STAR WARS REBELS || Her Wings Of Fire

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Vader Comes Out To Play

As the Imperial shuttle carrying one captured Inquisitor, one Rebel informant with questionable motives and the crew of the Ghost exited hyperspace and made its way towards the small fleet of ships nearby, two fighters came up alongside it. Its pilots were wary of the sudden appearance of an Imperial ship, but they knew that the Empire wouldn't send just one of them if they had discovered their location.

The only other possibility was that it was carrying friends.

"Phoenix Home, this is Ghost away team," Hera said as she hit a few buttons on the ceiling panel, opening a line of communication between the stolen Imperial shuttle and the officers aboard the Rebel fleet's flagship. "Clearance code one-two-one-eight-one-five."

There was a moment of silence as they ran Hera's voice and code through the database, and the Twi'lek pilot and Kanan, who was acting as her copilot, raised their eyebrows. "Your clearance code checks out," came the eventual reply. "Welcome home, Ghost team."

Soon, they had docked with Phoenix Home and were making their way up to the bridge to give their report. Zeb had stayed behind to guard their prisoner, who was still out cold, and contained by several of the shields with the polarity inversed, which made a sort of temporary force field.

But before they could get too far, Chopper began to squawk and bleep agitatedly. Sabine listened for a moment, translating the droid's binary audio codes into Basic, then turned back towards the others. "Chopper said a transmitter activated on our shuttle moments ago!" she exclaimed.

Hera took off running immediately, but Ezra stopped next to her to ask: "What does that mean?"

"It means the Empire tracked us back to the fleet!" Kanan shot Teri a stare that was almost powerful enough to burn a hole through a sheet of metal. "How could you have been so stupid? They must have tracked the Sith woman here, or known about the shuttle! Probably both!"

"I... I didn't know!" Teri called back, but his defense sounded weak even to his own ears. He knew the consequences of his actions and was accepting them.

He and the others started after Hera, soon overtaking her and darting through the door onto the command deck. "Commander Sato!" the green Twi'lek called. "We need the fleet to jump out of here. Our shuttle was tracked."

The officer turned away from the young woman in a pilot's uniform he had been talking to, his face set in a grim expression. He opened his mouth to speak, but an operative at one of the consoles nearby began making a report on the readings he was getting from the scanners and beat him to it.

"Commander, scanning a ship entering our sector."

Hera looked back at Kanan, and they shared a look. Things were taking a turn for the worse, and, for now, there was nothing they could do.

-:-:-:-:-:-

As the transmitter hidden in Sorena's headband, which Vader had programmed to activate as soon as the ship carrying the Rebel operatives left hyperspace began transmitting information to his starfighter, Vader made the jump to lightspeed. The area where the Rebel fleet was hiding wasn't too far off the beaten trail, and the travel time was less than ten minutes from his location.

Of course, if they were anywhere near as efficient as they let on, by now, the Rebels would be alerted to the potential arrival of Imperial ships. But the presence of just one fighter would probably take them by surprise.

That and his skills as a pilot would be his greatest allies today.

He throttled the engine, upping its speed to close to its limit. The corvettes were moving into a defensive position, and his monitors were picking up on the signs in the lead cruiser that it was about to launch its fighters.