Mission to Khar Delba

The Mission to Khar Delba was an attempt to rescue the Zeltron crime boss Ara Merquise from the clutches of the Sith Lord Vegal Ein, led by Ara's underboss, Tak Sakaros, and the Jedi Master Souv Tanake. The attempt was unsuccessful, though Vegal paid for it with his life.

Background
Since rebelling against the shadow governance of Vegal, Ara Merquise had been a thorn in the Sith Lord's side. Repeated attempts to kill her using bounty hunters and sabotage had failed, and the Merquise Syndicate had just moved into a new, well-defended headquarters from which it would be almost impossible to wrest Ara by force. Unable to crush her by force, the Sith turned instead to subterfuge.

Bribing a Black Sun vigo, Xiere, the Sith arranged for Ara to be brought to a meeting, ostensibly to set up a tentative business deal between the two crime syndicates. When Ara arrived lightly guarded, however, Xiere teleported her using a matter transmitter to Vegal's waiting ship.

Beside himself with outrage and worry, Tak rallied all the force he could while dispatching his apprentice, Alluria Quinn, to hunt down Xiere. When the vigo had been tortured and confessed his role, Tak suspected Vegal. A transmission to the Merquise fortress of Ara, shivering and alone on the icy sith world of Khar Delba, cemented this belief. Intent on ridding the world of the Dark Lord, a number of Jedi from the Nar Shaddaa Temple, under their Master Souv Tanake, agreed to accompany the Syndicate forces.

Khar Delba
Journeying to the forgotten world in Tak's freighter, the Dragon Slayer, the crew had nearly landed when they came under fire from ground batteries. Forced to land behind a ridge, Tak left the ship concealed and advanced, searching for Ara. He found her, only to be on the receiving end of blasterfire. While deflecting shots and trying to safely disarm her, the Sith read his boss's mind, only to sense chaos, agony, and the reek of the dark side. Tanake sadly confirmed that Ara was so extensively brainwashed that her own mind was almost completely destroyed, replaced only with the automaton Vegal had left in her place. Detonating a series of explosives, Ara killed one of the Jedi Knights and crippled the Dragon Slayer. In her brief seconds of lucidity, Ara begged Tak to kill her, and he bitterly obliged, running her through the heart and lungs so she would die quickly.

Screaming challenges for Vegal, the rescuers were instead met by the Dark Lord's apprentice, Azrael. After trading a volley of insults with Tak and killing another Knight, Azrael engaged Reiko, Alluria, and Zev in a duel. Meanwhile, Vegal himself finally appeared, coldly decapitating Ara's corpse to provoke Tak. The Sith went on the attack with Souv and Arik, but the Mandalorian Jedi Knight was quickly knocked out of the fight, leaving Souv and Tak to face Vegal alone.

Azrael managed to duel his attackers onto lower ground, away from the fight, using Khar Delba's shaky terrain to cause a minor landslide. In the ensuing fight, he dealt minor blows to all his attackers, hit Zev in the face with Force lightning, and used his mechanical left arm to crush Reiko's own left, crippling the limb. Meanwhile, Tak and Souv fought a hopeless fight against the Dark Lord. Souv was dealt several minor injuries and electrocuted, and Tak had his mechanical right arm cut off, followed by a gouge in the left hip. Both Sith attempted to use Dun Moch against one another, without effect.

After hitting Tak in the hip, Vegal moved to execute Tanake. However, in the heat of battle, the Jedi Master and the former Sith Lord formed a connection, allowing each to sense and see the other's thoughts. Tak could see Vegal preparing to strike, and consequently so could Souv. In unison, the two attacked. Souv ducked into a turned slash, cutting through Vegal's midsection, as Tak sprang off her shoulder and onto Vegal, impaling the towering Dark Lord through the chest. With these two blows, Vegal's body wasted to nothing and his soul was consumed by the Sith mask he wore.

Sensing his master's death, Azrael attempted to abandon the fight with his enemies and return to Vegal's side, but he was knocked unconscious by a tranquilizer dart from Flinton Hawk, Tanake's lover, who had been in near space and summoned to the surface by Andess as backup.

Aftermath
Tak Sakaros experienced a brief moment of temptation to take Vegal's mask for his own, but at the last moment recoiled in horror and begged Tanake to take it and destroy it. The Jedi Master vowed to do so, and in respect for their camaraderie and the Jedi who had died trying to save Ara, Tak offered to extend indefinitely the truce between the Merquise Syndicate and the Jedi of Nar Shaddaa, which Souv accepted.

Only Alluria Quinn had come out of the duel with Azrael mostly unscatched. Zev was injured, but would recover quickly enough. The Mandalorian Knight Arik Andess was treated quickly for his wounds as well. However, Reiko Kaytana was to lose most of the use of her left arm for quite some time.

With Ara's death, Sakaros became the boss of the Merquise Syndicate. He threw a lavish funeral for Ara on Nar Shaddaa, then laid his former boss and lover to rest in the lowest depths of their fortress.