Kallus paused on the catwalk and watched the rebel freighter make a steep climb. The sole pursuing TIE replicated the maneuver with ease and fell in right behind the freighter. Yet what should have been an easy kill for the TIE turned into something far more tragic. The freighter detached its cargo container, which hit the TIE like a missile. The freighter sped away from the explosion, escaping once again.
He hoped the Wookiees were still in the container, but if they weren’t, the loss meant little to him. Kallus had something the rebels would return for. He had the boy.
Why the rebels would risk everything to rescue the boy, as they had before on the Star Destroyer, made perfect sense now that Kallus had witnessed what the boy could do. Ordinary boys didn’t break out of Star Destroyer detention cells. Ordinary boys didn’t ride speeder bikes like champion racers. Ordinary boys couldn’t leap over stormtroopers without wearing a pair of jump boots. This boy possessed a gift beyond the ordinary. It was a gift Kallus didn’t have, but he knew the signs.
This boy, like the Jedi rebel, could command the Force.
Such an ability made the boy’s capture all the more important. Certain entities in the Empire would find the boy of considerable value. Kallus would receive a commendation for the boy’s capture, though awards weren’t his goal. As an officer of the law, he had sworn a duty to protect Imperial citizens from those who posed a threat, which included all users of the Force.
The boy had his back turned to Kallus, using an astromech droid arm to unlock the Wookiee cub’s binders. The binders fell from the cub’s wrists and the boy put his astromech arm into his backpack. Kallus set his blaster on stun.
The cub saw Kallus and yelped. The boy turned. Kallus raised his blaster. “It’s over for you, Jedi. Master and apprentice, such a rare find these days. Perhaps you are the only two left.”
A sudden wind tousled the boy’s hair. “I don’t know where you get your delusions, bucket-head. I work alone.”
“Not this time,” said a voice, coming from below.
Kallus spun. The Jedi rebel, his lightsaber humming, stood on top of the rebel freighter, which had swooped low to rise from underneath the catwalk.
Kallus fired. Multiple times.
The Jedi’s lightsaber deflected all the shots back at Kallus. Kallus’s armor kept blaster bolts from burning through his chest, but it didn’t reduce the power of their impact.
He fell backward, over the catwalk railing.
Safe again in the Ghost’s cargo bay, Ezra was relieved to let Kitwarr run free. The little Wookiee didn’t realize how sharp his claws were. He had latched on to Ezra’s shoulder as if Ezra were a tree.
Ezra forgot the pain upon seeing the reunion between father and son. Kitwarr raced into Wullffwarro’s arms for a loud, howling embrace. The other Wookiees who packed the cargo bay added joyous roars as a chorus.
Ezra stood back, away from it all. A vision of his parents came to him and he quickly squashed it. Those memories only brought pain.
A hand squeezed his shoulder. Ezra looked up to see Kanan beside him. The man said nothing, just watched the Wookiees. On his belt, close to Ezra, dangled the hilt of his lightsaber.
For the second time that day, Kallus hung by his fingertips over an abyss. But in this instance his fingertips had a firm grip on a support beam under the catwalk. And the abyss wasn’t a vortex trying to suck him into the ether of space. It was just a deep, dark mining pit. He’d still perish if he fell, but that wasn’t going to happen. He had rebels to catch.
The only thing preventing Kallus from pulling himself back onto the catwalk was the stormtrooper who’d also fallen over the railing. The trooper clung to a lower support beam and was shaking the whole structure as he tried to climb up.
“First Jedi you’ve ever seen, sir?” the stormtrooper asked.
Kallus sneered. It had taken a ship to thwart Kallus, while this stormtrooper had been surprised by a mere boy. Such incompetence didn’t deserve another chance in the Imperial ranks. He gave the man a good kick.
The stormtrooper lost his grip and shrieked as he plummeted into the pit.
When the support beams stopped vibrating, Kallus climbed onto the catwalk bridge. He brushed dirt off his uniform, then strode onto the platform.
Rarely did he fume with so much anger as he did now. In any case, it only made the situation worse for the rebels. They did not realize the forces now arrayed against them. For Agent Kallus always caught his criminals, no matter where they hid, no matter who they were, no matter whom he had to call or what he had to do.
Kallus would not rest until he caught these traitorous rebels.
Ezra joined the Ghost’s crew to say his good-byes to the Wookiees. With Sabine translating their grateful roars, the hairy bipeds crossed through the airlock into a friendly Wookiee gunship Wullffwarro had contacted. The Wookiee soldier commanded a couple of such vessels devoted to freeing his people from slavery, but Ezra didn’t inquire further. He was done with all the infighting between Imperials, rebels, and Wookiees. He just wanted to go back to his tower on Lothal, where he could eat jogans until his stomach hurt.
Wullffwarro and Kitwarr lingered last. The silverback bellowed so quickly that Sabine had a tough time translating. “Um, he says if we ever need help, the Wookiees will be there.”
Wullffwarro reached out to rub Ezra’s head. The touch was gentle, though Ezra could feel the strength under it. This Wookiee could squash him if he wanted.
Ezra smiled at the cub. “Good luck, Kitwarr. And try to stay out of trouble.”
The Wookiees roared back and stepped through the airlock. Zeb sealed it behind them. “Trouble, humph. Look who’s talking.”
Acknowledging the Lasat’s comment wouldn’t get Ezra anywhere. He turned toward the others. “So,” he said, keeping his smile, “I guess you drop me off next?”
Hera, Kanan, and Sabine exchanged surprised looks. Even Zeb seemed caught off guard.
“Uh, yeah,” Zeb said. Did Ezra just hear disappointment in the bruiser’s voice? The Lasat cleared his throat and regained his normal growl. “Finally, right?”
Not disappointment. Just surprise. Zeb was probably elated inside. “Right,” Ezra said.
As he walked past the crew, he thought he heard Kanan sigh. But like usual, the man said nothing.
Then the Ghost wobbled as the Wookiee gunship disengaged, giving everyone a solid shake. Ezra used the opportunity to bump into Kanan and grab his reward.
“Oh, sorry,” Ezra said. He didn’t wait for Kanan to respond. He hurried into the corridor, slipping Kanan’s lightsaber under his sleeve.
The prairie grass around Hera rippled back and forth like waves. She agreed with other pilots’ assessments of the world. Lothal did indeed look like a sea of green.
Next to her, under the parked Ghost, Kanan scuffed his foot back and forth, lost in thought. She had assured him he had made the right choice in revealing himself as a Jedi. What was the point of fighting the Empire if he couldn’t be the person he was meant—he was destined—to be? They were rebels, and they couldn’t be afraid of that fact.
Surprisingly, Kanan had accepted her reasoning without argument. He couldn’t go back on being a Jedi now. What bothered him was the boy.
“I thought he might make a good candidate,” Kanan said.
“For running around with us? He’s fourteen, he needs to be—” Then she realized what he was implying. “You want to train him?”
“Was considering it, until he stole my lightsaber.”
Hera blinked. What little she knew about the Jedi was that instruction was a major part of their lives. Jedi were supposed to pass on what they learned, from master to apprentice. Kanan had only been an apprentice, but if teaching opened him up to his past, perhaps he should try it.
“Should I retrieve it?” he asked.
“No.” She was surprised she said this. “Let him give it back to you like he did before. Let him make the decision for himself.”
Kana
n went back to scuffing his foot in the prairie grass. “What if he doesn’t return it?”
“Can you make another one?” Hera asked.
A voice echoed inside the Ghost’s cargo bay. Zeb, Sabine, and Chopper were all in there, attending to their duties, but the voice was Ezra’s. “So, uh, see you around?”
Hera moved closer to the hatch to peek inside. Sabine lubricated Chopper’s gears and gave the boy an apathetic nod, though Hera could tell that wasn’t how the girl actually felt. Chopper was more honest. He didn’t emit his usual snort; he hooted softly, almost sadly.
Zeb put down the crate he was moving and gave Ezra a punch in the arm. “Not if we can see you first.”
Hera knew that Zeb was just horsing around. Ezra didn’t interpret the punch as anything like that. He rubbed his arm and headed toward the hatch, clutching the straps of his backpack. “Don’t worry, you won’t,” he said.
Hera was about to nudge Kanan, but he stood tall now, his indecision gone, the grass below him straight, as if never scuffed. When Ezra was about to step off the ramp, Kanan moved forward. “I think you have something that belongs to me,” he said to Ezra.
Ezra froze. For a moment, Hera thought he was going to buck and run like a frightened nerf. He didn’t. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a transparent object.
“Good luck saving the galaxy,” he said. He tossed the Jedi holocron to Kanan, then turned and ran into the prairie toward a distant communications tower.
Kanan did not follow him. He let Ezra go, watching him with regret.
Hera studied the holocron in Kanan’s hand. It wasn’t a perfect polygon anymore. Some of its sides had shifted. “He opened it,” she said. “He passed the test.”
She looked at Kanan. He had his own decision to make.
The ground floor of the communications tower looked undisturbed. Helmets lay strewn around the floor, shaken off their racks from the Star Destroyer’s rumble. Propaganda holopads cluttered the workbench along with power couplings and droid brains. A forgotten jogan had rolled between the Treadwell base and the shuttle stabilizer fin. All was as Ezra had left it.
But Ezra didn’t step past the threshold. He pulled out the newest addition to his collection. Kanan’s lightsaber.
He had decided not to sell it. Not now, at least. It would look good as a trophy on the wall, in between the various Imperial helmets.
Given time and practice, he could teach himself how to wield the blade. Maybe he could even teach himself how to hone this ability he had, what the holocron had called the Force.
Ezra’s fingers squeezed the lightsaber. His instincts were suddenly on edge. Someone stood behind him. He didn’t need to turn to know who it was.
After a moment, he asked Kanan the question that was burning in his mind. “What’s the Force?”
“The Force is everywhere. It is everything,” Kanan said. “It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together. And it’s strong within you, Ezra. Otherwise, you’d never have been able to open the holocron.”
Ezra turned to face the ponytailed man. “What do you want?”
Kanan remained outside the tower, near a patch of green daisies. “To offer you a choice. You can keep the lightsaber you stole and let it become just another dusty souvenir. Or you can give it back and come with us, come with me, and be trained in the ways of the Force. You can learn what it truly means to be a Jedi,” he said.
Ezra stared at the daisy patch. His instincts usually gave him guidance in situations like this. But he felt nothing at the moment. This was a decision he had to make on his own.
“I thought the Empire wiped out all the Jedi,” Ezra said.
For the first time, Kanan’s stony face cracked a slight smile. “Not all of us.”
Ezra looked down at the lightsaber in his hand. He felt the metal pommel, the curve of the focusing lens, the button that activated its blade. He had heard that every Jedi built a lightsaber. If he believed this strange man, if he chose this path, would he be able to make one of his own?
When he looked up again, Kanan was gone. But the green daisies were in full bloom.
Aboard a Star Destroyer departing the planet Kessel, one ghost spoke to another.
Agent Kallus, however, was not a ghost. He only appeared to be by a trick of the light. The blue glow of the holographic figure whom he addressed gave his skin a pale, spectral sheen.
“Excuse the intrusion, Inquisitor, but in the course of my duties, I have encountered a rebel cell,” Kallus said to the figure shimmering before him. “The leader of that cell made use of a lightsaber.”
Irrespective of his present holographic form, the Inquisitor had the features of an apparition. He was dressed all in black, and his eyes glinted an eerie yellow, while the flesh of his tattooed face and bare, bald head gleamed a corpse white. If he wasn’t the ghost of a man in armor, he was the closest thing Kallus had ever seen.
“Ah, Agent Kallus. You did well to call.” The Inquisitor’s voice lost none of its sinister oil through the convoluted routing of the Imperial Holonet. “Now tell me everything you know about this Jedi—and his apprentice.”
In measured tones, Kallus made his report. He ended by vowing that he would leave no planet, no star untouched until these traitors had faced the Imperial justice they deserved.
In a dark cabin aboard a freighter parked on Lothal, there was another meeting of ghosts.
Bruises and wounds testified that the figure who sat on the bunk was indeed flesh and blood, yet Kanan felt anything but. Battle had exhausted his body, sapped his energy, and thinned him of the fear that had long paralyzed him. He wore a new mantle now, that of Jedi Knight, but by doing so, he had stepped into a phantom realm. Those who previously had worn the mantle, such as his former master and his colleagues, were dead. Long dead.
Was he, Kanan Jarrus, then the last of the Jedi? And how long would he survive before the Empire also exterminated him, making him another ghost?
The Jedi holocron in his palm projected what was, in the technical sense, a ghost. In the air glowed a small hologram of a bearded man who spoke from the dead. He did not know how this Jedi had died, just as he didn’t know how most of the others had met their fates.
“This is Master Obi-Wan Kenobi,” said the hologram. “I regret to report that both our Order and the Republic have fallen, with the dark shadow of the Empire rising to take their place. This message is a warning—and a reminder—for any surviving Jedi. Trust in the Force.”
Trust in the Force. That’s what Kanan had done. But trust didn’t vanquish worry. His revelation could—would—cause harm to the ones for whom he cared. They were all implicated now in his crime, and the Empire would not hesitate to hurt them to hurt him.
He sensed their presences about the ship, knowing what they were doing without seeing it, as all were creatures of habit. Zeb moved cargo in the bay, where Chopper would be making repairs on the laser cannon circuitry. Sabine drank her blue concoction in the galley. Hera, dear Hera, lounged in the cockpit, resting.
“Do not return to the Temple. That time has passed and our future is uncertain,” the hologram said.
Time had passed; that was for sure. Enough that the Jedi Temple had become yet another ghost in his memories, an element of a dream he must piece together in his new life. A return to the Temple would not help, even if he wanted to go. Nothing of it remained on the world now known as Imperial City. Not a museum, not a plaque, not a mark. The Empire had reduced all its brick and steel to dust.
“Above all else, be strong,” Kenobi said. “We will each be challenged—our trust, our faith, our friendships. But we must persevere, and in time, a new hope will emerge.”
Hope. That was the key to all of this. To believe that freedom in the galaxy could be renewed. That tyranny was not eternal. That the dark side of the Force could not snuff out every flicker of the light.
Kanan believed. He had to believe. There was no other choice. But he was afraid. He sensed th
e tyranny of this Emperor was unlike that of any other despot history had ever recorded. His Empire would devour the whole galaxy if it wasn’t stopped. This made the struggle Kanan and his friends were involved in the great battle not only of their lifetime, but of many, many lifetimes.
Perhaps it was the greatest battle of all.
“May the Force be with you, always,” said Kenobi. After those final words, his ghost disappeared, and once again, the cabin was dark.
Kanan took a breath.
The darkness did not last. The door opened and in spilled light. A boy stood in that light. He held out a lightsaber.
Kanan went over to Ezra and took the lightsaber. In return, he put his hand on Ezra’s shoulder. The boy beamed back.
In former times, a child of Ezra’s age would be deemed too old to be an apprentice. But those times had passed. The boy had much to learn, as did Kanan. They would learn together.
May the Force be with them all.
Star Wars Rebels Page 10