Star Wars: Ahsoka

The moon stretched out around her. She was facing the center of town, so she reached behind where she sat. There were the fields, mostly harvested as Kaeden had said and ready for the next season’s planting. There was stone, rocky hills and caves where nothing useful could grow. There were large animals, though whether they were for labor or food, Ahsoka couldn’t tell. And there were boots, dozens of them, walking toward her.

Ahsoka shook herself out of her trance and found that the cleaner was cheerfully butting itself against the door to the shower. She got up to turn it off, and the new sound reached her ears: talking, laughing, and stamping feet. Her new neighbors were home from their day’s work in the fields.

Chapter 03

KAEDEN SHOWED UP on Ahsoka’s doorstep bright and early the following morning with two ration packs and a—

“What is that?” Ahsoka asked, staring at the mangled bits of scrap Kaeden held under her arm.

“Your first patient, if you’re interested,” Kaeden replied cheerfully.

“I can’t fix it if I don’t know what it was supposed to do in the first place,” Ahsoka protested, but held out her hands anyway.

Kaeden took this as an invitation to enter. She deposited the broken pieces into Ahsoka’s hands and then sat on the bed, putting the rations down beside her.

“It’s the thresher I lost a fight with,” Kaeden said. If she felt strange about sitting on the place where Ahsoka slept, she gave no sign. Then again, the bed was Ahsoka’s only furniture, besides the low table.

Ahsoka spread the pieces on the table and sat down on the floor to look at them more closely. She supposed that the contraption might have been a thresher. But it could have also been a protocol droid, for all the mess it was in.

“I’d hate to see what happens when you win

fights,” Ahsoka said.

“It was not my fault.” Kaeden said it with the air of a person who has made the argument, unsuccessfully, several times before. “One moment we were cruising along, set to make quota and everything, and the next thing I knew, disaster.”

“How’s the leg?” Ahsoka asked. Her fingers moved across the table, rearranging parts and trying to figure out if anything was salvageable.

“It’ll be well enough to go back to work tomorrow,” Kaeden said. “I’ll keep my harvest bonus, particularly if I don’t have to pay to replace the thresher.”

Ahsoka gave her a long look.

“I’ll pay you instead, I mean,” Kaeden said quickly. “Starting with breakfast. Dig in.”

She tossed Ahsoka a ration pack. Ahsoka didn’t recognize the label, except that it wasn’t Imperial or Republic.

“No place like home,” Kaeden said, ripping her own pack open. “There’s not much point in living on a farm planet if you have to import food. These just make it easier to keep track of who gets what.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Ahsoka said. She tore the packaging open and took a sniff. She had definitely eaten worse.

“Anyway, can you fix my thresher?” Kaeden asked.

“Why don’t you tell me what went wrong with it, and I’ll see what I can do,” Ahsoka said.

She turned back to the table and continued to move the parts around while Kaeden told her about the mishap. Ahsoka was used to the way clones told war stories, but Kaeden could have given them a run for their credits. To hear her tell it, the thresher had suddenly developed sentience and objected to its lot as a farming implement, and only Kaeden’s quick thinking—and heavy boots—had prevented it from taking over the galaxy.

“And when it finally stopped moving,” Kaeden said, winding up, “my sister pointed out that I was bleeding. I said it was only fair, since the thresher was bleeding oil, but then I passed out a little bit, so I guess it was worse than I thought. I woke up in medical with this fancy bandage and the stupid machine in a tray beside my cot.”

Ahsoka laughed, surprising herself, and held up a bent piece of what had once been the thresher’s coolant system.

“Here’s the problem,” she said. “Well, I mean, part of your problem. If you can replace this, I can rebuild the thresher.”

“Replace it?” Kaeden’s smile died. “Do you think you can just, I don’t know, unbend it somehow?”

Ahsoka looked down. This wasn’t like the Temple, or even her field experience commanding troops. There were no supply lines and no backup, not without cost. Replacement was a last resort.

“I can give it a shot,” she said. “Now tell me more about how things work around here.”

The previous night, Kaeden had not been overly curious about Ahsoka’s reasons for coming to Raada. As the girl chattered on about work rotations and crop cycles, it occurred to Ahsoka that having reasons might not be important. As Kaeden described it, Raada was a good place to lead an unmomentous life: hard work, ample food, and just enough official enforcement that local freelancing was discouraged. No one asked too many questions, and as long as you met your work quotas, your presence was unremarkable. Ahsoka Tano wouldn’t do very well here, but Ashla would do just fine.