Path of Destruction

by Drew Karpyshyn

  She staggered back with a gasp, her senses crashing over her like floodwaters bursting through a retaining wall. Sight, sound, smell, and touch returned all at once, overwhelming her frantic mind. The light from the glow rods had grown faint and dim, as if it, too, was being swallowed by the ritual. The chant continued, so loud now it actually hurt her ears. The temperature had dropped so sharply that she was able to see her breath, and tiny crystals of frost had begun to form on the stalactites and along the edges of the tiny puddles and pools.

  Suddenly she realized that neither Kaan nor anyone else had a grip on her hands. They were all standing in the ring, arms raised toward its center, oblivious to the world around them. At first it looked as if they were grasping at nothing, but as her eyes adjusted to the gloom she caught sight of a strange distortion in the air.

  Githany couldn’t bear to look at it for more than a moment. There was something terrible and unnatural about the wavering fabric of reality, and she turned away in horror.

  Bane was right, she realized. Kaan has brought us to ruin!

  There was a faint tug on her mind. A gentle pull that was quickly growing stronger, threatening to draw her in with the others. She stumbled away from the profane ceremony and its doomed celebrants, squinting to see her way along the uneven footing.

  Bane tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen. Her thoughts were a chaotic jumble of regret, desperation, and fear. Even as one part of her brain chastised her for her mistake, another was forcing her to back away from the abomination being birthed by the Brotherhood.

  Her retreat brought her to one of the cavern walls and she followed along it, looking for a way out. The compulsion of the ritual was growing stronger. She could feel it calling to her, inviting her to join the others and share their fate.

  She had no plan, no sense of where she was going. She simply had to escape, flee, get out. Get away from here before she was sucked in once again. A small space opened in the stone: a narrow tunnel entrance just wide enough for her to sneak through. She squeezed her body into the crevice, the jagged stone slicing through cloth and skin.

  The pain was nothing to her. The physical world was slipping away again. Desperately, Githany managed to throw herself forward, crashing to the ground, then crawled frantically on her hands and knees down the tunnel.

  Away. She had to get away. Away from the ritual. Away from Kaan. Away from the thought bomb before it was too late.

  * * *

  The Sith soldiers guarding the entrance to the subterranean tunnels were strong in number but weak in spirit. They offered only token resistance to Farfalla and the rest of the Jedi advance units who came against them. The last battle of Ruusan quickly transformed into a mass surrender, with the enemy throwing down their weapons and begging for their lives.

  Farfalla walked among his troops, surveying the scene. General Hoth was close behind with the bulk of the army. He’d be surprised to find the war already over when he arrived.

  “How goes it?” Farfalla asked one of the unit commanders.

  “The Sith troops have us outnumbered three to one,” the commander answered gruffly. “And they’re all trying to surrender at the same time. This is going to take awhile.”

  Farfalla gave him a hearty laugh and slapped him on the shoulder. “Well said,” he agreed. “Sometimes I think people only follow the Sith because they know we will take them alive if they lose.”

  “Don’t you dare take me alive, Farfalla,” a voice gurgled. Turning his head sharply, he saw a heavyset Twi’lek lying wounded on the ground.

  The injured Twi’lek struggled to his feet, and Farfalla was surprised to see that he wore the robes of a Sith Lord. His face was so covered in blood and gore, most of it his own, that it took the Jedi a moment to recognize him.

  “Kopecz,” he said at last, remembering him from days long gone, back when Kopecz had been a Jedi. “You are hurt,” Farfalla continued, extending his hand in an offer of friendship. “Lay down your weapons and we can help you.”

  The Twi’lek’s meaty hand lashed out to slap him away. “I chose my side long ago,” he spat. “Promise me death, Jedi, and I will give you a warning. I will tell you Kaan’s plan.”

  One look at the Dark Lord’s wounds told Farfalla his enemy didn’t have long to live in any case. “What do you know?”

  Kopecz coughed, choking on the blood welling up in his throat. “Promise me, first,” he wheezed.

  “I will grant you death, if that is what you truly seek. I swear it.”

  The Twi’lek laughed, pink froth bubbling up on his lips. “Good. Death is an old friend. What Kaan has planned is far worse.” And he told Farfalla about the thought bomb, his words sending a chill down the Jedi Master’s spine. When Kopecz had finished he bowed his head and took a deep breath to gather his strength, then activated his lightsaber.

  “You promised me death,” he said. “I wish to fall in combat. If you hold back at all, you will be the one who dies here today. Do you understand?”

  Master Farfalla nodded grimly, igniting his own weapon.

  Lord Kopecz fought valiantly despite his wounds, though he was no match for a fresh and uninjured Jedi Master. In the end, Farfalla fulfilled his promise.

  31

  The scene that greeted General Hoth as his army came upon the battlefield was as unexpected as it was welcome. He had braced himself for a vision of grim and bloody slaughter, fierce combat with neither side giving nor asking quarter. He had imagined the corpses of the dead would be strewn about, trampled beneath the feet of those still fighting desperately to hang on to their lives. He had come expecting to see a war.

  Instead he was witness to something so unbelievable his initial reaction was one of suspicion. Was it a trick? A trap? His fears were quickly allayed when he recognized the familiar and smiling faces of other Jedi all around him.

  As he surveyed the aftermath of the last battle of Ruusan, his own face broke into a smile. There were only a handful of dead, and from their dress it was clear that few of them had served in the Army of Light. Most of the enemy had been taken prisoner: they were sitting calmly on the ground in large groups, surrounded by armed Jedi. Yet even though the Jedi were keeping close watch on their captured foes, they were laughing and joking with one another.

  He reached out with the Force, and he felt wave after wave of relief and joy washing out from Farfalla’s troops. The soldiers under his command were quick to feel it, too. Seeing the obvious victory, they broke ranks and ran cheering and laughing down to join their fellows in celebration. Hoth resisted the urge to shout out a command to regroup and simply let them go.

  The endless war was over!

  But as he walked through the milling throngs, accepting the salutes and congratulations of his followers, he realized something was wrong. The battlefield was full of placid, unarmed Sith … but he saw not a single Dark Lord among their numbers.

  The sight of Master Farfalla running at full speed toward him from the far side of the field did little to soothe his unease.

  “General,” Farfalla said, sliding to a stop and gasping for breath. He snapped off a quick salute. The lack of his typical over-the-top bow further fueled Hoth’s mounting concern.

  “I must have taken longer to assemble my forces than I thought,” the general joked, hoping his disquiet was simply misplaced paranoia. “It seems you’ve already won the war.”

  Farfalla shook his head. “The war isn’t over. Not yet. Kaan and the Brotherhood—the true Sith—have taken refuge in the caves. They’re going to unleash some kind of Sith weapon. Something called a thought bomb.”

  A thought bomb? Hoth had heard mention of such a weapon long ago, studying at the feet of his Master back at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. According to legendary accounts, the ancient Sith had the ability to forge the dark side into a concentrated sphere of power and then unleash its energy in a single, devastating blast. All those sensitive to the Force—Sith and Jedi alike—would be consumed by the explosion,
their spirits trapped in the great vacuum created at the epicenter of the detonation.

  “Is Kaan mad?” he said aloud, though the very question was answer enough.

  “We have to evacuate, General,” Farfalla insisted. “Get everyone away as fast as possible.”

  “No,” Hoth answered. “That won’t work. If we retreat, Kaan and the Brotherhood will escape. It won’t take them long to rally support and begin this war all over again.”

  “But what about the thought bomb?” Valenthyne demanded.

  “If Kaan has such a weapon,” the general explained grimly, “then he will use it. If not here, then somewhere else. Maybe in the Core Worlds. Maybe on Coruscant itself. I can’t allow that.

  “Kaan wants to witness my death. I have to go into the cave to face him. I have to force him to detonate the bomb here on Ruusan. It’s the only way to truly end this.”

  Farfalla dropped to one knee. “Then I will go by your side, General. As will all who follow me.”

  Reaching out with his strong, weathered hands, General Hoth took Farfalla by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet. “No, my friend,” he said with a sigh, “you cannot walk this journey with me.”

  When the other started to protest he held up a hand for silence and continued. “When Kaan unleashes his weapon, all within that cave will die. The Sith will be wiped out, but I won’t let that happen to our entire order. The galaxy will have need of Jedi to rebuild once this war is over. You and the other Masters must live so that you may guide them and defend the Republic as we have done since its foundation.”

  There was no real argument against the wisdom of his words, and after a moment’s deliberation Master Farfalla dropped his head in mute acceptance. When he looked up again there were tears in his eyes.

  “Surely you’re not going in alone?” he protested.

  “I wish I could,” Hoth replied. “But if I do the Dark Lords will simply take me down with their lightsabers. That would solve nothing. Kaan has to see that his only choice is to surrender or …” He left the thought unspoken.

  “You’ll need enough Jedi to convince the Brotherhood that a physical battle would be hopeless. At least a hundred. Any less and he won’t detonate the thought bomb.”

  Hoth nodded. “Nobody will be ordered to go in with me. Ask for volunteers. And make sure they understand none of us will ever be coming out.”

  Despite the danger, virtually every single member of the Army of Light volunteered for the mission. General Hoth realized that he shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, these were Jedi, willing to sacrifice everything—even their lives—for the greater good. In the end he did what he knew he would have to do all along: he himself chose who would accompany him to certain death.

  He selected exactly ninety-nine others to go with him. The decision was agonizingly difficult. If he took less, the Sith might be able to fight their way out of the cave and escape, only to detonate their thought bomb somewhere else. But the more he took, the more Jedi lives he might be needlessly throwing away.

  Choosing who would go with him was even more difficult. Those Jedi who had served at his side the longest, the ones who had joined the Army of Light at the very beginning of the campaign, were those he knew best. He knew how much they had already given in this war, and these were the ones he least wanted to lead to their doom. Yet these were the ones with the most right to stand by his side when the end finally came, and when all was said and done that was how he made his selection. Those with the most seniority would go with him; the others would fall back with Lord Farfalla.

  The hundred Jedi—the ninety-nine chosen plus Hoth himself—stood anxiously at the entrance of the tunnels. The sky above was growing dark as night fell and ominous storm clouds rolled in. Still, the general did not give the command to advance. He wanted to give Farfalla and the others enough time to get clear. If it had been possible, he would have ordered all those not going into the cave to leave Ruusan. But there wasn’t time. They would simply have to get as far away as possible, then hope they were beyond the range of Kaan’s thought bomb.

  As the first drops of rain began to fall, he realized he could wait no longer, and he gave the command to advance. They marched in an orderly fashion into the tunnel, down into the caverns far beneath the planet’s surface.

  The first thing Hoth noticed as they descended was how cold the tunnel quickly became, as if all the heat had been sucked away. The next thing he felt was the tension in the air. It actually pulsed with vast, unimaginable power just barely held in check; the power of the dark side. He didn’t allow himself to think about what would happen when that power was released.

  They advanced slowly, wary of traps or an ambush. They found none. In fact, they saw no sign of the Sith at all until they reached the large central cavern at the heart of the tunnel system.

  General Hoth led the way, a glow rod in one hand and his drawn lightsaber in the other. As he stepped into the cavern, his glow rod suddenly flickered and went very dim. Even the illumination from his lightsaber seemed to die, becoming the thinnest sliver of incandescence.

  As his eyes grew accustomed to the heavy shadows he was able to pick out the shapes of the Sith Lords, standing in a circle on the far side of the cave. They faced inward, their hands raised to its center. They stood without moving, their mouths hanging open, their features slack, their eyes blank. Cautiously, he approached the still forms, wondering if they were alive, dead, or trapped in some nightmare state in between.

  Drawing closer he could make out a single figure standing in the center of the circle: Lord Kaan. He hadn’t seen him at first; the middle of the ring was darker than the rest of the cave. There seemed to be a black cloud hovering above him, tendrils of inky darkness extending down to wrap and twist around him in a sinister embrace.

  One look at the leader of the Brotherhood and any hope the general had of convincing Lord Kaan to listen to reason died. The Sith Lord’s face was pale and taut; his features were stretched as if his skin had become too tight for his skull. A thin layer of ice coated his hair and lashes. His expression was one of cruel arrogance, and his left eye trembled and twitched uncontrollably. He stared straight ahead with a frozen intensity, unblinking and unmoving as Hoth and his Jedi slowly filled the cavern.

  Only after all the Jedi were inside did he speak. “Welcome, Lord Hoth.” His voice was tight and strained.

  “Are you trying to scare me, Kaan?” Hoth asked, stepping forward. “I do not fear death,” he continued. “I do not mind dying. I would not mind all the Jedi dying if it meant the end of the Sith.”

  Kaan turned his head quickly from one side to the other, his eyes darting back and forth across the cave as if he were counting the Jedi who stood before him. His lip curled into a sneer, and he raised his hands up.

  The general made his move, lunging forward to try to end Kaan’s life before he could unleash his ultimate weapon. He wasn’t quick enough. The Dark Lord clapped his hands together sharply—and the thought bomb exploded.

  In an instant every living soul in the cave was snuffed out of existence. Clothing, flesh, and bone were vaporized. The stalactites, the stalagmites, even the massive stone columns were reduced to clouds of dust. The rumbling echo of the blast rolled down every tunnel, crevice, and fissure leading out of the cavern as the destructive wave of energy began to spread.

  Githany was trapped in the labyrinth of subterranean passages. In fleeing Kaan’s ritual she had lost her bearings, and now she wandered aimlessly down kilometer after kilometer of natural tunnels as she searched in vain for an exit to the surface.

  In the dim light of her glow rod she saw a small opening on her left and followed it for many meters before it came to a dead end. Shouting out a curse, she turned and made her way back again.

  She was furious. Furious at Kaan for bringing the Brotherhood to the brink of destruction. Furious at herself for following him there. And furious at Bane. There was no doubt in her mind that he had somehow orchestrate
d all this. He had manipulated Kaan and the rest of the Brotherhood, driving them toward their own destruction. Yet that betrayal wasn’t what enraged her. Bane had abandoned her. He’d cast her aside with the others, leaving her to die while he went off to rebuild the Sith.

  Ahead of her the tunnel branched in two directions. She paused, drawing on the Force to heighten her senses in the hope she might find some hint as to which path to take. At first there was nothing. Then she caught the faintest whisper of a breeze coming from the tunnel on the left. The air smelled fresh and clean: it led to the surface!

  As she raced up the passage, her frustration and rage fell away. She was going to survive! The uneven ground began to slope sharply upward, and she could see a hint of natural light far in the distance. She redoubled her efforts, and her thoughts turned to how she would exact her revenge.

  She would have to be subtle and cunning. She had underestimated Bane too many times in the past. This time she would be patient, not striking until she was certain the moment was right.

  The first step was to find him and offer to be his apprentice. There was no doubt in her mind he would accept. He needed someone to serve him; it was the way of the dark side. She would learn at his feet, subjugating herself to his will. It might take years, maybe decades, but in time he would teach her everything he knew. Only then, after all his secrets were hers, would she turn on him. She would become the Master and take an apprentice of her own.

  Escape was fewer than fifty meters away when Githany felt the first effects of the thought bomb. It began with a trembling in the ground. Her initial instinct was fear of a groundquake or cave-in that would bury her beneath tons of dirt and stones within sight of the surface. But when she felt the power of the dark side rushing up the passage toward her, she realized she was about to suffer a far more horrible fate. Those at the epicenter of the blast had been vaporized. Caught on the fringes of the thought bomb’s radius, Githany was not so lucky. The wave of pure dark side energy swept over her an instant later. It tore through her like some terrible wind, sucking the essence of life from her body and ripping her spirit from its corporeal shell. Her flesh withered and shrank, her beautiful features mummified before she even had time to scream. And then, as quickly as it had come, the wave had passed. For one frozen moment her lifeless husk stood in perfect balance, before it toppled and struck the ground, disintegrating into ash.