The chute that this particular kitchen chucked their waste down was more horizontal than vertical, thankfully, and part of a complex maze of pipework in and around the Palace. Leia had spent three weeks studying the maps, seven years familiarising herself with the building, and yet she still found herself relying on Ahsoka to lead much of the way.
"If only I had my lightsaber," Ahsoka murmured, eyeing a particularly loose wall plating. Not loose enough to pry open by hand, but. . . "The younglings' dormitory is right down there. We could just carve our way through—"
"We'll just have to go the long way round," Leia grunted, heaving herself up another few metres. A fish skeleton swam past her in the deluge—a fish skeleton larger than her. Lovely. "And the lack of sabers is why we're going to the younglings' dormitory."
Ahsoka bit her lip. "That. . . doesn't feel right."
Leia shrugged. "It's necessary."
Ahsoka murmured, "That doesn't make it right."
Leia just ploughed on forwards. Quickly.
Ahsoka cursed and jogged to catch up.
The nature of the midden, or the kitchen chute, or whatever Leia wanted to call it, was that every kitchen in the Palace had a hatch that dumped its waste into it somewhere. Where she and Ahsoka had first jumped wasn't even particularly close to where it was spat out; it was just an area where it ran into a gutter-like channel and continued on.
But that meant that, if they were navigating correctly, they could wade through the waste and up the inclines to find the chute that opened out into the kitchen that was a part of the Jedi Temple. That had never been renovated into the whole.
And from there, as Leia ought to know, it was easy for one to sneak into the Palace—if one knew where the passages were.
So they turned left at the right time, and soon enough the chute began to even out more, growing less and less congested. No food had been dumped down here in nearly twenty years, after all.
Eventually, it grew completely dry. The light from the entrance had long since faded, but under the poor-quality robes they were wearing for their disguises, they'd managed to hide things that were somewhat smaller than a lightsaber: a glowrod, an emergency comlink and, in Ahsoka's case, a mishmash of spare, half-assembled parts and a screwdriver.
They knew what they had to do.
When they finally wriggled out of the tunnel and into a dark, dusty kitchen, Leia let herself pause for a moment. Catch her breath. Then she glanced around.
It was only a small kitchen, she noted; probably why the chute had been such a tight squeeze. She could hear Ahsoka cursing behind her. It echoed oddly.
It was a small kitchen, but it had not been spared. Even after all these years, Leia knew what dried blood on the floor looked like.
Her father had done that, she realised.
She tried not to think about it.
But other than a brief, rough clearing of the carcasses, nothing in the room had been touched. There seemed to be. . . something. . . growing on the handtowels and surfaces that Leia didn't want to look at too closely, but she tore a clean-ish scrap of fabric off one of the aprons and uses it to wipe off the worst of the stuff on her.
She felt like shavit.
Ahsoka dropped to the floor behind her and groaned. "We're here?"
"We're here." Leia wandered to the door and glanced out, glowrod out and ready. "This way to the younglings' dormitory."
The Chamber of Bones was. . . a lot creepier than she remembered it to be.
Maybe that was because the rotting hand of that Rebel Luke had fought down here still lay at the entrance.
She kicked it away with her (already filthy) boot and strode right in, sweeping the glowrod over the bones and sabers. Ahsoka followed a bit more gingerly. She gasped and grimaced when she saw what the room contained.
It wasn't like Leia hadn't explained it to her when they were making the plan, but. . . to actually see it. . .
She shivered.
"Here." Leia knelt down to pick two sabers up, dusting them off. "Here's a pair of Shoto lightsabers." She lit them; they were a deep, brilliant blue.
"Leia, I hope you know I still don't like this— oh." She took them almost on autopilot, staring.
Leia tilted her head. "What is it?"
"These. . ." They slotted into Ahsoka's hands like they were made for her—as, indeed. . . "The last I saw these were on Mandalore. Planted beside Rex's fake grave."
Leia shrugged and didn't ask who Rex was. She felt like she might've seen him around base somewhere or something. "He must've dug them up and brought them here to gloat."
Ahsoka clenched them tighter to herself, spinning the blades almost thoughtlessly. She looked odd, holding them, like a teenager hugging the toy that had calmed their nightmares when they were five.
But they still fit her hands. She spun them some more, the tips drawing large oblongs in luminescent blue on the musty air because she extinguished them.
"Alright," she said. "Find yours, and let's go."
Leia didn't spend long searching. She eventually found a hilt that fit her hand well enough, that was a slightly paler blue than Ahsoka's when she lit it, and then they left. Ahsoka cast the saber an odd look, but didn't comment.
"Let's get into the Palace proper," she said instead. "We're running out of time."
"Shouldn't we assemble the device here? Before we get up there? So you can use it as quickly as possible."
Ahsoka grimaced.
She shot the bones another look. "Fine. But we're moving out into the corridor; I don't like this place."
"I suppose it reminds you of what's at stake."
Ahsoka shot her a sharp look. But her words didn't correspond to it. Instead she said, "Yes. It does."
It was outside, then, that Ahsoka stripped open the pockets sewn into her disguise and brought out the pieces. Leia held the glowrod aloft so she could see what she was doing and watched, fascinated, as her hands deftly assembled them.
She was halfway decent at mechanics—at least, as much as she was at flying—but it was similar to military strategy in that she'd not studied it since she opted for politics and related subjects full time. She'd certainly have no idea how to reassemble an EMP grenade on the fly.
Lessons learnt during the Clone Wars, she supposed.
"How many of those do you have?" she asked as Ahsoka set the completed one aside and reached for the remaining parts.
"Four," came the reply. "If we use one in the right place, we can knock out almost all the security cameras in one blow with the discharge. One of these is larger, and is designed to knock out all blasters within range. The other two are for emergencies." Finished, she slipped all them back into those makeshift pockets—the bulge was obvious, but Leia didn't think they'd fall out anytime soon.
"Ready?"
"Ready."
"You get to the slave quarters, I'll get to the cells."
"Leia." Ahsoka's finger, slim but strong, closed about her wrist. "Be careful."
Leia frowned.
"I will," she promised, and she even half meant it.
But if it came down to it. . .
She'd risk anything to get her brother back.
Careful didn't come into it.
The 'slaves' cleared the strict checks and regulations regarding who could bring what into the Imperial Palace and then they were through. That Imp was already condescending to inform the slaves where the kitchen was, and how soon they'd be expected to work, the moment they were shown to their quarters for conditioning.
Jyn smiled a little. That guy would regret telling them where the kitchens were.
The only reason he wasn't already regretting it was because they had to wait for their signal. . .
. . .and then it came.
A high-pitched whining at first—then all the security cameras, in all the places Jyn could possibly imagine they'd be, exploded in a shower of sparks.
Everyone froze. The Imp stopped in his self-righteous speech and looked startled. Scared.
The troopers around them tightened their grips on their blasters.
Jyn sucked in a breath through her teeth. If Tano was doing her work right. . .
And she was.
Another moment, another wave: this time, the blasters all went out at once.
It was, Jyn thought with a vicious grin, truly remarkable how much EMP technology had improved since the Clone Wars.
"Go!" That was Cassian, barking, and everyone sprung into action.
The stormtroopers relied on might and weaponry more than skill. They fell easily—died easily.
The Imp officer wasn't even worth thinking about.
It was barely half a minute later that they were alone in the corridor, and Jyn said, "That EMP pulse will have shorted out all the transmitters as well."
The 'slaves', some of them Partisan friends of hers, others a ragtag collection from Amidala's motley group of cell, turned to look at her.
"Let's get to the kitchens, and prove to the slaves that this is their chance." There were plenty of ships to steal here, even if Antilles and Darklighter were keeping the Star running hot so that Skywalker could escape with her brother; if Tano and Skywalker could bust political prisoners out of the Palace's private cell block, there was no reason a mass slave exodus wasn't on the cards, was there?
"Anyone get where he said the kitchens were?"
Benthic raised his hand. Follow me.
They did. With vigour.
After all: blasters may not be working, so knives—especially big ones—were the next best thing.
It was far, far too easy to get from the Jedi Temple to the Imperial Palace, Leia thought. Especially after she and Luke had escaped through there before; Palpatine ought to have red guards swarming the area. But there was nothing.
No one in sight.
The moment Ahsoka's pulse ravaged the system, she dropped her shields and let herself use the Force again. It was no use hiding, after all; Palpatine knew she was coming, and he knew what she was looking for.
And he knew that there was nothing in this galaxy that could stop her from finding it.
She ran up, down, twisting through the painfully familiar corridors in a dance. Panicked people sprinted past her, only a few bothering to clock onto the fact she was a Rebel wielding an azure saber, looking ready to murder someone.
And she was.
But the people guarding the cells in the Palace weren't the ones in disarray. It took some fancy fighting and Force techniques to bring them down. And throughout it all. . .
Something was wrong.
The ease of the entrance, Luke's. . . absence in the Force. . . something was very, very wrong indeed.
She crept through. These were standard cells, in the Palace—specifically designed to be close to Palpatine's meditation spots so the suffering would nourish him, true, but essentially an identical design to anything you would find on a Star Destroyer. Now that she wasn't hiding in the Force, it was ease incarnate to reach out to the cells and sift through them.
Rebels and Rebels and more Rebels. Three embezzling Imperial governors. A senator's aide who'd been accused of using spice.
No Luke.
But. . .
But. . .
There was one cell she couldn't sense anyone in.
Empty? Or Force-suppressant cuffs? She was inclined to think the latter; she could sense empty cells, and none of them were holes in the Force.
Cell 221B. Quite a trek, but she made it in barely a minute, the Force adding to her movements—and her urgency.
She jabbed the unlock button outside it; it beeped, then demanded she produce a code cylinder before she passed. She snorted and waved her hand.
The door slid open.
She peered inside and instantly met eyes as brown as her own.
A woman. A woman who, quite frankly, looked like shavit, with horrendous rings around her eyes and sores littering every inch of her that was visible. Her shift had several holes on it in the right sleeve; Leia knew exactly what that meant. Her hair, which might have been brown and beautiful in a better circumstance, hung limp around her face.
"You're not Luke," Leia said, and ran out the door again.
She left it open, though. Another prisoner escaping would only help the chaos.
In fact—
A wave of her hand, and every door sprung open.
Ahsoka was coming here to free the other politically significant other members of High Command had authorised. She was just helping her out a bit.
Then she cast out her senses again—and this time, she reached up.
Palpatine was gargantuan in the Force, like a gigantic aiwha had swept over the planet and cast the Palace in the shadow of its wings. She shuddered as he fixed his metaphysical gaze on her, cold and hideously amused, but stretched further, further—
The darkness parted like a veil, and there was her brother.
She was running before she'd even thought about it. She sprinted right past Ahsoka, leaving her "Leia, wait!" far, far behind. She flung troopers and bystanders into the wall if they hindered her in any way, and did not bother to make it gentle—or even survivable.
Palpatine was baiting her. She knew it, and her fury suffused every cell in her body. She vibrated with it. She was ready to kill, and he knew it.
He could not stop her.
The turbolift took entirely too long in taking her up to the level the throne room was on, and before it opened she let herself feel for attackers waiting outside. There were none.
She didn't expect there to be.
Palpatine was waiting for her.
It was evident from the moment she strode to the throne room and saw no red guards at their usual posts, no one else for her to carve a swathe through. The blue lightsaber hummed in her hand.
The doors flew open.
Luke's presence. . . glimmered. . . somewhere near here. She scanned the room, windows open to the light and bright for once, but she saw no blond head anywhere near.
Her lightsaber bounced eagerly in her hand as she stalked forward. Palpatine, standing peering at the window in the corner, turned to regard her jovially. "Leia! How kind of you to drop by."
She snarled at him.
He made no reaction. Instead, he just ran his gaze up and down her, her disguise, and said, "Clever. But there was no need to go to all this trouble. I would have let you walk right in."
She settled into a ready position, eyes still periodically glancing around the room. Now she was here, Luke's presence. . . flickered. Like a candle flame held up in a dark room, like a distant star.
Like a mirage.
It was dark and dim and dingy but there was a light, there was one light, and Luke. . . despite everything. . . He smiled.
He knew that presence.
Even blind, swamped in darkness, he'd know that presence.
It was at once behind and before her, left and right. She shook her head a little, dazed.
"Would you have let me walk right out?" she shot back belligerently. Luke had to be here somewhere. . .
He laughed. It was not a nice laugh.
"Leia," he said. "Do you really think I'm going to do that now?"
She just spat, "What have you done with my brother?"
"Very little, actually. Most of his injuries he inflicted upon himself."
"Liar."
He stiffened, she noticed with a perverse pleasure.
He did not appreciate having his manipulations called out.
"I told you there was no need for the disguise," he said instead. "But you know, it's endearing itself to me. You do look so much like your brother with the blonde hair, the blue eyes. . ." He smiled. "And the bloody face."
Leia did not so much scream as roar, and brought her saber crashing down.
The Ahsoka novel by E.K. Johnston describes how, after Order 66, Ahsoka and Rex pretended to have killed each other and made a fake grave where Ahsoka left her lightsabers. The novel describes the lightsabers as green. The TCW S7 trailer, however, shows that the lightsabers Anakin gave her when she contacted him after she left the Order were blue. I've therefore put that in this chapter she has her blue ones. Sorry for any confusion.