Chapter 54
Pantora – Black Cliff Prison
The shuttle landed roughly on the flat surface, the landing struts grating against the stone and throwing sparks. Throwing up the seat restraints, Fay punched the door activation button and leapt out before it had lowered. Bultar rolled her eyes, but grabbed her lightsaber and followed the Silverine as she leapt out of the ship. The emerald blade's ethereal song thrummed in the evening air, illuminating where they had landed.
They were in the seven-kilometre wide valley that separated the main civilisation from the Harshplains. The nearby river, only about five meters from where they had landed, was about two kilometres wide. The currents sent ripples of white across the water's surface. Off in the distance, she could see the pinpointed lights of Gronas, a city built into the far wall of the valley. To the north, above the marshes, she could see the flashes of light as the gigantic enemy ship began to descend and rain an assault against the dwindling Republic Forces. Like a thick surgical scalpel, the enemy flagship sliced through the clouds, it's red lasers battering the Republic's shields. But that was in the distance. Her focus was on the prison.
From the reports that she had read before they arrived on Pantora, Bultar knew the Black Cliff Prison was an ancient asylum built by the Pantoran's ancestors and restored as a prisoner confinement facility by Chairman Cho. It was isolated against the cliffs by a bend in the river, trapping the criminals held there in a limited area even if they escaped. The walls of the prison were high, and as the name suggested, they were completely made of black stone excavated from a mine deep below the facility. The old mine tunnels had been turned into the cells that the prisoners occupied.
A single, wide entrance stood before the shuttle, though it had already been overrun. A series of floodlights swung around the walls on automated paths, illuminating a group of about a dozen men and women dressed in orange jumpsuits, disengaged the metal control collars still fastened around their necks. The prisoners were lighting fire to a wooden barricade that stretched across the entrances gate, and a few more groups were slowly making their way down the banks of the river to try and escape through the rushing water. There were no guards to be seen. They were probably barricaded inside against the rush of rioting prisoners, Bultar speculated, holding out until help arrived. That, or they hadn't made it.
She turned around to see who else had joined them for the trip. The quick flight here had been so chaotic that she hadn't gotten the chance to even look at them. Nahdar Vebb, Kit Fisto's padawan, already gripped his lit lightsabre in both hands, ready to defend himself and the troopers behind him should the prisoners have blasters. The Mon Calamari's eyes flicked between the distant flashes of the ariel battle and the prisoners at the gate. Master Fisto was up there, while he was stuck on the ground. Bultar knew the feeling. She yearned to be up there, fighting the larger threat, instead of stuck down here tending to prisoners the Pantoran's had crammed into the facility.
"Remain focussed, Vebb.", she told the padawan.
He nodded in understanding, "Focus on where the Force's current has led me, not where I wanted it to take me."
Bultar hadn't heard that expression, but guessed it was probably the result of having a Nautolaun and a Mon Calamari partnered together. She briefly remembered the lessons her master had taught her, but shook the memories away. Kit and Vebb had been together for nearly five years. It made sense that the boy would have some yearning to be fighting beside his Master.
The remaining members of Altinrose's squadron were here, ready to avenge their fallen leader. Murray had taken command of the three soldiers, hefting their rifles with stoic resolve. Desh Squad, a Republic Special Forces taskforce had been assigned to them. The seven team members were checking their weapons, sighting down the barrels towards the prison.
Hondel, sergeant of the RSF team and the de facto leader of the soldiers, called out to his fellow soldiers. "Listen up people! We have a small team of Jedi with us, and so we need to work together to keep this entire prison on lockdown. I don't know how this riot started, but we need to stop it quickly before they break out into the wilds. According to our probes, the prisoners have gotten access to the armoury and some will be carrying rifles. Specifically, we can expect the standard D-99 assault carbines the guards here use."
A hologram blared from the handheld projector Fay held out, showing a skeletonised wire map of the prison's structure. As Bultar had surmised, there was only one obvious exit. However, she could see maybe four problems they would need to deal with.
"Our first priority is the guards.", Fay said. "We need to round up prisoners as we search room by room and attempt to find them. We also need to stop the prisoners from escaping. Thankfully, once we reach the lower levels, there are cells every few metres with a solid manual lock. Herd as many prisoners there as you can."
The men and women nodded their agreement.
"I see a few key positions to cover.", Bultar stepped forward. Fay had already covered one of the problems she had seen earlier. "The first is here."
She pointed to a locked and fenced area, where three large gunboats were waiting patiently for their pilots. If the prisoners got access to those boats, they could leave easily, or start strafing runs on the prison infrastructure. With only the beat-up shuttle as air support, there was a chance the Jedi would lose those criminals forever. She explained as much to the soldiers before she moved onto the next point.
A little to the left of the main courtyard stood the main control tower. That was likely compromised, giving control of the huge facility to the convicts inside. But that would be the final objective. Once they dealt with the gunboats and prisoners at the gate, they could focus on the tower itself.
The final possible exit was the three large overflow pipes that fed into the river. These were partially located above ground, and they opened deep inside the prison. Once a prisoner got access to that pipe, it was likely that they would be able to escape the facility with little resistance.
"So we need three teams.", Hondel nodded slowly, considering the three points and his assets available. "Chris and Tan, I want you two with Jedi Swan on the main gates. Try to disable before you kill. Hold it for as long as you can before using lethal force. You know the drill. Duke and Murphy, take the speeders and grab any prisoners trying to escape along the river bank. Padawan Vebb, can you take Elias into those pipes? See who you find?"
The young Mon Calamari nodded, "You got it, sergeant."
"Master Fay, you can join the rest of Desh Squad as we flush out the tunnels. Hopefully, we can find the rest of the guards." Hondel paused for a second. "Ressa, I need you and your men to secure those gunboats. Take the shuttle for aircover."
The Chadra-Fan nodded and gave a wicked grin that lit up her batish eyes, "Sounds good, sir."
Fay nodded in agreement. "You heard the man, let's move!"
Everyone moved at once. Bultar and the two soldiers she had been teamed up with, Chris and Tan, hurried to the gates. Fay and the rest of the squad weren't far behind, and so she deflected any bolts that she saw. There were surprisingly few, and she thought for a moment that perhaps the rest of the armed prisoners might be laying a trap.
They were waiting in ambush instead, hunkered down behind crates and exercise equipment as they attempted to snipe at the Republic troops. They needed a quick way to take out their opponents, and Bultar's eyes flicked to the flaming wooden barricade that stretched across the gate entrance. She stepped to the left, blocking a shot aimed at Chris, and slashed through one end of the barricade. Fay clearly saw what Bultar intended. She caught the obstacle with the Force and sent it spinning into the ranks of the armed escapees. In an instant, the barricades had been swept aside by the thrown obstacle.
The RSF soldiers crouched and began shooting, aiming for legs and arms that had been exposed. Prisoners fell, clutching at burnt limbs and scarred waists. For a moment, a path opened up between them and the far buildings that led into the underground cells. Seizing the moment, Hondel charged forward, leading the rest of Desh Squad into the fray. Tan and Chris remained, shooting at any prisoner who got close to their companions. Once they were underground, Fay and Hondel would be on their own. For now, they would have what cover they could.
She heard a loud roar of engines passing overhead and watched as the shuttle flew over the walls, blue plasma streaking from its low-powered cannons and forcing the prisoners to flee from where they were trying were trying to enter the gunboat landing area. She heard the familiar boom as Murray, Ressa and Donovin landed, Ressa firing her heavy AD-90. Now they just had to hold out until the Republic could send reinforcements, or until Fay took the tower and activated the wall turrets.
Glancing to the left, Bultar spotted Chris' eyes peering through her D-12 rifle's scope. The woman hefted the rifle upwards forty degrees and fired into the left wing of a captive Toydarian trying to escape over the walls. The D-12 didn't fire single bolts, instead opting for short bursts of three to five bolts that ensured a single click of the trigger punched through most armour. The D-12 also had other numerous settings and attachments, such as stun needles, shock nets and a small grenade launcher linked under the barrel. The weapons were completely customisable to a soldier's preferences.
Over on her right, the young Zabrak callsigned 'Tan' had just flicked the switch of his rifle to activate said launcher. He pulled the trigger, and a thin shock disk went skidding across the floor. It stopped when it sensed metal underneath – probably an electrical cable – and magnetically locked onto the ground. Five of the prisoners who stopped their headlong charge away from the shuttle providing air support to stare at the strange device could only watch as it lanced out with a dozen bolts of high voltage electricity. The powerful static charge danced across their bodies, and they fell to the ground, unconscious.
Bultar kept deflecting the fire that came at them, trying to deflect it back into the soft tissue around the thighs and biceps. She knew that sometimes an injured man could be taken out of the fight just as well as a dead one, proven by the RSF soldiers earlier. As a Jedi, she could respect that they took the care to leave killing as a final resort.
"We might need to break into code red soon.", Chris commented suddenly, firing another burst of three bolts into a prisoner's weapon. The stolen D-99 shattered in the man's hands.
"Code Red?", Bultar asked skeptically.
"Means that we can switch to aggressive tactics.", Tan answered. "One death might convince the others that escape is futile."
Bultar looked up and stared around the yard. There were probably forty or fifty prisoners still out there, trying to conceive a way past them. Smiling grimly, she looked at the two RSF soldiers. "Let's try and hold out a little longer. Code Red might be needed. But not yet."
Nahdar Vebb and Elias 'Rocker' Ripley, the bucktoothed Tynnan soldier who had been assigned to help secure the pipes, swam upstream using quick and powerful kicks. The currents were stronger than anticipated, and Nahdar could feel a layer of exhaustion kick in. His Mon Calamari heritage helped him to navigate the currents, but the river here had been augmented with air tubes below the surface to whip up the water and stop prisoners trying to cross. It was a rather ingenious system, tossing any swimmer back and forth like a child in a bouncy castle. Only the strongest would survive, and they would be exhausted by the other side.
They soon reached the entrance to the trio semi-submerged sanitation tubes. There was a grate over all three, but a quick slash of Nahdar's lightsabre and they were able to clamber inside and out of the fast-flowing river. Rocker shook the water from his short fur and unslung his rifle from his back. Nahdar was amused to see that it was a spear blaster, native to Mon Cala. They began their hike through the knee-high wastewater, weapons raised. Guided only by the light of Nahdar's blue blade, as no person in their right mind put a series of lights in an overflow drain, they moved steadily forward. Every now and then, Rocker would stop and place something on the wall, then continue walking.
After watching the Tynnan do this for a few hundred metres, Nahdar asked, "What are those?"
"Laser sensors.", Rocker answered. "In case we need to move to another pipe, these sensors will tell us when someone come back through this way."
The Padawan was about to compliment the man's forward thinking when a yellow glow up ahead caught his eye, and he disengaged his lightsaber. He heard his companion click thermal goggles in place, and reached out with the Force in kind. He sensed four lifeforms ahead, none trying to be particularly stealthy. He gestured for Rocker to kneel with his blaster ready, then leapt up. His fingers and toes found purchase on the pipe's ceiling, and he slowly began to crawl forward. When the prisoners passed below, guided by the pathetically dim light of a pocket lamp, he waited for three seconds, then reached over and clicked the comm button strapped to his belt to signal the Tynnan below him. Immediately, Rocker activated his rifle's lights and blinded the prisoners. Even in the glare, Nahdar saw that they were not armed. They turned to run, but didn't make it three feet before Nahdar dropped on top of one and slammed him into the murky water below them.
The remaining three surrendered immediately, and Nahdar grinned as he radioed in the capture to Master Fay. "Bring them back to the prison, kid.", she told him, "We will try to have the cells cleared by the time you get here."
"Understood, Master.", he replied.
Turning to the now cuffed escapees, he gestured for them to walk, and they began the steady hike back through the pipe.