Chapter 8: After the Battle- Part 2
Imperius stood in front of the force user that he had taken prisoner at the temple. For the first minute they just looked at each other in silence. After a few minutes Imperius finally spoke.
"Who are you?" Imperius asked the prisoner. The inquisitor just stared at Imperius. Imperius asked again, still with no response. Imperius was getting annoyed. He leaned forward and looked the prisoner directly into his eyes. "I will ask you one more time. Who are you?"
The prisoner just laughed. Then in a raspy voice he said: "You will never get the answers from me. You can try as hard as you can but you will never break me. You may as well kill me now." Under his mask Imperius rolled his cybernetic eyes.
"Very well, if you won't give me the answers I will take them from you." Using the force, Imperius attempted to break into the prisoner's mind. He proved to be surprisingly resilient, but it did not matter to Imperius. Using the power from the ghosts he had bound Imperius began to push harder. After a few minutes the prisoner's mental wall finally broke. Imperius began to see the man's memories. He saw the prisoner training to become an inquisitor with the tutelage of a mysterious black armored man. He watched as the inquisitor had been pushed to the limits, tortured to the point of no return, broken into pieces by the armored man, and reforged into a jedi killer. He saw the inquisitor in battle against jedi, white armored soldiers and other inquisitors like him fighting alongside him.
Imperius decided to look deeper in the inquisitor's memory. He started to see more of the black armored man. He also saw a hooded figure, a shadow. He was about to investigate further when he felt the inquisitor's mind beginning to shatter. If Imperius went into the Inquisitor's mind any deeper the inquisitor would be driven insane. He was able to get one last thing out of the inquisitor's mind, a name: Darth Vader.
Imperius released his grip on the inquisitor's mind and opened his eyes. The inquisitor lay against his restraints, spasming and twitching uncontrollably. Imperius ordered the guards to take the prisoner away before sending Emperor Finalus an urgent transmission.
Imperius had just finished telling Darth Finalus what he has learned. Finalus thought for a moment before talking.
"When I got the report of the data taken from the enemy computers and from the captured prisoners many of them mentioned a "Lord Vader". This Vader matches the description of the armored man you talked about.
"What do we know about this Vader?" Imperius asked Finalus. Finalus typed something into the computer council built into the table. A hologram of the black armored man appeared in front of them.
"Much of the recovered enemy intelligence is still being looked through, but what we do know is that this Lord Vader is the second in command of the enemy. We gathered some other details but they are very minor. The rest is restricted. Our best hackers are working on bypassing the codes as we speak."
Imperius thought for a moment.
"What do we know about our enemy so far?"
"The enemy is called the Galactic Empire." Finalus told Imperius. '"It is led by Emperor Sheev Palpatine. It was founded about twenty years ago after something called the "Clone Wars". The rest is just minor details or propaganda."'
"So the Republic has fallen then." Imperius mused to himself. "I will continue to search for more information on my end, but this makes me wonder. The Jedi would not have let the Republic fall, and yet it did. The inquisitor I faced at the temple used too much of the dark side to be a Jedi. It may be possible that we were not the last remnants of the old Sith Order after all." He thought for a moment before asking Finalus a question.
"You are the Emperor. Do you plan to continue the war or end it?"
"Continue it", replied Finalus. "We have come too far to turn back now. I doubt the Dark Council will protest. Our plans will continue." Imperius nodded and ended the transmission, wondering what the future of the empire he founded would be.
(The Imperial Palace, Coruscant)
Darth Sidious stood in front of his throne, fuming. In front of him lay the ashes of the commander in charge of the defence of Dromund Kaas. The coward fled from the battle, and now had paid the price for dereliction of duty. Before he had been disintegrated the commander had reported that the system taken by a unknown fleet of warships that had jumped out of hyperspace. They had claimed to be the "Sith Empire". Sidious was furious.
How many secrets have these false sith obtained?, he thought to himself. How much of a threat have they already become? Sidious contacted Darth Vader who currently tracking the Rebel survivors fleeing from their defeat at Hoth. After a few minutes the imposing figure of Darth Vader appeared before him.
"What is thy bidding my master?" Vader asked Sidious. Sidious replied:
"Lord Vader, we have a new enemy. The planet of Dromund Kaas has been taken by an unknown enemy. Take your fleet and go to the planet. Destroy the invading fleet then report to me."
"What of the surviving rebels?" Vader asked.
"They are still recovering from their defeat on Hoth. This is a more important matter."
"As you wish." Vader said before cutting communication. Then Sidious summoned the Grand Inquisitor and the Captain of the Elite Royal Guard. He addressed the Grand Inquisitor first.
"Grand Inquisitor, have all of your inquisitors go to the planet Moraband. Guard the system." Then he turned to the captain of the Elite Royal Guard. "Take your best guards and go with the Grand Inquisitor to Morraban. Guard the planet with him." Then addressing both of them he said: "I expect both of you to work together. I will also send three legions and one of the newly constructed super star destroyers. Do not fail me." He dismissed both of them and began to meditate, expecting the new threat to be vanquished quickly.