STAR WARS AHSOKA [English]

someplace random. Then lead everyone out to the caves as quickly and quietly as you can.

“Neera, you come with me. There’s a line of Imperial tanks pointed away from the compound. They must have set them up for defense, and they haven’t had time to get them turned around yet. I’m going to disable as many as I can. You go to the doors on the left side of the compound and get those people out.

They aren’t being pressed as hard, so they should be able to get free.” Neera nodded. “If you can get to the right-side doors, try for that, too, but if you can’t, leave them, do you understand?”

“Where’s Hoban?” Neera asked, shrewdly seeing the information Ahsoka had omitted.

“I didn’t see him,” Ahsoka said. “I’m sorry, but you need to focus, too.”

“I understand,” Neera said.

“What are you going to do, Ashla?” Miara asked. For the first time, she sounded very small.

“I’m going to the front,” Ahsoka said. “The fighting is the thickest there, but I might be able to help out long enough for our people to retreat.”

“Where did you come from?” Neera asked. She didn’t sound like she was expecting an answer, but Ahsoka decided to give it to her. In all likelihood, they’d find out soon enough anyway.

“The Clone Wars,” she said. “I fought in the Clone Wars.”

She didn’t give them any more specifics. Let them think she was part of a planetary militia. She was pretty sure that’s what Selda and Vartan thought already. They weren’t even wrong. She had been part of a planetary militia. But she’d also been a part of something else.

There was another explosion. They couldn’t afford to wait anymore.

“Are you ready?” she asked Neera.

Neera held the blaster she’d gotten from Vartan in one hand and a couple of explosives in the other.

Ahsoka carried most of the explosives, because she had no blaster of her own. She was sure she’d be able to pick one up after a few minutes of fighting.

“Good luck,” she said to Miara. The younger girl swallowed hard and crouched to wait.

Neera and Ahsoka turned and ran into the yard.

Ahsoka’s initial tactical assessment had been immediate, instinctive, and not at all promising. Now that she could see the whole compound at once, she was no more optimistic. She had warned them that this kind of strike was a terrible idea, for exactly this reason: the farmers were outmatched, and she still wasn’t entirely sure what they were up against. They hadn’t listened. Now she had to either leave them to their fate or go to their rescue. No choice, really. Her only advantage was that they were up against the Empire’s new stormtroopers, not the formidable clones. She couldn’t use the Force for anything as showy as deflecting blaster bolts, but she could jump and she could run, and that would have to be enough.

Most of her friends had already retreated, and Neera was rounding them up. The left side was clearing, and even the fighters on the right side were starting to retreat now that they knew their options. It was the disastrous attempt to take the front gate of the Imperial compound that was causing the biggest problem. It had ended almost before it began. As Ahsoka had suspected, the heavy artillery was too much for the ill-equipped farmers to deal with, even with the element of surprise and Miara’s explosives to back them up. The five who remained alive were pinned down, with the Imperial ground reinforcements closing in. Through the smoke, Ahsoka could see both Hoban and Kaeden crouched among the survivors.

They didn’t have a lot of time, and Ahsoka was their only hope.

She moved forward cautiously, staying as low to the ground as possible to present a minimal target for the guns that lined the compound walls. She was far enough away that the troopers couldn’t target her more easily than they could her friends, and she didn’t want to draw attention until she had to. She listened for incoming fighters but couldn’t hear anything over the noise of battle and the hammering of her own heart.

“I am really out of practice,” she said, talking to companions who were no longer with her. She spoke out of habit, falling into the banter as easily as she took stock of her surroundings, even though there was