Mira couldn't remember the last time she'd been so grateful to be allowed to curl up naked on a cold stone floor and sleep dreamless sleep. She was no longer bleeding - Prelate Soyidh had healed most of her injuries except for a gruesome hand print burned into her breast, the mark of the Ministry of Light - but the pain still lingered over her body like a ghost. But was past caring, and glad just to have rest and a reprieve from being stretched out and bound on the torture rack. Several times, when disturbing dreams intruded on her peaceful sleep, she would awake, whimpering fitfully until she could control herself and sleep's comforting embrace reclaim her.
For all Mira knew it could have been a single night's time or three by the time Prelate Soyidh returned, carrying tan robes over her arm. She was wearing a white mask instead of the red this time and she moved with comfortable authority rather than threat.
"Stand," Soyidh commanded.
Stretching stiff limbs, sore muscles, and aching bones, Mira did so. The hand print on her chest throbbed with pain, but she forced herself to ignore it while the Prelate draped the tan robes over her shivering body, wrapping her in the folds of the shapeless garment. When she was finished, the Prelate produced a plain gray mask from her own robe and fastened it over Mira's face, bunching her thick red hair behind the robe's hood and pulling it over her head.
"Do you know why all Nihil wear the mask?" the Prelate asked as Mira fingered its bony surface with a hand.
Mira shook her head.
"Then this will be your first lesson."
With skilled grace, Soyidh reached a hand into her own hood and undid a clasp. When she lowered the mask from her face, Mira's eyes beheld for a moment a blur, like a mirage, before a face coalesced. She stifled a gasp at what she saw; it was her mother's face. She knew it had to be an illusion, but the memories stirred by looking upon her mother's soft features again after so long were heartbreakingly painful.
Soyidh's face - her mother's face - was split by a sad smile. She took Mira and led her by the arm while she talked. "There are many reasons we wear the mask. The first is simple enough to understand. During the Old Revolutions - the troubled, disturbed times of our genesis - the first tyrants who came to power rightly concluded that our race was a hideous disfigurement of life and began enforcing upon all who fell under their rule that they should wear masks to cover their appearances. Though they were eventually to form the basis of the Ministry of Light, these tyrants held only a tenuous grip on power, and there were a series of bloody wars during which those who opposed them were eventually all but wiped out. With no one left to challenge them, these early tyrants laid the foundation for the empire of today. That is the first reason; it is a statute set down by our founding fathers that persists to this day, if for different reasons."
For the first time, Mira began to take notice of her surroundings. Soyidh had led her out of the torture chamber and into a vast indoor garden. Windows set high in the towering ceiling above and round about the expansive walls let in rich beams of golden sunlight which reflected off the polished marble floor and smooth pillars all around. Majestic fountains and sparkling streams wound through beds of opulent green ferns and the vivid colors of exotic flowers in full bloom.
People were everywhere; sitting on benches beside the the streams, walking amidst the towering columns, standing and conversing in groups, or simply passing through. But the atmosphere was nonetheless one of quiet reverence. The sheer quietness in the midst of such a gathering of people was disorienting, almost dreamlike.
Soyidh took notice of Mira's stares at her surroundings. "This is one of the Gardens of Monument. It is meant to remind the people of the beauty of the Empire, envisioned and realized only through the obedience and cooperation of all who serve under it. Just as in a magnificent garden where every flower has a place and a role to fill, in the Sacred Empire all have security through contribution. When one attempts to gain something for herself or himself, it is only to the detriment of everyone else within the Empire. This is why all are treated equal and given equal, so there is harmony. And like the water and the light feeds the garden, so the Ministry of Light feeds the Empire. We provide the authority and security that governs its billions of inhabitants. If the people do not obey, if they do not contribute and surrender their selfish desires to the good of all, then the light is removed from them and they become Pariah, cut off from the bond with the Ministry of Light."
Mira was only half-listening, and startled by a lance of pain that shot into her skull as an indicator of Soyidh's displeasure. She fought down a sob as tears of pain welled up in her eyes.
"Pay attention to me and I will tell you the next reason why all Nihil wear the mask." The coldness was back in the Prelate's voice.
The pain passed and Mira took a deep breath and focused raptly on Soyidh, having no intention of letting her attention wander again.
"The second reason for the mask begins at the time the Ministry of Light was formed. The first tyrants to seize power had long died and left their kingdoms to heirs. It was these who discovered the power of the Rayaj. They discovered it to be the polar opposite of the vile Force--not a tool of oppression but one of protection. They used this power to drive away the barbarian tribes who continually threatened the conquered kingdoms and protected those who had come to be their people. It was symbiotic; through their conquest they came to power, and with that power they protected those they had conquered. But there were yet more revolutions as opposition rose and fell, eventually dividing the people in two as some of the rebels grew powerful enough to challenge the tyrants.
"Civil wars raged for decades until the tyrants finally were forced to forge a permanent alliance to protect their power, their territory, and their people. They founded the Ministry of Light and its most potent and powerful branch, the Rayaj, to combat the pervasive propaganda of their adversaries. The new Rayaj, lords of immense magic who commanded to power of death itself, were the ones who created the bond that finally, after centuries of turmoil, cemented our people together.
"All who would swear their allegiance and surrender their lives and wills to them were bonded to the one chosen, the Sacred Saint of the Nihil, and spared from the slaughter that followed. The bond to the Sacred Saint shrouded our people in a cloak of power that accomplished what the masks had tried to do; hide our appearance forever. As long as we are bonded to the Saint, we have no appearance but the one we choose, as I choose to show you the face of your mother.
"We wear the masks in tribute to the ones who formed the Ministry of Light and bound together our Empire. They are also symbolic of our mask names. We all are given two names; a mask name and a flesh name. The mask name is the proper address for socialization. Flesh names are only exchanged from parent to child at birth, and lover to lover ever after. My mask name is Soyidh, as I have told you. Yours will be Jalisca. Do you understand?"
Mira nodded. "Jalisca. Yes, I understand."
"Good." Soyidh put the mask back over her face, and for an instant Mira thought she saw her features swirl and shimmer like a mirage before the white mask clicked into place.
Silkily, Soyidh put a finger underneath Mira's chin. "Mira is your flesh name. And since you and I are closer than lovers now as master and student, I will tell you mine."
Mira shuddered as the Prelate whispered a single word into her ear, shuddered as the rolling syllables passed a wave of profane revulsion over her. Hearing the name left her feeling more defiled than had the hours of horrific torture.
"So, Jalisca, I have told you of the history and customs of our people. Now you must answer me what I ask."
Betraying her friends was something Mira wished desperately not to do, but she couldn't go through more of Soyidh's torture. She didn't want to die that way, she wanted to live. Besides, she told herself, it wasn't as if Revan had made her privy to much of his plans anyway. He told her only what he deemed she needed to know, leaving her mostly in the dark in regards to much of his strategy. She had almost nothing to betray, only their mission, which had already been carried out.
"What purpose will it serve Revan to hold Saint Akar prisoner? If you know you will tell me."
Mira could have sighed with relief that it was a question she could answer. As she spoke, she tried to brace herself for Soyidh's sure anger. "He wants to exploit this bond to cause the Force to flow through your race again."
Mira was surprised to hear the Prelate laugh instead.
"Then he is more foolish than I thought," Soyidh remarked. "Such a thing is not possible. And regardless, the Ministry of Light has already begun the process of selecting another to serve as Sacred Saint. Soon the bond will flow through the new and Akar will be useless to him--only a great deal of trouble.
"You see, Jalisca, there is no individual within the Empire who, in themselves, is important. Not even the Sacred Saint. Anyone, no matter his or her position, can be easily replaced. It is the post that is significant. Individual lives are meaningless, only what is for the good of all is important."
Listening with numb ears to Soyidh's words, Mira was crushed with despair. It had all been for nothing. Everything, from the moment Kuryama had stepped onto the Ebon Hawk and collapsed into a coma, to the bloody fighting alongside a desperate alliance of Jedi and Sith on three different worlds, from watching friends and allies fall, to becoming one of the fallen, was all for naught. There was no way for them to win. The Nihil were going to have them all.
Up close, the Gardens were even more stunning than Mira had at first noticed. Walking next to one of the gentle streams and looking over row upon row of rich red, vibrant yellow, deep purple, and creamy white blossoms from dozens of species of flower she'd never seen in her life, she felt cheered just the tiniest bit by the display of nature. Having lived all her adult life in the dregs of Nar Shaddaa - surrounded by the stink and filth of the smuggler's moon day in day out, chasing down one lowlife after another for the credits - such forthright beauty was completely alien to her. Even had the flowerbeds been filled with ordinary flowers that grew beside every swoop track on Dantooine, she still would have been struck by their simple, elegant beauty. Arranged as they were in breathtaking swirls and mosaics of living color and vibrancy, their magnificence was almost overpowering.
Even more incredible to her than the glorious display of life in the Gardens was the mere thought that such an oppressive society as the Nihil Empire could have created something so beautiful.
Prelate Soyidh had left her in the Gardens to reflect on what she'd been taught, how life meant nothing without obedience and contribution to something greater. After her brief history and social coaching lesson, the Prelate had spent the better part of an hour lecturing her on the philosophy and beliefs of the Nihil, concepts and ideas she would have to embrace and follow as a part of the Empire.
Other Nihil dressed in robes like hers were likewise wandering about the Gardens, silent, perhaps lost in thought as was she. Out on the perimeter of the immense chamber, by the towering pillars and radiant windows, white-armored soldiers patrolled by the dozen. On occasion, she even caught sight of other black-robed figures walking among the passersby, and did her best not to attract their attention. There were certainly enough things to look at and be hypnotized by in the Gardens, and Mira had no trouble fitting in with the others to stay out of the attentions of any passing Rayaj.
She was trying not to fall to her knees and sob with futility at the hopelessness of her bleak future when she noticed two Nihil soldiers break from their patrol and head toward her. The urge to run was nearly uncontrollable, but she knew there was nowhere she could go to escape, not as long as she was on this planet, in this vast section of space, and maybe even the whole galaxy.
Not knowing what else to do, Mira fell onto a white marble bench beside a stunning fountain and tried not to cry.
The two soldiers, as they approached, became cautious and paranoid, casting suspicious glances every which way and nervously fingering their weapons. They stopped a short distance from her, slinking about as if they were trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Mira was now more confused than frightened, and observational skills born of years working bounties began to reactivate, trying to ascertain what the two could possibly want and why they were acting so strangely.
When another Nihil patrol passed out of sight, and for the moment there was no one around except her and the two odd Nihil soldiers, they came right up to her. One of them tugged at her hood, brushing it aside to get a look at her red hair.
He spoke to her. His voice was familiar.
"Mira! Thank the juma, I knew you weren't dead!"
Mira shot to her feet. She couldn't believe he was here. It didn't seem possible.
"Atton! What in the name of every deity in the galaxy are you doing here!" She kept her voice low out of caution, but the temptation to scream almost overrode reason. She was also gripped with a sudden desire to fling her arms around him in a hug, and had an even harder time suppressing that.
"Nice to see you too." He shrugged and pointed at his companion. "Rigel and I decided to come after you."
Shaking her head in stunned disbelief, Mira sat back down as she listened to Atton.
"After we got all the Jedi who were left out of the palace, Revan had us hightail it out of the system and we lost a few more ships in the battle. After he finished doing his magic on his wounded Cathar bodyguard I asked him what happened. He stonewalled me, refused to tell me a thing, so I went to Kuryama and got the story from her. She and everyone else was sure you were dead. And then Revan decided we had to abandon the asteroid base anyway--something about giving Kuryama time and space to do whatever it is she needed to. Heck, I don't know. By that time, Rigel and I were fully sick of being pushed around. I, for one, was tired of sitting on the sidelines. I think thirty years of that was enough."
At this break in the story, Atton let Rigel pick it up. "We boosted the Whitecap from the Sith hangar and took off without permission. Atton and I both had a gut feeling youd probably figured out a way to survive, since no one actually saw you killed. I've seen you in action, you're pretty resourceful.
"It helped that apparently Revan has tracking devices implanted in all of us somewhere. Don't ask me how he got them in, but they're there. He could've stopped us, in fact he hailed us and let us know he knew where we were going. Even gave us your signature so we could find you." The one Mira presumed was Rigel shook his head incredulously. "I don't understand that guy."
"So anyway," Atton continued, "we went in cloaked, landed in a debris field in the middle of the city, and tracked your position with one of Rigel's gizmos."
Mira was overwhelmed. "That's insane. Even if I think you look a little short for Nihil, you definitely look just like them. How did you do that?"
"What, you mean the eyes?" Atton pointed to his face.
Mira nodded.
Atton did a little thing with his head that Mira could tell from her time around him meant he was scowling. "Rigel rigged something with black market gear. Sort of a personal cloaking field some gangsters were working on, tinkering around with traditional stealth generators. It makes you numb in all the wrong places, if you know what I mean, but it passed us off."
Mira was tempted to be overjoyed, but she knew the two rogues had come all this way for nothing. She couldn't escape. Soyidh would find her--she had no illusions about being able to escape her.
"Just how did you plan on getting me out of here?" she asked, trying not to sound too cynical. Not quite succeeding.
Atton and Rigel glanced at each other. "Uh, yeah, we hadn't thought that far ahead," Atton sheepishly replied.
"Get of of here," Mira told them. "You can't save me. Besides, I won't make it two steps out of this garden without my master. I'm sorry, but you came all this way for nothing. Save yourselves, I might as well be dead."
"No way, Mira. We've been through too much for me to give up on you now." It was the most caring thing she'd ever heard Atton say, and she knew he meant it.
But she had to make him see, make them both see, that there was no way out for her. Angrily, she got to her feet again and ripped open her robes at her chest, exposing the sickly burn mark on her right breast that had yet to completely clot over. The odor of burnt flesh rose to her nostrils.
"Look at it!" she demanded when the two men tried to shrink away from the hideous sight of the oozing hand print. "I've been marked by their Ministry of Light. I'm to become one of them. There is no way I can leave. The only reason you managed to catch me away from my slave master is because I'm supposed to be reflecting on my lessons for the day. She'll know if I try to escape with you and then we'll all die slow, agonizing deaths! I've had a taste of that fate and it's something I don't ever want to go through again!" She closed her robes over her injury. "I'm really glad to see you two again, and it means a lot that you would do this for me. But you can't save me. The only thing you can do now is save yourselves."
When she had finished, and before either man could respond, the Gardens were suddenly filled with the sound of screams.
One of them - Mira couldn't tell if it was Atton or Rigel beneath the armor and masks - shoved her down behind the bench as they leveled their weapons and scanned the immediate area. The screaming was everywhere, reverberating off the marble floor, the immense glass windows, and the cavernous roof, turning the quiet surreality of the peaceful sanctuary into into a deafening cacophony of mortal terror.
Flashes of harsh blue light razored through the room, bouncing blindingly bright off the milky surfaces of the building as the screams grew ever more inhuman and bestial. Abruptly, a shock wave swept through the giant chamber, sounding with an audible impact to the air as the concussive energy echoed off the solid walls. Waves shot through the meandering brooks, water from the fountains showered down on the floor, petals were stripped from flowerbeds, and the great windows shattered with a deafening crash. Mira covered her head as a torrent of glass rained down on them.
After the last of the glass hit the floor, everything was quiet. Slowly at first, then gradually picking up force, the din of battle replaced the screams. There were first yells of outrage none of them could understand, then blows, soon even weapons fire erupted.
"This is bad," Mira said. All three of them had spent enough time on Nar Shaddaa for one reason or another to recognize the signs of a newborn riot.
"Maybe not," Rigel disagreed. "You asked how we planned on getting you out. Maybe this is our chance."
Mira had to admit he might have a point, something definitely felt different. Cautiously, she felt under her robes where she knew the burn mark was. It was gone, the skin unbroken. Her eyes opened wide. "I think she's dead."
"Dead, who?" Atton asked from over the barrel of his weapon.
She didn't know how she could possibly know, but it couldn't be anything else. "The gay slave master I was telling you about. I think she's dead."
Rigel sighed audibly. "Great! Let's get of out here then!"
"Good idea," Atton agreed. He looked down at Mira, who was still crouching by the stone bench. "Can you handle a gun, or do you just want to flash everyone and let the boobs do the work?"
Mira shot her best scowl at him, despite the fact that most of its scathing intensity was lost behind the mask. "Atton, just because I'm glad to see you after two days of torture doesn't mean I've suddenly become a damsel in distress or a two-cred prostitute, for that matter. You can give me your gun and get behind me, I'm a better shot than you anyway."
Atton grunted and handed her a pistol from his belt. "Here, smartass, I'm keeping mine."
"We need to go!" Rigel urged them impatiently.
They started moving not a moment too soon, as almost immediately they crossed paths with a Nihil soldier who staggered towards them, firing crazily from his weapon while yelling incoherently. A few clinical shots from Atton's rifle put him down.
When they exited the winding paths of the Gardens, discarding their unneeded masks, the three of them were faced with an open brawl between Nihil soldiers and civilians alike, all seemingly at war with everyone else. It was utter chaos among the columns. Nearby, Mira saw on the floor remains of several Rayaj sending up tendrils of foul-smelling blue smoke, unmistakably dead.
She helped Atton and Rigel gun down a few rioters who came charging at them, but her mind was nearly stunned by the possibility. Spontaneous riots and mass deaths of Rayaj disciples--maybe, just maybe, Kuryama had succeeded. Maybe the war was over.
Unfortunately, while Mira was having this epiphany, the mob realized they were there, and seemed almost to coalesce in opposition and charge en masse. The illusion of unity among the rioters was just that, an illusion, as they continued to battle amongst themselves, but to Mira, Atton, and Rigel, it was still a serious threat.
Ducking behind one of the giant columns, they fired back at the unleashed mob in concerted, concentrated attacks. Sustaining heavy casualties, the crowd broke just as they reached them, degenerating into a vicious free-for-all. Their ranged weapons were nearly useless in close quarters, so Atton and Rigel pulled swords from scabbards on their backs and Mira fell back on her considerable hand-to-hand skills.
They chopped down the mostly untrained opposition easily, not even the soldiers much of a challenge in their fevered, almost drunken state. Moving quickly, the three of them fought their way through the garden chamber and to an enormous, stunningly ornate staircase where other small battles were being fought. They skirted around the conflicts were they could, preferring escape to battle. The stairs seemed to go on forever, drilling down in its wide spiral for hundreds of feet.
They passed landings onto other floors that opened onto yet more of the pervasive riots, reinforcing Mira's belief that Kuryama had completed the mission and the Force flowed through the Nihil once again. She would have been tempted to cheer had she not been running for her life.
Finally, the three of them reached the bottom and an equally grand entrance to the city floor. What looked like a full-scale battle was raging in the streets outside. Not just a riot, it was a clear struggle between two opposing sides. Before they could even gape at what lay before them or think of how to get past it, they were seized by robed men outside on the sprawling entryway.
It was a fairly-sized crowd who held them at gunpoint. Oddly, they didn't look like Nihil; they had no masks and wore strikingly human faces, covered though much of their countenances were by low hoods shielding their eyes. Still, however, when they spoke it was in the hissing speech Mira had gotten used to hearing.
When none of them could respond, one of the men grabbed her by the chin and and spoke forcefully in crude, broken, but understandable Basic. "You are for us or against us?"
"I don't know," Mira managed, trying to speak through the grip he had on her mouth. "Who are you?"
The question seemed to genuinely puzzle the man, as he released her and stepped back, his face unreadable concealed as it was by the hood that fell over his forehead and eyes. "We," he indicated those around him, "we are miraluka."
Mira's jaw dropped, as did Atton's and Rigel's.
"Freedom or servitude?" she asked, hoping he would understand.
He took a mask from his robes, dropped it on the ground, and crushed his boot over it. The symbol of enslavement cracked and broke under his foot.
He looked up at her and spoke a single word. "Freedom."
They all lowered their weapons. "We are with you."
Civilization, that most noble of goals; a free society of equal opportunity, united, bound by justice, where no man need fear another. This is what the Jedi wished to forge those thousands of years past with the formation of the Galactic Republic. Whether or not they succeeded at the first is unclear, but what is clear is that the vision has long since been lost.
This civilization, this republic, is broken. It was not by war, war was merely the final blow. What broke it was the strain of its own weight, carried by shoulders unable to bear the burden. Foolish generations traded loyalty and honesty for money, seeding corruption and stagnation within the edifice of government. Further successive generations traded strength for placation, pacifism, weakness, opening the door for the Great Wars.
A different society, a true civilization, would have emerged from the Great Sith War as a stronger entity, being blooded in such a fierce war and coming out of it as the victors would have been a mark of pride and incitement to remain firm. Instead, the already-crumbling Republic threw itself forward with barely enough force on which to sustain itself, to say nothing of striking back against the aggressors. Wounded and limping it stumbled into the Triad Wars, a final triptych of desperate struggles.
There was no might left in the Republic to overcome the Mandalorian Crusade, and finally some came to see that fact. In a desperate attempt to prolong the the life of the dying beast, they turned once again to the Jedi Council, the last line of defense of justice in their crippled society. They didn't realize that their guardians had gone the same way. Their Masters saw only a terrible vision of prophecy for the future should they enter the conflict, and in the process of attempting to elude the vision's fulfillment they ultimately ensured its eventual outcome.
Revan's departure split the Jedi Order, creating anew the Sith, a force powerful enough to defeat the Mandalorians. He then led the Sith against the Republic in his own war, which his once-friend Aleksie soon supplanted and carried to a crescendo of bloodshed. It drove the remains of the Republic to the brink.
There is no future beyond this Third War for the Republic as a society, this effigy of civilization must end in one way or another. It is offered two choices: Conquest and subjugation under the iron fist of the Nihil, Force-dead creatures who seek the end of all life but their own because their religion brands us all heathens, blasphemers. Or it may die with what dignity remains in its undead carcass, starting with the destruction of the Senate to let those with the strength to persist rise from the ashes and take a new stand for civilization.
Chaos is the base form of all things, it is that from which creation begins. The destruction of Malachor V at the end of the Mandalorian Crusade was an invocation to chaos, made to bring about the creation of a new Sith State. I invoke chaos once again, to wipe away these fragments of society and clear our way for a new beginning.
To be continued...