The abstract swirls and eddies of hyperspace resolved themselves into star trails and then pinpoints of light, and Mara found herself looking at a bland, reddish ball. No blues or greens, just a dusty brownish red. A planet, she was reminded suddenly, was a very big place.
It was easy to forget that sometimes, in a large galaxy with many populations interconnected by hyperspace travel. When most civilizations were well aware of each other and interacted regularly, and travel between those planets was only a matter of days, or perhaps a few weeks at most, you could forget that even a small planet was actually a lot of ground to cover.
Even a city was, really. Even the smaller cities, like the ones that passed for metropolitan areas on a sparsely populated planet like Tatooine. A lot of unfamiliar territory, a lot of people for one or two individuals to hide amongst if they wanted to. And whatever Organa had originally come here for, it was very likely that the Emperor would have announced Alderaan's fate on the HoloNet by now, and something as big as that would make ripples even in the Rim. If the announcement was made, Organa would have heard it and come to the obvious conclusion; she would be acting like a fugitive, avoiding recognition at all costs. Mara had faith in her own ability to track suspects—her training had been second to none—but time wasn't on their side here.
And yet…
The Force still beckoned, she was sure it did. The odd pulling sensation had grown ever stronger as they drew closer to Tatooine, and now, in orbit, Mara felt it as clearly as if someone had reached out and taken her hand. She'd never felt anything like it before this, and it was surprisingly unsettling. But she'd discussed it privately with Luke the night after they'd left Kattada, and he'd felt the same sort of pull toward Tatooine that she did. He'd also suggested that both of them might have unknowingly made use of subtler Force proddings throughout their lives; after all, how many times had either of them played hunches that turned out to be exactly right, even though there was no logical reason for them? Maybe Force-sensitive people didn't get ordinary hunches, maybe they just heard the Force whispering to them.
Mara thought the whole concept was slightly creepy, to be honest. But if it got results…
She tilted her head to gaze a moment longer at Tatooine, then locked them into orbit and went back to the lounge, where Luke was leaning his elbows on the table and contemplating the map before him. He looked up as she entered.
"We're here," she said. Still feel it?
He nodded minutely, and she huffed a quiet sigh. Okay, then. "Any ideas?"
Luke looked back at the map with a sigh of his own. "You understand I'm guessing—even a planet like Tatooine has multiple population centers she could have any reason to visit."
Mara nodded as she sat down beside him. "But you're the local. If you could only pick one?"
He pointed to a spot on the map. "Mos Eisley. It's notorious for pirate and smuggler activity, and as a place where you could blend into a disreputable crowd and disappear. Whether she's looking to meet someone surreptitiously or just go to ground, Mos Eisley is her best bet."
Mara pulled up Mos Eisley on her datapad, scanning its description, and her stomach sank. "There's an Imperial garrison there."
"Is there?" Luke leaned back, looking both wary and resigned. "There wasn't when I left. Or if there was, they were laying very low."
"No," Mara said with another sigh. "Looks like it was established a couple of years after you left. That could complicate matters."
Hobbie eyed her from one of the lounge's reclining chairs. "Don't you outrank everyone in a garrison like this?"
"Yes," Mara said, still skimming the entry on Mos Eisley. "Assuming we haven't been discovered, and my authority and codes are still intact. But even if that's the case, any contact I made with Imperials here would get back to the Emperor one way or another. There's no one else in the Empire who would use my recognition codes."
"Which means if you use them, he'll know for sure we've been here," Tycho said quietly.
"Well, hopefully no one knows any of you are with me," Mara said, leaning her own elbows on the table and rubbing her eyes wearily. "Though that depends on whether we avoided all the usual surveillance on Coruscant, and whether anyone thinks to check that surveillance once he realizes I'm not coming back. But yes, the second I say anything to pull rank with the garrison, it'll send up a homing beacon that he'll see eventually. I doubt any Imperial commander would fail to note a visit by the Emperor's Hand in their log." She sighed and sat up straight again. "If I have to, I will, but it's an absolute last resort. Far better to avoid them altogether. Which could be complicated."
Luke slid an arm around her waist, resting his hand lightly on her hip. "You're the one who actually knows what she's doing in a situation like this. We're at your command."
Mara looked them over and smiled wryly. "A handful of hotshot fighter jocks—yes, you'll be naturals at undercover work. So glad to have you on board for this mission."
She leaned back and briefly covered her face with her hands. How was she going to do this? All their lives potentially depended on her navigating this successfully; it was her area of expertise, not theirs, so the responsibility was hers too. Somehow she had to avoid the garrison, find and make contact with a Rebel leader, and convince her to take four strangers back to her hidden base—without making use of any of her usual resources or authority, and all with three utter amateurs in tow who could torpedo the whole thing without even realizing it.
Luke drew her closer against his side. "Even hotshot fighter jocks are used to taking orders, and you're used to giving them. We'll be fine."
She looked at him sideways, trying to muffle her worries. There was no sense in distracting him with them—and really, where was her own discipline, to be letting them distract her? But it was hard, knowing how compromised her usual methods were, and how much was at stake. No way around it, though; she would have to brazen this out and hope the Force really was nudging them the right way.
"Okay," she said. "Mos Eisley it is. And here's the fun part: we need to assume we've already been identified as deserters, and that the garrison has holos of all of us. That's in addition to the other threats of the Rim's usual lawlessness." She cringed slightly, realizing her own words, and glanced back at Luke. "Sorry."
"What, you think I'm going to argue?" he asked, sliding her datapad in front of him and scrolling through a few pages. "I could tell a few stories that would probably surprise even you. We need to fit in, and as it stands, none of us are going to pass as locals."
"Not even the local?" Tycho asked mildly.
Luke shook his head. "Not in these clothes. We all look like Core Worlders."
"Can you find us local clothes, quickly?" Mara asked.
Luke's shoulders lifted in a shrug. "There'll be sellers in the main market with the basics, sure. What currencies do you have with you?"
"Let me guess," she asked resignedly. "They don't take Imperial scrip here."
"Oh, they probably have to now, if there's a garrison here. But it sure won't help us keep a low profile. Have anything Huttese?"
"Hang on." Mara went to the cabin she and Luke were sharing and rummaged through her bag for her store of credit chips, then brought them back and fanned them across the table. Luke studied them, then pulled out a couple.
"Truguts," he said. "Pretty standard here. But take a couple of Imperial chips too, as backup."
"Okay," Mara said, distributing the chips among them. "Luke, you get to inspect everyone's clothes, see what we all have that's least likely to be noticed down there. If we need to, we go to the market and buy local garb. Then we split up. Luke and I will go to the main civil affairs building, see if there are any leads in the publicly available arrival and departure records, then we'll scout the cantinas around the spaceport that could be likely meeting places for Organa and Retrac and whoever their contact is. You two wander the marketplaces, see if you spot them there. If you do, don't approach them, comm me. Avoid Imperials at all costs, and if you have any doubts, lay low yourselves and comm us. If we miss Organa here, we can either find another Rebellion contact somehow or just go to ground until we figure out some other plan, but if we're caught ourselves, that's it—we'll never see the outside of a cell again unless it's for our own executions. Keep a map and your comlinks on you; we'll update you on where and when to meet."
"Right," Luke said, standing. "Everyone, go dump your clothes out on your bunks. Mara, you too, and let me handle our landing negotiations."
"Far be it from me to turn down expert help," she said, gathering the rest of the credit chips. "Bet you didn't think you'd be coming here again."
"Not like this, anyway," Luke replied. He shook his head, then added quietly as Hobbie and Tycho entered their own cabin, "I've never been to Mos Eisley, Mara. Remember that I left here at only sixteen. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru would never have let me come here. They worried enough about occasional trips out to Mos Espa, and that's way more respectable than Mos Eisley."
Mara took a deep breath to calm her own nerves and reached out a hand to touch his arm. "And I've never run a mission with anything like these parameters, either. You still know Tatooinian culture far better than any of us, and I'm sure you saw some disreputable locales before you hit Coruscant."
Luke grinned suddenly, irrepressible humor coming to the fore even now. "Disreputable locales? In the TIE corps? I'm shocked that you would think such a thing."
Mara snorted before she could stop herself. "Uh-huh. Go find those two something that doesn't make them stand out like a Wookiee in the Palace so we don't give this whole thing away in the first five minutes."
He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to kiss her forehead. "May the Force be with us."
She reached up for a proper kiss, then pulled away to go lay out her own clothes. "We're going to need it."
Mara was sitting at the lounge's table, sipping caf and reviewing her data on Mos Eisley, when Luke returned to the ship with a large bag. She looked up at him as Tycho and Hobbie set aside their ever-present cards to do the same.
"Okay," Luke said, dropping the bag on the floor and rummaging through it. "Here's yours—" he threw a rolled up bundle at Hobbie, who caught it smoothly "—and yours" another bundle thrown at Tycho. "Go change. Make sure you have your credits and comms."
"And maps," Mara added. "We don't need you getting lost."
Hobbie raised an eyebrow as the two of them stood and headed for their cabin. "I like how it's obviously going to be me and Tycho who get lost, not you and Luke."
"This is Luke's home," Mara replied, not bothering to mention that he didn't actually know his way around Mos Eisley. "And I've spent my time studying this planet and city, while you've spent yours playing sabacc."
Hobbie made a face at her as he closed the cabin door behind them, and Luke grinned. "Is it any wonder I love you?"
Mara looked at him coolly, tamping down a smile. "I'm not letting you get away with any nonsense either, Skywalker."
"Worse than any drill master I've ever had." He winked at her. "Very enticing."
She laughed, ruining her stern facade. "Quit being weird."
"Mara," he said as he reached into the bag again, "the first time I met you, I literally almost knocked you over. At a formal occasion. Where you knew perfectly well I was a hick from the Rim. You knew what you were getting into." He tossed her a cowl of some roughly woven fabric that was somehow still soft to the touch, then lifted the bag to his shoulder. "I'll be right back."
He disappeared into their cabin, and Mara held the cowl against her arm for a moment. It was almost exactly the same color as the long-sleeved tunic she wore. Leave it to Luke to pay attention to a detail like that. She smiled to herself and put the cowl on, then continued sipping her caf and reviewing her data. There were a lot of cantinas in this city. Tycho and Hobbie would certainly finish their initial search first, then she would have to send them to a different cantina than wherever she and Luke were at the time. They'd never cover the whole area if they didn't stay split up. Mara absently tapped the datapad with a fingertip, mentally dividing the spaceport section of town into search areas.
Luke was the first to emerge, having only added a light hooded cloak and a utility belt to the most casual of his own clothes. She glanced up at him and smiled. "You look nice."
"You look dangerous," he replied approvingly.
Mara shrugged. She was only wearing a nondescript dark blue tunic and black pants with a side-laced brown vest and boots, but instead of keeping her weapons concealed, she'd strapped on visible holsters and a belt and was conspicuously armed with two blasters and a vibroblade. The cowl hid her pinned-up hair and would hopefully keep her face from getting sunburned. "Sometimes you want to blend in, sometimes you want to warn people off. Mos Eisley seems like the sort of place where the latter is more useful."
He sat beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders, and took a sip of her caf. "Almost certainly. I wouldn't mess with you."
She reclaimed her mug and sipped from it. "He says as he takes my caf."
"I meant if I didn't know you," Luke said, taking the mug back as she set it down and taking another sip. "But since you agreed to marry me, I figure I have a measure of immunity."
Mara elbowed him and took her mug back again, but before she could say anything else Hobbie and Tycho reemerged, almost entirely covered in fairly shapeless garments in earthy tones.
"Luke," Hobbie said, "You come from the least fashion-forward planet in the galaxy."
"Do you realize how hot it is out there?" Luke asked, unimpressed. "You dress for practicality on Tatooine."
"And yet you put this much on for extreme heat?" Tycho asked doubtfully.
"It's all loose-woven, the wind will blow right through it and cool you off," Luke said. "You don't leave your skin exposed here. Especially fair-skinned offworlders like you. You'd be burnt to a crisp."
"Mara's fairer-skinned than any of us," Hobbie protested, "and she's not wearing these grain sacks."
"Mara," Luke said, rising, "is an undercover agent who carries a wide assortment of clothing with her to fit into a variety of situations. You, as she so astutely pointed out, are a hotshot fighter jock. You needed more to fit in. Stop complaining."
"I said you were a hotshot fighter jock, too," Mara said, amused.
"Sure," he replied, placing a hand on his chest in mock offense. "But from the Rim, not the Core. There's a difference."
Mara shook her head as she turned off her datapad and rose. "Uh-huh. You're all a pain in my neck, is what you are. Come on, it's already midmorning and we have a lot to do. Let's get going."
Mos Eisley's civil affairs building was a small and dingy thing, as befit such a small city that brandished its disregard for actual civility so blatantly, and the public research room was unpleasantly tiny, with only a handful of terminals. Fortunately, no one else so much as walked past the door in all the time Mara and Luke were there.
Which wasn't long at all: it took less than half an hour to scan all the arrival and departure records and realize that there were no more obvious leads here than there had been on Kattada.
Mara sighed heavily as she shut down the computer. "About what I expected, but we had to try. Cantinas next, I guess."
"Mara," Luke said quietly. "If we don't find them, do you have a plan for what we all do next?"
"No," she admitted. "But that's the next step, if we don't find them here within a day or two. It's unlikely they'll stay here longer, and by that time we really do have to assume that the military will be looking for us."
"Mm," Luke said, then smiled ruefully at her. "I wish we had time for me to show you the farm. Or Beggar's Canyon, or Anchorhead. None of it is anything spectacular, but…"
"It's home," she finished softly.
"Yeah," he agreed.
A thought occurred to Mara, just a glimmer at first, but it quickly shone brighter, like the sun rising above the horizon. "Luke." He looked at her inquiringly, and she caught her breath at her own impulsiveness. "Luke, let's get married right now."
His eyebrows lifted nearly to his hairline, and Mara laughed. "Is that what I looked like when you proposed?"
Luke snorted. "Probably, yeah." He took her hand. "And here I thought you said this was an insane idea."
"I also said yes. Are you trying to talk me out of it now?"
He lifted her hand to his lips. "Never. But Mara, it's not legal if we don't use our real names. Is that something we should be doing right now?"
Mara thought furiously for a moment. "No one knows we're here. There shouldn't be any way to trace us after Kattada. What are the odds that anyone would look for us on Tatooine at all, let alone Mos Eisley specifically? Anyone trying to trace you wouldn't assume you'd go right back home, and anyone looking for me wouldn't think of Tatooine at all. We'll be gone in two days at the most, either with Organa or looking for some other obscure place to hide. And we only have to use our real names for this; we can use false ones everywhere else if we want. There still wouldn't be a trail."
Luke was starting to grin at her. "This is by far the craziest thing you have ever suggested."
"You suggested it," Mara said archly. "I'm just continuing the thought." She caught his other hand, held them both tightly. "Luke, we can't go back to Coruscant, maybe not ever. Neither of us have any family to stand with us. This is at least your home. And if we do find the—" she stopped herself, abruptly mindful of her words in case of passersby "—if we do, and we arrive already married, there's a better chance they'll keep us assigned together instead of splitting us up. I didn't come all this way just to wind up on the other side of the galaxy from you."
His grin was fully fledged by now. "You're sure?"
She squeezed his hands. "More than sure. And if ever there was a place where you could bypass the ordinary regulations and get a rush job wedding—"
Luke laughed. "So Mos Eisley's good for something after all. Who'd have guessed?" He stood, pulling her up with him. "Come on, let's go find whoever officiates weddings around here. I bet we'll be married in twenty minutes, then I can take you on a whirlwind tour of Mos Eisley's filthiest cantinas for a honeymoon."
Mara laughed too, suddenly giddy. "You're on."
It was closer to thirty minutes before they were married, in a ceremony that took less than five minutes, officiated by a thoroughly bored civil employee and witnessed by a clerk and a janitor, the former of whom repeatedly checked her chrono throughout the brief exchange and the latter of whom apologized awkwardly afterward for his tears. "I always cry at weddings," he told them, and Luke and Mara took turns shaking his hand and thanking him for his help. He wiped his tears away and wished them well, then returned to his duties as Luke and Mara returned to the dusty streets outside and began to make their way back toward the spaceport, holding hands tightly.
"We are insane," Mara muttered to him, trying hard to wipe a silly-feeling smile from her face. She was supposed to look coolly threatening, not like a lovesick teenager.
"So what?" Luke asked, squeezing her hand. "I'd rather be happy than sane any day."
Mara laughed. "The first cantina is three blocks to the north. We have to look casual by the time we get there."
Luke pulled her into an alleyway, ducked into the shadows, and took her in his arms, kissing her. "How casual?"
She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. "Much, much more casual than this."
He kissed her again. "You're sure?"
Mara grinned but pulled away, just a little. "Luke, stop. We don't have time for this."
"You're no fun at all."
She kissed him again. "Liar."
The clatter of armored footsteps in the street behind them caught their attention. Luke's eyes flashed alarm at her, and she pulled him quickly behind a garbage receptacle. She peered through the crack between the receptacle and the alleyway's wall, watching the stormtroopers pass by.
"Okay," she breathed as the footsteps continued away from them and disappeared into the ambient street noise. "I guess we pick up that line of thought later."
"Good idea," Luke agreed. "Let's go this way." He took her hand again and led her to the alleyway's other end, then wove his way through the tiny back ways between the mostly domed buildings that all looked the same.
"I thought you hadn't been here before," Mara said, slightly breathless from their close call.
Luke shrugged. "The layout isn't all that different from Mos Espa, and as long as we go north we'll hit the spaceport. We'll just start at whatever cantina we come upon first."
"Casually," she reminded him, then couldn't help but laugh at the comically reproachful look he gave her.
"There's one," Luke murmured, and Mara took a deep breath as the cantina came into view. She smoothed her clothes and made Luke stand still while she straightened his cloak.
"Okay," she said again. "Follow my lead. You remember what Organa and Retrac look like?"
"Yes," he said, then leaned in for another quick kiss. "For luck."
She smiled and squeezed his hand. "I love you. Watch my back." She stepped away from him, concentrated a moment on making sure her expression was the don't-mess-with-me sort that everyone else in a place like this would be wearing, and walked into the cantina, Luke following at a slight distance.
Back to work.
