Onimi: Pretty girl and sound economic theory...who wouldn't fall for that? ;)

Chapter 9 - Distress [[[[#]]]]]]]]=(=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Mara watched from the corner of the infirmary as Cilghal worked with a 2-1B droid to prepare Luke for the Bacta tank. The Mon Calamari healer's initial assessment was similar to how Mara had been assessed at the start of the Vong war – whatever he was infected with was not contagious, but it was designed in a way that the human body was not strong enough to fight it even with the help of the Force. Something would be needed to counteract it properly.

Cilghal had explained that her hope was that the Bacta would help Luke fight it until the Yuuzhan Vong shaper she had befriended could get there to assess the blood and tissue samples they had taken from him. She watched helplessly as her husband placed the mask over his face and sat onto the rig that would lower him into the tank.

She had spoken to him briefly when they forced him out of his healing trance. He briefly explained what Krayt had told them and that Jacen knew how to heal him. He also told her that, if he didn't make it, Kam should be the one to lead whatever is left of the Jedi.

Mara watched as they lowered him into the tank, giving Luke the emotional equivalent to a squeeze of the hand through the Force. As soon as his toes touched the Bacta she felt a flare of pain shoot up his body.

"Stop!" Mara shouted, startling Cilghal. She pointed at Luke, who, now knee deep in the Bacta, had begun convulsing in pain. She used the Force and pulled Luke out of the rig, lifting him right out of the tank and lowered him to one of the operating tables near Cilghal. She grabbed a towel and rushed over to him, wiping off the residual Bacta on his legs.

"The poison spores must be sensitive to the Bacta," Cilghal said as she arrived with her own towel. They finally removed the Bacta and Luke stopped jerking, but was once again unconscious. "I'll run some tests."

Mara squeezed Luke's hand and looked at him with a far too familiar sensation of helplessness sitting in the pit of her stomach.

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Jaina spent the trip back to the Falcon in a semi-conscious Jedi recovery trance trying to eliminate the effects of the alcohol in her system. Thinking back at the night, she realized she drank a lot. The Force was about the only thing that had kept her going, and she barely remembered using it to sustain herself. While Lowie did her the favour of not making a comment on her state, part of her did not know if she needed to hear something. Maybe she needed someone other than herself to tell her how reckless she had been so it would sink in. She let herself get abducted because she was too drunk to do anything about it, and Talon Karrde died because of her.

[I received a data burst from Eriana about an hour ago,] Lowie finally broke the silence as she showed signs of increased alertness. [The mission failed. Eriana, Luke and Mara returned to Zonoma Sekot.]

Jaina suddenly became alert.

"Wh-what about Jacen?" she demanded. "Are Kyp and Octa okay?"

[Jacen was last seen being taken captive,] Lowie growled as he brought the rented hovercar down to the drop off point at the spaceport. [Kyp and Octa were not as fortunate.]

Sometime later Jaina felt her shoulder being shaken and she turned and looked up to face her mom from the pilot seat of the Falcon. She vaguely remembered returning to the ship, doing a pre-flight check and requesting clearance from the spaceport, but until the gentle jarring from her mom, she had been on autopilot. She looked up to see the sad, concerned brown eyes looking down at her and wondered how pitiful her own eyes looked.

"I'm worried about you," Leia said in her stern motherly voice. "You're not yourself."

"I'm fine," Jaina said and turned back to configuring the repulsors to the specific gravity of Iope for a more efficient launch. "Just a lot on my mind."

"We'll get Jacen back," Leia assured her. "Something tells me he's more valuable to Krayt alive than..." Her voice trailed off, not wanting to say the word that seemed to be coming up far too often in the last couple weeks.

Lowie chose that moment to open the door.

[I need to contact General Stragoron or Cooper,] Lowie growled. [Head to the Primus Goluud system. There is an unmonitored Holonet relay there we can hack into and borrow for a short time.]

"Sure," Jaina said and pointed to the navicomputer behind her. "Mom, can you take care of that?"

"Jaina..."

"Millennium Falcon, you are cleared for departure," the comm interrupted whatever Leia was going to say. The control tower provided her with more details on her exit vector and Jaina brought the ship out of the berth. The cockpit remained silent, save the operational sounds of the ship, until they cleared the gravity well of Iope and jumped to hyperspace.

"It'll take an hour until we get there," Jaina said and got up. "I'm going to take a nap."

"Jaina, we need..."

"Wake me in twenty," Jaina interrupted and walked out of the cockpit.

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Slave IV landed in the sole docking bay of the Stex City Space Port on Gerrenthum, a small out of the way mining town that rarely saw visitors willing to spend more than a couple hours with their boots on the ground. Boba nodded approvingly as Han set the ship down with hardly a bump and unclipped his crash webbing.

"You were always a hell of a pilot, Solo," Fett said. Already wearing his famous Mandalorian armour, he opened a locker and extracted his helmet. "I'm just glad I witnessed it first hand before I die."

"Yeah, we can all die happy now," Han growled. Fett had been talking his ear off the entire trip, explaining how his ship operated. Han learned it all quickly, and he was about ready to throttle the chatty Mandalorian, but he still didn't know where their end destination was. "Let's get the cargo and get off this rock."

"I find myself in agreement," Fett said and put his helmet on. As if a switch was flipped, his voice dropped in tone and he took on a more menacing body language. "Keep alert."

"Do I get a blaster?" Han asked.

"DL-88," Fett said, grabbing a blaster in a belt holster from the locker and tossing it to him. "Couldn't find a 44 on short notice."

Han caught the belt and strapped it on. He pulled the blaster out, noticing that the sight on the front had been filed off. He knew that was important, but he could not remember why.

"You coming?"

"Yeah," Han said. "Right behind you."

The unlikely pair walked out of the spaceport without so much as a security check to slow them down. In fact, the door to the bay they landed in opened out right to the dusty dirt road that was completely devoid of vehicles, save one load lifter slowly driving away from them. About ten tightly packed buildings spanned out on their right, and another ten were scattered across the street at varying distances from the road.

Fett marched across the street and up to the second closest house. He hammered his fist on the old wooden door, and Han heard someone scrambling inside to reach the door.

"Who is it?" an elderly voice called out.

"Today's customer."

The door opened up to the smiling weathered old face of a human with grey hair and a patch over the left eye. His knotted old fingers grabbed the door frame for support as he struggled to balance himself while opening the door with is cane hand.

"Power packs or explosives today, Mr Fett?" the man asked, still smiling.

"Explosives," Fett said. "Big explosives."

"Right place, as always," the man said. He turned around and hobbled away on his cane down the hallway that went straight through to the back of the house. Fett and Han followed, and Han closed the door behind him.

"Bit old for an arms dealer," Han muttered just loud enough for Fett to hear.

"I've been using Harold since I was born," Fett said. "He supplied my dad with the best weapons, and he's very discrete."

"Expensive, too!" Harold said happily. He reached the back wall and stood next to a radiating heater against the wall. Fett stepped up right beside him and turned around. Han stared at them from several feet back.

"Well, get over here, son," Harold said, tapping the floor with his cane. "Waiting for me to die? Not going to happen today, I tell you."

Han reluctantly stepped closer, and when he was close enough, Harold pressed a hidden button on the side of the radiator and the floor began to drop. Specifically, a two metre square area, which was quickly replaced by a sliding panel above them, casting them into darkness. The lift dropped about ten metres before it stopped, and a door slid open behind Han, showering them with light. He turned around and saw one of the biggest armouries he had ever seen. As far as he could see, there were rows upon rows of everything from holdout blasters to E-webs, from concussion grenades to proton torpedoes, and even a pair of quad turrets that looked like upgraded versions of the ones on his ship. His ship...if he could only remember the name...

Fett pushed past Han and began walking into the armoury without hesitation and Harold hobbled along behind him.

"Grab a cart, Han," Fett pointed to one of the five wagons beside the lift entrance. He began taking products from the shelves. "I'll need rocket propelled grenades for my wrist launcher, fuel canisters for the flame thrower, extra blaster power packs, and the big stuff."

As Han pushed the cart along, Fett dropped the items into it, but at the mention of the big stuff, Harold and Fett stopped and stared at each other.

"You've never wanted that before, Boba," Harold said in a condescending tone.

"My days of bounty hunting are at an end, old friend," Boba put an armoured hand on Harold's shoulder. "It's time to do something bigger."

Harold nodded absentmindedly. "The degeneration is worsening?"

Fett merely squeezed the man's shoulder and removed his hand from it. Harold's eyes lit up like fireworks.

"Then let's make the biggest bang of all! I've been saving this for a special occasion."

Harold pushed past Fett and worked his way to the far end of the room, leading them past all the proton torpedoes, heavy weaponry, and suits of battle armour to a relatively open area. Han noticed that there appeared to be an irising hatch in the ceiling above him, and a lift under his feet. If he were to guess, they were probably directly under the space port, which would explain how Harold could move weapons in and out of the underground facility.

Harold waved a hand over an inconspicuous area of the wall and a keypad appeared which he pressed some numbers into. The wall slowly parted along a formerly invisible seam, descending into the floor and ascending into the ceiling to reveal...

"Wow," Han said, examining the head-sized explosives racked up several layers deep in the hidden compartment. "I thought this stuff was impossible to find."

"Been cornering the market," Harold said with a twinkle in his eye. "A couple have slipped out in the last few years, but I've been saving these for my best customer."

"We'll take 'em," Fett said. "All of 'em."

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Mara had not left Luke's side since she had pulled him out of the Bacta tank. Nom Yomnom, a Yuuzhan Vong shaper, had come to help Cilghal with her analysis of Luke's infection. She came to the conclusion that Mara had already suspected – it was a heavily modified version of the spore that she had been infected with, so heavily modified that they could not apply the usual healing methods. Nom had promised to continue working on a solution, but she did not seem overly optimistic.

To Mara's surprise, Eriana had stayed close to them, too. Tekli had bandaged the blaster wound on her bicep with a concentrated Bacta patch held on with a strap of white gauze. The former Jensaarai seemed out of place, pacing back and forth across the far end of the infirmary as if she was expecting something to happen. Mara felt like the younger woman was avoiding her, but at the same time could not figure out why she was still there when the Jedi Temple offered plenty of space for her to be anywhere but there. Feeling a mix of emotions between anger and helplessness, Mara finally decided to vent. She got up and approached the Black Vornskr leader.

"Isn't there something you should be doing instead of pacing around here?" Mara growled, stopping Eriana in her tracks. The blond woman turned and looked at Mara as if she had been caught by her mother while sneaking cookies out of the kitchen, but her face went from one of surprise to angry in an instant.

"Put him in carbonite," Eriana snapped in response to Mara's tone. "It should stop the spores from spreading and buy him some time. Salliche is the nearest ag planet I can think of with a carbonite chamber. They use it to freeze produce for transport to the outer rim so it doesn't waste. I have a contact there if you want it."

Mara blinked in surprise, both at the fact that it was a good idea and that Eriana was thinking of ways to help. Knowing the amount of responsibilities Eriana had as leader of the Vornskrs, Mara felt a bit ashamed about her initial assessment of the other woman since she was spending her time trying to figure out ways to help her husband.

"That's a...really good idea," Mara said softly. "I'll discuss it with Cilghal."

She turned around and took a step away when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked back to see Eriana's bright green eyes blazing with an intensity that wasn't there a minute ago.

"You're right. There is something I should be doing," Eriana said, looking more like her normal self – determined, driven, and dangerous. "I'll get him back. Jacen's the only real friend I've ever had, and I'm not going to let him rot in some Sith Lord's jail. If I have to fight through the entire Bogan army with nothing but my lightsabers, I promise I'll bring him back to heal Luke. The Jedi need Skywalker as much as I need Jacen, so as far as I'm concerned, there's only one thing to do."

Seeing the change in Eriana sparked something in Mara, and she put a hand on Eriana's shoulder in return. She felt her worry and fear melt away, exposing the core of herself she had always drawn upon to survive and thrive in every part of her life. She felt herself becoming the Emperor's Hand once again.

"You've never had a family, have you?"

"He's the closest thing to a brother that I've ever had," Eriana said, her eyes glittering with ferocity that Mara knew was reflected in her own gaze. "As far as I'm concerned, you're all my family."

"Then let's put it back together."

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Jaina woke up in her bunk on the Falcon and rested for a moment as she felt the familiar dull throb of the hyperdrive purring through the ship. Through the open door she overheard everyone laughing, talking and making clanking noises that made her realize it must be meal time. She looked at her wrist chrono and she jumped out of bed. She slept six hours?

"Good morning," Ben snickered when he noticed her enter the crew area. "Nice hair."

"I thought you were going to wake me before we arrived at Primus Goluud," Jaina said irritably, ignoring the jab.

"We've already moved on," Danni said. "Have some dinner; Lowie did a great job on the meal."

[Thanks,] Lowie barked.

"You should've seen it," Erinn said with a twinkle in her eye as she handed Jaina a plate. "Ben, Danni and I were out on the hull in space suits tying the communication system into the Holonet transceiver when a space slug jumped out of the transceiver and tried to bite Ben's head off."

"It was only about this big," Ben laughed, holding up a finger. "It just kinda got stuck on my helmet and made this growling sound that echoed like crazy."

"You should've seen Ben running around screaming on top of the Falcon!" Danni said. "You'd think it was gnawing his brain out the way he was flailing around."

"Lowie and I were in the cockpit trying to figure out what the commotion was," Leia continued. "All we heard was laughing and screaming through the radio."

[It's like they were attacked by clowns,] Lowie chuffed.

"Was there any news on finding Jacen?" Jaina asked, intentionally bringing a somber tone to the room. Everyone stopped laughing and avoided eye contact with her, save her mother.

"Nothing new," Leia admitted. "Eriana and Mara barely got off Krayt's command ship with Luke. He's been infected with a Yuuzhan Vong poison, similar to the one Mara was infected with at the beginning of the Vong war. They're going to put him in stasis until they can learn more about it."

"Eriana and Mara are both looking for Jacen," Danni continued. "They know he's the best chance of saving Luke."

Jaina reached out to her brother on their twin bond, but got no response from him. Either he was unconscious, or was blocking her. She could still sense something from him, enough to know he was alive, but that was it.

"Where are we going?"

"Directly to where Karrde told us we'll find Wedge," Leia said. "Half way between Odik and Byss. Lowie is being recalled to the Vornskrs to help out while Eriana's looking for Jacen, and Ben is going with Mara. Wedge should be able to provide them with a ship, and the rest of us will see what we can do to help Wedge get the fleet back into the fight."

Jaina walked over to the selection of prepared food and used the Force to relocate a large chunk of meat onto her plate, ignoring the rest of the offering.

"I'll be in the cockpit," she said and disappeared in that direction.

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