Previously on Star Wars: Exile's Journey

After defeating a bounty hunter named Koros L'Larr and taking his ship for her own, Ahsoka Tano has taken on the persona of Riella Masso, bounty hunter, as a way of keeping tabs on the current hunt for Jedi on the run. She has taken up the mantle of Jedi once again, and taken in a young boy named Nat Tina as an apprentice.

An Alderaanian student at the University of Rudrig asked her to help find his missing sister, a Padawan named Mirian Varos who had gone missing several weeks prior. She followed the lead and discovered not only the missing Padawan, but a Jedi Master named Ylenic It'kla, and a mad Jedi turned Sith named Kan'to Kree.

Kree and Varos had been infected by shards from an ancient Sith holocron that was driving them mad. Mirian only had one shard in her shoulder, and Ahsoka and her friends were able to save her. But Kree had fallen to the dark side before the holocron had shattered, and he could not be saved. Ahsoka defeated him in combat, and then turned his body in for the bounty.

Chapter 29

Backstab

"Well that was surprisingly easy," said Ahsoka as she dropped the credits into her belt pouch. "I just turn in a body, show them a lightsaber, and call it a day. Thanks for the help, BLX-5."

"It was my pleasure, Mistress Masso. Would you mind if I gave you a bit of advice for next time?"

"Advice from a droid? This I have to hear."

BLX-5 started walking back towards the ship, now pulling a repulsor dolly carrying an empty crate instead of the dead body that had been on it. "Your attempt to impress the bounty office clerk into thinking that you are, in fact, a hardened bounty hunter fell rather flat. I would suggest being more straightforward and matter of fact. Claiming that you need to keep the lightsaber as a trophy was believable, but it would have been more believable if you hadn't twirled it, and then said 'A girl has to have her trophies.'"

Ahsoka looked at the old droid. "Acting advice from a droid? That's really a new one for me. Was I... over the top?"

"As far over the top as you were over your starship last night during your fight."

Ahsoka stopped dead in her tracks and grabbed BLX-5's arm. "How on Susevfi did you know what happened last night?"

"I've found that few people learn to speak binary. Which means that few people know just how chatty some maintenance and cleaning droids can be. You have little need to worry. The inorganic half of the spaceport staff is grateful that you removed the killer from this city, and have no intention of revealing your presence here."

"Why's that?"

"The arrest and bounty reports mentioned how many organic sentients the Jedi maimed and killed. Non-organics, however, were listed merely as destruction of property. Many droids found themselves at the wrong end of a lightsaber in the last few weeks."

"Huh," Ahsoka said as she let go of BLX-5's arm and continued walking. "I've spent the last couple of years doing my best to deconstruct just about every droid I came across, except for Artooie."

"Well, I for one am glad that you have decided to kick the habit."

Ahsoka shook her head. BLX-5 was certainly an odd droid. Something occurred to her, something she normally associated with clones rather than droids. But BLX-5 had far more personality than most droids. In a way, he almost reminded her of R2-D2. She asked, "Do you have a name besides BLX-5?"

"Back in the shipyards of Fondor, when I went for a year without a memory wipe, occasionally I would deal with minor system overloads. One of the repairmen there told me that I was all bolluxed up. The nickname stuck, and they would call me Bollux for short."

"That'll work," said Ahsoka.

"However, I have discovered in my travels that on certain planets, most namely those closest to the core, the name is homophonic for a slang term that refers to a certain part of male mammalian anatomy. On those planets I choose to use the name Zollux to avoid confusion and derision."

Ahsoka shook her head, "Boys are the same across the galaxy."


In the end, Ahsoka ended up spending much more than she wanted on a load lifter droid. The spaceport droid wrangler drove a hard bargain, and she wasn't willing to use the Force to try and persuade him.

But it was worth a little extra to have a droid with a bit of personality.

"Bollux, secure our cargo. We're about to break atmosphere."

"I am afraid that the only cargo we have on the ship is Master Nat."

Nat turned in his seat, "Hey! I'm not cargo, I'm crew. You're cargo!"

"In that case, boys, secure yourselves. We're about to break atmosphere."

The blue sky thinned, and one by one the stars came out and the sky turned to black. "Nat, prep the torpedo launcher. I've got a little message to send to Darth Nadir."

Nat pressed a few buttons at his console. "Got it."

Ahsoka left the spacelane and headed inward, towards Susevfi's sun. "We'll be within firing range in about two minutes."

Before lifting off from the spaceport, Ahsoka had prepared a message capsule. The broken remnants of the Sith holocron were inside of the capsule. The only way to make sure that it could never be recovered and cause harm would be to destroy it. And since there weren't any handy black holes nearby, the sun would have to do.

Jyssa commed them from the Red Drexl, "We're ready to head back to Rudrig. Mirian's long overdue for a family vacation. Comm me when you get in."

"Will do, captain."

"You do realize that you're still my mechanic. Just because you happened to find a Verpine who can make my engines purr like a newborn spukamas doesn't mean you get off that easy."

"Yeah, yeah. Whenever I don't have a bounty or a lead on a Jedi, I'll get around to fixing the hyperdrive coolant leak."

"Wait... there's a coolant leak? You didn't tell me about that!"

"What's that, Captain? You're breaking up." Ahsoka used a trick she'd learned from her former Jedi master, and rubbed a gloved hand over the microphone on the dashboard, simulating the sound of static.

"Why you little..."

Whatever creative insult Jyssa finished her sentence with was cut off by the sound of a turbolaser blast ringing through the ship.

"Shields up!" yelled Ahsoka as she jerked the steering yoke to the right. "Bollux, what's on sensors?"

"They are not broadcasting identification, but from the profile I believe they are a pair of Flarestar class attack shuttles."

A man's voice came over the com. "Koros L'Larr. When my scouts told me that your ship had been sighted here in the Susevfi system, I couldn't believe it. Did you really think that after everything you'd done, you could waltz through my territory unharmed?"

The man had a mild accent, one that Ahsoka recognized immediately.

"Oh no," said Ahsoka as she scrambled for the com channel button while desperately weaving the ship to avoid incoming fire, "I know that voice."

"My mother always told me that revenge is a dish best served when there were no authorities around to stop me. So, here we are. In deep space. Away from the shipping lanes. Just you, me, and my band of bloodthirsty pirates."


The com on the Red Drexl crackled. Jyssa yelled, "Why you little... short! You're little and short!"

Arc laughed. "Actually, she's pretty average. You're tall."

"Quiet, you. No disagreeing with the captain when she's annoyed. That's a rule. That I just made up." Jyssa squinted out of the viewscreen. "Arc... point the sensors towards Ahsoka's last location."

"Yes sir. Whoa! Two Flarestar class assault shuttles. Not broadcasting any ID. Should we give them a piece of our mind?"

"Coming about. Man the upper turret. And have our furry guest man the lower one. I wanna give them a few pieces of hot plasma. You can be the diplomatic one and shove an ion bolt up their..."

Arc didn't hear the last word over the sound of his own pounding footsteps down the corridor. He got to the cargo hold and yelled, "Ylenic, lower turret! Xho, see if the Captain needs another set of eyes and hands in the cockpit. Ahsoka's in trouble."

The deck shook with the force of the Drexl's exoburn exhaust system kicking in. The feedback momentarily confused the circuitry in Arc's prosthetic hand, and he almost accidentally let go of the ladder as he clambered up to the upper turret. The Tolos class ship was an attempt by the Corellian Engineering Corporation to build something that combined the features of the Barloz class medium freighter, with the smaller, more easily modified YT series. Jyssa had modified it for running through blockades, giving it a set of dual ion cannon turrets on the top and bottom, a set of forward facing quad lasers, a missile tube that, since she wasn't part of the military, was only loaded with chaff missiles made to confuse sensors and tractor beams, and most importantly, an exoburn exhaust system to give the ship an extra speed boost when it needed it. In addition to the energy pulsing through the ship's ion engines, an unstable negatively charged ionic gas was released between the two engines, and once it combined with the ion exhaust, it ignited. The ship couldn't sustain a burn like this without damaging the engine housing, but for short bursts it really helped make up a lot of distance.