Chapter 12

Low Blow

"So, we meet again, mechanic. I thought something seemed off about you." The Zygerrian slung the rifle around his back, its ammo apparently spent in a single shot. The marketplace crowd spread out, leaving a huge space between the three. Nat gripped his board tightly, unsure of what to do as the Zygerrian pulled out a pistol with one hand and a long stun stick with the other. The stun stick flared to life, crackling electricity running up and down it. "If you give up now, you and the boy might survive what happens next."

"Worry about yourself, slaver," Ahsoka said evenly, dropping into a fighting stance.

Nat said, panicked, "Where's your lightsaber?"

"I don't have one."

Then the Zygerrian opened fire. Ahsoka dodged one, two, three bolts. The fourth looked like it might wing her. Nat panicked, and used the Force to throw the bucket that had been the bottom half of his table between the two. The bolt hit the bucket, and burned a hole right through it. But the bolt was slightly deflected, and only singed Ahsoka's coat. Ahsoka landed, crouched low.

"Run!" she yelled to Nat, "Get out of here! I'll handle this schutta!"

He nodded, and darted down a narrow alley.

Ahsoka faced off against the Inquisitor. The marketplace was rapidly emptying out as people panicked and fled from the large man with the large blaster. To an outside observer the fight looked like it would be one sided. A large, well armed man verses a small teenage girl.

But this observer had never seen a Jedi in action. Ahsoka leapt, flying ten meters through the air in the blink of an eye. She landed, with both knees against the Inquisitor's shoulders. He grunted and windmilled backwards a few steps, but the impact had hurt Ahsoka as much as it had hurt him. Apparently his shirt hid armored shoulder paldrons. Before he could recover, she punched him in the face with a solid right, left, then another right. He snarled, and she sensed the attack before his arm even moved. With a quick push through her legs and through the Force, she performed a lazy back flip while his stun stick crackled through the air in front of his face where she'd been a moment before.

She dodged two more shots from his pistol, then did a quick spin kick to his gun hand. He didn't lose his grip on the pistol, but at least it knocked it aside for a moment. She gathered up all of her concentration and blasted him with sheer telekinetic force.

He was only knocked back a few feet. Without a pause, he glared at her and unleashed three more blaster bolts in her direction. "No Jedi whelp is going to take me down!" he yelled, "I am Koros L'Larr, master hunter! No bounty, slave, or even Jedi can stand against me!"

As Ahsoka flipped to avoid the third bolt, he dashed forward and swung his stun stick. She barely ducked under it, seeing trails of electricity flare right in front of her eyes. She tried to duck around him and kick the back of his knee, but he turned and lifted his leg, taking the hit on one of the armored greaves attached to his boots. Before she could react, even with Jedi precognition, he lashed out. She was too close for him to swing and hit her with the electrified part of his stun stick, but a solid pommel strike still sent her sprawling, with the wind knocked out of her. She rolled over, gasping for air. He must have gotten a solid hit to her solar plexus for her to have this much trouble breathing.

All she could see was the outline of the large Zygerrian, a dark shape blocking out the sun behind him. Then he raised the stun stick, crackling lightning surrounding it.

And a small metal cylinder rolled into Ahsoka's hand. Her hand closed around it. It was a small Padawan-sized lightsaber. She ignited it, just in time to deflect the stun stick. She rolled backwards, kicking out as hard as she could partway through the roll, and used the Force to calm her nerves and force her lungs to expel their held breath. The lightsaber was small, and a little shorter than what Ahsoka was used to. She saw that her kick had landed exactly where she aimed it. And even with a codpiece, the Inquisitor was still half bent over in pain.

And she charged. Batting the stun stick aside, she charged in close to him, then flipped backwards and kicked off from his stomach. Even with light armor, he had the wind knocked out of him and stumbled back. She charged again, with both hands on the small lightsaber hilt. She entangled her blade with the oddly lightsaber-resistant stun stick and forced it to the side. Koros tried to point his blaster at her, and without missing a beat, Ahsoka disentangled her blade from his weapon and slashed at his wrist. The blaster, along with the gauntlet-covered hand that had held it, fell to the ground.

In shock, the Inquisitor stared at the stump where his hand had been. Then his vision went dark as Ahsoka drove the glowing blue blade through his heart, and his body ceased to function.

Ahsoka turned off the lightsaber as the large body fell to the ground. She looked back towards the alley behind her to see the small Twi'lek boy, looking a little more green than he had when she first saw him.

He slowly walked over to her. Looking down at the body, he asked, "Is he..."

"Yes. He's dead." She nudged the body with her foot. "We should get him out of here. Someone's bound to have called the police by now. And you're not safe here anymore."

Ahsoka handed the lightsaber back to the boy, stuck the long stun stick in her belt, and then began to pull the body back into the alley. She saw the flashing lights of an emergency response vehicle pull into the marketplace, and several men in uniforms exited it. At the last moment, she realized that she had left some evidence of foul play. The armored hand, sitting next to the powerful blaster pistol, was still in the middle of the street. Reaching out with the Force, she pulled them both slowly towards her, hoping that the uniformed men wouldn't notice.

"Okay, we've got to get out of here. I've got a speeder bike parked at the edge of town. Do you know any place we can hide this body?"

Nat looked down at the ex-Inquisitor and said, "I don't know... I've never even thought about... Sithspit... I don't know."

"Calm down," Ahsoka said, "take a breath. We need to get moving. The police could poke their heads into the ally any minute."

"I guess... there's an old abandoned dumpster in one of the alleys I sleep in. It looks rusted shut, but there's a loose panel on the side. I hid things in there and they never got stolen."

Ahsoka handed him the blaster pistol and the hand. "I need you to hold these while I drag the body."

Nat looked at the hand, and went from yellow-green to almost purely green. "O...kay. I've got it."

"What's your name?" asked Ahsoka, as she dragged the body down the alley. She was trying to distract him from the gruesome scene in front of him.

"Nat Tina. I was apprenticed to master Tolan Reyes."

"I remember him. Corellian, right? Green lightsaber, yellow hair?"

Nat nodded. "We were assigned to a mission on Toprawa, when suddenly our Clone Troopers turned on us. He died protecting me. I stowed away on an empty grain ship. I've been here six days now."

Ahsoka turned to him, her face showing surprise. "Six days? Are you sure?"

"I think I know how many days it's been since I showed up on this planet!"

"I believe you, I'm just confused. Order 66 was called four days ago."

"Well, I don't know why Captain Roc and all of the other clones tried to kill us. I just know it was a week ago. And I've been here on Dantooine for six days. All I've heard about the last six days on the holonews is that the Jedi betrayed the Republic. But there isn't even a Republic anymore left to betray."

"Grife. Someone planned this. Your master was alone, away from other Jedi. They must have tried to take him out early. Maybe it was a test, to see if the Clone Troopers could actually do it." Ahsoka followed Nat around a corner, and he kneeled down by an ancient looking dumpster. With his small fingers, he pried open a panel on the side and took out a few spare cups and a small pouch of credit chits.

Ahsoka dragged the body over to the dumpster, but before she did, she started going through the dead man's pockets. She found several hidden weapons, a wallet with his official looking ID, as well as a half-dozen official looking ID cards for various government agencies. "Wow, either he was a fraud... or Inquisitors are allowed to impersonate anyone they want to. Even other government officials."

She pocketed the weapons and the wallet, and as an afterthought, took his scanner and wrist computer as well. Then she used the Force to levitate his body through the narrow hole. She took the hand from Nat and tossed it in after the body, then pushed the panel back into place.

Now there was no sign of a missing Inquisitor, except for the ship he must have left parked somewhere in the spaceport.