Time and Faraway Space
"He saves planets, rescues civilizations, defeats terrible creatures...and runs a lot.
Seriously, there is an outrageous amount of running involved."
- Donna, Doctor Who, "The Doctor's Daughter"
Chapter 20. An Outrageous Amount of Running
This...was not going to work.
For the third time in less than five minutes, Ahsoka was forced to duck down a hallway, press herself into the frame of a door, hold her breath, and hope that the passing patrol of stormtroopers was going to continue on down the corridor past her. As the sound of multiple booted feet thudded away into an echo, then silence, she expelled a relieved sigh and let her head fall back with a faint thunk against the durasteel plating of the wall. This was not going to work. More than that, there were too many patrols - the station was on the alert. The most likely reason for that was the failure of the superlaser. They either knew Rex and the Doctor were specifically behind it and were looking for them, or they at least knew the failure was due to sabotage and had men out looking for anyone suspicious.
An orange skinned teenage Togruta with Padawan braids and dual lightsabers probably qualified as "suspicious" to the Empire. She'd be a walking target the second a trooper laid eyes on her. There had to be a better way of doing this. The halls were too open, too populated. If she could get into one of the station's mass cargo transport platforms, she could probably make it around the station with less risk of being seen. A place this huge had to have some serious maglev transports for both food and weapons. People needed to eat, soldiers needed to fight, and it took supplies to manage that - and supplies had to be sent around the station. More immediately, though, she had to get out of the hallways so she could make it to one of those transport districts - but first, find a computer terminal to access so she could find out where they kept the brig in this place, and how many levels away it was.
Ahsoka frowned, looking around the hallway. Everything was disturbingly nondescript. Ducking into one of the rooms could mean stepping straight into a batch of stormtroopers. Didn't the Empire believe in labeling doors? It'd be nice to know a conference room from the barracks. She sighed as her gaze lowered down past the doors and vertical white lights to the floor. Sections of the grey walls were bolted in in place, a series of neatly fitted geometric forms covering various conduits. A small smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. Unless the Empire had devised a dramatically different form of carrying power throughout their systems in the last twenty or so years, conduits meant ship systems, and ship systems ran throughout entire ships - or mobile, moon-sized balls of mass destruction. Not all systems were accessible from the panels in hallways. Maintenance tubes should be running somewhere behind the walls, and maintenance tubes ran practically everywhere on board.
Moving close to the wall, she ran a few steps further down the corridor, looking for a likely panel. It only took a moment to spot one, now that she'd decided to look: a square access panel was bolted into the floor, about a half meter high and another half meter wide. Just the right size. Darting quickly across the hall, Ahsoka felt around the edges of the panel, which did not fit completely flat against the wall. Access hatches snapped firmly into place, but they usually weren't bolted down. A moment later, the tips of her fingers tripped across latches on either side of the panel, and she pulled them upward, releasing them. The panel popped easily out of place, and the dim glow of the maintenance shaft greeted her with a dull green sheen.
Slipping inside, she pulled the access panel into place behind her, twisting the circular knob in the middle of the hatch into a locked position to reseal her entry point. She grinned as she turned herself around and began to crawl. "Now for a terminal."
It was narrow inside, a comfortable enough space if you only needed to crawl, though it was clearly designed for humans. Though smaller than the average human male, Ahsoka winced as she scraped a montral on the low ceiling. It was grated, charcoal black durasteel, and she made a small grunt of annoyance over the fact Togruta took up so much headspace. Her montrals and lekku weren't even done growing in yet. The floor below her at least was smooth, a stretch of unadorned grey plating with narrow green lights recessed into the sides, where the floor met the bowed out walls. About ten meters further down the tube was a junction, with two more shafts jutting off her central one. Hurrying along as best she could in the confined space, she pulled herself into the larger juncture and sat up straight. Sure enough, in the crux between two of the tubes, was a maintenance port, blue screen glowing eerily in the darkness, complete with both droid-based dataport and a humanoid user based mini-terminal, bristling with docks for code cylinders and scomp links. Making herself comfortable, Ahsoka activated the terminal from sleep mode and pulled out a keypad from where it was stowed in a drawer under the main screen.
She didn't need any kind of classified information; unless Tarkin and the man in black were keeping Leia somewhere unusual, she'd be in the brig. A basic schematic of the station should show her that. The keyboard rattled as her fingers pounded lightly across it, searching for a map of the station. It only took a few moments to find; the map was meant for engineers navigating the maintenance areas, so for someone looking to avoid patrols and remain within the maintenance tube network, it was perfect. The blueprint showed her a small red dot where she was; apparently somewhere in the middle decks of Level 7. It was Level 5 that was neatly labeled "Detention Level". Leia would likely be kept somewhere in there.
Running a finger along the surface of the monitor, Ahsoka tapped a finger against the dish-shaped depression in the upper right corner of the Death Star. That was likely the firing platform for the superlaser. It wasn't entirely unlike the super-massive ion cannon on Grievous's old ship, the Malevolence. She frowned at the thought. Was the Malevolence's cannon a prototype for the Death Star's superlaser? The Malevolence was never capable of destroying a planet, but its destructive power was immense, and, like the Death Star, its existence a secret for a long time. She sighed, shaking her head. Things to mull over later. Dragging a finger down the screen, she traced her location and compared it to the superlaser dish depression. She was a level below it, with about a dozen decks between herself and the nearest sub-station that ringed the superlaser. That was good; there were likely repair teams being deployed to fix whatever sabotage Rex and the Doctor had wrought, but it looked like she was far enough below the primary areas they'd need to access for repairs. There shouldn't be any troopers or engineers crawling through the maintenance shafts near her. Her way should be clear.
Which left one last thing before she headed for Leia.
Lifting her wrist, Ahsoka made a few final tweaks to her communicator. They'd been in such a rush to get out the door, Rex hadn't given her the frequency of the comm in his new helmet. Knowing Rex though, he'd want to keep a channel available while they executed the mission, and he'd know she wouldn't have his frequency. Therefore, the most logical thing to do was set up the same frequency in his stormtrooper helmet. If she was wrong, though, this could get a little awkward.
Sitting up straight and taking a deep breath, she opened a channel and said, in her gruffest and most professional sounding voice, "Captain."
There was a brief pause on the other end, and then a response. "Commander Tano."
Ahsoka gave a small chuckle and relaxed slightly. Trying to impersonate an Imperial officer who got the wrong stormtrooper would have been awkward at best, suspicious at worst. "Always good to hear your voice Rex. What's your status?"
He was breathing heavier than usual, meaning he was either walking very quickly or jogging. The small pause before he answered also indicated that his attention was divided; she hoped that meant he was just on the lookout, not being pursued. "We're on our way back to the TARDIS. Mission was successful but we had witnesses. We're taking a more circuitous route back to avoid patrols but there's more of them being sent out. I'm getting a lot of chatter on the other comm channels. It's helping us avoid the Imperials but I'm not sure for how long. Hold position for now, but we might need backup soon."
Ahsoka winced a little bit, bracing herself. "Rex, something else has come up. I'm not in the TARDIS, I'm on my way to the detention level. Tarkin is here, Rex. He's got Leia."
There was another pause on the end of the line, then she heard the faintest of curses float down the channel from Rex. A part of her wanted to apologize; if Rex and the Doctor needed help, she wasn't going to be there to provide it. But she didn't regret the decision. There was no way Ahsoka was going to leave Anakin and Padme's daughter in the hands of someone like Tarkin, knowing there was no one else to help her. Ahsoka squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, knowing how little Rex liked this, but she knew just as well he'd understand. Leia was Anakin's. She was one of them, one of the circle they'd formed during the course of the Clone Wars. She was a piece of Anakin, a memory of better days, of the way things should be. Leia was part of a man they'd fought beside for years, not a man who had betrayed them all. They wouldn't - couldn't - leave her behind. Ahsoka didn't leave men behind. Rex didn't leave men behind. Not unless there was another choice. Rex had saved her life on Meioh, and he'd understand why she had to save Leia's.
"Where?" Rex asked, voice flat, crisp and professional. He wasn't happy, but he wasn't arguing either. Ahsoka smiled wanly.
"I'm heading to the detention level, Level 5. I'll have to figure out which block she's in when I get there."
"There's patrols everywhere, Ahsoka."
"I know." She paused, looking down at the commlink strapped to her wrist. They'd had so many conversations like this down the years. Her and Rex, her and Anakin, all three of them strategizing and arguing and updating each other, giving orders and sometimes bickering, though that was mostly her and Anakin. It felt wrong having Anakin not there, but then Anakin wasn't really Anakin anymore. Rex's voice and presence were something normal, stable, right. She smiled a little down at the commlink as she added, "I'm in the maintenance tubes."
The sound of his breath was loud, tinny in the metallic space of the junction. "Be careful."
The words seemed heavy in the quiet, foreboding. They were used to fighting apart, but they were stronger together, especially in circumstances like these. "I will. May the Force be with you Rex."
"You too, Commander." The line went silent, and Ahsoka shivered once. Two levels down and by then Rex and the Doctor could bring the TARDIS to her and to Leia.
One more Jedi safe. Or at least someone with the potential to become one.
Twisting herself around, Ahsoka took the maintenance shaft on the left, crawling along a couple dozen meters of the tube before reaching another junction. This one did not branch off to the sides - another shaft rose vertically at the tube's end.
Down two levels and into one of the most heavily guarded areas of any space station.
For a moment, Ahsoka forced herself to relax, to breathe outward and dispel her worries, her concerns, her fears. She was one of the last of the Jedi. She was a keeper of the peace, a warrior, someone who made a difference in the galaxy for the better. For Leia. For Luke. For Anakin. For the Republic that was. For the Jedi the Empire had slaughtered. For Rex. For herself.
It was time to make a stand.
Slipping her legs over the ledge, she gripped the first rung of the ladder with both hands and began to descend.
"I'm no Jedi, Captain, but I distinctly get the feeling that you're troubled."
They were moving as quickly as they could through the hallways, painfully aware that there were squads out searching for them. Each of them strode quickly through the halls, the two men matching long, swift strides as they navigated their way back to the safety of the TARDIS. So far, the chatter coursing through the various communication channels in Rex's borrowed stormtrooper helmet was giving enough forewarning to keep them out of the way of Imperials, but they'd made too many detours. Alone, Rex could blend in fairly easily; the stormtroopers all had bland, white, unmarked armor and his borrowed kit would have easily served as camouflage. He looked exactly like everybody else. The Doctor, however, stood starkly out in his distinctively non-military blue suit and brown overcoat. His magic flimsi wouldn't get them very far against a squad of troopers looking for a man of his description. The constant backtracking and taking side routes kept them exposed and in the open, where they could easily be noticed and caught. Rex didn't like it, and he liked the idea of Ahsoka taking on the entire detention level by herself even less.
"Commander Tano has given herself a mission," he said quietly, half wishing the Doctor had a bucket on his head as well. Not only would stormtrooper armor give the man a disguise of his own, they'd have better communications. Nothing like having an information-sensitive conversation about the number of people in their unit and their objectives in the middle of enemy territory, out loud where anyone could hear them. Leia was being held by the Empire. By Captain Tarkin, of all people. Who knew how far the man had ascended through the ranks in the years since the formation of the Empire? Somehow, it was unsurprising to hear that the man who thought the Citadel of Lola Sayu was an excellent way to manage prisoners and instill fear into enemies was working on board a station built for terror and intimidation. This space station, with its planet-killing superlaser, sounded like the cumulation of Tarkin's belief: rule through fear. The man was a terrorist given validation and legitimacy by a tyrannical government.
Luke was hopefully still safe on Tatooine. He looked so much like a younger General Skywalker.
Did Leia have the General's eyes too? Or were they more like Senator Amidala's?
Rex scowled into the glowing Heads Up Display before his eyes, tightening his grip on the E-11 in his hands. He should be with Ahsoka. Leia deserved better than to be left in the hands of Tarkin. "She's left the TARDIS and is on her way to the detention level. The Imperials have Leia."
"What?" The Doctor's pace faltered and Rex paused briefly, jerking his head forward in an impatient gesture. They had to keep moving. The Doctor's expression, intent up until that moment, became alarmed as he began walking again, this time shifting from a brisk walk into a jog. "No...no, no, no, no, no, she can't head down there, there should already be a rescue -"
"You there! Stop!"
The shout was immediately followed by a volley of red plasma, scorching its way through the air and slicing through the space that was, just a second ago, occupied by Rex and the Doctor. However, at the moment the warning was given, the Time Lord and the clone trooper sharply swerved left, ducking down another grey and white corridor and breaking into a full run.
"You know, for a bunch of exceptionally well trained soldiers, they do tend to miss the mark quite a lot, don't you think Captain?"
The Doctor was a single step ahead, his brown coat twisting out wildly behind him as they ran. As a single shot winged its way down the hallway and skimmed perilously close to the Doctor, Rex spun around and opened fire, releasing a return volley of red bolts into a knot of stormtroopers that were still in the process of spreading out and taking cover behind the corners of walls. Of the three shots he fired, two found marks, one slamming straight into the chest of a trooper in mid-way through the junction of corridors and sending him flying backward off his feet. The other impacted the shoulder of trooper hard enough to send him spinning around with his blaster misfiring into the air.
Rex grunted in annoyance, but a lip curled up in a small display of satisfaction. Give him Torrent Company any day over this lot. His company of Clone War veterans would plow through a squad of stormtroopers like flimsiplast shearing in a high wind. But he didn't have Torrent - he didn't even have Cody. Rex ripped Writte's blaster pistol off his belt and stretched it out towards the Doctor. "Bad shots or not, there's a lot more of them then there are of us, there's more coming, and we still have another two decks to go. Take the pistol."
The Doctor grinned as he gave a brief shake of his head. "Got myself a far better weapon than that, Captain," he quipped as he hefted his sonic screwdriver into the air and gave it a waggle. "There's more ways of fighting than just shooting at things, after all. Right!"
The Doctor pushed Rex sharply to the right and down another corridor as another squadron of stormtroopers emerged from a crux in the hallways before them, opening fire. The pitched whine of the screwdriver cut into the air, louder and more scathing than the deeper, staccato sounds of multiple E-11's. In the dull, metallic hallways of the Death Star, the blaster fire was a cacophony of noise, reverberating through the air and vibrating down into his bones. Twisting around, Rex moved a few steps out from the Doctor, then returned fire with both his rifle and Writte's blaster pistol, squeezing shots off as quickly as he could into the growing knot of stormtroopers rushing along behind them. Six, seven, eight troopers were pounding the ground along the corridor with more streaming into the hallway behind that original unit. One fell, then another was shot down as he leapt over the body of his collapsed companion. Smoke began to clog the passageway from so many shots being fired so rapidly, the stormtroopers taking on a ghostly appearance as they emerged out of the miasma, specters in white armor broken only by the glittering black eyepieces of their helmets. Smoke clung to them as they lit the hallway up in a glare of crimson laser fire. Rex fired off another shot as two more stormtroopers moved out of the smog to replace the fallen troopers. Another stormtrooper fell.
The good thing about being outnumbered was that it was really easy to find targets.
The Doctor shouted a warning: "Captain!"
Spinning himself back towards the Doctor, he saw the edges of a set of thick, heavy durasteel blast doors jerk out of their sheaths within the floor, walls and ceiling. They began to close smoothly, swiftly, and Rex was well past them as they met in the middle, narrowing down to a diamond shape and then to nothing, cutting off the pursuit.
"They'll be trying to surround us," Rex snapped towards the Doctor, his visuals in his HUD rapidly scanning down each hallway they passed.
The Doctor had his hand outstretched from his side, the screwdriver buzzing frenetically as he aimed down another corridor. A step behind the Doctor, Rex saw another set of blast doors sliding down into place from the ceiling as three sets of white booted feet slid into view. Taking quick aim, Rex sent a pair of low shots winging towards the feet. The boots disappeared behind another wall of impenetrable, heavy duty durasteel, lurching out of the way of the scarlet laser bolts that skidded towards them. The blast door hit the floor with a resounding thunk, echoing behind them as they ran.
"We still have to get down two more floors," Rex called to the Doctor as he pulled even, falling into step with the Time Lord. There was no manic grin on the man's face as there so often was. His profile was set, lips taut and twisting downward as he tilted his chin towards his neck. It was those eyes though - the same eyes Rex had seen so briefly in the TARDIS when the Doctor had gone out to save Ahsoka from General Skywalker, that night in the Jedi Council Chamber. They were unforgiving, wary, determined. But soft. Too soft. It was the look of a man who had lived too long through a war and knew precisely what to expect in yet another battle. It was the look of a man who was preparing himself to face bad odds; Rex had seen it before, on the faces of so many men. He'd worn that expression himself, so many times.
Rex didn't really understand the Doctor. He was a strange man, who smiled when he shouldn't as often as when he should. But it was, in a way, a relief to see the man beside him now; Rex didn't understand the Doctor, with his mad machine and mad talk about time and space and colliding realities. That man was alien, too strange for comprehension. But the man beside him now was a warrior if not a soldier, an ally and a friend, and that Rex understood utterly.
This was the fight he'd wanted to be in when he was a cadet. This was the war for the galaxy he thought he was fighting, when he was leading the 501st. There were several billion people down below on Alderaan that were alive now because of him, because of the Doctor. This was his purpose. This was his fight. This was the purpose of a clone trooper. This was the dream of Captain Rex: to do some real good in the galaxy, and know his short life was really, truly worth something.
Hidden behind the unwelcoming glare of a stormtrooper helmet, Rex smiled.
The Doctor wasn't a Jedi, but he did seem to sense things in a way that reminded Rex of one of the more mysterious Jedi Masters. Tilting his head to the side, the Doctor looked at him as they ran, one step after another, footsteps falling in unison on the hard, grey floor of the Death Star.
The Doctor grinned.
They rounded another corner, and at the end of it waited a trio of turbolifts.
As they approached, the doors of the central turbolift slid open, and framed within them was the towering figure of a man, draped head to toe in black. The man was unfamiliar, intimidating not only by his sheer size but by the expressionless helmet he wore. It made a strange mockery of the human face, with only gleaming black eyepieces to mimic the appearance of a man. If the stormtroopers, with their white armor and black eyes and ventilator grimaces, seemed like angry ghosts, this man was the monster that led them. The lights that lined the halls of the Death Star were stark, a harsh whiteness that illuminated the space with a clinical, cold gleam. That light seemed negated as the man in black stepped forward, the light bending around him, away from him, as though no brightness was willing to touch his figure.
There was a sound in the air, just audible beneath the heavy pounding of his own footsteps striking the floor. It was a rasp, a breath taken in; it was a purr as that breath was pushed back out, soft and sibilant.
Rex only vaguely recognized that the Doctor was skidding to a halt; the man in black was a threat, that was obvious, but this was not a man to turn and run from. Not because of his size, or because of the way the world seemed to grow cold at his appearance, more full of shadows and darkness than cold if reassuring light.
It was because, in his hand, he held a lightsaber, bladed red.
Rex opened fire. There was nowhere to run, no Jedi there to back him up, no time to devise a clever escape. So he used his momentum to propel himself forward, faster, harder, hoping that bringing himself point-blank into range would at least allow him to get close, too close, inside the reach of the red blade to pour some plasma straight into the Sith's chest.
It was a bad plan and Rex knew that. One on one, a clone couldn't defeat a Sith. Not in a straight fight. Not alone. That was why Palpatine needed an army to defeat the Jedi. Overwhelming numbers of clones could take down a Force-user. Overwhelming numbers with the advantage of surprise. Not one by himself, exposed in a hallway with an unarmed man to defend.
But Rex would try. This was the war he was meant to fight. For himself. For Alderaan. For the Doctor. For Ahsoka.
For all the brothers that died during Order 66. At least one of them would die fighting the right war.
The man in black did not even need to raise his blade - only his hand. Rex had felt the weight of the Force on him before; he'd been glad of it back on Meioh, when Ahsoka had dropped what felt like an iron curtain down on his head, to save his life so he could save hers. But for all the heaviness, the bluntness of Ahsoka's use of the Force, her touch seemed light, a careful application of power intended to protect rather than maim. The Sith had no need for such restraint. The raw strength of the man in black hit him so hard that the visuals in his HUD shorted, dazzling his eyes in a bright, spectacular display of electronics.
He felt himself hit the floor with a body-wide, blunt pain that reverberated through his muscles and deep into his bones. The armor, though, served its purpose. It slammed into his skin with bruising force, but Rex felt no bones snap, no joints break or twist on impact. There was a rough crack as the back of his helmet hit the floor, a spike of pain and then the HUD came partially back online, knocked back into partial functionality by the brutal blow against the ground. Alerts were filling the viewscreen before his eyes, spinning and flashing in an array of reds and oranges, his bucket trying to tell him that he was injured and his gear damaged.
The HUD's main screen was grainy, with small, floating black spots populating his visuals, but it was clear enough to see the Doctor moving forward, taking a defensive posture as he hefted his sonic screwdriver in front of him like a lightsaber. There was already a whine beginning to fill the air, audible even through the crackling of his internal speakers, but it did not last. As the pulse of the screwdriver built towards full intensity, it abruptly died, wrenched neatly, easily, out of the Doctor's hand.
The world spun a little, and Rex fought back a wave of lightheadedness, forcing himself to breathe deeply and move. He uncurled himself slowly, twisting around onto his shoulder to see the man in black holding the sonic up in one hand as he extinguished the gleaming red blade he held in the other.
The voice that came from the man in black was deep, made inhumanly rich by the tonals of the vocabulator embedded in his helmet. "Your tricks will not avail you this time, Doctor." He made a small motion, and several stormtroopers appeared in Rex's blurred line of vision, a stream of them emerging out of the other two turbolifts, blasters leveled and ready.
The Doctor was lifting his hands slowly up into a position of surrender, the scowl on his face deep. This time, his eyes were not soft and calculating; they were hard, full of sharply focused anger, his gaze locked irrevocably on the man in black. He made a small face, nose wrinkling briefly as though considering something and coming to a decision. The Doctor said, with false lightheartedness, "You're looking well, Vader. For being just short of a Cyberman, at least."
Vader. Vader. The man in black was General Skywalker. No.
Rex's vision was abruptly filled with the empty faces of stormtroopers and their reaching hands, grabbing at him and hauling him to his feet. His viewscreen went black, then flickered precipitously back on as he was dragged upright, struggling to steady himself as another wave of dizziness washed past him. Someone was yanking on his arms, pulling his hands to the front and slapping thick binders across his wrists as someone else gripped his shoulder and balanced him until he seemed steady enough not to topple over. Even when released, a pair of stormtroopers stood immediately at his side, E-11's trained on him in case of any unwanted movement, but Rex was focused too hard on the Sith lord standing before him to struggle.
The Doctor wouldn't make a mistake like that. Vader was the name General Skywalker took upon his betrayal of the Jedi. But this...this was not General Skywalker. There was nothing to the man in black that was at all like the friendly, if driven, Jedi General that Rex had known for the last three and a half years. Anakin Skywalker was tall for a human male, but not a dark monolith of cybernetics reminiscent of Grievous. Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber was cool blue, a steady and welcome sight amid a battle. It was the blue of the 501st. The blue of his Padawan's eyes. This Sith lord's weapon was an angry red, a color Rex had learned, down the years, to be a sign of hell being unleashed on a battlefield. So many brothers had died at the hands of a man or woman wielding a blade of red. It was an evil color, the color of blood spilled and the fires of unleashed artillery.
How could this be the same man he'd served with such pride only a few days ago?
Stormtroopers were lashing the Doctor's hands into binders as well, shoving him closer to Rex as Vader stepped forward, his breath puffing and hissing in a slow, sibilant tune. The Sith lord paused in front of the Doctor, his head tilting ever so slightly downward, then upward, as he inspected the Time Lord. It was a gesture Rex had seen many times. A simple, thoughtful examination of a prisoner.
Anakin Skywalker would be taking the measure of the man in front of him, weighing his options, determining how best to make use of his captive. Vader was likely doing the same. It was a frightening concept; General Skywalker was a hero of the Clone War for good reason. He was powerful, fearless to the point of recklessness, a battle commander of high ability. Rex had seen those attributes first hand, over and over again. To imagine himself pitted against Skywalker, instead of accompanying him, was a frightening concept. Without the scruples of a Jedi, it was even more terrifying to imagine standing against him. Skywalker - Vader - had already proved himself capable of genocide, of killing younglings.
The ventilator hissed again, rasping against the air before Vader said in his preternaturally deep voice, "I remember this device well." He turned the sonic screwdriver in his fingers around, examining it. "Rest assured you will not be given an opportunity to use it against me again, and that its workings will be examined and put to good use for the benefit of the Empire." If the man had still been Anakin Skywalker, there would have been a smug grin on his face; now though, Rex could only see the blank, black visage of a helmet, devoid of all emotion. "Also feel content in knowing that we will repair the damage you have inflicted upon the Death Star. Alderaan and worlds that align themselves with the Rebellion will learn the price of their treachery." Vader paused, his breath a mechanical sigh. "And know that it is only a matter of time before we also find your mysterious blue box. If you are here, it must be as well. Your ship will be found and put to use as I see fit."
"You'll have to get it open, first," the Doctor said, with a somewhat vicious smile. "Good luck with that. Not even your precious superlaser could dent the TARDIS. Nothing but a giant paperweight to the Empire and I'd rather see her collect dust for the next million years than help you lot out with anything." He rolled his eyes a bit, then looked between the stormtroopers. One of them shoved an E-11 towards him menacingly, and the Doctor gave him an annoyed look. "Oh do get that out of my face, if you were going to shoot me you'd have already done it, so what do you want?" The last words were sent to Vader, standing composedly by.
"So it's called the TARDIS," Vader mused, then loomed closer, letting his massive size impress upon the Doctor how much smaller he was. The Doctor seemed unimpressed, glaring back up into the blank black sockets of the helmet. "And what I want is information." Vader pulled away, taking two, short steps from the Doctor to Rex. "And answers to questions."
There was a pause as Vader leaned down towards Rex, the black eyepieces of the Sith's helmet boring into those of a stormtrooper. Vader's image, pressed so close to him, was still garbled by the malfunctioning helmet Rex wore. The view was pixelated, tinged in red, lined and covered with alerts for rebooting systems and damage.
The helmet was unceremoniously yanked down and off his head, leaving him dizzy enough to stagger. It fell with a clatter to the floor, bouncing once before settling in place, tilted on its side somewhere between Rex's feet and Vader's. His guards shoved him upright as he forced his head back up to stare, disbelieving, into Vader's dispassionate mask. The soft hiss and purr of Vader's ventilator was close; close enough that Rex could feel its dry, mechanical exhalation press against his face. He grimaced, but did not break his gaze from those two, inscrutable eyepieces. Somewhere behind them was Vader. Somewhere behind them was a man who he would not bow down to.
The man who was once General Skywalker pulled back a step, straightening himself to his full height, and managing to sound both curious and ominous at the same time. "Captain Rex. It is most interesting that you are not a withered old man. If the Doctor is unable to provide me with answers, then perhaps you will."
The Doctor jerked against his binders, lunging forward as several stormtroopers shoved him roughly back, some with blasters clicking as they took aim. "Vader! Leave him alone or I swear I'll -"
Vader merely waved his gauntleted hand, still holding the sonic screwdriver so delicately. "You have no power here, Doctor." He clipped the screwdriver to his utility belt, just beside the unlit hilt of his lightsaber. He lifted a finger and pointed it in the Doctor's face, emphasizing his point and the Doctor's powerlessness. "You can swear to do whatever you like, but you are an enemy of the Empire, terrorist, Rebel saboteur and a prisoner. You will confess your crimes and be executed." There was anger in those words, tempered only by the satisfaction of knowing he already had them in custody. His next words were far more chilling, cool words spoken with the smooth satisfaction of someone who felt assured in a victory. The gleam in the black eyepieces shifted from the Doctor to Rex. "And if you think you can rely upon my former apprentice to rescue you, have no delusions about that. She will join you soon enough."
Ahsoka. This time, it was Rex who lunged forward against the stormtroopers restraining him, his protest a wordless snarl rather than an attempted threat. The Doctor began to struggle at the same moment, the two of them fighting against their captors as Vader's deep voice rolled through the corridor. "Take them to the detention level. I will supervise their interrogation from there."
In the moment before Rex felt someone strike him across the back of the head, he heard the clipped, professional, voice of a stormtrooper say, "It will be done my lord."
And then there were stars and darkness.
Above her was a kaleidoscope of black, white, and light.
The shaft stretched an innumerable number of levels above her, disappearing into a shadowy point somewhere beyond the borders of her vision. The ladder, maintenance crawlspaces, computer displays, and durasteel wall plating combined into a dizzying mixture of shades, all kept within less than a meter in circumference. A greenish haze could be seen emanating from some of the junctions, where horizontal shafts opened out into her vertical one. Her shaft was straight, but the longer she looked up at it, the more the column seemed to warp, twisting around itself until it was a blur of dingy color.
Ahsoka closed her eyes for a moment, shutting out a sense of vertigo, and breathed. The Death Star was the size of a small moon. Even small moons were large, in their way. Trying to cross one on foot, without the help of turbolifts or maglev transports, meant covering an enormous amount of territory. The vertical shaft she was occupying seemed to pierce its way through kilometers of the station, extending further than she could see both above and below. A quick glance down only showed her more of what she saw above; a straight shaft full of shadows, drilling inexorably downward, a trick of distance and light causing it to look like it was warped.
Sighing, she rested her forehead on one of the ladder's rungs, feeling the cool durasteel against her skin. She'd been climbing downward for what felt like ages. A glance to her right showed the nearest deck marker - Deck 12. She was almost down into Level 6. Frowning, Ahsoka again looked down the length of the shaft. Her feet were braced on one of the rungs of the narrow ladder, her borrowed black boots blending into the dimly lit murk below. This was taking too long; Rex and the Doctor should be back to the TARDIS by now, as long as they didn't run into a firefight with a squad of stormtroopers. They'd be waiting for her, for Leia. A small smirk formed on her lips. Though the TARDIS probably wouldn't fit in a maintenance shaft, there'd be plenty of room in the detention level. Having a giant blue box crash into the brig to rescue them would make the fight interesting, at least.
She had to move faster. Going one rung at a time wasn't cutting it. With a grimace, she shifted her stance, sliding each foot into place on the outside of the ladder. She tightened her grip, feeling her weight shift from her feet to her hands and arms. Breathing out long and slow, Ahsoka focused, pulling on the ebb and flow of energy around her, using the gravity of the Force to envelop her, whistle around her like a steady wind.
She didn't let go of the ladder; her hands loosened, barely clasping the surface. With her feet off the rungs, she slid downward, slowly at first as she adjusted to slowly plummeting in a narrow space, then faster as she acclimated to the speed. She learned how best to grip the ladder, and she summoned the Force to her like a strong hand, controlling her descent. This sort of thing was so much easier in free fall; she had all the space to tumble and twist that she needed, the ground an obvious, clearly visible target below her. Generating a pillow of the Force under her to slow her fall for a landing was easy in those conditions. In here, she had no room to let gravity tug her around, no margin for error. If she drifted more than a few centimeters away from the ladder, she'd get caught on one of the walls, a lekku or elbow snagging on one of the junctions, one of the computer terminals, or a stray piece of grating. She was half blind here and her hands were tied. Her echolocation only made the sense of smallness more intimidating. To focus on sound only exacerbated the problem; the shaft was an echo chamber, devoid of anything that would absorb noise. Small sounds refracted for ages in both directions, making the incredible length of the narrow shaft even more obvious. She couldn't afford an uncontrolled descent. At best she'd be bruised, but it'd be more likely she'd lose a lek or an arm and be swept into an uncontrolled freefall in a narrow space, her body being tossed around the shaft like an old tooka doll until she was pulverized at the bottom.
Not exactly how Ahsoka intended to go.
So she controlled her fall, sliding loosely down the ladder and feeling air rush up past her face and montrals, causing her lekku to flap, slow and heavy against her back and shoulders as they caught on the current of wind. Face tilted upward, she watched level after level fall away from her, until the rapidity of her descent began to feel too uncontrolled and she pulled that soft, familiar pillow of energy up beneath her, buoying herself until she was able to get a hand on one of the rungs.
Gasping as she bounced off against the ladder, Ahsoka's left hand joined her right in holding on, and she quickly swung her feet back onto the nearest rung, breathing hard more from adrenaline than from fear. Freefall was always exhilarating, though she definitely preferred it with lots of open space for acrobatics. Puffing her cheeks, she blew out a sharp sigh of relief and looked around.
The dim lighting had changed. On Level 7, the lights recessed into the horizontal floors provided the vertical shaft a faint, greenish glow. Now the color had shifted to yellow from a bit of dull lighting emanating from the nearest pair of horizontal maintenance tubes. The nearer tube was just below her, gleaming dull yellow in the dark, and she moved down a few rungs to pull herself even. Beside the shaft's entrance there was a marker: Level 7 - Deck 42. She'd just dropped about twenty floors. Not too bad.
Leaning backward, she looked up. It was no different from any other view she'd had; the vertical shaft stretched determinedly upward, streaks of white, grey and black merging together into a distant point, illuminated only by faint colored lights.
The maintenance tubes were their own little world of narrow hallways and darkness. Frowning, Ahsoka looked down at the comlink on her wrist. She should check in with Rex. It was hard to tell how long she'd been descending since they last talked. Twenty minutes? Thirty? They should be at the TARDIS by now, though if they were, Rex should have contacted her so she knew his location and that he and the Doctor were safe and ready to provide backup. It didn't feel right that he was keeping radio silence.
Her lips, still pressed into a frown, twitched, and she tapped a finger on the ladder, her nail making a tiny ringing noise as it struck the metal once, then twice. If Rex was captured, contacting him could tip off the Imperials that there was a third member of their party. She could wait a moment before taking that risk - a Jedi had other means of gathering intel.
Straightening herself on the ladder, she braced her feet firmly against the insides of the rung she stood on, then clasped the sides of the ladder loosely with her hands. Then she reached - upward, downward, her senses riding on a current of the Force that expanded like a bubble, growing outward and encompassing more and more space further and further from her. Stretching out with her feelings, she felt the sharp, clinically clean edges of the Death Star itself. It felt like a new thing, with pride and precision polished into every surface; the people who built it left a patina of themselves upon the station, still strong since the structure was so new. There were the echoes of engineers in the corridors, of curiosity and fear and satisfaction embossed into the very fabric of the place. For a weapon of such incredible destruction, it felt ordinary in that way. The Death Star itself was a workplace as well as a weapon, functional and deadly, just as its creators meant for it to be.
Ahsoka pressed further, shifting focus from the station itself to those who lived upon it. A small frown puckered her lips. Clones all felt different from each other, but were often the same at the base; they were like trees in a forest, with similar components - roots, trunk, branches, leaves - but as they reached skyward, they took on differences, different shades and shapes. Rex felt very little like Cody or Fives, but even with her eyes closed, she could always perceive them as having the same template, growing out of the same rich soil. There was a similar feeling here, pervading the Death Star. The forest - the template - felt different from that of Rex or Cody or any of the 501st she knew, but there was a commonality that dozens - no, hundreds - of beings on the station shared. Clones. Her white brows drew together in consternation. The Clone War would be long over by this time, but the Empire was still using clones in some capacity, presumably as soldiers. The presence of that template permeated her awareness, but it did not dominate it. Though there were a great many clones on the station, they were not so dominant that they comprised almost the entire crew, like on a capital ship of the Republic. They were alert; there was a general tension to their collective minds, a readiness, but it was not so highly peaked as it would be in a battle. With a small sigh of frustration, Ahsoka turned her consciousness away from the stormtroopers. Not specific enough. Of course they were on alert, they had to know they'd been sabotaged by now. There was no feeling sharp enough, close enough, to indicate that the station's stormtrooper contingent was currently in a battle, even a small one, with the Doctor and Rex.
She pushed onwards, seeking outward with her mind and brushed against a void. Shivering once, she drew back from it slightly, warily. It was a presence, as powerful as stars and vast as space, a presence well imbued within confines of the station. People usually took up space in the Force rather than leaving it blank. It was a contradiction of existence, to both be there and not there, like a black hole, both dead and furiously alive at once, a blankness in space caused by the presence of an overwhelming source of gravity. The emptiness of the presence echoed in the walls, down corridors, patterned itself across the soul of the Death Star like a web of night, connecting everything to it and pulling it in. It felt like a night sky on an ice planet - distant, cold, dark - enveloping her in a complete chill. It shifted on the edges of her perception, skirting the edge of her consciousness, tugging at her mind with deceptive delicacy. It pulled at her like gravity, towing her slowly towards itself, towards a murky event horizon that reflected nothing. It was aware of her, and she withdrew from it, letting her mind slip away. It permitted her to depart, smoky tendrils of that other mind trailing after her like the lifeless fingers of a loosened fist. It was a strange presence, both alien and recognizable. In that mind like a night sky, there were constellations scattered across the surface, little points of bleak light flickering against an overwhelming sea of darkness. Those constellations seemed familiar to her as they emerged into the sky, the patterns recognizable but unfamiliar too, like stars seen through a telescope with bad refractors. The man the mind belonged to was warped somehow, a shadow that had forgotten what person it belonged to.
Shadows shouldn't have that kind of strength. Not on their own.
Her mind retreated from the shadow, seeking out something warmer, steadier. She wanted Rex, or the Doctor. He was aware of her, the shadow-man. A man of darkness, all black. The man from the bridge, who had controlled Leia, worked with Tarkin. It had to be the same man. A Sith. Only another Force-user could possess that kind of presence. It couldn't be Chancellor Palpatine encased in that tomb of black metal armor. He'd declared himself Emperor and Emperors didn't take orders from anyone, certainly not self-aggrandizing men like Tarkin.
She almost tripped on it. In her effort to escape the pull of the man in black, her mind caught on the presence of another. For the shortest moment, she thought she'd found the Doctor; it was a powerful old presence, swirling about with worry, warm without being hot enough to burn. In that they were the same, but from there the similarities ended. The Doctor was like fire and ice at the same time, a storm building in the clouds, rumbling with the promise of power. This presence was different, a bit like tea, bitter from steeping but still so very welcoming and uplifting. Tea allowed you to take a moment to let everything else fall away, if only for a moment. Ahsoka breathed it in, felt it fill her; it made her think of green tea in chipped GAR mugs, herbal and bitter. Of short moments between old battles, when uncertainty first filled her heart and she began to become aware of her own weaknesses and failures, but also started to reflect upon them, learn from them. The bitter, warm welcome of the presence was familiar, but more clearly familiar than the strange, warped night sky of the man in black. There were cares and joys that spun around a calm center, like bits of tea leaves that were not caught by a filter. Those cares and joys were deeper, older, more seasoned than she remembered, weathered and enriched by time and age, but utterly, completely, and wonderfully recognizable.
Ahsoka's eyes opened and her face lit as she stood, braced upon the rungs of the utility ladder.
With a smile of increasing magnitude and relief, she let herself say it out loud.
"Master Kenobi is here."
I've spent quite a bit of time poring over what blueprints I could find of the Death Star, but there's limited information on minor things like where engineering stations would be, or how maintenance shafts work, or how a station the size of a moon can only have about seven or eight levels. To make some of this make sense to me, I assumed each Level of the Death Star was subdivided into different decks. So Ahsoka is sliding past multiple decks on each level as she works her way to the Detention Level. I've pretty blatantly borrowed the idea of Jefferies Tubes - the maintenance shafts - from Star Trek. I can't recall ever seeing them in anything Star Wars, but it makes sense there'd be some sort of access ports and shafts leading to various functions around ships in the Star Wars universe as well.
A little bit of meta with the Doctor recognizing that stormtroopers can be really bad shots. The Doctor has used guns before, but it happens very rarely. Ten will pick up arms temporarily during Journey's End but he generally dislikes weapons of any sort, and Ten doesn't use a gun to actually shoot a person in Journey's End. His use of the sonic to shut blast doors here is both acknowledgement of that as well as a reference the open/close the blast doors scene in ANH when the stormtroopers accidentally cut themselves off from Han. Which would be happening just a few minutes from now, based on where this story is chronologically in relation to ANH.
The reference to tea is a bit of an allusion to another short story of mine, The Way of Tea. Though The Way of Tea technically takes place within my Said the Joker series, it's very much a standalone and could be applied in the TaFS timeline as well. In the story, Obi-Wan teaches Ahsoka to appreciate tea and reflect. So to Ahsoka, Obi-Wan is perceived as being like tea.
And yeah...things aren't looking so good for Rex and the Doctor, are they? Hm. However will they get out of this one? ;)
Til next time,
~Queen