The Fall of the Infinite Empire
Chapter 55
Za-Hell woke to the sound of his door opening. In the doorway, framed by the hallway light behind her, stood Myra, the holocron in one hand.
"It's time to leave," she said, as though she was saying it was time for breakfast.
"What? What are you doing here? How did you get here?" Za-Hell said while stumbling off his bunk. "How did you open my door?"
"I have full security privileges now," she said nodding at the holocron. "And it is time to go."
"How dare you come in here," he said while putting on his boots, "barking orders at me? You are the prisoner here, if you recall."
"You know that isn't true, and I know Zhed-Hai ordered you to help us get off Lehon. He ordered you to go with us, which I see no reason for, but I need you and some of the other guards to escort us along the way and get us through the security checkpoints," she said. "So get your boots on, get your spear and start getting the guards together. I have opened all the doors to all the cells. My people are getting everyone together. Meet us at the tram."
"The tramway is blocked," he said angrily. He had become aware of the closing of the route into the annex where his family was staying the night before. He had meant his previous visit to be his last, but the idea had been in his head the whole time that he would find a way to sneak back to them, to share a last moment. That was over now.
"There is another tramway. It will take us to the shuttles. It is on the other end of the compound from the tramway to your people," she said. Za-Hell was left wondering how she knew all these things about the layout of the facility, but supposed the holocron had told her.
"Most of the guards were sent home. It's just the drones, myself and a few of the oldest guards now, the ones with no family left," Za-Hell said while grabbing his spear and stepping out of his room.
"Can you trust them, the ones who aren't drones I mean?" Myra asked.
"Trust them to what?" Za-Hell asked in turn.
"To help us escape and not turn us in?" she answered.
Za-Hell thought about it a moment and said, "No."
"Then lock them in their rooms and only bring the drones. I am going back to the enclosure. I will see you at the tram," she said as she turned away from him. She wound her way through the hallways until she arrived at the central cylindrical enclosure. The doors opened for her without need for a command. As the holocron had explained to her, once Zhed-Hai left she had effectively become the master of the facility. She had spent the better part of the previous day, after meeting with Zhed-Hai on the beach, exploring that newfound authority, before contacting him through the Force trying once again to dissuade him from his plan. The holocron had shown her a surprising number of things, such as the defense system which struck her as entirely mad. She had now at her fingertips the ability to annihilate the entire capital city of the Infinite Empire. She also had the ability to shoot down the space stations whose orbits were presently taking them across the hemisphere in which that capital city was located. These abilities were, of course, useless given her goal, but it had shocked her that Zhed-Hai had not disabled them before he left. If Halvor had been in charge she was sure he would have ordered the massacre of the Rakatans on their way out.
As she walked through the enclosure she saw Halvor in the distance, going from group to group waking his people up. Where once he could have commanded the allegiance or at least obedience of nearly everyone in the enclosure, that group was now restricted to the group of humans who wanted to go to the rich, contested world Zhed-Hai had spoken of, the world to which she had promised Halvor she would go. More than half the humans on this level had decided to accompany Halvor. Among the humans on the lower level the numbers were fewer, for the most part matching the distribution of northerners and southerners. Try as Tytus might the old suspicions and animosities could not be overcome, not in a few days anyway.
She reached their little hut and entered to find her children all asleep, Brun having been prevailed upon to sleep indoors that night. She spent a few seconds just watching them, despite the urgency of the day. The soft light of early morning on their sleeping faces was an image she wanted to keep, and she tried to commit every bit of it to memory. Tytus walked into the hut a few moments after her, carrying some food he had gathered. Before he could speak Myra put her finger to her lips and gestured at their children. They stayed that way a while, but all too quickly the necessity of movement overtook them, and they gently roused them.
Brun woke up with a start and was instantly excited and ready to go when told what the day would bring. Tytus sent him to go collect a few more items of food, making sure to tell him to pick only small items that didn't need to be processed much to eat. They had no idea what the ships they were supposed to board had for them, and Tytus wanted to be prepared. Sani and Corus woke up more slowly, and when they told them to get ready to leave the facility forever, Sani immediately went outside the hut. Myra was going to ask what she was doing when Tytus said, "Just wait, you'll see."
Corus, who was too young to help prepare much, kept one hand on Myra at all times as she yawned her way into wakefulness.
"Where are we going momma?" she asked as Myra waited for Brun and Sani to return.
"Do you remember when you came to this place with daddy? You went from our world to this one. Well we are going to go to another world, all of us together," she said.
Corus nodded and said, "I hope that world has grass too. And stars."
"Had enough of caves my little one?" Myra asked, smiling.
"Yes. I like the sunshine all the time," she said.
Just then Sani came back in, and Corus started to clap and said, "Oh mommy, look, look."
Sani was carrying a bundle in her arms and when she came to a stop in front of Myra she opened it up and shook it out as it unfolded. It was a robe of plain brown cloth. It was the robe she had begun with them after their arrival on Lehon, but which she had found less and less time to work on with them as time went on and she had been focusing on how to stop Zhed-Hai, how to contact the Celestial, and other things.
"We worked on it, me and Corus. It's not quite finished, but it has a hood, and its long enough," Sani said, trying to hide the pride in her voice.
"Sani, this was supposed to be for you," Myra said. She had been slow to start making Sani her robe, and it had been incomplete when they had set out to change caves. That robe had been left behind of course, along with everything else they had been carrying that day.
"It's ok mother. Yours was destroyed, and, well, they gave us clothes that fit here."
"A mother should give her children their robes," Myra said shaking her head. "I know we have missed a lot, with all this insanity. I know I haven't been around much. But that's going to change. We are going to start over, in a new world, where we will be safe. I promise."
Sani smiled and said, "Maybe on this new world they will have better stuff to weave from than weeds."
Brun, who had returned with the food, had rolled his eyes through a fair bit of this conversation, and it was he who said, "Let's go! I saw everyone getting ready when I was out."
"It's a nice moment son, relax," Tytus said.
"We have lots of time for lots of nice moments, once we are out of here. Right?" Brun said impatiently.
"Yes, we do," Myra said, smiling at her son's obvious excitement.
The five of them walked out of their little hut, the first house they had ever had, towards the gathering crowd milling about in the sunlight. All eyes were on Myra, and on the holocron in her hand, for word had gone around that it was the way out. There were rumors that she had killed Zhed-Hai to acquire it, or that he had gone into hiding and left it behind. There had been darker rumors among some of the northerners that Myra was Zhed-Hai's servant, but Halvor had silenced such stories with a ruthless efficiency. There were a few northerners walking around with fresh and very prominent bruises and scars.
Her fellow humans parted as Myra approached, allowing her to walk to the front of the crowd. Halvor was standing there waiting, with Usment standing by. Halvor's face was inscrutable as he locked eyes with her. Was he thinking about her promise to go with him, she wondered, or was he thinking of the punishment he had no doubt received for attempting to help her kill Zhed-Hai? If he had some kind of grudge that would interfere with the escape she needed to know, and there was no time left for things to remain unsaid.
"Are you ready?" she asked him, as the group began to move towards the exit.
"Yes, are you?" he replied.
"As ready as I can be. When we get to the station the groups need to split and we have to be prepared to do it fast. I don't want to spend any more time there than we have to," Myra said as they left the enclosure that had been her home for months and Halvor's home for many years.
"Why not break the groups up now?" Halvor asked.
"Because there is a conversation I haven't had yet, and I would rather have it when there isn't time to dwell on it," Myra whispered.
Halvor looked back at Tytus, who was close enough to see they were speaking, but not close enough to hear. "You haven't told them yet?"
"That isn't any of your concern. I will handle this," she said. Halvor nodded as they turned the corner to find Za-Hell standing in front of a group of guards. Behind the Rakatans were the assembled humans from all the floors below, hundreds of them, filling the hallways. Myra stepped forward to speak to him.
"Is this all of them?" she asked.
"Yes," Za-Hell said, tersely.
"Let's get to the tram. We need them to escort us like we are prisoners once we are above ground. It might be best to tell them we are prisoners," Myra said, "in case they get ideas about not following orders."
"These men have been raised from nothing; their families granted privileges beyond anything they could have hoped to expect. No one else in the Empire would have done anything comparable for them. Their loyalty is absolute," Za-Hell said.
Myra felt a sadness in Za-Hell's words that surprised her. She had expected him to be indignant at all this, and there was still some of that present in Za-Hell as they set out towards the tramline, but far outweighing any anger or hurt pride was a sense of sadness.
"Something similar true for you? Is that why you obey him?" she asked.
"My family has been given a place in Zhed-Hai's most secure location other than this one, and this facility will likely become a target soon anyway. I have much to be grateful for," he said.
"He expects you to leave them behind?" she said, surprised at this.
"My family has been given more than the drones' families have. It is because more has been asked of me. When they are done with their duty today they will be released from Zhed-Hai's service, and they will return home to families that were made, if not great, then at least middling, by his favor. They will live out the rest of their lives far from the war. But my family resides now with the great families of Lehon, and if my father can keep his mouth shut and let my mother talk, they could do very well for themselves. There is a price for such gifts," Za-Hell said.
"If there is a price, then it isn't a gift," was all Myra could manage to say in response. She thought of what she knew that he did not, that almost all Rakatans were going to die in the next few weeks. Looking at Za-Hell as he marched along beside her, she felt the urge to tell him, to let him know that in all likelihood there was nothing he was buying with his sacrifice. That he should go back to his family and spend what time with them he could, because there was nothing for them to look forward to. If there was no hope left, if the end was coming, Myra knew how she would want to spend her last days and weeks, and it was with her children. Maybe, she thought, at the end, as we board the ships, maybe then she would tell him. For now she needed him, and she would not risk her own family for him, though she felt a twinge of guilt at it. Zhed-Hai had made her part of his deception. He had only told her his plans when his plans could not be endangered by her knowing, for now she was desperate to get off this world, and could not allow anything to get in the way.
"In the end, we all do what he wants," she said. Za-Hell only nodded.
Far below Myra and her party, the Kwa sat cross-legged, facing each other, with their eyes closed. The time had come, they knew, for their confinement to end. They had accomplished all they had set out to in those first days after Zhed-Hai had captured them. It had started with Anluk saying, in his desperation after being caught, that it would have been better for the Kwa to never have met the Celestials at all, which led to Inbarra formulating the plan to strip their people of the Force in order to guarantee their survival. It had come as something of a surprise that Zhed-Hai had agreed. They had spent centuries working with him to develop the midi-chlorian, the organism that would soon reshape the face of the galaxy. It was based on elements found in their own blood, and the blood of the Rakatans, isolated and subjected to repeated genetic manipulation, until they had perfected it. It would spread the Force throughout the species of the galaxy, and take the Force from the Kwa and Rakatans.
For all that time the two of them had wondered how Zhed-Hai had intended to profit from that situation, and how he intended to protect his own people from it. They assumed that while the three of them worked to create the midi-chlorian, he worked on his own to develop a way to block it from infecting the Rakatans, or at least the one's loyal to him. It would kill any Force empowered Kwa or Rakatans it came into contact with, except in some rare cases where it would simply depower them. He had agreed that, before the midi-chlorian was released, he would use a diluted version of it to prepare a new variant of the Kwa that would not have the Force, and so would not be threatened with plague. It was being released on Dathomir that very day, and would do its work long before the primary pathogen arrived there, isolated as the Kwa home world was. Anluk and Inbarra had been sure he would accept no such solution for his own people, and it was of course ridiculous to think he would allow his own people to be nearly wiped out.
But today they had found out the truth. The Celestial below them had told them of Zhed-Hai's plans, plans which were not limited to the plague that was about to overtake his homeworld. Anluk was sanguine about the whole affair. He did not pretend to understand why Zhed-Hai was doing what he was doing, but he did not object. Inbarra had doubts. If she had been asked to wipe out the Rakatan species at the beginning of their collaboration with Zhed-Hai, she would have refused. She had been on Lehon when the rebellion had begun, and had been part of the group which had decided not to destroy the planet, which had been within their abilities at that time, and to cripple the Infinite Gate instead. Her faith in the correctness of that decision had wavered over the years as the Rakatans proved how formidably violent they were, but fundamentally she agreed with Myra.
But unlike Myra she never had any illusions about changing Zhed-Hai's mind, or somehow stopping him. She had come to know his mind as well as she did any but her own and Anluk's, and she knew that he would not be dissuaded and would not be outplayed. And so she was resigned to her role in the genocide that was to come. She had already contributed her efforts to it, though she had not known it, and the only duties that remained to her and Anluk had nothing to do with the midi-chlorians. They had shut down all their research projects, and wiped all the data from the system in case somehow a Rakatan was able to get down to their lab one day.
That last remaining duty would not be easy, but the Kwa were happy to carry it out. All these years working with their enemy against the will of their gods had taken their toll. It was difficult enough to make the kind of tragic choice they had made, but to have that choice animate your life and work for centuries was a difficulty of an entirely different order. But today at least they would do something good, something to be proud of, for however long they had left.
In the skies above Lehon, Soaf-Rushk was worried. The Star Forge was growing frantic, warning of impending doom from some unknown quarter. His droid flown patrols were out in force, but still the system insisted more needed to be done. There had been no word from Drisk-Koan as he raced his way from garrison to garrison, trying to build an army and a fleet to bring back to Lehon before Kru-Garth arrived. Kru-Garth was, for some reason, doing nothing, which ought to have been good news, but nothing seemed to satisfy the system. Soaf-Rushk thought to himself it was probably necessary to make some alterations to its cognitive systems, but that was for another day. Today he would need to meet with Fa-Rush who, days after breaking off contact, was back in touch with what he claimed was very sensitive information about Zhed-Hai. The young fool was on his way, waiting, he said, only for some drill at Zhed-Hai's compound to take the guards away long enough for him to escape. Soaf-Rushk wondered whether Fa-Rush's discovery would be sufficient to force Zhed-Hai to abandon the suddenly lethargic Kru-Garth, and hoped it would be. Then he could focus on re-programming the Star Forge and begin the process of Zhed-Hai's re-education.
High above Belsavis, Zhed-Hai entered the codes necessary to descend to the surface. The planet had been used as a prison by the Celestials and Kwa before the Rakatans had found it, but it was so perfectly suited to the task that they had made use of it themselves. Any enemy that was powerful enough to one day be useful, but dangerous enough that they could not be allowed freedom of action was placed there. A general breakout would have been an unmitigated disaster. The Esh-Kha alone could ravage hundreds of worlds before reaching the limits of their power. There were disobedient warlords from past generations imprisoned there was well, more because of how awful a punishment eternal imprisonment was than because of their potential future usefulness. The planet was ringed with defensive satellites and studded with ground to space guns. The real threat of course was not outside, but within. Alone of Rakatans, Zhed-Hai knew what lived beneath the surface of the planet, because alone of Rakatans he had refrained from killing their enemies. Even before his moment of revelation with the Eee-Wook mother, Zhed-Hai had always preferred learning to killing. It was ironic, he thought to himself, that after a lifetime of living in that way, his last act would be the killing of an enemy. Was he only now, at the end, becoming a true Rakatan?
After receiving permission to descend he piloted his ship to the research station on the surface. Not understanding the reason for, or even the full nature of, the system of barriers put in place around the Old One, the Rakatans had set up a research facility to study them at the place where the Kwa operators of the system had been found and killed. Very little progress had been made over the years in figuring out how any part of the system worked and the research station, while not entirely abandoned, had become a posting fit only for the lower ranks of the scientific corps. His own long work with the Kwa meant that Zhed-Hai could have answered in a few hours most of their questions about the workings of the technology they had studied for years in vain. He always felt a little regret at that, for he respected his fellow members of the scientific corps, for their intentions if not their intellect. He felt a great deal more regret for what he would soon have to do.
His ship flew down through a light snow, something that Zhed-Hai, in all his travels, had rarely seen. Rakatans did not do well in cold weather, and so cold worlds were rarely selected as locations for garrisons. The few cold worlds there were in the Empire were restricted to the function of mineral extraction, which did not interest him. He thought about all the things that remained in the universe for him to see, and how he would never see any of them. He tried to banish such thoughts from his mind, but he failed. He tried to focus on the potential of those thoughts to weaken him, but that obsession with strength had lost its motivational punch. His labors were almost over, and in this last task his strength would not decide matters. If his plan worked it would be the strength of others that made the difference, if his plan didn't work, then his strength would avail him nothing.
As Zhed-Hai's ship descended through the snow to the surface of Belsavis, Myra and her people rode a train on an underground track. The car did not actually make any contact with the track, it levitated above it, so the ride was quite smooth. The smoothness of the ride along with the uniformity of the tunnels made it impossible to guess how fast they were going, and thus how far they had traveled. Myra, curious, turned to Za-Hell, who sat nearby.
"How far do these tunnels extend?" she asked.
"I don't know. None of us even knew these tunnels were here until recently. I don't know how long he has been digging, or what his purpose was in doing this. There are tunnels leading to the annex where my family is staying. I had no idea any of it existed. I don't think anyone, even on the Council, did."
"Who is on this Council?" she asked derisively. "It sounds like he was able to get a lot of things past them."
"It's the Council of Elders. They run the Empire. Or they did. There are all sorts on there I suppose."
Tytus, who was sitting next to Myra, asked, "What does 'all sorts' mean?"
Za-Hell shrugged. "Warlords, scientists like Zhed-Hai, administrators. They are usually the oldest and most powerful Rakatans in the Empire. They made all the decisions, and delegated the tasks to be done. We have had it since the rebellion against the Celestials began."
"How do they choose who is on it?" Tytus followed up.
"I don't know. When old members died new members would be named by the remaining Elders. Usually the new members are already well known, and so it usually just makes sense. It worked well for a long time. Not now."
"Why did it fall apart now?" Myra asked.
"I don't know that either. I am not that important. Zhed-Hai picked me for these tasks because I am not important. He could kill me and kill my family without any risk. It was some disagreement about the Sith, from what I hear. A disagreement between Zhed-Hai and Soaf-Rushk."
"Who is that?" Myra asked.
"Zhed-Hai's enemy," Halvor answered, having just walked into their area of the train car. He was far too anxious and excited to sit still. "He told me all about him, back when I received his special attention. Soaf-Rushk is the one who built the Star Forge."
"Which is?" Tytus asked.
"A space station, where almost all our ships are constructed," Za-Hell answered.
"It talks to the Star Maps," Myra interjected.
"What?" Za-Hell said surprised.
"The Star Forge communicates with all the Star Maps in the Empire. I felt it when I interacted with one."
"No, no," Za-Hell said. "The Star Maps are the honored resting places of our most revered explorers; the Star Forge is just a factory."
"It is more than a factory. It thinks. And it feels. Hate, fear, envy."
"Envy?" Halvor asked, incredulously.
"Envy of those who have not been stuck inside some machine. Haven't you felt it? When we got here, to Lehon, I could feel it. I just didn't know what it was. I thought at first it was Zhed-Hai, or maybe Rakatans in general. They did such terrible things, I thought it made sense that the darkness was from them. But it's not. Zhed-Hai isn't who we thought. You," she said, looking at Za-Hell, "aren't what I thought. You've done terrible things, but the darkness isn't you. It's that thing you made."
"I feel no darkness," Za-Hell said.
"Yes, you do. You just don't know you're feeling it, because you've always felt it. It's been with you, since the day you were born. It was always there, pressing on you, shaping you."
"This is nonsense," Halvor said as he walked away. He didn't want to hear any story about how the Rakatans weren't to blame for what they had done, for what they were.
"How do you know this?" Tytus asked.
"This," Myra said, holding up the holocron. "I knew about the Star Forge, knew it was something wrong, back on Tatooine. I should have known it was the thing I was feeling, the source of that feeling, sooner, but I was too busy hating the Rakatans to figure it out."
"You don't hate us anymore?" Za-Hell said, almost laughing.
"No," Myra said softly.
"Why not? What changed?" Za-Hell asked. His tone suggested he was approaching this discussion mockingly, but secretly he wanted to know very much. He thought about the face of the human he had killed, Myra's own kin, and wondered how anyone could not hate him.
Myra looked at Za-Hell and felt a mixture of pity and shame. She could feel his guilt, and she could feel his fear for his family. These two feelings dominated his mind. She knew he felt indebted to her for what he had done, that he longed for some kind of absolution. She also knew that his love of his family and fear for them was stronger. How could she tell him why she no longer hated the Rakatans? Should she tell him that she knew their end, knew it was coming swiftly? How could you hate something you know is about to be killed unjustly? Zhed-Hai's condemnation of his people, and his plan to carry out what he considered their just punishment, had freed Myra to see them differently. They were a people not so unlike her own. They had been made slaves, and they had risen up, only unlike humanity they had succeeded. They had then become something worse, worse than they had been, worse than what they were rebelling against, in the process. In that they were not so different from someone like Halvor.
But in their fear they had created the monster which had consumed them. The holocron had told her of the method used to create the Star Forge. Criminals, killers, rapists, traitors, all of them fed to create the engine, an object rich in the Force, a vessel into which the Rakatans had poured all their sins. But the engine was alive, and the vessel spilled out more sins than it accepted. Its presence had slowly twisted them, like a root beneath the stone which slowly tore the stone apart. She wondered whether Zhed-Hai saw it, whether he truly understood the source of his people's evil. She wondered what Zhed-Hai might have been had the darkness not twisted him as well. He had never, despite the Forge's oppressive influence, lost his fear and hatred of that darkness, but what might he have been had he instead loved and cultivated the light? What might Za-Hell have been had that darkness not driven his people to turn from defending their home to conquering an Empire? He would not be here, trying to save his family, trying to find an escape from his guilt. He would not be here, being lied to by her. But she needed him, so she could not tell him the truth, she thought to herself. The darkness found its way into all of them.
While she lost in her ruminations, and long after Za-Hell had given up on getting an answer to his last question, the tram carried them above ground, into the light of day. Myra and the others turned to look out the windows at a wide valley, with mountains far in the distance. Between them and the mountains were wide fields of tall crops, with a few large harvesting droids to be found passing through them.
"We must be on Gaz-Pak," Za-Hell said. "It's an island where we get most of our food from. It's a long way away, and that tunnel must have been going under the sea floor."
"We are going to fly out on a barge, delivering food," Myra said. Za-Hell looked at her with a puzzled expression and she reminded him, "The holocron."
She could see houses in the distance as the tram turned towards the mountain range. She wondered who lived there, what their lives were like. Rakatans who grew food. She wondered if any of them had ever left their world to go kill others, and she thought it was likely they had not. They were in the business of creating and supporting life.
She leaned her head forward until it rested on the glass, and reached her mind out to Zhed-Hai.
"Please turn back," she said in her mind.
Zhed-Hai heard her voice while walking from his ship to the entrance to the research station. Because the station was mostly underground the entrance was nothing more than a door to an elevator. He stopped in his tracks when he heard her voice in his head. He considered shutting her voice out, not responding. He wanted these last few moments before the plunge to himself, not indulging Myra in her endless desire to argue the point. But then he thought about the fact that this would likely be the last time they spoke to each other, and relented.
"It is over Myra," he said in his mind as he reached the doorway.
"Not yet," she replied as she watched the golden fields pass her by. "Just try, try to save them. Give up on this mad plan, and just do what you can to save those who don't deserve to die."
"Even if I could undo what I have done already, then what? What happens to the galaxy if I don't do this?" he asked while pausing at the door, his hand resting on the console where he had to enter the security code to get in, as the snow collected on the scaly skin of his hands.
"We all just carry on," she said. She stood in the train with her eyes closed, feeling the sunlight on her skin, as though if she could find some internal peace it would somehow cross the stars to Zhed-Hai.
"And what? Hope? Hope my people or the Sith don't find you? That the Star Forge doesn't send its machines to hunt you down?" he said looking up into the dark, cloudy sky.
"Yes, hope. And trust," she said.
"Hope and trust in what Myra?" he asked as he opened the door and turned around in the elevator.
"In the Force," she said. "That it will send us a way out of this problem. That we can end the cycle of violence and death in some way other than more violence and death."
Zhed-Hai punched in the code for the elevator, and it began to descend. As he stood there, dimly illuminated by the electric light on the ceiling he smiled ruefully, though no one could see it. "Maybe the Force is an agent in the universe, maybe not. But if it is, if it is a power which guides history, if it did send someone, someone to deliver you all, then it sent me. Goodbye." At that he closed his mind and stood in silence as the elevator worked its way down.
Myra opened her eyes and saw the mountains all around her. The train had started to move up the tallest of the mountains on a track that wound around it in great loops. At the top she knew there would be a huge grain transport ship, with a compartment set aside for them for the first leg of their journey into space.
The doors opened for Zhed-Hai to reveal a passage that seemed narrower than it was, because of its great length and height. At the other end of it was the control facility, where the barriers placed around the Old One were monitored. The elevator shaft was a new addition, drilled by the Rakatans after they discovered the vast network of underground passages with this facility at its center. The Kwa had of course made use of their teleportation technology to get from above to below ground, but despite having found several of the devices used to do this, the Rakatan scientists stationed here had never figured out how to make them work. Zhed-Hai knew, from Anluk and Inbarra, that the devices would have been intentionally sabotaged when it became clear the Celestials guarding the planet would die. He also knew that the nature of Kwa technology was such that they would likely self-repair, though it would take thousands of years to do so. But his fellow scientists did not know that, so they had just dug a shaft and put an elevator in it. But seeking to leave as much of the network of tunnels undisturbed as they could, the shaft had been placed at some distance from the machinery found within the tunnels, which those scientists had figured out how to monitor, and, to a limited extent, use.
Zhed-Hai was thankful for their failure penetrate the mysteries of Kwa technology. The long walk towards the control area gave what he valued most at this moment, time. Time to compose himself and order his mind. Time to achieve the clarity of thought and emotion that would be necessary for what was shortly to come. He had spent his entire life building walls between his innermost thoughts and the rest of the world. He had learned to keep his emotions out of his facial expressions and bodily movements as a child, for his parents did not want to be troubled with such things. He had learned to keep his ideas and beliefs hidden from the other students at the scientific academies, so that his failures would stay hidden, and his successes would stay his. He learned to block his mind off from the Gifts of others when he ascended to the highest levels of politics, erecting psychic walls against the other powerful leaders staring at him from across tables. He remembered the day on the Star Forge when those walls had been tested as never before, and never since. He had learned that day that more was needed than meeting brute mental force with brute mental force. His great plan had been, at that point, unknown even to him, and he was sure, now looking back on it, that Soaf-Rushk or the station would have discovered it that day, had it been in his mind to discover. Since then he had learned to fill his mind with something more useful than walls, and that was lies. There was no better way to keep someone from the information you did not want them to have than to hide false information from them. He had spent many years before Soaf-Rushk had retreated permanently to the Star Forge masking his true intentions with false but plausible ones. He had even altered his great plan at some points to make certain lies more plausible.
This took a discipline that went beyond almost anything else he had ever done. The genetic secrets of thousands of species had opened themselves up to his gaze with less effort than it took to wrap his mind in falsehoods. He found that it was not enough simply to think about the lie, to commit it and all its detail to memory. Someone who gained access to his mind would be able to tell it was a lie. He had spent years working out his method with captured Rakatans, usually the clients of enemies of his, in the lowermost halls of his compound. He would give them access to his mind and try to deceive them despite that fact. He learned that the key to deceit was to really believe the lie, to create a persona for yourself that actually believed it. Each persona was like a mask, and behind each mask was another. He had worn many masks in his life, and he would need them all today. He had spent the days since learning the nature of the being imprisoned beneath his feet coming up with versions of himself that would believe the lies that would hide the truth. He was ready. It was time for his final performance.
Myra watched as Lehon receded slowly behind them. The grain hauler, massive and not very powerful, rose from the mountains only slowly. Zhed-Hai had cut her off, but not entirely. She could feel his fear rising, and that did nothing for her own mood. She decided to use this time to make sure all was prepared. She walked over to Za-Hell, standing with the drones, and beckoned Halvor to come over.
"Once we reach the station, I want you to let the drones go. Send them back down to their families. If anything goes wrong, they won't be much help anyway. The holocron has selected a path through the halls of the station that should keep us from encountering any unwanted attention," she said to Za-Hell as Halvor drew close.
She turned to him and said, "Still, I want to be protected. Za-Hell and I will be up front, but I want you and your best men in the rear, in case we pick up any unwanted followers. There isn't going to be another chance at this, so err on the side of fighting, and we can start running."
"Sounds good," Halvor said.
"Once we get to the two ships and you," she pointed at Za-Hell, "get them open, we will start sorting people into their respective ships. I am assuming everyone you want in the rearguard is also planning to join you on your world."
"Our world, right?" Halvor said.
"Of course," Myra replied, with a slight smile. She looked back at Za-Hell, who nodded. She nodded back and turned to go talk to those elected to lead the various smaller groups, to make sure they were on the same page. Halvor followed behind her.
"You should bring him with us," he said, causing Myra to turn to look at him.
"Who?" she asked.
"Tytus. We would be better with him," Halvor said. Myra gave him a skeptical look and he continued, "Don't get me wrong. I want him separated from you. But I know you'd skin me alive before you would leave your children behind, and I…I don't want to separate a man from his children."
"Why?" she asked, surprised at his sudden sentimentality.
"Some things a man earns, fair and straight. Take those things from him, and you're no better than some damned carrion eater. And being here, free from the Old Man at last, I feel like being myself again. I don't want to do the kinds of things he made me do, not anymore. So bring old Tytus along. He and I can have some fun talks," Halvor said, smiling broadly.
Myra could not help but smile back, but then gave him a serious look and said, "I would rather not talk about this right now. I don't like keeping secrets."
"Understood," Halvor said and turned to walk away, back to Usment and his friends. Myra returned to the window and looked at the stars appearing over the horizon, both anxious to get moving, and dreading what she would need to do on the station when they got there.
Zhed-Hai saw the five scientists as they noticed his approach. They had been sitting around indolently, but now hopped to something like attention. His identity would have been transmitted to them along with the codes he sent down. He had no need to fear their reaction to his presence. This world was under the control of Kru-Garth's fleet, or Fa-Rush's fleet now, though they did not know that, and so he was still, as far as they were concerned, a high-ranking member of the ruling council. And of course lifelong scientists like these five would have known Zhed-Hai's name and accomplishments since they were children. Perhaps they had even looked up to him and, as children, wanted to emulate him. They probably did, he thought sadly.
They were striding forward, having smoothed their uniforms out and affected their most confident stance and gait. If there was something they had planned to say to him by way of greeting they never got the chance to say it. Zhed-Hai lifted an arm, and all their bodies were lifted into the air, while they grabbed furiously at their necks. This was quicker, he thought, than the death they would face from his plague. Better this way, he told himself, even for them. He walked between their hanging bodies as their feet kicked in the air. As he reached the computer console, he lowered his arm and heard their bodies hit the floor. He pulled the device he had fabricated on his ship and placed it on the console when he heard movement from behind him.
He turned and saw that four of the five were dead, but one of them was trying to crawl away down the passage Zhed-Hai had just marched down. The Elder winced and walked toward injured and terrified scientist. Hearing his approach the injured man turned to face his attacker. Zhed-Hai saw the look of incomprehension and fear on the face beneath him, and felt the pull of Myra's words. What he was doing now he was doing millions of times over across the Empire. This young Rakatan had never invaded a world, never stood guard over slaves. He would have been selected for the science academies in part based on his intellectual aptitude, but also in part due to a hesitancy to do what warriors were required to. Zhed-Hai remembered his own feeling of relief when he had been told that he would be spared the cruelties and monotony of the life of a warrior. Surely this scientist had felt that same relief not so long ago. He had been posted far from home to a research station known for its mysteries and the lack of interest of the Council in what happened there. Had there been a celebration in his honor, full of family and friends happy for him that he was getting to do what he had always dreamed of? The knowledge that his story would end here, looking up into his eyes, made Zhed-Hai's heart sink.
But he could not afford a heavy heart, and so he thought about how little difference it made. So this scientist died here rather than dying of plague on some other world, so what? Or worse, he would wake up after a terrible illness to realize his Gift was gone, and there was no way back to the childhood home doubtless filled with the dead bodies of his family. There was nothing left now but a final mercy.
"Wah…Why?" the young scientist croaked out through his crushed throat. He was still trying to crawl away, pushing with his feet against the ground, and sliding slowly backwards.
"Look at you, fighting until the end," Zhed-Hai said, in genuine admiration. "You are a credit to our people brother, and you deserve an answer. I am sorry that I won't be giving it to you."
After saying this he twisted his hand ever so slightly, and the scientist's neck snapped, then went limp as his head fell to the floor. Zhed-Hai looked at the body and said, "If only I had more time."
He stood up and walked back to the control board. He began removing panels from it and wiring the device he had brought with him into the system. When he was done, he found a button in the center of the control panel and pushed it. Lights began to flash across the cavern, warnings that elements of the security system had been shut down.
Myra and Za-Hell were at the head of several hundred humans walking their way through one of the large space stations that orbited Lehon. The holocron had selected a path through the station which, while slower, kept them away from anything but droids. They were already more than halfway to the hanger with the two ships that would take them, at last, away from this place, and Myra knew that the key juncture was coming soon.
She looked at Tytus, who was walking closely behind her, and said, "Follow Za-Hell. I have shown him the way. I will catch back up soon." She then turned and started to walk to the back of the column, passing many hopeful faces as she went, but many fearful ones as well. Almost everyone was trying to stay as quiet as they could, so Myra could hear Halvor and Usment's voice as she approached.
"Ay Myra," Usment said, beaming at her. "You make a gut plan. We almost free!"
"Thanks," she said in return. As she reached the group of Halvor's key men she turned again, walking slightly ahead of them. Halvor watched her do this and thought it odd. He picked up his speed to catch up with her.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
Myra did not look at him. She was trying to see over the heads of those in front of her.
"No, nothing wrong. I just wanted to update you on something," she said. Halvor looked ahead as well, and being taller than Myra was able to make out a doorway coming up. Most of their people had already made it through, but it was narrow enough that it had slowed them down.
"Update us on what?" Halvor asked. He was suddenly anxious, but could not say why.
"Do you feel them? The Rakatans?" she asked him.
"A little," he answered. "They must not be that close."
Myra nodded. "There are some on the level above us, I think. But not many. Nothing you all can't handle."
"Well the plan is that we don't handle them, right? We get on the ships and go and try not to attract any attention," he said.
"I might have oversold how simple that part will be. We aren't operating on our own timetable here," she said as they waited for those ahead of them to file through the door.
"Why not?" he asked.
"The ships have hyperdrive, but their range is fairly limited. And there is no Star Map on either of these worlds, so even a good hyperdrive would take a long time to get us there, and we don't have the food for it."
"So where are we going?" he asked, perturbed.
"We are going there, don't worry. Both ships will arrive at their destination today. It's just that we have to wait for an alternative form of transportation," Myra said as she looked back over her shoulder and saw that only a few more people were ahead of them and on their side of the doorway.
"How does this affect us?" Halvor asked, upset that he had not been told this before.
"It just means we might have to wait a little bit before the ships set off. Once they do, they are going to attract attention, and there is a plan to deal with that, but we have to time our departure to fit that plan," Myra looked over the several dozen northerners who Halvor had chosen to accompany him as the last person ahead of her walked through the doorway. She looked up at Halvor and said, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what Myra?"
"For getting you captured and tortured. Sorry my plan didn't work. Sorry I didn't tell you why we had to do it," she said. She took a deep breath and continued, "And for this." She raised both hands, and it was like a gale force wind hit Halvor and those around him, lifting them up into the air and throwing them back several yards. As this happened Myra sprinted for the doorway. While the others ended up a sprawling mass of legs and arms on the floor, Halvor had landed on his feet. He raced behind Myra but could not reach the door before she activated the mechanism to close it. A thick, heavy slab of either plastic or glass dropped between them.
When he reached out with the Force to lift it, he felt Myra's greater strength keeping it in place. His friends ran up behind him, shouting insults and crying 'Betrayal!' Halvor just stared at Myra.
She pressed a button on her side of the door which activated a speaker on theirs. "You would have trouble opening this door even if I weren't here. Its heavy and it's a secure door and I have locked it. You can't get past this door with me here, not even all of you working together."
"You are going to leave us here to die?" Halvor said, enraged both at that prospect and at having been tricked.
"No. There is another path to the hangar. It will take longer, and you will have to fight some Rakatans to get through. You have to go back to the last junction and then use the ladder to go up a level and then past a door just like this, and then down another ladder. I will have Za-Hell hold your ship until you arrive. By the time you do, my ship will have cast off. Once the ships depart the station, there is no way for anyone to move between them, and there is no turning back."
"Why are you doing this!" Halvor yelled.
"You are going to get your war world. I am sorry I lied to you, but I never had any intention of joining you. I needed your help. I'm sorry. If you stick together you will make it, all of you. But you don't have time to waste talking to me. You have to get moving. You have to run, and you have to fight! I will stay here as long as it takes for you to decide to turn back, and you cannot get past me."
"Dammit! Why? You tell me why!" Halvor screamed.
"I don't want the world you are going to make. I don't want my children growing up in your world. And you wouldn't listen, and I don't want to have to kill you. And you are running out of time."
Halvor reached out and tried to lift the door again. When it did not budge, he called for help. When his friends lent their strength to the task, Myra flicked her head and most of them were thrown backwards again. Usment, who had remained standing, put his big hand on Halvor's shoulders and said, "Come on man. We got to go!"
Halvor growled in anger and cast a baleful look Myra's way. Myra just nodded. Halvor turned around and started to run back the way they had come. Myra waited until they were out of sight before turning and sprinting along the path she knew Za-Hell was taking.
Far away from each other Gran-Nock and the Star Forge felt the sands of time shifting. For the Star Forge the catastrophe of the past several days had only accelerated. Its back up plans had long since fallen to pieces, and its new plans which aimed at a kind of Imperial triage were coming apart as well. The probabilities were breaking like a wave on rocks. Everything was collapsing, and there was nothing it could think to do. Ordinarily Soaf-Rushk would have been able to step in to provide some assistance, providing order and direction to the Star Forge's cognition, if for no other reason than that the Forge was programmed to do the bidding of the Force user in control of it. But Soaf-Rushk was distracted. Moments after the food barge carrying the humans had, unbeknownst to Soaf-Rushk, docked at its transfer station, alarming events had started being reported across Lehon. Every city, including the capitol Kwashang, on every continent was reporting major explosions at seemingly random locations, though later analysis carried out by the Star Forge would reveal they were all at sites bought by drones over the past few hundred years. Potentially even more concerning was the fact that droids seemed to be malfunctioning all over the planet as well. The Star Forge would again be able to determine all these droids had come from those same sites, secretly owned by Zhed-Hai. But that knowledge would come later, and too late for Soaf-Rushk. His response was to immediately put all key sites on the planet under lockdown. For the Great Temple of Kwashang this meant all the doors locking at once, and the defensive systems, run by an autonomous, air-gapped computer system of Soaf-Rushk's devising, going online.
For Gran-Nock, floating in an infinite ocean beneath a starry sky, the future's movements presented themselves differently. He felt hope wash over him, and it seemed as though a fire had been kindled beneath the water, sending its light up from the depths, so that Gran-Nock could not really tell where the stars ended, and the water began. Unbeknownst to them both, their destinies were on their way. Adas was walking slowly down the stairs to Gran-Nock's cell, intent on making this visit the one where he would finally put his hands around the Rakatan's throat. And a lone ship was headed towards the Star Forge. In it, Fa-Rush, or his body at least, sat staring unseeing at the Star Forge as it grew before him.