Chapter Text
Five Months Post-Order 66
“Pull up.”
“I just need to—”
“Pull up.”
“I know, but—”
“Pull up!”
Ahsoka lunges over, seizing command from Hongai even as the girl jumps back like she’s been burned, and shoves the steering so far forward that it clangs against the metal of the dashboard.
The ship jolts, curving sharply up towards the sky and missing the radio tower by mere inches.
Before they can angle so far back their course turns into a loop, Ahsoka sets the ship flying flat, then pushes up and out of her chair, reaching back for the auto-pilot button.
A gentle beep sounds, and the ship settles onto a stable course.
When Ahsoka turns back to Hongai, the Elomin girl is breathing heavily, her shoulders curved inwards as her hands tremble in front of her. Fear is whipping around her with each heave of her chest.
“When I say pull up,” Ahsoka gets out, frustrated, “it means pull up.”
“I was going to.”
“Not in time.”
“I was going to.”
“No. You weren’t.” Ahsoka lifts her eyes skywards and counts to ten. Something bad could have happened – but it didn’t actually. There’s no reason to let that worry disguise itself as anger. Letting out a long breath, Ahsoka tries to release that emotion, and, a little calmer, says, “I’m sorry for touching you, Hongai. I—” panicked. “—needed to get to the steering.”
Hongai nods, shaky. Bites her lip. “I don’t want you to,” she says. “Please, don’t—don’t do it.” The emotions whirling around her in the Force begin to slow, just a fraction.
It looks like flying lessons will be ending as quickly as they started.
“Okay,” Ahsoka says. “I won’t touch you again.” She indicates the pilot’s seat. “I need to take us back to the landing pad.”
Hongai just sits there, staring down at her hands for a long, long moment.
This might take a while, and they’re not about to crash anymore, so Ahsoka takes the chance to gaze out of the cockpit.
Beautiful peach skies, interrupted by only the fluffiest of white clouds, stretch out in every direction. As the ship shoots directly away from the capital, Den Velmor, they’re heading across a massive lake and towards the snowy-capped mountains in the distance.
Velmor is a peaceful planet. Although the people haven’t accepted Imperial rule with open arms, they haven’t resisted either, so there’s little friction over the newly-renamed stormtroopers patrolling their streets. So far, none of their group has been stopped or searched or even had to show their most recent batch of fake chain codes, bar when they first arrived to the system.
They won’t be able to stay here for long. They’re never able to. But while they’re here, Ahsoka is appreciating the calm.
“Okay,” Hongai says at last, and peels herself out of the pilot’s seat. She hangs back, crossing her arms protectively across her stomach, as she waits for Ahsoka to take her spot.
Hopping over the central unit, Ahsoka lands in the pilot’s seat, grimaces at how far forward it is, and shifts it back several inches so she can comfortably hold the steering. Then, with a glance back over her shoulder, she tells Hongai, “You should strap yourself in.”
Quiet, Hongai says, “I’m okay, thanks,” and shuffles out of the cockpit.
Well, kriff.
Ahsoka’s getting better and better with the younglings every day, but she still manages to mess up.
But none of what she wants to say or explain needs to be done now, and they’re going to start wasting fuel if they fly much further away from the city, so she flicks her fingers towards the autopilot, switching it off with a push of the Force, and grips the steering as it whirs back online.
Guiding their freighter in a wide curve, Ahsoka starts them back towards the city.
After stealing a Nu-class from the Imperial base months ago, they’d quickly found that stolen Imperial ships are all too noticeable, so they’d managed to do an under-the-table trade of the near brand-new shuttle for a much older freighter. Soon, they’ll have to replace this ship too, but for now, it’s the only space they can call their own.
The ship’s comm unit buzzes.
Tapping the button to accept the transmission, Ahsoka is met by an immediate, “Is this the B-7 freighter that almost karking killed me?”
“Apologies,” Ahsoka tells whoever it is manning the radio tower that Hongai had very nearly hit. “It won’t happen again.”
“Who taught you to fly?” the person, presumably a tech, shouts, incredulous.
Ahsoka turns the pilot’s chair a fraction, glancing back to the door that leads to the rest of the ship. Hongai’s not too close, Ahsoka can feel the little bubble of tightly-wound emotions, so she’s probably gone to the bunkroom. “It was flying lessons,” she says, a little distracted. “For my—” Adopted family is the cover they use. It’s never fitted right, but there’s no other explanation for a group of younglings belonging to half a dozen different species. “—sister. She’s eleven,” Ahsoka adds.
“Well, don’t let her touch a dashboard ever again!”
Everyone has to learn somehow. Ahsoka imagines this guy didn’t start out at the top of a radio tower; he had to work his way up.
Ahsoka doesn’t think it’ll go down well if she tries to explain as much.
“I won’t,” she lies.
“Good.” The tech makes a huffy noise, winding down without someone to argue again. “Good.”
“Is that it?”
A pause that Ahsoka takes as a yes.
She ends the transmission and settles back in her seat.
The ship flies – safely, this time – past the radio tower as Ahsoka begins the descent to the spaceport, and she frowns at it. Until that moment, Hongai’s flying lesson had been going smoothly. Their whole time on Velmor has: they’ve rented two nice rooms above a quiet cantina just a few minutes’ walk from the spaceport, and there’s been no screaming nightmares to wake the neighbours, and when they leave in two days’ time, it looks like it’ll be peacefully. Their current chain codes should last them another week.
Of course, as soon as Ahsoka allows herself to think they might make it out of here peacefully, an echo of warning sounds in her chest.
The hole where her eye once was aches; hollow. A reminder that peace doesn’t exist for them anymore.
But there’s nothing to be done. Danger is all around them, at all times. A single person recognising Mace, or one of the younglings forgetting themselves and saying the wrong word or reaching for the Force, and the entire Imperial garrison could come slamming down on their heads. Once, Jedi younglings could freely be themselves; Ahsoka could, Mace could, every Jedi could. That’s not true anymore.
Ahsoka comms the radio tower – not the one Hongai nearly hit, but the other one even though it’s further away – to ask for permission to land, and it’s granted, so she sets their freighter down in the marked-out section before deactivating the engine.
It’s as she turns her chair, starting out of it, that she hears the ramp already clanging to the ground.
Ahsoka sighs. Heavily.
Sure enough, her instincts are right: by the time she’s reached the top of the ramp, the hem of Hongai’s blue dress is already disappearing around the corner, hurrying ahead so she doesn’t have to talk to Ahsoka.
So Ahsoka takes her time locking the ship up, making sure that everything’s in place.
A few weeks ago on Phindar, half their fuel tank was siphoned out by a group of teenagers, barely a few years older than Ahsoka herself, and only Mace’s intuition that something was wrong had stopped them losing hundreds of credits more fuel. The spaceport attendant there had tried to sell them a special device to give anyone who tried that again a stun-blast, but they didn’t have anywhere near enough credits for it.
Ahsoka had gone out that night and found another fighting pit. She’d gone for four rounds, won enough to buy the device, and returned to the ship with brown bruises all over. They’d fought, Mace and her, in whispered tones so as not to wake the others even as he’d dabbed at her cuts and checked her aching arm for a break.
In the end, the spaceport attendant had vanished in the night. Taken by stormtroopers. His husband wouldn’t talk to them, refusing to even open the door, and even though it had hurt, they didn’t have the time or resources to go after him.
Now, as Ahsoka checks on the droid-popper they’ve wired onto the fuel tank as a makeshift defence, she thinks about that spaceport attendant.
He’s not the first person the Empire’s made vanish for no apparent reason. Ahsoka knows that he won’t be the last.
Off to Obroa-skai is as calm at this hour as it is at every hour, and Ahsoka quickly takes in the cantina as she steps through the door.
Fourteen customers, most sat in pairs, spread across the entire room. Six blasters total, all worn in plain-view in holsters on hips and thighs. The four exits Ahsoka’s mentally marked as viable – front door, window, out through the kitchen, and up the stairs to the rented rooms – are clear and unblocked. The bartender, Jefi, is cleaning some old glasses and looks absorbed in her work.
In the corner booth they’ve claimed as their own in the week they’ve been here, Mace and Arjun are sat.
Mace’s head is covered by a helmet so as to not give his identity away, but both his and Arjun’s focus has been on Ahsoka since before she entered. They’ll have sensed her approach.
As Ahsoka crosses the room, slipping between tables to reach them in the most direct way possible, she frowns.
No Val or Mei.
Unease whispers along her ribs.
As she reaches the table, before she’s even stopped, Arjun’s brow is furrowing.
“Is Hongai okay?”
Stilling halfway to asking about the others, Ahsoka tries to keep a calm expression on her face. “We…had a disagreement,” she says, trying to be diplomatic. “I upset her – by accident,” she hurries to add.
“Oh.” Arjun frowns down at the table. He and Mace are playing some game involving little blue and green pieces of plastoid, but Ahsoka doesn’t know who’s winning.
A nudge of the Force from Mace, and Ahsoka glances to him.
Before Mace can say anything, Arjun abruptly stands up.
Without another word, he slides out of the booth, past Ahsoka, and hurries over to the stairs that lead to their renter rooms.
Ahsoka doesn’t bother to watch him go, and instead slumps onto the end of the booth seat, propping her elbows on the table and resists the urge to hide her face in her hands.
She doesn’t have to ask for Mace to say, “She left as quickly as she entered.”
Which means she ran through the bar, heading for the privacy of their rooms.
“Flying lessons,” Ahsoka says, “are cancelled.”
“Is this Hongai’s decision or yours?”
“Mine,” Ahsoka says. Then: “We nearly crashed.”
“‘Nearly’,” Mace says, “is important.”
“Not important enough.” Ahsoka shakes her head, grimacing. “She wouldn’t listen to me! If I hadn’t done something, we would have crashed right into one of the radio towers. I told her to pull the ship up, but she didn’t.”
Mace nods slowly.
Dragging a hand across her face, Ahsoka slumps further, looking up at the ceiling. “We’d be dead if I hadn’t done something,” she says, but even to her it feels like an excuse.
Mace stays silent.
Glancing over at him again, Ahsoka adds, “I had to touch her, to stop us from crashing.”
“I see,” Mace says at last. He begins to collect up the game pieces that he and Arjun had been using, moving the coloured tiles into separate piles one-handed. “She scared you, you scared her, and so you’re both upset.”
“I didn’t—” Ahsoka starts, but cuts herself off, pulling a face. “Okay,” she admits, quiet. “Yeah. I scared her.”
She tracks the methodical movements of Mace’s hand as he separates out three stacked pieces. It’s the only part of his skin that’s visible right now, and there’s something calming about watching him work. One line of scarred lightning extends out from his sleeve and over his knuckles, splintering out across the back of his hand and disappearing as it curves around his fingers. The way the scars are gleaming in the light is a bad sign.
“I didn’t mean to.”
Mace knows that even without Ahsoka voicing it, but she thinks she needs to.
“Intention is not action,” Mace says. “You may have acted out of necessity and no wish to hurt Hongai, but you also reminded her of the worst moments of her life. Understand that she wants some time to herself.”
Ahsoka sits up straight and starts to help Mace sort the pieces. There’s a lot of them, almost too many to fit on the table. “I know,” she says, low. “Like I said: flying lessons are done. If I can’t save our lives without scaring her, then I can’t teach her properly.”
Mace doesn’t reply to this. “Val and Mei are at the market.”
At this, Ahsoka pauses, distracted from their train of conversation. The market is crawling with stormtroopers. “Alone?”
Though his eyes are hidden behind his helmet, Ahsoka can feel Mace’s gaze cut across to her. “I checked the rations while you two were flying.”
Ahsoka’s heart sinks. The weight of Mace’s next words is already bearing down on her, before he’s even said them.
“A number of them have expired.”
How many?
“Two boxes of twenty,” Mace says.
It hits like a blow, and for a moment, Ahsoka can’t breathe.
Forty ration bars are two and a half days’ worth of food. All the rations the Republic ever supplied the GAR with were a decade out from rotting, so Ahsoka’s never had to worry about ration bars expiring before. As Ahsoka tallies up this loss, begins to work out how it will impact them, she realises it must have been the bars from Aurra Sing’s ship. They were in storage for too long, and Ahsoka just didn’t think to check the year.
She should have checked.
“Val and Mei will buy enough to replenish our stocks,” Mace says, and though his voice stays the same, something calming drifts from him over to Ahsoka, threading between her fingers.
Ahsoka huffs a breath out. “They will?” The two younglings work hard and they mean well, but they’re easily distracted.
“I trust them to stay on mission.”
The cantina door hisses open, and Ahsoka tenses on instinct. She doesn’t turn to look, but she still tracks the two beings as they enter, talking loudly about some stormtroopers.
A hidden blaster-pistol under the one on the left’s jacket. He doesn’t move like he knows how to use it.
The bartender greets them cheerfully, asking what they want to drink, and they begin to give her their orders.
No bad intentions from them. The blaster’s just a precaution.
Exhaling, Ahsoka forces herself to relax.
Mace collects up the last of the game pieces and tucks them into one of the pouches on his belt. The sheen on his scars is brighter, and the winding tension of approaching pain is beginning to hum around them.
“There are healers here,” Ahsoka says, but she already knows it won’t work.
“Healers—”
“—won’t be able to do anything,” Ahsoka finishes heavily for her Master. “I know, I know.”
“You asked,” Mace points out.
“I hoped you’d finally changed your mind,” Ahsoka counters. “Instead of being stubborn.”
“I hope that you aren’t the person making that accusation,” Mace says. “I taught you to be better than a hypocrite.”
Ahsoka rolls her eyes.
Across the bar, just a fragment of the new customers’ conversation with the bartender reaches Ahsoka’s montrals.
It’s all she needs.
Something’s happened at the market.
The market.
The unease that’s been lazily curling around her chest squeezes tight.
Ahsoka explodes into action; in the blink of an eye, she’s out of the booth and on her feet, moving across the room.
Another patron leans back, their chair legs scraping against the floor as they laugh at something and get in Ahsoka’s way, so Ahsoka jumps up, kicks off the table behind them to go soaring over their head, and comes down in a crouch.
The bar falls silent.
Already, the two at the counter are turning to her, surprise on their faces, but Ahsoka hisses out, “What did you see?”
One of them blinks, glancing at the other, but the other is just staring at Ahsoka, slack-jawed. They look back, uncertain. “Uh…”
“At the market,” Ahsoka presses. “What did you see at the market?”
Mace is up too. He’s leaning back against the side of the booth, arms crossed with all of his focus on this conversation. That same unease that’s constricting Ahsoka’s chest pulls taut between them.
The uncertain man stumbles over his words more, taking an age to get to the point, and Ahsoka fixes him with a stare that seems to pin him place.
Eventually: “A kid. The troopers—”
“Stormtroopers,” the other mumbles in his ear.
“—stormtroopers, whatever they want to be called—there was this kid, I think it…did something? I dunno, but I just turned around and there was lots of yelling and staring and this little kid was getting binders slapped ‘round its wrists.”
There’s more than one reason why the Empire would arrest a child. Ahsoka’s seen them do worse.
They don’t do it in public, though.
Not unless they think they can get away with it.
“Did anyone say,” Ahsoka says, “that the kid was a Jedi?”
The man’s eyes grow wide – but not in surprise. In realisation. Remembering.
That tells Ahsoka everything she needs to know.
Across the cantina, Mace moves. Disappears up the stairs in just a few long strides, near-silent. Going for the others.
“You know what, someone did say that.” The man shakes his head. “Honestly, Jedi. What were they thinking?”
The bartender, Jefi, scoffs. The sound is low and rough in this silent room. “Are you blind? Didn’t you see what the girl just pulled off?” Jefi swings her gaze around to Ahsoka, and there’s some old, sad well inside of her. When their group arrived here, she’d had given the exhausted younglings a round of juice, on the house. Ahsoka sees that kindness in her still, even after finding out what Ahsoka is. “Run, kid. Before they catch you too.”
Ahsoka’s not used to the kindness of strangers. Not once they know. Not once they realise that they have a traitor in their midst. Some hate her for what the Jedi tried to do to the Republic; others simply want the reward for turning in a Jedi.
But now, as Jefi tells her to run, Ahsoka remembers what the Galaxy is supposed to be like.
It doesn’t matter, though.
Mei or Val or both are in Imperial custody as they speak. Both of them just eight, standard. Ahsoka fought for their lives; got them out of the Temple as it burned. So many Jedi gave up their lives for Mei and Val’s to continue on.
“I can’t,” Ahsoka breathes.
Jefi says, “Yeah, I guess so,” and turns around to start cleaning glasses.
No one moves an inch.
Upstairs, Mace will have found Arjun and Hongai. He’ll be telling them that the others have been captured by Imperials. He’ll be reminding them of the plan they’ve put in place for this: the remaining younglings flee while Mace and Ahsoka do what they can to get the others back.
The front door hisses open, and everyone in the cantina startles, jerking around to look.
A ball of utter terror tears in, and Ahsoka only just turns in time to catch Val as he jumps straight into her arms.
“They took her,” he says. He’s shaking so hard that his voice is shaking with it, but he sounds blank. “They took her, ‘Soka. They took her.”
Ahsoka doesn’t want to look after a youngling right now. She wants to run from this cantina and go straight to the Imperial base; to storm in, and free Mei before the Imperials execute her for the crime of being a Jedi. Hand Val off to someone else as she does what she’s good at.
But there’s no one else to hand Val to. Mace is upstairs, and not a single person in this room can be trusted.
It’s just Ahsoka. Ahsoka, and Val.
Shifting her arms, wrapping them tighter as she holds him close, Ahsoka lets herself be relieved for just a second.
It’s horrible, to feel relief when Mei has been torn away by the Imperials. But Val is here, at least. It’s not the both of them gone. It’s not both.
Then, Ahsoka turns and hurries out the front door.
Nothing is wrong outside. There are no exclamations about the Jedi, there’s no increased presence of stormtroopers in their hideous skeleton-like armour. Just people, continuing to go about their day, like nothing has happened.
The sky above is still peach-coloured. The clouds are still fluffy. The beautiful, curved buildings of Den Velmor city are still gleaming under the afternoon suns.
They need to get the younglings out of here.
Ahsoka pulls Val closer to her as she rounds the corner, into the spaceport.
“Hey!”
A voice rings out, muffled slightly through a helmet in a way that Ahsoka knows only too well, and her heart sinks.
But there’s no danger yet. Just warning.
“You there!”
The only way these stormtroopers will attack is if Ahsoka gives them reason to.
“Stop!”
So she stops. Turns. Puts confusion on her face, even as Val shakes harder, burying his face into her shoulder like that’ll save him.
Two stormtroopers are jogging over from the office at the entrance of the spaceport, armour clacking as catch up to her.
“What is it?” Ahsoka breathes in and out, slow, forcing her heartbeat to calm. Stress isn’t going to save anyone. Clutching at Val’s tangling head-tendrils, Ahsoka tries to project enough warmth to make him still.
It doesn’t work.
The troopers come to a stop in front of her. Both of their blasters are out, held loosely in front of them. “Present your chain codes for inspection,” one barks.
“That’s not spaceport policy,” Ahsoka says.
The other stormtrooper says, “A dangerous criminal was apprehended recently, ma’am. We’re working to block the escape of their accomplices.”
Right. Because Mei’s a vicious and deadly criminal. The little girl who’s woken by her nightmares night after night, and gets upset when Val won’t play with her, and is terrified of the Empire.
Ahsoka adjusts an arm to give herself a free hand, with which she unclips her chain code from her belt and holds it out to the troopers. “My brother’s,” she says, “isn’t on me.”
One of the troopers makes an irritated noise that’s audible even through his helmet. “All citizens have to carry their chain codes with them.”
“Brother?” the other asks, and the single word is full of doubt.
These two men aren’t clones. Ahsoka knew it already – knew it just from the way they walked and talked – but now, the difference is all too stark. No man she fought alongside ever acted like this.
“Yeah.” Val’s starting to slip down Ahsoka’s front, so she hoists him back up. Keeps his face hidden from these men; she doesn’t know if Val was seen as he fled the scene earlier. “Brother,” she says, and it’s rougher this time.
“Really?”
Ahsoka wants to tell this man that he’s an idiot, but she knows that that wouldn’t go down well. Distant diplomacy lessons with a Jedi long-dead ring in her mind. She goes for sympathetic, but the words come out too flat, too toneless: “We lost our parents in the war. We’re adopted.”
The other trooper scans Ahsoka’s chain code with the one of the new reading devices.
Instead of simply flashing green with an approved chain code, the device beeps and casts a hologram in front of him, showing all of Ahsoka’s faked details.
Polli Clem. 17 years standard. Born on Shili. No current planet of residence, just a starship.
The trooper gives it a look over, seems satisfied by it – and he should be, they paid good credits for this batch of fakes after the last set didn’t work – then looks to Val. “We need the kid’s too.”
“Our—dad has it.” The word dad has never fit right in Ahsoka’s mouth, but that’s what normal people have. Parents; grandparents; siblings. Just the beings related to them by blood and nothing more. “He’s back on our ship.” That’s when an idea strikes, and Ahsoka relaxes at it. Puts a smile on her face. Says, “Why don’t you come with me, then you can check their codes too?”
She leads the two troopers back to the B-7 freighter.
Mace and the others are already inside, hurrying around as they prepare the ship for take-off.
The younglings want to cower at the appearance of the stormtroopers, but they don’t. Instead, they just stand, stock-still, and watch.
By the time that one of the troopers demands their chain codes, Ahsoka’s set Val down and he’s tucking himself away and out of sight.
In a single, restrained motion that the stormtrooper doesn’t see coming until it’s far too late to do anything about it, Mace flicks a game tile into the trooper’s helmet, pointed edge straight between his eyes, and the angle and placement are perfect. A loud crack echoes through the ship as the trooper’s helmet breaks in two.
Ahsoka grabs the other trooper by the arm, feels him tense to cry out, and flips him right over her and slams him into the floor; before he can recover, she’s on top of him, pressing her forearm against his windpipe. No Republic or Imperial armour has ever protected their throats properly. He bucks once, twice, three times, but Ahsoka keeps him pinned, and soon enough his wild movements slow then stop, and he goes limp.
As Ahsoka rolls off him, dusting her hands off, Mace begins to detach the handplates from his knocked-out trooper.
Hongai and Arjun, who’d also known to shelter when the fight began, both move out, and Hongai looks immediately to Val.
“You’re okay?”
He peeks his head out from behind the table, blinks, then scrambles to his feet. “They took her.”
Fear chimes between Hongai and Arjun.
Hongai nods. “Master—I mean, Mace told us. But he said…”
Val wraps his arms around himself protectively, clutching at his elbows. “They didn’t see me. Just her.”
Hongai turns her head, looking to Ahsoka. That fear grows, expanding to fill the aching hole left by Mei’s absence. “You’ll get her back?” she whispers.
Ahsoka says, “Yeah.”
The Empire kills Jedi. That Mei was arrested first just means they didn’t want to execute a child in front of a crowd. If Ahsoka and Mace don’t move quickly, they’ll be rescuing a corpse.
But she can’t show her trepidation. Not in front of the younglings.
Not when— “You’re flying this ship.”
Hongai almost recoils at the words.
Still sat beside the unconscious and now half-undressed trooper, Mace pauses in removing the man’s cuisse for just a second. A warning to be careful, just for Ahsoka, pings.
Ahsoka draws herself up, crossing her arms. “No one else can do it.” Not with Ahsoka and Mace going after Mei. “Either you manage it, or you’re stuck here. Go to Talcene. We’ll try to meet you there.” Ahsoka doesn’t stumble over the words, but Arjun flinches at them: “After five days, leave. Go to the Outer Rim.” Then, she softens her gaze, still looking at Hongai. “Just be careful, and you’ll be okay.”
“I’m going to—”
“You won’t crash,” Ahsoka says, trying to sound as confident as she possibly can. “You won’t, Hongai.”
Hongai’s teeth click as she shuts her mouth abruptly. Her blank white eyes stare up at Ahsoka.
Arjun lifts his hand, trying to reach out for Hongai, but she steps out of the way without even turning to him.
Her focus remains on Ahsoka.
“You’re lying,” Hongai says at last. The words are stretched and brittle. “You don’t trust me.”
Ahsoka presses her lips together.
Hongai isn’t wrong.
Hongai breaks their locked gazes, turning to the cockpit above her. “But I have to. Don’t I.” It’s not a question.
Ahsoka says, “Yeah,” anyway.
Without another word, Hongai sets her jaw and begins to climb the ladder to the cockpit.
Ahsoka stares at the initiate’s retreating form until she’s disappeared.
Then, she turns back to Mace. She feels oddly breathless, like she’s been running, but she hasn’t. All she’s done is stand here.
During her stare-down with Hongai, Mace has methodically stripped the stormtrooper down to his body glove and is beginning to clip a handplate to the back of his hand.
Silent, Ahsoka moves to help him.
Together, they put his armour on – Ahsoka working from bottom up and Mace from the top down - and Arjun and Val stand and watch as Jedi Master Mace Windu slowly becomes a stormtrooper.
There’s nothing to be done for Mace’s lost hand, but Arjun has the idea to take one of the stormtrooper’s gloves, fill it with some balled up material, then attach it onto the end of Mace’s sleeve. Once the second handplate is clipped on, the fake hand hangs limply on Mace’s stump, but as long as no one looks too closely, he won’t be found out.
Then, Ahsoka pulls the helmet from the stormtrooper she’d knocked down.
Under it, he has a mop of blonde hair and an upturned nose. His skin is tanned. He looks nothing like someone in that armour should.
But the clones are slowly going. Regular Humans are the face of the Empire now. And this man is one of them.
Ahsoka tosses the helmet to Mace, who catches it one-handed, but instead of putting it straight on, he studies the visor for a moment.
Regret and remorse ripples around him.
Ahsoka wants to look away, but she doesn’t; she forces herself to watch, to feel that same grief, as Mace turns the helmet and shoves it down onto his head.
It should fill Ahsoka with the usual strange mixture of grief and disgust to see a stormtrooper stood there, but it doesn’t. No matter how he looks, Mace will always be her Master; will always be warm and kind. Someone else might not see it, but a Force-sensitive can.
Sure enough, though Val shivers a little, neither him nor Arjun are scared.
Ahsoka holds out her hands, pressing her wrists together, and tells Mace, “Bind me.”
No one bothers them as Mace leads an ‘imprisoned’ Ahsoka through Den Velmor and to the Imperial landing point.
They stand before the gates, staring out at the airfield in front of them.
Shuttles are lined up, one of them halfway unloaded of crates of blaster-pistols. Others are empty, waiting for passengers. As they watch, another zips down from the skies above, setting down and opening its doors to let out a new squadron of stormtroopers.
Their armour is as shiny as the rest of them.
Tipping her head back, Ahsoka finds the Star Destroyer.
It’s hidden by the fluffy white clouds – or it would be, if its hulking shadow didn’t blot out half the sky. It squats over Velmor as a constant reminder of the Empire’s power.
Ahsoka remembers Hallitron-7 and the destruction one Star Destroyer had wrought on its people. There was never an official figure, but the death count whispered about in the refugee camp had been over fifty million. And millions more had been killed in the weeks that followed.
Once, a Star Destroyer had been a place of safety for Ahsoka. Once, she could look upon one and know that it meant she was returning to war, but she was also okay when she was on board.
Now, she knows what a Star Destroyer can do.
None of them will ever be safe again.
Mace is stood at Ahsoka’s shoulder, holding the binders loosely around her wrists to keep up the pretence, but in this moment, it feels like it’s the two of them against the Galaxy.
And it is.
They start into the base.
Ahsoka stumbles a little like Mace yanked her forward without warning, cursing and swearing at him, and several of the stormtroopers standing around chuckle.
Somone comes up; asks who this prisoner is. Mace tells them that she’s a dissident who was causing trouble in town. Says that he thinks a few nights on the Star Destroyer will teach her the lesson. The other stormtrooper says it’s against policy, so Ahsoka swears at him too, and he quickly tells Mace that a night on a Star Destroyer will definitely do her some good and he points them to the next departing shuttle.
Mace nods, thanks the man, and drags Ahsoka away.
LAAT/is have been discarded in favour of some blocky new metal shuttle, and as Mace pushes Ahsoka up into the standing compartment where two stormtroopers are already waiting, one sat on a crate while the other stands, reading a datapad, she quickly takes in both the hatch leading to the engine and the door to the cockpit.
She also realises that the trooper sitting, cleaning his blaster with little enthusiasm, is a clone.
The one standing isn’t.
Both look over as Mace and Ahsoka come in; the clone quickly dismisses it, while the regular must be fairly new because he immediately perks up with interest.
“Why’s a prisoner going up to the Star Destroyer?”
Mace doesn’t bother turning to him, instead lifting Ahsoka’s hands to the rail so she can stay upright without using the Force, then crossing his arms to hide his fake hand in the crook of his elbow. “Orders.”
“What did it do?” the regular asks.
Ahsoka stiffens.
“Crime,” Mace answers, but he doesn’t let any of his own frustration show.
The clone bangs the side of the shuttle, and the ship rumbles to life. As he turns back, he lifts his helmet to look at the regular. “Regs say prisoners—” he starts, and he sounds exhausted, but he’s quickly cut off by a mocking laugh from the regular stormtrooper.
“No one cares about your old Republic regs, clone. The Empire’s in charge now.”
The shuttle doors slide shut, and the seconds’ gap between the daylight being cut out and the overhead lights flickering on leaves them in complete darkness.
When the lights flicker back on, Ahsoka grins. “Kriff the Empire.”
Normally, she has to be so careful and stay so far in line; spend every breath making sure that she doesn’t give herself away. Right now, these men know she’s a criminal. As long as they don’t find out that she’s a Jedi too, there’s nothing worse they can do than has already been done.
As the regular stormtrooper makes an offended noise, and the clone rolls his eyes – rolls his helmet, really, but clones wearing armour have a language all their own and Ahsoka once spoke it as well as any of them – Mace radiates a sense of disapproval.
“Down with the dictator,” Ahsoka goes on. “We’re supposed to have a democracy, whoever elected that—” Sith Lord; monster; murderer. “—nerf-herder to become a karking Emperor?”
The clone stays silent.
There’s something to him that’s different than before. In the month since she last saw a clone, something’s changed. This man feels empty – but not like the hollow shells left by those chips in their head. No, something else is wrong.
“Don’t talk like that,” the regular stormtrooper snarls, moving like he’s going to hit her.
The blow is broadcasted well in advance, and Ahsoka has several seconds to react.
She could duck. She could retaliate. Mace could catch it, if she asked.
But Ahsoka can handle herself.
As the stormtrooper’s gloved palm smacks across Ahsoka’s cheek, all she can think is that she’s battled cage-fighting opponents with a better slap than this.
Letting her head snap to the side with the force of it, Ahsoka feels the hot pain radiate through her cheek, but it’s the sharp, fleeting kind: there and gone in moments.
Working her jaw in an over-exaggerated way, stretching the muscles out, Ahsoka flatly says, “Wow, beating up your prisoners. That’s the sign of a powerful man.”
The shuttle takes off, making the whole vehicle shake for a second, and this new stormtrooper is the only person not holding on, so he goes stumbling to the side, crashes into a crate, and tumbles straight over it to land flat on his back in a heap on the floor.
Ahsoka raises a brow and doesn’t say another word, but by the embarrassment lashing around the stormtrooper, her judgement is clear.
He whips around to Mace, who’s stayed completely still through all of this. “You let your prisoners behave like this? You’re supposed to keep her in check!”
Mace’s helmet turns very slowly to look at this stormtrooper. Any clone would see the disdain for what it is, but this stormtrooper has only worn his armour for a few weeks. He’s just pretending. “Is it expected,” Mace says, dry as a desert planet’s planes, “that I gag her?”
The clone has paused in cleaning his blaster, and is watching Mace with a faded kind of interest.
Ahsoka doesn’t like interest from a clone. She doesn’t like what it means.
Too many people she loved were gunned down by the same DC-15 that sits in this man’s hands. Interest from a clone means being clocked as a Jedi, and being clocked as a Jedi means being killed.
Just like Mei will be. Could be already.
Ahsoka is struck by sudden fear.
Lying there, helpless, useless, pointless. Feeling, hearing, knowing Tyzen die.
Ahsoka doesn’t want to watch another Jedi die.
The shuttle is taking too long. Shifting her weight from foot to foot, Ahsoka frowns up at the ceiling, willing the pilot to fly faster. To get them to the Star Destroyer sooner.
Then, the clone’s helmet swings around to Ahsoka. Low, he says, “I remember you.”
The words ring heavy in Ahsoka’s montrals. Intention thrums from him.
Ahsoka stills. Doesn’t drop her gaze from the ceiling, but curls her fingers around her binders. They’re over her head as she still clutches the overhead rail, and she could pull herself up, use the momentum to swing around and kick the stormtrooper back then tackle the clone before he can get his blaster up—
“Remember her?” the stormtrooper asks, turning. He sounds perplexed. “Where from?”
They’d assumed no clones would be left on Velmor. No one would have recognised Ahsoka, and they’d have had no issues. But this clone has, and is, and that means that this is another person that Ahsoka once fought alongside.
And another one she’ll have to fight against now.
But the clone doesn’t shoot. Doesn’t lift his blaster from his lap. Doesn’t do anything other than lean back against the wall, crossing his arms and settling in.
The threat curling around Ahsoka’s spinal column is hollow; there’s danger, but nothing more…
“Doesn’t matter,” the clone says, shrugging. “It was a long time ago.”
And Ahsoka can’t breathe.
The clones are supposed to kill them; the clones are supposed to have chips in their heads that make them think every Jedi is a traitor to the Republic and needs to be shot. There’s no planning, there’s no foresight, there’s no trickery; clones find a Jedi and kill them.
What does it mean that this clone isn’t?
The stormtrooper makes a dismissive noise, turning away.
Mace is a statue behind her. He wants her to keep her cool and focus on the mission – and he trusts her to do so.
Mei’s life is at stake. If they get this wrong, another youngling will die for no reason other than that they’re a Jedi.
Ahsoka counts from one to ten then back again before forcing herself to suck in a deep breath. Fill her lungs. Give nothing away.
If this clone won’t tell, then it’s stupid to do his job for him.
The pilot’s voice comes through the speakers, telling them that the ETA is five minutes.
Nerves are sparking under Ahsoka’s skin. Anxiety, worry, fear – but not anger. Not anymore. Not again.
All of her anxieties are pointless. What happens will happen regardless of any of Ahsoka’s worry, and with the Force flowing through her, she has the power to do what it takes.
Exhaling a long breath, Ahsoka sinks into the Force, letting it wash over her and soothe her fear and fill her entire body with a humming surety.
She knows Star Destroyers, better than anybody. She lived on one for months at a time and spent hundreds of hours exploring all of the boring hallways and rooms that no one else could be bothered to.
It doesn’t matter what happens. She can do this. And—if they fail, and Mei dies anyway, then they at least did everything that they could. What more is there?
A sound rings through the shuttle, warning of impending landing, and Ahsoka tightens her grip on the rail just before the ship thuds down.
The clone pushes to his feet, holstering his blaster, as the doors slide open.
Ahsoka lets go of the rail, letting Mace take her arm roughly and make like he’s dragging her off the ship and into the ranks of men waiting, only—
“Don’t tell me what I can and kriffing can’t do,” someone snarls. “I didn’t fight a war just to be given orders by some upstart who thinks putting the armour on make him a soldier.”
“Major Bon ordered that no stormtrooper remove their helmet—”
“Do I look like I care?”
Ahsoka turns.
Commander Wolffe is stood by the doors of the shuttle, mid-argument with some stormtrooper.
His scarred, familiar face is on full display.
Last time Ahsoka saw him, he was at Master Plo’s side. Loyal to the fault.
If Wolffe was at Master Plo’s side on the day of the Purge, then Wolffe is the one who killed him.
In the moment that Ahsoka thinks this, Wolffe looks around. Meets Ahsoka’s eye with his own. His face goes completely and utterly blank.
He retreats a single step, even as the stormtroopers around him begin to flood onto the shuttle, jostling around Ahsoka and Mace, muttering for them to get out of the way.
All Ahsoka can see if Wolffe.
His shoulders bunch up; his breathing stutters. His throat bobs. His face twists, mouth curving down, jaw tensing with effort.
To stay silent or to speak, Ahsoka doesn’t know.
The Force begins to tremble, like the ground at the beginnings of a quake, something bigger and greater and sadder than Ahsoka can even begin to fathom growing inside of Wolffe.
Mace says, “Run.”
Wolffe spits, “Jedi.”
Before anyone can react, Ahsoka yanks her wrists from Mace’s grip, tearing her binders away as she pulls her wrists apart, and jumps up, as high as she can.
She knows this cruiser.
Landing on top of the shuttle in a crouch, Ahsoka then springs up again, reaching for the tangled net high above.
She and Ponds had once got tangled up in one of these nets. But Ponds is dead.
The rope burns her hands, but Ahsoka grabs hold of it and doesn’t let go.
As the troopers below finally react to their Commander’s revelation, blaster bolts begin to fire around Ahsoka, whistling past.
She moves a hand further up a section of the net then heaves her entire body with her; then, she moves her remaining hand further. Pulls herself again.
Phantom pain bursts along her calf, and Ahsoka pulls her legs up, tucking them in tight as she moves out of the way of a laser just in time.
Arms aching, Ahsoka hauls herself up the net and over onto the narrow metal walkway crossing the very top of the hangar bay.
A glance down shows the cluster of stormtroopers, still firing up at her.
Wolffe is right in the middle.
Stepping to the side, Ahsoka dodges another blaster bolt.
Mace isn’t down there anymore. He must be on his way to finding Mei.
If Ahsoka can buy him some time…
She takes off running, into the belly of the Star Destroyer.
“Sector nine, cleared!”
Ahsoka stays completely and perfectly still as shadows move past the grating.
“Move out, move out!”
Two dozen boots thunder along the tiled hallway, hurrying onto sector ten of the ship.
Once they’re gone, Ahsoka begins to crawl back to the grate. A few flicks of the Force have it unsealing itself from the hatch, and then Ahsoka slowly pushes it out of the way, before rolling out of the vents and popping up to her feet in the hallway.
Her senses tell her that this hallway is empty, but that won’t be true for long; in a ship this large, people are always moving around. Even when there’s a Jedi on the loose and they’ve gone into full lockdown measures.
Pressing the vent grating back into place – there’s no point in letting her pursuers know where she’s been – Ahsoka secures it, before stealing her way down the corridor.
The brig should be just two junctions ahead.
She can’t feel Mei, but that doesn’t mean she’s dead. There could be any number of reasons why Mei isn’t there. She could be tired, she could be scared…
Ahsoka shakes her head, pulling herself away from that line of thinking.
She just needs to find Mei. Alive or dead, in pain or okay; there’s nothing Ahsoka can do to change that now.
No matter how much the not-knowing hurts.
Moving from strut to strut, tucking herself between them, jumping into the ceiling joints, Ahsoka makes her way down the hall, avoiding the shifting holocams and patrolling troopers alike.
Most of the men aboard this ship are from the 104th Battalion.
Ahsoka knows that it wasn’t the clones’ fault, and still isn’t, but the awareness that these men were the ones who gunned down Master Plo makes her chest ache just as much as the tired muscles in her arms and legs.
She’s been running around the ship for an hour now, slowly working her way towards the brig.
Mace contacted her once, with nothing more than a series of long and short beeps that would be unintelligible to anyone but her.
He’s found a data centre. They’ve let him, a regular stormtrooper who of course poses no threat, in. And he’s looking for information.
All Ahsoka can do while she waits is try to find Mei.
Another trio of stormtroopers approach, so Ahsoka quickly and quietly climbs the wall to hang between two ceiling struts, hidden from them as they pass.
She waits with bated breath as they come into view, walking in a straight line with their blasters held loosely in front of them.
One clone and two regular troopers. The difference is built into the very fibre of their beings.
A regular stormtrooper glances over to the clone and asks how dangerous Ahsoka Tano is.
Tension brims in the line of the clone’s shoulders, in the grip on his blaster, in the Force as it whips around him.
For some reason, he doesn’t want to be here.
Something has changed with the clones since Ahsoka last saw them. Something deep and fundamental that she doesn’t understand.
A part of her doesn’t want to understand. A selfish, angry little part of her that can only ever see the crumpled bodies of Jedi lining the halls of the only place she’d ever considered home.
But that part’s not worth her time. It never is. Ahsoka was taught to be kind.
It would be a disgrace to the memory of every teacher she ever had to choose apathy instead.
An image of Hera Tuix’s burning golden eyes flashes before Ahsoka, and even as she shakes her head, trying to blink it away, those flames leave shadows behind, like when she’s looked into a bright light for too long.
“Dangerous,” the clone grunts.
“You ever fought a Jedi?” the other stormtrooper asks.
Something hollows out in the clone’s chest. He says, “Yeah. I have.” Then, thick with sarcasm: “Shoot at ‘em. Works wonders.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.” The clone gestures forward with his blaster. “Move faster.”
As the three of them disappear around the corner, the last thing Ahsoka hears is one of the stormtroopers berating the clone for giving them an order. Apparently, it’s not allowed.
With a sigh, Ahsoka lets go and drops to the ground, bending her knees to absorb the impact as she lands in a silent crouch.
The last ten metres to the brig take no time, and the doorpad opens at Ahsoka’s command. No password or keycard required.
She steps inside and the door zips shut behind her, and Ahsoka is in the brig.
A dark corridor stretches out in front of her, lit by too-bright fluorescent lights. Ridged metal flooring is uncomfortable under her boots, and Ahsoka shivers at the dark shadows of pain trapped here.
It hadn’t felt like this before the Empire. Things, terrible things, have happened in these cells in the handful of months that have passed since Palpatine’s rise to power.
A dozen doors sit on each side of the corridor, angled like they’re sunk down from the walkway, and each is only a few metres apart. The cells must be cramped, for them to be laid out like that.
Mei’s in one of these. Locked up, if she’s not dead already.
Maybe all Ahsoka will find is a corpse.
That thought has her moving to the control pad at the end of the corridor.
It needs a code-cylinder to work, but code-cylinders have never stood up against the Force, and it only takes Ahsoka a few seconds to rotate the layers this way and that, and then the control pad is beeping and flashing a bright green colour.
Every single cell door opens.
Ahsoka takes a step forward, opening her mouth to call out for Mei, when something flashes.
“Don’t move.”
A dark figure steps out from around the corner, and Ahsoka freezes.
Wolffe.
His helmet is on now, and with his full armour he could be nothing more than a regular stormtrooper. To any none Force-sensitive, that’s all he would be.
The blaster pistol in his hand is pointed directly at Ahsoka’s heart.
A prisoner – a near-Human who looks part-Twi’lek, hope singing around them – tries to clamber out of their cell, and another blaster pistol is whipped from Wolffe’s hip and pointed directly at their face.
Without even looking at them, attention not leaving Ahsoka for a fraction of a second, he growls, “No karking way.”
The near-Human squeaks, and whips back, hiding in their cell.
Ahsoka should fight him. She should yank the blasters from his hand with the Force and bound across the distance between them in the time it takes him to pick them up. Punch him, kick him, hurt him.
But, as she feels the tiny flame of Wolffe’s essence, hidden but there all the same, all Ahsoka can see is Master Plo’s gentle face and kind hands.
“Why,” Ahsoka says, “don’t you want to kill me?”
“Are you kriffing blind?” Wolffe retorts. His grip tightens on the blaster pistol pointing at her.
“No more than you,” Ahsoka returns. And it’s true: they’ve both lost an eye now. Both left scarred. “You should have pulled that trigger already.” The clone in the shuttle on the way up should have pulled the trigger the second he recognised her.
“I’m a good soldier,” Wolffe says. “I’m a good soldier.”
It’s not for Ahsoka. It’s for himself. Ahsoka can see it now, clear as day.
Something is cracking inside of him.
Ahsoka says, “Good soldiers do what they think is right.”
“They follow orders.” Wolffe shakes his head at his slip up. “We follow orders.”
“Did Plo teach you that?”
Wolffe makes a sound like he’s been shot.
Ahsoka presses a step forward. Wolffe doesn’t pull the trigger. “Mei’s not here. Is she.”
If Mei were in one of these cells, she would have come rushing out, consequences be damned. She would have told Ahsoka, somehow. Ahsoka would know.
So she’s not here.
If she’s not here, then Ahsoka doesn’t know where else she is.
She could be—
“They want them.” The words are driven out of Wolffe, punched, and as he says them, the barrel of his blaster dips. “Jedi younglings. They want them.”
Ahsoka’s blood runs cold. Her skin feels like ice. “For what?”
Wolffe turns his head to the left, then the right, then the left again, and it takes Ahsoka that long to realise that he’s shaking it.
“You don’t know?”
Wolffe nods.
Ahsoka swears, low and under her breath. People have always wanted Force-sensitives; it’s why Jedi younglings are so willingly given to the Temple, because it puts everyone around them in danger otherwise. Ahsoka herself was stolen away by an impostor. But—the Empire is more than a simple impostor. Palpatine is more than an Imposter. He’s a Sith Lord.
Whatever he wants with Jedi younglings, it’s nothing good.
“Where is she?” Ahsoka breathes.
“A shuttle,” Wolffe gets out. “Hangar bay. Departs in ten minutes.” His hand is trembling now, and the blaster pistol is trembling with the effort of trying to keep it steady. “Go.”
It took her an hour to get here from the hangar bay. She has just ten minutes to get back.
But there are still people stuck here, and Ahsoka can’t just leave them. Who knows how far Wolffe’s goodwill extends?
A pull in the Force has the blasters ripped from his hands, a shout to flee has the prisoners surging out of their cells, and that’s all Ahsoka can do for them.
Ahsoka turns on her heel and runs from the brig.
Boots pounding on the steel floor, Ahsoka tears through the ship. Before, she’d been trying to hide; now, she knows that there’s no time for that. If she takes a second too long, Mei will be taken away to some Dark fate.
Hundreds of hours of training, both through the Temple and up and down the length of the 91st’s own cruisers, have trained Ahsoka for exactly this, and she knows what to do; how to step, how to regulate her breathing, how to keep her back straight even as her legs blur.
She reaches for the comm on her belt, tapping out a message for Mace’s ears only.
Hangar bay. Departing—
A stormtrooper rounds the corner and surprise echoes at the sight of Ahsoka pelting towards him.
He raises his blaster.
Ahsoka keeps running.
A blaster bolt shoots for her, and she throws herself forward and under it, landing in a roll that uses the momentum to carry her to her feet, and as she reaches the stormtrooper, Ahsoka jumps up, tumbling through the air as she soars over his head, and lands on the other side of him.
Before he can turn around and start firing on her, Ahsoka thrusts her hand out behind her and Force-pushes him back against the wall.
She doesn’t miss a step.
Mei doesn’t have enough time for Ahsoka to waste any.
Reaching for her comm again, Ahsoka finishes her message to Mace: Departing in seven.
She knows that he’ll get there. He has to.
Speeding up, Ahsoka sprints down the halls of the Star Destroyer.
Half a squadron of stormtroopers appear at an intersection, but Ahsoka shoves her hand out, pushing them all off their feet with a burst of the Force, and runs even faster.
She reaches a corner and doesn’t bother slowing, instead leaping up, kicking off the wall, and coming down in a roll before returning to her run.
A clone appears, but this one doesn’t bring up his blaster and point it at her.
He lifts it high in the air then simply…lets go.
The DC-15 goes crashing to the floor, and as Ahsoka dashes past, he snaps into a salute.
Ahsoka doesn’t stop.
She tears around another corner as she races for the hangar bay.
It’s just a few hundred metres away now. Mei’s just a few hundred metres away now.
Her comm chirps at her: Mace, saying that he’s on his way.
More stormtroopers are up ahead. A dozen of them. A shout is going up; the Jedi they’ve been searching for has been found. She’s here.
Ahsoka won’t be able to just run through a crowd like this.
As the front line of stormtroopers raise their blasters, Ahsoka slows. Goes low. Then, as they take aim, she bursts up, flying straight for one of them.
She collides with him, sending him stumbling a step back, and grabs his blaster even as his finger stays on the trigger and he keeps firing; locks onto him and spins, bringing him turning in a circle with her and sending a spray of lasers into the crowd of waiting soldiers.
One hit, two, three—Ahsoka counts each one.
The stormtrooper cries out and relaxes his finger on the trigger to stop from shooting his comrades, so Ahsoka gets her leg up between them, kicking him back and away, and now the troopers are scrambling back to form a loose circle around her, but in the split-second before they open fire, Ahsoka twists low, going for the floor, and those blaster bolts don’t find a Jedi but stormtrooper armour instead.
Gen one clone armour could have taken those hits. Stormtrooper armour doesn’t stand a chance.
The men die.
But Ahsoka doesn’t have time to mourn these people who are trying to kill her.
One reaches for her, trying to grab her and hold her in place as he yells something about needing to pin her down, so Ahsoka takes him by the arm – one hand on the wrist, one on the forearm, foot hooked around his ankle – and flips him right over her, slamming him into the ground.
Now, his yell is one of pain.
More bolts come for her, and Ahsoka lunges forward into a handspring, flipping right over the danger as she starts again for the hangar bay.
As she comes out into the cavernous space, zig-zagging to dodge the lasers peppering the ground by her feet, her focus goes straight for the long-distance shuttle docked at the very end of the hangar bag.
Bright white wings are tucked up for the landing position, and the edges of the wings are glowing blue as the engines, facing away, start to fire up. The ship is pointed towards her, ramp down, and so Ahsoka can see the figures moving around in the cockpit.
Can see them see her.
Mace should be here. But he isn’t.
Ahsoka taps out another message.
Shuttle leaving with Mei.
She can’t do anything but run for the ship.
With every step that Ahsoka takes – each one covering metres at a time, carried by the Force at her heels – she looks for Mace.
But he’s still not here.
And no response comes.
Worry is a drum in Ahsoka’s chest. The shuttle holding Mei is firing up, the ramp is starting to close, and if Ahsoka waits then Mei will be taken away forever. Another child, lost to Palpatine’s horrifying plans.
But if she leaves then Mace will be here alone. On a ship surrounded by people who want him dead.
The ramp is closing by inches with every second that passes. The engines are loud, rumbling through the floor of the hangar.
Ahsoka is just a dozen metre away.
And—
Mace can handle himself.
Mei can’t.
Ahsoka jumps.
Air rushes past, stale and processed. It’s cool on her face.
But, as Ahsoka crashes into the ramp of the shuttle, scrambling up it and into the ship just as it seals shut, she doesn’t regret this choice.
Four stormtroopers are strapped into seats. All of them stare at her, frozen.
The fight doesn’t go in their favour.
It’s as Ahsoka shoves the unconscious pilot out of his seat and takes his place that her comm beeps again.
All that Mace says is that he’ll catch up to them.
Worry winds around Ahsoka’s wrists like a pair of binders, but she breathes in then out then in again, and presses the control stick forward to send the shuttle shooting away from the Star Destroyer.
Mei is sat beside her in the passenger seat, hunched into a ball as she tries to soothe herself, making strange little whimpering noises. Her chelicerae are clamped around one of her knees.
“You’re okay,” Ahsoka says. She can’t take her eye off of space yet, even as she types hyperspace coordinates in the navicomputer.
The scanner starts to beep as one- and two-person ships begin to emerge from the cruiser, shooting for their stolen shuttle.
“We’re okay, Mei.” Ahsoka seizes the lightspeed lever, gripping it tightly as she waits for the navicomputer.
They just need to get to Casfield 6. From there, they can jump to Ord Tiddell, then to Euceron, then finally to Talcene and meet the others.
Four jumps will lose any Imperial trackers. And they can’t have anyone following them, not now.
Those bombers start to inch closer.
The navicomputer lights up green, and Ahsoka wrenches the lightspeed lever back towards her.
Space around them blurs as they shoot into hyperspace.