Breaking Ranks

Gone hunting for a few days. Don't be mad at me farmboy . . .

40 ABY, Drall, Corellian System

Some prickling sense of unease woke Han in what he knew had to be the dead of night, something that didn't happen much anymore as he got older and life somehow only got harder. A crippling jolt of adrenaline nearly killed him on the spot as his eyes registered a spectral silhouette against the light from the hall lamp.

"Damn it, Leia!" he hissed, catching his breath. He was too old for this. "What is it?"

"It's Luke," she murmured, a statue sitting beside him in the dark. Her voice was flat and distant, the way it always was when she was concentrating, sunk in the Force.

Han exhaled, steadying himself. It was always like this, feeling like a blind man in a family of overpowered Jedi. "What about him?"

"He's worried."

"He's always worried."

"Maybe panicked is more accurate."

That got Han's attention. "Okay, why?"

"Working on that." Leia tilted her head, as if leaning into a transmission signal. Several minutes passed. "It's Mara," she decided. "He can't find her."

Han frowned. "What do you mean, he can't find her? Don't they live in each other's heads?"

"That's just it," Leia clarified. "She's gone, disappeared in the Force." She finally turned to look at him. "Like Jacen does."

Han started to ask why Mara would start doing that, especially considering how unsettling and borderline rude other Jedi considered the habit, when the answer jumped into his mouth. "She's hunting." Then more pieces fell into place. "And Luke didn't send her, and doesn't know where she went. She's hiding from him, too."

Leia said nothing, and Han was left to consider that in silence. The uneasy prickle traveled up his spine again, the strange certainty that something very significant was happening very far away while he was lying quietly in bed.

"Grab your comlink," Leia said.

"Why?"

The blasted thing buzzed right on cue, and Han finally flipped on the bedside light and groped for it. "Luke?" he guessed.

"Hey, Han," Luke said, sounding tense and rushed. "Leia. Sorry, I don't know what time it is there, but do you have any idea where Mara is?"

"No," Leia answered, pulling the comlink toward her. "But she was here last week. Did you know that?"

There was an ominous pause. "No, I didn't," Luke said, his tone already much darker. "Why? I assumed she was hunting for Lumiya. That's what she's supposed to be doing."

"She wanted to talk," Leia explained, "about Lumiya, but also about Jacen. Mara wanted to know if I thought Jacen was naive enough to possibly be controlled by Lumiya. I told her I doubted it, that he might be willing to listen to someone like that, but he'd always make up his own mind. I could feel she was holding back, but I didn't press it. We went out for dessert, and then she left for Coruscant."

"Then you've seen her more recently than I have." Some of that desperate anxiety was creeping into Luke's voice, and Han felt a sympathetic twinge in his chest. "She was here two days ago, but left a useless note and took off again while I was asleep. Ben's gone, too. I've called everyone I can think of. I've been to Starfighter Command, but all they could tell me was that she took a StealthX without filing a flight plan."

"What'd the note say?" Han asked.

Leia scowled at him, probably sure it was something private. That honestly hadn't crossed his mind in all intrigue.

"Nothing," Luke finally answered. "That she would be gone for a few days, and not to be mad at her."

"Uh-oh." That wasn't good. "Where I come from, that's practically a confession. She's definitely off-script."

"That's what I'm afraid of." Luke paused for breath, considering his next move. "All right, I have to make some arrangements at the Temple. I don't know how yet, but I need to go find her. Let me know if you hear anything."

He was gone before they had a chance to reply.

There was a restless light in Leia's dark eyes that Han knew well, something he was more used to seeing in their daughter. A lifetime of Alderaanian finishing school couldn't suppress Anakin Skywalker's blood forever. "You want to go, too?" he asked.

"Where?" Leia asked, though she didn't say no. "If Luke can't find Mara, what hope do we have?"

"He'll find her," Han said. "He always does. So, should I pack this place up?"

Leia sighed, and gave him a look that was both apprehension and gratitude. "Do it."

"Never liked this place anyway." Han rolled out of bed and pulled open the closet. If he'd seen one anonymous apartment, he'd seen them all. That pit of dread sat heavily in his gut as he dressed, his own intuition supplying whatever he lacked in Force-sensitivity. They had all been in tight places before, but it usually worked out fine so long as they held together. People were breaking ranks now, and anarchy got people killed. He didn't like it, and being aware of it all happening in real time just made it worse. It would help to have something to do.

It was still several hours before dawn. Leia got herself ready and then curled up in the big chair to meditate, her eyes narrowed to vacant slits, her mind far away. Han began throwing all their belongings into cases, ready to disappear again. Being a rootless freighter pilot had been fine when he was young, but he hated it now. Nowhere was home, and they were wanted fugitives on both sides of that blasted war. The only reason they were hiding out in Corellia was because CorSec was more disorganized than GAG. The more he thought about it, the more he also wanted to saddle up and follow Luke, all political loyalties be damned.

"Jaina's with him," Leia said, still not entirely present, sounding like some dispassionate oracle.

"Good," Han muttered to himself, not sure Leia expected or would hear an answer. Luke and Jaina made a good team, and it was a relief to know they were looking out for each other.

Clothes, valuables, personal items. When everything was packed, Han set himself to work warming something for breakfast, not that either of them were especially hungry. It would be a shame to waste all that food in the conservator.

"Hapes."

He stopped banging around for a minute. "What?"

"He's honed in on Hapes. Ready to fly."

"Jaina, too?"

Some hesitation. "Maybe."

At least the local government was friendly to them on Hapes. "I'll send Tenel Ka a heads-up as soon as we're on the Falcon. How far is that from here?" Leia didn't answer, but he wasn't really asking her. "Eighteen hours, pretty sure. Should probably give the kid a headstart and let him point the way. The Consortium's a big place."

He was talking to himself, always a bad sign.

Leia gasped, startling him out of his rambling thoughts. "What now?" he asked.

"Mara's back," she said, rubbing her temples, her concentration broken.

"What, back on Coruscant?"

"No, in the Force. And she's loud."

"Like, she's-in-trouble loud?"

"Like trouble-for-somebody-else loud. Like a challenge."

"Oh, boy. I'll bet Luke's bolting now."

"Jaina, too."

"Here." Han set a plate of breakfast scramble down at the table for her. "Come eat something, and then we'll bolt, too." He looked around, not inclined to waste time washing dishes or cleaning the 'fresher. "I guess we won't be getting our deposit back."

The trouble with being fugitives was that everywhere they went, somebody was looking for them. It wasn't a new feeling by any means, but it had been a while since no place had been a safe place. It made leaving the system more complicated than it should have been.

"Don't let 'em get so close!" Han was shouting. "Lando just fixed this bucket, for kriff's sake!"

"They didn't hit us, did they?" Leia quipped back, throwing the Falcon into a steep twisting dive. "I'll remind you that this is still a freighter, whatever you two have done to it. I'm doing everything I can short of blasting them."

"Not a bad idea," Han grumbled, his eyes nervously flitting over the status displays as they careened away from their pursuers.

"We are not going to take potshots at CorSec! Just plot us a course out of here."

"Where?"

"Anywhere! Anywhere but Coruscant or Hapes."

"YT-1300 High Jinks," the comm growled again, "you are being detained on suspicion of being the Millennium Falcon. Cease evasive maneuvers and prepare to be boarded."

"Oh, dear," Threepio moaned. Nobody else bothered to acknowledge the transmission.

"Caamas? It's kind of on the way."

"Sure, why not?"

The whole ship lurched as a laser blast bounced off the rear shields. "They shot first," Han pointed out. "Can I shoot back?"

"No!"

Several more blasts followed, and Leia spun Falcon away in a stomach-churning series of maneuvers no freighter had ever been built to endure. She had places to be, and no time for this nonsense.

"YT-1300 High Jinks! Cease evasive maneuvers immediately!"

"Got those coordinates for me yet?" Leia shouted. She abandoned the fancy flying and fired the sublight drives for all they were worth, climbing free of Drall's gravity well.

"Just give it a minute!" Han protested.

"We don't have a minute!" CorSec was pounding the rear shields again, but the best bet was to get clear. If nothing else, they might beat them to the edge of the jurisdiction.

As they drove for deep space, Leia's mind reached beyond Corellia again. Mara was still blasting a clear note of defiance from what Leia assumed was someplace within the Hapes Consortium. Luke had stopped reaching for his errant wife, surly, withdrawn, and terribly focused as he hurtled through hyperspace toward that beacon, Jaina close on his tail. Leia thought she could recognize Ben, too, and he seemed to be near Mara already. It made her skin crawl knowing so many members of her family were locked into a collision course with something she didn't entirely understand, and she felt an overpowering need to be there with them.

Her hands moved almost independently, corkscrewing the Falcon to avoid another barrage. There were too many blasts for a ship their size to avoid them all, and the rear shields registered a partial failure. Han was swearing, Threepio was fretting, but Leia kept driving forward, aware of the steady weakening of the planet's pull. At any moment they would be clear.

And just like that, CorSec broke off and reversed course. As Leia gradually released her white-knuckled grip on the conn and re-attuned her attention to what was actually going on around her, she heard Threepio very helpfully rattling off an extensive list of the damages they had just sustained, none of it anything Han couldn't read for himself on the console. "What does all that ultimately mean?" she asked, skipping over the fine details.

"It means a few hours' work and replacing a lot of wires," Han said, still irritable but obviously relieved. "Nothing we can't handle, but I wouldn't advise trying to jump like this. Hyperdrive's fine, but the connections need work. Why'd CorSec pack it in so quick? Are we out of range already?"

"Must be," Leia concluded. "They didn't have any real proof that we were who they thought we were, and since we didn't commit the capital offence of shooting at them, they decided it wasn't worth it. But I think the High Jinks will forever be on the local naughty list."

"Then we'll be someone else." Han drew up his list of bogus transponder codes. "You wanna pick this time?"

Leia glanced at it. "I always liked Blue Streak."

"Fine." Han reprogrammed the transponder with the new credentials and rebooted it to refresh the signal. "There. It's official. Want to have a drink to mark the occasion, or come help me rewire the relay?"

"The drink will keep," Leia decided, unbuckling herself to head aft. "We'll share it with Luke and Mara when we pick them up."

Han's appraisal of the situation seemed to be accurate enough. Nothing was catastrophically broken, but it would require a lot of tedious detail work to set right. Han was still by far the better mechanic, especially on the Falcon, so Leia settled into the role of tool-finder, lamp-holder, and wire-sorter.

"Who's Mara picking a fight with?" Han asked as he soldered connections together from behind his tinted magnispecs. "Lumiya?"

"That would be my guess," Leia agreed. "That's what Luke expected her to be doing."

"Then why is he so twisted all of a sudden?"

"I don't know," Leia admitted. Something was clearly nettling Luke enough to make him drop all his responsibilities and rocket off to Hapes despite the general sense from Mara that she had the situation handled. "I don't think he's deliberately keeping secrets from me anymore, but something's not adding up somewhere. We can all feel it, and maybe that's making us jittery."

Han grunted, squinting through an intermittent shower of sparks. "I've learned by now that every time I tell Luke not to get jittery, I end up looking like rumpside of a ronto. Let's get this done and get out there."

They worked in efficient silence, leaving Threepio to man the cockpit and alert them to any potential threats. Even so, it was going on three hours before they were finished. A power check showed all systems operational.

"Out of my seat, Goldenrod," Han grumbled, shooing the droid away from the pilot's station. "Come on, Leia. Chart that jump to Caamas, and then we'll come out and hang a left toward Hapes. Should lose any trace that way."

"On it." It was much easier to be patient with the navicomputer when nobody was chasing them. Leia supplied the coordinates, Han engaged the hyperdrive, and they were off.

"Gonna be a while," Han observed, sitting back and rubbing his eyes. The early morning was finally getting to him.

"Hang tight, Captain," Leia said, patting him on the shoulder. "I'll bring you lunch."

As she headed back to the galley and started prepping some of those spicy fritters he liked, Leia tried to exert some control over what was steadily growing into one of those Very Bad Feelings. Mara could handle herself. Luke was just feeling protective, like he always did. In a matter of hours they would all be reunited, however briefly, toasting their recent escapes and near misses. Her brother, his rank and dignity notwithstanding, would get an earful from his still very independent wife, and he wouldn't care because he'd probably do the same thing the next time, and they would all just be glad everything had turned out for the best. It would be good to see Jaina again, and Ben, and hopefully they could at least have dinner without anybody trying to arrest anybody else. That's how it would happen.

By all she had ever held sacred, Leia hoped that was how it would happen.

Energies were shifting by the time the fritters were ready. Mara had gone dangerously quiet. Luke was still racing down the Perlemian Trade Route at thousands of times the speed of light, not fast enough, acutely frustrated that he was still ten hours away. Ben was present somehow but unsure, distracted.

Leia plated the food, forcibly slowing her heart rate. We're going as fast as we can, she assured herself. We'll get there when we get there, and we'll all laugh about it someday. But like any vigilant mother, she couldn't put the conflict out of mind, and she kept at least half her attention bent in that direction.

"Here," she said, laying the plate on the Dejarik table in the lounge. "Sustenance."

"That's one word for it."

Then her breath caught in her throat as she was broadsided by fury, vengeance, sheer animal ferocity. Leia clutched the edge of the table, and Han jumped to his feet. "What's the matter?" he demanded.

"It's started," Leia told him through gritted teeth, every instinct pulling her toward the conflict. "The fight. Luke's not going to make it."

"Don't mind me," Han assured her, helping her to a seat on the couch. "You go wherever you have to go, do what you have to do."

Leia sank into a meditation almost immediately, drawn into that luminous tapestry that was the Force, outside of physical space. Mara was burning with desperate rage, as if she were trying to overcome a superior opponent with a quick and intense attack. Leia couldn't sense anything of that opponent, whoever it was. Why was she alone? Why had she deliberately left Luke behind? Where were the other Masters?

Then it was quiet.

A tactical retreat?

Tension and suspense.

A trap?

Waiting . . .

Then grim elation and a massive pull on the Force. The trap was sprung. Cold satisfaction and a determination to finish the job. As disquieting as that assassin's instinct felt to Leia, it was a relief. She shouldn't have underestimated Mara. She always did know how to get the job done.

The moment of deadly triumph was obliterated in a blaze of outrage and pain. The violence that erupted then was ten times what it had been before, frenzied and bestial, a storm of hurt and desperation. The Force was churning with the titanic clash of two master warriors, each trying to destroy the other, wounds taken and inflicted.

A moment of extreme confusion, stillness, and then dread. There was no more violence, only nauseating disbelief, protest, resentment. Bitter, bitter resentment. The pain was fading, numbed, and dread sharpened into despair.

Every maternal instinct rose in Leia as Mara's presence dimmed, reaching with a last effort toward Ben, toward Luke. Ben was screaming into the Force as his mother vanished like a breath of mist in the wind, and Leia briefly saw Luke's face, felt the shock as half his being was torn away.

Then there was nothing, just a yawning emptiness where they had all been a moment before—Ben, Luke, Jaina, even Leia herself—still alive but too stricken to quite fathom what had just happened.

"Leia?"

She opened her eyes, and saw that same dread frozen on Han's face. She didn't know how much time had passed, but he hadn't touched his food, and only then was she aware of the tears streaming down her face.

"Mara," she managed to say, choked by a horribly familiar grief, aware that their whole world had once again completely changed. "Han, Mara's dead."

Sitting in the cockpit with only an inert protocol droid for company, staring into the swirling chaos of hyperspace, Han clenched his jaw and silently cursed the unfairness of the universe.

It had been twelve hours already, and they were about to emerge in the vicinity of Caamas. Leia had spent five of those hours crying, and then had willed herself to sleep. Han had tried to sleep, but he was too angry.

Luke would have arrived at Hapes by now. What those last ten hours trapped in transit must have been like, Han could only guess. He knew Leia's tears were entirely for her brother's sake, and Han could have shed a few himself, but that wouldn't help anything. Losing Chewie had been awful, losing Anakin had been catastrophic, but if he lost Leia, Han had to imagine a fundamental part of his life would simply be over. After thirty-two years together, he wasn't sure he would even know how to be himself without her.

That was the gutted existence Luke was facing now, and he'd had ten miserable hours to think about it. Ten miserable hours alone.

They all knew how much Luke hated being alone.

Han didn't know what he could do about any of it, but he couldn't do nothing.

He pinged the bunkroom, reluctant to wake Leia, but he knew she wanted to be up for this. "Sweetheart," he said into the intercom, "we're coming up on Caamas."

Five minutes later, she joined him in the cockpit and slid into the copilot's seat. Her eyes were puffy, but she had dried her tears and put on a brave face, ready to project strength and sympathy. If Han knew anything about the way his family of Jedi operated, Luke would be invisibly smothered in a sister's love the moment she made contact.

"All right, cutting to sunlight engines," he said, finding cold solace in the routine. Leia obliged, prepared to react on his mark.

When the starlines shrank back into sharp points in the blackness, they were still far enough from Caamas that no one would notice their arrival. The sensors registered no other ships in the area, so they took a risk and lingered, powering up the comm station.

Leia's shoulders slumped for a moment before she firmed up again. "Looks like he tried to call a few hours ago," she said.

Han frowned and cursed the universe again. "Poor guy."

Leia redialed the code, and they waited several minutes while the signal was routed through the appropriate relays. Then the channel was opened.

"Hey," Leia said before Luke could say anything, and there were volumes of unspoken emotion in that one word. "We're coming back as fast as we can. I'm so sorry. I am so, so sorry."

"Kid, you just hang in there," Han insisted, unable to keep quiet. "Don't do a thing. Leave it all to us. Is Ben okay?"

"Missing again."

Blast it. That boy and his dad needed each other right now. "He'll be fine," Han decided, hoping it was true. "Don't you worry. We're coming."

"Thanks. Jaina and I are with Tenel Ka at the Fountain Palace."

"Got it." Luke sounded terrible, flat and dead to the universe. Han bit his lip, forcing down a powerful need to throttle whoever was responsible for this. "Just take it easy. We'll sort this out together."

There wasn't much else to say, and Han wasn't surprised when the connection was dropped without any final pleasantries. "Get us a fix on Hapes," he growled, seeing Leia go limp in her seat as she presumably released her ethereal hold on her brother. "How is he?"

"He's numb," Leia said, punching their request into the navicomputer, "shut down, because he's still trying to function. It can't last forever."

"At least Jaina's there," Han observed, prepping for launch. "Somebody should be with him. Let's turn this crate around and catch up."

The story continues in In the Shadow of His Wings: Blackout (Chapter 17).