The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 9

Gran-Nock did not know how long he had been left alone. Weeks at least, perhaps more than a month. After the Sith capture of the fleet the great black Sith, Adas was his name Gran-Nock now knew, had come to speak to him a few times. The first time he had asked his questions about the great war, and Gran-Nock had refused to answer. This had resulted in the imposition of pain, to which Gran-Nock responded by giving evasive and uninformative answers, which was followed by more pain. By the end of that first, long meeting Adas had gotten from Gran-Nock that the enemy were called the Celestials, that the Celestials had controlled Lehon for thousands of years, and had acted primarily through intermediaries, the Kwa. He knew that the Rakatans had thrown off the Celestial yoke in a sudden uprising that lasted less than a year. It had been while pushing Gran-Nock for details about the uprising that Adas had brought the first meeting to an end, apparently intrigued by what he had heard, but also frustrated at how resistant Gran-Nock was to telling him anything.

The next couple of meetings has been shorter, though similar amounts of torture and pain were squeezed into these abbreviated sessions. Adas' frustrations were growing, and Gran-Nock did not know why. Certainly he was no more intransigent than before. If anything, Gran-Nock was sure, his defenses were probably crumbling. Rakatan warriors were not trained to resist interrogation. Rakatan warriors were almost never captured. In the great war they either died, the most common outcome of an engagement, or survived the death or flight of the enemy. Celestials did not take prisoners any more than they sought out battles. And the garrisons had never experienced anything like the defeat that had been visited upon them on Korriban. But while Gran-Nock had not been prepared for interrogation, he was no stranger to pain. Pain was the currency of warriors in training. You absorbed it while young, stored it up as you grew in strength, and doled it out once you were in a position of authority. Gran-Nock knew that pain eventually broke everyone, so he assumed that his resistance was growing weaker over time. But despite what he was sure was his flagging efforts to resist, Adas was clearly growing more angry not less. The last meeting was quite short, and quite painful.

Since then Gran-Nock had been alone. He did not know how long he had been in his cave. He could not see the sky. Even if he could he did not remember how long it took Korriban to turn on its axis, so tracking the sun and stars would have done him no good. He had kept track of meals and how often he slept, but he did not know how long he was sleeping, or how long he was awake. He was also fairly sure that the food was delivered at irregular intervals. It always happened while he was asleep anyway, so he didn't know for sure when it got there. But he was certain it had been several weeks at least since he had been captured.

But then Adas appeared again. In the past Adas had appeared with a joyful flourish. As his anger built, it had been with a more and more intimidating manner that he opened their discussion. This time, however, his arrival was marked by a quietness that Gran-Nock found unnerving.

"You will tell me how your ships work," said Adas in a whisper that sounded like a hiss.

"I will not," was Gran-Nock's response. The pain came immediately after, as he had expected. It came in the form of intense compression of his body, followed by his limbs, or what remained of them, being pulled in opposing directions. This cycle was repeated as he was flung around the room. In the breaks between the pain, Gran-Nock often wondered how Adas decided when to stop.

"You will," Adas said. Gran-Nock felt his lungs compress. Adas did this occasionally, kept him unable to breathe just long enough for the panic to set in, then releasing him.

"I can't. I am a warrior. I don't know how the ships work. They fix themselves usually. If it is something that can't self-repair then there is no one on this planet who can help," he said through ragged breaths. He realized that he was perhaps giving more information than he should, but he didn't think admitting ignorance could really cause much trouble. At a level Gran-Nock himself could not appreciate consciously though, he was speaking more partly because the weeks without contact with another being had been getting to him. He had reached the point where he did not want Adas to simply turn around and leave, despite the pain their discussions involved.

"Impossible. There must be people who can repair major damage, who understand how the machines work. Someone builds and maintains those things!" Adas raised his voice for the first time, and Gran-Nock could hear the desperation.

"No. When a ship suffers significant damage we just replace it," Gran-Nock replied.

"Lies!" Adas threw Gran-Nock against the cave wall and held him there, all without touching him. "What if you became stranded on this world because your ships broke down? Why would anyone replace what can be fixed? No one would be so wasteful!"

"Ships went back and forth from Korriban every few weeks. If somehow all the ships broke at once, they wouldn't have had long to wait, and they would have had more than enough supplies. But none of that mattered because our ships don't just break. If they suffer severe damage we replace them. If they grow old we replace them." Gran-Nock wanted to stress this fact. He knew that Adas was smart enough to realize that what he was describing wasn't waste, at least not from the Rakatan perspective. It was, rather, a sign of the extent of Rakatan resources. A starship was nothing. If defective it would be thrown out and replaced, as one would a shirt or pair of boots. He wanted the Sith to realize that what to the Sith were technological marvels, were to Rakatans merely tools. He wanted them to think about what they were trying to take on. He wanted Adas afraid.

Adas let Gran-Nock go and sat down on the cave floor, crossing his legs and looking down for a moment. Gran-Nock managed, after a few tries, to sit himself up. He still could not maneuver very well with his arm and leg stumps, though he had stopped being surprised when he woke to find his hands and feet gone. For the most part anyway.

Adas looked up. "This is because of your Star Forge, yes?"

Gran-Nock stopped breathing and felt a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with torture. One of the cowards Adas had caught, one of those weaklings in the planetary garrison had told the Sith about the Star Forge. Fear and contempt swirled through Gran-Nock's mind. If the Sith figured out the connection between the Star Forge and the Star Maps, what could they not do? What devastation could they not wreak?

"I do not need your answer. I have heard all I need to about the Star Forge. And not just from one of you. Over and over again your people gave up that secret. With how well you guarded the secret of its existence from us during your occupation I would have thought it would have taken more to get your warriors to talk about it. 'Warriors' is perhaps the wrong term for what you left here for us. Such weaklings. When I was young, bringing the tribes under my command, I thought that you were just a weak people, that we were stronger. Over time it became clear that was not the case. We came to understand that those you sent to guard us were only those you thought were unworthy to stand in battle. I wondered then whether your strength had blinded you, whether your power had made you so arrogant that you could not see ours. But that is not the truth is it? You left the weak here because you needed all your strength. Because your enemy is so much more powerful than you. But that meant that all your weaklings, who were so quick to tell us of this great factory in the sky, they could tell me nothing about that enemy. They never faced them. They never faced anything." Adas stared at Gran-Nock for a few seconds before asking, "But you have, haven't you Gran-Nock?"

Gran-Nock did not know what to say. He did not know how the Sith knew this about him, nor could he imagine what might be at stake in admitting this truth. Could it hurt anything for him to admit that he had been in a battle with a Celestial? There had been thousands of them that day, and just one of the enemy. Gran-Nock had barely caught a glimpse of the Celestial. That was, he thought ruefully, part of how he survived when so many others did not. There were thousands of warriors like him who had survived such encounters, the lucky few who could say they had won a battle against the godlike creatures the Infinite Empire hunted.

"I saw it in your mind while you slept. Even unconscious your mind has safeguards though. A discipline many of your fellow stationed on this world lacked. From them I got much of what I needed. The torture was just to fill in a few missing pieces. From you I got only images. Images of glorious beings, luminescent and mighty, being brought down by you lizards. When your party butchered my followers did it not seem familiar to you? We came in waves and you slaughtered us in waves, but in the end it was we who were victorious. Just as you brought down a god, we brought down far less noble prey. I wonder, what would the gods think of our victory? That fleet I captured, and all those warriors I killed, was that more or less than you would send against one of gods? Did we Sith bring down that which could bring down a god?"

"No," Gran-Nock answered, "There would have been dozens of ships, not three. We wouldn't have sent down a few scouting parties to guide the thousand or so warriors we had onboard those three ships. There would have been thousands upon thousands more." What harm could it cause to tell him this truth? Gran-Nock could not see what these questions were for. He understood why Adas wanted to know about the ships. He imagined the Sith believed he could invade Lehon. Let him think it. Even if he could get those three ships working, the defenses at Lehon would annihilate such a force.

Adas nodded, looking at the ground, lost in thought. Then he asked, without looking up, "Where is the nearest Rakatan world to this one?"

"They are all our worlds!"

"How tiresome," Adas sighed. The crushing feeling came to Gran-Nock again. At the edge of unconsciousness Adas relented, allowing him to breathe again. When Gran-Nock rolled over onto his back he saw Adas was now standing over him.

"Where is the nearest Rakatan world?"

Gran-Nock, through gritted teeth, responded, "Ya-Veen!"

"How far?"

Gran-Nock was for a moment bewildered. "What are you asking?"

Adas backhanded Gran-Nock across the face. It took Gran-Nock a moment to realize that this was the first time punishment had taken the form of physical contact. Prior to this Adas had only used his power from the Gift to torture him. I am close, Gran-Nock thought to himself, close to making him lose control. It will end soon.

"I am asking which planet takes the least amount of fuel to get to! Answer me, you worthless worm!" Adas was yelling now, and Gran-Nock understood at last. He began to laugh. In response Adas picked him up, using his hands again, and threw him back down onto the rock hard enough to force all the air from Gran-Nock's lungs. This put a stop to his laughter but not his joy.

"The engines repaired themselves, but you don't have enough fuel to get to Lehon. That's it isn't it? You want to know where to get fuel." At his Gran-Nock looked up at Adas, who stood above him seething and staring down at him. Gran-Nock stared right back. The façade of calm Adas had maintained throughout their previous sessions had fallen away. He could feel the Sith's anger and hate rising. He could feel the blow that would kill him about to fall. Then, in an instant, the façade was back. Once again Gran-Nock felt nothing from the Sith. Adas turned around and walked towards the exit, but stopped before he got there. He turned back towards Gran-Nock, who thought his chance might not have slipped away after all. Then, to Gran-Nock's frustration, Adas once again sat on the floor, his legs crossed.

"We thought that you must have fuel depots on every world. For the hunt. If you are checking world by world for the Celestials, you must have fuel close at hand."

Gran-Nock, still flush with joy at figuring out the nature of Adas' predicament, felt that if he pushed just a bit harder he could break through Adas' reserve. If he could just bring the anger back, this could all end. He had been close, Gran-Nock was sure of it.

"We don't search world by world you small minded brute! You think you find beings like the Celestials by just popping out above their world and what, looking around? What would you look for? What would you see? What scans could you make to find something like that? You are an insignificant child meddling in affairs you cannot begin to comprehend. You have ships that will run out of fuel after a few jumps, filled with technology you don't understand, and in your blindness you killed everyone on the ship who could tell you about these things. All you have is me, a common warrior. But even I have wit enough to know you couldn't do a damned thing with those ships even if they had unlimited amounts of fuel. The Infinite Empire has thousands of ships. You think you have won? You think you were clever? You are an insect that escaped the hand that swatted it away and you think you have won a conquest?"

Gran-Nock felt his own anger rising. He needed his anger to balance out the fear. The final blow was coming. He was certain of it, but how much of a beating he would take before the end he was not sure of. He did not want to lose his nerve in front of the beast.

But the blows never came. Adas sat in thought, staring past Gran-Nock to the wall behind him, though his expression showed no recognition of him or the wall. After a few moments of this unnerving silence, a smile formed slowly on his face. Now his eyes focused on Gran-Nock's. "So you can't find them with scans? You can't see them? You use the Force to find them then? You must."

Gran-Nock sat stunned, and Adas continued to study his prisoner's face as he said, "And if you can sense them, certainly they can sense you. Not much of a hunt if the quarry doesn't ever run away. And if they can sense you, they can sense us. They will sense us if we call to them, won't they? Good. I have been so looking forward to meeting them, your enemies. I just know we will have so much to talk about."