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ISBN 978-1-4847-0609-1
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Contents
Prologue
Part 1: Call to Action
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part 2: Rebel Resolve
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part 3: Fire Across the Galaxy
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
About the Author
LIKE THE THUNDERHEAD of an approaching storm, the Imperial Star Destroyer Sovereign bellowed through the skies above Lothal Capital City. Yet the massive warship neither rained turbolaser fire nor unleashed the lightning of its ion cannons, as it had done many times before. Instead, a single shuttle launched from its hangar bay. TIE fighters left their flight patterns around the destroyer to escort the shuttle toward the city’s domed Imperial complex.
In the complex’s hangar, Agent Kallus questioned whether he would have preferred a downpour of lasers. The sudden arrival of the shuttle—and the man inside it—did not bode well.
The most elite Imperial soldiers and officers on Lothal had been assembled as a welcome party. As the TIEs veered off and the shuttle landed, AT-DP walker pilots and stormtroopers stood at attention in long rows. Kallus couldn’t locate Academy Commandant Aresko or Taskmaster Grint among the ranks, but the Inquisitor was there, his pale face impossible to read. Minister Tua, who was currently leading Lothal’s government, was also present. Kallus noticed a quiver in her usually perfect posture when a thin man in a gray uniform exited the shuttle.
“Grand Moff Tarkin. I am honored by your visit to Lothal,” Tua said, the quiver also detectable in her speech.
Tarkin strode up to her with a squad of black-pauldroned troopers. His aristocratic nose had the sharp contours of a hawkbat’s beak, and his eyes lay sunken into his skull, which rimmed them in perpetual shadow. Though his voice sounded gracious, his words were not. “My visit is hardly an honor, Minister.”
“I admit I was surprised to learn you were coming.” Tua fell in step alongside Tarkin as he walked toward the complex. Kallus followed with the Inquisitor.
“I, too, have been surprised by what’s been happening on your little backwater world,” Tarkin said.
Tua let out a nervous chuckle. “If you are referring to the insurgents, I—”
Tarkin halted and faced her. “You have had a single, simple objective, Minister: to protect the Empire’s industrial interests here, interests that are vital to our expansion throughout the Outer Rim. But instead of protecting those interests, you have allowed a cell of insurgents to flourish right under your nose. Am I correct?”
Tua cleared her throat, having nothing to say.
“And, Agent Kallus,” Tarkin said, turning around, “have you just stood idly by while this rabble have attacked our men, destroyed our property, and disrupted our trade?”
Kallus was ashamed to have to report his failure. “I have exhausted every resource to capture them, sir. This group has proven quite elusive.”
“It’s said their leader is a Jedi,” Tua added.
“Yes, let us not forget the sudden appearance of a Jedi, as if leaping from the pages of ancient history,” Tarkin said in mock amusement. He shifted his glare to the Inquisitor. “A shame we don’t have someone who specializes in dealing with them. Otherwise, our problem might be solved.”
The Inquisitor bristled at Tarkin’s comment in a rare display of emotion.
“Minister, have you ever met a Jedi?” Tarkin asked.
“No, I—”
“I actually knew the Jedi,” Tarkin said. “Not from the pages of folklore or children’s tales but as flesh and blood. And do you know what happened to them?”
“Well,” Tua said, “there were rumors that—”
“They died,” Tarkin said, interrupting her. “Every last one of them.” He swept his withering gaze across all. “So you see, this criminal cannot be what he claims to be, and I shall prove it.”
Kallus reconsidered his previous doubts. Perhaps the Grand Moff’s arrival was for the better. Perhaps Tarkin could provide the resources Kallus needed to catch these vile insurgents—these rebels.
LIKE MOST FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLDS, Ezra was a rebel. But unlike his peers, he was the real deal. Because he wasn’t just breaking a curfew set by his parents or playing pranks on his teachers; he was rebelling against a tyrannical empire that had taken his parents from him and forced him onto the streets.
Most of the time, being that kind of rebel was terrifying, because one false move meant he could lose his life—or worse, his friends could lose theirs. But once in a while, it was fun. Like now.
Ezra zipped across Lothal’s golden-green plains on a speeder bike filled with supplies stolen from Taskmaster Grint’s weekly convoy. His friends Kanan and Sabine raced with him on speeder bikes packed with more supplies. Five Imperial troopers pursued on military-grade bikes while a troop transport in the charge of Commandant Aresko and Taskmaster Grint chugged to keep up.
Out front, Kanan course corrected toward the town of Jalath, so as to lead the Imperials far away from the Ghost, the freighter Ezra now called home base.
Townspeople scattered and street vendors lobbed curses as the rebels and troopers tore through the main drag. Sabine pulled back on her throttle and swerved, a move her nearest pursuer couldn’t duplicate. The trooper’s bike wiped out on the pavement.
Another trooper started blasting away at Kanan and Ezra. As if he was part of a speeder show, Kanan spun around in his seat, drew his blaster, and, with a single shot, took the offending trooper off his bike.
Sabine regrouped with them in a plaza; then they veered down an alley. Two of the three remaining troopers followed them into the alley while, Ezra assumed, the third was looping around to cut the rebels off.
The troopers obviously didn’t know whom they were dealing with. Ezra slammed the brakes of his speeder and made a hand signal to Kanan and Sabine. They halted their speeder bikes and quickly knocked out the two troopers. When the third trooper arrived at the other end of the alley, two riderless bikes glided past him into the street.
The trooper dismounted and walked down the alley, blaster in hand. Clinging to a balcony in the alley wall above, Ezra waited until the trooper had discovered the unmoving bodies of his comrades before he made his presence known with a snort.
The trooper looked up only to have Ezra deliver a stun bolt from the blaster extension he’d attached to his lightsaber hilt. The trooper joined his comrades in unconsciousness.
“Told ya that’d work,” Ezra said. He dropped down from the balcony, as did Kanan and Sabine.
“Such a Zeb maneuver,” Sabine said, her multicolored Mandalorian helmet filtering her voice. “He’d be so proud.”
As they got onto their vehicles, Ezra beamed with pride, though not because of anything Zeb might’ve said or thought. What mattered was that Sabine was the one who had given him the compliment.
After a long stretch of traveling, they came to a circle
of ancient standing stones that had become a favorite hiding spot for the Ghost. They parked their speeders and went aboard. Instead of receiving a welcome, however, they found their three crewmates—burly Zeb, the crotchety astromech droid Chopper, and even their ever-resourceful Twi’lek pilot, Hera—in the freighter’s main cabin, all eyes and photoreceptors glued to a Holonet broadcast. Alton Kastle, the Imperial Holonews anchor, was interviewing the former renegade Gall Trayvis, who had betrayed the rebels’ cause.
“Senator Trayvis, now that you’ve recommitted yourself to the Empire, will your followers do the same?”
Trayvis smiled for the holocam. “Most will, Alton. These were good people who simply wanted to make the Empire a better place—peacefully. But I’m afraid these ‘insurgents’ have twisted my message into something violent and frightening.”
The broadcast cut to grainy holograms of the Ghost’s ragtag bunch. Ezra flinched at seeing himself. Did he really look like that? He’d always wanted to be on the news—but not like this. Most of what was being said about him and his friends was bald-faced lies.
Trayvis spoke over the holograms. “So I’m personally offering a reward for their capture—”
“Karabast.” Zeb cursed in his native Lasat tongue. “Shut it off.”
Hera keyed a console, and the holograms vanished. “Still makes me sick to think that Trayvis is working for the Empire.”
“Well, I have a plan that might just even the score,” Kanan said. “Because if Trayvis can do it, we can do it, too.”
“What, we’re gonna send out some kind of inspirational message?” grunted Zeb. He’d become more sarcastic since he’d been rooming with Ezra.
“Exactly,” Kanan said.
Ezra braced himself before listening to the Jedi’s plan. If Kanan had an idea, it probably meant they were about to do something crazy and jump into a sarlacc pit of danger.
AS WAS HIS CUSTOM, Agent Kallus arrived ten standard minutes early for the meeting Grand Moff Tarkin had called. Minister Tua and the Inquisitor came a few minutes later. Tarkin sat at his desk in the office he had occupied at the complex. He did not say a word, so neither did they. They stood and waited. Two chairs before the desk remained empty.
The first rays of dawn fell through the window, casting the city outside in crimson. It was Kallus’s favorite time of day. The sun wasn’t bright, and all was quiet, under control—secure.
The door hissed open. “Commandant Cumberlayne Aresko and Taskmaster Myles Grint reporting,” said Aresko, the leader of Lothal’s Imperial Academy. He and Grint, whose bulky frame didn’t line up with Imperial fitness regulations, saluted in the doorway.
Tarkin wasted no time with military protocol. “Gentlemen, sit.”
Aresko and Grint did as ordered, though Kallus could see they were nervous, especially when the Inquisitor prowled across the room toward them.
“I understand you have experience dealing with these insurgents,” Tarkin said.
“Yessir,” Aresko said.
“We responded personally to an attack last night in one of the outlying towns,” Grint piped up, sounding enthusiastic about what Kallus had learned from the morning intelligence bulletin had been a failure. Tarkin would probably know that, too.
Aresko admitted defeat before he could be caught. “The insurgents stole some supplies and escaped on speeder bikes,” Aresko said, “but no casualties.”
“No casualties,” Tarkin repeated. “Your rebel cell is more principled than others.”
“There are other cells?” Grint asked.
“Cells, factions, tribes, call them what you will. They lack the one thing that would make them a credible threat to the Empire,” Tarkin said. “Unity.”
The Inquisitor’s shadow fell over the officers. Both men shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Tarkin rose from his desk. “While your cell seems uninterested in violence, it does present a specific threat—the ‘Jedi.’”
“Uh, we have encountered him, sir, and he lives up to their reputation,” Aresko said.
The Grand Moff walked around the desk toward the commandant and the taskmaster. “I am not concerned with his skills as a warrior. I am concerned with what he represents. Or perhaps I should say I am concerned by what you allow him to represent by failing to stop him.” He sneered when he spit out the next word: “Hope.”
Kallus observed the Inquisitor’s hand hovering over his belt as Tarkin stopped before the officers. “And that, gentlemen, is something I cannot have.”
The Inquisitor ignited his lightsaber. In a blur of red, Aresko and Grint went silent and still in their chairs, never to move again.
Minister Tua covered her mouth and gasped. Kallus, normally immune to such grisly sights, flinched. Aresko and Grint, though incompetent, had been loyal Imperials—a fact that didn’t seem to matter at all to Grand Moff Tarkin.
“Make no mistake.” The Grand Moff glanced at both Tua and Kallus. “From now on, failure will have consequences.”
Tarkin gave Kallus a new directive to dispatch probe droids across Lothal to locate the rebels. Kallus then left the office and went out into the dawn. The streets were quiet, with most citizens asleep in their beds. Everything was under control except his own mind. He kept replaying the scene in the office, with a minor alteration.
He sat in one of those chairs.
In the Ghost’s main cabin, Ezra fiddled with the holotransmitter he had taken from his parents’ old home. He sensed something wasn’t quite right with the device, yet when both he and Hera had double-checked the components, everything seemed to be in working order. He just didn’t want to be responsible for botching the mission.
Kanan’s plan called for them to take control of the Empire’s main communications tower on Lothal. Ezra had helped scope out the tower’s defenses, which included a stormtrooper perimeter guard and three antiaircraft guns at the tower’s base. Kanan figured Sabine and Zeb could drive their speeders past the stormtroopers and take control of the antiaircraft guns. While Hera manned the Phantom, Kanan and Ezra would arrive with Chopper, and they would enter the tower. Chopper would then upload a data spike Sabine had designed into the tower’s central computer. The spike would create a temporary overload of the tower’s systems and allow Kanan to connect the holotransmitter to the tower and send his message of resistance to the entire galaxy.
As complicated as it was, the plan seemed nowhere near as difficult as other missions they’d done before. They should pull this one off with flying colors. Yet for some reason, Ezra had a bad feeling about it.
Kanan sensed his reluctance and asked Ezra to go outside for a walk. Ezra went but stopped on the Ghost’s landing ramp. He stared at the horizon, at the never-ending sea of gold-green grass.
“I’m not sure we should go through with this. My parents spoke out, and I lost them. And I don’t”—Ezra tried not to choke on the words—“I don’t want to lose you guys, okay? Not over this.”
Kanan did not reply with a quote from some long-dead Jedi, as he often did these days. Rather, his next words had a reassuring, almost gentle tone. “All of us have lost things. And we will take more losses before this is over. But we can’t let that stop us from taking risks. We have to move forward. And when the time comes, we have to be ready to sacrifice for something bigger.”
“That sounds good,” Ezra said. “But it’s not easy.”
“It’s not easy for me, either,” Kanan said. “My master tried to show me, but I don’t think I ever understood it until now, trying to teach it to you. I guess you and I are learning these things together.”
They both looked out at the horizon. Never-ending though it seemed, Ezra knew that somewhere out there, near or far, the grass stopped growing.
Kallus received footage from a probe droid he’d dispatched near the communications tower. A wild animal had somehow busted its repulsor unit, but its mechanical eye remained operational. It had recorded three figures racing away from the tower on speeder bikes. He couldn’t see the f
igures clearly enough to identify them, but the speeder bikes matched the ones responsible for the theft near Jalath. The rebels must have been doing reconnaissance on the tower.
He showed the footage to Tarkin in his office, also finding the Inquisitor there, like a Loth-bat in the eaves.
“We can’t risk losing the tower,” Kallus advised. “We should reinforce security—”
“No,” Tarkin said. “Let them believe they still possess the element of surprise. Lure them in, and we shall be waiting.”
That did not seem like a sound strategy to Kallus, considering how these rebels had been able to break into a heavily guarded detainment facility on Stygeon. Nonetheless, he was not one to question a Grand Moff. “As you wish,” Kallus said, exiting the room.
He slowed his steps just enough to hear Tarkin’s words to the Inquisitor: “I am giving you the opportunity to redeem yourself. Remember, I want this ‘Jedi’ alive.”
Kallus comforted himself with the fact that even the Inquisitor had to answer to Grand Moff Tarkin.
THE EMPIRE’S MAIN communications tower stood out on the plains like a dark finger pointing to the heavens, blocking a vast patch of the starry sky from view. The enormous structure dwarfed all the other towers on Lothal, for good reason. The Empire had built the tower to route communications not only across Lothal but also to neighboring star systems.
Kanan and Ezra watched from a safe distance as Sabine executed her stage of the plan. On a speeder bike carrying a barrel of rhydonium fuel, she accelerated through the stormtrooper perimeter. Caught off guard, the stormtroopers fired wildly and missed. The gunners at the antiaircraft batteries had more warning, but their bulky weapons were meant to target larger vessels, not speeder bikes. Before they could get a lock on her, Sabine soared past their firing radius and steered straight toward a gun turret. Slamming the bike’s foot pedals into the lock position, she dove off the speeder while it continued to fly at the turret. What resulted was no mere crash but a spectacular ka-boom that knocked troopers off their feet and completely destroyed the turret.
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