Jaina Solo Fel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
solo_sword) wrote2010-08-07 09:46 pm
solo_sword) wrote2010-08-07 09:46 pm
Entry tags:
- *adds to body count*,
- *adds to death count*,
- breaking up is hard to do,
- canon peeps: han,
- canon peeps: jag,
- canon peeps: leia,
- canon peeps: saba,
- canon peeps: zekk,
- catchup: dark nest trilogy,
- gffa: tenupe,
- home,
- how i ruined jag's life,
- i have an ouchie,
- joined at the brain,
- minor dmd flashbacks,
- slight rage issues,
- so i'm a bughugger,
- the post-fandom years,
- why does it always have to be bugs?
Tenupe, 5 years after Fandom
Jaina and Zekk felt Luke call them back to Coruscant, but they ignored it. Part of it was because they honestly couldn't trust Jacen not to be pulling another trick on them, and part of it was because staying in Chiss space meant helping the Colony in the war. Even if they couldn't go back to Taat, the Colony was more home than anywhere.
Raynar- UnuThul, whatever they were calling him these days- named them subcommanders, putting Zekk in charge of the flightbound nests, and Jaina in charge of the ground troops. This posed a problem for one reason: Raynar was not a commander. He'd been a Jedi during the Vong war, and had been lost since halfway through it. He'd never seen battle like this, never organized one, and didn't understand strategy as it needed to be understood. And, though Jaina and Zekk didn't know it anymore, he was acting for the Dark Nest. When it came to war, Jaina damn well knew what she was doing, and so a lot of the time it was a matter of trying to resist UnuThul's will when he told her to send the troops off into something she knew was going to go badly. With Zekk around, this tended not to be a problem. They could retreat to their meld, lend each other the needed support, and do what they needed to do. But at this distance, she couldn't connect to Zekk nearly as well, and she found that even she couldn't resist UnuThul without the support.
She was out there for weeks, on an unforgiving jungle planet, directing the Killiks on what to do and where to go. So when the Chiss landed a drop ship on the planet during a storm, the Killiks were ready, using the tiniest breach left in the hull in order to get inside and do their damage in there. And then her communications officer, a tiny little Wuluw, began freaking out and started to turn and flee back down the tunnel.
"No!" Jaina caught the insect by an arm. "This way." If the Chiss activated any self-destructs on the drop ship, they didn't want to be underground when that happened. And Jaina felt responsible for Wuluw- the Killiks in that nest were fragile and not built for any sort of fighting, thus the communications status- so she took Wuluw with her when she Force-leapt onto the ship's hull, then again, half a dozen meters to the surface.
This put them in the Chiss landing zone, a clearing of mud and ash surrounded by a circle of blast-toppled trees. A hundred meters away, the landing zone gave way to a skeleton jungle, a trunks and limbs stripped bare by Chiss defoliating sprays. War was not environmentally friendly. In the distance, barely visible through the pouring rain and the naked timber, she could see the tail of another drop ship, rising out of a hole similar to the one from which she had emerged.
Having spotted them, the Chiss began firing. Wuluw tried to dive back underground, but Jaina wouldn't let her. "I told you, this way!" she said, pulling the little insect with her. "It's safer!"
"Bur ub bbu!" Wuluw protested.
"Of course they're shooting at us," Jaina said as the got them safely to cover. "They're the enemy!"
As Wuluw fretted some more, Jaina unslung her repeating blaster and assured her, "Don't worry. We're Jedi, aren't we?"
Wuluw did not seem convinced. Maybe because Wuluw was not, in fact, a Jedi.
Jaina unloaded her blaster across the clearing, adding to the melee. The Rekker and Jooj nests were doing what they could, but the Chiss had recovered from the shock and were fighting back. Jaina tried to lend cover where she was able, but it wasn't easy, especially with the camouflage the Chiss had going for them.
The ground shook, and the nearest drop ship's tail burst into flame. Jaina didn't know who died or how many, but she could feel a lot of death in the Force. Immediately she dropped back behind the tree and went to pull Wuluw with her, and found that the Killik was gone, save for the blood-splattered mess left on the side of the tree.
Something in Jaina snapped. The Yuuzhan Vong war had, essentially, turned her into a trained killer. She'd seen a lot, done a lot, and for the most part, it didn't affect her anymore. She could turn herself off to death and destruction to do what she had to do. But something about this, the senseless death of a defenseless, scared innocent that she'd intended to protect shook her, and shook free that rage that didn't get to come out all that much these days.
Yet when she jumped up again, ready to take out anyone in her way at this point, things had fallen eerily quiet. The drop ship had been destroyed, and the Killiks that had survived the explosion just looked stunned. The silence would occasionally be disrupted by the far-off boom of another drop ship exploding, and Jaina would feel the death of another thousand or so of Killiks. After a moment, the Jooj started to find their way into the fallen trees the enemy was using for cover. Chiss soldiers began to leap out of hiding, screaming and ripping their armor off, slapping and even shooting at the thumbnail-sized insects that had slipped past their defenses. Jaina understood their panic. The Jooj were not attacking so much as feeding, injecting their prey with a flesh-dissolving enzyme. Supposedly, victims felt as if they were being burned alive.
Then the Rekkers began the attack again, putting the Chiss on the defensive and beginning the battle anew. The Chiss were using pesticide grenades, among other things, meaning Jaina could also feel the agonizing deaths of more Killiks even as she returned fire, using the Force to sense Chiss hidden by camouflage. And once again, it looked like the Killiks were winning this one. Even if they lost a thousand from their numbers every time a drop ship exploded, you simply couldn't wipe out all the insects.
Her danger sense alerted her to a trio of Chiss soldiers coming up behind her, weapons already aimed in her direction. With a wave of her hand, she used the Force to redirect their aim, the bolts firing past her without coming close to harming her. So the leader rushed toward her, attempting to club her with the rifle, but she ducked, using the Force to pull him over her back and send him crashing into the trunk behind her. The other two Chiss arrived a step later, one bringing a knee up at her face. Jaina blocked with her blaster, at the same time squeezing the trigger and pumping fire into the stomach armor of her other attacker. The bolts ricocheted away and sent the soldier stumbling hack, but not before he slammed the barrel of his own weapon down on the back of her head.
All these years and she still collected head injuries like they were going out of style. She didn't even realize at first that she was kneeling on the ground, knocked off her feet, and the blaster was somewhere other than in her hands. She went to stand, and didn't even think she could; the way her vision was blackening along the edges was worrying.
No!
That snapped her out of it. The physical distance between them had weakened her bond with Zekk, but that was definitely him. He knew what was happening, and he was lending her strength to stay conscious, and that was exactly what she needed right now.
Jaina dropped flat to the ground, unhooking her lightsaber and igniting it so that when she rolled, she cut both Chiss off at the knees with the blade in one swift motion. While they were busy screaming over the loss of their lower legs, she felt her lightsaber blade catch a bolt without her even trying, and there was the first Chiss who had attacked. He fired again and this time she meant to deflect the shot, sending it back into his helmet visor and sending him falling over a tree trunk. He wasn't going to be getting up again.
She spun on a knee to check on the other two Chiss. They weren't going to be getting up either, but they were still getting their blasters to open fire on her again. She pulled the weapons from their hands with the Force, and then stood with her lightsaber raised, completely intent on finishing the job.
And there was Zekk again, inside her mind. He didn't say anything, but she knew how repulsed he was with her doing this.
It hadn't even occurred to her that she was about to two kill soldiers in cold blood. She'd been acting in anger and fine, self-defense, but now they were defenseless, unarmed, unable to do more than crawl away. They were no longer a threat. If she killed them now, she'd be doing the exact same thing she'd done after Anakin died. It'd be another turn to the dark side. Did people come back from that more than once? And if she'd been fighting this whole war because the Jedi were supposed to act in the name of fairness and justice and stand up for those who couldn't stand up for themselves, then taking that route would be going against everything she'd been fighting for.
Disgusted with herself, Jaina deactivated her lightsaber, kneeling beside the Chiss she had been just about to kill. She checked them over, satisfied that at least her blade had cauterized their wounds, so blood loss wasn't much of an issue. They were alive, but too quiet, and she rolled them onto their backs. She removed one's helmet, and found him sweating, his red eyes unfocused. She shook him by the chin, trying to get his attention. "Where's your medkit?"
He didn't want her touching him, and clamped a hand weakly over her arm. "Why?"
"You're going into shock," she explained. "You need a stim-shot, or you'll die."
"You?" the second soldier gasped inside his helmet. "Trying... to save us?"
"Isn't that what we just said?" Jaina demanded. She wasn't mad at him, but she could see why they'd be shocked. And she was still mad at herself for the reason why.
"No!" the first soldier cried, pushing her away with strength she hadn't thought he had.
"Don't be afraid." Jaina poured soothing emotions into the Force, trying to calm and comfort the pair. "The Colony will take care of you. We'll even give-"
The second soldier snapped a vape charge off his utility belt and pulled the activation pin. "We know what you'll... do."
Well, that was an overreaction, but Jaina didn't dare grab the canister from his hand. It'd detonate the second he released the trigger. "Hey! The Colony is good to prisoners. You'll hardly know-"
"That your bugs are eating our insides?" The Chiss nodded to his companion, then said, "We'll be waiting on the other side, Jedi-"
All right, she had to accept that she wasn't going to be able to save them. They wouldn't let her, and she was going to have to get out of here if she wanted to survive. Jaina sprang into a backward Force flip and tumbled away, thumbing her lightsaber active again and batting aside the bolts flying at her right until she landed safely in the murky river.
The charge detonated as she hit the water, knocking the breath out of her and dazzling her vision, but that wasn't the part that worried her. She didn't understand why they thought that the Killiks ate their prisoners. It was apparently enough for them to want to die rather than let it happen, which shook her more than anything.
Not that she could deal with it now, and she pushed aside her confusion in order to swim to shore.
*****
The battle continued on the ground for days, but on the day the Swarm War ended, Jaina and Zekk were flying their StealthXs in atmosphere. Jaina didn't even know what it was her parents were doing, but she and Zekk had taken to the air because Leia had urged them to. Even as an adult, even when you were mostly controlled by a nest of war-obsessed bugs, there were just some times you had to listen to your mother.
The problem was, UnuThul didn't want them doing what they were doing. Urging the Killiks on, he was forcing them to be intent on killing all the Chiss they could. And Jaina and Zekk definitely felt it, a dark pressure in their chests that couldn't be ignored. Ignoring it brought on physical pain sometimes. When Jaina saw the fleet deployment on her tactical display, it was clear how UnuThul was going to just crush the Chiss here if they were that unprepared.
The Chiss have made their last mistake, Zekk said. After UnuThul destroys their fleet, they will not be able to press the war.
The Chiss will be weakened, Jaina agreed. It wasn't really her thought. She didn't really want the Chiss to be weakened. Doing that would just make UnuThul fight harder and move faster against them, drawing them even further into war, but she couldn't care. It was what UnuThul wanted. She could feel it. He wanted them to kill Chiss, so they were going to kill Chiss. The tide will change, and the Colony will crush them like bugs.
Zekk chuckled, but the sound made Jaina a little sad. Not long ago she would have laughed, too, or neither of them would have known who the thought even came from. Now, after time apart, one could make a dumb joke and the other would laugh. She didn't like that bond weakening.
And then she sensed alarm from him, and they both dropped into the clouds to be harder to spot. Four squadrons of clawcraft had showed up, escorting a pair of Chiss defoliators. And whatever was in those defoliators was exactly what Leia and Saba had wanted them to intercept. Jaina and Zekk didn't know what was in there, they just knew that they had to stop the Chiss from using it. UnuThul was able to sense it, too, and that familiar pressure in their chests appeared again, trying to force them to attack it now. Again, it was a situation where he didn't know exactly what he was doing; Jaina and Zekk were able to use each other to resist the impulse given to them, waiting till they could actually do some good rather than striking now, when they'd just get blown out of the sky.
When they did attack, it was at the right time, and immediately they came under fire. The bonus to flying while the meld was open was that it was easier to fly as one. When Jaina took a hit (which was felt a lot harder than while flying in space), Zekk could run cover until she got herself back in gear and vice versa. Together they fought against the clawcraft squadrons, noting that whenever torpedoes were fired at the defoliators, the Chiss would intercept the missiles by crashing into them.
That's spaced- even for Chiss! Zekk said.
Maybe the defoliators don't have countermeasures, Jaina suggested.
Or maybe the Chiss just want to be really sure those ships deliver their payloads.
Their method of flying worked just fine until a triple cannon hit Jaina. She knew her astromech was panicking, her panel was shooting off warnings, but the explosion was so loud she didn't even hear it. As usual, Zekk took the lead position to let her recover while they fired at the clawcraft. When he got hit, Jaina moved to take his place, but the clawcraft had already fired off another shot, hitting her again. Then Jaina realized the pilot had no intention of veering away. With her and Zekk flying in overlap formation, the explosion from a midair collision would be enough to take them both out.
Realizing this, too, Zekk headed left, while Jaina broke right. The clawcraft didn't even hesitate. He easily turned his attention to Jaina, aiming for her and blowing holes into the fuselage of her ship. She couldn't shoot back anymore, so she cheated. She used the Force to tip his clawcraft downward. Now he couldn't hit her, and she could pass over him easily. As she did, she could feel the pilot's frustration- a very human sort of emotion. And if there was a human among the blue-skinned alien Chiss...
Reaching out with the Force just confirmed what Jaina had feared. That was Jagged Fel who'd just tried to shoot her down.
"Blast," she muttered.
There was no way she was letting this clawcraft get behind her now. He was too good, he'd have her down in no time if she did that. Instead, she turned her attention to her astromech. "Sneaky, open a hailing channel to our target."
The droid objected to this, which was fine. She wasn't supposed to hail the enemy, it was one of the things that made a StealthX stealth. "Comm protocols don't apply right now," Jaina said. "The enemy already knows where we are. They can see us."
When Sneaky protested again, she warned, "If I have to do it myself, I'm ejecting you."
The channel was open by the time she fell in behind the clawcraft.
"Jag, what are you doing here?" she demanded.
"Trying to shoot you down," Jag said over the comm. "But I forget- that's supposed to be a military secret. Now I guess I have to kill you."
Ow. Even moreso than the words, the tone of voice hurt. She'd never heard him sound that bitter. She probably should have expected it.
While she and Zekk worked together to try and keep Jag in line, she kept an eye on what he was doing and noticed he was trying to draw them away from the defoliators. "Jag, you shouldn't take this so personally," she said, completely oblivious as to how much of a bitch that sentence made her. "You and I were over a long time before Zekk and I met Taat."
"You think I care whose antennae you rub?" Jag retorted. "You betrayed your honor."
She wouldn't have expected that to come up. "Our honor? We haven't made you any-"
"I guaranteed Lowbacca's parole at Qoribu," Jag reminded her. And he had, without being asked, and expecting nothing in return. Thanking him had been the first time she'd spoken to him since the breakup, and now was the first time she'd spoken to him since then. "And you returned my courtesy with betrayal at Supply Depot Thrago and the Battle of Snevu. My family's reputation has suffered."
As had its finances, if Jaina recalled the terms of the guarantee correctly. The Fels would have to repay any damages Lowbacca caused if he violated the parole- and before returning to the Alliance, he had taken part in the destruction of not only several million liters of space fuel, but also dozens of clawcraft and a couple of capital ships. And given her role in this war, it had to look like she'd had something to do with it personally, or maybe even arranged it. "Jag, I'm sorry," she told him, even now trying to dodge fire from the second wave of clawcraft. "In the urgency of the situation, the parole just didn't occur to us."
"Don't apologize. The fault is all mine," Jag said, even while trying to set Jaina and Zekk up for his wingmates to pick off. "I should never have made the mistake of thinking Jedi had honor."
Okay, so Jaina was going to spend the rest of the battle feeling cut to the core. It didn't matter how long you'd been broken up with someone, when they talked to you like they hated you, it was going to hurt. And she was going to feel worse in a second, because she knew what she had to do. It was war. When the enemy was lining her up to get killed, there was only one thing she could do.
"Jagged, we- I-" It was important that she was her for this. "-want you to know that I still love you. And I always will," she said, locking him as her target. "But if you can eject, you should do it now."
And at once, she and Zekk opened fire.
They didn't get him. Didn't even come close. Jaina had met Jag a decade ago over the fact that he'd been the only one who kept killing her in sim missions at the beginning of the Vong war, and he'd only gotten better since then. He was already spinning away- impressively, too- and was ready to start in on them again with the rest of his squadron when Jaina and Zekk finally went after the defoliators.
In the end, one defoliator was completely destroyed when Jaina and Zekk finally got some backup, even that backup did not go exactly as they would have liked. The other defoliator was blown apart, with one wing surviving in order to fall to the planet's surface, which would end up leading to the race to find the bombs the defoliator had been carrying. The destruction of the defoliators hadn't stopped the clawcraft from attacking the StealthXs, either, partly because the StealthXs were drawing their attention away from the bombs that had fallen. And with Jaina's shields entirely gone, and with Zekk missing a wing, they had finally had to give up and head planetside or risk dying out here.
That happened somewhere around the time the Falcon shot Jag's clawcraft down.
Crashing wasn't something pilots liked getting used to, but as far as crash landings went, surviving made it better than blowing up. Again. Jaina and Zekk were badly battered from the landing, but they were together in the jungle, more worried about Leia and Saba and the parasite bombs than getting rescued. This wasn't anywhere they wanted to be exposed, but they found a safe tunnel to hole up in, and after years on Yavin 4 and weeks fighting on this planet, it wasn't anything they couldn't handle. Neither of them were in the shape to start any fights, but they could defend themselves if anything attacked. They stayed silent, patching up any injuries that needed it with what they had, and tried to focus on Leia and Saba, hoping they found the bombs before the Chiss.
Hours later, when Leia and Saba had succeeded, when Luke had killed Lomi Plo and captured Raynar and thus ended the war- and the Colony as Jaina and Zekk knew it- Han, Leia and Saba returned to retrieve Jaina and Zekk.
"What about Jag?" Jaina asked before all else.
"We didn't feel him die," Zekk added. That was Jaina's concern showing through, or maybe his concern for her. Zekk himself had never liked the guy.
"Neither did I," Leia said reassuringly, but there was some obvious guilt. It couldn't be easy to tell your daughter that you probably didn't kill her ex-boyfriend.
"I'm sure he's okay, kid...s," Han added, looking a little uncomfortable at having to add the plural. He'd never really gotten used to this situation. "He's a tough guy."
Jaina nodded, swallowing. So they hadn't been a couple in years. So he apparently had nothing but disdain for her anymore. Again, it didn't matter how long you'd been broken up with someone- at least not to her. It wasn't like she didn't still wonder how John was doing, and she was allowed to want to know whether Jag was okay, whether they'd just been trying to kill each other or not.
She'd be waiting a long time for answers on that one.
[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Most of the dialogue and chunks of stuff taken from The Swarm War by Troy Denning, who hates me specifically.]
Raynar- UnuThul, whatever they were calling him these days- named them subcommanders, putting Zekk in charge of the flightbound nests, and Jaina in charge of the ground troops. This posed a problem for one reason: Raynar was not a commander. He'd been a Jedi during the Vong war, and had been lost since halfway through it. He'd never seen battle like this, never organized one, and didn't understand strategy as it needed to be understood. And, though Jaina and Zekk didn't know it anymore, he was acting for the Dark Nest. When it came to war, Jaina damn well knew what she was doing, and so a lot of the time it was a matter of trying to resist UnuThul's will when he told her to send the troops off into something she knew was going to go badly. With Zekk around, this tended not to be a problem. They could retreat to their meld, lend each other the needed support, and do what they needed to do. But at this distance, she couldn't connect to Zekk nearly as well, and she found that even she couldn't resist UnuThul without the support.
She was out there for weeks, on an unforgiving jungle planet, directing the Killiks on what to do and where to go. So when the Chiss landed a drop ship on the planet during a storm, the Killiks were ready, using the tiniest breach left in the hull in order to get inside and do their damage in there. And then her communications officer, a tiny little Wuluw, began freaking out and started to turn and flee back down the tunnel.
"No!" Jaina caught the insect by an arm. "This way." If the Chiss activated any self-destructs on the drop ship, they didn't want to be underground when that happened. And Jaina felt responsible for Wuluw- the Killiks in that nest were fragile and not built for any sort of fighting, thus the communications status- so she took Wuluw with her when she Force-leapt onto the ship's hull, then again, half a dozen meters to the surface.
This put them in the Chiss landing zone, a clearing of mud and ash surrounded by a circle of blast-toppled trees. A hundred meters away, the landing zone gave way to a skeleton jungle, a trunks and limbs stripped bare by Chiss defoliating sprays. War was not environmentally friendly. In the distance, barely visible through the pouring rain and the naked timber, she could see the tail of another drop ship, rising out of a hole similar to the one from which she had emerged.
Having spotted them, the Chiss began firing. Wuluw tried to dive back underground, but Jaina wouldn't let her. "I told you, this way!" she said, pulling the little insect with her. "It's safer!"
"Bur ub bbu!" Wuluw protested.
"Of course they're shooting at us," Jaina said as the got them safely to cover. "They're the enemy!"
As Wuluw fretted some more, Jaina unslung her repeating blaster and assured her, "Don't worry. We're Jedi, aren't we?"
Wuluw did not seem convinced. Maybe because Wuluw was not, in fact, a Jedi.
Jaina unloaded her blaster across the clearing, adding to the melee. The Rekker and Jooj nests were doing what they could, but the Chiss had recovered from the shock and were fighting back. Jaina tried to lend cover where she was able, but it wasn't easy, especially with the camouflage the Chiss had going for them.
The ground shook, and the nearest drop ship's tail burst into flame. Jaina didn't know who died or how many, but she could feel a lot of death in the Force. Immediately she dropped back behind the tree and went to pull Wuluw with her, and found that the Killik was gone, save for the blood-splattered mess left on the side of the tree.
Something in Jaina snapped. The Yuuzhan Vong war had, essentially, turned her into a trained killer. She'd seen a lot, done a lot, and for the most part, it didn't affect her anymore. She could turn herself off to death and destruction to do what she had to do. But something about this, the senseless death of a defenseless, scared innocent that she'd intended to protect shook her, and shook free that rage that didn't get to come out all that much these days.
Yet when she jumped up again, ready to take out anyone in her way at this point, things had fallen eerily quiet. The drop ship had been destroyed, and the Killiks that had survived the explosion just looked stunned. The silence would occasionally be disrupted by the far-off boom of another drop ship exploding, and Jaina would feel the death of another thousand or so of Killiks. After a moment, the Jooj started to find their way into the fallen trees the enemy was using for cover. Chiss soldiers began to leap out of hiding, screaming and ripping their armor off, slapping and even shooting at the thumbnail-sized insects that had slipped past their defenses. Jaina understood their panic. The Jooj were not attacking so much as feeding, injecting their prey with a flesh-dissolving enzyme. Supposedly, victims felt as if they were being burned alive.
Then the Rekkers began the attack again, putting the Chiss on the defensive and beginning the battle anew. The Chiss were using pesticide grenades, among other things, meaning Jaina could also feel the agonizing deaths of more Killiks even as she returned fire, using the Force to sense Chiss hidden by camouflage. And once again, it looked like the Killiks were winning this one. Even if they lost a thousand from their numbers every time a drop ship exploded, you simply couldn't wipe out all the insects.
Her danger sense alerted her to a trio of Chiss soldiers coming up behind her, weapons already aimed in her direction. With a wave of her hand, she used the Force to redirect their aim, the bolts firing past her without coming close to harming her. So the leader rushed toward her, attempting to club her with the rifle, but she ducked, using the Force to pull him over her back and send him crashing into the trunk behind her. The other two Chiss arrived a step later, one bringing a knee up at her face. Jaina blocked with her blaster, at the same time squeezing the trigger and pumping fire into the stomach armor of her other attacker. The bolts ricocheted away and sent the soldier stumbling hack, but not before he slammed the barrel of his own weapon down on the back of her head.
All these years and she still collected head injuries like they were going out of style. She didn't even realize at first that she was kneeling on the ground, knocked off her feet, and the blaster was somewhere other than in her hands. She went to stand, and didn't even think she could; the way her vision was blackening along the edges was worrying.
No!
That snapped her out of it. The physical distance between them had weakened her bond with Zekk, but that was definitely him. He knew what was happening, and he was lending her strength to stay conscious, and that was exactly what she needed right now.
Jaina dropped flat to the ground, unhooking her lightsaber and igniting it so that when she rolled, she cut both Chiss off at the knees with the blade in one swift motion. While they were busy screaming over the loss of their lower legs, she felt her lightsaber blade catch a bolt without her even trying, and there was the first Chiss who had attacked. He fired again and this time she meant to deflect the shot, sending it back into his helmet visor and sending him falling over a tree trunk. He wasn't going to be getting up again.
She spun on a knee to check on the other two Chiss. They weren't going to be getting up either, but they were still getting their blasters to open fire on her again. She pulled the weapons from their hands with the Force, and then stood with her lightsaber raised, completely intent on finishing the job.
And there was Zekk again, inside her mind. He didn't say anything, but she knew how repulsed he was with her doing this.
It hadn't even occurred to her that she was about to two kill soldiers in cold blood. She'd been acting in anger and fine, self-defense, but now they were defenseless, unarmed, unable to do more than crawl away. They were no longer a threat. If she killed them now, she'd be doing the exact same thing she'd done after Anakin died. It'd be another turn to the dark side. Did people come back from that more than once? And if she'd been fighting this whole war because the Jedi were supposed to act in the name of fairness and justice and stand up for those who couldn't stand up for themselves, then taking that route would be going against everything she'd been fighting for.
Disgusted with herself, Jaina deactivated her lightsaber, kneeling beside the Chiss she had been just about to kill. She checked them over, satisfied that at least her blade had cauterized their wounds, so blood loss wasn't much of an issue. They were alive, but too quiet, and she rolled them onto their backs. She removed one's helmet, and found him sweating, his red eyes unfocused. She shook him by the chin, trying to get his attention. "Where's your medkit?"
He didn't want her touching him, and clamped a hand weakly over her arm. "Why?"
"You're going into shock," she explained. "You need a stim-shot, or you'll die."
"You?" the second soldier gasped inside his helmet. "Trying... to save us?"
"Isn't that what we just said?" Jaina demanded. She wasn't mad at him, but she could see why they'd be shocked. And she was still mad at herself for the reason why.
"No!" the first soldier cried, pushing her away with strength she hadn't thought he had.
"Don't be afraid." Jaina poured soothing emotions into the Force, trying to calm and comfort the pair. "The Colony will take care of you. We'll even give-"
The second soldier snapped a vape charge off his utility belt and pulled the activation pin. "We know what you'll... do."
Well, that was an overreaction, but Jaina didn't dare grab the canister from his hand. It'd detonate the second he released the trigger. "Hey! The Colony is good to prisoners. You'll hardly know-"
"That your bugs are eating our insides?" The Chiss nodded to his companion, then said, "We'll be waiting on the other side, Jedi-"
All right, she had to accept that she wasn't going to be able to save them. They wouldn't let her, and she was going to have to get out of here if she wanted to survive. Jaina sprang into a backward Force flip and tumbled away, thumbing her lightsaber active again and batting aside the bolts flying at her right until she landed safely in the murky river.
The charge detonated as she hit the water, knocking the breath out of her and dazzling her vision, but that wasn't the part that worried her. She didn't understand why they thought that the Killiks ate their prisoners. It was apparently enough for them to want to die rather than let it happen, which shook her more than anything.
Not that she could deal with it now, and she pushed aside her confusion in order to swim to shore.
*****
The battle continued on the ground for days, but on the day the Swarm War ended, Jaina and Zekk were flying their StealthXs in atmosphere. Jaina didn't even know what it was her parents were doing, but she and Zekk had taken to the air because Leia had urged them to. Even as an adult, even when you were mostly controlled by a nest of war-obsessed bugs, there were just some times you had to listen to your mother.
The problem was, UnuThul didn't want them doing what they were doing. Urging the Killiks on, he was forcing them to be intent on killing all the Chiss they could. And Jaina and Zekk definitely felt it, a dark pressure in their chests that couldn't be ignored. Ignoring it brought on physical pain sometimes. When Jaina saw the fleet deployment on her tactical display, it was clear how UnuThul was going to just crush the Chiss here if they were that unprepared.
The Chiss have made their last mistake, Zekk said. After UnuThul destroys their fleet, they will not be able to press the war.
The Chiss will be weakened, Jaina agreed. It wasn't really her thought. She didn't really want the Chiss to be weakened. Doing that would just make UnuThul fight harder and move faster against them, drawing them even further into war, but she couldn't care. It was what UnuThul wanted. She could feel it. He wanted them to kill Chiss, so they were going to kill Chiss. The tide will change, and the Colony will crush them like bugs.
Zekk chuckled, but the sound made Jaina a little sad. Not long ago she would have laughed, too, or neither of them would have known who the thought even came from. Now, after time apart, one could make a dumb joke and the other would laugh. She didn't like that bond weakening.
And then she sensed alarm from him, and they both dropped into the clouds to be harder to spot. Four squadrons of clawcraft had showed up, escorting a pair of Chiss defoliators. And whatever was in those defoliators was exactly what Leia and Saba had wanted them to intercept. Jaina and Zekk didn't know what was in there, they just knew that they had to stop the Chiss from using it. UnuThul was able to sense it, too, and that familiar pressure in their chests appeared again, trying to force them to attack it now. Again, it was a situation where he didn't know exactly what he was doing; Jaina and Zekk were able to use each other to resist the impulse given to them, waiting till they could actually do some good rather than striking now, when they'd just get blown out of the sky.
When they did attack, it was at the right time, and immediately they came under fire. The bonus to flying while the meld was open was that it was easier to fly as one. When Jaina took a hit (which was felt a lot harder than while flying in space), Zekk could run cover until she got herself back in gear and vice versa. Together they fought against the clawcraft squadrons, noting that whenever torpedoes were fired at the defoliators, the Chiss would intercept the missiles by crashing into them.
That's spaced- even for Chiss! Zekk said.
Maybe the defoliators don't have countermeasures, Jaina suggested.
Or maybe the Chiss just want to be really sure those ships deliver their payloads.
Their method of flying worked just fine until a triple cannon hit Jaina. She knew her astromech was panicking, her panel was shooting off warnings, but the explosion was so loud she didn't even hear it. As usual, Zekk took the lead position to let her recover while they fired at the clawcraft. When he got hit, Jaina moved to take his place, but the clawcraft had already fired off another shot, hitting her again. Then Jaina realized the pilot had no intention of veering away. With her and Zekk flying in overlap formation, the explosion from a midair collision would be enough to take them both out.
Realizing this, too, Zekk headed left, while Jaina broke right. The clawcraft didn't even hesitate. He easily turned his attention to Jaina, aiming for her and blowing holes into the fuselage of her ship. She couldn't shoot back anymore, so she cheated. She used the Force to tip his clawcraft downward. Now he couldn't hit her, and she could pass over him easily. As she did, she could feel the pilot's frustration- a very human sort of emotion. And if there was a human among the blue-skinned alien Chiss...
Reaching out with the Force just confirmed what Jaina had feared. That was Jagged Fel who'd just tried to shoot her down.
"Blast," she muttered.
There was no way she was letting this clawcraft get behind her now. He was too good, he'd have her down in no time if she did that. Instead, she turned her attention to her astromech. "Sneaky, open a hailing channel to our target."
The droid objected to this, which was fine. She wasn't supposed to hail the enemy, it was one of the things that made a StealthX stealth. "Comm protocols don't apply right now," Jaina said. "The enemy already knows where we are. They can see us."
When Sneaky protested again, she warned, "If I have to do it myself, I'm ejecting you."
The channel was open by the time she fell in behind the clawcraft.
"Jag, what are you doing here?" she demanded.
"Trying to shoot you down," Jag said over the comm. "But I forget- that's supposed to be a military secret. Now I guess I have to kill you."
Ow. Even moreso than the words, the tone of voice hurt. She'd never heard him sound that bitter. She probably should have expected it.
While she and Zekk worked together to try and keep Jag in line, she kept an eye on what he was doing and noticed he was trying to draw them away from the defoliators. "Jag, you shouldn't take this so personally," she said, completely oblivious as to how much of a bitch that sentence made her. "You and I were over a long time before Zekk and I met Taat."
"You think I care whose antennae you rub?" Jag retorted. "You betrayed your honor."
She wouldn't have expected that to come up. "Our honor? We haven't made you any-"
"I guaranteed Lowbacca's parole at Qoribu," Jag reminded her. And he had, without being asked, and expecting nothing in return. Thanking him had been the first time she'd spoken to him since the breakup, and now was the first time she'd spoken to him since then. "And you returned my courtesy with betrayal at Supply Depot Thrago and the Battle of Snevu. My family's reputation has suffered."
As had its finances, if Jaina recalled the terms of the guarantee correctly. The Fels would have to repay any damages Lowbacca caused if he violated the parole- and before returning to the Alliance, he had taken part in the destruction of not only several million liters of space fuel, but also dozens of clawcraft and a couple of capital ships. And given her role in this war, it had to look like she'd had something to do with it personally, or maybe even arranged it. "Jag, I'm sorry," she told him, even now trying to dodge fire from the second wave of clawcraft. "In the urgency of the situation, the parole just didn't occur to us."
"Don't apologize. The fault is all mine," Jag said, even while trying to set Jaina and Zekk up for his wingmates to pick off. "I should never have made the mistake of thinking Jedi had honor."
Okay, so Jaina was going to spend the rest of the battle feeling cut to the core. It didn't matter how long you'd been broken up with someone, when they talked to you like they hated you, it was going to hurt. And she was going to feel worse in a second, because she knew what she had to do. It was war. When the enemy was lining her up to get killed, there was only one thing she could do.
"Jagged, we- I-" It was important that she was her for this. "-want you to know that I still love you. And I always will," she said, locking him as her target. "But if you can eject, you should do it now."
And at once, she and Zekk opened fire.
They didn't get him. Didn't even come close. Jaina had met Jag a decade ago over the fact that he'd been the only one who kept killing her in sim missions at the beginning of the Vong war, and he'd only gotten better since then. He was already spinning away- impressively, too- and was ready to start in on them again with the rest of his squadron when Jaina and Zekk finally went after the defoliators.
In the end, one defoliator was completely destroyed when Jaina and Zekk finally got some backup, even that backup did not go exactly as they would have liked. The other defoliator was blown apart, with one wing surviving in order to fall to the planet's surface, which would end up leading to the race to find the bombs the defoliator had been carrying. The destruction of the defoliators hadn't stopped the clawcraft from attacking the StealthXs, either, partly because the StealthXs were drawing their attention away from the bombs that had fallen. And with Jaina's shields entirely gone, and with Zekk missing a wing, they had finally had to give up and head planetside or risk dying out here.
That happened somewhere around the time the Falcon shot Jag's clawcraft down.
Crashing wasn't something pilots liked getting used to, but as far as crash landings went, surviving made it better than blowing up. Again. Jaina and Zekk were badly battered from the landing, but they were together in the jungle, more worried about Leia and Saba and the parasite bombs than getting rescued. This wasn't anywhere they wanted to be exposed, but they found a safe tunnel to hole up in, and after years on Yavin 4 and weeks fighting on this planet, it wasn't anything they couldn't handle. Neither of them were in the shape to start any fights, but they could defend themselves if anything attacked. They stayed silent, patching up any injuries that needed it with what they had, and tried to focus on Leia and Saba, hoping they found the bombs before the Chiss.
Hours later, when Leia and Saba had succeeded, when Luke had killed Lomi Plo and captured Raynar and thus ended the war- and the Colony as Jaina and Zekk knew it- Han, Leia and Saba returned to retrieve Jaina and Zekk.
"What about Jag?" Jaina asked before all else.
"We didn't feel him die," Zekk added. That was Jaina's concern showing through, or maybe his concern for her. Zekk himself had never liked the guy.
"Neither did I," Leia said reassuringly, but there was some obvious guilt. It couldn't be easy to tell your daughter that you probably didn't kill her ex-boyfriend.
"I'm sure he's okay, kid...s," Han added, looking a little uncomfortable at having to add the plural. He'd never really gotten used to this situation. "He's a tough guy."
Jaina nodded, swallowing. So they hadn't been a couple in years. So he apparently had nothing but disdain for her anymore. Again, it didn't matter how long you'd been broken up with someone- at least not to her. It wasn't like she didn't still wonder how John was doing, and she was allowed to want to know whether Jag was okay, whether they'd just been trying to kill each other or not.
She'd be waiting a long time for answers on that one.
[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Most of the dialogue and chunks of stuff taken from The Swarm War by Troy Denning, who hates me specifically.]