Onimi - I figure it could be a common name...how many people share your own name? And I thought it sounded funny :)
Sioux - I figured it would be funny to have a Luke-in-a-box at some point, so I went that route. A friend suggested it to me. Jaina needs something. I don't even know what at this point. She's a mess.
Chapter 10 - Unholy Alliances [[[[#]]]]]]]]=(=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To Jaina's surprise, as the visage of the mottled blue tunnel of hyperspace dissolved into pinpricks of the densely packed stars characteristic to the deep core, the outlines of a giant Mandalorian battle cruiser and several thousand other capital ships greeted her. Happy to finally have found some good news, Jaina flicked the switch to broadcast the Falcon's IFF code and pressed the PTT button on the control stick.
"Allied fleet, this is Colonel Jaina Solo aboard the Millennium Falcon requesting clearance to dock wherever the hell Admiral Antillies is."
[Smooth,] Lowie barked sarcastically from the co-pilot's seat.
"Shut up, you walking carpet," Jaina said with a smile.
"Millennium Falcon, please proceed to dock at hanger bay 421 on the Screaming Ewok," A voice returned over the communication system. "Docking procedures are being transmitted on this frequency. Please confirm receipt."
"Transmission received," Jaina said, seeing the instructions appear on the console beside her. "Millennium Falcon proceeding on designated course."
On their approach, Jaina took a few moments to look around and assess the status of the fleet. Next to the enormous ship dominating the middle of the fleet were two super-class Star Destroyers with what looked like shipyards completely encompassing them and several other ships. Thousands of other ships ranging from old Nebulon-Bs and Corellian Corvettes to Mark III Imperial Star Destroyers and Bothan attack carriers held a loose spherical formation, all ships angled to provide the largest defensive fire array away from the Screaming Ewok. As they traveled along the one side of the Ewok toward the hanger bay, Jaina noticed that the Super Star Destroyer they could still see was undergoing a refit of sorts to the outer edge of the giant arrowhead, but neither her nor Lowie could determine what the refit was about. They noticed other ships, mostly Star Destroyers, undergoing similar modifications.
"Millennium Falcon, you're drifting," the voice of the control person caught Jaina off guard, so she corrected her course and guided the ship into the hanger. As they flew through the mag-field lights, the hanger bay lights flickered on, revealing an entirely empty cavern. As Jaina settled the ship down and noticed the highly polished floor and otherwise vacantness of it, she figured she may be the first person to put a ship down in this hanger.
After completing the shutdown procedure, Jaina and Lowie made their way to the boarding ramp where everyone else had already exited the ship. A nervous looking young man in uniform, who Jaina guessed to be less than half her age, was talking to Leia and Erinn, but mostly focused on Erinn. Jaina noticed a thin gold rank bar on his collar denoting an officer cadet.
"Is this everyone?" he asked, seeing Jaina and Lowie appear. Jaina looked around quickly and ran over the inventory: Ben, Erinn, Lowie, C-3PO, Leia, Danni and herself.
"I couldn't get anymore in the ship," Jaina remarked. "Broke the pry bar trying."
The young man looked at her skeptically, as if not sure how stupid she thought he was, but held his tongue and nodded. He turned on his heel and led them out of the hanger and into a conveniently located turbolift directly across the hall. They piled into the lift car, which was a tight fit for seven humans and a Wookiee. Somehow Jaina and Danni were stuck facing each other close enough to hug and spent the several tense minutes of silence trying to avoid looking at each other as they traveled to their destination.
The lift arrived and Jaina practically exploded out of it sideways, tumbling right into the chest of Admiral Wedge Antilles.
"I believe that is assault of a superior officer," Wedge said smartly before Jaina could recover from her embarrassment. "I understand you are familiar with the special way of handling insubordination the Wraiths use? It is one of my favourites."
"Anything but that," Jaina said, her eyes growing with fear from the custom that included a ship wide broadcast. She had witnessed it once, and the sight of a quite drunk Kell Tainer waltzing naked with a stuffed Ewok was still burned into her mind from nearly half her life ago.
"I'll let you off this one time, Colonel," Wedge said severely, then pulled Jaina into a warm hug. "It's great to see you!"
Wedge exchanged hugs with everyone except Erinn and Ben, opting to shake their hands instead, and Threepio, whom he ignored.
They retreated to a conference room off the expansive main bridge where Jaina, Danni, Erinn, Leia and Threepio were ushered in. Lowie and Ben stopped to talk to Wedge outside, and Wedge appeared alone a few minutes later.
"Lowie and Ben are departing immediately," Wedge said to answer Jaina's questioning stare as he took his seat at the head of the large table. "Lowie was ordered to give me new communication codes to coordinate our efforts with the Vornskr if needed. However, I am damn happy to see you. Especially you, Danni. We need your help refitting the fleet."
"Looks like you've already got it well in hand," Jaina said, interrupting Danni's attempt to speak.
"No, they don't," Danni said, earning a nod from Wedge. "They're retrofitting superlasers and planetary shield emitters onto some of the ships. Those ships aren't designed for the configuration of the planetary shields, and I doubt the power requirements needed would allow you to use both systems."
"Now you know why I'm glad to see you," Wedge said with a grim smile. "As we've discovered, planetary power systems run on alternating current. Everything on the ships run off direct current, and the conversion is taxing our capacity. We've rigged the shield systems with capacitors so we can store up enough power to turn the shields on in bursts of about thirty seconds before they have to recharge. They should be able to block at least one shot from the super laser and give us a fighting chance against one of their ships, assuming we can time it properly. The superlasers are another problem entirely. We're going off an early schematic of the Death Star for our designs, but it seems that they're from before the laser was perfected."
"I read an article on the Death Star lasers a few years back," Danni said. "One of the major problems they had was getting enough power to the focusing crystals before they discharged because the superconductive conduits couldn't handle the current and lost efficiency as they heated up."
"That sounds a lot like what someone else who is way smarter than I am said to me," Wedge said. "Can you fix it?"
"They fixed it by replacing the conduits with ionized gas cylinders. You'd need to get a lot of an element like tornum or morthite, ionize it, keep it in an ionized state, trap it in a conduit that you can pump the calibrated energy current through - like you would a signal through a fibre optic cable - and use focusing lenses to keep the energy going where you want it to. Anything less than that and you'll have energy leaking out in the wrong places and..."
"We already lost five good people on a test fire," Wedge said darkly. "Congratulations; I'm going to give you a field promotion of Colonel and command of this project. Anything you need, we'll do our best to get."
"I'll...consult with your team and get back to you," Danni said, somewhat surprised by her unexpected job offering.
"Major Daniels is running the project from his office in sector D-8, floor seventy, room 8162. I know, I know. It's a big ship. He can find you an office, too."
"I'll start walking," Danni said, standing up.
"You'll need this," Wedge took a small box out of his pocket and tossed it to her. She opened it to find a rank insignia for Colonel and a command access card. "Cadet Smark is waiting outside. He can direct you to Major Daniels's location."
Danni smiled and retreated from the conference room, leaving the rest of the Jedi with Wedge.
"Jaina, I'm going to need your team to find the stuff we need for this project," Wedge said. "I suspect you have a few of your dad's less-than-legal ship ident codes which would make the Falcon ideal to sneak around to find the goods. Whatever Danni asks for, you're buying. Until our superlasers are operational this fleet is effectively out of the fight. I'll have you granted access to an untraceable credit account. Fifty million ought to do it."
"Wedge," Leia said gravely before Jaina could make a comment. "Superlasers? When did we become the Empire?"
"I don't like it either, Leia," Wedge said. "But we can't repel firepower of the magnitude that Krayt has at his disposal. My job is to come up with ways of beating Krayt, and I'm completely open to ideas if you have any better ones, but this is the best long term strategy I've got."
Leia merely shook her head with a neutral expression, leaving the question open as to what she was disagreeing with.
"Where did you find two Executor-class Star Destroyers?" Jaina asked.
"Ever hear of Yevetha?"
"I vaguely remember it when I was young," Jaina said. "I was, what, ten?"
"Younger than that," Leia said absently and nodded to Wedge to continue.
"Along with many other ships, the N'zoth captured three SSDs from the Empire's Black Fleet just after Palpatine's death. At the end of our skirmish, the fleet disappeared. Up until a month ago, nobody knew where they ended up."
"You just found them abandoned?" Leia asked.
"Pretty much right where they are now," Wedge shrugged. "Scared the hell out of us when we arrived, until we saw the energy readings were completely absent. The reactor cores were cold as space. We had packed up the shipyards when we left Belgaroth, left some debris behind to make it look like we blew them up, so we unpacked key parts and reassembled it around the two ships. Not even a skeleton left behind when we searched them. Took us most of the last month to get the reactor cores and engines back up and running."
"What about the third one?"
"The databanks on both ships were wiped clean," Wedge said. "Not even a captain's order to abandon ship left behind. We suspect they left two here and took the third one to wherever they were going, intending to come back for them. Scans of the area indicate no ion trails fresher than twenty years old have passed through here until we did."
Wedge's communicator chirped in his pocket and he took it out to look at the display.
"Leia, would you join me?" Wedge asked as he stood up. "Duty calls. I'll have quarters assigned to each you. Jaina, feel free to enjoy the amenities while we're waiting for Danni's update."
[[[[#]]]]]]]]=(=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Reunited with his belongings and given a small but fast ship called Fang, Jacen departed Darth Krayt's command ship with everything he could have hoped for, and then some. The extra was the angry Twi'lek sitting beside him with a glare on her face that suggested she might want to eat his spleen for lunch and floss her teeth with his ligaments.
"Just to be clear on one thing," Jacen said as he completed the final preparations for a jump to hyperspace. "Krayt put me in command, not you. We do this the way I want it done, no exceptions. If you have a problem with that, there's a nice storage locker back there I can stuff you into for the duration of our trip."
"You will refer to him as 'Lord' or 'Darth' Krayt," Zara sneered. "He is the one among us worthy of the title of the Sith, and he will be honoured accordingly."
"I'll call him shik-face for all I care," Jacen said and pulled the lever, launching them into hyperspace. "I'm not one of you and as far as I'm concerned every last one of you should be stripped of the Force and exiled to a barren rock for crimes against life everywhere."
A low growl emanated from her throat and Jacen took that as a sign to continue annoying her.
"So what colour were you before you started all the body art?" Jacen asked casually. "You look like a blue to me. Or maybe a green. I hear the greens are the best dancers – want to give me a show to pass the time?"
Zara lashed out to slap him across the face, but he caught her arm at the wrist and bored his gaze into her eyes. He squeezed hard, putting the Force into his grip until he saw the pain in her eyes break through the wall she tried to keep between them.
"Krayt assured me that you would not be a loose cannon," Jacen said. "If I find that you and your anger are a liability on this mission, I will remove those variables from the equation. Is that understood?"
"I understand," Zara said through gritted teeth. He released her wrist and she pulled it close to herself, massaging it with her other hand. "You are not like any Jedi I have met. You have hidden strengths I did not expect."
"The best strengths remain hidden until needed," Jacen said and relaxed into his chair. "If we're going to be working together, we may as well get to know a bit about each other. You want to start?"
"I hate Jedi," Zara said.
"Anything else?"
"I kill Jedi."
"That's it?" Jacen asked. "Where were you born? Who trained you? Do you do anything for fun?"
"What does it matter?"
"It matters because I want to know who I'm working with," Jacen said. "And there should be more about someone than what work they do. Tell me more about this Bogan Empire. I thought all of you would be following the way of the Sith with Darth titles for anyone who wipes their own nose with the dark side."
"Only Lord Krayt and his successor carry the title of the Sith Lords," Zara said. "The Bogan Empire brings the Dark Side back to its roots. We are the followers of the ancient tradition of darkness, using our power to forge our future."
"Who is the successor?" Jacen asked. This could be vital intel if we need to take them down.
"Not even I know," Zara said. "He will be revealed when he is ready to take his place leading us in exterminating the Jedi."
"Lucky guy," Jacen remarked. "Any chance it's you? C'mon, you've got to be giving Krayt some side benefits to climb the company ladder."
Jacen could sense the anger radiating from her from over a metre away, and turned away so she could not see him smirk at her anger.
"How dare you accuse me of subjugating our cause?"
"Temper, temper," Jacen chided her. "I could teach you some Jedi meditation exercises if you think they'll help."
"How about I just kill you?" Zara pulled her lightsaber from her belt and pointed it at him. "I can route out the leaders of Black Sun on my own."
"Can you also breathe vacuum?" Jacen asked in turn. "I've never seen a lightsaber fight in a ship this size that didn't result in a hull breach."
Zara replaced her lightsaber on her belt in a huff and crossed her arms, resolving to stare out the window at the hyperspace visage before them.
"I don't know why Lord Krayt recruited you," she muttered. "You are the most infuriating Jedi I have ever met."
"That's probably because I'm not chained to a wall with your lightsaber in my ribs," Jacen replied. "And you really don't know why he wants me? I thought it was obvious from the minute I met him."
"What do you mean?"
"He's dying," Jacen said. "Or, more specifically, his Yuuzhan Vong armour is killing him. The parasites have been on his body for decades and are outgrowing his body's ability to sustain them. He needs me to remove them. Whatever he's been doing to sustain himself hasn't been working."
"How could you possibly do that?" Zara asked. Her angry facade dropped for a moment as her curiosity took over, replacing the angry scowl with a surprisingly pretty face.
"You know how most Force users have empathic powers with the Force?"
"Yes."
"I have that ability outside the Force," Jacen explained. "There are many species with Force-derived empathy, but having it outside the Force is exceptionally rare. Somewhere in around one in twenty trillion, I've been told. Most people who do have it never get the training to develop it like I have and spend most of their life subconsciously learning to suppress it, but I've been able to use it to connect to Yuuzhan Vong biotech and other creatures in a way other Jedi can't because of the Yuuzhan Vong's inherent disconnect with the areas of the Force that the Jedi use. It's one of the ways that I'm able to neutralize Yuuzhan Vong poisons so effectively and train amphistaffs. Krayt realized this when I kicked his poison so quickly, and he knows I could tell the armour to walk off him if I wanted to. That's why he's trying to recruit me."
"You are lying," Zara exclaimed, her anger returning. "Lord Krayt is the strongest of us! Even you and your great Jedi Masters could not beat him."
"If that's true, why did he order you to keep me alive and close by at all costs? He doesn't want to lose his best chance at long term survival."
"Those orders were given in private." Zara's eyes narrowed dangerously. "How did you know about that?"
"I told you my empathy is an ability outside of the Force," Jacen smirked. "Not many Force users can detect it, especially the dark ones. Krayt seems to be one of the few who can. He had Jedi training at some point, so that's probably why. I could tell it amused him when he realized I was listening in."
"I have even less reason to trust you now, Jedi," Zara said. "Stay out of my head!"
Jacen merely sighed and shook his head.
"Zara, you can drop the act. I know you're just trying to keep up the image by pushing a Jedi around, but enough is enough. If we have to work together, we need to at least start pretending to get along otherwise when we start going after our real enemies they'll see us coming a kilometre away."
Jacen stared at her for several moments until she finally turned and looked at him. She avoided his gaze and focused on a dial on the panel somewhere between them, nodding with a hint of embarrassment peeking through her shell of pride.
"It is not easy for me. I was trained to hunt and kill Jedi, not work with them," She said. "For the sake of the mission I will...try to accept you as a partner. But you must stop infuriating me! I am a Bogan assassin, not a sex slave or a dancer!"
"I'm sorry I riled you up," Jacen said. "I wanted to make sure you were going to follow your orders. I know anger is useful, but it has its time and place. This isn't one of them."
"I don't need Jedi lectures."
"And I don't need you," Jacen shot back. "I can do this mission with my own resources. As far as I'm concerned, you're nothing more than a cranky chauffeur."
"You wouldn't be able to kill me if you tried, Jedi."
"Well, that's certainly an interesting scenario I hope we don't face anytime soon," Jacen said enthusiastically. He reclined his chair and closed his eyes. He used the Force to begin entering his semi-asleep mode to remain alert while gaining rest. "The trip is another ten hours. I suggest you get some sleep before we arrive. We'll discuss the mission particulars in nine hours. G'night."
[[[[#]]]]]]]]=(=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Eriana's contact on Salliche helped Mara load the giant crate into the Jade Shadow and gratefully took a hundred-credit coin from her before disappearing. The farmer had been incredibly helpful and discrete putting Luke into carbon freezing without alerting even his own staff that the Jedi Masters were there. Together they had loaded Luke into a crate as a disguise and transported him back to the Tormin Grofreed spaceport in the capital city of Netassa. As the farmer drove away, Mara sat on a crate at the top of the boarding ramp with her LinkCom. She jabbed her finger on the small display screen and after a couple minutes the haunted face of Shada Dukal appeared.
"Mara, I'm glad to see you," Shada said. "I'm afraid I have some bad news."
"I heard about Talon," Mara said. "But I don't have time to grieve right now. I need your help."
"What happened?"
"Luke was infected with a Vong spore that is attacking his nervous system," Mara said. "I froze him in carbonite to slow the infection."
"I see," Shada said. "I'm sorry to hear that. Do you have any leads?"
"I need to find Jacen," Mara said. "He was captured on Krayt's command ship. Do you have any resources that could track it down?"
Mara noticed someone walking up to her ship and saw it was Ben. She waved him forward to join her and indicated he should close the ramp behind him.
"I do," Shada said. "Or I should say, I did. I had someone in the Bogan fleet dispatch office that was working on fleet composition efficiency and tracking. If anyone would know where any ship in that fleet is, it'd be her."
"But...?"
Shada grimaced. "She made contact with us to do a data drop on Tattoine at Targo the Hutt's palace. Yeah, Jabba's old place. Lately our best encryptions have been getting hacked so we've been doing data drops in person to move information around. The last we heard she made it to Targo's, but we haven't heard from her since she was supposed to meet her contact. We never heard back from either of them, but we did find out that she's being held prisoner for violating some of Targo's rules. He's very sensitive about what he lets anyone do in his palace. I'll transmit anything we have on the situation to you."
"There's something you're not telling me."
Shada stared at Mara for a full ten seconds, long enough that she began to wonder if the connection froze. Mara finally realized why Shada had hesitated, and her face went white.
"Ami?" Mara asked, a quiver in her voice. "Ami's your operative."
"Yes," Shada responded, confirming her fears.
"Mom?" Ben asked. He grabbed her arm and shook her, but she ignored him. "Mom, what is it? Who is Ami?"
"I'll look into it," Mara finally said, still ignoring Ben. "Thank you, Shada."
"May the Force be with you, Mara. You're going to need it."
Mara broke the connection and almost ran to the cockpit, Ben on her heels.
"Mom! Who is Ami?"
"Someone I knew when I worked for Karrde," Mara said evasively, starting the pre-flight sequence for the ship with one hand while buckling up her crash webbing with the other. "Strap in and start reading that data package from Shada. We don't have any time to waste."
[[[[#]]]]]]]]=(=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Mere minutes after the Solo Quest arrived on the Blaze of Glory, Black Vornskr General Stragoron's personal command ship, Eriana stepped foot on the bridge with the assassin droid HK-47 in tow. She was given a wide berth as she marched right up to Stragoron and ordered him into his office for a meeting. Even though the scarred, white-haired General was half a metre taller than her and almost twice as broad, he knew not to question her when she had that intense, calculating look in her eye. If that was not concerning enough, the fact that she was wearing her Jensaarai armour told him that she was ready for battle – any battle. He followed her into his office and waited by the door for it to close. After putting the helmet she had been carrying on his desk, she walked directly up to the window and stared out it, her droid standing with its back to her in a protective manner, embracing an illegally modified blaster rifle.
"I take it the mission did not go well," Stragoron surmised.
"It's like they knew we were coming," Eriana said softly, still looking out the window. "They captured Jacen, poisoned Luke, and killed two other Jedi. We need to get Jacen back."
"Do you know...?"
"No," Eriana cut him off, her voice turning sharp. "We need to locate him. Contact General Cooper and have him bring his fleet to the Shumogi sector. Ask Generals Carver, Ulrand and Dollan to step up activity in their sectors and start expanding their coverage according to diversionary plan Omega-Seven-Eight. I want Pulastra to assault the Hemei IV Bakur mining operation and meet us at Shumogi. Have her steal as much of the precious metals as she can to cover the theft of some asteroids. Tell her to make sure they're rich in densely packed iron ore."
"What are we going to do?"
Eriana finally turned around, facing her General with a glint in her eyes that sent shivers down the old warrior's spine. "We're going to hit the Fondor shipyard."
[[[[#]]]]]]]]=(=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jacen absentmindedly twirled a small glass phial of liquid between his fingers as he read the mission briefing from Krayt's datacard at the back of the Fang's passenger area. Directly behind the cockpit with only a half wall separating the two sections of the ship, the passenger area afforded virtually no privacy from other occupants. The only place to truly escape the company aboard the ship was the small refresher unit that doubled as a sonic shower. After he had taken a shower and eaten a standard ration bar for breakfast, he listened to Zara's gentle breathing as he examined the mission data.
The creak of her chair caught his attention and he realized that her erythematic sleep breathing had stopped before she stood up and stretched. He quickly tucked the phial into his jacket and looked up at her.
"Good morning," Jacen said warmly. "Care for some ration pack breakfast? It looks like we got the cheap ship without the kitchen unit."
Zara's scowl returned and she shook her head.
"You Jedi are weak, wanting hot prepared meals all the time," she said, digging out a ration pack from the nearest cabinet and tearing it open. She took a bite from it and tried to hide her gag reflex from her travelling partner with little success.
"By the way," Jacen said conversationally as he returned his gaze to the datapad. "Half the rations they gave us were Trandoshan standard. I put the human ones in the other cabinet while you were sleeping so we wouldn't get them confused."
"How do you expect me to trust you when you pull childish pranks on me all the time?" Zara demanded.
"Probably about the same way as you expect me to trust you when you go around insulting me all the time and ignoring the fact that I'm important, too," Jacen mused. "Shall we discuss the mission?"
"After my shower," Zara said. She disappeared into the 'fresher and five minutes later she reappeared in somewhat of a better mood. "You may now begin."
"The local governor of Tepasi, a mister Jem Virray, has been living somewhat out of the means of his salary," Jacen began. "It may have gone unnoticed but there have been repeated reports of weapons being stolen from the barracks despite repeated covert upgrades to the security systems. About two weeks after each batch of weapons being reported, a one Jem Virray has made a large purchase of various sorts. First one of those new handheld communication devices, a new sports speeder, a new holo-entertainment system..."
"Yes, yes, I get the idea," Zara interrupted. "Is there a point of your babbling?"
"Yes," Jacen said, as if to an insolent young padawan. "The point is that you need to understand what this guy has been doing so we can figure out the best way to catch him."
"We should infiltrate the resistance," Zara said, taking another bite of her wretched Trandoshan ration to maintain her stubborn pride. "We can gather intel and discover who the mole is in his organization."
"I was thinking of going the other way," Jacen said. "We need to find some luxury good that he wants and pose as a seller. Something exclusive that he can only get through us."
"What good would that do us? We need to find the mole, not make credits."
"Easy," Jacen said. "He's surrounded by guards all the time. It'll be hard to get to him. We'll use the exclusive item as bait to lure him out, kidnap him, and question him."
Zara smiled for the first time since Jacen had met her, an odd motion of her mouth that looked almost foreign to her face.
"That is a surprisingly good idea, Jedi. I might yet begin to like you."
[[[[#]]]]]]]]=(=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
