Not everyone agreed that the Muuns’ strategy of “tactical astriction” was the best method for keeping the Republic off-balance and thus ripe for manipulation. But Damask had insisted that their common goal of oligarchy — government by a select few — would eventually be realized, even if attained as a result of actions and events few would observe, and about which some of the membership might never learn.
Starlight glinted from the hulls of the last of the departing ships. Damask took comfort in knowing that his guests believed they had taken part in something secretive and grand, and had been encouraged to execute campaigns that on the surface may have seemed informed by self-interest but were in fact bits of Sith business.
Movements in the symphony that was the Grand Plan—
Keening klaxons fractured the morning silence.
Damask’s eyes narrowed and swept the surrounding forests for signs of disturbance. He had moved to the southernmost parapet when two Sun Guards hurried up the stairs in search of him.
“Magister, the eastern perimeter has been breached,” one of them reported.
Outside the fort’s walls, illumination was coming up and drone ships were beginning to meander through the treetops. Occasionally one of the imported beasts would lumber into the safe zone, touching off the alarms, but none of the remote cams were showing evidence of intrusion.
“It’s possible that one of our guests may have overstayed his or her welcome,” the second Sun Guard said. He stopped to listen to a message being relayed to his helmet earphones. “We think we have something.” He looked at Damask. “Will you be all right, Magister, or should we wait with you?”
“Go,” Damask told them. “But keep me informed.”
Stretching out with his feelings, he began to scan the forest again. Someone was out there, but not in the area the guards were searching. He attended through the Force to the sound of movement in the trees. Had the Gran infiltrated an assassin? If so, had they found one clever enough to divert the Sun Guards into chasing an illusion? Damask and the other Muuns should have been the targets, but instead of moving toward the fort, the intruder was actually moving away from it.
He spent another long moment listening; then, like a wraith, he dashed down three flights of stone steps and out through the old gate into the waking forest, parting his cloak as he ran, his left hand on the hilt of the lightsaber. Lifting off in great numbers from their evening roosts and screeching in displeasure, the morning’s earliest risers warned the rest that a hunter was on the loose. Of the most dangerous sort, Damask might have added: a hunter of sentients. In moments he was deep in a stand of old-growth greel trees well outside the security perimeter, when he sensed something that stopped him in mid-stride. Motionless, he drew inward in an effort to verify what he’d felt.
A Force-user!
A Jedi spy? he wondered.
They had tried repeatedly to penetrate Sojourn’s defenses during previous Gatherings. But unless one had arrived in a ship designed and built by Darth Tenebrous, there would have been no way to reach the surface undetected. And yet someone had obviously succeeded in making it downside. Lifting his hand from the hilt of the lightsaber, Damask minimized his presence in the Force, surrendering his eminence and disappearing into the material world. Then he began to move deeper into the forest, winding his way through the trees, allowing the Jedi to stalk him even as he berated himself for having acted rashly. If it came to ambush, he would not be able to fight back and risk exposing himself as a Sith. He should have allowed the Sun Guards to deal with the intruder.
But why would a Jedi bother to trip the perimeter sensors only to retreat beyond their reach? They didn’t make mistakes of that sort. And surely whoever was out there wouldn’t have expected a Muun to respond, if for no other reason than Muuns didn’t make mistakes of that sort. So what was this one after?
Ahead Damask heard the characteristic hiss and hum of a lightsaber, and saw the weapon’s blade glowing in the mist. Emerging from behind a thick-boled tree, the wielder had the lightsaber in his right hand, angled toward the spongy ground.
A crimson blade in a crimson wood.
Instantly he called his own lightsaber to his left hand, igniting the blade as the figure in the mist revealed itself fully: a tall, thin, pink-skinned craniopod with large lidless eyes—
A Bith!
Tenebrous?
He faltered momentarily. No, that wasn’t possible. But who, then? Tenebrous’s offspring, perhaps — some spawn grown from his genetic material in a laboratory, since the species reproduced only in accordance with the dictates of a computer mating service. Was that why Tenebrous had declined to discuss midi-chlorians or ways of extending life? Because he had already found a way to create a Force-sensitive successor?
“I knew I could draw you out, Darth Plagueis,” the Bith said.
Plagueis dropped all pretence and faced him squarely. “You’re well trained. I sensed the Force in you, but not the dark side.”
“I’ve Darth Tenebrous to thank for it.”
“He made you in his image. You’re a product of Bith science.”
The Bith laughed harshly. “You’re an old fool. He found and trained me.”
Plagueis recalled the warning Tenebrous had nearly given voice to before he died. “He took you as an apprentice?”
“I am Darth Venamis.”
“Darth?” Plagueis said with disgust. “We’ll see about that.”
“Your death will legitimize the title, Plagueis.”
Plagueis cocked his head to the side. “Your Master left orders for you to kill me?”
The Bith nodded. “Even now he awaits my return.”
“Awaits …,” Plagueis said. As astonishing as it was to learn that Tenebrous had trained a second apprentice, he had a surprise in store for Venamis. Inhaling, he said, “Tenebrous is dead.”
Confusion showed in Venamis’s eyes. “You wish it were so.”
Plagueis held his lightsaber off to one side, parallel to the ground. “What’s more, he died by my hand.”
“Impossible.”
Plagueis laughed with purpose. “How powerful can you be if you failed to sense the death of your Master? Even now, your thoughts fly in all directions.”
Venamis raised his lightsaber over one shoulder. “In killing you I will avenge his death and become the Sith Lord he knew you could never be.”
“The Sith he wanted me to be,” Plagueis corrected. “But enough of this. You’ve come a long way to challenge me. Now make a worthy effort.”
Venamis charged.
To Plagueis, lightsaber duels were tedious affairs, full of wasted emotion and needless acrobatics. Tenebrous, however, who had pronounced Plagueis a master of the art, had always enjoyed a good fight, and had clearly bequeathed that enthusiasm to his other trainee. For no sooner had the blades of their weapons clashed than Venamis began to bring the fight to him in unexpected ways, twirling his surprisingly limber body, tossing the lightsaber from hand to hand, mixing forms. At one point he leapt onto an overhanging greel branch and, when Plagueis severed it with a Force blow, hung suspended in the air — no mean feat in itself — and continued the fight, as if from high ground. Worse for Plagueis, Tenebrous had made Venamis an expert in Plagueis’s style, and so the Bith could not only anticipate but counter Plagueis’s every move.
In short order, Venamis penetrated his defenses, searing the side of Plagueis’s neck.
The contest took them backward and forward through the trees, across narrow streams, and up onto piles of rocks that were the ruins of an ancient sentry post. Plagueis took a moment to wonder if anyone at the fort was observing the results of the contest, which, from afar, must have looked like lightning flashing through the forest’s understory.