The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 31

As he passed by the door to the Sith's cell Zhed-Hai thought to himself that he needed to remain calm. Calm and attentive. The two trapped in the levels far below him had tried to escape once before, and come closer to success than they knew. And the one imprisoned many levels even below them, well he was the only thing that truly terrified Zhed-Hai. He could not afford to lose his temper with any of them, could not afford to allow his mind to be clouded by emotion. The strength one could temporarily gain from such conative indulgences was more than outweighed in its significance by the loss of cogency in one's thinking, and awareness of one's surroundings. As he stepped into the spiral staircase at the end of the hall, he had begun the breathing exercises he had learned, ironically, from the two prisoners he was about to see. The necessity of unlocking the barriers that he had placed on this stairwell was a distraction from the effort to cultivate the sense of peace he knew he needed. These locks were far more complicated than the ones that led down to the Sith. Those were necessary to keep Rakatans from reaching the lower levels of his research complex. He was confident there were no more than a handful of Rakatans who could have reached the level with his Sith prisoner. If there was any but him who could make his way down this stairwell it was that horrid relic Soaf-Rushk on his abomination of a space station. But who knows what was left of the oldest of the Elders? Perhaps the years had taken from him the strength of mind necessary to pass these obstacles. But it did not matter, and not just because Soaf-Rushk would never come to this place himself, but because these locks were for the Kwa.

As far as Zhed-Hai was fairly sure no one else on Lehon was aware he had captured Kwa. If anyone had known, then Zhed-Hai would be dead and the Kwa would have been retrieved, even if the blundering oafs had to tunnel their way down there to get around Zhed-Hai's security. Soaf-Rushk would have repurposed his little army of droids to get at the Kwa and their knowledge. Zhed-Hai imagined that it ate at Soaf-Rushk, the fact that he never figured out even the basic elements of the signature Kwa technologies. He usually imagined this when he was feeling angry or dejected, because it was, for him, a very pleasant thing to imagine. And of course Soaf-Rushk was not alone in his desire for Kwa secrets. In a way, that desire is what started the Great War in the first place. This was the mark of Rakatan inferiority, that they were denied the Kwa's deepest knowledge, the knowledge of the Infinity Gates. That the Kwa could keep such things from them made it clearer than anything else that the Rakatans were servants. That they were slaves. But for all its importance in his people's history, Zhed-Hai himself had never felt the attraction. Certainly instantaneous travel had its allure, but the Rakatans had found their way around most of the inconveniences of distance on their own. As for the darker elements of Kwa technology, Zhed-Hai did not want the ability to destroy an entire star system.

But others wanted it, wanted it desperately. Their desperation betrayed their reasons. Should the secret of constructing Infinity Gates fall into the hands of warlords like Drisk-Koan or Kru-Garth, it would only be a matter of time before stars began to be snuffed out. They would use it in the war against the Celestials first of course. But the use would not stop there. Stubbornly resistant species like the Gree would find their meager collection of star systems wiped from the galactic map. Eventually, when all enemies were gone and only rivals remained, who would this power be used against? The Kwa who had always refrained from destroying Lehon, as it had always been in their power to do, could enact no greater revenge on their former servants than giving them the great secrets. Were the Rakatans capable of such restraint in the face of an enemy? Was Zhed-Hai? Would he use the Infinity Gates to destroy Korriban? He knew the answer, and in his knowledge of his own deficiencies found all the reason he needed to justify his refusal to compel the Kwa to give up this secret. When the Kwa and the Celestials were gone the knowledge would die, and the galaxy would be all the better for it.

When the last door opened Zhed-Hai was hit with the smell of the jungle. To keep his Kwa prisoners comfortable and docile he had allowed them to re-create, as much as was possible, the environment of their home world. It was not so different from Lehon, a lush world of jungles and oceans. Perhaps the greatest difference was the darkness of Dathomir. The cloud cover left most parts of that world shrouded in a gloom most of the time. That was all the better for the task of simulating the environment down here, far beneath Lehon's surface. Zhed-Hai made his way through the hallways overgrown with the various plants he had acquired for the Kwa. He knew where he would find his prisoners and made his way to the large room around which this floor was built. The room which sat directly above the cell for his last and most dangerous prisoner.

And find them there he did, crouching down on their large hind legs, eyes closed, in communion with their god. The god they had betrayed, at his, Zhed-Hai's, command. He had other, greater accomplishments, but few that gave him such delight. That their god knew of their betrayal, and could do nothing about it, made it all the sweeter. Was it pettiness? No, nothing so trivial, he contented himself. What he and all Rakatans felt towards the Kwa and their masters could be given many names, not all of them good, but petty was not one of them.

"How fares our guest today?" Zhed-Hai asked as he approached the Kwa. Their closed eyes and stillness might make them look for all the world as though they were asleep, but Zhed-Hai knew better. At his question the male, Anluk, opened his eyes slowly and turned his head towards his captor.

"He strives to escape, as always," Anluk sighed.

"And demands you aid him, yes?" Zhed-Hai probed.

To this the female, Inbarra, responded without opening her eyes, "Which we refuse to do, as you have commanded."

"That is very wise of you," Zhed-Hai acknowledged.

"If it is wise, it is so because of what you have promised us. A promise not yet kept," Anluk murmured.

"How do you know it has not been kept? How do you know I have not already done all that I promised?" Zhed-Hai asked?

"You would not tell us?" Inbarra asked in return.

"If I did, what would be left to secure your…agreement?" Zhed-Hai queried. "What would stop you from doing as our guest demands you do?"

"The knowledge that you would kill us if we failed, and that even if we succeeded, it would only mean that your brothers on the surface would kill us, rather than you," Inbarra answered.

"But would that not please you? To kill me, or to have it kill me I suppose. To kill hundreds or thousands of Rakatans on the surface before our guest was brought down?" Zhed-Hai inquired.

Anluk's response was in the same calm voice he and Inbarra had used during the entire discussion, "You ask whether it would please us to fight and lose another battle in this war? Why would it? We take no joy in the suffering and death of your people. We never did."

"So long as we obeyed," Zhed-Hai insisted. This was an old debate; one they had engaged in more than once. It always ended in the same place. They lacked the leverage to either alter the deal, or force its completion. Zhed-Hai simply liked to hear them acknowledge that fact. Hopeless the Kwa were immensely valuable commodities, but were they ever to see a way out of their situation, they were dangerous. Combined they might be able to overwhelm Zhed-Hai, despite the fact that the Kwa as a species had never done much to develop their martial abilities. But the real risk was not that, for while they might emerge victorious in a conflict with him they likely wouldn't, and they knew that. The real risk was in the monster beneath them. If ever they should seek to free it, they would succeed. If they even stopped maintaining its prison for long enough, it would escape on its own eventually. It was vital they see no hope but the narrow path Zhed-Hai had laid out before them. But it was not to perform maintenance on their despair that Zhed-Hai had taken the time to descend to their prison. He had other questions.

"And our guest, he speaks to you and no others?"

Anluk and Inbarra looked puzzled at the question. "With whom do you fear communication?"

"Who said I feared it? I simply wonder whether it has attempted to reach out, beyond you."

Inbarra answered, thinking she knew what lay behind the question, "None of the masters are close enough to hear this one. And even if they were, they would not come. Not here."

Zhed-Hai was not satisfied with this answer. "And no others?"

"You think he would contact the Rakatans? Why?" Anluk responded. As he usually did Anluk said 'him' and 'he.' Inbarra was always more careful, as was Zhed-Hai. Thinking of what was restrained beneath him as being male or female, as being the kind of thing that could be male or female, was to forget its true nature. It was to treat it as something ordinary, as one being among others. Like them but stronger. This was the wrong way to think of it of course. It lulled one into a false sense of safety.

Inbarra spoke up again, before Zhed-Hai answered, to ask only, "The other prisoners? The new ones?"

"I did not ask you to guess who I might be thinking of. My thoughts are not your concern. I simply wish to know if it has reached out beyond you," Zhed-Hai snapped. Inbarra's shrewdness was a problem, as it always had been.

"He can barely reach us. The barriers contain his power. It takes great effort for him to reach us when we are trying to hear him." Anluk blinked as he answered, an involuntary gesture Zhed-Hai had come to realize signaled disappointment in Kwa. So you wish to be closer to your master, do you slave? The Kwa disgusted him in a very different way than the Sith, who were disgusting in general. To have all that native power the Sith possessed and to waste it on being little better than animals was beneath contempt. But the Kwa were in some ways the opposite. To have such might, such knowledge, and to see no greater use for it than to serve the whims of others was wasteful, and Zhed-Hai had little patience for waste. If the Kwa had risen up against their masters as the Rakatans had, what might they have made of the galaxy? What world would they all be living in now if the Kwa had chosen to resist the Celestials, instead of doing their bidding? He had often asked himself that as a child and young man, when he had come to the conclusion that all the universe was composed of only slave and masters.

"It cannot reach out. Without our assistance it cannot reach even us. Only those with the Force can contact it."

Inbarra's tone was meek and submissive. Too submissive. It was for show, Zhed-Hai could tell. She tried this from time to time. Zhed-Hai never let on that he knew, that she might think she was fooling him. The failing of the Kwa as masters had always been underestimating the Rakatans, and that tradition of failure was one from which these two could not seem to distance themselves. Though they knew he could overpower either of them, and could likely do the same to both of them simultaneously, they nonetheless thought him simple. An overgrown child who could be manipulated by telling him what he wanted to hear. He proved them wrong without their knowing it by restraining his rage, not letting on that he knew precisely what she was doing. To let her know her ruse did not work would be to give her reason to come up with a better one, and his pride was not worth the trouble it would cause if she started truly keeping things from him. To be thought a fool when one was not was an advantage not to be thrown away, no matter how much it galled him.

But the fact remained that she had figured out the humans above had the Gift. How did she know this? There were barriers in place to prevent the Kwa and the Sith from reaching the humans above. Zhed-Hai already knew Myra was powerful enough to push her way through those barriers. She had already found the Kwa. The question was had she pushed her way through to the creature beneath entirely on her own? Had the Kwa helped her? Were they lying to him? They must be. To push through the last set of barriers without the Kwa's help would have meant Myra was more powerful than Zhed-Hai believed was possible for her species. No, the Kwa had helped her, he was sure, and now they were lying. What did they hope to achieve, Zhed-Hai wondered? Did they think Myra could set them all free? It did not matter. She couldn't do that. Nothing could.

Anluk and Inbarra were not made uncomfortable by the long silence while Zhed-Hai thought through the implications of the situation. The default state of a Kwa was peaceful contemplation, and they found it easy to settle back into such a state anytime the opportunity presented. This had been, in the beginning of their relationship, somewhat irksome for Zhed-Hai, who at that time, like all living Rakatans, had no personal experience with the Kwa. But now he found it a welcome respite. Much of Zhed-Hai's life was absorbed in maintaining relationships of domination, over his prisoners, over his fellow Rakatans, and it was something of a relief to interact with beings who did not spend every moment of their time with him looking for signs of his displeasure, or signs of his weakness.

Zhed-Hai considered confronting them with his knowledge of their lies, but decided not to. They were doing the bidding of another, but yet they continued to do his bidding as well. The source of the problem was below, and much as the thought troubled him, it was below he would have to go. Punishing the Kwa would serve no purpose. They could not be expected to refuse every demand, and so long as they refused to set the prisoner free some leeway could be granted.

"I shall go down today. Prepare the elevator," Zhed-Hai finally said.

Anluk and Inbarra quickly set about meeting Zhed-Hai's request. If they had doubts or fears about what was happening, they did not share them. They knew they had lied; they must know that there was a good chance Zhed-Hai realized that, but they went about their work nonetheless. Zhed-Hai did not go down very often, but he had done so enough that the Kwa knew the steps to be taken by heart. In a way they were his last line of defense. If any but him somehow made their way to this room, the complex series of steps that had to be taken to properly engage the elevator would doom the intruder. Only the Kwa would be able to facilitate their descent, and the Kwa would do so for none but Zhed-Hai. They did not know why he kept the prisoner alive, but he did, and that was something they could expect from no other Rakatan.

"I trust that you have inspected the barriers today, and they remain firmly in place," Zhed-Hai said.

"Yes," Inbarra responded coldly. They did not like to chain their god, but they did it anyway. Such was the value of what Zhed-Hai had promised them.

From the center of the floor of the room the elevator rose. It was small, with room for only one Rakatan to fit comfortably, for it was made with the intention that only one Rakatan would ever use it. It was a clear glass cylinder with machinery on the bottom. The key to its operation is that it did not move itself, gravity did. The function of the elevator's machinery on descent was simply to slow the fall. If not prepared correctly it would do so only for the first few seconds of the descent. It would then fall uncontrollably, killing any occupant who did not understand how it worked. The Kwa had never tried to trick Zhed-Hai into thinking it was properly prepared when it wasn't, but nonetheless he checked to make sure every time he got in. Even he could not survive such a fall. On the return journey it would be Zhed-Hai's own power which would activate the machinery. He knew from experience that would be something of a strain. But it was never as much of a strain as the meetings themselves were.

The elevator lowered slowly through hundreds of feet of stone. Every time Zhed-Hai made this trip at some point the same thought always occurred to him. If it escaped, it would blow through this thick stone ceiling with such force that the compound above, the compound he had spent a century designing and building, would collapse and shatter within seconds. Then it would emerge into the eternal city of Kwashang. Dozens of Rakatans, and his hundreds of human captives would die when the compound was destroyed, but thousands more Rakatans would die in the first few minutes after it emerged from the depths. It would break upon the defenses of the temple. Of this Zhed-Hai was certain. But while the encounter would kill many more hundreds of Rakatans it would not kill Zhed-Hai's prisoner. It would make for space, where it would encounter the old planetary defense network, designed specifically to kill creatures of its kind. Who knows how much of the home fleet would be destroyed in the process? The ships the Empire could afford to lose. Soaf-Rushk would be happy to replace them. But the warriors lost would not be so easily made up for. The Infinite Empire was all too finite. So it must not escape.

The elevator emerged from the rock into the large chamber below. It had once been an aquifer. Certainly it was too large for Zhed-Hai to have excavated it without being noticed. He had chosen his compound because this was beneath it. His mind had been full of such foolish ideas then. Dreams of the Empire ruling the entire galaxy, and of himself as sole ruler of that Empire, a position no Rakatan had ever held. He had intended to keep his experiments, and the weapons he assumed he would develop hidden here. It was to be, he had thought at the time, his counterpoint to the Star Forge. But it had come to serve a far more terrifying purpose. That purpose lit up the vast cave. Through the window of the elevator Zhed-Hai beheld it, the enemy. The Celestial glowed within its cage. Dozens of black octahedrons rotated around the Celestial, like electrons around the nucleus of an atom. Every day the Kwa checked on those onyx guardians, making sure their strength was not ebbing. A few had failed over the many years Zhed-Hai had kept the Celestial prisoner, forcing Zhed-Hai to take up the distasteful task of making a new one. Doing so reminded him of the grisly task of making the original set of them, the set he had used to keep the Celestial contained during transport. If he prayed Zhed-Hai would have prayed to never have to do that again. But if he prayed it would have been to the being he kept locked up here, or to its kin, and no Rakatan would ever pray to them again.

When the elevator reached the floor Zhed-Hai pushed the glass door open and, after taking a deep breath of the musty air, walked out into the cave. The appearance of the Celestial from a distance was that of a ball of light, an effect produced by the energy within, the energy which constituted the Celestial, being in constant motion. The closer you got the easier it was to see the swirls produced by its rapid movement within its prison. It never stopped moving, and likely hadn't for the uncounted years of its existence.

Zhed-Hai was stopped in his tracks by a scream which filled the chamber. That was new. The Celestial had never made such a sound before. It had been a long time since they had spoken, and it had come up with a little trick in the meantime. The purpose of the trick? Perhaps that would reveal itself. Zhed-Hai continued his walk towards the Celestial. He did not need to get any closer of course. They could communicate without his doing so. But staying at the elevator always felt to Zhed-Hai like cowering, and that was something he refused to do. So he walked right up to the whirling ball of energy contained within the field produced by the black stones which sped around it.

"Hello."

From the swirling white energy within a shape emerged. What shape would it take this time? It could not of course take a fully corporeal form, not within the field. The prison forced the Celestial to show its true self. But it could create images, and it had chosen many over the years. It had first presented itself in the godlike form in which its species had first appeared to the Rakatans, so many years ago, attempting, Zhed-Hai supposed, to awe him into submission. When that failed it had taken many others. When it had taken the form of Zhed-Hai's long dead mother it had been clear to Zhed-Hai that there was a price to these conversations. No number of restraints would prevent the Celestial from gleaning things from his mind. The key was to learn more from it than it learned from him.

This time it took the form of a non-descript Rakatan. That was good. The shriek had made Zhed-Hai think that he would face significant resistance, but the Celestial would normally only use this form when it did not intend to test him. So Zhed-Hai looked up at a Rakatan, impossibly large, made entirely of a nearly blinding white energy.

"Greetings," it said, its voice calm and smooth. It could make any sound it wished and could reach very high volumes. It had once, in rage, destroyed Zhed-Hai's eardrums, and it was lucky that growing a new set was, for Zhed-Hai, quite easy. They did not need sound to discuss of course. This close, Zhed-Hai's mind could reach out to his captive's mind, despite the barriers he had built around it, but that was always a risky thing to do. Maintaining selective mental defenses was exhausting. So they spoke in the normal way.

"Why have you come?" it asked.

Right to business. It was worried it had been discovered. It had taken a risk speaking to Myra. How odd it must be for one of its kind to have to worry, Zhed-Hai thought. It had not taken such a risk in its captivity until now, and of course before it was captured the Celestial would have had no one to answer to, except perhaps others of its kind. But Zhed-Hai decided not to get straight to the point. Better to let the Celestial wonder. Its attempt to figure out whether and what Zhed-Hai knew would probably be more informative than any answer it would give.

"How many of your kind are left?"

"How many times are you going to ask me that question? Inside this cage there is no way for me to know. But when you took me, there were few of us left, and I have no doubt you have gone on hunting us down. But of course if I did know of others, I would not tell you, and you know that. So again, I ask you, what is the point of your question?"

Zhed-Hai nodded. "I ask because it is important, oh great one." Zhed-Hai's words were dripping with resentment. "I want to know when the war will be over."

"The war could be over today, if your people wished it."

"The war cannot end until all of you are dead."

The Celestial's false face stared down at Zhed-Hai while it asked, "Then why do I still live?"

"You live that you might answer my questions."

"We speak rather rarely, if your goal is dialogue."

"Well it is so very dangerous, speaking to you. I can never be quite sure that the barriers still keep your powers in check, and so I can never be quite sure that my mind is my own. I cannot know that I am not becoming your slave."

"Were this prison to fail, you think I would wait for you to come down here before making use of that fact?"

"I do not pretend to understand your motives, the reasons for any of the things you have done, despite my asking so many times for you to enlighten me."

"There are things you do not understand, that you cannot understand, limited as you are."

Zhed-Hai nodded again, this time more forcefully. "Ah yes, that old bromide, told by every parent to every child. You are too young to understand, when you are as old as I am you will agree with me."

"To us you are as children."

"NO!" Zhed-Hai roared. "We are not your children, because we will never grow to be like you. You are not entitled to this pretense of paternal regard. You did not come here to make us as you are!"

The Celestial replied calmly, "As you say, you do not understand the reasons for what we have done."

Zhed-Hai smiled. "Say rather that I do not understand fully, but I understand enough to detect the lies. The evidence is there. Of all your slave species, which did you raise up to join you in your power? In your godhood?" Zhed-Hai's voice was full of disdain. "The Kwa served you loyally. You could have had no complaint about them, so docile were they. And what did you give them?"

"The Stars."

"No, those you kept for yourself. You gave them the Infinity Gates, that they might go where you go, though not as you go. In all the stories there is no story of Celestials travelling by Infinity Gates. And how could you have done so? That first time, when one of you appeared in the sky above Lehon, before any Gate was built, how did you come? How do you travel unaided in space? That is not something you taught the Kwa. They travel from star to star; you live amongst them."

"To make the Kwa such as to live as we do, would be to make them no longer Kwa. It would be to make them us. That is not a gift, that is destruction."

"All life is destruction," Zhed-Hai said with a dismissive wave of his clawed hand. "Predator eats prey, the animal eats the plant. No organism lasts. No species lasts. Except you. Since you made us your slaves we have changed, but you have stayed the same. As we chased you across the galaxy, you stayed the same, there were simply fewer of you. You have found the key to eternity, not just as a species, but as individuals. We have tracked you for thousands of years, and we know our quarry. You yourself were alive at the time of the rebellion, and for thousands of years before that, in the time of Captivity. And never have you shared this. Not with any known species."

"And now you wish to become as us."

Zhed-Hai laughed cruelly. "No, of course not. Look at what we have done to you, we slaves. There are so few of you left. We just found another of you, did you know that? Can you feel when your brothers and sisters die? Of course this one was a child, not yet fully developed. Was it your child, I wonder? Did you leave something behind when you travelled to that planet I found you on? It is only the third of your kind we have found since I took you. They are dead of course. Once we would find and fight several of you in a year. Our first leaders, they killed dozens of you."

"And you lost millions."

"Such was the price of freedom. The freedom you denied us."

"We did not take your freedom, we simply opened up a new path for your people and tried to help you see it."

"You closed all paths but that one. The one the Kwa walked down. The one so many others have walked down. How many others were there? How many others like us did you find? We were hunters when you found us. You tried to take that from us, but even you cannot overcome millions of years of evolution. Had you succeeded before? Is there some race we have not met, a race of warriors you turned towards peace and harmony with all life, or whatever it was you used to tell us?"

The Celestial stayed silent at this.

"Of course not. When those who would not walk down your path were discovered, they were done away with. How much longer would you have given us before you wiped us out? How much time did we have left when we rose up against you?"

The Celestial allowed its false shape to melt away, back into the ball of light. A new form began to coalesce and in a few seconds it was clear the form it was taking was that of a Sith. It was not quite the Sith in confinement above them. It was as though the Celestial had seen a blurry image and tried to make it precise through guesswork. But it was close.

"How come you by such an image, oh ancient one?" Zhed-Hai asked in mock deference.

"I see more, even from within this prison, than you can know. I am aware of the Sith who lives above me."

"And how is it you are aware of him as a Sith? Have you been speaking? Have you found his conversation enlightening? What do you think of my other guest?"

The Celestial again did not answer. Zhed-Hai sometimes forgot how much it did not like to lie. What different way of understanding the world must they have, Zhed-Hai wondered, to be so averse to untruth? What made them pass up that weapon?

Zhed-Hai answered his own question, for the conversation could not end yet. "You did not speak to him, I know. What would you have said? What could you have learned? It would have taken supreme effort for your mind to reach out of this place and make contact with his, and there is no reason to do it. For you already knew what he was, didn't you? You had already encountered the Sith, hadn't you? How long ago was that?"

"After we found your people, but before your rebellion."

"And what did you think of them?"

"We thought they were very much like you."

"THEY ARE NOT!" Zhed-Hai screamed. He told himself that his rage was mock rage, not admitting to himself that, despite the fact that the rage was part of his ruse, the comparison did in fact enrage him. "They are barely more than animals, crawling around in the dirt, in their caves, on that horrid little world. They build nothing! And they make nothing!"

"In time they will. Or in time they would have. I assume the Sith's presence here means you found his people. What did you do when you found them?"

"We did what you did, we enslaved them. Is that not what great power does, subjugate and exploit?"

"We did not come to you to exploit you. You had nothing we wanted."

Zhed-Hai looked at the smooth but uneven floor of the cave. When he spoke again his voice was softer, and wearier. "We didn't need anything from the Sith either. They had nothing we wanted, nothing we needed."

"Then why do it?"

"Well the official reason was that the Infinite Empire ought to control all star systems. That our power gave us the right to rule all. Of course we could have simply ignored them. We haven't set up garrisons on most of the worlds we have found. So why subjugate the Sith? It is a question no one asked, but everyone knew the answer to. They were a potential threat."

"Then why not kill them?"

Zhed-Hai looked up at the Celestial and responded, "Why did you not kill us? Did you not realize we could pose a threat? Of course you did. You saw our numbers; you saw our native power. Obviously when there are enough of us, we can kill even you. You had to know we were a potential threat, at some point."

"We do not kill lesser species."

"But you do control them, you do change their path. You take them from the one they were on and move them down another. You did it to us, I suppose you were going to do it to the Sith at some point. Because we were on the wrong path."

"Yes, you were," the Celestial replied, seeming pleased Zhed-Hai understood.

"What made it wrong?"

"It leads to suffering."

"Whose?"

"Everyone's, everything's. The power used improperly leads to terrible, horrific things."

For a moment Zhed-Hai thought of asking how it was that the Celestials knew this. If it was for the purpose of protecting the galaxy from the horrors of the Gift used improperly that they set themselves above other species, how did they learn this? Was it through personal experience? Were there horrors in their own past? Horrors of their own making? Or did they learn it from something else? A topic for another time.

"So you are looking to steer the younger species away from the terrors and the horrors? And towards what? Where does your tutelage end? With servants like the Kwa?"

"Can you imagine nothing but servitude or barbarity?"

"One does not need to imagine those, for they are easy to observe. As is the other option, mastery. The Celestial masters, the serving Kwa, and the barbarian Rakatans. That is the world you made. Now we make a world where we are the masters."

"And you make the servants."

Zhed-Hai smiled, "Yes, I have done so."

"And what will you make the of the Sith and their barbarism?"

"Nothing," Zhed-Hai answered. Sensing the Celestial's puzzlement, he continued, "There is nothing to be made of them. Nothing to be done with them. From materials so warped and perverted nothing useful can be made. So they will be destroyed."

"You would kill an entire species?"

"I would. I will. I go to do so very soon in fact. I suppose you would never do the same."

"You have said what they are, but nothing of what they can be. If you kill them you take away all potential."

Zhed-Hai noted the way the Celestial had not denied its people had ever committed genocide. It was something he had long suspected, but he did not think he would get any greater confirmation from his prisoner, so he moved on. "I have judged their potential. I know what they could be."

"You claim the power to see the future? An uncertain art, even for us."

"To know the future through the Gift is a difficult thing, but that is not the source of my knowledge. To know what a species is capable of look at what it is. Then compare it to other species with similar profiles in their past. That will give you the greater insight."

"And what species are they so like, that you condemn them to death?"

Zhed-Hai paused before answering, looking up at the swirling light above him. "Us. They are just like us, only with one crucial difference, the capacity for self-control, for reason."

"And do your people deserve death? Or do your rules apply only to others?"

Zhed-Hai laughed, "Of course we deserve death. Look at what we have done. All the galaxy condemns us, but there is no one to carry out the sentence."

"What your people have become, is not all they could have been. So it is with the Sith."

"We are what you made us. You left us only one path out of slavery, to become the most vicious version of ourselves. And since we made that choice we have done the same as you did, over and over."

The Celestial stayed silent for a while. Zhed-Hai wondered what it was thinking, and mused on how the Celestial provided him the opportunity to live as others did. The Celestial alone, of all the beings Zhed-Hai had ever encountered, had a mind that was completely opaque to him. Even in the years he had spent learning under Soaf-Rushk, he had been able to gain some insight into his mind. The oldest of Elders protected himself, of course, as any powerful Rakatan would, but his defenses, while strong, were ultimately imperfect. Far less perfect were the mental barriers put up by other members of the Council. And of the humans only Myra had the ability to place any barriers up at all, but ultimately Zhed-Hai could get past them, get through them. But the Celestial, its mind was surrounded by walls Zhed-Hai could go neither over, under, around or through. This is what it was like for other beings, he realized. This was life for everyone else.

"You have never spoken this way before," the Celestial said at last.

"You are the only one I can say such things to. Everyone else presents a risk, but you, you will never speak again to any but me, and your slaves above us." Now came the moment of truth. Would the Celestial allow the mistaken claim to pass? Would he try to hide the fact that he spoke to Myra?

"Why do you pretend not to know that I have made contact with the human? What is the purpose of this attempted deception?"

Zhed-Hai smiled. "If you tried to hide the fact that you had done so, that would tell me something of why you had contacted her in the first place. It would speak of a plot, some plan that you needed her for. But that is not it, apparently. So why?"

"To tell her the truth."

"You don't know the truth," Zhed-Hai said dispassionately. "You fill her head with stories of how I will make slaves of them."

"Won't you? It would not be your first time."

"Yes, I understand you told her of that as well."

"You bent the people of the Seas and the Trees to your purposes, to the purposes of your Empire. She deserved to know that. Do you pretend you are not doing it again?"

"What purpose do you think I have in mind for them?"

"You have altered them, that they might have the Force."

"Is that a question?"

"You have admitted that the Sith were a threat to you because they have the Force. You would not create another threat unless there were corresponding benefits to you. You have a purpose in making them."

"Of course I have a purpose in mind for the humans. You simply do not know it."

"We know what you have created here. We know how it was made. With a species of Force users under your control, you could make many more of them."

"There are those who would do exactly as you fear. They are already trying to do it. But it is not my purpose."

"What is it then?" the Celestial asked.

"Why should I tell you that?" Zhed-Hai responded.

"What other purpose did you have in coming down here?" the Celestial retorted.

"I want you to stop telling her these things. I want you to stop interfering with what I am doing with Myra."

"You wish me to help you deceive her?"

"I have not lied to her. I have withheld information from her that she is not ready for, or that she does not need to know at all. But I have not lied to her. She suspects me of doing so of course, as she probably should. It is only rational in her situation. But you exacerbate the problems her lack of trust creates with your little suggestions. So I would like them to stop." Zhed-Hai said.

"Then convince me that what I tell her is not true. You intend for your Empire to rule the galaxy, and you intend to rule that Empire. You wish to supplant the creator of the monstrosity that orbits the star above us, and you have captured the Kwa and me to do this. In such a plan no good can come to the humans you have made. Convince me this is not true, and I will stop telling Myra that it is."

"I have kept you here out of pride, and idle curiosity. And you are rapidly approaching the point where you will have convinced me that it is a mistake to let you live."

After saying this Zhed-Hai waved his hand. The objects revolving around the Celestial began to glow as they spun around it. They also began to scream. It was not a scream most could hear. Fa-Rush, if by some magic he made it all the way down here, could not have heard it. Za-Hell would have been aware of something amiss that he could not place. Myra would be able to hear it, Zhed-Hai was sure. She might even be aware of it now. But Zhed-Hai could make out every voice. They were screams without sound, mental wails coming from the minds trapped inside those black stones. They would do Zhed-Hai's bidding, and they would be in agony for it.

But their trapped strength was enough to accomplish their purpose. The Celestial lost its defined shape, and its scream joined the ghastly chorus of his jailors. Zhed-Hai had not used the objects this way before, for the Celestial had never posed a threat to his plans before. But Zhed-Hai was nothing if not forward thinking and prepared. He had realized quite quickly that the prison he had constructed for the Celestial could be put to this purpose. It had not been in his mind when he had discovered the Celestial of course, all those centuries ago. Nor had anything been on his mind but the need to capture one of the enemy alive when he had begun to kill his own guards, and the few warriors who had survived the encounter with this Celestial. It still troubled him when he thought about it. They thought they had killed it, they thought they were safe. It had been something of an accident Zhed-Hai was with them at all. There wasn't supposed to be a Celestial on that world. It was, he knew now, a fairly young member of its species, though not a child like the one that had recently been killed. It was full grown, but young, though that still meant it had been alive for many hundreds of thousands of years. Its strength was not such that it could be detected from space. But its presence was impossible to disguise once on the surface. Its power showed up in a hundred ways everywhere you looked. Or at least it did to Zhed-Hai. It had been there a long time, long enough for generations of plants and animals to grow up bathed in the glow of its energies. Zhed-Hai had been brought in to analyze the peculiar flora and fauna of the world, and had almost immediately realized what the other Rakatans had missed. It had been trying to hide, to wait them out, but almost the moment Zhed-Hai realized what he was seeing it had tried to run. The regular garrison for the world would not have been enough on its own to stop the Celestial, but several divisions of warriors were on planet preparing to be sent to a new battle group that was forming. Almost all of them had died that day, but they, and the ships above them had succeeded in cornering the Celestial, and then injuring it. But the ships had been too close to the surface when it had emerged. When the battle was done it had been Zhed-Hai and a few stragglers watching as the ships fell smoking to the planet.

Zhed-Hai still felt some small twinge of shame when he remembered how quickly he had gone from the realization the Celestial was still alive to the realization that he could keep that fact secret. All he had to do was kill several dozen of his own people. That alone would have been tolerable. He had killed before, and he had killed many more since then. It was the process of binding them to stone that made the memory so troubling. Each one of them woke up during the process. Each one of them knew what was happening to them. Each one of them begged him to stop. Each one of them died in despair. But while Zhed-Hai felt shame at what he had done, he did not feel regret. It had been necessary. It had been cruel. It had been an act of shocking disloyalty and ingratitude to a group of Rakatans who had just saved his life, but it had been necessary. Everything else stemmed from that decision. And now his fallen brothers, the brothers he had betrayed, were attacking the Celestial again, and once again at Zhed-Hai's command.

The screams, both the purely mental ones coming from the deceased Rakatans and the auditory ones coming from the Celestial, made it difficult, but Zhed-Hai shouted over them. "Everything I have done, all the sacrifices I have made, will be undone, be made in vain, if Myra is deflected from her purpose. She is the key to all of it. And you are perverting her mind, trying to direct her away from the path I have laid out for her. You will stop this, or I will hurt you, and if needs be, I will kill you." Then, with another flick of his hand, the stones stopped glowing, and the screaming stopped.

It took a few moments for the Celestial to compose itself. The light within the barrier swirled around wildly, looking like a million brightly shining atoms shooting through an only slightly less luminous gas, before eventually those little points of light began to slow down and coalesce until there was a single ball of light floating within the cage the rotating stones created.

"What was the point of talking to me, if this torture was your intention?"

"It would be my preference not to kill you. You are useful. You have been useful anyway, and I have a feeling you will be useful again. If I can get you to stop what you are doing with words I much prefer that."

If the Celestial had not been a thousands year old being of unimaginable power and knowledge, it might have laughed ruefully at that point. "Your words were not well designed for that end. You have told me nothing of your true goals, only that they are not what I believed them to be. Denials without explanation or evidence."

Zhed-Hai nodded and said, "If I told you my plan, what I plan to do, you would believe me. You would see how it makes sense of all of this." He waved his clawed hand as though to signify the cave, but both he and the Celestial knew he meant more. He meant all that went on in the facility above.

"So, tell me," the Celestial said. "It is as you said, who could I tell?"

"Well apparently you can tell Myra."

"Do you not intend to tell her about this plan she is the key to?"

"In time. When I have prepared her to hear it, she will hear it. But she isn't ready now. She would not agree. Neither, I think, would you. You, your kind, are not like my people. You would not countenance what I intend to do, though I think you would see the necessity." Zhed-Hai's voice grew sad as he said this. The knowledge that no one in the world would support you if they knew what you really were, that you would be rejected by both ally and enemy, was uncomfortable knowledge.

"Then again, why talk at all? Why not go straight to the threats?"

"Well it is as I said, you are the only one I can talk to about this, even if I can only tell you a little. Anyway, I am off now. I go to Korriban, to correct a cosmic mistake. When I return, if this meddling of yours continues, I will kill you. And then I will kill the Kwa, for they will no longer serve any function here. Do you understand?"

"Why do you still keep me alive?"

Zhed-Hai did not answer, but the question stayed with him as he walked back to the elevator. He honestly did not know the answer. The Celestial had been useful in the past, vital even. The plan to which all Zhed-Hai's efforts had been directed, the secret around which he had constructed his life, all of it was only possible because of his study of the Celestial. But those inquiries were centuries in the past. He had learned everything from the Celestial that he could think of as important. But whenever he thought about killing this enemy, a feeling of dread stopped him. Was this feeling an unconscious glimpse of the future, provided by the Gift? Or was he falling prey to the same reverence his people had found themselves saddled with in their time of slavery? When Zhed-Hai reached the elevator, he looked back angrily at the Celestial. The final question had shaken him, even if just a little, and had provided a most unsatisfactory end to the discussion. But now he had to push that out of his mind. Now he had a genocide to plan.