Kira nudged the Amaya's throttle forward as she shot through the cloudy Nal Hutta sky toward a trio of M-3A Scyk fighters that bore down on the Aldera. She closed in on the trio of fighters, and once she was within range, she reached for the triggers for her firing controls and unleashed a furious barrage of well-aimed blasts from the Amaya's forward cannons. Two of the Scyks vaporized instantly as her blaster barrage hit their core drives. The third took several hits to its starboard wing, which caught fire. The flames reached the fuel line, and an explosion sheered the wing of the fighter off, sending it cartwheeling into the clouds below.
"Kit, your tail is clear," Kira called into her comm. "Fall back, and let's take out those Scyk's bearing down on the Phoenix."
"Copy that," Kira responded through her comm, and the Aldera lost speed and swerved to the Amaya's side. The two ships shot toward another quartet of ships in pursuit of the Phoenix. They had opened fire on the heavy freighter, but Rogers, an able pilot, dodged and weaved to avoid the blasts. The Amaya closed the distance with the Aldera close behind. The quartet of Scyks split into pairs, and Kira fired into the left pair while Kit made short work of the pair on the right.
With their pursuers momentarily destroyed, Kira hailed the Phoenix. "What's the status of the fleet, Captain?"
"Ready and waiting," Rogers acknowledged tersely. "I pick up three Interdictors in containment formation. Home Two is set back in command position. Half a dozen frigates and two heavy cruisers – looks like A-wings in a holding pattern set for intercept."
Great, Kira thought to herself. The Republic had sent a full task force with Interdictor cruisers to hold them in place. The Interdictors, which were updates on the old Imperial models used to apprehend Rebellion fleets while Star Destroyers vaporized them, projected a gravity well that mimicked a planet's gravity, thus preventing ships from jumping to lightspeed. Leia had anticipated that they might be a problem, and they were prepared at least for that contingency – assuming they could make it past the A-wings.
"Which Interdictor is least protected?" Kira asked.
"Starboard," Rogers replied.
"Send its coordinates to Captain Kenlo and have them standby to jump to hyperspace," Kira ordered.
"Copy," Rogers acknowledged, and then after a paused, she added with a note of skepticism in her voice, "Are you sure your friend is up to this?"
"I am," Kira said, a note of defensiveness in her voice. She knew what Rogers was referring to, and she knew that it reflected a general lack of confidence in him, whom Kira understood to mean Jax. Jax was positioned on Captain Kenlo's ship, and although they had rehearsed what they were planning dozens of times, this was only the second time he was attempting it in a "live" situation.
"Good," Rogers responded, "Because I'm not interested in being vaporized today."
"Nobody's getting vaporized today, Captain," Kira responded.
But before she could switch off her comm, Kit interjected on a separate channel, "Kira, with everything at stake, shouldn't we just send a direct transmission?"
Kira had weighed this question with Leia, and she had made the case that the responsibility was too much to put on Jax. He was now well into his training, and the combined efforts of Kira, Leia, Cere Junda, and Zhey'la had done wonders for his skills and confidence. On the other hand, his past traumas had interfered with his mastery of various elements of the Force, leaving him inconsistent and prone to bouts of low confidence. Without time to explain the particulars, Kira said, "It's too risky, Kit. They're expecting us to pull something, and if we send a transmission, they'll have a better chance of timing it. We do it this way, they don't know when we're coming."
"If you say so," Kit retorted skeptically. She switched off the comm, and as she did so, the Aldera shuddered as a blast of energy glanced her shields.
"More fighters incoming," Kit called into her comm. "Looks like more Scyks and a couple of Dunelizards."
"Lovely," Kira added dryly, and she reversed her throttle, causing her ship to shoot upward. She banked hard to the left as three quartets of fighters shot past after Kit. She banked back to the right and took up position behind Kit.
"You know I don't like it when you do that," Kit called.
"I don't want you running out of things to be grumpy about," Kira shot back, smiling.
Kira began firing into the ships, allowing the Force to guide her actions. Three of them exploded instantly, and the other nine swerved in numerous directions to avoid being destroyed. Kit took that opportunity to swerve to the right, and she hit a couple of the diverting Scyks¸ which burst into flames.
Kira felt another blast hit the Amaya, this time more directly. "BD-5, damage report," Kira called out.
The droid warbled and trilled a report. Shields were down 40% after that hit, but no structural damage had occurred. She looked down on her scope and saw a Kimogila heavy fighter bearing down on her from the right. BD-5 chirped another warming, and Kira's control panel lit up, indicating that the Kimogila was attempting to lock its torpedo firing control onto her ship. If the ship got a lock on her, her compromised shield would not protect her from a direct hit.
"Kit, I got incoming," Kira called as she pulled the Amaya into a dive to evade the Kimogila. The ship anticipated it, and with unusual adeptness for a Hutt syndicate pilot, matched her movement. Another series of blasts grazed her shields, causing them to drop another 15%. Her warning light began beeping furiously, indicating that the Kimogila would soon be locked on. The furious beeping switched to a high pitched, continuous beep as the Kimogila locked on.
But before the ship could fire, Kira could feel a tremor in the Force as the ship erupted into flames. A sleek, black and red freighter shot past the spot where the Kimogila had been moments before it transformed into a massive fireball. Kira had seen the ship before and recognized it as the Harpy, which belonged to the bounty hunter Panga Meesh.
"Damnit, it's Panga!" called Kit through her comm. Kira watched as Kit swerved away from the Scyk she had been pursuing as she changed her vector toward the Harpy.
"Kit, no!" Kira barked into the intercom, "Panga just cleared a Kimo off my back. She's helping, not hunting us."
"Not a chance, Kira. . ." Kit began, but Kira cut her off.
"Kit, keep your focus on the Phoenix!" Kira shouted back into her comm. Kit began to argue, but the Phoenix took a glancing blow from a Scyk, and Kira and Kit both diverted their ships toward the attacker. Kit got their first and blasted the ship off the Phoenix's path. Kit did not respond, but Kira could imagine her ferocious expression and her gritted teeth as she resisted every impulse to turn back and blast Panga's ship out of the sky.
"I have nothing to say to you," Ben spat bitterly as he stepped forward with his lightsaber still ignited.
"I'm sorry for what I did – for concealing the truth and misleading you," Leia said earnestly.
"Save your apologies for the Tribunal," he snapped. Ben knew he needed to step forward and shackle her, but the leaden dread that had settled in his stomach had rendered him immobile.
Leia read his inner struggle as if scanning facts from a data pad. Her smile faded, replaced by an expression of concern. Regarding her son – full of anger, confusion, dread, and bitterness – she could feel her heart breaking. She said sadly, "Look at what they've asked of you."
"I'm doing my duty," Ben responded, a slight quake in his voice.
"Duty? To invade a friend's mind? To arrest your own mother? To disown your grief over your father? Is that what it means to be a Jedi now?" She asked each question with love and compassion as she conveyed her sorrow at how much he had suffered.
"You're a criminal and a liar," Ben shot back, although his effort to infuse the accusation with disdain felt empty and hollow. He attempted to dig deep into Master Rancisis's practiced stoicism to ward off a growing desire to break the dam of anger and resentment that held his grief in. Instead of stoicism, he found fear of the price of failure in its place.
"I've certainly made some desperate decisions of late," she admitted, sorrow and regret straining her voice. "I apologize for keeping the truth from you. I thought I could protect you, but I only made it worse."
"You kept me weak," Ben said, as hurt as much as angry.
"Ben, you're going to find that no matter how hard we fight, we can't always save the ones we love," she said as tears welled in her eyes at the thought of Han's body drifting into space.
"The Jedi are showing me how to be strong," he said, attempting to remain defiant.
"And do you think that strength will save me from Bolsko's capriciousness?" Leia asked as if debating matters with a student. "Bolsko has said he wants me dead."
"He gave me his word that you wouldn't be harmed," Ben said, but Leia could feel his resolve faltering.
"And do you believe him?" Leia asked, her eyebrow raised slightly.
Ben paused, looking down at the mechanical hand around his lightsaber. He had lowered his blade without realizing it as he recalled the numerous conversations he had had with the Supreme Chancellor in the last year as the recently appointed Jedi Envoy to the Chancellor. The appointment had been a major event, with Senatorial confirmation, media coverage, and more photo opportunities than Ben could stomach. Ben could barely tolerate the man, and the more time he spent with him, the more duplicity he had observed. Inwardly, he admitted to himself that he did not trust the Chancellor – perhaps he never had. The mistrust had been there from the start, buried by his anger and his sense of duty. However, it had also held him back; perhaps he could have found Kira and his mother any time he wanted. And now, standing before his mother, the weight of every emotion he tried to deny, every misgiving he privately considered, all the grief that the Jedi had tried to meditate out of him – it all cascaded down on him in the realization that he had been manipulated through his own fears and ambitions.
"Come home, Ben," Leia implored, her voice soft and pleading. "Give me a chance to make things right. We can expose Bolsko. We can. . ." She hesitated, and Ben could feel her own surge of grief rise as the words came to her lips. "We could be a family again."
Ben's breath caught in his throat as a wave of grief and longing washed over him. He extinguished his lightsaber and gasped, "Mom."
Just as he was about to step forward, he sensed a sudden ripple in the Force. A sound of rushing wind and flapping fabric preceded a heavy thud as a dark shape fell from the cliff above and landed behind his mother. With a snap-hiss, a blue lightsaber blade erupted in the darkness, and a shadowy figure lunged forward. The blade passed through Leia's chest, and her eyes went wide with shock. She stumbled forward, and Ben caught her as her strength failed. He held her body up as her life drained from her. Feeling a horrific helplessness flooding him, he gazed into his mother's eyes, watching the light behind them dwindling.
The shock was gone from Leia's face, and a soft fondness shone in her eyes instead. As the light began to fade from her eyes, she smiled, holding his gaze. She whispered, "I love you," and then her body vanished, leaving Ben standing motionless, his mother's robes hanging from his hands.
The four ships shot into Nal Hutta's upper atmosphere with two squadrons of fighters on their tails. The Amaya, Aldera, and Harpy all weaved and dodged, doubling back to clear the fighters off the Phoenix's tail. So far, all four ships had escaped annihilation, but the Phoenix's shields were dangerously low, and Kira knew they would still have to make it past the Republic blockade. She rolled the Amaya into a sharp bank, drawing half a dozen Scyk fighters away from their pursuit of the Phoenix. She was pleased to note that their pursuers had identified her as the primary threat, and using that to their advantage, she watched as Panga Meesh cleared four of the six fighters off her back. She swung the ventral cannon to aim backward and reaching out through the Force for guidance as she aimed, she cleaned the last two fighters off her tail.
Before she could smirk to herself in triumph, BD-5 trilled a warning that another Kimogila heavy fighter had joined the sortie, and this one was barreling down on the Phoenix as it continued to plow ahead determinedly toward open space.
"No, you don't," Kira muttered to herself as she swung the Amaya around on a course to take out the heavy fighter. She felt the Force guide her to the perfect vector, and switching off the firing control, she took aim at the backside of the ship, which she knew housed the weakest part of the ship's exterior armor. Having homed in on the ideal spot, she closed her eyes.
The sense through the Force that flooded her was not guidance and tranquility, but rather a rush of shock and horror. Distracted by the sudden surge of emotion, she lost track of where she was, and instead of a space battle unfolding in front of her, she could see Ben holding Leia's body up. As if watching the interaction on a holonet projection, she heard Leia's distant whisper of "I love you" before her body vanished, leaving Ben with her cloak in his hands.
The vision vanished as quickly as it appeared, and Kira's breathing collapsed under the weight of the sheer horror of what she saw. As she reached out through the Force, she could find nothing of Leia's presence anywhere, and she knew that Leia was gone.
"Kira, what the hell are you doing?!" she heard Kit call through her intercom.
With an effort, Kira jerked her focus back to the battle at hand and found that she had sailed past the Kimogila, which was now closing in on the Phoenix. She wrenched the controls to take a hard 180-degree turn and gunned the throttle to catch back up. She was within firing range as the Amaya's proximity alert began blaring, signaling that the Kimo was on the verge of firing. She was not going to get there in time.
As if in slow motion, Kira saw the Kimo explode in a fiery ball of gas. The Harpy shot past, and it cleared another Scyk from Kit's tail. "Head in the game, Jedi," Panga admonished through the comm.
Leia, Kira called, attempting to reach her. For the last year, the call had always been met with a response. Leia was always there, ready to offer insight or guidance. Kira could not shake the vision out of her head, and at the same time could not fathom why Leia would not respond. Leia, she thought more desperately. Again, there was no response. The light that had burned so brightly through the Civil War and into the Galactic reconstruction had been suddenly and irrevocably extinguished.