Chapter Eight
The Palace District had changed a lot in the six years since Palpatine's death. Mara went out of her way, now, to think of him as Palpatine and not The Emperor. There was some small satisfaction every time she thought of her old Master and used his name (always with the awareness that Palpatine had been a lying fraud) and not his title (which still sent a shudder of awareness and obeisance through her that she was going to eliminate).
Though, the minor disrespect of her use of his name would no doubt frustrate Palpatine far less than her choice of breakfast company. Across from her Skywalker was perusing the Woonseer Cafe's intricate menu with an attentive expression.
They'd spent a fair amount of time together since her return to Coruscant a week ago. Before she and Karrde had left Coruscant on their Smugglers' Alliance quest, she and Skywalker had found a surprisingly comfortable camaraderie, sharing meals and furthering her Jedi training. Now that she had returned, that old pattern had resumed as if it had never ended. Her primary complaint was Skywalker's poor taste in eateries. As far as she was concerned, most of those places were less sanitary than a trash compactor and less culinarily satisfying than Imperial ration bars.
(Though she actually rather liked Imperial ration bars. An acquired taste, probably.)
Luckily one of the things that hadn't changed about the Palace District was the plethora of local dining options. When she'd been younger, before Palpatine had put her into full operation (like she was a combat droid needing its last system checks and not a child who still needed to grow up) she had used her freedom of movement to explore the city. She'd found a number of places that had become havens. The Imperial Opera, now renamed and under new management, had been one of her favorites. (When she'd finally gotten up the courage to look at ticket availability, she'd actually lamented the loss of her position as Emperor's Hand for the first time in years; without Palpatine's box seats it would take her years to get in to see a performance.)
With the opera out of the question (at least for now), Mara turned to her other favorite hideaways. The Adarian Building was located not far from the Imperial Palace; a magnificently constructed building of multicolored transparisteel that glittered in the sun, casting rainbow shadows down over the plaza that faced the Senate Dome. During Imperial rule the building had been Doriana Tower, named after one of the Emper—of Senator Palpatine's most trusted aides during the Old Republic years.
The building's top floor held another of Mara's favorite places. The ceiling pointed upwards in a tall pyramid, made of tinted transparisteel that cast the floor below in slowly shifting colors, ringed by walkways with immaculately-ordered greenery that offered spots of solitude. Inside planters with a rich mix of imported potting soil hosted plants and flowers. They crawled up the interior of the transparisteel pyramid and helped block the sun's glare, and were well-maintained by diligent gardener droids. The tables were spaced far apart from one another, each sized to hold only one or two persons, which was just fine with Mara; before now, she'd always come here alone.
Besides the artful ambiance, the food here had always been excellent.
The culinary arts had never been required for the position of Emperor's Hand (ration bars provided all the nutritional and caloric value that the human body required and could be easily carried and stored), but she did enjoy fine food even if she'd never learned to prepare it for herself. Karrde had realized early in their business relationship that she could be lured with the promise of a fine meal and had exploited that more than once; this both annoyed her and she allowed it, since the exploitation was never onerous and the food was always excellent.
Skywalker put his menu down and gave his order to the table droid. "I can't believe I haven't been here before," he mused, his blonde hair tousled. He offered her one of his bright, naive smiles, looking absurdly youthful.
She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth curled up in a smile of her own. "During the Empire this place was a refuge for members of the court aristocracy who wanted to get away for a little solitude," she explained quietly, sipping her caf. "That aristocracy is mostly gone now, although—" she glanced around the room and nodded subtly at a few of the other diners "—I still recognize some of the faces here. My guess is this place is still finding its new clientele. It's only been a few years since the New Republic took Coruscant and a lot of the old aristocracy fled."
Skywalker nodded, looking out the large transparisteel windows. The Senate Dome loomed across the square, its huge, mushroom dome busy with activity as all the Senators—and their staff—arrived with the sun. Beyond that, casting the Dome in shadows, was the looming dark towers of the Imperial Palace. "Leia says they're going to dismantle it," he murmured.
Mara blinked. "Dismantle what?"
Skywalker nodded at the window and the imposing structure beyond. "The Imperial Palace. There are enough people uncomfortable with the symbolism of the New Republic taking up residence there that they're planning to knock it down and replace it with something new."
Mara looked out the window after him. The Imperial Palace was an enormously tall black castle, magnificent and imposing, ringed with towers. Whatever had been at that location before the Empire was long gone now; the palace had been there as long as she'd been alive. She'd been raised in the palace. A small part of her heart still looked out at the building and thought of it as home. But that was the part of her that still wanted to say "The Emperor" instead of Palpatine. "The Smugglers' Alliance has just been assigned an office there," she replied, her voice sounding distant in her ears as she fought down a swell of memories.
Skywalker nodded. His hand twitched, sliding towards her, then he drew it back. "I know," he replied. "Leia told me. But it's only temporary… she said that you'll have a new office when the replacement is prepared. I'm not sure what they're planning, exactly."
"Good riddance," Mara said darkly, turning her head away from the Imperial Palace. "The view here will be nicer when it's gone anyway." Her eyes met Skywalker's, and the compassion shining in his blue eyes made her want to… throw her caf at him? Hug him? Toss him through the multicolored transparisteel? But then he smiled at her again and her brief bout of indignation faded. So he was feeling overprotective. It was just Luke. She could handle overprotective.
The conversation was interrupted by the delivery of their food. "Wow," Skywalker said, his eyes widening as he took in his plate of seared Nerf rashers over jeweled groats. "I hope the food tastes as good as it looks."
Mara, already delicately conveying the first bites of her dish, an array of crepes made from small eggs from factory-bred Coruscant game fowl with sauteed throneworld fungus inside. She paused to answer, "it should" before she took a bite.
Despite having ordered this meal dozens of times before, almost a ritual in years past, she was unimpressed with the overly-curated, staid flavors of the standard all-coreworld breakfast for the great and good.
Skywalker, on the other hand, was paying only surface-level attention to table manners and was focused on devouring his plate with the rapaciousness of a starving rancor. He offered her an apologetic smile, slowing his pace. "It is as good as it looks," he confirmed.
Farmboy, she thought affectionately.
He cut off a piece of the nerf and speared it with a fork, watching her. "So, are you free for some training this morning?"
She quickly did a mental rundown of her schedule. "I have a few hours," she replied, taking another bite of her own meal. She wondered if perhaps the tower had gotten a new cooking staff since the Imperial turnover and the Adarians were not as adept with the menu as its previous management had been. "Meditation again today? You're not going to make me do that handstand, are you?"
She had expected her teasing to make him smile. It usually did. But instead his expression grew serious. "No," he said, putting his fork down. "Not meditation today. I was thinking I could teach you some of the more advanced lightsaber forms. See if any of them appeal to you?"
Mara frowned. The Emperor had taught her a great many Force abilities: sensory and memory enhancement, basic trances, levitation and telekinesis, and most importantly danger awareness. She'd carried a lightsaber as the Emperor's Hand—for a moment she allowed herself to mourn the loss of the magenta blade, which she'd sacrificed to escape the one time Isard's operatives actually managed to find her—but lightsaber dueling had never been a serious part of her training. It hadn't been necessary; there weren't enough lightsaber wielders left in the galaxy for her to need to train to oppose them herself. That was what Palplatine had kept Vader for. And Vader had been the only true master of the form who might have taught it to her; she had no doubt that he would have refused had she ever asked.
"Why?" she asked.
Skywalker shrugged, his expression taking on that distant gaze that told her he was communing with the Force as much as he was talking to her. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "I just think it's important."
She wrinkled her nose. "You know, I wish these Force premonitions of yours were a bit more precise. It's hard to plan for the future when all you get is vague intuition."
Skywalker smiled. "Sometimes they're more precise… but not often," he admitted. "It's not any different than your danger sense, really, it's just more removed from the threats." He nodded at her. "With a little more training, I have no doubt that you'll start getting them too. Maybe you'll be better at interpreting them than I am. I'm still not sure what to make of my last vision, the one of a man training a boy."
Mara took another bite of her breakfast, thinking about how quickly her own Force powers had grown over the last year. Since she had fulfilled Palpatine's last command (she refused to imagine Luuke's dead face, fighting successfully to prevent the image from resolving in her mind), all the old powers she'd possessed as the Emperor's Hand had returned, with more consistency and fidelity than she'd had at the previous height of her power. The only one that remained absent was the ability to communicate with the Force across galactic distances, but as she'd only ever been able to do that with Palpatine, she was just as happy it hadn't returned.
So Skywalker was probably right. Pretty soon, she might start having more Force premonitions too. What was it he had said when he'd given her his old lightsaber?
"Because you're on your way to becoming a Jedi and you'll need it."
Skywalker was watching her with that damnably knowing expression of his, sympathetic and caring. She huffed softly, glaring at him. "I'm not about to join your damned-fool crusade," she hissed.
"Maybe not," Skywalker said with a grin. "But if I teach you some more lightsaber forms, you might be able to beat me the next time we spar…"
"I can beat you now," she retorted.
His grin grew broader. "Well, let's finish breakfast and I'll give you an opportunity to prove it."
She pointed her fork at him. "You're on, Jedi."
The training facility in the Imperial Palace which had been allocated to Skywalker for lightsaber training was hidden away, in a centrally located but otherwise isolated spot that gave it easy access to the rest of the palace, but that people would be unlikely to stumble over.
It was a location Mara knew well, and the swell of old memories when she entered the room brought her to a halt. Skywalker didn't notice until he'd put several strides between them, turning back with a concerned look. "Mara?"
She shook her head, then strode into the room confidently after him, refusing to allow her past to burden her—or him—this moment. "It's nothing. I was tutored here. In martial arts, echani and others… and dance. Ballroom and performance." She turned away from him, fighting back a swell of memories, both good and bad, sometimes both at once. She had loved to dance, loved it for its own sake, but for Palpatine it had been merely a tool; an asset for a skilled covert operative. Was it something she, Mara Jade, owned for herself? Or had dancing been something that belonged to the Emperor's Hand? Was it something she even wanted to reclaim?
She could tell that Skywalker wanted to ask what she was thinking. To her relief, he didn't inquire further. He just watched her for a long moment, then turned away himself and stepped into a large closet which, in the days of the Empire, had housed weapons of every variety. Now it seemed mostly empty, but he emerged holding a pair of wooden swords just under a meter in length, with a slightly wider wooden handle.
He extended one slowly to her, handle first, and she took her hand off the actual saber at her belt to accept it. "Wooden swords?" It was extremely light, and she spun the handle in her hand comfortably as she adjusted to it. "Solonese airwood?" she guessed. It was heavier than a lightsaber would've been, and balanced slightly differently, but not by that much.
"That's right," Skywalker replied. "We can get a feel for technique with a live blade, but for sparring it's safer to use one of these. They're surprisingly robust and don't break easily."
He walked into the center of the room. Mara could remember it being filled with obstacles, to practice movement over changes in height, but now it was a large, open space. She followed him, keeping a moderate distance.
"I found them on Kamparas," he continued. "It was a quick trip I made a few months ago, looking for Jedi relics; there used to be a training facility there. There wasn't much to be found—the Empire was very thorough when they destroyed the place—but I came across a few relics in the markets." He smiled thinly. "Some of them had been planted by Imperial agents and were decidedly… unhelpful… but some of the local artisans still make these, and some of the local clans do train like the Jedi used to." He tossed the training sword from one hand to the other, then back. "I'm not much of a woodworker, though, so try not to break them."
"No promises," Mara said curtly as she tested the wooden sword. It wasn't a sword, really; it had no edge, and was really just a long stick for all practical purposes. Despite its light weight it felt solid, and Mara thought it would make a pretty decent baton in its own right.
She stretched out her senses to attune herself to her weapon, breathing and centering herself as she remembered from Skywalker's first lessons. "Rules?" Skywalker's expression was confident—eager even. Her competitive instincts flared in response.
The Jedi lifted his training sword into a guard position. "The usual? Start slow and go to light contact?"
Mara nodded. She widened her stance, gripped the handle with both hands and adopted a standard guard with the shaft pointed straight up, dipping the blade in a small salute. Luke matched her and as one they began, working through parries, swings and thrusts at half-speed.
Again as one they drew back. Mara offered Skywalker a new salute, he returned it, and then they moved to clash again, this time at full speed.
Her stick immediately left its guard position as she slid forward, the tip of her blade moving slightly as she probed for weaknesses in his guard. Skywalker offered her none, giving ground and blocking only when necessary; his feet shifted to adjust to her new angle of approach. He glided backwards as she pursued him.
He fought defensively, as he had on Wayland, moving to void and block her thrusts and slashes before shifting to the occasional lightning-fast retaliatory strike to keep her off-balance. Long years of intermittent dance training helped Mara keep her balance. Adjusting her stance, she lowered her core and lashed out with a low strike that caught him by surprise. The tip of her sword nipped at his calves while the base of her blade protected her head and body.
As he parried she pounced, staggering her steps towards him and powering the midpoint of her blade straight into the tip of his, knocking his sword out of the way before transitioning into a leg sweep. To her disappointment she didn't make contact; Luke jumped over her leg, stepping backwards to put some more distance between them. She pursued furiously, on him like slobber on a Hutt as she searched for an opening—
Her aggressiveness almost cost her as Skywalker abruptly shifted from a defensive style to a more offensive one. His sword slashed at her in the middle of a step; the only thing that kept her from catching that blow across the chest was a flicker of Force-awareness. She rolled and came up on the balls of her feet, regaining her center and grinning fiercely as he came after her again. Her sword swatted his out of the way and she caught his chest with a quick snap-kick that, while he managed to step back and avoid most of its power, staggered him slightly.
When he came in again, he did so more cautiously.
Now Mara was playing defense with her blade, trying to make it a moving wall, all while striking out with her extremities when opportunities presented themselves. The shift in tactics had the advantage of not allowing Luke an opening, but it tired her quickly and earned her a stinging blow to her left wrist (and a momentary look of horror from her sparring partner). Mara smiled briefly to reassure him before she transferred to a single-handed grip, body set sideways in a more traditional duelling stance. Then, rather than press his advantage, Skywalker dropped back a step and raised his blade in the two-handed guard that screened his upper torso, took a breath, and stepped into measure with her.
Luke could feel the sweat beading on his brow as Mara surged to meet him again. He'd caught her off guard by switching from the defensive to the offensive, but just as she was more comfortable attacking, he was more comfortable preserving his energy for critical strikes. Fighting Mara was like fighting a whirlwind—she was always in motion, could move with remarkable deception, and was seemingly mechanical in her endurance. Luke stopped trying to watch her eyes and guess her next move, opening himself fully to the Force and feeling the warmth and certainty of what he had to do to defend against her, just as he could feel her presence stretching out too, looking for an opening of her own.
Mara's eyes gleamed as she thrust the tip of her sword directly at his chest, forcing a small shift and parry, but this attack was a hair slower. She was getting tired, she had to be, but she was no more willing to relinquish this moment of connection than he was. Sparring with droids or whatever commando he could wrangle up was nowhere near as satisfying as sparring with Mara; there was a sheer rightness to it that enticed him to ask each time, and he guessed she felt similarly or she would have said no. Both of them could fight at the limits of their abilities, no holding back. It was liberating.
She stepped back, covering her retreat with two quick jabs, gaining distance before she drew in a long breath, and then to Luke's surprise she flexed her left hand, tossed her sword from her right hand to her left, and realigned her body to fight with her off hand. Mentally anticipating a combined slash and whirling kick up close and ignoring murmurs in the Force, he stepped back himself to open more distance—
And Mara charged, eyes flashing, red braid streaming out behind her, wooden sword aimed right at his head. Luke smiled, judged the distance and stepped in to meet it in mid-swing. As Mara closed, she used the base of her blade to flick his point out of the way, levering it away from his body and useless for anything for a split second. That was all Mara needed. A small, colorful pistol flickered into her hand and she shot him in the chest, just over the heart. The small foam dart bounced off him and fell to the floor before they broke apart and he found himself staring down the barrel of her "blaster" as his sword came up again on instinct.
"Got you," Mara said with a predatory smile, her Force-sense gleaming with satisfaction. She spun the child's toy once to drive her victory home as a smuggler might, then made it disappear into her ensemble like a well-trained assassin.
Luke laughed breathlessly, wiping sweat from his brow. "I think the blaster is cheating, Mara."
"On the contrary, I think it teaches an important lesson, Skywalker. Do you think the next dicred-rate C'baoth or Thrawn will play fair?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow. "And if the answer is no, then why should I put myself at a disadvantage?" She prodded him with the tip of her sword. "And why should you?"
"Let me see if I can explain it," he sighed, moving to fetch two bottles of water from a cooling unit he kept in the training closet and tossing Mara one. She drank from it greedily. "I'm not sure if I fully understand how I feel myself. But, growing up how I did, where I did, I learned what a blaster or slugthrower can do young, and I also learned it was a tool to be respected, not a symbol to wave around to make myself feel big and other people feel small. It puts holes in things, it's designed to, and those things can be targets, food for a week, or a person." He shrugged. "That's what people see. A tool. A soldier's weapon."
Mara frowned at him.
"The saber," he said, motioning his head towards it, "that's a tool too. It can open doors, block blasters. And it's a weapon. But it's also a symbol. When people see a lightsaber, they don't see a soldier, they see a Jedi, and there are still a lot of beings around the galaxy for whom that has meaning." He smiled wryly. "An elegant weapon of a more civilized age, Ben said."
"There is something to that," Mara admitted thoughtfully. Luke looked at her inquisitively, and she sighed. "Before I lost the lightsaber Palaptine gave me, people responded to it in one of two ways. During the Empire, most people saw it and assumed I was like Vader." Both Luke and Mara grimaced. "But after Palpatine's death, I… met others, who saw the blade and reacted with… hopefulness." She looked down. "I got myself into trouble a few times that way," she sighed. "But, symbolic issues or not, Skywalker, a lightsaber has practical limitations that a backup blaster can overcome."
Luke chuckled. "Ben took me into the worst cantina in the worst city on Tatooine and he had the arm off an Aqualish inside of five minutes. That Aqualish had a blaster and it didn't do him any good. If Ben had really needed a blaster, he could have taken that one. And if I ever find myself needing a weapon, I can always take one off my opponents."
Mara wrinkled her nose. "Why not just carry your own all the time so you don't have to rely on some poor unfortunate properly maintaining theirs?" She frowned at him. "Besides, your Imperial file said you carried a blaster. A Merr-Sonn 57 if I recall correctly."
He drank from the water bottle again, moving slightly to begin a cooldown. "I did carry a blaster, until I resigned my military commission," he agreed. "Though I stopped carrying the Merr-Sonn not long after Endor. Han chopped me up a custom BlasTech after we took Druckenwell as a thanks for getting him out of Jabba's. We spent a long time tinkering with it for a longer effective range. I've still got it back in my apartment."
Mara nodded. "When things heat up with the Empire again you should go back to carrying it," she told him firmly.
Luke felt a deep sadness and tried not to let any of it show on his face. "I've tried not to kill anyone I didn't have to since I enlisted. The last few years I've been able to talk down more situations than I've had to fight my way out of. I think not having a visible, recognizable distance weapon might have helped with that. It also might have been why few Jedi carried blasters. They were keepers of the peace, not soldiers, and they were symbols of that peace. I am too. Well, the potential for peace anyway."
Mara shook her head in denial. "No, Skywalker. You're both. You're Farmboy, sage, and pilot. Some people expect you to be practically divine. They expect this shining hero of the Republic, perfect and poised and… perfect." She wrinkled her nose. "You try to be what people expect and it'll get you killed. Or maybe it'll get someone else killed because you'll be in a situation where you need a blaster and don't have it." She shook her head again. "You remember that question you asked me before? What does it mean to be a Jedi?"
He nodded.
"Well, here's my answer," she folded her arms across her chest. "Whatever you think it should mean. You're the only Jedi, and you can't be everything to everybody." Her gaze softened. "You can't save the galaxy on your own, Skywalker," she said. "You can't even save the New Republic, not any more than your sister can. In the end, people make their own choices. When I was the Emperor's Hand, it wasn't my job to save the Empire. We all knew only Palpatine could do that, and that was a laughable fiction. It was my job to make a small difference when and where I could. And that was still too much for one woman to do all on her own, a lot of the time." She gave a slight bow, which he returned, stepped in close to hand him the training sword. He took it. "I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you that I want you doing everything you can to stay alive when you know you're going into dangerous situations."
He sighed heavily. "Mara—"
"Don't 'Mara' me, Farmboy," she interrupted. "You're under no obligation to ride mental rails trying to do what you think Yoda or Ben or any of those other Jedi in that museum would've wanted. Don't get so caught up with striving for their approval that you forget that you get to build traditions too. But they have to make sense." She paused. "Most of the time at least. If they do, the rest of us will just follow your lead." She shook her head at him. "And no," she preempted his question, "that still doesn't mean that I'll join the new order."
Her tone didn't quite match her words, and her refusal didn't dampen his enthusiasm at Mara Jade voluntarily saying that she would follow his lead. That enthusiasm, however, also didn't quite help to lift the full weight of the obligation now draped over his shoulders.
"Hey," Mara brought his attention back to her, her hand wrapped around Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber. His gift to her. She thumbled the blade to life with its distinctive snap-hiss. "How about showing me some of those power strikes you were doing? I was getting hits in but my wrist wishes I hadn't, and I should fight more conservatively with a live blade." She saluted the humming blade at him.
Luke, mentally and emotionally drained, hauled himself up. "All right," he replied, shaking off some of the pressure that being the "First of the New Jedi" had heaped on him and focusing instead on the woman standing in front of him, wielding his father's blade. "Let's start with the two forms I used earlier…"
Hours later, washed and exhausted, Mara finally arrived at the new offices for the Smugglers' Alliance. Unlike the training facility, it was kept in close proximity to all the major administrative centers in the Imperial Palace; the ambassadors' offices, Palace Security's primary coordination center, and the various dignitaries who comprised the New Republic's unofficial aristocracy were all a short walk (or lift) away. Better than that, the docking bay the Wild Karrde was currently stationed in could be reached with a quick airspeeder ride.
She didn't know why Skywalker doubted his ability to teach, or his ability to lead. He was an exemplary teacher, guiding her ably through both his verbal guidance and gentle Force promptings, helping her learn quickly and using Force techniques to speed her development of the muscle memory so necessary to precise training. He would model, she would imitate, and though her arms were furious and the rest of her was tired, it had been one of the most productive learning sessions she could remember having.
She wondered, vaguely, if the location had also helped. The training room in the Imperial Palace that Skywalker had co-opted had always been a location she'd found conducive to learning. She preferred to credit Skywalker, though.
"Ahh, Mara," Karrde greeted her. He glanced at the chrono, then back at Mara. "Had a productive morning?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied, moving to the desk that would become hers. "Have we acquired a droid to help with the office work yet?" she asked, sorting through the stack of datapads and flimsi that was waiting for her. She sighed as she saw page after page requiring a formal signature.
The best part of being Emperor's Hand was definitely the lack of flimsiwork, she thought tiredly.
Karrde watched her, sliding back in his chair. He'd furnished these rooms himself, Mara knew; the decor and lighting distinctly reminded her of his office aboard the Wild Karrde. His white tunic was dotted with red highlights, its sleeves rolled up as he worked; his usual light blue cloak was folded over the back of his chair. He'd also grown out his beard some, letting it thicken (and grey) in a way that reminded Mara very vaguely of the old Imperial aristocracy. The overall effect added to his usual distinguished appearance, but not so much that anyone would forget his roguishness. Clearly, Karrde intended to dress for the part he wanted to play. "Finding one that I can be assured has no potential exploits is difficult," he reminded her. "I will continue searching."
Mara thought of her droid, Kaythree. Palpatine hadn't really allowed her friends—not that she'd ever have admitted that she wanted any—but she'd had a protocol droid. The last thing she remembered of Kaythree was his concerned, electronic voice when she'd collapsed under the strain of the Emperor's dying message. She'd woken up in a cell, accused of treason, with Ysanne Isard's goons watching over her. That cell was only a few floors down…
"Mara?"
She shook herself. "Sorry," she muttered. "Distracted. What's on today's priority list?"
Karrde lifted one perfectly manicured eyebrow. "Councilor Organa Solo invited us over for dinner? Remember?"
Mara froze. Right. Dinner. "Anything I need to do before then?"
"Nothing serious," Karrde replied. "I've already got Ghent working on a simple program that will allow the New Republic to make shipping requests and the members of the Smugglers' Alliance to receive them, based on the payment scale we agreed to. It should be ready before our formal contract is signed." He stood and walked to the office door and slid it shut, then took out one of his electronic scramblers and put it on the desk. "Other than that," he continued calmly, "the only important thing we should discuss is my most recent meeting with General Cracken."
She grimaced. Being at NRI's beck and call was her least favorite part of this whole arrangement. "Does NRI have any requests?"
"Of a sort." Karrde's tone became conspiratorial. "Apparently the HoloNet has been compromised."
Mara frowned. "Compromised? You mean someone has placed a bug on one of the network nodes?"
"I am afraid nothing so easily solved," Karrde frowned as he resumed his seat. "There's someone out there with the ability to slice the HoloNet more directly. Cracken tells me that we should assume that all HoloNet transmissions are potentially vulnerable to interception. Without adequate encryption, their contents could be captured. With adequate encryption, the slicer will still be able to get information like point of origin, destination, and potentially other data from the originating and receiving holocomm nodes." He shook his head. "I heard rumors of someone with such talents, many years ago. But it has been a decade at least since then."
Mara nodded slowly. She'd heard rumors herself, years before, that such things were possible. The HoloNet was widely viewed as effectively sacrosanct, impervious except in the case of a compromised node (and even then, the only risk was to transmissions that went through that precise node). She'd always wondered if Palpatine had intentionally encouraged the growth of that belief to make it easier to track his enemies. She had a more pressing question under these circumstances, though. "Why did Cracken tell us this?"
"He has a mission for me," Karrde explained. "Two, actually." He slid a datapad towards Mara, who caught it as it fell over the edge of his desk towards her. "First, he has asked if he can borrow Ghent to work up an encrypt that can stand up to the best of Imperial Intelligence's codebreakers. Second, he's asked me to join General Bel Iblis in the Albrion sector, personally."
Some of this wasn't surprising. "You did tell Cracken about our little gift, then?" She knew he had intended to tell the General about the toy she and Karrde hoped to acquire—trying to keep it a secret from Cracken was a fool's errand anyway.
"I did," he nodded. He didn't elaborate, and she wasn't really expecting him to. If there was more she needed to know, he'd tell her. Otherwise, it was best to compartmentalize information as much as possible, and Karrde more than most liked to play his cards close to his well-tailored vest.
"When do you leave?"
"In a few days," he replied. "There are a few more things I want to get done here, first. I'm still hoping to have a signed contract with the New Republic before I depart. But we do have more important concerns for this evening. I don't intend to miss dinner with the Solos."
Mara sighed. "What should I wear?"
"Whatever you think appropriate, of course. Though I would leave the blasters at home. I'm quite sure Solo has more than enough of them for all of us, should the need arise." Karrde smiled. "Though I very much hope that it will not."