Then he went on the attack. In the past he had always been afraid to surrender his will to the raw emotions that fueled the dark side. Now he had no such limitations; for the first time he was calling on his full potential.
He drove Kas’im back with furious slashes, forcing his old mentor into a backpedaling retreat across the floor of the chamber. Kas’im flipped back and out through the door into the hall beyond, but Bane was relentless in his pursuit, leaping forward and coming within a centimeter of landing a crippling blow to the Twi’lek’s leg.
His strike was turned aside at the last second, but he quickly followed it up with another series of powerful thrusts and stabs. The Blademaster continued to give ground, pushed inexorably back by the raging storm of Bane’s onslaught. Each time he tried to change tactics or switch forms, Bane anticipated, reacted, and seized the advantage.
The outcome was inevitable. Bane was simply too strong in the Force. Only some unexpected maneuver could save Kas’im, but they had fought too many times in the past for him to surprise Bane now. Over the course of his training Bane had seen every possible sequence, series, move, and trick with the double-bladed lightsaber, and he knew how to counter and nullify them all.
The Blademaster became desperate. Leaping, spinning, ducking, rolling: he was wild and reckless in his retreat, seeking now only to escape with his life. But he didn’t know the Temple like Bane did. Bane kept the routes to the outside cut off, slowly herding his opponent into a dead-end hallway.
Recognizing what was happening, Kas’im blew open the heavy door of a side room with the Force and dived inside. Bane knew there was no other exit, and he paused at the threshold of the room to savor his victory.
The Twi’lek stood in the center of the empty chamber, panting heavily, stooped ever so slightly, his head bowed. He looked up when Bane stepped through the doorway. But when his gaze met Bane’s, there was no hint of defeat in his eyes.
“You should have finished me when you had the chance,” he said. There were fewer than five meters between them, but it was just enough space for Kas’im to give the hilt of his lightsaber a quick twist. The long handle separated in the middle, and suddenly he was armed not with one double-bladed lightsaber, but with a pair of single blades, one in each hand.
Bane hesitated. Few of the students at the Academy had even attempted to use two sabers at once. The Blademaster had always discouraged them from this variation of the fourth form, saying it was inherently flawed. Now, as he saw the cruel and cunning expression on his enemy’s face, Bane understood the real truth.
The battle was rejoined, but now it was Bane who was in full retreat. Without proper training, even his enormous command of the Force was unable to anticipate the unfamiliar sequences of the two-handed fighting style. His mind was flooded with a million options of what his opponent might attempt, and he had no experience to draw on to eliminate any of them. Overwhelmed, he staggered back, floundering with the desperation of a drowning man.
Within the first few passes Bane knew he couldn’t win. Kas’im had trained his entire life for this moment. After years of study, he’d mastered all seven forms of the lightsaber. Then he’d honed his skill for decades, perfecting every move and sequence until he had become the perfect weapon and the greatest living swordsman in the galaxy. Maybe the greatest swordsman ever. Bane was no match for him.
The Blademaster was unrelenting in his pressure. He seemed to wield six blades rather than two: he attacked with a peculiar rhythm designed to keep his foe off balance, coming in with one blade high and the other low at the same time, striking from opposite sides at odd and opposing angles. Bane had no option but to fall back … and back … and back. He was fighting now with a single purpose: somehow escaping with his life. One hope gave him the strength to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds; one advantage the Blademaster had lacked during his own retreat. He knew the layout of the Temple, and he was able to work himself slowly toward the exit.
Battling through the halls and corridors, the combatants rounded a corner to bring them in sight of the Rakatan Temple’s only entrance: the wide archway and the small landing beyond, with the wide staircase leading back down to the ground nearly twenty meters below. In the instant it took Kas’im to recognize where they were and realize that his opponent might still escape, Bane thrust out with the Force. He knocked the Twi’lek off balance for a brief second, then backflipped out through the archway and onto the landing. He dropped into a crouch, still facing his opponent. But in his haste Bane had leapt too far; he was balanced precariously on the precipice of the uppermost stair, the steps falling sharply away behind him.
Kas’im responded by using the Force to knock Bane backward, sending him tumbling down the great stone staircase, away from the Blademaster. The fall would have broken his neck—or at least fractured an arm or a leg—if Bane hadn’t cocooned himself in the Force. Even so he reached the bottom bruised, battered, and momentarily stunned.
On the landing high above Kas’im stood beneath the massive arch of the Temple entrance, staring down at him.
“I will follow you wherever you run,” he said. “Wherever you go I will eventually find you and kill you. Don’t live your life in fear, Bane. Better to end it now.”
“I agree,” Bane replied, hurling out the wave of Force energy he had been gathering during the Blademaster’s speech.
There was nothing subtle about Bane’s attack: the massive shock wave shook the very foundations of the great Rakatan Temple. The concussive blast had enough power to shatter every bone in Kas’im’s body and pulverize his flesh into a mass of pulpy liquid. But at the last possible instant he threw up a shield to protect himself from the attack.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t shield the Temple around him. The walls exploded into great chunks of rubble. The archway collapsed in a shower of stone, burying Kas’im beneath tons of rock and mortar. A second later the rest of the roof caved in, drowning out the Twi’lek’s dying screams with a deafening rumble.
Bane watched the spectacle of the Temple’s implosion from the safety of the ground at the foot of the stairs. Billowing clouds of dust rolled out from the wreckage and down the stairs toward him. Exhausted by the long lightsaber battle and drained by the sudden unleashing of the Force, he simply lay there until he was covered in a layer of fine white powder.
Eventually he struggled wearily to his feet. Reaching out with the Force, he sought some sign that Kas’im might still be alive beneath the mountain of stone. He felt nothing. Kas’im—his mentor, the only instructor at the Academy who had ever actually helped him—was dead.
Darth Bane, Dark Lord of the Sith, turned his back and walked away.
24
There was neither time nor reason to mourn Kas’im’s death. For all his use in the past, he had become simply an obstacle in Bane’s path. An obstacle that was now gone. Yet his arrival on Lehon had prompted Bane to action. For too long he had separated himself from the events of the galaxy, seeking wisdom, understanding, and power. With the Temple’s destruction there was no reason for him to remain on the Unknown World. And so he began the long trek through the jungle on foot, following the same path Kas’im had taken only hours before.
He could have used the Force to summon another rancor to speed him along, but he wanted time to think about what had happened … and how he would deal with the Brotherhood.
Kaan had perverted the entire Sith order, transforming it into a sickly assemblage of mewling sycophants. He had tricked them all into believing they could achieve victory over the Jedi through martial might, but Bane knew better. The Jedi were many, and they gained strength when united against a common foe: that was the nature of the light side. The key to defeating them wasn’t fleets or armies. Secrecy and deception were the weapons to bring them down. Victory could only come through subtlety and cunning.
Subtlety was something Kaan lacked. If he had been smart, he would have sent Kas’im to Lehon in the guise of a disgruntled follower. The
Blademaster could have arrived with a tale of how he had turned his back on the Brotherhood. Bane would have accepted him as an ally. He would have been suspicious, of course, but over time his vigilance would have waned. Sooner or later he would have let his guard down, and Kas’im could have killed him. Assassination was quick, clean, and effective.
Instead, Kas’im had come and issued an open challenge, following the rules of some foolish code of honor. There was no honor in his end; there was no such thing as a noble death. Honor was a lie, a chain that wrapped itself around those foolish enough to accept it and dragged them down to defeat. Through victory my chains are broken.
Bane followed the rancor’s trail through the trees without incident; the denizens of the jungle steered well clear of him. He caught a brief glimpse of a pack of six-legged felines scavenging the corpse of a rancor along the path, but they scattered at his approach. They waited a long time after he was gone before slinking back to continue their meal.
By the time he arrived at the beach he had devised his plan. Kas’im’s ship was sitting on the sand beside his own, and he quickly stripped it of supplies, including the message drones. He lugged them over to his own vessel, then made a quick inspection of the Valcyn. Finding all systems in working order, he boarded. Before liftoff, he programmed a course into the message drone using coordinates he had downloaded from Kas’im’s ship. A few minutes later, the Valcyn launched from the Unknown World’s surface, climbing higher and higher until it broke through the atmosphere into the black void of space. Bane punched in the hyperspace coordinates of his destination, then discharged the message drone.
The drone would reach Ruusan within a few days, offering Kaan a truce and delivering a gift—a gift he suspected Kaan would be too foolish and vain to recognize for what it really was.
The Brotherhood would never defeat the Jedi. And as long as they existed, the Sith would be tainted, befouled like a well poisoned at the source. Bane had to destroy them. All of them. To do that, he’d have to use the weapons Kaan had been too proud or too blind to use against him: deception and betrayal. The weapons of the dark side.
“I don’t like splitting our squads like this,” Pernicar whispered, following closely at Lord Hoth’s heel. The general looked back along the ragtag line of soldiers trudging through the forest. Fewer than a score in total, half starved, most wounded and ill equipped, they looked more like refugees than warriors in the Army of Light. They were carrying supplies from the drop point back to the camp, as were two other caravans taking different routes.
“It’s too dangerous to travel in one large group,” Hoth insisted. “We need these supplies. Splitting us into three caravans gives us a better chance that at least some of them will make it back to camp.”
Hoth glanced back along the path they had come, wary of signs of pursuit. The rains had stopped nearly a week earlier, but the ground was still soft. The passing of his troops left deep impressions in the loamy ground.
“Even a blind Gamorrean could track us now,” he grumbled. Silently he wished for a return of the concealing rains he had so often cursed these past few months while sitting huddled and shivering beneath inadequate shelters fashioned from leaves and fallen branches.
Yet he knew it wasn’t trackers they had to worry about. He cast out with the Force, trying to sense hidden enemies lying in wait in the trees ahead. Nothing. Of course if there were any Sith, they would be projecting false images to conceal themselves for their—
“Ambush!” one of the points screamed, and then the Sith were upon them. They came from everywhere: warriors wielding lightsabers, soldiers armed with blasters and vibroblades. The clash of durasteel and the hiss of crossing energy blades mingled with the screams of the living and the dying: screams of rage and triumph; of agony and despair.
A volley of blasterfire ripped through his lines, taking down those Padawans too inexperienced to deflect the shots. A second volley tore through the melee. The bolts ricocheted wildly as Sith and Jedi alike batted them aside, doing little real harm but adding to the chaos. Lord Hoth stood in the thickest of the fighting, hewing down foes foolish enough to come in range of his fierce weapon. His nostrils were filled with the greasy-sweet stench of charred flesh, and a wall of bodies was mounting around him. And still they kept coming, swarming over him like carrion beetles on a fresh kill, seeking to drag him down by sheer numbers.
Pernicar vanished beneath the sea of enemies, and Hoth redoubled his efforts to reach his fallen friend. He was unstoppable in his fury, like the devastating storms of the Maw itself. When he reached him, Pernicar was already dead. Just as the rest of them soon would be.
An explosion on the edge of the battle briefly drew his attention skyward. One eager minion of the Sith lunged forward, seeking glory beyond her wildest expectations by trying to kill the mighty general while he was distracted. Hoth never even turned his gaze, but merely cast out with the Force, imprisoning her in a stasis field. She stood helpless, frozen in place until struck down by the careless follow-through from a vibroblade wielded by one of her own side.
Her death barely even registered in Hoth’s conscious thoughts. He was focused on the four swoopbikes barreling down on the battle, their heavy guns pounding into the enemy lines. The Sith ambush scattered, unable or unwilling to stand against heavy air support. It took all of Hoth’s Jedi training not to chase after them and hack them down from behind as they fled into the safety of the trees.
A moment later the swoops landed to cheers from the dozen or so Jedi still standing. Lord Valenthyne Farfalla, looking as fastidiously proper as ever, dismounted and bowed low before his general.
“I heard you were bringing supplies, my lord,” he said, rising with all the affected elegance of a Coruscant Senator. “We thought we’d come give you an escort.”
“There are two other caravans,” Hoth snapped. “Instead of standing here gloating, you should be heading out to help them.”
Farfalla pursed his lips in displeasure, a peevish, pouty expression. “We have other swoops escorting them already.” He hesitated, as if considering whether to say anything more. Hoth shot him an angry look that all but screamed at him to remain silent.
Despite this—or maybe because of it—he added, “I thought you’d be more welcoming to my reinforcements.”
“You’ve been gone for months!” Hoth snarled. “While you’ve been out playing diplomat, we’ve been stuck here in a war.”
“I did as I promised,” Farfalla responded coldly. “I’ve brought three hundred Jedi reinforcements. They’ll be in your camp as soon as we have enough fighters to break our transports through the Sith planetary blockade.”
“Little comfort to those who gave their lives waiting for you to arrive,” Hoth shot back.
Farfalla glanced at the corpses scattered on the ground. Seeing Pernicar among them, his expression fell. He crouched down beside the body and whispered a few short words, then touched the fallen soldier once in the center of his brow before standing up once more.
“Pernicar was my friend, too,” he said, his tone softer now. “His death pains me as much as it does you, General.”
“I doubt that,” Hoth muttered angrily. “You weren’t even here to see it.”
“Do not let your grief consume you,” Farfalla warned, the ice back in his voice. “That path leads to the dark side.”
“Don’t you dare speak to me of the dark side!” Hoth shouted, jabbing an angry finger in Farfalla’s face. “I’m the one who’s been here battling Kaan’s Brotherhood! I know its ways better than anyone! I’ve seen the pain and suffering it brings. And I know what it will take to defeat it. I need soldiers. Supplies. I need Jedi willing to fight the enemy with the same hatred they feel for us.” He let his finger drop and turned away. “What I don’t need is some prancing dandy lecturing me on the dangers of the dark side.”
“Pernicar’s death is not your fault,” Farfalla said, coming forward to place a comforting hand on Hoth’s shoulder. “Let go
of your guilt. There is no emotion. There is peace.”
Hoth wheeled around and slapped his hand away. “Get away from me! Take your blasted reinforcements and run back to Coruscant like the mincing cowards you are! We don’t need your kind here!”
Now it was Farfalla who turned away, stomping angrily back to his swoopbike while the rest of the group watched in silent shock and horror. He threw one long leg over the seat and fired up the engines.
“Maybe the other Jedi were right about you!” he said, shouting to be heard over the roar of his swoop. “This war has consumed you. Driven you to madness. Madness that will lead you to the dark side!”
Hoth didn’t bother to watch as Farfalla and the other swoops sped off into the distance. Instead he crouched down beside the body of his oldest friend and wept at his brutal, senseless end.
When Githany finally arrived, Kaan had to keep himself from snapping at her. She had already seen him with his guard down: uncertain, unsure. He had to be careful when dealing with her now, lest he lose her allegiance. And he needed her more than ever.
Instead he spoke in a casual tone that held only a hint of icy disapproval beneath its surface. “I sent for you nearly three hours ago.”
She flashed him a fierce, savage smile. “There was a sortie going out against one of the Jedi supply caravans. I decided to go with them.”
“I haven’t heard the reports yet. What was the result?”
“It was glorious, Lord Kaan!” She laughed. “Three more Masters, six Jedi Knights, a handful of Padawans … all dead!”
Kaan nodded his approval. The tide of battle was ever changing on Ruusan, and with the end of the rainy season the pendulum had swung back in favor of the Sith. Of course he knew it was more than a change of weather that had restored the morale of his troops and brought them a string of resounding victories.