“It was pirates,” said the woman. She was the first to calm down enough to talk. “They attacked the shuttle we were on and took several prisoners. We barely made it into the pod.”
“Why would they attack you?” Ahsoka asked her, speaking as gently as she could.
“Ransom, I suspect,” the woman said. She shifted uncomfortably. Ransom was something that the Black Sun crime syndicate peddled in this sector, and they were not known for being courteous to their hostages.
“You don’t have to tell me your business,” Ahsoka told her. “Just tell me why you were targeted.”
“We were underbid by a well-known firm for a large project,” the taller of the two men said, after considering his words for a moment. The only large projects were Imperial ones. “We were reworking the numbers to see if we could match the lower bid when we were attacked.”
“You think your competitors would like to bankrupt you enough that you can’t afford a lower bid?” Ahsoka asked.
The woman nodded.
“If I help you and you save the credits, are you still going to get involved?” she demanded. She was willing to help people who needed it, but she was far less comfortable making it easier for them to serve the Empire. The fact that she was forced to make that sort of distinction made her feel ill.
“No,” the woman said emphatically. “No credits are worth this kind of trouble. We just want our people back and we’re out.”
The way she said people made Ahsoka think she wasn’t just talking about employees.
“All right,” said Ahsoka. “Give me the coordinates.”
After that, it seemed like she kept running into people who needed help. The missions—if she could call them that—were random and unorganized, and sometimes they ended badly. More than once, she was betrayed and escaped only because she’d been trained to fly by the best pilot in the galaxy. But little by little, she carved out a reputation. Or Ashla did. After the first time, she did what she could to prevent those she was helping from seeing her face. They usually understood. Anonymity was the best defense she could muster.
If the Fardis knew what she was up to when she took their ships and cargo off-planet, they didn’t complain. She made sure the ships she flew were hard to track, and she scrubbed off all evidence of carbon scoring every time she was back on the ground. Soon, she thought, she would be ready to go back to Raada. Soon she’d find a ship big enough for her friends. And the rest of the farmers, too. It wasn’t a big town. She would think of something.
If she was being honest, being a hero again felt good. She had been trained for this, for justice, and the fact that she was working against those who had hurt her so badly only made it better. She was careful and did her best to resist her reckless nature. And she made life a little easier for the people of the Outer Rim.
Her good work did not go unnoticed.
Chapter 19
THE SIXTH BROTHER did not hold the district commander’s failure to apprehend the Jedi Padawan against him. After all, if just anyone could catch Jedi, there would be no need for Inquisitors. He did make sure to file a report detailing where the commander had fallen short and outlining his suggestions for reprisals, but he did not hold a grudge. He was too much of a professional for that sort of pettiness.
He was significantly less impressed by the nonmilitary lackey who called himself Jenneth Pilar.
“You weren’t exactly what I had in mind,” Pilar said, winding down a long series of complaints about how he felt the Imperial base was understaffed and why his suggestions should be followed to fix it. “I am sure you are good at whatever your job is, but I need men to patrol, to enforce order, and to make sure the fieldwork gets done on schedule.”
“Then you will have to do it yourself,” the Inquisitor said. He enjoyed the way Pilar recoiled from the harshness of his tone. “The Empire has other priorities on Raada now.”
Pilar huffed for a while longer but finally fled as the Inquisitor’s expression got blacker and more threatening. That was the easiest way to deal with weak-minded bureaucrats. They didn’t listen anyway, so it was best to intimidate them until they gave up.
The Inquisitor called up the interrogation report on the girl called Kaeden Larte. She’d given no indication that she knew anything about a Jedi, but of course her interrogation had been mostly botched. They’d pushed her too hard, trying to scare her, and then she hadn’t been physically capable of speech before her rescue. The rescue itself was almost certainly carried out by the Jedi. No one had seen anything, and the window was far too high for a girl who had a broken arm to climb through on her own.
A map of the surrounding area replaced the report on the Inquisitor’s screen. There was nowhere to hide in the agricultural region of the planet. It was too well patrolled, there was no cover, and it would take too long to cross. The insurgents couldn’t be hiding in the town itself. They would have been uncovered by now, by even the most inept stormtrooper patrol. That left the hills. Without use of the walkers, the commander had been slow to search the area, because it would require too much manpower. Maybe that wretch Pilar had a point about being understaffed.
It didn’t matter. The Jedi Padawan was long gone. Her ship had been seen leaving the planet after the successful rescue mission. What the Sixth Brother needed to decide was the order in which to take his next steps. He was going to find the insurgents and torture them, but he thought it might be wiser to track down the Jedi first, so she would be sure to hear about the suffering of the people she’d left behind. Then she’d come back to save them, and he’d have her. He knew, or at least suspected, the general direction she had gone. He’d received reports of a series of seemingly random heroic actions that, when considered together, he felt a Jedi could be responsible for. He simply required confirmation. He’d hate to go to all the effort of setting the trap without making sure his prey would be able to find it.
Decision made, he prepared to go back to his ship. Let the Empire drain Raada of its resources for a while longer. It wasn’t as if the people had anywhere else to go. He’d get the Jedi’s attention and then crush all of them at the same time. He deleted the report on the district commander before he left. He hated having to reestablish his authority, and if the incompetent man were replaced before the Inquisitor returned, he’d have to do just that. It was much easier to leave Raada as it was for now, ripe and ready for his return.
The casual observer might have thought it a regular meeting between a senator and his staff. Bail Organa sat behind his desk and discussed logistics while his underlings took notes, and everything looked absolutely aboveboard. Outside the window behind him, Coruscant traffic moved endlessly in ordered lines.
What Bail was really doing was making a list. There had been several lucky coincidences in the Outer Rim of late that had come to his attention. An Imperial contract had fallen through. A planet in desperate need of food aid had received it. A pirate ship known to run operations for Black Sun that had been preying on passenger shuttles had been thwarted. There was no pattern in terms of time or location, but for reasons he couldn’t explain, Bail was certain it was the Jedi he sought.
So far, none of his tracking methods had paid off. He wasn’t entirely surprised. The Jedi would be hiding from Imperial watchers, and the Empire was far more likely to employ unsavory types to do its dirty work than Bail was. He’d gotten R2-D2 back from Captain Antilles but had left the droid with Breha on Alderaan when it was time to return to the Senate. Although the droid was eager to help, Bail didn’t have a mission for him yet. He’d left the little astromech happily working through the Alderaanian historical database and hoped to have a more practical job for him soon.