Bane's eyes opened a few seconds later, burning with a fierce intensity.
"Darth Zannah, you are my apprentice. The heir to my legacy. You can still claim the destiny that is yours by right. You can still ascend to the rank of Sith Master."
He was speaking louder now, his strength slowly returning. Zannah wondered if the men outside could hear him.
"Take your lightsaber and strike me down! Claim my title as your own. Slay the others and flee this place before the Jedi arrive. Seek out a new apprentice. Keep our Order alive "
Zannah shook her head. Caleb had already considered that possibility, and effectively eliminated it. "Our ship is disabled, and the Jedi will be here in a matter of hours. Even if I flee into the desert, they will find me before I can escape this world."
"I never thought you would fail me so utterly," Bane told her, turning his head away from her in disgust. "I never thought you would be the one to destroy the Sith."
She didn't say anything in her defense, and a few seconds later Bane turned back to face her once more, casting his eyes to the lightsaber on her belt.
"I don't want to live as a prisoner to the Jedi," he said, his voice low, as if he now knew there were others who might overhear, "You can end this before they arrive."
Zannah shook her head. She hadn't gone to all the trouble of saving her Master's life just to kill him now. "While you live there is still hope, Bane," she said quietly, worried what Darovit or Caleb would think if they heard her words. Yet she had to offer some type of reassurance to her Master. "The Sith may yet rise again."
Bane shook his head, though it took a monumental effort. "The Jedi will never allow me to escape. They will sense my power, and keep me under the constant guard of a dozen Jedi Knights until the
Senate decides to execute me for my crimes. Kill me now and deny them their justice."
Zannah had spent the past two days by Bane's side, waiting for him to wake again. It had been clear he would live, but she'd wanted to speak with her Master to be certain his mind was still intact. She'd wanted proof that all his faculties-his intelligence, his cunning- had survived his ordeal. She had it now, ironically expressed in his desire to die.
"A Sith never surrenders, Master," she told him.
"And only a fool fights a battle that cannot possibly be won," he answered sharply. "The Jedi will be here soon. Act now. Strike me down!"
She shook her head. Her Master tried to rise, his fury giving him the strength to sit halfway up. And then he collapsed back onto the pillow, utterly exhausted.
As her Master slipped once more into unconsciousness, Zannah realized he was right. The Jedi were coming, and if she didn't act now it would be too late. She stood up and drew her lightsaber, knowing the hum of its blade would alert the two men outside. She didn't care. By the time they realized what she was doing it would be too late.
Chapter 24
The Light of Truth, one of the many Jedi cruisers that had been incorporated into the Republic fleet after the Ruusan Reformations, landed with a soft thump on Ambria's desolate surface.
"Be ready for anything," Master Tho'natu warned his team as they prepared to disembark.
Back before he achieved the rank of Master, the Twi'lek had served as a Jedi Knight in the Army of Light on Ruusan. He had been assigned to Farfalla's ship, luckily in time to avoid the effects of the thought bomb, but not before he'd had ample opportunity on Ruusan to witness first-hand the kind of atrocities the Sith were capable of. He wasn't about to take any chances here.
They'd been dispatched in response to a message drone that had arrived on Coruscant a few days before. The anonymous message inside had been cryptically short, and somewhat disquieting in its lack of detail. It contained only a set of landing coordinates and four brief lines of text.
A Sith Lord still lives. He killed five Jedi on Tython. He is now on
Ambria, under the care of a healer named Caleb. He is badly injured and helpless.
Less than two weeks ago Master Farfalla and four companions had hastily taken off from Coruscant, leaving behind word they were heading to Tython in pursuit of a Dark Lord of the Sith. They hadn't been heard from since. The message drone offered a grim explanation of their fate, and it drew an immediate response from the Jedi Council.
They'd quickly assembled a team of fourteen Jedi, six Masters and eight Jedi Knights, and sent them to Ambria under Tho'natu's command to apprehend the man responsible for the massacre of Master Farfalla and his companions. The journey had been made with all possible haste, but now that they were here they intended to proceed with caution, wary of walking into a trap.
The landing coordinates had set them down a few hundred meters from a small wooden hut and a tiny campfire. A cruiser with the name LORANDA emblazoned on its side was parked nearby.
The landing bay doors opened, and Tho'natu and the others leapt to the ground, ready to draw their lightsabers at the first sign of trouble. The air around them trembled with a strange and unfamiliar sensation of power, though beneath was the unmistakable taint of the dark side.
"First and second units, go check out that ship," he said. "Third unit explores the camp with me."
Nine Jedi rushed off toward the Loranda, while Tho'natu and the others approached the camp. What they saw as they drew nearer filled them with revulsion: Someone had been literally chopped to pieces.
Eviscerated chunks of human anatomy littered the ground around the campfire. Arms had been hewn off at the shoulder, then sliced again at the elbows and wrist. The same had been done to the lower limbs, dismembered into feet, legs, and thighs. Even the torso had been carved into quarters. The clean, cauterized cuts left no doubt the butcher's weapon of choice had been a lightsaber.
Only the head remained whole, placed like a trophy atop an upside-down cooking pot resting on the ground. A human male with long, black hair, he appeared to have been forty or fifty years of age. His features were twisted in a gruesome mask of pain and terror; Tho'natu wondered how many of the wounds had been inflicted while he was still alive.
"What kind of madness could make someone do this?" one of the others asked, but Master Tho'natu had no answer.
At a nod from their commander, the Jedi ignited their weapons. They crept toward the small shack, their commander in the lead. As a unit, they stopped when he heard a soft sound coming from inside the building: hard ragged breaths broken by trembling sobs and whimpers of fear.
A tattered blanket hung down across the building's open doorway, obscuring their view. The Twi'lek reached out with the Force to try to sense whoever was hiding inside, but something-likely the strange, underlying power of the campsite itself-blurred his awareness.
"I am Master Tho'natu of the Jedi" he called out, flicking off his lightsaber's blade. "We're here to help you."
A scream of incoherent rage erupted from the shack. A young man burst from the doorway, brandishing a golden lightsaber above his head in his left hand. His right hand was nothing but a stump, and there was a crazed gleam in his eye.
"No!" he shrieked as he charged at them, flailing wildly with his weapon. "You'll never get me! No! No! No!"
Master Tho'natu ignited his blade as the man fell on him with the fury of madness, his cries turning to mindless, beastly howls. The rest of his team reacted on instinct, leaping to their commander's de- fense. The battle lasted less than three seconds, the raving young man cut down by a swarm of Jedi lightsabers.
When it was over, the Jedi took up defensive positions facing the shack, weapons poised as they braced themselves for another potential attack. For several seconds nothing happened, and there were no further sounds of life from inside. Motioning for the others to stay back, Tho'natu crept forward and pulled aside the blanket covering the doorway.
The room beyond was empty except for five lightsaber handles lying beside the door. The Jedi Master stepped inside the small building, his keen mind quickly piecing together what must have happened.