Jhothal Township, Lothal Plains6 BBY (Six Weeks After the Relay Station)
The farm kid couldn't have been older than sixteen, but his eyes carried the kind of exhaustion that aged people beyond their years.
Ezra watched him from across the cantina table, noting the way his hands trembled slightly around the mug of caf, the nervous glances toward the door, the body language of someone who'd learned that safety was temporary and trust a luxury he couldn't afford. His name was Tev, and he'd lost his family's farm to Imperial appropriation three months ago. Now he worked maintenance at one of the outlying mining facilities, scraping together enough credits to eat while watching his home get transformed into another cog in the Empire's industrial machine.
"You're younger than I expected," Tev said, voice carrying the flat affect of someone too tired for surprise.
Ezra had heard variations of that observation enough times that responding felt pointless. Instead he pushed a small datapad across the table, screen displaying a map of the routes he'd been building across Lothal's forgotten spaces.
"These are safe paths," he said. "Tunnels, service corridors, abandoned infrastructure the Empire hasn't bothered cataloguing. You can move goods through them without Imperial oversight, which means you can make actual money instead of subsistence wages."
Tev studied the map, his expression cycling through skepticism and something that might have been hope. "You're talking about smuggling."
"I'm talking about survival. The Empire took your farm, pays you nothing, and expects gratitude for the privilege of existing under their boot. You want to keep playing by their rules, that's your choice. But those rules are designed to keep you exactly where you are until you're not useful anymore."
The brutality of the assessment made Tev flinch, but he didn't argue. Couldn't, really. Every word Ezra had spoken reflected reality too accurately for comfortable denial.
"What's your cut?" Tev asked.
"Ten percent. You use my routes, my contacts, my infrastructure. In exchange, I take a small piece and ensure the operation stays invisible."
"Ten percent seems low."
"I'm building a network, not extracting maximum profit from desperate people. The more reliable operators I have, the stronger the whole system becomes. Your success makes my investment worthwhile."
It was true, though not for the reasons Tev probably assumed. Ezra wasn't building this circuit for profit, though the credits certainly helped. He was constructing the skeletal framework of what would eventually become Rebel infrastructure on Lothal. Safe houses, supply routes, trusted operators who understood how to move beneath Imperial surveillance. When the Ghost crew arrived, when the real resistance began, these foundations would transform from criminal enterprise into unbeatable logistics.
But explaining that to Tev meant revealing knowledge he shouldn't possess and raising questions about motivations that had no satisfactory answers.
Tev made his decision with the kind of resignation that came from recognizing when you'd run out of better options. "Alright. I'm in."
They spent the next hour going over specifics. Meaning drop points in the spice-field barns, timing windows that exploited shift changes at the mining facilities, communication protocols that kept operational details compartmentalized. Ezra had learned from watching Vizago that successful criminal enterprises ran on structure and discipline, not chaos and improvisation. Every operator in any criminal organization needed clear parameters, specific responsibilities, and consequences for deviation that were understood but rarely enforced.
By the time they finished, full darkness had settled over Jhothal. The township existed as a collection of prefabricated structures clustered around agricultural processing facilities, population maybe two hundred on a good day. Small enough that everyone knew everyone else's business, which made operational security challenging but also meant Imperial presence was minimal. They had bigger problems than farmers trying to supplement their income through black market trade.
Ezra left through the cantina's back entrance, moving through alleys that had become automatic navigation over the past weeks. He'd made similar recruitment runs to three other townships, building his circuit one desperate operator at a time. Orphans, displaced farmers, people the Empire had ground down until survival required stepping outside legal boundaries.
The irony wasn't lost on him. In his previous life as Solomon, he'd followed rules, believed in systems, trusted that society functioned through collective adherence to established norms. Then he'd died and woken up in a universe where the established norms included slavery, genocide, and the systematic destruction of anything resembling freedom or justice.
That dissonance had carved away whatever moral certainty he'd carried from Earth, leaving something harder and more pragmatic in its place. He didn't enjoy what he was doing, exactly. But he'd stopped feeling guilty about it, which felt like its own form of corruption.
Maybe this is how Luthen Lear felt...
The walk back toward Capital City took him through the plains regions where Lothal's original character still persisted in fragmented pockets. Grasslands not yet paved over, shallow seabeds where water pooled during seasonal rains, the occasional stand of trees that had survived Imperial logging operations through luck or irrelevance. In the darkness, with the twin moons painting everything silver, it was almost possible to imagine the planet as it had been before the Empire arrived.
Almost.
Movement registered in his peripheral awareness before conscious thought processed the input. Ezra dropped into a crouch behind an outcropping of rock, hand moving automatically to the blaster at his hip. The Force rippled through his consciousness, not warning but information, painting a picture of his surroundings that bypassed normal sensory limitations.
Three figures, maybe forty meters distant, moving with the careful deliberation of people who didn't want to be noticed. Not Imperial, the body language was wrong. Probably criminals, possibly Vizago's competitors testing the boundaries of his territory.
Ezra extended his awareness, letting that strange perceptual channel the Force provided fill in details visual observation couldn't capture. He could feel their intent, taste their emotional state, sense the weapons they carried and the tension that vibrated through their movements.
One of them was injured, favoring his left side, breathing shallow with pain that each step aggravated. The others were nervous, hyperalert, scanning for threats they expected but couldn't locate. Running from something, then, not hunting.
Decisions...decisions. Get involved and risk exposure, or ignore them and maintain operational security. Ezra's instincts pushed toward the former, some vestigial compassion that hadn't been fully burned away by the life he was living now...
The Force offered no guidance, remaining neutral in that way it always did when the choice mattered.
Ezra made his decision and stood, keeping his hands visible and away from weapons. The three figures spun toward him, their own weapons coming up with the reflexive speed of people operating on adrenaline and fear.
"Easy," he said, voice carrying across the distance. "Not looking for trouble."
The uninjured two exchanged glances, some wordless communication passing between them. Then the one on the left, a human woman with a scar bisecting her eyebrow, spoke.
"You're that kid. Solomon. The one running operations for Vizago."
"I work with Vizago sometimes. Wouldn't say I work for him."
"That means nothing when Imperial patrols are hunting anyone associated with his network."
Damn...
That was news, and unwelcome news at that. If the Empire was actively targeting Vizago's organization, it meant his operational security had been compromised at a level that threatened everyone connected to his gig as Solomon...Which he had carefully cultivated to remain just prominent enough to be useful but not so visible as to warrant dedicated Imperial attention.
"What happened?" he asked.
"ISB raid on one of Vizago's warehouses. We were inside when they hit, barely got out before they sealed the exits. They've got our faces now, probably our names, definitely enough to disappear us into some detention facility."
The injured one, a Twi'lek male whose blue skin looked grey in the moonlight, coughed wetly. "Need to get off-planet. Can't stay on Lothal, not with ISB hunting us."
This is so fucked... The Imperial Security Bureau didn't arrest people for trial, they arrested them for interrogation. And ISB interrogation had a zero percent survival rate for subjects who couldn't provide value beyond their own knowledge.
But helping them meant exposure, meant using resources he'd been hoarding for future operations, meant potentially drawing Imperial attention to infrastructure he couldn't afford to lose.
He had to suppress and even darker thought of what to do..kill them and kill a trail. He would have to make it look like an accident though...
Yeah, that wasn't going to work out..
"There's a freighter leaving from the western sea-port tomorrow at dawn," he heard himself say. "Captain's name is Dorne, ship's called the Dust Runner. Tell her Solomon sent you, she'll get you passage to somewhere the ISB won't think to look."
"Why help us?" the woman asked, suspicion warring with desperate hope in her expression.
"Because the Empire's good at making everyone their enemy, and their enemies should help each other when they can."
It was a better answer than the truth, which was he didn't want 'get rid' them the Dexter Morgan way.
Having lived as Ezra as long as he did, it made him realized how exceptional Ezra was. Star Wars was cool and all, but living in it was grim.
He gave them directions to the sea-port, contact protocols for reaching Ria, and a small credstick containing enough money for passage and supplies. Then he left, moving quickly back toward his own route before second thoughts could transform generosity into regret.
The rest of the journey passed in contemplative silence, his mind turning over the implications of Imperial action against Vizago's network. If the ISB was moving against established criminal infrastructure, it meant they'd shifted resources away from other priorities. Which meant something had changed at a level above local enforcement, some strategic calculation that justified increased attention to Lothal's underworld.
The factory sabotage, probably. His disruption of the TIE Defender shipments had drawn exactly the kind of attention he'd been trying to avoid, and now that attention was cascading through every criminal operation on the planet. People would die because he'd interfered with Imperial logistics, their deaths distant and abstract but no less real for being unintended consequences.
Guilt was a luxury, regret an indulgence he couldn't afford. The sabotage had been necessary, would save lives down the line when those Defender components weren't available for the Empire's next-generation fighters. The calculus was cold but accurate: some deaths now to prevent more deaths later.
He'd become someone who thought in those terms. The transformation had been gradual enough that he couldn't identify the exact moment when human lives became variables for him to factor into a greater good equation. Thankfully, he wasn't completely gone yet.