the drone and stridulation of insects, the territorial cries of avians, the mournful waking howls of creatures of the night. Clouds of bats spilled from caves in the escarpment, devouring bloodsuckers born by the strong rains. A breeze rose out of nowhere.
Still in safekeeping on Aborah were texts and holocrons that recounted the deeds and abilities of Sith Masters who, so it was said and written, had been able to summon wind or rain or fracture the skies with conjured lightning. In their own words or those of their disciples, a few Dark Lords claimed to have had the ability to fly, become invisible, or transport themselves through space and time. But Plagueis had never succeeded in duplicating any of those phenomena.
From the start Tenebrous had told him that he lacked the talent for Sith sorcery, even though the inability hadn’t owed to a deficiency of midi-chlorians.
The question of whether he and Sidious had discovered something new or rediscovered something ancient was beside the point. All that mattered was that, almost a decade earlier, they had succeeded in willing the Force to shift and tip irrevocably to the dark side. Not a mere paradigm shift, but a tangible alteration that could be felt by anyone strong in the Force, and whether or not trained in the Sith or Jedi arts.
The shift had been the outcome of months of intense meditation, during which Plagueis and Sidious had sought to challenge the Force for sovereignty and suffuse the galaxy with the power of the dark side. Brazen and shameless, and at their own mortal peril, they had waged etheric war, anticipating that their own midi-chlorians, the Force’s proxy army, might marshal to boil their blood or stop the beating of their hearts. Risen out of themselves, discorporate and as a single entity, they had brought the power of their will to bear, asserting their sovereignty over the Force. No counterforce had risen against them. In what amounted to a state of rapture they knew that the Force had yielded, as if some deity had been tipped from its throne. On the fulcrum they had fashioned, the light side had dipped and the dark side had ascended.
On the same day they had allowed Venamis to die.
Then, by manipulating the Bith’s midi-chlorians, which should have been inert and unresponsive, Plagueis had resurrected him. The enormity of the event had stunned Sidious into silence and overwhelmed and addled 11- 4D’s processors, but Plagueis had carried on without assistance, again and again allowing Venamis to die and be returned to life, until the Bith’s organs had given out and Plagueis had finally granted him everlasting death.
But having gained the power to keep another alive hadn’t been enough for him. And so after Sidious had returned to Coruscant, he had devoted himself to internalizing that ability, by manipulating the midi-chlorians that animated him. For several months he made no progress, but ultimately he began to perceive a measured change. The scars that had grown over his wounds had abruptly begun to soften and fade, and he had begun to breathe more freely than he had in twenty years. He began to sense that not only were his damaged tissues healing, but his entire body was rejuvinating itself. Beneath the transpirator, areas of his skin were smooth and youthful, and he knew that eventually he would cease to age altogether.
Drunk on newfound power, then, he had attempted an even more unthinkable act: to bring into being a creation of his own. Not merely the impregnation of some hapless, mindless creature, but the birth of a Forceful being. The ability to dominate death had been a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t equivalent to pure creation. And so he had stretched out — indeed, as if invisible, transubstantiated — to inform every being of his existence, and impact all of them: Muunoid or insectoid, secure or dispossessed, free or enslaved. A warrior waving a banner in triumph on a battlefield. A ghost infiltrating a dream.
But ultimately to no end.
The Force grew silent, as if in flight from him, and many of the animals in his laboratory succumbed to horrifying diseases.
Regardless, eight long years later, Plagueis remained convinced that he was on the verge of absolute success. The evidence was in his own increased midi-chlorian count; and in the power he sensed in Sidious when he had finally returned to Sojourn. The dark side of the Force was theirs to command, and in partnership they would someday be able to keep each other alive, and to rule the galaxy for as long as they saw fit.
But he had yet to inform Sidious of this.
It was more important that Sidious remain as focused on manipulating events in the profane world as Plagueis was intent on dominating the realm of the Force, of which the mundane was only a gross and distorted reflection.
To be sure, the light had been extinguished, but for how long and at what cost?
He recalled a stellar eclipse he had witnessed on a long-forgotten world, whose single moon was of perfect size and distance to blot out the light of the system’s primary. The result hadn’t been total darkness but illumination of a different sort, singular and diffuse, that had confused the birds and had permitted the stars to be seen in what would have been broad daylight. Even totally blocked, the primary had shone from behind the satellite’s disk, and when the moon moved on there had been a moment of light almost too intense to bear.
Gazing into Sojourn’s darkening sky, he wondered what calamity the Force was planning in retreat to visit upon him or Sidious or both of them for willfully tipping the balance. Was retribution merely waiting in the wings as it had been on Coruscant twenty years earlier? It was a dangerous time; more dangerous than his earliest years as an apprentice when the dark side might have consumed him at any moment.
For now, at least, his full convalescence was near complete. Sidious was continuing to become more powerful as a Sith and as a politician, his most intricate schemes meeting with little or no resistance. And the Jedi Order was foundering …
Time would tell, and time was short.
The Dathomirian Zabrak sat cross-legged on the duracrete floor, recounting for Sidious the surveillance mission he had completed at the Jedi Temple, weeks earlier, at the height of the Yinchorri Crisis.
“It sickened me to see how easily the reptilian infiltrators were deceived, Master, even by the fair-haired human female sentry they thought they had taken by surprise outside the Temple. From where I watched I knew that she had feigned surprise when her lightsaber failed to penetrate her assailant’s cortosis shield, and that she had merely been faking unconsciousness when the Yinchorri had yanked her to her feet and she impaled him on her activated blade.” Maul snarled, revealing sharply filed teeth. “Their stupidity allowed me to revel in the fact that their mission had been compromised — that the Jedi were simply luring them into a trap.”
The abandoned LiMerge Building had become the assassin’s home and training center; The Works and the fringes of the nearby Fobosi district, his nocturnal haunts. Circling him with the cowl of his robe raised over his head, Sidious asked, “The Jedi gained your respect?”
“They might have, had the infiltrators showed any skill. Had I been leading them …”
Sidious stopped. “The mission would have been successful? Jedi Knights and Padawans killed; younglings slaughtered.”
“I’m certain of it, Master.”
“Just you, against the Masters who make up the High Council.”
“By hiding and striking I could have killed many.”
The Yinchorri stratagem had failed, in any case. Additional Jedi had died, but Jedi deaths had never been the primary reason for instigating the crisis. What mattered was that Valorum had triumphed, with some help from Palpatine, it was true, but mostly on his own, by managing to bring Senators Yarua, Tikkes, Farr, and others over to his side and establishing an embargo. But with his political currency spent, Valorum’s position was more tenuous than ever. Even a hint of scandal and the Senate would lose what little confidence they had in him.
