Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Chapter 1

Dessel was lost in the suffering of his job, barely even aware of his surroundings. His arms ached from the endless pounding of the hydraulic jack. Small bits of rock skipped off the cavern wall as he bored through, ricocheting off his protective goggles and stinging his exposed face and hands. Clouds of atomized dust filled the air, obscuring his vision, and the screeching whine of the jack filled the cavern, drowning out all other sounds as it burrowed centimeter by agonizing centimeter into the thick vein of cortosis woven into the rock before him.

Impervious to both heat and energy, cortosis was prized in the construction of armor and shielding by both commercial and military interests, especially with the galaxy at war. Highly resistant to blaster bolts, cortosis alloys supposedly could withstand even the blade of a lightsaber. Unfortunately, the very properties that made it so valuable also made it extremely difficult to mine. Plasma torches were virtually useless; it would take days to burn away even a small section of cortosis-laced rock. The only effective way to mine it was through the brute force of hydraulic jacks pounding relentlessly away at a vein, chipping the cortosis free bit by bit.

Cortosis was one of the hardest materials in the galaxy. The force of the pounding quickly wore down the head of a jack, blunting it until it became almost useless. The dust clogged the hydraulic pistons, making them jam. Mining cortosis was hard on the equipment. and even harder on the miners.

Des had been hammering away for nearly six standard hours. The jack weighed more than thirty kilos, and the strain of keeping it raised and pressed against the rock face was taking its toll. His arms were trembling from the exertion. His lungs were gasping for air and choking on the clouds of fine mineral dust thrown up from the jack's head. Even his teeth hurt: the rattling vibration felt as if it were shaking them loose from his gums.

But the miners on Apatros were paid based on how much cortosis they brought back. If he quit now, another miner would jump in and start working the vein, taking a share of the profits. Des didn't like to share.

The whine of the jack's motor took on a higher pitch, becoming a keening wail Des was all too familiar with. At twenty thousand rpm, the motor sucked in dust like a thirsty bantha sucking up water after a long desert crossing. The only way to combat it was by regular cleaning and servicing, and the Outer Rim Oreworks Company preferred to buy cheap equipment and replace it, rather than sinking credits into maintenance. Des knew exactly what was going to happen next, and a second later, it did. The motor blew.

The hydraulics seized with a horrible crunch, and a cloud of black smoke spit out the rear of the jack. Cursing ORO and its corporate policies, Des released his cramped finger from the trigger and tossed the spent piece of equipment to the floor.

"Move aside, kid," a voice said.

Gerd, one of the other miners, stepped up and tried to shoulder Des out of the way so he could work the vein with his own jack. Gerd had been working the mines for nearly twenty standard years, and it had turned his body into a mass of hard, knotted muscle. But Des had been working the mines for ten years himself, ever since he was a teenager, and he was just as solid as the older man and a little bigger. He didn't budge.

"I'm not done here," he said. "Jack died, that's all. Hand me yours and I'll keep at it for a while."

"You know the rules, kid. You stop working and someone else is allowed to move in."

Technically, Gerd was right. But nobody ever jumped another miner's claim over an equipment malfunction. Not unless he was trying to pick a fight.

Des took a quick look around. The chamber was empty except for the two of them, standing less than half a meter apart. Not a surprise; Des usually chose caverns far off the main tunnel network. It had to be more than mere coincidence that Gerd was here.

Des had known Gerd for as long as he could remember. The middle-aged man had been friends with Hurst, Des's father. Back when Des first started working the mines at thirteen, he had taken a lot of abuse from the bigger miners. His father had been the worst tormentor, but Gerd had been one of the main instigators, dishing out more than his fair share of teasing, insults, and the occasional cuff on the ear.

Their harassments had ended shortly after Des's father died of a massive heart attack. It wasn't because the miners felt sorry for the orphaned young man, though. By the time Hurst died, the tall, skinny teenager they loved to bully had become a mountain of muscle with heavy hands and a fierce temper. Mining was a tough job; it was the closest thing to hard labor outside a Republic prison colony. Whoever worked the mines on Apatros got big, and Des just happened to become the biggest of them all. Half a dozen black eyes, countless bloody noses, and one broken jaw in the space of a month was all it took for Hurst's old friends to decide they'd be happier if they left Des alone.

Yet it was almost as if they blamed him for Hurst's death, and every few months one of them tried again. Gerd had always been smart enough to keep his distance until now.

"I don't see any of your friends here with you, old man," Des said. "So back off my claim, and nobody gets hurt."

Gerd spat on the ground at Des's feet. "You don't even know what day it is, do you, boy? Kriffing disgrace is what you are!"

They were standing close enough to each other that Des could smell the sour Corellian whiskey on Gerd's breath. The man was drunk. Drunk enough to come looking for a fight, but still sober enough to hold his own.

"Five years ago today," Gerd said, shaking his head sadly. "Five years ago today your own father died, and you don't even remember!"

Des rarely even thought about his father anymore. He hadn't been sorry to see him go. His earliest memories were of his father smacking him. He didn't even remember the reason; Hurst rarely needed one.

"Can't say I miss Hurst the same way you do, Gerd."

"Hurst?" Gerd snorted. "He raised you by himself after your mama died, and you don't even have the respect to call him Dad? You ungrateful son-of-a-Kath-hound!"

Des glared down menacingly at Gerd, but the shorter man was too full of drink and self-righteous indignation to be intimidated.

"Should've expected this from a mudcrutch whelp like you: " Gerd continued. "Hurst always said you were no good. He knew there was something wrong with you… Bane."

Des narrowed his eyes, but didn't rise to the bait. Hurst had called him by that name when he was drunk. Bane. He had blamed his son for his wife's death. Blamed him for being stuck on Apatros. He considered his only child to be the bane of his existence, a fact he'd tended to spit out at Des in his drunken rages.

Bane. It represented everything spiteful, petty, and mean about his father. It struck at the innermost fears of every child: fear of disappointment, fear of abandonment, fear of violence. As a kid, that name had hurt more than all the smacks from his father's heavy fists. But Des wasn't a kid anymore. Over time he'd learned to ignore it, along with all the rest of the hateful bile that spilled from his father's mouth.

"I don't have time for this," he muttered. "I've got work to do."

With one hand he grabbed the hydraulic jack from Gerd's grasp. He put the other hand on Gerd's shoulder and shoved him away. Stumbling back, the inebriated man caught his heel on a rock and fell roughly to the ground.

He stood up with a snarl, his hands balling into fists. "Guess your daddy's been gone too long, boy. You need someone to beat the sense back into you!"

Gerd was drunk, but he was no fool, Des realized. Des was bigger, stronger, younger… but he'd spent the last six hours working a hydraulic jack. He was covered in grime and the sweat was dripping off his face. His shirt was drenched. Gerd's uniform, on the other hand, was still relatively clean: no dust, no sweat stains. He must have been planning this all day, taking it easy and sitting back while Des wore himself out.

But Des wasn't about to back down from a fight. Throwing Gerd's jack to the ground, he dropped into a crouch, feet wide and arms held out in front of him.

Gerd charged forward, swinging his right fist in a vicious uppercut. Des reached out and caught the punch with the open palm of his left hand, absorbing the force of the blow. His right hand snapped forward and grabbed the underside of Gerd's right wrist; as he pulled the older man forward, Des ducked down and turned, driving his shoulder into Gerd's chest. Using his opponent's own momentum against him, Des straightened up and yanked hard on Gerd's wrist, flipping him up and over so that he crashed to the ground on his back.

The fight should have ended right then; Des had a split second where he could have dropped his knee onto his opponent, driving the breath from his lungs and pinning him to the ground while he pounded Gerd with his fists. But it didn't happen. His back, exhausted from hours of hefting the thirty-kilo jack, spasmed.

The pain was agonizing; instinctively Des straightened up, clutching at the knotted lumbar muscles. It gave Gerd a chance to roll out of the way and get back to his feet.

Somehow Des managed to drop into his fighting crouch again. His back howled in protest, and he grimaced as red-hot daggers of pain shot through his body. Gerd saw the grimace and laughed.

"Cramping up there, boy? You should know better than to try and fight after a six-hour shift in the mines."

Gerd charged forward again. This time his hands weren't fists, but claws grasping and grabbing at anything they could find, trying to nullify the younger man's height and reach by getting in close. Des tried to scramble out of the way, but his legs were too stiff and sore to get him clear. One hand grabbed his shirt, the other got hold of his belt as Gerd pulled both of them to the ground.

They grappled together, wrestling on the hard, uneven stone of the cavern floor. Gerd had his face buried against Dessel's chest to protect it, keeping Des from landing a solid elbow or head-butt. He still had a grip on Des's belt, but now his other hand was free and punching blindly up to where he guessed Des's face would be. Des was forced to wrap his arms in and around Gerd's own, interlocking them so neither man could throw a punch.

With their limbs pinned, strategy and technique meant little. The fight had become a test of strength and endurance, with the two combatants slowly wearing each other down. Dessel tried to roll Gerd over onto his back, but his weary body betrayed him. His limbs were heavy and soft; he couldn't get the leverage he needed. Instead it was Gerd who was able to twist and turn, wrenching one of his hands free while still keeping his face pressed tight against Des's chest so it wouldn't be exposed.

Des wasn't so lucky… his face was open and vulnerable. Gerd struck a blow with his free hand, but he didn't hit with a closed fist. Instead lie drove his thumb hard into Des's cheek, only a few centimeters from his real target. He struck again with the thumb, looking to gouge out one of his opponent's eyes and leave him blind and writhing in pain.

It took Des a second to realize what was happening; his tired mind had become as slow and clumsy as his body. He turned his face away just as the second blow landed, the thumb jamming painfully into the cartilage of his upper ear.

Dark rage exploded inside Des: a burst of fiery passion that burned away the exhaustion and fatigue. Suddenly his mind was clear, and his body felt strong and rejuvenated. He knew what he was going to do next. More importantly, he knew with absolute certainty what Gerd would do next, too.

He couldn't explain how he knew; sometimes he could just anticipate an opponent's next move. Instinct, some might have said. Des felt it was something more. It was too detailed, too specific, to be simple instinct. It was more like a vision, a brief glimpse into the future. And whenever it happened, Des always knew what to do, as if something was guiding and directing his actions.

When the next blow came, Des was more than ready for it. He could picture it perfectly in his mind. He knew exactly when it was coming and precisely where it would strike. This time he turned his head in the opposite direction, exposing his face to the incoming blow and opening his mouth. He bit down hard, his timing perfect, and his teeth sank deep into the dirty flesh of Gerd's probing thumb.

Gerd screamed as Des clamped his jaw shut, severing the tendons and striking bone. He wondered if he could bite clean through and then, as if the very thought made it happen, he severed Gerd's thumb.

The screams became shrieks as Gerd released his grasp and rolled away, clasping his maimed hand with his whole one. Crimson blood welled up through the fingers trying to stanch the flow from his stump.

Standing up slowly, Des spat the thumb out onto the ground. The taste of blood was hot in his mouth. His body felt strong and reenergized, as if some great power surged through his veins. All the fight had been taken out of his opponent; Des could do anything he wanted to Gerd now.

The older man rolled back and forth on the floor, his hand clutched to his chest. He was moaning and sobbing, begging for mercy, pleading for help.

Des shook his head in disgust; Gerd had brought this on himself. It had started as a simple fistfight. The loser would have ended up with a black eye and some bruises, but nothing more. Then the older man had taken things to another level by trying to blind him, and he'd responded in kind. Des had learned long ago not to escalate a fight unless he was willing to pay the price of losing. Now Gerd had learned that lesson, too.

Des had a temper, but he wasn't the kind to keep beating on a helpless opponent. Without looking back at his defeated foe, he left the cavern and headed back up the tunnel to tell one of the foremen what had happened so someone could come tend to Gerd's injury.

He wasn't worried about the consequences. The medics could reattach Gerd's thumb, so at worst Des would be fined a day or two's wages. The corporation didn't really care what its employees did, as long as they kept coming back to mine the cortosis. Fights were common among the miners, and ORO almost always turned a blind eye, though this particular fight had been more vicious than most, savage and short, with a brutal end.

Just like life on Apatros.

Chapter 2

Sitting in the back of the land cruiser used to transport miners between Apatros's only colony and the mines, Des felt exhausted. All he wanted was to get back to his bunk in the barracks and sleep. The adrenaline had drained out of him, leaving him hyperaware of the stiffness and soreness of his body. He slumped down in his seat and gazed around the interior of the cruiser.

Normally, there would have been twenty other miners crammed into the speeder with him, but this one was empty except for him and the pilot. After the fight with Gerd, the foreman had suspended Des without pay, effective immediately, and had ordered the transport to take him back to the colony.

"This kind of thing is getting old, Des," the foreman had said with a frown. "We've got to make an example of you this time. You can't work the mines until Gerd is healed up and back on the job."

What he really meant was, You can't earn any credits until Gerd comes back. He'd still be charged room and board, of course. Every day that he sat around doing nothing would go onto his tab, adding to the debt he was working so desperately to pay off.

Des figured it would be four or five days until Gerd was able to handle a hydraulic jack again. The on-site medic had reattached the severed thumb using a vibroscalpel and synthflesh. A few days of kolto injections and some cheap meds to dull the pain, and Gerd would be back at it. Bacta therapy could have him back in a day; but bacta was expensive, and ORO wouldn't spring for it unless Gerd had miner's insurance… which Des highly doubted.

Most miners never bothered with the company-sponsored insurance program. It was expensive, for one thing. What with room, board, and the fees covering the cost of transport to and from the mines, most thought they gave ORO more than enough of their hard-earned pay without adding insurance premiums onto the stack.

It wasn't just the cost, though. It was almost as if the men and women who worked the cortosis mines were in denial, refusing to admit the potential dangers and hazards they encountered every day. Getting insurance would force them to take a look at the cold, hard facts.

Few miners ever reached their golden years. The tunnels claimed many, burying bodies in cave-ins or incinerating them when somebody tapped into a pocket of explosive gases trapped in the rock. Even those who made it out of the mines tended not to survive long into their retirement. The mines took their toll. Sixty-year-old men were left with bodies that looked and felt like they were ninety, broken shells worn down by decades of hard physical labor and exposure to airborne contaminants that slipped through the substandard ORO filters.

When Des's father died, with no insurance, of course, all Des got out of it was the privilege of taking on his father's accumulated debt. Hurst had spent more time drinking and gambling than mining. To pay for his monthly room and board he'd often had to borrow credits from ORO at an interest rate that would be criminal anywhere but in the Outer Rim. The debt kept piling up, month to month and year to year, but Hurst didn't seem to care. He was a single parent with a son he resented, trapped in a brutal job he despised; he had given up any hope of escaping Apatros long before the heart attack claimed him.

The Hutt spawn probably would have been glad to know his son had gotten stuck with his bill.

The transport sped above the barren rocks of the small planet's flatlands with no sound but the endless drone of the engines. The featureless wastes flew by in a blur, until the view out the window was nothing but a curtain of shapeless gray. The effect was hypnotic: Des could feel his tired mind and body eager to drift into deep and dreamless sleep.

This was how they got you. Work you to exhaustion, dull your senses, numb your will into submission. until you accepted your lot and wasted your entire life in the grit and grime of the cortosis mines. All in the relentless service of the Outer Rim Oreworks Company. It was a surprisingly effective trap; it worked on men like Gerd and Hurst. But it wasn't going to work on Des.

Even with his father's crushing debt, Des knew he'd pay ORO off someday and leave this life behind. He was destined for something greater than this small, insignificant existence. He knew this with absolute certainty, and it was this knowledge that gave him the strength to carry on in the face of the relentless, sometimes hopeless grind. It gave him the strength to fight, even when part of him felt like giving up.

He was suspended, unable to work the mines, but there were other ways to earn credits. With a great effort he forced himself to stand up. The floor swayed under his feet as the speeder made constant adjustments to maintain its programmed cruising altitude of half a meter above ground level. He took a second to get used to the rolling rhythm of the transport, then half walked, half staggered up the aisle between the seats to the pilot at the front. He didn't recognize the man, but they all tended to look the same anyway: grim, unsmiling features, dull eyes, and always wearing an expression as if they were on the verge of a blinding headache.

"Hey" Des said, trying to sound nonchalant, "any ships come in to the spaceport today?"

There was no reason for the pilot to keep his attention fixed on the path ahead. The forty-minute trip between the mines and the colony was a straight line across an empty plain; some of the pilots even stole naps along the route. Yet this one refused to turn and look at Des as he answered.

"Cargo ship touched down a few hours ago," he said in a bored voice. "Military. Republic cargo ship."

Des smiled. "They staying for a while?"

The pilot didn't answer; he only snorted and shook his head at the stupidity of the question. Des nodded and stumbled back toward his seat at the rear of the transport. He knew the answer, too.

Cortosis was used in the hulls of everything from fighters to capital ships, as well as being woven into the body armor of the troops. And as the war against the Sith dragged on, the Republic's need for cortosis kept increasing. Every few weeks a Republic freighter would touch down on Apatros. The next day it would leave again, its cargo bays filled with the valuable mineral. Until then the crew, officers and enlisted soldiers alike, would have nothing to do but wait. From past experience, Des knew that whenever Republic soldiers had a few hours to kill they liked to play cards. And wherever people played cards, there was money to be made.

Lowering himself back onto his seat at the rear of the speeder, Des decided that maybe he wasn't quite ready to hit his bunk after all.

By the time the transport stopped on the edges of the colony, Des's body was tingling with anticipation. He hopped out and sauntered toward his barracks at a leisurely pace, fighting his own eagerness and the urge to run. Even now, he imagined, the Republic soldiers and their credits would be sitting at the gaming tables in the colony's only cantina.

Still, there was no point in rushing over there. It was late afternoon, the sun just beginning its descent beyond the horizon to the north. By now most of the miners from the night shift would be awake. Many of them would already be at the cantina, whiling away the time until they had to make the journey out to the mines to start their shift. For the next two hours Des knew he'd be lucky to find a place to sit down in the cantina, never mind finding an empty seat at a pazaak or sabacc table. Meanwhile, it would be another few hours before the men working the day shift climbed onto the waiting transports to head back to their homes; he'd get to the cantina long before any of them.

Back at his barracks, he stripped off his grime-stained coveralls and climbed into the deserted communal showers, scouring the sweat and fine rock dust from his body. Then he changed into some clean clothes and sauntered out into the street, making his way slowly toward the cantina on the far side of town.

The cantina didn't have a name; it didn't need one. Nobody ever had any trouble finding it. Apatros was a small world, barely more than a moon with an atmosphere and some indigenous plant life. There were precious few places to go: the mines, the colony, or the barren wastes in between. The mines were a massive complex encompassing the caves and tunnels dug by ORO, as well as the refining and processing branches of ORO's operations.

The spaceports were located there, too. Freighters left daily with shipments of cortosis bound for some wealthier world closer to Coruscant and the Galactic Core, and incoming vessels bringing equipment and supplies to keep the mines running arrived every other day. Employees who weren't strong enough to mine cortosis worked in the refining plants or the spaceport. The pay wasn't as good, but they tended to live longer.

But no matter where people worked, they all came home to the same place at the end of their shifts. The colony was nothing more than a ramshackle town of temporary barracks thrown together by ORO to house the few hundred workers expected to keep the mines running. Like the world itself, the colony was officially known as Apatros. To those who lived there, it was more commonly referred to as "the muck-huts." Every building was the same shade of dingy gray durasteel, the exterior weathered and worn. The insides of the buildings were virtually identical, temporary workers' barracks that had become all too permanent. Each structure housed four small private rooms meant for two people, but often holding three or more. Sometimes entire families shared one of those rooms, unless they could find the credits for the outrageous rents ORO charged for more space. Each room had bunks built into the walls and a single door that opened onto a narrow hall; a communal bathroom and shower were located at the end. The doors tended to squeak on ill-fitting hinges that were never tended to; the roofs were a patchwork of quick fixes to seal up the leaks that inevitably sprang whenever it rained. Broken windows were taped against the wind and cold, but never replaced. A thin layer of dust accumulated over everything, but few of the residents ever bothered to sweep out their domiciles.

The entire colony was less than a kilometer on each square side, making it possible to walk from any given building to any of the other identical structures in less than twenty standard minutes. Despite the unrelenting similarity of the architecture, navigating the colony was easy. The barracks had been placed in straight rows and columns, forming a grid of utilitarian streets between the uniformly spaced domiciles. The streets couldn't exactly be called clean, though they were hardly festering with garbage. ORO cleared trash and refuse just often enough to keep conditions sanitary, since an outbreak of diseases bred by filth would adversely affect the mine's production. However, the company didn't seem to mind the cluttered junk that inevitably accumulated throughout the town. Broken-down generators, rusted-out machinery, corroded scraps of metal, and discarded, worn-out tools crowded the narrow streets between the barracks.

There were only two structures in the colony that were in any way distinguished from the rest. One was the ORO market, the only store on-world. It had once been a barracks, but the bunks had been replaced with shelves, and the communal shower area was now a secure storage room. A small black-and-white sign had been fastened to the wall outside, listing the hours of operation. There were no displays to lure shoppers in, and no advertising. The market stocked only the most basic items, all at scandelous markups. Credit was gladly advanced against future wages at ORO's typically high interest rate, guaranteeing that buyers would spend even more hours in the mine working off their purchases.

The other dissimilar building was the cantina itself, a magnificent triumph of beauty and design when compared with the dismal homogeny of the rest of the colony. The cantina was built a few hundred meters beyond the edge of the town, set well apart from the gray grid of barracks. It stood only three stories high, but because every other structure was limited to a single floor it dominated the landscape. Not that it needed to be that tall. Inside the cantina everything was located on the ground floor; the upper stories were merely a facade constructed for show by Groshik, the Neimoidian owner and bartender. Above the first-floor ceiling, the second and third floors didn't really exist, there were only the rising walls and a dome made of tinted violet glass, illuminated from within. Matching violet lights covered the pale blue exterior walls. On almost any world the effect would have been ostentatious and tacky, but amid the gray of Apatros it was doubly so. Groshik often proclaimed that he had intentionally made his cantina as garish as possible, simply to offend the ORO powers-that-be. The sentiment made him popular with the miners, but Des doubted if ORO really cared one way or the other. Groshik could paint his cantina any color he wanted, as long as he gave the corporation its cut of the profits each week.

The twenty-standard-hour day of Apatros was split evenly between the two shifts of miners. Des and the rest of the early crew worked from 0800 to 1800; his counterparts worked from 1800 to 0800. Groshik, in an effort to maximize profits, opened each afternoon at 1300 and didn't close for ten straight hours. This allowed him to serve the night-crew workers before they started and catch the day crew when that shift was over. He'd close at 0300, clean for two hours, sleep for six, then get up at 1100 and start the process all over again. His routine was well known to all the miners; the Neimoidian was as regular as the rising and setting of Apatros's pale orange sun.

As Des crossed the distance between the edge of the colony proper and the cantina's welcoming door, he could already hear the sounds coming from inside: loud music, laughter, chatter, clinking glasses. It was almost 1600 now. The day shift had two hours to go before quitting time, but the cantina was still packed with night-shift workers looking to have a drink or something to eat before they boarded the shuttles that would take them to the mines.

Des didn't recognize any faces: the day and night crews rarely crossed paths. The patrons were mostly humans, with a few Twi'leks, Sullustans, and Cereans filling out the crowd. Des was surprised to notice a Rodian, too. Apparently the night crew were more tolerant of other species than the day shift. There were no waitresses, servers, or dancers; the only employee in the cantina was Groshik himself. Anyone who wanted a drink had to come up to the large bar built into the back wall and order it.

Des pushed his way through the crowd. Groshik saw him coming and momentarily dipped out of sight behind the bar, reappearing with a mug of Gizer ale just as Des reached the counter.

"You're here early today," Groshik said as he set the drink down with a heavy thud. His low, gravelly voice was difficult to hear above the din of the crowd. His words always had a guttural quality, as if he were speaking from the very back of his throat.

The Neimoidian liked him, though Des wasn't sure why. Maybe it was because he'd watched Des grow up from a young kid to a man; maybe he just felt sorry Des had been stuck with such a rankweed for a father. Whatever the reason, there was a standing arrangement between the two: Des never had to pay for a drink if it was poured without being asked for. Des gratefully accepted the gift and downed it in one long draft, then slammed the empty mug back down onto the table.

"Ran into a bit of trouble with Gerd," he replied, wiping his mouth. "I bit his thumb off, so they let me go home early."

Groshik tilted his head to one side and fixed his enormous red eyes on Des. The sour expression on his amphibian-like face didn't change, but his body shook ever so slightly. Des knew him well enough to realize the Neimoidian was laughing.

"Seems like a fair trade," Groshik croaked, refilling the mug.

Des didn't guzzle the second drink as he had the first. Groshik rarely gave him more than one on the house, and he didn't want to abuse the bartender's generosity.

He turned his attention to the crowd. The Republic visitors were easy to spot. Four humans, two men, two women, and a male Ithorian in crisp navy uniforms. It wasn't just their clothes that made them stand out, though. They all stood straight and tall, whereas most of the miners tended to hunch forward, as if carrying a great weight on their backs.

On one side of the main room, a smaller section was roped off from the rest of the cantina. It was the only part of the place Groshik had nothing to do with. The ORO Company allowed gambling on Apatros, but only if it was in charge of the tables. Officially this was to keep anyone from cheating, but everyone knew ORO's real concern was keeping the wagers in check. It didn't want one of its employees to win big and pay off all his or her debts in one lucky night. By keeping the maximum limits low, ORO made sure it was more profitable to work the mines than the tables.

In the gaming section were four more naval soldiers wearing the uniform of the Republic fleet, along with a dozen or so miners. A Twi'lek woman with the rank of petty officer on her lapel was playing pazaak. A young ensign was sitting at the sabacc table, talking loudly to everyone around him, though nobody seemed to be listening to him. Two more officers, both human, one male, one female, also sat at the sabacc table. The woman was a lieutenant; the man bore the insignia of a full commander. Des assumed they were the senior officers in charge of the mission to receive the cortosis shipment.

"I see you've noticed our recruiters," Groshik muttered.

The war against the Sith, officially nothing more than a series of protracted military engagements, even though the whole galaxy knew it was a war, required a steady stream of young and eager cadets for the front lines. And for some reason the Republic always expected the citizens on the Outer Rim worlds to jump at the chance to join them. Whenever a Republic military crew passed through Apatros, the officers tried to round up new recruits. They'd buy a round of drinks, then use it as an excuse to start up a conversation, usually about the glorious and heroic life of being a soldier. Sometimes they'd play up the brutality of the Sith. Other times they'd spin promises of a better life in the Republic military, all the while pretending to be friendly and sympathetic to the locals, hoping a few would join their cause.

Des suspected they received some kind of bonus for any new recruit they conned into signing up. Unfortunately for them, they weren't going to find too many takers on Apatros. The Republic wasn't too popular on the Rim; people here, including Des, knew the Core Worlds exploited small, remote planets like Apatros for their own gain. The Sith found a lot of anti-Republic sympathizers out here on the fringes of civilized space; that was one of the reasons their numbers kept growing as the war dragged on.

Despite their dissatisfaction with the Core Worlds, people still might have signed up with the recruiters if the Republic wasn't so concerned with following the absolute letter of the law. Anyone hoping to escape Apatros and the clutches of the mining corporation was in for a rude shock: debts to ORO still had to be paid, even by recruits protecting the galaxy against the rising Sith threat. If someone owed money to a legitimate corporation, the Republic fleet would garnish his or her wages until those debts were paid. Not too many miners were excited about the prospect of joining a war only to have the privilege of not getting paid.

Some of the miners resented the senior officers and their constant push to lure naive young men and women into joining their cause. It didn't bother Des, though. He'd listen to them prattle on all night, as long as they kept playing cards. He figured it was a small price to pay for getting his hands on their credits.

His eagerness must have shown, at least to Groshik. "Any chance you heard a Republic crew was stopping by and then picked a fight with Gerd just so you could get here early?"

Des shook his head. "No. Just a happy coincidence, is all. What angle are they working this time? Glory of the Republic?"

"Trying to warn us about the horrors of the Brotherhood of Darkness" was the carefully neutral reply. "Not going over too well."

The cantina owner kept his real opinions to himself when it came to matters of politics. His customers were free to talk about any subject they wanted, but no matter how heated their arguments became, he always refused to take sides.

"Bad for business," he had explained once. "Agree with someone and they'll be your friend for the rest of the night. Cross them and they might hate you for weeks." Neimoidians were known for their shrewd business sense, and Groshik was no exception.

A miner pushed his way up to the bar and demanded a drink. When Groshik went to fill the order, Des turned to study the gaming area. There weren't any free seats at the sabacc table, so for the time being he was forced into the role of spectator. For well over an hour he studied the plays and the wagers of the newcomers, paying particular attention to the senior officers. They tended to be better players than the enlisted troops, probably because they had more credits to lose.

The game on Apatros followed a modified version of the Bespin Standard rules. The basics of the game were simple: make a hand as close to twenty-three as possible without going over. Each round, a player had to either bet to stay in the hand, or fold. Any player who chose to stay in could draw a new card, discard a card, or place a card into the interference field to lock in its value. At the end of any round a player could come up, revealing his or her hand and forcing all other players to show their cards, as well. Best hand at the table won the hand pot. Any score over twenty-three, or below negative twenty-three, was a bomb-out that required the player to pay a penalty. And if a player had a hand that totaled exactly twenty-three, a pure sabacc, he or she won the sabacc pot as a bonus. But what with random shifts that could unexpectedly change the value of cards from round to round, and other players coming up early, a pure sabacc was a lot harder to achieve than it sounded.

Sabacc was more than a game of luck. It was about strategy and style, knowing when to bluff and when to back down, knowing how to adapt to the ever-changing cards. Some players were too cautious, never betting more than the minimum raise even when they had a good hand. Others were too aggressive, trying to bully the rest of the table with outrageous bets even when they had nothing. A player's natural tendencies showed through if you knew what to look for.

The ensign, for example, was clearly new to the game. He kept staying in with weak hands instead of folding his cards. He was a chaser, not satisfied with cards good enough to collect the hand pot. He was always looking for the perfect hand, hoping to win big and collect the sabacc pot that kept on growing until it was won. As a result, he kept getting caught with bomb-out hands and having to pay a penalty. It didn't seem to slow his betting, though. He was one of those players with more credits than sense, which suited Des just fine.

To be an expert sabacc player, you had to know how to control the table. It didn't take Des many hands to realize the Republic commander was doing just that. He knew how to bet big and make other players fold winning hands. He knew when to bet small to lure others into playing hands they should have folded. He didn't worry much about his own cards; he knew that the secret to sabacc was figuring out what everyone else was holding… and then letting them think they knew what cards he was holding. It was only when all the hands were revealed and he was raking in the chips that his opponents would realize how wrong they'd been.

He was good, Des had to admit. Better than most of the Republic players who passed through. Despite his pleasant appearance, he was ruthless in scooping up pot after pot. But Des had a good feeling; sometimes he just knew he couldn't lose. He was going to win tonight. and win big.

There was a groan from one of the miners at the table. "Another round and that sabacc pot was mine!" he said, shaking his head. "You're lucky you came up when you did," he added, speaking to the commander.

Des knew it wasn't luck. The miner had been so excited, he was twitching in his seat. Anyone with half a brain could see he was working toward a powerful hand. The commander had seen it and made his move, cutting the hand short and chopping the other gambler's hopes off at the knees.

"That's it," the miner said, pushing away from the table. "I'm tapped out."

"Looks like now's your chance," Groshik whispered under his breath as he swept past to pour another drink. "Good luck."

I don't need luck tonight, Des thought. He crossed the floor of the cantina and stepped over the nanosilk rope into the ORO-controlled gaming room.

Chapter 3

Des approached the sabacc table and nodded to the Beta-4 CardShark dealing out the hands. ORO preferred automated droids to organic dealers: no salary to pay, and there was no chance a wily gambler could convince a droid to cheat.

"I'm in," he declared, taking the empty seat.

The ensign was sitting directly across from him. He let out a long, loud whistle. "Blast, you're a big boy," he shouted boisterously. "How tall are you, one ninety? One ninety-five?"

"Two meters even," Des replied without looking at him. He swiped his ORO account card through the reader built into the table and punched in his security code. The buy-in for the table was added to the total already owing on his ORO account, and the CardShark obediently pushed a stack of chips across the table toward him.

"Good luck, sir," it said.

The ensign continued to size Des up, taking another long drink from his mug. Then he brayed out a laugh. "Wow, they grow you fellas big out here on the Rim. You sure you ain't really a Wookiee somebody shaved for a joke?"

A few of the other players laughed, but quickly stopped when they saw Des clench his jaw. The man smelled of Corellian ale. Same as Gerd had when he'd picked a fight with Des just a few hours earlier. Des's muscles tightened, and he leaned forward in his chair. The smaller man let out a short, nervous breath.

"Come on now, son," the commander said to Des in a calming voice, stepping in to control the situation the same way he'd been controlling the table all game long. He had an air of quiet authority, a patriarch presiding over a family squabble at the dinner table. "It's just a joke. Can't you take a joke?"

Turning to face the only player at the table good enough to give him a real challenge, Des flashed a grin and let the tension slip from his coiled muscles. "Sure, I can take a joke. But I'd rather take your credits."

There was a brief pause, and then it was as if everyone had sighed in relief. The officer chuckled and returned the smile. "Fair enough. Let's play some cards."

Des started slow, playing conservatively and folding often. The limits on the table were low; the maximum value of any given hand was capped at one hundred credits. Between the five-credit ante and the two-credit "administration fee" ORO charged players each time they started a new round, the hand pots would barely cover the cost of sitting down at the table, even for a solid player. The trick was to win just enough hand pots to be able to stick around long enough for a chance at the sabacc pot that continued to build with each hand.

When he first started playing, one of the soldiers tried to make small talk. "I notice most of the human miners here shave their heads," he said, nodding out at the crowd. "Why is that?"

"We don't shave. Our hair falls out," Des replied. "Comes from working too many shifts in the mines."

"Working the mines? I don't get it."

"The filters don't remove all the impurities from the air. You work ten-hour shifts day in and day out, and the contaminants build up in your system," He spoke in a flat, neutral voice. There was no bitterness; for him and the rest of the miners it was just a fact of life. "It has side effects. We get sick a lot; our hair falls out. We're supposed to take a few days off now and again, but ever since ORO signed those Republic military contracts the mines never shut down. Basically, we're being slowly poisoned to make sure your cargo hold's full when you leave."

That was enough to kill any other attempts at conversation, and they continued the hands in relative silence. After half an hour Des was about even for the night, but he was just getting warmed up. He pushed in his ante and the ORO cut, as did the other seven players at the table. The dealer flipped two cards out to each of them, and another hand began. The first two players peeked at their cards and folded. The Republic ensign glanced at his cards and threw in enough chips to stay in the hand. Des wasn't surprised, he hardly ever folded his cards, even when he had nothing.

The ensign quickly pushed one of his cards into the interference field. Each turn, a player could move one of the electronic chip-cards into the interference field, locking in its value to protect it from changing if there was a shift at the end of the round.

Des shook his head. Locking in cards was a fool's play. You couldn't discard a locked-in card; Des usually preferred to keep all his options open. The ensign, however, was thinking in the short term, not planning ahead. That probably explained why he was down several hundred credits on the night.

Glancing at his own hand, Des chose to stay in. All the rest of the players dropped, leaving just the two of them.

The CardShark dealt out another round of cards. Des glanced down and saw he had drawn Endurance, a face card with a value of negative eight. He was sitting at a total of six, an incredibly weak hand.

The smart move was to fold; unless there was a shift, he was dead. But Des knew there was going to be a shift. He knew it as surely as he had known where and when Gerd's thumb was going to be when he bit down on it. These brief glimpses into the future didn't happen often, but when they did he knew enough to listen to them. He pushed in his credits. The ensign matched the bet.

The droid scooped the chips to the center of the table, and the marker in front of him began to pulse with rapidly changing colors. Blue meant no shift; all the cards would stay the same. Red meant a shift: an impulse would be sent out from the marker, and one electronic card from each player would randomly reset and change its value. The marker flickered back and forth between red and blue, gaining speed until it was pulsing so quickly the colors blurred into a single violet hue. Then the flashing began to slow down and it became possible to tell the individual colors apart again: blue, red, blue, red, blue… It stopped on red.

"Blast!" the ensign swore. "It always shifts when I have a good hand!"

Des knew that wasn't true. The chances of shifting were fifty-fifty: completely random. There was no way to predict whether a shift was coming… unless you had a gift like Des occasionally did.

The cards flickered as they reset, and Des scooped up his hand one more time. Endurance was gone, replaced by a seven. He was sitting at twenty-one. Not a sabacc, but a solid hand. Before the next round could begin, Des flipped his cards over, exposing his hand to the table. "Coming up on twenty-one," he said.

The ensign threw his cards to the table in disgust. "Blasted bomb-out."

Des collected the small stack of chips that were the hand pot, while the other man grudgingly paid his penalty into the sabacc pot. Des guessed it was closing in on five hundred credits by now.

One of the miners at the table stood up. "Come on, we got to go," he said. "Last speeder leaves in twenty minutes."

With grumbles and complaints, the other miners got up from their seats and trudged off to start their shift. The ensign watched them go, then turned curiously to Des.

"You ain't going with them, big fella? I thought you were complaining about never getting a day off earlier."

"I work the day shift," Des said shortly. "Those guys are the night shift."

"Where's the rest of your crew?" the lieutenant asked. Des clearly recognized her interest as an attempt to keep the ensign from saying something to further antagonize the big miner. "The crowd's become awfully thin." She waved her hand around at the cantina, now virtually empty except for the Republic naval soldiers. Seeing the open seats at the sabacc table, a few of them were wandering over to join their comrades in the game.

"They'll be along soon enough," Des said. "I just ended my shift a bit early today."

"Really?" Her tone implied that she knew of only one reason a miner's shift might end early.

"Lieutenant," one of the newly arrived soldiers said politely as they reached the table. "Commander," he added, addressing the other officer. "Mind if we join in, sir?"

The commander looked over at Des. "I don't want this young man to think the Republic is ganging up on him. If we take all the seats, where are his friends going to sit when they show up? He says they'll be along any minute."

"They're not here now," Des said. "And they're not my friends. You might as well sit down." He didn't add that most of the day-shift miners probably wouldn't play, anyway. When Des showed up at the table they tended to call it a night; he won too often for their liking.

The empty seats were quickly filled up.

"So how are the cards treating you, Ensign?" a young woman asked the man Des had bested in the last hand. She sat down beside him and placed a full mug of Corellian ale on the table in front of him.

"Not so good," he admitted, flashing a grin and exchanging his empty mug for the full one. "I might have to owe you for this drink. I can't seem to catch a break tonight." He nodded his head in Des's direction. "Watch out for this one. He's as good as the commander. Either that, or he cheats."

He smiled quickly to show it was just another of his mildly offensive jokes. Des ignored him; it wasn't the first time he'd been called a cheat. He was aware that his precognition gave him an advantage over the other players. Maybe it was an unfair advantage, but he didn't consider it cheating. It wasn't as if he knew what was going to happen on every hand; he couldn't control it. He was just smart enough to make the most of it when it happened.

The CardShark began passing out chips to the newcomers, wishing each of them a perfunctory "Good luck" as it did so.

"So it seems you don't really get on well with the other miners," the lieutenant said, keying on Des's earlier comments. "Have you ever thought about changing careers?"

Des groaned inwardly. By the time he had joined the table the officers had given up their recruiting spiel and stuck mostly to playing cards. Now he'd given her an opening to bring it up again.

"I'm not interested in becoming a soldier," he said, anteing up for the next hand.

"Don't be so hasty," she said, her voice slipping into a soothing, gentle patter. "Being a soldier for the Republic has its rewards. I suspect it's better than working the mines, at least."

"There's a whole galaxy out there, son," the commander added. "Worlds a lot more attractive than this one, if you don't mind me saying."

Don't I know it, Des thought. Out loud he said, "I don't plan to spend my whole life here. But when I do get off this rock, I don't want to spend my days dodging Sith blasters on the front lines."

"'We won't be fighting the Sith for much longer, son. We've got them on the run now." The commander spoke with such calm assurance, Des was half tempted to believe him.

"That's not how I hear it," Des said. "Rumor is the Brotherhood of Darkness has been winning more than its share of the battles. I heard it's got more than a dozen regions under its control now."

"That was before General Hoth," one of the other soldiers chimed in.

Des had heard of Hoth on the HoloNet; he was a bona-fide hero of the Republic. Victorious in half a dozen major confrontations, he was a brilliant strategist who knew how to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Not surprising, given his background.

"Hoth?" he asked innocently, glancing down at his cards. Garbage. He folded his hand. "Isn't he a Jedi?"

"He is," the commander replied, peeking at his own cards. He pushed in a small wager. "A Jedi Master, to be more accurate. And a fine soldier, too. You couldn't ask for a better man to lead the Republic war effort."

"The Sith are more than just soldiers, you know," the drunken ensign said earnestly, his voice even louder than before. "Some of them can use the Force, just like the Jedi! You can't beat them with blasters alone."

Des had heard plenty of wild tales of Jedi performing extraordinary feats through the mystical power of the Force, but he figured they were legends and myth. Or at least exaggerations. He knew there were powers that transcended the physical world: his own premonitions were evidence of that. But the stories of what the Jedi could do were just too impossible to believe. If the Force was really such a powerful weapon, why was this war taking so long?

"The idea of answering to a Jedi Master doesn't really appeal to met," he said. "I've heard some strange things about what they believe in: no passion, no emotion. Sounds like they want to turn us all into droids."

Another round of cards was dealt out to the remaining players.

"The Jedi are guided by wisdom," the commander explained. "They don't let things like desire or anger cloud their judgment."

"Anger has its uses," Des pointed out. "It's gotten me out of some nasty spots."

"I think the trick is not to get into those spots in the first place," the lieutenant countered in her gentle voice.

The hand ended a few turns later. The young woman who had bought the ensign his drink came up on twenty, not a great hand, but not a bad one, either. She looked over at the commander as he flipped up his cards, and smiled when he had only nineteen. Her smile faded when the drunken ensign showed his twenty-one. When he scooped up the pot, she cut his laugh short with a friendly elbow to his ribs.

Everyone anted and the dealer flicked out another pair of cards to each player.

"The Jedi are the defenders of the Republic," the lieutenant went on earnestly. "Their ways can seem strange to ordinary citizens, but they're on our side. All they want is peace."

"Really?" Des said, glancing at his cards and pushing in his chips. "I thought they wanted to wipe out the Sith."

"The Sith are an illegal organization," the lieutenant explained. She folded her cards after a moment of careful deliberation. "The Senate passed a bill outlawing them nearly three thousand years ago, shortly after Revan and Malak brought destruction to the entire galaxy."

"I always heard Revan saved the Republic," he said.

The commander jumped back into the conversation. "Revan's story is complicated," he said. "But the fact remains, the Sith and their teachings were banned by the Senate. Their very existence is a violation of Republic law, and with good reason. The Jedi understand the threat the Sith represent. That's why they've joined the fleet. For the good of the galaxy, the Sith must be wiped out once and for all."

The drunken ensign won the hand again, his second in a row. Sometimes it was better to be lucky than good.

"So the Republic says the Sith must be wiped out," Des said as he anted up for the next hand. "If the Sith were the ones in charge, I bet they'd say the same thing about the Jedi."

"You wouldn't say that if you knew what the Sith were really like," one of the other soldiers said. "I've fought against them: they're bloodthirsty killers!"

Des laughed. "Yeah, how dare they try to kill you in the middle of a war? Don't they know you're busy trying to kill them? How rude!"

"You bloody Kath-mutt!" the soldier snapped, rising up from his seat.

"Sit down, deckman!" the commander barked. The soldier did as he was told, but Des could feel the tension in the air. Everyone else at the table, with the possible exception of the two officers, was glaring at him.

Good. The last thing on their minds now was cards. Angry people didn't make good sabacc players.

The commander sensed things were bad, too. He did his best to defuse the situation.

"The Sith follow the teachings of the dark side, son," he said to Des. "If you saw the kinds of things they've done during this war. and not just to other soldiers. They don't care if innocent civilians suffer."

Only half listening, Des glanced at his cards and placed a wager.

"I'm not stupid, Commander," he said then. "Whether the Republic officially acknowledges it or not, you're at war with the Brotherhood of Darkness. And bad things happen during a war, on both sides. So don't try to convince me the Sith are monsters. They're people, just like you and me."

Of all the players at the table, only the commander folded his cards. Des knew that at least a few of the soldiers were playing bad hands simply for the chance to take him down.

The commander sighed. "You're right, to a point. The ordinary troopers, who serve in the army because they don't know what the Sith Masters and the Brotherhood of Darkness are really like, are just people. But you have to look at the ideals behind this war. You have to understand what each side really stands for."

"Enlighten me, Commander." Des put just a hint of condescension in his voice and casually tossed in some more chips, knowing it would rile up the table even more. He was glad to see that nobody folded; he was playing them like a Bith musician trilling out a tune on a sabriquet.

"The Jedi seek to preserve peace," the commander reiterated. "They serve the cause of justice. Whenever possible, they use their power to aid those in need. They seek to serve, not to rule. They believe that all beings, regardless of species or gender, are created equal. Surely you can understand that."

It was more a statement than a question, but Des answered anyway. "But all beings aren't really equal, are they? I mean, some are smarter, or stronger… or better at cards."

He drew a small smile from the commander with the last comment, though everyone else at the table scowled.

"True enough, son. But isn't it the duty of the strong to help the weak?"

Des shrugged. He didn't believe much in equality. Working to make everybody equal didn't leave much chance for anyone to achieve greatness. "So what about the Brotherhood of Darkness?" he asked. "What do they believe in?"

"They follow the teachings of the dark side. The only thing they seek is power; they believe the natural order of the galaxy is for the weak to serve the strong."

"Sounds pretty good if you're one of the strong." Des flipped his cards up, then scooped up the pot, relishing the grumbling and curses muttered under the breath of the losers.

Des flashed a nasty grin around the table. "For the sake of the Republic, I hope you guys are better soldiers than you are sabacc players."

"You mudcrutch, rankweed coward!" the ensign shouted, jumping up and spilling his drink onto the floor. "If it wasn't for us, the Sith would be all over this pit of a world!"

Another miner would have taken a swing at Des, but the ensign, even more than slightly drunk, had enough military discipline to keep his fists at his sides. A stern glare from the commander made him sit down and mumble an apology. Des was impressed. And a little disappointed.

"We all know why the Republic cares about Apatros," he said, stacking his chips and trying to appear nonchalant. In fact, he was scanning the table to see if anyone else was getting ready to make a move on him.

"You use cortosis in the hulls of your ships, you use it in your weapons casings, you even use it in your body armor. Without us, you wouldn't stand a chance in this war. So don't pretend you're doing any favors here: you need us as much as we need you."

Nobody had anted yet; all eyes were drawn to the drama unfolding among the players. The CardShark hesitated, its limited programming uncertain how to handle the situation. Des knew Groshik was watching from the far side of the cantina, his hand near the stun blaster he kept stashed behind the bar. He doubted the Neimoidian would need it, though.

"True enough," the commander conceded, pushing his ante in. The others, including Des, followed suit. "But at least we pay you for the cortosis we use. The Sith would just take it from you."

"No," Des corrected, studying his cards, "you pay ORO for the cortosis. Those credits don't make it all the way down to a guy like me." He folded his hand but didn't stop talking. "See, that's the problem with the Republic. In the Core everything's great: people are healthy, wealthy, and happy. But out here on the Rim things aren't so easy.

"I've been working the mines almost as long as I can remember, in one way or another, and I still owe ORO enough credits to fill a freighter hull. But I don't see any Jedi coming to save me from that little bit of injustice."

Nobody had an answer for him this time, not even the commander. Des decided they'd talked enough politics; he wanted to focus on winning the two thousand credits that had built up in the sabacc pot. He went in for the kill.

"Don't try to sell me on your Jedi and your Republic, because that's exactly what it is: your Republic. You say the Sith only respect strength? Well, that's pretty much the way things are out here on the Rim, too. You look out for yourself, because nobody else will. That's why the Sith keep finding new recruits willing to join them out here. People with nothing feel like they've got nothing to lose. And if the Republic doesn't figure that out pretty soon, the Brotherhood of Darkness is going to win this war no matter how many Jedi you have leading your army."

"Maybe we should just stick to cards;" the lieutenant suggested after a long, uncomfortable silence.

"That works for me," Des said. "No hard feelings?"

"No hard feelings," the commander said, forcing a smile.

A few of the other soldiers murmured assent, but Des knew the hard feelings were still there. He'd done everything he could to make sure they ran deep.

Chapter 4

The hours ticked by. Other miners began to arrive, the day shift coming in to replace the night crew that had left. The CardShark kept dealing, and the players kept betting. Des's stack of chips was growing steadily larger, and the sabacc pot kept on growing: three thousand credits, four thousand, five. None of the players seemed to be having fun anymore; Des figured his scorching rant had burned off all the pleasure from the game.

Des didn't care. He didn't play sabacc for fun. It was a job, same as working the mines. A way to earn credits and pay off ORO so he could leave Apatros behind forever.

Two of the soldiers pushed away from the table, their credits cleaned out. Their seats were soon filled by miners from the day shift. The lure of the massive sabacc pot was enough to draw them in, despite their reluctance to go up against Des.

Another hour passed and the senior officers, the lieutenant and the commander, finally packed it in. They, too, were replaced by miners with visions of hitting one good hand and cashing in the unclaimed sabacc pot. The Republic soldiers who stuck around, like the ensign who had first challenged Des, must have had deep, deep pockets.

With the constant influx of new players and new money, Des was forced to change his strategy. He was up several hundred credits; he had enough of a cushion built up that he could afford to lose a few hands if he had to. Now his only concern was protecting the sabacc pot. If he didn't have a hand he thought he could win with, he'd come up in the first few turns. He wasn't going to give anyone else a chance to build up a hand of twenty-three. He stopped folding, even when he had weak cards. Sitting out a hand gave the other players too much of a chance to win.

Some lucky shifts and some poor choices by his opponents made sure his strategy worked, though not without a cost. His efforts to protect the sabacc pot began to eat into his profits. His stack of winnings shrank quickly, but it would all be worth it if he won the sabacc pot.

Through hand after agonizing hand players continued to come and go. One by one the soldiers gave up their seats, forced out when they ran out of chips and couldn't afford more. Of the original group, only Des and the ensign remained. The ensign's pile was growing. A few of the soldiers stayed to watch, rooting for their man to beat the miner with the big mouth.

Other spectators came and went. Some were just waiting for a player to drop so they could swoop in and take the seat. Others were drawn by the intensity of the table and the size of the pots. After another hour the sabacc pot hit ten thousand chips, the maximum limit. Any credits paid into the sabacc pot now were wasted: they went straight into the ORO accounts. But nobody complained. Not with the chance to win a small fortune on the table.

Des glanced up at the chrono on the wall. The cantina would be closing in less than an hour. When he'd first sat down at the table, he'd felt certain he was going to win big. For a while he had been ahead. But the last few hours had drained his chips. Working to protect the sabacc pot was crippling him: he'd gone through all his profits and had to re-buy-in twice. He'd fallen into the classic gambler's trap, becoming so obsessed with winning the big pot that he'd lost sight of how much he was losing. He'd let the game get personal.

His shirt was hot and sticky with sweat. His legs were numb from sitting so long, and his back was aching from hunching forward expectantly to study his cards.

He was down almost a thousand credits on the night, but none of the other players had been able to cash in on his misfortune. With the Sabacc pot capped all the antes and penalties went straight to ORO. He'd have to work a month of grueling shifts in the mines if he ever wanted to see any of those credits again. But it was too late to turn back now. His only consolation was that the Republic ensign was down at least twice as much as he was. Yet each time the man ran out of chips, he'd just reach into his pocket and pull out another stack of credits, as if he had unlimited funds. Or as if he just didn't care.

The CardShark fired out another hand. As he peeked at his cards, Des began to feel the first real hints of self-doubt. What if his feeling was wrong this time? What if this wasn't his night to win? He couldn't remember a moment in the past when his gift had betrayed him, but that didn't mean it couldn't happen.

He pushed his chips in with a weak hand, defying every instinct that told him to fold. He'd have to come up at the start of the next turn, no matter how weak his cards were. Any longer and someone else might steal the sabacc pot he was working so hard to collect.

The marker flickered and the cards shifted. Des didn't bother to look; he simply flipped over his cards and muttered, "Coming up."

When he saw his hand he felt like he'd been slapped. He was sitting at negative twenty-three exactly, a bomb-out. The penalty cleaned out his stack of chips.

"Whoa, big fella," the ensign mocked drunkenly, "you must be lumsoaked to come up on that. What the brix were you thinking?"

"Maybe he doesn't understand the difference between plus twenty-three and minus twenty-three," said one of the soldiers watching the match, grinning like a manka cat.

Des tried to ignore them as he paid the penalty. He felt empty. Hollow.

"You don't talk so much when you're losing, huh?" the ensign sneered.

Hate. Des didn't feel anything else at first. Pure, white-hot hatred consumed every thought, every motion, and every ounce of reason in his brain. Suddenly he didn't care about the pot, didn't care about how many credits he had already lost. All he wanted was to wipe the smug expression from the ensign's face. And there was only one way he could do it.

He shot a savage glare in the ensign's direction, but the man was too drunk to be intimidated. Without taking his eyes off his enemy, Des swiped his ORO account card into the reader and rang up another buy-in, ignoring the logical part of his mind that tried to talk him out of it.

The CardShark, its circuits and wires oblivious to what was really going on, pushed a stack of chips toward him and uttered its typically cheery, "Good luck."

Des opened with the Ace and two of sabers. He was at seventeen, a dangerous hand. Lots of potential to go too high on his next card and bomb out. He hesitated, knowing that the smart move was to fold.

"Having second thoughts?" the ensign chided.

Acting on an impulse he couldn't even explain, Des moved his two into the interference field, then pushed his chips into the pot. He was letting his emotions guide him, but he no longer cared. And when the next card came up as a three, he knew what he had to do. He shoved his three into the interference field beside the two that was already there. Then he bet the maximum wager and waited for the switch.

There were actually two ways to win the sabacc pot. One was to get a hand that totaled twenty-three exactly, a pure sabacc. But there was an even better hand: the idiot's array. In modified Bespin rules, if you had a hand of two and three in the same suit and drew the face card known as the Idiot, which had no value at all, you had an idiot's array… 23 in the literal sense. It was the rarest hand possible, and it was worth more than even a pure sabacc.

Des was two-thirds of the way there. All he needed now was a switch to take his ten and replace it with the Idiot. Of course, that meant there had to be a switch. And even then he'd have to draw the Idiot off it… and there were only two Idiots in the entire seventy-six-card deck. It was a ridiculously long shot.

The marker came up red; the cards shifted. Des didn't even have to look at his hand: he knew.

He stared right into the ensign's eyes. "Coming up."

The ensign looked down at his own hand to see what the switch had given him and began to laugh so hard he could barely show his hand. He had the two of flasks, the three of flasks… and the Idiot!

There were gasps of surprise and murmurs of disbelief from the crowd. "How do you like that one, boys?" he cackled. "Idiot's array on the switch!"

He stood up, reaching out for the stack of chips on the small pedestal that sat in the center of the table representing the sabacc pot.

Des whipped his hand out and snagged the young man's wrist in a grip as cold and hard as durasteel, then flipped over his own cards. The entire cantina became silent as a tomb; the ensign's laughter died in his throat. A second later he pulled his hand free and sat back down, dumbfounded. From the far edge of the table somebody let out a long, low whistle of amazement. The rest of the crowd burst into noise.

"… never in my life…"

"… can't believe…"

". statistically impossible…"

"Two idiot's arrays in the same hand?"

The CardShark summarized the result in the purest analytical fashion. "We have two players with hands of equal value. The hand will be determined by a sudden demise."

The ensign didn't react with the same kind of calm. "You stupid mud-crutch!" he spat out, his voice strangled with rage. "Now nobody's going to get that sabacc pot!" His eyes bulged out wildly; a vein was pulsing on his forehead. One of his fellow soldiers had placed a hand on his shoulder, as if afraid his friend might leap across the table to try to choke the life out of the miner on the other side.

The ensign was right: neither of them would be collecting the sabacc pot on this hand. In a sudden demise each player was dealt one more card, and the value of the hands was recalculated. If you had the better hand, you'd win… but you wouldn't get the sabacc pot unless you scored twenty-three exactly. That, however, seemed impossible: there were no more Idiots to deal out to preserve an idiot's array, and no single card had a value higher than the Ace's fifteen.

Not that Des cared. It was enough to have destroyed his opponent's will; to have crushed his hopes and robbed him of his victory. He could feel the ensign's hate, and he responded to it. It was like a living being. an entity he could draw strength from, fueling his own raging inferno. But Des didn't put his emotions out on display for the rest of the crowd to see. The hate burning in him was his own private store, a power raging inside him so fierce he felt it could crack the world if he let it escape.

The dealer flicked out two cards faceup for everyone to see. They were both nines. Before anyone even had time to react the droid had recalculated the hand, determined that the two players were still tied, and fired out another card to each of them. The ensign took an eight, but Des got another nine. Idiot, two, three, nine, nine… twenty-three!

He reached out slowly and tapped his cards, whispering a single word to his opponent: "Sabacc."

The soldier went ballistic. He leapt up, grabbed the underside of the table with both hands, and gave a mighty heave. Only the weight of the table and the built-in stabilizers kept it from flipping over, though it rocked and slammed back into the ground with a deafening crash. All the drinks on it spilled over; ale and lum washed across the electronic cards, causing them to spark and short out.

"Sir, please don't touch the table," the CardShark implored in a pitiful voice.

"Shut up, you hunk of rusted scrap metal!" The ensign grabbed one of the overturned mugs from the table and hurled it at the droid. It connected with a ringing thud. The droid stumbled back and fell over.

The ensign thrust a finger at Des. "You cheated! Nobody gets sabacc on a sudden demise! Not unless he cheats!"

Des didn't say anything; he didn't even stand up. But his muscles were braced in case the soldier made a move.

The ensign turned back to the droid as it rose shakily to its feet. "You're in on it!" He threw another mug at it, connecting again and dropping the droid a second time. Two of the other soldiers tried to restrain him, but he shook free of their grip. He spun around, waving his arms at the crowd. "You're all in on it! Dirty, Sith-loving scum! You hate the Republic! You hate us. We know you do. We know!"

The miners pushed in closer, grumbling angrily. The ensign's insults weren't far off the mark; there were a lot of bad feelings toward the Republic on Apatros. And if he didn't watch his mouth, somebody was going to show him just how strong those feelings were.

"We give our lives to protect you, but you don't give a wobber! Any chance to humiliate us, you take it!"

His friends had grabbed him again, trying to wrestle him out the door. But there was no way they could get through the crowd now. From the looks on their faces, the soldiers were terrified. With good reason, Des thought. None of them was armed; their blasters were back on their ship. Now they were trapped in the center of a hostile crush of heavily muscled miners who'd been drinking all night. And their friend wouldn't shut up.

"You should get down on your knees and thank us each and every time we land on this ball of bantha sweat you call a planet! But you're too stupid to know how lucky you are to have us on your side! You're nothing but a bunch of filthy, illiterate?"

A lum bottle hurled anonymously from the crowd struck him hard in the side of his head, cutting his words short. He dropped to the floor, dragging his friends down with him. Des stood motionless as a mass of angry miners surged.

The sound of a blaster caused everyone to freeze. Groshik had climbed up onto the top of the bar, his stunner already charging up to fire again. But everybody knew the next shot wouldn't be aimed at the ceiling.

"We're closed," he croaked as loud as his raspy voice could manage. "Everybody get out of my cantina!"

The miners began to back off, and the soldiers stood up warily. The ensign swayed, the cut on his forehead bleeding into his eye.

"You three first," the Neimoidian said to the ensign and the soldiers who supported him. He waved the barrel of his weapon menacingly around the room. "Clear a path. Get them out of here."

Everyone but the soldiers remained frozen. This wasn't the first time Groshik had whipped out the stunner. The BlasTech CS-33 Firespray stun rifle was one of the finest nonlethal crowd-control devices on the market, capable of incapacitating multiple targets with a single shot. More than a few of the miners had felt the brutal force of its wide-beam blast rendering them unconscious. From personal experience Des could attest to the fact that it wasn't a pain anyone was likely to forget.

Once the Republic crew vanished into the night, the rest of the crowd began to move slowly toward the door. Des fell into step with the masses, but as he passed the bar Groshik pointed the blaster right at him.

"Not you. You stay put."

Des didn't move a millimeter until all the others were gone. He wasn't scared; he didn't think Groshik would really fire. Still, he saw no advantage in giving him a reason to.

Only after the last patron had left and closed the door did Groshik lower his arm. He clambered down awkwardly from the bar and set the rifle on the table, then turned to Des.

"I figured it was safer to keep you here with me for a bit," he explained. "Those soldiers were pretty mad. They might be waiting for you on the walk home."

Des smiled. "I didn't figure you were mad at me," he said.

Groshik snorted. "Oh, I'm mad at you. That's why you're going to help me clean up this mess."

Des sighed and shook his head in mock exasperation. "You saw what happened, Groshik. I was just an innocent bystander."

Groshik wasn't in any mood to hear it. "Just start picking up the chairs," he muttered.

With the help of the CardShark, at least it was good for something besides dealing, Des thought, they finished cleaning up in just over an hour. When they were done the droid waddled out on shaky legs, heading toward the maintenance facilities for repairs. Before it left, Des made sure his sabacc winnings had been credited to his account.

Now that it was just the two of them, Groshik motioned Des over to the bar, grabbed a couple of glasses, and took a bottle down from the shelf.

"Cortyg brandy," he said, pouring them each half a glass. "Direct from Kashyyyk. Not the hard stuff the Wookiees drink, though. Milder. Smoother. More tame."

Des took a sip and nearly choked as the fiery liquid burned its way down his throat. "This is tame? I'd hate to see what the Wookiees drink!"

Groshik shrugged. "What do you expect? They're Wookiees."

With his second sip, Des was more careful. He let it roll across his tongue, savoring the rich flavor. "This is good, Groshik. And expensive, I bet. What's the occasion?"

"You had quite a day. I thought you could use it."

Des drained his glass. Groshik filled him up halfway, then corked the bottle and set it back on the shelf.

"I'm worried about you," the Neimoidian rasped. "Worried about what happened in the fight with Gerd."

"He didn't give me much choice."

The Neimodian nodded. "I know, I know. Still. you bit off his thumb. And tonight you nearly started a riot in my bar."

"Hey, I just wanted to play cards," Des protested. "It's not my fault things got out of hand."

"Maybe, maybe not. I saw you tonight. You were goading that soldier, playing him like you play everyone who sits down against you. You push them, twist them, make them dance like puppets on a string. But this time you never let up. Even when you had the advantage, you kept pushing. You wanted him to go off like that."

"Are you saying I planned this whole thing?" Des laughed. "Come on, Groshik. It was the cards that set him off. You know I wasn't cheating, it's just not possible. How could I control what cards were dealt?"

"It was more than the cards, Des," Groshik said, his gravelly voice dropping so low that Des had to lean in close to hear. "You were angry, Des. More angry than I've ever seen you before. I could feel it from all the way across the room, like something in the air. We could all feel it.

"The crowd turned ugly in a hurry, Des. It was like they were feeding off your rage and your hate. You were projecting waves of emotion, a storm of anger and fury. Everyone else just kind of got swept up in it: the crowd, that soldier. everybody. Even me. It was all I could do to aim that first shot from my blaster at the ceiling. Every instinct in my body was telling me to fire it into the crowd. I wanted to take them all down and leave them writhing in pain."

Des couldn't believe his ears. "Listen to what you're saying, Groshik. It's crazy. You know I wouldn't do that. I couldn't do that. Nobody could."

Groshik reached up a long, thin hand and patted Des on the shoulder. "I know you'd never do it on purpose, Des. And I know how crazy it sounds. But there was something different about you tonight. You gave in to your emotions, and it unleashed something. strange. Something dangerous."

Groshik tossed his head back and drained the last of his cortyg, shuddering as it went down. "Just watch yourself, Des. Please. I've got a bad feeling."

"Be careful, Groshik," Des replied with another laugh. "Neimoidians aren't known for relying on their feelings. It's not good for business." Groshik studied him carefully for a moment, then nodded wearily. "True. Maybe I'm just tired. I should get some sleep. And so should you."

They shook hands, and Des left the cantina.

Chapter 5

The streets of Apatros were dark. ORO charged such high rates for power that everyone turned off all their lights when they went to bed, and tonight the moon was only the barest sliver in the sky. There wasn't even the cantina's glow to guide him: Groshik had shut off the lights on its walls and dome until he opened the next day. Des stayed in the middle of the street, trying to avoid barking his shins on the debris hidden in the darker shadows along the edges.

Yet somehow, despite the near-absolute darkness, he saw them coming.

It was a split second before it happened, a sense that danger was coming… and where it was coming from. Three silhouettes leapt at him, two coming head-on and another attacking from behind. He ducked forward just in time, feeling the metal pipe that would have cracked his skull and knocked him cold swiping through the air a hairbreadth above him. He popped back up as it passed and lashed out with a fist, driving into the featureless head of the nearest figure. He was rewarded with the sick crunch of cartilage and bone.

He ducked again, this time to the side, and the pipe that would have brained him square between the eyes thumped down hard across his left shoulder. He staggered to the side, driven by the force of the blow. But in the darkness it took a moment for his opponents to locate him, and by then he had regained his balance.

Through the gloom he could just make out the vague outlines of his attackers. The one he'd punched was slowly standing up; the other two stood wary and ready. He didn't have to see their faces to know who they were: the ensign and the two soldiers who'd half carried the man from the cantina. Des could smell the reek of Corellian ale wafting up at him, confirming their identities. They must have waited outside the cantina and followed him until they thought they could get the jump on him. That was good: it meant they hadn't gone back to their ship to get their blasters.

They came at him again, rushing him all at once. They had the numbers and months of military hand-to-hand combat training on their side; Des had strength, size, and years of bare-knuckle brawling on his. But in the darkness, none of that really mattered.

Des met their charge head-on, and all four combatants tumbled to the ground. Punches and kicks landed without any thought given to target or strategy: the blind fighting the blind. Each blow he landed brought a satisfying grunt or groan from his opponents, but his enjoyment was limited by the pummeling his own body was enduring.

It didn't matter if his eyes were open or closed, he couldn't see a thing. He reacted on instinct; aches and pains were washed away in the darkness by the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

And then suddenly he saw something. Someone had drawn a vibroblade. It was still black as the heart of the mines during a cave-in, yet Des could see the blade clearly, as if it glowed with an inner fire. It stabbed toward him and he grabbed the wrist of the wielder, twisting it back and driving it toward the dark mass from which it had appeared. There was a sharp cry and then a choking gurgle, and suddenly the burning blade in his vision winked out, the threat extinguished.

The mass of bodies entwined with his quickly untangled, two of them scampering clear. The third was motionless. A second later he heard the click of a luma switching on, and he was momentarily blinded by its beam of light. Eyes squeezed shut, he heard a gasp.

"He's dead!" one of the soldiers exclaimed. "You killed him!"

Shading his eyes against the illumination, Des glanced down to see exactly what he'd expected: the ensign lying on his back, the vibroblade plunged deep into his chest.

The luma flicked off, and Des braced himself for another assault. Instead he heard the sounds of footsteps fleeing in the night, heading toward the docking pads.

Des looked down at the body, planning to grab the glowing blade and use its light to guide him through the darkness. But the blade wasn't glowing now. In fact, he realized, it had never really glowed at all. It couldn't have: vibroblades weren't energy weapons. Their blades were simple metal.

There were more pressing concerns than how he had seen the vibroblade in the darkness, however. As soon as they reached their ship, the soldiers would report to their commander, who would report the incident to the ORO authorities. ORO would turn the planet upside down looking for him. Des didn't like his chances. It would be the word of a miner, one with a history of brawls and violence, at that, against two Republic naval soldiers. No one would believe it had been an act of self-defense.

And had it been, really? He had seen the blade coming. Could he have disarmed his opponent without killing him? Des shook his head. He didn't have time for guilt or regrets. Not now. He had to find somewhere safe to hide out.

He couldn't go back to his barracks: that was the first place they'd look. He'd never reach the mines on foot before daybreak, and there was nowhere on the open wastes he could hide once the sun came up. There was only one option, one hope. Eventually they'd go looking for him there, too. But he had nowhere else to go.

Groshik must have still been awake, because he answered the door only seconds after Des began pounding on it. The Neimoidian took one look at the blood on the young man's hands and shirt and grabbed him by the sleeve.

"Get in here!" he croaked, yanking Des through the door and slamming it shut behind him. "Are you hurt?"

Des shook his head. "I don't think so. The blood isn't mine."

Taking a step back, the Neimoidian looked him up and down. "There's a lot of it. Too much. Smells human."

When Des didn't reply, Groshik ventured a guess. "Gerd's?"

Another shake of the head. "The ensign," Des said.

Groshik dropped his head and swore under his breath. "Who knows? Are the authorities after you?"

"Not yet. Soon." Then, as if trying to justify his actions, he added, "There were three of them, Groshik. Only one's dead."

His old friend nodded sympathetically. "I'm sure he had it coming. Just like Gerd. But that doesn't change the facts. A Republic soldier is dead… and you're the one who's going to take the blame."

The cantina owner led Des over to the bar and brought down the bottle of cortyg brandy. Without saying a word, he poured them each a drink. This time he didn't stop at half glasses.

"I'm sorry I came here," Des said, desperate to break the uncomfortable silence. "I didn't mean to get you mixed up in this."

"Getting mixed up in things doesn't bother me," Groshik reassured him with a comforting pat on his arm. "I'm just trying to figure a way to get us out of this now. Let me think."

They downed their glasses. It was all Des could do to keep from panicking; with each passing second he expected a dozen men in ORO body armor to crash down the cantina's door. After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a minute or two, Groshik began to talk. He spoke softly, and Des wasn't sure if the Neimoidian was addressing him or merely talking out loud to help himself think.

"You can't stay here. ORO can't afford to lose their Republic contracts. They'll turn the whole colony upside down to find you. We have to get you offworld." He paused. "But by morning, your picture will be on every vidscreen in Republic space. Changing your looks won't help much. Even with a wig or facial prosthetics you tend to stand out in a crowd. So that means we have to get you out of Republic space. And that means, " Groshik trailed off.

Des waited expectantly.

"Those things you said tonight," Groshik ventured, "about the Sith and the Republic. Did you mean it? Did you really mean it?"

"I don't know. I guess so."

There was another long pause, as if the bartender was gathering himself. "How would you feel about joining the Sith?" he suddenly blurted out.

Des was caught completely off guard. "What?"

"I know. people. I can get you offworld. Tonight. But these people aren't looking for passengers: the Sith need soldiers. They're always recruiting, just like those Republic officers tonight."

Des shook his head. "I don't believe this. You work for the Sith? You always said never to take sides!"

"I don't work for the Sith," Groshik snapped. "I just know people who do. I know people who work for the Republic, too. But they're not going to be much help in this situation. So I need to know, Des. Is this something you want?"

"I don't have a lot of other options," Des mumbled in reply.

"Maybe, maybe not. If you stay here, the ORO authorities are sure to find you. This wasn't a cold-blooded murder. The judiciary probably won't let you get off by pleading self-defense, but they'll have to admit there were extenuating circumstances. You'll serve time on one of the penal colonies, five, maybe six years, and then you're a free man."

"Or I join the Sith."

Groshik nodded. "Or you join the Sith. But if I'm going to help you do this, I want to be sure you know what you're getting into."

Des thought about it, but not for long. "I've spent my entire life trying to get off this hunk of rock," he said slowly. "If I go to a prison world, I'm trading one barren, blasted planet for another. No different than staying right here.

"If I join the Sith, at least I'm out from under ORO's thumb. And you heard what that Republic commander said about them. The Sith respect strength. I think I'll be able to hold my own."

"I don't doubt that," Groshik conceded. "But don't dismiss everything else that commander said. He was right about the Brotherhood of Darkness. They can be ruthless and cruel. They bring out the worst in some people. I don't want you to fall into that trap."

"First you tell me to join the Sith," Des said, "now you're warning me against joining them. What's going on?"

The Neimoidian gave a long, gurgling sigh. "You're right, Des. The decision is made. Grim fate and ill fortune have conspired against you. It's not like sabacc; you can't fold a bad hand. In life you just play the cards you're dealt." He turned away, heading for the small stairs at the back of the cantina. "Come on. In a few hours, after they've searched the housing units in the colony, they'll start searching the starport for you. We have to hurry if we want to get you safely hidden away on one of the freight cruisers before then."

Des reached out across the bar and grabbed Groshik's shoulder. Groshik turned to face him, and Des clasped the Neimoidian's long, slender forearm.

"Thank you, old friend. I won't forget this."

"I know you won't, Des." Though the words were kind, there was an unmistakable sorrow in the gravelly voice.

Des released his grip, feeling awkward, ashamed, scared, grateful, and excited all at the same time. He felt like he needed to say something else, so he added, "I'll make this up to you somehow. The next time we meet?"

"Your life here is over, Des," Groshik said, cutting him off. "There won't be a next time. Not for us."

The Neimoidian shook his head. "I don't know what's ahead of you, but I get the feeling it isn't going to be easy. Don't count on others for help. In the end each of us is in this alone. The survivors are those who know how to look out for themselves."

With that he turned away, his feet shuffling briskly across the cantina's floor as he headed to the back exit. Des hesitated a moment, Groshik's words burning into his mind, then rushed off to follow.

Huddled in the hold of the ship, Des tried to get comfortable. He'd been crammed into the small smuggler's hatch for nearly an hour. It was a tight fit for a man of his size.

Twenty minutes earlier he had heard an ORO patrol come to inspect the ship. They had made a cursory search; not finding the fugitive they were seeking, they had left. A few seconds later the captain, a Rodian pilot, had rapped hard on the panel keeping Des hidden.

"You stay until engines go," he had called in passable galactic Basic. "We take off, you come out. Not before."

Des hadn't recognized him when he'd climbed aboard; he had looked like any other Rodian he'd ever seen. Just another independent freighter captain picking up a load of cortosis, hoping to sell it on some other world for enough profit to keep his ship flying another few months.

If ORO had offered a reward for Des's capture, the captain probably would have sold him out. That meant the ORO managers hadn't put a price on his head. They were more worried about paying out a bounty than letting a fugitive escape Republic justice. It wasn't important that they found him, as long as they could show the Republic they had tried. Groshik must have realized all this when he made the arrangements to smuggle Des aboard.

The high-pitched whine of the engines powering up caused Des to brace himself against the walls of his close quarters. A few seconds later the whine became a deafening roar, and the ship lurched beneath him. The repulsors fired, counterbalancing the vessel, and Des felt the press of the g's as the ship took to the sky.

He kicked at the panel once, knocking it free, and untangled himself from the hidey-hole. The captain and crew weren't around; they would all be at their stations for liftoff.

Des didn't know their destination. All he knew was that at the end of the trip a human woman was waiting to sign him up for the Sith army. As before, the thought filled him with a mix of emotions. Fear and excitement dominated all the others.

There was a slight jostling of the ship as it broke atmosphere and began to speed away from the tiny mining world. A few seconds later Des felt an unfamiliar but unmistakable surge as they jumped to hyperspace.

A sudden sense of liberation filled his spirit. He was free. For the first time in his life, he was beyond the grasping reach of ORO and its cortosis mines. Groshik had said that grim fate and ill fortune were conspiring against him, but Des wasn't so sure now. Things hadn't worked out quite the way he'd planned, he was a fugitive with the blood of a Republic soldier on his hands, but he had finally escaped Apatros.

Maybe the cards he'd been dealt weren't so bad, after all. In the end he'd gotten the one thing he wanted most. And when you came right down to it, wasn't that the only thing that really mattered?

Chapter 6

Phaseera's yellow sun was directly overhead, beaming down across the lush valley and over the jungle camp where Des and his fellow Sith troopers waited. Beneath the shelter of a cydera tree, Des ran a quick system check on his TC-22 blaster rifle to pass the time. The power pack was fully charged, good for fifty shots. His backup power pack checked out, too. The aim was off just slightly, a common problem with all TC models. They had good range and power, but over time their scopes could lose precise calibration. A quick adjustment brought it back into line.

His hands moved with a quick confidence born of a thousand repetitions. Over the past twelve months he'd gone through the routine so many times he barely even had to think about it anymore. A pre-battle weapons check wasn't standard practice in the Sith militia, but it was a habit he'd gotten into, one that had saved his life on several occasions. The Sith army was growing so fast that supply couldn't keep up with demand. The best equipment was reserved for veterans and officers, while new recruits were forced to make do with whatever was available.

Now that he was a sergeant he could have requested a better model, but the TC-22 was the first weapon he'd learned to fire and he'd become pretty good with it. Des figured a little routine maintenance was a better option than learning to master the subtle nuances of another weapon.

His blaster pistol, however, was top of the line. Not all Sith troopers were given pistols: for most soldiers a medium-range, semi-repeating rifle was weapon enough. They'd probably be dead long before they ever got close enough to their enemy to use a pistol. But in the past year Des had proven a dozen times over that he was more than just turret fodder. Soldiers good enough to survive the initial rush and get in tight to the enemy ranks needed a weapon more suited to close-quarters fighting.

For Des that weapon was the GSI-21D: the finest disruptor pistol manufactured by Galactic Solutions Industries. Optimum range was only twenty meters, but within that distance it was capable of disintegrating armor, flesh, and droid plating with equal efficiency. The 21D was illegal in most Republic-controlled sectors of the galaxy, a testament to its awesome destructive potential. The disruptor's power pack carried only enough charge for a dozen shots, but when he was eye-to-eye with an opponent it rarely took more than one.

He slid the pistol into the holster clipped to his belt; checked the vibroblade in his boot, and turned his attention to his troops. All around him the men and women of his unit were following his lead, making similar inspections of their own equipment as they waited for the orders. He couldn't help but smile; he'd trained them well.

He'd joined the Sith armies as a way to escape both prison and Apatros itself. But it hadn't taken him long to actually grow fond of the soldier's life. There was a camaraderie among the men and women who fought at his side, a bond that quickly extended to include Des himself. He'd never felt any connection to the miners on Apatros and indeed had always considered himself something of a loner. But in the military he'd found his true place. He belonged here with the troops. His troops.

Senior Trooper Adanar noticed his gaze and responded by thumping a closed fist lightly against his chest twice, just over his heart. It was a gesture known only to members of the unit: a private sign for loyalty and fidelity, a symbol of the bond they all shared.

Des returned the gesture. He and Adanar had been in the same unit since day one of their military careers. The recruiter had signed them up together and assigned them both to the Gloom Walkers, Lieutenant Ulabore's unit.

Adanar picked up his rifle and sauntered over to where his friend was sitting. "You figure we're going to need that disruptor pistol of yours anytime soon, Sarge?"

"No harm in being prepared," Des replied, whipping out the disruptor and giving it a spinning flourish before returning it to its holster.

"I wish they'd give us the go-ahead already," Adanar grumbled. "We've been in position for two days now. How long are they going to wait?"

Des shrugged. "We can't go until they're ready to move in with the main force. We go too early and the plan falls apart."

The Gloom Walkers had earned quite a reputation over the past year. They'd been in scores of battles on half a dozen worlds, and they'd tasted far more than their share of victories. They'd gone from being one of a thousand expendable front-line units to elite troops reserved for critical missions. Right now they were the key to capturing the manufacturing world of Phaseera, if someone would just give them the order to go. Until then they were stuck in this jungle camp an hour's march away from their objective. They'd been here only a couple of days, but it was already beginning to take its toll.

Adanar began to pace. Des sat calmly in the shade, watching him march back and forth.

"Don't wear yourself out," he said after a minute. "We're not going anywhere until nightfall at the earliest. You might as well get comfortable."

Adanar stopped pacing, but he didn't sit down. "Lieutenant says this is going to be easy as a spicerun," he said, trying to keep his voice casual. "You figure he's right?"

Lieutenant Ulabore had received many accolades for the success of his troops, but everyone in the unit knew who was really in charge when the blaster bolts started flying.

That fact had become painfully clear nearly a year before back on Kashyyyk, where Des and Adanar had seen their first action. The Brotherhood of Darkness had tried to secure a foothold in the Mid Rim by invading the system, sending in wave after wave of troops to capture the resource-rich homeworld of the Wookiees. But the planet was a Republic stronghold and they weren't about to retreat, no matter how badly outnumbered.

When the Sith fleet first landed, their enemies simply vanished into the forest. The invasion turned into a war of attrition, a long, drawn-out campaign fought among the branches of the wroshyr trees high above the planet's surface. The Sith troopers weren't used to fighting in the treetops, and the thick foliage and kshyy vines of the forest canopy provided perfect cover for the Republic soldiers and their Wookiee guides to launch ambushes and guerrilla raids. Thousands upon thousands of the invaders were wiped out, most dying without even seeing the opponent who had fired the fatal shot… but the Sith Masters just kept sending more troops in.

The Gloom Walkers were part of the second wave of reinforcements. During their first battle they were separated from the main lines, cut off from the rest of the army. Alone and surrounded by enemies, Lieutenant Ulabore panicked. Without direct orders, he had no idea what to do to keep his unit alive. Fortunately, Des was there to step in and save their hides.

For starters, he could sense the enemy even when he couldn't see them. Somehow he just knew where they were. He couldn't explain it, but he'd stopped trying to explain his unique talents long ago. Now he just tried to use them to his best advantage. With Des as their guide, the Gloom Walkers were able to avoid the traps and ambushes as they slowly worked their way back to rejoin the main force. It took three days and nights, countless brief but deadly battles, and a seemingly endless march through enemy territory, but they made it. Through all the fighting, the unit lost only a handful of soldiers, and the troops who made it back knew they owed their lives to Des.

The story of the Gloom Walkers became a rallying point for the rest of the Sith army, raising morale that had become dangerously low. If a single unit could survive for three days on its own, they reasoned, then surely a thousand units could win the war. In the end it took almost two thousand units, but Kashyyyk finally fell.

As leader of the heroic Gloom Walkers, Lieutenant Ulabore was given a special commendation. He never bothered to mention that Des was really the one responsible. Still, he'd been smart enough to promote Des to sergeant. And he knew enough to stay out of the way when things got hot.

"So?" Adanar repeated. "What's the word, Des? When they finally give us the go, is this mission going to be a spicerun?"

"The lieutenant's just saying what he thinks we all want to hear."

"I know that, Des. That's why I'm talking to you. I want to know what we're really in for."

Des thought about it for a few moments. They were holed up in the jungle on the edge of a narrow valley, the only route into Phaseera's capital city, where the Republic army had set up its base camp. On a nearby hill overlooking the valley was a Republic outpost. If the Sith tried to move troops through the valley, even at night, the outpost was sure to spot them. They'd signal ahead to the base camp so their defenses would be up and fully operational long before the enemy ever reached them.

The Gloom Walkers' mission was simple: eliminate the outpost so the rest of the army could launch a surprise attack on the Republic base camp. They had interference boxes, short-range jamming equipment they could use to keep the outpost from transmitting a signal to warn the main camp, but they'd have to hit them fast. The outpost reported each day at dawn, and if the Gloom Walkers struck too soon, the Republic would realize something was wrong when the daily report didn't come in.

The timing was critical. They'd have to take them out just before the main force entered the area. That would leave a few hours to cross the valley and catch the base camp unprepared. It was doable, but only if everything was coordinated perfectly. The Gloom Walkers were in place, but the main force wasn't ready to make its move yet… and so they waited.

"I'm worried," Des finally conceded. "Taking that outpost won't be easy. Once we get the go-ahead there's no margin for error. We have to be perfect. If they've got any surprises waiting for us, we could be in trouble."

Adanar spit on the ground. "I knew it! You've got a bad feeling, don't you? This is Hsskhor all over again!"

Hsskhor had been a disaster. After Kashyyyk fell, the surviving Republic soldiers fled to the neighboring world of Trandosha. Twenty units of Sith troopers, including the Gloom Walkers, were sent in pursuit. They caught up to the Republic survivors on the desert plains outside the city of Hsskhor.

A day of savage fighting left many dead on both sides, but no definitive victor. Des had been uneasy throughout the battle, though at the time he hadn't been able to say why. His unease had grown as night fell and both sides retreated to opposite ends of the battlefield to regroup. The Trandoshans had struck a few hours later.

The pitch-black night wasn't a problem for the reptilian Trandoshans: they could see into the infrared spectrum. They seemed to come out of nowhere, materializing from the darkness like a nightmare given substance.

Unlike the Wookiees, the Trandoshans weren't allied with either side in the galactic civil war. The bounty hunters and mercenaries of Hsskhor cut a swath of destruction through the ranks of Republic and Sith alike, not caring whom they fought just as long as they came away with trophies from their kills.

Details of the massacre were never officially released. Des had been at the very center of the carnage, and even he could barely piece together what had happened. The attack caught the Gloom Walkers, like every other unit, completely off guard. By the time the sun rose nearly half the Sith troops had been cut down. Des lost a lot of friends in the slaughter… friends he might have saved if he had paid more attention to the dark premonition he'd felt when he first set foot on that forsaken desert world. And he vowed he'd never let the Gloom Walkers get caught in a slaughter like that again.

In the end Hsskhor paid a heavy price for the ambush. Reinforcements were sent in from Kashyyyk to overwhelm both the Republic forces and the Trandoshans. It took less than a week for the Sith to claim victory, and the once proud city was sacked and razed to the ground. Many of the Trandoshans simply gave up the fight to defend their homes and offered their services to their conquerors. They were bounty hunters and mercenaries by trade, and hunters by nature. They didn't care whom they were working for, as long as there was a chance to do some more killing. Needless to say, the Sith had welcomed them with open arms.

"This isn't going to be a repeat of Hsskhor," Des assured his nervous companion. It was true he had an uneasy feeling once again. But this time it was different. Something big was going to happen, but Des couldn't say for sure whether it would be good or bad.

"Come on, Des," Adanar pressed. "Go talk to Ulabore. He listens to you sometimes."

"And tell him what?"

Adanar threw his hands up in exasperation. "I don't know! Tell him about your bad feeling. Make him get on the comm to HQ and tell them to pull us back. Or convince them to send us in! Just don't leave us sitting out here like a bunch of dead womp rats rotting in the sun!"

Before Des could answer, one of the junior troopers, a young woman named Lucia, ran up and snapped off a crisp salute. "Sergeant! Lieutenant Ulabore wants you to assemble the troops by his tent. He'll address them in thirty minutes," she said, her voice earnest and excited.

Des flashed a smile at his friend. "I think we've finally got our orders."

The soldiers stood at attention as the lieutenant and Des reviewed the troops. As it always did, the inspection consisted of Ulabore moving up and down the ranks, nodding and giving half-muttered approvals. It was mostly for show, a chance for Ulabore to feel as if he had something to do with the success of a mission.

Once they were done, the lieutenant marched to the front of the column and turned to face the troops. Des stood alone in front of the unit, his back to them so he could be face-to-face with his superior officer.

"Everyone here is familiar with our mission objective," Ulabore began, his voice unusually high-pitched and loud. Des guessed he was trying to sound authoritative, but it came across as shrill.

"I'll leave the specifics of the mission to the sergeant here," he continued. "Our task is not an easy one, but the days of the Gloom Walkers getting easy jobs are long gone.

"I don't have much else to say; I know you're all as eager as I am to end this pointless waiting. That's why I'm happy to inform you that we've been given the order to move out. We hit the Republic outpost in one hour!"

Horrified gasps and loud whispers of disbelief rose up from the ranks. Ulabore stepped back as if he'd been slapped. He'd obviously been expecting cheers and exultation, and was rattled by the sudden anger and lack of discipline.

"Gloom Walkers, hold!" Des barked. He stepped up to the lieutenant and lowered his voice. "Sir, are you certain those were the orders? Move in one hour? Are you certain they didn't mean one hour after nightfall?"

"Are you questioning me, Sergeant?" Ulabore snapped, making no attempt to keep his own voice down.

"No, sir. It's just that if we leave in one hour it'll still be light out. They'll see us coming."

"By the time they see us we'll already be close enough to jam their transmitters," the lieutenant countered. "They won't be able to signal back to the base camp."

"It's not that, sir. It's the gunships. They've got three repulsorcraft equipped with heavy-repeating flash cannons. If we try to take the outpost during the day, those things will mow us down from the sky."

"It's a suicide mission!" someone shouted out from the ranks.

Ulabore's eyes became narrow slits, and his face turned red. "The main army is moving out at dusk, Sergeant," he said through tightly clenched teeth. "They want to cross the valley in darkness and hit the Republic base camp at first light."

"Then there's no reason for us to move so soon," Des replied, struggling to remain calm. "If they start at dusk, it's going to take at least three hours before they reach the valley from their current position. That gives us plenty of time to take the outpost down before they get here, even if we wait until after dark:'

"It's obvious you don't understand what's really going on, Sergeant." Ulabore spoke as if arguing with a stubborn child. "The main force isn't going to start moving until after we report our mission is complete. That's why we have to move now."

It made sense: the generals wouldn't want to risk the main force until they knew for certain the valley was secure. But sending them in during the light of day guaranteed that the Gloom Walkers' casualty rate would increase fivefold.

"You have to comm back to HQ and explain the situation to them," Des said. "We can't take on those gunships in the air. We have to wait till they ground them for the night. You have to make them understand what we're up against."

The lieutenant acted as if he hadn't even heard him. "The generals give the orders to me, and I give them to you," he snapped. "Not the other way around! The army is moving out at dusk, and that's not going to change to fit your schedule, Sergeant!"

"They won't have to change their plans," Des insisted. "If we leave as soon as it gets dark, we'll still have that outpost down by the time they reach the valley. But sending us in now is just?"

"Enough!" the lieutenant snapped. "Quit braying like a bantha cut off from its herd! You have your orders, now follow them! Or do you want to see what happens to soldiers who defy their superior officers?"

Suddenly it was clear to Des what was really going on. Ulabore knew the order was a mistake, but he was too scared to do anything about it. The order must have come directly from one of the Dark Lords. Ulabore would rather lead his troops into a slaughter than face the wrath of a Sith Master. But Des wasn't about to let him drive the Gloom Walkers to their doom. This wasn't going to become a repeat of Hsskhor. He hesitated for only a second before slamming his fist into his lieutenant's chin, knocking him cold.

There was stunned silence from the rest of the troops as Ulabore slumped to the ground. Des quickly took away the fallen officer's weapons, then turned and pointed at a pair of the newest recruits.

"You two, keep an eye on the lieutenant. Make sure he's comfortable if he wakes up, but don't let him anywhere near the comm."

To the communications officer he said, "Just before dusk send a message back to HQ telling them our mission is complete so they can start moving the main force into the valley. That will give us two hours to achieve our objective before they get here."

Turning to address the rest of the troops, he paused to let the gravity of his next words sink in. "What I've done here is mutiny," he said slowly. "There's a chance anyone who follows me from here on in will face a court-martial when this is over. If any of you feel you can't follow my orders after what I've done here today, speak up now and I'll surrender command to Senior Trooper Adanar for the rest of the mission."

He gazed out across the soldiers. For a second nobody spoke; then as one they all raised their fists and gave two light raps on their chest, just above the heart.

Overwhelmed with pride, Des had to swallow hard before he could give his final order to the troops. his troops. "Gloom Walkers, dismissed!"

The ranks dispersed in groups of twos and threes, the soldiers whispering quietly to one another. Adanar broke away from the rest and came up to Des.

"Ulabore's not going to forget this," he said quietly. "What are you going to do about him?"

"After we take that outpost they'll want to pin a medal on our commanding officer," Des replied. "I'm betting he'd rather shut up and accept it than let anyone know what really happened."

Adanar grunted. "Guess you got it all worked out."

"Not quite," Des admitted. "I'm still not sure how we're going to take down that outpost."

Chapter 7

The outpost was located in a clearing on the top of a plateau overlooking the valley. Under the cover of night, the Gloom Walkers had moved silently through the jungle until they had it surrounded. Des had broken the unit up into four squads, each approaching from a different side. Each squad carried an interference box with it.

They had set up and activated the i-boxes once they'd closed to within half a kilometer of the base, jamming all transmissions within their perimeter. The squads had continued on to the edges of the clearing then stopped, waiting for Des to give them the signal to move in. With no communication among the squads, the i-boxes jammed their own equipment as well, the most reliable signal was the sound of blasterfire.

As he stared across the clearing at the three repulsorcraft sitting on the landing pad atop the outpost's roof, Des felt a familiar feeling in the pit of his stomach. All soldiers felt the same thing going into battle, whether they admitted it or not: fear. Fear of failure, fear of dying, fear of watching their friends die, fear of being wounded and living out the rest of their days crippled or maimed. The fear was always there, and it would devour you if you let it.

Des knew how to turn that fear to his own advantage. Take what makes you weak and turn it into something that makes you strong. Transform the fear into anger and hate: hatred of the enemy; hatred of the Republic and the Jedi. The hate gave him strength, and the strength brought him victory.

For Des the transformation came easily once the fighting started. Thanks to his abusive father, he'd been turning fear into anger and hate ever since he was a child. Maybe that was why he was such a good soldier. Maybe that was why the others looked to him for leadership.

They were waiting on his signal even now, waiting for him to take the first shot. As soon as he did, they'd charge the outpost. The Gloom Walkers were outnumbered nearly two to one; they'd need the advantage of surprise to even out the odds. But those gunships were a problem Des hadn't anticipated.

The clearing was surrounded by bright lights that illuminated everything within a hundred meters of the outpost itself. And even though the repulsorcraft were grounded, there was a soldier stationed in the open flatbed at the rear of each vehicle, operating the turrets. The armored walls of the flatbed rose to waist height to give the gunner some cover, and the turret itself was heavily shielded to protect it from enemy fire.

From the landing pad on the roof, the gunners had a clear view of the surrounding area. If he fired that first shot, the other units would charge out into the clearing and right into a storm of heavy-repeating blasterfire. They'd be torn apart like zucca tossed into a rancor pit.

"What's the matter, Sarge?" one of the soldiers in his squad asked. It was Lucia, the junior trooper who'd delivered Ulabore's orders to him earlier. "What are we waiting for?"

It was too late to call off the mission. The main army was already on the move; by the time Des got back to camp to warn them, they'd be halfway through the valley.

He glanced down at the young recruit and noticed the scope on her weapon. Lucia was carrying a TC-17 long-range blaster rifle. Her knuckles were white from gripping her weapon too tightly in fear and anticipation. She'd seen only minor combat duty before being assigned to the Gloom Walkers, but Des knew she was one of the best shots in the unit. The TC- 17 was only good for a dozen shots before the power cell had to be switched out, but it had a range well over three hundred meters.

Each of the four squads had a sniper assigned to it. When the fighting began, their job was to watch the perimeter of the battle and make sure none of the Republic soldiers escaped to warn their main camp.

"See those soldiers standing in the rear of the gunships? The ones working the flash cannons?" he asked her.

She nodded.

"If we don't get rid of them somehow, they're going to turn our squads into turret fodder about ten seconds after this battle begins."

She nodded again, her eyes wide and scared. Des tried to keep his voice even and professional to calm her down.

"I want you to think about this very carefully now, trooper. How fast do you think you could take them out from here?"

She hesitated. "I… I don't even know if I could, Sarge. Not all of them. Not from this angle. I could get a line on the first one, but as soon as he goes down, I doubt the others will stand still long enough for me to take aim. They'll probably duck down in the flatbed for cover. And even if I take the gunners out, there's half a dozen more soldiers on that roof who would jump in to take their places. I can't drop nine targets that fast by myself, Sarge. Nobody can."

Des bit his lip and tried to figure out an answer to the problem. There were only three gunships. If he could somehow get a message to the sniper in each squad and have them fire at exactly the same time, they might be able to take out the unsuspecting gunners… though they'd still have to stop the other six soldiers from replacing them.

He cut off his own line of thought with a silent curse. It would never work. Because of the i-boxes there was no way to get a message to the other squads in time.

Taking the sniper rifle from Lucia's hands, he brought the weapon up and set his eye to the scope to get a better look at the situation. He scanned the roof quickly from side to side, noting the position of every Republic soldier. With the magnification of the scope he could make out their features clear enough to see their lips moving as they spoke.

The situation was practically hopeless. The outpost was the key to taking Phaseera, and the turrets on the roof were the key to taking the outpost. But Des was out of options and almost out of time.

He felt the fear stronger than ever and took a deep breath to focus hismind. Adrenaline began to pump through his veins as he redirected the fear to give him strength and power. He lined the blaster's scope up on one of the gunners, and a red veil fell across his vision. And then he fired.

He acted on instinct, moving too quickly to let his conscious thoughts get in the way. He didn't even see the first soldier drop; the scope was already moving to his next target. The second gunner had just enough time to open his eyes wide in surprise before Des fired and moved on to the third. But she'd seen the first gunner go down and had already dropped down behind the armored walls of the gunship's flatbed for cover.

Des resisted the impulse to fire wildly and moved the scope in a tight circle, looking in vain for a clean shot. The sound of blasterfire exploded in the night, along with shouts and pounding feet as the Gloom Walkers burst from their cover and rushed the outpost. They'd followed their orders to the letter, charging out at the sound of the first shot. Des knew he had only a few seconds before the turrets opened up on them and turned the clearing into a killing field, but he couldn't see the shot to take out the third gunner.

He whipped the rifle around in desperation, looking for a new target on the roof. He set his sights on a soldier crouched down low beside a small canister. The soldier wasn't moving, and he'd covered his face with his hands as if shielding his vision. The blast from Des's weapon hit him square in the chest just as the device at the soldier's feet detonated.

"Flash canister!" Lucia screamed, but her warning came too late. The view through the scope vanished in a brilliant white flare, temporarily blinding Des.

But with his vision gone, he could suddenly see everything clearly. He knew the position of every soldier even as they all scrambled for cover; he could track exactly where they were and where they were going.

The soldier in the third turret was training the cannons on the incoming wave of troopers. In the excitement she'd popped her head up just slightly above the walls of the flatbed, leaving the smallest of targets exposed. Des took her with a single shot, the bolt going in cleanly through one ear hole on her helmet and out the other.

It was as if time had slowed down. Moving with a calm and deadly precision, he trained his rifle on the next target, taking her through the heart; barely a moment later he got the soldier beside her right between his cold blue eyes. Des took one man in the back as he ran for the nearest gunship. Another was halfway up one of the flatbed's ladders when a bolt sliced through his thigh, knocking him off balance. He fell from the ladder, and Des put another shot through his chest before he hit the ground.

It had taken less than three seconds to wipe out eight of the nine soldiers. The last one made a run for the edge, hoping to escape by diving off the roof on the far side of the building. Des let him run. He could feel the terror coming in waves off his doomed prey; he savored it for as long as he could. The soldier leapt from the rooftop and seemed to hang in midair for a second; Des fired his last three shots into his body, draining the weapon's power cell.

He handed the weapon back to Lucia, blinking rapidly at the tears welling up as his eyes tried to soothe their damaged retinas. The effects of the flash canister were only temporary; his vision was already beginning to return. And the miraculous second sight he'd experienced was slipping away.

Rubbing his eyes, he knew now was not the time to think about what had just happened. He'd eliminated the gunners, but his troops were still outnumbered. They needed him down in the hot zone, not here on the edges of the battle.

"Keep an eye on that roof," he ordered Lucia. "If any of those Republic mudcrutches appear on top, take them out before they get to the gunships."

She didn't reply; her mouth was hanging open in amazement at what she'd just witnessed.

Des grabbed her by the shoulder and gave her a rough shake. "Snap out of it, trooper! You've got a job to do!"

She shook her head to gather her senses and nodded, then loaded another energy cell into her weapon. Satisfied, Des pulled out the 21D and charged across the clearing, eager to join in the battle.

Three hours later it was all over. The mission had been a complete success: the outpost was theirs, and the Republic had no idea that thousands of Sith troopers were marching through the valley to attack them at first light. The battle itself had been short but bloody: forty-six Republic soldiers dead, and nine of Des's own. Every time a Gloom Walker went down, part of Des felt he'd failed somehow, but given the nature of their mission, keeping the casualties under double digits was more than he could have reasonably hoped for.

Once their objective was secured he'd left Adanar and a small contingent to hold the outpost. With Des in the lead, the rest of the unit marched back to its base camp.

Along the way he tried to ignore the hushed whispers and furtive looks the rest of the company was giving him. Lucia had spread the word of his amazing shooting, and it was the talk of the unit. None of them was brave enough to say anything to his face, but he could hear snippets of conversation from the ranks behind him.

Honestly, he couldn't blame them. Looking back, even he wasn't sure what had happened. Des was a good marksman, but he was no sniper. Yet somehow he'd managed to pull off a dozen impossible shots with a weapon he'd never fired before… most of them after being blinded by a flash canister. It was beyond unbelievable. It was as if, when he'd lost his vision, some mysterious power had taken over and guided his actions. It was exhilarating, but at the same time it was terrifying. Where had this power come from? And why couldn't he control it?

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that at first he didn't even notice the strangers waiting at their base camp. It was only after they stepped up and slapped the stun cuffs on his wrists that he realized what was going on.

"Welcome back, Sergeant." Ulabore's voice was filled with bile.

Des glanced around. A dozen enforcers, the military security of the Sith army, were standing with weapons drawn. Ulabore stood behind them, a deep bruise on his face where Des had struck him. In the background Des could see the two junior recruits he'd left in charge of Ulabore. They were staring down at the ground, embarrassed and ashamed.

"Did you really think those raw recruits would keep their commanding officer trussed up like some kind of prisoner?" Ulabore taunted him from behind the protective wall of armed guards. "Did you really believe they would follow you in your madness?"

"That madness saved our lives!" Lucia shouted. Des held up his shackled hands to silence her: this situation could get out of hand far too easily.

When nothing else happened, the lieutenant seemed to gain some courage. He stepped out from behind the protective wall of enforcers and over to Des.

"I warned you about disobeying orders," he sneered. "Now you get to see firsthand how the Brotherhood of Darkness deals with mutinous soldiers!"

A few of the Gloom Walkers began to reach slowly for their weapons, but Des shook his head and they froze. The enforcers already had their blasters drawn and weren't afraid to use them. The troopers wouldn't manage to get off even a single shot.

"What's the matter, Sergeant?" Ulabore pressed, drawing closer to his defeated enemy. Too close. "Nothing to say?"

Des knew he could kill the lieutenant with one quick move. The enforcers would take him out, but at least Ulabore would go with him. Every fiber of his being wanted to lash out and end both their lives in an orgy of blood and blasterfire. But he managed to fight the impulse. There was no point in throwing his life away. A court-martial would likely end in a death sentence, but at least if he went to trial he'd have a chance.

Ulabore stepped up and slapped him once across the face, then spit on his boots and stepped back. "Take him away," he said to the enforcers, turning his back on Des.

As Des was taken away he couldn't help but see the look in the eyes of Lucia and the troopers whose lives he'd saved only hours ago. He had a feeling the next time the unit went into combat, Ulabore would suffer an unfortunate, and fatal, accident.

That realization brought the hint of a smile to his lips.

The enforcers marched him through the jungle for hours, weapons drawn and trained on him the entire time. They only lowered them when they reached the sentries on the perimeter of the main Sith camp.

"Prisoner for a court-martial," one of the enforcers said flatly. "Go tell Lord Kopecz." One of the sentries saluted and ran off.

They marched Des through the camp toward the brig. He saw recognition in the eyes of many of the soldiers. With his height and bald head he was an imposing figure, and many of the troops had heard of his exploits. Seeing a formerly ideal soldier being brought before a court-martial was sure to leave an impression.

They reached the camp's makeshift prison, a small containment field over a three-by-three-by-three-meter pit that served as a holding area for captured spies and POWs. The enforcers had relieved him of his weapons when they first took him into custody; now they did a more thorough search and stripped him of all other personal effects. Then they shut down the containment field and roughly tossed him in, not even bothering to release his cuffs. He landed awkwardly on the hard ground at the bottom of the hole. As he struggled to his feet he heard an unmistakable hum as the field was activated once again, sealing him in.

The pit was empty, other than Des himself. The Sith didn't tend to keep prisoners around for long. He began to wonder if he'd made a serious mistake. He'd hoped his past service might buy him some leniency at his trial, but now he realized his reputation might actually work against him. The Sith Masters weren't known for their tolerance or their mercy. He'd defied a direct order: there was a good chance they'd decide to make a harsh example of him.

He couldn't say how long they'd left him at the bottom of the pit. After a while he fell asleep, exhausted by the battle and the forced march. He slipped in and out of consciousness; at one point it was light outside his prison and he knew day must have come. The next time he came to it was dark again.

They hadn't fed him yet; his stomach was growling in protest as it gnawed away at itself. His throat was parched and dry; his tongue felt as if it had swollen up large enough to choke him. Despite this, there was a slowly increasing pressure on his bladder, but he didn't want to relieve himself. The pit stank enough already.

Maybe they were just going to leave him here to die a slow and lonely death. Given the rumors he'd heard of Sith torture, he almost hoped that was the case. But he hadn't given up. Not yet.

When he heard the sound of approaching footsteps he scrambled to his feet and stood straight and tall, even though his hands were still cuffed in front of him. Through the containment field he could just make out the blurred forms of several guards standing on the edge of the pit, along with another figure wearing a heavy, dark cloak.

"Take him to my ship," the cloaked figure said in a deep, rasping voice. "I will deal with this one on Korriban."

Chapter 8

Des never got a clear look at the man who'd ordered his transfer. By the time they'd gotten him out of the pit, the cloaked figure had vanished. They gave him food and water, then let him clean and refresh himself. Though he was freed from the cuffs, he was still under heavy guard as he boarded a small transport ship heading for Korriban.

Nobody spoke to him on the trip, and Des didn't know what was going on. At least he wasn't cuffed anymore. He chose to take that as a good sign.

They arrived in the middle of the day. He had expected them to touch down at Dreshdae, the only city on the dark and forbidding world. Instead the ship landed at a starport built atop an ancient temple overlooking a desolate valley. A chill wind blew across the landing pad as he disembarked, but it didn't bother Des. After the stale air of the pit, any breeze felt good. He felt a shiver go down his spine as his foot touched Korriban's surface. He'd heard that this had once been a place of great power, though now only the merest shadows remained. There was an undercurrent of malice here; he'd felt it as soon as the transport had entered the bleak planet's atmosphere.

From this vantage point he could make out other temples scattered across the world's desert surface. Even at this distance he could perceive the eroded rock and crumbling stone of the once grand entrances. Beyond the valley, the city of Dreshdae was a mere speck on the horizon.

He was met on the landing pad by a hooded figure. He could tell right away this wasn't the same one who had come to him in the pit. This person had neither the size nor the impressive bearing of his liberator; even through the containment field Des had been able to sense his commanding presence.

This figure, which Des now thought to be female, motioned for him to follow. Silently she led him down a flight of stone steps and into the temple itself. They crossed a landing and descended another set of stairs, then repeated the pattern, working their way level by level down from the temple's apex to the ground below. There were doors and passages leading off from each landing, and Des could hear snippets of sound and conversation echoing from them, though he could never quite tell what was being said.

She didn't speak, and Des knew better than to break the silence himself. Technically, he was still a prisoner. For all he knew, she was leading him to his court-martial. He wasn't about to make things worse by asking foolish questions.

When they reached the bottom of the building, she led him to a stone archway with yet another flight of stairs. These were different, however: they were narrow and dark, and wound their way down until they vanished from sight deep in the bowels of the ground. Without a word his guide handed him a torch she had taken from a bracket on the wall and then stepped aside.

Wondering what was going on, Des made his way carefully down the steep staircase. He couldn't say how much deeper he went; it was difficult to maintain any perspective in the narrow confines of the stairwell. After several minutes he reached the bottom, only to find a long hallway stretching out before him. At the end of the hallway he encountered a single room.

The room was dark and filled with shadow. Only a few torches sputtered on the stone wall, their dying flames barely able to pierce the gloom.

Des paused at the threshold, letting his eyes adjust. He could just make out a dim figure inside. It beckoned to him.

"Come forward."

He felt a chill, though the room was far from cold. The air itself was electric, filled with a power he could actually feel. He was surprised that he didn't feel afraid. He recognized what he felt as the chill of anticipation.

As Des moved deeper into the room the features of the shrouded figure became clear, revealing himself to be a Twi'lek. Even under the loose-fitting robe he wore, Des could see he was thick and heavyset. He stood nearly two meters tall, easily the largest Twi'lek Des had ever met.. though not quite as large as Des himself.

His lekku wound down his broad chest and wrapped back up around his muscular neck and shoulders; his eyes glowed orange beneath his brow, mirroring the flickering torches. He smiled, revealing the sharp, pointed teeth common to his species.

"I am Lord Kopecz of the Sith," he said. At that moment, Des knew without a doubt this was the cloaked one who had come to him in the pit, and he gave a slight bow of his head in acknowledgment.

"I am to be your inquisitor," Lord Kopecz explained, his voice showing no emotion. "I alone will determine your fate. Rest assured my judgment will be final."

Des nodded again.

The Twi'lek fixed his burning orange eyes on Des. "You are no friend of the Jedi or their Republic."

It wasn't a question, but Des felt compelled to answer anyway. "What have they ever done for me?"

"Exactly," Kopecz said with a cruel smile. "I understand you have fought many battles against the Republic forces. Your fellow troopers speak highly of you. The Sith have need of men like you if we are to win this war." He paused. "You were a model soldier… until you disobeyed a direct order."

"The order was a mistake," Des said. His throat had grown so dry and tight that he had trouble getting the words out.

"Why did you refuse to attack the outpost during the day? Are you a coward?"

"A coward wouldn't have completed the mission," Des replied sharply, stung by the accusation.

Kopecz tilted his head to the side and waited.

"Attacking in the daylight was a tactical mistake," Des continued, trying to press his point. "Ulabore should have relayed that information back to command, but he was too scared. Ulabore was the coward, not me. He would rather risk death at the hands of the Republic than face the Brotherhood of Darkness. I prefer not to throw my life away needlessly."

"I can see that from your service record," Kopecz said. "Kashyyyk, Trandosha, Phaseera… if these reports are accurate, you have performed incredible feats during your time with the Gloom Walkers. Feats some would claim to be impossible."

Des bristled at the implication. "The reports are accurate," he replied.

"I have no doubt that they are." Kopecz either hadn't noticed or didn't care about the tone of Des's reply. "Do you know why I brought you to Korriban?"

Des was beginning to realize that this wasn't really a court-martial after all. It was some kind of test, though for what he still wasn't sure. "I feel I've been chosen for something."

Kopecz gave him another sinister smile. "Good. Your mind works quickly. What do you know of the Force?"

"Not much," Des admitted with a shrug. "It's something the Jedi believe in: some great power that's supposed to be just floating out there in the universe somewhere."

"And what do you know of the Jedi?"

"I know they believe themselves to be guardians of the Republic," Des replied, making no attempt to hide his contempt. "I know they wield great influence in the Senate. I know many believe they have mystical powers."

"And the Brotherhood of Darkness?"

Des considered his words more carefully this time. "You are the leaders of our army and the sworn enemy of the Jedi. Many believe that you, like them, have unnatural abilities!'

"But you do not?"

Des hesitated, struggling to come up with the answer he thought Kopecz wanted to hear. In the end he couldn't figure out what his inquisitor was looking for, so he simply told the truth. "I believe most of the stories are greatly exaggerated."

Kopecz nodded. "A common enough belief. Those who do not understand the ways of the Force regard such tales as myth or legend. But the Force is real, and those who wield it have power you can't even imagine.

"You have seen many battles but you have not experienced the real war. While troops vie for control of worlds and moons, the Jedi and Sith Masters seek to destroy each other. We are being driven toward an inevitable and final confrontation. The faction that survives, Sith or Jedi, will determine the fate of the galaxy for the next thousand years.

"True victory in this war will not come through armies, but through the Brotherhood of Darkness. Our greatest weapon is the Force, and those individuals who have the power to command it. Individuals like you.

He paused to let his words sink in before continuing. "You are special, Des. You have many remarkable talents. These talents are manifestations of the Force, and they have served you well as a soldier. But you have only scratched the surface of your gift. The Force is real; it exists all around us. You can feel the power of it in this room. Can you sense it?"

Des hesitated only a moment before nodding. "I feel it. Hot. Like a fire waiting to explode."

"The power of the dark side. The heat of passion and emotion. I can feel it in you, as well. Burning beneath the surface. Burning like your anger. It makes you strong."

Kopecz closed his eyes and tilted his head back, as if basking in the heat. The tips of his head-tails twitched ever so slightly. The only sound was the faint crackle of flame from the torches. A bead of sweat rolled down the crown of Des's bare scalp and along the back of his neck. He didn't wipe it away, though he did shift his feet uncomfortably as it trickled its way between his shoulder blades. The slight movement seemed to snap the Twi'lek out of his trance.

He didn't speak again for several seconds, but he studied Des intently with his piercing gaze. "You have touched the Force in the past, but your abilities are an insignificant speck beside the power of a true Sith Master," he finally said. "There is great potential in you. If you stay here on Korriban, we can teach you to unleash it."

Des was speechless.

"You would no longer be a trooper on the front lines," Kopecz continued. "If you accept my offer, that part of your life is over. You will be trained in the ways of the dark side. You will become one of the Brotherhood of Darkness. And you will not return to the Gloom Walkers."

Des felt his heart pounding, his head swimming. As long as he could remember, he'd known he was special because of his unique talents. And now he was being told that his abilities were nothing compared with what he could really accomplish.

Still, part of him balked at the idea of leaving his unit without even having a chance to say good-bye. He considered Adanar, Lucia, and the others as more than just fellow soldiers; they were his friends. Could he really abandon them like this, even for the chance to join the Sith Masters?

He recalled one of the last things Groshik had ever said to him: Don't count on others for help. In the end each of us is in this alone. The survivors are those who know how to look out for themselves.

Everything he'd had, he'd given to his unit. He'd saved their lives too many times to count. And in the end, when the enforcers had come to take him away, they'd been powerless to save him. They would have tried if he'd let them, but they would have failed. Des realized the truth: his unit, his friends, could do nothing for him now.

He could rely only on himself, like always. He'd be a fool to turn this opportunity down.

"I am honored, Master Kopecz, and I gratefully accept your offer."

"The way of the Sith is not for the weak," the big Twi'lek warned. "Those who falter will be… left behind." There was something ominous in his tone.

"I won't be left behind," Des replied, unfazed.

"That remains to be seen," Kopecz noted. Then he added, "This is a new beginning for you, Des. A new life. Many of the students who come here take a new name for themselves. They leave their old life behind."

Des had no desire to hang on to any part of his old life. An abusive father, the brutality of working the mines on Apatros; he had been seeking a new life for as long as he could remember. The Gloom Walkers had offered an escape, but it had been a temporary one. Now he had a chance to leave his past behind forever. All he had to do was embrace the Brotherhood of Darkness and its teachings. And yet, for reasons he couldn't explain, he felt the cold grip of fear closing in on him. The fear made him hesitate.

"Do you wish to choose a new name for yourself, Des?" Kopecz asked, possibly sensing his reluctance. "Do you wish to be reborn?" Des nodded.

Kopecz smiled once more. "And by what name shall we call you now?"

The fear would not stop him; he would seize the fear, transform it, and make it his own. He would take what had once made him weak and use it to make himself strong.

"My name is Bane. Bane of the Sith."

Lord Qordis, exalted Master of the Sith Academy on Korriban, scratched gently at his chin with long, talon-like fingers.

"This student you have brought me, this Bane, has never been trained in the ways of the Force?"

Kopecz shook his head and twitched his lekku ever so slightly in annoyance. "As I told you before, Qordis, he grew up on Apatros, a world controlled by the ORO Company."

"Yet you managed to find this young man and bring him here to the Academy. It seems almost too convenient."

The heavyset Twi'lek snarled. "This is not a plot against you, Qordis. That is no longer our way. We are a Brotherhood now, remember? You are too suspicious."

Qordis laughed. "Not suspicious; cautious. It has helped me to maintain my position here among so many powerful and ambitious young Sith."

"He is as powerful as any of them," Kopecz insisted.

"But he is also older. We prefer to find our students when they are younger and more… malleable."

"Now you sound like a Jedi," Kopecz sneered. "They seek younger and younger pupils, hoping to find them pure and innocent. In time they will refuse any who are not infants. We must be quick to pluck those they leave behind. Besides," he continued, "Bane is too strong to simply pass over, even for the Jedi. We are lucky we found him before they did."

"Yes, lucky," Qordis echoed, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "His arrival here seems to be an incredible turn of many fortuitous events. Quite lucky indeed."

"Some might see it that way," Kopecz admitted. "Others might see it as something more. Destiny, perhaps."

There was silence while Qordis considered his longtime rival's words. "The other acolytes have been training for many years. He will be far behind," he said at last.

"He will catch up, if given the chance," Kopecz insisted.

"And I wonder… will the others give him that chance? Not if they are smart. I'm afraid we may simply be throwing away one of Lord Kaan's best troopers."

"We both know the Jedi won't be defeated by soldiers," Kopecz snapped. "I'd gladly trade a thousand of our best troopers for even one Sith Master."

Qordis seemed taken aback by his passionate reaction. "He is that strong, is he? This Bane?"

Kopecz nodded. "I think he might be the one we've been searching for. He could be the Sith'ari."

"Before he can claim that title," Qordis said with a cunning smile, "he'll have to survive his training."