“You could call him,” Luke reminded her.
“I could also call the Imperials directly and save myself some time,” she retorted. “Unless you don’t think they’ve got the equipment to monitor anything I send. Now shut up; I’ve got work to do.”
For a few minutes she worked at the flat box in silence, fiddling with a tiny keyboard and frowning at something Luke couldn’t see from his angle. At irregular intervals she looked up, apparently to make sure he wasn’t trying anything. Luke waited; and abruptly she grunted in satisfaction. “Three days,” she said aloud, closing the box.
“Three days to what?” Luke asked.
“The edge of the forest,” she told him, gazing at him with unblinking eyes. “Civilization. Well, Hyllyard City, anyway, which is about as close as this part of the planet gets to it.”
“And how many of us will be going there?” Luke asked quietly.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she agreed, her tone icy. “Can you give me any reason why I should bother taking you along?”
“Sure.” Luke inclined his head to the side. “Artoo.”
“Don’t be absurd.” Her eyes flicked to the droid, back at Luke, “Whatever happens, the droid stays here. In pieces.”
Luke stared at her. “In pieces?”
“What, you need it spelled out?” she retorted. “The droid knows too much. We can’t leave it here for the stormtroopers to find.”
“Knows too much about what?”
“You, of course. You, Karrde, me-this whole stupid mess.” Artoo moaned softly. “He won’t tell them anything,” Luke insisted.
“Not after it’s in pieces, no,” Mara agreed.
With an effort, Luke forced himself to calm down. Logic, not fervor, was the only way to change her mind. “We need him,” he told her. “You told me yourself the forest was dangerous. Artoo has sensors that can spot predators before they get close enough to strike.”
“Maybe; maybe not,” she countered. “The vegetation here limits sensor ranges down to practically zero.”
“It’ll still be better than you or I could do,” Luke said. “And he’ll also be able to watch while we’re sleeping.”
She raised her eyebrows slightly. “We?”
“We,” Luke said. “I don’t think he’ll be willing to protect you unless I’m along.”
Mara shook her head. “No good,” she said, picking up her blaster. “I can get along without him. And I certainly don’t need you.”
Luke felt his throat tighten. “Are you sure you’re not letting your emotions get in the way of your judgment?” he asked.
He hadn’t thought her eyes could get any harder than they already were. He was wrong. “Let me tell you something, Skywalker,” she said in a voice almost too soft for him to hear. “I’ve wanted to kill you for a long time. I dreamed about your death every night for most of that first year. Dreamed it, plotted it-I must have run through a thousand scenarios, trying to find exactly the right way to do it. You can call it a cloud on my judgment if you want to; I’m used to it by now. It’s the closest thing I’ve got a permanent companion.”
Luke looked back into those eyes, shaken right down to the core of his soul. “What did I do to you?” he whispered.
“You destroyed my life,” she said bitterly. “It’s only fair that I destroy yours.”
“Will killing me bring your old life back?”
“You know better than that,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “But it’s still something I have to do. For myself, and for-” She broke off.
“What about Karrde?” Luke asked. “What about him?”
“I thought he still wanted me kept alive.”
She snorted. “We all want things we can’t have.”
But for just a second, there was something in her eyes. Something else that had flickered through the hatred …
But whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. “I almost wish I could drag it out a little more,” she said, glacially calm again as she lifted the blaster. “But I don’t have the time to spare.”
Luke stared at the muzzle of her blaster, his mind frantically searching for inspiration … “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly. “You said you needed to find out what Karrde had told the Imperials. What if I could get you a secure comm channel to him?”
The muzzle of the blaster wavered. “How?” she asked suspiciously.
Luke nodded toward her survival kit. “Does the communicator in there have enough range to reach back to the base? I mean, without satellite boosting or anything.”