“I didn’t think anyone could keep up with me through the forest,” he said, defeated as he opened the door to his small hut. “You might as well come inside and get out of the cold.”
The interior was simple but clean, and just large enough for the two men to share the space without feeling cramped. The only furnishing was a small sleeping mat in the corner. Glowing embers in a pit at the room’s center threw off enough heat that Johun was able to remove his thick winter robe and lay it beside him as he sat cross-legged on the floor.
His host also shed the heaviest of his garments, peeling away multiple layers before kneeling across from his uninvited guest. Johun guessed the man was in his early twenties, only a few years younger than the Jedi himself. He had dark scruffy hair and a long scraggly beard; there was a wildness in his eyes. But it was only when Johun noticed he was missing his right hand that he recognized him as the famed Healing Hermit of Ruusan.
“Do you know who I am?” Johun asked.
“I know you’re a Jedi,” the hermit replied. “That’s why I couldn’t shake you.”
“My name is Johun Othone. I’m in charge of the project to build a monument to those who sacrificed their lives here on Ruusan.”
Johun waited, giving the other man a chance to respond or reply. But the hermit simply stared at the ground, his good hand resting in his lap, clasping the stump of his right arm.
“Why did you wreck our equipment at the construction site?”
He half expected the hermit to make some type of denial; after all, Johun hadn’t actually caught him in the act. But instead he freely admitted what he had done.
“I wanted to stop you. I figured if I cost you enough time and credits you would give up and go back where you came from.”
“Why?” Johun asked, puzzled at the venom in the hermit’s voice.
“We don’t want your kind on Ruusan,” the younger man snapped. “You have no right to be here!”
“I served with General Hoth in the Army of Light,” Johun answered, trying to stay calm despite the righteous indignation he felt. “I saw my friends die. I saw them sacrifice themselves to save the galaxy from the Sith.”
“I know all about the Sith,” the hermit sneered. “And the Jedi, too. I saw the war with my own eyes. I know what happened.
“Look at what your war did to this world!” he shouted, his voice accusing. “Every year the snow falls, and with each winter more and more animals die from the cold. Ten years after your so-called victory, entire species are still being driven to extinction by what you caused!”
“I am sorry for the suffering this world has endured,” Johun said. “But the Jedi cannot be held responsible for everything. The greatest harm to this planet was done by the Sith.”
“Jedi, Sith, you’re all the same,” the hermit spat. “You were so blinded by your hatred of each other you couldn’t see the consequences of what you were doing. And in the end your general marched down into the underground caverns to face Kaan’s followers, knowing he would unleash the devastation of the thought bomb on this world.”
“Hoth sacrificed himself so that others could be saved,” Johun protested.
“The thought bomb was an abomination! Hoth should have done everything in his power to keep Kaan from using it. Instead he intentionally forced his hand.”
“There was no other choice,” Johun answered, defending his former Master’s actions. “The detonation of the thought bomb destroyed the Brotherhood and forever rid the galaxy of the Sith.”
The hermit laughed loudly. “Is that what you believe? The Sith are gone?” He shook his head and muttered, “Poor, deluded little Jedi.”
“What do you mean?” Johun demanded. He felt an icy fist closing around his guts. “You don’t believe the Sith were wiped out?”
“I know they weren’t wiped out,” the hermit answered. “One of the Dark Lords survived, and he took my cousin as his apprentice.”
Johun’s head snapped back as if he’d been slapped. “Your cousin?”
It sounded crazy, completely implausible. But the hermit, despite his wild eyes, didn’t strike Johun as mad.
“How do you know this?”
“After the thought bomb exploded, I went down into the tunnels to see what was left,” the hermit whispered, his expression grim as he dredged up dark memories from his past. “I saw them there, my cousin and Lord Bane.” He held his stump up before his face. “They gave me this.”
Johun’s mind was reeling. He remembered the mercenaries he’d encountered in the aftermath of the battle, and their tales of a Sith Master who had brutally slain their companions. Though he’d later recanted his position and dismissed their account in the face of Farfalla’s irrefutable logic, part of him had always clung to the belief that their story was true.
With no evidence and no leads, he had abandoned his efforts to prove that a Sith Master had escaped Ruusan alive. Now, inside the walls of a tiny mud hut, he had stumbled across the proof that had eluded him a decade ago.
“You saw a Sith named Lord Bane?” Johun pressed eagerly, looking for greater confirmation. “How do you know it was him?”
“For a time I was part of Kaan’s army,” the hermit whispered softly. “We all knew who Bane was.”
“This … this is unbelievable!” Johun stammered, all thoughts of the monument and the vandalism that had led him to the hermit gone from his mind. “We have to tell the Jedi Council! We need to go to Coruscant as soon as possible!”
“No.”
The refusal was delivered with such simple finality, it stopped Johun cold. “But … the Sith are still out there. The Council must be warned.”
The hermit shrugged. “So warn them. My place is here on Ruusan.”
“They won’t believe me,” Johun admitted. “They’ll want to question you themselves.”
“I’ve seen what happens when the Jedi and Sith go to war. I won’t be part of it again. I won’t go to Coruscant.”
“You were vandalizing Republic property,” Johun reminded him. “I could arrest you and bring you there to face charges.”
The hermit laughed again. “And then what, Jedi? Torture me until I confess what I saw? Use your powers to twist my mind and make me say the words you want to hear? I’m sure the Council will believe you then.”
Johun frowned. The hermit was right; the only way the Council would believe him was if his testimony was freely given.
“Don’t you see what’s at stake?” Johun said, changing tactics. “You saw what happens when the Sith raise an army and go to war. If you come with me now, the Council will listen to your warning. We can seek out this Lord Bane and stop him before he has a chance to lure others to his cause.”
As he spoke he reached out to touch the hermit’s mind with the Force. He didn’t compel him to agree to the request; that wouldn’t serve his purpose here. Force persuasion was a temporary measure, and by the time they got back to Coruscant, the effects would have worn off and the hermit would know he had been manipulated, making him even more intractable. Instead Johun simply tried to make the man more willing to listen to reason, casting a veil of calm and tranquillity over his thoughts. He gently swept the other man’s bitterness and resentment to the side, allowing him to weigh the logic of his arguments unclouded by passion and emotion.
“Bane has gone into hiding,” he continued. “If we do not find him, he will reveal himself only when he has rebuilt the armies of the Sith, and the galaxy will be plunged once again into war. But if you come with me now, we can convince the Council to seek him out. Help me stop him, and we will prevent another war.”
The hermit stared at him for a long time before finally nodding his agreement. “If it means stopping another war, I will go with you to Coruscant.”
The chief librarian of the Jedi Archives was a venerable Cerean named Master Barra-Rona-Ban.
“Welcome to Coruscant, Padawan Nalia,” he said, rising from his seat to greet Zannah with a smile as she entered his room.
“How was your trip from Polus?”
Master Barra’s private quarters looked much as she had expected: a great number of journals, handwritten notes and datacards covered his small desk, organized into neat little piles. There was also a small viewscreen and a terminal that she suspected was linked to the main index catalog of the Archives, allowing Master Barra to reference it at will.
“The journey was long but uneventful,” she replied.
Her voice was calm and relaxed, though inside her heart was pounding. The illusion she projected of being an apprentice of the light side had served her well so far, but now she was face-to-face with a Jedi Master. If she made even the slightest mistake, all was lost.
“It was good to get away from the cold,” she added. Nalia, unlike her Master, had not been born on Polus: She had originally come from the tropical regions of Corsin.
The Cerean laughed, creasing up the wrinkles on his tall, cone-shaped forehead. “Master Anno would disagree with you, I suspect.”
She replied with a gentle laugh of her own. “My Master sends his regards,” she said, recalling from the profile that Anno and Barra had briefly studied together at the Academy here on Coruscant. “Do you have any plans to visit him on Polus in the near future?”
“I’m afraid such a journey would be impossible,” he replied with a sigh. “The Archives require my constant attention.”
“Master Anno warned me you would say that,” she said, smiling. “He told me you would use any excuse to avoid ever visiting Polus again.”
“Not everyone takes to the ice and snow with the ardor of the Pyn’gani,” the Cerean admitted with a sly twinkle in his eye.
The exchange of pleasantries concluded, he returned to his seat and punched a key on his terminal, bringing up a large block of text on the screen.
“I have reviewed your request to access the Archives,” he told her, “and I believe we can accommodate you.”
He tapped the terminal again and inserted a datacard. The terminal hummed as encrypted data was loaded onto it.
“The Archives are available at all hours, day or night,” he informed her. “You will have clearance to access the general collection, but please remember that the contents of the analysis rooms and the chamber of Jedi Holocrons are restricted.”
“I don’t think they’ll be necessary for my research,” she assured him. “Master Anno was very specific in what he wanted me to look for.”
The datacard popped out of the terminal, the information download complete, and Master Barra handed it to Zannah.
“Insert this into any of the catalog terminals in the Archives whenever you wish to log in and look something up. Original works may not be removed from the premises, but you are free to copy any materials you find onto this disk for your personal use or collection.
“I’ve taken the liberty of preloading your disk with some seminal works that may be of interest to your research,” he added, smiling at her once again.
“Thank you, Master Barra,” Zannah said with a bow.
“How long do you expect to remain here on Coruscant?” he asked.
“A few days at most,” she answered. She doubted she could maintain the illusion that shielded her dark side powers from detection any longer than that. “Master Anno is anxious to continue his research. He wants me to return as soon as I have the information he needs.”
The Cerean nodded in understanding. “Of course. But while you are here, I hope you won’t spend all your time studying parasites and symbionts. You have a rare opportunity to explore all the knowledge and wonders of the galaxy, and I hope you will take advantage of it.”
“I will try, Master Barra,” Zannah promised, though she had no intention of staying a second longer than was necessary.
“Good luck with your research, Padawan Nalia,” the librarian said, dismissing her.
With another bow, Zannah turned and left his room, more confident in her mission than ever. If she could fool Master Barra, chief librarian of the Jedi Archives, into believing she was Nalia Adollu, she knew she could fool anyone.
18
The Mystic dropped out of hyperspace with a jolt. Through the cockpit viewport a large planet loomed only a few thousand kilometers away, its surface concealed beneath a thick mass of rolling gray clouds. Bane checked the nav computer, confirming via the coordinates that he had arrived at Tython.
Like all planets in the Deep Core, Tython was a world shrouded in mystery and legend. Some accounts held that the Jedi had visited this world during the era of the Great Hunt, three thousand years ago, to cleanse it of the fearsome terentateks, monstrous creatures that fed on the lifeblood of those sensitive to the Force.
Much older legends identified Tython as the original birthplace of the Jedi Order over twenty-five thousand years before. According to the tale, priests and philosophers of the world had the ability to draw upon a mystical energy they called Ashla; a power that represented all compassion and mercy in the universe. They were opposed by a rival group that drew their strength from Boga, the manifestation of raw passion and pure uncontrolled emotion.
The stories said that a great war ensued between the two groups, with the worshipers of Ashla emerging victorious. The first Jedi Knights supposedly had evolved from the survivors of the war, creating the first lightsabers in their initiation ceremonies. Many years later, the legend continued, some of these Jedi left Tython and braved the unstable hyperspace routes to share their beliefs with worlds beyond the Deep Core. And as they met and mingled with other civilizations, Ashla and Boga became more commonly known as the light and dark sides of the Force.
Bane didn’t know if the legend was true, but even if it was, it merely proved the superiority of the dark side and its inevitable conquest of the light. For though the followers of Ashla had supposedly defeated the followers of Boga, the dark side had prevailed in the end. Tython, revered by many as the birthplace of the Jedi Order itself, was now a bastion of dark side power, and the location of Belia Darzu’s hidden fortress.
Bane knew it was possible that other people still lived on Tython: descendants of the early Jedi who had survived for eons in the isolation of the Deep Core. But he had no interest in seeking them out, even if they existed. Armed with the information from Hetton’s datacard, he was heading straight for Belia’s stronghold.
Pushing forward on the yoke, he sent the Mystic plunging down into the atmosphere of the cloud-covered world. Breaking through the mist, he saw that the surface below was the color of ash; barren fields stretched endlessly beneath an unbroken mantle of gray and sunless sky.
He brought his ship in low, only a few hundred meters above the ground, as he raced toward the only feature visible on the horizon: a massive, two-towered citadel constructed entirely of black durasteel.
The building was square and measured 150 meters on each side. The exterior walls rose up thirty meters above the ground, and the only entrance appeared to be a massive, twenty-meter-wide gate on the face of the front wall. The towers stood on either side of the front wall, rising up another ten meters from the corners.
As he closed to within a few hundred meters, a barrage of ion cannon fire erupted from the towers. Bane pulled hard on the stick, banking the Mystic ninety degrees to starboard, narrowly avoiding the unexpected attack. Except for her technobeasts, Belia’s stronghold was supposed to be empty.
He circled and brought his ship in again, setting the targeting systems to lock on to the first of the two towers. The ion cannons roared again, and Bane barrel-rolled out of the line of fire as he opened up with the Mystic’s lasers, reducing one of the towers to a heap of molten slag as he flew by.
The Mystic’s sensors had detected no life-forms present during his pass, suggesting that the ion cannons were likely part of an automated defense system still active after almost three centuries. This theory was confirmed twenty seconds later when Bane used the exact same barrel-roll maneuver on his next attack run to eliminate the second tower; automated defenses
were nothing if not predictable.
He circled the citadel twice more, making a sensor and visual scan to confirm that there were no other threats before bringing his ship down to land on the barren ground a short distance from the stronghold’s entrance.
Drawing his lightsaber, he leapt from the cockpit and moved carefully forward until he stood before the black gate. It loomed above him, a giant blast door without handles, hinges, or a visible control panel. Gathering his power, he placed his left palm against the surface. The gate exploded, rupturing inward with a sharp bang that reverberated down the long, dark hallway leading into the fortress.
Bane stepped forward, wary and watching for any trick or trap that might await him. He could feel the power of the dark side in this place, but he detected no immediate threats to his person, and he proceeded cautiously.
Using glow rods to light his way, he explored the stronghold room by room, stirring up dust that had lain undisturbed for centuries. It was primarily a military base, the majority of the space taken up with the barracks and mess halls necessary to house and provide for an army of followers. But the rooms were deserted. Not even the vermin and insects one would expect in an abandoned building prowled the halls, though whether they were kept at bay by the dark side energy permeating the air or by some unknown means he couldn’t say.
As he moved deeper into the fortress, he began to come across Belia’s alchemy labs. Sealed beakers filled with strange-colored liquids rested atop long metal tables. Empty vats connected by coiled glass piping used to distill or separate mixtures lined the walls. In one room the hearts and brains of a dozen different species floated in specimen bottles, preserved forever in clear embalming fluid. Another lab contained notes and sketches tracking Belia’s efforts to transform living creatures into organic-droid hybrids.
Bane paused at these, glancing through them briefly before continuing on his way. He was unable to make sense of the cryptic scrawl; he needed to find Belia’s archives—and hopefully the Holocron where she had stored all her knowledge—if he was to comprehend her experiments.