Chapter 8

Night fell on the island, and with the rising of the triple moons came the night song of waking nocturnal animals venturing from their dens and into the rain forest. The of screams of predators attacking prey drifted up into an open window set high above the canopy. Luke sat on his bed pulling on a pair of black boots and wondering if Adega's predatory wild life hunted human prey. Without the Force, it would be near impossible to tell beforehand if an attack were eminent.

Suddenly he stiffened, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. He may not have the Force, but something within him told him he was no longer alone. He had kept his lights off to avoid anyone from detecting him from outside. Now he strained his eyes into the black corners of the room trying to make out each shadowy shape in the meager moonlight. He thought he caught a flutter of movement, but before he could move toward it, a cool hand clamped over his mouth. He nearly jumped out of his skin. He wasn't used to not being able to sense beings in his presence and the fact that anyone could sneak up on him so easily was very disconcerting.

His anxiety was somewhat put to rest when Mara stepped around him and into a beam of moonlight, a wide grin plastered across her face. She placed a finger to her own lips indicating silence. Then she removed her hand from his mouth. He wanted to question her on how she got into his room, but they had already found a least three listening devices in their rooms, and there was no telling how many devices still remained. Noiselessly, Mara pointed to her chrono, then the door. Luke nodded and followed her out the door.

Before taking a single step into the hallway, Mara pulled what looked like a plastic ball from her utility belt and chucked it into the air. As it arced through the air, it exploded with a barely perceptible *pop* filling the air in the hallway with a fine white powder. A grid work of lasers appeared on the floor crisscrossing the corridor with alarm beams. Mara began hopping, skipping and jumping gracefully down the corridor with Skywalker only slightly less gracefully in tow.

Soon, they came to the lift. Mara shook her head and pointed to the spiraling staircase further down the corridor. Luke had to admit that in prowling and just plain sneakiness, she far out skilled him. Whatever was disturbing their use of the Force seemed not to affect her other abilities in the least. She moved with grace, completely in her element. But then, she had trained for years to learn how to blend into, get into and get out of high security places.

She poked her head over the open shaft of the spiral staircase, then turned back to Luke raising three fingers. Instead of using the steps like a normal person, she hooked her leg over the banister and with a playful wink began a careening descent to the third floor. If the situation permitted, Luke thought she might have even squealed in delight. He followed suit with lackluster enthusiasm as the banister rubbed uncomfortably against his nether regions. Within a few seconds, he had dropped four floors and squeezed his thighs together with a slight grimace to bring himself to a halt at level three.

He scowled at Mara who was covering her mouth to suppress a giggle at his expense. She's having way too much fun with this, he thought. He hopped lightly to her side, and they began creeping down the dark hallways toward Guru's office. They had just reached another staircase, when Luke caught movement above them out of the corner of his eye. A perched on the top step, an armed guard seemed to hear something and descended to inspect it. In one swift movement, Luke wrapped an arm around Mara's waist and a hand over her mouth and dove behind a large potted fern. The guard passed by them, and convinced that he had been hearing things, continued on his rounds.

The two prowlers let out the breaths they were holding and emerged cautiously from their hiding place. Encountering no other guards, they continued their journey down the hallway. Soon they came to a large wooden door that looked much like all the others they had passed, except that while the other had manual handles, Guru's office had electric. And an electric lock that required a seven digit access code. After inspecting the door for any trip wires or alarms, Mara pulled a palm-sized black box from her pocket and attached it with two wires to the lock. Luke glanced furtively up and down the hallway for any sign of the guards as she searched for the access code.

In less than a minute, they were standing inside the large, ornate office. Mara shut the door quietly behind them. "You start looking for any clues in his files, I'll try his computer," she whispered.

Luke nodded. Holding his hand lamp between his teeth, he began rummaging through datapads and flimsiplast documents as quietly as possible. Mara sat down at Guru's computer and pulled out another electronic gadget. She had no doubt paid a visit to Ghent before taking off on this crazy assignment.

They had been in the office for over two hours and found no trace of the missing crews or their cargo. Luke's eyes were beginning to ache from glaring at the unyielding documents. He glanced up at Mara, bathed in an eerie blue glow from the computer screen. She absently massaged her temples while she searched for information. They only thing they had learned was that Guru liked spice and art. One glance at his home revealed that he loved art. The entire complex was littered with paintings, sculptures and statues of various mediums.

Mara mumbled something inaudible, and Luke wandered over to see what she found. On the screen was what looked like a list of bank records. He chuckled softly in admiration. Mara could get into just about anything, and if she couldn't, she usually knew someone who could.

"It looks like Guru has a little side business going," she whispered.

"You mean other than stolen art and illegal spices?" Luke retorted.

"There is a third listing here, but it doesn't say what. It's bigger than the others combined," she explained. "Someone has dumped a helluva lot of credits into this account."

"Maybe he sends out a mail-order catalogue," Luke said half-jokingly.

"Actually, this looks exactly like an order. Look here." She indicated one of the columns to the right. "Whatever it is, they haven't shipped it yet."

"Maybe the buyer intends to pick up the merchandise himself," Luke suggested. "Do you think that could be the stolen artifacts?"

Mara chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. "I don't know. Could be, but it just seems like an awful lot of credits for a handful of antiques."

"Do you have the shipping date?"

She tapped a few keys to bring up another screen. "Four days."

"I've got a bad feeling about this," he muttered.

"Oh, great. That makes me feel so much better," Mara snapped.

From outside the door and down the hall a pair of voices became distinguishable. Mara and Luke locked gazes for a split second before arranging everything to how it was before they had arrived. Luke darted to the door and cautiously peeked out. Two beams of light cut through the darkness as a couple of guards swept their hand lamps along the hallway approaching the office. Somewhere, somehow, they must've tripped an alarm.

Mara came up behind him and peered over his shoulder. "No getting out that way," she whispered. She immediately began looking for hiding places in the office. There wasn't much to choose from. There were no closets or storage rooms.

Luke looked out the large bay window. They were now about eye level with the tree tops, which still left them several meters to the ground. With the Force to help cushion their landing, they might have been able to make the jump, but without it, they would be lucky to come away with only a few broken ankles, legs or worse. Mara, determination set in her face, seemed willing to take that chance and began reaching for the window release.

A small squeak sounded behind them. Mara already had her blaster unholstered and ready to shoot anything that made so much as a hostile thought in her direction. Behind them, the wall had mysteriously opened to reveal a dimly lit passageway and a steep staircase. With the voices now in front of the office door, they had little time to debate the origin of this lucky break. Grabbing their equipment, Luke and Mara slipped inside the passage and moved the panel back into place. A muffled click signaled to them that a locking mechanism had been activated.

Luke placed a finger on Mara's lips to signal *quiet* to which she lightly smacked his hand away to signal *duh*. They could hear the guards on the other side grumbling to each other.

"You're imagining things buddy," the first guard admonished.

"I'm telling you, I can feel that something's not right," the other insisted.

"Well, there's no one here now. The office doesn't look like it's been touched since this afternoon."

"Just keep alert tonight. Double check the sensors, too."

The rest of their conversation was cut off as they exited the office. The two fugitives behind the wall breathed a bit easier. Luke ignited his lightsabre with a sharp snap-hiss and passed the green glow along the inside of the panel. Mara added her own lightsabre's blue-white light to his. The panel was smooth with no evidence of a lock trigger or a handle. Even the seams indicating a door were barely visible.

"Looks like there's no way out this way," Mara dared to whisper.

"So which way do you suggest we go?"

The lightsabre's dim glow did not extend more than a few meters from the blade, with a few cautious steps, Luke could feel a definite downgrade in one direction. From Mara's shadowed expression, he could tell that she had discovered the same thing.

"There's got to be a ground floor access to this passage," Mara said.

"Down it is," Luke replied.

Silently, they descended along the hidden passage for several minutes but no exit appeared. For a moment, Luke wondered if they were going to keep going to the center of the planet. It was a veritable maze within the walls of the castle. Several times, the passageway leveled out or made sharp turns. Tunnels branched off in every direction and disappeared into the darkness.

Luke estimated that they had to be several meters underground when they finally reached a heavy durasteel door. Unlike the sophisticated entrance from the office, this door had a manually bolted lock. The grips on the lock were worn from overuse.

"Shall we go for what's behind door number two?" he half-heartedly joked.

"Be careful," Mara warned. "We don't know what's on the other side."

Luke shut down his lightsabre and motioned for Mara to do the same. Then he gently pulled back on the bolt and slowly pushed open the door. Through the crack, a bright orange glow nearly blinded them, their eyes having gotten used to the almost total darkness of the passage. They blinked away the spots and found themselves on a wide ledge overlooking a gigantic cavern. From their vantage point, they could see the entire underground complex spread out before them.

The cavern was at least 50 meters in diameter and contained hundreds of natural rock platforms. On each platform was a workstation. On the lower levels, workers dressed in thin, dirty rags picked though rock, ash and soot from the cavern wall. Other levels contained work equipment and supplies. Scientists in clean white uniforms worked on the highest platforms where complex laboratories were set up to experiment with the substance that was mined from the lower levels.

Catwalks crisscrossed the expanse over the boiling cauldron deep within the mountain and connected all of the platforms. Each catwalk joined at one of six hubs at the center and had a force field generator that had been set up in a cylindrical formation around the cauldron to keep the poisonous gases and unbearable heat from killing the thousands of people scurrying from station to station.

Luke felt his stomach turn. He didn't need the Force to feel the misery and hopelessness emanating from those people on the lower levels forced to toil away their lives in these nefarious conditions. All of them looked bone-thin, dirty and sick. He spotted a female Twi'lek on one platform whose lekku hung limply down her back and had several burn and cut marks. Beside her, a humanoid girl, who looked no more than eight-years-old, dug through the loose rock with her bare hands. Her pale, blonde hair was almost white and hung limply over her shoulders. She must have felt his eyes on her, because suddenly she turned and looked straight at him. Her eyes bored into him. They did not the vacant gaze that the other slaves had. She studied him as one would an interesting piece of artwork. He felt pinned to the spot, unable to move or breathe.

"Hey," Mara whispered in his ear jerking him back to reality. "We've still got some investigating to do."

He turned to her and nodded. When he looked back, the girl was no longer at her workstation. He quickly scanned the surrounding platforms, but she had simply disappeared. He had the strangest sensation from that girl, but he had no time to analyze it as he hurried to catch up with Mara who had sneaked over to the ledge and was peering onto the platform below.

There was only one technician in the laboratory, and he was completely engrossed with the data running across his computer. Mara didn't bother with the lift. She jumped the two and a half meters to land silently behind the man and whacked him soundly on the back of the head with the handle of her lightsabre. He slumped over in his chair never knowing what hit him.

Luke followed Mara feeling only slightly sorry for the headache the guy was going to have when he woke up. He helped her drag the man out of sight behind one of the durasteel tables.

Mara sat down at the computer and began analyzing the data with a puzzled expression on her face.

"I don't get any of this," she muttered in frustration. "It's just a bunch of numbers and symbols to me."

"They look like bio readings," Luke replied. At Mara's dubious look, he elaborated. "You don't spend as much time as I do in a bacta tank without picking up a bit of medical knowledge."

Mara rewarded him with a smirk.

"Why would Guru be doing medical tests?" she wondered. "It's not like spice dealers are reputed for their interest in their clients' health. It would be bad for business. Unless he's testing something new."

"Maybe, but this is just a little too involved for mere spice testing. Look," he said pointing at the screen, "he's got data on respiratory functions, blood count, heart rate, neurological functions. They are all normal for human species."

"Even with the smallest amount of spice there should be some fluctuation in these results," Mara added.

Luke leaned over her and began scrolling backward to view the data results over a longer period of time. Everything seemed normal, then something caught his eye that made his face pale slightly.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"I think I just figured out part of the puzzle," he replied. "Look at these numbers. This isn't just a human we're talking about, but a Force-sensitive human. Only Force-sensitives would have this extra column in the neurological readings. And from the looks of these endorphin levels, I'd say he's using a dark Jedi as his test subject."

Mara's eyes widened as something clicked in her brain.

"On the days when the spice was administered," Luke continued, "these chemicals that govern the Force are in such an excited state, they stop functioning properly. Too much information is absorbed at a time, so you are unable to distinguish a signal from all the background noise."

"Huh?" Mara nearly crossed her eyes. "Okay, rewind. Now can you repeat all that in Basic?"

"Okay, take the stars for example. The stars are always there, but if you are standing on the day-side part of a planet, you can't see them. There's too much light that drowns out the starlight. Somehow, this spice," Luke said gesturing to the computer, "actually increased our Force sensitivity to a point that we can't distinguish one being from another through the Force."

"And basically renders you Force-less," Mara said. "If Guru can engineer a spice that neutralizes the Force in Force-sensitives -"

"-he could take advantage of their momentary shock and wipe them out," Luke finished for her.

"Or sell the spice to the highest bidder," Mara added. "Guru doesn't seem like the type to organize an army."

"It gets better," Luke said grimly. "These tests are taken every other day, which means -"

"-the dark Jedi is here." Mara shook her head in agitation.

Luke remained silent with his brow furrowed.

"Something's bugging you," Mara stated realizing at the same time that it was probably the biggest understatement of the year.

"It's just this feeling that keeps nagging at me," he replied. "What do stolen artifacts have to do with this?"

"Probably nothing," she said. "We've probably just stumbled on one of Guru's many hidden dealings."

"But how does all this tie in with the stolen artifacts?"

"Maybe it doesn't."

"Maybe it's a trap," a small voice suggested.

Both Mara and Luke whirled around, their lightsabres turned off, but in en garde position. Luke gasped uncontrollably. The being standing before them was the same girl he had spotted in the work pit. She stood calmly, unarmed and did not appear the least bit frightened of sliced in half by a lightsabre.