The Unchronicled Adventures Of Ahsoka Tano, Book Nine

Chapter Twenty-Four: Han's Mission

HAN SOLO

The Bria came out of hyperspace above Mandalore with a few ominous clunking noises, before puttering along towards the yellow-grey planet ahead.

"Come on, girl," Han said from the cockpit, addressing the controls in front of him. "Hold together now. Your cranky old hyperdrive regulators can wither up and die when we get back to Mos Eisley or somewhere, okay?"

As they got closer to the planet, Chewbacca ran into the cockpit to take his seat, yowling at him in Wookiee that the scanners had picked up on something up ahead. Something big.

Han looked up from the panel and out at the viewport while Chewy took over flying. His eyes widened when he realized what the scanners had found. Hiding behind the planet so that it was nearly invisible to incoming ships was an Imperial Star Destroyer.

And it was covered in plasma fires.

He chuckled. It wasn't every day that you saw that. Part of him wished he had a holo-recorder on him to get a picture. "You see that, Chewy?"

The Wookiee roared in agreement.

"That's the Empire cowering behind the planet while they try to nurse their wounds." He leaned in closer to the window. "Yeah, they sure took a beating. Wonder who it was that was able to get the better of a Star Destroyer like that...?"

The Wookiee let out a low growl, and Han looked up. "Well, we'd better hope we're not dealing with the sort you're talking about. I mean, come on. Fulcrum would never deal with those kinds of people. I'm sure of that, fuzz-ball."

He talked like he was certain of what he was saying, but his heart wasn't in it.

Han and Chewy landed the Bria at the rendezvous point on the planet's surface, thankfully, without incident. They loaded Fulcrum's special cargo onto the lift and brought it out of the ship, even though Han had to give the lever controlling it a few good whacks before it started moving in earnest.

No one was there to meet them, but he was fine with that. He now had a sneaking suspicion that they were getting their cargo to a certain group that had caused Mandalore a lot of trouble during the Clone Wars. Now, they were all that was keeping the planet out of the Empire's hands - proof of how desperate some planets could get for help.

As they loaded the last canister-shaped-thing out of the ship, Han heard a peculiar sound. It sounded like an engine, but not quite...

And then he recognized it. "Chewy!" he yelled, and grabbed his blaster.

Not a moment later, five Mandalorian warriors outfitted with jetpacks landed in a crescent formation around them, readying flamethrowers, shoulder cannons and top-of-the-line blasters. A speeder with three more inside pulled up a moment later. Chewbacca let out a roar, readying his crossbow, and Han had to stop him from blasting one of them into oblivion.

The leader of the group, a woman by their body shape, stepped forward. "You. Smuggler," she said, her voice crackling with static over her helmet comm. "What's the password?"

Han crossed his arms, his blaster resting leisurely up against one arm. "The writing on the wall spells out the Empire's fall. Happy, Mandalorian?"

The Mandos' guns were lowered immediately.

The woman took off her helmet, giving her choppy red hair, which was held out of her eyes by a headband, a shake. "That's Redbird to you," she said, her light green eyes flashing. "Do you have the cargo from Fulcrum?"

"Yeah," he said. "It's all here. All five of the shield generators." At Redbird's raised eyebrows, he chuckled. "I've been around, sweetheart. I know a shield generator when I see one, especially Imperial grade." More to himself, he added, "Wonder where Fulcrum got them."

"Where Fulcrum got them doesn't matter. All that does matter is that they're here now. And we're most certainly going to put them to good use." She signaled to the other Mandos, who began loading the generators into a speeder.

Even though she was clearly in her late thirties, Redbird looked every bit as deadly as the younger warriors behind her. Maybe even more so, judging by the way they obeyed her orders without question.

Suddenly, her eyes narrowed with deathly severity. "Smuggler. I have something you need to get to Fulcrum when you go back for your pay." She handed him a holo-disk, which he tucked into his jacket without a word. "She needs to see what's on that disk, and no one else. Got it?"

"Yeah, I hear you loud and clear," Han said in an annoyed tone.

"Good. Now get lost. The Imps saw your ship land, and you can bet they'll be coming for you soon."

Han nodded, calling to Chewy, who was busy giving the Mandalorians a stare-down. As they keyed up the takeoff cycle from the cockpit, Han's copilot murmured a particularly rude comment on the Mandos' hospitality.

Han smirked. "Yeah, I know. Pretty damn happy to be off, huh?"

The Wookiee nodded his great furry head with a growl-chuckle and got back to his controls, leaving Han to his own thoughts. There were many things about this whole operation he was curious about, but the matter of the disk bugged him the most out of all of them.

"I guess we'll just have to ask Fulcrum when we get back," he said aloud, before hitting a few buttons and pulling a lever.

And then the Mandalore system faded away into one starline out of the billions in the galaxy as the Bria engaged lightspeed.

*The Bria's mission has finally been revealed. But what could be on the disk that Bo-Katan - or Redbird - wants Han to deliver? And what could the Imperial forces and the Sith be planning? And who could Rain, the woman who visited Kaylira in her dreams, really be? You'll find out in the next thrilling chapter of The Unchronicled Adventures Of Ahsoka Tano!

Hello all! Second chapter for tonight, yay! I know I'm posting kind of late, and it's probable that not many people will see it until tomorrow, but it takes me roughly an hour to write a chapter. So you do the math: I just wrote about half the first chapter and the whole of this one.

And also, Once Upon A Time has kind of re-taken over my life. I left off halfway through season 4, and after watching the third episode today, I was just like, "Why the heck did I ever stop watching this?"

Hope I got the Han Solo/Chewbacca reactions okay (because this is really not my area of expertise) and that the last two chapters were to your liking. And HEY, WHO'S LOOKING FORWARD TO THE NEXT EPISODE OF SEASON 2?!?!?! I SURE AM!!!

Discover that your cells are in a symbiotic relationship with Force-sensitive creatures called midichlorians and may the Force be with you,

Sharron