Chapter 6
Mara and Leia traveled in silence, the only sound in the open cockpit of the decrepit landspeeder was the wind blowing through their hair. Leia half lay in her seat, trying to keep the pressure off of her bound hands. There was no play in the rope binding her hands and feet; Mara had wanted to make sure that Leia couldn't pull some Jedi trick to get out of the ropes. As if there was anything I could do she thought. My experience with the Force is limited to listening to Luke talk about it.
She watched as Mara stopped the landspeeder and consulted a old-style datapad. "What's that?" she asked.
"Old survey records." was the curt answer. Mara put the landspeeder into motion again with a lurch and Leia bashed her head against the seat.
"Oww!" she moaned, "Can't you drive any better than this?"
Mara glanced at her prisoner. "Sorry," she said sarcastically, "that this isn't the typical comfortable means of travel you're used to."
Leia looked at her curiously. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, come on, Princess," came the snide answer, "like you don't take advantage of your status every chance you get."
Leia was thoroughly confused now. "I still don't know what you mean."
Mara snorted. "Sure you don't. Like you don't insist on hairdressers, and luxury cabins when you travel with that rag-tag collection you call a fleet."
Leia stared at her open-mouthed, astounded. "But I don't. The Alliance can't afford those things, and neither can I. Most of the time I travel on the Falcon."
Mara laughed. "That hunk of junk? Don't make me laugh. That's hardly 'your' style."
Leia was getting angry now. "And what do YOU know about MY style? Hmm? Emperor's lapdog?" She stopped, suddenly afraid that she might have pushed her volatile captor too far. But Mara seemed to not notice the insult.
"Perhaps you do, at that," muttered Mara, "that junk heap does belong to your boyfriend."
"Han? My boyfriend?" sputtered Leia, "He's just a friend of mine."
"Sure," came the sarcastic response, "just like Darth Vader isn't your father."
"Darth Vader isn't my father. Anakin Skywalker is." snapped Leia. She didn't see the slap that bounced her head off of the seat and left a reddened hand print on her face and tears of pain in her eyes.
"Don't EVER mention that name to me again!" snarled Mara. "He murdered my master and left a gaping hole in my life! They will die for that!"
"Who are they?" asked Leia carefully.
"Vader! and his brat!" yelled Mara, "like you couldn't figure that out!"
The anger radiating off of Mara astounded Leia. She'd never seen anyone as angry as this woman before. She shifted in her seat slightly, trying to move further away from her, but all she succeeded in doing was slamming her head against the seat for a third time. The pain this time was too much for her and she passed out.
When she awoke, she was aware that the speeder had stopped and that her hands and legs were untied. She found herself sitting up in the seat with Mara holding an ice-pack to her head.
"Oh good, you're awake." said Mara cheerfully, "I was worried about you for a moment." She smiled at Leia and continued, "I didn't think I'd hit you that hard."
Leia stared at Mara for a moment, wondering who this woman was and where the angry, vicious person had gone.
"Since you're awake now, can you hold this so I can continue driving?" Mara asked.
"Umm, sure," muttered Leia, placing a hand on the ice-pack, "you think we could go back to my friends now? They won't hurt you--not if I'm with you." She held her breath, wondering if the entreaty would work with this strange new personality. She admitted to herself that she much preferred it to the other.
"Oh, I don't think so," replied Mara, "He wouldn't like that, and when he gets mad..." She paused and looked stricken for a moment, "...when he gets mad, he hurts me. I don't want to make him mad."
Him? thought Leia, she must mean the emperor, but he's dead. How can he hurt her? "Who gets mad at you, Mara?" she asked.
"Who? Oh, the Emperor," answered Mara, "I work for him and he doesn't like it when I don't do what he wants." She paused and looked fearfully at Leia. "You don't want to make him mad. He can hurt you without even touching you."
Leia considered this as she reflected on the change that had overcome the Emperor's Hand. Her voice has changed she thought, and she's not the angry, dangerous person she was only a few minutes ago.
Oh, she's still dangerous said Qui-Gon, Mentally ill, but that just makes her all the more dangerous because she's unpredictable.
Master Qui-Gon! thought Leia, You're back.
I can't stay long, Leia he answered, I've about overstayed my welcome on this plane of existence.
What does that mean? she asked.
I don't have time to explain. Ask Luke or your father some time. They are on their way to find you. He paused for a second, Be very careful with this woman, Leia. She's showing several of the signs of multiple personality disorder--this makes her very dangerous. I have to go now, so be very careful. She sensed a smile coming from him. You were very easy to watch, and it was a pleasure. Take care, Leia. His presence vanished from her mind.
Master Qui-Gon? thought Leia, but nothing answered her.
"Where were you?" asked Mara, bringing Leia back to her surroundings.
"I was just thinking," replied Leia with a tentative smile.
Mara smiled back. "Can I tell you something?" she asked.
"Sure," said Leia uncertainly, but determined to humor this dangerous, unpredictable woman.
"You're very beautiful."
Leia blinked. That was not what she expected to hear from the Emperor's Hand. That's the sort of thing a young girl would say, she thought. Wait a minute, Qui-Gon mentioned something about multiple personality disorder. What was it about that...oh, right...but wait a minute, she still seems aware of what she's doing, that isn't typical of that disorder, or is it? I wish I'd paid more attention in human psychology...
"Uh, thank you," replied Leia, unsure of how to proceed. "You are quite pretty yourself," she added.
Mara smiled shyly. "I'm not pretty like you are." She frowned. "I hurt people."
"It's not your fault," murmured Leia reassuringly, wondering how much that actually was true.
They continued on in silence, Leia occupied with her thoughts about Mara's behavior, and Mara concentrating on controlling the beat-up landspeeder. So it was a bit of a relief for both of them when Mara brought the speeder to a stop beside a rocky cliff formed by one side of the mountain.
"We're here," she announced brightly, like a child on an outing.
"Where's here?" asked Leia.
"It's a cave," Mara replied excitedly, "I like caves, don't you?"
"Umm, usually," replied Leia with a wry expression, "as long as they don't have space slugs in them."
"You've seen a space slug! Wow! I wish I'd been there--I've always wanted to see a space slug!" Mara was almost bouncing up and down in her seat with excitement.
Leia looked at Mara in astonishment, stunned at the apparently exuberant child trapped in a twenty year old assassin's body. She suddenly felt a wave of anger go through her at what the Emperor must have done to this happy child in order to make her into his willing slave. She shook her head in disbelief.
"Is it true you're Luke Skywalker's sister?" asked Mara.
"Yes, " answered Leia, uncertain of where this line of questioning was going, but nervous that it might bring back the nasty personality.
"Wow! I'd like to meet him. My master didn't like me talking about the Jedi, even though I think they're the coolest. I researched them all at one point or another. I told my master that it was so I'd know my enemies, but it was really just so I could learn about them." said Mara excitedly. "Did you know that Jedi Master Mace Windu was a master of the most difficult Lightsaber fighting style ever? He was SO cool!"
She sounds like a teenager thought Leia, talking about her favorite jizz band or holo star.
Mara hopped out of the speeder, and then looked worriedly at Leia. "You aren't going to run away from me, are you? If you do, I might have to hurt you, or he'll hurt me, and I don't want to hurt you, you've been nice to me." She looked pleadingly at Leia, "Please don't run away?"
Leia looked at the commlink hanging from Mara's belt. "If you let me call my friends and tell them that I'm okay, I'll stay with you. I promise." She found that she really didn't want to leave this hurt child alone in the woods.
Mara looked at the commlink uncertainly, and then said, "I suppose it'll be all right if you do that. But you can't tell them where you are, okay?" She took the commlink off her belt and handed it to Leia.
"Sure," answered Leia, activating the commlink.
--------Theed-----------
Meanwhile, the rescue party had just left the outskirts of Theed following the trail left by the damaged landspeeder through the tall grass surrounding the city. Han and Luke were in the front, trailed by Anakin, Padme, and Chewbacca. Unfortunately, they hadn't been able to find another working landspeeder, or even one that Anakin and Luke's formidable mechanical skills could repair--at least not in the time they had. So they were walking.
"Luke," said Anakin.
"Yes, father?"
"You never told me what happened to Master Kenobi."
Luke sighed, "Are you sure this is the right time for that?"
"Actually, I think I'd like to know too, Luke," said Padme.
Luke looked back at the both of them. "It isn't pleasant," he said.
"I figured that," said Anakin. "In fact, given your reluctance to talk about it, I gather I'm the one that caused his death..." He sighed and it was obvious he was thinking about something, "but I need to know anyway."
"What were you thinking about then?" asked Luke.
"Was it that obvious?" asked Anakin wryly.
Luke nodded.
"I was thinking about something that Obi-Wan said to me once while we were chasing a Changeling assassin that had tried to kill your mother. I'd done one of my typically impulsive stunts and scared Obi-Wan badly. Anyway, he said to me 'You'll be the death of me one day, Anakin.'" He sighed, "Apparently I was." He looked at Luke, "so what happened?"
Luke shrugged. "It was on the first Death Star. We'd jumped into the Alderaan system shortly after it was destroyed--we were trying to reach Leia. Anyway, we hid while the Falcon was pulled on-board the Death Star. Obi-Wan volunteered to go disable the tractor beam so we could escape--I think he knew you were there because he wouldn't let me go with him." Luke paused and looked at his father. "Anyway, Han and I discovered that Leia was a prisoner and was slated to be executed--Tarkin's orders, not yours--so we rescued her. We fought our way back to the Falcon, and while we were boarding her, I watched you cut Obi-wan down..." He stopped and blinked back tears. "I'm sorry, I...I..."
Anakin blinked back tears of his own, and said, "Never apologize for honest emotion, son."
"What do you know about it?" snapped Luke. "You were living a lie for twenty years! Killing, torturing, and betraying your friends and family all in the name of the 'great Emperor Palpatine'! Where was the honest emotion in that?" he shouted, not noticing that the entire group had stopped moving at his uncharacteristic tirade.
Anakin stood open-mouthed, staring at his son in amazement. Padme looked equally astonished, while Han said nothing but put his hand on Luke's shoulder in comfort.
Luke suddenly stopped speaking and then looked at his father ashamedly, "I'm sorry, father, I shouldn't have..."
"Stop, Luke," said Anakin forcefully. "Never apologize for being angry with me--what suprises me is how long it's taken for you to get that off your chest. Righteous anger is healthy son." He stopped and looked at the ground, "You have every right to be angry with me for what I did."
He looked around at the others, "You all do. The Force may have given me a second chance, but I still have to deal with who and what I was. Even if I don't remember it, everybody else does."
They were interrupted by the ringing of the commlink that Padme carried. She snatched it off her belt and answered it, "Hello?"
"Mother?" asked Leia's voice.
"Leia! Where are you?" asked Padme excitedly while everyone else gathered around her. Han pulled a scanning device from his pack and started trying to track Leia's signal.
"I'm not allowed to tell you that," answered Leia. "I can tell you that I'm okay, other than a rather sore head."
"Where's the Emperor's Hand?" asked Padme.
"Standing here next to me. I think she'd like to say hello to Luke. Is he there?"
"Uh, yes." said Padme carefully.
"Put him on please," said Leia.
Padme handed the commlink to Luke. "Leia, " said Luke, "I'm here."
They heard some indistinct noises over the commlink, Leia muttering, "go ahead", followed by an indistinct "are you sure?" Finally, Mara Jade said, "Is this Luke Skywalker?"
Luke looked quizzically at the commlink. "Yes," he answered.
"Oh, like wow!" came an exuberant and unexpected response. "I'm actually talking to Luke Skywalker? Cool!"
Luke almost dropped the commlink in surprise. He heard Han muttering "What the..." while Padme suddenly grabbed Anakin's hand.
"Who is this?" asked Luke.
"Mara Jade. Hey, I'm sorry about hitting your sister over the head, okay? He told me to do it, and if I don't do the things he tells me to do, he...he hurts me. I don't like it when he punishes me."
"Who is 'he'?" asked Luke, although he suspected what the answer would be.
"The Emperor," she said, "he says he's my daddy although I don't believe him. He never wants me to call him daddy, only master. I mean, what kind of daddy is that?"
"Um, yeah," answered Luke, with a quizzical look at everyone else. Han looked like he was trying hard to hold back laughter, while Anakin and Padme looked slightly worried. "I have to agree with you on that one, Mara."
"Well," said Mara, "I think we've talked long enough. Wow, I can't believe I got to talk to Luke Skywalker. I'm sorry I have to kill you, you sound like a nice guy. Hope you were able to trace this call. Goodbye." The commlink went dead.
Han burst out laughing, "'what kind of daddy is that?' Give me a break! That's the Emperor's Hand?"
"There is something seriously wrong with that girl," said Padme. Chewie howled agreement.
"Did you get the trace, Han?" asked Anakin.
"Yeah, they're somewhere up in the mountains. Shouldn't be more than two or three hours ahead. They've stopped moving."
"Well, let's get going then, " said Luke.
----------The Cave------------
Mara pulled her blaster from her holster and motioned towards the cave opening. "Inside, Princess, and don't try anything. This isn't set on stun."
Leia looked at Mara, disturbed by the angry undercurrents in Mara's voice and realized that the angry Mara was back. Probably the stress of talking to Luke she thought.
Without a word, Leia began moving towards the cave entrance. She's serious about it not being on stun, and she's unstable enough to shoot me without a second thought. Leia sighed internally. I thought only Luke got into this much trouble without any help.
Mara waited until Leia was about ten feet away from her and then said, "Here, since your hands are untied, you can use this." She tossed Leia a glowrod.
Waited until I was far enough away that I couldn't do anything thought Leia, yes, the assassin is back. She bent down and picked up the glowrod.
They proceeded in silence into the cave, Mara staying about 10 feet behind Leia. The cave itself was not very deep, it proceeded about 100 feet into the mountain before ending in a sealed blast door.
"A blast door?" asked Leia, "Why is there a blast door here?"
Mara glared at her for a moment, and then, deciding that the question was fairly harmless, answered, "This was some sort of defense installation or something. The records were pretty sketchy regarding what this was. I figured it would be a good place to wait for Skywalker."
Leia decided to push, just a little. "You know, the other you was much nicer."
Mara looked at her strangely, "What are you talking about? What 'other you'?" Her face tightened with anger and suddenly she fired her blaster into the ceiling. Rock showered down. "Quit trying to confuse me!"
She stalked toward Leia, pulling a pair of tractor-cuffs from a belt pouch. "I don't think I can trust you anymore. I don't know why I thought I could in the first place."
She stood in front of Leia, who was looking back at her with a mixture of pity and dread. "I don't think I like the look on your face," snarled Mara, her anger again overwhelming.
Mara moved so quickly that Leia never saw it coming; she was suddenly lying on the ground gasping, trying to recover her breath from Mara's punch to her solar plexus. While she was lying there gasping, Mara fastened the tractor-cuffs to Leia's ankles.
"You know what these are," said Mara. "I've got the remote right here. No matter how far you get away from me, I can still stop you from walking with the push of a button. And I'm warning you, if I have to track you down because you ran away and I had to use these, that little punch I gave you just now will feel like a lover's caress compared to what I'll do to you. Do you understand me?" she snapped.
Leia, still unable to breathe, nodded vigorously.
"Good," growled Mara, "when you can breathe again, let me know. I'll be opening that door." She glanced speculatively down at Leia, and then pressed the button on the tractor cuff remote. The two cuffs slammed together, holding Leia's legs so that she couldn't move them. "Don't go anywhere."
Mara pulled out her datareader and walked over to the control panel by the door. She began to press buttons while referring to the datareader; it took her several tries, but eventually the door squealed open. Leia meanwhile had managed to pull herself into a sitting position, ignoring the pain in her stomach.
"Good," said Mara, "you're breathing again. That means we can get moving." She hit the button on the remote control, and Leia, her legs now free, struggled to her feet.
"Princesses first," said Mara with false charm, indicating the dimly lit hallway beyond the blast door.
Leia grimaced, but then began to pick her way through the rock-strewn floor, and then into the hallway. Mara followed ten feet behind her. "Keep going straight to the end of this hall," said Mara, "there's another blast door there."
Leia nodded and kept walking. While she did so, she studied the walls of the hallway, puzzled by their design. To her eyes, they appeared to be ten foot wide doors spaced at three foot intervals. But why would they be doors? she wondered.
They reached the end of the hall, and Mara opened the blast door with the aid of her datareader. They walked into what Leia recognized as a battle control room, having spent a large portion of her short adulthood in such rooms. Everything was dark, the only light coming from the emergency lights glowing on the walls.
Mara walked over to the one console showing any light at all and began wiping the dust off of it and trying to read the labeling.
"What are you doing?" asked Leia, curiously. This place is really old she thought. A lot of this equipment hasn't been in use for over thirty years--I'd say this place is pre-Empire.
"I'm trying to turn the lights on," snapped Mara.
"I'm not sure I'd do that..." began Leia, as Mara pressed a switch on the console. Lights began turning on everywhere, and they could hear the hum of machinery starting up. They looked at each other for a moment, and heard a thump behind them. They turned around and stared at an old-style battle droid who was pointing a blaster rifle at them.
"Identification," snapped the droid. Other droids began to enter the room from doors along the sides of the room and activate the other consoles.
"Umm," stuttered Leia, for once at a loss for words.
"Negative ID. Umm not in personnel records. Do not move, you are my prisoners." replied the droid.
Another droid, with a different paint scheme, spoke up, "Status of Naboo pacification?"
"Incomplete," answered a third droid. "We have lost communication with orbital control; switching to ground based back-up."
"Activate battle groups al, be, and se. Begin defensive patrolling prior to activation of TF Delta."
"Roger." The droid began to press buttons and issue commands.
The differently painted droid turned to the one holding the blaster rifle on the two women. "Disarm them and take them to the holding cells."
"Roger." The guard droid waited while another droid came up and removed Mara's pistol from her holster. It almost seemed to pause when it came across the lightsaber she had hidden in her belt pouch. "Warning! this prisoner is a Jedi," it said.
"I am not!" she said angrily, finally shaken out of her stunned silence.
"You carry a lightsaber, therefore you are a Jedi. Take them away."
The droids roughly pushed them towards a door different from the one they had entered through, down a short hallway, around a corner, and then they pushed Mara into one barred cell, and Leia into another. The droids then turned and left, pausing to deposit their equipment into locked cabinet.
"Bars?" asked Mara sarcastically. "Nobody's used bars in hundreds of years. These guys aren't that old."
Leia looked at her. "Unless you know of a way to get us through them, they're holding us as well as a regular cell would."
"Sister," snapped Mara, "you forget I'm the Emperor's Hand. There isn't a cell around that'll hold me. Besides, those droids are idiots. They didn't search me hardly at all."
She knelt down and examined the lock on the door. "That's what I thought. These are old-style mechanical locks." She looked up at Leia amazed. "Nobody, and I mean nobody, except some extremely primitive people would use these any more. How did these get here, and why?"
She pulled a pair of metal rods from her boot soles and went to work on the lock. It took her only a minute and the cell door clicked open. "Hah, haven't lost my touch."
She looked at Leia for a moment and then sighed and proceeded to unlock her door. "Thank you, "said Leia.
"Did you happen to see where they put our stuff?" asked Mara.
"Over in a cabinet over there, "said Leia, pointing. "Where did you get a lightsaber from?"
"It's Vader's. I picked it up when he dropped it on the Death Star after your darling brother chopped his hand off."
"Oh," answered Leia. "Well, lets get our stuff and get out of here."