Searching for Vong
45 ABY
Jedi Masters Jaina Solo Fel and Corran Horn landed their StealthXs in the only hangar bay on the Outer Rim world of Lanteeb without fanfare. After turning off their engines and exiting their craft, the two Jedi disembarked and allowed the incoming technicians to lock up their spacecraft and perform other maintenance duties while the Masters were to complete their mission on this planet.
Jaina and Corran then met up with the spaceport security administrator. Before they even stepped up to the administrator's slightly elevated podium, the stocky male human said, "You two can just go right through."
"Really?" Corran asked. "Just like that?"
"Of course, you're Jedi," the administrator said, noting their traditional robes. "Whatever you gotta do here, go right ahead. And it's always a pleasure to meet the great Jaina Solo, the daughter of two of the Galactic Alliance's greatest heroes."
"That's Jaina Solo Fel, thank you very much," Jaina corrected in a matter-of-fact way.
"Very well," the administrator said before allowing the Masters to pass by through customs without trouble.
Minutes later, Jaina and Corran were out of the spaceport and in Lanteeb's sole city. They took a moment to themselves to view the sparse traffic–both pedestrian and vehicular–that ran in Lanteeb's narrow streets. The streets did nothing more than convey the city's relatively simplistic nature compared to most worlds of the greater galaxy–it was surely backwards compared to Coruscant, but it was definitely more advanced than a world like Caluula when it was briefly ruled by the Yuuzhan Vong near the end of the war against them.
And speaking of the Vong, it was time to get them, Jaina thought.
"So I suppose we begin looking to the southern outskirts of the city first, Master Horn?" Jaina inquired.
"By your lead, Master Solo," he said with a modest wave. "Of course, I think it's simpler if we just took a cab."
"Me, too," she said before turning and hailing a nearby taxi. The cab pulled over and she and Corran trotted over to the vehicle to enter it. Once the two Masters were firmly seated, Jaina told the Devaronian driver to take her and Corran over to the southern district of the city and just leave them within at least two miles of the city's end from there. The driver wasted no time weaving his way through the city to get the Jedi to their destination as quickly as possible. Once he pulled over, Jaina paid for the trip, and once she and her fellow Master were out, their cloaks fluttered heavily in the wind that the cab rose up in its hasty departure.
Jaina and Corran then turned away from the curb they were dropped off at and looked to the building that they were now in front of. It was nondescript, and could have been a place where business meetings were frequently held. Of course, this was where the Jedi Order received a tip that at least three Yuuzhan Vong were hiding out in.
Apparently, there were very few Vong left in the galaxy who managed to sneak past the search for them that followed the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar and preceded Zonama Sekot's departure back into the Unknown Regions. One such example was Nom Anor, who was at first thought to be dead for an entire decade by the end of the war, but who was discovered by the Skywalkers on the world of Marfa, where he had been cloaked via an ooglith masquer and was living the life of a businessman. From there, he had been tried and sentenced to Zonama. The same was intended for these three Vong–assuming that neither Jaina nor Corran were forced to kill them in the process of arresting them.
The Masters entered the building and then began searching the lobby area of the building with their Force senses. In spite of being Jedi, though, they didn't attract a lot of attention with their presences, but they received one particularly shocked stare from a female individual–dark skin, slightly-above-average height–who quickly turned around and walked back the way she came in a not-so-subtle manner down the hall. Jaina and Corran sensed no presence from the woman in the Force, so they both nodded as they began trotting off after the suspicious woman.
The woman took one look behind herself before looking back and hastening her pace. She turned a corner, and a few seconds later, Jaina and Corran also rounded that bend with no sign of their quarry other than the closing door of the woman's refresher area. Corran hung back while Jaina rushed to the refresher, swinging the door open and looked around. There were five blocked-off stalls for the sake of privacy, all of which were closed, so Jaina bent down and locked through the tiny openings that revealed feet. Three of those stalls were occupied by people who didn't have the feet of a human woman–or at least a Yuuzhan Vong female disguised as a human woman–so Jaina went to the first closed stall. She pressed against it to see if it was open, but it was locked.
Believing that she had the woman in her grasp, Jaina whipped out and ignited her lightsaber. She cut the door down but found nobody inside. At that, the remaining empty stall swung open and the suspicious woman flew projectile insects that Jaina, in the split seconds she saw those weapons whir for her, was able to recognize as thud and razor bugs. She batted them aside effortlessly before rushing in for her opponent. But the other woman rolled off to the side before whirling around on the floor and tripping Jaina onto her back with her feet. The disguised Vong then leapt to her feet and sprinted for the door just as Jaina did the same about two seconds later.
Once the disguised Vong was out of the refresher, she looked and found Corran sprinting for her. Without hesitation, she turned around and continued running just as Corran was joined by his fellow Master. The chase continued for a few more seconds before Jaina used the Force to swing open a door that was nearby her and Corran's target. The door bashed right into the woman, and she was knocked onto her back. Jaina, with her lightsaber now off and hanging on her belt, and Corran then leapt atop of the downed woman. During the resultant struggle, as people around them watched in shock and curiosity, Corran reached for the woman's nose and pinched it. It wasn't long before her false skin crawled off of her body to reveal her true alien nature much to the added shock of the others around the three-person pile. Jaina then knocked out the Vong woman.
As she hefted the Vong onto her shoulder, Jaina and Corran turned around and found two male humans standing threateningly in front of them. These two didn't waste time with trying to maintain their physical disguises as they pinched their noses for themselves, allowing their ooglith masquers to slide off of their bodies to expose their flat-nosed, armored features. People began running and panicking in the hall that this confrontation was taking place in, but the four combatants–the Jedi and the Vong–were calm. Jaina dropped her unconscious charge to the floor before brandishing her lightsaber with Corran accompanying her in the action. Their opponents similarly branded their amphistaffs, one of them snapping their snaky weapon into a solid staff while the other let his hang limp like a whip, before they charged for their superhuman foes.
The Jedi met the warriors head-on in a clash of blades and amphistaffs. Jaina duelled the Vong with the rigid amphistaff while Corran fought the other one. Corran worked the two-blade mechanism in his saber to counter the whip-like amphistaff's near-unlimited mobility, backing up from his challenger, while Jaina stood her ground in the midst of combat as her blade sent sparks from its clashes against her enemy's hardened weapon. As the duels went on, however, Corran managed to gain the advantage and began pushing his foe back, all the while still interchanging the blades for the sake of combat, while Jaina took at least one step back before she, too, began pushing her foe back.
For Corran, the duel ended when he finally managed to send a decapitating strike against the amphistaff before similarly dispatching its wielder. He was then thrown off his feet when the Vong that he and Jaina chased, who recovered from the knockout that the latter gave her, but just as he landed prone to his feet, he saw the once-unconscious charge push herself up and began running. Corran then used the Force to throw his lightsaber and impale the female Vong, piercing her torso. He called the weapon back to his hand just as the Vong woman collapsed.
Five seconds later, Jaina won her duel by pirouetting through one of her opponent's moves and piercing him through his exposed neck area, just as she had done to Warmaster Tsavong Lah in Ebaq 9 almost two decades earlier. With that victory, she looked back to Corran, and they nodded at each other as they looked about the three Vong who they killed.
Minutes later, the Jedi left the building and returned to the Lanteeb spaceport; coincidentally, they were given a ride back by the very same Devaronian who drove them to the building where they fought the three Vong. After paying him and leaving his cab, the two Jedi entered the spaceport, cleared customs easily thanks to their supportive administrator, and they took off for space in their StealthXs.
Next stop: JanFathal, where there were reported to be six rumored Vong hiding there.
This should be fun, Jaina thought as she and Corran entered hyperspace.