Chapter Fourteen
"Was that fire from the dudes pursuing us, Dad?" Menelaus asked when they made the leap into hyperspace. Hyperion nodded, letting go of the controls for a moment and relaxing in his chair before he did so. He let the currents of blue fire swallow his view of pretty much everything except when Menelaus was talking.
"They pursue me because I had quite the rap sheet when I was young. Do you remember the Sith I taught you about?" Hyperion asked. Menelaus nodded and then made mention of what he had been taught by Hyperion about them.
"You told me about how they had a lot of empires throughout history. Naga Sadow, Exar Kun, and Darth Revan were a few of the Sith lords who commanded vast legions. You told me that the Sith rewarded strength and inwardly thinking, promoting self-preservation and elevation so that the strong rule and the weak serve. But you also mentioned that because of this, empires of Sith tended to implode once they got big enough and all the Jedi had to do was survive until then and pick up the pieces after the Sith were done with one another," Menelaus said.
"And what did I tell you would be a good way to tell the difference between them if you don't remember anything else?" he asked.
"Their robes and the color of their lightsabers. Jedi sport a white tunic and mostly brown cloaks while the Sith tend to favor grey armor and black cloaks. While the Jedi tend to have green, blue, and sometimes yellow blades, the Sith almost exclusively wield red," Menelaus answered.
"And their codes?" Hyperion continued.
"You told me about how the Jedi would try compassion and lifting up the weak in the hopes that the weakest links in the chain of life could become pretty strong. On the other hand, the Sith believed in a natural order where only the strongest survived and the weakest were meant to serve throughout the rest of their lives. But you also noted how you disagreed with the Jedi having a hive-minded approach to their rules and the Sith being too self-indulgent to stand united," Menelaus explained.
"I tell you these things..." Hyperion said, heaving a heavy sigh before continue. "Because I once was trained by a Sith Lord. Not one who joined the Empire, having foreseen its doom long before the Empire fell. He was known to the Empire as Lord Crassus who found me when I wasn't much younger than you. As his eldest grandson, I was introduced to the tenets of the Dark Side before I was even ten years of age and given missions until I was nineteen.
"From there, I pursued revenge against my brother Dantius when he incarcerated me for crimes I committed against him and those closest to him. I spent nearly another ten years there before I escaped and pursued him before finding my way to Ando Prime. After I failed to kill him and another Jedi in the cave of the specter, I lost my way until I found you. When I decided to adopt you, I vowed to live as a man but the truth is that I was destined to be so much more and now so are you." Menelaus took in everything that Hyperion said, realizing that he had been raised by a killer for nearly all his life.
"Why do you say nothing, Menelaus?" Hyperion asked. The boy seemed to be swimming in thought before he could even muster enough courage to speak. Muster enough courage to find out the truth of how he came to be in the care of a former Sith Warrior.
"Did you... did you kill my mother?" he asked, understandably embittered by his foster father's confession.
"No, she was already dying when I found her. But you were very much alive and at her behest, I was eventually persuaded to take you in. I... I almost left you to die with her but I knew that if I was to find a better way, perhaps to absolve myself of my sins, I couldn't do that. Not when I'd already produced one daughter by forcing myself on a woman my brother loved and then failed to be there for her even as her aunt pursued me across the stars for vengeance. Obviously, she never found us or else you and I wouldn't be having this conversation right now," Hyperion confessed.
"I... I think I'll be needing some time to take this in, Dad. I mean... I knew you were different, you weren't exactly Jedi or Talid material but you always did try to teach me restraint. Whenever I asked you why you were trying to teach me self-defense killing, you would tell me about how I'd become a demon for killing in pleasure. Now, I think I understand why: because you were a killer and you know how it feels to kill for pleasure. Can I... can I take a walk around?" Menelaus asked.
Hyperion nodded, not begrudging his foster son if he never wanted to speak to him again. Frankly, he wouldn't begrudge him if he wanted to remain silent throughout the rest of the journey to Dathomir to disperse his mother's ashes. He watched the controls, watched the distance between the ship and the first stop on their journey continue to diminish ever so slowly. "Dad!?" Menelaus shouted from across the way.
"What is it, boy?" Hyperion asked.
"There's a big grey box with black stripes across the sides and the lid. I could've sworn it wasn't here before and there's a comlink on top of it! Should I open it?" Menelaus asked. Hyperion knew of only one box that matched the description and rose from his chair so fast that he almost hit his head on the starboard above.
"Don't touch that, boy! Stay away from it!" Hyperion shouted. He finally found his son in the supply room and sure enough, he saw the box which had been stored in his safe for eleven years. Pushing Menelaus away, he carefully took the comlink and decided to ask his son for some privacy. He added that this box represented something he'd swore he'd leave in the past when he bought the safe.
Menelaus was respectful of this wish, perhaps realizing how much strength it had taken Hyperion to confess that he'd been trained as a Sith warrior. "What the kriff is this box doing here? Tyro, he must be involved," Hyperion growled, thinking aloud when the boy was gone.
That was a dangerous move, revealing that you are Sith. Are you sure the boy was ready for it? interjected a strange female voice. It took Hyperion a moment but when he flipped the ring over to see the green jewel on it, he noticed it was shimmering to indicate the specter of the mountains speaking to him. When he figured this out, he relaxed a little and then started by replying to her statement.
Our children will never be fully ready for such revelations. The best we can do is hope they're ready enough when we tell them and I was Sith Hyperion replied, correcting her. She laughed briefly, a sinister sound in his head as she whispered back the answer to his comment about having been Sith.
Once you start down the dark path, it will forever dominate your destiny. You've been trained as Sith and that is what you'll always be. The best you can do is control yourself in the face of the flaws presented in the teachings of the Sith or let them control you. If your friend Tyro is responsible for bringing this box aboard the ship, it would appear he knew as much too the specter told him. Hyperion looked over the box and looked at the comlink in his hand, contemplating what to do.
Figuring there was nothing else that could be done, he activated it to hear what could be said. "Hey big guy, we had a good run huh?" Tyro began. So the snake reveals himself Hyperion thought silently.
"Yeah, yeah, I know I wasn't legally supposed to have access to this stuff but I was able to buy off the consciences of the guys down at the saferooms. Anyway, I had a peek inside this baby and I gotta tell ya... the galaxy's changed, buddy. You'd be making a big mistake to take my ship without having this baby on reserve plus something tells me you ain't gonna be coming back for a little while anyway. So I had the boys haul the contents of your safe onto the ship while you and your boy were stocking up some supplies. And hey, if you ever come back, my throat's free for you to slice open if I was wrong, later man!" Tyro said.
The transmission ended thereafter, Hyperion enraged enough to smash the device with his mechanical hand when it was over. See? Even the little man knew that wherever you went, your past would always follow you. The best you can do is embrace who you were without becoming it once more for your son's sake as well as your own. I know it's not simple but as I once was a mother, nothing is simple when it is your child the specter told him.
"The contents of this box are staying but under no circumstances am I opening it again. I'll die before I put on that armor and use that... weapon, ever again!" Hyperion vowed aloud.
And let your child die before you embrace what you were? Let the implications of what you have just said hang for a bit the specter warned him. But Hyperion didn't let it hang nor did he have the chance if he had wanted to: Menelaus came to announce the first stop on their journey to Dathomir would be coming up in a standard hour. Mon Gazza was the first stop before entering the Corellian Run, a major trade route that cut a swath across the entire galaxy. But they would need to reach the intersection leading to the Hydian Way, according to a galaxy map. And their journey was being noted by more vengeful eyes than the Jedi or the Imperial Sith ever had.
Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen years... It'd been nearly fifteen years since Clyde Rev lost an important floating fortress of his, hundreds of millions invested in its construction. And that bald Sith Hyperion had been responsible for it and releasing his Trandoshan archnemesis from his kriffing cell. Still, Clyde Rev had been working on a discovery that had not been lost to him at the time, one that revolutionized the way he was going to make credits. Before he'd captured Hyperion and lost a fortune on him, he'd been working up a legitimate enterprise that he could operate when the war was over as a facade. The Clyde Rev the public now knew was the CEO of a medical technology firm that was on the cutting edge of medical research for all species.
Any and all discoveries were approved with patents to go with the inventors as well as made to benefit everyone they benefited for little to no cost at all. Clyde had made the billions he needed to recover and pursue his true passion: skinning and torturing things to provide data for those revolutionary discoveries behind closed doors. Corrupt customs officials and private investigators could be made to turn an eye to what they saw for the right price. Clyde was also careful to hide as much evidence as possible even if the occasional rumor was allowed to spread. After all, his old life as a smuggler meant that he didn't want his former criminal connections thinking his wealth had made him go soft.
Such had been the case when his Trandoshan foe Drak was paid a five million credit bounty to remove Clyde from the picture. Apart from the fact that he'd be fulfilling his long held desire for revenge in the process, Drak had zealously jumped at the chance to make a fortune. But Clyde had come ready, realizing that Drak wouldn't relent and killing him would be a waste of a perfectly good Force-sensitive Trandoshan. Tired of the old game of hunter and hunted, with the two of them alternating between roles, Clyde lured him into a setting where the Trandoshan would believe him vulnerable. Then he had electric nets ensnare the beast and take him back to the second floating fortress and selectively lobotomized him for one simple purpose.
He wanted to keep Drak's skills with the Force and with a blade without his abilities of free enterprise. Keeping him sedated long enough to discover the parts of the Trandoshan brain which would accomplish this, Clyde then produced an experimental parasite designed to feed on specific parts of the brains of specific species then dislodge itself. In return for the meal, it provided a secretion that emitted a strong sedative aroma and made for an even stronger anesthetic that doctors across the galaxy were now using for a variety of species. For legal and financial reasons, Clyde had diluted the effects of the anesthetic so that patients wouldn't experience the semi-permanent subordination that Drak did now.
But aside from that, the breakthrough had been revolutionary and made the company billions more. And he got a wanted criminal out of it before the Imperial Sith were destroyed, which would have ensured that the lizard man was a goner if he hadn't acted. For good measure, he also gave him a worm that erased elements of his memory so that his grudge against Clyde was wiped away in aphasia along with his origins on Trandosha and his honor code. In return, Clyde had allowed him to keep the instinct to hunt and feed on his prey along with the skills that allowed him to do this successfully when Clyde bade him to perform a mission. But there was one type of parasite that he prized above else, one that allowed him to make decent credits with the Hutt cartel especially once Drak started rounding up stray Wookiees.
Normally, he didn't like to even think about these creations since they were usually a tad sadistic in their work even for him. But there were some days, like when he thought about the Sith warrior Hyperion who had escaped him. He still had the file on Hyperion's abilities in the Force, still had knowledge that Hyperion had been missing for eleven years. That said, something in his twisted heart told him that Hyperion wasn't dead... men like that, men like him, didn't simply die. So when one of his spies reported seeing a bearded man that otherwise matched Hyperion's description with a Zabrak child of eleven or twelve years in tow, he was elated.
He didn't consider himself a very vengeful man but he did like the idea of tying up all loose ends from his past. And Hyperion was nothing if he wasn't a dangerous loose end that needed to be tied up before anyone got word of his involvement with Clyde. The only unsettling detail about the encounter was that Hyperion didn't even have his lightsaber, in fact it seemed he'd traded that in for a blaster pistol and a collapsible shield. Had Hyperion somehow turned self-righteous and chosen a path where he foreswore the Dark Side? If so, it meant that Clyde would need to perform just a little more work in order to make him snap once more.
"They asked about heading to Dathomir and what planet would be their next stop in order to complete the journey. Of course, my boy at information told them to head for Denon in order then fill their tank as full as possible before continuing on their way to Dathomir," said his informant. Clyde Rev couldn't understand what Hyperion could want in visiting Dathomir after all these years... Was it possible he was returning there after being assigned to protect the boy? If so, it made sense since the Sith were rumored to have retreated to Dathomir, Korriban, and Ziost among other worlds after losing Dromund Kaas, Honoghr, and Nogatan to name a few major ones.
It would also explain the bag of ashes that the boy bore in tow with him and it could explain why Hyperion had the blasters. As a cover for his true nature as a Sith warrior that could wield a lightsaber with deadly accuracy if he needed to. "You done good boy, send the images to our contacts and tell them to catch the boy. Leave Hyperion alive if you can with a message to come find him over Bandomeer if he values his life. Oh and make sure you're a decent distance from his ship before you attack if you can, I want him to have a sporting chance in rescuing the kid if he cares... if he doesn't then we know the Sith warrior in him is back," Clyde said.
The informant nodded and stated that he was transmitting the images and Clyde's instructions to their Denon contacts as they spoke. Clyde then transmitted the worth he assigned the info to the kid's account and cut transmission so that he could begin planning his revenge. Hyperion had cost him dearly and if he cared about this boy he had in his tow, Clyde was going to make sure to return the favor before he tied up that loose end. And he had the perfect trap too, a way to remind Hyperion of what he'd done to Clyde even as he tried to rescue the kid.
And if he somehow emerged victorious from it all, he and the boy were free to continue the journey to Dathomir which wouldn't be far away. Clyde wanted to be the last obstacle they overcame if they emerged victorious in their journey, the last before the Sith if they were still alive and enemies of Hyperion. The cries of a Wookiee called his attention away from his thoughts but only enough that he might get up and see his favorite beasts at work. Though his favorite creations could thrive in either light or dark, he decided to leave the lights off for now then show the boy what they could do when he arrived.
The Wookiee had been an exceptional nuisance and had even tried to kill Clyde in order to get his kind free, nearly succeeding too. So Clyde also had the members of his little chain gang with special goggles so that only they could see what was happening to their leader. Their friend to the bitter end which Clyde had to give his respect to, even lowering his hat to his heart in a mark of sarcastic salutation to the fur brain. When the handlers finally managed to poke him enough times to get him over the edge of the plank he was to walk, Clyde drank in the cries of the thug.
Not long after, he heard the hiss of his babies finding their target and the gurgled cries of the Wookiee as they began their deed. Unfortunately for the chain gang and its leader, Clyde's babies finding their meal was the only thing that was quick about the ordeal. Otherwise, they took their sweet time throughout, keeping their hapless victim alive until they couldn't find anything more to eat out of his innards. Clyde knew it was over, even while thinking about how the boy could be their next meal if Hyperion decided to simply abandon him from the experience of repetition. When he heard the snap-snap of what made them his prized creation doing their job for him, he knew it was over.
"Collect the pelt and get the inside part cleaned up. I got a Chiss prince who wants that within the smallest amount of time possible and he's paid a pretty price for pelts. This one, I'll let him keep as a gift so that the friends of this poor fur-brained bastard know that I only care about the part where they make me more money. And the part where they make me money is the part where I feed them to my babies down there," Clyde said. He knew his orders would be obeyed to the letter: apart from the fact his clients never knew how he got them, he also knew they wouldn't have cared as long as the quality kept being fantastic.
At least, the Hutts and other species of similar sadism wouldn't but something told Clyde they'd have to be hush-hush with the Chiss prince. Even so, he couldn't complain when he was essentially persuading the prince to keep his mouth shut in exchange for a free high-quality pelt to go with the ones he paid for. Meanwhile, Clyde was planning on the most gruesome way he was going to get back at Hyperion, a way he could enjoy tying up the loose end he represented while tying it. Something that surpassed even his babies in the pit as far as slow, painful deaths went and thus beyond any ability of the Sith warrior to enjoy even if he was masochistic. Once his spies confirmed their arrival on Denon, he'd go to Bandomeer and contemplate more extensively.
