Chapter Seven

At various points in her life, Ahsoka had thought she'd found the "worst" planet in the Galaxy. Felucia had occupied that place of honor for a long time, and, though that time had long past, she still considered the jungle world to be at least in the top five of undesirable vacation spots.

Umbara, however, trumped them all.

She decided this only a few minutes after they'd inserted onto the world, when a very large and very toothy vine plant had become suddenly determined to eat Niner and Striker, that is, until Ghes had fed it a thermite grenade instead. This turned out to be only the first in a wide variety of hostile flora and fauna which inhabited the dark world. And Umbara was most certainly dark, in a very literal sense. Ahsoka had thought the description of a shadow world locked in eternal night that had been presented in the mission brief was an exaggeration born of rumors and bad intelligence, but, after nearly a standard week without any sign of daylight, she'd lost that skepticism.

What Ahsoka wanted to know was why Umbara was important enough to be worth the effort of an invasion, because she had no idea what value the Chancellor and the Council saw in the hellish rock, and neither did anyone else. It seemed to her this was a classic case of "the Separatists are there, so the Republic has to be there too!".

Or, more accurately, the Republic would be here, eventually. For now, though, GAR presence on the planet was limited to recon teams spread out over the entire northern hemisphere around proposed landing sites for the real invasion. These recon teams represented Ghes's entire battalion, much to his chagrin. Ahsoka got the impression that Ghes didn't like having all of his men participating in the same operation at once, not least of all because it placed Retaliation at the disposal of the assault fleet, and, despite all its automation, the ship's skeleton crew was not prepared for a fleet engagement.

Despite this reluctance, and the complaining that had come with it, Ghes was still a professional, and he'd do his job.

"I don't like the look of these militia units, colonel." Vor's voice crackled faintly over the commlink. "I've never seen kit like this before."

"All we can do is pass it up the chain." Ghes responded, clearly as unnerved by what they'd been seeing as Vor was. "Not that it ever gets where it'd do any good."

Ahsoka nodded idlily, though she really wasn't paying much attention. Fixed observation was incredibly boring, and, though Ghes and his men seemed fine with the work, she was having trouble dealing with the long periods of inactivity. She shifted uncomfortably on her stomach, careful not to disturb any of the foliage or camouflage netting that surrounded her and Ghes, and looked over at her companion. He lay only about forty centimeters away from her within the cramped confines of the observation post, propped up on his elbows and looking through a pair of macro binoculars. Even in the darkness, she could see that his armor had become coated with mud, something which didn't bode well for her own appearance.

"Take a holo," Ghes said, still not looking away from whatever was downrange. "It'll last longer."

Ahsoka scowled at the lame joke, though she wondered how he'd even known she'd been looking at him.

"How can you stand just sitting here?" She said, rolling onto her side so she was facing him.

"Discipline." He said. "Discipline and caffeine pills."

"Really?" She said, disbelievingly.

"Oh yeah," He said, finally dropping the binocs for the first time in hours and turning toward her. "You want some?"

"Colonel?" She asked in mock surprise. "Are you offering me drugs?"

"I suppose I am." Ghes answered, laughing. "I have combat stims to, if you want something stronger."

"No!" She laughed back. "I'm not tired, I'm just bored."

"Can't you meditate," He asked, turning back to his work. "or whatever it is you Jedi do?"

She could, but she really didn't want to. A very insistent part of Ahsoka was telling her that she should't waste any time she had alone with Ghes. But she'd had a lot of time alone with him on this mission, and she'd yet to implement the "plan" she'd thought of days prior. She wasn't sure what was holding her back, it wasn't like anything she'd thought to say would tip her hand. Yet she'd been unable to overcome her nerves to ask completely innocent questions.

That had to change.

"You ever tried meditating. Ghes?" Ahsoka asked.

There, she thought, that should get the ball rolling in the right direction. Moreover, it wasn't a completely unfounded question. After all, Ghes had an awareness of the Force, even if he didn't consciously use it most of the time.

"Not my style." Ghes said dismissively.

"Come on," She said, sounding more pleading than she would have liked. "it'd probably help you be more relaxed."

"I am relaxed."

Ahsoka doubted that, though she admitted that he hid any anxiety he had well.

"Besides," Ghes continued. "if I need to relax, I can go to the range, or the gym."

"You don't have to stop doing any of that." She said. "I'm just saying meditation is something else you could try."

Ghes once again put down his macro binoculars and turned toward Ahsoka, though this time he paused in between to remove his helmet. She assumed this was mostly for her benefit, as her natural night vision was much better than a human's, so Ghes would barely be able to see her without the benefit of his helmet's optics.

"This is about my mind block thing, isn't it?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "It makes you uncomfortable?"

Ahsoka quietly panicked as he said that, before she realized that he'd missed the mark by just enough that she could roll with it.

"How'd you know?" She lied, thankful that Ghes wasn't sensitive enough to pick up on her emotions.

"Because I make every Jedi uncomfortable," He answered. "most just don't understand why."

That seemed odd to Ahsoka. She'd never been uncomfortable around Ghes, at least not for that reason. But she could understand how other Jedi might be put off balance by a non-Jedi they couldn't read.

"It's sort of like the mental equivalent of a helmet," She said, entertained by the comparison. "especially when you're already wearing an actual one."

"I guess it is." Ghes said, laughing softly.

"But do you have to be like that all the time?"

There, she'd said it. Well she hadn't said it, but she'd moved the conversation in a direction she couldn't easily back away from.

Ghes looked puzzled by what Ahsoka had said, as if he'd never given that question any real thought. It was likely he hadn't, especially if it was the default state she'd assumed it to be.

"I guess not, if I didn't want to." He said with a shrug. "But I've been doing it so long that I don't really have to think about it."

She'd been right then, he didn't think about it at all, it was just how he was now.

"You can turn it off though, right?"

"I think so." He said, running one hand over his scalp. "But, like I said, I've never really tried."

"You could try now." She suggested casually, trying not to seem like she was pushing him.

Ahsoka quickly realized she'd failed at that.

"Why are you suddenly asking about this?" Ghes said defensively, clearly becoming suspicious.

"Because…" Ahsoka began, mentally scrambling for something, anything, to deflect away from her real motivation. "It makes you seem like you don't trust anyone. You trust me, right?"

"You're here, aren't you?" He responded. "If I didn't trust you, you wouldn't be watching my back."

"Then you should be able to drop your guard around me." She countered. "What's the worst that could happen?"

Ghes considered what she'd said for a few moments, appearing deep in thought. Ahsoka felt her heart began to race as she waited for him to answer. Eventually, after what felt like hours yet was probably less than a minute, Ghes's expression changed from of contemplation to one of frustration and confusion.

"What's wrong?" Ahsoka asked, concerned.

"I can't do it." Ghes admitted, looking and sounding defeated.

"What?" She asked.

What was he talking about? Did he mean…

"I've just been doing this for so long." He said. "I don't know how to turn it off."

So that was what he meant. Ahsoka, admittedly, had very little firsthand experience with these matters, but she had been taught about it as a youngling in the temple. If she remembered correctly, untrained Force-users, and even lower level Force-sensitives like Ghes, often had little to no control over their abilities. With beings stronger in the Force, this lack of control resulted in them developing a noticeable talent. Ahsoka, for example, had superior empathic abilities as a child, and still did. Weaker beings like Ghes, however, more often than not just had better than average reflexes. But Ghes was different because he, under extreme stress, had developed a crude yet powerful ability to shield his mind from Force-users. It was reasonable to assume, then, that, due to his lack of any formal training and the traumatic circumstances of its origin, Ghes would have no real control over his ability. And it was also possible that…

"Maybe I could help you." Ahsoka blurted out before she'd really had the chance to work out how she was going to help him.

"Really?" Ghes said, skeptical, but still interested. "How?"

"It would involve meditation…" She said, that being the only part she'd worked out so far.

Ghes sighed.

"I'm not really sure how I feel about this whole 'communion with the Force' thing." He said. "That might be a little too open for me."

"Don't think about it like that." She said, reaching out and placing a hand on his forearm. "You're not 'communing with the Force', just me."

Ghes glanced down at her hand. He looked reluctant, and a little uncomfortable, but he didn't pull away or ask her to move her hand, so that was a good sign.

"All right." He said finally. "I'll try it."

Even though she knew he couldn't see it, Ahsoka smiled.

Though Ghes had agreed to try… whatever Ahsoka's plan was, he still insisted on waiting until Vor and Niner switched out with them in the OP. This was probably the right call for multiple reasons, not the least of which being that it gave Ahsoka enough time to actually think through the rest of the plan beyond "meditation". She was eventually able to put together a decent idea of what she was going to do, even if she still wasn't sure of some of the smaller details. This all took a few more hours, though time did not seem to drag nearly as much now that she had something to focus her mind on.

When Vor and Niner finally showed up to relieve them, Ahsoka's heart began to beat a little faster in anticipation. It took her and Ghes another few minutes to travel the hundred meters through the brush from their OP back to their camouflaged camp. The small clearing contained only two bedrolls, more camouflage netting, and an encrypted, tight beam transmitter attached to a dish antenna.

"Okay." Ghes said once he'd placed his helmet and rifle down on a bedroll. "How do you want to this?"

Ahsoka thought for a moment as she glanced around the camp. There was really only one place to go.

"Just sit down here." She said, gesturing to the pair of bedrolls.

Ghes nodded and lowered himself to the ground as quietly as he could while wearing full armor. As Ahsoka followed suit, he reached for a pack and pulled out a lantern. Placing the device on the ground between them, he activated it, fiddling with the output dial until it put out what she suspected was just enough light for him to see her face.

"All right." Ahsoka began once they'd both settled facing each other. "Close your eyes."

Ghes did as he was told without another word.

"Breathe deeply," She said, continuing to direct him. "clear your mind of all distractions."

This was the part that gave beings just starting out, including Ahsoka years ago, the most trouble. Ghes had the advantage of already having a soldier's discipline, so hopefully that would help.

"Focus on your sense of me." She continued, closing her own eyes and extending her awareness outwards.

Ghes's Force presence was familiar enough to her by now, distinct for its lack of feature. The helmet metaphor she'd used earlier in the night wasn't completely accurate, a helmet at least had an identifiable visor to focus your attention on. In contrast, Ghes's presence was uniform across its entirety, like a wall, another comparison she'd already drawn, if only in her own mind. Ahsoka focused her awareness in on this presence, "surrounding" it, as it were. In return, she could feel Ghes focusing on her as well, though, as he wasn't able to "project" himself in the same way a Jedi could, the sensation was very weak.

"Now open your mind to me." Ahsoka said, as much in her mind as aloud.

She searched along the "surface" of Ghes's presence, looking for a flaw she could exploit to slip past the mental defenses. Ahsoka could feel Ghes strain against these defenses himself from the "other side" as he made a concerted effort to force his way through. He succeeded in creating a small opening, a "crack", and she exploited it, pouring her own will and mind through the breach. Once she was through she found herself overwhelmed by a flood of images that

She saw her younger self from across a busy hanger, dismissed as another kid caught up in a war she didn't understand…

There were walls of text, mission reports, and she read them with an idle sense of interest in someone she'd never really met…

Again, Ahsoka saw herself, this time older and caked in dust, but now she wasn't dismissed…

She saw herself fight on Felucia. Now there was respect, and a protective instinct she somehow knew was unnecessary…

And she saw herself a hundred more times, stolen glances from every angle. Affection and freienship started to change into something… more.

There were rules, rules that said she shouldn't feel this way, and it scared her. She was confused…

No… Ghes was confused. It was all him, his memories from his perspective. Ahsoka had felt all of it as if it had happened to her, and now she understood. Ghes felt the same the same way about her as she felt about him, but he was too much the good soldier to admit it.

Well, she'd just have to fix that.

Ahsoka launched herself at Ghes, flattening him onto his back, and kissed him. He reciprocated at first, still dazed from the meditation, she suspected, but eventually he stooped her.

"Wait, Ahsoka!" Ghes said, grabbing her shoulders and lifting her off his chest. "What're you doing?"

"I'm kissing you, stupid!" She said, slightly aggravated by his reluctance.

"I can see that." He said. "And there are so many…"

Ahsoka clamped a hand over his mouth, silencing the protest, and stared into his eyes.

"I was in your head, Ghes." She said, maintaining her grip on his jaw. "I know how you feel about me. This is me telling you I feel the same way. Don't tell me it's against regulations, don't tell me it's against the Jedi Code. I've thought it through and I want this. Now, are you going to keep ruining the moment, or are you going to shut up and enjoy this?"

She saw in Ghes's eyes that she'd shut down every argument he could have made, and those nervous reservations had been replaced with acceptance… and excitement.

"I knew you were going to be trouble." He said a few minutes later when they'd both come up for air.

"And I told you to shut up!"

Ahsoka woke slowly into the twilight that was the closest Umbara had to a daytime. She didn't quite remember falling asleep, in fact she didn't remember much at all until she realized what her head was resting on. Or, rather, who she was resting on.

Her first groggy thoughts were slightly panicked as she checked to make sure both her and Ghes were still fully clothed, which, thankfully, they were. Ahsoka may have already crossed a few lines with Ghes, but that was one step she wasn't quite ready for.

"Ghes." She whispered, tapping on his breastplate. "Wake up."

"I'm awake!" Ghes said, jerking his head off the ground.

He seemed suddenly alert, eyes darting back and forth across their surroundings before his gaze finally settled on her. She could practically hear the gears turning in his head as his mind cleared and he too remembered what had happened.

"Good morning." Ahsoka said, smiling.

"Hey." He responded, still clearly trying to shake off the effects of their nap.

"So…" She started, not sure what she was supposed to say. "That… happened."

"Yea." Ghes agreed, laughing nervously.

"What happened?"

They both jumped at the sudden intrusion of an unexpected voice. Ahsoka tried to roll to face the unknown speaker, but found herself pinned in place by Ghes's arm as he drew his sidearm and pointed it across both their bodies. Her first hint at their guest's identity came a moment later, when Ghes lowered his sidearm and sighed, and she knew who it was immediately after when her senses fully caught up with her.

"Niner?!" Ahsoka yelled as she sat up, angered and surprised by the trooper's presence. "How long have you been there?!"

"A few minutes." The clone said sheepishly. "Vor sent me to find you two when you didn't show up for shift change and the colonel didn't answer his comm."

Ahsoka looked back at Ghes, who himself was staring blankly at a blinking red light on his gauntlet.

"Oops." He said, embarrassed. "Listen, Niner... how about we don't tell the others about this?"

"I think they already know, colonel." Niner said, pointing at Ghes's discarded helmet.

"Don't tell me…" Ahsoka groaned, dreading the explanation she knew was coming.

"Vor checked your cam footage when he couldn't reach you." Niner explained. "He didn't tell me what he saw, but…"

"Of course." Ghes sighed, gripping the bridge of his nose. "Tell the lieutenant that the commander and I will be along shortly."

"Will do, boss." Niner said, snapping a quick salute before walking back into the brush. As he moved out of sight, Ahsoka thought she heard him mumble something about Rip owing him thirty creds.

"So much for keeping this, whatever this is, on the down low." Ghes said once the trooper was out of earshot.

Ahsoka reached over and grabbed Ghes's helmet from where it had sat facing them.

"I didn't think these things recorded." She said, looking into the helmet's T-visor. "At least not all the time."

"They don't." Ghes said, still squeezing the bridge of his nose again as he realized his mistake. "Mine's modded to. I must have forgot to turn it off when we were…"

"Making out?" Ahsoka asked, amused by his coyness.

"I was going to say 'meditating'." He said. "But that too."

The two shifted around nervously as they took time to process what had just happened. Ahsoka remembered sitting down to help Ghes with his "problem", she remembered touching his mind, and she remembered kissing him over his half-hearted protests. But everything after that was a blur of very strong emotions that had apparently ended with them falling asleep in each other's arms. And now, at the very least, Vor and Niner knew that there was something going on between her and Ghes. The worst part of all this, though, was that none of them, not even Ahsoka and Ghes, knew what that "something" was.

"So…" She began, breaking the silence. "what are we doing here."

It was, on the surface, a simple question. But it was also one that Ahsoka, despite her complete lack of experience, knew needed to be answered sooner rather than later.

"Surveillance." Ghes said.

Ahsoka rolled her eyes.

"You know that's not what I meant." She said humorlessly.

"I know." He said, running his hand over his scalp. "It's just… I've never really done anything like this before."

"Really?" Ahsoka asked, disbelievingly. "Never?"

Ghes shrugged.

"I guess I never met the right girl." He said, giving her a look that tied her stomach in knots.

Ahsoka smiled, simultaneously flattered and embarrassed.

"Then we'll have to figure things out together." She said. "Do what feels right."

Ghes smiled, a wicked glint in his eye.

"I'll tell you something that feels right…" He said, voice trailing off as he pulled Ahsoka's lips to his.

And something told her Vor was going to have to wait for them a little longer.

Before I get into the author's notes for this week, I have something else I want to put out there. Don't worry, it's not some plea for assistance or a declaration of some kind, it's just a little bit of supplementary material. This is something that you describe as sort of a "deleted scene", an idea for a scene that I thought of and really wanted to do, but couldn't find a place to fit into the story where it wouldn't have been out of place or flow breaking. Depending on how you all react to this one (this is one of those times when leaving an opinion could have an effect on future content from me), this might become a semi-regular thing I do, probably more so in Parts III-IV where the broader time scale means that more events are occurring "off-screen". I'll start off putting these in between the chapter and the author's notes, but once the story is complete I'll likely move them to there own "appendix" chapter.

This scene here is something that would have occurred sometime between when our heroes returned from Felucia and when they went to Umbara before the start of the chapter you just read, and is essentially a parallel to Ch. Six, but from Ghes's perspective. It's only about three pages as is, and there really wasn't much I could think of to add to it to that would have made it long enough to be a chapter. Besides, I didn't want to start switching up the POV character so soon. Next chapter will be the first time that something is shown from anyone else's perspective, and that will be for less than a page. I'm going to save the first time we see a scene from Ghes's perspective in-story for a far more significant event that will happen around the middle of Part II.

What Ghes Knew

Ghes was in no hurry as he made his way down the line of Nu-class shuttles that made up Retaliation's modest air wing, taking time to give each vessel a visual once-over for any obvious damage or abnormalities as he passed. He knew he wouldn't find anything unexpected, not if his flight crews were doing their jobs, but lending his personal attention to such things had always given him peace of mind, no matter how unnecessary it usually was. Besides, it was the last shuttle in line that he'd come to see, the one he'd had to pull out of service after it had returned from a reconnaissance mission on Mimban with only one operational engine.

The work had already begun by the time he came into view of the afflicted vessel, and Ghes immediately recognized a grim looking clone in fleet coveralls knelt atop the hull beside a propped open access panel he assumed led into the engine compartment. Tech Sergeant Greer was one of the few members of the ship's company Ghes expected to be in the mostly droid run hanger on a daily basis, since he was their only rated flight mechanic.

Or, at least, he had been.

"Yeah, it looks like this coupling is shot to." Ahsoka Tano's voice echoed from somewhere inside the vessel. "How many does that make? Four?"

"Yes, ma'am." Greer said, reaching down through the access hatch and retrieving the hunk of metal Ghes assumed was a coupling. "And still only the two replacements."

"Well then," Ahsoka said as the blue and white stripes of her montrals appeared out of the hatch. "we'll just have to make the other two ourselves then, won't we?"

Ghes smiled. The young Togruta Jedi had been quick to offer her services when he'd told her about the grounded shuttle, and he hadn't hesitated to accept it. Greer had been overworked for a long time, and it wasn't like there was any rule against an officer getting her hands dirty.

"Commander!" Ghes called out from where he'd stopped about ten meters from the base of the shuttle. "How's everything going up there?"

"Colonel!" She called back, turning towards him beaming with a smile Ghes could only think to describe as radiant, even with her eyes obscured behind a pair of goggles. She rose up further out of the compartment, leaning forward on folded arms bare but for a pair of sturdy mechanics gloves as she looked down at him. "Not too great, half of the electronics in here are shot and we're short on replacement parts."

"Wouldn't be the army if we weren't short on something." Ghes joked, though that seemed to be the case all too often. "Mind if I come up and take a look?"

"Be my guest." Ahsoka replied, waving him up before turning back towards Greer. "Sergeant, why don't you head down to the machine shop and start working on those part's? I can keep things going here by myself for a little while."

"Yes, ma'am." Greer said, nodding curtly as he stood and made his way towards the ladder that had been clamped to the hull behind the cockpit section.

He slid down, nodding to Ghes in acknowledgement as he passed him at the base before heading off. Greer was quiet for a clone, always had been, and Ghes didn't really care much about being saluted every five minutes.

Ahsoka had pulled herself up onto the outer hull by the time Ghes reached the top of the ladder, sitting on the edge of the open access panel. As he approached and she turned to flash him that infectious smile again, he got a different view of the young woman than the one he'd gotten used to in the weeks since she'd arrived. Rather than the usual short, sleeveless dress she always seemed to wear, she'd donned a well-worn and heavily stained pair of the same gray fleet coveralls Greer and most of the other maintenance and engineering personnel wore, except with the top half of the garment tied around her waist, leaving her torso covered only by an equally stained, white tank top. Put together with the goggles that now sat on her forehead and the gloves she'd removed and placed in her lap, the outfit made her look more like more like a Coruscant mechanic than a Jedi, at least not any Jedi he'd every seen.

"So," He began, squatting down on his haunches next to her. "What's wrong with the old girl?"

"Like I said, a lot of the electronic components are fried." Ahsoka said with a heavy sigh as she gestured down at the partially disassembled drive below them. "Most of the power couplings and at least one fuel pump need to be replaced, and once that's done the whole thing is going to need to be realigned…"

"Uh huh…" Ghes said, nodding along and doing his best to follow what Ahsoka was saying as she continued to describe the myriad of problems the shuttle was experiencing.

When it came to starship mechanics and avionics, he wasn't very familiar with most of the jargon, or many of the technical aspects of how the shabla things worked. He'd never owned a ship himself, and Greer had always handled Retaliation's air wing without much of a need for input or assistance from anyone else, so it had never seemed like all that necessary of a thing to learn. His eyes must have started glazing over, though, because it didn't take long for Ahsoka to notice that he wasn't really comprehending what she was explaining.

"You don't understand a word of what I'm saying, do you?" She said with a bit of a laugh.

"Not at all." Ghes admitted, not feeling the need to try and hide just how limited his knowledge was in this area. "But I can fix a speeder engine if I have to."

"Well an ion drive is just a bit more complicated than that." Ahsoka said.

"I'm sure." He agreed. "But as long as you know how fix it, and, preferably, what caused the problem in the first place."

"That…" Ahsoka said, reaching over to a pile of discarded components and grabbing something wrapped in an oil-soaked rag before holding the parcel out for him to take. "Would be this little guy."

Ghes took the item from her and considered it for a moment before peeling back a corner of the rag. Inside was one of the ugliest creatures Ghes had ever seen in his life; a thirty-centimeter-long thing that looked like a rodent but was armored like an insect and had a multipart jaw. It looked like something even a strill would think twice about eating.

"Found it in nest tucked under the number one reaction chamber." Ahsoka explained. "I think it excretes some sort of acid, because that's the only reason I can think of for most of the corrosion in here."

"Okay then…" Ghes said, quickly wrapping the creature up and putting it aside before wiping his hands off on his jacket. "And you're sure he didn't bring any friends?"

"If he did, I'd know about it." She said, grabbing the re-wrapped hitchhiker and returning it to the trash pile. "Whatever these things are, they smell. Bad."

"Well, at least now we know it this won't happen again." Ghes said, still trying to get rid of the greasy feeling the creature had left on his hand. "Wouldn't want you to be down here every day."

"Speaking of which…" Ahsoka began, lowering her goggles back over her eyes and pulling on her gloves. "I should get back to work."

"Mind if I watch for a bit?" Ghes asked. Even if he didn't understand any of this, he was still more than a little curious.

"Go ahead." She said with a shrug, pushing herself off the ledge and dropping back down into the engine compartment. "Just try not to touch anything."

As he sat on the ledge above, watching her work, Ghes, not for the first time, considered the young Jedi who had so quickly become part of his life. She really was, by a fairly wide margin, one of the most interesting beings he'd met, not just in the army, but in all his twenty years of life.

Ahsoka wasn't like most other Jedi he'd met, at least not in any of the ways that made him despise so many of the arrogant, prideful zealots. She was down to earth, dedicated to her role as an officer, and, like her master, she hadn't dismissed him out of hand as a violent thug the way other Jedi had throughout his life, going back to when he'd still been working with his buir. It also didn't hurt that she was handy in a fight, or that she was willing to do work most officers thought was below them. In a lot of ways, she'd had the makings of a Mando'ad…

But she wasn't, and she never would be, that was something Ghes knew he'd always have to keep in his mind. As different a Jedi as she was, she was still a Jedi, and Jettisse had never mixed well with Mando'ade. That didn't mean they couldn't be friends, of course, it just meant he had to be careful around her. Besides, it wasn't appropriate for a commanding officer to be too familiar with a direct subordinate.

"Ghes?"

"What?" He said, a little disoriented as he realized just how lost in his thoughts he'd been.

"I asked you to grab me the size eleven hydrospanner." Ahsoka said, looking up at him with what was either bemusement or annoyance, it was hard to tell with the goggles.

"Oh." Ghes said, grabbing the tool and passing it down to her. "Sorry, I guess I zoned out for a minute there."

"You okay?" She asked as she turned back to her work. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." He reassured her. "I just have a lot on my mind right now. Burdens of command, you know?"

"Well try not to do that next time we're in the field." She teased, handing the hydrospanner back up to him along with the component she'd used it to remove. "You wouldn't want to get yourself killed and leave me to have to run this tub by myself, would you?"

"No, I guess not." He agreed, chuckling softly as he took the offered items. "Don't worry, I wasn't planning on dying any time soon."

Yes, they could definitely still be friends, at least as long as Ghes had anything to say about it, and, for now at least, that was just fine with him.

Author's Notes:

If I'm being honest, at least half the reason I wrote that scene was because I thought of the idea of Ahsoka in that mechanic's garb and I lack the artistic talent to draw anything other than straight on shots of suits of armor, so I had to write a scene around it. It's definitely not the first scene I've ever written off of one idea for an image/joke, and it's unlikely to be the last.

No reviews this week, so I can get right into talking about the chapter.

At no point do I ever want anyone to tell me "That's not how the Force works!" when it comes to how I portray the Star Wars universe's signature mystical element (and, admittedly, all-purpose plot sealant). Just know that my understanding of the Force is based heavily in Post-ROTJ literature, mainly Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi, so I'm not coming entirely out of left field here. I'm interested in hearing what opinions you might have about the angle I went with though.

Not much else to say really, which I guess is kind of odd considering that this is really the culminating event if Part I. Marczak (the original story) was my first attempt at writing romance, and I still think it turned out rather well considering that fact. I'd like to think that that this is one hundred percent an improvement over that original scene, but I'm obviously biased in that regard.

There'll be more to talk about next chapter, when the effects of all this Force nonsense become clear, and Retaliation gets some unexpected guests in the aftermath of the Invasion of Umbara (which I'm sure will go great!).

Until then, remember to follow and favorite if you enjoyed, and leave a review to let me know what you're thinking! Seriously, it's weirdly tied into my self-confidence as an author for some reason!

Don't worry, that was (mostly) sarcasm.