There've been some incredibly squeaky cogs in the cranking-out of this chapter, but it's finally done! :D

(Summer won't be as busy this year, she said. There'll be more time for writing, she said. *whistles inconspicuously* Darn adult life anyway.)

Chapter title from The Trouble with Angels, 1966

The Force was serene as Ahsoka and Rex entered the Christophsis system. There was no warning trill of danger, no frigid void to mark the presence of a Sith. The scanners picked up no sign of star destroyers or other large ships of war. They did not encounter a checkpoint, nor a single Imperial patrol. Christophsis had submitted reluctantly but quietly to the Imperial yoke, and furthermore enjoyed the rare privilege of a lenient sector moff who was content to let the people live in peace as long as mined ores flowed out and credits flowed in.

"Well, Commander, what's the forecast?"

"Clear. I don't sense any danger."

The Force remained as tranquil as the surface of a pond on a calm summer's day. Either Anakin had learned to hide the black hole that his presence in the Force had become, or he was indeed absent.

Ahsoka lowered the ship to skim over the planet's crystalline landscape. No ships could be seen in the area, save a solitary lambda shuttle waiting on the ground at the abandoned spaceport that was their destination. She looked to Rex. "Proceed?"

"Still clear on the scanners."

She reached into the Force to check one last time, and met again with calm stillness, wheeled back toward the spaceport and brought the ship into a graceful landing near the shuttle. Tugging her cloak's hood low over her face, she rose. "Shall we?"

Rex nodded and pulled on the unmarked bucket he had brought.

By the time they made it down the ramp, a tall, stern Imperial officer had likewise disembarked from the lambda. He carried a pistol on his belt, but his hands remained at his sides.

"Designation?" he asked.

It was real, then—all of this was real. The message, the meeting—and they needed to provide a designation. Ahsoka racked her brains. What would Vader have given as her designation? Commander? Apprentice? Maybe Fulcrum?

"Torrent," Rex said, and Ahsoka could have smacked herself. Code company, her master's message had said. Of course.

The officer nodded. "Colonel Veers. I have orders to turn over six clone soldiers to you."

Six? Only six? It was more than she should have expected—she knew that, logically—but still disappointing, all the same. She had hoped—oh, it had been foolish, but she had hoped there would be more, some major proof… and yet… six. Vader—Anakin—had, for reasons known only to himself, sent six clones to Ahsoka. Perhaps he had only removed the chips from six. That just raised more questions. Unless Rex had been right, before, and the clones themselves were the trap. She tucked one hand into her pocket, and gripped the lightsaber within.

Colonel Veers spoke into his commlink. "Release the soldiers, and remember your orders. Only the clones leave the ship."

She could feel Rex's tension and anticipation, sensed him leaning ever so slightly forward, as if he could will his men forth from the shuttle. And then they appeared—two, side by side, and two more following behind, guiding hoverstretchers. Ahsoka's muscles tightened, equally ready to leap to the defensive or run forward to hug her vod'e. She willed herself to relax. Wait. Just wait.

"They're unarmed," the colonel said, noting her tension. "Lord Vader's orders."

The first two clones reached the bottom of the ramp—and though they wore black Imperial uniforms, sans rank insignias, and their hair was regulation-cut, she knew them by their tattoos. Delta, a private from the replacements after Umbara, and Ramser, a sergeant who had been with the 501st since before Ahsoka had joined. Behind them came Knockout—another private—and a medic named Roche.

None of the men saluted Colonel Veers as they passed. A couple made rude gestures, which were resolutely ignored, and then, glaring, all four came to stand before Rex and Ahsoka, their bodies angled defensively in front of the hoverstretchers.

"Were you given any further message to relay?" Ahsoka asked the colonel.

"No sir," he replied.

"Then I believe we're finished here, Colonel. Dismissed."

She was prepared for a fight, long experience having taught her never to expect to get away clean, but the colonel merely nodded and returned to his shuttle. Moments later, the lambda was climbing into the Christophsis sky.

Ahsoka turned back to the vod'e. "We'll explain everything, inside."

Glaring, they marched up the ramp after Rex. Their spines were ramrod-straight, and they looked ready to mutiny at a moment's notice, armed or otherwise.

Once everyone was sequestered in the ship's cargo bay, Ramser burst out, "I don't know who exactly you are, but any agents of Vader's had better stay the kriff away from my brothers."

"Easy there, vod. We're friends." Rex removed his helmet, and Ramser's eyes widened.

"Captain Rex? How—?"

"We were hoping you could tell us." Rex brushed his fingertips over Ramser's temple, near a neat, white scar. "Someone tell you about the chips?"

Ramser nodded. "Droids gave us bacta, but we didn't use it any more than we had to. Wanted to be able to see that the damned things were gone. But what do you mean, you were hoping we could tell you?"

Ahsoka let her hood drop. "Vader left a message via an old wartime channel. It seemed to say we would find a certain cargo here, at this spaceport."

"Commander?" Roche blanched. "We—the order, we couldn't—we would never, but it took over, and we couldn't, we had to—your aliit—" He shuddered, and forced himself to meet Ahsoka's eyes. "Ni ceta, Commander."

"Mhi ceta, cuun jetti," the other three clones echoed, heads bowed, their shame thick in the Force.

"Ni vore gar ceta," Ahsoka said. "But there's no need," she added gently, taking each of their hands in turn. "It wasn't your fault, any of it. You didn't do it."

"We could have fought harder against it," Roche insisted. "We should have."

Rex put a comforting arm around him. "It wouldn't have mattered, vod, believe me. I tried. I knew what was happening, I fought it like anything, and I still tried to shoot the Commander. Besides, you're here now. Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaasla."

It doesn't matter who your parent was; only the parent you'll be.

"I don't think that quite applies here, Captain," said Ramser.

"It's close enough. You can't change the past. It's what you do now, and what you will do, that matters."

"We want in on your Rebellion," Delta declared. "We were made to fight for the Republic, not for some Sith demagolka who tells us to kill our Jedi and makes us just as bad as the Seppies our brothers died fighting. We're with you, Captain. Commander."

"Already got a head start, even," Knockout added with a shaky grin. "Did in the hyperdrive on that Sith karker's flagship. Kriffed up the backup drive and all, just the four of us."

"That's my vod'e." Rex clapped him on the back with a quiet chuckle of pride.

Ahsoka, however, didn't laugh. She was staring intently at the four clones.

He did it. He took out the chips—a few, at least. The vod'e sabotaged his ship, and he didn't kill them. He didn't punish them. He sent them to me.

Part of her wanted to go hail the Imperial colonel's shuttle before it left the system and tell him to take her with him, back to Vader so she could go find whatever trace of light still glimmered in her brother's soul, and coax it forth until he broke away from the dark side and renounced the Sith. There was something there, there had to be, for why else—how else—would he have cared enough to remove the chips and let even a handful of the clones go?

Strategy, said her cynical side. After all, no Sith would want his troops' loyalty to be decided by a device that lay in the hands of his master. That was reason enough to investigate the chips. Still… Vader could have just killed the clones after their mutiny. But he hadn't.

There's still enough of Anakin left to care about our men.

"Commander, you're gonna scare off the recruits, staring at 'em like that." Rex's voice broke through Ahsoka's reverie, and she jumped.

"Sorry," she said. "Who do we have here?" pointing to the unconscious clones.

"Reech, Jenth Squad; and Suumla, Sarlacc Squad," said Roche.

"Better get ahold of Snap," Rex told Ahsoka. "Let him know we've got one of his squadmates back."

"Might be more than one," Ramser added. "Striker and Stowaway were both there from Sarlacc, along with some others. If any of them have any sense, they tried to get away when we were taking out the hyperdrive. Could be tryin' to make contact with your rebels right now."

Luke and Leia bided their time as Artoo had suggested, and, a week or so after the hatching of their plot—once their Rebel relations were all suitably preoccupied, Aunt Beru had gone with a friend for a day of errands in Anchorhead, and Uncle Owen was out working on a stubborn vaporator on the farthest edge of the moisture farm—they put the plan into action.

Luke stole some dried meat and fruit from the kitchen and tucked them into a knapsack, to which Leia added a canteen of water and another of milk. The spaceport city of Mos Eisley, where they intended to find a ship to borrow, lay quite some distance away, and such being the case they would likely want to have some lunch during the journey. Provisions procured, they stole into the garage where their aunt and uncle's landspeeder was kept. Uncle Owen had let them sit on his lap and hold the controls a couple of times, and they had surreptitiously poured over the manual for some hours the day before, when they were supposed to be doing homework, so both thought they had a pretty good idea of how to run the thing.

Hopping into the speeder, Luke found the button that turned the engine on, and the one to enable levitation.

"Not in here!" Leia squawked, as the elderly speeder's ruckus filled the cavernous garage. "And hold on a minute, anyway!"

Luke watched impatiently as she knocked over a couple of crates of spare parts, tipped a can of paint on its side and scuffed her feet through the resulting dribble, and finally, with the air of a genius completing her masterpiece, sacrificed a few hairs from her head and scattered them on the floor.

"We've got to make it look like we were really kidnapped," she explained.

"Don't you think you oughta bleed a little, too, then?" asked Luke, to whom the whole production seemed a trifle unnecessary.

"I didn't mean it!" he rushed to add, when Leia propped her chin in her hand and looked as if she was seriously contemplating the suggestion. "Really Leia, don't!"

Reluctantly, Leia threw the switch for the lift and scrambled onto the plate as it began to rise, carrying her and Luke and the landspeeder up to the surface. The garage roof folded back, and both twins scanned the desert around them to make sure the coast was clear.

It was. Luke again turned on the speeder, and Leia climbed in.

"I think I should fly," she said.

"No way! 'Sides, I'm older."

"Barely. And you obviously came out a few minutes underdone."

"That's not how it works! But fine, we can take turns. But I got here first, so it's my turn now."

Luke moved the speed lever up a trifle, and the speeder began to inch forward. He was about to shift to a higher speed, when Leia's hand covered the lever.

"What do you want to do, go crashing into the dome?" she asked. "Make it turn before you make it go faster!"

This was a fair point, so Luke spun the control yoke to the left. The speeder responded with a violent leftward spin, and Leia let out a pained oof as she was squashed between the side of the compartment and her brother.

"The side turbine-things don't stay the same speed as the middle one, remember?" she reminded him, none too gently.

Luke recentered himself at the controls and tried again. This time, the speeder made a slower, if rather jerky, turn toward the left. Gaining confidence, he increased the speed. The nearest vaporator survived, but only barely. Leia again peeled herself from the side of the compartment, and this time shoved Luke from his seat.

"Move over. We're never gonna get to Mos Eisley with you flying."

One can only conclude that the vaporator must have enjoyed a charmed existence, for it also survived Leia's attempt at a right-hand turn that left her brother rather green about the gills, as well as the ensuing scuffle for the controls.

Miraculously, or perhaps by the will of the Force, the twins made it to Mos Eisley in one piece. Stealing a ship, unfortunately, was not as simple as they had expected, thanks to such nuisances as vigilant copilots, and even guards. By midafternoon, both children were hot and tired, and had begun to despair of ever finding a ship they could take offworld. They had just dragged their weary bodies over to an abandoned packing crate to the side of a busy street, when a pair of figures at the edge of the spaceport caught their attention. Near a ship that had seen better days, a rather disreputable-looking Twi'lek was having a disagreement with a Weequay, who seemed more amused than perturbed. His jovial tones carried to twins.

"—think you'll recall, if you try, that you agreed to pay me in nysillin. But what's this? I am no botanist, but even I can tell poonten grass when I see it. For shame, for shame! My friend, there is not a trick in the holobook that Hondo Ohnaka has not seen, and I must tell you that this is one of the shoddier among them."

Hondo Ohnaka. That name was rain upon the barren field to which the twins' ventures in Mos Eisley had so far amounted, and possibilities sprang into bloom. Luke poked his sister.

"D'ja hear that, Lei? What he said? That's Hondo!"

"So?"

"Soooo… Lei, I've got an idea!"

"What idea?" Leia asked.

"Hondo kidnapped Uncle Ben, right?"

"Yeah."

"And Dad?"

"Yeah…."

"So maybe we could get him to kidnap us too."

Leia watched the unsuspecting pirate, who was too busy with his irate customer to notice.

"We shouldn't," she said.

Running away and making it look like they had been kidnapped was one thing. Actually being kidnapped, on purpose, was another entirely. And getting themselves kidnapped by Hondo Ohnaka…. Then again, if they called it quits now, they would have to go back home. Aunt Beru would have returned from Anchorhead by the time they got there, and then she would know they had run away with the speeder. Even if she didn't ask why, even if they lied and said it was just for a bit of adventure, they would be in so much trouble. Leia couldn't even begin to imagine what the grownups would do. She and Luke had gotten up to a lot of mischief over the years, but they had never done anything like this. Shooting water blasters at a general didn't even begin to compare. It wasn't actually dangerous.

Luke, to judge by the troubled contortions of his face, was reaching the same conclusion.

"We shouldn't," Leia repeated, "but I think we've got to."

"It'll work, Leia, you'll see!"

They continued to watch as the Twi'lek shook his fist at Hondo and stormed away. The pirate heaved a visible sigh, shook his head to lament his client's ill temper, and strolled into the cantina.

"Well?" said Leia.

"Well?" said Luke.

"Well, are you gonna go?"

"You first."

"No, you."

"You."

"You're older."

"No, you said I'm half-done."

"Still done enough to go first now."

"But you're still more done, so you—hey! What're you doing?" Luke yelped, as Leia snatched his hand and began dragging him toward the cantina.

"Come on, nerfherder."

"Don't call me—oh, fine. Bantha-brain."

The cantina doors slid open before Leia could deliver a suitably searing retort. Both children peered into the dim, crowded interior. It smelled like the Naboo wine the grownups drank at dinner on Life Day, but a hundred times worse. Luke gagged. But they pressed onward, with the threat of untold years of grounding nipping at their heels. Most beings in the cantina were too absorbed in their drinks or their hands of sabacc to pay much attention to the youthful newcomers. In a far corner, a Dug and a Bothan were engaging in a halfhearted and rather tipsy fistfight, which the other patrons ignored except to fend off the occasional errant limb.

Luke stared, agape. "This is…"

"Gross," Leia said, and yanked her foot out of a sticky puddle on the floor.

"Whoa, is that blood?"

"Don't think so. But I bet that is!" She steered him away from a dark, crusty-looking spot.

"Ew."

"Anyway, where'd he go?"

"Over at the bar thing. C'mon."

Luke tugged Leia over to the bar, where Hondo was talking with a young Tholothian woman. They scrambled up on a couple of empty stools nearby, much to the amusement of the barkeeper and a couple of other patrons.

"We'd like a drink," Luke said.

"Well, now—startin' a bit young, aren'cha?" said the barkeeper.

"I were six when me mam let me start," a helpful old spacer volunteered around her pipe, with a jovial wink. "Can't hurt 'em any."

Drawing herself up, Leia gave both spacer and barkeeper a stern look that a decade or so would see honed to a spectacular edge. "Two cups of milk, please."

"You two got a grownup with ya?" asked the barkeeper, dubiously.

"No, but we've got money." Luke fished their allowance from his pocket and plunked it on the bartop. Leia fought the urge to squirm under the intense gazes beginning to turn their way. Time and again, Mama and Aunt Beru had told them they must never, ever, ever say they were alone if they got separated in Anchorhead. Slavers had no scruples about scooping up a couple of unchaperoned children.

Hondo, however, didn't even glance in their direction. Maybe he hadn't heard, or maybe he just wasn't interested in whatever petty funds a couple of children were likely to possess. It was time for more drastic measures, before any of the too-interested parties in the cantina made a move of their own.

Leia drummed her fingers on the bar. "The first thing I'm gonna do when I'm grown up is get off this dustball and go get all the spice Dad left," she announced.

"What spice?" asked Luke.

The ploy seemed to have some effect. Hondo adopted a casual slouch that just so happened to bring his ear into better eavesdropping range in the noisy cantina. He appeared to be absorbed in studying a fly as it crawled along the rim of his glass, but now and again, his shrewd eyes flicked in the twins' direction.

"Y'know…" Leia leaned close to her brother, and hissed, in a stage whisper that left him rubbing his ear with an aggrieved expression, "The spice? The spice Dad stole from the rest of the crew of the dread ship Direnaught, and he hid you-know-where—before The Tragic Skrimish?" Leia's powers of narration were something to behold.

"Oh, that spice. Riiiight."

A wrinkled Weequay hand came down on Luke's shoulder. "Now, now, now—what's this I hear? Spice? A couple of nice little younglings such as yourselves, already messing about with spice? Tsk-tsk! Whatever will your parents say?"

The bait had worked.

"We don't want to use it," Leia explained, gazing earnestly up into the face of the pirate who had figured in so many of her aunt and uncles' stories. "It's spice our dad left on a deserted planet before he died. He was a navigator on a spice freighter. We want to sell it, so we can be rich."

"Rich?" mused Hondo. Calculation gleamed in his keen gaze.

"Rich as a Hutt!" Leia said. "Only, we need a way to get there, 'cause Mama's run away and left us all alone, and we can't get a ship by ourselves."

"Why, you poor little shaaklings! Mama run away, father so tragically departed—why, haven't you any family at all? No one to miss you when you're gone?"

"No." Having caught his sister's drift, Luke heaved a doleful sigh. "No one at all."

Hondo shied a glance at his Tholothian companion. "Did you hear that, Kat? No one to miss them, the poor things, no one at all. Even your scruples could not object—a charity, upon my dear grandmother's grave."

"Your grandmother died in a smuggling run gone bad. In an explosion. No grave."

Hondo waved a hand. "Mere technicalities. Grandmama Ohnaka always did appreciate the metaphorical, stars rest her scattered atoms. Well, well—younglings, I should say my dear Kat and I might, perhaps, be able to take you to… wherever this spice is stashed. That is, ah—for a suitable price, of course."

"We can give you some of the spice," Leia suggested. "There's loads of it. Loads and loads and loads. Dad said so."

"Indeed!" Hondo draped an arm over each of the twins. "Well, then, what are we waiting for? Come along, little shaaklings—places to go, profits to be made."

The twins shared a conspiratorial smile as they allowed themselves to be herded down from their seats and out into the sweltering heat once more.

In a far distant part of the galaxy, Padmé tossed her robe of state on a chair, drew the draperies upon the twilit world of Mohr'aa, and proceeded to sweep for bugs in the suite she and Asajj were sharing in the Governal Palace's guest wing. Ever since Mohr'aa's attempt at an uprising shortly after the formation of the Empire, its people had been ground down under the crushing weight of army occupation and strict ISB oversight.

Padmé's present mission had taken months to set into motion, with meticulously crafted backstories and careful coordination of travel so as to avoid suspicion. Interplanetary travel to and from Mohr'aa was limited to Imperial vehicles controlled by Imperial pilots and monitored by Imperial agents. Appointments were required for every arrival and departure, and showing up too late or too early was a signed invitation for a visit from the ISB.

Padmé and Asajj had gained access to the planet and its figurehead government by posing as a minor Rim dignitary and aide. For a few days now, they had been wading through a murky stream of Secretaries of This and Ministers of That, not to mention Chairs of Everything Else, to arrange a meeting with the de jure heads of state. It was a strenuous dance on both sides. Padmé navigated the stream of Mohr'aan statesbeings under the assumption that anybody might be in the ISB's employ or in its pocket, whilst the semi-mythological heads of state threw still more sentient obstacles into her path, perhaps in an effort to suss out whether she herself might be an ISB plant.

Wearisome work, in every way.

The sweep finished, Padmé dropped into her chair and tried to relax the tension in her shoulders. This was a more strenuous mission than she had been used to accept, but it kept her busy, and the more complicated the mission, the less time there was for her mind to dwell on other things. [Anakin. Vader. Ahsoka's faith, and that strange message. Another message, which Bail had sent before Padmé left for Mohr'aa, regarding dechipped clones defecting from Vader's fleet. The past and the future—and all the tumult of emotions those thoughts evoked.]

"You think there's really a resistance here?" Asajj asked. She lay sprawled across a velvet divan, the image of exhausted boredom.

"There must be. The monarchs are just puppet rulers, if that. They can't be so busy that they don't have time for an audience. With how cagey they seem to be, they must be hiding something."

Asajj rubbed her temples with a groan.

"Remind me not to take a political assignment again," she complained. "Kenobi should have taken this one. Talking in circles all day long? It'd be perfect for him. Why isn't he here? Are you two still on the outs?"

"Maybe a little bit," Padmé replied. "But mostly, his gift for talking in circles was needed elsewhere."

She was never going to believe that Obi-Wan had been right to keep Anakin's survival and Vader's identity from her for all those years, but she wasn't actively angry about it anymore. (At least, not much.) There were more important things to do, and the Rebellion needed its agents to work together in a smooth and efficient fashion which holding grudges would not further. And it wasn't as if she herself had made perfect decisions all her life, was it? She was in no place to judge. From a certain point of view, she could admit to herself, he would not have felt the need to make the foolish choice he had made, had she not made several others first.

On this cheery thought, Padmé dragged herself up to go prepare for bed. She got no farther than the door to her room, however, before she was summoned back by the sound of a commlink, chiming from a hidden pocket of the robe she had flung on her chair. Her heart dropped, and she rushed over to grab the device. It was a long range burner comm, only to be used in emergencies. Only two people even had its code: Mon, and Beru. Either the mission was compromised, or else…. Weariness forgotten, Padmé flicked the comm on.

"Genetrix," she rapped out. "All clear."

Across the room, Asajj cracked an eye.

"Padmé!" Beru's voice sounded ragged. "Padmé, I'm so sorry—the twins, they… they're gone."