"The Courtship of Princess Leia"

[Jedi Cool]

chapter 25:

 

In pain, Luke feels his body breaking. Teneniel’s voice calls to him, telling him the Jai never die and that nature cherishes them. He can hear the most minute noises of nature, from the worms to the bushes to a salamander which opens its mouth and gives Luke a gift from the Force.

 

Life comes from the creation around him, reinforcing his own. He knows that there are parts of the Force he had never imagined or dreamed of. He can hear Leia call his name and opens his eyes to a black night.

 

He calls for Leia back and Han approaches by torchlight. Han tells the peasants to take Luke back to his ship and then tells Luke to take care of Leia before he heads on his way.

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[Jedi Cool]

chapter 26:

 

As Isolder tries to repair the sensor array window, he sees Teneniel Djo sitting down crying. She killed in anger, violating her oaths as a clan sister. She will be banished for three years after which, if she has cleansed herself and wishes to come back, they will accept her.

 

He knows there will be no life for her here anyway if the nightcloak doesn’t come down. He offers to bring her with them. He will take her to any of the stars that she wishes to see. She wonders what she would be to his people: an odd backward woman.

 

He tells her she could be an advisor. In fact, with her powers, she could help him see past the schemes of his relatives. Teneniel wants to know if she would also be a friend or a lover to him. He knows he cannot marry her. If he marries a commoner, he would be force to abdicate and one of his cousins would become the Chu’meda.

 

He wishes her all happiness and starts to go back to the ship. She confronts him about how happy she can be if left behind by a man who loves her. She knows now that he is the one who came looking for love and has found it in her. Isolder tells her she cannot know what life that would mean for them. She doesn’t care about his family or his planets.

 

When she kisses him, he knows he’s making the right decision and races her toward the ship.

 

Leia feared Luke to be dead when he was first brought to her. She tries to tell him she’s alright but he doesn’t believe her. He asks where Han is. She explains that Han is turning himself into Gethzerion so she will not keep killing the prisoners.

 

Luke protests. He has to stop her. This is why he came here. She urges him to rest. They have three hours before Zsinj’s shuttle arrives. Luke can sleep until then. He tells her not to lie to him. Neither she nor Isolder knows the true power of the Force.

 

She agrees to wait three hours, though she knows he needs more like a week. They cannot travel by foot to the prison and neither can they fly the Falcon without the Star Destroyers firing at it. But when Isolder tells her he’s having trouble with the long-range sensors, she asks the droids if they can tell how many Destroyers are up there. With the orbital nightcloak in place, they can’t say for certain but can detect subspace radio emissions. Leia and Isolder realize that the nightcloak acts as a cloaking device. As long as the Falcon flies under the satellites and doesn’t use radio, the Destroyers won’t notice them.

 

Isolder is ready to get aboard the ship now and go after Han but Leia knows they have to wait for Luke.

 

After several hours of waiting, even past Zsinj’s deadline, Han is finally taken to one of two transports that have landed where he is identified by General Melvar. Han has the detonator but doesn’t just want to kill stormtroopers here. He has to make sure the witches are nearby.

 

As Melvar is about to send Solo up the ramp, Gethzerion appears and tells him he’s led her on a merry chase. He pulls out the detonator and pushes the button. The general and his men jump for cover.

 

Gethzerion reveals that one of the other Nightsisters detected the detonator and disabled it when he first came to them. The general thanks her and she responds by giving him and his men something else: a simple death.

 

Melvar and the stormtroopers drop dead as the Nightsisters race aboard the armed shuttle and kill the guards and pilot. Han realizes that this was the only way Gethzerion knew she’d be able to get past the ships in orbit.

 

She wonders what to do with him and thinks it only fair that she treat him as he would’ve treated her so starts to break bones in his body that the detonator would have broken in hers.

 

He spots the Millennium Falcon flying toward them. It fires on the guard tower and it collapses. Isolder has deadly accuracy in piloting and firing the ship lasers. The ship takes out the unarmed carrier, causing Gethzerion to run up the gangplank of the armed one.

 

Han crawls for safety, his leg broken. The Falcon blows a hole in the prison walls and lands. Leia tells him to climb aboard. Isolder helps him and Han asks who’s flying the ship. When Leia tells him Luke is, Han protests that Luke isn’t that good.

 

It turns out that Luke is using the Force to pilot and fire the weapons. Going after the armed shuttle, the Falcon executes moves that Han had never seen. The Nightsisters are equally astounding at shooting down missles with deadly accuracy.

 

Luke tells Leia and Isolder to get on the quad cannons. They cannot allow the Nightsisters to roam free.

 

Then Luke turns on the radio jammers. The armed shuttle is headed toward a jump to hyperspace but they are still within the gravity well of the planet. Han realizes that Luke turned on the radio so that the Imperials would know there was a ship there and see the shuttle escaping.

 

Sure enough, missles from the Star Destroyers puncture the hull of the shuttle until it explodes. Then Luke brings them back to Dathomir’s darkness and views a holodisplay of the ships in orbit. He has to bring down the nightcloak, or else all life on this planet will die, not just the people.

 

Luke locks onto something and fires. He does this repeatedly but no one understands what he is doing.

 

Several hundred fighters are scrambled when, suddenly, the darkness is gone. The nightcloak has shorted out. They see hundreds of ships in the air, including Hapan Battle Dragons.

 

The Hapans are sending out pulsemass generators that will keep everyone here for at least 15 minutes. The Falcon heads into help when Han sees a huge number of TIEs around a Star Destroyer. He asks who is there. Luke tells him it’s Zsinj and that ship is the Iron Fist.

 

Han demands the helm. Luke asks him if he’s sure he wants to take on a Star Destroyer. Han reminds him it’s his planet that’s being trespassed on.

 

He slowly approaches the ship and gets hit by a tractor beam. He transfers power to the rear deflector shields, waits until they pass through the ship’s particle shields and then fires two concussion missles.

 

They hit the ship and explode magnificently. Then he comms Zsinj and tells him to look at the viewscreen and kiss his Wookiee. Then he launches his last two missles. The command module disintegrates, the shields come down and a Hapan ion cannon kills the ship.

 

Months of hunting Zsinj are over. The monster has one less head. The other heads will start battling each other until they become fewer and fewer. Leia tells him he won. He doesn’t think he won the war, but that’s not what she means.

 

Seven days on Dathomir was the bet. She’s fallen in love with him all over again.

 

He tries to tell her it was a stupid bet, but she won’t release him.

 

Isolder is happy for them though there will be some embarrassment at home. Captain Astarta explains they used Skywalker’s earlier route to shave some time off of the fleet’s approach. His mother authorized it.

 

He orders that they will accept only unconditional surrenders, confiscate spaceworthy Star Destroyers and destroy the shipyards. They will evacuate all political prisoners as well as any locals that wish to leave.

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• They keep calling the Iron Fist a Star Destroyer. It was a Super Star Destroyer. I know that Zsinj had an actual SD called the Iron Fist but this wasn’t it and, since the SSD wasn’t really destroyed in Solo Command, this should have been it. Oh, and Han doesn’t seem really surprised to see it considering he thought it was blown up.

• And what will the New Republic think of the Hapans confiscating a bunch of Star Destroyers for themselves? To the victors go the spoils, I guess?

• And here is yet another incredible display of power by Luke…flying a ship, firing its lasers….through the Force.

• Ah, so the bet was seven days on the planet, not counting travel time!

 

[Jedi Cool]

chapter 27:

 

At a feast the next evening, Han presents the deed to the planet to Augwynne and refuses the gems and gold. They insist and Leia tells him they can use it for the wedding.

 

Prince Isolder announces that Teneniel Djo has consented to be his wife. His mother is incensed that he would choose a wife from this primitive world. Isolder tells her that Teneniel is a princess who will inherit this world someday. Besides, Ta’a Chume has many years left and can train her.

 

She doesn’t think he seriously thinks she would allow that. Luke knows that and also knows that she would not have allowed her son to marry Leia either. She sent the assassins. Isolder doesn’t understand why after she gave him permission and sent her gifts.

 

Ta’a Chume could not risk Isolder’s loyalty by discouraging him, but she could not have a pacifist with no wealth to rule the Hapan Empire, giving it over to her descendants.

 

His aunts have committed their share of misdeeds, but Leia would be too weak to lead. Having a strong military would have spared Hapes from Imperial rule. He wonders if she had the pacifist Lady Elliar, his late fiancée, also killed.

 

For that matter, he wonders if his brother was too weak to rule, too.

 

She refuses to be interrogated and starts to leave when Teneniel tells him to let her handle it. She tells Ta’a Chume that she is marrying Isolder and will rule in her place someday. She has killed several people in the last two days alone and will make sure the Queen Mother is executed if she ever harms her or her children.

 

Then she uses the Force to crumple the guards’ blasters. The Queen Mother is forced to acquiesce that Teneniel would make an adequate ruler.

 

Isolder also insists that Hapes join the New Republic immediately.

 

The next day, Augwynne meets with Luke and tells him she’s staying here. It’s her home and has nothing anyone would want…except that Luke himself wants something. He asks to come back someday and salvage the remains of the Chu’unthor. She tells him their ancestors fought a great battle there before giving up and negotiating a settlement.

 

They got the ship but never did anything with it. Only Mother Rell knows the details and her mind is gone. Luke runs to the old woman and she recognizes him. She asks if the Nightsisters are dead.

 

Luke tells her they are and she is glad that the old world is ended and the new one begun, as Yoda had foretold. Rell knows he wants the records. They had wanted them, too, but the Jedi had refused to give them the technology to read them for fear that the Nightsisters would use them. Yoda told her that someday another would come and share them with their children.

 

She gives him a box full of hundreds of reader discs.

 

Later, Isolder and Teneniel say good-bye to their friends. Isolder offers Han and Leia a tour of the Hapan worlds for their honeymoon. Luke looks into Teneniel’s eyes and tells her she will have a daughter first who will be strong. Perhaps she will come to Luke for training.

 

Six weeks later, Luke is dropped off at the Aldereenian consulate instead of the Alderaanian consulate and has to run to get to the wedding where 3PO stops him and tells him that Korol Solo was only a pretender to the throne and was hanged for his crimes. They’ll have to call off the wedding.

 

Luke understands. He shuts the droid off and puts him in a closet before taking his place as best man where his sister looks as joyous as she’s ever been.

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• Interesting that the Queen Mother confirms that the Empire did control the Hapan Empire. Wouldn’t you think, though, that Hapan technology would have been taken for Imperial use? I’ve not seen any indication in any other books that the Empire utilized the fierce Battle Dragons or anything else Hapan.

• Aldereenian? Have we ever heard of that species? And wouldn’t the wedding of Princess Leia be big enough news that no one would mistakenly deliver Luke Skywalker anywhere else but the right place?

• Oh, and that bit about Isolder insisting that Hapes join the New Republic …really silly. He is still a man on a female-dominated planet, after all!

 

The End

• It was nice to finally see an end to the Zsinj storyline and, after four years, an actual commitment between Han and Leia.

• And, of course, as pointed out, for someone with limited knowledge about the history of the Jedi, Luke can really do some incredible things through the Force.