The Captain looked up, a glint of hope in his eyes. "Yes, Sir."
Luke sighed, letting the disappointment leave him with the breath. He turned to Mara, who had catwalked silently up behind him. "Do Intel have anything yet?"
Mara nodded, "They've confirmed that Madine was onboard the second freighter, which they've tentatively identified as the Sol. We don't know who was onboard the first freighter - possibly just Mothma and the freighter Captain."
Which pretty much negated the need to have captured the first freighter anyway, since Madine hadn't been onboard. Luke had actually known over two hours ago that the Fury had failed to capture its target, immediately ordering the Fury to his present location, well off any known shipping lanes on the edge of the Core and Rim borders, Nubia's distant sun casting the faintest of glows.
The Attin'Cho had been busy whilst waiting for the Fury to arrive, Luke clearly not yet willing to give up his chance to catch Madine. Thus, the Peerless, waiting at the edge of the Core Systems, had been placed on alert and Luke had surprised Mara by sending out a call to the Executor, which was only two hours away by lightspeed- quite a coincidence, to Mara's mind.
If Palpatine found out that this was because Skywalker and Vader were communicating behind his back, there would be hell to pay; so much so that Mara hesitated to put this suspicion in her report until she had proof one way or the other. Any unauthorised contact between the two was strictly forbidden; if the Emperor even suspected such it would be Skywalker who paid the penalty- and it would be severe.
For the first time, Mara found herself torn between her loyalty to the Emperor and her developing amity with Skywalker; she didn't wish to be the one who took this to Palpatine. She would if she had to but still, she felt a certain... unease at the thought that it would be her who had informed on Luke - and he would know it.
She didn't wish to lose what she had - even if she didn't know quite what it was yet.
He turned to her now, expression thoughtful, "Order Intel to work on Mothma's guards; the Rebels who came onboard with her. I want to know what Madine was doing with the Sol at Col Din- why he wasn't with Mothma."
Mara shrugged, "Probably backup."
"Then he should have been closer." Luke shook his head, "And he should have arrived sooner when the Arcturus put out a distress call... what took him so long?"
Good point, Mara conceded, nodding, "Why don't we go straight to the source; Mothma will know."
"No; no-one's to go near Mothma." Luke said tightly.
Mara had already noted that since her capture, Skywalker had very pointedly avoided any contact with the Rebel leader, allowing no-one else near her either. Despite the Emperor's warning to Mara that she should monitor closely how much time Skywalker spent with the Rebel leader he had known so well, exactly the opposite seemed true; whether he was uncomfortable with her capture or whether he simply wanted nothing more to do with her, Mara wasn't certain. Either way it seemed strange that he now showed so little interest in that which he had invested so much time and effort in securing.
Still, she nodded now, already lifting her comlink from her belt.
"And tell them to find out who was commanding the Arcturus." Luke added before turning away, back to Kavanagh.
It was a more relevant question than it first seemed, Mara knew.
When he had found out that the Fury had failed to capture Madine, Luke had... well, first he'd flown into a temper - not the wild, uncontrolled rage which Mara associated with his father Vader's outbursts; this was something far more cold and calculating, so that by the time he'd calmed, he already had the outlines of a plan in mind.
He still wanted Madine and he clearly intended to go after him - using the one lure that he knew the General just couldn't pass up on.
To that end, he sent a short communiqué to Coruscant on a frequency which it was known the Rebellion monitored, using a code which Intel knew the Rebels had recently broken, acknowledging the capture of Mon Mothma and informing of his intention to remain at his present co-ordinates until the Fury had arrived as escort, at which point she would be taken onboard and he would cross the border to the Core Systems and transfer his prisoner to the Peerless for their return to Coruscant.
He was, Mara realised, gambling that the Sol would be the nearest ship, knowing that if it was the Rebellion would try for an extraction in this brief window of opportunity - with Madine in command.
He'd also, strangely, taken Kavanagh to one side to request that the comm officer who had been in the unit which had boarded the Attin'cho be found something to do which would keep him occupied in the bowels of the ship for the next few hours, and for someone to be with him t make sure he had no view and no outside view and no access to ship's comms. Kavanagh had merely nodded, following orders, but Mara knew the careful exclusion of a suspected spy when she saw it. Luke had a habit of keeping them in active play rather than simply removing them, feeding them information until he felt their usefulness had come to an end.
She'd wondered more than once in the past whether that was her role here too.
.
When the Executor arrived, dwarfing the Fury as she came in for a slow pass, Luke made the unprecedented move of heading down to the forward docking bay as a single shuttle made its way across to the Fury.
Mothma was already in the bay, surrounded by a phalanx of white-armoured stormtroopers, but Skywalker gave her barely a glance as he entered the bay, remaining to the far side, his attention on the incoming shuttle. When the tri-wing Lambda-class shuttle came to a stately landing inside the bay, six stormtroopers marched smartly down the ramp and Mara knew immediately who was inside.
Darth Vader stalked down, his height forcing him to bow his head slightly to clear the end of the ramp, and Mara was left standing - both mentally and physically - as Skywalker walked forward.
When she finally did manage to get her feet moving, a subtle move of Luke's hand told her to remain where she was, leaving her to frown in confusion- not particularly that she had been excluded from the conversation; even with Vader, that wasn't uncommon. Luke tended to keep all conversations private, even the most inane or adversarial, more out of a point of principle than any greater incentive. She was after all Palpatine's agent at the end of the day, and everyone present knew it.
No, what surprised her was firstly that Skywalker had come down to the bay at all - something he had never done before - and secondly that he stepped forward to acknowledge Vader, the slight nod of his head as his father stepped onto the docking bay floor far more telling than his neutral body-language or his impassive face.
Mara watched closely as the two began a slow walk forward, but the pair spoke quietly and were past her too quickly for her to get any useful reading from Skywalker's lips as he spoke, and even if she had, it would have been at best a one-sided conversation.
.
Vader took a long look at Mothma, the woman he had spent so much time hunting through the vast Rim Systems, but she didn't look up and anyway, his conversation with his son was of greater importance. Strange- once nothing else would have mattered except catching this elusive quarry; now she was almost below notice, both for himself and more curiously, for his son, who had been made both pariah and prey by her command.
"Thank-you for coming at such short notice." The boy said, nothing more than filler to get them past the Emperor's little spy, Vader knew, her green eyes watching intently.