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Mara made one last circuit of the reception hall before grabbing a glass of wine from one of the waitstaff and threading her way through a cluster of tall potted palms towards a window seat. Once past the palms, she was not completely surprised to find Luke Skywalker already entrenched in her chosen spot. Wrapped in a dark cloak, his head leaned against the window frame and his eyes were closed.
“You know,” she said, sitting down in the other corner, “they make these things called ‘beds.’ You may have heard of them.”
He opened his eyes blearily. “I got back earlier this evening, and Leia asked me to put in an appearance at the Gelinish reception.” He sighed, and readjusted his cloak. “I didn’t know you were on Coruscant. Smugglers’ Alliance business?”
“A little bit of liaison work,” she agreed, taking a sip from her glass. “But we’re also picking up some things for Karrde. I came with Aves, on the Lastri’s Ort.”
She studied him more closely. His clothes were clean and pressed—Mara imagined that Organa Solo had probably pulled them out of his closet while she issued the invitation—but his hair was longer than usual, and his face looked drawn and worn. “Another unsuccessful search?”
“I don’t know what I’m searching for, so it’s hard to judge success,” he said frankly. “It feels like I’m sifting through junkyards, looking for one useful scrap. But it’s mostly been exaggerated folktales or wary silence. The Jedi scattered during the Purge, and survivors didn’t seem to leave anything behind to link them with their old life.”
He rubbed his face. “I went to Nixor, because there were stories of Jedi there in the early days of the Empire. But if that’s true, there’s nothing left to prove otherwise.”
“Could you delegate—” she asked, breaking off as she thought about it further.
“Who to?” Skywalker said, shaking his head. “Leia’s busy. You’re busy. There’s just me. Maybe it’s better this way; Obi-Wan told me I was the first of the new Jedi. We get to start fresh, without any of the past’s mistakes.”
“Still would be nice to have a little guidance,” Mara said darkly, finishing the last of her glass. Her limited Force training had mostly focused on combat and communication, and it was one thing to have a damn good danger sense. It was quite another to try to teach someone else concepts that she only vaguely understood. Skywalker, meanwhile, was running off a few weeks of instruction with a Jedi Master and whatever pieces of information he had managed to scrounge up. She didn’t envy him his task.
She eyed him for another minute, then put her glass down on the window seat. “How long are you staying?”
“A while. I thought I’d do some research in the Historical Archive, before rushing after the next ghost story.”
“So your schedule is relatively free?”
He smiled. “For the time being. Why?”
She picked her glass back up and fiddled with it. “You know how I said that Aves and I were doing a pickup? Some old moneyed Coruscanti gearhead died without an heir or a will.”
Skywalker perked up. “And they sold off his estate?”
“Precisely,” Mara said. “Bargain prices. We picked up an airspeeder you might be interested in testing: a Sorosuub SU-40.”
“A SU-40?” he echoed. “Those were custom-built—only sold in the Core.”
“Are you interested?”
“I’m free tomorrow!”
“I have an appointment in the morning,” she said firmly. “I can pick you up outside the Palace in the afternoon; I’ll send you the time.”
“I can’t wait,” he said eagerly.
He turned to gaze fixedly at the other end of the room, and after a beat he slowly climbed to his feet. “I think Leia wants me. I’ll see you tomorrow, all right?”
She waved her hand dismissively, and he worked his way around the palms back into the reception throng. She watched him stop and talk with his brother-in-law, then continue towards his sister. Solo, however, clearly had another destination in mind.
“Great,” Mara bit out. She stood and started skirting the wall, but Solo caught up with her before she could slip through the door to safety.
“You got a SU-40?” he demanded.
“I’m not letting you fly it, Solo.”
“Hey, I’m a good pilot—look at the Falcon.”
“You forget, I’ve been on it. That piece of junk is not exactly a mark in your favor,” Mara pointed out.
“Heard about your date,” he continued.
“Not a date.”
“Sorry, kid. Sounded like a date to me.”
“It’s not a date,” she repeated. She handed her empty glass to him, taking advantage of his confusion to make her excuses and escape into the corridor.
“Have fun,” Solo called after her.
Mara barely resisted the urge to shoot him an obscene gesture.
“You sure you want to let Skywalker pilot that? He crashed one of our Skipray blastboats,” Aves said dubiously.
“It’s just an airspeeder,” Mara said, stashing her pack behind the cockpit.
“Yeah, with pretty much no safety features. It doesn’t even have a speed governor.”
She climbed in the pilot’s seat and searched for the canopy switch.
“Hey—have a nice date,” he said.
Mara skewered him with a glare. “It. Is not. A date,” she bit out. “It’s an outing. A friendly outing. Do I look like I’m going on a date?”
“How should I know?”
“So.”
Aves threw up his hands. “I’m just saying, if it looks like a gundark, and sounds like a gundark, maybe…?”
“Are you done?”
He groaned. “Try to bring it back in one piece,” he said, heading back into the cargo bay.
She shut the canopy and took off towards the Palace, following the skylane traffic until she pulled off outside the Palace Gardens. Skywalker had jumped up from a garden bench and was already circling the airspeeder before she popped the canopy.
“It’s so flashy,” he breathed, inspecting the wings. “Single engine?”
“An IN-780,” she confirmed.
“There’s definitely altitude thrusters,” came his voice from the back. “What’s the maximum altitude?”
She checked the display. “100 kilometers.”
“Vectoring thrust nozzles!”
“Do you want to fly it, or just name every part? Get over here,” she said, sliding over to the passenger seat.
“Sorry.” Skywalker clambered over the side and studied the controls. “Not many safety features.”
“That’s what Aves said.”
He closed the canopy and eased out into the skylane. After a few minutes of cautious, law-abiding speeds, Mara said, “It goes much faster than this.”
“I figured.”
“Are you planning to go any faster?” she pressed.
“Not until we’re out of this skylane,” he said patiently.
Mara raised an eyebrow. “Surely the New Republic gave you special dispensation to fly outside skylanes.”
“They did,” he agreed. “First I want to get farther away from the Palace. I think the Manarai Mountains would be a good place for a test run.”
“Fine,” she said, shrugging. “Wake me up when we finally get there.”
But before too long they were past most of the Palace traffic, into the relatively sparser development of the mountains. Skywalker pushed the throttle down and they rocketed towards the slopes.
“Watch out for the floating restaurants,” she warned, wincing as they whipped past one with meters to spare.
“I see them,” Skywalker answered.
He hit the altitude thrusters and they shot up towards the peak before leveling out and turning towards the Great Western Sea.
He fiddled with different controls, tested the engine’s turbo-boost, and alternated between high and low altitudes until he finally found a sustainable height. They reached the shores of the sea and looped back towards the mountains.
“I wish we had something like Beggar’s Canyon here,” he said. “This SU-40 could fly circles around my old T-16 skyhopper. Just the visibility out of the canopy is better, not to mention the speed and maneuverability. You could thread the needle with this, no problem.”
“What’s threading the needle?” she asked.
“It was a shortcut through the Canyon, you could shave at least five seconds off your time if you passed through it. My friend Biggs and I were the only two pilots to ever thread it, I reckon.”
“What happened if you missed?”
“Crashed,” he said succinctly. “I lost a stabilizer when I went through. I was lucky.”
Mara glanced skeptically at him. “And you did that for fun?”
“Sure,” Skywalker agreed. “Didn’t you do dangerous things for fun when you were a teenager?”
“For fun?” she repeated. She had certainly done dangerous things in the past. She had enjoyed some of her tasks—mastering combat skills, outwitting and outmaneuvering her rivals—but more because they proved she was capable of succeeding, capable of meeting or surpassing all the Emperor’s demands. She had focused on duty and competency, perhaps even superiority. Could she remember doing anything for the sheer amusement of it?
“No,” she said finally, “not for fun.”
He gradually braked, and turned to look at her. “Here, why don’t you take over for the rest of the ride? I’ve been monopolizing it.”
She started to protest, but he stood, stooping, and shuffled towards the passenger seat. She slid sideways into the pilot’s seat, narrowly avoiding getting sat on, and waited for him to get resettled.
Mara spent her time zipping up one peak and down the other, racing out to the sea and back, while Skywalker sat quietly in the other seat. She half-expected to find him dozed off like last night, for there was something soothing in racing among the hills and trees, temporarily removed from the city’s sprawl. She kept away from any of the rigid skylanes, and weaved her way in and out of the slopes and greenery.
Her concentration was eventually broken by the setting sun, and she glanced at the chronometer in surprise. “Blast. It’s late. We should start heading back.”
He nodded, and she retraced her way back to one of the skylanes heading towards the Palace, merging into the traffic flow.
They were passing through Orowood when Mara felt her danger sense tingle. She continued forward, but the discomfort built and grew until she finally pulled over by the Orowood Tower. She inspected the endless line of traffic moving past, the Medcenter across the way—and something prompted her to focus on the Tower itself. She scanned the endless face of windows in the dying light.
“Something’s wrong,” she explained, straining to look up.
“I feel it. Can you pop the canopy?”
She hit the switch, and Skywalker leaned out, hanging over the side. “Go down: fifth floor.”
She shot down, almost to the level of the tapcafes, focusing on the window missing a pane of glass. “Did someone climb up from the fourth flour? I’ll call the Coruscant Security Force,” she began, but he was already halfway into the apartment.
“The alarm’s disabled too,” he said over his shoulder, then disappeared into the darkened room.
“Skywalker!” she hissed.
No response.
Mara locked down the airspeeder, grabbed her pack from behind the seat, and climbed across the seat, out of the speeder, and through the window into the room. She was standing in a spare bedroom. The missing window panel was leaning against the wall, with the alarm tossed beside it. She noted it was intended for approaching airspeeders, which explained why nothing had triggered at their approach.
She reached down to her belt, bypassed her lightsaber, and unholstered her blaster. The tapcaf below was full with an after-work crowd, so it was hard to sense what lay outside the room beyond the noise and buzz of many life-forms in the vicinity. She concentrated, and felt Skywalker moving towards the center of the apartment. She crept through the door, and down a shadowy hallway toward a lit turning on the left.
“I need you to put down your weapon,” she heard Skywalker say ahead.
He was answered by blaster fire, and Mara quickened her pace. “Damn fool,” she muttered, listening to the snap-hiss of a lightsaber deflecting blaster bolts.
She peeked around the corner and assessed the situation—to the left a man with a blaster, to the far right Skywalker with his lit lightsaber, standing defensively in front of a family of Ortolans.
She dropped the intruder with a stun bolt.
“I told you I was calling CSF,” she snapped, exasperated. “You couldn’t wait thirty seconds?”
While Mara called CSF, Skywalker pulled the children aside and talked to them in the kitchen; she let him focus on being calm and compassionate and understanding, which was quite outside of her skill set. Once the call was done, she focused instead on the grunt work: pulling stun cuffs out of her pack and restraining the intruder. Going through his pockets and itemizing what she found. Asking the Ortolans’ matriarch whether she recognized the man.
“No?” she confirmed. “It was worth a try. I want you to make a list of anyone who’s been here in the last month, or expressed any sort of interest in your place. Give that to the officers when they arrive.”
“Potato stick?” Skywalker asked, as she sat down across from him at the dining table.
“No thanks,” Mara said.
The intruder writhed in his stun cuffs, and let off a string of curses.
“And you shut up!” she ordered. “You’re not even a proper thief. Don’t you know to wait until your mark’s not home?”
Skywalker glanced at her bemusedly. “I don’t think burglars have a code of etiquette.”
“I always waited until the place was empty.”
He pushed the plate towards her again, and she resignedly picked up a potato stick and started nibbling.
“These are tasty. I’ll have to thank them when we leave,” he said.
“You’ll eat anything,” she groused.
Skywalker cleared his throat. “We should do this again,” he said hopefully.
Mara stared at him. “Interrupt a burglary?”
“No,” he said, blushing. “Just—go out somewhere. The next time we’re both on Coruscant. If you like.”
“Maybe,” she hedged. Then after a moment—“All right, yes. I think I’d like that.”