A long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away….
STAR WARS REBELS
The Kessel Run: Making the Run
Grand Nebulae Cantina, Formos, Kessel Sector, Outer Rim Territories – 19:20 Local Time – 04 BBY
Hera studied the human male standing beside her.
He was a rogue, there was no doubt about that, but he had a certain aura that set him apart from the other lowlifes in the cantina, and the way he held himself suggested a laissez-faire attitude to life. He radiated confidence, and his clothes practically screamed 'smuggler', though his boots were of imperial make. Comfortable and sturdy, the footwear probably hinted at his past life. Hera doubted he'd always been a smuggler, just as Hera had not always been a freedom fighter. Life in the galaxy was a constant struggle and Hera, like so many others, had been forged by her experiences. It was possible the course of this man's life had changed dramatically under the yoke of Imperial oppression.
Hera gazed at his face, looking him directly in the eyes. While undeniably steely, there was also strange warmth there; a veiled sincerity that suggested he was a safe person to be around.
Probably safer than the rest of the patrons in this dive, at least!
"Han?" she repeated, rolling the name around her mouth. "I like it. It's nice and simple."
"Suits my personality," the man replied with an easy grin.
"Really?"
"So I've been told."
"Yeah," Hera agreed. "It's easy to remember, too."
"I do tend to stick in the memory."
Hera gave a faint smile. "I'm sure you do."
Han glanced around the cantina. "Compared to the rest of us poor slobs, though, I can guarantee that you're the most striking pilot on the entire planet."
Hera's gaze fell on a vicious looking Trandoshan male on the other side of the bar, his green skin littered with scars and a gaping hole where his left eye should have been. "I don't know, the guy with the lazy eye is fairly striking."
"He couldn't hold a candle to you," Han assured her.
Hera lips curled into a wry smirk. "And do all the pilots fall for that line?"
"No idea. I've never tried it on him!"
Hera couldn't help but grin. "Yeah, he probably wouldn't appreciate it."
"Plus, he's really not my type." Han took a swig of his drink. "Do you have a name, or should I make a guess?"
She hesitated, mentally debating whether to use a false name before replying, "Hera."
Han gave an approving nod. "Well, Hera, I'm assuming you've graced this backwater burg with your presence to do the Run?" Hera nodded. Han leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice. "A word of advice: While you're in the Nebula, don't stop for any reason, don't let your shields down, don't dock with another ship, and above all, don't trust anyone. Not all of the crews here are as welcoming to newcomers. Some of them target ships coming back from the run for their cargo. They're considered easy pickings."
"Have you ever been targeted?" Hera asked softly.
"Me? Oh, I'm sure they'd love the chance to board the Falcon, but they've never been able to catch me. I've outrun Imperial Destroyers; I can run rings around the local freighters. The Millennium Falcon is the fastest ship in this sector."
"That's a proud boast."
"Not a boast if it's true," Han replied. "I'm serious, though: Be careful out there. And if you have the chance, don't hesitate to shoot first."
"I'll take it under advisement," Hera promised.
At that moment a third voice joined the conversation.
"I've got the passcode for Kessel. We leave in an hour…" Kanan declared from Hera's left. He stopped and stared when he noticed Han. "Am I interrupting?"
Solo looked up at Kanan. "Friend of yours?" he asked Hera.
"You could say that," Kanan replied pointedly. Sabine, Ezra and Zeb appeared behind him. Sabine appeared to perk up considerably when she saw Han, while Kanan glared at him suspiciously. "We can't help you if you're looking for work. We don't need any more ship hands. All positions have been taken."
"So what would yours be?" Solo asked Kanan. "First Mate or Cabin Boy?"
Kanan bristled, drawing himself up to his full height.
"Who's this joker?" Zeb snarled as he jerked his thumb at Han.
"Your crew? Looks like you brought the family along," Han observed as his eyes swept over Sabine and Ezra, his gaze falling on Zeb. "And the babysitter!"
"Hey!" Zeb exclaimed.
A shadow fell across the group. To Han's right, a wall of fur had suddenly appeared, blotting out the meagre light from the cantina's ceiling lights. A Wookiee was looming protectively over Han's shoulder.
"Nice bo-rifle." Han nodded at Zeb, indicating the weapon slung across Zeb's back. "I thought the Honour Guard of Lasan were the only ones allowed to carry those."
"What's it to you?" Zeb challenged, his outburst prompting a warning growl from the Wookiee. "Oh, 'Grraaah' yourself, ya overgrown furball!" Zeb snapped.
Han casually raised his hand to calm the Wookiee. "Easy, Chewie." Then he turned to Hera. "We're heading out. But if you ever want a tour of the Falcon, you only have to ask."
"I don't think that's likely," Hera replied. "But thanks all the same."
"My pleasure," Han winked at her.
"See you around, Captain," she replied as he led the Wookiee across the bar.
"You okay?" Kanan asked Hera with concern. "What did he want?"
"He was offering some friendly advice, that's all," Hera replied simply.
"We don't need advice from a smuggler," Kanan said firmly. "Guys like that are nothing but trouble."
"I don't know, he had a couple of redeeming features…" Hera craned her neck to watch Solo walk away.
Kanan cleared his throat and fixed Hera with an accusing glare. "Ahem!"
Hera grinned ruefully. "What? Can't a girl window shop?"
The Ghost's crew wandered back to their ship, tailed by three individuals who evidently weren't well-versed in the art of subterfuge.
"We've got a shadow," Sabine murmured to the rest of the team.
"Yeah, I see them," Kanan replied quietly. "They were in the cantina. A Transdoshan and two Feeorins."
"Not exactly being subtle about it," Ezra commented, glancing back casually at the three followers. "They're standing out like a Krayt Dragon in a herd of banthas.
"A Tatooine expression." Zeb nodded approvingly. "Nice. I never even taught you that one."
"I'm a fast study," Ezra said proudly.
Hera led them back through the Spaceport Docking Bay. "Come on, let's get back to the Ghost. Chopper's probably going nuts being left all alone."
"Yeah, we should probably have cracked a window open for him!" Zeb joked.
Several metres behind the crew, and failing miserably to remain unobtrusive, the three smugglers blatantly stared as the Ghost's crew walked up their ship's boarding ramp.
"Greenhornssss! Amateursss," the reptilian Transdoshan hissed to his fellow smugglers. "We wait for them in the nebula. Ambusssh them when they return from Kesssel," He grinned, his snake-like mouth splitting into a wide grimace. "Eassy pickingsss!"
The Ghost lifted off from the landing pad and powered out of Formos' atmosphere.
Hera and Kanan sat at the helm, guiding the craft towards the vast expanse of the Maw Nebula. The immense dust cloud stretched out before them like a cosmic wall, filling the view screen. Hera slowed the Ghost and entered the Nebula with trepidation. The sensors were useless. All her scans were being reflected back by the cloud, leaving the ship effectively blind. Hera had to navigate by sight only as she nursed the ship through the narrow corridor of the Kessel Run.
Behind her, Sabine, Ezra and Zeb were staring at the brightly hued purple, blue and yellow clouds in awe, the dust formations illuminated by ghostly lights echoing from stars within the nebula.
"It's even more beautiful than I imagined," Sabine enthused.
"Yeah. And even more dangerous," Hera replied. "Our sensors are useless. Navigation is practically non-existent. We're reduced to flying VFR. If we go off trail we risk getting lost in here. No wonder the Run is so dangerous. This is going to be a long haul."
"We should share the piloting," Kanan said.
"You might as well get some rest, Love," Hera told him. "I'll do the first shift. Relieve me in about four hours?"
"Will do," Kanan agreed. He swivelled his chair and left the cockpit, closely followed by Ezra and Zeb. Only Sabine lingered behind as she continued to admire the cloud's splendour.
Hera saw little during her shift to break the monotony other than the all-encompassing landscape of the nebula. There wasn't another ship in visual range for hour after hour and parsec after parsec. It was only when they were approaching the tightly packed asteroid field known as The Pit that another ship finally appeared on the skyline. Kanan had just returned to the cockpit to relieve Hera when the same saucer-shaped Corellian freighter they'd docked beside at Formos Spaceport flew into range.
The couple turned to watch the freighter drift past close to their port side. Hera stared at the freighter's cockpit and actually did a double-take when she saw who was in the pilot seat: It was Han Solo and the Wookiee they'd met in the cantina.
Solo gave them a cheerful wave as the Falcon accelerated past, before it disappeared between the huge brown and grey chunks of cratered rock.
"That's his ship?" Kanan scoffed. "It really is a piece of junk!"
"The Millennium Falcon," Hera remarked. "Apparently it's the fastest ship in this sector."
"Must be a very small sector," Kanan muttered.
Kessel, Kessel Trade Corridor, Maw Nebula – 16:50 Zulu
"We're approaching Kessel. Everyone get up here!" Kanan's voice echoed over the comm.
There was a mad dash through the corridors as the more competitive members of the crew, namely, Sabine, Ezra and Zeb, raced towards the cockpit. Sabine, incentivised by her strong desire to see the exotic planet, won.
The view that greeted them when they entered the cockpit was both beautiful and chilling.
Kessel, the deformed, unremarkable looking planetoid, hung in space, its tiny grey moon hiding in its shadow like a wayward child. The Nebula's gold and blue clouds encircled the entire system, completely filling the horizon. Far in the distance, the mouth of the Trade Corridor, the official route that allowed safe passage in-and-out of the nebula, was clearly visible. A number of ships could be seen heading towards the Corridor before disappearing into the gaping hole in the clouds.
The only other corridor in the seemingly impenetrable nebula clouds led to a vast expanse of darkness. At first glance it appeared the area was an empty stretch of nothingness, but as they drifted closer to the planet the truth became clear: That opening led to the Maw Cluster of black holes.
The crew stared as a swirling cyclone of ionised gases was suddenly sucked towards one of the black holes, encircling it like a colossal blazing halo; the swirling gases illuminating the lethal gravity wells in the Cluster. Huge chunks of rock were now visible in the light. The moon sized asteroids disintegrating against the immense gravitational pull of the black holes as they ripped apart any surrounding debris unlucky enough to be drawn into their orbit.
Even seen through the narrow hole in the cloud, the sight was truly terrifying.
Zeb gave an involuntary shudder. "Glad we're avoiding that area."
Shining lines of traffic moved constantly to-and-from the planet, overseen by two dagger-shaped Imperial capital ships that were patrolling Kessel's northern pole.
"That's Kessendra," Kanan said, pointing towards the city on Kessel's pole. "That's where we're going."
"You mean past the Star Destroyers?" Ezra asked.
"Absolutely."
"They're gonna see us," Sabine pointed out.
"That's the idea," Hera replied. "We're hiding in plain sight."
Hera manoeuvred the Ghost into Kessel's orbit, adjusting her flight trajectory to fly beneath the planet's southern pole and merge with the line of freighters moving towards the capital.
"Now we find out if this smuggler code is worth the price of admission," Kanan said. He flicked a switch on the console and spoke into the comm. "Flight control, this is freighter Archeron, requesting permission to land at Kessendra Spaceport. Sending authorisation code now."
There was a long, tense silence while they waited for the reply.
Finally, a voice piped through the speakers. "Access granted, Archeron. You are cleared for landing. Proceed to docking bay 42."
"Roger that control," Kanan replied. Beside him, Ezra breathed a small sigh of relief.
"Well, so far, so good," Hera muttered as she manoeuvred the Ghost into the planet's thin atmosphere.
The Ghost passed through Kessendra's magnetic shield and descended onto the landing pad of Docking Bay 42.
Hera powered down the ship's controls as the crew looked expectantly at Kanan.
"I assume you have a plan?" Zeb asked him.
Kanan smiled and nodded at the Astromech droid skulking behind Ezra. "Chopper. Let's see it."
Chopper warbled happily as his holographic projector lit up, casting the image of a square frustum shaped armoured fortress into the middle of the cockpit.
"The Imperial Citadel," Kanan explained. "The seat of power for Kessendra and the Kessel system. From this building the Spice trade for the entire sector is controlled and monitored. It's also where the holocron is hidden. From what Hondo tells me, Roto Shar keeps the holocron in his own personal quarters, in the private wing just here." Kanan pointed to a corner of the structure.
"What are you thinking? A direct approach in the Phantom, like we did on Stygian Prime?" Ezra asked, referring to the Ghost's attack shuttle.
Kanan shook his head. "No. The Citadel is heavily defended. There are way too many external sensors to guard against attack. We'd never be able to disable them all. They'd see us coming a mile off. Fortunately, there is another way in. Chopper?" The projection changed to show archive footage of a gathering of people taken from inside the Citadel. "Roto Shar is having an informal reception tonight in the main hall. It's an open invitation to all pilots, and a chance for the Imperials to solidify their power base. That's our ticket inside. Once we're through the doors, we scope out the place, raid his office, swipe the holocron, and make a swift exit. Walk in the park!"
Zeb shook his head. "I'm sensing a 'but' here. You say it's easy and then there's a catch. There's always a catch!"
Kanan glanced down, a guilty expression on his face. "Yeah, there is one small problem… The invitation is for humans only."
"What?" Zeb thundered.
"Are you serious?" Hera demanded.
"It's an Imperial ruling – on Roto Shar's direct order. If you're not human you're not getting through those doors."
"I know the Empire is oppressive, but this?" Sabine gaped. "This is low even for them."
"You don't have to tell me, Sabine," Kanan replied bitterly.
"Just another reason to tear the Empire down," Hera said firmly.
"You mean you don't need me for this mission?" Zeb asked in a low voice. He looked like he was barely keeping his anger contained.
"We need you for every mission, Zeb," Kanan assured the Lasat. "But the Empire isn't going to let you show your face in the palace. You so much as set a foot on the grounds and they won't hesitate to shoot you."
"Let 'em try!" Zeb growled. "I can take any number of those bucket-heads!"
"Zeb, wait," Hera implored. "I don't like it any more than you do, but running in all guns blazing isn't going to work here. We're vastly outnumbered and in the heart of enemy territory. Even if you do manage to break inside the palace and steal the holocron, the Empire would simply lock the planet down. We'd never make it out of the nebula. We can't just jump to hyperspace. And they know this region a lot better than we do. This operation needs a certain tact and delicacy."
Zeb scowled. "You don't think I can be delicate? Just the other day, I used a Stormtrooper's own helmet to knock him out rather than shoot him. Don't tell me that wasn't tactful!?"
"I'm sure he appreciated the gesture, Zeb," Sabine assured him.
"We could dress you up in furs and say you're a tauntaun?" Ezra suggested with a wide grin. "You certainly smell like one!" he added under his breath.
"Yeah, and we could dress you up as a respectable member of society, but it wouldn't make you one!" Zeb retorted.
"Where's the fun in being respectable?" Sabine asked ruefully. "I avoid it whenever possible!"
"Enough!" Hera barked. "This isn't helping. Kanan, you take Sabine and Ezra to the Citadel. The sooner you retrieve the holocron, the sooner we can get out of the nebula. This place is starting to make me feel claustrophobic." Hera gestured at herself, Zeb and Chopper. "In the meantime, we'll stay in the Spaceport and maintain our cover." She swept her gaze over her crew. "We are supposed to be professionals, right? So, let's act like it!"
Kanan, Sabine and Ezra marched into the Phantom. Kanan sat in the pilot seat and fired up the shuttle controls.
"Do we really have to dress up for this event?" Ezra complained as he fidgeted at his collar. The outfit Hera had given him to wear was one of Kanan's smarter suits, and didn't fit as well as Ezra would have liked. He was constantly adjusting the long sleeves on the brown leather jacket to stop them falling past his wrists.
"Remember your training," Kanan replied. "If we've taught you anything it's that we have to blend in." Kanan had changed into a smart high-collared black jacket with black trousers and black boots. "Though, I think Sabine could have made a bit more effort!" he added.
Sabine was still wearing her custom purple Mandalorian armour, decorated with her own personal symbols and artwork.
"I have made an effort!" Sabine protested. "I cleaned my boots."
"Might have been nice to see you in a skirt, though?" Ezra suggested.
Sabine looked at him askance. "A skirt?" she exclaimed in disgust. "What do you take me for? That's not my style. I don't even own a dress!"
"Next time we're on Lothal I'll buy you a nice one," Kanan promised.
"Fine. You can wear it then!"
Kanan laughed and detached the Phantom from the Ghost's rear docking bay.
The craft spun 180 degrees before lifting into the air as it flew above the Spaceport and powered towards the imposing grey Citadel fortress dominating the Kessendra skyline.