Star Wars Jedi Knight IV: Sith Empire

Chapter 13: 1313

"If you think this is the dirty work, you better get ready for a wake-up call. It gets a lot dirtier where we're headed. The rings aren't on Coruscant. They're underneath it."

―Jix Berus

70 years ago, Coruscant Undercity Level 1313

Raw sewage. That was the smell that assaulted Ahsoka Tano's nose as she woke up on the streets of the most notorious organized crime haven in the Deep Core. 

It was almost a year since she left the Jedi Temple. Then, she was unarmed and dirt poor. All she had was the clothes on her back. She thought that by going to the Coruscant Undercity, she could make money, given the anti-Jedi sentiment was so high on the surface. Oh, how wrong she was.

Overall, her situation had only degraded, slowly. As a carnivore, she had a bit of a difficult time finding something affordable to eat. Meat required preservation, and in slums like this, you took what you could get. In her case, Ahsoka went without eating anything for the last three days.

Her decision to steal a DL-44 blaster pistol was questionable at the very best. Did she just sentence the former owner, a homeless man, to death by stealing his only means of self-defense? She agonized over that for over six months.

Also questionable was her theft of ratty, hole-filled cloak that probably could be credited with keeping her alive this long. Even if it didn't do much to keep her warm while sleeping on the relentless cold permacrete, it helped disguise her and keep her from being recognized by Karazak. 

Ahsoka lived like this willingly. She could have all the money she ever wanted...if she would just give up. Surrender to evil and join any one of the criminal organizations or gangs that roamed level 1313. She would no sooner do that than start murdering random people, which, in effect, was all they did anyway.

Sitting up and recoiling against the side of a building, she breathed into her hands to warm them up. Rough looking sentients of all species sporadically walked by. Some minded their own business, some had wandering eyes that hinted at sticky fingers, and others were predators that eyed Ahsoka like a piece of meat.

She thought she could start fresh here, where nobody knew who she was. Start bringing a little hope to this wretched poodoo hole. Make new friends. Make enough money to catch a ride to her homeworld, Shili. But the reality was nobody here wanted good. Everybody seemed perfectly happy with the status quo. 

The only friend she had made turned out to be a quasi-friend, and once he was finished using her to escape from Karazak, he stole a ship and blasted off without her. And in turn, he made her an enemy of Karazak Slavers Cooperative. What a steaming mess she got herself into. It seemed after her mistake of leaving the Jedi Temple, the problems in her life started snowballing.

Still curled up against a cold durasteel wall with her knees up to her chin, Ahsoka's mind continued to wander. She tried not to think of food, but all around her the living hell of level 1313 brought her mind back to her constant misfortune. She still had one last trump card, for her absolute darkest hour. But she wasn't going to use it unless she absolutely had to. She had convinced herself that as terrible as her situation seemed, things could get worse still. Fatal disease was rampant, and Ahsoka had been very lucky to avoid any such disease for about ten months.

Over the buzzing of signage and various machines, trash blowing around, hushed talking, and distant speeder engines, the former Jedi thought she heard a familiar voice. Familiar voices, actually. She looked around, her eyes darting from one side of the street to the other. And she saw the source.