Jaina waited in her X-wing in the midst of an empty system for nearly a day after her departure from the Coruscant system so that the Dodonna could come and pick her up. According to Lumiya, who decided to manifest herself as merely a voice in her head this time, the Galactic Alliance had retaken Corulag and Captain Klauskin had been granted permission by his superiors to collect her. In the meantime, however, Jaina had had to resort to using the Force to at least stave off the pain in her arm and ankle following her battle with Jacen; she knew, though, that if she didn't get a proper bacta treatment soon, especially since she wasn't particularly skilled as a healer, she might suffer irreversible damage in those body parts.

Thankfully, the Dodonna arrived and she was promptly brought aboard to be taken immediately to their medbay. For the extent of her injuries, she only had to soak in bacta for a few hours before she was brought out to take a meal in the mess hall and return to her quarters for some rest; it was unknown how long it would be before the Dodonna's next mission, so it was good to get some proper sleep first.

Upon returning to her quarters, however, Jaina stopped in her tracks when she saw a familiar officer standing as still as a statue before the door leading inside.

"Lieutenant Klass," she said with some mild surprise. She chided herself mentally; she should have been more alert with her Force-senses aboard this ship. Even here, she shouldn't feel this safe, especially not after what happened on Coruscant.

"Miss Niazh," Herush Klass said stoically. "I'm off-duty right now. So I was wondering if you wanted to... have another cup of caf with me?" If it weren't for his Force-presence radiating the strong sexual desire that he had for her, Jaina wouldn't have known just how much she had this man wrapped around her finger.

She quirked a flirtatious smile. "I wouldn't mind th-"

No, Lumiya's voice strongly insisted in her head.

Klass' face looked quizzical. "Something wrong?"

Jaina looked back at him in frustration. "On second thought... I think I should get some rest. Still feeling some aftereffects from the bacta."

"There are aftereffects to bacta?" Klass asked.

"There are for me," Jaina replied firmly. "Excuse me."

"Well, then, I guess I'll see you later, Miss Niazh," Klass said with his characteristic stoicism returning to his face and tone. "Have a good night." He turned and walked away, his Force-presence now radiating disappointment for an averted good time.

With an angry growl, Jaina walked back into her quarters, and as soon as the door behind her closed, an apparition of Lumiya appeared before her.

"You know, I know you can't get any on that asteroid you call the Home, but can't you let me-"

Jaina was abruptly cut off when the arm that just had its fracture repaired nearly tore out of its socket as it was used to pin her to the wall behind her; Lumiya didn't seem to move a muscle.

"Don't let yourself fall for those kind of distractions," the Dark Lady intoned. "You must remain focused, even at rest. The dark side of the Force will not tolerate that kind of weakness, and neither will I."

Jaina sneered at her even as she vainly tried to pull her arm free from Lumiya's Force-hold upon the wall; it didn't help that said arm still felt a little tender from the bacta treatment.

"You didn't seem to mind when I first slept with Herush," Jaina said.

"I was, admittedly, unaware of that. I can't spare every second of my life looking after you from afar. But now that I know, I only warn you now to cease this relationship. Otherwise..." Lumiya trailed off as she exerted pressure on Jaina's arm through the Force, which prompted a grunt of pain from the younger woman.

"I will give you a lesson in the dark side that you won't be ready for," the Dark Lady concluded.

Only then did she finally release her hold on Jaina's arm, which allowed the former Jedi to grasp at it with her other hand.

"So what's next?" Jaina asked through gritted teeth.

Even though the lower part of Lumiya's face was covered by the opaque veil she wore, Jaina was pretty sure that she was smiling.

"Your next encounter with Jacen, the one in which you will defeat him, will not be long from now," the Dark Lady said. "But before then, you will have a reunion with another family member of yours."

"Who?" Jaina asked when Lumiya was silent for a little too long.

Suddenly, an apparition of Mara appeared before her and slapped her across the face.

"Oh," Jaina said with realization even as she reeled from the strike. When she took her hand off her cheek and faced Lumiya again, she asked, "So how you gonna get me to the Transitory Mists? That's kinda outside the GA battlefront against the Chiss."

"Leave that to me," Lumiya replied before her form disappeared.

With a quirked eyebrow, Jaina went and sat on her sofa. She had a feeling, more by gut instinct than by the Force, that what Lumiya was setting into motion was going to come soon.

Jaina only had to wait less than thirty minutes before she used the Force to open her door as she felt Klauskin's presence approach her quarters with a duo of personal bodyguards. The captain, who was holding a datapad by his chest with both hands, and his guards were momentarily stunned by this, but Klauskin shook his head to clear out his mild shock before he asked, "Miss Niazh, may we come in?"

At her wordless nod, the captain and his two guards entered and he said, "Miss Niazh, I formally relieve you of any further duties aboard the Dodonna. Here is your severance pay." He handed her the 'pad. "You may leave whenever you wish."

Jaina took the 'pad and only glanced at it momentarily before she stood up, shook his hand, and said, "Thank you, Captain. I'll depart immediately."

. . .

Having completely healed from her stab wound thanks to a bacta tank in one of the medbays of the Thrawn's Vindication, Tahiri walked back down one of the ship's corridors to her quarters with her head down in dejection.

"Miss Dhreat."

Tahiri stopped in her tracks and turned to find Master Skywalker walking toward her with a sympathetic expression on his face and in his Force-presence. She already knew what he wanted to say to her, but given their present surroundings, with Empire of the Hand personnel walking past them at various intervals, even she didn't want to say anything to him that might compromise her identity.

"May we please speak in private?" Luke asked.

Reluctantly, she nodded. "I'll take you back to my quarters, Master Skywalker."

Once they returned to said quarters—which, apparently, had a new door installed after Luke broke into it—and that door was closed behind them, the Grand Master reached out through the Force to scan this part of the ship. When Tahiri saw what he was doing, she stayed still and silent as she let him work.

After a few minutes, a palm-sized listening device was telekinetically lifted out from beneath the sofa from which the two of them had their conversation before the EH's triple assault on the Gorog-held Chiss systems. Without further thought, Luke Force-crushed the device as if it were a sheet of flimsiplast and allowed it to drop to the floor.

"Hesklon knows who you are, Tahiri," Luke said.

That raised her eyebrows; obviously, she wasn't prepared for that.

"He's known since we had that conversation," he elaborated.

"So, wait, he knew that before we even attacked Gorog in the Ufesha system?" Tahiri asked.

Luke nodded. "And he also decided, without even letting me know beforehand, to attack the nestship in which you, Lowie, and Alema were all aboard after a certain period of time had passed. He didn't want to lose anymore people than he had to in that attack. I thought you deserved to know this."

Tahiri was silent for several heartbeats before she said, "Huh. I'm strangely not angry with that."

Now it was Luke's turn to raise his eyebrows in surprise. "Really? Why not?"

"Because it makes sense from Hesklon. He didn't tell me that he would save me from the jungle planet before I went in to search for Alema because he thought it might've compromised my mission. If anything, learning that he didn't tell me about this time limit just makes me feel..."

"Yes?"

"Annoyed."

"Annoyed?"

Tahiri nodded. "Like he didn't trust me to carry out the mission, even with you and... Lowie helping me out." She choked back a sob; her grief for her dead friend was as fresh as his loss. Then she turned and headed back to the sofa where she collapsed there and began crying into her hands.

Luke sat next to her and placed his natural hand on her shoulder. But instead of shooing it away, she let it stay there.

When she was finally done crying, she looked at Luke with tear-stained eyes and said, "I'm a terrible Sith. I should be using this sadness, this anger, to redirect it at Alema and Gorog; they killed Lowie. But instead, all I feel is just... empty."

"Being a terrible Sith doesn't sound so bad," Luke said evenly. "It just shows that they couldn't break you completely. That you still have some goodness left in your heart, Tahiri."

At that, the softness on Tahiri's expression disappeared before she asked, "Are you going to let me kill Alema, Master Skywalker?"

Luke's lips firmed. "On principle, Tahiri, I can't let you go through with that."

"Of course you can't," she replied bitterly. "But I suppose if I don't give in quietly, you'll subdue me and get Hesklon to lock me up with one of those Force-repressing binders for the remainder of this mission?"

"If that's what it'll take," Luke said evenly.

Tahiri sighed. "I was afraid that might be the case."

She breathed deeply, her cheeks puffing up as she held her breath, before she used the Force to rip open a tear in the couch cushion upon which Luke sat. Instantly, a small cloud of white aerosol enveloped the Grand Master, and Tahiri could hear him coughing behind that cloud.

She then kicked out and delivered a blow to his face that knocked him unconscious right before the cloud cleared. Next, she reached beneath her own couch cushion and procured a set of Force-repressing stuncuffs; with one cuff secured around the unconscious Luke's wrist, the other cuff was eventually secured to the bolted-in tower rack in Tahiri's refresher.

Tahiri said nothing to the unconscious Luke before she headed directly to her quarters' exit. When she opened the door, Admiral Hesklon and two EH stormtroopers stood on the other side waiting for her.

"Are you sure this plan will work out, Miss Veila?" Hesklon asked.

"Not a hundred percent, Admiral," Tahiri replied. "But one thing's for sure; I'm not letting Master Skywalker rob me of my vengeance."

"And I wouldn't let him rob you of it," Hesklon said with a conspiring grin. He waved her out of the quarters, and as they and the stormtrooper duo started heading for one of the Thrawn's Vindication's hangar bays, he told her, "Master Katarn's located Rar's Force-presence in the Gerdrush system. With him occupied there and Master Durron having to deal with a nestship Interdictor that's preventing him and my forces from leaving the Kelska system, we'll be over Gerdrush in less than an hour."

"Good," Tahiri remarked. "And with what I've seen Master Skywalker do to Alema while I was on that nestship, I'm confident enough that I can give her enough pain to make what he did look like child's play."

As she spoke, Tahiri ignored Gosuj's voice in her head saying, Oh, yes, you will, Tahiri. Yes, you will.

. . .

In the privacy of her bedchamber, Mara meditated on the mat by the floor when her holocomm pinged for her attention. She opened her milk-white eyes, unfolded herself from her position, stood up, and walked over to sit in the chair in front of the device before she activated it.

"Hello, Mara," her sister-in-law said.

"Leia," Mara replied. "It's good to hear your voice again. How's it going?"

"Not well, I'm afraid."

"Oh? What's wrong?" Even as she asked that question, she had a feeling that she knew what the answer was going to be.

"Jacen was injured recently; he lost an arm. Apparently, it was from a lightsaber duel... with Jaina."

Mara sighed. "So... Jacen told you that I was there in spirit for him. That I lent him some of my strength against Jaina."

"That's what you did for him?" Leia asked incredulously. "All he said to me before he passed out was that you knew that she had... gone dark."

"Yes, she has," Mara said unflinchingly. "And now you know that I helped him against her."

Even though Mara couldn't see her sister-in-law's expression from her holographic representation, she could imagine the disgust there.

"Jacen said that he tried to kill Jaina," Leia said, her tone slightly wavering in anger. "Was that you, Mara? Was that you goading him on?"

"I didn't influence him into wanting to kill Jaina. That was all him. I just gave him a boost in the Force so that he wouldn't die. If it weren't for me, Jacen would be dead now."

Several heartbeats of silence passed before Leia said, "Don't expect me to thank you for this, Mara. Just because you saved Jacen doesn't mean that I can look past the fact that you actively tried to have Jaina die."

"I was helping Jacen defend himself!"

"You could've reached out to Jaina! You could've helped her bring her back to the light!"

"I can't help her, Leia! She's beyond hope!"

Another moment of stunned silence passed before Leia asked, "Excuse me?"

"You heard me! Jaina is beyond hope! She's so tainted with the dark side that she-"

"No. No. No. I refuse to believe that. I can't believe that, Mara, and I can't believe you. I won't just accept your word that Jaina is beyond hope."

"You think I like it, Leia? I don't want Jaina dead!"

"You could've fooled me," Leia replied bitterly.

"Leia, listen, please-"

"No, no, you listen, Mara. It took all of my self-control not to lash out at you when I heard that you slapped Jaina on Jwlio over a year ago. But I swear, if you do anything to harm her in any way next time, even if you're helping Jacen or think you're helping him, I will kill you. I don't care if you're my brother's wife, I will kill you. Because my daughter means more to me than you ever will, Emperor's Hand."

When Mara heard the holocomm shut off, the silence that fell over her was one that she felt alone.

But just before she could force herself to stand up, Mara seized up as a vision overtook her.

In that vision, which took place in Ben's own room, Jaina was holding him up in the air through the Force with one hand while wielding a crimson-bladed lightsaber in the other.

And with that weapon-holding hand, Jaina plunged it into Ben's gut, ending his life within moments.

The vision ended, and Mara shot up from her seat to rush out of her bedchamber. When she made it to Ben's room, he awakened from his sleep and asked, "Mom, what's going on?"

"Ben, we have to leave now," Mara said urgently.