While Octa returned to the Jade Shadow's passenger cabin, Jacen and Corran headed to the ship's cockpit.
"How much further do we have until we reach Zonama Sekot, Valin?" Corran asked his son.
At the vessel's helm, Valin looked over at the time indicator and said, "A little less than an hour at this point, sir."
"All right, keep us posted," Corran said before he and Jacen turned to rejoin the others in the passenger cabin.
"Wait," Valin said, prompting the other two Jedi to turn back. "I'm picking up an anomaly, I think it might be a black hole or something. I'm dropping out for a course correction."
Valin then pulled down on the hyperdrive lever to drop the Shadow out of hyperspace.
But instead of ending up in the same system as a black hole, the Shadow found herself facing the ChaseMaster fleet instead.
"Valin, let me take the helm!" Corran exclaimed. "I'll get us outta here!"
It was then, just as the Millennium Falcon and the Jedi StealthX fleet dropped out of hyperspace, that one of the ChaseMasters locked onto the Shadow with a powerful tractor beam and kept her in place.
And just as Corran sat himself in the pilot seat that Valin just vacated, the Shadow received a ping that was characteristic of an incoming transmission.
"Oh, screw that!" Corran said.
"Master Horn, wait," Jacen said as he laid a hand on his shoulder. "I think we should hear them out."
Corran looked at Jacen as if he had just said that they should all eat cyanide tablets. "Are you crazy, Jacen?!"
"They're not firing on us, and I don't sense any hostile intent," Jacen pointed out. "And the fact that they have us in a tractor beam and haven't destroyed us should indicate that they wanna talk."
"Yeah, probably because they want their Grand Lord back," Corran countered.
"Of course they would," Jacen agreed. "But this could just be the opportunity I could use to get aboard their ship and download some holograms of what each of their High Lords look like." He then answered the hail, much to Corran's chagrin.
The holographic representation of High Lord Ivaar Workan appeared over the Shadow's console.
"Jacen Solo," Workan said without preamble, "let's make a trade: give us back both Grand Lord Vol and your cousin Ben and we will allow you and the rest of your Jedi fleet to live. We don't care about Sith Saber Degron anymore; you can kill him if you like."
Jacen smirked. "Nice try, Workan, but you're gonna have to do better than that. Also, you forget that we Jedi don't kill unarmed prisoners."
"I thought you might be less than receptive to this deal, Solo," Workan replied.
The image then shifted from Workan to that of Vestara.
"Where's Ben?" she asked.
"He's none of your concern anymore, Khai," Jacen said.
"Oh, yes, he is," she said, "especially since he's the father of my child."
Jacen froze alongside Corran and Valin at that sudden bombshell of news.
"That's right, Solo," Vestara said. "Ben impregnated me; and I want him back so he can raise our child together."
Jacen gritted his teeth. "How do I know you're telling the truth?"
"Allow me to come aboard your ship," Vestara said. "I'll come alone, if it'll make you feel safe. Not that I want to endanger my child, which I'll let you feel through the Force."
"Even if I believed you, Khai," Jacen said, "I won't let Ben return to the Lost Tribe; and you and I both know that your people have no intention of keeping their word about our lives. And at any rate, Ben's not interested; whatever you did to his mind, we helped him out of it."
"Is that what you think?" Vestara asked.
One of the Shadow's sensors beeped and Corran looked at it.
"The X-wing in the Shadow's aft docking bay has launched," he reported.
Jacen then looked out through the forward viewport and found that the X-wing that Luke tended to pilot was soaring, of its own volition, to the ChaseMaster that had anchored the Shadow in space.
"Ben!" Jacen exclaimed.
Vestara smirked before the holographic representation returned to being that of Workan's visage.
"Now, Jedi Solo," the High Lord said, "if you would be so kind to teleport yourself and Grand Lord Vol to the bridge of the ChaseMaster before you, we will allow you to return to your yacht with the X-wing that Ben will leave behind. And then we can all go our separate ways; oh, and if you try to bring one of your Jedi friends with you instead of our Grand Lord, or if you come by yourself, Ben will die. It would be a shame for Vestara, but one I think she can live with." The grin he leered at Jacen didn't even try to hide the thinly-veiled lie that he spouted about letting the Jedi live.
But while Workan thought he had nothing but the upper hand here, Jacen managed to keep the surprise from his face; not at how poorly the High Lord contained his deceit, but by the fact that he just invited him to come aboard the ChaseMaster (even if he did have to bring a fully powerful Vol with him).
"As you wish," Jacen ultimately said. He then cut off the signal before turning to Corran. "Master Horn, you do what you can to get this ship out of that tractor beam. I'm gonna get aboard that ship."
"You're not seriously thinking about complying with them, are you?" Corran asked.
"Oh, I won't give them back Vol," Jacen said. "But I am going to save Ben, even if I won't be able to come back with any holographs of the High Lords. Wish me luck."
"Good luck," Corran said with a raised eyebrow.
Jacen then closed his eyes to initiate the Aing-Tii teleportation method and locked onto Ben's Force-signature as he did so.
. . .
After Ben docked his father's X-wing in the port that the ChaseMaster let him have, he jumped out of the canopy and rushed over to a waiting Vestara.
They embraced each other in a warm hug, and Ben managed to feel the life growing inside Ves. He pulled back and was about to say, "I've missed you so much," when Jacen suddenly appeared off to his left.
And just as Ben and Ves looked over at him, a dark-haired female Sith Saber suddenly jumped out from the open canopy of a nearby Y-wing, where she had been hiding, with her lightsaber active and heading for Ben.
Jacen Force-shoved both Ben and Ves away from the descending Saber; the Sith's lightsaber only ended up carving a small swath on the deck before she landed in a feral crouch.
She then looked up at Jacen, who had his own lightsaber out and active. He and his opponent then rushed toward each other and began clashing blades.
Only seconds later, however, did the Sith from the other starfighters around them leap from their own canopies and surround the duellists with their own blades.
When Jacen realized that he and his opponent were surrounded, the latter disengaged by executing three back-flips to join the ring surrounding the Jedi Knight.
They all looked upon him with vicious, predatory gazes, while Jacen looked at each one of them with typical Jedi calm and patience.
"Wait," the woman he had briefly dueled said. "Before we kill him, let's make good on High Lord Workan's threat; Jedi Solo here should know the price for such deceit against the Sith."
She then looked back over at Ben and unleashed a torrent of Force-lightning that immediately brought the teenager to his knees; he screamed in agonizing pain as he was bathed in the lightning.
As Vestara looked on in horror, Jacen put on a burst of Force-speed to try to strike down the woman torturing Ben, only for one of the Sabers to trip him with the Force; he ended up right at the torturer's heals, and one of the Sabers next to her pinned him in place, where he was unable to do anything but watch Ben get electrocuted to death.
But before that could actually happen, a different torrent of Force-lightning from Vestara shot toward the fuel tank of one of the X-wings, causing an explosion that rocked the hangar bay and threw everyone off their feet.
Just as Ben was freed from the Force-lightning, so, too, was Jacen freed from the Force-pinning. And when he got up, he saw that the Sith began scrambling to their fighters or into the ChaseMaster proper, as the X-wing explosion began a chain reaction that resulted in the fighters beside it blowing up, too.
Hurriedly, Jacen saw that Vestara was dragging Ben by the shoulder to a Z-95 Headhunter that was far from the initial reaction point; as she did, she threw a dagger from her belt into the back of a Saber that was heading for the Headhunter.
When Jacen and Vestara locked gazes for a brief moment, she only nodded at him; Jacen only grimaced before he hurried over to the X-wing that Ben had taken to get here.
Soon, Luke's X-wing, as piloted by Jacen, managed to blast out of the ChaseMaster's hangar bay before quickly circling around in the midst of the other starfighters emerging from it; with a few laser shots from Jacen, the ChaseMaster's tractor beam emitter was reduced to slag, freeing the Jade Shadow from her captivity.
And not a moment too soon, for that was the point when the ChaseMasters decided to once again open fire on the Jedi fleet.
As Jacen found himself engaged in a dogfight with a red-marked X-wing, his father's voice came over the Jedi fleet frequency.
"Jacen, where's Ben, is he all right?" Han asked.
Just after Jacen managed to duck beneath his opponent and blasted him away with a few well-placed shots at his underbelly, he replied with, "He's free... I think." He then veered out of the way of an incoming Sith Y-wing, which then ended up firing on his tail.
"What do you mean you think?" Han asked.
Jacen executed a quick barrel roll before diving in and coming up so that he ended up facing the Y-wing, which he promptly destroyed with a couple of quad shots.
"Vestara saved him," Jacen elaborated. He took a hit to starboard, prompting him to snap-turn right to cover his flank as he opened fire on the B-wing that attacked him and destroyed it.
"She saved him?" Han came back. "What are you talking about?"
"She took Ben in a Z-95 Headhunter," Jacen responded before he rolled out of the way of a Y-wing that was about to collide with him. "I'm gonna keep try to tabs on 'em."
As if on cue, he found the Headhunter that bore the markings of the one that Vestara took; and as if to dash Jacen's hopes, it launched into hyperspace.
Jacen hissed as he hurriedly tried to get a lock on the coordinates before all chances of tracking them were lost.
But that chance was lost when yet another Y-wing dropped in front of him and launched a proton torpedo for him.
Jacen once again veered out of the way of the torpedo so that he could pepper the Y-wing's left flank with laserfire; it was quickly destroyed.
But now Jacen had lost all trace of where Vestara and Ben went.
"No!" Jacen screamed.
"Jacen, we have to go!" Corran said called over the Jedi frequency. "We have to get to Zonama Sekot! We can rescue Ben later! Come on!"
Jacen growled, but he reluctantly turned around and joined the rest of the Jedi fleet, besieged though they were by the Sith forces, and managed to get far enough away from the ChaseMasters and their starfighters to jump to hyperspace.