Confederacy Testing Facility, Ossus
It was a whole different galaxy from the one she knew.
But then again, the galaxy that she had grown up in was different from the one she knew, as well, because once the Yuuzhan Vong had come, nothing had ever been the same.
Still, it was strange to see life on a planet that she knew to be devoid of it.
Through the Force, Jaina Solo was intently aware of her surroundings, of every blade of grass crinkling beneath her boots, of the wind ruffling at her hair as it flowed downward from the mountain range, but most of all the way the planet's every breath teemed with life.
It was different in the future.
Ossus as she'd last seen it, just before Danni had sent her through the wormhole, had been a graveyard.
The Yuuzhan Vong had decimated the villages and colonies there, even the Knossa Spaceport, in their mad quest to completely eradicate the Ysanna, just as they had done to the Fallanassi and the Jenasaari, the Aing-Tii and the Theran Listeners, the Sunesi and the Korrunai.
Any Jeedai, whether they were technically a Jedi or not, was an abomination in the eyes of the enemy.
For proof of that, there was no need to look any farther than Dathomir, and the horrible fate that had been dealt to both the Force witches from which Tenel Ka, the Queen Mother of Hapes and one of Jaina's closest friends, had been descended and their dark counterparts the Nightsisters.
This time around, though, Jaina thought with a surge of fierce determination. We'll be ready, we'll be prepared.
She would make certain of that if it was the last thing she ever did.
The hair on the back of her neck suddenly bristled, even as the Force tingled a warning, and Jaina dropped to the floor, flattening herself on the roof of the biotics building as a visual scanner droid hovered past.
After waiting several seconds to ensure it was past, she rolled to her feet.
As soon as she'd left Ben, safely hidden in the ruins of the Jedi Library, Jaina had set out in search of signs of the nearest Separatist base, and it hadn't taken her long to locate a droid patrol craft out scouting the area. Knowing it would return to base sooner or later, she'd followed it at a distance, keeping it in sight both visually and with the Force, and it had led her back to the base just as she'd expected.
The base itself was a fairly large facility, with at least a dozen buildings scattered through the complex, mostly consisting of research labs for developing new weapons, droid factories, and several sprawling warehouses that she suspected were used for storing the droids until they were deployed into the field.
Exactly the kind of target she'd been hoping to find.
Pushing off her feet, she made a Force-assisted jump across the divide between buildings, but instead of leaping for the roof of the hangar, Jaina let herself drop about two meters toward the open ventilation window along the duracrete wall.
Her fingers caught the edge of the window and she pulled herself upward and through in one fluid movement.
Perched in the window, palms pressed against the sides for balance, Jaina inspected the upper level of the hangar. A maze of crane tracks crisscrossed the ceiling overhead, and a service catwalk ran around the entire interior of the facility about a meter below the windows, overlooking the hangar floor below.
Time to find a ship, she thought grimly. And blow this joint before I'm seen.
As therapeutic as a little action would have been, Jaina knew that the sooner she got Ben off of Ossus and to safety the better, so she would have to avoid any confrontation if at possible.
Of course, if the Force willed it, she would be more than happy to oblige.
As Valin used to say whenever she suggested something dangerous, she had some serious adrenaline issues, and as far as Jaina could surmise it was entirely genetic.
No sense of self-preservation in a Skywalker, she could almost hear her father's exasperated groan. None at all.
But she was also a Solo, and if there was one thing her father had no room to complain about, it was getting into tight situations. He'd had an uncanny knack for getting out of them again, though, and Jaina often tried to imagine what her father would do in a situation before she acted.
Somehow, though, she didn't think blowing up the entire complex was a good idea this time.
Dropping lightly onto the catwalk, Jaina stayed low and moved to the edge, peering down at the floor of the hangar, her gaze sweeping over the dozens of droid fighters, patrol ships and spacecraft below, and the insectoid aliens at work with the machinery.
The droid ships were out of the running automatically, no matter how fast or sleek they were, because they didn't have a functional life-support system onboard.
After all, droids didn't have to breathe.
She and Ben, on the other hand, were quite attached to that little human quirk.
Patrol ships weren't equipped with hyperdrives, nor did they have any real firepower in case of trouble, at least not by Jaina's standards, so it looked like she was going to have to swipe some poor Separatist commander's personal vessel and her eyes fell on the perfect ship instinctively.
That'll do nicely, Jaina mused with a small, fleeting grin.
A SoroSuub Horizon-class star yacht, fairly generic in design, but they handled beautifully.
Jaina knew firsthand because she'd gotten quite a bit of time in at the controls of a later model that wouldn't even be marketed for another few decades, the Jade Shadow.
Mara's pride and joy.
It was hard to think about her aunt and Master at times, but Jaina preferred to remember the woman as she had been before the war, vibrant and strong and fiery, not the way she'd been at the end.
What would you think of the mess I've gotten myself into this time, Aunt Mara? she wondered with a faint smile. Her uncle would have been concerned, worried about the possible consequences and the paradoxes it could create, but Mara would have just done what had to be done.
So that was exactly what Jaina was going to do now.
Besides, even Luke's reaction would have paled in comparison to her twin brother's.
She didn't want to even get started imagining what Jacen would have to say about this crazy venture she'd agreed to, and she was quite certain he'd have plenty to say about it.
Anakin, though, would have thought it was 'wizard'.
It was hard to believe that she hadn't heard her baby brother's trademark exclamation in nearly five years.
If all goes well, though, she reminded herself, pushing aside the flicker of constant grief she felt at the memory of the family that had been stolen from her. I'll be hearing it again someday.
Someday.
That was what she had to keep her mind on, the goal to keep her focused.
Someday things would be different.
Grabbing onto the edge of the catwalk, Jaina flipped over the side and dropped to the floor ten meters below, landing softly on the balls of her feet in a crouch, her braid flapping against her back gently.
One of the insectoid aliens lifted its head, as if he half-thought he heard something.
Rising to her feet smoothly, Jaina pulled her lightsaber from her belt and ignited the purple blade.
The alert alien spotted her and shrieked, setting off the rest of his companions, and within moments their wings were a blur as they began to buzz wildly about the room, clucking madly in their panic to escape, and all at once the droids lining the walls came to life, weapons at ready.
By the time they opened fire, Jaina was already moving, her lightsaber flashing.
Years of warfare had schooled her into an efficient and deadly killing machine when the need arose, and a few dozen droids never stood a chance.
The Sword of the Jedi, Jaina thought wryly. Reduced to clean up.
Still, she knew she shouldn't be complaining- at least the droids weren't determined, fanatically so, to hunt her down to the ends of the universe so that they could ritualistically torture and murder her in a sacrifice that Shimrra himself had called for, vowing he would drink her blood in a toast to the gods.
Compared to the Vong, the Separatists and their droid armies were downright friendly.
Whirling, she cut through the droids rushing her, deflecting blaster bolts from their weapons back at them in the process. Distantly, she was aware of footsteps, that the commotion in the hangar was drawing attention, and she spared a glance up at the catwalk overhead to see a human male in a technician's uniform peering down at her.
"Jedi!" the technician cried, eyes wide as he reeled back from the banister.
Then the alarms started to shriek.
So much for stealth, Jaina thought with a mirthless chuckle.
Darting left, her lightsaber slicing around to sever the midsections of the nearest droids, she planted one booted foot against the wall of the hangar and kicked herself into a backflip to land just behind the droids. The moment her feet touched the ground, she was moving again, spinning and slashing with instinctive rhythm that allowed her to outmaneuver her opponents.
When she finally came to a halt a few moments later, the floor was littered with droid parts and smoking debris.
"Almost too easy," Jaina murmured, eyeing the deserted hangar with a strange sense of disappointment that she knew was unbecoming of a Jedi Knight, but she brushed it off just the same.
She'd spoken too soon, of course.
The Force warned her of their approach just before she heard the noise.
From a door that slid open in the wall came a trio of droids, curled up so that they looked like gleaming metal wheels as they rolled toward her in a blur. Before they even unfolded into the tripod destroyer droids, Jaina recognized them from her history lessons.
Droidekas.
The combat droids were designed with one purpose, to be killing machines, and between their twin blasters and the personal deflection shields they were equipped with, they had been regarded as one of the terrors of the Clone Wars, a terrible tool of the Confederacy.
Jaina, she told herself. You have got to stop provoking the Force.
Holding her lightsaber out in front of her with her right hand, Jaina reached to her left hip and removed the second lightsaber she kept on her belt, igniting it.
"All right," she murmured, bringing her brother's lightsaber up to join her own. "Let's see what you've got."
More than happy to oblige, the droidekas opened fire.
By the time that she was able to extinguish her weapons and step back to examine her handiwork, the hangar was a mess and Jaina was out of breath, but she felt more invigorated than she had in a long time.
Her senses told her that more droids were beginning to move towards the hangar to deal with the intruder, and she was half-tempted to stick around and use the opportunity for some much needed venting of frustrations, but she knew that she needed to get back to the ruins of the Jedi Library and collect Ben.
It was one thing to throw her own fate to the wind, but she wouldn't gamble with his.
Mara had known that, of course.
Opening the hatch to the star yacht, Jaina clipped both lightsabers to her belt and hurried up the ramp before it had even finished lowering. She slapped the touchpad to close it behind her as she made her way into the cockpit, not bothering to inspect the interior of the ship- there would be time for that later during their trip through hyperspace.
Instead, she settled herself down in the pilot's seat, powered up the engines and blasted apart the closed hangar doors with the laser cannons.
Then, just for good measure, she turned the guns on the hangar itself once she was clear.
As the building exploded, Jaina turned the ship around and headed in the direction of the ruins of the Jedi Library without giving the hangar so much as a second glance. The way she figured it, by the time that the chaos on base died down enough for anyone to come looking for her, she and Ben would be breaching atmosphere.
It only took a few minutes to reach the ruins and find a suitable landing spot, then Jaina made her way back inside to collect Ben.
As soon as he spotted her when she came into view, Ben released his Force shield and scrambled to his feet, grabbing his blanket and flinging himself at her, wrapping his little arms around her legs tightly.
It was always more emotional for him when she came back than when she left.
After all, he'd seen others, including his mother, leave plenty of times, but eventually they had all stopped coming back, and Jaina knew that it was his greatest fear that one day she, too, would fail to return.
"Come on, little man," she told him, grabbing their pack off the ground beside him and then taking his small little hand in hers. "I found us a ride out of here."
Ben followed her dutifully out to the ship, the edge of his blanket dragging behind him, and his face lit up at the sight of the sleek star yacht. "Pretty," he announced in approval.
"It's no Falcon," Jaina retorted as she lowered the ramp. "But it will do."
Leading the way onto the ship and into the cockpit, she dropped her pack onto the floor and then helped Ben climb into the copilot's seat, which he had already begun to attempt on his own. She'd learned a while back that it was no use to try and get him to take one of the seats in the back, he felt at home in a cockpit, and she could relate.
It was in their blood, after all.
"Where we going?" Ben asked as she strapped him into his crash-webbing.
"We're going home, little man," Jaina replied, checking his restraints to make sure they were tight enough and then rising to her feet.
"Home?"
Seeing the confusion on his face, she chastised herself mentally, remembering that Ben had no memory of the world he'd been born on, his earliest memory of 'home' was of the hidden installation in the Maw, but since they had been forced to evacuate that a long time ago, and in the years since they'd moved around so much to stay a step ahead of the Yuuzhan Vong that he didn't really have a concept of a physical place to go back to.
For Ben, home began and ended with her.
"We're going to where we used to live when you were just a baby," Jaina explained. "We're going to Coruscant."
"Why?"
"Because," Jaina replied with a forced smile. "We're going to look up some old friends of the family."