In the depths of the Invincible, Anakin Skywalker let the Force flow through him as he worked. Parts flew around him without anyone holding them, assembling in the air before affixing themselves to the rapidly-growing hyperdrive. Tools leapt into his hands as he moved, climbing all across the immense engines which were responsible for propelling the Sith flagship through hyperspace.

In all his life, very rarely had Anakin experienced anything close to what he was feeling now, so in tune with the Force. The only occasions he could remember were when he had won the podrace despite being a human pilot, which had earned his freedom, and when he had blown up the Trade Federation ship in Naboo's orbit. In those instances, he'd gone beyond thought, beyond instinct, and moved purely in accordance to what he now knew had been the will of the Force.

As for why exactly the Force was so interested in him, he could only attribute it to the prophecy of the Chosen One Master Jinn had been convinced was about him. Certainly, using the Force had always been easier for Anakin than it was for other Padawans. Once Obi-Wan had taught him the basics, his learning speed had been very, very fast : he could move objects with his mind, accelerate or reinforce his body, and use the combat precognition every Jedi depended on in battle (because otherwise, using a weapon like a lightsaber was just asking to get your limbs chopped off).

But even for him, it was draining, a constant effort of will and focus to draw on the Force, to make it do what he wanted it to do. No matter how hard he tried, it seemed, he couldn't find the harmony, the serenity Obi-Wan always talked about. Meditation didn't help : if anything, it made things worse, amplifying whatever errant thoughts he couldn't get out of his head.

Not so now. The Force flowed through him freely, guiding his actions, wordlessly whispering technical answers to problems it would normally have taken him days to figure out the solution to.

He thought he knew why : it was because Cain was in danger, and the Force didn't want him to die. Master Qui-Gon Jinn had taught him, in what little time they'd spent together, that the Force bound all living things together, but it was also alive in itself, with a will of its own. Trying to divine the will of the Force was all but impossible, Master Jinn had said, but he'd firmly believed the Living Force wanted the good of everyone in the galaxy – that this was the truth of what Jedi called the Light Side of the Force.

Cain was strong, Anakin knew. Very, very strong, since he must be stronger than Vaylin and Vaylin had killed Jabba in his own palace, something Anakin hadn't even dreamt was possible back when he was a slave, when he'd fantasized about freeing everyone who suffered under the slavers' whip.

And now, Anakin even had an example of how strong Darth Cain was. Like every other Force-sensitive on Perlia (and likely in the galaxy), Anakin had felt it when Darth Cain had used his power. To him, it had sounded like the roar of a Krayt Dragon, proudly announcing his presence to everyone and challenging them to do anything about it.

So yes, Darth Cain was strong. But he wasn't all-powerful, or the Republic wouldn't have won the war thousands of years ago. He could lose; he could be hurt; he could be killed.

And this, Anakin couldn't let happen. Cain might be a Sith, but his apprentice had saved the slaves of Tatooine; in the entire galaxy, it seemed, he was the only one willing to stand up to the Hutt Cartels and do something about them.

The teenage Padawan knew he was being unfair to the Jedi Order and the Republic. He knew there were numerous factors in play, that it wasn't apathy that held the Order back from going into the Outer Rim and dismantling slavery at the point of ten thousand lightsabers. But for all that he'd experienced far more than anyone his age ever should, Anakin Skywalker was still a teenager : a child, growing in power but still lacking in wisdom. But if being wise was accepting the existence of slavery as an inevitable, then Anakin was fine staying a child forever.

And it seemed the Force approved, even if Cain used the Dark Side – which, in Master Jinn's metaphor, was when people tried to force their own desires and impulses on the Force and use it for their own selfish goals instead. Anakin wasn't sure how that worked, but he figured the Force knew what it was doing.

Following the Force's guidance, the Padawan had sneaked aboard one of the regular transports between the surface of Perlia and the Invincible, and from there, made his way to the engineering decks. Security wasn't exactly lax, but with a lot of soldiers being away on Perlia, Tatooine, or accompanying Darth Cain to Savareen, it wasn't as tight as it might have been either, and Anakin had spent his formative years avoiding the gaze of enforcers as he looked for water, food or medicine for the other slaves. Sure, the Sith were a lot better trained than the thugs of Tatooine, but Anakin had gotten much better since then, too, and he'd made it all the way to the hyperdrive before someone had finally seen him and he started to panic.

Anakin wasn't very good at the Jedi mind trick, and he was fine with that. He understood how useful the ability was outside the safety of the Temple, but it still made him uncomfortable to alter someone's thoughts like that. Paradoxically, he preferred using the threat of violence to force someone to do something : it felt more honest, less of a slippery slope in a way he had trouble properly articulating when Obi-Wan asked him about it.

But he hadn't needed to do either when the crew members had found him : instead, he'd simply said he'd come to fix the hyperdrive, and after exchanging bemused looks, they had let him through. Of course, they had called in their superiors, and escorted him, but that was still more than he'd expected. He'd a feeling they were used to Force users doing crazy stuff all the time, probably because they were from a time when there'd been a lot of Sith running around, and based on what Obi-Wan's history lessons had taught Anakin, most of them hadn't been as reasonable as Cain or Vaylin.

The hyperdrive engines of the Invincible were still in the process of being dismantled and put back together by the ship's engineers after their last journey. Anakin had known they were huge, but he hadn't really grasped how huge until he'd seen the immense room with his own eyes. The entire chamber was a giant workshop, with dozens of holos showing various pieces of the greater whole, and many more engineers working tirelessly – each and every one of them had turned to look at the Padawan who'd suddenly intruded into their domain.

Before anyone could say anything, Anakin had grabbed a spanner from a pile of tools, used the Force to jump ten meters in the air and up on one of the components, and gotten to work, letting the Force flow through him.

Obi-Wan was going to be furious, he knew. They weren't supposed to do anything which might get the Sith angry at the Republic, and Anakin was self-aware enough to know that sneaking aboard the Invincible to fiddle with the hyperdrive didn't look good. If he failed, then the Sith could accuse him of sabotaging the repairs to keep the superdreadnought stranded in Perlia.

If he succeeded … well, the Sith wouldn't be angry at him, but the rest of the galaxy would be. But Anakin didn't care. The Force was guiding him, and he owed a debt to Vaylin's Teacher for her freeing his homeworld – and such debts had to be repaid, or else you were the worst kind of sleemo.

And as he worked, with his hands and with the Force, he felt the words of an old song on his lips – a song whispered quietly by slaves huddled around the fires in the cold nights of his homeworld, when the masters couldn't hear. It was just one song among many, from one story among many which the slaves of the desert planet told each other to keep the crushing weight of despair at bay.

It would still be sung, now that the masters were gone, but the occasion would be very different. Now, it would be a celebration and a promise, not a hope and a dream.

Anakin hadn't thought about the song in years, hadn't heard or sung it for even longer, yet now its first verse felt like the most natural thing in the universe to sing :

"Hold onto hope, we're starward bound.

In the darkest of night, there's light to be found.

From a spark will be born a fire,

Shinin' through the shadow of doubt …"

Felicia Tyber, chief engineer of the Invincible, watched the Padawan work with increasing awe.

Everyone aboard the Invincible knew that Force users were crazy. You didn't survive for long in the Sith Army without learning that fact, even if you didn't say it aloud. Admittedly, those who were lucky enough to serve under Darth Cain were exposed to the better kind of crazy, where the Force users were helping instead of making everything worse for everyone.

And there were degrees of craziness : the acolytes were much less crazy than Lady Vaylin, for instance, and she was less crazy than Darth Cain, even if most people who didn't know them would think it was the other way around.

But you didn't see the Lord of Terror do the impossible time and time again without realizing that, despite the mask of calm and sanity he kept up, Darth Cain was crazier than any other Sith in the Empire – only, in a good way.

Alright, perhaps it didn't make much sense, but Felicia was a Cyborg and an engineer, not a philosopher.

She knew the kid was using the Force, but it didn't feel like anything Felicia had experienced before. As chief engineer, she'd been in the presence of Darth Cain when someone had delivered bad news to him more than once : she'd felt the pressure of his rage, the cold burrowing deep into the hearts of everyone in the vicinity until the Lord of Terror reined in his temper – always, always before someone got hurt, unless that someone was one of his enemies.

And, like everyone aboard the Invincible, she'd felt the horrific presence of the Emperor's spirit as they orbited Molech, during that final battle before their exile through time, when the monster had tried to dominate them all into killing each other to fuel his resurrection. Even now, and despite her implants, Felicia woke up in the middle of her rest period sometimes, clawing at her bedding, sure that she could still hear those awful whispers – which had only been whispers thanks to Darth Cain and the other Force users of the mission banding together to hold Vitiate at bay.

But this was completely different. It felt warmer, softer, kinder. Felicia had been with the Invincible all of its life, and she was well attuned to the ship's moods – and yes, those were moods, no matter what other, less-qualified engineers might think. Right now, the flagship felt … curious. It wasn't responding to what Skywalker was doing with hostility, but a sense of cautious optimism.

That was all Felicia needed. Skywalker wasn't a Sith, and from what Felicia knew it was mostly the Sith who had used the Force to create crazy superweapons and ships – which had all ended up being blown up by Republic operatives in the end – but if the Sith could use the Force to boost their engineering skills, she didn't see why a Jedi couldn't do it too.

Then Skywalker started singing in a language Felicia didn't know, and suddenly, she started to understand what he was doing.

She could see the parts moving, gently locking with one another, see how the whole engine was slowly coming together, piece by piece. She could see the design, how disparate elements would combine to form something capable of accomplishing the impossible – breaking the hard limits of the universe by propelling something as vast as the Invincible beyond lightspeed.

It was breathtakingly elegant and beautiful, and it would also take days for the Padawan to finish it on his own.

"Move," she ordered the technicians around her. They stared at her, not understanding, and she repeated, louder and with an edge of authority in her voice : "Move ! Can't you see what he's doing ? Then help him ! Or are you going to let a karking Jedi be the one who fixes our mess ? Do any of you want to report that to Commodore Kasteen ?"

That did it. Dozens of men and women rushed forward, the spell which had held them in place finally broken. They moved with the unity of professionals who'd worked together for years, following a plan they all knew but none of them could have described aloud.

Felicia itched to join them, but she had her own responsibilities to take care of first. She did a few scans, then took up her personal holo and called the bridge of the Invincible. Her call was picked up immediately – she rarely bothered to contact the bridge, and when she did, it was always with a very good reason.

"Commodore, this is Tyber," she said without preamble once the image of Commodore Kasteen had appeared in front of her. "I think … I think we're going to do it."

"What do you mean, Tyber ?" asked the Commodore, who still avoided looking directly at Felicia's implants, focusing on the one eye she had that was still organic. "What exactly is going on down there ? I've already called Mrs Skywalker-Lars, and she didn't even look that surprised her son would do something like this. The other Jedi are on their way to the Invincible, and they've asked us to detain the Padawan to keep him from hurting himself. I was about to call you and tell you to get security on the job."

"We're going to fix the hyperdrive, ma'am," Felicia explained, ignoring the sharp intake of breath her words provoked. "Not in a few months, but right now, in the next few hours – I'd say a day at most. The Padawan is putting the parts we collected from Tatooine together, and from what I can see and what our scans are telling us, it's going to work."

"… Are you sure ?" Felicia could hear the hint of longing in her commanding officer's voice. The Commodore had taken being stranded in Perlia just as bad as everyone else. The system was great, but the very idea of the mighty Invincible being trapped in a single star system was just plain wrong.

"Yes," she confirmed. "We were already pretty sure we could do it, that's why we even bothered to bring the parts back from Tatooine in the first place. It was just that it'd take us a lot of time to figure it out, and now it looks like the Padawan is cheating using the Force. To be honest, ma'am, we're lucky the Republic didn't have anyone like him back during the Wars, or our Navy would've gotten the short end of the stick even more often than it actually did."

Kasteen frowned at that statement, which would have seen Felicia executed for sedition on any other dreadnought. But since this was the Lord of Terror's flagship and there was no more Sith Empire (at least not until Darth Cain decided to do something to change that), the chief engineer figured she could get away with some light-hearted treason.

"Very well," the Commodore eventually replied. "I'll inform Lady Vaylin and start making preparations for our departure to Savareen. But, Tyber. If you're wrong …"

If she was wrong, then Darth Cain's apprentice would most likely kill them all in a fit of disappointment-fuelled rage. The Commodore didn't need to say it out loud. Lady Vaylin had been remarkably stable since leaving the Eternal Empire of Zakuul behind and joining Darth Cain, but she still had a reputation – and, crucially, Darth Cain wasn't here to calm her down.

Felicia would've preferred not to have Lady Vaylin informed until the hyperdrive had been turned on, but she understood why that wasn't an option, and she couldn't exactly have kept what was going on a secret from Kasteen.

"I'm not wrong, ma'am," she assured the Commodore.

"I hope so. Now get back to work."

With that typically curt goodbye, the link went dead, and Felicia pocketed her holo before stretching her limbs and joining the rest of the engineers, following the guidance of the song.

Hold on, my lord, she thought. We're coming.

As I stepped off the Dread Son's boarding ramp and unto the sands of one of Savareen's deserts, I had to mask just how tired I still was, even after a quick nap and a hot meal provided by JURG-N. Unleashing my aura of terror hadn't been the hard part : Erebus' training and Vitiate's trial had made sure of that. But keeping it under control to prevent it from affecting my own forces, as well as drawing it back once we were down on the planet, had been as draining as it always was.

I felt like I'd just run a marathon in full armor, and my headache reminded me of some of the times I'd gone out drinking with Darth Imperius on Dromund Kaas. But I couldn't afford to rest, because we didn't have much time. I knew from experience that within a few hours, the pirates would recover from what I had done to them, and they would undoubtedly be looking for revenge, if only to remove the stain on their reputation I had caused. If I was to survive this mess, I needed to make as much use of that grace period as I could. So I drew on the Force and strode out with as much confidence as I could fake.

The disembarkation had gone well while I recovered, and I could see Broklaw was already hard at work fortifying our position. Standard prefabricated building pieces were being pulled out of the ships and assembled by the engineering corps. It was the same type of buildings we'd used to house the Tatooinian refugees near the Temple on Perlia, although with a lot more gun emplacements than had been allowed to the former slaves.

By filling the holds of our flotilla, I'd been able to bring a few thousands soldiers with me, along with a dozen Sith acolytes and twice that number in Mandalorian fighters. More than enough to take care of some local criminals and establish a new order on Savareen, I had thought, but against the kind of number we were up against, it wouldn't be enough.

Our first priority was making sure they couldn't simply blow us up from orbit. Us landing far from what passed for civilization on this planet had removed the danger of collateral damage, but that went both ways (not that I thought the Hutts would've balked at opening fire if we'd landed in the middle of a city instead). While none of the ships we'd seen had looked to be fitted with high-caliber weaponry, neither had Varan's fleet, and it hadn't stopped the little bastard from killing a lot of people without the Perlians being able to do anything about it.

I had no intention of dying to concentrated orbital fire if I could help it, so I would have to do something which would make Amberley even more angry at me.

"Iskandar," I called out, projecting my voice so it could be heard without sounding like I was shouting (a little trick which had taken me years to perfect). I could have searched for him, or sent JURG-N to find him, but there were certain standards expected from a Sith Lord. "Attend me."

Within seconds, the pureblood was standing before me, waiting for my orders. Force help me, I swear he actually looked eager for instructions.

"Among the acolytes, you are the most skilled when it comes to rituals," I told him, and he positively preened under the compliment – which was nothing less than the truth.

Iskandar hadn't known anything about them when he'd fled from the Academy (if I remembered correctly, the course had been suspended after the thirteenth time a student had tried sacrificing all of their classmates for power), but he'd managed to learn from the few books on the subject I kept in the part of my library which was accessible to the acolytes. Once I'd realized that, I'd immediately confronted him about it, and he'd somehow ended up believing he'd passed some kind of test by finding these texts. I'd given him a stern warning to avoid following the same path as Darth Erebus, telling him – completely honestly – that I would kill him without hesitation if he showed any sign of emulating the Vile One.

Fortunately, by that point Erebus' legacy had been thoroughly besmirched in the Sith Empire, so Iskandar had assured me he'd no intention of dishonoring himself like this. Still, I'd kept a close eye on him, just in case his ambition overruled his common sense, a fate far too common among Darksiders. It hadn't so far, however, and that made him very useful.

"Which is why I have a task for you, one of great importance," I continued.

"I am at your command, my lord," he replied, head bowed.

"I know. Gather your peers, and call forth the storm. Let loose the fury of the Dark Side across this desert," I declared, gesturing at the seemingly endless expanse of sand all around us, "so that our enemies in the void cannot see us and cowardly bombard us from orbit."

"It will be done," he promised, and went to do my bidding.

"Are you sure that is wise, sir ?" asked JURG-N once Iskandar was out of earshot. "The Jedi Order will already be up in arms after what you did in orbit. This will not help."

"The Order can get in line," I sighed. "If they didn't want me to use scary Dark Side techniques against the Cartels, they should have dealt with them before we came back. Besides, Amberley knows I kept him away from anything like what Erebus did. What I've got him doing isn't that different from any number of times the Jedi combined their strength to pull off something ridiculous – it's not like I'm having him pull ships off the sky, for kriff's sake."

"If you think so, sir."

And that was that. One of the many, many great things about JURG-N was that, while he was perfectly willing to question my orders and course of action, if the reasoning I gave was sound, he immediately dropped the subject off – and, conversely and even more importantly, if it wasn't, he wouldn't let it go until I had either given him a reason he was happy with or I'd reconsidered my course of action. In the early days of our association, when I'd still been young and struggling to make sense of things in a galaxy so different from my time in Sicarus, that habit had saved my life more times than I cared to count.

I stood there for a few more seconds, re-centring myself, then started walking, once more infusing every step with the confidence expected of a Sith Lord. My commanders had established their command center in the first of the buildings to have been erected, and the troopers guarding the entrance saluted me as I walked in.

"Commander Broklaw," I barked, and the Imperial officer immediately snapped to attention with a sharp salute of his own. "I've ordered the acolytes to give us some cover from our foes in orbit. Make sure everyone is wearing the rebreather in their kit when the storm starts. Sulla, have your people scout the area and make us a map of any interesting features we can use. Unless I've misread the enemy, we're about to be swarmed by superior numbers from all directions, and I want these fools to learn what the Sith Army is capable of."

"So we get to fight raiders in the middle of a sandstorm ?" I could hear Sulla's smile in her voice. "Truly, you provide the most interesting battlefields, lord Cain."

"I'm glad you're having fun, Sulla," I replied drily. Despite not being a Sith herself, the Mandalorian leader could be as bloodthirsty as any of my peers. I'd half-hoped her relationship with Trevellyan would've calmed her down, but it didn't seem like it.

With a laugh, she left the command center, no doubt to join the scouting efforts herself, using her jetpack to move across the dunes faster than the Sith troopers could.

"We'll give the bastards a proper welcome, my lord," promised Broklaw. "They'll know not to mess with Cain's Own."

And he truly meant it, too. I smiled, only partially faking it this time. Despite all the headaches, there was something undeniably reassuring about having a bunch of warmongering, bloodthirsty psychopaths on your side when a battle was on the horizon.

I casually sat into one of the chairs around the main holographic display, and pretended to look at the positioning of our forces. I'd done all I could think of : now, it was time to hurry up and wait.

Truly, I mused, some things never changed, no matter how high you rose in the Sith hierarchy.

It had taken entirely too long for Durge's liking, but Grice and him had finally managed to get the fleet back in order.

The Hutta's Magnificence had endured Darth Cain's sorcery well compared to the rest of the fleet. Mostly, this had been thanks to Durge being unaffected by Cain's terror spell : while his perceptions had been disrupted, he'd been able to power through it and maintain order on the bridge by forcefully keeping the crew members seated and preventing them from doing anything stupid.

Eventually, the terror had retreated, but not before the entire Sith force had managed to land on Savareen. Durge had no idea why Cain hadn't taken advantage of the disruption to escape the system, and that made him nervous – and Durge hated feeling nervous.

Putting the scattered fleet back into a semblance of order had taken a lot of holocalls, which had been comprised of a lot of coldly spoken threats by Durge and softly-spoken promises by Grice, the slug finally pulling his weight by using the silver-tongue the Hutts were so famous for to cajole the raiders back into the game. Around one in ten of the ships had left the system regardless, willing to take their chances with the Cartels' displeasure rather than face the Lord of Terror again.

They'd also taken the time to contact Marlo directly to inform him of Darth Cain's arrival and what had followed. The Cartel leader hadn't looked pleased, but neither had he appeared surprised, and Durge wondered just how much the archives of the Council of Elders contained about the ancient Sith Lord. Marlo had told them to be careful, but not to waste this opportunity to remove Cain from the board, which was easy for him to say, since he was safe several parsecs away.

Still, a job was a job, and Durge always delivered, one way or another. And now the remainder of the fleet was, finally, back under their control, tenuous as it had proven to be. Dozens of ships were converging above the landing zone of the Sith vessels, although you could see their reluctance in the way ships belonging to rival groups were sticking close to each other in an instinctive search for mutual protection – nevermind that such close proximity would only put them at more risk if Cain decided to do an encore.

Durge was reading through a series of damage reports sent by the more professional warbands when one of the Hutta's Magnificence's bridge crew cautiously approached him. Lowering the datapad, he glared at the man, who quaked but, to his credit, stood his ground.

Or maybe, Durge thought, it was just that after experiencing Darth Cain's terror spell, the man's sense of fear was out of balance. If so, he would fix that quickly. Durge's job didn't allow for people to be less scared of him than the enemy.

"What ?" the Gen'Dai grunted.

"We … We've got a problem, sir."

Those weren't words Durge wanted to hear right now. Slowly, carefully (everything made for everyday use by other species was so fragile to him, especially in his armor), Durge put the datapad down and turned to face the officer.

"Elaborate," he ordered.

"There's a sandstorm on the planet," said the officer. "It came out of nowhere, and it's covering the entire region where the Sith landed and blocking our scanners."

"Fine," snapped Durge. "We can still bombard them until there's nothing left of them."

"Actually … given the calibre of the weapons of our fleet and the violence of the storm, it's unlikely any of our shots will reach the ground."

Durge took a deep breath. He didn't actually need to, but it made him look like he was calming down, and he'd gotten into the habit of doing it over the centuries.

"Then we will land on the planet and deal with these invaders face-to-face," he declared, catching sight of Grice looking at him, startled. "Send a message to every ship to start dropping their forces around the storm."

"All of them, sir ?"

"Yes, all of them !" roared Durge. "Or do you still believe we can win against Cain by holding anything back ?"

"I-I …"

"Because if you do, then you clearly are a fool. And Marlo has no use for fools."

Durge held the wretch in place with his gaze for a few more seconds, then turned aside and let him collapse on the deck, breathing heavily. He really, really wanted to crush the idiot's skull, but that would delay the attack, and things were already going to be complicated enough.

"Once the ground attack is underway, you will need to keep all the ships right above that storm," he told Grice.

"Why ?" replied the Hutt. "Concentrating the fleet in one spot is far from conventional strategy, and for very good reasons."

"If the Sith had any ships left in the void, I'd agree with you," Durge explained, forcing himself to stay calm. Grice's question was perfectly reasonable, especially given he didn't have any practical experience when it came to military affairs. "But everything they've got is on the planet, and based on Marlo's intel, the few ships they kept in reserve in Tatooine and Perlia are far too few to be a threat if they jump in behind our back. Meanwhile, when we win on the ground, the Sith might use the storm as cover to punch back out into the void."

"I see," mused the Hutt. "You're right. And besides, whatever they're doing to cause that storm, they can't possibly keep it up forever. When it stops, we'll want our ships in position to start providing orbital support immediately."

Of course, Durge fully expected that their forces would be fully enmeshed with the Sith troops by that point, and orbital fire would likely get as many of their own men as the enemy's. But the Gen'Dai bounty hunter didn't care about that, and clearly neither did Grice – nor, come to think of it, did the pirates themselves, who would all too happily open fire on their own 'comrades' to get a bigger share of their warband's paycheck.

Oh, and Durge himself would be on the planet as part of the assault, obviously, but if a little something like an orbital barrage could kill him, he would've died long, long ago.

Despite everything, the Gen'Dai smiled under his helmet. Finally, they were going to get to the good part. It'd been far too long since he'd last killed a Sith.

Iskandar Khayon exulted in the power that coursed through him and the other acolytes as they pooled their strength and summoned the storm. The pureblood was strong in the Force, stronger than any of his peers (including Nefertari, though she was always quick to remind him she surpassed him in other areas), but this was something else entirely.

At their call, a great sandstorm engulfed the desert, blocking the light of the sun and making visibility beyond a handful of meters a myth. Great arcs of lightning illuminated the storm, causing further interference for any scanners trying to get a read from orbit.

It was a vision straight out of myth, and if not for the rebreathers Darth Cain had ordered distributed to everyone, the expedition forces would have been crippled. As it was, Commander Broklaw's people were struggling to finish setting up the prefabricated fortifications.

Between the sheer mass of sand in the air and the Dark Side sorcery empowering the tempest, any orbital bombardment would lose its strength long before it reached the surface. In one move, they had effectively created a massive shield and turned their surroundings into a nightmarish battleground, where the advantages of the advanced equipment of the soldiers and the preternatural perceptions of the Sith would be multiplied.

It was fortunate (but, Iskandar knew, not a coincidence) that they were thousands of kilometers from the closest settlement, and even then, the knock-on effect on weather patterns was going to be brutal. Now that the ritual was performed, the storm was self-sustaining : it would last for days, drawing on the savage energies of the battle to come and those of the planet itself.

For generations, the people of Savareen had suffered under the boot of one gang or another, all ultimately paying tribute to the Hutt Cartels. Centuries of oppression and depredations had bled into the Force, and with the assistance of the other acolytes, Iskandar had been able to reach out to that reservoir of Dark Side power and bring it forth.

The Cartel forces in orbit could simply wait them out, of course. But Iskandar knew they wouldn't, just like Darth Cain had known it. Their overlords wouldn't allow it : after Darth Cain's display of sorcery, they'd be too afraid of leaving the Lord of Terror time to plan. And the beauty of it was, they were right : if they waited for the storm to pass, Darth Cain would recover from his efforts and unleash his aura of terror again, and again, and again, until the raiders were too traumatized to stay in the same star system as the Sith Lord.

Admittedly, their chances of success weren't much higher on the ground, but they didn't know that for certain, not with how much had been forgotten of the Sith Empire's might.

Already, Iskandar could feel the raiders' transports descending upon Savareen, their tiny minds shining with fear, anger and greed. They were landing far beyond the edges of the storm and, judging by their movements, boarding speeders and other vehicles to cover the rest of the distance.

He couldn't read their thoughts from so far away, but he could easily imagine them. They had felt the touch of Darth Cain's power, witnessed how easily a true Sith Lord could send them running like scared children, and now they were moving against him once more, except this time without unfathomable stretches of empty space between them and him, and with an ominous, entirely unnatural-looking storm raging overhead.

Ever since they'd heard that the Sith had returned, Iskandar had no doubt horror stories had circulated among them, as was always the way of such low-lives. But the promise of Hutt coin, and the threat of the Cartels' retribution, was motivating them to advance anyway. He could feel the cracks in what passed for their morale, and knew that if he could detect them, then Darth Cain definitely could.

Oh, yes, Iskandar thought, smiling under his rebreather, grains of sand whipping at his exposed skin. This was going to be glorious.

AN : Well, the Muse wants what it wants - plus, teasing you about Anakin was cruel.

Speaking of Obi-Wan's favorite Padawan, the song Anakin sings is from Fireborn, by JT Music (you can find it on YT). If you find him being able to fix the hyperdrive too powerful, remember all the crazy stuff Anakin does in canon : there's a reason he's the Chosen One. Also, the Sith engineers did a lot of prep work.

One thing I thought about while writing this chapter is comparative power levels. Cain and Amberley, for instance, are more personally powerful in DCRSL than in 40K. Admittedly, Jedi!Amberley doesn't have the same level of influence as Inquisitor!Amberley, but when it comes to raw power, Jedi!Amberley has the edge.

Erebus is a bit more complicated, but on the whole, I'd say Sith!Erebus and 40K!Erebus were more or less equal. Sure, Sith!Erebus didn't get to frak up the entire galaxy and ruin everything for everyone, but that's because he didn't have the same Plot Armor as 40K!Erebus. In terms of martial and sorcerous feats, the two are in the same court.

No, the one character who got shafted by the passage to Star Wars is Iskandar. 40K!Iskandar is said to be the second-most-powerful Sorcerer to be born from the line of Magnus, right behind Ahriman himself, and the feats we see him performing in the two books of the Black Legion series are truly impressive, and make Acolyte!Iskandar's little ritual look like a cheap trick.

Although at least Acolyte!Iskandar can rest easy knowing that his boss won't send him unarmed to be taken prisoner by their sworn enemies as part of some long-term plot. You lose some, you win some, I guess.

Next up : the Battle of Savareen, between the Sith forces of Darth Cain and the mercenaries of the Hutt Cartels, fought amidst a sand-and-lightning storm (don't think too hard about the physics, I remembered the scene from Fury Road and decided Dark Side sorcery was too good an excuse to pass up).

Zahariel out.