Under The Cover Of Darkness

Chapter Nine

"So. Walk me through your exact objectives for the children."

Volyn narrowed her eyes as she focused in on Mara. "Here?" Her tone was scathingly dubious.

But Mara just shrugged, her demeanor utterly unaffected. "Why not? Either we can't go back, it's all moot, and we get some amusement horrifying the Jedi, or we can go back, they can't stop us from the past, and we get some amusement horrifying the Jedi."

Luke was pretending to be asleep in his cell. Mara carefully did nothing that might be expected to wake him; the conversation was going to be hard enough for him to overhear.

Rolling her eyes, Volyn answered, "Torture. Brainwashing. Unshakeable loyalty to the Empire. The works."

"We doing this at another Sith Temple?" Mara asked, careful not to seem too interested in the idea of a location. "Because the one we broke Skywalker at, that additional power was useful."

"Force users," Volyn scoffed, but lightly. Idly. "Always chasing your damn highs."

"You dare—!" The Inquisitor burst out of his brooding silence. He stuck his face, burning and contorted with rage, right up to the bars and double forcefields that separated their cells. His face was inches from Volyn's. "You mock the power of the Dark Side!"

Volyn's snort was one of those occasional things that made Mara doubt the bounty hunter's actual opinion of the Inquisitor, but it might just have been an occupational hazard. "I mock a lot of things."

"And you take your life into your own—"

"Relax," Mara cut in, drawling. She sharply regretted that she couldn't sit back and let her enemies tear into each other. Verbally or otherwise. "She has no idea what she's missing."

The process of the Inquisitor deciding to force his rage down was entertaining to watch. "You're right," he said, finally. "She has no idea how pathetic and empty her life truly is. She's simply jealous of her betters."

"Whatever you want to tell yourself," Volyn said, her voice like ice.

And that was the firm end of that conversation. Without any word on the children.

Mara would just have to keep trying.

---

The problem was, of course, that Volyn was a reticent bastard of a woman, and the Inquisitor was just an insane fanatic. So getting anything at all out of them would be extremely, extremely difficult.

But without Volyn and the Inquisitor thinking that Mara and Luke were also Sith, getting anything out of them would have been impossible.

Luke, Mara knew, hated lying to his father and Ben and, by proxy, Yoda, although the Grandmaster of the Order had yet to grace them with his presence. From what Mara had gathered by watching the Council's interactions, Yoda was too busy serving as the public face of the Order and taking care of Jedi business and war business. Despite the fact that, as far as Mara could tell, Mace Windu was the one actually responsible for running the Order.

Much to her surprise. And Luke's.

Jedi records from the Old Republic had been...sparse.

So Yoda's preoccupation could only be a good thing, since Mara knew the last thing he wanted was to have to lie to the Master who'd taught him the most and the longest.

Also, being interrogated by Yoda was likely where Luke's acting abilities would fail him. Especially given that, Mara knew, Luke almost wanted them to.

He wouldn't give the game away on purpose, she knew. But he wanted it to be over.

The only problem was that they couldn't reveal the truth until they had the locations from the children. Because after everything Luke and Mara had said and done, the Jedi would never, ever believe them. What little chance of that there had been, it had been dealt a serious blow with Luke's attack on Obi-Wan. And with the revelation of Obi-Wan's possession, that chance had vanished almost entirely.