A partially crushed but costly and salvage-worthy starship. The decomposed body of a Bith spacefarer. The aftermath of an explosive event …
The scene of an unfortunate accident in a galaxy brimming with them.
Satisfied, Plagueis leapt to the top of the pile, then through the roof into the remains of the day.
The radiant heat of Bal’demnic’s primary beat down on his exposed skin, and a persistent offshore wind tugged at the robe. West and south as far as his eyes could see was an expanse of azure ocean, curling white where it pounded the coastline. Rugged, denuded hills vanished into sea mist. Plagueis imagined a time when forest had blanketed the landscape, before the indigenous Kon’me had felled the trees for building materials and firewood. Now what vegetation survived was confined to the steep-sided gorges that separated the brown hills. A somber beauty. Perhaps, he thought, there was more to recommend the planet than deposits of cortosis ore.
A resident of Muunilinst for most of his adult life, Plagueis was no stranger to ocean worlds. But unlike most Muuns, he was also accustomed to remote, low-tech ones, having spent his childhood and adolescence on a host of similar planets and moons.
With that hemisphere of Bal’demnic rotating quickly into night, the wind was increasing in strength and the temperature was dropping. The map he had called up on the comlink showed that the planet’s primary spaceport was only a few hundred kilometers to the south. Tenebrous had intentionally skirted the port when they had made planetfall, coming in over the northern ice cap rather than over the sea. Plagueis calculated that he could cover the distance to the spaceport by evening of the following day, which would still give him a standard week in which to return to Muunilinst in time to host the Gathering on Sojourn. But he knew, too, that the route would take him through areas inhabited by both elite and plebeian Kon’me; so he resolved to travel at night to avoid contact with the noisome and xenophobic reptilian sapients. There was little point to leaving dead bodies in his wake.
Cinching the robe around his waist, he began to move, slowly at first, then gathering speed, until to any being watching he would have appeared a dazzling blur; an errant dust devil racing across the treeless terrain. He hadn’t run far before he chanced upon a rudimentary trail, impressed in places with the footprints of indigenes, and he paused to study them. Barefoot, lower-class Kon’me had left the prints, probably fisherfolk whose thatched-roof dwellings dotted the shoreline. Plagueis reckoned the size and weight of the reptilians responsible for the tracks, and estimated the time elapsed since they had passed. Drawing himself up, he scanned the dun hills, then sniffed the wind, wishing he were imbued with even a touch of Tenebrous’s olfactory acuity. Up ahead he was bound to encounter elite Kon’me as well, or at the very least their cliff-side dome dwellings.
Night fell as he resumed his pace. The ocean shone silver under starlight, and night-blooming flora scented the humid air with heady aromas. Predators of any size had been hunted to extinction on the northern island continents, but the deep gorges were home to countless varieties of voracious insects that set upon him in clouds as he picked his way through the dense underbrush. Lowering his body temperature and slowing his breathing to alter the mixture of gases in his exhalations did little to dissuade the insects, so after a while he ceased all attempts at warding them off and surrendered to their thirst for blood, which they drew freely from his face, neck, and hands.
In the dark wood of that remote world, with a salted wind whistling through the trees and a distant sound of waves like drumming, he would take flight from the underworld in which the Sith had dwelled. Awakened from a millennium of purposeful sleep, the power of the dark side would be reborn, and he, Plagueis, would carry the long- forged plan to completion.
Through the night he ran, sheltering inside a shallow cave while the morning mist was evanescing from the hollows. Even that early the blue-scaled indigenes were about, appearing from their huts to cast nets into the crashing surf or paddle boats to stretches of reef or nearby islets. The best of their catch would be carried into the hills to stuff the bellies of the wealthy, with whom rested responsibility for Bal’demnic’s political and economic future. Their guttural voices stole into the cave that fit Plagueis like a tomb, and he could understand some of the words they exchanged.
He chased sleep, but it eluded him, and he deplored the fact that he still had need for it. Tenebrous had never slept, but then few Bith did.
Awake in the oppressive heat, he replayed the events of the previous day, still somewhat astounded by what he had done. The Force had whispered to him:
And yet …
When he reached out with the Force he could detect the presence of something or some being of near-equal power. Was it the dark side itself, or merely a vestige of his uncertainty? He had read the legends of Bane; how he had been hounded by the lingering presences of those he had defeated in order to rid the Sith Order of infighting, and return the Order to a genuine hegemony by instating the Rule of Two: a Master to embody power; an apprentice to crave it. To hear it told, Bane had even been hounded by the spirits of generations-dead Sith Lords whose tombs and manses he had desecrated in his fervent search for holocrons and other ancient devices offering wisdom and guidance.
Was Tenebrous’s spirit the source of the power he sensed? Was there a brief period of survival after death during which a true Sith could continue to influence the world of the living?
It was as if the mass of the galaxy had descended on him. A lesser being might have heaved his shoulders, but Plagueis, wedged into his clandestine tomb, felt as weightless as he would have in deep space.
He would outlive any who challenged him.
Hours later, when the voices had faded and the insects’ feeding frenzy had started anew, pain roused Plagueis from tortured slumber. The tunic was adhered to his swollen flesh like a pressure bandage, but blood had seeped from the wound and soaked through to the robe.
Slipping silently into the night, he limped until he had suppressed the pain, then began to run, beads of perspiration evaporating from his hairless head and the dark robe unfurling behind him like a banner. Famished, he considered raiding one of the local homes and feasting on the eggs of some low-caste Kon’me, or perhaps on the blood of her and her mate. But he reined in his impulses to strike terror, his appetite for destruction, sating himself instead on bats and the rotting remains of fish the waves had washed ashore. Hurrying along the black sand beach, he passed within meters of dwellings built from blocks of fossilized reefstone, but he glimpsed only one indigene, who, on leaving his hut naked to relieve himself, reacted as if he had seen an apparition. Or else in hilarity at the figure Plagueis must have cut in robe and boots. On the cliffs high above the beach, artificial lights glimmered, announcing the homes of the elite and the proximity of the spaceport, whose ambient glow illuminated a broad area of the southern littoral.
His destination close at hand, each incoming ocean wave reverberated inside him, summoning an unprecedented tide of dark energy. The knotted tendrils of time loosened and he had a glimpse into Bal’demnic’s future. Embroiled in a multifronted war, a galactic war, in part because of its rich deposits of cortosis, but more as a pawn in a convoluted game, the subservient Kon’me turned against those who had mastered them for eons …
Lost in reverie, Plagueis almost failed to notice that a massive breakwater now followed the curve of the beach. Stone jetties jutted into a broad, calm bay, and behind the wall a city climbed into a surround of deforested foothills. Kon’me of both classes were about, but interspersed among them were offworlders of many species, most from neighboring star systems but some from as distant as the Core. The spaceport formed the city’s southernmost outskirts, made up of clusters of modular buildings, prefabricated warehouses and hangars, illuminated landing areas for cargo and passenger ships. To a being unfamiliar with isolated worlds, a tour through the spaceport would have seemed closer to time travel, but Plagueis felt at home among the cubicle hotels, dimly lighted tapcafs, and squalid cantinas, where entertainment was costly and life was cheap. Raising the cowl of the robe over his head, he kept to the shadows, his height alone enough to draw attention. With security lax he was able to circulate among the grounded vessels without difficulty. He ignored the smaller, intersystem ships in favor of long-haul freighters, and even then only those that appeared to be in good condition. Muunilinst was several hyperspace jumps distant,
