Star Wars: Sith Insurrection
Chapter 1: Succession
Darkness,
emptiness, desolation, unforgiving, lifeless. Such was the view of space as
seen through the eyes of a young, if not easily impressionable apprentice as the
brief swishing motion of the doors brought him into my sight. We are two of a
kind. We are the only two of our kind. Thus it has been for endless centuries,
and will continue to be for some time yet.
As
I walk in the room, his head slowly rotates toward me, betraying no emotion,
and most importantly, showing no fear. I have taught him well. He learned well,
though I never tell him so. It is not our way. He looks very sepentine for one
so young; only seventeen, his blue-black robe the color of darkened thunderstorm
clouds, and like them, barely concealing the raging storm beneath. He has grown
much in power, if not in the proper channeling of it, but he tends to be very
sloppy in his use and overuse of it. We are sith. Our ways are subtle, our
existence a myth, and we do not tolerate failure. His face, like my own, is
barely concealable through the shadows thrown over his face by an oversized
hood.
He
speaks, his voice being comparable to the effect of dragging a durasteel rod in
several layers of Grundolian silk, "They should have been here some time ago."
I
give him my response, in my own slow, methodical, though not monotone voice,
"We have survived countless centuries by virtue of patience, my apprentice, we
will wait as long as is necessary for them to arrive. A virtue you would do
well to learn. Impatience has been the undoing of many an aspiring sith lord."
The
ones we were waiting for were a group of pirates who had recently broke away
from Black Sun. Their ship was equipped with a cloaking technology that had
enabled them to safely elude their previous employers. They had reason to
believe they were being paid to transport us to Corellia with a large shipment
of glitterstim and black market bacta. Who better to ship a group of black
marketers than those with cloaking technology? They have reason to believe they
are being paid well, thirty thousand credits worth of well. What they don't
realize is, for starters, who we are, and second, that sith have no interest in
things as petty as the narcotics and stolen goods trade. What I really want is
their cloaking device, and I have every means available to me to take it.
This
particular project has been five years in the making. Tracking down such rare
and illusive equipment is a particularly sensitive area. Anyone with it guards
it quite jealously, and others spend entire lifetimes trying to get it. On
occasion smugglers and gun-runners are known to come across it and use it to
make a very large fortune in a very short time; some of the very rare cases I
hear there are such people who actually retire and eventually die in their
sleep years later.
I
leave the room and walk down the corridor, my footfalls ringing and echoing the
whole way down. It is the one thing about me that I could accurately describe as
being not subtle. I feel the air against my robes flowing silently. I can feel
every ticking beat, every rhythmic pounding of the ship, even the beating of my
apprentice's darkened heart. I feel all things through the force, even if I do
choose to follow it's darker antithesis.
I
feel my apprentice turn away from his portal and exit the room, making his way
toward me. I know why even before he falls in step with me. The pirates,
Captain Hadron has arrived.
………………………………
Docking
with us took less time than I expected, and shortly afterward Captain Hadron
came to introduce himself. His crew wasted no time getting our cargo moved from
our derelic freighter into the cargo hold of their more top-of-the-line YT-800.
After we had finished our transaction, boarded their freighter and detached
ourselves from our ship, the two of us knew what was next. Our lightsabers came
out in unison, his with a bright crimson blade, and mine of the same color,
though of a much darker shade, more the color of dried human blood. I let go of
my lightsaber, using my mind to keep it suspended in air for but a brief
second, then sent it spinning in a propeller-like motion and speed, carefully
guiding it to it's designated targets. A chorus of screams was heard throughout
the ship, but within seconds, there was silence. I never bothered to watch the
slaughter I had done. I killed as it was necessary, but I've never felt any
need to glory in the act; such was never my nature. I stood in the cargo hold,
on a balcony directly overlooking two open bacta tanks, as I raised all the
bodies psycho-kinetically, and placed them in a pile in the center of a largely
unused cargo hold.
What
came next, I should have been expecting, but at the time, I thought it too
soon. My hold over the force was abruptly severed and a felt something warm
through my torso. I instinctively looked down, knowing what to expect: The
bright red blade of my apprentice's lightsaber protruding from the center of my
chest. I had been so focused on the job at hand, I had lost my hold on the mind
of my apprentice. The blade disappeared, and my body fell, straight into one of
the bacta tanks. The lid immediately closed; the work of my apprentice's own
mind, I would assume. It was difficult to see clearly in that fluid, but I made
out his form leave the cargo hold. Shortly afterwards, the cargo doors came
open, and all loose material was swept away, including, not coincidentally, the
bacta tank I was in. Everything around me went black, with pinpricks of
starlight.
I
had only one chance of survival, assuming I could pull it off. An old sith
secret I had learned about in one of the texts. The last thing I remember
seeing clearly was the old, junked freighter we came in being blown into
sub-atomic particles……
My
name was Darth Set. The name of my apprentice was Darth Sidious.
