Significant Negative: "Mission to Myrkr"

[sacrifices]

Memory: Mission to Myrkr
Won: Game 39
Summary: Little brother dies. Jaina is mad. Jacen leads the remnants of a commando team to kill the Voxyn queen and gets captured by the Yuuzhan Vong.

I'M ACTUALLY ONLY DOING THE LAST CHUNK OF THE MYRKR TEAM'S ADVENTURE. Maybe the earlier parts will be a trivial negative someday, idek. Anyway, not that anyone but Jaina read Star by Star, but this memory starts with the skirmish that gets little Anakin to keel over dead, and ends with Jacen getting captured.

I apologize for vagueness in advance: it’s hard to navigate what Jacen was doing for large parts of this because Troy Denning cannot write fights for shit. Anyway. The remnants of the Myrkr team are fighting Vong in their assault on the Voxyn queen. Jacen is with Ganner doing his thing while Anakin is a badass.

"Hutt breath!" Jaina cursed over the comlink. "She's escaping."

Anakin could feel it, too. The voxyn was moving down and away. He activated his own comlink. "The impostor must have opened an escape tunnel." It no longer hurt to speak, but his aura had gone from faint to bright. His cells were burning like fire. "Jacen, you're in charge. Take everyone and go after her."

Jaina's surprise at not having her own name called carried through the Force like a shout across water, but she stifled any resentment she felt and said, "Can't get there, Little Brother."

"The path will clear."

[ Anakin is a badass ]

"Anakin!" Jaina's cry resembled a scream.

Go! He commanded her through the Force. She's getting away!

[ Anakin continues to be a badass ]

The longblaster roared from the pen area, blowing a head-sized hole through one Yuuzhan Vong and a fist-sized hole through the one behind him. Anakin launched himself into a back flip and landed five meters away. His aura flickered wildly as his cells began to burn and burst. [As a note this is because he’s hurt and surviving by CHANNELING PURE FORCE ENERGY or something idk. ] He hazarded a glance over his shoulder and saw Jaina peering over the pit wall, tears streaming down her cheeks, the longblaster propped against her shoulder. Jacen was beside her, likewise weeping, trying to pull her away.

Go! Anakin said through the Force. I can't hold.

Anakin continues to be a badass and then he comes across a bunch of voxyn tissue that could be used to clone lots more voxyn, so he pulls out a grenade and gets ready to blow himself up.

Go now.

"Anakin, I can't!" Jaina commed.

Anakin raised the detonator so his brother and sister could see. Thirty seconds. He released the trigger. Take her, Jacen. Kiss Tahiri for me.

He blows himself up. The survivors of the strike team hide in a tiny room deep in Myrkr. Alema cooks badly.

Jacen scooped a bowlful of pulp from a shell-like serving basin and pressed it into Jaina's hands. "I don't feel like eating either, but you need to keep up your strength."

Jaina hurled the gruel against the bioluminescent wall. Their Yuuzhan Vong captive, a lowly worker who was almost attractive in her utter lack of mutilations or tattoos, cringed in the corner as though the bowl had been thrown at her. The lichen began to glow more brightly as it absorbed nutrients, and no one spoke.

Jacen could feel the guilt and anger tearing his sister apart, though her emotions were so intermingled with his own that he could barely distinguish them. They shared a void that would never again be whole, an emptiness that he sensed pulling at Jaina like a vacuum breach. He laid a hand on her knee, hoping his touch might serve as her anchor.

"We can't give up. We still need to destroy the queen."

Jaina looked up, a faint spark of presence finally showing in her vacant eyes. "You left him to the Yuuzhan Vong."

"We had to," Jacen said, accepting the rebuke. As much as he himself was hurting, he would rather Jaina lay the blame boiling up inside her on his shoulders than her own. "They were all over him. You saw that."

Jaina pushed his hand from her leg. "He put you in charge, and you left him behind."

Jacen said nothing. Though he knew his sister's own feelings of guilt were driving her to accuse him, he did not trust himself to keep an even voice.

"Jacen does not deserve your blame." Tenel Ka was sitting on the other side of the small room, her legs crossed beneath her and her posture as erect as ever. "Everyone heard the command, and we all know why he gave it. To disregard such an order would have been to dishonor Anakin's memory and dismiss his sacrifice."

"Stay out of this, Tenel Ka," Jaina said. "You can't possibly know anything about it. You have the emotional depth of a ronto."

The speed with which Tenel Ka unfolded her legs and stepped around the low table proved how mistaken Jaina was. Jacen thought for a moment the Dathomiri would slap his sister, but Tenel Ka only continued to glare until Jaina finally grew uncomfortable and looked away.

When she did, Tenel Ka said, "We are all hurting, Jaina. Your brother, too."

It was difficult to tell from Tenel Ka's tone whether she meant the words to be conciliatory or cutting, but they caused Jaina to stand. Jacen reached for Jaina's hand, but he needn't have worried. Zekk was already stepping between the pair, positioning himself to intercept any blow that might be thrown.

But then Lowie comms them! He’s not kidnapped, and also he found Anakin’s body.

"Keep watching," Jaina said. "And whatever you do, stay with him. I'll be there as soon as I can."

She snapped her comlink off, and Jacen barely caught her arm before she reached the door.

"What are you doing?"

"Going after Anakin's body - what do you think?" It was Tahiri who said this, speaking for the first time since they had fled the grashal. "They're not taking him anywhere."

She rose and went to Jaina's side, as did Alema and, a moment later, Zekk. Jacen ignored them all and continued to hold his sister's arm.

"What about Anakin's last words?" he asked. "He told us to destroy the queen."

"Then destroy her." Jaina tore her arm free of his hand and slapped the tickle pad. "But I'm going back."

So part of the strike team goes to get Anakin’s body, while Jacen, Tekli, Ganner, Tesar, and Tenel Ka go to kill the voxyn queen. They talk about how to kill it. A shuttle lands. They think it’s some dude named Nom Anor’s. They go to look at it. Some Yuuzhan Vong, Nom Anor, and Vergere come out. Vergere is wearing Anakin’s stuff.

As much as it hurt to see her wearing Anakin's gear as a war trophy, he felt no urge to attack her, nor even Nom Anor. Truth be told, though he was determined to destroy the queen, he really did not want to kill her either. None of it was going to bring Anakin back.

Anyway, those Vong are angry.

"Looks like Jaina has been busy," Gamier observed.

"Why am I not surprised?" Tenel Ka asked. "But it is going to be difficult to destroy the queen now. That frigate will complicate matters."

"Not for long," Jacen said. He could feel something in the Jaina-place inside him, something angry and dark coming their way. "Not if I know my sister."

Blah blah they wait a while.

As weary as Jacen was of watching Vergere and the shaper argue with Nom Anor, he could think of no way to reach the voxyn. With a frigate full of Yuuzhan Vong in the area, sneaking up on it was out of the question. So was floating a detonator or incendiary at it; the creature had proved many times that it would flee as soon as it felt them using the Force. That left only waiting, but wait he would - until he was fifty, if that was what it took to destroy the queen. He had promised Anakin.

Vergere and the others were still arguing when a series of frantic clicks came over the comm net. Jacen reached out to Tesar and felt the Barabel still waiting at his station on the surface, concerned but not nearly excited enough to be fighting someone. A single click confirmed that Tesar had felt his touch, then the boom of an exploding missile reverberated through the yorik coral. Vergere turned and bounded away around the detritus mound. Nom Anor and the shaper remained where they were, barking questions at her vanishing back.

"Jaina?" Ganner gasped.

"Who else?" Tenel Ka replied.

Jacen reached out to his sister through the Force, found only the same cold anger that he had felt since Anakin's death, and tried to break through to some vestige of the Jaina he had known all his life. He touched only swirling darkness, stormy and unreasoning and full of hate. Afraid to use the comlink - he could not be sure what channels Vergere had open - Jacen opened his emotions to the others, drawing them into a battle meld and reaching out to Tesar with the same question on their minds: Was this Jaina's doing?

Yes it is. Jaina is blowing the hell out of things. I actually can’t figure out what she’s using to blow things up. Jacen feels that something has gone very wrong for Jaina!

"No!" Jacen gasped.

He had felt something wrong even before Tesar commed, but had not known what. Forgetting about Anakin's captured comlink, he opened a general channel and would have started calling for a report, had Tenel Ka not ripped the mike off his throat.

"You will not help anyone by getting us killed," she said. "Jaina will bring them down softly. You know that."

"No, I don't. Not anymore." Jacen took a deep breath, using a meditative calming technique to bring himself back under control. "But you're right about the rest."

Jacen reached out to his sister and spent the next minute or so struggling to stay in contact with the dark emotions that now filled her. She did not seem frightened, only angry and focused on the effort at hand. Then, as he sensed her efforts growing even more intense, her anger abruptly deepened to a level that Jacen could not bear, and he lost her.

"She's gone," he gasped.

"Dead?" Ganner asked.

"I don't know." Jacen looked up. "I didn't feel that. I just don't feel her at all."

Tenel Ka enfolded him in her one arm and pulled him close. "Jacen, I am so sorry."

Nom fucking Anor and Vergere keep talking and then Nom Anor leaves. Then holy fuck Vergere talks over Anakin’s walkie-talkie!

"It is safe to come out now, young Jedi. You have nothing to fear from me."

Jacen motioned the others to ready their weapons, then activated his comlink microphone. "Who is this?"

"There is no time to explain that now." As she spoke, Vergere came around the colony on the side opposite the one she had departed, then pointed in the direction the voxyn queen had fled. "Your quarry is escaping."

So they go with Vergere.

With both valves of the distant air lock drawn open, a bright crescent of blue sun could be seen blazing out from behind Myrkr's rising disk, illuminating the million pillars of the serpent hall in gloomy streaks of sapphire. The shaper and his escorts were little more than stick silhouettes filing toward the exit in a single line. The voxyn queen was not visible at all, though Jacen knew she was there, in the gap two figures from the front.

"This is not right," Tesar rasped quietly. "That air lock can't be open."

"It is better to seek an explanation than to deny what we all see clearly," Tenel Ka replied. "There is an atmosphere outside that lock."

"Yes, but what else?" Vergere asked. "That is the question, is it not?"

"How about you answer it for us?" Ganner replied.

When Vergere spread her arms and gave a feathery shrug, Jacen looked back to the line of Yuuzhan Vong. He filled his mind with thoughts of fear and suspicion and reached out to the queen for the eighth time since leaving the hive colony.

The voxyn reacted even more quickly than she had the last time, whirling on the warriors behind her. She must already have struck the first Yuuzhan Vong with her poison tail barb, for she ignored him and belched acid at the second in line, then leapt past both to slash at the next one. All three warriors went down, and she was attacking a fourth before the shaper and two of his remaining assistants got hold of her leashes and restrained her.

Jacen withdrew his presence. The queen slowly calmed to the point where the shaper felt confident in approaching her, stroking her muzzle and no doubt speaking to her in soothing tones. It would not be long before that act of bravery turned into a deadly mistake, but Jacen did not want the beast to kill the handler yet. As wary as the warriors were already, the death of the shaper would cause them to send for reinforcements.

The shaper finally backed away and signaled his assistants to release the tethers. They had learned the hard way that the queen would not move with someone holding the other end of a leash - the result of another uneasy feeling planted by Jacen. When the voxyn showed its willingness to resume travel by not killing anyone, the Yuuzhan Vong turned and - leaving their dead and wounded where they lay - vanished through the open air lock.

"Only four left," Vergere said, rising from the group's hiding place. "Well done, Jacen Solo."

Jacen did not thank the strange little creature. He disliked killing, and he disliked even more tricking an animal into doing it for him. But he had his promise to Anakin to keep and his sister to track down - he still could not feel Jaina through the Force - and encouraging the voxyn to follow its nature was his only hope of doing either. He nodded to Tesar, who rose and set off. The Barabel kept them concealed in a fungus-lined rift, for the area was strewn with Yuuzhan Vong workers scavenging the exhausted serpent yards for a usable amphistaff or tsaisi baton.

Blah blah thinking.

They found themselves standing on the inside rim of what looked like an enormous impact crater, save that the slope was surprisingly featureless and the crest unnaturally even. There was no covering overhead, but the atmosphere was as thick and warm as inside the worldship. In the bottom of the basin lay what resembled a giant honeycomb, save that each cell was a meter across and held a single dovin basal.

Jacen could not sense the emotions of the dovin basals - creatures with no connection to the Force remained as unreadable to him as the Yuuzhan Vong themselves - but he could see by their labored pulsing and flaking hides that the things were in distress. There were even large tracts where the cells contained nothing but shriveled husks. Whether this stemmed from old age, exhaustion, or disease he did not know, but it did suggest another reason the Yuuzhan Vong were deserting the dilapidated worldship.

The shaper and his escorts were already on the floor of the basin, moving along the edge of the basal-comb toward Nom Anor's frigate, which lay about a fifth of the way around the circle. The executor himself and perhaps fifty Yuuzhan Vong were half a kilometer out on the structure itself, crawling along the narrow walls between the cells and being careful to avoid the dovin basals themselves. From the group's different dress - many of them wore armor only over their torsos - it was apparent the executor had stripped the ship's crew to supplement his company.

Nom Anor and his followers were making their way toward the center of the basal-comb, where a huge sweep of cells contained either shriveled husks or nothing at all. In the heart of this dead area rested Jaina's stolen shuttle, cracked and overturned, but still in one piece. The sporadic stream of blaster bolts and magma missiles arcing out of the wreckage suggested that at least a few Jedi had survived the crash.

Vergere hunched beside Jacen, her gaze running from the queen over to Nom Anor's frigate, where four warriors stood watch at the base of the boarding ramp. "Interesting ... Will you destroy the voxyn, Jacen Solo, or save your sister?"

Jacen ignored the question and continued to study the situation. The longblaster roared and split open a warrior in front of Nom Anor. The executor shuddered, but lowered his head and continued forward.

"I don't understand," Tekli said. "The shuttle is helpless. The frigate should be attacking."

"Yes," Tenel Ka agreed. "Why crawl so far under fire?"

"Why, indeed?" Vergere said. "Perhaps there is something aboard they want alive?"

"Jaina," Jacen said.

Vergere spread her hands. "And you. Tsavong Lah promised Yun-Yammka a pair of Jedi twins for the fall of Coruscant. Matters will go badly for Nom Anor if she is already dead." She stopped there and studied Jacen a moment, then said, "But you could save him the trouble of looking, could you not? I understand that Jedi twins have a special ... sense of each other."

Jacen studied her from the corner of his eye. "I wouldn't place too much trust in cantina tales, were I you."

"No?" Vergere smirked. "Are you just cautious, I wonder, or do you have a suspicious nature?"

"Both are the same around you, this one thinkz," Tesar said. He checked the power level of his minicannon, then braced it on the crest of the slope and trained it on the voxyn. "Jacen, this one has two shots, maybe three. We must destroy the queen."

Jacen nodded. "And save -" He almost said Jaina, then caught himself. "- our friends on the shuttle."

"You cannot do both," Vergere warned. "The Yuuzhan Vong have a saying: 'The fleet that fights two battles loses twice.'"

"Do we look like Yuuzhan Vong?" Ganner demanded, pointing at his eyes. "We're Jedi."

"So you are," Vergere said mildly. "But the Yuuzhan Vong have their strengths, as well. Do not dismiss those strengths because the Force is blind to them."

"I don't," Jacen said. "But we are going to win two battles - and here's how."

Tesar goes for the ship in front of them.

Jacen filled his mind with an image of his cramped cell in the Shadow Academy and allowed himself to feel again the terror of the kidnapping, his fear and confusion when he realized he no longer controlled his own destiny. Never far from the surface even this many years after the event - and perhaps made more accessible by his anguish over Anakin's loss - the emotions returned easily. When a cold sweat began to bead on his forehead, he reached out to the voxyn, infusing her with his own feelings, urging her to flee.

The voxyn screeched and sent two escorts reeling despite the protective membranes in their ears, then turned to run and found a third warrior blocking her way. She snatched him up and bit him cleanly in two. The shaper raced after her, calling out commands, trying to calm her. Jacen urged the beast not to trust her "tormentor." She whirled and spat acid, but the shaper was quick enough to dodge and let one of his escorts be hit instead.

Jacen undipped his lightsaber. "I'll need to concentrate on the voxyn, so we have to do this without the battle meld. May the Force be with you, my friends."

Taking her own lightsaber in hand, Tenel Ka stepped over to kiss him - and was cut off by Vergere.

"And with you, Jacen Solo." The little creature shooed him down the slope. "Now go, before your quarry escapes."

Jacen looked over her to Tenel Ka and rolled his eyes, then flashed the Dathomiri a lopsided grin and pushed up his breath mask. Using the Force to descend the basin's inner rim in two bounds, he landed undetected behind the last stunned escort. Thinking he could knock the lurching warrior unconscious rather than kill him, he reached out to pull off the Yuuzhan Vong's helmet - and saw his mistake when the fellow spun on him.

Jacen thumbed his activation switch. The weapon sprang to life in front of the approaching arm and severed it at the elbow, but losing a limb would never stop a Yuuzhan Vong. Jacen turned his weapon ninety degrees and drew the blade across his foe's neck. The warrior collapsed in a heap.

"Jacen?" The voice on the comlink belonged not to Jaina, but to Zekk. "That you?"

"Who else?" Jacen continued forward, tried not to be disappointed that he wasn't talking to Jaina. "What's your condition?"

"A few injuries, but everybody's stable," Zekk reported. "We have Lowbacca - and Anakin's body."

"And Jaina?" Jacen asked, concerned by what Zekk left unsaid.

Zekk paused, no doubt surprised Jacen would need to ask. "She's here, Jacen."

Something in Zekk's tone hinted at the cold darkness Jacen found whenever he reached out to his sister, but he was happy enough for now to hear she was still alive. "Good. Wait there - somebody's coming for you."

Jacen chases after the fleeing shaper and voxyn. There is fighting around him. He tries a bunch of different ways to reach out to the voxyn queen but pretty much fails.

Tenel Ka's voice crackled over the comlink. "Frigate secured. We have a way home, but also a complication."

Lowbacca rumbled a question.

"How does not matter," Tenel Ka replied. "When we found the communications officer, he was in contact with the spaceport."

Jacen groaned inwardly, then asked, "Vergere?"

"She said she had no wish to be atomized, then departed," Tenel Ka said. "She seems to be following you."

"Check. You hurry." Jacen reached the basal-comb and had to slow. The walls between cells were a half meter wide, but so steeply crowned that running over them was like running on a board's edge. "Shuttle first."

"Us?" Zekk complained. "You do know the Yuuzhan Vong are chasing you?"

Jacen had no time to look. He was gaining on the queen. "Shuttle first," he repeated. "I have to finish here."

Jacen and the voxyn queen fight. Jacen kills her but is really badly poisoned.

There came a terrible thunder overhead, a firestorm so bright it lit the darkness behind Jacen's closed eyelids. He heard a voice calling - a voice he had known all his life, yet one that now seemed as alien as that of any Yuuzhan Vong.

"Jacen?" A pause, cold and demanding. "Jacen, answer me!"

A delicate hand brushed back Jacen's hair, took the comlink from his head. "You can do nothing for Jacen now," a second voice said - also familiar. "Save yourselves."

"Vergere?" the first voice demanded. "Is that you? I want to talk to my brother -"

The demand was clicked silent. Jacen opened his eyes and saw a delicate, four-fingered hand flinging his headset into the air. In the sky far above raged a battle, a Yuuzhan Vong frigate trying to blast through a screen of Yuuzhan Vong corvettes.

Jacen was confused, but only for a moment. The frigate was Nom Anor's, stolen by his friends, now trying to reach him. He struggled upright and saw a one-eyed Yuuzhan Vong leading several dozen warriors through a rain of plasma balls and magma missiles. Toward him. He tried to roll, found himself restrained by a four-fingered hand.

"No." Despite the apparent frailty of the hand, its strength was irresistible - at least in Jacen's condition. It took his lightsaber from his grasp, then undipped Anakin's from his equipment harness and took that one as well. "You have won your battles. Now you pay."

Jacen recalled the tortures he and the others had endured aboard the Exquisite Death. His stomach grew queasy. His hands trembled. He opened himself to the Force and smiled at his body's fear. The Jedi were safe. Compared to that, his pain meant nothing.

"It will, Jacen," Vergere said, surprising him. He did not recall speaking his thoughts aloud. "That I promise you - it will."

A warm drop struck his face, then another and another. Jacen craned his neck and found Vergere wiping tears from her cheeks. Her face was turned so Nom Anor and the others could not see.

"Vergere, were you -"

"Yes, Jacen." She pressed a finger to his lips. "I was crying for you."

Getting from it:
- So conclusively, people have called me and Jaina twins. TWINBOND UP IN THIS BITCH. We had a little brother named Anakin, and he died. And Jaina blames me for it. Oh yeah and then she went dark-ish
- So that’s what the Yuuzhan Vong look like :|
- We were hunting a monster called “the queen” or “the voxyn”
- Hot amputee babymama tried to kiss me :D
- SPACE
- I killed that thing we hated…
- … and that segued into the horrible torture memory from two games ago

What you might notice:
- Jacen left a bunch of neatly stacked jars/containers/etc. that he was keeping small pets in stacked in the kitchen. He unceremoniously dumped all the animals outside. Per his conversation with Wedge in Exile, Mykyr was the point where Jacen stopped being kawaii derp derp about animals.
- Jacen is going to start patrolling every dawn/dusk.