Chapter 3
The next morning, Meli woke up to the sight of Lincoln modifying his Lightsaber Pike to have only one blade rather than two (Lincoln's reasoning was that a shorter Lightsaber hilt would be easier to conceal, and unfortunately, he had been forced to discard the hilt he'd built as a Padawan). Lincoln looked up from rearranging the wires in the hilt and smiled.
"Ah, good morning, young one! How did you sleep?" he asked.
"Fine, thank you. Better than in the alley," she replied.
"I'm glad. Come, let us break the fast, and then I have a proposition for you." Meli let out a small giggle at Lincoln's prim and proper way of speaking and followed him to Stella's small dining area. Breakfast consisted of Escobarian wheat cakes smothered in a sweet cream made from blue Bantha milk (Escobar being one of the largest grain producers in the galaxy).
"So, what did you want to ask me?" Meli asked after swallowing the last bite.
"The one thing I've come to regret about becoming a Temple Guard was my inability to take on an apprentice of my own," Lincoln told her. "Now that the Temple has been all but destroyed by those Imperial vermin, I am no longer needed to guard it. Seeing as you are close to the appropriate age, would you be willing to become my Padawan?"
Meli thought about it. If she wanted to effectively wield the Force, she desperately needed someone to teach her. Any more of this self-training, and she could wind up imprisoned or worse.
"Okay, I'll be your Padawan," she consented.
"Marvelous! We will begin your training as soon as we find a new place to settle," Lincoln told her.
"What? Why are we moving?" Meli asked.
"Lincoln and I both agree that with so many Stormtroopers running around, Coruscant is too dangerous for a developing Jedi," Stella responded, entering the dining area without her helmet. "I've been moving my essential supplies to the freighter I bought a while ago. The plan is to see if my clansmen, the House of Zhau on Mandalor, would be willing to shelter us."
"Oh, okay."
Stella went back to work at her forge soon after to try and make a few quick Credits before the big move. Late in the afternoon, half a dozen white-armored soldiers entered her shop, surrounded her, and leveled their blasters at her. The two closest to the entrance parted to let an officer in a smart black uniform through.
"Stella Zhau of Mandalor, you are under arrest for harboring a suspected Jedi. Upon your surrender, any revenue that you may have will become the sole property of the Galactic Empire, and you will be imprisoned for the remainder of your natural life. Any attempt to resist will result in your prompt execution. How do you plead?" the officer asked.
The funny thing about Mandalorians? In a pinch, their tools doubled as weapons.
Stella hefted her long-shafted hammer and swung it into the breastplate of the nearest Stormtrooper, causing the flimsy carbon fiber and the rib cage beneath to suffer catastrophic damage. The next soldier she hit was sent flying into the forge and was almost immediately incinerated. She continued to bash in armor and helmets, and any blaster bolts that managed to hit her simply ricocheted off of her Beskar armor. Once she cleared the room, she returned her hammer and tongs to the clips on her belt and ran up the stairs, where Lincoln and Meli had been playing a game of dice until they heard the blaster shots.
"We need to get to the ship! Fast!" she said to her guests. She bent down and moved a floor tile aside to retrieve the final piece of luggage from its hidden compartment.
"What's that?" Lincoln asked, referring to the medium-sized ammunition can Stella now held by the handle.
"My secret stash of Whistling Birds. They're hard to find and even harder to make, so we need to use them sparingly." Stella used the container to smash the transparisteel in the nearest window. "I'll meet you two at the hangar!" she said and flew off using the jet pack under her cape.
Lincoln knelt down, allowing Meli to climb onto his back, and said, "Hang on tight!" He then jumped out of the window himself, using the Force to pull him and his passenger onto the roof of the neighboring building. He ran across multiple rooftops in the direction that he knew the hangar to be, using Force-propelled somersaults to cross the wide gaps between buildings. Soldiers in the street below began firing at him, and he was forced to ignite his Lightsaber to deflect shots that came alarmingly close. All the while, Meli clung for dear life to his shoulders, her legs wrapped securely around his waist. Soon, he was forced to jump off of the roof he was currently on and continue along the ground. His Lightsaber cut through the Stormtroopers between him and the entrance to the hangar like a hot knife through butter (a fitting analogy, as the blade of a Lightsaber was rumored to burn with the heat of a star).
"Lincoln! In here! HURRY!" Stella called from the belly of a Mandalorian freighter very similar in design to the infamous SLAVE-I but painted bright orange and purple. Lincoln dashed across the lot and up the loading ramp, and Stella closed it behind him as the ship's engines fired up. The Stormtroopers still on the ground fired their blasters at the ship as it began its ascent, but the crimson bolts failed to pierce the thick hull. They were able to exit Coruscant's atmosphere unimpeded, and soon jumped into Hyperspace.
...
In Hyperspace, the three occupants of the small vessel were finally able to relax. They passed the time playing Holo-Chess (surprisingly, Meli won every single game against both Lincoln and Stella) until the navigator gave warning beeps to tell them that they were entering Mandalorian space. When Stella pulled them out of Hyperspace, however, and official-sounding voice addressed them over the intercom.
"Unidentified incoming craft, you are entering restricted Imperial blockade space. Leave immediately, or prepare to be fired upon."
Meli looked out the viewport and gasped. "Master, look!" Outside, Mandalor could be seen surrounded at every angle by Imperial Star Destroyers. Occasionally, a Star Destroyer would release a gargantuan capsule from its airlock that would plummet toward the surface of the planet and detonate in a huge ball of flame. Lincoln watched the whole spectacle with a pit of dread in his stomach. This was something he'd studied years ago at Master Plo's request: a warfare intimidation tactic called glassing, in which a planet or colonized moon was bombed so heavily that the entire surface turned to glass, making it uninhabitable for decades or even centuries. With the Jedi all but extinct, Emperor Palpatine obviously saw Mandalor as the next biggest threat to his rule and thus wished to set an example for the rest of the galaxy. Swarming around the huge Destroyers like insects were hundreds of strange one-man ships resembling eyeballs sandwiched between two discs. Lincoln and his friends would come to learn that these were the expendable Twin Ion Engine fighters, referred to by civilians as TIEs.
"NO!" Stella screamed and opened fire on the TIEs that broke formation to approach them. The freighter's guns easily penetrated their flimsy shields, reducing them to hunks of molten metal and space-frozen corpses.
"Unidentified incoming craft, you have committed an unprovoked act of aggression punishable by death," the voice over the intercom informed them as more TIEs broke formation, prompting Stella to respond.
"Unprovoked, my fanny! You're destroying my homeworld!" Stella roared into the mouthpiece in addition to a stream of words that would have been obscene in any language.
"Need I remind you, Stella, that one simple freighter does not have the firepower to take down an entire fleet? The wisest course of action would be to throw off pursuit and find an alternative planet," Lincoln advised as their ship rocked with the enemies' returned fire.
"Alright, buster, where do YOU suggest that we go?" Stella snapped irritably.
"This may be a long shot, but perhaps we could try my own homeworld of Escobar, a planet that I've researched but, regrettably, never actually traveled to," Lincoln suggested.
"Alright, you win this time," Stella sighed as she reset the ship's course. "Deploying seismic charges." The shockwaves emitted when the black capsules with flashing blue lights detonated sufficiently distracted the pursuing TIEs long enough for them to blast into Hyperspace once more.