Star Wars Rebels

by Michael Kogge

  And he was about to die.

  A TIE fighter roared past, so close he could see the solar collectors on its wing. Ezra slid in the chair as the freighter rolled, skirting green bolts of enemy fire. The turret’s crosshairs displayed wireframes of three more TIEs racing from behind.

  The intercom hissed with a silken female voice. “Shields are holding—for now—but you need to buy me time to calculate the jump to lightspeed.”

  A familiar masculine voice responded over the intercom. “Buying time now.” The ponytailed man must be in the other turret, because lasers rang out and lanced the cockpit of a nearing TIE. It burst apart in a twist of metal and fire.

  Ezra blinked, the intensity of the explosion giving him flash blindness. When his vision cleared, he found himself being yanked out of the cushioned chair and flung back onto the hard metal floor. He looked up to see the woman in the Mandalorian armor remove her helmet.

  She wasn’t a woman. She was a girl, not much older than he was, with large eyes, a pinch of a nose, and rainbow streaks in her hair that matched her armor plates.

  His head suddenly didn’t ache anymore.

  She hooked the helmet on the seat arm, then sat down and got to business. After a few spins in the chair to track the enemies, she thumbed the triggers and turned a TIE into a starfield of its own.

  Ezra was astounded. This girl handled a gun turret like a pro. He tried to deepen his voice to make it sound older, though without any Imperial affectation. “My name’s Ezra. What’s yours?”

  Her answer consisted of wheeling away from him and firing. Before Ezra could ask again, he was lifted into the air by his backpack.

  “My name’s Zeb, you Loth-rat,” said the bruiser, right in Ezra’s face. Ezra grimaced and had to turn his head. The Lasat’s breath smelled like the city gutter.

  “Calculations complete,” said the woman over the intercom. “But we need an opening.”

  “Found one.” Sabine didn’t wait for the crosshairs to turn green when she pressed the triggers. A third TIE was blown to bits, clearing an escape vector for the freighter.

  “Entering hyperspace,” the woman said.

  Those million dots of space smeared into a million lines as the freighter made the jump. Ezra’s stomach, however, didn’t. Fortunately for everyone in the turret, it was empty.

  Ezra squirmed in Zeb’s grip as he was hauled into the cockpit. “Let go! You can’t keep me here! Take me back to Lothal!”

  The pilot, a green-skinned Twi’lek with flight goggles strapped to her forehead, turned from the controls. “Calm down. That’s exactly what we’re doing.” Hers was the female voice Ezra had heard in the turret.

  Ezra held up his hands to stave off that ludicrous proposition. “Wait...right now? With Imperials chasing us?”

  “We lost the TIEs when we jumped,” the Twi’lek said. “And the Ghost can scramble its signature, so they won’t recognize us when we return.”

  Ezra dropped his hands. He had thought only military vessels had that capability. “That’s...pretty cool, actually.”

  He scanned the cockpit. This Ghost was more than just pretty cool. It possessed components far more sophisticated than what he’d seen in mass-manufactured TIEs or transport vessels in the spaceport. There was even an orange-domed astromech droid, which rotated its photoreceptors at him. Maybe if Ezra stayed a little longer, he could nick some of this tech.

  He looked back at the Twi’lek pilot. “So just drop me and my blasters outside Capital City and—”

  “They’re not your blasters,” said a sassy voice behind him.

  Ezra turned to see the Mandalorian girl enter the cockpit with the ponytailed man.

  “And we’re not going back to Capital City,” the man added. “The job’s not done.”

  If the man said anything more, Ezra didn’t catch it. He was staring at the girl.

  She didn’t give him even a glance.

  Night had descended over Capital City, and with it came Agent Kallus. He strode through the city square, all in gray, wearing a fleximetal cuirass that protected his upper torso and gauntlet gloves over his hands. His combat helmet had blast-proof cheek plates, which framed and focused his incriminating stare. Stormtroopers went out of their way to avoid him, though an AT-DP walker tilted its head as if in salute. Kallus walked past it, without acknowledgment.

  This concentration of military personnel and weaponry was unnecessary, since the ones who had engineered the crate heist were long gone from the square. The troopers should be out combing the city streets, searching for clues about the thieves, not running amok here. This was but another example of the incompetence he would have to reverse to accomplish his mission.

  He came to the scene of the crime, where a group of Imperial officers huddled. He walked through the group without comment and inspected the smoldering wreckage. It confirmed what the forensics analysts had told him. Detonators placed on the speeder’s carriage had caused it to explode. Moreover, surveillance footage from rooftop cameras revealed that a female in multi-colored Mandalorian armor had probably planted the detonators, though it was difficult to verify from the angle. Kallus didn’t need verification. A person of her description, with slightly different-colored armor, was already on Lothal’s most-wanted list for causing similar havoc at an Imperial airfield.

  What irritated Kallus was that she had done both deeds right under Imperial eyes. This wasn’t the usual military incompetence—this was a gross neglect of duty that went up and down the chain of command. He had a lot of work to do to turn this planet around.

  Aresko, one of the highest-ranking officers on Lothal as commandant of the Academy, came up beside Kallus. “They knew our protocol and were waiting in position.”

  “I’ve no doubt. You’re not the first on Lothal hit by this crew,” Kallus said.

  Aresko exhaled a kept breath. “That’s a relief,” he said. “I mean...I assume that’s why you’re here, Agent Kallus.”

  Kallus removed his helmet. “The Imperial Security Bureau pays attention to patterns. When the Empire’s operations are targeted on an ongoing basis, it could signify something more than the theft of a few crates. It could signify the spark of rebellion.”

  Aresko twitched, for good reason. Even the hint of rebellion on one’s planet could instigate a change in leadership. Kallus knew the commandant would now do everything required to make sure that didn’t happen.

  Kallus toed the wreckage with his boot. “Next time they make a move, we’ll be waiting for them—to snuff out that spark before it catches fire.”

  He stepped on the last bit of smoldering metal, crushing it to ash.

  Ezra emerged cautiously from the Ghost when the cargo hatch opened. Their landing site on top of a hill looked like everywhere else on Lothal: grassy and green.

  Zeb pushed two hover crates down the ramp. “Outta the way, Loth-rat.”

  Ezra did as instructed, not wanting to be bowled over by Zeb’s crates or the ones that came after. The ponytailed man, whose name Ezra had learned was Kanan, pushed the crate of blasters they had stolen from him. Next to him walked the Twi’lek pilot. Hera. The astromech droid, Chopper, remained inside the ship, while the Mandalorian girl brought out a fourth crate.

  She had not bothered to introduce herself.

  Kanan and Hera headed down the hill. Ezra started to follow. He wasn’t going to let them walk off with his blasters.

  Zeb grabbed Ezra’s shoulder and held him in place. “Hey,” Ezra said. “Where are they going?”

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill you. And I might just kill you anyway,” Zeb growled. His fingers pushed deeper into Ezra’s shoulder blade before he released him and moved on with his two crates.

  “Grab a crate. Pull your weight,” the Mandalorian girl said, her first words to Ezra since she had landed on the speeder bike. She nudged her crate past him.

  Before she had taken twenty more steps, Ezra was pushing a hover crate out of the cargo hold. Chopper bleeped som
ething at him but Ezra didn’t take his eyes off the girl. He followed her and the others toward a settlement that lay below the hill.

  The place looked barely habitable. It was nothing more than a collection of metal shacks, repurposed tents, and crude shelters made from shipping containers. Humans and nonhumans huddled in doorways or sat in puddles on a muddy street. Some moaned; others cried; a few wailed. All looked weary, hungry, and desperate. It was as if the poorest and most wretched people of Lothal had come to this one place to live—and die.

  Kanan ordered the others to wait while he and Hera went ahead with the crate of blasters. Ezra didn’t try to follow this time. He had a feeling if he did, those hungry faces might try to jump him. Better to stay behind with Zeb and the Mandalorian.

  He took another look around the shantytown. He’d traveled throughout the grasslands, had ridden through some poor, isolated communities, but none compared to this misery. “Lived on Lothal my whole life. Never been here.”

  “The Imperials don’t advertise it,” the Mandalorian girl said.

  Zeb joined in with a snarl. “Locals call it Tarkintown.”

  “It’s named for Grand Moff Tarkin, governor of the Outer Rim,” the Mandalorian girl said. “He kicked these folks off their farms when the Empire wanted their land.”

  “Anyone who tried to fight back got arrested,” Zeb said.

  Ezra remembered the arrest in the marketplace. Yoffar had spoken his mind, and in return, the commandant had charged him with that gravest of crimes. “For treason...” Ezra said.

  A couple of the refugees shuffled toward them. Malnutrition had shriveled their bodies; exhaustion had wrinkled their faces. Ezra stepped back, clutching the handles of his crate. Zeb and the Mandalorian opened the lids of theirs.

  “Who wants free grub?” Zeb asked. He reached into his crate and took out not a blaster, but a jogan fruit.

  The shuffle became a scramble. Famished refugees rushed out from every hole and hovel for what was probably their first meal in days. Zeb and the Mandalorian distributed fruits and food packets to eager hands. Ezra stood stunned. Was this the whole point of stealing the crates? To help these poor people?

  A pea-green Rodian in a brown jumpsuit put his puckered fingers on Ezra’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he squeaked through his snout. “Thank you so much.”

  Ezra stiffened. “I...I didn’t do anything.” He hadn’t even opened his crate.

  The Rodian didn’t seem to notice. He grinned and walked away. More refugees assembled around Zeb and Sabine, some coming back for seconds and thirds, always grateful. Ezra stayed a few paces away from the crowd, somewhat uncomfortable. He felt bad for raising a fuss on the ship. He felt even worse for clamping up. He could count on his hand the people who had ever shown him any gratitude.

  He left his crate to the refugees and wandered back to the Ghost.

  Despite the research Hera had done during the flight, she had uncovered no explanation that satisfied her as to how or why the large stone slabs ringed the clearing she and Kanan entered. Such stone circles could be found all over Lothal on the various continents, without a hint to their purpose. During the Old Republic, these circles had been a matter of investigation. Archaeologists from all over the Outer Rim had come to examine them and decipher their origins. Speculations varied wildly. Some attested that the circles were proof that a ritualistic civilization had lived on Lothal millennia before scouts had logged the planet. Others surmised that the slabs were of much more recent placement, dragged together by the original colonists for use as a landing area in lieu of electronic beacons.

  Under the Empire, all inquiries into the matter were terminated. Superstitious mysteries of the past had no place in the New Order. The stone circles were abruptly forgotten and left to weather the elements—which Hera assumed made them an ideal meeting point for Cikatro Vizago and his Broken Horn crime gang, or “syndicate,” as he preferred to call it.

  A number of dinged-up IG-RM war droids clunked out from behind the slabs. Though they appeared to be in shabby condition, Hera knew the state of their exterior casings did not impair their primary function—to shoot and kill. Vizago always had their weapons and interior circuitry well maintained.

  Kanan stood tall, the crate hovering before him. He hid his distaste for being there behind an expression that was as cold and inscrutable as the stones. He loathed working with unsavory characters like Vizago, whom he considered self-motivated and untrustworthy. Hera had told him such alliances were a necessary evil, and that Vizago was fighting against the Empire just as they were. But she could tell he remained unconvinced. His eyes darted repeatedly to and from the droids as if he was gauging a speedy exit in case the deal went south.

  Vizago walked down the path into the clearing, his arms wide in greeting, his sharp-toothed smile wider. The tips of the twin black horns twisting from the Devaronian’s hairless head had also been sharpened, as had his long black fingernails. Multiple earrings pierced the upper cartilage of his pointed ears, lending him the guise of a devilish scoundrel. Hera received his embrace. Kanan did not.

  Vizago took no offense. His beady eyes zeroed in on the crate. He pushed open the lid and his smile grew wider. “Any problems procuring these lovely ladies?”

  Hera shot a glance at Kanan. They had agreed not to speak about the chase in Capital City. The less the Devaronian knew, the better.

  “Nothing we couldn’t handle, Vizago. Your intel was accurate,” Kanan said, then added under his breath, “this time.”

  Hera jumped on Kanan’s last words so as not to arouse suspicion. “We got the goods and took a bite out of the Empire. That’s all that matters.”

  Vizago closed the lid of the crate. “Business is all that matters. But I love that you don’t know that.” He gestured and a war droid came forward, carrying a container of credits.

  Vizago took the credits and began counting them out to Kanan. He stopped halfway through their agreed amount for their payment.

  “Keep going,” Kanan said.

  Hera tensed. The Devaronian had a reputation for being cheap, but she didn’t think he was stupid. He’d get more than he bargained for if he tried to stiff them.

  Vizago picked up another credit from the container. “I could. Or I could stop and trade the rest of the bounty for another bit of intel you’ve been begging after.”

  “The Wookiees?” Hera asked, unable to contain herself.

  Vizago’s red pupils centered on Hera. “The Wookiees,” he said. His smile seemed anything but trustworthy.

  Ezra sat in the grass near the freighter and looked down the hill at Tarkintown. Questions filled his head. If the Ghost’s crew was truly on a mercy mission, why had it been necessary to anger the Empire by taking blasters? Couldn’t they steal their food from someone else? Who were these people, really? Why was everything they did so hush-hush, so secret?

  Why wouldn’t the Mandalorian girl even tell him her name?

  A breeze whistled through the grass. He drew his arms closer to his chest. They hadn’t said how long they would be down there, and nights could be cold out on the prairie. He glanced back at the freighter. It wasn’t any warmer in there. Hera kept the heating systems on minimal to evade infrared detection. These people didn’t seem to mind flying around space in a cold ship.

  The Ghost. It was a suitable name. The ship spooked him.

  Ezra turned to look at the freighter. Something inside it tugged at him. It was the same uneasy feeling he had had in the town. It had brought him here, alone, and now was calling him inside. Could it be the answer to his questions? He had to go and see what it was.

  He rose from the grass and ascended the ramp into the Ghost.

  Shadows filled the cargo bay. Chopper must have dimmed the illumination. But Ezra didn’t need eyes to know where he was going. He felt pulled, as if by a string. He went to the ladder and climbed into the main corridor.

  Emergency lights glowed along his feet. Clunks and clangs echoed through the
ship. The cockpit lay ahead at the end of the corridor, the instrumentation inside blinking on standby. Chopper probably had plugged himself into the monitors there. Did the droid hold the secrets? Ezra went toward the cockpit. But as he got closer, he felt farther away from where he should be going.

  He stopped and turned around. An unmarked door was set into the corridor wall. He took a step toward it. And another. This felt right. Behind that door lay what had induced him to reenter the ship.

  The door was locked. It would only stall him for a minute or so. As sophisticated as the cockpit’s systems had been, this lock looked to be a much simpler device.

  He reached into his backpack and pulled out his astromech arm. After tweaking the manipulator, he inserted it into the lock. He put his ear to the door and stilled his breath, listening only for the sound of the mechanism inside.

  He jiggled the astromech arm back and forth. He heard nothing at first, then a faint click. The door slid open.

  He put the arm back in his backpack and entered a room as spare as a monk’s quarters. The bunk itself was a lean mattress without a blanket, as if no one slept there.

  Someone did. Ezra could feel his presence drifting about the room. The ponytailed man. Kanan Jarrus. This was his cabin. And he had hidden something there.

  Relying on his instincts, Ezra raised his hand and waved it through the air. His fingertips tingled and his palm felt like a rudder in a stream. The stream’s current drew him under the bunk.

  He bent down to touch the wall. It was smooth and cold but didn’t give him shivers. Rather, he felt refreshed.

  His fingers found a crack in the wall, too thin to be noticed by a casual glance. The crack made a right turn, then another, and a third, to form a rectangle. Was that what he was drawn to? A secret panel of sorts? He pushed his palm into the rectangle. Something in the wall clicked like the lock, and a drawer popped out.

  A polygonal object sat in the drawer. Ezra picked it up, mesmerized. It reminded him of a chance cube from the betting gates at the spaceport, yet it was transparent and each of its many sides sparkled like a diamond. Maybe it was a puzzle. They were popular those days. He tried to twist its sides. Nothing moved.