Star Wars Rebels

by Michael Kogge

  Zeb peeled his bike around to come right at one trooper, surprising the man and knocking him off the bike. Kanan, meanwhile, pulled a detonation charge from his belt and cut his speed so the third trooper overtook him. “Okay, you caught me. I give up!” Kanan said.

  The trooper cocked his head at Kanan, probably perplexed that Kanan would concede when he seemed to be winning the chase. To prove the point, Kanan lifted his hands from the steering rods in mock surrender.

  “Just kidding.” Kanan tossed the confused trooper the blinking detonator and gunned his engine, speeding away as the trooper’s bike exploded.

  Zeb caught up beside him. The Lasat scowled when Kanan signaled for him to watch the cargo. Zeb never liked quitting a chase, but Kanan had to be the one to go after the kid. He wanted to confirm if the kid’s talents were real or if he was just lucky.

  He pressed a button on the bike’s controls and the crates detached from the couplers and fell away. Zeb halted his bike before the crates, muttering something about ending the kid for risking their operation. Kanan ignored him and swerved over the divider into the opposite lanes.

  The kid had regained partial control of his bike and was on the move. Yet Kanan had a much lighter load, having dumped both of his crates. He rocketed past the kid, then looped around to fly straight at his young quarry.

  The kid panicked and slammed on his air brakes, skidding horizontally. Kanan did the same, so the two faced each other, sideways.

  “Who are you?” the kid asked.

  “The guy who was stealing that crate,” Kanan said.

  “Look, I stole this stuff—whatever it is—fair and square.”

  “And you made it pretty far, kid. But I’ve got plans for that crate, so time to give it up. Today’s not your day.”

  The kid tilted his head, looking at something behind Kanan. “Day’s not over yet,” he said with a smile.

  Kanan glanced over his shoulder to see TIE fighters cutting through the clouds to bear down on them. Wonderful. Just what he needed.

  The kid stepped on his foot pedal, rotated his bike, and whisked off. Kanan spun his bike around to give chase, into a hail of TIE laser fire.

  He adjusted his altitude and direction, anticipating the TIE pilots’ firing patterns to steer through the barrage unscathed. Uncannily, the kid matched Kanan’s exact movements, tacking right and left to dodge the lasers. No, it was more than uncanny—it was as if Kanan and the kid were on the same wavelength.

  This kid had more than just luck.

  Kanan, however, could’ve used some luck himself when a TIE’s lasers scored a hit on his bike, shorting out the inertial compensators. He lost momentum instantly and could do nothing as his bike fell.

  “Have a good one.” The kid gave a mock salute and sped away as Kanan’s bike crashed into the ferrocrete. The TIE fighter swooped around to fly after the kid.

  Kanan picked himself up from the wreckage. He unfastened his comlink. “This is Spectre-1. I need a lift.”

  He wasn’t done with this kid. Not yet.

  Turning off the freeway into the grasslands, Ezra was feeling like an old pro on his speeder bike. Despite losing a repulsor flap, everything else on the bike performed magnificently. The thrusters responded to the slightest nudge of the foot pedals. The engine hummed even at the highest speeds. The contoured handgrips made the steering rods move with ease. He had to give credit where credit was due. The Empire always kept their equipment in tip-top shape—including their TIE fighters.

  A blast skimmed by his head, centimeters away. The TIEs’ cannons were powerful enough to destroy enemy spacecraft. If they got a solid hit on his bike, there probably wouldn’t be enough wreckage to identify his remains.

  Whatever was in that crate had better be worth it.

  He weaved through the prairie mounds, eluding the TIEs’ lasers. He might find protection and a place to hide in the mountains, but he’d never outrace the TIEs before he got there. The only other option was to slow down so the TIEs overshot him. Maybe then he could turn back toward the city and lose them in the alleys.

  He didn’t even get to lift his feet off the pedals before a TIE’s lasers slowed his bike for him.

  His bike began to smoke and shudder. His speed declined dramatically. The engine must have been struck. Ezra jammed his heels against the rocker pads and pulled back on the steering rods, trying to keep as much altitude as possible. If the TIEs didn’t get him, gravity would.

  The TIEs dove closer, peppering the area around him with laser fire. None hit, yet his bike’s engine gave a horrendous, wailing shake. It was gone. Ezra pressed the cargo detachment button, then hit the brakes. He flew off the bike and landed with a thud in the grass. He didn’t break any bones, but the impact still hurt.

  He pushed himself up. Flames engulfed the bike behind him. The crate, however, had detached and safely hovered a meter or two away. One of the TIEs wheeled back toward him. He could see its lasers heating up, priming to score a direct hit—on him.

  He didn’t bother to run. He wouldn’t have gotten far. If this was the end, so be it.

  Lasers twanged, but not from the TIE. The Imperial fighter erupted in the sky in a great ball of fire.

  A star freighter with diamond-like angles sailed through the explosion and slowed to hang right above Ezra. The cargo hatch opened and a ramp half extended, revealing the man from the square, his ponytail whipping in the wind. “Want a ride?”

  Ezra stood there, partially in shock. This man had been trying to stop him before. Now he had come back to save him? It didn’t make sense.

  The man reached out a hand. “Come on, kid—unless you have a better option?”

  The group of TIE fighters screaming back convinced Ezra he didn’t. But rather than head to the ship, he dashed to the hover crate. He wasn’t going to leave without it.

  Ezra began to push the crate toward the ship. The weight of its contents strained his muscles. The ponytailed man shook his head in disbelief. The freighter started to rise as the TIEs drew near. They’d be there in seconds.

  Ezra cranked up the hover crate’s repulsors, then took it in his arms and jumped.

  He didn’t know why he did; he just felt that he should. Normally, he couldn’t leap more than a meter off the ground without a pair of jump boots. And a hover crate’s repulsors were weak, with a ceiling of only a few meters. Yet his jump took him higher than that. Much higher.

  It wasn’t natural. But it felt natural.

  His legs relaxed. His body soared. It was as if a little voice inside him had been released to sing. It connected him to the world around him, which was ablaze with life and energy. The green grass on which he had snoozed so many times had sprung him upward like a trampoline. Tiny insects buzzed around him, the flutter of their wings giving him lift. The outstretched hand of the ponytailed man seemed to pull him to the ship like a magnet.

  It all happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly, Ezra could scarcely believe it.

  In that hesitation, the surge of force that propelled him vanished.

  Ezra fell.

  The crate slammed onto the Ghost’s ramp, without the kid. Kanan looked around. TIE lasers whitened the sky. He sighed. The kid’s leap had been an incredible feat but it had not been enough.

  Perhaps Kanan had been mistaken. Perhaps it had all been luck to begin with.

  Then the crate on the ramp moved. Two hands clung to its sides. One grabbed the edge of the ramp. Kanan watched, amazed, as the boy pulled himself over it.

  Who was this kid?

  Laser fire crackled in the air, too close for comfort. The kid shoved his crate into the cargo bay. Kanan retracted the ramp and closed the hatch.

  Zeb and Sabine were unloading the other crates in the bay. After a glance at the kid’s crate, Zeb stomped over and wrenched off the lid. Inside was a cache of assorted blaster weapons, mostly E-11 stormtrooper rifles, DH-17 pistols, a couple of hold-outs, and a stingbeam.

  The kid’s eyes widened at the sight of
the arsenal. “Do you realize what these are worth on the black market?”

  “I do, actually,” Kanan said.

  “So don’t get any ideas,” Zeb said.

  “Ideas? These are mine,” the kid said.

  Zeb showed his teeth. “If you hadn’t gotten in our way—”

  “Can’t help it if I got to them first.” The kid stood on his tiptoes to challenge Zeb’s vicious stare with one of his own.

  Kanan stepped between the two. The last thing they needed was a fight while Hera was trying to outfly TIEs. “It’s not who’s first, kid, it’s who’s last.”

  The additional sublight engines came online, jostling the Ghost and her passengers. Kanan grabbed a crate to steady himself. They must be nearing the upper atmosphere. Hera probably needed his help.

  “Keep an eye on our friend here,” he said to Sabine and Zeb. He climbed the ladder into the central corridor. To play it safe, he verified that the surveillance system was working. Sabine usually did her own thing, and Zeb wasn’t necessarily the greatest of babysitters.

  Kanan hurried into the cockpit. Atmospheric clouds fogged the viewports. Hera pulled on the flight stick, taking the Ghost on a steep climb. “You said this was a routine op. What happened down there?” she asked.

  Chopper, plugged into the shield controls, responded first with a chiding snortle. Kanan knew the droid was right—he, Sabine, and Zeb had screwed up—but this was not the time to lay blame. “Chopper, please. It’s been a difficult morning.”

  “He has a point, love. We’ve got four TIE fighters closing in.”

  Love. Hera tossed that word about like it meant nothing. Years earlier, Kanan would’ve believed in her affection and told her how exceptional a pilot she was. Now he deflected her sarcasm with that of his own. “How about a little less attitude and a little more altitude?”

  “No problem.” Hera slapped the flight stick hard to one side as the TIEs opened fire.

  Before the artificial gravity could adjust, Kanan was thrown across the cockpit into the side wall. He grimaced. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you did that on purpose.”

  She banked hard to the other side, avoiding a deluge of lasers. This time, Kanan gripped a component handle to keep from falling.

  “If you knew better, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” Hera said. “Seriously, what happened down there?”

  Kanan pointed at a surveillance monitor. The cargo bay cameras were trained on Sabine, Zeb, and the boy. “He did.”

  Hera glanced up from the controls, continuing to pilot. “A kid tripped you up? Must be some kid. Spill it.”

  “Aren’t you a little busy at the moment?” Kanan asked. Sensors showed the TIEs were about to make a coordinated attack run.

  Hera’s gaze didn’t leave him. “Spill.”

  The internal display of Sabine’s helmet showed her the kid’s basic biometrics. He was definitely human, of average height and build for a boy his age, probably only a few years younger than her sixteen years. He must be right-handed, since he wore an energy slingshot on his left forearm. Below two blue eyes and above a constantly devious grin, his nose stood large and prominent, as if it had a jump start on a future growth spurt. Like that of most Lothal natives, his skin bore a copper sheen, and his shaggy dark hair, parted down the middle, hadn’t seen the barber in some time. He was most definitely a street kid. An urchin.

  While she was examining him behind her helmet, he was also scrutinizing her. “Are you a Mandalorian?” he asked. “A real one?”

  If he hadn’t been a kid, she probably would have answered his question with her blasters. Mandalorians were unwelcome in the galaxy those days, ever since the Empire had outlawed their mercenary practice and occupied her homeworld of Mandalore. The few who still roamed the stars were usually armored impostors, which Sabine Wren was not. But the kid didn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to know anything about her or her people. She remained silent.

  The kid turned to Zeb. “How about you? You some kind of hairless Wookiee?”

  Sabine smiled under her helmet. That would get Zeb going. The Lasat felt indebted to the Wookiees for helping his people fight the Imperials on his homeworld, but he despised ignorant comparisons. It would be amusing to watch how the kid dealt with someone three times his size and ten times his strength.

  “Is that what the Imps taught you at school? That we nonhumans all look alike?” Zeb growled, and planted his foot on the crate and wiggled his four broad toes. “Well, let me teach you a lesson. I’m a Lasat, and we don’t think highly of little thieving Loth-rats like you.”

  The kid scooted to the edge of the crate. “I was just doing the same thing you were. Stealing to survive.”

  “You have no idea what we were doing,” Zeb said.

  “And I don’t want to. I don’t,” said the kid. “I just want off this burner.”

  Zeb snarled his lips into a cruel smile. “Nothing would thrill me more than tossing you out. While in flight.” He reached for the kid just as the ship shook, pounded by laser fire.

  Sabine’s feet remained anchored to the floor. Balance was one of the first things you learned as a Mandalorian. Zeb, however, toppled over and landed on the kid.

  “Get off,” the kid gasped. “Can’t...breathe.”

  “I’m not that heavy in this gravity,” Zeb said, picking himself up.

  “Not the weight,” the kid said, his face puckering. “The smell.”

  Sabine nearly laughed. The smart-mouthed kid was a true urchin, fearless to a fault.

  Zeb’s purplish skin burned red. He grabbed the kid and hoisted him up. “You don’t like the air quality in here, eh? Fine. I’ll give you your own room.” He dragged the kid past Sabine toward the storage lockers.

  The kid kicked and screamed. “Hey, stop! Let go of me, you brute!” If Zeb’s reach hadn’t been so long, he probably would’ve been bit. Like all street kids, this urchin fought like one.

  Zeb opened the locker and shoved the kid inside. Before Zeb slammed the door, the kid looked at Sabine, as if she could do something.

  She stayed her ground, scanning her helmet’s read-out. The biometrics registered a flush of heat on the kid’s face. He wasn’t completely fearless. His boldness was just a mask, like her helmet.

  She wondered what he was hiding.

  Hera powered on the final sublight engine to lift the Ghost through Lothal’s upper atmosphere. The TIEs ascended with her, trying to penetrate the Ghost’s deflector shields. She would’ve told Kanan to man a turret, except that as he described what he’d seen the boy do, he spoke with a certain charge and emotion she hadn’t heard from him in a long time.

  “Kid sounds impressive,” she said. Impressive enough to make her consider that he might not be any ordinary boy—he might have talents beyond the norm. This put his life in extreme danger. The Empire viewed anyone with such abilities as a possible traitor.

  “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking,” Kanan said.

  “He held on to a crate of blasters with a pack of troopers on his tail,” she said.

  “Because I was there to save him. He’s undisciplined, wild, reckless, dangerous, and...” Kanan’s litany trailed off. “Gone?”

  She followed his eyes to the surveillance monitor. It showed only Zeb and Sabine in the cargo bay, repacking the crates for delivery.

  Kanan clicked the intercom. “Where’s the kid?”

  “Calm down, chief,” Zeb said, his gravelly voice coming over the speaker. He walked over to the storage locker. “He’s in here.”

  Hera checked the sensors. Even with the boost to their engines, the TIEs were gaining, as were their lasers. The Ghost’s deflector shields could only absorb so much.

  She took the Ghost on a series of quick turns, evading enemy fire while keeping the engines hot. Once they broke into orbit, she could prepare the jump to hyperspace. That was the only way they’d lose their pursuers.

  Kanan didn’t seem concerned about the TIEs
. He leaned closer to the surveillance screen as if that would give him a better view. “Zeb, where is he?”

  Hera glanced at the monitor and saw Zeb pop his head out of the empty locker.

  “W-well,” the Lasat stuttered, giving the camera a sheepish grin, “he’s still here in the ship.”

  Sabine pushed past Zeb and inspected the locker herself. “Oh, he’s in the ship, all right,” she commed. Her helmet sent an image to the surveillance screen that showed the ceiling grill inside the locker had been removed. The kid must have climbed into the ventilation duct.

  “Very creative,” Hera said, glancing at Kanan. “Sounds like someone I used to know.”

  The warning sensors blared. A TIE screamed overhead, its lasers rattling the entire ship. Chopper blatted out a damage report. The Ghost’s hull remained unscathed, but the deflector shields were low.

  Hera threw her full attention into piloting. Their conversation about the boy could wait. This was time for battle.

  She didn’t need to tell Kanan. He ran out of the cockpit toward the dorsal turret.

  Ezra shook like a tuning fork as he crawled along the ventilation duct. The TIE’s blasts reverberated through the duct, causing the thin panels he was squeezed against to vibrate ceaselessly. He thought his teeth would rattle loose, until the duct panel below him collapsed under his weight and he dropped.

  It wasn’t a long fall—much shorter than his plunge from the building and his flip over the speeder bike—but it hurt the most. His chest hit the ship’s hard floor while his backpack slid over his shoulders and struck him in the head. He regretted taking so many of Yoffar’s jogans.

  Ezra adjusted his pack, took a breath, and lifted his aching head slowly. Just his luck. He’d been only a half meter away from a soft landing in a big cushioned seat.

  He pulled himself up into the chair, only then recognizing where he was. He had dropped into one of the ship’s gun turrets. Welcoming him through the canopy was a black canvas of bright dots.

  They weren’t just dots, Ezra realized. “I’m...I’m...” he said, choking on his disbelief, “in space.”