Chapter 39
I find myself sitting in the medical bay aboard Resolute as a medical droid checks out my injuries. It runs several scans and tests before finally telling me the report.
"Your field medic was correct, it would seem. Your right arm is broken right below your shoulder, and you have a mild concussion as well. It's a wonder how you don't have any worse injuries considering what you did to get these injuries," it tells me.
"He probably would've been killed had I not kept him off the front line."
Sabine walks up to me and crosses her arms.
"Commander," the droid says politely.
"How long would he be like this?" she asks.
"He should be combat ready within a couple days, given bacta treatment," the droid replies.
"I'm not getting in a bacta tank. I'm not that seriously hurt," I say.
"I wasn't suggesting the tank, sir. Just the standard bandages and wraps should do."
"Right... thanks doc," I say.
"If you will excuse me, I have other patients to tend to."
"Go ahead."
The droid walks off to treat other wounded soldiers and I look up to Sabine. She doesn't look happy, but not exactly mad either.
I look down and sigh. "I know what you're going to say..."
"Ezra..." she sighs. "You shouldn't push yourself so hard."
"I know..."
"I was told what you did," she says then. "You saved a lot of lives, but how you did it... it was so stupid, Ez."
I don't say anything.
"It was a rocket, Ezra. You could've just pushed it away with the Force, or something," she says.
"I know. In hindsight I should've done that, but it was just the heat of the moment. All I knew was I had to get that rocket away from my men," I say. "For all I know, if I did use the Force, who knows where it could've gone then."
Sabine sits to my left and wraps an arm around mine. There's curtains separating the other patients so for the most part we have privacy.
"If you weren't already hurt, I'd punch you."
I smile. "I kinda miss that, too. You always used to punch my shoulder for seemingly no reason."
"I could start that up again," she says, smiling.
"On second thought, maybe not."
"Aw, you're no fun," she jokes.
"So... mind filling me in on what happened down there?" I ask her.
"Well, you certainly missed a lot of fighting. I'm glad I made you sit out, cause you almost certainly would've been killed or more seriously hurt," she says. "You likely saw the first AA cannons get destroyed and we had to fight for the shield. We captured the command center and blew up the other cannons and the shield."
"I saw bombers fly in after the shield was destroyed," I remember.
"Yeah, the rest of the Imperial garrison didn't want to stop fighting. They all gathered in a sort of warehouse and barricaded themselves. After the bombers went past, there was nothing left."
"Any ideas what we could do with the remains of the base?" I ask her. "Maybe use it for our own purposes?"
"I thought about that and well... we're not in a good system for that sort of thing," she says. "The only reason the Empire was building it here was to attempt to track our fleets in the outer rim. Monitor communications and all that. It's no use for us right here."
"It would be good to monitor the sector, though," I say. "Rebuild the fortifications. The defenses. It wasn't done being constructed, so when it is it would be even easier to defend."
"I suppose you're right," she sighs. "I'll be up in the bridge. You should get some rest."
I nod and lie on my back. I don't expect to fall asleep, but as soon as my eyes close, I'm fast asleep.
...
Two Days Later...
"General, we're making landfall. Welcome to the Nedij Listening Post."
"Wait, we're not in the same sector," I mention.
"It's the closest system to us. Besides that it's mostly empty," a rebel trooper tells me. "Commander Wren's idea."
"Ah, okay."
The U-wing I'm in lands on a new landing pad that we've constructed and the doors open. I climb out and see engineers working to keep the base working and soldiers out on patrol. One soldier, who I assume is the deck officer, approaches me and salutes me.
"Welcome, general!"
"Deck officer," I reply, returning the salute.
"As you can probably tell, we've been really busy the past couple days," he tells me. "Follow me to the command center. Commander Wren wishes to see you."
"Lead the way," I tell him.
He turns and I follow him into the main building. When we get to the command center, a call goes out.
"General on deck!"
"At ease," I say.
"Sabine is right this way, sir," the deck officer says. He guides me to the center of the room where Sabine is leaning over the holotable.
"Commander!" he says, snapping a salute.
"At ease," she replies. "Thank you. You may return to your duties."
"Yes, ma'am," he replies before leaving. Sabine turns to me and smiles.
"Welcome back to the action, Ezra," she says.
"I've been told you've been busy while I was recovering," I say.
"We have. The base is almost fully operational. A lot of the parts for the base's construction was left here by the Empire. At least, whatever wasn't destroyed in the battle," she reports.
"Well that saves us resources then. Not a loss for us," I tell her with a smirk.
She rolls her eyes. "Yeah yeah, I know. You were right. We will be able to track Imperial fleet movements in most of this half of the outer rim so if anything does come our way, we'll see them. I've sent a scrambled transmission on a secure channel back to Command. They'll send a crew to this new station and we're to remain here until they arrive."
"Good. I spoke with the admiral before I came down here. There's no sign of Imperial activity in this sector."
"We've seen that much from here as well. I just hope they don't come back."
"Would there be a fleet nearby to defend it?" I ask her.
"I would assume one would be nearby. Might not be the biggest fleet we have but the Empire might not be so reckless sending an entire star destroyer fleet here either."
"They would be a bit more careful," I agree. "How long until the new crew arrives?"
"It'll be a couple rotations. Two or three," she says. "I'm sure we can hold out until then."
"What do we have in terms of defenses?"
"Well, the anti air cannons are completely destroyed so we can't use those," she says. "There's plenty of munitions for our walkers and artillery as well as our own forces. The shield generators are also completely destroyed but I've made a request for the fleet to send some down. They should be coming shortly with them plus other supplies we may need. I don't need to get into early warning."
"Any idea what was in that warehouse we blew up?" I ask her.
"I'm not sure, but if it was full of explosives and ammunition this entire base would've gone up in flames. There wasn't anything left to salvage but it was likely just some other supplies," she replies. "But it doesn't matter either way. It's all gone and the base is ours."
She goes silent for a moment as if she's thinking about something. Because I love her and respect her privacy, I don't bother using the Force to figure out what.
"I've got to say," she says. "This is all a pretty good start to the war. We've got manpower, we've got ships, we've got territory..."
"Yeah. We've gone so far since then, haven't we?" I say. "Let's hope it's still enough to win."
"I think our chances are pretty good, Ezra," Sabine says with a smile. "Considering we finally destroyed the Death Star and everything. Before that, I don't think the Empire actually took us seriously."
"Well, it's long past time for them to get serious about us. Ignoring us for so long could be the very thing that brings them down."
...
Another two days go by and our replacement crew finally arrives to relieve us from the outpost. Before they arrived, we were able to bring up the base defenses and fortify them. Instead of the original four AA cannons guarding the base, we were able to double that amount, and place redundant shield generators throughout the base itself. What was just a partially constructed Imperial outpost, in just a couple days we were able to turn it into a kind of fortress. Our ground shield generators aren't as strong as the Imperial shields so we have to use more of them to match. That's one of the challenges we face against the Empire but it's war; you can't make everything too easy. It just doesn't happen that way. For now, though, I'm sitting in my quarters, reading the seemingly endless reports filing in from all over the galaxy.
As often as we win our battles, I often forget that the rebels on other fronts aren't so fortunate. For every victory we gain, there's just as many losses if not more. But lucky for us we have the manpower we need and the support of important star systems. Many systems still under Imperial rule secretly support us, like Kuat, but they are unable to openly show that support. Quasi Hydra is still going strong as a company and so far the Empire still doesn't suspect a thing. A portion of their funds earned through their sales go towards funding our war effort; however, since the Empire is watching them like every other company in the galaxy, they can only send small amounts from their income. Small enough to avert the Imperials, but since they are making a lot of sales, we make decent money.
I pick up another datapad and open another report file labeled Praetor.
I haven't heard anything from or about them in a long time. I open the report and start reading.
'Admiral Paelleon, Commanding Officer of Praetor Fleet Operations,
Operation Centurion was a total loss. I've lost a majority of my fleet and support. I am planning on making a call to Rebel Command to discuss further details.'
Not a long report... I look at the bottom of the message and find a contact link. It's too dangerous to have an important discussion to Epsilon via comms. Perhaps we could get someone from the Central Command to meet him.
Then again... I am a member of Central Command... But it might be better to have someone a bit more diplomatic to handle it.
My door lets out a second-long beep and I sense Sabine on the other side. "Come in!"
The door opens and she walks up to me.
"Still reading reports?" she asks me.
"Yeah... this is the last datapad but there's a few more reports on it. I just read the first one here."
"So you don't need these anymore?"
She gestures to the four other datapads I've looked through. I shake my head and she picks them up.
"You know you can always just take a break," she tells me.
"What's the point in that? You don't take breaks on your tasks."
"I'm a Mandalorian. I'm trained to finish what I start. You weren't," she says.
"But I'm trained to have patience... Yet somehow I have very little of that. Besides, I'm almost done. If I stop now, I'll never get this done."
"Suit yourself. I'll be in the weapon's bay if you need me, after I deliver these datapads to the bridge."
With that, she leaves me to finish reading and filing the reports, which I manage to do by the end of that hour. I get up and stretch after sitting for so long and walk around my ship. As I walk, I notice that besides the usual daily tasks everyone has, it's relatively calm throughout the ship. I see rebels of various ranks playing games on the holotables in the rec rooms, grabbing food from the mess hall, walking and chatting or just simply relaxing. I head to the training rooms and find that there are more rebels working on improving their marksmanship skills and physical strength. I keep walking and see there are still more rebels doing various tasks around the ship. Engineers making their way to their designated decks to make sure the ship is still operating at peak efficiency, security personnel guarding important doors and hallways, making sure unauthorized personnel keep out but also ready to fight off any onboard attackers. They stand at attention and salute me as I pass them and I give them a polite nod. After I pass them, they stand back at ease; nothing needed to be said. Usually someone calls out "General on deck!" or something so I have to tell them to get back to work. This time, I don't need to.
I've fought alongside this crew for so long that now they just call out I'm there and they keep doing their duties. The guards and anyone else standing near the doors stand at attention, but return to their duties right after I walk pass them. I don't usually have to say "At ease" unless I have to, and most of the time I don't need to anymore.
I find myself near the weapons bay and remember Sabine said she'd be in here. I walk in and see rebel weapons maintenance technicians -or WMTs- at work, performing maintenance on our ordinance and systems, carefully transporting them to their respective storage compartments, or just taking inventory of what's ready to go. I look around the bay and a couple technicians acknowledge my presence and I ask them where Sabine is. One of them points over to the far side of the bay to my right and I make my way there, dodging other technicians and engineers until I get there. I find Sabine staring into a datapad.
"Hey!"
She turns and smiles at me, "Hey, Ez! Finally finished those reports?"
"Yeah. What are you looking at?"
"Oh, there's a pallet of proton torpedoes that need to go up on that loading rack up there, but this thing isn't really working..." She holds up her datapad and I see it's the controls for a crane hanging above her.
"Where does it go exactly?" I ask her.
"Right up there..." she points to an empty rack. "I need this pallet up there. The auto-loading systems should pick out these torpedoes one by one so I just need the pallet next to it."
"I can help with that," I say. I concentrate on the torpedoes and lift the pallet up to the rack. The system lets out a beep and one by one the torpedoes get pulled from the pallet and loaded into the storage racks.
Once that's done, I lower the pallet and see Sabine leaning against a crate, watching me.
"What?"
"Nothing," she says, smiling. "Thanks for your help. I should probably get a technician to look at these controls here. We'll need this crane to work otherwise you'd be down here the whole time loading torpedoes."
"We wouldn't want that now, would we?" I grin.
"This was the last thing they needed me here for. I'm pretty much free for now."
"Where'd we get these, anyway?" I ask.
"Some of it is from the base we captured. The crew taking it over didn't have any need for these so we took it. They also brought some of these crates to resupply us," she replies, knocking on one of the crates next to her.
"Your request?"
"Actually, the head WMT here said we needed to restock on some ordnance. He came to me about it while you were recovering and I okay'd it after reviewing what we had."
"Are we fully restocked, then?" I ask her, my eyes following the racks up to the ceiling.
"Not fully, but we've been able to replace most of what we used during the battle."
"That's good. It wouldn't be good if we ran out of ammo in the middle of a fight," I say.
"Well, duh," she remarks. "Come on, smart guy."
"Where are we going?" I ask as she walks past me.
She grabs my shoulder and pulls me after her. "Just come on, will you? Unless you want to stand in the weapons bay all day."
I shrug and follow her out. We just walk through the ship and chat, which was nice considering we've been really busy the past few days. We find a good place to just stop and look out into space. Since we were on the edge of the outer rim, we could see a large bulge of light surrounded on two sides by arms of countless stars, steadily shrinking in size as it got further from the center. I suddenly thought about my home, Lothal. It's still in Imperial control, but Sabine's home of Mandalore isn't.
"Have you thought about what you're going to do after the war?" I ask Sabine.
"It's hard to say," she replies. She looks out at the stars. "Most of my life was just fighting people. Other clans, family members, the Empire, of course... Really the only thing I can think of is trying to rebuild it. Permanently uniting the clans and rebuilding everything that was destroyed. Or at least, everything that can be rebuilt."
She looks over at me and we lock eyes for a moment. "What about you?" she asks.
"Probably the same thing," I say. "Rebuild my home. Maybe... buy or build a home of my own just outside the capital. Hell, I might just move back into my old radio tower, if it's still standing."
"You can do better than your tower, Ez. But I can understand why you would want to. Your childhood home was destroyed, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. Not long after I first joined you guys." I smile at the memory.
At that time, I was scared. Angry. Things weren't really looking good for anybody. The Empire was chasing us, which is nothing new. But even those times seem like the good old days, which is strange.
"Besides, somebody must've already rebuilt it and moved in anyway," I say then.
"You don't know that for sure," Sabine says. She puts a hand on my arm and smiles softly. "We'll get your planet back, Ezra. We've liberated mine. Yours can't be any harder to save."
"Your planet is surrounded by the Empire, though," I point out.
"Yes, but don't forget that we're-"
"Mandalorian," I interrupt. "I know."
"My people have always been surrounded by enemies. It's not new. Besides, we've sparked something in them that encouraged them to take up arms like they did long ago. My brother has sent me reports that the clans have declared a temporary truce with each other to push the Empire out of their space."
"Didn't you just say you wanted to unite your people? Sounds to me that's already happened."
She rolls her eyes at me. "I said they did this temporarily. I want to make it permanent. But... That's not really going to happen. It's only happened few times in our history, the first time being way back during the days of the first Mand'alore."
"What about the darksaber?" I ask her. "You've been able to unite your people before with it!"
"Yeah, but it's been missing for a long time," she says with a grim look on her face. "Without it, my people can't truly unite. Like I said, their truce is temporary. They just happen to agree that the Empire is a much larger threat to them. They're probably not really working together, either. They're at the very least not shooting at each other."
"Do Mandalorians have to be so complicated and stubborn?"
She smiles softly. "It's part of our culture, Ez."
I sigh and look back out to the stars, "Well... at least they're on our side."
...
Sorry this took me so long to finish. I kinda got stuck with where I was going with this chapter. Also, lately I've been considering another story. Don't worry, I plan to keep the other active stories going, but they will take time so I ask you to please keep patient with me. As for that other story I mentioned, I should say that I am not just an Ezrabine fan but also a HUGE Percy Jackson fan and the Percabeth ship was the first ship I got hooked on. Recently, I've been rereading those books and looking for good fanfic stories that might inspire me to start my own story about them if you, my readers, are interested. Those of you who aren't interested in a potential Percy Jackson story, don't run off. I'll still have my Ezrabine stories here for you and I'll still expand on them.
I am very grateful for your support and I plan to keep writing as I do enjoy it.