Galaxies Apart
Thirty-One
"Imperial Palace to unidentified craft. Identify yourself or you will be destroyed."
"You don't need to see my identification," a voice sounded over the comm channel, even as the luxurious Sullustan personal liner maneouvred itself gracefully over one of the prime docking ports at the Imperial Palace, those normally reserved for visiting dignitaries.
The lieutenant at docking control turned to his fellow duty officer, an expression of intense thoughtfulness on his face.
"You know," he said, "we don't need to see his identification."
"You're a weak-minded fool."
"I'm a weak-minded fool," the lieutenant agreed cheerfully.
"You're right!" his companion agreed. "We don't need to see his identification."
"You're clear to land, unidentified craft. Have a great stay at Imperial Palace."
"Thank you," the voice sounded again. "You've been most helpful. And you will be rewarded."
The lieutenant smiled as he deactivated the comm channel. He had a good feeling about this.
The man known as Prophet guided his ship in for a soft landing and prepared to deal with the Imperial guards no doubt already moving to intercept him. The weak-minded could be coerced like the simpletons at docking control.
And if any should possess stronger minds, well...his hand drifted to the lightsabre at his side. A sabre with a long history steeped in blood. There were ways to deal with the strong-minded also.
A frown surfaced on his face. He had expected to make contact with Palpatine's presence upon landing, and sure enough he could sense the massive Force presence of the Emperor nearby...but something was wrong. Something was different.
He pressed the controls for opening the landing hatch.
Five years of hiding had ended. It was time to take his place in this galaxy he had created.
Or perhaps, to take the place of another...
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Han Solo considered himself a fast draw. Years of shoot-first encounters had honed that particular skill. Upon seeing Mara Jade's transformation, therefore, his first instinct was to go for his blaster and, easy on the eyes or not, put a few well-placed bolts between her eyes before he became her next target.
It was with some sense of surprise that he realised his hands weren't responding to his commands. He was frozen to the spot. Even his eyes could barely move, but even their limited movement told him he wasn't the only person similarly affected. Threepio was wailing his protests at this latest outrage, as usual.
One of Chewie's arms was halfway to unslinging his bowcaster. The Wookiee was doing his best to howl his disapproval, but all Han's ears could discern was a faint, strangled moan from his mighty friend's throat.
Luke and Kyp were statues also. Han could see the desperation etched in their faces, as despite their much-vaunted Jedi abilities, they too were forced to stand and watch the scene before them unfold.
Two of their party seemed completely unaffected by the sudden paralysis. They were locked now in a battle the likes of which Han had never imagined.
A stream of blue lightning connected Mara Jade's outstretched hands to the tiny figure of Yoda, only a few feet away. The lightning was like a living being; as Han's unblinking eyes watched helplessly, he saw it snarl and coil like a whip, probing at Yoda, trying to find some way to sear through the little Jedi's body.
Yoda's own arms were held out before him. Somehow he was absorbing the onslaught, standing in the midst of the lethal pyrotechnics being hurled at him and managing to deflect them to the floor upon which they stood. Judging from the rumblings and grumblings the station was beginning to produce, Han didn't think that was a good thing.
Yoda was being forced back. Inch by inch he was giving ground, sliding back across the polished metallic floor of the control room. The lightning was no longer flowing through Yoda - instead, it was building between his hands into a larger and larger ball of energy, an evil-looking sphere that snapped and snarled and curled tendrils of malice at the Jedi Master who was struggling to hold it at bay.
"I should have finished you in the Senate Chamber," Palpatine's voice sounded, sounding less and less strange with each second as Mara's appearance seemed to warp further and further into matching that of her Master.
"From my mouth..." Yoda replied, sliding backwards, "...took the words..." and he raised his arms, the ball of lightning raising along with them, "...you have."
He threw his arms forward.
Mara Jade's body was blown backward, tossed like a leaf in a gale, impacted full-on by the same energies it had helped to create.
Han found he could move. His hand completed its interrupted trajectory. He felt the coolness of the blaster pistol in his hand, the blessed relief of movement.
Yoda himself staggered, barely kept his feet.
Mara landed. Not with the thump of a hurled object, but gracefully, gently. Halfway across its arc through the air her body seemed to have regained control over gravity.
"You'll have to do better than that," Palpatine hissed.
"Just watch us," Han replied.
He fired bolt after bolt, as did Chewie from his bowcaster. He prided himself on his accracy as much as he did his quick-draw, and true to form not a single bolt missed its target. Han's strangled cry died in his throat.
His target was Yoda.
With muscles he wasn't controlling, he and Chewie were relentlessly pounding the Jedi Master with blaster fire. Han would have bet the Falcon - not something he did lightly - that no-one, let alone a nine-hundred year old Jedi Master, could have survived.
His doubts evaporated in the face of seeing Yoda launch his tiny body into a series of acrobatic somersaults, twisting and turning out of the blaster's line of fire. Halfway through the display there was a snap-hiss and Yoda landed on the deck, his lightsabre suspended in mid-air before him, stationary for the briefest of moments before it began to throw itself in the path of every blaster path directed at its owner. Yoda himself was perfectly still, his eyes locked on his opponent.
Should he live through this, Han Solo resolved to learn more about this particular hokey religion.
"Enough," Palpatine snarled. Han and Chewie joined the rest back in statue mode. Luke cried out in frustration as his lightsabre worked itself loose from his belt and flew to Mara Jade's hand. It settled into her grip already ignited. Mara's body levitated into the air, swept with incredible grace toward Yoda until she settled down to Earth just out of striking distance.
"Your time has come," her mouth puppeted.
"Long since," Yoda replied. "But on borrowed time living, the only one, I am not."
The lightsabres came together as the lights in the control room died completely. In a room one mile across, two solitary blades of light provided the only source of illumination.
The others could only watch as they began a dance to the death.
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Mara?
It was dark. Cold. She shivered in this place. She felt so alone, so small. Like a little girl lost, a million light-years from the Emperor's Hand she would one day become. But there was none of that strength here, none of the resolve and the certainty of conviction and of power that flowed through her, originating from the strength of his will and channeled through her-
He used you.
The three words caused her to shrink further, if that were possible. She fought against them all the more because of the bitter truth they contained. Hurt and anger burned within her, as it had for years, but directed now at the one person she had elevated so high that she could barely live with the guilt at the feelings she was experiencing. And so she had refused to deal with them, had retreated instead inside her own mind.
Dimly, as though she were at the bottom of a lake and perceiving things happening in the skies above, she knew that her body was being controlled, puppeted to channel immense energies from unimaginable distances. She was being hollowed out body and soul to make way for Palpatine's enormous Force presence, the full extent of his terrible arsenal now being brought to bear on-
On me, Mara.
Why had he come here? How? He was fighting for his life and barely holding his ground, and yet she could feel him in this place, making himself available for her, standing there patiently waiting for her to respond to his gentle pleas. Shame, humiliation, more anger coursed through her. Even in her greatest defeat she could find no hiding place. Her talents with the Force had cursed her to this life.
The Force is not a curse, Mara Jade. It is a gift.
Try being an Emperor's Hand, she retorted, at last seeing fit to reach out and grasp that tendril of assistance being proffered. She felt his gratitude and wondered again at how in the galaxy he was splitting his attention like this.
It is not easy, he admitted, perhaps a touch of gallows humour in his presence now. I fear that I will not be able to manage for much longer. Which is why I must ask you to listen to me. Please.
You don't talk like you talk in here, she noted, almost lazily, feeling what remained of herself seeming to spiral painlessly away with each passing moment. What happened to the backward sentences?
This is not crude verbal communication, Mara. This is the Force. Mara, I need your help. I cannot defeat him. But you-
Me? and she laughed, if that were possible here in the emptiness. It was, and it echoed. Oh how it echoed. Me? Against him?
Not just you, he promised her, and she felt all nine hundred years of his resolve behind those simple words.
He has made me all I am.
He has poisoned you. He continues still. The power you believe that he grants you is your own power - he merely feeds from it, as he is feeding now. If he succeeds, you will be a lifeless husk when this is done. You must find the courage to reject him, Mara Jade.
To save you?
No, and she sensed again the truth behind his reply, sensed more than that, and she was shocked and humbled for the first time in her life. To save another. He will need you, though he does not know it.
The water was getting deeper. The outside world, already hazy and distant, now felt like something from a half-remembered fantasy, a dream of waking. She felt as immaterial as a phantom...and to her astonishment, the darkness around her rescinded for the first time as a light source entered her twilight world.
The light was from her. She was glowing.
What...is this?
This is how we are in the Force. This is what you can be, Mara. But not yet, and now his voice was almost inaudible, the faintest of whispers in a world of shadows. Not yet...
And he was gone, leaving her alone in the void.
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Palpatine could scarcely believe it. Yoda was crumbling before his eyes. His lightsabre parries were becoming laboured with every exchange, his anticipatory thrusts less and less effective.
They had been battling for only a few minutes, and yet with the Force assisting their movements, each of the two combatants had covered half of the room's circumference. They battled a mile above the heads of the immobile watchers.
Knocking aside his diminuitive opponent's latest feeble attack, Palpatine responded with a deadly flurry of his own, knocking Yoda back, forcing him into last-minute parries which gradually robbed him of his footing until he stumbled backwards with a cry. Palpatine advanced on him mercilessly.
"The past dies with you. Now."
He raised the saber for the killing stroke...and found that he couldn't bring the arm down.
Remember me, my Lord?
"Mara!" Palpatine spat through her mouth, "Mara...I will destroy you if you...aaagh!"
He staggered backward. Half a galaxy away in his Throne Room, his physical body shook with exertion and rage. He poured himself back into the body of his Emperor's Hand, as he had done shortly before with no resistance.
This time, things were different.
"Get...OUT," Mara choked, this time the soul behind the words belonging to its rightful owner.
Weakened, wheezing, Yoda managed to stand. He deactivated the blade on his lightsaber.
"No..." Mara said desperately, sweat beading from every pore on her body, her veins standing out on her neck, blood beginning to cloud her vision, "...do it. Kill me...I can't keep him out. I'm trying, but I can't-"
Yoda merely looked at her. "Do," he said softly, "or do not. There is no try."
A scream began in her throat, a low cry of pain and anguish that was at once the strain of removing Palpatine's iron grip on her body, her mind, her very soul, but also the pain of knowing that what she was doing meant her old way of life, the life she had loved, would soon be gone forever.
I will be free.
No, and it was his voice, dripping with hatred, you will never be free. You will remain my servant.
She summoned up everything she had, and blasted him with it. Had she been closer to him, and had he not already exerted himself with the extent of his remote puppetry of her compliant body, she would never have stood a chance. Here, now, with her own resolve and the assistance of a Jedi Master, she felt his imprint, his stain begin to be removed from deep within.
But he was not to be denied.
In the instant before she loosened his grip on her, he retook control of her arms and sent an immense bolt of lightning searing through her body. She could only watch as the bolt flew from her hands.
Yoda never knew what hit him.
He was blown backward, his body scarred and smoking as it impacted the ground with a terrible, final boneless thud.
The lightning had been so powerful that it contined still, through where Yoda had been standing, grounding itself in a computer bank at the far side of the control room. Dark Side energies flooded the systems around the huge circular expanse.
YOU WILL KILL DARTH VADER.
The words, imparted with Palpatine's final thoughts as a resident within her mind, reverberated agonisingly through Mara Jade's entire being as the artificial gravity field failed. The floor beneath her feet abruptly became ceiling.
She fell, her scream fading as consciousness fled and the void reclaimed her whole.