Star Wars: Join the Resistance: Escape From Vodran
to do more than just harvest hemmel on Durkteel And though the Force hadn’t yet manifested itself in him he knew it would emerge when the time was right It was why even now sitting alone on the cold hard floor of his cold hard cell he didn’t overly worry The Force was within him somewhere Of course the Force hadn’t been much help in keeping him out of this catastrophe and all the catastrophes that led up to this one There had been plenty of opportunities along the way for the Force to intervene When Mattis arrived on the Resistance base and befriended AG-90 a droid with a singular personality who looked cobbled together from junkyard components the Force might have said Watch out buddy The Force could have cleared its throat in warning when AG introduced Mattis to the droid’s brother Dec Hansen who was charming enough to talk them all into trouble and only sometimes out of it Or when Dec suggested that for a laugh they hack the base’s mainframe That the true reason for this transgression was benign made little difference difference Admiral Ackbar came down hard on Mattis and his new friends The Force had nothing to join the resistance
say about any of that before during or after It did nothing to keep Mattis out of hot water at any step If that wasn’t how the Force worked it was how it should work in Mattis’s opinion It had been a torpedo to blazes since then Admiral Ackbar placed Mattis Dec AG and their friends a bookish behemoth named Sari Nadle and a hyperactive Rodian named Klimo under the rigid instruction of a human rule book called Jo Jerjerrod and his brusque Zeltron second in-command Lorica Demaris AG caught Jo communicating with the First Order and assumed Jo was spying on the Resistance The spite between them came to a head when Jo tried to reset AG-90 whose peculiar personality was due to the fact that his memory had never been wiped since the day Dec’s mom built him The fracas had culminated in all of J-Squadron being sent to do scrapping work on Vodran a murky humid planet on the Outer Rim Vodran was a monster-beset swampland once occupied by a nasty imperious Hutt The atmosphere on Vodran was so muggy and stifling that Mattis felt he could cut it with a dull blade The humidity humidity irritated everyone setting them against each CHApTER 01
other The Resistance was not the place of harmonious harmonious camaraderie Mattis had thought it would be Until it was It took an animal attack really multiple attacks by many animals before J-Squadron pulled together It was the incident with the sarlacc pit that started it Each squadron member Mattis Dec AG Sari Jo Lorica and Klimo had a hand in rescuing someone from that pit After the harrowing incident with the sarlacc Mattis felt he’d found the fellowship he’d expected from the Resistance It was then that Dec confronted Jo about his presumed treachery Jo revealed he had secretly joined the Resistance under the noses of his First Order officer parents He wasn’t a traitor to his squad mates but to his family Mattis felt they understood one another or at least they were starting to Then their group was torn apart First by a rolling pack of snarling stupid tawds followed by a cadre of vicious rancors Dec and Sari escaped in one of their short-range shuttles Klimo commandeered the other one and he was poised to rescue the rest of them but he never made it The last image Mattis had of his Rodian friend was of Klimo in the cockpit of the shuttle struggling to maintain its lift against join the resistance
rancor after rancor until finally the struggle ended tragically Mattis felt horrible and worse he felt responsible Klimo was the first recruit Mattis had met on the transport to the Resistance base He was wiry and sunny always fidgeting and restless for adventure Mattis could only wonder what might have become of Klimo if they hadn’t befriended one another Klimo might have been warm and safe now bouncing like a rathtar after three cups of caf back in his bunk on the base Mattis knew it was unhelpful to his present situation to think that way a guilty conscience wouldn’t free him from this mess but it was difficult not to So again he thought of General Leia Mattis was certain the general felt guilt about the death and chaos she’d had a hand in but he was equally sure that she didn’t dwell upon it for too long Based on the stories he figured she would use that guilt that anger that sense of justice to fuel her crusade She could transform those negative feelings into positive action that was what made her a hero He would do the same and that would make him the hero he knew he was Maybe that’d wake the Force within him When that happened Mattis was confident it CHApTER 01
