Chapter Text
The planet called Te Hasa appeared a lonely one. No moons swung around it and no cities could be seen marking its dusty yellow-orange face. A single spacecraft, elegant and long-bodied like a silver needle, fell out of hyperspace toward the planet.
Strapped in his starship’s cockpit, the pilot tapped his comm console and broadcast his security clearance to the surveillance devices in orbit. Free to pass, the needle-shaped ship plunged into Te Hasa’s atmosphere, leaving a narrow trail of friction-flame in its wake. After dropping closer to the surface it levelled out above an endless sprawl of sandy plains, interrupted occasionally by juts of red-stone mountains, brown trails of long-dried riverbeds, and the crumbling ruins of long-dead cities.
Finally the ship found its destination inside the heart of the kilometer-deep canyon that wound through the desert like a trailing knife-wound. It set down on one of two landing pads jutting from the steep red-stone wall and a moment later the pilot stepped outside. The tall, bulbous-headed Bith wore a breathing mask over the lowest portion of his face, protecting him from Te Hasa’s methane-rich atmosphere. The Bith took long strides toward the sealed metal door placed in the cliff-side and didn’t falter to see the two beings waiting for him on either side of the portal. In a galaxy filled with two-armed, two-legged, roughly Bith-shaped aliens, the Gree were an exception. Each creature was planted to the ground by four thick green tentacles while two more were wrapped around robe-draped torsos like arms. Their oblongs head possessed pairs of large, all-black eyes while a brain sac dangled halfway down their backs. Metal sheaths were wrapped around the lower half of their faces, obscuring the layered flaps of skin used for respiration and vocalization.
The Gree on the right, called Kavont’k, waved two tentacles in greeting and squealed into its face-sheath. A cold mechanical voice translated, “Welcome back, Darth Tenebrous.”
The Sith Lord gave each Gree a curt nod and stepped through the portal. The Gree slithered behind on their snaking tentacles and followed him down the rock-carved hall that led deeper into the facility. Once inside Tenebrous removed his mask and breathed the filtered oxygen that pumped through most of the underground chambers.
“Has the master been informed of my arrival?” Tenebrous asked.
The Gree called Rakat’l said, “He is waiting for you in the laboratory.”
Of course he would be, Tenebrous thought sourly. While the apprentice traversed the galaxy, secretly doing Sith business in the guise of his profane identity, starship designer Rugess Nome, his master rarely left his secluded research center. When Darth Bane had envisioned the Rule of Two over eight hundred years ago, he’d imagined master and apprentice fiercely pushing each other to lofiter ambitions, not this.
It was sad in a way, but Tenebrous tried not to feel pity. It would make it harder to do what had to be done now.
This facility on Te Hasa was as secret as any place in the galaxy, made possible only by critical connections and hidden funds. The Gree were an incredibly ancient and notoriously isolationist race. This place had been constructed and staffed by Rakat’l, Kavont’k, and a handful of other natives whose services Darth Acheron had purchased decades ago. Gree were a long-lived race, with individual lifespans lasting nearly a millennium, and in theory they could guard this place for centuries to come.
Darth Tenebrous traced the familiar path to his master’s laboratory and stopped before going in. He looked over his shoulder to Rakat’l and Kavont’k; he could make out nothing in their half-hidden, so-alien faces, and when he tried to search them in the Force he barely felt their presence. According to Acheron the Gree, as a race, had apparently lost their ability to use the Force tens of millennia ago. His master had a theory about that, but nowadays the old Twi’lek had theories about everything, right or wrong, and Tenebrous didn’t bother to keep track of them all.
“You may go about your business,” the Sith told them. “I will speak to the master alone.”
The Gree waved tentacles in front of their torsos, a respectful gesture, then turned and slithered down the hall. Tenebrous watched them go, waited, and pushed his thoughts to the back of his mind, where even his master would not be able to read them. Then, finally, he opened the door and stepped into Darth Acheron’s lair.
As a Bith, he came from a culture with the utmost respect for science. As an engineer famous galaxy-wide for designing custom spacecraft for ultra-rich clients, he knew the value of testing every method and honing every piece of your machine. Yet it seemed to him that what Darth Acheron was doing on Te Hasa, and had been doing for over a decade, approached the pedantic. Tenebrous stepped across the metal-grate floor, passing rows of transparisteel cannisters where bodies bobbed in liquid. Next he passed through a narrow hallway walled on either side by creatures trapped in cages. Some were living, some dead. Sentient and non-sentient lifeforms from across the galaxy had been gathered in Darth Acheron’s menagerie. As he neared the end of the hallway Tenebrous paused for just a moment to look at another Bith, naked and curled up knees to chest, shivering in pain behind a glass wall. Her all-black eyes found his and implored. The Sith Lord walked on, into the next section of the laboratory.
Darth Acheron’s favorite chamber had been bored straight down into Te Hasa’s crust. The rough stone walls of the well had a diameter ten meters wide, and Tenebrous stepped carefully down the spiraling metal walkway that corkscrewed down its outer edge. As he walked he passed more containers keeping pieces of past test subjects, shelves full of notes written on arcane parchment, barbed and pointed tools crusted with dried blood from dozens of different species.
When he reached the bottom of the spiraling ramp, three full rotations from where he’d entered, Tenebrous found his master standing over a blood-splattered surgical table on which the body of a human child lay cooling. Tenebrous’ boots sounded on the grated flood, and with a rustle of black robes Darth Acheron turned from his test subject to fix his apprentice with a one-eyed stare. His left eye, and most of that side of his face, had been scarred since before he’d taken Tenebrous as his apprentice. Acheron’s remaining eye was small but piercing, the same yellow color as the Twi’lek’s wrinkled skin and drooping lekku. The same, too, as the pointed teeth he bared in a smile.
“Welcome back, apprentice,” Acheron said. “I’ve been waiting for you. I trust you’ve finished the work you needed to do.”
Tenebrous nodded; he’d been on no Sith business this time, only finalizing designs for several custom starships and starting the manufacturing process. He looked down at the dead child on the table. “I see you’ve been experimenting without me.”
“Indeed. The Jedi sent a delegation to Dubrillion. They brought several padawans with them. It wasn’t so hard to steal one away.”
“We’ve tested the virus on Jedi before. And children.”
“Yes, but never a padawan this young and unformed.” Acheron looked at the brown-haired human boy almost fondly. “Nor one with as high a midi-chlorian count as this.”
“Did you learn anything?”
Acheron’s smile wilted. “The higher the midi-chlorian count, the faster the subject dies. Level of training in the Jedi arts is unrelated to the efficacy of the virus.”
Tenebrous had already gathered as much from all their years of experimentation. Acheron’s goal for over a decade had been to develop an artificial disease that would do the Sith’s work for them. The weapon he and Tenebrous had created could survive among hosts from nearly all sentient species and was easily passed on the air between them. Once taken into the respiratory system it seeped into the body, attacked midi-chlorians, and destroyed them. With midi-chlorians dead the host body died, and the more midi-chlorians in the host, the faster the death.
“The incubation period for the virus seems to be longer for younger beings,” Acheron observed. “This could be useful in disseminating the virus. This one lasted almost two weeks before showing signs. Once it did, death came within hours.”
One of the Twi’lek’s biggest worries was that the Jedi would realize a disease was targeting their midi-chlorians and react accordingly, quarantining themselves until a counter-agent could be found. A valid concern, to be sure, but not the one that weighed on Tenebrous. As far as he was concerned only one thing mattered about Acheron’s virus, one thing that would make or break their decades-long enterprise.
“You wanted a child because it did not belong fully to either the light or dark sides of the Force,” Tenebrous surmised. “Did that effect your findings?”
Acheron’s response was a sigh, and Tenebrous knew what that meant. For almost twenty years they’d perfected strain after strain of the virus, testing it on live subjects ranging from kidnapped Jedi to untrained Force-sensitive strays. Thrice they’d captured young adults with high mid-chlorian counts and trained them for years in the ways of the dark side, with the express goal of testing the virus on them. All three subjects had died. A bio-weapon that targeted all Force-users would harm the Sith as much as the Jedi; worse, as there were only two Sith in existence, while Jedi infected the galaxy by the thousands. The virus would only be useful if it targeted light-side users alone, but despite two decades of experimentation, Acheron had made no progress. For midi-chlorians, there seemed to be no difference between drawing on the Force’s opposite sides.
“This young one drew on the Force in its most inchoate form,” said Acheron. “I… experimented on him, drawing him toward the light and dark. Neither made any change in the virus’ behavior.”
Of course not, Tenebrous thought. Two decades wasted, when they should have been progressing Bane’s Grand Design through other means. Darth Acheron was over a century old, and in his younger years he’d been a power that had left Tenebrous in awe. Acheron had killed his own master at a mere twenty standard years and had slain Jedi on three separate occasions, all the while hiding his presence from the Jedi Council on Coruscant. As a xenoanthropologist scholar, polylinguist, and member of the Republic’s diplomatic corps he’d travelled to every charted sector of the galaxy, quietly building a network of allies. He’d even wooed the most-secretive Gree who hosted him now.
Most impressive of all, however, was the permanent mark he’d left in the Force. After joining a commercial starliner making a pleasure cruise through the Oseon system, Acheron had overpowered the crew and wrecked the ship on an uncharted planetoid while keeping the passengers alive. Acheron had spent a month on that world, killing each passenger one-by-one, using their successive agonies to fuel his life-essence as he spread it across the galaxy and touched the very whole of the Force. By the end of that month he’d been starved and wasted, every last passenger on that starliner dead, but their sacrifices had allowed him to access untold power. Using their borrowed strength and his own cruel determination, Acheron had rendered a hole in the fabric of the Force, afflicting the Jedi scattered galaxy-wide with some of his own dark anger and sending shockwaves of apprehension through their Order.
A long time ago, Tenebrous had felt honored to serve him.
“With every experiment we learn a little more.” The old Twi’lek stroked the dead child’s head, mussing its hair. “And I think other possibilities are opening to us.”
Tenebrous didn’t allow himself to hope Acheron might end this fruitless quest. “What possibilities?”
“Come, my apprentice.” Acheron wagged a clawed finger.
He hobbled away from the vivisection table and up the corkscrewing walkway. The Bith followed his master past the hall with the glassed-off cells, where the captive Bith still shuddered. They went through the long room with bodies preserved in liquid containers and finally into the chamber where Acheron kept his library. The Gree were the most ancient civilization still extant in the galaxy today, and though they’d fallen very far from their peak, the half-ruined archives on Te Hasa contained more information on ancient galactic history than anyplace else, even the Jedi Temple on Coruscant- so long as one could read the various Gree languages they’d been written in, and Acheron was one of at most a dozen non-Gree in the entire galaxy who could do that. The tablets, parchments, and bound tomes that filled Acheron’s library were gibberish to Tenebrous, but his master shifted through them with the familiarity of someone who’d already memorized half their contents.
“Consider the Rakata,” Acheron said. “Ancient history to us, but once contemporaries of the Gree. And if their records are to believed, it was the Rakatan Infinite Empire that broke the Gree and forced them to retreat back to this scrap of space. They were a naturally Force-powerful race, and they embraced its dark side to fuel their war machine and conquer system after system.”
Tenebrous had heard all this before. “If records from twenty-five or thirty thousand years ago can be trusted,” he said skeptically.
“Gree live almost ten times longer than Twi’leks or Bith. History passes slowly for them. That’s why their records are so invaluable. When it comes to the downfall of the Rakata, the sources lay different claims, but not necessarily ones that contradict. Some say the Rakata fell because of a civil war, others that they were broken by the arrival of new Force-users, possibly early Jedi. Also, it was said that a great disease ravaged the Rakata, killing many of them and severing their connection to the Force.”
Tenebrous understood now, but he warned, “You said it’s just one story among many, and the Rakata have been extinct for over twenty millennia.”
“Yes, but secrets may remain. It’s possible the Rakata were ruined by a plague that rendered midi-chlorians mute without destroying them entirely and killing the host body. I must spend more time working in the Gree archives to be sure.”
Tenebrous heard the certainty in his master’s voice and felt a flush of disappointment. He’d already decided what needed to be done and inwardly committed himself to the act; still a small part, a weak part, a very un-Sith-like part, had been hoping some fruit might come of Darth Acheron’s final labors and give reason to spare the once-great Dark Lord.
Oblivious to his apprentice’s thoughts, Acheron continued, “I’ve uncovered more interesting hints. We know the Rakata were Force-sensitive to an extent unheard of in modern races. It was not just rare individuals who could use the Force; all of them could. But I’ve also found suggestions that the Force was once widespread among the Gree, though they referred to its touch in archaic theological terms. There is suggestion that Force-sensitivity was also universal for the ancient Kwa, who predated even the Gree and Rakata.”
Tenebrous edged closer, feigning interest so the old Twi’lek would sink deeper into distraction. “What does all this mean? That the Force was once more common than it is now?”
“Yes. And we must wonder why.” Acheron looked down at the scrolls. “It’s tragic we cannot sample the genes of those ancient races, examine their midi-chlorians and find what separated them from us. Now we must wonder why the Force touches sentients today so rarely.”
“Perhaps the disease that struck the Rakata mutated to affect other life-forms and limit their Force connection.”
“Yes. I have thought of that. And yet… I wonder if the Force is not acting of its own volition, withdrawing its power from us.”
That took Tenebrous by surprise, and he froze beside his master. “Is such a thing possible?”
“You have not touched the Force as deeply as I have.” Acheron’s yellow eye turned toward Tenebrous. “When I wrenched that hole in its fabric and enacted my will upon it, I could feel some power working against me. It was not like any sentient mind I’ve ever felt. It was far, far greater… The Jedi talk of the Force having a will, a consciousness.”
“The Force is a source of power. Our power,” Tenebrous said. He hadn’t realized his master was so far gone. “To say it has a will of its own, a sentience, is pablum the Jedi peddle to excuse their own weakness.”
“Perhaps…” Acheron looked down in thought. “But you did not feel that strength. There is something to what the Jedi say. I am certain of it. Perhaps that will has been foiling my research… I wonder if we haven’t been taking the wrong approach for all these years…”
Enough. Tenebrous reached into his robe and plucked his lightsaber from his belt. He barely had to shift it in his hand before he tapped the button and sent a spear of humming red light through Acheron’s flank, under his armpit, through lungs and heart. A tiny gasp escaped the Twi’lek’s mouth. He managed to twist his head and his eye locked on Tenebrous. Lips peeled back from yellow teeth and his mouth opened a little wider, and for one awful moment it seemed like Acheron was laughing.
Then Tenebrous shut off his lightsaber. The old body tipped to one side and toppled to the floor in a messy tangle of sprawled limbs, withered yellow lekku and black robes.
Darth Tenebrous stared at the body of his master, shocked breathless by how easy it had been. His heart was pounding in his chest. He half-expected Acheron to spring back upright, like a puppet lifted by strings, but he lay there, chest still. Tenebrous reached out with the Force for some lingering trace of his master’s life but found nothing except a dark, hollow place.
Just to be sure, Tenebrous stepped over to the body and kicked it once in the chest. Nothing.
The Bith slumped against the table, almost knocking some of his master’s precious archives off. It was done; he had fulfilled the fate of all Sith and surpassed his master. Now he would have to find an apprentice of his own to train and to use, and perhaps be used by in turn. He’d helped Acheron train dark acolytes for the sole purpose of using them as test subjects; he had no doubt he could teach a real apprentice on his own.
The apprentice would be his to mold; so would the future of Bane’s Grand Design. Tenebrous felt lightheaded, dizzy from his success and all the possibilities that had suddenly opened before him. He wouldn’t waste a single day more on Acheron’s misguided virus scheme, nor would he seclude himself on Te Hasa, pouring over archaic tomes.
Yet as he looked around the room and considered the body of his master, Tenebrous admitted that there had been some virtue to Acheron’s obsessions. Sith did not run from knowledge, they embraced it and used it. Genetic manipulation of midi-chlorians could yet hold promise; so, too, could all the ancient half-factual tales in these accumulated Gree texts. Acheron’s fatal error had not been his interests, merely that he’d pursued them to the exclusion of all else.
Tenebrous thought on that for a time, and when he was ready he touched the communications panel by the door and called for a servant.
Rakat’l appeared a minute later, slinking into the room on writhing tentacles. When its blank eyes rested on Darth Acheron’s corpse it gave no sound, betrayed nothing in the Force.
“The Dark Lord is dead,” Tenebrous said simply. “I am your master now.”
Rakat’l made a low hiss beneath its breath-mask. The tinny translator’s voice said, “What would you have us do, Master Tenebrous?”
“Dispose of the body. Burn it. I will be going soon, but I’ll return from time to time. You’ll continue to receive the standard payment for your services. Master Acheron’s experiments are to be kept on hiatus. Continue monitoring and feeding his test subjects. If some die, dispose of those bodies too.”
“It will be done, Master.” Rakat’l’s two arm-tentacles writhed in obedience.
Tenebrous gestured to the library’s piled tomes. “While I am gone, I want you and your staff to translate these volumes into Basic.”
Rakat’l made a high-pitched squeal. Its translator said, “Which volumes?”
“All of them. Prioritize the ones most referenced by Master Acheron. Can you do that?”
He sensed some hesitation from the Gree. Rakat’l said, “These archives are written in six distinct languages that have all gone extinct.”
Tenebrous felt an involuntary stab of admiration for his master. “Can they be translated?”
“It will take time, Master.”
“Then you should get started as soon as you can. As long as you continue to receive payment, you’ll continue to work. I’ll check on your progress from time to time, but I won’t be taking up residence here like Acheron. Do you understand?”
“We understand.” Rakat’l raised his tentacles again.
“I’m glad,” Tenebrous said.
He walked swiftly for the door, deftly stepping around Rakat’l’s tentacles on his way out of the chamber. Once clear he strode out the laboratory, down the long rock-carved hall, back to the landing platform where his ship was waiting. He’d done what he’d come here to do and ended his master’s foolishness. Now it was up to him to redirect the Grand Design to a more fruitful path, and to train an apprentice fit to carry on the legacy of the Sith. When Tenebrous stepped outside his head was lifted high in anticipation. The future was waiting to be made.