Chapter Thirty-One
While Crassus was wrenching the reins of power from happenstance and chaos, Dantius had called an assembly of everyone joining him to destroy the Sith. "Thank you for joining me on this fateful expedition. Before we begin, I'd like to inform you all that the reason this is even possible is because of a double agent we have amongst the Sith ranks who found himself wanting absolution from the atrocities he performed against the Republic. One who has experience with the Dark Side and is therefore far less susceptible to its whims than we all are with our formal Jedi training," Dantius said, letting a pause occur to have his words sink in. Inoy already knew who he was talking about but the Nautolan asked the name of this double agent be revealed for those who didn't know.
"Thank you Knight Llimetch, this double agent is my one-time enemy and older brother, Hyperion Algethii. In youth, he tried to destroy me and everyone associated but his redemption began when he and Inoy collaborated to survive in the depths of Nar Shaddaa. Though he is by no means capable of becoming a Jedi, and lacks the desire in any case, he agreed to act as our double agent amongst the Sith in return for total expungement of his Republic crimes. Now, he has informed me that the Sith have rung their requiem knell, fighting among themselves for power again since the death of Emperor Verrin. Unfortunately, time is still of the essence because an even older and more twisted soul has been again given life through reasons of necessity: for those who know my family background, my grandfather has returned from death," Dantius continued.
"How is that possible?" Ashlynn asked then after a moment, she added, "You told me he died when he failed to perform essence transfer on your cousin."
"I thought he was too, I'll no deny it. But Crassus laid a seedling of his power in myself and Hyperion, years before even arriving to the galaxy. Calling upon it, when he was defeated by my cousin, he temporarily bound himself into Hyperion only to be released upon the soul of a Pau'an Sith Lord named Darth Imperius and now he is more powerful than he's ever been. Perhaps more powerful than even Emperor Verrin had been during the fall of Dromund Kaas," Dantius told them.
"Then let's not waste a moment and go on the attack," declared Jace Malcom.
"I've already outlined the Dathomir strategy and will brief everyone here on it once again. Jace, you and I will take our space forces and lead the attack against Dathomir's atmospheric defenses and break a wide enough hole in their fortifications for Inoy to slip past in unmarked cargo ships. Once he lands at these coordinates, he will take the amphibian force we've assembled for him and cross the lake to flank the Sith temple on the other side. Meanwhile, Ashlynn will lead a distracting land force that will focus the bulk of Sith security upon them as if they were the true threat. When Inoy has attacked, Ashlynn will press her forces through the front door with confirmation of success sent when the temple is taken," Dantius said.
"And Balmorra?" Jace asked.
"Inoy and I will storm that planet on land while you and Ashlynn supervise the space forces. I will also need you to make sure that any reinforcements that come to their aid are shot down as well. When we have stormed Dathomir, I should have a more complete assessment of the Balmorran situation in case we need to change up the plan a tad. If there are no more questions, let's-," Dantius continued, interrupted by an emergency transmission from Hyperion.
Looking around to the other members of his attack force, he let them know who it was and asked if he should take it. When the three of them nodded, Dantius answered to see a hologram of Hyperion looking exasperated though relieved when he saw Dantius on his end. "Oh dear brother, what a relief it is to see you again!" Hyperion began.
"You look like it's a relief, for sure. What can I do for you, you broadcast on an emergency code?" Dantius asked. Hyperion nodded and let himself breathe for a little bit before speaking but sadly, the news he brought once he could wasn't good.
"I think... I think I've discovered what our grandfather means to do if he can. So if you got that attack force ready that you told me about, you'd better get it on the move and fast! Grandpa thinks he's found his host body capable of performing Drain Life on any scale Crassus needs it to and intends to replicate the ceremony that empowered Lord Vitiate at Nathema and Ziost. This way, he doesn't have to worry about death ever again," Hyperion told his brother. Jace, Inoy, and Ashlynn were galvanized at the news while Dantius took it in stride as best he could with recitation of the Jedi Code's first line to help him as best as possible.
"Do you have an idea of the world he intends to consume for the ceremony or even a reason to think this could be so?" Dantius inquired. Hyperion looked like there was no time for questions but decided his best recourse was to answer Dantius' inquiry anyway. If for no other reason than to give hope to the others in the room with him, should he have sensed Ashlynn, Inoy, and Jace.
"He absorbed the life essence and Force power of a Dark Council member named Darth Nox and used the combined strength of her, the Council member Darth Imperius whose body he took over, and the potential he brought to the table as a disembodied soul. If my suspicions are correct, he means to do it somewhere that is heavily populated and he has artifacts capable of enhancing his willpower so that he can say for certain that he is up to the task. But the fact he can die now means we must act and act quickly in order to stop him from completing the ceremony while there's still time," Hyperion explained.
"The first expeditionary force to attack Dathomir will be setting out within the day. We have a whole other fleet following on its tail to fly into Balmorra and conquer it while there's still time. If you can find out where Crassus intends to perform the ritual, we'll combine both expeditions to stop him there. In case we can't, stay close to him and make sure that when he starts the trance to wait for the right moment and disrupt his concentration. Once deeply entranced in the ceremony, you only need him unfocused for one second to destroy him," Dantius said.
"I will do that. May the Force be with you," said Hyperion, then he cut the comm transmission.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Hyperion was fortunate he was able to contact Dantius when he did. Because Crassus' fortifications over Balmorra and Dathomir were not yet complete. The fact that Dantius would be striking the latter within the day was comforting news to the older Force-sensitive but he still needed to know what world Crassus intended to consume. He knew it was going to be heavily populated, it'd have to be for the ceremony of consumption to be worthwhile for him. Vitiate had had to feed on populated worlds twice in order to carry himself on for another few centuries, even if the Outlander had defeated him before he could benefit from those centuries.
And since Crassus was already a hundred and fifty years old, a successful performance of the ritual would allow him to surpass even Vitiate in age. Hell, even transferring his consciousness into another Utapaun body (when Imperius expired) would allow him to do that. But he seemed content to desire immortality of one body as Vitiate's ceremony would surely make him. Off the top of his head, he could only think of a handful of planets Crassus could use, most of which were too deep in Republic Space for the limited Sith resources available. There were Sith worlds that were rich in the energy of the Dark Side like the fairly recovered Malachor V, Dromund Kaas, Korriban, and Yavin 4 but those worlds were indispensable to the Sith cause.
There were worlds in Hutt Space, like Nal Hutta and Nar Shaddaa that could be used if Crassus wanted to break the power of the Hutt cartel. However, Crassus didn't strike Hyperion as having the wisdom to see the ethical dilemma he could create amongst the Jedi if he did that. If he moved on Nal Hutta, the ritual would allow him to break the power of the Hutt cartel in the galaxy but the Jedi would also be obligated to save lives when and where they could. Doubtless, the Dantius' network would most likely have to evacuate civilians from the site even as the Hutts were unsuspecting.
This left only one true choice, worlds that fell within Imperial Space that had been lost during the war against the Republic. That or else a world that had been Neutral during the war, even from Hutt Space. This narrowed his search for potential candidates until he realized there was only one that met all the criteria of Dark Side energy, heavy populace, and a system the Jedi would not expect. In the later stages of the war, the Sith world of Nogatan had been abandoned by the Sith in favor of Balmorra and Dathomir, with Dromund Kaas and Korriban falling thereafter. From what Hyperion had read, Nogatan was abandoned because of a virus that had swept through the Imperial world, forcing it on lockdown.
In light of the time that had passed since, there was no reason to believe the virus still lived with the hosts most likely dead and decomposed by now. However, that wasn't what would draw Crassus to that world as much as the cache of powerful Dark Side artifacts that had been left behind there. He could start by consuming them before then consuming the remaining life energies of the planet as well as its connection to the Force, specifically the Dark Side of the Force. More to the point, the population would have time enough to recover before the consumption could begin and that included the wildlife population which would've been first to recover. But now that he knew that Nogatan was the site of Crassus' choice for the consumption of a world, he needed a way that he could let Dantius know.
That was when he realized two things, one of which was that his comm had a frequency that was almost impossible to hack. Aside from how long the code lasted before it could no longer be traced, it was also the kind of coding that was used by high ranking officials of the Republic government. More, the Sith lacked the kind of engineering personnel that once made them the formidable fighting force that nearly lay waste to the Republic. So he typed in a single word that he sent to Dantius' frequency, seeing no one at the communications station at the moment. He commed the word Nogatan to the frequency associated with Dantius and one more note, "Crassus is hungry for a Dark Side world".
Then he decided to deactivate the comlink, this way the trace was even more difficult for either Republic or Imperial decryptors. And may the Force forgive me the lives that will undoubtedly be lost before the Sith are stopped Hyperion thought to himself silently. It was this thought, this remorse, that made him begin to wonder. Was it right to exterminate the Sith so thoroughly, to aid the Jedi in the purge of a sect of Force users that disagreed with them? Had it been right for the members of the Jedi Council of Arden Lyn and Xendor's day to banish them for their desire to study and understand Bogan for the benefit of the Order?
Was it right that those who followed were hunted down like mad dogs across the galaxy? Had it been right for the Dark Jedi who fought the Hundred Year Darkness to be exiled and left for dead on Korriban simply because they chose a different path from the rest? And what of Dantius' conspirators in that organization he had referred to as the Sentience? How was their existence not a walking hypocrisy of everything the Jedi said not to do when serving the Force? It was times like this when Hyperion wished he could still commune with his mother, even if just in her spirit form.
She would've known he was having this conflict and understood how best to solve it if she were alive now to help him. "If only I'd listened to my mother and let her reach me when she was alive. Damn you, grandfather!" Hyperion snarled under his breath. But knowing the silence he would get if he tried to reach out for his mother, he thought back to his other reason for doing this. Whatever he did from here on, he did so with the expectation that he was creating a safer galaxy for his adopted son, Menelaus.
Even as Hyperion was technically destroying his foster son's inheritance, now that his brothers were dead, the human recognized this as true. And when he had a moment of privacy, away from the eyes of the other Sith who joined him and his grandfather on the trip to Nogatan, he pulled out a datapad with a hologram of him with his son. It was back when Menelaus was still an infant and Hyperion was just beginning to soften up to having such a fragile charge in his care. Back then, Hyperion hadn't been appreciative of how much Menelaus would come to mean to him. Now, he'd give anything to hold Menelaus in his arms again, and hear about his day among the things they used to do when they lived in peace on the frozen world of Ando Prime.
Epilogue
When Dantius received the coded transmission from Hyperion, it clicked at once for him. Of course Crassus would use a world that reeked of the Dark Side like Nogatan did for his performance of the ritual discovered by Vitiate. And of course, he would choose a world like Nogatan which was situated in one of the old holdings of the Empire. Nogatan, as far as Crassus would be concerned, had been one of the strategic weak links in the chain of the Sith especially once the Sith Lords who came from there had usurped the Empire in Vitiate's absence. Even the return of several prominent faces like Jadus, Ravage, and Mortis hadn't been enough to stop them until Lady Acina had allied with Lord Malgus to bring them down.
Now that Nogatan was a world in a system that was now Neutral Space, there was no reason to believe that the Republic would immediately give help. Unfortunately for Crassus, Dantius was not only ready with a force that would bring down both worlds currently controlled by the Sith but would also follow Crassus to Nogatan. "Prepare for lightspeed, we're in this to the end and we're making sure the Sith are wiped away forever!" he told the troops.
"May the Force be with our efforts," said Jace. Inoy and Ashlynn hung off to the side, nodding their agreement as they readied themselves for the mission too. Then they watched as the frontmost ships of the fleet jumped into lightspeed as their cruiser braced to follow them into the blue netherworld. As soon as they did, Dantius turned to enter the briefing room with his Jedi colleagues while Jace began coordinating the formations of their fleet.
"This will be a day long remembered, it has seen the Sith deplete themselves in their facade of unity, it will soon see them pay the price for their lack of vision. The Force is on our side, Dantius," Inoy said. Dantius nodded but Ashlynn wasn't content to leave things at that statement.
"Dantius, despite our commitment to the Order, I love you with all my heart still. And as someone who loves you, can we trust Hyperion after what he had done to try and destroy us?" Ashlynn asked. Once, in their youth, Hyperion had led an attack on her homeworld of Lorrd in an effort to destroy her family and kill her to ruin Dantius. It had culminated in Hyperion barely escaping with his life as well as being fitted the mechanical arm he would wield into his exile on Ando Prime, after holding Dantius and Coventry captive long enough for Forseti to rescue them. So when Ashlynn asked the most critical question he could expect someone he had loved for years in disobedience to the Jedi's rule of attachment.
"I don't suppose we can ever trust him in full, Ashlynn. But he is a tired, older man looking for absolution from the rambunctiousness of his fiery youth. As Jedi, we owe it to ourselves to give him the chance to attain forgiveness if he puts forth the effort to obtain it for himself and from us. So far, his leads haven't failed us and we now stand to achieve the one thing no Jedi has ever bragged about before. Does this satisfy your question?" Dantius said.
Ashlynn didn't waste any time in replying by saying that it did. "Then it is settled, the Sith threat ends now and forever with what we do today," Dantius told her and Inoy both.
