Crash and Burn

Jaina walked with her hands behind her back, as though they were bound, and followed Sarra along a confusing, twisting path around pillars and down corridors. Her senses were on full alert, ready to spring her into action if she perceived any coming danger that was new. It was hard to sort unusual danger, though, from the darkness and death all through the complex. She had the feeling that her own future was fuzzy, perhaps not even there. She had no exit plan and her stomach tightened if she tried to think of one, because the thought that came to her was that she would have to get through Lumiya to even get to that plan. Lumiya was a tall duracrete wall in her mind. She couldn't see through or around it.

I made my choice, and it's too late to go back, she thought; there was an alternative, and that was telling Sarra that she'd changed her mind and wanted to go back to her ship, but that was no real option. There was nothing to return to if Lumiya was left alive. All of the Jedi would be hunted; the ones who remained and remained as Jedi. As far as she knew her friends from Yavin 8 were the only ones - with Luke's guidance, they could rebuild the Order, and in time, they'd appreciate the fact that she was right about Lumiya and right to do what she did.

"You aren't taking me down a direct path," Jaina accused. "You're either trying to lead me into a trap, or you want to confuse me so I won't find my way back."

Sarra paused, as though weighing her words before speaking. "Back from what?" she finally asked, too lightly.

She has more courage than I thought she did, Jaina mused. Even if it is the courage of one who feels she's about to die. "You are not going to die today. I meant what I said when I told you I was going to get you away from Cyalax and to a New Republic world," Jaina said.

Sarra only nodded. Her thoughts were a roiling mess of contradictions; basic decency and loyalty to the Empress dueled to a draw. Jaina saw Sarra thumb a button on her comlink, and heard her say a few words in a foreign tongue - broken fragments of something like a partially learned battle language.

"Stop that, or I'll rip out your tongue." Jaina picked up enough through the Force to know that Sarra was warning Lumiya's closer people of Jaina's presence. "You won't die from losing your tongue."

"I hope you will forgive me if I have my doubts about your good intentions," said Sarra. "I've seen some of what you are capable of."

"I am a Jedi - not a Sith, like your overlords."

"I see no difference but political allegiance. I am probably dead either way, and don't quite trust you to save me after my usefulness to you is no more."

Jaina bit her lip. Surely the problem was that Sarra didn't understand the finer points of the Force. Sith were never self-sacrificing, never willing to do battle without perfect confidence of both victory and survival, even if that confidence later proved to be false. Jaina believed in her victory because she had no choice other than to defeat Lumiya; however, her continued life was unlikely at best.

Without her twin, and little Anakin, she wasn't sure she cared. She was tired of running and hiding, tired of fear and grief. Sidour. Alema. Tiera. Vurif. Jovan. Jacen. Anakin. Raynar. The list would grow if she didn't put herself on it as the final entry - and go out in a blaze of glory, unlike the quiet fade of the Jedi trapped in quarantine on Coruscant.

Sarra's comlink crackled. She didn't try this time to turn it up but the words came through in their garbled code. Jaina couldn't grasp the nuances, if they were even known to the speaker, but "let her through" was the gist. And that was enough.

"Take me to Lumiya by the shortest path," she commanded.

Sarra's green eyes opened all the way, and she nodded, now with no hesitation - muttering "Sith witch" under her breath.

It only took ten more minutes to get to a long, dark corridor, with guards stationed along it every few meters. This was where the main Force power in the complex came from. All the dark energy. Jaina felt more uneasy with each step, and by the time she got to the end of the corridor, she was actively focused on calming her breaths.

She looked up at the tall black and gold door in front of her and felt a thousand possible futures converging just beyond it. A galaxy of Sith rule, a galaxy of peace, ceaseless war, every world laid waste. Jacen had occasionally spoken of such convergence and it froze him into inaction. Jaina couldn't afford to make the same mistakes he did. I honor your memory by learning from your life - and not letting your death be in vain. We were formed together, we grew together, and soon we will be with the Force together, mission accomplished.

"I have nothing to lose now," said Sarra. "So I can tell you that you're a fool. You are a Jedi Knight, by your own claim. Can you stand against a Sith Lord, one that the Grand Master couldn't even find? If Her Imperial Majesty had any doubts about your death, you wouldn't have been allowed to come this far. You walk to your end."

"I don't fear death," Jaina lied. "You fear yours more. Now step aside and let me through; your job here is done and I will save you if I can. But my task comes first and if you stand in my way I'll have to go through you."

Sarra opened the doors, and all Jaina could see inside, past four meters, was an expanse of pure darkness. Sarra made the warding sign at her forehead again and stood as far away from the open door as she could.

"Wait here," Jaina instructed. "When I return - if I do - then do as I say right when I say it or you won't reach the hangar."

Sarra stared at Jaina for a moment, again with her tortured confuson, and took another glance into Lady Lumiya's chambers. Then she fled down the corridor.

Jaina tried not to think about it for more than a second. Sarra was an unnecessary distraction, and as an adult, she had to be left to choose her own fate. Maybe she would fare better than Jaina. Or maybe not, but she would become known as the one who helped her, not the one who tried to stop her. And either way it didn't matter.

Jaina took a deep breath and stepped into the void. The floor was firm and the air temperate, without any unnatural breezes. She sensed a wide, cavernous room, a dozen quiet figures waiting for a cue of some kind, and another figure in the middle of the others, swallowing energy and light.

They knew she was on her way.

There was a distant hum, followed by a low whirr that grew in volume every second. Lights exploded with the sound of ten thousand clicks, so bright that Jaina fell to her knees and felt sick in her stomach.

The figures up ahead, so small that they looked like tiny statuettes in a miniature display, did not move. Twelve robed guards - all human or humanoid, of indeterminate species or sex, covered by long dark cloaks and featureless black masks - stood beside and behind an inky, reflective throne on which a woman sat. Her robes were also black, but sleeveless, revealing arms of shining silver covered in dark webbing.

Jaina stepped forward. Lumiya grew in size, although Jaina didn't think she had moved much at all; the lights on the walls and high up on the ceiling looked the same as they had several meters ago. The only defense was to silently curse the optical tricks of the room, and recall known truths. Lumiya was not a particularly large woman, not much bigger than Jaina's mother, and was apparently relying on psychological tricks to look more intimidating. A truly powerful Sith would have no need for such frills...

Kill her, and kill the Imperium.

Lumiya looked like a giantess, but when Jaina focused on her depth perception, the illusion phased into and out of existence, shrinking Lumiya back to her true size.

"Empress Shira, it seems that your power is mostly based on what people think of you - not what's real," Jaina said. Cut right to the heart of the matter.

Lumiya turned her head slightly - casually. "Stop where you are," she said, and while her partially veiled expression looked neutral, her voice carried a thrust of power and Jaina struggled to keep on walking. She found her center, her connection to the Force, and it washed over her, carrying away the worst of her anxiety and leaving only traces. She reached for her lightsaber - with any luck, the battle would begin and end quickly. There was no time to scheme or plan, only to do.

The dark guards sprang into action. Jaina saw them move, with long poles in their hands. She activated her lightsaber and felt the familiar thrum of its gyroscopic vibration in her hand. The Force, distorted but thick, flowed into her, and she allowed herself to fall into it and let it guide her motions. Trusting it not to steer her the wrong way or fail her.

Limbs flew, and pikes were sliced into pieces. Jaina whirled her blade in a figure-eight pattern in front of her, and it shredded everything that came too close. She smelled the combined stench of burned flesh, burned synthetic fabric, and oxidized metal.

Something stung her leg. Blood flowed freely from a small cut near her ankle - a surface wound over the bone. One of the guards had managed to cut her while her blade was slowed cutting through something else. "Shaving nick," Jaina sneered, and stepped over a fallen body to advance on the last two guards.

Her Force shove sent the weaker of the two into a black pillar; she heard his - or her - spine shatter on impact. The one who had slashed her ankle, and had the red-tipped blade to prove it, stepped back and activated the electrical power unit within the pike. Its vibrations were slower now, less able to slice through body tissues, but violet light sparked around the blade to jolt anyone touching the wrong end with a shock that would induce muscle spasms on contact. The guard swung it again at Jaina's legs and aimed underneath her whirling beam.

Jaina, however, was small enough to lean into the hit to intercept it; she cut the pike into two and struck the guard's neck. The head detached cleanly from the body and both fell to the slick black floor. With all of the dozen down, Jaina slowly turned in a quarter-circle to face Lumiya.

It was Lumiya who spoke first. "Excellent, Jedi Solo," she said. Without the power of Sith suggestion, she sounded like any tired woman of the previous generation, but Jaina would not be fooled, either into the false security of thinking Lumiya harmless or the false fear of thinking her omnipotent. "You managed to kill all my guards. You are much stronger than I thought you would be by this time."

"I don't want to talk about trivial issues. I know who you are - Empress Shira, Lady Lumiya."

"Yes. I trained under your grandfather, Jedi Solo. He was truly destined for greatness - but his broken body only allowed him to reach some of his potential." Lumiya smiled a silver smile. "As you see, I, too, have similar limitations. But you are young and strong. And complete."

"I want nothing to do with you," Jaina spat, "but to crush your Imperium."

"Allow me to train you, and when you surpass me in power, you will not need to crush what I've built. You could own it."

Lies! "Are you crazy?"

"You're already halfway there. Your anger is strong in you, and you showed that you know how to use it. All you need from me is help with refining your natural talent. Rage against injustice, if you must, but find something to be passionate about and use that passion to guide your actions."

"You killed my brothers!" Jaina shouted. "I'll never trust you!"

"An excellent place to begin, yes. Doubt everything that you do not know to be true on your own. Hold onto that which makes you feel, instead of that which makes you only think."

Jaina couldn't take any more of the placid smile, the mocking tone. She raised her lightsaber up over her head, and rushed upon Lumiya.

The hodgepodge of soft tissues and metal parts that comprised Lumiya was faster and more agile than Jaina thought possible. Lumiya sprang from the throne in a rapid flip and grabbed a small cylinder out of the right-hand armrest at the same time. By the time she landed on the floor, her glowing lightwhip was snapping through the air towards Jaina, and although Jaina was able to jump out of the way in time, the range of Lumiya's weapon kept her opponent out of range.

Jaina reached down and pulled at the first weapon she saw - a bladed pike in the severed hand of one of the fallen guards. She shook the hand away from it and held it in her left hand, with her lightsaber in her right. When Lumiya's lightwhip came forward, Jaina let it wrap around the blade of her saber, and the two weapons hissed and sizzled against each other while Jaina slammed the pike against Lumiya's shoulder.

Lumiya, however, only turned by a step, and the pike landed on hardened metal, doing nothing but making a tiny surface scratch. Lumiya easily kicked the pike away and yanked back her whip; Jaina almost lost her grip on her lightsaber, but she thought to momentarily deactivate it and untangle their blades.

"If you want me to really get angry," Jaina said, "then I will." And with that, she fell into the Force completely, with all of its swirls and twisting patterns. Lumiya was half-machine, and the Force wouldn't flow through her the same way it did through Jaina.

When she had Lumiya pinned against the throne itself, she knew the fight was over.

"Go ahead," Lumiya whispered. "Kill me. Fulfill your destiny, the one that your grandfather could not, that your brothers never had the chance to, because they got in our way. Build upon their fates. Use them like the instruments they were. Let them make you stronger."

Jaina only hesitated for a moment, but that moment was enough. Before she could will her arms to move and put Lumiya out of the galaxy's misery, her body was seized by a terrible jolt of energy and she felt herself hurtling back away from the throne. She slowed her fall with levitation and landed safely but sorely two meters away.

"If I didn't know better," Lumiya said coldly, "I would have thought you were trying to kill me."

"My aim is better than that, and the throne itself is non-conductive," a second voice snapped. Silent in the Force until the last second, Darth Inferna now stood beside Lumiya, with Welk on the other side.

"Enough. Kill her."

One Sith Lord was bad enough, but Jaina knew that she couldn't possibly fight three of them, not when two were at Master-level and the third roughly her equivalent. She did the only other thing she could do; remind herself that stopping and beginning again later was not the same as failure. She grabbed ahold of one of the ceiling light fixtures and gave it a good pull with the Force. Two dozen gas-filled lamps crashed into the floor and shattered in what could best be described as an explosion. Then she took off running, using all her powers to add to her speed.

Wait! What am I doing? Isn't the drive to live the way of the Sith? How do I know if what I'm doing is - oh, kriff that! Thinking about philosophy wasn't the most productive of activities in the safest times, and to engage in it while running for one's life was probably the very worst choice. To want to save oneself was natural. Animals did it, or they went extinct. Now Jedi had to do it, or they would go extinct, too.

She got to the door to the open corridor, and now would have to face the other guards. Jaina was ready to make a run through them, but her attention was diverted upwards, to a grate in the ceiling. One that had been removed and pulled aside, only half visible through an opening large enough to admit her. She jumped up and grabbed ahold of the edge, then pulled herself up into the air vent.

"I made my choice," Sarra said. "I'm taking my chances with you. Better a question mark than a certain evil."

"I'm not evil," Jaina protested. "Maybe... maybe I made a mistake or two. Nobody's perfect." A blaster shot zinged behind her. "No time to talk about it; let's get to the hangar. I'm going to trust you but don't you dare try to double-cross me."

Sarra was still too weak of mind to resist a brief mind-probe, and Jaina just poked around enough to know that she wasn't considering a double-cross, and that she was still upset and angry about Perroc. Understandable. Jaina crawled behind Sarra and they worked their way around corners and over bumps, until they were crouched in the ceiling right above the impounded X-wing.

"We aren't both going to fit," said Sarra, "even if you can get it out of the containment field."

"Containment field isn't an issue; all we have to do is flip that switch." Jaina pointed to a control panel on the far wall. "Space is the real problem. But we're both small; there are pilots with more than our combined mass. We'll put the seat back as far as we can and I'll sit on your lap to the next safe system."

"How long is that?"

"Probably about ten hours."

Sarra groaned, but nodded, and slowly opened the grate.

"Here's what we do. Drop down first and go to deactivate the containment grid. I'll create a distraction, and then we run for the X-wing."

Jaina's plan fell apart in seconds. As soon as the grid went down, that part of the hangar filled with blaster fire, and Jaina found herself deflecting shots with her lightsaber and scrambling for the small fighter craft. Sarra didn't make it even halfway to the X-wing.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jaina saw her fall down, and it was only adrenaline that shielded her from another stab of anger mixed with sorrow. She'd done the best she could, but that meant that the best she could do was to save her own skin, and not somebody else's. Quite Sithlike. Maybe I was just never meant to be a Jedi, Jaina thought grimly, and shook her head to clear it of any thoughts that would get in the way of her escape.

Her starfighter was faster in the atmosphere than the TIEs behind her, and she easily evaded them. By the time the lumbering Star Destroyer in orbit around Cyalax came around to try to get a lock on her and pull her back in, she was already punching in the coordinates for Kalla Tora; by the time the tractor beam activated, she was gone.

Lumiya did not come out of her throne room very often, and even less often when the purpose wasn't to put on her Empress Shira guise for ill-conceived peace talks with various other factions. But that day she walked the halls with Welk and Inferna - in front of them, with one at each side and a step behind her. "You humiliated me," Lumiya finally said.

"I thought you would have preferred it to the alternative," said Inferna.

"And you let Jedi Solo escape."

"She escaped on her own. If I may be so bold as to say it, you were also looking for her, and you weren't able to find her before she got to the hangar, either."

"You could have put nerve gas in the air vents," Welk said, trying to take Lumiya's side.

"And killed at least half of our personnel, and risk Jaina being able to hold her breath long enough for it not to work? Foolish."

"We now have at least one remaining Jedi that knows where we are - and soon all of them will," said Lumiya. "There may not be many, but it does not take many to cause a problem, and the New Republic has not even begun to hate and hunt them, thanks to your own haste and overconfidence in the plague's success. We will begin moving to another station immediately. In the meantime - the two of you are charged with a new task." She turned around. "Lord Welk, Lady Inferna. Your job is to destroy Jedi Solo - Jaina. Do not dare to return to my presence until she is dead and you have her dead body to prove it."

Lumiya stormed off, leaving the other Sith alone in the corridor. "She can't go far," said Welk. "We could find out where she's going and possibly overtake her."

"We can look for her for awhile, but if she proves elusive - we fight her on our own terms. We bring her to us," said Inferna. "And I know the perfect place to lure her to."

When Welk did nothing but raise the eyebrow over his good eye, Inferna went on: "G0-CV. G0-CVII, to be precise. Where her brothers died. They will have left something behind - perhaps bodies, if they haven't been torn by animals yet; things they might have worn and owned. I do not think that, once we have the last relics of the Solo brothers, luring Jaina out to the planet will be difficult."

And so it was, that Jaina had seemed to disappear, and was never in one place long enough for Welk and Inferna to catch up to her. After many weeks, Welk finally agreed to Inferna's plan.

They took a small cargo ship, filled with various power generators and instruments for drilling, scaling, and cutting, and were on their way. Soon the strange white sun blazed before them, and they slowly descended towards the green and gray world. They shielded themselves, so that the local wildlife would disturb them less, and settled down near the original crash site several months earlier.

"Welk." Inferna's voice was harsh and clipped.

"What?"

"Reach out through the Force - lightly, lightly! Do not reveal yourself! - and tell me what it is you feel."

Welk closed his eyes for a few seconds, and then they popped open. "Jedi? Here? Jaina is here already?"

"Not Jaina, but two who feel much like Jaina."

Welk began to tremble, and when he settled down in the co-pilot's chair of the landed freighter, he was pale. "They were dead. I was sure they were dead - they weren't anywhere on the planet, and would have been picked up by my sensors unless they were more than 200 meters underground. Plus, with the temperatures as low as they were before the thaw-"

"Mountain caves," said Inferna. "Hot springs under the surface, warmed by magma. Those would hide them from your orbital scanners and keep the boys from freezing." She set her mouth in a hard line.

"Then let's go hunting," said Welk. "We'll get them this time."

Inferna nodded, and sat down. She powered up the ship and lifted it gently into the air, then guided it in the direction that they felt Force activity. "Whatever you do," she said, "don't kill them, unless it's the only way to keep them from stealing the ship."

"Why not?"

"Because Jaina has the twin bond. It may have weakened, or Jacen's signals in the Force may be what is weak, but under the right conditions, he could be... induced to call to her, and strongly enough that she would pick up on it."

Welk looked over with his face twisted, and then he relaxed and smiled with understanding. "Torture him."

"Both of them," Inferna corrected. "He will have two assaults on his self-control - his own pain, and Anakin's. One or the other will break him."