The Clone Wars

by Lou Anders

  If there is one thing I learned while I was in that cave, reduced to nothing more than an animal, devoid of rational thought and sustained only by hate, it is that vengeance cannot be rushed. No, one must take one’s time and play the game, wait for the enemy to make a mistake. I would bide my time, play this long and tortuous game to its conclusion. And when Kenobi finally fell, oh, I would enjoy it like the finest meal I had ever eaten.

  It was enough for the moment to know he was alive and that he feared me. I knew we would meet again, and when we did, not only would I grant him an agonizing death, I would expose the Jedi for the false order they were. Then my revenge would be complete.

  My path has been long and filled with pain, child. It is not the destiny I would have chosen for myself, but often we do what we must to survive, and we make our own destiny along the way. Today I did not exact my revenge, which will make tomorrow’s revenge all the sweeter.

  Until we meet again, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

  I NEVER EXPECTED TO BE CHASED BY pirates once, much less twice, before I even finished my Jedi training. Or was this three times? It’s hard to keep track when you’re being chased by pirates!

  As a laser blast sheared the side of our “borrowed” speeder tank, I ducked behind the engines with one of the other Jedi younglings, Petro. A second blast rattled the frame of the whole vehicle, and we were both knocked onto our rears. “Uh, I think they’re still upset that we tricked them,” I said.

  Another blast rocked the speeder, and I scrambled to the hatch. Petro followed me inside. “They’ll get over it once we’re off their planet,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Padawan Ahsoka said as she held the steering steady.

  Yes, the Padawan Ahsoka Tano, apprentice to Jedi Master Anakin Skywalker and pretty much the strongest, fastest, bravest, and cleverest Padawan ever. (I drew a poster of her with her signature double lightsabers for my room at the Jedi Temple. Okay, I drew three posters of her.) She was assigned to escort all six of us—Petro, Ganodi, Zatt, Byph, Gungi, and me—on the rite of passage known as the Gathering. We were supposed to find our kyber crystals and learn to build our first lightsabers. We weren’t supposed to be attacked by pirates who wanted to steal our crystals. They didn’t get them, but they did capture Padawan Ahsoka. We then rescued her from the pirate leader, Hondo…or almost rescued her. Almost is the key word.

  Petro contacted our starship. “Ganodi, we need a quick evac! Come in, please! Ganodi!”

  We’d left Ganodi on the ship since she was the only one of us six younglings who’d taken flight simulator training. She was rebooting the ship’s systems, as well as working with R2-D2 to repair Professor Huyang, the droid who’d been training us in lightsaber construction. He’d been damaged in our first encounter with the pirates. By “damaged,” I mean that his head and arms had been knocked off. It was not his best day.

  “Maybe the pirates are jamming the signal,” Zatt suggested behind me.

  Gungi let out a Wookiee moan.

  “Where can she be?” I asked. What if the ship had been attacked? What if she’d been captured? What if—

  Suddenly, Ganodi’s voice crackled cheerfully through the comm unit. “I’m here! I was in the back fixing Huyang.”

  “Great! That’s great!” Petro said. “But we’re all going to need repairs if you don’t have the engines running!”

  He’s right about that, I thought as the pirates’ laser blasts rocked the speeder tank yet again.

  “Where are you?” Ganodi asked.

  Keeping her hands tight on the steering, Padawan Ahsoka leaned back to talk into Petro’s comm unit. “Ganodi, it’s Ahsoka.”

  I heard Ganodi gasp. “Padawan Tano! We rescued you!”

  “Almost,” she said.

  Almost, I thought. Almost wasn’t good enough. Just like it wasn’t good enough that I’d almost assembled my lightsaber. “Almost” meant it was still a jingling mess of parts in my pocket. I was almost a Jedi. I was almost brave. I almost believed we’d survive this.

  “We need you to get us home,” Ahsoka continued. “Fire up the engines and head to these coordinates.” She tapped on the screen, sending our location directly to R2-D2.

  We raced between the boulders, the pirates close on our tail, firing shot after shot. I gripped the back of Ahsoka’s seat so hard that my fingers hurt. And then a shadow passed above us. They caught us! my brain shrieked.

  But no, it was our rescue. Our ship was here!

  “Everyone,” Ahsoka ordered, “get topside and stay down.”

  Following her command, Zatt, Byph, and Gungi climbed up out of the hatch.

  “But who’s going to pilot the tank?” Petro asked.

  Twisting in her seat, Ahsoka pointed at one of the carnival masks we’d used to trick the pirates. “Katooni, grab that mask!”

  She knows my name! I thought. And then the logical part of my brain followed with, Of course she knows my name. It was only that, aside from roll call, she’d never said it before. She’d always called us collectively “younglings.” I hurried to toss the rancor mask to Ahsoka, and she fit it over the tank’s controls.

  We raced to the top of the tank as Ganodi lowered the boarding ramp above us. Drawing her double lightsabers, Ahsoka deflected the pirates’ laser blasts. One by one, the other younglings grabbed on—hands to ankles, making a chain up to the ramp.

  “We got it!” I shouted.

  And that was when the steering came loose, the speeder zoomed toward a cliff, and the pirates used their cannon to shoot the engine of our starship, our only escape route.

  Above us, the starship lit up with blue lightning, and Ahsoka shouted into her comlink, “Artoo, get out of there now! Everyone, let go! Jump down!”

  Explosions burst all over the starship, ripping it apart. We let go, crashing onto the top of the tank as the ship fell from the sky. Tilting, it clipped one of our engines, and the speeder tank tumbled, crashing into the rocks at the same time the starship slammed into the ground. We were thrown from the tank, and we rolled across the dirt and rocks, only a few meters from the crash.

  I felt as if my entire body was one massive bruise, all the way to my fleshy head tendrils. As I lifted my face out of the dirt, I saw a pirate step in front of Ahsoka and pick up her two lightsabers. “Nice try, little Jedi,” he snarled. “But it looks like you’re coming with us.”

  Almost was definitely not good enough.

  This was supposed to be a learning mission, and I was learning that I didn’t like being captured, I didn’t like binders, and I definitely didn’t like pirates. Gungi was learning that even a Wookiee can’t chew through steel.

  As we sailed toward the base we’d just (almost) escaped from, one of the pirates scanned Hondo’s compound with his macrobinoculars. “What the—Droids!” He lowered the macrobinoculars and signaled the speeder tank to stop. “It’s an invasion!”

  Guarded by our pirate captors, we hid behind an outcropping of rocks and peered down at the compound. While we’d been racing across the boulder-strewn planet, several droid transports had landed. I watched them disgorge row after row of battle droids. As one, the droids unfurled from their racks, were deposited on the ground, and began to march, followed by super battle droids and droid commandos parading in front of…

  General Grievous.

  I’d never seen him before, but I knew him instantly. Even from this distance, the cyborg was unmistakable and horrifying. He stalked out of his ship on his metal legs, back bent, with his hands clasped behind him. His body was made of metal plates, like armor, but welded together with no space for flesh, and his feet were steel talons. It was said only his eyes still looked like the man he had once been, and gazing into them was supposed to feel like looking into the gaping maw of a black hole. I was glad I couldn’t see them from here. In fact, it was fine by me if we never moved any closer at all.

  “This isn’t good,” the pirate muttered. “Those scrappin’ droids are lootin’ the plac
e! They’re dismantlin’ our ships!”

  “The fact that Grievous is here with his entire fleet means that Master Kenobi must have been overrun,” Ahsoka said. “This entire system is now Separatist-controlled space.”

  How could she say that so calmly? Maybe because she’s Padawan Ahsoka Tano, I thought, and she faces impossible situations all the time. For her, this is an ordinary afternoon. As for me, I wanted to burrow into the ground and hide like a Tholothian dirt-mole. I was keenly aware of the unfinished lightsaber in my pocket, useless even if I weren’t in binders. “What should we do?” I asked Ahsoka. “There’s nowhere to run.”

  “You’ll not be runnin’ anywhere, skug,” the pirate said. “You’re still my prisoner. Maybe I can trade you to the Separatists in exchange for my freedom.”

  That would be even worse than being a pirate prisoner! The Separatists hated Jedi!

  “Not likely,” Ahsoka said. She twisted to meet his eyes, even though I knew the movement had to hurt with her wrists cuffed behind her back. The rest of us had been cuffed with our hands in front. But the pirates considered her more dangerous, which was accurate. “Grievous didn’t come here to make deals. He already controls the planet and the system. If you hand us over to him, he’ll kill us and then you. We have a common enemy in Grievous. Together, we can get out of this. You must have some other ship somewhere. You are pirates.”

  I held my breath. Please work, I thought. Listen to Padawan Ahsoka. She clearly had a plan, even though I didn’t know what it was. Honestly, it all felt more than a little bit hopeless, with both pirates and droids.

  The pirate seemed to be listening, but with all the coarse wrinkles on his face, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Hondo’s got a private fleet,” he said, “but only he knows where those ships are.”

  “Then we’ll have to rescue him,” Ahsoka said.

  Wait, what? I thought. Rescue Hondo? He was the one who attacked our ship! He’d taken Ahsoka prisoner! He’d sent his goons to recapture us! But I didn’t say anything. I trusted our mentor. She was Padawan Ahsoka Tano, and she was going to get us out of this.

  “I know Grievous, and I know droids,” Ahsoka continued. “With my help, you stand a better chance.”

  Raising his weapon, the pirate aimed at Ahsoka’s back.

  Oh no, he’s going to shoot!

  I wanted to scream. But I didn’t, because Ahsoka wasn’t screaming. She bowed her head, her expression so brave and so calm. She looked every bit the dignified hero I wanted to be.

  The pirate fired—and the binders around Ahsoka’s wrists split and fell to the ground.

  “You’ve got yourself a deal, Jedi,” the pirate said.

  R2-D2 piloted the speeder tank into Hondo’s landing field as a distraction—he was, per Ahsoka’s instructions, supposed to claim in his beeps and chirps that he’d captured it—while we snuck past the droids on foot. It was surprisingly easy to sneak in. Battle droids, as I was learning, aren’t very bright, and pirates and Jedi are both very sneaky. I doubted, though, it would be so simple to sneak out.

  Ahsoka sliced the two battle droids outside Hondo’s cell into thirds. She moved fluidly, almost faster than I could see: a voomm, voomm, voomm from her lightsabers and then a clatter as the droids’ bodies collapsed. Before the final head hit the ground, she slapped the control on the door, and it slid open.

  Inside the cell, the pirate leader Hondo was suspended midair by binders on his wrists and ankles that glowed with blue energy—a ray shield. In the instant before he recognized us, I saw him cringe, fear in his face. And then he was all smiles. “Jedi! And here I thought you made your escape, no?”

  “No,” Ahsoka agreed. “There were complications.”

  Yeah, that’s putting it mildly, I thought. All of us piled into the room behind Ahsoka—six younglings, the two pirates who’d captured us, and the droid Professor Huyang. Ganodi had managed to reattach his head, though he was still missing his arms.

  Dangling in the air, Hondo had clearly encountered his own complications. Staring at him caught in the blue energy, I thought he didn’t seem as scary as he had before. Maybe this was how Ahsoka faced so many enemies: she trusted that they could be defeated.

  “Now we have to put our differences aside and be friends,” Ahsoka said, “or else we’re all going to die here.”

  “Ah. Very diplomatic. Ha! I know you did not come back to rescue Hondo—how do you say it?—out of the goodness of your heart. No, no, no, no, you need something from me.”

  I stepped forward. “A ship, to be specific.”

  He looked at me as if noticing me for the first time. “Ah, yes! A ship, a ship, but where would we find one of those? My new friend General Grievous has destroyed my ships.”

  Petro jumped in. “We know you have one. A whole pirate fleet!”

  Hondo’s voice was still light, but the look he gave the two pirates was hard. “And one of my old friends apparently has been talking too much.”

  The other pirates shrugged.

  Hondo glared at them harder and then tossed his head back. “Ah, what does it matter? We’ll never reach the vault anyway. Grievous’s army is way too big.”

  “Don’t give up,” Petro said. “We can fight.” He punched the air with so much enthusiasm that he nearly fell over. It didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but we all nodded anyway. We wanted to help.

  The droid professor spoke up. “If I may, sir.” His monocle slid up as he surveyed us. “I have instructed Jedi younglings for over a thousand generations, and these are among the best I have ever seen.”

  Did he…did he mean that? I wondered. Padawan Ahsoka had once been a youngling. As had Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Luminara Unduli, Kit Fisto, Plo Koon…. Even Master Yoda must have been young once, though I couldn’t imagine it. Could Professor Huyang really think we were among the best? Including me?

  “Well then, show me,” Hondo said. “Show me your swords, tiny Jedi!”

  Oh, no.

  Byph drew his saber, and blue light blazed as he ignited it.

  Then Petro lit his.

  “Show Hondo you are ready to fight!” Hondo crowed.

  A smile on his furry mouth, Gungi ignited his, and his blade glowed green.

  Then Ganodi.

  And Zatt.

  All five of them raised their lightsabers, but I didn’t move. I wished I could shrink smaller and smaller, folding in on myself until I was as small as an atom.

  In a surprisingly kind voice, Hondo said, “And you, child, where is your saber?”

  I pulled the pieces out of my pocket and held them up. “It’s not finished. I never finished it. I’ve done everything right, but it won’t work.” The others had assembled theirs back on the ship, before we tried to rescue Ahsoka, but I’d failed. The parts just wouldn’t connect, no matter how hard I’d tried.

  Almost a Jedi is so close to never a Jedi, I thought. I didn’t need to be like Padawan Ahsoka right this instant, but I at least wanted that never to be someday. Standing there, though, with the power vortex ring, field conductor, blade emitter, pommel cap…all the pieces of a lightsaber in my hands, I felt closer to never.

  Professor Huyang leaned over my shoulder. “You must trust that the components that form your lightsaber are meant to be together. There is no other way. It is the Force that binds them.”

  “Yes, I was just going to say that,” Hondo said. “Finish it now! Finish, finish! This is worth the price of a ship, to see the construction of a Jedi lightsaber. This…this is priceless. Finish it, and together we can defeat Grievous!”

  He seemed eager. Even excited. Staring at him, I realized that this pirate, our enemy, believed I could do it. He looked at me, and he didn’t see a Tholothian girl dreaming of an impossible future filled with brave deeds and glorious victories that she’d never achieve. He saw me, Katooni, a Jedi youngling with the kyber crystal I’d retrieved on my own and the pieces I’d chosen for my lightsaber. He saw a girl who had helped tri
ck him to free Ahsoka. He saw someone who was here to rescue him. More than that, he saw someone who could become everything she wanted to be.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor of Hondo’s cell, I spread the components in front of me and I reached inside myself, to the quiet place in my mind. The Force felt like a pool of water, endlessly deep. I dipped my thoughts into it and let it soak into me.

  In front of me, the lightsaber pieces swirled in the air.

  Distantly, I heard Hondo’s voice: “Amazing! Oh, that is truly amazing!”

  I quit thinking about how badly I wanted a lightsaber, how much I wanted Padawan Ahsoka to be proud of me, how long I’d dreamed about this moment. Instead I let the cool water of the Force flow through me. For the first time since this mission began, I let myself trust it—and myself.

  The pieces clicked together, the cap whirled as it screwed onto the hilt, the rings slid into position, and the kyber crystal spun like a holocron and then settled into its chamber. I plucked the lightsaber—my lightsaber—out of the air and ignited it.

  Blue light blazed with a familiar pssshew, and I stood, holding my lightsaber aloft. My lightsaber! Me, Katooni! I felt as if I were glowing inside as brightly as it was.

  “Well, cut me down, little Jedi!” Hondo cried. “It’s time to leave.”

  I sliced through the blue energy beneath his feet, and the binders released. He landed, free, and nodded at me with a smile. I smiled and returned the nod. Cheering, the other younglings crowded around me.

  Behind me, I heard Ahsoka say to Hondo, “So why the big show? You didn’t really have a choice. You know we have to work together.”

  In a low voice, Hondo replied, “Because, Jedi, you know what we are about to attempt is very dangerous. And I may be a pirate, but I do not like taking children into battle.”

  “That didn’t seem to bother you when you attacked us.”

  He laughed. “Well, today is a new day! And lucky for you”—he spun around, spread his arms wide, and winked at me—“today I like children. Now, let’s free the rest of my men.”