"You sent for me, Lord Bane?"
She made no acknowledgment of the tremor, yet Bane was certain it had not gone unnoticed. Was she playing him for a fool? Pretending not to see his weakness in the hope he would become careless and let his guard down? Or was she silently gloating while she bided her time, waiting for the dark side to simply rot his body away?
Zannah was only ten years younger than Bane, but if the dark side was extracting a similar physical toll on her it had yet to show itself. Unlike her Master, she had never been infested with the orbalisks. It would still be many decades before the corruption of the dark side caused her body to wither.
Her curly golden hair was still long and lustrous, her skin still smooth and perfect. Of average height, she had the figure of a gymnast: lean, lithe, and strong. She wore fitted black pants and a sleeveless red vest embroidered with silver, an outfit that was both stylish by current Ciutric standards and practical, in that it would not hinder movement.
The handle of her twin-bladed lightsaber hung from her hip; over the past few years she had never come into her Master's presence without it. The hooked handle of Bane's own weapon was clipped to the belt of his breeches:it would have been foolish to leave himself unarmed and vulnerable before the apprentice who had sworn to one day kill him.
I'm still waiting for that day, Bane thought. Out loud he said, "I need you to make a trip to the Outer Rim. A planet called Doan, where a Jedi was murdered three standard days ago."
"Anyone powerful enough to kill a Jedi is worthy of our attention," Zannah admitted. "Do we know who is responsible?"
"That is what you need to find out."
Zannah nodded, her eyes narrowing as she processed the information. "What was a Jedi doing on an insignificant planet in the Outer Rim?"
"That is something else you need to find out."
"The Jedi will send one of their own to investigate," she noted.
"Not right away," Bane assured her. "The Doan royal family is calling in political favors to delay the investigation. They've sent a representative to meet with the Jedi Council on Coruscant instead."
"The royal family must be rich; those kinds of favors don't come cheap. Small world, but not widely known yet with wealthy royals. Valuable resources? Mining?" she guessed.
Zannah had always been able to grasp bits of information and put them together into something meaningful. She would have been a worthy successor, if only she had possessed the ambition to seize the Sith throne.
"The planet's been carved down nearly to the core. There are only a few habitable kilometers of land left on the surface; all food has to be shipped in. Most of the population live and work in the strip mines."
"Sounds charming," she muttered, before adding, "I'll leave tonight."
Bane nodded, dismissing her. Only after she was gone did he dare to place his still-quivering hand back on top of the desk.
The death of a Jedi was always of interest to him, but in truth he cared about finding Andeddu's Holocron far more than he did about the outcome of Zannah's mission.
Fortunately, the incident on Doan offered the perfect distraction. Investigating the Outer Rim world would keep his apprentice occupied while he braved the dangerous hyperspace routes into the Core to retrieve the Holocron. If things went as he hoped, he would be back long before she returned to give him her report, with Zannah none the wiser.
Confident in his plan, Bane focused all his concentration on calming the tremor that still gripped his hand. But for all his power, for all his mental discipline, the muscles continued to twitch involuntarily. In frustration, he balled up his fist and slammed it once hard upon the surface of the desk, leaving a faint impression in the soft wood.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ciutric IV's twin moons shone brightly down on Zannah's airspeeder as it zipped through the night sky. The evening's rain clouds were just beginning to build; they were still no more than wispy veils that simply tore apart as her vehicle ripped through them. On the ground below, still a few kilometers ahead, she could see the lights of Daplona's primary spaceport.
A light on the nav panel blinked a warning, indicating she was approaching the two-kilometer limit of restricted airspace that surrounded the port. Her hands moving with casual precision over the controls, she brought the speeder in for a landing at the section reserved for those wealthy enough to afford private hangars for their personal shuttles.
As the vehicle gently touched down on the pad located on the starport's perimeter, three men scurried out to meet her. The first, a valet, tended to her speeder, whisking it away toward the secure lot where it would be parked until she returned. The second man, a porter, loaded her luggage onto a small hoversled then waited patiently as the third man approached.
"Good evening, Mistress Omek," he greeted her.
From their first arrival on Ciutric, Zannah and Bane had worked hard to build up their identities as Allia and Sepp Omek. After nearly a decade, she was able to slip into the role of the wealthy import-export trader without even thinking about it.
"Chet," she said with a nod to the customs official as the young man handed her an official-looking form.
For the common masses, arrivals and departures at the Daplona spaceport were a long and arduous process. Because the world was built on commerce and trade, the government required copies of trip itineraries, verification of ship registration, and a host of forms and permits to be filled out before the port authority would clear a vessel, its contents, or its passengers. This frequently involved a thorough inspection of the ship's interior by customs personnel, with the official explanation being increased planetary security. However, everyone knew inspections were actually meant to discourage merchants from trying to transport undeclared merchandise in the hope of avoiding interstellar taxes and tariffs.
Fortunately, Zannah didn't have to worry about any of that. She simply signed the departure form and handed it back to Chet. One of the chief benefits of maintaining a private hangar at the port was the ability to come and go at will. In exchange for their substantial monthly hangar fees, the government kept its nose out of her and Bane's business:a bargain at nearly any price as far as she was concerned.
"You'll be taking your private shuttle, I assume."
"That's right," she replied. "The Victory over in hangar thirteen."
"I'll alert the control tower."
Chet gave a curt nod to the porter, who headed off with the hoversled in the direction of the hangar.
"Just a moment," the customs official said softly to Zannah, causing her to hang back.
"Heard some news I thought you might be interested in," he continued once the porter had disappeared around the corner. "Argel Tenn touched down a few days ago to meet with your brother."
Zannah had never met Argel, but she knew who he was and what he did. Over the past few years she had slowly been gathering information on all the members in Darth Bane's network of contacts; they could prove useful to her once she took over the Sith. She didn't know if Argel's arrival was relevant or not: Bane was always looking to acquire rare Sith manuscripts, and it could just be a coincidence. Nevertheless, she filed the knowledge away in case it should ever prove handy.
"Thanks for the update," she said, slipping Chet a fifty-credit chip before heading off toward her private hangar.
The porter was already there, waiting with her bags by the shuttle. Zannah punched in the security code, causing the boarding ramp to lower.
"Put everything in the back," she instructed, smiling and handing the porter a ten-credit chip.
"Right away, mistress," he replied, the tip disappearing instantly into a pocket somewhere on his uniform as he hustled to load her baggage.