The return to Yavin 4 was like a dream. Tenel Ka's personal shuttle, the Isolder, exited hyperspace with her two Miy'til escorts. Immediately they were bathed in the warm orange-gold glow of the gas giant. The light from Yavin blocked out the light of the stars, and Yavin 4 hung in the pure-black distance like one perfect emerald sphere.
Zekk was at the helm of the Isolder, Taryn in the co-pilot's seat. Tenel Ka, Allana, and Lowie crowded forward to see the whisps and whorls of gas drift across the face of Yavin. Jaina kept in the back of the cabin, arms crossed, watching the face of the planet she hadn't seen in half a lifetime. For a long time, it had seemed like Yavin was the only thing she ever did see, the constant fixture in the skies of Yavin 4 both day and night. She had forgotten how deep its colors were, and how the gas seemed to writhe in slow-motion across it's ever-changing face. She'd forgotten what a deep, beautiful green the moon was.
"You're looking at one of the most important places in the history of the galaxy," Zekk was telling Allana as she squeezed between his seat and Taryn's. "Before any of us were born, Master Skywalker destroyed the Death Star in orbit over Yavin. That was the turning point of everything. Before that, nobody believed anyone could beat Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. But with that great victory, the whole tide turned."
Allana nodded dully. She seemed transfixed by the orange light of Yavin. Zekk smiled gently, and it struck Jaina that he was good with kids. Strange, since he was raised an orphan himself.
Zekk continued, "Way, way before that, Yavin 4 was the base of a great Sith Lord named Naga Sadow. Naga Sadow led his people, called the Sith, out of their original empire in Korriban and brought them into the Rebublic to make war on it. He failed, but the Sith people settled on Yavin 4. A thousand years later a Jedi named Exar Kun found the moon. The natives called themselves Massassi now, and they'd built huge temples. Exar Kun found remnants of Naga Sadow's great Dark Side magic here and made it into his own Sith empire."
"Exar Kun was betrayed by Ulic Qel-Droma," Allana said as if repeating staid lessons. "His spirit stayed in the temple for four thousand years until Uncle Luke and his Jedi knights defeated him."
Lowbacca roared something. The green moon drew closer.
"He's right," Tenel Ka said. "This place is truly rich with history. You're about to step foot on a place that's seen five thousand years of conflict between Jedi and Sith."
"I know," Allana looked at her mother, "But like Zekk said, that was a really long time ago."
"Not for us," Zekk said.
"Exactly," Allana gave a little pout. "I don't care about ancient Sith Lords. I want to see the places you care about!"
Tenel Ka smiled gently and patted her daughter's shoulder. "I want to as well. But we don't know how much the Yuuzhan Vong left behind."
"Well, we'll see in a minute," Taryn chimed in. The green moon was filling their viewport. "I'm heading for the coordinates of the Great Temple, but it looks like there's a storm system moving through the area. You should all strap in, it might get a little bumpy."
"We could hold in orbit and wait out the storm," Zekk suggested.
Taryn shot him a sly look. "Come on, dear, don't you want some excitement on our honeymoon?" She punched the throttle, and they dove.
The Miy'til escorts hung in orbit while the Isolder stabbed into the storm. Jaina strapped into one of the seats in the back cabin along with Tenel Ka and Allana, while Lowie stayed up front to help Zekk and Taryn. As the wind buffeted the shuttle and jerked them in their seats, Allana asked, "Aunt Jaina, are you excited to be going back?"
"Excited?" Jaina forced a laugh. "I'll be excited to get on solid ground again."
"But Yavin 4 used to be your home, right? Don't you want to go home again?"
Jaina looked at Allana, then at her mother. Tenel Ka's lips were a flat line, her gray eyes inexpressive. Jaina shook her head and said, "It was all a really long time ago, long before you were born. I don't even know how much I'll remember."
"I bet it will come back to you," Allana said. "Really important things always do."
"You're getting wise with age, aren't you?" Jaina smiled.
Allana did that pout again. "I'm almost ten. I'm not a little kid any more."
"No," Jaina admitted. "You're definitely not."
Allana looked satisfied. The shuttle jerked, and Tenel Ka put an arm around her daughter's shoulders. They said nothing else on the way down.
When they finally settled on solid ground, Jaina found she couldn't wait to get outside. She was used to spending time in spaceships, of course, but still she hated being tossed around inside a metal can. When the landing ramp lowered the smell of damp warm air rushed into the shuttle's artificial atmosphere. Lowie and Zekk went down first, followed by Taryn and Jaina, with Queen and Princess coming down last. Zekk had put them down in a clearing, and wind and light rain still shook the surrounding forest.
Jaina stepped tentatively onto the familiar soil. She'd been to more worlds than she could count, but somehow she knew immediately that this was Yavin 4, her old home. Even with the clouds covering Yavin overhead, there was something in the shape of the trees, and the smell of the thick warm air. In the distance, wild animals gave familiar cries she hadn't heard in half a lifetime.
And in the distance, peeking above the shaking treeline, the old temples rose high into the air.
"Oh, wow," Zekk said softly. Taryn came at his side and softly squeezed his hand. "Oh wow," he said again.
Jaina nodded. That was about all you could say.
Except for Allana, at least. She said, "This is awful! Is it always this rainy?"
Lowie chuckled and brushed some of the rain out of his fur. Tenel Ka said, "Only sometimes, dear."
"Let's get some cloaks from the ship," Zekk said. "And some supplies too. It shouldn't be a long walk to the temples, but the forest floor might be damp."
"Agreed," Tenel Ka nodded.
Allana scampered up the ramp, glad to be out of the rain. Zekk, Taryn, and Lowie followed. Tenel Ka lingered at the bottom of the ramp and sidled alongside Jaina as she walked back into the ship.
"How do you feel, friend Jaina?" she asked.
"Weird," Jaina said. "Just... weird."
"Fact," Tenel Ka said, nodding once.
-{}-
The six of them set off through the jungle with raincloaks, two packs of rations, and a communicator wired directly to the Miy'tils in orbit. All the Jedi had their lightsabers, and Zekk, Lowie, and Taryn all had blasters. The jungle floor was relatively dry too, so passage through the forest was not difficult. When they got to the temple, though, it was clear things had changed.
Jaina had gotten only second-hand descriptions of the Yuuzhan Vong attack on Yavin 4, but she knew the Great Temple had been damaged. She was shocked to see the black-scored hole where its east face had been. The entire five-thousand-year-old structure had been smashed by some Yuuzhan Vong weapon, walls and steps and superstructure caved in. The Blueleaf Temple, smaller than the Great Temple and not as big a target, seemed in better conditions though it, too, bore many black battle-scars.
Interestingly, she saw virtually no remains of Yuuzhan Vong biotechnology. From what her late brother Anakin had told her, the Vong had begun their typical attempts at terraforming the moon to make it more habitable for Vongformed creatures. She couldn't recall hearing about Alliance attempts to re-terraform the planet. Perhaps when the Vong left the planet after the war, they'd made sure to take all their materials with them.
Tucked behind the Blueleaf Temple, though, they found the burnt husk of what had once been a daumutek, shell-shapred organic bunkers the Vong could grow quickly on the planets they invaded. The jungle had already started to reclaim the wreckage, and creeper-vines climbed up the walls of the cracked, curving outer walls.
Leaving the others outside, Jaina and Lowie began exploring the inside of the structure, such as it was. The roof had been torn off, leaving it exposed to the elements. Grass and even small trees poked through the floor. From what she remembered of Yuuzhan Vong biotech, it seemed like the places that should have housed villip choirs or sensory apparati had been intentionally gouged out and destroyed, rather than simply abandoned to the elements. She wondered if this had been the shaper daumutek where her friend Tahiri had been held captive, and into which her brother Anakin had ventured to rescue her. She found herself glad that Ben and Tahiri were off on the other side of the galaxy, doing who-knew-what. Coming back to Yavin 4 was hard enough for Jaina; it would have been even worse for Tahiri to revisit the place of her torture.
As they stalked through the ruined daumutek, Jaina found herself glad for the distraction. She'd been afraid that Yavin 4 would bring back a rush of memories of her brother as he once had been, always grinning and cracking the lame joke, always fishing for a smile from Tenel Ka. Instead the place seemed alien, which was far better than familiar right now.
Once she and Lowie had determined that the daumutek was indeed abandoned and overgrown, they went back to the others. By now Allana seemed eager to get inside the Great Temple and see the place her parents had called home, though the adults were far less certain.
"We don't know what kind of damage the Vong attack did to the superstructure," Taryn said as they circled back around the big pyramid to look at the damaged east face. "Even if this place had an internal energy grid, I doubt it's workable now."
Lowbacca roared and pulled a glowglobe out of his pack.
"Fact," Tenel Ka nodded, "But even so, we don't know the internal integrity of the building. The entire interior may have collapsed."
"These temples were made to last," Zekk reminded them. "Five thousand years and more than one invasion, and most of it's still standing. You know how it was built; layer by layer, step by step. Most of the damage doesn't look too deep to me. We should at least take a look inside. I'd bet the old hangar bay and convocation hall on the ground floor is intact. Maybe the old com-munications room too, where they planned the attack on the Death Star."
Allana groaned, "Not another history lesson."
"It's family history though," Zekk reminded her.
"I'm more worried about what's inside," Taryn spoke up. "I don't suppose any of you Jedi can scan the temple for life forms?"
"I don't feel anything," Jaina said, and Lowie moaned in agreement.
"Of course, if there was Vongformed life we wouldn't feel it anyway," Zekk said, then asked, "Would we?"
"I doubt it," Jaina shook her head. The Yuuzhan Vong had proven immune to the Force, something that had baffled the Jedi all throughout the war, until the living world Zonoma Sekot had revealed that the Yuuzhan Vong had been separated from the Force after their fall into barbarism, like a diseased person put under quarantine.
"Well," said Tenel Ka, "It seems there is only one way to determine the truth, and that is to investigate the scene. Fact?"
"Fact," Taryn nodded and readied her blaster rifle, a medium-range carbine. She affixed a light to its barrel while Lowbacca and Zekk prepared glowglobes. As they rounded the side of the Temple, the entrance loomed before them like a big black mouth, spread wide to take whoever wished to enter.
Allana, at least, still seemed excited. "Come on," she said, tugging her mother's hand. "What are we waiting for?"
"Nothing," said Taryn, and flicked on the light. Its beam stabbed into the darkness like a knife. "Nothing at all."
-{}-
Everything felt different in the dark.
The Great Temple had always been a strange place, as ancient and ghost-filled as it was filled with life and young energy. When she'd allowed herself to think back to the place, Jaina had thought of the people who'd filled its old stone hallways: stubborn Tenel Ka, brave Lowie, troubled Zekk, her brothers; Uncle Luke, wise Tionne, stern Kam Solusar, restive Kyp Durron (when he wasn't off playing hero). Dark hallways flashed in the light of glowglobes and beam-lights, and with every flare of light she felt like some old remnant of the living and the dead was stirring.
The Temple itself was not as badly damaged as Jaina had expected. The big open hangar space at the base of the pyramid was untouched, though whatever equipment the Jedi or Rebel Alliance had left there had been stripped the presumably destroyed during the Yuuzhan Vong occupation. They moved through the great entry hall, up a long flight of stairs, into the convocation chamber. Stone benches, some intact and some broken, lined the tiers that descended to the speaking floor. Lowie and Zekk sent their glow-globes levitating high in the air, casting the entire vast chamber in a dim artificial light.
"Wow!" Allana exclaimed. "This place is huge!"
"Yep," Zekk said, "You could fit a whole lot of Jedi in here."
Lowie grunted in agreement and went down the steps. There was a stout platform in the center of the arena, from which Uncle Luke had given many addresses. Jaina's mind flashed back less to those, and to the fierce debates during the Vong War that had turned this convocation hall raucous. She remembered all of Kyp Durron's fiery speeches, and Uncle Luke's attempts to meet that fire with coldness and calm. It hadn't always worked, and sometimes Jaina herself had felt drawn to Kyp's personality, which was then as magnetic as it was angry. Anakin had been tempted too, she remembered, though not Jacen. Back then he'd clung to peace like Kyp clung to his lightsaber.
"This is where Master Skywalker used to gather the Jedi," Tenel Ka was explaing to her daughter as the two stepped carefully down to the central platform.
"It's a huge space!" Allana marveled. "Did they fill up the whole room? Were there that many Jedi?"
"Not quite," Tenel Ka admitted, "But when Master Skywalker spoke he commanded everyone's attention."
"I know," said Allana, "He's always like that."
"And he always has been," Zekk said, and chuckled to himself. "You know... I used to be kinda scared of Master Skywalker."
Jaina smiled at that memory. After his brush with the dark side, Zekk had been more conscious of its temptation than any Jedi she's known, and he'd always pressed hard to curry Uncle Luke's favor. He'd been scared of other people's judgment then, and maybe still was.
"Master Skywalker has never been intimidating," Tenel Ka arched an eyebrow. "Quite the contrary, he has always acted rather… fatherly toward me."
"Well, he was friends with your mother," Zekk shrugged. "I was just a street rat with a bad attitude."
Taryn, still at the top of the stairs, said, "Will we visit the underworld of Coruscant for the rest of our honey-moon, dear?"
"If you really want to," Zekk looked up at her. "It might be the least popular vacation spot in the galaxy."
"Then we should have no problem booking a hotel," Taryn said, and raised her spotlight to scan the roof of the hall. Jaina's eyes followed the lights. The roof seemed largely intact at first, until Taryn's spotlight caught a long crack running from the center of the ceiling to what must have been the eastern wall. Lowie gave a low moaning sound.
"He's right," Taryn said, "This place isn't as stable as we thought. We should be very cautious."
Allana tugged on her mother's hand. "Mom, do you think you can find your room?"
"My room?" Tenel Ka looked down at her daughter.
"Yeah," said Allana. "Do you think you remember?"
Tenel Ka lookedthoughtful. "I believe I may."
"I want to see it," Allana said eagerly.
"If we go into the upper levels we'll have to be careful," Zekk said.
"Fact," nodded Tenel Ka, "But we've come this far. It would be a waste to turn back now."
-{}-
The halls of the Great Temple were dark things, illuminated only by bursts of artificial light. They were cool and damp, and the air smelled of vegetation. The jungle had crept into the hole in the Temple left by the Yuuzhan Vong, and it felt like the moon was finally starting to reclaim what had been built from its stones five thousand years before. Without light, or the hum of living and the Force, it felt like an empty thing, haunted not even by ghosts but by dim twenty-year-old memories.
When Jaina tried to find her way to the room she and Jacen had shared all those years ago, she was relieved to find the way blocked by a collapsed hallway. Zekk fared little better, but Tenel Ka was able to lead Allana to the room where she had lived. Dim gray light shone through its porthole window. Tattered remains of someone's mattress lay on one ledge, while a crumpled desk slumped against the opposite wall. Allana looked disappointed. Tenel Ka did not.
"Come," she said, leading the group away from her old room. "We should reach the top of the Temple."
"Are you sure we can get there?" Jaina asked.
"Most of the structure is still sound," Tenel Ka said. "Besides, haven't you forgotten, Jaina? I knew every corner of this place, inside and out."
And it was true, Jaina thought with a reluctant smile. Tenel Ka had been the master explorer of both the Temple and the jungle, always seeking out new ways to challenge her mind and body, even after the loss of her arm. She had climbed trees, scaled cliffs, and of course she had found a dozen ways to get to the top of the Great Temple, inside and out.
They needed to give Allana a few Force-boosts to get her over a ledge here and there, but in the end it wasn't hard. When they emerged at the Temple's peak the rain had stopped, and afternoon sunlight was beginning to break through the clouds, casting the sky in mottled shades of gold and pink. The great orange-yellow form of Yavin shone faintly through the cloud-whisps. The great jungle expanded in every direction, tree-tops swaying in the wind. A few birds glided through the air, v-shapes hovering in the distance. Jaina couldn't deny it. It was a beautiful sight.
"Wow!" Allana marveled, spinning herself around to get the full panorama. "This is amazing!"
"It is impressive," Taryn sound almost grudging. "You can even see the clearing where we left out ship."
"Good to know," Zekk breathed. He stood at the edge of the roof, staring down the eastern side at the charred rubble and creeping vegetation. Lowie pointed his head to the sky and let out a proud roar. Tenel Ka giggled, and Jaina did too, against herself.
"I would come here every morning," Tenel Ka said, putting her arm around Allana. "I would get up an hour before dawn and exercise in the jungle, then run to the top of the Temple to greet the dawn."
Allana made that pouty face again. "Is that why you always try to get me up early?"
"A habit made early is a habit for life," Tenel Ka said. "And I have missed this place. Spending too much time on Hapes has been... softening."
"I don't think you're going soft, Tenel Ka," Zekk grinned at her, then said to Jaina, "She still gets up an hour before dawn, you know. The Palace still has plenty of walls to scale and ledges to climb."
"And she never takes the same route twice," Taryn added. "It's a nightmare for her security detail."
"And she always tries to get me to join her," Allana whimpered.
Jaina fixed Tenel Ka with a tight smile, and her friend returned it. Jaina was surprised to find how relieved she was, learning that Tenel Ka was still Tenel Ka, after all the sad turns her life had given her. Some people, thankfully, never changed.
Jaina stepped careful to the eastern ledge and stood beside Zekk. She said, "A long way down, isn't it?"
"That it is," Zekk said. "Shame about the Temple, but in a way it just shows how amazing this place is. Five thousand years old and it takes an extragalactic invasion to finally put a dent in it."
"Yep, those Sith engineers could work wonders."
"Well, I give credit where it's due," Zekk shrugged. He looked down at Jaina, and asked in lowered voice, "You've been pretty quiet this whole time."
Jana glanced askance at Taryn, then at Zekk. "I'm fine. It's just... been a long time."
"I know," Zekk said. "But it's not all gone, is it? You, me, Tenel Ka, Lowie, together again."
"It's nice," Jaina admitted, but they both knew who was missing.
A memory came back to her, vague and distant. She remembered standing on a cliffside and seeing these temple peaks from a far distance. Jacen had been with her, and Anakin too. The bittersweet thought made made something well up in her throat; her eyes became unexpectedly moist.
At that point Taryn sidled along Zekk's other flank. Instead of interjecting, though, she took you a pair of macrobinoculars and brought them to her eyes. She scanned the horizon and said, "Is there another temple over there? Looks like... five kilometers south-south-east?"
Lowie growled warning, and Zekk said, "He's right. We don't want to go there."
"What's there?" Taryn asked.
"A Sith Temple," Jaina said. "Another Sith Temple, actually. One Exar Kun built, four thousand years back. I think Corran Horn blasted it to rubble though, or at least part of it."
"I suppose so." Taryn adjusted to macrobinoculars. "Is it located in a clearing?"
"A lake, I think," Zekk said. "It wasn't really a place we wanted to go."
"We don't have to go there too," Allana said.
Lowie moaned in relief.
"But what about that other temple, the Blueleaf Temple? Did you guys use that?"
"Master Skywalker did use it as an additional training area," Tenel Ka confirmed. "We could visit that too, if you like."
"I don't see why not," Zekk said. "We did come all this way, didn't we?"
"Fact," Tenel Ka patted her daughter's shoulder. "Come. It's going to take a bit more effort to get down safely..."
"I'm ready for anything," Allana said with a youthful confidence that made everyone, even Jaina, crack a smile.
Before they could start down, though, they heard a loud noise from somewhere within the Temple. It sounded like cracking stone.
"What was that?" Zekk said, suddenly alert.
Lowie moaned something, and Tenel Ka nodded in agreement. "Some crumbling structure, I expect. We should be cautious."
As they moved again through the dark halls of the Temple, Jaina felt a chill go through her body. She looked around at the others: Zekk, Lowie, and Tenel Ka all seemed extra-alert, and she felt a nervousness emanating from all of them.
"Do you feel that?" she spoke aloud.
"I feel something," Zekk muttered, and Lowie grunted in agreement.
Taryn, at the head of the group, stopped dead in her tracks. "Fell what? Is this some kind of Jedi thing?"
"I don't think I feel anything..." Allana said. "It does feel a little... chilly, maybe..."
"This is familiar," Zekk said. "Almost like..."
"Like what?" Jaina asked, because she didn't want to be the one to say it. She hadn't felt this in the Force for almost twenty years, but she remembered it in her nightmares.
"Voxyn," said Tenel Ka.
"It can't be voxyn!" Jaina snapped. "We killed their queen! Anakin died killing their queen! And how could they be here, on Yavin? The Yuuzhan Vong are gone! Nobody's even seen them in over a decade! It's not possible!"
"We need to get out of this Temple fast," Taryn snapped. "We'll call the fighters in orbit and have them pick us up."
"There's not room for all six of us in Miy'tils," Zekk told his wife. "Let's just stay calm and get back to the shuttle."
"It can't be voxyn," Jaina repeated. "Something... else maybe, but not voxyn!"
"Oh, Jaina," Tenel Ka breathed, "I'm so sorry."
Jaina spun to look at her friend, but as soon as she turned they heard the skittering of claws on stone. Taryn spun her light-beam to face the noise, and motion flashed out of the darkness: scampering legs, white teeth, glow-ing gold eyes. It lunged forward and in the cramped space of the hall there was no room to hide.
Tenel Ka grabbed her daughter with the Force and hurled her against the floor. Taryn fired vainly, laser-blasts leaving pitiful scorch-marks on its armored hide. Zekk, Jaina, and Lowie ignited their lightsabers even as they tried to doge the creature.
Lowie let out a yelp of pain as the voxyn threw him to the ground. As the creature whipped past them, Jaina stabbed outward with her lightsaber, jabbing the animal in the side. It let out a horrible scream and whipped its tail back and forth, knocking Zekk to the ground. In the cramped space of the hallway there was no room for it to spin around, so instead of turning to attack Jaina it kept barreling down the hall. It turned with the corner and kept moving, leaving its victims in its wake.
"Report!" Taryn snapped, shakily moving for her husband.
"We're all right." Tenel Ka said, finally stepping back from Allana after shielding her with her own body.
Lowie let out a weak moan, and Jaina crouched low to inspect his wounds. She felt warm blood on his fur, and in the light of the glowlamp saw red streaks across his side. Lowie groaned again, trying to tell her the wounds weren't too bad, but his eyes were going unfocused. Jaina's mind tried to race back twenty years to that horrible worldship over Myrkr, where they had fought the voxyn and doing so lost almost half a team of promising young Jedi Knights, including her younger brother Anakin and, in some sadder way, her older one too. She remembered the voxyn's acidic saliva, and their poison-tipped tails, and tried to remember if their claws were poisoned too.
Taryn was already on the comm to the Miy'tils in orbit, calling for help. Zekk, dazed and bruised but apparently okay, shambled over to Lowie and pulled some bacta bandages from his pack.
"Oh, this isn't really good for a Wookiee..." Zekk shook his head as he tried to attach the bandages to Lowie's furry hide. Their friend was moaning weakly, still, but his breath was getting slower. Jaina put her small hand in his paw and held it as tight as she could, willing him to hold on until help came.
"We need to get out of here," Tenel Ka said, helping Allana to her feet.
"It'll be too hard to get the Wookiee out of here," Taryn checked the power cells on her blaster rifle.
"We are not leaving him behind," Jaina snapped.
"It will be too hard to take him out the main entrance," Taryn said coldly. "We need to take him back up top."
"That's the way to voxyn went," Zekk reminded her.
"Or we try to find a hole in the east face," Jaina tried to calm herself. "That would be the easiest."
"Agreed," Tenel Ka said, and clasped her daughter's hand. "Let's go quickly, before that... thing comes back."
Taryn took the front of the group, with Tenel Ka and Allana behind her, advising her on which way to move through the Temple's dark winding corridors. Jaina and Zekk shared the burden of Force-levitating Lowbacca, all the while reaching out with their awareness and trying to sense of the voxyn. They still felt it, that familiar, half-forgotten animal need to destroy and kill, like the Dark Side embodied at its most primal. Mixed in with that she thought she felt fear, like the kind a wounded animal might, but she wasn't sure. It had always been Jacen who worked well with animals, at least until Myrkr.
Tenel Ka was able to lead them to a few caved-in corridors, through which they were narrowly able to squeeze Lowbacca. When they emerged onto a breach in the Temple's east face, the two Miy'til fighters were already waiting for them, hovering in the air with cockpits popped open. Just as they stepped out into the open, Taryn began firing her rifle downward toward the jungle clearing around the Temple. The others looked down to see the sleek black form of the voxyn racing away from from the Temple mouth. If Taryn's shots connected, they didn't do any good. The creature quickly disappeared in the jungle, though from its direction it seemed to be heading for the distant black pyramid of Exar Kun's temple. The thought filled Jaina with dread, but somehow she wasn't surprised.
Jaina and Zekk lifted Lowbacca into the empty passenger seat behind the pilot's seat, while Taryn got on the comlink and ordered the pilot to take him to the shuttle for immediate medical action.
"They can take someone else in the other ship," Zekk reminded them as the pilot awkwardly strapped the unconscious Lowie into his seat.
"Allana, get in the ship," Tenel Ka said firmly. The girl looked at her mother, and her eyes clearly held the typical Solo stubbornness, but in the end the encounter with the voxyn had rattled her, and she nodded. Tenel Ka Force-lifted her daughter into the air. Allana gently waved to the others as she was set down in the Miy'til's passenger seat. The pilot moved to strap her in, but she did it herself.
Tenel Ka took Taryn's comlink and spoke directly to the pilot. "Take her back to Hapes immediately. Make no delay."
"Yes, ma'am," the pilot affirmed, and the cockpit swung shot. Jaina felt a wave of relief as she watched the Miy'til shoot off into the sky, red engine-trail blazing. The other ship, the one with Lowbacca strapped inside, still hovered over the Temple.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Zekk said, gesturing to the ship.
"Oh, no," Taryn shook her head, "You can't be serious."
"Fastest way to the shuttle." Jaina nodded in agreement. "Probably the safest too, if your pilot's good."
"She's one of my best," Tenel Ka said. "Shall we?"
Taryn sighed, strapped her rifle to her side, and let Zekk put an arm around her waist. They went first, hovering up into the air, drifting toward the Miy'til, then gently dropping onto its scimitar-shaped wing. They pressed themselves flat against its surface, gripping its edge hard.
"Are you ready, friend Jaina?" Tenel Ka said, reaching out to grip Jaina's hand in her own.
"As I'll ever be," she said, and they took off in the air.