Jaina, Jacen's presence said through the battle-meld, Are you sure this is a wise idea?
What's wisdom got to do with this? Jaina retorted. By now, the StealthXs, along with Tahiri's Sekotan ship and the Solo Quest, were back in the space surrounding Qoribu and its moons; it wouldn't be long before they were joined by more swarms of dartships from several of the other moons. Their target was the Star Destroyer upon which they sensed Lowbacca. We're saving Lowie. And like I told Uncle Luke and Aunt Mara, the Chiss can't be reasoned with, so we have-
What about Mom and Dad? Jacen cut in. I can feel them aboard the same Destroyer that Lowie's on. Even if I believed that the Chiss can't be reasoned into releasing Lowie, what you're planning could very well endanger them and-
Mom and Dad can handle themselves, Jaina pointed out sharply. They may be old, but they still have a lotta fight left in 'em. You'd know that if you stuck around with the rest of us.
She felt the note of pain in her brother's presence, but right now, she didn't care about how he felt; she sensed that he wouldn't jeopardize their only real chance at saving Lowie, so that was good enough for Jaina. And if Jacen had any counters to Jaina's biting remark, he kept them to himself as she saw two squads of clawcraft rush out from the Destroyer that Lowie wasn't aboard.
Naturally, since they had run through this plan before they took off, the Quest and Tahiri's ship split off in different directions, with each of them drawing four clawcraft on their tails. That still left four fighters left from the depleted squadron as well as the entirety of the second one, who rushed past the invisible StealthXs to engage the swarms headed for them.
Alema veered to nip at the heels of the clawcraft chasing Jacen while Tesar covered Tahiri. The Twi'lek managed to destroy the leftmost clawcraft with a few well-placed laser shots in its rear, quickly overwhelming the fighter's shields and blasting it to oblivion. Simultaneously, Tesar took out the clawcraft that was second to Tahiri's starboard by blowing out its port S-foils, sending it spiralling away in a course that would inevitably drag it down one of Qoribu's moons.
Once those two clawcraft were dispatched, their comrades broke off from their shots at their respective targets and banked away in different directions to locate their invisible attackers. They all fired at the spots where they thought Alema and Tesar would be, but both pilots were smart enough to veer way off, with Alema breaking port and Tesar starboard, which would naturally make them more difficult to kill.
So far, so good, Jaina thought. And with the rest of the clawcraft dealing with the dartships, that left Jaina and Zekk to be the only ones who would embark on the actual rescue mission for Lowie. So, without further regard to their fellow Knights or the Killiks now sacrificing their lives to battle the clawcraft, both humans accelerated their starfighters for the Destroyer ahead.
Several hundred kilometers from reaching one of the capital ship's hangar bays, Jaina sensed her uncle's presence intruding into the battle-meld.
Jaina, don't do this, she felt Luke commune. You're only making things worse for everybody involved. If you won't back down now, we will come for you.
Indeed, Jaina saw through her rear sensors that the Jade Shadow was tailing her; no doubt Luke was sensing her Force-presence to track where she was given her StealthX's invisibility.
Stay out of this, Uncle Luke, Jaina replied. And tell your wife the same.
Then you leave us with no choice, Luke conveyed before Jaina felt him leave the battle-meld.
A second later, the Shadow's turbolasers began peppering the rears of both Jaina and Zekk's StealthXs.
The former banked hard to starboard while the latter rolled quickly to his port. And from there, they began executing various jinks and jukes to avoid the laserfire that zipped past them, all the while still making their way for the Star Destroyer that held Lowie.
Jaina, please! Zekk practically screamed through the battle-meld. The Masters Skywalker are firing on us! We have to surrender to them while we still can!
They won't blow us out of the sky, Zekk, Jaina responded. Those are low-powered bursts; they'll be enough to cripple us if they accumulate, but they won't be enough to blow us away. My aunt and uncle wouldn't risk it.
Are you sure about that? Zekk asked. After what Mara-
Don't distract me. I'm trying to concentrate.
After Zekk fell silent through the meld, it didn't take long before one of the bursts struck at Jaina's port S-foil. The shields held, and they held much stronger than they would have had that laser been at full capacity.
The part of Jaina that thought that Mara was willing to kill her after what happened on Jwlio was relieved; but that relief was short-lived as she had to make a starboard bank to avoid another low-powered shot from the Shadow.
Moments after that first nip at her shields, Jaina caught another hit, this time on her starboard. A few maneuevers later, another hit collided in the exact same spot. Two seconds after that, another hit, same as the last.
And so that pattern went, in spite of Jaina's efforts, as Mara—she had no doubt it was her aunt—fired off scoring shot after scoring shot on the StealthX's starboard, rapidly depleting her shields to the point of nothingness. It wouldn't be long, Jaina knew, until her shields dropped completely and render her ship dead in space, allowing the Shadow to pick her up and abort her rescue mission.
But before that could happen, the rapidity of the yacht's fire decreased, allowing Jaina to dodge them more easily. Once the rear fire petered out completely, Jaina looked through her rear sensors again and found that her aunt and uncle's ship was now engulfed in a new dogfight as they blasted away at the swarm of dartships surrounding it.
On the one hand, Jaina was relieved that she was free of the Shadow's pursuit. On the other, she felt disgusted that her aunt and uncle were now using fully-powered laser shots to blow away their insectoid attackers.
Regardless, the most Jaina could do at the moment was to send a sentiment of thanks through the Force to the Killiks now losing their lives to the Shadow's power. Once that was done, she and Zekk wasted no time in resuming their course for their destination.
Once they neared the Destroyer, its turbolasers began to blindly pound the space around the two StealthXs, in several instances only narrowly missing Jaina and Zekk. No doubt, the former thought, that in between blowing away their attackers, either Luke or Mara must have commed the Destroyer and let them know about the Knights' arrival, even if the Chiss didn't have any solid way of tracking their invisible fighters.
But if that was the case, Jaina realized, then that must have meant that...
Zekk, pull up now! Jaina screamed through the meld as she put her own words into her actions.
Unfortunately, Zekk wasn't as quick on the uptake as Jaina had hoped, for he realized too late that if the Destroyer had been expecting them, then they would have erected a ray shield to keep out any intruders. So instead of pulling up as Jaina had told him, he pulled hard to the left in an arc that would bring him around and shoot him away from the capital ship.
As a result, his starboard S-foil punched up against the ray shield blocking the hangar bay, sheering off that entire section of Zekk's StealthX and sending it into an uncontrollable barrel roll in a parallel line with the Destroyer's prow.
Jaina soon levelled out from her upward arc and brought it back down for the shielded hangar. She put Zekk's current predicament out of her mind, knowing that he was okay for the moment, before she fired a pair of quad bursts for the ray shield's generator. It erupted in a magnificent yet brief explosion, and as predicted, its emergency hull activated and began to close up from the port side onward. To compensate, Jaina aimed her fighter for the farthest point of the entrance, making it just in time before the emergency hull closed behind her.
Now that she had made it inside her target, Jaina slowed down and levelled out again. She set her ship to hover several meters above the deck as he looked around through her canopy, seeing that there was currently no one in the hangar, not even any technicians waiting on standby; Jaina figured they must have been informed by the Destroyer's command about potential intruders, so they were promptly evacuated further into the capital ship. The only two other ships occupying the bay were a long-range shuttle and the Millennium Falcon, a painful reminder that her parents were here in the vain hope of releasing Lowie, if not ending this whole crisis, peacefully.
Putting the presence of her parents out of her mind, Jaina knew that now that she was inside, where her StealthX was far more visible since it was out of space at the moment, she didn't have long before a security team arrived to take her in, if not kill her outright.
She wouldn't be surprised if the Chiss commanders sent their Destroyer's entire security force just to deal with her, even if they didn't know that she was Han and Leia Solo's daughter, or, more importantly, the Sword of the Jedi.
Indeed, after landing on a vacant spot on the hangar deck and powering down, it was only moments after Jaina unstrapped her crash webbing and popped her canopy open that all of the hangar's egresses also opened. Rushing in from all sides were uniformed members of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force, all of them armed with their charric blasters. The soldiers at the forefront of their groups already had their weapons aimed around Jaina's ship and held their positions as the rest of them arrayed themselves in a wide but tight circle before they, too, had their charrics properly aimed at her.
Before she allowed their leader to tell her to carefully step out of her ship and give herself up, Jaina used the Force to launch herself high into the hangar; immediately, the Chiss began firing their weapons at her ascending form even before she had her lightsaber in hand and ignited. It was only once she started to descend back to the hangar deck that she started to deflect the shots that actually had a chance of hitting her.
Knowing that projectiles fired by charrics were more difficult for lightsabers to deflect than the average blaster, Jaina exerted more effort through the Force in knocking away the blue particle beams. Once she landed in a crouch, she began to Force-sprint around the hangar, making it more difficult for the Chiss to fire upon her without hitting one of their own. With both of those factors to her advantage, she began to efficiently and expertly slice off the barrels of each and every one of the charrics, and occasionally knock back their owners with a well-placed kick that plowed them into one or two other of their brethren.
As this went on, a part of Jaina's mind, the same part that had been so passionate in viewing the Chiss as being similar to the Yuuzhan Vong, wondered why she didn't simply kill these blue-skinned bastards; by leaving them unconscious but alive, she was only inviting them a future opportunity to regroup, gain new weapons, and come after her again. Moreover, why would killing them like this be any different than blowing them out of the sky? Death was death, after all, so it didn't really matter if it was brought on by the impersonal fire of a starfighter's turbolasers or by the intimate use of a lightsaber.
Because, Jaina thought, it was her duty to do only what she had to to resolve conflicts as peacefully as possible; by dispatching these Chiss non-lethally when she was in a position to do so, she was fulfilling that duty while still making her way toward saving Lowie without hindrance or delay.
It would take a lot more to bring her to killing the Chiss from outside her StealthX, she realized. For now, this would have to do.
Within less than a minute from her high jump from her fighter, Jaina had cleared the hangar of all conscious Chiss and their weapons; while the latter lay on the deck in pieces, the former lay on the deck alive and whole but out cold.
Moments after her single-handed defeat of the enemies around her, and with her lightsaber still active, one of the hangar's egresses opened again. Jaina turned and instinctively lowered her lightsaber when she saw her mother and father standing there, with Master Saba Sebatyne looming behind them.
"Jaina," Leia said, "put your lightsaber away and let's talk about this."
Jaina's face softened as she deactivated her lightsaber; but it remained in her hand as she asked, "How's Lowie?"
"Lowie's fine, kid," Han was the one to answer. "But, apparently, you're not."
"Han," Leia said as she looked at her husband sharply.
He nodded submissively as his wife turned back to their daughter and said, "The Chiss have told us what you and the others have done. You've resorted to destroying unarmed ships now?"
"You're talking about that defoliator, Mom?" Jaina asked. "Those ships are weapons in and of themselves; they were made to drive out the Colony even if it meant starving them to death. Disabling them wouldn't be enough."
But hadn't she tried to just disable that defoliator for Ruu? Jaina wondered to herself.
No, she reminded herself. She meant to destroy it all along; she just thought of disabling it to make sure that the Knights who still had their doubts—Lowie, Zekk, and especially Jacen—wouldn't stop her from committing to her truly intended action.
Yes, that was why.
"So you admit to being the one to destroying it personally?" Saba asked.
"Of course," Jaina answered firmly.
"Jaina," Leia said, "what's gotten into you?"
"Aunt Mara asked me the same thing," Jaina stated evenly. "And I'll tell you what I told her; I'm still a Jedi. I'm doing exactly what needs to be done. Look around you." She waved her arms at the unconscious Chiss. "You see any dead Chiss here? I exercised restraint; because, quite frankly, they deserve death. All of these Chiss; I'm being kinder to them than I should be, and all so I can continue to balance what I think is right and what the Jedi creed tells me I should do."
"What you think is right and what the Jedi creed tells you to do should be one and the same, Jaina," Saba asserted sternly. "There shouldn't have to be any balancing act here."
"I don't have time for this," Jaina spat. "Where's Lowie? If you know where he is, tell me so I can rescue him and we can leave. We don't even have to kill anyone here."
"Jaina, please, stop this!" Leia pleaded. Jaina noticed that tears were starting to form in her mother's eyes. "Get out while you still have a chance or nobody wins!" By now, several of the Chiss were beginning to stir back to consciousness. "Return to Ossus so we can see what's going wrong with you and the other Knights!"
"I'm afraid that option is no longer available to your daughter, Princess Leia," a familiar voice said over the Star Destroyer's EPA system. "Because that blast door that shut the hangar off completely from space can only be opened by a code known only to myself and a select few members of my senior staff. Destroying that door's controls will render it shut permanently until it can be cut open after so many man-hours of using blast-torches after this Destroyer returns to base. You have nowhere to run, Jaina."
"Jag?" Jaina asked. She only now realized that the voice over the EPA was that of Jagged Fel, her old flame from her time fighting the Vong and whom she hadn't seen since the war's end.
"Stand down, Jaina," Jag's voice commanded harshly. "Don't make this anymore difficult than we have to."
"Or what?" Jaina asked as several of the Chiss around her were now completely recovered and were reaching for their backup blasters. "You'll torture me just like you did with Lowie?"
"Drop the weapon!" one of the Chiss commanded in accented Basic. "And put your hands on your head!"
"Do as he says, Jaina," Jag's voice returned. "Because I doubt even you have an endless supply of energy to knock all of those soldiers back to unconsciousness."
She doubted it, too. Which meant one thing...
"I said drop it!" the same Chiss repeated.
Instantly, her lightsaber was ignited again and Jaina moved in a blur for the shouting Chiss; he wouldn't have enough time to fire his weapon before she removed his head from his shoulders.
But then a blue-bladed lightsaber blocked Jaina's, and the next thing she knew, she was lifted off her feet and flung several meters back where she hit the deck to slide another meter.
When she looked up, Jaina shared the same look of befuddlement as those of the recovered Chiss, for now Leia stood ahead and above her with her lightsaber active and in hand. Her expression was a complete blank, as if it took all of her willpower just to attack her daughter like that and not lose her composure.
"I won't let you do this, Jaina," Leia said with a tone that matched her facial expression.
A mixture of anger and sadness crossed over Jaina's face. How could her own mother turn on her like this? How could she side with the enemy, against her own daughter? Mara slapping and disowning her for making the Palpatine comparison was one thing, especially since Mara was only Jaina's aunt by marriage, but with Leia, it was different. This was betrayal of an abhorrent kind, pure and simple.
When her face set itself into an expression of grim resolve, Jaina shrieked as she allowed a great burst of the Force to knock back everyone else in the hangar, including all of the other Chiss who were only now regaining consciousness. As for Han and Saba, the latter anchored herself to the deck with the Force and she kept Han on his feet by wrapping him up in her arms.
And like Saba, Leia stood firm as she, too, anchored herself to the deck with the Force. Nevertheless, that still allowed Jaina time to leap to her feet and charge at Leia with a loud battle cry.
Only when she was a meter away, when she was finally able to get a good look into her own mother's eyes, did she stop dead in her tracks and freeze.
Only then did she realize what she had been doing; she had been about to charge in at her mother with the full intent of killing her. That was too far for her; she couldn't bring herself to do such a despicable act was beyond even her own moral certainty. Killing an anonymous Chiss commander, or any other Chiss for that matter, wouldn't have put a dent into Jaina's conscience; but striking down Leia, even if she had turned on her daughter, was something that Jaina knew she could never live with.
Mother and daughter held their respective positions for an innumerable set of heartbeats. With the blast door leading out into space blocking out any view of the space battle from here, and everyone else present in the hangar remaining where they were to see what would happen next, it seemed as if time itself had stood still in anticipation of this moment.
The perspective of time resumed when Jaina finally deactivated her lightsaber, dropped it to the deck, and raised her arms in the air.
And just like that, as the Chiss got up and surrounded her with their backup sidearms, it was as if the extreme hatred that she had for them simply evaporated into nothingness. She didn't know why; all she knew was that they no longer reminded her of the Yuuzhan Vong or their genocidal tendencies.
But as she was stuncuffed and hauled away by her captors, a new emotion replaced her hatred: fear.
However, it wasn't fear of what the Chiss would do to her in response for her actions.
It was the unsettling feeling of being cut off, of being alone, from the sense of purpose with the Killiks that she had just lost.