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10BBY
"I have a bad feeling about this."
Kanan scrubbed a hand through his hair and grimaced at the crater-covered planet currently filling the Ghost’s forward viewport. In the moments since they’d emerged from hyperspace, a ball of dread had formed heavy in the pit of his stomach.
"Relax," Hera told him, waving a hand dismissively. "I’ve done this a hundred times before."
He tried to push down his misgivings about what they were about to do. Hera was an excellent pilot, after all; convincing Okadiah’s old hoverbus to fly had fallen several steps down the list of unbelievable aerial manoeuvres he’d seen her pull off in the eight months since.
A flare of bright orange caught his eye. A meteorite had entered the planet’s atmosphere and was burning up on re-entry, though it was far from the only one they would see that day. The planet orbited its star in the middle of an asteroid belt and collisions were frequent. It was what had made it such an attractive spot for the Pykes to set up their doonium mining operation – the rich ore deposits were protected by the natural barrier of the asteroids.
It was also what made it so appealing to Hera as a target for theft. The Pykes had left minimal security around the planet, only a few sensors tracking incoming atmospheric objects for electrical signals, and Hera had said that was practically an invitation to liberate some high-value cargo. The same asteroids that protected their base also prevented them from having anything more comprehensive in the way of surveillance, and it was this flaw in their security that the Ghost would be exploiting.
Word from Hera’s contact was that any ship entering the planet’s atmosphere would be indistinguishable from the asteroids to the Pyke’s scanners – as long as all systems were completely powered down. From there, all you had to do was wait until you were below a certain altitude to power back on, and you were literally flying under their radar.
Of course, thanks to her aforementioned incredible skills, Hera made all of this seem much easier than it was. She’d have to perfectly judge their angle of entry so that they wouldn’t come in too fast (and therefore too hot) or too slow (and risk overshooting completely), avoid any asteroids on the way, and then time the restarting of the Ghost’s systems to the second to make sure that they weren’t detected – but also that they didn’t hit the ground in one final, explosive landing.
All things considered, Kanan thought his bad feeling was pretty justified. But as she had said, Hera claimed to have done this several times before and had made a good profit from it. Who was he to doubt her quick, easy way to earn a few credits?
Someone who hadn’t done this before, that’s who. Someone who was afraid of the Pykes, the asteroids, and hitting the ground at terminal velocity – and rightly so.
Hera began flipping the switches to power down the Ghost’s core systems. Chopper was already off, having calculated their angle of entry immediately after they exited hyperspace, and they’d already shut down the non-essential systems in preparation. This part was easy; the part Kanan was nervous about was turning them back on.
Kanan felt the shudder as the sublight engines were switched off. He heard the sudden silence as the atmospherics stopped circulating air and felt the weightlessness as the gravity generators went offline. His seatbelt held him down in the co-pilot’s chair, but he noticed Hera’s lekku rising slightly to float just around her shoulders. Now began the slow descent towards the planet’s surface. He wasn’t sure whether to close his eyes and leave the whole op in Hera’s hands, or keep them open and watch death rush towards him at what would soon be fatal velocities.
The jerk of a new, unexpected force caught him by surprise.
"What’s happening?"
Confusion and fear flickered across Hera’s face. "I don’t know."
She shot a worried glance at the blank terminal screens of the shut-down console.
There was a loud clang from further back in the ship. Hera hissed something that he was pretty sure was a Ryl curse word.
"That’s the portside airlock. We’re being boarded. Someone must’ve been waiting in orbit under a cloaking field."
Kanan’s stomach sank to the floor. This was worse than free-falling with asteroids; they were sitting mynocks up here.
Hera’s hand was almost on the primary power switch when it flickered to life by itself. The cockpit's interior lights came back on as did the hum of the atmospherics and the gentle pull of artificial gravity.
"They’re using the stranded ship protocol to remotely control the Ghost!" she cried. "I knew I should have disabled that!"
"Attention, crew of the Ghost," came an unfamiliar female voice over the internal comm. "This is Pirate Captain Shae Barasai of the Asymmetric. Your ship is now under my control. I have," – there was a whoosh as the cockpit door opened behind them – "opened all internal doors and locked them in position. You will do as I say or I will open your starboard airlock and jettison everyone on board into space – oh, and I know there are only two of you, thanks to your wonderful internal security cams. Now, please leave all weapons behind and come meet my first officer. He’ll be waiting by your port airlock in a spacesuit in case either of you try anything."
By the time the pirate captain finished speaking, Hera’s face was a mask of fury. Her lips had pressed together in a thin line, but she did as she was told, standing stiffly from the pilot’s chair. She didn’t look at Kanan as she walked to the open cockpit doors, and he followed his captain in silence. They both knew resisting was pointless when their captors had so much control over the situation, but that didn’t make it any easier.
The pirate had been telling the truth; all of the crew cabins were open. Kanan caught a glimpse of Hera’s room, which he had never been inside, but quickly averted his eyes. Now wasn’t the time to invade her privacy. His gaze lingered on his own bunk, underneath which his blaster was stashed along with something else that could have been very useful right now. But diving for the drawer would do no good. The pirates would flick a switch and he'd be jettisoned into the cold vacuum of space before he could even click the pieces together.
They reached the airlock where, as promised, someone wearing a spacesuit was waiting. As they neared, Kanan saw he was a twi’lek with pale blue, almost grey skin. He was impressed at how the man had managed to fit his lekku inside the bubble of the helmet. One seemed to be wrapped around his neck like a scarf, and Kanan assumed the other was tucked down his back.
The twi’lek tossed a small something towards each of them. Kanan caught his automatically; a pair of electrocuffs. From the way he was pointing a blaster at them, it was clear they were supposed to put them on. Once his prisoners were cuffed, the pirate stood aside and jerked his blaster in a way that indicated they should continue through the airlock.
Hera led the way into the pirate’s ship with her head held high. Even now she exuded a sense of command and control, as though she were allowing this to happen. Kanan couldn’t help but quietly marvel at her. It only lasted a few seconds; what she really needed from him right now was a way to get out of this situation.
The pirate’s ship was not a model Kanan could recognise from the inside. The interior was shabby, the battered wall panels clearly having seen several fights and most were in need of a good clean. The airlock hissed shut behind them and a second later Kanan felt the twi’lek wordlessly jab his blaster into Kanan’s back. He obediently started walking, mentally working through their options, and Hera fell into step beside him.
A few meters further on, the corridor opened out into a common area. It was deserted, and with another prod of the barrel their captor indicated a corner for them to stand in. Kanan glanced back at the man to see him using one hand to pop the seal on his helmet and lift it off. Unfortunately, his blaster arm still seemed perfectly steady.
Kanan turned back to the room, intending to search for anything he could use to help with an escape, a horrified gasp from Hera made him spin back around. The twi’lek had removed his helmet, and it had become clear how he’d fit his lekku inside. The one that had wrapped itself around the man’s neck now slipped to hang freely, but without the transparisteel helmet warping the view, they could now see that the man’s other lek stopped just before it could pass his shoulders. The stump was an angry mess of old scar tissue. Hera looked like she was going to be sick.
Their captor gave her a menacing look. "Nasty place, this galaxy of ours," he said in a gravelly voice. He pulled a commlink from his belt. "Alright, Cap’n, they’re on board."
Kanan tried to catch Hera’s eye, but she had already looked away. He mentally filed lekku injuries away as something he would avoid at all costs.
Another door opened, and they whipped around to see a tall, heavyset togruta walk through. This pirate was also missing a limb; only one thick montral curved upwards from his head. Scars crisscrossed the blue and white stripes of the stump that remained, and a few even made it as far as the red skin of his face. He fixed both Hera and Kanan with a glare before taking up position next to the door.
A second togruta of the same colouring entered the room after him, this one a woman with both montrals, though not quite so tall. She continued forwards with a commanding air that made Kanan immediately assume that this was Captain Barasai herself. Something glinted in the artificial light; one of her front lekku had been replaced with a prosthetic made of interlocking durasteel vertebrae. The ship’s name suddenly seemed very fitting for its crew.
The pirate captain came to a halt just in front of her captives, a small smirk playing on her lips.
"It is my pleasure to welcome you and your crew aboard my ship, Captain Syndulla." Kanan was surprised by the softness of her voice, but it didn’t last long as the mention of Hera’s name reminded him of where she had got that information from. "Thank you so much for your compliance. I’ve only been able to skim over your schematics, but I can tell already that your ship is going to fetch me a fantastic profit."
Hera’s eyes were calculating. "You want money? I can pay you. Just don’t touch my ship, or harm my crew."
That surprised Kanan. What did they have that could compare to the Ghost in value? Or did Hera’s mysterious anti-Empire contacts have a secret reserve of cash?
Captain Barasai simply laughed. "Seriously? If you have money, why were you trying to steal from the Pykes? Oh yes, I know all about this spot. Plenty of smugglers like you have tried to make the same run on this planet that you just attempted – it’s easy pickings for someone like me. So I won’t fall for your pathetic attempt to trick me – I’m going to take your beautiful ship, and I’m going to dump the two of you on some Outer Rim backwater. Maybe you can start a new life as moisture farmers or something."
"That would be a very bad idea for you." Hera drew herself up to her full height. "If my father finds out that I wasn’t able to complete the task he gave me, he’ll deploy his whole fleet to find me – and the person who got in his way."
The pirate captain looked unimpressed. "Your father?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. "And why should I be worried about him?"
Hera turned to the twi’lek, a calm confidence etched onto her face. "I’m surprised you didn’t recognise my name. Surely you have heard of the lengths Cham Syndulla will go through to protect what he cares about."
Kanan had to work hard to keep his expression blank. That was a bold claim indeed – but it might just work. Their twi’lek captor was certainly taken aback by it.
"The Liberator of Ryloth...?" he whispered incredulously.
"You’re welcome to call him and check, but I suggest you let me and my crew go." Hera levelled each of the pirates with a hard stare. Damn, but she was good at this.
Captain Barasai returned Hera’s gaze with an unreadable expression for a long moment. Then she turned to her first officer.
"Lock them in the spare cabin and meet me in the cockpit."
The captain swept from the room, the other togruta following. The twi'lek jerked his head at Hera and Kanan, prodding them down another corridor and through an open doorway.
The room beyond was small and clearly disused, the only piece of furniture a single bunk stripped of bedding. Kanan wasn't sure how much of an improvement this was on their situation; maybe he should keep thinking of possible means of escape. The door hissed shut behind them with a click of the lock engaging.
"Well, that was a good bit of quick thinking," Kanan said, taking a seat on the bare bunk. "Taking a bit of a risk, though."
"I know," Hera sighed, pacing to the door. "But it'll be worth it if we can get out of this."
"Better hope they don't actually call the Liberator of Ryloth to check."
She shot him a glance before looking back at the door. "I'm banking on him not answering calls from pirates."
"Fair point. Here’s hoping it works."
"Shh." Hera waved a hand to quiet him and he watched, confused, as she pressed the side of her head to the doorframe and raised her still-bound hands to tap it lightly with her fingers. She seemed to be listening for something.
He didn’t get a chance to ask her for what, however, as a few moments later the sounds of footsteps could be heard in the silence. Hera pulled back from the door in time for it to open and reveal the twi’lek first officer.
"I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that Captain Barasai has decided to return you to your father," the man announced, speaking to Hera. "She is confident that she'll be able to strike up a mutually beneficial agreement. We're about to make the jump to Ryloth now, so if you do as you're told, you’ll be back home in no time. But if you try anything, I’ve got nothing against spacing your friend – clear?"
To her credit, Hera managed to keep her face smooth. "You’re clear."
Chuckling, the pirate turned and left.
As soon as he'd locked the door behind himself, she slumped. "Kriff."
"My thoughts exactly," Kanan agreed. "What the hell are we gonna do when he refuses to pay their ransom?"
She glanced at him. "Oh, he'll pay. And then he'll hold it over me, and I won't be able to leave."
"What do you mean? Wait, do you actually know him?"
Hera frowned. "Weren't you paying attention? He's my father."
"Cham Syndulla is your father?" Kanan spluttered.
"That’s what I just said."
"I thought that was just a lie to get us out of here!"
Hera looked very confused. "Kanan, you've known my surname since you came on board."
"Yeah, and I thought you might be distantly related or something, not that you were his daughter." Kanan's head was spinning – Hera was the daughter of Cham Syndulla? The Cham Syndulla? How had that slipped past him?
"Well, I am." She shifted uncomfortably. "Look, that doesn’t matter – are you ready to get out of here?"
"Wha–" Kanan mentally stashed this latest revelation about his captain away to be dealt with later, and focused. "Yes. How?"
She nodded at the door. "That locking mechanism is an old DC-72/44A. If you hit the right spot hard enough, the magnetic clamp slips out of alignment and you can force it open. We’ll run back to the airlock and as soon as we’re through, Chopper can detach us – I’ve already remotely reactivated him, so he should be ready to retake control of the Ghost. I’d rather not do this in hyperspace, but I really don’t want to go back to Ryloth. "
Kanan gaped at her. All of his escape plans involved challenging the pirates to a bet. Or a drinking game. Or both.
"Have I ever told you how incredible you are?"
She smirked at him. "Frequently. Are you ready?"
"Yes, captain." He gave her a mock salute, made somewhat harder by the electrocuffs on his wrists.
"Good."
She sent a spinning kick to the door. Kanan immediately grabbed the handle and heaved; sure enough, with only a little resistance, it sprang open. He then darted out into the corridor, holding his bound hands at the ready in front of him, keeping an eye out for the pirates. They would surely have heard the loud bang.
The two of them sprinted for the common area. The male togruta was sat on the acceleration couch, looking at a datapad, but he was too slow to react to Hera and Kanan’s arrival. Kanan sent a double-fisted punch to his one good montral as he started to rise, and the man staggered and fell with a cry, his balance ruined. Another door started to open but Kanan didn’t wait to see who came through. He tore after Hera down the corridor to the airlock.
She yanked it open and threw herself through.
"Chopper, let’s go!" Hera yelled.
Kanan caught a warbling of binary over the internal comm as he followed her into the Ghost ’s familiar hallway, pulling the airlock shut after him. The light flashed to indicate it was sealed just as the whole ship shuddered violently. He and Hera were thrown to the floor as Chopper detached the Ghost from the pirates’ ship – and they fell out of hyperspace.
Kanan's awareness narrowed to the durasteel deck underneath him and the sole of Hera's boot in front. Everything else was lost to the screaming of the engines and the shaking of the ship.
When it was finally over, Kanan let out the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding and pushed himself awkwardly to his feet. Hopefully Chopper would be amenable to taking his cuffs off. Hera was already running for the cockpit, keen to get back to the helm of her ship, so he followed.
"Good job, Chop," she was telling the droid when he reached them. Her hands were already freed and busy at the console. "All systems look good, but I want to do an external examination of the airlock, so let’s head to the nearest planet and land."
Chopper warbled an affirmative and then caught sight of Kanan. Unprompted, he extended his electroprod and shorted out the cuffs with only minimal insulting of Kanan's abilities.
"Thanks, Chopper," Kanan said, surprised by the droid’s actions – only to suck in a breath a moment later as the droid wheeled over his toes on his way to the navicomputer. Kanan should have seen that coming – Chopper was incapable of doing anything nice.
He took his seat next to Hera, helping her bring the Ghost back online.
"I almost can't believe we made it out of there," he said.
"Well, there was no way I was going to Ryloth."
"I hope you don't mind me asking, but – if it's your home, what's so bad about going back?"
Hera sighed. "It’s complicated. I mean, it's the one place where the memories of my mother are still alive. I told you before that I don't have much to remember her by – not even holos. But Ryloth isn't really my home any more. I left for a reason, and I wouldn't go back, not even to get– not for anything. And definitely not to see my father."
"What’s Cham Syndulla like as a father?" Kanan asked idly. "Did he take you with him for his campaigns? Did he tell you the stories about the battles he fought? Did you–"
"I actually don’t like talking about it," she interrupted.
"Oh. Right." He realised he'd done that thing again, where he'd started asking too many questions. "I'm sorry."
"Let’s just find a place to land and work out where our next job is going to come from."
He fell silent as they started up the scanners, his hands working but his mind wandering.
***
In her cabin, Hera contemplated her options. The airlock was fine, with only some minor scraping on the outer hull serving as evidence of their run-in with the pirates. At least it wouldn't need repairs. Unfortunately the fuel tank had been low even before their attempt to steal from the Pykes, so now they needed to find some other way to make a few credits.
Kanan had been strangely quiet since she’d told him she didn't want to talk about her father. He’d helped her with the diagnostics, and then asked if she had a spare datachip and retreated to his cabin. She realised she might have been a little harsh in shutting down his questions; he had probably heard all the stories about the great General Syndulla during the Clone Wars. In comparison, her version of the man must be jarring. She wasn't going to apologise, but maybe it was time she opened up to her only (organic) crewmate about her past.
A soft knock at her door brought her back from her thoughts.
"Hera?"
"Come in," she called.
Kanan stood awkwardly in the doorway, fidgeting with something in his hand – the datachip she’d given him earlier. He opened his mouth as if to start speaking, but hesitated.
"Jedi Master Mace Windu fought with your father in the Clone Wars," he said finally. "He was my master’s master."
Hera blinked; that hadn't been what she was expecting at all.
"Depa Billaba." He said the name almost reverently, and something on her face told him it was the first time he'd said it out loud in many years. "That was my master. But when the three of us were all on Coruscant at the same time, she would take tea with Master Windu, and she’d bring me with her. We’d talk – about the war, about my training, about her training, about – well, anything, really. And when Master Windu came back from the Ryloth campaign, he told us about that, too. About the people there, about what he was fighting for, about what the Republic had done to help."
Hera could tell it was difficult for him to tell her this. He kept stumbling over his words in a way that was very unlike Kanan, and his eyes were fixed on the datachip in his hands.
"Master Windu – he liked to take holos, whenever he went somewhere new, to better capture his memories of the moments he shared with the people he met. Ryloth was no different. And after the Battle of Lessu, he took a recording of all the fighters celebrating with their families at finally being able to go home. He showed us, when he came back to the Temple, and Master Depa said that it was an important reminder of what the Jedi's part in the war was really about. It was about giving the people of the galaxy a place where they belonged, and could feel safe. She had a holocron – a store of knowledge – and she copied his recordings onto it. Then, the night before she died, she gave the holocron to me.
"I know you said you don’t have much left to remember your home, and your mother, so I thought you’d like to see them. The holos. They’re all on here," – he gestured with the chip – "it’s – there’s one in particular that made me remember it. I put that one at the start for you. But they’re all for you. Everything on the holocron from Ryloth, it's all there."
Kanan finished speaking, holding the datachip out for her to take. She was speechless; it was the most he’d told her about his past since joining her on board the Ghost. She was also fighting against the sudden swell of hope clawing its way up at the thought that she might finally have a digital image of her mother and not just her own increasingly blurry memory.
Hera took the chip from him wordlessly. Out of the corner of her eye she was vaguely aware of him backing out of the room and closing the door, but her focus was on the object in her hand. She picked her datapad off the floor and plugged the chip in, watching the as the screen lit up with rows and rows of timestamped datafiles.
There was over an hour of footage all together, mostly short clips with a few longer ones. She tapped on the first one, the one Kanan had picked out specifically, and saw the image of her father materialise on the screen. Her stomach did an unpleasant lurch at the sight of him, but this wasn’t the same man she’d said goodbye to as a teenager. This holo was from the Clone War, and so this Cham had a fire in his eyes and a glow to his expression, not the cold steel that had set in after her mother had died. It looked like he was in the cave system she could still remember hiding in after the war had first come to Ryloth, when Wat Tambor and the Separatists had annexed Lessu. She hit play.
"–and over there is my wife, Eleni," Cham was saying to someone above and behind the recorder – probably Mace Windu himself – with a gesture to a far corner of the cave. "She likes to sing to the children."
Hera's anticipation grew as the recorder’s frame moved in the direction Cham had indicated, stopped, and started to zoom.
"She has such a beautiful voice…" The love in her father’s voice made Hera's heart ache unexpectedly, but whatever train of thought would have come from that was driven from her mind as the image sharpened and came into focus.
The datapad screen now showed a twi’lek woman kneeling beside two child-sized lumps of blankets on sleeping mats. Hera recognised all three immediately, but that wasn’t what made her breath catch. The person holding the recorder had also refocused the audio sensor, and it was now picking up the sounds coming from the woman’s – her mother’s – mouth.
Eleni Syndulla, rendered in a crisp, blue-tinged image, was singing an old Ryl lullaby to her two children. It was one Hera remembered clearly from her childhood, one that her mother would often choose to soothe them after a nightmare or disturbed sleep. There had probably been bombing runs happening nearby that night that they’d heard from the cave. Her mother’s voice and that song had always relaxed Hera, and even now, she felt it soothing parts of her she hadn’t even realised were tense.
A tear slipped from the corner of one eye. She blinked, desperate to keep her vision clear even though this was a holo that she could replay as many times as she wanted. How would she ever thank Kanan enough for this? How would she ever make him understand the enormity of the gift he had given her?
She supposed the first step was trying. Hera stopped the next clip from autoplaying and stood, leaving the datapad on her bunk.
She found Kanan in the galley waiting by the caf machine.
"Kanan," she started. He turned, and she tried to say something, but she couldn’t find the words. She stood there with her mouth open for several seconds, and then gave in. She crossed the room and pulled him in for a hug, wrapping her arms tightly around him.
"Thank you," she mumbled into his shoulder as she felt his arms come up to embrace her back. Her voice broke halfway through, and she hoped he wouldn’t mind too much if his sweater was somewhat damp. He didn’t mention it, just held her as she squeezed him and let the tears fall into the thick wool.