Chapter Text
This whole mess started when Luke and Han were called into a meeting with General Syndulla and Fulcrum. When they got to the meeting room they saw the green twi’lek they both recognized, and a togruta woman they assumed to be Fulcrum. “Well, now that everyone’s here,” Fulcrum said, “We can get started. We recently got intel that one of our operatives from the early days of the rebellion may have been found. He went missing in wild space while liberating Lothal four years ago. We found an imperial prison that recently had a new inmate, using one of the aliases he is known to go by. He was part of a rebel cell with a now deceased Jedi, and has lots of intel about rebellion leadership, due to these factors it is imperative that we find him, and stage a rescue if he is indeed there. We don’t know if the empire knows what they have, so I can’t tell you much for fear of information leaking. I can tell you his code name was Specter-6, and I am going to ask General Syndulla to send her astromech droid with you. Chopper has worked with Specter-6 before and will be able to assist you in identifying him. I will warn you now though, he’s a bit of a character.
Han and Luke looked at each other, it made sense why they were being sent then, or it made sense to send Luke. If this guy had known a Jedi he might be able to tell him more about them, and at least share some theoretical knowledge. As far as the astromech being a ‘character’, Luke said what they were both thinking, “Well, we’ve worked with R2 for all these years, it can’t be much worse. It might take us a bit of time get everyone though”
The twi’lek and togruta gave each other a look that Han wasn’t sure he liked. But it was too late to question it now.
“Ok, I’ll have Chopper meet you at your ship, and we aren’t sending anyone else, we don’t want them to learn what they have if they don’t already know. If we send a large rescue mission they will think they have someone important. Chopper has experience with infiltrations as imperial droids, this is going to be a small-scale infiltration mission, you’ll leave as soon as you get to your ship.”
Wow, thought Luke, whoever this guy is must be really important, now I can’t wait to meet him. His head was spinning with thoughts as he and Han left the briefing room and made their way to the Millennium Falcon. “I wonder what this guy’s like, he must be really important if they’re this worried about a rescue mission. I’ve never heard of any ‘specter’ before but given that he was 6 there must have been others, I wonder if I’ve met any of them.” As they neared the Falcon they saw an old droid rolling over to it. It was painted up like an imperial droid, but Luke felt like he’d seen it around before, which would make sense, Fulcrum had said it was General Syndulla’s astromech. As they came closer it started beeping at them. “Well, I guess this is Chopper, so I guess we’re all set to go”.
As Han started powering up the Falcon and preparing for takeoff Luke started trying to get to know their third member for this mission. He very quickly learned to give Chopper his space. When Luke tried to ask him about the guy they were going to rescue, if he could even show him a picture of what the guy looked like, Chopper shocked him. You even had to be careful where you stood, because Chopper did not care where you were, he would roll right over you. Han swore he was doing it on purpose, Luke was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but yeah, he might have been doing it on purpose.
“When they said he was a ‘Character’ they should have said menace” Han grumbled after the third time getting whacked by his manipulator, “or bloodthirsty”. Both Han and Luke were doubting the droid's ability to go undercover by the time they dropped out of hyperspace near the prison; he didn’t exactly seem like the subtle type. But it was too late to question things now, so they’d just have to make it work.
Getting in was actually pretty easy. Or at least was something they’d done many times before. When they made their way to the main computer in their ‘borrowed’ storm trooper armor Han immediately tried to look up “Specter-6” to which he got promptly zapped by Chopper. He beeped at Han and rolled over, Han didn’t have a choice, it was move or be moved with this droid. When he searched through the records he stopped at a cell that was apparently home to one “Jabba the Hutt” which was weird, because Luke could swear Jabba was dead. The droid seemed to be excited by it though, so they started heading to the indicated cell.
They got into a few tussles, but made it down without too much going wrong, but this is where things always went wrong for them, getting the person and getting out. And here was a perfect example of that, when they opened the door of the cell that belonged to ‘Jabba’ it was empty. Luke felt his heart sink, there wasn’t anyone here. Suddenly Luke felt a presence behind him.
“If you’re going to steal trooper armor, make sure to turn the comms on, if you did you’d have known he escaped a bit ago.” Luke turned around to see a man in a basic flight suit had come up behind him. He couldn’t see what the man’s face looked like, since he was wearing a stormtrooper helmet.
“How do you know we’re not stormtroopers?” Luke said, he seemed kind of offended, why did they always get caught, and this time by someone who clearly wasn’t a trooper either. Actually that was a thought, “And who are you?”
“Oh that’s an easy one, someone I know helped develop the codes and regulations that these places use. The options were either you were new and hadn’t learned them yet, which doesn’t track with my guess of your age, given your heights and builds, or you’re breaking in and just grabbed some trooper armor to try and not get spotted. As far as who I am, I’m Dev, Dev Morgan.” The man stuck out his hand, “I decided with everything going on, it’d be a good time to attempt my own daring escape.”
Luke’s head was spinning with all that coming at him, but took Dev’s outstretched hand. “I’m Luke Skywalker, this is Han Solo, and the droid is Chopper. You’re right, we’re with the rebellion, we got some intel that a rebel who’d been missing for a few years might be in this cell, but it looks like he’s not here. We were supposed to bring him to the rebellion, I don’t know what we’re supposed to tell the general now. You don’t happen to know if the inmate who was here was a man called Specter-6, do you? And if it was, do you know where he is now?”
“Skywalker? As in Anakin Skywalker? I had some friends who knew your father, they only had good things to say about him. You’re looking for Specter-6? I remember hearing that on comms when I was younger. When people annoyed him and asked for his name he would respond with ‘Jabba the Hutt’, and since the actual Jabba is dead, it’d be a safe assumption to make. But I know he’s not incarcerated here anymore.” Dev paused for a moment, “I’ll tell you what, I’m from Lothal, and remember what he looked like before he went missing, if you get me off this rock, I’ll help you out. I was there when Lothal was liberated, and would like to see him back home too.”
Han had his arms crossed, he didn’t seem to like the idea, but Luke felt something from the force, like this guy was important to the mission. “I think we should take him with us. I know you don’t like it, but I feel something. The force tells me we should take him with us.”
“You know I don’t believe in the force kid. Try something better. OUCH!”
The ouch was because he’d been shocked again by Chopper.
“Looks like the droid agrees I’m coming with you. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side. He seems to be a bit too fond of electrocution." Dev quickly dodged out of Chopper’s range. “Either way we should move, there’s about to be a guard change, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be caught out here by the new patrol.”
Well, they definitely didn’t want that, this mission had been uncharacteristically quiet, and they weren’t looking to break that. As the three of them started heading for the exit Dev asked which hanger they were going to. “Even if I’m not catching a ride with you” he said with a glance to Han, “I’m gonna need to borrow a ship to get out of here, and there’s safety in numbers, so I might as well head in the same direction as you.”
“We’re heading for hangar two, there weren’t a lot of ships there but we won’t leave you stranded. You can come with us, even if Han’s being grouchy about it.”
Suddenly Dev spoke “They found the two troopers you knocked out and are putting out an alert, we’re gonna need to be careful from here on out. There’s two patrols heading our way, so from here out be prepared to fight.”
Everyone nodded, Chopper even sparked his shock prod like he wanted to zap something. Yeah, bloodthirsty was right Han thought I’m glad he's on our side. He got his blaster out. “The kid’ll take the lead, if it comes to it he can use that force stuff to help out, I’ll go next, you bring up the rear, keep an ear on the coms and let us know any updates.”
Dev just nodded. Luke wasn’t one to judge, but the guy didn’t seem surprised by the mention of the force, he had mentioned he knew people who knew his father, and they were gonna talk about that when they got to the ship, so maybe he had made an assumption? Who was this guy? He seemed to know a lot of people? Luke would have to pick his brain when they weren’t in enemy territory.
As they made their way towards the hanger Dev stopped, “There’s a lot of troopers out there, they must know that someone’s trying to escape, so instead of chasing us down they're just waiting where they know we’ll have to go. I’ve got an idea on how to get past them though. It might be a bit messy though. And I’ll need to borrow Chopper.”
“I knew this was going too smoothly.” Han sighed, “Take the droid, we’ll wait here and head over to the ship once you clear the way. Make your way back quickly, we can’t leave without the droid, or the general will kill us.”
“Glad to know you care so much, don’t worry we’ll follow right after you. And don’t worry about a signal or anything, you’ll know when it’s time to move. You might need to fight through some of them, but I’ll draw at least some of them off. May the force be with you.”
Luke answered gravely, “May the force be with you”
…
As Ezra and Chopper peeled off from them, when they got far enough that Han and Luke wouldn’t see or hear them Chopper poked him and beeped, “Why not just tell them who you are? Hera and Ahsoka sent them to pick you up.”
“Well, if they didn’t tell them my name, they were setting this up, and you have to admit it’s funny, anyway, is the kid really Vader’s son? Where’d they find him?”
“He showed up 4 years ago, a bit after your stupid stunt. Came with that R2 unit and annoying protocol droid we ran into on that one job, back when you first came on board. Had Kenobi with him too, at first. Kenobi bit the dust pretty quick though. Vader got him."
“Well, at least now I have an idea why he was on Tatooine, and why he said he couldn’t leave. Anyways, enough of that, let’s mess this place up.
As they came to an access port and Chopper hooked in, the alarms started blaring. Ezra turned on the comm in his helmet, “All available troopers to the lower levels, we have a mass breakout, repeat we have a mass breakout, all the doors on levels three through eight are stuck open.” Turning to Chopper he added, “While you’re opening all the cells in this place, wanna see if you can overheat the towers from here?”
“Who do you think you’re talking to, those things are gonna blow momentarily, if that doesn’t let the scruffy guy and kid through that’s on them, lets go.”
When Ezra and Chopper arrived at the hangar again there were a few bodies, but it seems most of the troopers had been successfully diverted. As they ran through Chopper went towards the Falcon and Ezra grimaced, “we’re really going that hunk of junk?” Chopper just laughed at him. As the building began to be rocked by explosions Ezra saw a brown haired guy his age waving him over from the ship, he recognized his force signature as Luke.
As they ran on board the guy shouted, “Everyone’s on, let’s go!” then he turned to Ezra, “were the explosions really necessary?”
Ezra just shrugged as he started walking towards the cockpit, “do you want the tactically sound answer, or the truth?”
“Let’s do both, that way we have an answer we can give command when they demand one, but I’m not bored to death.” Han called from the front. “Let me make the jump first, that way I can join.”
…
While Han was flying, it seemed to be a good time to ask some of the questions that Luke was wondering, “So… you said you knew some people who knew my father, and some people who designed the protocols for the empire. Did you know someone who defected or something? Also, do you know about… how Anakin… fell?”
Ezra took off the helmet to reveal dark, shoulder length hair that he tied in a tail. He had blue eyes, bronze skin, and two parallel scars, right under his eye. He looked sad, “No, they weren’t defectors from the empire, back during the Clone Wars, Anakin had a padawan, her name was Ahsoka Tano. I met her a few times about seven years ago. Yes, she told me what happened to her former master, but that doesn’t have anything to do with you. As for the codes, the empire just continued to use the old protocols from during the Clone Wars. Anyways, how’d you end up with this hunk of junk, and why were you looking for Ezra? I remember the specter cell being the ones to liberate Lothal 4 years ago, but I don’t really hear people talking about them anymore.”
“Who’s Ezra? Is that Specter-6’s name? One of the higher ups, Fulcrum, sent us to investigate if he was in that prison. She said that he knew a lot about the rebellion and had been missing for years, so we were supposed to see if it was really him and help him get out. I’ve never heard of the specters, how many were there?”
“There were six, I saw there wanted posters a lot back on Lothal, there was specter-1, Kanan, a jedi who survived the genocide, he died about four years ago, specter-2, Hera, was his wife, she was an amazing pilot, specter-3, was their astromech droid C1-10P, specter-4, Zeb, was a lasat, he was proud and tough in a fight, specter-5, Sabine, was a mandalorian, she loved art and explosives, and specter-6, Ezra, he was specter-1’s apprentice and went missing in wild space four years ago, shortly after his master died, during the battle to liberate Lothal.”
“He was trained by a Jedi! Was he a Jedi too?”
“No, at least he never described himself as one. As far as I know he was never knighted, he was only with them for about 5 years, give or take.”
Han came down from the cockpit, “we should reach Yavin in a few hours, so, want to explain the explosions now?”
Dev looked a little sheepish, “ok, so the explosion managed to destroy the records of their prisoners so they wouldn’t know who escaped, it also increased the chaos, so they had other things to worry about, besides us leaving. Also, you said you were there to pick up Specter-6, so it just felt right. The specters rarely got away without at least one explosion, especially on rescue missions.”
Chopper squawked, “It’s true, Sabine was a big fan of explosives.”
“Wait, did you know her?”
“Of course, we did work together”
“Oh, I guess General Syndulla did mention that.”
“But of course, we couldn’t get any warnings about random explosions. Whatever, I’m going to the cockpit, don’t bother me until we get back.”
After Han left Dev bent over and was shaking, upon looking closer Luke saw he was laughing. “I can’t wait to see whoever set this up, I owe them, I haven’t had this much fun in years.” Since it seemed like Dev was fine, Luke decided to go check on Han, he wanted to make sure the other man wouldn’t go off on the general when they saw her next.
“It was Fulcrum who issued the mission, she seems to be doing better than we had been led to believe” Chopper said while shoving Ezra over. “Hera was there though, so she okayed the deception.”
“Well this is gonna be fun when we get to base.”
When they dropped out of hyperspace Ezra grabbed the helmet and tucked it under his arm, he’d spent the time taking the black imperial paint off chopper revealing a beat up, orange exterior. In response to Luke’s look, Ezra only shrugged, “I don’t want to forget it, all the ones in my collection are old.”
When they flew into the base, they were greeted by a large group of people, in the front was General Syndulla and her young son, as well as Fulcrum, and a woman who Luke had seen around a few times. She was wearing brightly painted mandalorian armor. That must be Sabine. First down the ramp were Han and Luke, the mandalorian came up to them, “Was he really there?”
Before Han could shake his head Luke stepped in, “We aren’t sure, when we got there the cell was empty, but we found someone else escaping, he claimed to be from Lothal, and remembered him” It was at that moment Ezra and Chopper came down. The mandalorian saw him, and ran over and smacked him, “Ezra Bridger, don’t you ever do that again!”
Ezra looked at the assembled people, “Hi Sabine, hi Hera, I’m home.”