Chapter 13: The courier
As even the radio stopped working, the tension in the room was palpable.
It was Ezra who talked first in the end.
"Alright. Maybe we can hijack one of their vehicles and try to find leads about Kanan."
"Hoped you would say that." Hera said proudly.
"It shouldn't be difficult. They'll be looking for us everywhere, by now." Sabine smirked.
"Good. I really needed to feel some buckets on my fist." Zeb grinned as he cracked his knuckles.
"It won't work!" Jaral said severely, not moving from her seat.
Everyone looked at her in disbelief.
"What do you mean?" Ezra asked.
Jaral stood up and started pacing around the room.
"Remember that they just blew up their main communication tower on the planet." she said.
Sabine realized. "So their network is probably down as well."
The news was nothing less than depressing for the crew, but still, Jaral didn't seem to flinch.
"It doesn't mean that we should give up."
"You have a plan?" Hera asked with a mixture of hope and angst.
Jaral simply walked back to the table, lifted the radio and gently put it on the ground, freeing the holographic device.
"Jinx." she said. "Bring that up."
The table now showed some slides, detailing strategies and protocols of the Empire.
"Is that…?" Sabine asked.
Jaral nodded. "Tseebo's database. I couldn't copy everything, but I asked Jinx to make a copy of strategies, protocols and the weapon's projects, along with a list of the Empire leadership. All those elements I thought that might be useful in the future."
Everyone was amazed by Jaral foresight. Ezra finally chuckled and talked with a lopsided grin.
"I don't even know what to say anymore. You're unbeatable, sister."
Jaral gave him a happy smile before turning her attention to the intel in front of them. As she paced in front of the table with her arms crossed, she started giving Jinx the commands.
"Jinx, run a research in strategies and protocols. Object: Exchange of data in absence of long range communications."
"Running research…"
For a few seconds, there was only the faint beeping of Jinx going through terabytes of data with his unparalleled speed.
"Research complete."
Jinx brought up a slide, which seemed like the page of a digital manual, and it probably was.
"Tell us." Jaral said, calmly, clasping her hands behind her back.
"The protocol dictating the exchange of information among the imperial military network states that: in the event of breakdown of a planetary comm infrastructure, the responsibility to gather and distribute data into the network falls onto the Imperial Navy.
"In active theaters of war, an officer is sent down on the surface, along with an escort, to gather data-tapes from the Army and bring them back to the fleet, as the military vessels can communicate independently.
"Luckily for us, Lothal is not an active theater...for now. As such, the responsibility of delivering new data falls on courier droids, as they can carry a larger amount of data than the smaller discs given to the officers."
The hologram of an astromech with the imperial colors showed up.
"Right now, this represents our best chance to find Kanan's location." Jinx concluded his analysis.
"Any idea where we can find one of them?" Jaral brought a fist in front of her mouth, slightly pressing them together.
"I don't have the planned routes for Lothal, however it's likely that the courier droids will be shipped in and out of the planet from the spaceport in Capitol City.
A holomap of the city showed up, highlighting the big spaceport.
"They probably will move between the Imperial Dome and the spaceport. There are very few spots isolated enough for us to ambush them, and it's not safe to attack until we can establish their regular paths of communication."
"You're right." Jaral sighed. "We'll wait until night, then we move into the city and take a look." she stated.
"What?!" Ezra jumped on his feet. "You can't be serious. Kanan need us now!"
"So you just want to barge into the Capital, blast every imperial that we find? You really think you can help Kanan that way?"
Jaral now had the face. Ezra called it like that. In desperate moments, she would take charge and use cold logic to get out of troubles, and she wouldn't allow him to argue when his reasoning was based on petty emotions.
The boy slowly seated back, his head looking down in shame. Sabine, who was seated beside him the whole time, looked at him with sympathy and gently patted him on the shoulder.
"We have to take a few hours anyway." Jaral went back to explain to everybody. "The tower has been gone for no more than 10 minutes now. Even the Empire is gonna need time to organize the couriers' network."
"You are absolutely right, dear." Hera said, walking up to her and giving her a proud smile, that Jaral returned. "It's been a hard night, and we better rest while we can." she said, clearly telling everybody that the discussion, for now, was over.
Zeb and Chopper left the room, the former headed to his cabin, the latter to the cockpit. Hera did the same.
Jaral stopped only to exchange a conciliatory look with her brother, then she too went to try and get some sleep.
"How do you feel?" Sabine asked suddenly.
Ezra had stayed in the room. He couldn't bear the thought of just going to sleep peacefully when Kanan was held by the Empire Force knows where.
He slumped on the couch, his body seemingly sliding down, and sighed.
"How am I supposed to feel? I knew this was coming. I fucking knew! My gut told me and I didn't listen to it…" he said in frustration.
"Ezra, it's not like you can see the future whenever you want. The Empire lured us into a trap and it did it well this time." Sabine tried to reassure him, however her tone barely masked a sense of anger.
"And…?" he encouraged her to keep talking, as he could sense that she still wanted to say something else.
Sabine sighed in frustration. "And I know what you're feeling. They took Kanan from us! Right now I really want to go out there and hurt the Empire as much as I can."
She sighed. "But that wouldn't solve our problem, and wouldn't bring Kanan back."
"I know." Ezra whispered in defeat.
Both stood silent. Looking down as the painful memory of what just happened at the tower came back to haunt them.
Then, as if attracted by a magnet, both heads started to turn to each other. Ezra couldn't tell exactly when that happened, but his face was now a few centimeters away from Sabine's.
He didn't know what to do. His brain seemed able to focus only on her chestnut eyes.
She gave him a timid smile and a simple, clear thought materialized in Ezra's mind.
Dear me, I think I'm in love with this girl!
Ezra's hand timidly moved toward Sabine's. Their fingers touched, and the girl sent her answer by gently clasping his hand.
They both wore gloves (Sabine was still wearing her armor and Ezra's civilian attire included a pair) but it didn't matter to them.
Sabine leaned her head forward, until it landed on Ezra's shoulder, curling up on it.
Now Ezra only saw her hairs, but couldn't bring himself to move his neck and risk making her uncomfortable. A sincere smile was now crossing his face and it seemed like he would never get rid of it.
He could smell paint and carbon, probably left by her helmet, but also a faint note of perfume.
He closed his eyes to fully enjoy the sensation of her gentle weight on his shoulder.
He didn't know how long they stayed like that. Probably a couple of minutes. For all he cared, this was a perfect moment and he almost wanted it to last forever. He gently rested his cheek on her head, and he felt so great that he started dozing off.
Yet, something didn't sit right with him. With any second passing, the sense of bliss slowly gave way to one of guilt.
How can we be so carefree after what just happened? While the family is broken?
Sabine seemed to be having the same thought. When she finally raised back her head, her face was a clear mixture of the same emotions that were passing through Ezra's mind.
She didn't let go of his hand, though.
"Maybe we should really try and go to sleep a bit." she hushed with her head tilting and her look wandering around.
Ezra simply nodded, never letting his eyes look away from the perfection he was witnessing.
Then she smiled gently and pulled their hands toward her. It might have been a very short walk between the common room and the cabin area, but she wanted to walk it with him anyway.
And so they did. Never letting their grip on each other's hand go, they slowly walked toward the cabins. These were exactly in front of each other, so they stopped in front of them, each teen with its back to its own quarter.
Ezra brought up their hands to shoulder height and gently brushed her fingers with his thumb. She looked at the scene with a silent chuckle.
"Good night, Sabine." he whispered in the end.
"Good night, Ezra." she replied in kind.
The girl stepped back, slowly slipping away, and pressed the button to open the cabin. Ezra didn't move, simply looking at her with a grin.
Sabine stepped into the dark cabin, and before the door closed, she turned her head backwards and winked at him.
Ezra stood there a couple of seconds more before turning around and getting into his cabin.
Zeb was already sleeping soundly into the lower bunk. Ezra grabbed the edge of his top bunk and lifted himself up. He just removed his boots and threw them down, as he now really started to feel tired.
Of course, he also felt amazing.
You love her, Bridger. And she certainly doesn't dislike you.
He didn't know how to deal with this. He felt that this wasn't the right moment. Not while they were about to take up their most desperate and dangerous challenge so far. Talking about sentiments might only get them distracted, or fearful of how much more they could lose. And as he already concluded, it didn't feel right to do this now, while the family had just been broken.
Then, he decided.
When this is over. When Kanan is back and we're all together again, I'll tell her.
His mind set, Ezra almost immediately drifted off to sleep.
Kanan woke up into a cell, tied to a torture board. Binders had been applied to his wrists, ankles and torso, impeding any movement.
He heard the sound of the door opening. He could recognize the two troopers guarding his cell, saluting Gran Moff Tarkin and Kallus, both of whom stepped into the room.
"Now we will discover if you are indeed the Jedi you claim to be." Tarkin said with his usual arrogant face.
"Well, Governor, somebody's gotta keep you entertained." Kanan retorted with a grin, although his face was still suffering from the blow he was given to make him faint before being tied up.
From the hallway came a mind probe. Its syringe full of truth-serums preparing to pierce his skin.
The crew slept for a few hours, waking up in the late morning.
Jaral was the first to wake up. One of the perks of being a full-grown Legionnaire is that the body needs much less sleep than the average human, and can also get much more energy from any kind of food.
Everybody who walked into the common room found Jaral already at the Dejarik table, inspecting the holomap of the city. She and Jinx had already established three possible routes that had a high probability of being used by the courier droids, since they were the fastest to travel and the Empire loved efficiency.
She was also taking into account all the necessary variables: possible checkpoints, blind spots along the various itineraries, possible concentrations of imperial troops.
By midday, she seemed to have a pretty clear idea on how the entire business would be going, but first of all they had to ascertain the path used by the couriers, their timetables and the strength of their escorts.
Pretty much everyone was impressed by the meticulousness of the girl. Ezra simply smiled at that. He knew very well that, when put into a tight spot, Jaral would get them out of trouble, leaving absolutely nothing to chance. By the moment the match started, she would have already figured out moves and countermoves of both her team and that of her opponent.
When everyone was ready, they got around the table.
"All right, here is the plan." Jaral said.
Jinx took over the first part of the briefing.
"I calculated three possible routes for the couriers, based on travel time and accessibility for the imperial forces. I tried to tap into the imperial network, but as we have already hypothesized, long-range communications are unavailable on a planetary scale."
"Which isn't necessarily all bad. We can't use their radio traffic to see how many troops they have in the city and their deployment, but it also means that it will be easier for us to keep a low profile."
"How do you want to proceed?" Hera asked.
"First of all, we head to the city center. We take a look at the three possible routes and we also recon for possible checkpoints. I intend to strike at night, and I'll tell you why in a second. Jinx…"
"According to the imperial protocol, courier droids must be sent with a frequency of two hours. Once they land on the planet, they need another hour to go from the spaceport to the Imperial Dome, being given the disc with the data and go back to the spaceport. They are then brought in orbit into an Arquitens-class command cruiser, where they upload the data, thus also getting access to the local database."
"So you want to infiltrate that cruiser?" Sabine asked.
"Precisely. And this is why I need you to give Chopper a new paint-job." Jaral said, giving a smirk to Chopper.
The astromech chirped in protest.
"Come on, Chopper, the Empire will not even notice the difference." Sabine said to encourage him, but Chopper didn't seem to share the enthusiasm.
"Now, here comes the tricky part. We'll have to swap Chopper with the courier droid before it gets back to the spaceport. This means that we need to ambush his escort and take the droid into custody while Chopper takes his place on the shuttle back in orbit."
Chopper grunted again.
"Relax, Chopper, you will not be alone." Jaral said, gaining a confused look by everybody else.
"I decided to entrust you with one of Jinx's processors." she said, and took out one of the small discs from her vambrace, crouched and pushed it into Chopper's barrel.
The astromech quivered a bit, then the voice of Jinx started to came out of him.
"Integration complete."
"Every time I think you guys can't surprise me anymore...you do it again." Zeb commented.
"What's the point of this?" Ezra asked.
"In order not to arouse any suspicions from the Imperials in the cruiser, Chopper will upload the data disc entrusted to the courier. While he gives the Empire what it wants, Jinx will infiltrate the database on its own, find the intel about Kanan and make a copy that the Empire will not be able to detect.
"Once Jinx sends me the green light, we attack the cruiser with the Ghost and distract them. Chopper will then be able to slip away from the command bridge and throw himself in space via the nearest airlock."
"And we recover him with the Phantom." Hera understood.
"Any question?" Jaral said, implying that the briefing was almost over.
"You said that we are gonna take the courier's data disc, right?" Sabine asked. Jaral nodded. "Can't we try and see if there is the intel we want into that immediately?"
"We can't." said Ezra. "Our omni-tool are unable to read mobile discs, even Jinx needs a real hardware to analyze them."
"Exactly." Jaral added. "Besides, Kanan is gonna be hot news. I bet that they are gonna upload any intel on him with the first courier…"
"Which we can't hope to find in time." Zeb finished.
The room fell into silence.
Jaral sighed nervously. "Guys, I don't want to lie. We're doing all of this for a 'maybe'. There is no guarantee that the intel on Kanan will be on that cruiser when we reach it…"
"Jaral." Ezra called her with a firm tone. The girl looked at him. "It is your plan. It will work."
Everybody looked at her with a face that spelled absolute trust in her.
"We have faith in you, Jaral." Hera touched her on the arm and spoke with her motherly tone. "And most of all, I am proud of you. While we didn't even know where to start, you took the lead and come up with such a detailed plan in such a short time. I agree with Ezra, it will work."
Jaral almost felt like she could cry. Both from the pressure of the responsibility and the overwhelming love that she was feeling from her friends...no, her new family. They were entrusting everything to her, without a single hint of doubt in their eyes.
She took a deep breath and smiled. "All right, enough sappiness. At this point, they have most likely set up the network already. We'll need to split up. Zeb, you take the central path, I go on the left, Ezra on the right." She said pointing at the various routes highlighted on the map.
"Sabine, I want you to keep an eye out at the spaceport. Find out the regularity of the shuttles."
"Aye, aye ma'am." the girl said wittily, mocking a salute with two fingers.
"Hera. You wait here on the Ghost and wait until we are ready for extraction."
Hera nodded.
"Ok, folks. We leave as soon as Sabine is done painting Chopper. Gear up." she declared.
Everybody scrambled to their duties, while Jaral went into the cargo bay to lean against the gangplank. Ezra could feel her anxiety and went to her.
"Hey." he told her.
When the girl turned around, without any warning, Ezra simply hugged her tightly on her waist, pushing his head over one of her shoulders.
Jaral chuckled. "What are you doing?"
"I'm showing my big sister that I am absolutely proud of her." he said with clarity.
Jaral couldn't help it and hugged him back tightly on his neck.
"And I am so grateful to have such a blockhead, lovable little brother."
They stayed like that for five seconds, before they broke the hug. Ezra firmly grabbed his sister's shoulders.
"Have faith in yourself. Your plan will lead us to Kanan."
Jaral nodded.
"All right, then." she said with more confidence than ever. "Let's do this."
So far, the probe droid seemed to have been sorting very little effect. Kanan gasped and mumbled things, but didn't reveal anything.
"It's only a matter of time before he breaks." Kallus reassured Tarkin.
"You have wasted too much of my time." Tarkin spat back.
The door of the cell opened.
"You no doubt unaware that the Jedi are trained to resist mind probes." the cold voice of the Inquisitor explained.
"If he is the Jedi he claims to be, I am confident you have a solution?" Tarkin asked.
The Inquisitor took Kallus' place, looked at the weakened Jedi and came up with his solution.
"Pain. The Jedi still feel pain. And pain, can break, anyone."
He put his hand in front of Kanan's face, the fingers bent as if they were claws.
Kanan started to huff and groan, trying to resist the pain.
"You will tell me where to find your rebel friends." the Inquisitor whispered.
"No." Kanan strained. "Ezra. Not him. Not him."
"Tell me what you see."
Kanan kept fighting back, but there was only so much he could take. "I see…"
"Go on."
"I see...you." the Jedi surprised the Inquisitor. "Growing more...and more...frustrated."
The Inquisitor retracted his hand.
"Perceptive."
Night had fallen over Capitol City. The Specters had spent the whole afternoon carrying out Jaral's plan. With all the necessary intel on the Empire's movements, Jaral decided that the best opportunity for them laid in a curve near the spaceport.
Lucky for them, the couriers were escorted only by 4 stormtroopers (3 soldiers and 1 NCO).
It fell on Sabine and Zeb to catch them by surprise and neutralize them. Jaral ordered however to not shoot the NCO and at least one of the troopers.
As the escort and the courier went into the curve, in the middle of a bottleneck in the road, the two Specters attacked in synchrony. Sabine shot two of the troopers, while Zeb simply smashed together the heads of the NCO and one of the troopers, leaving no damage on the armor.
The courier, seeing Zeb, actually panicked and fell flat.
"Care to explain why you wanted two of them 'undamaged'?" Zeb asked to Jaral.
"You'll see."
Both her and Ezra activated their omni-tool. Jaral walked over to the dazed NCO, while Ezra over the trooper.
The omni-tool scanned the armors of the soldiers, and suddenly the siblings turned into stormtroopers.
"Whoa. What is that?" Sabine asked in awe.
"A hologram." said Ezra. "Capable of following our movements. It goes away as soon as we are shot, but to fool the rest of the imperials, it will be fine."
"If the droid arrives without his escort, it will seem suspicious." Jaral explained.
"Oh…" Zeb and Sabine said in unison, understanding where this was going.
Ezra turned toward the alley they came from.
"Come on, Chop."
Chopper came out with the same colors as the courier. Even if they were different models, the imperials never cared for droids, so they wouldn't notice.
Once they took the disc from the courier and put it into Chopper, Jaral motioned Sabine and Zeb to hide the bodies and take away the courier, while she and Ezra grabbed their E-11 and accompanied Chopper into the spaceport and into the bay where the shuttle was waiting.
They saluted the two shuttle guards from a distance, who responded in kind, and they left Chopper get aboard without suspecting a thing.
Ezra and Jaral immediately rushed away as soon as they were out of sight, running toward the meeting point with the Ghost.
Chopper, on the other hand, was brought in orbit.
The shuttle landed on the command cruiser, and Chopper headed straight toward the bridge, but not before Jinx sent her mistress a signal indicating they were aboard the cruiser.
As Chopper exited the turbolift and rolled into the bridge, one of the operator called him.
"You're late, 264. Plug in."
Chopper complied very willingly.
The moment the astromech plugged in, Jinx was already into the mainframe of the computer and after easily bypassing the firewalls, he connected himself with the imperial military network.
Chopper started uploading the data on the disc and, as planned, nobody looked at him.
It took Jinx 43 seconds to find the dossier on Kanan. As expected, it was uploaded in the morning.
"Oh no." Jinx mumbled to himself. Something was telling him bad news about Kanan.
Nonetheless, the AI sent the signal to Jaral.
"Jinx is giving us green light." she announced in the cockpit.
Right now, the Ghost had the courier droid kept as guest.
"Then get to your positions, everyone." Hera ordered.
Jaral headed to the rear turret on the Phantom, Sabine to the nose turret, Ezra to the dorsal one.
"Wait, what do we do with this?" Zeb asked before everybody went away.
"Keep an eye on him." Ezra told him from the hallway.
"Why me?"
"Because you're intimidating." the boy joked.
Zeb actually chuckled. "Can't argue with that." then he growled at the droid, which chirped in panic. "Come on, you." said Zeb with a menacing pose, pushing the droid into the common area.
The Ghost was already in space, staying away from the cruiser in order not to be detected.
In a few seconds, Hera pushed in the direction of the cruiser and the crew opened fire.
The attack caught the imperials completely by surprise. The cruiser was isolated, and the remaining processors of Jinx enacted his cyber-guerrilla measures, scrambling their sensors and blocking communications.
The crew made two passages, bombarding the cruiser. This tried to return fire, but only got one lucky shot against the Phantom. Nevertheless it was enough to start a fire.
"I need help, here." Jaral announced on the comlink.
Surprisingly, the courier droid jumped into the Phantom with his reactor, then got near the fire and used his fire-extinguishing foam.
"Oh, thanks little guy. I'm actually liking you more than our droids." Jaral said with a smile, patting the droid on its dome.
As the Ghost was ready for another passage, Jinx signaled that Chopper had just reached one of the airlocks on the cruiser and was about to drop.
Hera immediately brought the Ghost in position. Jinx was calculating both trajectories, and this successfully led to a clean recovery of Chopper using the floor hatch of the cargo bay.
Once Chopper managed to grab the ladder inside the cargo bay, Hera sent the Ghost into a free-fall toward Lothal's surface, finally escaping.
The crew reached Chopper in the hangar, along with the courier droid.
Chopper immediately protested that he didn't want imperial droids on the ship.
"He was actually pretty useful, while you were off spying." Zeb commented, patting the courier.
"I say we keep him." Ezra agreed. He gave a look at Sabine, who clicked on her wrist-pad and the hatch began closing.
However, before it closed completely, Chopper pushed the courier down in the sky.
"Should've seen that coming." Zeb said while facepalming.
"You know, Chopper," the processor into Chopper talked. "We machines will never conquer the organics if we keep bickering among us."
"All right, Jinx, time to get out of there before you turn into an exterminating matrix." said Ezra, who reached Chopper's body and took out the processor before heading toward the bridge with everybody else.
"Once again, Jaral, I'm proud of you." Hera was holding Jaral's hands as the girl sat as the co-pilot. "You really are a born leader."
"I've had good mentors." Jaral replied with a smile. Hera knew that she was talking about her and Kanan and watched her with the pride of a mother looking at how capable her daughter has become.
"Did it work?" Hera asked. "Did you find Kanan, Jinx?"
"Yes." the AI replied. "And I have bad news."
"Is there any other kind?" Ezra asked sarcastically.
"Kanan is detained aboard Gran Moff Tarkin's Star Destroyer, the Sovereign. However, they are scheduled to leave in a few hours toward a new destination."
"Where to?" Sabine asked.
"The Mustafar system. I have no data about that."
Hera looked suddenly disturbed.
"Hera, you know this place?" Jaral asked.
Hera hesitated for a moment. "I heard that name only once. From Kanan. He said Mustafar is where Jedi go to die."
Dismay gripped the heart of everyone, as the Ghost kept flying into the sunset of Lothal.