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.]

Luke had disappeared up toward the Council Chambers immediately on landing the Jade Shadow at the Temple, leaving Ben, Jaina and Vestara to make their way toward the library on their own. Jaina had wanted to see Natua first thing to thank her for her hard work. After a few moments of watching Vestara take in the sights--mostly corridors and turbolifts, by design--Ben broke the silence. “So what do you think?”

She turned to him. “It’s … quite large.”

“Jedi have been on Coruscant for a very long time,” Ben reminded her.

“Sith have been on Kesh for a very long time as well, and yet our Temple is much smaller.”

Ben filed that away for further inquiry later. “Well, once we’re done in the library, we can go anywhere you’d like. I suggest the cafeteria.”

She gave him a little glare. "Very scenic, I'm sure."

The few beings who were here seemed engrossed in their research and didn't pause to stare as the three of them entered. Even, it seemed, Natua Wan, whom they finally found as Jaina peered behind several stacks of datapads. “I commed you about seventeen times,” Jaina greeted her.

( Greetings, exposition fairy! Tell us our next wild nexu hunt location! )

[OOC: Adapted from Christie Golden's Ascension.]

The ship's presence grew stronger the closer Ben flew to the Hapes Cluster, even though Ben couldn't figure out what Lumiya could possibly want in that part of space. He couldn't feel Jacen--hardly unusual--but he could feel a trace of his mother.

( Don't tell me we're both following Lumiya... )

[OOC: NFI or B due to distance. Dialogue snurched with love from Karen Traviss' Sacrifice. And we have gotten to the "sacrifice" part of the book now. Ye be warned for character death and general woe. Comments are love.

Ship had been remarkably effective at pinpointing Jacen's--what had it called it?--wake, even with him being completely shut down in the Force, and it wasn't very long at all before Ben found himself ten thousand klicks in front of the Jacen's Star Destroyer, the Anakin Solo.

Riding in an ancient, sentient, Sith meditation sphere. This was going to take some explaining. "Anakin Solo, this is Ben Skywalker of the Galactic Alliance Guard. Hold your fire...please," he transmitted.

( And here thar be backstory! )