the energy bolt smashed into Gizz’s upper chest. Gizz howled in pain and rage. The sniper fired again, and the swoop’s control vanes exploded into metal shreds.

  And then Nuru had a clear view of the figure on the speeder bike. He was startled that the figure was clad in the unmistakable armor of a Mandalorian warrior.

  The damaged swoop plunged toward the ravine’s floor. Nuru was confident that he could leap away safely, but was less certain that he could do anything to help Gizz. Before Nuru could do anything, he was caught in the crook of Gizz’s left arm, and then the giant tumbled off the swoop, taking Nuru with him.