(Author's notes: This is a work of fiction. In particular, fan-fiction. I do not claim to own the universe. Most of the characters are not official canon in the Star Wars Universe, either.)
(For anyone willing to take this story up, it is set about 25,000 years before the events of the movies, during the time of the formation of both the Jedi order and the Galactic Republic. No characters from the movies, TV shows, Knights of the Old Republic, or most of the Expanded Universe will be present. The story itself will revolve around Beriven Vaime and Marius Altaire, as they grow up in and around the events that will lead to the beginning of the Jedi Order, the Unification Wars, and the expansion of Hyperspace Travel as the Rakatan Empire fades from Galactic memory)
(Oh, and if you like it, feel free to say so. I've had a lot of people add the tale to their alerts or favorite stories, but very few who said what they liked, or didn't like about the story. Encouragement would go a long way to helping me get further along with this tale. This of it this way, I've given you permission to harass me about it.)
Prologue, Revolt
It was always the place of the Master to embody power, and the place of the Apprentice to covet it. The Master, by virtue of being the one who offered power to his disciples, was the measure by which the right to wield power was weighed. Should the Apprentice weigh too heavily on the scales, it was only right and inevitable that the greater power should rule.
However, even that right had to be earned.
And for an old sorcerer, who had commanded an entire world for four generations, it was a right that could only truly be wrested from his own cold, limp hands.
"Iniquitus, my lord." a timid voice announced, from below a throne of black obsidian. The speaker, fully a hundred steps down from a chair as heavy as a star freighter, and as imposing as a mountaintop, was still heard as clearly as if he stood beside the throne itself.
It was rare, on any day, to hear noise when in sight of the throne. Poets had described the horror of standing in a field, that only hours before had been the epicenter of a thermonuclear blast. So powerful an explosion that no wind would return for hours, nor any life survive, you could stand for hours or even days and hear nothing except the noises you brought with you. Those same poets used such imagery to describe the throne room of the Immortal Emperor of Coruscant.
On this heavy obsidian throne, cloaked in black cloth that covered everything except one eye, a figure glanced down at this blemish in his near perfect silence. His hands, gloved as black as the throne, rose in a gesture that, from anyone else, might have appeared accommodating. As it was, it brought the timid messenger to his knees, stammering in fear.
"What use is a messenger that cannot serve as such?" The figure asked the empty air, gesturing again with his hand. This time, in the near darkness of the throne, brilliant, tiny bursts of light seemed to dance in his upraised palm.
The messenger bit his own tongue, hard enough to cringe in pain, before trying to speak again. "I'm sorry, my lord. Rebellion."
"Rebellion? Surely there is no one so brave on this world. Even to do your duty to me, you can barely stammer the word."
The figure stood up, and glanced as if to gaze upon something beyond sight.
"Ah. I know who, and I know how. The admirals, pray chance?" Iniquitus asked. He almost sounded amused.
"Yes, my lord. The still unfinished armada. A few ships were finished ahead of schedule, kept in secret. We only know now, because of reports coming in from the army bases of these attacks."
Iniquitus made no visible response. "My apprentice?" He asked, after a long moment.
"Bid me to report to you, sire." The messenger responded, cringing. For good reason, unpleasant news was not something anyone wished to present to the Lord of Courascant. "I don't know if he is allied with this plot."
"He leads them, you fool. A single, rather serious oversight on my part, to allow such weapons to slip from my grasp. But I wonder..." He said, sitting back down on his throne. "Bring me the base commander, and every general still in the city." He said eventually, a little louder.
An attendant near the messenger bowed, as deeply as he could in a kneeling position, and stood up to leave.
"And bring me Aryan Maizer, the engineer." The old sorcerer added.
"The inventor of the energy shield battery?" The attendant said.
"Did you really need to ask?" Iniquitus said, raising his only visible eyebrow.
The attendant bowed again and stepped through a small door to the side of the entrance.
"As for you," The Lord of Courascent said to the messenger, "I want to know why you had to deliver this news in person, rather than cabling a message to my attendants." The words were spoken softly, barely more than whisper, but every word was as clear to the messenger as if they were spoken straight to his ear.
"My lord, I was instructed to bring you a small package, and to present it and this news to you directly. I was told that any deviation would make the situation worse."
"Of course you were." The old sorcerer said scornfully. "What did my apprentice bid you to bring me?"
Out of his jacket, the messenger extracted a small cylinder. Slightly larger than a flashlight, made entirely of metal, it looked at first glance like the handle of a plasma torch or a hydro-spanner.
"My lord, forgive me, but I don't recognize it." He said, holding the item upraised in his hands. He moved forward to present it, but the master held his hand straight in the air, bidding him to hold still.
The lord of Coruscent held his hand out, as if reaching for a cup on the shelf. The cylinder leapt from the messengers hands, sailing in a steep, nearly straight arc into Iniquitus' outstretched hand.
He gazed at it impassively for a moment, as if it were the most common thing in the world. His expression changed, quickly, when he began rolling it in the palm of his hand, holding it as if one would a flashlight.
"Did my rebellious little disciple say anything about his message?" Iniquitus asked into the air. He gazed down at the messenger after a few moments, scowling.
"No, my lord." the messenger stammered.
"I see." Iniquitus replied. He lifted the cylinder into the air, point outstretched to the ceiling above him. His thumb moved, slowly, to the latch on the side.
With a squelch of rushing energy, a beam of brilliant red light leapt from the end of the cylinder. The various attendants in the corners of the room, their faces in stark relief with the new light, stumbled backwards in surprise.
The light, surprisingly, held a solid shape and extended no more than four feet from the end of the cylinder. It gave off a menacing, low hum that suddenly seemed to howl when Iniquitus would swing it through the air.
It was, though, the light that seemed to terrify everyone else in the room. It was red, as dark and menacing as the colour of blood on a wall.
"So, this is the last piece of his plan." Iniquitus said, more to himself than to the terrified servants in the furthest corners of the throne room. "Inspired, though insipid. Instead of growing powerful enough to counter my strength, he searches for a way to neuter it."
He took the first of the three dozen steps on the obsidian pyramid that made his throne. Each step he took was punctuated by the howl of the energy blade in his hand as it cut through the air.
"Do you know what the only true crime is under my throne?" Iniquitus asked, staring directly down at the messenger as he took another step.
Three more steps, with three more howls through the air, were heard before the messenger stammered a reply. "Disloyalty, sire?" He asked.
"Exactly. Disloyalty. Not even stupidity, as detestable as it is, can be considered a crime under my throne." Iniquitus answered, still marching slowly from his throne.
"I fear, that you are guilty of that single crime." He added, quietly.
"My lord?" the messenger began, but another wave of the energy blade cut him off.
"You stink of fear. The terror of the weak as they discover their lust for life isn't matched by their capacity to keep it. If you were wise you would deny it. If you were quick you would already flee. But you are only weak, and having failed to use whatever meager capacity allotted to you, to inform me right away of this rebellion, you demonstrate not only stupidity, but disloyalty." Iniquitus said, stopping on the step above where the messenger still knelt.
"But my lord, I came directly to you..."
"And obeyed the directions of those rebelling against my throne." Iniquitus finished, in a voice one could almost mistake as kind.
"My lord, please!" The messenger began, looking up just in time to watch the red blade flash once.
The weapon shrieked, briefly, a high pitched counter-note to its usual howl, as it cut through the messenger. The blade stopped, and Iniquitus had a full moment to turn around and take a step back up to his throne before the body crumpled to the floor.
"Flesh is no more than air to this blade." Iniquitus remarked, smiling. "Quite a weapon, my erstwhile apprentice. Quite a weapon."
He took a few more steps up to his throne, and turned the latch back. The blade vanished from sight, leaving no mark of having existed.
"Have the garrison generals responded yet?" Iniquitus asked the room, starting back up the stairs to his throne.
"All of them have, sire." Came a voice from one of the dark corners of the room. "The troops are being deployed to the outskirts of the city, and preparations are already underway to move civilians out of potential combat zones."
"That's rather foolish, isn't it?" Iniquitus asked. "Step forward, General Verre, and explain to me why the troops, already inadequate, are spread so thin and preoccupied with coddling the weak?"
"You know my concerns towards the citizens, sire." General Verre answered, softly. He bowed once, perfunctory, before standing up straight and standing at ease. It wasn't missed by anyone in the throne room that his quiet voice still held iron.
"Ever with two masters, General Verre. The unique thing about you, of course, is that self-glorification is not one of them. Myself and morality, the need for order against the dignity of the lives that order protects, the two governors of your every action. Tell me, General, do you suspect that this rebellion may serve your other other master better than I?"
The general flinched, but did not look away. "I considered it, sire."
"And decided otherwise, or you would not stand before my throne right now. So tell me, why have you spread the troops so thinly, and wasted the best resource we have to slow down the coming armada?
"My lord, under the circumstances, holding the capital seems beyond the capabilities of the garrison. I have actually come to advise you to flee the capital, join the armies, and return." General Verre explained.
"I see." Iniquitus said, with a small smirk on his face. "You're quite right, of course, if I were depending on the garrison to hold the city."
"You have another plan, my lord?" General Verre asked, as the smaller doors opened again.
Ushered inside by robed attendants, a ragged looking woman well beyond middle years stepped into the room, and knelt immediately before the obsidian throne.
"You may stand, Aryan. We're a little preoccupied to demand the usual forms of obedience." Iniquitus said. "How long will the shield batteries last if you were to cover the entire city?"
"Only five hours, sire. Each battery could only be used to cover the entire city for half an hour." Aryan explained, quivering.
"And if we were to only cover the palace?" Inqiuitus asked.
"Almost three days, sire."
"If the generators below the palace were used to recharge the used batteries in turn?"
"That would depend on how long the batteries take to charge. If it takes an entire day to recharge a battery, then you would only gain a single day. If the batteries took less than seven hours to recharge, you could maintain it indefinitely." She explained, staring up at the ceiling as she thought through the calculations.
"Four days will be more than long enough." Iniquitus reflected, to himself. "General Verre, reassign your troops to prepare to hold the palace and inner-city from a small-scale ground assault. Assist Aryan Maizer in her preparations for the energy shield, and insure the public is informed that it's in their best interests to leave the capital."
Iniquitus climbed back to the obsidian throne, and sat down. "Oh, and inform the army generals that it's in their best interests to properly mobilize their forces before they come to reclaim the capital. I expect them to be here four days from now, but I expect them to come prepared to take down the unfinished armada."
"Your will, sire." A number of the attendants spoke in unison, bowing deeply and stepping from the room.
Aryan moved to leave, but General Verre still stood, looking up at the obsidian throne with a concerned look in his eyes.
"What else, General?" Iniquitus asked.
"The armada will still have their irregular commandos. The divisions being trained for clandestine high-altitude descent and ship-boarding. While professional, the capital guard and the garrison won't be adequate to hold off a determined attack from such forces. Even adding the civic security forces and the police to the defense of the palace won't improve our capacity much. Are you sure we can hold for that long?" General Verre asked.
"Someone more inclined to foolishness, or less forgiving of impertinence, would have failed to see your redeeming qualities as a general. Your tactics will have to accommodate the need to avoid costly conflicts while not allowing the enemy to gain a foothold. Explosive and traps should be employed." Iniquitus commanded.
"We will do all we can." The General said, standing to attention and giving a sharp salute.
"If it comes to it, General, I will take the field myself. But for now, we can only prepare, and watch carefully as our enemy makes the opening move."
