Chapter 24

Darth Hatus held the Sith Orb in both hands, staring into its red eddies. He could feel it pulsing with power, as though its constant use had brought it to life. He closed his eyes and pictured her in his head, noting every detail. Then, he willed the orb to make that picture a reality. It did not resist, having grown so accustomed to him over the past year. Tendrils of red mist snaked from the orb and wrapped around each other just above the floor. Within seconds, the mist condensed into a naked human body. After a few more seconds, the body became recognizable as that of Darth Volatis.

The woman's eyes popped open and she gasped loudly. She scrambled to her feet and looked around, expecting to be on Dromund Kaas with Ben Skywalker attacking her. To her confusion, however, she was in Darth Hatus' office on Korriban. Hatus himself was standing in front of his desk, holding the Sith Orb. He was flanked by Darths Sinestro and Masculous, as well as Moff Hyke. All four men were frowning at her. Realizing that she was naked, Volatis covered herself with her arms and hands. When Sinestro removed his cape and tossed it to her, she quickly wrapped it around herself to protect what little modesty she had left. "What happened?" she asked.

"I'll tell you what happened!" snapped Hyke. He had been holding his tongue for too long and was ready to explode. "That Skywalker boy got a message to the Alliance, and they sent an entire fleet to attack Dromund Kaas! Every Sith on the planet has either been killed or captured, the base has been destroyed, and all of the slaves have been freed! And it's all thanks to your incompetence!"

Everything came back to Volatis. She now remembered the duel with Ben Skywalker, the Alliance attack, and that boy torturing her to death. The pain had been excruciating, like thousands of knives flaying skin from muscle. The very memory of it made her feel nauseous. That nausea was soon replaced by anger. The son of Skywalker had ruined everything! She asked, "What about the boy? What happened to him?" Hopefully, the Sith had given him a painful and gruesome death before the Jedi arrived.

No such luck, apparently. "Back on Coruscant with his family, and no doubt telling the entire galaxy all about us!" Hyke pointed an accusing finger at her. "Our entire operation was predicated on secrecy, which, thanks to you, is now gone!"

Volatis seethed. "None of this is my fault! The Skywalker boy was on Dromund Kaas before I arrived, so you should be blaming General Dykes for that! I couldn't sense him there because he was suppressing his Force aura, which Lord Caedus taught him to do. Also, I would have caught him if I had been allowed to sacrifice slaves. You were the ones who prohibited me from doing that! Finally, the Alliance wouldn't have taken the base if your Sith had been better fighters!"

Hatus put in, "They wouldn't have taken the base if you had called for reinforcements!"

"They would have arrived too late! I did everything I could, given the circumstances! I managed to draw the boy out by threatening a girl he likes, but he killed all of the Sith who faced him, which is their fault, not mine! I wanted to start killing slaves to draw him out sooner, if you had allowed it. We would only have lost a few slaves, instead of a thousand! So, ask yourselves; who's really to blame for all of this?"

"You!" exclaimed Hyke. He then looked at the other Sith and added, "All of you!"

Masculous emitted a low growl. "What are you talking about?"

"Those were your droids that attacked the Jedi Temple! If they had succeeded, the Jedi never would have gotten the boy's message! Their failure is on you!" Then, Hyke glared directly at Hatus as he continued, "And you're little experiment, I heard he offered to help Luke Skywalker destroy us to fulfill his own goals! You created a traitor to the Sith!"

Volatis asked, "Wait, what attack?"

Ignoring her, Hatus replied, "It seems I gave him too much free will. That is a mistake I will be sure to rectify next time."

"What is going on?" demanded Volatis.

"Next time?" repeated Hyke, incredulously. "After everything that's happened, you're going to create more of those… abominations?"

Hatus walked threateningly towards the Moff. He growled, "How dare you speak to me like that! I created all of this! If it weren't for me, you would still be stuck serving the Imperial Remnant! I will do whatever it takes to secure our victory! So, yes, I will resurrect Palpatine, and every Sith who ever lived, because I have the power to do so! I have the power to vaporize your brain with a single thought, so you will respect me! IS THAT CLEAR?!"

Hyke's face turned pale as Hatus' turned red. A moment later, he responded quietly, "Yes, my lord."

"Good. Now get out." He turned to Volatis and added, "Both of you."

Hyke spun around and hurried out the door. Volatis, still wrapped in Sinestro's cape, followed shortly after. The Moff marched straight to his quarters, where he noticed that his personal holotransmitter was beeping. He looked at the console and scowled when he saw who was calling him. He was not in the mood to talk to this person, but, he decided to get it over with. He pressed the answer button and a life-sized hologram was projected in front of him.

It was Mek Dain, and he did not look happy. "Where have you been? I've been trying to call you for hours!"

Hyke replied, "I was in a meeting."

"Of course you were," Mek mumbled. "Well, Lord Hatus has been blocking my calls. I demand to speak with him at once!"

"He doesn't want to speak with anyone, it seems."

"Then perhaps you can explain to me what the hell happened!" The Gran held his thumb and forefinger less than a centimeter apart as he said, "I was this close to destroying the Jedi! I had finally convinced my father to authorize an attack on the Jedi Temple, and I had a nuclear missile ready to destroy it on my command! But you sent in those droids and ruined my plan!"

"I had nothing to do with that!" Hyke yelled defensively. "It was Hatus' idea to send the droids."

"And I suppose it was also his idea to send that Palpatine clone, or whatever it was? The moment my father saw it, he realized that the Sith had returned. Now, he believes everything the Jedi are telling him! I spent years trying to turn him against them, and now I have nothing to show for it! Why did you even attack the temple, anyway? I thought you were trying to keep your existence secret."

"We were, but then we learned that the Skywalker boy had infiltrated our base on Dromund Kaas. Hatus decided, just in case the boy sent out a message, to attack the Jedi before they could receive that message. He did not know that you were already planning your own attack. If you had contacted us about your plan, this whole situation could have been avoided!

Mek seethed. "Or, maybe you should have contacted me about your plan! Then the Jedi would be destroyed, and by the time my father learned about the Sith, it would be too late for the Alliance to stop them!"

"Well, it looks like we'll have to wait a little longer for that. We will defeat the Jedi, then we'll defeat the Alliance, and then we'll take over the galaxy, and Hatus will give you the status and power you crave so much."

"And what am I supposed to do until then? My father will never listen to me again, so you can bet your last credit that I will be stuck on the Coruscant Defense Force for a long time! And that's assuming my superiors don't find out that I was the one who gave you the military clearance codes – which, by the way, won't work anymore, thanks to your attack!"

Hyke shrugged. "If you're really as smart as you claim to be, I'm sure you'll figure something out. I will contact you when we've determined our next move. Until then, stay under the radar, and don't let anyone figure out where your true loyalties lie."

Mek frowned and shook his head. "My loyalties are with neither the Sith, nor the Alliance. And they are certainly not with my father. I'm only helping the Sith because they promised to give me what I want, what my father has denied me all my life. My true loyalties lie with me, and me alone."

Now that the remaining three Sith were alone in Hatus' office, Sinestro asked his master, "This is a serious setback, my lord. How do you intend to recover from it?"

Hatus bowed his head thoughtfully and began to pace. After a moment, he answered, "I don't think we can. Like Moff Hyke said, our plan relied on secrecy. Without that, we've lost the element of surprise."

Masculous suggested, "We could go back into hiding for a couple more years while we build up our forces. When we finally reveal ourselves, the Alliance wouldn't be prepared for us."

"Oh, they'll be prepared," said Sinestro. "Master Skywalker will not rest until we have been defeated. He searched for us for a year based on the knowledge of just the four of us. Imagine how hard he will search knowing we have an entire army."

"You're right," agreed Hatus. "Hiding is no longer an option for us. It's time to take the fight directly to the Jedi. We'll begin our war campaign with the forces we already have. The rest of the army will join them when it's ready. In the meantime, I'm sending both of you to our other bases to conduct thorough investigations of each. Learn from your sister's mistakes, and eliminate any undercover Jedi or troublesome slaves. Once you're satisfied that each base is secure, double its security. If the Jedi discover where the rest of our facilities are, we need to be ready for them."

The two apprentices bowed to affirm their understanding. They were about to leave when the office door chimed, indicating a visitor. Hatus used the Force to open the doors, allowing a Sith laborer to enter. The worker approached the Sith Master, carrying a long, flat box. He knelt in front of Hatus and held out the box with both hands. "My lord, it is finished."

Hatus must have already known what was in the box, for he smiled excitedly as he tore off the top and removed the item within. It was a lightsaber, but unlike any Sinestro had ever seen. The half-a-meter-long hilt had a golden finish with thin black rubber bands every five centimeters to serve as grips. At either end, the hilt forked off into two angled cylinders which curved towards each other until they were parallel with a little over five centimeters of space between them. Each of those four cylinders then extended for another ten centimeters.

The Sith worker continued, "It was crafted to your exact specifications, as ordered. The energy crystals you created work, however, they had an… unexpected result."

Hatus pressed the ignition plate at one end of the hilt, and two energy blades sprang from the parallel emitters at that end. The red blades matched those used by the other Sith, except for one key difference; instead of having white cores, these blades had black cores. Hatus pressed the plate at the other end, and two identical blades appeared. His mouth hung open with the corners elevated, forming an excited smile. He caressed the hilt of the double-sided lightsaber and gazed into the red-and-black blades. "It's beautiful," he breathed.

Sinestro nodded half-heartedly. "It's… unusual." He failed to hide the disdain in his voice.

Hatus frowned. "You don't like it?"

The Sith apprentice chose his words carefully. "It's just that… I fail to see the benefit of having two blades side-by-side when one would be just as effective. Also, the blades look, well, different."

"It's probably because I created the crystals using the Sith Orb," Hatus mused. "Trust me. There is more to this weapon than meets the eye. Once I've mastered it, no one will be laughing for long." He deactivated the lightsaber and nodded to the laborer. "You've done well."

The Sith bowed deeply with pride. "Thank you, Lord Hatus."

"You may leave. All of you." At Hatus' urging, everyone left the room, leaving him alone with his new weapon. He tossed it from one hand to the other, testing its weight. Then, he ignited one set of blades and performed a few practice swings. As he became more and more comfortable with the lightsaber, he ignited the other set of blades and began to twirl it around, fighting an invisible foe.

But, his legs had not yet reached their full strength, and he tripped and fell. As he did so, he tried to catch himself by planting his left hand on top of his desk, but he missed, and the corner of the desk dug into his palm. After he had recovered from the fall, he realized that his hand was bleeding. Cursing silently to himself, he opened his desk drawers and began searching for something to stop the bleeding.

That is when he heard it. A low, deep humming sound, emanating from the Sith Orb, which was sitting on his desk. He had never heard it make a sound like that before. As he reached for it with his bleeding hand, the humming grew louder. Even though his instincts warned against it, Hatus felt oddly drawn to touch the orb. It was as though the orb itself was asking him to. He gently placed his hand, bloody palm down, on top of the orb.

The instant his blood came in contact with the orb, it was like everything exploded. Hatus' office and everything in it suddenly turned various shades of red. Everything was silent, except for the humming, which now seemed to be coming from every direction at once. Warmth flooded through Hatus' body as the orb's power flowed through his bloodstream, was pumped through his heart, and then carried all the way to his extremities and back.

Within seconds, the room disappeared, and the objects transformed into various indiscernible shapes that divided, floated, and recombined like a sea of fuzzy-edged bubbles, each representing one of a thousand shades of red and orange. As Hatus looked around, there was a noticeable lag in his blurry vision. The pitch of the humming began to vary, forming a random yet comforting tune to the loud thump-thump of his rapid heartbeat. There was no floor, ceiling, or walls in sight. He was suspended in an infinite sea of red and orange bubbles, with the weight of the water pressing on him from all sides – not like he was being crushed, but more like he was being hugged.

No matter how hard he tried – or could have, if he wanted to – Hatus could not find a single memory or emotion stored in his brain. All he could think about was what he was seeing, hearing, and feeling at that precise instant. Everything was so beautiful, so peaceful. He had never felt so happy in his entire life. He relaxed every voluntary muscle in his body, letting his limbs float in the psychedelic sea, listening to the calm humming, watching the colorful bubbles, reveling in his newfound happiness. He had no concept of time here, although it felt like he had been there for an eternity.

When the high finally ended, Hatus awoke on the floor of his office. He tried to wrap his mind around what had just happened, but it took several minutes for the different parts of his brain to catch up to each other. With the grogginess gone, he could remember who he was, where he was, and why he was there. It did not take him long to realize that the Sith Orb was responsible for his high. He had heard stories of ancient Sith Lords infusing their orbs' power directly into their bloodstream; perhaps that was what had just happened.

Hatus stood up and quickly collapsed to the floor. The light in his office burned into his retinas, and its electrical buzzing was threatening to blow up his eardrums. He reached out with the Force to turn it off, but he could not concentrate. He had to leave the room. Noticing how tired he was, he decided to go to his bedroom. But he could not stand up, no matter how hard he tried, so he had to crawl. When he reached the door to his room, he reached up to the control console to open it. It caused every muscle in his body to ache, but he had no choice. When he finally hit the button to open the door (which was much louder than he had anticipated), he crawled into the dark room. He then had to reach up for the button to close the door, much to his chagrin.

With a great deal of difficulty, Hatus pulled himself up into his bed and crawled under the covers, not even bothering to take off his clothes. As he lay there, trying to sleep, he wondered why he felt so terrible. Perhaps he was experiencing aftereffects from the Sith Orb. Was he going to have to suffer the same effects every time he tried to infuse the orb's power? If so, perhaps it was not worth it. He decided there and then that he was never going to try that again.

But, by the following evening, he was going to crave the high again, and he would figure that the aftereffects would not be as severe the second time around. So, before he went to bed that night, he would cut his palm with a dinner knife and place it on the orb again. The next morning, when he awoke in his dark bedroom, the aftereffects would be much less painful. So, he would do it again that night. Just like that, Hatus had become addicted to something far more dangerous than the strongest drug; raw, dark power.

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