Divided Heart
Part 5: The Trap
By SJ and Rhea Jediknight (skyjade@globetrotter.net and
jediknight@mail2master.com)
____________________
Disclaimers: Nothing in the Star Wars Universe belong to us; everything
belongs
to George Lucas. We're only writing stories for fun. See my homepage for
more
details.
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quasar/3702
__________________
"This is Firebird. We are out of Coruscant's gravity field."
The Commander smiled thinly as he heard the report of his Sovereign' pilots.
He then turned toward his troops, who had subdued the surveillance men of the
Capitol's deflector shields. He nodded at the them to initiate the sabotage
while preparing their means of protection for it. He then contacted his other
teams and also ordered them to proceed with the other sabotages.
Seconds later, the planetary shield generator activated, bypassing all the
security safeguards that were meant to prevent what his teams had just managed.
From this moment onward, the security shield would remain in place until the
planet would break apart.
His prey was trapped, he smiled to himself as he followed his men out the way
they had come in.
His victory, as well as Luke Skywalker's death, were finally at hand.
******
A shrill warning signal pulled Leia out of deep sleep. Warmly ensconced in
her husband's strong arms, she moaned in complaint; behind her, her
ex-smuggler of a lover also groaned; the signal didn't leave their conscious
attention alone. She reluctantly opened her eyes and pulled her comlink to her
hand.
"Don't they know that calling this early is uncivilized?" Han grumped, then
threw his pillow over his head to block out the continuous, strident sound.
"Must be what we call progress," Leia replied tiredly, then turned on
her comlink.
"Leia," Ackbar's gravelly voice greeted her before she had time to indicate
her presence on the line. "Sorry to wake you up, but we have an emergency on
our hands. The magnetic planetary shield has gone berserk and we can't shut
it down anymore."
"What??" Han gasped, pulling the pillow off his head before he sat up. "How
did this happen?"
"Different teams of saboteurs have managed to overcome the night team and have
shielded their own work before they left."
"Can't you undo what they have initiated?" the woman asked after she turned
on the light of their bedroom. She was completely awake now.
"We've been trying to do that for the past twenty minutes, princess. We've
already called Luke for help."
"Where are you?" she asked him.
"At the generator station that is located near the Bothan Embassy."
"I'll be right there," both she and Han answered in unison, then they jumped
out of their bed.
As they hastily put on the nearest clothes, they both exchanged a worried
glance.
They had a bad feeling about all this.
******
The moment that the enemy had left the secondary throne room, Mara left it in a
rush.
As she ran as fast as she could throughout the hidden corridors of the
former imperial palace, she tried to focus her mind and contact her friend
through the Force. However, between her ragged breath and her worry about him,
she was not able to clear her mind enough and establish contact.
Minutes later, she literally burst out of the secret entrance that was
closest to Luke's place, then rushed over to his door. By the time
that she stood in front of it, she knew that he was not inside. Forcing
herself to relax, she found her center of Force awareness, reached out, out,
searching along the bond that she seemed to share with the young man--- and
finally found him.
She began to sigh in relief as she pinpointed his exact location--- then she
suddenly lost him as if he had mysteriously disappeared in the Force. But he
hadn't, she realized. He couldn't be dead either, so she suspected that he had
just entered an ysalamiri bubble, which was located in the area of the Bothan
Embassy.
Kreth!, she cursed vehemently. She quickly calculated how fast she could reach
him, then, when she estimated that she would never reach him in time,
punched in her override backdoor code in his door pad. If she couldn't use
the Force to reach him, then she'd use his call station; she did not have
her comlink with herself at the moment.
The door slid open; she stepped inside---- and stopped in her tracks when a
flash of electricity barely missed her midsection. Startled that Skywalker would
have any anti-burglar system in place, she gazed down--- and growled in
annoyance as she identified the identity of the Jedi's security system.
"Cut it out, Short Stuff," she warned the artoo unit as she tried to push
past him. "I need to contact Skywalker, and fast."
The droid tweeted something that sounded derogatory to her ears.
She glared down at him as she deciphered part of what he had just told her.
"Get over it," she sneered at him, "just because I wasn't friendly when we
first met doesn't mean that I can't change. It's been almost eight years
now." She narrowed her eyes at the droid. "I'd think that Skywalker would have
taught you that by now," she rebuked him.
Artoo warbled another remark.
"No, I don't want to harm the farmboy any more. However," she continued more
seriously, "he's sure to come to harm if you don't let me in."
The droid considered her comment, then pulled his welding arc away and
allowed her entrance in the apartment. "I never thought you could be that
resentful, Short Stuff," she commented, throwing him a warning glance. "I'll
have to warn Skywalker to teach you some manners."
The little droid beeped briefly in answer as he followed her toward the
nearby communication console.
Slightly annoyed by the droid's remaining wariness, Mara reconsidered
pulling her blaster on him to discourage him from treating her like an
enemy, but she once again changed her mind when she decided that such an action
would not do her any good.
She had never thought that she had hurt the droid in the past, but she was
beginning to understand that he had not taken lightly the fact that she had
threatened to rip him to pieces while on Myrkr.
But that had been a long time ago, she thought seriously.
Almost another life.
"Skywalker took his comlink with him, right?" she asked her unwanted
companion.
An affirmative note answered her.
"Good." She tapped in his code. The light continued to blink as it tried to
establish contact with Skywalker. "Come on," she muttered in growing worry,
"get through to him." More blinking. "I thought that technology was even
more infallible than Jedi!" she spat in frustration.
The droid behind her made a thoughtful comment about her complaint.
Mara ignored him and tried to enhance her signal so as to pierce through
whatever was also blocking the receiving functions of Luke's comlink.
"Drat!" she finally admitted defeat. She could not warn Luke about the
incoming danger. She reconsidered her options, then tried to contact Coruscant's
security.
The line was busy, asking her to call again later.
Feeling the very intense urge to just shoot the frustrating appliance to
space dust, she forced herself to calm down and simply turned off the
communication system. "So much for that," she muttered, then headed out the
way she had come when she heard a querying note from behind her.
She turned around. "Where do you think I'm going?" she snorted at the
machine. "I'm going to save your master's butt again, of course."
To her surprise, the droid answered her statement by rolling closer to her,
then past her as the door slid open. For a brief instant, Mara stared after
him in confusion. When he turned his domed head toward her, she understood that
he wanted her to follow him.
Frowning in confusion, she fell in step behind him, careful to lock her
friend's main door behind them.
"What do you have in mind?" she asked him, wondering since when she had
become so comfortable with the droid as to engage in sustained discussions
with him.
Either she was really softening as she got older, she thought dimly, or
Skywalker was rubbing off on her.
The droid remained silent. A few seconds later, he plugged himself in an
information jack of the nearby wall and unlocked a hidden panel. Although
Mara knew that much was hidden in the walls of the ex-imperial palace, she
couldn't help but gape as this hidden panel slid up to allow her entrance
into a darkened room. Reflexively pulling her blaster from her wrist
holster, she followed Artoo inside. "You sure about that?" she asked him
even as the door closed behind them.
The moment that they were sealed inside, the lights turned on--- and she
could only gape as she discovered the powerful YP-9800, high-altitude speeder
that was hovering in front of her; in front of it, an outer door was already
sliding open.
"Don't tell me that this is Skywalker's," she commented as she quickly
walked around the speeder to study the state-of-the-art, latest model of the
sport-model, high-altitude craft.
Artoo chuckled at her even as he used a specially-designed entrance ramp and
climbed aboard.
It was Luke's, she realized even as she tried to understand how he could
have afford the thing, let alone what had pushed him to waste his
non-existent money on such a 'toy'... which she herself had promised herself
that she'd get on her next stop on Coruscant.
Well, well, well, she finally smirked, then took place behind the steering
controls, the farmboy was still full of surprises, even for her who thought that
she knew everything about him. "All right, Short Stuff, buckle in tight. We've
got an earthquake to stop."
Bleeping in surprise at her statement, the droid didn't have time to comment
on her moniker for him before they were through the main hatch and out into
the sky of Coruscant. Pushing the engines to their maximum speed, Mara flew
right toward the Bothan Embassy.
She was within sight of the tall spires when they began to shake uncontrollably
before her horrified eyes.
She was too late.
******
When Luke joined Admiral Ackbar and his team, they went directly into the
control and maintenance bays of the local shield generators.
The moment that he stepped through the hatch of the main control room though, he
froze in sudden worry. He couldn't feel the Force anymore. Whoever had sabotaged
the shield had not only been thorough on the technical side, but all the other
aspects of the job as well.
"What's wrong, Luke?" his old friend inquired, turning toward him when he
failed to follow them inside.
"I'm afraid that I won't be able to help you more than your experts can. The
place is surrounded by ysalamiri."
"What?" Page, the officer who was in charge of the investigation, frowned as he
overheard his comment. "How can it be? Where are the lizards?"
Luke pursed his lips in sad humor. "If I could feel them, I'd gladly tell
you. However, that's the point with ysalamiri. I can't pinpoint them; I can only
feel the zone of influence."
"Then let's blow this place----"
"No," Leia's stern voice interrupted. Surprised to see her there, Luke turned
around.
Considering her sleep-tousled hair, he could tell that she and Han had rushed
over as fast as they could. "If we destroy the room, we will ruin our only
chance to figure out what has been done to the generators and undo it. You said
that it couldn't be turned off?" she inquired next.
"Yes, Mme President. We've also discovered that the vital mechanisms of the
generator are shielded. That's why we can't interact with them anymore."
"What about the other generators?" Han inquired while he surveyed the
crowded room.
Page shook his head in answer. "They've also been sabotaged like this one."
"And the energy source? Have you tried to cut it off?" Luke suggested,
feeling a dim hope fill him at the though that causing a general power outage
might be the solution.
"Whoever did this, Sir," Page replied, "they knew even more than we did
about the inner workings of the shield generators. I think that we are
dealing with ex-imperials."
"And they've efficiently cut us off from the rest of the universe," Leia
summarized, exchanging a worried gaze with her family. "What could be their
motives though?"
Before anyone could answer her, the ground under their feet began to shake
hard, throwing them off balance even as the surrounding electronic appliances,
unable to withstand the enormous tensions, instantly began to pull themselves
free from their mountings on the walls.
As he reeled into the nearby wall, Luke understood that they had just gotten
their answer. Someone was using a seismic accelerator to destroy Coruscant.
Wrapping an arm around his head, trying to protect it from impacting with
the durasteel wall, he slammed into the wall; he hurried to recover from the
impact and looked around. He saw his sister and brother-in-law--- and leaped
forward as he spotted a light that was about to impale them as it detached from
the ceiling overhead.
He tackled Han and pushed him aside just in time to avoid a crushing impact
with an suddenly dangerous object.
The tremors then subsided as if they had never been.
"You okay?" his sister asked as she checked on both of them.
"Not a scratch," Luke replied, then, pulling himself to his feet, hurried
back toward the room. The doors had begun to close itself when they had begun
to malfunction.
Once in front of them, he discovered that the doors had been stopped by a pile
of computer and rubble, which was now blocking the main access of the control
room. He tried to slip past it, then to push it away from the entrance.
Nothing budged.
"Anybody by the door?" he asked even as he turned on his lightsaber. Without
the Force, he couldn't sense anything nor anyone.
"Not that I can see," someone answered him from inside, "but be careful, just in
case."
'Right,' he thought grimly as he attacked the upper lid of the right-most door.
He sliced neatly through it before he focused on the side. The closer he came to
eye level though, the more he pulled his blade out of metal until only the tip
of it was cutting through the metal. Then, after allowing the metal to cool
down a little, he gripped both edges of the heavy door and strained to pull it
away from its lower mooring.
Han, who had recovered from his shock, then Leia, joined him in his effort.
Together, they managed to pull the door free and against the nearby wall. Inside
the room, the remaining lights were dim, lighting the walls instead of the
floor. "We're coming through," he informed the moaning men and women who were
trapped under computer consoles. "Anything broken?"
Behind him, Leia helped the luckier techs out of the rubble while Han joined
him in his effort to free those who had not escaped injuries.
Even though Luke sometimes wished that he wasn't burdened with the Force,
and all the challenges that it brought in his life, he now wished most
ardently that he could have access to it. Lives were at stake. He needed to
interven fast or----
As if to confirm his feeling, new tremors shook the ground under them.
This time, he and his friend were right in the path of the computer
stations---- He unpleasant discovered the danger of their current position when
a huge station pulled free from the wall and seemed to be aiming at him.
He reflexively ducked even as he futilely tried to shield both him and Han
with the Force.
******
Mara and Artoo had reached the location of the main generator and had
entered the wide, main corridors when the ground shook again. Cursing, Mara
shielded her head with her arms while she kept trying to move forward,
protecting her luma from any damage. It was the only light available now,
along with Artoo's headlight.
Behind her, Artoo fluted a query.
"No," she shot in irritation, speaking loudly in order to be heard over the
the metallic screeching of the straining corridors. "I don't know where
Skywalker is. My guess is the control room, don't you think?"
Her electronic companion beeped once--- then disappeared down an adjacent
corridor and stopped there. Wondering what he had uncovered, she reluctantly
returned on her steps and held her balance as she waited for him to talk to her
again. Around them, the remaining lights crashed down on the floor, plunging
the corridor into complete darkness.
"Should I leave you here and continue?" she inquired in slight irritation as
she gazed down at his illuminated headlight.
He answered her with a raspberry, then a triumphant squeal.
"What?" she inquired. The tremors stopped once again. "What is it?"
Even as the droid began to answer her in a flurry of sounds and chirps that
were too fast for her to decipher, the Force provided her with the
translation.
She could sense Luke again; the Force had returned. *Luke!* she reached out
instantly. *Get out of there before it's too late. It's a---*
*Trap, we know,* her friend answered, then sent to her an image of what was
happening around him. *I can't abandon them, Mara, but save yourself. Get
airborne before the next tremors strike.*
"Like Hell I will," she muttered to herself, then headed toward her friend's
location at full speed. Behind her, the droid tooted forlornly.
"Stay put," she yelled at him without turning around, "we'll come back for
you." Then, she was sprinting down the grate-covered floor, careful to avoid
the shattered glass and broken metal panels.
******
"Mara's coming," Luke informed his sister as the two of them finished to Force-
pull a heavy station from Han's arm.
"Mara? Why is she here now? And how does she know that we're here? The
communications are jam---"
Feeling his sister's reflexive distrust toward his friend, Luke frowned at
her. "She's not involved in this, Leia. She's worried about our safety."
"Whatever, Kid," Han gripped as he held his injured arm with his healthy
one. "As long as she can explain to us how she got rid of the lizards."
"And that we get out of here in one piece," Leia added as she helped her
bruised up husband out of the messy room.
They still did not trust her, he understood as he turned toward Page, who
had just recovered his full senses. No matter how much his friend had helped
them, how devoted to the New Republic she was, Mara still remained a number
one suspect when they were dealing with ex-imperials.
As he helped his friend up to his feet, he reflected that it was also
probably one of the goals that was being pursued by their enemy. Sadly, they
were succeeding in that aspect too.
Minutes later, he, Page, and the survivors of the last tremors, all made it out
of the room. Once they were done arranging for the transport of the wounded,
their group hobbled away from the control room. New tremors hit their location,
plunging them into complete darkness as the last lights fell and shattered on
the floor.
"Leia!" he called even as he unhooked his lightsaber with the Force, "take
my lightsaber." He pressed it against her hand, making sure that she
understood that he had given it to her. "We can use it as a glow lamp."
"As long as we don't accidentally touch it," Han muttered tiredly, pulling a
slight smirk from his friend.
Good old Han, Luke thought in relief. No matter how bad the situation was, or
how bad of shape he was in, he could still crack a joke and lighten their
moods.
"Well, don't hold it by the bright and pointy end and you should be okay,"
Luke joked back, then he reached out with the Force to reinforce his charge
before his senses could drift out again.
Ahead of the group, Leia cut away the larger pieces of debris that were blocking
their path. As they walked, the broken pieces of lights crunched under their
thick shoes. She tried to direct the group away from the worst of the glass, but
the corridors were filled with shards. Everyone paid extra attention to those,
careful to avoid new injuries.
When new tremors hit, she shared the suspicion with the others that they
were increasing in strength and length; they didn't allow this new information
stop them. Now that all the lights had been knocked down, they estimated that
they couldn't be hit by anything else... until the shakes were strong enough to
challenge even the strength of the overhead ceiling plates.
Seeing this, she urged the others along faster, keeping her fledgling Jedi
senses alert for warnings of new dangers.
She thus felt a bright light approaching when someone ran toward their group.
Lowering her brother's lightsaber into a defensive posture, she waited for the
woman to appear to them; as she stepped out of the shadows, her green light
illuminated the red-head's, worried green eyes.
"Is everybody all right?" Mara inquired even as her eyes ran a cursory check
on the men and women who were behind her and Han.
Leia noticed that the other frowned when she refocused on her. "You keep
going, I'll cover the rear," she said. "The coast is mostly clear, but we
must not dawdle in here. The ceiling is beginning to give in, and the deck is
giving up too."
When Mara stepped closer, Leia reflexively followed her with her brother's
blade, but before she could ask her how she had known about their
predicament, her brother's voice filled her mind. *We need to get going,
Leia. A new round is building up.*
*Are you sure about her, Luke?* she asked him uncertainly.
*I implicitly trust her with my life. If you don't trust her, then trust
me.*
Sighing in defeat, Leia silently nodded in acknowledgement at the red-head
before she pulled the blade forward again and resumed her walking. At her
side, Han moaned slightly as his arm shifted with the movement.
Mara quickly checked on the techs that made it past her luma light, then sighed
in relief when she spotted the familiar features of the one man for whom she
would willingly risk her life in order to save his.
"Are you all right?" she asked him even as she slipped her shoulders under
Page's dangling right arm and helped her friend to carry him.
"Are you?" he inquired back. "How did you know that I was here? What
happened?"
"While I was cooling down from our previous spat, I overheard a conversation
that someone didn't want anybody to hear. They've planted a seismic
accelerator under the Bothan Embassy."
"Figured part of that already," he nodded, locking his shadowed eyes on
hers-----
A new tremor hit them again, harder than ever. Both she and Luke instantly
widened their stance to retain their balance, but even then, they almost fell on
the shard-filled deck. Mara reflexively checked the others in front of her---
and noticed that the ceiling was dangerously bowing, about to cave in on the
front of the group.
"Luke!" she warned him. She didn't wait for his assistance and reached out to
shield the others with the Force.
She had barely begun to focus her control when Luke's much more skilled
powers steadied her owns, joining and reinforcing her shield around both
his family members and those who were coming right after them.
Then, to Mara's awe, the Jedi Master also pushed the ceiling plates back
into the ceiling, wedging them into place while the group hurried to walk under
them.
Once they were all safe, he let go of the plates; they crashed loudly behind
them--- and forced the weakened deck open thanks to the strength of their
impact.
"I think it's about time to get out of here," he muttered under his breath.
Mara wholeheartedly agreed with him, especially since the hard work had only
begun.
TBC in part 6
Written 2003 Rhea and SJ
Part 5: The Trap
By SJ and Rhea Jediknight (skyjade@globetrotter.net and
jediknight@mail2master.com)
____________________
Disclaimers: Nothing in the Star Wars Universe belong to us; everything
belongs
to George Lucas. We're only writing stories for fun. See my homepage for
more
details.
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quasar/3702
__________________
"This is Firebird. We are out of Coruscant's gravity field."
The Commander smiled thinly as he heard the report of his Sovereign' pilots.
He then turned toward his troops, who had subdued the surveillance men of the
Capitol's deflector shields. He nodded at the them to initiate the sabotage
while preparing their means of protection for it. He then contacted his other
teams and also ordered them to proceed with the other sabotages.
Seconds later, the planetary shield generator activated, bypassing all the
security safeguards that were meant to prevent what his teams had just managed.
From this moment onward, the security shield would remain in place until the
planet would break apart.
His prey was trapped, he smiled to himself as he followed his men out the way
they had come in.
His victory, as well as Luke Skywalker's death, were finally at hand.
******
A shrill warning signal pulled Leia out of deep sleep. Warmly ensconced in
her husband's strong arms, she moaned in complaint; behind her, her
ex-smuggler of a lover also groaned; the signal didn't leave their conscious
attention alone. She reluctantly opened her eyes and pulled her comlink to her
hand.
"Don't they know that calling this early is uncivilized?" Han grumped, then
threw his pillow over his head to block out the continuous, strident sound.
"Must be what we call progress," Leia replied tiredly, then turned on
her comlink.
"Leia," Ackbar's gravelly voice greeted her before she had time to indicate
her presence on the line. "Sorry to wake you up, but we have an emergency on
our hands. The magnetic planetary shield has gone berserk and we can't shut
it down anymore."
"What??" Han gasped, pulling the pillow off his head before he sat up. "How
did this happen?"
"Different teams of saboteurs have managed to overcome the night team and have
shielded their own work before they left."
"Can't you undo what they have initiated?" the woman asked after she turned
on the light of their bedroom. She was completely awake now.
"We've been trying to do that for the past twenty minutes, princess. We've
already called Luke for help."
"Where are you?" she asked him.
"At the generator station that is located near the Bothan Embassy."
"I'll be right there," both she and Han answered in unison, then they jumped
out of their bed.
As they hastily put on the nearest clothes, they both exchanged a worried
glance.
They had a bad feeling about all this.
******
The moment that the enemy had left the secondary throne room, Mara left it in a
rush.
As she ran as fast as she could throughout the hidden corridors of the
former imperial palace, she tried to focus her mind and contact her friend
through the Force. However, between her ragged breath and her worry about him,
she was not able to clear her mind enough and establish contact.
Minutes later, she literally burst out of the secret entrance that was
closest to Luke's place, then rushed over to his door. By the time
that she stood in front of it, she knew that he was not inside. Forcing
herself to relax, she found her center of Force awareness, reached out, out,
searching along the bond that she seemed to share with the young man--- and
finally found him.
She began to sigh in relief as she pinpointed his exact location--- then she
suddenly lost him as if he had mysteriously disappeared in the Force. But he
hadn't, she realized. He couldn't be dead either, so she suspected that he had
just entered an ysalamiri bubble, which was located in the area of the Bothan
Embassy.
Kreth!, she cursed vehemently. She quickly calculated how fast she could reach
him, then, when she estimated that she would never reach him in time,
punched in her override backdoor code in his door pad. If she couldn't use
the Force to reach him, then she'd use his call station; she did not have
her comlink with herself at the moment.
The door slid open; she stepped inside---- and stopped in her tracks when a
flash of electricity barely missed her midsection. Startled that Skywalker would
have any anti-burglar system in place, she gazed down--- and growled in
annoyance as she identified the identity of the Jedi's security system.
"Cut it out, Short Stuff," she warned the artoo unit as she tried to push
past him. "I need to contact Skywalker, and fast."
The droid tweeted something that sounded derogatory to her ears.
She glared down at him as she deciphered part of what he had just told her.
"Get over it," she sneered at him, "just because I wasn't friendly when we
first met doesn't mean that I can't change. It's been almost eight years
now." She narrowed her eyes at the droid. "I'd think that Skywalker would have
taught you that by now," she rebuked him.
Artoo warbled another remark.
"No, I don't want to harm the farmboy any more. However," she continued more
seriously, "he's sure to come to harm if you don't let me in."
The droid considered her comment, then pulled his welding arc away and
allowed her entrance in the apartment. "I never thought you could be that
resentful, Short Stuff," she commented, throwing him a warning glance. "I'll
have to warn Skywalker to teach you some manners."
The little droid beeped briefly in answer as he followed her toward the
nearby communication console.
Slightly annoyed by the droid's remaining wariness, Mara reconsidered
pulling her blaster on him to discourage him from treating her like an
enemy, but she once again changed her mind when she decided that such an action
would not do her any good.
She had never thought that she had hurt the droid in the past, but she was
beginning to understand that he had not taken lightly the fact that she had
threatened to rip him to pieces while on Myrkr.
But that had been a long time ago, she thought seriously.
Almost another life.
"Skywalker took his comlink with him, right?" she asked her unwanted
companion.
An affirmative note answered her.
"Good." She tapped in his code. The light continued to blink as it tried to
establish contact with Skywalker. "Come on," she muttered in growing worry,
"get through to him." More blinking. "I thought that technology was even
more infallible than Jedi!" she spat in frustration.
The droid behind her made a thoughtful comment about her complaint.
Mara ignored him and tried to enhance her signal so as to pierce through
whatever was also blocking the receiving functions of Luke's comlink.
"Drat!" she finally admitted defeat. She could not warn Luke about the
incoming danger. She reconsidered her options, then tried to contact Coruscant's
security.
The line was busy, asking her to call again later.
Feeling the very intense urge to just shoot the frustrating appliance to
space dust, she forced herself to calm down and simply turned off the
communication system. "So much for that," she muttered, then headed out the
way she had come when she heard a querying note from behind her.
She turned around. "Where do you think I'm going?" she snorted at the
machine. "I'm going to save your master's butt again, of course."
To her surprise, the droid answered her statement by rolling closer to her,
then past her as the door slid open. For a brief instant, Mara stared after
him in confusion. When he turned his domed head toward her, she understood that
he wanted her to follow him.
Frowning in confusion, she fell in step behind him, careful to lock her
friend's main door behind them.
"What do you have in mind?" she asked him, wondering since when she had
become so comfortable with the droid as to engage in sustained discussions
with him.
Either she was really softening as she got older, she thought dimly, or
Skywalker was rubbing off on her.
The droid remained silent. A few seconds later, he plugged himself in an
information jack of the nearby wall and unlocked a hidden panel. Although
Mara knew that much was hidden in the walls of the ex-imperial palace, she
couldn't help but gape as this hidden panel slid up to allow her entrance
into a darkened room. Reflexively pulling her blaster from her wrist
holster, she followed Artoo inside. "You sure about that?" she asked him
even as the door closed behind them.
The moment that they were sealed inside, the lights turned on--- and she
could only gape as she discovered the powerful YP-9800, high-altitude speeder
that was hovering in front of her; in front of it, an outer door was already
sliding open.
"Don't tell me that this is Skywalker's," she commented as she quickly
walked around the speeder to study the state-of-the-art, latest model of the
sport-model, high-altitude craft.
Artoo chuckled at her even as he used a specially-designed entrance ramp and
climbed aboard.
It was Luke's, she realized even as she tried to understand how he could
have afford the thing, let alone what had pushed him to waste his
non-existent money on such a 'toy'... which she herself had promised herself
that she'd get on her next stop on Coruscant.
Well, well, well, she finally smirked, then took place behind the steering
controls, the farmboy was still full of surprises, even for her who thought that
she knew everything about him. "All right, Short Stuff, buckle in tight. We've
got an earthquake to stop."
Bleeping in surprise at her statement, the droid didn't have time to comment
on her moniker for him before they were through the main hatch and out into
the sky of Coruscant. Pushing the engines to their maximum speed, Mara flew
right toward the Bothan Embassy.
She was within sight of the tall spires when they began to shake uncontrollably
before her horrified eyes.
She was too late.
******
When Luke joined Admiral Ackbar and his team, they went directly into the
control and maintenance bays of the local shield generators.
The moment that he stepped through the hatch of the main control room though, he
froze in sudden worry. He couldn't feel the Force anymore. Whoever had sabotaged
the shield had not only been thorough on the technical side, but all the other
aspects of the job as well.
"What's wrong, Luke?" his old friend inquired, turning toward him when he
failed to follow them inside.
"I'm afraid that I won't be able to help you more than your experts can. The
place is surrounded by ysalamiri."
"What?" Page, the officer who was in charge of the investigation, frowned as he
overheard his comment. "How can it be? Where are the lizards?"
Luke pursed his lips in sad humor. "If I could feel them, I'd gladly tell
you. However, that's the point with ysalamiri. I can't pinpoint them; I can only
feel the zone of influence."
"Then let's blow this place----"
"No," Leia's stern voice interrupted. Surprised to see her there, Luke turned
around.
Considering her sleep-tousled hair, he could tell that she and Han had rushed
over as fast as they could. "If we destroy the room, we will ruin our only
chance to figure out what has been done to the generators and undo it. You said
that it couldn't be turned off?" she inquired next.
"Yes, Mme President. We've also discovered that the vital mechanisms of the
generator are shielded. That's why we can't interact with them anymore."
"What about the other generators?" Han inquired while he surveyed the
crowded room.
Page shook his head in answer. "They've also been sabotaged like this one."
"And the energy source? Have you tried to cut it off?" Luke suggested,
feeling a dim hope fill him at the though that causing a general power outage
might be the solution.
"Whoever did this, Sir," Page replied, "they knew even more than we did
about the inner workings of the shield generators. I think that we are
dealing with ex-imperials."
"And they've efficiently cut us off from the rest of the universe," Leia
summarized, exchanging a worried gaze with her family. "What could be their
motives though?"
Before anyone could answer her, the ground under their feet began to shake
hard, throwing them off balance even as the surrounding electronic appliances,
unable to withstand the enormous tensions, instantly began to pull themselves
free from their mountings on the walls.
As he reeled into the nearby wall, Luke understood that they had just gotten
their answer. Someone was using a seismic accelerator to destroy Coruscant.
Wrapping an arm around his head, trying to protect it from impacting with
the durasteel wall, he slammed into the wall; he hurried to recover from the
impact and looked around. He saw his sister and brother-in-law--- and leaped
forward as he spotted a light that was about to impale them as it detached from
the ceiling overhead.
He tackled Han and pushed him aside just in time to avoid a crushing impact
with an suddenly dangerous object.
The tremors then subsided as if they had never been.
"You okay?" his sister asked as she checked on both of them.
"Not a scratch," Luke replied, then, pulling himself to his feet, hurried
back toward the room. The doors had begun to close itself when they had begun
to malfunction.
Once in front of them, he discovered that the doors had been stopped by a pile
of computer and rubble, which was now blocking the main access of the control
room. He tried to slip past it, then to push it away from the entrance.
Nothing budged.
"Anybody by the door?" he asked even as he turned on his lightsaber. Without
the Force, he couldn't sense anything nor anyone.
"Not that I can see," someone answered him from inside, "but be careful, just in
case."
'Right,' he thought grimly as he attacked the upper lid of the right-most door.
He sliced neatly through it before he focused on the side. The closer he came to
eye level though, the more he pulled his blade out of metal until only the tip
of it was cutting through the metal. Then, after allowing the metal to cool
down a little, he gripped both edges of the heavy door and strained to pull it
away from its lower mooring.
Han, who had recovered from his shock, then Leia, joined him in his effort.
Together, they managed to pull the door free and against the nearby wall. Inside
the room, the remaining lights were dim, lighting the walls instead of the
floor. "We're coming through," he informed the moaning men and women who were
trapped under computer consoles. "Anything broken?"
Behind him, Leia helped the luckier techs out of the rubble while Han joined
him in his effort to free those who had not escaped injuries.
Even though Luke sometimes wished that he wasn't burdened with the Force,
and all the challenges that it brought in his life, he now wished most
ardently that he could have access to it. Lives were at stake. He needed to
interven fast or----
As if to confirm his feeling, new tremors shook the ground under them.
This time, he and his friend were right in the path of the computer
stations---- He unpleasant discovered the danger of their current position when
a huge station pulled free from the wall and seemed to be aiming at him.
He reflexively ducked even as he futilely tried to shield both him and Han
with the Force.
******
Mara and Artoo had reached the location of the main generator and had
entered the wide, main corridors when the ground shook again. Cursing, Mara
shielded her head with her arms while she kept trying to move forward,
protecting her luma from any damage. It was the only light available now,
along with Artoo's headlight.
Behind her, Artoo fluted a query.
"No," she shot in irritation, speaking loudly in order to be heard over the
the metallic screeching of the straining corridors. "I don't know where
Skywalker is. My guess is the control room, don't you think?"
Her electronic companion beeped once--- then disappeared down an adjacent
corridor and stopped there. Wondering what he had uncovered, she reluctantly
returned on her steps and held her balance as she waited for him to talk to her
again. Around them, the remaining lights crashed down on the floor, plunging
the corridor into complete darkness.
"Should I leave you here and continue?" she inquired in slight irritation as
she gazed down at his illuminated headlight.
He answered her with a raspberry, then a triumphant squeal.
"What?" she inquired. The tremors stopped once again. "What is it?"
Even as the droid began to answer her in a flurry of sounds and chirps that
were too fast for her to decipher, the Force provided her with the
translation.
She could sense Luke again; the Force had returned. *Luke!* she reached out
instantly. *Get out of there before it's too late. It's a---*
*Trap, we know,* her friend answered, then sent to her an image of what was
happening around him. *I can't abandon them, Mara, but save yourself. Get
airborne before the next tremors strike.*
"Like Hell I will," she muttered to herself, then headed toward her friend's
location at full speed. Behind her, the droid tooted forlornly.
"Stay put," she yelled at him without turning around, "we'll come back for
you." Then, she was sprinting down the grate-covered floor, careful to avoid
the shattered glass and broken metal panels.
******
"Mara's coming," Luke informed his sister as the two of them finished to Force-
pull a heavy station from Han's arm.
"Mara? Why is she here now? And how does she know that we're here? The
communications are jam---"
Feeling his sister's reflexive distrust toward his friend, Luke frowned at
her. "She's not involved in this, Leia. She's worried about our safety."
"Whatever, Kid," Han gripped as he held his injured arm with his healthy
one. "As long as she can explain to us how she got rid of the lizards."
"And that we get out of here in one piece," Leia added as she helped her
bruised up husband out of the messy room.
They still did not trust her, he understood as he turned toward Page, who
had just recovered his full senses. No matter how much his friend had helped
them, how devoted to the New Republic she was, Mara still remained a number
one suspect when they were dealing with ex-imperials.
As he helped his friend up to his feet, he reflected that it was also
probably one of the goals that was being pursued by their enemy. Sadly, they
were succeeding in that aspect too.
Minutes later, he, Page, and the survivors of the last tremors, all made it out
of the room. Once they were done arranging for the transport of the wounded,
their group hobbled away from the control room. New tremors hit their location,
plunging them into complete darkness as the last lights fell and shattered on
the floor.
"Leia!" he called even as he unhooked his lightsaber with the Force, "take
my lightsaber." He pressed it against her hand, making sure that she
understood that he had given it to her. "We can use it as a glow lamp."
"As long as we don't accidentally touch it," Han muttered tiredly, pulling a
slight smirk from his friend.
Good old Han, Luke thought in relief. No matter how bad the situation was, or
how bad of shape he was in, he could still crack a joke and lighten their
moods.
"Well, don't hold it by the bright and pointy end and you should be okay,"
Luke joked back, then he reached out with the Force to reinforce his charge
before his senses could drift out again.
Ahead of the group, Leia cut away the larger pieces of debris that were blocking
their path. As they walked, the broken pieces of lights crunched under their
thick shoes. She tried to direct the group away from the worst of the glass, but
the corridors were filled with shards. Everyone paid extra attention to those,
careful to avoid new injuries.
When new tremors hit, she shared the suspicion with the others that they
were increasing in strength and length; they didn't allow this new information
stop them. Now that all the lights had been knocked down, they estimated that
they couldn't be hit by anything else... until the shakes were strong enough to
challenge even the strength of the overhead ceiling plates.
Seeing this, she urged the others along faster, keeping her fledgling Jedi
senses alert for warnings of new dangers.
She thus felt a bright light approaching when someone ran toward their group.
Lowering her brother's lightsaber into a defensive posture, she waited for the
woman to appear to them; as she stepped out of the shadows, her green light
illuminated the red-head's, worried green eyes.
"Is everybody all right?" Mara inquired even as her eyes ran a cursory check
on the men and women who were behind her and Han.
Leia noticed that the other frowned when she refocused on her. "You keep
going, I'll cover the rear," she said. "The coast is mostly clear, but we
must not dawdle in here. The ceiling is beginning to give in, and the deck is
giving up too."
When Mara stepped closer, Leia reflexively followed her with her brother's
blade, but before she could ask her how she had known about their
predicament, her brother's voice filled her mind. *We need to get going,
Leia. A new round is building up.*
*Are you sure about her, Luke?* she asked him uncertainly.
*I implicitly trust her with my life. If you don't trust her, then trust
me.*
Sighing in defeat, Leia silently nodded in acknowledgement at the red-head
before she pulled the blade forward again and resumed her walking. At her
side, Han moaned slightly as his arm shifted with the movement.
Mara quickly checked on the techs that made it past her luma light, then sighed
in relief when she spotted the familiar features of the one man for whom she
would willingly risk her life in order to save his.
"Are you all right?" she asked him even as she slipped her shoulders under
Page's dangling right arm and helped her friend to carry him.
"Are you?" he inquired back. "How did you know that I was here? What
happened?"
"While I was cooling down from our previous spat, I overheard a conversation
that someone didn't want anybody to hear. They've planted a seismic
accelerator under the Bothan Embassy."
"Figured part of that already," he nodded, locking his shadowed eyes on
hers-----
A new tremor hit them again, harder than ever. Both she and Luke instantly
widened their stance to retain their balance, but even then, they almost fell on
the shard-filled deck. Mara reflexively checked the others in front of her---
and noticed that the ceiling was dangerously bowing, about to cave in on the
front of the group.
"Luke!" she warned him. She didn't wait for his assistance and reached out to
shield the others with the Force.
She had barely begun to focus her control when Luke's much more skilled
powers steadied her owns, joining and reinforcing her shield around both
his family members and those who were coming right after them.
Then, to Mara's awe, the Jedi Master also pushed the ceiling plates back
into the ceiling, wedging them into place while the group hurried to walk under
them.
Once they were all safe, he let go of the plates; they crashed loudly behind
them--- and forced the weakened deck open thanks to the strength of their
impact.
"I think it's about time to get out of here," he muttered under his breath.
Mara wholeheartedly agreed with him, especially since the hard work had only
begun.
TBC in part 6
Written 2003 Rhea and SJ
