And with that she was gone, slipping out of the command center and around the wall toward the slideway.
With a sigh, Luke stepped over to the nearby wall segment and sank down into a crouch with his back pressed against it. Closing his eyes for better concentration, he stretched out with the Force. In times past, on Dagobah and Tierfon and other places, he'd been able to use the Force to obtain glimpses of future places and events. Now, as Mara headed down the slideway, he tried to focus that same ability onto real-time observation, hoping to be able to see what was happening to her.
It worked, too, at least after a fashion. The image he got of Mara and her surroundings was faint and foggy, heavily colored by her emotions and shifting mental state, and with the same discomfiting tendency to ripple or metamorphose that seemed to be characteristic of Jedi visions in general. But with Mara's mind there to act as anchor, he was able to quickly drag the images back to something at least vaguely understandable. It was hardly ideal, but it seemed clear that it was all he was going to get.
The slideway from this level seemed to be roughly the same size as the one they had used to get down from the roof. Mara moved to the inner section and headed down, apparently making no attempt at concealment. The lack of any sudden combat twinges in her emotions as she reached the next level implied she didn't see anyone, though he had the impression that she was still hearing distant sounds.
She made no move to get off at this level, but let the slideway carry her on down. The next level was more of the same, with no one coming near the slideway. Luke could sense a definite annoyance beginning to seep through the alertness in Mara's mind, an annoyance aimed both at the aliens'
seeming disinterest in her and at their incompetence at basic internal security. She passed that level, and the next, and started down toward the next—
And suddenly there was a dizzying jolt that slammed like a ground-quake through her emotions, accompanied by a brief flash of pain.
Luke stiffened, eyes jerking open as he scrambled to his feet. But even as he did so he felt a warning flicker of reassurance from her, together with understanding of what had just happened. Without warning, the slideway section she'd been riding on had suddenly reversed direction, yanking her feet out from under her and slamming her flat on her chest on the ramp. And as the moment of dizziness from the impact faded away, her combat emotions flared to full alertness.
She was no longer alone.
Luke clenched his hands into helpless fists as he rode her emotions to try to pierce the hazy image. There were several people standing around her, of the same species as those they'd tangled with once already.
And as near as he could tell through the wavering view, one of them was calling Mara by name. For a moment he continued to talk to her, and though Luke couldn't hear any of the words he had the impression that he was asking her to accompany them farther into the fortress. She agreed. There was a flicker of inevitability as they took her BlasTech, and then the whole group was walking away from the slideway down a corridor that Mara recognized as decorated similarly to the barracks area they'd seen farther below.
Soon—all too soon—the group reached an open door. Another exchange of unheard words, a suppressed flutter of uneasiness from Mara, and she stepped alone through the door into the room beyond.
From her thoughts he could tell that there were others waiting inside for her. One of them—possibly more than one—called out to her as she moved farther inside. Mara answered, surges and flickers of emotion marking bits of information that the vagueness of their contact prevented Luke from getting himself. She continued to walk farther into the room—
And without warning, right in the middle of a step, the touch of her mind cut abruptly off, leaving Luke staring at the quiet lights of the command center. Heart pounding in his chest, he stretched out with the Force, trying to reestablish the contact.
But it was no use. There was no response, no returning contact, no sense of her presence. Nothing at all.
She was gone.
CHAPTER
27
Mara took in the room in a glance as she stepped through the doorway. It was long and narrow, stretching perhaps fifty meters back from the door but no more than five meters wide. Near the far wall was a solid-looking chair, facing away from her. Five meters beyond that, right at the room's back wall, were six more of the blue-skinned aliens, all wearing the same tight-fitting burgundy patchwork-design outfits as the ones who had escorted her here from the slideway. And like her escort, each of the aliens was wearing Imperial ranking bars on their chests beneath the high-topped black collars.
But even as her glance took in those details, her main attention was caught by the man in the center of the group, seated in a duplicate of the empty chair facing him a few meters away. His hair was gray, his skin lined with age; but his eyes were alert and shrewd, and his back was straight and proud.
And he was wearing the uniform and insignia of an Imperial admiral.
