Mara held her completed lightsaber in the palm of her hand, staring down at it with bated breath. Never before—not even on one of her missions for the Emperor—had she felt this anxious.
This was the pivotal moment. The handle of the lightsaber felt as if it were melded to her hand, as if it were meant to be there—but she would soon discover whether it would ignite or she would have to (in her embarrassment) blast off planet and put all thoughts of being a Jedi far behind her.
She closed her eyes and lit the weapon.
The telltale hum of a lightsaber reached her ears, and she opened her eyes in relief. She exhaled and then smiled as she saw the weapon.
The blade was a gentle blue, and it looked just as a lightsaber was supposed to. She twisted her wrist around, letting the saber cut through the air and relishing in its comforting weight.
"It's pretty," a voice said from behind her, and she swiveled around, her saber at the ready.
The intruder was only Sun, however, and he looked at her warmly, the corners of his lips tugging upward. She smiled back at him, relaxing and feeling a bit silly. "Sorry," she mumbled. "And—thanks." She was quite proud of her saber, and it was nice to hear someone else admire it. She nodded toward the lightsaber handle held by her companion. "Is yours ready?"
"Yes," he answered simply.
She waited to hear more, but he didn't volunteer anything. Apparently, an upbringing as a desert nomad didn't entail automatically satisfying the curiosity of others. She prodded, "Can I see it?"
"Yeah," Sun replied. He looked down at his saber and thumbed the 'on' switch. A green blade protruded from the handle, adding another low hum to the still air. "It feels like..." he said slowly as he stared at his new weapon, "—like it's mine." He turned the lasersword off, and she did the same with hers.
Mara grinned at him. "Mine does, too—it feels, well, perfect, really." In actuality, 'perfect' felt like an understatement. "I guess we'll make pretty good Jedi after all," she told him.
He stepped toward her, his fingers tracing the contours of the unlit saber in his hands. "So, you want to be a Jedi now?"
The redhead nodded slowly. "I do. I feel...Well—there is something..." But she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to say, and she simply trailed off.
"I know what you mean," the young man said softly.
"Do you, Sun?" she queried quietly, moving closer to him, searching his face for—for something...
He looked at her pensively for a moment before exhaling. "I think—I think I would like to be called Luke. Not Sun or Kid or Chinnatah—Luke. I wish—I wish to accept the Force—and—I think I would like to take on the name Luke as—" he paused, searching for the right phrase, before finally saying, "—as a sum of all my parts."
"Luke," she whispered, not even sure why she felt it was so significant that she repeat the name he had just taken on himself.
"When I rebuild the Order," he said softly, staring into her eyes, "I will not banish fear, yes, but I will also not banish love. How can I? Love is good—too good to be hidden away, as my parents did their love."
Mara found herself breathing his new name again. She trembled as she realized how close she was to him—how their faces were less than a foot apart—and she slowly lifted her hand to his chin. It was covered in rough bristles—he hadn't shaved in a day or two—but she felt as if an electric current passed through her when she touched him. There seemed to be something significant in the air between them, and she pulled his face down toward her, meeting only with a little confused resistance, and pressed her lips to his.
He was unresponsive at first—having been raised as a Tusken Raider, he'd had no experience with human intimacy—but with her lead he was soon kissing her back. Their eyes closed of their own accord, and they both found themselves taking away something great from this perfect moment.
His Force sense reached out and brushed hers, questing for something, and she opened herself up to him. For perhaps half a second, their minds united, their souls becoming one. Then Mara withdrew from the Force contact and pulled away from him, trembling.
She looked at him and saw him open his mouth to say something, then close it, then open it again—
"Come on," she said abruptly, turning and walking briskly away. Her heart was pounding, and she couldn't really talk to him right now. She couldn't believe what she'd just did. "Let's go show our new sabers to Yoda," she called over her shoulder, though even saying those few words seemed to weaken her.
She just barely heard him respond, "All right," before he began sloshing through the swamp to follow her.
But though she tried to clear her head, it was filled with questions. Did he really know what had just happened? What was he thinking? What did it mean to him?
But most importantly—what did it mean to her?
The Triad—Leia Organa, Garm Bel Iblis, and Mon Mothma—were holding a private meeting on Yavin IV, discussing a battle for Coruscant. So as to maintain the element of surprise, only the higher ups of the Alliance hierarchy were included. They were all seated around a round table, and everyone's faces were grim.
Garm Bel Iblis seemed most concerned with the possibility of failure. "We face a severe lack of pilots, not to mention ground troops."
"But to present ourselves as a formidable force, our government needs a base of operations," Mon Mothma noted. "Coruscant is in a much better location than Yavin, and we cannot set up our government on a remote forest planet. No one would take the Republic seriously if we couldn't regain control of Coruscant."
"Mon's right, Garm," Leia sighed. She didn't like it any more than the Corellian did. "We aren't really given much choice in the matter. We need to gather the forces of our members—perhaps we could appear to plan an attack on one of the Imperial shipyards. We could gather our ships in a system near it and then have a massive hyperspace jump."
"Perhaps," Garm grumbled. He didn't like it, but he knew they had a point. As the head of the executive branch, it was his job to try to figure out how to make it happen. He just hoped the cost wasn't too high.
Anakin had given the Wookiees a few days to spread the word and prepare while he and Obi-Wan tried to busy themselves with "examining" Wookiees and performing other official-looking duties so as not to arouse suspicion. When the planned day finally arrived, Anakin bathed himself in the Light Side, thankful once again the ysalamir was on the ship. He would need every bit of his Force ability to try to pull this off. He'd been honest with the Wookiees—many of them would probably die, and the coup might not even work. But the noble beings were tired of the Imperials forcing them to do such tasks as making desks for Imperial officers. It was demeaning, and they deserved their freedom. They did not want their children to grow up as slaves.
Anakin pretended to survey the work of the Wookiees before him, nodding every now and then and muttering something about their movements. In reality, he was watching out of the corner of his eye for a cue. When he finally saw a Wookiee give him the awaited signal, he nodded to Obi-Wan. The two Force users and their Noghri escorts strode toward the Imperial garrison. Soon, they were brushing past the garrison leader's guards and into his office.
"Major General Arkent," Anakin said grimly. "There's a bit of a situation."
The garrison commander paled—clearly fearing the worst—and rushed out of his office and followed them.
He was not disappointed.
All over the seventh level of the Wookiee civilization, wild animals raged. Creatures such as the predatory Kashyyyk greyclimber—a bantha with a pair of bony head plates that it used as battering rams—were stampeding throughout the Wookiee city. Stormtroopers were being tossed and rammed off the sides by Wookiees and beasts which were unable to break through their armor, while several of the non-armored officers were being attacked head-on. Several Wookiees—who had certain ways of handling and even taming the dangerous creatures—had brought the beasts up on pulleys, as per Anakin's instructions, and it seemed as if more were appearing every minute. The Wookiees, accustomed to the attack patterns of the animals, were able to—at least, for the most part—stay out of their way. The Imperials, however, even though they possessed blasters and were able to take down several of their assailants, were not so lucky.
Fortunately for the Wookiees—and unfortunately for the Imperials—the tops of a lot of trees near the garrison had been removed. That meant Imperials were less likely to be saved by nearby branches and more likely to fall down toward the dangerous Shadowlands far below the seventh level. It was only rare that even the powerful Wookiees went even below the fifth level, so those individuals who fell were almost certainly doomed.
Anakin smiled on seeing the havoc his plan had wreaked, finding himself reminded briefly of the arena of beasts on Geonosis.
Arkent, on the other hand, cursed when he saw the chaos. Then he began shouting into his comlink.
Obi-Wan moved out of the way of a raging greyclimber, and he nodded at Anakin. Grabbing some blasters from a couple of downed Stormtroopers, the two Force users sent off a few intentionally bad shots toward the monsters and a few of the Wookiees, all the while using the Force to sweep Stormtroopers off the seventh level and down toward the Shadowlands. Until more Imperial forces had come in and things became even more of a mess, they were going to feign that they were on the side of the Imperials.
The Noghri were watchfully surrounding them. Plakhmil seemed to be twitching in his readiness to go into battle, though the other Noghri seemed relatively calm.
A growling feline—a blastail, if Anakin was fitting the proper name to the Wookiee description he'd been given—came rather close, bearing its teeth and holding claws up threateningly. Plakhmil was about to jump toward it and kill it when Anakin swept it away with the Force.
Seeming to suspect what had just happened, Plakhmil scowled at the Force user, an expression which was quite terrifying when found on a Noghri but which merely made Anakin laughed. He liked the reckless battle-hungry Noghri.
A few minutes later, however, he had his chance: Anakin was distracted by the appearance of some aerial transports carrying the awaited Imperial troops, and an Acklay-like Walluga came barreling toward him on its six powerful legs. Plakhmil pushed Anakin out of the way and leapt up onto the Walluga's back. The gray creature reared up, trying to dislodge its passenger, but a well-placed dagger from Plakhmil spilled its life-force, and it went tumbling to the ground.
As Plakhmil went back to Airakh's side, the older Noghri mewed, "Well done, young one."
Plakhmil gave him a fang-filled grin. "Thank you, Airakh clan Khim'bar."
"It's time!" Obi-Wan yelled over the noise of monster howls and blaster fire.
Anakin nodded. He and Obi-Wan lit their sabers—his blade Qui-Gon's green one and Obi-Wan's blade a newly created blue one—and stepped into the middle of the chaos.
It didn't take long for the Imperials to realize they had a new enemy, and they then had to split their firepower between monsters, Wookiees, Jedi, and Noghri. Major General Arkent, it seemed, had disappeared—probably having returned to the safety of the garrison.
After cutting several Imperials down, Anakin managed to make his way to Kalshkka, who was having fun ripping the arms off a screaming Imperial who'd been particularly cruel to him.
"Can your people take it from here?" Anakin asked the Wookiee. "My companions and I should probably go into the garrison—maybe we can negotiate a surrender, so there won't be more bloodshed."
The Wookiee nodded and tossed the Imperial over the side. [We can handle it,] he growled. [Go do what you must.]
Anakin caught Obi-Wan's eye, and they rushed toward the garrison building. Three of the Noghri appeared behind them.
"Where's Plakhmil?" Anakin asked one of Obi-Wan's Noghri escorts as they stood at the front of the Imperial construction.
They all turned to look at where the battle was raging. Near the middle of the activity, Plakhmil was being held in a headlock by one of Arkent's guards. Anakin had assumed the guards were mostly hired for sharpshooting skills—but if they could spend longer than a few seconds against a Noghri and survive, they must be highly trained in physical combat.
Another Walluga charged toward them, but Anakin managed to jump away from it. As his companions focused on taking it down, Anakin jogged toward Plakhmil and his attacker.
"Plakhmil!" he called. He held his lightsaber at the ready, willing the Force to speed his steps as he raced toward them.
Two daggers glistened in the black-suited human's legs, but he still held tightly onto his Noghri captive. The pain seemed to mean nothing to him. His face was blank as he concentrated on his Noghri target.
Using what was probably a Noghri-taught move, Plakhmil managed to twist out of the Imperial's grip. His dagger was raised and moving as he targeted the guard's heart, but suddenly there was a gun in the human's hand and he was blasting the Noghri in the chest at point-blank range.
"Plakhmil!" Anakin cried out. He blocked the guard's shots toward him and sent them back toward their owner, who crumpled to the ground.
"Plakhmil," the Force user whispered, falling to his knees at the Noghri's side. In barely restrained panic, he searched Plakhmil's face, desperately desiring for the Noghri's mouth to move and give him even one last word, but the noble Plakhmil was still. Dead.
"Come, Anakin clan Skywalker," Airakh said quietly as Anakin clutched the Noghri's body to his chest. "We must go into the garrison to negotiate a surrender."
"No," Anakin whispered. He stood up with fire in his eyes and darkness in his heart. "Plakhmil deserves vengeance—there will be blood here tonight," he growled, and he called the Dark Side to himself.