“This is ridiculous. I should be prepping my X-wing right now. This is not how I want to finish this war!” Anakin winced as his sister kicked the dry earth, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Her tiny fists were balled in anger, and the Force boiled with her fury. They had only been on Terephon few hours, but all she had done was fume about her exit from Rogue Squadron.
Several other Jedi in the camp gave her ranting exclamation sideways looks, but none paid her tantrum much attention. It was easy enough to guess why she was upset. The volume of her conversation with Luke after the Jedi meeting cast off any doubt. She was as riled as nexu on the prowl. “What did you tell Gavin?” Anakin questioned, then took a small bite off his ration bar. For the moment at least, he was satisfied to bear the brunt of her frustration. He knew that it was better than letting her take it out on someone less experienced with his sister.
Jaina resumed her pacing, hands clasped tightly behind her back as Anakin watched from his perch on a fallen log. It was a primitive camp the Jedi had created, but the whole point was for their presence to be unknown. Therefore a base in the city would not have been conducive to the overall goal. So they stayed in the mountains above the marshes, waiting for the big push.
Next to their encampment was the rebel ground forces, armed to the teeth with the new weapons commissioned especially for combat with Baci. This time they would be the ones with the upper hand.
“What could I say?” she spat an answer at last. “I turned in my gear and told him I was a Jedi first. And…that I was sorry.” She spun on her heel and faced Anakin fully. “I’ve dreamed my whole life of being a Rogue, and I finally attained that goal. And now what’s happened? I’m forced to choose between being a pilot and being a Jedi.”
“You could always turn in your lightsaber,” he joked, trying to lighten her brooding mood.
She didn’t find it funny. “Oh yeah, like that would go over real well with our family. I’m half Skywalker, Anakin; being a Jedi is not up for debate.”
“You can still fly,” he told her, and stirred their campfire with a short stick. Sparks lifted to fill the air between them. “Just not with the Rogues. Why not form your own squadron? A Jedi one.”
She paused, as if at a loss for words. He could see the wheels of her mind suddenly come to a squealing halt, then rotate in the other direction. “That’s an interesting thought. Do you think Uncle Luke would let me?”
“If it would get you to shut up, yeah, I think he would,” Anakin laughed. To his credit, it sparked a half smile from her. “Having a member of his own family so openly oppose this really doesn’t do anything for his cause, you know.”
Jaina flushed bright red, then continued to wear a small path in the grass. “I guess. But that still means I’m out of the star fleet and won’t get to see…” her words trailed off, and she eyed Anakin with unexpected distress. At the same time he felt her close down in the Force, shielding her thoughts from him.
Suspicious, he asked, “See who?”
“You know,” she glanced away. “My friends. Pash and Anni and everyone.”
“Uh-huh,” his eyes beetled. It felt like she was only giving him part of the story. But then Jaina was hardly ever secretive with him, so he decided not to push it. If she wanted to tell him, she would tell him. “Well, we’ll still be on the Pillory a lot. You could see them then.”
“True,” she still didn’t seem happy about it. “But it’s not the same.”
“Hey, just pitch the idea to Uncle Luke,” he suggested. “It can’t hurt anything.”
“But I’m so young,” she plopped down on the log beside him with a heavy sigh. “I’d be leading people with a lot more experience than me.”
Anakin wrapped an arm around her shoulder in a brotherly embrace. “But that’s how you get experience, Jay. Besides, I’m tired of listening to you mope, too.” Jaina managed a faint laugh, and gave him a little shove. He chuckled in return and pushed her back.
Both their heads lifted with a jolt as they felt the call in the Force, ripping all other thoughts into the void. “Oh no,” Jaina jumped to her feet. Troupes of Jedi were emerging from their tents, lightsabers dead in their hands but at the ready. They had all felt the same thing: the arrival of hundreds of thousands of beings, all Force aware.
“It’s time,” Anakin stood beside her, trying to calm his racing nerves. He had faced the Baci in hand to hand combat before and knew this wasn’t going to be easy.
“Come on,” Jaina grabbed his arm and dragged him forward. “Let’s go find our assigned company.”
Each Jedi had been given a designated portion of the ground forces to defend, and Jaina and Anakin had been lucky enough to get the same faction. “All right. But remember, just because I’m your little brother doesn’t mean you outrank me,” he muttered.
“That’s what you think.”
- * *
To complete the illusion that Teneniel’s presence was supposed to be a secret, the Queen Mother was carefully secreted away in her private home on Terephon, owned under a false name. The trouble was, they didn’t want to be so guarded that the Baci didn’t know she was there. At the same time, they had to be clandestine enough to make it appear real. It was a tricky business, but Jacen thought they had pulled it off well.
A figure emerged from the door to the Queen’s personal chambers and shut it quietly behind them. The night concealed Tenel Ka’s face, but he knew it was her. She turned from the entrance to gaze at the place where he kept watch, even though she was surely blinder than he. “How is she?” he whispered in the dark. Everything in the house was quiet, and as far as Jacen knew, the two of them were the only ones still alert. Anyone else was on patrol in the grounds.
“Well,” Tenel Ka replied as she sauntered over. The scales on her lizard skin garb rubbed loudly against her skin in the silence. She took a seat on the bench beside him, carefully positioned so that he could see anyone coming down either end of the hall. The Queen’s rooms were windowless to prevent an unwanted entry. Anyone that came for her would have to go through him. “Thanks to you, my friend.”
He smiled bashfully, and was glad of the lack of light so she couldn’t see him blush. “I didn’t do it alone.”
“But you could have,” she persisted, and her fingers curled around his own where their hands rested on the soft fabric bench. They squeezed tenderly. “And I could not.”
“Hmm,” he looked at his feet, trying not to stare at the place where her flesh brushed his.
The last two days since they had healed Teneniel had been the most uncomfortable of their friendship. He was suddenly very aware of their every touch and look, and Jacen felt very exposed. The feelings he was abruptly aware of around her discomfited him. Once upon a time, he had had a childhood crush on the reserved redhead. Yet what he felt since seeing her again after so long was completely different. Bonding with her in the Force had made him acknowledge those feelings. He knew her intimately, like he’d never known anyone else, and really liked what he found.
What made it worse was that she seemed to be completely aware of this shift as well, and appeared determined to torture him because of it.
“Hmm?” she echoed, laughing. “You definitely did not inherit your mother’s flare for words.”
“Maybe I only lose my words when I’m around you,” the statement fell out of his mouth before he knew he’d said them. His jaw clacked shut immediately, his eyes going wide. He had meant to say nothing of the kind.
She swiveled her head to look him directly in the eyes, her expression curious and fond. “Jacen…” whatever she was about to say seemed to die on her tongue. They kept eye contact, both of them hesitant and confused. So many things were happening all at once, and for Jacen at least, it was intimidating.
Her face whispered forward until her nose was but a sigh from his own. Their heads tilted in opposing directions, experimenting with the angle of approach. He felt her like a flare in the Force, their feelings merged between them, magnetized. Yet neither of them took the fateful plunge forward that seemed so imminent. The moment lingered until Jacen thought it would pass.
At last he inched closer, and his lower lip barely brushed her upper one when the Force burst like a supernova with alien presences.
They both jumped, Jacen even came to his feet. “No,” she grabbed his forearm in restraint. “It’s the Baci fleet. They have come for her.”
Jacen grabbed his comlink out of his belt and snapped, “All units, the Baci fleet has arrived. Elevate to high alert status.”
“Roger that,” the Queen Mother’s female commander answered back immediately. “We’re moving into defensive positions.”
“Keep us updated,” Jacen ordered.
“Copy.”
He clicked off the comlink and spun on his heel to face Tenel Ka. Looking down at her angelic features framed in the shadows, he was suddenly thankful for the interruption, even if it was a call to war. If they had continued, things could have become very awkward. Now they had an excuse to ignore it. “You should tell the Queen Mother.”
“All right,” she rose and brushed past him without another glance, miffed for some reason Jacen couldn’t understand. He sighed as she opened the door and slid inside, suddenly nervous about everything. Not only what they had almost done, but the situation they were now in. The Queen Mother—and by extension the fate of Hapes—was guarded only by the two of them and barely a dozen security guards that would be worthless if the Baci had lightsabers, like the woman Mara fought on Tatooine. He had to rely on the fact that the Jedi and other ground troops would hold them at bay. If they didn’t, this whole engagement wasn’t going to end pretty.
- * *
“Premier, we’ve exited into a mine field!”
Cale’s hands gripped the arms of his command chair severely, holding firm as the Dintellion rocked from numerous explosions all over the gigantic hull. “Really, Captain, I never would have guessed. Do something, you fool!”
“The mines don’t show up on our scopes, My Lord,” a worker at the sensor station called.
“Casualties?” Cale demanded, and was almost thrown from his seat as his ship lurched and shivered from another impact.
“We lost almost fifteen capital ships on departure from hyperspace, Premier. Two more have been crippled since. The Dintellion herself has suffered forty percent shield loss,” the strained reply came.
“Retreat,” Zeya’s voice jumped into the conversation as she appeared at his right elbow. She was grounded to the deck in the Channel, fixed in one place against the quaking deck. “It’s a trap, they knew we were coming.”
“But the Queen Mother,” Cale sputtered, waving frantically at the blue and green planet in the forward viewport.
“She’ll have to wait,” Zeya snapped, and for a moment even Cale forgot that she wasn’t the one in charge.
“Too late! Premier, we have an entire enemy fleet just entering the system!” another officer at a different desk exclaimed.
“Fencing us in,” his second muttered, and rage rolled off her in waves. “We’ll have to fight our way out. Damn them.”
“Send in the landing party,” Cale grappled to keep the reigns of control. “If we have to stay we might as well kill the Queen!”
“Cale, you are a blind idiot!” Zeya didn’t hesitate in her censure. “And I have had enough. This is ambush, they’ve got something waiting for us down there.”
“I don’t care!” he yelled back, and used the Channel to shove her backwards, dislodging her from the spot she had rooted herself. “And you will stay to your rank, cousin! I will have Teneniel Djo’s head on a platter.”
“Selfish fool,” she didn’t back down.
He ignored her. “Commence the ground assault. And give the code for the strike team Alpha to move in.”
“Sir,” the Captain dipped his head in acknowledgement.
Cale spared Zeya a second look. She stood with arms cross across her chest, openly fuming at him. The look in her eyes said everything. He scowled at her and turned away. “Now turn the fleet around to face our visitors. Let’s show them the Baci Nation is not so easily overcome.”
- * *
“Here they come,” Luke’s blue eyes sparkled in the faint light of dawn as Terephon’s sun peaked over the horizon. They were fixed on the violet sky where dozens of specks had just appeared. It was the Baci dropships, come at last. He could feel them, their intent to destroy and kill.
The rebel troops behind him had already set to work. The big guns were being put into place on their mounts. They were ion cannons, the kind taken straight off a Star Destroyer, and should be more than effective against the small Baci troop carriers.
“Master Skywalker?” a colonel in charge came up behind him. “Orders, sir?”
“Open fire as soon as they’re in range,” Luke instructed.
The officer saluted. “Yes, Master.”
Luke cast a glance to his left and right. All along the frontlines were Jedi intermingled with the soldiers. They paced back and forth in their robes, giving orders and providing insight. The Force swelled inside him, giving him peace. The tides of fate were with them this day.
“Hey, Skywalker. You awake?”
Luke turned to look over his shoulder at Mara, who had just finished helping ease one of the cannons onto its tripod. “Yes, just taking a final moment to meditate.”
“Well you best wrap it up. I think we’re about to become really busy,” Mara pointed at the Baci craft, now close enough to make out the shape and size.
“What do you say,” he pulled his lightsaber from his belt, “we go and meet them?”
Her grin was feral. “Right behind you, farmboy.”
The ion cannons opened fire. The first blue bolt caught the closest drophsips’ moon-shaped frames squarely. Electric fingers crawled across the hulls, killing the power supply and engine capabilities. The transports wobbled in the air, careening towards Terephon’s surface. As the first one made impact, sending billowing clouds of dirt into the air, Luke ignited his lightsaber. He waved it triumphantly over his head, signaling the Jedi to follow his lead. And then he charged.
The ballooning screen of dust quickly enveloped him, and Luke had to move according to the Force, blinded. His green saber was a beacon in the dirty cloud, the only source of light. He could hear the ping of laser blasts around him, and could feel the Baci flooding, disoriented, from their downed freighters. They were frightened, as well they should be.
A flash of warning from his danger sense, and Luke was diving to the right, swinging his lightsaber up to the left to intercept the laser bolt. He batted it back into the unknown in front of him, unrelenting in his headlong attack.
Suddenly he was there, not ten meters from the hulking mess of a Baci troop carrier. The aliens were still pouring out of the opening when they caught sight of him. A dozen blasters raised and opened fire. Luke surrendered to the Force, his arms moving in a whirlwind of light. Nothing penetrated his defense. The Baci laser bolts only bent back to attack their own numbers, and several fell in screaming dismay before Luke ever came close enough to touch.
He saw Mara emerge on his right, his father’s lightsaber dancing around her capable hands. Behind her came a cadre of ground troops bearing sonic rifles. He only spared them a quick glance before his attention was forced to return to the Baci in front of him. They didn’t cower from him, but doubled their efforts. Luke, though disappointed in what had to be, didn’t hesitate.
After that particular ship had been handled, Luke took a moment to catch his breath. “Mara?” he beckoned to her through their bond as well as in speech.
“Here,” she picked her way through the carnage towards him. Her red mane was clasped in a braid down her back, and sweat and dirt caked her face. Other than that, she looked unhurt. “I just spoke with Colonel Fyrum,” she cited the rebel officer in charge of the ground troops. “He says the ion cannons disabled all the dropships before they reached the city, and the Baci are losing ground quick. The biggest pocket of resistance is about a kilometer north of here, in the swamps down the mountain.”
“Which Jedi are covering that area?” Luke was already jogging in the direction of the rebel troops he had assigned himself and Mara to.
She followed. “Jaina and Anakin’s team got there first, but Kyp and Kyle are almost there. Saba Sebatyne and Ganner Rhysode are heading that way as soon their team finishes.”
“Commander,” Luke waved to a soldier stationed near the equipment sled. “I need a speeder.”
“Right away, Master Skywalker,” he was already lifting his comlink to his lips and calling for the requested transport.
Luke turned to face Mara fully. “How serious is the situation?”
“Not too dire,” she brushed a hand over her scalp. “But they all seem to be gravitating to that location. Making a last stand. They know we have them beat.”
That wasn’t good. Any enemy that knew they couldn’t win but kept fighting was the most dangerous kind. “Any word on the Queen Mother?”
“None.”
A swoop bike came to a screeching halt beside them, and the rebel trooper driving it slipped off the seat. Luke nodded his thanks to the man and climbed on, Mara behind him. A few quick seconds as he familiarized himself with the controls, and they were off.
- * *
Leia gripped her crash webbing in both hands as Han threw the Millennium Falcon into a full throttle spiral, so fast the inertial compensator struggled to keep up. She gasped as she was pressed back in her seat, watching the stars fly in dizzying circles outside the viewport. Finally he pulled up out of the loop, but the maneuver had failed to lose the squadron of finnies following them.
It was obvious that the Falcon had been labeled as a main target by the Baci starfighters. Since the start of the conflict they had been harried from all angles, not getting even a moment of respite. They hadn’t had any time to inflict real damage because they had been too busy trying to dodge the unending assaults. If it hadn’t been for the extra help of Jag Fel and Spike Squadron Leia thought they might not have made it, even though Han would never admit it.
Despite their own difficulties, the battle as a whole was going well. The combined rebel, Chiss, and Hapan fleets were pushing the Baci into the deathtrap that was the minefield. They were trapped against Terephon, and this time the numbers weren’t necessarily with them. A vast amount of their navy had been destroyed as they exited hyperspace into the mines. Leia prayed the skirmish on the surface was going just as well. She had no way of telling, cut off from the Force as she was.
Red lights erupted from in the cockpit, and the floor shook beneath them. “Damn it,” Han jumped from the pilot’s seat and rushed out of the cockpit without explanation. The Falcon took another shuddering hit, and the emergency lights bathed the room in red light. Chewbacca roared in frustration, struggling with the controls of the ancient ship.
“What’s going on?” Leia leaned forward over Han’s empty chair, her brown eyes wide. Beside her, Padmé’s face reflected the same confusion and fear. She had insisted on coming with them instead of staying on the Pillory, and Leia had by then learned that there was no point in arguing with her mother. She had finally met her match in political skill.
Chewbacca barked a perturbed reply over his shoulder, and rolled the Falcon onto its side. The old freighter slipped between two finnies, its lasers cutting one of them to ribbons, leaving it to explode in their wake.
“The third hold is venting atmosphere?” Leia gasped. “He’ll need help patching it.” She unbuckled her restraints and jumped from her seat before Chewie or Padmé could protest.
The Falcon quaked like it was going to be ripped apart as soon as she set foot into the cockpit access corridor. Leia let out a screech, but it was swallowed in the terrible groan as something deep within the ship buckled and died. Leia didn’t have to wait long to find out what it was.
The inertial compensator was gone. The force of the Falcon’s propulsion sent her tumbling through the corridor, winded as the air was knocked from her lungs. She had less than a second to scream, and then hit the ladder of the quad laser tube with bone crushing strength. Her vision went black, but she was fully conscious as her body dropped down the tube. Her right leg caught in one of the rungs, and she felt the tibia snap like a twig.
Leia’s last cognizant memory was of hanging upside down at an odd angle, and of feeling a sudden spike of uncontrolled fear for the baby inside her.
- * *
“Princess Tenel Ka, we have over fifty Baci troops approaching the South entrance,” the Hapan guardswoman burst into the upper room of the Queen Mother’s Terephon home. Both Tenel Ka and Teneniel’s heads snapped up from their private conversation at the unannounced entrance. Behind the female bodyguard stood Jacen, his Force presence thick with alarm.
Tenel Ka stood, her one fist clenching tightly. “Hold them off as long as you can. Jedi Solo and I will take the Queen out the north side and into the swamps.” Inside, she was cursing their luck. This whole operation had been based on the hope that the ground forces would keep the Baci away from the city and Tenel Ka’s mother. How had they failed?
She executed a deep bow. “Yes, Princess. And godspeed, my Queen.”
Jacen shouldered his way past her and into the room. “Are you sure it’s wise to leave?”
“We have no choice,” Tenel Ka’s countenance was firm. “This is not a fortress we can defend, it’s a simple house.”
Teneniel came to her feet beside her daughter, who was almost a head taller than she. “She is right, Jacen Solo. Come. We must move quickly.”