The personal bedchamber of Princess Serissa Lohr, heir to the throne of Hapes, was one of the most secure rooms in the entire Fountain Palace. Considering that, it was probably one of the most secure rooms in the entire galaxy. The windows were thick transparisteel. They looked out on a straight cliffside drop into the ocean and barely-visible micro-wires connected to intruder alarms bisected the pane in both directions. The same micro-wires surrounded the door-frame and ran a tight grid beneath the skin of the walls, floor, and ceiling. Infra-red sensors scanned for body heat and motion-traps caught unnecessary movement. The air sensors were calibrated to detect any changes in the oxygen content. Even a slight rise in carbon dioxide when the room was unoccupied would trigger the alarm.

The one flaw in this elaborate set-up was a simple one. When Serissa Lohr entered the chamber the infra-red, motion, and atmospheric sensors all went dormant. To protect to privacy of the princess, Darth Terrid supposed. Life was full of ironies.

Force suggestion was something Terrid had been trained at, first by the Jedi and later by the Sith. It had never been his specialty, but he could do for a small number of people for short intervals. He only had to walk alongside the princess down three winding corridors before they reached the door, willing her not to see him for what he was. She pressed her palm against the door's scanner to be granted access. As the door slid open, revealing the marble floors, broad thick window, and hand-carved furniture, Serissa said with afterthought, "Thank you, guard. Leave me now."

She stepped through. The door slid shut behind her. Attempting to arrest its slide would trigger another alarm, so Terrid used the Force to speed him through the threshold before the door snapped shut.

The split-second break in concentration was enough to clear the cloud he'd formed around the princess's mind. The girl spun around and her eyes went wide in confusion and shock. She was two long steps away so Terrid used the Force to squeeze her windpipe shut. Her mouth flapped, almost comically, and a hand went to her throat.

Terrid loosened his grip slightly, enough to stop her words while still allowing her to breathe. "You conspired to poison the Queen Mother," he said. "You will be delivered to her and to your death."

Her mouth snapped again and wordless sound creaked out. She'd want to plead for her life, but Terrid wasn't interested in hearing. She could beg her grandmother if she wanted to, not that it would do any good on a woman who'd had her own daughter killed.

"You will sleep now," Terrid said, and began to reach out for the girl's mind.

He was suddenly repelled; a mind forced back his. Surprise loosened his grip. Then, incredibly, pain shot across his cheek as though he'd been slapped.

Anger swallowed surprise. He used the Force to pick the girl off her feet and hurl her onto the bed. He was on top of her in a moment, pinning both her hands with his. He didn't need those to squeeze her throat again with the Force, but as she writhed beneath him she managed to wheeze out, "Please… Knew you'd come..."

He could feel that her initial panic had subsided. There was still fear, but mixed with it was a tentative hope, even a bit of triumph. He realized then that what he'd felt- the mind repelling his, the handless slap- had come from her.

That changed everything.

With her body still pinned beneath his he relaxed the grip on her throat enough for her to gulp in necessary breath. He asked, "Do you know what I am?"

The princess took two deep breaths before responding. "You're one of her secret allies. The ones who helped her beat the Jedi."

"What do you know about us?"

"Only rumors, from people who were around when my grandmother overthrew Tenel Ka. I know Jedi were killed, multiple Jedi."

"Jedi aren't invincible. They die like anyone else."

"No. Not like anyone else. It takes someone special to kill a Jedi. And my grandmother, all these years she's been in power…. She has a security team but everyone knows she has someone else too. You have to be one of them. You're clearly not Hapan."

As she talked on her confidence grew. He asked, "Is this what you planned all along? To draw us out?"

"I was good, wasn't I?" Her eyes gleamed; she even smiled. "I made sure the investigation team wouldn't trace it back to me. She'd have to call in your people. Only they'd be able to find me."

As he stared down at her proud grinning face Terrid didn't know if he should be fascinated or repulsed. She had the haughty arrogance of a born-royal but her actions walked the line between arrogant and reckless. In baiting him this way she'd very clearly risked her life. The girl wasn't stupid; she clearly realized that. The satisfaction welling from her was that of someone who'd gambled everything and, against all odds, come out victorious.

And above all else, she had the Force. Whether she knew she had it he couldn't tell. He hadn't sensed it from her since he'd first attacked and she'd defended herself in a panic, which probably meant she wasn't aware of her own power. But she did have it: the heir to the Hapan throne was Force-sensitive. She was right to feel triumphant.

He asked again, "What do you think I am? Say it."

She took another breath and said, very seriously, "I think you're a Sith."

"What do you know about the Sith?"

"Like the Jedi, but their opposite."

Vermin always said that about Sith but they never understood what that meant. Serissa was too young and had spent all her life locked away in a society that had purged itself of apparent Force-users.

"Your grandmother will kill you for this. Why did you seek us out?"

"Can't you guess? You have to kill her and make me Queen."

"Why?" He needed to know her reasons.

The girl's face darkened. "She killed my mother. You know that."

Revenge was a start, but there needed to be more. To be Sith was to serve a greater purpose. "Your mother was going to kill her. The queen was defending herself."

"She's ruled for almost thirty years. That's long enough. She's let Hapes rot."

"And what are you planning to do with your hermit kingdom?"

"Rule it my way," Serissa hissed. "Cull the nobles. All the schemers like Ducha Reshul and all the ones that want to be like her. I can make Hapes better."

He could tell she meant it. She wanted revenge for her mother. She raged at the old woman who controlled her life. But she also had a vision for Hapes. "How?" he asked.

"I just told you. Destroy the aristocrats. Give power to people who deserve it. The smartest. The strongest. My grandmother's coddled the nobles and all Hapes has done is stagnate. Even that Jedi was a better queen."

"Would you open the doors and let the rest of the galaxy back inside?"

She waited before respond. He realized she was staring at him, evaluating him like he was evaluating her. Eventually she asked, "Would the Jedi come back? Do they know your kind is here?"

"If they knew they'd have rooted us out by now."

"But they suspect. They have to, after the ones you killed." Terrid granted her a nod. Her face lit brighter. "Then we'll keep them out together. I'll be exactly the kind of ally you need."

Queen Demia had been that for thirty years. Not a perfect ally, to be sure, but one the Sith could work with. This girl was an unknown quality; if she didn't have that untamed, unrecognized Force power he'd hand her over to Demia to be killed right away. As it was, Serissa Lohr had the power to change more than she could possibly realize.

Terrid knew this matter was too great for him. He'd have to refer it to Avanc and Wyyrlok. He already had an idea of what they'd say, but they needed to be consulted first. Only after that could he take this matter to the queen.

Then he remembered something, perhaps the most important piece. "Your grandmother," he said, "Has collected information about us. She's programmed some of her communications arrays to send that information to the Jedi when she dies. Do you know about this?"

That one took her aback. She shook her head and said, "No, but I can find out. I promise."

"Until we find those arrays and disable them your grandmother cannot killed. Do you understand? If she dies then the Sith go down with her, and you go down with us."

She nodded seriously. "I'll help you any way I can."

She could help them in more ways than she could possibly imagine. He was tempted to probe if she had any idea she was Force-sensitive, but there was nothing to be done about that now. If she was ever to become Sith, that would be a long time from now and there were more immediate concerns.

Without moving from on top of her he released her wrists. She held them over her chest, massaging them, staring up at Terrid without flinching.

"What now?" she asked.

"Now you sleep," Terrid said, and placed a hand on her forehead. She responded on instinct, a slap-back in the Force, but he was ready for it and easily overwhelmed her resistance. Her eyes fluttered shut. Her head rolled to one side. She looked like a teenage girl at rest, but he knew now that she was anything but.

This was as good a place as any for a long discussion with Darth Avanc. Sitting on the side of the bed, watching the ocean churn under moonlight past the window, he removed the long-range comlink from his pocket and made the hail.

-{}-

When the Sith finally appeared it was another clear morning. Lenor Chalk had given her report and Demia had decided to linger on the outside walkways, watching the ocean. She'd been getting pensive; the issue with Ducha Reshul had been resolved, and but the greater treason still hung above her, uncertain, waiting to be revealed. Every meal was risking death. Her nerves wouldn't last much longer, so when she turned toward the door and saw the Chiss standing behind her, black robe glaring against the white marble of the balustrade and clear blue sky, her first reaction was relief.

"I was wondering when you would arrive. Have you uncovered the ones who tried to kill me?"

"Yes," the Sith said. Darth Terrid, she recalled.

"And you've brought them to me, alive?"

He gestured to the door to the vestibule, the door Lenor had passed through just ten minutes before. "They are inside."

"I'll want to talk to them first. Make sure they're responsible for everything."

"Of course."

She felt a spike of foreboding when she looked at that door, but there was no point in stalling. "All right. Let me see them."

Terrid went through the door first. Demia followed behind him. A gust brushed through the open doorway, furling his black cloak like a curtain, and when it curled away she could look past the Sith and see revelation.

She barely noticed the young man and woman on their knees. In front of them, a pair of stun-cuffs around her wrist, was her granddaughter. The practiced royal mask melted away and Demia couldn't hide her shock. Fear and defiance warred in Serissa's eyes. She was trembling but she didn't kneel.

Terrid walked a slow circle to come up behind the two kneeling figures. "Security Officer Panal purposely omitted key information from her report to you. She did that on request of Servant Yanar Rolt, who contaminated your food supplies with poisoned items." He stepped in between them and hovered behind Serissa's shoulder. "The poisoning was done on behalf of your granddaughter."

Demia took a step closer. "I have to hear her say it."

The young woman's pretty face twisted in a sneer. "I did it."

"But why?"

"Do you have to ask?"

"Your mother… I regret what I had to do but she left me no choice!" The queen felt like she'd stumbled into a nightmare. All this time she'd thought she was raising Serissa into something better than her mother. A wiser ruler, less greedy, less vicious; someone who could carry on her legacy when she was gone.

She'd thought they loved each other.

The weight of failure threatened to pull her to the floor. "I thought I'd made a difference… I thought you were better than your mother. I tried to make you better, I tried so hard."

"Don't apologize," Serissa sniffed. Her voice quaked now, but with fear or anger Demia couldn't tell. "Just kill me like you did my mother. Get it over with."

Demia didn't have the strength to do it again. She'd forced herself to stand in the courtyard and watch as the firing squad had executed Melor. Her life had never been the same after that; any pleasure in ruling had been inevitably poisoned. A second time would kill her as surely as Serissa's poisons.

She realized she was crying. Her old gnarled hands dried her old sagging face. Still hovering behind Serissa, red eyes glowing above the crown of her head like a scarlet halo, Darth Terrid said, "What will we do with the traitors?"

Of course he knew. They all knew and waited for her to make it official. They were torturing her with their eyes.

She blinked wetness away and looked down. "You know what to do."

"Say it," the Sith commanded.

In a weak and hollow voice she said, "The penalty is death."

A humming blade appeared in the Sith's hand: red tinted white. He took two steps back, flicking his wrist as he did so. Two heads rolled in opposite directions and two bodies, already on their knees with hands bound back, tipped forward so the scorched stubs of their necks touched the clean white floor.

Demia looked up. Her granddaughter was still on her feet. Serissa trembled; when she met her grandmother's eyes there was no fear but no regret.

The lightsaber shrunk to nothing and disappeared in the Sith's sleeve. He stepped up to Serissa again, this time hovering behind her left shoulder. He looked at Demia and said, "What will you tell your people about her?"

She hadn't even thought to care. Every Hapan noble knew what Melor had done and the fate she'd been given. Demia had wanted to make an example of the daughter who'd plotted murder and treason. She'd been younger then, stronger and crueler, less sick of ruling.

"I can't do it again," she said aloud.

"Then you'd let her go?"

For a second the option sounded so sweet, so tempting. Not forgiveness, but something else. A banishment, perhaps, as close to amnesty as she could allow. But then she looked into her granddaughter's eyes, defiant in a way they'd always been but she'd never wanted to see. All of this was a tragedy of her own making. If she didn't end what she'd begun she'd be an even more pathetic ruler than she already was.

With effort she shifted her eyes to the Chiss. "You know I can't do that."

"So will you tell your people your granddaughter also sought your life? Will you disgrace her too?"

She wagged her head. "I can't."

"Then you'll tell them something else. That she died in an accident."

That would be a small mercy. The others would look at her in sympathy instead of contempt. She might even be able to hide her shame. She'd have to, to keep the illusion.

She sniffed. "Yes. We can tell them that."

"Very well," Terrid said, then reached up to wrap his palm over Serissa's face. The princess opened her mouth to scream but before sound could come, blue lightning jumped out from the Chiss's hand. It ran up and down her like an electric current. Her whole body shook and her half-covered face contorted in a soundless scream.

It lasted for only a few seconds but Serissa's death seemed to take forever. Demia's mind fell back thirty years to the moment she'd watched Darth Xoran scald that Jedi woman until her skin curled clear and muscle charred against visible bone. The Falleen had drawn out the agony as long as possible, savoring it like a true sadist. Before that moment Demia had never truly understood what the Sith were and what they could do. Only when they'd been joined together for the rest of her life had she realized.

Darth Terrid was merciful in comparison. When the lightning stopped he pulled his hand away. Serissa dropped on the floor between them. The Chiss stood over the princess, looking at Demia and wordlessly asking if she were satisfied. The old queen's trembles were too much. Her legs gave out beneath her and she fell to the floor, more softly than expected. She bent over Serissa's body and reached out cautiously, afraid some lightning might jump to her fingers, but nothing came. She pulled black hair free from her granddaughter's face. It was smooth, pretty, almost peaceful. Like the child she'd been. Corruption had taken her before she'd ever had a chance. That was the fate of those born princess of Hapes. Demia understood that now; it should have been obvious all along.

If she'd known triumph would cost her this much she would have let that damned Jedi witch keep the Hapan throne. The price was too high, too high.

With a hint of softness, maybe even sympathy, the Sith said, "I will take the body."

"What?" Blinking, she looked up at that hood-shadowed face, those glowing inhuman eyes.

He picked bent low and picked Serissa up in both arms. Without waiting for Demia he started for the door. The old woman pushed herself off the marble, knees aching and arms trembling, and staggered onto the balcony just in time to see Darth Terrid lift Serissa's body over the balustrade and let go.

Demia wasn't fast enough to see it hit the water. When she came up beside Terrid and looked down there was only rock plunging into water and the white crash of waves.

"Wait an hour, maybe two," the Sith said. "Then send searchers for her body. It will be easy to claim she drowned. An accident, like you wanted."

He was right. It was the easiest way. She remembered the other two bodies in the room behind them, heads cleaved off by lightsabers, but those would be easy to dispose of. They had been nothing people anyway.

Serissa was different. Just an hour ago she'd been a queen's pride and promise; now she was an open wound that would bleed Demia to death, sooner or later.

This Chiss stayed where he was beside her, unmoving. When Demia steadied herself she looked him in the eyes and asked, "Well? Are you expecting me to thank you?"

After a moment he said, "No. Just remember, we've held up our side of the agreement."

"I won't forget this."

He took her every meaning with a nod. He stepped for the door. It slid open, revealing the remaining bodies. He glanced over his shoulder and said, "I will leave the rest to you." Then he stepped through, the door closed, and he was gone.

Demia bent against the railing, hands on cold marble. She didn't have to strength to stand on her own. She stared down the long drop into the ocean, the waves and eternal water that had always given her comfort. Now even those were ruined for her.

Even as she hated that place she stayed there for a long time. She didn't want to go back into the palace. She didn't feel like a queen any longer, just an old woman, more alone than ever.

-{}-

The nova cruisers and flight control stations over Hapes were designed to intercept any unwanted visitor to the throneworld, but even they were unable to spot the single small spacecraft, black as space and shaped like a flying wing, as it soared clear of the Fountain Palace, pierced through the clouds, climbed out of orbit, and finally began its course through the Hapes Cluster's winding hyperspace lanes back to Shedu Maad.

To Darth Terrid it was a strange experience. Seventeen years ago this same vessel had carried a Jedi apprentice named Ran'wharn'csapla to the secret Sith world. Like Serissa Lohr, that boy had had no idea of the horror and power that awaited him there.

It had all gone easier than expected. A show of lighting and temporary Force-induced stoppage of the princess' breathing had been enough to convince the old queen that her granddaughter was dead. As planned, Darth Kheykid had been waiting in the cliffs beneath the palace to catch her body before it fell into the violent waves. By the time Terrid had found his way back to the hidden hangar where Intruder had docked, the young woman had already been strapped down inside the ship's cockpit and the Barabel Sith Lord waiting outside, long-toothed and slit-eyed reptilian face as fearsome as it had been all those years ago, when he'd been the prisoner and Kheykid his captor.

Though Darth Avanc had been the one to forge Ran'wharn'csapla into Darth Terrid, the Chiss still looked on Kheykid as the one who'd ushered him onto the path of the dark side. A hundred-fifty kilos but still lightning-fast, armed with natural teeth and claws in addition to twin short-blade lightsabers, Kheykid was the One Sith's most fearsome living weapon. Even now Terrid felt disconcerted to be with him in Intruder's cockpit.

When they entered hyperspace, Terrid pushed out of his seat and looked to the back of the cockpit. The Hapan princess was stirring at last. She pushed herself upright on the couch and blinked her eyes; they settled on Terrid first, then Kheykid. A spike of fear shot out of her but she stifled it, on her face and in the Force. She indeed had a natural, unconscious talent, but it would take a lot of punishment to forge her into a Sith.

He didn't bother to ask how she felt. Even the short burst of lighting he'd given her would send after-shocks of pain through her system for hours. That was fine; to be a Sith was to use pain as a tool. She had better start learning now.

The first thing Serissa asked was, "Does she think I'm dead?"

"I made sure of it," Avanc said.

She shifted in her seat and her eyes lingered on Kheykid. "Am I going to get introductions?"

"Darth Kheykid," the Barabel said simply.

"And we're going to your planet now, aren't we? Shedu Maad?"

"That's right," said Terrid.

She held her hands up, examining them like they were something new. "You really think I have your Force."

"You do," Terrid said. "But it will take much training for you to become a Sith."

"I want to become Queen of Hapes," she said, haughty and regal despite her circumstances.

"You will become a Sith first. Or you will die."

Her eyes narrowed. "I already gave you what you wanted. A list of the transmission centers where my grandmother keeps her message for the Jedi. She might change locations or add another array. You should kill her now before she has the chance. It's the safest thing."

"She is impatient," Kheykid hissed disapproval.

"She's young," said Terrid.

"I'm not a child," she glared.

Terrid believed her. "You are not a princess anymore. Do you understand? The princess is dead. You may be queen one day but you are a Sith apprentice now."

She looked at her hands again. "You said the Force can give me power to remake things the way I want them to be."

"With the Dark Side you can bend everything to your will," said Kheykid. "But only if you truly embrace it."

When she looked back at the Barabel she said, hard and determined at last, "Then I'll do it. Teach me to be a Sith. I'm not afraid."

But she was. He could feel that: frightened and resigned and resolved all at once, and above all hungry to be more than what she was. Not a child, not an adult, burning with an inner need: she reminded him of himself as he'd been when Kheykid had ended his first life and begun a new one.

Until that moment his mission on Hapes had been a bothersome duty, reluctantly fulfilled. Now he understood the Force had been with him all this time. It was putting an opportunity before him and he'd be a poor Sith not to take it. He'd have to argue to get his way from Avanc and Wyyrlok, of course, but he'd done that before.

In the years since he'd been introduced to the dark side- not by Kheykid or Avanc but ultimately by Darth Xoran herself on Varadan- he had always been a student. Now it was time to be a teacher.