Brilliant, on a curve of Skywalker

As the Rude Awakening sped onward, the fire-rimmed orbs ahead rapidly began to swell and drift apart, leaving the area between them webbed with blazing whorls of accretion gas. Against this brilliant backdrop, Ship also began to swell, growing from a propulsion halo the size of a dust mote to a dark sphere as large as Jaina’s thumb.

A constant stream of fire streaked back and forth between the two vessels, cannon bolts from the Awakening and plasma bulbs from Ship. Both vessels were taking the attacks dead center in the forward shields, making no attempt to evade. With the grasping hand of a black hole reaching from both sides of an ever-narrowing safe corridor, there was no room to maneuver or flee. Flying skill and combat training did not matter: pilots had one choice and one choice only: punch it out head-on.

And in that kind of fight, it was usually the pilot who attacked quickest and hardest who survived. Jaina checked the range and, seeing that the two vessels were closing in even faster than she thought, armed the Rude Awakening’s first missile. Jaina had chosen the Rude Awakening for good reason: it was a Void Jumper assault pinnace. That meant it could get in fast, evade detection, take a beating, and deliver a devastating attack. It was one of the most fearsome tactical combat vessels in the galaxy, designed to go head-to-head with a Mandalorian Bes’uliik and be the craft that emerged from the fireball. Jaina could not imagine any better combat transport to fly head-on against Ship—especially not after she had fitted the entire missile magazine with baradium warheads.

Talk about a rude awakening. Heh.

The targeting computer chimed once, announcing that the two crafts had closed to effective missile range. Jaina did not bother to try for a target-lock—Ship would defeat it anyway, and in this fight a quick attack was everything. She simply launched, then pulled the throttles back so the Awakening would not be inside the lethal radius when the baradium detonated. The blazing white disk of a thrust ring appeared in front of the cockpit then, as the missile streaked away, quickly shrank to a white dot. In the next instant a tiny gray dot appeared in front of the Awakening.

In an eyeblink, it expanded into the gray, oblong lump of one of Ship’s Force-hurled stones. Fighting the urge to dodge—a mistake that might well have carried them across a nearby event horizon—Jaina held the pinnace steady and thumbed the intercom pad on her control yoke.

“Brace for impact back there,” she said. “This one is going to take down our shields.”

( This seems like an excellent time to go on a vision quest, doesn't it, Luke? )

( Meanwhile, on Coruscant-- )

( And on Abeloth's home planet, Ben gets a mouthful of tentacle. Seriously. It's nasty. )

( Hooray, we won! What do we do with Vestara? )

[OOC: Troy Denning, THERE IS SO MUCH WRONG WITH YOU. Warnings for torture, violence, and death. Played out with amazing hoorayimrich, life_inshadow, and endsthegame. Done with the spamming for today!]

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.]