it into her pack, she sat down on her 'chair'—another mostly flat rock—and waited.
It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time before the bouncing light finally resolved itself into a Jedi Master carrying a glow rod; but when it did she finally understood the reason for the slow trip. Luke himself was burdened down with what looked like the sort of
everything-but-a-set-of-alluvial-dampers survival kit Karrde's people liked to put together; and trundling awkwardly but gamely along beside him on the uneven ground was his R2 astromech droid.
'Mara?' Luke called, his voice echoing through the cave.
'Right here,' Mara called back, standing up and waving her glow rod. 'You sure took your time.'
'Sorry,' he said dryly, making his way to her. 'We couldn't find the local airspeeder-hire stand and had to walk. You look good.'
'You look terrible,' she countered, running a critical eye over him. His jacket and the jumpsuit beneath it were stained with dirt and sweat and dotted here and there with small rips and punctures.
'How far did you walk, anyway? Halfway around the planet?'
'No, only about ten kilometers,' he said, shrugging the pack off his shoulders onto the ground and running a hand through his hair. 'But it was cliffs and wilderness all the way.'
'And thornbushes, apparently,' Mara added, gesturing toward the tears in his jumpsuit. 'You want to get cleaned up? There's a stream right over there that doesn't have too much ice floating in it.' The droid gurgled. 'Maybe later,' Luke said. 'How have they been treating you?' Mara shrugged. 'Ambiguously,' she said. 'At first I thought I was being held prisoner. But they didn't seem to mind if I moved around the immediate area, so I thought I might have been mistaken. On the other hand, they also wouldn't let me go too far in any direction, and they've still got my lightsaber and the blaster they took from me.'
'Your blaster?'
'Yes, my blaster,' Mara said, putting a drop-it tone into her voice. The aliens had taken both of her main weapons; but they'd missed the tiny backup blaster snugged in its holster against her left forearm. Up till now she hadn't had occasion to use it, but she didn't want Luke announcing its existence, either. 'And my lightsaber,' she repeated. 'So now I'm not sure what's going on.'
'Yes, my Qom Jha guides told me you have trouble understanding them,' Luke said. Apparently, he'd gotten the message about the blaster. 'It sounds to me like the reason they brought you in here was to keep you safe.'
'I was afraid of that,' Mara said, feeling her cheeks warming and hoping the chagrin didn't show. Bad enough that someone had had to come all the way out here to the edge of Unknown Space to rescue her after she walked the side of her head into that rock. Even worse that it had to be Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, who probably had a million better things to do with his time. But for the
'rescue' to be from what was essentially an impromptu alien baby-sitting service was embarrassing beyond words.
'Don't worry about it,' Luke said quietly.
She blushed harder. 'Blast it, Skywalker, stay out of my mind.' She felt his own flush of embarrassment at the unintended intrusion. 'Sorry,' he apologized. 'But I didn't mean it that way. They say they needed to protect you because you were being hunted by the Threateners from the High Tower.'
Mara frowned, her embarrassment abruptly forgotten. 'The Threateners?'
'That's the Qom Jha name for them,' Luke said. 'Beings similar to us, they say, and allied with the Empire.'
'Terrific,' Mara murmured. With her attention these past few days focused on survival and the exploration of her surroundings, the reason why she'd come to Nirauan in the first place had rather been lost in the back of her mind.
But now it was suddenly back in a rush: the mysterious spaceship she and Luke had spotted skulking around the Cavrilhu Pirate base, and the one that later had buzzed Booster Terrik's private Star Destroyer. Alien beings and alien technology, but with a distinctly Imperial flavor mixed into the design. 'So we were right,' she said. 'They
'It's starting to sound that way,' Luke said. 'Though don't forget we only have the Qom Jha word for that. We'll need to check it out for ourselves.'
'Um.' Mara eyed him. 'So they can talk to you, huh?'
'Through the Force, yes.' Luke paused, eyes slightly unfocused as if he were listening to a faint sound. Mara stretched out to the Force herself, but aside from the creatures' normal chirping she could still catch only the familiar almost-voices making almost-words. 'You can't hear that?' he asked.
