Chapter 50

Hondo's Home

"The problem," Xho said as he held up Ahsoka's armored mask, "was a mistake in the distribution of padding. I am afraid that I am not used to faces as flat as yours, and I did not design the mask properly to absorb impacts as such. The strike not only hit at the, as far as I can tell, only place and angle that it could possibly jostle the mask enough to cause it to strike you in the face, but the strike was perfectly targeted in terms of force as well. It hit with just the right force to loosen a connecting wire to the buffer memory in the control system for the mask. That is why you could not send video from the last three minutes before the strike. It was still stored in the buffer, and had not yet transitioned to the memory drive. Or the backup I built into your wrist datapad."

"What are the odds that the hit would do that?" Ahsoka asked the Verpine. She was out of her space suit and mask, and no longer looked like Riella Masso, bounty hunter. Once again, she just looked like Ahsoka Tano, seventeen year old Togruta Jedi.

"The odds of striking the right place on the mask... approximately fifteen to one. The odds of striking at the right angle... ten to one. The odds of striking with the perfect amount of force to knock the wire loose? Astronomical. Unheard of. It took me seventeen tries, even after reconstructing exactly how it was done, to duplicate that feat."

"So you're saying that the man I fought not only managed to get past my defenses, my Jedi reflexes and danger sense, and years of training... and then managed to hit me in just the right way to make sure I didn't have any video footage of him, and then he managed to hit a nerve cluster in my foot so I couldn't chase him down."

He clicked his mandibles together, and said, "Doubly astronomical. Nerve clusters in a Togruta are in different places than a Human. In order to do so on purpose, he would have likely had to have been trained in Togruta physiology. Which is quite unlikely, even if he is a combat expert of a high enough caliber to take on a Jedi in a fight. Your race is not particularly common in the galaxy."

"And this guy is stealing what he needs to make lightsabers." She sighed. "This doesn't look good."

Xho's mandibles clicked together. "No, it doesn't. If you could provide ZT-47 with a list of hard-to-acquire parts that are necessary for lightsabers, he can try to find where the pirate may strike next."

"Way ahead of you. Nat's working on that right now, and when he's done he'll send the list to Master It'kla to double check it. We should be coming out of hyperspace above Florrum in a few minutes. I'm sure I can convince Hondo to cooperate. One way or another."

The Whipclaw roared over the pirate camp, and Ahsoka dropped out of the hatch. She rolled as she hit the ground, coming to a stop in what she hoped was an intimidating pose, her new double sided lightsaber drawn and activated.

The green and blue blades hummed in the dry air. And that was the only sound, other than the engines of the Whipclaw as Ashoka's apprentice brought the ship around to land on a nearby mesa.

Ahsoka stalked forward, looking for any sign of life. It looked like Hondo had moved on. After the number of times the Clone wars had infringed on his campsite, Ahsoka couldn't really blame him.

She put away her lightsaber and walked into the caverns that made up Hondo's home. There had to be some clue in there as to where he went. Her newly repaired and modified armored mask covered her face, and she paid close attention to her Jedi danger sense. She didn't trust Hondo not to leave traps in his old hideout.

The outside of the camp looked much as she remembered it. She'd been in this dusty wasteland before. She'd been held captive by Hondo here before.

A group of younglings had saved her. Using the kind of crazy logic that only a group of headstrong young Jedi would have used, they joined a circus, got Hondo drunk, and escaped with Ahsoka.

Ahsoka had no way of knowing if any of them were still alive. Those young, strong, vital apprentices that she had watched over, and who had saved her life in return, were either dead, or scattered to the four corners of the galaxy.

She remembered them, though. If they were still alive they'd be a few years older than her own apprentice, Nat. Petro and Gungi were probably taller than she was by now. Although Wookies age more slowly than most other humanoids, so perhaps Gungi hadn't grown much since she had last seen him. If they were still alive.

Ahsoka shook her head, and focused on the task at hand. She could take time to mourn lost friends later. Right now, she had a pirate to catch.

The outside of the camp showed few signs of habitation. Any old campfires were gone. There were a few broken down empty plasteel crates that the pirates hadn't bothered to take with them when they left. A few sections of ground had cracked fusionformed concrete, showing where they had once mounted heavy equipment or sentry guns.

The door to the inner caves slid open slowly, as if its power source were mostly drained. It screeched, and gave up while it was halfway open. There was a faint whine of a servo, still trying to do its job.

Ahsoka stepped inside, and ducked under a metal wire that was hanging across the door. Then she saw what the wire was attached to, and was glad that the door had gotten stuck halfway open.

The pirates had tied the wire to the door, and then tied the other end to a grenade that they'd hastily taped to the wall. Ahsoka untied the wire from the grenade activator and peeled it off the wall. It could still be useful.

She set her visor to infrared and scanned the passage. A furry warm-blooded lizard blinked at her from a nest in the wall, but that was it.

The passageways were just as she remembered them, as fuzzy as her memories were at the time. She had been locked up and repeatedly electrocuted while she was imprisoned here.

"Why is it that I didn't take off Hondo's head the last time I saw him?" she mused to herself. "Oh, right. Jedi don't take revenge. Stang moral code, always getting in the way."

She heard a burst of static over her com, with what sounded like Nat's voice in the background. "Sorry, I didn't get that. The caves must be blocking the signal."

Nat's voice came through again, with less static. "I'm boosting my signal. Yours is pretty weak though, I don't know if I'll be able to hear you. The Whipclaw is landed safely, but sensors aren't really picking up much of anything. Just local life forms. Almost no electronics."

"Copy that," Ahsoka replied. Nat didn't reply, so she assumed her com hadn't gotten through. She typed out a quick message on her wrist datapad, telling Nat that she was searching the base. It would send the message as soon as she had enough com signal.

In the meantime, she had a pirate base to search through. It could take a while.

And when she reached the cafeteria, she realized she was very glad for the armored mask. It had built in breathing filters, and it looked like the pirates hadn't bothered to throw away any of the food they'd left behind.

"Gross," she said, as she saw something purple and fuzzy growing on what appeared to be a pile of ground nerf that had been dumped on the floor next to a trash can that was overflowing.

Author's note: Sorry about the huge delay and the lack of communication. Life just kinda... went nuts. Right before Christmas things just got so crazy busy that I spent about two weeks without any real time alone to get any of my personal work, including writing, done. And then after that I got really sick, to the point where there were a few days where my head was too fuzzy to even think about getting any of my own work done. Finishing this chapter (I wrote the first quarter or so before Christmas!) was the first writing I've done this year.

Thanks for bearing with me, I'll try to at least finish this episode on my regular schedule. Unfortunately now that I'm done with all that, I'm going to be going back to school for my (hopefully) final semester at the end of the month, so I may have to lessen my update schedule then. But at least I have advanced warning for that, so I'll be able to let people know, unlike this last unexpected hiatus.