~5~
The Map
It felt good to be back in the lab with a purpose, Anakin thought, flicking on the phosphor lamps above his usual workbench. Even under these most unbelievable of circumstances.
The rest of the room was dark, the sick bay visible only in shadow through the glass partition separating the two rooms. Tara was stretched out asleep on one of the sterile white beds within, a cold compress over her eyes, hands folded benignly over her stomach. She had promised to join Anakin as soon as she managed to rid herself of her lingering nausea.
Anakin himself still felt a little weak, but he presumed that the shock would wear off once he uncovered the secrets of the letter-sized laminate printout of the map that he held in his hands.
He set it face-up on the table and pulled up a stool, closing his eyes for a moment to set himself in the right frame of mind to do some deep thinking. A message of this type – a Realtime Imaging Relay, or RIR – could potentially reveal much about itself, if you knew where to look.
It helped that the messaging console belonging to the academy was equipped with a Galactic Positioning System – a handy rebellion-age device that automatically sourced the origin of every message received by the unit. It had made an exceptional name for itself during the war, when every message intercepted by the Yavin rebel air force base was either a threat of death or a promise of salvation, and even the Imperial offices of the galactic parliament had based their later technologies on it.
The beauty of the Galactic Positioning System was not just that it had the ability to source all message origins; it also embedded the exact coordinates of the origin into every copy of the message made, stamping them imperceptibly into the grain of the flimsiplast sheets, able to be detected only by microscopic examination.
During the rebellion, the Empire hadn't known about this feature, so even if a message happened to fall into the wrong hands, its origin was safe from prying eyes.
Anakin paused his reflection to prepare his trusty portable microscope – the Skywalker lab was in possession of medical and scientific technology so formidable, it seemed a shame not to put it to use under these circumstances; it would have added so much more drama to the process – but a regular microscope was all that was needed.
Adjusting the light source to its brightest setting, Anakin squinted through the ocular lens, twisting and turning knobs this way and that. The uppermost right corner of the map printout was secured in place on the stage beneath the lenses, and Anakin smiled as the thickly inked image came into sharp focus.
"Right then," he murmured. "Let's see what secrets you conceal, my friend …"
The coordinates were exactly where Anakin expected to find them – "Reliable old machine, that console," he clucked, pleased – three of them, as per usual. Large numbers comprised the map width coordinate – a quick glance at the second printout on the table beside him showed Anakin that wherever the map had come from, it was a long way from Yavin. The length coordinate, however, came up very small. Since the coordinates of every planet in the galaxy were listed in relation to their proximity to the axis connecting the Tingel Arm (the leading arm of the galactic mass' slow rotation) to its tail on the opposite side of the galaxy, Anakin was able to deduce that the origin of the message was somewhere quite close to the tip of the Arm, but a fair distance from the bottom of the axis: somewhere in the extreme upper right sector of the galaxy.
The depth coordinate was more difficult to place, as the map was only in two dimensions on paper, but it was of no immediate consequence. Only pedants and hyperspace navigators bothered with sourcing the depth of a planet – plotting that coordinate was an immensely imprecise branch of space exploration, as there was no real axis of reference. Hyperspace navigators possessed the odd ability to view space as though from the inside out, and thus knew exactly where the top began and the bottom ended – depth was much more difficult to see in realspace, which went on forever in all directions.
Anakin was fair at hyperspace navigation. Thinking about the thousands of possible planes of dimension and the task of finding the correct one for a specific jump still made him nauseous sometimes, but was also the reason hyperspace fascinated him. It was the perfect mathematical challenge for his eager brain, and could be likened to a humungous piece of chocolate cake sitting in plain view of a hungry stomach.
Not at that moment, however. Ani was more excited by the prospect of triumphantly discovering the origin of the galaxy map.
Turning his attention back to the map in front of him, he scanned the printout for any further traces of information, but found nothing.
No matter, though. He switched off the microscope, and shifted his weight on the stool.
He closed his eyes and listened to the buzzing of the lights above him, the distant patter of feet running the length of the corridor outside the lab door, the whisper of the ventilation system circulating air through the sterile room, and let any hints of frustration ebb from him like a storm tide.
He thought of Tara, always so composed and secretly eager to embrace a challenge, and found new inspiration. He lived to impress her, and imagining the look on her fair, young face when she awoke to find that he'd solved the first mystery of the summer spurred him on. He fished in a drawer beneath the table for a compass and pencil, and set to work, plotting the coordinates on an imaginary plane upon the printout.
***
Tara awoke to the sound of violent swearing coming from the other side of the glass partition separating the sick bay where she lay from the lab where Anakin was. Her boyfriend had thrown something metal upon the floor, where it lay glinting underneath the bright ceiling lamps, and was jumping up and down, howling angrily. Papers lay scattered upon the worktable with a collection of pencils, styluses, and various straightedge tools.
Tara checked the chronometer on her wrist – barely an hour had passed while they'd been in the lab and she'd been asleep, ridding her aching head of the last remnants of the Force flicker. Why was he being so mental? Such behavior was expected after eighteen hours of unsuccessful spatial research, not a mere hour of grade school graphing.
Sitting upright, she tapped on the glass, attracting Ani's attention. Seeing that she was awake, he came striding over to the glass and knocked his head deliberately against it. Tara shook her own head, and was pleased to discover that she was feeling much more like herself now that she'd caught a few zees.
"What's wrong?" she mouthed through the glass.
Anakin screwed up his boyish face, and pulled on a lock of his unruly chestnut hair. Then, his moment past, he beckoned for her to enter the lab.
Tara swung her feet over the edge of the bed, and slid them into the sling-back sandals she'd been wearing before she'd lain down. Then, easing herself over to the lab door, she prepared herself for Anakin's inevitable tirade about the improbability of life, science, and the universe. He had a half-memorized speech that he subjected her to every time things went wrong in one of his experiments, and though it changed slightly every time, the message was always the same.
"Ton-Ara," he started, sounding on edge, a murderous look in his eyes, "I've –"
"I know," she interjected sarcastically. "You've looked at it inside out and upside down and you can't figure out a gosh darn thing."
She paused to give him ample time to roll his eyes at her. "You sourced the coordinates, right?" she added smoothly, trailing him over to the worktable.
"Yes," he fumed, pacing in circles around her. "But when I went to plot them, they led to empty space!"
"Are you sure you got them right? You didn't make an error in your graphing?" Tara had now placed her hands on Anakin's hunched shoulders and begun to massage them gently.
"Yes, I did and no, I didn't. Have a look for yourself." He stepped aside, and Tara bent over the table, examining his work with a professional eye.
He had indeed found the right coordinates, and they seemed to lead in a logical arc across several systems to the Corporate Sector, close to the base of the Tingel Arm, but Anakin wasn't lying: where there should've been a planet, there was only empty space.
Tara frowned. "You don't suppose it could've been wiped from whatever archives the sender pulled this map from, do you?"
"Impossible," Anakin sulked.
"Not impossible," Tara corrected him. "Nothing's impossible. Remember Camino?"
"Camino was the work of dark Jedi," Anakin said, still scowling menacingly. "Lilandra said that this map was identical to the one beneath the Galaxy Lake, which shows the galaxy exactly as it is. Assuming that whoever sent this used that as their model, even planets that have been forcefully removed from our synthetic archives would show up. You can't just erase a planet in realspace."
Tara raised her eyebrows. "Interesting logic, Ani. But that raises the question as to why anyone would send us a map of the galaxy in the first place. We have to assume that they must have known they were sending it to one of the foremost educational institutions in the galaxy. Wouldn't they assume that we'd have the technology to both see the galaxy for ourselves and decode any intercepted messages?"
"I think that's exactly what they did," Anakin said, his eyes taking on a misty, faraway look. "Whoever it was must've figured that we'd know from the off exactly what they were trying to tell us. But why disguise it as a map?"
"Obviously they feared that their message would fall into the wrong hands en route," Tara explained. She paused for a moment, examining Anakin's handiwork. "I should think that would explain your mapping dilemma. There must be some trick to these coordinates – real coordinates disguised within these false ones. It's pretty clever, if you think about it. What if you didn't want anybody but the recipient of your message knowing where you had sent it from? You'd code your location somehow, wouldn't you?"
"I don't see why you'd want to hide your whereabouts," Anakin frowned. "Seems kind of pointless in peacetime."
"Not if it wasn't sent in peacetime," Tara said quietly.
Anakin stared at her disbelievingly. "Okay, now you're really grabbing at straws, Jaks."
"No, think about it. It all adds up! It's sent anonymously from a location with secret coordinates, in disguise as something that looks random but serves its purpose as well. This is exactly the kind of tactic the Rebel Alliance used to use when it was informing its supporters of its each and every move – they would hide records of their movements in advertisements and personal relays. Whoever sent this must want us to decode the real coordinates, and then plot them properly on this map to reveal their location!"
Tara was looking very excited now, but Anakin was still skeptical.
"I repeat: why?"
"The peacetime theory fits perfectly: whoever sent this was in grave danger, and needed a rescue," Tara pronounced definitively. "I know what you're going to say," she added. "I can see it on your face. You're thinking, 'how can she tell it wasn't sent in peacetime? There's no evidence!' Well, I have a theory. Top secret. Give me a minute …"
And with that, she smuggled the map and the coordinates and a pencil and compass down the table, hiding it all from view behind her arms, which she folded resolutely on the tabletop. Anakin could see her scribbling something furiously on a piece of scrap, her face set in a look of intense concentration.
Within moments, she was grinning, and Anakin had to smile as he listened to the exclamations she was making under her breath as she worked: "Ha!" "Oh …" "Aah!" … "Of course."
This was the most infuriating and yet lovable aspect of Tara Jaksbin's personality, and the reason Ani had been drawn to her from the very moment he'd come to realize it: something in her mind, perhaps a symptom of her Force awareness, seemed to drive her constant hunger to be the first one to figure things out in a tricky situation. It was as though success was a drug for her, a life-force, and at times her need for it was almost reckless, causing her to go to any lengths to obtain it, if only in a small dosage. Other times, she seemed to forget about it completely, perfectly happy to sit back and let someone else – usually Anakin – share the limelight for a while. And yet, here she was, in her element, scratching figures and lines and characters all over the map, racing an invisible person inside her head, desperate to finish first, even though she was the only one who really knew what she was trying so feverishly to prove.
When she'd finished, she looked up, delight written all over her face.
"Deceptively simple coding job," she commented, pushing her revised coordinates over to Anakin. "An admirable effort. See what you make of it, Expert Cartographer Solo."
He scanned her work, knowing somehow before he even fully understood her logic what she had attempted – and apparently managed – to do.
"You fiend, you!" he whispered, grabbing her round the middle and kissing her happily on the forehead. She laughed, looking suddenly abashed.
"It wasn't that difficult," she said, flushing red.
"I don't know why I didn't think of it myself," Anakin mused, acknowledging his girlfriend's genius. "Of course it would be the inverse … Let me map these … you're out of your mind, Tara … sheer brilliance …"
He went on like that for a moment as he excitedly plotted the new, inverted points upon the map, paving the way for Tara's focus to be drawn to a very real star system hovering on the edge of the Kathol Sector, bordering on Wild Space.
"That's the one," Anakin said, his voice full of quiet triumph as he jabbed his finger upon the system. "Good grief," Tara murmured, leaning her head on his shoulder and peering at the map. "Exactly opposite to where we thought it was, but … I didn't think there were any habitable systems out there. Wouldn't it have been discovered by now?"
"Not if someone didn't want anyone to know it was there," Anakin said, sounding sinister. "You know, your non-peacetime theory is starting to sound awfully plausible right now, Tara."
She grinned. "And you thought you were finished with conspiracy for good this time," she chuckled, and grabbed his elbow, pulling him from the table.
"Come on," she said eagerly. "We need to find someone who knows their galactic history."
They caught up with Mara in the common room, where she was curled up on the sofa under a woolen blanket, watching the news on the holoscreen. She appeared significantly less grudging than at breakfast, although it looked as though the flicker in the Force had hit her quite hard – her usually ruddy complexion was drained of color, and faint sun freckles stood out on her nose and cheeks. Even her hair seemed duller than usual, and she wore a lost expression on her wan face. She stared at the holoscreen without really seeing the pictures dancing across it, or hearing the voice of the newscaster talking about the latest holovid to hit the top grossing spot for the week's end.
She didn't even appear to have enough strength to blink her eyes until she realized that two teenagers were sitting on the table in front of her, hand in eager hand, leaning over her with matching looks of excitement on their faces and radiating youthful exuberance.
She snapped awake, noting that the pair must have some business with her, and summoned the energy to sit up and flatten a few wisps of hair back down against her forehead.
"All right there, Anakin?" she asked, her voice noticeably weaker than normal.
"Got a few questions, Aunt Mara," her nephew replied, tapping his foot anxiously against the rug beneath it.
"Shoot," she said, cracking a feeble grin.
"Okay …"Anakin glanced down at the map in his hand, collecting his thoughts and assembling a direct question that would milk as much information from his aunt as possible in as little time as possible. Once he'd organized himself, he cleared his throat, and spoke carefully:
"When you were working for the Empire, Aunt Mara, did you ever hear anything about a … a secret planet?"
Mara frowned, and Anakin wondered briefly if he'd been wrong to think that Mara would be willing to talk candidly about the years she had spent working for the Emperor Palpatine. But she was merely formulating an equally cautious answer.
"Can you think of a time frame, maybe? I'm getting old, you know – can't recall details as well as I used to …" she cracked a grin. This was a complete joke, Anakin knew. Mara was all of forty years old and barely showing it. She was just having some fun with him.
"I guess about … twenty years ago, at the height of the war," Tara answered.
Mara leaned back against the arm of the couch, thinking back. "A secret planet, huh? Well … such things weren't really my business. I was strictly reconnaissance – didn't hear much about the Emperor's special affairs, only about who wanted to kill him …"
"Surely you must've heard things around the Palace," Tara insisted. "Just gossip or something. We only need a small lead."
"Hmmm," Mara mused. "Actually, now that I think about it, there was something …"
She laughed as both Tara and Anakin leaned forward simultaneously, positively bursting with anticipation.
"What do you want to know for?" she asked cautiously. "It was probably classified information at the time, and has likely stayed that way for a while now. I don't think too many Imperial higher-uppers would be too pleased with me if you two started an intergalactic uprising or something."
"Oh, it's nothing like that," Anakin laughed dismissively. "I guess Luke explained to you about the map?"
Mara's eyes took on the same haunted look as before. "Yes … odd, isn't that?"
"Very," Tara agreed earnestly. "But Anakin and I think we've traced the source of the message. We just need to give the sender or senders a motive, and we'll have a theory taking shape."
"Alright," Mara said. "I think I can help you there. I suppose it must have been at least twenty years since I last heard anything about this, but I can remember a particular year when the entire palace was a-buzz with rumors about some penal colony. I remember wondering what the big deal was – Palpatine had started penal colonies all over the place, for captured rebels and such, in the most horrible of places. I suppose people got very excited about this one because of its location. Rumor had it that Palpatine put his latest victims on a world so remote, it would take them years to return to the galactic core, should they ever even find a means of doing so. He'd taken away all their technology, all their luxuries … just thinking about it now makes my heart ache for them."
Mara stared up at the ceiling, as if trying to imagine what it must have been like, ripped from the comforts of the galaxy and stranded on a backwater for all eternity with no hope of return, no means of ordinary survival.
Tara couldn't even begin to picture what such a place must be like. The emperor had obviously achieved new heights of vindictiveness when he had implemented that plan.
"They're probably all dead now … does that change your theory at all?" Mara asked.
"Actually, it backs it up," Tara replied, waving the map. "Ani and I have reason to believe that this message was sent a number of years ago – perhaps not twenty, but certainly about ten – and has been traveling across eons of time and space on its way to us. The planet you're describing perfectly fits the coordinates we've identified as well. It's entirely possible that the prisoners on the emperor's colony world sought to contact someone who could help them."
Mara considered this for a moment, but then shook her head. "How could they? They wouldn't have had the technology to even scribe that map you've got."
Tara and Anakin exchanged a glance.
"She's got a point, Tara," Anakin said sadly, patting her knee. "It was a good thought, though."
"Looks like it's back to the drawing board," Tara sighed, and got to her feet. She was just about to thank Mara for her information when someone called "Wait!" from the common room door.
Tara turned to see Lilandra standing in the doorway, waving a thick black volume and looking very harassed but excited. The girls acknowledged each other with a glance, and Lil came hurrying over.
"Let me see that map."
Anakin handed it to her, and she scanned it, following the coordinates that he had penciled in.
"Yes," she said, nodding. "You've got the right planet. Listen – right after we noticed Alderaan's absence on the lake map last night, we both found that our focus was drawn to a planet on the outer rim – and I mean the way outer rim. It seemed to have, well, some kind of emotional ambiance. Like there was so much meaning attached to it, it had to dispel some onto us."
"You don't think it was the same planet as the message origin, do you?" Anakin asked dubiously.
"That's exactly what I think. It all seems to add up, don't you think?" Lilandra shrugged. "Luke and I visit an underwater map of the galaxy, and notice a complete backwater planet above all other planets that's emanating some kind of deeply emotive aura. But get this – when we got out of the water, we didn't touch at all. We went straight back to our respective beds when we got back to the academy. But then, this morning, the first move he made towards me caused an enormous emotional disturbance in the Force, like a static shock of sensation. Simultaneously, a message arrives, bearing a map identical to the one beneath the lake – old enough to show Alderaan's absence, but not quite old enough to give us an exact idea of its sending date. Then, you plot the origin coordinates and lo and behold, they lead straight to the same planet Luke and I saw beneath the lake. This planet also happens to correspond perfectly to Mara's description of one of the emperor's top secret penal colonies, and it even fits the time frame!"
"You believe me then," Tara breathed. "That we're dealing with a cry for help from a bunch of backwater prisoners from ten years ago."
"I don't know how they did it, but they did," Lilandra said, nodding. "They must've thought that if they could find help anywhere, it would be here on Yavin, the center of rebel activity during the war. They were pretty smart, you know, if what Mara says is true …"
Lilandra shrugged.
" … They knew that if they couldn't come to us, they'd just have to get us to go to them."