Star Wars: Ahsoka

She made it all the way to the spaceport before she met anyone. A very junior-looking Imperial officer was making a list of all the ships docked there. She considered using the Force to convince him to let her take her ship. She could pretend she was under orders from one of the overseers, who appeared to be the only people the Imperials would talk to. It would be easy to play the overwhelmed hired hand and then nudge the officer a bit when he was distracted.

At the same time, he might have been trained to recognize Jedi powers when they were used on him. The stormtroopers had been risky enough. Ahsoka couldn’t take the same chance on an officer.

She could go home and fake up some credentials, but then she wouldn’t be able to move the ship until the next day. Every moment she waited was another moment one of the Imperials might remember that they were occupying a planet and they should act like it. Ahsoka couldn’t afford to wait. She walked out into the yard. She would have to play her way through this by getting more creative. Or, rather, Ashla would.

“You, stop right there,” said the officer. Ahsoka was pretty sure he was trying to make his voice deeper than it was. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve come for my ship,” said Ahsoka. “All these new security measures are making me nervous. I want to keep my property where only I have access to it.”

“I assure you, the Imperial garrison stationed here will maintain a high level of security at this spaceport,” the young officer blustered. “Your ship will be safe.”

Slowly, and with considerable scorn, she looked him up and down.

“Are you high-level security?” she asked. “Because you don’t inspire a lot of confidence.”

His chest puffed out, and his face turned red. As she’d hoped, she hadn’t made him angry. She’d embarrassed him.

“I’m in charge of all the ships here,” he told her. “It is my specific job and specific training to ensure that the spaceport runs smoothly and securely.”

“I was able to walk right in here without anyone stopping me,” Ahsoka said. “I hardly call that secure!”

“We’re still getting set up,” the officer said defensively.

“Well, that settles it,” Ahsoka said. “I’ll take my ship until you’re done getting set up, and then I’ll bring it back when I know everything is safe.”

“I really don’t think—” began the officer, but Ahsoka had already blown past him.

She was in the pilot’s seat and preparing to take off before he mustered any kind of protest, and by then the engines were too loud for her to hear him. She took off and flew in the opposite direction of the hills. It wouldn’t take much time to fly around the moon the long way, and it would help cover her tracks before she concealed the ship in the ravine.

As she flew, it occurred to her that she could just keep flying. She could leave Raada, run from the Empire again, and try to set up somewhere it hadn’t reached yet. She could find a cave in some isolated mountain range, or an oasis in the middle of a desert. She could go far away and abandon everyone again. Not again. Not again.

She looked down at the fields of Raada, spread out below her, and knew it was a dream, anyway. There was nowhere she could go where the Empire wouldn’t find her eventually. No matter how far she went, it would be behind her, nipping at her heels. She might as well face them here, where she was relatively anonymous and moderately prepared.

She set the ship down in the gully, wedging it in backward so that the nose of the vessel pointed straight at the sky. As she’d suspected, the landing struts were very unhappy with her, but the rocky sides of the ravine supported most of the ship’s weight. She stayed on the bridge, lying back against the chair and looking up, her mind filled with too many thoughts. She didn’t get out of the pilot’s seat for a long time.

Chapter 09

AHSOKA WAS LATE getting back to town, even running the whole way, but her ship was hidden and she was relatively sure no one had detected her as she was hiding it. She stayed in her house only long enough to throw the mostly empty bag on the bed and kick the crate with the ration packs in it under the table before heading to Selda’s. She hoped Kaeden and the others hadn’t been too vocal in wondering where she was.

There were even fewer people in the cantina that night, as most of them had headed home well in advance of the curfew. Ahsoka had seen this sort of thing before, when she was on Separatist-occupied worlds during the Clone Wars. For the first few days, the locals would observe the rules very closely and see what the reaction to breaking them was. Then they would begin to push back. If the Imperials reacted violently, the pushback could be extreme.