The Last Signal

The Senate Rotunda hummed with the usual tedium of interminable speeches. Ahsoka Tano, seated between Barriss Offee and Caleb Dume, had already sketched a full battle scene in the margins of her datapad. Caleb’s stomach growled audibly for the third time in the last hour. Barriss shot him a warning glance, but her lips twitched. Then the lights flickered. A low rumble shook the chamber. Senators gasped as chunks of ceiling rained down near the dais. Red alarms blared. Through the chaos, Ahsoka caught the flick of Barriss’s hand — the code for ‘distress’. Caleb’s eyes went wide, and he signed back ‘hungry’ — their emergency extraction phrase. “Now or never,” Ahsoka whispered. She vaulted over the railing, igniting her lightsaber. Barriss followed, calm and precise, while Caleb scrambled after them, muttering about missing lunch. A group of Separatist sympathizers had planted explosives in the sub-levels. The Senate Guard was overwhelmed. But the three padawans had spent months learning every corridor, every guard rotation, every hidden passage. They moved like a single organism — Ahsoka clearing a path, Barriss slicing through control panels with surgical accuracy, Caleb using his small frame to squeeze into vents and disable detonators. “Left vent, third junction!” Ahsoka shouted over the din. Barriss nodded, already rerouting power. Caleb emerged covered in dust but grinning, holding up a deactivated bomb core. Within minutes, the threat was neutralized. The Senate stood in stunned silence. Master Windu’s eyes met Ahsoka’s from across the hall, and for a moment, she thought she saw the ghost of a smile. The Council, of course, would never acknowledge their secret club — but they didn’t need to. Later that evening, the three friends gathered in their abandoned hangar. A single glow-rod lit the space. Caleb produced a bag of stolen tarts — still warm. “I can’t believe that worked,” he said between bites. “We trained for it,” Barriss said softly, a rare smile crossing her face. Ahsoka leaned back, looking up at the stars through the cracked transparisteel ceiling. “We’re not just padawans anymore. We’re a team.” “The Council knows,” Caleb said. “They always knew,” Barriss replied. “They let us have this.” Silence settled, comfortable and full. They shared the tarts, their laughter echoing in the empty hangar. Tomorrow they would return to their masters, to separate missions. But tonight, they were just three friends who had found a way to survive the galaxy together. And that, Ahsoka thought, was worth more than any mission.