Chapter I

"Five m-minutes," whispered Astbri
Behind his Stormtrooper helmet Kallus started sweating. Despite all of his experience he still couldn't shake off the feeling of dread that always befell him in the calm before the storm. The only real difference between him and a rookie, is that he didn't let it show. The rookie in question fiddling with the engine was certainly under some duress, one didn't need to be an ISB spook to see that. Normally Kallus wouldn't take someone so inexperienced but the parameters for this operation didn't leave him with a lot of options.

The Triton Besh listening outpost wasn't exactly a high value target, much like the moon itself. A practically lifeless rock stuck near the end of the Rimma trade route, it was only known as a site of Pilgrimage for the religious bugs that lived on Triton proper. Its only real value was the system's placement on the Galactic map, stuck between Eriadu and the Sluis Van shipyards, the outpost functioning as a glorified sentry between the shipyards and the local capital.
If they had more time and men they could wiretap the station without the Imperials ever noticing, though Kallus, not for the first time. But nowadays they lacked both of these, especially for a small scale attack like this one.

"Three minutes," said Astbri
Kallus snapped back from his reverie and glanced at the Rebel setting up the blackout. Astbri was a former Engineer working at a listening outpost similar to this one: hence why he was chosen for this mission. They were 5 in total, all humans, all former Imperials. Probably why his squad got the nickname "Turncoats". Defectors were nothing new: half of the Rebellion's high command studied in Imperial Academies after all. But the new ones were often treated with suspicion, sometimes with good reason. Probably another reason why my unit is a continuously revolving door, thought Kallus, observing the deserted hall.

Suddenly he tensed up, seeing a shadow coming up from further in the gallery, a few seconds later its owner appeared, a Stormtrooper. His ID displayed on Kallus' HUD didn't mark the trooper as one of the Turncoats. Kallus waited until he got close enough, putting his hands on the top of his rifle in a non-threatening manner.
"Hey you're not authorized to be h-" The trooper never got to finish his phrase before the stock of an E-11 hit him square in the jaw. Before he got a chance to realize what was happening, Kallus hit him again, now using the rifle as an improvised club and then again once the Buckethead was on the ground. 3 direct hits to the head, a major concussion, if he was lucky.

Kallus turned back to Astbri who was watching with a mix of awe and terror on his face.
"I believe we have one minute left."
The engineer swallowed and got back to work. Kallus glanced at the trooper. In a few minutes Control would make the routine check but at this point it would be too late. Kallus switched to a designated frequency in his helmet, checked his rifle and shivered from anticipation.

"30 seconds… 20 seconds… 10 seconds…" his countdown became almost robotic, in an effort to hide the tension building up inside of him. Astbri stood at the ready, having put his helmet back on but his hands still betrayed his anxiety.

At his signal Astbri cut the power and the station went dark for a few moments before the back-up generators kicked back in. Just as planned, thought Kallus while he moved through the corridor towards the Control room. Shutting down both generators could be done but it would be more difficult to coordinate and wouldn't fit the parameters of the mission.

Kallus reached the entrance to the stairs, Control was three floors above but he waited for the inevitable response. He had to linger behind the door for another minute before he heard hurried footsteps descending from the second floor. Response to emergency is 30 seconds late, he thought as he switched to stun and signaled Astbri to do the same, sloppy. The response team had barely enough time to react before Kallus and Astbri fired the paralyzing blasts, falling to the ground as soon as they stepped into the dimly lit corridor.

Kallus waited a few more seconds before cautiously peering into the stairway, only to find it deserted. Only three people responded to the generator shutdown and two of them were engineers.
According to protocols it should've been a team of five and they should've sent someone through the door first instead of piling up like a bunch of Banthas, his inner ISB voice told him. Well he could fault his teachers for many things but failing to push the entire code of Military regulations down his throat wasn't one of them.
"Come on," he urged the rookie, "we're behind the schedule because of them"

By now the others should've taken over Control. Kallus decided to risk it and activated his comlink:
"Team B, Status?" He didn't wait for an answer before starting the climb, Astbri following close behind. The Comlink in his helmet stayed silent for a couple of painful seconds before it came to life.
"Securing Control, over." a female voice responded. It was a cold, calculating voice, unfazed by the sound of combat taking place on the other side of the transmission. If he had known any better he would've thought of it as a facade, a masque of a professional soldier, but Kallus fought alongside Ivercamb long enough to know that this was something more. He brushed that thought aside and doubled his climb, more concerned about the background noises he heard.
"Y-you heard it didn't you? The b-blaster shots?" Astbri voiced his concern.
Kallus only responded by making a quieting gesture.

They moved past the automated turrets into the upper hallway, their droid optics blind and dead. Normally the emergency power would go to them first but since Astbri tinkered with the emergency generator yesterday all that reserve power was going to functions Kallus deemed as far more important, like the Caf dispensers in the cantina. Or all the memory logs stored in the computers at Control… Of course once the main generator went out the trick would be easily spotted and could be fixed by any operator at the Control room, which is why most of the Turncoats were already ready to storm it the moment Astbri cut the main power supply.

Kallus blitzed into the Control room, only to find the aftermath of a struggle. Bodies littered the floor, most of them covered with blaster impact marks. The two troopers were behind cover, rifles aimed at the door. The closest one to the door nearly shot Kallus as he entered the room before recognising him and giving a curt nod.
"Lock the doors, Astbri we need that data sliced." Kallus gave the engineer enough space to proceed before realizing that they were one man short.
"Where's Faihair?"
Ivercamb pointed at one of the bodies.
"One desk jockey was faster than we expected."
Kallus grimaced, "Is this why you switched to blaster fire?"

"Stun shots weren't doing it," Ivercamb argued, "if we had used blaster setting from the start-"

"Enough, we'll deal with this later." He didn't have the strength to argue, instead he went to Faihair's corpse. The Turncoat didn't have any identifiable markings or dog tags that would distinguish him, nothing Kallus could take as a memento, nothing aside from his name. Kallus dimly recalled that he was a former TIE pilot, who in true stereotypical fashion was suicidally audacious.
I never got to ask why he even defected in the first place, he thought. From the files he knew it was about something about honor but a person could always tell their own story better than a debrief paper. The pilot would never get the chance to tell his tale now.
And one more reason why no one stays in this unit for long, safe for a few exceptions…

The steps behind the door brought him back. Ivercamb locked it as he had instructed but it was only a matter of time before the Imperials found enough thermal detonators to blow the whole thing open, but they also think that we are trapped here and so will take their time planning the assault instead of rushing, thought Kallus. Well they would if they were smart which was perhaps too big of an assumption on his part.

He gazed at the far side of the room. It resembled a bridge of a Star destroyer, similar structure, work stations and panels made out of glass for observation purposes. Beyond it he could see the barren surface of the moon and the multiple tower arrays standing tall in the distance, cold and arrogant. They won't be standing for long if everything goes right.

"Done!" triumphantly yelled Astbri after disconnecting his datapad from the terminal.
"Good job rookie," Kallus tossed him a Detonite charge. "You know what comes next."
"R-right." the engineer grabbed the charge holding it as if it was a newborn and started setting it up on one of the glass panels. Kallus started disabling terminals making sure that the Imperials wouldn't know what they were after. It wasn't a very thorough clean up but if the plan worked he wouldn't have to worry about it. They did their part, the extraction would be out of their hands.
A minute passed, then two, then four.
"Where the hell is our ride?" Muttered Ivercamb to no one in particular. Kallus heard shouting on the other side of the door and readied his blaster.
"You remember what to do if they get through right?" He asked Astbri.
The rookie nodded and clutched the datapad. Should the worst come to pass, Astbri was supposed to wipe the datapad clean so that the enemy wouldn't know what they were after. The mission comes first.

Suddenly his comlink came to life once more: "TC, this is Sable-1, we're not too late are we?"
"In a few seconds you will be, you sorry excuse for a pilot!" Snapped Kallus, to his own surprise.
An alien laughter could be heard: "Well someone's nervous, don't worry Agent, your evac-"
Kallus never got to hear the rest. The Door exploded in a cacophony of sounds and fire. Heat and light overwhelmed his senses momentarily and Blaster fire started pouring down the opening but no further grenades. Kallus was thankful for that, the Imperials wanted to avoid completely destroying the Control. The Turncoats had no such reservations, though a lot less grenades than one one would want.
"Spare the charges! Sable, how long till evac ETA?" Kallus shot a Stormtrooper that peered a bit too far into the breach. He hadn't realized that he switched from stun setting to lethal until he pressed the trigger and cursed his reflexes for it. But Ivercamb was right, at this distance and under fire, he had little chance of hitting targets with a stun blast.
"40 seconds TC, hold on." well he could follow that order easily enough. Behind him Astbri gasped and he felt a slight tremor. He averted his gaze momentarily to see one of the array towers collapsing and melting with bits flying off into the void. Y-wings of the Sable Squadron disappeared in the distance going for another bombing run.

The sight didn't avert the Imperials, now seemingly determined to get into Control and reactivate the dormant Turrets. Blaster shots were getting more and more frequent and Kallus was forced to stay in cover. He heard a scream, and saw the Rebel near Ivercamb fall to the ground. His name was Patcren, Kallus thought, another new arrival, he wouldn't get his story either.

"10 seconds TC!" On the side of the room he could see the shadow of a U-wing ready to pick them up. Kallus attached a cable to a nearby terminal then yelled
and threw his thermal detonator, Ivercamb followed suit. The blasts scattered the incoming Stormtroopers.
"Astbri now!"
The engineer pressed the remote control and the window panel disappeared in a blazing nova. The heat from the detonation was quickly washed away by the gale of air escaping from the building into the vacuum outside. The pressure drop and the current was enough to knock any man off his feet and pull him towards the breach. Stormtroopers were trying to grab onto anything, some managed, others flew out into the void, screaming. The Turncloacks would too if not for the cables holding their weight. The sound of a distant siren reached them, the system noticing that there's a critical decrease in the atmosphere. Suddenly the flow stopped, the automatic lockdown was activated and the Control room and the hallway were separated from the rest of the outpost, now devoid of air. Luckily for its current residents, Stormtrooper armor was designed to sustain short exposures to the vacuum. Kallus slowly got up checking his surroundings. The Imperials were down on the ground, some in the open but most finding some sort of cover. Ivercamb was up but Astbri was fiddling with his cable. Behind the breach the U-wing had stopped in place and opened its hatch.
Kallus saw Ivercamb aiming at one of the Stormtroopers, he grabbed her by the shoulder.
"We're done here trooper, move!"
"Cover us then." Ivercamb started running towards the U-Wing, hunching forward so that she would be a lesser target. Kallus rushed towards Astbri who was still stuck to a terminal. He pushed the latter's hands aside and pointed the rifle and the cable. In a flash it was gone.
"Thank you comm-"
"The Ship, now!" Roared Kallus. They lost too much time already, he knew, a suspicion confirmed when a blaster bolt flew past his head. He fired a few shots blind while running, letting Astbri get into the U-Wing.

Kallus was nearly there when his left shoulder churned and burned with pain. He convulsed from the agony but he continued limping before throwing himself into the transport. His vision was hazy but he could see someone searching for a medkit while the shuttle was refilled with oxygen. His shoulder was burning but he was alive. Someone cut off parts of his armor and started spraying bacta. He looked up to see Astbri and laughed. Funnily enough right now Kallus could only think of one thing to say:
"So, why did you defect?"
And Kallus passed out.

Author's notes:
Alright so Kallus. While he is one of the more interesting characters in Rebels I feel like his defection happened too fast and wasn't given enough time to flourish. Further more once he becomes a Rebel we barely see him or his evolution. As such I decided to include him as a POV character since I felt like there was a lot I could go in depth while presenting the conflict from another perspective. The Rebels show and the short stories that include him paint a clear picture of Kallus, a idealist who believed in the Righteous cause of the Empire and wore a stoic mask while doing his duty. He values loyalty, martial prowess and honour, while also being a stickler for rules.
However this facade crumbles, too fast in my opinion, as he gets to know one of the Rebels and recognises his valour leading to his defection to the Alliance. It's a good premise but it was never expanded upon, a shame considering how many things one could do with this character.
I've decided to give him a role that would put an emphasis on his ISB skills, while still keeping his idealistic nature.
Speaking of I also wanted this chapter to be a showcase of how efficient a Rebel operation should be. Plucky optimism and luck are nice and all but I want to portray the Galactic civil war as a conflict between two experienced and dangerous sides. Certainly the Rebels don't have Star Destroyers (yet) but they're infiltration tactics should be downright terrifying to any imperial commander. Or well most commanders anyway...
Until next time!