Subject: [OTL]: (alt. Betsy/Star Wars) Fanged Butterfly 2: Knightcross 4/? (PG-15; viole From: Phil Hartman Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008 03:06:33 +0000 will1@earthling.net Fanged Butterfly Vol. 2: Knightcross Chapter 4 by Phil Hartman DISCLAIMER: Marvel's are Marvel's. LFL's are LFL's. Any original characters are mine. The rest belong to their owners/creators. No money is being made off of this. Please don't sue. WARNING: Violence and the dark side ... NOTE 2: Life Day = birthday in Star Wars jargon. --------------------------------------------- 40 ABY: Apartments of Jacen Solo, Galactic City District, Coruscant, Core Worlds Region: --------------------------------------------- Jacen paced his apartment, glancing in the mirror before sitting cross-legged to meditate. He'd taken to wearing a black cape with his ebon GAG fatigues. His still-dark brown hair was cut above the ear, but officers didn't have to get a buzzcut, and Tenel Ka liked it longer anyhow. Thinking of his distant lover - the queen of the Hapes Confederation, with whom he'd secretly fathered a daughter, Allana, now 4 - took the edge off of the Sith student's frustration. He knew he shouldn't be so edgy. He'd achieved great things in his 31 years of life so far. Jacen had helped save the galaxy more than once, embraced all sorts of exotic Force knowledge from one end of the galaxy to the other, and convinced his young cousin Ben Skywalker to open himself to the Force ... and Jacen had killed Nelani Dinn. Jacen and Ben had met up with Nelani while they were on the trail of assassins involved in the murder of the Corellian Prime Minister, Aidel Saxan, at peace talks between the Alliance and the Corellians. The assassination had, obviously, caused the current Corellian crisis to go out of control. It'd been Ben, wise beyond his years, who'd found their most likely suspect, a Brisha Syo. "Brisha" had led them to an asteroid in a system near Bimmiel, an asteroid allegedly used as a base by one Darth Vectivus long ago. After a few rounds with dark-side phantoms, "Brisha" stopped lying about her identity. She was actually Shira Brie, Vader's apprentice Lumiya, the Dark Lady of the Sith and one of Luke's ex's. The cyborged ex-Imperial agent had faced Jacen and Nelani - Ben had been unconscious, overwhelmed by a phantom of Mara - before giving Jacen an offer: Learn to be the new Dark Lord of the Sith and bring order to the galaxy. A vision of various dark futures, ones where Lumiya was turned over to the authorities or slain, had convinced Jacen to spare her - to save his uncle Luke. Nelani had disagreed ... and she became his first sacrifice as a Sith. "There will be others," Lumiya had warned, after Jacen had gathered up the dozing Ben and left a trail of false leads for anyone who might try to find the asteroid. Jacen was terribly familiar with sacrifices. He'd seen the price inaction had exacted when he'd sat out the early part of the Vong War - his mother had almost died by the hand of a Vong Warmaster on Duro. He'd seen the light go out of the eyes of many of his friends on Myrkr, fighting the Vong to destroy the Jedi-hunting voxyn, before his own capture. He'd felt the agony of the Vong Embrace of Pain as the "gray Jedi" Vergere, a birdlike Fosh, started him on the road to understanding that the Force wasn't just light and dark. It had a spectrum, like light. He'd witnessed his classmate Ganner Rhysode's utterly Jedi sacrifice on Coruscant, holding back thousands of Vong warriors to allow Jacen and Betsy Braddock a chance to kill the Vong Supreme Overlord, Shimmra. He'd walked the hyperlanes for five years after the Vong War ended, sacrificing time with family and friends to learn more about the spectrum of the Force by studying with Force-users outside the Order. He'd had to deny the truth of his love for his old classmate, even erasing Ben's memory of Allana's parentage to protect the girl from jealous Hapan nobles in Tenel Ka's court.. And he'd sacrificed the love of his twin, Jaina, by tricking her and their fellow Myrkr survivors into attacking the Chiss during the Dark Nest crisis - #OK, maybe attacking that Chiss supply station hadn't been `help' ...# he admitted, wincing at the fight that had been set off between the Killiks and the Chiss. Jacen's manipulation of his sister drove a vibroblade into the twins' relationship, and Jaina had taken off to marry her longtime "friend" Jag Fel. Jacen hadn't spoken to Jaina in almost five years. And she hadn't invited him to the wedding. Another sacrifice. Life moved on; the Order had overlooked Jacen's manipulations, and stuck him with Ben Skywalker as an unofficial apprentice. That had been five years ago. And now Jacen had betrayed a fellow Jedi - was betraying the Order. Betrayal was what Sith DID, but it was still unsettling. #You betrayed Ben by tampering with his memories, then ditching him on Ossus whenever you visited Hapes. Killing Nelani saved Luke - you remember the vision,# that dark, coiled voice in the back of Jacen's head reminded him. Lumiya had, at least, not pretended to console Jacen. Her occasional visits were lessons, while he got to work. He'd taken the colonel position with the GA defense forces to bring the military to his side, and used his fame as a hero against "Corellian treachery" to open the ears of Senators looking for reassurance against chaos. It was pretty easy to direct things once one played by whatever rules were necessary. Ben had made an eager, loyal soldier, picking up military discipline and jargon easily. The troops had initiated him by giving him a buzzcut like theirs, and "Lieutenant" Skywalker had become one of them - just smaller. Luke was ... not pleased with Ben being a soldier instead of a Jedi - but he was alive. That mattered. Mara was giving Jacen the benefit of the doubt. Ben was doing far less messy work than she had. The Jedi were waiting for the other shoe to drop, the Council tied in knots over whether going after the Corellians instead of trying to broker negotiations was dark-side. They were really waiting for Luke to act as the Grand Master. #Blind fools. They jump at Luke's voice like trained nek battle dogs - even Katarn's whipped,# Jacen sneered mentally. Anyone else who might interfere was running around or had stuck their heads in the Dune Sea. Anakin was off being a brat; Jaina - well, that door had closed. Artoo was by Luke's side, as usual. Han and Leia - Dad and Mom - were running around Corellian space, Threepio and Chewie with them, and the Noghri bodyguards of the month watching their backs. It was Han and Leia who were Jacen's latest critics. They'd been the ones to meet up with Boba Fett and Fett's - protege? - a Mandalorian woman named Mirta Gev, during Fett's mission to kill cousin Thrackan. Thrackan had hired Ailyn Habuur - Fett's daughter, AKA Ailyn Vel - to kill Han, Leia and Jacen. It'd been the Guard who'd brought Habuur in. And Jacen had killed her as Ben had listened outside the cell, too frightened to defy orders and run for help. It'd been ... too easy to let his emotions take over ... using the Force to vent his frustrations. Two hours of beating Habuur's head against a table had yielded nothing but a needless corpse Jacen had had to deliver to his parents. His father - Han Solo, laughing, forgiving rogue - had DISOWNED Jacen. His mother - Leia Organa-Solo, moral light of the Rebellion, lately Jedi Knight - had looked at Jacen like he'd stabbed her. Two more sacrifices, both of which had stung. But what had scarred Jacen's soul was the look of utter horror Ben had when the boy saw Habuur's body. #THAT's what's frustrating me,# Jacen realized, a little sorrow filtering into his aggravation. He loved Ben - he was such a better "little brother" than Anakin had EVER been. Smart, loyal, attentive, funny ... "Bennie" had become a fixture in Jacen's life surprisingly quickly. #Admit it, Jacen, you treat him like a son. At least, you did, until you joined the GAG and became Colonel Solo and Lieutenant Skywalker,# that OTHER voice in Jacen's head growled - the one he thought might be his conscience. He'd had to put some distance between them, to emphasize the role of a Master to his apprentice. He couldn't comfort Ben every time things got bloody. The boy had to be strengthened by his duties, and accept the necessity of enforcing order. But ... Jacen wanted to be able to go back to the days when he'd held his terrified cousin after Ben woke from a nightmare. He wanted to share the sight of an Ossus sunrise with him, to show Ben the best way to disarm an opponent without harm. But that wasn't the way of the Sith. He almost vomited at the thought of sacrificing Ben's light - the boy still lit up when happy, still eagerly listened, still cared about others. About Jacen. Lumiya would whisper that the boy was too soft, unworthy of being a Sith apprentice. That was hardly true, Jacen reminded his ... dark voice. Ben had manned up, as the troops put it, helping kick open doors on raids. The boy wasn't afraid to root out insurgents. Until earlier tonight. #Killing those two thugs wounded Ben. I should've done better, kept track of him - but there was so much to sort out ... and now he's *missing,*# Jacen worried. Ben hadn't run when Habuur had died. But his own blooding - killing two nameless insurgent scum - had apparently struck Ben in his heart. Jacen could dimly sense Ben's pain, at a far distance. He'd left Coruscant, and it terrified Jacen on more than just the Sith level of losing an apprentice. #I pushed him. I even pushed him away,# Jacen realized - he needed Ben at arm's reach for the time he'd have to turn the boy. The thought was ... painful, that he'd have to hurt Ben someday, break and reshape him. But then, pain and Jacen were old friends. Vergere had shown him how to master and grow from pain. He glanced at the spare Embrace of Pain - a living torture rack created by the Vong as a means of religious communion with their gods - hidden under a dropcloth in his closet. #Could I subject Ben to that?# Jacen asked himself. It would be the deepest, worst sacrifice of all - destroying Ben's innocence and trust, making him hate Jacen enough to embrace the dark and plot to someday kill his Sith Master. #You survived the Embrace even without being told its true purpose,# the dark side whispered. #Vergere did it to me to open up my eyes. I've shown Ben ... less than light-side techniques, and he wasn't corrupted by them,# Jacen snapped back. Correction - Ben hadn't grown comfortable using less than light-side techniques. He didn't rely on them; he used all his strengths, as well as the Force, without sacrificing his decency. That was Jacen's job ... to twist his cousin. And he wasn't sure he could do that. #Then WHO will be your heir? You stood in the Council chamber and played at being Qui-Gon, your hands on Ben's shoulders when he was 8, saying `I take Ben Skywalker as my Padawan learner,'# the dark side snarled. #Becoming Sith didn't absolve you of YOUR duty ... Dark Lord. You need an apprentice.# Hot tears dripped down Jacen's cheeks as he left his cross-legged meditation position and looked in the mirror. #A little more touseled, and I'd resemble Grandfather ...# Except for the tearstreaks. He couldn't turn Allana. She was his little girl, the reason he'd sacrificed so much already. And some random youngling from the Academy on Ossus wouldn't be the same. The galaxy needed a Skywalker with the strength to save it from itself. Jacen's eyes flickered yellow-orange as he opened them, and he nodded at his reflection. [Ben,] he called in the Force - Some smothering presence shielded the boy, making it impossible to lock on despite the Force-bond Jacen shared with him. #BRADDOCK ...# the dark-side voice snarled - its rage even surprised Jacen momentarily. Of course she'd protect and coddle Ben. If Jacen fostered illusions of being Ben's father, then Betsy had been the Life-Day mother who just wouldn't quit. #That's not fair. She knew how to let go - she trusted you, didn't she? If anything, she's an example of devotion to a task. Her maps of the Unknown Regions have helped with post-war resettlement efforts,# Jacen reminded himself. Jacen actually liked Betsy; she'd tried to help him when he was on the cusp of adulthood, reached out to him as the Vong War exploded around them. She'd come for him, convinced he was still alive, after Myrkr, and helped him strike down Shimmra. She could act without blindly using the Force like a hydrospanner ... and could accept gritty necessity. #She's still in the way,# the dark-side voice hissed. Lumiya had warned Jacen that he'd have to make one final, unforgivable sacrifice - someone he loved, someone who really mattered to him, had to die by his hands before he could achieve Sith Mastery. #... I'd thought maybe Mara, to drive another point into Ben's heart ...# But the adopted aunt of the Skywalker clan made sudden, horrific sense as Jacen's kill to ascend. Even after Myrkr. Jacen had to be sure, letting his memories take him ... *********************************** 27.2 ABY: Myrkr System, Expansion Region: Yuuzhan Vong Worldship Baanu Raas: ------------------------------------------------- She *still* couldn't believe the madness of the idea. Betsy had run afoul of the Vong's bioengineered voxyn - acid-spitting, poison-backed, disease-spreading Jedi-hunting animals, able to detect Jedi in the Force and created to kill them - during her months-long intel mission to Nar Shaddaa. (For which, she thought bitterly, she was going to imitate Leia and STRANGLE Kyp Durron with the chain to her Hutt slave-girl costume ...) As usual, Betsy's telepathy had given her the edge on the six-legged horrors, but it'd been her astromech droid N4-EL who'd received the flash-code message about the mission to Myrkr. #And that's the madness - they sent 17 Jedi, most under the age of 18, to infiltrate and destroy the voxyn cloning facility!? Without even a SINGLE Master!? Bloody kark, who convinced them to do that!?# she thought, edging her StealthX through the Vong lines to see - Bloody hell. Myrkr, the home of the Force-sensing vornskrs the Vong used for a cellular template for the voxyn, was ringed by a Vong picket fleet at LEAST twice as large as she'd been informed by the Wraiths. The Force had been screaming at Betsy to get to the Solo kids - something horrible, something as critical as saving Chewbacca at Sernpidal, was about to happen ... #Unless we defy all odds and throw the hydrospanner into the works ...# She dodged magma spitters and stuttered her lasers - Neal had been left behind on Eclipse, after her rather ... vehement argument with Kam Solusar over whether she should follow Anakin's team, since the Vong LOATHED droids - before diving for the worldship. Betsy was counting on her non-Jedi skills to get her through this; she'd been doing infiltration long before Charles Lehnsherr had thrown her out of her old life. She just hoped this wasn't pushing even *her* string of X-Men luck. #Jedi don't believe in luck,# Betsy reminded herself. She sealed her flight suit, then ejected as close to the surface as possible, following her Force-sense of the Solos and the other Jedi. Her telekinesis, however, was being purely channeled through her mutancy. It'd been a side-effect of esoteric study with Tionne, the Jedi historian and Kam's wife, that Betsy realized why her TK had shut off when she'd gotten her telepathy back. #Think of it as using one power relay to power two different tools, Tionne and Cilghal explained,# Betsy thought, flying - and loving the feeling - for what had appeared to be a docking port, while the Vong vaporized her StealthX. Mitochondria, midichlorians - same difference. The problem Betsy had had, before opening herself to the Force back on Sernpidal, was that she'd had to rely on her own biogenetic energy to power her mutant abilities. #My body can handle the telepathy load. It's trying to use telepathy and telekinesis in tandem that karks up the power flow ... unless I open myself to the Force,# she recalled, darting in through a membrane and shutting down her telekinesis. Once she peeled off her flight suit to reveal her armored jumpsuit - no Jedi robes for this job, the Vong's weaponry was too piercing - she let her telepathy and Force-senses flow ... There. Their presences were very close - but there were fewer than 17 ... And they were overwhelmed by Vong - Betsy could sense the alien, pained, hateful minds, eager to kill those they called "Jeedai." Betsy lit her lightsaber and carved through the floor, diving through the yorik coral and falling onto what looked like a street from any Mid-Rim world. Most Mid-Rim cities, however, didn't have Jedi fighting for their lives against apparently human attackers - "BETSY!?" She nodded at Anakin, snapping her purple lightsaber to life and springing into the middle of the carnage as the youngest Solo ran to help - Jaina. The girl was fighting one-handed, stuck to a building wall by that accursed blorash jelly the Vong used as a binding, blood streaming from her temple. What looked like a pair of Duros were fighting her with Vong amphistaffs. Betsy carved one through the chest, then mindblasted the other and sliced Jaina's binding, letting Anakin and Jacen tend to their sister. The rest of the strike team was in ... bad shape. The red-headed human woman, Eryl Besa - a gifted Force-navigator - lay dead in Raynar Thul's arms as he sobbed over her, while the small, furred Chadra-Fan healer, Tekli, tried to stabilize the dying Rodian Jovan Drark. Zekk - Jaina's Academy-days suitor, a Coruscanti boy with a black ponytail and a troubled past - fought beside Lowbacca, Chewbacca's nephew. They were being overwhelmed by more Vong, who were disguised by skintight ooglith masquers. It didn't help the Vong that Betsy could easily sense their fanatic hatred, nor that she could brainblast them. Lowie gave the human woman a greeting roar, and Betsy smiled before looking around - Ganner Rhysode, the formerly-egocentric "pretty boy" of the "young" Jedi Knights, was fighting ferociously beside Anakin's blonde girlfriend Tahiri Veila. Petite, her forehead marred by Vong scars, the Tatooine-born girl had overcome an attempt by the Vong to brainwash her into a hunter of her fellow Jedi. #Reminds me of -# Betsy clamped down on that, sending another Vong to Yun-Yammka, their war god, and counting Jedi heads - Beside them, three Barabel - tall reptoids from Barab I - Jedi, named Tesar, Krasov and Bela, were savagely mangling Vong with lightsabers, power blasters, and their foot spurs. Of the Bith musician and tactician, Ulaha Kore, Betsy could sense nothing. Worse, Jovan's Force-presence winked out - And Anakin flared in her precognition, as two Vong broke from fighting Zekk and held their amphistaffs as if to - throw them - The futures, all the futures, pivoted around Anakin, and Betsy's heart broke as she saw traces - fragments: Jacen, with a red blade, in a dark place, Leia crying. Little Ben, grown into a teenager, crying with his head in his hands. Tahiri, lost in the dark and never quite finding her way back from her Vong personality, Riina Kwaad. Jaina, triumphant over a Sith corpse as her soul shattered. Mara - poisoned, and Luke broken - And the heads of the Vong attacking the team erupted in blood from their eyes, ears and missing noses. The Solos - all the young Jedi - looked at Betsy in shock - but she didn't care. ~The ARROGANCE - butchering good, kind young people for tapping into life itself - of polluting our galaxy - for your vile, false gods!?~ she mindshrieked, reaching for the Vong-minds around her ... "BETSY! NO!" "Leave her, young Solo - this is a fascinating display," Betsy heard as if from a great distance - Anakin shook her out of her psionic storm, bringing her back to focus on him in the Force - dear God ... The Vong were dead. Extremely dead. "I - if you'd been injured, you would've died - the future would've shattered -" Betsy stammered, trying to EXPLAIN to Anakin how much he mattered - "... please, don't do that again. Not if you have to go dark to do it," the 17-year-old pleaded, and Betsy managed a nod as he hugged her - a nephew to an adopted aunt, nothing more. Tahiri looked ready to spit blaster bolts, while the blue Twi'lek, Alema Rar - who'd been laying down cover fire against the Vong - looked ... disappointed. #Keep an eye on her,# Betsy warned herself, as she glanced at two dark-robed - dark-aura-surrounded - figures keeping a healthy distance from Zekk, who glared at them with ill-disguised loathing. "Dark Jedi?" Betsy asked - the strike team had, at least, accepted her joining them, even if she'd frightened them. She hadn't lost it that badly since she'd been Lady Mandarin. The dark-haired woman of the pair smiled - a twisted thing - at Betsy and bowed. "Lomi Plo," she said, as her blond male companion avoided Zekk's disgusted glances. "And this is Welk. Your young compatriots know us from before your arrival in our galaxy, but the daring purple-haired Knight Braddock is something of a legend to those of us ... in the shadows." "Hopefully more of a bedtime story to frighten children," Betsy shot back icily. "That tantrum of mine was just that - I'm not given to genocide." She allowed herself a demonstrative smirk as she mindlinked with Anakin, sharing her idea to accelerate the mission while minimizing casualties, then returned his nod. "However, the Force provides ... such as getting to the heart of the matter," Betsy said calmly. She kept her expression even as she let loose with a telekinetic shockwave in the general direction of the voxyn lab, focusing in the Force on the greatest hunger - - the strongest sense of the voxyn. The queen the strike team had come to kill. The far wall collapsed, an invisible wave burrowing through yorik coral and some vast arena, toward what Betsy could tell was a conelike grashal - a living Yuuzhan Vong building. "The shapers' lab?" Jacen asked, using macrobinoculars. He passed them to Anakin, while Raynar let Ganner help him lift Eryl's body and Lowie scooped up the dead Jovan. "Got to be - astral, Betsy. But a Force wave of that level -" the younger Solo warned, as the slaves around them surged in the Force - a wave of panic - The hunger of enraged voxyn flooded the Force, and Betsy concentrated - "There's a freighter! If we could get it running ..." Jacen called, as Lowbacca handed Jovan to one of the Barabels and started toward the Corellian model ship. "Lowie -! Raynar, go with him! Kriffit - we have to GO!" Jaina yelled, pointing at a wave of voxyn, Vong handlers behind them, pouring from the nearest entrances to the slave city. Raynar protested, but reluctantly gave Eryl's body to Ganner, and the blond Jedi followed his Wookie classmate toward the ship Betsy's shockwave had exposed. Betsy assessed the situation, then let the Force flow through her and surrounded the remaining strike team members with a telekinetic bubble ... and *lifted,* as she hadn't since she'd been an X-Man. "Thisz one is impressed, Knight Braddock," one of the Barabels - they were impossible to tell apart, even in the Force, Betsy thought as she flew the strike team toward the grashal - hissed with amusement. "Congratulate me after we kill that bloody voxyn," Betsy said, hurtling the team through a hideously carved arena depicting various Yuuzhan Vong gods and within attack range of the grashal. She wasn't even winded as she set them down, but subtlety was obviously out the window - The Barabels started laying down cover fire toward the thorn hedge blocking the grashal from the slopes leading down to it, while Anakin coordinated a crossfire to snipe the warriors pouring out of the artificial building. Betsy spared a telepathic sweep while she drew her lightsaber to beat back Vong thud bugs - "What the bloody KARK is Nom Anor doing here!?" she shouted over the din of combat - #kriffit,# she thought, heaving another telepathic blast against the Vong front lines. Jacen and Jaina looked ill, as Anakin growled, "Something about a twin sacrifice - they want us alive, I guess -" Betsy's precognition flared again, as she looked around - "Zekk! Where are those Shadow Academy dropouts?" she called, and the tall boy went ashen with rage as he carved through thorns with his lightsaber. "They - a mindtrick. SHAVIT!" Zekk barked, ducking a rather tall Vong - The freighter suddenly rose in the distance, its drives drowning out Jaina's enraged shout, while Jacen shuddered and leaned on Tenel Ka. "Lowie - I can't feel him in the meld -" Jacen stammered - Betsy mindlinked with him, feeling the Force-bond network between the younger Jedi starting to collapse - ~WE ARE NOT LOSING HERE. WE ARE NOT *DYING* HERE,~ she sent, both telepathically and in the Force, managing to support the younger Jedi before she locked onto the voxyn queen and met Anakin's weary gaze. ~If you can ... we still have to destroy the clones,~ he sent, grief and worry for Lowie and Raynar ringing across the Force - KARK, there went a Vong frigate, chasing the freighter - ~Anakin. You've done what you can - let me help,~ Betsy extended, fear for the Wookie and the young blond, rich Thul heir filling her before she shoved it down. Anakin drew strength from his "aunt," and nodded. "Your suggestion?" he asked, assessing the situation with Betsy. ~Ganner. Be a dear and ram that monolith through the front doors, please?~ Betsy asked the tall male human, his once-holozine-perfect face slashed by a Vong blade months ago. The cut had slashed Rhysode's ego, but he'd recovered admirably, even becoming more open to others' suggestions and helping the Order. He nodded, telekinesing a rune-covered monolith through the grashal's front door. Unsurprisingly, a horde of thud bugs flew out, but Betsy simply shut down their minds with a wide-bore psi-blast and led the charge into the grashal. She swept the building with another mindblast wave - couldn't keep that up forever without Force help, but the queen was within range - ~SHIELD!~ she warned the younger Jedi, locking onto everything not in the battlemeld ... and detonating the telepathic equivalent of a nuclear weapon. The voxyn, Vong, thud bugs - all collapsed, bloody. The Force quaked, and Anakin looked ill, but the meld had protected him from the worst of the effects - he was the only one of the Jedi who could sense the invaders in the Force, thanks to the Vong lambent crystal he'd used in his lightsaber. Betsy gave him a sad glance as the strike team started destroying nutrient pods and Jacen checked the voxyn pen. "I'm sorry. But we are at war. You accepted that when we came here," she told Anakin. "I know ... but you're so ... no wonder the Jedi lost the Clone Wars. All this death IS feeding the dark side," Anakin worried, until a weak Wookie rumble rippled from his comlink. "LOWIE!?" Anakin shouted joyfully, as a battered, scorched Lowbacca wobbled into the grashal - - and was sent flying by a magma ball, just as Jacen called, "The queen's dead!" "KRIFF! I didn't sense - magma spitter, a Vong artillery crew is out there!" Anakin yelled, while another red-hot hunk of rock flew through the far wall. Betsy concentrated, finding the oily, greedy mind of the Vong executor, or bureaucrat, Nom Anor - a one-eyed spy and assassin who'd infected Mara with a disease that had almost killed her before she, with Luke and their unborn son, had used the Force to cure her. Ben had been born safely soon after, but Nom was still desperate to harass the Jedi for his own gain among the Vong ... Jacen ran over, teary-eyed as one of the Barabels grunted - the battlemeld shook, and Betsy saw one of the female Barabels keel over from a bloody head wound, her siblings hissing in grief - "If Nom Anor wants Solos, I could -" the 18-year-old offered, just as the front walls started to heat up. "NO! Sithspawn, Jace, you can't GIVE yourself to them!" Jaina cried - and an ominous cracking drew everyone's attention upward, as the grashal roof started to open. The cone of the grashal extended into space, Betsy realized. If the Vong could control their worldship that easily ... and the front walls were scorching ... "They plan to decompress us into unconsciousness - or cook us in here," she warned Anakin. "We have Lowie; the queen's dead. Tahiri can translate a cognition hood's input if we steal a ship," Anakin said, his mind flashing with a plan - "You need a distraction," Betsy offered, but the Solos looked at her in protest - Another round of Barabel hissing, as amphistaffs started to pierce the walls, and the other female Barabel went down with a Vong spear in her back. The male - Tesar? - sissed in rage ... The dark side was overwhelmingly strong, and Jacen was about to keel over. The rest of the strike team survivors were nearing the limits of their physical strength, while the Force couldn't sustain them if they suffered many more emotional shocks. Betsy gathered her strength. This was going to be almost as bloody as her fight with Creed - She turned to Anakin, then ordered, "Apprentice Solo, I'm ordering you: Get your team to a ship. I'll be behind you." "But -" Anakin tried to protest, then snapping his teeth closed as he summoned the others. Betsy immersed herself in the Force. And the front wall erupted under a Force bulldozer, becoming shrapnel that smashed the wave of Vong approaching the grashal. The magma spitter was flattened, as Betsy found the one-eyed Nom Anor scuttling back. Beside some kind of robed, bird-headed creature with feathery hair and a bipedal body. #Vergere,# Betsy recalled - the "familiar" of a Vong priestess captured by Han, whose tears had somehow helped stave off Mara's illness. The - Fosh, Betsy recalled from the Temple record of the Old Republic - concentrated, countering Betsy's Force thrusts. Worse, the creature was able to deflect her psi-bolts ... and a fresh wave of Vong warriors swarmed over the threshold of the far entrance. Betsy wobbled; she was spent. Vergere was fresh. She cried out as Jacen grabbed her arm and pushed her at Lowie, then brandished his green lightsaber and bellowed, "FOR THE REPUBLIC!" Jaina's scream of protest echoed as Betsy blacked out. ********************************** 40 ABY: ------------------------------------------------ Jacen shuddered against the memory; they'd saved each other that day. But Betsy was the true hero. The true obstacle to his ascension. #Lumiya was wrong. It's not just about who we love when we make our sacrifice,# he realized. #It's also about unbalancing the equation. Dark over light.# He closed himself down to Force detection and left for his shuttle. The Dark Lord was going to get his apprentice. And unlock the door to the dark side. The greatest sacrifice was at hand. ---------------------------------------------- tbc ...