Author's Note: Throughout this fic, I intend to use snippets, if not whole sections, from Dark Nest I: The Joiner King by Troy Denning for my story, which was not unlike my prologue/opening chapter to one of my previous fics, Jacen Solo: On the Right Path. Although I intend for these snippets to be used as minimally as possible, I want to make it absolutely clear to any and all readers to this fic that it is not my intent to plagiarize Mr. Denning's work, but, rather, to do a rewrite of it for purposes that I hope will become clearer later on. So if you see any sections in this fic that can be traced back to TJK, don't be alarmed, I merely use them as a base as part of this rewrite. Moreover, if you notice any contradictions to the source material for this fic, I can assure you that it's part of the rewrite (though you're free to criticize such gaffes anyway). Moreover, if you notice any contradictions in later chapters, that's because throughout this fic, I will be doing rewrites and edits whenever I realize, on my downtime, that something wasn't working for whatever reason. So if anyone notices something, I'll be more than happy to point it out if you wanna DM me.
(not that I'll make any money from this, anyway, but, oh, well)
Title Crawl
It has been five years since the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War. The galaxy has been steadily rebuilding itself, with LUKE SKYWALKER's JEDI ORDER helping the healing process. Displaced refugees see their suffering mitigated while devastated worlds throughout the GALACTIC FEDERATION OF FREE ALLIANCES and IMPERIAL REMNANT are seeing steady degrees of improvement toward returning to what they once were.
But in the UNKNOWN REGIONS, the CHISS ASCENDANCY find themselves in a standoff with a mysterious insectoid race known as the KILLIKS. Encroaching on the Ascendancy's territory, the Killiks inadvertently threaten to start a war with them even as they struggle for food and resources. In spite of this, the Killiks gain new allies from both the Unknown Regions and from the wide galaxy.
Among these new allies are young members of the Jedi Order, all of whom have one thing in common: a successful but tragic mission against the Yuuzhan Vong. These young Jedi, including JAINA SOLO, daughter of HAN and LEIA SOLO, have abandoned their duties to the larger galaxy without explanation to Master Skywalker or any of his fellow Masters...
Chapter 1
When Jaina had finally downed the last of the curd, she lifted her wooden bowl in one hand and smashed it to splinters along the side of her stone bench.
Naturally, all of her fellow Knights—Zekk, Lowbacca, Tesar, Tahiri, Alema, and Tekli—all looked up in shock from the remnants of their food to Jaina.
She looked among each and every one of them slowly, like a predator evaluating its prey, while the rest of the Knights sat frozen in place with the same worried expression, comical though it may have looked on even the Wookiee and Barabel. Each of these stares lasted for about five seconds, enough time for Jaina to evaluate each individual Knight with her Force-senses, before she moved onto the next one.
When she made it to the end of the line with her stares, Jaina breathed in deeply before she pointed down at the splinters of her bowl and asked, "Who's responsible for this?"
It was at that point that all of the other Knights decided to blink and shake their heads, as if Jaina simply speaking had broken them out of a unified trance. When they were done, they all looked at Jaina in confusion.
"Need I repeat myself?" she asked in a low tone.
It was Lowie who spoke up first in his native Shyriiwook. Jaina understood him as he asked, "What do you mean?" She noticed that he stuttered in mild fear of her; again, Jaina would have thought it somewhat comical had she not been angry at the moment.
"Y-you were the one who broke the bowl, Jaina," Zekk pointed out, his semi-cowed tone matching Lowie. The fact that he pointed out Jaina's action, as if it were a suitable answer for her, demonstrated that he hadn't been totally cowed... yet.
Jaina levelled a darkened stare at him. "That's not what I meant. Zekk." She made his name sound as if she were calling him an idiot. "I'm talking about who thought of the thakitillo?"
Silence once again reigned supreme among the group as Jaina waited for nearly a quarter of a minute before Tesar hesitantly raised a hand from his own near-empty bowl.
"It may have been this one," he admitted. In spite of his hesitation, he didn't sound nearly as scared as Zekk or Lowie.
Jaina's nostrils flared in anger. "May have been? You either said something or you didn't."
After he lowered his hand back to his side, Tesar's dorsal scales rose slightly just as the tip of his tail also rose up to be level behind his head. His eyes maintained contact with Jaina's as he replied in a defensive tone with, "This one said nothing. He thought it."
"Don't try to feed me that, Tesar," Jaina said as she maintained her low tone. "Taat can't eavesdrop on our thoughts." She then looked back among her fellow Knights, abruptly breaking the tension with the Barabel. And though Tesar's posture returned to normal, Jaina could sense from his Force-presence that he would be ready to renew that tension should she bring that death-glare on him again. "One of you must have slipped."
Yet another quarter of a minute passed as they all sat stone-still in silence as Jaina waited for one of her fellow Knights to reply to her accusation.
But when that silence was finally broken, it came as an unexpected response from Alema Rar.
Laughter.
Jaina's expression became angrier than before as she asked, in as level a tone as she could muster, "What's so funny, Alema?"
The Twi'lek allowed herself a few extra seconds of guffawing before she responded. "You, Jaina! You!"
Jaina's head tilted slightly to the right as she asked in that same artificially level tone, "And why would that be, Alema?"
"Well, isn't it obvious, Jaina?" Alema retorted as she made the human's name sound like an insult the same way Jaina made Zekk's name sound earlier. "You're making such a big deal out of nothing!"
"Thakitillo is not nothing, Alema," Jaina growled.
"Oooohhhh," Alema mocked. "You tryin' to turn yourself into a Wookiee, Jaina? You'd need a lot more hair on you before you wanna get into Lowie's pants." She looked over to the actual Wookiee in the group. "Oh, wait, I forgot! You have no pants!" She looked back at Jaina. "Well, I guess that makes it slightly easier for you, huh, Jaina!" She renewed her guffawing, even allowing her bowl of thakitillo to slip from her grasp and fall to the arid, dusty ground beside her booted feet.
Alema's laughter took a two-second pause as she looked down at the spilled food before returning her gaze back up to Jaina. It was then that her laughter returned as it was interrupted intermittently by her saying, "Uh-oh, look! Look, Jaina, look! I spilled some of that nothing-thakitillo! Oh, you gonna get mad, Jainy-whany?! Jiney-whiney!"
It was then that Alema shot up from her seat and began stomping down at the thakitillo in a mad dance, her laughter turning into a cackling that made everyone except for Jaina look genuinely concerned for Alema's mental well-being.
Of course, Jaina's face gradually reddened as her anger boiled not only to the surface of her physical expressions, but also in her Force-aura. Everyone else who was seated took notice of this as they shifted their attention from the prancing Twi'lek to the seated human woman who had started this bizarre interaction.
"Jaina-whany, Jiney-whiney!" Alema continued to shout in between her cackling.
After about half a minute of this, Jaina practically launched herself from her seat and tackled Alema down to the ground, her hands on the Twi'lek's shoulders. At this, everyone else abruptly stood up from their seats but froze once they saw that Jaina had stopped herself from doing anything else.
Alema, for her part, had also stopped laughing, her expression having gone blank while Jaina stared down at her in barely-controlled fury.
The two of them maintained this level of contact for about ten seconds, with none of the other Knights around them doing anything to intervene, before Jaina grabbed some of Alema's stomped thakitillo in one hand and brought it near the Twi'lek's face.
"This," Jaina growled. "This is not nothing. And do you know why it's not nothing, Alema?"
The Twi'lek was smart enough to know that the human had asked a rhetorical question, so she remained silent.
Jaina then stood up from Alema and continued with, "Because of all this." She spread her arms out at the environment around them.
Indeed, the moon of Jwlio, which orbited the gas giant Qoribu of the Gyuel system, had been mostly reduced to a barely habitable sphere for the Killik nest of Taat. Before Jaina or any of the other Knights had come here, Taat had been doing its best to harvest what little it could from the arid soil of Jwlio just to survive, and that had been on top of the attacks brought upon them by the Chiss Ascendancy.
"When Taat can barely get by with what they have here, Alema," Jaina said, "you think you have any right to stomp around that food that you had in abundance?" She once again looked back at her peers broadly. "It should be a crime for us to have the meal that we just had, and yet Taat gave it to us anyway! We can't keep eating like Hutts while Taat starve!"
Jaina levelled her gaze back at Alema, who had picked herself back up. "So imagine what kind of sentence you should get for wasting that thakitillo."
"Jaina," Zekk said, his hands held up in a defensive but non-threatening posture, "you need to calm down."
No doubt, Jaina thought, Zekk at least half-expected her to turn back at him and redirect her anger toward him, if only just to shift unwanted attention from Alema.
Instead, she looked back at him in annoyance.
"Zekk," was all she said for several seconds before she concluded with, "that advice would have been better spent on Alema."
The Twi'lek scoffed in response.
Naturally, Jaina swivelled back to face her. "You have something to say?"
"Okay, that's enough," Zekk said as he finally stepped in between Jaina and Alema. "We shouldn't be fighting each other here. Alema, Jaina's right; we shouldn't be wasting any resources when we're already low on them and in a conflict with the Chiss. And, Jaina, we really don't need to add any interpersonal conflict here when, again, we're at war with the Chiss."
"I'm not trying to add any 'interpersonal conflict' here, Zekk," Jaina countered. "I'm trying to make sure this team holds together and doesn't do anything wasteful or unnecessary." She directed those last four words at Alema, who looked back at her with a derisive snort.
"Jaina, can I talk to you for a moment? Alone?" Zekk asked.
Jaina said nothing, but allowed Zekk to lead them out of earshot from the others. The remaining Knights started to surround Alema in support, no doubt wondering if she was okay, Jaina thought bitterly.
When they were finally alone, Zekk asked Jaina, "What's gotten into you lately?"
"What, I didn't make myself clear back there?" she retorted.
"Look, Jaina, I'm here the same reason as you," Zekk said. "I feel for Taat, I really do, and I wanna. Everyone here wants to help, even Alema; that's why she's even here, if you remember. But you using the plight of the Colony as an excuse to-"
"Excuse?" Jaina interrupted. "Oh, so, you think I don't really care, huh, Zekk?"
"No, no, Jaina, that's not what I',m saying at all," Zekk clarified hurriedly. "What I'm trying to say, what I'm trying to get at here, is that something else is bothering you, and it's not Alema."
"Oh, yeah, then what do you think it is?" Her tone made it sound as if she were daring him to say something that he would instantly regret.
Zekk allowed a few seconds to compose himself before he asked, "You know you're wrong about it, right?"
"Wrong about what, Zekk?" Jaina asked, her tone evidently annoyed.
"About the Killiks," Zekk said, "not being able to sense our thoughts."
This time, Jaina's expression changed to one of mild curiosity instead of anger or annoyance. "Oh?" she asked.
"Look, between everything you said to Alema, and tackling her to the ground and all, I was thinking," Zekk said carefully, "about why Tesar would have been thinking about thakitillo."
"Go on," Jaina said in a neutral tone, her arms crossing over her chest.
"You remember the last meal we had aboard the Lady Luck?" Zekk asked. "You know, before..."
"Vaguely, yes," Jaina conceded, cutting him off before he could allow himself to say anything more. They both knew that he was referring to the Mission to Myrkr during the Yuuzhan Vong War, the same mission where they lost so many fellow Jedi, including Jaina's own younger brother, Anakin. Even now, after all these years, a small ache in Jaina's being tended to act up whenever she thought of him.
"Well, you can sense that Tesar is telling the truth, right, Jaina?" Zekk asked. "That he didn't tell Taat or any of the other nests about the food?"
It took Jaina a few seconds to reply with, "Yes. I know he was telling the truth."
Zekk nodded in relief. "Good. Good."
"So Taat can read our thoughts, huh?" Jaina asked. "Alright. I can buy that. It's a little... unnerving, but... not bad, I have to admit." She then nodded. "I could get used to it."
Zekk gave a small smile as he patted Jaina's shoulder. "So can I, as a matter of fact."
Jaina gave a brief chuckle. "And to think that with the effect that the battle-meld had on us, which often made us get on each other's nerves, that somehow I'm more comfortable with having a bunch of insectoids in my head." As Master Cilghal explained to all of them years ago, the boundaries between the minds of the Myrkr survivors had been weakened, and only really manifested itself after the Yuuzhan Vong War's end. "That's weird, isn't it?"
"It is weird," Zekk conceded, his smile not fading. "But in a good way, eh?"
"Yeah. It is weird in a good way." Jaina reciprocated the smile before asking, "So I guess we should go back to the others and I should apologize to them and Alema especially?"
"Oh, no, don't apologize to her," Zekk said quickly. "She had that coming."
Jaina looked at Zekk in askance.
"She's a surprisingly horrible dancer," Zekk quipped. "If you hadn't tackled her to the ground, I would have just on principle."
Jaina couldn't help but giggle at that. "Oh, what, you mean because of the fact that she's a Twi'lek and she should be really good?" Now that she was in a good mood, it was obvious that she didn't mean that accusation.
"Hey, now that's something I don't think I've seen in a long time," Zekk said pleasantly. "A smile? Say, when was the last time you laughed, anyway, Jaina?"
"Oh, I can't even remember," Jaina replied as she shook her head. She then perked up, "Oh, I do remember smiling earlier today that made me smile. Ja- Oh, wait, you think I should tell the others about this, too?"
"Um, yeah, sure," Zekk said. "Wait, were you about to say-"
"Oh, no, no, don't say it, don't say it," Jaina said playfully. "I want you to be just as surprised as the others when I give the news. So pretend I didn't say anything just then, okay?"
"Okay, okay," Zekk replied with a coy half-grin. "C'mon, let's go."
Jaina didn't need the Force to tell that Zekk had already figured out that she was about to refer to her twin brother—the one who was still alive, she thought with a bittersweet tinge—Jacen. Indeed, Jaina intended to tell Zekk and the others that Jacen was coming to join them; she hoped that Alema would have the decency and presence of mind to not talk about her brother in any suggestive manner that made Jaina even mildly sick.
Before Jaina and Zekk could take a step back to rejoin the others, they felt some kind of ripple through the Force. It was then that their expressions changed to a unified concern as Jaina and Zekk looked back at each other.
"You feel it, too?" she asked.
"Fear," Zekk confirmed. "Surprise."
"Resolve, too," Jaina added.
Then Jaina, Zekk, and the other Knights looked and saw Killik dartships launch from the nearby valley to make for the skies above.
"Another defoliator squad," Jaina said in determination. She looked back at Zekk. "Let's turn 'em back."