Star Wars Infinities: The Master
Chapter 5
By: Christopher W. Blaine
e-mail: darth_yoshi@yahoo.com
DISCLAIMER: All of the characters and situations contained in this story are ©2003 by LucasFilm Ltd. They are used here without permission for fan-related entertainment purposes only. This original story is ©2003 by Christopher W. Blaine.
Luke Skywalker, the Dark Apprentice, stepped into the turbolift within the lobby of the castle of Lord Ravage, master of the New Order. He was flanked by two of the Crimson Guard, as he always was whenever he chose to visit Imperial Center.
As the turbolift lifted, a little too slowly for the Sith Lord, Luke glanced down at the datapad he was carrying and scanned through the security briefing prepared by several of his subordinates. Normally he would have preferred a verbal review of the matters of the day, but time was of the essence today. Daala's announcement of the death of Tarkin and her ascension to the head of the Confederacy was of great import to his master. Lord Ravage hated surprises, was almost paranoid about them. Luke found that strange considering the raw power that the clone of Palpatine had at his command, but it didn't really matter to him.
Five years before, Luke was betrayed when his mother decided to side with his twin sister and turn her back on the way of the Sith. Lord Ravage took Luke in and showed him how to channel the rage and humiliation he felt in order to become a true Dark Lord of the Sith.
If his master wanted to be paranoid, then so be it. It did nothing to sway Luke's loyalty to him.
The turbolift stopped at the top floor and the doors hissed open, giving Luke access to the most secure place in the galaxy. Assassin droids, Crimson Guardsman, bounty hunters and the Force knew what else was here; ready to give life, limb and circuitry to protect the undisputed master of the Empire. A fresh-faced young ensign in a red uniform met Luke, designating her as a member of Luke's personal staff. "My lord," Fresca Isaard said, bowing her head.
Luke regarded her for a moment, a stunning and beautiful creature, barely out of her teen years. Her mother had been Darth Deceptra's personal assistant but had been executed after Lord Ravage came to power. Fresca worked hard to please her master; almost as hard as Luke did. "You have something to report?" Luke asked, his tone having just a hint of a sinister edge.
She gazed at him with her steel-blue eyes without fear. She had beauty and intellect as well as a high dose of ambition. Were he of the type to marry, she would have been a contender for his affections. Luke had no need to take a wife, however. He refused to make the same mistake his father had. "There has been another murder," she announced.
Luke rubbed his blonde goatee and sighed. Ever since he had taken the position of head of security he had dealt with the Serial Killer of Coruscant as many underground holonet sites proclaimed him. Someone was killing loyal Imperial citizens without regard to their position or relative worth to the New Order. "Same method of murder?" Luke asked as they started to move down the passageway. Two more guards, the personal protectors of Ensign Isaard, fell in with them. Unlike the crimson-garbed bodyguards that accompanied Luke, Fresca was protected by two black armored stormtroopers.
"The body was found dumped in one of the royal gardens," she stated, looking straight ahead. "No apparent cause of death. They simply died."
"I assume the autopsy turned up nothing unusual?" Luke asked.
She shook her head and he caught the scent of her perfume. He casually reached out to her with the Force, probing her mind for her intentions. As he suspected, she was attracted to him but saw him more as a rung on the ladder to real power. He admired her raw emotional honesty. "Some bruising on the wrists and neck, but nothing to indicate that they were caused at the time of the murder."
"Who is looking into it?"
She smiled. "I have assumed the lead on the case, my lord," she said. They stopped in front of the doors to the throne room. Two IG-89 series droids stood at the ready. The Crimson Guardsman with Luke shifted uncomfortably under their mechanical gazes. The members of the Crimson Guard were trained to be as skilled as Jedi in their fighting techniques, but they suffered from sentient reflexes. The IG series assassin droids were renown in the galaxy for their ruthless efficiency and accuracy.
"Excellent," Luke said. He handed over his data pad to her. "I will be expecting a full briefing by the time I am ready to leave for my flagship."
She cocked her head to the side. "I could provide a private briefing…"
Luke chuckled. "Perhaps. You may stop by my private quarters." He turned to the door. "Be prepared for an extended briefing," he added as the doors slid open.
He entered and looked to either side to see two pairs of Crimson Guard as well as a motley assortment of droids from every major military force that had existed since the Clone Wars. The former ruler of the New Order, Emperor Palpatine, had somehow let his security grow lax in his later years. It proved to be costly.
Luke smiled at the irony; he was to have been part of the security net around Palpatine.
Lord Ravage stepped down from the raised dais where his throne sat and walked briskly over to where Luke stood. Luke immediately went down on one knee in a sign of submission. "My master, I have come as you bid," Luke said to the cold floor.
Ravage's well-shined boots stopped just on the periphery of Luke's vision. "Rise my servant," Ravage told him. Luke did as he was commanded and slowly stood straight. Ravage was clad in the green leather uniform he had taken to wearing. His hair was curly and light in color, much lighter than Luke's sandy-brown top. There seemed to be a new animation to his master's eyes and Luke was glad for it.
Over the past few years, Luke had noted that Lord Ravage's physical appearance would alternate between deathly pale to robust. Luckily, this was one of the days that the emperor of the New Order was full of color and vigor. "You have heard the news of Tarkin?" Ravage asked.
Luke nodded. "Not completely unexpected. He was advanced in his years. I was surprised to see how easily Daala slipped into power, however," Luke admitted. It hadn't been just him either. Several senior intelligence officers had been caught completely off-guard. The hope had been an internal power struggle that would cripple the government of the Confederacy.
It had not happened and now everything was up in the air. "No doubt Daala will seek to solidify her position in the Corellian System. It's well-known that she did not agree with her husband's policy of light-handed tactics with the Corellians." That was, of course, an understatement. Daala had often preached mass executions of the Corellians to get them to tow the line but Tarkin had always been of the mind that select executions were the way to control.
"She is preparing to move the Death Star to the Mon Calamari System," Ravage said off-handedly. Luke slowly turned to his master, wondering how it was he knew that. Luke's own spies had yet to report in to him. Ravage laughed. "Your spies are dead, killed by a most unique Confederate officer."
They continued walking over to an open area that Luke knew was being watched by snipers. He had no choice but to follow but he still reached out with the Force to see of any of them wished him any harm. He was only slightly relieved to discover he was safe from that death trap at least.
If his master detected his student's fears, he did not voice it. "The Death Star is making her way to destiny, just as I foretold. Warlord Thrawn was correct when he surmised that whomever succeeded Tarkin would be searching for a new base of operations."
"Only we did not expect Tarkin to die so soon," Luke informed him. That much was true, but Luke was starting to feel embarrassed that he had not known just how sick Tarkin had been. "Is Thrawn in position? I was not aware he had returned from his mission."
"Our Warlord was no out as far as you might have thought, but he was far enough away that there was a moment of concern." Ravage stopped and brushed some lint from his cape. "But that is not why you are here, my apprentice."
Luke sensed a change in his master's mood. The movement of the Death Star was indeed important, but Luke's field of expertise was not in military matters. While he did control a private fleet, his duties were more aligned to securing the Sith way of life and collecting intelligence. "Have you sensed the change in the Force?" Ravage asked.
Luke nodded. "I cannot describe it, but it is almost as if I am…weaker."
Ravage looked away. "It was once said, in the times when the Dark Lords were plenty, as were the Jedi, that the number of Sith grew so high that it weakened all of their hold on the Force."
Luke knew the history of the Sith. "And so the Dark Lords were reduced to one, bringing a balance to the Force. It gave the remaining Dark Lord the power he needed to ensure the survival of our kind. Such is why there is one master and one apprentice."
"You quote Sith history well, Luke Skywalker, but what does that history teach you?"
He considered it for a moment, not wanting to give a wrong answer. When the realization struck him, his eyes went wide. "Another Dark Lord?" he asked, surprised he had not figured it out. It was so ludicrous to believe, though. There were no more Sith Lords in the galaxy. The only other candidate had been his mother and she had renounced the Dark Side. Luke was sure he would have felt her return to the fold.
"I have tried to contact the spirits of our predecessors but I am unable, for whatever reason," Ravage announced. "Mind you, my apprentice, we are not talking about some dark Jedi, but of true Sith lords." They began to walk again, over to a giant holographic map. "My own spies tell me nothing more than the recurrent rumors of a one-armed Jedi hunting children on the Outer Rim."
Ravage stopped at the map and pointed to a small dot on it. "However, I have information that is not rumor." He smiled before continuing. "This is the world of Bespin in the annexed territories of the Corporate Sector Authority."
Luke said nothing and waited for his master to continue. "Your sister is there right now."
Anger welled up from Luke and permeated the Force around them. It was like a malevolent spirit rising from the grave so great was its intensity. Luke's hatred of his twin sister was well known throughout the elite circles of both the New Order and the Tarkin Confederacy. A substantial bounty had been placed on her head with funds drawn from the personal fortune of Skywalker himself.
"She also has Kyp Durron and Corran Horn accompanying her," Ravage told him. The emperor's eyes flashed. "The information came to me just minutes ago from a free trader named Booster Terrik."
"How reliable is it?" Luke asked, his tone low. For five years he had waited for the opportunity to strike at his sister, to punish her for simply being related to him. She represented the betrayal of the Skywalker name. She was a Jedi.
"Very," Ravage told him and with a wave of his hand he used the Force to press the appropriate glyphs to bring up a window of secondary information. "Terrik thinks that they have gone to Cloud City, the capital of Bespin and a large gas mining facility. It is run by one Lando Calrissian, a man with some minor warrants for smuggling here. It is believed that he is in fact a Republic sympathizer. However, he runs a profitable business and so the CSA overlooks his shady past."
"If the CSA shows him favor, then it will be hard to get in with a battle force," Luke pointed out. His own fleet could immediately jump for Bespin, but it would take several days to get there. Then there was the possibility of engaging an Authority flotilla.
The Corporate Sector had an impressive fleet and Luke, not an experienced military officer and not vain enough to think he was, did not want to find himself in a small shooting war no matter the prize. "I have made arrangements for a single shuttle to be allowed entry, though it cost me several million credits," Ravage said. He turned to his apprentice and his look became very dark. "We both need Leia for different reasons. If there are other dark lords out there, then we will need all of the dark Jedi we can muster."
"She will not turn," Luke said flatly.
"She will if you can persuade her, open her to the glory of the Dark Side," Ravage whispered. He reached out and put a hand on Luke's shoulder. "Your thoughts are open to me, my apprentice. I see the dark things you want to do to her and while I will not stop you, I demand that you do not kill her. Any Jedi you can bring back can be executed later if our efforts fail."
Luke's jaw clenched. "As you will it, my master."
"Obedience, my apprentice, is the first step to power. One cannot wield what they do not respect." Ravage shut the screen down. "All is coming together as I had dreamed. The Death Star will be destroyed over Mon Calamari and very soon I will have two Skywalkers kneeling before me."
Fresca looked in the small mirror at her black eye and Luke, sitting up in the bed watched her face. She touched the bruise, caused by a Force-induced mental strike, and then smiled. Luke could sense she enjoyed the pain, enjoyed the power it gave her. She had taken Luke's hate and lust and lived. It made her stronger.
She would go far he assumed and then she would have to be killed. Until then, she would allow herself to be one of his playthings. "Why is our intel from the Tarkin Confederacy so lax?" he asked as he balanced a hairbrush in the air with the Force.
She didn't turn around but instead wiggled a loosened tooth. "All of our agents were rounded up and executed. Daala has a new star in her ranks, an admiral named Rose."
"Stupid name," Luke remarked. "What do we know about him?"
"Nothing. The rumors are he was some sort of planetary militia commander who gained Tarkin's favor. We doubt it." Luke asked why and she turned to walk over to the bed. She limped slightly from the bruised ankle. "He's far too young to have made any sort of rank so quickly, though if he had been privy to Tarkin's sickness, he could have used it. Certainly he was smart enough. He caught all of our agents and spies within one day, which convinced Daala, apparently, in charge of Corellia while she left."
"Corellia is open?" Luke asked. He couldn't believe that. Daala may not have been able to use it as a base, but by keeping it, she denied the shipyards of the system from the New Republic.
"No, Rose has his fleet there which was confirmed by a long probe TIE flight three hours ago. The Death Star is gone, though." She reached down to her torn uniform and withdrew a small notepad. Fresca was one of the few persons that Luke had ever seen that actually kept hand-written notes on important facts. "Thrawn's fleet will not reach Mon Calamari before Daala, unfortunately, but the Warlord had an alternate plan in such an event. We don't know what that plan is but we assume he has some sort of weapon to take out the Death Star's main gun."
Luke said nothing but considered the possibilities. Thrawn had originally been instructed by Emperor Palpatine to look over the designs of the Death Star to see of there were any fatal flaws. Thrawn had discovered unshielded reactor vents that could be attacked by small fighters and had the problem corrected. Palpatine had announced that the Death Star would then be unstoppable.
It was ironic that what had stopped the massive battle station was the ravings of an old man's mind. Tarkin had simply been too afraid that somewhere out in space was a weapon that Palpatine had developed without his knowledge. In the first year of the civil war, Tarkin's regular military forces had dealt lethal blows to the special forces of the New Order. Daala herself had taken out the second Death Star in the opening shots of the conflict and six months later she successfully destroyed the smaller battle station Eye of Palpatine as a wedding present for Tarkin.
Of the five Super-Class star destroyers originally built for the New Order, only one remained, though a new one, the Ravage was currently being built by the Imperial yards at Yaga Minor, but it would not be finished for another two years. Not that those vessels were any good against something like a Death Star. "What could we possibly have that could do that?" Luke asked, not believing that such a thing was possible.
Fresca shrugged her shoulders and suddenly appeared much younger than her disposition allowed. "There is a rumor that Thrawn's personal intelligence cadre secured a weapon from the Maw Installation, something so powerful that it was moved outside the know galaxy for testing."
"Thrawn left to negotiate with the Vong…"
"And we know that your master ordered him to destroy their emissaries," Fresca reminded her lover. "I have seen the preliminary reports on their bio-weapons technology. It is very impressive. To discount the threat the Vong would pose to the New Order at some future date would be a mistake." She reached out and stroked Luke's exposed thigh with red fingernails. "Now is a most precarious time for the New Order. I ma not privy to the Force…"
"True enough," Luke agreed as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back.
"But I can feel something. We are on the verge of a major victory and it is because of not just the efforts of Thrawn, whom I acknowledge as a master tactician, but because of the direction Lord Ravage and yourself have directed us."
Luke considered her words and found that there was some sense to them. Thrawn had successfully maintained the relative strength of the AFNO during the civil war through strategic victories and acceptable defeats. Luke had known about the Maw Installation raid, but the report he had received from Thrawn indicated that there had been nothing of use found there. Had the blue-skinned military man lied to him? If so, did that mean he had a secret agenda like Tarkin had so many years before?
Luke couldn't believe it. If Thrawn had wanted control of the Empire, he could have done so with his loyal forces at the start of the civil war. Luke was already aware that the New Republic had courted Thrawn, trying to lead him away from the New Order, but they had failed. Thrawn was not interested in power, he was interested in pursuing order and that made him much more dangerous to his enemies. There was nothing more potent as a weapon than an idealist.
"See what you can find out about any other secret weapons we might have missed," Luke ordered and then he allowed himself to fall under the spell of Fresca's touch.
Lord Ravage sat down as his personal physician attended him. He said nothing as the man scanned, prodded and poked him for several minutes, relaying information to a medical droid that was standing nearby. After several minutes, the physician dismissed the droid to analyze the data. "Your condition is improved but the overall prognosis is not good."
"I am still dying?" Ravage asked. There was no concern in his voice.
"Your status is unique…I have not been able to find an exact description, much less a treatment for your…"
"Disease?" Ravage finished. "I am a clone, no doubt susceptible to many, many ailments that you naturals are not."
The physician shook his head. "As I explained previously, your basic health is perfect. Genetically, you are the most perfect example of human evolution I have ever encountered. My theory is midi-chlorian mutation."
"It is my connection to the Force, then, to the Dark Side?"
The doctor blew out. "The records of Jedi health care are non-existent and since you murdered all of the Dark Side Adepts…"
Ravage chuckled. In all of the Empire, only this nondescript physician could speak to him so. This was his confidant. "So, I will have to continue the treatments while you seek out a cure."
Blanching, the physician shook his head. "Deviltry if you ask me! I d not know about the Force, but Sith healing techniques are not medicine! I need to consult an expert in Jedi healing."
"What if I provided you with a Force-talented individual to experiment upon?" Ravage put to him. "Perhaps then you would find me a cure?" The doctor did not answer and Ravage laughed for several minutes as a new plan formed in his mind.