Rule of Two Page 8

  Yet another part of her wanted to go back to the fleet. Bane had warned that her apprenticeship would be a long and difficult struggle. She was tired of struggling. And Bane had abandoned her. Bordon, on the other hand, had offered her his home; he’d offered to let her be part of his family. What would be so wrong about simply accepting his offer? Bane had said she was the chosen heir to the legacy of the ancient Sith, but was that really what she wanted?

  Before she could come up with an answer she heard a noise, and looked up to see Wend, the younger of Bordon’s two sons, coming in from the cockpit to talk to her. She guessed he was somewhere around thirteen—only a few years older than she was.

  “Papa says you don’t have any family,” he said by way of greeting.

  Zannah didn’t know what to say, so she only nodded.

  “Did they die in the war?” Wend asked. “Did the Sith kill them?”

  She shrugged, unwilling to elaborate in case she inadvertently gave away some detail that would expose her façade.

  “My mother was a soldier,” Wend told her. “She was very brave. She went to fight the Sith when they first came to Ruusan.”

  “What happened to her?” She only asked the question because it was expected and it would have seemed odd if she hadn’t. She didn’t want to do anything to draw unwanted attention to herself.

  “She died at the Fourth Battle of Ruusan. Killed by the Sith. Papa says—”

  “Wend!” came Bordon’s voice from the cockpit. “Get back up here. Let Rain have some peace and quiet.”

  The boy gave her a shy smile, then turned and left her alone again with her thoughts. Thanks to his words, however, she’d made her decision.

  Bordon had offered to take her in. He’d offered to make her part of his family. He was tempting her with a simple but happy life. But his words offered nothing except empty promises. Peace is a lie.

  What good were family or friends if you didn’t have the strength to protect them? Bordon had lost his wife, and Tallo and Wend had lost their mother. When the Sith came they’d been powerless to save the one they most loved.

  Zannah knew what it was like to feel powerless. She knew what it was like to have the things she valued above all else taken from her. And she had vowed to never let it happen again.

  Bordon and his family were victims—slaves bound by the chains of their own weakness. Zannah refused to be a victim any longer. Bane had promised to teach her the ways of the dark side. He would show her how to unleash the power within and free herself from the shackles of the world.

  Through power I gain victory. Through victory my chains are broken!

  The realization of what she was—the acceptance of her destiny—spurred Zannah into action. She tried to call upon the Force to give her strength, but she was still too exhausted from her previous exertions to use her talents. Undaunted, she began to rummage through the supply crates in the cargo hold, looking for something she could use to stop the shuttle and her crew from bringing her to the rest of the fleet.

  She found what she was looking for just as Tallo entered the hold, catching her red-handed.

  “Papa wanted me to see if you—Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Zannah wrapped her hand around the grip of the blaster a split second before Tallo crashed into her, tackling her to the ground.

  “You kriffing little thief!” the boy swore at her, trying to pin her to the ground and pull the weapon from her hand. He outweighed Zannah by thirty kilos, but she fought with a savage desperation that kept him from getting a firm grip on her as they wrestled on the floor.

  Drawn by the sounds of their struggle, Bordon came running into the room.

  “What the blazes is going on here!” he shouted.

  In that exact instant the blaster discharged. It was impossible to say whose finger had been on the trigger; Tallo and Zannah were each clutching at the pistol with both hands in their efforts to wrest possession of it from the other. But through ill luck or dark fate, when the bolt was fired the barrel of the weapon was pointed squarely at Tallo. The impact left a gaping wound in the center of his chest, killing him instantly.

  The young man’s hands went limp and fell away from the blaster. His body toppled forward, pinning Zannah’s legs beneath its weight. Across the room Bordon’s eyes flew wide in horror. With a scream of anguish he lunged forward to help his son.

  Seeing the father of the boy she had just killed rushing toward her, Zannah acted on instinct and fired the weapon again. The bolt caught Bordon just above the belt, cutting off his cry and knocking him to his knees. He let out a low grunt of pain as he clutched at the smoking hole in his gut, then reached a bloody hand out toward Zannah. She cried out in fear and disgust and fired again, ending Bordon’s life.

  “Bordon!” Irtanna’s voice came over the shipboard intercom. “I heard blasterfire! What’s happening back there?”

  Moving quickly, Zannah squirmed out from under Tallo’s corpse and ran up to the cockpit. She arrived to find Wend still harnassed into his passenger’s seat, trying to turn around to see what was going on. Irtanna was just rising from her chair to go help Bordon. She’d had to engage the autopilot before she could leave her seat, and the delay had given Zannah the precious seconds she’d need to gain the upper hand.

  “Sit back down and don’t move!” Zannah shouted, pointing the blaster at Irtanna. Her voice sounded thin and hollow in the tight confines of the cockpit—the voice of a panicky child.

  Irtanna hesitated, then obeyed.

  “What happened?” the woman asked, her tone carefully neutral. “Is anybody hurt?”

  “Plot a course for Onderon,” Zannah ordered, refusing to answer the question. She could barely hear herself speak above the deafening thump of her racing heart.

  “Okay,” Irtanna said slowly, reaching up to punch the coordinates into the ship’s command console. “I’ll do what you want. Just stay calm.” The ship’s autonav chimed to acknowledge the new destination, and the woman half turned in her seat so she could look the young girl holding her hostage square in the eye. “Rain, put the blaster down.” There was a cool self-assurance in her words, and a grim determination on her face.

  “I’m not Rain,” the girl retorted through clenched teeth. “My name is Zannah!”

  “Whoever you are,” Irtanna said, standing up slowly, “you’re going to give me that blaster.”

  “Don’t move or I’ll shoot!” Zannah warned, her voice rising shrilly. How can she be so calm? she thought, even as she struggled to slow her own breathing down. She was the one with the blaster, but somehow she felt like she was losing control of the situation.

  “No,” the young woman replied calmly, taking a single step toward her. “You won’t shoot me. You’re not a killer.”

  The memory of the two dead Jedi back on Ruusan flashed through Zannah’s mind, followed quickly by the image of Bordon and his son lying lifeless in the cargo hold.

  “Yes, I am,” she whispered as she pulled the trigger.

  Irtanna managed a faint gasp of surprise, then collapsed to the ground—a quick and clean death. Zannah waited a second to confirm she was gone, then turned to point the blaster at Wend. He had watched the encounter unfold as if paralyzed, not even bothering to undo the buckle of his safety harness.

  “Don’t kill me!” he begged, squirming beneath the chair’s restraints.

  She could actually sense the fear emanating from him. She felt the familiar heat of the dark side flare to life within her, responding to the plight of her victim, feeding itself on his terror. It flowed through her like a wave of liquid fire, burning away her guilt and uncertainty and strengthening her resolve.

  Zannah’s mind was filled with a great and sudden realization: fear and pain were an inevitable part of existence. And it was far better to inflict them on others than to suffer them herself.

  “Please don’t shoot,” Wend whimpered, making one last plea for his life. “I’m just a kid. Like you.”

/>   “I’m not a kid,” Zannah said as she pulled the trigger. “I’m a Sith.”

  7

  Bane could hear the whine of the Valcyn’s engines as the ship sliced through the upper layers of Dxun’s atmosphere, protesting as he pushed the vessel to her very limits. Normally the trip from Ruusan to Onderon’s oversized moon would have taken a T-class cruiser like the Valcyn between four and five days. Bane had covered the distance in just over two.

  Within hours of leaving Ruusan—and Zannah—behind, he had been cursed with the return of the almost unbearable headaches. And with them had come an unwanted and most unwelcome companion. The spectral shade of Lord Kaan loomed over him in the cockpit for the entire first day of the trip, a visible manifestation of the damage Bane’s mind had suffered from the thought bomb. The spirit never spoke, merely watched him with its accusatory gaze, a constant presence on the edges of Bane’s awareness.

  The ghostly apparition had driven Bane to adopt an irresponsible, even dangerous, pace for the journey. He had pushed the Valcyn far beyond the recommended safety parameters, as if part of him was trying to use the speed of the ship to outrun his own madness. He was desperate to reach Dxun so he could find the tomb of Freedon Nadd and hopefully discover some way to rid himself of the torturous hallucinations.

  Kaan had disappeared toward the end of the first day of his journey, only to be replaced by an even worse visitation. It wasn’t the founder of the Brotherhood of Darkness that hovered beside him now, but Qordis—the former head of the Sith Academy on Korriban. Pale and semi-translucent, the figure was otherwise an almost perfect replica of what the Sith Lord had looked like at the time of their final meeting, when Bane had killed him. Tall and gaunt, Qordis had skeletal features that seemed more at home on a spirit than they ever had on a being of flesh and blood. Unlike Kaan, however, Qordis actually spoke to him, spewing forth an endless litany of blame, denouncing everything Bane had accomplished.

  “You betrayed us,” the phantom said, extending a long, thin finger topped with a talonlike nail. Bane didn’t need to look at it to know the finger would be adorned with the heavy bejeweled rings Qordis had worn in life. “You destroyed the Brotherhood, you brought victory to the Jedi. And now you flee the scene like a craven thief in the night.”

  I’m not a coward! Bane thought. There was no point in voicing the words aloud; the vision was all in his mind. Speaking with it would only be a sign that his mental condition was further deteriorating. I did what had to be done. The Brotherhood was an abomination. They had to be destroyed!

  “The Brotherhood had knowledge of the dark side. Wisdom that is lost forever because of you.”

  Bane was growing weary of the all-too-familiar refrain. He’d had this conversation with himself before he decided to destroy Kaan and his followers, and now he was reliving it again and again through the delusions of his wounded mind. Yet he refused to allow any doubts or uncertainties to weaken his resolve; he had done what was necessary.

  The Brotherhood had lost its way. They had fallen from the true path of the dark side. All the study and training Qordis put prospective students through at the Academy was worthless.

  “If that was true,” the apparition countered, answering his unspoken arguments, “then how do you explain your current mission? Your claim to reject my teachings, yet I was the one who discovered the location of Freedon Nadd’s lost tomb.”

  You didn’t discover anything. You’re just a hallucination. And Qordis may have stumbled on this information, but he didn’t know what to do with it. A true Sith Master would have left Ruusan to seek out Nadd’s tomb. Instead he decided to stay and help Kaan play army with the Jedi.

  “Excuses and justifications,” the spirit replied. “Kaan was a warrior. But you would rather hide from your enemies than fight them.”

  Bane gritted his teeth as the Valcyn hit the turbulence of Dxun’s heavy cloud cover. The ship was still going too fast, forcing him to clutch the steering yoke so hard to keep his craft on course that his knuckles turned white. He heard the creaks and groans as the over-stressed hull sliced through the thick atmosphere.

  “You betrayed us,” Qordis said again.

  Bane swore under his breath, doing his best to ignore the ramblings of the image conjured up by his own mind. How many times had he heard this exact conversation in the past day? Fifty? A hundred? It was like listening to a busted holoprojector repeating the same message over and over.

  “You destroyed the Brotherhood, you brought victory to the Jedi. And now you flee the scene like a craven thief in the night.”

  “Shut up!” Darth Bane screamed, no longer able to contain his rage. “You’re not even real!”

  He lashed out with the Force, releasing an explosion of dark side energy inside the cockpit, determined to blast the offending vision into oblivion. Qordis did vanish, but Bane’s victory was short-lived. Emergency lights began flashing inside the ship, accompanied by the shrill whooping of a critical failure alarm.

  The ship’s console had been fried by the burst of power he’d unleashed. Cursing Qordis and his own reckless display of emotion, Bane began a desperate struggle to somehow bring the vessel in for a safe landing. From all around him he could hear the ghostly, mocking laughter of Qordis.

  The Valcyn was in free fall, plummeting straight down toward Dxun’s heavily forested surface. Bane yanked back on the yoke with all the strength of his massive frame, managing to redirect the ship into a shallower angle of approach. But if he didn’t find some way to decelerate, it wasn’t going to matter.

  He punched at the controls, trying to restart the engine thrusters with one hand while the other still struggled to keep the yoke steady. Getting no response, he closed his eyes and reached out with the Force, digging deep into the burned-out circuits and melted wires of the ship.

  His mind raced through the labyrinth of electronics that controlled all the Valcyn’s systems, reassembling and rerouting them to find a configuration that would restore power to the dead ignition switch. His first attempt resulted in a shower of sparks shooting up from the control panel, but his second effort was rewarded with the roar of the thrusters coming to life.

  Bane managed to get the engines into full reverse only a few hundred meters above Dxun’s surface. The ship’s descent slowed, but didn’t even come close to stopping. A split second before the Valcyn slammed into the forest below, Bane wrapped himself in the Force, creating a protective cocoon he could only hope would be strong enough to survive the unavoidable collision.

  The Valcyn hit the treetops at a forty-five-degree angle. The landing gear sheared off on impact, tearing loose with a thunderous crack. Wide gashes appeared in the sides of the ship, the hull hurtling into thick branches and boughs with enough force to tear through the reinforced sheets of metal and peel them away from their frame.

  Inside the cockpit Bane was flung against walls and ceiling. He was spun, tossed, and slammed against the sides of the cockpit as the vessel careened through the trees. Even the Force couldn’t fully shield him from the devastating crash as the ship carved a kilometer-long swath of burned and broken foliage before slamming into the soft, muddy ground of a swamp and finally coming to rest.

  For several seconds Bane didn’t move. His ship had been reduced to a smoking pile of scrap, but miraculously he had survived, saved by the dark side energies enveloping his form. He hadn’t escaped unscathed, however. His body was covered with painful bruises and contusions, his face and hands cut from fragments of shattered glass that had pierced his protective cocoon; his right bicep was bleeding heavily from a deep five-centimeter gash. His left shoulder had been dislocated and two ribs were broken, but neither had punctured a lung. His right knee was already swelling up, but there didn’t seem to be any cartilage or ligament damage. And he tasted blood in his mouth, oozing from the gap where two of his teeth had been knocked out. Fortunately, none of his wounds was life threatening.

  Bane rose to his feet slowly, favoring his injured knee.
What was left of the Valcyn had come to rest on her side, turning everything in the cockpit at a disorienting ninety-degree angle. Moving gingerly, Bane made his way to the emergency exit hatch, his left arm dangling all but useless from his side. Given the ship’s position, her exit hatch was now above him, facing the sky.

  Strong as he was, Bane knew he wouldn’t be able to pull himself to freedom with only one good arm. A Jedi might have been able to use the Force to heal his wounds, but Bane was a student of the dark side. Even if his ability to call upon the Force hadn’t been temporarily exhausted in surviving the crash, healing was not a skill the Sith were familiar with. Before he became a Sith Master, however, Bane had served as a soldier, where he had received basic medical field training.

  The Valcyn was equipped with an emergency medpac under the pilot’s seat. Inside it were healing stims he could use to treat the worst of his injuries. But when he made his way over to look under the seat, the kit was gone.

  Realizing it must have jarred loose during the crash, he rummaged around the cockpit until he found it. The outside of the kit was dented and slightly bent, but otherwise it appeared undamaged. It took him three tries to open the latch with only one good hand. When he finally succeeded, he was relieved to see that several of the health stims had survived intact.

  He removed one and injected it directly into his thigh. Within seconds he could feel his body’s own natural healing properties beginning to kick into overdrive in response to the healing shot. The blood flowing from his cuts began to clot. More important, the shot helped dull the pain from his swollen knee and broken ribs, allowing him to walk and breathe more freely.