Sacrifice

Take care. Oh, I will. I've got one advantage you haven't, Leia, and that's darkness. I've been that dark. I was trained by a Sith Lord. I can think like them.

At least Leia hadn't made any cracks about Luke not taking the opportunity to finish off Lumiya. Sometimes, when she considered her sister-in-law, Mara regretted her own temper and wished she could learn a little of that steely diplomacy.

Mara turned the XJ7 and checked Ben's transponder again. Still on Coruscant. That didn't guarantee his safety, but at least she could pinpoint him. She zoomed her screen in on the trace, and the coordinates resolved into a grid, and then into neighborhoods and skylanes. Ben was at GAG HQ. She could locate him accurately to within three meters.

He liked the vibroblade she'd given him. She felt bad not telling him it housed a long-range passive transponder, and that it had saved her more than once because she'd used it as a homing beacon, but that was just detail. It was a superb weapon, so it wasn't a lie.

The tagged vibroblade ensured she knew exactly where Ben was at all times now.

He'd never spot it. The GAG thought they had all the best kit, but she had a few devices that could get past them, using older technology, frequencies, and relays they'd never spot. A surveillance system using the most sophisticated technology wasn't looking for devices almost as basic as a code flashed with a piece of broken mirror. Tech could be blind. If they scanned Ben, they'd only find his comlink code, not the signal hiding within it, because they didn't have the active end of the transponder link. She did.

She had one more transponder left, and she was saving that for a rainy day.

Sorry, sweetheart. Had to do it.