Gavar Khai's eyes narrowed in consternation as he looked out through the forward viewport of the Khai Pride's bridge; he sensed at least a few dozen blazing Jedi presences heading for his ship and the Exiled Warrior from Shedu Maad. He turned to one of the bridge's sensor consoles and looked over the shoulder of the attending officer, a male Devaronian who didn't have the Force (one of the many mercenaries that the Lost Tribe had hired since Kesh's fall). That officer looked up and behind him as he narrowed a curious gaze up at Khai.
"Is there something I can do, Saber Khai?" the Devaronian asked.
"No," Khai replied tersely without taking his eyes off the alien's computer. Then he turned and headed to another sensor station, which was manned by an 18-year-old male Keshiri Tyro named Gebb Hiulk.
"Your sensors aren't picking up anything either, Tyro Hiulk?" Khai asked.
"No, My Lord," Hiulk replied.
"But you can feel the Jedi presences closing in for us from the planet, yes?"
Hiulk nodded grimly. "I can, My Lord."
Khai straightened up from where he stood and announced loudly to the bridge, "The Jedi are going to attack us in their StealthX fighters!" Everyone present was aware of the Jedi's invisible fighters that allowed them a distinct, even Sith-like, advantage in space combat; Khai himself would never forget how so many Lost Tribe fighters were blown out of the space surrounding Kesh by lasers, concussion missiles, and proton torpedoes that seemed to have been fired out of nowhere.
Shifting those painful memories to the back of his mind, he turned to the female Givin who was his subordinate, a surviving member of the One Sith named Fugh Benzal. "Commander, order all fighters for launch. You have the bridge; I'm going down to the planet, and make sure I get a decent defensive screen for when I get my daughter out of there."
"I take it you wish for us to hold off any orbital bombardment of Shedu Maad until after you have recovered your daughter, Saber Khai?" Benzal asked just as her immediate superior turned to leave the bridge.
Khai looked back at her derisively. Even after all these months of working with these One Sith survivors, there was still some animosity between them and the numerically dominant Lost Tribe, who had all but become their superiors. So while Khai was annoyed by Benzal's tone, he wasn't surprised by it, and now was not the time to reinforce that dominance that he had over her. Instead, he said, with a straightforward tone, "Indeed, Commander Benzal." Then he turned back and left the bridge.
. . .
Although they all got aboard Centerpoint Station alive and intact, the Djalnis family had lost two of their members in the battle between the Corellians and their Killik and Joiner enemies within the first half-hour of their raid. Moulg was attacked by a child-sized Killik who landed a vibroblade strike into his femoral artery, right between his armor joints during a fight in one of Centerpoint's food courts. After that, another of Opak's sons, Hwendel, had gotten shot right between the armor plates of his chest by a CorSec officer with whom he ended up in a physical struggle on a walkway near Dur Gejjen's office; Opak was the one to slice the cop's throat open with his vibroblade mere seconds after.
There would be time to mourn for their losses later; as Mandalorians, it was the Djalnises' duty to see to the completion of their assignment before they reconvened and grieved in their own time and privacy.
As it was, with Opak and his four remaining family members—Majis, Sayji, their 19-year-old sister Kayji, and their 26-year-old male cousin Kolsk—were currently in the middle of the last corridor that would lead directly to Centerpoint's weapon control station. But, as could be expected, this section was clogged with fighting Corellians and Killiks (and, again, their Joiners) who only occasionally tried to kill the Mandos directly; the rest of the time, the armored mercenaries simply tried to survive getting caught from stray fire while cutting, shooting, and even sometimes burning their way through the combatants before them with their wrist-mounted flamethrowers.
The Djalnises were stuck fighting in this corridor for nearly fifteen minutes before they heard the sound of a humming lightsaber coming in from behind them. Opak turned away from a CorSec cop that he just killed with his vibroblade to see none other than Luke Skywalker stepping toward him and his family. During the Jedi's forward progression, he cut through the Killiks, Joiners, and Corellians around him while sometimes deflecting blaster bolts back at their firers or in the ceiling, floor, and bulkheads around them.
Beneath his helmet, Opak gritted his teeth in frustration. After all the effort and losses that he and his family had to go through just getting this far to their target, a shabla jetii—and not just any other Jedi, but Luke Skywalker himself—was about to ruin everything unless Opak and his remaining family members moved their collective shebs and fought harder and faster through the fighting in front of them to that damned weapon control room.
"Enough foolin' around!" Opak exclaimed in his helmet on the frequency in which only he, his offspring, and nephew could hear. "We need to get to that control room pronto!"
The younger Mandos all quickly responded in their own fashions before their movements became much more hurried, their strikes and shots much more focused and more quickly executed, against the Corellians, Killiks, and Joiners before them, and the Mandos' progress toward the weapon control room quickened marginally as a result.
Unfortunately for the mercs, they sustained another loss, as a man-sized Killik tackled Majis against a bulkhead and sliced a vibroblade right through his throat, just beneath where his helmet could have protected him. Opak and Sayji were the ones to open up multiple shots against that Killik before it collapsed to the deck as a smoking carcass.
"Don't stop!" Opak exclaimed. "Keep going!"
And on the way forward, he bent down next to Majis' corpse and, wary of the fighting still going on around him, he struggled to wrestle the pack of explosives that his last son had brought with him off of his back. Opak lifted the pack up with both hands and turned to follow his daughters and nephew toward the control room.
But just as Opak turned, he was suddenly felled to his stomach by an invisible force from behind before he was pulled back through the corridor by several meters. Along the way, though, he opened up Majis' pack and lifted a thermal detonator out of it.
He turned to his back just as he stopped and saw Skywalker looking down upon him with a mixture of concern and effort on his face; several laser blasts that would have scored hits around the Jedi were dissipated harmlessly mere inches from him, as if another invisible force were protecting him.
"Please, you don't know what you're doing," Skywalker said with desperation in his tone. "If you and your kin blow this station up, you will-"
The Jedi was cut off from saying anymore as Opak activated the detonator's firing mechanism. Skywalker turned away just as the resultant fireball consumed Opak and so many other combatants around them.
Several meters ahead, Sayji, Kayji, Kolsk, and other Corellians, Killiks, and Joiners were just barely outside of the detonator's blast radius, and the three surviving Mandos were among the ones to be blown to their feet after being launched forward several meters toward the door leading to the weapon control room. No one among the trio of mercs allowed the realization of the death of their father—or uncle, in Kolsk's case—distract them from immediately pushing themselves back up to their feet and downing several more Killiks and CorSec officers with vibroblade strikes and blaster shots as they made their way even further to their target.
On the other side of the corridor, amidst the scorched ceiling, floor, bulkheads, and the crisped bodies of the combatants who had been alive mere moments before, Luke Skywalker, having erected a Force-shield around his whole body, had still been knocked unconscious by the blast; lying on his stomach, his clothes were smoking and second-degree burns marred his face and hands, with the synthflesh of his robotic hand having peeled away to reveal the metal prosthetic beneath.
For an all-too brief moment, however, Luke had recovered just enough cognizance to wake up and turn his head far enough to get a blurred angle of the surviving three Mandalorians making their way further toward the door of Centerpoint's weapon control room.
But then that moment passed and Luke lapsed into unconsciousness again.
. . .
"You made sure the cabin was rigged to blow, Majesh?" Quisa asked. She, the rest of her family, and Judicar continued to stalk through the darkened forest around them, relying partially on their memory and—much to Quisa's chagrin—their Sith cohort's danger-sense to avoid the traps that they had laid throughout their immediate environment.
"For the fourth time, Ma, of course I made sure!" Majesh replied in mild frustration.
"Don't you use that tone on me, boy!" Quisa barked. "If we weren't out here getting chased by these Sith, I'd-"
"There it is," Herush cut in. "Our ship."
By then, they were in direct sight of a large obscured shape that could only have been the N3 Allanar light freighter that Herush used to bring Judicar to Adumar.
"Ain't no traps from here to there," Ivip said. "So let's make a beeline for it!"
"Who made you the matriarch of this family, girl?" Quisa intoned.
Ivip shrunk in place. "Sorry, Ma."
Quisa allowed a brief but tense moment to pass before she announced, "Let's go."
And with that, they all raced forward toward the covered freighter.
Halfway there, however, Judicar's danger-sense spiked. Immediately, she unhooked her lightsaber and activated its violet blade in one swift movement as she brought it up over her head. She was driven back several steps by the red-bladed 'saber of a Keshiri Sith who simultaneously tried to swipe at her throat with his shikkar in the other hand.
"Jaina!" she heard Herush's voice call out; from just out of Judicar's line of sight, he had stopped and turned toward her.
"Forget her, Herush!" Quisa exclaimed after she turned and ran back to his side. "Let's keep goin'!"
As Judicar and the Keshiri's lightsabers clashed seconds after the former found her footing and anchored herself into place, Herush cried out, "But, Ma, you know she's-"
"Not worth it!" Quisa interrupted. "Plenty o' other fish in the sea you can stick your you-know-what in to gimme grandchildren!"
Herush levelled a shocked and disgusted stare at his mother. But before he could voice any objections against her callous and cruel remarks, he was stopped by the sound of Ivip screaming, followed almost immediately after by another lightsaber activating.
Herush and Quisa turned and saw that the former's siblings, who had made it to the camouflaged N3, were confronted by a Zabrak, who was wielding the then-activated red-bladed lightsaber, and a Zeltron. With one quick swipe, the Zabrak decapitated Ivip while the Zeltron splayed both hands before him and telekinetically lifted Boisk and Gornae up into the air by their throats. Herush and Quisa watched in stunned horror as the former's brothers grasped vainly at their necks with both hands; Majesh, meanwhile, had been Force-pulled by the Zabrak from somewhere in the tree-line to his mother and Herush's left before he was impaled by the alien's 'saber.
Screaming shrilly, Quisa produced a handblaster and fired multiple shots at the Zeltron, hoping to at least save two of her still-living sons. But the Zabrak immediately stepped in the way and deflected all of the bolts away, with one of them striking Quisa right in the head.
When Herush looked back up from regarding his mother's corpse with the same horror that he had when he watched Ivip and Majesh die, he saw Boisk and Gornae's bodies drop limply to the ground as the Zeltron's hands dropped back to his sides. Then that alien and the Zabrak fully turned their attention to him and began to stalk forward.
Quickly, Herush produced his own blaster from his belt and began firing at the two Sith while running back to Judicar, who still dueled off against the Keshiri.
. . .
It took all of Jacen's power and concentration to not let either of the Sith in front of him push him any further into the Solo Quest II's cockpit than they already had. By now, he had made his stand by the cockpit's threshold and deflected as many of the slashes from the human and Keshiri as he could, but, unfortunately, in the several minutes that had passed since his enemies boarded his ship, Jacen had sustained several flesh wounds that charred and cut various areas of his body. Fortunately, they had, so far, all been flesh wounds, and he gritted his teeth through the pain that was now wracking his body with every quick movement that he made... which, at the moment, was every movement that he was making period.
By the end of those minutes, the human Sith was the one to score a blow with his shikkar right at Jacen's thigh, close to where his femoral artery was. While only a little bit of blood gushed out from the wound, the strike still sent him reeling back so that his posterior hit the Quest's control console. Immediately, the ship took a sharp dive down toward the forest floor, which threw both Sith down toward him.
Quickly, Jacen telekinetically shoved them back upward by several meters, which bought him just enough time to turn back to the console and pull the vessel back up toward the sky. He strained against the centrifugal force as the artificial gravity struggled to compensate, but thankfully for him, that also pinned both Sith to the deck in the passenger area.
Once he righted the ship and had it hovering in place again, Jacen turned back and rushed into the passenger area. The Keshiri recovered before his human counterpart as he stood up, but Jacen sent a current of Electric Judgment his way; the alien failed to respond in time to deflect the green electricity and was knocked further back through the passenger area.
By then, though, the human Sith was on his feet, but Jacen had closed the gap between them. The Jedi drove his opponent back a few steps with a flurry of vicious yet controlled attacks before the red-bladed combatant rooted himself in place again and continued to clash blades against Jacen from there.
A little over fifteen seconds into this part of the duel, the Keshiri was back on his feet and rushed back in to help his human counterpart kill Jacen. But when the alien joined his fellow Sith to strike the Jedi down, the latter leaped off to his right so that, after his booted feet planted themselves against the bulkhead for less than a second, he launched himself to the opposite wall.
And in the course of that extremely brief flight between bulkheads, Jacen's blade cleanly swiped through both Sith's necks; and before either of their heads could clatter to the deck, the Jedi had flipped in midair and landed just inches from the bulkhead to which he flew.
With no further acknowledgement of his decapitated enemies, Jacen turned and rushed back to the cockpit. After seating himself in the pilot seat, he reached out for Judicar's presence, hoping that she had, for whatever reason, ceased to make herself small through the Force again and opened herself back up to it again.
Indeed, she had; but much to Jacen's fear, she was in grave danger, as he sensed that she was now in the midst of fighting multiple enemies simultaneously.
Hang on, Jaina! Jacen shouted through their twin bond as he gunned his ship for where he could sense her.