A long time ago in a galaxy far,

far away….

STAR WARS REBELS

The Kessel Run: Infiltrating the Citadel

Imperial Citadel, Kessel, Maw Nebula, Outer Rim Territories – 21:30 Local Time – 04 BBY

The Phantom descended through the planet's thin atmosphere to land on the open pad in the Citadel grounds.

Kanan turned to Sabine and Hera. "Alright, just follow my lead. If we keep this nice and discreet, we should be able to grab the holocron and be out of here in no time."

He flicked a switch on the console to unlock the rear hatch. The Phantom's ramp lowered revealing a squad of Stormtroopers standing outside.

The armoured guards raised their blasters. The crew raised their hands.

"What ship are you from?" the lead Stormtrooper demanded.

"Our ship is the Archeron," Kanan replied promptly. "We were invited. I believe your Commander Shar is throwing a party?"

The lead Stormtrooper turned to the man on his right with a computer pad in his hand. "The Archeron?" he asked his subordinate.

The Stormtrooper with the pad nodded. "It checks out, sir."

"You're on the list," the leader confirmed. The Stormtroopers lowered their weapons. "On your way!"

The crew let their hands down cautiously. "Geez!" Ezra exclaimed. "What would have happened if we weren't on the list?"

"We're on Kessel. You really don't wanna know," Kanan replied quietly.

He shepherded Sabine and Ezra past the guards towards the Citadel entrance. Overhead, other small shuttle craft were descending onto the landing pads.

The armoured fortress dwarfed the buildings around Kessel, resembling a grey pyramid with its top cut off.

"The Empire has no sense of style," Sabine muttered. "Everything they build is square and grey and boring! What this place really needs is a splash of colour…"

"Sabine!" Kanan warned out of the corner of his mouth. "We're not here to draw attention…"

"A few highlights here and there is all I'm saying," Sabine replied. "I mean, there are other colours in the spectrum. I bet you anything the inside of this place is decked out like a mausoleum."

A Stormtrooper at the main doors watched them approach and flicked a switch on the control box to his left. The heavy blast doors split open allowing the crew access. The trio took a few steps inside and stopped dead when they saw the main hall.

"I think you would have lost that bet," Ezra told Sabine.

Red!

The entire hall was swathed in varying shades of red.

A crimson carpet enveloped the floor; blood-red tables and chairs were spread around the room; scarlet drapes emblazoned with the Imperial crest hung from the walls. To crown the gaudy décor, the heads of slaughtered animals (and a few Wookiees) stared down at them from every angle. The vast hall was filled with humans from every part of the galaxy, attended to by a small army of droids who were busy serving food and drinks to the guests.

A silver protocol droid approached them.

"On behalf of the Empire and Commander Shar, I bid you welcome," it said in a feminine voice.

"Thank you," Kanan replied graciously. "This place is… memorable. Where is the Commander?"

"Commander Shar regrets he will be unable to attend tonight's festivities, but hopes you will enjoy all the hospitality Kessel provides."

"'hospitality' and 'Kessel' aren't words I thought I'd hear a same sentence," Sabine murmured quietly.

A red Astromech with a tray attached to its head appeared from behind the protocol droid, beeping politely as it offered a selection of canapés.

"Don't eat anything, and don't drink anything," Kanan warned as he waved his hand at the Astromech. They moved away from the droids, weaving through the crowd. Sabine was still gazing up at the display of stuffed heads in disgust.

"Who is this Commander Shar?" she asked.

"A trophy hunter by the looks of it," Kanan replied.

"Or a psychopath!" she muttered.

"Sabine, start a passive scan of the building, find us a safe route out of the hall," Kanan ordered.

"With pleasure," Sabine replied, nodding. She casually activated the portable scanner on her forearm guard.

Kanan glanced back at Ezra, noticing he was grasping a glass of sparkling wine between his fingers.

"What did I just say?" Kanan hissed to Ezra.

"It was handed to me," Ezra replied sheepishly. "And I thought I might look suspicious if I wasn't carrying something at least."

Kanan was about to confiscate the drink when a masculine voice sounded from behind him.

"Well, look at you. The captain let you off duty for the evening?"

Kanan turned. The smuggler Han Solo was standing behind him. He hadn't bothered changing for the event and was still wearing the same dark-blue trousers and cream shirt that he'd worn in the cantina on Formos. Sabine noticed Solo standing there and her face lit up. She grinned, pushing her hair away from her forehead.

"Don't you clean up nice?" Han commented as he admired Kanan's threads. "You could almost pass for a member of the crew."

Kanan drew himself up, looking Han in the eye. "It's a shame you couldn't bring your Wookiee bodyguard," Kanan retorted.

"He doesn't care for these Imperial shindigs," Han replied, grabbing a small morsel sized pastry from one of the passing trays. "The portions are way too small for him." He grinned and popped the titbit into his mouth.

"Plus, something tells me he really wouldn't be welcomed here," Ezra pointed out.

"Yeah, the Empire would probably shoot him, then display his head on the wall," Sabine said, gesturing towards the three stuffed Wookiee heads mounted behind her.

Han stared at the grim display and his expression darkened. "Trust me, anyone who tried to do that to Chewie would regret it. It's hard to kill a Wookiee when your arms have been torn out of their sockets!" he said heatedly. "I'd be the one doing it!" he added, before muttering. "Never liked these damned events."

"'Never'?" Kanan repeated quizzically. "What are you doing here then?"

Han shrugged, the easy smile snapping back into place. "To see what everyone's wearing this season," he replied smoothly "And I never pass up the offer of a free drink." With well-practised ease Han swiped the glass from Ezra's fingers and downed its contents in one go.

"Hey!" Ezra exclaimed.

"Maybe when you're a bit older, kid," Han declared as he placed the empty glass on a passing tray. "I gotta dash, but this has been fun." He slapped Kanan on the shoulder as he moved away. "Until next time, Cabin-boy!"

Sabine watched him leave; feeling a twinge of disappointment that he was going. A grin played on her face and a small sigh escaped her lips. It wasn't a sentiment shared by her fellow crewmembers.

"Jerk!" Ezra and Kanan said in unison.

"Are we still recruiting?" Sabine asked wryly.

"No!" Kanan replied firmly. "Get your head back in the game, Sabine. What'd you find?"

Sabine consulted her scanner. "The main doors are a no-go," she replied. "There are more guards in the corridor beyond and too many sensors to disable. "We'd never make it through without tripping every alarm in the place."

"There's gotta be a way inside," Ezra insisted.

"I think I've found one," Sabine said. "There's a service corridor leading out through the kitchens to the private wing. The droids use it to access the private quarters. It bypasses most of the security sensors."

"If in doubt, follow the help," Kanan said. "Alright, let's move. Try not to draw attention and make for the kitchens."

Sabine and Ezra nodded. They ducked into the crowd and headed towards the unguarded kitchen entrance at the far side of the room.

Kanan dodged a passing droid carrying another tray of drinks, and then led them through the swing doors.

The kitchen was a hive of activity. Small labour-specialist droids scuttled between the legs of taller servant droids toiling away at the grills, while a polished black protocol droid stood by the entrance directing the bustling action. It turned and saw Kanan.

"Guests are not permitted in the kitchen area," the droid said politely.

Kanan grabbed Ezra's shoulder and hauled him close. "Sorry, we're looking for the bathroom. My kid's got stomach cramps!"

Ezra rolled his eyes but dutifully held his stomach to feign being ill. "Oh! It hurts!" He dry heaved in a suitably theatrical fashion.

"My apologies, sir, but unauthorised personnel are prohibited from…" the droid maintained, but he was cut off when Ezra continued to retch dramatically.

"This is kind of an emergency," Kanan insisted.

"I think I'm gonna hurl!" Ezra said.

"Oh, no! It's going to go all over the buffet!" Kanan declared.

"I've seen him do it. He has excellent aim!" Sabine told the droid.

"Oh, my!" the droid exclaimed.

"Yeah, so unless you want to explain the mess to your boss, I suggest you let us by," Kanan pressed.

"Really quick!" Ezra added in a strained voice.

The protocol droid pointed at the far door. "There are restrooms available third door on the left down the corridor, but I must insist…"

But Kanan was already moving. "Thanks!" he called out, hustling Ezra and Sabine past the droids and out of the kitchens.

Once they were through the doors, Sabine turned her attention back to her scanner.

"That was easy," Kanan observed.

"Why do I have to be the one pretending to be sick?" Ezra huffed.

"Because you look so convincing," Sabine replied with a smirk.

The Imperial guard turned away from the three humans on the security screen and called out to his superior.

"Sir! We have three unauthorized personnel outside the secure zone."

Commander Roto Shar cast his gaze over the live feed from the kitchen corridor. He stepped forward, grasping his pallid hands behind his back and settling into a comfortable stance as he studied the intruders on screen. A human adult male accompanied by a younger male and female were tracking through the corridors, following the directions of the female as the made for the private quarters.

Shar frowned as the female periodically stopped and sprayed a drawing of a violet starbird on the walls of his Citadel. The intruder was marking his nice clean walls with graffiti!

"Dispatch the cleaners to those areas after we've taken the intruders," Shar ordered. "I can't have them vandalising my Citadel!"

"Shall I dispatch the squad now?" the guard asked.

Commander Shar gave a slight shake of his head. "Not yet. Let's see what they're after. One of them may be exactly what I'm looking for."

The Citadel's Imperial private quarters looked more like what Sabine expected. The corridors were nothing but grey metal walls, interspersed with matching black doors, each as crushingly soulless as the last. The corridors looked identical save for the numbers to the side of the doors.

Kanan came to an intersection and glanced around to check the coast was clear.

"Which way?" he asked. Sabine signalled with her hand, indicating the corridor to the left. Kanan nodded and led the team down the corridor. He was a few paces from another intersection when he raised his fist sharply, signalling them to stop.

No-one moved.

Kanan concentrated, shutting his eyes as he opened himself up to the Force. A moment later his eyes snapped open again and he spoke, his voice no more than a whisper. "There's someone coming. I can sense it."

The team pressed themselves against the wall. Kanan drew his blaster and edged closer to the end of the corridor.

He hesitated for only a second, then swung around the corner, his blaster raised to confront the intruder…

… And found himself staring into the sights of another blaster. A gun was pointing directly at his head. Kanan stared down the barrel and blinked in surprise when he recognised the person wielding it.

Han Solo was standing in the corridor, his weapon levelled at Kanan.

"What are you doing here, Cabin-boy?" Solo demanded.

Kanan could feel his hackles rising. He continued to train his blaster at Solo's face. "What are we doing here? What are you doing here?"

"What do you think I'm doing? I'm looking for the men's room!"

Kanan glared incredulously. "Oh, is that right? You're just taking a break from the party?"

Han scowled. "Yes. Can you help me? I seem to be a bit lost!"

Neither of them had lowered their weapons. "Well, it's easy to get turned around in here!" Kanan replied heatedly. "This place is very confusing."

"I know! All these corridors look the same. They need better directions!" Solo stated in a loud voice. Sabine and Ezra gave each other a quizzical look.

"I agree. You should probably make a complaint," Kanan vehemently suggested.

"Well, that's a good idea. I might take you up on that!"

"I'm happy I could help!"

"Your advice is much appreciated!" Han yelled.

"Okay! Okay!" Sabine interrupted. "Time out. You've both made your point… and probably alerted half the Citadel at the same time! Didn't you say we shouldn't draw attention, Kanan?"

Kanan and Solo hesitated for a long moment before they slowly (and grudgingly) holstered their weapons.

Sabine nodded. "Right. Thank you." She pointed down the corridor. "We're going this way." She moved off. Kanan left to follow.

Han took a quick look at the portable scanner in his hand before trailing after the threesome. He caught up with them as they were standing outside a seemingly identical black metal door and sidled up to Kanan.

"Can I take it you guys are here for the same thing I am?" Solo asked.

Kanan frowned as he scrutinised the smuggler for a moment, then his eyes went wide in understanding. "You're here to steal the holocron!"

"Guess Hondo didn't trust me to do this alone."

"Hondo paid you?" Kanan exclaimed.

Solo nodded. "Looks like we're both his subcontractors. Small galaxy," he quipped.

Kanan turned back to Sabine who was busy trying to access the office door. "Sabine, what's the hold-up?"

"I can't access the door from out here. It has to be unlocked manually from inside."

"We have to be inside to unlock it? That's weird," Ezra commented.

"Can we blast our way in?" Han asked.

"No. It's magnetically sealed," Sabine replied. "We'll have to find another way in."

"I think I've found it," Kanan said quietly. He was looking up at a small air vent in the ceiling directly above them.

The team looked up at the vent, and then, as one, all eyes were on Ezra; the smallest of the team.

Ezra heaved a sigh. "Is that all I'm good for? Crawling through the ducts?"

"Why do you think we brought you?" Sabine replied with a grin.

Commander Roto Shar leaned closer to the security screen as he watched the image of the two older males haul the younger male into the air duct directly outside his office. Shar straightened up, his lips pressed into a thin smile and an excited gleam in his eye.

"Shall I call in the guard, sir?" his subordinate asked.

Shar gave a curt shake of his head. He pointed at the image of Han Solo on the screen. "What ship is that one from?"

The subordinate called up the details. A live feed of the Millennium Falcon docked at Kessendra Spaceport appeared on the screen in front of them.

"His ship is registered as the Stellar Envoy," the subordinate said. "Although that may be an older designation. Or a fake name."

Shar watched as a Wookiee stepped out down the landing ramp of Solo's ship, and moved to supervise a shipment of crates being loaded onto the Falcon's aft freight elevator.

"That's almost certainly a cargo of Spice. They're smugglers, sir," another of Shar's men observed.

"Call up the feed from the other ship," Shar ordered.

A second later the image of the Ghost appeared on-screen. A female Twi'lek and a male Lasat could be clearly seen through the cockpit windows, waiting impatiently for their crew to come back.

"The ship is registered as the Archeron. But it doesn't look like they've taken on any cargo at all, sir," one of Shar's men said.

Shar didn't reply; he was too busy staring at the non-humans on the screen. Finally, after a long moment of thought, he reached a decision.

"Send a squad in to arrest the crew from both ships. Bring them in for questioning. They're not the ones I'm after, but they may yet be useful to me."

"Are you nearly there, Kid?" Solo called out.

There was a slight pause accompanied by the sound of several locks being unlatched.

"Almost…" was Ezra's muffled reply from the other side of the door. "How many locks does this guy need?" he muttered.

"While we're young, Ezra!" Sabine called out tapping her foot.

"Got it!" Ezra replied.

The doors slid open, revealing Ezra standing in the doorway.

"You guys are not gonna believe what's in here!" he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

The team edged their way into the office. The doors snapped shut behind them and they stopped and stared.

"Well, this isn't what I was expecting!" Kanan exclaimed.

The brightly lit room was packed with relics.

Glass fronted cabinets filled with trinkets and souvenirs lined the walls and ran down the centre of the large room. Every available space was taken up with some sort of artefact. Looking closer Kanan started in shock as he recognised some of the items.

"These all belonged to Jedi!"

"Are you sure?" Sabine asked.

"Positive," Kanan replied firmly. He noticed a battle-scarred and badly damaged Kel Dor breathing mask in one of the cabinets. "That's an antiox breath mask. The label says it belonged to Master Plo Koon."

"This one's all lightsabres," Ezra said behind Kanan as he stared at a display of mounted laser swords in varying designs and styles, including a few double-bladed hilts, several curved or paired lightsabres that joined at the pommel, and a rare guard shoto weapon, was also known as the 'lightsabre tonfa'.

Sabine finished daubing another starbird on the wall and peered at the broken remains of a strange bronze-coloured architect droid on display in another cabinet. The ancient droid had multiple arms mounted on its back and an eye-glass set above its right photoreceptor. Sabine glanced down; the label on the cabinet read: 'Professor Huyang'.

"Shar is a collector," Kanan muttered.

"Yeah, a collector of Jedi artefacts!" Ezra exclaimed.

"Okay, so he's a hoarder," Han said. "Let's get the holocron and get out of here."

"Over here!" Sabine called out.

At the far end of the room, behind a desk, was a collection of holocrons.

"These are all from the Jedi Temple," Kanan said.

"You seem very sure about that," Han observed.

"Trust me, I've done my homework," Kanan replied.

Sabine scanned the holocrons. "It's this one!" she declared, pointing at a blue and red octagonal holocron. It didn't take long to release the lock. They opened the cabinet and Ezra reached in to grab the holocron.

"Wonder what's so special about this holocron…" he mused.

"Doesn't matter," Han replied. "Only Jedi can open them. We're not about to find out in here."

"Yeah, right, no Jedi in here," Ezra replied cagily.

"Would be nice to know what we're risking our necks for," Sabine said.

"Best not to hang around," Han suggested. "We can discuss a cut of the profits when we're out of this place."

"Solo's right," Kanan said as he made for the door. "We go now."

Kanan hesitated. He stared at the polyhedron in his hands…

It wouldn't take long to open the holo-chronicle. Ezra cast a quick glance at Kanan by the door, facing away from him, before the Padawan closed his eyes and reached out with the Force…

Gradually, the corners of the holocron shifted as Ezra prised the Jedi record open…

The world was suddenly filled with light and sound!

Alarms were going off. Ezra's eyes snapped open in shock. The whole floor was alive with sirens and red light.

Kanan and Han drew their blasters, turning sharply towards Ezra and Sabine. Han noticed the partially opened holocron and marched towards Ezra.

"What did you do, Kid?" he demanded.

Han snatched the holocron from Ezra's hand, flipping it upside down. A small device was attached to the underside of the holo-chronicle.

"It's rigged! There's a sensor that trips when it's opened!" Han glared down accusingly at Ezra. "Are you a Jedi?" he asked.

"No!" Ezra exclaimed. "Well, not quite yet…" he added sheepishly.

Han looked sharply at Kanan. "Did you know about this?"

Kanan didn't have time to reply. The doors opened and several figures appeared in the room. Stormtroopers rushed in, levelling their weapons at the four intruders.

A cacophony of barked orders echoed around the chamber. "Drop your weapons! Don't move! Get your hands up!"

Kanan backed up, joining the others by the desk as the Imperial troops pushed them into the corner, completely blocking off their escape.

The wall of Stormtroopers parted in the middle as a figure appeared between them. A man in a grey Imperial uniform with commander's bars stepped into view, his pale face stretched into a rictus grin. Strangely, the man had a lightsabre strapped to his belt. Commander Roto Shar regarded the four intruders with interest, before slowly and deliberately grabbing the lightsabre in his right hand and pulled it off his belt.

He flicked a switch and a blazing green blade ignited from the hilt.

Roto Shar's grin widened as he pointed the lightsabre menacingly at the intruders.