Thule

The Falcon lifts off, and the Starwind rendezvouses with the fleet. Ree spots what looks like an old Jedi capital ship. In fact, there are quite a few ships in the fleet ranging from antique to positively ancient. Apparently Luke hauled out a bunch of the ships from the Rakata ghost ship. When she asks after he meets them in the hangar bay, Luke tells her that the "Twilek tech-fairy" got a lot of them working. Ree hands him a Force crystal, which he finds fascinating. He already knows about his mother. They know Zan's well because he's been very effective at slowing Thule's main cruiser, he tells Ree when she asks. He stopped up the plumbing while they had him on KP duty.

They're introduced to the various plans of attack they're thinking over. Sighing, Luke grudgingly shows them Han's (only because Han made him promise to present it for consideration, he says), which goes like this:

"I can only see one flaw," Kyp says. "How do we get Luke to the evil leader?" Luke gives him a dirty look. "It's hardly going to be that easy."

When Ree tells Luke about Set Harth, Z remembers he had something to give her. He traced the message service to the Smashed Holocron, but couldn't follow it any further. Kedrihm'Val says he always thought it was Jude, but she denies it, and Endek says it wasn't him, either. Still, Endek says, he doesn't think the leader is Harth. He always sounded more likely to raid Jedi artifacts or, well, the prison ship. Kedrihm'Val suggests that they might ask their captive Thule agent who the leader is.

Dalt reiterates what he said before about knocking out the Thule temple. The easiest way, of course, would be to use a planet mine on Thule, but he doesn't like the idea of blowing up planets (oh, how our little Dark Sider has grown!). If they grab the Dark Side device he left on Dathomir, they could use that to bathe the planet in less morose Force radiation. It would sap much of the Dark Side power that Thule's Force users tap, and while it wouldn't make anyone spontaneously decide to become a good guy, it might help those on the planet who are little more than slaves. They've got one of Dalt's stealth ships here; he thinks they can strip it down to be fast enough to get to Dathomir and back in time.

He takes Oola, Z, Ree, and INON, in case they need to fend off attackers while he and Oola hook the device up. And indeed, Z and Ree have to hold off some angry Force witches. Z plunks some of those Force crystals into his flechette launcher, and it does truly explosive things to the Force witch he aims it at.

The device, when loaded with not-badness, works wonders. It saps much of the power from Thule's fleet, which after all is powered by enslaved Force users hooked up to engines, and Republic ships are able to follow the auto-returning Thule ships back through the defenses. The device strapped to the fairly small ship makes it difficult to steer, but INON rides on top and helps control the ship using his own weight.

The group gets ready to head down to the planet, except for Dalt, who says he'd better stay with the device in case something goes wrong. SARR tells them to watch out for Thrawn trying to evac a Dark Sider. Kyp figures to head down with Luke and Ree, meet up with Zan, and implement Han's plan (much to Luke's disgust).

SARR, INON (in his capacity as a destroyer droid), Jude, Endek, Luke, and Kyp all make planetfall with the crew. The force sent out to meet them doesn't exist for long. Oola finds the leader's location and sends it to the Jedi, who head in. While Ree, Luke, and Kyp take off to fight the Bad Guy, Z and the others head in to take out the planetary defenses. Oola stays outside to coordinate, Endek and INON watching over her.

Z figures to steal some equipment from the dead and disguise the group as Thule soldiers in order to sneak in with minimum resistance. At this point, they learn that SARR has a hologram projector. They make it to the command center, but Kedrihm'Val doesn't quite manage to bluff well enough, so they're in for a fight. Kind of. Z blows the crap out of people, while Oola hacks the system using SARR as a relay point. Once she checks to find out that Zan's been extracted, she simply turns the planetary defense grid on the Thule fleet.

Meanwhile, the three Jedi go after the heads of Thule. It's two womenL the high priestess Absinthe Dooku, and a war leader. Luke takes the war leader while Ree and Kyp gang up on Absinthe.

Luke's fight takes about .5 seconds, as he gets in a great shot and simply beheads the vaunted war leader. With nothing better to do and every confidence in his companions (and no desire to get any more glory than he absolutely has to), he shuts off his lightsaber and sits down in a nearby chair to watch the others.

Absinthe shuts her mouth on the defiant comment she'd been about to make and decides to indulge in the better part of valor. She doesn't get far from Kyp, however. He hauls her back with the Force and throws her off the wall. "You sure you wouldn't like to surrender?" asks Ree (finally revealing to Luke and Kyp how she manages to keep bringing back live Dark Siders). Absinthe draws her weapons, so...Ree cuts her in half.

Luke calls Dalt to come in with Zan and hook up the device to the temple. Kyp mocks the crap out of Luke: "It's not that easy! It's not that easy, you said!" Thrawn behaves himself, withdrawing Imperial forces other than a small force to help with cleanup.

Luke notes that after this, they should get through the New Year without further complications, then adds, "Well, let's incinerate these bodies so they can't be cloned."

There is a happy reunion with Zan, who's glad to hear about all they've done while he was gone. He knows about Ree and Kyp's date, somehow, but all he'll say is, "I haven't lost my touch!" Kedrihm'Val retrieves the lightsaber from SARR (again; this could become a problem).