Zannah kept the smile plastered on her face while he worked. She made a point of being friendly with everyone at the spaceport. She saw it as an investment in the future-the cultivation of a potential resource. The members of the Senate and other powerful individuals might shape galactic policy, but it was the bureaucrats, government officials, and various other low-level political functionaries who actually made things run:and they were so much easier to deal with than the political elite. A few kind words and a handful of small bribes, and Zannah could get anything she needed without attracting unwanted attention. Just as she had done with Chet.
This was one advantage she had over Bane. She knew she was attractive. Men in particular were drawn to her because of her looks; they wanted to help her, to please her. Zannah wasn't above encouraging them with a soft laugh or a subtle touch-it was a small price to pay to establish a relationship that might eventually prove useful. Her Master's appearance, on the other hand, would never inspire anything but fear in those who didn't know him.
Only once the porter was gone and she was alone in the cockpit of the vessel did she let the facade drop. Settling into the custom-molded seat, she punched in the navigation coordinates. Through the cockpit viewport she could see the Triumph, Bane's personal shuttle, in the adjacent hangar.
Like her own, it was a Cygnus Spaceworks Theta-class T-1 vesseclass="underline" the latest, and most expensive, personal interplanetary transport shuttle available on the open market. Everything about their life here on Ciutric-the mansion, their clothes, even their social calendar was a part of their disguise. They surrounded themselves with luxury and material comforts; a far cry from the austere life they had lead during their years on Ambria.
There were times when Zannah missed the simplicity of those early days. Life on Ambria had been hard, but it had kept her strong. And she couldn't help but wonder if the lavish lifestyle here on Ciutric had made her-and Bane-soft.
The Victory's engines roared to life, and the shuttle rose up a few meters off the ground. Zannah piloted by instinct while her mind continued its train of thought.
Life was a constant struggle; the strong would survive and the weak would perish. That was the way of the universe, the natural order. It was the philosophy embraced by the Code of the Sith. But here on Ciutric it was easy to be lulled into a sense of peace.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken.
Zannah understood that chains were not always made of iron and durasteel; they could sometimes be woven of expensive shimmersilk. The easy life they enjoyed on Ciutric was a trap as dangerous as any the Jedi could ever set for them.
She had continued her study and training even after Bane had moved them into their magnificent estate outside the city. But the sense of urgency and the threat of danger that had spurred her on during her early years had faded, replaced by the ennui of security and contentment.
It was time to stake her claim as Dark Lord of the Sith. She would already have challenged him by now, if not for two things.
The first was the tremor she had noticed in his left hand several months ago. He tried to hide it from her, but she noticed it more and more. She didn't know the cause of the tremor, but regardless, it was an obvious sign of his degenerating skills.
Perhaps too obvious. Bane was a master manipulator. Zannah couldn't dismiss the idea that he was faking it. What if the tremor was just a ruse meant to lure her into the confrontation before she was truly ready-one final test to see if the apprentice had learned the lesson of patience he had worked so hard to ingrain into her?
I will strike at a time of my choosing, Zannah vowed to herself. Not his.
But in order to make her move, she had to be ready with an apprentice of her own. Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody the power, the other to crave it. The Rule of Two was inviolate. If she was going to seize the mantle of Master from Bane, she would need to find an apprentice. So far, despite her best efforts, she had failed to locate even a single potential candidate.
Bane had recognized her own potential when, as a young girl, she had killed the Jedi who had mistakenly slain her friend. Now she was going to investigate the mysterious death of another Jedi. Might she find her successor the same way Bane had found her?
But if she was thinking along these lines, it was a sure bet that Bane had thought of it, too. He was rarely caught unprepared or off guard. So:why would Bane send her on a mission that could end with her finding the individual who might become the next Sith apprentice? Did her Master want her to challenge him? Was he trying to help her? Or was he looking to replace her? Maybe he had decided she was unworthy of assuming his title. Maybe he was hoping this mission would provide him with someone new to train in the ways of the dark side, and he planned to cast her aside.
If that's true, Master, you might be surprised at how this ends. Underestimate me at your peril.
A beep from the nav screen notified her as the shuttle broke Ciutric's atmosphere. A few seconds later she felt the unmistakable surge as the ship made the leap into hyperspace.
Zannah eased her seat back and closed her eyes. There was no point in dwelling on all the possibilities of what Bane might or might not be thinking, or what his secret motivations for sending her on the mission might be. The web of his machinations could be too impossibly tangled to unweave.
But she knew one thing for sure: something was about to change. For twenty years she had served as his loyal apprentice, learning the ways of the Sith. Now her time as a pupil was about to end. Whatever the mission might bring, she had decided this would be the last time she answered to Darth Bane.
CHAPTER FIVE
Coruscant was unlike anything Serra had ever seen. As a child she had known nothing but the simple isolation of her father's camp. When he had sent her away, she'd visited dozens of other worlds before settling on Doan, but all of them had been less populated planets on the Outer Rim. Her entire life had been spent on the fringes of civilization. Here, on the planet-wide metropolis that was the Republic capital, she had been hurled into the madness of the Galactic Core.
Caleb had made sure his daughter's education was well rounded; she had read descriptions of Coruscant, she had memorized all the relevant facts and figures. But knowing a world had a population approaching one trillion individuals and seeing it in person were entirely different.
Serra simply stared out the window of the airspeeder, speechless as it darted and dived, fighting its way through the heavy traffic of the skylane. Below, an endless ocean of durasteel and permacrete stretched off to the horizon in all directions, shining with the permanent glow of a million lights. The effect was overwhelming: the crowds, the vehicles, the dull cacophony of sounds that could be heard over the hum of the engines-the sheer magnitude of it was almost more than her mind could grasp. It made her feel small. Insignificant.
"There it is," Lucia said, nodding out the window.
In the distance Serra could just make out a massive structure that towered high above the rest of the cityscape: the Jedi Temple. The swift-moving speeder was bringing them rapidly closer, and it wasn't long before she could make out the unique details of the Temple's construction.
The foundation was a pyramid of successively smaller blocks, creating a stepped or ziggurat effect. On the top of the uppermost level was a tall central spire, surrounded on each corner by smaller, secondary spires. Scattered among the spires were open plazas, wide promenades, vast natural gardens, and a number of smaller buildings that served as dorms or administrative centers.
As the speeder dropped out of the main line of traffic toward their destination, the structure's true scope became apparent. Everything on Coruscant was grand and magnificent, but the Temple dominated the skyline. Serra recalled that it had been built on top of a mountain. Not on a mountain, like the small settlements the nobles had constructed on the plateaus of Doan, but actually over the mountain-the stepped pyramid covered the entire surface, swallowing the mountain so completely that it was no longer visible.