#unexpected consequences

It hadn’t taken much further before they crossed one of the small clearings the forest was dotted with and sent the encrypted message to Karrde. Mara insisted they push on further before stopping at a large tree bole and underneath its canopy as the last bit of dark blue faded from the gaps between the leaves leaving blackness above them. “We’ll make camp here.” She eased down and pulled out the survival kit’s worklight and set it to its lowest setting. Now that the most pressing survival needs have been answered, she had time to pay attention to her throbbing ankle and the two people she hadn’t expected to become traveling companions. She had hoped to get a spare moment to confess to Skywalker, but now she was second guessing that. His family were all targeted by Thrawn.

Lucinda took the make camp announcement as time to talk. She closed in on Luke. “You’re Luke Skywalker. Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker.”

He opened his survival kit. “I am.”

“You blew up the Death Star.”

“The first one I did.” He pulled the thermal blanket from the kit.

“You killed Jabba the Hutt.”

Mara wondered where this hero worship came from. She hadn’t passed on any Luke Skywalker stories to Lucinda and she had made sure the history lessons were accurate for the events and not holodrama stories. She pulled a glow rod out from her survival kit, so it would be out and ready.

He flattened the blanket next to the tree. “No, I fought all his guards and bounty hunters which gave my sister the chance to kill him.”

Lucinda grinned. “Dankin is telling it wrong!”

So it’s Dankin’s fault, Mara thought ruefully.

“You’re Luke Skywalker,” Lucinda’s voice got serious. “What are you doing on Myrkr?”

And I haven’t taught her how to not give information away.

“Ask your mother.”

Mara cocked her head as she glared at him. She couldn’t believe he just said that.

He ignored her glare as he held out his hand. “Let’s treat your leg.”

“It’s fine,” she insisted.

“It’s not and you should not hike for three days on a damaged limb.”

Becoming a Jedi had improved his confidence, Mara observed, but she wasn’t sure if she approved of that right now. “It’s just my ankle and you can’t do Jedi magic to it, not on Myrkr.”

“I was going to do Rebel-trained medpac on it. You have a problem with that?”

She grabbed his hand and he leveraged her up and then set her on the thermal blanket. He shifted her survival kit with the lit worklight to her feet. He lifted up the right leg and pushed the survival kit under to use as a foot rest.

Lucinda waited until both adults were settled. “Mommy, why is Luke Skywalker here?”

Mara glared at Luke again, but he ignored it as he untied her boot. She set the glow rod in her lap and drew her blaster out of the forearm holster. “You need to watch for vornskrs.” She held out the blaster.

Luci took it and turned to face the dark forest with excellent form. She had practiced that at least while Mara was away. Luke’s expression was sabacc-blank, so he was hiding how he truly felt. “You think an eight-year-old is too young to know how to shoot.”

His eyebrows raised at her snappish tone. “Has someone critiqued your parenting? I was shooting a Czerka 6-2Aug2 hunting rifle when I was her age.”

She was expecting critique and argument about what she had done for nine years. And her fear of losing Lucinda still hadn’t recovered from learning what Thrawn was up to only to get revved up by seeing her childhood lessons in action followed by stormtroopers who would add the Jades to Thrawn’s collection of Force sensitives. And it all could’ve been avoid had Luke just waited in the shed. Luke peeled off her sock and Mara sucked in her breath from the throbbing and swelling.

Lucinda looked over her shoulder. “You had a slugthrower when you were a kid? Why?”

“Watch the forest,” Mara reminded her.

Luci huffed but she turned her head back. The droid rocked into place to Mara’s right and rotated a sensor dish extended from its dome, so both side of the camp were covered.

Luke dug for the medpac out of his survival kit. “Blasters are expensive on worlds with harsh climates, which Tatooine qualifies. Slugthrowers take less maintenance, and you can make slugs if you want to take the time.” He found the medscanner and aimed it at her ankle. “Second-degree sprain. I think you hurt it worse with the running.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to slowly saunter away from stormtroopers,” Mara said.

His gaze went back to the medpac. “You should have just turned me in.”

Her back straightened right off the tree bole, but his grip on her leg kept that from jerking off the improvised foot rest. “You idiot! I was trying to keep them from learning we had you, which you didn’t help at all.”

He found the flexible tape and began winding it around her ankle and foot to immobilize it. That he was doing properly. “They came to dinner,” he said without looking up.

“No, they were uninvited. We had another set of guests that Karrde figured didn’t need to know about you. And since we haven’t heard any orbital bombardment, Karrde got them safely out of Imperial sight.” She took a deep breath against the throbbing in her ankle. “For the last time, I don’t want to see you in Imperial hands. Especially now that they have ysalamiri. And if Karrde decided differently, I was planning on telling you that and equipping you to help your escape.”

He looked up at her face, the lingering suspicion clearing from his blue eyes. Her heart turned over in her chest. Nine years, nine years, she should not still have a weakness for those blue eyes after nine years!

Mara’s other weakness scuffed her foot against a root. “Why are the Imperials after him? It it just ‘cause you’re New Republic or is it something else?” Lucinda didn’t turn around with her questions this time.

Mara leaned back against the bole with a sigh. “The Imperials have a new bounty out on him since he broke his hyperdrive getting away from them. We found him on the Wild Karrde’s last flight.”

“You found me.” Luke concentrated on winding the flexible tape around her foot. “Karrde gave you all the credit for that.”

Mara really didn’t want to get into a philosophical debate over what the Force was doing by leading her to him after nine years. So she went with her lingering outrage. “Why didn’t you just stay put?”

He sighed. “I am sorry for all this. I was trying to get you out of divided loyalties.”

He did it for her? She shook her head, of course he did. “Only you could cause this much trouble doing someone a favor, Luke.”

“Lucinda’s father,” he nodded at the little girl without looking at Mara, “must be going crazy back at the base.”

Oh damn. She wasn’t ready for this conversation. Not in front of Lucinda, not to put them both on the spot without any reflection on it. “He’s not—”

Lucinda interrupted. “He doesn’t care about me. He left Mommy knocked up.”

“Who told you that?!” Mara demanded looking at Lucinda’s back. She suspected Karrde had some theories that he was using this whole situation to find answers for, but if he was questioning her daughter behind her back, he would rue it.

Luci’s shoulders jerked up to her ears. “Ghent,” she answered sounding sorry to get the young man in trouble.

That was less troubling. Mara sighed. “Do not get biographical details of your life from Ghent; he wasn’t there. We didn’t meet him until you were three and I had to give you the job of keeping him fed because he only looked up from his consoles when he was getting shot at.” She looked at Luke, who was pretending to be fascinated with her ankle. “Her father doesn’t work for Karrde.”

Luke met her eyes with his own. “And didn’t keep in touch.”

She didn’t want him to feel bad about that. She smiled, “You may have missed it, but there was a war going on.”

“Still going on.” Luke’s shoulders slumped slightly as he finished wrapping her ankle, and put the flexible tape away.

“Wait, he was running away from the base.” Lucinda’s voice was puzzled as she faced the forest. “You found him, but he was running away. You were trying to keep him here?”

“Captain Karrde was keeping Jedi Skywalker here.” Mara kept her voice calm. Lucinda was about to go shrill over this, which was probably something else to blame Luke for. “I was trying to keep the Imperials from finding him.”

Lucinda whirled around to face the adults and remembered to aim the blaster at the ground. “But Captain Karrde can’t just keep people! It’s wrong!”

And there it was. Luke smothered his laugh as he set a medical cold pack over her bandaged ankle. Well, if Karrde hadn’t had a hellacious time with this venture of who will pay more for a Jedi yet, the Jades would finish that off. “Luci-love, when we get back to the base, I’ll make sure that you tell Captain Karrde keeping people is wrong and you can explain in great detail.”

Lucinda considered that. “Will you lose your job? I’ll do it, but you like this job.”

“After this fiasco, I’m sure Captain Karrde has learned his lesson.” Mara held her hand out for the blaster. She was looking at a suspicious shadow behind Luke.

The droid’s dome rotated a few degrees and it gave a quiet gurgle. “I think Artoo’s picked up something.” Luke twisted to face the darkness.

“No kidding,” Mara said. She aimed the glow rod’s beam over Luke’s shoulder.

A vornskr stood in the circle of light, its front claws dug into the ground, its whip tail pointed stiffly back and waving slowly up and down. It ignored the light as it stepped forward, its attention focused on Luke.

The beast stepped forward twice before the blaster bolt went neatly through its head. It collapsed to the ground, its tail giving one last twitch before doing likewise.

“Be faster on the trigger next time, Lucinda,” Mara corrected. She played the glow rod over the area, but there were no more suspicious shadows.

“Sorry, I thought the light might scare it off.”

“We know better now,” Luke said. “Thank you.” He nodded at her before he dug into the medpac again.

Lucinda grinned as she nearly skipped to Mara’s side and handed back to the holdout blaster. Mara drew her down to sit next to her. Luci yawned and pulled Mara’s arm around her.

“Are Karrde’s pet vornskrs a different species?” Luke asked. “Or did he have their tails removed?”

Mara blinked at him, impressed at his Jedi calm in spite of herself. Most men staring down a vornskr’s gullet wouldn’t have noticed a detail like that. “The latter,” she told him. “They use those tails as whips—pretty painful, and there’s a mild poison in them too. At first it was just that Karrde didn’t want his people walking around with whip welts all over them; he found out later that removing the tails also kills a lot of their normal hunting aggression.”

“They seemed pretty domestic,” he said. “Even friendly.”

“They were friendly to you?” Lucinda exclaimed. “They keep trying to eat me.”

“They weren’t that friendly,” Mara admitted. “They do better around people who aren’t Force sensitive. Karrde’s thought occasionally about offering them for sale as guard animals. Never gotten around to exploring the potential market.”

“Well, you can tell him I’d be glad to serve as a reference.” Luke said dryly. “Having looked a vornskr square in the teeth, I can tell you it’s not something the average intruder would like to do twice.” He moved to Mara’s right side and poured some tablets into the palm of his right hand. “Pain killers.” He held them out to her.

She shook her head. “Those will blunt my reaction time.”

Exasperation finally crossed his face. “I can shoot the vornskrs tonight. You have to rest that ankle.”

She glared at him but half-heartedly, and then took his hand and licked the three tablets from the palm. That contact jolted him from his Jedi stoicism and a flush spread over his face. He looked away, abashed. There was a glimpse of the younger man she had known within the Jedi. She passed the holdout blaster to him.

He walked around to settle on the left and pressed his back against the tree. Lucinda yawned again between them and snuggled closer to Mara. “Myrkr,” he said softly. “Reminds me of Endor. A forest always sounds so busy at night.”

“Oh, it’s busy, all right,” Mara said. “A lot of the animals here are nocturnal. Including the vornskrs.”

“Strange,” he murmured. “Karrde’s pets seemed wide enough awake in late afternoon.”

She wanted to rest her head on his shoulder. Luckily, the space between them prevented it. “Actually, even in the wild they take small naps around the clock. I call them nocturnal because they do most of their hunting at night.”

He mulled that over for a moment. “Maybe we ought to travel at night, then,” he suggested. “They’ll be hunting us either way—at least then we’d be awake and alert while they were on the prowl.”

Mara shook her head. “It’d be more trouble than it’s worth. We need to be able to see the terrain as far ahead as possible if we’re going to avoid running into dead ends. Besides, this whole forest is dotted with small clearings.”

“Through which a glow rod beam would show very clearly to an orbiting ship. Okay, we’ll travel by day. Good night, Mara.”