Alderaan for the win!

The Jedi masters got yet another "fascinating" call in the middle of the night after that little adventure. Ree wondered out loud why it was always Kyp or Luke who got her calls, and Zan pointed out that it might be wise to keep such news among a small circle.

Yet again, they were given vacation time. This time, they actually used it. Z took them to a bar not far from the Jedi temple, called "The Shattered Holocron." It's a Jedi-themed bar, with appropriate costumes and themed drinks such as the "Forced-up Yoda," the "Draught Vader," and the "Totally Mauled" (strongest drink in the house). They also had the Obi One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six, depending on how strong you wanted it.

While they were there, an ad for the upcoming movie about Ree premiered on the holovid, and people began discussing how she really ought to have a drink named after her, too. Poor Ree was rather embarrassed, but no one really recognized her, so that was okay.

Kedrihm'Val spent a bit of his downtime trying to figure out how to detect Sith poison. Ever since one of his companions had mentioned the idea, he'd been a bit worried about the idea of Dalt (or Darth Maul, or the witch) possibly having used the stuff on more of his people. The Jedi allowed him to read through some of the information on Sith poison they'd gotten from Komok-Da's lab, and briefly, the answer seemed to be there.

He found information about some rare spider-like creatures that could detect the poison. They came from a little planet on the Outer Rim. But when he mentioned this to his companions, they were shocked. There's no planet listed anywhere near those coordinates. Oola wanted to go investigate right away, seemingly thrilled with curiosity. Kedrihm'Val, however, kind of wanted to learn more about these spider-things first. If they were evil (as seemed quite likely, given the source material he'd found them in), he had no desire to import any of them to his planet.

So he went to talk to the Jedi librarians of the Ossus library they'd helped recover. Those fine souls said that yes, indeed, these spider-things were dark side creatures, so that nixed the idea as far as he was concerned. Faced with no immediate reason to head out to a missing planet, Ree suggested they arrange to have a probe sent out there first, to see if there was even anything worth checking on.

In the meantime, they weren't left to be bored. The Ossus librarians said they'd pinpointed the location of the Jedi ship the crew had been searching for all this time--the one that had been harrying the child-slave lanes for so long. It just so happened to be out in the same direction as Kamino...which was looking like a worthy destination, what with everything they'd been finding out about Dalt lately. So off they went.

But they didn't get far. Near the Alderaanian asteroid field, the ship picked up a distress beacon. Following an odd little argument in which Ree tried to advise caution, Drath took it to mean she was wary of going at all, and Zan just watched the two like it meant something, they flew in to investigate.

What they found was quite odd: it looked like a large meteor chunk, but scanning it showed a base buried inside, with active power. Additionally, an Imperial shuttle was fastened to the side.

Docking the Starwind, Onna stayed onboard with SAR while the others went inside. Oola was able to get access to the systems without much trouble, and they watched security tape of a group of stormtroopers along with two men whom Zan identified as Imperial Inquisitors. That meant trouble.

Oola hunted through the records to see what the place was supposed to be. The shielding was so heavy that everything was intact even after the destruction of the planet the base had been hidden in. She found, to everyone's shock, that this place was a repository of genetic material from all the biological entities of Alderaan--all the flora and fauna, along with the royal family...including Leia.

And guess which room the Inquisitors were headed for.

They commed Onna to let her know what was up, and she placed a call to the Republic. There are always a couple of ships patrolling the Alderaanian belt, after all, so they figured help shouldn't be long in coming.

After ascertaining that she couldn't do anything from this panel, Oola located the security station, from which she could get the elevators working and maybe lock the Imperials down. But the security station turned out to be guarded by four Imperials. Kedrihm distracted the two on the outside with the simple expedient of throwing something down the other way of the hall while Ree and Ja'len jumped them from behind. Meanwhile, Zan and Drath dealt with the Imperials inside the security station. One surrendered, while Zan dragged the other (who had the insignia of an Imperial guard) through the window and beheaded him.

Oola told them it'd take about an hour to get the elevators working, but that it'd take them three hours to simply walk down to where the other Imperials were.

When she had them working, the group came up with a plan to lock the Imperials in the vault they'd gotten to, and knock them out by simply removing the oxygen from the room. This worked, for the most part, except on one of the Inquisitors. Realizing that something unfortunate had happened to his people, he began pulling down vials and smashing them, then looked pointedly at the camera with a "What're you going to do about it?" gesture. After a moment of debate, Drath simply commed the man and, in his best angry Zabrakian snarl, growled, "Don't touch my samples!"

This gave the Inquisitor pause, and then Zan Force-shoved him into a wall and knocked him out.

With the coast clear, the group headed on down, reclaimed the vial of the Princess's blood, and rounded up the unconscious Imperials. Oddly, all the stormtroopers looked exactly alike. Zan commented on this, but thought they looked too young to be part of the 501st, which was the battalion that had housed most of the remaining clone troopers from the clone war. They should've been in their 50s, if that were the case, but these men looked like they were in their 30s at most.

At about this time, Onna called them to tell them about the Imperial Star Destroyer that was hailing the shuttle. Apparently, the group didn't have as much time as they'd thought. Onna set up a fake beacon from the shuttle to lure the Star Destroyer into thinking they were simply behind schedule, while the crew rounded up the slew of droids who occupied the facility and got them loading vials onto the Starwind. If things went really far south, they wanted to save as much as they could.

They managed to buy enough time to get just about all of it. Ja'len snagged the Imperial shuttle while the others piled into the Starwind just as the Star Destroyer caught on that there was a serious problem and unleashed a battalion of TIE fighters. It was very touch-and-go there for a bit (Ja'len almost didn't make it), but as they cleared the asteroid field they found not one, but TWO New Republic capital ships waiting for them. One was the flagship for the Jedi Order. They hid behind their big pals while the Star Destroyer buggered off, realizing just how much trouble it was in.

Docking with the Jedi ship, they found Kyp waiting for them in the hangar bay. "It's not that far to Coruscant," he said when they looked surprised. Then he said, "Do you know what time it is on Coruscant?! I got shaken awake in the middle of the night!" This led to: "It's a Jedi's duty to be awakened in the middle of the night." "Yeah, Ree's always being woken up by dark and ominous figures." "That's exactly what I'm talking about!" Kyp retorted. "Was your ominous figure Luke Skywalker? Then I win!"

Anyway, after he stopped ragging on them, it was a nice, quiet ride home. To massive and unprecedented adulation.

As Kyp put it, "You guys saved the Senate, the Jedi Temple, and the Chancellor's family before. You realize that's going to be nothing compared to rescuing all the plants and animals of Alderaan?"

Yeah, there was quite a crowd.