Vision of the future

caverns and tunnels they'd so laboriously picked their way through days earlier with Child Of Winds and the Qom Jha. Dimly through his slow asphyxiation, Luke decided it was just as well that they'd cut away so many of the stalactites and stalagmites that would have been in their way...

Abruptly, he snapped awake, half submerged in water, his head and chest resting precariously on a slimy boulder, Artoo's frantic twittering in his ears. 'Okay, right,' he managed, shaking his head to clear it.

And suddenly stiffened. Mara was gone.

He shook his head again, digging out his glow rod with numb, half-frozen fingers as he scrabbled around looking for footing. He found it immediately; the water he was in turned out to be only waist high. He fumbled the glow rod out at last and flicked it on.

He was standing in a pool just off the edge of the last of the underground rivers he and Mara had passed during their trip through the caverns. Five meters to his left, the torrent that had brought them here had vanished, leaving only the river rippling its sedate way along. And two meters to his right, bobbing gently in the pool as she floated beside the craggy rock, was Mara. Her eyes closed, her arms and legs limp. As if in death.

The precise image he'd seen of her in that Jedi vision on Tierfon.

And then he was at her side, raising her head out of the water, gazing at her face in sudden fear. If the trance hadn't kept her alive—if she'd struck something hard enough to kill her after he'd lost his grip on her—

Behind him, Artoo whistled impatiently. 'Right,' Luke agreed, cutting off his sudden panic. All he had to do to bring her out of it was speak the key phrase she'd chosen, the phrase she'd wondered aloud if he could handle. Almost as if she was afraid he couldn't...

He took a deep breath. 'I love you, Mara.'

Her eyes blinked open, blinked again as she chased the water from them. 'Hi,' she said, breathing heavily as she grabbed his arm and maneuvered herself upright. 'I see we made it.'

'Yes,' Luke said, taking her in his arms and holding her tightly, his tension and fear evaporating into a mist of utter calm and relief. The vision had been passed, and Mara had survived it. And they were together again. Forever.

'Yes,' Mara murmured. 'Forever.'

They loosened their grips on each other, just slightly... and standing together in the cold water, their lips came together in a kiss.

It seemed like a long time before Mara gently pulled away from the embrace. 'Not to put a damper on this,' she said, 'but we're both shivering, and we're still a long way from home. Where are we, anyway?'

'Back at our underground river,' Luke told her, reluctantly bringing his mind back to practical matters.

'Ah.' She peered toward the stream. 'What happened to our personal flood?'

'It seems to have ended,' Luke said. 'Either we drained the lake completely—'

'Which is real unlikely.'

'Right,' Luke said. 'Or else it's gotten stopped up again somehow.'

'Probably more of the chamber wall collapsed,' Mara said, reaching up to push back some of the hair that had gotten plastered across her cheek. 'Or else it's jammed up with what's left of the cloning equipment.'

Luke nodded, helping her push the rest of her hair back out of the way. 'Good thing we didn't wait any longer to make our exit.'

'Sure is,' Mara agreed. 'Handy things, those Jedi hunches. You'll have to teach me how to do those.'

'We'll work on it,' Luke promised, wading toward the edge of the pond. 'I think the Qom Jha said this river emptied out into a small waterfall.'

'Sounds good,' Mara said. 'Let's go find it.'

* * *

Another wave of Skipray Blastboats shot past, pelting the Tyrannic with laser fire. Behind them, two of the Ishori war cruisers had gotten inside the kill zone and were scattering a dazzling pattern of more powerful turbolaser blasts across the ridgeline. 'Two more starboard turbolasers knocked out,' the fire control officer called tensely. 'Forward ridgeline has been breached; crews are sealing it off.'