* Chapter 13 *

When they came into his cell, they said not a word as they roughly grasped him by the arms and half-led, half-dragged him away. He wished that they would be gentle with him; he was an old man, and the recent fight had left him bruised and battered. At one point, he considered asking them to let go of him so that he could walk on his own strength, but he knew it would never work. After what they had done to his world, King Cresta Joisûr could expect no mercy from the Sith.

As they led him through a labyrinth of drab, gray, metal corridors, he was baffled by the idea of anyone finding the aesthetic appealing. The architecture on Latru was infinitely more pleasing, in his opinion.

At least, it had been. It was all destroyed now. Every handcrafted home, shop, eatery, park, and garden was nothing more than ash and debris, courtesy of the Sith. Cresta had not seen what had become of his palace, but he did not expect that it had fared any better.

His heart ached as he imagined his home of sixty years reduced to rubble. He had personally helped build that palace; his blood and sweat had been embedded in the wood and stone. He had married his childhood sweetheart, Tyllia, in the throne room; the subtle vibrations of their spoken vows and affirmations of love had been preserved within the plastcrete walls. Their children, Mara and Vistro, had been born in their bedroom; their first cries had echoed through the halls of the palace, as had those of Mara's own children, Ramar and Meilla Quidden.

Now, Tyllia was dead. Mara and Vistro were dead. And, for all Cresta knew, Ramar and Meilla were dead, too. He had lost his entire family for the second time in his life. Only this time was worse. After the carnage of the Clone Wars, the rest of the galaxy had left Latru alone. Gratbûr had been left mostly intact, and the nine-year-old King Cresta had had Tyllia to help him get through the dark days that followed. Now, Cresta had no one, Gratbûr was utterly decimated, and the surviving Latruans were under the thumb of the barbaric Sith.

They dragged him out of the building and into the snow. He initially thought it was still daytime based on the amount of light illuminating everything. Quickly, however, he realized that it was in fact nighttime and that the illumination was provided by a series of tall lampposts. As he took in his surroundings, Cresta was struck by how quickly the Sith had erected the complex. When they had brought him to his cell, only a few manufactured buildings had been standing. Now, there were at least seven additional buildings that he could see, not including the large command building that was comprised of approximately twenty interconnected modules. At five stories tall, it towered over the other buildings, no doubt allowing the Sith overseers to observe every part of the base.

The two Sith warriors tugged Cresta's arms, forcing him onward. They directed him through the complex, winding their way between metal structures that almost all looked identical and passing multiple Sith and even more Latruan slaves. As he walked, Cresta's head swiveled back and forth to look at each and every one of his people. They were all, young and old, being forced to help assemble the buildings where they would live and toil for who knew how long. Many of them were sick or injured, and all of them were grieving for the loss of their homes and loved ones.

Those who were not preoccupied with their work looked at their king as he passed. Their expressions of pain and grief morphed into shock and despair as their eyes met his. Cresta imagined that they were taken aback by his appearance; his normally well-groomed silver hair was a disheveled mess, his fair skin was marred by cuts and bruises, and his fine clothing was in tatters. He wondered if they were more or less stunned by his appearance than by the fact that their king was being manhandled by Sith.

He cared less what they thought of his current condition than what he thought of theirs. These were his people. He had spent most of his life working to give them happy lives, and now those lives had been snatched away. Cresta could not help but feel like he had let them down, that they were suffering because of some failure on his part. They had accepted him as their king and been loyal to his rule, and he had rewarded them with ruin and death.

A shrill alarm echoed throughout the base, startling Cresta. Many of the Latruans gasped and whimpered in fear of what the alarm might signal. Through a series of loudspeakers, a voice yelled, "All slaves, report to the main square immediately!"

Slaves. It angered Cresta to hear his people referred to as such. That single word spoke volumes; it meant that the Sith viewed the Latruans as expendable objects rather than people, and that they would have no qualms about killing anyone who did not perform to their satisfaction.

All around him, Sith were rounding up Latruans, yelling and swinging their glowing yellow electrowhips. Cresta and his people were quickly herded through the base to a large open area in front of the command building. More Latruans flooded in from all directions with Sith slave drivers close behind. Everyone was forced into the main square, huddling together as more and more people came. For the first time since the attack, Cresta was able to see all of his surviving people at once. He estimated that there must have been about three thousand of them, much to his dismay. So many, and yet so few.

"Your Majesty!" Cresta turned toward the source of the voice to see a pallid, middle-aged woman barely a meter away, looking at him with tear-filled, bloodshot eyes. "Your Majesty," she repeated in a trembling voice, "what do we do?" Several other nearby Latruans piled on their own questions, fears, and pleas for help.

Cresta wanted to reassure them that everything would be okay, that help would come or that they could rise up and defeat their oppressors. But the words would not come, for he had no hope to offer them. After giving it a moment's thought, he answered, "This will not last forever. Someday, somehow, we will be free. But we must hold out long enough for that day to arrive."

This seemed to mollify the people somewhat, for they began to quiet down. We will be free, Cresta repeated to himself silently. If not in life, then in death.

From somewhere in front of the crowd, a giant blue-tinged hologram of a person materialized. Cresta felt his blood begin to boil as he recognized the figure towering over them as Darth Hatus. He is the one responsible for this. My city is destroyed because of him. My daughter is dead because of him.

"People of the galaxy," Hatus began. "A great tragedy has occurred on Coruscant. Millions of innocent people are dead or wounded, and you all have the same question: why?"

Cresta's jaw dropped. Millions? Have the Sith attacked the entire planet? Is my entire kingdom destroyed? It took him a second to register that Hatus had mentioned Coruscant instead of Latru. While that brought Cresta a small measure of relief, he was still shocked by the revelation that there had been a tragedy on the capital planet of the Galactic Alliance. Had the Sith attacked there, too?

A second hologram appeared alongside Hatus, this one depicting a figure who was much more familiar. "Most of you recognize Luke Skywalker, Grand Master of the New Jedi Order and hero of the Rebellion."

Angry murmurs arose from the Latruan crowd, and Cresta could make out what those closest to him were saying.

"He should never have come."

"He brought them here."

"This is all his doing."

Cresta's first instinct was to defend his friend from the people's ire. He did not hold Luke Skywalker responsible for the tragic events of that day. He did not think it a coincidence that the Sith decided to attack on the day of the winter festival, Latru's most important holiday. The king had deduced that Darth Hatus had had his sights set on his homeworld and had maneuvered his greatest enemy into visiting so that he could kill two birds with one stone. If Luke had not come, Cresta was certain that the Sith would have attacked anyway.

At least, that was what he chose to believe, because he could not bear the thought that he could have prevented his daughter's death by turning the Jedi away.

"There is a world that the galaxy has long since forgotten. A planet called Latru." Cresta perked his ears upon hearing Hatus say his planet's name. "That is where I was born. That is where the Jedi found me. And that is where my life was destroyed."

The Latruans listened as Hatus recounted how he had visited Latru long ago, when he was a Jedi Knight named Demood Elppirc. He spoke of how kind they had been to him until they had accused him of impregnating a woman.

"Every single friend I had made turned against me. And Monad Joisûr, the Mad King of Latru, reported me to the Jedi Council."

Those closest to Cresta turned toward him to see how he reacted to the insult to his grandfather. If they had been hoping for an angry outburst, they would have been disappointed. He had no illusions about King Monad's mental instability, especially since the king had blown up his palace with his entire family inside to prevent them from being captured by the Republic. Cresta had been the only member of his family to survive.

He had long believed that the fallout of his grandfather's tumultuous reign had passed, but now it had reared its ugly head again in the form of Sith vengeance. It did not absolve Hatus of guilt, however; he had not needed to exact revenge on Latru, especially since the responsible parties were long dead. Cresta had learned to let go of his anger toward the Republic for abandoning Latru after the Clone Wars, so he saw no reason why Demood Elppirc could not have done the same.

"Now you know my story," Hatus continued. "Now you see that I am not the villain, but the victim. But you must be asking, 'Who is responsible?' Who was that lying whore who betrayed me and set this entire chain of events in motion?" He pointed at Luke, still kneeling behind him, and said, "It was this man's grandmother, Shmi Skywalker, whose bastard child grew up to be none other than Darth Vader!"

Cresta could not hide his surprise any more than the other Latruans could. He was not sure what shocked him more; that Luke's mother had been in love with Darth Hatus, that she had betrayed him, or that she had been from Latru. Cresta had known that there had once been a family of Latruan artisans with the Skywalker surname, although the line had ended many decades prior. All of the family members had supposedly either died out or taken the names of their spouses. When Luke had dined with the royal family on the night of his arrival, he had seemed surprised when Cresta mentioned this to him.

The king had suggested to Luke that he could have been distantly related to the Skywalkers of Latru, although he had not actually expected it to be true. He certainly had not expected that Luke would have been so closely related to them. Now, Cresta wondered if Luke had already known this and kept it a secret. After all, the Jedi had just recently admitted that he had come to Latru under false pretenses. While Cresta did not blame him for his secrecy, he still could not help but feel like he had been betrayed by a friend.

Hatus' hologram then proceeded to declare that the Jedi had given him his power, that the chancellor of the Galactic Alliance was a former Separatist, and that his son had been working for the Sith—none of which interested Cresta. It had little bearing on the current plight of his people.

"Now you see that the Alliance is rotten to the core!" Hatus proclaimed. "Your leaders are liars and traitors! The Jedi are too weak to protect you! They could not protect Coruscant, just as Master Skywalker here could not protect Latru."

Latru was not his responsibility, Cresta wanted to say. It was mine. I, and I alone, failed my people.

"And now," Hatus continued, "I will answer the question everyone is asking: Why attack civilians? Because I want the galaxy to know fear. I want it to know betrayal. I want it to know pain. I want it to know everything I have been put through! The people of Latru have already paid for their betrayal. They are now under my power. Soon, the entire galaxy will follow."

We are under his power. For Cresta, that was as much a reminder of his failure as it was a warning that Hatus could do whatever he pleased with the Latruans. If they did not cooperate with the Sith, they would all be punished. If only there were a way I could help them, he thought.

From behind his cape, Hatus pulled out his lightsaber hilt. Cresta recognized it immediately; it was the same weapon Hatus had wielded when the king and the Jedi fought him during the attack. It was instantly clear to Cresta what he intended to do with it now. He watched helplessly as the Sith Lord killed his new friend.

Everyone gasped in horror as Hatus brought his blades down on Luke's neck and they expected to see the Jedi's head separate from his shoulders. Their horror quickly turned into astonishment, however, as Luke's body vanished the instant the blades touched his skin. Even Hatus appeared taken aback by his unexpected disappearance. His hologram lingered for a few more seconds before dissolving into static and winking out of existence.

Immediately, the Sith began to corral the slaves back to whatever tasks they were meant to be doing. The two Sith who had brought Cresta to the square once again grabbed him roughly by the arms and began to lead him back in the direction of his cell. As he walked, he ruminated on what he had just seen. Having almost no experience with the Force, Cresta did not clearly know what powers it gave the Jedi. A part of him wondered if Luke had somehow teleported to safety and would soon return to save the Latruan people.

But that was only wishful thinking. Cresta knew in his heart that Luke Skywalker was dead.

Whether by luck or by the will of the Force, he happened to look to the right just in time to see a vaguely familiar figure lurking near one of the buildings. The two men locked eyes for a split second as they passed, and Cresta almost believed that he saw concern in the man's eyes.

Darth Sinestro watched as the two Sith hauled King Cresta away. Although their eye contact had been brief, the king's haunted countenance lingered in his vision for several seconds. It was an expression he knew quite well; he had seen it in the mirror every day for several years. That had been after the Yuuzhan Vong had obliterated his home on Kamino, leaving him and his siblings homeless, alone, and powerless. He supposed the Latruans and their king were now in a similar situation, courtesy of Darth Hatus.

It turns out he's a Latruan, as well, he thought bitterly. Sinestro was peeved that his master had not bothered to share that detail before announcing it to the entire galaxy. In Sinestro's mind, it changed everything. In fact, everything he had just heard changed everything.

Now he reveals his true agenda. He does not care about the Sith or the galaxy. He cares only about revenge. He'll destroy us all in his mad quest for galactic suffering. And it's all because of that wretched orb. The irony was not lost on him that Hatus' powers had been given to him by Sinestro himself. And he had regretted that decision more and more each day since.

Luke Skywalker had asked him about that as Sinestro was leading him to his execution. The Jedi Master had wanted to know why Sinestro had given Hatus the Sith orb when he could have kept it for himself. He could have led the Sith the way he wanted to instead of catering to the demands of a madman. More often than he cared to admit, Sinestro wished it could be so.

The unfortunate reality was that he and his siblings were clones commissioned by the late Emperor Palpatine to help him reconquer the galaxy if he should lose his grip on it. To ensure the clones did not try to overthrow him, he had the Kaminoans program them to obey their master's commands and never attempt to seek power for themselves. In annoyingly Jedi fashion, Luke had deduced precisely that, and had urged Sinestro to resist his programming and turn against Hatus. As if it were that simple. He has clearly never had a chip embedded in his brain, altering his thoughts. If he had, he would have known that it was impossible to resist.

Even after Palpatine had died, the programming had remained in place. Thus, the clones were left with an insatiable drive to rebuild the Empire—but no Emperor to rule it. They could not even begin to rebuild without a master to command them. After the cloning facilities were destroyed, Sinestro and his siblings had wandered aimlessly through the galaxy, searching for a master who could train them in the Sith arts and rule their new empire. For a while, they had been taken in by the Dark Lady Lumiya until she had been killed by Luke. By then, however, she had handed them off to a new master: Darth Caedus, formerly Jacen Solo. He had used his power as short-lived ruler of the galaxy to covertly provide them with the resources needed to begin their task. But he, too, was dead.

After that, Sinestro and his siblings had been stuck in limbo. They had allies and resources, but they could not use them until they had found a new master. Needless to say, they had grown frustrated with their inability to do anything and had decided to lash out at the galaxy by attacking the inauguration of Chancellor Don Dain. Although nothing practical had come of it, the attack did result in a climate of fear and mistrust, and they had planned to lay low for a while to let the galaxy stew.

That was when the visions had started. Every night, while he slept, Sinestro had experienced the same dream: Luke Skywalker kneeling at the feet of a man dressed in black, who then used a lightsaber with two parallel red blades to behead his sworn enemy. At first, he did not know what to make of the recurring dream. Then, after barely a week, Jedi Master Sol Fadré, whom he had managed to turn into a double agent, reported that a survivor of the Old Jedi Order had been found: a Jedi Master named Demood Elppirc. What's more, this Jedi, in his mad ramblings, had suggested that he knew the location of something called a Sith orb.

Sinestro had heard of neither Elppirc nor the orb and had been prepared to dismiss the news as unimportant. That is, until he had looked Elppirc up on the HoloNet and found old reports that branded him a terrorist and a traitor. And those reports had all included images of the same man from Sinestro's dreams. Suddenly, he had understood that the Force had been showing him the future, that this man would one day kill Luke. Volatis and Masculous had been skeptical, but Sinestro had been convinced that Elppirc was the key to victory over the Jedi. He had insisted on recruiting Elppirc to their cause and giving him the Sith orb so that he would have the power to achieve their goals.

My vision came true, Sinestro thought ruefully, but everything else has gone wrong. Our new empire is made up of bloodthirsty savages conjured by a genocidal madman. I wanted only to bring peace and order to the galaxy, but Hatus wants only chaos and suffering. Giving him the orb was a grave mistake.

But what can I do about it? I cannot turn against him. There had to be a way out of this, some kind of loophole Sinestro could exploit. If he could not overthrow Hatus, then someone else could. But he could not tell them to do it; they would have to come to that decision themselves.

And if, by some miracle, they manage to kill Hatus, what then? Who would rule the Sith, and would they be any better? Sinestro could not think of anyone who could take over if Hatus should die. Without a leader, the New Sith Order would descend into anarchy, and the empire he had worked so hard to build would collapse.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Hatus is not dead yet, and, thanks to the orb, the chances of that are almost none. My only course of action now is to continue to serve him while trying to steer events in the desired direction. If someone does eventually succeed in killing him, we will search for a new master, just as we have done before.

Luke Skywalker was dead. The sworn enemy of the Sith had been killed by Darth Hatus. From the moment Ship had arrived on Kesh and told the Lost Tribe about him, every Sith had been ingrained with a burning hatred of the man who had stolen the galaxy from them, Vestara Khai included. She had been so devoted to the idea that the Sith were the rightful rulers of the galaxy that she had fostered intense rage toward a man she did not know or even care to learn about. And now, he was dead.

Vestara had watched Hatus' transmission in the solitude of her new quarters in the Latru Sith base, but she knew that it had been broadcast to everyone in the galaxy, including Kesh. She imagined that the people of the Lost Tribe were celebrating in that moment, reveling in the death of their archnemesis and, more than likely, praising the power of their overlord.

She had, more eagerly than most, awaited the day Luke would meet his end. She had even dreamt of being the one who killed him and earning her place at the top of the Sith hierarchy. Well, that day had finally come. Vestara should have been happy that she had finally gotten what she wanted.

So, why was she sad?

When she had seen Luke bow his head in defeat and realized that he was going to die, her first thought had been of his son, Ben Skywalker. She had imagined that Ben was watching the transmission too, and was about to watch his father—his only surviving parent—be killed by the Sith. He must have been in agony, and Vestara wanted nothing more than to comfort him.

But she knew that he would never allow that. Now that he knew what she really was, he probably felt nothing but hatred toward her. In fact, he probably held her responsible, in some manner, for his father's death. It pained Vestara to believe that the boy she loved might think of her that way.

But Ben was not the only thing on her mind. She replayed the final moments of Hatus' speech in her head. I'm not interested in ruling the galaxy, he had said. I don't care if the Alliance lives or dies. Those statements alone were anathema to everything the Sith stood for. They believed that they were meant to rule the galaxy, that it was their purpose. The galaxy had proven time and again that it could not be trusted to govern itself.

In the days of the Old Republic, crime and corruption had run rampant, and things were no better now under the Galactic Alliance. Only the Sith had the power to impose order and save the people of the galaxy from themselves. For Hatus to say that he could allow the Alliance to continue to rule was to endorse chaos and betray the Sith.

He had also said, I want the galaxy to know fear. I want it to know betrayal. I want it to know pain. I want it to know everything I have been put through! All I want is revenge against everyone who ever wronged me, and for everyone in the galaxy to know my suffering.

The way he had said those words gave Vestara the impression that he wanted to cause suffering simply because he got off on it. True, the Sith had frequently put civilians in the line of fire in the past, but it had always been to serve their purposes. They had done it to punish the defiant, inspire obedience through fear, or strengthen with hardship. There had always been a reason. But Hatus sounded like a child who tortured animals because it tickled his fancy.

Can he lead us to victory if he doesn't share our goals? Vestara let the unasked question hang, because she knew that she would not like the answer.

Maybe I'm overreacting, she thought. Maybe he didn't mean all those things. He could just be saying them to scare the galaxy into accepting the Sith as their new rulers. Yes, that makes more sense. There's no way the Sith would allow a sadist to rule them. But then she thought about what Ben had told her about Dromund Kaas, and she once again began to wonder if the Sith Order she had believed in had been a fantasy. Maybe they would allow Hatus to get away with this.

And then she remembered, I'm his apprentice now. He said he wanted me to advise him. Maybe I can steer him down a less sadistic path and make things better for everyone. That was assuming, of course, that Hatus would listen to her. Of course he'll listen. I'm his apprentice. He has to listen.

Vestara had to believe she could sway him. Because she did not know what she would do if she failed.

The end... of Book Three, again!

Not much to this chapter; it basically just delves into the mindsets of some of the characters before we continue the story. But something big is going to happen in the next chapter, which I will post in two weeks!

Thank you for reading this chapter! If you have an comments or questions, please leave them in your reviews or private messages.