Author's Responses at End
Chapter Ten: What Price Victory?
Jor opened his eyes. The medical bay of the Ralroost was, like the rest of the ship, in bad condition. The monitoring beds were hard-locked to the floor, but everything else was thrown haphazardly around the room.
That included Danni and Jacen.
The young Jedi was slumped in a corner with a small trickle of blood from his forehead. Jor caught a glimpse of Danni's bare, too-thin leg from a pile of blankets nearby. The medical droid lay on its side. "Please help me up, sir," it said in a calm, Bothan voice.
Jor picked himself off the plating and looked down at the loose robe he wore. It was better than being completely nude, he supposed. He felt incredible weak and heavy as he stumbled to the droid. Even so, he righted the four two hundred kilogram machine.
"Thank you," it said. "I am Five Five Cee, Medical droid. Please assist me in placing the patients back on their beds."
Jor went to Danni first. Her eyes were half open. "What happened?" she managed to whisper.
"I think the ship was hit," Jor said. "We're okay now. The alarms have turned off."
Though she too wore a robe now, he still wrapped her in the blanket and carried her to the first bed. Her arm bled a little where an intravenous line was torn free during the wreck. It was a mark of her poor condition she did not bleed more.
"I'm so tired," she whispered.
"I know the feeling," he said.
"Where is Jacen?"
Jor turned and looked at his distant cousin. He heard the concern in her voice and had to crush a swelling of jealously. Instead, he stumbled over and lifted Jacen from the floor and carried him to the bed next to her.
"The young Jedi will be fine," the droid said. "Ms. Quee on the other hand is in need of more intensive care."
"Bacta?" Jor asked.
"Bacta cures injuries, wounds and in some cases illness. It does not treat starvation." A secondary pair of arms emerged from the droid's body and quickly attached a new IV to Danni's arm. She barely grimaced.
A thin hand took his. "You're so strong," she whispered. Her face was sunken and her blonde hair dull and thin. "You saved me."
"It's what we Naberries do," Jor said. "It's what friends do. Besides, without you, I would have gone insane in there."
She smiled weakly. "I'm going to sleep now," she managed to say.
Jor leaned over and kissed her forehead. "I'll be here."
She nodded, smiled to him again, and then quickly slipped into a deep slumber.
"Going to kiss me too?" Jacen asked.
Jor looked up at the other padawan. Jacen sat up slowly on the edge of the bed. The blood from the cut on his forehead ran down his cheek.
"I'll pass," Jor said. "Are you all right?"
"Just a bang on the head. Question is, are you? Danni told me a little. A week without food; maintaining a force bubble against a flood of water. Curled up on the ground, just the two of you. Naked, no less. I bet that was a stimulating adventure."
Jor felt heat rush to his cheeks and had more difficulty this time wrestling with the anger. "What are you trying to say, Jacen?"
"Nothing at all," Jacen said. "I admire your strength in the Force to be able to do that. I'm not sure I could have. And when I see how she came through it, and how you came through it, it does make me wonder what else you've been hiding."
"I've never hid anything," Jor said. "I'm tired, Jace." He walked back to his bed and lay down.
"Go ahead and take a nap," Jacen said. "Don't worry about your girlfriend. I'll take care of her." He managed to make it sound like he was being genuinely helpful. Jor kept his face blank and his eyes closed.
"This is the Millennium Falcon to rescue crews," Leia said. "We are sensing survivors aboard the Stalwart."
"Acknowledged, Falcon," a brisk voice responded. "Thanks for the assist, we're on our way."
The Majestic-class heavy cruiser hung at an odd angle to the Falcon with a large piece of debris from Helska lodged squarely into its midsection. Still, through the Force they could sense a good portion of the crew alive and in need. Within moments of the message, a much smaller fleet tender approached the fatally wounded ship with rescue crews standing by. The fleet tender ships provided basic supplies, but could also be converted to a number of other uses as necessary because of their extensive cargo room and fast hyperdrives.
That marked the fourth capital ship from the Obi-Wan task force destroyed or severely damaged but with survivors. Four other ships held no survivors at all. The Obi-Wan herself did have over three hundred survivors. Sadly, General E'tahn was not one of them.
Beside Leia, Anakin poured over the co-pilot controls while Karia sat at the navigation console. The two Jedi could feel a steady pulse in the Force and knew the youngest Naberrie was reaching out to her father. The power in the call was almost numbing.
In fact, "Karia, that hurts a little," Anakin said.
"Shield then," Karia said.
"I AM shielding," he snapped back. He winced under another pulse.
"Karia, stop trying to call to him," Leia said gently. "Use the Force. Reach out with your senses and let the Force guide you. Brute strength isn't always the best approach."
Karia opened her mouth as if to snap back, but then closed it and nodded. "Yes, Master," she said. The pulses came to a stop as Karia reached out with the Force. "I just don't understand why he's not responding."
Leia returned her attention to the task at hand. They had already checked all fifteen ships of the lost task force and crews were already trying to help the survivors. In this one task above all others, the aid of Jedi could never be underestimated.
Still, their primary target eluded them.
"This is like searching for a fish in the ocean," Anakin whispered.
"Then we'll just have to be good fisherman," Leia said with a confidence she did not feel. She closed her eyes and let herself drift on the tides of the Force. It was something she wasn't able to do as often as she wanted. The conflicting pull of her duty to the New Republic and her duty to the Jedi Order was distracting her from her equal duty to herself, and her place in the Force. She thought back to the early days of the Rebellion. She realized with a start that those were only four years between when Kale came into her life, and when he left her alone to found the Jedi order.
Leia Organa Skywalker Solo, Jedi Master and founder of the new Jedi Order, discovered something in her that she would never have believed. She resented Kale. Just as Han did. Just as Wedge and Mon Mothma and the rest of the Alliance did. At the time, she respected him for what she viewed as a difficult moral choice. But as the years that followed poured out the blood of friends and colleagues, she unconsciously built up a resentment that the strongest being in the galaxy, who claimed kinship and friendship with her, was not by her side fighting for what they both professed to believe in.
With this new discovery came yet another painful realization. Her resentment of Kale bled over, intentionally or not, to his whole family. To Mara, fighting a terrible illness, to Jor-El, and finally to the beautiful, frightened young woman sitting behind her.
She wondered just how much of her resentment her children, and in fact the rest of her Order, picked up on unconsciously.
She turned then and reached out to take Karia's hands. The young woman blinked in surprise. "We will find him," Leia said. "I promise."
Karia nodded and forced a smile. "Thank you."
"I think you did find him, mom," Anakin said.
Leia spun back around and looked through the viewport. All she saw was floating, unstable debris. Already Helska's gravity was starting to draw the pieces of it back. That much mass simply did not disappear, and the natural forces began to do their work.
She called on the Force, though, and followed its pull to a point just ahead of them. In the dim light of the red sun, it was nothing more than a pale dot. However, as Anakin expertly brought the Falcon closer, the dot resolved into a body.
"Dad!" Karia whispered. Her terror poured from her as she ran to the back hold.
"Why's he naked?" Anakin asked. "I've seen more naked people today than I have in my whole life. I just wish most of them weren't boys."
"Yes, too bad," Leia muttered. As they got closer, they realized he was not naked. His black jumpsuit was simply burned and tattered so badly much of his body showed through.
Then she saw something that made Anakin beside her gasp. Karia floated through the void toward her father. Her red hair trailed behind her. "I didn't know she could do that!" Anakin said.
"I think we've misjudged all the Naberries," Leia said. "Move it closer. We're still under a red star and she's not as strong as she needs to be."
Indeed, they could see her struggling as she pulled at her father's arm. Still, the Falcon moved close enough that it was a simple matter for her to pull her father into the airlock.
"Take us back to the Ralroost," Leia ordered. She trusted Anakin to fly the ship. Like Jaina and Jacen, Han made sure all his children could pilot the Falcon.
She rushed to the back just in time to see both Kale and Karia collapse to the floor. Karia was gasping and crying in pain and her skin looked red, as if sunburned. Kale looked…like he had on Hoth, when Darth Vader stabbed a kryptonite lightsaber through his chest.
"He's not breathing at all," Karia gasped as she cried. "I can't feel him, Master!"
Using the Force, Leia levitated Kale through the ship to the infirmary with Karia on her heels. As soon as he was safely in a bed she started digging through the panels until she found a lamp.
Karia blinked. "What is that?"
"A broad spectrum lamp," Leia said. "When I stepped down as Chief of State Han and I took a vacation for month with the kids. Jacen set up a hydroponics lab in here for cooking herbs. This light simulates light from a yellow star."
She hooked it up to the power jack and then hung it over a diagnostic arm and turned it on. Karia moved to stand in front of the lamp, and closed her eyes. Leia watched, stunned, as the red burns faded from the young woman's skin.
"That feels incredible," Karia whispered. "I never realized how good the sun feels, until we came here."
Karia looked down to her father and put a hand on his chest. "His heart's still not beating," she said desperately.
"Did he ever tell you about what happened at Hoth?" Leia asked.
Karia shook her head. "He didn't talk about the war much."
"Darth Vader and your mom invaded our base. Kale tried to save us and attacked Vader. But Vader had a lightsaber that used a piece of Kryptonite. It cut right through him. I had to fight your mom all the way back to the transport. We got him on board, but he had no life signs at all. And then, after a few hours, he just woke up."
Karia's hand moved down her father's broad, muscular chest until she found the one and only blemish on his body. "I was wondering why that scar never healed." She smiled. "So mother was out to get Kale even before they got married?"
"Mara came close to killing us all," Leia said. "Did you know one time she knocked me out and kidnapped me to the Death Star?"
Karia gaped. "Really? Was she pretty?"
The question nonplussed Leia. "She was the Emperor's hand and a professional assassin."
Karia shrugged. "Yeah, I know. But was she pretty?"
With a hopeless laugh, Leia wrapped Karia in a hug. "Yes, she was. She was beautiful. Your father was smitten with her the moment he saw her, even though she kept trying to kill us all."
"But he saved her," Karia said. "Just like he saved us from that ship."
Leia kissed her forehead, and nodded. "Yes, Karia. Your father is a hero."
"Better not let Han hear you say that," a weak voice murmured.
"Dad!" Kara was out of Leia's arms and over her father in the blink of an eye. Leia didn't mind at all as she moved around the table in the cramped cabin.
"Damned gravity fields slowed me down," he said. "I wasn't able to escape the blast completely."
He reached up an arm and took Leia's hand. "I felt you. All of you. I tried to reach you, but I couldn't. But I felt you coming. I knew you would find me. Thank you."
"That's what family does, Kale," Leia said. Around them they heard a metallic clang as they returned to the Ralroost. "Thank you for what you did."
"Did it work?"
Leia nodded. "It did. But the Vong didn't surrender. They rammed the ship into the planet. We lost General E'tahn and an entire taskforce."
Kale closed his eyes a moment and then struggled to sit up. Karia had to help. "How is Han taking it?"
"Like a general who has led men into difficult battles before. The question is how the Senate will take it."
"And Mara?"
"She's on board the Ralroost," Leia said. "Beyond that I don't know." She took a long, appraising look. "We need to get you a shirt. Han has a few loose sweaters around her somewhere that'll work short term."
"I want to see the rest of my family," Kale said.
General Solo transferred his flag from the Ralroost to the Endurance-class fleet carrier Venture. He sent orders flowing through the entire New Republic defense forces and sent encoded briefs to the Minister of Defense and Chief of State Elegos A'Kla with every bit of information they had, which wasn't much.
He met with his senior staff every hour as they continued to rescue personnel and had to set up a triage system on what ships to try and rescue from the increasingly dangerous Helska gravity well.
This took the better part of a day. Han had not slept in at least two days. He moved as if in dream, issuing orders and running on stims and caf. Of all the numbers, facts and figures that ran through his head, only one lingered: 98,523. That was the number of beings in his fleet that died. Men, women and sentient beings of all races from across the Republic. Almost one hundred thousand people died under his command.
Even as exhausted as he was, Han did not blame himself for their deaths. As a seasoned commander who served under both the Empire and the Rebellion, he realized death happened in war. Though he did not blame himself for their deaths, nonetheless he was responsible for the losses as their commander.
The fact that 28 ships were lost, including several large capital ships, and almost every other ship in the fleet suffered some level of damage, was less important than personnel. Ships could be rebuilt, even if the senate was not going to see it that way.
The door to his quarters opened and he looked up bleary-eyed as his wife stepped in. "Our children are bunked down," she said. "Jaina wants to sign up now."
"She's a damned fine pilot," Han said.
"Are you serious?"
"I'm tired," Han said.
Leia nodded. He knew she had not slept since he had, and yet as always she seemed more alert and awake than he. More beautiful. She took his hand and pulled him away from his desk. "Wedge got five hours of sleep today. He's on duty. You're off. Come to bed."
"I've got a lot to do."
"And it will still be there for you when you wake up," she said. She undid the ceremonial buttons on this uniform and pulled his jacket off, then pulled the shirt over his head. She thought back to Kale on the table, then looked at the graying hair on her husband's chest. She saw the scars from years of hard living. She traced one from a surgery just a few years ago. One came from an accident involving Anakin and a droid the young man was trying to build.
She noticed how the muscles weren't quite as large or firm as they used to be. She noticed that Han was getting older. He was more beautiful to her then than at any point in their long marriage.
She stepped back and looked him in the eye as she let her robes drop around her ankles. She was getting older too, she knew. But she knew that as he looked at her, he thought she was beautiful too. "I love you," she said.
"I know," he said with a tired grin. "I'm not sure how much fun I'll be."
"I just want to feel you sleeping," she assured her tired warrior as she led him to bed.
"Okay," he said with a yawn. "Gonna be there when I wake up?"
"Yes."
They climbed under the covers and he curled up next to her. "Good," he mumbled. "I'll be more fun then." And with that, General of the Defense Force Han Solo slipped into a deep sleep.
He started snoring loudly a minute after that.
"I love you, Han," Leia said one more time with a gentle smile. She closed her eyes, and drifted into sleep herself.
Yes, I know, a short chapter. But then again, I realize as I'm doing this that I got my posting order mixed up on my two stories, so in a sense consider this a bonus chapter.
Dajohu--Thank you. I agree that the different authors found themselves in a bad situation with how the first writers so horrifically wanked the Vong out.
Alex--Thanks, and due to my own lack of brainpower, you're getting a chapter one week early!
Wawaboy2--Thanks, and here's an early update for you.
Davin Sunrider--Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
GoldenRat--You do when you're basing the chapter in spirit off the movie. He comes, makes a BIG splash and pays a personal price, though of course you know he'll survive.
Roosterman71--Thanks, I think most people agree the NJO was just straight bad.
The-Knight2000--Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it!