Ezra...
The whisper echoed in darkness.
Ezra..!
A hissing sound grew louder, then died away. A low, rhythmic thumping began in the silence. Then another, much softer and faster, fell into place with the first. The beats meshed in a perfect pattern.
Muffled cries erupted in the distance. Blaster fire, shouting, screams of the wounded. A speeder started up and sped away. More blaster fire. The explosion of a building. Flames.
An angry Lasat's voice faded in, accompanied by the sound of knuckles knocking plastic armor. He snarled before the snap of a spine split through the space.
Zeb?
A lightsaber activated, its hum filling the air. The crack of clashing blades echoed sharply in the distance. Flesh was seared, followed by a cry of pain. The area illuminated just enough so the figures were barely visible.
No.
The red blade emerged from the back of his chest. It retracted back into its hilt, sending him falling to the ground.
Kanan! the distance shouted as it faded to black.
The voices kept on. Hera's weeping, her singing, her murmuring to the baby. Sabine's quiet sobbing, her airbrush spraying. Zeb's laughter. Chopper's caterwauling. Kanan's dying breath.
Groaning, followed by shallow breathing, turned into a scream. The darkness of the space turned to a deep red. A quiet tapping sound came from the right.
Hera.
A darkness blacker than anything before swept across the area. Mechanized breathing lingered. A woman's pained cry and forced deep breaths sounded close.
I bring news of a potential apprentice, a male voice said.
We shall unleash his power on the Rebels... Restore order to the galaxy...
It has yet to be born... We're keeping Syndulla here...
Good, good, said a vaguely familiar voice. Notify me the moment the child is born.
Ezra jolted out of sleep, breathing quickly. He sat up in bed and glanced around the dark room. Zeb was snoring on the bunk below him. Ezra let his eyes adjust to the darkness, controlled his breathing, and let his mind return to his dream.
So it's true, he thought, remembering the short vision he had a week ago. Vader does want the baby.
He realized that if Vader planned to apprentice Hera's child to become a Sith lord, saving her before she gave birth was more important than ever. If he and the crew did manage to rescue her, would they be hunted for their entire lives? Would they have to spend each day worrying about whether they would be safe? Would life ever be back to normal?
Ezra dreaded the thought of Hera on the run from the Empire, having to live under immense fear for the safety of her child.
That reminds me, he thought. I'm supposed to train him.
How he was going to mentor a small child in a somewhat confusing concept was beyond him. Was he supposed to be the baby's father-figure, like Kanan was to him? When should he earn his lightsaber? How was he to teach him with incomplete training? What if he was actually a she?
Deepening his meditation, Ezra remembered that Kanan was the one who knew he had a gift for connecting with other beings. Kanan knew he needed a dad, so he stepped in and taught him as his son. He taught Ezra the best he could, even with incomplete training himself.
I'm just like him, Ezra realized. He doubted himself. He knew he wasn't the best. He wanted me to have someone better, but he was the only one I wanted.
Kanan wanted Ezra, no one else, to train his child because he knew he could do it.
The door to the room suddenly slid open, revealing Chopper. He warbled and spun his head around, getting Ezra's attention. He slid down from his bunk and stretched his upper body, hearing Zeb groan and roll over to face the wall.
"Yes, Chop," Ezra yawned. "I didn't need a wake-up call."
Chopper replied with a series of beeps. He pointed down the hallway.
"She's up already?" Ezra walked idly toward the lounge. When he opened the door, he found Sabine hunched over on the sectional with the endless list of prisoner files pulled up on the holotable. She scrolled carefully through them, not paying any attention to Ezra.
"Hey, Sabine," he said, trying to casually readjust his hair. He realized he probably had terrible bedhead. "You're up early."
"Yeah," she replied, breaking her gaze at the files. "I couldn't stay asleep. I'm just... so worried about Hera."
Ezra sat down next to her. "Me, too."
Sabine briefly returned to the files before letting out a sigh.
"What's Vader going to do to her, Ezra?"
He paused. "My guess is he either plans to keep her alive for interrogation, or to kill her after she has the baby."
Sabine went silent. She glanced down at the floor. "And what about him?"
"Remember how the Inquisitors hunted down those Force-sensitive children?"
She nodded.
"They were afraid they'd become Jedi," said Ezra.
Sabine froze in shock. "So you're saying—"
"Vader wants the baby as his apprentice."
"Oh, no," said Sabine under her breath. "Did you tell Hera?"
"No. I had the vision the night she was captured."
"Ezra!" she scolded him. "You knew about this? And you didn't think to tell us?"
"It wasn't clear at the time!" he said defensively. "I didn't know for sure until last night."
"But you knew?"
"Okay, the first time wasn't really—well, it was more of a—"
"A what?" she said sharply.
"It was just something Vader said. I didn't know if it was real."
Sabine sighed again. "This is going to make rescuing her really difficult if she's being guarded under Vader's orders." She hated thinking about how the Empire was probably treating Hera. Being away from her family was bad enough. Sabine had hoped to be there for her during labor, just so she could have a hand to squeeze. She imagined it would be a lot harder without Kanan by her side.
"Well, we can at least start by finding Hera's prison records," suggested Ezra.
"Right," replied Sabine before looking back up at the hologram. "Do you want to give it a try?"
"Sure."
Ezra relaxed his body and closed his eyes. He reached out with the Force and focused on the weak signatures connected to each name on the hologram. He raised his hand slowly and held it in front of him, and the names began to scroll downward. As the Force signatures became more clear, they scrolled faster; Hera was still quite far down the list. Her deeply lonely and fearful state stood out compared to the others.
The names were soon only a white blur. About twelve seconds passed before they gradually slowed and finally came to a stop. The cursor rested on Hera's name.
"Wow," Sabine remarked. "It would have taken me a day to do that."
"What can I say?" replied Ezra with a half-grin. "It's a gift."
Sabine opened Hera's file, seeing her picture, a distant and slightly saddened expression stuck upon her face. "024-601," she mumbled, glancing at her identification number beside it. The document showed all of the typical data: height, weight, age, sex, race, home planet, and offenses committed. And of course, in the additional information, how far along she was in her pregnancy. She shifted the page down to look at the rest of it, hoping to see where Hera was being held.
The Mandalorian's eyebrows knitted closer together as she skimmed further down the document. "Some of these words are garbled, it doesn't say her prison block or cell number," she said, her tone growing increasingly frustrated. "These files are incomplete! Karabast!" She clapped her hands to her head and slumped into the back of the sectional, letting out a growl. "You were right, Ezra," she moaned. "We should have had Saw get closer."
"We will find Hera," Ezra reassured her. "I promised her I would. We'll just have to find another way."
Sabine looked at the file once more. She scrolled back up to the top, seeing Hera's picture and the number beside it.
"Maybe..." she paused. "Maybe we only need her identification number," she glanced at Ezra. "024, I wonder if that's a cruiser number."
"That's a start. Do any other prisoners have it?" Ezra asked.
"Just what I was thinking," answered Sabine before she exited Hera's document. "Look," she said, pointing to the surrounding names. "They're all tagged 024." She panned up and down the list a few lines to see the whole unit. "And there's Andrexis, looks like Saw was right about him."
"The number has to mean something," Ezra said. "Maybe we can find it on the fleet files."
Sabine nodded and flipped a small switch right above the disk slot on the holotable. The prison list disappeared before a large red imperial emblem cued up on hologram. It spun slowly around for a short while before dissipating, revealing a chunk of unreadable data.
"It's encrypted," she stated. "Hey Chop, a little help?" she shouted to the hallway. They both could hear the astromech's groan from Hera's quarters. He grumbled as he rolled into the lounge, wheels squeaking.
"Would you decrypt these files for us?" Sabine asked the droid. Chopper huffed and issued grumpy beeps.
"Because you're our droid, and we need your help."
He muttered resentfully and shook his head.
"Do you want to save Hera or not?"
Chopper sighed and extended his manipulator to rotate the astromech port. The hologram flickered several times before coming back on with the text changed to basic.
"I can look through these ones if you want to get something to eat," offered Ezra.
Sabine smiled a little. "Thanks, I think I will." She got up from the sectional and headed to the Ghost's galley.
Ezra slid over to where she was sitting and opened the fleet files. He scanned the extensive but comparatively shorter list of names of teams, squadrons, and whole armadas of imperial ships. He shifted to a different page listing every class of TIE fighter, cruiser, and dreadnought they had. He kept switching through the different lists until he eventually came back to the first one.
No search bar, he thought jokingly.
Ezra shifted back to one of the lists that showed the amount of each type of ship the Empire had. He selected 'IMPERIAL-CLASS STAR DESTROYER (25,000),' which led him to a huge list of numbers.
"Shouldn't be long now," he said to himself before scrolling down a short way. He opened file 024 and froze as he read the name.
The Chimaera.
Part of Ezra knew that of course it had to be Thrawn's ship. He didn't want to think about the things he'd probably done to Hera. But the other part couldn't register it, as if it were still encrypted. Nonetheless, he panned down to view the rest of the file, looking for anything on its whereabouts. When he read where it was stationed, he stopped in shock.
Just then, Sabine returned with a plate of hexagonal waffles. "What is it?" she asked anxiously. "Did you find something?"
Ezra nodded slowly. "She's on the Chimaera," he answered, "and it's stationed over Lothal."