Star Wars Rebels: Rise of the Rebels Read online

  Copyright © 2014 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or TM. All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-0284-0

  Visit the official Star Wars website: www.starwars.com

  Contents

  Part 1: The Machine in the Ghost Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part 2: Art Attack Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part 3: Entanglement Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 4: Property of Ezra Bridger Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  About the Author

  To all those new rebels, about to take

  their first steps into a larger world.

  —M.K.

  The Outer Rim.

  It was the largest region of the known galaxy—and the loneliest. Much of it had not yet been mapped. Ships could travel the hyperlanes for years and never run into another soul.

  Such was not the case for the Ghost. The sector of the Outer Rim where it traveled had suddenly become a very busy place. Four flat-winged Imperial TIE fighters screamed after the diamond-shaped freighter in hot pursuit.

  “Kanan.” Hera’s voice crackled over the Ghost’s intercom. “We have a small situation here.”

  Kanan Jarrus hurried down the Ghost’s main corridor to the dorsal turret. He shook his head at Hera’s words. A small situation. Hera loved to understate their challenges. It was her Twi’lek sense of humor.

  In reality, there was nothing funny about being chased by TIEs. They were the Empire’s fastest fighters, flown by the Empire’s best pilots—pilots who were willing to surrender their lives for the greater glory of the New Order.

  A TIE fighter’s lasers shook the ship’s shields, causing Kanan to bump into a wall. He grabbed the turret ladder to steady himself.

  No. Their troubles were far bigger than just a small situation.

  “And if you’d care to blast one of those TIEs out of the galaxy, I don’t think anyone would object,” Hera said through intercom static.

  “Working on it,” Kanan said, climbing the ladder into the turret. Internal microphones would transmit his voice back to Hera in the cockpit. “But it’s not like you gave me a lot of warning.”

  “As I recall, raiding an Imperial convoy was your plan, love,” Hera said.

  Kanan dropped into the turret’s bucket seat. “Well, it made sense at the time.”

  And it had. They’d thought they had hit the jackpot when Chopper, their antique astromech droid, had unscrambled an Imperial military frequency. Comm chatter revealed that nearby cargo ships were transporting minerals used to build the Empire’s war machines. But what Kanan and Hera hadn’t known was that the Empire would have TIE fighters waiting for them. The cargo report had been a trap set to capture rebels.

  Kanan didn’t blame himself. He and Hera would’ve been lazy banthas if they hadn’t done something about the transport convoy. Every chance to end the evil of the Empire had to be taken—no matter how great the risk. That was what Hera always said.

  More lasers hammered the Ghost’s shields. A TIE roared over the freighter. Kanan grabbed the gun grips and spun in his seat, tracking the enemies.

  The TIEs were indeed fast and hard to target. Yet speed had its sacrifices. The Empire had designed their fighters to be all engine, no shields. One or two direct hits could knock out a TIE for good.

  The targeting computer beeped. It had a lock.

  Kanan fired.

  His shots nailed the TIE in one of its twin ion engines. The enemy pilot couldn’t maneuver out of this. His craft exploded in a blaze of light.

  Kanan whirled around in the turret. One down, three to go.

  Hera was nearly blinded in the pilot’s chair. First there was the explosion; then came a barrage of laser fire from the remaining TIEs. The light was so intense that even Hera’s Twi’lek head-tails twitched.

  Laser fire shouldn’t be that bright. The shields should have lessened the intensity. It could mean only one thing.

  “Shields down!” Hera shouted after checking her scopes. “Chopper, fix them!”

  Behind her, the astromech unit C1-10P, otherwise known as “Chopper,” uttered a sound halfway between a snort and a beep. He was an old and moody little machine, always whining about this or that. But as much as the droid complained, and as out of date as his model was, Hera wanted no one else repairing the Ghost. Chopper connected with the ship’s systems far better than any flesh-and-blood mechanic or new droid model ever could.

  Chopper extended one of his repair arms into a socket and got to work. Meanwhile, Hera toggled switches on the control panel. They were going to need every boost of speed they had to avoid the TIEs until the shields were online again.

  Kanan wasn’t making their job any easier. His next shot completely missed. But the oncoming TIE didn’t. Its lasers hammered the Ghost’s hull, rattling Hera in her seat.

  She slapped the intercom. “Kanan, what part of ‘blast them’ did you not understand?” she said while steering the ship into an evasive roll.

  Hera expected one of Kanan’s wry replies. He had a thousand one-liners ready to go. Humorous banter was their way of keeping their heads cool during life-and-death moments. But there was no response through the intercom.

  “Kanan?” Hera stabbed at the intercom button again. “Kanan, do you read?”

  There was nothing but static. If the TIE’s blasts had somehow hit the turret and she’d lost Kanan, she didn’t know what she’d do. Kanan Jarrus was more than a friend or a colleague. The human meant the world to her—although she’d never admit it to him.

  A burst of cannon fire from the turret relieved her worries. Kanan was still there in the turret, fighting the good fight. The enemy’s shot must have destroyed only a communication module.

  “Internal comm is out,” Hera said to Chopper. “Go back to comm control and fix it.”

  Chopper let out a high-pitched whine that exasperated Hera. This was no time for complaining.

  “I know you’re fixing the shields,” Hera said, jerking the flight stick from side to side. “But I need the comm operational to coordinate our attack. Now go before I pull your battery!”

  Chopper grunted and withdrew his arm from the socket. A third round of cannon fire rang out from Kanan’s turret. The closest TIE swerved around the bolts and came at the Ghost for another laser strafing run.

  “And while you’re back there,” Hera said as the droid rolled out of the cockpit, “tell Kanan to please hit something!”

  Chopper trundled down the corridor, grumbling in low tones. Do this, Chopper. Do that, Chopper. Hera and Kanan were always telling him to get things done—things that always had to be done now. Yet when was the last time they had thanked him with a lubrication bath? It had been thirty-two days, twenty-three hours, fifty-seven minutes, and four seconds since his last dip. Pa
rts of him were getting rusty. Rust slowed his joints. Rust made his circuits misfire. Rust made him crabbier.

  Chopper stopped before the turret. Inside, Kanan whirled in his seat, trying to get a lock on the approaching TIE.

  Chopper chirped for Kanan to shoot better. The droid knew Kanan couldn’t understand exactly what he said without a translation screen. That was one of the difficulties of working with organic beings. Their brains couldn’t handle binary.

  Kanan pressed the gun triggers. This round didn’t miss. It reduced the enemy fighter to space dust.

  “I’m a little busy, Chop,” Kanan said, scanning for the other two TIEs.

  So am I, Chopper wanted to reply. But the droid kept those beeps to himself. He started to move away to the comm center.

  “Wait…” Kanan said. He looked down at the droid from the turret. “What are you doing back here? Shouldn’t you be fixing the shields?”

  Chopper rasped Hera’s message to Kanan in binary.

  Kanan shook his head and fired again. His shots kept the two TIEs from getting closer. “Did you say you’re fixing the comm?” he asked.

  Chopper revolved his dome toward Kanan. The droid had to admit this human was one of the smarter organics he’d worked with. Kanan Jarrus often got the gist of what Chopper chirped.

  Kanan didn’t wait for Chopper’s response as he pumped the cannons. “Because I don’t need to talk to ‘Captain’ Hera right now. What I need is for you to get back there and fix the shields!”

  Chopper groaned. He could have fixed either the shields or the comm unit during the 34.2 seconds he had wasted here. He turned around and headed back toward the cockpit.

  “Oh, yeah,” Kanan yelled from the turret. “When you see Hera, tell her to fly better.”

  Chopper repeated his low-toned grumbles. Organics were so inefficient in communicating with each other.

  Hera jerked the flight yoke right and left to avoid the TIEs’ lasers. The navicomputer showed that the two fighters blocked the escape vector into hyperspace. If Kanan couldn’t do his job and blast them, she’d have to find a way to get rid of them.

  Chopper reentered the cockpit. The droid whistled something that sounded like she needed to fly better.

  “Oh, he said that, did he?” Hera yanked the yoke to one side, pulling the Ghost in a fast arc around a TIE. Her fingers danced on the controls. The nose gun’s targeting system came online. Almost immediately she had a lock on the TIE.

  “Do I have to do everything myself?” she said, pressing the firing button.

  The TIE stood no chance against her attack from behind. Its explosion reminded Hera of fireworks on her homeworld of Ryloth.

  “There, I just reduced Kanan’s targets by half.” Hera glanced over her green head-tails at the droid. “Tell our fearless leader he should be able to handle one lone TIE fighter on his own.”

  Chopper blurted out something and turned back toward the corridor.

  “What was that?” Hera asked. She heard nothing more as the droid rolled off.

  When Chopper was out of Hera’s visual range, he angrily waved two of his repair arms back in her direction. This was ridiculous. Going back and forth, like a computer program caught in a never-ending loop. Meanwhile, without shields, the Ghost had nothing but a thin layer of hull plating to keep them all from being obliterated.

  While Hera and Kanan might be reckless with their lives, Chopper actually cared about his circuits’ continuing to operate. And though he’d never tell them in binary, he cared about theirs, too. His programming instructed him to preserve their lives at all costs.

  That was why he wheeled past the turret without stopping.

  “Chopper?” Kanan said. The human must have heard the rust in his joints. “Chopper, where are you going?”

  Chopper didn’t answer. There wasn’t a microsecond to spare. His logic chips assured him that what he was doing wasn’t disobedience, because Hera had not told Chopper precisely when to relay to Kanan what she’d said. Chopper could tell Kanan after he was finished saving them all.

  Chopper entered the Phantom, the small craft attached to the tail section of the Ghost. Its cockpit was cramped. Its control panel lacked multiple banks of switches and status gauges. It had no navicomputer, because it had no hyperdrive.

  But the Phantom didn’t need all those features. The vessel was designed for one function and one function only.

  To fight.

  Chopper extended his arm into the main socket. On the control panel, the targeting screen powered on. The droid uploaded a batch of commands.

  Unlike the Ghost, which often responded rudely to what Chopper asked it to do, the Phantom followed Chopper’s commands without objection. Its laser cannons angled toward the TIE fighter that streaked past. Chopper waited for the right moment to tell it to fire.

  The Imperial pilot likely believed he had a bull’s-eye shot at the Ghost. But the pilot never got to unload his lasers. In the moment before he could fire, the Phantom’s cannons atomized the enemy ship.

  Chopper headed back to the Ghost’s cockpit, this time tootling a victory tune.

  “All right, I admit it,” Hera said from the cockpit. “That was some fine shooting.”

  Chopper rolled through the doorway and let out a string of triumphant beeps. Then he saw Kanan was also in the cockpit, facing Hera. “Thanks. You too,” the human said to Hera.

  Chopper realized that Hera hadn’t been talking to him. Rather, the two organics were communicating with each other. And they stood rather close to each other—a third of a meter closer than usual, to be exact.

  Chopper excused himself with a sharp beep and moved to go.

  “Just kidding, Chop,” Kanan said. He turned away from Hera and crouched at the droid’s level.

  “We know you got the last one,” Hera said. “Good work.”

  Chopper looked at them for a moment, then waved away their praise with a socket arm. His circuits had trouble processing what organics wanted when they displayed too much emotion. It was illogical. It was what they called “sappy.”

  What Chopper wanted more than their praise was an oil bath. It had now been thirty-three days since—

  “Now get that comm fixed,” Kanan said.

  “And the shields. Don’t forget the shields,” Hera said.

  Chopper shifted his dome’s photoreceptors from the human to the Twi’lek. Was this another display of emotion? Or one of their so-called jokes?

  His logic chip couldn’t figure out the difference. But the chip did inform him that because his friends’ lives were no longer in danger, he needed to attend to those duties they had requested.

  As he went to do so, the droid popped off a long stream of grumbles.

  “What was that?” Kanan and Hera asked.

  Chopper rolled forward to a central computer socket. The Ghost’s complicated electronic systems and engines were things he could understand. Organics, on the other hand, tended to say one thing but mean something else.

  And they obviously didn’t understand the need for lubrication baths.

  A thousand thousand worlds sparkled in the night sky above the capital city of Lothal.

  Sabine found the view breathtaking as she scaled the city wall. The galaxy’s Outer Rim was such a big place. So many planets, so many stars, with names like Lasan, Utapau, and Mandalore, her birth world. All teeming with mysteries and diverse species.

  She wanted to visit them all. She wanted to have a thousand thousand adventures on those thousand thousand worlds. She wanted her name and her artwork to be known across the stars.

  That was impossible with the Empire in control of the galaxy.

  The Imperials did everything they could to limit personal freedom, including suppressing creative talent. They cracked down on anyone whose work didn’t glorify the Emperor’s New Order.

/>   Their efforts didn’t frighten her in the least. They only made her want to paint more images that defied the Empire.

  No one was going to squash Sabine Wren.

  Hard clack-clacks echoed in the street below. Sabine recognized that sound immediately. Imperial stormtroopers.

  She tightened her grip and leaned close against the wall she climbed. She must remain unseen. Stormtrooper blasters were hardly ever set to “stun.”

  She turned her head for a glance below. Her helmet’s internal display magnified a squad of white-armored stormtroopers surrounding some unlucky bystander. Their commander shoved the bystander to the ground.

  “Move along! This is a restricted area,” the commander said, his stern voice filtered through his helmet.

  The bystander, a city resident whom Sabine didn’t know, crawled back up and scurried off. The stormtrooper commander then gestured. His squad scanned the streets for other trespassers.

  Right as the commander turned toward the wall, Sabine climbed over the ledge. She laid her body flat along the top and waited. One heartbeat. Two heartbeats. Three…

  She hoped that if one of the stormtroopers did spot her, he would pause in fear at the sight of her Mandalorian helmet. There were few signs of her people in the galaxy these days other than the notorious bounty hunter Boba Fett, who wore Mandalorian armor. His captures and kills had only helped spread the legend that the Mandalorians were the most fearsome warriors in the galaxy.

  One day, maybe her own name would have a similar effect. Sabine Wren. Another Mando you didn’t want to mess with. A great warrior and a great artist.

  The sounds of boots echoed again on the pavement and started to fade. The stormtroopers were marching away. Sabine was safe—for the moment.