The Unchronicled Adventures of Ahsoka Tano, Book Seven

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Searching For Survivors

AHSOKA TANO

Coughing, Ahsoka crawled out from under the wreckage of the Hope’s copilot and navigator’s chairs, along with some other debris she couldn’t identify. Remarkably, she had only been unconscious for a few minutes, and she knew why. A pipe running directly beside the chairs had been blown out of position. In turn, it had knocked them right out of their spots, even though they were bolted down.

Just based on the damage she was seeing in the cockpit, she shuddered. Assuming that one end of the Hope hadn’t been blown to bits or something, which would warrant buying a new ship, this was going to cost a small fortune to repair.

“Computer,” she said, her voice hoarse from the smoke-saturated air. “Status on internal and external damage.”

Based on what the one working screen showed her, the hyperdrive was down, so were the engine, and the ship only had enough power for life support. Not to mention that the outside of the ship was now as pockmarked as a moon right next to an asteroid field. The hull was pierced in no less than seven locations.

“Could this get any worse?” she asked herself, then realized that she was tempting fate by saying so. Looking out the viewport in front of her, she analyzed the surrounding geography quickly. She was pleasantly surprised to discover that the ship had landed less than a kilometer away from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s house.

“Well, it saves me and Lux a long walk,” she muttered, then slapped her forehead. “Lux! Where could he be?”

Scrambling over the pile of debris separating her from the exit, she took off down the hallway

Ahsoka had frantically searched the entire ship with no results. By now, she was starting to worry. Lux was nowhere. Taking a few deep breaths to calm down, she tried using the Force to track his presence.

As she walked throughout the ship again, this time using the Force as a probe into every corner, she felt something. Following the feeling down the hallway, she found its source. It was blood! Lux’s blood!

She suddenly felt dizzy. “Force, he’s probably hurt somewhere, or even worse! I have to find him! He could be dying!”

Taking another deep breath, Ahsoka managed to calm down, but only partially. She was too high-strung by the drying spot of blood – which the Force had told her was Lux’s – to quiet her mind any further.

But it wasn’t just one spot of blood. It was several. As if Lux had tried to drag himself back towards the cockpit, but then it inexplicably turned around and gone back the other way.

She bent down to look closer at the blood. As much as it made her stomach turn, she had to check something. And… there! Right next to the thin trail of blood, there were very faint, but visible sandy footprints. So Lux had been trying to reach the cockpit, probably to reach her, when someone had come aboard and dragged him the other way.

She followed the new trail back the other way, and realized that it led right out of the ship. Shielding her eyes from the light of the two suns, she clambered around the wreckage of the ramp that led the ship and looked around.

A moment later, she slapped her forehead again. “What kind of leader am I?” she said to the surrounding sand. “I leave someone behind! I have to find Amni!”

She did another quick search of the Hope using the Force. There was nothing. Amni must have been the one who dragged Lux out of the ship. She smiled half-heartedly. From what Ahsoka knew, that wasn’t an easy task. He was a lot heavier than he looked.

Suddenly she felt something. Something dark. It wasn’t unlike the presence she had sensed coming from the enemy ship orbiting Tatooine, except that it almost seemed more powerful.

She increased her eyesight, and was rewarded with something in the distance. She could just make out the shape of a Twi’lek girl sitting in the sand, and had someone propped up against her lap. That was probably Lux. And there was someone standing over them. They were wearing a dark cloak, and Ahsoka got the feeling that it was Anakin.

She took off sprinting towards them. “Anakin!” she called when she was closer. “Are you all okay?”

But then she noticed Amni’s petrified expression. The girl was using her eyes to motion for her to look at Anakin, who was turned away. “Anakin? What’s going–”

He slowly turned around, and suddenly she realized that it wasn’t him. It was someone who had been replicating Anakin’s aura to mask their own, which was dark and corrupt. A pair of yellow eyes rimmed with red, and a red Zabrak face with black markings greeted her.

Ahsoka took her lightsabers from her belt. “You’re not Anakin! Who are you?”

She looked back at Amni’s terrorized face, and realized that the girl was trying to show her something. It was a memory. She saw the same face, and heard a single sentence in her head that Amni must have as well in the memory.

I am Maul.

*Darth Maul has made his entrance. But what happened to Anakin? Where is he now? And what has become of Lux? Was he injured in the crash, or by other means? What will become of he and Amni, Maul's two hostages? And where to Luke, Padme, Biggs, Obi-Wan and Christo stand in all this? You'll find out in the next chapter of the Unchronicled Adventures of Ahsoka Tano!

Become the only human who can fly in a podrace and survive and may the Force be with you,

Sharron*