Disclaimer: Sadly, I own nothing of the Star Wars universe. I just take its characters and use them as my playthings. Muaha.

Part I

"Leyla."

Kyp Durron woke up with her name on his lips and no idea why. He looked around uneasily, but the Force had already told him he was alone. Sitting up and frowning, he stretched out further, reaching for his daughter, sensing nothing wrong with the sleeping child; he transferred his mental query to the girl's mother and found her uneasily acknowledging his probe.

There was nothing wrong… but he could tell from her own wearied wariness that a similar uneasiness had struck her, perhaps even waking her as it had him.

That was enough for Kyp. Sending her a vague thought of heading over and not waiting for a response, he swung out of bed and threw on a robe. He tied his long, dark hair back and swept from the small apartment, riding the turbolift down fifteen levels to the closest personal hangar pad where his speeder lay waiting.

On a normal trek through the constantly swarmed lanes of traffic, it would take him close to thirty minutes to reach the apartment where his daughter lived with Jaina Solo, her mother, and Jagged Fel, her father in all but biological technicality. Tonight, however, he was interested in beating that time, pushing his speed to the limit as he swarmed in and out of traffic levels in maneuvers that would have spelled instant death to any but a Jedi.

Ten minutes later, when he was halfway there, his attuned senses exploded in fear and alarm.

Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene.

Jagged Fel, diplomatic envoy of the Galactic Alliance on Coruscant for the Chiss, frowned as he landed his small, covered craft in front of the embassy, a towering structure divided in two parts and shared by the Imperial representatives from Bastion with the Chiss representative from Csilla. Closely allied even before the formation of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances some five years ago, the Empire and the Chiss viewed their futures and fortunes as intertwined in this new political landscape, which strongly favored the existing power of what had been the New Republic before the Yuuzhan Vong wreaked havoc on all three governments.

Jag had been a smart choice for the job, albeit an odd change in direction for his own career as a fighter pilot and colonel in the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force. His marriage to Jaina Solo, Jedi Knight and daughter of former Republic chief-of-state Leia Organa Solo, had made him a logical representative between the two governments, since he already had one foot in each system.

Now though, as he stared up at the darkened building in the middle of the night following an emergency message from an overnight guard, a tingle ran down Jag's spine. An emergency situation of the level which would merit calling him would be accompanied by some panic or frenzy; guards would be running around, lights would be going on in the building, alarms might be sounding…

Silence.

Keeping an eye on his sensors for any approaching vehicles, Jag leaned over his console and keyed in his remote access frequency to access his home holo-message terminal- and found himself shut out.

Frowning harder still, he checked the relay signal- all clear. Again, he tried his access key and was denied. With a good signal, he could think of only one plausible reason: the comm center back in his apartment was being jammed.

His apartment where his wife and daughter were currently sleeping, blissfully unaware.

Cursing in language he would never dream of using in front of his seven-year-old child, Jag swung the speeder suddenly skywards, ignoring the vehicles in low orbit that veered suddenly in alarm at the reckless pilot.

Two figures watched in go from the shadows of the grandiose entryway of the embassy. Annoyed, one produced a comlink and snapped in to it. "On your guard, Delta team- Fel wasn't fooled, he's headed back your way."

Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene.

The low buzzing of uneasiness erupted into a full-fledged danger sense as Jaina crossed the threshold of Leyla's bedroom. Spinning, she drew her lightsaber, but nothing in the room moved except for the young girl whose own sense of awareness had finally jolted her into wakefulness.

"Mommy?" she asked, confused to see her mother in full guarded position, poised in her doorway.

"Quiet," Jaina hissed. "Something's wrong…"

At that moment, the front door of the apartment blew inwards. Leyla stifled a small shriek and rolled out of bed.

"Hide," her mother snapped before running down the hallway to the debris-ridden living room, fighting to see through the dust.

There should have been alarms.

A few figures could be seen vaguely coming through the door. Unwilling to play games that would chance them getting closer to her daughter, Jaina ignited her lightsaber, knowing their attention would quickly be drawn to the violet blade. She remained in the entrance of the hallway, blocking the path back towards Leyla's bedroom.

Shots were fired in her direction- stun bolts, she noted, but took no time to analyze the possible reasons why. The blue arcs dissipated around her blade and she drew her own blaster from the hip-side holster she had donned upon waking uneasily a quarter hour earlier. Precise, surgical shots were fired- also stun bolts- and she thought she heard at least one of the attackers go down.

Suddenly, one of the oncoming blaster bolts changed to full-power, lethal energy shots. She deflected them with ease, sending one back at the shooter and driving him to the floor as well. By her awareness, however, there were still four standing, still firing stun blasts relentlessly in her direction.

The air was clearing slightly, and Jaina crouched down on the floor, letting shots go wide over her head and burn into the wall behind her. Taking careful aim, she dropped another attacker, and cursed the Chiss for having an emergency at a time like this.

Then something changed. Her head twisted around as she felt a new danger, even as her arm moved instinctively to batter away and absorb the shots. Someone was coming through the balcony… and a presence stood out to her, something cold and… dark.

Swearing under her breath, she drew further into the hallway, reluctant to leave three standing attackers at her back… but she would not leave Leyla's bedroom open to this new set of intruders. Seeing her retreat, the three men behind her renewed their efforts and Jaina was forced to turn to ward off a concurrent trio of blasts. Moments later, she spun and dropped as four more men appeared at the other end of the hallway, boxing her in.

Frantic, Jaina poured stun fire into the new crowd, cursing her decision to face off against the initial attackers in the confined hallway space- good for cover; bad for ambush. A voice sounded faintly over the blaster fire, however, and froze her blood in her veins.

"Five and six, on me- the child is in here!"

With a growl of fury, Jaina leapt headlong into the attackers who had come in through the balcony that had mysteriously allowed them entrance with no warnings. Her lightsaber made fast work of one, and the other three scattered at the onslaught of the glowing energy blade.

She stunned a man in body armor at point-blank range, not stopping to see him fall to the floor. Leyla's panic was palpable through the Force, her room only a few meters in front of Jaina…

An explosion tore through the apartment, and she stopped breathing for a second in the certainty that her daughter had just been killed. Only a moment was needed, however, to reassure herself that she was wrong, and Leyla was unharmed, albeit terrified. Taking advantage of the brief cowering of the assailants in light of the explosion, Jaina plunged ahead into her daughter's room…

Where the entire outer wall had been surgically imploded.

The currents of air at thousands of feet whipped through the room, but Jaina did not blink as her furious eyes saw two men wrestling her daughter into submission. Leyla was struggling valiantly in one's arms as he fought to wrap them around her own flailing ones, the other standing to the side, holding an injector pen. He found an opening and pressed the tip to her leg, depressing it at the same moment she kicked him in the face.

Jaina could only watch in horror as she continued to battle away blasts from outside the room. Leyla stopped struggling, her eyes drifting closed… the man holding her got a firm grip and spoke into a comlink strapped to his wrist.

She strode forward, using the Force to slam the door on those at her back. Before she made it two steps, however, she whirled and parried a harsh blow from a red lightsaber that shone bright against her own violet blade. Her eyes widened as they locked on to a pair of glowing, intense, dark eyes set deep within a hooded face. She swung and was repelled once before the red saber came down low and close to her face.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shuttle approach and hover near the devastated wall. With a grin, the woman opposite her sprang away, wresting Leyla from the grasp of the man. "No!" Jaina shouted uselessly as she found herself again under the barrage of blaster bolts- full powered ones this time- preventing her from reaching the dark woman.

Scooping Leyla firmly into her grasp, the woman leapt from the opening and Jaina's heart plummeted. Ignoring the shooters, she dashed to the remains of the wall and saw, horrified, as another shuttle picked up the survivors at the balcony.

There was little she could do but leap up after her stolen daughter. She readied herself for the spring as the shuttle began pulling away… and felt a fiery pain tear into her side.

Only fast reflexes kept her from falling out into thousands of feet of free-fall. Growling as she fell, she turned and leveled her blaster at the shooter, dropping him like a stone with a blue stun arc. "Call them back," she hissed painfully at the man who had injected Leyla with a sedative. "Call them back or I'll kill both of you."

It would have seemed an empty threat from anyone else. She was injured, a burn wound under her ribs on her right side… but the man seemed aware enough of who she was to know that she could do it easily. He steeled himself, raised his blaster… and turned and shot a fatal bolt into his companion's head.

The surprise of the move was enough to give Jaina pause as he darted for the opening. For a moment, it seemed that he judged the distance between himself and the landing ramp… and then the decision was made for him. He never saw the blaster bolt coming and then he was falling from the torn wall, leaving Jaina alone with a corpse, struggling to rise and figure out a new way to stop the vessel bearing her daughter away from her.

Tears springing to her eyes, she angrily yanked her comlink from her utility belt, setting the frequency for GA security… and was answered by a hiss of static. A feral snarl emerged from her throat as she felt another presence approaching… this one safe…

"Jaina! Leyla!"

Jag's panic was obvious in his voice, something rare for the Chiss-raised man. He burst into the bedroom, seemingly oblivious to the bodies he must have passed on the way in, and stopped short and horrified at the sight of his bedclothes-wearing wife on her knees in front of a hole torn out of the wall of their daughter's room, one hand pressed to her side, and other in the midst of smashing her useless comlink against the ground.

"Jaina," he rushed to her side and pulled her away from the ruined wall, wind whipping around them. "Where's Leyla? What's happened?"

She let out a strangled sob and pointed, shaking, to the two shuttles rising into the night. "I couldn't stop them," she whispered. "There were too many to take on all at once…" She heaved a shuddering breath. "Jag, we have to go after them!"

He was already pulling her to her feet and leading them into the next room and through the door onto the balcony where his covered speeder sat idling. He wrenched the comm unit from its holder and keyed in a priority access channel. "Coruscant space defense, this is diplomatic envoy Jagged Fel, requesting immediate acknowledgment."

Silence met his request, and then a burst of static caused him to curse and drop the receiver. "Jag, we have to go," Jaina urged, trying to push him into his small craft. "Before it's too late…"

"Jaina," he said brokenly, "there's nothing we can do. By the time we get to a space-worthy craft, they'll have entered hyperspace. You're injured…"

"Who gives a kriffing damn!" she yelled. Her heart broke further over the gut-wrenching despair on his face, but she had no one else at whom to lash out. Suddenly, she stilled, hearing approaching repulsor jets…

Jag whirled around, blaster at the ready as an open-topped speeder veered recklessly towards the exposed balcony. He seemed on the verge of firing when Jaina stayed his hand. "It's Kyp," she shouted over the drone of the engines.

The speeder landed next to Jag's; Jag shielded Jaina from the whipping winds and they watched in forlorn silence as the older man jumped from the pilot's seat with murder in his eyes.

End Part I