[Some Time Ago On A Planet Far Away]
---
The Ghost sat tucked beneath an overhang of rust-colored rock, running lights killed, engines idling at the barest whisper. From the cockpit, Hera Syndulla had an unobstructed line of sight down the canyon mouth three klicks east, where the convoy would emerge in approximately twelve minutes.
Assuming Imperial logistics ran on schedule. Which they always did. Say what you want about the Empire—and Hera had plenty to say—but they moved cargo from Point A to Point B with the kind of obsessive punctuality that would make a Muun banker weep.
She adjusted the comm bead in her ear. "Specter Two, status."
Canyon mineral deposits played hell with short-range comms, turning clean signals into something that sounded like talking through a mouthful of sand.
"In position." Kanan's voice came through, flat and professional. "Got visual on the approach corridor. Nothing moving yet."
"Copy. Specter Three?"
"Bwoop bworp." (
"Good. Hold position, both of you."
"Bweeep bworp boop." (
"When I tell you to."
"Bweeeeep." (
She muted the channel.
The silence that followed was almost pleasant. Hera knew from experience that Chopper's patience had a half-life shorter than unstable baradium, and that every second of enforced waiting increased the probability of him doing something creative with the explosive charges.
She settled back in the pilot's seat and let her eyes track across the landscape.
Kessoria didn't show up on tourist brochures. The surface was oxidized rock formations and scrubland for kilometers in every direction, the kind of terrain that looked dramatic in a holo postcard and felt absolutely miserable to actually stand on. Hot, dry, and gritty in ways that found their way into every seal and joint on a ship.
The canyons were the exception. Deep gouges cut through the plateau by some ancient river system, walls rising nearly a hundred meters on either side, layered sediment banded in reds and oranges and browns. She'd scouted the route herself two days ago, walking the canyon floor with Chopper while Kanan stayed with the Ghost. Mapping sight lines, identifying choke points, choosing where to plant the charges.
Her father would have spent a week on reconnaissance. Would have had contingency routes for the contingency routes, fallback positions mapped to the meter, and at least two additional cells on standby.
Hera had a former Jedi who refused to act like one and a droid who considered arson a legitimate form of self-expression.
She was working with what she had.
The comms crackled.
"Bweep bworp boop?" (
Hera unmuted. "No."
"Bworp?" (
"Still no."
"Bweep bweeep bworp boop?" (
"Chopper, I swear to—"
"Fine, fine, fine."
Kanan's voice cut in. "He's been doing that every forty-five seconds. I've been counting."
"I'm aware."
"Just wanted to make sure you were also suffering."
"Bworp bweep boop!" ()
"Both of you, clear the channel. Please."
---
Twelve minutes became ten, then five.
Hera used the time the way she always did before an operation—running scenarios. Charge failure, faster escorts than expected, Imperial comm checks that might bring reinforcements from the garrison forty klicks north. Each possibility branched into responses, and each response into further branches.
She'd learned that from watching her father plan ambushes on Ryloth. Not that he'd been intentionally teaching her. Cham Syndulla had been too busy liberating a planet to notice his daughter memorizing his tactical briefings from the next room.
That felt like a lifetime ago. A different Hera, on a different world, fighting what felt like a different war. Though the enemy hadn't changed. The Empire was always the Empire.
"Movement." Kanan's voice sharpened. "Lead vehicle cresting the ridge. I count six transports in column formation, two escort speeders—one at the front, one bringing up the rear. Light armor. Standard trooper complement, maybe eight to ten total."
Hera's hands moved to the Ghost's controls on reflex, even though she wouldn't be flying this part. "Weapons on the escorts?"
"Chin-mounted repeating blasters. Nothing that'll punch through Ghost's hull, but I'd rather not find out the hard way."
"Agreed. Specter Three, confirm charges are primed."
"Bwoop bwoop!" (
"Confirm the secondary charge too."
A pause.
"Bworp." (
That pause was about half a second too long. "Chopper."
"Bwoop bworp bweeep boop." (
"Define 'fixed.'"
"Boop boop." ()
Hera closed her eyes. Breathed in. Breathed out. "Chopper, is the secondary charge going to detonate when we need it to?"
"Bweeep bworp boop." (
"Kanan, did you copy that?"
"Unfortunately, yeah."
"Can we run the op without the secondary?"
"It's our rear cover for extraction. If someone follows us into the east branch, we've got nothing between them and us except wishful thinking."
"I know what it's for."
"Then you know the answer."
Hera pulled up the canyon layout on her datapad. The primary charges would collapse the canyon wall at the midpoint, cutting the convoy in two. The secondary was planted at the entrance to the eastern branch canyon—their escape route. If the Imperials recovered fast enough to pursue, the secondary would seal the branch behind them.
Without it, they'd be running with an open back door.
"We proceed," she said. "But we adjust the timeline. Chopper, once you have the hauler, you don't wait for anything. Straight into the east branch. Kanan, you disengage the moment he's moving."
"Bworp bweep." ()
"Copy," Kanan said.
"And Chopper? If we survive this, you and I are having a conversation about field maintenance protocols."
"Bweeep bworp boop." (
---
The convoy crawled into the canyon like a snake entering a pipe.
Lead escort first, repulsors kicking up thin trails of red-brown dust. Then the transports, one after another—boxy Imperial-standard cargo haulers with sealed beds and the kind of armored plating that said the contents were worth protecting. The cargo hauler—their target—was third in line, riding noticeably lower on its repulsors than the rest. A flatbed configuration with a sealed container module on the back, the kind of rig that could carry twenty tons of refined ore without complaint.
Kobalite. Rare earth mineral used in the manufacture of high-grade warhead components—specifically the kind that went into proton torpedo yield enhancers, according to Fulcrum's intel. Denying the Empire those resources served the larger cause. Acquiring them for the rebellion's own supply chain served it even better.
The rear escort brought up the tail, its chin-mounted blaster tracking lazily across the canyon walls like the gunner expected trouble about as much as he expected a promotion.
Hera watched them on the Ghost's passive sensors. Six blips moving at convoy speed through the narrow passage.
The ambush point was a red line on her display, right where the walls narrowed and the primary charges were planted thirty meters up in the rock face.
The lead escort crossed the line. First transport, second.
The cargo hauler entered the kill zone.
"Specter Two, you have the trigger."
"Copy. On my count. Three... two... one."
---
A deep, percussive thump rolled across the plateau, and Hera felt it through the Ghost's hull even at three kilometers. Several hundred tons of oxidized rock sheared away from the cliff face and crashed across the canyon floor in a grinding roar that echoed off the walls for a solid five seconds after the initial blast.
Dust erupted upward in a thick brown-gray column. The passive sensors scrambled momentarily, then resolved.
The convoy was cut in two. Four transports and the lead escort sat stranded on the far side of the rockfall, their crews already shouting confused orders that bounced uselessly off the stone. On the near side: the cargo hauler, one transport, and the rear escort.
"Charges good, canyon's blocked." Kanan was already moving, she could tell from how his breathing had shifted. "Rear escort deploying troops. I count six—eight. They don't know what's happening yet."
That confusion was their window, and it wouldn't stay open long.
"Specter Three, go."
"BWOOP BWOOP BWOOP!" (
---
Dust still hung thick enough to choke on when Chopper rolled out of his concealment nook between two boulders at the canyon's edge.
The floor was a mess—debris scattered everywhere, the trailing transport slewed sideways where its driver had panicked and overcorrected. The rear escort had ground to a halt, its ramp already down, and the troopers were fanning out in a loose perimeter with their weapons up and their helmet comms full of overlapping chatter.
"—contact, we have contact! Where the hell is it coming from—"
"—can't see a damn thing in this dust, somebody get a reading—"
"—Command, this is Convoy Seven-Seven, we have a route obstruction, possible hostile action, requesting—"
"—I told you, I told Sergeant Briggs last rotation, I said these canyon routes were asking for trouble, but does anyone listen to—"
"—shut up, Derry—"
Blaster fire erupted from an elevated position along the western wall. Kanan, drawing their attention exactly where the plan needed it. The bolts came angled down into the trooper perimeter, and the effect was immediate—every helmet snapped west.
"Contact west! Elevated position, maybe thirty meters up!"
"Returning fire!"
"How many hostiles?"
"I can't tell, could be one, could be—"
"Just shoot where the bolts are coming from!"
The troopers opened up on the canyon wall with the kind of enthusiasm that only came from men who'd spent six hours on boring convoy duty and were now channeling all of that pent-up energy into holding down their triggers.
Thirty meters behind them, completely unnoticed in the chaos, a small angular astromech droid trundled toward the cargo hauler with a kind of single-minded glee that would have concerned anyone who knew him well enough to recognize it.
Chopper reached the hauler's cab in under thirty seconds. The driver was still inside, hunched over the controls, one hand mashing the comm panel trying to raise someone with authority. He didn't notice the droid until the shock probe was already sliding into the exposed wiring panel beneath the door.
The man jerked once and slumped sideways over the console.
"Bwoop bwoop!" (
Chopper extended a manipulator arm, shoved the unconscious driver out of the cab—the man tumbled off the running board and landed in the dirt with a deeply satisfying thud—and jacked himself into the control interface.
Imperial standard controls. Clunky, unresponsive, like trying to steer a drunk bantha through a doorway. He loved it.
The hauler lurched forward with a whine of protesting repulsors, and Chopper felt the beautiful vibration of twenty tons of kobalite ore answering to him and him alone.
"Bwoop bweep bworp!" (
Hera's voice came through his comm, sharp and focused. "Chopper, east branch, right now."
"Boop boop boop!" (
Along the western wall, Kanan fired three more shots into the trooper perimeter and then broke from cover. He moved along the canyon's edge, keeping rock formations between himself and the troopers, heading for the eastern branch where the hauler was already swinging wide through a lumbering turn.
"He's moving! The shooter is heading east!"
"Cut him off, cut him off!"
"Wait—where's the hauler going?"
"What?"
"The cargo hauler! Look! It's moving!"
"What do you mean it's moving? Who's driving it?"
"Nobody authorized—are we being robbed right now?"
"Is that a droid in the cab?!"
Kanan was forty meters from the branch entrance, running hard along the base of the canyon wall. The troopers had finally pieced together what was happening, and about half of them were sprinting after the hauler while the rest kept shooting at the position Kanan had already left.
Thirty meters.
Twenty.
The trooper sergeant figured it out fastest. He was a career soldier—you could tell from the way he broke from the confusion, took a knee behind a chunk of fallen rock, and shouldered his rifle with the kind of practiced calm that came from having done this more than a few times. He tracked Kanan's movement through the thinning dust, leading the shot, finger settling on the trigger.
Ten meters to the branch entrance.
And then Kanan stopped running.
---
The disturbance felt alien and familiar at the same time. The Force—the thing he'd spent ten years suppressing, ignoring, pretending was someone else's burden—crashed through him with an intensity that left no room for pretending. The last time he had felt anything close to this, it had left his world turned upside down. As much as he'd tried to forget, the memory that was buried deepest came back to him all on its own, and for a moment he was back at that very place. A small boy, running away as blaster bolts took the life of the master who had been trying to protect him.
The stormtroopers shouting behind him, the white armor in his peripheral vision, the blaster fire cracking off canyon walls—for that one stretched second, it all blurred together with something older and worse.
But it was a moment only. He dragged himself back to the present and forced his mind clear, but that moment was a moment where his guard was down and his feet weren't moving and the sergeant behind him had a clean shot.
CLANG.
The cargo hauler's loading arm swung wide and caught a loose boulder at the canyon's edge, sending two hundred kilos of oxidized sandstone tumbling across the floor. It bounced once, twice, and caught the kneeling sergeant square in the chest plate. The man went down flat on his back with his rifle clattering away into the dust.
"BWEEP BWORP!" (
Kanan's legs started working again. He covered the last ten meters at a dead sprint and grabbed the rail of the cargo bed, hauling himself up and over the side as Chopper gunned the repulsors into the eastern branch.
"Blow the secondary!" Kanan called forward toward the cab.
"Bwoop bweep bworp!" (
"Chopper!"
"Bworp boop bweep!" (
Behind them, the surviving troopers were already regrouping. The sergeant had gotten back to his feet despite a cracked chest plate, waving his squad forward with one arm while the other hung at his side at an angle that suggested something was broken underneath the armor.
"After them! Both of them! Move it!"
"Sir, shouldn't we wait for—"
"Did I stutter? Move!"
Chopper cycled the detonation trigger again. And again.
"Bwoop—bwoop—come on you piece of—bwoop—"
The secondary charge fired with a whump that was noticeably less impressive than the primary, bringing down a curtain of rock across the branch entrance that was just barely enough to block the passage. Rocks were still settling and sliding when the first troopers reached the other side.
From behind the fresh rockfall, muffled but audible: "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
And further back: "I'm putting in for that transfer. I'm actually doing it this time."
Chopper let out a long, triumphant whoop and flexed both manipulator arms so hard his chassis rocked on its struts.
"BWOOOOP!" (
---
The rendezvous point was a shallow cave system two kilometers northeast, where the canyon network opened into a wide depression sheltered by overhanging cliff faces. Decent cover from aerial scans, lousy place to get cornered in, but they wouldn't be staying long enough for that to matter.
Hera had the Ghost powered up and the cargo ramp down by the time the hauler came grinding out of the canyon mouth trailing smoke from two of its repulsor housings. The cab listed hard to port, there was a substantial dent in the loading arm, and something was making a rhythmic clanking sound from the undercarriage that couldn't possibly be good.
But the cargo container was intact.
Chopper rolled down from the cab first, manipulator arms raised high, doing his victory wobble—that side-to-side rocking motion on his struts accompanied by high-pitched whooping sounds that Hera had never managed to train out of him no matter how many times she'd tried.
"Bwoop bwoop bweeeeep!" (
"The secondary almost didn't fire, Chop."
"Bwoop bworp." (
"Because you got lucky."
"Bweep bworp boop." (
Kanan dropped from the cargo bed a moment later. He'd brushed off some of the canyon dust during the ride, but his jacket was still coated in a layer of red grit and there was a scrape along his left forearm that was bleeding sluggishly into his sleeve.
Hera had seen enough combat to know when someone was carrying something beyond the physical. Kanan moved fine—no limp, no favoring a side—but there was a delay in him, a fraction of a second where his eyes would track to something before the rest of him followed, like his thoughts were running just slightly behind his body.
"You want to tell me what happened back there?" she said.
He walked toward the ramp without stopping. "Got distracted for a second, that's all."
"You stopped dead in the middle of a firefight with blaster bolts coming at you from multiple directions. Chopper had to bail you out with a loading arm and a boulder."
"Bwoop bweep bworp!" (
"There's a list?" Kanan glanced back at the droid.
"Bwoop." (
Hera stepped into his path at the base of the ramp. She didn't block him exactly, just made it clear she was expecting more than a two-word brush-off.
"Kanan. I need to know if this is going to be a problem on future ops."
He looked at her for a moment, and she could practically watch the process happening behind his eyes—whatever the real answer was getting filed away, replaced by something more presentable.
"Look, I don't know what to tell you. Something threw me off for a second and I locked up. Canyon was loud, dust was everywhere, my head went somewhere it shouldn't have gone. It happens to people in firefights sometimes, you know that."
She did know that. She'd seen it happen to fighters on Ryloth who'd been through too much and carried it too close to the surface. The sound of a blaster or the flash of an explosion would send them somewhere else for a moment, somewhere older and worse.
She also knew Kanan well enough after a year of working together to recognize when he was using a partial truth to cover something he didn't want to discuss.
"And you're good now."
"I'm good now." He said it with just enough ease in his voice to make it sound convincing, and just enough steadiness in his eyes to make it clear the topic was closed.
She held his gaze for another second, then stepped aside. "Get that arm cleaned up. I want us off-world in fifteen minutes."
"Already on it." He headed up the ramp and disappeared into the ship.
Hera watched him go.
Something had happened in that canyon beyond a momentary lapse in focus, and whatever it was had to do with the parts of Kanan's past that he kept locked behind a door she hadn't been invited to open. She'd picked up enough fragments over the past year to know the broad strokes—he'd been through the Clone Wars in some capacity, he'd lost someone, and he carried it the way some people carried shrapnel, buried deep enough that you forgot it was there until something shifted and the edges caught.
But his past was his to share on his own terms. Pushing wouldn't get her anywhere with Kanan Jarrus. If anything, it would just make him pull further back, and a Kanan who'd retreated behind his walls was harder to work with than a Kanan who was deflecting with half-truths and easy smiles.
She'd wait.
"MOM!"
Chopper's voice blared through the ship's internal speakers at roughly twice the volume necessary for a vessel this size.
"Bwoop bworp bweep boop!" (
Hera sighed and turned toward the cargo bay. "Did you ram into something during the extraction?"
A beat of silence that told her everything she needed to know.
"Chopper."
"Bworp bwoop bweep boop." ()
She pinched the bridge of her nose and walked up the ramp.
The kobalite was secured, the intel had been good, and her crew was alive with nothing worse than a scraped forearm and a bruised ego between them. By Spectre standards, this counted as a clean operation.
She'd take it.
---
[Chapter End]
(A/N: Regarding Chopper calling Hera Mom, I checked it from multiple sources and they also understand his lingo as that. If you think that's incorrect, just take it as creative liberty)
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