Back in the Game (COMPLETE)

9.15.4

She let her gaze drift thinking. "Asking for me specifically was one thing, but this...I don't understand."

Rex shook his head, just as confused. "I don't even get why you're on the list. I mean, everyone knows you're about as close to Jedi as a civilian can get, but even killing Maul makes more sense than killing you."

"If it was Palpatine giving the order, I wouldn't question it," Ahsoka muttered darkly, looking at Rex. "Anyone with the Force would be a threat to him, but Kanai? I've never even met her, much less threatened her."

"And then there's this," he added, motioning to the projection of the Chancellor. "There's probably a lot you could make of that, but I wouldn't even know where to begin."

Unfortunately, Ahsoka did. The look on her face was quite familiar to her, or rather, to the Sister. "I'm almost sure a Force-user is in play here, or at the very least, some other type of mind-control. If I had to guess, I would say a Dark user, but even a Jedi could accomplish this if they wanted to."

They both knew that was unlikely, though. "Why would a Jedi activate an Order that would destroy their people? Other than Krell, I would understand that."

"I don't think they did," she admitted, "but without any proof otherwise, I'd rather keep my options open. Assuming the worst probably isn't that far off the mark right now."

Speaking of the worst, there was more. "Something else that I noticed right before I left to guard the hangar, not long after I saved this recording, the original transmission, the one that is saved to the Republic database? Someone deleted it."

Ahsoka sighed, disappointed but not surprised. "Of course they did. Whoever forced the Chancellor to activate Order 66 wouldn't want to leave any evidence behind. All of the blame is going to fall on the clones. I'll bet whoever it was found a way to erase Kanai's memory too."

"So you don't think the Jedi committed treason?" Rex asked, agreeing but trying to keep her thinking. 

"It's not likely," she confirmed, powering down the recording, "unless the real mastermind behind this is a Jedi. In that case, only one person would be a traitor. Other than that, I think this is a setup. At least, that's what I want to believe."

Rex nodded, having had the same thought process. "So who is to blame, if not the Jedi and not the Chancellor?"

She shrugged, not sure it was possible to count the number of feasible suspects. "A Separatist spy? Bounty hunter? Tyrannus himself, maybe?" Rubbing her eyes, she dragged her hands down her face. "I have no idea. I'm not sure it even matters now that it's done."

"This day could have gone a lot better," he agreed, and the two of them stood silently, wishing that the order had never been activated and they were still on their way back to Coruscant, with Maul in custody and the Jedi Order still in one piece.

Ahsoka didn't want to think about the losses she had felt just yet, but it did remind her of something. She strode over to her bag, digging around for something she had slipped in there a few days ago. "I should have given this to you earlier, but we were so caught up in the siege that I didn't think of it."

She found what she was looking for and stood up to hand it to Rex. It was a small projector, not unlike the one Rex had handed her. "Another recording?"

"Not exactly," she admitted, and when he fired it up, a picture appeared instead of a video.

It was one Ahsoka had managed to take from over a month ago when Obi-Wan had been injured in the Lower Levels. Rex had been sitting on the counter, Anakin was leaning against the wall, and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka were debating something, probably. All of them were smiling, though. 

"Feels like forever ago," he said, smiling at the image. "Getting stabbed in the side doesn't seem like as big of a problem now."

Ahsoka laughed, just a little bit. It was a hollow one, though, because she felt the same way. She didn't know what she would give to go back to that night when the Clone War didn't exist and she wasn't on the run again. 

After staring at the picture a little longer, Rex asked, "How are you going to manage to get a message to Skywalker?" 

"I don't know yet," she confessed, and Rex powered off the projector. "I have to make sure that only he'll find it and understand it. If the Republic figures out where we're going, we'll be back at square one."

"About that, you might want to pull the ship out of hyperspace," Rex reminded her, pointing at the navi-computer. "We're almost to that system."

"Right, right," she remembered, sliding into the pilot's seat and fiddling with the controls. She looked back at Rex, though. "You should go back with the others, I don't know if it's fully hit them yet. It's going to be a rough night."

Rex nodded and grabbed his helmet, not putting it on though. "For everyone, I'd imagine. I'll come back in and check on you in a while, just to see how the work is coming."

She nodded but turned her attention to the controls. She disengaged the hyperdrive and activated the engines, pulling the ship around to face towards the Outer Rim. "It shouldn't take very long. I'll be in here," Ahsoka assured him, moving to reset the coordinates for their next jump. 

By the time she looked up again, Rex had gone into the passenger bay to be with his brothers. She aligned the ship one more time, making sure it was pointed in the right direction. She wished she had R2-D2 or R7 around to help her, but that wasn't an option at the moment. Sighing, she reactivated the hyperdrive and shut off the thrusters, sitting back in her seat once the task was done.

Leaning her head back, she looked up at the ceiling and tried to comprehend everything that had happened since the last time she had slept. Bo-Katan, Maul, the Rule of Two thing, Order 66, and now she was legally dead. 

It would be so nice to just fall asleep in the chair right now, but Ahsoka didn't have that option. She had to mess with the tracker and the rest of the ship's internal computer before someone decided to check up on their shuttle. Groaning, she stood up and grabbed the toolbox again, opening the panel to the computer system again. She needed to do a quick check on the engine while she could too, just to make sure it wouldn't break down on her when she needed it. 

She pushed back a cluster of wires to reveal the tracking system, but as soon as her hands got to work, her mind drifted, automatically tuning in to the Force. No sooner than she did than she felt those gaping holes in the Force, and significantly more of them than before. Ahsoka winced, holding her head and trying to block it out.

There would be time to grieve and work through all of the loss she had felt, but there were troopers, and very alive men, whom she could still help. This work had to be done and she couldn't get distracted by everything that had happened. It was too important to get wrong. She couldn't help the Jedi, so the Jedi would have to wait. 

Still, what about the clones? Ahsoka looked back at the doors Rex had just gone out of, knowing there were twelve soldiers behind them who had risked their lives to save her. And for what? What were they going to get out of this? Ahsoka knew that she was going to have to run from both the Republic and the Separatists, possibly indefinitely. If the Republic never revoked Order 66, she was going to be a criminal for life. Taking the clones with her had made sense when the cruiser was about to crash, but now?

As long as they stayed with her, they were condemned to the same fate that she was. They would be soldiers without a war to fight, without anywhere to call home. Ahsoka was willing to take the challenge on, but she didn't dare lay that burden on any of them. She flipped the wrench in her hand, trying to think of some kind of alternative for them. There would be nothing for the troopers on Xlenia except some ruins and the bleak possibility that Anakin would join them. Was there no way out of this for them? Ahsoka may not have been able to stop Order 66 like she had hoped to, but the least she could do was spare the men that had spared her. She just had to find a way...