Mara returned to base to find one of the ground crew waiting patiently by her allocated XJ7. She climbed into the cockpit and started her instrument check.
"Is Lumiya really a Shh?" the technician asked.
"The very last of her kind," said Mara, not asking what he'd heard and how he knew the name anyway. She felt a pang of guilt at her sloppiness for arguing loudly and forgetting there were other personnel around. She sealed the XJ7's hatches. "I'll make sure of that."
Mara ignored military air traffic regulations and circled over the area where she'd last picked up Lumiya's powerful wake. If she concentrated, it was relatively easy to follow, and she found herself leaving Coruscant orbit on a bearing for one of the moons, Hesperidium.
"Oh, yes, Palpatine loved that place," she said aloud. "You heading there for old times' sake?"
Lumiya was definitely playing a game. But she wasn't stupid enough to think she could offer Mara her hand and find it still intact like she had with Luke.
The wake led to Hesperidium's main resort, which wasn't quite as splendid as Mara recalled. She wondered if it was feeling the pinch of postwar recovery, and if there still weren't enough tastelessly wealthy folk to go around. Port traffic control was surprised—to say the least—to find a military vessel on its scanners.
"I need to put down for a while," Mara said, knowing they had no choice about the matter. They could hardly stop her landing. "Getting weird readings on my instruments. I have to check it out."
"Let us know if you need help," the ATC controller said. "We pride
"Classified," Mara said, and ended the conversation in the way that only she could.
When she landed and saw the selection of vessels standing on the private strips of the hotels, she realized that a XJ7 probably looked like an eccentric billionaire's toy, and a small one at that. Some of the craft here were staggering in their size and opulence; she wondered how they even managed to land. There was clearly a thriving class of the ultrawealthy that had come through the last decade pretty well unscathed, and life was going on uninterrupted for them now, regardless of another war. Credits seemed to operate like deflector shields: if you had enough of either, nothing could touch you.
She checked around her—in the Force, and visually—before sliding out of the cockpit and jumping to the ground. At least she'd managed to dress like eccentric wealth, and few would look at her.
Yes, there were definitely some bizarre-looking flying palaces here
. . .
And then she felt darkness touch her shoulder in the brilliant morning sunshine.
It was so tangible, so dense, that she spun around with her hand on her lightsaber hilt expecting to find Lumiya ready to swing at her. But there was nobody.
You want to play games?
It was early. A couple of hotel guests in sports clothes jogged by and glanced at her, but ran on. She prowled between the vessels on the strip, feeling the darkness pressing on her sternum like a coronary.
Something dark was here—and that meant Lumiya. The crushing sensation in her chest was getting so powerful that she ignited her
lightsaber's blade, ready to fight when she rounded the next hull.
This is it, Lumiya. No more games.
She sprang into the gap, lightsaber humming.
Staring back at her wasn't a veiled figure with a lightwhip but a single, disembodied, flame-red eye ten meters wide. Her instinct said it was alive, an alien being, but it was clearly a ship of some kind, and that meant only one thing: Lumiya was inside.
It was a trap, Mara was sure of that.
Fine. But sometimes traps swallow prey that's way too big for them
. . .
She looked over the hull for a hatch, but the roughly textured surface—was it stone?—was unbroken.
Come inside.
Mara wondered why she was thinking that and then realized that the thought was actually a voice inside her head, in the fabric of the Force itself. It was inanimate, yet sentient; and it wasn't a droid.
It was the ship.
Mara concentrated hard on sensing Lumiya, but she could detect nobody inside the vessel. Suddenly an aperture appeared in the hull and a ramp extruded. It was too tempting, and she was too old a hand at this kind of game to walk straight in, but she had to know what was going on.
The wake ended here. Lumiya had used this ship. But—
I can take her. This is all mini games. I'm not falling for it.
If Lumiya was waiting within, hiding somehow, then Mara would kill her. If
she wasn't, then Mara would sit in wait for her, and kill her then. It was all the same to Mara. She didn't have anything more urgent to do right then.
She placed her boot on the ramp and took a few cautious steps, lightsaber held two-handed. If the hotel had security cams and could see what was going on, it was just too bad.
Mara felt bewilderment that wasn't hers.
You're not who I expected.
It was the ship again.
"What d'you mean, I'm not who you expected?" No, she didn't need to speak: she realized she could think back at this thing.
You are . . . very similar.
"Thanks. Thanks a bunch." Maybe the ship had a high regard for Lumiya. Mara decided that it was as good a source as any of information.
She thought her next question, not even in words, but in concepts and attitudes she thought she'd left behind a long time ago. The mental conversation left a taste in her like being a Hand again.
Where is she, Ship'?
The other one? Close by.
You're a thing of the Sith, aren't you?
You know darkness well. Better than the other one that I expected to see return.
Mara didn't know what to make of that, but right then she was prepared to accept that her intent was far more malevolent than Lumiya knew how to be. She wanted destruction. She wanted obliteration.
Last of your kind, Lumiya. And about time.
Mara hesitated on the brow of the ramp. She thought for a minute that she might be pulled in, and the spherical ship would then trap her inside and make a run for it. She took the precaution of reaching inside with one hand to place the last of her tiny transponders—her only remaining gadget from her previous existence—just inside the hatch. It attached to the oddly stone-like coating she could feel within. At least if that happened, someone might trace her. And if Lumiya ever returned to the ship, the transponder would report her position every time Mara's emitter pinged it.
Mara took a cautious breath and lowered her head to look inside.
The ship really was empty.
Not just devoid of crew—empty. There was nothing within the hull; no cockpit, no instruments, no systems indicators, nothing. It was hollow, lit by a red glow as if there were a fire burning steadily behind the bulkheads. She hadn't seen that light from the outside.
And that was as far as she got. She felt something coming, and she knew what that something was. She took a few steps back down the ramp and waited, lightsaber still extended.
A slim figure in a dark gray suit and veiled triangular headdress stepped into the space between the parked ships.
"Hello, little housewife . . . ," said Lumiya.
Mara's autopilot kicked in and she was the Emperor's Hand again, silent and focused. There was nothing worth saying anyway. Amateurs gave speeches; professionals got on with the job.
She Force-leapt five meters at Lumiya, slashing down right to left, two- handed. The stroke—all power, no finesse—clipped the Sith's headdress as she sprang back, slicing off a section. Lumiya's eyes widened, pupils dilated, but she was already whirling her lightwhip about her head. The tails crackled and hissed, missing Mara only because she threw all her energy