Origins: The Mirror

You stand before it,
Cautious and afraid.
Touch and feel it smooth,
Cold and hard as you.
Breath softens the plane
But wipe it clear.
Scour familiar shapes
And safer shadow
Until you find at last
Your truth in darkest glass.

Pupaku of Klatooine

538 LE
Three Days Ago

The door swung on creaking metal hinges until it closed against its painted-wood frame. Oziaf twisted the knob and pressed the lock.

Now, at last, it was time for a private conversation. Just him and Kallas-mar.

The Moralan's narrow wrists had been bound behind him, and he looked fairly comical seated on the toilet beneath the bright bathroom light: just a shaggy brown orb, really, with a pouch-laden belt around the waist, skinny legs sprawled out in front of him. There were a few patches of blood in his fur, not his own. His wide mouth was set in a scowl and he watched Oziaf with narrowed eyes.

"It's a pleasure to meet you at last," Oziaf began. "I've traveled a long way to be here."

Kallas-mar squirmed. In husky Huttese he said, "You didn't have to kill all my men—"

"Those weren't all your men," Oziaf corrected. "I know you have active operatives elsewhere. Hence the very sophisticated translight comm system. Now you're going to tell me where those people are, what they're doing, and who you work for."

Oziaf tried to get a sense of Kallas-mar with his divining power, but the Moralan defied his probes. That was a surprise; the trio he'd been traveling with aboard the Gravity Scorned were pathetically open with their emotions. All their griefs, frustrations, and angers were so obvious Oziaf tried to shut them out when he wasn't making use of them. There was a reason he preferred to travel alone.

Kallas-mar huffed, "Who do you think I work for?"

"Given your base of operations, I have to assume Kossak is your patron. But I'm wondering exactly what you and your agents have been doing for him. I doubt burning Tialvai was the only thing. I'm also curious about recent developments, such as baiting Xim to attack Nar Kreeta. That was your handiwork, yes?"

Oziaf gave the Moralan a mental nudge, the kind he usually used the knock the truth out of someone. But Kallas-mar was unmoved.

"Keep asking questions," the Moralan said. "I'll answer one when I feel like it."

"Did you know about Ontagga's death before you bombed Tialvai?"

"I only did what I was told."

"By whom?"

"I think you know the answer to that."

This wasn't the conversation Oziaf expected. The Moralan confounded his powers and refused his questions. Oziaf had other tools, of course, including the poisoned needle he carried inside his vest all this while. He didn't know if the poison would work on a Moralan, but he might decide to find out.

Not yet. He'd come all this way for the truth.

With a tolerant smile he said, "You work for Kossak. That much is clear."

"As you work for Xim, Special Plenipotentiary." Kallas-mar gave a mocking smile.

"Who else do you work for? Tell me his name."

"Why? Are you afraid to say it yourself?"

"Damn you!" Oziaf snapped, and called on his power to give the Moralan a blow to the chest.

It landed. And then, just as strong, a formless hand struck Oziaf across the cheek.

He gasped and looked at the prisoner, still bound on his seat. Kallas-mar smiled.

"You..." Oziaf rasped, "You have it too."

"You really didn't know. He never told you."

"Told me what? Who are you? How do you… How do you know Gedor?"

"I met him a long time ago. He came to my world and taught me to use the power inside me." Kallas-mar's expression darkened. "They called it 'the White Wind' on Moralan. My poor, murdered world."

"How long ago was this?"

Kallas-mar considered. "I was very young then… almost sixty years ago."

Sixty years. Before that fated meeting aboard the Hutt dromon.

His shock must have shown. Kallas-mar said, sympathetically, "You didn't think you were only one, did you?"

Oziaf swallowed. "How many others?"

"A few of my operatives have the Wind, but I've had to train them myself. There's all his Iduxians, of course, and you—"

"He told you about me?"

"Not directly, but it wasn't hard to guess. I already said, I work for Kossak like you work for Xim."

"I want you to elaborate," Oziaf's voice shook.

"Do I have to?" Kallas-mar frowned. "Yes, I do what Kossak tells me, like feeding Xim false intel to bait him into attacking the Patarii, and plenty more over the years. But Gedor is my real master and always has been. He taught me to unlock the Wind and showed me how superior I was to all the filth that clogs the galaxy."

"Foul creatures," Oziaf whispered.

"Exactly. I despise the worms and Kossak most of all, but I've served him for years because Gedor—and the White Wind—need me to."

"The attack on Tialvai?"

"Gedor."

There it was. He'd come all this way, gone through so much, for that simple conformation of what he'd long suspected. After Crain Geray, weapons officer of the Iron Lance, died during interrogation (sudden heart failure, the report said) Oziaf had investigated the dead officer's past. There'd been a six-month hiatus between his graduation from the Chandaar academy and his enlistment with the Navy. Oziaf had been forced to question family and scour transit records to learn where Geray had gone during that half-year gap: Idux.

But that wasn't enough. Oziaf needed proof, and he'd come to Kallas-mar to get it.

He'd never imagined the full story. He'd been too short-sighted, too self-centered, to consider it. Yes, self-centered. Gedor had taught him to use his power, and he'd also taught Oziaf to nurture his resentment, to become superior and conceited.

It was a lesson Kallas-mar had learned as well. The Moralan said, "I've been serving him, always. A week ago, I sent two ships to the Obsidian Veil to destroy an Iduxian scout."

"Iduxian? Why?"

"It wasn't my place to ask. They didn't succeed. One was destroyed and the Iduxians got away."

Too much information and he didn't know what to do with it. Oziaf tried to center the conversation. "You've been serving Gedor all this time, I understand that… but for what purpose?"

He direly needed to know. Because he understood Gedor's goal, or thought he had. The so-called Prophet of Idux believed the galaxy could only be ruled by those in touch the primal flow of the universe. Only the handful of blessed had the right to rule, but the stars teemed with inferiors who'd never accept that, especially humans. With the Iduxians, Gedor was raising a small army that might seize control, not by toppling Xim's empire but seizing it. That young human, Erakas, had been broken and remade for that express purpose.

Such was Gedor's aim, as Oziaf understood it: a galaxy ruled by the only people who deserved to.

But Kallas-mar said, "So we can destroy the Hutts, of course."

He was rocked again. "You mean bring down their empire?"

"I mean their entire disgusting race," the Moralan sneered. "I've been living under the worms my entire life. All I want is to see every one of those monsters burn. Gedor promised me I would, sixty years ago. He said we'd turn Varl to ash."

For the first time, Oziaf could sense emotion from Kallas-mar. It was pure hatred.

"Why does Gedor want to destroy the Hutts?"

"Because they're a blight on the universe, isn't that enough?"

Gedor would need more than that. "So…. he invites war with Xim, so Xim can crush them?"

"Xim and the Iduxians." Kallas-mar leaned as far forward as his bonds allowed. "Don't you see, Oziaf? We're the same."

He was right. This was another creature who'd been born lonely and betrayed, then was pulled from desolation by a kindly stranger. That stranger taught them that they were blessed instead of cursed, and that their pains were the fault of everyone else. Stoking resentment and fueling hate, he'd convinced them it was their purpose to wreak revenge on lesser beings and call it justice.

Why, Oziaf wondered, had he not realized the obvious until he saw it in the mirror of Kallas-mar?

"After all these decades, we're almost at the end," the Moralan told him. "With my help you'll destroy the worms. Then you can bring down Xim. Everyone who ever broke and belittled us will pay for it."

But Xim had not broken or belittled him. For some strange reason, which Oziaf still didn't understand, the son of Xer was the only person who'd ever trusted him.

"We can work together from now on," Kallas-mar insisted with harsh conviction. "We can complete Gedor's vision and claim our just inheritance."

The T'iin T'iin exhaled and looked at the bright tile floor. For a time he'd thought his life so grand and important, yet it had been upended by a single conversation in a locked bathroom. For all his cosmic gifts, he was a minor beast after all.

"Let me go," Kallas-mar said, "and we'll figure out what to do next. Together."

He could feel the Moralan's honesty. Oziaf lifted his head. "Stand. Turn around."

Kallas-mar stood, turned. His hands dangled at his back, bound at the wrist, and were too high for Oziaf to reach. So instead, the T'iin T'iin used his power to carefully undo the knots. When Kallas-mar shucked his wrists free, the thin rope fell soundlessly at his feet.

Oziaf picked it up, considering. Then, still holding it in his right paw, he sprung up onto the bathroom's flat-top sink, so he might look the Moralan in the eye.

"What next?" he asked. "You said you were supposed to destroy an Iduxian ship."

"It was saved by the worms, if you can believe it. A chelandion. We don't know where it is now, unfortunately."

"And Gedor didn't say why."

"I didn't ask, but he implied they were no longer… loyal."

Oziaf looked at the rope dangling from his paw. It was so long it drooped down to the floor. "You sent two ships after it. How many do you have?"

"Including the one parked here, six. Most of them are Tionese designs."

"I know. You don't base them all here, do you?"

"They lay low near Karsabeth. Not the main planet, an outer gas giant."

"Ah. You could slip ships through both sides from there."

"Exactly."

"And Kossak knows about all this?"

"He supplies the ships and the Karsa base, but he doesn't know everything I do with them. As long as I do his assigned tasks, he doesn't ask too many questions."

"Hmm. Sloppy of him."

"Hutt arrogance. We'll make him pay," Kallas-mar grinned.

"But Karsabeth doesn't do you much good now. Kossak destroyed its nav beacon, or so I've heard."

"The one over the planet, yes. Kossak provided us with a few beacons of our own, set to encrypted frequencies. I have the keys right here." He tapped a pouch on his belt.

"That explains it. I guess he really is Kossak the Clever."

Kallas-mar gave a lanky shrug. "He's clever and he's vicious, but what is he compared to the White Wind?"

"Or compared to Gedor."

"That goes without say."

Oziaf looked at the rope one last time, then tilted his paw and let it fall in swirls to the floor. He asked, "You could have undone these knots any time, couldn't you?"

"Yes," the Moralan admitted, "but I knew you'd do the right thing. After all, we're on the same side."

Oziaf nodded, then slipped a hand into his vest's, drew out one slim needle, and plunged it into Kallas-mar's chest.

His eyes went wide, his mouth gaped. He reached out to grab Oziaf but this time the T'iin T'iin shoved him back with his power. The Moralan groped the tiny hole in his chest, collapsed to his knees, then fell back. His head knocked the rim of the toilet and his long limbs splayed across the floor. A final rattle escaped his mouth but his eyes remained open, staring dead at the ceiling.

Amazing. The poison acted even faster than it did on humans.

Oziaf opened his vest, sheathed the needle, and hopped lightly to the floor, carefully avoiding contact with the dead man's flesh. Looking at the corpse inflicted him with an uncomfortable sympathy and cool contempt. He looked away quickly, unlocked the door and stepped outside, where the Krollers were waiting.