Kneeling before the panel in front of him, the Chiss computer slicer had completed his task within seconds as the monitor over the panel flashed from red to green. The blue-skinned alien promptly stood up, turned to his commando colleagues (who stood by the downed corpses of the Centerpoint guards who tried to stop them), and flashed a gesture that wordlessly translated to, "We're good."
In turn, the commando leader turned to his subordinates and silently signaled for all of them to stand to one side of the door. After they and the slicer complied, the latter opened up the door to which the panel had been electrically tied to; a hail of red lasers soon followed from inside, undoubtedly from the security guards who were attempting to protect the commando squad's target: Centerpoint's prison sector.
The commando leader, who was closest to the door, took out a flash grenade from his bandolier, armed it, and threw the weapon through the door without giving up his cover. Two seconds later, a bright flash of white light flared through the door for less than a second before a medley of pained cries erupted from the human guards who stopped firing their blasters to tend to their temporarily blinded eyes.
The leading Chiss then stepped out from his cover and led the way in for his subordinates even as he fired his rapidly-repeating charric rifle at the stunned humans before him. It wasn't long after that that the following commandos added their own fire against the other human guards who were now arriving in this area as backup.
A quarter of an hour later, the last of the Centerpoint prison guards had been dealt with, and only three Chiss commandos were lost in the firefight. Thankfully, the slicer was not among that trio, and he was thus able to get to the prison sector's control tower. Less than half a minute of slicing later, he was into the prison security system and was consequently granted unlimited access to the cell doors that kept all the inmates in their cages.
Hence, when Mirax Terrik Horn saw that her cell door had seemingly unlocked itself of its own volition, she tentatively stepped out along with the other prisoners. It only took a moment before everyone present, except for Mirax, erupted in anarchic cheer; however, she was with them in getting to the nearest exit of her cell block.
But first, she thought, before she left the prison proper, she had to collect something that the CorSec officers would have no doubt taken from her.
. . .
Thrackan Sal-Solo pounded a fist upon his desk angrily as he watched the live feeds of the battles raging throughout his station. One by one, a feed would be dropped thanks to the efforts of a slicer belonging to one of the Chiss commando squads, and that was along with the localized anti-Jedi traps that Sal-Solo reactivated from his desk to try to stop the blue-skinned aliens. In some of the dropped feeds, he saw the Chiss expertly throw almost imperceptibly tiny devices throughout various corners of the corridors in which they ran, and it was almost always done by one particularly observant Chiss in each commando squad who had some kind of headgear. Sal-Solo would bet a million of his own credits that the headgear aliens were there to detect any electric-based traps that would have stopped the invaders from reaching their destinations.
And in spite of the efforts of both the local station security and CorSec forces' efforts in repelling the aliens—most of which were successful thanks to Jacen Solo and Darth Acheron's presences—the enemy troops were gradually making their way toward the level where his public office was.
The fact that Sal-Solo was currently sheltered in his private office in the more secretive depths of Centerpoint didn't alleviate his anxiety one bit. Because the more he thought about it, the more the idea that the Chiss might know about his office somehow—whether because they were aligned with these secret Sith that Acheron and Hushk Grendel were a part of or through some other means—took root in his mind.
A part of him was tempted to activate Acheron's ankle bracelet and electrocute her to death. But he stayed his hand over the button that could kill her; there might be a chance that she might have nothing to do the Chiss. And for all he knew, maybe they didn't even know about his secret office; none of them made it there yet.
Still, he thought, maybe it would be wise to direct the two Force-users he had for assets toward the public office. Hell, it might even be more prudent now that he was seeing a full-scale prison break from that sector of Centerpoint, which would undoubtedly take some of both the local security and CorSec forces' attention away from the invading Chiss.
Without hesitation, Sal-Solo brought up the button to contact all of his subordinates on one frequency.
"Attention, all squad commanders. Get to my public office as soon as possible. I repeat. Get to my kriffin' public office ASAP!"
. . .
Upon getting the message from Sal-Solo to get to his public office, Sgt. Guessis' squad hurried to the nearest emergency stairwell after they had taken out another Chiss squad (thanks mostly to Jacen using some flickering Fallanassi illusions to confuse them just before the Corellians gunned them down). From there, as Guessis led the way up, it wasn't long before they saw another dozen enemies enter the stairwell from a different entrance several floors above.
Almost instantly, both squads ducked for cover as they began firing up and down at one another. Naturally, Jacen began to Force-pull each Chiss trooper one by one so that they would each plummet to their death at the bottom of the stairwell, which seemed to appear as a black gaping maw that swallowed anything that fell into it.
However, even as that Chiss squad was dwindled to half its numbers, another enemy troop division entered the stairway from the entrance directly beneath the Corellians. Jacen's danger-sense alerted him to this new development, so he shifted his attention from the currently half-done alien division to Force-pulling the new squad over their own railing.
Unfortunately, he was only able to send two of those Chiss to their deaths before the leading four made it to the flight of steps where the Corellians were. In an instant, two of Guessis' men were gunned down and sent falling over the stairwell even as the rest of the humans dropped to their backs to gun down the one leading Chiss.
Quickly, Jacen leapt from his position with his lightsaber active and, with extra Force-effort behind his deflections, sent them back to the next three Chiss who were coming up for them. From there, though, the aliens beneath the humans took better cover and aimed around for the humans; now Jacen was left to concentrate as he deflected the charric bolts while more of the Corellians around him fired at the enemies both above and below. His anxiety worsened as two more of Guessis' men died by Chiss fire—one from above, one from below—and they, too, fell into the maw below while the remaining Chiss continued to live.
Half a minute into this state of the firefight, however, all six of the aliens above screamed before they fell to the bottom of the stairwell; in the instant that Jacen saw them in their lethal descent, he noticed that their bodies were sparking from electricity. Then, just after those Chiss fell away, the aliens beneath the Corellians were suddenly yanked by an invisible grip to join their brethren.
Jacen, Guessis, and the latter's surviving men stayed in place for a moment before they all tentatively looked up. There, Lt. Pantuck, his five remaining men, and Darth Acheron were looking back down at them.
"C'mon!" Pantuck called down to Guessis. "You heard the call! Let's get movin', Sarge!"
Despite the fact that Guessis outranked Pantuck, he didn't berate him for it. Instead, he looked at his men and Jacen and said, "By my lead!" He waved them upward as he took charge again.
But even as Jacen followed, he couldn't help but feel even more wary after that rescue; Acheron didn't save them out of kindness, and he felt that the time was approaching soon when that would be one of the last good things that she did in her life.
. . .
The area surrounding Thrackan Sal-Solo's public office had turned into a war zone within an hour of the Chiss commando squads invading Centerpoint. From their covers around the buildings and walkways, the local security and CorSec forces fired their blasters at the aliens, who had quickly taken cover of their own. Adding to the massive firefight that was reducing the surroundings around them to rubble were grenades, both concussive and flash, from both sides that not only took down the combatants, but also the civilians who rushed out of the buildings and their homes only to get caught in the crossfire.
But Jacen didn't allow the heartbreak that he was feeling right now for the pointless loss of life around him to overcome his senses. Instead, he advanced, step by step, moment by moment, through the battlefield with his lightsaber deflecting charric bolts either back at the Chiss or around them when his deflections weren't quite precise. He did his best to make sure that he wasn't hurting or killing fleeing civilians, and so far, he hadn't, even if he wasn't in that great of a position to save any of them at the moment.
Acheron, meanwhile, who was several meters away from the overly-focused Jacen, seemed not to have any qualms about outright using civilians around her as meat-shields against the Chiss. At several instances, in between dodging and deflecting charric fire, she would pick up a running non-combatant via telekinesis and fling them into the path of incoming fire. Sometimes, she would even use the corpses as projectiles against the aliens as several of them sprinted from their covers to make it to Sal-Solo's public office building. And as Acheron continued to advance, she allowed Lt. Pantuck and the three men behind him who were still alive to aid her in downing more Chiss as they took more and more of the enemies' covers; not once did Pantuck or his men voice any objections to Acheron's use of civilians against the aliens.
After more than twenty minutes of making it to the public office building and shooting more enemies, Acheron, Pantuck, and his remaining trio had taken out half a squad of the invaders behind a partially-destroyed wall. And by that point, Jacen was well out of sight of Acheron when a lone figure suddenly leapt out from an adjacent building. But before the Sith could telekinetically lift that figure up or before Pantuck or his men could fire upon the new arrival, the latter fired a blaster at them that, instead of unleashing a laser bolt, brought about a dizzying wave of nausea over the five humans.
Within seconds, Acheron, Pantuck, and his men were all brought to their knees, with two of Pantuck's men outright vomiting upon the floor beneath them. The figure who continued to unleash this nausea wave approached them, lucky that neither the Corellians or Chiss decided to fire at her in the continuing battle around her, before she was less than a meter away.
From her free hand, the figure, Mirax Terrik Horn, brandished a more conventional blaster and promptly shot each of Pantuck's men in the back of their heads before executing Pantuck himself. She then levelled the blaster up at Acheron's head just as the Sith had the wherewithal to look up to her attacker.
But even from her dizzied perspective, Acheron could make out the indecision on Mirax's face. Then the older woman sneered as she put the conventional blaster back in the holster on the belt that looked like it had been stolen from a CorSec officer and brandished a vibroblade.
"Yes," Mirax said with an anticipatory tone. "This should be appropriate."
Then she swung the vibroblade low and plunged it into Acheron's stomach; right in the same area where the Sith had plunged one of her own vibroblades into Corran Horn before she finished him off. Acheron then fully collapsed to her side, futilely nursing the wound that was already pooling blood beneath her.
And that was when Mirax made the mistake of deactivating the nausea blaster.
Even in spite of the pain in her stomach, Acheron reached one hand up just as Mirax was about to plunge the 'blade into the Sith's throat; and in an instant, her hand was telekinetically levelled to shove the weapon into her own throat.
Acheron grinned wickedly as she watched Mirax stiffen in shock and pain even before blood bubbled from her mouth.
"Say hi to Corran for me," Acheron sneered through her own agony.
And just as Mirax collapsed dead to her back, Acheron rose up—again fighting against the pain—as she used the Force to try to stem her bleeding. Unfortunately, she felt that she didn't have a lot of time left, unless she found a bacta patch; but if only she could find Judicar...
As if on cue, Judicar appeared from behind a line of Chiss troops firing at a group of Corellians taking cover. With her Sith lightsaber, she cut through all of those soldiers' blasters before efficiently cutting them down without giving any of them a chance to flee.
The two of them then locked eyes; they didn't need to commune telepathically to know that Acheron would have, at best, an hour even with the Force.
So Judicar reached within the folds of her robes and tossed another lightsaber at Acheron; the latter caught it, much to some added pain to her wound.
And upon grabbing onto the lightsaber, she knew, without even getting a better look at it, that it was Anakin Solo's weapon.
This will help destroy the Jedi, Judicar communed. Take it to the command center.
"Acheron!" Sal-Solo's voice came over the Sith's personal comm. "Acheron! Do you copy! What the hell is going on down there?! We lost all visual around the public office! Acheron, I know you're there, don't make me-"
"I'm still here, Thrackan," Acheron reluctantly reported even as she headed to the office building. "But Lieutenant Pantuck and all his men are dead. I'm on my own, but I'm dying now. I've taken a bad wound; I don't think I'm much better to you at here at the moment, so I'm heading back to you."
"No, no, no!" Sal-Solo screamed. "If you won't get back out there to fight, then I might as well-"
"Do it, Sal-Solo," Acheron growled. "Kill me if you want; but if I don't get bandaged up soon, I'm as good as dead anyway. If you can't see that on whatever vitals that let you know I'm still breathin', then you ain't as smart as you thought."
Sal-Solo's own growl sounded much less controlled over the comm just as Acheron entered the building. "Okay, fine! You'll probably be more useful to me down here anyway, even if you are wounded!"
"Thanks," she said sarcastically before she placed the comm back on her belt and proceeded to the office room, limping along the way because of her wound.