Vision of the future

'So here you are at last, Mara Jade,' he said, waving her forward with a gnarled hand. 'I must say, you took your time.'

'Sorry to have kept you waiting,' Mara countered with an edge of sarcasm as she walked toward them. She could feel Luke's concern and nervousness at the back of her mind, and tried to send him a reassurance she didn't entirely feel. These people knew who she was and presumably what she was; and yet here they were, letting her move freely toward them. It all looked far too casual, and she didn't like it one bit. 'If your people hadn't been so trigger- poppy, I'd have been here a lot sooner.' The admiral bowed his head briefly. 'My apologies. For whatever it's worth, it was an accident. Please, come sit down.'

Mara continued forward, trying to watch all of them at once, her senses alert for trouble. If they had a trap set, it would be sprung somewhere before she got too close to them... And without warning, right in the middle of a step, Luke's presence suddenly vanished from her mind.

Her brain froze in shock, sheer momentum keeping her feet moving. Luke? Luke! Come on, where are you?

But there was no response. No emotion, no sense of mind or thought, no sense of presence at all. Incredibly, impossibly, he was gone.

Gone.

'Come sit down,' the admiral said again. 'I imagine you must be quite worn out after all you've been through.'

'You're too kind,' Mara said, the words sounding distant and mechanical through the pounding of blood in her ears as she forced her feet to keep moving her forward. What in the worlds could possibly have happened to him?

There could only be one answer. Somehow, they'd gotten past his Jedi senses, had penetrated his Jedi powers, and had launched a sudden, undetected, and unblocked attack. And Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, was unconscious.

Or dead.

The thought slashed into her mind, cutting through her heart like a jagged blade. No—it couldn't be. It couldn't. Not now.

The gray-haired man was still gazing at her, a thoughtful look on his face, and with an agonized effort Mara shoved the fear and pain away to the back of her mind. If Luke was merely unconscious, they could still get out of this. If he was dead, she would most likely soon be joining him. Either way, this was no time to let her emotions muddy her thinking.

She made it the rest of the way to the chair and sank carefully into it. 'You don't need to look quite so worried,' the admiral said soothingly. 'We have no intention of harming you.'

'Of course not,' Mara said, hearing the bitterness in her voice. 'Just like you had no intention of harming me on my last trip in here?'

The admiral's lip twitched. 'As I said before, that was a regrettable accident,' he said. 'They were shooting at the vermin flying around near you—we've had some problems in the past with them getting inside. When you started shooting back, I'm afraid they jumped to the wrong conclusion. My deepest apologies.'

'That makes me feel so much better,' Mara growled. 'Now what?' The admiral seemed mildly surprised. 'We talk,' he said. 'Why else do you think we gave you our location in the first place? We wanted you to come see us.'

'Ah,' Mara said. So her guess earlier had been right—those two ships had deliberately flown off on vectors that would lead her here.

Unless, of course, he was lying after the fact to cover up his pilots' blunders. 'You could have just sent me an invitation,' she told him, feeling her forehead crease slightly as she stretched out toward him with the Force. Odd; for some reason, she couldn't seem to touch him. Not him, not the aliens flanking him. 'Or would that have been too straightforward and easy?' The admiral smiled knowingly. 'With an open invitation I doubt you would have come alone. Something more vague seemed a better arrangement. I apologize for not having an escort waiting, by the way—your landing caught us a bit by surprise.'

'As did your arrival earlier inside the fortress,' the alien standing at the admiral's right added, his voice smooth and cultured, his glowing red eyes steady on Mara. 'If we'd known you were coming our people would have been much more careful with their charrics. May I ask how you managed to penetrate the fortress without being spotted?'

'We turned ourselves into vermin and flew in, of course,' Mara told him. 'It was faster than walking.'

'Of course,' the admiral said with a smile. 'Or perhaps you scaled up the side of the fortress and came in through one of the cracks?'

Mara shook her head. 'Sorry. Trade secret.'

'Ah,' the admiral said, still smiling. 'It's not important; I was merely curious. The point is that you are here, Mara, just as we wished. May I call you Mara, by the way? Or would you prefer