Chapter Text
“YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER,” the Emperor’s voice told Mara, repeating the same words that she had heard so many times already in the weeks since his death at Endor. But Mara knew killing Skywalker wouldn’t accomplish anything. His death, satisfying as it would be to avenge her former master, wouldn’t bring the Emperor back from the dead. It wouldn’t restore the status that she had once held within the Empire, reunite the Moffs who were already squabbling more with each other than with the Rebellion that was growing stronger by the minute, or get Isard’s people off of her back.
Instead, Mara had something better in mind. When the Emperor had shown her around his top-secret Mount Tantiss facility years ago, he had made her memorize the location of one artifact in particular. A Sith holocron, created by the legendary Darth Aevus untold thousands of years ago. The gold-trimmed red pyramid hadn’t seemed special to Mara at the time, but Palpatine had called it his failsafe device. A guarantee that events would turn out his way. He hadn’t told Mara what it would do, only that she would know when and how to use it. He had never mentioned it again after that day, but Mara figured she might as well activate it and see what happens. Not like it could make the situation any worse for her or the rest of the Empire.
And that was why Mara currently found herself descending through Wayland’s atmosphere. She transmitted her access codes to the Mount Tantiss facility, simultaneously opening the hangar doors and informing the Guardian that she was a friend. Luckily, Isard and her allies hadn’t discovered the base yet, and Mara was able to land without incident. Mara retraced her steps back to the innermost vault, located at the far end of the longest corridor in the facility, one level above the cloning chamber.
After only a few minutes, Mara located the holocron. She slowly turned it over and inspected its surface, looking for anything that looked like it might be a power button. Failing to find that, she looked back into the crate that had been holding the holocron. Maybe the Emperor had left some instructions behind for her. But she had no such luck. She was about to start rifling through the rest of the objects in the room to find the instructions when she remembered what the Emperor had told her that day: The Sith were an ancient organization of Force users.
Which wouldn’t have been a problem if the Emperor hadn’t done, well, whatever it was that happened when he died. Her connection to the Force hadn’t felt the same ever since. Mara knelt on the ground and placed the holocron in front of her. It was all she could do to just reach out to the holocron and prod it with the Force. A task that, just weeks ago, would have been as easy as flipping a light switch, now required every bit of her concentration and strength in the Force. It reminded her of the early days of her training when the Emperor had first taught her the basics of telekinesis.
After a few seconds, though, it seemed to work. The holocron levitated off the ground and began to glow an eerie blood-red, while the temperature of the air around her plummeted. A red-tinged hologram shimmered into existence around the device, depicting a Wookiee-sized humanoid being. The holocron was embedded inside the image itself, right where the being’s heart would have been were they not a hologram. The being’s features were entirely concealed by a dull gray metal mask with an intricate pattern carved into it. The slits for the wearer to see through were as dark as space itself, leaving no hint as to what said wearer might look like underneath. The rest of the being’s body was covered in a dark floor-length hooded cloak, leaving Mara no clues as to their species or gender. They had a lightsaber clipped to their belt, with a wire extending from the base of the hilt around their right side and presumably connecting to something on their back.
“WHO DARES DISTURB THE GREAT DARK LORD AEVUS?” a voice boomed from every direction at once, deeper than any Human could manage. It sounded like what Mara imagined a Hutt might sound like if one were to ever speak Basic.
“Mara Jade,” she introduced herself, for once not using an alias. If Palpatine had sent her here, she figured she could probably trust this ‘Lord Aevus’. “The Emperor’s Hand. He told me that this holocron holds the key to a failsafe device.”
“Perhaps it does,” Aevus replied. His voice still seemed to be coming from all around Mara, but at least he was now speaking at a somewhat normal volume. “I take it the almighty Darth Sidious has fallen? Why else would he send one of his pathetic minions crawling back to me?”
Darth Sidious? Mara had never heard that name before, but she assumed that it might have been some kind of alias for Palpatine. Aevus had clearly made the connection the moment she mentioned the Emperor.
“Emperor Palpatine is dead,” Mara admitted. “Killed by a Jedi Knight. I need to activate his failsafe device.”
Aevus laughed. “I told him the Jedi wouldn’t be gone forever. The fool didn’t believe me, and look what that got him. Why should I help him fix whatever mess he created?”
“To avenge his death?” Mara suggested.
Aevus laughed again. “I’d have killed him myself were I not trapped in this holocron. He was a pathetic excuse for a Sith Lord, and I doubt he could have survived a week on Korriban. The coward spent so much time scheming and plotting and planning, and for what? Not once did he ever lead an army into battle, wield the full power of the dark side against his rivals, or even allow any of his poorly-trained servants to challenge what little power he had.”
“He single-handedly destroyed the entire Jedi Order,” Mara countered.
“Evidently not, if his killer is a Jedi Knight.”
“And he has been ruling the entire galaxy since before I was born.”
“Hardly an accomplishment when there are no other Sith to challenge him for the throne,” Aevus spat before the hologram flickered out of existence. The holocron’s red glow dimmed down to nothingness over the next few seconds as it lowered itself back down to the ground, and the room abruptly warmed back up to its previous temperature.
Mara swore at the ancient Sith Lord before picking up the holocron and returning to her ship. She wasn’t sure how long she had before Isard discovered this place, or if she would be able to crack the holocron and activate the failsafe before then. Better to play it safe and make sure she wasn’t here when any other Imperials arrived, even if that meant she would have to come back later to activate the device. Would the Emperor have even stored both the key and the device in the same location? Mara had to admit that that didn’t sound like something he would do. Mount Tantiss might have held the biggest and most secretive storehouse the Emperor had left behind, but she knew it was far from the only one out there.
Once Mara was in hyperspace going to nowhere in particular, she began to probe the holocron again. But she couldn’t get it to activate this time. Was she still too drained from the first attempt back in the storehouse, or was Aevus deliberately ignoring her? Mara couldn’t tell. So she set it aside and tried again the next day.
The next time she reached out to the holocron, it reacted almost instantly. Just like before, it began to glow and levitate, and the air around her suddenly became very cold.
“I have already told you I will not help you avenge the death of Darth Sidious,” the hologram said as soon as it appeared.
“I know,” Mara replied. “But suppose you did. What do you have to offer me, should you choose to help?”
“Anything you’ve ever wanted,” Aevus replied.
“What if I want to restore the Empire to what it used to be? Could you resurrect the Emperor, rebuild the Death Star, or reunite the Moffs?”
“I could give you the power to do that yourself,” Aevus said. “All of that, and more.”
“How?”
“Sidious told you where to find me but not what I can do for you?”
“He told me that this holocron contains the key to a failsafe device. Can you give me that key and tell me how to activate the device?”
Aevus laughed. “Sidious really has done a terrible job with your training. Were you really a Sith, you never would have asked that question. A true Sith would not ask before taking what they want. If you truly deserve the information you seek, you would have the strength to take it from me and I would be powerless to stop you.”
Mara thought about what Aevus said for a few seconds before she replied. It did sound like something the Emperor would have taught her. “But how am I supposed to know what to take, if you haven’t told me what you can do?”
“Fine. Not like you’ll be able to take it either way. I have the power to transport you through time, to any moment past or future of your choosing. But you must earn that power.”
Mara felt her heart begin to beat faster. Time travel? Maybe she could find a better way to fulfill her final orders from the Emperor. She could kill Luke Skywalker before he ever joined the Rebel Alliance. The traitors would be crushed at Yavin, and there would be nobody left to dispute the Emperor’s power. Aevus had been telling the truth. He really could give her everything she wanted. But how could she find Skywalker? Mentally, she ran through every file the Empire had on him. Born to an unknown mother at an unknown location some time around the founding of the Empire, raised on an unknown planet. The man didn’t even appear in the Empire’s records at all until the Rebels began to venerate him as a hero after Yavin. That suggested he probably didn’t come from anywhere in or near the Core Worlds, but that still left her with most of the galaxy to search. The one potentially useful bit of information she had was the name of the man Luke claimed as his father: Anakin Skywalker, the Republic war hero who had given his life to thwart the Jedi Order’s attempt to assassinate Palpatine at the end of the Clone Wars.
“Tell me,” Aevus suggested. “If you were to earn this power, what would you do with it?”
“I would prevent the Jedi from ever joining the Rebellion.”
“Why? Because it’s what you want, or because it’s what your master demands?”
“To get my old place back at the Emperor’s side. Put an end to the Rebellion before it takes off. Prevent the civil war that has been raging for the last four years. Bring peace to the galaxy.”
“Peace is a lie,” Aevus snarled.
Mara didn’t know how to respond to that.
A few seconds later, Aevus asked, “How do you plan to kill the Jedi?”
“He is the son of Anakin Skywalker,” Mara said. “If you send me back to before he was born, I can kill his father and make sure he never exists.”
At the mention of the name ‘Skywalker,’ Aevus suddenly dropped the hostile act. “Yes, I believe that can be arranged. When was Skywalker’s son born?” His face was still concealed by the mask, but Mara could imagine him smiling beneath it.
Mara was a bit wary of the shift in the Sith Lord’s demeanor. One second, Aevus had been taunting her, telling her all about his powers while treating her as if she didn’t deserve to be in his presence. She had been convinced that he wouldn’t help her. But now, he seemed to be on her side. But he was her best hope to succeed, so she ignored her doubts and answered the question. “I’m not sure about the exact date,” she admitted. “But it was some time around year zero on the Empire’s calendar.”
“A calendar I am not familiar with,” Aevus countered.
“Alright,” Mara said, doing a bit of quick mental math and hoping she remembered her pre-Imperial history. “I think that would be about sixteen on the Old Republic’s calendar if you go by the Great ReSynchronization, or nine hundred and eighty something on the Ruusan Reformation calendar.”
“If you cannot give the date on the old Sith Empire’s calendar, I cannot help you,” Aevus said.
That might be a problem. Mara hadn’t even heard of the Sith Empire, let alone studied its calendar. For a moment, she feared she might have to go back to Wayland to look it up in the Emperor’s library. But then another idea popped into her mind. “Did you know Palpatine - uh, ‘Darth Sidious’ - before he became the Emperor?”
“I first met him before he became a senator, back when he was even younger than you are now.”
“Did he tell you when he became the Emperor?”
Aevus nodded.
“I need to go back to one year before the date he told you about that.”
“I believe that can be arranged,” Aevus replied after a moment.
“How do I do it?” Mara asked.
“Follow my instructions,” said Aevus. “To begin, clear your mind of all distractions. Focus on everyone and everything that you want to bring with you.”
Mara imagined her ship and all of the equipment she kept on board. The various disguises and fake IDs she had used in her service to the Emperor, the array of blasters and other weapons stored in the armory - YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER, Palpatine’s message interrupted with a brief flash of the usual vision. For a split second, she could feel Luke Skywalker’s presence in the Force as clearly as if he was standing right next to her. She pushed the thought out of her mind and refocused on the task, picturing her stash of just about every type of currency used throughout the known galaxy, her standard-issue Imperial datapad, and anything else she could think of that might come in handy.
“Excellent,” Aevus said after a few seconds. “Now, picture where you want to be.”
Mara hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. She wasn’t sure where the elder Skywalker might have been a year from the end of the Clone Wars, or how she might be able to make contact with the man who at the time had been known as the Chancellor. But she suspected this might be her only opportunity to activate the failsafe, so she wasn’t going to let that stop her. She focused on her present location in the void of interstellar space, knowing that she’d be able to figure out the rest after she was in the past.
“Are you sure?” Aevus asked.
Mara nodded. “What next?”
“Now, allow me to finish the job,” Aevus replied. The holocron’s glow grew brighter and brighter until it was nearly blinding to look at. It rose higher off the ground and began to rotate, slowly at first but picking up speed as the light grew more intense. With one final brilliant flash of light, it was over. The hologram of Aevus disappeared, the red glow faded into nothingness, and the holocron came to a stop and gently descended back to the ground in front of Mara.
“It is done,” Aevus’s disembodied voice said just before the holocron crumbled into a pile of dust.
Mara powered up her datapad and tried to log into the HoloNet, hoping to find some kind of useful information about Skywalker. Maybe, if she was lucky, a Republic propaganda piece could tell her where their most famous general was. And immediately, she was hit with a whole slew of error messages telling her that her datapad wasn’t recognized. So she rebooted the device into compatibility mode, hoping that it would be enough to interface with the outdated network.
Luckily, it worked. But as soon as Mara saw the date, she realized that something was wrong. It was only a few months before the formation of the Empire, not a year like she had wanted. The request that she made to Aevus came back to her. One year before the date he told you about that, she had said. Not one year to the date of the Empire’s formation, she realized, one year to the date that the Emperor told Aevus about it. Apparently he hadn’t told Aevus right away. And now there was a pretty good chance that Luke Skywalker had already been born, or would be within the next few months. It would make her job harder, but she still had time. If she was too late to kill Anakin Skywalker, she could go after the mother. And if that failed, she still had about nineteen years to track down the kid before Yavin. Or, in the worst-case scenario, four more years between then and Endor.
Briefly, she wondered what had caused the sudden change in Aevus’s demeanor. When she first connected with the holocron, he had been dismissive and hadn’t seemed like he was interested in helping her or the Emperor. But as soon as she mentioned Skywalker’s name, Aevus practically gave her the secrets contained within the holocron. How would a being who died thousands of years ago have known that name in the first place? Maybe the Emperor had told Aevus about him. But what could he have said to incite such hatred of the Republic’s general? Perhaps Aevus had learned how Skywalker thwarted the Jedi’s attempt to assassinate Palpatine and seize power for themselves the night before the formation of the Empire. And of course she couldn’t ask Aevus about any of this anymore. She hated starting a mission without all of the necessary intel, but it was too late to back out now.
Luke Skywalker had seriously underestimated the amount of paperwork involved in signing his command of Rogue Squadron away to Wedge Antilles. But once it was taken care of, hopefully he would have some time to work on rebuilding the Jedi Order. He was under no illusion that this would pull him away from the war effort completely, but with any luck he might have a few hours here and there to dedicate to the Force and the Jedi.
Once his signature was on what would hopefully be the last of the forms involved, Luke began to meditate. He hoped the Force could offer a suggestion as to where he could start his research. The old Jedi Temple on Coruscant was still firmly under Imperial control, and likely would be for some time still. There had to be somewhere else in the galaxy, preferably somewhere controlled by what would soon be the New Republic, where he could learn more about the Jedi of the Old Republic.
Instead of answering his questions, however, the Force decided to show him the image of a red-haired woman, probably about the same age as him, staring into a small glowing red pyramid. Even through the vision, the pyramid exuded dark side energy far stronger than anything Luke had ever encountered outside of the immediate presence of Darth Vader or the Emperor. A very deep voice boomed all around him, “Picture where you want to be.” It sounded like Jabba the Hutt if he had spoken Basic.
Instinctively, Luke’s mind called up an image of the Jedi Temple in all of its glory. He had never been to Coruscant in person, but he had seen enough holos to know what the home of the Jedi Order had looked like before the Empire. He could practically hear the hum of the speeder traffic flowing in a multilayered web of intertwined lanes on every side of the Temple while the sun set behind the spires.
The vision of the woman faded out while the room around Luke began to glow red. The light grew brighter and brighter until he couldn’t see at all, and then it abruptly disappeared. And when it did, Luke realized he was not in his room anymore.