No Choice
Revan Averre, Darth Revan and Dark Lord of the Sith, cursed silently to himself under his mask as he looked out the viewport to the battle before him. Another Republican capital ship disintegrated under the guns of Revan's mighty Sith fleet. Yet this entire battle was nothing but a ruse, the sacrifice of the Republican forces a noble one meant as a mere distraction. They had suckered him. Him! He, who was the master strategist of the war with the Mandalorians, who had sundered their entire invasion force and crushed them at Malachor V, had been tricked by a handful of Jedi Council pawns and a few desperate squadrons of Republic troops.
"After all I've done, all I've sacrificed, all I've planned, it could all come to nothing because of this idiocy," the Dark Lord thought to himself. For all his brilliance he had become complacent, and he realized that now. He'd become too assured of his own knowledge of strategy, the power of his ships, the strength of the Star Forge, and the abilities of his soldiers and Sith. Perhaps the dark side had finally managed to actually corrupt him, managed to give him the same sense of arrogant superiority that had come over Malak as of late. These thoughts led Revan down a path of reflection. The Dark Lord could well afford it after all. The Republic 'fleet' was helpless; even Malak would have been able to defeat it using numbers alone. And Revan could do nothing about the strike force on hi ship that hadn't already been done.
Revan had disobeyed orders to fight the Mandalore's armies, and to this day he believed that to be the right choice. Innocent people, both within and outside of the Republic, were being slaughtered. Entire worlds were being burned. And the soldiers and pilots of the Republic, for all their gallantry and stubbornness, could not win. They were simply too burdened by the bureaucracy of their government and lacked the strength to do the job alone. So Jedi Revan led his best friend and a cadre of Jedi into the teeth of the invasion.
He had been victorious in the end, but the frightening casualties had scarred him badly. He still had nightmares sometimes, although he kept them more secret than his appearance. He had lost many good friends and comrades, and had another friend even more badly scarred at Malachor. She had been sent home on his orders, the only one to do so, and the Jedi Order had made her an Exile. He scowled under his mask at the thought, but it softened quickly. It had been another example of the Council's stupidity and ignorance, but at least by making her an Exile they had kept her out of the war. So she had dodged two disasters: the war with Revan's Sith, and the calamity that came before it.
The Council, for all its foul ignorance of its duty to the people, had been right about one thing when they forbid him from going to war. There had been another threat, something behind the Mandalorian invasion, waiting out in the depths of space. And when Revan, Malak, and their forces tracked it down it leapt upon them with all the ferocity and 'mercy' of a terentatek. And Revan had realized he had no choice.
If he attempted to stand in the light against that bleak darkness, it would devour him and all he held dear. Yet if he fled from it, it would merely emerge from its hiding place within a few years and do the same thing anyways. But if he joined it and twisted it to his own uses, he could force it to devour him alone and save that which he sought to protect. He could use the darkness's power against itself and they would both be destroyed, cleansing the galaxy and leaving behind those who could rebuild. So, he had 'fallen' and brought Malak and the other with him. That had led him to this regrettable yet necessary war.
A sword must be strong in order to fight evil, and the fact that Revan had been forced to go to war in the first place proved that the Republic's sword was too weak to fight off the darkness that haunted the Outer Rim. When a sword was too weak, it was replaced. So that was what Revan sought to do. He would replace the Republic with his own Empire and then turn on the darkness. The darkness's empire and his own Empire would destroy one another and leave the innocent people of the Galaxy unscathed with the ability to build a new Republic.
True, a new form of darkness would eventually appear to threaten that New Republic, if it would be called that. But he had thought of a plan even for that; a holocron detailing a plan for a Rule of Two to weaken the Sith. Nothing could make the Sith a non-threat, but at least this Rule of Two would slow them down some by limiting their forces. After all, the Jedi would be better off facing two crafty Sith than several hundred fighting Sith. Surely the horrific casualties the Jedi had taken in this conflict alone were proof of that! Revan realized his thoughts were skittering from the past to future and back, and controlled himself. Thinking calmed him before a fight, but not if his thoughts were wandering. And that led him to his biggest problem.
Somewhere, Malak had begun to wander from the path of martyred, unappreciated, hated 'savior' that he and Revan had assumed. He had actually become dark, unlike Revan who merely used the dark in an (admittedly twisted) attempt to protect the light. The man who had been the more reluctant of the pair at every step had finally gained confidence, but in such a terrible way. Revan sought the salvation of the galaxy ending in the destruction of the darkness and his own life, what he viewed as a fair trade. Malak had done the same, once, but now sought the conquest of the galaxy ending in a mastery of the darkness and him possessing supreme power, which he viewed as the inevitable way of nature. And many now thought as Malak did.
Malak had finally pushed Revan too far with Telos. The slaughter there served no purpose but slaughter and for Malak to prove to Revan that he had the guts to do such things. So Revan had summoned Malak, drawn his lightsaber, and chopped off his best friend's jaw. It had hurt him to do so, but at this point Revan had become cold and resolute. HK-47 had displayed quite a bit of glee at the act and had gladly followed orders to haul a gurgling Malak to sickbay. Revan found himself missing the droid badly, but HK was away on assignment at the moment.
"I could use good old Psycho Circuit right now to repel this infernal strike force," Revan thought to himself as he heard screams, blaster bolts, lightsabers, and grenades leak through the bridge's blast door. According to reports filtering into the bridge, the Jedi strike force had taken heavy casualties. Most of the Republic commandos escorting the Jedi were dead and over half the Jedi were in pieces on the ground. But they would reach the bridge and Revan easily enough. Nothing was wrong with their courage. That much they had already proven.
Three Republican capital ships had hyper-jumped almost on top of his fleet while it was laying at rest. Taken by surprise, the Sith had lost two frigates before they could get their shields up and guns firing. Only one Republican ship escaped back into hyper, and Revan had ordered his ships after it. He had intended to track it to its base and punish the Republicans for their insolence. When the Sith arrived they discovered not a base but a small fleet, and quickly surrounded it. Only to find their flagship boarded.
Revan turned to the bridge door and fingered his lightsaber. They were here; their presence in the Force called out to him and made them shine with light. Jedi. Revan sighed deeply, being careful not to let any of his minions hear him. "I'm not looking forward to killing these people," he thought to himself. "But I've no choice. I just can't let them kill me. It would mean I've corrupted myself for nothing, and I can't stand that."
Revan didn't even flinch as the bridge door exploded inward from the force of several thermal detonators. The two Sith troopers standing at the door discovered that their shiny armor did not make them invincible, as red-hot shards of metal slashed into them. The three surviving Republic commandos who had set off the blast stepped back and turned away to cover the exit route while the Jedi stormed into the bridge.
"The Force fights with me!" Revan heard a young woman yell as she cut down another trooper. He looked for the source of that voice yet couldn't see it through the chaos as troopers fired their rifles, bridge officers drew and fired their pistols and the lightsaber of Jedi and Sith clashed together. In a moment, two Jedi cut their way through the melee and ran towards him. Revan ignited his lightsaber as one of his acolytes intercepted the woman and the man rushed to meet him.
Gritting his teeth, Revan swung the weapon down hard, but the Jedi managed to block it and directed a kick at the Dark Lord's chest as the lightsabers locked together. Revan slid to the side and the kick merely glanced off of his armor. With a wave of his hand and a small amount of Force power Revan pushed the Jedi Knght back, freeing his saber. The Jedi quickly recovered and attacked again, slashing at Reven's waist. Revan easily deflected several blows before extending his hand again and firing a bolt of Force lightning into his enemy's chest. The Jedi gasped as his lungs stopped working and his heart spasmed, and his lightsaber fell from his grip. Before the weapon had even turned off automatically and hit the ground, Revan swung his saber up and across, leaving a terrible scorch mark across the Jedi's chest. Grabbing the wound, the man collapsed to the ground and became one with the Force.
Revan looked up from the corpse to see that the female Jedi had struck down the acolyte, and that in fact his entire bridge crew had been wiped out. The surviving Jedi, as few as they were, approached him with sabers drawn and the lead female yelled at him.
"You cannot win, Revan!" she said. Revan nearly laughed at her sheer arrogance in the face of his power. He recognized her as the source of the battle cry from earlier, and then remembered her name as memories flickered across his mind. Bastila Shan. He had seen her from a distance several years before at the Academy prior to when he went to war, and her skills and self-confidence had apparently only grown greater. Supposedly she was the source of the Battle Meditation that had been so much trouble of late. Looking at her now, only a few years younger than Revan himself, he could remember thinking that she was still a good person for all her severity. And, he realized, she actually looked quite beautiful. And she had to die. He was outnumbered, true, but still stood a good chance to kill the beautiful young woman and her comrades; regrettable, but necessary. Really, he had no choice.
He swung his saber into a fighting stance and was about to attack when he felt a tremor through the Force. He couldn't believe what the Force was telling him, and for a moment stood there paralyzed. All of his plans, ruined in one fatal moment.
"Malak! No!"
Malak would have sneered if he retained the ability to do so. Instead, he just reveled in the heady feeling of power he possessed as he heard Revan's mental scream and felt his 'Master' vanish from his senses. "That's that", he thought. Darth Malak was now the Dark Lord of the Sith and the upcoming ruler of the galaxy.
The Sith fleet was in too much chaos, what with its leader being killed and replaced, to notice a small ship leave Revan's flagship and dock with one of the few remaining Republican capital ships Taking advantage of the confusion the battered forces of the Republic fought their way out of the kill zone and escaped into hyperspace with a very important cargo.
Blaine Averre, Lieutenant of the Republic's Special Forces, startled awake as the Endar Spire shook around him. He'd been having another nightmare, apparently, because he was drenched in sweat. Suddenly the door burst open and a young Ensign ran through yelling about a Sith attack. Blaine was disoriented from having woken up so quickly, but the young man – Trask – talked him out of the foggy half-sleep very quickly. Blaine quickly tossed on his clothes and hefted his blaster rifle.
"We're going to have to blast and cut our way to the bridge if we're going to get Bastila off safely," he said to the Ensign as the pair prepared to move out. "It's going to be messy, and it's going to be dangerous. Chances are we're going to die before we even get close, but we have to try. Really, we have no choice."