Star Wars: Ahsoka

She felt the familiar tightness in her throat, the same strangling grief that came every time she imagined what had happened when the clone troopers turned. How many of her friends had been shot down by men they’d served with for years? How many of the younglings had been murdered by a man wearing a face they implicitly trusted? And how did the clones feel after it was done? She knew the Temple had burned; she had received the warning not to return. But she didn’t know where any of her friends had been during the disaster. She knew only that she couldn’t find them afterward, that her sense of them was gone, as if they had ceased to exist.

Ahsoka felt herself spiraling down through her grief and reached out to grasp something, anything, to remind her of the light. She found the green fields of Raada, fields she hadn’t even seen with her own eyes yet. For a few moments, she let herself get lost in the rhythm of growing things that needed only the sun and some water to live. That simplicity was heartening, even if at that particular moment she couldn’t remember exactly what Master Yoda had said about plants and the Force.

The extra pieces of Kaeden’s thresher were still on the table. Ahsoka leaned down and picked them up, absently weighing them in her hands before she put them in her pocket. There, they jingled against the rings she’d taken off the ship console the day before. If she kept accumulating tech at this rate, she was going to need bigger pockets.

Thinking about what she needed reminded Ahsoka that she really ought to check her ship for tools and other useful items. She looked around the house quickly: the crate was on the table, but it was nondescript, and the panel over her credits in the shower was secure. It didn’t look like anything that would appeal to a thief, but Ahsoka was uneasy as she shut the door behind her.

“I hope Kaeden needs something else fixed soon,” she said under her breath to a nonexistent R2-D2. “I’d feel better if I had a lock.”

One of the problems with spending a lot of time with an astromech droid was that one tended to continue talking to it even when it was no longer there to talk to.

Ahsoka walked up the street, toward the center of town and the spaceport. She paid more attention to her surroundings this time, noticing the little shops perched on corners, waiting for customers. Most of them sold the same goods and sundries, and Ahsoka needed none of them. The larger houses in the center of town no longer looked intimidating now that Ahsoka had a place of her own to retreat to. Two places if she counted the ship, which was still parked in the spaceport, exactly as Ahsoka had left it. She opened the hatch and went inside.

It would draw too much attention if she did a flyover of the hills near her house. If she wanted to scout out the caves, she was going to have to do it with her feet. The house and the ship were a good start, but it would be nice to have a place she could go in an emergency.

“Food, tools, safe place in case I need to run,” she said out loud. She really should stop that. She missed R2-D2.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than nothing.

Chapter 04

KAEDEN DIDN’T COME BACK

the next day, which Ahsoka took as a sign that the girl had healed enough to return to work. In the daylight, the Raada settlement was mostly deserted. Nearly everyone who lived on the moon worked in the fields. Those who didn’t—food vendors and the like—usually followed the field workers out of town in the morning. It made sense to go where the money was.

This meant that Ahsoka had her days to herself, or at least she would until Kaeden made good on her promise to tell the others that Ahsoka could fix things for them. When the quiet got too much for Ahsoka to bear, she tucked a ration pack into her bag, filled a canteen with water, and headed toward the hills.

It was warm enough that she didn’t need her cloak, though she knew that when the sun went down, the heat would drain off quickly. Ahsoka was used to fluctuating temperatures. When she’d been a Padawan, she’d only occasionally known what sort of planet she might end up on, and that was good training when it came to learning how to adapt. At least it didn’t get cold enough on the moon that she’d need a parka.

There didn’t seem to be much in the way of wildlife on Raada. Ahsoka had seen a few avians clustered around the water sources when she flew in. There must have been pollinators of some kind, but when it came to big things—predators or creatures worth hunting for meat—Raada didn’t offer much in the way of variation.