Jaina Solo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sticksofthejedi) wrote2012-01-02 03:38 pm
sticksofthejedi) wrote2012-01-02 03:38 pm
Entry tags:
Memory 23
Memory: Warmaster Tsavong Lah falls to the Sword of the Jedi.
Received: Day 111, late afternoon
Form: Jello shot.
Summary: Jaina personally defeats the Yuuzhan Vong Warmaster in an operation that Admiral Ackbar came out of retirement to plan. Needless to say, IT'S A TRAP.
The Battle of Ebaq 9 starts with alarms waking Jaina and Twin Suns Squadron in a poorly-equipped, cold asteroid base. Jaina's eyes are gummed shut, but thanks to the Force, she's able to grab equipment and start for her fighter before even prying them open. Artificial gravity gets unreliable as the base's shields go up -- the power generators just can't handle both. Jaina uses Force telekinesis to get herself and her wingmate to their fighters. The squadron launches ASAP -- and that's when Jaina feels the predatory focus of the Voxyn bearing down on her through the Force.
The plan was to bait the Vong into attacking a "secret base" for the New Republic's leaders, guarded by Jaina Solo, who some of the Vong think is their evil Trickster goddess (and the rest think she's mocking their goddess and want to kill her more because of it). The Vong come in with a huge armada, and find General Farlander's New Republic fleet, which won't be enough. Twin Suns squadron joins the fight; Jaina receives notification that the Vong have finally figured out a counter to the transponders she's been using to fool enemy sensors and get them to fire on each other. Twin Suns are tearing up some Vong ships! Then Jaina's wingmate, Vale, gets completely vaporized by friendly fire. Things are getting bad for the Republic forces; that's when Ackbar's first wave of reinforcements arrive.
It's the Ralroost, a couple other capital ships, and some more Jedi fighter pilots. The first wave of reinforcements also is mainly comprised of transport ships, which promptly turn around and jump back out of the system; the wave is to look like a supply convoy with an escort so Tsavong Lah doesn't clue into the trap just yet. The transports go back along the hyperspace lanes, set up a device to yank any fleeing enemy ships out of hyperspace and start laying a ginormous mine field.
Combat remains so clustered for Twin Suns that Jaina's having to dodge friendly fire in addition to the enemy's attacks. Twin Nine died, and now Jaina's Getting Mad. The second wave of reinforcements arrive: a fleet of hodgepodge smuggler's ships pulled together by Han and his smuggler buddies; Tsavong Lah begins to suspect a trap, but it's a bunch of smugglers, so it doesn't seem like intentional military reinforcements. Twin Three's shot down, but manages to eject.
Elsewhere, the minefield is completed, and the rest of the Republic's reinforcements start jumping in, because now it doesn't matter if the Vong realize it's a trap and try to retreat. In fact, with all those mines, it'd be KINDA NICE.
Twin Suns loses two more fighters, and of the eight remaining, only Lowbacca's fighter is in good condition. Jaina's lost her rear shields and one of her fighter's four wings has been blown clear off, so she's also down to three lasers. They're completely out of missiles and bombs. The fighting has moved out of the squadron's area of the system, though; Jaina starts to direct them to the next part of the engagement, but receives orders to return to Ebaq 9. Jaina's a little unhappy because she wants to keep helping. She turns the squadron back to base, weary and contemplating that this is the first time in a very long time anyone had told her to think about preserving her own life.
That's when Tsavong Lah takes the option Ackbar didn't think of: instead of retreating to preserve his forces, the Vong warmaster decides he's going to go out in a blaze of glory, and orders a portion of his armada to retreat to fight another day, and for the rest of his forces to come with him and sacrifice themselves to get at Jaina and whoever else is being defended on Ebaq 9. Jaina leads the squadron's pilots into the asteroid's mine shafts; they set up mines and shut blast doors to delay the enemy's landing forces. She has them all suit up for some Action Heroing, getting body armor, blasters, explosives, and vac suits in case of depressurization.
The Warmaster transmits a message for his enemies: "This is Warmaster Tsavong Lah. We are having a Jeedai hunt on Ebaq Nine! Although anyone else coming near will be destroyed, all Jeedai are welcome to participate!" The lights and gravity switch off as the Vong start overloading the shields. Jaina and her Jedi pilots are fine in the dark because the Force lets them know where everything is, but they all turn on flashlights because her non-Jedi pilots don't have that capability. Jaina can feel a void in the Force -- the huge Vong landing forces. Then she gets disturbed by the sensation of Voxyn focusing on her again. She's being hunted. Jaina's pissed because Ackbar's plan had assumed the Voxyn had finished dying out since the Jedi took out the Voxyn Queen a while ago; the Vong were supposed to get lost searching hundreds of mine shafts, but with Voxyn they'll head straight to where Jaina, Lowie and Tesar are.
The eight set up mines beyond the blast doors, but almost too late, Jaina notices that the Vong have decided to burrow AROUND the doors instead of going through them. The team fall back, continuing to drop mines. After retreating a distance, Jaina, Lowie and Tesar make a combined effort to use the Force to pull the roof of the tunnel down behind them. The roof begins to fall, but a Voxyn gets through, interrupting. The team kills it and Jaina starts fighting incoming Vong with lightsaber in one hand and blaster rifle in the other, resuming work on the roof with the other Jedi. They'll continue retreating; unfortunately, in the skirmish Twin Four was killed and Twin Seven is badly injured. At an intersection, Jaina orders the non-jedi redshirts to go one way, while she and her Jedi buddies go another way; the Vong will follow the Jedi, who are the only ones really able to fight the Vong. The extras protest; "We haven't come this far with you just to let you go off and fight the Vong on your own. You made us a team, and we're sticking together." Jaina has a moment of pride in the fighting spirit she's created in her unit, but threatens to pull rank on them. The extras are frustrated, but follow her directions.
The Jedi go down a different tunnel, and now that it's just them, decide to pull out more Jedi tricks. They use the Force to levitate each other up an air shaft. Jaina has a quick mental exchange with Luke Skywalker, who's still tied up in the space battle. He wonders if he could fly a fighter into the shafts to start blasting Vong with better firepower than ground forces carry; Jaina's bad mood lifts with weary amusement at the idea of someone piloting an X-wing down the tunnels. He tells her to sit tight, the fleet will find a way to help her. She bitterly snarks that she doesn't have a choice.
The Vong start trying to get up to the Jedi; they slice the first Voxyn up, gun down a dozen climbing warriors, and drop a couple grenades because why not. Tsavong Lah decides instead of continuing to lose warriors trying to get them up the air shaft, he'll collapse the Jedi's footing and bring them down to him. Jaina decides they'll take out a few more warriors then run again. She's thinking to run until the enemy catches her, then fight to the death.
She doesn't have to, though, because that's when Vergere crashes a stolen A-Wing into the tunnels, depressurizing the base. The fiery explosion from an A-Wing's ridiculously overpowered engines helps suck out the air quickly. Jaina thinks the base's engineers have deliberately depressurized the mine shafts, and is glad she had her people suit up in case something like this happened. Tesar watches the enemy die below, and signs to Jaina not to take a look because humans wouldn't find it a pretty sight.
Because of radiation from the A-Wing's engine explosion, people can't get in to Jaina's team, and they can't get out. Droids start transporting supplies in and medical droids check up on them. Since the Jedi are uninjured, Jaina directs the droids that find her in the direction the rest of the squadron went -- and that's when Tsavong Lah, who was buried in a pile of Vong bodies, decapitates the medical droid.
The warmaster immobilizes Jaina's feet with a glob of blorash jelly and throws a weapon at her; she falls to the side and it impales Lowie's shoulder instead, who falls into Tesar, keeping Tesar from drawing a blaster to shoot the warmaster. Tesar gets busy assisting Lowie, who's now losing air. With Jaina stuck in place and lacking peripheral vision due to her vac suit's helmet, Tsavong Lah decides to attack her from behind; she watches his shadow to parry strikes. The warmaster's strong; the first weapon clash almost dislocates her arm because of the awkward angle. Tesar identifies the warmaster; Jaina doesn't care WHO it is, just that it's an attacking Vong. She orders Tesar to shoot him. Tesar tries, but the warmaster puts Jaina between himself and the gunner. Since shooting at Tsavong Lah is pointless, Tesar goes back to tending to Lowie.
Jaina finally cuts up the warmaster's amphistaff, but there's a handy pile of warrior's bodies with more of the weapons, so Tsavong Lah just rearms himself and comes at her again. She tries a move to turn a parry into a bind and disarm, but because he keeps coming in at awkward angles, she lacks the leverage to carry through with the disarm. Tsavong Lah kicks and may have broken one of her legs, and she loses her weapon. She snatches Lowie's lightsaber since he wasn't using it anyway. She manages to pull herself up to continue the fight, cutting off part of the warmaster's arm. He backs off for a moment, surprised; she points Lowie's lightsaber at his face and takes the interlude to check on Lowie's condition. Tesar's almost finished patching him up. Jaina says good, she'd like some backup soon -- she's pretty sure she just made the warmaster mad.
He charges and starts to overwhelm Jaina's defense. She finally spots her lightsaber on the ground, and while continuing the melee exchange of attacks and parries, grabs her lightsaber with the Force and uses telekinesis to drive it through Tsavong Lah's throat from behind.
Jaina turns her attention to Tesar and Lowie. They'll have to contact Luke and have another medical droid sent in. (Trivial note: fans complained to the author, Walter Jon Williams, about the warmaster's final battle; they felt it was too short and he should've been even tougher. They also complained about how Jaina gives zero fucks about the fact that this is the freaking warmaster, but. As far as Jaina's concerned, it's one more dead Vong, and Williams responds to fans by pointing out that she beats him as quickly as she did because IT'S JAINA FREAKING SOLO and also she'd be more interested in making sure her close Wookie pal is okay than watching the warmaster's death throes.)
The blorash jelly immobilizing her finally breaks up from exposure to the vacuum of space.
Jaina does not appreciate the timing.
Received: Day 111, late afternoon
Form: Jello shot.
Summary: Jaina personally defeats the Yuuzhan Vong Warmaster in an operation that Admiral Ackbar came out of retirement to plan. Needless to say, IT'S A TRAP.
The Battle of Ebaq 9 starts with alarms waking Jaina and Twin Suns Squadron in a poorly-equipped, cold asteroid base. Jaina's eyes are gummed shut, but thanks to the Force, she's able to grab equipment and start for her fighter before even prying them open. Artificial gravity gets unreliable as the base's shields go up -- the power generators just can't handle both. Jaina uses Force telekinesis to get herself and her wingmate to their fighters. The squadron launches ASAP -- and that's when Jaina feels the predatory focus of the Voxyn bearing down on her through the Force.
The plan was to bait the Vong into attacking a "secret base" for the New Republic's leaders, guarded by Jaina Solo, who some of the Vong think is their evil Trickster goddess (and the rest think she's mocking their goddess and want to kill her more because of it). The Vong come in with a huge armada, and find General Farlander's New Republic fleet, which won't be enough. Twin Suns squadron joins the fight; Jaina receives notification that the Vong have finally figured out a counter to the transponders she's been using to fool enemy sensors and get them to fire on each other. Twin Suns are tearing up some Vong ships! Then Jaina's wingmate, Vale, gets completely vaporized by friendly fire. Things are getting bad for the Republic forces; that's when Ackbar's first wave of reinforcements arrive.
It's the Ralroost, a couple other capital ships, and some more Jedi fighter pilots. The first wave of reinforcements also is mainly comprised of transport ships, which promptly turn around and jump back out of the system; the wave is to look like a supply convoy with an escort so Tsavong Lah doesn't clue into the trap just yet. The transports go back along the hyperspace lanes, set up a device to yank any fleeing enemy ships out of hyperspace and start laying a ginormous mine field.
Combat remains so clustered for Twin Suns that Jaina's having to dodge friendly fire in addition to the enemy's attacks. Twin Nine died, and now Jaina's Getting Mad. The second wave of reinforcements arrive: a fleet of hodgepodge smuggler's ships pulled together by Han and his smuggler buddies; Tsavong Lah begins to suspect a trap, but it's a bunch of smugglers, so it doesn't seem like intentional military reinforcements. Twin Three's shot down, but manages to eject.
Elsewhere, the minefield is completed, and the rest of the Republic's reinforcements start jumping in, because now it doesn't matter if the Vong realize it's a trap and try to retreat. In fact, with all those mines, it'd be KINDA NICE.
Twin Suns loses two more fighters, and of the eight remaining, only Lowbacca's fighter is in good condition. Jaina's lost her rear shields and one of her fighter's four wings has been blown clear off, so she's also down to three lasers. They're completely out of missiles and bombs. The fighting has moved out of the squadron's area of the system, though; Jaina starts to direct them to the next part of the engagement, but receives orders to return to Ebaq 9. Jaina's a little unhappy because she wants to keep helping. She turns the squadron back to base, weary and contemplating that this is the first time in a very long time anyone had told her to think about preserving her own life.
That's when Tsavong Lah takes the option Ackbar didn't think of: instead of retreating to preserve his forces, the Vong warmaster decides he's going to go out in a blaze of glory, and orders a portion of his armada to retreat to fight another day, and for the rest of his forces to come with him and sacrifice themselves to get at Jaina and whoever else is being defended on Ebaq 9. Jaina leads the squadron's pilots into the asteroid's mine shafts; they set up mines and shut blast doors to delay the enemy's landing forces. She has them all suit up for some Action Heroing, getting body armor, blasters, explosives, and vac suits in case of depressurization.
The Warmaster transmits a message for his enemies: "This is Warmaster Tsavong Lah. We are having a Jeedai hunt on Ebaq Nine! Although anyone else coming near will be destroyed, all Jeedai are welcome to participate!" The lights and gravity switch off as the Vong start overloading the shields. Jaina and her Jedi pilots are fine in the dark because the Force lets them know where everything is, but they all turn on flashlights because her non-Jedi pilots don't have that capability. Jaina can feel a void in the Force -- the huge Vong landing forces. Then she gets disturbed by the sensation of Voxyn focusing on her again. She's being hunted. Jaina's pissed because Ackbar's plan had assumed the Voxyn had finished dying out since the Jedi took out the Voxyn Queen a while ago; the Vong were supposed to get lost searching hundreds of mine shafts, but with Voxyn they'll head straight to where Jaina, Lowie and Tesar are.
The eight set up mines beyond the blast doors, but almost too late, Jaina notices that the Vong have decided to burrow AROUND the doors instead of going through them. The team fall back, continuing to drop mines. After retreating a distance, Jaina, Lowie and Tesar make a combined effort to use the Force to pull the roof of the tunnel down behind them. The roof begins to fall, but a Voxyn gets through, interrupting. The team kills it and Jaina starts fighting incoming Vong with lightsaber in one hand and blaster rifle in the other, resuming work on the roof with the other Jedi. They'll continue retreating; unfortunately, in the skirmish Twin Four was killed and Twin Seven is badly injured. At an intersection, Jaina orders the non-jedi redshirts to go one way, while she and her Jedi buddies go another way; the Vong will follow the Jedi, who are the only ones really able to fight the Vong. The extras protest; "We haven't come this far with you just to let you go off and fight the Vong on your own. You made us a team, and we're sticking together." Jaina has a moment of pride in the fighting spirit she's created in her unit, but threatens to pull rank on them. The extras are frustrated, but follow her directions.
The Jedi go down a different tunnel, and now that it's just them, decide to pull out more Jedi tricks. They use the Force to levitate each other up an air shaft. Jaina has a quick mental exchange with Luke Skywalker, who's still tied up in the space battle. He wonders if he could fly a fighter into the shafts to start blasting Vong with better firepower than ground forces carry; Jaina's bad mood lifts with weary amusement at the idea of someone piloting an X-wing down the tunnels. He tells her to sit tight, the fleet will find a way to help her. She bitterly snarks that she doesn't have a choice.
The Vong start trying to get up to the Jedi; they slice the first Voxyn up, gun down a dozen climbing warriors, and drop a couple grenades because why not. Tsavong Lah decides instead of continuing to lose warriors trying to get them up the air shaft, he'll collapse the Jedi's footing and bring them down to him. Jaina decides they'll take out a few more warriors then run again. She's thinking to run until the enemy catches her, then fight to the death.
She doesn't have to, though, because that's when Vergere crashes a stolen A-Wing into the tunnels, depressurizing the base. The fiery explosion from an A-Wing's ridiculously overpowered engines helps suck out the air quickly. Jaina thinks the base's engineers have deliberately depressurized the mine shafts, and is glad she had her people suit up in case something like this happened. Tesar watches the enemy die below, and signs to Jaina not to take a look because humans wouldn't find it a pretty sight.
Because of radiation from the A-Wing's engine explosion, people can't get in to Jaina's team, and they can't get out. Droids start transporting supplies in and medical droids check up on them. Since the Jedi are uninjured, Jaina directs the droids that find her in the direction the rest of the squadron went -- and that's when Tsavong Lah, who was buried in a pile of Vong bodies, decapitates the medical droid.
The warmaster immobilizes Jaina's feet with a glob of blorash jelly and throws a weapon at her; she falls to the side and it impales Lowie's shoulder instead, who falls into Tesar, keeping Tesar from drawing a blaster to shoot the warmaster. Tesar gets busy assisting Lowie, who's now losing air. With Jaina stuck in place and lacking peripheral vision due to her vac suit's helmet, Tsavong Lah decides to attack her from behind; she watches his shadow to parry strikes. The warmaster's strong; the first weapon clash almost dislocates her arm because of the awkward angle. Tesar identifies the warmaster; Jaina doesn't care WHO it is, just that it's an attacking Vong. She orders Tesar to shoot him. Tesar tries, but the warmaster puts Jaina between himself and the gunner. Since shooting at Tsavong Lah is pointless, Tesar goes back to tending to Lowie.
Jaina finally cuts up the warmaster's amphistaff, but there's a handy pile of warrior's bodies with more of the weapons, so Tsavong Lah just rearms himself and comes at her again. She tries a move to turn a parry into a bind and disarm, but because he keeps coming in at awkward angles, she lacks the leverage to carry through with the disarm. Tsavong Lah kicks and may have broken one of her legs, and she loses her weapon. She snatches Lowie's lightsaber since he wasn't using it anyway. She manages to pull herself up to continue the fight, cutting off part of the warmaster's arm. He backs off for a moment, surprised; she points Lowie's lightsaber at his face and takes the interlude to check on Lowie's condition. Tesar's almost finished patching him up. Jaina says good, she'd like some backup soon -- she's pretty sure she just made the warmaster mad.
He charges and starts to overwhelm Jaina's defense. She finally spots her lightsaber on the ground, and while continuing the melee exchange of attacks and parries, grabs her lightsaber with the Force and uses telekinesis to drive it through Tsavong Lah's throat from behind.
Jaina turns her attention to Tesar and Lowie. They'll have to contact Luke and have another medical droid sent in. (Trivial note: fans complained to the author, Walter Jon Williams, about the warmaster's final battle; they felt it was too short and he should've been even tougher. They also complained about how Jaina gives zero fucks about the fact that this is the freaking warmaster, but. As far as Jaina's concerned, it's one more dead Vong, and Williams responds to fans by pointing out that she beats him as quickly as she did because IT'S JAINA FREAKING SOLO and also she'd be more interested in making sure her close Wookie pal is okay than watching the warmaster's death throes.)
The blorash jelly immobilizing her finally breaks up from exposure to the vacuum of space.
Jaina does not appreciate the timing.