The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 24

"So, you have taken the coward's way out," came that terrible voice. Gran-Nock lay on his raft on a sea that did not exist, beneath a blue sky unmarred by ships or satellites. He had been there for most of the day. He preferred it there. His ability to use the Gift had increased, but more and more he wondered what he ought to do with it. At first his goal had been to die. Then at least his torment would end. Later, as his strength increased, he had thought to attack his captors. He would still die, but he would take a few of them with him. For a moment he had considered trying to kill Adas. He was not as strong as the Sith, far from it. But he was stronger than Adas believed, and perhaps the Sith would return with his guard down.

And return he had, while Gran-Nock drifted, unaware and uncaring of what was going on around him. Thoughts of killing and of dying had mostly left him in the last few days. Or were they weeks? He could no longer tell. His time was spent on the sea he had constructed for himself. He would spend time thinking about his own past, savoring old memories and the few more recent ones that brought him happiness. He supposed it was still a good idea to try to die, but he also supposed that would take care of itself soon enough. While his facility with the Gift was as strong as it ever was, his body was growing noticeably weaker. The muscles that had once graced his warrior body were gone. He could see bones where he had not seen them since childhood. He moved mostly by using the Gift now, which was good. He was not sure how high or how many times he could lift his arms or legs using the atrophied muscles that were left to him.

So now Adas was here, for the first time in a very long while, and his guard had not been down. He had approached silently, masking not only the sound of his arrival, but also the strength of his Gift. Did he anticipate what Gran-Nock had been planning? If so, why come down again? It didn't matter though. Gran-Nock did not intend to hurry his death. His days or weeks of drifting had convinced him, for reasons he could not state, that he needed to stay alive for now. The end was coming, but it was not here, and it would not be hurried. It would happen when it was supposed to happen, of that Gran-Nock felt sure. And that certainty brought him peace.

"You have retreated into your mind, have you?" Adas asked. "We know of this tactic. In the past there were Sith who did such things."

Adas lifted Gran-Nock's body using his hands, not the Force. He did not need any help, so emaciated was the Rakatan.

"They would be taken by their enemies, and they would be tortured. And instead of fighting, struggling against what was being done to them, they would use the Force to escape the pain. Such techniques had been taught in the past. Those teachers were exterminated. Those who used such techniques were starved to death, for it was beneath the dignity of a true Sith to kill such a loathsome creature. Retreat is not the way of the Sith. That is not how you become strong. You fight and you struggle against all that stands in your way. If you win through you are stronger, and if you fail, well, then," Adas paused for effect, "you were weak and now the Sith are stronger that you are gone."

Adas dropped Gran-Nock again. Wasted away to leathery skin and brittle bones as he was, the pain of hitting the floor was greater than it would have been when his confinement began. He grimaced, but did his best to hide the pain from Adas.

"That was the way of things. Sith fought Sith, and the Sith grew stronger. No one really knows how long it went on like that. Who was there to keep track of the years? To tell the stories? Who would choose to live a life telling the stories of the conquests and victories of others? And who would listen to such a pathetic creature, were he to exist? And so we were, living in our scattered tribes, content in our ways, proud of our strength," Adas paused again, "until you showed up."

Adas walked towards the opening of the cave, but turned around and sat down to face Gran-Nock, as he had in their first meeting.

"You made a mockery of our strength. It was clear you had come to conquer us, so we attacked you. We attacked, each of us in our own way. There were so many of us and so few of you. How could we fail? So without strategy, without even tactics we came at you. Some warriors would attack alone, some would attack in small groups, if there was more than one of you to take on. We were thinking that you were like us. We thought you were trying to test yourselves against us, to either prove your strength or die. But that isn't why you came was it? Why did you come? Was it just to slaughter us? You did a fine job of it. Thousands upon thousands of Sith came at you in those first years. Do you know how many you killed? I don't. We didn't even know how many of us there were back then. We had no government, no ruler who could give someone the job of knowing how many he ruled. It took a while for us to figure out that we could not beat you, not if we kept treating you like us. Not if we stayed as we had been."

Adas seemed less agitated than he had in their past meetings. But Gran-Nock wondered, was that only because he himself was less agitated? Had his own anger and fear clouded his perceptions? Was he only now seeing Adas aright? Gran-Nock thought for a second, while Adas stayed silent, lost in some thought of his own. No, the Rakatan thought to himself, this was real. The Sith was calmer. The aggression was still there, but there was something else. Gran-Nock realized that Adas was happy. They have had some success, Gran-Nock thought to himself. Something to make up for the disappointments from earlier. He supposed he should try to find out what that success was. It was his duty after all. But to think of his duty now made Gran-Nock weary. The war he had sworn to fight seemed so pointless now. But, he admitted, it remained his duty all the same.

"You speak as though you were around back then, when my people invaded," Gran-Nock asked. Best to draw him out with stories he would likely want to tell.

Adas, shaken by the question from his own ruminations, locked his eyes on Gran-Nock. But Gran-Nock was right, this was a story Adas wanted to tell.

"Yes. I was young then. I had not yet made my name. I had victories to be sure, but not enough that I was known across Korriban. Not enough that your people would have come across my name at any point. No Sith before the invasion was coming from great distances to challenge me, no matter how much I wanted them to. I already knew that there was none quite like me among my people. I had conquered those around me. Taken control of my tribe and bent it to my will. Sought out other tribes and subdued them. Even then I did not see the purpose of making corpses when I could make servants. Others feared to leave their defeated enemies alive. What if they turned on you? I knew that if they turned on me I would simply crush them a second time. Let them unite their strength if they had no shame, for even then they would have no victory. My name was small, but my tribe was large. Larger perhaps at that time than any on the planet, given how murderous other aspiring warriors could be."

"When your people came, I held my tribe back. There were those I had defeated who were anxious for a chance to reclaim their status. They could not defeat me, they knew that, but they hoped they could defeat one of you. I knew better. I had waited and watched. I knew that the least of you was stronger than all but the best of us. And I saw you fight enough to know that you were not here for glory, or the chance to show your prowess. I saw you blow up whole tribes because one of their number attacked you. All they wanted the chance to return home in glory, and after you destroyed them you destroyed their home too. It would have gone on that way, if I had not brought a stop to it. My people would have dashed themselves against you again and again, and you would have slaughtered tribe after tribe, until one day the world would be empty. Empty of all but you. Would that have made you happy? To wipe us out?"

"No," Gran-Nock answered quietly.

"Then why? Why come? Why stay? What was the point of it?" Adas asked. His tone struck Gran-Nock as strange. The Sith sounded relieved. Relieved at what? At his answer that the Rakatans had not come here to kill all the Sith, at least not at first? Surely Adas would have known that. Then it occurred to Gran-Nock that it was not his answer, but the opportunity to ask the follow-up question that had brought Adas relief. This question, the question 'Why?', was the point of this conversation. Adas was relieved to have drawn Gran-Nock out, just as Gran-Nock was trying to draw Adas out. Why did Adas want to know the answer to this question in particular? Gran-Nock knew the time to puzzle of that question was later, for now he had his own questions that needed answering and for that he had to keep the conversation going.

"I am just a warrior. I am not warlord. Reasons are not given to warriors, like me. All we get are orders," he said.

Adas shook his head in annoyance. "That is nonsense!" he barked. "You do not need to be a leader to know why things are done. What brought you here? Why did you stay? What was it? Is there some resource on Korriban that you wanted? We never saw evidence of that. No mining, no cultivation of crops, no hunting of the creatures here. Was it us? Did you want us? All you did was kill us. You never took us as slaves. What was it? What were you doing here?"

Gran-Nock thought for a moment before answering. Adas was right. These were the questions every warrior asked, though they would never be answered by those in command. These questions were discussed in the barracks at night, joked about while on patrol, seethed over whenever news came from home about something you missed because you were stationed on some worthless rock.

"We found you without looking for you. We simply set out into the darkness, hoping to find new worlds, so we could make them ours," Gran-Nock paused briefly when he noticed Adas' reaction to what he had said. Surprise? Worry? What was it the Sith was feeling? Adas took the momentary pause as a chance to interrupt.

"But why stay? Once you got here what did you want?"

"To rule you."

"But why?" Adas growled.

"Because if we didn't you would exist, and not be ruled. Nothing can be allowed to be that. What we do not rule is a threat. Threats must be destroyed. We conquered you because you were here. There is no deeper reason I can give you."

Adas considered this answer for a moment. "So when your fleet returns, this fleet you promise will destroy my world, and kill all my people, and it has done its work it will what? Just go? When there are no Sith left to rule or to live free, your interest in this system will cease? There was nothing in this sector you wanted our planet for? No enemy you were trying to outmaneuver? No supply line you were trying to secure?"

Gran-Nock shook his head.

Adas seemed genuinely perplexed for a moment and then laughed, seemingly without meaning to. "So there was no reason for any of it." At that he turned and walked out.

Gran-Nock sat for a while thinking of the Sith's questions. What information was he trying to get and why? The desire for the information was new, as was this more serene attitude on Adas' part. They were connected. Whatever success they had achieved had created the need for information. But what information had he given Adas? Gran-Nock thought over what the Sith had said. Over and over again he replayed his captor's words in his mind. And he kept getting stuck on one of the last things he had said. Adas had kept asking Gran-Nock why the Rakatans had come here. Here to the planet Korriban? But at the end Adas had asked about the system, and the sector. He wasn't asking about Korriban in particular. Maybe he wasn't asking about it at all. Had the Sith already given up on his home world? Did he understand the counterattack was inevitable, and that the genocide of his people was assured? And if he did what hope did he hold out?

Sector. System.

Adas was thinking about more than his planet. He was thinking about other planets in the system and in the sector. He wanted to know what the Rakatans were interested in. Why? Because he wants to know if, after we kill all the Sith on Korriban, we are going to stay. Stay where? On Korriban, in the system, in the sector? The only way it could help Adas to know this is if the Sith would survive the attack on Korriban, which they could do if they had found their way to other planets. Travel to other planets in the star system was possible with the ships they had captured. But hyperspace jumps were not, not without the Star Map. But no other planets in the Korriban system supported life, so that couldn't be it. What then?

Then everything fell into place. When Gran-Nock had mentioned striking out into the darkness, Adas had reacted. Was it fear? Fear of an un-plotted hyperspace jump? Of the idea of an un-plotted jump? Gran-Nock had trouble believing Adas would be scared of an idea. No, Gran-Nock realized, it was him bringing it up that scared Adas. Why? Because it was getting too close. Too close to the truth, the truth that the Sith had escaped their star system by making a blind hyperspace jump. They had found another world, another world in the sector. Adas wanted to know whether the Rakatans were going to stay in the system because the world was close enough that the Rakatan fleet might detect the Sith on this other world. This was the victory. Perhaps he had hoped at first to bring war on the Infinite Empire, but Adas now seemed to just be trying to save his people from extinction. They had looked for Celestials and failed, and now they wanted to run and hide from the death that was coming for them.