After Mara stepped out of the guest quarters that were prepared for her and her son, she turned to Captain Booster Terrik of the privately owned Star Destroyer Errant Venture, who asked her, "How's Ben doing?"
"A little confused, but he's alright," Mara replied. "He's asleep now. Anyway, thanks again for taking us, Booster."
"As I said before, no need for that," he responded with a wave of his hand. "As far as I'm concerned, you and Ben are family, Red. Not to mention, I could never turn away anyone who was actually born on this ship." Given that Mara and Booster's daughter Mirax were friends, it wasn't hard to see why the elderly ex-smuggler would see the Jedi Master as family.
Mara gave a weak smile. "Family. Yeah." Her head slouched at the thought of the woman from whom she and Ben were running and the tragedy surrounding the circumstances.
"You sure you'll be okay, Mara?" Booster asked after a moment.
She nodded. "I think I will be. Any word from Luke yet?"
He shook his head. "Nothing yet. We're pretty close to the Unknown Regions right now, but we can't get a signal out. Wouldn't be surprised if that's the Empire of the Hand's way of makin' sure no authorized signals can get through. No one from the GA's willing to share if they got anything from their people, of course, but that's to be expected. But you'd know if Luke and the others are okay, right?"
"I can still sense him." After a pause, however, Mara concluded with, "But right now, I feel like he's in trouble."
"I'm sure he'll pull through. After all, it takes a lot more to kill Luke Skywalker than a knockoff of the Empire and a buncha bugs, eh?"
"Oh, that it would," Mara replied with a much lighter tone. "That it would, Booster." She sighed. "Still..."
Booster placed a calming hand on Mara's shoulder. "I know I don't have to say this, but if you need anything..."
"Yeah, yeah, I got it.".
"Well, you have a good night, Red," Booster said as he took his hand off her shoulder. "I still got some things to look over before I turn in myself. See ya 'round."
"See ya, Booster," Mara said before she heard his footsteps moving away from her.
When Mara was sure that she was alone in the corridor of this level of the Venture, she stayed in place for well over a minute, fearing that, at any moment, she would receive another dreadful premonition from the Force.
But even when it didn't come, and she felt secure enough to turn around and reenter her shared quarters with Ben, a part of her, something more in her gut than in the Force, told her that she was now in the midst of the quiet before the storm.
. . .
Once Booster entered the Venture's bridge, he asked his female Rodian comms officer, "Any luck, Hushoji?"
"No, sir, I still haven't picked up any hypercomm traffic, GA or otherwise, from the Unknown Regions," came the reply. "I'm still just getting static."
Booster nodded. "Probably an overlap of jamming fields across several systems. No doubt they have a special code to communicate with the Chiss for the war. Thinkin' 'bout gettin' a new hobby, Hushoji?"
"By hobby, sir, do you mean a secondary assignment that involves cracking that code so that it could be sold to the GA?" the Rodian asked wryly.
"Hey, whatever you wanna call it, it's no business o' mine," Booster replied with a knowing grin. "I just wanna see if we can get a few extra creds before they crack it."
"Sjir!" the Laerdocian sensor officer Bodwae spoke up from his station. "A shjip, looks ljike an Ebruchji freighter, dropped out of hyperspace, few hundred kjilometers off our starboard. Jit's just hoverjing jin place rjight now. Regjistry marks jit as the New Purpose."
"Comm, establish a communication with that freighter," Booster ordered.
"Link established, Captain."
"This is Captain Booster Terrik of the Star Destroyer Errant Venture. Is there something we can do for you, New Purpose?"
The voice that appeared at the other end was one that nearly stopped Booster's heart; simultaneously, he heard his commlink go off, but he couldn't muster the wherewithal to answer it.
"Yes, Captain Terrik," Jaina Solo said from the other end. "You and your crew can all die."
Booster then felt a sharp pain in his neck that was quickly accompanied by his view of the Venture's bridge being lopsided. Not even a second after that, he lost all feeling with everything below the neck before he only knew the darkness of oblivion.
. . .
In the privacy of her temporary bedroom, Mara had dressed down into a nightgown in preparation for going to bed when she suddenly stiffened in place.
For right then, she felt her niece Jaina's Force-presence, and when they felt each other, the younger woman retorted, Hi, Auntie Mara.
That was when Mara's commlink beeped; hurriedly, she walked towards the sound that it made, picked it up, and activated it.
"I was in the neighborhood," Jaina's voice came through, "and I thought, why not say hello to you and Ben?"
"How'd you find us?" Mara asked with horror. "And how'd you get this comm frequency? I had our Force-presences cloaked and-"
"You forgot, I remembered your comm frequency, so it wasn't that hard. I'm surprised you didn't have the forethought to change it. As for how I found you and Ben, I... Oh, I'm sorry, hold on, Mara. Captain Terrik is contacting me, it'd be rude for me not to answer. Give me a minute, please." Jaina's tone was mockingly amicable, as if she hadn't clearly intended to kill Mara and Ben.
Hurriedly, Mara switched to Booster's comm frequency. "Booster, are you there? Come on, answer me!"
When she didn't receive any response, she reached out through the Force to get a read on the captain's familiar presence.
Only to realize that he was nowhere on the ship anymore; and, simultaneously, she started to feel other life-forces wink out from throughout the Venture.
When she switched back to her niece's frequency, Mara yelled, "Jaina, stop this!"
"I can't, Aunt Mara," Jaina said in a disturbingly calm tone. "If I want my reunion with you and Ben, I have to make sure none of the Venture's weapons and tractor beam operators, fighter pilots, hyperdrive engineers, or the helmsman can do anything to stop me. Oh, and also the sensor and comm officers, those are important, too."
"You killed Booster?!" Mara replied with more horror.
"Well, yeah. He was the captain now, wasn't he? Cut off the head, the body will flail before it dies."
"Enough!"
She then reached out and tried to attack Jaina mentally. But the younger woman seemed to be ready with a psychic attack of her own, one that caused Mara to stumble back and trip so that she fell on her back along the carpeted floor.
And this attack continued, as if by autopilot, while Jaina resumed Force-snapping the necks of the Venture's bridge crew at a rapid rate. Mara, meanwhile, was stunned by the withered visage of Emperor Palpatine looking down upon her with the phrase that had haunted her since he died.
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER! YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER! YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER!
Moments after she fell to the floor, Ben rushed into the bedroom, crouched by Mara's side to grab her by the shoulders in a vain attempt to shake her out of her stunned state, and screamed, "Mom! Mom! What's happening! Are you okay! Say something! I... I... I feel... death! Death is everywhere, all around us! Mom!"
. . .
With the thousands of crew members and guests that the Errant Venture had aboard, Jaina knew that it would take her quite a while to use the Force to snap every single neck or stop every heartbeat one-by-one even at a rapid rate. Fortunately for her, there were ways in which she could apply her well-developed Force-skills in which she could wipe out entire groups of people at a time.
Whether that was by causing support beams to collapse upon off-duty officers and guests, overloading computers, databanks, blasters, and various other machines in numerous locations, Jaina found that she might be able to shorten what could take hours of concentrated effort into maybe less than an hour, if only slightly.
Of course, with what she was able to do, Jaina figured she could probably overload the Venture's central core with just the right amount of Force-pressure and kill everybody aboard in an instant, including Mara and Ben. That was why she was here, after all.
However, Jaina knew that when she killed her aunt and cousin, she had to be there in person, to see the light go out in their eyes. It would be just the right punishment for Mara, for her sins, for turning her back on Jaina when she needed her support to begin with.
Yes. Yes, that was the reason.
Group by group, always maintaining that rapid rate, Jaina used the Force in the most efficient manners she thought possible to wipe out every single man and woman whom she believed could pose any kind of threat to her. Only the children would be spared since they would were nothing to her... with one notable exception.
When Jaina was finally done, she looked at her ship's chronometer.
59 minutes and 55 seconds. It took her that long to kill everybody aboard the Venture, with the exceptions of Mara, Ben, and the other children whom were aboard.
And, strangely, Jaina didn't feel any guilt or remorse over what she had done. Instead, she felt a sense of pride, of accomplishment, of having been able to take out the entirety of the crew of the famed Errant Venture without having to fire a single laser or launch a single proton torpedo or concussion missile. Moreover, she felt an accompanying sense of invigoration where she probably should have felt a deep sense of fatigue after such effort.
This is the power of the dark side, Jaina, Lumiya's voice said in her head. When you truly give yourself to it, nothing can stop or limit you.
Yes, Jaina agreed wholeheartedly. Now... for the real fun. She then guided the New Purpose towards one of the Venture's hangar bays.
. . .
"Mom! Mom! Come on, wake up! Please, wake up! The death! All the death! Almost everybody's dead, Mom! Come on, please, snap out of it! Mom!"
Yet Mara continued to lie on the floor as Ben went on pleading for her to come back to him while still shaking her by the shoulders every now and then.
After a little over an hour, the boy's incessant pleas for his mother were cut off once he heard the door to their quarters open. He stood up warily as he looked to the door that led out of Mara's bedroom; he couldn't feel the Force-presence of the owner of the shadow that appeared underneath the door.
Quickly, he climbed under the bed, concealed his Force-presence as his mother had taught him to do several times, and looked just as the door opened. From his vantage point, he saw black boots enter the bedroom with slow, deliberate steps toward Mara.
For a tense moment, Ben considered scrambling out from under the bed to stop whomever wished harm upon his mother. But he considered against it when he suddenly remembered one of Mara's pieces of advice when they had first boarded the Venture.
"Remember, if there's trouble, you hide and stay hidden. Don't worry about me... you're more important than I could ever be."
At the moment, Ben couldn't disagree more. Yet, at the same time, even without taking into account the fact that this person was more than likely the monster who just wiped out virtually the entirety of the Venture's crew, it was plain, simple fear than froze Ben into place more than his own mother's advice.
Thus, all he could do was watch as the boots stopped next to Mara. For a moment, Ben was scared that he was about to watch his mother die, that a red-bladed Sith lightsaber was going to plunge deep into her chest and end her instantly.
Instead, a dark-gloved hand reached down and touched his mother's forehead. Less than a second later, Mara's eyes flashed open before a boot stomped down on her chest. Ben repressed a frightened yelp at the sight.
"Blind now, huh?" a familiar yet brittle voice asked. "When'd that happen? Ah, it doesn't matter. I'm sure it didn't stop you from reliving that old chestnut I gave you, huh, Emperor's Hand?"
"How?" Mara asked. "How did you-"
"A trick I learned," the voice interrupted, "from someone who had the same boss."
"Who?" Mara growled.
"Familiar with a woman named Shira Brie?"
"Shira Brie?!" Mara exclaimed with familiarity. "Lumiya!"
"That's right. And your pathetic attempts to cloak yourself and your son are nothing compared to what she can do, what she taught me to do. Which reminds me, can you tell me where Ben is?"
"I will never-"
"Oh, wait, I just told you. You can't cloak yourself or Ben that well from us. Which means..."
Suddenly, the bed overturned to crash behind Ben, leaving him completely exposed but able to look up at the attacker. Her face, though withered as if by extreme age, and eyes, though tainted a dark orange-red, were too familiar to Ben.
"Jaina?!" he asked with shock.
"Ben, run!" Mara cried.
"Now, now," Jaina said as she used the Force to fling Ben back and pin him to the wall behind him. "Young Ben, there's no need to-"
"Leave him alone!" Mara said before she blasted Jaina back with a powerful Force-wave.
However, the younger woman, though she lost her Force-grip on Ben, landed with a crouch in front of the bedroom's exit before standing up and activating her red-bladed lightsaber. Meanwhile, Mara had leaped to her feet and used the Force to call her lightsaber to hand before she activated its blue blade.
The two combatants, without saying another word between them, rushed toward each other and began clashing where they stood, with neither of them giving ground to the other in the midst of their wild attacks and defenses.
"Ben, do as you're told!" Mara cried out. "Go!"
Hesitantly, Ben turned and rushed out of the room, not sure where to go or who to turn to now that all the adults on the ship were dead. But just as he got out into the corridor outside, a thought occurred to him.
Maybe there was a way he could send out a call to someone. Maybe he could get to the Venture's bridge and get a Galactic Alliance or Jedi rescue crew. Maybe they could arrive in time to help save him, his mother, and the children who were still on the ship.
Maybe. It was the only hope he had. So, without giving into a single doubt, he hurried to the nearest turbolift that was still active and pressed the button that could take him to the bridge.
