E. Johnston: Star Wars: Ahsoka

The ships were mostly Imperial, and therefore not good targets. They would have been registered and tagged, and probably had some kind of tracking device. Ahsoka looked at the troop carrier with some regret. Of all the ships docked there, it was the one with which she was most familiar, but she couldn’t take the risk. Instead, she focused on a small freighter tucked in at the very back of the yard.

It was a Fardi ship, one of the legal ones, but Ahsoka knew it could be made less legal very quickly. The Fardis paid her to tinker. She was a good mechanic, and she’d earned their trust through diligent work. The ship was also unguarded. Ahsoka didn’t know if it was an invitation or not, but she wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass her by.

There were maybe twenty stormtroopers in the yard. Before, when she could openly use the Force, that would have been no trouble at all. Now, with just her blaster, Ahsoka took a moment to consider her options.

Anakin would have crashed right through, regardless of personal risk. Even without his lightsaber, he’d have been fast enough and strong enough to make it. It would have been very noticeable, though. Explosions had tended to follow close behind her old master. She missed the excitement, but this was not the time for it. Master Obi-Wan would have tried to charm himself through and would invariably have ended up making as much noise as Anakin anyway.

“When are you going to admit you’re on your own?” Ahsoka muttered. “They’re gone. They’re dead, and now it’s just you.”

As motivational speeches went, it was not her best, but it did spur her into action. She risked a jump from the rooftop to the alley below, prioritizing speed over anything else. She pulled the blaster out of her bag. Quickly, she unseated the overload dowels in the ammo pack and set the blaster on the ground. Now she had to move. She ran down the alley and leapt over a short wall into a family garden. A few steps and another jump took her to a different alley, and she raced toward the shipyard.

She reached the open area just as the blaster exploded. The stormtroopers reacted immediately, falling into neat lines and running toward the noise with admirable dedication. They didn’t completely desert the yard, but it was good enough for Ahsoka’s purposes.

Ahsoka stuck to corners where she could hide and behind crates to block the remaining Imperials’ sight lines. She reached the ramp of the Fardi ship and was aboard before anyone was the wiser.

“I hope I’m not stealing anything you need,” she said to her absent benefactors. “But thanks for the ship.”

The engine hummed to life just as the other stormtroopers returned to the yard, but by then it was too late. Ahsoka was in the air before they could set up the heavy weaponry and out of range before they could fire. She was away, on the run again, and she had no idea where in the galaxy she was going to go next.

FROM ORBIT,Raada didn’t look like much. The readout from the navicomputer wasn’t particularly enthralling, either, but that was part of Ahsoka’s reason for choosing the moon. It was small, and out of the way even by Outer Rim standards, with only one resource. Ahsoka could be unremarkable here. She didn’t like to make the same mistake twice, and she had made a big one on Thabeska, getting involved with one of the planet’s most prominent families.

Ahsoka set the ship down in what could barely be called a spaceport and secured it against theft as best she could. While in transit, Ahsoka had made some modifications to the vessel, hoping to conceal where she’d gotten it from, and discovered that a fairly sophisticated ground-lock system was already in place. Recoding it had been relatively straightforward, even without an astromech droid like R2-D2 to help. She did one final check, her eyes drawn to a pair of metal rings that demarcated a pressure valve on the power console. The rings had no purpose beyond making the panel look clean and tidy. Ahsoka pried them loose and pocketed them without much more thought. That done, she shouldered her bag and walked down the ramp.

On the ground, Raada had a distinctive, though not altogether unpleasant, odor. There was life on the moon’s surface that the computer didn’t account for: green and growing. Ahsoka could sense it without effort and drew in a deep breath. After a year of either space or Thabeska’s dust, it was a welcome change. Perhaps when Ahsoka meditated here, she would find something between her and the yawning gulf that had haunted her since Order 66.

A few people were in the spaceport, loading crates onto a large freighter, but they ignored Ahsoka as she made her way past them. If there was someone she was supposed to pay for a berth, Ahsoka didn’t find them, so she decided to worry about that later. A place like Raada had even less of a legitimate government than Thabeska or a Hutt-controlled world, but Ahsoka could handle any local toughs who thought she might be easy pickings. What she needed now was a place to stay, and she knew where she wanted to start looking.

Raada had only the one major settlement, and Ahsoka would not go so far as to call it a city. By Coruscant standards, the settlement barely existed at all, and even the Fardis would have turned their noses up at it. There were no tall houses, no rooftop highways, and only one market near the dilapidated administration buildings in the center of town. Ahsoka headed straight for the outskirts, where she hoped there would be an abandoned house she could borrow. If not, she’d have to start looking outside of the town.

As she walked, Ahsoka took note of her new surroundings. Though the architecture was monotonous and mostly prefabricated, there was enough decorative embellishment that she knew the people who lived in the houses cared about them. They weren’t transient workers: they were on Raada to stay. Moreover, judging by the variation in style, Ahsoka could tell that the people who lived on Raada had come from all over the Outer Rim. That made the moon an even better place for her to hide, because her Togruta features would be unremarkable.

After a few blocks, Ahsoka found herself in a neighborhood with smaller houses that had been cobbled together with no sense of aesthetic. This suited her, and she set to looking for one that was uninhabited. The first one she found had no roof. The second was right next to a cantina—quiet enough in the middle of the day but presumably loud and obnoxious at night. The third, a couple of streets over from the cantina and right on the edge of the town, looked promising. Ahsoka stood in front of it, weighing her options.

“There’s no one in it,” said someone behind her. Ahsoka’s hands tightened on lightsaber hilts that were no longer there as she turned.

It was a girl about Ahsoka’s age, but with more lines around her eyes. Ahsoka had spent her life on starships or in the Jedi Temple, for the most part. This girl looked like she worked outside all the time and had weathered skin to show for it. Her eyes were sharp but not vicious. She was lighter than Master Windu but darker than Rex, and she had more hair than both of them combined—not that that was difficult—braided into brown lines neatly out of her way and secured behind her head.

“Why is it abandoned?” Ahsoka asked.

“Cietra got married, moved out,” was the reply. “There’s nothing wrong with it, if you’re looking for a place.”

“Do I have to buy it?” Ahsoka asked. She had some credits but preferred to save them as long as she possibly could.

“Cietra didn’t,” said the girl. “I don’t see why you should.”

“Well, then I suppose it suits me,” Ahsoka said. She paused, not entirely sure what came next. She didn’t want to volunteer a lot of personal information, but she had a decent story prepared if anyone asked.