Acrid smoke permeated the atmosphere of the innards of the chamber, and the dead littered the deck. Still forms of stormtroopers mixed with men clad in Imperial gray uniforms, each adding to the macabre collection of lifelessness. Sputtering darkness was illuminated by brief electrical sparks generated by severed power lines and couplings. Blaster craters still smoked from the numerous blaster bolts that had only recently filled the air, crashing into bulkheads and terminals throughout the chamber.
Beyond the chamber were similarly damaged chambers filled with the dead, damage liberally spread about. Along with blaster craters were lengthy burn slashes and deep gashes created by a plasma blade wielded with fierce abandon.
Deep in the bowels of the kilometer-long warship lay the still form of a man clad in black armor. The figure lay slumped against a bulkhead, dead stormtroopers in both white and dark-gray armor arrayed before him like a fan. Some were decapitated or missing limbs, while others were crumpled into lifeless piles after having been violently hurled against hard objects for which the protection of their armor had never been designed.
Blackness consumed him, a dim rage simmering just below consciousness. The suit and armor in which he was encased finished its diagnostics and repairs, simultaneously finalizing injections of bacta into its occupant. The respirator mechanism resumed, forcing air into badly-damaged lungs.
Air hissed weakly through Lord Vader's face-mask. As consciousness returned, so did dark rage fueled by the Dark Side of the Force. The word revealed itself to him through the mask's visual imaging, in familiar red, including digital readouts in Basic of the suit's system status.
Vader discovered he could not yet move any extremities, for his suit and armor systems had sustained critical damage. But that was no barrier to a Dark Lord of the Sith. Suspecting his enemies might yet live, Vader purposefully remained motionless and stretched out with the Force throughout the entirety of the Imperial Star Destroyer.
Vader detected only distant sparks of life, likely crewmen cowering in fear for their lives. He detected no presence in the Force bent upon his destruction. More importantly nor could he detect holes in the Force that betrayed the presence of the men from the Sol system. Only very recently had he discovered a means to detect such holes, and even now he knew he would not be able to detect much more than their presence in the vicinity.
Vader knew he was alone, except for a few crewman and the ship's droids. He was alive, and his enemies were not.
…
Though like all members of the Miraluka species, he could not see through eyes that most sentient beings could see with physical eyes, Jerec could see quite clearly through the Force. While beings with limited or no sight compensated with input from other physical senses, Jerec compensated his lack of physical vision with vision through the Force itself. Perhaps because of his physical blindness, Jerec's species could see through the Force as well or better than most sentient beings could with their own eyes. A clear advantage Jerec had over other Miraluka was his strength in the Dark Side of the Force.
And so Jerec studied a huge formation of Force "holes" created by the beings from the Sol star system in the strange, empty galaxy far, far away. Jerec was no fool, and he knew the Emperor was dead. He had felt his death clearly through the Force. He also knew that a fake Emperor now sat upon the throne on Coruscant.
What Jerec did not know is how all that had come to be. The Emperor's overthrow had come as a shock to him. Darth Sidious had seemed an unstoppable force to Jerec, while he had been alive. To see him so readily destroyed made Jerec sit back and ponder his situation. He had no doubt that the Forceless humans of Sol had played a critical role, though he did not know how.
"Clever!" Jerec muttered under his breath, considering the plans within plans that had facilitated the Emperor's destruction. It was scheme worthy of a Sith Lord.
While the fake Emperor may have fooled most of the galaxy, he did not fool Jerec. Nor was Jerec stupid enough to believe that those who had destroyed Palpatine would assume others did not know of their plot. Jerec knew that the denizens of Sol would move quickly to ruthlessly hunt down and destroy all who would suspect them or oppose them.
So Jerec turned his attention back to the massive window in the Imperial training complex headquarters building. Thousands of Sol humans were parading in lock-step formation, highly trained and competent. Many more were undergoing the rigours of training throughout the complex, prior to donning the dark gray armor that distinguished Sol stormtroopers from regular stormtroopers.
Jerec knew that there were religious fanatics disbursed liberally throughout the troopers, and he had purposefully culled them into separate formations. Among the most brutal of the fanatics were those adhering to the religion centering on the religiously-significant Sol city that had been destroyed from orbit. A hatred having nothing to do with the Dark Side of the Force permeated those fanatics, and they had hurled themselves into combat training with ferocity and focus.
Those troopers would be especially useful to Jerec in the next phase of his plan. But he knew the forces of the fake Emperor would soon discover him, and so he planned to be absent when they arrived, and his fanatics would go with him.
Jeric would soon visit the legendary Valley of the Jedi.
…
The ruins of the ancient temple brought great sadness to Yoda. The Empire had seen fit to leave most of the temple in ruin, after execution of Order 66. Gone were the many Padawan Learners, Jedi Knights, Jedi Masters, and of course the Jedi Counsel. Yoda could still feel the presense of the Dark Side of the Force, left by Darth Sidious as he had stalked the ruined halls of of the Jedi Temple at his own leisure.
Yoda could also feel through the Force the shadows and echoes of violence that had been visited upon the Jedi Temple on that dark day, years ago. A place of learning, serenity and training had been transformed into a place of violence and death in the space of a single day. Nevertheless, Yoda was here now, and no threat of violence or arrest hang over him.
Bel Shadar had resumed his role as a military colonel from the planet of Sol, but Yoda knew that the Force would not long allow him to pretend to be something other than he was – a Jedi Knight. Too few were left, scattered throughout the galaxy, and Yoda would need as many as possible to rebuild the order.
Yoda sighed. The old Jedi Order had become complacent and susceptible to corruption from outside sources. Always did the Sith sprinkle their lies with bits of truth, and so the Sith had leveraged themselves into power, nearly destroying all Jedi in the galaxy as a result. Yoda would do all within his power not to allow that to happen again, and he knew that meant allowing Jedi to take a different path than the previously regimented path used by the old order.
Perhaps this temple was destined to remain an ancient, ruined relic.
…
Colonel Dudley sat in contemplation, within his quarters. His very being was flooded with the Force, and he had a difficult time attempting to mute it. The ship in which he was traveling was an Imperial Star Destroyer, which unlike members of the Rebel Alliance didn't seem strange to him. After all, the last time Bel Shadar had been in this galaxy, he had been a young Jedi Knight aboard a predecessor of the Imperial Star Destroyer, conducting missions for the old Republic.
Dudley also went by the call sign of Lancer Six, which only a very few knew. Working closely with other power brokers of Earth, he had successfully engineered the overthrow of Emperor Palpatine, who it turns out was a Dark Lord of the Sith. He still marveled at how that Sith Lord had successfully hidden his true nature from even the most powerful of Jedi Masters, while living among them – until too late.
Well, turn-about was fair play, as the old Earth saying went, and Dudley had employed trickery and diversion to overthrow the Sith and install his own government. The United States had accomplished on a galactic scale what it had done throughout the latter portion of its history in global politics. Of course, the United States had been crushed by the forces of the Galactic Empire, along with every other major global power.
Then there was Moheb. When Dudley had last seen him, Moheb had something in his eyes that had nothing to do with the yellow infused to make him appear as Emperor Palpatine. No, there was something more. The destruction of Mecca had affected Moheb deeply, and so Dudley was concerned for Moheb, because he had seen in those eyes what he had seen in the eyes of others, just before they did something completely unexpected.
What he had seen was madness.
…
Though his face and yellow eyes reflected the gnarled visage of a Sith Lord and the Emperor of the galaxy, he knew better. He was a Syrian of the planet Earth, known in this galaxy colloquially as the Sol star system, utter alone in his own native galaxy in regard to life. Moreover, Moheb was a Shi'a Muslim. The power at his control exceeded that of any man of Earth, even in his wildest dreams. Moheb peered into the reflective monitor, into the yellow eyes and pale, scarred skin that now covered his once-handsome face.
"Am I Muhammed al Mahdi?" he asked himself in wonder. Like most "Twelver" Shi'a Muslims, Moheb had grown up learning of the "Hidden Imam" and all that surrounded the prophecy. He would appear in the final days of mankind, along with Isa, to bring peace upon the world after days of severe tribulation. Could Earth have seen greater calamity that the utter destruction of holy Mecca visited upon it by infidels from the stars? Moheb was convinced it was so. This was the time.
Moheb had spoken with Colonel Dudley at length, agreeing to the facade that he appear to be Emperor Palpatine, having survived an attempt on his life. Like Colonel Dudley and only very few others, Moheb knew that the remains of the real Palpatine lay dead beneath a mountain of durasteel, and that his body had been blasted into a non-recognizable heap of ash, along with those who had been with him. The dark-gray stormtroopers who had committed the deed were in turn destroyed by long-dormant battle droids that Palpatine had kept in secret storage.
Moheb would play his scripted role … for now.
…
Hate. Inexhaustible, pure hatred, fueled by the Dark Side of the Force, consumed a being now existing only in spirit. The spirit roamed the realm of the Force, forcing it to remain in existence only though the force of its incredible hatred.
And so it found its way around the hole in the force that had been the assassin of its former physical form, and toward the center of the galaxy it fled, with but one purpose in mind.
Deep in the core of the galaxy, Byss awaited, as did Palpatine's destiny.