Heir to the Empire
Chapter 28
The Story So Far
After Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing sustained damage to its hyperdrive in an altercation with an Imperial Star Destroyer, Grand Admiral Thrawn puts out a bounty for his capture. Perchance (or perhaps something more sinister) Luke is picked up by smuggling lord Talon Karrde, who is reluctant to break his neutrality in the struggle between the Imperial Remnants and the New Republic.
They return to Myrkr, but Luke escapes followed by Mara Jade. Luke crashes both his and his pursuer’s Skipray starfighters in the harsh Mykyr forest. Jade recaptures Luke, marching him at blasterpoint through the forest.
Circumstantially present to witness the chase, Thrawn is told by Karrde that it is an internal dispute. Thrawn departs to prepare for a military operation, but suspecting subterfuge leaves a contingent of stormtroopers to receive the crashed pilots trekking through the wilderness.
Having uncovered the incidental abduction of Luke, Han Solo and Lando Calrissian work with the indebted Karrde to guide Mara and Luke to safety.
In the forest, Luke and Mara receive the encrypted warning of the waiting stormtroopers. After sleepless days of marching, Mara reaches a breaking point and reveals that she was an operative, known as the Emperor’s Hand; the Emperor's death and her own subsequent ruination she blames entirely on him.
Chapter 28
After the catharsis about her past, Mara has dropped her overt hostility and adopted a more surly attitude towards Luke, more willingly working with him to exit the forest.
With the sound of the Imperial speeders echoing around them, Luke and Mara discuss the best strategy for emergence; he stows his lightsaber into R2-D2’s dome for safekeeping, they exchange weapons to swap apparent roles, and Mara applies some erythrogenic/anaphylactic local flora to Luke’s face to obscure his identity.
Prepared, they emerge from the forest into the hands of the Imperials. They are taken to the major in charge of the Imperial contingent who regards them with suspicion. In spite of Luke’s feigned protests, they are both detained until further interrogation in the city.
On Hyllyard’s highstreet, a group of Karrde’s henchmen is relieved of their weapons while delivering a scoundrel — a roughed up Han Solo — for Imperial Justice. However, Han is a plant, here to warn the Imperial detainees of Karrde’s imminent ambush. Seeing a tactical opportunity, Luke creates a commotion so that R2-D2 can inform the ambushers (via C-3PO in binary droid-speak) on the optimal timing for their attack.
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Hosts’ Thoughts
Was that really Chin? Luke didn't identity the froffli haircut
Mara's change is jarring, I would have liked to see more internal conflict from her about the new arrangement
I would love an audio map
“Somewhere in the back of his mind, though, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was the sort of trick a Jedi should use.” Shut the f*** up, Luke
Imperials and their perfect maneuvers
Mention of "hover scouts" reminds me of the droid STAP
Luke seems stuck in some B&W thinking if he's questioning lying to save his own skin