'I didn't think Jedi needed to use their eyes,' Mara countered sourly. 'Watch it-here we are. That's a section of crew quarters over there.' Luke had already sensed the sudden jump in population level. 'I don't think we can sneak through that many people,' he warned.
'I wasn't planning to.' Mara pointed to another corridor leading off to their right. 'There should be a group of TIE pilot ready rooms down that way. Let's see if we can find an empty one that has a couple of spare flight suits lying around.'
But if the Empire was lax enough to leave its service supply areas unguarded, it wasn't so careless with its pilot ready rooms. There were six of them grouped around the turbolift cluster at the end of the corridor; and from the sounds of conversation faintly audible through the doors, it was clear that all six were occupied by at least two people. 'What now?' Luke whispered to Mara.
'What do you think?' she retorted, dropping her blaster back in its holster and flexing her fingers. 'Just tell me which room has the fewest people in it and then get out of the way. I'll do the rest.'
'Wait a minute,' Luke said, thinking hard. He didn't want to kill the men behind those doors in cold blood; but neither did he want to put himself into the dangerous situation he'd faced during the Imperial raid on Lando's Nkllon mining operation a few months earlier. There, he'd successfully used the Force to confuse the attacking TIE fighters, but at the cost of skating perilously close to the edge of the dark side. It wasn't an experience he wanted to repeat.
But if he could just gently touch the Imperials' minds, instead of grabbing and twisting them...
'We'll try this one,' he told Mara, nodding to a room in which he could sense only three men. But we're not going to charge in fighting. I think I can suppress their curiosity enough for me to walk in, take the flight suits, and leave.
'What if you can't?' Mara demanded. 'We'll have lost whatever surprise we would have had.'
'It'll work,' Luke assured her. 'Get ready.'
'Skywalker-'
'Besides which, I doubt that even with surprise you can take out all three without any noise,' he added. 'Can you?' She glared laser bolts, but gestured him to the door. Setting his mind firmly in line with the Force, he moved toward it. The heavy metal panel slid open at his approach, and he stepped in.
There were indeed three men lounging around the monitor table in the center of the room: two in the Imperial brown of ordinary crewers, the other in the black uniform and flaring helmet of a Fleet trooper. All three looked up as the door opened, and Luke caught their idle interest in the newcomer. Reaching out through the Force, he gently touched their minds, shunting the curiosity away. The two crewers seemed to size him up and then ignore him; the trooper continued to watch, but only as a change from watching his companions. Trying to look as casual and unconcerned as he could, Luke went over to the rack of flight suits against the wall and selected three of them. The conversation around the monitor table continued as he draped them over his arm and walked back out of the room. The door slid shut behind him 'Well?' Mara hissed. Luke nodded, exhaling quietly. 'Go ahead and get into it,' he told her. 'I want to try and hold off their curiosity for another couple of minutes. Until they've forgotten I was ever in there.' Mara nodded and started pulling the flight suit on over her jumpsuit.
'Handy trick, I must say.'
'It worked this time, anyway,' Luke agreed. Carefully, he eased back his touch on the Imperials' minds, waiting tensely for the surge of emotion that would show the whole scheme was unraveling. But there was nothing except the lazy flow of idle conversation.
The trick had worked. This time, anyway.
Mara had a turbolift car standing by as he turned away from the ready room. 'Come on, come on,' she beckoned impatiently. She was already in her flight suit, with the other two slung over her shoulder. 'You can change on the way.'
'I hope no one comes aboard while I'm doing it,' he muttered as he slipped into the car. 'Be a little hard to explain.'
'No one's coming aboard,' she said as the turbolift door closed behind him and the car started to move. 'I've keyed it for nonstop. She eyed him. 'You still want to do it this way?'
'I don't think we've got any real choice,' he said, getting into the flight suit. It felt uncomfortably tight over his regular outfit. 'Han and I tried the frontal approach once, on the Death Star. It wasn't exactly an unqualified success.
'Yes, but you didn't have access to the main computer then,' Mara pointed out. 'If I can fiddle the records and transfer orders, we ought to be able to get him out before anyone realizes they've been had.'
'But you'd still be leaving witnesses behind who knew he'd left,' Luke reminded her. 'If any of them decided to check on the order verbally, the whole thing would fall apart right there. And I don't think that suppression trick I used in the ready room will work on detention center guards-they're bound to be too alert.'
