In the morning he would commandeer a ship and take a closer look. He couldn’t go now, as much as he suddenly wished to, because it was too late in the day. It was nearly curfew, with the sun setting and the last poor ragged souls stumbling home after a hard day of near slavery in service of the Empire. If only they knew what awaited them.
Jenneth looked with great distaste at his dinner, a tube of pure nutrition that left his insides feeling somehow cheated, and counted the days until he was away from this moon. It couldn’t come soon enough. He pulled up his calculations again and let the running tally of labor, production, yield, and destruction wash over him. Not bad work, the jobs he did, and he was going to make sure he kept doing well enough that the Empire would keep paying him to do it. He had no intention of ending up like the benighted souls who called Raada home: destitute and marooned on a lifeless rock.
They talked in the fields. The Imperials couldn’t hear what they plotted there, and neither could the girl who called herself Ashla.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Kaeden said. “Ashla wants us to wait.”
“Ashla isn’t from here,” Hoban said. “She got to Raada only just before the Imperials did, and she wouldn’t even tell you her name at first. We don’t know anything about her. For all we know, she’s with them.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Kaeden said, but even Miara looked hesitant.
Kaeden bristled. She didn’t like it when other people speculated about her feelings, especially when they were right. Neera held up a hand.
“Look, Kaeden, I know you like her, but think about it,” Neera said. “Ashla said it herself. She doesn’t understand farming. She doesn’t really understand what we lose every day this blasted plant is in the ground. She has a ship. She can go whenever she wants.”
“But she hasn’t!” Kaeden said.
“Anyone with any sense has left,” Neera said. “Anyone who can. And yet she stays. Why do you think that is?”
“Maybe she likes us,” Kaeden said.
“Oh, Kaeden,” Neera said. It was almost kind but edged too far into pity to be pleasant to hear.
“Don’t treat me like a child, Neera,” Kaeden said, and hated how petulant she sounded. “And don’t you dare involve my sister in anything dangerous.”
“I’ll do what I want,” Miara said. Kaeden looked sharply at her. They were almost the same height now. When had that happened?
“All we’re saying is that when Miara builds things for Ashla’s stores, she also builds things for us,” Hoban said. “It makes sense to have our supplies split up. That way if something happens to Ashla, we’re not strung out on our own.”
Kaeden hesitated. She wanted to trust Ashla, but what Hoban was saying made sense. Ashla had said a lot of it herself, or at least implied it. She’d worked with Selda without telling any of them, and she’d stolen her own ship. It couldn’t do much harm for Kaeden to help her own crew make their own plans.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m in. Tomorrow Miara and I will go with Ashla and learn as much as we can. And we’ll share it with you.”
“Good,” Hoban said. He looked up and saw that Vartan was heading back toward them, so he turned away from the girls and focused on his job.
Hoban was watering today. The work didn’t take a lot of his concentration but required strong shoulder muscles, which he had in plenty. Miara was too little to be more than a runner, so she’d been carrying messages. Hoban’s shoulders ached under the weight. He didn’t mind hard work, but this was extreme, and it was only a matter of time before he got too weak to work on the rations he was given. And if he was feeling it, the others were, too.
The girls would crumple first, he knew. They were strong, but they weren’t indestructible. Miara was already attracting too much attention from the Imperials as they questioned her abilities in the field. If they sent her off, she’d lose what small rations she was still getting. Hoban was helping them, even if Ashla couldn’t see it. She just didn’t understand farming like he did, but she would, and then she’d realize that they were all in this together.
AHSOKA GOT A terrible bargain for the ship, but she didn’t care. It was money she hadn’t had before she made the trade, and the ship was too noticeable, too easy to trace. She was better off without it, even though she was now much less mobile. She cleared every trace of herself from the cockpit and hold, and handed over the launch codes with only a moment’s hesitation.
The man who bought the ship had brown skin and black hair and said his name was Fardi, even though Ahsoka hadn’t asked. His daughters, or maybe nieces—Ahsoka wasn’t entirely clear on their relationship—had been the ones to meet her at the landing pad. They had the same coloring as Fardi, only their glossy black hair was long enough to sit on and completely straight. They’d chattered about the city, about where Ahsoka could find food and a place to stay, so Ahsoka had asked if they knew of anyone who might buy her ship for a decent price.
Or at least a nearly decent price. But the trade had made her a friend, and it wasn’t like she had bought the ship with her own credits in the first place.
The Fardi girls—it turned out Fardi was their family name—took Ahsoka under their wing, even though she was at least three years older than the eldest of them. It was they who showed her the vacant house she would buy and they who told her which shops had the best prices. Once they found out Ahsoka could fix droids, her place was secure in what she was coming to realize was a neat little smuggling operation. Sure, several of the Fardi businesses were legitimate, but they mostly served to cover for the less legitimate ones. Ashla didn’t ask questions, so they liked to have her around. In return, Ahsoka made a bit of money and didn’t have to answer any questions about where she’d come from, which she thought was a fair deal.
For several months, Ahsoka had slipped into a sort of functional comatose state. She refused to feel anything and didn’t talk to anyone much, but she was able to go about the business of daily life as though nothing was wrong. Someone who knew her wouldn’t have been fooled for an instant, but no one knew her anymore, so the deception held. She was even mostly able to deceive herself and believe that Ashla was a real person after all. She liked being useful and being a part of something, and the Fardis dealt in money, not blood, so she was able to sleep at night.
Two months before the first anniversary of Palpatine’s ascension to Emperor, Ahsoka saw something that nearly changed everything. She was at the shipyard, tinkering with one of the bigger droids that wasn’t easy to take off-site. Several of the youngest Fardi kids were playing in the yard, which they weren’t supposed to do, because it was dangerous. Ahsoka was about to shoo them out when a stack of crates that a couple of the kids were playing on wobbled and started to fall.
Afterward, when she was able to think about it, Ahsoka was glad to know that she’d responded instantly, reaching out with the Force. The numbness she had worked so hard to maintain since Order 66 remained intact, but she hadn’t watched mutely as the crates fell, the children screaming as they fell, too. She’d acted.
And then the screaming stopped. The crates settled gently on the ground, and the children settled just as gently on top of them. The other kids stared, unable to figure out what had happened, but Ahsoka knew. She got ready to run. She looked around and saw little Hedala Fardi, too small to be included in the game, standing just clear of the crates with a fascinated look on her face.
“You know you’re not supposed to play out here,” Ahsoka said, hoping to head off any awkward questions the kids might have had. “You were almost crushed by falling crates. That’s no way for a Fardi to go out!”
She was right to appeal to their pride and fear of the trouble they’d be in if they got caught. They made Ahsoka swear not to give them up—for her silence, she exacted from them a fair amount of sweets, the only currency they had—and then they all ran off. They never mentioned it again, and Ahsoka was fairly certain they hadn’t even noticed their brush with physical imp
ossibility.
She watched Hedala closely after that. She was certain that the child was the only one who’d fully seen and understood what Ahsoka had done. Three days later, she watched with some horror as Hedala, left alone by the older kids, casually moved a small stone from one side of a doorway to the other without laying so much as a finger on it.
She should have done something. She should have told the girl’s family and helped get her off-world. But she had no idea how to hide a Force-sensitive child from the Empire. She could barely hide herself. So she did nothing instead. She told herself she would think of a plan, but she didn’t, or at least she didn’t try very hard.
And then it was Empire Day and the Imperials came in greater numbers. Ahsoka could have stood her ground, could have fought them, but she couldn’t take on the whole Empire herself. When the Fardi girls warned her and offered her a way out, she took it without a second thought. She didn’t remember Hedala Fardi until she was in orbit, and then it was too late.
KAEDEN SAT CROSS-LEGGED on top of a crate, with a map of Raada spread out in her lap, and watched her sister. Miara was working on a series of explosives, all with higher yields than any of the stingers she put in her locks, and Kaeden was a little sickened by how easy it was for Miara to build them. Ashla had gone out for an hour or so, to fetch something, she’d said, and Miara had taken advantage of the time to build bombs that were more to Hoban’s specifications than the ones Ashla had suggested.
“It’s a good combination, I think,” Miara said as she worked. She was oblivious to her sister’s distaste, or else she was willfully ignoring it. “Ashla’s bombs are good for the joints of Imperial walkers or blowing doors open. Hoban’s will clear our path wherever we need to go.”
“What if there are people where you’re clearing?” Kaeden asked. “It’s like turning your thresher loose, only it’s people who get cut up instead of crops.”
For the first time Miara hesitated. Then her expression hardened.
“It’s us or them,” she said. She didn’t sound fourteen anymore. “Kaeden, we don’t have a choice.”
Kaeden didn’t say anything. She’d spent a couple of hours the day before, after their shift was over, trying to talk Miara out of Hoban’s plan, but it hadn’t done any good. Every time she tried, Miara countered with an example of a time someone on Raada had helped them before they were old enough to help themselves. Kaeden felt each one of those debts like a weight around her neck. Before she was old enough to work full shifts, it had been kindness and generosity that kept her and her sister fed and let them keep their family house, the one their parents had built when they’d decided to settle on Raada. It wasn’t much, but Kaeden liked making breakfast on the stove her father had used, and she liked fixing the walls her mother had built, even if she wasn’t her mother’s match when it came to construction. Miara knew how Kaeden felt and for the first time was absolutely merciless in leveraging it against her. By the time she’d given up and gone to bed, Kaeden had almost been the one to change her mind. Then she’d dreamed of Tibbola getting shot; only it was Vartan getting shot in his place, and then Miara, and then Ashla, all while Kaeden had to watch.
In the morning, she’d been shaken and conflicted, and mostly useless. She didn’t tell Ashla what the others were up to, and she didn’t help Miara much, either, despite her sister’s glaring. Instead she mostly stared at the map and hoped that no one asked her any questions she didn’t want to give the answers to.
It had worked pretty well, for the first few hours. She and Ashla couldn’t make any marks on the map, in case it fell into the wrong hands, Ashla said, but they did discuss where the caves Ashla had found were and where they might set up an encampment big enough for all the people Vartan was recruiting under the guise of field meetings. Then all Kaeden had to do was commit it to memory, which was what she was ostensibly doing while Ashla was out on her mysterious errand.
“Where do you think she went?” Miara asked. Kaeden hoped her sister was trying to change the subject and was more than happy to help with that.
“I have no idea,” Kaeden said. She pointed at the map. “This is the main cave system. There are tunnels to others, but most of them are too small to drag gear through. They’re only big enough for a person with a small pack. She might have gone to bring something around from one of those caves to this one. We talked about a door, or more likely a cover for the entryway to conceal it a bit.”
“A door would be a good idea,” Miara said. “I can secure it, if we can get it installed.”
“There’s also her stores,” Kaeden said. “I know she has private ones, because her ship’s still out there somewhere, but she has one for us, too, the one she set up with Selda.”
“I wish she’d tell us where her ship is,” Miara said.
“I wish you’d tell her about the bombs,” Kaeden fired back. “But you won’t, so stop complaining.”
“I just don’t know why she’s so eager to help,” Miara said, echoing Neera from the evening before. “She could leave whenever she wants.”
“Do you want her to go?” Kaeden asked, all but daring her sister to voice the taunt about Kaeden’s feelings for Ashla that had so far been left unspoken. Miara didn’t take the bait.
“Of course not,” Miara said. “She knows more about this sort of thing than anyone else on Raada does. I just want her to tell us how she learned it.”
“Well,” Kaeden said. “Maybe give her some more time. I think whatever happened to her was very bad and she doesn’t want to talk about it yet.”
Miara made a noncommittal sound and went back to the intricacies of her engineering work. Kaeden ran a finger along a line on the map, one that delineated a steep-sloped gully. That was where she’d hide a ship, if she had a ship to hide. She wasn’t about to share that information with Miara, though.
Ashla appeared in the entrance of the cave, startling both girls. She was carrying a pack so massive that Kaeden wasn’t sure how she’d been able to carry it at all. Ashla wasn’t broad-shouldered like Neera or tall like Vartan, and she didn’t have years of experience working in the fields to bolster her strength, but somehow she was clearly very strong though she looked delicate. Maybe it was a Togruta thing. Kaeden didn’t know much about their physiology, but she liked it.
“Here’s all the supplies I had stashed away in the first cave I found.” The pack made a loud clunk when she set it down. “I started to set it up before I knew I was going to be sharing. But it’s probably better to have everything in one place.”
Miara was about to make a biting remark about the ship, but Kaeden cut her off before she could.
“Why did you set up a stash as soon as you got here?” she asked. “There weren’t any Imperials yet.”
“Old habits,” Ashla said. She tried to make it sound like a joke, but there was something deadly serious in her eyes. “I wasn’t sure how safe the house was, but now I know better.”
Kaeden got up to help her unload, and they spent the next couple of hours organizing where the medical supplies should go and trying to activate a power converter that looked like it was older than all three of them combined.
“What’s that?” Miara asked as they settled in with a ration pack each and one canteen of water to pass among them.
Ashla was holding a small cloth bag. Kaeden had seen her pick it out of the larger bundle earlier in the afternoon but hadn’t said anything.
“Oh, just some odds and ends I’ve collected,” Ashla said. She opened the bag so Miara could look inside.
“There’s a lot of junk in here,” Miara said dismissively. “I mean, I can’t use any of it. They don’t even match.”
“It’s just something I do,” Ashla said. There was an odd note in her voice, a mix of defensiveness and longing that Kaeden thought she recognized.
“Our mum was like that,” Kaeden said. “Always had pockets full of scraps she’d found. It drove our father crazy, the things he’d find when he did the washing.
”
“They used to fight about it,” Miara said. “But in the good way, you know?”
Kaeden realized it was quite likely that Ashla didn’t know, but it was a question she couldn’t resist asking.
“Did your parents bicker?” she asked. “The adoptive ones, I mean.”
A slow smile broke across Ashla’s face, curling first one side of her mouth and then the other. Whatever she was remembering, Kaeden could tell it was good.
“All the time,” Ashla said, almost as if she were talking to herself.
Miara launched into a story about their parents, a small power coupling, and the horn that sounded to mark shift change. It was a story Kaeden remembered well, so she only half listened as her sister talked. The rest of her attention was concentrated on what she was going to do next: if she would listen to Ashla’s advice or stick with her sister and her crew. She knew she couldn’t abandon Miara, but a lot of what Ashla suggested seemed like a good idea. In the end, she reached a compromise that suited both sides of her warring conscience. She would stay with Miara and listen very carefully to what Hoban planned. If Vartan thought it was a good idea, she’d go along with it, but the second things got out of hand, she’d find Ashla and tell her everything. The solution wasn’t perfect, but she could work with it, and Kaeden was good at working.
“What are you looking so serious about?” Miara asked when Kaeden didn’t laugh at the funny part of the story. Ashla did, which at least made Kaeden smile.
Star Wars: Ahsoka Page 8
