Darth Malak stood on the observation deck of the Leviathan's command tower, watching what would soon be remembered as the final stroke that brought his victory to completion. Soon the pitiful resistance of the dying Republic would end, and his Sith Empire would consume the galaxy. The outer rim was all but his. The core had only to follow.
It was only due to the young Jedi Bastila's Battle Meditation that they had survived this long; it had been Malak's will that she should meet her end along with his former Master, when he had ordered his Leviathan to open fire on Revan's bridge. But the Force served Malak, and brought the happenstance of Bastila's escape as something to be savored. He would possess the child who had witnessed Revan's final moments; perhaps even drink the taste of her death from Bastila's mind.
Had Revan wavered, in that single, perfect moment of his betrayal? Had she keened for him as she died, her body tightening in sweet terror as death came upon her? Had she removed the helm, as the last few beats of her heart counted her life away? How sweet, if Malak could look upon Revan's naked eyes through the sight of Bastila's memory, and truly know her soul.
He would keep Bastila, an empty shell but for what he desired of her. It would amuse Malak to look upon the child chained at his feet and know Revan would have called it a waste. It was true that Bastila was powerful, but she was as nothing compared to Malak's infinite Armada. It was only a matter of time before his Sith were so numerous that their inexorable march inward put a final end to all resistance.
Even now, the Leviathan and four Centurian-class battlecruisers formed two long, staggered pincers before the planet. They were backed by several Derriphan-class battleships and the full complement of support ships, all lying in wait for the Endar Spire and what would soon follow.
As Malak watched, the capital ships unleashed their complements of intercepters, and the Sith fighters swarmed into the dark backdrop just as the Endar Spire appeared out of hyperspace.
The ensuing chaos was a thing of beauty. The Spire took the first wave of fighter fire full in her engines, caught completely unawares in the trap, and the next in her belly, before she could bring her point-defense cannons to bear. Her laser cannons cut a swath of death through the swarming fighters, creating bits of burning wreckage that snared more of the Sith fighters and sent them spinning and colliding in brief puffs of fire.
The next wave of fighters strafed the ship's midsection and she listed sideways, her hull penetrated a thousand times over until her bones and sinews were nothing but ribbons of riven steel. The Spire launched its Aurek-class strikefighters, too late before she'd even arrived, and they were torn to pieces by the interceptors.
One of the Centurians fired her ion cannons, the ionized plasma slamming into the Republic war cruiser and rendering her heavy weapons useless.
The A-wings gone, the weapons fused, the Sith fighters began to board the doomed ship.
Below, Taris glistened, like a fruit ripe to be devoured.
It wouldn't be long, now. Soon, Malak's apprentice would board the dying Spire and tear her belly from stern to prow. Bastila would be brought before Malak, and he would rip the memory of his old Master's final moments from her mind; Revan would be his, and only his, even in death.
Then, Malak would order his Fleet Admiral to waste the planet. Taris was known to him as a nest of Revan's spies and loyalists; it was time the infestation was eradicated: a lesson, that his orders were not to be questioned, and a warning to anyone else who might have protested Darth Malak's rise as sole Lord of the Sith.
Soon.
