A Call for Help

~Part Five~

Ezra’s stomach dropped. Emperor Palpatine? Alive? How? Luke had assured them that he was dead. Killed in front of his own eyes. He gritted his teeth. Why did the Sith have to be so resilient?

“From your lack of response I assume you’re shocked to the core and are coming with us.” Lando said grimly. “We have a few more systems to stop at before we regroup. We’re gonna need every able fighter we can find. Is there anyone else on the surface with a ship who might be willing to join us?”

Sabine was the first one to recover from the news. “Yes,” she said, “There are a few new republic soldiers who’ll come along, and if we put out a message I’m sure there’ll be others too.”

“Alright,” Lando replied, “Make it quick.”

Sooner than expected, 4 ships emerged from the planets surface, and they all jumped away. Jacen had added a few more systems to Lando’s list, and their first stop was Ryloth. He hoped Numa and her rebels were still alive and putting up a fight.

As they jumped from system to system, Lando explained everything to them, and they explained why they couldn’t make it to Crait, and how terribly sorry they were about it. The situation was far worse than they’d feared and they finally understood Lando’s urgency.

By the time they were ready to jump to Exegol they had acquired pretty much the biggest fleet ever. It wasn’t a Navy, it wasn’t even a coordinated group of fighters. It was just…people. All of them fed up tyranny and oppression. All of them ready to die to be free.

They’d had no word from Exegol for far too long and knew the situation must have been dire. Lando signalled to all the ships to set their navi-computers, prime their hyperdrives, and make the jump on his mark.

3…2…1…

And just like that they were hovering over the most devastating battleground they had ever seen. Jacen’s eyes were wide. Ezra swore. Over the comm they heard Poe say, “I’m sorry…I thought we had a shot. There’s just too many of them…”

He sounded so dejected it broke Jacen’s heart. He wanted to scream “We’re here!” But Lando beat him to it.

“But there are more of us Poe,” He said. “There are more of us.”

That’s when Poe spotted them. The Falcon, and the Ghost right beside them, leading their new-found forces into the fray.

“Hey! Spectre 8!”Jacen shouted over the comm. Giddy with glee. “You miss me?”

Poe’s face lit up like a summers day, and then he just started to laugh. “Let’s show these guys how real rebels fly,” he replied. “Hit those underbelly cannons,” he announced to the whole fleet. “Every one we knock out is a world saved.”

And that was all it took. Soon, Star destroyers were going down in flames all around them. They heard cheers as well as painful cries over the comm, but the battle raged on.

On and on and on. Until they won.

~The End~

A Call For Help

~Part One ~

Soon after the destruction of the Republic in the Hosnian System, reports of First Oder fleets occupying worlds in the outer rim had come flooding in. The crew of The Ghost were the first to see them in action. They had been on Ryloth, scouting an old rebel base for supplies, and giving Jacen a chance to visit his family home, when an enormous star destroyer dropped out of hyperspace right above them.

“Woah”, Ezra said as he saw it in full view from his perch in the turret gun. “What is that thing?”

“It’s huge,” Jacen muttered.

“We have to get out of here,” finished Sabine.

“Did we get everything we need?”, Ezra inquired.

“Doesn’t matter”

“Of course it does!”

“Not if we don’t make it off the planet!”

“Will you two knock it of!” Jacen interjected.

Chopper grumbled in agreement.

“Honestly Chop, how did you deal with them for so many years?”

“Please,” Ezra scoffed, “Your parents were way worse. Let’s get going.”

“Chop, Scramble the Ghosts signature” Sabine ordered as they pulled away. And just in time too. Moments after they’d cleared the surface, that monstrosity of a ship had opened fire on the planet and destroyed the entire city that they had just left behind.

“No!” Jacen yelled, “We have to help them! I’m turning the ship around.”

“We help them by surviving Jacen” Sabine said kindly. “If we go back now we’ll die for nothing.”

Jacen looked close to tears. He’d grown up on space stations and rebel bases but Ryloth was his home. He couldn’t stand to see it helpless like this. His family had fought too hard for their freedom to lose it all over again.

“Let’s head back to Lothal” Ezra suggested. “We can lay low for a little while and figure out what we’re up against. Then we’ll be back. I promise.”

When they arrived in Capital City on Lothal, they headed for Ezra’s house(well, it was all of theirs now but it used to belong to his parents). Lothal was one of the few safe planets that hadn’t fallen under oppressive rule in decades. It was the only place they had left where no one was trying to kill them…most of the time.

Sabine went to research about the new murder ship with chopper and Ezra went to take a nap, or maybe he was meditating. Jacen didn’t know or care. He stayed on the ship and pulled up a bunch of old holos of his parents. He had collected a small stash of them over the years. There were pictures of them together from long before he was born, recordings his father had made for Ezra’s Jedi training, a few that his mother had made when she was training Phoenix Squadron. He’d even found a birthday message from his second or third birthday with the whole crew that he’d watch over and over again. His grandfather had been in that one too. As he skimmed through the holos he thought about his mother. How she’d spent her whole life trying to make the galaxy a better place for him to live in. Seeing her home planet get destroyed, he felt like he’d failed her, and everyone who’d come before her. His whole family had spent their lives fighting, Hera had only hoped that Jacen wouldn’t have to. He would never forget the look on her face when they new war began. She was more heartbroken than anyone.

Jacen slept on the ship that night. It was the last piece of his family he had left. Whenever he was on The Ghost he felt like he was surrounded by his mother and father’s warm embrace. He felt like a child, safe in his mothers arms, and he loved it.

The next morning they gathered in the house so Sabine could brief them about the First Order’s new ships. They were Dreadnaught class, but far more dangerous than the old separatist frigates that shared the same name. These ships were equipped with what was essentially miniaturised death star tech. They couldn’t blow up a planet, but a city, a few ships, definitely. This was bad. They had no real way to combat these things without fighters or bombers. They were alone, their best plan right now was just to avoid them.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, contemplating their new adversary, when Ezra’s head suddenly jerked up. Jacen hated when he did that, he always knew something was about to happen.

Sure enough Ezra said, “Something’s coming,” right before a First Order fleet dropped out of Hyperspace right above them.

To be continued…

Is Ezra Bridger the greatest Jedi in Star Wars canon?

Photo Credits: Star Wars Rebels

Children of the Rebellion

Jacen and Syndulla and Poe Dameron grew up together. Their parents were Rebel leaders, and all they ever wanted to do was be just like them. As it turned out, they both grew up to be exactly the reckless flyboys they’d hoped.

Jacen taught Poe about the force and the Jedi, telling him amazing stories about his father and his adventures, and Poe had an absurd amount of smuggler stories to share with Jacen. They were both born to fly. “I’m gonna be the best pilot in the galaxy one day,” Jacen would say. “Better than Han Solo?”, Poe would tease. “Better than my mom”, Jacen would reply with conviction. Then Poe would smile, “We’ll be better than all of them.”

They decided that they would start fighting for the rebellion together as soon as they could and that Poe could join the crew of the Ghost as Spectre 8. Luckily or unluckily for them, the war ended before they were even old enough to fly. They joined the New Republic Fighter Academy instead, and became part of the Navy but then Poe went on a different path for a while…

When Poe joined The Resistance, Jacen was the first person he called. He told Jacen to join them as well and he obliged. They fought together on the ghost and i their X-wings. Sabine, Ezra and Chopper were still part of the crew and they sort of adopted Poe. But as time went by Poe was needed on more and more for spy and stealth missions, which he went on alone, and Jacen and the Ghost crew spent more and more time in the outer rim protecting the planets with no military from the rising First Order. General Organa had wanted them to regroup with The Resistance fleet at their new base in the Illenium system but the Ghost crew refused to leave the outer rim undefended.

When they saw the strike from Starkiller base they were devastated, but still they did not regroup. When they received the distress call from Crait they were in the middle of a battle on Lothal, the one place they wouldn’t leave for anything. Poe thought that even if only one person heard that call and came to help it would be Jacen, and when he didn’t show it broke his heart. Poe knew that wherever Jacen was he was saving lives, but it still hurt.

Finally, at the battle of Exegol, they were reunited. When Poe saw the Falcon emerge from hyperspace with the Ghost right behind, he was so overjoyed he nearly got shot out of the sky. “Hey! Spectre 8!” Jacen said, “You miss me?”. Poe just laughed, “Let’s show these guys how real rebels fly.”

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Photo Credits: Artwork by me.