Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 26

Fa-Rush had never done anything like this. He had always followed the rules, written and unwritten. That was, he had always been assured, the only way to advance. To step out of line, to defy the law, or the will of the Elders, that meant death. And that had worked, that obedience. He had placed himself in the role Zhed-Hai had made for him, and he had advanced. So many of those he had grown up with, the brawny brutes, were just dead bodies strewn about the galaxy. And there he had been, second in command of a whole world. Then came the triumphant return home. Only it wasn't a triumph. It was one insult and indignity after another. From Zhed-Hai's right hand to some afterthought. And following the rules would have left him there. Once you accepted the protection of an Elder, you no longer had a choice about where to bestow your loyalties. This was part of no law. No trial would be called to punish him for what he was doing. Zhed-Hai, could he see where Fa-Rush was, would simply send someone to kill him. If he even remembers who you are, Fa-Rush thought bitterly. That was foolish. He remembered Fa-Rush; he just didn't care. And ordinarily that would not have mattered. Ordinarily he would not have been able to do anything about the sudden stop to his climb up the ladder. Zhed-Hai was too powerful to challenge. Even if he had been able to secure the help of the generals, it would have done him no good. None of them would cross him. Since his return Zhed-Hai had clearly taken his place as the most powerful Elder on Lehon.

Not that he did anything with it. The old scientist sat at the top of every social hierarchy. He was invited to every event, his favor sought by all, his approval required for every major undertaking on the home world, even by other Elders on the Council. He should have been out, making his presence known, ensuring that the people knew of his greatness. That is what Elders did. And if Zhed-Hai had done it Fa-Rush would have walked beside him. And then everyone would know how high he had climbed. But no, the most powerful Elder on Lehon stayed isolated in his compound, denying Fa-Rush his moment.

But the most powerful Elder on Lehon was not the same thing as the most powerful Elder. It was to the real power in the Empire that Fa-Rush now traveled. He had spent the previous evening picking the perfect formal tunic and belt. He looked immaculate. The evidence of this was in the eyes of everyone he passed on his way to the spaceport. He caught their eye. Why would he not? Why should he not? He had earned their attention. And he would earn even more of it now. He could feel it, the importance of this event. To be sought out by Soaf-Rushk, the greatest and oldest of all Rakatans, perhaps the greatest Rakatan to ever live, this was an honor surpassing even Fa-Rush's ambitions. To be granted an audience with the reclusive Elder was an event in itself. No one had been called to see him on the Star Forge for years. It was a shame he could not tell anyone, Fa-Rush thought to himself, for what could be better than to be recognized in a way denied to all others? It did not occur to him that if he had been sworn to secrecy that others might have done as he was doing, and been similarly so sworn.

But people would know soon enough, he thought. It was surely for some great purpose that he had been called in this way. How could the purpose not be great, when it was Soaf-Rushk's? The Elder who had discovered how to harness the technology of the Star Maps, and then to turn what had been a simple system of beacons into the greatest weapon the Rakatans had. Hundreds of years of war, of fleets and armies sent out to attack the great Enemy, and every ship, every weapon, every vehicle, every droid, supplied by the Star Forge. Soaf-Rushk had built the empire. Before his discovery the Infinite Empire had been hemmed in. The Enemy had pulled back after the initial century of fighting, leaving most of a sector in their hands, but had seemed so entrenched in their new positions that there was no hope of further expansion, and therefore no hope of safety from the oppressor. The great enemy, the false gods, had come once before to enslave the people of Lehon, and all had thought they would wait until its great warriors let their guard down, and then return. They were patient, the enemy. How could they not be, when they lived forever? They could wait for the Rakatans to soften, to abandon the way of strength that had allowed the Great Rebellion to succeed. They had to be attacked, and it was only Soaf-Rushk who provided the way to do it. What was he planning now? It had been some time since he had announced a major breakthrough, since long before Fa-Rush had been born.

The recent centuries had been testament mainly to the greatness of Zhed-Hai, and if you had asked Fa-Rush a few weeks ago to compare the two great leaders of the Empire, he would have said that Soaf-Rushk was a tired old fool living on past glories, while it was Zhed-Hai who had been the source of the Empire's strength for generations. Now it seemed to Fa-rush that Zhed-Hai' discoveries, while impressive, were, in the grand scheme of things, minor improvements when compared to the glory of the Star Forge. What were big hairy slaves when compared to a machine that could turn the energy of a star into anything its creator could dream of? Kolto was no doubt a help to the warriors on the battlefield, but the Star Forge could great droids that did our fighting for us. Yes, yes, it was quite clear that it was Soaf-Rushk who was the greater servant of the Empire. And if he had gone a long time since his last great service, then it would be Fa-Rush's place to help him bring forward his newest one, whatever it turned out to be.

These thoughts tumbled over themselves in an excited parade across Fa-Rush's mind while he waited in line for his shuttle and then waited on the shuttle for it to take off. It would have been nice to have traveled on one of Soaf-Rushk's personal ships. His ships had their own unique appearance, because the Elder denied ships of their design to the military, and were rarely seen on Lehon. All would have known immediately who had summoned Fa-Rush, and this was, he supposed, the reason they were not sent. This must all remain secret, as had been made clear to him. Fa-Rush guessed that this was out of a desire on Soaf-Rushk's part to not show up Zhed-Hai in public. He knew there was some tension between the two. Everyone knew that. But it had never erupted into any explicit and public breach, as sometimes did happen between other Elders on the Council. Yes, if he were to leave Zhed-Hai's service for Soaf-Rushk's it would all have to be handled very discreetly. He was Zhed-Hai's trusted servant, and so of course there would be embarrassment at his being very publicly courted and poached. Zhed-Hai had earned some consideration for his standing. Discretion was what honor and loyalty demanded here. And, after all, there would be time to show off his new leap in status later.

There were, as usual, no direct flights to the Star Forge. Typically when one left Lehon the first destination was one of the space stations in near orbit. There one could board one of the large ships with hyperdrive, or, as in Fa-Rush's case, board another shuttle for the Star Forge. Having never seen a ship go there, or even seen it advertised as a destination, Fa-Rush did worry on his way up to the space station how he would find the connecting shuttle. He had been told that someone would be waiting for him on the space station. Fa-Rush hoped the welcoming party would not be too conspicuous. He would take the opportunity to tell Soaf-Rushk that he had not needed to send someone for him. This would show both proper humility and how serious Fa-Rush was about maintaining security. It was important to make a good first impression, and Fa-Rush prided himself on his ability to make the right comment at the right moment to achieve the proper effect. He prepared for conversations such as these, doing his best to anticipate the different turns the conversation would take, so as never to be caught off balance. It was true that this preparation almost never worked out very well in his conversations with Zhed-Hai, but the Elder was so peculiar. It was good, Fa-Rush thought, that he would soon be free of him.

As the shuttle slowed to enter the docking bay at the space station, Fa-Rush stood and waited as other Rakatans stood and gathered their belongings. He did not like to rub elbows with such people. They were common and ordinary. Their clothes spoke of dreary jobs supervising droids at some farm somewhere. None were dressed as provocatively as Fa-Rush, with his bold colors and shining metallic belt. None were even entirely clean it seemed to him. He waited for them all to leave the shuttle before he walked away from his seat. He did not have to wait long. Very few Rakatans travelled off world unless they were being assigned to garrison duty or service on one of the fleets, in which case they did not use private transport. His fellow passengers were those Rakatans with neither the intelligence to have been selected for one of the scientific academies, nor Gifted enough to join the military academies, nor able to attach themselves to the personal service of some powerful individual. The fact that Fa-Rush had come very close to being such a Rakatan himself did not prove an obstacle to his disdain.

Last to emerge from the shuttle Fa-Rush looked for the party of guards he assumed would be waiting to escort him. He found no one so he waited. The pilot exited the shuttle and left the hangar through a side door and still Fa-Rush stood waiting, not understanding what he was supposed to do. He looked all over the hangar, despite there being nothing behind which those were sent to greet him could be hiding, no reason for them to hide and no way he could have overlooked their presence if they weren't hiding. All he saw was various gear associated with the shuttle and a few droids. The droids had begun to move around the shuttle, doing some kind of service work on it, or most of them did anyway. One, a boxy unit on wheels sat unmoving by the door to the terminal. Certainly it had not been a droid that was sent to greet him, Fa-Rush thought. So he stood there a while longer until finally the hangar lights went out. It seemed the shuttle was not to be making a return flight anytime soon.

With a sigh, Fa-Rush walked towards the terminal door, and as he approached the waiting droid it turned towards him and beeped. Fa-Rush looked down to see that the boxy contraption had a screen on it. Older model droids often had screens rather than holographic projectors, and this droid certainly looked old enough for that to fit. The screen simply flashed the words 'Follow me.' Then the droid began to roll, not towards the terminal door, but towards the exit the pilot had used. The door opened to reveal a narrow hallway. Fa-Rush followed the droid as it took turns he lost track of. He saw no one in the hallways, which surprised him. Hadn't the pilot come down this way? Where had he gone? Was he the only one back here? Wouldn't this be where the other pilots were? The mechanics? Maybe the mechanics were all droids. Fa-Rush's questions were cut off when they finally reached a door at the dead end of a hallway. It opened to reveal what appeared to be a storage room. The droid entered but Fa-Rush hesitated. Was this droid taking him to the right place? Was he even supposed to have followed this droid? Perhaps the honor guard he had anticipated had simply been beyond the exit to the terminal. The thought occurred to him that it was not Soaf-Rushk who had sent this droid, but rather Zhed-Hai. This thought frightened him enough that he let out a little squeak. This drew the attention of the droid, which had simply been sitting still, facing, to the extent that the little box on wheels could face anything, the wall opposite the door.

It turned towards Fa-Rush, a motion requiring a somewhat ridiculous looking three-point turn, and made an incomprehensible chirping noise. Fa-Rush knew there were those who could understand the rudiments of droid communication, but he could not, and so he stared at the little machine blankly. The screen on the front of the droid's body lit up and words formed on it saying, 'This is the way to Soaf-Rushk.'

Still Fa-Rush hesitated. The thought that Zhed-Hai had discovered his betrayal and had taken steps to prevent it would not leave his mind. If Zhed-Hai knew he was here, then the Elder also knew why. He would know that Fa-Rush had come to meet Soaf-Rushk. This could be a trap. If he stepped into that room what would happen? Would the droid kill him? Fa-Rush thought not. It had no arms and no visible weapons. Surely Fa-Rush could handle this little machine even if it had concealed weapons somewhere. But what else was in that room? It was dark, who knows what waited in the shadows. It could be one of those horrible furry beasts Zhed-Hai had created. Those creatures did not have the Gift but were physically powerful enough to rip a Rakatan warrior apart if they came upon one unaware. If he stepped into that room, would it be the last thing he did?

The droid made a few more meaningless beeps. The screen then asked, 'Do you intend to come to me or not?'

Fa-Rush looked over his shoulder back down the hallway, then turned back to the droid. He felt ridiculous speaking his response to it. Did it even have aural sensors? But it had asked a question, and if the droid was speaking for Soaf-Rushk it would be impertinent to not answer. So he asked, "How do I know you are not sent by my master to kill me?"

The screen changed in response to say, 'If Zhed-Hai knew you were coming here, he would have killed you before you left the surface. It is time to come to me.'

At that the droid turned rolled in reverse towards the back wall, leaving more room for Fa-rush to enter. A kind of invitation, Fa-Rush supposed. It was time to decide what he was going to do. He could turn around and return to Zhed-Hai's service, having done nothing but taking a trip to the local space station. People did that sometimes, didn't they? To see the stars? To get the grand view of Lehon? Anyway Fa-Rush was sure he could be convincing. It would be safe. It would also condemn him to the future of obscurity Zhed-Hai had for some reason chosen for him. It was time to make his mark. So Fa-rush stepped into the room.

The door closed automatically behind him and as soon as it did, a light appeared on the opposite wall in the form of the outline of two rectangles abutting each other. It was coming from behind the walls, through hidden doors. A moment later those doors opened, to reveal what looked like a small elevator. The droid rolled in, still moving in reverse so that Fa-Rush could see the screen. Once it was inside the elevator the screen said, 'Get in.'

Fa-Rush obeyed, stepping quickly into the elevator. The doors closed quickly behind him and the lights in the elevator, along with the screen on the droid immediately went out. Fa-Rush felt the elevator begin to move downward through the station. After a few seconds it came to a stop and the lights turned back on as the door opened to reveal another hallway, this one with no doors except for the one at the very end. The droid began to roll towards that door immediately after the elevator opened and Fa-Rush followed. When they reached the end of the hallway the door slid open and behind it was a darkened hangar. Or it least it seemed like a hangar. It had a ship in it, though in the dark it was hard to make out the ship's profile very well. The problem was there appeared to be no way for the ship to leave. The hangar Fa-Rush's shuttle had docked at was open to space on one side, with an airlock that connected to the shuttle door. There was no airlock here, just a ship, and seemingly no way to get that ship into space.

Despite this the droid rolled right towards the ship. With its lights back on the droid illuminated enough of the ship that Fa-Rush could see an open boarding ramp, towards which the droid was heading. With no one else around signaling that he ought to be doing something else, Fa-Rush hurried to follow the droid, which had started rolling up the ramp. He had not counted on needing to run when he had selected his outfit, and it was clinging to him in unflattering ways. This situation was not helped by the fact that the ramp began to lift towards its closed position as Fa-rush was still walking up it, leading to him to half trip, half jump to get all the way in the ship before the door closed.

The ship itself was small, the cockpit only a few feet from the rear entrance. As there were no chairs that Fa-Rush could see except those in the cockpit he walked towards one and sat down. He was afraid he was expected to fly the craft, and did not know how to get word to Soaf-Rushk that he did not know how to do so, and so was relieved when the droid hooked into the control panel. The internal lights of the ship turned on, but the external lights did not. And then Fa-Rush's questions about how the ship would exit the space station were answered when the floor of the hangar opened up and the ship simply fell out of the bottom. For a nauseating moment the artificial gravity of the station fought against the artificial gravity of the ship, and Fa-Rush felt as though he was being pulled in multiple directions at once. The feeling passed quickly however, and the ship began to fly away from the space station. There were a few ships visible entering the station through the regular hangars, but unlike them the ship Soaf-Rushk had sent flew dark. Dark and fast. As the station receded quickly away from them Fa-Rush found himself wondering how Soaf-Rushk had managed to create his little secret hangar. How had he built that into the station without anyone knowing? What had that room been before Soaf-Rushk repurposed it? It did not occur to Fa-Rush that perhaps the hangar had been there from the beginning, that it had been part of the station plans all along. That would have forced him to think about the fact that no matter how many Rakatans might have been involved in approving the designs of the primary space station servicing Lehon's capital city, it was Soaf-Rushk's droid workers that had actually constructed it and so Soaf-Rushk who ultimately decided what would be built and how. Acknowledging that fact would have made it impossible not to ask on what other occasions the will of the Council had been altered to fit Soaf-Rushk's needs. It would have cast doubt on the central operating principle of the Infinite Empire, that it had no Emperor, that none was a slave because there was no ultimate master. No one Rakatan could make anything happen without the consensus of a Council whose members were pulled from every part of society. This is what every Rakatan had been told. That is what freedom was. And it had been in the name of defending that freedom that the Great War had been fought. The terrible costs of that war, the brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, and children sacrificed across a hundred alien worlds, had all been so that no Rakatan would have to live under the yoke. But all those loses, the millions upon millions dead in a war that had been going on for more than a thousand years, meant that Rakatans no longer built things themselves. It was Rakatan warriors who conquered the Empire, and droids that built it. Soaf-Rushk's droids. And so the galaxy the war was securing for them would be a galaxy built according to his designs. None of these questions occurred to Fa-Rush, for he was quite good at stopping himself from asking questions with potentially inconvenient answers.

So it was that he simply stared through the window in the cockpit, thinking of nothing but how to seem as impressive as possible when he finally actually got to speak to a living creature on this little clandestine adventure. The ship flew at high speed towards the soft yellow sun at the center of Lehon's solar system. The light of that sun allowed Fa-Rush to make out his destination, even from millions of miles away. Seen through the viewscreen of the shuttle, treated to allow the sun to be looked at directly, the Star Forge showed up at first as a small black dot, barely distinguishable by its elongated shape from the sunspots dotting the star's surface. But as the shuttle hurtled through the empty night of space the immense space station came more clearly into view, its towers stretching out from the main body of the station like fingers grasping at the sun in one direction and out towards the stars on the other. A constant stream of superheated plasma seemed to connect the Star Forge like a tether to the star upon which the great factory fed, which it would eventually consume. This was, Fa-Rush knew, a moment hundreds of millions of years in the future. The Star Forge, which itself grew larger over time, would eventually cut the lifetime of Lehon's star by more than half, but when dealing in billions of years, what did that matter?

And it was well worth the sacrifice. What his people would have to do or not do millions of years from now when their home star burned out, of what consequence was that? The war had been raging when the Star Forge had been created. The Forge had started small, barely large enough to house Soaf-Rushk and his crew of scientists as they molded the station into what it was today. In those early days it was capable of producing only a handful of starfighters a year, along with a few dozen war droids, sets of armor and weapons. When Soaf-Rushk was young it had been a mad dream of a foolish scientist misusing, as the War-Lords of the time had said, his Gift on this silly venture. It had been nearly shut down several times. But Soaf-Rushk had been able to, at the same time, continue producing the equipment necessary to strip-mine the few worlds the Rakatans had managed to claim and hold. And that kept the War-Lords from killing his project until its moment came. A dark time in the history of the war, when several of the great armadas had been annihilated in quick succession. The Enemy's great counterattack, when hundreds of millions of Rakatans had died, had been nearly overwhelming and all but the worlds of the home system had been lost. Then the Star Forge proved its worth. With the resources from the colony worlds gone there had seemed no hope of rebuilding the great fleets. But by then the Star Forge had grown to a size allowing it to produce the great warships around which the armadas were organized. Pulling energy and matter directly from the sun, using the powers of the Gift to reshape them into whatever form Soaf-Rushk wished, the fleets had been rebuilt, and the War-Lords had been freed from the necessity of protecting colonies. Gone was the strategy of slow expansion, clawing one world from the Enemy's grasp at a time and turning its bounty against them. Now all that was needed could be gained from home, at least all that was mechanical. Then the Great Hunt had truly begun. The sacrifice, hundreds of unlucky and unloved souls bound to its core, necessary to speed the station's growth had been terrible, but Lehon and the Rakatan people had been saved.

The shuttle was now close enough to the Star Forge that it was the only object visible out of the front viewscreen. Fa-Rush had not been prepared for how large it was and it had unnerved him. Or, rather, he was filled with anxiety, and it seemed to him the most likely explanation was the unexpected size of the factory. The entire space station from which Fa-Rush had recently embarked, the space station that handled all the non-military traffic from the capital city of the Infinite Empire, would have fit easily within the collection of hangar bays towards which the shuttle was moving. It should have filled him with pride, with patriotism, to see this testament to his people's greatness, but Fa-Rush felt as if there was an unseen hand slowly sliding up the outside of his throat, its grip tightening as it moved. The shuttle came to rest inside one of the Star Forge's smaller hangar bays. Unlike the secret hangar bay in the civilian space station this one was well lit, but was just as empty as the first one had been. Nothing but droids moving about seeing to their routinized tasks could be seen as Fa-Rush disembarked. The small droid that had been his companion during the flight, and in the surreptitious journey through the space station did not leave the shuttle. Fa-Rush supposed that meant it would wait there to escort him back.

But in the absence of a guide he was not sure what to do. Then the several story tall wheel shaped door from the hanger to the interior of the Star Forge rolled open and a squad of warlike looking droids awaited him. These were not the squat, wheeled variety of droid that had brought him here, these were half again as tall as Fa-Rush, with arms and legs and even faces, of a kind. The place where the head of a Rakatan would be was taken by a large block with a single circular sensor in its middle. The droid in front swiveled its 'head' towards Fa-Rush, and beckoned him with one of its 'hands', the one that was not holding a projectile weapon. Fa-Rush was at first surprised to see the crude thing, used as he was to the graceful spears borne by Rakatan warriors. He reminded himself that of course these droids would not employ such weapons, as the Gift was needed to use them. He stepped forward to accept the guidance these droids seemed to be offering, and upon seeing him do so they turned around in the particularly unsettling fashion of having their upper bodies swivel completely independent of their lower body and setting off, Fa-Rush tailing behind.

Their walk together was terrifying. The Star Forge did not seem built for use by any but these droids. The pathways on which they walked swooped and curled through mid-air, seemingly unsupported and certainly with nothing to prevent an unwary walker from falling off, a fall which seemingly meant death. The great station had a cavernous interior which would, even without the seemingly unsafe walkways, have produced vertigo in Fa-Rush. It was so large he could not make out where the outer hull curved, despite the fact that he knew it did so. And this size was all the more impressive given that Fa-Rush knew that the center of the station was a huge area open to space. It was there that the station created the ships by some process opaque to all but Soaf-Rushk. But the size of the station and the vertiginous heights did not see to phase the droids, who kept moving along the elevated pathways until finally reaching a part of the station with more normal enclosed hallways. After walking for a few minutes through this part of the station Fa-Rush was brought to an elevator, and he wondered why there had not simply been an elevator at the hangar. A peculiar oversight it seemed to him, though oversight it was not. Fa-Rush was not the first Rakatan to make the journey to the Star Forge, but it had been purposefully designed so that it would not encourage repeat visits.

But at last his journey to Soaf-Rushk came to an end. The elevator doors opened, and Fa-Rush found himself inside a vast hall. He had reached the highest point on the Star Forge, or at least the highest point any Rakatan could go. The machinery of the factory itself extended miles farther up and away from the sun, but this was the end of the line for Fa-Rush. And the hall itself was breathtaking. It was a vast semi-circle, with the elevator on the straight side, and the curved side being entirely windows which looked out onto the vast roiling surface of the home star and the few stars visible above it despite the light it gave off. And despite the fact that the Star Forge narrowed considerably as you ascended from the hanger bays, so that this was literally the narrowest deck on which one could stand in the entire station, the room was cavernous. The ceiling was many stories above him, and the spot to his left and to his right where the curved windows met the straight wall were difficult to make out due to their distance from him. There were columns to the ceiling throughout the hall, though Fa-Rush doubted they were necessary for any kind of support. They seemed decorative, which was odd. Who was Soaf-Rushk decorating them for? Who came here?

For that matter, Fa-Rush thought, where was Soaf-Rushk? Surely this was the kind of majestic location in which you would find the most powerful Rakatan in the Empire. This was the heart of the Empire. But where was its master?

'I am here,' came a voice in Fa-Rush's head. His master had done this many times, used his Gift to communicate without speaking. Fa-Rush had always found doing so difficult, as most Rakatans did, but had become used to being on the receiving end of such messages. Something was different about this, however. There was no sound to the voice in Fa-Rush's head, but if there had been Fa-Rush felt certain the voice would have sound like metal striking metal. The three short words did not flow, as a sentence should. Somehow, they did not even sound as though they formed one sentence, but rather were each said on their own. It was not something Fa-Rush could explain. There were no abnormally long pauses between the words, but something sounded clipped, unnatural, and halting. It made his spine tingle the way it did when you looked upon those rendered decrepit by age, or when smelling rotting food.

Fa-Rush forced the feeling down, for he did not wish to insult the Elder. And who else, after all, could it be? Who else lived in this place? He looked up to the high ceilings and around the room but saw no one. He walked towards the windowed wall and as he did he noticed what seemed like one of the columns moving. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. It looked at first like a part of the column was falling slowly out of it, as though it was coming to pieces slowly. But he realized in a moment that what he was seeing were legs unfolding themselves. Legs of some great metal spider, which had been folded up into a recess in the column. Three pairs of legs, shortest in the front and longest in the back, after making contact with the floor pushed what at first Fa-Rush thought was a droid with an ovoid body nearly straight up. Fa-Rush took a few steps back when the monstrous metallic thing, which at first had been 'facing' away from him, turned towards him. Only after it had done so did he see what was occupying the body of the contraption.

It was Soaf-Rushk. The greatest Rakatan alive, the Elder who had, more than any other, steered the course of the Infinite Empire, was before him. His withered body lay in a pod lined with a dark red cushion. His arms and legs were restrained, to keep him from falling out Fa-Rush guessed. His hands were not visible, encased in the same black material as the legs and pod were made of. The Elder's face was pure horror. His eyes were gone. Instead a line ran into each empty socket at the end of each stalk from the top of the pod, where, Fa-Rush could see, optical sensors could be found. A tube ran from the back of the pod into a clear mask that covered his mouth. But the way the mask sat on the face seemed to pull the mouth into a distorted grin, a grin with no teeth.

Soaf-Rushk's spidery droid body made its way over to Fa-Rush, who could not help but recoil.

'I know I am difficult to look upon,' came the Elder's voice in his head. Fa-Rush tried to calm himself, but the unnaturalness of the voice was overpowering. He shook his head as though that would clear the sound out, conscious that he was giving grave insult but aware he could not help it.

"I apologize Fa-Rush," came another voice, though it took Fa-Rush a second to realize he was actually hearing it, not hearing it in his head. It was the sound of a droid's voice, and so in some ways sounded similar to what his imagination had made the voice in his head sound like, but whatever it was about Soaf-Rushk's mentally projected voice which made it so panic inducing was not present in the sound coming from his machine.

"I forget sometimes the effect that purely mental communication can have with those not used to it," Soaf-Rushk continued.

Fa-Rush nodded weakly while keeping his eyes locked on the floor in front of Soaf-Rushk's robotic body. He held back from pointing out that when Zhed-Hai spoke to him that way it was not nearly so troubling. He tried his best to hold back even from thinking it, but to no avail. He could only hope the Elder was not monitoring his thoughts.

"You avoid looking at me," Soaf-Rushk said. "I understand. My body is not a pleasant thing to see. You need not worry that I will be insulted by your reaction to seeing me. I do not take offense in you recognizing what is true, that my appearance is grotesque. I left such vanities behind long before I became what you see now. Time does its work, no matter how powerful we are. And I have been alive for a very long time."

Fa-Rush decided this was some kind of test. He was being given the excuse to not look at Soaf-Rushk to see if he would take it. It was an attempt to make Fa-Rush show he was weak, and Fa-rush would not fall for it. He looked up and forced himself to stare at where Soaf-Rushk's eyes had once been. His revulsion, great as it was, could not overpower his ambition.

"You wonder perhaps, why I have allowed myself to become like this." Soaf-Rushk asserted incorrectly. Fa-Rush had been unable to get far enough passed his shock and disgust to ask that question. Nor did he stop to ask how the Elder, so strongly gifted as he doubtless was, could be that wrong about what Fa-Rush was thinking. He was too busy forcing himself to figure out whether it was more insulting to stare at where Soaf-Rushk's eyes had once been or more insulting to stare at the optical sensors that he likely was using to see now.

"The answer is simple. The Empire required it of me. We all have a responsibility to the Empire, to our people. I long ago eclipsed the record for oldest Rakatan in our history, and even before that I had lost that zest for life that no doubt animates one as young as you. But I knew that if I allowed myself to die that the Empire would be in danger. For what was true then is true now. If I die, Zhed-Hai, your master, will take the Empire into his hands."

"But certainly, my lord, the other Elders would stop him," Fa-rush offered meekly. He felt it was necessary to show his allegiance to the established order of things by repeating what every Rakatan had been taught to say since they were old enough to learn. The Empire had no master because one Elder would be checked by the others.

"Would that that were true, as it was in the years of my youth. But we are not what we once were. Many of the Elders are weaklings, corruptible and contemptible. That by itself is a problem, but not one that would doom us. What would doom us would for someone like Zhed-Hai to be let loose among such mediocrities. For your master, as you well know, is no mediocrity."

Fa-Rush nodded and responded, "It is said his power is greater than all but yours my lord."

Soaf-Rushk said nothing at first in response to this. This would have been off-putting from anyone, but the completely absence of any body language from the withered corpse-like thing laying in the pod of the great black exoskeleton made it doubly so. Fa-Rush worried that the silence meant that he had angered the Elder and that some punishment was being developed in the old Rakatan's mind. In fact Soaf-Rushk was not angry, but rather quite bored, and was quickly going through the names of every known close associate of Zhed-Hai's to see whether there was anyone who could take the place of this little fool. But of course there was no one, or at least no one likely to be any less insipid. Could a mind this tedious and shallow do what Soaf-Rushk needed him to do? That was not clear. This was another of Zhed-Hai's defenses. Those with access were too stupid to conspire, and perhaps they were too stupid even to be pawns in the conspiracies of others.

Having eliminated from consideration all other alternatives to Fa-Rush, Soaf-Rushk at last answered, "Yes, it is true, for now at least, I am stronger. But for how long Fa-Rush? Your master shows no signs of slowing down, of weakening. He is already old enough himself that none would be surprised if his strength began to ebb, but he seems hale and hearty to me. Does he not to you?"

Fa-Rush nodded vigorously. He was used to expressing pride in his master for this very reason. "Yes, my lord. He is still quite vigorous."

"It is no doubt connected to his prodigious abilities in manipulating flesh. Perhaps had I his knowledge, I would not be reduced to what you see before you now. But it is no matter."

Fa-Rush prided himself on his control of his own reactions, and while it could fairly be said that his pride was closer to a realistic appraisal of his own abilities on that score than it was elsewhere, even here that pride was misplaced. At hearing Soaf-Rushk refer to his own physical state Fa-Rush had flinched almost imperceptibly. But what was imperceptible to others was not missed by Soaf-Rushk. He saw with eyes that were not eyes, sensors that could detect movement at the cellular level if he chose. And of course his mind reached beyond the limits of physical perception. But did one need perception to realize that anyone would be disgusted by the sight of him?

"I have hung on to life beyond all desire to live. I can no longer walk, no longer see, no longer feed myself. I have done this to preserve our empire against your master's ambition. But I cannot do it alone. I need your help Fa-Rush. I must know what is going on in that compound of his."

"He tells me nothing my lord," Fa-Rush answered plaintively. "Since our arrival on Lehon he has shared no secrets with me. He treats me like a lowly servant, less well than he treats some of the guards."

Soaf-Rushk tried to pitch the mechanical voice to sound soothing, but he has lost his ear for the spoken word and no longer was sure of what successful consolation would have sounded like. "Of course he does Fa-Rush. He must keep his secrets. It is not your failings or inadequacies that keep you from his confidence, it is your intelligence." The advantage of the machine speaking for him was that his voice could not give such lies away.

"Really?" Fa-Rush asked hopefully. He had been searching for some story to tell himself, to salve his wounded ego.

"Of course. He would not have taken into his service if you had been a fool," Soaf-Rushk said, despite knowing that this was precisely the reason Fa-Rush had been recruited. "He worries only that if he is open with you know that his plans will be revealed," he continued, again knowing this to be a lie. Fa-Rush could probably stare directly at the evidence that Soaf-Rushk needed and not realize he was seeing anything of importance. "But I must know what goes on that he is keeping from the Council."

"He keeps a great many humans from Tatooine there," Fa-Rush offered quickly, hoping this news would earn him praise.

"He has told the Council of this," Soaf-Rushk replied.

"I believe some of them may have the Gift!" Fa-Rush said, having held back this guess, hoping it would be the bombshell.

This fool has been surrounded by aliens with the Gift and is not sure that they have it, Soaf-Rushk thought to himself, lucky that he no longer had eyes he could roll. Fa-Rush would clearly be no help when it came to the humans, despite having spent years in Zhed-Hai's service on Tatooine. "This has also been recently revealed to the Council. Tell me of these guards you say he treats better than you. How does he treat them better?"

"He takes Rakatans of low station and brings them with him to the Great Temple. He allows them to accompany him to the Star Map…" Fa-Rush blurted out, happy to have someone to whom he could air his petty grievances.

"What? What Star Map? Where?" Soaf-Rushk barked.

"On…on Tatooine my lord," Fa-Rush answered.

"Why?" Soaf-Rushk's machine voice could not really yell, but it could increase its volume, which it was doing now.

"I do not understand my lord, it was so he could take his journey home on his personal ship," Fa-Rush replied, genuinely confused.

"He has no need of the Star Map on Tatooine. He has made enough trips back and forth between there and here that he knows the path, and he would be able to use the Gift to determine if there were obstacles in the way." Soaf-Rushk was thinking out loud as much as explaining the matter to Fa-rush.

"Then…I do not know why he took them." Fa-Rush said after a moment's thought.

"Them? Who is them? Was it not just the guard?" Soaf-Rushk's interest was piqued.

"The guard, and also the human," Fa-Rush said.

"Which human? The male he brought to the Temple?"

Fa-Rush shook his head. "No, my lord. A female. The male is her mate."

"Has he shown any other special interest in this female?"

Fa-Rush nodded. "Yes, he meets with her often. Alone, in his chambers."

"Was she born here, in captivity?"

"No, my lord. I will say it was being near her that made me first suspect the humans had the Gift," Fa-Rush was not quite sure why the female (whose name escaped him at present, Meenar was it?) was so interesting to these two Elders, but he wanted to be in the club and so shared his lone interesting observation about her.

This female's Gift must be considerable for it to register with this oaf, the Elder thought. He remembered too that Zhed-Hai had claimed that the male in his demonstration was mated to a human without the Gift. Soaf-Rushk thought for a moment before asking, "Did he meet with her this way often, one on one, on Tatooine?"

"Other than the trip to the Star Map, I do not believe there was time. We left Tatooine soon after capturing her and her family," Fa-Rush said.

Soaf-Rushk was deeply unsettled by this answer, as was shown by his spidery legs clicking back and forth, clacking, and clicking on the cold floor. "Was this departure date long planned?"

Fa-Rush could not imagine why any of this mattered, but he thought back to those last days on Tatooine. "No. No the decision to depart was made the day she was taken my lord. And he left with her only a few days later."

"He left with her? Just the two of them?" These answers were getting worse, and Soaf-Rushk's anxiety was growing.

"The two of them and that wretched one-eyed guard, Za-Hell," Fa-Rush said haughtily.

It took a great deal of Soaf-Rushk's restraint to not choke Fa-Rush and scream at him that he did not care about the guard. The female had been set apart. Something about her was special. Years on that blasted world and Zhed-Hai left immediately after finding her? And yet she was not brought to Temple. She was clearly stronger than the male who was brought if this mindless functionary had been able to sense her power. How much stronger was she? How strong could these humans get? He needed information that Fa-Rush could not give him.

"Are there any other Rakatans at Zhed-Hai's complex who have interacted with the female who could report on her, other than this guard. Za-Hell did you say his name was?" Soaf-Rushk knew he had to be delicate here. He could not show too much interest in others or Fa-Rush's pride would be hurt. But he also did not think he could entrust Fa-Rush with the task of recruiting others to operate under his authority.

"It is Za-Hell mostly I suppose, but the guards interact with them very little. He uses droids when he can. And besides, most of his guards are such weaklings."

"What?"

"Most of his guards are drones, my lord. Weaklings born without gift. He gives them weapons fit only for droids," Fa-Rush let his contempt and disgust show, but then worried that Soaf-Rushk would take the disparaging reference to droids as an insult. So he quickly followed up with, "Meaning no disrespect for your noble creations my lord, but it would be simpler to just use droids, and it would spare me the indignity of having to converse with those…cripples!"

"Why does he do this?" Soaf-Rushk asked.

"He said that it would be wasteful to not find some purpose for them, that every Rakatan had their role to play in the Empire," Fa-Rush had thought it a noble sentiment when he had heard it. Now it sounded naïve, because that is what he assumed Soaf-Rushk would think of it. In actual fact, however, Soaf-Rushk was anxious. He did not understand this tactic on Zhed-Hai's part, but the schemer did nothing without a reason. There was a purpose here, a plan, and he did not know what it is was. He quickly accessed all the information he could on drones. His mind was hooked directly into the Star Forge computer system, which had direct access to all the satellites above Lehon, and that meant he could interface directly with the Temple records system. This was not something his fellow Elders knew about of course. Access to the Temple records was something that was supposed to be requested from the attendants. Such requests were supposed to be recorded. But Soaf-Rushk did not have time for that. His mind poured over thousands of records in an instant. This was something only possible for him by leaning on the computational power of the Star Forge's main computer system. He did not like doing this. It always made the machine voice in his mind stronger for a while, and as he got older it took more and more will power to force that voice to quiet itself. But there was no choice here.

There were hundreds of drones alive at that moment. Each one a living shame for their family, they typically found positions far away from others. The army would not tolerate their presence even in menial positions. The attendants at the Temple, and the instructors at the Academy considered their inclusion in their institutions an insult. So they usually worked out of the way jobs in the private world. But even such work would show up in the records. Everything was recorded, everything was open to scrutiny by the Council. This practice had begun back in the days of the first rebellion, when the Kwa had ruled on Lehon, and the Council's existence was a secret. No resource could be denied to the community, no strength left unmarshalled. Everyone and what they did was open to examination by the leaders, no matter how trivial. Soaf-Rushk looked for jobs of the kind drones would do and compared the names occupying those positions with the registers kept by the academies. It was the Academies that tested every Rakatan to find out where they belonged. It was there that the names of drones would be found. While Fa-Rush shifted back and forth on his feet, worrying that Soaf-Rushk's silence confirmed that he had been offended, the pattern came into view. Hundreds of drones on Lehon had, over the past few centuries, been hired away from their positions cleaning up shops that were too poor to afford a droid, or doing manual labor on the kind of uneven ground only the best and therefore most expensive of Soaf-Rushk's droids could navigate, or taking care of elderly Rakatans too deep into senility to notice they were being waited on by a drone. They had been hired away by Zhed-Hai.

There was a larger pattern here. This was too much like Zhed-Hai's practice of hiring fools to work for him to be a coincidence. Creatures like Fa-Rush ran research outposts and had not the first clue how to do any of the research. Decades spent on Tatooine and Soaf-Rushk doubted the little dandy could even say what they had been researching. So it was for almost every lieutenant of Zhed-Hai's. He surrounded himself by fools because he did not have to worry about them, though perhaps Fa-Rush was disproving that notion. He surrounded himself with mental weaklings to eliminate the threat from other Elders scheming against him. Now it seems he had been recruiting physical weaklings. But why?

Soaf-Rushk's mind worked fast to start with, and he had, ever since hooking himself up to the Star Forge computer system, been able to move through data even more quickly than normal, but reasoning his way through the data still took time. And so it was that the silence eventually got to Fa-Rush, who offered, "There is some consolation in their presence I suppose, since around them one need not maintain one's mental protections."

Soaf-Rushk held back expressing his annoyance at this silly attempt at small talk, and also his disgust that Fa-Rush found maintaining protections against telepathic intrusion difficult enough to be glad to drop his guard. But then he realized that was it. The little fool had figured out the reason. The drones were there because they could not read the minds of others. Zhed-Hai didn't need drones to keep his own mind secure. Soaf-Rushk himself could not have cracked open that mental fortress. And his assistants, fools as they were had nothing in their minds worth stealing. The humans then? What did they know that needed kept secret?

"Fa-Rush, do the drones spend more time with the humans than you?" Soaf-Rushk asked? "Did they manage them on Tatooine?"

"No my lord. No guards are allowed in the humans' enclosure, and those that stand watch outside, are not drones. And there were none on Tatooine."

Soaf-Rushk was again taken aback. If not the humans then what? Why didn't he have them on Tatooine? Where did he keep them all? A quick look into the Temple records again revealed the surprising fact that all the drones Zhed-Hai had ever recruited had been kept on world. Despite his many research stations spread across the empire, and despite the army of workers he kept busy there, none of them were drones. The drones only worked on Lehon, and all in the capital, which meant all at his main facility.

"Where do they work if not with the humans? What else does he have on Lehon?" Soaf-Rushk asked impatiently and nervously.

"I…I do not…know, my lord. They work on the lower levels. They are the only ones allowed there."

"What lower levels?" Soaf-Rushk yelled. This little nitwit dressed up like some ridiculous bird was reaching the end of Soaf-Rushk's patience. How useless could someone be? Soaf-Rushk, with a nearly imperceptible flick of his finger turned on the holographic projector in his droid housing, and loaded the architectural plans for Zhed-Hai's compound. "Show me!" There were indeed lower levels. Almost the entire compound was below ground. There was the large, circular, central enclosure for the humans. Soaf-Rushk's satellites were sufficient to tell him that. That space went several stories into the ground. Below it came several levels of what he guessed were less hospitable enclosures for the humans, considering that they had the same shape and were hooked into all the same systems. Around the enclosure were located hallways stretching out into the earth like spokes from a wheel.

Fa-Rush looked at the plans for several moments. He reached his hand up to touch the holographic image at the lower most level it depicted.

"Here my lord," he said.

"They are on this level?" Soaf-Rushk asked. It was the tenth enclosure down, the bottom of the mammoth cylinder in which all the humans were kept.

"No my lord, this is where the door to the elevator to the lower levels is found," Fa-Rush answered.

Soaf-Rushk was dumbstruck. Zhed-Hai had expanded his compound without informing anyone. He had violated the law. It was a serious offense. If anyone else had done it other than Zhed-Hai or Soaf-Rushk himself the punishment would have been severe. Not death, but still, severe. When had he done this? How had he done it without anyone knowing? Quickly pouring over the Temple records again he found several points at which it might have been done. Moments when significant infrastructural work was being done in the capital city would have allowed Zhed-Hai's expansion to go unnoticed. On a hunch Soaf-Rushk compared those moments to the employment record, and, as was often the case, his hunch was right. There, hundreds of years ago, one of the major renovations to the power grid coincided with the moment when Zhed-Hai had started hiring the drones. He had hired them to work in those hidden areas and only there. And he had kept hiring them, generation after generation. This was before there was any record of his bringing humans to Lehon. Indeed it was before the bombardment and before he had made his first trip to Tatooine. He was hiding something there. Something old. The drones were there because they would not be able to figure out what it was. Whatever plan Zhed-Hai had, it was old. Soaf-Rushk felt something he had not felt in a long time growing inside of him. Fear.