“He’s quarantined Dromund Kaas,” Meetra said, trying to lead them to the same conclusion. “What if he’s preparing to do the same thing here that he did on Nathema?”
Scourge hadn’t considered that possibility, and it chilled him to his core.
“Is that possible?” he asked. “Nyriss told me the ritual on Nathema took days, if not weeks. And the Emperor had to trick hundreds of other powerful Sith into working with him so he could draw on their power.”
“He’s stronger now,” Revan said. “But even if it’s possible, I don’t think he’ll go that far. At least not yet. He is too patient, too careful. Dromund Kaas is the heart of his Empire and the seat of his power. He has too many valuable resources here to throw it all away. But once he is ready, there will be nothing left to stop him from launching his invasion of the Republic.”
“What do you mean?” Meetra asked.
Scourge answered on Revan’s behalf. “The Emperor had to keep his plans secret because he knew the Dark Council would oppose him. Now they are wiped out. And whoever he picks to replace them will remember what happened to their predecessors, and be too terrified to speak out against him.”
“He can also use this to rally the will of the people,” Revan added. “He can claim the Dark Council was working with agents of the Republic, and that is why he destroyed them. He will claim the Sith Empire has been rediscovered by its old enemy. He will convince his subjects that the only hope of survival is to strike first.”
“He won’t make his proclamation until order is restored on Dromund Kaas,” Scourge noted.
“That doesn’t give us much time,” Meetra remarked, remembering how efficiently the Guard had overrun Nyriss’s stronghold.
“The Guard are patrolling the streets, enforcing the curfew,” Scourge said. “Only a handful remain stationed at the citadel. Now is our best chance to strike at the Emperor.”
“This time I know his tricks and tactics,” Revan assured them. “I can shield my mind from being dominated by his will, and I can show you how to do the same.”
“We should wait until dawn,” Scourge said. “There will be fewer people out in the light of day. And most of the Guard will be recovering at the barracks after patrolling the streets all night.”
“Good,” Revan said. “That gives us a few hours to try to get some rest.”
Both Meetra and Scourge nodded in agreement, though the Sith doubted any of them would get much sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SCOURGE HOVERED ON THE EDGE OF SLEEP. His body was exhausted, but his mind was churning. Unable to still his thoughts and let sleep wash over him, he tossed and turned.
Unlike his Jedi companions, he had never learned to sit and meditate in order to draw sustenance from the Force. The dark side was about action and activity, not restful contemplation. But he knew that if he didn’t try something, he would have to endure a long and restless night.
He propped himself into a sitting position and closed his eyes, trying to open himself up to the Force. Taking slow, deep breaths, he focused on letting his mind open itself to the infinite possibilities swirling through time and space. After several minutes he managed to drift into a state of semiconsciousness.
Revan lay motionless on the floor of the Citadel’s throne room. Meetra and Scourge lay beside him, their bodies twisted and broken, clinging to the last moments of life.
The Emperor approached the trio, regarding them with a cold and casual contempt as he loomed above his fallen adversaries. Scourge tried to stand and flee, but his crippled limbs wouldn’t support his weight. All he could do was crawl on his belly like a worm.
His efforts drew the attention of the Emperor, who didn’t speak but came over and lowered himself to one knee. He grabbed Scourge by the shoulder and rolled him over so he was staring up into the twin voids of the Emperor’s eyes.
As he reached out a hand and placed it on Scourge’s forehead, the Sith began to scream.
Scourge’s eyes popped open as his mind snapped to a fully alert state of consciousness. His heart was pounding, and he could still hear the sound of his own scream ringing in his ears.
Glancing around the cave he realized the scream must have been confined to his mind; neither Meetra nor Revan had reacted in any way. She was sitting in the same cross-legged pose Revan had often assumed during his time in Nyriss’s prison. Revan was kneeling in front of T3-M4, hunched forward as he rewatched the holovid of his wife and son.
Scourge shook his head, trying to push away the remnants of his dream. But the memory stayed with him, and he began to realize that what he had seen was something more than a mere nightmare.
The experience lacked the hazy, surreal feel of a dream. It had been too vivid, the details too sharp and precise to be a figment manifested by his subconscious. There was only one possible explanation for what had happened: the Force had given Scourge a vision.
Scourge’s hands began to tremble slightly as he realized he had witnessed his own destruction at the Emperor’s hand. Even worse, the vision made it clear that both Meetra and Revan would suffer the same fate. He had opened himself up to the Force, and it had shown him that their coming mission would end in failure.
He glanced over at the Jedi, wondering if he should warn them. Even if he did, would they believe what he said? Could he believe it?
His training at the Academy had taught him little about the prophetic abilities of the Force. Was what he had seen inevitable, or was it a fate he could somehow avoid? Maybe his strong connection to the dark side would somehow color his visions, distorting them so they showed the worst of all possible futures.
The simplest course would be to tell Revan what he had seen and hear his opinion of it. But Scourge knew his allies’ trust in him was already fragile. If he admitted he thought their mission was doomed, it could convince them he couldn’t be trusted. They might even decide it was his presence that caused their failure; after all, he was the one who had seen the vision.
Scourge continued to struggle with what he had seen, trying to understand what it meant and what he should do about it. But after several more minutes of silently talking himself in circles, he realized he simply wouldn’t find the answers on his own.
He pushed himself to his feet and went over to where Revan was sitting. T3 paused the playback of the holovid as he approached, but left the still image of Revan’s wife and son hovering in the air.
“May I speak with you?” Scourge asked, taking a seat beside the Jedi without waiting for a reply.
“You may,” Revan said, not bothering to tear his gaze away from the projection of his family.
“I want to know more about the Force,” Scourge said. “I want to understand it as you do.”
Revan turned to give him a quizzical look. “You want to know this now?”
“This might be our last chance,” Scourge said. “I’ve been thinking about something you said to me the last time we spoke in your cell.”
“What is that?”
“You knew Meetra was coming to rescue you because the Force had given you a vision.”
Revan smiled. “Actually, I was bluffing. I was trying to trick you. I was hoping you might dream of me escaping, and think the Force was guiding you to help me.”
“Is that how it happens?” Scourge asked, slightly miffed at Revan’s confession. “They come to you in your dreams?”
“No. A Force vision is more powerful than any dream. There is an intensity that jumps out at you, and the details do not fade. But I figured you wouldn’t know the difference.”
I do now, Scourge thought.
“I won’t apologize for lying to you,” Revan said, mistaking the reason for his companion’s silence. “And if it makes you feel any better, I actually did have a vision of Meetra after we spoke.”
“That seems a highly unlikely coincidence,” Scourge noted.
“That is the way of the Force,” Revan said. “Cause and effect are not a simple linear relationship.
The Force transcends space and time; it flows through us and around us; it influences our past, present, and future. Maybe I spoke to you of visions because I knew the Force was trying to reach out to me. Or maybe Meetra came to Dromund Kaas because I told you someone was coming to rescue me.”
“But she started looking for you long before we had our conversation,” Scourge protested.
“It’s complicated,” Revan answered with a cryptic smile. “Jedi scholars have devoted centuries to understanding the ways of the Force, and we have only scratched the surface.”
Scourge silently tried to digest what he was being told. At the same time, he tried to form the questions that would give him the answers he wanted without revealing what he had seen.
“Once you had the vision of Meetra, were you certain she was coming? Did you know for sure that she would help free you?”
Revan shook his head. “We can never be certain about anything. The future is always in motion, and a vision shows you only one of many possible outcomes.”
“Then what purpose do visions serve?”
“They guide us,” Revan explained. “They give us focus. They show us a goal to strive for, or something we can work to prevent.”
“So the visions are not absolute?”
“As I said, the future is always in motion.”
There was another long period of silence before Scourge asked another question. “Have you had any visions of what will happen when we face the Emperor?”
“No,” Revan said. “The dark side obscures my sight. We are walking into a time and place of shadows, and I cannot promise you that we will ever come out.”
“Doesn’t that terrify you?”
“Fear is only an emotion; a trick the mind plays on us. You must learn to set your fear aside.”
“We Sith are taught to embrace our fear,” Scourge told him. “We transform it into anger and use it to fuel the power of the dark side.”
“But then your actions will always be driven by that fear,” Revan said.
“And what are your actions driven by?” Scourge asked. “Logic? Reason?”
“No,” Revan admitted. “If I were reasonable, I would never have left my family behind to face the Emperor.”
“Then why did you do it?”
Revan nodded in the direction of the holoprojection. “For them. I want my son to live a long and healthy life. I want him to know peace, not war. I’ve come to stop the Emperor for him.”
“And what if we don’t stop him?” Scourge said, treading perilously close to the heart of what he really wanted to say. “What if he’s too strong?”
“That is a possibility,” Revan admitted. “But even if we fail to defeat the Emperor, there is still hope. My return will give him pause. He will wonder how I threw off the chains of his will. He will wonder why I have returned, and how much the Republic now knows of his plan. He will even wonder about Malak. For all the Emperor knows, Malak is still out there, plotting to take the Emperor down if I fail.”
“You’re just trying to buy time,” Scourge gasped. “You don’t care if the Emperor kills us all—you just want to delay him!”
“No,” Revan said. “I want to live. Even more, I want to purge the galaxy of his evil once and for all. But I understand that there can be victory even in defeat. Even if we fall, we will buy time. Maybe a few years. More likely a few decades.”
“Time for your son to become a man,” Scourge noted bitterly. “Are you hoping he will finish what you might not?”
“Him or someone else,” Revan admitted. “The Force always strives for balance. The Emperor is an agent of darkness and destruction. It is inevitable that a champion of the light will one day rise to oppose him. I may be that champion.” He spoke with no hint of hubris. “I’ve played the role before. At the very least, I will make the Emperor step back and reconsider his plan. If that is my fate—if my role is to sacrifice myself for the one who will come next—then I embrace it.”
Scourge shook his head. “I’m beginning to think you are as mad as the Emperor. I have no intention of dying tomorrow.”
“Neither do I. But if death comes, I will face it without fear. You will find our task easier if you can convince yourself to do the same,” he said, before turning his attention back to the holoprojection.
“Start over from the beginning,” Revan told T3, and the astromech obediently restarted the recording.
Scourge got to his feet and walked back to the section of the cave he had been sitting in earlier. He briefly considered talking to Meetra, then realized that would be a waste of time. She would only echo what Revan had said.
The Sith sat down and crossed his legs again, closing his eyes. But he wasn’t able to clear his mind this time. Instead, he kept running over Revan’s words, playing them against the enduring images of his vision, trying to understand what it all meant.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
AS PLANNED, Revan, Meetra, Scourge, and T3-M4 left the cave at dawn, though dawn on Dromund Kaas was a term with little meaning. The black storm clouds completely blocked out the sun, and the sky was only marginally lighter than it had been during the night.
A steady drizzle fell on them as they climbed into the speeder. They rode in silence, all of them preparing in their own way for what they knew lay ahead. Meetra had gone into what Revan called her warrior’s trance; she sat still and straight, her eyes focused on nothing as she stared straight ahead.
He had seen it many times during the war against the Mandalorians. Before each major battle she would try to center her emotions, cleansing herself of all fear and hatred lest the imminent violence draw her toward the dark side. She believed she could transform herself into a perfect conduit for the Force, an incorruptible weapon of light.
Revan was no longer sure such a thing was possible, but he didn’t say anything to Meetra for fear of disrupting her routine.
With his memories restored, Revan recalled that he, too, had once clung to a set of rituals before each battle. He would stare at his reflection in the mirror, his face covered by his mask as he recited the Jedi Code over and over until the words seemed to blend together, their meaning lost in the rhythmic repetition of a mantra.
In those days, he had believed this would protect him from the dark side, but he no longer had any such illusions. He was older and wiser. He understood that the two sides of the Force were more closely intertwined with each other than either the Jedi or the Sith would ever admit. He had learned to balance on the knife-edge between them, drawing on both the light and dark sides for strength.
As much as things had changed, however, he still felt the old stirrings of glory as they set off—a faint echo from the impetuousness of youth that had caused him to defy the Council and lead his fellow Jedi into war so many years before.
Even T3 was strangely subdued, the gravity of their situation weighing as heavily on the astromech as it did on his organic companions.
Revan knew he didn’t have to worry about Meetra or the faithful droid. Scourge was another matter, however. The conversation they’d had during the night left little doubt that the Sith was troubled.
Unlike the Jedi, he had not spent a lifetime preparing for this. The concept of self-sacrifice came easily to those who walked the path of the light. Even though he occasionally strayed into the dark side, Revan still embraced the nobility of the idea.
For the Sith, however, there was no such thing as a noble death. Scourge understood the concept of sacrifice, but only when it came to sacrificing others. He had been taught to value survival above all else. Even his willingness to join with Revan and Meetra was driven by his desire for self-preservation; ultimately he wanted victory only for his sake, and not for the sake of others.
Perhaps there was no greater illustration of the difference between the light side and the dark, and Revan knew it would make their mission more difficult for Scourge. He had tried to make him understand during their brief conversation, but it was hard to undo years of tea
ching in a single night.
Still, the Sith seemed to be holding himself together well enough this morning.
“I can’t bring the speeder in too close,” Scourge said now, taking them in for a landing on the farthest outskirts of Kaas City. “They might have set up ion cannons to shoot down any unauthorized vehicles.”
They continued on foot, making their way through the empty streets heading toward the citadel. They didn’t encounter a single living soul on their journey; apart from the Emperor’s Guard, nobody dared to violate the curfew. And three Force-sensitive individuals and an astromech equipped with top-of-the-line optical and audio sensors had no trouble avoiding the handful of patrols still wandering the streets.
As they drew closer to the city’s center, the signs of the previous night’s mayhem became more frequent and more striking. Most of the windows were shattered, and many of the buildings were blackened by smoke or completely gutted by fire. The street was pockmarked with craters and covered with the burned-out husks of speeders lying on their sides. Most of the dead had been carted away, either by friends or Imperial cleaning crews, but there was still the odd body slumped in a doorway or half hidden under a refuse pile down a side alley.
When they finally reached the citadel, there were no sentries standing by the entrance at the top of the stairs.
“If we run into anyone, let me do the talking,” Scourge whispered as they mounted the steps.
They were only a few meters away from the entrance when the door flew open and half a dozen of the red-uniformed soldiers spilled out, armed with blasters and electrostaffs.
“You are in violation of the Imperial curfew,” one of the soldiers informed them. “Surrender your weapons and you will be escorted to a nearby prison facility.”
“You fool!” Lord Scourge spat at the Guard, his voice rising with arrogant indignation. “Do you know who I am?”
“Only those explicitly authorized by the Emperor are permitted on the streets,” the soldier replied, his voice wavering only slightly.