Sinkhole Station, the Maw [several days later, or a few hours after Ender started messing with Sith]
That awful smell, Ben realized, was probably him. It reminded him of sour nerf milk, with a hint of ash and mildew. His tongue lay in his mouth like a raw sausage, his left eye could barely open (thank you, Ender), and he generally felt sore and weak, with a throbbing, muddled head that made him feel like he'd died and just didn't realize it yet.
Which, Ben suddenly remembered, was a distinct possibility. He stared up into the red strobing of the control room's alarm lights, then glanced over at the IV drip bags he'd brought to hydrate himself. They'd been drained, which meant he'd been Mind Walking for much longer than just a day.
"Now I see why they'd rather die than return to their bodies," he gasped out after a couple of tries.
When no reply came, Ben looked over and found his father still lying motionless on his gurney, his gaze vacant and fixed on the ceiling.
"Dad?!"
Luke
Nothing moved but Luke's mouth, which opened barely far enough to emit a hoarse whisper. "Uh...yeah."
There was another pause. "I'll be okay," he rasped. "Just need to...get blood to muscles again."
Ben
"Yeah, well, good luck with that."
Ben used the Force to undo the straps across his chest, then tried to sit up...and dropped back to his gurney in a heap.
Rhondi
"It's always like this," Rhondi said quietly. "Give yourselves a break."
Ben
She was sitting where Ben had left her, slumped against an equipment cabinet with the stun cuffs he'd put onto her wrists still holding her attached to the floor beam he'd exposed. He felt guilty now about not giving her an IV drip of her own but before they'd gone beyond shadows he'd felt that if she believed her life was in danger she'd make their trips short.
"How are you feeling?" he asked. "Better than you look, I hope."
Rhondi
"That's nice." Her gaze shifted to Luke. "If you want grandchildren someday, you need to have a conversation with your son about how to talk to the ladies."
Luke
Luke fought the urge to give in to slightly hysterical laughter at her advice, focusing instead on drinking down the pack of hydrade Ben was holding for him.
Ben
"Dad, that trip...it was pretty dark," he said quietly. "Worse than a triple hit of yarrock." He noticed the look in his father's eyes and tacked on a hasty, "...I'm guessing. I get plenty of weirdness without drugs."
He stared into a space for a long moment, then asked, "All of the stuff that happened while we were Mind Walking...was that real? Mom, Anakin, Jacen?"
Luke
"Was that real?" This time Luke did give into his impulse to laugh, though it came out choked. "Maybe you'd rather ask me something else, like the ultimate origin of the Force."
Ben
"We'll save the easy stuff for later," Ben replied. "Seriously, this whole experience is making me barvy. I need to figure it out now."
Luke
Luke closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. "Ben, you're the detective. You can figure this out for yourself--in fact, I think you have to."
Ben
It was times like this that Ben regretted being the son of the Jedi Grand Master: everything turned into a lesson.
"Okay," he said. "Let's start with the fact that we both saw the same people at the Lake of Apparitions."
"We all saw the same people," Rhondi corrected, jerking her cuffs against the beam. "How about a little help here?"
Ben grabbed another sip-pack and headed toward her. "If we all saw the same thing, that means we experienced something. We just can't be sure what since we were, um, outside our bodies."
Rhondi
"Because our bodies don't exist beyond shadows," Rhondi said as Ben knelt down to undo her stun cuffs.
Ben
"Yeah, you keep saying that," Ben said, "but your word isn't evidence. I still don't know whether I had the experience of really talking to Mom, or if I just saw what someone else in that place wanted me to see."
Rhondi
"Well, if you believe someone in it can make you see something, you must agree that the place itself was real," Rhondi replied.
Ben
Ben nodded slowly. "It was real. I felt something there that I recognized from before..." He turned to his father. "From when I was at Shelter. It's what drove me away from the Force, and I'm pretty sure it's what's behind the paranoid delusions that Jedi Knights my age keep having."
"Good theory," Luke said, "but how is it spreading?"
"The same way that's happening." He waved his hand at all of the bodies floating in the meditation vault beyond the control room. "The same way I felt it at Shelter. Through the Force."
Rhondi
"They aren't sick," Rhondi said. "They're only being called home."
Ben
Ben made a face at the term she used, but had to admit, "You might call that evidence too. Qwallo Mode didn't show up here by accident."
Luke
Luke reached for a second sip-pack. "Why aren't Kam and Tionne having trouble? Or any of the adult Jedi who spent time guarding Shelter?"
Ben
"I don't know," Ben said. "If I'm not infected any more, it might because I withdrew from the Force. Maybe trained adult Jedi have too many defenses, or there's something smart behind all of this. If Master Solusar had felt that place reaching out--"
Luke
"Right," Luke said. "The young ones would have been moved. But why now? It's been nearly a decade and a half since there were any students at Shelter."
Ben
That answer Ben didn't have to think about--it was surrounding them with its acrid smoke. "Centerpoint Station was destroyed, and that's what changed. Suddenly whatever we felt in Shelter started leaking out--maybe reaching out--beyond the Maw."
Luke
Luke's face went even paler as he combined that information with what Mara had told him. Unlike Ben, he wasn't plagued with doubts about the reality of what they'd experienced. "Wonderful."
Ben
Ben nodded grimly and stood up, heading for the door panel he'd welded shut, but Rhondi had already beat him there.
"I'm sure Rolund is fine," he said a little grimly. "Ender was going to watch out for him."
Rhondi turned from the door to make a reply but it was cut off by a stunned cry as a red circle of blazing light burned through the back of Rhondi's skull. She was dead before the scream died. Behind her, the bright column of a scarlet lightsaber began to cut a smoking furrow through the thick metal of the hatch.
Ben's first thought was to Ender--a quick quest into the Force told him that he was still alive, though not much else--and then his lightsaber was out. So was Luke's, but now there were four red lightsabers making amazingly fast progress through the blast doors.
Luke leaped down to the front of the control room--though hardly with the ease Ben was accustomed to seeing his father use in such tasks--and began cutting an escape hole in the viewhatch. It wasn't going nearly as quickly as the hole opening up rapidly by Ben.
"Dad, you're cutting really slow," Ben said as he slid into his vac suit. "Could your power cell be low?"
Luke
"Son, I'm a Jedi Master," Luke replied. "Do you really think I'd forget to check my own lightsaber's power-cell levels?"
Ben
"Just asking," Ben replied. "Stranger things have happened around here." He checked the scarlet lightsabers' progress. "Such as...they're cutting through that hatch about twice as fast as you're cutting through the viewport."
He tried for a fifth time, and then added, "And Ender's not picking up on the comms. I've no idea who these people are, but they had to have heard Rhondi by the door and they still pushed a lightsaber through at head height. That's not really Mind Walker style."
Luke
"But they didn't manifest out of the void," Luke said, leaving a ten-centimeter section in place and popping the rest of the hole out using the Force. "They're a part of this somehow. We need to take one alive." He glanced back at Ben. "Are you ready with the gas cylinder?"
Ben
Ben held up his hand torch and nodded. "Can we at least be careful about capturing one? You're not exactly at full capacity, and all we know about them is that they don't mind killing people and seem to have a thing for red lightsabers."
He leaned down to the gas canister and disabled the safety shutoff. He'd already opened the feed valve.
Luke
"Hide your Force presence and wait for my signal," Luke ordered. "We might learn something just by watching them."
Two seconds later the door charge detonated and the pounding feet of seven or eight intruders entered, but it was impossible to count them from Luke's angle through the smoke.
He tapped his comm twice to let Ben know he was ready to move.
Ben
Holding the gas canister in one hand and his lightsaber in the other, Ben rolled from his hiding place. A line of eight intruders were heading to the hole in the viewport, all of them in a hurry, and most of them showing sign of injury.
Ben smiled a little grimly. Ender must have been busy.
Like the Skywalkers, they were wearing combat-rated vac suits and carrying lightsabers, but some were also carrying blasters. Most of them had equipment belts with two sheaths, one for a slender, glass-handled dagger and one for a curved, heavy-bladed parang.
Luke was climbing up to the top of the equipment console, so intent on capturing a prisoner that he didn't sense the intruder coming up behind him--a female with lavender skin, holding a parang in her hand.
"Dad!" Ben commed. "Roll now!"
Luke
The parang flew and Luke rolled, disappearing over a row of equipment cabinets as the weapon spun a few centimeters over his helmet.
Ben
Ben didn't give her a chance to retrieve her weapon. He Force-leapt the three meters between them, pointing his lightsaber at her heart and thumbing the activation switch. To his relief, both his body and his weapon felt fully powered--though he wasn't sure how much of it was him running on adrenaline.
But the woman must have had her own danger sense. Even before Ben's blade extended, she was spinning away, still reaching for her parang with one hand, igniting her lightsaber with the other, and snapping a vicious heel hick at Ben's groin with her near foot.
It was too fancy, too much. Ben stepped back and gave her empty hand a Force tug. Instead of returning to her grasp, the parang sliced her hand off at the wrist.
She cried out, then attempted to slash at his neck with her lightsaber. He leaned away, then used the Force to pull her, center mass, onto his own blade.
In the next instant Ben's entire body was tingling with danger sense and he was facing off against the woman's seven companions and their blasterfire.
"Hey, Dad, about that prisoner--" he began.
Luke
"Go!" Luke came rolling back over the banks of equipment cabinets, pouring blasterfire into the intruder he had been attempting to capture, then hit the floor and scrambled toward the hatchway. "And cover me!"
Ben
"No problem," Ben said a little dryly, slipping through the hatch and slamming the neck of canister on the door jamb, then tossed it back into the room where it began flying around in the weightless environment, spewing explosive azetal fumes and bouncing off smoking equipment consoles.
He took cover behind the jamb and drew his blaster, then began to fire around the corner, opening himself to the Force so he could sense his father's location. He felt a wave of terror as the enemy realized what would happen with the concentration of azetal grew high enough to ignite, then his father came flying through the hatchway feet first, low to the ground and pouring bolts back into the control room.
Two heartbeats later, the enemy fire had trailed off to nothing. "Did you get them all?" Ben asked, eyes wide.
Luke
"Just three," Luke said, shaking his head. "The rest were Force-leaping through the bolt-hole I cut." He reached into the Force and shut the hatch door again. "Whoever those guys are, they're not idiots. They know what's going to happen with the azetal gas gets dense enough."
Ben
They headed down the hallway as quickly as they could--Ben wasn't admitting it aloud, but it worried him that Ender wasn't answering his comm--and made their way for the membrane that would let them out of the command area.
They'd gotten about two-thirds of the way there when two grenades came hurtling toward them--no, four--no, wait, they were all heading back into another hatch and two others were heading for them as hatches slammed shut around them.
"Getting the feeling these people like to overthink things," Ben muttered just before the pair of stun grenades blew.
Luke
Luke and Ben had been trained enough to resist the effects of stun gas, but it suited their purposes to float, seemingly unconscious, and learn more about their enemies.
One of whom was killing the other with her lightsaber, much to her victim's bellowed surprise. It took the attention of the one who was trying to restrain Ben, and that second of distraction was enough for his son to get his lightsaber out and bisect the intruder down the spine, then extend his hand to deflect another pair of grenades (he wasn't going to bet on them being stun genades this time) from a third enemy down a hatch and slam the hatch shut on the man's arm.
Luke, meanwhile, was sneaking up on a final enemy--female, it seemed--clamping down on her wrist and jerking her from her hiding place. His other hand snatched grenades from her hands and tossed them into the corridor behind them.
He put his face mask up, getting a closer look at his opponent, who couldn't be much older than Ben. "You should know," he said, "that Jedi can resist stun grenades."
She hissed something at him in a language he didn't recognize, then drew her parang from its sheath using the Force and slashed it at Luke's face, cutting a deep gash across his cheek and nose.
Luke hid his small smile and released her hands, then reached out to knock her unconscious.
Ben
Ben was rather more concerned by the amount of blood that was pooling in his father's facemask. "Come on, Dad," he said. "We have to get back to the Shadow." He glanced at the floating body next to Luke. "Guess we'll take her along too," he added, reaching out to tug her along.
They passed through the area with the Killick bodies, then the detention center--and Ben's danger sense flared to life. He gave their prisoner a hefty shove in the Force and focused on what was coming through the membrane. "Can't these people take a hint?" Ben muttered as he began firing at the membrane just before his father Force-rolled them both into a wall, barely avoiding getting hit by an air tank.
Ben glanced back and saw their prisoner, wobbly but definitely conscious, trying to get a little round-bellied cart launched at them. "Time to dump the girl," Ben said, turning his blaster on her.
"No!" Luke knocked his hand down.
"Are you crazy?" Ben demanded. "That's the second time she's tried to kill you in the last five minutes."
Luke
"Just scare her off," Luke ordered. "I've got plans for her."
Ben
"Plans?" Ben could just hear Ender's thoughts about that. "Okay, if you say so. We're almost to the ship."
Two final intruders stepped into view and Ben gasped as things finally snapped into place for him. "I know who they are. They're Sith."
Luke
"Sith?" Luke glanced at him. "They can't be, Ben. There were at least dozen of them--"
Ben
"And Sith only come in twos, I know. But Ship is here. I feel it looking for us."
Ben sounded distinctly unhappy to admit that.
Luke
"Go prep the Shadow," Luke said, leaving off mentioning Ender. He knew it would be the first thing Ben did anyway. "I'll holding them in the lift until we're reading for launch. If Ship is working with them, it'll be moving to block the hangar exit."
Ben
"Okay," Ben said, sighing, "but I'm not leaving without you."
Luke
"If it comes to do, you better," Luke said. "Coruscant needs to know if Sith are involved in this."
He gave Ben a reassuring Force nudge. "Go."
Ben
Ben didn't wait to watch his father go back up to face off against the Sith--his feet pounded down the metal walkway as he raced to the Shadow.
"ENDER?"
Ender
The business end of a blaster was probably not what he'd been hoping to see, but Ender wasn't taking any chances. He'd only gotten back to the Shadow five minutes ago - enough to tell Jane to get things moving, enough to listen in to what was going on, but that was about it.
There was blood on his face, in his hair and on his jacket, as well as other particles of a questionable nature. His eyes had the feverish-but-sharp look to them of someone who'd been running on sheer adrenaline for a while now.
"You took your time."
Ben
"You're bleeding," Ben replied, ignoring the blaster in favor of what he considered the more immediate problem.
Ender
Considering the blaster was chiefly intended to be a distraction, Ender would have happily gone with this one. If it hadn't give Ben a few good points in the 'not insane' column.
"It isn't mine," he said, pulling the blaster away after a brief moment of consideration.
Ben
Ben's eyes flicked to Ender's, making a quick mental assessment of his friend's state of mind. "Dad's fighting off the last couple of Sith to buy us some time to get the Shadow prepped to go. Do you need help with that or is it already started?"
Logistics first, then emotions.
Ender
"We're good to go," Ender said, sliding the blaster into the holster. "Tell him to hurry the hell up. We don't have time for theatrics."
Logitics first.
Ben
Ben headed for the cockpit. "We need to get Ship out of the way of the exit first," he said. He paused as he brushed past Ender, then stopped and leaned his forehead in. "I'm sorry," he murmured softly.
Ender
"Apologies later," Ender said, pulling away. "Ship."
It had less to do with Ben than with his own tenuous grasp on keepgoingkeepgoing right now.
Ben
"Ship," Ben agreed, sliding into the pilot's seat and prepping the weapons at the same time he fired up the engines. "Strap yourself in. This could get bumpy."
Especially with a pilot who could only see through one eye--and the Force--but one eye.
Ender
Ender would apologise for that, but...
...no, actually, he wouldn't.
"I'm still trying to think of a good reason to let you fly us out of here," he commented, sitting down.
Ben
"You have a lot of experience flying against ancient Sith meditation spheres?" Ben asked dryly.
Ender
"Half-blind and half-crazy?" Ender asked. But honestly, even he had to admit they had no time to quibble. "Just get this thing out of here." He mentally went over his failsafes.
Ben
"No crazier than usual," Ben declared, bringing the Shadow in low and fast, then commed his father with a warning that he was about to open fire a split second before he let loose on Ship with the big laser cannons.
Ender
All of Ender's muscles seemed to tense all at once. But laser fire wasn't something you could fight or flee from, so he grabbed his self control tight and kept still, staring out at the Sith vessel.
Ben
Ben didn't have time to worry about Ender right now. Ship veered out of the way, chased off--or more likely, Ben thought, following some Sith order--and Ben took a deep breath just before Luke's voice came over the comms. "Hey, Ben?"
Ben frowned and swung the Shadow immediately in the direction of his father. "Dad, what's wrong? You don't sound so good."
"I'll survive," Luke said. "If you hurry."
Ender
"All the doors are open."
Not nearly as obvious a statement as it might have seemed: he was trying to let Jane know she had to make absolutely certain they could take the most direct path. Immediately.
Ben
Ben wasn't going to decrypt Ender right now--he was too busy flying like a slightly insane person a Skywalker, honing in on his father's location and lowering the hatch before the Shadow had come to a stop. "I'll be back," he snapped to Ender. "You've got the controls."
Ender
Ender grabbed the controls without bothering to answer. Jane listed off passageways and coordinates at great speed. She was probably filling up the databank already; he didn't take the time to check. He had other things to keep his attention on.
Ben
In a shorter amount of time than should have been possible Ben was back with Luke, who was unconscious and looking more dead than alive. Ben headed to the medbay without a word, working quickly to clean his father's wounds and hooking him up to various bits of machinery.
He noticed the cut on Luke's face and frowned slightly. Compared to the rest of the the wounds, it was almost insignificant, but Ben knew that his father had faster reactions than that.
"Blood trail," he murmured. "You got your prisoner after all."
Ender
"You should have let me navigate to begin with," Jane complained. "The Force-- now there's a good made-up excuse to get by with wild guesses and braggadocio. How do you squishy sentients come up with this stuff?"
"Not the time, Jane," Ender snapped, as he turned the ship and steered them out as fast as he could manage. It wasn't long before Jane's coordinates would start picking up the slack, though he had no idea how long her consciousness would be able to stick with them-- would she blink out at the edges of the Stable Zone again?
Ben
"Wait a second, Ender," Ben called. "We need one of the Sith to leave Sinkhole Station so we can follow her."
And for Dad to wake back up, Ben added mentally, then glanced down to see his father staring at him with bright blue eyes. "You could say something, you know," he complained.
Ender
"I'm taking it we're not planning on her being a stowaway," Ender called back.
Ben
Ben snorted. "Not exactly. Dad put a tracker on her during a fight."
In a matter of speaking, anyway.
"We can't let them disappear again," he added. "They might be the key to part of this mess."
Ender
"So you're suggesting we do what, exactly," Ender said, "Release an escape pod? If we're not hoisting her aboard and Ship isn't taking her, then the only way she's getting off this rock is if she can build her own way out."
Ben
"Or gets one of the other ships to work," Ben said. "They're old, not completely disabled."
At that, a ship that had been old in Anakin Skywalker's time began lumbering toward the exit. "Like that," Ben added. "Assuming she doesn't blow up on her way out of the Maw."
Ender
"Since she seems to be doing okay, I'm getting us out of here," Ender said, flipping a few switches.
Ben
"Need help flying through the black holes?" Most of Ben's attention was back on Luke.
Ender
"No, I've got a course," Ender said, tersely. He was pretty sure that if he closed his eyes right now he'd see blood and gasping Sith on the station floor.
"Team Ansible saves the day. Let's dazzle this boy," Jane said.
For once, he didn't tell her to shut up; for once, he almost relaxed in the knowledge that he had someone with here unequivocally on his side, with no complications and no troubles, something simple he didn't need to calm down to determine what she was or what she was doing for him.
Nothing had ever felt better than the exact moment he got the ship out of the station.
Ben
"Head toward Kessel," Ben recommended. "Lando owns it these days and will help us out on supplies. It's the closest planet away from the Maw, anyway--it's probably where the Sith is heading."
Ender
"I could have told you that," Jane said.
"I'll get right on that," Ender called back. "But the sanisteam is mine as soon as this is over."
[OOC: And that's it for Abyss! Preplayed with the always amazing endsthegame. Warnings for lightsabering with extreme prejudice. NFB, NFI, OOC is always welcomed.]
Which, Ben suddenly remembered, was a distinct possibility. He stared up into the red strobing of the control room's alarm lights, then glanced over at the IV drip bags he'd brought to hydrate himself. They'd been drained, which meant he'd been Mind Walking for much longer than just a day.
"Now I see why they'd rather die than return to their bodies," he gasped out after a couple of tries.
When no reply came, Ben looked over and found his father still lying motionless on his gurney, his gaze vacant and fixed on the ceiling.
"Dad?!"
Luke
Nothing moved but Luke's mouth, which opened barely far enough to emit a hoarse whisper. "Uh...yeah."
There was another pause. "I'll be okay," he rasped. "Just need to...get blood to muscles again."
Ben
"Yeah, well, good luck with that."
Ben used the Force to undo the straps across his chest, then tried to sit up...and dropped back to his gurney in a heap.
Rhondi
"It's always like this," Rhondi said quietly. "Give yourselves a break."
Ben
She was sitting where Ben had left her, slumped against an equipment cabinet with the stun cuffs he'd put onto her wrists still holding her attached to the floor beam he'd exposed. He felt guilty now about not giving her an IV drip of her own but before they'd gone beyond shadows he'd felt that if she believed her life was in danger she'd make their trips short.
"How are you feeling?" he asked. "Better than you look, I hope."
Rhondi
"That's nice." Her gaze shifted to Luke. "If you want grandchildren someday, you need to have a conversation with your son about how to talk to the ladies."
Luke
Luke fought the urge to give in to slightly hysterical laughter at her advice, focusing instead on drinking down the pack of hydrade Ben was holding for him.
Ben
"Dad, that trip...it was pretty dark," he said quietly. "Worse than a triple hit of yarrock." He noticed the look in his father's eyes and tacked on a hasty, "...I'm guessing. I get plenty of weirdness without drugs."
He stared into a space for a long moment, then asked, "All of the stuff that happened while we were Mind Walking...was that real? Mom, Anakin, Jacen?"
Luke
"Was that real?" This time Luke did give into his impulse to laugh, though it came out choked. "Maybe you'd rather ask me something else, like the ultimate origin of the Force."
Ben
"We'll save the easy stuff for later," Ben replied. "Seriously, this whole experience is making me barvy. I need to figure it out now."
Luke
Luke closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. "Ben, you're the detective. You can figure this out for yourself--in fact, I think you have to."
Ben
It was times like this that Ben regretted being the son of the Jedi Grand Master: everything turned into a lesson.
"Okay," he said. "Let's start with the fact that we both saw the same people at the Lake of Apparitions."
"We all saw the same people," Rhondi corrected, jerking her cuffs against the beam. "How about a little help here?"
Ben grabbed another sip-pack and headed toward her. "If we all saw the same thing, that means we experienced something. We just can't be sure what since we were, um, outside our bodies."
Rhondi
"Because our bodies don't exist beyond shadows," Rhondi said as Ben knelt down to undo her stun cuffs.
Ben
"Yeah, you keep saying that," Ben said, "but your word isn't evidence. I still don't know whether I had the experience of really talking to Mom, or if I just saw what someone else in that place wanted me to see."
Rhondi
"Well, if you believe someone in it can make you see something, you must agree that the place itself was real," Rhondi replied.
Ben
Ben nodded slowly. "It was real. I felt something there that I recognized from before..." He turned to his father. "From when I was at Shelter. It's what drove me away from the Force, and I'm pretty sure it's what's behind the paranoid delusions that Jedi Knights my age keep having."
"Good theory," Luke said, "but how is it spreading?"
"The same way that's happening." He waved his hand at all of the bodies floating in the meditation vault beyond the control room. "The same way I felt it at Shelter. Through the Force."
Rhondi
"They aren't sick," Rhondi said. "They're only being called home."
Ben
Ben made a face at the term she used, but had to admit, "You might call that evidence too. Qwallo Mode didn't show up here by accident."
Luke
Luke reached for a second sip-pack. "Why aren't Kam and Tionne having trouble? Or any of the adult Jedi who spent time guarding Shelter?"
Ben
"I don't know," Ben said. "If I'm not infected any more, it might because I withdrew from the Force. Maybe trained adult Jedi have too many defenses, or there's something smart behind all of this. If Master Solusar had felt that place reaching out--"
Luke
"Right," Luke said. "The young ones would have been moved. But why now? It's been nearly a decade and a half since there were any students at Shelter."
Ben
That answer Ben didn't have to think about--it was surrounding them with its acrid smoke. "Centerpoint Station was destroyed, and that's what changed. Suddenly whatever we felt in Shelter started leaking out--maybe reaching out--beyond the Maw."
Luke
Luke's face went even paler as he combined that information with what Mara had told him. Unlike Ben, he wasn't plagued with doubts about the reality of what they'd experienced. "Wonderful."
Ben
Ben nodded grimly and stood up, heading for the door panel he'd welded shut, but Rhondi had already beat him there.
"I'm sure Rolund is fine," he said a little grimly. "Ender was going to watch out for him."
Rhondi turned from the door to make a reply but it was cut off by a stunned cry as a red circle of blazing light burned through the back of Rhondi's skull. She was dead before the scream died. Behind her, the bright column of a scarlet lightsaber began to cut a smoking furrow through the thick metal of the hatch.
Ben's first thought was to Ender--a quick quest into the Force told him that he was still alive, though not much else--and then his lightsaber was out. So was Luke's, but now there were four red lightsabers making amazingly fast progress through the blast doors.
Luke leaped down to the front of the control room--though hardly with the ease Ben was accustomed to seeing his father use in such tasks--and began cutting an escape hole in the viewhatch. It wasn't going nearly as quickly as the hole opening up rapidly by Ben.
"Dad, you're cutting really slow," Ben said as he slid into his vac suit. "Could your power cell be low?"
Luke
"Son, I'm a Jedi Master," Luke replied. "Do you really think I'd forget to check my own lightsaber's power-cell levels?"
Ben
"Just asking," Ben replied. "Stranger things have happened around here." He checked the scarlet lightsabers' progress. "Such as...they're cutting through that hatch about twice as fast as you're cutting through the viewport."
He tried for a fifth time, and then added, "And Ender's not picking up on the comms. I've no idea who these people are, but they had to have heard Rhondi by the door and they still pushed a lightsaber through at head height. That's not really Mind Walker style."
Luke
"But they didn't manifest out of the void," Luke said, leaving a ten-centimeter section in place and popping the rest of the hole out using the Force. "They're a part of this somehow. We need to take one alive." He glanced back at Ben. "Are you ready with the gas cylinder?"
Ben
Ben held up his hand torch and nodded. "Can we at least be careful about capturing one? You're not exactly at full capacity, and all we know about them is that they don't mind killing people and seem to have a thing for red lightsabers."
He leaned down to the gas canister and disabled the safety shutoff. He'd already opened the feed valve.
Luke
"Hide your Force presence and wait for my signal," Luke ordered. "We might learn something just by watching them."
Two seconds later the door charge detonated and the pounding feet of seven or eight intruders entered, but it was impossible to count them from Luke's angle through the smoke.
He tapped his comm twice to let Ben know he was ready to move.
Ben
Holding the gas canister in one hand and his lightsaber in the other, Ben rolled from his hiding place. A line of eight intruders were heading to the hole in the viewport, all of them in a hurry, and most of them showing sign of injury.
Ben smiled a little grimly. Ender must have been busy.
Like the Skywalkers, they were wearing combat-rated vac suits and carrying lightsabers, but some were also carrying blasters. Most of them had equipment belts with two sheaths, one for a slender, glass-handled dagger and one for a curved, heavy-bladed parang.
Luke was climbing up to the top of the equipment console, so intent on capturing a prisoner that he didn't sense the intruder coming up behind him--a female with lavender skin, holding a parang in her hand.
"Dad!" Ben commed. "Roll now!"
Luke
The parang flew and Luke rolled, disappearing over a row of equipment cabinets as the weapon spun a few centimeters over his helmet.
Ben
Ben didn't give her a chance to retrieve her weapon. He Force-leapt the three meters between them, pointing his lightsaber at her heart and thumbing the activation switch. To his relief, both his body and his weapon felt fully powered--though he wasn't sure how much of it was him running on adrenaline.
But the woman must have had her own danger sense. Even before Ben's blade extended, she was spinning away, still reaching for her parang with one hand, igniting her lightsaber with the other, and snapping a vicious heel hick at Ben's groin with her near foot.
It was too fancy, too much. Ben stepped back and gave her empty hand a Force tug. Instead of returning to her grasp, the parang sliced her hand off at the wrist.
She cried out, then attempted to slash at his neck with her lightsaber. He leaned away, then used the Force to pull her, center mass, onto his own blade.
In the next instant Ben's entire body was tingling with danger sense and he was facing off against the woman's seven companions and their blasterfire.
"Hey, Dad, about that prisoner--" he began.
Luke
"Go!" Luke came rolling back over the banks of equipment cabinets, pouring blasterfire into the intruder he had been attempting to capture, then hit the floor and scrambled toward the hatchway. "And cover me!"
Ben
"No problem," Ben said a little dryly, slipping through the hatch and slamming the neck of canister on the door jamb, then tossed it back into the room where it began flying around in the weightless environment, spewing explosive azetal fumes and bouncing off smoking equipment consoles.
He took cover behind the jamb and drew his blaster, then began to fire around the corner, opening himself to the Force so he could sense his father's location. He felt a wave of terror as the enemy realized what would happen with the concentration of azetal grew high enough to ignite, then his father came flying through the hatchway feet first, low to the ground and pouring bolts back into the control room.
Two heartbeats later, the enemy fire had trailed off to nothing. "Did you get them all?" Ben asked, eyes wide.
Luke
"Just three," Luke said, shaking his head. "The rest were Force-leaping through the bolt-hole I cut." He reached into the Force and shut the hatch door again. "Whoever those guys are, they're not idiots. They know what's going to happen with the azetal gas gets dense enough."
Ben
They headed down the hallway as quickly as they could--Ben wasn't admitting it aloud, but it worried him that Ender wasn't answering his comm--and made their way for the membrane that would let them out of the command area.
They'd gotten about two-thirds of the way there when two grenades came hurtling toward them--no, four--no, wait, they were all heading back into another hatch and two others were heading for them as hatches slammed shut around them.
"Getting the feeling these people like to overthink things," Ben muttered just before the pair of stun grenades blew.
Luke
Luke and Ben had been trained enough to resist the effects of stun gas, but it suited their purposes to float, seemingly unconscious, and learn more about their enemies.
One of whom was killing the other with her lightsaber, much to her victim's bellowed surprise. It took the attention of the one who was trying to restrain Ben, and that second of distraction was enough for his son to get his lightsaber out and bisect the intruder down the spine, then extend his hand to deflect another pair of grenades (he wasn't going to bet on them being stun genades this time) from a third enemy down a hatch and slam the hatch shut on the man's arm.
Luke, meanwhile, was sneaking up on a final enemy--female, it seemed--clamping down on her wrist and jerking her from her hiding place. His other hand snatched grenades from her hands and tossed them into the corridor behind them.
He put his face mask up, getting a closer look at his opponent, who couldn't be much older than Ben. "You should know," he said, "that Jedi can resist stun grenades."
She hissed something at him in a language he didn't recognize, then drew her parang from its sheath using the Force and slashed it at Luke's face, cutting a deep gash across his cheek and nose.
Luke hid his small smile and released her hands, then reached out to knock her unconscious.
Ben
Ben was rather more concerned by the amount of blood that was pooling in his father's facemask. "Come on, Dad," he said. "We have to get back to the Shadow." He glanced at the floating body next to Luke. "Guess we'll take her along too," he added, reaching out to tug her along.
They passed through the area with the Killick bodies, then the detention center--and Ben's danger sense flared to life. He gave their prisoner a hefty shove in the Force and focused on what was coming through the membrane. "Can't these people take a hint?" Ben muttered as he began firing at the membrane just before his father Force-rolled them both into a wall, barely avoiding getting hit by an air tank.
Ben glanced back and saw their prisoner, wobbly but definitely conscious, trying to get a little round-bellied cart launched at them. "Time to dump the girl," Ben said, turning his blaster on her.
"No!" Luke knocked his hand down.
"Are you crazy?" Ben demanded. "That's the second time she's tried to kill you in the last five minutes."
Luke
"Just scare her off," Luke ordered. "I've got plans for her."
Ben
"Plans?" Ben could just hear Ender's thoughts about that. "Okay, if you say so. We're almost to the ship."
Two final intruders stepped into view and Ben gasped as things finally snapped into place for him. "I know who they are. They're Sith."
Luke
"Sith?" Luke glanced at him. "They can't be, Ben. There were at least dozen of them--"
Ben
"And Sith only come in twos, I know. But Ship is here. I feel it looking for us."
Ben sounded distinctly unhappy to admit that.
Luke
"Go prep the Shadow," Luke said, leaving off mentioning Ender. He knew it would be the first thing Ben did anyway. "I'll holding them in the lift until we're reading for launch. If Ship is working with them, it'll be moving to block the hangar exit."
Ben
"Okay," Ben said, sighing, "but I'm not leaving without you."
Luke
"If it comes to do, you better," Luke said. "Coruscant needs to know if Sith are involved in this."
He gave Ben a reassuring Force nudge. "Go."
Ben
Ben didn't wait to watch his father go back up to face off against the Sith--his feet pounded down the metal walkway as he raced to the Shadow.
"ENDER?"
Ender
The business end of a blaster was probably not what he'd been hoping to see, but Ender wasn't taking any chances. He'd only gotten back to the Shadow five minutes ago - enough to tell Jane to get things moving, enough to listen in to what was going on, but that was about it.
There was blood on his face, in his hair and on his jacket, as well as other particles of a questionable nature. His eyes had the feverish-but-sharp look to them of someone who'd been running on sheer adrenaline for a while now.
"You took your time."
Ben
"You're bleeding," Ben replied, ignoring the blaster in favor of what he considered the more immediate problem.
Ender
Considering the blaster was chiefly intended to be a distraction, Ender would have happily gone with this one. If it hadn't give Ben a few good points in the 'not insane' column.
"It isn't mine," he said, pulling the blaster away after a brief moment of consideration.
Ben
Ben's eyes flicked to Ender's, making a quick mental assessment of his friend's state of mind. "Dad's fighting off the last couple of Sith to buy us some time to get the Shadow prepped to go. Do you need help with that or is it already started?"
Logistics first, then emotions.
Ender
"We're good to go," Ender said, sliding the blaster into the holster. "Tell him to hurry the hell up. We don't have time for theatrics."
Logitics first.
Ben
Ben headed for the cockpit. "We need to get Ship out of the way of the exit first," he said. He paused as he brushed past Ender, then stopped and leaned his forehead in. "I'm sorry," he murmured softly.
Ender
"Apologies later," Ender said, pulling away. "Ship."
It had less to do with Ben than with his own tenuous grasp on keepgoingkeepgoing right now.
Ben
"Ship," Ben agreed, sliding into the pilot's seat and prepping the weapons at the same time he fired up the engines. "Strap yourself in. This could get bumpy."
Especially with a pilot who could only see through one eye--and the Force--but one eye.
Ender
Ender would apologise for that, but...
...no, actually, he wouldn't.
"I'm still trying to think of a good reason to let you fly us out of here," he commented, sitting down.
Ben
"You have a lot of experience flying against ancient Sith meditation spheres?" Ben asked dryly.
Ender
"Half-blind and half-crazy?" Ender asked. But honestly, even he had to admit they had no time to quibble. "Just get this thing out of here." He mentally went over his failsafes.
Ben
"No crazier than usual," Ben declared, bringing the Shadow in low and fast, then commed his father with a warning that he was about to open fire a split second before he let loose on Ship with the big laser cannons.
Ender
All of Ender's muscles seemed to tense all at once. But laser fire wasn't something you could fight or flee from, so he grabbed his self control tight and kept still, staring out at the Sith vessel.
Ben
Ben didn't have time to worry about Ender right now. Ship veered out of the way, chased off--or more likely, Ben thought, following some Sith order--and Ben took a deep breath just before Luke's voice came over the comms. "Hey, Ben?"
Ben frowned and swung the Shadow immediately in the direction of his father. "Dad, what's wrong? You don't sound so good."
"I'll survive," Luke said. "If you hurry."
Ender
"All the doors are open."
Not nearly as obvious a statement as it might have seemed: he was trying to let Jane know she had to make absolutely certain they could take the most direct path. Immediately.
Ben
Ben wasn't going to decrypt Ender right now--he was too busy flying like a slightly insane person a Skywalker, honing in on his father's location and lowering the hatch before the Shadow had come to a stop. "I'll be back," he snapped to Ender. "You've got the controls."
Ender
Ender grabbed the controls without bothering to answer. Jane listed off passageways and coordinates at great speed. She was probably filling up the databank already; he didn't take the time to check. He had other things to keep his attention on.
Ben
In a shorter amount of time than should have been possible Ben was back with Luke, who was unconscious and looking more dead than alive. Ben headed to the medbay without a word, working quickly to clean his father's wounds and hooking him up to various bits of machinery.
He noticed the cut on Luke's face and frowned slightly. Compared to the rest of the the wounds, it was almost insignificant, but Ben knew that his father had faster reactions than that.
"Blood trail," he murmured. "You got your prisoner after all."
Ender
"You should have let me navigate to begin with," Jane complained. "The Force-- now there's a good made-up excuse to get by with wild guesses and braggadocio. How do you squishy sentients come up with this stuff?"
"Not the time, Jane," Ender snapped, as he turned the ship and steered them out as fast as he could manage. It wasn't long before Jane's coordinates would start picking up the slack, though he had no idea how long her consciousness would be able to stick with them-- would she blink out at the edges of the Stable Zone again?
Ben
"Wait a second, Ender," Ben called. "We need one of the Sith to leave Sinkhole Station so we can follow her."
And for Dad to wake back up, Ben added mentally, then glanced down to see his father staring at him with bright blue eyes. "You could say something, you know," he complained.
Ender
"I'm taking it we're not planning on her being a stowaway," Ender called back.
Ben
Ben snorted. "Not exactly. Dad put a tracker on her during a fight."
In a matter of speaking, anyway.
"We can't let them disappear again," he added. "They might be the key to part of this mess."
Ender
"So you're suggesting we do what, exactly," Ender said, "Release an escape pod? If we're not hoisting her aboard and Ship isn't taking her, then the only way she's getting off this rock is if she can build her own way out."
Ben
"Or gets one of the other ships to work," Ben said. "They're old, not completely disabled."
At that, a ship that had been old in Anakin Skywalker's time began lumbering toward the exit. "Like that," Ben added. "Assuming she doesn't blow up on her way out of the Maw."
Ender
"Since she seems to be doing okay, I'm getting us out of here," Ender said, flipping a few switches.
Ben
"Need help flying through the black holes?" Most of Ben's attention was back on Luke.
Ender
"No, I've got a course," Ender said, tersely. He was pretty sure that if he closed his eyes right now he'd see blood and gasping Sith on the station floor.
"Team Ansible saves the day. Let's dazzle this boy," Jane said.
For once, he didn't tell her to shut up; for once, he almost relaxed in the knowledge that he had someone with here unequivocally on his side, with no complications and no troubles, something simple he didn't need to calm down to determine what she was or what she was doing for him.
Nothing had ever felt better than the exact moment he got the ship out of the station.
Ben
"Head toward Kessel," Ben recommended. "Lando owns it these days and will help us out on supplies. It's the closest planet away from the Maw, anyway--it's probably where the Sith is heading."
Ender
"I could have told you that," Jane said.
"I'll get right on that," Ender called back. "But the sanisteam is mine as soon as this is over."
[OOC: And that's it for Abyss! Preplayed with the always amazing endsthegame. Warnings for lightsabering with extreme prejudice. NFB, NFI, OOC is always welcomed.]