Though the battle over Tythe was, by all accounts, over, the steady droning of the alert klaxon continued through the Placator’s hangar bay. Ships were still coming to and fro, supporting some of the lingering action on the planet below, as well as undertaking search and rescue out in the void and repairing damage that both the Placator and its various escorts had suffered through the engagement. It was all very new for Ben.
He’d served in the New Republic for a number of years before he’d come to the Jedi, as had some of those he’d been on this very mission with - but he knew that they had all had more experience with this kind of situation than he had. Ijo had extensive military command experience to call on, he’d seemed utterly at home in the midst of all this. Sestri had shown her usual skill within the cockpit, and there had even seemed to be some glee she took in the danger of being out in that chaos. As for Ben, well…
“Phew, aren’t you a lucky one.”
The engineer that was tending to his Windweaver spoke up with a whistle, knocking his hydrospanner against the scorch marks that had been left by Vandal’s volley against his wing.
“A little shift to the right and he’d have torched your engines, to the left and he’d have ruined your stabilizer, either way, seems like you avoided burnin’ up somethin’ nice, eh?”
The Cathar seemed to think he was being reassuring, the smile on his face was almost giddy at the fact that Ben had so narrowly avoided burning up and being dumped into the vacuum of space. He only spared the engineer a faint, placating smile in return as he stood and started to step away from his craft. He could have used some fresh air, but there wasn’t exactly a great deal of that to be found on a Star Destroyer.
In his studies of the Jedi’s history, Ben had read plenty that pointed to the more militaristic past of the Order. Generals in the Clone Wars, warriors long before that in a hundred conflicts. This, it seemed, was merely part of being a Jedi. And yet, he couldn’t escape that twisting pit in his stomach, the reflection on how quickly it could have fallen apart at any moment. The fear.
Nojin had urged him to meditate when his anxieties arose, when he began to doubt himself or to feel that pit in his stomach. That was what he needed now. With a sigh, he allowed his footfalls to start carrying him away from the hangar bay. He didn’t care if all he could find was a storage room, he needed somewhere quiet to gather his wits. He hoped at least for those from the order that had descended to the surface, the lingering thoughts of fiery death might not haunt them so.