I'm usually known for writing a different type of action, so I hope you'll find the type of action in this chapter up to par. ;)
CHAPTER 9
They reached the station after exiting lightspeed. It looked much the same as Luke remembered from the last time he'd been there. Mara grimaced at the black hole, but the station itself protected them from it. He directed her to land and request a shield for the ship, to save it from the intensity of the continual x-ray assault. They managed to find a ride toward the domed city, and Luke told Mara the story of Han violating an alien's leg when they had been there together in his dimension. Han hadn't realized it was an alien's leg appendage and tried to shake it like a hand. It broke the silence that had sprung up between them, and he was glad to share a laugh at Han's expense if it would bring a smile back to Mara's face.
The asylum was far within the city, and the ride was sticky and hot. He had forgotten the tropical heat of the domed city. Long removed were the days of living on Yavin IV, and he was no longer used to humid temperatures. He quickly grew warm. Mara made no complaint but sweat trickled in a thin line down the side of her face.
Getting in to see Niragen turned out to be quite easy. The asylum had regular visiting hours and during that time most of the patients were seated in a cafeteria-style room with their visitors. Luke thought of all the people who lived here and how in his universe they had evacuated this system so many years before. At least, he hoped they had all been evacuated. He had been in no condition to help at that time and now grew concerned that some of these people may have been lost in that explosion.
They signed in at the front desk under assumed names and were told that Niargen would pose no threat to them physically, though the specifics of his medical condition could not be discussed. They were told, however, that he had checked himself in under his own cognizance and continued to stay year after year under his own free will. The nurse also mentioned that they were the first visitors he had ever had. Mara gave Luke a sidelong look at the information, before going to find their patient.
The nurse pointed them in his direction. They found the former scientist seated in a back corner of the cafeteria, the artificial light from the dome shining in over him. Introducing themselves, they went ahead and gave Luke's real name, thinking that an asylum patient was probably a pretty safe person to reveal a 'dead' person to. Luke also dropped the Force disguise he had been using since landing on planet, hoping to appeal to Niragen with nothing but the truth.
Niragen look up at them quizzically. He was an older human male, his bald head reflecting the light from the windows. "The Emperor's Hand and Jedi Luke Skywalker," he said in greeting. "You're here to see me? To what do I owe this honor?" He paused, his eyebrows sloping inward in thought. "Does the Emperor wish to see me?"
"The Emperor's dead," Mara said bluntly.
Niargen didn't look surprised at her statement. "That's right. I forget that sometimes."
"We've come to ask you some questions," Luke said, jumping in before Mara could persist. "If that's okay." When Niagren nodded, Luke continued. "I understand that you once were a scientist in the Maw Installation. That you worked for the Empire—for the Emperor."
"You understand that correctly."
"I also understand that you created a machine that you called an Inter-Dimensional Device."
"I can take credit for that, yes."
"Were there only ever two devices created?" Mara asked.
"I created one in my free time, just a hobby really. The second one I created at the request of my superiors. They felt that it was a great invention, but I felt it was flawed. One could only travel for twenty-four hours and I could not fix that defect." Niargen fiddled with a cup that was in front of him. "Why?"
"I heard about it from a former colleague of yours," Luke answered. "He told me that of the two created that only one still worked. That the other had been blown to pieces on the Death Star."
"That was a lie."
"A lie?" Mara asked, sitting down next to Niargen. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that my former colleague lied to you. There was never an IDD on the Death Star. Don't you think Tarkin would have used it to escape? No, I have the second IDD."
"You have it?" Luke asked, his voice hitching in surprise.
"Of course I do. But why are you so interested?" Niargen looked appraisingly at them both. "Aren't you dead?" he asked of Luke.
"No," he said, and put the backing of the Force behind the word to stop any further questioning.
Niargen looked confused for a minute. "Why am I here?"
"We wanted to speak with you," Mara said. "Don't you remember? About the IDD that you created?"
"No, that's not what I meant. Why am I here? In this asylum. You know I'm a political prisoner."
"The nurse told us that you checked yourself in here. Maybe you just missed the power of a black hole," Mara said, gesturing out to the domed city and the black hole that loomed beyond, just like the black holes surrounding the Maw.
"Maybe I missed intelligent conversation and this is the only place to find it."
"Brains and a sense of humor. I think I'm in love," Mara snapped. "Look, what can you tell us about this IDD? You say you have the second one?"
"I can tell you that it is flawed."
"Why is it flawed?" Luke asked again.
"It only works for twenty-four hours! The Emperor didn't want it."
"We know that it only works for twenty-four hours. But the question is—why? Can you jump back to the original galaxy you came from if you accidentally stay past the time period?"
Niargen shook his head, holding his cup up for a drink. He swallowed and then looked at Luke. "The IDD is only stable for twenty-four hours because that's all the power I could put behind it. I can't change the laws of physics."
Luke fought the urge to raise his hand to his temple. They were getting nowhere. "What about the second device? You said you had it."
"Oh, I have it, Skywalker. It's right here."
Mara and Luke both looked around the table, empty save for Niargen's cup. "Where?" Luke finally asked.
"Right here." Niargen held up his cup. After a beat he started to laugh. "I'm only joking. This is just a cup."
Mara did not look amused. "I'm getting impatient, Niargen. Do you have the second IDD or not?"
"My dear." He reached out for her hand. Mara pulled it back before he could touch her. "If I had an IDD on my person do you think I'd still be sitting here?"
A silence grew between them, broken only by the loud chatter of other patients and their families. Finally Luke asked, "Other than the IDD, do you know of a way to move through or to other dimensions?"
Niargen looked as if he were puzzling it out. Finally he said, "Only if you can harness a power larger than time itself. But then, if you could do that, why would you be sitting here?" He drank his cup dry. "Personally I think you'll get further by using this cup."
Luke let out a frustrated breath and stood. "Thank you for meeting with us."
They were nearing the exit when Niragen called about to them. Beside him, Mara rolled her eyes, and Luke shook his head almost imperceptibly. "Hang on, I'll go see what he wants." He left her there and jogged back to Niragen's table. "Yes?"
Niragen still appeared to be enamored with his cup. "I forgot to tell you that the duplicate you seek is here."
"The duplicate?"
"You were asking me about the second one…it's here. It used to be housed elsewhere but now, it's here."
The second IDD. Luke's stomach knotted. After the twists and turns of his earlier conversation with Niragen, he wasn't sure what to believe. "Here on this station?"
"Here," Niragen said, handing Luke his cup. On the cup was a hand-drawn map. "I told you that you'd find more use from the cup." He didn't wait for Luke to speak further, getting up and walking away.
.
.
"Well, that was a waste," Mara murmured as Luke met back up with her at the door. "I thought he might have more answers for us."
"Only if they were on the bottom of his cup." Luke held the cup up for Mara's inspection and saw her eyes widen as she took in the markings covering it.
"Is that—a map?" She took the cup from him as they exited the asylum.
"He told me that the duplicate I seek is actually here on the station, and gave me this map. I have no idea if the information is any good or not, but I couldn't sense any deception from him."
"Or common sense," Mara disagreed. "The 'duplicate'. The other IDD, I presume?"
"I hope so. Do you think we should follow the map?"
Mara gave him a look as if she were thinking about checking him into Niragen's asylum. "Of course I think we should follow the map." She stepped into the taxi that had been waiting to take them back to the entrance of the dome. "But why would Naelli lie to us about it being on the Death Star?"
"Maybe he still wants it for himself."
"Maybe." Mara reached out to pull open the door and Luke's danger sense flared. "Did you—" he started to ask her, when she swung up from behind him with her saber and stopped a blaster shot from hitting his head.
He didn't speak, grabbing his own saber from the folds of his cloak and moving, already tracking the next blaster shot as it aimed for his head. He turned and crouched, using the rear bumper of the taxi for cover. Mara moved beside him, panting slowly. It was quiet around them, only the driver of the taxi cowering in his seat.
"What the kriff was that?" Mara growled, eyes scanning the surrounding buildings for the source of the shots.
"They looked like blaster shots," Luke said dryly, his own eyes seeking answers. He cast out with the Force but the immediate sense of danger had past, leaving only a dim uncertainty.
"What is this? Jedi humor?" Mara snapped. "Where the hell did those shots come from? No one even knows we're here."
"I don't know. Do you want to pursue or should we continue on with the map?"
Mara looked at him like he had grown another head. "Pursue, of course. Those shots came out of nowhere and I, for one, want to know why."
"Just checking. I don't want to drag you further into something that's my fight." Luke placed the cup in the inner pocket of his cloak.
"It's a little late for that, Skywalker." She turned and sent the taxi off. The driver looked only too pleased to comply, driving off in a cloud of dust and leaving them alone on the street. "Come on, we're too open here." Mara grabbed his hand and pulled him to the cover of some nearby buildings. There was still no sense of imminent danger in the Force but Mara was in her element now, tracking through the streets silently, her hand never far from the belt where her saber hung.
"The shots came from this direction." Luke took the lead from her and cut through an alley to come out next to a building diagonal from where they had just been standing. They scaled the fire escape quickly, landing lightly on the roof of the building. Luke walked to the edge of the roof and stopped as he reached the far corner of it. He stretched out with the Force. "There were two of them. They were right here."
Mara looked down to where they had been standing minutes before. "Who the hell were they?"
"You had never even heard of this station before I mentioned it, so it's safe to assume it has to do with us speaking to Niargen. Did anyone other than Karrde know we were going to speak with him?"
Mara opened her mouth to answer but quickly whipped her head around to track her eyes after an approaching speeder, the Force sending yet another warning to them. "Down!" she screamed as the speeder buzzed them.
Luke dropped, but as the speeder passed he used enhanced Force speed to run after it, jumping from the edge of the roof to grab the underside of the vehicle.
"What the kriff?" he heard one of the beings inside of the speeder scream out. "He's hanging onto the underside!"
The driver banked left and turned sharply in the air. Luke hung on grimly, managing to grab a hold of the tail fin to hoist himself up to the trunk of the speeder. He could see inside of it now, with a female Twi'lek pilot and human male passenger. The male gave Luke a startled look, but then pulled out a blaster and pointed it. Luke ducked as the back window opened and a shot came out. He held on tightly to the tail fin with his right hand while using the Force to rip the blaster from the man's hand. "Land this speeder," he screamed.
They were back over the roof again, dropping quickly as the pilot kept trying to throw Luke off the back. When her drop to the left didn't work she swung around and tried going to the right, overcorrecting in the air to wobble dangerously close to the building. Luke felt the danger throb in the Force again and listened to it without thought, letting go of the tail fin as the speeder dropped close to the roof. He fell the few feet from the back, cushioning his fall and rolling with the Force.
He jumped to his feet and ran to Mara's side as the speeder managed to right itself momentarily. But on executing the next turn to fly off, the wing of it clipped the side of the building. It started to descend almost immediately, a crash landing imminent. Mara took off down the fire escape again and Luke followed, their speed in the Force no match for the accelerated speed of the vehicle as it plowed into the street below, residents of the dome scattering as it fell.
They reached the smoking wreck as the male human was exiting. The pilot was lying against the smoking controls, and Mara pulled open the door back to drag her out. The male started to run. Luke sprinted after him, easily outdistancing the injured man. "Stop!" he yelled. "We just want to talk to you."
The man did stop, but picked up a rod that had dropped from the underside of the wreckage, aiming it daringly at Luke's chest. "I don't want any trouble," he said, the rod shaking in his hand as Luke's saber ignited and sliced it in half.
Mara checked the Twi'lek's pulse. She laughed at the man's pronouncement and at the half rod he now held in his hand. "Well, too bad—you've found it. Now tell me why you were shooting at us."
"We weren't shooting at you. He," he pointed at Luke, "kriffin' jumped on the back of our speeder and forced us to crash!"
"It was your friend's bad piloting that caused you to crash," Mara said. "And she'll live. I think she's just unconscious." Mara placed the Twi'lek on the ground and focused on the male. "Again, why were you shooting at us?"
The man gulped and glanced Mara's hard eyes and the saber at her waist. "Are you a… Jedi?"
"Yes," Luke answered for the both of them, shutting his own saber down.
"I didn't want to be involved in anything like this," the man said, raising his hand to the gash on his forehead. "I'm sorry."
"Oh, he's sorry," Mara said, looking at Luke. She brushed her hands together as if cleaning off crumbs. "Well, that's that, I guess."
The sound of a siren came from a distance. The man looked toward it and started to sway on his feet. Luke grabbed him and steadied him. He could feel the deception leeching off the man in the Force, and turned him to face him. "Tell me why you shot at us," he said, time running out as the sirens came closer.
The man looked at Luke as if he couldn't look away. "We were paid to shoot anyone who came to speak to the scientist that you went to see."
"Paid by who?" Luke asked, keepingthe power of the Force in his voice.
"Don't know him. Met him in a Sabaac game. Fast credits."
Luke released the man's arm and moved back as the security force stopped their vehicle and began to take inventory of the crash. Mara stepped to the side to speak with the alien in charge. Luke stayed back, once again donning his Force disguise to blend into the background. He sighed with the effort of so much Force expenditure, and worked to calm his breath.
The paramedics took the male and started working on his gash, while the security guards cuffed him to the vehicle. Luke watched with a sort of detachment, thinking of what he had just been told. A Sabaac game. It was all circumstantial evidence, of course, but Naelli had to be the one to pay these two to shoot at anyone visiting Niargen. But which Naelli, and why? Other than Niragen's ravings about his cup and the map that may not even lead to anything, he hadn't exactly been a font of information.
The thoughts rolled around in Luke's head and he began to wonder if it had been chance that this particular dimension had been keyed into the IDD in the first place. He had thought that to be the case, but if Naelli had paid someone to shoot anyone who visited the one man who could feasibly build another IDD…not to mention that Daala had been so very intent that the Jedi guard the item…
Luke's mouth twisted and his stomach rolled, the implication too much to handle. None of this had been by chance at all. He'd been set up all along, falling for it headfirst and with no questions asked.