A/N: Thank you so much for your patience, everybody! We're nearly there. I'm still waiting for one of my betas to have a chance at going over the remaining material, but I think I can post this much to hopefully tide you over. On an administrative note, I've roughed out the chapter breaks and we seem to be looking at twelve more chapters plus an epilogue. Enjoy this slice – it's a good thick one – while I finish mopping up after myself.

A galaxy of thanks to kataja for being a bona fide saint of a beta, who has read through all one hundred and fifty pages not once but twice for me.


To think that merely months ago, this had been the sum total of his existence.

Darth Vader stormed out of the chief command hub and through the Naval Command Center complex, disgusted and bereft of anything resembling patience. Forcing himself to spend a day as if it were normal, meeting with the Admiralty and Imperial Intelligence, reviewing after-action reports and being briefed on the latest schemes for countering the Rebellion – that self-same Rebellion in which he had been rendered complicit. That was essentially the only thought that had run through his head all day, except for wondering which of the officers around him were also in league with Thrawn.

His constant dread over the various states of his missing children went without saying. Baranne had arrived on Coruscant only shortly before the Emperor's press stunt and had yet to emerge from the bowels of the Central Security Department. Calrissian's image and name remained in the fifth slot on the planetary catch-and-detain lists that were submitted to every police station; the Dark Lord did not dare include images of his daughters or of Luke. He could only hope Calrissian would lead to them. Luke had not surfaced on his mental radar. Every time he attempted to search for the boy on that front, he only found himself tugged back towards the muted glow of his distressed twin sister.

Distracted as he had been since coming down to the surface, young Leia's predicament had slipped from the front of his mind. But Thrawn's impending arrival – with a vast joint war fleet geared up for a battle to the death with the formidable force stationed in orbit around the capital – had brought it back to his attention. Despite being much the nastiest warship in the system, even the gargantuan Executor could fall prey to the vagaries of battle.

But what else could he do? Bringing his daughter down to the surface was out of question. Sending her out of the system in a flimsy shuttle was an even worse option. Dispatching the Executor herself would seriously weaken Thrawn's advantage and possibly endanger their chances of successfully deposing Palpatine, while transferring Leia to another Destroyer and sending it out would prompt undesirable questions. Besides, the captains of the Destroyers in system were unquestionably loyal to Palpatine and would be sure to report their highly unusual prisoner.

The quandary made him even more terrified, and therefore even angrier than he'd been yet today. His present route would lead him close to the CSD. Vader decided to vent his wrath on Baranne. He made a convenient and plausible target, and the startled terror of the entire CSD at his unexpected arrival might manage to amuse him.

He'd just turned down the final hallway when his agent appeared at the far end. Terrorizing the CSD would have to wait for another day. Vader ground to a halt until Baranne got within conversational distance. The agent broke into a jog, apparently even more impatient than the Sith, and contrived to get the first word in.

"I've got a lead, my lord," he said curtly, and handed over a datachip. "The holo trail ended about fifty levels from the surface, so I'm taking an escort to continue pursuit on foot. I'll contact you as soon as we've got more definite information."

"Good," was the most threatening response Vader could muster against such abrupt progress. "I will have a ground squadron meet you here."

Baranne nodded and began checking his sidearm. There was a grim set to his jaw which the Dark Lord did not like, but the busy corridors of Naval Command were not the place to ask questions about this most secret of affairs. He left Baranne waiting for the squad at the hangar and boarded his personal transport back to his castle. Ordering the forward passenger cabin cleared, he viewed the chip via the onboard computer.

It contained a summary report from his agent and a holoclip. Anxiously he viewed the latter. It had been taken from a security holocam located outside a lower-level entrance of one of Coruscant's starscrapers, where a stormtrooper was standing guard. An instant after the clip began, Lando Calrissian and his two missing daughters came into view, crossing the loading platform towards the trooper. A burning started in his throat; involuntarily his hand crept toward the fuzzy projected image.

Calrissian appeared to be arguing with the trooper to gain access to the building. The trooper, quite properly, was having none of it. At one point the information broker set one of the twins down so as to gesticulate more emphatically, but snatched her up again when she started wandering away over the platform.

A few minutes passed, during which Calrissian seemed to make no progress towards his goal. Then, mid-argument, he spun on his heel and sprinted as if a pride of nexus had appeared somewhere out of the holocam's range. A nanosecond too late, blaster fire erupted from inside the entrance and tore up the air where his daughters had just been. The trooper pivoted, preparing to open fire, but was caught by a stun beam. Just as Calrissian vanished down a ramp leading to the next lower gate, an armored blur on two fleet blazed out of the tunnel and took aim again –

– He'd missed.

The edges of the console had crumpled in Vader's grip. He forced himself to relax. This had been at least a day ago, according to the time stamp on the recording. His anxiety could do nothing for his children now. Had his hand been real it would have shaken with terror and rage as he selected Baranne's report for viewing.

Holoclip was retrieved from SecCam140S12-449-3, situated at Subsidiary Cargo Gate Twelve on the south side of Imperial Palace, Level 140. Subjects continued to be pursued on a direct downward trajectory as far as Level 55. Last sighting was retrieved from SecCam55S12-449-3T, situated at Subsidiary Cargo Docking Platform Twelve on the south side of Imperial Palace, Level 55. Subjects were seen entering downward-bound cargo turbolift and presumably exited at a point below the repair line where security camera network has not yet resumed operational status.

In other words, Calrissian and his daughters had plunged into Coruscant's dark, cankerous bowels. As the starscrapers grew higher and became more and more connected, Coruscant's population had shifted its center of habitation up. Ninety percent of its inhabitants lived more than sixty levels above the actual surface of the planet, which had gradually been abandoned to darkness and decay. These days there was no telling what creatures lurked in its black mazes – just considering what pets people were liable to have released was enough to make Vader's skin crawl. The surface was Coruscant's answer to Corellia's nine hells, avoided by both wisdom and superstition. Even the ancient sublevels of Imperial Palace were almost entirely disconnected from the more recent upper structure, vacant and unpowered. The usual surveillance methods would not avail them; Baranne could only investigate on foot.

Come to think of it, another squad of troopers couldn't hurt. Vader sent the dispatch order and scanned the last line of the agent's report as his shuttle touched down within his castle.

Assailant tentatively identified as Boba Fett.

Fear squirmed in his belly, cold and wild. It fueled his rage to new heights. Fett had attempted to eliminate Sara and Sandra, whom he had undoubtedly taken from Bast Castle along with Solo. Why would he have taken them without Palpatine's orders? But if his master had known whose children they were, why would he have sent Fett to kill them instead of taking them to use as leverage in the same way he had taken Solo? Vader's head spun with the contradictions, raging around the central question – did his master know or didn't he?

The answer meant life or death. Deliberately conceiving and raising two Force-sensitive children in total secrecy was subversion on a far different order of magnitude than discovering a live son whom the Emperor had told him was dead and reacting out of anger with similar lies. At best they represented disobedience of his master's standing order to eradicate all Force-sensitive beings not in service to him. At worst, Palpatine would consider them proof of betrayal. If the Emperor already knew that his servant had been raising two potential apprentices behind his back, he would be expecting further treachery and no doubt was well prepared.

But if the Emperor did not know, he and Olin still had a chance of taking the Sith Master by surprise when the moment for attack came. All hope of success against the scheming despot depended upon that advantage. Without it he stood to lose far more than his life.

The natural response to all this was, of course, rampant fury. Thus far, he raged to himself as he careened off his shuttle, the only child he'd managed to protect at all was that never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed, scum-spawned Corellian mutt masquerading as his heir –

"My lord?" An aide had arrived around a corner, cowering in trepidation. Vader was tempted to kill him simply for being there and being alive, but reminded himself that neither of those crimes was exactly the aide's fault. "There seems to have been a miscommunication with our outpost commander stationed at Vjun, Captain Landre. We received this message from him about half an hour ago." The aide swallowed as he handed over the chip. "Apparently his mobile task force has just arrived in the Borleias system."

"What?" Vader nearly crushed the chip in his fresh surge of wrath. "I issued no deployment orders!"

"That's what we told him, my lord," the aide cringed, "but he insists that you personally instructed him to proceed to the Core and await additional orders in the outer Borleias system. In fact, he transmitted us a copy of this communication. We're analyzing it right now, but it doesn't appear to have been forged –"

"Get me a connection to Captain Landre immediately," Vader snarled, shoving the chip back at the aide.


As many questions as Ferus had, it wasn't possible to ask them. Behind the dummy access panel there had indeed been a secret passage – in fact a whole maze of them. Without the fungus trail to guide them, even Yoda would have had a job picking the correct path. The warren of cramped tunnels and miniaturized turbolifts led them a circuitous route – sometimes long and straight, sometimes following unorthodox curves and arches, sometimes coming to six or eight-way intersections. Several times Yoda sensed someone else nearby in their passages, but they avoided any run-ins until the trail dead-ended into a corridor. Ferus leaned against the exit carefully and listened.

"Not a public corridor, Master," he murmured. "Too few people."

Yoda tapped his gimer stick on the floor. "But not the Emperor's chambers. Too busy for that it is."

Ferus edged back from the door, keeping his lightsaber in hand just in case someone decided to barge in on them. "I think there's a spatial locator on this thing," he said, fiddling with the wrist receiver. "Maybe – there it is."

A dimly glowing hologram of the Imperial Palace flickered into being. A red pinprick noting their position glowed amidst the upper levels.

"We're about a hundred levels from the pinnacle," Ferus said. "The private throne room is up there." He tapped the tip of the central spire. "According to Vader that's where they usually meet if it's not a matter of state, and this wouldn't be."

Yoda nibbled the top of his stick. "Trace our route through the building's floor plan, can this device?"

Ferus tapped some controls experimentally. The hologram expanded to exhibit miniaturized versions of Imperial Palace and Vader's castle, adding a thin snaking red line throughout the two denoting Ferus's route thus far. "Looks like it, Master."

"Good, good," Yoda said cheerfully. "Come, young Olin." He started pattering back the way they'd come. "Time we have until this ambush of Vader's," he called over his shoulder. "Many upward-bound lifts I have noticed. Explore them we will, and find an entrance to this throne room we might."

"Vader will get antsy if I take too long about getting back," Ferus said, not without some bitterness.

"Doing his bidding, you are," Yoda reminded him with an urchin's grin. "To seek an entrance to this place he sent you, did he not?"

"I rather doubt he meant for me to take you along on the expedition," Ferus observed.

"What Vader knows not," Yoda observed with a mischievous quirk of his ears, "hurts him not."

"Not yet, you mean."


Mara Jade frowned as she glanced around her stealth tutor's office. When he hadn't shown up at the usual training room, she'd decided to go looking for him. No one had told her the lesson had been canceled or switched, so she had concluded he must have run late working on something else. But he wasn't here either. His work terminal was missing; maybe he had left on an emergency assignment.

She should have left to find another trainer and ask about the stealth lesson. And she would have…

…Except for the irresistible fact that her confiscated electrobinoculars had to be in this office somewhere, and she'd never have a better chance to nick them back. They might even still have the snapshots of Boba Fett and the man in the cryostasis chamber. Her sense of adventure piqued, Mara crept in, sealed the door behind her, and started rummaging through his drawers and cabinets. She found the binoculars in the supposedly secure arm compartment of his work chair – hacking passcodes was a skill she'd mastered last year. Eagerly she switched them on to view whatever images were still in its memory.

Everything was still there – except for the images of Fett. When she reached the place where they should have been, something else appeared: a snapshot of her tutor's work terminal screen covered in text.

Instead of class, it said, we'll be holding a practical exercise. For the next week I will be controlling an evasion training simulation. Your mission is to evade capture by Imperial authorities for the next 168 standard hours, beginning immediately upon receipt of this message. Be advised that I will use all resources and ruses at my disposal to prevent success. Trust no one you usually would. Use all resources and ruses at your disposal to acquire allies and evade capture by Imperial authorities. Good luck.

Flush with excitement, Mara leapt to her feet and slipped out of the office down the corridor, down one more, and vanished through a hidden panel into one of Imperial Palace's many secret passages where the surveillance cams could not detect her. Two practical assignments in one day! And this one sounded even better than breaking into Vader's castle. Though Mara's head still ached from being walloped by a falling glowpanel, it had otherwise been easy; but avoiding Imperial authorities who were out to catch her for a whole week would be a real challenge.

But she'd do it. Letting her master down wasn't an option in Mara's book.


Though a lot of its original bunk space had been taken up by modifications and weaponry add-ons, the lambda shuttle still had four separate bunkrooms. Lando decreed that they were all going to sleep in the same cabin nonetheless, saying he didn't want Luke to get any ideas about sneaking out of the ship in the middle of the night. Luke scowled, but obediently climbed onto the top bunk. Sara and Sandra were sharing the one right beneath him, and Lando had claimed the other bottom bunk across the cabin. Luke was faintly surprised nobody had come to investigate the unholy racket of his snoring – they could probably hear it in Imperial City. How could his sisters sleep through it? If Luke hadn't been planning to stay awake, he would have been mightily annoyed.

Very quietly, he peeled the blanket back and swung himself over the edge in one smooth movement, holding on to one end of the frame and lowering his bare feet silently onto the freezing deck. His boots were under Lando's pillow, right next to his lightsaber – drat him anyway, the man was almost as paranoid as his father. Not that Luke could really blame him; the thought of having to explain the last week or so to his father made Luke want to bury himself beneath the lowest level of Coruscant and never come out again. It'd be even worse for Lando, as he couldn't rely on family relationships to pin back Father's inevitable fury.

But Luke just couldn't take it anymore. Han was out there, squirming in the Emperor's merciless grip, and the Emperor thought Han was him. So whatever horrible things he was doing to Han, they were Luke's fault really. What if Yoda wasn't fast enough? What if he couldn't get Han out? What if Han was dead?

At the very least, he had to check the news. If something had happened, perhaps he could find out about it. Lando had refused to let him boot up the Holonet connection, saying it was just putting a foot down a slippery slope that would get him killed. Luke rolled his eyes again as he nudged the door open and crept to the cockpit. The local news isn't going to kill me.

He sealed the door to muffle any sounds that might wake the others up and switched on the cockpit's reserve power so he could run the computers without firing any engines or generators. He didn't try searching for anything but standard news feeds. They probably were less likely to have the information he was looking for, but if he started hunting for illegal feeds he might tip off an Imperial monitor and get them all arrested, and what stormtrooper would believe that they were really Vader's kids? Whatever Lando thought, he wasn't stupid.

Selecting the official Imperial planetary news feed, Luke sat back, waiting for the screen to adjust and preparing himself for a long search –

And then Han was staring straight at him.

Luke blinked in disbelief.

LORD VADER REVEALS SECRET SON! screeched the headline in frenetic bold caps.

That was only the first headline. The floating tag line at the bottom was full of blurbs about nothing but Han. There was one passing mention of Rebels and another about some new bill granting additional powers to the planetary governors, but other than that Han was apparently the only thing happening anywhere in the galaxy. Son of Vader May Inherit Imperial Throne…Unknown Teenager Is Son of Sith Lord…Luke's brain was going numb…Emperor Hints at Significant Gov't Role for Son of Vader…

After bouncing in bewilderment from headline to headline, Luke finally made himself pick one to read. It seemed that the Emperor had made some sort of speech today and had introduced Han as…well, as him.

And evidently his father was going along with it, because there he was in the background of the pictures, standing next to Han. When had his father even gotten to Coruscant? Luke was sure he'd been with the Fleet, or at least out looking for him and his sisters. But here he was on Coruscant telling everybody that Han was his son. Why hadn't he told the Emperor who Han really was? Why was his father leaving Han in danger when he could protect him? Why?

He was shaking; his hand wouldn't stay steady enough for him to select the holofile of the Emperor's speech. He ran it through his hair and got up to pace the cockpit, no longer remembering that he had to keep quiet and not wake up Lando. Maybe – maybe his father was just trying to keep Han safe? After all, the Emperor would be pretty ticked to find out that Boba Fett had kidnapped the wrong kid for him – perhaps his father thought Han would be safer if he went along with it.

Luke, you idiot, what are you thinking? Father hates Han, remember? Heck, the very last time they'd talked he'd been threatening to lock Han up and torture him if it was the only way to keep Luke and the twins a secret from Palpatine. Nope – the Emperor could beat the snot out of Han Solo and mop the floor with him afterward, but as long as Luke was out of the line of fire his father wouldn't care. He might even let Han get killed – especially if he thought it was somehow Han's fault that Sara and Sandra had been kidnapped –

Except it wasn't Han's fault – it was his, for not stopping Fett in the first place! And then he'd lost them all over again on Corellia –

Corellia! Agent Baranne had probably told his father all about the battle on the Strip by now. Suppose he thought they'd all been killed? That would explain why he wasn't out looking for them. And if he thought the girls were dead – then he was probably really, really angry –

Or – or what if – what if Vader did know it was Luke's fault? What if he knew Han was the one who'd tried to save Sara and Sandra, and Luke was the one who hadn't stopped Fett getting away? What if he'd decided Han would make a better son? Luke had only been living with him for a few months, and he'd been pretty much nothing but trouble the whole time.

Or suppose…suppose he thought Luke had just up and run away again?

The idea of having done such a thing – after the memory of his father hugging him tight and asking, almost pleading that Luke never leave him – sent a horrible wrench through Luke's gut. He sagged against the bulkhead and weakly wiped at his forehead. Of course that was what his father thought had happened! Why had it never occurred to him until now?

I have to talk to him. He knew Yoda had told him to stay with Lando, knew that Yoda wouldn't want him to go looking for his father – that it was dangerous, that it might not even be the best thing he could do for his father – but he had to. He had to get Han away from the Emperor so something didn't happen to him. He had to talk to his father, tell him that Sara and Sandra were alright – tell him that he loved him, that he hadn't run away really –

He'd have to go without his shoes or his lightsaber. He couldn't risk waking up Lando or the twins. The shoes weren't such a big problem; it was the idea of going unarmed that worried him. But Lando's blaster was in the arms locker; he could probably pick it open and take that, as long as he moved fast and quiet. He'd look less suspicious without a lightsaber, too.

Just hope I can find my way back


"What do you mean, you cannot locate her?" Composure was something the Emperor rarely lost in front of subordinates, but with treachery suddenly springing up on every side this frustration was simply one too many.

The captain of the Imperial Guard somehow managed not to cringe. "We not yet able to locate Mara Jade, Your Majesty," he repeated. "None of her trainers report having seen her at any time during the past twelve hours and she has not been spotted on the surveillance systems. I ordered a complete manned search of the building which should be finished in another two hours."

"You," Palpatine said conversationally, "are the most highly trained and best-equipped security brigade the galaxy has ever known, and you cannot capture a twelve year old girl."

"Not yet, Your Majesty," the captain insisted.

"You did search the secret passages."

"Neither Jade nor any other unauthorized personnel were located in the clandestine sections of the building, Your Majesty. With your permission, I plan to transmit Jade's information to the planetary security network at large."

Palpatine brooded on the question. If once he placed information about the girl in the wider sphere of knowledge, Mara Jade would have ceased to be of use. Twelve years of investment and painstaking training, gone just like that. Such a promising and talented child too…

"Do so, Captain," he murmured. "And pray you do not fail me."

That trainer's death would indeed be slow and painful.

As would that of Mara Jade, if the girl dared defy him much longer. Briefly the Emperor considered using the Force to locate the child himself – though hiding beneath the strong mental shields he had taught her to always maintain and therefore out of his mental sight, she would not be able to hold them against the superior power of a Sith Master. But that might attract Vader's attention, even alert him to the fact that his master had lost control of an underling. Young Jade did not pose even a fraction of the threat that Vader would should he scent weakness – and he had yet to rule out the chance that the ex-Jedi was also complicit with Thrawn's plot.

Well. If his apprentice was harboring treasonous designs, they would not remain secret for long. His agents had already begun probing more deeply into the Dark Lord's activities from a safe distance, and if there was any compromising information in the messages the trainer had sent, it would soon be identified. Perhaps it was time to be rid of Vader anyway; in young Skywalker he had a more malleable alternative.

Yes…perhaps…


Mara had decided her best bet would be to travel into the lower levels and make her way towards the old industrial districts, where there ought to be plenty of hiding places and fewer chances of being located. She sped down through the secret passages of the Palace for a short distance until she reached one that included an access point into one of the turbolift shafts. It had been intended as a secret lift car stop; by design there wasn't room in the shaft for an adult to scale its walls.

But Mara wasn't an adult. She was a smallish twelve-year-old who fit nicely into the recessed ladder nook that ran up and down the whole length of the shaft. It had been built so that repair droids could access the power lines, but provided Mara was careful to press close against the rungs she could squeeze into the space and still keep a few inches between herself and any passing lift cars. She smirked to herself as she shimmied down story after story. It might be a long and exhausting descent on foot, but nobody would think to look for her in a turbolift shaft that wasn't supposed to be accessible to humans. Not even her stealth trainer knew about this little secret of hers. She'd discovered it during one of her exercises and had seen no reason to spread the word.

Around the upper levels she had to watch for passing cars all the time, but as the hours passed and she reached the lower levels they thinned out and finally ceased to appear at all. After going some levels further she set her feet down on the base of the shaft and pulled out her glowstick. Several ratlike creatures fled its bright beam, vanishing into chewed-out nooks. Below this slab lurked the basement levels of Imperial Palace, which had been built eons ago and where nobody ever dared venture. No surveillance systems functioned down there; there was no power at all anymore. The stormtroopers, and even the Emperor's bodyguards, would be hard-pressed to find her there.

Reverently Mara took from her belt the Emperor's latest gift to her – a functional lightsaber, taken from a vanquished Jedi Master. The battle-scarred hilt was still too big for the small, awed hands she ran over it, but someday she'd be worthy of it. For now it would be an ideal tool. She carefully activated it, sucking her breath in with delight at the gorgeous violet blade. Brighter than her measly glowstick by far, it bathed the whole base of the shaft in iridescent purple light. She took another moment to admire the magnificent weapon before beginning her cut through the floor, making sure to bevel the edges so she'd be able to put the piece back in place behind her. Finishing the cut, she screwed up her forehead in concentration, balled her fists, and finally got the cut piece of duracrete to hoist itself out of the new hole.

Wiping sweat away, staying back fron the edge in case something should be lurking below, Mara tossed her glowstick through and peered to see where it had landed. Good – she seemed to have cut through the ceiling of a passage. The floor wasn't far. Her lightsaber still in hand, she dropped through. Overhead, the chunk of durasteel levitated back into its spot.

The corridor in which she'd landed was dark and dilapidated, but otherwise not very alarming. Here and there some of the emergency lights in the wall were still active, and they provided just enough light that she could find her footing without the lightsaber or the glowstick. She turned them both off against future need and struck out in a westerly direction. Industrial district, here I come!

After a few course adjustments, she found a passage that took her out of Imperial Palace to the next building over. So far she'd still encountered nothing more alarming than the occasional pseudo-rat or night lizard. Perhaps she hadn't gone down far enough – weren't the sublevels supposed to be a wild zoo of all the galaxy's most freakish and least picky predators? But seeing no signs of power she calmed her fears and continued - down corridors, down another few levels, around the next corner –

Whoa.

The hall which she had just entered looked like the relic of a warzone. Blaster fire had perforated the walls. Great black scorch marks stretched haphazard across the walls and the ceiling. Nearby the entrance of a turbolift shaft had been blown away, leaving a gaping black chasm. The edges of the walls' wounds still stuck out sharp and fresh. There had been one wild fight here not long ago. Mara glanced around uneasily, hoping she hadn't wandered into gang territory. She'd thought that was all farther south, roundabouts the Southern Underground districts. But suppose she'd somehow lost track of her direction?

Anxious, she pulled out her lightsaber once more and rounded the corner in the direction the battle had taken – and found that she had company.

Both of them gasped and froze, unable to make out each other's faces in the impoverished illumination of the emergency lights. Mara thought it was a boy, not much older than herself; he had a blaster. Should she shoot? Or just drive him away?

She got no chance to decide, because voices suddenly echoed in the distance, from the way she'd come. Voices – and the unmistakable staccato of marching boots. She looked over her shoulder, pale with surprise. Stormtroopers! How could they have found her so soon?

"Come on!" the boy at the other end of the corridor hissed, waving to her.

Use all resources and ruses at your disposal to acquire allies and evade capture by Imperial authorities, her stealth trainer's voice echoed in her head. Well, whoever this boy was, what he certainly wasn't was an Imperial authority. Mara dashed towards him; taking her arm he sprinted down a narrow side hall and shoved her into a tiny supply closet. Its ceiling and walls were crumbly with age and dust kept falling in her eyes, but the pounding of adrenaline enabled her to ignore the discomfort. Across from her the shadowy boy gripped his blaster at the ready, apparently planning to attack the troopers if they were discovered.

"…think we've got something, Agent," a filtered voice echoed.

"Mm," concurred a clearer voice, which had paused not far from their corridor. "This seems to be the last of the battle. Someone must have won…but no bodies…"

"Perhaps scavengers," the filtered voice suggested.

"No. I doubt they'd have made such a clean job of it." There was a brief pause. "No, there were at least some survivors. We'll continue down this way. They must have retreated down one of these corridors…"

Footsteps, more footsteps – and then there were some echoing loudly down their corridor, right past their closet door – Mara held her breath for dear life –

"No sign of them this way," a trooper announced.

"This route looks more likely," called the voice belonging to the agent. "We'll see where it leads."

After a long several minutes of scurrying activity, the footsteps vanished down the corridor Mara had been planning to take. For another several minutes they waited before the boy dared to inch out into the hall. "Clear," he whispered back to Mara, who decided that constituted permission to switch on her glowstick and get a better look at this character.

He was human, she confirmed, probably about her age, with blond hair and much-occupied blue eyes. Undercity grime had left its marks over most of his wardrobe, which she noted with bemusement did not include a pair of shoes or socks. In his hand he held a full-size blaster. Mara might have dismissed him as an ignorant lowlife street rat if he weren't glancing sharply at her lightsaber every other second.

"You're hiding from them too?" he murmured, with a keen look.

"Yes," Mara said slowly. Well, it was true, wasn't it? This week, anyway. And she was supposed to be making allies to improve her chances of success. Who better than a fellow fugitive familiar with the underground? She always had her lightsaber if things went sour.

The boy glanced significantly at her lightsaber. "Me too," he said, with a pointed nod.

Mara stiffened. Could it be that this boy was an agent in training too? Maybe even on a similar practical assignment? Might he be who her trainer had meant by talking about allies? "Do you have friends in the Palace?" she asked, giving him a pointed nod in return.

He lit up like a glowpanel. "Yes! You do too?"

Mara nodded and even smiled at him. She'd never met someone her own age before that she'd been able to treat as an equal. Those airheads in dancing class didn't count. Questions chased around her mind – did he have the same trainers, how long had he been learning to serve the Emperor, did he know anyone else their age – but professional secret agents didn't interrogate each other no matter what age they were, and Mara was determined to be exquisitely professional.

He blew out a deep sigh. "Do you know the way in? I haven't been able to find it."

Perhaps he'd gotten turned around after wandering the lower levels for so long. Mara believed it; with so many unlit mazes and nothing but a basic compass at best, keeping track of where you'd gone and how you'd gotten there must be a tough trick. She'd better remember to be extra careful. "I can show you the way back," she said. "If you'll show me the way to the industrial district."

He winced and combed through his hair with one hand. "I don't think you'd better go towards the industrial district. It's the same way those stormtroopers are heading. You might run into them again."

Mara considered that. Perhaps it would be better to take an easterly direction then, towards the vicinity of Vader's castle. Such was the local fear of Darth Vader that the lower levels surrounding his castle were said to be almost completely deserted. Or she could go towards the old Jedi Temple; that area was at least as desolate. Either way, showing her new companion the way to the Palace would give her time to contemplate her route.

"But I promise that once I'm done with what I need to do at the Palace, I'll help you get safely away," he said fiercely.

Mara decided that even if he was odd, she liked him. Loyalty was the chief virtue of her creed and he seemed to have it in abundance. "What's your name?"

He hesitated and glanced around. "Luke," he mumbled, and grabbed her hand for an old-fashioned but determined handshake, so seriously she almost burst out laughing. She'd only seen such formalities at court before.

"I'm Mara," she volunteered. No call for last names. "I think I'll manage to hide fine on my own, but I'll take you to the Palace entrance I used. It's not too far." From a glance, she figured he was small enough to shimmy through the lift shaft as she had. And for all her bravado, she just might need some help avoiding the troops as the days passed. It couldn't hurt to be able to call in a favor. "Long climb, though."

He grinned broadly and pointed out the grappling attachment on his blaster. "I think I'll manage."


tbc