"Really?" That didn't seem very likely. Why was he so bothered by this? "Are you... claustrophobic?"
There was a long pause, then she heard his voice ask warily, "No... are you?"
Mara rolled her eyes in the darkness, "No- you just seem a little edgy..."
"Well the timing seems a little convenient..."
Mara frowned, well aware of this fact but not willing to actually panic yet, "Give it a minute - the emergency power will..."
The lights in the turbolift flickered on and they both flinched beneath the bright glare, looking down. When she looked up, he was holding out his hand; in it was her comlink. It wasn't particularly in Mara's nature to get embarrassed, but Skywalker seemed to have a special propensity to make her so- though if he knew, he had the good grace never to draw attention to the fact. Mildly discomfited, she quickly took it back and changed the subject, "Weird - why aren't we moving again?"
Luke took a half-step back to look at the panel, " 'System failure- please wait'." He read aloud.
Mara's comlink pipped a tone and he reached out, taking it from her hand, "Yes?"
"...Commander?" The voice sounded both surprised and relieved, "Sir we had a shipwide..."
In the next instant, everything was black again, the comlink falling to instantaneous silence, not even a static hiss escaping it.
"Great." Luke said into the darkness.
"I think that was emergency power that just blew." Mara said, the first inklings of alarm casting tension into her own voice now.
She heard him move again; the slightest sound of hard metal, "My lightsaber's out."
Now that was odd; she fumbled for her blaster and pulled it free, pointing it at the floor; 'click'. "So's my blaster."
She was pulling the power pack with the blind familiarity of a professional soldier when he spoke again.
"Don't jump." He said cryptically, and she was just lifting her head to the sound of his voice when there was an almighty, rending 'WHUMP!' from the ceiling above her, making her crouch down with a yelp, arms above her head.
In the long, dust-choked silence that followed, Mara's pounding heart slowly leveled off.
"I said don't jump." Luke's amused voice came from the darkness.
"Very funny." Mara growled, standing, "You're supposed to also say why. You're supposed to say, 'Don't jump; I'm about to make a lot of noise.'"
"I did, but the noise drowned it out." he deadpanned, still amused. If she'd known exactly where he was in the darkness, Mara would have taken a swing for him, Heir or not. "Don't jump... but I'm leaving."
Mara's hair rustled in a flurry of displaced air, a sound from above indicating that he'd jumped and landed. He must have used the Force to peel part of the turbolift roof back to get a clear jump out, she realized.
"Give me your hand." His voice came from above, echoing slightly in the turbolift shaft, and Mara glanced blindly up, flailing in the darkness, "Where are you?"
"Not even close. Stay still."
His hand locked around her wrist and she'd barely gotten a grip and braced herself before he hauled her up, her feet scrabbling at the edge of the remains of the turbolift roof as she leaned forward blindly and grabbed for him in the darkness. He held onto her for a few seconds as she steadied herself.
"Don't step back." He said calmly, arm still about her.
"If this is all some elaborate hoax to get me to cling on to you..." she grinned, unable to resist.
"Yes:" he said, dryly amused, attention clearly elsewhere, "I really do have so few lines that I need to resort to this."
"Just checking." She said with mock-seriousness.
He turned slightly and reached out his arm over her shoulder and she heard him lightly touch the wall behind her, then the reluctant grating of plassteel against plassteel.
"You can back out now. Take a big step back over the shaft and a half-step up."
"You're sure there's a floor there?"
"As tempting as it is to lie, yes, I'm sure there's a floor there."
Mara stepped gingerly back; for a short distance, her foot hung over nothing, presumably the void at the edge of the lift shaft, then her heel hit a hard ledge and she lifted her foot up to feel the non-slip floor beneath her feet, just slightly up from where she'd expected; they must have been very close to a set of doors when power failed. She released him to turn around and take the long step... into absolute darkness.
"Well this is so much better." She stated sardonically, reaching her hands out before her. "I'm assuming this isn't the bridge."
"That's a good few levels up." He announced from close beside her, making her jump. His voice trailed away as he spoke though, and she turned slightly to keep it centered, her only indication of where he was.
The dry, grating, metallic rasp sounded again and a sliver of dusky light cast a hazy glow through the opening doors, outlining Skywalker where he stood, one hand held before them.
Mara had never been so happy to see starlight.
She walked quickly into the room; it was empty, a 'tech station set up for human interface, but all the screens were blank. She pushed a few buttons and toggled some switches pointlessly. "Dead."
Skywalker turned to the wall beside him as he entered and banged his fist into the fire alarm, breaking the transparent cover and hitting the alarm at the same time. Nothing happened.
"Everything's out." He repeated calmly, then paused as a thought occurred, "Wonder if life support's working."
Mara frowned, "Why do we have gravity?"
"Good question." He walked towards the viewport and looked out. They were at the very base of the Command Tower, the turbolift having just left the main body of the Destroyer, the 'tech room affording an impressive view of its massive bulk - or it would have been, had anything been working. There wasn't a single light or visibly active system to be seen across the long, streamlined hull.
Luke was pressing the side of his face to the viewport now, and Mara frowned as she walked towards him, "Are you... listening?"
"Yes." he said dryly, "I'm listening to the viewport."
"Hey, you have set something of a past precedent for wierdness." Mara retorted, belatedly realizing that he was trying to see to the very edges of the viewscreen's field of vision, "What are you looking for?"
She glanced out, eyes drawn to the dead-in-space bulk of the freighters Luke had used in the attack at Bothawuii, drifting dangerously close.
"Well this didn't happen on its own." Luke said distantly, eyes further afield.
"EMP?" Mara said, having come to the same conclusion herself, though she hadn't said it out loud for the simple fact that all Star Destroyers were of course hardened against the overload effects of an electromagnetic pulse. She gazed out over the dead ship, trying to work this through in her mind, then spotted the slightest flicker of starlight on metal near the heat exhaust ports which vented to either side of the Destroyer's apex gunnery platforms. "The fans are still working."
Luke glanced down, following her line of sight and squinting. "They're mechanical - no link to the automated systems."
So it had to be an EMP; "But we're combat-hardened. Nothing can..."
She stopped as it occurred to her in exactly the same moment as Luke-
"The Invincible." she said, as if it were a kick to the gut. The as yet unlaunched Invincible sported the latest advance in dynamic flux compression EMP technology. Supposedly the only system in existence - obviously not.
Luke didn't reply, a more immediately relevant thought occurring, "Shields..."
"They must be down- they're linked into the mainframe." Mara cursed, joining him in leaning her head against the cool transparisteel to widen their field of view.
The Fury's engines must have powered down within a split second of each-other but not quite simultaneously, since as well as gliding slowly forward, she was gradually tilting on her axis - and it was this which brought the small freighter slowly into view.