Baanu Rass, Wednesday Fandom time

[solo_sword]

Previous.

The shock of Anakin's death didn't wear off, but it did make Jaina sort of numb to everything else. It made her think and thinking was making her angry, but she didn't realize that yet. It had been impossible at first to keep everything from replaying over and over in her head, and each time it became easier to assign blame to something. If Luke had put up more of a fight about this, if Han and Leia hadn't okayed it, if she hadn't gotten stuck, if Anakin had waited and thought for two seconds before rushing to her rescue, if Tekli had insisted on stopping to make him rest, if he hadn't put Jacen in charge, if Jacen hadn't pulled her out of there... And it was all because he'd tried to save her.

She'd been losing people, dealing with death since the start of this war. A year and a half in her personal time spent between two galaxies, two full years out here. She had gotten used to it, become unable to feel the deaths every time they happened, perhaps out of self-preservation, but she'd felt this one, and she'd never felt hurt like that before. There was nothing to sink in for her; very simply, Anakin was dead, there was nothing she could do about it, and it was someone's fault. Maybe even hers.

Jaina snapped out of it when Jacen placed a bowl of whatever gruel everyone else was eating into her hands. The strike team was hiding in a one-room lodging cell on the outskirts of a domicile warren deep inside the worldship, trying to stay out of sight until Tesar reported back with news of the queen's location. Everyone had been dealing with their grief in silence till Jacen told her, "I don't feel like eating either, but you need to keep up your strength."

Her response to that was to hurl the bowl into the wall. Their terrified Yuuzhan Vong captive cowered in a corner like Jaina had thrown it at her.

No one spoke, and Jacen stayed calm, placing a hand on her knee and saying, "We can't give up. We still need to destroy the queen."

The queen. The thing that had been so important that they'd been ordered to go after it, and they'd lost her anyway. She looked up at him and accused, "You left him to the Yuuzhan Vong." Apparently her blame was settling on Jacen.

Jaina knew he was hurting. She could feel his pain as well as she could his own, and she knew her accusation hurt worse. But he took it, and said, "They were all over him. You saw that."

She pushed his hand from her leg. "He put you in charge, and you left him behind."

Jacen didn't argue. He felt guilty about it. Probably always would. But he didn't argue.

Tenel Ka, however, sitting cross-legged on the other side of the low table, did speak up for him. "Jacen does not deserve your blame. Everyone heard the command, and we all know why he gave it. To disregard such an order would have been to dishonor Anakin's memory and dismiss his sacrifice."

"Stay out of this, Tenel Ka," Jaina said. "You can't possibly know anything about it. You have the emotional depth of a ronto."

Proving her wrong, Tenel Ka was immediately on her feet and stepping around the table. She probably wanted to hit Jaina, but didn't. Eventually when sense kicked in, Jaina grew uncomfortable and looked away.

"We are all hurting, Jaina. Your brother, too," Tenel Ka told her.

Now Jaina wanted to hit her. She didn't need anyone to tell her what Jacen was feeling. She knew. She knew she wasn't helping, too, and she could heap that on top of everything else she had to feel horrible about. How dare anyone else try to tell her they understood when she knew for a fact that they didn't? The words caused her to stand, hands balling into fists. If it came to it, Tenel Ka could wipe the floor with Jaina and yet she was sure she could put up a serious fight right now.

Zekk quickly made sure to place himself between the two to intercept any blows that might be thrown. "What's this going to help?" he asked, more to Tenel Ka than Jaina. "Calm down."

Jaina unclenched her hands, but didn't stand down. Neither did Tenel Ka, and both girls were apparently willing to stand there until the other apologized.

Their argument was quickly ignored when a low growl came over the comlinks. "Tesar?" Jacen commed back. "Did you find her?"

The growl back was definitely of a Wookiee variety, and Jaina would take that one little thing going right. "Lowie?" she said, grabbing her own comlink. "Is that you?"

Lowie groaned an affirmative, and began to apologize for letting the Tachyon Flier to be stolen.

"Lowie, forget it- they fooled us too," Jacen assured him. "Where are you now?"

The answer Lowbacca rumbled was considerably more than a location.

"Why would they do that?"

Lowbacca grunted a guess.

"Keep watching," Jaina told him. "And whatever you do, stay with him. I'll be there as soon as I can."

She snapped her comlink off, and started for the door so quickly that Jacen almost didn't catch her. "What are you doing?"

"Going after Anakin's body- what do you think?" asked Tahiri, who otherwise hadn't spoken since it all happened. "They're not taking him anywhere."

She came to Jaina's side, followed by Alema, and after a moment's hesitation, Zekk. Jacen ignored them all, and wouldn't let go of his sister's arm. "What about Anakin's last words? He told us to destroy the queen."

"Then destroy her," she said, pulling her arm away. "But I'm going back."

*****

On some level, Jaina knew she was being the worst sort of hypocrite. She'd nearly left Lowie behind at the AT-AT, and for all she'd been telling Anakin that they had to stick to the mission, she didn't care anymore. She couldn't care. They followed Lowbacca's signal to a mortuary for Vong casualties, and the whole way there Jaina found herself growing angrier. The four had located him on an observation balcony at the tunnel mouth overlooking the process, where after crawling through the ashy, cremated remains of untold Yuuzhan Vong soldiers, they watched. She could only hope they'd done nothing to Anakin.

Lowbacca pointed over the rim, where they found Vergere working through a practice routine with Anakin's lightsaber. "So where's Anakin?" Tahiri hissed.

Lowbacca gestured at one of the warrens, then to a nearby airlock. He explained that the lock opened into a small docking pit where Vergere and her companions had a shuttle waiting. None of them probably considered something like a ready shuttle lucky anymore.

They had to watch the gruesome death rituals for an hour or so before the Vong began donning their armor again. Jaina lifted her power blaster from the ash and cleaned the scope. "Blast them when Anakin's out where we can see him," she commed. "We'll jump down and get him, then commandeer the shuttle, go find Jacen, and finish this thing."

The others checked off, and they all named their targets as two of the Vong crew members emerged, carrying an Anakin-sized husk between them. Jaina aimed her blaster at Vergere. "I've got Featherbag," she said. "Fire at-"

She almost got her. She probably would have if Zekk's hand hadn't come down across the barrel of Jaina's weapon, forcing her shot to land near Vergere's feet. Jaina whirled on him. "What'd you do that for? I had her!"

"And we don't know you should have," Zekk said. "She's done us no harm, and she's had the chance."

"The company she keeps is harm enough!" As she peered into the pit, Vergere was escaping with Anakin's lightsaber while the surviving husk-carrier had Anakin's body. "Zekk, don't do that again. Don't you dare stand in my way!"

By now, an astonished murmur was rolling across the compound as the crowd below began to realize they were under attack. Jaina shouldered her blaster, then snapped her lightsaber off her belt and hurled herself headlong into the pit. Using the Force to slow her descent, she performed a twisting flip and landed facing into the warren, midway between Tahiri and Lowbacca. Alema was on the other side of Tahiri, her longblaster rising to her shoulder. The warrior whose life Zekk had spared was backing under the wall, using Anakin's body to shield himself from the Twi'lek's weapon and drawing his coufee.

"You two secure the shuttle," Jaina ordered Lowie and Tahiri. "Alema and I will get Anakin."

As they scrambled to obey, the Yuuzhan Vong plunged his coufee into the husk and cut it open near the head. "You want your Jeedai?" He thrust the blade through a layer of clear gelatinous slime and placed the tip on Anakin's cheek. "Stay back, or I give him to you in pieces!"

The longblaster roared, missing the Yuuzhan Vong but demolishing the keystone of the arch behind him. He flinched and looked over his shoulder at the tons of rubble crashing down behind him, then turned back towards Jaina and moved his knife toward Anakin's eye.

Rage boiling inside her like magma, Jaina reached out with the Force and shoved Anakin's body hard. The Yuuzhan Vong yelled in surprise and stumbled back into the collapsing arch, his coufee sliding away from the eye. Jaina jerked her brother free of the warrior's grasp and sent him floating in Alema's direction.

"Take Anakin," she said.

As Jaina spoke, she was opening herself to her anger, using the power of its emotion to draw the Force into her as the Dark Masters Brakiss and Tamith Kai had tried to force her to do so long ago. The power came surging to her in cold waves, feeding on her hatred of the Yuuzhan Vong and pouring it back to her twofold.

In a motion so fast Jaina barely saw it, the warrior sat up and flicked his coufee at her throat. She could have dodged or blocked with her lightsaber, but she did not. Instead, with the fierce energy crackling inside her, she used her free hand to bat the weapon aside, then raised her hand toward her attacker and released the dark power inside. A fork of lightning crackled into existence a few centimeters beyond her glove tips, then blasted a hole through the Yuuzhan Vong's chest and hurled him onto the rubble pile smoking and motionless.

Jaina felt someone watching and turned to find Vergere staring at her from the shelter of a nearby archway, Anakin's lightsaber dangling from one hand and her narrow eyes angled in what seemed an expression of dismay. Jaina sneered at the creature, then raised her hand and loosed another bolt of Force lightning.

Anakin's lightsaber snapped to life in Vergere's hand and rose to intercept the attack. Then, eyes going wide, she turned and fled into the warren, the lit blade wagging behind her like a tail.

Alema came to Jaina's side and, somewhat tentatively, took her by the arm. "We'd better go."

Jaina grew aware of a roar building on the other side of the vessel and realized that the outraged priests were exhorting their mourners to attack. "The shuttle?"

"Secure," Alema reported. "Everyone's aboard but us."

"Good." Jaina took Anakin from the Twi'lek, then entered the air lock. As the outer valve opened, she thumbed the fuse of her last thermal detonator to ten seconds and dropped it on the middle of the lock. "The vac breach that leaves ought to burst a few scarhead lungs."

As time went on and Jacen, Tenel Ka, Tekli, Tesar and Ganner were still gone, Jaina grew impatient. She didn't care about the queen, but she wasn't about to do anything like leave Jacen behind. It just wasn't going to happen.

And an impatient Jaina right now was a dangerous Jaina.

She sat herself down in the pilot's seat of the shuttle, and once she got herself used to the cognition hood, she had the ship up in the air. "What are you doing?" Zekk asked, sounding alarmed.

"You see the rest of that frigate?" Jaina said, taking a second to get her bearings flying this thing. "They're not going to be happy with us stealing their ship and that will make it harder for the others. I'm just clearing their way."

A moment later she was launching the first missile. The destruction itself didn't cause her any particular joy, but there were satisfying moments when she saw that it meant less Yuuzhan Vong. After the first blast, she felt Jacen in the back of her mind, panicked and most of all worried about her, but she didn't bother to touch him back. She was busy here. She could make contact when she was done killing things, if she ever felt like being done.

A second missile followed, and a third, each one connecting and knocking chunks of yorik coral loose from the walls and ceiling. She heard Tesar's voice over the comlink, warning, "Stickz, not there- stop!" but she didn't listen. She was busy.

"Jaina, stop," Zekk insisted.

"What did I tell you about getting in my way?" she snapped.

Lowbacca backed Zekk up with a growl, and Jaina realized that Zekk's warning had more to do with the shots coming from Nom Anor's frigate as they took the hits. The shuttle rocked around them, jostling her in the pilot's seat, but there was no fear left in her. It had all been burned out.

She struggled with the controls to keep the nose of the ship up, but they were still descending too fast. They skimmed a crater rim and crashed down like the rock the shuttle was, and then there was nothing to do. They skipped across the basin floor and rolled sideways, dislodging her from the pilot's seat and sending her crashing to the deck. They decelerated sharply as the nose of the ship caught something, and Jaina pitched forward, someone's screaming the last sound she heard for a while.

*****

She awoke to laughing, a bright light shining in her eyes and the smell of stinksalts under her nose. Her head was throbbing again, her shoulder aching, but nothing felt too damaged.

The longblaster roared again, and so did the laughter. Coming from somewhere in front of Jaina, Alema was saying, "Did you see that one? I cut him in two."

"Good," Jaina mumbled. The effort filled her head with pain, but she welcomed it, drew strength from it. "Kill some more."

"Be quiet, Jaina," said Zekk, his voice condemning as he shone the light into her other eye. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"And you do?" She slapped his hand aside, forcing the glowstick and stinksalts away from her. "You don't even have a brother."

"But I do know the dark side," he said. "It isn't the answer."

"Who said I was turning to the dark side?"

"You used the Force to kill."

He was right there, yes. And, Jaina remembered, it wasn't even the first time she'd been accused of it. It probably would have been a lot easier to accept his words if she wasn't suddenly sure that her grandfather had been right about her. "He had it coming," she said defensively. "You saw what he did to Anakin."

"Anakin is beyond insults," Zekk said evenly. "And what about Vergere? You attacked her, too."

"I was angry," Jaina explained. She was still angry. She thought she'd be angry for the foreseeable future, and she was glad for it. It was better than the earlier numbness. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she sat up and looked around. They'd lost another mode of transportation. The deck was littered with equipment, cognition hoods and burst villips, but the crack running along the hull was the real trouble. Tahiri lay across from her, a broken arm draped over the husk that held Anakin's body, still talking softly to him.

In the back of the vessel, Lowbacca let out a low groan as he moved something heavy into place. Jaina listened as he was obviously working on something, a something that then sounded like a plasma ball erupting outside. "A little short," called Alema from the forward door. "Raise it one degree, and you'll burn them crisp."

"I take it we're under attack," said Jaina.

"Not exactly under attack," Zekk replied, "but they're coming. Nom Anor is trying to capture us alive."

"Let him try," said Jaina, getting to her feet and reaching for her power blaster. "I'm going to enjoy this."

*****

Holding off the Vong wasn't exactly fun. Jaina did take some satisfaction in the death of every warrior she caused when they were stupid enough to get close enough to a group of Jedi who'd lost half of their team and had had it. Alema was having fun, though, almost making a game of firing at them and seeing how much damage she could cause. Jaina wouldn't begrudge her that. It wasn't like she could talk, really.

"Jaina!" Zekk called from further inside the damaged ship. "We've got contact from Jacen."

She looked up, shooting once more around the door of the ship before ducking inside. "What'd he say?"

"Not much. They're coming for us."

"Hopefully they brought a ship," she said, though the loss of this one had been her fault.

It was a while before Tenel Ka reported over the comlink. "Frigate secured. We have a way home, but also a complication."

Lowbacca rumbled a question.

"How does not matter. When we found the communications officer, he was in contact with the spaceport."

"Vergere?" Jacen's voice said.

"She said she had no wish to be atomized, then departed," said Tenel Ka, and Jaina shot at a Vong rather than roll her eyes as she listened. She didn't know what was going on or why they'd been hanging around Vergere, she just wanted them back so they could end this. "She seems to be following you."

"Check. You hurry," Jacen said. Of course he was still going after the queen. Of course he was.

"Us?" Zekk said. "You do know the Yuuzhan Vong are chasing you?"

"Shuttle first," he insisted. "I have to finish here."

Jaina hated that her first thought was that he sounded like Anakin.

Getting from the crashed freighter to the frigate was easy enough when they were supposed to be taken alive. In comparison to everything else, it was child's play. All they needed was Jacen to get back, and they could go. Jaina ordered Tahiri and Tekli to set Anakin up elsewhere, mostly to keep Tahiri busy, ordered the dead Vong tossed off the ship, and waited.

For about two minutes. "We're finding Jacen," Jaina decided. "We're going to get nothing done sitting here."

No one argued with her. Zekk took the pilot's seat this time, seeing as how Jaina had crashed the last one, and she slid into another seat, donning the targeting hood. She had no problem being the one killing more things right now. Following the other's directions and the general sense given off by both Jacen and the voxyn queen, it wasn't too difficult to find him, but the Vong started firing on them from a few corvettes sent after them. It was distracting enough that she almost missed feeling the death of the queen.

"So much for taking us alive," Zekk grumbled.

It was more a bad feeling than anything else that had Jaina suddenly going for her comlink. She could see Jacen from the viewport in some sort of basin, and there looked to be someone with him, but she couldn't tell what was happening. "Jacen?" She got nothing but silence at first, and ignored the sudden worried looks from the others. "Jacen, answer me!"

The voice Jaina heard was unfamiliar, alien-sounding. "You can do nothing for Jacen now. Save yourselves."

"Vergere?" Jaina demanded. "Is that you? I want to talk to my brother-"

The comm hissed with static, and Jaina went cold. Vergere hadn't killed him, she knew that, but... That meant the Vong had her brother.

They brought the Ksstarr around again. The targeting mask over Jaina's face showed three yorik coral corvettes coming straight at them. Behind the trio, the worldship was silhouetted against Myrkr, the basin where she had last seen Jacen was smaller than the last time they had come around.

"Zekk!" she yelled. "We're farther away!"

"Because they keep getting closer!" Zekk growled back. "We won't save him by getting blasted ourselves. Clear me a lane!"

"Done!"

Cursing Zekk for a Sith-spawned coward, Jaina raised her left thumb. The control glove on her hand activated the mask's targeting reticule, and with some trial and error, fired a plasma ball at the enemy. When the viewfinder cleared two seconds later, her plasma ball was arcing towards her target- and a long line of enemy rounds was streaking back toward her.

"Incoming!" she yelled.

Zekk put the frigate into a tight rising turn, and they swung away from the worldship.

"Zekk!" Away was not the direction in which they wanted to go.

Lowbacca cut her off with an urgent bellow.

"A fleet?" Jaina cried.

She craned her neck around, and a dozen oblong flecks appeared in her targeting mask, streaking in from the edge of the system. Her heart fell. It wasn't a fleet- not exactly- but if they tried to return to the worldship, they would be trapped.

The frigate shuddered as they took a hit, and Zekk's voice came through the mask. "Jaina, what do you want to do?"

Jaina could not answer. There was only one thing to do. But how could she abandon Jacen? After rebuking him for leaving Anakin, how? The Ksstarr shuddered again. A wet pop sounded somewhere aft, a door valve sealing against a vacuum breach.

"Jaina!" Zekk yelled.

"I-"

The words caught in her throat, like she was choking. She closed her fist and sent a plasma ball streaking into space.

"Better for Jacen if we flee," Tenel Ka said. "With only one twin, perhaps they will delay the sacrifice until we can organize a rescue."

What rescue? They had lost so many Jedi already. Even Luke would risk no more to rescue Jacen. But he would not stop Jaina. Nobody would.

"That's what we do," Ganner said. "Best thing for Jacen."

"Jaina?" Zekk asked. "Your brother."

Just do it, Jaina thought. Don't make me say it.

"All right." Zekk turned the ship away. "I think I understand."

"This one thinkz you do," Tesar said. "We all do."

Not possible. Mask filling with tears, Jaina craned her head around, and the worldship came into view, no larger than a fist. She closed her eyes, concentrated on that place in her chest that had always belonged to Jacen. She felt him there, just a flicker for just an instant, and then she lost him, then she could feel nothing except her own anger and hatred and despair.

"We'll be back, Jacen," she said, finding the strength to speak. "You hold on. We'll come for you."

Next.


[Omg you know how it goes by now. Dialogue and some bits taken from Star by Star by Troy Denning.]