Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [37]
He thought of his younger days, taking a T-16 skyhopper screaming through Beggar’s Canyon on Tatooine, avoiding obstacles, performing daredevil stunts. Right now Mara Jade was just showing off—and he decided to let her blow off steam. She probably wanted to rattle him, but it wouldn’t work.
Below, the dense greenery looked like clouds of foliage. Mara stormed along, her eyes fixed on her piloting. The Massassi temple dropped away in the distance, but Luke wasn’t worried. Though Mara had repeatedly tried to kill him in the past, he now trusted her implicitly. Luke smiled to himself at the irony of their situation.
“So,” he said, “what is it you wanted to talk about?”
“Got some information for you,” she answered, flicking a glance toward him, then looking away just as quickly. “In my work with the Smugglers’ Alliance I keep my eyes and ears open. Sometimes I hear things the New Republic should know about.”
Luke raised his eyebrows. “Such as?”
Mara pretended to frown. “You expect me to give you important information like that for free?”
Luke stared at her in silence for a full second, then smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”
Mara laughed. “That doesn’t surprise me a bit from you, Skywalker,” she said. “All right. You know the Smugglers’ Alliance was specifically set up to provide a strong front against some of the more powerful crime organizations, especially the Hutts.”
“Yes,” Luke agreed, suspecting where this might lead.
“We keep tabs on the Hutts’ comings and goings, since they’re our enemies—or perhaps I should say ‘competitors.’ Recently they clamped down on our usual information sources. They’ve been building up what appears to be a respectable front—several commercial corporations, the most prominent of which is Orko SkyMine, a mineral resource development consortium.”
“Shouldn’t we be happy that the Hutts are trying to be ‘respectable,’ as Lando Calrissian would have put it?”
“We’d be happy—if we could believe them,” Mara said, then concentrated on flying again as a thermal up-draft buffeted them. The wind rattled the transparisteel windows of her craft, and she banked to the left around a volcanic rock outcrop. She increased altitude. “But you know as well as I do that you can never really believe what the Hutts say.” She looked at Luke again. “I think they’re up to something. Something big.”
Luke kept his expression bland. “Even though I’m just a Jedi teacher, I have a few sources of information of my own. And I’m inclined to believe your suspicions are right, Mara Jade.”
She blinked in surprise. “Ah. So my coming here was unnecessary?”
Luke shook his head. “Your coming to Yavin 4 is never unnecessary. What did you want me to do with this information?”
“I thought you might take it to your sister on Coruscant. As the Chief of State, she can probably think of something to head off trouble.”
Luke tapped his fingers together, consciously relaxing in the face of Mara’s breakneck piloting. “You could have just gone there yourself. Isn’t Yavin 4 a bit out of your way just to deliver a message?”
Mara took a deep breath. “I wanted to do this quietly. Since I’m with the Smugglers’ Alliance, I need to keep things low-key. My involvement shouldn’t be too obvious. Talon Karrde taught me that.”
“I see,” Luke said. “How is Karrde? Still retired?”
“Hah!” she said. “More than a few months of relaxation was enough to bring him to the brink of insanity and boredom. He’s back at it and busier than ever, with his hands in more schemes than I can keep track of.”
She pulled her nimble craft hard to starboard in a tight loop and shot over the treetops back toward the Great Temple. “The other reason I came in person,” Mara continued with some uneasiness, “is that occasionally—for some unknown reason—I almost look forward to seeing you, Skywalker. Not often … but there are times.”
“And this