Chapter 21

"NO!" Jacen screamed angrily, clapping his palms together. The grinning Sith Lord, still staring into Tenel Ka's eyes as her life faded from them, did not know what happened. He simply disappeared in a flash, lightsaber and all. Jacen sprinted faster than he ever had in his life to Tenel Ka's side and caught her before she hit the ground.

"Hey, Your Highness," Jacen said softly, eyes watering with tears. "Miss me?"

Tenel Ka smiled as best she could, her lips trembling from the pain of her injury.

"Save Hapes, my friend. I…" Her body trembled and convulsed before finally falling limp.

"Time for a nap," Jacen said, closing his eyes and placing a hand over her wound, cradling her limp body in his other arm.

"Jacen!" Eriana called to him.

"Not now," Jacen muttered, concentrating on Tenel Ka.

A second later Eriana called again with a note of increasing panic in her voice. "Is now a good time?"

"Nope."

"Now?"

Jacen ignored her and focussed solely on preserving the last flicker of Tenel Ka's life with a healing trance. He distantly heard the sounds of lightsaber fighting and after an eternity, or mere seconds, Jacen finally laid his friend down and surveyed the situation.

Eriana was a blaze of motion fighting an increasing number of Sith with the lethal efficiency that could only be reached through Vaapad. While she was far better skilled than her opponents, she was outnumbered and had to resort to delaying tactics rather than killing strikes.

Time to even the odds, Jacen thought angrily, calling the lightsaber he dropped by the door to his hand. He firmly clipped it to his belt and reached out with his empathic abilities to link with Eriana so their minds were one, and so she would know exactly what he was doing. While she continued fighting, he stared into his hands and willed some light into existence. Pouring his anger and rage over his fallen friend into the light, he created a few sparks of various colours that started to grow into a coherent ball of light as they sparked across his fingers. Adding fury to the mix, the ball of light grew. And grew. And grew. When it developed into a massive ball of multicoloured light the size of his chest, he squeezed the embodiment of his pain and anger together so it bulged away from him and he pushed. A massive arc of expanding light spread away from Jacen towards Eriana and the attacking Sith. At the right time, Eriana pushed back against an attacking lightsaber to upset the balance of her opponent and jumped, leaping high over the wave of light to avoid its touch. Two of the Sith attempted to follow Eriana's leap, but Jacen's control over his fury was not over. He used his mind to call whips of light to lash out at the inventive Sith and send them tumbling to the floor. Once the shockwave had dissipated against the walls of the throne room, Jacen counted twenty-three unconscious Sith warriors.

"Not good," Jacen sighed.

"It never is, for the Jedi," A sinister voice said from behind.

Jacen did not sense an immediate threat, so he turned around slowly to look at the new entrant. He wore a simple black robe that hid his body with hood draped over his head. His venomous red and yellow eyes glowed at Jacen from beneath the hood, causing Jacen to laugh softly.

"Cool trick. Care to teach me that one?" Jacen asked sarcastically. "I never quite figured out the glowing eye thing. My sister does it at parties all the time and always teases me about it."

The shadowed man answered by igniting his crimson lightsaber.

"Somehow I didn't think you would," Jacen said with mock regret. "But in the interests of saving time, could I ask you to put the lightsaber away? I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself. Those things are quite dangerous in the hands of children."

"Jedi coward!" The man yelled, hood falling to reveal the face of a bald, tattooed human. "I was trained by Lord Bulq himself! You are not worth the energy it will take my lightsaber to remove your head!"

Tired of the banter, Jacen quickly spoke to Eriana as she came up to his side. "Take Tenel Ka and get her into a bacta tank. The infirmary is two floors down. The healing trance is working, but she needs all the help she can get. I'll keep Admiral Arrogant busy."

"What if there are more Sith around?"

"Unlikely, if this goon is showing his face," Jacen replied. "I'll have Astro join you. Go." He turned his attention back to the Sith.

"So you wanna play with lightsabers, eh?"

He held out his hand, raising twenty-three lightsabers from among the unconscious Sith to surround himself with a cage of ignited blades, all pointing at the Sith Lord.

"I'm game."

-! #$%^&*()

Ben found his mom in a secluded clearing in the nearby forest practicing her lightsaber routines with a metal sword after he wandered around for a short time. Lowbacca asked him to "Take a walk with the Force." So he took a walk, and eventually found his mom. He presumed the Force led him here, because he really had no idea where he was anymore and had merely trusted his feet to find somewhere to take him.

He sat down at the edge of the clearing, watching her movements. He realized this was the first time he had seen either of his parents practicing with a blade, despite having heard of their prowess as fighters within the Jedi Order. She was as fast, fluid, and precise as anyone he had ever watched; maybe even more so. In the last month of his Jedi training, he had watched several training exercises of Jedi sparring with lightsabers even though he had not had the chance to use one yet. Every time he watched the graceful dance of Jedi Knights sparring he longed for the chance to build and wield such an amazing weapon. His interest in the ancient art had given him enough of an eye to see a skilled artist at work, and his mom was definitely a skilled sword fighter.

He knew better than to interrupt his mom in her exercises. A couple years ago he tried to surprise her by shouting "Boo!" from beside a door she just opened, and was rewarded with a painful back fist across the face that left him crying for hours. Mom and Dad quickly established a "No scaring anybody" rule at home.

What amazed him most was the focus in her eyes as she trained. The only thing he could compare the look to was a holoprogram he watched about Corellian Sandpanthers as they hunted nerfs. The focus and intensity in her eyes were as intimidating as her blade work was deadly.

After several minutes, she finally noticed Ben and threw the sword to stick in a tree not a metre from where he was standing.

"Hi Ben," Mara said with an exhausted smile, moving to retrieve the sword.

"Hi Mom," Ben smiled. "Good throw."

"Thanks," She yanked the sword from the tree and examined the blade. "Now if only I could do that with a lightsaber."

"What's the problem?"

"Wind resistance, for one," Mara said, replacing the blade in its scabbard and sitting down in front of her son to stretch. "The lightsaber blade is weightless, but it does create drag. I still haven't figured out the pivot point."

"Jaina has," Ben smiled.

"I know," Mara growled as she reached for her toes. "I gave her the idea. I think she reweighted her hilt. How's your training going?"

"Good," Ben said happily. "Master Lowbacca has taught me some good stuff. But all the other kids are jealous that I have a Jedi Master when they're all stuck with Tionne and Kam."

"Well, you are rather…" Mara stopped in mid-sentence and looked to the sky.

"Mom?" Ben asked.

"Something's happening," Mara said, rolling back over her shoulder and to her feet. She immediately headed towards the Jedi compound and Ben instinctively followed. "Let's get back to the Academy. Stay with me."

-! #$%^&*()

To his credit, the mysterious Sith Lord fought quite well. Jacen attacked with five blades at a time of varying speeds and movements, cycling them with reserve lightsabers to keep the Sith guessing. The Sith was also able to take out several of the lightsabers by destroying the hilts. Jacen's plan was more to keep the Sith occupied rather than to defeat him outright so he could analyse the Sith's fighting style. However, few plans made on the spur of a moment survive very long.

"Query:" Jacen asked with an abundance of sarcasm, "How do we get information from an enemy that has a new nostril through his head?"

Jacen rolled the lifeless head of Sith Lord upward with the toe of his boot, examining the neat hole between the fading red and yellow eyes as a thin tendril of smoke wafted out of it.

"Answer: Master, Sith meatbags rarely divulge any information, especially under the strain of excruciating pain. If any assassin droid would know that, it is I.

"Consolation: Besides, Master, we have twenty-three other meatbags to torture and mentally dissect as you so please."

"Remind me to cut your pay," Jacen said, looking at the droid hovering horizontally several metres above, just below the ornate ceiling. How R12-47 had managed to shoot the Sith Lord between the eyes from that angle, especially given the speed the Sith was moving at, was something Jacen did not know. Nor did he want to. "How are things on the Mandalorian front?"

"R-r-r-report: The Mandalorians seem quite uninterested in attacking the palace directly, Master. Thus far, they are laying waste to the helpless civilian meatbags and are massacring the ill-equipped Hapan militia in a rather glorious bloodbath, leaving the palace for the Sith. As you can see, the Sith are failing miserably at their task thanks to my services. I abandoned the attack on the Mandalorians as my expert battle mind came to the conclusion that my services will do very little against such a large contingent."

"Good, and bad, I suppose," Jacen summarised. "Have you heard from Master Skywalker or Jaina?"

"That would be a negative, Master."

"Okay," Jacen sighed. "Take a quick run through the halls and meet me in the Infirmary two floors down from here. I'm on my way there now."

-! #$%^&*()

An impossibly large number of torpedoes streamed towards the Hapan vessels, propulsion flares illuminating the Mandalorian ships like a new sun. What the Mandalorian ships lacked in turbolasers, they made up for with their ability to hurtle massive volleys of proton torpedoes at their targets. Orders went out to all turbolaser and laser turrets to switch from attacking the ships to targeting the projectiles, effectively reducing the torpedo screen at the expense of covering the fighter squadrons, though dozens of torpedoes still pounded against the Hapan shields. A particularly dense group of torpedoes broke through the shielding of a pair of battle dragons, obliterating them and a dozen fighters around them from both sides. The Nova class cruisers were largely undamaged due to their sleek inverted-V design and advanced shield emitters, but a well-timed strike from the Mandalorian fighters was able to take advantage of the torpedo salvo to converge on and destroy a Nova. Several other ships, mostly battle dragons, suffered varying degrees of damage and were out of the fight. Once the torpedo wave had passed, the surviving two-thirds of the fleet returned fire on the Mandalorian capital ships, methodically blasting torpedo turrets with their highly accurate turbolasers. Several well-placed strikes from the battle dragons and the Hetrinar assault bombers claimed two Mandalorian ships, but this was not enough to stop another salvo of torpedoes from being launched.

Jaina Solo wove between torpedoes blasting them as quickly as her gunners could keep up. Something was nagging her about the activity of the missiles. Something her mind could not place. The second wave of torpedoes approached, filling Jaina with a feeling of helplessness. Calling upon Seven and Five to join her, she slammed the throttles to their walls, and raced towards the oncoming torpedoes.

"Millenium Falcon entering Hapes system, seeking clearance to – STANG! Now that's a battle!"

"Dad?" Jaina asked. "What're you doing here?"

"Just helping out," Han's voice came back over the frequency. "Where's your brother?"

"Fountain Palace," Jaina said. "Mandos landed shock troops and he went to deal with them."

"Great," Han muttered. "I've got a delivery for him. I'll be back soon."

"Who's that?" Five asked Jaina.

"Hope for your planet," Jaina responded. "Look sharp, torpedoes in range in five, four, three…"

-! #$%^&*()

The Hapan queen bobbed gracefully in the bacta tank, healing faster than the Jedi Healing Trance that saved her life could heal her on its own. Having highly concentrated bacta straight from Tyferria definitely helped. Unlike the regular diluted bacta available virtually everywhere except on Tyferria, the concentrated form was as potent as it was expensive. The strongest bacta was said to be capable of healing injuries as severe as crushed spinal columns, and could sometimes rekindle the fire of life from a mere spark. When combined with a Jedi Healing Trance, especially one of Jacen's design and a Jedi of Tenel Ka's strength, recovery could be measured in hours rather than days or weeks.

"How is she?" Jacen asked Eriana as he entered the Infirmary.

"I'm fine, thanks for asking," Eriana said sarcastically.

"Well, I figured that, given the Sith body parts littering the hallway."

"And you immediately thought that I was okay because of some bodies?"

"Yep," Jacen said with a smile. "Yours wasn't one of them."

"Do the Jedi have an investigations department?" Eriana asked with mock interest "Your stunning powers of deduction would do wonders for them. You should teach a course. 'Jacen's guide to being a jerk and indicating the blatantly obvious.' "

"Chapter One:" Jacen continued. "Find a sarcastic partner who ignores the blatantly obvious."

Both Jedi chuckled, and their eyes fell back on Tenel Ka. Jacen put his arm around Eriana's shoulders and squeezed her.

"Thanks for taking care of her."

"Her recovery is proceeding remarkably well," Eriana rested her head on his shoulder, taking the opportunity to relax. "She'll be fine soon."

"Good. We'll need her to fight the Mandalorians."

"Any Sith left?"

"Not around here. I took a minute to meditate, and I didn't sense any more Force users within a hundred or so kilometres."

"They could be hiding themselves from the Force."

"Possible, but unlikely," Jacen said. "During the Vong War I developed an ability to look beyond Force footprints and see life. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I found there are other ways to find life signs sensitive to the Force even if they're hiding themselves or making themselves 'small' like I taught you. The range is quite limited compared to the Force, but I can tell there are no more Sith in the capital city."

"When were you going to tell me about that trick?" Eriana pushed him away, slightly offended.

"I tried to," Jacen said defensively. "But that was when you were trying to rewrite the engine protocols and Womprat kept zapping you because he thought you were rewriting his speech protocols to make him speak Woolimander."

"Oh, yeah," Eriana voice was distant and thoughtful. "I probably should've rewritten his voice patterns."

Two blaster shots echoed from the hallway, followed by two metallic thunks and a comically menacing voice.

"Rhyming Battle Cry: All meatbags fear, for R12-47 is near!"

"I've always wondered how that would sound in Woolimander," Jacen agreed.