Chapter Eleven
Mara sat behind her desk in the new Smugglers' Alliance office and rifled through her stack of datacards. Karrde was away, off in a final meeting with Leia Organa Solo and other representatives of the New Republic's inner circle, signing the paperwork that would finalize the creation of the Smugglers' Alliance. And she, Mara Jade, would become an official agent of the New Republic's government.
She leaned back in her very comfortable, Karrde-sourced desk chair. Until then, there was literally nothing for her to do. Ghent had finished putting together the program that would offer shipping assignments (and compensation) to the Smugglers' Alliance membership, and General Cracken had made it clear that Mara's new NRI counterpart, the mysterious Iella Wessiri everyone seemed to know, was currently busy on assignment.
What Mara would give for an assignment.
Left alone in the Smugglers' Alliance office, deep in the Imperial Palace, Mara had done some exercises and tried a bit of Skywalker's seated meditation. It didn't help. The Imperial Palace loomed around her like a castle, and in her mind she ran through the floor plan of the floor she was on, then the floors above and below. She didn't have a holographic memory like Winter, but she was no slouch and knowing the hidden byways of the Palace inside and out had been one of the first tasks Palpatine had ever required of her. The Palace had been her proving grounds, her first confined theatre of operations; she knew every suite, every office, and every hidden passageway.
She wasn't sure when she'd perfected her mental map of the palace, but she'd been young. Not yet even a teenager to be sure. Then Palpatine had set her loose, spying on his friends and rivals in equal measure, with a myriad of cover identities that she rarely needed, so skilled she had been at using the Palace's secrets to avoid being seen.
And soon enough the Palace would be gone.
She had told Skywalker that the Palace's impending destruction was for the best. That it would improve the view from the Adarian building. But part of her—the part that still thought of this building as home—recoiled from the possibility. All that effort, all those years of struggle and work and discipline, her out-of-date mental map, all gone, disassembled, made to disappear the way the New Republic strove to make the Empire disappear.
Spurred by some impulse she didn't quite understand, she sat up and activated her computer terminal. The system whirred as it came up, then Mara searched for the floor plan of the palace. The one that came up was incomplete, and Mara frowned at it for a moment before realizing that the sectors that were missing were classified. It wasn't all that surprising that the "restaurant" that Cracken had taken Karrde to didn't appear on the public map.
She wasn't a skilled slicer like Ghent, but Mara knew her way around a computer network and it would take more than even an excellent security system to keep the Emperor's Hand out of files she wanted to access in her own house. Unless the New Republic had replaced the entire computer mainframe—which she doubted—there were certain commands embedded into the hardware itself that Mara might well be the last person alive to know. She'd have to tell Cracken about them eventually, but in the meantime…
She brought up the full, unredacted map of the Imperial Palace and started perusing it, comparing her Imperial memories to the new Republic reality. She noted that the secret passages that she'd shown Palace Security a year prior, when she and Garm Bel Iblis had foiled the Empire's attempt to kidnap Jacen and Jaina (her thoughts softened for a moment at the thought of Jaina; her memories of the toddler's innocent affection surged forward, threatening to derail her train of thought) were now on the map. They hadn't found all of them, though, which was curious. The passages must be better hidden than Mara remembered. Or perhaps one of the Palace's more recent occupants had blocked them off permanently, she considered.
Scrolling through the map, she stopped at room after room, flashing back to memories of each one. A first mission—an investigation of the secret safe of the Governor of Chandrila, who Palpatine had suspected of collaborating with Mon Mothma—from one room; Force practice under Palpatine's guidance in the large training room near the throne room (which the New Republic had transformed into offices for the aides to the Inner Council); her extensive (and excruciating) training in manners, etiquette, and conversation in the small ballroom…
Mara frowned suddenly, staring at an empty gap on the map. That was odd. Her previous base of operations was missing.
That was very odd.
One of the Palace's many towers had hosted a landing pad for the freighter that Mara had used as her personal vessel. Her primary armory had been there also, as well as a sophisticated computer system that she used to monitor her ongoing assignments. She'd had dozens of smaller bases scattered around Coruscant, serving as safehouses while she was on assignment and couldn't return to the Palace, but the tower had been her primary. She could still remember when Palpatine had brought her there the first time, congratulating her for all her hard work and formally announcing that she was no longer a trainee but was now the Emperor's Hand…
But the tower in question didn't have a hangar listed, not on either the public or the classified map. Where she knew a hangar had been, where her hangar had been, the map showed nothing more than permacrete foundation and utilities lines.
Mara's frown deepened. Was it possible that New Republic Intelligence had missed it during their sweep of the palace? In theory it was, she supposed; the hangar had been hidden well enough. It had never appeared on any Imperial-era maps of the palace, Palpatine had seen to that.
Her musings were distracted as the office door opened and Karrde stepped in. He wore one of his quietly smug expressions, and flashed her an unusually satisfied grin. He slid a datapad across her desk, then fell into his even-more-comfortable seat and set up one of his electronic scramblers.
"Good news?" Mara asked as she examined the datapad.
"Good news," Karrde confirmed. "Meeting with the Inner Council is exhausting, and both Fey'lya and Ackbar expressed… degrees of skepticism… about the sustainability of our project. But neither vetoed it, either." He nodded at the datapad. "We have a contract, and formal signatures. As of…" he examined his chrono, "fifteen-hundred standard Coruscant hours, we have a formal, verified, legal contract and are now officially the Smugglers' Alliance."
Mara put the datapad down. "When will operations commence?"
"Immediately, in the case of shipping. There's a list of vital cargoes on that pad that the New Republic wants taken care of right away. I've already identified which of our associates are best placed to take care of each one, and I'll be sending additional bonuses out to ensure that they're taken care of in a timely fashion. Best to get started off with everyone happy."
"And in the case of intelligence?"
Karrde shrugged. "Agent Wessiri is still on assignment, I understand, but if any information comes to our attention that we think might be to the interests of NRI, I will forward it to General Cracken. He and I will be meeting once more before the Wild Karrde leaves Coruscant; we need to discuss Rendili before I head out to confer with General Bel Iblis. Of course, the current state of the HoloNet makes long-range communication much more complicated."
Mara nodded. "I think I might have something that they could be interested in too," Mara said, glancing back at the map of the Palace. "But I want to go check it out before we tell them anything, in case it's nothing."
"Oh?" Karrde raised an eyebrow. "Anything concerning?"
"I'm not sure," Mara admitted. "I'll let you know."
"Mara," Karrde said warningly. "You know that I trust you, and I am fully aware of your skills and expertise, but investigating anything that might be 'in the interests of NRI' alone is foolhardy. Do you want me to come with you? Or I can call Dankin or Chin back from leave."
She pursed her lips. "No, that's all right," she replied. "I'll ask Skywalker. I think I'm going to need his droid's scanners for this, anyway."
"Ah." Karrde's lips twitched, and Mara swore he was hiding a smile. "Well, between you and Skywalker, I don't think there are any dangers in the galaxy you cannot handle."
Mara's eyes narrowed, but Karrde just looked back at her with a damnably innocent expression. Her eyes narrowed even more. "Karrde…"
He smiled. "Go on, Mara," he said, amusement lurking in his voice. "I'll take care of things here."
The Imperial Palace had dozens of towers, many of which served no purpose other than defense. The external ring was festooned with weapons emplacements and surveillance equipment that made sure no one approached the tower unauthorized or unnoticed (though Luke had learned that the system was easy enough to compromise if you knew how, and the Empire did).
He peered up at the fourteenth tower of that outer ring with a frown. "How do we get in?"
Beside him, Artoo whistled and put his wheels securely on the permacrete walkway, rolling towards the tower with his little sensor dish whirling.
Mara wore a deceptively blank expression. Her shielding was good, but he could still feel the undercurrents of tension and uncertainty roiling beneath her placid surface.
They stood on one of the external walks that separated the towers at higher levels. The Coruscant sun was hazy through a thick layer of clouds, and on occasional smattering of rain had left the permacrete slick. In front of them was Palace Tower Fourteen; like the rest of the Palace it was crafted out of imported stone and then covered in a layer of black paint. The external wall of the tower was tough and resistant to damage, and the paint left it too slippery to climb. Glancing from side to side, Luke could see Tower Thirteen and Tower Fifteen, and more towers beyond those.
The Palace was enormous. Looking outwards, he could see the comparatively tiny form of the Senate Building, it's dome occasionally reflecting sunlight when the clouds shifted. Beyond that, he could see the array of towers that characterized the endless city. It wouldn't have meant anything to him a few weeks before, but looking out now the gleaming pyramidal peak of the Adarian Building stood out to Luke.
Mara stepped in close to the tower. Her hands rested over the painted stone, gliding as she slowly started to circle the tower. She stopped and Luke could see her press into the seemingly smooth material, and see it give under her applied pressure. There was a click, and Mara stepped back as creases in the stone appeared and a heavy door swung slowly open.
"Impressive craftsmanship," Luke commented, feeling no small amount of awe at the extraordinary stonework.
"Palpatine left no credits unspent when he built the Palace," Mara said. She stepped into the gap in the stone. The corridors were lit only intermittently, from sunlight that peered in through windows along the exterior. Mara unbuckled her lightsaber and ignited it with a snap-hiss. The blade cast blue-white light into the narrow walkway. "There are other ways to get into this tower from the lower levels," she commented. "I wouldn't typically have used this one. Too great a chance of being spotted."
"Does that mean we're not worried about being spotted now?" Luke asked.
Artoo wheeled after Mara into the darkened corridor, producing a large spotlight as his sensor dish continued to whir. The light cast over Mara, leaving a shadow of her form stretched along the long corridor.
"Whatever we find I'll have to take to Cracken anyway," Mara replied. "And I don't want to be accused of sneaking around the Imperial Palace." She led them down the corridor, the only light from her lightsaber and Artoo's spotlight. They came to a fork, with the corridor shifting off to the left and right. "It goes all around the tower," Mara explained. "There are hidden passageways to get deeper in, if you know where to look." They walked through the dark corridor, passing small, camouflaged windows that looked out both over the palace's interior courtyards, and out into the city. "Observation deck," she added. "In the event of an uprising, Stormtroopers could station snipers or E-Web nests and cover the city surrounding the palace, or the palace grounds themselves from up here."
Luke peered out one of the windows, seeing the tiny figures of people going about their daily lives far below in the exterior courtyards. "Palpatine was prepared for everything," he commented.
"He certainly thought he was, anyway," Mara muttered, more than a hint of scorn touching her words. She waved him back into the corridor. "Now, along this inner wall…" she stopped, disengaging her lightsaber and putting it back on her belt before placing the palms of both her hands on the interior wall of the corridor. She drew back with a frown. "Artoo, are your scanners picking up anything? I'm pretty sure there was a door here."
The little astromech wheeled up next to her, his sensor dish whirling slowly. He gave an uncertain warble.
Mara glanced at Luke. "What did he say?"
"Too much interference in the wall for him to be sure where the door is," Luke replied with a frown. He closed his eyes, stretching out to the Force, pushing his Force-sense through the wall and beyond. It was much easier to find minds than it was to map geography… "There is a large open space beyond us," he murmured. "Several meters in. I don't feel any passageways leading to it, though."
Mara stepped back, re-igniting her lightsaber to cast its blue glow across the wall. Her frown became the most visible single image in the entire corridor. "It was here," she said with certainty. "Someone must have come along and changed things around in the years I've been gone. Walled off the passageway."
Artoo warbled uncertainly.
"I'm not sure who," Mara replied, "but I'd guess Isard. She was one of Palpatine's few favorites who knew who and what I was, along with Thrawn. After Palpatine died at Endor—" her voice wavered for only a moment "—she had me arrested and locked up in the Palace. During interrogation she asked me all kinds of questions about what resources Palpatine had given me. It wouldn't surprise me if she tracked this facility down after I made my escape."
"So we should be worried about traps?" Luke asked, his hand on his own lightsaber.
"It's Isard, " stated Mara flatly. "Of course you ought to be worried about traps, the more convoluted the better. Come on, let's continue our circuit and see if we can't find a better-hidden entrance."
It took them the better part of an hour, stopping and starting to use all their (and Artoo's) senses to probe various promising locations. It was Artoo's triumphant whistle that finally brought the search to a halt.
"Found something?" Mara asked.
Artoo whistled again, his sensor dome spinning as his one large photoreceptor swiveled between Luke and Mara, his large light focused on a particular spot on the wall.
Mara stepped in close, feeling her hand over the wall slowly.
"He says there's a small recess in the wall that might be a trigger—"
Mara pressed down and the wall underneath it gave way. There was a whirring sound, a hiss of air, the smell of old lubricant, and then the slow mechanical creaking of a hidden doorway swinging back. Mara pressed her back to the wall next to the slowly yawing opening; Luke quickly did the same on the other side. With a nervous warble, Artoo wheeled out of sight of the passageway.
It slowly creaked open and then stopped with a heavy, stone-on-stone shudder. Mara drew back, her green eyes flicking to Luke. "Well?"
"Not feeling any imminent danger," he replied softly.
"Me neither," she replied, and reached her hand out into the opening. When nothing happened, Mara pulled back from the wall and poked her head to the side to take a look.
The revealed passageway was nothing special. Dark, stone, square, just like the one they were already in. "Not very exciting," Luke commented.
"There was no need to make it decorative," Mara countered. "Nobody was supposed to see this. Come on."
They took their time down the hallway, both stretched out to the Force, seeking danger. It was an odd sensation, Luke thought. He could feel the structure around them; the passageway, but more than anything he could feel Mara. Her mind and his met in the middle, and stretched out as they were, it was hard to maintain the normal shields that would assure privacy. He could hear the edges of her thoughts, and knew she could hear him. It was strangely intimate, even if the only thought that was shared was their twin determination to keep from being surprised by a potential threat.
The opening ahead should lead to the main facility, he heard. Had Mara said that, or thought it? An image of a large, wide hangar with a bulk freighter within it flashed into his mind; he saw a silver protocol droid with visual sensors that looked more like a blindfold than eyes. Mara, performing maintenance; Mara, discussing an assignment with the droid; Mara, hearing Palpatine's cold, approving voice in her head…
"Stop that," Mara hissed at him.
"You're projecting," Luke replied apologetically, trying to ease the flow of memories past him.
He felt more than saw her grimace and the images stopped. "You know," she growled testily, "if you were carrying a blaster you could cover me, instead of just standing behind me being useless if we get shot at."
"You could let me go in front."
"Unlike you, I know where I'm going."
They came to the end of the passage—it hadn't been that long since they'd entered it, stretching out to the Force and the accidental intimacy of the moment had caused time to come to a sluggish halt—and entered into the hangar that Luke had seen in Mara's memories. It was well maintained; a maintenance droid was humming as it worked, ignoring their presence entirely. Throughout the room was a battery of computers, their screens dark, set in front of empty chairs that the droid moved to clean, then returned to their place. Against the opposite wall sat the freighter from Mara's thoughts.
She blinked, shaking her head. "I didn't really expect it to still be here," she murmured.
"It was your ship?" Luke asked carefully.
"One of them. Its name is L6000-H-82688. It's a modified Maka-Eekai freighter." She frowned. "Looks like it was just left here, though I'm sure Isard searched it thoroughly."
"The name of your ship was just a string of numbers and letters?" Luke asked. He relaxed as his danger sense still hadn't alerted him to any, withdrawing his Force senses slightly; he could feel Mara doing the same, and the entanglement of their emotions faded. He peered around the room. This had been Mara's place, the place the Emperor's Hand had made her fortress.
"Well, we used many different false identities for the ship when we traveled," Mara replied. "It was best not to get too attached to the ship anyway, Palpatine made me replace them regularly to make sure I didn't get predictable, or I would've kept the Suwantek… what is this thing?" She took a set in front of one of the terminals, tapping on the keyboard.
Luke joined her. "They weren't here before?" he asked; it was an unnecessary question, as the memory he had seen of this place had been of an open space, uncluttered. The screen was slow to illuminate, bearing all the typical interface markers of an Imperial computer.
"No," she replied, tapping on the keyboard with increasing annoyance. A prompt appeared, requesting a password. "Isard took this over, remember?" Mara growled, and Luke could hear a hint of righteous indignation in her voice. "I'm sure of it now. She probably made it a sanctum for Imperial Intelligence's worst."
There was a twinge in Luke's danger sense, and he peered around, concentrating… but the twinge didn't grow into any greater alarm.
"What is it?"
"Probably nothing," Luke said.
"Well," Mara's attention reluctantly returned to the computer. "I'm not going to try to slice this right now. I'll put together a report and send it to Cracken and let Ghent and NRI take a crack at it, maybe they can figure out what Isard was using this place for." Her righteous scowl remained.
He couldn't take his eyes off her. There was place and purpose in her expression, the anger of a woman whose home had been usurped from her. "This was your place," Luke murmured, finally giving voice to his earlier thought.
Mara's eyes flicked back to him, hardening for a moment—but just for a moment—before she consciously relaxed. "Yeah," she replied with a sigh. "This was my place. This all belonged to the Emperor's Hand." She waved at the room. "The tower, the ship, the droids, the Imperial officers who rotated in and out and served as my crew and support… it was all mine." A small, melancholy smile tugged at her lips. "It's not quite as grand as I remembered it," she admitted. Her head dipped slightly, looking down at the Imperial-style keyboard under her hands. "None of this was what really mattered, though. What made this all special was the responsibility. Being needed. Everything else…" she shrugged, waving her hand at the room again, her voice trailing off.
Luke took a risk and rested a hand on her shoulder nearest to him for a moment, feeling the tightly tensed muscle before raising it. "Someone with your fire and conviction turning it around to help people? I can assure you you're needed, Mara." He could hear the tenderness in his voice, and fought to keep his swell of emotions safely behind his own mental shields.
She turned towards him, her expression neutral, something undefinable lurking in her eyes. She didn't back away, and for just an instant he thought he could feel her lean closer into his hand. "I'm not sure it'll ever be enough to make up for…" her voice faded, and she shook her head. "I should've seen it sooner," she said quietly. She closed her eyes for a moment, and he could feel her engaging old memories, settling ghosts to rest. When her voice came again, it startled him. "We're wasting time." Her voice punctured the calm with suddenness, but without any anger. "Come on, let's take a look at the ship."
The Palace Security operations center was largely unchanged from the days of the Empire, although the uniforms were different (there were fewer sets of Stormtrooper armor, among other things).
Lieutenant Caston Nalle had been a Captain in the Rebellion, but a shoulder injury had rendered him unfit for field service and he'd accepted medical retirement before assuming a supervisory post with Palace Security. Most days nothing interesting happened, which suited him just fine.
"Uh, Lieutenant?" the young Corporal who was at the computer monitoring station called.. Corporal Corde Brandes was a relatively new recruit, still in her first year with Palace Security, and young, but she had a talent for computers and was doing well so far in her rotation in SecOps.
He turned in his chair, standing up awkwardly and hobbling over with his cane in his hand. "What is it, Corporal?" he asked.
"Well, there's an alarm code here that doesn't appear in our manual," she said, her lips firming together in confusion. In one hand she had a datapad which she'd already gone through, he could see; her other rested on the controls of her console.
He could see the flashing alert on the screen. "Code Iota-Thirteen-Ten-A," he read. His frown deepened. That didn't mean anything to him, either. "Strange indeed," he mused. "And there's nothing in the codebook? Anything under just 'Iota-Thirteen'?"
Brandes shook her head, the tightly-coiled dark braid of her hair bobbing back and forth in emphasis. "No, Lieutenant," she replied.
"Hmmmm," Caston considered that for a moment. "Well, there are a whole lot of old Imperial codes buried in these computer systems. It's probably a systems error. Maybe we can figure out what it means…" he strode over to his desk and gingerly pulled it open. There was a stack of datapads ten deep in there, recovered from when the New Republic had first captured Coruscant. New Republic Intelligence had gone through them with a fine-toothed comb and Palace Security never had gotten all of them back, but… Caston picked up the stack and hobbled back to Brandes' desk, giving her half. "Let's see if there's anything in these," he said.
They started searching through them, checking under appropriate codes. It was a while before either of them found anything relevant. "Aha!" Brandes announced, her dark eyes flashing victoriously. "Here we are. Iota-Thirteen-Ten codes… there's not a lot of information here. Instructions, but not information for what they actually mean."
Caston took the datapad from her. There was a list of different codes under the prefix "Iota," and all of them included instructions for dispatching Stormtroopers to certain palace locations and implementing enhanced security measures against intrusion. He noted the date of when these instructions were issued. "These are all from after the Emperor's death, when Director Isard was in charge," he mused aloud. "Iota-Thirteen-Ten-A. Dispatch two units of Stormtroopers to Tower Fourteen," he read. "Cut off all exits, and alert aerial patrols for potential exfiltration attempts. Also alert local Fleet commanders to prepare to interdict any unauthorized vehicles launching from the Imperial Palace." He lifted an eyebrow. He peered at the map of the Imperial Palace. Tower Fourteen wasn't anything interesting, so why… ?
"What do we do?" asked his young Corporal.
Caston shrugged. "Well, let's dispatch a Palace Security team down to check it out at least, full biologicals because it's Isard, and then get a squadron armed and in the air just in case. And…" he frowned, waving at her solicitously, "give me a line to NRI Headquarters. I think Cracken and his spooks will be interested to know that one of Isard's old palace alert codes just pinged our board."
The entry hatch to her freighter, which as Emperor's Hand she'd never given a name beyond its manufacturer's registry number, L6000-H-82688, opened and hissed as the ship's internal vacuum was punctured. It wasn't a very pretty ship; like most ships to come out of the Gallofree Yards it was symmetrical and ovoid, designed for transport and cargo. It was actually about the same size as the Wild Karrde, though it had much less room for cargo (especially if it was carrying a snubfighter; as Emperor's Hand Mara had usually kept her Z-95 tucked away in its internal hangar).
Memories swirled as she hit the control panel on the inside of the door, and the ship's lights flickered to life. She peered inside; activating the lights hadn't triggered any obvious traps, which was a good sign, but Mara would be shocked if there wasn't at least one homing beacon that had just been activated. Mara had known better than to come back here after she'd escaped Isard's clutches, finding civilian transport off Coruscant instead of trying to reclaim her ship, but Isard would surely have put a homing device aboard, just in case.
On the outside, L6000-H-82688 was a battered looking, pre-Clone Wars era wreck—at least, it was to the inexperienced eye. But the ship's four engines had been carefully overhauled and could put out significantly more thrust than the ones it had been built around, and as carefully camouflaged as they were, no customs crew would miss the ship's retractable dual laser cannon turrets. It's single forward-mounted spinal turbolaser was better hidden, which was good since under the Empire it had been so illegal, the whole ship would've been instantly impounded if it was found. And as illegal as that was, it wasn't as illegal as the two forward-mounted rapid-fire proton torpedo launchers.
The interior was as Mara remembered it, with a clean Imperial finish that gave Mara an eerie sense of homesickness. For better or worse, this tower, this ship and the job she had been groomed for had been her home.
The large cargo bay stretched back for the entire length of the ship, the small passenger entrance under the ship's blunt, rounded nose and the much larger cargo hatch (which could accommodate a snubfighter's in-vacuum launch) at the back. Twin stairwells curled upwards to the passenger deck above them, hugging the front of the ship.
"Nice," Skywalker commented, glancing around.
"Nothing but the best for ISB," Mara commented. "This wasn't the first of their covert ops ships I commandeered for my own use. You should've seen their operating budget… if Palpatine had ever sent me after them, the amount of waste and corruption in that organization would've kept me busy for the rest of my natural life." If Palpatine hadn't died.
If Skywalker heard her unspoken addition—which he may have, he was alarmingly attuned to her subvocalized thoughts today—he didn't say. "The bridge is above?" he asked instead.
Mara nodded. "Bridge, crew quarters, common area, and my own quarters." She stretched out with the Force, searching for danger once again; felt Skywalker doing the same, felt how their senses intermingled, giving her a glimpse into what he was seeing and knowing that he was receiving a glimpse into her mind as well… she reinforced her mental shields, trying to keep from broadcasting her memories as she had on the way in.
It was hard.
She might not have ever given L6000-H-82688 a proper name, but the ship had been her home for the better part of two years. Imperial Center, the Imperial Palace; they had been her home for most of her life, but this ship (and its predecessors) had become the places she spent most of her time once the Emperor started sending her on missions off Coruscant.
Mara had never expected to be aboard her again.
Re-entering the large common space on the ship's upper deck brought flashes of memory; the largely nameless, faceless men who had been her crew, so constantly replaced that none of them so much as stood out in her memory as more than obedient droids. The gaming table, where she had occasionally favored Kaythree with a game of dejarik, which she had always won (something which had never bothered the droid overmuch). Kaythree, her aide and the ship's effective operations officer, who had been as polite and unnoticeable as the human members of the crew but unlike them had at least been consistent; she'd never thought much of the droid, but still her heart tightened just a bit at the sure knowledge that Isard had pulled him apart and scoured his memory for every spare scrap of information, then tossed whatever was left into the palace waste disposal.
She pushed through, entering the large captain's quarters in the back of the ship. It had served as a combination briefing room and bedroom; a large holographic display sat in the middle of the room, which she had used to detail every mission she was given. She had spent hours here, sitting and reading, planning and plotting, educating herself about every detail of a world, a city, or a target. No mistakes could be made; they were as unacceptable to the Emperor's Hand as they had been to the Emperor. On the one wall sat two tall bookshelves which had played host to numerous books and souvenirs of missions past; more than any other single place in the galaxy, those bookshelves had been her place. Her finest missions, her proudest accomplishments, tokens of memory. All gone now, probably buried in a forgotten closet aboard Lusankya, which had been Isard's personal Super-class Star Destroyer and lair. There was a locker somewhere, she guessed, filled with the trinkets and possessions of her childhood, such as it had been.
Mara could remember some of the objects. A globe with the appearance of Ghel Daneth, a gift from that planet's governor after she'd arrested his top aide and executed the commander of Ghel Daneth's fleet detachment for treason (they'd been routing military funds into their own personal accounts, leaving the planet woefully under-defended and vulnerable); a print of a painting of the Silver Sea on Chandrila, which she had picked up on a whim one time she had visited the art wing of the Imperial Museum; a book on dance she'd owned since she was a teenager, still struggling with perfecting her art.
Skywalker was watching her, and she knew the images were leaking across the porous boundary between their outstretched minds. She could feel the swell of emotion, of sympathy and care, and she tightened her shields and put her past out of her mind. She had blamed him for the loss of that past once, not that long ago; his fault or not, she didn't need to burden him with the extent of her loss.
Surprisingly, there was one wall which had been left largely untouched. She moved over to it; felt Luke stop and stare at the wall of weapons. Her armory had everything from sniper rifles to holdout blasters, a half-dozen vibroblades of varying sizes, and even a Sith lanvarok (though that had been a gift from Palpatine she'd never used; she wasn't left handed). The spot on the wall where she'd kept her lightsaber was woefully empty.
Mara found herself drawn to one of the items. It was an old one, one of the only items on the wall that wasn't a weapon. Back when she'd been younger, before the Emperor had sent her on missions through the entire galaxy, when the scope of her operational area only extended through Coruscant, he'd had a tool for communicating with her that wasn't the Force. A simple communications wristcom, hooked in to her personal computer net. Prompted by an instinct, undefinable but nonetheless real, she picked it up and turned it over. The screen lit up; the device was still charged.
"Wow," Skywalker said, drawing her attention away from the wristcom, which she slipped into a pocket. His gaze was on the weapons still on the wall. "Have you used all these?"
"No," Mara replied. "Not in combat. Tested, yes, but some of them are more flash than substance, better left on the wall." She turned and gazed around the room, feeling the weight of memory and loss press down upon her, mixed with confusion. Yes, this had been home, once… home to the Emperor's Hand. That isn't me anymore, so why does it still provoke this feeling of longing and loss? "Best not to touch any of these," she growled in response to the emotion. "Isard probably sabotaged them."
The twinge of her danger sense was matched by Skywalker's sudden sense of alarm. It was probably for the best; the way his emotions had reached out to hers had been alarmingly comforting, and she'd started to lean into his emotional embrace before she could stop herself. That was probably the most confusing thing of all, and she was almost glad for the sudden sense of alarm. Her first thought was that the weapons had indeed been sabotaged, but the danger wasn't quite so proximate.
"We have company," Skywalker murmured, his voice all business. "There are a half-dozen people approaching the way we came, and fast."
She closed her eyes, concentrating; felt the consciousnesses of well-trained men and women, and one particularly bright, vivid mind who felt more curious than alarmed…
"That is General Cracken," Skywalker answered her unspoken question, and Mara grimaced both at the fact that he knew what she was thinking, and at what he'd said.
"I suppose I'll get to make my first Smugglers' Alliance intelligence report in person," she muttered.
"General Cracken," Mara greeted the man leading the small parade of Palace Security agents as she trotted down the freighter's aft entry ramp. There were quite a lot of them, more than seemed reasonable. The men and women were clearly serious-minded and well armed; one of them started examining the computers, while two others passed by her and Skywalker and went up into the ship. "I'd be careful in there," she warned them, looking at Cracken. "Skywalker and I didn't clear it of booby traps, and Isard might've left something."
Cracken nodded at the security team, and they proceeded more cautiously. "It hasn't even been three hours since the Smugglers' Alliance contact was signed," he said, arching an eyebrow, "and here I already find you and Jedi Skywalker skulking around the palace grounds, identifying old Imperial bases of operations."
Mara crossed her arms in front of her chest, glowering vociferously. "I wasn't skulking," she retorted. "I was investigating, and out in the open at that."
The head of New Republic Intelligence offered a thin, polite smile in response. "What did you find?"
She shrugged. "This used to be my base of operations on Coruscant. The ship behind us was my final operations vessel before—" she paused, considering the right way to frame it "—I left the Imperial service."
"So it's yours then?" Cracken asked, his eyes sharp. "Are you making a claim for ownership?"
Mara frowned. That thought hadn't occurred to her. Now that Cracken mentioned it, she could think of several uses for the freighter, and Karrde might be interested in adding it to his fleet. "I'm not sure if I have a legal claim," she said slowly. "I don't have any flimsiwork that could prove prior ownership, given the… unofficial… nature of my position. If I do have a legal claim that would hold up in court, I wouldn't mind getting it back."
Cracken just nodded. "I'll look into it. I should mention that I've been in contact with Agent Wessiri, but her operational duties at the moment make her unavailable to assume her post as NRI Liaison to the Smugglers' Alliance at this time."
She'd almost forgotten Skywalker's presence. "You're going to be working with Iella?" he asked, tilting his head at her and smiling. "That's great!"
"You know her?"
The blonde Jedi offered a somewhat boyish, slightly abashed smile. "Iella and I go way back. General Cracken asked me to do him this favor—"
"Ah, Jedi Skywalker, perhaps we should leave that one with little else said," Cracken cut in. He turned to Mara. "Agent Wessiri's current task is an important one, but I'll task her to you as soon as it's complete. In the meantime, if you're planning on uncovering any more hidden Imperial bases in the palace, perhaps you should contact me first?"
Luke grinned at her. Mara frowned at them both. "Fine," she agreed curtly.
Cracken smiled. It was an expression that Mara found vaguely unsettling; one of determination and echoes of omniscience. It reminded her of Karrde, who enjoyed nothing better than knowing things he shouldn't and dangling hints of profound insight before an enraptured audience, just out of their reach.
She then remembered that those two kindred spirits were working together now, and shuddered internally.
"What made you decide to come down here?" Cracken asked.
Mara frowned, glancing sideways at Skywalker and then away from him again. "I had a hunch."
"A hunch?" Cracken turned his own attention on Skywalker and lifted one grey eyebrow. "A Jedi hunch, I presume?"
Skywalker shrugged his shoulders innocently. "I told her they might start becoming more common again as she opened herself up to the Force. I didn't know that it would happen so quickly, though."
Cracken's expression was one of resignation. "I suppose I've gotten used to your reports with 'I had a hunch' as justification for action. I'll just have to get used to Miss Jade's as well."
"If she's working with Iella, you won't have to worry about that so much," Skywalker replied confidently. "Iella has a way of turning Jedi hunches into actual information." He grinned at Mara. "You'll like her."
Mara kept frowning. There was something about the way Skywalker talked about Wessiri that annoyed her. But just then, everything about Skywalker and his chirpy connections to his squeaky-clean New Republic annoyed her. "Sure. Can we go?"
Skywalker's expression fell slightly, but he nodded. "Did we get what we came for?"
Mara paused, her frown deepening yet again. Had she? Why had she come here? It had just been a hunch—was the hunch now satisfied? She turned back towards the hanger; her ship, sitting quietly against the wall; the bay of Imperial Intelligence computers arrayed across the open space. The large floor which had been a place for training, when more public locations were inappropriate. It was all so familiar, and yet… all so alien, now.
Why had she come? Closure?
"I guess," she muttered. The Force wasn't tugging at her, wasn't drawing her to stay longer. And she had no interest in being here while Cracken dissected her life, just as Isard had half a decade before. She turned towards the exit and refused to look back. "Yes. Let's go, Skywalker."
The sound of his footsteps behind her was oddly reassuring, but Mara resolved to convince him to carry his blaster. He'd be terrible backup at any distance beyond close combat without one. If Skywalker was going to be the one watching her back, she needed to make sure he could do it properly.