Chapter Eighteen: Diya

Vader had informed Ahsoka early on that the Emperor had enlisted a special task force consisting of fallen Jedi and other dark side adepts called Inquisitors. All of them were tasked with two objectives. The first was to find all remaining Jedi that may have escaped the initial purge, and either force them to pledge service to the Empire or be killed. The second was to find as many Force-sensitive beings as possible, especially children, who could be groomed to serve the Empire. Any of whom, she'd forced Vader to acknowledge, could become his eventual replacement if he outlived his usefulness.

He hadn't given her pictures or profiles or been able to tell her exactly how many inquisitors there were. Just that they were out there and that if she ran into one, her best bet was to kill them. Inquisitors wouldn't stop until they hunted their target down, and if she left them alive, they'd only figure out who she was, and word would get back to the emperor that she was alive. And part of their plan depended on the emperor not knowing she was alive or involved with the rebels.

Ahsoka thought the kill, be killed, or worse mentality would bother her when Vader first advised her. But maybe the fact that it didn't was a testament to the fact that she hadn't been a Jedi for a long time now. Maybe since the war because kill or be killed was how most Jedi lasted the war, whether they wanted to admit it or not.

"Now would be a really good time to use your own lightsaber," Diyannah said in a grim tone without taking her eyes off the inquisitor.

"I agree. It would be if I had mine," Ahsoka replied.

"How are you a Jedi and don't have a lightsaber? Isn't that being a Jedi 101?"

"I'm not a Jedi."

"Tell that to her," Diyannah managed to say before she and Ahsoka had to duck out the way of the lightsaber thrown at them.

"Diyannah, get out of here," Ahsoka said as she ducked and jumped over the lightsaber attacks of the Inquisitor. If it came down to a force-sensitive child who didn't know how not to draw attention to herself and a full-fledged former Jedi, she knew the Inquisitor would choose the latter.

"Ahsoka Tano," the woman said. "I should have known that you would have managed to elude the initial purges. I'll certainly gain the emperor's favor once I report your capture."

"Good luck with that," Ahsoka said, deciding there was no time to waste letting the woman think she'd ever gain the upper hand over her.

It had only taken her observing the woman's initial strikes to notice she was using a very rudimentary and clumsy form of Vader's powerful offensive lightsaber technique. With none of Vader's strength and little of the man's speed that would have served as a cover for the weaknesses in the technique, Ahsoka took advantage of an opening in the woman's defenses. Ahsoka jumped over her blade and chopped the woman right in the neck in a place that wasn't obscured by her helmet and collar.

The woman let out a choked gasp, her empty hand going to her neck and her other hand loosening its grip on her lightsaber, allowing Ahsoka to take the blade out her hand and plunge it into the woman's heart.

The Inquisitor let out another choked gasp, this time, blood spilling from her mouth before she fell backward onto the floor.

Out of danger for the moment, Ahsoka took a moment to inspect the woman's lightsaber and noticed a second switch which Ahsoka pressed to reveal the second blade of the lightsaber. What was it with dark siders and their dual-bladed weapons?

She was distracted from her inspection by the Force and a loud cry.

"Diyannah," Ahsoka shouted, running toward the door that opened up to the secret alley.

She paused before rounding the corner, not wanting to be seen, but the girl's shouts told Ahsoka all she needed to know. Ahsoka peered her head around the corner to see Diyannah being cuffed and placed into an Imperial transport despite her struggling. If Ahsoka helped her now, she'd not only expose herself but also have all Imperial planetary forces after them. Right now, unless Diyannah told them something, she had the element of surprise on her. The best thing to do for now would be to let the Imperials take her and then track her down later.

Ahsoka went back into the old loading area and began to check the body of the Inquisitor, briefly regretting killing her and not being able to get any information from her. But Ahsoka imagined if she had left the woman alive, it would have immediately come back to haunt her. She found both a handheld datapad and a comm unit. With a little luck, she should be able to get into both and find out where they might have taken Diyannah. Hopefully, not off-planet.

The secret door began to lift behind her, and Ahsoka reluctantly lit the red saber. It might not be her color, but it was going to have to do.

"Diya," she heard Noni shout, causing her to turn off the lightsaber. "Diya. They're gone. Left in a hurry. I don't know why but—"

"They left because they got Diyannah," Ahsoka informed with a sigh.

"Diya's gone," Noni exclaimed to which Ahsoka nodded. Then he snapped, "What kind of Jedi are you to let this happen? We didn't have this issue before you got here."

Ahsoka didn't even bother disputing the Jedi thing as she said, "None of this is my fault. If anything, it's your friend's fault. She's cocky, reckless, and always drawing too much attention to herself. They would have come after her regardless of whether or not I'd come here. But you're lucky I am here because I'm going to help you get her back. And to do that, I need to know what's going on and what I'm getting into when I go to rescue her."

"We don't talk about that kind of stuff here," Noni said as he lowered the door back down and put the shelf back in place. "We have to set up a meeting and a time an-an-and," Noni stuttered here as he followed her back through the kitchen, "you're not the one in charge around here."

"Then take me to the person in charge. There's not a lot of time before they take her off-planet to who knows where, and wherever it is, I won't have the resources to stage a rescue," Ahsoka declared. "Besides, the Empire isn't going to let this place still operate after you were found harboring someone that was old enough to maybe have received Jedi training. They'll be knocking on your doors to shut you down tomorrow. If you've got any incriminating evidence, you better move it by tonight."

"Diya was the one in charge," said Noni, all but running to catch up to us

Ahsoka stopped walking at that, causing Noni to bump into her.

"Diyannah? She's the leader of Shili's resistance?" Ahsoka asked as she looked back at him.

"Why else do you think she's always getting into so much trouble? She rather be the one labeled as a delinquent than getting the rest of us in trouble."

Somehow, Ahsoka wasn't surprised by that. She'd been surrounded by people her entire life who'd been at the forefront of Galactic conflicts as children and teens. Padmé was a queen and led the fight to take back her planet at fourteen. Anakin had flown into space battle in the same fight at nine, and then was later a General who quickly rose to both fame and infamy in the Clone Wars at twenty. She'd heard that Obi-wan had been engaged in some exciting adventures as a teen. And Ahsoka herself had been a commander in the war at fourteen and a general at seventeen. It wasn't a stretch to believe that an almost sixteen-year-old was leading a resistance, even if Ahsoka thought she was reckless.

"And she can get out of stuff easier than the rest of us can because of her… I mean, she's not a Jedi. But she has powers."

"The Force," Ahsoka supplied. "She's Force-sensitive."

"Something happened during the last mission. We've been tracking a group of slave smugglers for weeks now. They were going to smuggle their cargo through a shipping yard in the city that they partner with. They knew we were there, though, and to escape, Diya shoved them out the way without touching them. They had to have told local Imperial enforcement," Noni explained. "That's the only thing different that happened from usual."

Ahsoka sighed as she said, "Frankly, it's a wonder she hasn't been apprehended before all this. The Empire could find a lot of uses for someone with the kind of Force talent she has. That means I have even less time to rescue her than I thought."

"What do you mean less time? Amala, what are they going to do to Diya?"

She didn't bother correcting him on the alias yet either as she said, "You really don't want to know." Then she held up the handheld datapad and comm in her hand. "Got any way to slice into these things?"

"What kind of operation do you think Diya runs here?" Noni asked, sounding insulted. "Of course, we do."

He led them to his room and pulled a laptop computer out from under his bed.

"It's Diya's. She's usually the one to intercept communications and stuff like this, but I've watched her hack into stuff like this enough times to do it," Noni said while gesturing for Ahsoka to hand over the datapad and the comm unit as he pulled out a couple of link cables

Ahsoka did so, deciding to let Noni do the hacking even though she could have done it herself with access to a computer. Besides, Noni knew the program his friend ran for this kind of stuff. Ahsoka could probably figure it out with a little time, but time was something they lacked right now, and even then, it took Noni the better part of an hour to get to the information they needed.

"Here's the mission report," Noni said as Ahsoka sat beside him on the floor.

She took the computer from him and briefly scanned the report before scoffing and saying, "You've got to be kidding me."

"What?"

"They think she's me," Ahsoka said with a laugh.

"Who are you?"

"Ahsoka Tano."

"Ahsoka… Wow. Diya idolizes you."

"Does that word mean something else in togruti? Because Diyannah far from idolizes me," Ahsoka replied as she continued through the mission report, searching for the coordinates for where the Inquisitor was supposed to take Diya.

"Of course, she wasn't going to tell you that. She hasn't run a secret resistance being stupid. And it was you they were after?"

"No. They were after Diya, but apparently, they think she looks enough like me that they mistook her identity with the old pic of me they've got on file. I wonder if it ever occurred to them that I got older."

"Well, the Empire generally doesn't care much to find out about non-human biology. They probably thought you were done growing up if they used human biology as the benchmark," Noni pointed out.

That information about the Empire was probably useful for later, but not right then. So Ahsoka filed it away for later as she finally found the coordinates for where Diya was taken. Noni caught a look at the coordinates from beside her and made a clicking sound.

"They took her there!"

"You know this place?" Ahsoka asked.

"Everyone knows it. It's one of the Imperial detention centers for slave shipments. They work in conjunction with off-planet slavers. The slavers get part of the shipment as payment along with the Empire turning a blind eye to them," Noni explained. "We try to intervene with the slavers as much as we can, but with the backing of the Empire, we're not always successful. Actually, we're rarely successful. Taking down that place has been one of Diya's goals for a long time."

Ahsoka made a point to look into that when she had time. If the Empire was running an underground, not so secret slave trade on Shili, they were definitely running one elsewhere. Probably because they needed the free labor to build their increasingly massive navy.

"It's about two hours out from here by speeder. But I can get there faster in my ship. Still, I've got to get going," Ahsoka declared as she got to her feet.

"By yourself?" Noni asked.

"It's better if I do this alone. Taking you or any of your resistance will slow me down. Besides, you all need to get ready to scatter. Destroy or hide any incriminating evidence if you have it, tell your allies to go ghost if you have them, and then scatter to go to a secure rendezvous point later. Preferably another city far from here," Ahsoka explained. Then, given the look on Noni's face, she added, "You don't have to take my advice, but it's the only way to salvage this. Diya wanted attention, and she got it. Shili may protect their own, but if it comes down to throwing you all to the akul or the whole planet coming under strict Imperial lockdown, I don't think you want to gamble what your planet will choose."

Ahsoka took the datapad, hoping that she might get more updates through it and directed Noni to destroy the comm. There was no need to stop by her room. Carrying on her everything she needed to go on the run with her wherever she went was a habit she carried over from being a Jedi.

"Wait!"

"Noni. There's no time to argue. Either—"

"I know. I'm going to do it. I just wanted to give you this," Noni said as he handed her a comm. "You can use this to get in touch with us. Don't worry. Diya's good with this kind of stuff. It's secure. We haven't been interfered with yet."

"Thanks," Ahsoka said as she pocketed the item in her cargo pants. "Now hurry up. You don't have a lot of time. A rotation at best."

That said, Ahsoka went to the docking bay where she'd left her ship. It didn't look like the Empire had come by the place or connected it to the resistance she'd been spying for the last few weeks, but she could never be too careful.

"Artoo," Ahsoka called out as she boarded the ship. The little droid immediately came out of whatever place he'd been hiding in and followed her to the cockpit. "Make sure there are no tracking devices on this thing."

Artoo gave an affirmative beep while Ahsoka readied the ship for takeoff. Once he'd confirmed they were clear, Ahsoka took off into the Shili skies toward the coordinates she'd swiped. It would be a short trip. About thirty minutes compared to the time it would have taken in a speeder. As she did so, she rechecked the mission brief, finding that it had been updated. Diya was now scheduled for immediate interrogation, which somehow both made Ahsoka's mission much more urgent, but less urgent at the same time. At least they weren't taking her off-planet. But at the same time, Force-sensitive or not, Ahsoka wasn't sure if the girl would be able to resist the interrogation techniques of the Empire. And Ahsoka had told the girl a little more than she probably should have.

Ahsoka landed in a secluded patch of tall grass with think foliage and trees surrounding it, hopefully outside the scanning range of the facility. She guessed since she wasn't hailed or shot at, it likely was. Then she made the rest of the hike through colorful foliage to get to the detention center, climbing a tree to do a quick assessment of the place and look for the best place for entry. By now, they'd probably figured out—hopefully,—that Diyannah wasn't really her, and it would be marked as a false lead. That way she could get in and get out before anyone noticed that she was really here.

Finding her opening, she leapt out the tree and started towards the facility, easily jumping over the fence and managing to slip her way inside without being seen. Clearly, they hadn't ever expected a former Jedi to breach their security. And why would they? Most Jedi trained individuals were long dead or in hiding like she had been, waiting for the initial devastation and aftermath of the purge to settle.

She carefully made her way down the halls, avoiding being seen as she followed her instincts to find where the girl had been taken, catching a lift ride down to solitary confinement. She thoughtlessly disarmed the few guards securing the area with the sabers she'd taken off the inquisitors before going down the hall and calling Diyannah's name.

"Ahsoka!" the girl called back, and Ahsoka followed the girl's voice to a cell at the other end of the hall.

"You okay?" Ahsoka asked as she opened the door.

"Besides being cuffed and locked in a cell for the last couple of hours, just peachy," Diyannah replied. Then she said, "Ahsoka. You've got to get out of here."

"I will," Ahsoka said as she used the lightsaber to cut the cuffs on Diyannah's wrists.

"No. I mean you shouldn't have come to get me. They think I'm you."

"I know. And I've been in and out of worse places," Ahsoka said, gesturing for the girl to follow her.

"Worse than—"

Ahsoka gestured for Diyannah to stop talking as she became aware of a presence on the edge of her senses. She noticed it long before they heard the lift at the other end of the hall going back up and certainly long before a dark chill settled in the air and in the Force. She was aware of it just like in what felt like another life she could tell when he was near because she was always acutely aware of his presence.

"You're kriffing kidding me," Ahsoka muttered to herself.

"That's what I was trying to tell you. Darth Vader's coming for you."

So much for getting in and out, Ahsoka thought to herself as she said to Diyannah, "Look for a vent or something. Usually, huge facilities like this need huge exhaust vents because of all the energy they produce. You should be small enough to fit inside.

"But what about you?"

"I can handle Vader," Ahsoka said as they found said vent above them, and she used the Force to pull it open.

"Handle Vader," Diyannah said as Ahsoka boosted her into the vent. "Do you know who Vader is? Have you heard the things he's rumored to have done?"

"Yes."

"Ahsoka—"

"Diyannah," Ahsoka said, looking back up at the girl imploringly. "Trust me. I'll be fine."

Diyannah looked at her searchingly for a few moments before she nodded and said, "Diya. You can call me Diya."

"I'm truly grateful for the sentiment," Ahsoka said as she sensed Vader's presence coming closer. "But if you want me to be okay, I really need you to get out of here."

"I'm going," Diya said as she pulled the vent closed and disappeared.

Cunning as she was, Ahsoka had no doubt the girl would be able to escape and find her way out the prison with no one noticing. The question was, would she choose not to attract any attention along the way? Ahsoka hoped it wasn't too much to ask that the girl didn't.

She then turned back to the lift, which had opened to reveal not just Vader but also the warden and five local stormtroopers.

"Hey! You there," the warden shouted before directing the troopers to detain her.

Ahsoka deflected the blaster bolts back at the troopers, felling them with little effort. The warden had just begun to lift his comm to his mouth to alert the facility, and Ahsoka started to reach out to pull it from him with the Force when, suddenly, the man's eyes rolled back to his head, and he collapsed onto the ground.

Vader inspected the scene, and then finally, his eyes fell on her.

"That color suits you," he said, mask tilting toward the red lightsaber in her hand.

Ahsoka couldn't help rolling her eyes, and before she could stop herself said, "Oh, shut up."


AN: I think teenagers are awesome. Sure they're a little obnoxious and think they know everything, but I always find sitting around and talking with them to be very insightful and entertaining, albeit infuriating. Ahsoka is probably going through the whole gambit of that with Diya in this chapter and the next. And Vader probably won't make it easier.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed! Review please.