Okay since the last update there have been some big additions to the show such as Ezra getting a lightsaber and the addition of their speeder bikes and the other Rebels along with Ashoka and Darh Vader. That has not happened yet in the narrative of this story. So I don't wanna see any reviews pointing out what I have now addressed, if you do decide to be one of those guys I will let everyone know in the next update who among you didn't read what is written in bold.

Chapter 5

ISB Headquarters, Davenport Gateway

The building seemed to shake all of a sudden as Sabine realized that her rescue was underway. She looked up at the ceiling, seeing the lights flicker and then drop to a red as the primary generators' power feed was cut off and the emergency power kicked in. She hoped, in vain, that her bindings would power down but experience told her that there was an independent power source in it. The single guard in the room seemed a bit surprised, looking up at the ceiling with real worry on his face. Either things weren't going as the Imperials wanted or this guy was none the wiser as to what the plan was.

Sabine comforted herself with a smile into her gag, knowing that this was her rescue signaling its start. But the stormtroopers that appeared as holograms in her field of view reminded her of the bold plan that Kallus had come up with. If she were rescuing one of the other members of the team from this situation she'd expect to look in the high security zone, thinking the Imperials thought it untouchable. But she wasn't in a high security zone, and therefore would have walked right into a trap. And all Sabine could hope for was that Kanan or Ezra would sense something was up and foil this Imperial scheme.

But all she could do was wait, and hope. That was not something a go-getter such as Sabine could really swallow. So being the objective of a rescue was not her preferred position, as she had been there once already and was nearly killed. But this time her captors weren't some normal Imperials who dealt with the lowest criminals and crooks, these were hardened rebel hunters. This was an ISB headquarters, where an ISB trap was set for her friends. And there wasn't a thing she could do about it aside from do her best to get her gag out of her mouth to try and warn them. So with a task to perform Sabine began to immediately struggle, using her tongue to try and push the gag tied between her teeth out.

"The rebels have entered the base! The rebels have entered the base!" the loudspeakers called out, catching Sabine's attention.

"All units respond, secure all entrances and exits," another voice called out on the speakers of the control interface in her cell, signaling that they were now moving against Sabine's friends.

The pieces were in play.

"Well they know we're here," Kanan noted as he led the way at a brisk jog with Ezra and Zeb right behind him.

"And we thought we were going to be subtle," Ezra sarcastically piped up.

"Subtlety went out the window a long time ago," Zeb laughed, remembering the fact that they'd done millions of credits worth of damage to this building.

The three of them knew what they were doing. They'd accessed the floorplans of this building and knew the fastest way to the high security zone. And speed was the name of the game here, the Imperials would be moving to cut them off with squads of stormtroopers so they needed to get in, save Sabine, and with her in tow they would get out as fast as possible. Fighting the Imperials would be reserved for only the most dire circumstances, as they would be pinned in place, allowing Imperial troops to be focused against them and would be eventually overwhelmed.

"How far are we from the high security zone?"

"One hundred meters, and a right turn and a stairwell, and the entrance to the security zone is to the left," Kanan called out on memory.

"They'll be waiting for us," Zeb reminded the three of them as they kept going, keeping their weapons at the ready.

"Never stopped us before, and it won't stop us now," Kanan replied, just as the three of them ran right up the stairs, and encountered their first Imperials.

"There they are!" the first Stormtrooper called out, pointing down the staircase that they were on, looking down at the three rescuers.

"Blast them!" their commander ordered, and the five troopers immediately took aim.

But Kanan beat them to the punch, throwing his hand out and reaching out with the force he used his connection to lift every one of the troopers off their feet and quite savagely pulled them right towards them. However, this staircase was a triangular shape altogether, with the ceiling being the same level as the level at the top of the stairs, creating a large surface just above the entrance that Kanan, Ezra, and Zeb were standing in. On that metallic surface was a glass window made more for aesthetics reasons. But it made for a great place for Kanan to throw the troopers through the glass and get rid of them. And he did so, and the Stormtroopers didn't even see it coming.

With a sudden swoop of his arm Kanan launched every trooper through the glass, sending the shards falling all around the floor. Once they were through that window and incapacitated Kanan didn't pause and kept running up the stairs.

"How'd you know that window was there?" Ezra asked.

"I didn't," Kanan shrugged, as they reached the top, where a security checkpoint behind a glass booth was manned with an Imperial black uniformed sentry busy frantically tapping at the controls to their immediate left.

"I got it!" Zeb said with a roar as he activated his weapon's staff mode and leapt at the glass.

The Imperial didn't see him coming, and all the warning he got was a sharp crack as the end of Zeb's weapon cut through the glass and shocked him unconscious. He stood upright slightly as the electric current coursed through his body before he collapsed backwards. Zeb smashed his fist through the weakened booth and hit the door button that would allow them access to the high security zone, where Sabine was most likely being held.

"Good job Zeb," Ezra said as he and Kanan carefully walked in, ready for anything.

The hall was a long one, with no Stormtroopers inside, oddly. On the right side were the big solid doors that led into the cells that held the Empire's most dangerous enemies. At the entrances were sealed boxes for evidence pertaining to each individual that was found on their person. Kanan led the way, looking at each box, seeing the first ones were empty, one was filled with what was obviously death sticks and a blaster.

"Are we sure that Sabine is here?" Zeb asked, "Something doesn't feel right."

"I don't need to be force sensitive to feel the same way," Kanan grumbled, reaching out trying to find any trace of Sabine but not finding the strength of presence he expected.

"There, Sabine's blasters," Ezra called out, pointing at the obvious shapes of Sabine's weapons in the evidence box just in front of them.

"That's gotta be it," Zeb called out, running over behind the others.

"I'm not sensing her presence," Kanan mumbled, grabbing Ezra's hand as he was about to reach out and tap the door control, "Hold on a second."

Kanan pulled out his lightsaber, and activated it, cutting into the evidence box to take out Sabine's weapons passing them to Ezra. All three were now ready and Kanan waved them to the sides and pointed his saber at the door, and plunged it straight in. The heat emanated from the door's melting face as Kanan began to move his weapon in a circle. The melted steel flowed for a second or two as it began to cool and Kanan almost finished with the circle in the door.

"Zeb," Kanan ordered.

With that order Zeb walked over and kicked in the door, sending the thin door slab into the room.

"Sabine!" Ezra called out, looking through the hole in the door to see their lost teammate. She was in a classic high security restraining system, her arms and legs held out with the restraining system's power flows glowing in the dark. It kept Sabine very much under control, as Ezra could see her struggling intensely.

But something wasn't right. Ezra noticed it as soon as he laid eyes on Sabine. For one she was gagged, not something that Ezra was expecting. A cloth was tied between her teeth, and he could hear her screams quite clearly. But it was her eyes that made him stop himself from rushing into the cell. They weren't the hopeful and joyous eyes he'd expected from Sabine upon seeing her rescue was there. Instead they were wide open in fear as she shook her head back and forth, her eyes darting to the left and right. Then Ezra peaked to his right, and saw a flash of white that he recognized instantly.

"It's a trap!"

Sabine knew that her friends had at least made it to the cell in that high security zone. This was a good thing if they had made it that far within one of the highest security zones in this building. Many of the Stormtroopers took up their positions within her line of sight, positioning their blast shields towards the door and aiming their weapons at the entrance, ready for their quarry to burst in.

Her mind raced, trying to figure out what exactly she could do to alert her friends to the danger they faced and the deception that they'd seemed to have fallen for. She tried ever harder to get her gag out, but weakness from trying for so long and the fact it hadn't budged for the past hour meant it wasn't going anywhere. The damned Imperial who'd tied it must have been a shoe tying champion or something.

Then the unmistakable sight of a lightsaber piercing the door in front of her made her shout in fear at what must follow. She pulled hard against her restraints as the lightsaber cut a circular hole in the door and she knew she'd have to try something else. Then she realized that she could see the Stormtroopers, and the door was right in front of her. That meant she'd be seen immediately, and perhaps that could be how she was going to warn her comrades. This idea struck her about the same time as the door fell to the ground within the cell as the cutting was complete.

"Sabine!" she heard Ezra call out.

Sabine looked right at him and then looked and motioned her head at the squad of troopers, hoping to get her message across. And it worked. For a moment she saw Ezra narrow his eyes, examining the situation, seeing that there was some odd stuff to take in. Then she saw Ezra look at one of the Stormtrooper's who was probably just barely within view of him.

"It's a trap!" Ezra yelled, and she responded with calling back, ordering them to get out as fast as possible.

The group of Stormtroopers knew their cover was blown, and moved to attack her rescuers. Blue circular stun blasts were fired from the lead Stormtroopers as their CO hit the door controls to get at them. One of the troopers took a shot from Zeb's blaster to the chest and fell backwards into his comrades, causing a domino effect as the other troopers crowded the entrance. As they fell the door opened and she could see the Kanan, Ezra, and Zeb standing there, ready to defend themselves.

But as Kanan fired into the crowd of Stormtroopers the trooper's blaster flipped backwards, firing a stun blast right at her. Ezra saw it, and witnessed the circular blast go right through her, and watched it hit the far wall. To Sabine this was it, the big clue that would tell them that the image they were seeing was in fact a hologram. It was still kind of unnerving to see a shot go at her and not feel the expected effects.

"Guys!" Ezra alerted them, "It's a hologram! She's not here."

Sabine wanted to shout for glee at having gotten the message across, and shot a confident look at the guard in the room. But that didn't sit well with that Imperial, as he had been watching the show as well, and in retaliation he hit her with a painful shot of an electric shock from the restraining system. Her teeth clenched the gag tightly as her captors threw a hissy fit after their plan got thrown out of the window.

"Corporal, the Rebels sniffed us out, deactivate the hologram," she heard Agent Kallus call out on the intercom for her cell.

"Agent Kallus she alerted them by motioning to the squad in the cell," the guard replied angrily.

"Very well, knock her out," Sabine heard Kallus order the guard.

"Behind us!" Zeb growled, and Sabine saw him aim and fire, and stun blasts come flying past him.

"We need to get out of here!" Kanan ordered, activating his lightsaber, "I have an idea get in close."

And just like that Ezra and Zeb got in next to each other and Kanan stabbed his lightsaber right into the ground. As soon as that happened Sabine saw the very point of his lightsaber pierce the ceiling. She was under them!

But as the lightsaber began to cut through into a circle she saw the guard pull out an E-11 after setting it to stun and aimed it at Sabine, and shot her point blank.

The idea to cut a way out through the floor was a good idea. And none of them could really have predicted how well it paid off. Of course it got them away from the Stormtroopers that had sprung a trap on them. But when Kanan had cut into the floor and finished his circle in the hall the floor had fallen down, right into the level below. It hadn't been too bad, just a swift and sudden stop.

But what Ezra, Kanan, and Zeb saw, or rather, who they saw, immediately got their attention. Ezra saw the object of their mission, Sabine, equally restrained and gagged from what they'd seen her as before he'd realized it had been a trap. But she was limp, her head down, completely unresponsive to the fact her friends had just fallen from the ceiling on top of a half-ton of steel. All three caught sight of an Imperial guard scrambling out of the door, too late to do anything about it.

"Sabine," Ezra called out, running over to Sabine's limp form.

"Move aside kid," Kanan ordered, "Zeb, be ready to catch her."

The Jedi walked over to the restraining system, lightsaber in hand. Zeb walked over, ready to catch Sabine when the restraints were released. And Kanan didn't waste any time, and slashed the device with his weapon. The Imperial restrainer died instantly, and Sabine limply fell into Zeb's waiting arms. Immediately he checked for vital signs, checking to be sure she was alive.

"She's alive, that guard must've stunned her once he saw we were comin' down," Zeb growled.

"Can you wake her up?" Ezra asked.

"I don't have anything on me to do that. We'll have to get her aboard the Ghost and let the effects wear off," Zeb growled, pulling the gag from Sabine's mouth, noting how worn out she looked along with the scabbed lips and tiny trail of blood from an old nosebleed.

"They really beat her up," Kanan mused sourly, "We need to get out, now. Or none of this effort will have accomplished anything."

"I've got her," Zeb called out, hoisting Sabine over his shoulder in a fireman style carry, keeping his weapon in one hand.

"Our exfiltration point is down the hall, to the left and we'll reach where we arrived."

"Let's get out of here then," Ezra affirmed, looking out of the hall to see that the coast was clear.

"Follow me," Kanan ordered, and ran down the hall, blaster in hand along with his lightsaber in his other hand deactivated, but ready for anything.

This time around, there were no Stormtroopers to ambush them, apparently Kallus hadn't figured Jedi ingenuity into his backup plans. And there was no Imperial in the area that was capable of stopping them. Only a few clerks and firemen scampered away as the three Rebels stormed their way out. And once they got within a few hundred feet of their extraction point Kanan made the call for pickup.

"Specter One to Specter Two, objective acquired, we need a pickup, now."

"Copy Specter One, Ghost inbound," Hera immediately replied, having been awaiting the call for pickup since she'd reunited with the Ghost in orbit and had been hovering at the transmitter, hoping that they would be okay, "ETA is two minutes."

"We'll be ready."

The three of them, all now quite worried about the lack of resistance they had encountered, saw the fires and wreckage that signaled their exit point. They'd been able to make it there in about a minute, leaving Hera with another minute to get there and get them out. But for them that last minute was an incredibly long one. And when that signal from the Ghost and the shape of their getaway vehicle showed up they were all incredibly elated. Strangely none of them noticed any incoming fire from the Imperial defenses.

The Ghost swooped in, the landing bay open. And that's when the Imperials sprung their long awaited trap. Stormtroopers emerged from the wreckage that they had been hiding in, waiting for Kallus's orders. And they immediately opened fire. The group ducked down instantly, with a cloud of the deadly blaster bolts striking all around them.

"Well I knew it wasn't going to be this easy," Zeb growled, firing at the Imperials who just seemed to pop up and fire from every conceivable hiding spot.

"When was anything risky ever easy?" Ezra replied, firing back with one of Sabine's own pistols, striking nothing but the wreckage and metal that the Stormtroopers utilized with expertise.

"Guys you need to get over here, I've got TIE's incoming, I'm a sitting duck," Hera called over the comms.

"There are too many troopers, we'd be gunned down before we can make it," Kanan replied.

"Well you need to figure something out or none of us are going to get out of here."

"Too bad we didn't borrow some of those troopers' shields," Zeb growled, remembering the blast shields that the ambushing troopers had carried.

That's when an idea hit Kanan as he saw a large slab of metal laying on the mangled ground next to them.

"Who needs 'em?" he chuckled, deactivating his weapon and holstered it.

"What are you talking about?" Ezra asked, as he kept shooting.

Then he looked over to see Kanan with his hand out, and the large metal plate shuddered, and lifted into the air, rotating as it did so. It took them all a moment to realize what Kanan was doing but then the metal floated in between them and the Imperials, creating a large shield.

"Nice," Ezra noted.

"Get Sabine and get aboard, now," Kanan ordered as he began to back up, covering Zeb and Ezra who made a run for the Ghost.

The gargling roar of the incoming TIE fighters approaching caught Kanan's attention as he backed up closer to the Ghost, using the metal as cover from the streams of blaster bolts gradually blasting it to pieces. He knew he'd have to make a run for it, and took his opportunity. Summoning his strength in the force he prepared to jump upwards and backwards, aiming for the door and took one last deep breath. Releasing his hold on his makeshift shield he crouched down, and pushed upwards. The force lifted him up, like no other jump anyone without the use of this tool was able to. In a moment of snap second observation Kanan saw that several bolts came screaming right past him. One was so close he'd been able to feel the heat as it passed by his cheek.

But none hit him, and he landed well within the Ghost's bay, and hit the controls to close it as soon as he was in.

"Hera go!" Zeb roared into the comm, alerting her to get out of there.

"Hang on!" Hera ordered them, and her hands immediately started dancing across the controls, handling the Ghost like a dream. The TIE's that had been closing in on the Ghost hadn't started their attack run soon enough and the Ghost quickly began to climb away from them. In the heavy, thick atmosphere of Davenport Gateway the Ghost was able to quickly outpace the flight of TIE's and was gone.

They'd gotten away, it was over.

There we are, I wanted to get this story done, or at least get you guys off of the cliff I'd left you on for so long. But a few things have prevented me from getting around to it. The worst of which was just recently. I had to put down my beloved 14 year-old Doberman Pinscher, Molly a few days ago. She'd been a great dog and I will miss her dearly.

But moving on, as anyone must, I have a plan and a request. In the time since I had last updated this story I'd had an idea strike me like a lightning bolt. It was when I was watching the show Clone Wars. I noticed that the crews of the ships that the Republic used were not clones. They were volunteers, and the idea hit me, there must have been Republic and Separatist volunteer units that saw combat during the Clone Wars, I mean we see them as crew, officers, and foot soldiers(mostly as militia like Rom Kota's troops and the Umbarans) so why not have a story for that?

And the request I have is for someone to act as a co-writer for the CIS side's POV of this story about Republic and Separatist volunteer units in the Clone Wars. I myself am leaning towards the Republic force so I need someone who has written Star Wars before, knows the history, technology, tradition, etc. Most of all I need someone who has experience. If you have never written or barely written don't ask to co-write. I'd like someone I won't have to coach up, so to speak.

But with that out of the way I think I'll end this chapter. Thanks for reading, hope you guys enjoyed, if you did, and more importantly, if you didn't let me know so I can improve and give a story that you and others can enjoy.

Next Chapter Preview: Sometimes things aren't that easy to forget, and for our team, this incident will require some real character development.