After Team Jacen's Imperial shuttle dropped out of hyperspace in an unnamed system whose sole celestial body consisted of a distant yellow sun, which was what forced them to drop out of hyperspace due to the gravity well, Onimi began plotting coordinates in the nav computer for their next jump. But just before Jacen could begin piloting the shuttle away from the gravity well, the sensors before him flared to life of thousands of incoming presences dropping out of hyperspace ahead of the shuttle.
Jacen, Onimi, and Nom Anor all looked up to the forward viewport and watched with calm expressions as Chiss Ascendancy Star Destroyers dropped out of hyperspace.
Daddy? the voice of a young girl rang through Jacen's head.
Before Jacen could comprehend who that voice belonged to, an army of voices suddenly replaced the individual girl.
You wish us death, the droning collective voice said. We cannot allow that.
All of a sudden, Jacen's head was wracked with pain, and at the periphery of his awareness, so, too, did Onimi appear to suffer as he desperately clutched at his misshapen head. The two of them collapsed to the deck of the cockpit as Nom Anor watched with an expression devoid of any feeling. Neither of them noticed this at first.
Join us. Join us, the collective said in Jacen's mind. No doubt the same was being said in Onimi's head.
"Onimi!" Jacen cried. "Do something! Use your molecule-changing powers or something!"
"I'll try!" Onimi shouted. "But it's so painful!"
"Was it anymore painful than when you were deformed?" Jacen asked.
"No," Onimi said, an undertone of confidence beginning to rise over his agony. "Never. Is it more painful than any of Vergere's teachings?"
"Not even a bit," Jacen replied, a small smirk starting to form on his face.
"Well, then..." Onimi trailed off before he closed his eyes and appeared to concentrate on what appeared to be meditating while laying down, even though he didn't remove his hands from his head.
After a few seconds, the pressure in Jacen's mind eased as he heard that collective voice scream in a pain similar to that of what he and Onimi just suffered. Nom Anor's own voice joined in that screaming for Jacen and Onimi's eyes.
"Nothing like a psychic attack... boosted by an ability to concoct molecules... to amplify to successfully attack an entire hive mind," Onimi said, panting from the pain that still resonated in his mind.
Jacen and Onimi then looked at Nom Anor, who had just stumbled out of the copilot seat and was leaning in pain against the bulkhead at the back of the cockpit near the exit.
"It appears they were trying to assimilate Nommy," Onimi pointed out. "I'll help him get out of it, you take care of that fleet with the spiders."
Nodding, Jacen pushed himself back to his feet with Onimi and turned back to the console, sitting back in the pilot's seat. While Onimi went to purge Nom Anor's mind of the Thuruht hive mind, Jacen pressed a button on the pilot's console that sent an army of nano-spiders toward the Killik-Chiss fleet.
But just when the spiders were a quarter of the way to the fleet, Jacen and Onimi felt a powerful pulse through the Force coming from one of the Star Destroyers. Before they could do anything to counter it, their view of the Killik-Chiss fleet was instantly obstructed when a giant orange wall of fire erupted before them, signifying the premature explosions of the nano-spiders. The impact wave from the unified explosion of the nano-spider army hit the shuttle and sent it spiraling backward and out of Jacen's control. Still, thanks to the internal gravity of the ship, the actual movement of the shuttle's spiral was barely felt by the occupying trio.
When Jacen finally managed to right the shuttle, the first thing he asked Onimi was, "How long before our nano-spider generator can make more of those to take on this fleet?"
Onimi, who had just turned away from Nom Anor, trotted back to the nav chair and looked at the readouts for the aforementioned nano-spider generator. After a moment, he reported, in his most professional tone, "About an hour or so. Our Cilghal maybe a tech witch, but she ain't a goddess there."
Jacen nodded at his friend. Without the nano-spiders, they won't be able to last ten minutes against that fleet, never mind an hour.
"Well, even if we somehow last them for that long," Nom Anor began, waving his hand at the fleet ahead with one hand while rubbing his head with the Sekotan-manufactured other, "it'd be pointless. They'll just stop it the same way they just did."
"Force wave," Jacen hurriedly clarified for his non-Force-sensitive Yuuzhan Vong friend. "But don't worry, I have a plan to counteract this. We're just gonna need to get the hell outta here first."
"Well, then, let's turn around and go into hyperspace," Nom Anor suggested firmly.
"No time," Jacen said. "They could track us even if we can get away from them in time that way."
"Well, is your reality-traveling powers working yet, man?" Onimi asked.
"You bet your ugly ass it is," Jacen said before he furrowed his brow in concentration at the viewport before him. "Now turn off the engines and thrusters while I pay attention."
"Why must you remind me that I'm ugly?" Onimi muttered in a rhetoric sense as he turned off the ship's engines and thrusters as Jacen said.
Then a white flash engulfed them and neither they nor the shuttle were in the system any longer.
When the shuttle and its occupants next manifested, it was parked in an empty spot of what appeared to be a large abandoned warehouse. A female Mon Calamari in mechanics clothes who slept on top of a desk nearby was startled awake and her eyes widened in dull surprise. She then hopped off the desk and walked up toward the section of the Imperial shuttle where the landing ramp would soon appear.
A few moments later, the ramp lowered, and Team Jacen stepped down and into the warehouse proper.
"We're gonna need some better nano-spiders," Jacen said without preempt.
Cilghal's eyes widened with rage, and her gravelly voice became absolutely menacing. "What was wrong with the ones I gave you?!"
"They-they couldn't withstand a Force blast," Jacen said uncertainly, afraid of enduring this reality's Cilghal's wrath.
Cilghal's eyes widened in curiosity. "Really?"
"Yes," Jacen confirmed. "So do you think you can install that mechanism?"
"I think I can," Cilghal said. "Just let me get to work as soon as possible."