Previously on Star Wars: Exile's Journey
After leaving the Jedi Order, ex Jedi Ahsoka Tano joined the crew of a freighter, the Red Drexl. After a year of working as a mechanic and copilot, suddenly the Republic fell and the Empire rose in its place, and she found herself fighting and defeating a bounty hunter named Koros L'Larr and taking his ship for her own. Now Ahsoka 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
So far on her journey she has discovered two Jedi Padawans, one Master, a Verpine mechanic and his tiny droid, a manual labor droid who goes by the name Bollux, and one dark Jedi who had been infected with shards of an ancient Sith holocron, the likes of which she'd never seen before. The holocron contained the spirit and essence of an ancient Sith Lord, and in the end she decided that the only safe course of action was to put the broken holocron into a message capsule and shoot it into the nearest star.
After a run-in with a group of pirates, and having to fend off the mental control of the ancient Sith Lord, Ahsoka is ready to destroy the holocron and head back to her temporary home base in the Rudrig system.
Chapter 41
Blank Slate
"Well, this is it." Nat said as he fed the coordinates into the targeting computer. "Horuset is targeted. Anything that comes out of our torpedo tube is going to go right into the sun."
"Thanks," Ahsoka said. "I can still feel Darth Nadir out there, trying to play with my perception. I couldn't take the risk that he'd make me miss." She tightened her grip on the ship's yoke and rested her index finger on the missile trigger. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. "A Jedi is calm, at peace. I'm not doing this out of vengeance, because you hurt people. I'm not doing this out of anger, because you managed to get inside my brain and figure out whatever the Son did in there to make me turn against my friends on Mortis. I'm doing this to make sure you can't hurt anyone else again. Ever."
Her finger twitched, and the message capsule containing all the shards of the modified holocron that Darth Nadir had used to store his essence and his mind shot out of the nose of the Whipclaw at high velocity. Ahsoka couldn't see it against the backdrop of the sun that illuminated the planet Korriban, which had once been the capital of the Sith Empire. But she trusted Nat's skills.
Behind the mental shields she'd put up in the Force, she could feel the powerful hammering blows of Darth Nadir, trying to lash out at her. He knew her weaknesses now, he'd even managed to go through her memories and discover how someone even more powerful had manipulated her in the past, and duplicate it. But she had her apprentice at her side in the copilot's seat, and a friendly Jedi master behind them.
"And now?" Nat asked.
"Now we wait. It'll take a few minutes to reach the sun. I want to make sure he can't get free. Never again."
They sat in the cockpit for six minutes, just waiting.
And, with a final scream echoing in the back of Ahsoka's mind, it was finally over.
The last vestiges of Darth Nadir were gone from the galaxy, and the wounds he left could finally heal. Ahsoka took a breath of what felt like the first fresh air she'd breathed in days, despite the slightly metallic tang that the ship's oxygen scrubbers left behind. The slimy claws that had been scrabbling at her mind for days were gone for good.
Ahsoka opened a com channel to the Red Drexl. "It's done," she said. "Now let's head back to the University to meet Mirian's brother. I'm sure he'll be happy to see that she's safe."
"Course is plotted, we were just waiting for you, kid," came Jyssa's reply.
Mirian's voice came over the com, "I'm a little nervous. I don't really remember my family."
Over Ahsoka's shoulder, Master It'kla spoke up, "They certainly remember you."
"I'm sure with the resources I have on this ship," Ahsoka said, "I can get you a new identity. Some way to disappear from the Empire's scanners and have a normal life."
Jyssa responded on the com, "Yeah, if my mechanic keeps running after Jedi bounties I might just need to hire a new one. Maybe we can give her an identity that will get her a scholarship to hyperdrive repair school."
The ships dropped out of hyperspace in the Rudrig system. "Nat, what do the internal sensor say? How's the little gash by the Whipclaw's nose holding up?"
"It's still airtight, but I've got a few warning lights."
"Will it hold up to reentry?"
"If it won't, we probably won't ever find out," he said, grinning cheekily at her. "Seriously though, as long as we take it slow, we should be okay. No airbraking or high-g maneuvers and we should make it down in one piece."
"I kinda wanna make it down in as many pieces as we're in right now," Ahsoka replied, "Getting fused with the ship won't make for a happy landing."
"Um... Ahsoka, you might want to take a look at the external sensors too."
Ahsoka looked at her sensor screen and tapped on the largest dot on the fore sensors. "An Imperial Attack Cruiser? What is that?" She tapped another button and an image of the ship came up on the monitor next to the sensors. "Oh, it's just a Venator-class. They must have renamed them. That was quick. This new Empire works fast, I guess. Last week that was just a Venator-class."
"Master Reyes and I served on the Broadside with Captain Joliar. It's the biggest ship I've ever been on."
"Is the Drexl out of hyperspace yet?"
"Umm..." he checked the scopes, "Yeah, they're a few klicks behind us."
"Open up a tightbeam transmission."
Jyssa's voice came over the com, "I see it too, kid. I don't have any excuse for having extra passengers. But if we turn tail and run, they might think it's a little funny."
"Any ideas?"
"I don't know... fly casual?"
"All right, but be prepared to book it if you need to." Ahsoka grabbed her armored bounty hunter's mask off the dashboard where she'd left it and put it on. "For now, I'll just be Riella Masso, and you be yourself. As far as anyone knows there's no connection between us. We just happened to be coming from the same direction at the same time."
"Hey, I'm just an innocent little freighter captain. Why wouldn't I want to travel near a bounty hunter with a powerful ship? We should have come up with an identity for Mirian before we left."
"I was a little distracted. Pirate attacks, ancient Sith spirits... I promise I'll cover my bases better next time." Ahsoka wished she was joking. It had been a busy week, even by a Jedi's standards.
Following Jyssa's advice, she flew towards Susefvi normally. After a brief exchange with the spaceport traffic controllers, and after telling them that she'd suffered an asteroid impact and needed repairs, they directed her to a slow approach and after a bit of haggling about the price, assigned her a landing bay.
There was no mention of what an Imperial craft was doing out here in what had been Separatist territory until fairly recently.
Ahsoka didn't like it.
During the last few seconds of the Whipclaw's approach, Ahsoka heard a rattle from the nose of the ship, one that slowly turned into a heavy vibration that she could feel even through the shock absorbers in the expensive pilot's chair. A warning light started flashing on the sensor board, but even without looking she knew what had happened. One of the seams had come loose on a plate that had been welded over the damaged spot. Luckily, she was only a few hundred meters above the ground, and there wasn't a huge pressure differential between the inside and the outside of the ship.
Ahsoka brought the ship in and landed it, much more smoothly than the last time. The landing gear was still a little stiff from the previous landing, but the patch job on the hydraulics was holding for now.
She had been expecting a long wait while her ship was repaired. But any wait with an Imperial Attack Cruiser hovering over he head was going to be too long.
"Well, there's no phalanx of clones waiting for us on the ground. That's a good sign," she said.
"Until we know why they're here and what they're looking for, we must be cautious," Ylenic said.
"Hey, I don't know about you guys," Nat said, grinning up at the two older Jedi, "but I can survive on the mean streets on my own."
Ahsoka snorted, "You might have been able to earn a living gambling on the streets of Sandrale City, but this is Rudrig. You need at least a doctorate to earn a living here."
Author's note: I hope everyone enjoyed the comeback episode last week. I figured if I was going to go away for a month, I'd better have something big when I came back. If I'm still going by the episodic TV show format, that was a big middle-of-the-season episode. Hmm... I wonder if that means in nine or ten weeks I have to plan for a big two or three episode arc to end this first 'season' with...