As much as I would like to say I own Disney I don't so I don't own Star Wars, either.


Palpatine finished rereading the news article from Milagro that had been flagged by his news filter, then rose from his seat at the desk in his working office and strode to the office's clear wall to stare out from his point in the highest tower on the planet at the scattered lights of a Coruscant night. The capital city planet of a galaxy-spanning Republic never slept, of course, but, biological imperatives being what they are, the tempo did slow down with the fall of night. Not that he was really in the mood for 'Coruscant stargazing'. (The light pollution meant the sky never really got completely dark, just a very deep blue, but there was still the artificial beauty of the semi-random light show put on by those parts of the towers below him still occupied and awake, and the multi-layered traffic lanes that passed between them.)

A world along the Corellian Run just shy of the Outer Rim border, there was nothing particularly significant about Milagro — certainly nothing to draw the attention of the Chancellor of the Republic. However, it was the world where the mercenary gang hired by Darth Sidious to pursue a certain former Padawan had met their deaths.

The second such band, actually, and what had been a simple case of cutting off a loose end and perhaps furthering the estrangement between Anakin Skywalker and the Jedi Council with news of his Padawan's death was becoming more serious. And Palpatine didn't know why.

Everything seemed to be going well — Jedi after Jedi had fallen in the war; the Jedi that survived were mostly scattered throughout the Republic fighting alongside their future executioners; the military he would need to hold on to power when he was declared Emperor was growing as the war continued, and the news released to the Republic's sheep subtly played up that military's accomplishments while undercutting the Jedi's reputation; the Hunters that he had tossed a few fragmentary Dark Side techniques moved about in the shadows eliminating possible future threats as they gained the experience they would need to form the core of his future Inquisitors; and the Jedi Council was flailing about in the mists of the Dark Side that Darth Sidious had immersed them in, trying to find the elusive Sith Master and unknowingly sowing the seeds of their own destruction as their continuing alienation of Skywalker and his 'friendship' with Palpatine allowed the Sith Master they couldn't find to further sink his hooks into his future apprentice. Yes, all was going as he had foreseen.

But then the mercenary gang he'd tasked with capturing Ahsoka had failed, she'd temporarily vanished, and Darth Sidious's visions of the approaching glorious future had become ... fuzzy — slightly indistinct, as glorious as ever but not quite there. Then a short time ago those visions had cleared once again, but he still felt as if something was off, somehow, a piece missing along with the Padawan.

And now the news that his second attempt on Ahsoka had failed.

More mercenaries would both be pointless and risk exposure. I cannot order Darth Tyranus to take up the hunt — his persona as 'Count Dooku' is too important to my plan's culmination, even if he were in position to quickly resume the pursuit he would be missed. It will have to be one of my Hunters.

Decision made, Palpatine turned back to his desk to bring up his database, to review his Hunters' locations and missions and determine which was in position and could be most easily spared.

/oOo\

The trip back to the freighter was a nightmare. Ahsoka was actually both skilled and powerful for her age, even as a newly-minted (if somewhat older) padawan she had been able to reach out with the Force and pull down an entire wall (with an empty window to supply a hole for Skywalker, and hadn't that been fun?). But the burst of effort that had required was a far cry from using the Force to carry an unconscious body behind her as she made her way back to the surface, for hours. Then there had been getting both of them on a speeder bike she wasn't certain could handle the weight, and the long cold trip down the mountain. (The Human's coat was thankfully much better protection than Ahsoka's blanket, she hadn't had to worry about the patient the Force had led her to dying of hypothermia without her realizing it — not that that didn't stop her from reaching out to sense the limp life tied to her back every few minutes.)

She was very happy when the freighter came into view.

She was also happy that her unnamed benefactor had taken especial care with medical equipment and supplies — as lovingly maintained as the rest of the ship and much newer. No bacta tank, of course, not even an emergency one, and when she undressed her (frowning slightly at the primitive fastenings on the clothes), her patient didn't have any outward injuries needing bacta bandages. Still, to be safe, as soon as she had the Human wrapped in a blanket and laid out on the couch in the common room she gave her a bacta injection for any internal injuries she might have.

Everything done that she could do for the moment, she sat at the game table and laid her head down for a moment's rest.

/\

Jenni's eyes snapped open, staring up at the metal-paneled wall that curved up above her. It certainly wasn't the Heaven she'd been expecting, or even any heaven that she'd ever heard of. And if the Buddhists were right (or many of the Buddhists, anyway) and those not reborn merged into Nirvana, she wouldn't be aware of anything, at all.

Instinctively, she reached out, sending, "Hey gang, what's going on?"

Nothing. Not just no reply, the joy/grief/whimsy/determination/anger/love of her Bond was gone, — she was alone in the Dark of her mind.

She bolted upright, looking around wildly only to find herself alone in a room the like of which she'd never seen before: small, rounded corners, round doorways in three walls, a built-in couch she had been lying on along the wall without a doorway, a seat in the corner on the other side of the doorway at a console with a dark screen and a scattering of lights above it, and in the other corner across from another round doorway another table and several seats — and one seat taken by a red-skinned girl, a white-and-blue headpiece on the head she was lifting from the table. Jenni instinctively reached out, to get a read of who she was dealing with, and froze in shock.

The girl she was sharing a room with wasn't human.

Jenni scrambled backward along the couch toward the corner away from the alien. "Who are you!? What are you!? Where am I!? What happened to my Bond!?"

But she knew what had happened to them: they were dead like she should be, and as that reality crashed down on her she curled up against the corner on the couch and began to cry.

/\

Ahsoka stared at the crying Human female, trying to work through what had just happened. There had been a wave of shock powerful enough to disturb her sleep and she'd lifted her head to find her patient looking around wildly. That was understandable, she'd never been on this freighter before, but why had she panicked when she saw Ahsoka? It wasn't like they'd ever met before. And what language had she been speaking? She was a Human on a colony world, she should be speaking Basic!

... just how long was she asleep in that Force vortex?

What do I do? She needs comforting, but if we don't share a language ... Then she remembered the head of a protocol droid she'd seen in a case of miscellaneous spare parts she'd seen during her search of the ship. If she could rig up a battery pack —

A few minutes and a quick search in the hold, and she'd found a battery pack with a bit of a charge left. She thought she'd worked out which of the wires in the droid's neck stump she needed so attaching the pack's lead should activate it instead of frying every circuit it had left...

She carefully clipped the lead into place, pressed the 'on' button, and sighed with relief when the head's eyes lit up and it spoke with in a pleasant female voice.

"Hello, I am D-FN8, sentient-cyborg relations. How may I ... Oh my, what happened to my body!?"

/\

Jenni jerked when a gentle hand gripped her shoulder, then lifted and shifted her so she was half-on a lap — the alien's, from the red skin tone she could see through cracked eyelids. And another hand was gently stroking her hair as the alien murmured something in (naturally) no language Jenni had ever heard the like of. She focused on the alien, and gasped — she had rarely met a Dancer whose Flame burned so brightly, more than enough that she could sense and manipulate the currents of the Tao without the aid of living crystals. For a moment fear flashed through her, but then she sensed the alien's sympathy and concern washing over her. She twisted to throw an arm around the waist by her head and buried her face in a bare orange stomach, and sobbed.

She finally ran out of tears, and sat up to wipe at her cheeks. "Thanks, I needed that. You don't speak Anglic by any chance, do you?"

"Oh my, that is a fery obscoor language." Jenni twisted in shock — there was nothing living there! — then relaxed at the artificial head like a robot from a scifi movie, sitting on top of a small black box on the table where the alien had been sleeping. She hadn't sensed anything because there was nothing living to sense. The robot head continued, "Yam D-FN8, sentient-cyborg relations. Mistress Ahsoka has tasked me to translate."

"Uh ... hello ... Defenate." She paused, surprised to hear Defenate speak in another language using her voice. Oh, right, 'translate'! It had been centuries since the League had needed to use translators, Anglic had long since become the unofficial common language of Earth's people and its colonies, but she remembered reading about their use by the United Nations that had preceded the League. And they'd been people, of course, not robots.

Turning to face the alien sitting on the couch beside her, she repeated, "Hello. My name is Jennifer Allston, but you can call me Jenni. Where am I?"

The alien replied, and Jenni did her best to pretend the robot speaking with the same voice was actually the alien. "Hello, my name is Ahsoka Tano. Yoor on ... my freighter, but I found you inside the mount weer parked below."

"Mount? Mountain? The Mountain! Maybe ... do you have a map?"

"Of course." Ahsoka rose to walk over to the table where Defenate was placed. Moving the robot head to another chair, she sat down and fiddle with controls Jenni couldn't see for a few minutes until a hologram of a planet sprang into existence that instantly had Jenni's complete attention.

"Weer here ..." Ahsoka was saying, but Jenni ignored the dot of light as she rose to her feet and walked over. Her finger traced the white that covered the top of the globe. "Is that all ice?"

"Yes, is an ice age. At least I think so."

Jenni's finger ran along the ice that had swept over the Bering Strait joining Asia to North America, then circled the patch of ice that covered what had been Tibet before resting on the dot of light on the easternmost edge. "Good thing you found me when you did or the ice would have rolled over me, and who knows how long it would have been before it retreated."

Ahsoka stiffened, and Jenni turned to focus on the stunned silent alien staring at her wide-eyed. "What is it?" Jenni asked, worry suddenly twisting her gut.

"Jenni ... the ice is retreating. You were covered."

"It —" Jenni whirled back to the globe, staring at the vast expanse of white. If that wasn't the maximum advance ... She whispered, "How large is the population?"

"I don't know, I don't think anyone does," Ahsoka replied. She fiddled with the table's controls, and the globe began to turn as a thin scattering of lights appeared across its surface, mostly along major rivers toward the equator. "These are all the settlements in the database, maybe ... a few hundred thousand settlers?"

A few hundred thousand!

Jenni toppled forward into the hologram, Ahsoka just fast enough to keep her from cracking her chin on the far edge of the table.

Ahsoka stared down at the Human girl for a long moment before levitating her up and back toward the couch. "Defenate, that language she was speaking, how old is it?" she asked as she made Jenni as comfortable as she could.

"No one knows, mistress," the robot head replied. "It is related to Anguc, an ancestral Human language of several Core worlds that argue over which world spoke it first. It is now spoken only by scholars that argue as much as the worlds do."

" 'Related'?"

"Yes, mistress. I was forced to ... approximate the translation of a number of the words she used."

" 'Approximate' — does that mean 'guess at'?"

"As you say, mistress."

Ahsoka grinned for a moment at the protocol droid's prissy, almost offended tone, before sobering again as she refocused on Jenni. She speaks a dead language. She was trapped in a Force vortex for so long that an ice age covered up and then uncovered her location. She is so shocked by the number of inhabitants that she faints. The picture that was being painted was bizarre, so bizarre she could hardly believe it, but ...

She sat back down at the game table and started typing.

/\

Jenni slowly came awake to find herself staring at the same metal-paneled wall curving above her as before, and again instinctively reached out for her Bond to find nothing but the Dark. She pressed her eyes closed to fight back the tears, then sat up and wiped away the few that had escaped. Am I going to go through that every time I wake up from now on?

She sat up and looked around for a distraction, and found the orange-skinned alien — Ahsoka, her name is Ahsoka — sitting at the table with the rotating hologram of Earth again, watching her. The young ... girl? Is she really female, or is that just human preconceptions talking? Whichever, Jenni took comfort from Ahsoka's sympathy rippling through the Tao.

But however strong her sympathy, the question she asked through Defenate took Jenni's breath away for a second. "Jenni, when you were trapped in the Force vortex, how many people lived on this planet?"

"Trapped in a what?" Jenni waved off the question. "Never mind, later. When I should have died, there were as many souls as the planet could sustain, approximately ten billion."

"Ten billion ... yes, that's ... a lot of people." Ahsoka waved a hand through the rotating hologram. "Yoor sure this is your home planet?"

Jenni pushed to her feet and walked over, and started poking at land masses. "North America. South America. Africa. Eurasia. Australia. Yes, I'm sure."

Ahsoka slumped back in her seat and stared at the globe, her sympathy washed away by pure wonder. "Scholars back in the Core are going to go crazy when they find out about this," she muttered, then grinned up at Jenni. "This planet rotates once in just over twenty-four hours. And it slowing slightly, thanks to the moon — 'suming the rate of slowing is constant, it would have been exactly twenty-four hours around ninety thousand years ago. This might be the Human homeworld!"

"Wait, you mean there are humans —" She waved at the ceiling. "— out there?"

"Oh, yeah, trillions of 'em, planet after planet full. Can't go anywhere without running into 'em. This planet is pretty far from the Core Worlds, it was colonized — maybe recolonized? — just a few centuries ago, I think."

Jenni collapsed into the other chair by the table to stare at the rotating globe, so stunned she lost her focus on Ahsoka's eddy in the Tao and was again alone in her own head. "Wow." Maybe ... maybe we weren't such failures, after all.

After awhile she shook herself free of her own wonderment at what she'd just learned and looked over at Ahsoka. "So, now what?"


I came across 'Coruscant stargazing' in And None of It Seems to Matter, by Kablob.

So, for levels of power when it comes to the Force. Whatever the RPGs might say, it's clear from the movies that strength of connection to the Force and training in how to use it are two entirely separate things. However, while there is no way the Jedi Order finds all the strong force-sensitives in the Republic so there can be many more than seems to be the case on the surface, there aren't so many that you can have enough in a single planetary population to populate a large Order (not unless that planet's name is Coruscant, anyway). Hence the crystals Jenni is used to — among other things they amplify the Force, allowing someone that would otherwise be way too weak to perform at Jedi level. So Jenni thinks that Ahsoka, who I'm considering to be above average but not spectacularly so (and about Jenni's level), to be incredibly powerful. What Jenni is going to think when she meets Anakin...