Star Wars Rebels
Out of the Past
Chapter 1
Suddenly, an unexpectedly, the white tunnel of light that surrounded the Y-Wing vanished, and with a painful jerk the ship returned to normal space.
"Damn it!" Ezra said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Chopper, what happened?"
Shut up, I'm working on it. flashed across one of the displays of the pilot's control panels.
"Do you know where we are?" Kanan's voice carried forward from the gunner's seat.
"Not yet," Ezra said, as his hands flew across the controls of the navcomp console. "Still somewhere in the mid-rim, I imagine."
It was times like these that Ezra really missed Kanan's sight; using the Force he could still do many things, like fighting; but he couldn't read a computer display.
That stupid hunk of junk hyperdrive that we salvaged burned out on us. I don't know why we had to provide the stupid hyperdrive; Bail Organa's a viceroy of an entire planet, don't you think he could've got off his high-nerf and given us one; we gave him the damn Y-Wings in the first place!
"We can't use anything that can be traced back to him or the government of Alderaan," Ezra said. "Can you fix it?"
I need to take it apart first, I'll let you know. Ezra heard him pop out of his socket and heard the scraping of his magnet casters as he rolled across the surface of the fighter.
Ezra turned his attention back to the navcomp. "Okay, so it looks like we're… nowhere. Mid-Rim, like I thought, but we're more than 10 light-years from any star, outside of the heliopause of any system." He left it unsaid: there was no place for them to go for repairs, even if any of the nearby solar systems were inhabited.
The silence that followed was only broken by the clanking of Chopper taking apart the hyperdrive.
"At least we're unlikely to run across any Imperial patrols out here," Kanan said.
Ezra was reminded of a legend back on Lothal about a girl who never gave up hope; even as she fell into the sandpit of an antlion she believed that everything would work out in the end. It didn't, though, she wasn't able to escape, and the antlion ate her.
The clanking stopped and Chopper scraped back to the socket and plugged himself in.
The damage is extensive. I can probably repair it with parts from the repulsorlifts.
"That should be fine, we're only returning to the Tantive IV, so I don't think we'll need them," Ezra said. "How long should it take?"
Ezra shouted some curse words as the response scrolled across the display.
"What is it?" Kanan said.
"We're going to be stuck here for almost a day!" Ezra said.
"That's well within the timeframe of our rendezvous with the Tantive IV," Kanan said.
And naturally we can't contact them to have them pick us up, Ezra thought. Any communication could be intercepted, so they couldn't take the risk unless it was an emergency; and being stuck in interstellar space for a day didn't qualify.
The hours moved at a glacial pace. Kanan had gone into a Jedi trance, and suggested that Ezra do the same. Ezra wasn't even tempted to try, as he felt restless.
For the first couple of hours he played with his new toy, an old gaming device he picked up at their last stop. It had a flat screen and limited controls, but it was amazing how compelling it could be. As was common for the past couple of days, he felt himself feeling nostalgia for a time before he had been born.
This job had been a most unusual one. There was an annual meeting of Clone Wars enthusiasts on Rustibar, a backwater planet in the Mid-Rim. Every year these enthusiasts met to swap stories and show off their latest acquisitions: obsolete technology that had become more difficult to maintain as the years passed and replacement parts stopped being produced.
Kanan and Ezra had come here to find potential suppliers, since much of the Rebellion's aging technology dated back to this era. They were also on the lookout for potential allies. It was a difficult, and dangerous, assignment. If the person they propositioned had imperial ties, they could end up in the mines of Kessel. So it was decided that the perception of a Jedi was necessary to make the trip work, and both Master and Padawan had been drafted.
The Y-Wings they had secured for the Rebellion recently had dated back to that era, and they were also the early models which accommodated two passengers, so they had borrowed one from Bail Organa and went undercover as enthusiasts.
It remained to be seen how successful the mission had been; they'd gotten several business plaques and it would be Rebel Intelligence's job to see if they would be of any use.
After another fifteen minutes he tired of the gaming device's catalog of games and started to practice using the force to levitate the objects of his bag around the inside of the cockpit. It stopped being fun when he realized that he could have gotten the same effect by turning the cockpit's gravity off.
He lounged back in the pilot's seat and closed his eyes. He was considering trying to enter into a Jedi trance, but he forgot about it as the rhythmic clanking of Chopper's repairs lulled him to sleep.
Kanan was, truth be told, not in a Jedi trance. There was neither a shortage of air or food which would have required such a trance; Kanan simply told Ezra he was entering the trance so that he wouldn't be disturbed as he was meditating.
The lie hadn't exactly had the expected effect, since Ezra still managed to disturb his meditation. Now that he was finally asleep, Kanan could begin to meditate in earnest.
A sufficiently trained Jedi is capable, while in deep meditation, of projecting their perception outside of their body and into their environment. Many Jedi used this as a way to see around corners, or through walls; but as a youngling he had been taught by Master Yoda to unlearn the limitations of his mortal frame.
Some Jedi were never able to perceive more than a few meters around them, stuck in the imaginary limitations that were analogous to those of their eyes or ears. Kanan had learned the lesson that Master Yoda had been trying to teach them; the loss of his sight had only made his perception that much more powerful.
His perception enlarged, taking in the entire Y-Wing; Ezra's snoring body and his troubled psyche; Chopper's slow and tedious work on the hyperdrive; the energy that flowed through the network of cables and circuit boards within the ship.
He expanded outward so that the Y-Wing was a small piece of drift-wood floating in a sea of black nothingness. He longed to increase his perception to the nearby stars, hopeful that he might savor the refreshing scent of life.
He felt it, a red dwarf star; so energetic compared to anything else he had felt, but cold as far as stars went. There were no planets surrounding it, only asteroids, and no ships nearby; the system was as dead as the interstellar gulf they were adrift in.
In the opposite direction was a star which was so small that even his perception was unable to visualize it at this distance, he only knew it was there because of its enormous energy. The star exuded that energy in two powerful beams, the swift rotation of the star made them sweep the surrounding void like searchlights.
Kanan had seen pulsars both with the naked eye and on a display screen with a wide-spectrum view. Neither case did this star justice; the sheer beauty of this star, which would appear dim and insignificant to the naked eye (if it was visible at all), was breathtaking.
Since neutron stars were born from supernovas, Kanan hadn't expected to find any planets in the system, much less life. He certainly didn't expect to feel a faint echo of his perception come back to him through the Force.
It was something he had experienced before, during his training-when he was practicing telepathy with a partner-attempting to read the mind of a Jedi who was attempting to read his mind; it was analogous to feedback on a comlink.
However this echo was very faint compared to his memories, possibly due to the distance, and possibly due to something else. He had encountered something similar during one of his missions to infiltrate a the stronghold of a minor Hutt who had been conspiring with the Separatists during the Clone Wars. The Hutt had kept as pet fierce canines that were capable of sensing and tracking Jedi through the Force. Whenever one of the animals had sensed him, he had felt a similar faint echo.
Kanan felt the cool sensation of hope flowing into his soul; they may have just found another Jedi.
"Ezra! Ezra, wake up!"
"Whaa?" Ezra said, reluctantly sitting up in the pilot seat. He rubbed the back of his neck in an attempt to get the crick out of it. He shoulder also hurt from where Kanan had been shaking it.
"I want you to crank up the navcomp, find out any information you can on a Pulsar in this sector," Kanan said.
"You woke me up for that?!" Ezra seethed.
"There's something out there, Ezra," Kanan said, and immediately Ezra knew this was serious. "Something out there that can use The Force."
Ezra nodded in compliance, more for his own benefit since Kanan wouldn't see it. After a few moments he found what they were looking for.
"The star is called GPS-7AA, age 200 million years…" Ezra looked up. "Isn't that pretty young for a star?"
"The kind of massive stars that produce supernovas don't live as long as stars like Lothal's sun," Kanan said. "Does it have any planets?"
Ezra flipped forward a couple of pages on the data file. "Two known planets, it says. Neither capable of supporting life."
"No records of any colonies?" Kanan said.
"None that were important enough to be in the navcomp," Ezra said.
Kanan pondered that in silence for several moments.
"How long until Chopper has finished the repairs?" Kanan asked.
Ezra looked over at the chronometer he'd set to countdown. "About two hours."
"It looks like I'll have to heed my own advice about meeting our circumstances with patience," Kanan said, not quite managing to keep some petulance out of his voice.
Ezra smiled wryly.
"This could be a trap," Hera said. "Remember what happened with Luminara."
"If it is a trap, it would be an extremely subtle one. Do you realize the chain of events that would have to occur for me to be aware of the bait, much less take it?" Kanan said.
They were sitting in the galley of the Tantive IV. The Ghost and her crew had already arrived at the rendezvous point by the time Ezra and Kanan had made it; so both Hera and Bail Organa were there to greet them as the Y-Wing pulled into the landing bay. He could feel the relief, even if he couldn't see it on their faces. Bail Organa noted that he would be happy to not have to explain to General Dodonna why his Gold Squadron would be short a fighter.
"I also don't want to take the Ghost into a pulsar system unless I absolutely have to. We'd have to have shields on full the entire time just to keep from frying up," Hera said.
"Which makes an ambush even less likely; this would be one of the few times the Empire would be on a level playing field," Kanan said.
"We wouldn't even be able to explore any of the planets, you'd need power suits to survive outside," Hera said.
"Whatever this things is, it's alive, which means that there must be some place in the system which is amiable to life," Kanan said.
"Maybe not human life," Zeb said, taking a break from devouring a mollusk right out of its shell. "You'd be surprised the kind of hostile environments life can survive in. There are fish which swim in the lava seas of Mustafar."
"If that's the situation, then we'll come back once we're better equipped. All I'm asking is for a chance to see what's there," Kanan said. "A scouting mission, that's all it is."
Hera drummed her fingers on the table in frustration, her head-tentacles occasionally wagging in frustration. Finally she turned to Zeb. "What do you think about this? I think I might be overly cautious, but I've got a bad feeling about this."
"Trusting feelings is a Jedi's stock-in-trade," Zeb said. "Though any spacer worth their spice knows to trust their gut… But if there's even a chance that one of Kanan's people is out there, and needs help, it's a risk we need to take."
"All right, you've got the Ghost, and her crew, but if she gets so much as a scratch on her paint job…" Hera said.
"I'll get Ezra to repaint her, then," Kanan said.
"Hey!" Ezra said, spitting out a mouthful of soup.
"What, you'd prefer the blind guy do it?" Kanan said.
As Kanan suspected all information on GPS-77A, in every database they had access to, had come from a long range surveying probe. They had gravity silhouettes of the two known planets, and nothing else.
One of them was 70 AUs from the pulsar, and had enough mass to be a gas giant.
The other was merely 3 AUs from the pulsar, and had a mass roughly five times that of Coruscant, so possibly a super-terrestrial planet, or a gas dwarf. Either way, Kanan decided that it was the best bet.
When they jumped out of hyperspace, Kanan heard a groan from Hera.
"Looks like we might need those powersuits after all," she said.
Ezra looked up from the scanner console. "There are no hills or mountain on this side of the planet; it's completely flat!" He gasped as he looked out the window. "Is… Is that ice?"
Kanan didn't need to be able to see the planet to understand what they were seeing. "No, it's crystal."
"The entire planet is covered by crystal?" Ezra said.
"It isn't a planet at all, it's what's left of one. When this system's star went supernova, it ripped the atmosphere off of the gas giant that was here. What we're looking at is its solid core."
"A chthonian planet," Hera said, breathlessly. "I've never seen one of those in the flesh."
Ezra looked back at the scanner. "I'm reading an atmospheric pressure of 0.0. Not even any trace gases."
"I'll meditate and see if I narrow down where our friend might be," Kanan said, and walked into the back of the ship.
Kana sat on the floor of the ship, his legs folded beneath him, and began to focus on his breathing. Within seconds he freed his perception from the shackles of his body, and cast it beyond the confines of the ship.
When he was finally able to visualize the planet beneath him, he was taken astonished. He knew of chthonian planets from his Jedi training, but he had never actually seen one before. He knew that he heavy elements all sank to the center of the planet while it was still the core of a gas giant, and lighter elements, like silicon and carbon, made up the outer layers, with carbon making up the outmost layer because it was the lightest. Since the carbon was under immense pressure at the heart of the gas giant, it would fuse into exotic allotropes; what this ended up meaning is that the crust of chthonic planets were made of diamond.
He had expected a greyish-white glaze to cover the planet, but he had forgotten that impurities could enter into the diamond from the mantle and core. The result of this was that just about every color of the rainbow was present on the surface. There were streaks of rust red, swirls of purple, blobs of blue, yellow streaking through vast plains of white diamond.
If it looks this beautiful in the dim light of the pulsar, Kanan thought, I can only imagine what it would like in the light of a main sequence star. He was so mesmerized that the beauty, that he didn't notice the echo at first.
He narrowed his perception and employed several tricks that he had devised on his own to range the echo. He traced it to somewhere on the dark side of the planet. As there was no light on that side of the planet, he couldn't see where the echo was coming from. He cast his perception until the echo became powerful and insistent, and tried his best to get an image of its source.
Somehow, and he was never sure where from, he got the image of a massive ship, crashed into the surface; part of the ship's bow cracking the crystal of the surface, causing cracks that ran for kilometers. Also he knew without a doubt that the mind he was touching was not only sapient, but human.
Kanan roused himself and walked back to the cockpit.
"It's on the far side of the planet, a ship. Try scanning for common alloys or plastics," Kanan said.
Hera nodded and fired the thrusters: enough to increase their velocity, but not fast enough to break orbit. Rapidly they passed the terminator and entered the sky above the dark side of the planet.
"Have you managed to calculate the length of this planet's day yet?" Kanan said.
Hera chuckled. "There isn't one, the planet is tidally locked."
"What does that mean?" Ezra said.
"It means that only one side of the planet ever faces the pulsar. That may be how someone survived; the entire planet shields it from the radiation," Kanan said.
"I got it!" Ezra said. "It's a freighter of some kind; I don't recognize the model."
Hera looked at the silhouette on the radar screen. "That looks like a Hutt design."
"Are you picking up a distress call?" Kanan said.
"Not on any of the usual frequencies," Ezra said.
"Send out a message on all common frequencies, ask if they need our help," Kanan said.
Five minutes passed in silence. Kanan finally turned to Hera. "We need to land."
"Are you crazy?" Ezra and Hera both said at the same time.
"The artificial gravity in the cabin will keep everyone safe. It may be stressful, but if we land close enough, Ezra and I should be able to walk over to the ship. Once there we can have Chopper repair the artificial gravity in the freighter."
From the engineering compartment came a spurt of static that Kanan was pretty sure was obscene.
"That's assuming we're able to land!" Hera said.
"You've skirted the event horizons of black holes," Kanan said. "Five gravities should be nothing compared to that. Also the planet has no atmosphere, so there's no drag or turbulence to worry about."
"Look, I'm sure we can walk half a kilometer or whatever in five gees, but what if we get in a fight?" Ezra said.
"I've had high gravity training as a Jedi," Kanan said.
"Yes, but that was how many decades ago? And don't forget that I haven't!" Ezra said.
"Luckily whatever we would have to fight will be under the same strain," Kanan said.
"All the same, I want you to take Zeb with you," Hera said.
"What?!" Zeb said as he stood up, finally paying attention to the conversation.
"I can't believe you roped me into this," Zeb grumbled over the spacesuit com.
Ezra couldn't imagine how anyone would have the energy to complain. Every muscle in his body was in agony; it even hurt to breathe. Each step took so much effort to make that Ezra had begun shuffling instead of walking; this was aided by the smooth ground. He could imagine just how ridiculous he must look, waddling along like some arctic fowl.
It was so dark that Ezra wouldn't have been able to see his hand in front of his face if it weren't for the helmet lamps. Ezra shuddered as he realized that, since the world was tidally locked, it's possible that nothing more than starlight had ever touched this side of the planet.
They were following Chopper, who lead them towards the crashed ship with his sensors. He made occasional cutting remarks over the com, which thankfully none of them were able to interpret.
Chopper suddenly skidded to a halt; his dome whirled around to face them. He squawked at them over the com. Ezra was at the lip of the crater before he saw it; he almost stepped over the edge. He staggered back and fell to his knees. He leaned forward so that his helmet lamps could illuminate the crater.
It was at least five meters deep, dead in the center of the crater was a long thin ship with a globular compartment on the end, which had crushed into a demisphere which was open to vacuum. Ezra suspected it was the crew compartment.
"That's a Hutt freighter, all right. You can tell because of the winged decoration on the rear sections," Zeb said. "Never seen this particular model, though."
"How are we going to get down there?" Ezra said.
Zeb turned to walk along the lip of the crater. "This thing crashed headfirst, if we're lucky some of the rear compartments might be out of the crater." After a few moments. "I was right, the very tail-end of it is just a meter down into the crater."
Ezra felt like a fool as they climbed down into the one-meter deep pit on ropes. Jedi and a hardened warrior might be able to survive a jump into such a pit in five gees, but they would almost certainly break something or at least tear a muscle.
"Should we cut a hole in the hull with our lightsabers?" Ezra said.
"No need to bother," Zeb said. "I'm sure there are plenty of tears in the hull. We just need to find one."
They walked into the crater, the ground crunching below their feet. It suddenly occurred to Ezra that the gravel his feet were crunching was powdered diamond. This was going to make a great story to tell at the cantina.
Unfortunately none of the holes that crash had ripped in the hull were large enough, or in convenient enough locations, for them to access the interior of the ship. They ended up having to walk the entire thousand-feet length of the freighter.
They shot liquid cable lines up to the bulkhead of the first level in the smashed crew compartment, and climbed up into the crew quarters level. A desiccated Twi'lek slumped against the wall at an unnatural angle. His nakedness suggested that he had been sleeping when the ship crashed.
The door was jammed, so Ezra cut through it with his lightsaber; he wondered if the muscles in his arm would ever forgive him.
"No power, either the reactor ran out of fuel or was disabled in the crash," Zeb said.
"Or all doors were sealed when the hull breach occurred," Kanan said.
"Then why would the artificial gravity be off?" Zeb said.
"Could be the lattice in the floors was damaged," Kanan said.
Ezra couldn't imagine where they found the energy to chat like that. It had almost gotten to the point where he was too tired to think.
"Are the main reactors in the engine compartment, do you think?" Kanan said.
"Probably, but crew compartments tend to have backups," Zeb said.
"Chopper, could you take a look?" Kanan said.
Ezra looked around. "Chopper?" He he was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly a series of jubilant hoots came over the intercom.
Ezra's helmet lamps finally caught sight of him, about ten meters astern.
"What's got him so excited?" Zeb said.
Very quickly the light of their helmet lamps fells on the object of Chopper's interest, and he understood.
"Good job, Chopper!" Ezra said.
It was a repulsor sled with four seats and a spacious cargo bed.
"Does it still have power?" Kanan asked.
Chopper replied with another happy hoot.
They quickly got aboard, Ezra grabbing the driver's seat for themselves. Ezra couldn't remember anything in his life that felt as good as finally being able to sit down. Well, there was that time with Rachel behind the power-station…
The repulsorlifts were reluctant to start at first, and even once they did they made an unhealthy grinding noise, but the sled rose and stayed aloft.
They needed to cut through three more doors, and they passed almost a dozen corpses along the way, including a Hutt in some sort of command dias. They must have moved out of the crew quarters and into the command center. Eventually they made it into a large room filled with large cylinders that extended far beneath the floor they were walking on. They had found the reserve generators.
Chopper began to assess the damage, but Kanan said they needed to keep going.
"It's difficult to rest in high gravity, if we don't expend our energy in the search, we'll lose it by trying to rest," Kanan said.
"That's all fine and good, but we have no idea where we should be looking; or really what we're looking for," Zeb said.
"Very well, I'll see if I can get us some guidance," Kanan said, and folded his legs beneath him.
They waited a long time; Ezra got the impression that Kanan was having trouble focusing. Or perhaps time just seemed to slow down due to the greater gravity. Ezra seemed to remember reading somewhere that the passage of time in an environment was proportional to its gravity; but as far he knew that was only noticeable in the case of black holes.
"What we're looking for is in the back of the ship, almost to the engines," Kanan said.
"Of course it is," Zeb grumbled.
"Do you have any idea what it is?" Ezra said.
"No," Kanan said; from his tone it was obvious something was bothering him. "It's in some kind of cargo hold, but my perception just sees that place as a blind spot… There's something else… Whoever or whatever is back there, it's not alone."
They left Chopper to repair the generator while they went in search of Kanan's quary. They then had to cut a hole through a double-thick bulkhead. Once they were through, however, Ezra got the impression that they wouldn't have to cut their way through much anymore. The cargo compartment they were in was wide open, and seemed to go on forever. They zipped right along on the repulsor sled, though it kept bumping the ground, as the sled was never meant to be run on an inclined surface, and with the engine compartment of the ship sticking up in the air (vacuum?) as it was, the floor of the ship was basically a ramp.
The first blaster bolt hit the sled long before the wardroid was illuminated by their sled's headlights .
That first shot simply singed the bumper of the sled. Ezra began to swerve, but Kanan's hand clamped around his wrist. "Don't, the broadside will present it with more targets. Keep straight ahead."
Of course, Ezra though. He'd been panicking; he thought he'd overcome that.
Two more shots hit the sled, another in the bumper, another that melted through the windscreen but managed to not hit anyone.
Finally the wardroid came within sight; Ezra was glad to finally see what was shooting at them, but that was little solace. The thing was made of some greenish-grey metal; it wasn't built to resemble a human; or possibly anything at all, but it looked insectine. Its body consisted of a linked chain of metal segments, which alternatively had either limbs or blaster barrels. It walked on three of these, the rest were curved back so the blaster barrels could get a bead on their target.
"Get out," Ezra said. "I'm going to ram it."
He had expected an argument, but Zeb and Kanan quickly tuck-and-rolled out of the sled. Ezra ducked his head down as far to the dashboard as the helmet allowed and slammed down on the accelerator. The wardroid must have figured out what he was doing, because it began to skitter out of the way, but he was faster, and struck it head-on. There was a horrible screeching noise as it was pulled along under the bumper of the sled, followed by a satisfying crunch as droid and sled both slammed into the bulkhead on the far side of the compartment.
Ezra looked up, dazed. Unfortunately the wardroid hadn't taken nearly as long to recover. It was trying to pull out from where it had been wedged between the sled and the bulkhead. Then suddenly the upper segments snapped loose from the lower ones, and a much smaller, but just as deadly, wardroid crawled over the hood towards Ezra.
Ezra leapt to his feet and attempted to backflip out of the sled; he had forgotten about the five gee gravity and ended up sumersaulting over two sets of seats before landing hard on his ass in the cargo bed. He skittered out of the cargo bed and pulled out his lightsaber, igniting it as he did so.
The wardroid fired all four of its blasters at him all at once; Ezra tried to deflect them back with his lightsaber, but the gravity so impaired his reflexes that he only managed to block them.
He noticed that the segments which had limbs also had a red lense; possibly a camera or other kind of sensor? If he used his lightsaber in blaster mode, he might be able to take them out and blind the wardroid. However it was firing at him so rapidly that he didn't think he'd get a chance.
"Hey, I need some help, those lens things are probably sensors. Can one of you take them out?" Ezra said.
"Hold on kid, we'll be right there," a winded Zeb said over the com.
There wouldn't be enough time, though. The last few hours in five gees of gravity had taken their toll, and even with the Force to guide his reflexes, Ezra's muscles weren't able to keep up with the signals his brain was sending one them. One of the bolts got through and hit him in the leg. He fell to one knee, and the other bolt hit his hand, and his lightsaber went flying.
The lenses of the wardroid seemed to glare at him as it charged its blasters for another hit. This is it, Ezra realized. This is how Ezra Bridger, rebel and Jedi Padawan, died.
Suddenly it seemed as if the entire ship shook, and relief flooded through every muscle in Ezra's muscles. The compartment was suddenly flooded with light as the long-dormant lamps switched back on.
The sudden changes caused a moment of confusion in the wardroid; but that hesitation ended up being fatal. With the burden of five gravities gone, even the pain in his leg and hand weren't enough to keep Ezra from concentrating, and he grabbed the wardroid with the Force, and slammed it against the bulkhead so hard that not only was it crushed beyond recognition, but the bulkhead buckled and cracked from the force.
By the time Zeb and Kanan reached him, he had sealed the punctures in his suit with a tube of sealant from a pouch on the leg of his suit.
"Are you okay, kid?" Zeb said. "After seeing how hard you hit the wall with the sled, I figured out you for a goner."
"I got a couple of blaster hits; luckily I don't seem to be bleeding," Ezra said.
"The bolts probably cauterized the wound," Kanan said. "Just to be on the safe side, we probably shouldn't move you."
"What the hell was that thing?" Ezra said, staring at the crushed droid. He couldn't imagine how much force it needed to hit the bulkhead with to crack like that. "It doesn't look like any battle droid I've ever seen."
"This isn't a CIS job from Geonosis. The Hutt's have been building their own for centuries now. If the Sepratists had been using these babies, they would've won the war," Zeb said.
"Luckily the Hutts are jealous of their technology; it's the only thing in the galaxy they won't put a price on," Kanan said.
Kanan suddenly looked lost in thought, staring at the bulkhead. Ezra almost thought he was going to accuse him of using the Dark Side of the Force to crush the wardroid. He was actually surprised to learn, on recollection, that he hadn't.
"I can feel him," Kanan said, hauntingly. "He's in the next compartment."
Kanan started walking through the door which connected the compartments. After a moment's hesitation Zeb followed him.
"Hey, wait for me!" Ezra said, and stood up. He was able to walk, the shot to his leg must have been a glancing one. It hurt like hell, however. He steeled himself with the Force and hobbled after his master and crewmate.
The next compartment was a cargo bay, like the one they had just left. But where that one had been almost empty, this one contained rack after rack of metal slabs. On the side of each slab were flashing lights, buttons, and switches.
Kanan sighed; Zeb grumbled; neither said anything.
"What are those things?" Ezra said.
"People, frozen in carbonite," Kanan said.
Ezra blinked rapidly; he tried to take a quick count of the slabs; there were about twenty in each rack, and there were a bunch of racks in an aisle, and there must have been at least fifty aisles. There were thousands—no, tens of thousands-people.
"But why would they freeze people in carbonite?" Ezra asked.
"Slavers. Those bastards were slavers," Zeb spat out.
Kanan started walking towards the far end of the compartment.
"Kanan, the Rebellion doesn't have the resources to fix this. We're going to have to bring in the government of Alderaan," Zeb was saying, then he noticed that Kanan had walked away. "Yes, of course, you still need to find 'him'. Who cares about slaves?"
Ezra hobbled after Kanan. Eventually he found him in one of the aisles at the near the end of the compartment. He stood behind one of the slabs, lost in thought. Ezra went to stand beside him. Etched into the slab of carbonite was a bearded human face, screaming in agony.
"Who is he?" Ezra said.
"A Jedi," Kanan said. "That's all I know."
The Tantive IV jumped into the system twelve hours later. There were two medical frigates scheduled to jump into the system eighteen hours after that. However by that time the Ghost and her crew would need to be long gone.
It had been obvious that the Rebellion wouldn't be able to resuscitate all of the slaves. What hand't been so obvious was that it would've been impossible to keep the secret from the Empire. More than that, any attempt to keep the secret at all would put the 12,000 people on the slave ship, most of them Republic citizens, in jeopardy.
"We have no right to choose for them," Bail Organa had said to Kanan and Hera. "And only the Empire can reunite them with their families."
He had promised to do everything with a select committee in the Senate, and would do his best to make sure the Emperor himself didn't get involved. It was still cold comfort to the rebels who knew how bad life under the Empire could be.
Crewmen from the Tantive IV were already on the surface, preparing the carbonite blocks for transport. As per Kanan's instructions one of them was ferried up to the Tantive IV and taken to the medical bay.
Several loyal technicians and a GH-9 droid worked on the carbonite block as Kanan and Bail looked on. Ezra was present as well, but was floating in a bacta tank at the far end of the medical bay, and was dead to the world.
"How long has he been in hibernation?" Kanan said.
"These readings say he was frozen 42 year ago," the technician said.
"I didn't know anyone could survive that long frozen in carbonite," Bail said.
"I don't see why not, even though freezing is only used for short term purposes, the hibernation coma could probably last indefinitely," the technician said.
"I believe we have stabilized him as much as is possible from the external life support frame. We must unfreeze him now," GH-9 said.
"I thought you said the shock might kill him?" Bail said.
"At this point there is nothing else we can do, the carbonite encasement must be removed," GH-9 said.
Bail and Kanan exchanged looks. Kanan nodded.
"Go ahead," Bail said.
The technicians adjusted the temperature controls on the life support frame, and slowly but surely the carbonite melted away. The figure that was left in the frame was in late middle age with white hair, however his exposed chest rippled with muscles. He wore a simple brown robe and had a medallion hanging from his neck.
Two of GH-9's nurses moved the old Jedi from the remnants of the carbonite block to one of the beds. GH-9 flew around the man, placing data-leads and IV tubes in here and there.
"If he does not awaken on his own, I will transfer him to one of the bacta tanks to recover…" GH-9 said. "I don't understand, he's already recovering consciousness…"
"Jedi are very resilient," Kanan said.
"We are at that," the man rasped. He opened his eyes, which were a plain brown, and took in the surroundings.
"I would ask if I were a prisoner," he rasped, then coughed a little. When he spoke again his voice was clear and strong. "But I can feel that you bear me no ill-will. Where am I?"
"You are onboard my ship, Master Jedi. My name is Bail Organa, I am Viceroy of Alderaan," Bail said.
"Giles's boy?"
Bail stared at him, nonplussed. "Well, yes."
"I am Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight," Kanan said. "I heard you; from over ten light years away."
"Yes, your mind is familiar to me. I don't remember calling to you; it was all like a dream to me," the man said.
"As for myself, my name is Jorus C'Baoth, Jedi Master."