Chapter 7
To onlookers, it must have been pretty funny.
Close to a hundred heavily-armed stormtroopers were escorting two teenagers in stun cuffs through a series of passages towards the interrogation chamber. One of the "teenagers" kept cracking rude jokes and making wisecracks whenever the chance was offered. The other seemed to be on the border between a meditative calm and punching either his fellow prisoner or their captors.
Hurting either would do me no good, Luke thought miserably.
Andover and Luke were roughly pushed the last fifty feet towards a lone door at the end of the hallway. Luke wondered about the sudden change in their Stormtroopers demeanor. Maybe they actually did hear the rather insensitive joke Andover told Luke about their armor.
"Well, this is our stop," Andover remarked sourly. "Interrogation, clones, idiots, and all points west!"
"Can you stop with all of the sarcastic comments?" Luke asked, becoming annoyed. Andover's caustic wit was far more powerful than his short training in meditation.
"Sorry."
"Was that supposed to be a train joke? The all points west?"
"Yeah. If I said the train was going south on a one-way trip, then it would be a Stormtrooper joke."
The pushes and shoves got rougher.
"Can you just stop with jokes referring to trains and Stormtroopers?" Luke pleaded.
"Yes. I was going to say something else, but my train of thought derailed. There were no survivors."
Luke shot him a withering glare.
"And I'm not sure, but I think it was carrying Partly-cloudy troopers. They weren't Stormtroopers, that's for sure."
The door opened and they were practically thrown through the doorway. It was less of being thrown, per se, but more like being unceremoniously pushed to the floor. Andover landed on his face and cussed, while Luke managed to fall on his side. They looked up to see two stormtroopers, two uniformed officers, and a (Rather beautiful, Luke noted) redheaded woman in a black leather bodysuit standing above them. Among them, Luke sensed an ostensibly large force presence.
The two pensively stood up from the floor. As usual, Andover spoke first.
"Lady, I think your hair's bleeding." he smiled, basking in his insolence. He was rewarded with a slap to the face and a force-push back into the wall.
Luke could only look on as the redhead observed the teenager's collapsed figure with extreme contempt. The pieces didn't fit together. Why was a force user allied with the Empire? There could only be two Sith, Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. And she wasn't, by definition, a well-kept secret if she was an illicit third Sith Lord.
His mind skipped through all of the classified information he had read over the last few years. Slowly, he mentally erased all but one possibility:
She was Mara Jade, Emperor's Hand.
He sure isn't the Jedi, Mara thought, observing the collapsed Rebel laying where the wall met the floor.
As he was in a collapsed heap, she felt comfortable enough to look over at the Jedi, Luke Skywalker.
The first thing she noticed was his piercing blue eyes. Unlike her emerald ones, which were usually narrowed to slits, his were bright. The next thing she noticed was his force signature. The one man, the sarcastic one, had left an aura of fear, but with enough of a chipper mood to cover it. Luke just stood still, looking at her curiously, like a tourist regarding an exotic bird at a zoo. A calming aura radiated off of him.
"Luke Skywalker," she half-greeted, the accusing tone bringing an edge to her words.
"Mara Jade," he spoke back calmly, his blank expression unchanged.
Her eyes narrowed further. "How do you know my name?"
"I get around," Luke stated simply.
"Owwwww…" Andover groaned. "So do I. Mara, thanks for the free flight." Both Luke and Mara looked down at him. He looked up at Mara, disbelief in his eyes. He then looked to Luke.
"Hey, buddy!" he exclaimed, obviously hurt but skill good enough to have enthusiasm. "She's a force user! Finally, a live female member of your species!" He looked back to Mara. "You two can repopulate, like, make more force sensitives!"
Mara turned red, and Luke looked to Luke. "Don't get any ideas," she suggested coldly.
Luke's blank face was soon split by a smile. "Oh, I assure you, it wouldn't be fun in stun cuffs."
At Mara's command, each stormtrooper pushed a captor into the padded room. The officers stood opposite a small table while Luke and Andover were strapped to their chairs around the waist. Mara observed on the other side of a transparisteel sheet, as usual in interrogations.
"Smooth," Andover commented, when the door had shut. "With the stun cuff comment? I must be rubbing off on you."
Please, Force, no, Luke prayed.
The officers began the interrogations by pressing a button on the wall. Andover eyed Luke nervously as a droid walked into the room, a needle extending it from one of the upper appendages.
"Procedure dictates we take midi-chlorian counts," stated the officer.
"Alright, Lieutenant DICK-tates."
Luke smiled at Andover's cruel joke.
"I could have you killed for contempt right now. Would you rather be respectful or put you or your Rebel friend in peril?"
"He's not in contempt," Luke pointed out. "He added the '-tates' for a reason."
Andover put his hands on the table and smiled brightly at the officers. "You wouldn't hurt him or me one bit. We're too valuable, with too much information. You would be helping us if you killed us, or even hurt us at all."
"Then you will tell us everything."
"No," Andover replied.
"Then we will torture you."
Calling their bluff, Andover leaned back and put his hands behind his head. "Go ahead."
Luke looked at him oddly, taken aback by his blatant risk.
The officer looked just as surprised as Luke. "Never mind that. We will now begin the midichlorian test."
Behind the transparisteel wall, Mara watched in concern as Andover and Luke smiled about something. She watched for a few moments as the officers pushed the droid closer to the detainees.
Her comlink buzzed, and she answered it.
"Commander Jade, your presence is requested on the bridge."
She waited a few seconds before responding. The officers seemed to have everything under control. So why not? "Okay," she responded. "I'll be up there in five minutes."
Luke watched as he saw Mara leave the room. Within a few minutes, she would be far away enough to not sense any Jedi mind tricks.
Andover gasped as the droid punctured his arm, sampling his blood cells for testing. The droid processed the information, and the officers stood still watching it. Eventually it beeped.
"What's the reading?" asked the one Imperial.
"7,000 per cell."
"But that's impossible!" Andover protested, trying to stand up out of his seat. "I have a 1500 count! I was tested four years ago at the doctor's!"
"Apparently not, you Rebel scum."
He sighed. "Yet another reason for them to kill me."
Meanwhile, Luke had been focusing on Mara's ever dimming force presence in his mind. She had her mental shields up, but that didn't mean he was entirely shut out. He could still figure out where she was. When it was dim enough that it was unrecognizable, he was ready.
He opened his eyes and looked over at the approaching droid.
"We need to obtain a sample of your blood," the droid recited, its mechanical voice sounding like an echo of itself.
Luke subtly waved at the officers. "You do not need to take any of my blood."
The officers blinked. "We do not need to take any of your blood."
He looked at the stormtroopers. "You will unlock us from our seats."
They repeated back virtually the same thing. After they unlocked Luke, he turned again to the officers. "You will give us our possessions immediately."
They consented.
Andover, now recovered standing freely, looked on curiously.
"Alright," Luke began. He waved his hand. "You will give us your blasters."
"Holy bantha crap that sounds perverted," Andover commented.
"We will give you our blasters." They did so. Andover picked up his, while Luke laid his on his seat.
"I do not think these Stormtroopers were taught colloquial slang," Andover announced.
He was ignored. Luke began giving another command, but was interrupted by Andover. Using a small wrist-slick, he said, "You will tell us the location of the nearest hull-breach alarm." Luke's eyes widened in shock when he realized that Andover was going to fake an Abandon-Ship Order.
"Turn left at the second hallway crossing the one that led you here. It will be thirty meters ahead of you," the Stormtroopers replied. He repeated the motion.
"You will go back to your bunks and you will forget this ever happened."
"Yes, sir." With that they left the room, leaving Andover and Luke behind.
"That was awesome!" Andover hollered. "And 7,000 midichlorians per cell! Wow!"
"You seem to have the mind control thing down nicely," Luke complimented.
His friend merely smirked. "I have a sister."
They collected Luke's lightsaber, their Rebel wings, and Andover's lucky white pin, and their flightsuits and helmets. They took their possessions, and were about to leave when Luke remembered that the officers were still in their mind-controlled trances.
He waved his hand at the officers. "You will leave this room and forget what has just happened." Like their Stormtrooper predecessors, they left the room like what can only be described as hypnotic statues.
Luke turned to Andover. "You told me you weren't force sensitive," he said accusingly.
"I didn't know!"
"How do you have seven thousand midichlorians per cell and not notice?"
"I thought I just understood people really well. And I can anticipate people's moves in a fight. But many people who are in similar upbringings can do that automatically."
"And you said you were tested at the physician's!"
Andover stared at him incredulously. "I live in a rusty hangar. What, do you think I can pay for an annual checkup?"
"Then how do you build you prototypes?"
Andover shifted. "The Alliance brought down an Imperial Cruiser on me and my sister's runway. They got the troops, I got the parts."
Luke smiled inwardly. Some people would never change.
"Let's go set off the alarm."
Mara was halfway up to the bridge when the alarm went off.
She was immediately enveloped by a wave of panic. For a ship-wide breach to occur there must have been a huge explosion, collision, or rupture. If radar had picked up anything significant, she would have been notified. And the ship was in almost-mint condition. Nothing was damaged enough to explode or destroy a large section of the ship. And the computer had checked all of the pipelines, fuel tanks, hyperdrive parts, and any other rupture-susceptible areas.
The panic gradually turned to confusion. What went wrong? There was hardly anything that would push someone to operate that alarm…
She turned and sprinted back towards the interrogation area.
REVIEW!
Next chapter, there's going to be a Luke and Mara duel, of course color commentated by Andover. And, if you have the time, check out my new Anakin/Padmé story, "The Best Thing Ahsoka Ever Did for Him." I think it's going to be pretty good.
-ClaptonJr.
P.S.: REVIEW!