A few hours later Bane was back in his shuttle, armed with the information he needed. Despite the old man’s declaration, he’d found people were only too eager to share what they knew about the strange, insular cult deep in the neighboring mountains.
It was clear that Andeddu’s followers were still active; occasionally some of them even came into the small town in need of supplies. It was also clear that the people in the mountain village regarded their mysterious neighbors with a combination of fear and loathing. Estimates of their numbers ranged from a few dozen to more than a thousand, though Bane suspected the truth was somewhere closer to the low end. Beyond that, everything else fell under the headings of wild speculation or illogical superstition.
Drawn by the unmistakable power of the dark side emanating from his target, Bane dropped the Triumph lower and began to weave in among the tall black peaks. As he flew deeper into the range, he began to notice increased signs of recent seismic activity. Some of the mountains were over twenty kilometers tall but most were half that height, their tops blown off when the molten lava at their core erupted in a shower of smoke and fire.
It wasn’t long before the stronghold itself came into view, a towering structure built on the flat plain of a valley hidden deep within the heart of the range. A four-sided, flat-topped pyramid chiseled from black obsidian, the two-hundred-meter tall building was part fortress and part monument to a self-proclaimed god.
From the stories of the townspeople, Bane had learned that Andeddu had been worshiped as a deity during his long, long life before being overthrown. Yet even after his betrayal and death, a small cult of devoted followers believed his spirit still existed. They had continued their loyal service, preparing themselves for the day their Master would return.
Prakith’s long isolation from the rest of the galaxy had only served to strengthen his followers’ resolve. Those who lived in the temple now were described by everyone he spoke to as fanatics, and Bane suspected each would be willing to sacrifice his or her life to protect Andeddu’s Holocron.
Bane throttled back his shuttle, searching for a place to touch down. Ribbons of lava crawled down from the surrounding peaks and crisscrossed their way across the valley. The malevolent power emanating from the stronghold kept the deadly streams at bay, but any landing site he chose on the ground would be at risk. He had no intention of acquiring the Holocron, only to return and discover that his ship had disappeared beneath a slow-flowing river of magma.
There was one option: the flat top of the stronghold, no doubt constructed in the first place as a landing site. He would have preferred not to risk alerting anyone inside the pyramid by landing on it, but it seemed he had no choice. There was a time for subtlety, and a time for strength. He circled the pyramid once, then brought the shuttle in for a perfect landing on the landing pad.
Moving quickly, he sprang from the cockpit and raced outside, lightsaber already drawn. Through the Force, he could sense the chambers in the building beneath his feet explode in a flurry of activity as the cultists rallied to meet the unexpected intruder.
He glanced quickly around, taking stock of his surroundings. The roof was square, thirty meters across on each side, with a small hatch built into one corner. At that moment, the hatch burst open and beings he assumed were cultists began to pour out—nearly two dozen in total, all armed with vibroblades and clubs.
Despite their numbers, Bane instantly realized they posed no real threat. Though they worshiped one of the ancient Sith, these were ordinary men and women. The Force did not flow through their veins; they were nothing but fodder. Their fury might be fueled by the dark side energies emanating from the temple, but Bane could just as easily draw upon the same power, letting it build until he unleashed it against his foes.
A decade earlier he would have eagerly engaged them in physical combat, his body pumped full of adrenaline released by the orbalisks that had covered his flesh. Swept up in a mindless rage, he would have carved a bloody swath through their numbers, hacking and slashing at his helpless enemies while relying on the impenetrable shells of the orbalisks to protect him from their blows.
But the orbalisks were gone now. He was no longer invulnerable to physical attacks, yet he was also no longer a slave to the primal bloodlust that used to overwhelm him. Free from the parasitic infestation, he was able to dispatch his enemies using the Force rather than relying solely on brute strength.
Bane extinguished his weapon and stood perfectly still, allowing the swarming horde to close in on him as he gathered his strength. He called upon the power of the temple itself, feeding on it to bolster his own abilities as he created a deadly field around his body. It began as a tight circle, but quickly spread outward until it extended to a radius of ten meters, with the Sith Lord at the center. The air within the circumference of the field suddenly became darker, as if the light from the red sun above had been suddenly dimmed.
Cloaked in the shadowy gloom, Bane simply held his ground against the enemy assault. The front ranks of onrushing cultists shrieked in agony as they entered the field, their life essence violently sucked out of their bodies, aging them a thousand years in only a few seconds. Muscles and tendons atrophied instantaneously; their skin withered and shrank, pulling tight across their bones. Eyes and tongues shriveled, turning them into mummified husks before their desiccated flesh crumbled away, leaving only skeletal remains and a few strands of hair.
The effort of creating an aura of pure dark side energy would have quickly exhausted even Bane. However, as his enemies fell he was able to draw their essence into himself, feeding on their energies to revitalize his fading strength and reinforcing the field in preparation for the next wave of victims.
The mass of cultists continued to charge forward. Those in the middle ranks had seen the fate of their companions and tried desperately to stop. But the momentum of those behind swept them forward into the field to suffer the same agonizing death as those who had already fallen.
Only those at the very rear of the crowd were able to see the danger and pull up in time to save themselves. Of the more than twenty cultists who had attacked him, only a handful were able to save themselves. They stood at a safe distance, hovering on the edge of the deadly field with weapons raised, uncertain how to proceed.
Bane ended their confusion by letting the field drop and drawing his lightsaber. His opponents were too slow and too few to challenge him, and their crude vibro-weapons couldn’t even parry his glowing blade. Completely helpless against a superior foe, their mindless devotion to Andeddu still compelled them to attack the invader of the sacred temple. Bane cut them down like dogs.
No more cultists emerged from the hatches to attack him, but Bane could sense nearly a hundred more in the temple below him. The ones he had slain on the roof were the warriors, guardians sent up by the priests and attendants still huddled in the rooms and corridors of the pyramid.
The remaining enemies were potentially more dangerous: the priests of Andeddu had no doubt ascended to their positions because of their affinity for the Force. Their training was probably limited, and Bane knew no single one among them was powerful enough to stop him. Together, though, they might have the potential to overwhelm him. However, he didn’t intend to give them time to organize so they could attempt to unite their strength.
Moving quickly, Bane strode over to the hatch. Sometime during the battle it had been closed, and he discovered it had been locked from the inside. Letting the Force flow through him, he clipped his lightsaber and crouched down to grip the handle with both hands. Bracing his massive shoulders, he wrenched the metal hatch open, yanking it off its hinges and tossing it aside.
He jumped down the steep staircase revealed below, landing in a sloping corridor that led deeper into Andeddu’s stronghold. Igniting his lightsaber again, he moved with long, quick strides as he made his way unerringly through the labyrinthine halls, drawn by the power of Andeddu’s Holocron calling to him from the lower chambers.
&nbs
p; The interior architecture reminded him of the Sith Academy on Korriban: ancient stone walls, heavy wooden doors, and narrow halls dimly lit by torches sputtering in sconces along the wall. As he marched through the corridors, Bane sensed the occasional presence of one or two individuals on the other side of the doors he passed. Most simply cowered in their rooms, allowing him to continue on unhindered; they could sense his power, and they knew that interfering with his quest would only result in their pointless deaths. Every so often, however, a cultist whose devotion to Andeddu outweighed all sense of self-preservation would spring out to try to stop him.
Bane responded to each of these attacks with brutal efficiency. Some he sliced in two with a single swipe of his lightsaber; with others he used the Force to cleanly snap their necks, never even breaking stride. By the time he reached the central chamber of the stronghold, all pretense of resistance was gone. Anyone still left in the temple had retreated to the lowest chambers, fleeing his wrath.
Here at the heart of the pyramid Andeddu’s followers had built a shrine to their Master. Glow lamps in each corner illuminated the room with their eerie green light. The walls were covered with murals depicting images of the God-King unleashing his power against the armies of those who opposed him, and a great stone sarcophagus lay in the center, its lid carved with a relief of the long-dead Sith Lord.
In the Valley of the Dark Lords on Korriban, Bane had searched the ancient burial sites of the Sith who had come before him. Each of these, however, had been empty. Over the centuries the Jedi had stripped away anything of value or dark side power from the world, secreting the treasures away in their Temple on Coruscant for safekeeping.
Here, however, Bane had found what had been lost on Korriban. The isolation that had allowed the Jedi to purge Andeddu from the galactic records had kept his resting place safe from their looting. The sarcophagus on Prakith had been undisturbed for centuries. Inside, the Dark Lord’s most prized possession waited to be claimed by one worthy of its secrets.
Entering the room, Bane noticed the cloying smell of sickly-sweet incense in the air. As he approached the sarcophagus, he could feel the scent crawling over him like a fine mist, clinging to his clothes. Finding a grip on one corner of the sarcophagus’s lid, he leaned in and shoved. Muscles straining, he used all his great strength to slide it out of the way, the sound of grinding stone echoing in the chamber as the heavy lid grudgingly succumbed to his efforts.
Inside, Andeddu’s mummified corpse lay on its back, hands clasped around a small crystal pyramid clutched against his chest. Reaching into the casket, Bane seized the pyramid and pulled. For a moment it felt as if the corpse inside was resisting him, its bony fingers refusing to relinquish their grip.
He pulled harder, wrenching the Holocron free from the hold of its dead creator. Then he turned and left the room.
On his way back to his ship, only a few of Andeddu’s followers made any effort to stop him; those who did he brushed aside like gnats. He half expected to find a few dozen amassed on the roof against him in a last desperate stand, but except for his shuttle the roof was empty. Apparently wisdom and self-preservation had prevailed over their loyalty to Andeddu.
As it should be, Bane thought to himself. The leaders of the cult had realized a fundamental truth: the strong take what they want, and the weak can do nothing about it. They were not powerful enough to stop him from claiming Andeddu’s Holocron, therefore they did not deserve it.
Bane climbed into his shuttle and prepared for liftoff. He couldn’t help but think that if any of the cultists had been worthy, he would have left with more than just a Holocron: he would have taken a new apprentice, as well.
As it was, the search for Zannah’s replacement would have to wait. He had what he’d come for. It would take many days to traverse the hyperspace routes leading out of the Deep Core, but Bane welcomed the journey. It would give him time to explore the Holocron in greater detail. And if all went as planned, by the time he arrived back home all of Andeddu’s secrets would be his.
9
Paradise was anything but what it promised. The ironically named space station was located along a small hyperspace route branching off from the Corellian Trade Spine. Although technically under Republic jurisdiction, the quadrant was largely neglected by most major shipping corporations; it was known more for pirates and slavers than the transport of commercial goods. But realizing that even criminals needed somewhere to spend their ill-gotten credits, a group of Muun investors had pooled their resources to create an orbital platform catering to a segment of Republic society shunned on more civilized worlds.
Lucia had been to Paradise more than enough times in her life. After her release from a Republic POW camp she had spent several years as a freelance bodyguard, and many of her clients had contracted her specifically to provide protection during their visits to the station. The jobs always paid well, but she took them only when there was nothing else available.
Though Paradise officially billed itself as a “full-service entertainment lounge,” the reality of what transpired there was far more sordid than that innocuous term implied. Pleasure slaves, gambling, and illegal narcotics were available on hundreds of worlds and orbital platforms, most of them promoting themselves as hedonistic retreats for the rich and powerful—but generally law-abiding—citizens of the Republic. This was not the case with Paradise. The clientele here could best be described with a single word: scum.
Lucia’s dislike of the station had been formed on her first visit, and each time she returned her opinion was further reinforced. As she made her way through the crowd at the Stolen Fortune—the largest of the six casinos on the station—she didn’t see anything to change her mind.
Music was pumped in through overhead speakers, mingling with the general din rising up from the crowd. Humans, near-humans, and aliens all mingled freely, drinking, laughing, shouting, and tossing credits away on various games of chance. Pirates and slavers made up the bulk of the crowd, along with a few mercenaries, bounty hunters, and a handful of personal security personnel. Virtually everyone was armed. Pleasure slaves, both male and female, made the rounds offering drinks and other, more powerful indulgences for purchase. For the right price, anything could be bought on Paradise … even the pleasure slaves themselves.
The potential threat of sudden, lethal violence was an inevitable and generally accepted element of Paradise’s culture. There were no security forces on board, and no official representative of Republic law had ever set foot on the station—not openly, at any rate. Autotargeting blasters mounted in the ceiling could be used as an extreme method of crowd control if anyone ever attacked the casino staff, but when it came to individual safety, patrons were expected to fend for themselves. Those able to afford the expense typically hired an entourage of bodyguards, but the average visitor had to rely on a prominently displayed blaster at the hip and the threat of retribution from friends to make others think twice about starting something.
Lucia didn’t have any friends with her on this trip, but she had been here enough to know how to avoid trouble. She carried herself with an air of confidence, an unspoken challenge in the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her head that dissuaded others from approaching her. Besides, most of the conflicts started near the gaming tables, and Lucia wasn’t here to gamble.
She was here because the princess had sent her to find the Iktotchi assassin known as the Huntress. The last time Lucia had come here she had also been looking for the Huntress, though that had been her decision, not Serra’s.
At the time, Lucia hadn’t known about the king’s arrangement with the Jedi. She never suspected the assassin would kill Medd Tandar and set off a diplomatic incident. Yet even if she had, she would still have come for Serra’s sake.
She had seen her mistress grieving for her husband. His death had torn a hole in the princess’s heart, and after two months with no signs of improvement, Lucia couldn’t bear to watch her friend suffer any longer without doing
something.
The princess needed closure; she needed to see those responsible pay for their crimes. But though the king had sent his troops in search of Gelba and her followers, they had made no progress in tracking her down. And so Lucia had taken matters into her own hands.
Going behind the king’s back to hire an assassin was a clear breach of Doan law and a direct violation of the oath she had taken when she was sworn into the Royal Guard. But this went beyond any oath or vow. Serra was her friend, and her friend had been wronged. She couldn’t bring her husband back, but she could see that those responsible for his death were punished. That was what you did as a friend: you put the needs of each other above everything else. You were loyal to your own.
That was the reason Lucia had joined Kaan’s armies in the New Sith Wars twenty years ago. She didn’t care one way or the other about the dark side, or the Sith, or even destroying the Republic. She had been a young woman with no family or friends. No prospects. No future. When the Sith recruiter came to her world, he offered her something nobody else had: a chance to be part of something greater than herself; a chance to belong.
She had found that sense of belonging during her time as a sniper with the Gloom Walkers. The other members of the unit became like her family. She would have given her life to save any one of them, and she knew they would have done the same. And if she couldn’t save someone, she would do the next best thing and honor their memory by avenging their death.
That’s what happened with Des. Although Lieutenant Ulabore was the official commander of the Gloom Walkers, everyone knew Sergeant Dessel was the real leader of the squad. A miner from Apatros, he had been a giant of a man: two meters tall and 120 kilograms of pure muscle, with an instinct for battle and a knack for keeping his fellow soldiers alive in impossible situations. Des had risked his own life to save the unit more times than Lucia could even remember.
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