Chapter 34

Ezra POV

After Saw flew them away from the relay, Sabine got on her comm system and began to explain to Hera that they were safely away from the explosion beneath them.

Ezra didn't know if the Ghost had managed to deal with the other TIE Defender, but he imagined they would easily enough. Seven years chasing the Ghost had taught him that it was a tough ship to bring down, in no small part due to the piloting skills of Captain Syndulla.

Speaking of, Hera didn't sound happy to hear that they were with Saw Gerrera, and Ezra could imagine why, but he believed that they had it under control. Gerrera may be a bit crazy, but he didn't fight his fellow rebels, even if they were from a different cell. Well, not often, at least.

Hearing Hera order Saw to return her crew members, Ezra yelled into the cockpit, "Hey, Tubes! We're gonna head into the atmosphere and dock with the Ghost for a few seconds!"

He turned around to find Saw looking at him suspiciously, and he questioned, "What?"

Saw nodded towards the cockpit and asked Ezra, "How did you know my pilot's name? Not even most of your rebel cell knows him. And who are you?"

Ezra looked nervously over his shoulder at Sabine, who seemed to realize the problem as well and was preparing for a possible fight. "Well, you know. You guys are just… really popular. I'm a big fan of your-" Ezra started, but suddenly Saw surged forward and pressed him against the wall, holding a knife to his neck.

"Perhaps I didn't properly convey that I am not the sort of person who enjoys being lied to!" Saw growled.

Suddenly, he found Sabine's vambrace pressed up next to his head, and she said, "Let him go, Saw. Listen, he used to be an Imperial spy. He's heard of you."

Saw slowly released Ezra and stepped back before saying, "The Empire employed a Mandalorian? Why didn't I know about this?"

"Actually, they used to employ quite a few of them," Ezra responded. "Luckily for you, that's not true anymore after what we did last week."

"And why haven't they sent one after me?" Saw said as he crossed his arms, then chuckled, "Were they worried I'd scare them off?"

"Well… I mean, not to be rude or anything, remember that this is the EMPIRE, not me, but… Well, they don't really consider you much of a threat," Ezra admitted.

Saw looked affronted, but then he just chuckled again and said, "Really? Good! I'll prove them wrong in time."

"Didn't you get the Rebellion's warning that the Empire has been controlling your movements?" Sabine asked. "Making you hit only what they want you to hit?"

"That's what they think!" Saw argued. "They think that they can control me, but only I control my own actions! Did they want me to destroy that communications relay just now?"

"Considering that you did, most likely, yes," Ezra answered.

"Well, I guarantee that they won't want me doing what I'm planning next!" Gerrera insisted. Chopper hummed at him uncertainly.

Saw then turned around and got onto the comms and contacted the Ghost before saying, "Ghost, we've just picked up a Star Destroyer approaching. No time to dock, but your crew will be okay with me. Besides, maybe they'll enjoy fighting with a real army for a change."

Before Ezra or Sabine could even process his meaning, Tubes pushed the lever on his console forward, and the U-Wing shot into hyperspace.

As they flew away from the rest of their crew, Ezra leaned over to Sabine and whispered, "I'm pretty sure we just got kidnapped. I don't know how you rebels usually do this, but this would normally be the part where I knock these guys out and hijack the ship."

Sabine ignored him and stepped forward to say, "Saw, I just want to say that we appreciate the save."

Grinning, Saw cheered, "We turned the worst-case scenario into the best!"

"Except that Hera won't see it that way," Sabine argued. "Technically, we just disobeyed orders by destroying that relay."

"Following orders will only get you so far," Saw responded. "Then, you have to take control of your destiny. I heard about what you did on Mandalore, Sabine Wren. Very impressive. I came to get you because I need your help."

Crossing her arms, Sabine asked, "Really? So you didn't just come to the station because you wanted to blow it up?"

"Blowing up an Imperial outpost was just a bonus," Saw said as he pulled a handheld hologram projector from his belt and pressed a button on it to emit an image of a floating spaceport. "This is Faos Station. I recently acquired intel on a secret Imperial cargo being loaded on a civilian freighter there."

"What kind of cargo?" Sabine questioned.

"Months ago, on Geonosis, your Jedi, Captain Rex, and myself discovered that the Empire had wiped out the entire civilization of the planet because they were building something. Something they've kept hidden away," Saw told her. "Well, I never stopped looking for it."

"What did you find?" Ezra asked.

Saw deactivated his hologram and answered, "Just rumors. Whispers. But they all led me to that cargo ship."

"So what do you want us for?" Sabine asked as she crossed her arms, clearly hesitant to agree to anything.

"You and your droid have proven yourselves capable of infiltrating Imperial bases undetected," Saw answered, then gestured to Ezra and added, "I didn't plan on bringing this one, but I suppose having one more Mandalorian couldn't hurt."

Ezra and Sabine shared a look, and he shrugged to her before she answered, "Alright. We're in."

Chopper whirled out a protest, but Ezra just told him, "Sorry, Chop. You're outvoted."

Saw smirked and walked into the cockpit to sit next to his pilot, Two-Tubes, and told him, "We might make them into real rebels yet."

Tubes just laughed to himself, prompting Ezra and Sabine to share another wary look with one another.

Line Break

About half an hour later, Ezra, Sabine, Chopper, and Saw wandered around Faos Station, looking for any signs of the Imperial transport, but all of the ships were merely civilian cargo freighters. Sabine had given Chopper a yellow paint job so that he blended in with the other maintenance droids on the station, allowing their group to wander freely.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Sabine asked Saw. "This looks like a civilian cargo facility. I'm not seeing any signs of the Empire anywhere."

Ezra just shrugged and responded, "That's the idea. If they want to move cargo in secret, where better to move it than with all the innocent stuff? They're hiding their materials in plain sight."

Saw gave him a sideways glance and noted, "You sure seem to know a lot about secret Imperial strategies."

"I ought to. I gave them half of their brilliant ideas," Ezra responded as he continued scanning around.

His eyes widening, Saw asked, "You were a tactician for the Empire?"

"In my spare time, which wasn't much," Ezra responded idly. "I spent most of my time hunting down leads on signs of rebellion, but the Imperials I worked with on rare occasions had a Mandalorian Captain on their hands. You can't really fault them for being smart enough to use me."

"Interesting," Saw said. "I wonder what other Imperial secrets you have locked away inside that head of yours?"

"How about the fact that they like locking prisoners inside cargo containers to disguise their movements?" Ezra said as he pointed ahead of them towards one of the cargo containers that was being magnetically lifted onto a freighter. "My scans show life forms inside that container there. That freighter must be the Empire's."

Saw ran forward and looked at the side of the freighter before announcing, "You're right! Freighter 2-7-1-6! This is where we need to sneak in. Over here!" Saw waved for them to follow him as he climbed on top of one of the final cargo containers and opened up a hatch in the top.

"Ah, sneaking on board in a cargo container?" Sabine noted as Saw and Ezra jumped in first. "Maybe we don't do things so differently after all, Saw." She and Chopper followed behind them as a magnetic clamp came down to lift their container onto the Imperial freighter.

Once they were inside and they felt the freighter start to move, Saw opened the container and drew his pistol before he began to move out, keeping the area covered.

The other three followed behind him, and Sabine asked Ezra, "Hey, Ez, did you say that you scanned prisoners in one of those containers?"

Ezra nodded and answered, "Yeah, but that can't be what Saw was after. He said that the Empire was building something."

"We can still free them while we're here," Sabine said, and Ezra nodded in agreement.

Suddenly, Ezra froze as he heard a distant sound. It sounded like… a voice of some sort.

He rested his hands on his pistols warily, and Sabine asked, "What is it?"

Listening more closely, Ezra said, "Do you guys hear that? It sounds like… singing?"

Sabine paused and listened closely, but then just shrugged and said, "I don't hear anything."

Ezra scowled at himself and shook his head to clear his thoughts. He had a mission to focus on. The singing slowly faded to background noise in his mind.

Meanwhile, Saw was opening various other containers in the cargo hold, and he said, "These containers are filled with high-quality construction materials. Materials used to build the Imperial Navy."

Sabine looked at the compounds he had found and said, "Alright, but these could've come from Corellia, or any other planet with shipyards. It doesn't mean anything special."

"There are more holds to search," Saw insisted, and ran out of their current hold and into the halls of the freighter. The other three members of his party followed after him, but suddenly Saw stopped at an intercepting hallway and put out an arm to stop them, listening closely around the corner. Ezra scanned around the corner and saw two stormtroopers going by.

After they had passed, Saw said, "They have guards posted here. This is definitely an Imperial ship. Now we just need to find what it is they're guarding. Your droid should check the cargo manifest."

Turning to their droid, Ezra said, "You heard him, Chop."

Chopper rolled over to the nearest scomp terminal and plugged in, then beeped out an announcement. "There's an Imperial military shuttle in Hold 12," Sabine translated for Saw. "Definitely something more going on here."

"Find out where we're going," Saw ordered. Chopper spun his claw inside the terminal and then whirled out another statement.

"Tonnis sector?" Ezra repeated. "That's just empty space. No settlements or stations, and no Imperial patrols go out that way."

Saw just chuckled to himself and said, "The perfect hiding place."

"Or just a rendezvous point," Sabine added, trying to warn Saw to be cautious.

Chopper whirled once more and Ezra translated, "He says that Cargo Bay 17 is a restricted area."

"Then that's where we go next," Saw said and purposefully began to run in the direction of the indicated location. They dodged a few more Imperial patrols in the halls and soon arrived in front of the door to Bay 17.

Finding the door locked and expecting guards on the other side, Saw pulled out his blaster pistol, but Ezra warned, "Careful, or you'll alert the whole ship."

"You got a plan?" Saw questioned.

"I've got a droid," Ezra answered as he gestured over his holder at Chopper. Saw nodded hesitantly and pressed himself against the wall, out of sight behind the doorway, and Ezra and Sabine followed his lead after Ezra knocked on the door. When the door opened to reveal three stormtroopers on the other side, they could only see Chopper.

"Hey, get out of here, droid," one of the troopers ordered. Chopper just whirred out an insult and fired an electric bolt at the soldier from one of his small extendable arms in response. The bolt hit him and slightly shook him in place, but after the jolt faded away, the stormtrooper was still standing.

"Blast that piece of junk!" the lead stormtrooper ordered, and he and his two fellow soldiers surged out of the door as Chopper rolled around the corner and down the adjacent hall. As the stormtroopers emerged from the doorway, however, Ezra, Sabine, and Saw jumped from their places against the walls to quickly subdue the three Imperials.

Once they'd all been taken care of, they dragged the stormtroopers' unconscious forms back into the room to keep them hidden. In the center of the room was a single shipping container, and after a quick scan with Ezra's rangefinder, he nodded to his compatriots and said, "It's the prisoners."

Sabine quickly opened the container, releasing about half a dozen people of various species from inside and dragging the unconscious guards inside to lock them in, but Saw just protested, "My intel wasn't about prisoners. The Empire has prisoners all over the galaxy."

"We can still help them, Saw," Ezra argued.

Sabine addressed the prisoners and asked, "Who are you, why are you here, and what do you know about the cargo aboard this ship?"

There was a silence as the prisoners shuffled nervously, but then one, a male Ishi Tib, stepped forward and said, "My name's Mich Matt. I was the supervising tech on Coruscant's main power generator. The Empire tried to hire me away for some secret project, but I refused to leave my family, so they just took me."

"Power technician?" Saw questioned with curiosity.

Mich waved around at the other prisoners and said, "Everyone else here has similar stories. We're all reactor mechanics or power specialists of some kind. But I heard them saying something about Jedha. If there's some secret cargo here, it probably came from there."

Saw looked at Ezra for an explanation, apparently having decided that Ezra was his new favorite source of secret Imperial info, but Ezra couldn't give him much. He just shrugged and said, "All I know is that there's some big mining project there. The Empire has thousands of those."

Sabine crossed her arms and said, "It doesn't make any sense. The Empire wouldn't go to all this trouble just to guard a few techs."

Saw eagerly jumped at his opportunity and said, "I agree! There must be something else here!"

"I agree as well," Ezra said, "but we need to get these people out of here."

"Use that shuttle your droid found," Saw said impatiently, but Ezra just shook his head and said, "No, it'll be guarded. We can't put these civilians in the line of fire."

"What about the escape pods?" Sabine suggested. "We can sabotage the hyperdrive, and as soon as the freighter drops from hyperspace, they can fly to safety while we take the ship."

Ezra nodded in agreement, but just then, they heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and he hurried to shove the civilians back towards the container. "It's a patrol," he warned. "We'll handle them, you guys pretend you're still prisoners."

"We are still prisoners!" one of them complained as he was forced back into the container. Ezra ignored him as he, Sabine, Chopper, and Saw ducked around the corner of the container to get out of sight.

Two stormtroopers entered the room just before the last civilian could get back into the container, and they both quickly ran forward to secure the prisoners. They yanked the door open and caused one of the civilians to fall out and then they both directed their blasters at the other cowering prisoners, and one demanded, "Who let you out? Where are the guards that were stationed here?"

The prisoners tried to discreetly adjust their positions to hide the bodies of the guards inside the container with them, but the other stormtroopers saw them. However, they didn't quite understand what they were seeing. "What?" one of them questioned in shock and confusion.

Sabine POV

That was when Ezra and Sabine both appeared from either side of the container and fired a blast into the chest of one of the stormtroopers. Saw jumped down from the top of the container and told them, "Nicely handled."

Ezra ignored the compliment and told Chopper, "Chop, get the prisoners to the escape pods. We'll take out the hyperdrive." Chopper whirred an affirmative and began to lead the prisoners down one hallway while Sabine, Ezra, and Saw ran a different way.

However, as they ran through one hallway, Sabine and Saw ran right by a door that caused Ezra to stop. "Wait," he told his partners, and they both came to a halt, looking back at him.

"What is it?" Sabine asked. They needed to move quickly to get to the engine room so that the civilians could escape, but she also knew to trust Ezra's instincts, having plenty of experience from working with both him and Kanan.

Ezra listened closely at the door for a moment. "This is the source of the singing I heard before," he said. "It's much louder here."

He reached out and pressed the button to open the door, and suddenly found himself facing an Imperial Death Trooper on the other side. Before Ezra could react, Saw ran forward and shoved his blaster over Ezra's shoulder and shot the Death Trooper in the helmet. Behind him, however, the room had several more Death Troopers and a few stormtroopers, all of them standing around some sort of ten-foot long sealed box in the center of the room.

As she saw their numerous new enemies, Sabine quickly threw a number of small balls into the room, which immediately began to spit out a large cloud of smoke, obscuring their vision within seconds. The Imperials blindly fired into the smoke, and Ezra led the charge as their group rushed in to engage the Imperials in combat. Using their rangefinders to see their enemies through the smoke, Sabine and Ezra aimed for the most dangerous targets first and were able to quickly eliminate most of the Death Troopers with a few well-placed blasts, until only three were left. Saw used one soldier's fallen body as both a disguise and a shield to get in close to the other Death Troopers and shoot one, and Sabine grabbed another one from behind and tackled him to the ground, punching him repeatedly across the face until he was knocked out.

Saw shot at the last one, but the Trooper dodged and Saw's bolt instead hit the large box in the center of the room, causing it to spark dangerously. The last Death Trooper saw this and ordered her remaining troops, "The blocks have been compromised. Cease fire! Fall back immediately!"

The Imperials all ran out of the room, and as the smoke began to clear, Ezra said, "One's getting away!"

"Forget him," Saw said as he looked at the sparking box with reverence and awe. "We found it!"

By now, the box was shining much more brightly, and the entire top covering of the box was melting away. They all shielded their eyes with their hands as the box sent out a large burst of light, and then Ezra asked, "What is that?"

Sabne lowered her hand from her eyes and looked on in amazement as she laid eyes on what was in the box: the largest kyber crystal she had ever seen. "It's a kyber crystal," she answered Ezra's question.

Confused, Ezra asked, "You mean… like a big version of what's in my lightsaber? These things sing now?"

Saw looked at him and asked, "Wait, you have a lightsaber? You're not… a Jedi, are you?"

Sighing at the familiar question, Ezra responded, "Yes, I have a lightsaber. No, I'm not a Jedi. It's a long story, but right now we should be discussing why this thing is here."

"Well, first of all, these things store and amplify energy, so one this big is probably unstable," Sabine warned as she holstered her pistols. "Put your weapons away."

Ezra and Saw both obeyed her without question, and Saw, now getting incredibly excited, said, "They're trying to harness the power of this thing! That's why they have the techs! To weaponize it!"

"We need to stop this ship and get the prisoners out of here," Sabine reminded them, but Saw quickly cut her off by saying, " need this cargo to reach its destination, to find out what the Empire's building!"

"We can't take the chance that the Empire manages to get this crystal back!" Sabine argued.

Saw thought about it for a moment, then said, "You're right about that too."

Sabine looked over to Ezra, but he seemed to be deep in thought. "What are you thinking, Ez?" she asked.

Ezra remained silent for another moment, then said, "Saw, I know what you want to do, but we can't let this thing get where it's going. Even if we found out what the Empire's building, we wouldn't live to do anything about it. So instead, I say that we sabotage the hyperdrive and take that shuttle to get out of here, and turn this crystal into a bomb. Sabine, you said it stores and amplifies energy? Well, we can overload it and make it blow up, hurting the Empire's little project while we're at it."

"No!" Saw protested angrily. "I've come too far, lost too much, to give up now! I must learn the secrets of my enemy!"

"We've all lost stuff, Saw," Ezra said, "but we still have things worth fighting for. That's why we're here. And if I'm right about where this thing's going… We need to do whatever we can to stop it, because if we don't then the Empire might be on the verge of winning a war that most Rebels don't believe has even already begun."

"What are you talking about?" Sabine questioned. Ezra almost sounded… scared. He didn't get scared easily. Last time she'd heard him this worried, it had been when he'd nearly killed her when she used the Darksaber for the first time.

When Ezra hesitated to answer, Saw surged towards him and grabbed him before lifting him clear off his feet and demanding, "Then what is this about, Mandalorian? If you want me to trust you on this, give me something! What are you so worried about? What is the Empire hiding from me?!"

Ezra just held up his hands and said, "Something whispered about in the Empire since they first rose. I spent seven years near the top levels of the Empire and still, I don't even know what it really is. All I know is one word: 'Stardust.'"

Saw continued glaring for a moment, then sighed and gently lowered Ezra back to the ground, saying, "Fine. You've given me something to work on. After this, I'm going to Jedha so I can research this 'Stardust' you speak of, and when I find it, I'm gonna burn it to the ground."

Sabine opened her mouth to give him encouragement, but suddenly they felt the ship drop out of hyperspace. "Well, looks like we might be too late," she noted with apprehension.

Ezra pulled up his comm and asked, "Chop, what just happened? Are we at our destination?"

Chopper grunted out a response, and Sabine sighed in relief, "They stopped before we got to the Tonnis sector coordinates."

"But he also said that he didn't get all of the civilians out, and there's a Star Destroyer here to greet us," Ezra added.

"And we won't get to damage their project with our bomb," Saw said as he gestured towards the crystal.

Ezra just shrugged and said, "Well, we can damage it by losing them all the valuable materials on this freighter."

He then pulled his lightsaber from the back of his belt and activated it as he plunged the blade into one of the crystal's blocks. He held it there for a few seconds, letting the block begin to spark much more dangerously than before, and then he pulled the lightsaber out, though the crystal continued to grow in brightness and intensity.

He clipped the lightsaber back onto his belt and said, "Well, this thing's definitely gonna blow now. At least we know that the Empire won't be using it. But we should probably get outta here."

Neither Sabine nor Saw had any arguments, and they all ran out of the room towards Hold 12, where the Imperial military shuttle was waiting. As they ran, Sabine contacted Chopper and told him, "Chopper, we're taking the shuttle out of here, and this place is about to blow, so get yourself and the remaining prisoners down to Hold 12 now!"

Chopper responded by saying in Binary, "I'm already doing that!"

She just hung up on the aggravating droid and focused on running as fast as she could. When they arrived in the Hold, they saw Chopper and a few of the techs, including Mich Matt, attempting to board the shuttle while several stormtroopers and the last Death Trooper from before attempted to stop them.

She turned to ask Ezra to handle the Death Trooper, but he had already rushed in, drawing his lightsaber and deflected several bolts away from himself before jumping up to kick the Death Trooper in the face and knock her back onto the ground. Sabin drew the Darksaber and followed his example, charging in and attacking the remaining stormtroopers to give Chopper and the civilians a chance to board the shuttle.

Once they were all on board, Sabine used her jetpack to fly backwards into the ship, slashing one last stormtrooper's blaster in half on her way. Sabine ran to the cockpit of the shuttle, removing her helmet as she sat in the pilot's seat, and began to fly them out of the freighter, though the Imperials continued trying to stop them by firing their blasters at the bottom of the ship. She flew past the Destroyer outside at full speed and rose over the top while trying to get as far away as possible.

"What are you doing?" Saw questioned. "Just make the jump!"

Sabine shook her head and said, "No time for lightspeed. I'm getting us out of here and putting that Star Destroyer between us and that crystal."

Within a few seconds of flying, the shuttle suddenly picked up a massive energy reading, and then an enormous explosion tore through the Star Destroyer beneath them and headed towards their shuttle, seeming unstoppable.

"Full power to the shields!" Sabine announced. "Hold on to something!"

A green blast of energy slammed into the shuttle and instantly deactivated all of its systems, sending them spiraling out of control. Everyone aboard let out a yell as they were rocked by the blast, but after a few seconds, it was over, and they were dead in space. Sabine flipped some switches on the console, trying to bring the ship back to life, but ultimately announced, "The engines are fried. We're not going anywhere anytime soon."

Chopper whirred out something, and Ezra said, "Or maybe we are. Chopper says he sent Hera our coordinates before leaving the freighter."

Just after he said it, there was a small boom as a ship exited hyperspace, and then the Ghost appeared in front of them. Looking to her side, Sabine saw Ezra awkwardly waving at Hera through the glass, just as he had done with Commander Titus at the relay station on Jalindi. This time, Sabine just embarrassedly facepalmed rather than smacking him.

As the Ghost flew down to dock with their destroyed shuttle, Saw said, "Well, I guess that this will be where we part ways. Unless…" He gave Ezra a questioning look and said, "Well, you're pretty good with dealing with Imperials, Ezra. I could certainly use someone as knowledgeable as you among my own rebels."

Ezra spun in his chair to look back at him and said, "Flattered, but I already have a crew, Saw. As of yesterday, I'm apparently now Spectre-6."

Gerrera seemed disappointed, but he said, "Integrity. I can respect that. Still, if you ever change your mind, find me, and I'd be happy to have you. And thank you for your help, telling me about Stardust. Confiding such a thing in me could save many lives."

"I'll be sharing that information with the Alliance as well, you know," Ezra clarified.

Saw just shrugged and said, "Just as well. We're all in this together, whether we like it or not. Long live the Rebellion, my friends. I hope we meet again." He gave them one last salute and walked out into the hold, and Sabine and Ezra joined him to get back to their ship.