'Shuttle 37 down,' Luke announced into the comm. 'Awaiting further orders.'
'Shuttle 37, acknowledged,' the voice of the controller came over the speaker. 'Shut down all systems and prepare for unloading.'
'Got it.'
Luke reached over to shut off the comm, but Mara stopped him.
'Control, this is my first cargo run,' she said, her voice carrying just the right touch of idle curiosity. 'About how long until we'll be able to leave?'
'I suggest you make yourselves comfortable,' Control said dryly. 'We unload all the shuttles before any of you leave. Figure a couple of hours, at the least.'
'Oh,' Mara said, sounding taken aback. 'Well ... thanks. Maybe I'll take a nap.'
She signed off. 'Good,' she said, unstrapping and standing up. 'That ought to give us enough time to get to the detention center and back.'
'Let's just hope they haven't transferred Karrde off the ship,' Luke said, following her to the rear of the command deck and the spiral stairway leading down to the storage area below.
'They haven't,' Mara said, heading down the stairs. 'The only danger is that they might have started the full treatment already.' Luke frowned down at her. 'The full treatment?'
'Their interrogation.' Mara reached the center of the storage room and looked appraisingly around. 'All right. Just about ... there should do it.' She pointed to a section of the deck in front of her. 'Out of the way of prying eyes, and you shouldn't hit anything vital.'
'Right.' Luke ignited his lightsaber, and began carefully cutting a hole in the floor. He was most of the way through when there was a brilliant spark from the hole and the lights in the storage room abruptly went out.
'It's okay,' Luke told Mara as she muttered something vicious under her breath. 'The lightsaber gives off enough light to see by.'
'I'm more worried that the cable might have arced to the hangar deck,' she countered. 'They couldn't help but notice that.' Luke paused, stretching out with Jedi senses. 'Nobody nearby seems to have seen anything,' he told Mara.
'We'll hope.' She gestured to the half-finished cut. 'Get on with it.'
He did so. A minute later, with the help of a magnetic winch, they had hauled the severed section of decking and hull into the storage room. A few centimeters beneath it, lit eerily by the green light from Luke's lightsaber, was the hangar bay deck. Mara got the winch's grapple attached to it; stretching out flat on his stomach, Luke extended the lightsaber down through the hole. There he paused, waiting until he could sense that the corridor beneath the hangar deck was clear.
'Don't forget to bevel it,' Mara reminded him as the lightsaber bit smoothly into the hardened metal. 'A gaping hole in the ceiling would be a little too obvious for even conscripts to miss.'
Luke nodded and finished the cut. Mara was ready, and even as he shut down the lightsaber she had the winch pulling the thick slab of metal up into the shuttle. She brought it perhaps a meter up and then shut down the motor.
'That's far enough,' she said. Blaster ready in her hand, she sat gingerly on the still-warm edge of the hole and dropped lightly down to the deck below. There was a second's pause as she looked around-'All clear,' she hissed. Luke sat down on the edge and looked over at the winch control. Reaching out with the Force, he triggered the switch and followed her down. The deck below was farther than it had looked, but his Jedi-enhanced muscles handled the impact without trouble. Recovering his balance, he looked up just as the metal plug settled neatly back down into the hole. 'Looks pretty good,' Mara murmured. 'I don't think anyone will notice.'
'Not unless they look straight up,' Luke agreed. 'Which way to the detention center?'
'There,' Mara said, gesturing with her blaster to their left. 'We're not going to get there dressed like this, though. Come on. She led the way to the end of the passage, then down a crossway to another, wider corridor. Luke kept his senses alert, but only occasionally did he detect anyone. 'Awfully quiet down here.'
'It won't last,' Mara said. 'This is a service supply area, and most of the people who'd normally be working here are a level up helping unload the shuttles. But we need to get into some uniforms or flight suits or something before we go much farther.'
Luke thought back to the first time he'd tried masquerading as an imperial. 'Okay, but let's try to avoid stormtrooper armor, he said. 'Those helmets are hard to see through.'
