A/N: My first foray into the realm of Sci-Fi and it just had to be Star Wars didn't it. I accept that the summary isn't great and will probably replace it at some point. For point of reference, this is set after episode 4, before episode 5. This is AU as it will not follow the storyline set out by the series. Enjoy.
Ezra Bridger was bored. He had never thought that he would miss danger, but the last few jobs that he'd run with the crew of the Ghost had gone off without a hitch, mind-numbingly simple fetch and carry jobs, jobs that Ezra felt Chopper could have done by himself. Jedi training with Kanan had been largely unsuccessful, with little advancement from the abilities that Ezra had been capable of before throwing his lot in with the rebels. Kanan had insisted that this was completely normal for someone beginning Jedi training, but Ezra wasn't convinced. He sat up and jumped down from his bunk, prompting a growl of anger from the Lasat whose feet he'd just landed on.
"Ezra!" Zeb growled.
Ezra fled out the room, poking his head around the door frame as he left. "Sorry, didn't see you there." Unaffected by the apology, the Lasat bounded after the boy in a two metre pile of purple muscle and fury, practically bouncing off the walls in his eagerness to catch the offender.
"Will you two cut it out?" Hera's voice came across the intercom, just as Zeb caught up with Ezra, "Some of us are trying to fly a spaceship."
"It's his fault!" Ezra and Zeb both declared at the same time, pointing accusatory fingers at each other.
"I don't care whose 'fault' it is, just stop it, or so help me I'll have Chopper dump both of you out of the starboard airlock."
"She wouldn't actually do that," Ezra said, "Right?" He laughed, but then stopped when he saw the expression on Zeb's face. "Would she?"
"She hasn't yet, but I wouldn't put it past her next time we're on Lothal."
Hera was busy making slight adjustments to the flight path and running checks on some of the Ghost's more temperamental systems when Ezra entered the cabin. "What is it kid?" she asked.
"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for messing about earlier."
"Mm-hmm." Hera was more interested in why that light on the console was flashing when it didn't normally. Ezra took her non-committal response as an indication that she expected more of an apology from him.
"And I'm sorry for disrupting your concentration."
Still no response.
Ezra finally broke down and fell to his knees, "Please just don't jettison me out of the airlock!" He begged, "I promise I'll behave."
"Jettison who out the what?" Hera asked, spinning round in her chair to face the boy. "Has Zeb been telling you horror stories again?"
"So you weren't serious then." Ezra said, relieved.
"Of course not, if I-"
Whatever Hera was about to say was interrupted by an insistent beeping noise from the console behind her.
"That doesn't sound good." Ezra said.
"Don't worry, it's not a system warning, it's a..." Hera consulted the manual, "Distress call?"
"Distress call?" Ezra asked.
"Hang on," Hera switched on the intercom, "Kanan, I'm picking up a distress call from a nearby system."
Kanan's voice came back almost immediately, "And I'm guessing you want to go and investigate it."
"Of course love."
"So why are you telling me?"
"Just figured you'd appreciate a little heads up." Hera sighed as she began to read of the co-ordinates given out by the distress call and fed them into the hyperspace computer.
A few minutes later the Ghost dropped out of hyperspace, and the view that could be seen through the cockpit canopy was one of cold, dead carnage. Numerous spherical TIE fighter cockpits and hexagonal wings floated around the central wreckage of a vessel roughly the size of the Ghost, surrounded by a cloud of splintered metal and glass. As Ezra gazed out at the destruction, he was suddenly confronted by a face on the other side of the glass. He recoiled in shock, uttering a small cry, as the body of an Imperial pilot slowly drifted past the outside of the ship.
"Not a nice way to go." Kanan's voice caused Ezra's head to whip round to the entrance to the cockpit.
"No, I don't suppose it would be."
"Hera," Kanan continued, "What's the likelihood that there'll be any survivors?"
"Not great. If there are any, they'll be in the main hull of that ship." She pointed towards the roughly triangular black shape near the centre of the debris cloud. "That's where the distress call is coming from, and it's the only thing large enough to still have its artificial atmosphere intact."
"What are we looking at here though? Clearly whoever they were, they were no friend of the empire."
"Mandalorians." Ezra hadn't heard Sabine enter the cabin.
"How do you figure that?" He asked.
Sabine gestured out of the cabin at the approaching hulk, more specifically at a line of glyphs stencilled below what appeared to be the cabin windows. "That text says 'Ca-galaar', or night-hawk in Mando'a."
"Is it normal to find a single Mandalorian vessel out on its own Sabine?" Kanan asked, "All the stories I've ever heard describe Mandalorian pilots as pack hunters, but you've got actual experience of being a Mandalorian so I defer to your expertise."
"It's unusual yes, but not entirely unheard of..." Sabine's voice tailed off.
Kanan was quick to notice this, "What is it Sabine?"
"It's just, the writing and the language used are definitely Mandalorian, but the ship itself doesn't look like anything I've ever seen Mandalorians using."
"Guys, I've got a hit on a life sign coming from the cockpit of that ship." Hera's voice interrupted the conversation. "I suggest that Zeb and Ezra take the Phantom to go across and get them."
"Why me?" Zeb and Ezra both asked at the same time, "And why with him?"
"Because, that ship has been shot to all the nine Corellian hells and you may need to go through whatever venting system it has left to reach the survivor, or you may need to lift some pretty heavy debris out of the way. Another possibility is that structurally the ship is perfectly intact inside but you'll need Ezra's skills with his screwdriver to get through the doors. And think of this as your punishment for messing about earlier, work together on this and I won't jettison you through the airlock."
"I thought you said you didn't do that." Ezra said.
"First time for everything." The Twi'lek replied with a grin.
Inside the drifting ship, Ezra and Zeb quickly came to the conclusion that it was not perfectly intact. Pieces of metal that had obviously once held the ships corridors and rooms in shape were now strewn haphazardly across the floor. Zeb having to stop numerous times to heft some of the more obstructive pieces out of the way.
"Ghost, this is spectre four. Are we sure there's someone alive in here? Because I'm looking at the interior of this ship, and I gotta be honest, it doesn't seem like anyone could survive this. We've already seen three dead crewmembers."
"Zeb, doesn't it strike you as odd that none of the crew were Mandalorians like Sabine thought. I mean none of them are even the same race." Ezra's voice cut across the comms, sounding odd due to the acoustics inside his spacesuit's helmet.
"Perhaps they were bounty hunters." Kanan suggested, "With a Mandalorian in charge."
"It's possible I suppose."
"Guys, can it, you're approaching the life sign now." Hera's voice cut across the chatter. "They should be just beyond that door in front of you. According to the Ghost's scanners, there should be some atmosphere on the other side. Be careful."
"Aren't we always?" Ezra asked.
"Really want me to answer that one Ezra?"
Ezra grinned and applied his screwdriver to the locking mechanism of the door in front of him.
"Almost got it... there." Ezra jumped back as the lights on the locking mechanism turned green and the door hissed open. On the other side of the door, the cabin appeared to be in much better shape than the rest of the ship. Ezra could see only one figure, covered in black armour with gold details, slumped over the main console. "Ghost, this is spectre six, we've got one figure draped across the command console. Is this our life sign?"
"Pick it up and move it and I'll tell you." Hera's response was quick.
"Well Zeb, I think that this is a job for you."
"Oh yeah. How do you get to that one?"
"I'm clearly the brains of this outfit, that makes you the muscle."
"Guys," Sabine's voice was the next to come across the comm, "Can you keep the arguments and violence for when you're not on board a floating wreck that could fall apart at any moment and get that survivor back to the Phantom."
Grumbling to himself, Zeb picked up the black figure, and tossing it over his shoulder, returned to the Phantom with Ezra, noting as he did so, the figure's armament. Twin pistols similar to the ones carried by Sabine were slung in hip holsters, a blaster rifle hung from the shoulder, a wickedly-serrated blade in a sheath crossing the chest from the left shoulder to the right ribs, and what looked like a rocket protruding from the jetpack on the figure's back. "Whoever this guy is, he's got a lot of weapons on him."
"Just shut up and bring him back to the Ghost while he's still alive."
Back on board the Ghost with its artificial gravity, the Mandalorian suddenly became much heavier. "I swear Sabine's armour doesn't weigh this much." Zeb said.
"Must be a different design." Ezra suggested.
The doors ahead of them slid open as Sabine approached them. "Alright boys, let's get that armour off him, then we can take him to the med-bay."
With a practised ease that came from years of experience with her own, similar armour, Sabine set about removing the weapons and jet pack from the black armoured figure. Once the weapons were clear, including the wrist-mounted blasters that Zeb had initially missed, Sabine flicked the catches on the Mandalorian helmet, before gently removing it to reveal a female face.
"A woman?" Ezra asked.
"Yeah." Sabine said, "Obviously."
"But she looked like a man."
"That's armour for you kid, covered up in that stuff, you could be anything."
Ezra took a good look at the woman's face. Her skin was darker than Sabine's, her hair black but streaked with grey. Her eyes were currently closed, but the skin around them seemed wrinkle-free. Ezra thought she was probably close to Kanan in age.
Stripping off the rest of the armour, leaving the woman in a black one piece jumpsuit, Zeb carried the unconscious woman to the med-bay, where Kanan injected her with an all-purpose healing serum.
"So, we got any ideas about who our mystery woman is?" Hera asked.
"Not yet," Sabine replied. "She's a dangerous enemy though."
"How do you know that?"
Sabine pointed to a symbol painted on one of the pauldrons of the armour, a five pointed star constructed of five overlapping lines. "That's the symbol of the Darkstar Covenant." She looked at the rest of the crew, clearly that name was supposed to mean something. When it became obvious that no-one had any idea what she was talking about she rolled her eyes and continued, "Okay, basic Mandalorian history 101. Historically Mandalorian society was split up into many clans and groups, each focussing on different aspects of our culture. The Darkstar Covenant was one of the more well-known ones. They were warriors, highly-trained and disciplined, often equipped with more weaponry than your typical Imperial squad. They were fierce warriors and had a reputation for honour."
"So why's one of them working as a bounty hunter?" Ezra asked.
Sabine's face fell, "About eight years ago the Empire instigated its first purge of the Mandalorian warrior clans, the Covenant was wiped out."
"But this woman survived?" Ezra asked.
Sabine shrugged. "Perhaps, or perhaps she came by the armour some other way."
"She was heavily armed enough to be one of your 'Darkstar Covenant'," Zeb suggested, "And she was clearly Mandalorian, based on the text on that ship."
"Hmm." Sabine was clearly not convinced.
"So," Kanan mused, "To sum it up, we may have just taken aboard our ship a battle-hardened warrior with a reason to have intense hatred for the empire, as well as the fire-power to take out entire Imperial squads? Or we may just have found some bounty hunter type who got lucky?"
"That's about it, yeah."
"Right, put her armour away in the med-bay storage and get some rest. Force knows we've earned some."
A/N: So the woman hasn't woken up yet. This was a quiet chapter, more setting the scene than anything. Next one will be hotting up considerably.
Please Read and review. If you have any advice or opinions or if you think any of the characters are OOC I'd love to know. Thanks.