A Pawn To Be Sacrificed
Darth Virulous was seated quietly, in front of her master's desk, listening with rapt attention to Nox as he spoke to her. He had summoned her to appear before him, and had her sit in front of his massive desk. Whatever he wanted to speak to her about had to be very, very important to her.
"You are strong in The Force, Darth Virulous, you've shown an aptitude for dark Force techniques and rituals, but I need you to be stronger," Nox, seated in his office chair behind his desk, told his apprentice before asking, "You've seen some of my power, haven't you?"
"I have also felt it, Master. If I did not shield my mind, I would be crushed by your dark aura," Virulous confessed to her lord.
"Have you ever wondered how it is that I could wield such enormous power? Have you ever asked yourself, how is it possible?"
"I have, Dark Lord. While I have learned various techniques for manipulating The Force, both from reading the ancient scripts in the archives and from watching you, and while I have gained insight into how some of your techniques are done, I could never grasp how it is that your power can reach such levels," Virulous said, before taking a great risk to ask, "Will you teach me this, Master?"
She knew how jealously Nox guarded his secrets. Merely asking for access to his most closely guarded secrets could send him into a foul mood. Virulous had to pry knowledge from Nox's grasp to learn what she could.
At times Nox would angrily shout at her, giving a vague hint and sending her out of his sight. Virulous would have to sort through the insults and berating comments to find the nugget, and then she would slink into the archives to figure out the rest on her own. At other times, Nox would grudgingly share a secret, giving a generally vague explanation of it only once, and then send her away to figure out the details for herself.
Then there were the rare times, like this one, when Nox would unhurriedly speak, allowing her to ask her questions and then actually take the time to answer them.
"I'm going to teach you a ritual that will allow you to subdue a Force ghost and subsume its power," Nox told her with a pleased expression, "I feel you are ready."
Virulous became greatly disappointed on hearing this. Nox could see it quite plainly on her face. She did not even bother with trying to hide her great displeasure. Nox became indignant at her attitude and let her know it.
"Perhaps you would rather go back to digging up dusty old relics with no value other than its old and uninteresting history?"
"Master, this was the same story you told me when you tried to trick me into interacting with the Rakata Mind Trap. Did you forget? You imprisoned Juuldis' consciousness in it so that Darth Zash could take her body. How could you forget, Dark Lord?" Virulous asked.
She was careful not to raise her voice at Nox, but it was quite plain that she was quite miffed at her master. The memory of that day in Taris' ruined structures suddenly flooded Nox's mind and his eyes registered his recollection of that time. The ridiculousness of this moment, in his office, caused the dark lord to burst into laughter.
"That's right! I remember it now!" he said, following with another round of laughter.
"At the time, I told you the truth about the ritual, but I had no intention of actually teaching you how it was done. You are correct. At that time I wanted to trick you into interacting with the mind trap," he admitted.
His mood began to sour as he shook his head, disgusted at his laps in recollecting that moment on Taris.
"This time, however, I'm actually going to teach you the ritual. I need you stronger than you are now. I want you to be able to back me when I make my move for the throne," Nox said, a faint smile was all that remained of his good mood.
However, even that tenuously remaining good humor completely evaporated from his countenance, when he recalled that moments before his lie to Virulous, his worshipful and capable apprentice, Darth Xalek, had been killed by one of the Jedi his faithful servant and Virulous had been battling.
"Then you really do have the Force Ghosts of long dead Sith lords enslaved to your will, Dark Lord?" his apprentice asked, deeply skeptical.
"I have subsumed their existences. They are now a part of my own existence. I admit I am not the same man I was before. Although, my strong will has permitted most of my personality to come through," Nox told her, soberly.
"However, the path for you to take the power of more than a single Force Ghost is closed to you. There is a machine that remade my body, at the genetic level, in order that my body could withstand these enormous levels of power. However, that machine is on Belsavis, a Republic prison planet. It has likely come under Republic Control since I've left that planet so long ago.
"I should have destroyed that machine when I was done with it. It was an intact and active Rakata device. The remnants of the Rakatan civilization were using it to experiment with making Force sensitive intelligent life forms with the intent of revitalizing their dying species, allowing them to reestablish their Infinite Empire, a wholly fruitless endeavor. If that technology has fallen into the hands of the Republic..."
Nox shook his head, wondering if the Rakata who operated the machine were still in control or if the Republic had discovered their secret.
Nox returned to the subject.
"It is possible to consume the Force Ghost of one individual without adversely affecting your physical and psychological well-being. As soon as you've taken a second Force Ghost, your mind begins to fragment.
"I began to notice problems after I had enslaved the second Force Ghost, but it wasn't until I had taken control of the Forth Force Ghost in my search for greater power to defeat my enemy, Darth Thanaton, that I found myself in imminent danger of losing control of my own body and possibly ceasing to exist. Meanwhile, my body became the play thing of those four Sith lords I had bound to my existence.
"Nevertheless, I struck at Thanaton and nearly destroyed him, except that the extreme power flowing through me had caused extensive damage to my own body, and I passed out. At the time, my servants told me that I was out of control, babbling nonsense while Thanaton, greatly wounded, made his escape.
"When I had returned to my senses and regained conscious control of my body, I found my body ravaged and burned by the torrents of raw power which flowed out of it. It was then that I also learned, through my servants, that I had developed multiple identities as each of the Force Ghosts attempted to take control of my body.
"After learning of the existence of the Rakata machine on Belsavis, I made contact with the surviving Rakata, asking them to heal my body. The Rakata were quite willing to aid me. In return, I allowed them to study the results of the repairs made to me, allowing them to take genetic samples. It was quite a good trade for them and for me.
"Going to Belsavis and accessing this machine allowed for my body to be remade at the genetic level and repaired at the cellular level. My mind was reconstituted, reinforced, and its capacity increased, allowing it to properly absorb the memories and considerable knowledge of the four Sith lords I had enslaved, but that came at the cost of permanently changing my personality. My former self is gone.
"Darth Virulous, I don't expect that you will encounter these problems, as long as you only subsume one Force Ghost, but these are things you must still take into consideration," Nox said in warning to his apprentice, adding, "If you do this, you will gain great power, but you must risk changing, to some degree, who you are."
Nox fell silent, waiting for his apprentice's reply.
"Dark Lord, you have taken great risks to gain power so that you could attain your goals. I will follow your example. I want greater power so that I too can achieve my own goals, while propelling you to the Imperial throne. Teach me what I need to know, Master," Virulous said, hiding her true feelings and doubts from her master.
Darth Virulous decided that she would get to the bottom of all of this. If her master was lying to her again, she determined that she would leave his service, and carve her own place among the Sith.
"I am not a pawn to be sacrificed!" she declared to herself, remembering what Nox had told Marr about needing a weak pawn to sacrifice. "Even if I must kill him to be free," Virulous vowed to herself, "I will be free!"
"Go rest yourself, Darth Virulous. When I am ready to begin your training, I shall need you fully rested and capable of exerting a very great effort," Nox told his apprentice, "You are dismissed."
"Thank you, Master," she said, perfectly masking her feelings and her thoughts.
Virulous rose from her seat in front of his desk. She bowed slightly at her waist and dipped her head towards her lord. Then turning about, she stepped briskly from Darth Nox's desk, making her way across his prized brilliant yellow and deep black rug in his opulent spacious office.
"Who actually needs an office this large?" she asked herself, incredulous, as she passed through the office door which hissed shut behind her.
Virulous navigated the labyrinthine corridors and office suites as she made her way to a bank of turbolifts. After a long wait, she entered the turbolift, grateful that it wasn't full. There were still a few seats at the sides of the car available. She made her way to an empty seat, and as she sat, the officers seated on either side of her hurriedly got up from their seats, to give Darth Nox's deadly enforcer her space.
The ride up from Nox's floor took several long minutes for a total of six hundred thirty two stories over the span of twenty four minutes, including wait times for the lifts to arrive. The first lift she entered, on Nox's floor, was an express lift which stopped every fifty stories. So it only made twelve stops on its way up. Virulous had to switch to a local service turbolift to go up the remaining thirty two stories to her destination floor. It was a long commute within the building.
Exiting the local service turbolift, she made her way through another series of corridors and office suites until she finally arrived to one of thirteen shopping centers located in the gargantuan edifice. One shopping center was located roughly every hundred stories, for the thirteen hundred story tall building. There weren't any shopping centers in any of the nine hundred sub-levels below the ground floor.
This particular shopping center was conveniently located on the three hundred and thirty second story of the gargantuan building, and was for the exclusive use of Imperial officers, who worked in the Imperial military headquarters, ranked general marshal, grand admiral, and moff. Ordinary generals and admirals were not permitted access.
The headquarters was an enormous military bureaucracy that took up four hundred floors from the two hundredth story to the six hundredth story of The Citadel. As long as they had offices and worked in The Citadel, the only others permitted in this shopping center were lords of Sith and darths, irrespective of which sphere of influence they worked for. Also a very small handful of very powerful politically connected non-Sith civilians were also permitted, providing they, too, worked in and had offices in the gigantic building.
Virulous didn't have an office in The Citadel, but she was well known as the enforcer who, at the direction of Darth Nox, singlehandedly wiped Acina's followers within her domain, the Sphere of Technology, within The Citadel. She'd also slaughtered a few dozen Imperial soldiers who'd been providing security within that domain. She spent enough time going in and out of Nox's office, that the building administrators decided not to look too closely at Virulous' qualifications for access to this very exclusive shopping center.
At the shopping center was a members' only gymnasium for the use of this very exclusive class of very high ranking individuals who worked in The Citadel. Virulous went to the women's locker room, making a beeline to her rented locker.
There, she changed out of her Sith armor and robes and packed them, and her sabrestaff, into a large gym bag, which she pulled out from her locker along with a change of clothes. Virulous changed into common civilian attire, concealing her chromium plated lightsaber under her windbreaker.
After giving herself a good look at her holographically projected image, to be sure she looked presentable and to be sure that her face was adequately hidden beneath her wide brimmed floppy hat, she proceeded to leave the gym.
On her way out of the gymnasium, she stopped at the members' customer service kiosk and checked with the droid to make sure her membership was paid up to date, and that she wouldn't lose her locker. Satisfied that all was in order, Virulous made her way out of the maze that was The Citadel, traveling three hundred and thirty two stories down to the main level and then through the cavernous lobby to the expansive taxiport outside.
The sky was dark, but the stars were not visible through the powerful lights illuminating the taxiport. However, she wasn't thinking about starry night skies. Virulous was trying to hide the fact that she was a powerful Sith lord, apprentice to Darth Nox, Dark Lord of The Sith, and potentially the next emperor of the Sith Empire. She was deeply ashamed, however, because she was so poor that she made her home among common Imperials in a rental flat.
She got in line, trying to blend in with the others, which she seemed to have carried out well. Her large floppy hat seemed to do its job of hiding her hair and obscuring her face. She fervently hoped, however, that no one would notice how short she was.
When word had gotten out that it was she who had slaughtered Acina's people in The Citadel, and who had ravaged the Exchange Gang on Tatooine, she became famous for being the tiny package of death and carnage unleashed on the galaxy by Darth Nox.
Virulous had managed to recover her expenses, and earned quite a large sum more with the reward money she'd earned from an Exchange Gang thug who'd paid her a bounty for each of his rivals that she'd killed while she exacted Darth Nox's wrath on Tatooine.
It was because of this blood money that she was living comfortably, anonymously, among the common Imperials, but she knew that it would be a terrible humiliation for her master if it were discovered that she could not afford to live the opulent life style of lords of Sith and of the darths who were her peers.
It was finally her turn to approach the taxi kiosk. She shook her head in derision at herself.
"I can't even afford to own and maintain my own speeder, not even a used one!" she thought bitterly. Parking, licensing, and insurance was very costly in Kaas City.
"Welcome, traveler," the droid at the kiosk said, addressing Virulous, "What is your destination?"
Months before she was ordered to Tatooine by her master, when she had first leased her flat and had gotten in line for the first time at a taxi kiosk wearing her disguise, the droid recognized who she was and addressed her appropriately.
"Welcome, my lord. Where do you wish to travel?"
Virulous had become startled, worried that her cover would be broken.
She whispered harshly at the droid, "If I am wearing commoners' clothing, then I am attempting to hide my identity! Address me as any anonymous common traveler!"
This evening, the late night breeze was cool and light, but the humidity had offset what comfort the breeze might have offered as she told the taxi kiosk droid her destination, speaking tersely and keeping her voice low.
"Northern residential sector, block two hundred twenty, building four."
She didn't want the other commuters knowing where she was going.
"That will be a mere forty four credits, Traveler," the kiosk droid said, cheerily. "Will you pay now, or do you wish to be billed?"
Virulous presented her credit card.
The kiosk droid waved a datapad over her card then told her, "Please board taxi twelve thousand two hundred ninety two, at boarding station six, Traveler. Have a pleasant trip."
Virulous walked to the passenger loading station with a huge number six stenciled in white onto the metal plated deck painted with dark grey textured slip resistant paint. As soon as she boarded the taxi droid, it immediately departed, leaving the massive taxiport behind and entering the local traffic stream.
For the next forty minutes the taxi droid seemed to follow an invisible road high in the air, one hundred and twenty stories up. The road could only be defined by the seemingly endless train of speeders of every make, model, and type as they flew between blocks of neighboring precincts, defining major thoroughfares.
Smaller streams of speeders occasionally split off from the major streams of traffic, meandering into the precincts, descending lower and lower between the towering spires as they transitioned to the slower local traffic patterns.
The streaming flows of traffic became increasingly sparsely populated with speeders each time Virulous' taxi droid split off for an ever smaller side traffic lane until her conveyance finally began to descend to the surface below and came to a stop in front of building four which was part of a block of eight buildings.
After the long ride, Virulous debarked from her taxi droid feeling a little stiff. So she did a few stretches as the taxi gently lifted off and made its way to a residential tower not very far from her residence, having been dispatched to its next fare. After her short stretch, Virulous walked briskly down the long covered walkway to the entrance of her residential tower. Passing through the always opened doors, she entered the grand lobby.
The anonymous Sith lord lived at the northern edge of Kaas City, only a few blocks from the wall which kept the wild jungles and beasts of Dromund Kaas out of the city. As Virulous walked past a long oval concierge counter in the center of the lobby, she was greeted by one of several concierge droids.
"Good night, Mistress Lunn, welcome home. Two packages have arrived for you. Shall I bring them to you here, or shall I have them sent to your apartment?"
"Deliver them to my flat without delay," the anonymous Sith lord said, as she swept past the droid, making her way towards the bank of turbolifts furthest away in the lobby to her left.
As she neared the bank of turbolifts, one of them opened and a group of residents exited, obviously on their way out to a night on the town. Virulous hopped in, feeling lucky that she didn't have to wait forever for the lift. She was also very glad that the chittering voices of the party goers were cut off when the doors slid shut. Their incessant prattle had instantly begun to grate on her nerves.
The turbolift opened up and she exited on the sixty seventh floor, where she finally made her way the last few meters to her apartment. At the door, she entered a six digit combination code onto the screen interface of the security system. A small panel slid open and she slid her hand into the opening. Upon verifying her hand print and her DNA signature, the apartment door slid open and she walked in. The panel and the door both slid shut and locked upon her entrance.
Virulous set her large gym bag down on the floor of her vestibule and removed her floppy hat and loose fitting windbreaker, hanging them on hooks on the wall near the apartment door. She then sat on a small stool in the vestibule and removed her casual walking shoes, replacing them with fuzzy slippers.
She made her way to the utility and laundry room with her gym bag, setting it down. Opening the bag, she proceeded to remove her armor, thermal underlining suit, boots, and robes from the bag, placing them in her valet and getting her laundry started. She then picked up a green plasticine watering can and filled it with water from the utility sink. Virulous then went about watering her houseplants, all native species of Dromund Kaas.
She had to throw out the houseplants she previously had, after returning from Makeb when her mission there with Darth Nox was completed. They had all withered away and died from a lack of water while she was gone. She had spent several days dusting down her place, too. It was a hassle-filled homecoming that she did not appreciate.
Virulous knew that this batch of plants was destined to die, as well. Eventually, her master was going to send her off somewhere into the wide open galaxy to do who knew what to further his agenda. She thought about getting a household protocol droid.
"If I had a droid, I wouldn't have to worry about my plants dying, or about keeping the place clean while I was away," she thought.
Despite how ubiquitous humanoid protocol droids were, they were extraordinarily expensive. Most humanoid droids were owned by government agencies, or large corporations. They were considered luxury items when privately owned.
The wealthy would sometimes take a protocol droid with them everywhere they went, during business deals, or while shopping for expensive gifts. As a symbol of wealth, humanoid protocol droids were better than jewelry – which might be cheaply manufactured with synthetic gems. A well maintained humanoid protocol droid, however, displayed the showoff's substantial wealth. Getting such a droid was costly, and properly maintaining a humanoid protocol droid was not cheap, either.
Incredibly, a well maintained used humanoid protocol droid was sometimes even more expensive, because it had learned a great deal and had gained a lot of experience in dealing with sentient beings (humans and aliens). Indeed, after many years of learned behavior, these droids had the ability to proactively carry out daily routines without needing its owner to tell it every little thing.
These droids even learned the ability to anticipate the need to carry out tasks that weren't part of its routine, even to the point of anticipating its owner's needs when confronted with a set of circumstances that required independent decision making. In that respect, 2V-R8 was worth sixty to seventy million credits.
This was not to say that one couldn't find a humanoid protocol droid for a cheap price. The buyer simply had to accept any bugs, defects, and other problems with the droid which was the cause for such a cheap price to start with. For example, a droid with a glitchy positronic brain, causing it to to reboot and self-wipe its memory. A droid like that could be obtained for as little as twenty thousand credits.
However, Virulous was not prepared to accept such a defect from a droid no matter how good the price was. What good would it do to have a droid that forgot to water the plants and keep the place dust free while she was gone for an extended period?
Despite the potential expense, Virulous convinced herself that she really needed one to maintain her apartment while she was away on long missions. However, the more she thought about it the more she realized she lacked the connections to get favors for getting one as inexpensively and as defect free as possible.
At that moment Andronikos' smirking facade flashed across her mind.
Virulous watered the last of her houseplants. In the utility room, she emptied the remaining water from the watering can into the sink and left the can on the floor next to the sink. Then she removed her sabrestaff from the gym bag and made her way to her spacious bedroom. One corner of her bedchamber was made up of two, very wide, floor-to-ceiling windows joined at ninety degrees, and at that corner was a very small writing table where she sat to look out at the panoramic view.
Virulous set her sabrestaff on the floor, leaning it upright against the small desk, where the corner of the desk made contact with the permaglass window on her left. Then, taking her smooth, chromium plated lightsaber, clipped horizontally at the small of her back on her conceal carry utility belt, she set it on the desk top. She also took her holo-transceiver from the holder on the right side of her conceal carry utility belt and set that on the small desk in front of where she sat. Virulous stared at the device, hesitating to make the call.
After wavering for a time, she finally dialed the pirate's holo-frequency. A still image of a happily smiling Andronikos Revel came up with a prerecorded message. Virulous was taken aback by the image the pirate had chosen for his avatar, laughing merrily at what she saw.
"That happy smiling man is NOT Andronikos!" she thought, greatly amused.
"I can't take your call right now," the prerecorded message said, "I'm in the middle of something. Leave a message and I'll get back to you."
Virulous sighed heavily in disappointment and disconnected the call. She looked out the window from her sixty seventh story apartment, absently taking in the view of the city. The buildings across the very wide boulevard were as far as her vista of the city went.
Even if she could afford an apartment on the one hundred and twentieth floor of her building, her view of The Citadel, southeast of her neighborhood, would still have been blocked by the buildings, across the wide boulevard, which were fifty to seventy stories taller than her building.
Virulous leaned towards her left a little and looked down through her window at the speeder traffic below. The speeders traveled to her right at the thirtieth story and to her left at the twentieth story. Traffic was lively. Much of it, at this hour, was made up of revelers on their way to private parties, or to dance clubs scattered throughout the city.
Her holo-transceiver emitted a pleasant chime. She looked down at it to see who was calling. It was Andronikos' caller ID, but it was audio only.
"Are you still on Dromund Kaas?" she asked the semi-retired pirate.
"Yeah. We got work? Is the boss calling for us? He usually calls me direct when he wants something."
Virulous was slightly annoyed that she was getting only his audio, but she put that to the side and got to the point of what she wanted to say.
"I want to meet with you tomorrow to talk to you about something I need," Virulous told him, then asked, "Is a meeting possible?"
"Who's that woman, Andronie?" a sultry woman's voice asked.
"I told you to keep your lips shut while I made this call. Now, can it," was Andronikos' sharp rebuke.
"Is it business? Is it for you exclusively, or is it for the boss?" the semi-retired pirate asked the Sith lord.
She didn't know why she should feel irritated at hearing the woman's voice, but she was. Again, Virulous put that to the side and got to the point.
"It's not business, and it's for my own personal reasons," she said, adding quickly lest he got the wrong idea, "and it isn't a social call, either."
"Let's meet for lunch, then," Andronikos proffered, "I'll pick you up at your place. Or did you want to meet somewhere instead?"
"We'll meet somewhere," Virulous said quickly, asking herself in alarm, "How does he know where I live?! Does he know where I live?"
"Where do you wanna meet?" he asked.
She realized she only knew places military officers frequented.
"You pick a place," she said.
"Graggo's Eats. They make the best pulled porg sandwiches," he said, adding, "Be there midday."
"Graggo's Eats," Virulous repeated, "at noonday."
"See ya tomorrow, then," Andronikos cut the connection.
Virulous looked at the chronometer on her desk and decided she wasn't sleepy despite the hour. She got up from her desk and began to strip out of her clothes until she was completely naked. She then put on a set of sports briefs and bra. Exiting her bedroom, she used The Force to clear the furnishings and the rug from the center of her living room and set them to the side.
Then, reaching for her durasteel rod, the length of an activated sabrestaff, the heavy rod floated its way to her hand. Upon grasping the training aid, she began her workout routine, practicing various sabrestaff combat stances, swings, spins, thrusts, and other martial arts techniques. Virulous did this until she had worked up a good sweat and was winded from the physical exertions.
Using The Force, she returned her durasteel rod to its place and returned her rug and furnishings to their places in the living room.
She undressed, and then hit the fresher for an efficient but thorough shower. After drying off, Virulous got into her bed clothes, climbed into her bed and, shortly thereafter, fell to sleep.
Before drifting off to sleep, she had an idle thought.
"What kind of female company does that pirate keep?"
Her idle thought was followed by a not so idle one.
"How can I make the dark lord's death look like an accident?" she asked herself, but just before drifting off, she told herself, "No one will ever believe it was an accident."
11