Hours after the end of their conversation, Mara had finally decrypted Gamner's commlink connection and retraced the Nom Anor communications to their point of origin.
"Belkadan?" Jacen asked over their ship-to-ship communication.
"Yes, that's what I said, Jacen," Mara said. "Belkadan."
"Where the war had started," Jacen remarked with graveness in his tone.
"Exactly," Mara agreed, just as gravely. "And it's so far out from the rest of the galaxy, not even the Galactic Alliance was interested in having it Reshaped from its Vongforming. It's a perfect place for Nom Anor to be hiding out on. I'm going to call your uncle and let him know about this."
After Mara commed Luke and told him about her and Jacen's next destination, Luke said, "All right; I'll have a squadron of StealthXs meet you; no doubt that if Nom Anor is hiding there, he'll have some defenses at this point that won't be sneezed at. I'll be sending the coordinates soon."
Moments later, coordinates appeared on one of the Jade Shadow's computers, and Mara logged them in before sending them to Jacen in the Solo Quest.
"Thanks," Mara said to her husband. "Who will Jacen and I be meeting, by the way?"
"I'll be sending Kyp and his Dozen, if they agree," Luke said. "I'll let you know if there are any changes later. May the Force be with you, Mara."
"And you, too, my love," Mara said before signing off.
She and Jacen then jumped into hyperspace for the coordinates that Luke sent them. Hours later, they were met by a StealthX squadron that pinged each of them immediately on a shared channel.
"Mara, Jacen, good to hear from both of you again," Kyp Durron's voice said. "Especially you, Jacen; learn anything interesting on your sojourn?"
"Quite a bit, Kyp," Jacen said.
"Can the reunion chatter for later," Mara piped in. "We have a Yuuzhan Vong bastard to catch."
"Right," Kyp said. His voice then shifted focus to the rest of his squad. "Dozen, form up on the Jade Shadow and Solo Quest, and let's head to Belkadan."
Hours after that, the Shadow, Quest, and Dozen came out of hyperspace right in the Belkadan system.
The system was populated by various ships of different classes and sizes, with very few being capital vessels. There were three MC40a cruisers, some corvettes, and an Imperial-class Star Destroyer further out in the system.
And they all went to alert when the small Jedi fleet entered their turf.
Mara tried to contact Kyp and Jacen to try to give them battle plans, only to find that her communications were only receiving static; comm signals were being jammed now. And that left only one other option.
She entered the battle-meld that was now being formed, her consciousness joining Jacen's, Kyp's, and all the other Jedi in the Dozen. And without needing to use words - at least not verbally - they set out to accomplish their implicitly-stated goals.
The Dozen allowed their StealthX fighters to merge their appearances into the star-studded blackness of space all around them before zooming away toward the enemy vessels that could neither see them with their naked eyes or their advanced sensors. Lasers and other projectiles that seemed to come out of nowhere were fired and hit dozens of pirated vessels, either blowing them to pieces or severely weakening their shields, as was the case of the capital vessels.
The Shadow and the Quest, meanwhile, headed toward Belkadan, firing along the way against enemy ships while using the battle-meld to avoid hitting any of the near-invisible StealthXs. Mara blew away several Uglies - X-wing-TIE fighter combination ships - while performing various maneuvers with the Shadow that allowed her to avoid enemy projectiles where she could; what hits that her ship took were absorbed by the shields that had time to prepare themselves in the face of the enemy's confused and frightened attempts to defend themselves.
Jacen was doing marginally better; even with the Force, he was no Han Solo in the cockpit of a modified YT-1300, and he certainly wasn't as good as his sister or even his late brother, Anakin. But he held his own more than competently against the pirates that seemed like bumbling imbeciles in comparison to trained Yuuzhan Vong pilots that he had fought in the war; in several instances, he performed more-than-basic maneuvers that allowed the enemies to blow each other away as they tried to blow the Solo Quest into oblivion.
.
Down on the surface of Belkadan, in the building that once housed the ExGal-4 research facility a decade earlier - and which had been remodeled as a secret criminal headquarters - Nom Anor, now wearing an eye-patch like an ancient water-treading pirate over the empty eye socket that once housed his deadly, venom-spitting plaeriyn bol, growled in both anger and fear at what his orbital vidcams were showing him.
Not only were his pirate ships being utterly wiped out by relatively few camouflaged ships - which he felt were piloted by experienced Jedi, given how well they were flying - that the cams could barely discern, but a YT-1300 that he doubted was the Millennium Falcon and the star yacht that he knew to be the Jade Shadow were expertly flying all around at a slow but gradual rate for Belkadan.
Where they would get to him so that Mara Jade Skywalker could exact her revenge on him.
Nom Anor stood up from the seat of his office desk and briskly headed out the door, thinking about how he could escape the grasp of the Shadow, her fellow ships, and Skywalker's wrath.
While he knew that Skywalker was a Jedi - the member of an Order that banned the practice of revenge - and that she had spared his life during the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar all those years ago, he still had his doubts about her character; her past as Emperor's Hand and whatever lingering hatred she still had for him still carried a fifty-fifty chance that she could kill him out of vengeance. That, and the fact that the Jedi had this new, more morally-gray view of the Force gave Nom Anor less confidence of his likelihood to survive his next encounter with Mara Jade Skywalker.
Out in the corridor leading away from his office, Nom Anor was intercepted by his male Neimoidian lieutenant, Shipna Judak.
"Sir!" Judak called before getting into Nom Anor's way. "What should we do?"
"We abandon all our operations here and escape to wherever we can, Shipna," Nom Anor said. "So you can..." Then it dawned on him. "Actually, do you think you and your men and women can cover my escape before you scatter to the solar winds?"
Judak gulped in fear of that thought, of having to put his superior's life ahead of his own - Nom Anor could relate, he thought; he hated doing that back when he had superiors - but the Neimoidian nodded after five seconds. "Yes, sir."
"Good," Nom Anor said. And without another word, he continued on his way to his hideout's hangar bay, with Judak hurrying to catch up.
.
Partway to Belkadan, Mara noticed an unmarked bullet-shaped vessel coated entirely in dull silver was rocketing away from the planet and heading away from the battle. It was accompanied by a retinue of Uglies, X-wings, and TIE fighters.
In between blowing away more enemies, she reached out with the Force to find out what presence was aboard.
She found only an empty void; one that was all too characteristic of a Yuuzhan Vong.
Jacen, she said through the battle-meld. You see that ship flying away in the distance?
Yeah, Jacen replied.
I think Nom Anor is aboard that ship. Can you use your Vongsense to confirm my suspicions? While it was a long-shot, Mara felt that she had to know that this was, indeed, Nom Anor, and not one of the few Vong left in the galaxy that escaped the grasp of Zonama Sekot and the living planet's journey back into the Unknown Regions six years earlier.
I'll have to drop out of the battle-meld for a bit to do that, Jacen warned her.
Do it then.
Mara then felt her nephew's presence disappear altogether from the Force, albeit not in a way that made it seem as if he had died like when he was in Vergere's captivity, and waited while she continued to blow more pirate ships into brief fireballs.
As quickly as Jacen disappeared from the meld and the Force, he reappeared.
It's him, he confirmed.
And that was all she needed to turn away from the remaining pirate starfighters, allowing members of the Dozen to take care of them for her, as she zoomed in for Nom Anor's escape vessel. Almost immediately, the squadron of ships defending the coward's fleeing ship turned to meet the Shadow - and the Quest, Mara realized from her rearview sensors - in a formation that Mara couldn't help but notice seemed... reluctant and fearful.
Mara smirked. Cowardice only breeds more cowardice, she thought as she started firing away with her turbolaser batteries. Jacen's Quest joined in two seconds later for artillery support, and in the span of half a minute, all of Nom Anor's defense ships were rendered into slag at best and space dust at worst by the weapons of the Jade Shadow and Solo Quest.
As the Shadow and Quest neared Nom Anor's ship, the latter began launching a volley of proton torpedoes and concussion missiles right for the former two. Mara then took evasive action by peeling off to her port while firing away with her lasers, blowing away some of the torps and conc missiles and producing explosions that wiped away their fellow projectiles. The Shadow, meanwhile, had managed to get out of range of the shockwaves that the explosions produced while the Solo Quest kept up on Nom Anor's ship opposite of Mara's ship, having peeled off to starboard when the projectile volley was launched.
Mara soon looked at one of her sensor boards to find that Nom Anor's escape craft was now nearing the edge of Belkadan's gravity well, and would soon no doubt launch for hyperspace. By no means would she allow that to happen, so she began shooting her turbolasers for the treacherous Vong's ship at rapid-fire.
Soon, the lasers pierced through Nom Anor's shields and took out his engines; yet the Shadow kept on firing, puckering away at the reinforced metal of his escape craft.
Aunt Mara, that's enough! Jacen's telepathic voice called out through the battle-meld. If you'll continue this, you'll kill him!
Good, she sent back before dropping out of the meld entirely. She didn't let up on her barrage against Nom Anor's escape ship.
Soon, however, her lasers disappeared before they ever reached the Vong's vessel. Mara stopped firing to wonder how this could be before her ship rocked from out-of-nowhere laser hits that punctured through her shields and took out her turbolaser batteries.
A second later, the pirates' sole Star Destroyer - now dying from the attacks brought upon by the invisible Dozen - lit up in a brilliant explosion that killed all aboard, and which shut off the comm signal jamming. That was what brought about the persistent pinging on Mara's comm console that she promptly answered.
"Sorry I had to do that to the Shadow, Aunt Mara," Jacen's voice came, "but you left me no other choice."
"What did you do to my ship, Jacen?" Mara asked angrily.
"I used a little technique I learned from the Aing-Tii," Jacen explained. "I teleported the last of the lasers you fired on Nom Anor's ship away from his direction to the Shadow."
"You shouldn't have done that, Jacen," Mara growled, as she tried to restrain the depths of her anger. "Do you know how much this is going to cost me in damages?"
"Again, I'm sorry," Jacen apologized in a straightforward tone, "but I couldn't let you kill Nom Anor. You would have been succumbing to your own anger and inner darkness; I couldn't let you do that. And besides, Nom Anor deserves to face true justice for all that he's done."
Mara sighed, knowing that he was right... about this, anyway. She and Jacen had discussed this; she was at least somewhat glad that it didn't escalate into violence between her and her nephew.
"So I suppose you won't be allowing me to take Nom Anor prisoner aboard the Shadow, huh?" Mara asked.
"I think it'd be best if I took him in, yeah," Jacen agreed.
"Fine," Mara replied reluctantly. "And I think I said all I needed to say to that coward back in the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar anyway."