When She Was Gone

Chapter 24

The crystals were broken. Broken, but it wasn't unheard of to fix broken things.

She raised them from the remnants of the sabers into the air, and they began to glow a bright red. Slowly but surely, she turned their glow from a searing ray into something...gentler. Something she could not only observe, but use.

Something that didn't harm, at least not anymore.

Not unlike her.

Ahsoka opened her eyes to see two pure white crystals floating before her. She smiled and looked to Anakin, who smiled back.

~

Ahsoka rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. Senses on high alert, she could feel everything around her. Anakin's grip on his balance strap tightened. Barriss grit her teeth. Obi-Wan shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

The shuttle shuddered as Rex lowered them into the atmosphere, and the go/no-go lights flickered on red. Ahsoka pulled a lightsaber off her belt.

The ship shuddered again as they landed. The lights flickered to green, and the doors opened.

Right on cue, Ahsoka leapt out of the shuttle. The Stormtroopers turned from their monitors to see her, raised their guns and glanced at one another warily.

"Identification?" One of them shouted.

"Do you not recognize one of your own?" Ahsoka cried.

They glanced at each other again.

"I am Darth Makari, apprentice to Assassin Kaivo, and I will cut you down if you do not let me through," she said as menacingly as possible. No one answered. "Do you always question your superiors?"

One of the troopers stepped forward and motioned for his comrades to stand down. "Apologies, Lady Makari. You may pass."

Ahsoka raised her wristcomm to her face. "Pilot."

"Yes, my Lady," Rex said. Disguises were important; Barriss, Obi-Wan and Anakin all had Rebel Scout outfits, Rex was covered in Stormtrooper plastic, and they were all using code names--except for Anakin. Kaivo couldn't be fooled, so a code name would be a lost cause.

"Bring the ship through," she said, stepping back into the ship.

"Yes, my Lady." The doors closed, cutting off the Jelucan landscape, and they lifted into the air. Ahsoka felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Anakin looking at her through his flight goggles.

"Well done," he said quietly. She smiled a bit and squared her shoulders.

~

Kos surveyed the bridge, watching the workers in the data pits carefully. There had been no sign of Lady Makari as of yet, but they'd find her.

He rolled his neck tiredly and cracked his knuckles. He'd been standing in the same spot for hours now, but he couldn't leave his post until either Lord Kaivo returned or they found Makari.

So he kept standing.

To his surprise, the doors behind him slid open and Kaivo brushed past him, marching to the front. He observed the nearby planet, turned and watched the data pits for a moment, then returned to stand beside Kos.

"Anything?"

"No, My Lord. But we are close."

Kaivo grunted. They stood there tensely, then he turned and walked back out of the bridge, but not before pausing by Kos and saying quietly,

"She is closer than you think."

~

They were being lead into what Anakin could only assume were transports to the just-above-atmosphere Destroyer. He was shoulder-to-shoulder with Stormtroopers, and he could feel Barriss', Rex's and Obi-Wan's tenseness radiating off them in waves.

Anakin hated the feeling of cold metal on his wrists and Stormtrooper hands on his arms plus a Force collar around his neck, and wasn't particularly pleased with the fact that Ahsoka was marching them straight into Bucketbrain Headquarters.

Oh kriff, Ahsoka. Anakin couldn't even fathom what was going through her head. This had been more or less her home for the past eleven years.

He looked up at her slender form, cape hiding most of her body language. The black fabric made him grimace. It wasn't very long ago at all that it had been an everyday outfit and not a costume for her.

The nutcase had done his job well in creating Makari's conscience, and he could tell it was easy for his Padawan to at least partially slip into her mindset. Normally, Anakin would have panicked at a development like that, but if it fooled Kaivo, he was all for it.

The shuttle doors closed, and Rex made his way to the copilot's seat. It had been hard to procure a pilot's set of armor for him that would fit, but it was paying off. No one looked twice at him, and the real pilot suspected nothing as he followed the clone into the cockpit and primed the engines.

The ride up to the Destroyer was quite tense. Anakin repeatedly felt the compulsion to give Ahsoka a pep talk like he would in the Lady on the way to a battle during the Clone Wars, but he had to smush the urge. Any of them uttered a single word that might blow their cover and the whole operation would go to the akk dogs.

With a shudder, the transport entered the Destroyer's artificial gravity. Anakin sucked in a breath and squared his shoulders as they touched down lightly in the hangar, and tried to look angry as the troopers escorted them out of the ship and through the bay. He glanced back briefly to see Rex watching the caravan of fake prisoners from the refueling station. He gave Anakin a small nod as they passed through a doorway.

So far, so good.

But then again, anything involving a Sith rarely turned out well.