Jaina Solo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sticksofthejedi) wrote2011-11-20 03:48 pm
sticksofthejedi) wrote2011-11-20 03:48 pm
Entry tags:
Memory 19
Memory: Anakin Solo dies.
Received: Day 99, morning
Form: thread-bare blindfold, 1/2 uses
Summary: A good chunk of the Mission to Myrkr. While a strike team of Jedi Knights hunts down the voxyn queen on a Yuuzhan Vong worldship, Anakin takes a bad wound trying to help Jaina in a fight. Jaina is about 18 years old and starts out with some strong emotional armor, but as the team takes casualties that armor gets worn away until Anakin dies.
Troy Denning is a glorious bastard who draws Anakin's death out, so this takes a while. Bodycount: five comrades confirmed dead, one believed to be dead, one missing. At the end of the memory, the team is down to 10 members. Also a pair of stupid dark jedi are believed to be dead.
Note: Jaina in Aather already knew Anakin died fighting the Vong, but Jacen framed it as something Jaina blamed him for. She knows now that she had been lashing out at Jacen at some point because she was angry and blamed herself for Anakin taking the wound that eventually killed him.
OKAY SO. Jaina, Jacen, Anakin, the Young Jedi Knights and several other, new teen Jedi are on a Yuuzhan Vong worldship. It's important to note, right here and now: up until now in memories, Jaina has been able to feel everything around her in the Force. However, everything Vong comes across Force senses as a VOID. So being in a Vong stronghold, yeah. It's weird. The only thing Jaina senses is her teammates, who have joined together with her in a battlemeld, heightening their sense of each other and basically giving them an empathic hivemind. Also there are two Dark Jedi along: adult woman Lomi Plo and teen-ish (I think?) Welk; note that they are definitely not in the battlemeld.
They're hunting the Voxyn queen. Voxyn are terribad creatures genetically engineered by the Vong to hunt Jedi; they'll kill you twelve different brutal ways, and the Jedi are pretty freaked out about them because they're the one thing the Vong have that DOES ping in the Force -- and not in a good way. If you're in the same solar system as a Voxyn, and you're a Jedi? You feel that Voxyn's mind focusing on you like a goddamn spotlight. A spotlight that's going to murder you. So she feels that periodically throughout the memory, too.
The strike team plus dark jedi are in a compound where the Vong keep their slaves. There are thousands of the Star Wars galaxy's native species in the compound, broken and despairing; as the strike team tries to make their way through, the crowd presses them, and the jedi have to push and use Jedi persuasion techniques to soothe their minds and generally push through. It sucks.
Here's the other thing about the Vong, though: they have this fleshy thing called an masquer that they can wear that makes them look indistinguishable from the species they are attacking. Vong use it to spy mostly, rather than wearing it while fighting, but the slave compound makes a perfect trap. The Vong use these to hide in the crowd and Anakin, with a special Vongsense only he has, notices them just as they start the attack.
Right off the bat, Jaina gets hit by surprise with blorash jelly, which is...jelly. Used to glue enemies in place. In fact, Jaina's stuck to a wall and unable to dodge, so she promptly takes a nasty amphistaff blow to the head (amphistaff: LIVING SNAKE STAFF, Vong use it to cut, bludgeon, whip and/or bite you. Lightsaber resistant, though if the weapons clash often enough the amphistaff will probably eventually die). She's on the edge of unconsciousness; only the strength of the battlemeld keeps her up, and aside from tunneled vision she's got blood from a head wound getting in her eyes. Everyone in the meld feels it, but Jacen's her twin and he's the only one who feels it clearly enough to identify who was hit; he calls her name.
Even so, she fumbles out her lightsaber and starts fending two attackers off at the same time. She feels young female Jedi Eryl die through the meld -- razor-sharp cut to the face. Wookie Lowbacca and almost-boyfriend Zekk are fighting their way toward her; Twi'lekk Alema Rar is behind cover and keeping reinforcements from swarming all of them by shooting at them with a longblaster -- it's basically a BFG that's not QUITE a sniper rifle. Anakin uses the Force to make a giant leap over the fighting, trying to get to Jaina -- and gets an amphistaff thrown into his side like a spear for his trouble.
Jaina cries his name; he flings a bunch of salt at her, using the Force to make sure it gets on the jelly pinning her. This causes it to start dissolving, so she can get free. Then he pulls the amphistaff out, and one of Jaina's enemies turns to attack him; Anakin takes his lightsaber to the attacker's neck.
Able to move again, Jaina goes on the offensive against the other; while she keeps the warrior busy with a flurry of saber attacks, Anakin strikes at the Vong's knees, and Jaina slashes his chest, killing him. The masquers peel away from the dead Vong, incidentally, so Jaina finally has a visual to go with the name. The more self-mutilated a Vong warrior is, the higher the rank.
Jaina berates Anakin for the risk he took; Anakin manages to tell her that the team's already lost two people, and he wasn't willing to lose her. The strike team regroups and escapes; Anakin is trying to pretend the wound isn't as bad as it is.
The Vong are on the team's tail now, though; Vong warriors are harassing the team at every opportunity, throwing razor-sharp bugs as ranged weapons and baiting the team into firing back with their blasters, whittling them down. Anakin starts second-guessing himself, and Jaina senses it; she thumps him on the head and tells him he can feel sorry for himself later -- he should blame the war for their dismal situation, not himself.
Jaina: "Do you think Uncle Luke sent us here to train? This is important. If people die, people die."
Anakin: "That's a little cold."
Jaina: "I'll cry at home. Maybe you made a mistake, maybe you didn't. But start focusing on the mission, or more people will die."
The team notices how bad Anakin's actually wounded; Jaina steps up to plate and takes charge. She has the team levitate Anakin so they can keep moving, and plunks the team's medic on Anakin's legs so she can work on him. Tekli is tiny so this doesn't bother Anakin at all apparently (and, well, she's a Chadra-Fan and only three feet tall). She informs Jaina that Anakin is bleeding internally and they need to stop so Tekli can work on him for at least fifteen to thirty minutes. The Vong sound like they're closing in, and the team feels trained Voxyn focusing on them again -- at least four. Alema takes six concussion grenades and sets them up to bury Vong in the tunnel and block off pursuit; it's semi-effective, but the Vong eventually get to the team again. The Jedi have to use blasters to gun down a voxyn. It takes a lot of laserfire to gun it down.
Eventually they get their lightsabers out again, holding the Vong at the rubble so Tekli can finish her work. Bela, a lizard-person Barabel, dies -- she was impaled by an amphistaff. They break off as soon as Anakin's back on his feet again; as they retreat some more, someone buys time by setting off mines dropped in the rubble -- the firepower is described as turning the Vong essentially into a spray of blood. A second set of mines are set off when they hear Vong coming up again, and they widen the gap with their pursuit. The team hides in "feral" voxyn tunnels -- tunnels carved in the worldship's stone by acid belched by voxyn that have escaped their trainers and roam that area of the world at will.
Anakin narrowly avoids an acidic death from a feral voxyn; the team heads into its tunnel and toward the voxyn's warren to get away from the Vong warriors. Jaina stays at the tunnel entrance, using the Force to levitate herself up upgainst the ceiling and hides there until the Vong pass, with the intent to set up motion-detecting mines once they're by. A Vong investigates into the tunnel a little, and Jaina worries he'll look up, but he learned from the MGS School of Extras and leaves. Jaina's relieved. That's when a bird-person pokes her head in. Jaina identifies Vergere, and feels something touch her mind -- Jaina is startled, and points her blaster at Vergere's face. Vergere smiles, and Jaina knows the bird touched her mind on purpose --she wonders if Vergere is a Force sensitive, which raises questions of why the Voxyn don't hunt Vergere as well.
So Jaina arms the mine and pushes herself along the ceiling out of sensor range. Vergere can scram or get blown up when the motion detector comes online; Vergere smirks, leaves and tells more Vong that no one's in there; Jaina turns her blaster's safety back on, shaking, and convinces herself Vergere didn't even know she was there.
She meets back up with the team, but feels that they're in combat with Voxyn again while she's away. As the team cautiously proceeds in the tunnels, Jaina, Jacen and Tenel Ka have a pow-wow. The twins can feel that Anakin's facade of strength is slipping.
Jaina: How's Little Brother doing?
Jacen: Hard to know. I'm scared.
Jaina: [grasps his arm] Don't be. We're not going to let anything happen to him.
Tenel Ka: [takes his other arm] This is a fact.
The team proceeds. Eventually, more voxyn! One gets Krasov, a Barabel Jedi in the face with acid, which is fun for no one on the team to feel. They saber it, and Anakin uses a thermal detonator to stop further attacks. Then he freezes up; "Every decision cost someone something. Their mission began to seem distant and impossible...Anakin barely heard Jacen's words. He did not want to make any more decisions, cause any more casualties."
The twins probe his mind while more voxyn are incoming. Jaina realizes and announces that Anakin is breaking. The fight is rejoined; Anakin decides he'll at least fight, but Jaina orders him to stay back and get himself back together. She joins a line of teammates, pouring blasterfire at the voxyn. Anakin does get it together, and he decides they'll retreat into the nests of the voyxn itself, planning to have Jacen use his animal empathy to have the voxyn not fight them and instead stick to the nests. Krasov finally dies from the acid.
They sneak through, but Anakin grows so weak the final Barabel on the team, Tesar, has to carry him. Raynar gets wounded by a voxyn; he found one of the dead teammate's body in a nest and rushed for it. They get him away so the voxyn can go back to guarding the nest. It's been long enough the team decides it's safe to emerge from the voxyn tunnels; surely they've lost their Vong pursuit by now. They'll get out and find a place to lick their wounds. When they do, they find a small captured freighter. Raynar gets tucked inside to heal while Lowbacca works on fixing the freighter to serve as an escape vehicle after the team's killed the voxyn queen. The others scout; they locate the queen itself in a cloning facility.
That's when our dark jedi pair stun Lowie and dump him outside the ship he was fixing, then take off in the ship with Raynar and Lowie's translator droid Em Teedee still inside. The team is spread out but notice the takeoff and immediately flood the commlinks with questions, Jaina included, trying to call Lowie and ask him why he appears to have launched. Jaina is a smart mechanic, and after a few moments sends a signal to Em Teedee instead, remotely activating the droid. The droid announces "They're stealing me!" before getting cut off--Zekk is angry and informs everyone it had to be the dark jedi.
The team regrets saving the dark jedi for a moment, but Anakin reminds them that saving Lomi and Welk was the right thing to do and they need to concentrate on the mission. For a moment they hope the Vong take out the ship, but Tenel Ka reminds them Raynar's still on board; they can feel in the Force that Lowie's not leaving. Jacen, Jaina, and Tahiri get a little watery-eyed. Anakin has Jaina keep her commlink open to Raynar's in the hopes of finding out what becomes of him and the team sets up their ambush on the voxyn queen.
The queen has Vong warriors guarding it. They set up around them and use the Force to ensure accuracy as they try sniping them out; none of the shots miss, but only two guards drop, with the rest of the shots deflected by the guard's armor. Half the team charges, while Anakin, Jaina, Tesar and Alema continue shooting in place for a few moments before joining the charge as a second wave.
Anakin can't keep pace; he's reaching his limits. Jaina suggests he backtrack to find Lowie, find a safe place and go into a healing trance. Anakin says it's too late; Jaina's angry and appeals to him to at least try, if only so he doesn't slow the rest of the team down and put them in danger by being slow. He tells her he's going to fight; Jaina looks away and says she thought he would.
The team's sabers cut through a hostile hedge to pursue the fleeing queen, but a company of warriors is waiting. A swarm of bugs attack, and something starts spitting exploding balls of magma at them. Despite not sensing Vong stuff in the Force, the Jedi are good enough to use lightsabers to pick the bugs out of the air, and grenades take down the magma-spitter. They're about to go on the offense again when Jaina's commlink sputters with static; the freighter has been shot down and they think they feel a Force ripple that signifies Raynar died. Jaina swears the Vong will pay; Anakin notes how fatigued, sorrowful, and frail she's starting to look. He reminds her they're there to destroy the queen, not get revenge; she agrees, adding that revenge will come later.
They get back into the fight, engaging the Vong with lightsabers and blasters. There's too many enemies; Tesar gets knocked out. Anakin orders the team to grab him and get away from the fight, find a place for Tesar and keep after the queen. He's covering the escape, and claims he'll catch up. Anakin attacks, and notices someone trying to drag cloning material containers away; he notifies the team, and they start shooting and blowing stuff up; Jaina calls for a charge.
Anakin draws on the Force to the point of overflowing; he starts glowing as his cells start burning out from the energy, but he's hyperaware and strong enough to really fight again. Every attack he makes kills a Vong; Jaina announces that the voxyn queen is escaping...some more, I guess.
Anakin orders the team after the queen, and places Jacen in charge. Jaina is surprised and has to stifle resentment at not being named. She tells him she can't get to the queen; it's an excuse, she just doesn't want to abandon Anakin to his death. He presses his attack against the Vong, trying to keep more warriors from getting in to get in the team's way. Jaina's still not leaving, and he starts broadcasting Go! at her in the Force. He's doing a heroic last stand, piling up Vong bodies.
Jaina gets the longblaster from Alema and snipes out a couple of Vong attacking Anakin. She's crying, and Jacen is trying to physically pull her away from her position so they can escape. She lines up and burns two down with one laser, and continues firing into Anakin's melee because Jedi are awesome and don't need to worry much about friendly fire.
He spots the dude trying to escape with the cloning material, and tells Jaina one more time to go through the Force. She says again over commlink that she can't. He holds up a thermal detonator for the twins to see, and thinks at them that they've got thirty seconds; that Jacen better take Jaina away. He throws the thermal detonator, blows up the cloning material, and dies. All the Jedi feel his death. In fact, halfway across the galaxy, Luke Skywalker feels Anakin's death and Jaina and Jaina's rage, sorrow and fear over the whole thing.
Trivial notes:
-Originally, Jacen was supposed to die here! Anakin was meant to be the hero of the New Jedi Order storyarc. That's why it comes as something of a shock on the first readthrough of the series -- Anakin is clearly being set up to be the guy who resolves this war. Then he dies instead. This is actually lampshaded by narrative in which Jacen contemplates how it felt like Anakin had the key to winning the war.
-Kyle Katarn was originally going to get Worfed by a voxyn in the beginning of this book, where Denning is working on establishing how incredibly dangerous these creatures are. (Katarn's death was removed so LucasArts could make another game with him, but let's be honest, it's Kyle frickin' Katarn.)
-After NJO is finished, it is revealed that Raynar Thul, Lomi Plo and Welk all survive the freighter getting shot down by the Vong. However, Troy Denning specifically notes that Em Teedee died inna fire. Depending on your opinion of the droid, this is either sad or exactly what the the droid deserved. Elaine Cunningham believes the latter and has Jaina and Lowie specifically say in a short story that's placed a little while after this book that they're glad he's gone despite the fact that they had an "oh that prissy droid, how we love him" attitude up until then. Hurray multiple author syndrome!
-The strike team suffers more losses than Jaina remembers, here. Jedi Ulaha never makes it onto the worldship, and the team started out with a couple badass war droids, all of which get destroyed very quickly trying to tank for the team.
Received: Day 99, morning
Form: thread-bare blindfold, 1/2 uses
Summary: A good chunk of the Mission to Myrkr. While a strike team of Jedi Knights hunts down the voxyn queen on a Yuuzhan Vong worldship, Anakin takes a bad wound trying to help Jaina in a fight. Jaina is about 18 years old and starts out with some strong emotional armor, but as the team takes casualties that armor gets worn away until Anakin dies.
Troy Denning is a glorious bastard who draws Anakin's death out, so this takes a while. Bodycount: five comrades confirmed dead, one believed to be dead, one missing. At the end of the memory, the team is down to 10 members. Also a pair of stupid dark jedi are believed to be dead.
Note: Jaina in Aather already knew Anakin died fighting the Vong, but Jacen framed it as something Jaina blamed him for. She knows now that she had been lashing out at Jacen at some point because she was angry and blamed herself for Anakin taking the wound that eventually killed him.
OKAY SO. Jaina, Jacen, Anakin, the Young Jedi Knights and several other, new teen Jedi are on a Yuuzhan Vong worldship. It's important to note, right here and now: up until now in memories, Jaina has been able to feel everything around her in the Force. However, everything Vong comes across Force senses as a VOID. So being in a Vong stronghold, yeah. It's weird. The only thing Jaina senses is her teammates, who have joined together with her in a battlemeld, heightening their sense of each other and basically giving them an empathic hivemind. Also there are two Dark Jedi along: adult woman Lomi Plo and teen-ish (I think?) Welk; note that they are definitely not in the battlemeld.
They're hunting the Voxyn queen. Voxyn are terribad creatures genetically engineered by the Vong to hunt Jedi; they'll kill you twelve different brutal ways, and the Jedi are pretty freaked out about them because they're the one thing the Vong have that DOES ping in the Force -- and not in a good way. If you're in the same solar system as a Voxyn, and you're a Jedi? You feel that Voxyn's mind focusing on you like a goddamn spotlight. A spotlight that's going to murder you. So she feels that periodically throughout the memory, too.
The strike team plus dark jedi are in a compound where the Vong keep their slaves. There are thousands of the Star Wars galaxy's native species in the compound, broken and despairing; as the strike team tries to make their way through, the crowd presses them, and the jedi have to push and use Jedi persuasion techniques to soothe their minds and generally push through. It sucks.
Here's the other thing about the Vong, though: they have this fleshy thing called an masquer that they can wear that makes them look indistinguishable from the species they are attacking. Vong use it to spy mostly, rather than wearing it while fighting, but the slave compound makes a perfect trap. The Vong use these to hide in the crowd and Anakin, with a special Vongsense only he has, notices them just as they start the attack.
Right off the bat, Jaina gets hit by surprise with blorash jelly, which is...jelly. Used to glue enemies in place. In fact, Jaina's stuck to a wall and unable to dodge, so she promptly takes a nasty amphistaff blow to the head (amphistaff: LIVING SNAKE STAFF, Vong use it to cut, bludgeon, whip and/or bite you. Lightsaber resistant, though if the weapons clash often enough the amphistaff will probably eventually die). She's on the edge of unconsciousness; only the strength of the battlemeld keeps her up, and aside from tunneled vision she's got blood from a head wound getting in her eyes. Everyone in the meld feels it, but Jacen's her twin and he's the only one who feels it clearly enough to identify who was hit; he calls her name.
Even so, she fumbles out her lightsaber and starts fending two attackers off at the same time. She feels young female Jedi Eryl die through the meld -- razor-sharp cut to the face. Wookie Lowbacca and almost-boyfriend Zekk are fighting their way toward her; Twi'lekk Alema Rar is behind cover and keeping reinforcements from swarming all of them by shooting at them with a longblaster -- it's basically a BFG that's not QUITE a sniper rifle. Anakin uses the Force to make a giant leap over the fighting, trying to get to Jaina -- and gets an amphistaff thrown into his side like a spear for his trouble.
Jaina cries his name; he flings a bunch of salt at her, using the Force to make sure it gets on the jelly pinning her. This causes it to start dissolving, so she can get free. Then he pulls the amphistaff out, and one of Jaina's enemies turns to attack him; Anakin takes his lightsaber to the attacker's neck.
Able to move again, Jaina goes on the offensive against the other; while she keeps the warrior busy with a flurry of saber attacks, Anakin strikes at the Vong's knees, and Jaina slashes his chest, killing him. The masquers peel away from the dead Vong, incidentally, so Jaina finally has a visual to go with the name. The more self-mutilated a Vong warrior is, the higher the rank.
Jaina berates Anakin for the risk he took; Anakin manages to tell her that the team's already lost two people, and he wasn't willing to lose her. The strike team regroups and escapes; Anakin is trying to pretend the wound isn't as bad as it is.
The Vong are on the team's tail now, though; Vong warriors are harassing the team at every opportunity, throwing razor-sharp bugs as ranged weapons and baiting the team into firing back with their blasters, whittling them down. Anakin starts second-guessing himself, and Jaina senses it; she thumps him on the head and tells him he can feel sorry for himself later -- he should blame the war for their dismal situation, not himself.
Jaina: "Do you think Uncle Luke sent us here to train? This is important. If people die, people die."
Anakin: "That's a little cold."
Jaina: "I'll cry at home. Maybe you made a mistake, maybe you didn't. But start focusing on the mission, or more people will die."
The team notices how bad Anakin's actually wounded; Jaina steps up to plate and takes charge. She has the team levitate Anakin so they can keep moving, and plunks the team's medic on Anakin's legs so she can work on him. Tekli is tiny so this doesn't bother Anakin at all apparently (and, well, she's a Chadra-Fan and only three feet tall). She informs Jaina that Anakin is bleeding internally and they need to stop so Tekli can work on him for at least fifteen to thirty minutes. The Vong sound like they're closing in, and the team feels trained Voxyn focusing on them again -- at least four. Alema takes six concussion grenades and sets them up to bury Vong in the tunnel and block off pursuit; it's semi-effective, but the Vong eventually get to the team again. The Jedi have to use blasters to gun down a voxyn. It takes a lot of laserfire to gun it down.
Eventually they get their lightsabers out again, holding the Vong at the rubble so Tekli can finish her work. Bela, a lizard-person Barabel, dies -- she was impaled by an amphistaff. They break off as soon as Anakin's back on his feet again; as they retreat some more, someone buys time by setting off mines dropped in the rubble -- the firepower is described as turning the Vong essentially into a spray of blood. A second set of mines are set off when they hear Vong coming up again, and they widen the gap with their pursuit. The team hides in "feral" voxyn tunnels -- tunnels carved in the worldship's stone by acid belched by voxyn that have escaped their trainers and roam that area of the world at will.
Anakin narrowly avoids an acidic death from a feral voxyn; the team heads into its tunnel and toward the voxyn's warren to get away from the Vong warriors. Jaina stays at the tunnel entrance, using the Force to levitate herself up upgainst the ceiling and hides there until the Vong pass, with the intent to set up motion-detecting mines once they're by. A Vong investigates into the tunnel a little, and Jaina worries he'll look up, but he learned from the MGS School of Extras and leaves. Jaina's relieved. That's when a bird-person pokes her head in. Jaina identifies Vergere, and feels something touch her mind -- Jaina is startled, and points her blaster at Vergere's face. Vergere smiles, and Jaina knows the bird touched her mind on purpose --she wonders if Vergere is a Force sensitive, which raises questions of why the Voxyn don't hunt Vergere as well.
So Jaina arms the mine and pushes herself along the ceiling out of sensor range. Vergere can scram or get blown up when the motion detector comes online; Vergere smirks, leaves and tells more Vong that no one's in there; Jaina turns her blaster's safety back on, shaking, and convinces herself Vergere didn't even know she was there.
She meets back up with the team, but feels that they're in combat with Voxyn again while she's away. As the team cautiously proceeds in the tunnels, Jaina, Jacen and Tenel Ka have a pow-wow. The twins can feel that Anakin's facade of strength is slipping.
Jaina: How's Little Brother doing?
Jacen: Hard to know. I'm scared.
Jaina: [grasps his arm] Don't be. We're not going to let anything happen to him.
Tenel Ka: [takes his other arm] This is a fact.
The team proceeds. Eventually, more voxyn! One gets Krasov, a Barabel Jedi in the face with acid, which is fun for no one on the team to feel. They saber it, and Anakin uses a thermal detonator to stop further attacks. Then he freezes up; "Every decision cost someone something. Their mission began to seem distant and impossible...Anakin barely heard Jacen's words. He did not want to make any more decisions, cause any more casualties."
The twins probe his mind while more voxyn are incoming. Jaina realizes and announces that Anakin is breaking. The fight is rejoined; Anakin decides he'll at least fight, but Jaina orders him to stay back and get himself back together. She joins a line of teammates, pouring blasterfire at the voxyn. Anakin does get it together, and he decides they'll retreat into the nests of the voyxn itself, planning to have Jacen use his animal empathy to have the voxyn not fight them and instead stick to the nests. Krasov finally dies from the acid.
They sneak through, but Anakin grows so weak the final Barabel on the team, Tesar, has to carry him. Raynar gets wounded by a voxyn; he found one of the dead teammate's body in a nest and rushed for it. They get him away so the voxyn can go back to guarding the nest. It's been long enough the team decides it's safe to emerge from the voxyn tunnels; surely they've lost their Vong pursuit by now. They'll get out and find a place to lick their wounds. When they do, they find a small captured freighter. Raynar gets tucked inside to heal while Lowbacca works on fixing the freighter to serve as an escape vehicle after the team's killed the voxyn queen. The others scout; they locate the queen itself in a cloning facility.
That's when our dark jedi pair stun Lowie and dump him outside the ship he was fixing, then take off in the ship with Raynar and Lowie's translator droid Em Teedee still inside. The team is spread out but notice the takeoff and immediately flood the commlinks with questions, Jaina included, trying to call Lowie and ask him why he appears to have launched. Jaina is a smart mechanic, and after a few moments sends a signal to Em Teedee instead, remotely activating the droid. The droid announces "They're stealing me!" before getting cut off--Zekk is angry and informs everyone it had to be the dark jedi.
The team regrets saving the dark jedi for a moment, but Anakin reminds them that saving Lomi and Welk was the right thing to do and they need to concentrate on the mission. For a moment they hope the Vong take out the ship, but Tenel Ka reminds them Raynar's still on board; they can feel in the Force that Lowie's not leaving. Jacen, Jaina, and Tahiri get a little watery-eyed. Anakin has Jaina keep her commlink open to Raynar's in the hopes of finding out what becomes of him and the team sets up their ambush on the voxyn queen.
The queen has Vong warriors guarding it. They set up around them and use the Force to ensure accuracy as they try sniping them out; none of the shots miss, but only two guards drop, with the rest of the shots deflected by the guard's armor. Half the team charges, while Anakin, Jaina, Tesar and Alema continue shooting in place for a few moments before joining the charge as a second wave.
Anakin can't keep pace; he's reaching his limits. Jaina suggests he backtrack to find Lowie, find a safe place and go into a healing trance. Anakin says it's too late; Jaina's angry and appeals to him to at least try, if only so he doesn't slow the rest of the team down and put them in danger by being slow. He tells her he's going to fight; Jaina looks away and says she thought he would.
The team's sabers cut through a hostile hedge to pursue the fleeing queen, but a company of warriors is waiting. A swarm of bugs attack, and something starts spitting exploding balls of magma at them. Despite not sensing Vong stuff in the Force, the Jedi are good enough to use lightsabers to pick the bugs out of the air, and grenades take down the magma-spitter. They're about to go on the offense again when Jaina's commlink sputters with static; the freighter has been shot down and they think they feel a Force ripple that signifies Raynar died. Jaina swears the Vong will pay; Anakin notes how fatigued, sorrowful, and frail she's starting to look. He reminds her they're there to destroy the queen, not get revenge; she agrees, adding that revenge will come later.
They get back into the fight, engaging the Vong with lightsabers and blasters. There's too many enemies; Tesar gets knocked out. Anakin orders the team to grab him and get away from the fight, find a place for Tesar and keep after the queen. He's covering the escape, and claims he'll catch up. Anakin attacks, and notices someone trying to drag cloning material containers away; he notifies the team, and they start shooting and blowing stuff up; Jaina calls for a charge.
Anakin draws on the Force to the point of overflowing; he starts glowing as his cells start burning out from the energy, but he's hyperaware and strong enough to really fight again. Every attack he makes kills a Vong; Jaina announces that the voxyn queen is escaping...some more, I guess.
Anakin orders the team after the queen, and places Jacen in charge. Jaina is surprised and has to stifle resentment at not being named. She tells him she can't get to the queen; it's an excuse, she just doesn't want to abandon Anakin to his death. He presses his attack against the Vong, trying to keep more warriors from getting in to get in the team's way. Jaina's still not leaving, and he starts broadcasting Go! at her in the Force. He's doing a heroic last stand, piling up Vong bodies.
Jaina gets the longblaster from Alema and snipes out a couple of Vong attacking Anakin. She's crying, and Jacen is trying to physically pull her away from her position so they can escape. She lines up and burns two down with one laser, and continues firing into Anakin's melee because Jedi are awesome and don't need to worry much about friendly fire.
He spots the dude trying to escape with the cloning material, and tells Jaina one more time to go through the Force. She says again over commlink that she can't. He holds up a thermal detonator for the twins to see, and thinks at them that they've got thirty seconds; that Jacen better take Jaina away. He throws the thermal detonator, blows up the cloning material, and dies. All the Jedi feel his death. In fact, halfway across the galaxy, Luke Skywalker feels Anakin's death and Jaina and Jaina's rage, sorrow and fear over the whole thing.
Trivial notes:
-Originally, Jacen was supposed to die here! Anakin was meant to be the hero of the New Jedi Order storyarc. That's why it comes as something of a shock on the first readthrough of the series -- Anakin is clearly being set up to be the guy who resolves this war. Then he dies instead. This is actually lampshaded by narrative in which Jacen contemplates how it felt like Anakin had the key to winning the war.
-Kyle Katarn was originally going to get Worfed by a voxyn in the beginning of this book, where Denning is working on establishing how incredibly dangerous these creatures are. (Katarn's death was removed so LucasArts could make another game with him, but let's be honest, it's Kyle frickin' Katarn.)
-After NJO is finished, it is revealed that Raynar Thul, Lomi Plo and Welk all survive the freighter getting shot down by the Vong. However, Troy Denning specifically notes that Em Teedee died inna fire. Depending on your opinion of the droid, this is either sad or exactly what the the droid deserved. Elaine Cunningham believes the latter and has Jaina and Lowie specifically say in a short story that's placed a little while after this book that they're glad he's gone despite the fact that they had an "oh that prissy droid, how we love him" attitude up until then. Hurray multiple author syndrome!
-The strike team suffers more losses than Jaina remembers, here. Jedi Ulaha never makes it onto the worldship, and the team started out with a couple badass war droids, all of which get destroyed very quickly trying to tank for the team.