Crash and Burn

Jaina had plenty of time to think during her journey from Yavin to Cyalax. She could have thought about the layer of grime on her face and arms that only got thicker in the confined space of her X-wing, or her parents on Coruscant, who were quarantined with most of the Jedi and the other people and trapped alone with their grief, far from their last child. But the one thing that replayed over and over in her mind was her uncle's message - his tone, the stricken look on his face, and most of all, the words he said. Without the Force, he was still a man of honor, and one who sought real solutions to real problems. But seeking did not always lead to finding. Without the Force, he was no longer a superhuman leader of the new Order, and he was unable to save her brothers.

She had reached out as much as she could, trying to find him through the Force, and all that came to her were faint echoes, hazy and fleeting pictures and sensations of a bitter cold sucking the life out of her bones. There was a freeze, so strong as to be suffocating, and then a place of darkness and death - and Anakin.

Jacen was gone.

No doubt the Sith meant to destroy the Jedi, one way or another. But they had cut their own pool of apprentices and failed to incapacitate everyone who was against them. The New Republic still had its fleet and ground forces, and Jaina still had her training. She also knew where the Sith were hiding.

Welk's travel logs showed more than one destination before he came to Yavin 8. Coruscant and Cyalax appeared multiple times, with one stop at Marstill and one at a location called only G0-CV. Jaina balled her hands into fists and closed her eyes; she knew that Marstill was between Yavin and Dantooine, and she felt the last tiny bit of hope that there was some mistake regarding the deaths of Jacen and Anakin flutter away. It was several minutes before she pulled herself together enough to check her own navigation system and look for GO-CV. It didn't appear anywhere on any of her charts.

Jaina briefly wondered what it was, but then an answer came to her: a trap. Who could resist the call to investigate the secret activities of the Sith within the Stellar Imperium at an unknown location? Me, that's who. At least with Cyalax, she had a little bit of information about where she was going and what she could expect. Besides, Lumiya is the big game, not Welk and whatever projects he's running on the side. Welk is her pawn. Even that troublemaking senator is a pawn. Lumiya is the one killed Jacen, even if it wasn't with her hands, and Lumiya is the one I'm looking for. Cut off the head and the whole snake dies.

Jaina missed Jacen in a profound way, unlike her mourning for Anakin. In the loss of Anakin she felt failure; the one she'd tried to protect, even as a small child, really hadn't been ready to charge forward without her, but she hadn't tried to stop him from going. That was pain in her heart, but Jacen's absence made that sorrow fade into the background. Jacen had been replaced by a hole carved inside her with its walls still raw and bleeding. She heard phantom whispers from far away, the echoes of a dead man - despair on a frozen world, terror, suffering, desperation. It was not until she felt a cold, slick surface against her sore hands that she realized she was banging on her fists on the canopy.

Jacen didn't even get to die with glory and purpose.

Lumiya wouldn't, either.

Jaina felt stronger than she had at any point in the last two years. No more at peace, but stronger, and that was what mattered when she bounced into realspace in the system of a dull orange star. She smiled, a broad and feral grin under her helmet. This was a nexus of power - not cosmological, but a place where individual fates converged and mixed. Instead of attacking a moon-sized space station, a satellite of a larger Empire, she would be slicing away the Imperium at its source.

The star's lone planet loomed up, a world of electrical storms and crashing gray waters against jagged rocks. Its violent but natural seascape served well to hide its contents from ordinary man, but one large island - more properly a small continent - glowed with invisible energy.

She spotted a long crack in the black, craggy rock formation and flew straight into it. The darkness lit up with a hundred search lights and a jarring noise came over her comm system. She quickly adjusted the frequency and heard, "Unidentified ship, you now have ten seconds to comply. Transmit your access code."

"Quick, send Welk's code," she said.

Her astromech droid tootled and beeped, and Jaina held her breath. Fifteen seconds passed before she heard, "You are clear to land, Lord Welk."

She only exhaled partway. There was still the problem that she was more than twenty centimeters shorter than Welk and looked nothing like him apart from being of the same species. That might be enough to fool a particularly dense member of a particularly non-humanoid species, but only maybe, and that was useless if she met with anybody else. At least the Cyalax station appeared, to be largely a military station with military security systems, and that gave her a slight and brief advantage. She still needed a plan.

No, that's defeatist thinking. The Force will guide me. The Force doesn't want Lumiya trying to control it any more than we want her trying to control us.

The inside of the crevice also came alive with artificial lamps, and Jaina didn't run into any immediate trouble on her way to the tunel's end. That end turned out to be be a hangar bay, currently not very busy. There were only a half-dozen people there, four humans in military dress, a similarly-clothed Zabrak, and a human mechanic.

Jaina landed her X-wing and took off her helmet before she opened the canopy. All six heads began to turn, and Jaina grabbed a metal pipe on the wall, using the Force, and twisted it out of its rings. The pipe fell with a clatter and five of the six looked in the direction of the noise. One of the human officers, though, continued to stare at her.

She had her lightsaber in one hand, just in case she would need it and quickly, and she flicked a small motion through the air in front of her with her other hand. "I have an appointment with Empress Shira," she said.

"She has an appointment with Empress Shira," the tall man agreed.

"I am to go to the Empress immediately."

"She is to go to the Empress immediately."

"You must allow me to go inside the complex at once."

"We must allow you to go inside the complex at once."

The others quizzically looked at their leader, but allowed Jaina an easy passage to the main doors leading into the Imperial headquarters.

The few people she passed inside didn't seem to pay much attention to her, but she had not gone more than fifty paces down a long hallway - in search of some kind of computer console - when the corridor exploded into a red and white light show and a screeching alarm sounded in bursts of five, one blare per second and then a pause of three between bursts. Now I really need a plan! She ran down a side corridor, and then another, trying to get away from the main passageway. Once Jaina had bought herself a minute or two of time, she started pulling on the sliding gray doors in the hallway, hoping one of them would have been left unlocked. The fifth door she tried opened for her, and she slipped into the room and sealed it behind her.

Jaina finally paused to catch her breath and take a look around. The room wasn't much more than a supply closet, though it was twice as large as her bedroom in her parents' suites on Coruscant. There were ten rows of shelves along each wall and five more free-standing columns in the center. Hundreds of glass and ceramic jugs and bottles filled every shelf, labeled with symbols she either didn't understand or just barely remembered from chemistry lessons.

She picked a few bottles of liquid fuel that she could ignite and throw if needed, and pulled them down from their shelf. Nothing else looked particularly useful; a jar of inert powder that could be used to make a smoky distraction, maybe, but then she'd be tracking white powder everywhere she went...

The door slid open and Jaina ducked down behind the last free-standing set of shelves. She heard two distinct sets of footsteps, and saw two shadows of humanoids in lab coats. "We're going to have to fumigate the entire complex," a man said.

"It would be wiser to hunt with vornskrs," a woman answered.

Jaina rolled out from her hiding place and ran to the door, which she pushed fully closed. The stunned scientists jumped and the blonde woman started to pull out her blaster, but her companion held her arm back. "In here? Are you insane? You'd blow us up!"

"Who are you?" the woman asked.

"I don't have to tell you that," Jaina said. She steadied her voice and tried to project confidence; the more she drew upon the Force inside her, the easier it was, and her voice took on a hardened, sharpened edge that she welcomed. She took out her lightsaber and activated it. Violet light bounced around, through glass and crystal and glinting off metal canisters, spraying the room with scattered blue and violet shimmers. "I'm looking for Lady Lumiya. You call her Empress Shira. You WILL take me to her."

"I can't do that," the man said. "We are not allowed into her chambers without a summons."

"I don't care."

"Perroc, for kriff's sake, she has a lightsaber," whined his companion.

"And you would rather face the Empress?"

"I said before," Jaina snapped, "that I don't care. I want one or both of you to take me to the Empress. If you don't, then I'll kill you now and go myself."

Perroc grabbed the blaster from the other scientist and swung it at Jaina. She sliced cleanly through the barrel with the violet beam of her saber, then kicked upward towards his arm. The broken blaster went spinning out of his hand and it crashed harmlessly into a metal jug.

The next minute went by in a blur. She knew that she had to intimidate at least one of the two into taking her to the Empress, and the woman appeared to be the weaker one of mind - not due to gender, specifically, but to individual personality. Jaina swung and kicked and spun around, and when she pulled herself back out of the Force maelstrom, Perroc was on the tile floor, on his back, missing most of one leg and one arm. Both were leaking blood from partially cauterized stumps, and his eyes were squeezed shut.

"You," she said while pointing towards the shaking woman, "will now take me to the chambers of the Empress."

"Sarra, call the medics first," Perroc croaked. Sarra reached for her comlink.

Jaina placed one boot on his chest and balanced herself, half of her weight pressing into his ribcage and half into the floor. "I'm afraid we don't have time for emergency calls," she said, and brought down the blade of her lightsaber near Perroc's face. She didn't cut through it, since that would kill him, and she really didn't want to kill him if there was another way to convince Sarra that doing Jaina's bidding would be the wisest opition. Instead, she just held the burning blade a centimeter above his nose and watched the skin turn red, then purple, then black, searing and bubbling away. The smell of burning flesh didn't bother her quite as much as she thought it would; it was less offensive than the smell of his newly evacuated bowels, and distracted her from his screams.

When Perroc was no longer recognizable - as himself, or as a human, with only dripping and partly charred gel globules for eyes and a blackened skull showing through the destroyed skin - Jaina straightened up. Sarra, predictably, was wringing her hands and whimpering, her back pressed into a corner between bottles of hydrofluoric acid and cesium chunks immersed in oil. "If you don't lead me to Empress Shira's inner chambers and get me through security," Jaina said, "you will be next."

"I'll take you," said Sarra, her voice barely a whisper.

"Good. But before we go, I have a question for you. With what, exactly, were you planning to fumigate the building?"

"Nothing... nothing much." Sarra's green eyes darted from Jaina to the flailing Perroc and then back to Jaina. "A virus, but it's not lethal."

"The one that takes the Force away from the Jedi," Jaina said coldly. "You were trying to strip the Force from me."

"My orders were-" Sarra started to explain herself, but stopped when Jaina stepped toward her with the lightsaber held out. "My duties are to the Empress! I have no choice!"

"You do have a choice, and if you help me then you'll be granted amnesty in the New Republic. Why don't the Sith fear the virus? I know there are Sith within your ranks - Lord Welk, the Empress, maybe Prille Quoll, possibly others, so don't lie. Is there a vaccine?"

Sarra was silent, but she nodded.

"Give it to me," Jaina commanded, putting the power of the Force behind her voice. Sarra didn't hesitate for even a moment before crossing the room and pulling down a small plastic rack of clear vials.

Jaina cleared her throat and waited. Sarra dutifully retrieved a syringe and placed it and one of the vials into Jaina's outstretched hand, and said nothing. Jaina examined the vial, then pushed into Sarra's mind, looking for evidence of lies. There were none; she had given over the right bottle, and Jaina injected herself with it, then capped and pocketed both vial and syringe.

Another alarm sounded, this one short. "There it is again," Sarra breathed. "He must be here."

"Who?"

"Lord Welk."

Jaina's heart skipped a beat. If he escaped Yavin 8, what happened to her friends? "All right, there's a change in plans. First you will take me to Welk, and then to Shira. Lumiya."

She allowed Sarra to put in the medic call that she wanted to, while they were walking, and Sarra was able to deflect any questions about who their companion was. When there was an additional question, Jaina mind-tricked the questioner away, and she thought that perhaps the Sith had become overconfident, with as ill-defended as their fortress was.

When they reached the hangar, Jaina saw Welk's small ship waiting for them, but there was no sign of him. She stretched her awareness into the ship itself, and felt three familiar presences, shortly before the boarding ramp of the vessel extended almost too the ground and the people inside walked out. Zekk led Valin and Tahiri, all dressed in flight suits and carrying their weapons, down to the floor, and they faced Jaina and Sarra.

"Jaina!" Zekk's face was one of surprise, relief, and upset. "What are you doing here?"

"What do you think I'm doing here? I'm making the galaxy safe for the rest of us. For the few of us that are left. Where's Sannah?"

"Welk got to her," Tahiri explained. "She's alive, but we had to leave her with the other Melodies; he crushed her legs when she was keeping watch, because he got out of his bindings. He stole our ship so we had to take his to chase you."

"So where is he?" demanded Jaina.

"Probably on Coruscant," Zekk said. "Senator Quoll is still in solitary confinement, and his direction out of the system looked like it was towards Coruscant. He might be trying to break her out and come back here. Come with me, and we can get a message to Coruscant." His eyes almost indetectably flicked across the hangar bay. And we can tell the fleet admirals where the Empress is hiding."

"There isn't even anybody chasing us, and you want to run away?" Jaina hissed, and she lowered her voice. "No. I'm going after Lumiya myself, while she isn't expecting it."

"Jaina, she'll kill you, if you even get to her. And even if she's dead, who's to say that someone won't come up and take her place, as bad as she is or worse?"

"The Imperium won't last long without her. She doesn't deserve to be allowed to run around and live in her own form of peace, Zekk. Look what she did. Look at all the people who died because of her. All the other Jedi we grew up with or at least studied with. Our friends. My brothers." Jaina stamped her foot on the ground and tried to hold back the tears in her eyes. "The Sith murdered Anakin and left Jacen to die alone. I'm not going to let them get away with it!"

"Live or die, they've won," Zekk said, while Tahiri and Valin took a step back. "If they're just trying to destroy the Jedi, there are other ways than killing. The plagues. And turning them dark." His dark green eyes locked into Jaina's brown ones and followed them even if she tried to look away.

"I don't expect you to understand. You don't even have a family." At that moment, Jaina didn't care if her words stung; there was a worse stinging inside her, one that she couldn't pass off as someone else's bad mood. "I am never going to see Jacen or Anakin again thanks to these people. My twin brother is dead. You have other friends, and Tahiri, you can find another boyfriend - look how close you're already standing to Valin! - but I am alone. And if that means I'm the only one who has the guts to face the one responsible, then so be it!"

Zekk grabbed Jaina by the shoulders and squeezed them hard. "No. Get control of yourself. You're doing exactly what the dark ones want you to do; give in to your anger, and you're one of them, only with a different point of view on a few people's fates. No other difference. Isn't it wiser to have the New Republic attack where they now the power of the Imperium to be concentrated?"

"Right, kill thousands instead of just one," Jaina snapped.

"Look at yourself. You're so mad that I'm surprised you're not glowing. And what if you don't make it out? Are you going to leave your parents to know they lost all three of their children?"

"I won't be kept a prisoner all my life just because I happen to be the last of something. As for you, if you're not with me, then you're against me, and you're supporting Lumiya because every second you keep me here is a second she has to mount her defenses."

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes," Zekk said, and he finally let go of her, looking hurt.

"I am going to kill Lumiya, and there is nothing you can do to stop me," Jaina insisted. "I would like you to join me, because it's safer in numbers, and she can't stand against four united Jedi. If you won't follow, I will go alone."

"Then you have to go alone," Zekk said. "Come on, Tahiri, Valin."

"Wait!" Jaina reached into her pocket and pulled out the vial and syringe that Sarra had given to her. "At least take this with you. It's the vaccine for the bug that Senator Quoll let loose. There should be enough left for all three of you, and this way you can go back to Coruscant."

Zekk took them from Jaina and then caught her in an embrace. "I don't want to leave you here, Jaina, but we aren't going to stay and help you fall," he whispered. "Let it go. There will be no rest in the Dark Side. I know this. I've been there, and it's worse than any sorrow you have now."

"Zekk, they killed Jacen! And I'm not going to the Dark Side. Do you think it was okay for them to do what they did to my brothers? Lumiya can't be let to get away with it, or with killing the millions upon millions that she did already. By getting rid of her we're saving lives." She pressed her face into his jacket, and left damp spots from her eyes when she pulled away. "I have to do this. For Jacen, and Anakin, and Alema, and everyone else."

"Jacen wouldn't want you in a position where you either lose your life or lose your soul, Jaina. He'd want you to grow from this, and never forget the pain that those who are dark bring to everyone else."

"You don't know him like I did," Jaina said, and she wrenched herself completely free. "You don't know what he would want, and I don't have any other choice but to find the Empress."

Zekk only nodded, said, "You always have a choice," and started to board the ship behind Tahiri and Valin.

"May the Force be with you," Jaina called after him, and got no reply. She looked over to Sarra, who had done nothing except making a protective sign across her forehead with her fingers, and nodded. "They're leaving. Take me to the Empress."

Her voice had lost much of its conviction.