But he did know how much time had already been invested in making Project Redress amenable to Luke's less obvious aims, the ones shared with the trusted few. They all saw the potential of course- now they were looking for the flaws; the traps and the pitfalls, the carefully hidden snares. When they'd cleared them all away, they could begin work.
So this wasn't exactly the ideal time to be adding to the problems, Hallin knew, and particularly not with one as delicate as this- but he would be remiss in his duties, both as an ally and a friend, if he chose not to report this simply because it was difficult.
He'd sent Luke a short message which was innocent enough at first glance but had one of several pre-arranged phrases within it which signalled him to empty his room. Luke had done so, charging Mara, who was on bodyguard duty this morning, with a task elsewhere.
Now he looked up from his wide desk as Hallin entered, eyes sharp and tense, the question unspoken.
Hallin stepped forward, coming straight to the point, "I overheard a couple of conversations when I was in the medi-centre this morning; 'techs who were repeating rumours."
"Go on?" Luke said, wondering why Nath was so tense at telling him this, whatever it was.
"They were talking about Jade- Mara. Rumours are that she keeps a few vials of glitterstim in her quarters... recreational use of course." Hallin said dryly of the popular drug, shaking his head. "I... put two and two together; she's not the type to take glitterstim but there is one drug she might still carry, though I'm sure she assures you otherwise."
Hallin reached into the pocket of his pale gray medical coat fingering the four small vials there, each as about half the size of his little finger, with a narrow neck halfway down their length.
"I took the liberty of going to her quarters this morning, when I knew she was on duty."
Luke rested his elbows on his desk at that, head in his hands; Hallin would probably have blundered through all kinds of subtle trips - espionage was hardly his forte - and worse, Mara was now who-knew-where onboard the Destroyer. If any of them were connected to her comm, she'd already know she'd been broken into so they couldn't even try to repair the...
Hallin stepped forward and placed four small, familiar vials onto the desk before Luke, breaking his train of thought completely, eyes following them as they rolled forward and came to a stop, chinking lightly against each other.
For a long time he remained silent, staring at the tiny vials, half-filled with a dirty brown liquid... finally he reached out and took one, lifting it to hold it at eye level.
.
This was it, Luke knew.
This was the drug that Palpatine used against him so effectively; the tailor-made drug he had no counter to. The drug which, once in his system, could self-replicate at a rate faster than he could remove it with the Force. This debilitating drug enabled Palpatine to return Luke again and again to the cell beneath the Palace when he chose to discipline and chastise, punish or rebuke. The drug that kept him there, in any state Palpatine chose from subdued and listless to paralysing incapacity or unconsciousness every time he overstepped his mark.
The drug he'd tried so hard for so long to get a sample of.
The drug that Mara had said she no longer carried.
She'd looked him in the eye and promised him that she had none. Which meant she'd lied to him... which meant that she could lie to him.
He shouldn't be surprised, he supposed; he had after all taught her how to do it. He'd always known that in teaching her to be able to lie to Palpatine, he was also teaching her to lie to himself.
Luke glanced up to Hallin, who looked nervously down, then turned his gaze back to the vial, though he was no longer really looking at it.
.
Hallin watched in tense silence as Luke looked back to the vial, shaking his head infinitesimally just once, jaw tight. He seemed to wander for long seconds in consideration...
Then he was back in the moment, turning a delicate vial over in his fingers, studying it.
"Is there any way to get a sample from this without breaking the cap- any way at all?"
Hallin shook his head, "No, not without destroying the vial. They're intended to be broken at the neck to release the contents into a pressure dart for delivery. It's a similar system to a standard hypo. All medical vials are designed to be impervious to any outside agent; completely tamper-proof."
Luke studied the vial as Nathan spoke, aware of his heart pounding, both at the opportunity and the betrayal.
He'd wanted this chance for so long; this had been the shadow hanging over him since he'd first arrived here- it was the one thing that scared him, because with it, anyone could stop him dead. And its distribution was tightly controlled by the Emperor, every vial always accounted for; Luke had no idea where it came from, how much was out there or who had it. He turned the vial over in his hands again, considering... because much as he wanted this, was the cost of gaining it right now, this way, too high?
It was a vulnerability and he didn't like having them, but was he blowing this one weakness out of all proportion? Palpatine meticulously controlled its distribution, this attested to by the fact that Luke had spent so long trying to gain a sample.
Was his unease a reasonable response to a genuine weakness or simply his distaste of Palpatine's use of it?
Had it ever actually stopped him doing anything- or had it simply made the consequences arduous? Which they would have been anyway, one way or another.
He tapped against the delicate vial, turning it over in his fingers and watching the dark liquid coat the inside of the glass... then reached out to press the comlimk set into his desk, looking to Nathan as he did so. "Is Wez up yet?"
Nathan didn't bother to answer, since Luke was already pressing the comm and Wez' voice came back seconds later; "Reece."
"Wez you need to get up here. And find out exactly where Jade is- comm me."
Luke didn't elucidate further but knew he didn't need to; Wez would already be on his way. He glanced back up to Nathan; "This is all the vials you found?"
"Yes. They were in a small metal case. I left the case where it was."
"Describe the case exactly."
"It was just... just a small metal case. There was a protective insert in it to hold the vials-"
"There were no empty slots?"
"Yes- two."
"Is there any way the insert could have been lifted out- that the antidote vials could have been hidden underneath it?"
Hallin's face lit, realising that Luke was looking for the antidote. "No I don't think so- the box was too slim."
"Do you have anything in your medical store which looks exactly like this - anything at all?"
"No- not that colour." He wants to replace one.
"Do you have facilities to seal a liquid into a vial this way?"
"No- that's a specialist facility. The contents would have been loaded in a sealed, sterile environment."
"Doesn't matter- can you seal a vial so the contents don't condense?"
Hallin squirmed slightly, "No. No I can't."
Luke fell to silence again, considering his options.
"First, we need to get these back into Mara's room- exactly as you found them."
"You're not going to keep one? The antidote..."
"This isn't the antidote, which means that if we keep one to hand over to Karrde's chemist to hopefully create an antidote, then Mara will know that she's lost one and report it to Palpatine. Even if she can't account for where it's gone - and I'm pretty damn sure she'll make it her mission to find out - Palpatine will play this cautiously; it's been too useful for too long for him to even risk my having a sample. Which will mean that he'll have the drug changed slightly; just enough that anything we make to counter it, assuming Karrde's chemist is capable enough to break its chemical code then create an antidote in a reasonable time, will no longer be effective. No matter what we do to hide the fact that we have it, if Mara can't account for all the vials, Palpatine will have the drug changed. If we can't get a sample and return the vial intact, she'll know that someone's been in her quarters and you're now on all the ship's standard security images as entering her apartment. That means I'd need a guarantee that every image was removed before she could take a copy because if she gets just one of them intact, even I can't protect you from Palpatine if it comes out. Finally, all this aside, she'll also know that I know that she can lie to me. Presently, she doesn't and I need to keep it that way. I need to break whatever she's doing - I need to know when she's lying - that's as important as the drug."