Slowly, sensually, Jaina swayed her body in front of the crowd of the horny patrons of Dev'lia's Dirties, slashing away the clothes on her form with calculated movements from the fake, purple-bladed lightsaber. Of course, the pieces of clothing only had minimal contact with the false blade, if any; the shreds had been timed to tear away and flutter along the raised stage as Jaina's dance continued against her will.
And she couldn't even wince in disgust as she watched some patrons unzip their pants and begin pulling on their hardened penises as she continued to get naked; had she shown that kind of emotion, it would take away from the sensuality of the performance, as Dev'lia told her, and it would "put the audience off" instead of "getting them off."
And if she didn't do as he said, he would kill her with the bomb implanted in her heart, placed there just the day before via an injection gun from Dev'lia. He told her that he did that so he wouldn't have to rely on the body-controlling drug, although he would still give her regular treatments of ysalamiri-laced chemicals so she wouldn't be able to access the Force.
By the time Jaina's dance was finally done, and her waxed vulva had been all but exposed to the crowd, sections of the bar floor, along with a few tabletops, had been stained with the semen of various members of different species. With one final movement for the crowd, Jaina bowed as if she were a showman with considerably more dignity and clothes, and the curtain over the stage lowered.
For a moment, without the Force to tell her anything that her other senses couldn't tell her,Jaina thought that she was alone until she felt a furry hand rest itself on her right shoulder. She jumped, startled, and turned to find Dev'lia standing right there with that seditious grin of his.
"Very good, Jaina," Dev'lia whispered sensually in her ear as he slithered his hand down her arm. "Very good. Had I actually been paying you like the others, I would have given you a bonus."
He then smacked her hard on her butt cheek and waved to the right side of the stage. "Back to your cell; we gotta get ready for the next act. I hope Leanna will deliver as she had yesterday," he continued more to himself than the enslaved Jaina, his tone dripping with lust for the dancer Leanna.
With one glance on the cylindrical device in Dev'lia's occupied hand, the top button held down as a dead man's switch that Jaina knew could only be deactivated by the bottom button, she knew she had no other choice but to listen to Dev'lia's orders and head to the exit of the stage; had she simply jumped on him, she would have no doubt knocked the detonator out of his hand and triggered the bomb in her heart.
After passing through the threshold, she walked through the dancers' lounge where the other dancers were sitting around on semi-comfortable seats and chatting in the scant clothes that they were allowed to wear on their downtime. Jaina couldn't help but notice that they looked like they either didn't have anything more to live for, or they looked traumatized and scared; for them, this wasn't a simple part-time job, like working at a fast food eatery or anything along those lines, where when they were on break, they could just take a load off, because Dev'lia and the bar's patrons were liable to come right into the lounge and rape every single one of them in a gang-bang of gang-bangs, and there wasn't a single thing the dancers could do about it. Hence, not a single one of the dancers wore expressions of boredom or casualness, but more alertness and fear.
Jaina couldn't blame any of them.
The dancers whose wills had been all but broken didn't even acknowledge Jaina's naked presence; they kept to themselves as if she were never there, for they were scared that she was even here. But Jaina had overheard some of their conversations in her cell over the past several days, and she could hear when they occasionally talk about her; they all knew who she was as a Jedi Knight, and they said things like, "If Devvy could do that to Iaina Solo, what chance do we have of getting outta here?" or "We could only dream that she'll take a chain and wrap it around that bastard's throat like her mom with Jabba the Hutt" or "Let's hope none of us end up like her; I like to have some freedom and even a meager paycheck."
Jaina didn't want to talk to any of them; even if Dev'lia was lenient and decided not to let his finger slip off the dead man's switch in seeing that she disobeyed his direct order for not returning back to her cell because she wanted to socialize, Jaina was simply uninterested and wanted to be left alone.
She reached the end of the lounge where the door to her cell was. She unlocked it, walked inside, closed it behind her, and the door automatically locked itself.
And it was only then that Jaina broke down sobbing, and slouched down to her bare haunches on the cold, unpadded floor, uncaring of the thin cushioning of her bed just across the cell that would provide only slightly more comfort. She braced her knees up against her nude form and let her tears stream down her legs until, half an hour later, she fell asleep there.
.
Since chaos could not be afforded in the Hapes Consortium, the Fountain Palace's security kept word of the Queen Mother's disappearance from leaking into the public in the first day; but sooner or later, as everyone in the Palace knew, word would leak once it was found that Tenel Ka had not been fulfilling the duty, forcefully prompting someone to tell the public that Her Highness was gone.
Had Tenel Ka herself actually cared about that, she would have figured that before the week was done, Hapes and the rest of the Consortium would erupt into chaos; people would go crazy and start rioting and looting throughout cities across the sixty-three worlds, the backstabbing Duchas would all vie for power on the empty throne, and whatever chance that the Consortium had with uniting itself with the Alliance of the Galaxy would simply be gone.
As it was, though, Tenel Ka continued to dwell Ta'a Chume'Dan's streets incognito, still wearing the dirtied garments that she took from the Palace before she sneaked out, and the hood she wore concealed her features fairly well. Whenever someone would try to take a closer look, Tenel Ka would wave her one arm to use a mind-trick on such an onlooker, and he or she would instantly forget that their Queen Mother was among their number, stalking the streets amidst the poor and downtrodden of Hapes.
As she continued to lurk through the streets of the city, Tenel Ka could not help but be temporarily broken out of her obsessive drive to leave the planet incognito to observe how the poor had lived. She found many people actually living out on the streets, beggars and would-be robbers of various ages, all of them filthy, hungry, and with appearances that would make the upper class nobles of all worlds throughout the Consortium wretch once they realized that imperfectly-looking Hapans lived with them in the Transitory Mists.
During her lurking, Tenel Ka had a brief moment of turning back and returning to the Fountain Palace to restart her duties, and possibly even begin some kind of program that could help the poor, at least here on Hapes, if not elsewhere in the Transitory Mists.
But that moment was broken with the reminder that any such action would get way more backlash from her upper class subjects than Tenel Ka would be willing to take; it would be all-out war against the Queen Mother by treacherous Duchas who thought it absolutely disgusting that their Jedi queen would dare waste resources helping people who were unable, and most likely unwilling (which they would most likely think), to help themselves. No, if the Consortium was going to go into chaos eventually, Tenel Ka would rather continue on her quest to leave the planet and the Mists behind to be with Jacen again than to return and be responsible for actually doing something that would lead the Consortium into irrevocable chaos. And there was no way she could just go on continuing her duties with the knowledge that she had the ability to help the poor of Hapes but refused to do it; it was against what she felt that she had to do as a Jedi Knight.
On the other hand, Tenel Ka thought, her very abandonment of her duties was going against her personal obligations as a Jedi Knight, and the part in her that told her what Master Skywalker - forget that, what Jacen might say - would tell her to do; because even if they were supportive of her leaving the throne, they would tell her that it was irresponsible to leave it just empty without a suitable replacement and ripe for the taking by corrupt Duchas who would covet power all to themselves.
But Tenel Ka ignored that part of herself - she ignored everything that told her that what she was doing was wrong, that what she was doing was completely irresponsible. Too much of her life by now had been doing something she had never wanted to do in her childhood, which was rule the Hapes Consortium; too much of herself had been sacrificed to helping others who wouldn't care about what happened to her, and she rarely, if ever, got to see those who did care about her, like Jacen, Jaina, or any of their friends and family.
And it was with that in mind that Tenel Ka walked into a building in the upper district of Ta'a Chume'Dan, where the poverty of the city was less pronounced. Here, the abandoning Queen Mother found herself in the sparse office of a private pilot. The red-skinned woman - the only other occupant in the room - sitting behind the desk barely took any notice of the cloaked figure on the other end as the former was smoking a cigarra; the private pilot's expression was one of cynical misery, as if she felt like she had nothing else in life, but kept on going anyway because she thought there might be some way that she could finally make something of her life.
Tenel Ka read that not only in the woman's Force-presence, but it was also laid bare in her external expression. The Queen Mother hoped that her abandonment of the Consortium would do this one person some good.
Once Tenel Ka removed her hood, the private pilot only gave an apathetic glance at her ruler and continued to smoke her cigarra.
"You do not bow before your Queen Mother?" Tenel Ka asked, but without any of the authority that she might otherwise carry in her tone. What with her abandonment of the Consortium, she was simply asking out of plain curiosity.
The red-skinned woman removed the cigarra from her mouth and blew out a big smoke ring. Once it dissipated, she said, "If you have to come in dressed like that, Your Highness, and without a royal escort, I take it you don't wanna be worshiped."
Tenel Ka was silent for a moment; it seemed that through this woman, she felt as if... as if... as if she were being vindicated in her abandonment of the Consortium, as if this woman were telling her, without any words, that it was all right to do this.
"I want you to fly me out of the Transitory Mists," Tenel Ka said, mentally slapping herself out of the brief euphoria from this woman's refusal to acknowledge her royalty.
"Where to?" the private pilot asked, blowing out another smoke ring.
And it was then that Tenel Ka had to stop herself, for she did not realize where Jacen might be right now; given that message he gave her telling him that he was searching for the missing Jaina, he could be anywhere now.
Nevertheless, Tenel Ka found herself answering, somehow against her own free will, when she said, "Dathomir."
"Fifty thousand credits," the private pilot said without preamble. "And that's just getting to Dathomir. It'll cost you another fifty thousand to supplement my return expenses here."
Tenel Ka grinned. "I do not think that extra fifty thousand will be necessary."
The private pilot looked back at the abandoning Queen Mother with dismay. "And why is that?"
"Oh, do not think that it is because I am unwilling to pay that much or that I do not have enough money," Tenel Ka said. "But even if my account was not closed by the Fountain Palace security systems by the time you bring me to Dathomir, you will not want to return here."
The private pilot opened her mouth to ask why, but just as well closed it once the reasons came to her mind as to why Tenel Ka would be right; Ta'a Chume'Dan might be in ruins from all the chaos that the absence of the Queen Mother would cause.
"Twenty-five thousand then," the private pilot answered eventually, "so I can reestablish my business elsewhere; perhaps in AG territory." She then bent down beneath her desk and produced a box-like machine with a series of buttons with numbers on it, set the machine on her desktop, and pressed a non-numbered button on the machine to activate it.
"Type in your personal bank number," the pilot said, "while it's still accessible. And make it all seventy-five thousand in one shot, just to simplify matters."
.
The first place Jacen went to in his search for Jaina was the Esfandia system, home of the sole HoloNet transceiver between the Unknown Regions and the rest of the known galaxy. There, he transmitted a message from the Solo Quest to Baron Soontir Fel's private comm channel, supplied, with Fel's permission, by Jaina and Jag sometime after Jacen took office as Grand Master of the Jedi Order.
In the brief conversation that Jacen had with Fel, the latter transmitted all of the available information that the Chiss search parties dispatched to find Jaina and Jag had returned to Csilla.
"For some reason, I found that a lot of information that would normally be available to my security clearance was off-limits to me," Fel explained. "But this was what I was able to get."
Jacen looked from the screen on his ship's console letting him know that the data package was sent to the Quest back to Fel's holographic form. "Why do you think that is?"
Fel shrugged. "I have nothing to support this claim, but I think there may be some corruption in the upper ranks of the Ascendancy's echelon. I intend to investigate it."
"Would you like any Jedi assistance?" Jacen asked. "I can make a call back to Denon and-"
"That won't be necessary, Master Solo," Fel interrupted. "At least I don't think so. But even if it was, and there really is something of a conspiracy going around protecting information that may lead back to Jaina and Jag, I know I can't afford attracting suspicion with a Jedi presence. I already have this line encrypted from my end, but talking to you right now is posing a great risk."
"I understand," Jacen said.
"I sincerely hope that you can find something in all of this that we may have missed that can lead back to my son and daughter-in-law, Master Solo," Fel said with worry seeping through his tone.
"I'll do my best," Jacen replied, understanding exactly where the man was coming from. "And thank you for providing me with this information, Baron Fel."
With that, the two men shared a nod of mutual respect, and Fel signed off. Jacen was then left to search through the Solo Quest's databanks to sift through the information that Jag's father provided him.
After nearly two hours - which felt like an eternity that was as stressful as it was simultaneously boring for Jacen - he finally found a lead - or, he mentally told himself afterward, he thought he find a lead.
According to the interrogations charts that Fel sent Jacen, several of the pirates who were found and arrested by the search parties for shipping illegal goods through Chiss territory had brought up a Rodian smuggler by the name of Gerlal Udono. What brought Jacen's attention to Captain Udono was that he was the only illegal trader between the Unknown Regions and the rest of the galaxy to ship people for slavery in lieu of drugs or other banned goods. Udono and his crew of the Trandoshan heavy freighter Service Sender would go back and forth between Chiss-occupied space and non-Chiss-occupied space in the Unknown Regions to various worlds in the Outer Rim, such as Zygerria, Tatooine, various worlds in the Hapes Consortium, and Dathomir.
And that was when Jacen decided to take the Quest over to the latter planet.
Two days after leaving the Unknown Regions, Jacen dropped his ship out of hyperspace in the Dathomir system, went through the usual landing procedures with the planet's ground control, and brought it down through the atmosphere to land in the exact same spaceport that he had landed on years before.
Debarking from the Quest with the Jedi robes he wore, his shoes, a small radio in his robes, and the lightsaber hanging on his belt, Jacen left his locked-up ship under the sight of the spaceport's female manager and her posse of wage slaves who overlooked and took care of the few other space-worthy vessels in the port. Stepping outside, he took a deep breath of the Dathomiri air, allowing himself a moment of necessary relaxation in his search for Jaina and Jag as he savored the familiar forest surroundings that he had visited during his post-Yuuzhan Vong War sojourn.
But then the moment passed, and Jacen began trekking on into the woods, back toward the lodge that the Singing Mountain Clan had provided him back when he visited during his sojourn; assuming that it hadn't been taken by anyone else, he would use that lodge to stake out on the planet and listen to his radio to find if any Trandoshan heavy freighters would enter the system.
Half an hour into the trek, during which he kept his ears peeled on the radio that he now held active in his hand, Jacen finally arrived in the village of the Singing Mountain Clan.
And right before him stood a smiling Tenel Ka, garbed not in her flamboyant Hapan robes, but the plain and simple garb of a Dathomiri witch, just as she used to wear when she and Jacen attended the Jedi praxeum on Yavin 4 when they were teenagers.
"Hello, Jacen," Tenel Ka said, her tone bright and happy. "I knew that you would be here."
Jacen just stood there, dumbfounded and perplexed at his friend's presence here. "Tenel Ka? What are you doing here?"
"I came here to be with you, Jacen," Tenel Ka replied. "And now we can finally be together."
