Force Exile VI: Prodigal/Part 1

1
A giant metallic arrowhead materialized with a flicker as the warship reverted from hyperspace. Its glowing blue engines propelled it through the void of space towards the cerulean orb of a planet. The ship was the Trucemaker, a fairly new reimagining of the now-classic Imperial Star Destroyer design, dubbed a Galactic-class battle carrier. Although the same length as a Star Destroyer, it displaced considerably more hull volume due to a broader and blunter hull. The vessel bore the insignia of the Galactic Alliance, the reigning galactic government, and although its launch bays were filled with starfighters and the ship itself bristled with turbolasers, ion cannons, and other weapons, it was not on a mission of war. Instead, its presence was due to a fragmented distress signal received from the planet a few days prior.

Even as the carrier entered orbit around the watery Inner Rim world of Manaan, its captain ordered transmissions to be continuously pulsed down to the lone city that rose above Manaan’s gentle waves, Ahto City. However, there was an eerie lack of a reply from the surface. Manaan appeared placid, its waters calm from space, but something was definitely wrong.

The ship’s commander was a male Human, fairly short and dark-haired, who wore the uniform of a commodore in the Galactic Alliance. He stood on the ship’s bridge near the forward viewport, stroking his goatee contemplatively as he stared at the planet. The battle carrier had detected nothing, not even signs of spacecraft in the area. This was most unusual, as Ahto City was normally a haven for merchants and other traders wishing to exchange cargo for the healing substance kolto that could be found on Manaan. Something was clearly wrong with the local Selkath.

“Send another transmission to the surface,” the commodore ordered.

“Aye, sir,” acknowledged one of the bridge crew, implementing the order.

“Ahto City, this is the Galactic Alliance vessel Trucemaker,” the officer said neutrally. “Please respond.”

He waited, but there was no response from the watery world aside from the normal static caused by subspace interference.

“Ahto City, did not receive your last transmission,” he tried again. “Please repeat.”

Another wait, another long silence. Whatever was going on down there had completely isolated the city from the galaxy.

“Sir,” the sensor officer broke into the commodore’s thoughts. “I have something on visual you might want to see.”

The commodore nodded and moved over to a glowing tactical command display. With a series of deft movements, the sensor officer projected a magnified image of Ahto City onto the screen. The Trucemaker’s master squinted at the sight.

“Magnify and enhance,” he said.

His command was swiftly carried out, revealing that Ahto City was burning in several places and had obviously been breached. The normally pristine silver architecture had been damaged, though there didn’t seem to be a reason why they wouldn’t be communicating.

“Take us in closer,” the commodore said. “See if there are any short-range transmissions.”

The Trucemaker descended majestically towards the planet, until the star-speckled black of space gave way to the deep blue of Manaan’s sky. The commodore kept his attention on the swelling image of Ahto City, a disturbed frown etched on his forehead. If there was anyone still alive on Ahto, they surely would have seen the battle carrier now floating a mere thirty kilometers above the planet’s surface.

“Have shuttles stand by with rescue teams,” he said.

The commodore was about to give the order to launch the small craft, when the communications officer reported short-range contact.

“Picking up a weak transmission. Just audio,” the officer, a green-skinned Twi’lek, reported.

“Let’s hear it,” replied his superior.

The sound crackled through the speakers, garbled and faint. It was a Bothan’s voice, but she was gasping, out of breath.

“Help. . . please. . . they’re coming for. . . enghh. . . no, gods above. . . no, not me. . . AUUUGH!”

The Bothan’s ear-piercing scream was of somebody in obvious agony, and the commodore immediately leaned down to the speaker, straining to hear more, searching for a cause.

“What is it?” he asked, concern filling the military man’s voice. “Who’s coming?”

However, there was nothing but silence, and as the minutes ticked away, no answer came, leaving the commodore still hunched over the speaker with a white-knuckled grip on the console, trying to learn what had happened.

“Launch shuttles,” he said hoarsely. “Tell them to be ready for anything.”

Four small craft shot out of the Trucemaker’s hangar, headed for the surface. They hadn’t been gone for more than five minutes when the battle carrier received another signal from the surface. Again, it was put through for the commodore and this time, included full holo.

The projection of a tattered-looking Selkath shimmered into view. The aquatic teal-skinned alien was cut and looked weary, and there was some kind of growth on his arm. He was carrying some kind of odd-bladed sword, it appeared, and it was evident from the stains on its blade that it had seen recent use.

“This is the Galactic Alliance vessel Trucemaker,” the commodore told the hologram. “Can you hear me?”

“I can,” replied the Selkath in a hoarse, gravelly voice. “I am Shyaxa, of the Order of Shasa. You are too late.”

“Just hang on,” the Galactic Alliance officer said. “Help is on the way.”

“No!” Shyaxa replied forcefully. “Call them off! You must call them off!”

“Why?” the commodore asked, confused.

“The city is doomed,” the Selkath replied, glancing at his arm. “It happened three days ago.”

“What happened?”

The commodore was getting more than little flustered, but the Selkath was unfazed. Instead, the alien heaved a sigh and returned the commodore’s waiting expression evenly.

“The great plague,” he said.

With that, the Selkath held his arm up to the holocam, showing them the reason for the urgency in his warning. The commodore gasped in surprise and horror as he realized what it was.

“I can feel it running through me,” the Selkath whispered hoarsely. “Thousands are dead or have changed already. It is. . . terrible.”

The commodore could only stare in abject shock at what he was hearing.

“Do not let your men land if you value their lives,” the Selkath warned him. “It ate through our thickest protective suits. Quarantine did not help, nor did our strongest kolto blends. There is no cure, not even the Force.”

That startled the commodore out of his silence, and he nodded.

“Lieutenant Erhina, recall all the shuttles,” he said. “Immediately.”

“Aye, sir,” a junior officer replied.

“We’re here to help,” the commodore told the Selkath. “We could evacuate you, get you and the other survivors medical help.”

The Selkath coughed painfully.

“No,” he croaked. “Keep away from this city. There are no other survivors, and I am dead already. The rest of my kind died fighting to get to this device so we could warn travelers away. Tell the others that the Order of Shasa died well.”

With that, the transmission ended.

“Launch a probe to the surface. I want visual down there,” the commodore said tersely. “And get a line to the Chief of State. Tell him it’s a priority.”

Within minutes, he was connected to the Chief of State’s office on Coruscant. This mission had been prioritized from the start, and the Chief of State had ordered that he be notified as soon as there was news, no matter what the time was. The hologram viewer projected an image of the Alderaanian Cal Omas, a distinguished-looking elder statesman of a politican, sitting behind a sizable desk in his office.

“Chief Omas,” the commodore told him. “This is Commodore Darklighter. I have bad news.”


 * Hapes, eight years earlier

“Hold still, Sylacra,” the older woman sniffed.

The thirteen-year-old girl whose jacket she was fastening stopped squirming with obvious reluctance. Sylacra and the women were standing in a relatively small and plain docking bay in the Royal Palace of Hapes—which meant that it could have housed an entire squadron of starfighters without trouble. Near them was a small Nubian freighter with its boarding ramp lowered.

“How long is the trip going to take?” she asked plaintively.

“Just a day or two,” replied the older woman. “Now, go join the others inside the Starsong.”

Sylacra did as she was told, smoothing down the elaborate folds of her jacket and, with a final nod at the older woman, walking aboard the ship.

“Thank you, Lady Orneya,” said another woman, dark-skinned and dressed in the plain brown and tan robes of a Jedi Knight, descending the boarding ramp. “And convey Master Skywalker’s thanks to the Queen Mother.”

“There is no need,” announced a regal voice from the other side of the docking bay, making use of the royal we. “We are here to see you off.”

Tall and stately, clad in a brilliant red robe that set off her elaborately curled red hair, Queen Mother Tenel Ka of Hapes entered the docking bay, surrounded by an omnipresent retinue of guards and courtiers.

“Queen Mother,” the Jedi acknowledged courteously. “I’m honored that you came.”

“There is no need for such formality, Sarna,” Tenel Ka declared, then added with a hint of regret as her royal persona temporarily slipped away. “I wish I was going with you.”

Sarna smiled. She had been in her youth during the Queen Mother’s adolescence at the Yavin Four academy, but the sight of the Hapan warrior princess dashing around in a lizard-skin outfit on one adventure or another had not been too uncommon. Though it had been years since Tenel Ka had assumed the throne of Hapes and she now carried herself with the dignity and bearing of a true queen, it was obvious that she missed her former freedom.

“I wish you were too,” Sarna said.

The two embraced briefly, Tenel Ka completely ignoring her attendants as usual.

“Give Master Skywalker our thanks,” Tenel Ka said, all business again. “Despite the wishes of some of the nobles, sending these girls to the Maw both for their safety and for training is the best thing.”

“We’ll take good care of them,” Sarna replied. “You know Master Skywalker will take care of them and do his best to teach them the ways of the Jedi. They will be safe from the Yuuzhan Vong there.”

“That is a fact,” Tenel Ka agreed.

“Goodbye, Queen Mother,” Sarna said, bowing as she left.

“Farewell, Sarna,” Tenel Ka replied as the Jedi boarded the Starsong.

She watched as the little Nubian transport powered up its engines and soared off into the night sky, heading for space.

It was a relatively short trip from Hapes to the Maw, where the Jedi Order had been hiding its young trainees after the praxeum on Yavin Four had been destroyed by the Yuuzhan Vong. Sarna was not a particularly accomplished pilot, but she was confident that once they were in hyperspace, the trip would be over in a few short hours. In the mean time, she figured she would get to know the nine Hapan girls on the ship with her. Sarna had spent some time with them on Hapes, knew their names, and knew enough to know they were all daughters of the Hapan nobility. She also knew that it had taken every bit of arm-twisting on the part of the Queen Mother to persuade the stubborn nobles of Hapes to send their Force-sensitive daughters to the Jedi academy for training, but Tenel Ka could twist an arm pretty hard when she needed to. However, the sidelong looks and quiet disdain Sarna had endured on Hapes were over now, and she was excited to meet these new trainees. Sarna spent the next hour talking with the Hapan girls, whose ages ranged from nine to fifteen, learning about them, where they came from, what they liked, and so on. Their girlish chatter was a welcome relief from the formality of the Hapan court, and Sarna found herself so engrossed in it that she almost didn’t hear the alarm coming from the cockpit.

Heading forward, she realized with alarm that the Starsong had dropped out of hyperspace prematurely. Activating the sensors, Sarna realized with horror that there was a sizable ship, at least 300 meters long, looming directly over them. It lacked the organic appearance of a Yuuzhan Vong ship, but their allies, the Peace Brigade, were known to use more conventional spacecraft. She tried to throw the little Nubian transport into an evasive power dive, but it was to no avail. It was caught in a tractor beam. A glance at the sensors also told her that it was a gravity cone projected from this vessel that had generated the mass shadow that had yanked the Starsong out of hyperspace. Moreover, the communications were completely jammed. Whoever these people were, they were well-equipped. The ship was trapped.

Telling the girls to stay in the lounge and keep quiet, Sarna made sure her lightsaber was in place and headed for the ship’s airlock. It was obvious they were going to be boarded soon since they hadn’t been outright destroyed, and Sarna was determined to get some answers from whoever these people were.

Sure enough, the ship was pulled into the docking bay of the larger vessel soon enough. As soon as it was resting securely on the floor, Sarna lowered the boarding ramp and descended, one hand resting on the hilt of her lightsaber. There was a woman there, dressed in a form-fitting black jumpsuit. She wasn’t human; her skin was pale blue, while her hair was ebony. The woman was petite, and the athletic Sarna towered over her.

“What do you want with us?” Sarna asked.

The other woman merely smiled slightly, and Sarna sensed her presence was suffused with the dark side of the Force.

“My name is Ariada. I’m going to kill you and take the girls,” she said flatly.

Sarna realized that the time for words was up. Her hand shot to her lightsaber and the Jedi weapon flew into her hand, the blade activating in a flash of green light. To her surprise, though, her adversary had likewise armed herself with two short lightsabers, or shotos, whose blades glowed deep blue. Without hesitating, Sarna attacked, using her strength and longer reach to good effect. The blue woman fell back a step under her sudden onslaught, then stopped, crossing her two short blades against Sarna’s lightsaber. Sarna was about to push through her guard and shove the other woman back when suddenly she heard a sizzling sound as a lance of blue fire drove through her chest. She looked down in stunned disbelief to see the hilt of a third shoto protruding from her body, its blade driven completely through her. All her strength abandoned her and she began to collapse, mouth working as she tried to force out words to register her surprise at the completely unexpected attack. The Force had given her no warning and she hadn’t even seen the third weapon. The Jedi’s thoughts turned to the girls, defenseless in the ship even as Sarna felt her life slipping away and the pain overwhelmed her.

“Don’t worry,” Ariada said with a triumphant smile, as if reading her thoughts. “The girls will be well taken care of.”

She shoved the lifeless Jedi’s corpse over and advanced into the ship’s interior, hiding her weapons away and adopting a much sweeter tone of voice.

“Girls, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay. There’s been a terrible mistake.”


 * Coruscant, present day

“And now for today’s keynote speaker, a distinguished lecturer from the University of Corellia, a man with dozens of publications and awards in the field of xenobiology, applied environmental theory, and bioethics, and a leading expert in understanding ecosystem balance, Doctor Yetr Jungplutt!”

The announcer gestured offstage as the doctor entered from stage right to thunderous applause. The doctor, an aging pale-skinned man whose gray hair was beginning to recede, gave no discernible response to the audience gathered in the large hall. Instead, he marched straight over to the lectern and stood behind, his gloved hands gripping its edges as he stared out over the crowd.

He saw that nearly three thousand people were gathered, seating around a number of tables as they watched him attentively. A few dozen more were scattered in the background of the massive auditorium, conversing in small knots amid the large displays and booths filled with the latest scientific equipment and findings. Holodisplays and exhibits littered the back half of the auditorium, where the latest thoughts and scientific instruments pertaining to biology had been transported across the galaxy for presentation. The topics ranged from terraforming to conservation to xenobiology to epidemiology to dozens of other biology-related fields. Graduate students, academics, corporate researchers, government bureaucrats, and philosophers all were assembled here for the third Convention on Biological Advancement since the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War eight years earlier. His quick survey of the crowd quickly informed him to which group each person he scanned belonged to. He waited several minutes for the applause to diminish, until every eye in the audience was enrapt with him standing there expectantly.

“Sentients of the galaxy, I bid you welcome,” he boomed agreeably, his stentorian voice echoing across the cavernous chamber. “I would like to thank all of you for your attendance, and the organizers and venues for arranging for me to speak to you. For I come to you with an important message.”

He paused for dramatic effect, casting a steely gaze around the room once more.

“Sentient life, as we know it, is expendable.”

Another pause.

“In fact, not only is it expendable, but, after examining its effects on hundreds of ecosystems, I have concluded that it can even be deleterious to the natural environment. Consider Raxus Prime or any of the dozens of worlds despoiled by the excesses of industry. Some would argue that this is unjust and immoral. There are others who would find the radical alterations of the Yuuzhan Vong whereupon the tables were turned and living things overran great cities to be equally unjust and immoral.”

“They are missing the point, the pivotal test upon which this ethical question rests. The question is not to whether it is wrong to destroy something with living things or artificial ones. The question is: does the greater galaxy benefit from this action? Individual lives are meaningless compared to the overwhelming force of greater benefit. When I speak of greater benefit, I insinuate to the galaxy as a whole, not just its inhabitants. We must consider the environment as an independent factor in weighing our decisions. It is the epitome of selfishness to blatantly corrode and pollute and mutate so that a few billion sentients—an insignificant number in the greater scheme—can live a couple years longer.”

“We must retrain our minds to think not of our own benefit, but of how the galaxy’s resources may be best distributed. Does it serve the welfare of all to pour billions of hours of research and trillions of credits into, say, prolonged treatment for the terminally ill? Does it serve the welfare of all to deliver repeated aid to colonists too stupid to settle on a planet that will not support their lives at the cost of resources that could have helped others? I challenge you, my enlightened listeners, to carefully weigh the value of each decision you make and to understand that to you, those on the cutting edge of all advances and decisions pertaining to life, is thrust the weighty responsibility of comprehending and choosing the many over the few, the galaxy over a few individuals. It is up to you to pass this understanding along to others, to ignore those who would haphazardly risk disproportionate lives and resources to save some arbitrarily selected few from the natural course of things.”

The sound of a solitary person persistently clapping stopped the doctor in midspeech. He searched around for the offender and quickly found her, a Wroonian woman clad in black who had risen from her seat and was advancing toward the stage. He glared down at the offender as the rest of the audience sat in stunned silence.

“And speaking of not disrupting the priorities of the many,” he remarked acerbically.

She seemed unperturbed and continued, though her clapping stopped.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

“You are all beings of science, all of you,” she said smoothly, her voice somehow resonating throughout the chamber without any amplification. “I applaud your work, Doctor, and I am sure that your address would amply illustrate your point—it was well-spoken. But perhaps, something else would showcase your message in a manner that would affect your audience more readily.”

“I will not stand for this interruption,” Doctor Jungplutt fumed. “Cease this insolence.”

She gave him a thin, cold smile as nobody moved to stop her.

“I don’t think so, Doctor. We have an experiment to conduct.”

“Experiment? What experiment?” he demanded.

“One that will verify the truth of what you have said here,” she answered. “Of whether or not it is preferable to always choose for the concerns of the greater galaxy.”

She held up a hand and the doctor fell silent as she walked up to the stage. In her hand was a small metallic canister. She pressed a button and a nearly invisible mist began to disseminate from it, propelled by an aerosol. From around various corners of the room, other clouds of mist began to emerge from the tables where the audience was seated.

“What have you done?” he asked her insistently.

“My experiment, Doctor,” she replied. “I have just dispensed a lethal airborne virus that will infect everyone in this room but me within one minute. There is no cure and the virus has a 100% mortality rate. In fact, it will kill everyone in this room in a horrific fashion. None of you will survive.”

The crowd stared at her, mouths agape in horror.

“Now, this room is equipped with a protective anti-contagion system that will prevent any of the pathogens from escaping into the greater city of Coruscant if activated to seal off the convention center, saving countless trillions of lives. There is a containment field over this room that I’ve established, but its power cells will only last another two minutes. That is how long you have to activate the quarantine system. I will tell you this: concentrated heat from, say, a plasma bomb, will destroy the viruses. It is up to each of you whether you stay here and accept your death nobly and selflessly, or whether you attempt to panic, leave, or seek medical help, actions which will only amplify the deaths a millionfold. I have no desire to see millions die—their lives are in your hands. The choice is yours.”

The Wroonian woman turned to the doctor.

“Let’s see if you believe what you espouse, Doctor. How about that greater benefit now?”

She gave the crowd a wicked, triumphant smile, threw the canister onto the ground, and then disappeared as a luma-grenade detonated in a blinding flash of light. As if a trigger for a sudden explosion, the impact threw the room into a sudden cacophony as three thousand individuals broke into utter pandemonium.


 * Yanibar

Selu Kraen sat in his chair in his office, looking over the latest reports on the evacuation schedule. His desk was littered with datacards and holodocs that detailed the progress that Yanibar was making in its mammoth evacuation effort, an effort forced on them by Yuuzhan Vong sabotage during the war eight years earlier. The aliens had used one of their dovin basal creatures to manipulate the orbit of Yorbinal, one of Yanibar’s moons, which had tugged it dangerously close. The altered orbit had caused increasingly destructive groundquakes and tsunamis, to the point where a full quarter of the Yanibar settlement was uninhabitable and had been evacuated, including the city of Saqua and all the residents along the coast. Now his brother Sarth’s company, Kraechar Arms, was racing to produce enough evacuation ships to carry the remaining populace that hadn’t abandoned the world already.

The rampant devastation had broken Selu’s heart. He had led the founders of the Yanibar refuge to this basin over fifty years earlier in his youth as a Jedi on the run during the rise of the Empire. He had built it into a place for those who served the light side of the Force to live in exile from the Empire’s wrath and it had grown and prospered. For over fifty years, he had labored to defend it as the head of the Yanibar Guard, which had grown into a strong fighting force for a remote world in Wild Space, and had fought against the Empire, the Zann Consortium, the Saraswan, and the Yuuzhan Vong. And now it was coming to an end. His people were forced to live in increasingly hazardous conditions until they could escape, fleeing known space for a distant, isolated world called Atlaradis, that his wife Milya and sister-in-law, Cassi Trealus Kraen had been led to during the Yuuzhan Vong War. Selu could only hope that this new world would be a more hospitable and safer haven than Yanibar had been. As much as he had wrestled with the harsh climate of Yanibar, Selu knew that leaving the only home he had known for fifty years would be difficult, even for a Jedi Master.

He glanced around the office, taking in the few decorations. There were several award plaques, models of Yanibar Guard ships and vehicles mounted to the wall, shelves containing datacards, and a large supply closet where he kept some of his personal effects. Several holographs of his family hovered on the wall opposite his desk so he could easily see them. His desk dominated the room, with a window off to the side, a tactical command display on the other side, and two chairs near the sole entrance into the room. The sensation of an approaching presence had distracted him from his reading and he looked up expectantly at the door, toggling a control on his desk to open it just as the other person approached.

Selu’s innate Force senses had told him already that it was Milya long before she reached his office. She entered, a lithe woman nearly as old as he was. Her once-auburn hair was now silver-gray and her face was lined from years of hard living and stress, but the same vigor that had burned in her eyes on the day he had first met her as a down-and-out spacer on New Holstice was still there. However, the lines on her forehead were amplified as her brow was furrowed in a look of deep concern. Selu immediately knew something was wrong as Milya wordlessly crossed the room and planted a datacard on his desk.

“She’s surfaced,” Milya said flatly.

The color drained from Selu’s face.

“I didn’t sense anything,” he said.

“I did, just before it happened,” Milya answered. “About four hours ago. We just got the preliminary report from one of our operatives.”

Selu was not surprised. Milya’s particular Force talents had always trended toward precognition and foresight, which had served her well in her decades-long role as Director of Yanibar Guard Intelligence.

“Before what happened?” Selu asked.

“Read the report,” she told him quietly.

“That bad?” he asked, eyebrow arching with worry at what could so discomfit a Jedi and intelligence officer as seasoned as Milya.

“Worse.”

2
Two black StealthX starfighters roared through space towards the icy planet of Belsavis. Though they resembled the famous X-wing starfighters that had played such a large role in the war against the Empire nearly forty years earlier, these were a newer model. They retained the same basic ship design: pointed nose, four engines, and X-shaped S-foils that gave the craft its name, but these fighters were sleeker, more streamlined, and slightly smaller, with almost imperceptible ion exhaust. More importantly, they were nearly invisible to sensors as long as they weren’t firing proton torpedoes or communicating with other craft. That latter restriction made their use more or less impractical, unless one was a Jedi who could communicate with other Jedi via the Force. Which both of the pilots were.

The lead fighter was flown by Jaina Solo, Jedi Knight and an ace pilot thirty years of age with at least five times as many kills. Lanky and dark-haired, her looks were a mix of her father, the famous Corellian rogue Han Solo, and her mother, Princess Leia Organa Solo of Alderaan. However, aside from the considerable Force talent that she’d obtained from her mother’s side of the family, Jaina’s aptitudes were more in line with her father. Like Han, she had an uncanny piloting ability, a knack for machinery and mechanical work, a dislike for anything resembling diplomacy or formality, and very few negotiating skills other than a wide and colorful repertoire of Corellian profanity and a low tolerance for political intrigue.

Her wingman was a tall Human Jedi named Zekk about her age. More soft-spoken and rules-bound than Jaina, Zekk had known Jaina for years and had largely been content to follow her lead for most of them. A brush with the dark side in his youth had left him wary of ever falling into that trap again, while Jaina was known for her impulsiveness and quick temper. There had, at times, been a quiet attraction between the two of them, one that had intensified after that Killik incident. Being joined into an alien hive-mind had left deep impressions on both of them and the memory wasn’t that distant even three years after the fact. The two Jedi had a mental link that was stronger than that between most Jedi who weren’t related or married, which had served them well. As such, they were often assigned together when Master Skywalker sent Jedi Knights out on missions.

At the moment, the lack of communication through the comm channels was also to Jaina’s liking. On a whim, she’d had her R9 unit, Sneaker, blare the latest compilation from Galactic Rejects through her audio system and the upbeat music filled the confined cockpit.

Listening to music on a mission? Zekk sent her through their mental link.

The two could practically hear one another’s thoughts, but for the sake of some privacy, restricted their mental hearing to only what the other wanted them to hear.

It’s great stuff, Jaina replied mentally. Anyway, I’m not even sure why we’re out here.

If Jaina could have seen his face through the tinted canopy, she would have sworn his eyes were rolling.

''Belsavis is an important trading world. Chief of State Omas asked Master Skywalker to send a couple Jedi after losing contact with the Belsavans about a week ago. That’s why we’re here, remember?'' Zekk thought reprovingly.

''Spare me the briefing again, I heard it the first time, and the second version I got from my parents. For an important trading world, it’s also fairly low-tech, out of the way, and sparsely populated,'' Jaina thought back. ''Could be just a broken transmitter or a storm or something. You don’t need Jedi to check on that.''

It might be, came Zekk’s reluctant mental thought. Except for this one thing.

Don’t even go there, Jaina sent back through the link.

What? Zekk asked.

Don’t you even think about having a bad feeling about this, Jaina replied mentally.

''Okay. I won’t,'' Zekk replied, but something in the “tone” of his reply made Jaina feel vaguely discomfited. Do you sense that?

Jaina reached out with her mental senses and sensed a massive roiling disturbance. It reeked of the dark side and she recoiled instinctively.

I do, she confirmed, flipping off the music. ''Coming from the direction of the main settlement. Let’s take a quiet look first.''

She felt his mental assent and the two StealthXs punched through the atmosphere of Belsavis, cruising high above the glaciers that covered most of the planet save for the few settlements nestled in canyons warmed by thermal vents in the planet’s crust. She felt the hair on the back of her neck rise, a sign that her father had told her meant she was being watched, but a check of her formidable Force senses told him that there was no one nearby except Zekk. Moreover, StealthXs were all but invisible to any kind of sensor—the expensive fighters had been specifically designed for that purpose—so she flicked on her shields and tried to relax and focus on the descent.

Her confidence in the stealthiness of her craft was abruptly shaken when the explosions erupted around her. The first hit came as a complete surprise as it detonated on her rear shields.

“What the—?!” Jaina swore, reflexively throwing her craft in a dizzying spin as the cockpit alarms blared.

A series of explosions blossomed around her craft as she and Zekk split off to avoid them. Sneaker wailed something about how badly they were hit, but she ignored it, focusing on survival. Neither her sensors nor her Force senses were detecting their pursuer, so only the last-minute warnings she got through the Force saved her. She bit back a curse as she realized that her rear shields were already down. StealthXs were great at getting into places undetected, but the design sacrificed survivability for stealthiness.

You okay? Zekk sent through their mental link even as he juked through his own pattern of explosions.

Staying alive, she sent back. Kinda busy.

Whoever they were, they not only could penetrate the StealthX disguise, but were also capable of firing on them without revealing themselves. She still wasn’t sensing any hostile intent and her scanners were clear. Not good. Since her stealth had already been compromised, Jaina reached for the comm board, but wasn’t incredibly surprised to find that all signals were being jammed. She tried to send out a mental message to her uncle, Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker, but a wave of the dark side clamped down on her, stifling her senses. She felt it as a rancid taste in her mouth that stifled her concentration, a distasteful perception that she had hoped to never to feel again.

Rolling her StealthX, Jaina could do little but jink and dodge as explosions buffeted her craft, tearing away little pieces of the StealthX at a time. Judging by the explosive pattern, it was some type of high-speed concussion missile, and most of them seemed to be aimed at her, as Zekk wasn’t nearly getting as torn up as she was, and Jaina could fly circles around him any day. She was even more surprised that one, their attackers had the audacity to attack Jedi, and two, that her piloting and Force skills hadn’t already allowed to detect and defeat the marauders. Both were puzzles that she didn’t have time to unravel—first she had to survive.

High overhead, four more starfighters rapidly closed on the scene. These weren’t StealthXs, nor were they a type flown by the Galactic Alliance or any of its allies. The double-prong nosed fighters bore markings would have been unfamiliar to either Jaina or Zekk, had they been able to see them. They were flown by pilots of the Yanibar Guard. For years, the refuge had been kept a closely-guarded secret, its inhabitants and the Yanibar Guard defending it unknown to the galaxy. However, stealth was not a priority now for the four fighters closing in on the two beleaguered Jedi.

“Three, Two, close it up,” ordered their leader.

He was human also, in his mid-thirties, and his name was Ryion Kraen, the son of Selusda and Milya Kraen, two of the founders of the Yanibar refuge. He’d inherited his parents’ Force-strength and even surpassed them in some regards, as he’d demonstrated on Chalacta during the Yuuzhan Vong War. Trained not only in the ways of the Jedi but in multiple Force traditions, Ryion had risen through the ranks to become the commander of a team of Elite Guardians, a highly-skilled organization of Force-sensitive commandos in the Yanibar Guard. He controlled his fighter—an indigenous design called the Maelstrom—with the calm steadiness of a combat veteran, as did the other three members of his team. Two was Qedai Sherum, a Lethan Twi’lek female, while Three was Zeyn Kraen, his step-cousin. He’d grown up with both of them, fought alongside them, and served alongside them for years. The fourth member of his team—a constantly changing position ever since late in the Vong War—was Jutka Dsitra, a heavily tattooed Falleen female. She was younger, but was also skilled, if a bit headstrong. Ryion wasn’t as comfortable with her as he was with the other two, but she’d served well in the past seven months, though her heavy accent had taken some getting used to. Still, she knew how to handle a Maelstrom.

“Copy that,” Qedai replied.

“Intercept in thirty seconds,” Zeyn interjected coolly. “Lead, my sensor board is clear.”

“I know,” Ryion said. “They’re cloaked.”

“Diss impossible to firre vwhile cloaked, yes?” Jutka asked.

“Normally, yes,” Ryion replied. “Unless my father’s right and it’s Ariada. She knows how to generate Force cocoons.”

“Wonderful,” Qedai answered. “We’re coming into firing range soon. Lead, I hope you can see through her trickery, or we’ll be sitting banthas.”

Ryion strained, trying to adjust his own Force senses to see through the cocoons that had to be shielding the attacking craft. The technique was not one he used often, and whereas his father would have had no difficulty discerning the cocoons, Ryion could only get glimpses.

“There’s eight of them, some kind of fighter,” he said. “There’s a larger ship in the distance, I think. They’re breaking towards us.”

Suddenly, the four Maelstroms were buffeted by explosions as six of the assailants broke away from the Jedi to intercept them.

“Take evasive action,” Ryion ordered crisply, putting his words into action by sharply rolling his fighter and climbing to evade the oncoming missiles. “Try to draw their fire away from the Jedi.”

“And not die,” Qedai added.

Ryion had no time to reply; he was too busy dodging the smoky orange starbursts of missile detonations while keeping a sharp eye on his diminishing shields.

“Derr not showing demselvesss,” hissed Jutka.

“I know,” Ryion said. “I can’t track them either.”

“I sure hope you have a plan,” Qedai put in worriedly.

“Working on it,” Ryion answered through gritted teeth, jettisoning a series of countermeasure decoys.

He ducked his fighter just as the distinctive contrail of a concussion missile sailed over his head, though the missile itself was invisible. This mission was turning out to be far worse than his most pessimistic projections had been.

Ryion caught a glimpse of a hostile craft and squeezed the trigger, sending purple quad-linked laser cannon bolts out. He was rewarded to see them hit, but the bolts impacted off shields. He tried to fire again, but his craft shuddered again from another near-impact, disrupting his concentration and throwing off his cocoon-piercing Force sight. He looked at his damage readouts and saw that many of them were blinking red. Apparently, the few seconds he had taken to concentrate and fire had cost him considerably in the hull integrity department. Suddenly, a friendly blip disappeared from his sensor screen. He glanced over his shoulder to see that Jutka’s fighter had disappeared into a ball of burning gas and metal shrapnel. There was no sign of an ejection beacon. A flash of pain and loss went through him as he sensed her passing in the Force and he mentally kicked himself. Their overconfidence and haste in charging to help had just cost them dearly, but he didn’t have time to mourn Jutka at the moment. Their rescue mission was turning into a deadly ambush. There were only eight hostile craft, and yet they were shredding both his flight and the Jedi with relative ease. Ariada really had outdone herself with this little trap of hers. At this rate, they were not going to survive.

Ryion caught a glimpse of one of the hostile fighters’ silhouette as it roared past him. The vehicle was a TIE Defender, one of the Empire’s most formidable craft and lacking the design flaws that characterized most of the TIE series. He winced as it made an impossibly sharp turn; obviously it had been upgraded and was flown by a skilled pilot. Possibly even equipped with a cloaking device. They were outclassed and outnumbered and the presence of a larger ship only made the situation worse. Flight was their only option.

“Close up around the Jedi,” he said. “Get their attention. Escort them back to space.”

“Copy that,” Zeyn replied, while Qedai merely clicked her comlink in reply.

The three Maelstroms, spitting countermeasures behind them, swooped down towards the Jedi StealthXs, but though they could sense the Jedi ships and see the explosions around their craft, they could not communicate with them.

“Gotta in touch with ‘em, Lead,” Zeyn replied. “We don’t know their frequencies and we can’t afford eavesdroppers.”

“Working on it,” Ryion said.

“I wish he would stop saying that,” Qedai muttered. “It makes me nervous.”

Ryion ignored her and concentrated on the Force, trying to form mental words and direct them to the two Jedi up ahead of him.

Head for space, he thought. ''We’ll cover you. ''

To his relief, the Jedi heard him. One of them, a female, he thought, replied to his tentative mental message.

Who are you?

Never mind that, he thought in reply. ''They’re trying to kill you and we’re not. Can we discuss this later?''

Good enough for me, Ryion sensed the other Jedi, a male, communicate through the link.

With the three sturdier Maelstroms closing up around the two StealthXs to protect them with their overlapping shields, they pointed their noses skyward and climbed towards space away from the larger ship, dodging and releasing the last of their countermeasures along the way. Their pursuers had seemingly run out of missiles, but they still had ion cannons and lasers with which to fire at them. Ryion filed away as much sensor data as he could on the beams for future analysis; hopefully, it would tell them how well their opposition was armed.

Then, a missile detonated right between Ryion and one of the StealthXs. The explosion slapped Ryion’s fighter around viciously, but he managed to keep control over his damaged craft. However, the StealthX had not been so lucky. The entire port side seemed to fly apart and the StealthX began falling, trailing smoke from its stricken side.

Jaina! The male Jedi’s voice echoed through his mental link. He started to bank his StealthX down towards her ailing craft.

Don’t, Ryion warned him as sternly as he could. You have to head towards space.

She’s still alive, the other argued. I can’t just leave her!

You don’t stand a chance, and my pilots can’t cover you against our attackers long enough for you to rescue her, Ryion replied.

As if to prove his point, a pair of laser bolts clipped the strike foil of the remaining Jedi’s StealthX, knocking off its laser cannon.

You have to come with us, get help, Ryion continued thinking. ''The Jedi have to be warned of this threat! ''

''You do it, then! ''

The other Jedi was clearly irrational, and was about to do something rash. Ryion glanced out of his cockpit at the falling StealthX. It was out of control, spinning wildly. He sensed that the pilot was still alive, but unconscious. She’d be lucky to survive the landing. In the meantime, this other Jedi was trying to get them killed. More laserfire flashed by his canopy as the TIE Defenders closed, reinforcing the urgency of the situation.

Ryion sighed.

I’ll go after her, he thought. ''I know a trick or two that might let us hide until you come back with help. ''

It should be me! the other Jedi thought. She’s my partner.

Ryion was unimpressed, particularly with the fact that the Jedi was wasting his time.

''The only way for you both to survive, is for you to go with my pilots, head towards space, and escape. I’ll do what I can.''

With that, he closed off their mental link and took a deep breath.

“Two, I’m going to need your cargo pod,” he said.

Then, he armed the self-destruct on his Maelstrom, released the cargo pod, and blew the canopy seals. Surrounding himself in a Force cocoon of his own, Ryion melted out of sight of sensors, eyes, and even the Force as he launched himself into the freestream. His fighter had been traveling at well over 3,000 kilometers per hour and Ryion now found himself hurtling through the air at roughly the same speed. It was incredibly cold and incredibly fast, whipping him one way and then another. He tried to armor his body with the Force as he tore through the sky. His insulated flight suit felt paper thin and Ryion felt like a plaything in the hands of the rushing wind. His altimeter before he’d ejected had shown an altitude of twenty klicks up. It was a long way to fall.

Streamlining his body to speed up his descent, he used his feet to steer him towards the stricken StealthX. He took care to avoid the plume of smoke trailing from its stern. The wind howled in his ears and he was sure his eyes would have been sucked out of his head if it hadn’t been for his fully-enclosed flight helmet. Pieces of the StealthX flew off, heading back towards him. Ryion dodged each and every one of the shards—at these velocities, even a piece the size of his fingernail would go straight through him. Slowly, he crept up on the plummeting fighter, meter by painstaking meter as they both fell towards the white glaciers of Belsavis.

Finally, Ryion reached the ruined fighter. Grasping onto its stern with both hands, he voice-activated his repulsorpack. Immediately the device started trying to arrest his fall, nearly jerking him loose of the fighter. The StealthX’s descent slowed, but not appreciably. The device was designed to slow one person’s fall safely, not an entire fighter’s. Ryion glanced at the altimeter in his helmet’s heads-up display. They were at two thousand meters and falling way too fast. He had to do something, or the StealthX was going to impact into a glacier at 1,000 kilometers per hour.

Ryion cranked up the audio output of his helmet, channeling the output to a pair of external speakers.

“You! Droid! Can you hear me?” he asked, dropping his Force cocoon as he was not sure if it would understand the message through the protective bubble.

The R9 whistled and tootled in reply, but Ryion couldn’t hear it through the roaring wind. However, the spinning of its dome was enough to convince him. It was apparently wasn’t too perturbed by the sudden appearance of a pilot flying through the air.

“Re-route all power to repulsors,” Ryion shouted. “Slow this thing down!”

YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHOUT.

Ryion started as the text began scrolling across his helmet viewscreen. The R9 must have broadcasted the message on an open frequency using a short databurst transmission. Ryion complied, turning down the audio on his output.

“Okay, the repulsors, please?” he asked.

THEY ARE OFFLINE, the droid replied.

“Use ion engines, then,” Ryion instructed. “Just slow this thing down.”

COMPLYING.

Ryion heard the firing of the engines and felt the StealthX’s descent slow somewhat. He breathed a momentary sigh of relief even as he continued to try and retard its plunge. Then he realized he was broadcasting in the open—everyone would be able to hear him.

“Can they hear us?” he asked the droid.

NO. I HAVE GARBLED THE TRANSMISSION BY LAYERING IT WITH GIBBERISH, the droid replied. ONLY SENSORS WITHIN THREE METERS OF ME CAN HEAR US.

“Good,” Ryion said, marveling at the droid’s cleverness. “Pitch the craft at an angle as close to perpendicular to the ground as you can, then eject as soon you can do so safely.”

UNDERSTOOD.

With that, Ryion checked his altimeter. Four hundred meters. He re-immersed himself into the Force cocoon and let go of the StealthX, allowing his repulsorpack take control over his descent. He was still falling quite fast and at first, he feared that he had waited too long in releasing the ship. He watched as the StealthX continued to plummet, saw the R9 eject and fly off at an altitude of one hundred meters, and could only wince as the StealthX plowed into the ground.

Thankfully, it did not explode upon impact and was roughly level with the ground when it hit. Sliding across the ground, shedding debris, the fighter scraped across a sloped patch of glacier in a direction about thirty degrees off-center from its nose. Unfortunately, that sloped ice led to a massive crevasse in the ice, and the StealthX still had more than enough momentum to carry it into it.

Ryion hit the ground just before the StealthX impacted, knees bent, just like he’d been taught. The force of the landing knocked the wind out of him and he tumbled end over end. Gasping for breath against the icy air, he staggered to his feet and raced after the sliding StealthX, jumping over more debris that came hurtling back towards him. The Force empowered him, making him faster, and he leapt on top of the StealthX just it slid into the crevasse. The fighter hit with its port S-foils first, which buckled instantaneously as they smashed into the icy wall, crushing into the fuselage of the fighter. Only the hooked starboard wingtip digging into the ice was keeping the fighter from falling into the crevasse. “Kriff,” Ryion swore under his breath as he alighted and ran along the top of the StealthX towards the cockpit. He had less than two seconds before the StealthX’s starboard wingtip snapped off, dooming both him and the StealthX to an icy demise. His lightsaber flew to his hand, coming to life as the brilliant purple blade appeared out of the hilt. He sliced the canopy open without hesitation and kicked it away. Closing down the lightsaber, he reached down and pulled on the unconscious pilot. She was still strapped to the StealthX’s chair, but Ryion whipped out a vibroblade from his boot and sliced through it, not wanting to use the lightsaber in case she convulsed suddenly. Reaching under her arms from above, he had just about extracted her when the StealthX’s starboard wing shuddered.

There was a loud snap, and then the wingtip was gone, leaving the StealthX to tumble into the icy depths. As it fell, Ryion grabbed onto the Jedi with both arms and jumped, propelling himself upward with the Force. He wished the Jedi was conscious instead of being dead weight. As it was, maintaining the Force cocoon, holding onto her, jumping, and trying to stay warm against the bitter cold of Belsavis was rapidly expending his reserves of Force power, not to mention what the fall from twenty kilometers had done to him. Ryion hoped he wouldn’t have to fight against their pursuers.

In mid-air, he managed to pull the Jedi up enough to wrap his left arm around her and pull her close to him, leaving his right arm free to pull his vibroblade and jam it into the thick ice walls of the crevasse. Doing so wrenched their flight to a halt, though the strain on his right shoulder was incredible. They were safe, for now—until his arm tired. He could hardly get them out of there while holding her and his Force powers were far too depleted to try levitation. Then, motion above his head caught his attention. Ryion glanced up to see the Jedi’s R9 droid floating down using a pair of booster rockets protruding from its two legs. It whistled and chirped shrilly at him, as if to blame him for their predicament.

“We can talk about it later,” Ryion replied. “I need you to do something for me.”

The droid came to a hover besides him and whirred expectantly.

“In my right pants pocket, there is a shaped charge,” Ryion said. “Take it out and set it prong-side into the ice wall right over there.”

Obediently, the astromech droid retrieved the charge from his pocket using its grabbing arm. Then, it jetted over to where Ryion had indicated and planted the charge into the ice.

“Good,” Ryion said. “Now, you might want to move. . .”

The droid floated away from the explosive and as soon it was clear, Ryion mentally activated its detonator. The explosion blew a two-meter deep semispherical impression into the solid ice. Close enough. With the help of the droid’s grabbing arm, Ryion deposited the still-unconscious Jedi pilot into the crude ice cave. He still had need of haste, though, because he could feel the subzero temperature’s devastating effects already start to take over. His hands were already numbing through his thin flight gloves. Now that the Jedi was safe for now, Ryion painstakingly climbed up and hauled himself over the edge of the crevasse. He squinted upward as his helmet beacons located the two cargo pods that had been jettisoned from the Maelstroms. Running over to them, he pulled each one from its landing place, then hauled it back to the crevasse. Lowering himself over the side into his crude cave again, he pulled out his lightsaber. Standing over the rapidly-freezing Jedi pilot, he lit it and went to work while the R9 stood behind him and watched him.


 * Coruscant, two days later

Selusda Kraen stared at the imposing edifice of the Jedi Temple that had been rebuilt on Coruscant after its retaking by the Galactic Alliance in the Yuuzhan Vong War. It was not as he remembered it. The five towers that had stretched skyward from the blocky structure he had known in his youth as a Jedi Padawan were gone or hidden away. The entire structure was encased in a large gleaming pyramid that sprouted smaller pyramids or smaller blockier substructures. During the daytime, the structure no doubt gleamed and reflected the light from Coruscant’s sun. Now, at night, the temple seemed solemn and foreboding. The stark contrast between this building and the Jedi Temple he had grown up in served as a reminder that this wasn’t his home.

He squinted at the pyramids, trying to see through the polished surface to no avail. The shape, reminiscent of that used in Sith holocrons, sent a chill down his spine and he wondered if he was doing the right thing. For years after the galaxy had become acquainted with Luke Skywalker and his New Jedi Order, Selu had advocated that the Yanibar refuge remain concealed from them. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate that Skywalker had overthrown the Emperor and Darth Vader—he did, knowing it was something he never could have been strong enough to do—but he distrusted him nevertheless. Selu had known Anakin Skywalker during the Clone Wars and had been at the Jedi Temple when the fallen Skywalker, backed by a legion of clone troopers, had slaughtered every single Jedi in his path. Memories of that day were one of the reasons Selu sometimes rued his eidetic memory—and that was why he had refused to disclose the existence of Yanibar’s collected Force-users, gathered carefully from the Jedi, Matukai, Zeison Sha, Jal Shey, and Gray Paladin sects, to Skywalker or his New Jedi Order. The destruction of Carida by one of Skywalker’s Jedi and the temporary fall of the Jedi Master to the dark side had only served to prove the veracity of his suspicions. He had met Luke Skywalker once, briefly and under an alias, but only to broker an agreement between Skywalker and ostensibly the Zeison Sha that had been brought about by his son Ryion. Yet now here he was, about to walk into the Jedi Temple and ask to speak to Skywalker, to reveal to him the nature of the Yanibar refuge, and to warn him about the threat of Ariada. To help the Jedi Order against somebody he had once thought of like an adopted daughter.

Selu knew that what he was doing would be fiercely condemned by Yanibar’s Ruling Council—he was already defying several of their resolutions by even being here and sending Ryion’s team to Belsavis. He also knew that his own status as a council member, along with Milya’s, would not be enough to protect them from severe repercussions in the event they returned to Yanibar successful. The dire straits of the Yanibar refuge due to the impending ecological and geological disaster had caused the council, now united against him and Milya after their aggressive interference in the Yuuzhan Vong War had cost the lives of thousands of Yanibar Guardsmen and left Yanibar open to the attack that had doomed Yanibar, to pass a resolution forbidding any major offworld activity, specifically singling out all high-ranking Force-users to stay in the sector.

However, the thought that kept him going was that he knew what Ariada was capable of. It was Ariada who had led both Dark Jedi and the Yuuzhan Vong to Yanibar to attack the world she had once called home. It was Ariada who escaped from a prison on Yanibar specifically designed to hold Force-users. It was Ariada whom Selu himself had helped train. He knew her strengths, her skills, and how she thought. If she had surfaced now to cause a string of terrorist attacks, Selu knew it was only the beginning of something far more insidious. She had to be stopped and without access to the resources of the Yanibar Guard, Selu knew he would have to approach the Jedi and warn them, for they were the only ones with the skills and wherewithal to stop the menace she posed.

His mind made up on the matter, he strode forward purposefully towards the Jedi Temple. After all these years, Coruscant hadn’t changed too much even after countless wars and occupations. Thousands of pedestrians moved along walkways between towering starscrapers as endless streams of speeders and ships flew overhead. The people around him paid him little attention. To them, he was just another human, and a rather aged one at that, judging by his weathered skin and his gray hair and goatee that had once been black. His clothing was far from ostentatious, just simple dark gray pants, shirt, and a brown leather vest that were common attire for a spacer. The hooded gray cloak he wore over that was a departure from that style, but nothing conspicuous.

Selu’s brow knitted with concentration as he made his way through the crowd of pedestrians and across the Processional Way that led up to the pyramidal structure. He needed to do this, and do it quickly, before he lost his nerve. His wife and his trusted right-hand, the Noghri warrior Morgedh clan Kel’nerh, and sister-in-law Cassi Trealus Kraen were out looking for Ariada now, and the sooner he approached the Jedi, the sooner he would be able to help them.

The ranks of the passers-by thinned as he reached the end of the Processional Way where it connected with the Jedi Temple. Due to innate suspicion of the Jedi or just general lack of need to be in close proximity, there were fewer people close to the structure, which suited him. It had been over fifteen years since he had been on Coruscant, and the less crowded expanses of Yanibar were a far cry from the ecumenopolis of the galactic capital. Their sensations in the Force permeated the air around him and while he was able to filter out any information he didn’t need from his senses, it was somewhat taxing after not having to do so for so many years.

As Selu started up the broad steps leading to the main entrance of the pyramid, someone called out to him.

“Should you be going there?” a deep voice rumbled.

Selu looked over his shoulder to see a massive Herglic standing a few meters behind him, its expansive body swathed and shrouded in an expansive cloak.

“There are Jedi in there, dangerous ones,” the Herglic warned him. “Do you really want to approach them? Just leave them be and everything will be fine.”

Instinctively, Selu knew something was wrong. He couldn’t sense the Herglic in the Force at all, and one of its hands wasn’t visible. Knowing a threat when he heard one, he went for his lightsaber, but the Herglic saw the movement and rushed forward.

Selu drew his weapon, igniting the emerald green blade with a snap-hiss as the Herglic rushed him, but suddenly the Force left him as his access to it was cut off. Selu realized the Herglic must have a Force-blocking ysalamiri creature on its person—the Yanibar refuge was quite familiar with the creatures—but the momentary disorientation and surprise was too much. Slowed and without the prized precognition that gave the Jedi much of their fighting edge, Selu was too slow to intercept the short-barreled pistol clutched in the Herglic’s meaty hand. It fired with a whirr-chirp that seemed strangely familiar and though he tried to twist out of the way, without the Force, his reflexes were too slow. The round hit him on the right side just under the rib cage and punched completely through him in a bloody spray. A millisecond too late, Selu’s lightsaber slashed through the barrel of the Herglic’s weapon even as he fell backward. Suddenly, a plasteel container flew through the air over Selu’s head to slam into the Herglic and he heard another lightsaber ignite.

“Stop right there!” a woman shouted.

The Herglic betrayed no fear or surprise, but instead rolled a pair of canisters onto the ground, turned and ran. As soon as the Force returned to him in a rush, Selu tried to telekinetically hurl the canisters away, but to no avail. Recognizing them as grenades, he pushed them as far away as he could before closing his eyes. The devices were thankfully far enough away that he was clear of the impact, but the last Selu saw of the Herglic was the beefy alien leaping over the side of the Processional Way, presumably to his demise.

Now able to draw on the Force, yet severely weakened by the trauma of the wound, he summoned the strength to rise from the ground. He had to get inside the Jedi Temple, to warn Luke Skywalker, in case there were more assassination attempts or in case he didn’t survive the injury. Selu coughed and flecks of blood sprayed from his mouth, signs of a punctured lung. Wincing and clutching his wound, he staggered towards the entrance, lightsaber still loosely in hand but not lit.

“Whoa, there, where do you think you’re going?” asked the female Jedi who had come to his aid earlier.

She was middle-aged and blonde-haired, wearing Jedi robes. She too still held her lightsaber in hand but had deactivated its blade.

“Must. . . get. . . inside,” Selu bit out.

Gathering more Force energy to himself, he built up momentum, increasing his pace despite the blood seeping from the wound.

“You’re shot!” she exclaimed. “Let me get you help.”

Selu brushed past her, ignoring her concern. Knowing that he was in danger, he couldn’t allow anything to delay his mission, even at the cost of his health.

“Hey!” she shouted, catching up to him. “We’ll get you inside, then. . .”

Selu shook his head.

“No time,” he gasped. “Must warn. . . the Jedi. Must see. . . Skywalker.”

“After we get you to the infirmary,” she insisted. “You’re badly wounded.”

“You. . . must stop her. . .” Selu wheezed as he collapsed to the ground, blood spurting through the hand clamped over the wound. “Do what I couldn’t.”

“You’re going to be fine,” the Jedi assured him. “What is your name?”

The world was beginning to go black for Selu, the loss of blood finally overcoming him, but he managed to rasp out the last few words before passing out. His true name. A name he had never told to anyone not associated with the Yanibar refuge since its inception.

“Selusda Kraen. . . Jedi Knight. . . of the Republic.”


 * Elsewhere on Coruscant

Morgedh clan Kel’nerh stood in the front room of the hotel, pacing back and forth. Though it was late, the diminutive Noghri warrior could not sleep. In the other room, Milya and Cassi had retired for the evening, deciding to sleep until Selu reported in with the results of his mission to the Jedi Temple. They had spent the day looking for traces of Ariada and the effort had been exhausting. There had been reports of some kind of biological contamination, followed by a plasma bombing in a convention center, but Milya had been unable to glean more information; the government was keeping the matter under wraps. For her part, Cassi had been attempting to look into the death of a scientist, Dr. Dmelte Volyken, whom she had met once, to see if it was related. The fact that a tungsten-durasteel slug—an ammunition type used only by the Yanibar Guard—had been found in his body suggested that Ariada might be behind it, but Cassi’s investigations had been similarly in vain.

However, something was disturbing Morgedh, weighing heavily on his mind. In his long years as a Noghri hunter and the leader of the Yanibar Guard’s Force-using Elite Guardians, he had learned to trust his instincts, and they told him that something was amiss. He didn’t know what it was, but was keenly discomfited for some inexplicable reason. Their false identities had borne up under the standard scrutiny subject for visitors and there had been no trace of a tail or surveillance. He hadn’t sensed any hostile individuals in the Force, nor any particularly notable manifestations of the dark side. Of course, Ariada was a skilled Force-user and she knew how to conceal herself in the Force—but Morgedh had twice faced her in combat and knew she wasn’t his match. If Ariada attacked them, it would be from ambush.

Ambush. That was the word that bubbled up to his mind, setting off mental alarm bells. He looked outside again. There was no sign of anything unusual in the incessant traffic streaming through Coruscant’s skies, nor any suspicious activity in the hotel. He had planted a surveillance holocam in a recess near their door shortly after their arrival and reinforced the door. Additional sensors had been tucked away in the hallway leading up to their room. Though they were fairly far down and therefore in a shadier section of Coruscant’s multi-tiered hierarchy, a number of precautions had been instituted for their safety. He doubted they would encounter problems from any of the locals.

He frowned. Selu should have reported back now, as should Ryion and his team. Selu should have made contact with the Jedi Order and Ryion’s team should have reached Belsavis and secured the situation by now. The last he had heard from Ryion’s team two days ago, they were about to reach Belsavis. The Noghri stalked silently over to their secure portable communications uplink, checking for transmissions. Nothing. He sensed Milya behind him and turned to see her in a light jumpsuit suitable both for sleeping and yet sturdy enough in case sudden flight or action was required.

“Lady Kraen,” he greeted her. “Could you not sleep?”

“No, I thought I sensed something,” she answered, running a hand through a pile of askew hair. “It was nothing. Has either group checked in?”

“They have not,” Morgedh told her.

She sighed and shook her head.

“Of course it wouldn’t be that easy,” she bemoaned.

“Have faith,” Morgedh assured her. “Your husband and your son are strong and capable Jedi.”

She smiled faintly.

“You’re right, Morgedh. I’m just stressed and worn out. The evacuation was hard enough to deal with, but having to leave now because Ariada is stirring up trouble is an added burden I wasn’t ready for. Even if we stop her, there’s a lot of unfinished business back on Yanibar. The Ruling Council won’t easily forgive our defiance and. . . some other things as well.”

“Your daughter,” Morgedh filled in. “You are concerned about how she will choose when it comes to leaving Yanibar.”

“Pretty much,” Milya said, then she stiffened. “Did you hear something?”

“No,” Morgedh answered, his voice dropping to a whisper.

“I thought I heard something at the door,” Milya told him, producing a blaster from a satchel lying on a table. “Check the cams.”

“They’re clear,” Morgedh replied after a quick scan of the feeds.

“I’m going to take a look anyway,” Milya told him as she pulled on her utility belt with her lightsaber and vibroblade. “It’s probably nothing, but back me up in case.”

“Understood,” Morgedh said, withdrawing his own lightsaber and sliding into position behind her.

They advanced on the door, but just as Milya went to check through the spyhole, it exploded into them unexpectedly. Milya took the brunt on the impact and went flying back, slamming into Morgedh and knocking both of them to the floor. She was seemingly unconscious and so he rolled her limp form off of him as he scrambled to his feet, drawing his lightsaber to confront the armored invaders pouring in through the ruined door. They caught sight of his weapon and opened fire with the distinctive blue of stun beams. Morgedh caught the bolts on his lightsaber and, sinking into the Shien form, returned them back to his attackers, his accuracy reduced by his inexplicable inability to sense the attackers in the Force. Were they droids? To his surprise, the bolts he bounced back were stopped by the hazy glow of personalized shields. The window shattered behind him and he whirled to see a pair of grenades rolling in towards them as three more armored attackers rappelled down, opening up with their own blasters. Morgedh Force-shoved the grenades back but their timers had already mostly wound down and they detonated close enough to make his ears ring. Stun grenades. Now under attack from two directions as three attackers from the window and three from the door poured blasterfire at him, Morgedh was hard pressed as he stood over Milya to defend her. The attackers were smart and knew how to fight a Jedi, he realized, concentrating their fire not just as his center of mass, but at his limbs as well, forcing him to abandon Shien and switch to the more defensive Soresu form just to keep from being hit. A stun bolt hit his leg and he felt that limb go mostly numb. Fighting off the nerve-scrambling charge with the Force, he kept fighting even as Cassi emerged from the bedroom with her own lightsaber. Though her skills were inferior to his and Milya’s, he was grateful that she was there if only so he didn’t have to defend both in front and behind him by himself.

They stood back to back, fending off the incessant barrage of stun bolts. Now less distracted, Morgedh used the Force to hurl a table into two of the attackers at the door, tumbling them over. He was about to follow the action up with a charge when suddenly the ceiling above him and Cassi exploded downward onto them with concussive force. Morgedh, caught offguard without the Force to warn him of the assault, was knocked to the ground by the blast and the debris raining down on him. His attackers immediately closed, pumping stun blast after stun blast into all three of the incapacitated Jedi. Morgedh tried to use the Force to dispel the stunning effects so he could rise and keep fighting, but there were too many. As the attackers closed to within three meters, practically point-blank range, he felt his access to the Force dissipate. Ysalamiri? How? How had they found them? Who were their assailants?

These and other questions rippled through his mind, but before he could process them, his mental processes were torn asunder by the barrage of stun bolts that rendered him unconscious and twitching on the floor. Even after Milya, Cassi, and Morgedh were clearly incapacitated, their attackers continued to pelt them with stun blasts for some time to make sure that the Jedi truly were unconscious and would remain that way.


 * Six hours later

Dawn on Coruscant. The star of the same name peaked over the edge of the cityscape, a red orb of fire that slowly ascended into the sky. Ariada smiled as she saw it rise. The new day marked the next phase of her plan. Erasing the smile from her face, she assumed a blank look and walked over to the pair of Coruscant Security Force airspeeders manning a checkpoint.

“Excuse me,” she asked, coming alongside one of the officers silently.

The officer, a Cathar, gave her a surprised look, having obviously not detected her approach.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Are you looking for the person who bombed the Convention for Biological Advancement twelve days ago?” she inquired innocently.

Immediately, his features began to sharpen, telling Ariada that he indeed was, even if he refused to confirm it.

“That’s none of your business, unless you know something about it,” he said sternly.

“Here I am,” she said simply.

His jaw visibly dropped open. She thrust her arms forward, palm open to show she had no weapon.

“I bombed the Convention for Biological Advancement,” she told him. “I surrender myself to your custody.”

The stark, unapologetic confession got the officer’s attention. He immediately barked out a call to his comrades, who burst out of their airspeeders. They followed all the appropriate police procedures, making sure she was surrounded and covered by multiple blasters before approaching her. They restrained her wrists, quickly frisked her to check for weapons, and then carted her off into their airspeeder. Ariada sat quietly as their airspeeder was soon surrounded by a sizable convoy of CSF vehicles, escorting her to the imposing Armand Isard Detention Center, a looming tower of black synthstone surrounded by a fifteen meter wall, complete with sniper’s nests. Within an hour, she had been escorted by a large convoy of guards from the vehicle arrival area into an isolated interrogation room, shackled to a table. The requisite holoscans, retinal scans, and fingerprints were already taken and collected. A sample of her DNA was obtained from a swab. To their credit, the officers and guards were professional, giving her nothing more than the occasional nasty look or muttered curse. Throughout the entire ordeal, Ariada said nothing and maintained the blank look on her face, which no doubt confused many of the law enforcement personnel, who at least expected some kind of reaction. However, Ariada refused to give them that satisfaction, at least until the interrogator came in. She knew that many law enforcement services like to make a game of making the subject squirm in the interrogation room, alone with their crimes and their conscience, in order to soften them up. She didn’t care. She could wait.


 * Chief of State’s Suite, three hours later

“Thank you so much for meeting with me on short notice, Jedi Skywalker.”

Mara Jade Skywalker nodded amicably as she walked into the office behind the Chief of State of the Galactic Alliance, Cal Omas. The Alderaanian statesman had been ably leading the galactic government for nearly ten years now after having served in the Rebel Alliance during the Galactic Civil War and then many years as a senator and then councilor in the New Republic. His age and the strain of his job was now beginning to show in the graying of his hair and the slight stoop to his shoulders, but his voice was still strong and steady and Mara knew that he was capable of brilliant oratory when the occasion arose. Omas owed his successful ascension during the turbulent times of the Galactic Alliance to the Jedi Order and had tried his best to maintain a good working relationship. Still, it was uncommon for him to specifically ask a single member of the Jedi Order who wasn’t her husband Luke to visit him in private on short notice.

“What is this about, Chief Omas?” she asked him. “We just saw each other a few weeks ago at General Bel Iblis’s funeral, so this isn’t a social call.”

He ushered her over to a group of couches around a meeting area sunk into the floor. The politician gestured at the decanter of clear Naboo water he kept on a table, but Mara shook her head impatiently in a gesture that sent her red locks swaying.

“No thanks,” she said, turning the intense gaze of her green eyes on him. “Whatever reason you called me up here, it was urgent and important. Let’s hear it.”

“Very well,” he said, picking up a datapad.

“Twelve days ago, the Convention for Biological Advancement was attacked by a terrorist,” Omas told her. “The terrorist, apparently a Wroonian woman, seeded the complex with some kind of biological weapon.”

He passed her the datapad.

“Take a look for yourself,” he said, then added a warning. “It’s not pretty.”

Mara picked up the datapad and activated the control. A video feed, only two-dimensional, appeared on the screen. The image of a young Human scientist swelled to fill the screen. He was sweating, nervous, and panicked, but trying to keep his composure.

“I’m Doctor Kervasi. The time is nineteen minutes after infection,” he said, only a bare hint of a quiver in his voice. “We estimate symptoms should start manifesting within the next half hour. We’ve successfully pooled our resources and quarantined the building. None of us are leaving. If what our attacker said is true, we’d only be dooming more people. It was a difficult decision, but we’re going to use what time we have to left to study and research this disease as best as we can. I regret that Doctor Jungplutt isn’t the one recording this, but he grew. . . frantic and had to be restrained along with a few others.”

The transmission skipped ahead. The scientist’s visage appeared again. Now he appeared pale and pained, his eyes rolled up and back into his head involuntarily. He was struggling to keep from convulsing. It was only with great effort that he was able to speak now. Mara frowned.

“Three hoursh since infecshun. Our preliminary findings have been. . . attached,” he slurred. “Itsh a virush, an artificial one. It attacksh the victim’sh vernoush. . . nervoush sishtem.”

He paused, concentrating hard to find the next words.

“And then it doesh thish.”

He held up one hand to show a metallic growth spreading across it.

“It turnsh flesh into metal. Happening to us of all. Brain functionsh firsht to go. Then you shtart. . . changing.”

He gasped for breath, heaving as his body fought the horrific transformation being forced upon it.

“Could be Iskallonian. . . could be shomthin new. High heat destroysh it.”

The scientist spasmed uncontrollably for a few seconds, then finally managed to lurch back into view, clutching the cam desperately.

“Tell my family I loved them, that thish. . . best choice.”

Then he screamed and his voice pitched higher as he bellowed out a nonsensical chain of words.

“BEST HOICE ALL GOOD GREA-A-A-TER NOW.”

The doctor reached up with fingers that were more metal than flesh and ripped off his own jaw in a spray of blood. Clutching at his throat, he collapsed, his voice lapsing into utter gibberish as he underwent the final throes of the ravaging disease. Mara blanched, horrified by the cruelty of such a disease, much less using it on sentient civilians.

“That was the last transmission. Coruscant Security Forces received a live feed almost immediately after the attack,” Omas told her. “Based on Doctor Kervasi’s recommendation, we immediately quarantined the area. CSF was working on ways to send material and medical droids when he warned us to stay away in case of other explosives. An hour after the final message, a massive plasma bomb detonated, obliterating the complex and everyone inside. Medical and scanner droids sent inside detected no trace of the virus.”

“How many died?” Mara asked impassively, bracing herself for the answer.

“A little over three thousand,” Omas answered. “A small number compared to the destruction this planet has seen, but still. . . it was done in such a horrible fashion.”

“Does the public know?” Mara inquired.

“Yes, but not the full truth. The story they were told was that there was a hostage situation at the convention center with a possible threat of toxic chemicals to explain the medical response. The explosion was written off as a mass suicide by the attackers.”

“It was a message,” Mara concluded. “To knowingly infect people with something this virulent and then stop its spread—they weren’t out to cause casualties. They were out to send a message.”

“CSF reached a similar conclusion,” Omas told her. “However, even with their surveillance networks, they were unable to locate the terrorist.”

“You asked me here to hunt down this person,” Mara remarked. “Makes sense, given my background. If I need motivation, all I need to do is remember that video.”

Omas gave her a thin smile.

“That won’t actually be necessary,” he said. “She surrendered this morning.”

Mara’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“Surrendered?”

“She’s currently at Armand Isard,” Omas informed her. “Hasn’t spoken a single word since confessing. I was hoping you might be able to do something about that.”

He pressed a button on the datapad and the feed advanced to a recording of the interrogation. Omas passed over the datapad. A tall Bothan male was circling the table around which a petite Wroonian woman wearing black civilian clothes was shackled. There was a blank look on the woman’s face, as if she didn’t comprehend the magnitude of her atrocities. Mara leaned in closer, studying the feed.

“Why did you attack the Convention for Biological Advancement?” the Bothan asked.

No response. The Wroonian might as well have not heard him.

“What message were you trying to send?” the Bothan tried again.

“Is this live?” Mara asked.

Omas shook his head. “No, though I could arrange for that.”

“Please,” Mara told him.

The Chief of State pressed a few buttons on the datapad and in a few seconds, a livestream was piped in for Mara’s purview.

“How did you pick your target?” the Bothan asked.

The Wroonian turned to look at him, giving a response for the first time.

“The strong will fall,” she told him bluntly. “They were just the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?”

Once again, she ignored him.

“She’s not intimidated by him,” Mara observed. “She’s trying to control the interrogation by selectively answering questions.”

“I find the whole thing disturbing,” Cal Omas said. “How someone guilty of such savagery is so calm about the whole thing. It reminds me of, well—,”

“The Empire,” Mara finished for him. “I was thinking it, too.”

“What are you starting?” the Bothan pressed again. “Why?”

“You are asking the wrong questions,” the Wroonian informed him. “It is too late anyway.”

“Too late for what?” the Bothan insisted.

Mara shook her head.

“The woman has him unnerved, he’s losing her.”

“Let me make this very clear,” the Bothan informed her. “You are responsible for the deaths of three thousand people, the destruction of millions of credits of property, and at the very least, you will be put to death. If you cooperate, there’s a slim chance you’ll live out the rest of your natural life in a cell block.”

No response. The Bothan scowled.

“It’s clear you wanted attention by the way you did your attack. You have our attention. We’re listening. What do you want to say? This is your moment.”

She looked up at him.

“Now you are on the right track,” she told him. “Bring me a piece of flimsi and a writing stylus.”

The Bothan frowned, but in a few minutes returned with the desired objects, sliding them across the table to his prisoner. It took her only a few seconds to quickly scrawl something on it.

“What is this?” he demanded.

“A message,” she said. “If you act now, you can take it to the person whose name is written on there. He’ll know what it means. If you don’t act now, the message will be destroyed when I escape and those lives will be on your head.”

“Escape?” the Bothan asked incredulously. “You’re surrounded by two hundred meters of synthstone, armed guards, barriers, and stuncuffs in every direction. That’s ridiculous.”

She didn’t look the slightest bit deterred. Her original declaration had been made with the same calm assurance of someone predicting that the sun would rise the next day.

Cal Omas shifted in his seat.

“Do you think she’s serious?” he asked Mara.

“She thinks she is,” Mara replied, picking up the datapad for a closer look at the prisoner’s face.

She was intent on deciphering the subtle cues in the woman’s body language, to figure how she thought. In her many years, reading people had been one of her strengths, but this Wroonian was different. She had no body language to speak of and Mara was almost certain that this was a deliberate attempt, that the prisoner had trained herself to give off absolutely no nonverbal cues that a trained interrogator who wasn’t a Lorrdian could read.

“Will you speak with her?” Omas asked.

“Yes,” Mara answered absently, “yes, I think I should. The sooner the better.”

The Wroonian had let just one thing slip. It was a hint of a smirk, only momentary, when the Bothan’s back was turned, but it was there. Mara froze the image, trying to read volumes from the slight twitch at the corner of the Wroonian’s mouth. That was the look of a sabacc player holding a winning Idiot’s Array while baiting the rest of the table into throwing down more and more credits into the pot before laying down his cards.

“She’s playing us,” Mara realized aloud. “And we’re the idiots.”

“What?” Omas replied, confused.

Mara’s eyes widened as her danger sense triggered, the legendary Jedi precognition giving her an instant’s warning of an impending threat and just a split second to react. She leaped up, her lightsaber coming to life as a flash of light burst through the energy shield. The sturdy transparisteel of the window shattered as a projectile slammed through at hypersonic speeds. Mara pushed Omas to the ground behind the table as her lightsaber arced across its path. Surprisingly, the projectile did not deflect off the lightsaber. Not a blaster shot, then. More rounds flew through the gap. Mara stood in the path of the barrage, the Force guiding her hands as she swept the lightsaber back and forth, defending herself and Omas. Fearful of contagions being released since the terrorist attack, Mara made sure to slash each one with her lightsaber’s blue blade, trusting in its searing heat to vaporize any pathogens. In that, she was successful. However, the exploding rounds sent tiny pieces of shrapnel flying through the room like miniscule razors that bit through her clothing and into her skin. Mara stood her ground, lightsaber humming and blazing as it slashed through each incoming round, guided by the Force and propelled at superhuman speeds. Alarms howled, and then a split second later, the attack was over. All in all, Mara had been under attack for only three seconds, during which time eighteen rounds had been fired.

She remained alert, lightsaber still lit. Omas had just started to reach for his comlink and she knew security would be here momentarily.

“If you can, crawl to the doorway, Chief Omas,” she said. “Stay low. I’ll cover you.”

“Thank you,” he replied, obviously shaken.

“And once you’re safe, I’m getting to the bottom of this,” Mara promised him firmly. “You have my word.”

Omas nodded his thanks again, then braced himself to begin crawling hurriedly.

“All right, let’s go,” Mara said with a wave of her lightsaber.


 * Armand Isard Detention Center

The Bothan suddenly stormed into the interrogation room without warning, slamming the door in yet another futile attempt to intimidate her. Ariada met his glower with a baleful stare.

“You’re going to tell me where you acquired your little bioweapon and how it can be stopped,” the Bothan informed her. “We know you made it into the convention center, infected it, and escaped without being infected, or you would have manifested symptoms by now.”

Ariada ignored him once again, closing her eyes. He slammed his furred fists onto the table, hoping to startle her. Her eyes opened, but her resolve was firm. She would not speak. There was no point in wasting words with the dead. The Bothan snarled and walked over to the wall, deactivating the holocam hidden in the recess.

“It’s just you and me now,” he told her. “And I don’t think anyone’s going to care if you sustained a few injuries ‘resisting arrest.’”

Ariada gave him a mocking smile.

“Torture, is it?” she asked. “The great and mighty Galactic Alliance, emblem of justice and order, resorting to such brutal methods? Quite unethical, isn’t it? Not to mention illegal.”

The Bothan snarled and backhanded her across the face. Ariada saw it coming before it happened and turned to soften the stinging blow that nonetheless left a handprint across her cheek.

“You seem to know all our rules. Time to break a few.”

Ariada smiled again, ignoring the fresh pain evoked in her cheek from doing so.

“Ah, and here we see it, the compromising of principles. The first sign of decline in a galactic civilization.”

The Bothan glared at her.

“You might be talking, but you’re not saying a whole lot,” he said. “Spare me the philosophical hoodoo and start with the real information, or I’m going to start breaking bones.”

“Takes a real coward to attack a helpless prisoner.”

Ariada gave him no further reply, so he drew back and unloaded a punch to her nose. Ariada’s head rocked back with the blow and, licking her lips, she could taste the warm blood dribbling down.

“Do you know the funny thing about torture?” she asked lazily. “You can torment someone to the breaking point, you can bring them to the brink of death, and you can even get them to tell you what you want to hear, but in doing so, you leave your mark on them. You deform their mind as much as their body and it changes them.”

She cocked her head to one side.

“That feeling of suffering, it stays with you long after the experience is over. It reminds you that somebody held you in their grasp and dominated you until they could break your will. It does things to you.”

Ariada suddenly outstretched her fingers and the Bothan was jerked forward, his face slamming painfully into the shackles on top of the table. In a flash, Ariada used one hand to grab an ear and jerk his head up toward her. He was clearly stunned and astonished as to how he had flown into the table. Ariada turned his head so he was looking directly at the back of one of her hands, where the dark-side-focusing Ilnash crystals were implanted behind her knuckles.

“Do you want to know how this happened?” she asked him.

The Bothan tried to gasp out a reply, but being slammed into the table had driven the wind from him.

“You see, a long time ago, someone captured me. Tortured me. They broke me, and they left their mark. They turned me into an object, an easily controlled object. And when they did, I swore it never happen again.”

The Bothan’s eyes widened and he flailed feverishly. She fixed a smoldering glare on him and summoned the Force. A faint tang of ozone filled the room.

“I bet you’ve never been tortured, have you?” she asked him.

She squinted and bolts of electricity coalesced around her hands, shooting into the shackles and the helpless Bothan. He flew back, twitching, as she snapped free of the now-disabled and melted shackles.

“How. . . ?” he stammered from the floor as she rose to tower over him malevolently.

“Still asking the wrong questions,” she told him coldly. “You were helpful enough to cut off the holocam for me, so I’ll make this quick.”

She advanced on the Bothan.

“No, please,” he wheezed.

“I will show you the same mercy you would have shown me,” she informed him.

Then she drew her foot back and stomped on his neck. The distinct crack told her that his neck was broken, his trachea destroyed. He would be dead in seconds. Now, it was time for her to make her escape.

It was simple enough to tear the door out of its hinges with the Force and hurl it into the hallway. The two guards standing by it were caught completely by surprise. Ariada flattened one with the door and the other was easily dispatched with a chokehold. She relieved them of their stun batons even as alarms began blaring through the prison.

She smirked and knocked out one of the holocams with a thrown stun baton. Once she was sure the cameras couldn’t see her, she called on the Force again, fading from sight in an esoteric technique she had learned in her youth.

Two minutes later, a line of heavily-armored security troopers began advancing through the crowded corridor, blasters ready. Ariada was tempted to bypass them, but in order for her plan to truly be successful, she had to send a very loud and obvious message to the Galactic Alliance. That started with the rather confused but wary squad of goons they’d sent to contain her. She fashioned her mental grip around the door as they closed on it and then suddenly, yanked it forward. The heavy metal panel bowled over several of them even as she launched herself forward.

Leaping into the air, she materialized out of nowhere, landing a kick square into the face of the first officer and then landing between two others to lash out with her stun batons on full power. They cried out and fell even as Ariada disappeared in a black shadow. She emerged again behind another, throttling and shocking him simultaneously even as the last two troopers turned to face her. From behind her hostage, she dropped one of the stun batons and called one of the blaster pistols to her hand. Before they could react, she’d shot them both in the head. Ariada relieved the troopers of a utility belt, including its all-important passcards, and kept the blaster as well. Retrieving her stun baton, she smiled and continued forward.

The next group of guards was larger, set up in a defensive position around the corridor that led to the high-security interrogation ward. Ariada sensed them in position long before she arrived. She smiled, knowing that this group would finally be observed by holocams, unlike the others. There were nearly twenty of them, armed with blaster carbines and riot gear, an imposing force for a single prisoner, and yet not nearly enough. She waited around the corner, knowing they could probably see her on their infrared sensors.

Ariada tapped into Sith sorcery she had learned during her many years of searching for dark knowledge, and an inky black shadow flooded the corridor where the guards were conglomerated. Then, she stretched out her mind and translucent blue tendrils of power began emanating from her fingers, assuming serpentine shapes and sliding forward into the next room to seek out their foes. They encircled the confused guards, who couldn’t see even a meter beyond them, transforming into clawed shapes that drove into their heads, attacking their most primal fears. Soon, the sounds of shrieking filled the corridor as each one began hallucinating. Within seconds, they were convulsing on the floor, trapped in a horrifying manifestation of their worst nightmares.

Having dealt with that threat, Ariada strode forward confidently. Though she could have kept herself concealed, now was the time for a little showmanship. She allowed only her eyes, now glowing blue as she continued terrorizing the guards, and the glowing blue tendrils that now shaped like claws around her hands and poured downward into the floor to attack the guards, to show. She pitched her voice into an eerie harsh whisper.

“Darkness,” she hissed, injecting as much venom into her voice as possible.

To the operators of the holocam, it would appear that some kind of wraith was attacking their fellows, a nightmare creature with unstoppable power. Ariada liked the sound of that. She stalked past the ruined guards, swiping her way through the heavy blast doors with her obtained passcards. Previous slicing efforts had allowed her to download the blueprints of the building and soon she was in the corridor heading to the fenced-off max-security portion of the exercise ward. As she approached a corner, she sensed a group of guards waiting in ambush for her. Recalling what she had learned about the building’s structure, she also knew there was a power conduit near their location. Again concentrating on the Force, she focused her efforts into the squeezing the flow regulator telekinetically until it burst. The resulting explosion was enough to kill or maim all of the guards. Ariada strode through the smoke and sparks left in the aftermath of the detonation, stepping over the bodies without any regard for the carnage she was inflicting. Retrieving one of their comlinks, she listened in to the traffic and was pleased to find that they were setting up another ambush for her.

She advanced unchallenged to the exercise yard in only a few short minutes. It was a simple matter to open the door, only to find a full concave of armed and armored guards waiting for her. She could see CSF airspeeders hovering in full view and sensed the snipers in their towers. Staying out of view, she waited in case any of them fired. None so far. She pulled the comlink.

“I’m coming out,” she told them. “You would be wise to let me leave.”

“You’re going to pay for this,” a baritone voice growled. “Come on out and see what happens.”

Ariada flashed a cruel wicked smile.

“If you insist.”

Two seconds later, an argent streak shot from the Coruscant cityscape to slam into the side of the detention center and explode. A giant fireball erupted, tearing open the face of the building and raining fire and shrapnel down on the exercise yard. The building shook as it was pierced and ravaged by the concussion missile. Suddenly, the snipers in their towers began dropping, picked off by unseen projectiles, while smaller missiles nailed the CSF airspeeders in a staggering display of precision heavy weapons. It took five seconds for all four speeders and the snipers to go down. The armored officers and guards on the ground, caught in the open, were next once the greater threats had been neutralized. Explosions began erupting in the yard, taking down several at a time, while sniper fire scythed through the rest. In the maelstrom of chaos and agony, Ariada strode out untouched, not even bothering to camouflage herself. She found one officer lying on the ground, still alive but with a serious chest wound. He looked up at her through his helmet visor.

“Who. . . who are you?” she asked.

“I am what you fear most,” Ariada told him. “A sign of things to come.”

Then she kicked his head, knocking him out. Looking around the exercise yard, all she could see were bodies, debris, wrecked speeders, and small fires from the missile explosions. The few surviving officers had retreated. She saw the devastation she and her allies had wrought and it warmed her heart. She had attacked a symbol of Galactic Alliance authority and brought it to its knees almost effortlessly. Soon, they would know her justice.

She conjured the Force around her, whipping it into a whirlwind that threatened to consume her. Once it was strong enough, she jumped upward, allowing it to convey her out of the exercise yard. Mid-air, a speeder roared by and she guided herself onto it. Ariada ducked into its cabin as it broke away at high speed and disappeared into labyrinth that was Coruscant, leaving the stricken detention center behind. She had other prey to hunt.