By My Side

Chapter 11 - Amorrut

"He's still alive," Master Skywalker replies.

It's not until he gives the order to head for the hanger that Ahsoka suddenly realizes that she has no idea what to do. It's the first space battle she's ever in. "Where's my fighter?" Ahsoka asks, trailing her master through the hanger.

"You'll be my gunner."

"What? Why?" she protests, annoyance flooding through her. "You have Artoo for that!"

"I don't have time to give you a crash course on flying fighters right now," Anakin replies as he starts climbing the ladder. "This isn't practice, Snips. It's war. Maybe next time. C'mon, let's get going."

Ahsoka decides to keep the rest of her complaints to herself as she climbs after him, settling into her seat. They're heading out of the hanger almost before Ahsoka has finished settling in and looking over the controls, commands being shouted all around. She's glad, she thinks, because she doesn't know enough about battle to be on her own. If she's with her master, the orders don't matter. All she needs to do is focus on shooting down one vulture droid after another, which she happily does.

Apprehension washes over her as a shot from the vulture droids' skims just outside the viewport – her master is going on a full-front assault on the droids, of course – but she quickly squashes it. Her master is an expert pilot; there's nothing to worry about. All she needs to do is focus. It's not that hard. They did the same thing back on Tatooine.

***

It's one of the more difficult battles, Anakin realizes quickly. He's taken out a few of the Separatist blockade ships, but their control ship is too well-guarded to damage. He'd continue pressing the attack, except the three cruisers he brought have been damaged, and they had to pull back and regroup.

The mission could very quickly turn out disastrously, and they need to proceed with upmost caution. "This may turn out to be no more than a rescue mission," Obi-Wan's hologram warns him.

"Can't let that happen, Master," Anakin replies, determination coursing through him. The Republic likely lost this battle last time, but that doesn't mean he'll back out of the fight. "If we can get past the blockade down to the surface, we can take out their bases. Once their hold on the planet is gone, they'll pull back."

"I hope you know what you're doing," Obi-Wan replies before call disconnects.

Anakin suppresses the swell of bitterness, because even now when Anakin has years of foreknowledge, his master hardly trusts him. He can think about it later.

"What's the plan, Master?" Ahsoka asks from where she stands at the holotable beside him.

"We can't sneak past," he realizes, studying a hologram of the blockade's layout. "We'll have to go through on gunships." Which means distracting the droids again, somehow. If they have something else to focus on...

For a fleeting moment he thinks of what he did on Ryloth, ramming his cruiser straight into the enemy's control ship, but Anakin would rather not sacrifice even one of his damaged cruisers for that unless he needs to. That time, the thing had been destroyed almost beyond repair, and they're very expensive. It'd take out the blockade, but more would come, anyway.

It only feels hard because Ahsoka won't be beside him, Anakin realizes. It's fine. He can do this. He's done it a hundred times throughout the Clone Wars last time. "I'll take a squadron of fighters out, to punch a hole through their defenses. The gunships will go through that. I'll join you on the surface afterwards, with Artoo."

This is always what frightens him, because Ahsoka will be in the gunships, and so will Rex, and it would be so easy for them to be shot down. He doesn't take the time to think about it any more than he ever does. War is war. It requires risks all the way around. It's only harder now, because he vowed to protect Ahsoka, and he failed. Who's to say he won't make the same mistake a second time?