Luke fired wildly at the remaining guards in the hangar, neutralizing them in seconds. Then he sprinted over to the ragged edge of the platform and peered into the dark abyss below.
"MAARAAA!" came his strangled cry. His voice echoed off the mountain walls, but no reply came. The light from the hangar could not penetrate the deep black of the forest night. In panicked frustration, he tried to reach out to his love, but the spice still rendered him Force-less. Her body had been engulfed by the night and was no where to be seen. His mind knew she could never have survived a fall from such a height, but his heart refused to listen.
"No, not again," he pleaded to the night. "Please, no, not another one. Not Mara. MARA!"
He lay paralyzed on the platform, his heart in his throat and his mind reeling. Blaster fire from below brought reality crashing back to him. He used every ounce of strength to push his sorrow down. He had to remember that the lives of all those slaves and the lives of the Jedi depended on stopping Guru and Callista. Dark thoughts of vengeance and anger crept into his mind, and for the first time since he had become a Jedi Master, he did not resist them.
Luke dragged himself off the ground and ran across the hangar to the Jade's Fire's berth. He punched in the code Mara had given him, dashed into the ship and locked her back down. As the access hatch locked shut, he saw the second wave of guards pour into the docking bay. Quickly he raised shields to keep their blasters from inflicting any damage on Mara's most prized possession. Confident in the Fire's security systems, Luke made his way back to Mara's quarters.
The door slid silently open, and Luke entered Mara's private sanctuary. He had never gotten more than a cursory look into the room before, and he absorbed every detail at once. The room was neat and orderly, but not lacking in knick-knacks. A few small paintings hung on the walls, and a pile of data pads were neatly stacked on her desk. But no holos of friends or family could be found anywhere. He fought down another wave of sadness that threatened to engulf him. Who besides him would mourn her loss? It had never really occurred to him before how empty Mara's life must have been. She should have been given a chance at a real life. Luke immediately kicked himself for wasting the many chances he had had over the years to give that to her.
He couldn't think about that now. He had to send a message to Leia. Getting down on his knees, he lifted the blanket at the foot of her bunk and found a palm-sized black box with a control panel and extendable antennae. There was no voice mode for the contraption, but he had to smile at the state-of-the-art encryption device attached to it, which probably had cost three times as much as the comm unit. So like her.
He was about to raise himself off the floor when another box caught his eye. He reached under the bunk, brought out a silver box and sat down with it on the bed. Thinking there might be more communications equipment inside, he lifted the lid and was surprised to find Talon Karrde smiling dashingly up at him from a holo. Luke's heart sank. Karrde was the one other person in the galaxy that had meant anything to Mara, and he was not looking forward to breaking the unhappy news. In the holo, Karrde had his arm affectionately wrapped around Mara, who looked like she was trying her hardest to seem barely tolerating of the gesture but failing miserably. Luke knew that face well.
The rest of the box contained little treasures from unknown places with unknown stories. Luke was about to close the lid when piece of flimsiplast at the very bottom caught his eye. Figuring Mara wouldn't be able to kill him now for going through her personal belongings, he dug down and retrieved what turned out to be a photo of him. It was a photo from a news story from several years ago. The accompanying story was missing, but it looked to have been taken about the time right after their meeting on Myrkr. Several cracks creased the old photo, and a quick examination revealed that it had been torn up and pasted back together many times.
The ship shuttered slightly, ripping Luke's attention away from his treasure. It sounded like Guru's men were bringing in heavier guns to disable the Fire's shields. He placed the photo gently back in the box and returned it to its hidden place. He would come back for it later. Right now, he had to get out the docking bay and over to Guru's fortress before he and Callista could give the Imperial the spice.
Grabbing the communications device, Luke darted to the cockpit. Out of the view port, he saw three men setting up a rocket launcher aimed at the Fire. He ran an eye over the battery controls and allowed himself a grim smile as he found a familiar set of buttons. He activated a ventral gun and rained down a fiery shower on his attackers. Looks like Mara's been talking with Han about ship defenses. Anyone left alive after the Fire's barrage of laser fire went scampering off into the forest. Luke grabbed a large backpack from a storage closet and filled it with extra blasters, thermo-nuclear detonators and enough arsenal enough to take out another Death Star. He hefted the pack onto his back, tucked the comm unit under his arm and clipped his lightsabre to his belt. Then he jogged down the access ramp and reengaged the locking mechanism.
Luke knew he only had a short amount of time before Guru sent more reinforcements, so he quickly trotted over to the edge of what was left of the landing platform in order to get the clearest possible signal. Making sure the encryption device was active, he typed out a brief message and sent it to his sister's private comm channel. As a last minute idea, he also sent the message directly to the Millennium Falcon. He couldn't wait for a reply and simply hoped that either Han or Leia would get the message in time.
Hoping that help was on the way, Luke began a search for a speeder bike that could take him to Guru's fortress. Halfway across the hangar, he accidentally kicked something small and metal. He bent down and picked up Mara's lightsabre. He fought down another wave of sorrow and clipped it next to his own lightsabre. Then he found a speeder on the other side of the docking bay, and he blasted through the trees within minutes.
As the speeder roared down the trail and toward Mt. Ch'ameki, Hagen held his limp captive in the shadows to keep from being detected. He looked down at her. She was beautiful. Even through the effects of the stun blast, her piercing green eyes were staring daggers at him. Guru would be pleased with his catch. Although with all the rubble that his concussion blast had caused, the small tractor device had had a hard time latching on to the woman's falling form. He brushed a strand of fiery red hair out of her eyes. It would have been a shame to let such a pretty thing be dashed to pieces on the rocks far below.
Once Hagen was sure the coast was clear. He loaded his precious cargo into a sidecar on his speeder, and rushed off to deliver her to his master.
The fog slowly receded to the back of Mara's brain as she woke to the Ewok celebration pounding against her temples. One side of her face felt sore and swollen, and she could taste the dried blood on her lips. She inhaled deeply and gasped as a sharp pain slashed into her ribcage. Somewhere between Mt. Ange and Mt. Ch'ameki, she had lost consciousness, most likely due to the effects of the stun gun. The last thing she remembered was flying through the trees, a captive of one of Guru's men. Groaning, she struggled to open her eyes, but try as she might, no light entered. Then she realized with a few firm blinks, that her eyes were open, and her cell was sheathed in complete darkness. She reached out with her senses to gage her surroundings, only to be met with a now familiar buzz that signaled a block in her Force abilities.
I guess we'll have to do this the old fashioned way, she thought grimly.
The next thing to catch her attention was the cold, hard metal of the chains around her wrists and ankles. The manacles were attached together by a thick chain, allowing her to separate her hands by only a quarter of a meter. Another chain held her hands high above her head, which would account for the numbness she felt in her arms. At least her captors had given her enough slack to be able to stand up or sit down.
She gave the chains a few good tugs. They didn't budge a millimeter. They were bolted tight into the rock wall. Rock? Something clicked in Mara's brain. She must not be in the house part of Guru's fortress. She had to be in one of the hidden passages that ran through out the mountain. She inhaled deeply and had to stifle a cough as an odor of sulfur and mildew bombarded her olfactory senses. If she could smell sulfur, then she must be close to the center of the mountain and the laboratory.
Mara strained her ears for any telltale sounds. Nothing. Only a few clawed feet skittered along the rock floor. She hoped that whatever rodent the feet belonged to stayed far away from her. Then another sound caught her attention. Footsteps. Muffled, but definitely more than one pair. They grew louder, then suddenly stopped nearby. Metal clinked against metal.
A shaft of light pierced through the darkness, and Mara's pupils did not have time to adjust. She squeezed her eyes shut at the welcome but intrusive light, and all the Ewoks that had been partying in her brain before seemed to get their second wind. Gradually, her eyes adjusted, and she found herself staring into the lewd smirk of their former host. Guru held up a lantern and shook his head in mock scolding.
"Captain Asaro, what have you done to that pretty face of yours?" he asked sweetly. "Well, it looks like someone just knocked the spots right off you."
Mara's face remained impassive as he burst out laughing at his own joke.
"Give it a rest, Guru," a voice commanded from the shadows. A woman draped in a deep purple cloak floated regally out from behind the spice dealer and bent down to get a better look at Mara. "So here's the little whore who tried to come between me and Luke."
"Callista," Mara nearly spat. "So you have turned to the dark side."
"Dark side, light side, who are we to judge what is dark or light," she said. "The Force is a tool, isn't that what you are always saying? So now I'm using all the tools at my disposal to get back what was stolen from me."
"Skywalker?"
"Yes, you might have been a convenient distraction for him in my absence," Callista replied, "but I assure you, he will no longer be needing your – services."
"You don't know anything about Luke and me."
"Don't I?" she arched her eyebrow maliciously. "I know about your little tryst in the forest."
"I didn't know you were such a voyeur," Mara retorted. "Look, I'd love to do the catfight thing with you, Callista, but I'm a little tied up at the moment."
"Smart move waiting until he had been poisoned, so you could nurse him back to health," she continued, ignoring the prisoner.
"With lovers like you, who needs enemies," Mara muttered under her breath.
"The poison was for you!" Callista screeched. "You were supposed to eat those dates!"
"Great, so we not only have a dark Jedi to deal with, but an incompetent one," Mara shot back.
"You gave those dates to him, so you poisoned him!"
Mara stared at her captor. Callista was just short of a mental breakdown. She paced back and forth in front Mara, her hands trembling and her body wound tighter than a spring. Mara wondered just how hard it would be to push Callista over the edge. Without the Force to control her anger, Callista was a loose cannon. Suddenly, the dark Jedi took a calming breath and granted Mara a chilling smile.
"Do you really think a Jedi Master could love an ex-Imperial who tried to kill him?" Callista ranted. "I never thought you could be that naïve, Jade. What kind of life would you have? You never even completed your training. You aren't good enough for Luke. He knows it, and his family knows it. They have always loved me. Leia and I were best friends, and we will be again. But you – you tried to kill her brother. You were allied with the people who destroyed her home world. You're tainted – tainted with the blood you've spilled in the service of the Emperor. So what other services did Palpatine require of his Hands?"
Mara felt her face become hot, but she refused to indulge in this woman's insane ramblings. Using every ounce of her restraint, she held her anger in check. Lashing back at the woman's viciousness would be futile while she was chained. In that moment, she realized that Callista had read her fears as clearly as if she had spoken them herself. The only way Callista could know about those feelings she kept hidden would be if she had read them through the Force. Some how she had managed to find a way to block whatever drug they were using on her and Luke.
Callista and Mara locked gazes. Green eyes burned into gray ones. The corners of Callista's mouth upturned into a sickly grin, and she lorded her power over the helpless trader.
"For someone who claims to love Luke, you don't know him at all," Mara declared. She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt, and she emptied her head of useless thoughts lest Callista pick up on them. "Luke's greatest gift is his ability to forgive. He forgave his father, and so did Leia for that matter. He forgave me. Luke will come for me."
Callista began to laugh maniacally. "Come for you? Why in stars would he?"
"He loves me, and he will find me."
A dark shadow twisted Callista's face into an ugly expression of hate. Her hand whipped out and slapped Mara solidly across the face, reopening the cut on her lip. In a mockingly sweet voice, she turned to Guru.
"You know, I don't know of anyone who could have survived a fall from that height. Do you?"
Guru shook his head.
"A person wouldn't have a bone left intact after that kind of fall." Callista lowered herself to stare directly into Mara's eyes. "You are dead to him!" she spat.
"What's the matter, Callista?" Mara asked calmly. "Are you mad because he loves me? Or because you know that he will come for me? He never came for you. He let you go. He'll never let me go."
Callista shrieked and grabbed a fist full of Mara's hair. Before she could pummel her prisoner with her fists, her COM link beeped. She quickly composed herself and satisfied her rage with simply bashing Mara's head against the wall. Stars swam in front of Mara's eyes, and a ringing in her ears muffled out the voice on Callista's comm link.
"We have business to attend to," Callista informed Guru. "We'll take care of her later." As the two jailers exited, Callista threw one last scornful look at her captive.
The cell was once again bathed in darkness, and Mara let out a painful breath. Despite all her training as a cold-blooded assassin, her eyes began to tear up and she was having difficulty swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat. She didn't want to think about Luke's emotional state if he thought she was dead. He would be devastated.
"Luke," she whispered into the dark. "Don't believe them. I'm not dead."