Star Wars: Return of the Sith

13: Everything or Nothing

By Nanaki

Kuat Drive Yards, Orbital Shipyard #12

Dirk Skywalker blinked rapidly as sweat dripped into his eyes, doing his best not to make any noise. The fight had recently spilled over into this water pumping and heating station, where Seco and Negian had killed the lights and slashed open several valves in short order. Now Dirk stood in a river of tepid, ankle deep water, the heat and humidity in the chamber sufficient to make him wish he wasn't wearing any clothes at all, not that even that would have helped to cool him down all that much.

Seco and Negian had revealed yet another annoying new trick, as each of them was somehow emitting four identical Force presences that were scattered randomly around the chamber. Dirk had no idea which might be the real one, if any of them were, since Negian had earlier demonstrated his ability to "misplace" his Force presence away from his actual location. Both of Dirk's opponent's had deactivated their lightsabers, and Dirk had quickly done the same, knowing that his glowing green blade would only give away his position. However, the longer this dragged on, the more the battle would swing in the favor of the dark siders. "If all you wanted to do was play hide and seek, you should have just said so!" Dirk called out.

"What the hell is your problem?" Seco called back angrily. "I would think that by now it's clear that you can't beat us alone, and we unfortunately can't beat you either."

"Trust me, if I wanted you dead, you'd be dead." Dirk answered calmly. "But now that I've actually got you cornered, you're coming back to the Temple with me, like it or not."

"Oh, how sickeningly NOBLE you are, Skywalker." Dirk was quick to note that now Seco's voice seemed to be coming from a different location than it had at first. "The Skywalker family is going to 'save' another wayward dark sider, is that it?"

"That is the general idea." Dirk agreed. "But even if you're utterly beyond help, you can't be allowed to just wander around the galaxy at will. You're too dangerous to innocent people."

"Innocent people?" Seco sneered. "No one who helps to maintain the Republic's ridiculous status quo is innocent!" Now Seco's voice seemed to be coming from somewhere behind Dirk.

"So, now you're disguising your incredibly selfish behavior as righteous political outrage? That's a new tactic for you." Dirk observed calmly. "You know, a LOT of people have fought and died over the years for that status quo you're so critical of."

"And it was all a karking WASTE!" Seco's purple blade ignited about ten feet to Dirk's left, then slashed forward without hesitation. Dirk brought his green blade up to block just in time, even while watching for Negian out of the corner of his eye. However, the Zabrak was nowhere to be seen. "For millenia, the Jedi have propped up this absurd system, all while willfully ignoring the fact that democracy doesn't work!" Seco was apparently so filled with rage now that his lightsaber strikes were unusually clumsy. It was equally apparent that Seco had caught his second wind, so his strikes were also stronger than they had been at first.

"Wow, are you a Sith or a pundit?" Dirk asked calmly. "Systems that don't work don't last for 25,000 years." He responded.

"And the Republic sure as hell didn't!" Seco snarled. He was driving Dirk back now, but they both knew that was only because Dirk was letting it happen. "It collapsed over and over and over again, reforming each time only because, for some reason beyond my comprehension, the Jedi wanted it to."

"I suppose you think you have a better way." Dirk surmised, even as he spun down into a slash at Seco's ankles. Seco jumped above it, and a fresh cloud of steam rushed into the air as Dirk's lightsaber hit the water.

"No, I don't." Seco shrugged. "All I want is the power to ensure my own happiness and well-being. Anything beyond that is too large of a task for one person to manage alone. That's what Palpatine and Krayt never realized."

"They did both have huge armies at their disposal." Dirk remarked dryly as he continued backing up.

"And they still failed in the end! You're making my point for me, here." Seco smirked.

"Seco, I don't think you have the capability to be happy anymore." Dirk shook his head. "That's assuming that you ever did in the first place." He abandoned proper technique for a second to charge forward with a two handed horizontal slash that sent Seco staggering back.

"On the contrary..." Seco switched his lightsaber to his left hand, then stretched his right out, parallel to the floor, fingers spread apart. "THIS will make me very happy." With that, several forking bolts of Force lightning shot from his fingers. Dirk quickly raised his lightsaber up to block, but realized at the last instant that Seco wasn't aiming directly at him. Rather, Seco was aiming at the water around his feet.

Dirk hurtled into the air in a Force powered jump a fraction of a second too late, the Force lightning arcing up his legs even as he took off. Dirk had meant to somersault backwards, hopefully landing on top of one of the huge water tanks in the chamber, but now he was heading pretty much straight up. However, as he caught a glimpse of Seco out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the Force lightning was flowing through the water in all directions. Seco had to have shocked himself pretty badly in order to hit Dirk. As Dirk hit the apex of his jump, he managed to straighten himself out, ready to land on his feet.

At that exact moment, Negian's booted foot connected with Dirk's back, very hard. The strike was slightly off center, but still on target enough to send Dirk hurtling toward the floor at high speed. In the split second he had, Dirk did his best to curl into a ball and draw on the Force to keep his body intact. He didn't succeed completely in either task. Dirk slammed into the floor on his left side, sending up a spray of water that continued to arc with electricity. Then the Force lightning homed in on him with a vengeance, arcing into him from all sides.

The surge of elation Seco felt was somewhat tempered by the fact that Dirk had yet to make a sound, even as he writhed. Then, somehow, barely four seconds after he had hit the floor, Dirk started to rise, the Force lightning now homing in on his lightsaber blade, instead of his body. "For kark's sake!" Seco swore. "What does it take?"

"More than you've got, kid." Dirk grinned. He couldn't help but notice that the Force lightning flowing through the water around Seco's feet passed right through Seco, as though he wasn't there at all. Dirk was also not as invincible as he wanted the Sith to believe. He had at least two broken ribs, one of the bones in his left forearm was fractured, and he'd broken two of the fingers on his left hand as well. Fortunately, he also had the Force, and he was far stronger in the light side than these two were in the dark. As he charged forward once more, he felt no pain, though he was going to have to fight one handed from here on out.

As Seco finally cut off his flow of Force lightning and returned both hands to his lightsaber, he merely shrugged. "It doesn't matter how many times you get back up, we'll just keep beating you down. After all, it's always been easier to destroy than to create or protect."

"That much is true." Dirk admitted as he twirled into a series of horizontal slashes. "Which is why TRUE power is not the ability to cut down your enemies, but to protect the people you care about."

"You're not protecting anyone right now." Seco observed. "Which means we have the advantage." Seco spun to Dirk's left side and started hacking from there, putting Dirk in an awkward defensive position.

"Not so." Dirk grunted. "Even now, I'm protecting Lucia. And Tenn. And the Republic!" He let loose with a Force push that slammed Seco back into one of the smaller water tanks in the chamber. Seco groaned and took a wobbly step forward, but Dirk would be on him before he could-

"Tenn was never yours to protect!" Negian's snarl came from just behind him, and Dirk turned to face this new threat, which was exactly what Negian had wanted him to do. As Dirk was halfway through his pivot, Negian landed another brutal kick directly to the broken ribs on Dirk's left side. Dirk went flying into the nearest wall, emitting a low groan as he went. Even as Negian closed on him, Dirk was trying to get back to his feet, but he wasn't succeeding this time. Negian used the Force to lift Dirk high into the air, where Seco hit him with a massive Force push that sent him sailing into the far corner of the chamber, well beyond the visual range offered by the glow of Seco's lightsaber.

Seco started to stagger off in that direction. "No, it's time to go." Negian stated simply.

"But, we can actually finish him off here!" Seco gestured in Dirk's direction.

"And do you really want to deal with the massive manhunt the Jedi will send our way if we kill a Skywalker?" Negian asked, already knowing the answer. "C'mon, let's go meet up with Korgo."

"All right." Seco started heading for the door that they had come in through, only to stop and look over his shoulder. "One day..." He promised himself.

"One day, we will be invincible." Negian nodded. "But today is not that day. Let's go."

.

Wild Space

A virtual rain of blaster bolts rushed at Sado Kressh from all directions. Ducking and twirling his lightsaber in a steady rhythm, Sado batted them back away from him, often into the droid that had fired the shot in the first place. It wasn't easy, but then, that was the point of the exercise: It wasn't supposed to be easy. The Dark Lord was surrounded by thirty droids in his personal training chamber, currently engaged in a training exercise to help him get used to fighting large numbers of "normal" troops. Sado would never have survived to adulthood, never mind to become the Dark Lord, if he hadn't already been an expert at dueling fellow Force users one on one. However, even though none of the Sith Lords were expected to fight Republic troops directly, Sado was well aware that it could still happen. He was also well aware that if it did, he would likely be fighting more than thirty enemies at once. To compensate, the droids' rate of fire had been increased by thirty percent, and two had had their speed doubled on top of that, to represent Force-sensitive individuals. As an added hurdle, the droids' blasters weren't set to stun, as the Dark Lord refused to fight a "coward's battle", even in training. With all of these factors, Sado was convinced that he was getting a good idea of what it would be like to fight a large number of Republic soldiers at once. Also, the droids did not broadcast hostile intent into the Force, as they were simply following their programming. This made it harder to anticipate their movements, and Sado was sure that it would be easier against living opponents.

Sado had eliminated about six of the droids with reflected blaster bolts so far. If he had been able to anticipate their movements like he could with living beings, he would have gone ahead and started attacking at close range. Under the circumstances, he figured he would have to whittle their numbers down to around fifteen before he could close to melee range. Then, behind the Dark Lord, the door to the chamber slid open quietly, and several of the droids immediately turned to attack the newcomer.

Sado turned to see General Lael calmly activate his own red blade and start batting the blaster bolts away with ease, his eyes not even widenening underneath his mask. His feline pupils narrowed in response to the glare of the blaster bolts, but that was the extent of his reaction. Sado smiled in approval. Virtually all of the high ranking Sith would have demanded that the droids be shut off immediately. "What brings you here during my training, General?" The Dark Lord asked as he spun back around, his saber moving rapidly the entire time.

"My Lord, I thought you would wish to know that our first long range probes have returned from the edge of the galaxy proper." Lael bowed, even as he continued batting blaster bolts aside.

"What have we learned from the probes?" Sado asked, spinning down into a roll that allowed him to cut the legs out from under two of the droids before returning to his feet.

"The Republic still does not extend throughout the entire galaxy." Lael reported what he thought was most important first. "Though it is considerably larger than when our ancestors fled, its authority weakens the farther away from Coruscant you are. Coruscant is still the capital, by the way."

"Enough of what's the same..." Sado had to stop speaking for a moment as he leapt into a Force powered backflip, coming down behind one of the double-speed droids, which he promptly cut in half. "What's changed in 5,200 years?"

"It's not the SAME Republic." Lael smiled under his mask.

"Elaborate." Sado said simply, as the droids' concentrated fire forced him to back up a few steps.

"The governing body currently calling itself the Galactic Republic was formed after the collapse of a 'Galactic Empire' ruled by one Darth Krayt, who considered himself a Sith Lord." Lael reported in a straightforward manner.

Sado staggered in surprise for the barest fraction of a second, but that was enough time for the droids to exploit, and the Dark Lord had to resort to a Force powered burst of speed to get away from the hail of blaster bolts. "How very interesting." Sado remarked dryly.

"It seems that for millenia now, the strongest practitioners of the dark side have referred to themselves as Sith Lords, regardless of species, though as yet we haven't discovered how this practice originated." Lael explained. "At any rate, Krayt's empire replaced the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, which itself formed after the 'New Republic' was decimated by a race known as the Yuuzhan Vong."

"And who are the Yuuzhan Vong?" Sado asked even as he charged forward, having whittled the droids' numbers down to the point where he could fight at close range.

"A VERY interesting race that apparently exists outside the Force as we understand it. Their warriors are very strong, probably even stronger than our Massassi, and they think nothing of sacrificing their lives to complete their objective. In fact, since the race believes that their creator god, Yun Yuuzhan, brought the universe into being by sacrificing parts of his own body, it's considered a high honor to sacrifice one's life, and pain is a divine sensation to them."

"That's a very different viewpoint from ours." Sado observed as he spun into a ridiculously fast series of slashes that dismantled the last of the droids. "Pain is useful only when it results in anger, which strengthens our connection to the dark side." The Dark Lord deactivated his lightsaber and returned it to his belt. "At any rate, it sounds like even the Yuuzhan Vong were unable to conquer the galaxy."

"It is as you say, my Lord." Lael nodded. "After five years of war, their campaign collapsed from a series of problems, both internal and external. Most of the survivors migrated to a planet called Zonama Sekot. If our intelligence is accurate, Zonama Sekot is a unique world capable of traveling through hyperspace on its own."

Sado frowned and regarded Lael with suspicion. "That can't be right. Even with engines powerful enough to move a whole planet, how could you accelerate a garden world past light speed without blowing its atmosphere off?"

"Very carefully?" Lael suggested, and a small snort of laughter escaped from the Dark Lord. "Honestly, we don't know. That's why this is the first thing I told our analysts to focus on."

"If this planet does exist..." Sado looked thoughtful. "We may have just found our contingency plan."

"Sir?" Lael was genuinely surprised. "I thought our upcoming operations were going to be an 'all or nothing' kind of scenario."

An odd sort of half smile appeared on the Dark Lord's face, then he shook his head. "If we fail to reclaim our home territory, if the Republic defeats us again... it could truly mean the extinction of the Sith, if we have nowhere to fall back to. If we can't make the Republic surrender to our demands, destroying the Legacy of Ragnos will undoubtedly be their foremost goal. However, if we could trade the Ragnos for a colony that would be self-sustaining if we just park it in the habitable zone of any star we come across..."

"Then you'd have a base of operations for a guerilla war that could go on forever." Lael nodded. "I should have expected such devious thinking from you. It's just, with the way you've been talking lately, I thought you planned on going out in a blaze of glory if we fail."

"Oh, I certainly do." Sado nodded. "I want the Sith race to survive no matter what, but for me, the next month is going to give me everything. Or nothing."

Lael nodded again, a smile spreading across his face. "We've learned from the probes that Kalee is still safe and sound. The fate of my race does not depend on my actions one way or another. With that in mind, I agree completely. Everything or nothing."

.

"I can't live the buttoned down life like you! I want it all! The dizzying highs! The terrifying lows! The creamy middles! Oh sure, I may offend some of the floo-noses with my cocky stride and musky odors. I'll never be the darling of the so-called 'city fathers', who stroke their beards, cluck their tongues, and talk about 'What's to be done with this Homer Simpson?'!" - Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

.

(Nanaki's note: Seco was channeling Kent Brockman a bit in this chapter, ("I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work.") but his outrage at people who help to maintain a completely unsatisfactory status quo, often without realizing it, is most definitely my own. Meanwhile, as an example of how fast the Star Wars galaxy can change, two things I've mentioned in this story have been rendered potentially inaccurate by recent developments, so I'm going to address those items now:

1. In chapter 10, I mentioned that the Nikto were one of the species bound in permanent servitude to the Hutts. In Fate of the Jedi: Allies, another of those slave species, the Klatooinians, have apparently had enough of that crap. At the end of the book, which, it should be noted, failed to resolve ANY of its new plot points, (Why the hell is Vortex not coming out until December?) it appeared that the Treaty of Vontor was no more, and that the Klatooinians were done serving the Hutts. By extension, it would seem logical to assume that the Nikto and the other Hutt hangers-on would take this opportunity to get out as well, and that could well happen by the end of the series. However, I'm going to make the claim that in the intervening years, the Hutts have largely nullified this new independence with shady backroom wheeling and dealing. After all, it's much more their style to roll with the punches and look for new angles to exploit than to simply resist change with force. Or maybe the Nikto never did leave in the first place. This isn't exactly a story-breaking continuity problem, but I wanted to give it some thought, even so.

2. In chapter 5, Jerin mentioned that even Kuat's orbital shipyards weren't much compared to Mon Calamari. Then, in a recent issue of Legacy, the Sith completely wiped out all life on Mon Calamari. Exactly how, I don't know, since there's only one place within a hundred mile radius that carries Legacy, and it's usually sold out before I make a trip into town. However, I imagine it was similar to how the Yuuzhan Vong destroyed Ithor. I don't know if the shipyards were hit or not, but even if they were, I can't imagine them simply being abandoned with that much infrasctructure already in place. Even with Mon Calamari now a graveyard planet, I'm sure somebody bought the shipyards and put them to use even if the Mon Cals and Quarren didn't want to hang around the place anymore.

Finally, happy anniversary to my parents, who undoubtedly won't actually be reading this on their anniversary, since they're probably on Kauai right now. If not, I'm betting at least Hilo or Kohala. Anyway, I hope to have another chapter for you all before the end of the month, but I also just got Alpha Protocol, so we'll see...)