Imbuing her Force-presence with as much calm and patience as she could muster, Tenel Ka approached the entrance of the Fountain Palace's hangar bay and allowed one of the to guards in front of her - neither of whom had been knocked out by Allana when she took the Millennium Falcon; the Queen Mother had seen to that personally - to open the door. Tenel Ka and her retinue of guards and sycophants behind her followed inside to see off Master Horn and the others; the very same group who failed to save Allana from the Free Men, and who had also planned to betray the Hapan crown with the rest of the Jedi Order.
Horn and the others were standing in front of the now-repaired Millennium Falcon, with Jag pushing the hovercart that had Tahiri's comatose form on it, as the ship's boarding ramp was lowered.
"Just as new, I'll admit," Han said to the others in a begrudging tone.
In spite of herself, Tenel Ka could not help but smile as she and her retinue approached the group from behind. "Never underestimate Hapan engineering, Han," the Queen Mother said.
Han and the others turned around with mixed looks of both respect and wariness that they no doubt tried but failed to hide; no wonder, since they were all intending on betraying her after they saved Allana. At least Han and Horn were able to have some facsimiles of sabacc faces, Han more than Horn given the former's experiences as a gambler.
"Thank you for seeing us off, Tenel Ka," Leia said in her practiced diplomatic tone. The Queen Mother did not need to see through the older woman's Force-presence to tell that Leia was just as anxious as the others about pulling off this treachery after Allana was rescued.
Regardless, Tenel Ka nodded just as diplomatically, and with a more convincing act; she could not let anyone in this group know that she was on to them.
"I must ask, however," the Queen Mother said, "why are you taking Tahiri?" She understood that it would not be a good idea to have Tahiri around when the Jedi Order betrayed the crown; nevertheless, Tenel Ka wanted to hear whatever cover story that the group had conjured up.
"We believe," Horn said, "that Jedi Veila will be provided with more convenient facilities to treat whatever she is undergoing right now. We will see to it that she will be transferred to a Skipray Blastboat that will be ready to take her back to Shedu Maad."
"By more convenient facilities, do you mean more convenient for a Jedi?" Tenel Ka inquired.
Horn nodded wordlessly.
"You have already made the contact to be ready?" the Queen Mother asked further.
"I have," Horn confirmed. "Two hyperspace jumps from the Hapes system. Jedi Doran Sarkin-Tainer is waiting for us as we speak."
"Then, by all means," Tenel Ka said as she waved her one arm to the Falcon, "may the Force be with all of you."
"Thank you, Your Majesty," Horn said for all of them before they turned around and began boarding the light freighter.
Normally, the send-offs would be more intimate among them; but because of the upcoming treachery, it would be prudent that they left sooner, without any remembrances of who the Queen Mother was to them before this crisis. Fine for Tenel Ka.
That meant that the Jedi Order would finally meet its end all the sooner.
After the Falcon had flown its way out of the hangar and into the skies of Hapes, Tenel Ka turned to Trista, who was among her retinue of guards and sycophants.
"Order the fleet to move in on Shedu Maad now," Tenel Ka commanded.
Trista, her face set in a tight grimace, nevertheless nodded once. "Ay, Your Majesty." She then took out her commlink.
.
Allana awoke in a slightly larger cell than the one on the shuttle from which she'd been kidnapped from Hapes. She sat up from the uncomfortable floor and got a look around herself; again, another windowless brig, but with only a small, lumpy cot for a bed.
She picked herself up and sat on the edge of the cot, waiting for Vergere's ghost to finally appear.
The Chume'da didn't know how long she had to wait, but she guessed that it was, at least, two to three days, given how many times she had to sleep since she found herself in here, and the number of meals of gruel that were slipped in through the small slit at the bottom of her cell's door.
At around the second or third day, Vergere's form finally materialized before her.
"What took you so long?" Allana asked.
Vergere shook her head in mock-disappointment. "Such impatience in you, child. But understandable nonetheless; I was just waiting for the right time to appear."
Allana made a face denoting what could only be described as a sarcastic understanding. She then asked, "So now what?"
"Isoolder is still wondering what to do with you," Vergere explained. "He's thinking to either continue holding you hostage to coerce your mother into surrendering and remaking the Consortium as a democracy; or, failing that, outright kill you to set an example."
"Neither will work," Allana pointed out in a matter-of-fact tone. "My mom won't capitulate to his demands even with me in his hands. And killing me will only make things worse; my mom might as well neuter him like Ducha Lorangal did to that poor man who attacked her."
Vergere nodded. "True. Of course, I've been influencing his thinking to delay whatever decision he'll make, and I'm still making sure that Dreinae won't be any trouble along the way. But still, so long as you remain alive, or so long as that tracking beacon in your molar is still active, this crisis can come to an end sooner."
Allana nodded. "Maybe when it comes to the Free Men. But that still doesn't cover Lorangal and her allies."
"Oh, you think so?"
Allana gave the ghostly Fosh a confused look before she rocked in her seat from the sudden lurch that the Battle Dragon just took.
"What's happening?" the Chume'da asked before the Dragon rocked again.
"Ducha Lorangal has just arrived," Vergere answered evenly. "And now, everything has been set. You will no longer be able to see or hear me, Allana, from hereon until the end of this conflict. The Force has now denied me the ability to affect things any further; so, when we meet again, it will be in either this life or the afterlife."
And with that, Vergere disappeared, leaving a stunned and confused Allana wondering at what end her fate would come to.
.
The sudden appearance of over a dozen Battle Dragons in the nameless system - which had only one relatively nearby star - where Isoolder's small fleet hid instantly brought about one of the climactic events of the Hapan Revolution.
Immediately, the recently-arrived Dragons opened fire on the home fleet, but it didn't take long for the latter to get their shields up and begin firing back at the outnumbering ships. From there, Miy'til starfighters from both sides launched and started strafing runs against each other, several of them incidentally getting caught in the laserfire from the Battle Dragons.
Aboard her own Dragon, Ducha Lorangal, dressed in a Hapan military uniform in place of one of her lavish dresses, watched from the viewport of her ship's bridge with a triumphant grin.
"Remember," she announced to the bridge crew, "we know which ship the Chume'da is aboard. So keep your firepower on it to a minimum." She then raised the datapad that she had in hand and looked at the beeping blip on it that indicated Allana Djo Solo's presence among the enemy fleet; such as it was in the spy business, Lorangal, along with several of her fellow Duchas, had a line, courtesy of their secret agents in the Fountain Palace and elsewhere in the Consortium, on the tracking beacon in the Hapan princess.
One way, or another, Lorangal thought, Allana would be hers to use against Tenel Ka. And she can finally settle her business with Mr. Leader and end this Free Men charade once and for all.
She had a gift for Mr. Leader that he wouldn't soon forget.
.
In the Shedu Maad system, over a dozen Battle Dragons appeared and began heading down the icy corridor of the system for the home of the Jedi Order. Jamming frequencies on the part of the Dragons had already been established, which meant that the Jedi still on Shedu Maad couldn't get any help from outside the system, leaving them alone to be decimated by the royal forces.
Or so the latter fleet would like to think they could so easily win this battle.
Some time after the Hapan fleet's arrival, and after the Dragons had finally reached a proximate distance from Shedu Maad itself, Jedi StealthX wings had already launched from the planet and were now launching lasers and other projectiles at the larger warships. And from where the Battle Dragons had immensity in size and greater firepower in their arsenals, the StealthX fleet had their namesake of stealth and Force-users, some of whom were already experienced pilots.
Pilots such as Jedi Masters Kyle Katarn, Saba Sebatyne, and Grand Master Luke Skywalker, to name a few.
It didn't take long before the Battle Dragons unleashed their squadrons of Miy'tils to take on their near-invisible Jedi opponents.
From the cockpit of his own starfighter, Luke Skywalker smiled and said to himself, "This is where the fun begins."
.
After the second hyperspace jump, the Millennium Falcon had dropped out to meet the expected Skipray Blastboat that would take on the comatose Tahiri Veila. Han carefully piloted his beloved ship toward the Blastboat so that their airlocks would meet.
But once the airlocks were synced, each of the Jedi aboard the Falcon seized up from where their seats in the ship's recreational area. They looked to their Hapan aides in shock.
"The Jedi Order is in trouble," Corran said.
"We know," one of the Hapans said.
Then she and her subordinates instantly unstrapped themselves from their seats and leveled their blasters at the Jedi. But the latter group had already taken out and ignited their lightsabers to deflect the bolts right back at their shooters, killing them all instantly.
"They were preparing to betray us," Corran said as he and the other Force-users unstrapped themselves from their seats and stood up. "Probably going to shoot us in the backs during one of our skirmishes against the Free Men while we would've been saving Allana."
"How do you know, Corran?" Jaina asked.
Corran looked at her. "Tenel Ka wouldn't have made this so easy on us," he said, nodding to the corpses of their attackers.
Jaina spared the bodies a glance, too, before she looked back at her fellow Master and nodded in agreement. "Right."
The Jedi Masters and the Knights with them hurried to the direction of the Falcon's airlock, which was now opened and connected to the airlock of Doran Sarkin-Tainer's Blastboat. Jag was now pushing the hovercart with Tahiri's form on it to the awaiting Doran on the other side.
"Doran," Corran called to the Knight at the other end, stopping Jag from completing the transfer, "are you feeling the distresses of the Order?"
The Knight nodded, though he was evidently scared and confused from what he was now feeling. "But Master Skywalker has assigned me to take Jedi Veila back to Shedu Maad. Should I contact him to see what I should do now, Master Horn?"
Jaina shook her head. "Don't bother. Not only would you be distracting Master Skywalker, the Hapans would have already jammed communications anyway."
"Then what should I do, Master Fel?" Doran asked, concern evident in his tone and eyes.
Jaina took control of the hovercart with Tahiri on it and shipped it the rest of the way to Doran. "Just take Tahiri and make sure she's safe, Jedi Tainer. Do whatever you have to to make sure of that; leave the Consortium if you have to. Whatever you do, just make sure she's still alive after all this is over. That's an order."
"Yes, Master Fel," Doran said as soon as he took control of the hovercart from Jaina. "I will do my best."
Jaina gave the Knight a brief nod before turning and heading back into the Falcon, where its airlock closed off from the Blastboat and vice versa, and as soon as the ships disconnected, they zoomed off in different directions in a matter of minutes.
.
Predictably, the battle was not going in the favor of the Free Men's fleet as they were withering away under the firepower of Lorangal's mighty fleet. Several of Mr. Leader's own Battle Dragons were now reduced to molten slabs and hulks scattered throughout the system, dead, frozen bodies of Hapan men and women alike now littering the endless void of space. The Miy'tils on both sides were still putting up a good fight, but, again, Lorangal's starfighters were faring much better in numbers still.
Half an hour had passed into the battle before the Battle Dragon containing the Chume'da had lost all of its weapons, now leaving it helpless for it to be boarded.
Lorangal turned around from the viewport where she saw the defeated Dragon and said to her aide, "Ready my shuttle."
The aide nodded as she began inputting a typed command into her datapad and moving along with her mistress out of the bridge of Lorangal's personal Battle Dragon.
Minutes later, the shuttle now carrying Lorangal and her aide rocketed toward the defeated Battle Dragon; the pilot deftly maneuvered the ship around lasers and projectiles that were still being fired in the already-dying battle, and after some short time, the shuttle docked in the hangar bay of what was no doubt the personal Battle Dragon of Mr. Leader.
Once the shuttle docked, it retracted a turret from its underside that began blasting away Hapan soldiers, technicians, and whoever else happened to be in the hangar. This went on for a good half minute before the turret fell silent from a lack of targets.
Some time passed before the shuttle's boarding ramp unfurled for Lorangal, her aide, and the squadron of troopers behind them to disembark onto the deck of the Battle Dragon.
"Our first priority," Lorangal said to her soldiers without turning to face them, "is to find the Chume'da. After that, Mister Leader is mine."
They then proceeded across the hangar toward one of its exits that led into one of the Battle Dragon's corridors. The aide led on, for she now had the datapad that indicated Allana Djo Solo's presence aboard the Dragon, with two troopers personally escorting her while Lorangal had the rest around her for tighter protection.
.
The Falcon finally dropped out into the system that indicated where Allana would be to find themselves in the middle of a mop-up operation; in other words, when the triumphant fleet was wiping out the remnants of the weaker and defeated fleet.
And now the Falcon was attracting some unwanted attention of some Miy'tils that were gunning for it on all sides. But Han soon flipped his freighter into a series of flips and other maneuvers, all the while having the turret from the underside of his ship blasting away at some of the enemy vessels.
"Jaina, Ben!" Han called out in between flying and shooting at the enemies. "Get to the manual turrets and help blast these things off us!"
A quarter of a minute later, new lasers being fired from the Falcon lanced out to blow up even more Miy'tils in the way as the freighter continued on its course to the Battle Dragon holding Allana.
"You sure she's there, honey?" Han asked, not taking his eyes off the viewport before him.
"I'm sure, Han," Leia said from the copilot seat. She kept her eyes glued to the datapad that was beeping Allana's location. "How many times do I have to remind you that?"
"Sorry, I'm just a little worried, is all," he said sardonically as he continued in his battle-strewn path for the disabled Battle Dragon up ahead.
.
Lorangal did not lose a single one of her troopers - or even her aide, for that matter - as her soldiers continued to gun down the mixed men-and-women crew of Mr. Leader's Battle Dragon they encountered until they came to a woman with dark hair, dressed in dark clothes, just openly standing in the corridor up ahead.
One of the troopers beside the aide fired at the woman ahead, but the latter quickly drew a crimson-bladed lightsaber that deflected the bolt right back at the shooter's face, killing her instantly.
"Wait!" Lorangal called just as the remaining soldiers aimed their weapons at the other woman. The Ducha then asked the lightsaber-wielding figure, "You're a Sith, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am," the woman answered with a nod. "And I presume that you're looking for Mister Leader?"
"And the Chume'da," Lorangal added nervously. "Yes." She was hoping that a Sith, a member of the ultimate enemy of the Jedi, would be willing to help her locate the daughter of a former Jedi queen and the leader of a male-run terrorist group; and the fact that this Sith was also a woman gave Lorangal that sliver of hope all the more confidence, if only slightly.
If that wasn't the case, then there was a fifty-fifty chance that either her remaining troops would be able to gun down the Sith, or the Sith killed them all with barely an effort on her part.
"Well, then," the Sith said before she struck her free hand out to the door beside her.
That door flew open, and a second later, with the flick of the Sith's wrist, a man flew out and crashed on his front on the deck of the corridor.
And not just any man, to Lorangal's surprise; it looked like the late Prince Isolder, of all men.
"Ducha Lorangal," the Sith said as she stomped her foot on the back of what Lorangal presumed to be an Isolder-look-a-like. "My name is Lady Dreinae. And this, beneath my heal, is the clone of Prince Isolder, who calls himself Isoolder. You may know him better as Mister Leader."
Lorangal's brows lifted in astonishment. "How fitting that even in death, the specter of Prince Isolder, one of the most independent and capable men throughout the Consortium who ever lived, would be leading the Free Men."
"Why?!" Isoolder asked in anger as he looked up at Dreinae.
"Ducha Lorangal is clearly the superior force here," Dreinae replied, looking down at the clone, before she looked back to the Ducha and her retinue. "So, Ducha Lorangal, would you like me to kill him for you?" She leveled her blazing red blade near the back of Isoolder's neck.
"No, Lady Dreinae, I have a special plan for him," Lorangal responded, sparing a knowing glance down at Isoolder before returning her full attention to Dreinae. "Now, will you take us to the Chume'da?"
"Absolutely," Dreinae said before she took her foot off of Isoolder's back, roughly lifted him up by the shoulder, and then shoved him over to Lorangal's retinue.
One of the soldiers grabbed Isoolder with both and held him in front of her with the muzzle of her blaster rifle pressed up beneath his chin. At Dreinae's lead, Lorangal and her women followed the Sith to the Chume'da's cell.
A few minutes later, they arrived at a door and Dreinae opened it to reveal Chume'da Allana sitting on the cot of her cell, as if in expectation.
"Hello, Allana," Lorangal said after walking past Dreinae. "At last, it's a pleasure to finally meet the princess of the Consortium."
Rather than react in fear, the Chume'da made a wry face. "I heard something like that before," she said as she looked past to find Isoolder still being held by one of Lorangal's troops.
The clone only sneered back at the little girl while Lorangal only growled.
"I don't believe you completely understand the gravity under which you're in, little princess," Lorangal replied, her tone mocking in the colloquialism of Allana's title. "Here's how this will work: I will take you, use you as a bargaining chip to take Tenel Ka away from the throne, and regardless of whether or not she complies, I will kill you."
"Oh, I understand," Allana said calmly. "But I believe that Dreinae here will tell you that that won't be so easy."
Lorangal looked at the Sith expectantly.
Gravely, Dreinae said, "There are Jedi in the system, and they are coming for her." She tilted her head sideways at Allana.
Lorangal looked back at the girl and snorted. "You will die regardless," the Ducha intoned. "But not until after I get what your grandfather's clone has coming to him." She spared a glance at Isoolder before looking at one of her soldiers and tilting her head back at Allana. "Take her out."
The soldier complied, dragging Allana out by her arm, as the soldier keeping Isoolder captive shoved him into the cell. Lorangal followed him and delivered a solid kick to his chest, sending him stumbling back to the cot. He collapsed onto it, and then Lorangal punched him across the face, sending him on his back on the cot before she mounted him at the hips.
As she did all this, the soldier who shoved Isoolder in had already shut the cell door closed.
After the door was shut, Lorangal began undoing Isoolder's belt as well as her own. Then, in a matter of seconds, a maw of teeth was revealed in her vagina.
"No!" Isoolder said as he looked at the tool with which Lorangal would use to...
"Yes," she muttered. "Oh, you have no idea how much I've wanted to do this, especially to you. And you being a clone of Isolder is all the more..." She had leaned in and whispered, "...delicious."
She then grabbed at Isoolder's exposed phallic and began yanking on it; against his groans of misery, Isoolder's penis hardened after a time. Once that was accomplished, Lorangal plunged her tooth-filled vagina right on top of his reluctantly-erect penis, and from there, the teeth started to chew on his genitals.
Screaming in agony, Isoolder writhed painfully on the bed, grasping the thin sheet beneath him as his penis and testicles were gnashed around in Lorangal's vagina dentata. The starch in the vagina-mouth soon made the gnashed remains of Isoolder's bloody genitals a lot more soft for the digestion that Lorangal's vagina dentata was commencing.
Half a minute after it began, it was over; all that remained of Isoolder's genitals was his bloodying crotch; in a matter of time, he would bleed out, and it would all be over.
.
Back in the Shedu Maad system, the Hapan Miy'til fleet had now been reduced to over half its number, and three of the Battle Dragons were all but destroyed.
Scratch that, Luke thought in the midst of blowing away another Miy'til with some well-placed lasers. Now a total of four of the Battle Dragons had been lost, as, from this distance, some invisible StealthXs had reduced yet another of the great warships in pieces. Several of the other Dragons that had yet to be destroyed were already on the verge of it, or had some considerable damage done to them by Jedi projectiles.
And the Jedi themselves? Only a tenth of them had been lost so far, though they were usually apprentices or relatively inexperienced Knights. None of them were the Masters, least of all its Grand Master.
Of course, the Hapans were still going strong, more or less. At this rate, the element of surprise and invisibility could only work for so long, Luke knew; eventually, if the Jedi didn't get out of the system at this rate, they'd be space dust in no time.
After Luke fired a shadow bomb at a group of Miy'tils that obliterated them, the Grand Master's smile, which had disappeared as the battle progressed, returned as he and the remaining Jedi in the fleet felt the presence of new Jedi coming in to help them from behind.
"Alright, all remaining Jedi," Luke said over the fleet transmission, "we're abandoning our attack on the Queen Mother. We must leave the Consortium, or we face obliteration."
"But, Mazter Skywalker," the voice of Saba Sebatyne came over the comm, "we have lost so few so far!"
"Maybe, Saba," Luke said, "but we're still too few in number to mount an attack on Hapes itself. And at this rate, we may all end up dead anyway."
A few minutes later, after taking out a quarter more of the Miy'til fleet and reducing two more Battle Dragons useless and dead, the remainder of the Jedi fleet - which had more than recouped its numbers with the backup - all but disappeared from the Shedu Maad system to find a new home elsewhere.
And it would be far from the Hapes Consortium this time.
.
Following the Jedi fleet's surprising departure from Shedu Maad, General Heqan Booja, commander of the fleet and of one of the remaining Battle Dragons in the system, opened a line of holographic communication to the Queen Mother from her command salon.
"General Booja," the blue-tinted Tenel Ka acknowledged.
"I regret to inform you, Your Majesty, that the Jedi have escaped, and we have only been able to destroy three-tenths of their fleet before they sneaked past us," Booja told Tenel Ka evenly.
The Queen Mother growled. "The Jedi can be dealt with later, General. In the meantime, how soon can you and your fleet make it to these coordinates?" A second later, a series of coordinates appeared beside Tenel Ka's face.
Booja took a moment to observe the coordinates relative to where she and her fleet were right now, and she said, "We can be there in a few hours, Your Majesty."
"Good," Tenel Ka said. And just like that, the Queen Mother cut off the transmission, leaving Booja to carry out her order of getting the fleet out of the Shedu Maad system.
.
After blowing through several more Miy'til starfighters - regardless of whether or not they were on the winning Hapan side or the losing Free Men side - the Falcon finally landed in the hangar bay of the Battle Dragon that Allana was aboard. It took only moments for Han to make the quick cycle-down of the engines before he and the others in the group headed out of the ship and down to the deck of the bay. They met virtually no resistance along the way, given the number of bodies all around.
Several minutes later, after running down a series of corridors, and trusting on both the datapad that Leia still had in hand as well as the senses of the Jedi in the group, they finally came to an intersection where they saw a group of female Hapan troopers up ahead, surrounding Allana. Also with them was a woman who looked more like a bureaucrat than a soldier, and the Sith responsible for kidnapping Allana from Hapes.
Immediately, the troopers opened fire, and the Jedi ignited their lightsabers to deflect the lasers back at their shooters. Two of the troops died while the rest retreated to either side of the intersection to continue firing. The Jedi nevertheless advanced, whirling their blades to deflect the lasers, while Han and Jag lent blasterfire from behind to help their Force-using compatriots.
As they neared the intersection, the troopers began to fall back, and the Sith took Allana by her other arm away from the trooper holding the Chume'da as they began running the other way down the next corridor.
"Jaina!" Corran yelled as he continued to deflect laser bolts. "Go ahead and-"
Before the Jedi Master could finish that order, Leia, in place of her daughter, had already leaped up and over the lasers to land among some of the troopers, cutting them down, before she sprinted after the Sith and Allana.
"Never mind," Corran muttered to himself as he and the others continued to advance on the troops.
Halfway down the corridor, however, two of the troopers, in lieu of shooting at their opponents, ducked out from their hiding spot and hurried to the nearest door, where they headed inside.
Seconds later, though, the Jedi had already reached the intersection and they cut down the remaining soldiers. Only the bureaucrat-looking woman remained where she was, looking at the Jedi in fear, before she dropped the datapad she had in hand and threw up her hands in silent surrender.
Jaina bent down to pick up the dropped datapad, looked at it for a moment, then threw it up in the air to slash the device in two with her lightsaber.
"You got some explaining to do, Lady," the Sword of the Jedi said as she leveled her blade near the helpless woman's throat, who now began to mew in fear.
Then Ben turned to the door that the other two troopers retreated into and slashed that in two with his own lightsaber. Everyone else looked as he deflected the incoming bolts from inside, which hit their shooters square in their faces and downed them.
And then something happened so quickly that even the battle-heated Jedi couldn't absorb all at once; someone who appeared to be the late Prince Isolder, whose crotch had been stained with blood and who had Ducha Lorangal on top of him near his waist, had reached for a vibroknife from some discarded military pants - no doubt belonging to Lorangal given that she had nothing to cover her bare legs - and then the Isolder-look-a-like punched out all the teeth in Lorangal's vagina.
The Ducha screamed in pain, and that only intensified as her male victim stabbed the vibroknife in Lorangal's pelvis.
As the Ducha experienced white-hot agony that not even a Yuuzhan Vong would enjoy - regardless of whether it was male or female - the Isolder-look-a-like dragged the vibroknife down until the blade reached her vagina. Then the now-crotchless man ripped the blade out of the now-toothless vagina and stabbed it in the side of Lorangal's neck, sending her stumbling off of him before she collapsed to the deck of the cell, all the while vainly grasping both her unnaturally-bleeding vagina and neck. It wasn't long until her pained screams died down to nothingness along with her life.
The Isolder-look-a-like then looked at Ben and muttered, with a weak tone, "Help me."
Nodding, Ben took out his portable emergency kit from within his robes, rushed over to the Isolder-look-a-like, and placed a bacta patch over his groin.
"This should staunch the blood flowing outta you," Ben said, "but you're gonna need quite a bitta a time in a bacta tank before you fully heal." He then moved one of the man's hands over the bacta patch. "Keep the pressure on it." Ben then lifted the man off the cot and directed him toward the door. "What's your name, by the way, because I don't think you're Prince Isolder."
"No, I'm his clone, Isoolder," the man answered. "And I've been the one leading the Free Men."
The entire corridor was silent for a while at what just happened before Jaina lowered her lightsaber from the similarly-stunned aide and said to Isoolder, "Okay, you've got some explaining to do now."
The helpless woman then fainted from the gory sight of the cell.
The Sword of the Jedi regarded the unconscious woman for a moment before Jaina seized up, along with Corran and Ben. "But not right now," the female Master said, as if the woman were still conscious. "We gotta help my mom first."
"Han, Jag, we'll be in the hangar bay," Corran said as Ben handed Isoolder off to Jag. Then the two male Masters and Jaina used the Force to speed off to where Leia went off to chase Allana and the Sith.
Looking about themselves, and particularly at the grisly scene in the cell, Jag looked between Isoolder and his father-in-law and said to the latter, "How would you feel if I told you that I think I'm getting too old for this?"
"How do you think I would feel?" Han retorted.
Jag nodded. "Right." He looked back at the unconscious woman and nodded at her. "You wanna come back for her later?"
Han tilted his head. "I don't think she'll be going anywhere anyway. So let's see what's happening at the hangar bay."
With an acknowledging nod from Jag, the two men, along with their neutered charge, set off for where the Jedi had so quickly departed to.
.
Allana and Dreinae made it to the Battle Dragon's hangar bay, where a new shuttle was just docking. However, several meters behind, Leia arrived, lightsaber in hand and still lit, and in the blink of an eye, Jaina, Ben, and Corran joined her with their own lightsabers, stopping after leaving their states of Force-speed.
Halfway to the shuttle, Dreinae turned with Allana to face the Jedi.
"You're not getting away this time, Sith," Leia growled.
It was then that the ramp of the newly-arrived shuttle had touched the deck, and three more Sith - one a dark-skinned human female, another a yellow-skinned human male, and the last being a female Keshiri - all ran out with their crimson lightsabers ablaze.
"We'll see, Jedi," Dreinae replied before she shoved Allana to the deck to ignite her own lightsaber.
The equal-numbered teams of Jedi and Sith then ran up to each other, meeting halfway, and their lightsabers clashed to begin their individual duels; Corran took one the dark-skinned one, Ben the yellow-skinned one, Jaina with the Keshiri, and Leia against Dreinae.
The duels went on for about a full minute before each combatant stopped when the presences of thousands of more Hapans entered the system. Everyone then looked out through the transparent shield that cut the hangar bay off from the vacuum of space to find a new armada of Battle Dragons now pounding both the now-insignificant Free Men fleet and the now-late Ducha Lorangal's still-considerable fleet.
The Queen Mother had just arrived to reclaim her daughter and annihilate the main forces of her competition, as both the Jedi and the Sith sensed from Tenel Ka's distant yet smoldering presence.
Now knowing what as going on, the two groups of Force-users returned to their duels against each other, and they then began to spread out across the hangar bay.
Leia, for her part, was backing Dreinae back across the hangar toward the Sith shuttle. Once Dreinae's back was a few feet from the ship, the Sith managed to whirl around one of Leia's attacks to deliver an elbow to the older woman's face before flipping back and up to the shuttle's top. Dreinae then unleashed a wave of electricity for Leia, but the latter leaped out of the way and then leaped up for the top of the shuttle, where she continued her duel with Dreinae there.
Their clash of blades lasted fifteen seconds there before Leia ducked beneath one of Dreinae's slashes to come up with a solid punch beneath the Sith's chin. Dreinae flew back and off the top just as Leia already went flying for her opponent, who landed on the deck on her back. But the Sith was still able to block off Leia's descending slash and kicked up both feet to send the Jedi flying back for the side of the shuttle.
Leia collapsed to the deck after her back hit the ship, but she managed to roll out of the way of Dreinae's incoming lightsaber slash. The old Jedi Knight then used the Force to propel herself back to her fleet to meet Dreinae's blade with her own again, and their duel continued as Dreinae began to back Leia across the hangar this time.
Seconds later, just as Leia's back hit a wall, she leaped up over Dreinae's horizontal slash to simultaneously flip over the Sith. Then, upon the Jedi's landing in a crouching position, Leia reversed her grip on her pommel and sent the blade skewering through Dreinae's back. The Sith seized as her lightsaber dropped from her grip. Leia then deactivated her lightsaber to let Dreinae's corpse drop forward.
But then Leia just as quickly reactivated her lightsaber when she saw that, meters away, Ben was defeated by his own opponent, who stabbed him in the leg. Leia leaped in, her blade blocking off the Sith's killing stroke on her nephew, and then she headbutted Ben's opponent. The Sith stumbled back, but he was able to recover quickly enough to block off Leia's next strike.
.
Allana sensed that her mother was coming; her fleet had decimated what little remained of the Free Men's fleet, and it was looking like a walk in the park for the Queen Mother's armada against Lorangal's forces.
Even as Tenel Ka's shuttle approached amidst the violence in the void, Allana could feel her mother's heated, simmering presence; she was of the dark side now.
No, she realized. She isn't of the dark side; the darkness is in her, just as Vergere taught me. And it's because of me that my mom is like this.
It's all because of me; all this, the violence, my fate, the prophecy of me being a queen for the galaxy, the ongoing war between the Jedi and Sith.
If there's one thing that Vergere taught me, even if she didn't outright say it, was that I have a choice, and I know that my choice is not to get involved in this any further; I only bring more violence and pain just from existing because of this prophecy. And while I may not know how this may happen, I feel, no, I know, I can get rid of my mother's darkness while doing it.
With that, Allana stood up from where she'd been flung by the now-dead Dreinae and hurried to the abandoned Sith shuttle. She quickly retracted the landing ramp upon her entrance, hurried to the cockpit, and, finding that the ship was only on standby, she was able to take control of the ship to pilot it out of the hangar bay for space.
.
Leia managed to twirl the Sith's lightsaber away from her before kicking him in the abdomen, sending him flying back across the hangar before she looked to the ascending shuttle.
"Allana!" she cried.
She turned back to block the incoming strike of her returning foe, unable to stop her granddaughter from escaping.
.
In the shuttle ferrying the Queen Mother toward the Battle Dragon from which Allana had been tracked down to, Tenel Ka, upon seeing the shuttle from which she sensed her daughter's presence now, called out to the pilot, "After that shuttle now!"
The pilot wordlessly responded by turning away from the Battle Dragon that Allana had been aboard and went after the receding shuttle. But it didn't take long before some Miy'tils - still of Lorangal's fleet, no doubt - began attacking the shuttle ferrying Tenel Ka. The Queen Mother gripped her one hand against one of the armrests of her chair as the pilot struggled to chase after the Chume'da in the midst of a still-ongoing battle, even one that Tenel Ka's forces were clearly winning.
"I almost have her in tractor range, Milady," the pilot called.
"Do not tell me that until you actually have her!" the Queen Mother exclaimed.
But then, just as the pilot was about to activate the tractor beam to at least delay Allana from going anywhere further, the ship ahead went into hyperspace toward the system's nearby star, sailing through the battlefield via a convenient gap in between ships, debris, and everything else.
Five seconds of stunned silence later, Tenel Ka felt the death of her daughter through the Force, bringing about a shriek of indescribable pain and misery.
.
Everyone, Jaina said through the battle-meld she had established with her fellow Jedi when the duels against the Sith started, anchor yourselves in the Force now.
All four of them, even the wounded Ben, did exactly as the Sword of the Jedi instructed even as they continued to duel their respective foes. Then Jaina, still wielding her lightsaber against one hand to battle her Sith opponent, reached out her free hand to the lever that held the hangar bay's shield from space.
Just like that, the vacuum from outside blew all three Sith out, as well as the corpse of Dreinae and anything else that was loose.
Once the Sith were gone, Jaina pulled on that lever again to reactivate the shield. The blowing of space's vacuum ceased, and air recirculated through the hangar again just as the Jedi collapsed to the deck from the effort.
"Allana!" Leia exclaimed as she and the others stood back up. "We have to-"
It was then that they all seized up at the feeling of a major death occur through the Force. When the feeling passed, Leia collapsed to her knees and began to sob. Jaina immediately rushed to her mom, kneeling to embrace her as she, too, began to cry over the loss of her niece.
Ben and Corran, meanwhile, each felt a profound sense of shock and loss that the prophesied Jedi queen was now dead. And while Ben's reaction was slightly stronger than Corran's, the feeling still hollowed each of them out on the inside.
By then, Han, Jag, and Isoolder entered the hangar bay to find Leia and Jaina kneeling and crying. The three men looked at the male Jedi, and Ben said grimly, "It's Allana."
Han's mouth dropped further than Jag's - while Isoolder remained half-dazed, since there was so much a mere bacta patch could do to numb the pain at his crotch - upon hearing about the death of his granddaughter. Han, too, rushed over to his wife and daughter to bask in the grief than none of them had felt since... since...
.
"Since my daddy died," Allana said, her face now streaming with tears.
Sitting in the cockpit of the shuttle she stole from the Sith - which was now traveling through hyperspace for the Unknown Regions - she felt the pain that her family had to go through; from her mother, her grandparents, her aunt; even if none of them could sense her anymore, Allana could still feel them and their pain.
Beside her, as if she were really sitting in the copilot seat, Vergere's ghost regarded Allana. "I know, Allana. I know. But that is the choice you made; the choice that the Force urged you to take. You could have made the decision not to; to let the Jedi and the Sith continue to fight over you. But you didn't. And now this is the path that you must take now.
"And because you made that choice, I have allowed you to give the impression that you have died, just as you managed to veer away from that star at the literal last second; you definitely have Solo pilot blood in you, if I may say. And since you not only just used the Force to destroy that tracking chip in your back left molar so that no one can track you down now, you also have no presence in the Force; yet you can still access it, and feel it, unlike what I did to your father.
"And now, Allana, you are free to make your own decisions."
"If that's so," Allana said, her tone still stifled by her tears, "there is one place I want to go to..."
"Which is why you've already set a course for the Unknown Regions?" Vergere asked.
Allana nodded wordlessly.
"Interesting contradiction that the Unknown Regions has in this instance," Vergere observed. "It has many things, places, and beings that have yet to be seen or known of to the greater galaxy; and yet, just as your future is uncertain, the Unknown Regions has the one thing that you know you want."