Chapter 6: Mara Jade and the Mystery of the Guavian Death Gang
It was almost twenty-hundred hours, and Mara was not making any progress. She sat in her apartment as the light streaming into the windows turned from daylight to the bright, artificial lights of Coruscant at nightfall. She was in the same position she had been in for hours: hunched over the HoloNet, searching through databases.
Snoke, she typed. Snake. Smoke. Supreme Leader. List of known Force users.
She was coming up empty. There were a few leads here and there, but nothing that she felt was solid enough to build upon. There was a listing for Snoken & Family Grocers on Coruscant, a Smoke-Acker High School for Boys. The only thing that sounded remotely likely was a reference to an ancient Force user that had been found on Jakku, but any trace of him had since been lost for centuries.
It was possible that Ben had made up the name himself. She knew well that Ben did have an active imagination. But something, whether deep in her intuition or in the folds of forgotten memory, not to mention Leia's all-but outright verbal confirmation, told her that Ben's casual admission was worth researching.
Mara shut off the HoloNet and buried her face in her hands. When she finally found what was at stake, would it already be too late?
Lost in thought, she jumped when she heard someone at the front door, and sensed a very familiar presence. She stood up at once. "Luke?" she called.
"Mara." And then he was there - in the doorway of their bedroom. Artoo beeped out a greeting at his side. His hair was longer, and his beard was growing in. She could swear he was thinner than he was when he left, but he was dressed in black like always, and...
"You didn't think you should tell your wife when you were coming back? Your pregnant wife?" she asked, coming up to him. "You said it would be tomorrow."
He grinned and kissed her. It had been a month since she'd seen last him but he still smelled the same. "We finished up early and I wondered if I could surprise you. I missed you." He hesitated. "Both of you."
She rolled her eyes. "A little early for that, Farmboy. This kid is about the size of my finger right now. Not that you would know it, with the morning sickness. Or the back pain. You know you're lucky you're a man, right?"
"You make me lucky," he said smugly.
"You make me sick," she said, but she kissed his jaw.
Later that night, they lounged on the couch in their living room. They should have already been asleep. Not only was it late, but Mara had work the next day. It wouldn't be a long shift, since, in anticipation of Luke's return, she had already told Karrde that she was taking a few days off. At the same time, it had been so long they'd last been together, and she wasn't quite ready to say goodnight to him, even if he'd be next to her in the morning. The Force bond between them sung and crackled at their physical proximity and Mara - Mara had just missed him.
He was telling her about his new students, and the kyber crystals they had found to fashion new lightsabers. Mara listened with more rapt attention than she might have otherwise, her right arm slung across her legs. When he finished his story, he said, "I want you to show you something."
"Oh?"
She internally groaned when he called Artoo over, and wrapped her legs underneath herself. She still didn't completely understand the mutual fascination between her husband and the droid. Luke touched a few buttons, and after a moment, a document projected out, the words clear against the white walls of their living room.
"I think my father wrote this," he said.
Mara sat up, and examined it carefully. Indeed, at the top where the the author should be was the name Darth Vader. She looked to Luke. She knew how important to him this was.
"But what's more," he continued. "is that if you look here…" Luke pressed the button several times until he reached a certain spot on the document.
Mara looked. "It stops in the middle of a sentence," she said, confused.
"Yes," Luke said significantly. "I...I know it's not much to go on, but just the style of this report compared to the others, not to mention the fact it's cut off, makes me think that maybe this file was actually from Vader's personal files."
Mara considered him. She knew that he, desperate to see any peek of humanity in Vader, could be made to jump to conclusions. When it came to his father, he wanted to jump to conclusions.
"You're not convinced," Luke guessed.
"It isn't much to go on," she said, echoing his own words. "The Empire wouldn't just leave the personal files of their most high-ranking officials lying around for any astromech to take from."
Luke sighed. "You're probably right. I just got excited. I also just thought...I mean, Artoo isn't just any old astromech."
Artoo beeped in indignant agreement.
"There's also this." He pressed a few more buttons. The report disappeared, and something massive replaced it, its projection filling the room.
Mara blinked. It looked like some type of map. But -
"There's a piece missing," Mara breathed. "And I don't recognize this system at all."
Luke grinned at her appreciatively. "That's what I thought, too."
"How weird," Mara said, getting up to examine the map closer. "Luke, we've done a lot of travelling. I thought I had seen most of the galaxy."
He nodded. "I thought at first it might be the next system they planned on destroying. But that didn't fit. They destroyed Alderaan because they wanted to make an example to the galaxy," he said. "There wouldn't be any point in using the Death Star to destroy a planet no one had ever heard of. So why would this map be in their databases?"
"I thought," he continued, clearing his throat. "That maybe if this file was related to Vader, that maybe it had something to do with the Jedi."
Mara turned to face him; the map's projection reflected eerily on his face. "That's pure conjecture," she said carefully. "But...you could be right. I'm not sure about this file having been directly from Vader's personal computers, but he definitely was on the Death Star, and he was obsessed with destroying Jedi history. And neither of us have never seen this system before. It is possible."
Luke beamed at her. "I was sure you were going to shoot down my theory."
She smiled affectionately at him, mussing his too-long hair. "Not all of your ideas are bad."
She hit a button on Artoo so the projection went away and she could see him clearly again. It was time to tell him. "Anyway, you're not alone. I've also been entertaining some crazy speculation," she confided.
"Really?"
"You sound so surprised."
His eyes danced. "Tell me."
"I doubt you'll look so enthusiastic when I'm finished." She told him about her latest theory with Ben, this 'Supreme Leader', and his newfound control and abilities in the Force.
She watched as Luke stiffened and his face grew drawn. "Mara," he said. "That's…" He shook his head. "You know I trust your judgement. At the same time, what you're saying is incredibly serious. I know you didn't get any results on the HoloNet, but we have more resources than that. I've found a few old archives we can look through. Plus, we can always ask Tekka, or Min, if they've heard of this Snoke, or a Force sensitive 'Supreme Leader.'"
Mara nodded slowly. Why hadn't she thought of that before? Over the years, Lor San Tekka had become a friend who was filled with old knowledge that most others had forgotten. And then there was Min, Luke's co-teacher at the Jedi school. Min was an ancient Jedi who had survived Order 66 and knew things about history and the Force that she knew could make Luke positively salivate.
Still, there was nothing like good old-fashioned intuition.
"The other thing is," Luke continued. "Ben really could have just been making all that up, or maybe misremembering something. You know he's just a kid."
Mara frowned. "I was just a kid when Palpatine manipulated me."
Luke looked abruptly stricken. "That's not what I meant."
She shook her head. "I know. But listen. When he said Snoke it was like...like I've heard that name before."
She knew, knew before she had said anything, that Luke didn't want to believe her. He didn't want to think that some Dark Side Force user was manipulating his nephew. He wanted to ask Tekka, and Min, and look through some archives, and tell his wife that he couldn't find anything, and that Ben was simply being an inventive, boisterous child who said silly things when playing with action figures.
"I think Leia might know something," she suggested.
He clasped her hand so tightly that it almost hurt, eyes baring into hers. "What do you mean?"
She told him about their conversation, and watched as his face turned visibly whiter. "I think she suspects something is off about him, and I think she might have some kind of misplaced maternal instinct that if she just keeps Ben at home and keeps him from training that he'll be safe."
Luke set his jaw. "We'll look into this together."
She knew his expressions well enough to know that he didn't believe her. "Luke, I went through this. This was my childhood."
Luke swallowed. "I know. I just don't want to jump to conclusions. Not yet."
"Well, I would say we have plenty of opportunities to gather additional evidence, but Leia forbade me from being with Ben alone ever again."
"What?"
"That's what I said."
"That's completely uncalled for-" he sputtered.
"Oh, she also figured out I was pregnant," she told him.
"How? Wait - did she use the Force?"
She smirked at him for his sudden enthusiasm. She understood his question. She still looked as she had before, even if she felt...well, a bit like an oversized, bloated bantha with urination problems. "She said that she knew all along."
"Hmm," Luke said thoughtfully. "That's basically what she said when I told her we were siblings, but…"
"But she still kissed you on Hoth?"
He winced.
She continued. "And there was something else…"
"This was quite the conversation," Luke murmured.
She knocked her shoulder against his. "It also turned out that Ben didn't know that his grandfather was Vader."
She had expected him to protest, or at least express surprise. Instead, Luke didn't respond. "Luke?" She looked up at him.
His brow was furrowed, and he was staring at her curiously. "I know that he doesn't know," he said.
Mara raised her brows. "You know? And it doesn't bother you?"
Luke sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Listen, I was twenty-two when I found out my father was Vader. It's been more than a decade since, and it's still a lot to take in. And Ben is only nine."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Mara protested.
"He's very young," Luke said.
Mara scooted slightly away from him. "I don't want my child not to know who her own grandfather is," she said coldly.
Luke looked at her strangely. "Her?"
Mara crossed her arms. "I was just picking a pronoun, and you're changing the subject."
"Leia always said that she could tell that Ben was going to be a boy through the Force, while she was pregnant with him, and she's hardly even been trained. I couldn't tell, but she could."
"Skywalker."
"Fine. I also want our child to know...his or her own family history. But not while the kid is too young. Maybe I wouldn't wait till as old as Ben is, but it depends on who the kid is. And also...Ben is Leia's son. And Leia hates Vader, she still pretty much denies that he's her father. On top of that, sometimes some of what Ben can do scares her. So of course she's hesitant to tell him. She's probably going to wait for as long as possible."
Mara listened but she could hardly believe what she was hearing. "Do you agree with her?"
Luke shrugged. "I mean...Ben is cute, but he's also pretty impulsive, and immature. I don't know how much good it would be for him to learn the truth right now. When he's a little bit older, he'll be able to process it in more of an adult way."
"So what, you're going to wait till he's twenty-five? Thirty? 'Surprise, Ben, the grandfather you idolize was a Dark Lord of the Sith'?"
Luke looked insulted. "I mean, that's basically what happened to me, except it was my father."
"Luke! Don't make this about you," she growled. "This is about Ben. This is about our child. What kind of stories we're going to tell our child."
Luke swallowed. "It depends on who our kid is," he repeated. "I don't think Ben should find out when he's thirty, more like...early teens, maybe. But ultimately that decision is up to Han and Leia, because they're his parents. With our kid, we have to see what we get. If he or she is really immature, we'll tell them later. If not, maybe earlier. I don't think there's an exact formula for this. But I want to be able to make this decision together."
Mara suddenly felt exhausted. "I'm ready to go to sleep," she said abruptly.
"Mara-"
She got up and absently started putting her hair into a bun on top of her head. She did not look at him.
She heard Luke's deep breath. "Okay. Let's talk about this later."
Later that night, in their bed, Mara heard the sound of the shower switch on, and gradually felt the temperature rise slightly in the room. She fell asleep, feeling, despite herself, very cold.
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Luke was still asleep when she woke. His body was turned toward her, his mouth ajar. He had shaved, but his hair still hung down long on his neck. From the position of his arms, she wondered if he had fallen asleep holding her.
The issues raised in their argument still pressed against her in their urgency, but somehow, the gap forged between the two of them seemed smaller in the morning light.
She brushed the hair from his brow. Farmboy. She hoped he knew her nickname for her was born out of only affection. Where others saw only his title, and recalled only his epic adventures, she saw a good man, a good husband. And soon, a good father.
She dressed quickly, ate - she still had hardly any appetite - and left for work.
The job Karrde had assigned to her today was fairly straight-forward; and she was cheered at the thought of being home again soon now that her husband was back. She had to slice into some of the accounts of a criminal organization calling themselves the Guavian Death Gang. She shook her head. What a name.
She typed in her encrypts, and waited.
ACCESS DENIED.
She blinked. This had never happened before. She tried again.
The red, block-letter words appeared once more on the screen. ACCESS DENIED.
She tried another code, and then another one. She went through her entire repertoire. She had no success.
A very peculiar sensation ran up and down her spine. She turned to the technician next to her. "Can you take a look at this?"
The technician, Allana Myssel, tried herself. Frowning, she tried a diagnostic test of her own. She turned back to Mara. "There's nothing wrong with your access codes, in and of themselves. However, it would appear that this group has already blocked them. Maybe they somehow anticipated that you would be searching through their accounts."
"How would they have known that?"
Allana raised her brows and started to answer, but at that moment her com beeped. She checked it. "Sorry, Captain Skywalker - I'm wanted at the other side of the ship." She got up and left.
Mara stared back at the screen. ACCESS DENIED.
Someone in the Guavian Death Gang had known that she would try to slice into their accounts. Someone had tipped them off - and somehow, they had gained access to her encrypts, in order to block them. No one had known that Karrde's organization was intercepting information from the group except the people on this ship, and no one but Mara had known her encrypts.
First the mystery of whether someone was teaching Ben, and now this?
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It was somewhat strange, Mara thought to herself, that the last time she had applied herself so readily to a project, she was trying to kill Luke Skywalker. This time, the project was her furious, never-ending research. She hoped that she would be more successful in this endeavor than she had been in the last one. It would not do to marry a research topic. However, to be fair, her late-night sessions tearing through archives Luke brought home, or hours spent on the HoloNet, sometimes made her project feel quite like an unwelcome, extra presence in the family; she could already tell that it was becoming a strain on her marriage.
A little over two months had passed since Mara had discovered that the Guavian Death Gang had blocked her access codes. It hadn't just been hers - no one in Karrde's organization had been able to access any of the gang's systems. For a group that prided themselves on being the best information brokers in the galaxy, the discovery made them all distinctly uneasy. It also raised the question - what was the Guavian Death Gang trying to hide?
Mara and Karrde assembled a special task force to figure out exactly that. However, for all their tapping into various information systems throughout the galaxy, they found nothing. It was not as though the Guavian Death Gang did not exist. To the contrary, it was clear that they did. However, besides for the occasional transfer of funds between the gang and other groups, they could find no other records of communication.
Whomever the Guavians had working for them, he was really good at what he did. (The idea of someone being better at their job than Mara naturally made her bristle.)
When she wasn't working out the mystery of the Guavian Death Gang, there was the small matter of whether or not a Force user named Snoke existed, whether or not that Force user was currently manipulating her nephew, and the fact that Leia seemed to have let on that she suspected it going on for some time. Lately, however, Leia outright refused to speak with Mara. While Leia's abrupt rejection hurt, it only provided bolstering to Mara's grim theory. On the other hand, if Mara was right, she figured they'd have much bigger things to worry about than a simple familial spat. Luke was still skeptical, but he seemed appeased to the idea that he could not talk Mara out of something she had committed herself to. He brought her archives and documents he had found on his trips like little offerings, little olive branches.
There was one consistent lead on Jakku that made Mara distinctly excited. For one, they already had a contact on Jakku. Lor San Tekka spent more time off Jakku than on it, but last they had heard from him, he had fallen in with an indigenous, religious community to the planet, and was learning about their customs. After weeks of consideration, she finally set a meeting with him. Luke seemed relieved about the decision. He had requested for it to be a double meeting - he wanted to ask Tekka about the map. Apparently, Min hadn't recognized the system, either.
Mara was checking her work messages when she noticed one with an ID she didn't recognize. Intrigued, she played the message. "Captain Skywalker," a droid's voice intoned. "This is Sai Li, of Kanjiklub. We know you are looking for information on the Guavian Death Gang. We have that information." The droid left its contact information, an urge to respond as soon as possible, and then there was a beep. The message was over.
Kanjiklub was a known criminal group from the Outer Rim, and as far as she knew, the Guavians were their primary rivals. It would make sense for Kanjiklub to seek sabotage on the their rivals' affairs. Mara ran her hands through her hair. Was this the lead they were looking for, or would it lead to another false trail?
At that moment, she felt a kind of brushing motion in her stomach. She lowered her hand. "What do you think?" she addressed the source of movement, very quietly. She and Luke had continued to keep mum about the pregnancy. Besides for Han, Leia, and a few med droids, she was quite sure no one else knew. She figured that once she started really showing, it would be all over the HoloNet anyway, but for the time being, she wanted to preserve her privacy while she still had it.
That was what she told Luke, anyway. Mara had her own reasons. If Ben actually was being targeted by someone, then it was because he was Darth Vader's grandson. There was no reason that her child would be any different. In fact, since her child was Luke Skywalker's kid, it seemed all the more likely that her child would catch the interest of every lurking Dark force user in the galaxy. It was absolutely in her best interest to keep their child a secret for as long as possible.
Mara forwarded the file to her boss, and continued to check through her other messages.
She sensed Karrde's presence before she saw him. "Karrde," she greeted, without looking up.
Karrde sat directly next to her. "What do you think of the message, Mara?"
She regarded him coolly. "I forwarded it to you."
"I know. I'm asking you what you thought of it. You're my second-in-command."
She glared. "Not anymore I'm not, that's Shada. I'm leaving, remember? If you'll ever let me."
"Mara, you were my second-in-command because I trusted your judgement, I liked your style, and I liked your work. That's still the case. What did you think of the message?"
She took a deep breath and addressed her boss. "I'm not sure. It could be some kind of trap. It would make sense for Kanjiklub to be interested in betraying them, but it seems more likely there's a catch. Obviously we haven't been exactly transparent about searching for the Guavians, but at the same time, we could have been more covert. Kanjiklub does have some kind of relationship with the Guavian Death Gang besides pure rivalry - there was a transaction between them less than a month ago. We know the Guavins know that we're after them, so it is possible they told Kanjiklub. This is all assuming, of course, that the message actually came from Kanjiklub. There are a lot of unknown factors. I personally am in favor of ignoring the message for now unless they come into contact again, and this time, with a human."
Karrde nodded. "Thank you," he said, and swept out of the room. She stared after him: he must have already drawn the same conclusions.
She felt another kind of funny motion in her stomach region. "Don't worry," she told it. "I won't let anything touch you."
It wasn't nearly as bad sharing a body with another human being as she had feared. As the weeks wore on, she found that many of her symptoms - morning sickness, most notably - had faded. Besides for feeling generally hung over all the time, she found the baby was becoming an agreeable body-mate. Mara smirked to herself. I have a bondmate, and a body-mate…
As it happened, Kanjiklub did contact again. A few days later, an unknown ship made contact with the Wild Karrde. After the OK came through from Shada and Karrde, the holographic image of a human man with long black hair, body armor, and a huge blaster appeared in the communications room.
Karrde raised a brow. "Ruhian Leech," he said.
When the man spoke, Mara couldn't understand a word. However, although had never heard his language before, she recognized that name. Leech was Kanjiklub's founder. He was a tall, dark, black-haired man in his mid-forties who had started the group as a guerrilla movement countering a civil war on his home planet. However, when the civil war ended, Kanjiklub remained. Now it was one of the more notorious groups in the galaxy, next to the Guavians.
Thankfully, Karrde knew Leech's language. "That's an interesting proposal," he replied in Basic. "You still haven't explained why I should believe you."
In lieu of understanding Leech's words, she kept an eye on his expressions and tone. There was something about them that Mara couldn't quite put her finger on.
Eventually, the holographic image flickered out. The other crewmen, and Mara, all turned to Karrde. He turned to her. "Did you catch any of that?" He explained, "Leech offered to meet us. They want credits in exchange for information on the Guavians. What do you think, Mara?"
She reached out to the Force and closed her eyes. She found uncertainty, a future that was unset. It was like trying to get a read through bad reception. She reopened them and looked back up to Karrde. "Something is off," she told him.
Karrde nodded thoughtfully. "Interesting." She knew he was weighing her Force sense with his desire to find out what was going on with the Guavian Death Gang. He sighed. "Mara, I hate to ask this of you now, but it would be helpful to have a Jedi to come meet with him."
She didn't think twice. "I'll come with you," she said at once. Not so long ago, Talon Karrde had taken her in when she had nothing. He had given her a job, and showed her he believed in her. Now she had a life, and a future, and not a small part of it was owed to him. This was the least she could do for him.
As expected, the next day Mara Jade Skywalker did not return to her home. Although Luke did not receive any calls from her, he did not start to worry until he felt his connection to her in the Force abruptly shut off.