Aboard Ship, Corscant [several days later]

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.]

Senate Building, Coruscant [at the same time as Ben's aboard Ship]

Anyone who was anyone--and a few people who weren't--were packed into the offices of Senator Luewet Wuul. The air had gone stale with the smell of nervous sweat and half-eaten sandwiches, and the ventilation system was struggling to remove the heat of all the bodies packed into the meeting room. The gleaming cylinder of the Galactic Justice Center, visible through the floor-to-ceiling viewport, was now swaying. Since Coruscant’s skytowers were designed to withstand tremors far more violent than what they were seeing, it was probably Not a Good Sign.

The last--and newest--member of the Jedi Council, Master Jaina Solo, promoted by Luke while they'd been fighting for their lives inside the Temple, slid into the last chair placed in a semi-circle at the front of the meeting room. Luke, purple circles beneath his eyes and a face clouded by fear and uncertainty based in no small part on the distinct lack of a redheaded Jedi among their number, was listening intently to a briefing already in progress:

"The Sith who've escaped the Temple are spreading out across Coruscant and launching soft-target terrorist attacks,” Dumper was saying. “Of course, BAMR News is blaming the violence on ‘Jedi spice cartels,’ and they’re urging their viewers to take arms against the Jedi and any ‘corrupt’ security personnel aiding the ‘spice smugglers.’ It's not really working. There have been a few civilian attacks against Jedi, but most of the other news outlets are taking a more balanced approach, attributing the violence to a rogue sect of Force-users.”

“They’re not even using the term Sith?” Kyle Katarn asked.

“There has been some speculation,” Dumper said. “But most of the public doesn’t really understand what Sith are, and those who do are accustomed to thinking of them as loners—either Jedi gone bad, or sinister geniuses hiding in plain sight.”

“So the population isn’t doing anything to help us, either?” Kyp Durron asked. Dumper shook his head. “Not much,” he said. “We’ve been getting a little cooperation through the security forces—primarily reports of suspicious behavior. But most Coruscanti don’t seem to know what to believe. They’re just keeping their heads down and trying to stay clear of any trouble at all.”

“Which is difficult, now that our fight with the Sith has spread beyond the Temple,” Luke said, reaching up to rub at the bridge of his nose. “How bad is the violence getting? Are we starting to contain it at all?”

( Luke's plan wasn't working. WHO KNEW? )

[OOC: Adapted from Troy Denning's Apocalypse. Preplayed with the lovely endsthegame, life_inshadow, solo_sword, and hoorayimrich. Warnings for discussion of gross torture-y stuff. WTF, Troy. WTF.]