“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 impossibility.
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.
Chapter 11
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.