Ahsoka
"Set course for Ido," Max ordered.
"Okay," Shenna keyed a few commands into the computer.
Ahsoka glanced around the cockpit.
Bo Katan was leaning against the wall next to the door. The Mandalorian wasn't wearing her helmet. Then there was also Kenseth Shen, a short thin man who was now the second pilot. He was one of the one hundred 30 new crew members they had hired to man the ship. Plus five Mandalorians of course.
The stars streamlined as the ship slipped into Hyperspace. "So Padawan, first job as an intergalactic good doer is to help two renegades Jedi break into a republic prison and free a terrorist?" Bo asked Ahsoka brightly.
"I can't believe I'm going to help free the person who framed me for bombing the temple." Ahsoka fingered the end of her Lekku.
"Who would have thought working with Jedi could be fun?" The Mandalorian mused.
Ahsoka closed her eyes for a moment before wordlessly leaving the cockpit. She passed one of the new crew members, a tall tank like man in his forties named Chuck.
Ahsoka headed down into the engine room were Samuel, Robaxin, and Sheeto were doing maintenance. Samuel and Robaxin were human twins and in their thirties and Sheeto was a green male Twi'lek in his twenties.
"How is it going?" Ahsoka asked.
"Great, this ship is a lot more modern than the one we are used to working on and we have an abundance of spare parts. The heat exchangers on the coils of the Hyperspace motivators needed to be cleaned out. I think your pilot tried to do this herself but she forgot to reset the calibrator of the plasma feed from the reactor so the frequency was off by 0.06 hearts. That and as you can tell we fixed the environmental systems down here."
"So, that was it?" Ahsoka sighed. While Maxwell had busy hiring a crew that morning Ahsoka and Shenna had been busy down here in the engine room trying to find out why the Hyperdrive wasn't working. Then the environmental system had stopped working and the engine room had heated up to around 140°F. In other words, it hadn't been fun.
"Do you need help with something. I really don't want to be on the bridge right now?" She asked.
A sly look appeared on the twins faces, "Actually you could help."
Ahsoka had the feeling that she wouldn't like this. "Yes?"
"Could you crawl through the ventilation shafts and check the Biomonitors?"
The padawan sighed. "Okay, give me a bag full of the necessary replacement parts."
Yela
Yela sat down on a sofa in the living room. Although Alexander had healed her wounds after surgery she still felt rather weak and tired. Still, she had hoped that after a day she would be in better shape. At least her little one was fine and kicking. Perhaps that was all Yela could ask for.
"She will be ready in just a minute," Alexander announced and sat down next to his wife.
He wrapped an arm around her and kissed Yela's temple. "It'll be fine. We'll find them." He announced.
Just then the holographic projector lying on the small table in front of them started beeping. Alexander leaned forward and pressed a button.
The hologram of an attractive, young chocolate skinned woman appeared hovering over the projector.
"Commander Foster," the king greeted the Naval officer.
"Your majesties," she nodded at them.
"I trust you are doing well my Queen. I apologize that this could happen and take full responsibility." Yela cracked the smile. She liked Foster.
"It's alright Nina. I'm fine and so is the baby."
The king cleared his voice, "Can we move the sentimental part to later. What did you have for us?"
Nina stood up a bit straighter and folded her hands behind her back, "Of course. The moment I was informed of the incident I put the geeks from the Department of Naval Intelligence onto it. We initially started monitoring communications via a keyword selection. Unfortunately -.."
"-the media found out what had transpired which made a keyword-based scan pretty useless. From what I've seen the incident is all over social media, not only on Alderaan. Yela being attacked made headlines all across the core worlds. Tourism firms from the Republic are panicking that I'll tighten security," Alexander finished.
Nina pursed her lips, she didn't like being interrupted. Not even by the King. She did, after all, belong to Maxwell's former band of elite, battle-hardened officers. The woman had nerves of ice and that made her incompatible with the politics in a royal court.
When she continued talking her voice was quite controlled, "Yes, I see you follow the news. Now, at first we didn't have much to go on but once we had investigators on station their preliminary analysis proved invaluable. It didn't take long to find out who the assassins were. After that, it was merrily a matter of retracing their steps and connecting the dots. Fortunately, our dead hit squad weren't pros. They were standard mobsters and belong to a crime syndicate that is based here on Alderaan, one that we've been monitoring quite closely. We checked their financial activities and Identified a number of suspicious-looking transactions. It took a few hours until we isolated the right one. The one in question was worth 300k Republic Credits. Or now 300005 now if you count the current rate of inflation. Although the Transaction was passed on over a number of phantom accounts we were able to trace it to house Rist. If you are looking for the people responsible for this I suggest you start there. I already put the entire house on the no-fly list. They won't be able to leave the planet."
"And our crime syndicate?" Yela asked.
"Having expected this question I have the Night Ops and sixty of the newly trained Commandos in position and awaiting your orders. One word and they will kick down the doors and wipe the organization in question out."
Alexander sat up straight, "Very good. Give Captain Sparkles the green light. We don't need many survivors. When he is finished he and his men are to report to my palace along with an Alpha Assault Package. Also, put the Pride on standby. I think it's time for a show of force."
"Of course your majesty."
"Ohh and Foster. Give your people my thanks. They did their job well, just like you. That will be all for now."
Nina foster bowed slightly, "Of course. Foster out."
The image died and Yela turned to her husband, "What are you planning."
"Only a minor show of force."
Maxwell Bay
He wasn't really listing to Shenna's and Bo Katan's arguments. If truth be told this was one of the few occasions in which he wasn't paying any attention at all to what was happening around him.
His thoughts were currently occupied with finding a solution to a problem. The problem name was Ahsoka Tano.
By now he knew that Ahsoka had feelings for him, for how long it had been like this he wasn't sure. It wasn't as if he hadn't had any suspicions. Of course, that posed a rather big problem. He was her mentor and the fact that Ahsoka at least desired him to some extent made his sacred task a lot harder.
Ahsoka had absolute priority. Maxwell would finish her Jedi training even if accomplishing that task were to destroy him. In his eyes, she was already a greater Jedi than he could ever be. He knew that he wasn't perfect but he had every intention of leaving Ahsoka with the tools necessary to be just that.
Max knew that wasn't all to the story and while his intentions concerning Ahsoka were pure there was more to the story than he liked.
Unlike many others, he was completely honest with himself. Max couldn't deny that Ahsoka's feelings for him were mutual. Back when she had been a youngling he had adored her.
Now she had grown up into a beautiful, clever young woman and one he was quite fond off. Unfortionaly Ahsoka was too young, and too important to risk starting any affair which was fine. He knew that unless she got over her crush, she'd see that quite differently though.
Once again he would have to hide his feelings from her which would be harder said than done. Ahsoka understood him better than anybody else, could read him better than even Shaak Ti had been able to. On the other hand, if there was one thing Max could do then that was hiding hide feelings.
Suddenly he sensed her. Was she?.......yes she was.
Maxwell could feel the young Togruta's annoyance. The Jedi reached out to his Padawan with the force and greater her with his trademark question. "Ahsoka, do you any idea unacceptable this is?"
Ahsoka took a few seconds to reply. "This is not what it looks like. I'm checking the Biomonitors and replacing the broken ones."
"You spend much to much time in ventilation shafts my young Padawan," he informed her gravely.
"I couldn't agree more. For some reason, I am always the one that gets jobs that require knowing my way around Ventilation systems." He could sense Ahsoka's amusement.
"Perhaps it's because you are so small," Maxwell reasoned.
"I'm not short Ma-" Just then there was a loud crack. Maxwell snapped out of his daze just in time to see Ahsoka crashing down onto the conference table.
I'll Beta read this chapter later.
Winter Wolf and Lengendary95 over and out