To my quiet surprise, none of the locals tried to kill me in the five days following our arrival to Perlia. Presumably, they all remembered the big ship in the system crewed by people who, as far as they knew, were fanatically loyal to me, and might react to my death by glassing the entire world from orbit. Which I didn't think Kasteen would do, although Force help the galaxy if Vaylin relapsed, since unless the Jedi Order had another legendary hero in their ranks in the current era, there was pretty much nothing in the entire galaxy that could stand up to her.
In any case, the lack of assassination attempts didn't mean I could relax, far from it. The Regent hadn't been kidding about wanting to properly celebrate my return, and I'd spent three days participating in various ceremonies which had mostly consisted of standing still while other people made speeches, as well as having to make a few of my own about how happy I was to be back, and other, vague promises of peace, prosperity and security that the crowd ate up like starving Terentateks. Something, incidentally, which wasn't a spectacle for the faint of heart, as I knew from painful experience.
With the formal transition of power complete, I was now the Sovereign of Perlia, holding the kind of absolute authority most tyrants could only dream of – and the weirdest part of it all was, it was all completely legal under Republic law, as far as I and the analysts could see.
It seemed that, after my disappearance, the Perlian leadership had set me up as some kind of mythical savior figure, destined to return in Perlia's hour of need to save the planet. They could hardly have been more blatant in their efforts to legitimize their own rule by claiming the 'Regents' were only ruling until my return, but it had effectively left Trevellyan with no choice but to offer me the crown back when, against all odds, I had come back when Perlia needed me.
Which, once again, proved that the Force had a nasty sense of humor where I was concerned. Somehow, I couldn't help but think the Republic in general and the Jedi Order in particular wouldn't look kindly on Trevellyan following the letter of his ancient oath of office by handing over a full star system to a Sith Lord – but that was a problem I was already taking steps to address.
While I had been trapped in celebrations and red tape, the rest of my people had been able to get to work dealing with the aftermath of the raid, which was how I had eventually ended up here, sitting around a conference table within the building which had hosted Perlia's seat of governance for the last couple of millennia, ever since the locals had converted my old fortress, built in the style of Dromund Kaas, into a museum. I had sent a few engineers to check out the old building and see if its upper levels could be refitted for our use, but that would take some time.
"Based on the intelligence we were able to extract from the computers of the Dread Son and the other captured pirate ships, Tatooine seems the most likely destination for those vessels which managed to escape the system with some of our captured people on board," said Agent Malden.
The blue-skinned, red-eyed Chiss was an operative of Imperial Intelligence, and, though the internal hierarchy of the spooks had never made any sense to me, he appeared to be the leader of our small contingent of spies, saboteurs and non-Sith assassins. Given that he was an alien in the Sith-and-Human dominated Empire, that was quite the achievement, although since Intelligence were the ones typically called in to clean up the messes caused by other Sith Lords, I supposed they had to be more pragmatic in their choice of hires just to keep up with their workload.
"Tatooine," I repeated, buying time to search my memory for any information about that world. Besides myself, the briefing was attended by Vaylin, Kasteen, and several other representatives of the various factions which had been aboard the Invincible during our trip through time, either in person or by holo, and I didn't want to look stupid or ignorant in front of any of them.
I vaguely remembered it being an Outer Rim backwater, with two suns and nothing but sand, with all attempts at extracting anything of value out of it ending in dismal and costly failure. Yet for some reason, a number of important individuals had spent time on it during the Second Great Galactic War (and Force, how depressing it was that we needed to number those bloody affairs).
"I see," I said at last. Best to redirect the discussion to something I wouldn't look foolish for not knowing, I decided. "Do we have a count of how many Perlian citizens were kidnapped ?"
Through what I could only think of as a miracle, none of the ships we'd blown up with the Invincible had been carrying Perlian captives : the slaver ships had all jumped out of the system the moment we had arrived and announced our intentions. While it meant I now had to arrange a rescue, that was much preferable to the public relations nightmare that killing our own people, however accidentally, would have been.
"The situation across Perlia is still evolving," replied Malden. "Distinguishing between missing and captured people is difficult, but we estimate that around four to five thousand civilians were aboard the pirate ships who entered hyperspace after our arrival in the system."
A tiny fraction of Perlia's total population, but that wouldn't matter if I abandoned them. If I could trust that one thing had remained the same over the last three thousand years, it was that most sentients across the galaxy were driven by sentiment, not cold-blooded logic – which, having seen the alternative, I much preferred, since emotional people were far easier to deceive and manipulate.
"What do we know about the current political climate of Tatooine ?" I asked, looking for the best way to approach the situation.
"The world is technically part of the Outer Rim and the Republic's Arkanis sector. But its isolation and lack of natural resources have left it more or less abandoned and ignored by the rest of the galaxy," Malden answered promptly, having clearly expected the question. "However, the Hutt Cartels moved in a few decades ago and have effectively seized control of all local institutions. Everyone on Tatooine either works for the Cartels, or pays some kind of tax to them. Currently, the representative of the Cartels on the planet is one Jabba the Hutt, one of the most powerful crime lords in the galaxy."
Oh, brilliant. Of course it would be the karking Hutts. It wasn't enough that I'd already crossed paths with a pawn of a Sith Lord who'd managed to survive in a galaxy dominated by the Republic : I had to deal with those slugs, too. And given their long lifespans, they were much more likely to remember me in greater detail than the Republic, which would make handling with them even more complicated.
I really wished I could get Amberley's advice (she'd always been better at that kind of thing than me) but that wasn't possible. She was still recovering in a kolto tank aboard the Invincible, which I had expected : the injuries she'd sustained battling Vitiate's mad cultists had been significant, even though the medical droids had assured me she would make a full recovery in time.
At least I'd been able to explain what had happened to her before she had gone back under. She'd taken the news about as well as I'd expected : the serenity so valued by the Jedi didn't quite extend to remaining calm upon learning you'd been trust thousands of years into the future, and the only people left from your time were citizens of the Empire you'd spent most of your adult life (apart from the times we'd been together against common threats, which more often than not had been Sith who'd gone off the rails anyway) fighting against.
I took a deep breath, and called on the Force, drawing the Dark Side to me in order to freeze the gnawing fear at the core of my being and let me act with the confidence expected of me. Everyone in the room (except JURG-N and Vaylin) flinched, and frost spread over the floor and walls as the temperature plummeted. Not exactly subtle, and I could only guess as to how they would interpret it, but maintaining my image of complete control was my first priority.
"Vaylin," I said, and my apprentice immediately perked up. "Come forward."
She stepped out of from behind my chair where she'd been standing and observing the proceedings. She didn't kneel : I had never asked her to do it, and I never would, since that was all too likely to trigger a flashback to her time in Valkorion's 'care', which was unlikely to end well for everybody – and, most importantly, me.
"The Invincible cannot go to Tatooine to rescue our people," I began.
For once, I was speaking nothing less than the truth. The accident which had brought us here had shorted out the whole hyperdrive. Already, our engineers were working on repairing it, as well as checking out every technological advance which might have occurred during the last three and a half thousand years and could be used to upgrade the Invincible.
According to their reports which had reached my desk, hyperdrive technology was the one area in which the advancements since my time had been the most significant. Modern engines were far smaller and more powerful than the ones of my time (which, I had learned with some bemusem*nt, was now called the 'Old Republic' era). Refitting the Invincible with one of these engines would drastically increase its speed, although it would also put us in violation of a law forbidding the construction and use of ships over a measly six hundred meters length.
How the Republic could have thought this was a good idea, I had no idea : it had been part of something called the 'Ruusan Reformation' at the end of the last war between Jedi and Sith a thousand years ago, and my efforts to catch up on galactic history in between attending meetings and ceremonies hadn't gotten that far yet.
Of course, without access to the Holonet, both myself and the engineers were restricted to the local archives. The pirate fleet had destroyed the system's relays to silence any call for help, which, on the plus side, meant the rest of the galaxy was still ignorant of what had happened (although only a fool wouldn't have thought the Jedi had sensed the sudden return of a ship full of Sith soldiers and several Dark Side Force users, including someone as powerful as Vaylin).
However, the blackout wouldn't last long : if not for the fact that emergency and repair services were overwhelmed dealing with the damage caused by the pirates elsewhere, it would have already ended. I'd put it off by ordering efforts be focused elsewhere and saying that by the time the Republic sent help, we'd already have dealt with the issues anyway. But sooner or later our isolation would end, and once it did, the entire Republic would be drowned in footage of the raid, the Invincible's arrival, and my takeover of the planet.
Which meant that we were on a hard time limit to do everything possible to prepare for the inevitable moment when the rest of the galaxy heard about the return of the ancient Sith Lord Darth Cain and his takeover of a whole planet.
"Furthermore, the political situation prevents me from leaving Perlia at the moment," I continued, still speaking the truth. Well, I could leave, nobody would stop me, but it would be a bad idea. My authority over the Perlians, however based on their misinterpretation of old history it might be, was probably going to be needed to prevent tensions between the Invincible's crew and the local population, even with the prestige of having helped fight off the pirates. "So I will trust you with handling this task, Apprentice."
Vaylin smiled, with what I read to be a mix of pride and predatory anticipation. I would have felt bad for the Tatooine slavers, but, well, they were slavers.
"You will go to Tatooine aboard the Dread Son and every other pirate ship we captured during the battle, along with as many soldiers as we can pack inside them," I told her. "Agent Malden and Miss Sulla will accompany you : make sure to work with him and don't hesitate to rely on their expertise when needed."
Jenit Sulla was the leader of the Mandalorians who had sworn themselves to me. She was, in my opinion, a complete lunatic far too willing to risk the lives of the men and women under her command, but the fact she was always leading from the front meant that the rest of the Mandalorians loved her and would follow her into hell – something which, under my nominal command, I had asked of them more than once, always while being forced to accompany them.
"Take some of the acolytes as well; I trust you to decide which ones," I added, with a mental apology to poor Malden, who would have to handle an additional bunch of Darksiders. "Once there, you are to do whatever needs to be done to free the slaves and return our people to us."
It was massively overkill, but I didn't want the Perlians to think I'd skimped on assets if things went wrong. And it would also take some of my most problematic subordinates off my hands while I dealt with things on Perlia, with Malden to make sure they stayed on track.
"Yes, Teacher," replied Vaylin with a slight bow. "I swear to you that all of our lost people shall be returned, and those who dared harm them will pay the price of their crimes."
Malden and her departed, leaving me feeling quite pleased with how I had handled the whole thing. I got to stay in Perlia, protected by the Invincible, which was apparently the strongest vessel in the galaxy at the moment, while Vaylin got to go out and rescue a bunch of civvies, which would hopefully help with her many, many issues. Given that Tatooine was in the hands of the Hutts, her only opposition would be Hutts, slavers and those willing to work for them.
By the time the Holonet was restored and the Republic learned of my return, I'd be able to point to the rescue operation as a sign that I wasn't like those scary Sith in the history holos, and the Senate didn't need to send the entire Jedi Order after me. After all, the Republic had always been firmly anti-slavery, ever since its foundation by a bunch of former slaves of the Rakatas' Infinite Empire. It had been one of the fundamental differences between it and the Empire, and one of the reasons why I'd always thought the side on which I'd been born was doomed to lose the Great Galactic War.
As that weirdo Darth Imperius had ranted to me one evening we'd gone out drinking together (after a sequence of events that still didn't make sense to me looking back on it), using slaves in a galaxy with droids and advanced technology simply didn't make sense unless you were a petty sad*st getting off on dominating over sentients, and that was hardly conducive to running a civilization efficiently. Especially since the Sith Empire had always been at a population disadvantage compared to the Republic, so allowing every citizen to pursue education and become as useful as they could would have been the most logical thing to do … but then again, the whole thing had been built from the ground and run by an omnicidal maniac with delusions of godhood.
I had always been uncomfortable with the Empire's use of the practice myself, although for far more selfish reasons than Imperius. I knew all too well that slaves inevitably revolted, and as a Sith Lord, I would be among the first to die in such an uprising. I had done all I could to lower the use of slaves within my domain back in the day, and set up harsh punishments for the mistreatments of servants in the guise of 'preventing the waste of the Empire's resources', but I'd known my limits : I wasn't the kind of individual who could change the ingrained nature of the Empire.
In any case, it was clear that whoever Darth Sidious was, they must be operating from the Outer Rim, hiding far away from the Core and the Jedi Order. After all, given how powerful the Jedi and the Republic were in this era, what kind of idiot would be stupid enough to get anywhere close to Coruscant ? And while I was confident I could deal with one Sith Lord (I had done it enough times already), facing the entire might of the Jedi Order was another story.
Why exactly the Jedi hadn't dealt with slavery in the Outer Rim entirely in the thousand years since they'd defeated the last open Sith (according to Trevellyan, it had been some group calling themselves the 'Brotherhood of Darkness', which really told you everything you needed to know about how things had gone down the drain after the fall of the Empire), I had no idea. But if they were anything like the ones from my era, they wouldn't see any problem with a bunch of Force-sensitives killing a lot of criminals in order to free kidnapped people from slavery – Force knew they had done the same to the Empire's own slave camps enough times.
Yes, this would all work out, I told myself. And really, it was Tatooine. What was the worse that could happen ?
***
With a gesture of Vaylin's hand, the choker around the neck of the Twi'lek dancer girl snapped open, before the chain it had been attached to wrapped itself around the throat of her master. Another hand motion then caused Tatooine's slaver king to rise into the air, the chain burrowing into the layers of fat around his enormous neck as it strangled him. The disgusting slug hung in the air like a worm on a hook, twitching and trying uselessly to break free of the stranglehold, until Vaylin closed her fist, tightening the chain with enough strength to break his neck and end the life of Jabba the Hutt.
She released her hold on the Force, and the fat corpse crashed onto the floor of Jabba's own palace's audience room with a disgustingly wet noise, reducing the body of his equally dead aide, Bib Fortuna, to pulp in the process. The Twi'lek slave leapt away reflexively to avoid being crushed as well – not that Vaylin would have let it happen, as it would have put quite the damper on the event. For a moment, she stared at Jabba's corpse, her shock and disbelief radiating through the Force, before shaking herself and spitting on the body. Then one of the Imperial troopers approached and gently led her away, leaving the room to Vaylin and her second-in-commands : Malden, Sulla, and the Sith Pureblood who led the acolytes (she didn't have the patience to do it herself), Khayon.
They had followed in her wake after she had broken through the main gate of the complex, keeping a careful distance to avoid being caught in her rampage and dealing with the few broken survivors. Vaylin had followed her Teacher's example by using herself as a diversion and battering ram, leading a frontal, single-handed assault on the enemy while her subordinates, who had already infiltrated the location, used the cover of her attack to perform subtler tasks (in this case, making sure the many slaves kept by Jabba were safe). While she wasn't her Teacher's martial equal, nor did she possess the same talent for inspiring terror in her enemies using the Force, her sheer raw power had been more than enough to tear through the thugs the Hutt had kept as protection.
Like that scum Varan, the guards had mistaken her for a Jedi, which was annoying, but inevitable. After today, though, nobody would make the same mistake. Jabba himself had tried to talk to her when she had reached his throneroom. Whether it had been to threaten, negotiate or beg, Vaylin didn't know and didn't care. She had heard too much about his depredations in her time on Tatooine, and seen even more as she carved a path through his stronghold. There could be no peace, no treaty, no accord with the slug, only punishment.
Slicers had made sure the sight of her killing Jabba had been broadcast all over the planet, on every screen and every holo. Within a rotation, every criminal in the Outer Rim and beyond would have watched the recording of her killing the Hutt widely considered one of if not the most powerful leader of the Hutt Cartels, and every politician on Coruscant would, at the very least, have heard about it.
The last time she'd done any public speaking had been when she'd led the subjugation fleets of the Eternal Empire, and at the time, she hadn't cared whether those who heard her demand their capitulation surrendered or not – lost to hateful apathy as she'd been, it had all been the same to her. But now, she genuinely wanted to convince people of her intentions, of her message.
She took a deep breath. She could do this. She'd seen her Teacher do things like it plenty of times. Even if she didn't think she'd ever be his equal in that regard, all she had to do was follow the examples he'd given her, and it would be enough. It had to be.
"People of Tatooine, I am Vaylin, apprentice of the Sith Lord, Darth Cain, and leader of the forces that are even now overthrowing the yoke of slavery wherever it may be found on your world."
To most of the people watching the broadcast, most of those words wouldn't mean anything. But to the people who actually mattered, it would mean a lot. Vaylin expected that historians across the Republic were going to get a lot of business in the coming days.
"We came here to rescue the citizens of Perlia who were captured and enslaved during a pirate raid several weeks ago. But upon witnessing the barbarity of the Hutts and their accomplices, I realized that merely doing this and leaving was unacceptable."
Finding and rescuing the kidnapped Perlians had been easy : within forty-eight hours of their arrival on Tatooine, the last of them was safe aboard the small flotilla that had carried Vaylin and her forces. She'd been about to give the order to return to Perlia when she'd suddenly been struck by how easy the whole thing had been : she could have done it all by herself … well, no. She could have done the fighting part by herself, but only a handful of assistants would've been needed to track down the Perlians.
Yet instead of doing that, her Teacher had given her an army. Why ? She'd spent several moments considering this, before the answer had come to her : because he expected more from her than merely liberating the victims of Perlia's raid. Darth Cain was the kind of man with the vision to turn every challenge into an opportunity : she had seen him do it several times, and heard about many more from talking with those who had been at his side longer than her. And with that vermin Varan having revealed the existence of a rival Sith Lord having influence over the Outer Rim's criminal elements, this mission to Tatooine was the perfect chance to strike a telling blow at Sidious' theoretical power base, all while increasing their own.
And while freeing millions of sentient from enslavement might have been low on her Teacher's priority list, Vaylin was confident it hadn't been entirely absent from it.
"I swear to you on my Teacher's name, none of you shall ever be enslaved again. Let the Cartels come and try to turn back the clock. Let the Hutts send their hired armies, their hunters and their assassins. All of them will be given a choice : to surrender, or to be crushed. You may fear that there are too many of them, that we don't have the strength to do this. I tell you : you are wrong. You thought Jabba's hold on this world was unbreakable, and look at him now. We did this, and with your help, we will achieve even more."
Once she'd made her decision and told the rest of the Imperials about it (nobody had argued against it, though she wasn't sure how much of it was them agreeing to her interpretation of her Teacher's instructions and how much them not wanting to contradict her), it had taken weeks of careful planning to pull the whole thing off.
Weeks of sending infiltrators into the local population, discreetly making contact with the existing resistance movements – such as they were, being more focused on helping individual slaves escape their masters than on overthrowing the whole system. Weeks of convincing people who had been betrayed and hurt far too many times (again and again and again, chains and whips and collars and lies spoken through smiling lips, just like what they did to her) that this was no trick, that the strangers from the stars really meant it when they promised to take down the Hutts and their enforcers. Weeks of raiding resources caches, masquerading their actions as the usual gang warfare.
The slavers were used to putting down uprisings and escape attempts, but Agent Malden and his colleagues had sharpened their skills against the best spies the Republic had to offer, before helping orchestrate a galaxy-wide uprising against Zakuul's Eternal Empire. Bypassing the criminals' security measures had been child's play to them.
As she walked into Jabba's Palace, dozens of strike teams had moved in across Tatooine. Snipers and commandos had eliminated the overseers of the largest slave pens and deactivated security systems, leaving the doors wide open for armored troopers. Meanwhile, slaves all over the world had risen up against their masters, striking with kitchen knives, poisons, and spanners.
The planet-wide signal jammer aboard the Dread Son built by the Imperial technicians prevented the masters from detonating the chips embedded in the flesh of their slaves, leaving the slavers uselessly pushing the detonation trigger even as their long-suffering victims took their justified revenge on their oppressors. Each and every one of them would need surgery to remove the abominable objects, of course, and they would get it : already Imperial medics were coordinating with local healers to set up field hospitals where the necessary surgeries could take place.
Overthrowing what was effectively Tatooine's planetary government overnight and setting up a functioning replacement was a lot of work, but again, the Imperial operatives her Teacher had told her to bring with her were well-used to this kind of work. They had done it before, and on worlds whose population was a lot less well-disposed to Imperial forces than that of the desert planet.
"Let the Hutts tremble, for their time of judgement is at hands. For millennia, they have preyed upon this galaxy. Always, always they have escaped justice, always they have hidden from retribution, sending others to fall in their place. That time is at an end."
"The Force shall set us all free !"
With her speech over, Vaylin smiled. There was still a lot to do before Darth Cain's vision for Tatooine and beyond was realized, but she felt confident this was a good start.
***
Iskandar Khayon watched the ongoing celebrations of Tatooine's liberation. With the setting of the planet's twin suns, the temperature had plummeted, but the large bonfire that had been lit in the middle of the courtyard of Jabba's Palace provided more than enough warmth for the hundreds of sentients of various species to continue dancing, singing, and otherwise enjoying themselves.
He was enjoying the chill : as a Sith Pureblood, Iskandar's physiology was naturally adapted to warm temperatures, but Tatooine was a bit much even for him. And the solitude gave him time to think; to consider what had happened on this world, and what it meant for the future.
When he'd learned what had happened to the Invincible, Iskandar had been shocked, naturally. Even though the Empire had been on the verge of collapse, it had still been where he'd lived all his life. Fortunately, most of the people he was close to had been aboard Darth Cain's flagship as well.
"What are you doing here all by yourself, Iskandar ?" called out a low, purring voice he recognized as belonging to one of the people in question, drawing him out of his reflection.
He turned in the voice's direction, and saw exactly who he'd expected : a black-skinned Twi'lek with elaborate golden markings, wearing one of the local, all-covering cloaks over the much smaller leather outfit she usually preferred – but which, on this world, would have just been asking for problems.
She moved with a natural, predatory grace she'd picked up in her youth in the dark streets of Nar Shadda, before her connection to the Force had been detected by a wandering Sith she'd tried to rob, leading to her being delivered to the Academy in a crate with several broken bones.
"Nefertari," he greeted her with a nod. "I am merely thinking."
"What about ?"
"All this," he replied, gesturing at the celebrations. "And what it means for the future … for us."
"Hmm." She sat down on the dune next to him, casually leaning against his shoulder for warmth like an especially murderous cat. "I must admit, I didn't think we'd end up doing all of this when we left Perlia."
"Neither did I," said Iskandar. "But it makes sense when you think about it. For all its advantages, Perlia is still far from the main hyperlanes, while this world is connected to the rest of the Outer Rim – it's the only reason anyone even comes here. Taking it in a way that makes the locals sympathetic to our cause is a great strategic move. And Lady Vaylin is right : Darth Cain wouldn't have put so many of us under her command if we were only supposed to rescue the people taken in the raid. Blood and stones, Nefertari, you and I could have achieved that much on our own."
It wouldn't have been easy, but given what he'd seen of the local criminals in his time on this miserable ball of sand, he felt confident he and the Twi'lek would have managed it.
"We couldn't have done this, though," he continued. "We would have sneaked around to get the information needed, killed the guards around the slave pens where our targets were, and escape before the enforcers realized what was going on and came down on us with overwhelming numbers. Only someone like Lady Vaylin could just waltz into Jabba's Palace and kill everyone in her way."
"Oh ?" Nefertari asked in a dangerously calm voice. "So you think she's more dangerous than me, is that it ?"
"She is the daughter of the mightiest Sith Emperor to have ever lived," Iskandar deadpanned. "And Darth Cain's apprentice besides. Yes, Nefertari, I think she's more dangerous than you, because she's more dangerous than almost anybody in the entire galaxy."
The Twi'lek considered his answer in silence for several seconds, before finally nodding.
"I suppose I can accept that." Which, crucially, didn't mean that she had or would, so Iskandar would probably still have to pay for his comment later – his punishment just wouldn't be as painful as it could have been, and he might even enjoy it.
The relationship between the two acolytes was a complicated one. When they first met, it had been as rival students at the Sith Academy on Korriban. At the time, Iskandar had been as arrogant as one would expect of a Pureblood Sith with his strength in the Force, convinced that he was destined for greatness.
He'd thought he would coast through the Academy's training easily, until his first spar with the Twi'lek once she'd recovered from her initial injuries thanks to the painful but effective care of the Academy's healers. Their bout had lasted almost an entire hour, left the training room in pieces, and had ended in a draw. It had marked the two of them as the best students in their group, and started a rivalry that had eventually grown into whatever it was they were now.
One of them would almost certainly have killed the other eventually, but events had conspired to prevent it. After the collapse of Zakuul's so-called 'Eternal Empire', it hadn't taken long for the conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire to start again. But without the authority of the first Sith Emperor to keep everybody in line, the Empire had begun to tear itself apart.
There'd been a succession of self-proclaimed Emperors and Empresses, but none of them had been Vitiate's equal, and the endless feuds and outright wars had done more to weaken the Empire than the Republic ever could. Things had gotten so bad that Korriban itself had gotten caught in the factionalism – well, the Academy had always been part of the Sith Lords' power plays, but that had become an accepted fact of life instead of an open secret. Teachers had pitted their students against one another, sabotaged trials and even orchestrated the assassination of those who might one day oppose their ideology of choice.
In the end, things had reached a boiling point before they could finish their training and be pitted against each other for the final time, as some of their teachers intended (although there had been some debate on the question, the Empire not being in a position to waste promising students). To this day, Iskandar didn't know exactly what had happened : the Academy had suddenly become a battlefield, as factions among the faculty and the student body alike turned to violence to seize the school, and through it, Korriban. The fact he hadn't been invited to join any of the factions due to the rumors circulating about him and Nefertari had been more than a little insulting, although looking back, he wouldn't have had it any other way.
He had found Nefertari in the middle of the confusion, and they had decided it was in their best interests to cooperate until they could escape the anarchy. On their way to the spaceport, they had gathered a bunch of other students caught in the crossfire – it had been Iskandar's idea, since Nefertari would have left them all to die, even though they could be valuable allies or, at the worst, bargaining chips. That decision had proven its worth once they were in the void, as it had been one of them who had suggested they seek refuge on Perlia, domain of the infamous Darth Cain.
The Sith Lord had welcomed them in with open arms and a smile on his face, even as his aura flared with the power of the Dark Side, carrying the unspoken yet vivid threat of what would happen to them if they ever spurned his generosity and betrayed him. While none of them had been selected to become his direct apprentice (not that anyone had so much as entertained the notion of replacing Vaylin the traditional way, except maybe Nefertari), Darth Cain had provided them with plenty of opportunities to increase their power, all while protecting them from any retribution for their actions on Korriban.
Both of them had taken part in the battle against the Cult of the Emperor. Made up of the surviving members of the Hand and Children of the Emperor along with Knights of Zakuul and even Imperials who'd stayed loyal to Valkorion, either due to the strength of their indoctrination or sheer stupidity, these deluded fanatics had sought to resurrect Vitiate once again. Left to their own devices, they might very well have succeeded, but after the truth of the Sith Emperor's aims for the galaxy had been revealed, nobody had any intent of allowing his return to come to pass.
It was one thing to be part of an Empire controlled by a single being of surpassing power, to whom every citizen of the Empire was merely a tool. It was quite another to be used like livestock to be devoured, all in order to fuel the endless hunger of a would-be god. Even now, remembering the expressions of the cultists as they fought like possessed sentients to protect their ritual site sent a shiver down Iskandar's spine that had nothing to do with the cold temperature. Each and every one of them had truly believed that the Emperor would resurrect those who'd served him after he was done devouring the galaxy, elevating them to his side as immortal spirits.
"By the way," said Nefertari nonchalantly, "I heard something about the sand people in the desert making a move now that Jabba is dead."
She patted the weapons hanging at her belt, making her suggested course of action clear. Like him, Nefertari had taken her lightsabers during their escape from Korriban, and baptised them in the blood of other Sith. Although while Iskandar's purple lightstaff had previously belonged to his teacher Ashur-Kai, before he'd claimed it after avenging the Human albino's murder at the hands of a colleague, Nefertari had taken her two red lightsabers off the corpses of full-fledged Sith who had made the mistake of underestimating her for being an alien on Korriban.
"Well," said Iskandar aloud, standing up and stretching. "We didn't get a chance to do much today. Might as well get some exercise."
A couple of hours later, the two Sith acolytes had finished slaughtering the hundred or so Tusken raiders who had been moving toward the city under the cover of night. They had allowed those who threw down their weapons and prostrated themselves to live : as Darth Cain had declared, leaving survivors to carry word of your deeds spread fear among your lessers, and mercy could be far more dangerous a weapon than cruelty when wielded by a skilled hand.
Besides, the two of them couldn't kill every Tusken in the endless deserts. Another approach was needed to ensure the fledgling new order of Tatooine was spared from their depredations. To that end, Nefertari had made sure the survivors knew that things had changed and would continue to change on Tatooine, and that the desert tribes had to choose between remaining isolated from the rest of the world's inhabitants, peacefully integrate, or continue their violent ways and be wiped out.
With that done, Iskandar used the Force to carry the weapons of the dead Tuskens away, before dropping them to a nearby homestead (a moisture farm of all things – the notion that people here needed to farm water was frankly head-scratching to the Pureblood), as a gift to the residing couple and their son in exchange for making sure the rest of the locals knew of their exploits.
There had been something about the woman there who had tugged at Iskandar's senses, but he hadn't been able to identify what in their few minutes of conversation. She wasn't Force-sensitive, but there had been an … aura, for lack of a better term, about her. He would probably have to keep an eye on her, just in case it meant something more than the random vagaries of the Force.
For now, though, Iskandar fully intended to enjoy the rest of the night in Nefertari's company.
***
Amberley sat at Ciaphas' left hand, on a hover-chair designed for recovering patients. She was very lucky to be alive : if the weapon that had injured her had been a lightsaber, she would have died on the spot. But fortunately the Emperor's mad cultists had been armed mostly with vibro-blades and other mundane weapons, and she hadn't ended up fighting the few Force-users still enslaved to the undead Sith Lord.
Even so, a punctured lung, several broken bones, and more blood loss than she was comfortable thinking about had almost been enough to end her. If not for Ciaphas carrying her back to the Invincible as the temple collapsed around them, using the Force to keep her alive all the way to the medical bay, she would have died that day.
Several weeks submerged in kolto had been enough for her to be let out of the Invincible's medical bay, and Amberley had hardly left Ciaphas' side since. She remained silent as he listened to the report his apprentice was delivering to him and those subordinates who had rushed to hear it.
Perlia's connection to the Holonet had only just returned, and once the servers had managed to process the large quantity of backlogged messages, Vaylin's request for a link with her teacher had come through. Ciaphas had immediately accepted it : they had been expecting her to be back already, and while Ciaphas did his best to conceal how worried about his Apprentice he was, he couldn't hide the truth from Amberley – he had never been able to, all the way back to their first meeting. And only someone who knew him as well as she did would have been able to tell he was completely flabbergasted by Vaylin's words.
"I see," he said once Vaylin was finished explaining how, instead of rescuing the few thousand kidnapped Perlians as had been her instructions, she'd led a slave revolt across all of Tatooine, successfully forcing the Hutts off the planet and freeing millions of sentients from slavery in the process, convinced all the while she was following Ciaphas' actual plan. "I am proud of you, my apprentice."
Amberley suppressed a smirk. She didn't need the Force to know Ciaphas was forcing the truth into knots – not that the Force would have been any help in this, as Ciaphas had learned to conceal any deceit beyond the ability of all but the most powerful (and wise, since Vaylin, for all her other faults, definitely was very strong in the Force) to detect.
"You have surpassed all of my expectations," he continued, before shifting from carefully phrased truth to outright lies. "You figured out the intent behind your orders, decided on a course of action, and executed it flawlessly by working with others and even making allies beyond the ones I sent with you, reaching out to the local population and gaining their support."
"Thank you, Teacher," replied Vaylin, beaming under her Teacher's praise. "But I couldn't have done it without Malden's and the others' help to set it all up."
Even through the low-quality projection, Amberley could see that Vaylin had to force the words out.
"Of course. Neither could I, Vaylin, or anyone else" replied Ciaphas, smoothly soothing any feelings of inadequacy his apprentice might have. "That's why I sent him and the others with you in the first place : because no one in this galaxy can do everything alone."
Not a sentiment typically associated with the Sith, but then, Ciaphas wasn't a typical Sith. Amberley had known that even before meeting him in person and realizing that the reputation of Darth Cain, the Lord of Terror, was nothing more than a mask Ciaphas used to survive the cut-throat world of Sith politics. Not that he wasn't dangerous in his own right, of course, although good luck trying to convince him of that. His lack of faith in himself was both endearing and, at times, extremely frustrating.
"You need to be careful, however," Ciaphas continued. "The Hutts will not take Jabba's death lightly. While there is little love lost between them, maintaining their reputation alone will demand they respond in some manner. As the one who killed Jabba, they are sure to target you."
"Let them try," boasted Vaylin. "I am not afraid of their hired killers."
"Nor should you be. But remember : caution isn't the same as fear. I have no desire for you to succumb to poison or another cowardly method because you let your guard down."
"I won't. Now that the Perlians are on the way back, I still need to stay on Tatooine for a few days, but then things should be stable enough that I can return to Perlia with the troops which aren't needed to garrison the planet."
"Take your time, my apprentice," advised Ciaphas. "How things progress on Tatooine will be of great importance to our future in this galaxy."
And the longer Vaylin was on the desert planet, the longer Ciaphas had to figure out how to respond to this latest development. Pure coincidence, of course, thought Amberley, still concealing her smile.
Because really, what did Ciaphas think would happen by sending Vaylin of all people to rescue a group of slaves on a planet full of them ? Of course she was going to free them all. Ciaphas really underestimated how much his influence had changed the daughter of the former Sith Emperor.
"I will make sure the world is properly secured before I return," promised Vaylin. "Until then, goodbye, Teacher."
"Goodbye, Vaylin. May the Force be with you."
The connection died. Immediately, Ciaphas pressed a few buttons, and the image of Commodore Kasteen replaced that of his apprentice.
"Commodore," he greeted her. "I take it you have heard about what happened on Tatooine ?"
"Yes, my lord. That Hutt's death is all over the galactic news. We are already preparing to run drills on how to fight off a Hutt response if they make the mistake of being in the same system as the Invincible."
"Very good," approved Ciaphas. "I expect the Invincible to be ready to show them all the Imperial hospitality they can handle. And fire up the factory decks : we're going to need all the prefabricated habitats we can get to house the refugees who are going to arrive soon, too."
"It will be done, my lord," saluted the hologram of the red-haired ship mistress before disappearing.
"Commander Broklaw, make sure the ground forces are ready to repeal another raid," said Ciaphas to the commander-in-chief of the Imperial forces in the system. "While I have no doubt that the Invincible is more than a match for anything the slugs can throw at it, not even so powerful a ship can blockade an entire world on its own."
"Yes, my lord," saluted Broklaw. "We will get the local boys and girls up to speed so we can leave things here in their hands while we go out to hunt slavers, you have my word."
"Make sure to train them in fighting Force users, too," added Amberley. "With this Sidious still out there, they might need it."
The Imperial Army officer glanced at Ciaphas, who nodded in approval. Even after her long association with Ciaphas, most of his subordinates were still nervous around her : a legacy of having grown up in an Empire which used the Jedi as bogeymen to scare children into obedience.
It had been years (not taking their recent misadventure into account) since one of them had tried to kill her in order to 'free Darth Cain from Jedi manipulations', but she doubted they would ever truly be at ease around her. Which was a shame : Ciaphas had a great eye for people, and had Kasteen or Broklaw not been born in the Empire, she'd no doubt they would have done very well in the Republic. Since that wasn't the case, however, she didn't go anywhere without her lightsaber, just in case.
"Everyone, leave us," Ciaphas ordered. "I wish to speak with Knight Vail in private."
Within moments, the room was empty, JURG-N escorting the last group through the door before sealing it shut. Amberley knew from experience that the assassin-droid-turned-aide would remain in front of the door, guarding it and preventing all but the most urgent of interruptions, while also not using his highly advanced suite of sensors to listen in on their conversation (a quirk of programming every protocol droid possessed, in order to avoid having to mind-wipe them every time they heard something they shouldn't have).
Now that the two of them were alone, Ciaphas let the mask of Darth Cain slip, and sat heavily on his chair, sighing deeply.
"What a mess," he moaned. "Dealing with the Republic was already going to be difficult enough, but now this … We're going to have to fight the entire Cartels, aren't we."
"Given the speech your apprentice gave after killing Jabba ? Yes, most likely," agreed Amberley. "But that won't happen quickly, I think. The Hutts will be more concerned with determining which of them gets to inherit Jabba's territory, seeing its reconquest as a mere formality. That'll change once they realize that Vaylin wasn't bluffing, and the size of the resources at your disposal, but for now, repelling their first reprisals shouldn't be too difficult."
"Staying on the defensive isn't viable," said Ciaphas, showing the instinctual grasp of tactics and strategy that had seen him rise so high on the Republic's threat list back during the First Galactic War. "Though they are divided between the Cartels, the Hutts have access to far more resources than us. If they have the time to bring them to bear, they'll crush us. Once things on Tatooine are stabilized, we'll need to go on the offensive instead – keep them off-balance, force them to react to us instead of the other way around."
"That … that might work," nodded Amberley, thoughtful. "But you'll also need to handle the Republic's response to this whole mess before going out to war against the Hutts, dear."
"I know." He was frowning, deep in thought. "Vaylin declared herself as my apprentice publicly : unless the Jedi Archives were destroyed again during the last three thousand years, they'll find my name in there eventually, and someone will connect the dots. Especially now that Perlia is back on the Holonet."
Ciaphas hadn't even tried to enforce an information blackout to keep what had happened to the pirate fleet a secret : like any good leader, he knew better than to give an order he knew wouldn't be obeyed.
Still, he once again underestimated himself. In Amberley's opinion, unless whoever was in charge of the Jedi Archives' nowadays was hopelessly incompetent, it wouldn't take them long at all to find a reference to Darth Cain.
"Jedi might be resistant to change, but three and a half thousand years is a long time, even for them. The Order I remember would never have agreed to these Ruusan Reformations limiting their reach like this. I cannot say how they'll react to your presence, or to what Vaylin did."
"She killed a slaver and freed an entire world's worth of slaves," Ciaphas pointed out. "Surely they'll approve ? I mean, apart from the whole live execution on the Holonet thing."
"Oh, Ciaphas," Amberley chuckled. "You underestimate how hidebound the Order can be, and that was before they had a thousand years of peace. They will agree with the liberation of the slaves in principles," at least she hoped they would, "but the fact a Sith Apprentice was the one to do it means they will immediately suspect a hidden, sinister motive. To them, these people aren't free, their master has just changed from Jabba to Vaylin. Unless attitudes toward the Sith have changed, of course, but somehow I doubt we will be so lucky."
"Surely they won't fight alongside the Hutts, though," he protested.
"That's … unlikely, yes," she admitted. Information on the Jedi Order was scarce, especially this deep in the Outer Rim, but what little she had been able to get her hands on since being cleared from bed rest indicated that the principles of the Order, its dedication to the Light and doing good across the galaxy, hadn't changed. "But that doesn't make them your allies, either."
"Well, I'll be relying on your help there. As long as we can avoid the Order or the Republic declaring war on us, I think we should be fine. Dealing with the Cartels won't be easy, but I'll be damned if the karking Hutts are the ones to get us after everything we had survived."
And just like that, she thought fondly, Ciaphas had decided that waging war against the criminal overlords of the Outer Rim and an entire sector of space beyond it was the most rational, self-interested course of action available to him. Nevermind all the people who'd already been saved by his apprentice, nevermind the billions more who had already heard her proclamation or would hear it soon, and find hope in Vaylin's words. Of course, it all had to be in the name of survival, not doing the right thing.
One day, Amberley hoped, Ciaphas would manage to escape the blinders his upbringing had forced upon him, and see himself for the good man she'd always known him to be. And, she thought, now that there was no Sith Empire to drag him into its bloody politics, that day was closer than ever.
She just had to make sure he survived long enough to reach it. Not an easy task by any means, but as Ciaphas had said : they had survived worse together.
***
AN : Well, the response to this story has been overwhelmingly positive. Over 20 reviews and comments, and that number again of pages of discussion on SB, with numerous snippets/omakes. I'm, once again, blown away.
And I know, I know. You all wanted to see the reaction of the rest of the galaxy to Darth Cain's return. But think about it this way : Cain doesn't get to explain how he took over one planet after saving them from pirates. No, that would be too easy.
Instead, he gets to explain why he took over two planets, and started a war with a criminal empire stretching across the Outer Rim which has existed for thousands of years.
This chapter had a lot of backstory and inner monologue; a bit too much for my tastes. That will change from now on, as I think I have established enough backstory - at least, the parts of it I couldn't think of a more natural way to convey to you the readers.
Iskandar Khayon and Nefertari are based on two characters from the Black Legion series, continuing this story's trend of using Warhammer characters for OCs. I hadn't planned their presence, but they invited themselves into this chapter once Cain decided to give a bunch of Acolytes to Vaylin - which doesn't bode well for my hopes to keep this story relatively short.
Also, after I had decided to have Khayon be a Sith pureblood, someone on the SB thread mentioned that by the time of the Great Galactic War, "purebloods" were all hybrids from the original Siths of Korriban and the Dark Jedi who found refuge there after losing their war against the Jedi - a mingling of bloodlines which was made possible through the use of Dark Side alchemy.
So what I am hearing is that Khayon is the fruit of ancient gene-wrights using forbidden sciences to alter the blood of children in order to make them more powerful. And the civilization which did that ended up being ruled by an immortal Emperor for centuries, who did many, many questionable things before being cast down in a process which involved many members of his ruling elite turning against him due to his plans to achieve godhood.
Hmmm. Now where have I heard that before ?
Next chapter will contain the reactions of the rest of the galaxy to the news of Perlia and Tatooine's recent events. I already have three different perspectives (the obvious ones), so if you have suggestions for someone else, now is the time. Since the Muse put a metaphorical gun to my head, I have been able to get a basic outline for this story done while also writing this chapter.
Zahariel out.
