The Unchronicled Adventures Of Ahsoka Tano, Book Nine

Prologue: The Last Broadcast

It was the night of the monthly Bridger broadcast, and the population of the small Outer Rim planet Lothal had their HoloNet channels eagerly tuned to the most customary frequency. Everyone was looking forward to it, including a small boy with bluish-black hair.

"Momma?" he asked a woman in her mid-thirties, who stood beside him, "are we gonna start now?"

"In a minute, Ezra," she replied. "Daddy just had something to check; he thought that there was a bug in the transmitter. We'll be ready soon."

"But it's my birthday," Ezra pouted, crossing his arms. His hair fell into his eyes, but his mother pushed it away.

"Just be patient, sweetheart." She looked up as a tall man with similar hair, his closer to an indigo-black than Ezra's, walked into the living room. "Look, here comes your father."

"Hello, Mira dear," he said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. Then he looked down at his son, wearing an expression that would have been stony if not for the twinkle in his bright blue eyes. "You haven't been giving your poor mother here any trouble, have you?"

"No," Ezra denied quickly, raising his arms for a hug. His father picked him up easily, as he was strong from his childhood of farming on the plains of Lothal, and swung him over his shoulder.

The boy shrieked in laughter, but his mother hushed him quickly. "Come now, Ezra, it's time to start. Ephraim, would you do us the honor?"

He nodded, and began to key in the access codes for their beat-up old audio transmitter, making sure that it had enough power for the short speech that they were planning to broadcast on Lothal and on a few other systems nearby.

A little while before, they had decided that the next broadcast would be made from the living room, as it had the best reception in the house. And, as the Empire was looking for them, their forces were stretching out a wide web of interfering signals to try to stop their transmission from getting onto the HoloNet. It would be more effective to attempt to broadcast from there than from their basement hideout.

It would be their fatal mistake. For, unknown to the Bridger family, the Empire hadn't just set up interference. They were setting up tracking signals, on high alert for the next broadcast, to pinpoint their location the next time they tried to air on the HoloNet.

It was time. Ephraim turned the battered old machine on, and cleared his throat. "People of Lothal," he began, his low voice at the same time strong and gentle. "These are difficult times we are living in. The Empire is slowly cutting off every link we have to freedom and justice that we so deserve."

"How long will we continue as little more than beasts of burden, slaving for the so-called 'greater good' of the Empire?" Mira chimed in. "How long will we have to work our fields as we always have, but instead send the majority of our earnings from our harvests to the Empire? I must ask everyone listening something tonight, because this is happening right now: how long will we let them?"

"We have to do something!" Ezra's father cried, and the boy smiled, in total awe of his parents. They were so brave, and he had admired them his whole life.

"We must stand up and fight! For freedom!" Mira said, beginning their routine that they would sign off with after every broadcast.

Ephraim's line was next. "For justice!"

"For the Rebelli–"

Ezra's mother never got to finish. Suddenly, one of the wide windows of the living room and some of the wall surrounding it imploded, sending up a shower of sparks, glass and smoke. Ezra screamed in fear, hearing the familiar and ominous sounds of Storm Trooper blasters being readied, and the clicks of their white armor.

To their credit, his parents reacted quickly. Mira turned off the transmitter almost faster than Ezra could follow, and then shoved it into her son's hands while her husband stood guard. "Momma? What's going on?" he asked, readjusting the machine in his hands to better absorb its weight as she pulled him down the hall.

"Ezra," Mira said, trying to keep her voice level. "We're going to play a game. You take the transmitter and go to the basement. It's just like hide and seek. You wait there until we come to get you, all right?"

"But–"

"Great! Let's go." She kissed him on both cheeks and gave him a tight hug, before sending him down the ladder and into the basement, telling him to leave the lights off. Then she put the chair that hid it into place, leaving Ezra in the darkness.

When his parents didn't come to find him after three hours, he came back up into the house. Ephraim and Mira were gone, as well as the Troopers. Ezra sat down and cried, still clutching the transmitter. He knew what had just happened.

That was the last of the Bridger broadcasts.