Two days later…

The eleven First Order ships dropped out of hyperspace into the path of an oncoming behemouth.

"What is that thing?" Rey gasped as what appeared to be a monsterously huge TIE fighter fired a gigantic blue bolt from it's center belt, which only narrowly missed the Redemption.

"Shields up! All hands to battlestations! This is not a drill!" Captain Glissando shouted. "Scramble the fighters!"

Perez relayed the orders in both shipwide and fleet wide channels.

A second bolt hit the ship next to them and it exploded in a shower of sparks, leaving nothing behind that was bigger than a grain of sand. Rey and Ben both began to shake as the terror of tens of thousands of people aboard the nearby ships washed over them.

"I ordered shields up!" Glissando shouted angrily.

"Sir, their shields were up!" Came the terrified response from across the bridge.

"Get us out of here!" Ben shouted as another ship nearby disintegrated in a shower of sparks. He could feel that Rey felt the same tremor in the Force that he did as thousands more died screaming just off their port bow. The sensation was more terrible than words can describe.

"Cancel the fighters, full retreat!" Glissando shouted to Perez who relayed the orders.

A moment later the terrified young man at the navcomputer cried out, "We have a pathway for a short hop!"

"Go! Go! Go!" Rey screamed as the blue glow around the center ball of the Behemouth ship signaled it's readiness to fire another blast of killing energy into their quickly diminishing fleet.

The elongated star lines of hyperspace had never been such a welcome sight to any of them. "What, in the name of Vader's ghost, was that thing?" Ben half-shouted.

"It looked like a giant TIE fighter." Glissando frowned.

"I saw what it looked like! What was it? Did anybody manage to scan it?" Ben demanded, nearly frothing at the mouth in his enraged state of shock.

"Scan failed, sir!" Cried the helmsman. "It's like it's cloaked, we couldn't pick up a thing!"

"Ask the rest of the ships if they experienced the same problem!" Ben shouted and dashed over to the helm to check the scan failure for himself.

Perez tapped a few buttons and requested a sitrep. He frowned and repeated himself. "Sir, the other ships aren't answering."

"What?" Ben gasped.

"We've lost communications with the other ships." Perez said, dazed, confused and trying hard not break down. "They didn't make it to hyperspace."

"You're telling me we just lost ten of our best ships in under a minute?" Ben choked around the hard knot of fury clogging his throat.

"I'm afraid so, sir." Perez said mournfully.

"Call the entire fleet. Every first Order Ship with a gun and a hyperdrive. I want them all to meet us..." He glanced at Rey, who was staring, whitefaced out the front plasteel viewing panel. "Two parsecs this side of the Kessel safety zone. That's our staging area. And call Poe Dameron! Put him through to my quarters as soon as you reach him!"

Ben tamped down his anger enough to try to sooth his grief-stricken, terrified wife. He touched her face and her eyes snapped up to meet his. 'Come on, sweetheart, let's get off this bridge before we both fall apart.' He crooned soothingly into her mind.

She nodded unseeingly and allowed him to lead her away on numb legs. 'We're the only ones who made it out alive.' Even her mind-voice was dazed and full of tears.

The holostation in their room was blinking when they arrived. Ben settled Rey in a chair by the small dining table they'd had brought in during her first week aboard the ship and answered the call.

"Ben!" Poe was surprised to see him. "I thought it was Rey calling. Sorry, buddy, I got no news to tell ya just yet."

"I've got some for you!" Ben snarled, his anger clawing it's way to the surface. "We found your convoy killer." His already shaky grip on control began to slip. "I'm calling in the entire First Order Armada, every ship we've got, and I still don't know if it'll be enough. I lost my auxillery fleet in the time it took our navcomputer to configure a hyperspace hop. A single hit was all it took to completely disintegrate my ships!"

"Disintegrated?" Poe gawked. "As in… disintegrated?"

"As in destroyed completely! Gone! Nothing left!" Ben shouted furiously.

"Holy…" Poe gaped. "I had no idea! I'm real sorry man!"

"Save your sorries! They wont help the twenty thousand men I just lost." Ben was too irate to worry about being gracious.

"Poe." Rey said, finally coming out of her shock induced stupor. "It was horrible. Just, horrible."

"I'm sure it was, Rey, but don't you worry, we've brought down bigger monsters than this. We'll find a way to bring this one down, too." Poe said, confidently.

"It doesn't even show up on scanners, how can we find a way to destroy it if our guns can't even find a way to shoot it?" She was still somewhat dazed.

"We'll make a way if we have to." Poe said with a steely resolve. "Ben, hold off on assembling your armada, lets come up with a plan before you go putting all that bait in one spot."

"A plan?" Ben snarled. "I have a plan! I'm going to hit that thing with everything we've got!"

"Hold up, I'm begging you man, give me a little while to ferret out some information from the criminal elements out that way. Might be that somebody knows something that could save lives." Poe pleaded.

"You have five days! When my armada is ready, we're hunting this beast down and killing it." Ben had moved past irate. He was dangerously close to becoming completely beyond reason

"Five days? Come on, work with me, here! It'll take me three days just to get there! Take a step back and think about it! You've already lost twenty thousand men! Don't throw away twenty million more in your thirst for revenge! We need intel! I need time to gather that intel! Give me the time I need and I will deliver the intel you need! We'll bring this beast down together as the first action of your Galactic Federation!" Rey could hardly reconcile his words with the Poe Dameron she'd met a year ago. Leia's death had hit him hard enough to knock some sense into him, that had been apparent for months, but she never imagined that it had knocked this much sense into him.

Rey could feel Ben's rage growing with every word Poe spoke, until it now bordered on demented. She slipped into his mind and was terrified by what she found there. She laid a soothing hand against the side of his face and looked deeply into his eyes. 'Please, Ben, I need *you* here with me.' She soothed. 'It's alright to feel the pain, don't let rage rob you of your grief for your people.' She felt a wavering in the rage he was using to shield himself from the pain. 'Feel me. Feel how much I love you and need you here with me. I'm here with you, be here with me. Grieve with me and I'll grieve with you. Come back to me, Ben. Please.'

He swallowed hard and took a long ragged breath. one excrutiating heartbeat at a time he tamped down his rage until he was finally able to regain some semblence of control.

'He's right.' She thought to him in a calm voice when she felt him take back control of his emotions. 'We need to know what we're up against before we go putting millions more in harm's way. We need to find that thing's weakness. Give him the time he needs.'

"Alright. I'll give you time." Ben's voice was a sound as harsh as boulders grinding together. He took another calming breath. "Get me that intel, price is no object, the First Order will make good on anything you promise."

"You got it!" Poe made a whew sound. "You had me worried there for a minute! Just take it easy, I need to know as much as you can tell me about this thing so I can sort the good intel from the bad."

"I want every bit of intel you can get your hands on." Ben insisted, but described every detail he could remember about the Behemouth TIE anyway.

After the call ended Ben used the coms panel in the room to rescind his order to gather the fleet.

It was far too early for sleep but both Jedi were suffering under the emotional battering they had just been through with Ben's melt down and the events that caused it. They both just needed to be held and so they lay down with their minds intertwined, feeling each other's feelings and holding each other tightly as the hours and the pain slowly slipped away.