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Even when they were sectors apart, even when they had drifted to other lovers, even when they were irritated with each other… the ships still flew.
It had all started as a joke.
“That’s the ugliest Ugly that ever uglied." Ghent goggled out the viewport.
Mara tilted her head. The pirate craft had been cobbled together from the snub-nosed cockpit of a Y-wing, two asymmetrically attached TIE wing panels, and one X-wing S-foil mounted vertically like an absurd dorsal fin.
“It’s an abomination,” she agreed. “It belongs in a museum to bad taste.”
Karrde laughed at her joke, and Mara was absurdly pleased. Until the Ugly showed up the next day in the hangar parked next to the Jade's Fire. Flaking rust and stars knew what corrosive particles and offworld contaminants all over her ship.
“This is your ship too, now,” said Karrde when she complained (vociferously). He pressed a hand to his chest, the very picture of wounded pride at the brutal rejection of his gift – except for the smile he could barely repress. “Don’t you like it?”
The monstrosity sported a new name: Love’s Talon.
“I suppose it would make for decent target practice,” allowed Mara with a sigh. “Your laser cannons haven’t been properly aligned since that dust-up over Ord Mantell.”
Karrde winced but quickly recovered. “I can align laser cannons with the best of them,” he murmured in her ear.
Mara’s grin was positively predatory. “Then you can help me slag Love’s Talon.”
Karrde smiled, ruefully ceding the round to her.
When Mara Jade shot a man down, she used heavy artillery.
Karrde won the next ship in a game of sabacc. Mara maintained this didn't count as a romantic overture, because Solo and Calrissian had made a galactic tradition of exchanging sabacc-won ships.
"If you say so," Karrde responded mildly.
Mara's eyes widened. "You don't mean... Solo and Calrissian? I know they're best friends, but I thought they got on each other's nerves too much for anything more."
Karrde winked. "A little friction can make quite a spark"
Rolling her eyes, Mara returned her attention to inspecting the hull. A scout ship, serviceable, new enough to be efficient, but not so new that any spaceport controller would remember it.
"I suppose you named this one too?" she asked.
“Seven Karrde Stud.”
Mara could appreciate a good pun (or a bad one) as much as the next spacer. But if Karrde fancied himself a stud, then Mara was morally obligated to take him down a peg.
“Are you sure you don’t mean One Karrde Short of a Deck?”
"Too long," he laughed. "I can't afford the paint job."
Neither name stuck, in the end. The scout ship was rechristened half a dozen times for entry to half a dozen restricted systems. Mara thought of it as the Skifter, and for good reason – it changed transponders more often than Karrde changed shoes. (The man had a flair for style, but was oddly sentimental about his favorite pair of boots.) Karrde's insistence on calling it the Stud only stopped when Mara pointed out that any stud worth his salt would have a faster hyperdrive.
"It's not the speed, my dear – it's the stamina."
Mara held up her hand to forestall more flirtation. Or fuel efficiency statistics.
"I don't care how many parsecs you have under your belt." With an effort, she kept her gaze from straying downward in keeping with her words. "A stud is all flash–"
"–and no bang?" Karrde's mouth twitched.
"–and no substance," Mara corrected. "I'll take a Skifter over a Stud any day."
Karrde grinned and gave a jaunty wave as he left her to her preflight check... and to wonder whether, in proving her point, she had actually accomplished something else entirely.
“It’s for your cover,” said Karrde. “Verisimilitude.”
Mara had eyes only for the sleek lines and silver gleam. “A Naboo N-1 starfighter,” she murmured. Twin radial engines. Monarc C-4 hyperdrive. And so much chrome.
Mara Jade had never considered herself one of those woman who could be bought with sparkly, shiny, flashy things. The N-1 was almost enough to change her mind.
Almost.
“You must have paid a mint.” Mara stroked the starfighter with the backs of her fingers so as not to leave any oily prints. “Or called in a lot of favors. This op must be more important than I thought.”
“Yes,” replied Karrde slowly, stroking his beard like he did when deep in thought. “It is important. And the datacube I hope you'll recover would indeed be worth a mint. But it’s not worth your life.”
Mara met his gaze and held it. Was that a little flutter in his breath? In hers?
“Promise me you’ll run at the first sign of trouble," he said softly. "This beauty will get you out in a hurry.”
Mara openly scoffed. “You know me better than that,” she chided.
Karrde sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “Promise me you won’t take on more than you can handle,” he amended. “If you come back alive, you can keep the ship.”
Mara’s lips curved in a genuine smile. “Now that’s incentive. What did you name this one?”
“Talonstrike. Too obvious?”
The N-1 perched in the hangar like a bird of prey ready to soar. Its streamlined curves tapered to wickedly sharp points: beauty with unsheathed claws.
“It’s perfect.”
“It was just a cover story.” Mara folded her arms and returned Karrde’s glare. “But even if I did have a real relationship with Calrissian, it wouldn’t be any business of yours.”
Karrde looked away first. “I see.”
Mara’s conscience twinged… or perhaps it was something else.
The Force was quiet.
Mara’s thoughts cycled rapid-fire. I didn’t mean that like it sounded. I don’t think I’m capable of being in a real relationship, but if I did, it wouldn’t be with Calrissian. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s better that I hurt you now than…
“I brought you something.” Karrde’s face was carefully bland. It was face he put on when dealing with potential adversaries. He had never directed at Mara before.
This time, the twinge was almost palpable.
“You shouldn’t have,” murmured Mara. Like something out of a bad holodrama.
If nothing else, she knew how to play a role.
“It’s nothing much,” deflected Karrde with a dismissive wave in the vague direction of the hangar. “Just an ordinary TIE Interceptor. A client pawned it off on me in partial payment of a debt. I thought it might amuse you to play around with the controls, if it holds your attention that long.”
Mara flinched. Karrde knew how much she enjoyed flying agile TIEs fighters. And with both shielding and a hyperdrive, an Interceptor was as useful as the X-wings that Skywalker favored.
“I didn’t name it,” Karrde continued as if idly musing, “since it’s only a starfighter. If you feel so inclined, however, I have a suggestion.”
Mara averted her eyes as Karrde uttered his parting shot.
“Jaded Woman.”
“Idiot,” snarled Mara. She slapped at the controls to silence at least the most deafening alarms. She knew from bitter experience that high-pitched klaxons weren’t kind to head wounds.
“Thank you,” muttered Karrde.
“At least you commandeered a fast ship.” Her voice was tight, and the damned twinge was back. At least she had stopped the bleeding, but she wouldn’t relax until Aves had examined him with the Wild Karrde’s state-of-the-art medical equipment.
“I picked it especially for you, my dear.” Karrde’s voice was growing weaker.
“Stay with me,” she snapped. Even more than the stolen yacht’s speed, she thanked their lucky stars that the ship’s inertial dampers were top-of-the-line. The G-forces of the Headhunter they arrived in might have done more damage to than the concussion grenade that injured Karrde in the first place.
What if that grenade had hit just a meter closer to them?
Mara shuddered. It didn’t bear thinking about.
“Stay with me,” she repeated, pleading.
Karrde managed a sardonic smile. “I have so far, haven’t I?” He winced when a stray laser blast knocked them about. “Don’t scratch my ship. I like this one. Might want to keep it.”
Mara spared him a exasperated glance. “Because you haven’t angered Moff Barridur enough this trip?”
“I don’t need his good graces nearly so much as those of New Republic Intelligence. We got their information, didn’t we?”
Mara damned his insufferably smug smile and all the stars that had led her to this point.
“It’s not worth your life!”
Always the gentleman, Karrde forbore mentioning their many prior conversations where he had been the one lecturing her.
“I’ll be all right,” he reassured her, which was rich coming from a man strapped into his seat because he was too weak to keep himself upright. “I wouldn’t mind a distraction, however,” he admitted.
"I’m a little busy.” Mara dared a little tighter roll and dodged another blast. They were almost out of the planet’s gravity well. “Why don’t you come up with more puns for your ship, or have you used them all up? What’s next, Hole Karrde? Karrde Trick?”
“All my cards are on the table, Mara,” he said softly.
When they were safely in hyperspace, she reached over to squeeze his hand.
“If you play them right,” she said lightly, “you might just find them stacked in your favor.”
After a silence so long Mara thought he’d fallen asleep, he spoke again.
“Dance Karrde.” His eyes stayed closed, but a smile played across his lips. “So I can always say it’s full.”
Something in Mara’s chest eased. She rolled her eyes in case he was peeking. “I’m sure Ghent will be flattered.”
It startled a laugh out of him, and he didn’t even wince. Mara relaxed further. With a little luck, he would be all right after all.
Perhaps they both would.
As always, their respective duties pulled them apart and spun them back together in dizzying, convoluted orbits. Mara began a quiet search for an antique. When she found it, it was in deplorable condition, but Mara Jade had never backed down from a challenge. She called in favors — so many that she almost regretted it — but they bore fruit. Booster came through with the missing landing gear, Solo had a friend who sourced the vintage hyperdrive, and Calrissian somehow conjured an original pilot’s couch with dewback-leather upholstery.
From all his stories, Karrde’s first ship had never looked so good in all the time he’d owned it.
Skywalker even lent her Artoo for the work that only an astromech could perform; she wouldn’t have trusted any other droid to do it. And when Skywalker offered to help calibrate the finicky environmental controls, she accepted gracefully. He was the only man she’d ever met who knew how to fine-tune humidity to the point where her hair did not frizz. (They never discussed Myrkyr, but the memory of that jungle would never be far away.) When he left, Skywalker had the audacity to wink.
He had clearly spent too much time around Solo.
Leia’s contribution was a pile of dust: an iridescent, deep-sea blue that Mara had only ever seen in holos.
The pigment had been made from Alderaani whorl-shells, a mollusk not found anywhere else in the galaxy. Stars knew where Leia had acquired enough to mix paint for even a small ship, but Mara deeply appreciated the gesture and what it signified.
Friendship.
Against all odds, the former Emperor’s Hand had forged lasting friendships.
Perhaps a real relationship, too, was within her reach.
When the ship was fully restored, Mara conspired with the crew of the Wild Karrde to give them a full day alone. No networking, no deadlines, no negotiating, no data to comb through. No interruptions.
Mara shepherded Karrde to the hangar before he even finished his first cup of caf.
No one had ever said she was patient.
Trailing in her wake, Karrde blinked, bemused. “You bought me a ship?”
“It suits your style.” She evaded answering his real, unspoken question.
“As much as I’d like to know what you think of my style—” Karrde broke off abruptly as they entered the hangar.
There she sat: a SoroSuub Peregrine-class star yacht, a relic from before the Clone Wars, clad in chrome and scintillating deep blue. It looked like a sea creature, with a long dorsal fin and short trailing finial, poised as if ready to dart away.
Karrde’s father had given him a Peregrine-class ship when he came of age. It had been stripped of all chrome and weapons and was barely hyperspace capable, but Karrde had learned to fly in that ship. He had told Mara of it so many times, of the inconsequential but nonetheless deep regret that he had sold it as scrap metal when the repair costs were overwhelming, work was scare and credits scarcer.
“How did you…” Karrde trailed off in disbelief. He touched the hull reverently.
She’d never tell him, but she had been quietly acquiring parts for years. New old stock, refurbished or corroded beyond recognition, she’d hoarded them all. Just in case the day she never thought would come finally dawned.
The day she trusted someone again, without reservation.
She had always known who it would be.
Mara moved to stand at his side. “Since you enjoy naming ships so much, I thought I’d give you the pleasure.”
“Jade’s Heart?” Karrde’s eyes searched her face, seeking her approval… and more.
Mara stepped into his embrace, closing the last distance between them.
“It’s all yours.”