Star Wars Rebels: Rise of the Rebels (4 page)

Sabine stood
on the cockpit of the TIE she had painted, watching the stormtroopers spread out to search for her. She jumped down when no one was looking in her direction.

This would be a good opportunity to complete her final mission objective, but she couldn’t do that just yet. It wouldn’t be right to leave her painting unfinished.

Sabine gave her mini airbrush a shake and added some strokes to the starbird she had sprayed on the TIE’s wing. But her painting wasn’t quite complete yet. It didn’t have her signature touch.

“Something ’s missing…” she said, pulling a circular object off her utility belt and plopping it between the wings she’d painted. “There, perfect!” Now the starbird had a beak, with a tiny light that blinked. Her signature.

She wished she could admire her work a little longer. But every blink of the beak told her time was running out for her diversion to succeed. She had to gather the troopers together into a group, then sneak back into the city without being noticed.

Sabine raced off, spying white armor behind a nearby TIE. She leapt up to grab a handle on the cockpit-wing attachment and twirled her legs in front of her. One of the stormtroopers approached her. “Hands up, you rebel scum!” Sabine used her speed and landed a devastating kick to him. The trooper fell, his rear smacking the tarmac. “Ha! Too slow!” she said. The trooper rolled and fired, but she was already circling another TIE.

The trooper’s frustrated yell brought three more troopers her way. She darted between and underneath the TIEs, laughing as the Imperials fired at her and missed.

The commander summoned all the stormtroopers back to him. Sabine slipped past them and made it to the wall. As she climbed, she could hear their electronically compressed voices.

“Intruder was headed your way!” the commander shouted to the trooper she’d kicked.

“I had her!” the trooper replied.

“Isn’t this where we started?” said the one who had identified himself as TK-626 over the comm.

Sabine heaved herself onto the top of the wall, then twisted her body around. She could see the stormtroopers examining the blinking beak. “Uh-oh,” she heard TK-626 say when the light became steady.

Uh-oh
was right. She hadn’t come here just to tag machinery. Her art always had a purpose. That day it was to teach those Imperial bullies a lesson.

Sabine dropped off the wall right as the beak on the TIE fighter exploded, destroying the vessel and knocking back all the stormtroopers to the tarmac.

Her signature was none other than a paint bomb.

The ground was shaking when she landed. Alarms rang out in the night. Sabine could hear the stormtroopers’ groans. She wished she could see their expressions when they noticed their armor was covered in purple paint.

“That was some diversion, Sabine,” Hera commed from the
Ghost
. “Did the job so well we can see the explosion from here.”

Sabine reached for the underside of her helmet. “Forget the explosion,” she said. She pulled her helmet off, wanting an unfiltered view of her minor masterpiece. “Look at the color.”

A beautiful purple cloud rose above the airfield. But it wasn’t just any cloud. It formed the shape of a starbird, with flashes of gold for eyes. And slowly, the ghostly bird spread its wings across the heavens.

Sabine smiled. Someday soon, she hoped, the oppressive Empire would be brought down, and those thousand thousand worlds would know her name and her art.

She put her Mandalorian helmet back on and walked into the city.

Garazeb Orrelios
entered the alley with his bo-rifle slung over his back. A light wind rustled his gray fur. Trash and dust blew back and forth. He had come here to meet his friend and fellow rebel near the marketplace in the lower levels of Lothal’s capital city. But as Zeb looked around, there was no sign of Kanan Jarrus anywhere.

His comlink crackled. “Zeb! Where are you?” said Kanan.

Zeb.
Everyone called him by that nickname, because few species could roll the
r
’s the way you were supposed to in his native Lasat tongue. He missed hearing his language spoken correctly. It was so rare these days. The Empire had done all it could to put his species on the endangered list.

Zeb grabbed his comlink and held it near his sharp-toothed mouth. “I’m at the rendezvous point. Where are you?”

Kanan’s voice sounded irritated over the comlink. “You’re not at the rendezvous point, because
I’m
at the rendezvous point.”

Zeb looked around the alley again, then scratched his chin. This didn’t make sense. Maybe he had misheard Kanan’s instructions. Humans talked so fast.

“Um, where’s the rendezvous point again?” he asked Kanan.

A sigh preceded Kanan’s voice. “In the alley by the marketplace.”

Zeb turned back toward the marketplace. Halfway down the alley, two Imperial stormtroopers neared a snout-nosed, one-meter-tall Ugnaught and an astromech droid. The droid wasn’t doing anything associated with his primary function of navigation. His repair arm held out a fruit that his master was selling from a crate.

Zeb frowned. He didn’t care much for street merchants or astromechs. Most street merchants thought Zeb was a big, gruff oaf and tried to rip him off when they sold him things. And astromechs beeped too much. He couldn’t count the number of times he had wanted to shake Chopper when the droid was being a smart mouth.

On the other hand, Zeb cared even less for Imperials. He kept his eyes on the stormtroopers as he spoke to Kanan through his comlink. “Well, I’m in an alley.”

“And yet clearly not in the
right
alley,” Kanan said.

The troopers jabbed their rifles at the crate, scattering the Ugnaught’s merchandise. Clearly they wanted something other than fruit. The squat Ugnaught cowered back in fear.

Zeb scowled, moving his neck to the side, cracking it. “Yeah, well, there’s a lotta alleys in this town,” he responded.

He pushed down on his hard-boned knuckles, cracking them, too. Then he wiggled his clawed toes and gave them a good crack. He always did this before moving into action. There was no better feeling in the universe. It got his muscles loose.

Bam!
One of the troopers kicked the astromech. The little droid fell on its photoreceptor with a clang and a squeal.

Zeb started toward them. That was no way to treat anything—not even an astromech.

“Hagwa je killya, dolpa kikyuna!”
said the frightened Ugnaught in Huttese.

“What? Is that a bribe?” the trooper who had kicked the droid shouted. “Well, now you’re under arrest!”

“Noah, noah,”
the Ugnaught said. But his protests went unheard. Imperial stormtroopers rarely knew or spoke anything other than Basic, even though Huttese was a common trading language. Zeb understood. He was big and he was gruff, but he wasn’t an oaf. All this Ugnaught had said to the stormtroopers was not to hurt him because he was a loyal, tax-paying citizen.

“I can’t believe it! That is an offense!” the trooper said to his comrade. Neither seemed to care about figuring out what the merchant had really said. He looked back at the whimpering Ugnaught. “Stop whining. We’re here to protect you.”

“Yeah.” The other trooper took the Ugnaught’s credit box and cleaned out all the coins and credit chips. “But the Empire’s protection can be expensive,” he said, laughing.

His laugh didn’t last long. Having advanced on the distracted troopers, Zeb grabbed each with an enormous hand and slammed them into each other like toy soldiers. They both crumpled to the ground.

Zeb’s comlink crackled again. “So are you going to make the rendezvous or not?” Kanan asked.

Zeb grinned down at the little Ugnaught, who seemed even more scared. At first he thought it was because of his size, but then he saw four more stormtroopers rushing into the alley.

“Hey! You!
Stop!
” the lead trooper yelled, raising his blaster.

“It’s possible I may be a little late,” Zeb said into the comlink. He began to run in the other direction before the stormtroopers could open fire.

“You’re
already
late,” Kanan said.

If Zeb didn’t find somewhere to hide soon, he might be more than late. He might never show up to whatever alley Kanan wanted to meet in.