The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 5

It had been a surprise to Gran-Nock that he woke up. The explosion at the cliff wall seemed like it should have been enough to kill him. But it was hard to argue with the pain that had woken him. The pain had drawn his attention to his arms and legs, where he quickly discovered two things. The first was that he was manacled. There were steel bands around his forearms and his lower legs, with chains connecting them to the floor. The second thing was that his arms and legs no longer ended in hands and feet. Those it seemed, had been removed. And it appeared no great care had been taken in the process. The cuts were uneven, and the wounds had not been treated. They had simply been burned to close them up. This discovery had prompted the Rakatan guard to scream in pain and wrath, swearing vengeance on all those responsible. After having screamed himself hoarse, he got to work at doing what a Rakatan warrior was supposed to. He supposed he could have used the Gift to free himself from the manacles, but there was little point to it. He was not strong enough with the Gift to move his whole body. He had seen an Elder levitate himself once, but such feats were beyond simple warriors like him. He could life himself a small ways off the ground, but not travel far enough to actually make an escape that way. And so without hands and feet he would not be going anywhere whether manacled or not.

He had decided quickly to kill himself, but hands were essential to every way of killing himself he knew. And so, he supposed, he was stuck. Having no other options, he would have to stay alive and stay put. Time took him from his initial horror, through rage, to despair and finally to a kind of anxious boredom. How long this sequence took he did not know. He was underground, in some primitive cave. There was no way to keep track of time, and Gran-Nock did not trust his own episodes of sleep to tell him much. The opposite end of the cave narrowed to a passage that went one for a few feet until it climbed up and out of sight. No one came down that passage for a long time. And then someone did.

It was the huge, black skinned Sith. Sith were usually much shorter than Rakatans, and usually red or grey. But this one would have looked down on Gran-Nock even before Gran-Nock had lost his feet, and his skin was the deepest black Gran-Nock had ever seen on a living creature. The Sith walked down the passageway, bending over to avoid hitting his head, and upon reaching Gran-Nock's cave, sat down cross legged and just looked at him.

Gran-Nock did not speak to him. What was the point of talking? Better, he thought, to save anything he had to say until the torture started. Maybe, he thought, he could goad the Sith into killing him.

But the Sith, after considering him for a moment, started the conversation himself. The Sith's voice had a metallic sound to it, like at the end of every word was the slight ringing of steel on steel. It was not nearly as low as Gran-Nock expected, given his size. The most surprising thing about the Sith's speech was, however, the fact that he was speaking in Rakatan. It was not that he was speaking in Sith but that Gran-Nock could understand him through the Gift. The beast was speaking Rakatan words, using Rakatan grammar. All of it flawless.

"You might be wondering why we took your hands. It seems strange doesn't it? What do creatures such as us need with hands? We who are gifted? It is with our minds that we truly control the power isn't it? But yet, I think you will find, if you tried to, you would struggle to lift a rock. You, who not so long ago brought a mountain down on my men. You probably think you can remove those manacles any time you please, but my guess is that you are wrong."

The Sith stopped speaking, as though inviting Gran-Nock to try. Gran-Nock refused to play along though. He was, of course, confident he could open the manacles, but there was no point to it, and if he did remove them he was fairly sure a beating would be the result. The Sith, after waiting a moment, smiled.

"You don't feel like trying? Well I want you to."

The Sith picked up a stone near him. It was not large, and probably was not that heavy. He held it up in front of his face for a few moments, letting Gran-Nock get a good look at it before saying "Catch."

The Sith then threw the stone at Gran-Nock's face. Gran-Nock tried to push it out of the way, tried to push it with the Gift, and failed. It hit him high up on his head.

The Sith made a sound that Gran-Nock thought might have been laughter.

"You see? It is hard. You spend your whole life making the little gestures with your hands as you use the Force, the Gift as you call it. The whole time you think it is just a habit, that you could stop doing it if you chose. But, you tell yourself, what is the point? It isn't hurting anything. And then when you have to do without them, you can't. Or most can't."

At that the Sith smiled at Gran-Nock, as the stone that had bounced off his head rose in the air and broke in half. The pieces began to revolve around each other, as though circling some invisible drain. The drew closer and closer until they hit each other and then fell to the floor. The Sith had not moved a muscle, other than to smile. While Gran-Nock refused to respond to these taunts they did make the point of his powerlessness quite clearly.

The Sith continued on, "You must ask why though? All of my people and all of yours have this power. This power that most species in the galaxy apparently do not have." The Sith detected Gran-Nock's slight flinch. "Oh yes I know all about them, all those others you have enslaved. You are not the first of your kind we have caught. Some of them became very talkative before the end. I know all about the Selkath, the Wookies, the Esh-Kha, all the rest. And I know that in all your Empire there are only two species like us, where all are born Gifted with the Force."

The Sith let what he said sink in. The Sith weren't supposed to know that they were the only subject people to have the Gift. Every Rakatan, from the War-Leader down to the lowliest warrior, assigned to Korriban had this fact drilled into them before arrival. They were never to be told about what set them apart. The fear was the Sith would take this knowledge as a reason to rebel. Why obey like the others when you are not like the others?

The Rakatan words that sounded so odd coming from the alien mouth began again. "How long have we been like this do you think? Were we always this way? Gifted? Then why is nothing else on our worlds gifted in the same way? You seemed to have evolved from some kind of lizard, but the lizards on your world do not have the Force. None of the animals on Korriban have it. And what about that thing with the hands? It is so odd. It is an instinct. Millions of years of doing things with our hands and so our minds are slowly shaped to always think that the hands must be used. It is buried so deep down that most of us can never get past it. If we want something to move we move our hands, even when our hands aren't doing anything. If we had always been this way, where did that instinct come from? Why were we ever using our hands if we never needed to? It is odd isn't it?"

"And then of course there is this ugly language I am speaking. Your language. It has probably occurred to you that I didn't need to learn it. Through the Force I can understand you and you can understand me, no matter what language we speak. I have never failed to understand a Rakatan, even before I learned your brutish, indelicate language. And we have had no secrets from you. From your first accursed ship landing on this world you understood every word we said."

Gran-Nock had been wondering this. He had never heard of any species learning the Rakatan language before. Prior to encountering the Sith the Infinite Empire had always sent specialists to learn the languages of their slaves. Never had one learned Rakatan. The slaves almost never heard Rakatan. But this great beast had learned it.

The beast was still smiling at him. Something about his eyes gave Gran-Nock the distinct impression that he could hear every one of Gran-Nock's thoughts.

"There are limits to what you understand, relying on the Force. Shades of meaning that are lost. Delicate implications that escape you. The Force lets you know what the speaker intends to say, but what of all those things we communicate without meaning to? What of the slips? What of the pauses between words that show hesitancy, uncertainty, fear? I wanted to understand my captives and so I learned their language. Your language. It would be a shame to waste my knowledge now wouldn't it? Speak up now Rakatan."

Gran-Nock looked the Sith in the eyes, trying his best to present a picture of strength and resolve. He was doing rather well until the pain started. The bands around his legs and arms began to constrict as the Sith's smile evaporated. Gran-Nock tried to block the pain out. When that failed he tried to force himself to think of something else as a way of controlling the pain. Put the pain in one part of his mind and then use a different part. When he found he could not distract himself any more than he could ignore, he tried to simply keep control of himself, to not let the pain through. And so when he finally spoke, it came out as a scream.

"You didn't ask me anything!"

The Sith's smile came back and he answered, "It's true, I did not. So here is a question. Why do you think there is a Rakatan language?"

"What?" The pain had not stopped but it had stopped increasing. Gran-Nock supposed that meant the bands had stopped tightening. He still couldn't really feel anything in his arms and legs but the pain.

"That isn't much of an answer," the Sith said with the disapproving tone of a children's teacher, "in fact it isn't an answer at all."

Speaking through gasps Gran-Nock said, "Because we need to speak?"

The pain stopped. The Sith leaned forward and sounded pleased as he said "Foolish answers are still answers. Well done! But I wasn't asking why you have a language instead of no language. I want to know why you think there is only one Rakatan language instead of many? Were there never other languages on your world?"

Gran-Nock kept feeling the urge to rub his legs where the bands were, but he had no hands to rub with. He looked up from his legs and wearily replied "I don't know. Yes I suppose, long ago."

"There was a different language for every tribe, or nation, I imagine," the Sith mused. "But then what? Where did they all go? Why did you all start speaking one language? Do you see the problem Rakatan? Every one of you can understand any language spoken to you. So why learn to speak another one? Have you ever had to learn a new language Rakatan? Really learn it? Of course not. All you need to know is whether the slaves obey. It is the slaves who must learn to read the master's mood. As we have had to learn."

"I am just a warrior, I have no slaves…" Gran-Nock began before being cut off.

"We are all your slaves. How you divide us up amongst yourselves does not matter. But as I said, you never had to learn a language. It is a hard thing. Most can't learn more than a few. So it makes sense that everyone starts to learn the same one. It's only natural. Natural that is, for other species. For those that can't understand every word spoken to them. Do you know how many Sith languages there were when your people arrived?"

Gran-Nock shook his head.

"Thousands!" Anger could be heard in the Sith's voice for the first time. "Now, of course, there are only a few dozen. Still one for each tribe of course, just like before."

Gran-Nock looked stunned for a moment. He opened his mouth to speak and was cut off.

"If you apologize, if you say you had no idea, I will kill you. And then who will I speak to in this hideous language I spent so long learning?" The Sith looked deadly earnest as he said this.

"The next of my people you take prisoner," Gran-Nock joked.

The Sith smiled again and said, "There won't be another Rakatan prisoner."

Gran-Nock looked down at the ground, mulling over this ominous response. When he didn't speak the Sith started up again, "You know what it tells me? The fact that there is only one Rakatan language? There was a time when you didn't just understand each other. When you had to learn a language, and so eventually you learned the one of the strongest tribe, the strongest nation. The one that mastered all the others. But that means there was a time when you were not Gifted. Before you had the Force. When you used your hands to move things, and your words to make yourself understood, and your machines and your weapons, and all the rest. What do you think of that, Rakatan?"

Gran-Nock again did not respond. It occurred to him that if he made this Sith angry then the result might be Gran-Nock's death. But of course there were stories. Old legends about the time before the Gift. About how the gods had set the Rakatans a special destiny and given them the Gift to make it real. The real gods that is, not the accursed Celestials, or their Kwa servants. This had all been long ago, before recorded history. Before the Rakatans had been made slaves. Before the Great Uprising. But Gran-Nock was not going to spend the last days of his life telling children's stories to this monster.

The monster seemed taken with the expounding of his theories however, and had stopped speaking only for a moment before he took to pacing and returned to his theme.

"But we Sith have always had the Force. Every element of our society confirms it. We are set apart from you and all other species. There are no merchants, there are warriors. There are no governors, there are priests. There is no power any Sith respects save power in the Force. There is no hierarchy but the ability to wield it. There is no trace of a time when anything mattered but the Force. And that is why we will win. Because this power was given to you. It came from outside, and no matter how strong you are, it will always be for you a tool. For us it is life. We are the Force little Rakatan. We always have been, and we always will be."

The Sith's manner had changed. He seemed possessed. The calm mocking smile was gone, his eyes were manic and wild. He was clenching and unclenching his three fingered hands, and his pacing had come to resemble stalking. Gran-Nock suspected the time of his death was at hand. He had been kept alive to hear this little speech. Now he would be killed. Now the pain would cease.

But before the Sith could do whatever he planned to do next, the cave shook slightly, and a soft rumbling could be heard above. Gran-Nock could tell what that meant, and he decided the Sith could be pushed over the edge. He summoned all the condescension he could muster and spoke.

"The Gift is our tool, and perhaps if you are the Force, that makes you our tool. You serve us, as all things must one day. You think you will win? You are strong for one of your kind, but you have never seen true power. No Elder has ever stepped foot on this barren nothing of a planet. You have no idea what strength the Gift can bring. And you never will. The bombardment has begun. Your pathetic little rebellion will end. You will die in these caves, cowering as the stone collapses and crushes you. And they will never need to call an Elder to come teach you the true nature of power."

The Sith did not lash out, as Gran-Nock hoped. The anger and rage melted from his face, leaving only a calm and calculating demeanor. When he spoke his voice was different than before, soft, almost a whisper.

"Then we have something to look forward to don't we?"