Eat,” Shryne said, forcing some of the rations he had taken from his utility belt on a distracted Olee Starstone. “We don’t know when we’ll have another chance.”
Several hours had passed since they had fled the ambush site, and they’d traveled clear across the city to an empty warehouse close to the access ramps of the northernmost of the landing platform bridges. It was midnight, and they were attired in the garb of three mercenaries they had taken by surprise behind the Argente Tower.
Shryne continued. “There may come a point when we’ll have to get rid of our comlinks, beacon transceivers, and lightsabers. Being taken prisoner could be our way off Murkhana.”
“Should we use Force influence?” Starstone said.
“That might work on a couple of troopers at a time,” Shryne said, “but not an entire platoon, much less a full company.”
Chatak eyed her Padawan with clear intent. “It’s a matter of surviving until the Republic is victorious.”
Shryne had a ration pack lifted to his mouth when his beacon transceiver began to vibrate. He fished the device from the deep pocket of the Koorivar robe and regarded it in silence.
“Could be troopers, tapping into our frequencies,” Chatak said.
Shryne studied the beacon’s small display screen. “It’s a coded burst-transmission from the Temple.”
Chatak hurried to his side to peer over his shoulder. “Can you decipher it?”
“It’s not a simple Nine Thirteen,” Shryne said, referring to the code the Jedi used to locate one another in emergency situations. “Give me a moment.” When the burst-transmission began to recycle, he turned to Chatak in stark incredulity. “The High Council is ordering all Jedi back to Coruscant.”
Chatak was dumbfounded.
“No explanation,” Shryne said.
Chatak stood up and paced away from him. “What could have happened?”
He thought about it. “A follow-up attack on Coruscant by Grievous?”
“Perhaps,” Chatak said. “But that doesn’t account for the clone troopers’ disloyalty.”
“Maybe there’s been a universal clone trooper revolt,” Starstone suggested. “The Kaminoans could have betrayed us. All these years, they could have been in league with Count Dooku. They could have programmed the troopers to revolt at a predetermined time.”
Shryne was glancing at Chatak. “Does she ever stop?”
“I haven’t been able to find the off switch.”
Shryne moved to the nearest window and watched the night sky.
“Republic starfighters will be setting down on the landing platform by late morning,” he said.
Chatak joined him at the window. “Then Murkhana is won.”
Shryne turned to face her. “We have to reach the platform. The troopers have their orders, and now we have ours. If we can seize a transport or starfighters, we may yet be able to return to Coruscant.”
Throughout the long night and morning, explosive light strobed through the warehouse’s arched windows as Republic and Separatist forces clashed at sea and in the air. The battle for the landing platform raged well into the afternoon. But now the Separatist forces were in full retreat, streaming across the two intact bridges, leaving the platform’s defense to homing spider droids, hailfire weapons platforms, and tanks.
By the time the Jedi managed to reach the more northern of the pair of bridges, the wide avenue was so closely packed with fleeing mercenaries and other Separatist fighters they could scarcely make any headway against the flow. A crossing that should have taken an hour required more than three, and the sun was low on the horizon when they reached the end of the bridge.
They were just short of the platform itself when a succession of powerful explosions took out the final hundred meters of the span and split the massive hexagon into thirds, sending hundreds of clone troopers, mercenaries, and Separatist droids plummeting into the churning water.
Shryne knew that the Separatists were responsible for the explosions. Before too long, munitions planted under the final bridge would be detonated, as well. By then, though, there would be no stopping the Republic onslaught.
While mercenaries shouldered past him in a frenzy, Shryne surveyed the forest of bridge pylons left exposed by the explosions, calculating their distance from one another and the odds of accomplishing what he had in mind.
Finally he said: “Either we frog-leap for the platform or we head back into the city.” He looked at Starstone. “You decide.”
Her blue eyes sparkled and she put on a brave face. “Not a problem, Master. We leap for it.”
Shryne almost grinned. “Right. One at a time.”
Chatak put her arm around her Padawan’s shoulder. “Let’s just hope no clone troopers are watching.”
Shryne gestured to his pilfered outfit of robe and headcloth. “We’re just a bunch of very agile mercs.”
Chatak took the lead, with Starstone right on her heels. Shryne waited until they were halfway along before following. The first few leaps were easy, but the closer he got to the platform, the greater the distance between the pylons, many of which had been left with jagged tops. On his penultimate jump, he nearly lost his balance, and on his final leap for the edge of the platform his hands arrived well in front of his feet.
A last-moment grab from Starstone was all that saved him from a plunge into the waves.
“Remind me to mention this to the Council, Padawan,” he told her.
The platform was being hammered, but not past the point of utility. On one fractured section gunships were beginning to land, along with a vanguard flight of troop transports. Elsewhere, battle droids were being flattened by magpulse busters, then picked off before they had a chance to reactivate by V-wings and ARC-170s performing lightning-fast strafing runs.
With night falling, the Jedi wove through firefights and fountaining explosions, using their captured blasters rather than their lightsabers to defend themselves against teams of clone troopers and commandos, though without killing any.
They came to a halt at a ruined stretch of permacrete, at the far end of which a squadron of starfighters was touching down.
“Can you pilot a ship?” Shryne asked Starstone in a rush.
“Only an interceptor, Master. But without an astromech droid I doubt I could fly one to Coruscant. And I’ve never even seen the cockpit of a V-wing.”
Shryne considered it. “Then it’ll have to be an ARC-one-seventy.” He pointed to a bomber that was just landing, probably to refuel. “That’s our ship. It’s our best bet, anyway. Enough chairs for the three of us, and hyperspace-capable.”
Chatak watched the crew for a moment. “We may have to stun the copilot and tail gunner.”
Shryne was on the verge of moving when he felt the beacon transceiver vibrate again, and he pawed it from the deep pocket of the robe.
“What is it, Roan?” Chatak asked while he was staring in stupefaction at the device. “What?” she repeated.
“Another coded burst from the beacon,” he said without moving his gaze from the screen.
“Same order?”
“The opposite.” Eyes wide, he looked up at Chatak and Starstone. “All Jedi are ordered to avoid Coruscant at all costs. We’re to abandon whatever missions we’re involved in, and go into hiding.”
Chatak’s mouth fell open.
Shryne made his lips a thin line. “We still need to get off Murkhana.”
They double-checked their blasters and again were on the verge of setting out for the starfighter when every Separatist droid and war machine on the landing platform abruptly began to power down. At first Shryne thought that another droid buster had been delivered without his being aware of it. Then he realized his mistake.
This was something different.
The droids hadn’t simply been dazzled. They had been deactivated, even the hailfires and tanks. Red photoreceptors lost their glow, alloy limbs and antennas relaxed, every soldier and war machine stood motionless.
At once, a full wing of gunships dropped out of the noon sky, releasing almost a thousand clone troopers, riding polyplast cables to the platform’s ruined surface.
Shryne, Chatak, and Starstone watched helplessly as they were almost instantly surrounded.
“Capture is infinitely preferable to execution,” Shryne said. “It could still be our way out.”
Closest to the ragged edge of the platform, he allowed his blaster, comlink, beacon transceiver, and lightsaber to slip from his hands into the dark waters far below.