Summary: Lorana might only be a Jedi Knight because Master C'baoth bullied the Council into naming her one, but she would be damned if she failed now.
Ezra had no idea what he was supposed to do now. Get Thrawn off of Lothal and find out what he's truly after, had been the extent of what he and Kanan had discussed. Now, his Master was truly gone, and he didn't know which step was the right one. It didn't help that Grand Admiral Thrawn really rubbed him the wrong way.
Notes: The past and the present collide. Lorana Jinzler POV and Ezra Bridger POV.
A Knight of the Jedi Order
Lorana Jinzler was a Jedi Knight.
She was. She was.
Even if she never felt like one.
She took in as deep and calming a breath as she could in the circumstances, winced briefly at the shooting pain coming from her right knee, and then hauled herself back up onto her feet. Around her the ship shook and roofing tiles made of durasteel cracked and slid and fell. Wiring exposed from the heavy gunfire – courtesy of the unknown alien ships – was sparking ominously and what lighting still worked flickered and sputtered and hissed.
Lorana was bleeding; she'd hit her head on something and had been thrown into more bulkheads and walls than she could rightly remember. She was also scared out of her wits, still on an adrenaline high from trying to stop Master C'baoth from using the Dark Side to kill the unknown enemy commander and been through a subsequent anti-Jedi uprising among the passengers and crew of Outbound Flight.
On a list of Really Bad Days, this was at the very top.
She put a hand to her right side to help ease the stitch in her ribs. She tasted blood in her mouth and the only thing she could hear was the erratic pounding of her own heart. Fool. Weak, pathetic fool, she chided herself, the voice in her head sounding like her Master when he reprimanded her – which had been often.
She tried to push that thought away as unhelpful – Master Kenobi had praised her ability to think on her feet while he'd been aboard and encouraged her to have more confidence in herself – and tried to listen around her own heart to assess her surroundings.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Are there any other lifeforms around?
Reach out.
One.
Lorana opened her eyes just as a blue-skinned, humanoid male skidded around the corner. There was a blaster in his right hand and he wore some type of military uniform. Those glowing red eyes of his widened as he saw her, and the hand on his blaster twitched. In an instant, her lightsaber was in her hands, it's comforting green glow providing steady illumination in contrast to the flickering lights all around them.
For a moment they were frozen in place, the blue-skinned man with his raised blaster and the Jedi with her green lightsaber – staring at each other – as the ship hurtled through space and the lights danced on and off.
Lorana was scared and injured and she had no idea what she was supposed to do. She took a shaky breath and thought back to the lessons she had learned in the Temple, the compassion she had been taught, the self-control she had practiced. It was her job…no, her calling to help those in need. She had no proof this man was an enemy, yet.
She didn't move to attack. "What do you want?" she called, hoping her voice was steadier than she felt.
The red eyes looked momentarily confused. His black hair was styled neatly, she realized, but not like a military man. His uniform as well, while resembling some type of military institution, did not quite sit on him as it would upon a soldier. His face was even-featured, even handsome, and she thought he might be younger than she had first assessed.
He said something in a language she did not know. She shook her head at him. "No, sorry, I don't understand."
He lowered his blaster. At last, in Sy Bysti, he asked, "Do you understand my words, now?"
Lorana turned off her blade and attached the hilt to her belt. "Yes, I understand this language. A little." Her language proficiency had never been anything to write home about, and Master C'baoth often deplored her slow-wittedness. "Please speak slowly," she asked. "Who are you, and what do you want aboard Outbound Flight?"
The man holstered his blaster and stood up straighter. His blue skin glimmered in many shades from the sporadic lighting of the splintering world ship and his eyes shown like kyber crystals – if any of them came naturally in red that was. "My name," he said formally, in a crisp, precise accent, "is Mitth'ras'safis, and I am part of the Chiss Ascendency. I mean you know harm, but I had no idea anyone had survived." His glowing eyes flickered down to the lightsaber at her side, and he frowned. "Who…what are you?"
Lorana almost smiled. This, at least, was something she knew how to handle. "I am a Jedi," she said. "My name is Lorana Jinzler."
There was something odd about Thrawn's voice when he'd announced their destination to the crew of the Chimaera. Ezra couldn't place it, but the orderly, near-impassible lines of Thrawn's mind went jagged for a brief moment, as though he was in the grip of some great emotion.
Well, great or intense for him, Ezra supposed. He was even sure the Imperial Admiral felt things the same way other people did. Once he had gotten over the initial shock, Ezra's defeat of his entire fleet – the deaths of numerous Imperials and the time-consuming repairs, as well as their uncharted course through hyperspace – had garnered the Jedi no more than a slight hint of frost from the Grand Admiral.
Ezra wondered if the Grand Admiral could really have such perfect control over his own emotions or if – which was the more likely scenario – he was actually a mass-murdering sociopath who just didn't care about anything but his far-distant goals.
Whatever they were.
Ezra, don't let your emotions cloud your judgment. Keep an open mind and open eyes, and truth will be revealed in time.
Kanan's voice was a vivid in his memory as though his Master was standing next to him. Ezra briefly closed his eyes and wrapped a hand around the lightsaber at his waist. His Master's lightsaber. An old Jedi saying came to him then. 'Truth enlightens the mind, but won't always bring happiness to your heart.'
He grimaced and wondered if the truth about Outbound Flight would bring unhappiness to him, or to Thrawn. He opened his eyes again. "So…Outbound Flight, huh? What exactly is it?" He squinted through the forward viewports, but all he saw was a hunk of rock floating in space. It didn't look like a habitable planet and the wreckage, if there was any left, wasn't visible to the naked eye.
Commodore Faro cleared her throat. She side-eyed her commanding officer to see if he objected, but when Thrawn continued to stare out the viewport as though lost in his own thoughts, she answered Ezra's question.
"Outbound Flight was a project commissioned by the Senate towards the end of the Galactic Republic. About four years or so before the Clone Wars, I believe. 45,000 people – as well as 20 Jedi and 5,000 crew members – were chosen to board six dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers attached to a central core. This world ship was to go beyond our galaxy, to explore the far reaches of space in the hopes of finding civilization and habitable worlds in other galaxies or star clusters." Her voice held a heavy ring to it.
"What happened?" Ezra asked, already knowing the answer. He moved to stand next to Faro at the monitors, where schematics of the world ship were displayed across various station monitors.
"It was classified as a failure after all contact was lost. Somewhere in the Unknown Regions."
Ezra nodded. "Well, I guess they ran into trouble. It must have been someone pretty terrible to try and kill all those people."
That odd flare shot through the Grand Admiral again. If Ezra hadn't been monitoring him so closely since he'd boarded this ship, wasn't so attuned to the slightest deviation in his normal behavior, he never would have noticed it. But he did, and it felt like touching a live wire.
"And Jedi," he emphasized, watching Thrawn's back closely.
"You did not know them, Commander Bridger," the Grand Admiral said dispassionately.
"Nope," Ezra agreed, "but then, no one here did, right? Before our time."
Commodore Faro looked between Ezra and her Grand Admiral's stiff back. She cleared her throat. "Initial bio-scans are negative, Admiral, but it appears that the atmosphere of this planet is causing interference with our scanners." She turned away for a moment and members from the crew pit called up the results of their own scans to her.
"The ship appears completely deserted and untouched since it crashed here decades ago," she confirmed to Ezra and Thrawn after a moment. "No signs of active power, and no signs that anyone left it and tried to take one of the escape pods."
Captain Pellaeon's voice came over the comm. "Grand Admiral? There may be valuable equipment on board which is still in working order."
"Yes, indeed, Captain. That is a distinct possibility." Thrawn had still not looked away from the viewport.
Ezra had no idea what was bothering the man, but he did have questions he wanted answered. "Do you know which Jedi were on board?" he asked.
Faro shook her head. "That information as classified," she said, looking at the record. Her eyes widened. "By the Chancellor…forgive me, the Emperor himself."
"The Jedi were led by a Master Jorus C'baoth." Thrawn's even voice surprised them both. For a moment there was silence between the three of them, as the men and women below them continued to speak softly into their comm units and to each other. "I believe your Master Kenobi and…Anakin Skywalker" – he hesitated briefly over the name – "were assigned to be part of this project as well." Ezra's eyes widened. "They were recalled to Coruscant before they reached the edges of Republic space," Thrawn added.
"Master Obi-Wan was –" He cut himself off hurriedly, unable to imagine a version of events where Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker had been absent from the galaxy during the Clone Wars. And the subsequent rise of the Empire. Ahsoka would have never been trained by them. Darth Vader would have never existed –
He drew in a sharp breath.
"Fascinating how paths converge," Thrawn murmured, "isn't it? But in this case, you are right, and the Emperor recalled them both personally."
"I didn't say anything," Ezra shot back, automatically. Sometimes he vaguely suspected Thrawn of sensing the Force himself, given his propensity to know things he shouldn't be able to.
"The direction of your thoughts was obvious."
"As is the direction of yours," he shot back, childishly. He winced internally. Oh, real mature, Ezra, he scolded himself, in a voice that reminded him of Sabine's. "I mean…let's go down there."
Thrawn turned at last, hands still clasped behind his back, to give Ezra a sharp look. "Any retrieval operation I decide to initiate certainly doesn't require my presence. Or yours."
"But you want to go. I can feel it." He frowned. "No…you need to go." He met the Imperial Admiral's eyes firmly. He might not trust the man, or even like him very much, but everything inside him was telling him that Thrawn had to go down to Outbound Flight. And so did he.
"There are answers there," he promised. "For both of us."
Thrass – for so he had allowed Lorana to call him after she bungled his name several times – was a diplomat from a place in the Unknown Regions he called the Chiss Ascendency. He was also surprisingly calm in a crisis.
"There are fifty-seven passengers still aboard," she told him quickly, or at least she hoped she did. In reality, what she was saying in Sy Bysti probably came across much more disjointed than her Basic, and her accent was undoubtedly atrocious.
"How? How is that even possible? My bro-…we scanned this ship for life-forms and found nothing." He looked around him in astonishment and she felt guilt flare in him sharply. The ship looked torn apart on the inside and Lorana could only imagine how it looked from the outside. It was no wonder he thought no one could have survived.
"They were in the central storage core," she explained, trying not to feel guilty about it. "It's reinforced, difficult to scan correctly due to the energy that crosses it from one dreadnaught to the other, and the scanners are scrambled due to the special metal which was used in its walls." She had tried to stop her Master…
No, that was no excuse. Do, or do not, Master Yoda always said. She hadn't stopped her Master and she had failed to prevent his fall to the Dark Side. But she had felt it. She knew why the enemy commander fired on their ship, and even if she mourned for the loss of innocent life, she understood it. A Jedi Master turned to the Dark Side was a terrifying thing.
But she would not fail those who had survived. "They were imprisoned there by…my Master," she admitted. "But it saved their lives, and now I have to find a way to stop this ship from crashing, and the only way to do that is by using the controls on D-1." Thrass merely looked at her. "This way," she told him.
They had to circle back around because D-2 was utterly impassible, so they went down towards the central storage unit, the ship shaking around them and mini explosions going over periodically from overloaded circuits and improperly wired panels. There was a tricky moment when Thrass lost his footing and almost plummeted down a drop of several hundred feet, thanks to the grav machines kicking in at precisely the wrong moment.
But Lorana managed to grab him in one hand and the edge of a doorframe in the other and halted his descent. She pulled herself up onto the ledge provided by the bulkhead – now tilted at one-hundred and eighty degrees – and pulled Thrass up after her. His glowing red eyes were slightly wider than usual, but all he did was nod his thanks.
She clapped her hands together, hard, and Force pushed a bunched of the detritus out of her way.
She could feel him studying her, but the curiosity was not unpleasant. It was far kinder than the anger and jealousy she had felt from the brother she had never known, Dean, when he confronted her on Coruscant just before her departure. His Force presence had been clouded black in his hatred for her, or rather his hatred of her as a Jedi. It had stung to know that she could inspire such hatred in someone she had never met, and she had tried to soothe the wound in him; the pain of it had saddened her. She hoped that young man found happiness and peace…and that the memory of her became gentler for him over time.
Thrass' regard felt more like a scholar pouring over a manuscript with an unfamiliar text. She almost smiled at the thought, but she supposed there were worse things to be called than a holopad.
"Jedi Jinzler," Thrass began.
"Lorana," she corrected him. Being referred to by that title was still not something she was used to. She winced internally at what her master…former master…would have said, but then her resolve firmed a bit. His arrogance had led him straight to the Dark Side. Perhaps a little more humility was exactly what was required in this situation.
"Lorana," Thrass agreed. He hesitated, and her attention was drawn back to him. His glowing eyes perused her face with open curiosity. She resisted the impulse to tell him they had to hurry and waited without showing impatience. At last he opened his mouth, licked his lips and said, "You called yourself a Jedi."
It was not a question.
She nodded, wondering what was wrong with that, wondering if the Chiss even had Jedi. "Did I not translate the word correctly?" she asked, after she'd thought about it. That was entirely possible, given her poor language skills and the fact that 'Jedi' did not translate directly into other languages.
Thrass licked his lips, his eyes suddenly intent upon her face. "The root words you used were those for 'air' and 'light' and 'travel,'" he said, and his voice was more intense than she had yet heard from him.
Lorana went over the translation again. "Yes, I suppose so…" she trailed off as a sudden thought struck her. She laughed, surprised to find that she still had a laugh in her somewhere. "You mean like 'Skywalker,'?" she couldn't help but ask, tickled by the notion. Master Kenobi's surly, angry Padawan, with his approval of Master C'baoth's ruthless methods and his obvious and complete adoration of his own Master, were the last things she thought of in association with the words; 'air' and 'light' and 'traveling.' She laughed again. "Well, don't tell him that, although I heard he's a fairly good pilot," she confided.
But Thrass just looked confused at her reference. Latching onto the one part of it he seemed to understand, he breathed, "sky walkers."
"Well, there's only one," she corrected. Thank the Force for that. Two would be more than Master Kenobi could handle. More than the galaxy could handle.
"You can think of me as a Sky Walker if you want," she allowed, hearing the way the words were separated and sounded like a title. Perhaps the Chiss had Force-sensitives of their own, and that's what they called them. It would certainly explain Thrass' lack of fear at her abilities and her lightsaber. She would think about that at another time. Now, they had to keep moving.
Speculatively, Lorana looked up. The ship was still tilted the wrong way, gravity and time were both against them, and this trip would be so much easier if she just…jumped.
She looked over at Thrass again. She had never attempted a jump of this height while holding onto someone substantially larger than herself. She closed her eyes and reached out to the Force. Yes, it whispered.
Alright then. She would do this, she could do this because…she had to.
Without opening her eyes, she extended her hands, palms up, towards Thrass. "Do you…" she didn't know the Sy Bysti word for 'trust.' "…believe…in me?" she asked at last, hesitantly. She shook her head in mild annoyance. "No, that's not the right word. Sorry."
Thrass placed his hands in hers. He was warm, his palms calloused, and his breathing was slightly faster than normal. "I do," he said.
He sounded so certain. Lorana opened her eyes to find him watching her, with something almost like awe on his face. She swallowed quickly and looked away. No one had ever looked at her with awe before. She was ordinary, not even very powerful for a Jedi, and nowhere near as skilled as her Master…
"Lorana?"
Thrass' voice. Right, not helpful at the moment. "Okay. Thanks," she said. She dropped his hands, reached out to clasp him under the armpits, and then stretched out to the Force. It flooded through her, singing a song louder, purer, more triumphant, than any she had heard before. She took a deep breath, let it fill her…and she jumped.
"Can all Jedi do that?" Thrass asked, somewhat breathlessly, several seconds later. They were at the bulkhead door which lead to the narrow passages separating D-6 from D-1. Thrass peered recklessly over the edge, looking back down the way they had come. Lorana resisted the impulse to grab him and pull him back from the edge.
She laughed instead, sounding somewhat dazed even to herself. "Most Jedi would have done that a lot more gracefully than I did," she said, shaking her head. They had reached where she had aimed without a problem, but she had miscalculated a bit and they had ended up slamming into the walls and almost tumbling back off the narrow ledge again.
Thrass shook his head, and when he looked over at her a wide smile split his face. It turned his rather severe features unexpectedly boyish for a moment. He murmured something in his own language, and then translated for her benefit. "Brilliant," he said. "That was brilliant!"
Lorana couldn't help the feeling of pleasure that filled her at his words. She met his eyes for a moment and then ducked her head, unable to bear what she saw in them anymore. She cursed herself for the warm feeling on her cheeks and tried to will the redness away. She had received so few compliments, it was hard to take one. "We're not there yet," she said, and held out a hand to him, pulling him up after her into the passageway.
They would have to crawl the rest of the way to reach D-1.
Ezra, Thrawn and Captain Pellaeon stood just inside the darkened airlock on D-3 and breathed in the stale, musty air. Around them hung loose, long-unused wires, broken and disintegrated circuit boards, loose floor and ceiling tiles, scattered crates and boxes, and the evidence of blaster fire.
There were no bodies, for which Ezra was grateful.
Behind them, the Imperial detachment in charge of equipment recovery, moved carefully through the doorway.
"The design of the ship attached to the other airlock looks very similar to those employed by the Chiss, Grand Admiral," Captain Pellaeon said quietly, and Ezra's estimation of the man went up by several notches. He had noticed the other ship, seen that it was unusual, but hadn't bothered to look any closer than that.
"So, it is, Captain. Your powers of observation are improving," Thrawn said calmly.
Ezra could feel faint unease coming off him. "Why would a Chiss ship – an old Chiss ship – be here?"
The Grand Admiral was silent. The other men and women spread out and began to scan and pick through the various crates and barrels lying around the ancient dreadnaught. Thrawn, hands clasped behind his back, watched them dispassionately. Finally, somewhere, someone found a light and flicked it on, illuminating the dusty, unused space around them in a faded, yellow glow.
"There was a rumor going around the Imperial High Command, many years ago," Pellaeon began, sounding cautious, "that the Emperor raised an alien so high in the ranks because he had already proven his loyalty to the Empire many years before."
Thrawn's emotions spiked again and at last Ezra understood. His eyes widened, and he couldn't keep the horror from his voice, or the hand from his lightsaber. "It was you, wasn't it? You're the one who destroyed…" he waved a hand around him, "this entire ship, killed tens of thousands of innocent people!"
The other imperials were watching him now, Captain Pellaeon looking alarmed and a hand drifting towards his blaster.
For a moment, Ezra was unsure whether or not he would ignite his lightsaber and strike the Grand Admiral down. The Force resounded with the terrified cries of thousands of people, their lives extinguished in a fiery explosion caused by a man who saw them as only numbers in a game.
Then…
"Yes," Thrawn said quietly, his back still to Ezra. "I killed them." And Ezra's anger almost made him miss that there was grief in Thrawn's Force presence, grief Ezra could feel swimming just beneath his tight control. "It was not my intent, but it proved to be out of my control."
Ezra's hand, still on his lightsaber, wavered. Ezra, think, Kanan's memory challenged him. His Master usually turned out to be right. At last, sounding somewhat strangled, he said, "Like on Batonn?"
The silence was telling. "What do you know of Batonn?" His voice was a warning, as dangerous as thin ice
Ezra's hand was clenched so tight around his Master's lightsaber that he thought he might crack the hilt. "Kanan said that it was an anomaly, that it didn't fit the pattern of your past engagement, and he thought that…perhaps someone else got involved." He shrugged and tried to take his eyes off Thrawn's back. The man was so blasted hard to read. "Or failed to follow your orders."
Like with the interdictor over Atollon, he didn't say out loud. He knew Sabine and Zeb would be shaking their heads at his recklessness, his constant needling of an Imperial Admiral who held all the power in Ezra's currently precarious situation. But Ezra had a gut feeling that if he didn't get Thrawn to see him as someone to respect – even just a little – their relationship would never improve, and the reason why the Force wanted them both in the Unknown Regions would remain a mystery.
Ezra would not fail. Kanan and Master Obi-Wan were counting on him to do his part.
Thrawn half-turned to take in Ezra's uncertain presence behind him. "Perhaps I misjudged your Kanan Jarrus," he said simply, but some of the ice was gone from his voice.
"Yeah, Kanan saw a lot," Ezra returned. Which is the only reason you're still alive, he added belligerently, and silently, in his own head.
Thrawn watched him for a moment, those glowing red eyes impassive. "Come, Commander Bridger. There are other things to see." And he headed carefully around the strewn detritus of the abandoned dreadnought and towards one of the half-open bulkhead doors.
Ezra and Captain Pellaeon – who left a quick word with the next ranking officer – exchanged a glance and followed him.
Thrawn led the way down downwards towards the central core of the abandoned ship. This part was half buried under the hard ground of this planet, Ezra knew from his quick glance at the scans aboard the Chimaera. He had no idea why the Grand Admiral felt an urge to start his search of the ship there, but he seemed to know where he was going, so Ezra contented himself with bringing up the rear of their odd little party, his lightsaber – Kanan's lightsaber – casting blue light to illuminate their path.
Captain Pellaeon, for all the years he had – amply demonstrated by his bushy, white mustache – proved to be both spry and possessing quick reflexes, and Thrawn seemed to have the physical stamina of a warrior, for all that Ezra often thought of him as an armchair military commander. The three of them climbed and skirted, crawled through, under and around, various pieces of machinery and parts of the ship, in silence save for the hum of the lightsaber.
After a quarter of an hour, after Ezra may have almost accidentally sliced Captain Pellaeon's head off when he'd lost his balance on a slippery, dusty, partially-rusted bulkhead door, the white-haired star destroyer captain gave a rueful laugh. Even as he eyed the lightsaber with caution and stepped further out of Ezra's reach.
"You know, I was good friends with the former Admiral Yularen during the Clone Wars," he began conversationally.
"Who was that?" Ezra asked, Force-lifting a huge beam out of their way. Captain Pellaeon gave him a small nod of thanks but Thrawn merely frowned and said nothing, his thoughts still seemingly far away.
"He fought with your Anakin Skywalker," Pellaeon explained, his keen old eyes taking in the badly disguised sudden interest on Ezra's face and Thrawn's momentary stillness. Yes, Ezra would do well not to underestimate the man just because he seemed old. Just look at Rex; old people could be dangerous.
"Yes," Pellaeon continued, and Ezra had a feeling that he was enjoying himself. He glanced over towards Thrawn to see if the Grand Admiral had noticed the same thing, only to find those glowing red eyes already upon him, a quirk of a blue-black eyebrow and a small, exasperated shake of the head confirming Ezra's suspicions that Thrawn had noticed it as well.
Was he really so easy to read?
"He had a lot of respect for Skywalker. And for General Kenobi as well."
"You fought in the Clone Wars?" Ezra asked.
Pellaeon nodded, swinging his legs over several smashed crates and hopping over them with relative ease. "About a year into the conflict I was assigned to the task force led by Jedi General Aayla Secura."
At Ezra's confused frown he added, "Twi'lek Jedi Master. Favored bold and unorthodox tactics. Got along quite well with General Skywalker, I'm told." He grimaced a bit. "Sometimes Yularen and I would get together back on Coruscant and…discuss…our respect Generals' various reckless maneuvers."
Ezra mulled that over, mentally substituting 'discuss' for 'complain about' and noticed Thrawn's eyebrow rising even higher, though he still said nothing. "What was General Kenobi like?" he asked. Ahsoka's master's master had been respected and admired by everyone who talked about him and Ezra sometimes couldn't reconcile the gentle old man he had met out in the desert with the fierce, cunning and charming hero of the Clone Wars.
"Kenobi was the strategist while Skywalker was the tactician," Pellaeon said, unhesitatingly, navigating another turning. "He was the diplomat to Skywalker's warrior. He generally liked to follow a carefully constructed plan in order to minimize causalities and deal the greatest amount of damage to the Separatists, while Skywalker would just jump right into a dangerous situation and come up with an orthodox solution on the move."
Pellaeon's smile, in the blue light of Ezra's blade, looked dangerous. "But don't let that fool you. I've never seen anyone improvise so quickly during a battle gone wrong as General Kenobi. He could be just as reckless as General Skywalker when the mood struck him." He shot both Ezra and Thrawn an amused look. "And that apprentice of theirs was just as bad. I heard a rumor she survived the war. As did General Kenobi."
Neither Thrawn nor Ezra answered him.
Ezra thought about what Captain Pellaeon said about Master Kenobi, and about the gentle man who had saved him and Chopper, the wisdom in his clear blue eyes, the chances he had given Maul to not fight him, and the unhesitating way he had drawn his lightsaber and cut the Sith Lord down when that had failed. "Yeah, I could see that." He remembered Rex's and Ahsoka's stories and wished he'd heard more of them. Kanan had told him everything he remembered about Master Billaba's and Master Windu's exploits, but they were long gone now, and Master Kenobi was still alive. So was Ahsoka. "I wish I could have seen them fight together," he said, more wistful than he had intended.
Kanan and Rex, and even Hera, had gone on about how, together, Master Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker were unbeatable. Given how Obi-Wan utterly destroyed Maul back on Tatooine, and how powerful and scarily-capable Darth Vader was, Ezra believed it.
"They sound like they were quite a team," Thrawn said, his voice very even. They were his first words since they had left Dreadnaught-3. "Once," he added, studiously neutral.
Again, Ezra wondered just how much Thrawn knew about what happened to the Jedi and the Republic. Even Ahsoka didn't know the whole story, and those who did – which probably included Senator Organa – weren't telling. Or at least they were telling Ezra.
Pellaeon let out a surprising chuckle. "It's surprising how often the past seems to catch up with us," he mused. "Sometimes in places we never thought to find it." He nodded at the ship they were slowly, but steadily, moving through.
"And sometimes the past is better off dead and buried, Captain," the Grand Admiral said, a distinct chill in his voice.
Ezra thought about secrets kept and which weren't his to reveal. For once, he realized, he and Thrawn were in complete agreement.
They rounded another corner and Ezra began to notice something odd about the place they were passing through. It wasn't anything he could put his finger on, but there was something…
He slowed down, trying to put a finger on what was bothering him.
Pellaeon and Thrawn slowed down and turned when they realized he was no longer behind them. "Jedi Bridger?" Pellaeon asked.
Ezra frowned and shook his head. "I don't know what it is yet, but something's wrong."
Thrawn's expression was more ambiguous. "Have you noticed the dust, Commander Bridger?" he asked, he inquired conversationally, but in an extremely low tone.
Ezra's eyes darted to the side, the blue of his lightsaber moving in an arc around him as he inspected the various boxes stacked off to one side…
Stacked off to one side.
His eyes widened, and his gaze shot back to Thrawn's. The Chiss' eyesight, which could see in the infrared, had obviously noticed something Ezra and Pellaeon had not.
"There is no dust," Pellaeon said slowly, hand already on his holster.
"And those crates and boxes are stacked neatly off to one side. Like someone came and cleaned up!" Ezra announced breathlessly.
"Yes," Thrawn agreed and his tone was speculative. "We are not alone done here."
Ezra heart lurched and Pellaeon's hand dropped to the blaster holstered at his side. "Jedi Bridger," he asked calmly. "You didn't sense anyone?"
The truth was, Ezra hadn't even been looking. He had been so sure that everyone would be long dead. It had been decades after all…
Listen. Observe, he reminded himself. Never assume you have all the answers! A foolish, rookie mistake. Kanan wouldn't be impressed.
He stretched out to the Force, searching carefully for any life forms, vaguely wondering why the Chimaera's sensors had failed to pick them up. He frowned. There was something there. Very faint. No, there. There!
Somewhere close by there came a little giggle. Thrawn and Pellaeon spun, blasters drawn in their hands as they searched for the sound in the darkness. "No, no!" Ezra cried, pushing their blasters down towards the deck with the Force. Ezra kept his eyes closed and shuffled forward slowly. There was a child somewhere close by, probably hiding behind one of the boxes. Female, human he thought. And definitely Force-sensitive. Yet he could only feel her faintly, as though she was masking her presence. How did she even know how to do that?
He caught a glimpse of a stray thought.
– pretty –
He opened his eyes and looked once more at the blue-white glow of Kanan's lightsaber, remembering how he had felt the first time he ignited the blade and the song from the kyber crystal burst forth in the small, cramped room of a space freighter. It had seemed like something from another world, like something from a story or a legend.
"Yes," he agreed softly, trying to reassure the child by making his voice as gentle as possible. "It is beautiful, isn't it? It's called a lightsaber and it belonged to…" he swallowed roughly, "someone very dear to me."
There was a soft shuffle from behind some boxes and Ezra caught a glimpse of a small face hesitantly peaking around the corner. "Are they gone?" And the voice was young, tiny, full of curiosity but not at all afraid.
Ezra wondered how such a small child – she didn't sound any older than four – could know so much about death as to calmly ask if someone was 'gone'. He knelt down on the metal floor beneath his boots so that he was more at eye level with her and kept the lightsaber's glow illuminating his own features. He tried to explain Kanan's death in a way that wouldn't alarm a child, and something Sabine used to say – a Mandalorian saying – came to him then.
"Not gone," he said. "Merely marching far away."
The child seemed to contemplate this for a moment. More of her head came into view, including a mop of messy brownish-colored hair. A small nose wrinkled. "That's silly," she said at last. "Why can't he come back?"
Ezra smiled. "Who said anything about a 'he'?" he asked her, already knowing that she must have picked up an image of Kanan from his mind. She didn't seem to understand his question, so he tried another. "How are you making yourself small?" he asked her.
"I'm always small," the girl said, and she finally stepped out from behind the boxes in order to prove her point.
Ezra could feel Thrawn and Pellaeon behind him very consciously not moving in any way. The little girl was aware of them, but she didn't seem alarmed as she slowly walked towards Ezra. She seemed fascinated by, and drawn to, Kanan's lightsaber. She was even smaller for her supposed age than Ezra expected, dressed in a slightly dirty dress of faded blue. Her hair was messy, and her face was dirty, but her eyes were keen and bright and curious. A pair of boots, very poor boots with several holes in them, covered small feet as she moved forward one step at a time until she was looking directly into Ezra's eyes.
"Yes, you are small, little one," he agreed, smiling at her. The crocked smile he received in return, several teeth still missing, made his heart clench painfully with a strangely protective feeling. She didn't look like she was starving or being terribly mistreated, but she was too small and skinny for her age and there was something of a scared animal in the back of her eyes. "It's alright," he told her, reaching out to her in the Force to let her see his intentions. "I won't hurt you, and neither will my friends." He waved back at Thrawn and Pellaeon, turning to bestow a ferocious look at the two Imperials in case they got any ideas.
Thrawn was watching him like he was an interesting specimen to research and Captain Pellaeon had on a gentlemanly smile. Their blasters had vanished back into their holsters.
Ezra turned back to the child. "I'm Ezra. What's your name?"
"Evlyn," said the girl, suddenly shy as she peaked around Ezra to inspect Thrawn and Pellaeon. Thrawn's unusual skin tone and glowing eyes didn't seem to alarm her, which was a relief. If the Chiss had destroyed Outbound Flight all those decades ago, at least their descendants didn't know what Thrawn's people looked like.
"And you can see me, right Evlyn?" Ezra continued. "I feel like light to you?"
The little girl nodded, reaching out to pat him on the cheek, as though she could touch the glow that surrounded Ezra in the Force.
"I don't see you like that. You look like shadow or mist, almost not there. How do you do that?"
Master Kenobi had felt like that on Tatooine – almost not there at all – until he had ignited his lightsaber against Maul, and then he had blazed across the desert like a supernova. Ezra had never seen anyone that bright before, not Kanan, not Ahsoka, not even Master Yoda.
But Evlyn, even though she was untrained and very young, should still have shone in the Force. Her presence flickered in and out of existence, only able to be seen if you had the skill and training, and moreover were actually looking for her.
"I'm hiding," Evlyn confided, as though this was a normal occurrence.
"Hiding from who?" Ezra asked, feeling a little shiver of unease crawl up his spine. To hide yourself in the Force – to need to hide yourself in the Force – didn't sound like something a child should have to do.
"From whom," Thrawn murmured behind him, and Ezra rolled his eyes. He could feel Thrawn's and Pellaeon's alertness begin to increase again, their hands drifting towards their weapons.
"They'll take me back and lock me up again," the child confided, her dark eyes huge in her pale face even as she grabbed Ezra's sleeve. "Please don't let them, Ezra. I don't like it there! The other children cry, and I can't feel anything in that room." She shivered.
Ezra stood up, suddenly decided. "We won't," he promised her, holding out an arm. After staring at him curiously for a moment, Evlyn jumped up and he caught her, holding her carefully and balancing her on his hip. She put little arms around his neck and stared over his shoulder at Thrawn and Pellaeon.
"Ezra," she whispered, still entirely audible. "Your friend is blue."
Ezra laughed and even Pellaeon smiled. Ezra turned to find Thrawn studying them both with his glowing red eyes. "Yes, he is," Ezra agreed, and Thrawn's eyebrow shot up so quickly that Ezra wanted to laugh again.
"Good," Evlyn said. "This way you can always find him."
Captain Pellaeon smothered a laugh and Thrawn closed his eyes wearily, an expression of strained patience crossing those usually inscrutable features. "Evlyn," he said through compressed lips and closed eyes, his voice gentler than Ezra had ever heard it.
Evlyn ducked her head into Ezra's shoulder before mumbling, "Yes?"
"Can you see the other children in that room…like you can see…Ezra?"
Evlyn shook her head against Ezra's shoulder. "I can't see anything in that room," she said, in a little voice that rang strangely flat for a child her age.
Ezra, Thrawn and Pellaeon shared a glance and Ezra tightened his arms around the child. Kanan had once described being cut off from the Force as feeling both cold and blind. The Force was life, Ezra thought, remembering one of his first lessons.
"It sounds like whoever survived has taken any Force-sensitive children they have and…locked them away," Captain Pellaeon said slowly. For an imperial, Ezra thought distantly – remembering Inquisitors, and Zeb and Chopper holding tiny babies who felt like little stars in the Force – he sounded remarkably disgusted by the idea.
"How many people are there, Evlyn?" Ezra asked her, but there the child was no help.
"Lots," she answered, and Ezra grimaced. He could feel the questions on the tip of both Imperials, buzzing just under the surface as they all decided whether to wait and call for reinforcements from the Chimaera, or to continue onwards, but Evlyn got there first.
"Are you lost?" she asked in a tiny voice, lifting her head and curiously looking between the three intruders.
"Why do you say that, child?" Thrawn's voice must have been soothing to her, for she was now staring at the Chiss as though he was the most fascinating person she had ever met.
"No one ever comes here," she said, as though the answer was self-explanatory.
Ezra thought rather wryly of his own separation from the Ghost crew, Thrawn's separation from everything he had been trying to build in the Empire, and even Pellaeon's journey from Grand Army of the Republic to Imperial Navy to…wherever Ezra and the purrgil had brought them to. He supposed they were all lost, in a way.
"Yes," he told the little girl. "We're a bit lost." The Force prodded him gently. Center yourself, Kanan said. Be mindful, but empty. Be present in this moment alone. "Can you help us?" he heard himself ask.
Evlyn's toothy smile was brilliant in the dim glow of the humming lightsaber. "I know other people who are lost," she confided. "They've never been found. I'm the only one who knows about them." Her smile became a child's pride in an accomplishment. "Because I'm brave."
Yes, you are, Ezra thought, amazed at the resiliency of her, still so hopeful and trusting despite what sounded like the mistrust and fear of those around her. "Show us?" he asked her.
"Commander Bridger." Thrawn's voice held warning and disapproval. "This is not our mission."
But Ezra walked forward with the child in his arms. "You wanted to find answers, didn't you?" he asked, feeling the muted convoluted tangle of emotions the Imperial Admiral was currently going through. "You said that despite an extensive search, the Chiss Ascendency never found Outbound Flight. Why not? And how did these people survive? Before we face them, I want to know what happened here."
Captain Pellaeon nodded, his white mustache blue in this lighting. Like the whales on Agomar. "I agree with Jedi Bridger, Grand Admiral. More information sounds like exactly what we need."
Thrawn's ability to come to the correct conclusion based on only a cursory glance at the evidence came back to Ezra. He remembered the disaster on Atollon. "Do you know what happened here?" he demanded accusingly.
Thrawn hesitated and Ezra scowled. "I…suspect," the Grand Admiral admitted. "I do not know."
Lorana and Thrass stared around at the main bridge of Outbound Flight in dismay. There was no way their original plan was going to work. The missiles fired by the unknown Chiss commander had targeted the main fuselage and, of course, the bridge, with catastrophic results.
The viewport had been destroyed, the emergency durasteel plating which had extended over the damage now blocked any view of path they were travelling. Proximity alarms were blaring, but they were hard to hear over the sounds of other alarms, detailing fuel loss, systems failure, structural damage, loss of life support and even malfunction of the few remaining escape pods.
Lorana moved around sparking wires and the innards of the weapons control and steering systems to attempt a system check at the main control board.
It was dark.
Thrass moved over and began to inspect the nav computers. "Do you know how Republic ships operate?" Lorana asked him, as she ducked under the control board and ripped open the paneling underneath. She wasn't a great mechanic, but she had been taught basic repairs at the Temple, and Padawan Skywalker had taught her a few more tricks while he'd been aboard. Perhaps she could figure out how to restore power to the control board.
Perhaps she could do that much.
"There should be some similarities between these designs and the ones I've seen from the edge of your Wild Space," Thrass assured her, voice muffled as he fiddled around with a nav computer that at least had a flickering screen.
The proximity alarms were still blaring and Lorana had no idea how close they actually were towards a collision with some planetary or star-like body. She took a deep breath in and let it out very slowly. Empty yourself of all outside distractions, she reminded herself, taken back to Master Yoda teaching her and her classmates as younglings in the Temple. You are here in this moment alone.
"This moment," she whispered to herself. She began sorting through wires. She could do this.
They restored the power…but it was not enough.
Outbound Flight was headed directly towards a collection of small rock-like planets, or perhps moons. "The Redoubt," Thrass said, moving up to stand besides Lorana as the holoprojector sputter to life and showed their current trajectory.
"Jedi Jinzler?" A male voice, frantic, calling over the damaged com system. Dillian Pressor. One of the crew who had been thrown by C'baoth into the central core due to his disagreement with the Jedi Master's orders.
"Yes?" Lorana answered, but he could not hear her.
"Took the first escape she found, I warrant," snapped another voice, next to the man on the com speaker. Chas Ulliar. He had been the most outspoken against C'baoth and the Jedi. "She left us here to die. Faithless and arrogant, like the rest of her kind."
Thrass might not have understood the words of the remaining crew members, as they shouted and argued through the com system, but he seemed to understand the tone. He frowned and shook his head.
"They have every right to mistrust me," Lorana told him quietly. "Master C'baoth betrayed their trust. He was…wrong," she admitted out loud, for the first time. She said it again. "He was wrong." And something in her lightened, a sudden release of tension at the knowledge that she had been right in her reservations. She should have trusted her own instincts more, as Master Obi-Wan said.
"Jedi Jinzler," Pressor said, "if you can hear us, we're heading towards D-3. We're heading towards D-3. Over and out."
Lorana's heart lurched. The plan had been for her and Thrass to crash the ship with D-3 towards the ground. They would set the nav computer and control systems, get back to the survivors in the central core, and then Thrass would take his small ship – attached to D-3 – and go for help. The terrible condition of D-1 meant that the autopilot was no longer an option. Lorana would have to stay here to manually pilot the ship. This wouldn't have been such a problem if the surviving members of Outbound Flight had stayed in the central core like she'd asked them to.
But now they were going towards D-3, which meant that the only way she could crash the ship was with D-1 on the bottom. She wasn't going to make it.
She had feared that when the time came for her death, that she would be filled with a cowardly unwillingness, a desire to look for any other option to avoid it.
Instead, all she was filled with was a calm certainty. She could still save them.
"You can still make it," she told Thrass hurriedly. "Get to D-3 as fast as possible, take your ship and go get help for them."
He looked like he wanted to run, like he wanted to sprint in the other direction as fast as possible, but something held him stubbornly in place. "You don't have to do this alone," he told her. "I don't think they deserve you dying for them."
"Alone for a Jedi is sometimes the only way," Lorana told Thrass quietly. "Go now, and live."
He stared at her for an endless moment, those glowing eyes seeming to take in everything about her, as though memorizing her every feature. At last he reached out and gently touched the back of her hand. "It would be to no purpose," he said. "You will need at least two people here to make sure the ship maintains its present position and course."
"I can hold all the instruments together through the Force long enough," she argued, feeling the seconds tick away and unable to look away from his burning gaze.
Thrass didn't look away from her eyes either, fiery red meeting cool grey. "Perhaps. But you don't have to," he told her, swallowing quickly around a voice gone hoarse, "because I'm not going anywhere." He turned away then and took his place at one of the nav computers, his continued presence as reassuring as a hug.
"It seems that both of us, Jedi Jinzler, will die for your people."
"They will live," she told him.
"Yes, they will live."
There were two desiccated skeletons in D-1, the dry air long-since turning them to nothing but bones. One of the skeletons bore the remnants of a Chiss uniform and the other…the other carried a lightsaber.
Ezra gasped.
"They died fighting each other," Thrawn surmised, his tone sounding almost…dead. It was hard to tell with the Chiss, but he felt almost as cold in the Force as Vader.
Ezra let Evlyn down gently, as Pellaeon found a light switch that actually worked, and then dropped to his knees besides the skeleton of someone who had once been a Jedi. He reached out a hesitant hand and brushed the dulled silver of the lightsaber. A jolt ran through him and he could feel the kyber crystal, sleeping quietly, come awake at his touch with a little trill of joy.
Her lightsaber.
Ezra got a clear picture of long, dark hair and sad grey eyes, the determination that sang through the Force at her decision…at their decision, while the Force sang a song of stark courage in a minor key.
"No," he breathed, "they didn't." He picked up the lightsaber and cradled it with care. "There is peace and…and purpose here. They died together," he looked around him at the dust-covered bridge, the destroyed equipment and battle scarring, feeling the echoes of their desperation. "Saving those that remained."
His gaze met Thrawn's. "They died as heroes," he said with finality. This woman, who might forever remain unknown to him, had died as a Jedi.
Those red eyes stared at him for a long, long moment, before dropping to the lightsaber in his hands and to the child who crouched at Ezra's side and was reaching small hands to brush the old weapon. He turned away from them abruptly and made to walk out of the room, back stiff and his thoughts louder than Ezra had ever heard them.
The skeleton of the Chiss – male, from what Ezra could tell – stopped him. He stared down at it for a silent moment, while even Evlyn waited with anticipation, before murmuring something in a language Ezra didn't know. Then he left.
"Jedi Bridger," Captain Pellaeon said, his voice cautious. "Do you know what that was all about?"
Ezra shrugged. "No idea," he admitted. He glanced back down into the bright eyes of the child. "But whatever it was about," he quietly added, "I think Thrawn needed to know it."
When they exited back into the passageway, Thrawn was quietly speaking on his com to Commodore Faro. "Yes, I'll need a full detachment of the 501st," Thrawn said. "Inform them that they are to set their weapons to stun and meet us at the central core. Make sure they are aware that there are civilian survivors aboard, but that they may be hostile."
Evlyn slipped her hand into Ezra's. "Why not use your Death Troopers?" Ezra snapped. "It seems that they would be more up for this sort of challenge." He really didn't trust the Grand Admiral – he was an Imperial for Force's sake – and his decision to use armored soldiers on a populace so isolated and undoubtedly fearful of any outsiders wasn't going to end well.
"We don't know if they have weapons, Jedi Bridger," Captain Pellaeon said. He was making faces at Evlyn behind Ezra's back, making her giggle joyfully, like a child her age was supposed to. He straightened up when he caught Ezra looking at him, appearing only mildly abashed. "We don't know their attitude towards the Republic, or the Empire, towards the Chiss" – he nodded towards his commanding officer – "and, forgive me Jedi Bridger, but given their apparent proclivity towards locking up Force sensitive children, we can only assume that they hold a decidedly negative view towards Jedi." Pellaeon looked towards Thrawn to see if he arrived at the correct conclusions. "We are only three, and therefore decidedly outmatched."
Ezra frowned and looked down the hallway – a crushed, labyrinthine obstacle course – and felt Evlyn watching him. He thought back to all of the impossible things he had seen the Ghost crew do, the awe he had felt for them, before he'd truly become one of them. It had been a long time since he'd looked at what a group of extraordinary people could do from an outside perspective.
"No," he disagreed. "What I see are a Clone Wars veteran, a brilliant tactician and warrior who has worked with, and fought, Jedi, and…me."
The two Imperials were watching him with surprise on their faces, even Thrawn who usually showed so little. He felt uncomfortable, hopeful they didn't think him utterly stupid but not really believing it. He dropped his head and scrubbed awkwardly at his hair. "Anyway…"
Evlyn tugged at his hand. "What am I?" she demanded excitedly.
Ezra smiled at her, he couldn't help it. He remembered looking at Kanan the way she was looking at him now. He wanted to tell her that she was the reason he was going to do this, but he thought that was putting too much pressure on a child her age. He tried to think of something more appropriate. To his surprise, it was Thrawn who answered her.
"You are a Sky Walker," he told her gravely. "You are our guide through the unknown."
The words sounded like more than a former Jedi Hero's last name to Ezra. They were a title and a reference that he didn't understand and could not ask about at the moment. It was clearly a story for another time.
Evlyn met the Grand Admiral's eyes solemnly. "Yes," she said quietly, accepting his words. "Come." And she tugged on Ezra's hand until all three men began to follow her.
The little girl led them back down the shaft separating D-1 from the central core. This time, though, instead of moving carefully along passageways on the outside, she led them down well-lit, clean, but old and worn corridors to the very center. The only sound was that of their footsteps, and the faint clink of the two lightsabers at Ezra's belt. They rounded another corner to face yet another corridor of dull, battleship grey durasteel, except at the end of this particular corridor was a wide, black, reinforced blast door. And either side of the door stood two young men, obviously guarding the entrance.
Their eyes flickered from Evlyn up to Ezra, then to the white-haired Pellaeon and the blue-skinned Thrawn. Their eyes widened. One of them swallowed and made to take a step back, while the other raised his blaster to point at the four of them. Their fear flowed into the Force, but they were too far away, 50 meters or more, and so Ezra dropped a hand to his lightsaber.
"Stop it, Doran!" Evlyn shouted, her small voice suddenly snapping with authority.
The one called Doran – a pimply-faced youth with tan-colored skin that looked sickly-yellow in this lightning – briefly wavered at this. The other boy, the one who had stepped back upon seeing them, now raised his blaster as well.
"Keep walking towards them, Commander Bridger," Thrawn said quietly.
Ezra did so, feeling Pellaeon and Thrawn at his back. Neither of them felt particularly worried and he wondered yet again how much they knew about Jedi.
"Have you ever aimed that weapon of yours at another person, son?" Captain Pellaeon asked quietly, speaking to the second boy, whose weapons was wavering wildly as he pointed it at them.
"Stop, or we'll shoot," Doran said loudly, trying to sound convincing.
Ezra let go of Evlyn's hand, raised his own towards the two boys and pulled with the Force. Their weapons were torn from their grips and caught effortlessly by Thrawn and Pellaeon. The boys' eyes widened and now the fear was filled with something else as well, disgust and loathing. "Jedi," spat Doran.
Ezra raised his hand again and concentrated. Kanan had always been better at this particular skill than he. He called on the Force. "You will let us pass and then forget you had ever seen us," the told the two of them. Their loathing of Jedi was so strong that for a moment Ezra wasn't sure his Force persuasion was going to work, but then with a ripple, the nodded and stood aside for Ezra, Evlyn, Thrawn and Pellaeon to pass.
"Cool," breathed Evlyn, but Ezra, who could still feel their hatred of his kind crawling all over him like something slimy, just grimaced a bit.
He hit the door release, and as it silently slid open, he stepped through.
What happened next probably took all of twenty seconds.
The room was far larger than Ezra expected. It would easily have fit the entire Ghost, and it was wide open. There was a small kitchen in one corner, a row of beds in another, and lavatories in another. Everything was dull and grey, and the Force was filled with a numb sense of despair and listlessness.
Across the wide room, a group of human men and women stood, perhaps two dozen of them. They appeared to be gathered around a group of children. A grizzled old man, his face furious, had his hands around one of the children's throats. The boy could have been no more than ten.
"Disgusting," the old man snarled into the boy's wide and fearful face, picking him up by the throat and shaking him. "If you ever do something like that again –"
The door hissed shut behind them and the Force was muted even further, but it wasn't gone, and Ezra felt righteous anger burn through him as the old man dropped the crying boy and then raised a hand to hit him.
Ezra threw his hand outwards, the Force leaping from him and freezing the old man in place. "What the kriff is going on?" someone cried.
"Chas!" cried someone else, towards the old man.
Ezra flicked his wrist and threw the old man aside, not as hard as he would have liked, and watched as the group of people turned around and caught sight of the three strangers in their midst.
"Evlyn?" said a woman. "Who are these people?"
"That's one of them!" an older woman cried.
Ezra could feel Evlyn's fear from just behind him, heard Thrawn and Pellaeon's quickened breaths, saw the wide eyes of the children, the Force sensitive children, in their too-thin faces. In one motion he unhooked Kanan's lightsaber from his belt and ignited the blade, it's blue blade bursting into life with a resounding snap-hiss as he pointed it towards the men and women across the room. He performed the most common opening move in Form Three and ended with the blade held upright before his face.
In the dead silence he said, "Step away from those children. Now."
No one moved. Then… "Jedi!" Someone shouted, and the blasters he had noticed on all of their hips were drawn and pointed at him. They fired…and the room was filled with light.
Ezra blocked the bolts and tossed them aside, feeling Pellaeon, Thrawn and Evlyn ducking for cover in the small kitchen area. He Force pulled two blasters away from people, shoved another person across the room and watched as one of the young women tried to move the children back towards the beds and out of the immediate line of fire.
He was so angry that he felt sick, but he pushed that feeling aside as unhelpful. Even if he had been tempted to return the blaster shots back to their original owners and start killing them, the weight on his leg from the Jedi woman's lightsaber would have stopped him. All those years ago, she had given her life so that these people could live. He wouldn't let her sacrifice be in vain.
He called his lightsaber to his left hand, igniting the glowing green blade and hearing its joy at being used once more.
And then he moved. Jumping, twisting, turning, blue and green sabers twirling around him, he deflected the rain of blaster bolts with all the skill Kanan and Ahsoka and Master Billaba's holocron had taught him. He sliced through blasters and kicked aside adversaries, shoving them with the Force and trying to end the conflict with as little injury as possible.
In a matter of seconds, it was over, and he had his lightsaber at the old man's throat.
"Commander Bridger!" Thrawn's voice, sharp and authoritative. A warning.
"Anyone else would kill you for what you did to these children," he said, and he could still feel a powerful anger in him. It had always been that way when he saw innocent people suffering. "But I won't," he said. "I want you to remember that a Jedi saved your life all those years ago, when you crashed into this world." He leaned closer to the man, the green blade of the Jedi woman's lightsaber, glowing and humming as he pressed it closer to the old man. "And that a Jedi spared your life today."
He turned away and met Evlyn's bright eyes, as she stood between Thrawn and Pellaeon halfway across the room. Troops from Thrawn's contingent of 501st were pouring through the door, their white armor gleaming and their weapons pointed carefully at the survivors.
But Ezra only had eyes for the child. The awe in her gaze, echoed in her suddenly bright Force presence, reminded him of himself, all those years ago when Kanan came into his life, and he knew he had made the right decision. He was a Jedi, and one day he would train Evlyn – and all of these children – and if they wanted, they would walk the Jedi path too.
End Notes: I grew to adore Lorana while writing her. And the compare and contrast between her and Ezra – both new, unsure Jedi Knights in extreme circumstances – was a great challenge too. Jorj Car'das doesn't seem to have survived the re-canonization of Thrawn's story, so I had another way for Lorana and Thrass to meet and communicate. Slight hints of Lorana/Thrass anyone? And yes, Evlyn is older here than she was in the EU, but I wanted her in Ezra's story. I tried to parallel Ahsoka and little Hedala's relationship in the "Ahsoka" novel with Ezra and Evlyn's relationship here.
Did anyone catch the parallels between how Kanan declared himself a Jedi – igniting his lightsaber and protecting the Wookiees – and how Ezra declared it – igniting his lightsaber the same way and defending the children? I hope so!
This chapter grew to be much longer than I ever anticipated. Yes, Cortosis Ore was built into the central core of Outbound Flight. I'm so glad it's canon again. I also included references to "Thrawn: Alliances", and how the Chiss referred to Force sensitives as Sky Walkers. I didn't outright explain it in this chapter – there really wasn't time because it felt so filled with other things that I didn't want to stop the action for more exposition – but if anyone thinks it needs to be explained, I might add it into a future conversation between Thrawn and Ezra. I have a whole backstory planned for Thrawn and Thrass – and their intense relationships with Jedi – so stay tuned.
Back to Thrawn's POV in the next chapter. More trouble ensues and Thrawn and Ezra find themselves stranded on a hostile planet. Thank you so much for all of your reviews. I think I fixed all the references to Thrawn's Fleet – now it should all be the Seventh Fleet – so thanks for catching that.