First Encounters
Pale blue light from the dejarik table illuminated the main cabin of the Ghost in flickers at a time. A holographic image of Commander Sato at quarter size stood there, hands behind his back in his usual formal manner as he conversed with the only way other person in the room, Hera Syndulla, sitting in the booth.
"This is imperative," he said at the conclusion of his brief. "Dr. Woofrow is a brilliant scientist and he could help our cause immensely if we extract him in time."
"You can count on me," promised Hera.
Sato's image flickered out just as a ship-shaking crash! rang from the belly of the Ghost. It was shrill enough to make Hera's lekku cringe, and it took all her willpower to restrain herself from checking in on the culprits. Zeb and Chopper had been tasked to modify the shields that day, and she'd heard more yelling and chaos from them than anything else. An eruption of blame followed, filtering through too many layers of durasteel for Hera to make out any words.
At least they'd settled on a truce for the duration of her meeting.
Sato had stressed how delicate the mission was to extract Woofrow—which told Hera that those of her crew swinging lightsabers were probably not the best choice to accompany her. They were great in a fight, but they tended to draw all the attention she needed to avoid. So it was rather convenient that both lightsaber-wielders of her crew were out at the moment with Rex, in the middle of their daily training.
Or in the middle of their daily argument, one of the two.
Hera knocked on one door in the sleeping quarters. After a crashing sound from beyond, the door flew open and Sabine leaned there, failing at playing it cool.
"Yeah, Hera?" Small as she was, she tried her best to take up as much of the doorway as possible. Her head moved to block Hera's view into the room.
"We've got an extraction mission, you and me. We're taking the Phantom."
Sabine hurried back into her room once Hera left, capping the open paints and dunking her utensils into the bowl of water on the floor. Her current project, a halfway complete Ketsu Onyo—still drying on a hull fragment canvas—she slid between her locker and the wall. If it was just herself and Hera on a mission, she didn't want Chopper or Ezra finding anything if they explored her room. Again.
She grabbed the charges for her blasters and loaded them, securing them with a twirl.
It was always exciting to go on a mission without the boys; there was something more professional about just the two ladies of the crew working together. Despite all the open seats in the back, Sabine stood at the helm, next to Hera's seat, scanning the HoloNet on a datapad.
"You said his name is Woofrow?" Sabine was now navigating the seventh page in the bounty boards, and when she found him, she nearly choked. "Sixty thousand credits?!"
"The Empire's serious."
He held no official affiliations to the rebellion; his wanted page said he was merely a known sympathizer. A very expensive sympathizer. In her short stint as a bounty hunter, Sabine had never seen prices even close to five digits.
Sabine glanced from the notice to Hera. "Y'know, we could turn him in ourselves and never have to worry about credits again…"
"Sabine!"
She ducked back behind the datapad, a grin wide underneath her helmet. Of course she was kidding, but there was still that tug of temptation at such a large number. There was still that reactive imagination—thinking about what all she could buy with sixty thousand credits. But her experiences following her bounty hunter days were enough to temper the lure of easy money, and she returned to the matter at hand.
"So either overconfident hunters are coming, or very talented hunters are coming. Great," muttered Sabine.
"That's why I have you along," Hera said with a casual shrug. "Who better to help me than a Mandalorian and a former hunter?"
Sabine puffed up. "Nobody, obviously."
Dactil, a planet boasting an impressive collection of rings, was fourth from the sun in the Garel system, smaller than the planet Garel, but more populous. It wasn't hard for a Twi'lek pilot and a pink Mandalorian to blend in here among diverse, colorful crowds. Just as many Rodians wandered the streets as Humans, along with Devaronians, Ithorians, Talz, and ruddy Zeltrons.
The buildings elbowed into one another, almost looming over the street where nothing stood shorter than two stories. Decorative spires grew from most buildings, none identical to any other. Archways, mostly ornate and freestanding, but also coupled with the copious amount of bridges Dactil liked to use to connect buildings, spanned the busy streets, adding an air of grandiose to the city. There were a handful of speeders in use—a handful more than Hera saw used in Garel or even Lothal. To those who never knew what elegance looked like, they would assume this was it.
Ten minutes away from the spaceport, Hera and Sabine entered a quiet neighborhood of apartment complexes, uniformly three stories along either side of a dead-end road. The Dactillian architecture saturating downtown was absent here, leaving everything looking meager by comparison. The few locals in this area hurried about their business. They passed right by the women without even acknowledging they existed.
Sabine looked from her datapad to each dusty door identical to its neighbors. "Sato's directions say… over there. Second level," she said, pointing.
Hera followed her to the building in question, up the steps hugging the side of the building and onto an open walkway, past door after door until Sabine stopped, indicating door number 2-49. Hera knocked.
"Go away!" a voice yelled from inside. "Your business is unwelcome!"
"Doctor, please," Hera called, "we're here to help you! We want to escort you to the rebellion!"
A tingle crept down the insides of Hera's lekku then. She looked behind them, over the railing and out into the street. Nobody below cast them even a cursory glance, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched.
A Chadra-Fan opened the door, recalling Hera's focus. Standing barely a meter tall and covered in brown fur, his pointed ears seemed to inspect the women just as much as his beady little eyes, which scrutinized them over his short snout.
"The rebellion, you say? The rebellion is why I'm afraid to leave my home!"
"We're here to keep you safe, Dr. Woofrow," Hera said. "Commander Sato sent us."
One of the doctor's ears twitched, and he glanced so suddenly at something on the street that both Hera and Sabine turned, Sabine's hands on her holstered blasters. But it was nothing. The neighborhood was deserted now.
"Right," said the doctor in a voice barely louder than a whisper. "I'll get my things."
By "things," he meant three trunks of possessions nearly as tall as himself. He happily led the one with wheels attached, leaving Hera and Sabine to tote the others. Much too big to carry in their arms, the women clung to the single handles on the top of the trunks, holding each with both hands because they were too heavy to lift with just one.
"He's supposed to be running for his life," muttered Sabine, "and he takes this opportunity to make us move half his house?"
"He's also a scientist," Hera reminded her. "He needs equipment and supplies for… science-things." The women continued huffing and puffing, struggling with the luggage while Dr. Woofrow followed, his rolling trunk not giving him the slightest problem.
"People have anti-grav nowadays!" Sabine threw over her shoulder.
Hera shot a silencing glare her way.
Back on the main road, their progression was slow, mulling through the heavy foot traffic, making way for themselves and their cumbersome trunks, but the women picked up speed one pace inside their own hangar—the Phantom had never been such a welcome sight.
Hera's arms were burning now—she'd love nothing more than to drop the trunk halfway across the floor and come back for it later, like the next time she was on Dactil—and she could only imagine Sabine was similarly struggling. But instead of panting, Hera could've sworn she heard muttering escape from her helmet.
Meters away from the Phantom, a small canister rolled from somewhere behind them, venting thick, purple smoke all the way into the middle of their little group.
Hera and Sabine dropped the luggage and armed themselves, spinning in a circle, aiming at the open roof, the walls, anything.
"Where'd it come from?!" cried Hera, coughing into her sleeve. If this was how the Empire operated on Dactil, then they were adopting new procedures.
Hera staggered closer to the Phantom and lowered the boarding ramp just as a net shot over a stack of crates to her left, straight through the swirling smoke, to snag both Woofrow and his rolling luggage in one go. Sabine opened a steady stream of fire on the crates—cover fire. Hera brandished a knife, but before she ran to aid the doctor, a missile shot over the crates. Sabine dove, tackling Hera to the ground behind the safety of the Phantom; the ship rattled from the impact and scooted a meter, but otherwise stood unscathed.
Hera choked on the duracrete. The smoke was almost as thick as her panic at not being able to breathe; Hera only got as far as taking a knee before passing out, but Sabine popped right up, safe inside her helmet.
She ran through the smoke, blasters in both her hands, only to stop short when she saw their attacker out in the open, already reeling in the netted and limp Chadra-Fan. His green Mandalorian armor was unmistakable.
"Boba F—"
A secondary explosion came from the Phantom behind Sabine, knocking her to the ground. She didn't get up.
The canister sat empty and the cloud of purple smoke inched its way toward the main hangar door as Boba Fett withdrew a scanner from his belt, holding it close to Woofrow's face. A sheet of light crossed the doctor's features over the netting, and his biometrics popped up on the screen, flashing green in confirmation.
Taking his time, Fett approached Sabine, yanked off her helmet, and scanned her, too. She was listed as wanted by the government of Lothal—an entirely different system. They offered two hundred and fifty credits for her return.
He circled the ship to Hera and nudged her onto her back with his boot. The scanner reported that Lothal offered four hundred credits for her.
Shaking his head, Fett stowed his tech, reclaimed his prize, and dragged the scientist out of the hangar.
Hera stirred first. She coughed; it felt like every gasp of air wasn't enough for her to breathe. She wobbled to her feet, and if it wasn't for the Phantom being within reach, she would've fallen over.
She stood dazed for the longest moment before the memories of the purple fog rushed back. The canister was still on the ground, but the only trace gas was ever there was the faintest acrid smell clinging to her clothes. Easing her way around the Phantom, she saw Sabine lying on the ground, her helmet a meter away.
"Oh, no," Hera murmured, chest tight. She dropped to her knees next to her and shook Sabine's shoulders harder than she'd ever shaken someone in her life.
It was always lurking in the back of Hera's mind, the supposition that she would one day give her life for the rebellion. She'd lived with that thought for so long it was just part of her identity now. But if she ever led any of her crew into a situation where she walked away from it and they didn't, that guilt would haunt Hera until the rebellion really did take her.
Sabine suddenly stirring at least let Hera breathe easy.
Sabine displayed the same gazed, glassy-eyed stare as Hera helped her to her feet. "How long were we out?" She accepted her helmet from Hera but continued to hold onto the pilot for support.
"Too long! Did you see who attacked us?"
Sabine's eyes finally focused, and her stare grew stony. "Boba Fett."
Hera's stomach dropped faster than a nosedive in the Ghost. All assumptions they would catch up to their culprit dissolved and a hand fell over her eyes. She'd heard of the infamous bounty hunter before, but his escapades always happened far enough away to sound fanciful and almost mythical. Like he was too good to exist. And now he'd captured the doctor right out from under them.
"The turn-in point's Coruscant, so the first thing Fett will do is leave the planet," Sabine said.
Scrounging together her remaining shreds of optimism, Hera ordered, "Get into the Phantom! We have to get the doctor back!" Leaving Woofrow's luggage on the floor where it fell, Sabine eased herself up the boarding ramp into the ship while Hera collected her scattered weapons.
Hera flipped everything on as she slid into the pilot's seat, and expedited her spaceport request to launch. Hera was familiar with everything about her ship, but there was always something foreign about the Phantom. It lacked the uniqueness and upgrades of the Ghost, and for that it was a little underwhelming to pilot. Especially considering who she was about to chase down.
"Sabine! Check all recent departures!" A tall order; this city had three spaceports alone.
By the time Hera's launch was approved, Sabine reported, "Three personal off-world departures were granted in the last half hour, all from the northern 'port."
Hera took off and angled the Phantom into such a steep climb that Sabine grabbed the pilot's chair to not fall to the back of the ship.
Juggling a datapad and her grip, Sabine managed to add, "Okay… head to sector 13, he's reaching the upper atmosphere now. If you punch it, we might really catch up!"
Hera responded immediately, rerouting power from shields to thrusters for an extra boost. Sabine really did slide to the back of the ship.
"How did you narrow it down?!" Hera shouted over her shoulder. Not that she didn't trust Sabine's judgment, but if they followed the wrong ship at all, they'd certainly lose Boba Fett for good.
"Please! I know his ship!"
Something about that made Hera's lekku twitch, but her adrenaline surged at the thrill of the chase, burning the uneasiness out of her system.
Proximity sensors blared in the cockpit of the Slave I, tracking a ship closing in from behind. It was a tiny auxiliary starfighter, which wouldn't have given Fett pause except that was the exact ship from his hangar scuffle.
Belatedly, he realized one of the combatants was a Twi'lek— a species which revived faster than other humanoids when it came to the purple gas he favored. It'd been years since he'd needed Twi'lek-proof gear.
Dactil's innermost ring loomed on the edge of his sensors, and Fett steered the Slave I straight for it. "Want a chase? Try to follow me in there."
Dust turned into ice particles turned into rocks of increasingly larger size. By the time Fett reached the outermost ring, Hera was dodging asteroids the size of the Phantom. Sabine stood next to the pilot's chair, helpless to do anything but watch Hera chase the hunter she and Ketsu had craved to emulate.
"Why aren't you shooting?" Sabine asked, all her frustration venting in a scoff.
"I can't risk hurting Dr. Woofrow. When I get an opening, I'll try to disable him." Hera folded into a barrel roll. She kept up with Fett, but he was just fast enough to dip around another asteroid every time Hera rounded a curve. "It wouldn't be so difficult in the Ghost!"
Sabine's fingers dug into the pilot seat headrest. She stood both paralyzed and antsy, her chest tight and a fresh shiver sweeping down her spine every time the Slave I reappeared in their line of sight. She'd never doubted Hera's abilities in the past—Hera had proved how easily she could outmaneuver anyone trained by the Empire. But Boba Fett was a legend. He'd long been a legend by the time Ketsu touted his exploits: a Mandalorian raking in the biggest bounties using equipment not much more advanced than what they got their hands on at the time.
He was an opponent to take seriously… and they were chasing him in the Phantom of all things.
Hera followed Fett around a particularly large asteroid, and immediately applied backwards thrusters, killing her speed.
A second ship was already there, a light freighter, bigger than Fett's ship and enormously brave to be careening among so many asteroids. It flew on Fett's tail, shooting a spray of lasers that the former evaded with an almost graceful roll.
It flew faster and smoother than any sort of freighter should, breaking away from Fett—sliding into a turn—to face Hera.
"Sabine! Who is that?!"
"What? Like I'm supposed to know every bounty hunter and hopeful scum out there?!"
Hera immediately spun the Phantom into a dive, zipping between asteroids and banking around them within inches of scraping them, but the freighter stuck to her tail. It opened fire.
Hera ducked under a looming asteroid—an impromptu shield—and just before the new enemy crested the asteroid, the Slave I snuck around from the port side, its own lasers flying for the Phantom.
"Hera!" shouted Sabine. "This is really bad!" These hunters hadn't started out working together to capture Woofrow, but now they both considered the Phantom enough of a threat to at least temporarily join forces.
"Not yet it's not!"
Hera pulled up hard on the controls, and as Boba Fett fell in behind her, the mystery ship barreled over the asteroid directly behind Fett, opening fire on the Slave I. Fett veered aside.
A moment later, half the cockpit controls flashed a bright red while the other half wailed. The third ship had locked onto the Phantom and shot two trailing missiles.
They followed Hera as she darted around asteroids, weaving and rolling and spinning. Hera brought the dorsal gun to life, shooting as best she could with no clear visual on either missile. Just as she banked to the left, one of her lasers hit a missile, destroying it in an explosion that bumped their ship forward. The second missile closed in on the Phantom.
Hera tilted to slip right between two asteroids. The wailing from the controls grew frenzied. She clipped an asteroid as she tried to duck around it for cover; the starboard side wing scraping the rocky surface filled the cabin with the shrillest screech, followed by a huge, buckling shudder that sent the entire Phantom spinning end-over-end. The viewport was more of a kaleidoscope than anything else.
The systems beeped wildly, but differently now. Instead of warning any impending danger, they wailed the current danger.
"We've been hit," Hera reported. "Thrusters are damaged; engine's fried. We're dead in the water."
The port side wing skidded along another asteroid—that at least stopped the Phantom from spinning endlessly. They leveled out and floated, both women looking for any sign of enemy hunters.
"Now it's really bad," Sabine said. "What do we do?"
There was a button on the dash that Hera never expected to use: the automated distress call, sent straight to the Ghost. She slammed the button.
"We keep our heads," Hera responded, hands tight on the controls. "We can't move, but if they fly into our crosshairs, I'm shooting." It was their only remaining option.
"They're bounty hunters—you really think a ship like this is going to do much more than scratch them?!"
As Sabine spoke, the mystery light freighter descended into their viewport, just out of reach of the Phantom's stationary twin laser cannons. Hera swung the dorsal gun around and shot a controlled pair of blasts at the ship, but the freighter's shields absorbed the attack without even the slightest rock. The stranger's weapon system locked onto them, a warning the Phantom blared over all other failing systems chirps.
Without another thought, Hera sprang up, blocking Sabine from the viewport and pulling the girl into a tight hug. They winced together as the ship rocked with the shockwave of an explosion. But it wasn't their ship. Hera spun back around.
The freighter had detonated in a blaze of engine oil and stockpiled explosives, and the Slave I soared through its remains. It hovered where the last ship had been, facing the Phantom, laser cannons pointed at them, before turning and continuing on his way.
Sabine breathed a sigh of relief as Hera let her go, flopping back into the pilot's chair. They let silence reign for countless minutes, ruminating on this whole ordeal.
"He saved us," Sabine said at last, hardly louder than a whisper. "I mean, technically, we owe him. Honor's a big Mandalorian thing."
Hera's gaze searched the asteroid field. Pieces of the light freighter spun slowly across the viewport. "Not all of us are Mandalorian."