Invasion of Yavin 4

Following Warmaster Tsavong Lah's humiliating setback at the hands of Jedi Knight Jacen Solo during the assault on Duro, he issued a decree calling for the elimination of all Jedi. He stated that any world offering refuge to a Jedi would become a target for attack. However, he proposed that worlds and factions that worked with the invaders to eliminate Jedi would be spared.

Many within the New Republic complied with his demand. Some were genuinely convinced that they could secure peace with the Yuuzhan Vong, or that cooperation was the only alternative to defeat. Others blamed the Jedi for instigating the war. Some were simply motivated by financial gain. This situation also bolstered recruitment for the Peace Brigade, a paramilitary group established by Nom Anor, who acquired a comprehensive list of Jedi from well-placed sympathizers.

Dorsk 82 met his end at the hands of a mob on Ando, and Swilja Fenn was captured by the Peace Brigade on Cujicor, while Cheklev barely escaped after the planetary government on Devaron surrendered him to the invaders. Even Uldir Lochett, a non-Force-sensitive associate of the Academy who was now a pilot for the Space Rescue Corps, was nearly killed by his own copilot.

The Jedi Praxeum was a particularly vulnerable target, now situated far beyond the reach of effective New Republic control. With the Jedi Knights dispersed throughout the Galaxy, only a small number of adult Jedi remained to protect the young Jedi trainees. Concerns arose regarding the continued effectiveness of the Fallanassi illusion, the Academy's primary defense, against the Yuuzhan Vong's ability to nullify the Force. Thrackan Sal-Solo, in an attempt to shield the Corellian sector from attack, disclosed the Academy's location to the Yuuzhan Vong.

On Coruscant, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker recognized the danger, but the New Republic delayed sending a ship to evacuate the children. Although he also tried to locate Booster Terrik in the hope that his Star Destroyer, the Errant Venture, could rescue them, he made little headway in finding him.

At this juncture, Jedi Apprentice Anakin Solo approached his uncle. Despite his reluctance to admit it, the young Jedi was growing increasingly concerned about Luke's limitations and errors in judgment. He was also plagued by nightmares involving his childhood friend Tahiri Veila, who had remained at the Academy. Luke's wife, Mara, suggested contacting her former employer Talon Karrde, a smuggler turned information broker who still commanded a sizable and well-armed fleet, and who could potentially rescue the students. Luke agreed, explicitly forbidding Anakin from taking any rash actions—but his nephew was convinced that Karrde would arrive too late and launched a solo rescue mission.

Employing slicing techniques taught by Mara, Anakin secretly departed through Coruscant's security perimeter aboard his XJ X-wing Starfighter accompanied by his astromech Fiver. Upon arriving in the Yavin system, he discovered a Corellian light freighter orbiting Yavin 4, seemingly scouting the area. Although the ship initially claimed to be a corusca gem prospector, a heavily armed flotilla of twelve additional ships, including several starfighters, corvettes, and a frigate, entered the system. Anakin realized his worst fears were confirmed: the Peace Brigade had arrived in force.

Anakin successfully fought his way past the Brigaders and landed at the Great Temple, where he learned that Streen and Peckhum had taken the Academy's only hyperspace-capable transport on a supply run to Corellia, leaving only Kam, Tionne Solusar, and his former Kushiban mentor Ikrit to protect the Jedi children. While Kam and Tionne led the children to hide in the passageways and caves beneath the Temple area and the surrounding river land, Ikrit and Anakin remained at the Academy to create a diversion against the Brigade assault—five ships filled with troops, led by Lieutenant Kot Murno. However, Anakin was dismayed to find that Tahiri Veila, along with fellow students Valin Horn and Sannah, had also stayed behind at the Temple, naively determined to help defend against the attack.

Meanwhile, Talon Karrde arrived in the system aboard the Wild Karrde to find the other seven ships of the Peace Brigade squadron in orbit around the planet. A tense standoff ensued, but while Captain Imsatad, the former Imperial commander of the Brigader force, was wary of the former smuggler, Karrde managed to entice him with an offer of vornskrs and ysalamiri to track down the Jedi. This offer proved too tempting for Imsatad to resist, but despite his attempts to control the situation to his advantage, Karrde successfully double-crossed the Brigaders and rescued Kam, Tionne, and the Jedi children who had been hiding with them.

Furthermore, as the Wild Karrde broke through the blockade, the rest of Karrde's fleet arrived, turning the tide against the Brigaders—but then a powerful Yuuzhan Vong task force appeared, led by two Miid ro'ik warships. Karrde quickly sent the Jedi children to the relative safety of Coruscant in the care of his partner Shada D'ukal, while he remained on the edge of the system with most of his ships, hoping that the Jedi still on the planet would also be able to escape.

On the surface, Anakin managed to commandeer a Peace Brigade light freighter piloted by Remis Vehn, but Ikrit was killed covering their escape, and Tahiri was captured. Anakin, along with Valin, Sannah, and the captive Ven, fled with three of the smaller Peace Brigade ships in pursuit. Although they managed to eliminate their pursuers, the damaged freighter was shot down and crashed deep in the jungle. Anakin initiated a salvage operation to repair the ship so they could escape the planet.

Days went by, and the standoff above Yavin 4 persisted between Karrde and the invading forces, while Tahiri remained imprisoned by the Peace Brigade. In the jungle, Anakin worked to repair the freighter and also to create a repulsor sled from the wreckage of a crashed E-wing: he was determined to rescue his friend, as he had promised her. A week passed, and he dreamed of her again, now seeing her being shaped and turned to the dark side by the Yuuzhan Vong.

At this point, the young Jedi was joined by Fiver with his damaged X-wing, and also by Qorl, a former Imperial pilot who had lived on Yavin 4 as a hermit for many years, and who informed him of the Yuuzhan Vong's arrival. Anakin asked the old TIE pilot to take charge of the others and left them to repair the damaged freighter, while he set out to rescue his friend.

Around the same time, a high-ranking Yuuzhan Vong officer, Commander Tsaak Vootuh, arrived on Yavin 4. It remains unclear whether the initial Yuuzhan Vong task force that arrived a week earlier had come to raid the Academy or, as they claimed to the New Republic, simply to extract water from Stroiketcy. However, they had now decided to occupy and garrison the jungle moon, seize any Jeedai they could find, and establish a damutek colony for the Shapers. Tsaak Vootuh had Imsatad executed and took Tahiri into his own custody, while his warriors rounded up the other Brigaders for interrogation and ritual execution.

Two weeks later, Master Shaper Mezhan Kwaad arrived on Yavin 4. A secret heretic who answered directly to the Supreme Overlord, she and her apprentice Nen Yim claimed Tahiri as a specimen for their experiments. Their goal was to physically and psychologically transform her into a Force-sensitive Yuuzhan Vong, replacing her personality with a new identity named Riina Kwaad, based on memories copied from Nen Yim's own childhood.

Meanwhile, Anakin journeyed through the jungle, occasionally evading Yuuzhan Vong patrols. He discovered that the damuteks had destroyed the Great Temple and encountered a Yuuzhan Vong outcast named Vua Rapuung. Once a renowned Warrior, he had been Mezhan Kwaad's lover, but when he ended the affair, she infected him with a virus that caused his body to reject his ritual implants, making him appear to be a Shamed One. Rapuung, however, knew that Kwaad was responsible and believed that Anakin could help him restore his honor.

Weeks more passed as Tahiri's brainwashing continued, and Anakin, disguised as a slave, infiltrated the Yuuzhan Vong colony and repaired his lightsaber. Together with Vua Rapuung, he broke into the damutek where Tahiri had been shaped, but as they approached the heart of the Shaper facility, Mezhan Kwaad was being apprehended by Tsaak Vootuh on charges of heresy. Anakin arrived just as the commander and his personal guard were leading away the captive Shapers, accompanied by the brainwashed girl who now believed herself to be Riina Kwaad.

Anakin and Vua fought their way through the compound to where Tahiri and the prisoners were being loaded onto a ship for transport off-world. In front of dozens of Yuuzhan Vong, ranging from Intendants to Shamed Ones, Vua Rapuung confronted his former lover and demanded she reveal the truth. Mezhan Kwaad calmly and proudly proclaimed her heresy, then killed Tsaak Vootuh and his remaining guards with a weapon concealed in her Shaper Hand before using it to incapacitate Anakin and Vua, ordering Nem Yim to take them aboard the ship for transport to the Supreme Overlord.

However, at that moment, Tahiri used Anakin's lightsaber to decapitate the Master Shaper, and the badly injured Vua Rapuung fought to give Anakin and her enough time to escape aboard the ship. The two young Jedi joined up with Qorl and the others on the now-repaired freighter and broke through the Yuuzhan Vong blockade, just in time to be rescued by Karrde's ships—restored to full strength by Shada's return—and the newly arrived Errant Venture, along with a force of X-wings piloted by Corran Horn, Jacen, and Jaina Solo.

A space battle ensued, during which Karrde's fleet, reinforced by the Star Destroyer and the additional starfighters, destroyed the Yuuzhan Vong ships in orbit and bombarded the colony on the surface, destroying the damuteks and additional ships that had landed. Karrde then deployed troops who liberated the enslaved captives the Yuuzhan Vong had been using, leaving the Shamed Ones and a few other survivors to await rescue by their own people.

Although Karrde withdrew from the system, and the Yuuzhan Vong eventually reoccupied Yavin 4, the battle was largely a victory for the Galaxy's defenders. Tahiri had suffered mental and physical trauma from her ordeal, but of all the Jedi at the Academy, only Ikrit had perished, and all the children had been saved, along with the enslaved population that the aliens had subsequently brought to the jungle moon. On a military level, Karrde and Terrik's irregular forces had eliminated a Yuuzhan Vong task force and completely destroyed the most important Shaper compound in the Galaxy.

Furthermore, a belief emerged among the Shamed Ones that Vua Rapuung had been redeemed in death thanks to his alliance with Anakin. This marked the beginning of the Jeedai heresy, an underground movement that regarded the Jedi as saviors rather than enemies, and which would eventually erupt into a full-scale revolution led by Kunra during the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar.