AHSOKA TANO

Ahsoka stood by the new bomb, unsure as to if she should go after the person who set the bomb or defused it. In a split-second, she had made her decision. She bent down to examine it.

She was lucky. This was the same kind of bomb that she had had to defuse with Anakin – she winced to think his name – in a Togruta colony on Kiros a year or two back. As he had correctly guessed, two lightsaber slashes in the shape of an X over the control panel would stop the countdown and disarm it.

And it might just work this time.

With a kick, she popped the control panel clean off, and stared down at the wires inside the device. It was a useless effort. All of them were covered in metal plating, making it impossible to guess which one to cut.

Left with no choice, she made a simple swing, and the countdown on the screen flickered, and then stuttered to a stop. Two wide lightsaber marks, still steaming, began to cool, forming a molten brown X.

Ahsoka took off running after the strange figure, then stopped. No footsteps in the distance. So they had chosen to hide. She wouldn’t be able to catch them if she didn’t use her Jedi senses.

She cleared her mind and listened. She could hear… life. The trees and plants bending and growing in the wind, and a small brook bubbling out a song in watery harmony with a breeze. An animal walked an ancient trail that its ancestors had walked for centuries. And…

A twig snapped directly behind her.

She turned around and held her lightsabers towards the sound. A battle-scarred commando droid stood facing her, draped in a cloak that gave it a vaguely humanoid appearance.

“I am here to deliver a message. But only if you guess and speak my password will my systems allow me to repeat it. You have three chances. Guess wrong on all of them and I self-destruct,” it said in its metallic voice, as Ahsoka vaguely wondered how on Coruscant someone had gotten access to a working commando droid.

Ahsoka then realized that the droid was telling the truth. There was some sort of listening devise attached to the droid, with three glowing red bars on it. Somehow, it was linked to a self-destruct mechanism. The bars had to represent every guess that she made.

She racked her brain for any clue as to what the password was. Who are my enemies? She asked herself. Who wants me dead and is also capable of orchestrating something like this?

The Emperor’s agents, maybe? Or some sleemo like Cad Bane I threw in jail? She decided to take a guess. “Bounty?” she said, asking it more than saying it. A bar on the commando droid’s listening mechanism flashed off with a beep.

Ahsoka thought harder. “Empire?” Another bar turned off. She was left with just one more guess.

Suddenly she felt the flow of the Force washing through her, filing her with wisdom and knowledge, showing her old memories of times long gone. She saw Anakin’s laughing face, and the blue of his lightsaber… But oddly enough, it didn’t hurt her as much to think his name.

And suddenly she knew what the answer was.

“Anakin.” Droid and device remained impassive.

“The password is Anakin. Now give me your message,” she said, and all three bars flashed green twice, then off.