The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter Seven

Gran-Nock was being carried by the large black skinned Sith. He floated a few inches off of the ground, his arms and legs bound beneath him. The Sith walked in front of him, pulling him along with the Gift. They were moving up through the caves. Gran-Nock had not appreciated how far down he had been brought while unconscious after the battle. While their path through the rock did seem to wind around in great circles, they were heading steadily up and they had been travelling for a long time. The Sith seemed to be paying no attention to the fact that, occasionally, Gran-Nock's face was dragging along the stone floor of the passage. Or perhaps he knew and enjoyed it.

Shortly before reaching the cave mouth other Sith fell in behind him. They whispered about him. He could catch some of it. Insults and threats. Perhaps he could get one of them to kill him. But that would have to wait until he could speak. Right now his body was bound too tightly for him to take a deep enough breathe to get a word out.

Gran-Nock was dragged out of the cave into the open air at dusk. Korriban's pale yellow sun was setting, and the sky had given over to a dark purple. The black skinned Sith lifted Gran-Nock up and placed him on the stone ground just outside the cave mouth, his back leaning against the wall. Gran-Nock looked up to see fire raining from the sky. The bombardment he had felt in the caves below was in its full glory. He could see the great starships above. They had closed in on the planet so they could bring their own guns to bear. Good, Gran-Nock thought. Fighters and frigates could not do the job that needed done. This world needed to go the way that Tato-Heen's world had. Three ships would not be enough, but they could get the job started. By now they had certainly already sent word to Lehon. The great fleets would come. They would converge on this desolate, useless world and consign these monsters to oblivion.

This Gran-Nock felt sure of. But as he looked on the faces of the Sith around him, he saw no fear.

In the lead Rakatan ship, high above the world the Warlord monitored the bombardment. This was tedious work. The recon team's ship had returned with only one warrior aboard. The story he told, of thousands of Sith ambushing them, of Sith killing the battle-leader, of the planetary headquarters overrun, was difficult to believe at first. The other recon missions had returned with no sign of the Sith at all. The other, smaller, Rakatan facilities around the planet had been levelled. This much had been expected. When word had first reached Lehon of the rebellion the stories were of an orderly retreat from the smaller facilities to consolidate control over the planetary headquarters and the region around it. An orderly retreat would have meant the destruction of all that had value but could not be taken with them. Perhaps levelling the structures themselves had been somewhat excessive, but the Warlord figured it was done to deny the rebels the inherent defensive strength that the structures would have granted those occupying them. And it proved that the Rakatan forces had not been too sorely pressed by the enemy. It would have taken days of work to affect such a thorough cleansing of the region. And that would have meant that all or nearly all of the planetary garrison would have made their way to headquarters, where the only problem that would have faced them was finding adequate space for all those warriors and ships.

That is what made the story from the headquarters recon team so troubling, and so hard to believe. No warriors. No ships. Nothing but Sith. More Sith than any Rakatan had ever seen working together at any point in the history of the occupation. The Sith were supposed to be a fractured people. When the Rakatans had arrived they found a people who had been at war with each other for as long as any of the natives of the rocky world of Korriban could remember. Resistance to the initial occupation had been stiff, given the natives' natural abilities. But that resistance had been disorganized. The tribes of the world were unwilling for the most part to work with each other, or, in those uncommon cases where they did, unable to keep an alliance together. Despite their having the Gift the Sith of Korriban fell to the Infinite Empire, as all others had before.

But what the lone survivor of the lost recon mission described was something outside of the experience of any of those who had served, as the Warlord had, on Korriban. He would have refused to believe it, were it not for the undeniable fact that the rest of the strike team was gone. Even now he was filled with doubt. Once the transport ship had returned, and the young warrior's story was told, they had scanned the surface, looking for this horde of Sith. They found no life signs anywhere near the headquarters. Had the Sith somehow melted away in the short time it took for the transport to arrive back at the flagship and for the tale to be related to Warlord and his staff? Of course the fact that they detected no life signs suggested that the story was correct, and that the Rakatans in the headquarters facility had been killed or fled. It was possible that the scanners were being jammed, but such technological feats were as hard to attribute to the Sith as was this supposed unity of purpose. The Sith relied almost entirely on the Gift. They were technological primitives, not through a lack of intelligence but seemingly through a lack of interest.

Not for the first time the Warlord wondered why this world needed to be held at all. The Sith were only a threat if you were on Korriban. Left to their own devices they would have remained there forever, content to battle among themselves and make tools from stone and clothes from the hides of animals. But the council had commanded this world be held. To the Warlord it looked increasingly as though that really meant that the world would have to be retaken.

The first step would be to eliminate the native resistance. The Sith did not have cities exactly, but they did have population centers. These would be eradicated. Estimates were that more than half the planet's native population was to be found at these locations at any given time, and, more importantly, well more than half of their females and young. It was a strategy that had been used on other species; if the population of fertile females could be reduced to a manageable number their very scarcity could be used to bring the males into line. Once under control a program of sterilization could be put in place. The basic need to reproduce, to see one's species survive overrode all sentiments of pride and honor. If the only way to have children was to work with the Rakatans, the Rakatans would find willing slaves. What worked for those slimy frogs on Manaan would work for the Sith, Gift or no Gift.

It was dull work killing most of a planet. The Warlord hoped that after the early phases of the operation the Council would see that this task did not merit the attention of one of his rank. The Council's orders had been to establish contact with the garrison and send a report back. But those orders had assumed that the fleet would have access to the Star Map below. Lacking that the courier bearing the message would take weeks to return to Lehon, just as it had taken weeks to get here. Since the Council was going to have to wait anyway the Warlord decided there was no reason to send word of what was happening until he had a better idea of what that was. He would reduce the population centers, then send down the infantry. Thousands of young Rakatans waited in the three starships under his command. This was the largest fleet currently in operation, other than the fleets of the Great Hunt.

Those grand fleets carried on the true war, the war against the Celestials. The Warlord had been pulled from command of a squadron of starships in one of those fleets. Pulled away from hunting the great enemy to crushing animals. But on the other hand, he was a Warlord for the first time, and of course it had been a long time since the Great Hunt had found anything. Perhaps a success against the Sith dogs would allow him to jump ahead of some of his rivals, and put him in line to command one of the grand fleets himself. Someday. But first he must teach these beasts a lesson.

The Warlord stood up from his chair in the center of the ship's bridge and walked over to observe his staff at work at the various stations around the room.

"How goes the bombardment?" he asked.

His staff exchanged nervous looks with each other.

"What is it?" the Warlord asked, his irritation evident.

"Warlord, we are hitting the coordinates, but we have no way of knowing whether we are hitting our targets," said the one of his staff. The Warlord could not remember his name, but it did not matter. Being the only one brave enough to speak plain truths was not sufficient to get you remembered.

"How much closer will we have to move to get a sense of the damage?" the warlord shot back immediately.

"50% closer, Warlord," came the response.

"Why so close?" That was too close, far closer than one would normally need to be for this kind of assault.

"The Sith have no cities Warlord. Usually we can scan for power signatures, large structures. But with the Sith the only thing you can scan for are life forms, and to get a good scan through all the interference our bombardment kicks up, we need to get closer"

The Warlord considered the staff member for a moment.

"What is your name and rank?"

"Warlord, I am Cron-Meck, and I am a 7T."

A 7T. Nothing exceptional, but it meant he was proceeding normally through the ranks of technicians.

"Well Cron-Meck, since these worms around you lack the courage to speak to their Warlord, I place them under your command. They will answer to you, and you will answer to me. Their failings are your responsibility. Now, bring us to the required height, and get me damage reports. I must know how thorough the bombardment has been before I plan the landings."

The Warlord had been stuck with the crewmembers the grand fleets had considered most expendable, and it showed. It might be necessary to kill a few of them. But that was something for later. For now he apparently had to get the ships close enough to the planet to smell the bodies burning.

Gran-Nock watched as the ships grew larger in the night sky. Starting as little more than three large balls of light, distinguishable from the stars only by their size, their shapes slowly became visible as they entered the atmosphere. The dust kicked up by the bombardment still obscured them to an extent, but it was clear they were descending towards the surface. Gran-Nock was trying to figure out why when the tall, black Sith spoke.

"They want to see their handiwork. They want to be sure we are dead."

Gran-Nock thought for a moment and realized the Sith was correct. They want to know it is safe to land the troops, so they can begin hunting the Sith down. But why were the Sith so calm? Gran-Nock looked around to see that his question was faulty. They were not calm; they were restraining their excitement. Not only were they not afraid, they were consumed with anticipation. Gran-Nock did not have long to wait to find out what they looked forward to. As the Rakatan starships and frigates moved closer to the surface, Gran-Nock saw lights in the distance. They were shooting up from the surface. Dozens of lights shooting towards the ships in the upper atmosphere as though the Sith were returning fire. But these lights were far too large to be blaster bolts. Even the defenses of Lehon didn't have guns that large.

It was not until the second wave of lights that Gran-Nock realized what he was looking at. The garrisons' ships. The transports and fighters that the garrisons at each outpost used. It had not occurred to him yet that they had been told that everyone had retreated to the headquarters, but that they hadn't seen any ships at headquarters. His party had been too focused on the lack of Rakatans to focus on the fact that their ships had seemingly never made it to headquarters. The outlying garrisons had not escaped. All had been butchered, and the Sith had their ships.

By the time the second wave began their much slower flight towards the starships Gran-Nock could see that the first wave of stolen ships had already crashed into their targets

All was chaos on the bridge of the lead Rakatan warship. The Warlord tried to make himself heard over the screams. He looked for Cron-Meck. He needed to get these worms to shut up and do their jobs. The Warlord did not realize at first that Cron-Meck was still at his station. The initial strikes had overloaded their shields, and caused a power surge throughout the ship. Cron-Meck's terminal had exploded and the debris had torn through his head.

He was going to be promoted, the Warlord thought to himself absurdly. He shook his head and started bellowing his commands. They needed to pull back. The Sith had launched the garrisons' ships at him. His own ship was effectively defenseless. The shields had been burned out and the weapons systems needed time for the redundancies to kick in, to replace the segments of the system the power surge had fried. They still had navigation. They needed to get back into high orbit. They needed time. Time to get the weapons working and time to target the ships hurtling towards them from the surface.

"All reverse!" came the command.

"Yes Warlord," came a voice in response, the owner's identity lost in the din.

But whoever it was had them ascending.

"Warlord, more ships are coming!"

"Can you identify them?" he called out.

"They are ours lord!"

"I know they are ours you bag of meat! What kind of ships are they!" The idiocy was almost too much to bear. Did the fool think that the Warlord suspected the Sith had built their own ships?

"Medium sized transports lord. They are moving slower than the first ships did. I think…"

"Those were fighters, obviously. Only fighters could move that fast. How many are there?" Slower these ships might be, but the transports were much larger. A few impacts from them, with the shields down, that could end things quickly.

"Nine or ten lord."

Gran-Nock watched the exhaust trails of the transports as they flew towards the lumbering warships. He knew that at top speed they hit with sufficient force to destroy them, despite their size. He lost sight of the transports as they rose into the upper atmosphere. He waited for the explosions to tell him that all his fellow Rakatans were dead. And so, after a few moments, he had a sudden flowering of hope when no explosions could be seen. The shouts of the Sith standing over him, all except the towering black Sith, at first seemed confirmation that their plan had failed. The Gift, however good it was at deciphering words and concepts, did not allow you to read the tone of a yell. But their smiles let him know those had been shouts of exultation. But why? There had been no explosions.

The huge black Sith turned to look down at him, a smug grin on his face. There were no explosions, what was he so happy about? They had missed his ships, or they had been blown out of the sky. The Rakatan starships would ascend to a safe distance and then either repair or begin the long trip back to Lehon. Still the Sith grinned.

"Release the Massassi," the great black Sith said softly. One of the other Sith ran back down into the caves.

The Massassi. Gran-Nock tried to remember the stories about them. Some long dead tribe of Sith. There hadn't been many left when the Rakatans arrived, and their bloodlust had been such that they had to be exterminated. It had been easy to do. They attacked seemingly without forethought or strategy. The best warriors the Sith had, and they broke on the Rakatan defenses like dirt clods thrown at stone walls. How could there be Massassi still alive? How could they have been hidden these long years? If they had existed the whole time how had they been held back?

Gran-Nock looked at the black Sith and saw his answer. This was his plan. His will had kept the Massassi in check until this moment. This moment to do what? The transport ships had…well they couldn't have been shot down. He would have seen that, even from this distance. They had missed then. But how could they miss? There had been close to a dozen of them. How could they all have missed? But if they didn't miss then their purpose in going up there was not to destroy the starships. What then? Why risk getting shot down?

Then Gran-Nock pieced it together. The second wave of transports ships had been sent to see if the weapons systems of the warships were online. If they had been the transports ships would have been shot down, and they hadn't been. And the Sith had chosen not to destroy the ships, helpless as they were, by sending the transport ships into them. They were sending the Massassi. He was sending them to board the warships, not destroy them. He meant to capture the ships intact. Where hope had flowered in Gran-Nock's mind, only terror now grew.

The Warlord did not share Gran-Nock's terror. He felt only relief. He had not the presence of mind to piece together why the transports had flown past them. As far as he was concerned the savages simply couldn't fly a ship straight for long enough to hit them. That every ship in the first wave had crippled his fleet by making contact had not made him reconsider his contempt. Keep backing up, he thought to himself. Give the engineers time to restore power to all systems and they could make a temporary tactical retreat. If primitives wanted to turn sophisticated weaponry into glorified rocks and simply hurl them at the Rakatan ships, well there were ways to deal with such tactics he was sure.

"Warlord, another wave of ships. Fighters again. Closing fast!"

"Display!" the Warlord barked in response.

At that a holographic image appeared above the central console. It consisted of around a quarter of Korriban, with the Rakatan fleet slowly withdrawing from it, and several dozen tiny points of light streaking towards them. The Warlord stepped towards the hologram, staring intently at the little lights, trying to discern their goal. His attention was so much on this third wave of ships that he failed to notice that the larger transports of the second wave were turning around at the edge of the hologram.

"Are they firing on us?" the Warlord called out to anyone in a position to answer.

"No Warlord!"

"Maybe they will pass us again."

It was this comment which unnerved the Rakatans on the bridge the most. Rakatan Warlords weren't supposed to hope the enemy would make mistakes. They weren't supposed to try to manage the morale of their warriors and servants. Warlords were supposed to control every aspect of conflict. They were supposed to lead their warriors to victory. Victory was supposed to be the source of the warriors' morale, not words. But the Warlord was hoping because that was all he could do. This next wave of ships would be on them before the weapons systems could be brought back online, so all they could do was pray, if Rakatans prayed that is, these ships would inexplicably miss, as the last ones had.

And for a moment, it looked as though they might. The fighters broke into three groups, one for each crippled Rakatan warship. But these fighters did not ram into the front of the ship, as the first wave had. Instead each group broke into four smaller groups of two or three ships each and flew under, above and on either side of the starships. It looked as though they would fly past them as well, until the fighters came to the rear of the vessels, where the engines were located. At that point all four groups of fighters for each ship broke sharply towards the engines, crashing into the engines right where they joined the rest of the ship.

On the bridge the lights went out. For a moment there was silence, and in that silence the Warlord at last understood. The Sith had taken out their shields and weapons with the first wave. They had passed them by with the second wave, something he still did not understand, but this last wave had taken out their engines and with them all their power. They are attacking systems, not the ship as a whole. There could only be one explanation. The Sith were trying to take his ships, not destroy them. And while the Warlord would not figure out that the transports initial function had been to test whether his weapons were functional, he could see a purpose for them now. Those ships could punch a hole in his armor. The Warlord looked around at his surviving warriors, lit up only by the light coming through the windows.

"Everyone, get your pressurized suits on! Broadcast that command on every deck of the ship!" At this point the Warlord was not even trying to hide his fear.

"Broadcast how Warlord? We have no power!" came the voice of one of the technicians whose fear of the situation had overcome the fear of the Warlord that had kept him silent when Cron-Meck had been forced to speak for him.

"Then…get your suits on! Spread out and warn the others!"

"Our suits are in storage! They aren't on the bridge!"

The Warlord was shocked at this rebuke. In any other situation he would have killed this impudent little toad and consumed him then and there, for the rest of the bridge crew to see. But now all the Warlord could do was howl, "Then go get them! Fool!"

The crewmembers, after a moment's hesitation, ran towards the blast door separating the bridge from the hallway leading to the lower decks. They began grabbing at it, trying to find a way to grip the minute seam where the different sections of the doors met. They pressed in on each other so that those closest to the doors found themselves crushed by those behind them. Dozens of clawed hands scraped their way across the hard cold metal in vain.

"Worms!" the Warlord shouted. He lifted his own clawed hands into the air and with one violent motion used the Gift to toss the bridge crew aside. These weaklings were barely Rakatans, he thought to himself. How could the Council blame him when he had been given such imbeciles, the refuse of the grand fleets? He reached out with his mind, finding the space between the doors, and giving that thin sliver of air his full attention and deepest concentration, began to push the doors aside. If the power had been one such a feat would have taxed even the Warlord, but even without the machines pushing the blast doors together they were too heavy for the rest of the Rakatans to move using the Gift. But for the Warlord it took only a few seconds to widen the gap between the doors so that the bridge crew could stream out into the hallway.

They moved swiftly after that, the Warlord in the lead, towards the supply room. It took only a few seconds but as the door to the room opened the ship shook violently. A second later it shook again, after which it was as though a hurricane was loosed on the command deck. Several of the bridge crew were swept off their feet and sucked down the hallway with the wind. A few more kept themselves upright only by grabbing onto the doorframes around them. It did not matter; they would be dead in moments from asphyxiation. The transports had done as the Warlord feared. Though they had been destroyed in the process they had torn through the hull at several points on each ship. Had the ships still had power then force fields would have automatically gone up containing the resulting depressurization. But with the power down most of those on each deck exposed were killed. Only those behind doors or somehow already in their pressurized space suits survived. The Warlord acted quickly to ensure that he was among their number. At the first impact he pulled himself into the storage room and quickly used the Gift to close the door, consigning all but a few of his bridge crew who had made it in with him to certain death. This mattered little to him. The weaklings would not have been useful in a fight anyway.

And it was a fight the Warlord was preparing for as he put his pressurized suit on. The bases below had been sacked, that much was clear now. It was the only way for the Sith to have gotten their hands on so many ships. And those bases had pressurized suits; only a few in each, but if the Sith had taken all the bases they would have enough for a boarding party for each cruiser. The Warlord was confident his warriors would repel these invaders. He did not know how many decks had been depressurized, but it could not have been all of them. Those warriors on the uncompromised decks would be suiting up now, ready to come to his aid. A single stout Rakatan warrior was worth a hundred Sith dogs. Everyone knew that. He had only to wait for his forces to come to him, and he would triumph over the Sith in hand-to-hand combat. Then he would set them to repairing their ships. That process was actually already on its way. The ships repaired themselves. In some ways they were living things themselves, animated by the same power that gave the Rakatans the Gift. The same power which had assembled the ships in the depths of the Star Forge. He had only to wait, and victory could be found.

He waited for hours. Waited for his warriors. Waited for the Sith. Waited for the ship to start showing signs of life. While he waited his men were slowly and methodically butchered. After the third wave of ships, which had taken out his engines, the second wave had returned to tear through his hulls. Then a fourth wave brought the Massassi, outfitted in modified Rakatan pressurized suits, just as the Warlord had guessed. But they did not charge mindlessly into the ships. Instead they floated around the exterior, cutting here and there with the spears seized from dead Rakatan warriors, until every deck of the ship was exposed to the vacuum of space. Then they went, deck by deck and sealed the doors behind which the remaining Rakatans hid. The Warlord's soldiers had not flocked to him as he had anticipated. Most of them had no idea what was going on during the battle, and had not known to get themselves to their suits. The suffocated quickly. The remainder suffocated slowly, behind doors melted shut. But the ship had begun to repair itself. There were limits to the level of functionality that could be achieved by this self-repair process, but the ships would regain power, and when they did, it would be Sith on the bridges of each one.

The Warlord had charged out of the storage room in which he had waited for help that never came. He killed a few of the huge Massassi warriors that had been trying to seal him in, but had been brought down by the lightning from their stolen Rakatan spears. He had not been worth one hundred Sith.

There was no moment when Gran-Nock realized that the Sith had won. He had hoped to see the ships explode. He hoped that someone up there would realize what the Sith were trying to do, realize the horrible consequences of their success, and make the sacrifice he had attempted to make and scuttle the fleet. But they apparently lacked either the wisdom to see what must be done or the will to do it. So Gran-Nock sat there watching the great ships drift. He wondered at how unremarkable this moment seemed from his vantage point. No subject race had ever been so successful in an uprising. No subject race had ever gotten their hands on a ship with hyperdrive. Could the Sith use the Star Map? He did not know. Most Rakatans could not. There were dangers hidden within them that many could not face and many more preferred not to. Once it had been necessary to face the specter of the ghosts of the navigators, but now one could rely on computers to plot a course home. It would take longer of course, but it will still work.

That meant that the Sith, once they got the starships working again would be a few months at most from Lehon. If they could find it that is. One could always reconstruct the location of Lehon from the navigational logs, but that was a time-consuming process even for the technologically adept. Prior to this mission Gran-Nock would have thought it beyond the abilities of the Sith. Now he felt no certainty.

"You came to conquer, perhaps to eradicate us," his captor said. "And now, now you know fear."

Gran-Nock looked up at the Sith and responded wearily, "Why?"

The Sith looked surprised for a moment. "How can you ask that? You enslave us and you ask me why we rebel?"

"Why did you take me prisoner? You learned nothing from me. This plan…this plan you must have had in place before I got here. Why didn't you kill me?"

The Sith nodded. Gran-Nock imagined he saw a hint of respect in his face, but what did he know of what respect looked like in the face of this creature?

"You are right that we did not need you for this. Some of the occupiers here were very helpful in the development of our plan, I must tell you. Some more than they knew. Of course there were the weaklings who told us how to pilot your vessels, and how your great ships worked. They told us anything we needed in order to make the pain stop. There were some who were stronger, and even they told us much, though they did not realize it."

Gran-Nock simply looked back at the ground. He did not want to see that gloating expression anymore.

"You realized the potential hole in our plan. I saw it in your mind. I just sent many of my own people to die, destroyed almost all of the vessels we captured at your bases, and if the commander of your fleet had truly understood his situation, he could have initiated the self-destruct sequence. Even without power they could have used the Force to collapse the reactor, and taken our prize from us. But we knew he wouldn't. We knew the thought of our victory in this battle would not occur to him. How could he lose to animals? It was surprising, how often that word came up in my conversations with your brothers and sisters. The ones who gave us information on your ships, they of course had the minds of slaves. Even in their innermost thoughts they had surrendered and did not think of us as animals. They thought of us as masters. I found them sickening. To think that we had been enslaved by such creatures. But the strong ones, even in their pain they remained bewildered. They could not believe they had fallen into our hands, that their fortresses had been breached, their warriors killed. By animals. And who goes down with their ship to save their people from animals?"

Gran-Nock did not need to look at the Sith to know he was smiling. He knew also that the Sith was correct. He had seen it during his own time stationed here, the disdain for the natives. Everything about the occupation was designed to keep the Sith aware of their inferiority, and so every occupier was equally certain of their own inestimable superiority, right up until their inferiors killed them. As Gran-Nock looked down at the stumps where his arms and legs ended he wondered whether he was any different?

"But to answer your question, I took you prisoner because you lived. I still have many questions. Questions neither the strong nor the weak of your kind on this world could answer. You have many worlds, you Rakatans. Those other prisoners had been to some of them, but they are all dead now, and more importantly they had only ever been occupiers. They spoke of guard duty on Manaan, on Kashyyyk, Dantooine, Tatooine. They did not speak of war. You sent us your children and your weaklings, while your strength was reserved for your great war. I would know of the great war, how it is fought, and who fights it."

Gran-Nock stayed silent through all of this. He had to start disciplining himself to keep silent. To give away nothing, either with his words or his thoughts. "Now I know what he wants, I know what I must not give him. If I frustrate him enough he will kill me, as he killed those others. And I will die unsullied by betrayal," he said to himself.

"You will tell me what I want to know Gran-Nock, because I need to know it," his captor continued. "The Sith have arrived on the galactic stage, it is time we knew the players."