Over Mandalore
In her Bes'uliik fighter, Mirta blew away another TIE fighter before swopping off to port to engage in a brief dogfight with an X-wing before letting her turbolasers rip through her opponent's shields in seconds. By the end of those seconds, the X-wing practically fell apart in a small explosion that sent the starfighter flying away in various pieces; pieces that joined the accumulating debris of the thousands of other lost war vessels in the Third Galactic Civil War's Battle of Mandalore.
Not too long after the departure of the remaining Jedi and their turncoat AG allies from Coruscant - and shortly after the holonews announcement of Ossus's desolation that completely wiped out the Jedi Academy there - a fleet of AG ships dropped out of hyperspace in the Mandalore system and engaged in battle with the defending forces.
Mirta had been over the planet aboard a Keldabe-class war vessel working out battle strategies with Goran Beviin when the fleet arrived. From there, Mirta and every other Mandalorian had no other choice but to rush to their Bes'uliiks and engage the enemy.
That had been about half an hour earlier. Now the Mandalorians were down to less than half their forces, while the AG armada before them seemed as limitless as it appeared when it arrived in the Mandalore system.
Still, Mirta was having her fair share of AG kills, and she suffered only superficial damage to both her shields and in some places of the nigh-impregnable armor of her Bes'uliik. Nevertheless, that wasn't changing the fact that the Mandos were getting creamed out here.
And that became all the more apparent as one of the AG Star Destroyers launched a missile that required the defenses of both an X-wing squadron and a TIE squadron. After blowing through two more TIEs, Mirta caught a break in the battle to find that the aiding starfighters were escorting the missile all the way to Mandalore.
For the few seconds she had, Mirta wondered why these fighters were protecting a mere missile. She doubted that it could destroy Mandalore itself...
Wait, she thought. That didn't look like a concussion missile. No, it looked like...
As the devastation of Ossus came to mind, Mirta's eyes widened in the horrible realization of what this projectile was. She keyed her ship-to-ship comm in an instant.
"All Mandalorian forces, engage that X-wing-TIE squad escorting that missile!" she practically screamed. "It's a baradium missile!"
Mirta didn't have to explain the implications of what that meant; half of the Mandalorians' halved forces immediately turned away from whatever dogfights they were engaged in - whether or not their opponents were destroyed - and rocketed toward the X-wing-TIE squadron of fighters escorting the baradium missile. Mirta herself was among the Bes'uliiks hurrying to stop the world-killing projectile.
But as the battle to stop the baradium missile proceeded, Mirta and her depleting forces gradually found themselves being hammered away by the outnumbering Alliance of the Galaxy forces that blew away Bes'uliiks left and right; for every one Bes'uliik that rushed in to try to stop the missile, five more AG fighters rushed in to defend it.
Mirta did her best as she blew away more of her share of enemy starfighters, yet the missile continued on, unhindered, with extra shielding and armor protecting it from deliberate and stray fire from where its guardians failed to protect it. And with most of the Keldabe ships obliterated by the enemy Star Destroyers, there was virtually no hope that they could stop the baradium missile.
Finally, one of the engines in Mirta's fighter blew out from a laser that hit it, sending the Mandalore's ship careening wildly away from the battle. Eventually, she adjusted it with attitude thrusters in time to right her ship up, her canopy's viewport facing the direction of her people's homeworld as a massive explosion hit its landscape; an explosion that could be seen even from millions of miles away from the planet, and which spread its fiery death and destruction all throughout until the lush appearance of Mandalore was reduced to the same barren fate that Ossus had suffered.
Mirta fell into a trance at that point, all of her attention diverted to that now-dead world ahead, uncaring of whether or not any AG fighters would want her dead now. So she offered no resistance as one of the remaining Keldabes tractored her Bes'uliik into its hangar bay before the Mandalorian capital ship jumped to hyperspace with all the remaining Mandalorian ships.
.
Aboard the Jade Shadow
"Luke, this is no time for jokes," Han said over the holocomm frequency established between the Millennium Falcon and the Shadow. He and Leia both stared back at Luke with renewed shock; renewed given how little time there was since the events at Coruscant and Ossus. "The Jedi Temple's in ruins, Ossus has been obliterated, there are so few Jedi left, and you're telling us that you wanna ally the Order with a buncha Sith?!"
"Even if we don't need them, Han," Luke said, patient and calm as ever, "we can't afford to have anymore enemies right now, even with all the allies we'll gain."
"Even with all the allies we'll gain?!" Han reflected. "Luke, Daala may be powerful, what with her controlling the majority of what was the Empire and a sizable chunk of what was the GA, but she can still be beaten with what we got so far! Hell, I'd doubt we'd even need the Mandos at this point, never mind this Lost Tribe of Sith!"
"Han, the Jedi Order has fallen yet again," Luke reminded his brother-in-law. "This is a dark time now. Darker than the days when we fought Palpatine, and even darker when we fought the Yuuzhan Vong. Now... I'm not even sure we can win." The words that he spoke to Vestara earlier - about the Sith being the ones fated to lose against the Jedi once Daala had been defeated - now sounded hollow in Luke's mind. "And while I don't expect the Order and the Lost Tribe to be easy allies, I expect the Sith to at least keep us alive long enough to take out Daala."
"They're Sith, Luke," Han said. "I don't expect a single one o' them to not eat a Jedi's sandwich, never mind making sure that they won't kill us while this alliance is still in progress."
"And besides, Luke," Leia piped in, "why would this Lost Tribe of Sith even want to agree to this deal, anyway? If they have these spy cells on various worlds that your prisoner... What was her name again?"
"Vestara Khai," Luke answered.
"Right, Vestara Khai. If these Sith have spy cells on planets that Khai hasn't yet identified, why would they want to expose themselves to the galaxy now? Wouldn't they want to keep to the shadows and take over the galaxy from there? It sounds like your prisoner is leading you into a trap; these Sith have every advantage at this point!"
Luke looked away from his sister and brother-in-law in a moment of contemplation for before looking back at them. "If this is a trap, and Ben and I don't make it out, then Kenth becomes the official Grand Master. My dying wish for him is to make sure that even if the Order is to fall under his leadership, then he at least makes sure that the Jedi go down fighting."
"Luke, you don't have to do this," Han insisted sharply. "Just space that Sith witch and forget about them."
"I can't kill an enemy that is, so far, offering no resistance," Luke countered calmly.
"She may not be offering resistance now, but again, she's a Sith, and her resistance is in her treachery that she'll spring up at the last minute, or when the moment is most opportune for her and her people," Han said. "Do I really have to spell it out to the Grand Master of the Jedi Order here?"
"We'll still need her anyway," Luke said, "if only to see if we can get any notifications of the Lost Tribe's movements. We have to know what they'll be doing, after all."
"And what makes you think she'd be so willing to provide that information, Luke?" Leia inquired.
"I'll find a way to make it in her best interests to do that," Luke said confidently, even as he felt the uncertainty in his words.
"Good luck with that," Han said sardonically.
"Does Master Hamner already know about this?" Leia asked.
Luke nodded. "I briefed him about the situation before I talked to you about it."
"How'd he take it?" Han inquired.
Luke cocked his head. "As well as a Jedi Master could. But I could sense his reluctance in allying with Sith, especially since we're so few in number now."
"Where's Vestara Khai?" Leia asked.
"Relaying the parameters of the alliance with her father, the Grand Lord of the Sith Gavar Khai, in her guest quarters aboard the Shadow," Luke answered.
"Please tell us you have a bug in there recording everything she's saying to her dad," Han said.
"Didn't have time to set one up in her quarters," Luke said. "She'd obviously be too suspicious if I did that; at least right now. So I ordered Ben to watch over her."
"Wait a minute, Luke, I know this may sound like a stupid question to ask under the circumstances," Han said, "but how old is Vestara Khai?"
"She seems like she's Ben's age, but what does that..." Luke's expression fell into one of incredulity. "Han-"
"I know, I know, but please bear with me," Han said. "Would you say she's attractive, if only physically, that only a teenage boy like Ben would find... pleasing?" It was evident that he was looking for the right words to not sound so crass, especially since it was such a dark time.
Luke sighed. "I'd say so, yes. But I think Ben is well-trained enough as a Jedi Knight to resist whatever charm she may try to pull on him. So I don't think we have to worry about that, Han. And besides, if that was somehow a problem, I think I'd be able to sense it."
.
In Vestara Khai's Guest Quarters
The both of them completely naked beneath the sheets covering their nude bodies, Ben and Vestara lay content in each other's arms amidst the aroma of glitterstim pervading the air. The young Jedi Knight and Sith apprentice were only now coming down from their drug-induced euphoria, which made the intercourse that they had minutes earlier all the more pleasurable.
"Where did you say... you got this 'stim from, Ves?" Ben asked, only half-caring as to whether or not his question would be answered.
"We stole it from a smuggler's vessel," Vestara answered. "Lady Rhea said it was for... it was for... to make money, I think it was. Yeah. Make money. Got it aboard here... before I got to you... you know, when you were... crying."
"Oh, yeah," Ben acknowledged, his high now being dulled further by the misery he experienced after realizing Ossus was destroyed. "That was awful."
"Yeah," Vestara acknowledged, still fairly high. "I'm sorry many of your people died... even if I'm a Sith."
Ben laughed despite himself (or maybe because of himself). "Why?"
Vestara shrugged. "Death isn't a very pretty thing to happen to people. Bad enough it happens to all of us eventually, so why speed things along, right?"
"Right," Ben replied with a lazy nod. "You still wanna take over the galaxy?" Given his euphoria, his question wasn't asked in the manner of an interrogative Jedi Knight, but a casual question from a drug user who was mildly curious about his sexual partner.
"My people do," Vestara answered. "'Specially my dad, man. Oh, boy, you would not believe his want to take over the galaxy. It's all he ever wants and talks about. 'Someday, I'm gonna rule the galaxy, and bring about an eternal reign of the Sith,' and bla-bla-bla, something like that. I just follow along because, hey, what else have I got to do? What else do I know, am I right?"
"So you don't like being a Sith?"
"I like it just fine. Just wish it was a lot less violent and with less betrayal and backstabbing."
"Yeah, same here," Ben returned. "I wished that the Jedi Order wasn't so strict with its rules, like not going down the path of the dark side and stuff like that. But, hey, at least it's better than that dumb rule of non-attachment that the previous Order had."
"Oh, yeah, the Lost Tribe heard about that," Vestara said. "Yeah, that sounds stupid whether you're Sith or not. I mean, really? You're gonna deprive people of living happy lives with other people because you're afraid that they'll become too attached? Pfft, kriffin' stupid, if you ask me. That can happen to anyone, whether you're Force-sensitive or not, Jedi or Sith or neither."
"Yeah," Ben replied with a lazy nod. After a euphoric chuckle that followed, he said, "You know, I've been hearing recently about this theory that there is no light or dark side to the Force, but that it's all part of some unimaginable spectrum or something like that, where the light or darkness comes from within you."
"Really?" Vestara asked, her attention perked up from her dulled euphoria. "Can you tell me more about it?"
"Yeah, it's what led to my cousin turning into a Sith Lord," Ben said. "So, obviously, it's wrong."
"Well, maybe it's not wrong, but his practice of it was," Vestara suggested.
Ben's eyebrows were raised in interest. "Maybe you're right. You know, he did happen to do good with it by ending the Yuuzhan Vong War, from what I heard. Maybe he just fell off the track after that war."
"Makes sense to me," Vestara said.
"Say, when are you gonna comm your dad and tell him about this alliance?" Ben asked.
"I think I'll do it right now," Vestara said before she pulled away from Ben to gather her clothes up.
After she finished dressing back up, Ben asked, "Hey, how we gonna get rid of this glitterstim scent?"
Vestara raised a hand and unleashed bolts of electricity through the air that dissipated the lingering smell of 'stim.
"There," she said before turning back and beginning to activate her commlink. "Oh, by the way, I should let you know, my dad only speaks the language he grew up from, no Basic. So I hope you don't mind if I talk to him like this?"
Ben shook his head. "Go right ahead," he said, not suspicious of his lover's motives whatsoever.
"Thanks," Vestara said with a gleeful smile before beginning to activate her father's frequency.