Chapter 26

MAIN HANGAR BAY; TRUE SITH DREADNAUGHT: BANE

Jace Solo was in an even mood when the shuttle touched down on the Bane's hangar deck. It had been over a standard day since Darth Nemuritor's doppelganger had returned to the Sith stronghold on Korriban, and less time than that since the True Sith fleet had arrived in the Coruscant system, armed for war.

Zak Arranda had told them that part of his reasoning for leaving behind the Sith's personal transport had been because he knew that it was a sure fire way to draw the Sith into a trap. Jace's uncle, Luke, believed him and accepted the "gift." Sure enough, the transport had somehow provided the Sith with all they needed to execute a hyperspace jump into the system while bypassing the defences on the far edge. So now, Jace only waited to see if the plan Luke devised while talking to Zak Arranda would work.

Jace still believed that his sister—if she could even be called that anymore—was beyond saving. She'd done so many horrible things in the course of this war. She'd even been responsible for the death of their younger brother, Anakin, and their uncle's fiancé, Mara Jade. And then, more recently, she'd led the fleet that had defended the attack on Mustafar, killing their own mother in the process.

But for some reason, Luke had acquired a degree of optimism about her fate. He seemed to believe quite firmly that she could be rehabilitated, and that Brakiss was at fault for the person she'd become. He believed that any psychological traumas that she'd suffered over those years that had led her to the Sith could be overcome by the love and forgiveness her family could provide.

Hypothetically. Their father, the legendary Han Solo, would never forgive her for what she'd done. She'd robbed him of the one woman in life he'd have died to protect, and he hadn't even gotten that chance. Jace wouldn't say never definitively, but it would be hard. Anakin had been more than a brother to him; he'd been a best friend.

So yes, while it would be hard for him to forgive all Jaina had done to their family, and to the Republic, there was a part of him that hoped that Zak Arranda was right. There was a part of him that hoped that the doppelganger could somehow incapacitate his Sith counterpart so before he, Jace, arrived.

It was a foolish chance, and there would always be loyalists who would set out to free the Sith. And the war with the True Sith would not end just because their leaders had been captured. The Disciples would fight over the power vacuum left behind by the capture of Devess and Nemuritor. One of them would eventually destroy the rest; the war would continue.

When he reached out with the Force, Jace could clearly sense the presence of both Sith, and the strangely conflicted Zak Arranda. It made sense that if the Sith believed this battle would tip the war in their favour—or better: end it—that they would both be present to witness such an historic event. To Jace, this meant that poor Zak had been dragged along from his cell on Korriban to witness the fruits of what his Sith counterpart believed to be a folly.

But, was it truly folly if they had expected and planned for the invasion?

"General?" the squad commander said suddenly, tearing Jace from his musings.

He looked up at the man in his standardised armour with yellow command stripes adorning his shoulders and a raptor-claw design in matching colour on his chest plate. "Yes, Commander?" he said.

The man had his helmet tucked snugly under his arm, for now. He looked at the Jedi with a kind of weary anticipation. "We're ready. General Solo is just locking in the engine shutdown now."

Jace smiled. It was typical of his father to have been quick to volunteer for the mission, and quicker still to insist that he was the only one that could fly it. That they had made it on board was a testament to Han Solo's skills as a pilot. Jace would never, ever doubt him.

"What about our friends from that … other place?" Jace asked.

During the visitors' brief stay on Coruscant, they'd stared their story on who they were and their theories on how they'd come to be here. Jace had found it to be more than a little unsettling to see his other self so optimistic and sure of himself, and yet so untried by the pressures and expectations of war. In a way, Jace hoped that Jacen Solo never had to go through what he was going through.

"They slipped past the TS fleet undetected as far as we can tell, sir," the squad commander replied.

"Good luck to them. I truly hope they find a way to get back home."

He stood up and picked up his armour from the seat beside him. Swiftly, he slipped it over his tunic, and then clipped the fastenings together at the sides. He rotated his arms to test out mobility, found that it was quite comfortable.

"Sir?" the commander quizzed.

"New armour," Jace replied. He reached down and unclipped his lightsaber from his belt, gripping it tightly in his left hand. "You remember the plan?"

"As if I could forget it," the commander said with a grin. He nodded over Jace's shoulder and the rest of the squad came into the main hold of the shuttle.

They slipped their helmets on to obscure their faces. All of them bore the same yellow raptor-claw print on their chest plates and all but two of them carried standard 280 model blaster rifles.

On each of their belts, they had one or two thermal detonators or other types of grenades, as well as a few spare power packs for their weapons. Some of them had L23 blaster pistols for close combat, others had DL-44s. One of the troopers was leaning heavily against a HH-15 mobile projectile launcher, which wasn't such a good weapon in close combat but which would help in clearing out the hangar before other shuttles started landing. Another of his own troopers had a Z-6 rotary blaster cannon slung over his shoulder as if it weighed nothing while he fiddled with his blaster's safety catch on his belt.

Jace could sense that the hangar was already starting to fill with True Sith shock troopers.

"Don't rely too heavily on that, private," Jace said to the wielder of the HH-15. "Get off a couple of good shots to cause some mayhem, then pick a lighter weapon. You can't afford to be caught reloading the launcher."

"Already on it, Commander Solo," the soldier replied. His voice was a little muffled by the helmet's speech slot, but it wasn't too bad. He turned on the spot briefly to reveal that he had an A280 slung across his back. Jace smiled at the soldier's foresight before he turned to the squad commander.

"Ready, kid?" his father said as he emerged from the cockpit, carrying his ever faithful blaster.

"As ready as I'll ever be. You sure you don't want to stay on the shuttle until we clear the way?" He got a disparaging look for the suggestion and instantly took it back. "Stupid question, really, wasn't it?"

"Very stupid."

Jace turned back to the squad commander. "Go," he said with an affirming nod.

The soldier nodded back to him, slipped his own helmet into place to obscure his features, and then plucked a flash grenade from the nearby crate. He twisted the grenade to life, then tossed it out through the boarding hatch into the hangar beyond.

Jace extended with the Force, creating a bubble around the shuttle so that the grenade's explosion wouldn't affect those inside. This was especially for himself and his father who weren't wearing protective gear on their heads to dull the sound or the flash. When he felt the explosion, he held the bubble firmly for a few extra seconds before he let go. He flicked the activator on his lightsaber, igniting the bright green blade, and then charged down the ramp.

Blaster fire rained down on him the second he was within sight of the shock troopers sent to greet them, and his lightsaber was on and swatting the incoming bolts away from him before they could do any harm. The sheer number of Sith troops that had been deployed to the hangar to either kill or apprehend them might have stunned another man. It might have caught them by surprise, made them hesitate for just a second.

But not Commander Jace Solo or his father. Neither did it affect—to their credit—the Republic SpecOps squad that had accompanied them aboard the Bane. He knew that they, like he, realised that even a split-second's hesitation when under such a heavy barrage of weapons fire was the difference between life and death.

Jace kept up his defence, employing all of the defensive movements and steps that his uncle and mentor had ever taught him just to keep himself and his men alive. What blaster fire he did miss with his lightsaber, he dodged away from. Using the Force to guide his weapon's movements, he took a second to look around the vast hangar to see how his squad was faring so far.

Most of them had taken cover behind stacks of supply crates conveniently nearby. Han Solo was still on the boarding ramp, ducking out every so often to fire off a handful of shots with his blaster before taking cover once more. The private with the HH-15 launcher was with him, loading a second missile with his blaster rifle flat on the boarding ramp between him and the general. Jace saw that the trooper with the rotary cannon was standing out in the open, unleashing a storm of blaster fire at a cluster of enemy troopers coming in through the blast doors on the far side of the deck. He was unprotected, so Jace coiled his leg muscles and leapt across to his location, swatting away what blaster fire had been directed to him.

He flung out his right hand, calling upon the Force and throwing a short stack of crates one box at a time heavily into the armoured opposition. Shock troopers were crushed against walls and deck plating. None of those men and women got back to their feet again.

"Get behind some cover!" Jace shouted over the noise of the rotary cannon going off behind him.

He didn't wait for a confirmation before he sprang into the air again and came down hard on the chest plates of a couple more Sith shock troopers. He didn't land with enough force to crush them, but he felt ribs fracture under his boots, and the armour gave way only slightly.

He quickly planted his feet on the deck between the two of them and launched a hard kick, one after the other, at their heads to knock them out. His senses tweaked, alerting him to immediate danger, and he spun to his left and slashed around with his lightsaber … only to have it impact against the crimson blade of another lightsaber.

"Disciple!" one of his men shouted above the din.

Blaster fire concentrated from several of Jace's squad on his new foe and he jumped out of the way to avoid becoming another casualty in the Solo family. The darksider was also quick, and he turned and swatted the blaster fire away as if it was nothing more than a nuisance. One of the stray bolts caught one of Jace's SpecOps troopers squarely in the chest. The trooper went down without a sound behind the crates he'd been using for cover.

Jace charged at the darksider, realising only too late that his new foe was one of the more deadly of the Dark Disciples, and the most loyal.

The silver-haired shape shifter morphed quicker than Jace could get to him, and he didn't bother putting his lightsaber in the path of Jace's. He merely ducked the blow and swung up with a scaly fist. It connected with Jace's gut hard, and he felt the air rush out of him. The shape shifter grabbed at him with both hands, taking advantage of his momentary lapse, and flung him across the hangar towards a durasteel support beam.

Jace recovered his breath midflight and twisted around. He planted his feet on the beam and pushed off so that he shot up into the air. He landed on an overhead walkway and spun on the spot as it shook beneath his feet to signify that the shifter had followed him.

He watched as the shape shifter reverted back from the reptilian Trandoshan form to the Shi'ido norm. He drew his own lightsaber once more from his belt and sneered at Jace, the dark marks of his status as one of the Dark Disciples gleaming black and ugly on the left side of his face. The marks on the right side of his face signified his victories over Jedi—there were five.

"You must be the one known as Catoxle," Jace said, raising his lightsaber to a defensive position. The shape-shifter nodded, bearing his teeth in a menacing grin. Jace glowered at him. Far-be-it for him to seek revenge for a wrong against his person, he had a serious score to settle with this creature. "You're the one that murdered Tenel Ka."

"Murder is such a negative word," the shifter said, advancing a step casually. "I like to think of it as a sacrifice. Your di'kut stood in the way of something my masters wanted, and so she was destroyed."

Jacen lost his temper for a moment, and he lashed out without warning. His hand shot out ahead of him, and a wave of the Force slammed hard into the shifter and sent him flying halfway down the gangway. He followed through with a charge, his lightsaber extended before him, ready to kill.

The shifter recovered quickly, and was back on his feet in time to batter Jace's lightsaber away with his own. Jace grabbed at the guardrail on his left with his right hand and wrenched himself around in a tight spin. The move jarred his shoulder but nonetheless had his lightsaber in place for the darksider's follow-through.

He pushed forward, flourishing his lightsaber and entering into a complicated sequence of movements he had spent years learning under the thumb of his uncle.

The shape shifter faltered, and took longer to adjust to the fast, sharp movements made against him. He paid the price, and Jacen moved into his next sequence swiftly without pause after taking away the shifter's left arm. To his credit, the darksider didn't even cry out or acknowledge whatever pain he must have been in. Jacen admired that, if not the creature itself.

His temper sated for now, he pressed on. He took each step slowly as he pushed his opponent back along the walkway to the other side. He swung wide, hoping to deal more damage to his opponent's left side. The darksider saw it coming, however, and jumped down over the guardrail.

Jacen followed a second later and landed in a crouch a few meters away. When he got back to his feet, he saw the darksider's lightsaber slice cleanly through the armoured bodies of one of his own shock troopers as well as one of the Republic SpecOps troopers. The two had been grappled together in melee combat at the time, fighting to get to each other's blasters.

Jace frowned.

Clearly this Disciple was remiss of his reported devout loyalty to his masters if killing one of his own shock troopers was an acceptable loss to killing one of Jace's. Perhaps this one darksider just didn't give a kriff who died in the face of his rage, as long as he accomplished his goals in the process. Was it just him, or was that how Jaina and her lover ran their armies?

He shuddered internally. The Disciple spun around, sensing that Jace was approaching him from behind. He swung his lightsaber widely at Jace's head.

Jace ducked the swipe and lunged forward, slashing up with his lightsaber and severing the shifter's other arm. He shoved him heavily with his own shoulder as he shot past him, and the swung around and went at him once more. His lightsaber dragged casually through the shifter's midsection, cleaving him in half.

Jace watched the two halves fall to the deck, and the life drain from the Disciple's eyes as he glared up at the Jedi that had felled him.