Ahsoka Tano; Mightiest Force Wielder (Book 1: The Rise)

The Jedi Master

The flight computer was beeping relentlessly and after a few minutes Ahsoka reluctantly pulled herself up from the floor. She looked out of the bow dome window and saw a green planet, she reckoned to be Dagobah. Entirely unmotivated, she trotted into the cockpit, but there was no call from ground control. Only thinking about getting closer to the planet, the VT-49 immediately responded approaching the atmosphere. For a few seconds she had forgotten, that thought control was implemented and only when she touched the manual control levers would it switch over to standard control. Soon her ship entered the atmosphere of Dagobah, but she did not know, what she even wanted here. The force had brought her here for whatever reason, a reason yet unknown to her. To find out, she opened herself to the force and the ship started to do a soft right turn, then dropping into a nosedive. Ahsoka was not clear of what was happening and thought about pulling the ship up again into a straighter flight direction and the VT-49 followed. Next she again opened herself once more to the force and the nosedive began again. She tried this a couple of times and realized, she could only open herself up to the force when she had her hands on the manual controls. With her limited understanding of how the system worked, she supposed, thought control and opening up to the force did not work together. She remembered she never opened herself to the force during the tests, which meant, there quite likely was an issue, a bug. Obviously, she could not fix it. Maybe Mike could fix it, but he was not there. She feared, he would never be here again and it would never get fixed and she started to sob. The issue with the system was not the reason for her tears, it was of little importance at the moment. The thought about Mike was what made her heart tremble. In regards to the thought control system, her only option was to account for the problem. Hands on the controls, she opened herself to the force and the force wanted her to go down relatively straight. She decided to go into a moderate spiral descent. The planet had many green mountains full of vegetation, with the tallest featuring an ice cap. Between the mountains everything was grey. The altimeter, gave her a reading of 200m above see-level and the echo-sounder a reading of 90m above ground, when she flew into the grey. The grey were clouds, clouds heavily laden with water. She could not see anything anymore. The cockpit window was suddenly covered with raindrops and the grey mist behind it reduced visibility to 30-50m. There were very strong air turbulences in the cloud layer and they shook the VT-49 terribly. Suddenly, the ships computer gave a visual and audial warning: the echo-sounder detected only 30m to ground with too fast of a decent rate. The ship must have gotten caught in a downwash. She had to stop the decent all the while the ship was so terribly shaken. What made stabilizing the ship so difficult was, that she could not use any steady point outside the ship for reference, because she could see none and she could not use her organ of equilibrium either, because the ship was so strongly shaken by the air turbulences. The only means she had to steady the ship were the instrument readings. Finally the readings were steady, showing her 3,4m above ground. Looking out the cockpit window, she could make out tree-tops right below now. Slowly and carefully, Ahsoka followed a course lead by the force, cruising over the endless forests, swamps and lakes until the force wanted her to stop and land. Close to the tree-tops, the air turbulences were a lot less then further up. Problem was, there was nothing to land on at this spot. Trees and forest, forest and trees and nothing else. She could obviously force the VT-49 down and farkle a good number of trees in the process, but the scratched paint and possible dents, were not worth it. After all, it was still her baby. There was this hidden idea, to screw the force and go back to Coruscant, but following the urges of the force had already become like second nature and she cruised around a bit more until she spotted a clearing, a big enough area without trees. Seeing no other option, she descended further down, until she could make out a water right below her. She was in a swamp. Here, the air was very calm. Seeing no other option for the time being, she placed the VT-49 about 1m above the water surface, then setup the navigation computer to hold position and therefore the ship was hovering over the water. Putting the remote control into her pocket, she got out of the cockpit. Investigating the environment, she looked out of the bow dome window, just seeing the swamp, an endless swamp as far as one could see in the mist. All around her were gnarl trees and murky water. Inquisitively she opened the side door of the VT-49. Looking out into the mist and then into the water under her, she spotted a big snake, maybe 5 meters long, swimming by. That snake looked somewhat similar to a python. Obviously, swimming in that water was maybe not such a good idea. She had some chicken left in the fridge which had been there ever since she left Tatooine, probably no good for eating anymore. With some curiosity she took it out and dropped it into the water. Quickly the water started to bubble like it was seething and she could identify fish praying on the chicken until it was all gone. Definitely, no good for swimming. This planet was strong with the dark side, she felt it more and more. She closed the side door, packed her orange and white striped backpack, entered the cargo area and opened the loading door. Mounting the scooter she left the ship, then with the remote, she closed and locked it. Hovering over the water with the scooter, she opened herself to the force again to determine a course. The force urged her to go to her left and get moving for farkles sake – for farkles sake, get moving right now. Therefore, she leaned to the left side and pulled the throttle. That very moment, an big head mounted on a long neck shot out of the water just barely behind the scooter. It had its mouth wide open, came up until it was above her head and bent sideways to still catch her, once the reptile realized it had barely missed its prey. Ahsoka could see the rows of sharp teeth and the rosy insides of the muzzle, and the big dark throat, ready to swallow whatever made its way inside. This must have been the infamous dragon snake of Dagobah, the head of the food chain. When the dragon snake slid back into the water again, it tried to fall back further sideways to potentially still get a hold of that appetizing, orangy morsel, which had so patiently awaited its assault. The tip of the upper jaw, hit the scooter and the brutal impact nearly kicked Ahsoka off the seat bench. Luckily, she could hold on when the scooter was accelerating forward and pushed sideways. Seconds, later, when she had recovered from the initial shock, she let the force set course again. For a moment, she considered to cut the dragon snake to pieces with the light saber, but then dismissed the idea again - live and let live.