'Is Kaan mad?' he said aloud, though the very question was answer enough.
'We have to evacuate, General,' Farfalla insisted. 'Get everyone away as fast as possible.'
'No,' Hoth answered. 'That won't work. If we retreat, Kaan and the Brotherhood will escape. It won't take them long to rally support and begin this war all over again.'
'But what about the thought bomb?' Valenthyne demanded.
'If Kaan has such a weapon,' the general explained grimly, 'then he will use it. If not here, then somewhere else. Maybe in the Core Worlds. Maybe on Coruscant itself. I can't allow that.
'Kaan wants to witness my death. I have to go into the cave to face him. I have to force him to detonate the bomb here on Ruusan. It's the only way to truly end this.'
Farfalla dropped to one knee. 'Then I will go by your side, General. As will all who follow me.'
Reaching out with his strong, weathered hands, General Hoth took Farfalla by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet. 'No, my friend,' he said with a sigh, 'you cannot walk this journey with me.'
When the other started to protest he held up a hand for silence and continued. 'When Kaan unleashes his weapon, all within that cave will die. The Sith will be wiped out, but I won't let that happen to our entire order. The galaxy will have need of Jedi to rebuild once this war is over. You and the other Masters must live so that you may guide them and defend the Republic as we have done since its foundation.'
There was no real argument against the wisdom of his words, and after a moment's deliberation Master Farfalla dropped his head in mute acceptance. When he looked up again there were tears in his eyes.
'Surely you're not going in alone?' he protested.
'I wish I could,' Hoth replied. 'But if I do the Dark Lords will simply take me down with their lightsabers. That would solve nothing. Kaan has to see that his only choice is to surrender or..' He left the thought unspoken.
'You'll need enough Jedi to convince the Brotherhood that a physical battle would be hopeless. At least a hundred. Any less and he won't detonate the thought bomb.'
Hoth nodded. 'Nobody will be ordered to go in with me. Ask for volunteers. And make sure they understand none of us will ever be coming out.'
Despite the danger, virtually every single member of the Army of Light volunteered for the mission. General Hoth realized that he shouldn't have been surprised. After all, these were Jedi, willing to sacrifice everything, even their lives, for the greater good. In the end he did what he knew he would have to do all along: he himself chose who would accompany him to certain death.
He selected exactly ninety-nine others to go with him. The decision was agonizingly difficult. If he took less, the Sith might be able to fight their way out of the cave and escape, only to detonate their thought bomb somewhere else. But the more he took, the more Jedi lives he might be needlessly throwing away.
Choosing who would go with him was even more difficult. Those Jedi who had served at his side the longest, the ones who had joined the Army of Light at the very beginning of the campaign, were those he knew best. He knew how much they had already given in this war, and these were the ones he least wanted to lead to their doom. Yet these were the ones with the most right to stand by his side when the end finally came, and when all was said and done that was how he made his selection. Those with the most seniority would go with him; the others would fall back with Lord Farfalla.
The hundred Jedi, the ninety-nine chosen plus Hoth himself, stood anxiously at the entrance of the tunnels. The sky above was growing dark as night fell and ominous storm clouds rolled in. Still, the general did not give the command to advance. He wanted to give Farfalla and the others enough time to get clear. If it had been possible, he would have ordered all those not going into the cave to leave Ruusan. But there wasn't time. They would simply have to get as far away as possible, then hope they were beyond the range of Kaan's thought bomb.
As the first drops of rain began to fall, he realized he could wait no longer, and he gave the command to advance. They marched in an orderly fashion into the tunnel, down into the caverns far beneath the planet's surface.
The first thing Hoth noticed as they descended was how cold the tunnel quickly became, as if all the heat had been sucked away. The next thing he felt was the tension in the air. It actually pulsed with vast, unimaginable power just barely held in check; the power of the dark side. He didn't allow himself to think about what would happen when that power was released.
They advanced slowly, wary of traps or an ambush. They found none. In fact, they saw no sign of the Sith at all until they reached the large central cavern at the heart of the tunnel system.
General Hoth led the way, a glow rod in one hand and his drawn lightsaber in the other. As he stepped into the cavern, his glow rod suddenly flickered and went very dim. Even the illumination from his lightsaber seemed to die, becoming the thinnest sliver of incandescence.
As his eyes grew accustomed to the heavy shadows he was able to pick out the shapes of the Sith Lords, standing in a circle on the far side of the cave. They faced inward, their hands raised to its center. They stood without moving, their mouths hanging open, their features slack, their eyes blank. Cautiously, he approached the still forms, wondering if they were alive, dead, or trapped in some nightmare state in between.
Drawing closer he could make out a single figure standing in the center of the circle: Lord Kaan. He hadn't seen him at first; the middle of the ring was darker than the rest of the cave. There seemed to be a black cloud hovering above him, tendrils of inky darkness extending down to wrap and twist around him in a sinister embrace.
One look at the leader of the Brotherhood and any hope the general had of convincing Lord Kaan to listen to reason died. The Sith Lord's face was pale and taut; his features were stretched as if his skin had become too tight for his skull. A thin layer of ice coated his hair and lashes. His expression was one of cruel arrogance, and his left eye trembled and twitched uncontrollably. He stared straight ahead with a frozen intensity, unblinking and unmoving as Hoth and his Jedi slowly filled the cavern.
Only after all the Jedi were inside did he speak. 'Welcome, Lord Hoth.' His voice was tight and strained.
'Are you trying to scare me, Kaan?' Hoth asked, stepping forward. 'I do not fear death,' he continued. 'I do not mind dying. I would not mind all the Jedi dying if it meant the end of the Sith.'
