Hera Syndulla (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
for_everyone) wrote2020-06-14 05:58 pm
for_everyone) wrote2020-06-14 05:58 pm
(no subject)
The initial rendezvous, after they escaped Garel, had been quiet, with no sign that the Empire had somehow followed them or known where to find them. As they don't know how they were found on Garel in the first place, this doesn't put anyone at ease. Hera can't risk reaching out to Kanan and Ezra to see if they made it to Lothal, not with the rest of their small fleet still in jeopardy. After hours of waiting, perpetually ready to jump to another rendezvous if TIEs and Star Destroyers suddenly descended on them again, Sato finally signaled for the Ghost to dock alongside the Liberator.
"My crew has been reviewing all our transmission logs and security protocols," he tells her, once they're walking along the corvette's halls. "We haven't found any evidence of an interception or breach."
"We've been doing the same," Hera says. "But with all due respect, I doubt either of those are how the Empire found us."
"No," Sato says. "More likely carelessness, bad luck, or –"
She knows at once what he's about to say, and it's the only reason she interrupts. "If the Empire had known our exact location, they would have sent strike teams, not a fleet."
His eyes flash up to her, perhaps also surprised at her interjection. But he lets it pass, and concedes, "Yes, it seems unlikely that we were betrayed. But I need to update Senator Organa, and I can't risk revealing his position if our communications have been compromised. We'll need to send a courier."
With another look to her. "The Ghost is the fastest ship we have."
Hera just nods, her mind already whirring ahead. "Yes, Commander Sato. I'll do another sweep for trackers and then head out."
"We'll transfer some of our fuel to you," Sato adds. "The Senator's location is very remote."
'Remote' is the word for it. The planet is uncharted, missing from the standard catalogue carried in nav computers and even Hera's more extensive collection. She plots a careful route to Sato's coordinates, deviating from the Treillus Trade Run well ahead of time and weaving through smaller lanes of largely barren space. The closest populated system she knew of were the orbiting stations of Sanrafsix, corporate-owned and Empire-friendly, which only makes this particular sector feel all the more lonesome.
From a distance, Crait looks white and frozen, but as the Ghost descends Hera sees red soil burst out from caverns and cliffs, spilled along as the white salt that coats the planet is brushed aside in the wind. Sato's own two-way beacon flashes along the console as Hera surveys the landscape, guiding her down to an enormous ridge that has been ripped open, the red chasm within glittering in the sunlight. A long trench cuts into the salt flats before it, dotted with lookout posts and mounted cannons, and a woman's voice greets her over her comm and guides her down into the open mouth of the chasm. Salt scatters, and inside a man waves her in among the ships already collected in the open mouth of the mine.
Organa is waiting when she lands. Hera hasn't seen him like this before – instead of his simple white diplomat's suit, he's dressed in deep brown, a short cloak along his shoulders that Hera knew concealed a blaster. A young human in white fatigues stands near him, her hair braided into twin buns and her right hand nervously thumbing her own pistol. He looks more like a soldier than a senator, until his eyes reaches hers, and his face breaks into a smile.
"But it sounds like your losses weren’t as severe as they could have been," he says after she explains what happened on Garel. He leads the way deeper into the mine, along a wide tunnel that has been lined with wire and quick-charge lanterns. The red soil crunches under her boots, and the whole place smells of salt and oil.
"In no small part thanks to you," he adds.
Hera doesn't answer this. Instead, her eyes flicker around each of the caverns they pass through, one lit by collection of portable Com-Scans that outnumbered the two beings in the room, a human and a Rodian dressed in the same white fatigues as Organa's guard. Another is stacked with crates printed with red warnings for explosive contents, and in a third two humans work under large lamps to mend old, mix-matched flight suits.
Organa's steps slow as they reach a larger cave, the crystalline red soil here still bursting from the ground as though enormous claws had ripped it into pieces. The space is too large for the small lanterns that had lined the halls, and here these rebels had laid out glowing mats in paths around the cave, to keep one another from wandering into dark spots where Hera suspected the soil had collapsed. Along the walls of the cave, she can make out an enormous crust-piercer and the spider-like legs of two ancient excavator droids.
"Looks like they barely scratched the surface," she murmurs. The air is cooler here, and the oil smell isn't as strong away from the ships. "Why did they stop?"
"Likely the same reason it's not very useful as a base for us," Organa says. His own voice echoes slightly in the cavern. "Too remote, too far off the hyperspace lanes. Hard to get to, or ship from."
Hera looks back to him, figuring he's about to lead her onward, to whatever she assumes he'd like her to see. But Organa folds his arms, looking out into the dark cave beyond them. A few pairs of pin-prick yellow eyes surface in the dark, something that would have startled Hera if she hadn't watched Zeb barking at couple of those shimmering crystal creatures to keep them from scampering up into the ship.
"Captain Syndulla," he says, turning back to her. "If you don't mind, there's something I'd like to ask you."
Or he'd been looking for some privacy. She glances down the empty passage they'd come through, trying to spot the shadow of his guard, but she doesn't see anything. "All right," she answers.
Organa's eyes meet hers again, and this time, he doesn't smile. Instead, he's focused, as though searching for something on her, and it's another moment before –"How old were you when you first –"
He seems to be waiting for her to offer some word, some way of finishing this question, but Hera can't guess where he's going with this, and so only watches him. Eventually, he says, "- when your father allowed you to join his cause."
This – is not what Hera expected. She presses her lips together, but otherwise tries keep her features in check. There's a lot she could say to that, about 'his cause,' about what she had been allowed - but she knows it's not the point. It's plain enough that Organa hadn't known how to ask this, nor is there any reason he should know. He knew Cham Syndulla, the militant radical. As she considers her answer, Hera looks back to the Senator, to his cloak, where she imagines he had hidden a blaster. She wonders whether he's ever fired it.
"My parents never hid the war from me," she says. Maybe there's a quiet correction, but Hera doesn't linger on it. "There was never a time when I wasn't a part of their cause."
Organa's eyes widen, but only very slightly. It seems he also doesn't want to give away too much. "And you don't resent them for that?" he asks. "You don't feel you were ever too young?"
Hera shakes her head. "The war was there, my being young didn't change that. I was always going to be part of it."
"That doesn't mean you had to be the one fighting it."
Something in his voice changes; there's a hardness that makes Hera feel as though she's being scolded. She meets his eyes, sees how the shadows fall across his face, the edges of gray in his dark hair, and for the first time considers that he must be old enough to be her father. A moment ago, she had wondered if Organa had ever fired a blaster. Now she realizes how very young she must look to him. Even if she is 'Phoenix Leader' – unlike Sato or Organa or Ahsoka, she isn't a veteran of the old Republic. Only a handful of years are between her and that young Twi'lek girl with her grumpy droid, alone in the galaxy.
And her eyes, set on his, don't flicker. She won’t have that.
"As far as my parents were concerned, being a Twi'lek in this galaxy meant always being at war." She lets her own voice harden, a tone she might use for an order, not an explanation. "And my life so far has only proved them right. So yes, I was always going to fight."
He's the one who flickers. He looks away from her, out into the dark cavern, and takes a deep breath that he releases in a sigh. She waits for him to speak again, but when he doesn't –
"I'm guessing there's a reason you're asking me this?"
He lifts a hand, pressing it to his brow at first, and down along his face. There's another deep breath. "I think what I'm looking for," he says, turning back to her, "is some advice."
And then it clicks. She thinks back to what she told Kanan, about Sabine and Ezra, another generation brought in so young, having only known the Empire. Leading them into lives – and possibly, deaths – shaped by war, even if that had already been the case long before she met them.
"My advice, Senator," Hera says, speaking slowly, "Is that you should listen to your daughter."
After a moment, Organa nods, and a hint of his smile has returned.
The Ghost stays on Crait for just under thirty hours, and Hera spends much of it working with Organa's communications officers to check their own data for any hint of an Imperial breach. There's also maintenance checks on the Ghost, confirming their fuel levels before their journey back to the fleet and cleaning out the salt that collects along the ship's turrets and outer plating, as well as distributing what they can spare from their own supplies, protein bars and power packs and even one crate of fresh fruit. A couple pilots venture up to Hera while she's wiping salt from the Ghost's nose turret, and she finds she can't deny them a look around her cockpit between questions about the new B-wing model and the destruction of the Sovereign. Everyone learns more about each other than maybe they should – a large number of Organa's recruits are from Alderaan's security forces, nearly all of the others came through resistance networks running out of Coruscant.
Nothing is found to suggest the communications on Crait have been compromised, but still, Hera waits until they've departed the base, and are deep into their first leg of their path back to the fleet, before she signals Sato. With that done, she checks her chronometer and the ship's computer to confirm the time on Lothal, before sending another signal, this one to Chopper.
"My crew has been reviewing all our transmission logs and security protocols," he tells her, once they're walking along the corvette's halls. "We haven't found any evidence of an interception or breach."
"We've been doing the same," Hera says. "But with all due respect, I doubt either of those are how the Empire found us."
"No," Sato says. "More likely carelessness, bad luck, or –"
She knows at once what he's about to say, and it's the only reason she interrupts. "If the Empire had known our exact location, they would have sent strike teams, not a fleet."
His eyes flash up to her, perhaps also surprised at her interjection. But he lets it pass, and concedes, "Yes, it seems unlikely that we were betrayed. But I need to update Senator Organa, and I can't risk revealing his position if our communications have been compromised. We'll need to send a courier."
With another look to her. "The Ghost is the fastest ship we have."
Hera just nods, her mind already whirring ahead. "Yes, Commander Sato. I'll do another sweep for trackers and then head out."
"We'll transfer some of our fuel to you," Sato adds. "The Senator's location is very remote."
'Remote' is the word for it. The planet is uncharted, missing from the standard catalogue carried in nav computers and even Hera's more extensive collection. She plots a careful route to Sato's coordinates, deviating from the Treillus Trade Run well ahead of time and weaving through smaller lanes of largely barren space. The closest populated system she knew of were the orbiting stations of Sanrafsix, corporate-owned and Empire-friendly, which only makes this particular sector feel all the more lonesome.
From a distance, Crait looks white and frozen, but as the Ghost descends Hera sees red soil burst out from caverns and cliffs, spilled along as the white salt that coats the planet is brushed aside in the wind. Sato's own two-way beacon flashes along the console as Hera surveys the landscape, guiding her down to an enormous ridge that has been ripped open, the red chasm within glittering in the sunlight. A long trench cuts into the salt flats before it, dotted with lookout posts and mounted cannons, and a woman's voice greets her over her comm and guides her down into the open mouth of the chasm. Salt scatters, and inside a man waves her in among the ships already collected in the open mouth of the mine.
Organa is waiting when she lands. Hera hasn't seen him like this before – instead of his simple white diplomat's suit, he's dressed in deep brown, a short cloak along his shoulders that Hera knew concealed a blaster. A young human in white fatigues stands near him, her hair braided into twin buns and her right hand nervously thumbing her own pistol. He looks more like a soldier than a senator, until his eyes reaches hers, and his face breaks into a smile.
"But it sounds like your losses weren’t as severe as they could have been," he says after she explains what happened on Garel. He leads the way deeper into the mine, along a wide tunnel that has been lined with wire and quick-charge lanterns. The red soil crunches under her boots, and the whole place smells of salt and oil.
"In no small part thanks to you," he adds.
Hera doesn't answer this. Instead, her eyes flicker around each of the caverns they pass through, one lit by collection of portable Com-Scans that outnumbered the two beings in the room, a human and a Rodian dressed in the same white fatigues as Organa's guard. Another is stacked with crates printed with red warnings for explosive contents, and in a third two humans work under large lamps to mend old, mix-matched flight suits.
Organa's steps slow as they reach a larger cave, the crystalline red soil here still bursting from the ground as though enormous claws had ripped it into pieces. The space is too large for the small lanterns that had lined the halls, and here these rebels had laid out glowing mats in paths around the cave, to keep one another from wandering into dark spots where Hera suspected the soil had collapsed. Along the walls of the cave, she can make out an enormous crust-piercer and the spider-like legs of two ancient excavator droids.
"Looks like they barely scratched the surface," she murmurs. The air is cooler here, and the oil smell isn't as strong away from the ships. "Why did they stop?"
"Likely the same reason it's not very useful as a base for us," Organa says. His own voice echoes slightly in the cavern. "Too remote, too far off the hyperspace lanes. Hard to get to, or ship from."
Hera looks back to him, figuring he's about to lead her onward, to whatever she assumes he'd like her to see. But Organa folds his arms, looking out into the dark cave beyond them. A few pairs of pin-prick yellow eyes surface in the dark, something that would have startled Hera if she hadn't watched Zeb barking at couple of those shimmering crystal creatures to keep them from scampering up into the ship.
"Captain Syndulla," he says, turning back to her. "If you don't mind, there's something I'd like to ask you."
Or he'd been looking for some privacy. She glances down the empty passage they'd come through, trying to spot the shadow of his guard, but she doesn't see anything. "All right," she answers.
Organa's eyes meet hers again, and this time, he doesn't smile. Instead, he's focused, as though searching for something on her, and it's another moment before –"How old were you when you first –"
He seems to be waiting for her to offer some word, some way of finishing this question, but Hera can't guess where he's going with this, and so only watches him. Eventually, he says, "- when your father allowed you to join his cause."
This – is not what Hera expected. She presses her lips together, but otherwise tries keep her features in check. There's a lot she could say to that, about 'his cause,' about what she had been allowed - but she knows it's not the point. It's plain enough that Organa hadn't known how to ask this, nor is there any reason he should know. He knew Cham Syndulla, the militant radical. As she considers her answer, Hera looks back to the Senator, to his cloak, where she imagines he had hidden a blaster. She wonders whether he's ever fired it.
"My parents never hid the war from me," she says. Maybe there's a quiet correction, but Hera doesn't linger on it. "There was never a time when I wasn't a part of their cause."
Organa's eyes widen, but only very slightly. It seems he also doesn't want to give away too much. "And you don't resent them for that?" he asks. "You don't feel you were ever too young?"
Hera shakes her head. "The war was there, my being young didn't change that. I was always going to be part of it."
"That doesn't mean you had to be the one fighting it."
Something in his voice changes; there's a hardness that makes Hera feel as though she's being scolded. She meets his eyes, sees how the shadows fall across his face, the edges of gray in his dark hair, and for the first time considers that he must be old enough to be her father. A moment ago, she had wondered if Organa had ever fired a blaster. Now she realizes how very young she must look to him. Even if she is 'Phoenix Leader' – unlike Sato or Organa or Ahsoka, she isn't a veteran of the old Republic. Only a handful of years are between her and that young Twi'lek girl with her grumpy droid, alone in the galaxy.
And her eyes, set on his, don't flicker. She won’t have that.
"As far as my parents were concerned, being a Twi'lek in this galaxy meant always being at war." She lets her own voice harden, a tone she might use for an order, not an explanation. "And my life so far has only proved them right. So yes, I was always going to fight."
He's the one who flickers. He looks away from her, out into the dark cavern, and takes a deep breath that he releases in a sigh. She waits for him to speak again, but when he doesn't –
"I'm guessing there's a reason you're asking me this?"
He lifts a hand, pressing it to his brow at first, and down along his face. There's another deep breath. "I think what I'm looking for," he says, turning back to her, "is some advice."
And then it clicks. She thinks back to what she told Kanan, about Sabine and Ezra, another generation brought in so young, having only known the Empire. Leading them into lives – and possibly, deaths – shaped by war, even if that had already been the case long before she met them.
"My advice, Senator," Hera says, speaking slowly, "Is that you should listen to your daughter."
After a moment, Organa nods, and a hint of his smile has returned.
The Ghost stays on Crait for just under thirty hours, and Hera spends much of it working with Organa's communications officers to check their own data for any hint of an Imperial breach. There's also maintenance checks on the Ghost, confirming their fuel levels before their journey back to the fleet and cleaning out the salt that collects along the ship's turrets and outer plating, as well as distributing what they can spare from their own supplies, protein bars and power packs and even one crate of fresh fruit. A couple pilots venture up to Hera while she's wiping salt from the Ghost's nose turret, and she finds she can't deny them a look around her cockpit between questions about the new B-wing model and the destruction of the Sovereign. Everyone learns more about each other than maybe they should – a large number of Organa's recruits are from Alderaan's security forces, nearly all of the others came through resistance networks running out of Coruscant.
Nothing is found to suggest the communications on Crait have been compromised, but still, Hera waits until they've departed the base, and are deep into their first leg of their path back to the fleet, before she signals Sato. With that done, she checks her chronometer and the ship's computer to confirm the time on Lothal, before sending another signal, this one to Chopper.
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Except --
"They staged the breakout because they heard him. His speech. The one we broadcast."
It would have always been bad, but Kanan's torn on whether learning that might have made it worse.
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Finally, she asks, "Do you think he blames himself?"
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Kanan takes a breath again.
"But I think . . . I think he's also aware that he's a piece of them still in the world, still doing their work. And maybe that will be enough to get him through."
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It's a page she has to turn in her mind, to the next practical question.
"Does he seem angry? Like he'd want revenge?"
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Except --
"I don't . . . think so. Maybe for a minute, but given that they died trying to free people -- "
Kanan trails off again.
" -- to free Lothal, I think as long as we have some focus on that, I think he'll be all right."
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But for now, that's another page she can turn. "What about you?"
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"Me? I'm -- I'm still mostly thinking about Ezra."
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"But I need to know how you're doing, too."
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He trails off again.
"I don't know. It feels close, and at the same time it's something I don't have any experience with."
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Hera takes a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment as she thinks. "One question this answers for Ezra is whether he can go back home again."
And every being on the Ghost, for their own reasons, had the same answer to that.
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Kanan exhales, very softly.
"It's not impossible."
Kanan managed. You know, with Hera's help.
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"That's something you can show him."
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(Or that he was with her anywhere.)
"We can," he says, instead. Maybe that will stand in for all the rest.
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And briefly, she makes herself smile. Even with her feelings more twisted toward exhaustion and sorrow than anything to smile about, her smile is soft, with a flickering warmth to it.
"I'm hoping we can regroup soon."
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"That would be -- "
He clears his throat.
"That would be good."
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She takes a breath, placing one hand on the console, and collects her thoughts again.
"Have you found a safe place to hide for now?"
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As it is --
He breathes, exhaling slowly, then nods.
"We have. I'm pretty sure we'll have to move again soon, but we've got a day or two more."
Ezra can use the time, for a little bit longer.
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With a soft sigh, "And hopefully we've shaken whatever the Empire used to find us."
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Kanan's jaw clenches as his stomach tightens with worry.
That last part is the opposite of good news.
"No sign of what it was at all?"
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Hera lets out a breath. "We haven't found any indication of a communications breach. More likely someone slipped up. We're never as careful as we should be."
And that's going to mean more lives lost, the longer this goes on.
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"I just hope it wasn't one of us."
He'll try to make sure the kids are more careful, at least.
All of the kids.
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She looks down, rubbing at her forehead. "Or maybe we were just noticed by the wrong people. Hiding the fleet in a city was never going to be sustainable."
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Instead --
"Long-term planning's not exactly the easiest thing right now."
He shakes his head.
"I know. The Empire doesn't want anyone to have that capability besides itself."
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She takes a breath, looking back up again. "It was one thing when it was just us on Lothal. Now we need a place we can operate out of, not scattered spaceports."
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"It would help a lot, you're right. Any potential targets in mind?"
Probably none it's safe to talk about now, precisely, but --
"Or should Ezra and I do some scouting on our way back?"
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"It's not like we can hire someone to do it for us. No lulls coming up?"
As if they can really predict those.
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"Maybe we could grab a probe droid."
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"Maybe two probe droids? We could play bait."
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"It's disabling the self-destruct that'll be the hard part."
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"Yeah, that's the hard part. As long as no one stabs it with a lightsaber, we can probably manage it."
If only Chopper were more of a droid diplomat . . .
(Wait.)
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But then Hera's eyes glance down to her chrono, and whatever she'd been thinking flickers out of her mind. "We're coming out of hyperspace soon, I'll need to be up there."
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As if she needs to be told. But maybe he needs to say it, to put that wish out there. (Even if the Force doesn't work like that.)
"We'll see you again soon."
Whatever he has to do to make that happen, he will.
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She pauses, and takes a breath. "- we'll be there soon."
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And then, because the heart of him still wants to linger --
"Chop, end transmission."
Hera's image disappears. There's work to do.