Lothal's Defence:

D38/1 BBY, Lothal

Sabine fell into her bunk face first and groaned, too tired to move into a more comfortable position. At least half of her days were spent whipping together a half decent group of soldiers to protect Lothal if the Empire decided to come back in retaliation. So far, they hadn't seen so much as a probe droid to investigate the disappearance of an entire Imperial Fleet, but no one was counting on that lasting too much longer. Sabine knew that the Intelligence division of the Rebellion was doing their best to intercept and answer any comm messages sent towards Lothal, but someone was bound to figure it out sooner or later. There was only so many times you could tell them that Grand Admiral Thrawn or Governor Pryce was unavailable right now.

Believe it or not, quite a few of the surviving stormtroopers that had been captured had turned to their cause, supplying them with a few half decently trained soldiers to base their new army around. (The rest were still in prison.) One in particular, a Sergeant who had been rescued from the ocean after the destruction of the Dome, had been particularly adamant in his hate of the Empire. Apparently he'd been one of the first Lothal children forced into becoming a cadet and torn from his family. Turns out Joshua Azadi was Ryder's nephew and his last surviving family member. He also happened to be very handsome with the same sky blue eyes as Ryder and short light blond hair. Ketsu hadn't admitted it yet, but Sabine was positive she was already half in love with him. Ketsu usually just went after a guy, had her fun, and then never talked to them again. With Joshua, she was different. She actually spent time with him, just talking, and if she was to be believed, they hadn't actually jumped in the sack yet. Apparently, they were going on a real date tonight instead.

Sabine already missed her secret dates with Ezra and couldn't wait to go on a non-clandestine one with him as her husband. But she'd have to work up the courage to tell her mother about it, though, before the rumours reached her as they inevitably would. Sabine had sworn everyone that currently knew about her and Ezra to secrecy upon threat of dismemberment and death; no one seemed inclined to test her on it. With Sabine as the reinstated heir to the Countdom of Clan Wren, she was expected to marry another Mandalorian. Preferably one of the ranking members of an allied clan. Her mother was just going to have to be happy with her choice of a Jedi husband or Sabine was going to abdicate the role of heir and give it Tristan. In her opinion, he deserved it more anyway. One day... One day, Sabine tell her. Just... not yet. So far, she hadn't even told her she wasn't exactly with the Rebellion anymore. She wasn't looking forward to that either.

With Ketsu and Joshua doing a lot of the training of the new recruits, Sabine spent the rest of her day organizing what felt like a million other things. The cleanup efforts of the citizens of Capital City were valiant, but someone needed to oversee them. Ryder was doing a great job putting the government back together and helped wherever he could with delegating jobs to his underlings, but Sabine was determined to make sure any tech left behind by the Empire was put aside for future reuse. Retrieving all of the bits and pieces of the Imperial Dome and the machines in it from the ocean was a long and depressing job that needed to be done. For every piece of salvageable tech or metal they found, they also found a body.

The city was in a confused state of half mourning and half rejoicing, for many of the deceased Imperials had been Lothalians. A mass memorial was scheduled to be held in two weeks based on the estimated time it would take to finish the clean up and give time for all of the bodies that could be to be identified. Sabine had blown up a lot of Imperial things; ships, facilities, walkers, and whatever else you could think of, but this was the first time it truly hit her what she had actually been doing. She'd never had to clean up the mess she made before. She'd never had to deal with the fallout of her own destruction. And now she was. And it felt awful. She'd been trained to kill without thinking about it too much from a very young age, and now she knew why. Seeing all those bodies piled up, waiting to be identified and then put through the incinerator to be made into ashes had pretty much killed her love of exploding things. Now all she could think about was how to make things right again. How to put everything back together and build things stronger and better than before. Her mind was full of new designs and improvements for buildings and armoured vehicles and ships to defend the planet.

One of the first things she'd done was go on a scouting mission around the planet and locate all of the secret Imperial testing grounds for the TIE Defender Elite Thrawn had been making on Lothal. So far, Sabine had found half a dozen complete Defenders and a further two hundred half finished ones in the factory. She'd made it a priority to get the rest of the Defenders finished and in the air, as well as training pilots to fly them. The first Imperial ship that tried to take over Lothal again was going to find itself bombarded by its own lethal little cousins. The Rebellion had tried to talk her into giving them some of the Defenders, but Sabine and Ryder were determined to keep them for the safety of Lothal. They had been made with resources from Lothal, so they felt like the TIE fighters belonged to the planet. Lothal didn't have the credits to purchase anything larger either, to defend the planet with, so a giant herd of Defenders was going to have to be good enough as a first line of defence.

For a second line of defence, Sabine was also working on shields for the cities, starting with Capital City. She'd managed to find a few good engineers who could follow her plans and do most of the work, but she still checked in on them at least once a day to make sure everything was going well.

All of this added up to about four hours of sleep per night, and dragging herself out of her bunk every morning at five a.m. to start it all again. She delegated as much as she could, but the first week of getting everything organized was hell. Hopefully things would get better soon, because she felt like she was about to expire from exhaustion and everything whirling through her head that she knew she still needed to get done. Sabine groaned again and mustered up the energy to roll over and start pulling off her armour plating and peel herself out of her body suit. She exhaled in relief to get out of the sweaty suit and walked in her underclothes to the refresher. There was one advantage to having a ship with just her and Ketsu living in it. She didn't have to worry about flashing any of the guys anymore.

Fifteen minutes later, she walked out of the refresher and back to her cabin in just a towel and feeling so much cleaner and even a little bit rejuvenated. Sabine pulled on a comfy set of sleepwear and trudged to the galley and made herself some caf while she inhaled a protein bar. While she was waiting for the caf to finish, Ketsu strolled in, looking radiant. Sabine raised a brow. "I take it your date went well?"

Ketsu sighed and sank into a chair by the small table, looking all dreamy eyed. "Almost too well. I'm starting to think Joshua is perfect and that kind of scares me. He's funny and sweet and strong and smart and gorgeous and..."

"Okay," Sabine laughed. "I get it. Joshua's the best thing to happen to you since we left the Academy. I'm happy for you, Kets. Just don't ruin it by over thinking it. Take my advice and give this a chance to become something real and lasting. I have a feeling you won't regret it."

Ketsu stood, pulling a mug out of the cupboard so she could have some caf too. "I think you're right, and that scares me even more," she admitted. "I don't know how to do a real relationship, Sabine. I barely remember my mother and you know how bad my father was. I've never really been around people in a happy normal relationship. What do I do to make this work?"

Sabine kind of snorted. "You're asking the wrong person. Ezra and I only know how to do the sneaky version where we snatched some alone time when we could. I know Kanan and Hera were together, but they didn't show much of it when others where around, and I think that put a lot of stress on their relationship. My parents are a good example though. They've been together and happy for twenty-five years. I just don't know how they make it work. They're so different."

Ketsu sighed. "I guess I'll just wing it then."

Sabine smiled. "Sounds like a solid plan to me. Almost everything I've ever done is in the category of 'winging it,' and it's worked out almost half the time," she finished with a laughing huff and a roll of the eyes at herself.

Ketsu laughed as well. "That sounds about right. Can't say I've done much better."

Sabine just shook her head and sipped her caf, which was finally cool enough to drink. "Well, I hope this works out for you. You deserve some happiness in your life."

Ketsu raised a brow. "And you don't?"

Sabine shrugged. "I had my chance, and he'll come back eventually. I can wait until then. I still have my families and more than enough work to keep me occupied until Ezra gets his butt back here."

Ketsu looked sceptical. "How long do you plan to wait for him? What if he never comes back? Would you consider another guy then?"

Sabine sighed and leaned against the wall, cradling her mug. "I don't know, Ketsu. You know we Mandos only really love once and I know Ezra is my once. Any relationship I had with someone else would just feel shallow in comparison. I can't say what I would do if Ezra isn't back in my life, say ten years from now, but for now, I'm content to wait."

Ketsu looked incredulous. "Not even a fling? In all of those ten years, you would wait, going completely without any sort of 'fun'?"

Sabine smiled into her mug as she raised it to her mouth. "I wouldn't say I had no 'fun' whatsoever, but, yes, I'm waiting for Ezra to come back. I've spent the last three years of my life having 'fun' with Ezra; I can survive on the memories until he returns to me."

Ketsu shook her head. "We are totally different people."

Sabine smiled and walked towards the door. "Yes, we are. But how boring would it be if we were exactly the same?"

Ketsu laughed and followed Sabine. "Boring as hell."

Sabine opened the door to her cabin. "And that's why we're friends. Good night, Ketsu."

Ketsu opened her own door. "Night, Sabine."

D40/1 BBY

Sabine was crawling around the inner workings of Ezra's old communications tower, trying to figure out what it would take to get it running again, at least temporarily, until they built a second one and could put this one under proper reconstruction, when her comm chimed. She brushed a strand of sweaty hair out of her face in exasperation and smacked the button to answer. "Yes?"

"One of the proximity sensors you planted near the hyperspace lane just pinged," Ryder said, ignoring Sabine's brusque tone.

"Kriff," she muttered and started crawling back the way she came. The tower would have to wait. Again. "Comm the other pilots. Tell them to get in their TIEs but not to leave the ground until I get there. If this is the Empire, we need to attack as a unit."

"I already have someone comming the others," Ryder said.

"Good. Excellent," she said as she jumped on her speeder bike and booted it back to the city where all the finished TIEs had been parked. "I'll be there in two minutes."

She wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not that only twenty TIEs were in working order so far. She hadn't had a lot of time to train pilots on how to fly them. At least she'd found enough people who were half decent at flying, but only Ketsu and Joshua had any experience flying a fighter, and even them, not much. And it wasn't just being able to fly the TIEs. It was also flying as a unit that worked together to defeat the enemy. That took practice. Practice they barely had. Oh well. They were just going to have to learn 'on the fly' as it were. Sabine smirked at her own bad joke as she jumped off her bike and met Ketsu and Joshua in the landing yard, who were also jumping off their speeder bikes. "Do you think it's actually the Empire this time?" Ketsu asked as they jogged towards their TIEs.

Each pilot had claimed their own personal TIE and each one was already slightly different from any other. Ketsu had tagged her wings with her stylized signature in purple. Joshua's TIE featured a plush sky blue seat cover that he'd produced from who knows where. When the others teased him about it, Joshua had just shrugged and said he was tired of being uncomfortable. They hadn't teased him since. Everyone agreed that Storm Trooper armour was the most uncomfortable looking armour in the galaxy.

"I almost hope so," Sabine replied. "I'm getting tired of all the anticipation and then no one to shoot at. Although, it wouldn't have bothered me any if we'd shot Hondo down yesterday, when his new ship was the one to trigger the sensor." That got a laugh from Ketsu and a confused look from Joshua.

"I'll explain later," Ketsu told him as they climbed the ladders into their TIEs.

Sabine paused for half a second and admired her TIE. There hadn't been a whole lot of time, but she'd made some, and decorated each of the Defender's six wing panels with starbirds in orange, lothcats in white, and lothwolves in blue on two panels each. She wasn't done with it yet, but the outlines of the animals were enough to make her smile knowing that the Empire would hate what she'd done to their ship. As she dropped down into the TIE, her comm chimed again. "An Imperial Light Cruiser has just appeared over Lothal. Go do your thing," Ryder said.

"We're on it," Sabine replied as she started her TIE. She opened the comm channel between all the Defenders. "Alright, Loth Squadron. We have the real deal this time. Let's go kick some Empire butt." She got a series of cheers in response, making her grin as she pulled her helmet on. It wasn't very military but she didn't care. This was Lothal, not the Empire. Morale was way more important than rules.

Sabine led the way into the sky, her fighters forming into a V formation behind her. "Well, here goes nothing," she said to herself and punched it into the atmosphere.

Captain Berkley of the Imperial ship, the Endurance, had thought he'd been sent on a ridiculous run to Lothal to see why the Seventh Fleet hadn't been responding properly to Imperial transmissions. But then he came out of hyperspace and found not a single Star Destroyer in orbit around the planet like there was supposed to be. Where had the Fleet gone? He was just about to report his findings when a squadron of colourful TIEs (at least, he thought they were TIEs) he'd never seen before approached them from the planet's surface.

"Sir. We're being hailed by the lead... TIE?" his comm officer said.

"Put it through."

"This is the Lothal Planetary Defence. You will get one warning only. This planet is no longer under Imperial control. Turn around and go back where you came from or you will be shot down," a female voice said.

The Captain scoffed. Like a squadron of TIEs could take out his ship. Let them try. "I don't think so," he replied. "We'll be taking that planet back." He signalled his officer to end the transmission. "Launch the TIEs to counterattack and fire all weapons on those... Whatever they are."

"Yes, sir!" came back the brisk reply from four different stations.

Sabine shrugged when her warning wasn't heeded. "It's your funeral, mir'osike." She addressed her squadron again. "Okay, Loth Squadron. We're going to attack that ship. Loth Two through Ten, you're with me, we're going after the shield generators. Loth Eleven through Twenty, you're job is take out the guns and defend the rest of us from any TIEs that come our way."

"Copy that, Loth Leader," came over the comm by many voices.

Sabine could barely believe she was doing this, but she pointed her Defender at the ship anyway. If someone had told her a month ago that she'd be the Leader of her own squadron of TIE Defenders, protecting Lothal, she would have laughed and thought they were crazy. "For Lothal," she said over the comm, getting another series of cheers in response. "And for Ezra and Kanan," she added silently.

As his ship got blown to pieces around him, Captain Berkley couldn't believe his eyes. The enemy ships were the fastest fighters he'd ever seen and the bloody things had shields! His TIEs had been wiped out easily and his ship was burning around him, the sound of explosions echoing as more and more systems gave up the fight and the ship floated dead in space. As his last act as Captain, he told whatever crew members that were still alive to evacuate the ship, and he made a frantic comm call to Coruscant. "This is Captain Berkley of the Endurance. The Seventh Fleet is missing and the planet of Lothal has a very competent defence system in place with fighters I've never seen before. They've destroyed my ship in two minutes flat. I recommend leaving this planet alone for now. Captain Berkley out."

With his duty to the Empire finished, Captain Berkley closed his eyes and waited for the end.

D41/1 BBY

The sound of her alarm clock buzzing annoyingly on the little table by her bed forced Sabine into real wakefulness. She groaned as she pulled her hand away from her throbbing core and shut off the alarm. The dreams were amazing, but she wanted the real Ezra back. She had so many fantasies stored up already, she was sure by the time she did get Ezra back, she wasn't going to let him out of bed for a week. Maybe more.

Despite her annoyance at having to get up, Sabine still smiled as she lay bonelessly on the bed and let the memories of their quickie after the Skystrike extraction roll through her once more. Kriff, Ezra was good at going down on her. Her core throbbed again at the very thought and her hand slid down her body again, ready for round two.

The alarm rang again, and she snarled at it. Cursing silently, Sabine grudgingly rolled out of bed and aimed for the refresher, feeling sticky and sweaty. After a quick shower, she got dressed for the day. Ezra or no Ezra, she still had a life to live. At least she had her dreams to keep her going. Before leaving the room, her fingers brushed over Ezra's lightsabre that she kept on the desk. One day, she'd feel his mouth on her for real again. She refused to let herself think anything even remotely less positive than that.

The last message from Ahsoka had been hopeful. She'd followed the estimated trajectory into Wild Space and so far had found a few bits of debris that appeared to have come from Imperial ships including an ion cannon. That meant she was on the right path. It was just a matter of time before she caught up.

D42/1 BBY

Sabine grinned in satisfaction as the first transmission was sent through the old comm tower in more years than anyone could remember. It was just a simple test to Ketsu where she was sitting in the Shadow Caster near Garel, but it meant the world to Sabine. She'd slaved over this hunk of junk for a whole day with a small team to make it work again. She was filthy and more than tired, but they'd done it, and she couldn't help but be ecstatic to hear Ketsu's voice answer them back. Lothal now had a working long range communications tower again. Now THAT was a good day's work.

D43/1 BBY

The idiotic Empire tried again, this time with a Star Destroyer. It didn't make any difference. Sabine and her Squadron of Defenders took out the Imperial ship in just under five minutes of intense battle. They had more TIEs to deal with this time, but with one successful battle under their belt, her Squadron was confident enough to handle it without panicking. Sabine was so proud of them. It almost made up for her lack of enthusiasm at seeing the Star Destroyer explode into tiny pieces. She was never again going to be able to see something blow up without knowing there were thousands of people dying. Sabine blamed the Empire for taking her joy of explosions away, along with the loss of Ezra, Kanan, and her clan. Now all she could do was try and go back to the emotionless state she'd been trained to adopt when having to kill someone. And it hurt. A lot.

That was the last time the Empire came back to Lothal. She didn't know it, but the Emperor was biding his time, waiting for his Super Weapon to be finished to wipe out the entire planet in one fell swoop. He didn't see the point in wasting any more ships on a fruitless battle to take back a planet he was no longer interested in anyway. Total annihilation would be much more satisfying.

Fortunately for Lothal, that day never came, thanks to one hotshot pilot called Luke Skywalker and his backup team of Wedge Antilles and Han Solo.

mir-osike - dung for brains or morons