Sacrifice
Page 60
It registered with him then. He was dreaming. The Force was speaking to him. He should have realized it sooner.
The revelation stilled the world. The wind fell silent and the air cleared of ice.
Jaden stood ready, tense.
A distant, sourceless cry sounded, repeated itself, the rhythm regular, the tone mechanical. It could have been coming from the other side of the planet.
“Help us. Help us. Help us. Help us …”
He turned a circle, fists clenched. “Where are you?”
The darkness around him diminished. Pinpoints of light formed in the black vault over him. Stars. He scanned the sky, searching for something familiar. There. He recognized only enough to place the sky somewhere in a Rimward sector of the Unknown Regions. The dim blue glow of a distant gas giant burned in the black of the sky, its light peeking diffidently through the swirl. Thick rings composed of particles of ice and rock belted the gas giant.
He was on one of the gas giant’s moons.
His eyes adjusted more fully to the dimness and he saw that he stood on a desolate, wind-racked plain of ice that extended as far as he could see. Snowdrifts as tall as buildings gave the terrain the appearance of a storm-racked ocean frozen in time. Cracks veined the exposed ice, the circulatory system of a stalled world. Chasms dotted the surface here and there like hungry mouths. Glaciers groaned in the distance, the rumbles of an angry world. He saw no sign of Lumiya or Lassin or any of the other Sith imposters he had sensed. He saw no sign of life anywhere.
His breath formed clouds before his face. His left fist clenched and unclenched reflexively over the void in his palm where his lightsaber should have been.
Without warning, the sky exploded above him with a thunderous boom. A cloud of fire tore through the atmosphere, smearing the sky in smoke and flame. A shriek like stressed metal rolled over Jaden. Ice cracked and groaned on the surface.
Jaden squinted up at the sky, still lit with the afterglow of the destruction, and watched a rain of glowing particulates fall, showering the moon in a hypnotic pattern of falling sparks.
His Force sense perceived them for what they were—the dark side reified. He disengaged his perception too slowly, and the impact of so much evil hit him like a punch in the face. He vomited down the front of his robes, fell to the frozen ground, and balled up on the frozen surface of the moon as the full weight of the dark side coated him in its essence.
There was nowhere to hide, no shelter; it fell all around him, on him, saturated him …
He woke, sweating and light-headed, to the sound of speeder and swoop traffic outside his Coruscant apartment. The thump of his heartbeat rattled the bars of his rib cage. In his mind’s eye, he still saw the shower of falling sparks, the rain of evil. He cleared his throat, and the sensors in the room, detecting his wakefulness, turned on dim room lights.
“Arsix?” he said.
No response. He sat up, alarmed.
“Arsix?”
The sound of shouts and screams outside his window caused him to leap from his bed. With a minor exercise of will, he pulled his primary lightsaber to his hand from the side table near his bed and activated it. The green blade pierced the dimness of his room.
The black ball of Korriban filled Kell’s viewscreen. Clouds seethed in its atmosphere, an angry churn.
He settled Predator, a CloakShape fighter modified with a hyperspace sled and sensor-evading technology copied from a stolen StealthX, into low orbit. The roiling cloak of dark energy that shrouded the planet buffeted Predator, and the ship’s metal creaked in the strain. Kell attuned his vision to Fate and saw the hundreds of daen nosi—fate lines, a Coruscanti academic had once translated the Anzati term—that intersected at Korriban, the planet like a bulbous black spider in a web of glowing potentialities. The past, present, and future lines of the galaxy’s fate passed through the Sith tomb-world’s inhabitants, threads of glowing green, orange, red, and blue that cut it into pieces.
Space-time was pregnant with the possible, and the richness of the soup swelled Kell’s hunger. He had first seen the daen nosi in childhood, after his first kill, and had followed them since. He thought himself unique among the Anzati, special, called, but he could not be certain.
Thinking of his first kill turned his mind to the food he kept in the cargo hold of Predator, but he quelled his body’s impulse with a thought.
His own daen nosi stretched out before him, the veins of his own fate a network of silver lines reaching down through the transparisteel of the cockpit and into the dark swirl, down to the tombs of the Sith, to the secret places where the One Sith lurked. He had business with them, and they with him. The lines of their fates were intertwined.
He punched the coded coordinates of his destination into the navicomp and engaged the autopilot. As Predator began its descent through the black atmosphere, he left the cockpit and went below decks to the cargo hold. He had half a standard hour before he would reach his destination, so he freed his body to feel hunger. Growing anticipation sharpened his appetite.
Five stasis freezers stood against one wall of the hold like coffins. Kell had given them their own clear space in the hold, separated from the equipment and vehicles that otherwise cluttered the compartment. A humanoid slept in stasis in each freezer, three humans and two Rodians. He examined the freezers’ readouts, checking vital signs. All remained in good health.
Staring at their still features, Kell wondered what happened behind their closed eyes, in the quiet of their dreams. He imagined the zest of their soup and hunger squirmed in his gut. None were so-called Force-sensitives, who had the richest soup, but they would suffice.
He glided from one freezer to the next, brushing his fingertips on the cool glass that separated him from his prey. His captives’ daen nosi extended from their freezers to him, his to them. He stopped before the middle-aged human male he had taken on Corellia.
“You,” he said, and watched his silver lines intertwine with the green lines of the Corellian.
He activated the freezer’s thaw cycle. The hiss of escaping gas screamed the human’s end. Kell watched as the freezer’s readout indicated a rising temperature, watched as color returned to the human’s flesh. His hunger grew, and the feeders nesting in the sacs of his cheeks twitched. He needed his prey conscious, otherwise he could not transcend.
He reached through the daen nosi that connected him to his meal.
Awaken, he softly projected.
The human’s eyes snapped open, pupils dilated, lids wide. Fear traveled through the mental connection and Kell savored it. The freezer’s readout showed a spiking heart rate, increasing respiration. The human opened his mouth to speak but his motor functions, still sluggish from stasis, could produce only a muffled, groggy croak.
Kell pressed the release button, and the freezer’s cover slid open. Be calm, he projected, and his command wormed its way into the human’s mind, a prophylactic for the fear.
But growing terror overpowered Kell’s casual psychic hold. The human struggled against his mental bonds, finally found his voice.
“Please. I have done nothing.”
Kell leaned forward, took the human’s doughy face in his hands. The human shook his head but was no match for Kell’s strength.
“Please,” the Corellian said. “Why are you doing this? Who are you? What are you?”
Kell watched all of the human’s daen nosi, all of his potential futures, coalesce into a single green line that intersected Kell’s silver one, where it … stopped.
“I am a ghost,” Kell answered, and opened the slits in his face. His feeders squirmed free of their sacs, wire-thin appendages that fed on the soup of the sentient.
The human screamed, struggled, but Kell held him fast.
Be calm, Kell projected again, this time with force, and the human fell silent.
The feeders wormed their way into the warm, moist tunnels of the Corellian’s nostrils, and rooted upward. Anticipation caused Kell to drool. H
e stared into the human’s wide, bloodshot eyes as the feeders penetrated tissue, pierced membranes, entered the skull cavity, and sank into the rich gray stew in the human’s skull. A spasm racked the human’s body. Tears pooled in his wide eyes and fell, glistening, down his cheeks. Blood dripped in thin lines from his nose.
Kell grunted with satisfaction as he devoured potential futures, as the human’s lines ended and Kell’s continued. Kell’s eyes rolled back in his head as his daen nosi lengthened and he temporarily became one with the soup of Fate. His consciousness deepened, expanded to the size of the galaxy, and he mentally sampled its potential. Time compressed. The arrangement of daen nosi across the universe looked less chaotic. He saw a hint of order. Revelation seemed just at the edge of his understanding, and he experienced a tingling shudder with each beat of his hearts.
Show me, he thought. Let me see.
The moment passed as the human expired and Kell let him drop to the floor of the bay.
Revelation retreated and he backed away from the corpse, gasping. He came back to himself, mere flesh, mere limited comprehension.
He looked down at the cooling body at his feet, understanding that only in murder did he transcend.
He retracted his feeders, slick with blood, mucus, and brains, and they sat quiescent in their sacs.
Sighing, he collected the human’s corpse, bore it to the air lock, and set the controls to eject it. Through the centuries, he had left such litter on hundreds of planets.
As he watched the automated ejection sequence vacate the air lock, he consoled himself with the knowledge that one day he would feed on stronger soup that would reveal to him the whole truth of Fate.
Reasonably sated, he returned to the cockpit of Predator and linked his comm receiver to the navicomp, as he had been instructed. In moments the autopilot indicator winked out—reminding Kell of the way the Corellian’s eyes had winked out, how the human had transformed from sentience to meat in the span of a moment—and another force took control of Predator. Kell settled into his chair as the ship sped through the malaise of Korriban’s atmosphere toward the dark side of the planet.
A short time later Predator set down in the midst of ancient structures. Lightning illuminated weathered pyramids, towers of pitted stone, crystalline domes, all of them the temples and tombs of the Sith, all of them the geometry of the dark side. Black clouds roiled and jagged runs of lightning formed a glowing net in the sky.
Kell rose, slid into his mimetic suit, checked the twin cortosis-coated vibroblades sheathed at his belt, and headed for Predator’s landing ramp. Before lowering it, he took a blaster and holster from a small-arms locker and strapped them to his thigh. He considered blasters inelegant weapons, but preferred to be overarmed rather than under.
He pressed the release button on the ramp. Hydraulics hummed and the door lowered. Wind and rain hissed into Predator. Korriban’s air, pungent with the reek of past ages, filled his nostrils. Thunder boomed.
Kell stared out into the darkness, noted the clustered pinpoints of red light that floated in the pitch. He shifted on his feet as the lights drew closer—a silver protocol droid. He attuned his vision to Fate, saw no daen nosi. Droids were programming, nothing more. They made no real choices and so had no lines. The false sentience of the droid unnerved Kell and he cut off the perception.
The anthropomorphic droid strode through the wind and rain to the base of the landing ramp and bowed its head in a hum of servos.
“Master Anzat,” the droid said in Basic. “I am Deefourfive. Please follow me. The Master awaits you.”
The droid’s words rooted Kell to the deck. Despite himself, Kell’s twin hearts doubled their beating rate. Adrenaline flowed into his blood. The feeders in his cheeks spasmed. He inhaled, focused for a moment, and returned his body to calmness, his hormone level to normal.
“The Master? Krayt himself?”
“Please follow,” the droid said, turned, and began walking.
Kell pulled up the hood of his suit but did not lower the mask; he strode down the ramp and stepped into the storm. Korriban drenched him. With a minor effort of will, he adjusted his core body temperature to compensate for the chill.
The droid led him along long-dead avenues lined with the ancient stone and steel monuments of the Sith Order. Kell saw no duracrete, no transparisteel, nothing modern. On much of Korriban, he knew, new layers had been built on the old over the millennia, creating a kind of archaeological stratification of the Sith ages.
Not here. Here, the most ancient of Sith tombs and temples sat undisturbed. Here, Krayt wandered in his dreams of conquest.
A flash of lightning veined the sky, painting shadows across the necropolis. Kell’s mimetic suit adjusted to account for the temporary change in lighting. As he walked, he felt a growing regard fix on him, a consciousness.
Ahead, he saw a squat tower of aged stone—Krayt’s sanctuary. Spirals of dark energy swirled in languid arcs around the spire. Only a few windows marred its otherwise featureless exterior, black holes that opened into a dark interior. To Kell, they looked like screaming mouths protesting the events transpiring within.
The droid ascended a wide, tiered stairway that led to a pair of iron doors at the base of the spire. Age-corroded writing and scrollwork spiraled over the door’s surface. Kell could not read it.
“Remain here, please,” the droid said, and vanished behind the doors.
Kell waited under Korriban’s angry sky, surrounded by the tombs of Korriban’s dead Sith Lords. Checking his wrist chrono from time to time, he attuned his senses to his surroundings and waited on Krayt’s pleasure.
Footsteps sounded behind him, barely audible above the rain. He changed his perception as he turned, and saw a thick network of daen nosi that extended through the present to the future, wrapping the galaxy like a great serpent that would strangle it.
The STAR WARS Legends Novels Timeline
BEFORE THE REPUBLIC 37,000–25,000 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
25793 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void
OLD REPUBLIC 5000–67 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories
3954 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
The Old Republic: Revan
3650 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
The Old Republic: Deceived
Red Harvest
The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance
The Old Republic: Annihilation
1032 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
Knight Errant
Darth Bane: Path of Destruction
Darth Bane: Rule of Two
Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil
RISE OF THE EMPIRE 67–0 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
67 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
Darth Plagueis
33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
Darth Maul: Saboteur*
Cloak of Deception
Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter
Maul: Lockdown
32 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
STAR WARS: EPISODE I: The Phantom Menace
Rogue Planet
Outbound Flight
The Approaching Storm
22 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
STAR WARS: EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones
22-19 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
The Clone Wars: Wild Space
The Clone Wars: No Prisoners
Clone Wars Gambit
Stealth
Siege
Republic Commando
Hard Contact
Triple Zero
True Colors
Order 66
Shatterpoint
The Cestus Deception
The Hive*
MedStar I: Battle Surgeons
MedStar II: Jedi Healer
Jedi Trial
Yoda: Dark Rendezvous
Labyri
nth of Evil
19 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
STAR WARS: EPISODE III: Revenge of the Sith
Kenobi
Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader
Imperial Commando: 501st
Coruscant Nights
Jedi Twilight
Street of Shadows
Patterns of Force
The Last Jedi
10 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope
The Han Solo Trilogy
The Paradise Snare
The Hutt Gambit
Rebel Dawn
The Adventures of Lando Calrissian
The Force Unleashed
The Han Solo Adventures
Death Troopers
The Force Unleashed II
REBELLION 0–5 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope
Death Star
Shadow Games
STAR WARS: EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE
Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina
Tales from the Empire
Tales from the New Republic
Winner Lose All*
Scoundrels
Allegiance
Choices of One
Honor Among Thieves
Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
Empire and Rebellion: Razor’s Edge
3 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope
STAR WARS: EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Tales of the Bounty Hunters
Shadows of the Empire
4 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope
STAR WARS: EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI
Tales from Jabba’s Palace
The Bounty Hunter Wars
The Mandalorian Armor
Slave Ship
Hard Merchandise
The Truce at Bakura
Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor
NEW REPUBLIC 5–25 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope
X-Wing
Rogue Squadron
Wedge’s Gamble
The Krytos Trap
The Bacta War
Wraith Squadron
Iron Fist
Solo Command
The Courtship of Princess Leia
A Forest Apart*
Tatooine Ghost