Obi-wan looked around his dwelling, knowing, and sensing that it would be one of the last times he did. He himself, after almost twenty years of seclusion, still smiled at the irony from all those years ago on Naboo. Qui Gon would still chide him for focusing on the future at the expense of the present with a spirited voice for him alone. Luke was his charge, his only charge, and he had done precisely what he had set out to do after parting ways with Yoda. Threats were minimal, the boy was more a threat to himself if he were being honest, the daredevil speeder racing, competition blaster muskets, trick handling vibro blades among some of the foolhardy endeavors of the young Skywalker. Other times Obi-wan would question his own sanity as Luke would spend hours staring at the stars or making ‘whoosh’ noises while tinkering with his toy swoop. But his vigilant stance, that of preventing the Empire from ever finding nor questioning this boy, nor linking him to Anakin was almost at its final stage, and he had seen to it all, mostly. Few factors are predictable when one finally takes one’s own destiny by the reigns making clarity beyond his purpose foggy at best, but Obi-wan would show him the door and look past options because the door was the only thing important at the moment. What Luke did with the opportunity was his choice, and his choice alone. “Ahsoka would take him to ground, protect him at all costs, hide him, stow him, and keep him from his destiny in doing so…. with honorable intent, yes, but at the cost of the boy’s own free will, and the freedom of the Galaxy,” Obi-wan had told Yoda, in as many ways as he could phrase it, and from ‘ALL points of view,’ he argued.
The time had come for him to share what he could with the only other person in the galaxy that had ever felt like close family to him, Anakin aside. With a wince and a slight groan, he seated himself on the floor of his homestead, atop a simple woven rug cast over the hard packed sand of the floor. With hands lying prone on his knees, his eyes gently closed and a deep exhalation he pulled the force into him as tightly wound as he could and placed a message deep into the center of the conjuring, “Ahsoka, your time has come. Time you know what you hold and what part you play. My sister. Tatooine.” Obi-wan inhaled on the final, then repeated the process three more times.
✦
The black cloth was not large, but she wouldn't need anything else that wasn’t already present upon it to construct the saber from her vision. It was all here. It was meant to be. Kowani was wrapping everything together to bundle with that same cloth when she saw Ahsoka crumple to the ground, her hand on her forehead. “Ahsoka!” She exclaimed, running to her friend’s side, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong Kowani, in fact it was expected...I... just wasn’t anticipating it to come from...him.” Ahsoka assured her.
---’Y’mmat--…. ----’Ani Y’mmat----….’come in.’
Kowani snapped her attention away from Ahsoka and onto her commlink. “Go ahead?”
“Garand. Tche gave us up. Teth is dead. I took care of Tche, but the Empire will be here any minute!” Garand rushed to get the words out. “I have the load aboard and am punching in Yavin now, get off that rock !!.” He shouted at his end of the transmission.
Proximity klaxons and sirens began to wail signifying the Empire were in fact ahead of Garand’s estimate and had remitted from hyperspace high above the moon’s surface. Kowani acknowledged the communique and ended the transmission looking up into the thick soupy atmosphere. Ahsoka, understanding the need for haste, didn’t need any prompting. They began running back to the hangar bay, Kowani taking point, to Ahsoka’s relief, as she was assuredly lost. They were slowed by everyone within eyesight scattering in every direction imaginable yet all seeming to be going in the exactly the same direction Kowani was leading Ahsoka for as much headway as they were making. A glance over her shoulder, Ahsoka could see drop ships breaking through the thick clouds and departing in their own separate directions, one of which was headed for the same hangar complex they were.
“Kowani, I have an idea.” Ahsoka didn’t, but a thought was certainly coming to her, quickly. “Get behind me.” Taking point for the moment, she slowed and pulled her hands to her as she gathered the Force within her, then exploding forward, sent the coiled energy coming in front of her, clearing a path as beings of all sorts were blown forward and sideways. She had assumed several mutterings and choice cursing would reach her notice, but the thick air was torn by a litany of gut-wrenching screams and blood curdling wails in their stead. Ahsoka glanced to her side and saw what she had done. The impending danger of the advancing dropship vanished immediately as abject horror took root within her very soul. She whirled around to find Kowani fifteen meters distant, planted precisely where she had stopped upon witnessing what Ahsoka had done. What should have been, at most, discomfort or minor injury was instead carnage and silence. Only the sounds of broken store fronts completing their horrendous implosions, falling glass finishing its shattering and the wails of those still alive. Everywhere there were bodies. Impaled. Skewered. Severed appendages. Open chests. Multicolored stains of blood from human, nonhuman and alien alike splattered like some macabre work of Momin. She stared, dumbfounded, at her hands for what felt like years and slowly lifted her horrified gaze back into the startled shocked eyes of her friend.
Kowani’s mouth was agape as she stared back at Ahsoka and could clearly see the dread in the Togruta’s gaze. She watched as Ahsoka dropped to her knees and audibly screamed the dread she held in her own mind. She had witnessed many scenes in her past that could not be unseen, but this was something different. Her hand quickly fired down to arrest the blaster at her side from its holster, but she hesitated to raise it. Had it been anyone else she would have had the shot lined up and the trigger pulled she admitted to herself, but this was Ahsoka. Immediately she replayed every conversation they had had, even the ones they didn’t. ‘This is what she meant,’ she told herself, remembering the conversations both spoken and non between the two. Kowani felt the emotional light and fire reignite, coming back to reality in time to dodge the first of incoming blaster fire from the decanted stormtroopers making their way toward herself and Ahsoka from up the road. Ripping the blaster completely from its holster and firing in the same move, she lowered her head and began zigzagging for Ahsoka.
Ahsoka watched as Kowani seemed to be competing with revulsion and indifference toward her and wasn’t sure which of the two she deserved more. ‘There’ she said to herself, watching as Kowani pulled the blaster and fired, she expected to feel the burn and incineration of the blaster bolt pass through her. She was slightly confused to see the bolts missing her completely and it wasn’t until she realized there was return fire aimed at her that none of the shots were meant for her. Someone was firing back! She turned her head to see, and quickly identify, the advancing troopers as they cascaded blaster fire all around them both. ‘They mean to kill Kowani?’ Realization of her own now registering, her brain finally sending down the necessary commands to break her free of her reverie. ‘Troopers trying to kill Kowani!’ She spun off one knee now facing the troopers, her upper body close to the ground, her hands falling to the hilts of her sabers. She saw them, everyone, three squads, twelve total, four commandos, one captain and a commander, all registering before she could ignite her lightsabers.
“NO!!!!” Ahsoka screamed as she deftly blocked four incoming bolts, sending one back into its source. Kowani, sensing the rage in Ahsoka, dashed behind a broken stone column as three bolts slammed into it. She could sense the immediate flow of Force energy into the Togruta, a typhoon the likes of which Kowani had never experienced before. Ahsoka, witnessing the near miss with Kowani, had had enough of being on the defensive and sprang from her crouched stance, coming in between four of the troopers with a low handspring landing. In one move she pivoted off her front foot with a high leg kick to the first of the troopers, his helmet sputtering off at an odd angle. Landing low again on her other foot and adeptly slicing clean through the torsos of two more, she crossed her sabers before her, forking them to decapitate a fourth. Two of the commandos were coming to bear while a third of their party was heading for Kowani.
Ahsoka would have none of it, launching into a wheelhouse of blinding light, she split and cauterized the two commandoes in front of her and sent her right-hand saber in a feverish arc toward the third, plunging it deep into and through his chest cavity. The fourth and final commando was assigning himself protection for the company captain which lasted as long as it took for Ahsoka to force pull him toward her, deflect two more bolts from his blaster and impale him on the waiting saber in her left hand. She quickly Force pulled her primary saber from its resting place in the trooper near Kowani, igniting it mid-flight and directing it to her open palm to cross and fork them both yet again deflecting another volley of bolts from the remaining trooper, captain, and commander. She stood her ground for the benefit of the commander allowing him to relay his action report adding,
“Commander, don’t forget to tell Anakin the best part,” she pulled the hood down off her head making sure the three could see her for who she was, “His padawan sends her regards.” She said with authority. The Commander could be seen yelling into his commlink and Ahsoka, deciding he’d had plenty of time to relay her message, sent both sabers arching toward her prey. The remaining trooper took her secondary full in the chest, released a chortled yelp and fell backward gurgling. Her primary was a graceful arc of white light that the captain couldn't avoid, severing his head in a hiss of cauterized flesh. The commander dropped his weapon and yielded, quickly adapting the techniques not taught in the academies and began removing his helmet. He was no stormtrooper. The whitening of what little hair remained and the undeniable chin and sunken eyes belonged to a clone. Ahsoka hesitated for only an instant. “You could have stopped this before it even started.” She said in a deeper voice than belonged to her. “You destroyed everything I loved!” Ahsoka finished the statement with her eyes low and teeth bared.
“CT-5668, ‘Bowers’. I don't even know you Jedi.” The commander said.
“It doesn’t matter, I am not here to interrogate you.” Ahsoka hissed as she drew her left hand up deliberately, compelling the clone to rise with it, sauntering closer as she began drawing her thumb and forefinger together. The commander gripped his neck to rip away the invisible noose depriving him of air. “Do I look like a Jedi to you.” She all but whispered through a throat too raw from the yelling she didn’t remember. Finishing her work, she closed her left hand quickly into the tightest fist she could muster, crushing his windpipe completely. She gave her wrist a quick snap twisting his head, an audible ‘pop’ punctuating the echoes of the chaos. She Force pulled her sabers and was already spinning around before his body had decanted fully to the ground. Deliberately attaching her sabers, slowly, at her waist she posed briefly for the suspended holocam she was intently aware of, made a ‘zero’ with her right hand and laced into some of the most outrageous language she could think of across a dozen dialects aimed directly at Sheev Palpatine, emphasizing his given name for flair. The cam’s last act was to catch her looking back down at her belt, back up at the cam and a stark white flash that seemingly came out of nowhere impaling its central holorecorder.
“Perhaps we need to work on specifying what definitions we each have for the word ‘distraction’ because this,” Kowani said scanning the battle scene, her arm following her gaze, “was not a distraction, this was a manifesto. One unlike which I’ve ever witnessed, heard about, read, or could possibly imagine Ahsoka.” Kowani confessed after Ahsoka had finalized her theatrics and returned to the Mirialans side. Ahsoka, not sure how to read the Mirialan, wasn’t even sure she should answer or react. She was afraid to admit to anyone, least of all herself, that she found it exhilarating and intoxicating. And just as quickly she was horrified and moribund.
“Kowani…. I….” She began.
“Later Ahsoka, those drop ships came from somewhere and we still have to get orbital, come on.” Kowani inflected reality, grabbing for Ahsoka’s hand. Ahsoka knew she was right but also knew the two of them would need to decompress and rehash what had happened. She needed to explain to Kowani that it wasn’t her, but to do so would be a lie she couldn’t utter to this friend that trusted her. It was her; it was what she wanted in that moment but not in that way. She had to admit to herself that she was tapping into a power that was intoxicating but that she didn’t have any control over it. Her mind was solid in its convictions, but it was as if the force was deciding things for her. ‘Childish’ she thought to herself as she helped Kowani clear up the last of the tech she had dropped in street and scooped it all cleanly into the black cloth and hauled off to the hangar bay. Reaching it quickly and clearing the entrance, they both abruptly stopped and pulled up fast. Two more troopers were standing watch at the Liberator’s draw way and an empty drop ship sat not ten meters away. “For the love of…” Kowani started.
“Not so fast, we’ll do this a more righteous way.” Ahsoka said, her hand on Kowani’s arm. Ahsoka began waving her hand slowly in front of her body, walking with purpose directly at the troopers. The troopers instinctively began drawing their weapons to bear but with negligible effect. The closer Ahsoka came the heavier the weapons got, until they both had to let them go for fear of the blasters tearing their arms off. “Better off without them, can’t hit anything with them anyway.” The troopers, not sure what to do, just looked at each other instead. “Let’s go.” Ahsoka said. Kowani tapped her commlink and the boarding ramp hissed open into the draw way, to which, they ran up quickly.
“Ahsoka, take the yoke.” Kowani all but commanded. “I need to work my magic while you work yours. As you can see, there is no armament on this ship, I’ve negated that in favor of linguistics, data manipulation, signal coding, scrambling and transmission hacking. A splicer of sorts, but of a specific skillset. Besides, you’re a better pilot. R3, was there any internal breach?” She quickly questioned the purposed droid.
Bee...boop...whirl
“That’s assuring. Scan outer hull for any foreign devices.” She repurposed R3.
Beep...whistle...whistle
“Ahsoka, I’ll be right back, get her fired up..” Dropping the ramp back down she ran over to the docking clamp, opposite the boarding ramp and forcibly removed a black device with the hyrdospanner she had grabbed on her way out and threw it into the bay of the empty drop ship, the troopers nowhere in sight. Satisfied with her efforts, she raced back toward and up the ramp and back into the cockpit as Ahsoka was engaging the repulsorlift and warming up the sub light banks. Upon clean fire, she understood now why the ship hadn’t sounded ‘quite right’ earlier. Kowani hadn’t just retrofitted her tech, she had also undergone some extensive modifications to the engine clusters as well. What was firing up behind her belonged to a YT-1300, not a YT-1760. How in the hell she got all that engine into the bay was a question for later.
“Kowani, have I mentioned how much I like your ship?” Ahsoka was in heaven.
“Nope, not once have you mentioned that. Not at all. Not before, not earlier….” Kowani explained but Ahsoka cut her off.
“I love your ship Kowani.” Ahsoka ended the conversation as blaster fire from redeployed troopers came into view. Ahsoka quickly turned the ship 180 degrees and engaged the sub light engines. Thirty percent was sufficient to knock them all on their respective backsides as she shot out of the hangar and low over the city. R3 began rocking back and forth like a possessed Kuatti crate, emanating ear splitting shrills.
“You refuse from a Wookies ass, why the hell didn’t you tell me there were TWO !?” Kowani almost spat at the droid.
BEEP…. BEEP….WHOOO….WHIRL !
“Language, really? That’s my job!” Kowani barked back.
“Ahsoka, find a place to set it down...quick.” She cast a side glance at her current astromech nemesis, “and cut power to the engine till I reboard.” She said in exasperation.
“Yeah...uh...sure….no problem.” Ahsoka lied. Seeing no platforms of any kind, and after the last 5 minutes, not expecting any to be Imperial free even if she did, she headed for the next best thing.
“Ahsoka, not exactly what I had in mind, but considering our options, it’ll have to do.” Kowani accepted after a glance out the front viewport and seeing the palace of Grakkus the Hutt getting closer. Ahsoka brought the ship in to the nearest ‘flat’ expanse that, she figured, was large enough for the ship. The roof of Grakkus’ grand attendance hall was servicing the blasts from the landing jets and anti-gravity rebound from the fully engaged repulsors as the gear dropped onto the careening surface. Kowani, fully garbed in anti rad and heat shielding gear with hydrospanner in hand, dashed off the ramp before it could open all the way, cursing as her boot hit the gritty surface that was never meant to support a starship. She could feel the supports underneath snapping like twigs as the starboard aft and fore gears began to buckle and crack the thick layer of dried mud underneath them. As quickly as she could and without forcing her arm too close to the white-hot engine cluster, she finessed her way around to locate the second device. “I’m going to scrap that dumb droid.” Spanner clenched around her quarry she snapped it off its magnetic mount and thought about tossing it into something. A deep lurch from the port side now alerted her that cunning heroics weren't of significant importance at the moment, and she pitched it over the side as she gave Ahsoka the affirmative to fire back up. Repulsor reactivated, the ship yielded its weight off the rooftop and with a final snap every support came loose as it crashed toward the floor, Kowani with it. Sensing the issue at hand, Ahsoka snapped the repulsor on auto, dashed for the opened rampway, catching Kowani in eyesight as she fell beneath the ramp’s lip and flailed madly at thin air to gain purchase where none could be found. Ahsoka immediately opened herself fully to the Force and cradled Kowani within its grasp instantly stopping her fall. For a moment, Kowani was terrified more of being saved in the manner she was than plummeting to certain death. In that moment she relived the horrific scene of Ahsoka dismantling life in an instant and leaving death and destruction in her wake. And just as quickly, the horror faded, replaced by the determined exerting face of the friend she knew Ahsoka to be. Just as quickly she was pulled up and over the ramps edge to safety and into the arms of a shaking Ahsoka.
“I almost lost you.” Ahsoka said delicately.
“Not today my friend, not today.” Kowani was relieved and just as happy as Ahsoka looked. “Let’s get the hell outta here!.” She finished, closing the ramp, and scrambling to the cockpit.
Ahsoka shot back into the pilot’s seat, engaged the sub lights, and fired up the well and off Nar Shaddaa. Almost immediately, Kowani set to work engineering a less elaborate but efficient ruse to get them into their hyperspace lane. “Before we work on what to do, where are we going?” She asked.
Ahsoka stared blankly at the darkening sky they were rocketing into and closed her eyes, “Tatooine.” She replied, trusting in Obi-wan’s guidance.