Abruptly, she slammed the survival kit lid shut and scooped it up. “Move!” she snapped, gesturing away from the wrecked fighters. With her blaster hand she picked up the flat box she’d been carrying and wedged it under her left arm. “Into the trees-both of you. I said move!”
There was something in her voice-command, or urgency, or both-that stifled argument or even question. Within a handful of seconds Luke and Artoo were under cover of the nearest trees. “Farther in,” she ordered. “Come on, move it.”
Belatedly, it occurred to Luke that this might all be some macabre joke-that all Mara really wanted was to shoot him in the back and be able to claim afterward that he’d been running away. But she was right behind him, close enough that he could hear her breathing and occasionally feel the tip of her blaster as it brushed his back. They made it perhaps ten meters farther in-Luke leaned down to help Artoo across a particularly wide root-
“Far enough,” Mara hissed in his ear. “Hide the droid and then hit dirt.”
Luke got Artoo over the root and behind a tree … and as he dropped down beside Mara, he suddenly understood.
Hanging in midair over the wrecked fighters, rotating slowly like a hovering raptor searching for prey, was an Imperial shuttle.
A small motion caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head to look directly into the muzzle of Mara’s blaster. “Not a move,” she whispered, her breath warm on his cheek. “Not a sound.”
He nodded understanding and turned back to watch the shuttle. Mara slid her arm over his shoulders, pressed her blaster into the hinge of his jaw, and did the same.
The shuttle finished its circle and settled gingerly to the torn-up ground between the ruined fighters. Even before it was completely down, the ramp dropped and began disgorging stormtroopers.
Luke watched as they split up and headed off to search the two ships, the strangeness of the whole situation adding an unreal tinge to the scene. There, less than twenty meters away, was Mara’s golden opportunity to turn him over to the Imperials … and yet, here they both lay, hiding behind a tree root and trying not to breathe too loudly. Had she suddenly changed her mind?
Or was it simply that she didn’t want any witnesses nearby when she killed him?
In which case, Luke realized abruptly, his best chance might actually be to find some way of surrendering to the stormtroopers. Once away from this planet, with the Force as his ally again, he would at least have a fighting chance. If he could just find a way to distract Mara long enough to get rid of her blaster …
Lying pressed against his side, her arm slung across his shoulders, she must have sensed the sudden tensing of muscles. “Whatever you’re thinking about trying, don’t,” she breathed in his ear, digging her blaster a little harder into his skin. “I can easily claim you were holding me prisoner out here and that I managed to snatch the blaster away from you.”
Luke swallowed, and settled in to wait.
The wait wasn’t very long. Two groups of stormtroopers disappeared into the fighters, while the rest walked around the edge of the newly created clearing, probing with eyes and portable sensors into the forest. After a few minutes those inside the fighters emerged, and what seemed to be a short meeting was held between them at the base of the shuttle ramp. At an inaudible command the outer ring of searchers came back in to join them, and the whole crowd trooped into their ship. The ramp sealed, and the shuttle disappeared once more into the sky, leaving nothing but the hum of its repulsorlifts behind. A minute later, even that was gone.
Luke got his hands under him, started to get up. “Well-“
He broke off at another jab of the blaster. “Quiet,” Mara muttered. “They’ll have left a sensor behind, just in case someone comes back.”
Luke frowned. “How do you know?”
“Because that’s standard stormtrooper procedure in a case like this,” she growled. “Real quiet, now; we get up and grab some more distance. And keep the droid quiet, too.”
They were completely out of sight of the wrecked fighters, and probably another fifty meters past that, before she called a halt. “What now?” Luke asked.
“We sit down,” she told him.
Luke nodded and eased to the ground. “Thank you for not turning me in to the stormtroopers.”
“Save it,” she said shortly, sitting down carefully herself and laying her blaster on the ground beside her. “Don’t worry, there wasn’t anything altruistic about it. The incoming shuttles must have seen us and sent a group over to investigate. Karrde’s going to have to spin them some sort of sugar story about what happened, and I can’t just walk into their arms until I know what that story is.” She set the small flat box on her lap and opened it.