The young man's hands went limp and fell away from the blaster. His body toppled forward, pinning Zannah's legs beneath its weight. Across the room Bordon's eyes flew wide in horror. With a scream of anguish he lunged forward to help his son.
Seeing the father of the boy she had just killed rushing toward her, Zannah acted on instinct and fired the weapon again. The bolt caught Bordon just above the belt, cutting off his cry and knocking him to his knees. He let out a low grunt of pain as he clutched at the smoking hole in his gut, then reached a bloody hand out toward Zannah. She cried out in fear and disgust and fired again, ending Bordon's life.
"Bordon!" Irtanna's voice came over the shipboard intercom. "I heard blasterfire! What's happening back there?"
Moving quickly, Zannah squirmed out from under Tallo's corpse and ran up to the cockpit. She arrived to find Wend still harnassed into his passenger's seat, trying to turn around to see what was going on. Irtanna was just rising from her chair to go help Bordon. She'd had to engage the autopilot before she could leave her seat, and the delay had given Zannah the precious seconds she'd need to gain the upper hand.
"Sit back down and don't move!" Zannah shouted, pointing the blaster at Irtanna. Her voice sounded thin and hollow in the tight confines of the cockpit-the voice of a panicky child.
Irtanna hesitated, then obeyed.
"What happened?" the woman asked, her tone carefully neutral. "Is anybody hurt?"
"Plot a course for Onderon " Zannah ordered, refusing to answer the question. She could barely hear herself speak above the deafening thump of her racing heart.
"Okay," Irtanna said slowly, reaching up to punch the coordinates into the ship's command console. "I'll do what you want. Just stay calm." The ship's autonav chimed to acknowledge the new destination, and the woman half turned in her seat so she could look the young girl holding her hostage square in the eye. "Rain, put the blaster down." There was a cool self-assurance in her words, and a grim determination on her face.
"I'm not Rain," the girl retorted through clenched teeth. "My name is Zannah!"
"Whoever you are," Irtanna said, standing up slowly, "you're going to give me that blaster."
"Don't move or I'll shoot!" Zannah warned, her voice rising shrilly. How can she be so calm? she thought, even as she struggled to slow her own breathing down. She was the one with the blaster, but somehow she felt like she was losing control of the situation.
"No," the young woman replied calmly, taking a single step toward her. "You won't shoot me. You're not a killer."
The memory of the two dead Jedi back on Ruusan flashed through Zannah's mind, followed quickly by the image of Bordon and his son lying lifeless in the cargo hold.
"Yes, I am" she whispered as she pulled the trigger.
Irtanna managed a faint gasp of surprise, then collapsed to the ground-a quick and clean death. Zannah waited a second to confirm she was gone, then turned to point the blaster at Wend. He had watched the encounter unfold as if paralyzed, not even bothering to undo the buckle of his safety harness.
"Don't kill me!" he begged, squirming beneath the chair's restraints.
She could actually sense the fear emanating from him. She felt the familiar heat of the dark side flare to life within her, responding to the plight of her victim, feeding itself on his terror. It flowed through her like a wave of liquid fire, burning away her guilt and uncertainty and strengthening her resolve.
Zannah's mind was filled with a great and sudden realization: fear and pain were an inevitable part of existence. And it was far better to inflict them on others than to suffer them herself.
"Please don't shoot," Wend whimpered, making one last plea for his life. "I'm just a kid. Like you "
"I'm not a kid " Zannah said as she pulled the trigger. "I'm a Sith."
Chapter 7
Bane could hear the whine of the Vakyn's engines as the ship sliced through the upper layers of Dxun's atmosphere, protesting as he pushed the vessel to her very limits. Normally the trip from Ruu-san to Onderon's oversized moon would have taken a T-class cruiser like the Valcyn between four and five days. Bane had covered the distance in just over two.
Within hours of leaving Ruusan-and Zannah-behind, he had been cursed with the return of the almost unbearable headaches. And with them had come an unwanted and most unwelcome companion. The spectral shade of Lord Kaan loomed over him in the cockpit for the entire first day of the trip, a visible manifestation of the damage Bane's mind had suffered from the thought bomb. The spirit never spoke, merely watched him with its accusatory gaze, a constant presence on the edges of Bane's awareness.
The ghostly apparition had driven Bane to adopt an irresponsible, even dangerous, pace for the journey. He had pushed the Valcyn far beyond the recommended safety parameters, as if part of him was trying to use the speed of the ship to outrun his own madness. He was desperate to reach Dxun so he could find the tomb of Freedon Nadd and hopefully discover some way to rid himself of the torturous hallucinations.
Kaan had disappeared toward the end of the first day of his journey, only to be replaced by an even worse visitation. It wasn't the founder of the Brotherhood of Darkness that hovered beside him now, but Qordis-the former head of the Sith Academy on Korriban. Pale and semi-translucent, the figure was otherwise an almost perfect replica of what the Sith Lord had looked like at the time of their final meeting, when Bane had killed him. Tall and gaunt, Qordis had skeletal features that seemed more at home on a spirit than they ever had on a being of flesh and blood. Unlike Kaan, however, Qordis actually spoke to him, spewing forth an endless litany of blame, denouncing everything Bane had accomplished.
"You betrayed us" the phantom said, extending a long, thin finger topped with a talon-like nail. Bane didn't need to look at it to know the finger would be adorned with the heavy bejeweled rings Qordis had worn in life. "You destroyed the Brotherhood, you brought victory to the Jedi. And now you flee the scene like a craven thief in the night."
I'm not a coward! Bane thought. There was no point in voicing the words aloud; the vision was all in his mind. Speaking with it would only be a sign that his mental condition was further deteriorating. I did what had to be done. The Brotherhood was an abomination. They had to be destroyed!
"The Brotherhood had knowledge of the dark side. Wisdom that is lost forever because of you."
Bane was growing weary of the all-too-familiar refrain. He'd had this conversation with himself before he decided to destroy Kaan and his followers, and now he was reliving it again and again through the delusions of his wounded mind. Yet he refused to allow any doubts or uncertainties to weaken his resolve; he had done what was necessary.
The Brotherhood had lost its way. They had fallen from the true path of the dark side. AH the study and training Qordis put prospective students through at the Academy was worthless.
"If that was true," the apparition countered, answering his unspoken arguments, "then how do you explain your current mission? Your claim to reject my teachings, yet I was the one who discovered the location of Freedon Nadd's lost tomb."
You didn't discover anything. You re just a hallucination. And Qordis may have stumbled on this information, but he didnt know what to do with it. A true Sith Master would have left Ruusan to seek out Nadd's tomb. Instead he decided to stay and help Kaan play army with the Jedi.
"Excuses and justifications," the spirit replied. "Kaan was a warrior. But you would rather hide from your enemies than fight them."