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Author	Topic: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU) updated 18th March - HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAGGY!
imperial77 Registered: Sep '06	Date Posted: 11/22/06 5:58pm Subject: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU) updated 18th March - HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAGGY! - Date Edited: 3/18 4:46pm (36 edits total) Edited By: imperial77
	[Hi, and welcome to Reversal! I’m imperial77, the new and hopefully less wacky alter ego of Thrawn McEwok, and this is an AU of the second half of the Edge of Victory duology, kicking off with a simple question: what would have happened if Anakin Solo had been captured by the Yuuzhan Vong at the end of Conquest? With thanks to Kidan for a few rounds of plotbunny tennis; and with a different sort of thanks to the NJO authors, especially Greg Keyes: I can make no claim for my ’fic to be anything as good as the story which inspired it... ] STAR WARS – THE NEW JEDI ORDER Edge of Victory II: Reversal Dramatis Personae Anh’khiin; Jeedai slave (male human) Colonel Gavin Darklighter; Rogue Squadron (male human) Colonel Jagged Fel; force Spike (male human) Han Solo; captain, Millennium Falcon (male human) Jacen Solo; Jedi Knight (male human) Jaina Solo; Jedi Knight (female human) Leia Organa Solo; former New Republic diplomat (female human) Lowbacca; Jedi Knight (male Wookiee) Luke Skywalker; Jedi Master (male human) Major Shawnkyr Nuruodo; force Spike (female Chiss) Niiriit Esh; subaltern (female Yuuzhan Vong) Nom Anor; executor (male Yuuzhan Vong) Mara Jade Skywalker; Jedi Knight (female human) Taher’ai; Jeedai slave (female human) Tsavong Lah; warmaster (male Yuuzhan Vong) Vergere; familiar to the deceased Yuuzhan Vong priestess, Elan (female Fosh)
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darth_dragon666 Registered: Aug '06	Date Posted: 11/22/06 6:01pm Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU)
	sounds good but i wont ead unless u work in lots of A/T mush -----signature----- Star wars was simple when-Jacen wasn't all weird-Anakin was alive (and with Tahiri)-and when Jaina was with Jag I ship A/T, J/TK(rarely), J/J, Benella, Im finally bacdk after a i think 10-6 month hiatus
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imperial77 Registered: Sep '06	Date Posted: 11/22/06 6:01pm Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU) - Date Edited: 12/2/06 7:17am (5 edits total) Edited By: imperial77
	The A/T scenes are almost all already written, so I'm afraid there's not much I can do about whether you like it or not. What can I say? It has A/T as a clear-cut couple all the way through. The first scene - which follows after this post - should give you some idea of the sorts of changes I'm making to canon, and how they affect the A/T dynamic. But it's not exclusively an A/T 'fic - as in Rebirth, there are big roles for other characters, especially Mara and Nom Anor. --imp77 PM List Draconarius G_Anakin DARTH_MU _sticks
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imperial77 Registered: Sep '06	Date Posted: 11/22/06 6:05pm Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU)
	Prologue Steel Plains, Coruscant Twenty months after the start of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion Jaina Solo had taken the new appartment after her return from Duro, largely because of the high-tech lounge area, with the big home holosuite and the full-function household control console, and the tall rank of viewports spanning the wall between them. It reminded her a little bit of the command deck of a cruiser. Now, as dusk drew in, she kept watch in front of the windows, armed with a cup of black caf: listening to the reassuring electronic whisper of the appartment’s systems, and looking out across the cityscape – out and up, to the strewn stars of the dark night sky. Where are you now, Anakin, she wondered. Too many weeks had passed since she had last seen her younger brother. Too many months. He had said goodbye to her outside the conference room at Jedi headquarters, after another monotonous, pointless meeting. She had never dreamed it would be for more than a few hours – typical Anakin, a grin and a wave, like their father. Perhaps she had ruffled his hair, told him not to get into any trouble. But he had left that night, jetting off in his X-wing to the Jedi Academy at Yavin 4, convinced that the young students on the jungle moon were in danger – especially his friend Tahiri Veila. Anakin had been right about the danger, but he had ended up trapped in the jungle with a handful of other survivors – and an awful lot of Yuuzhan Vong. It had been more than a month before Uncle Luke’s friends managed to put together a fighting force big enough to challenge the invaders and attempt a rescue. In the end, Jaina and the rest of that makeshift fleet of smugglers and Jedi had ended up doing much more than they’d dared believe was possible. As well as rescuing the survivors from the Academy, they had destroyed a major Yuuzhan Vong base, defeated an enemy battlegroup, and freeed more slaves than she could count. But they had been too late to rescue Anakin and Tahiri. Anakin.... She remembered dropping her fighter onto the tail of the Yuuzhan Vong transport as it powered out of the system. Like all the invaders’ ships, it was an ugly lump of organic armour, but this one was special because Anakin and Tahiri were aboard – calling out in the Force like beacons in the night. She had lined herself up on the scar-head’s tail, scouring her sensor displays – trying to work out what were the alien ship’s drives and what were the weapons, where a shot would stop it, and where a misplasced bolt would simply blast it into firey wreckage. She remembered Jacen’s voice as he slipped his X-wing alongside hers – her twin, Anakin’s big brother; his will in the Force pressuring her to hold her fire. I know it’s Anakin. That’s why we can’t take the risk. She remembered seeing the transport blink into darkspace, her fingers still wavering over the firing-triggers. She remembered Anakin being wrenched away from her – vanishing like the echo of a fading scream; his light dimming in an instant to a distant ember, invisible against the light of the stars that filled the sky. Jaina blinked, and stared out at the stars above the city. Since then, there had been nothing – not unless you counted squirms and shivers in the Force, and unsettling moments of ecstacy and joy. Jaina didn’t like to focus on those moments. She stared out at the stars. Jacen was out there looking for them, with mom and dad and the Millennium Falcon. And she was here on Coruscant – trying to coordinate the scraps of rumour from the intelligence agencies, trying to help Uncle Luke hold the Jedi together, and waiting for the military to reactivate her and return her to combat duties with her squadron. In the current climate of anti-Jedi paranoia – made much worse by the way the media had spun the battle at Yavin 4 – she doubted that reactivation would come soon. She sighed, and put the image of her brother’s face from her mind; drew in a breath, and relaxed into her surroundings. Opening herself to the Force, she felt soothed by what she found: the brushed-metal trim on the walls, the firm leather of her favourite couch, the enfolding web of circuitry and systems embedded through the appartment, vivid with electric life. … and something masked and dangerous, sneaking through the shadows – not quite the gnawing nothingness of the Yuuzhan Vong, but still a predatory presence, trying not to be seen, masking its approach with a deceptive familiarity. She spun on her heels, and saw two animals stalking through the darkened appartment towards her – standing upright, shaped like men, but palpably inhuman. She looked harder, and saw muscular bodies, hungry eyes, tousled manes that curled thick at the nape of the neck. One was broad-shouldered and dark-maned, with a wide, chiseled chest; the other slim and darker-skinned, with a lighter mane. Then Jaina Solo recognized the intruders for what they were, and her eyes and lips went wide and bright with disbelief. “Anakin!” she gasped, dropping the cup and hearing it shatter on the floor at her feet. A flicker of response may have answered in her younger brother’s eyes, but it might just have been the steely echo of the night sky as he took a predatory step towards her – the same starlight that glimmered off the curved blade in his hand. She saw him clearly now – mind and body hardened by pain, like one of the Yuuzhan Vong’s living weapons. The white kilt wrapped around his waist looked like a Yuuzhan Vong thing too, and so did the leathery satchel slung over his shoulder, the alien collar locked around his neck. But he was still her brother. He gave her a flicker of greeting in the Force, a quiet, familiar smile – chillingly incongruous for being so genuine. “Anakin?!” She stared in disbelief. “What have they done to you?!” “Taher’ai,” he said, gesturing to the golden-maned creature at his shoulder – and it took Jaina a moment to realise that the creature was his friend Tahiri, and he was speaking her name. “Guvvuk. Tutsaz duhn Jeedai.” “Belek tiu, tsaik,” she answered. She smiled as she wrapped her lips and tongue around the words – caressing the liquid, alien language like a lover. She moved out wide from him, into a classic fist-and-rapier attack. Jaina shivered, and fumbled her lightsaber into her hands. She always wore it on her belt now. She thumbed forward the switch, seeing the brilliant blade come alive in the half-dark. She lifted it into guard, and looked at the two figures facing her. “Anakin.” Her voice trembled. “Eh daj lightsaber, Jaenha?” her brother asked, with an amused expression that was disturbing for being so utterly familiar. Tahiri smiled as well. And then they pounced. Jaina thought she managed to block their first few thrusts, but in moments, they had her flat on her back with her weapon flung away into the night, scalding coffee and shards of broken cup printing a pattern of pain across her back and buttocks – and the weight of two muscular assailants pinning her to the ground. She saw a flash that might have been a grin or a knife, and felt a blade slash through fabric, grazing skin. Tough, capable hands tugged open the collar of her flightsuit and pulled it down over her shoulders – then flipped her over onto her belly. Held down, she struggled to slip free – snarling like an animal, no longer caring that one of them might be her brother. “Hush, Jaya,” Anakin’s voice whispered. He sounded tender – brusied, somehow. “No Krakana. We’re going to make you better. It’s okay.” She almost believed him. His hands brushed her hair gently to one side, then gripped tight on her shoulders. “Taher’ai?” “Dwiv, tsaik.” Jaina shivered, as strong hands positioned something on the back of her bared neck, and pressed it down. Straps like spiders’ legs laced quickly around her throat, and a stab like a needle sang through her skull. She tried to scream, but all she could manage was a strangled gurgle. For a moment, she felt simply numb. Then fire obliterated her thoughts.
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Draconarius Registered: Feb '05	Date Posted: 11/22/06 6:16pm Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU)
	Certainly an interesting start, and a very interesting AU. I'm going to keep an eye on this one, for sure. If you're doing PMs, would you mind flicking me one when you update? -----signature----- Shattered Mirror - http://boards.theforce.net/beyond_the_saga/b10477/28487856/p1/?1 Proudly A/T and J/J Knighted by the wonderful SilSolo "Damned if I'm gonna lose to you!" "Then damned you shall be!" - my brother and I playing Smash Bros.
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G__Anakin Registered: Apr '06	Date Posted: 11/22/06 6:21pm Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU)
	Do you mind PMing me with more -----signature----- Knighted by Courtney_Solo - - - My fanfic - - - Jedi Sith - http://boards.theforce.net/Message.aspx?topic=26751105&brd=10476&start=26759554
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DARTH_MU Registered: Feb '05	Date Posted: 11/22/06 7:04pm Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU)
	OMG P... whimpers M...? P.S. You know better than posting under a less than famous sock for your best work!!!! -----signature----- In Nelani's myriad futures he could dimly glimpse good and kind acts, love, perhaps family and children. Kidan's Apprentice EOV I: Despair (Link Lost) Gone, Gone, and never called me author! Lightsaber123's sock. Crewman aboard the goodship Beneha
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imperial77 Registered: Sep '06	Date Posted: 11/23/06 9:19am Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU) - Date Edited: 11/23/06 9:21am (1 edits total) Edited By: imperial77
	Draconarius posted: Certainly an interesting start, and a very interesting AU. I'm going to keep an eye on this one, for sure. If you're doing PMs, would you mind flicking me one when you update? Thanks for the reply - I hope you enjoy it! And yes, I'm doing PMs for this - just one of the differences between Thrawn McEwok and imperial77... At least, I assume you mean a PM - "flicking you one" can be misinterpreted...? G__Anakin posted: Do you mind PMing me with more Of course not. Glad you enjoyed the opening! DARTH_MU posted: OMG P... whimpers M...? By all means!! And, I take it that seeing what a few months in a damutek had done to A/T had the impact that it was meant to? But you enjoyed it, right? --imp77 DARTH_MU posted: P.S. You know better than posting under a less than famous sock for your best work!!!! P.S. I'm hoping that I can establish a reputation for this username that operates independently of T McE... I'm hoping the 'fic will stand strongly on its own two legs (even if it does have a spineray slave-colar on)... And, if you enjoy the 'fic, then the answer is simple: tell other people about it! "77"
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Kidan Title: TFN EU Staff Registered: Jul '03	Date Posted: 11/23/06 9:27am Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU)
	wonderful job here on this!! Great, great job! [better reply here later] -----signature----- You sadistic Yank!! - McEwok No Krakana - http://nokrakana.wrighton.org Believe in the Constitution? Ron Paul '08
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imperial77 Registered: Sep '06	Date Posted: 11/24/06 3:46am Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU)
	Kidan posted: wonderful job here on this!! Great, great job! [better reply here later] Thanks - glad you're enjoying it!! [full response to full reply here later, too] --Imp77
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imperial77 Registered: Sep '06	Date Posted: 11/24/06 3:51am Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU) - Date Edited: 11/24/06 3:53am (1 edits total) Edited By: imperial77
	Part One Threshold One Luke Skywalker padded out barefoot onto the beach, nursing his mug of hot chocolate. Sunset had been more than an hour earlier, but here in Coruscant’s tropics – on an artificial island in the Western Sea – the evening was still warm, and the lights of the city shone bright and hopeful along the distant shore. The people of the Galaxy continued to defy the dark. And after a childhood on Tatooine, where night meant deadly freezing temperatures and no light except the cold stars in the naked sky, Luke Skywalker was delighted by the sight of it. Luke grinned faintly. It was good to be doing this – joining his wife for a gentle after-dinner drink on the sand, wearing nothing more than a pair of beach shorts on a warm tropical evening. Sometimes, defying the dark took simpler steps; and even a Jedi Master needed reminding of that sometimes. Perhaps especially a Jedi Master. Mara was sitting on the bare, golden sand, leaning forward with her cup in her hands. Even though he could feel her undercurrent of alertness in the Force – sharpened to a narrow dagger by her current physical condition – he still smiled at the supple curve of her back, the way her bikini’s particular shade of playfully violent pink perfectly complimented the tan her skin was picking up. “Thanks for this, Farmboy,” she said, lifting her own cup of iced shuura juice. “Tastes just right – just the way Palpatine used to make it, anyway.” “You asked for it,” he smiled, settling beside her. Then he lifted both eyebrows at her. “Did Palpatine really make you fresh shuura juice?” “When I was little. Yes.” “You’re serious? You learn something new every day.” She turned, and smiled at him – beautiful as ever, as exotically strange and intimately familiar as a lover should be. His eyes drifted downwards across her bikini-cupped cleavage, and with effort, he drew his gaze back up. He blinked, swallowed, and waited for her to answer. “Uhh, Luke,” Mara said, a note of worry in her voice. Her eyes were gazing past him – at something round the beach behind him. “I think we have visitors.” Luke turned round, seeing a group of figures moving along the beach, around the curve of the artificial island’s edge. Eight big men and women in swimwear, moving a loose line like a surf party at first, then firming into a more precise pattern as they drew closer. Most of them were massive – broad-chested and big-limbed, like a special forces squad on vacation. And beneath their skins were the distinctive absences that indicated Yuuzhan Vong. “Yeah,” he said, as the masquers peeled and squirmed away, revealing the sight that had become too familiar to the Galaxy – armoured alien warriors, their vonduun crab exoskeletons spiked with spurs and hooks, their faces slashed and scarred and ghastly. Living weapons appeared in their hands – whips and blades that coiled and snapped of their own accord, and bugs that squirmed and fluttered in their wielders’ grips. Luke pushed to his feet. He had fought the invaders face-to-face just a handful of times before. The first time, with Mara by his side, they had barely bested a single elite scout; and since then, the skirmishes he’d found himself firing up his lightsaber to fight had been against garrison troops and slaves, hardly the same thing. His fingers twitched, and he frowned, realising that he’d left his lightsaber back in the pavilion. “Here,” Mara said, pressing a slim cylinder into his hand. He glanced back at her, and smiled in gratitude. “We make a great team,” she agreed. “Now, Skywalker – kill me some bad guys.” Luke nodded, and turned back to face the Vong. He picked out the leader, slighter than the others, with sleeker black armour – classier, Mara might have said; but there was something else, too, something in his gait and posture that seemed familiar. “Nom Anor,” Luke said, hefting Mara’s weapon lightly in one hand. “I was expecting someone taller.” “Luke Skywalker,” the Yuuzhan Vong replied, with a grin that seemed genuine. “I’m here to kill you.” He called a command in his own language, and Luke saw the volley of organic grenades flash through the air. Gathering the Force in reply, he pushed upwards with a massive rush of air – sending the grenades spinning skywards to detonate high overhead. Then, calmly, he gusted away the residue of the blast, out across the shoreline, relieved to realise that there had been nothing more noxious than explosives in the charges. He dropped into a fighting stance, igniting the lightsaber – smiling slightly at the purple hue of the brilliant blade, the lighter weight of Mara’s hilt in his hands. He clasped the grip tight, and felt her curve into a familiar geometry of body and mind on the sand behind him. She was drawing a bead on their attackers with her holdout blaster. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” he whispered at the Yuuzhan Vong. Nom Anor just glared at him, and snarled. Then the warriors rushed him – big monsters in dark armour, kicking up sand like blaster-bolts with every step. I don’t even come up to these guys’ nipples... Luke shifted, blocking and kicking, aiming for the vulnerable places, like he had a hundred times in training – unmasked faces, the gills beneath their shoulders, and the vulnerable points between their legs. Something skated past his guard, and he felt a slice of pain across his back. Another sharp edge skimmed his shoulder, but the warriors dropped dead to the ground around him. There were still more coming, though – he saw two moving towards Mara, three more holding back behind Nom Anor. A Force-fuelled leap sent him spinning through the air to land just short of the Yuuzhan Vong leader, and he flashed him a grin as he sprung back upwards, and thrashed the weapon from his hands with a deft play of his lightsaber. “Hello,” he said. Nom Anor’s eyes widened in disbelief. But one of his eyes got bigger far faster than the other - the pupil dilating into a black hole. The eye pulsed, and spat venom – some of it sizzling as he shifted his blade across to block, but more spraying past his guard to spatter on his cheeks and brows. He staggered back a step, dropping the lightsaber into a low, loose guard. “Whuh?” he asked Luke blinked. He saw a big Vong girl snap-kicking a blaster-pistol out of someone’s hands – sending it ten metres out to sea in an arching spin. A burly warrior with burn-scars on his breastplate was dragging Mara to her feet, locking her hands behind her back and hammering her head forward – making her spit blood. The other warriors closed in round him. He glanced down at the lightsaber, wondering why he hadn’t lifted it into a better guard yet. Then even that thought slipped away from him. Fire coursed through his body, and he felt slippery – sweat on his skin, feet unsteady, pulse racing. He heard whatever he was holding slip from his grip, landing softly in the sand. He saw the evening stars spin, and pitched down to his knees; then flat forward on his face. Poison, he thought, remembering the spray of venom from the Yuuzhan Vong’s eye. An alien voice that might have belonged to Nom Anor was saying things he didn’t understand. Reaching for the Force, he closed his eyes, and breathed in a noseful of sand – focusing all his strength and will on purging the poison from his system. Have to. For Mara. For Ben....
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DARTH_MU Registered: Feb '05	Date Posted: 11/24/06 5:50am Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU) - updated Friday 24th November: Mara/Luke and Nom Anor! - Date Edited: 11/24/06 5:51am (1 edits total) Edited By: DARTH_MU
	Go get them Luke! big Vong Girl? I didn't know Callista was shaped? P.S. You have no idea how relieved I am to see the dramatis personae unchanged (Jaina Solo, female Jedi Knight, etc). -----signature----- In Nelani's myriad futures he could dimly glimpse good and kind acts, love, perhaps family and children. Kidan's Apprentice EOV I: Despair (Link Lost) Gone, Gone, and never called me author! Lightsaber123's sock. Crewman aboard the goodship Beneha
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G__Anakin Registered: Apr '06	Date Posted: 11/24/06 11:35am Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU) - updated Friday 24th November: Mara/Luke and Nom Anor!
	-----signature----- Knighted by Courtney_Solo - - - My fanfic - - - Jedi Sith - http://boards.theforce.net/Message.aspx?topic=26751105&brd=10476&start=26759554
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imperial77 Registered: Sep '06	Date Posted: 11/24/06 5:19pm Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU) - updated Friday 24th November: Mara/Luke and Nom Anor!
	DARTH_MU posted: Go get them Luke! That's the spirit!! DARTH_MU posted: big Vong Girl? I didn't know Callista was shaped? Are you trying to drop hints about what you'd like to see? G__Anakin posted: You like it? --imp77 DARTH_MU posted: P.S. You have no idea how relieved I am to see the dramatis personae unchanged (Jaina Solo, female Jedi Knight, etc). P.S. How do you mean - in terms of layout, or what it says about the characters, or something else? I hardly think that Anh'khiin and Taher'ai can be said to have been "unchanged", though... "77"
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imperial77 Registered: Sep '06	Date Posted: 11/26/06 8:29am Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU) updated 26th Nov. - Luke and Mara... captured by the Vong!!
	Her arms knotted behind her back by her Yuuzhan Vong captors, Mara Jade Skywalker lifted her head, blinking away pain and darkness – and groaned in despair and disbelief. On the sand in front of her, her husband was pinned to the ground by the weight of three massive warriors– each one twice his size. The biggest of them all was feeling along Luke’s forearm with his clawed fingers, digging into his skin. She hadn’t even seen Nom Anor land a blow on him. But Luke had wrested the amphistaff from his hands. It had to have been something dirty. Typical Vong scum. She watched – glaring in anger – as Nom Anor crouched quickly over her husband’s body, urging the warriors away from his shoulders. Something that looked like a shard of broken bone jerked violently from inside his wrist – and he stabbed Luke in the back. “The antidote to the poison,” he explained, looking up at her – one eye screwed tight shut, as though he’d caught a piece of dirt in it. He smiled. “The effect is almost instantaneous.” Mara breathed out. A sigh of relief. Antidote. They’re not going to kill him. Then the big warrior who was probing Luke’s arm glanced up in triumph – growling something in their language. Nom Anor nodded, and answered, then glanced back at Mara. “Now, we remove his hand.” Mara started in her captor’s grip – mouth wide in a helpless cry, as the amphistaff slashed down, severing Luke’s right arm below the elbow. His right arm. His artificial arm. That means they won’t kill him immediately, Mara told herself, her gaze flickering from to her husband’s bloodied face to the twitching stump that one of the warriors had kicked away from them. If they were going to kill him, they wouldn’t have removed his prosthetic. She looked at Nom Anor – calmly locking eyes with him, waiting for the next opening. She was good in this sort of situation – sharp, clear and controlled. When he broke eye-contact, she’d know she’d won the most important battle. You’re not going to kill him, she breathed. Nom Anor glanced away, and gave a clipped command to his warriors. She saw a blade flash high, heard an abrupt cry from Luke. “He was the prey in a glorious hunt,” Nom Anor explained in Basic, standing up as the blood began to thicken the sand. “He earned a better death than poison” Is that what you call this?! Mara thought. But she couldn’t speak. Her lips were shivering. Her throat was choked. A better death?! The blades flashed again, and fell. And fell. She looked away, but she couldn’t block out the wet, sharp sounds of butchery, and she felt her chest heave, retching bile down her front – staining the bright pink of her bikini top. She tried to tell herself that it was because of her physical condition, but the slick, sick sounds behind her gave the lie to her excuses. She screwed her eyes shut, and fought back the urge to scream – realising that she hadn’t even noticed when Luke had faded from the Force. He had drawn himself in around himself, to shield Ben from the grief and pain. To shield her. Luke. She groaned his name – no better than a whisper, barely even a word. But even that was more than the bloody butcher-meat she could hear being prepared on the beach behind her. I have to be strong, she told herself, gritting her teeth and biting down on the grief. Strong. For our son. A rough hand clasped her jaw, gripping her chin like a pincer between thumb and forefinger, tugging her head round. Nom Anor’s face leered close – blocking out the sight of what she could hear his warriors doing. But his watery blue eyes reminded her of Luke’s, and she felt tears prick at her own irises. “What’s this?” he asked, brushing his hand across the taut, tanned skin of her rounded belly. As if he was stroking her son’s head. “Get your hands away from there,” she hissed, her gaze suddenly sharp. Nom Anor’s hand lifted away. His eyes widened, his scarred face twisting into an expression of amazement. Behind him, one of the warriors laughed – evidently amused at the reaction an infidel prisoner had won from him with just a word and a dirty look. But Nom Anor didn’t seem to notice. “Pregnant?” he asked. “Does that mean you won’t kill me?” Mara asked, a cold mockery of coquettishness. “How about this?!” Bracing back against the weight of the warrior holding her, she levered herself up, and rammed her knee in hard between his legs. There was a satisfying noise as the blow connected, and just for a moment, she found she could smile at the Executor’s gape of silent, open-mouthed agony. But her attempt to slip her hands out from the warrior’s grasp ended with a sharp wrench to her arms and shoulders, forcing her down to her knees. She looked up at Nom Anor again, viciously satisfied. “That’s just the start,” she spat. “Once I get free – pregnant or not – I’m going to cut you up like you butchered my husband.” She glared at the other warriors behind him, but her voice caught in her throat. Anger is not the Jedi way. Breathless, she stared at the Yuuzhan Vong. Luke is gone. Nom Anor’s answer was to scrape the spit off his face, and slap her hard across the cheek. Petty, she noticed. I can use that. He growled a command at his warriors, gesturing sharply. Then he turned, and gazed out across the sea towards Imperial City. A slight wind had risen, rippling the surface of the water, but the lights on the horizon still shone steady. Right here, in the heart of the Republic, Luke Skywalker had just been killed. Mara bit back the tears, and stumbled slightly as the two warriors began to manhandle her along the beach. Grimly, she assessed her situation. Nothing broken – nothing physical, anyway – but there was sweat on her forehead and between her shoulderblades, pressure in her skull that felt like fever. She managed to turn in the warriors’ grip, and looked back along the beach. The wind sang in her face, and she saw the other Yuuzhan Vong doing something, with Nom Anor looking on. “Luke!” she cried. But it was Nom Anor who turned at her voice, and started to follow – moving stiffly, as if there was something very sore between his hips. Mara’s lip twitched at the sight. But it brought her no satisfaction that she could feel. Not any more. Perhaps not ever again.
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DARTH_MU Registered: Feb '05	Date Posted: 11/26/06 9:25am Subject: RE: Edge of Victory: Reversal (NJO AU) - updated Friday 24th November: Mara/Luke and Nom Anor!
	But... But... Who is going to rescue my Jaya now????!!! Cries out! JACEN! YOU ARE our only hope... -----signature----- In Nelani's myriad futures he could dimly glimpse good and kind acts, love, perhaps family and children. Kidan's Apprentice EOV I: Despair (Link Lost) Gone, Gone, and never called me author! Lightsaber123's sock. Crewman aboard the goodship Beneha
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