Brilliant, on a curve of Skywalker

Ben awoke. He felt the familiar softness of Ship's gel-cushion floor beneath his aching body, and his temples pounding with the aftereffects of anesthetic gas…the same gas that filled the passenger cabin every time he tried to free himself.

As was his practice (and an Enderlike voice in his head wondered dryly why he'd been knocked out enough to have a standard set of procedures for this), he lay motionless, waiting for the fog to clear, trying to take stock of his circumstances. His hands remained behind him, secured by the same pair of stun cuffs that he had been trying to open when the gas had last come hissing from circulation vents. Judging by the numb ache in his shoulders, his arms had been folded under his back without moving for quite some time, and his tongue felt swollen with thirst. Clearly, this time he had been unconscious longer than a normal sleep cycle—for at least twenty-four hours, maybe even forty-eight.

The muffled rumble of a battle was reverberating up through the floor beneath Ship, and occasionally the entire hull would shudder with the force of an explosion that was either very close or very powerful. If Ben listened carefully, he could even hear the distant screech of blasters—though the sound was so faint it might have been nothing more than wishful thinking.

Don’t make me use the gas again. The words came to Ben inside his mind, as dark and full of menace as always. You need to see what is about to happen.

A section of hull grew transparent, and Ben saw that Ship was sitting in the formal reception hall just off Pinnacle Platform. Designed to impress, the hall was an immense, cavernous chamber with alabaster walls and a white stone floor. With a sweeping view across Fellowship Plaza, it had once been used by the Jedi Council to receive the Temple’s most distinguished visitors. Today it was filled with blast rubble, gray fumes, and a small band of weary-looking Sith.

Abeloth was there, too, standing in the wreckage of the hall’s grand entry, facing out toward the landing deck between a pair of laser cannon emplacements. At the ends of her upraised arms, her tentacles writhed in the air as though she were using them to stir the smoke that was swirling over Fellowship Plaza. Even with her back to him, Ben could see that she was looking toward the distant cylinder of the Galactic Justice Center, shooting blastboats out of the sky in a way calculated to cause the most fear and pain to the marines inside the carriers before they died. Ben closed his eyes against the pain in the Force and prayed he wouldn't recognize any of the Force-signatures as they flashed out of existence.

Abeloth was feeding on the dark side energy of their fear. Ben had seen her do it on Pydyr, when the entire population of the moon believed they were dying from a fake plague, and now she was doing it on Coruscant--but with trillions of inhabitants on Coruscant, Abeloth’s harvest would be limitless. Ben could not help wondering if this had been her plan all along—to set Jedi and Sith against each other, then feast on the fallout.

You Jedi are such small thinkers, Ship said, interrupting his thoughts. Abeloth wants so much more, Ben…especially for you.

( Wasn't that reassuring, Ben? )

[OOC: Taken from Troy Denning's Apocalypse. Warning for mild violence and creeptasticness.]

“So," Ben said, looking down on Upekzar, "this is a lot nicer than Ziost. Ship's taste in locales is improving."

“Or Abeloth’s,” Vestara said. When Natua had described the ruins of a temple that had closely matched Ben’s description of where he had first found Ship, they had all felt hope that they might actually find that elusive and dangerous vessel, and with it, Abeloth. She wouldn't be challenged just by Luke, Ben, Vestara, or the Lost Tribe, who’d had their own agenda, and one that ended up not really being all that interested in the destruction of Abeloth. Now she would be opposed by nearly every Jedi in the galaxy. And in with those kinds of numbers, even an ancient and powerful a being like Abeloth could not stand.

...Ben hoped. If it didn't work, a lot of people they would need later would die pointlessly now instead.

Natua’s long hours spent in the Temple library studying Sith worlds and their histories had made her the resident expert, and Luke had insisted that she be the one to brief her fellow Jedi. Vestara might know more about the Sith mind-set, but Natua had turned her fierce determination toward learning everything she could about their ancient habitations. Ben listened with half an ear as Natua filled in the rest of the fleet on the Dream Singers, the lava caves, and the subterranean hangar that had once contained Sith training vessel: he'd heard all of this before in the library.

( Well *this* planet sucks. )

[OOC: Warnings for NPC death, Ben being kicked around like a puppy, and massive stupidity. Adapted, mangled and folded into origami cranes from Christie Golden's Ascension.]

Ben could think of about ten thousand planets--including Hoth, Tatooine, Ziost, and the stupid hole the Hidden One had lived in--before he'd have voluntarily set foot on before Dromund Kaas, a planet so seeped in the dark side that Luke had erased it from star charts and general Jedi records for the safety of the public.

But here he was anyway, stomping through the humid guck with his father, his cousin, and Vestara, searching for Abeloth and trying not to lose his lunch because of the physical and spiritual nausea he was feeling.

“I don’t like this,” Luke said without preamble an hour into their search. “More than half a dozen places searched and no one’s found anything. Nothing at all.”

“Well,” Ben offered, “the galaxy is a fairly large place.”

“Of course,” Luke said, “but we should still be finding something. If nothing else, I’m surprised Abeloth hasn’t taunted us in some way. She needs an audience. This absolute inability to find anything at all, about either her and Ship or the Lost Tribe—” He shook his head. “It’s not adding up. She’s not hiding from us because she’s afraid. She’s hiding because she’s planning something. Combine that with the same inexplicable disappearance of the Lost Tribe—I’m willing to bet that they’re working together. They’re planning something. And when Abeloth and the Lost Tribe drop out of sight to plan something—it’s going to be very big, and very bad.”

Ben sighed. “Well, I don’t think we’re going to find them here.”

( Sith are drama queens, news at 11. )

[OOC: Adapted from Christie Golden's Ascension. Warnings for NPC death and soooo much scenery chewing.]

Ben woke up in the predawn hours, though he hadn't slept much during the night either. He'd finished his work on the lightsaber around midnight, and that was about the only constructive thing he'd accomplished.

He sat up where he'd slept, a couple meters from the campfire, wrapped his blankets around him, and began a series of breathing exercises, hoping to be as detached and reflective as Jedi should be.

When Darth Caedus died, and Lumiya before him, and when Tahiri had shown no sign of wishing to follow the Sith traditions, Ben had hoped it meant the Sith were gone for good. Oh, of course there had been suggestions otherwise: the continued existence of Ship, the rumors of dying Sith communities out in the galaxy somewhere. But he could ignore them. They weren't in his face, waving lightsabers.

That had changed with the arrival of the Sith strike team in the Maw. Most of the Sith that Ben and Luke and Ender had fought had been at the level of training of an experienced Jedi Knight. Luke described Vestara's female companion as being the approximate level of a Jedi Master, and Ben didn't feel lucky enough to hope that the strike team had been the last representatives of this new Sith Order.

So there were Sith again, and part of him, the younger Ben who'd been tortured and nearly turned by Darth Caedus, was still a little afraid of them. Death didn't frighten him. Becoming like Jacen...that was another matter.

( Where Ender and Ben talk about Sith and the amazing Skywalker-Solo parenting skills )

( Where the score in verbal sparring becomes Vestara 2, Ben 0. )

[Taken and adapted from Backlash by Aaron Allston. NFB, NFI.]