Road From Ruin: Star Wars Rebels

Chapter 1: It's A Long Way To Alderaan

??? P.O.V

My fingers drummed relentlessly against the padded arm of the shuttle chair that I resided in, my gaze fixed dead ahead.  A few of the other passengers shot me irritated looks but I ignored them merrily.  The silence in the shuttle was deafening and as everyone got comfy and waited out the rest of the ride, my anxiety gnawed away at my insides and I had butterflies in my stomach that did sickening flip-flops.  Considering that we were travelling at lightspeed, it was eerily quiet inside the transport shuttle.  Feeling my lunch start to travel upwards, I turned my attention to the outside of the ship.

Big mistake.

Hyperspace swirled around the transport shuttle, making me feel sick with it's distorting patterns.  I hated hyperspace.  I was constantly scared that it's raw power was going to shred the ship.  However, when I upset the Empire after breaking into a fortified vault, the Imperials weren't too impressed with me.  Normally, I wouldn't go looking for trouble, but this catch was worth it.  Pulling my bag a little closer, I felt if the contents were there still.  Thankfully they were.

Removing my heavy black coat, I turned my thoughts to my next move.  My previous location, the planet of Orto Platonia, wasn't exactly a warm place.  The desolate, frozen wasteland may have provided a good hideaway, but in the end I had to move.  Keep moving forward and the past can't catch you.  That was my motto.  Substituting the coat, I switched it for a long brown cloak that covered both my face and long blonde locks.

The transport ship shuddered slightly as it disengaged lightspeed and the planet of Lothal came into view.  It was mostly covered in grassy plains but in certain areas, the climate dropped enough for vast ice sheets to form.  It was winter now on Lothal, so the ice sheets had expanded slightly compared to the planet in the summer.  The shuttle neared the planet's surface until I lost sight of the curvature of Lothal.

As the shuttle touched down, I rose from my seat feeling my blaster brush my hip slightly.  The feeling was comforting, to know that I had some form of protection.  Tapping my foot, I waited impatiently for the door to spring open.  The sooner I was off this thing the better.

Wrapping my cloak around me and pulling the hood down firmly, I left the shuttle, only to be confronted by two strangers.  Both looked around my age, fifteen, perhaps one being slightly older.  One was a girl with blue and green short hair, dyed green at the ends with the main colour being blue, brown eyes and what looked like customised Mandalorian armour.  That put me on edge alone.  I didn't really have the best relationship with the Mandalorians to say the least.  The other was a boy with blue hair, and deep blue eyes.  He wore an orange jumpsuit and twin scars on his left cheek. 

The boy came up to me and said "It's a long way to Alderaan" very purposefully and slowly, as if I was a school kid.  Had I not been in a hurry, I would have probably said some smart remark or asked him if he needed his head checking, but I just looked at him strangely and shuffled past.  I was about to exit the hanger before something nagged at the back of my mind.  I turned slightly and looked back at the pair, before focusing on the boy.

Something was different about him.

I must have been staring more intently than I realised because he turned and searched the crowd of departing passengers before settling on me.  We met eyes for a second before I realised that I'd been here too long, and hurried away, breaking his gaze.

I had a few hideouts on Lothal but getting there without being spotted was an issue.  Star Destroyers circled the sky and spotlights searched the ground.  It shocked me.  Lothal used to be a relatively happy planet and the Empire never used to have this many patrols on it.  People would talk and even the occasional laugh would escape someone's lips, but now, people didn't even acknowledge each other.  Now, they kept to themselves, occasionally trading distrustful looks, or only speaking when they had to.