In her suite on Bothawui, Leia Organa Solo sat down at the worktable that was set up for her and pressed the palms of her hands upon her face in frustration. After a few breaths, she mustered the emotional wherewithal to compose herself before she picked up the portable hypercomm from beneath the desk and set the device upon it. She then dialed in the comm number for a very notable family friend and waited for the response to come in.
A few minutes later, an inches-high blue-tinted holographic representation of Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo's head appeared before Leia's eyes.
"Hello, Leia," Tenel Ka said with a soft smile that was seen as a rarity from those outside of the circle of people that she trusted and cared for. "I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong on your end."
"Yeah, sorry about that," Leia said with a tired smile; she had been late by about an hour for her monthly catchup holocomm conversation with Tenel Ka. "Latest session with the Bothans took a little longer than usual today. It would explain how tired I look, huh?"
"Fact," Tenel Ka replied as her smile was replaced by her characteristic stoicism. "How go the negotiations so far?"
"The Bothans are still reticent in reaffirming their loyalties to the Galactic Alliance. They still wanna keep out of the war with the Chiss, but like always, I try to remind them that their intended neutrality might not help them later. And like before, it's ended in a stalemate with the representatives considering whether or not they should rejoin the GA, yaddi-yaddi-yaddah. So, really, nothing new so far."
"I am sorry to hear that," Tenel Ka replied earnestly.
Leia waved dismissively. "Don't worry about it. Anyway, how are Jacen and Allana?"
"Allana is doing well," Tenel Ka answered evenly; it was agreed that over a hypercomm discussion, they wouldn't talk about the fact that Allana was her and Jacen's daughter, who was, therefore, Leia and Han's granddaughter. "Though I am curious: did Jacen not tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"About his renewed search for Jaina. He did not tell you?"
"I haven't spoken to Jacen since before he left Shedu Maad. I'm sorry, he's looking for Jaina again?"
Tenel Ka nodded with concern. "Yes, he did."
"Do you know where he is now?"
The Queen Mother shook her head. "Not to my knowledge. I would tell you if I did."
"I believe you. Thank you, Tenel Ka. I have some arrangements to make now. You take care of yourself."
"You, too, Leia. Goodbye." Tenel Ka signed off on her end.
Leia then dialed in her husband's hypercomm number. When his holographic visage appeared, she said to him, "Han, would you like to take a little vacation from training those new pilots?"
"What for, honey?" he asked.
"To look for Jaina again."
Han's eyes widened before they narrowed in determination. "I think I can get a last-minute replacement. You?"
"It won't be too difficult on my end. I'll see you in a bit." She signed off and stood up to leave the suite.
She imagined that the Bothans wouldn't appreciate her pulling out of these talks, and the GA wouldn't, either. But when it came to her children, especially with what happened to Jaina, Leia would find a way to move the galaxy to get out of these circuitous and monotonous talks, even if it meant risking the Bothans' loyalties to the GA. It might take a few days, at best, to get another diplomat (even if they weren't as skilled, wise, or patient as her) from Denon or some other well-placed GA system before she was allowed to leave. But Leia knew in her gut that this was ultimately the right thing to do.
She just hoped that this decision wasn't one that would be tinged by even a little bit of regret afterwards; she would hate for her absence to even be an indirect result of the Bothans falling out of the GA's hands for good.
. . .
According to the information that was copied from Omas' black datapad, out of the twenty-seven mercenaries who currently worked as unofficial elements within the Galactic Alliance fleet, only five matched Jaina's general description. However, what made Jacen believe that one Noonya Niazh was his sister was the fact that she tended to wear a white mask anytime she roamed freely within the corridors of the Galactic-class battle cruiser Dodonna whenever the ship wasn't in the midst of a battle or whenever she was in the X-wing that Captain Matric Klauskin had given her. And the more kills that Niazh wracked up in her dogfights, the more red marks she added to the mask.
Jacen had almost dismissed the idea that this particular merc could have been Jaina because her face had been seen when she first boarded the Dodonna and she hadn't been identified as his sister. But upon seeing the picture of her face, which looked subtly different from that of his twin, he couldn't help but think about how, if her cheekbones looked just slightly different, and if her hair and eyes were of different colors, then this woman was a dead ringer for Jaina. Plus, the idea that her wearing a mask could certainly allow her to get away with not having to wear her facial prostheses was plausible to Jacen.
So, once Jacen had selected Niazh as his prime suspect for Jaina's new identity, he had promptly deleted the information that was copied from Omas' datapad and left the Chief of State's office without another word; like the older man had said, that part of their conversation never happened. From there, Jacen departed from Denon aboard the Solo Quest II and set out to Corulag, the next world that the Dodonna was scheduled to fight over (which was also part of the info that he memorized).
A few days later, the Quest dropped out of hyperspace into the Corulus system and found a pitched battle between multiple GA capital ships—Star Destroyers, Nebulon-B frigates, Mon Calamari battle cruisers, and even three Galactic-class cruisers—against several Chiss Destroyers and cruisers millions of kilometers before him. Naturally, within the furball of physical and energy projectiles that were fired between the capitals, starfighters from both sides were doing their best to blow each other to oblivion for the fate of Corulag.
Seeing that he was more or less safe from this battle so far, Jacen shut his eyes and reached out to feel whether or not Jaina was participating.
Unfortunately, just as he did that, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the constant mental barrage of stress, pain, and death that he would normally shut himself off from in times like this. For Jacen, it was as if his soul was being bathed in a lake of fire as he attempted to reach out for individual presences, because at a constant rate that his mind was too distracted to discern, lives were lost in the midst of the fear and panic that were natural accompaniments in these conflicts.
But it was this pain that Jacen knew how to use to his advantage thanks to his tutelage under Vergere so many years ago. He used it as his strength and resisted the temptation to retreat to mental safety by blocking out the feelings of loss, grief, and every other emotion that would arise during dogfights and capital ship slugging matches. Yet, to him, it didn't feel that much easier for him to accept even as he continued to try to sift out Jaina's presence from every other aura in this system.
After what felt like an eternity of agony to his soul, Jacen finally discovered an aberration in the Force in the battle ahead. Darkness emanated from a presence that felt simultaneously familiar yet foreign to him, and he felt what that presence was doing to the enemies around her: she herself was using the Force to kill so casually that it was as easy as breathing for her.
And when that presence felt Jacen scanning her, she recoiled from him by retreating into herself through the Force like a clam-shelled animal.
It was her, Jacen realized with equal parts relief and horror. She may not have felt like her completely, but the presence that he felt was, indeed, his twin sister Jaina.
Now he had to reel her out of this battle somehow. Of course, he almost smacked his head with the palm of his head when he realized how stupidly simple the solution was: since the Jedi and Galactic Alliance were allies against the Chiss, all he had to do was just help the GA forces here win this battle, and he would be that much closer to confronting Jaina.
Without hesitation, Jacen poured speed into the Solo Quest II's sublight engines while comming the Dodonna. He received a reply from a stressed-sounding woman who said, "This is the Dodonna. Who is this?"
"This is Jedi Knight Jacen Solo piloting the Solo Quest II comin' up at your rear. Request permission to join the battle?"
After a moment, a masculine voice asked, "This is Captain Matric Klauskin of the Dodonna. You want permission to join this battle, Jedi Solo?"
"Yes, Captain Klauskin, I would," Jacen replied patiently.
"Well, if you got weapons, you could be a big help in any one of those dogfights. I'll let you take your pick, Jedi Solo, and I'll let the other commanders in this task force know about your added presence."
"Thanks, Captain. Solo Quest out." Jacen signed off and resumed his full attention for the battle ahead.
. . .
After Jedi Solo signed off, Captain Klauskin returned his attention to the viewport of the Dodonna's bridge. However, he stopped when his dead wife, Edela, appeared before him wearing a burgundy synthsilk gown and a loving smile.
"Matric," she said in a tone as silky as her gown, "it's a trick. You know it is. It's a Chiss charade. The Solo Quest is an Ascendancy warship. If you allow it to join this battle, many good pilots and soldiers will die."
The words she said weren't what convinced Matric to do what he did next: instead, it was that tone, that silky tone, that made his mind flutter in ecstatic relief, as if he had taken a depressant form of spice. And when that feeling of ecstasy passed, his mind became as sharp as it normally was and he turned to one of the sensor officers.
"Mark the Solo Quest II as an enemy combatant!" Captain Klauskin ordered.
"Yes, sir," that officer replied without question.
The comm officer who had answered Jedi Solo's hail asked, "Sir, what makes you think-"
"Now's not the time to question my orders, Ensign!" Klauskin barked. "We're at war here, and we will not fall for any Chiss trickery!"
The comm officer looked hesitant, but after a couple seconds, she nodded. "Yes, sir," she said before she returned her full attention to her post.
Klauskin turned back to the main viewport, and with his view unobstructed by the apparition of Edela, he smiled inwardly, believing that what he had done was just and right.
. . .
Right as Jacen entered the battlefield over Corulag, he suddenly found himself being shot at by two GA X-wings from ahead. He dodged the Solo Quest II to port, but soon found that those same two fighters were now trying to blow him up from behind with their quad laser turrets. He didn't have time to put in a comm call to ask Klauskin or whoever else he could talk to about what was going on as he now focused all of his concentration on making sure that the GA pilots wouldn't kill him by slaloming his ship.
Fifteen seconds later, a Chiss clawcraft pair dropped down from above and started firing their charric bolts at him. Jacen ducked off to starboard, where the alien projectiles blew up the X-wings that were chasing him, but now the clawcraft became his new pursuers.
Great, he thought sarcastically as he began ducking and weaving to shake the clawcraft. Now all I have are enemies out here.
Suddenly, both clawcraft veered off in opposite directions from each other in lazy arcs that each got them blown up by a turbolaser from one of the GA's capital ships.
Jacen looked at his rear scanners only briefly to acknowledge what happened to the clawcraft before he returned his full attention to the viewport. Ahead, an X-wing was headed right for him, but at the last second, it managed to veer off to his port.
And in the brief second he got as it passed by him, Jacen could see through the fighter's transparent cockpit canopy and found the woman who had to be Noonya Niazh with her red-marked white mask over her face.
Immediately, Jacen spun the Quest around after her as she led him out of the battlefield.
. . .
"Sir, one of our fighters is leaving the battlefield," one of the Dodonna's sensor officers informed Klauskin. "It's the one piloted by Noonya Niazh."
Let her go, Edela said in Matric's mind.
"Let her go," the captain relayed.
"Sir?" the sensor officer asked with panic from the ongoing battle in his tone.
"She's leading the Solo Quest away from us," Klauskin elaborated. Indeed, he could see the "enemy" freighter being led out of the furball by an X-wing. "When she's done with him, she'll return to us. Now return to your post, Ensign."
"Aye, sir," the officer replied before complying.
. . .
Even as he followed Niazh's—or rather, Jaina's—X-wing out of the battlefield, he felt darkness emanating from the woman ahead of him as fighters from both the GA and Chiss sides seemed to suddenly veer or drift off as if they had just lost their pilots.
And that was because, as Jacen learned before he briefly joined the battle, those fighters were losing their pilots on account of Jaina's use of the Force to kill them from afar.
Jaina, please, he tried to commune through their twin bond. You have to stop doing this! You have to come home! We have to talk about this!
But Jacen felt nothing come back to him, as he felt the bond between them had been severed, as Mara had said to him before he left Shedu Maad. Even though he could feel a presence that had traces of Jaina in it, it wasn't receptive to his entreaties through the Force.
Sighing in frustration, Jacen gunned the Quest's sublight engines again to try to catch up to Jaina's X-wing and get close enough to fry her engines with some well-placed turbolaser shots. And after a minute, during which he and his sister managed to escape the battlefield entirely, the X-wing seemed to drop back, as if it had just lost power.
But then, just as Jacen had lined up a shot, the X-wing jumped into hyperspace.
His eyes shot up in surprise. Quickly, he marked the X-wing's exit vector on his navcomp and then fed the coordinates for his own jump into hyperspace. Without hesitation, and just as another pair of X-wings were about to drop in on his tail, Jacen followed his twin sister into hyperspace.
