Zannah preferred a more subtle and insidious approach. Instead of using the Force to bend them to her will, she was gently prodding their collective psyche, pushing their thought patterns to make them more emotional, more aggressive. By itself the process was useless, but combined with persuasive words to further stir the blood, the effects could be more powerful-and more permanent-than the brute force of simple mind control.
However, the words couldn't come from her. She was a stranger here; they didn't trust her. Their natural instincts would be to reject her arguments; in their artificially induced hyperaggressive state they would quickly turn against her. They needed to be convinced by someone they knew. Someone like Kel.
"You say you want independence," the handsome Twi'lek told them. "You say you will fight for your freedom. Yet when I offer you this chance, you want to slink away like a Kath hound banished from its pack."
"We should wait for the Armistice Celebrations," Cyndra insisted. "We need to stick to the original plan."
"A plan is nothing until you act on it," Kel replied. "We talk about what we will do in the future, but when the Armistice Celebrations come, how easy will it be to find another excuse to wait yet again?
"Secret meetings will not bring change to the galaxy. Plans alone will not make the Senate tremble or bring the Republic to its knees. We must take action, and the time for action is now!"
Zannah recognized her words being spoken with Kel's voice. She had fed them to him over weeks of intimate conversations, planting the seeds of ideas, then watching them grow. Now he spoke the words with passion and fire, delivering them as if he truly believed they were his own.
Bane would be pleased. This was true power: to twist another to your purpose, yet have him believe he was in control. Kel was her puppet, but his pride and ego had blinded him to the strings she used to make him dance.
"We stand on the precipice of a momentous event," he continued. "In three days we will strike a great blow against the tyrants of the Republic, the first step in our long and glorious march to independence and true freedom!"
A spontaneous cheer of assent rose up from the room, and Zannah knew Kel had won them over. Only Paak and Cyndra showed any signs of reluctance, but as the rest of the group began working on the details of the plan to capture Chancellor Valorum, even they set aside their hesitations.
The meeting lasted long into the night, and when it was over she and Kel went back to the small apartment she had rented as part of her cover story.
"You were magnificent tonight," she breathed.
"This is the last time I can see you until all this is over," Kel warned. "The others are counting on me. I can't have any distractions."
As an answer she reached out and grabbed his wrist, then pulled him close in a tight embrace.
He left the next morning. Zannah kissed him good-bye and went back to sleep. Later, she rolled out of bed and began to gather her things. Her mission here was over; she knew she would never see Kel alive again. It was time to return to Ambria.
The camp was in ruins. The tents were leveled, their canopies shredded and torn. Wooden supply crates had been smashed into sawdust and splinters, their contents tossed and scattered on the wind. Hundred-kilogram fuel cells lay strewn about the campsite, some thrown fifty meters from where they had been stored.
The ground was littered with debris and marred by dozens of still-smoldering black scorch marks Zannah recognized as the remnants of a terrible storm of unnatural lightning. The air still crackled with the power and energy of the dark side that made her tingle in fear and anticipation.
It was easy enough to guess what had happened. Bane had failed yet again in his attempt to create a Holocron, then in a blind rage lashed out at the world around him with all the power of the Force.
If she had been here when it happened, Zannah wondered, could she have stopped him? Would she even have been able to survive?
She saw Bane seated on the far side of the camp, his back to her as he stared out to the horizon, meditating on his failure. He turned to face her as she approached, rising up to his full two-meter height so that he towered above her. His clothes had been torn and burned away, revealing the full scope of the orbalisk infestation. Hundreds of the creatures clung to him; except for his face and hands, his body was now completely covered. He looked as if he were wearing a suit of armor fashioned from the hard, oblong shells of dead crustaceans. Yet she knew that beneath the shells, the parasites were still alive, feeding on him.
Bane claimed the orbalisks enhanced his power, granting him unnatural strength and healing abilities. Yet witnessing the aftermath of his failure with the Holocron, Zannah wondered at what cost those abilities came. What use was greater power if it could not be controlled?
To her relief the fury seemed to have passed, and Zannah knew better than to ask him about it. Instead she offered news of her mission.
"It's done. When Chancellor Valorum's shuttle lands, Kel and his followers will be waiting for him."
"You have done well," Bane answered.
As always, she felt a surge of pride and accomplishment at her Master's praise. But her satisfaction was tempered by memories of Kel, and the knowledge that he was lost to her forever.
"Is there any chance they will succeed?" she asked.
"No," Bane said after a moment's consideration,
"Then what purpose do they serve?" she demanded, finally giving in to her frustration. "I don't understand why you send me on missions like this! Why waste all this time and effort if we know they're going to fail!"
"They don't need to succeed to be of value to us " Bane answered. "The separatists are only a distraction. They draw the attention of the Senate, and blind the eyes of the Jedi Council."
"Blind them?"
"The Jedi have surrendered themselves to the will of the Senate. They have let themselves sink into the morass of politics and bureaucracy. The Republic seeks a single, unified government to maintain peace throughout the galaxy, and the Jedi have been reduced to nothing more than a tool to make it happen.
"Each time radicals strike against the Republic, the}edi Council is called upon to take action. Resources are wasted on quelling rebellions and uprisings, keeping their focus away from us."
"But why must the separatists always fail?" Zannah asked. "We could help them succeed without risking exposure!"
"If they succeed, they will gain support," Bane explained. "Their power and influence will grow. They will become harder to manipulate and control. It is possible they might even become strong enough to bring down the Republic itself."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Zannah asked.
"The Republic keeps the Jedi in check. It maintains control and imposes order across thousands of worlds. But if the Republic falls, a score of new interstellar governments and galactic organizations will rise. It is far easier to manipulate and control a single enemy than twenty.
"That it is why we must seek out radical separatist groups, identify the ones that have the potential to become true threats, then encourage them to strike before they are ready. We must exploit them, playing them off against the Republic. We must let our enemies weaken one another while we stay hidden and grow strong.
"One day the Republic will fall and the Jedi will be wiped out," he assured her. "But it will not happen until we are ready to seize that power for ourselves."
Zannah nodded, though her mind was reeling as she tried to comprehend the true complexity of her Master's intricate and convoluted political machinations. She thought back to all her past missions, trying to see how each one played a part in his plans.