The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 15

Fa-Rush stood facing the elevator while he unconsciously smoothed his vibrantly colored tunic. He had not had a personal audience with Zhed-Hai since their return to Lehon. He had assumed that their relocation had meant a new phase of Zhed-Hai's work, a phase in which he, Fa-Rush, would take a larger role. It was certainly a mark of distinction to have been the personal assistant to one of the chief Elders in his work on Tatooine, but he had always known that the project there was only part of Zhed-Hai's work, and, more importantly, everyone else knew it too. Zhed-Hai had research stations on most of the worlds in the Empire, and while Tatooine certainly received more of his active attention than the others did, Fa-Rush had only been his assistant for that one base. But now that Zhed-Hai had returned to Lehon it seemed as though he might be consolidating his work. Certainly there were more specimens to be found in Zhed-Hai's massive compound here on the home world than there had ever been before, even if most of them were the singularly unremarkable natives of Tatooine. Fa-Rush had never, in all the years he had worked for Zhed-Hai on that planet, understood his fascination with the natives. They did not seem useful in any way, certainly nothing to compare with his previous breakthroughs.

And perhaps the Elder was past his prime when it came to scientific discoveries. It would not matter, not to Fa-Rush. Zhed-Hai's discoveries had brought him onto the Council of Elders, and kept him on it longer than all but Soaf-Rushk. He had been able to shepherd generations of military leaders through their careers, place them on the Council themselves, and then, after they died young the way military leaders tended to, decide which of their own protégés would succeed them. That was the true source of his current power. Half the governors and generals owed their positions to their patron Zhed-Hai. Nearly half anyway. And if Fa-Rush was known to be his chief assistant that would make him, well not the second most powerful person in the Empire exactly. Fa-Rush supposed Soaf-Rushk was the second most powerful person in the Empire, though some uncultured swine, unfamiliar with the way politics worked certainly thought him to occupy the prime position. But he was certainly no lower than second, on that all agreed. And there was no way being the assistant to a member of the Council of Elders made you more powerful than those Elders themselves. But to be the chief partner in Zhed-Hai's labors would put Fa-Rush right under those illustrious names. And, young as he was, many would naturally assume that it would be Fa-rush who would take over Zhed-Hai's truly massive patronage network when the already quite old Rakatan finally passed on. After all, Zhed-Hai had never had children, had never even taken a mate, so who else would succeed him if not a trusted servant? That expectation was power all on its own.

But it all hinged on the expected appointment. Zhed-Hai had recalled the staff from his other research stations, and so all of those whose position was technically equal to Fa-Rush's own were here on Lehon as well, though some of them hadn't seen the Elder they served in years. They all seemed to realize that while technically their status was equal with his, his longer time serving alongside Zhed-Hai meant they were not equals, that he had a preferred position. But every day that went by without Zhed-Hai explicitly recognizing that position cut into the aura of authority Fa-Rush was attempting to maintain. The others must not start to think of themselves as his rivals. They must think of themselves as the future beneficiaries of his largesse. And so he needed to make his move today. Zhed-Hai would be there soon. He had been overseeing something or other that Fa-Rush knew nothing about, a fact that by itself worried him, and it was time to be more direct. Not fully direct of course. To ask for the position would be an unthinkable transgression. But time was not in great supply for Fa-Rush.

It was as he imagined different conversational scenarios and how he could cleverly raise the idea of his promotion in each of them that the doors opened, and Zhed-Hai strode out. Despite the fact that Fa-Rush had been waiting in the hallway for an hour for just this moment, his focus on preparing his own clever comments meant that he was taken by surprise and Zhed-Hai had already walked past him, without a word, before Fa-Rush managed to say anything. Zhed-Hai walked with a purpose down the hallway with the glass barrier through which you could see the grassland environment under the dome on his left. Fa-Rush, after freezing for a moment in shock, started after him.

"My lord, how glad I am to see you," Fa-Rush said. He immediately regretted this pat greeting.

"How pleasant to be able to make you glad so easily," Zhed-Hai said without turning around or even slowing down.

"I hope that whichever project kept you from the compound was a success," Fa-Rush responded while trying to catch up without seeming to rush.

"What makes you think the project is complete?" Zhed-Hai asked without, seemingly off-handedly.

"Well if it is not, I am happy to offer my services. I have successfully transferred all the specimens from Tatooine without incident. They are sorted by level according to your instructions, and all seem to be thriving," Fa-Rush said with pride.

"Are you saying you have nothing to do, and so are available to help me in other endeavors?" Zhed-Hai queried. His tone made Fa-Rush think that admitting he had nothing to do, which he obviously didn't since he had spent an hour waiting in front of the elevator smoothing out his tunic, would not be advisable.

"No, my lord, there is still much important work to be done. I simply…" Fa-Rush began before being cut off.

"Then you ought to get to that work, Fa-Rush. It would be a shame were you to miss something," Zhed-Hai said pointedly. At that Zhed-Hai turned down a hallway to his right, at the end of which was another elevator. This one, Fa-Rush knew, led down into the lower levels where none of the research staff was permitted to go. There were guards who were permitted to use that elevator, but they were kept strictly separate from the researchers and even the other guards. They worked odd shifts and so arrived and left without having much of an opportunity to talk to anyone, and they did not seek out such opportunities for themselves.

Fa-Rush's mouth gaped as Zhed-Hai entered the elevator and turned around to face Fa-Rush just as the doors closed in front of him. If Fa-Rush did not have the well-developed sense of propriety on which he prided himself, he would have been angered by Zhed-Hai's dismissiveness. Had he not been so humble he would have been thinking of all the ways the Elder depended on his services. Had he not been so loyal he would have been thinking of how much trouble someone in his position could make for Zhed-Hai and all his little projects. The old man was lucky, Fa-Rush thought, that he had such a proper, humble, and loyal servant.

If Zhed-Hai gave Fa-Rush any thought at all after brushing him aside, it was a very short thought. He had been away a long time. Fa-Rush did not know about all of Zhed-Hai's trips back to Lehon, but even with his clandestine journeys it had been weeks since he had found a chance to visit the secure floors of his primary research station. He received daily updates to be sure, but those were insufficient given the danger posed by what Zhed-Hai kept here. The elevator opened onto an empty hallway and Zhed-Hai made his way past the guard station where one of his loyal servants watched over the specimens on this floor. Zhed-Hai entered the lab found at the end of the hallway and went to the console. The life signs were all within acceptable limits. Such data could be transmitted of course, but, given the sensitive nature of the work on this floor, Zhed-Hai preferred not to broadcast what was going on. There were perhaps only a dozen researchers in the Empire who would understand even the surface level of the work Zhed-Hai was engaged in, but even that would be enough to bring the wrong kind of attention.

He moved from the medical console to look at the samples taken for the subjects this week. All reported findings were in line with expectations, just as they had been for the last few months. When the samples had first shown these signs of success Zhed-Hai had been overcome with, well joy was the wrong word, but certainly with the immensity of what he was doing. All he had done since was predicated on this experiment continuing to bear fruit, and it appeared to be. This at least was a relief. But while it helped calm Zhed-Hai's nerves, it was not for the purpose of checking on up on this experiment that Zhed-Hai had come to the secure floors today. He took a look out of the window of the lab, a window that looked down into a large warehouse filled with long tubes of thick, cloudy glass, with thick clusters of cables sprouting from each. Each one contained within it enough to win for Zhed-Hai an execution, if there was any with wit enough to realize what was there.

But for now he had other tasks to attend to. He walked down the stairs connecting the lab to the warehouse and past row after row of tubes until he came to a door. That there was a door there was not something most would see, for it was made to look like any other section of wall. Even the seam where the door met the actual wall was hidden. It would take a great deal of concentration for someone who did not know the door was there to discover it, even by using the Gift. And even having found it most would not be able to open the complex locking mechanism Zhed-Hai had himself created. If that obnoxious, groveling worm Fa-Rush had a week he probably couldn't have figured out the door was there and certainly could not have opened it. But long familiarity made the task easy for Zhed-Hai, and so the door opened, revealing a dimly lit, narrow spiral stairwell, down which Zhed-Hai walked. The door closed behind him just as he reached the first of what would be several obstacles. Each was like the doors to the Star Map temples found on the various worlds of the Empire, though the ones Zhed-Hai had constructed were far more complex. The trick was that there was more than one sequence of moves of the barriers component parts that would open it, but only one of those ways would allow the one opening it to survive. Remembering the correct sequence of moves for each of the barriers would have been difficult even for Zhed-Hai if he did not make this descent so often. Sometimes he did it just to keep the sequences fresh in his mind. This was the price of the security he required. Security not only against prying eyes above, but escapes from below.

When the last barrier unlocked and parted for him Zhed-Hai stepped out into a long, narrow hallway. He knew, when he set the droids to constructing this place, that there would never be any but himself here, and Zhed-Hai did not waste time or resources on needless things. The lights came on as he entered the hallway, though by now Zhed-Hai could have found his way through this corridor with his eyes closed. It was only a few moments until he stood before the door to the room holding his first, and least, of his great secrets. The doors slid apart silently but the being within needed no sound to be aware of Zhed-Hai's arrival. The prisoner could sense Zhed-Hai's approach as surely as Zhed-Hai could sense the prisoner's presence.

The Sith sat alone on the floor of his cell, levitating the one chair he had been provided and turning it end over end in the air. His red skin stood out starkly against both the white tunic and robes he had been provided, and the white floor, ceiling, and walls. He did not react when Zhed-Hai entered the room, but continued to stare at the chair he was spinning with his mind.

"Put it down," Zhed-Hai said quietly, yet firmly.

Rather than place it gently on the floor, the Sith allowed the chair to fall suddenly, where it bounced loudly several times before coming to a rest. The Sith had learned not to disobey, and so he found ways to express his resistance in these petty acts of near defiance.

"What does the king of the lizards wish of me today?" the Sith asked while staring at Zhed-Hai's feet.

Zhed-Hai reached down, grabbed the Sith's face in his clawed hand and forced him to look up, while saying, "As we discussed before, we lizards have no king. We have never had one. Where there are kings there must be slaves, and no Rakatan will ever be a slave again."

The Sith looked into Zhed-Hai's eyes and loathing met loathing. Zhed-Hai considered his defiant stare for a moment before continuing, "But you must have kings, or must have had kings, on the little rock from which I plucked you. Else why would you be so certain that we had them too? So tell me, is there a king of the worms? Did one of you rise above the others?"

"We had kings once. What does that matter now? All that once was you have destroyed," the Sith answered.

Zhed-Hai lifted the Sith up by the jaw, holding him above Zhed-Hai's own head, causing the Sith's legs to dangle in the air. This the Sith bore with calm, for it was not the first time he had received treatment of this kind. He stared straight on over Zhed-Hai's head as the Rakatan spoke.

"So you have been sure to tell me these past few years. So many stories I have had from you about the destruction we wrought, about the complete collapse of your society in the face of our strength. You told the story with such hate that I confess I believed it. What would explain such hate if not just that manner of destruction? And we are so good at causing just that kind of destruction. So good at tearing the worlds we find apart. But now I think you have been telling me lies little Sith. Is that true? Have you been telling your master lies?" Zhed-Hai said.

"No lizard is my master," the Sith hissed in reply. For this he was thrown across the room, his body bouncing from the wall to the floor. As the Sith struggled to rise he groaned, "You are my captor, but not my master."

Zhed-Hai considered the creature before him. He admitted to himself that he had a particular loathing for the Sith and always had. He had never held such contempt for another species. Each in their own way was wondrous to Zhed-Hai. Even the enemy and their servants were such that he could find the beauty, the elegance in them. How could one fail to be impressed by the Celestials after all? But the Sith he had found repugnant upon their first having been described to him, and time had done nothing but deepen his revulsion. It was not physical distaste, or it was at least not entirely physical distaste. Many species were physically unlovely. The smooth, brown glossiness of Myra's skin was as unattractive to Zhed-Hai was it would have been to any Rakatan, but he did not feel the least bit of disgust towards Myra, or any human really. And yes the tendrils dangling from the Sith's face were particularly grotesque, but he suspected this was something he would have overlooked had the species not been so incredibly depraved. And so he knew, at an intellectual level, that his harsh treatment of this prisoner was not justified by any scientific or security consideration. He was acting in part out of hate.

The Sith looked up at Zhed-Hai suddenly, with a smile on his face. The impudent grin spread slowly across the red face, and it was only when it was at its widest that he opened his mouth to say, "They have done it haven't they? They have risen up!"

"Your people have risen up, yes. We have lost control of your world, at the cost of many Rakatan lives. But your grin is as absurd as it is ugly," Zhed-Hai replied coldly.

"Why? May not a warrior take pleasure in a victory? You grind us under your boot and then we are supposed to do what? Push the boot off respectfully? You kill us, and now we kill you. And every one of your kind that we kill is one less ancestor whose blood cries out for vengeance," the Sith said with such triumph in his voice that it sounded a bit like singing.

It was now Zhed-Hai's turn to smile as he knelt down next to the Sith, and leaned his head over him. This familiarity and proximity unnerved the Sith, who was used to being hurt when Zhed-Hai was so close. Zhed-Hai had expected this response and savored it while saying, "Your smile is absurd because there is only one thing that comes of his little rebellion. Your people will be exterminated. The decision has been made. I made it. The fleets will leave soon. They will converge on your world, and they will incinerate it. We might even destroy the planet itself. With enough time and effort we could turn one of your moons into a missile. Perhaps we will save a few of your people as slaves, so they can build the engines, and then take that last ride into the oblivion of your people. It would be poetic. Do your people have poetry?" Zhed-Hai asked. "Well I suppose that does not matter now. However we choose to do it, the day will come when you will be the last Sith in existence. We will see how you smile then."

The Sith fought unsuccessfully to keep the fear from his face. He was able to overcome his initial speechlessness in order to defiantly say, "The Force will not permit it."

"Ahhh yes, the Force," Zhed-Hai said mockingly as he stood up, "The universe does not care about your people. It does not value you. You have no special destiny. Your power has the same source as ours, a quirk in your biology. It is a shame that I will not have more subjects to experiment on from your species. I suppose I shall have to satisfy my curiosity with you."

"What curiosity could I possibly satisfy?" the Sith asked. "You want to know what it is like to live in this empty room? There is much I can tell you about that. That is all I can tell you about, because that is all I do. I sit in this room."

"That won't do. Now that I have caught you lying I know what it sounds like. And you are lying. You were not surprised to hear of this little uprising. You knew it was coming. You hid it from me," Zhed-Hai smiled before continuing, "and that must have been difficult. Very difficult. But you knew this would happen. And that means that your people were planning it. That they were planning it for years, since before I acquired you."

"Plan? A plan years in the making? You do not understand my people," the Sith said as he sat up and pushed himself against the wall, clearly still sore from bouncing off of it.

"Yes, this story too I remember. A people too concerned with fighting each other to unify to fight us. There was truth in that story. That was how you hid this from me I suppose. You wrapped your lies in truths. So what was that truth little Sith? Perhaps some of your people genuinely are this way, too short sighted and violent to work together, but others are not? Or perhaps this was how all your people once were. Did something change little Sith?" Zhed-Hai's tone had changed as his curiosity had gotten the better of his anger.

"Nothing!" the Sith barked.

"Something changed. A disunited people could not do what yours has done. You lack the strength for it. How many thousands did you lose in killing our hundreds? Someone or something marshalled those forces," Zhed-Hai replied, seemingly without taking umbrage at the disrespect clear in the Sith's voice.

"If they were able to come together in this way, it was without my knowledge. I had no part in such things, even before that brutal guard smuggled me off my home world," the Sith said with more control over his tone.

"Another lie. You have hidden things from me. You," Zhed-Hai said with disgust. "It is not just the clever little half-truths. You have enough strength to keep some of yourself hidden. I suppose even now, knowing what I do, if I reached into your mind I would find nothing of what I want. You would resist, and overcoming you would destroy your mind and with it the information I sought. A pity. But that means you must be exceptional for your people. That guard said as much, after I took you from him. You were almost too much for him to subdue and control. Did you know how close you were to escape when it was just you and him? He almost feared you. It was a good thing the money was so good, else he might have given up on the task."

"I hope I cost you dearly," the Sith growled grimly.

"You cost me nothing. He was a fool. He knew I was paying for secrecy, and yet he somehow expected to be allowed to walk away from our transaction. As though I acquired what I have by being wasteful," Zhed-Hai disclosed. As he did so he turned away and walked towards the door. As he reached it he looked over his should and said, "It is lucky for you that I do not throw away what might be useful. I will come to see you again soon."

At that Zhed-Hai walked out of the room, the door sliding shut behind him. He had lost his temper to be sure, but it had nonetheless been a fruitful meeting. His guesses had been confirmed by the lies the Sith had chosen to tell. He was trying to avoid talking about the agency responsible for the unity of his people. That meant there was a potential weakness there. Was the source of the unity unstable in some way? Or was the source so unique and exceptional that the unity could not survive without it? He was certain he could get no such detail from his prisoner. Other sources of information would be required.

He considered for a moment going deeper, to seek out the residents of the lowest levels of his facility, and their knowledge. The moment's consideration was sufficient to rule out the idea. Zhed-Hai was tired. Much of the work he had been doing since returning to Lehon could not be trusted to subordinates, especially creatures like Fa-Rush. Even more fatiguing had been his long training sessions with Myra. Going to the deepest levels of the facility without sufficient preparation was dangerous.