Aovor Xau stared at the ship's control panel and tried to figure out what was wrong. Something was off, that she was sure of, but what? There had been a warning, that much she remembered, but what happened afterwards was just a large black spot.
The Force whispered a warning. The chances of hitting a meteor field were minimal, and this didn't feel like a missile approaching her. She peered through the viewport.
Ah. That would explain it.
She wasn't in hyperspace, but rather sideways and half buried in sand. The obvious inference was that she had crashed and whatever had shot her down was soon coming to get her.
Aovor wriggled out of her flight harness, checked that her lightsaber and the datachit were still with her, and pried her way out of the ship. The impact would've killed a Human, based on the amount of deformation the ship had suffered, but Zabraks were sturdier and she was a Jedi. The dry feeling in her mouth indicated she'd spent some time in an instinctive healing trance as well.
The ship had been light on supplies, and most of them had burst, burned, or scattered in the crash, but she managed to gather two canteens of water and stuff some ration bars in her pockets. She perched a hat on her horns and hopped out onto the sand.
Two suns stabbed at her the moment she stepped out of the shipwreck's shade. She took a deep breath and reached out with the Force.
The Force obliged and showed her a direction. She set out, led by her shadow.
The suns, almost at the zenith when she'd set out, had descended halfway to the horizon when she arrived at a settlement. She'd tried to pace herself and stretch her water with the Force, but by the time she felt other sentients, her canteens were empty and her throat parched.
She took a breath to center herself before entering the town. Hopefully they'd take Republic credits for lodging.
Huttese was the main language on the streets. Less humans than a Core World market would have. An aura of wariness and misery clung to every passerby.
Tatooine? It would fit. And Republic credits wouldn't be accepted.
Aovor slipped into a shade and rubbed her head. It was supposed to have been a simple infiltration mission: get in unnoticed, slice the systems, get out. Unfortunately, the White Maw crime syndicate had been tipped off – perhaps by the Senator whose involvement with the criminals was under investigation – and the conditions on site had not matched the intel. She'd acquired the data only for the syndicate to send pursuers.
She was dressed in general spacer gear that blended in on Tatooine, even if it marked her as an offworlder. The syndicate did not necessarily know she was a Jedi; Judicial had its own investigators it could've sent. The White Maw didn't have ties to the Hutts, thankfully, and might not know to search on Tatooine – it was quite a bit off her course. They would pay visit to other planets first.
They would come, though. And Jinn's misadventure a few years back had proven that Tatooine didn't take Republic credits. She should've paid more attention to that report.
Right. Time to figure out a cover story and find a job. Aovor turned-
-and almost ran into a human woman. "Sorry."
"It's all right," the woman said. Pale skin, dark hair with a few threads of gray. Shorter than Aovor. Physically unremarkable, but in the Force... Aovor's metaphorical eyes kept sliding off her. Interesting.
"Would you happen to know of anyone hiring?" she asked.
The woman's eyes widened; Aovor felt the barest brush against her in the Force. "No," the woman said, eyes downcast. "I'm sorry."
"Thank you for your time," Aovor said and let the woman go. "I'm Aovor Xau," she added at the Force's prompting.
The woman assessed her, with sight and with the Force. "Shmi Skywalker," she said and disappeared.
Shmi Skywalker. "Well," Aovor said to herself. She really should've paid more attention to Jinn's report.
The highly Force-sensitive youngling Jinn and Kenobi had brought back was called Anakin Skywalker; Aovor had never met him, but a coincidential meeting with a highly powerful untrained Force-sensitive of the right age and species on his homeworld? Probably his mother.
His mother, who might know how Qui-Gon Jinn had actually acquired the funds to buy the hyperdrive parts. The Nabooan Queen had mentioned gambling, but Kenobi hadn't been privy to the details and half the Shadows suspected Jinn had turned to prostitution or something else unsavoury and lied to the Queen for the sake of his reputation. Though the talk about him joining a traveling circus was probably an invention of the grapevine.
Aovor walked around the town – Mos Espa – listening for indications of available short-term work. There were very few transients here, most of them bounty hunters visiting the local Hutts for contracts. Labor was done in large part by slaves. Freepeople were either business owners who may or may not report to the Hutts or moisture farmers outside town. The spaceport didn't have any upcoming departures to anywhere useful and the only person in the town who took Republic credits was a spaceport official who was definitely running at least two smuggling rings in her spare time. Aovor had gotten a few ration bars and a canteen of water out of that, though, so she wasn't in completely dire straits.
Thus, come dusk, Aovor had no local currency and no place to stay. She was a Jedi and perfectly capable of roughing it, though, so she reached out to the Force and let it guide her steps.
She was brought to a plain door in a pourstone slave housing complex. The units were sectioned into dwellings Aovor might characterize as family homes elsewhere, but on Tatooine, they were more likely divided up by slaveowner. Here lived the slaves of the cantina owner; there the slaves of the junk dealer.
And here lived Shmi Skywalker, mother of a Jedi padawan, in a slave dwelling. Her presence in the Force was unmistakeable.
Aovor knocked. Shmi Skywalker might not be able to help her, but if the woman had been sold into slavery after her son left, Aovor might be able to help her.
The door opened by a bare sliver. "Why are you here?" Shmi quietly asked.
Aovor didn't actually have a reason. She'd rather not mention the Force out loud, in case- Ah. Shmi had seen a Jedi, and Aovor had her lightsaber on her. She slid it out of her sleeve and angled it to the light.
Shmi inhaled sharply. "Come in."
The dwelling felt oddly empty in relation to its small size. Aovor took in the lack of decorations and sense of desolation and offered Shmi the canteen of water.
"Did Qui-Gon Jinn send you?" Shmi asked.
Aovor had a very bad feeling about this. "Uh, no? My ship crashed and the Force brought me to you."
Rage. Aovor had to take a step back from the sheer intensity of Shmi's feelings, rage and resentment and a desire to rip something apart-
-and then it was all gone. "I see," Shmi very blankly replied. Aovor couldn't feel her in the Force.
"Master Jinn died soon after leaving Tatooine," Aovor offered. "Did he make an agreement with you...?"
"I hoped he might return to free me."
"Um. Okay. What?" Aovor took a deep breath. Okay. What the kriff had Jinn done? "How did he acquire the funds he needed to repair the hyperdrive?"
Shmi stared at her. "He bet on my son in a pod race."
Okay. That was not the absolute worst case scenario of "sold a woman into slavery under the promise that her son would be a Jedi" even if it contained more child endangerment than a diplomat was supposed to encourage. Miraculously, it even matched what he wrote in his report. "He knew you were a slave?"
"Yes. He freed Anakin and took him to the Jedi. I'd hoped-" Shmi turned away, hands clenched. "Look at me, being a terrible host. Would you like something to eat?"
"I'll free you," Aovor promised. Shmi snapped her head to look at her. "I'm on the run from the White Maw crime syndicate and need a ship to Coruscant, but I won't leave until you're free." It wasn't her mission, but- She was a Jedi. She had to set right what her brethren had left in shambles.
Shmi took a deep breath. An array of complicated emotions leaked through her shielding, flickering away before Aovor could identify them. "I need to be up before dawn. You may sleep there."
Aovor bowed and settled down on the indicated pallet. It was far from the least comfortable place she'd slept in. She listened to Shmi's breathing in the other room as she drifted off, the Force contentedly settled over her.
Aovor woke up after dawn as all the aches and pains of yesterday's crash returned with a vengeance. She drank careful sips of the water she'd bought and ate a ration bar before settling down into another healing trance.
By the time she was done, Shmi had slipped back into the house. Aovor stretched out. Shmi had relaxed, slightly, which gave Aovor the chance to reach out and bask in her presence in the Force. It was hard to describe how people felt in the Force, Basic being too limited and concerned with the tangible rather than luminous, but even by those standards, Shmi was one of a kind. Aovor ran a gentle touch over Shmi's glow, moth drawn to a fire, and let herself be drawn in.
Shmi noticed her presence, though, confusion rising to the top of her mind. Aovor drew back and joined Shmi at the table. She'd promised to free Shmi. This was Hutt Space, so slavery meant... "Subcutaneous explosives?"
"...yes."
Shmi was still staring at her warily, like Aovor might go back on her word at any moment. It had been a common expression on the slaves' faces that time Aovor freed a shipment headed to Nar Shaddaa, and Qui-Gon Jinn hadn't exactly given her much reason to trust Aovor's word. "I might be able to feel the explosive's location with the Force," Aovor offered.
Shmi nodded. Aovor placed a hand on her shoulder and reached out with the Force.
The principle was the same as with a healing trance: probe through the body and find any foreign objects or the knots they would cause around them. It was harder on another's body, though, and Aovor felt her focus slip from Shmi's body to the air around her repeatedly.
A buzz made its way to her awareness from Shmi's left arm. She probed deeper and managed to isolate it to the outer edge of the bicep.
"It's here," Aovor said and tapped above the chip. She had some bacta with her, and the chip sat neatly between structures rather than embedded within one. "I think I can get it out with just a scalpel."
"I have a knife." Shmi rose with a determined set to her jaw and blaze to her eyes.
Aovor let her. She set her small medpack on the table and went through the contents: mostly bacta patches, with some painkillers, bandages, and disinfectant wipes around the edges. She set out a painkiller, wipes, and bacta patch on the table and waited.
"What is that?" Shmi demanded.
"A standard-issue painkiller, a disinfectant wipe, and a bacta-infused bandage," Aovor replied.
Shmi stared at the painkiller, calculation and conflict flickering in the Force around her. "I have not had painkillers before."
"This one won't cloud your senses or judgement."
"Very well." Shmi swallowed the tiny capsule with a minimum of water. "Please."
Aovor lifted Shmi's sleeve and wiped the skin and knife with disinfectant. Then she closed her eyes and reached out with the Force.
The explosive chip was where she'd found it. She wrapped it in stillness and gave it a careful nudge. Shmi twitched as the chip slid around the muscle, but that was all right, Aovor was doing this with the Force, not her hands. Gentle nudges. Careful pulls. The chip slept in silence as it was manipulated out of its position.
Finally it was at Shmi's skin. Aovor raised the knife and cut.
Blood welled at the incision as Aovor gave the chip a final tug. "It's out," she said as she levitated it to the table.
Shmi stared at the chip. Close enough to touch, Aovor could feel her emotions – intense wistfulness, regret, pain, anger – clearly enough to catalogue them.
"There," she said as she pressed the bacta patch to Shmi's skin and stepped back.
"Watto will expect me back in the morning," Shmi said. "We must leave tonight. Come."
"Do you have money to buy passage on a spaceship?" Aovor didn't think slaves were allowed to save, but then again, that would merely make them hide their tender.
"No. They are on guard for escaped slaves," Shmi explained. "But I still remember how to get into Gardulla's palace, and she has little security on her shuttles."
It was flashier than Aovor would have preferred, but then again, as far as the galaxy was concerned, she'd never been here. "There is no love lost between the Hutts and I," she said. "I assume we're walking?"
"In part."
They slinked out of the slave quarters, Aovor with the datachit burning against her skin and Shmi in her thickest clothes and the contents of an illicit toolbox. The explosive chip Shmi had placed beneath her bedroll.
There were guards at the entries and exits to the slave quarters, of course, but the night was old enough that this set had turned to drunken revelry. Aovor hotwired a speeder from the most drunk set and together with Shmi pushed it far enough that its noise wouldn't alert the watchers.
The desert night bit at Aovor's ungloved hands. She tightened her grip on the speeder bike's handholds. Shmi climbed up behind her.
The engine lit up with a muted cough that settled into a steady thrum. Aovor felt Shmi circle her arms around her waist, warm against her back. The galaxy lit up the clear sky with stars. Aovor turned the bike toward where the river of stars hit the horizon and pushed the bike to its limit.
There was something about the night that sang of freedom. The base of Aovor's horns ached with the whipping of the cold night air, but the sky was wide and the sands smooth, and Shmi's breath puffed against her neck.
A distant cry echoed across the desert night. "Krayt dragon," Shmi whispered in awe.
For a moment, Aovor reached out with the Force. The universe sang its symphony, every scorpion in the sand in perfect harmony with the steady hum of the planet itself, she and Shmi the only sentients she could sense.
They did not speak more on their journey. There was no need, between the sand and the stars.
Gardulla's palace, dimly lit in the dark, came before them, and Aovor couldn't help but feel a twinge of disappointment. She made a note to revisit that as she turned off the engine.
"This way," Shmi whispered and – disappeared.
Aovor was a trained Jedi Shadow, and it was only with those skills that she could follow Shmi. The other woman moved in a way that blended in to her surroundings, and was even instinctively using the Force to make attention slide off her. Aovor had met Jedi who hadn't mastered the art to such degree even after years of training, but then again, all of Shmi's life had been training: a slave was best unnoticed. Even so, it was impressive.
They walked along a narrow trail that barely counted as such. There was little sand on the rocks, as the ground sloped steeply enough that it fell down into a sand trap of sorts. Aovor wondered for a moment why Gardulla would build her palace in an indent, then realized that it was for cooling. She thought she saw a drawbridge on one edge of the palace.
They picked down the last meters of precipitous terrain and set for the palace proper. Aovor noticed Shmi wending a careful path through the sands and made sure to step in her footprints.
At the small side door, Shmi stopped. "It's after curfew," she whispered.
"I can get it open." Aovor closed her eyes and reached with the Force. She felt the door and its hinges, the locking mechanism, and ran her attention around it. There were some connections to elsewhere. Aovor checked once more that there was no-one on the other side of the door, then reached out to disable the alarm and open the door.
Shmi glanced at her oddly before slipping into the palace. Aovor closed the door and re-enabled the alarm after them.
Again Shmi led the way, this time through mostly unlit passages. Aovor followed her with silent footsteps and cast out with the Force. No-one was awake on their level; she felt a despair-tinged silence in what must be the slave dormitories above and scattered slumberers who must be Gardulla's guards. A few of them were still up, puttering about without caring overmuch about their surroundings. The slaves who had risen – kitchen staff preparing bread for breakfast, probably – were mostly spinning around in one corner of the complex.
"There are stairs up ahead, but we'll have to use a turbolift to get to the shuttle platform," Shmi murmured.
Aovor made an equally silent noise of acknowledgement. "And the detonators?"
Shmi froze. "What about them?"
"Are they stored in a singular location?"
"And once you have them, what would you do with them?" Shmi hissed, hands clenched into fists beside her thighs but presence worryingly nonexistent in the Force.
"Hand them over to the slaves, of course."
"Would that not delay you from your important Jedi business overmuch?"
Aovor inhaled at the rebuke. "As of now," she said, "freeing them is my important Jedi business." She frantically went through the conversations they'd had and wished she'd taken those extra diplomacy courses her Master had nagged her about. "I am sorry that Qui-Gon Jinn left you in chains. I am sorry no-one came for you when Gardulla owned you. I am a Jedi, and part of that duty is fixing where my brethren have erred."
If it wasn't the right thing to say, it was close enough to make Shmi's hands unclench and her presence reappear in the Force. She was still radiating old hurt. "The detonator room is guarded."
"I can cut through the back wall."
Shmi nodded and resumed walking. Soon enough they reached the stairs, lit only by the dim glow of half-expired emergency lighting strips, and went up. Aovor kept count of the storeys.
The dark had not allowed her a survey of the building, but she estimated they were perhaps two thirds of the way up when Shmi brought them out of the stairwell. A small group of guards were occupied with something along the lines of dejarik or shah-tzeh, more were sleeping – and a pair stood guard.
"Is it to the left of us, guarded by a pair of guards?" Aovor quietly asked.
"Yes."
Aovor nodded and let Shmi lead them partway to the detonator room. Just before they were in range of the guards, Aovor ducked to a side corridor and went around until she was at the back of the detonator room, aligned with the guards' bored presences.
No-one else was coming. She took a deep breath and lit her lightsaber.
A snap-hiss gave way to a thrum that would always mean safety to Aovor. Green light bloomed on the walls and Shmi's face.
"Take a step back," Aovor whispered.
She could, with some effort, use the Force to sense where the shelves were. She cut a horizontal gash beneath one shelf, hoping the clearance was enough not to heat treat any of the detonators, then beneath another, before drawing her lightsaber back to only poke through the wall.
Entryway cut out, she used the Force to pull the wall away. Three shelves of detonators blocked her path, slightly burnmarked but otherwise unharmed.
Aovor carefully sent the detonators to Shmi with the Force and eeled into the room proper. Most of the detonators had been on the back wall, but her lightsaber illuminated piles more that she waved over to Shmi. Shmi had lifted her skirts to form a makeshift sack to hold all the detonators; Aovor still had to carry a stack that wouldn't fit.
They retreated to the stairwell. The guards did not seem to have noticed, the pair guarding the detonator room as bored as they had been at the start and the rest slumbering or preoccupied.
There were harried, fearful people some levels down. "Are the kitchens down and to our right?" Aovor asked.
"I wasn't a kitchen slave, but – yes, they should be."
"It might be better if you hand over the detonators," Aovor suggested. "I am a stranger, while they know you were once one of them."
"Gardulla would never let any of the detonators out of the room unless she were blowing someone up."
"And I'd rather not have anyone think they're about to be blown up."
Shmi gave her a look, as if any slave could take one look at Aovor and see what Shmi knew through her Force sensitivity, but didn't argue the matter further. Going down the stairs was slower than going up, as Shmi couldn't see her feet from the pile of detonators, but they made it to the appropriate level without Aovor sensing any spikes of alarm.
Here the corridors were empty. Slaves slept beneath, crammed together like Anselmi sardines. Aovor levitated her detonators to Shmi's pile, propped them up with the Force, and stayed behind the door when Shmi entered the kitchens.
"Shmi!" a woman said. "Is- Is that-"
Aovor didn't hear the rest of the exchange, but she felt the blazing shock and delight of the slaves that turned into a frantic hurry. They skittered away, detonators hopefully with them. Aovor acknowledged her own gratefulness that she could help them and her sorrow that she couldn't do more.
Shmi emerged with none of the detonators with her. She didn't say anything as she marched past Aovor to the stairs.
Beneath and behind them, the slumbering masses were being awoken, their shock and joy enough to project through the whole building. Thankfully Hutts weren't Force sensitive; Gardulla would've jolted awake if she were. The guards, too, sensed nothing.
Aovor had been raised at the Jedi Temple, in the midst of her kind. It still sometimes boggled her that there were people who did not sense the Force and all its glories, did not see the rich tapestry of life, did not know that all life was one like they knew how to breathe. She had been trained to see and sent to the land of the blind.
The stairs ended. They emerged in a corridor that was lit.
The lighting wasn't much, a ruddy orange emergency glowstrip while the main lights were off, but it gave a sense that this corridor was occupied even when the levels below weren't – not even the one with the slave detonators. And Aovor had a bad feeling.
"Wait," she whispered. The Force was with her, her constant companion. She reached out past the bright sparks of the newly freed slaves to her close environment.
There. Someone stood guard.
"Where is the turbolift?" she asked.
Shmi gave directions that led straight to the sole guard. Aovor hissed. The turbolift was a chokepoint, and not one they could avoid. Alone, she might've tried scaling the walls, but Shmi wouldn't be able to keep up and Gardulla probably had unpleasant surprises at the edges of her shuttlepad. That left dealing with the guard. Her lightsaber was right out, as the wounds were too distinctive, and her blaster was still with the White Maw – she'd had to make quite the rushed exit. Goring the guard on her horns was a possibility, but it would give the guard too much time to call for help and wouldn't work if the guard was wearing armor.
That left the Force. Anything was deadly if thrown hard enough, but- Ah. Yes. It was the early hours of the morning, and the sole guard had no partner to chat with and was very tired.
Aovor smiled. It would ruin the guard's career to be caught napping on the job, but she did not care much for people working for slaver scum. "I've got it."
Shmi was perhaps a little skeptical, but Aovor had gotten them through this far. They'd make it through.
The excitement of a hunt almost complete – blood up, fangs out, end within sight – rose to Aovor. She acknowledged her hunting instincts and let go.
They inched closer to the turbolift. Jedi generally needed line of sight to do anything complicated, but a part of Shadow training was doing stuff in suboptimal circumstances, and making people take a nap was one of the things they practiced with often. Aovor touched the man's mind the moment she came close enough and subtly emphasized the feeling of tired. This gave her more of that tiredness to emphasize and add to, leading to a feedback loop that eventually made the target fall asleep.
It took two minutes to make the guard thunk his head against the wall and slide down. "He's asleep," Aovor declared and picked up the pace.
The man was snoring lightly when they passed him. "Qui-Gon Jinn did not display such skills," Shmi remarked.
A non-Force-sensitive might take it for an idle remark. Aovor knew it was fishing. "Beyond the basics, Jedi usually specialize. I do infiltration missions. Jinn did diplomacy."
"And Anakin?"
Aovor would've loved to answer, but she had no clue what Anakin was doing. She punched the appropriate level into the turbolift controls. "Probably still with the basics? Or figuring out what he wants to specialize in. I haven't actually met him."
"Will I get to speak to him?"
Initiates and padawans weren't supposed to have contact with their birth families, but... "I can bring you to Coruscant and I'll chew the Council for leaving you in slavery. I think they'll give you a chance to prove to Anakin you're alive and free? Anything further will have to wait until he's a Knight." Unless they decided to invoke one of the provisions concerning self-trained Force sensitives and give Shmi some proper training, but those had last been used before the Ruusan Reformation.
The turbolift doors opened to the desert night. "I get to see him again?" Shmi asked, voice and heart full to bursting with pained hope.
"Knights and Masters are allowed unrestricted contact with their birth families."
Determination crystallized in Shmi, and Aovor was given one moment to consider whether she'd made a colossal mistake in letting the conversation go this direction before Shmi strode out to the shuttle pad. Aovor slipped through the closing doors to follow her.
There were a few shuttles, all identical. Aovor spun around for a moment, listening to the Force while distracted by the slaves' celebration. Soon they'd build enough momentum to escape, either by rioting or fleeing, either of which would wake the guards and Gardulla. Aovor's Senate-accessible report would point out how good a distraction the slaves were.
The Force eventually deigned to show a preference for the leftmost shuttle. Aovor waved a hand to unlock them all and led Shmi up the ramp.
Everything was labeled in Huttese, but these things had a standard enough layout. Aovor checked the fuel – more than enough to make it to the Core – and ran through an abbreviated preflight checklist.
The shuttle was about as graceful as a bantha on roller skates, but it rose off the shuttle pad and made it through Tatooine's dry and dusty atmosphere without incident. Arriving on Coruscant with a stolen Hutt shuttle would raise more questions and attention than Aovor wanted to answer, so she picked a somewhat seedy world roughly halfway over and set course. Corellia would've been better, but it was too close to the core. Spirana had plenty of transit options to Coruscant.
With a jerk of pseudomotion, they entered hyperspace. Aovor relaxed as the streaks of blue and white filled the viewport.
"We're away?"
"Yes." Aovor turned her chair to find Shmi staring outside, entranced. "We'll have to switch transports at Spirana so we can arrive on Coruscant unnoticed."
"I have never been outside Hutt space," Shmi mildly said.
"I guess you're getting a tour, then." Spirana, Coruscant, potentially Corellia if they had a layover, and whichever world she ended up settling on – even had her son not been a Jedi padawan, no-one in their right mind would recommend Coruscant as a place to immigrate to.
"Yes." Shmi dropped her gaze from the window to Aovor. "I guess I am."
A grin split her face, and suddenly this woman, chewed up and spat out by slavery and the desert alike, shed a decade of age. Aovor couldn't help but smile back.
"I'm free," Shmi whispered. "I'm free."
"You are." She will live free and die free, the Force whispered to Aovor. Before she could remark on that, though, Shmi stepped into Aovor's personal space, cupped her face with her hands, and leaned down for a kiss.
Shmi's lips were dry and chapped, but that didn't matter, as Aovor felt her clumsily reach out with the Force. By force of habit, Aovor opened her mouth and reached back to complete the feedback loop before coming to her senses and tearing her mouth from Shmi's.
"You don't owe me anything," Aovor said. What was the suggested phrasing, again? She was sure one of her classes had gone over this. "I am a Jedi and we do not collect payment. The job is its own reward."
"I'm free. Am I not allowed to celebrate?" Shmi asked.
Aovor lightly skimmed over the surface of Shmi's mind. She found a deep, overflowing joy, the complex remnants of a dozen suppressed emotions, and no traces whatsoever of obligation. Shmi had dropped her shields as well; like this, she was impossibly bright, a bright star to the candle that Aovor knew her own presence to be.
"You are," Aovor said and leaned over to press herself to Shmi, body and soul.