Knowledge was power, and focus was the direction and application of power; and no being in the galaxy understood these truths better than Lord Silbus. Welded to the chair at his work station in Trayus Core, he focused, immune to all the petty protests and distractions of flesh. He put flesh to the rack, so that the left hand wrote and the right hand typed with no loss of either speed or precision. Let his head-tendrils shriek and twitch all they wanted, let his eyes tingle, let his bones waste away; only the final two pages of the magnum opus of Fulminius Graush remained to be translated. He was so close that, were not the senses themselves odious to him, he would have said he could taste his triumph already.

But as they say on Nam Chorios, the storms are strongest near the mountain's peak, and so the Headmaster found himself assailed by an even greater array of would-be interruptions than usual. As he took a moment to gingerly flip to the last page—which was more difficult than usual, for some reason—he found himself considering these new threats to his success. The first of them was actually metaphysical and thus able to directly invade the course of his thoughts: it was a crashing, surging wave of raw emotion, the sum of hundreds of beings crying out in terror, dismay, and naked, animal confusion…

Another distraction was auditory, a series of undulating, thunderous roars that flooded his eardrums with a terrific ringing. Still another was tactile, possibly a consequence of the noise, but at any rate something was causing Fulminius Graush's tome to vibrate so that the page was harder to turn; and it was also causing the little bookstand, Silbus' datapads, the other items on his desk, the desk itself, his chair and, in fact, seemingly everything in the vicinity, to rattle, resonate, shake, or shudder, depending.

Silbus' right hand managed to turn the page, only then to flop down onto the desk, spasming and twitching. His left hand dropped the stylus onto the face of its datapad, and a fitful bark of pain came bursting from his throat. He threw his body back against the chair, nearly knocking it and himself to the ground. His head angled up at the shrouded, miles-distant ceiling of Trayus Core, and he gnashed his teeth. He was so close…

The roars continued, each rumbling sound ebbing slightly, like a tide, only to immediately be supplemented by a new one. Irregularly, a cluster of sharp, titanic claps like clusters of explosions came blasting through the enveloping cacophony.

The Headmaster turned his head toward a distant rock wall, imagining he would see gaping cracks shooting down across it; whether or not there were any, the shaking and the murky darkness made it impossible to tell. This was, he realized sulkily, a most irregular sort of interruption, such that it demanded that a very painful and thorough retribution be visited upon whomever was responsible. His wrath would not be stayed again—not this time.

More immediately pressing, however, was the probability of this interruption proving fatal to him. But what was that probability? What would happen if the shockwaves didn't end soon? Would the cavern collapse? Would its walls explode inward? Would Trayus Core's platform snap like a reed and send him plummeting down into the abyss? There was no telling what could happen!

Silbus' cheeks pulled back in a defiant snarl, but its sound was swallowed up by that of the uncertain cataclysm that bore down on him. Outrageous. Why in the name of Typhojem's spawn should he ever need to be concerned about such things?! He was a xenolinguist, not a seismologist!

"Headmaster!" bellowed a voice through the din. From the hurricane of panicked emotions a single mind detached itself; its vessel, Gorbus, was sprinting down one of the bridges toward Trayus Core's platform.

With reluctance, Silbus let the power of his rage flood into his body and set him on his feet. Conscious of the need to maintain his composure, he whirled on the Human, his long robes flapping through the bloody red light of the Core, his olfactory tendrils also flapping, and silently screeching into his brain. "What is the meaning of this?!" he demanded.

Gorbus scrambled to a stop and stood heaving, his skin nearly as pale as Silbus', a few blueish veins bulging on his cranium. "We… are under attack!" he gasped. "The Republic… is bombarding the academy!"

The noise continued and the pains continued, but for a moment there seemed to be nothing in existence except for Lord Thoriel Silbus himself and the solitary, disastrous fact that had just been reported to him. Questions tore through his mind. "The transmission room!" he thundered at last. "I must speak with Admiral Varko—"

"But Headmaster, there is no transmission room! The upper levels have been destroyed! The academy's topside structures are gone, the proving grounds have collapsed, and other sections—"

The Human trailed off, seeing that the Headmaster's lips were moving; but Silbus was not addressing him, only repeating to himself what was perhaps the worst realization of them all. "Marr was right. Marr was right. Marr was right…"

"My lord, I can't hear what you—"

With savage energy, Silbus brought a hand up to the back of his head, thrusting it through the midst of his olfactory tendrils, which writhed in protest. His grip found one, and it came free with a nameless, wet popping sensation.

Appalled, Gorbus stared as the Headmaster tossed the flopping, useless member off to the side. With a brief spurt of blood running down his neck, Silbus said, "The entire academy has not yet collapsed, has it?!"

"No, Headmaster!"

"Then I need you to make contact with the Beastkeepers, if any are still alive—"

"Our comlinks are being jammed—"

"SILENCE!" Gorbus was dutifully silent, though nothing else was. "Someone must go to the beast pens! The keepers must open the drexl pens, all of them, in case the Republic lands any troops!" He paused. "But first we will gather what survivors we can—we will be safe in Singularity Base. There is a hovertram we can take there, close by—I must show you!"

A moment later they were striding across one of the bridges, Silbus crushing his two datapads and the tome of Fulminius Graush to his chest.

On the bridge of the lead dropship, Atton stood quietly behind one of the navigators' stations, watching through the viewport as the convoy raced for the surface of the dead planet. They had come out of hyperspace as close as they dared, just ten klicks outside the field of gutted and dismembered starships which had been screening Malachor's orbit for fifteen years. Off to the left at an almost-but-not-quite-comfortable distance, two fleets were joined in a tight-packed brawl of turbolaser fire. The battlefield's center glimmered like a splash of sunlight against the rippling surface of a lake, while stray bolts streaked off into the void like shooting stars tinged with scarlet or emerald. Starfighters and bombers swarmed like blister gnats, each one practically invisible—except when pinprick flashes of fire announced its destruction.

Atton was able to pick out the Valiant quickly enough. Dwarfing its Hammerhead cruiser escorts, the disk-hulled command ship slouched into the thick of the fight, its deflector shields shouldering heavy barrages of fire. Coming in from ahead to strafe it with kilometers to spare was a smaller, dagger-shaped Centurion-class battlecruiser, itself standing out from among her entourage of wedge-shaped Interdictors. There was a certain grim nostalgia to be found in the whole scene. The ship classes used by both sides—and probably most of the ships themselves—had all existed fifteen years ago, when Malachor was first a battlefield. This entire day would be a lethal, celebratory throwback, a reenactment of sorts.

The lone Republic cruiser Monitor hung in space below the melee, and somewhat between it and the convoy. It had spent barely half a minute tracing a dotted line of green death toward the surface targets before a trio of frigates from the rear of the Sith formation dipped down toward it, forcing it to break off—but the best they could do at this point was retribution rather than prevention.

"Captain, Monitor reports," announced a comm officer from her station. "Direct hit on both targets. Singularity Base's shield has collapsed. Moderate damage to its outer ring in the southeastern quadrant."

"Acknowledged," replied the captain dispassionately. "Gunners at the ready. We're four klicks from the debris field…"

As chatter on the bridge intensified and the view of the space battle slid past them, Atton took in the expanding view of Malachor V, where patches of silvery green light faded in and out over the surface like ghostly auroras, and writhing strands of what looked like slow-motion lightning circled in tight orbits. They were a visible sign of the Mass Shadow Generator's work, of whatever exotic energies it was harnessing in order to maintain the planetoid's gravity field, which in turn was keeping the artificial atmosphere in place.

Were it not for the eerie light show, that tortured mass of black rock would have looked just as lifeless as the hollowed-out ships surrounding it. As it was, it gave Malachor V itself a very out-of-place sense of life and activity. Undead was the best word Atton could come up with.

Well, they were on their way to fix that. Crossing the debris field, they soared past drifting hulks that were large enough to splatter the whole convoy like sparkflies against a landspeeder's windshield. Occasionally the ships' forward laser cannons flared, vaporizing small fragments of twisted metal that wandered into their path. A couple struck the dropship, sending jolts through the deck, but the particle shields held.

Atton glanced at a diagram showing the convoy in formation, consisting of the flying brick dropships along with several battle droid carriers. In a double-throwback, the latter craft were KT-400s—not only a long-lasting ship class, but also the same one that had been used by Mira and her clique, who had been shipped off to Coruscant days earlier.

The thought of Mira led Atton to think first of her various parts, then of her wrist launcher, which he had also never had the opportunity to get his hands on. Still, he was going to be better armed on Malachor than on Daluuj, thanks to the Valiant's armory.

Another crewmember picked up a speaker, and his voice bounced its way through the ship. "Atmosphere in two minutes!"

Those who had not already strapped themselves into jumpseats began to do so. Half-turning, Atton hesitated, giving one last look out the front viewport. Malachor V had swallowed the entire view and was now casting its silver-green glows into the bridge, along with pure flashes of actual lightning. A funny feeling came over him—not his usual bad feeling, but one which somehow reminded him of the one he'd had on Daluuj, that fluttering disbelief that progress was actually being made. It was different now, though—the incredulity was coupled with a cold finality that seemed to creep through his insides. In fact it was so cold, so absolutely frigid that it burned. This is it, he thought, staring at once into multiple levels of the past. This is where it was all supposed to end.

And it still could, he, or something, added. The storms are still there. And they were—the same ones Atton had seen from the gunner station of the Loxley, after the Mass Shadow Generator had fired for the first time. He pulled his eyes away to the Remote, who had been hovering a few feet off to the side, and made a beckoning gesture. The little droid followed him off the bridge, back toward the stern of the flying brick.

They passed row after row after row of Republic soldiers, the next generation of them. It was another generation of Humans, probably trained on Carida or Corulag. They wore armor, blasters, and expressions that looked so familiar to Atton they may as well have had his own face too—the universal soldier-before-battle looks. Most of them stared straight ahead or at the boots of the guys across from them, blankly daydreaming, or bored and weary with waiting. As always, a few were tense, psyching themselves up, a few were nervous, hiding their tics and twitches even though no one was watching them, and a few were misty-eyed, silently moving their lips as they conversed with the Force or with some other god, making promises and trying to strike up last-minute deals.

As he squeezed past each row, Atton picked out the faces of officers he'd spoken with at the planning sessions and after the briefing. Major Hawkins, Captain Hart, Lieutenant Reed… He knew their names and who was doing what. They knew as much about him, and that was enough, and soon the listing of their names changed into the counting of cards.

He took a jumpseat in the very back, next to Kaevee and Cole, just in time for the dropship to cut into the atmosphere with a lurch. He dipped into the Force, though he didn't need it to tell that the girl was wound up pretty good—she was praying too. The giant bug was under her seat, bracing itself between the front legs of the chair and the wall.

The flying brick bucked and rocked as it bulled its way through Malachor V's perpetual storms, and sickly gray clouds swam past the windows. Like the would-be Jedi, Cole wore his feelings on the outside, scowling and occasionally cursing as he was thrown against his restraints. Both of them had been duly acquainted with Major Hawkins and his subordinates.

More than once it had occurred to Atton to be uneasy about the level of confidence that Admiral Opelle placed in the Ebon Hawk's crew. Atton was, after all, cursed with actual familiarity with them as people. At any rate, though, he had to be there on Malachor for the battle, to make sure it was done right. As for the others, what happened with them in the next few hours would show exactly what the admiral's presumptions had to do with reality.

Draw from the deck, pull up a nine and a nine, the totals are twenty-two, sixteen. Play the minus-four card, that brings me down to eighteen…

Before he knew it the ride had smoothed out somewhat, and their dropship banked as it began circling down toward the LZ. Orders and updates from the bridge blared through the speakers, and the troopers started squirming and shifting, double- and triple-checking their weapons and gear. Leaning forward, Atton reached behind himself to his backpack and unzipped the main pocket. "Get in, it's almost showtime," he said to the Remote, who bobbed through the air and disappeared inside.

Kaevee glanced at him. She'd already asked why the little droid was coming with. Just insurance, he had told her.

There was a brief rumble as the dropship switched to repulsors, and their downward spiral became a straight vertical descent. "Looks like we're there," Cole observed, leaning over to peer out the window. Atton caught a glimpse of the giant dish at the center of Singularity Base, along with a cluster of strange green lights that crackled there, before the huge outer walls of the garrison rose and hid them from view.

Several dropships had already landed on the band of rare flat ground that surrounded the base and were being needled by the light laser cannons spaced along its wall. But even as his own ship still descended, Atton was able to make out the deep, ominous thumps that marked the deployment of the first visitors to Malachor. They were the Republic's eight-meter-tall tank droids, ponderously descending the loading ramps of dropships that had been specially modified to transport them. Theirs was a utilitarian design: an exceptionally ugly, boxy chassis fronted with cannons and missile launchers, held up and lugged along—barely—by two side-mounted legs.

The defensive guns soon switched to targeting the tank droids themselves. One of the lumbering defense platforms' weaknesses was their limited field of fire, meaning that someone attacking from the side or from behind could chip away at their duraplate armor at leisure. Being unable to move, however, the wall turrets of Singularity Base could not avail themselves of this tactic. For a few seconds the light and fury in the air thickened, and then it vanished, leaving the ferrocrete walls decorated with smoking black cavities.

The walking tanks—twelve in all—thumped into position, forming an out-facing ring around the LZ as the remaining dropships and droid carriers touched down. There was a flurry of clicks and rustles as people peeled off restraints and practically leaped from their jumpseats, and shouted exchanges between the troops and their officers. Discipline restrained their excitement, though, as the sentinel droids had to go in first.

But the men wouldn't have long to wait. As Kaevee and Cole were observing, sentinel war droids were already marching in ranks from the KT-400s' ramps toward the base's doors. Humanoid-shaped and toting blaster rifles or repeaters, the mechanized infantry were protected by built-in energy shields as well as silver and black armor plating—the latter of which lent them some resemblance to the Sith troopers which they were soon going to slaughter.

Atton kept his enthusiasm in check as the automatons marched in. Getting inside and sweeping through the outer layers of the garrison was always going to be the easy part. Singularity Base's many weaknesses—such as the omission of anti-aircraft emplacements and heavier ground-based turrets—stemmed from the nature of Revan's original trap for the Mandalorians. Since her plan hadn't involved a ground battle on Malachor V, the base was never meant to withstand a serious attack.

From across the cabin, Atton saw Captain Hart, a hatchet-faced man with a bristly blond mustache. In between repeating orders to his men, the captain was glancing at him expectantly. There was only a minute left. Shouldering his pack, Atton turned to Kaevee. "I'm heading out."

The girl eyed him, a ghost of worry on her face. In the Force she felt tense, but also steady—for now. You wanted to serve the Republic, and here you are, thought Atton. Sink or swim.

Silence ensued between them. Atton felt like he ought to say something more, but what was it? In the end he settled for repeating himself. "It'll be fine, just stick to the plan. Stay with the troops and follow their lead if anything goes wrong. Whatever Major Hawkins tells you to do, do it. Just keep your Force senses up—"

"—and watch for Sith," she finished, not impatiently.

"Yep. And whatever you do, no stupid, suicidal heroics, all right?" The freezing-burning sense of finality hadn't abated, so his own mood was anything but mirthful, but he chose that moment to pull out his winning smile and play it for all it was worth. "That's my job here."

Seemingly unaffected, the girl just nodded. "Good luck," chipped in Cole from beside her.

Atton gave the spacer a nod and said, "You too." Privately, he wished he could have had Ecksee along to keep an eye on Kaevee as well. But the probe droid was still undergoing repairs after being ionized on Daluuj, so that was out.

The captain was still waiting. Atton had just gone a few paces when the girl called after him. "May the Force be with you, Atton."

He looked back. Kaevee was standing as straight and unmoving as a tower, her hands joined before her, staring at him with eyes that suddenly seemed deep and genuinely serious. In that eerie moment, she looked for the first time like a real Jedi Knight, not a scared, posturing girl who was captive to her own dreams.

It did nothing for Atton's spirits—slightly annoyed him, actually—but he kept it off his face and hurried to join Hart and his men. "Sentinel droids have reported in," the captain said. "The security door codes are all working so far. It looks like the Sith troops are falling back to reinforce junctions F through J, but we expected that…"

The officer went on. There was a chorus of shouts from the squad leaders, and at last the Republic troops unslung their blasters and turned toward the dropship's ramp as it fell open with a squeal and a bang. Hefting his own rifle, Atton became part of the unit as it went down onto Malachor's surface. As they marched between the parked dropships and the vigilant droid tanks and made for Singularity Base, his eyes swept the length of its monolithic laser-scarred wall. He looked up and saw lightning casting itself through the shrouded sky—and farther ahead, over the center of Singularity Base, emerald flashes throwing themselves against the clouds.

Atton took a deep breath. "Heard you miss me, beautiful," he said quietly.