Two days after Zekk Solo's birth, Qizak the Nargon stepped up to the locked door to the Qreph brothers' office carrying a tray of food for the two Columi in each hand. With his right elbow, Qizak pressed the buzzer next to the door and said, "Lunch." But instead of hearing the telltale click that signified the door being unlocked, Qizak's hairless brow furrowed in consternation when he only heard silence. Again, he pressed the buzzer and said, "Bosses, I have your lunches." Still, no click. The buzzer was pressed once more and Qizak said, "Misters Qreph, why are you not opening the door?" No response, either a click or a verbal reply from the intercom, followed after several seconds.
By then, Qizak placed the trays down to one corner of the floor and turned to the female human receptionist behind the counter off to his right. "Gimme the emergency key," he grunted. "I think something's wrong."
The receptionist, who had also looked curiously to the door while Qizak was trying to get it open, reached under her desk and produced the key. The Nargon swiftly took it from her, returned to the door, and inserted the key into the tiny slot just beneath the buzzer. The click that should have come earlier followed and Qizak walked in.
But once he stepped inside, he halted instantly and looked in human-like horror at the corpses of the Qreph brothers sitting side-by-side behind their desks. From their pores and in various spots along their massive heads, a black ooze had leaked and crusted themselves along their petrified faces and tiny bodies.
Qizak then stepped out, looked at the receptionist with the same horror, and said, "We got a problem; and I think Jaina Solo's behind it."
. . .
Sitting peacefully in her quarters, Jaina rocked herself back and forward on her bed as she cradled her sleeping baby in her arms, not really thinking of anything else at the moment. Suited in her maternity dress and missing any footwear, she wasn't exactly ready to start a fight as she used to be in her younger years; she was just being a mother at the moment.
Of course, she wasn't sure how long she had been sitting there before her danger-sense tingled, prompting her to whip her head up and look to the door. In an instant, she used her free hand to reach for the nightstand, pulled a drawer open, and produced her lightsaber, which she had taken the time to reconstruct from its component parts not long before she gave birth. She stood up and adopted a battle-ready stance in anticipation for what was to come.
She knew this day would come; it was one of the many things that the Pool of Knowledge had shown her. She just wished that it hadn't come so soon.
As expected, the door was blown open by a low-yield explosive, which was more than easy enough for Jaina to handle as she erected a Force-shield around herself and baby Zekk—who had just then awakened with a wail appropriate for a newborn infant—to deflect the shock wave and debris. Then a Nargon—Jaina recognized him as Qizak, the one who had been so aggressive to her aboard the Red Ronto nine months earlier—stepped in with a large carbine directed at her.
He fired a large yellow projectile that Jaina barely deflected off to the wall next to her; it hurt her lightsaber-wielding arm more than a Chiss charric blaster would have done, prompting her to leap off to her left to avoid Qizak's next shot. When she landed, two more Nargons entered the room with the same model of carbine as Qizak's and joined him in firing more shots at her. This time, Jaina stayed her ground as she erected another Force-shield around herself and Zekk, but this time, the incoming blasts strained her concentration as they relentlessly pounded upon her invisible defense. Still, with her baby's continued crying, that was all the motivation Jaina needed to make sure that the Nargons' shots didn't penetrate that defense.
At least for another thirty seconds, anyway; even for a determined mother such as herself, there was still only so much that Jaina could do before her Force-shield would give out and lead to her and Zekk's deaths. So, thinking quickly, she dropped to the floor on her back as she abruptly dropped the shield and used her free hand to direct a wide torrent of Force-lightning for the Nargons' weapons before they had a chance to redirect their fire to her downed form. The resultant explosions from all of the carbines prompted the reptilians to stumble back as they shrieked in pain from the third-degree burns that they then sustained. Jaina then threw her lightsaber forward in a Force-directed arc that bisected all three Nargons across their waists, dropping their top halves to the floor while their legs still stood upright even after she leaped to her feet and ran out the door; only after she was gone did those legs finally collapse with their top counterparts.
As Jaina ran forward with Force-enhanced speed into the corridor leading away from her quarters, she used that speed to her full advantage as she darted between the dozen other Nargons who had waited outside as backup to Qizak and his two fellow programmed reptilians. With expert slices, she cut each of the stunned Nargons down in quick succession before any of them could respond in time to bring their weapons to bear against her.
When Jaina stopped using Force-speed, she stood in the midst of the dozen Nargons with only the sounds of her humming lightsaber and crying baby echoing through the corridor. Then, one by one, a body part fell away from each Nargon until they were all meaty reptilian pieces scattered all around her. She then rushed out of the circle of dismembered and dead Nargons and, before she was out of range, directed a burst of Force-lightning from two fingers of her lightsaber-wielding hand toward their carbines; they all exploded and began burning the chunks of reptilian meat with them.
It was better that whoever went after her for what she had done didn't have access to those weapons; the less she had to deal with as she escaped Base Prime, the better.
From there, Jaina found an emergency stairway, kicked it open, and slid down the rail to expedite her descent to the level where she knew where the ships on the base were docked. Along the way, though, entrances to other levels of the stairwell opened to admit other Nargons who immediately opened fire from both above and below her. Thinking quickly, Jaina rolled off the rail and allowed herself to plummet several levels as she expertly blocked the incoming shots with Force-enhanced strength.
When she finally reached the level where she remembered the docked ships to be, she Force-cushioned her landing while simultaneously releasing a powerful wave that knocked back the trio of Nargons who were waiting for her. She ran forward, reached them, and swiftly decapitated them in one swift stroke before any of them had a chance to recover; then she proceeded in a hurry down the corridor to the hangar bay. She encountered only two more Nargons along the way who each fired a shot at her with their carbines; but she had dropped to her back and used Force-enhanced momentum to slide her forward so that she cut the reptilians' legs out from beneath them as she passed by. Then she leaped back to her bare feet and resumed her course for the hangar without incident.
Once she got there, she saw a vessel—a small JQR12 shuttle armed with only a pair of laser cannons—just setting down and cycling down its engines.
Convenient timing, Jaina had thought positively.
From here, she could see the pilot, a light-skinned human male, lock eyes with her, and immediately, he reached to start his ship back up again. But Jaina didn't give him a chance, as she reached out with her free hand—or, rather, the hand that contained the elbow from which baby Zekk continued to wail—and telekinetically snapped the pilot's neck. She then rushed toward the shuttle, used the Force to open up its side passage before she got there, and leaped in.
After shoving the pilot's corpse to the deck next to her, Jaina seated herself, started the ship up again, and lifted it off just as about three dozen or so Nargons entered the hangar, each dozen coming from a single entrance. Without hesitation, she began firing upon the reptilians as they scrambled for one of the other armed ships, reducing them to clouds of black smoke and ash in rapid succession. Still, a few of them boarded an armed starfighter—whose designs were, admittedly, outside of Jaina's knowledge as a veteran fighter pilot—that lifted off, and they each looked much more well-equipped than her relatively lightly-armed shuttle; she even recognized proton torpedo and concussion missile tubes along those alien fighters.
And for a moment, Jaina was actually worried that she had come all this way for nothing; that she had given birth here, only for her and her child to die alone while the rest of the galaxy, including those few family members and friends she had left, suffered under Abeloth. Thus, she couldn't help but spare a glance at her still-wailing child.
But at her periphery, she spotted the corpse of the pilot she killed, and then felt stupid. Of course! Then she looked back toward the rising fighters and, in quick succession again, reached out with the Force and began snapping those pilots' necks, too; one by one, each of the ships collapsed back to the deck, with one of them doing so in a way that started a fire.
And knowing what that would do to a ship that was no doubt armed with a full complement of proton torps and conc missiles—as she didn't think that the Qrephs would have spared any expense in those areas—she wheeled her shuttle around and rocketed it toward the magnetized gap that led out into space as the remaining fighters opened fire at her rear with their turbolasers.
The JQR12 sustained only a few jarring hits that depleted its shields almost immediately down to fifty percent just before Jaina transitioned it out into space. And only two seconds after that, and before any of the remaining Nargon fighters could join her, the hangar bay erupted with that burning fighter's detonation thanks to its complement of proton torpedoes and concussion missiles, taking with it the last of Jaina's pursuers.
From there, Jaina wasted no time in finding an escape vector from this system before she jumped to hyperspace. And only once the reassuring startlines were shown through her viewport did she relax back in the pilot's chair and regard the crying Zekk still tucked into the crook of her left arm. With some calming sentiments from the Force and some cooing, Jaina calmed him back down so that he would be peacefully sleeping again.
That peacefulness lasted for only a moment before her peripheral vision returned her attention to the dead pilot still on the deck beside her; she knew she had to space him soon before he stunk up the cockpit. But for now, Jaina just wanted to sit here and resume her comfort time with baby Zekk before she had to resume any real responsibilities; for she knew that with Abeloth on the loose, those responsibilities would come much sooner rather than later.
. . .
Heckla Bukapi, Base Prime's primary administrator following the unexpected deaths of the Qreph brothers, looked out upon the ruined hangar bay with the magnetized barrier separating him from the vacuum of space. His teeth gritted with frustration and even some mild grief at the loss of his bosses; sure, Marvid and Craitheus weren't exactly the nicest beings in the galaxy, the male Omwati knew, but still, they were efficient and well-paying employers who at least treated him with some measure of respect. And coming from them, who considered virtually all non-Columi to be intellectually inferior races, that meant more than Bukapi originally thought.
Sentiments aside, though, the Omwati knew that the property damage that Jaina Solo had done to Galactic Exploitation Technologies both before and during her escape from Base Prime couldn't go unpunished; for that alone, it would ruin their notorious reputation among all of the smaller miner coalitions within the Chiloon Rift and, consequently, undermine their own power in taking those miners' working rights from them, among other reasons. Hence, Bukapi knew that swift and decisive action had to be taken.
"What should we do now, boss?" one of the six Nargons behind the Omwati asked.
Bukapi turned to the reptilian and his fellows with determination as he adopted what was, at least temporarily, his new position as the CEO of GET. Sure, there would be rivalling claims from other beings who were more or less on the same corporate level as him in the days to come, but for now, he would be making the executive decisions in light of the Qrephs' deaths.
"Put out a bounty on Jaina Solo," Bukapi commanded. "Ten million credits, dead or alive. But her body must be preserved for identification. At the very least, dental."
. . .
"Ten million credits, you say?" Grand Lord Vol asked from behind his desk. He resisted the urge to scratch the roughly-healed scars on the side of his face that were made by the late Kam Solusar nearly three months ago. "We could certainly use that money for more weapons and ships against the Jedi and the GA." His tone darkened when he spoke the following sentence: "It may even do something against Abeloth." In the time since that entity started appearing throughout the galaxy, she had claimed hundreds of Lost Tribe lives and assimilated them as units of her being; many of them were, in turn, killed after long and brutal fights that claimed further Tribe lives.
Eelos Elbas nodded with the telltale precision that marked him as a military man in the Empire of the Hand. "She has been confirmed to be in the Chiloon Rift when this announcement was made, my Lord. It is likely that she is still there. I ask you to allow me a chance at redeeming myself for my previous failure in killing Darth Judicar."
Vol regarded the Zeltron with a judgmental gaze. "The Chiloon Rift is still fairly large, and fraught with many mysteries. She may slip past our search and leave that nebula while we would still be looking for her."
Elbas looked downcast for a brief second before he resumed his stoic military posture; his reserved Force-presence also shored up to conceal his disappointment from Vol.
"That doesn't mean, however," the Grand Lord went on, "that I will not allow you to go, Tyro Elbas. What I'm saying is that we need a more concrete lead about where she could be."
"There are several known exit vectors from the Rift," Elbas started. "If we could spread out to cover those known vectors-"
"We're stretched thin enough as it is as we continue to hide," Vol interrupted. "We can't afford to cover that amount of space at this time."
"Then what do you suggest we do, my Lord?"
Vol steepled his fingers beneath his chin in thought. And after several moments, his brows lifted before they just as promptly dropped in disgust.
"I have an idea," the Grand Lord said. "I do not like it, but it may be our only chance. And it may very well be a way in ending Abeloth, too." He directed his gaze back up at Elbas again. "We will need to make an alliance with the Jedi."