The stories said that a great war ensued between the two groups, with the worshipers of Ashla emerging victorious. The first Jedi Knights supposedly had evolved from the survivors of the war, creating the first Hghtsabers in their initiation ceremonies. Many years later, the legend continued, some of these Jedi left Tython and braved the unstable hypers.p.a.ce routes to share their beliefs with worlds beyond the Deep Core. And as they met and mingled with other civilizations, Ashla and Boga became more commonly know as the light and dark sides of the Force, Bane didn't know if the legend was true, but even if it was, it merely proved the superiority of the dark side and its inevitable conquest of the light. For though the followers of Ashla had supposedly defeated the followers of Boga, the dark side had prevailed in the end. Tython, revered by many as the birthplace of the Jedi Order itself, was now a bastion of dark side power, and the location of Bella Darzu's hidden fortress.

Bane knew it was possible that other people still lived on Tython: descendants of the early Jedi who had survived for eons in the isolation of the Deep Core. But he had no interest in seeking them out, even if they existed. Armed with the information from Helton's datacard, he was heading straight for Bella's stronghold.

Pushing forward on the yoke, he sent the Mystic plunging down into the atmosphere of the cloud-covered world. Breaking through the mist, he saw that the surface below was the color of ash; barren fields stretched endlessly beneath an unbroken mantle of gray and sunless sky.

He brought his ship in low, only a few hundred meters above the ground, as he raced toward the only feature visible on the horizon: a ma.s.sive, two-towered citadel constructed entirely of black durasteel.

The building was square and measured 150 meters on each side. The exterior walls rose up thirty meters above the ground, and the only entrance appeared to be a ma.s.sive, twenty-meter-wide gate on the face of the front wall. The towers stood on either side of the front wall, rising up another ten meters from the corners.

As he closed to within a few hundred meters, a barrage of ion cannon fire erupted from the towers. Bane pulled hard on the stick, banking the Mystic ninety degrees to starboard, narrowly avoiding the unexpected attack. Except for her techn.o.beasts, Belia's stronghold was supposed to be empty.

He circled and brought his ship in again, setting the targeting systems to lock on to the first of the two towers. The ion cannons roared again, and Bane barrel-rolled out of the line of fire as he opened up with the Mystic's lasers, reducing one of the towers to a heap of molten slag as he flew by.

The Mystic's sensors had detected no life-forms present during his pa.s.s, suggesting that the ion cannons were likely part of an automated defense system still active after almost three centuries. This theory was confirmed twenty seconds later when Bane used the exact same barrel-roll maneuver on his next attack run to eliminate the second tower; automated defenses were nothing if not predictable.

He circled the citadel twice more, making a sensor and visual scan to confirm that there were no other threats before bringing his ship down to land on the barren ground a short distance from the stronghold's entrance.

Drawing his lightsaber, he leapt from the c.o.c.kpit and moved carefully forward until he stood before the black gate. It loomed above him, a giant blast door without handles, hinges, or a visible control panel.

Gathering his power, he placed his left palm against the surface. The gate exploded, rupturing inward with a sharp bang that reverberated down the long, dark hallway leading into the fortress.

Bane stepped forward, wary and watching for any trick or trap that might await him. He could feel the power of the dark side in this place, but he detected no immediate threats to his person, and he proceeded cautiously.

Using glow rods to light his way, he explored the stronghold room by room, stirring up dust that had lain undisturbed for centuries. It was primarily a military base, the majority of the s.p.a.ce taken up with the barracks and mess halls necessary to house and provide for an army of followers. But the rooms were deserted. Not even the vermin and insects one would expect in an abandoned building prowled the halls, though whether they were kept at bay by the dark side energy permeating the air or by some unknown means he couldn't say.

As he moved deeper into the fortress, he began to come across Bella's alchemy labs. Sealed beakers filled with strange-colored liquids rested atop long metal tables. Empty vats connected by coiled gla.s.s piping used to distill or separate mixtures lined the walls. In one room the hearts and brains of a dozen different species floated in specimen bottles, preserved forever in clear embalming fluid. Another lab contained notes and sketches tracking Bella's efforts to transform living creatures into organic-droid hybrids.

Bane paused at these, glancing through them briefly before continuing on his way. He was unable to make sense of the cryptic scrawl; he needed to find Bella's archives-and hopefully the Holo-cron where she had stored all her knowledge-if he was to comprehend her experiments.

Near the back of the building he came upon a narrow set of stairs leading down to the underground levels. One thing Helton's research had not provided was a map of the stronghold's interior, but he could feel the power emanating from beneath him. There was little doubt that the source of the dark side energies hanging like smoke in the air of every room and hallway of the fortress was located at the bottom of the steps. It was here, Bane knew, that he would find Bella's inner sanctum.

He crept down the stairs. At the bottom was another long, narrow hall, and at the end of this corridor was a small, archaic wooden door. A sliver of pale fluorescent light shone out from beneath. Unlike the floor above, Bane realized, generators were still providing power to the room beyond-another sign that it was of critical importance.

Bane approached the door, pausing at the threshold. He was unable to get any sense of what awaited him on the other side; his Force awareness was overwhelmed by a great concentration of dark side power. Taking a deep breath, he gently pushed open the door and stared in fascinated horror.

The chamber beyond was enormous, at least fifty meters long and easily twenty wide. Standing alone in the center was a pedestal, atop of which rested a small, familiar four-sided pyramid: the Holocron of Bella Darzu.

Yet this was not what had grabbed Bane's attention. The rest of the room had been completely overrun by an army of techno-beasts.

They seemed to have come from all manner of species: a menagerie of humanoids and beasts from every corner of the galaxy that had fallen victim to Bella's technovirus. Once a mutated combination of flesh and technology, most of the techn.o.beasts' living tissue had long since rotted and fallen away. What remained were desiccated strands of skin and sinew clinging to bone, supported and held together by rods, wires, and twisted sc.r.a.ps of metal.

The arms and hands of those creatures that had walked on two legs in life had been transformed into flat, jagged blades extending from their elbows. The larger creatures-like the techn.o.beast bantha he saw across the room, or the rancor near the pedestal in the center-had become machines of war, with blaster cannons fused to their shoulders and their hides replaced with spiked, plated armor.

From Helton's research, Bane knew that the technovirus attacked the frontal lobes of the brain, reducing its victims to mindless automata incapable of higher thought functions-a grim fate for any sentient being.

The creatures in the room were in an even worse state. Over the centuries what remained of their brains had been kept alive by the nanogenes of the technovirus, but the inevitable long-term degradation had impaired their motor skills and reduced them to sh.e.l.ls of shambling, mummified metal.

Bane guessed that the army a.s.sembled in the chamber must once have roamed the halls and rooms of the stronghold, guarding it against attack and serving the needs of their mistress. With Bella's death-poisoned by the a.s.sa.s.sins of the Mecrosa Order when her alliance with them fell apart-they had been left to wander mindlessly, without any purpose or direction. Over the decades they'd been slowly drawn to this chamber by the dark side energies radiating from the Holocron, the last surviving remnant of their mistress, calling them to her side. Driven only by simple, primal instinct, they had been helpless but to obey until, one by one, the entire bulk of her techn.o.beast army had a.s.sembled in this single chamber.

An eerie silence hung over the scene; the vocal cords of the unfortunate creatures had disintegrated hundreds of years earlier. The only sound was the faint whirring of mechanized joints and the rusty sc.r.a.ping of metal across the stone floor as they milled about in slow confusion.

Occasionally they would b.u.mp one another with a hollow clank, their movements awkward and clumsy as they jostled for position to move ever closer to the Holocron in the center of the room. But though they were clearly drawn to it, none dared to come within three meters of its pedestal. Instead they congregated in a loose, scuffling circle, an army of the living dead awaiting orders that would never come.

Bane stepped into the room, lightsaber drawn. The techn.o.beasts ignored his presence, their attention focused only on the Holocron.

He made his way slowly through their legions, trying to estimate their number as he edged ever closer to the center of the room. Fifty? A hundred? It was impossible to count; their bodies of rusted metal and mummified flesh all seemed to blend together into a single ghastly ma.s.s.

Reaching the pedestal at the heart of their numbers, he paused, uncertain what would happen when he reached out to claim the Holocron as his own.

Would the creatures bow down before him as their new Master, or would they fall upon him in single-minded fury to protect the idol they worshiped? There was only one way to find out.

As his fingers closed over the Holocron he heard a noise that caused him to pull his hand back with a start. It sounded like the moan of a long-dead G.o.d rising from the grave; a hundred mechanized limbs sprang to action with an angry hum as the monsters swarmed over him.

Bane thrust out with the Force, and a dozen of the oncoming creatures exploded into dust and tiny flecks of small, twisted metal. But the others surged forward like a wave, driving him under. Their feet stomped and kicked at him; their bladed arms slashed at him as he lay p.r.o.ne on the floor. But none of their attacks could pierce the chitinous sh.e.l.ls of his...o...b..lisk armor.

From his back, Bane slashed indiscriminately with his lightsaber, hewing off limbs with every swipe. There were no screams of pain or gouts of blood-the bodies of his enemies had been exsanguinated when their flesh had crumbled away centuries before. The only sounds of battle were the Dark Lord's own grunts of exertion, the clatter of metal falling to the stone floor, and the occasional small shower of sparks.

Even in their rage, the creatures were slow and c.u.mbersome. Bane's vicious strokes quickly cleared enough s.p.a.ce for him to find his feet again. He rose to see the wall of creatures pressing in on him, and he unleashed a wave of lightning through their ranks. The bolts arced through the mostly metal bodies; the nanotechnology that animated their frames and gave them life smoked and smoldered, and a dozen more of his opponents toppled over never to rise again.

A heavy blow suddenly struck Bane in the back, the metal rancor sending him flying with a swipe of one ma.s.sive, club-like claw. He slammed face-first into what might once have been a human, and the techn.o.beast opened its mouth and released a cloud of tiny metal spores directly into his face.

Bane breathed them in even as he cut the creature down, chopping it diagonally clean through from shoulder to hip. He could feel the technovirus inside him, its nanogene spores burrowing up to his brain to eat away his frontal lobes and begin the process of transforming him into an abomination that was neither droid nor alive.

Before he could reach out with the Force to save himself, he felt a surge of heat in his blood as the orbalisks released a burning chemical to destroy the microscopic invaders. His skull felt as if it were on fire as his heart pumped the searing chemical through his carotid artery and up into the capillaries of his brain, but he could feel the nanogenes wither and die in the heat almost instantly.

Using the pain in his head to fuel his rage, Bane spun and leapt at the rancor, slicing both its metal legs out from under it. The laser cannons on the creature's shoulders tried to fire at him, but in the more than two hundred years since its creation the power cells had lost their charge and the only result was a barely audible click. The torso fell to the floor, but the claws still clutched for him; Bane had to leap back out of the way before lunging forward to sever the arms at the shoulders.

That enemy vanquished, he used the Force to disintegrate two more advancing techn.o.beasts, then felt something b.u.mp against his foot. He glanced down to see that the rancor's jaws had clamped shut on his boot; it was trying to gnaw off his leg. Once again his...o...b..lisk armor protected him from harm, and Bane sliced the rancor's head from its body, relieved to see it finally go still.

There were still dozens upon dozens of the abominations in the chamber, closing in on him from all sides. Bane now realized that they couldn't possibly harm him, but he also knew the techn.o.beasts would not stop until he had reduced each one to pieces.

The slaughter lasted over an hour. He used his lightsaber to repeatedly dismember his enemies, conserving his Force abilities to stave off exhaustion in arms, legs, shoulders, and back. Three times during the one-sided melee he allowed himself to lose focus, his martial instincts thrown out of sync by the unnerving silence of his enemies as they were butchered. Each time his attention lapsed he was knocked to the ground by the blows of one of the lumbering creatures that got close enough to make contact and forced to battle his way back to his feet. Two other times during the battle he felt the burning in his brain as the orbalisks purged his system of yet another cloud of nanogene spores he had unknowingly inhaled.

By the time it was done every muscle in his body ached from hewing through hundreds of cubic meters of metal, bringing back memories of the long shifts he had endured in the mines of Apatros as a young man. From wall to wall the room was littered with the limbs, torsos, and heads of the techn.o.beasts, the carnage made bearable only by the fact that there was no gore.

Kicking aside the remains with weary legs, Darth Bane slowly cleared a path back to the center of the room. He extinguished his lightsaber and hung it from his belt, then staggered forward, grasping the edges of the pedestal to keep from collapsing as his thighs and calves simultaneously cramped.

Gritting his teeth, he leaned heavily on the pedestal to take the weight off the locked-up muscles. Breathing deeply, he called upon what remained of his Force abilities to replenish his strength. After several minutes the spasms began to fade, and he was able to stand gingerly once more.

His body and will were exhausted; the smart thing would be to rest before attempting to use the Holocron. But he had come too far, and endured too much, to be put off any longer.

Still clutching the pedestal for support with both hands, the Sith Master stared at the talisman, focusing his will on bringing it to life. Slowly it began to pulse with a faint inner light of deep, dark violet, and Bane smiled.

Soon, all the secrets of Belia Darzu would be his.

Chapter 19.

"I thought you had put this madness behind you, Johun," Farfalla said with a disappointed shake of his head.

"It s not madness" Johun insisted. "He was there, Master. He saw it with his own eyes!"

Farfalla sighed and got up from his seat and began to pace, making small tight circles over the carpet of his private quarters. Johun remained in his seat, focusing on staying calm and letting his arguments be guided by logic and reason.

"How did Hoth deal with your headstrong ways?" Valenthyne asked, stopping to throw up his hands in exasperation.

"Your personalities are quite different," Johun remarked. "Hoth often accused me of being too pa.s.sive."

Farfalla shook his head again and returned to his seat.

"Are you certain this witness is reliable?" he asked, alluding to the mercenaries Johun had wanted to bring forward ten years before.

Johun nodded. "All the details of his story check out. He calls himself Darovit now, but back then he was known as Tomcat. Records confirm he was recruited on Somov Rit by Torr Snapit, and he came with his cousins to join the Army of Light"

"And one of these cousins is the girl he claims took his hand?"

"A girl ten years ago," Johun noted. "She'd be a woman now. The cousin's name was Rain. She was lost in an attack by the Sith shortly after they landed on Ruusan. She was missing and presumed dead, but she must have been found by the this Lord Bane and taken as his apprentice."

"I've heard that name before" Farfalla admitted, leaning back in his chair. "It was mentioned in some of the statements given by Sith minions we took as prisoners. If I remember correctly, he was one of the last of the Sith to join the Brotherhood."

Johun nodded. "Darovit said the same thing. He said Bane was always reluctant to follow Kaan. If he refused to join the rest of the Brotherhood in the cave, that would explain how he survived the thought bomb!"

"It's possible," Farfalla admitted. "But how did Darovit recognize Bane?"

"He defected to the Sith near the end of the war." Farfalla threw his hands up again. "A defector, Johun? A traitor to the Jedi? The Council will never believe this!"

"That is what makes his story even more believable," Johun countered. "If he was lying he could easily have found some reason to explain how he recognized Lord Bane. But he has freely admitted his crime to me because he has decided the time has come to speak the truth."

"And why is that?" Farfalla wanted to know. "Your report said he has lived as a healer on Ruusan for the past decade. Why did he suddenly decide to come forward now?"

"When I spoke with him on Ruusan I convinced him of the dangers the Sith represent. He wants to stop Bane before another war begins."

Farfalla raised an eyebrow. "You convinced him? After a decade of silence, one meeting with you and he is ready to come forward? How, exactly, did you achieve that?"

"I didn't use the Force to do it" Johun protested. "Not exactly. I didn't use the Force to compel him. I just made him more willing to listen to me."

"You are making this very difficult for me," Valenthyne said, reaching up with one hand to rub at his temple.

"I only ask that you speak with him yourself, Master," Johun implored.

"Hear what he has to say. Listen to him, and then decide if you will bring him before the Council."

"Very well, Johun," Farfalla said, nodding. "I will meet with him. Where is he now?"

"He wanted to learn more about the healing arts of our Order," Johun explained. "Master Barra gave him access to the Archives."

Valenthyne slapped his hands on his thighs and rose to his feet. "Then I suggest we go find him before I come to my senses."

The general collection of the Jedi Archives was arranged in four long halls built off a ma.s.sive central rotunda. Each hall contained a wide primary aisle, with hundreds of smaller secondary aisles leading off either side. Lining the walls of the secondary aisles were the stacks: trillions of datatapes and datacards arranged under millions of categories, topics, and subtopics. Access to the disks of a particular hall could be gained via any of the terminals built along the center of its main aisle. Each terminal was equipped with a master index to help those seeking knowledge on a particular subject to find the proper hall, but to make things easier each hall also represented a specific, though very broad, branch of knowledge.

The first hall, the one all visitors pa.s.sed through when they entered the Archives from the Jedi Temple, contained works of philosophy and historical records. Included in its stacks were the personal journals of Jedi, political leaders, and individuals of historical significance.

Basic treatises examining the Force were also filed in this section, though Padawans were restricted from accessing many of these works lest they misinterpret the knowledge and become corrupted.

The second hall contained works dedicated to the mathematical and engineering sciences, including theories of s.p.a.ce-time and hy-perdrive construction, floor plans of official government buildings, and detailed design blueprints of every vehicle, weapon, or gadget ever made. The third focused on the geography and culture of the millions of known planets in the galaxy. Maps, both planetary and interstellar, as well as detailed descriptions of every recorded civilization, past and present dominated the stacks of the third hall.

However, it was the fourth hall where Zannah-still in the guise of Nalia-was headed. The fourth hall contained zoological data and research on virtually all known life-forms of the galaxy. This was her third day in the archives, and she had yet to find what she was looking for. The preloaded works on the datacard given to her by the chief librarian had helped to narrow her search, but locating a specific piece of information in an infinite ocean of knowledge was no simple task.

Had she gone back to Master Barra, or approached any of the a.n.a.lysis droids roaming the Archives, and asked for information on orbalisks rather than the more general topic of parasitic organisms, she might have made quicker progress. But, this would have conflicted with her cover story and raised unwanted questions. So Zannah had been forced to seek out the information using only the skills she had developed while studying various works during her apprenticeship under Darth Bane.

Her efforts had quickly brought to light several thousand articles and experiments that made at least some reference to orbalisks, but she had yet to find any mention of how to remove them without killing the host.

She knew she was running out of time, but as she made her way down the first hall toward the rotunda, she was determined to find what she had come for.

There were always a number of other scholars in the Archives, but the primary aisles of each hall were wide, and the stacks were so numerous and deep that Zannah never felt crowded. This allowed her to work without fear of anyone accidentally discovering what she was investigating.

However, she still felt a flash of apprehension whenever another of the Archive patrons pa.s.sed her by, always worried that her projected aura of light-side power would falter.

She nodded at one of the a.n.a.lysis droids as she entered the central rotunda and turned to her right, heading for the fourth hall. She pa.s.sed by the bronzium busts honoring powerful and memorable members from the Order's history. She paused as she often did in front of the busts of the Lost: the only twelve individuals who had willingly set aside the vows they had sworn upon becoming Jedi Knights and chosen to leave the Order.

The Lost served as a reminder to the Jedi that, despite their wisdom and talents in the Force, they were not infallible. The Jedi viewed each of the Lost as a failure of their Order, not as a failure of the individual.

A plaque on each bust recounted the individual's history of service, praising what he or she had achieved and contributed before departing from the Jedi ranks. Curiously, though, none of the plaques offered a reason for leaving.

Zannah shook her head and continued. As a Sith, she couldn't imagine any reason to honor someone who abandoned her cause... though with only one Master and one apprentice, the Sith had been transformed into something very different from the Jedi Order and its vast numbers.

She made her way down the fourth hall, heading for the privacy of the last viewing terminal in the central aisle. She inserted the personal datacard Master Barra had given her to gain access to the Archive catalogs, and then resumed her search where she had left off the day before.

Gathering a list of index numbers, she typed in a pa.s.scode to lock her terminal from other users, then wandered off into the stacks to retrieve the half a dozen datacards she wanted to study in further detail. By necessity the datacards in the Archives were nearly twice the size of her personal datacard; each one contained the full text of hundreds-if not thousands-of different t.i.tles.

For five long hours she continued her research without a break. Time and time again she brought datacards back to the terminal and scoured their contents, only to find that they offered nothing new. Frustrated, she would eject the cards and compile a new list of possible sources, then return to the stacks to switch the old datacards for those promising better results.

It was the rumbling in her stomach that told her it was time to take a break. If she became distracted-too tired or too hungry-her spell might falter, exposing Zannah's true nature to those around her. It had happened once before, on the first day when she pushed herself too hard and worked long into the night. It had lasted only an instant, a momentary lapse, but that could have been enough to doom her.

Fortunately, at that late hour the Archives had been mostly deserted, and n.o.body had been close enough to notice the Sith in their midst. Since then, however, Zannah had been much more careful.

There was one last datacard to check; then she would head down to the cafeteria and return once she had sated her hunger. She popped it into the terminal and quickly scanned the contents. When she found what she was looking for, she tapped a key; a block of text from an academic paper popped up onto the screen.

AN EXAMINATION AND EXPLORATION OF A MOST DANGEROUS AND RESILIENT ORGANISM.

by Dr. Osaf Hamud "In my years of study I have encountered a number of life-forms that subsist primarily through symbiotic relationships established with other species. Some of these relationships are commensalist, in which neither species is significantly affected by the presence of the other. Others are mutualistic, enabling both species to benefit from their shared existence. And still others are parasitic, in which the host organism suffers while the symbiont thrives.