Vader removed his helmet from his head, standing alone in the darkness of the meditation chamber of the Executor. The sensation of the air rushing over his scarred skin was overwhelming for a moment. The Star Destroyer hummed in the room, and the smell of ozone was a second skin over his armour. Ahead him there was nothingness, a hole in the fabric of reality. The door to Shu'ulk'Tarath, to the Old One that had slipped into every single one of his plans.
"Well done," the creature rumbled, the voices of many tortured souls echoing through some infernal pit. "Mara Jade proved an exceptional acquisition. But, as you are aware, there is always more power, and the power of the dark side is never finished."
Vader bowed his head in respect. "The Dark Side needs it. It needs more."
"Ah," the shadow intoned through its ethereal eyes. "Your harem will swell with your strength. As a reflection of your own might will your mistress also multiply. Already the second is chosen. She was meant for your apprentice's testing. But she will be more suited for you. Her name is… Shaak Ti."
It was a name he knew, a name of a woman he had once admired in his former life. Shaak Ti. Enigmatic Togruta, a Jedi who had escaped the Purge. She was a woman of quiet composure among the storm of the purge. She had been beautiful and he had not been allowed to want her. Now, in Vader, there was no discipline to restrain his desires. To think of her… her montrals, her unruffled spirit… She was the picture of composure, a thing of still water. Soon, she would be a picture of his power.
###
Life on the Executor ran on unspoken rhythms; some things were never discussed, while others were too obvious to ignore. No officer ever mentioned Lord Vader's bad moods, but everyone knew of them.
Everyone knew the red-haired girl, half a step behind him, whose speed and efficiency with which she carried out his demands were enough to terrify the bureaucrats, though in name, she was Vader's personal assistant. In truth, she was regarded by the ship's officers much as you would regard a blaster whose safety was disengaged. Yet she was not just beautiful which drew sideways glances along those gray, durasteel corridors, it was how Vader seemed to carry her about with him, not just close to him in protocol, but in how he possessed her, like he had purchased and paid for her.
Those who had been in the Empire long enough, who had survived the many battles and political intrigues that would land them as part of Vader's personal staff, liked to gather in the mess to discuss how Vader would tilt his helmet toward her in a gesture that was not command and not permission. They discussed how she would wander into his quarters, and not be seen until most of her ship had begun its long rest from hyperspace.
The Empire was certainly not the sort of place for rumors, but it was certainly not a place for rumors to stay away. And the rumors festered: Mara Jade was no ordinary assistant. Vader's chosen, exclusive, confidential mistress, an antidote, so quiet and private as the Emperor himself, to the galaxy's hardest hand. Mara herself heard the rumors, too, which drifted along like smoke between the hull's joints.
They did not show their presence on her face or in her behavior; to give the Emperor cause to know that sort of rumor existed would put her in greater peril than she could have fathomed. But she could not deny the rumor's truth: she was important.
She was, in the fractured, rebuilt heart of the dark lord, something she had never been: a link, a memory, a reminder of Anakin Skywalker. And so she walked, spoke, and listened, as sure and substantial as the foundation stones of the old Sith temples. But deep in her heart, Mara Jade knew herself to be more than a rumor; she was his.
###
Starkiller was never taken to the Star Destroyer. It had always been a personal invitation from Vader to his own personal station, one of those secret fortresses dotted around the galaxy, where the Dark Lord was answerable to no-one else. The station itself was very much like Vader: angular, steel and taciturn; every passageway was void of decoration. Finally, as Starkiller appeared before him, the voice spoke in its usual gruff, mechanical tone. "You have served me well, Starkiller. But you are not fully trained. I have a new assignment for you."
Mara Jade was also present, but she remained quiet. Her silence said enough. She was appraising and evaluating and those eyes of hers, even with all their distance, still retained the icy touch of the Core Worlds, cold enough to freeze anyone's soul should they stare too hard. And Starkiller was aware of it, of her silence, her very presence so close to Vader, and her very nearness gnawed at him as a wound he couldn't quite scratch.
Vader pressed on. "You will travel to Nar Shaddaa's shipyards. Your target will be a Jedi General, Rahm Kota. The General has eluded our grasp far too long and he remains one of the last remaining Jedi who hadn't gone into hiding or insane. We shall make an end of it."
He knew that name. It was familiar enough, even in his training, Kota's name being one of the last remaining Jedi who hadn't gone into hiding or insane.
Yet the moment he accepted the command, he knew why Mara Jade had remained silent. Vader was walking on equal ground with a woman who knew more than she let on. He saw no point in that, in that cold, detached green gaze. She was a pawn in a game Vader wasn't telling him about. A touch of jealousy, perhaps? Or mistrust? Both were fatal in someone like himself, and the Dark Side was quick to fan the fire in that direction: dark thoughts and fears waiting to destroy him.
Starkiller would not allow himself to be consumed. He knew his lesson too well, that if he ever questioned Vader he would die. If the doubts were to consume him, then he would be weak.
No, for now he would keep it all to himself. He turned and walked through the door, which promptly shut behind him, sealing him out from Vader and Mara Jade's unspoken silence.
Vader lifted his masked head to face her, his eyes clouding over, as though to see all that she thought within her mind. He was feeling her, too, the restlessness that was barely hidden under the surface of her Imperial calm. For the moment, though, the Dark Lord was not dismissing a student: He was a man in the center of a wreck he alone could feel.
"Mara, I must go to Felucia," Vader said like thunder. He said the name as if it were a stone. Felucia: the jungle planet, the mist, the fungus, the half-sunken ships of the Confederate fleet, the creatures that crawled in the brush beneath. And Mara could almost feel it. What on that planet could he possibly seek? With the Council shattered, and the Order itself on the brink of extinction, what could he want there? She did notice though, behind the mask: There was need.
Not just a need for another victory that Palpatine might applaud, or another atrocity for the Empire to glorify, but a need of his own. The Force told Mara this, whispering at the edge of her mind.
There was something Vader sought on Felucia, and he needed it.
"Another... conquest?" she managed in a low voice, a whisper in her mouth. The man was not in the least rattled by his own answer: "Shaak Ti, Jedi Master. One of the few to have survived the Purge. Her capitulation would be, meaningful."
Mara tightened as soon as she had heard her name: She knew her. Of course. A peaceful, calm presence. Reserved yet wise. The greatest of the great Jedi of the Republic. And now he was hunting Shaak Ti, like a prize. It made Mara's chest tighten as if someone had delivered a punch to her gut. A woman, for his harem. Just another pawn on a chess board, moved where and whenever he would have it so, discarded when it became necessary. That bit into her.
He left suddenly, though not without warning. Mara Jade remained behind, the door shut behind him for many moments, letting the stillness wash over her, letting the sound of his breathing fade into her recollections. She would sit and be haunted with the sense that she was a part of something far grander than she could fathom.
**
His ship was just as utilitarian as he was: cold. It wasn't the TIE fighter that escorted him through space, nor was it the Stormtroopers who waited on his commands, it was the craft itself. As it pulled out of hyperspace, his vision became very focused. Felucia. He had never visited Felucia in either life, but it was home to a Jedi who had somehow survived much longer than a Jedi should. She was Shaak Ti. She was no real threat to him, since he was even more powerful than when the Jedi were a threat.
However, for some reason she was still alive, and this bothered him immensely. He needed to know why, so that he might know what was necessary to change the situation. His curiosity, not fear, was what brought him to the fungus-laden world. Felucia was coming up to him. There were gigantic, glowing fungi growing here and there. The air was dense with spores, and his pilot seemed to struggle against a planet that preferred to be left undisturbed.
His shuttle pounded through the mist, trying to force its way to the surface of the world below. Vader didn't land the shuttle, per se. He simply let it hover in the air and deployed the shuttle ramp. His shuttle thrusters no doubt scorched the ground below, but Vader was the first to step out into the jungle. His presence was felt immediately.
The jungle swarmed with life, it smelled hot and putrid, and the air was heavy with the stink of rotting flora and strange blossoms. He was still a small dark blot in a forest of green where there should have been thrones and docking bays. Felucian war cry pierced the air and then they all ran toward him, shouting. They sounded like animals that knew they were dead already. They came screaming at him, their bonesword blades sizzling with power from the power of the shamans channeling the planet's energy.
They were just protectors, and Vader had fought Jedi. Armies. Wars. This was an easy warmup.
It took him one stroke to cut off the charging horde, and his blade sliced through flesh as easily as a howling gust through autumn leaves. The foliage seemed to pull away in his wake. It was a very easy, very quick kill. Screams rose above the roar of his saber. There was no rhythm to the bloodshed. However, there was an undercurrent. Was it anger? Perhaps, but not like before. It was something much older.
An emotion buried deep beneath two funerals and a lifetime of servitude to another. The thrill of a good fight. The exhilaration of purpose. This had been the catalyst in the past, before the mask, Sidious, and Padmé. He enjoyed it.
The simplicity. The adrenaline rush.
And, oddly enough, the sound of the jungle was not a nuisance. It was freedom.
Each time he struck, the spark flared. The Force coursing through him was not a replacement for what he had lost; nothing could be a substitute for the suffering that he had endured.
The Force flowed through him as strongly as it had years ago, unmediated by the presence of Vader's patron. He had not ever before felt the kind of confidence that Darth Vader felt in this instant; he felt alive. The Felucian wizards performed their last spell, bringing the rancors into the battle with a surge of magic. These massive, clumsy beasts came through the thick foliage. Every step was a small earthquake, shaking the ground.
The rancors roared out, the piercing sound echoing through the forest and frightening almost any settlement near by to flee for their lives. Vader didn't even raise a sword against them; instead, he reached out with the Force, icy and irresistible, and squeezed the brains from the beasts.
The rancors halted in their charge, a scream choking back into the back of their throats. Their bodies spasmed, as if the very atmosphere had turned on them, the creatures' eyes glazing as they crumpled and slumped forward to the soft ground, their shells lifeless. A crash rang through the air, thundering and loud. The silence that followed after the thunder was the opposite of silence; silence after death, the silence of emptiness.
For the Felucians, this was terrifying. The giant beasts, the apex predators in all this forest and this planet, lay there, dead, without a single blow being struck. Even the forest itself withdrew, the leaves of the alien flora ceasing to rustle, as if it too saw how great of a blow was dealt to this planet. Vader passed on, walking through the thickets, his black armor gleaming slightly from the sunlight that filtered down from the forest's canopy. Vader was dark, moving through green and blue that were too bright.
Each step was so powerful that the earth seemed to bend beneath his feet. The sorcerers broke, throwing themselves prostrate upon their faces and screaming. What was once a song, a chant, now became a scream. It was understood; felt in their bones: their connection with their world, their beasts, had been cut by just one man.