Two days later...
Talon handed Luke a heavy black cloak, "Here, you'll need this." Luke took it as the Wild Karrde pulled up to the busy docking bay of Coruscant. He was almost shaking from anxiety. He just wanted to get Mara out. He just wanted to see her and make her safe. He lifted the hood of his cloak far over his head.
He reminded Karrde, "Remember the guard intervals are less than a minute so we have to move quickly." Karrde nodded and motioned for Ghent, Aves and Dankin to follow him stealthily.
Luke walked out into the light first, moving briskly towards the palace which cast an ominous shadow over the docking bay.
Mara rose stiffly out of her bed. She had pulled out all of the tubes which threatened to restrain her escape. She tugged on her black jumpsuit with some difficulty and was thankful that it was able to accommodate her small belly. She focused hard and found that there were three troopers in the hallway. After her subsequent imprisonment the Emperor had stripped all of her weapons from the room. 'But' she thought thankfully, 'I still have my most lethal...me. Hold tight little one this is going to be a rough ride.'
L'wren sighed and said throwing a pack over her shoulder, "I think it's unwise to do this now Mistress." Mara shook her head, "No, we agreed to this. As soon as I was able to stand on my own and walk to the end of the room and back without assistance that we would leave. I met that requirement. It's now or never L'wren. You're with me right?"
Her handmaiden scoffed, "Of course I am! Silly girl..." Mara rolled her eyes, pulling her hood up on her dark cloak and went to the door taking a deep breath before she pulled it open sharply and ran into the hallway.
Anakin stowed the last bit of weapons onto the cargo freighter, and sent a hard look to Han Solo who was leading the aerial assault, saying a very friendly farewell to his daughter. Padme nudged Anakin in the back. He looked at her and protested quietly, "I cannot help it!"
Padme nodded at him patronizingly and adjusted her utility belt holding her lightsaber around her waist. She was wearing fitted black leggings with a gray tunic and black boots. Her long abundant hair was bound into an intricate knot at the base of her neck.
Anakin asked quietly, "Are you certain you feel comfortable using the saber? Would you rather have a blaster?"
Padme smiled ruefully, "Who says I don't?"
Anakin smiled shaking his head as Padme boarded the ship with the rest of the Jedi. Anakin sent another scathing look towards the smuggler who was rapidly becoming his least favorite person and yelled, "Leia! We have to go now!" The two lovers broke apart unhappily, and exchanged a bit of dialogue before Leia launched herself into his arms again.
Anakin exhaled sharply, "Leia!" she let Han go and walked over to the cargo freighter and said angrily, "You know! This may be the last time I see him father! This is a dangerous mission!" Anakin followed her up the ramp and replied, "Yes I know. You can't think like that now Leia. And besides. Han is a fair pilot. You cannot worry about him now. We all have to focus on the difficult task ahead of us." Leia rolled her eyes and said disdainfully, "Aye Aye. Captain." Padme turned her eyes on her obstinate daughter, "Leia!"
Leia sighed and said sincerely, "I'm sorry mother, father. I'm not fond of these types of situations.." Anakin put his hand over Leia's and said, "None of are, sweetheart, but you have to focus now. This mission is as you said, dangerous. You can't let yourself become distracted, if you do that you put yourself and those depending on you in great peril. And Mara is depending on us."
Leia nodded gravely and said nothing.
Mace witnessed the exchange and thought amusingly that Leia had the very spirit of her disobedient father. Yoda shared Mace's thoughts but added 'rude and disobedient father'
then the smallest Jedi announced, "Focus we must. Treacherous the task ahead of us is." Anakin agreed and interjected, "Master Yoda is correct. Just as we planned, we hit the ground and immediately fan out. Take out as many of the guards as you can, Master Windu, Obi Wan and myself will seek out the Emperor. Master Yoda will assist Padme, Leia and Kit Fisto to retrieve Mara from the Skywalker wing. We must all focus in the force, that is the only way to communicate once the battle has begun. It will be the only way to acknowledge if the teams have succeeded or failed."
Padme took Anakin's hand squeezing it in the process. He looked into her warm brown eyes and felt everything Leia had felt, this could be the last time he was with Padme. The thought of it pierced his heart, but he knew that there were larger things at stake here. Padme was strong, she would undoubtedly survive and succeed in getting Mara Jade to safety. Whether or not Anakin would succeed was the real conundrum. 'But as long as Padme survives', Anakin thought, a part of him would too.
L'wren pulled on her identical cloak and followed Mara's suit but ran the opposite way in the hallway, with the intention to disorient the troopers. One chased after the real Mara, while the other two took off after L'wren calling for backup.
As Mara ran out of the wing the trooper caught up to her attempted to clothesline her to stop her progress. She ducked below his arm quickly and swept him off balance with a quick swipe of her leg and continued her sprint - the docking bay, she had to get there. She had plenty of credits to bribe herself and L'wrens' passage off of Coruscant, then she knew that she would be on the run but at least she would have her freedom and she would have little Luke. That means more to her than any discomfort, she felt now or would feel in the future.
Her footfalls echoed loudly in the empty marble hallway, 'Force!' she thought trying to ignore the expanse of injuries clamoring out for attention, 'this hurts so much!'
Suddenly she barreled into several storm troopers as she rounded a corner in a dead run. She attempted to stop herself and run in the other direction but the lead troopers caught her by the arm, and hauled her back roughly, she screamed as pain shot through her shattered wrist being manhandled by the ruthless guard.
Using her good arm, she slammed her forearm into the troopers chest plate, shoving him back at arms length, she swung her fist forcefully catching him on the helmet wincing as her knuckles collided with the hard plastic. He staggered back from the force and she leapt up and kicked him hard in the chest. After he fell she snatched up his blaster quickly and snapped the switch from stun to kill and fired upon the rest of them.
As they fell at her feet she thought of the troopers that had beaten her, those that had burned her and those that had attempted to drown her. All this reinforced her anger and she felt no remorse in their deaths. She knew that they could have potentially killed her, and in doing so her precious son.
She saw this act as protecting him, and nothing would stop her. After they all lie at her feet she knew that the noise of her brief skirmish would draw others.
She looked at the ceiling, and used the force to knock down several tiles leaving a gaping hole. She fired shots into the inky chasm, to make it look like the hole had been made in the fight. She threw the blaster up first, then used to force to leap up and into the ceiling ducts and continued on her way.
As they approached the palace Luke pointed silently to Karrde, Aves, Dankin and Ghent the direction of the palace's infirmary. Talon nodded and moved with his men in the direction as Luke went the other way to the detention cells.
He took a deep breath and attempted to reach the force again and break through the serum. But again, all he felt was emptiness. He sighed exasperated with himself, a true Jedi would have merely dissolved the serum as it flowed through him.
He moved silently through the halls along the marble wall, his borrowed blaster in his hand. By some miracle he went detected and came to the detention cells. , he tapped in his authorization code in the keypad. The code rejected and a alarm started ringing loudly.
Luke cursed, then turned and ran in the direction he came, before hoards of guards showed up!
Mara swore as the alarm blared into her ears, "Well" she murmured , "at least L'wren was diligent in her diversion!"
Talon and his crew leapt at the sudden siren and steadied their blasters which were pointed in the Imperial doctors' face. Talon barked out again over the ringing alarm, "The antidote for the force numbing serum! Give it to me NOW! Or I swear that I will spread your grey matter all over your colleague behind you!"
One look at the menacing captain told the head imperial doctor that he meant business, and these were not idle threats. He wasn't going to be able to withstand any sort of torture! He was an academic not a warrior! He swallowed with great difficult, his mouth suddenly as dry as a Tatooine sandstorm and said, "In the medical vault, back there. Combination code - J-E-D-I-4977496JKF"
Ghent went over to the vault immediately and punched in the code entering the room and yelled out over the malay of the alarm, "Which one is it! There must be a hundred in here!"
The doctor fidgeted uncomfortably and Karrde moved a step closer, "Hundreds? How can there be hundreds? Just for Jedi?"
The doctor hesitated but when Karrde took another threatening step forward he confessed quickly, "Those are all serums to affect Jedi in different ways. We - had some here after the purge and we -"
He stopped speaking and saw the look of pure outrage on Karrde's face who finished his vile sentence, "You experimented on them!" his trigger finger itched and he yelled out disgusted, "Which one will bring the force back!" The doctor answered quickly, "It's the one on the furthest shelf - blue - marked J-E-D-I 46FBLD6J7" Karrde asked, "Mr Ghent?" Ghent replied after a moment, "Got it!"
Talon shot stun bolts at the other physicians leaving only the lead doctor standing, trembling. Karrde snarled, "You're not human! To experiment on Jedi, of all things. You're despicable. Disgusting imperial maggot who feeds off of the flesh of your betters. I should murder you here and now!"
The guard shook violently in fear, and was suddenly knocked unconscious by the butt of Talon's blaster, who yelled over his broken form, "It's you're lucky day. I don't murder maggots."
Mara felt the tiles under her begin to give under her weight, she cursed and moved quickly but was dismayed to discover that the weakness seemed to follow her like an errant rain cloud. She crawled along at a rapid pace in the vain effort to outrun it. She knew that she would have to stop and get her bearings if she didn't want to be lost in the labyrinth of ducts. She stopped and panted from the effort, feeling the pain once again.
Suddenly the tiles gave out violently beneath her, she used her good arm to try and pull herself back up but knew that she would be unsuccessful. She felt herself falling and used her force instincts to fall and land on her feet in a crouch, in the midst of a blaring alarm and shattered marble tiles, the dust swirling in clouds around her obstructing her vision.
She stood straight up, stiffly, looking around and froze. She was completely surrounded, by at least five dozen troopers, everyone of them with their blasters trained on her.
She looked around the room deftly, ever the assassin and inwardly cursed - the throne room. There was only one way in and one way out there wasn't even a small window in the room.
A rasping voice rang out, bringing hot tears of anger and helplessness to Mara's eyes, "You have betrayed me once more Mara Jade, and for the LAST TIME!"
Mara snarled, if this was how she would end so be it - she would go out in true Mara fashion, "Just so you know it doesn't matter what kind of prison you put me in, I will escape it. No matter where you try and hide me, I will find a way out and so help me I will sow my insolence into my child. I will run, and you will hunt me for the rest of your life until you shrivel - well shrivel further anyway and die, by the looks of you, I'll give you about two weeks."
The Emperor shook his head and replied scornfully, "You have chosen death - traitor!"
Mara smiled, bracing herself and her son for what she knew was inevitable death and spat, "I'm no traitor - I'm a rebel."
Luke ran furiously from the hoards of guards that had detected him. They fired madly at his form landing a few shots, luckily for Luke none of them were able to bring him down. One grazed his shoulder, another nicked his calf and the last running into his side.
Rounding a corner in a dead sprint he nearly smacked into Karrde who laughed saying, 'We were just looking for you! Need a few good shooters?"
Luke nodded out of breath and Karrde ordered, "Aves, Ghent, Dankin - surround him. Let him catch his breath" the man complied immediately forming rank in front of Luke who bent over breathing deeply, cursing for the millionth time that day that he lacked the force.
The Wild Karrde's crew were all very skilled marksman and the troopers fell in droves, the guards behind heedless of their dead comrades stepped over their corpses to descend on the five men,
Luke yelled, "In here!" he opened a door and they all ran in barricading it behind them. Ghent said gravely, "That won't keep them out forever." Luke shook his head, "No, but all of the doors in the palace are reinforced. Blasters won't work on them. It may take them awhile."
Karrde reached in his jacket pocket and grabbed the syringe throwing it to Luke and yelled over the banging, "Gift for you Skywalker!"
Luke caught the shining blue tube deftly, and looked at Karrde with hope in his eyes and the smuggler nodded in confirmation.
Luke blew out his breath to strengthen himself, and pulled the cap off of the syringe and jabbed the needle deeply into his neck and shoved the plunger down quickly.
The effect was instantaneous. The anti-serum ripped through him like cool water. Bringing the life back into his limbs slowly. It was like the force was blossoming once more inside him, and the feeling was pure nirvana. Suddenly, and without warning it shot back into his mind violently and seared his mind.
Karrde, Ghent, Aves and Dankin watched in horror as Luke gasped in pain and fell to the marble floor...lifeless.