Battle to the End Page 2

  Sabine jumped up to get a better view. Kanan guessed she was smiling under her helmet. Rhydonium was her favorite fuel for a reason: it was highly explosive.

  The troopers and the two other turrets all turned to attack Sabine. No one noticed Zeb zooming in behind them. He hopped off his bike, landed on a turret, and hurled the gunner out of his seat. Taking control of the trigger, he blasted the other antiaircraft gun to pieces.

  Kanan and Ezra then rode in, with Chopper on the back of Ezra’s bike. Zeb provided cover with his cannon as they all hustled through the tower doors, which were unlocked. Startled by the sudden alarms that blared, low-level Imperials bustled about until Sabine stunned them with precision shots. Kanan yanked off a control panel and shut off the alarms.

  Chopper extracted Sabine’s data spike from his dome and rolled to a console. He inserted the spike into an outlet and began the upload.

  Everything was going according to plan.

  Then Ezra looked out the doors. “Time’s up,” he said.

  Kanan went to Ezra’s side at the door. Three Imperial gunships descended from the air, and two troop transports approached from the freeway. Though Zeb’s cannon eliminated one gunship, he knew there was no way they would be able to repel the rest. Particularly when he felt a dark presence among the Imperials.

  The Inquisitor was leading the attack.

  “Sabine, we got targets incoming. Let’s move.” Kanan told Ezra to grab Zeb, then commed Hera to change the pickup point from the front of the tower to its top. She wasn’t happy, but there was no other way they could evade the troopers that were in the transports.

  Sabine and Chopper finished the upload and removed the data spike just as Ezra returned with Zeb. Kanan ordered them all back into the tower’s turbolift.

  “What about you?” Ezra asked.

  Kanan ignited his lightsaber. “I’ll take the next one.”

  Blaster bolts sizzled through the air around them. “Let’s go,” Zeb said, gesturing for Ezra to come inside the tower. The boy stepped back, but Kanan could sense his worry in the Force.

  “Ezra, I’ll be right behind you,” he said. They looked at each other for a moment; then Zeb closed the tower doors.

  Kanan blocked the entrance and waited for the Imperials. The transports halted just outside the doors. Stormtroopers funneled out from hatches, Agent Kallus with them. “Now this is a familiar situation,” Kallus said, spotting Kanan.

  “Same situation, same ending,” Kanan said. “You lose.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kallus said.

  One of the gunships circled the tower’s summit while the other descended to the entrance. The second ship’s hatch opened, and out leapt the Inquisitor.

  Kanan swung his blade and slashed the portal control panel, shutting the tower doors for good. Given the Imperials’ firepower, such an action wouldn’t delay them for long. But every second was precious in helping his crewmates escape. And before the Imperials made it to the doors, they would have to deal with him.

  The Inquisitor was the first to come forward, his red blade hissing. “What did you hope to gain by coming here?”

  “You’re clever. Figure it out,” Kanan said, and attacked.

  Their blades met, locked, disengaged, then locked again. Energy crackled as each tried to push the other back. Finally, both withdrew. “You’ve been practicing,” the Inquisitor said.

  “Nice of you to notice,” Kanan replied.

  The Inquisitor grinned. “There’s someone who wants to meet you. If you surrender now, he might let your friends live.”

  Kanan stood straight and seemed to consider the Inquisitor’s proposition. He retracted his blade, as if in surrender.

  “Unexpected,” the Inquisitor said, still on guard.

  “We’re full of surprises,” Kanan said.

  His comm beeped and lasers suddenly lit up the sky. The Inquisitor, Kallus, and the stormtroopers looked up to see the Inquisitor’s gunship explode from unexpected fire. The small auxiliary craft the rebels had dubbed the Phantom streaked through its debris.

  Kanan had retracted his blade to signal Hera to strike. Now he used the confusion of the moment to reignite his lightsaber and attack.

  It was not enough; the Inquisitor blocked all Kanan’s thrusts. Nor did the explosion of the remaining gunship—which Kanan assumed to be the handiwork of Sabine and her detonators—surprise the Inquisitor again. It further incensed him, and he struck back at Kanan with great fury. Soon Kanan lost his advantage and was pushed back toward the base of the tower.

  Ezra’s voice echoed over the tumult of combat. “Kanan!”

  Kanan glanced up to see the Phantom hovering at the top of the tower, its rear hatch opening. Sabine, Zeb, and Chopper sprang inside. But Ezra hesitated, staring down at Kanan, until laser fire from the troop transports forced him to go through the hatch.

  The Inquisitor lunged with ferocious speed. Kanan managed to duck and grabbed his comm. “Spectre-Two, get out of here!”

  As he continued to dodge and block, Hera’s voice crackled over his comm: “Not an option, Kanan!”

  “No time—go!” he shouted, leaping away from a would-be finishing blow.

  The Phantom rocked in the sky, taking hit after hit from the troop transports’ cannons. Kanan couldn’t fight the Inquisitor and try to persuade his crewmates to leave at the same time. Pinned against the tower, deflecting the Inquisitor’s strokes, he yelled his best friend’s name—“Hera!”—adding urgency through the Force.

  Though the Phantom swayed in the air for a moment, Hera did as he requested. The hatch closed, and the craft turned away from the tower, braving enemy fire to shoot off into the night.

  The Inquisitor also saw the ship’s departure and relented in his attack, though Kanan could not have blocked if he had tried. He had no energy left. He fell to his knees.

  The Inquisitor pointed the tip of his blade at Kanan’s throat. But Kanan realized it was an empty threat. The Inquisitor would have killed him earlier otherwise. “Looks like I have time to meet your friend after all,” Kanan said.

  Agent Kallus, watching all this from the background, made a comm call. The stormtroopers put Kanan in shackles. Kanan did not resist.

  AT SUNRISE, another Imperial gunship landed. A man as slender as a knife disembarked and walked toward them. Kanan recognized him immediately, even though the man was helmeted: Grand Moff Tarkin, governor of the Outer Rim Territories.

  Tarkin walked over to them, a thin smile on his thin lips. “Well done, Inquisitor. These are the results I expected.” He turned to Kanan. “So…you are the ‘Jedi’ in question?”

  “Whatever you want from me, you won’t get it,” Kanan said.

  “Sir, we have a problem,” Kallus said, hurrying to Tarkin’s side. “It appears the insurgents have gained control of the tower’s transmitter.”

  Kallus held up his comlink, which was broadcasting Ezra’s voice. He didn’t sound at all like the sarcastic boy Kanan taught, but strong and clear like the man of fierce conviction Kanan knew he was becoming.

  “We have been called criminals, but we are not. We are rebels, fighting for the people, fighting for you.” Kanan smiled while Tarkin scowled. Ezra’s broadcast continued. “See what the Empire has done to your lives, your families, and your freedom—”

  Tarkin motioned to the gunship captain. “Have all gunships in the vicinity launch their rockets at the tower.”

  The captain nodded and relayed the orders.

  “Governor,” Kallus countered, “you know a strike of that magnitude will destroy the communications tower?”

  “Precisely,” Tarkin said. He boarded his gunship, and Kallus and the Inquisitor followed, with Kanan held prisoner between them.

  When the rockets began to hit the tower, Tarkin turned to Kanan. “You do not know what it takes to win a war. But I do.”

  Kanan glared at Tarkin. The Inquisitor might emanate the dark side, but the Grand Moff was a man of colder, purer evil. />
  Tarkin had to be stopped, at all costs, or the galaxy would suffer greatly.

  For years, Ezra had mimicked voices he’d heard, particularly Imperial ones, in mocking defiance. Never in a heartbeat did he think that ability would come to good use. But when addressing the holotransmitter in the main cabin of the Ghost, he relied on it to speak with confidence, despite feeling otherwise.

  “It’s only going to get worse, unless we stand up and fight back. And it won’t be easy. There’ll be loss,” he said, taking a breath to remember Kanan, “and there will be sacrifice. But we can’t back down just because we’re afraid. That’s when we need to stand the tallest.”

  Hera strode out of the shadows to join Ezra before the camera. Chopper wheeled in next; then Zeb plodded over. Sabine was the last, yet stood right by Ezra’s side.

  “Stand up together. Because that’s when we’re strongest,” Ezra told his invisible audience, “as one.”

  Static suddenly burst through the comm unit, and the holotransmitter’s camera shuttered. The Imperials must have found a way to cut off their connection to the tower.

  “Was it worth it?” Ezra asked. “You think anybody heard?”

  “I have a feeling they did,” Hera said.

  Ezra exhaled and looked at his crewmates—his family. They seemed so much smaller without Kanan. “This isn’t over,” he said.

  The Empire might have taken his parents, but they would not take his Jedi Master.

  AFTER DOCKING the Phantom with its mother ship, the Ghost, Hera went into her personal cabin. She had received an encrypted call over the holonet from a very important contact. Hera accepted the message, and Fulcrum’s distorted voice, scrambled beyond recognition, filled her cabin. “Kanan knew the risks and had accepted them. I’m sorry, but you must focus on your next objective.”

  Hera was insulted that Fulcrum would give up on Kanan so easily. “Kanan is our objective. We can still find him.”

  “At what cost? You? Your unit? The overall mission?” Fulcrum asked. “There’s something else, Hera. The transmission Ezra was able to beam out has attracted attention, and not just from civilians but from the highest levels of the Empire.”

  Hera hesitated. Perhaps her contact had a point. Fulcrum was always considering the long-term strategy. “It was Kanan’s plan. I guess it worked,” she said.

  “Your mission was to be unseen, unnoticed,” Fulcrum lectured. “And now—”

  Hera spoke out in defense of her friend. “Kanan wanted to inspire people. He wanted to give them hope.”

  “Well, he was successful,” Fulcrum said. “But if you are caught—if Ezra is caught—that hope will die. To protect your unit, and Ezra, you must stop your search for Kanan and go into hiding. Do you understand?”

  Fulcrum’s last words were not a question but a command. The transmission ended, and she sat on her bunk. Where did her loyalties lie? With her best friend or with the growing rebellion?

  She knew what Kanan would tell her: “Forget about me. Stay focused on the mission. Do as Fulcrum requests.”

  It was the same thing she would have told Kanan if she had been the one captured. Part of her wished she had been so she wouldn’t have to make this kind of decision.

  Ezra gathered Sabine and Zeb in the Ghost’s common room, where they studied a map of Lothal to try to determine where Kanan was being held. It was frustrating, because that place could be anywhere on the planet.

  “Odds are they’ve still got him at the Imperial complex,” Sabine said.

  “If they do, we all know he’s as good as gone,” Zeb said.

  Ezra fumed at such talk. “He’s not gone! And he’s not in the Imperial complex!”

  “How do you know that?” Zeb asked.

  “I just know!” He stalked around the room, wishing he could explain how. But that would be impossible, because he couldn’t explain it to himself. All the Force told him was that his master was somewhere out there, still alive.

  Sabine wouldn’t be convinced. “We can’t make a plan based on a feeling.”

  “Yes, we can—we do it all the time!” Ezra said. Didn’t they remember the mission to Stygeon Prime or to the asteroid where the fyrnocks lurked? All their plans had been based on Kanan’s feelings.

  “Not this time,” Hera said as she entered the common room, looking exhausted and somber, as if she had just attended a funeral. “We can’t risk it.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?” Ezra couldn’t believe what he was hearing. These were Kanan’s friends—his family.

  “Ezra,” Hera said gently, “there’s a bigger mission you’re not seeing. We can’t be jeopardized for one soldier.”

  “Soldier? He’s our friend. He’d do whatever it took to protect us.”

  “He already did when he sacrificed himself for us,” Hera said. “He’d want us to honor the choice he made.”

  Sabine and Zeb seemed to accept Hera’s command without argument. Ezra stormed out, wanting to yell at all of them. But he couldn’t get out the words. Because deep down, he knew Hera was right.

  The problem was he also knew he was right.

  He went into the cabin he shared with Zeb to do what he had never done on his own before. He meditated, like his master. Maybe the Force would inspire him. Maybe it would devise a plan to save Kanan.

  When he opened his eyes, he found himself standing in the doorway of Kanan’s cabin. He didn’t remember walking there. But he accepted it, like he accepted that Chopper was also in the cabin, looking around and beeping softly, as if mourning Kanan’s loss like a living being.

  “I miss him, too,” Ezra said. “But I have a plan to find him. Wanna help?”

  The droid, one of the great naysayers of the universe, chirped an emphatic yes. Now all Ezra had to do was persuade Sabine and Zeb to do likewise.

  “I WILL ASK YOU AGAIN. Where is your rebel hideout?”

  When Kallus received no response from Kanan Jarrus, he ordered the interrogation droid to administer another dose of truth serum. The droid floated forward and poked the rebel prisoner with one of the many needles that stuck out of its ball-shaped body. After the droid withdrew the needle and floated back, Kanan twitched in his restraining chair.

  “It’s only a matter of time before he breaks,” Kallus told Tarkin, who had come to watch the most recent session.

  Tarkin snorted. “You have wasted enough of my time.”

  The door opened and the Inquisitor entered the detention cell. He strode forward, casting a dismissive glance at the droid and Kallus. “You are no doubt unaware that Jedi are trained to resist mind probes.”

  Kallus frowned. Not only was he following standard Imperial interrogation procedure, but no one in his experience had ever been able to resist the truth serum. It just took time.

  Tarkin, however, seemed intrigued. “If he is the Jedi he claims to be, I take it you have a solution?”

  “Pain,” the Inquisitor said as if it was obvious. “The Jedi still feels pain. And pain can break anyone.”

  He stretched out his black-gloved hand. Kanan’s head suddenly shot forward, stopping centimeters from the Inquisitor’s palm. “You will tell me where to find your rebel friends,” the Inquisitor said.

  Kanan seemed to bob in and out of consciousness, his speech slurred. “No…Ezra…not him.”

  The Inquisitor leaned closer. “What do you see?”

  “I see…” Kanan’s eyes rolled back, and he shook off his grogginess with a smile. “I see you, growing more and more frustrated.”

  The Inquisitor was not pleased. “How perceptive. Perhaps you can help alleviate my frustration.”

  The Inquisitor gestured with a finger, activating a feature of the chair Kallus had reserved for the final stage of interrogation. Kanan’s binders sparked, conducting electricity through his body.

  Kallus left the detention cell, realizing his presence was no longer required. He could hear Kanan’s cries far down the hallway.

  None revealed the location of the r
ebel hideout.

  SABINE LANDED the Phantom outside the ancient stone circle, near another starship, the Broken Horn. Ezra gave her a reassuring nod as they joined Zeb leaving the ship. Ezra’s pleas to save Kanan had won over Sabine, and once she agreed to ignore Hera’s orders, Zeb followed suit. Still, Ezra felt guilty about defying Hera. She had done so much for him, and now he was repaying her with disobedience. She deserved better.

  He walked over to the gangster they’d dealt with on many occasions, Cikatro Vizago. The green-skinned Devaronian, whose split left horn matched the name of his vessel, was overseeing his enforcer droids as they carried cargo crates into his freighter. He raised an eye ridge when he saw Ezra. “This is unexpected. Looking for work, or something else?”

  Sabine and Zeb stood behind Ezra as he spoke. “My guess is you already know why we’re here.”

  Vizago hesitated, as if thinking over his words. “I don’t know where your friend is. I’m sorry.”

  It was a lame apology. Ezra took a step closer. “You must’ve heard something?”

  “Even if I did know something, it would be of no use to you. In fact, I think your activities got the Empire’s attention and have made things more difficult for me. So get out of here. You’re bad luck.” Vizago went to board his own ship.

  In the past, Ezra would have overreacted. But because of what Kanan had taught him, he let go of his anger. “Ever wonder why the Empire was so interested in Kanan? Why they’d send an Inquisitor to Lothal?”

  Sabine removed her helmet. “Ezra, don’t.”

  Vizago turned around. “No. Please, do.”

  All eyes suddenly fell on Ezra, even the photoreceptors of Vizago’s enforcers. Ezra hadn’t planned what to say next, so he just told the truth: “Because Kanan is a Jedi.”