Des hesitated only a moment before nodding. “I feel it. Hot. Like a fire waiting to explode.”
“The power of the dark side. The heat of passion and emotion. I can feel it in you, as well. Burning beneath the surface. Burning like your anger. It makes you strong.”
Kopecz closed his eyes and tilted his head back, as if basking in the heat. The tips of his head-tails twitched ever so slightly. The only sound was the faint crackle of flame from the torches. A bead of sweat rolled down the crown of Des’s bare scalp and along the back of his neck. He didn’t wipe it away, though he did shift his feet uncomfortably as it trickled its way between his shoulder blades. The slight movement seemed to snap the Twi’lek out of his trance.
He didn’t speak again for several seconds, but he studied Des intently with his piercing gaze. “You have touched the Force in the past, but your abilities are an insignificant speck beside the power of a true Sith Master,” he finally said. “There is great potential in you. If you stay here on Korriban, we can teach you to unleash it.”
Des was speechless.
“You would no longer be a trooper on the front lines,” Kopecz continued. “If you accept my offer, that part of your life is over. You will be trained in the ways of the dark side. You will become one of the Brotherhood of Darkness. And you will not return to the Gloom Walkers.”
Des felt his heart pounding, his head swimming. As long as he could remember, he’d known he was special because of his unique talents. And now he was being told that his abilities were nothing compared with what he could really accomplish.
Still, part of him balked at the idea of leaving his unit without even having a chance to say good-bye. He considered Adanar, Lucia, and the others as more than just fellow soldiers; they were his friends. Could he really abandon them like this, even for the chance to join the Sith Masters?
He recalled one of the last things Groshik had ever said to him: Don’t count on others for help. In the end each of us is in this alone. The survivors are those who know how to look out for themselves.
Everything he’d had, he’d given to his unit. He’d saved their lives too many times to count. And in the end, when the enforcers had come to take him away, they’d been powerless to save him. They would have tried if he’d let them, but they would have failed. Des realized the truth: his unit—his friends—could do nothing for him now.
He could rely only on himself, like always. He’d be a fool to turn this opportunity down.
“I am honored, Master Kopecz, and I gratefully accept your offer.”
“The way of the Sith is not for the weak,” the big Twi’lek warned. “Those who falter will be … left behind.” There was something ominous in his tone.
“I won’t be left behind,” Des replied, unfazed.
“That remains to be seen,” Kopecz noted. Then he added, “This is a new beginning for you, Des. A new life. Many of the students who come here take a new name for themselves. They leave their old life behind.”
Des had no desire to hang on to any part of his old life. An abusive father, the brutality of working the mines on Apatros; he had been seeking a new life for as long as he could remember. The Gloom Walkers had offered an escape, but it had been a temporary one. Now he had a chance to leave his past behind forever. All he had to do was embrace the Brotherhood of Darkness and its teachings. And yet, for reasons he couldn’t explain, he felt the cold grip of fear closing in on him. The fear made him hesitate.
“Do you wish to choose a new name for yourself, Des?” Kopecz asked, possibly sensing his reluctance. “Do you wish to be reborn?”
Des nodded.
Kopecz smiled once more. “And by what name shall we call you now?”
The fear would not stop him; he would seize the fear, transform it, and make it his own. He would take what had once made him weak and use it to make himself strong.
“My name is Bane. Bane of the Sith.”
Lord Qordis, exalted Master of the Sith Academy on Korriban, scratched gently at his chin with long, talon-like fingers.
“This student you have brought me—this Bane—has never been trained in the ways of the Force?”
Kopecz shook his head and twitched his lekku ever so slightly in annoyance. “As I told you before, Qordis, he grew up on Apatros, a world controlled by the ORO Company.”
“Yet you managed to find this young man and bring him here to the Academy. It seems almost too convenient.”
The heavyset Twi’lek snarled. “This is not a plot against you, Qordis. That is no longer our way. We are a Brotherhood now, remember? You are too suspicious.”
Qordis laughed. “Not suspicious; cautious. It has helped me to maintain my position here among so many powerful and ambitious young Sith.”
“He is as powerful as any of them,” Kopecz insisted.
“But he is also older. We prefer to find our students when they are younger and more … malleable.”
“Now you sound like a Jedi,” Kopecz sneered. “They seek younger and younger pupils, hoping to find them pure and innocent. In time they will refuse any who are not infants. We must be quick to pluck those they leave behind. Besides,” he continued, “Bane is too strong to simply pass over, even for the Jedi. We are lucky we found him before they did.”
“Yes, lucky,” Qordis echoed, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “His arrival here seems to be an incredible turn of many fortuitous events. Quite lucky indeed.”
“Some might see it that way,” Kopecz admitted. “Others might see it as something more. Destiny, perhaps.”
There was silence while Qordis considered his longtime rival’s words. “The other acolytes have been training for many years. He will be far behind,” he said at last.
“He will catch up, if given the chance,” Kopecz insisted.
“And I wonder … will the others give him that chance? Not if they are smart. I’m afraid we may simply be throwing away one of Lord Kaan’s best troopers.”
“We both know the Jedi won’t be defeated by soldiers,” Kopecz snapped. “I’d gladly trade a thousand of our best troopers for even one Sith Master.”
Qordis seemed taken aback by his passionate reaction. “He is that strong, is he? This Bane?”
Kopecz nodded. “I think he might be the one we’ve been searching for. He could be the Sith’ari.”
“Before he can claim that title,” Qordis said with a cunning smile, “he’ll have to survive his training.”
PART TWO
9
Peace is a lie. There is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory my chains are broken.
Kopecz was gone, rejoining Kaan’s army and the war being waged against the Jedi and the Republic. Bane had remained behind at the Sith Academy on Korriban to learn the ways of the Sith. His first lesson began the next morning, at the feet of Lord Qordis himself.
“The tenets of the Sith are more than just words to be memorized,” the Master of the Academy explained to his newest apprentice. “Learn them, understand them. They will lead you to the true power of the Force: the power of the dark side.”
Qordis was taller than Kopecz. Taller even than Bane. He was very thin and clad in a black, loose-fitting robe, with the hood drawn back to fall across his shoulders. He might have been human, but something about his appearance seemed off. His skin was an unnatural, chalky hue, made even more obvious by the glittering gems encrusting the many rings on his long fingers. His eyes were dark and sunken. His teeth were sharp and pointed, and his fingernails were curved and wicked talons.
Bane knelt before him, similarly clad in a dark robe with the hood drawn back. Earlier this morning he had heard the Code of the Sith for the first time, and the words were still fresh and mysterious. They swirled through the undercurrents of his mind, occasionally bubbling up into his conscious thoughts as he tried to absorb the deeper mea
ning behind them. Peace is a lie. There is only passion. He knew the first tenet to be true, at least. His entire life was proof of that.
“Kopecz tells me you come to us as a raw apprentice,” Qordis noted. “He says you have never been trained in the ways of the Force.”
“I’m a quick learner,” Bane assured him.
“Yes … and strong in the power of the dark side. But the same can be said of all who come here.”
Not sure how to respond, Bane decided the wisest course of action was to stay silent.
“What do you know of this Academy?” Qordis finally asked.
“The students here are taught to use the Force. They are taught the secrets of the dark side by you and the other Sith Lords.” After a brief hesitation he added, “And I know there are many other academies like this one.”
“No,” Qordis corrected. “Not like this one. It is true we have other training facilities spread across our evergrowing empire, places where individuals with promise are taught to control and use their power. But each facility is unique, and where individual students are sent depends on how much potential we see in them.
“Those with a noticeable but limited ability are sent to Honoghr, Gentes, or Gamorr to become Sith Warriors or Marauders. There they are taught to channel their emotions into mindless rage and battle fury. The power of the dark side transforms them into ravaging beasts of death and destruction to be unleashed against our enemies.”
Through passion I gain strength, Bane thought. But when he spoke he said, “Brute strength alone is not enough to bring down the Republic.”
“True,” Qordis agreed. From the tone of his voice Bane knew he had said what his Master wanted to hear.
“Those with greater ability are sent to worlds that have allied with our cause to destroy the Republic: Ryloth, Umbara, Nar Shadaa. These students become creatures of shadow, learning to use the dark side for secrecy, deception, and manipulation. Those who survive the training became unstoppable assassins, capable of drawing on the dark side to kill their targets without ever moving a muscle.”
“Yet even they are no match for the Jedi,” Bane added, thinking he understood the direction the lesson was taking.
“Precisely,” his Master agreed. “The academies on Dathomir and Iridonia are most similar to the one here. There apprentices study under Sith Masters. Those who succeed in their training become the adepts and acolytes who swell the ranks of our armies. They are the counterparts to the Jedi Knights who stand in the way of our ultimate conquest.
“But even as the Jedi Knights must answer to the Jedi Masters, so must the adepts and acolytes answer to the Sith Lords. And those with the potential to become Sith Lords—and only those with such potential—are trained here on Korriban.”
Bane felt a shiver of excitement. Through strength I gain power.
“Korriban was the ancestral home of the Sith,” Qordis explained. “This planet is a place of great power; the dark side lives and breathes in the very core of this world.”
He paused and slowly extended his skeletal hand, palm upward. It almost seemed as if he was cradling something unseen—something precious and invaluable—in his claw-like fingers.
“This temple we stand in was built many thousands of years ago to collect and focus that power. Here you can feel the dark side at its strongest.” He closed his fist so tightly that his long fingernails cut into his palm, drawing blood. “You have been chosen because you have great potential,” he whispered. “Great things are expected of the apprentices here on Korriban. The training is difficult, but the rewards are great for those who succeed.”
Through power I gain victory.
Qordis reached out and placed his wounded palm on the crown of Bane’s bare scalp, anointing him with the blood of a Sith Lord. Bane had seen plenty of blood as a soldier, yet for some reason this ceremonial act of self-mutilation revolted him more than any battlefield gore. It was all he could do not to pull away.
“You have the potential to become one of us—one of the Brotherhood of Darkness. Together we can cast off the shackles of the Republic.”
Through victory my chains are broken.
“But even those with potential can fail,” Qordis finished. “I trust you will not disappoint us.”
Bane had no intention of doing that.
The next few weeks passed quickly as Bane threw himself into his studies. To his surprise, he discovered that his inexperience with the Force was the exception rather than the rule. Many of the students had trained for months or years before they had been accepted at the Academy on Korriban.
At first Bane found this troubling. He had just started his training and he was already behind. In such a competitive, ruthless environment he would be an easy target for every other student. But as he mulled it over, he began to realize he might not be as vulnerable as he’d thought.
He alone, of all the apprentices at the Academy, had been able to manifest the power of the dark side without any training at all. He’d used it so often he’d come to take it for granted. It had given him advantages over his opponents in cards and brawling. In war it had warned him of danger and brought him victory in otherwise impossible circumstances.
And he’d done it all on instinct, with no training, without even any conscious idea of what he was doing. Now, for the first time, he was being taught to truly use his abilities. He didn’t have to worry about any of the other students … if anything, they should be worrying about him. When he completed his training, none of the others would be his equal.
Most of his learning came at the feet of Qordis and the other Masters: Kas’im, Orilltha, Shenayag, Hezzoran, and Borthis. There were group training sessions at the Academy, but they were few and far between. The weak and the slow could not be allowed to hold back the strong and ambitious. Students learned at their own pace, driven by their desire and hunger for power. There were, however, nearly six students for every Master, and the apprentices had to prove their worth before one of the instructors would spend valuable time teaching them the secrets of the Sith.
Though he was a neophyte, Bane found it easy to garner the attention of the Sith Lords, particularly Qordis. He knew the extra attention would inevitably breed animosity in the other students, but he forced himself not to think about that. In time the additional instruction he got from the Masters would allow him to catch up to and pass the other apprentices, and once he did he wouldn’t need to worry about their petty jealousies. Until then he was careful to stay out of the way and not draw attention to himself.
When he wasn’t learning from the Masters, he was in the library studying the ancient records. As the Jedi kept their archives at their Temple on Coruscant, so the Sith had begun to collect and store information in the archives of Korriban’s temple. However, unlike the Jedi library—where most of the data was stored in electronic, hologrammic, and Holocron formats—the Sith collection was limited to scrolls, tomes, and manuals. In the three thousand standard years since Darth Revan had nearly destroyed the Republic, the Jedi had waged a tireless war to eradicate the teaching tools of the dark side. All known Sith Holocrons had been either destroyed or spirited away to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant for safekeeping. There were many rumors of undiscovered Sith Holocrons—either hidden away on remote worlds, or covetously hoarded by one of the dark Masters eager to keep its secret knowledge for himself. But all efforts by the Brotherhood to find these lost treasures had proved futile, forcing them to rely on the primitive technologies of parchment and flimsiplast.
And because the collection was constantly being added to, the indexes and references were hopelessly out of date. Searching the archives was often an exercise in futility or frustration, and most of the students felt their time was better spent trying to learn from or impress the Masters.
Perhaps it was because he was older than most of the others, or maybe because his years of mining had taught him patience—whatever the explanation, Bane spent several hours each day studying the ancient records.
He found them fascinating. Many of the scrolls were historical records recounting ancient battles or glorifying the deeds of ancient Sith Lords. By itself the information had little practical use, but he could see each individual work for what it actually represented: a tiny piece of a much larger puzzle, a clue to a much greater understanding.
The archives supplemented what he learned from the Masters. It gave context to abstract lessons. Bane felt that, in time, the ancient knowledge would be the key to unlocking his full potential. And so his understanding of the Force slowly took shape.
Mystical and unexplainable, the Force was also natural and essential: a fundamental energy binding the universe and connecting all living things within it. This energy, this power, could be harnessed. It could be manipulated and controlled. And through the teachings of the dark side, Bane was learning to seize hold of it. He practiced his meditations and exercises daily, often under the watchful eye of Qordis. After only a few weeks he learned to move small objects simply by thinking about it—something he would have thought impossible only a short time before.
Yet now he understood that this was only the beginning. He was starting to grasp a great truth on a deep, fundamental level: that the strength to survive must come from within. Others will always fail you. Friends, family, fellow soldiers … in the end, each person must stand alone. When in need, look to the self.
The dark side nurtured the power of the individual. The teachings of the Sith Masters would make him strong. In pleasing them, he could unlock his full potential and one day sit among them.
When the first wave of the attack came, the Republic fleet orbiting the skies of Ruusan was caught completely unprepared. A small and politically insignificant planet, the heavily forested world had been used as a base to stage devastating hit-and-run attacks against the Sith forces stationed in the nearby Kashyyyk system. Now the enemy had turned that same strategy against them.
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