Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan (10 page)

Her refusal to speak was reply enough.

“Even if what you say is true,” Revan continued, “I’m not the same man anymore. Is it right to still hold me accountable for those crimes?”

“A chalarax can’t change its spots,” she muttered under her breath.

Revan was too busy trying to process all he had learned to react to her comment. If Meetra was cut off from the Force, that would explain why he hadn’t been able to sense her presence. That meant she could still be alive somewhere; she might still know something that could help him understand the meaning of his vision.

“Do you know where she went?” he asked. “I need to speak with her.”

“Haven’t you done enough already?” Atris demanded. “It’s your fault she defied the Council and betrayed the Order. It’s your fault she fell to the dark side and was branded the Exile. It’s your fault she cut herself off from the Force. For a Jedi, that’s a fate worse than death!”

“I’ve come closer to death than most,” Revan countered, “and I can assure you that’s not true.”

Atris snorted in contempt. “That is the difference between us. I live for the Force. You live for yourself.”

Revan shrugged, knowing a philosophical argument wasn’t going to get him any closer to finding Meetra. “Whatever you think of me,” he said, “I did not compel Meetra into any of this. She made her own choices. And it should be her decision now if she wants to speak to me again, not yours. If you know where she is, you have to tell me.”

“I haven’t spoken to her since her trial,” Atris answered through gritted teeth, and Revan knew she was telling the truth. “I do not know where she went, and I hope I never see her again. The Exile betrayed the Order, as did you.

“You’re not welcome here. Go back home to your
wife
.” Atris spoke the last word with such venom, she nearly choked on it.

“Uh, uh, uh,” Revan said, wagging his finger at her. “There is no emotion; there is peace.”

Her lip curled up in a snarl and she spun on her heel and stormed out of the room. Revan waited until the sound of her feet on the stairs faded, then sat slowly back down in the chair.

With Atris gone, he could let his sarcastic mask slip. Despite what he’d said to her, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for Meetra. He’d refused to give Atris the satisfaction of seeing his guilt and grief, but now that he was alone, the emotions came flooding to the surface. Most of his specific memories of Meetra were gone; he could recall
only disjointed bits and pieces. But she had once been one of his closest friends, and he still felt a powerful emotional connection to her.

Slumping forward, he buried his face in his hands. He expected tears to follow, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he just felt a hollow, numbing sorrow. After several minutes, he took a deep breath to collect himself and rose to his feet. Then he headed out the Archives door and down the stairs.

He’d come to the Temple in search of an old friend and confidante, hoping she could help him understand the dreams that plagued his nights. Instead he’d found a dead end and learned the grim truth about the one they called the Exile.

“No wonder I never come here anymore,” he grumbled under his breath as he made his way across the courtyard and headed for the exit.

A WEEK HAD PASSED
since the mission on Hallion. Daily doses of kolto had healed Scourge’s wounds; even his cracked ribs were fully mended. But his pride and confidence were still wounded. The mission had been a success, but things had gone a lot less smoothly than he would have liked. No doubt Sechel’s report to Nyriss would paint each of his mistakes in the most garish tone.

He was desperate to find some way to vent his frustrations, and today he had finally felt well enough to visit the stronghold’s exercise yard for a much-needed workout. He rarely went more than two or three days without practicing his drills, knowing that his continued survival would often depend on his martial expertise.

Though there were others in the yard, none was a worthy sparring partner. He would gain little from testing himself against any of Murtog’s soldiers. Even the guard captain himself wouldn’t present any real challenge to a fully trained Sith Lord.

Instead he performed a complex routine of drills designed to hone his reflexes, all while wearing his heavy armor. His crimson blade hummed as he cycled through the aggressive thrusts and cuts of Juyo, the seventh form of lightsaber combat. The weapon moved so fast that it was nothing but a blur, but each strike was precise and controlled.

In the middle of his routine he noticed that Nyriss’s young Twi’lek
slave had entered the yard. She stood patiently off to one side, her head bowed respectfully.

Scourge put an abrupt end to the session, knowing she would be here only if Nyriss had sent her. He flicked his lightsaber off and clipped it to his belt before crossing the yard to her.

“Darth Nyriss wishes to speak to you,” the Twi’lek said softly, keeping her eyes focused on the ground.

“Will Sechel be there?” he demanded.

“I do not know, my lord,” she replied.

Scourge frowned. He had not seen or spoken with Sechel since their return.

“Take me to Nyriss.”

The slave nodded, then turned and set off. Scourge fell into step behind her.

He’d sought Sechel out several times over the past week, but the aide always seemed to be off on some task or assignment. It could have been coincidence, but it was also possible Sechel was avoiding him.

If that was the case, Scourge might know why. During his recovery, he’d had plenty of time to think back on the mission. Rehashing it in his head had brought several inconsistencies to light—things Sechel might not want to discuss with Scourge face-to-face.

The slave was leading him through the east wing of the stronghold. She was moving quickly ahead of him, but with his long legs Scourge had little trouble keeping up. As he walked, he continued to mull over the issue of Sechel.

At the time he’d credited the aide with saving his life by shutting down the manufacturing plant’s power grid and disabling the security droids. Now he wondered if that had been an accident. The more he thought about it, the more the evidence seemed to indicate that Sechel hadn’t wanted him to survive the mission.

Sechel had obviously needed Scourge’s help to get past the drones and the fence outside the plant. And he’d needed Scourge to hold off security long enough for him to slice into UDM’s computer network. But after that, Scourge became expendable. Once the droids were deactivated, Sechel no longer needed the Sith Lord to protect him.

What at first sounded like a paranoid fantasy became more and more plausible as Scourge recalled specific details of the mission. He had no way of knowing how long it had taken Sechel to slice into the network, but he’d likely found the files he was looking for in the first few minutes. Looking back, it seemed as if he could have shut down the power grid much sooner than he had.

What if Sechel had waited as long as possible before deactivating the droids, hoping they would have enough time to kill Scourge? From the records room, Sechel couldn’t have seen what was happening out on the manufacturing floor. He’d probably assumed Scourge was already dead by the time he shut everything down.

That would also explain why Sechel hadn’t bothered to contact him with a warning that the plant was about to explode. He’d only mentioned the reactors because Scourge called him on the holocomm after everything went dark. If Scourge hadn’t initiated the holocall, Sechel might have slipped away in the darkness alone.

Sechel’s early assurances that UDM didn’t have assault droids were also suspect. The units Scourge had encountered could have been experimental prototypes, as Sechel had claimed, but it was also possible he’d known about them all along and hadn’t said anything, hoping Scourge would be caught off guard by their arrival.

Three pieces of circumstantial evidence—a possible delay in shutting down the droids, Sechel not contacting him to warn about the impending explosion, and the unexpected presence of the assault droids—weren’t enough for Scourge to be certain of anything. Yet the fact that Sechel now seemed to be avoiding him further strengthened the Sith Lord’s desire to question him in a very long, very private session. Unfortunately, that talk would have to wait. Sechel still enjoyed Nyriss’s protection, and Scourge wasn’t willing to risk the Dark Councilor’s wrath by interrogating him. Not yet, at least.

They had reached the door to Nyriss’s private chamber. Scourge briefly considered whether he should say something about his suspicions to her, then decided against it. Sechel was an expert at political maneuvering; if he was guilty, involving Nyriss would only work in the adviser’s favor. Better to confront him directly when the time was right.

The Twi’lek slave knocked lightly on the door, and Nyriss’s voice called out, “Enter!” from the other side.

Once again, Nyriss sat at the computer console in the center of the room. As she rose from her chair and turned to face Scourge, the slave closed the door, sealing the three of them alone in the room.

“I was given word you have recovered from your injuries,” Nyriss said.

“Nothing serious, my lord,” Scourge replied.

“You seem to have a habit of getting wounded in my service.”

“I was surprised by the assault droids.”

“And I’m surprised they gave you so much trouble.”

Scourge remained silent.

Nyriss stretched her dry, cracked lips into an unsettling grin that seemed to fill the entire lower half of her wrinkled face. Scourge endured the rictus without comment until it mercifully faded.

“I find it odd that someone with your reputation would be hard-pressed to defeat a single assault droid and a few patrol drones, yet you dispatched my mercenaries with ease.”

It was obvious she was getting at something, but Scourge had no idea what it might be. “I … I don’t understand,” he finally admitted.

“No, you don’t,” she agreed, briefly flashing another disconcerting smile. “Recite the Sith Code for me,” she instructed, sounding like one of the trainers at the Academy.

“Peace is a lie; there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength.” The words came easily to Scourge; the mantra had been drilled into his brain during his training until it was second nature. “Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory my chains are broken.”

“You know the words, but you do not truly understand them,” Nyriss admonished. “The dark side draws on the most powerful emotions: anger, hatred, fear. We are taught to use our emotions to unlock our true potential and unleash the Force against our enemies.”

Scourge pushed down the impatience threatening to rise within him. She was saying nothing he hadn’t heard countless times during his apprenticeship, but she must have a reason he wasn’t yet seeing.

“The Force runs through every living being,” she went on. “When
we fight an opponent of flesh and blood, we draw on
their
emotions, as well. All who follow the dark side instinctively do this on some level—it is so instinctive that most instructors feel it does not need to be taught.” She paused, and again he wondered where she was going with all this.

“I have studied your records from the Academy and observed your battle with the mercenaries in my courtyard,” she said at last. “You have a special gift. You do not just feed on the raw emotions of your foe; you gorge yourself on them. You feast on their primal fear. It amplifies your hate and anger. It fuels the power of the Force. It transforms you into an instrument of death and destruction.”

Scourge nodded. Battling a living foe was intoxicating; with each attack and counter he felt a rush of heat coursing through his veins, energizing and empowering him. Yet he had felt almost none of that at the UDM plant. “When I fought the security droid, there was nothing to grab on to. It was cold. Empty.”

“Precisely. You tried to feed off its nonexistent emotions, and in doing so only made yourself weaker. I wonder that this wasn’t observed in you; even the most powerful gift needs guiding to be used effectively.” She shook her head. “You are so used to using your gift that you neglect the most basic source of power: yourself. The next time you find yourself in a similar situation, you must turn your focus inward. Draw on your own emotions, and you will destroy your mechanical enemies as readily as you slaughter your organic ones.”

Scourge nodded. He did not like being lectured, but her observation was a good one: he realized that he had, indeed, learned to rely on the emotions of his enemies to feed his power, and he had not seen that such a gift could also be a weakness. But one that, with time and practice, could be overcome.

“A valuable lesson, my lord. One I will take to heart.”

“I have enough sycophants working for me,” she answered, brushing off his gratitude.

“But none can do what I do,” Scourge reminded her.

Nyriss spread her lips into another gruesome smile, and Scourge resisted the urge to shudder as a chill crawled down his spine.

“I hope your restored confidence will serve you well on your next
mission,” she said. “The files Sechel recovered from UDM proved quite fruitful. He traced the payment for the custom droid sent to assassinate me back to a group of radical human separatists from Bosthirda dedicated to freeing their world from the tyranny of the Emperor and the Dark Council.”

Heavy sarcasm dripped from her voice, and Scourge shared her contempt. There were some enemies he could respect; there were some causes he could understand even if he fought against them. This was not one of them.

There were recently conquered worlds that suffered under the Empire’s yoke—planets like Hallion, where rebellion was to be expected. But Bosthirda had been part of the Empire for hundreds of years. Its people were full citizens, with all the rights and privileges of those on Dromund Kaas.

Human separatist propaganda might cry out against unfair treatment of their species, but Scourge knew their claims were unfounded. The original Dark Jedi who had taught the Sith tribes the ways of the Force millennia ago had been human. And though their bloodlines had been absorbed into the Sith aristocracy long ago, humans still made up the vast majority of the Imperial population.