There are lots of kids of teamwork. Teamwork is even when you simply stand next to someone who suffers. You go through it together. That's the teamwork.
Nial
:_:
Allana, who spent the free time Jaina permitted her searching for Ben, who, for some reasons unknown to anyone, shut down in the Force, sat down on the bottom of her and Jaina's shuttle.
Playing with her braid, she drew out her datapad and checked on the messages she sent him.
She expected no answer as every other time she checked it, but now, in the very bottom of the screen, there was a short, laconic message.
I'm okay. If you want to speak, meet me in the hangar. Fate of Carida, five minutes. Ben.
She checked the time the message was sent.
Four minutes to her credit.
She stood up and jogged along a nearby-standing Bes'uliik, which was attended by a hulky mandalorian, whose armor was taken off, except his forearm plates.
"Hello, sir," she said with her best innocent smile of a non-Jedi teen.
Mandalorian turned to her with a rough smile, cleaning up his hands with a rag. "Su'cuy, kid. What do you need?"
"I have arranged a meeting with a friend," she said, "at the Fate of Carida, and I don't exactly know which ship it is."
"Oh, of course. But Fate is not in the service hangar. It's in the command hangar. That's one deck below us, the command deck. Fate's a big Corellian shuttle. Can't miss it. It has a big paint on its side."
Allana nodded and offered the man a joky salute. "Thank you, sir."
"Glad to be of help, missy."
She ran away from the man, pulling out her datapad again. She sent a quick I'm-on-my-way message to Ben, then a missing-found one to Jaina and jumped into a service turbolift millisecond before the sky-blue painted door closed.
She shared the cabin with two brawny Mandalorians, one very nervous human officer and a pair of Rodian technicians.
The ride wasn't too long, but thanks to clicking of Mandalorian's knuckles, endless tapping sound of officer's vibrating leg and silent bubble-like sound of Rodian conversation, the ride was utterly unnerving.
Using the Force to calm herself, Allana tried to reach Ben in it once more, finding nothing resembling him in the whole ship.
She practically fell out of the lift as the pair of Rodian technicians rushed out.
Stepping aside politely and keeping the salvo of hapan curses strictly in her mind, she let them pass and then promptly fell in behind them, following them into the command hangar, to which, as she believed, they were heading.
She was right and the emerald-green pair led her to a rectangular doorway big enough to let three Hutts arranged to one line go through without even rubbing against the frame.
Both technicians inserted their indenticards into the slot in the door controls and the jet-black gate split up to let them pass.
Allana considered eluding the security measures by holding the gate opened for a little longer, but she discarded the idea. It was not necessary, though it was way too simple to evade it.
For people with Sith warriors onboard, they were almost ridiculously careless.
She used her own identicard to open the door – she had Jedi pass-check, which allowed her to go almost everywhere on the ship with impunity – and slipped into the hangar.
The Mandalorian man was right; the Fate of Carida couldn't be overlooked.
It was huge, honey-colored with a big black painting on the starboard side of the hull – GA roundel ringed with the ship's name.
Its ramp was lowered and a pair of brown-uniformed men was chatting on its bottom.
Ben was nowhere to be seen.
She continued forward to the men.
With a polite cough, she came to halt hardly a footstep from them. "Uh, gentlemen,"
Both men – both Human – turned to her.
The younger man – hardly twenty-one – smiled at her. "Hello, missy. How can I serve you?"
"I'm looking for Jedi Skywalker," she said. "Haven't you…"
"I'm right here, Allana."
She turned like a weather-clock, suddenly facing Ben's chest. "Oh. Sorry."
"It's okay," he said, stepping back.
Allana noticed he had changed his clothes, now wearing a dark-gray jacket and black trousers instead of his Jedi garments. With his short red hair a bit messy and calculative eyes, he was a perfect male version of his mother.
"Is the Fate repaired, Onowan?" he asked the older man.
The man nodded, ruffling his shoulder-length gray-streaked mane as he glanced at the chintzy-looking ship. "Yes, sir, but it will take some time to make it flyable again."
Ben nodded. "Very well. Keep it up."
"Will do, sir."
Ben beckoned at Allana and led her away into a storeroom.
There he lent against a rack while Allana sat down on a crate.
"What did you wanted?" he asked, studying her.
She suddenly felt exposed and embarrassed, but she didn't let it in her face. "I need to know if you're okay."
He spread his hands. "I apparently am."
"I meant if you feel okay. Inside."
He managed not to sound annoyed when he answered, "I do."
She nodded. "Fine. So why are you hiding in the Force?"
He frowned, then shrugged. "Reflex."
"It's troubling. When you can't feel one in the Force…"
He nodded. "I know."
He closed his eyes and his presence slowly flickered in, shiny and brilliant.
"Thank you."
He smiled tightly. "Ready to serve, Chume'da."
She frowned. "I don't like when you call me like that. It sounds so… abusive when you say it."
The smile vanished. "I'm sorry, Allana."
She grinned half-heartedly. "The galaxy's okay."
"Can I ask you for something?"
"Sure."
"I need you to tell me what happened at the meeting when I left."
She didn't show her disappointment. They haven't seen each other for almost a year, and when they had a while, he was still tackling his work. But that was okay. He was a Jedi Knight. "Will the short version do?"
Ben glanced at his chrono. "Of course. Go on."
"We agreed that prisoners will be moved to the new penitentiary facility in the Consortium. We called Mom – I mean Queen Mother – and she agreed with us. So I and Jaina will take the Princess of Carlania and take them there, while you and Wandaq will simply go on with your duty."
Ben frowned. "Princess of Carlania?"
Allana smiled. "It's the ship we arrived in, the shuttle."
"Oh. Hapan, right?"
She nodded. "Birthday gift from Mom."
"I knew it can't be a Jedi transport."
"Too sophisticated?"
"Too serviceable."
They both grinned. In last few years, the Jedi order's administration came to the point where every ship in the property of the Jedi order was almost in the working state of Millenium Falcon.
"It sounds too easy," Ben said after a while. "What if they will come to get their friends back?"
Allana's face betrayed her understanding. "I and Jaina will kick their dark-side asses?"
Ben looked stunned. "What?"
"I said…" then she realized and her hands flashed up to her mouth. "Oh, sorry, Ben."
He grinned. "Who taught you to speak like that?"
Allana shrugged. "You."
Ben smoothed his hair again. He didn't know when he had obtained this custom. "Just don't say it in front of Jaina, okay?"
"You can trust me. It's safe with me."
Ben sighed. "I can fly you an escort in my StealthX," he proposed.
"I doubt Aunt Jaina will agree. "
"I do, too, but you can convince her to approve it."
"What about this mission? What if Sith will strike again?"
Ben frowned and crossed his arms. "They have a whole ship of Mandalorians. And Wandaq. Wandaq's a good Jedi. He's a bit dark, but he hates Sith. If there's someone he can deal with, it's them."
"Ben, could you forgive yourself if the whole party here would be destroyed by a Sith flotilla just because you decided to help me and Aunt Jaina?"
Ben looked away from the inquisitive look of her gray eyes. "You are what have remained of my family."
"And your family is Solo-Skywalkers. Do you think that two Jedi women can't cope with few Sith?"
"You surely can, but…"
Allana tweeted.
A slightly embarrassing silence rose in the storage room.
Then Ben tweeted.
They both, almost simultaneously, reached down to their belts.
Ben was first to have his comlink on. "Skywalker."
A warbling voice of Rival's Sullustan communication officer sounded form the device. "Jedi Skywalker, Senator Norso requests your presence in the command salon. Immediately."
He raised his eyes and caught Allana's look. They both nodded and dashed out of the room, heading portside.
"Do you know what's going on?" he asked the Sullustan.
"Yes, sir," he said, clearly satisfied that he is well-informed. "It was me who intercepted the message."
"A message?"
"Yes, sir. We received a message. From some unidentified ship which had just arrived to the system."
"Do you know what's in the message?"
"No, sir. The first part of it demanded that I should put it through to the ship's commanding officer."
Ben frowned. "I'm the ship's commanding officer."
"We sent the message to your quarters, but you weren't present. So we sent it to Jedi Wandaq, who wanted to send it to Senator Norso, who called us to catch up with you – anywhere you are – and send you to the command salon."
Ben rubbed his forehead with one hand as he and Allana rounded another corner of the gold-and-cream colored corridor.
"Okay, okay, Ensign. Thank you. You can tell senator I'm on my way."
"Yes, sir."
He put the comlink back to his belt.
Allana looked at him. "What's going on?"
"We received some mysterious message," he said, shrugging. "Let's hope that others know more."
Allana nodded, reflexively reaching to her belt to the white-and-gold lightsaber there. "And let's hope that it's not another Sith ambush."