Luxury 5000 Yacht Rook, Shedu Maad Airspace 44 ABY
Vestara walked up into the main entrance of the ship and whistled, it was the most elegant ship she'd ever been in. The floor was intricately carved and textured to give better traction when walking, quite aesthetically pleasing. She made her way to the cockpit and Ben.
"Boy can I pick'em or what?" She hummed as she entered.
"Now we just need to get out of here in one piece so we can revel in your fine taste."
"Spoilsport."
Ben took them in a steep climb to the atmosphere. They didn't have much time to lose, the Jedi would call in StealthXs as soon as they could, now they knew where they were. There. Just over the tree line, a trio of pitch black fighters were skirting over the tips of the pines.
"They know we're here." Ben grunted as he fought to keep the steering yoke steady in the climb, this couldn't be good for their engines.
They were there, beacons of Force energy weaving their way to the Rook. Vestara took the co-pilot seat and started to look for the armaments controls. When she found them, she couldn't help but voice her frustration. "Who spends Force-knows how much on a luxury ship and skimps on the weapons systems?"
"You picked it, not my fault they didn't realize we'd need to borrow it." Ben jerked the horseshoe-shaped craft to the left as laser fire erupted from the StealthX pursuers. "Start plotting a jump. As soon as we've cleared the gravity well, we're gone."
Ben opened himself fully to the Force, feeling for the first time the full extent of his awareness. He hadn't done so at the Temple, it just hadn't felt right at the time, but now he knew he needed all the forewarning he could get.
Vestara was bathed in a glowing warmness as she felt Ben reaching out. She briefly considered joining him, but now wasn't the time to distract him with her presence. He had enough to worry about already. Punching in the coordinates to a nearby planet, Vestara let it start to run through the calculations while she turned her head to the pair of heavy lasers on either side of the bridge. Swiveling them around, she sent a line of fire at the following StealthXs, showing up as black smears between them and Shedu Maad.
Ben could feel Vestara firing on the Jedi fighters, could feel the Jedi inside altering their course to adjust for it. He knew he could make a sharp veer to the right and they would take direct hits. StealthX fighters were designed for covert missions, so armor was not a priority. As basic as the Rook's weapons were, a heavy laser blast would tear through the ship before the pilot could eject. He could do it, but would never. He was doing things he never thought he would, the Jedi were his family, but no matter what, he wouldn't purposely kill someone ever again.
Try as they might, the StealthXs couldn't land a direct hit on the engines, and using a plasma torpedo on the Grand Master's son was unacceptable. A payload that large could very well destroy the yacht, if they could hit it. As it was, laser blasts were faster, but the ship darted in and out of them with a level of precognition that was troubling.
The Rook passed that invisible line, the gravity well penumbra edge that meant that a ship could freely enter hyperspace. The StealthX squadron watched helplessly as the Luxury 5000 flickered in pseudo-motion and sped away to a tiny pinprick. They'd failed the Grand Master. With a slight hesitation, they rounded in formation and headed back to the Temple to report the turn of events.
Luxury 5000 Yacht Rook, Hyperspace; 44 ABY
Ben visibly relaxed, leaning back in his chair and shut his stinging eyes, the tension his body had gained during the chase bled out. He was soaked with sweat, but they were finally free. He didn't even know where they were headed, and he couldn't bring himself to move to find out. He was drained, the last few days were some of the most stressful he'd had since Jacen had been alive.
A sudden weight settled on his lap and he jerked up in surprise. He opened his eyes to see Vestara straddling him and smiling, a genuine grin he could feel radiating off her in waves of joy. It was infectious. In no time, he was beaming, too. She leaned down to him and their lips met. It felt . . . odd, but not unpleasant. The kiss broke after a few seconds and they looked at one another. For the first time since before they'd fought Abeloth they were alone and able to do whatever they wanted, at least until they exited hyperspace and needed to pick another destination.
He hesitantly opened himself up to her, letting her in, if she wanted. A flash of uncertainty flickered in her glowing eyes, she'd never been that open with anyone, that intimate. They'd shared their lives in the Pool, but that was the past, not who they were right now. Conflicting emotions battled on her face, though he saw them only because he knew her so well. At last, one side had won and she gently let down the barriers. She'd done something similar when Ben's father had asked, when he was making sure she was being honest about wanting to join the Jedi, but that was very different. This wasn't about someone asking, but Ben giving her the chance to choose, and not pushing himself on her.
One by one, her shields lowered. Vestara idly noted that they hadn't said a word since entering hyperspace. She felt vulnerable, but wasn't really afraid. Ben would not hurt her. Once they were all gone, she was the first to reach out her inner self to Ben's and they met.
"If I knew we'd end up like this, I'd have us escape more often" Ben spoke it in a dreamy tone, and neither knew exactly how long it had taken him to speak from when they first touched the other's mind.
Vestara jolted back, the words bringing back her insecurities. Her fears about what this meant for her, for them. What possible future they could have, being what they now were. She could feel Ben's tight grip on her thighs, or else she would have fallen out of the chair in her sudden movement.
She had broken the connection, but Ben felt her mind whirl through her fears. Instead of bringing them up now, he shared them to some extent, too, Ben decided he needed to get her mind off of it. "We can talk about it later, when we've had a chance to rest a bit. For now, how about we take a look around? We've got a spare," Ben checked the computer panel, "hour or so to kill."
She knew what he was doing, just as easily as he knew what she had been thinking, but it was just easier to go along with it, pretending to not know.
Grand Master's Chambers, Jedi Temple; 44 ABY
Luke stared out over the Temple grounds. With the emergency over, Jedi knights and Padawans resumed their normal duties. The Council hadn't been pleased. Despite all their best efforts, Ben and Vestara had managed to escape. He knew Ben hadn't wanted that originally, he'd hoped to convince his father to help them, but Luke just couldn't take the chance. He normally would have trusted Ben, but knew he couldn't do the same for Vestara, she'd managed to trick so many, Luke most of all, of her desire to join the Jedi. Worse yet, she now seemed to have an unhealthy control over Ben. The fact that it seemed to flow the other way didn't mean nearly as much to Luke. Ben's judgment had been compromised.
In hindsight, would it have been better to let her out here? At least she would have been under more direct observation. Now she was free, potentially to turn into the next Abeloth, only this time with his son trailing behind. Luke shook his head to clear his thoughts. It wouldn't due to dwell on 'ifs,' he'd told the Jedi that often enough he should know.
Luke went back to his desk. The Jedi had already sent out an alert to their allies to report any sightings, so there wasn't much they could proactively do until they had a location. Until then, the life of the Grand Master wouldn't wait forever. GA Chief of State Wynn Dorvan was requesting Jedi involvement in some boarder dispute, where neither side trusted the Galactic Alliance's impartiality, Imperial Head of State Vitor Reige was making inquiries of potential Jedi satellite academies in the Remnant, and there was a short memo regarding a pirate gang that had started to attack ships along Jedi-used hyperspace routes. Luke rubbed his tired eyes and started addressing the issues.
Luxury 5000 Yacht Rook, Hyperspace; 44 ABY
The yacht turned out to be even nicer than Vestara had initially thought. It was clearly the ship of someone with means, an unabashed sense of grandeur, and no compunction with spending credits lavishly. It was larger than the Shadow by over ten meters. The Rook contained two separate hanger bays, with room to easily fit three ships in each. They were both empty, and Ben suspected that the owner had been using them when he and Vestara had stolen their ship.
Eighteen cabins in total, even the ones designated for the pilot and copilot were plush and luxuriant, silken sheets and matt carpet the standard. Ben and Vestara came across the refreshers and were delighted to find that they all were tied in to an onboard water supply, definitely an expensive upgrade. Clothing of various kinds, lined the open closets. After taking a change of clothes, the pair split up to their own refresher to get cleaned, it had been a strenuous few days. By the time they were both done, the yacht was just signaling the eminent emergence from hyperspace.
"So where are we?" Ben asked, having completely forgotten to look after the earlier incident in the cockpit.
"Terephon," Vestara said, reading the name off of the computer screen.
"Huh," it was actually one of the few Hapan planets Ben knew by name, though that was only because his father had killed Lumiya here, under the false conclusion that the Dark Lady of the Sith had killed his mother. Ben had poured over every detail of the whole situation, burning it forever into his memory.
"What is it?" Vestara asked, sensing something vaguely like nostalgia wafting off Ben.
"What? Oh, it's nothing important, just a little history here."
"Want to talk about it?" She could sense that it would be quite a story, though it wasn't tied to the here and now, whatever had happened was long past.
"Not really, no." Ben brought his mind back to their main problem now. "What we need to do is figure out where we're going."
She considered it, "I don't know about you, but I have no idea. What we knew before is no longer accurate. I can't even tell what she did, much less how to undo it."
"Neither do I," Ben admitted, "But I did find something out about the dagger we saw in our vision. Apparently, my father's master, Yoda, told him of the Son and Daughter, the ones Abeloth was trying to replace us with. The weapon we saw can kill beings like those, beings like Abeloth—"
"—and like us," Vestara finished. "You father told you all this?"
Ben shifted slightly in the pilot's seat. "Not exactly, when he took me to run tests and I'd bring up Abeloth, I saw what he thought about, the things he knew. The Jedi are searching for it right now."
That brought Vestara's head up sharply, eyes narrowed. "For us?"
"No," Ben waved her anger down, "they did it before we even woke up, to stop Abeloth once and for all. They sent ten Jedi Knights after a gateway to the land where the dagger is kept."
"You know who the Knights are?"
Yes, but I've never met any of them personally," Ben's shoulders dropped a bit. " I have no idea where they are now or how close they are, my father didn't know or never thought about it in my presence."
They looked around the mostly empty expanse before them, Terephon was a pretty world from afar. The expanses of moorlands made large portions of the surface look like soupy green smears over the land. The more dry and stable portions of land supported opulent cities, a norm in the Transitory Mists. After a couple minutes of consideration, Vestara perked up. "What about the Pool?"
Ben gave a confused arch of his eyebrow. "What about it, what we saw has changed."
"Yes, but the Pool is still there. If something was changed, can't we just visit it again and see the future again?"
We have already done it once, Ben thought. "But it's a long way from here to the Maw. We're at least on the same side of the galaxy, but it's definitely not close."
"That's the beauty of it, we don't have to go there physically."
"What do you mean—oh." Ben understood, they could visit all the sites on that world in Beyond Shadows. All from the safety of their own ship. "If we do that, we need to get some things prepared first, because neither of us are going alone. We should take a short jump to open space, so we don't need to worry about someone stumbling on our ship. Then we need to find IVs from the medical cabin."
"Then let's do this."