Act I: Capture

Senator Viqi Shesh HATED datawork. It was one of the reasons she'd decided to sell out the New Republic to the Yuuzhan Vong. She strongly suspected the Vong had no use for datawork. Plus, her being a traitor added a certain spice to doing her datawork, since half of it was now reports from spies that she planned to pass on to the Vong.

One report in particular caught her eye. She read it three times to make sure she had it right. She did. This was priceless. . . which, of course, wouldn't stop her from putting a price on it.

Making sure the surveillance holocams in her officer were off, Viqi Shesh darted over to the locker containing an item that was sure to get her shot if it was discovered. . . Tsavong Lah's villip. Stroking it, she informed the Warmaster's companion villip, half a galaxy away, that she needed to speak with him.

After a far too long wait, the villip everted into the face of Warmaster Tsavong Lah.

"What is it, Tsup?" he asked.

Shesh smiled. She loved it when he called her that. It reminded her of a Kuati word, tsap, which was an archaic term for an honored and trusted ally.

"I have information you will be most pleased to learn."

"You just give me the information. . . I will decide how I receive it."

Viqi nodded, and told the Warmaster everything she knew.

Tsavong Lah smiled. "Indeed, I am pleased. You will be rewarded handsomely."

"Serving you and your gods is reward enough," Viqi lied through her teeth.

"Do not deceive me," Tsavong Lah scolded. "I know your kind well. You desire only to be compensated for your efforts, and you would sacrifice your own children for a material gain. Yet you will go through any amount of effort to avoid sacrifice yourself. Were we in our home galaxy, I would have no use for you.

"But we are not, and I do. I will reward you well, Tsup, like the merchant you are."

Viqi smiled. How well the Warmaster understood her. "Of course, Warmaster. May the gods grant you victory."

But the villip was already reverting back to it's closed state. Tsavong Lah had hung up on her.

Viqi hid the creature again, and leaned back in her chair. She wondered what the Vong would do to them. And if she could get holos. . .

"This ship is too small!"

Mara turned, suppressing smile. "It's not the size that counts, Leia. You of all women should know that."

Leia put her hands on her hips. "When it comes to size, sister dear, there is simply no comparison between my brother and my husband."

"And when did you get the chance to compare between your husband and your BROTHER?" Mara asked, smirking. The relationship between Luke and Leia before they had found out about their familial connection was the source of much good-natured joking among the adults in the Skywalker-Solo family.

Leia's retort was cut off by a young voice demanding: "Can we PLEASE stop talking about the sexual escapades of my mother, father, aunt, and uncle?" Jaina looked from her mother to her aunt and back again.

"Whatever you say, dear," Leia replied. "But this ship is still to small. There's only one 'fresher, and that witch has been occupying it for an hour." Normally, the use of the word "witch" would be an insult, but in this case, it was a literal truth. Tenel Ka, Witch of Dathomir, also a young Jedi Knight.

Leia Organa-Solo, Mara Jade-Skywalker, Jaina Solo, Tenel Ka, and Tahiri Veila were in Mara's ship, the Jade Sabre, making one last trip to the new secret Jedi base. It should be a routine, easy trip, hence their casual attitude and dress. Mara and Jaina were both in standard issue flightsuits, while Leia wore a casual dress, tight around the torso, shoulders, arms, and waits, but with a thick skirt loose enough for easy movement but tight enough to keep it from snagging. Tenel Ka, assuming she'd gotten dressed yet, would be wearing the circlet of a Hapan Princess along with tight-fitting Jedi robes that hugged her trim and athletic figure in a most enticing way. Tahiri, casual no matter where one was, wore an old red flightsuit, unzipped almost to her navel. Of course, she wandered the ship barefoot. More then once, Mara had sworn she'd scatter vibrotacks all over the floor one night, just to force the little brat to put her shoes one. But she said it in a way that made everyone, even Tahiri, laugh.

"Many apologies, Princess," Tenel said, emerging from the back quarter of the ship. "My arm takes some getting used to." Tenel had recently been fitted with a cybernetic arm to replace her missing left one, severed in a lightsaber duel. Though she harbored a deep distaste of the artifical devices, the war against the Yuuzhan Vong had proved to her that one arm was insufficient.

"It's alright, Tenel. We-"

Leia's reply was cut short as the Jade Sabre bucked violently underneath them, throwing anyone not strapped into acceleration couch to the deck.

Mara and Jaina were thrown hard aginst their harnesses, but recovered quickly, checking the sensors. "We've reverted from hyperspace," Jaina reported.

"I'm reading. . . oh, no." Mara looked up from the scope to the veiwport.

Dead ahead, barely visible against the blackness of space, was what looked like a gigantic, black asteroid.

A Yuuzhan Vong Cruiser.

"We're outta here!! Leia, Tenel, Tahiri! Strap in!!" Mara kicked up the throttle on the Jade Sabre, rocketing past the cruiser towards their hyperspace vector.

"Look!" Jaina shouted, pointing. Out the veiwport, the women could see several long spire extruding from the yorik coral vessel, similar to the spines that housed giant plasma projectors or coralskippers on similar ships. These spines, however, gleamed with a sheen unlike that of yorik coral.

"What are those, Jaina?" Leia asked.

"I'm not sure," the younger Solo replied, working the scanner before her mother even formed the question. "I'm reading a very high metal content, though."

"Metal?" Tahiri asked, hauling herself into the cramped cockpit and buckling herself into her seat. Her bare feet were bleeding from where the forced reversion to realspace had slammed them into a bulkhead. "The Yuuzhan Vong don't use metal."

"Apparently they started. . . could it be some organic being generating a metallic shell?" Mara asked.

"Possible," Leia replied. "Could be something similar to the iron mollusks of Mon Calamari."

"Power surge, tendrils!" Jaina shouted. Through their Master/Apprentice relationship, Mara knew what Jaina meant almost before she said it. . . the odd, metallic tendrils of the Vong ship were emiting a power surge. Probably, knowing the Yuuzhan Vong, some kind of weapon.

Mara jinked the Jade Sabre in a maneuver impossible for a ship it's size, and nearly so for a ship considerably smaller. A sizzle of blue energy, looking like nothing so much as an oversized lightning bolt, arced around the Sabre's shields for a moment. Then the shields were gone.

"What was THAT?" Tahiri squealed, her voice going high-pitched from the maneuver and her own fear.

"I don't know," Jaina replied, "but it took down the shields. Fried the generator but good, too." Leia marveled at how much Jaina sounded like her father in that moment.

"Some kind of ion cannon analog?" Tenel asked.

"Probably," Leia replied grimly.

"But ion cannons don't arc toward their target," Mara added, her voice equally grim.

Mara jinked the ship again as Jaina cried out, but it was too late. The electrical bolt arc to the nearest conductive substance for dozens of light years in any direction. . . the Jade Sabre. The electrical discharge danced over the hull, pentrating into her systems, overloading the circuits it didn't melt outright. Enough of the energy penetrated to the living areas to shock the Jedi women into unconsciousness.

Leia awoke unsure of where she was. It was hot and humid, reminding her of the atmosphere of Yavin IV. Yet it was filled with unfamiliar and unpleasant scents, so thick they boardered on flavors. She opened her eyes, and it was dark. . . not completely black, but lit with only a dark red light that hurt her eyes and made her surroundings very difficult to distinguish. She was laying on an uneven, rocky surface. . .

No, not rock. Coral. Yorik Coral.

She was on board a Yuuzhan Vong ship.

She sat up. A half-heard, half-felt sigh drew her gaze to her right. Jaina lay there, unconscious. . . but her sense in the Force was growing. She'd be awake soon. Looking to her left, Leia spotted Mara nearby. She crawled over to her sister-in-law, and put her hand on her shoulder.

Mara sprung to life, grabbing and twisting at Leia's arm. Only her old selfdefense reflexes and Jedi training allowed her to twist out of Mara's grasp without a broken arm.

"Mara! It's me!"

"Sorry," Mara muttered, sitting. "I thought you were. . ."

"I know," Leia replied. She looked around, but saw no sign of Tahiri or Tenel. Nor did she see anything resembling a door or hatch. "I have a bad feeling about this," she murmured.

Suddenly, the light shifted from red to white. Leia and Mara blinked, and Jaina stirred, waking. A crack opened in one wall, revealing the heavy coral door. In stepped three mean-looking Vong warriors. They were clad only in some sort of loincloth. . . though Leia suspected they were some kind of creature, as she doubted the Yuuzhan Vong would tolerated even unliving fabrics on their bodies.

And judging by the anatomy all to visible both under and outside the loincloths, these Vong were male.

The lead Vong snapped something to his comrades. They all reached behind their backs, and pulled out wicked-looking knives made from some kind of sharpened chitin. Leia had a vivid mental image of a beetle-like creature, growing these knifelike spines out of it's shell, waiting for a Yuuzhan Vong warrior to come by and snap the growth off, cutting his hand open on the blade that was to be his. Perhaps he and his comrades even had to fight and kill the creature, spilling blood to earn the right to spill yet more blood.

Leia stood, choking down her fear. Through the Force, she felt Jaina and Mara doing likewise. "I demand you release us at once, or there will be consequences."

If the aliens even understood her, they ignored her. Rather, they brandished their knives and moved, unafraid, toward their captives.

The one approaching Mara reached her first. Using every ounce of training she'd accumulated over her long years as servant of the Emperor, thug, smuggler, and Jedi, Mara attacked the Vong unarmed, evading his knife and delivering punches and kicks, most of which were blocked by his staggering reflexes.

Leia was critically distracted by Mara's fight for just long enough for her own assailant to creep up to her with inhuman speed and plant a punishing uppercut to the point of her jaw. Leia went down, hard, seeing stars. She heard a shriek, and saw Jaina trying to wrestle the knife away from her assailant. The tug-of-war seemed even for a few moments, then the warrior did something with this leverage, and Jaina crashed into the bulkhead. He was on her before she could reorient herself, his knife flashing down. Jaina screamed.

"NO!" Leia shouted, pushing away the Dark Side emotions that rose within her only with great difficulty. Still, she surged to her feet, ready to charge Jaina's murderer.

Pain exploded in her ankle, the room spun, and the wind was knocked out of her. Precious seconds later, she knew what had happened: Her own attacker had sweapt her foot out from under her, dumping her to the floor. He was now above her, his knife flashing threateningly in her face.

The sound of shrieks and tearing fabric brought Leia around to the fact that her daughter wasn't dead. The Vong atop her began his own work, and Leia understood.

The Vong weren't interested in injuring them, at least not right away. Those wicked knives of their's weren't for cutting flesh today.

They were for cutting fabric.

Leia struggled, succeeding only in getting herself sliced a dozens of times by the sharp organic knife. None of the cuts were deep, but they all hurt terribly. Jaina was likewise stripped of her flightsuit. When they were done, the two Vong got off of them and left the room.

Leia bounded to her daughter, picking her up and holding her in her arms like she had when Jaina had been only a little girl. The illusion was destroyed by how far Leia had to stretch her arms to enfold the young woman, as well as the fullness of her daughter's breasts pressing insistently against her own.

"Are you alright, baby?" Leia asked.

"I'm fine, mom. But Aunt Mara-"

They both turned. Mara had put up a fight, but it was over. A pair of tentacles and writhed down from the ceiling and enfolded Mara's arms. The Vong had hit her somehow to knock the wind out of her, and had proceeded to cut of about half of her green flightsuit. Leia slowly began to get to her feet-

The Vong turned, and snarled, brandishing his knife. Leia sunk back to her knees. She couldn't help Mara if she got herself killed. The Vong returned to his work, using the knife to strip Mara of the rest of her clothes. Due to her bondage, she received fewer cuts then Leia and Jaina had, but the knife still nicked her several times, at least a few of which Leia suspected were deliberate.

When all three women were naked, the lat Vong left the room, leaving them alone to contemplate their fate. . .