Disclaimer: I make no money off this, and own none of the involved works.
Authors Note: I have decided to rewrite Ch.1 of my story. Plot-wise it is similar, but not exactly the same. Some of you may know this story as TBD. It has been determined.
Falling into the Force
Chapter 1
The galaxy stretched out beneath Darth Nectus's awareness as a glowing field of light and motion. He could feel the electromagnetic radiation washing over him. He could've been inside of a star, if he wished, as a superheated gas, or he could've been spat out, to vibrate across the universe as a photon. He felt the connections between atoms. Even at such a small scale there was the force. He could feel every star, and was aware of the position of every asteroid. He knew life from non life, but to him the distinction was an artificial one. All things had the force, and so all things were under his scrutiny.
He felt the various planets closest to him, in the outer rim. Some were made of gas, some of stone. Some were light, and some were dark. He sank more deeply into the force, and likewise could he feel the mid-rim, and the more innermost planets. Some places had more force than others. He could see the tiny blazing light spots, the force users. Like him.
The force pulled on him and the galaxy faded to black, replaced by another vision. He saw a cloud of impenetrable darkness, and he saw himself and many others in it. The cloud was then penetrated by a light, which tore it asunder and burned it away.
He then saw a vision of the past. He saw himself standing over the withered-hollowed-out body of his adoptive father. He saw himself climbing onto a space-freighter and leaving the red-sand planet, never to look back.
Nectus then saw a new planet. It burned brightly, but with an unfamiliar kind of light. It was not the power of Sith or Jedi. He saw tall trees, and blue oceans that stretched far into the horizon. Salty wind blew against him, and the small tentacles on either side of his mouth were tossed about by the breeze. A blast of fire appeared before him next, shot out of the mouth of a human, towards another human. The opposing human jumped, and shouted something, and a crack of blue lightning flew from his extended hand and left the first a burned out carcass. What is this?!
He was suddenly viewing Nethos, his current location, a small moon known only to him in the outer-rim. He could feel and see himself, a bright spot of white-yellow light, shining through the the thick stone walls and through the kilometer of ground. He saw his adolescent human apprentice. He was dead, drained and withered away, just like Nectus's father.
Air rushed suddenly into his lungs as the vision abruptly ended. What had this meant? What was the force telling him? Nectus quickly reached out and felt that his apprentice was indeed still alive, he could see, even from here, the faint-force glow of the boy's dense midi-chlorian colony.
The force wanted his apprentice dead. The force wanted Nectus to leave the galaxy, to escape the coming destruction of the darkness. Nectus did not know what had been meant by the visions of the strange planet, with the human energy-throwers. And the strange unfamiliar light. Nectus did not know what was meant by these things, but he could feel his path.
"Open." Pneumatic pressure locks hissed and a crack opened up inside of the round mediation sphere. The inside walls were black and red and purple and covered in runes with pulsed and twisted with the language of the pure-blood Sith. His language. Nectus stepped out of the sphere once it had finished opening, and into the red glow-light of the old tomb that now functioned as his lair.
Nectus donned his synthetic blast-resist robe, adorned with runes to stabilize and protect, and started off towards the main chambers. Bits of sand crunched under his feet as he went. This lair, and indeed Nectus's very existence, were a total secret from the entire galaxy. He was a master of the dark side of the force, and specialized in Sith Sorcery, a powerful art form that was envied by many jealous powers-that-be. So the secrecy. The force is what kept him safe and secret. The force had alway been strong in Nectus; he even had the power to willingly enter into prescient visions, like the strange one he just had. When the force beckoned, Nectus answered. He would oblige the force.
A series of quick steps led him down the ancient stone hallway, hewn of huge cyclopean blocks whose arrangement defied all understanding and logic, blocks that gave off the dark side like waves, blocks that were scarred with accidental cuts from the weapons of ancient slave masters, and the blood of ancient slaves. He walked through his laboratory, past the muted screams of test-subjects locked away in glass confinement cells, past the desks littered in tattered scrolls of ancient Sith sorcery, stolen from tombs, and towards the quarters of his human apprentice.
The boy was a tool that he had shaped to execute his commands. Nectus had found him on a water-planet, being loaded onto a prison-ship headed towards a labor planet, hands stained with blood. Nectus had given him blood. He had given him darkness. He had given him power, and a means for freedom. He had given him the force. The boy was strong now. He was developing a powerful hatred, which was sharpening his senses and filling him with power. But he was stupid. He did not have the keen mind that had kept Nectus hidden from all the powers of the galaxy, Jedi and Sith alike. He was a grenade, meant to be thrown where it could do the most damage, like a senate house. All this was meaningless, now, though. The force wanted him dead. And Nectus was loyal to the force.
The apprentice could feel the master's intentions. Nectus had sensed that this would happen. He knew that a red light would explode into a thin saber at his apprentice's side. He knew that the boy would use this moment to unleash his hatred. Lightning flew towards Nectus. He could feel the boys malice in it; it excited his base-mind and filled him with a pavlovian hunger. The lightning made contact with Nectus's flesh. He let it. It felt good, pain. Pain was combat, and sometimes combat was so rare to Nectus, when he was locked away in his lab, as was often the case.
All in a fraction of a second, Nectus felt outwards into the force energy around him. He opened up the void inside his mind, the huge emptiness that was usually contained and fed by Sith sorcery. It was like a vacuum of the force, and all of the energy in the lightning was instantly drawn into it. The lightning crackled out of existence. Nectus then felt fear and awe from his apprentice. These feelings too, were drained away by emptiness inside of the dark lord.
Nectus extended his hand towards the boy. A vicious force pull yanked the human neck towards his cold clammy hands. Spittle gurgled up around the boy's mouth as Nectus squeezed his fingers. The boy strained with all his might to lash out with the crimson saber towards his master, but found himself incapable of motion.
Nectus looked into the child's eyes as the life left them and felt nothing. The light of the midichlorians in the boy's body, once so bright, swirled into the force-hole, leaving the boy an empty shell. Flesh shriveled in on itself, sans midichlorians.
The husk of his apprentice, now much lighter, fell to ground as he dropped it apathetically. He was thankful that the force had revealed to him the weakness of this miserable creature. What purpose had his death served? The force knew. It didn't matter, anyways. If he had been useful Nectus wouldn't have killed him; if he had been strong he wouldn't have died.
Darth Nectus mentally reactivated the force-imbued Sith runes that were carved on his chest. The air temperature began to rise as the hole-in-the-force was once again blocked up by his sorcery. He could feel the boy's midichlorians within him. They drawn from the force void and passed through layers of filtration and channels that assigned them to specific cells throughout his body. They would, like the many before them, serve to make him stronger.
"Droid."
"Yes, master? How may I be of service to you?" Came the mechanical reply.
"Dispose of this body in the usual way. Leave no trace."
"Right away, master." Servo motors whirred as the droid rattled towards the emaciated body and began to drag it into a room. A smaller droid followed behind, cleaning and sterilizing the blood-smeared ground.
Nectus walked back to his laboratory, and noticed that it was abnormally quiet. Similar noise levels usually signified that a trip was needed to collect new test subjects. This time, he realized while examining the body of an old man through the glass, they were all merely unconscious. Temporarily drained of energy from long-distance exposure to his emptiness.
They still had all their necessary midichlorians, he sensed. He knew that he had to be very physically close to another for that to work. Another limitation.
Through his vision into the force, Nectus knew that he had to somehow avoid the coming purge of darkness from the galaxy. The force had shown him being destroyed, just like the rest of the Sith, meaning that his current unknown-status would not last. So how to escape destruction? Nectus closed his eyes and began to generate and evaluate solutions to the problem.
After a moment, he knew that there were essentially two plausibilities. He could attempt to navigate into the unknown regions of space, which would require flying at sub-light speeds to avoid crashing into an uncharted body. Nectus considered this to be an unideal option, as the magnitude of time required to travel any appreciable distance at sub-light speeds was large, relative to someone traveling in pursuit, likely following the radiation-trail of sub-light speed engines, and any pursuer very well could travel at light speed along the known course that they are following. Because he did not know when the purge would happen, this option must be a last resort.
It would be much better to somehow escape without traveling. If he could somehow stay within the known regions of the galaxy, where no one would expect a Sith to hide, in a hypothetical after-purge situation. Nectus had to find some way to hide in plain sight. He had to somehow completely mask his dark-side presence from what would be a lily-white galaxy.
There seemed to be an obvious answer, perhaps because the force was leading him to it: Carbonite. Life processes slowed to such an extent that not even the best force sensor can detect a presence from inside carbonite. Perfect preservation. He even had a station set up for the preservation of specimen when shipping them from base to base. He could preserve himself, and then no one would be able to sense him, and he'd have a droid un-freeze him after a given amount of time. He'd have to set the time to be long enough to be post purge. The force wouldn't have warned him about it, probably, if it wasn't going to happen in his natural lifespan. That meant about 80 years. Add 20 years for the Jedi to relax their galaxy searching, and the galaxy would be ripe for his return. Darth Nectus. The Last of the Sith. It sounded good, he thought.
He would come back in stealth, but also in glory. All of his plans could come into fruition without competition from other Sith. He could slowly begin seizing control of crime rings in the outer rim, and use them to leverage money from profitable trade planets. With this he would build an army of genetically modified servants and conquer the galaxy!
There was also this question of the unknown planet that the force had shown him. He would have to meditate on the vision's importance later. Perhaps it too would come under his control.
Darth Nectus suddenly felt, through the force, that he would be encountering the unknown planet much sooner than he had thought.
END CHAPTER