Of course, there could be no question anymore of returning to the Temple on time. The time granted until the next checkup with the healers flew by like space dust in hyperspace.
I'd lain unconscious for too long in the Temple on Yavin. The allotted time had run out hopelessly, which meant I had to come up with a plausible excuse.
Masking my coordinates, I contacted the Temple via a holotransmitter my loyal astromech had repaired.
After telling the Jedi on comms duty that I was forced to leave on a journey because the Force willed it, I was already preparing to cut the channel when the operator unexpectedly said that Master Yoda himself wanted to speak with me.
He knows! the thought flashed through me like heat. While the operator rerouted the comm channels, I tried to clear my mind of stray thoughts.
"Calm yourself," the Emperor ordered, drifting like a pale shadow just outside the holotransmitter's field of view. "I am shielding you in the Force. He will never be able to trace you."
There was no time to answer. The small figure of the Jedi Order's Grand Master appeared before me.
"Knight Dougan," Yoda bowed slightly.
"Master Yoda," I returned the greeting. "You wished to speak with me?"
A faint smirk tugged at the corners of the Master's lips.
"Heard I have, that the Force leads you down an unknown path," the Jedi narrowed his eyes slightly. "Leave the Jedi Order, intend you to?"
"My fate is tied to the Order and the Republic," I objected. "But Geonosis changed me. I can't remain who I was. The Force is showing me a path, and I intend to follow it."
"Many into darkness led, searches like this have," Yoda observed. "The dark side clouds the mind."
"There will be no fall into darkness for me, Master," I promised. "I will remain true to the path I chose and return to Coruscant. As soon as I find myself."
Yoda sighed.
"Hold you, I will not," Yoda closed his eyes for a moment. "May the Force be with you."
"And with you, Master," I said my goodbye. The projector shut off. I ran a hand over my face, as if ripping off a mask.
"We must hurry," Valkorion noted. "The matter won't wait."
The ghost strode toward the corvette's bridge.
"To wage war, you need a great deal of resources," I said, catching up to the Sith. "I don't have enough money even for the mossiest cruiser."
"I did not speak of your credits," the Emperor replied. At the nav computer he addressed R3.
"Plot a jump to these coordinates."
The Sith dictated a sequence of stellar coordinates, and the droid entered them into the computer at once. A couple of minutes later it reported that the coordinates had been adjusted according to the algorithm. I gave the sign, and the corvette leapt into hyperspace.
"The Albarrio Sector?" I clarified, looking at the arrival point on the holographic galactic map. "That's just a few steps from the Muuns' homeworld. Are we flying to the bankers? Are we looking for allies?"
Valkorion bared his teeth and broke into booming laughter that made even the droid uneasy.
"In this galaxy there can be no allies besides the Force. All others are servants or followers. But no, we are not going to the Muuns," Vitiate spat the last word.
The droid trilled in binary.
"The Maelstrom Nebula?" I repeated. "But that's where…"
"For three hundred years I kept imprisoned, perhaps, the mightiest and most dangerous of Jedi," the Emperor said, confirming my guess. "Among dozens of my most dangerous enemies, Revan stood out for his unbending spirit and faith in a righteous cause… You should have seen the pomp with which two heroes of the Mandalorian Wars entered my throne room… One moment, and they are on their knees before me, begging to serve me."
"He managed to hold back your attack on the Republic for three hundred years," I recalled.
"And I managed to cultivate devotion in him," the Emperor smiled. "Or did you think he resurrected me of his own free will? Oh no, my young apprentice. Fear of oblivion, fear of death—that is the only thing that can frighten me. Naturally, there is nothing surprising in the fact that I will use even enemies to preserve my own life."
And at that, frankly, my jaw dropped. No, when I played through the expansion, I'd grimaced a little at the plotline—how, supposedly, at the Foundry Revan cast off his light side, and Dark Revan decided to resurrect and destroy the Emperor because he believed only he himself was capable of doing it…
Now the picture became clear. When Revan and his allies, after defeating Malak, went to Dromund Kaas to kill Vitiate, he captured the Jedi and locked him in stasis. For three hundred years Revan planted in the Emperor's mind the idea of delaying the invasion of the Republic. And the Emperor, as the history claimed, merely drew from the Jedi's mind information about the Republic and the Jedi.
Now, the one who had once been called Tenebrae told the story from another angle. And in a way that made his version of events look far more convincing.
"What awaits us at the Maelstrom?" I asked, meaning the station that had been turned into a prison.
"My personal vault," Valkorion answered simply. Seeing my confusion, the Sith continued. "After Revan was freed, the garrison and the prisoners were evacuated. On my orders the station was moved to another location within the nebula. Foreseeing the Jedi's murder of my Voice, I removed the most valuable Sith relics from my residence and hid them there."
"In three thousand years someone would have found it," I said doubtfully. "Hyperspace doesn't work inside the nebula, so merchants have to cross it at sublight speed. And there are a lot of pirates…"
In the next instant I was flying across the main deck, covering the distance from the bridge to the holoterminal in a heartbeat. Smashing my head painfully into the couch that had once seemed soft, I flared with anger and tore Valkorion's shackles off my body.
"Perhaps the lesson on Yavin 4 was not enough," the Emperor said with menace. "Your next doubt will end at an open airlock."
"I… understand, Master," I rasped, filling my lungs again.
"The station is protected," the Sith said. "Its preservation is the concern of several legions of my servants," he smirked.
"That's… magnificent, my Lord," I admitted. "But what exactly do we need on the station?"
"Everything," the Sith shrugged. "Besides, your new servants are waiting for you there."
***
The Maelstrom was a green nebula of charged particles and cosmic dust that formed an energy field beyond science.
Because of it, navigation computer readings aboard ships were distorted, which led to unfortunate consequences.
The nebula lay on the border of two sectors—Albarrio and Relgim. The latter, incidentally, gave its name to the trade route that partially passed through this very nebula. Merchants were forced to drop out of hyperspace and cross the charged region at sublight speed.
That couldn't help but attract people who liked profiting at another's expense. Pirates became a scourge of local trade, and it's no wonder—there was always something to grab. Even if not too much. The Relgim Route could not boast trade as lively as its hyperlane brethren. But as they say, "enough for bread and butter" was plenty for pirates.
Crossing the nebula to our destination took several hours, which passed unbelievably dully, in complete silence.
I swapped my battered Sith warrior armor for its Jedi variant. To my amazement, the latter was even better than Imperial armor. A built-in shield generator, a built-in wrist deck, a portable holoprojector, several cartridges for kolto injection—long since turned into jelly. Even a tactical headset was included. How interesting.
I left the helmet that came with the armor in storage. After all, in exchange for better head protection, it severely limited visual perception.
"We have arrived," Valkorion declared when the computer finally reported the end of the route.
I stared at the uniform green haze beyond the viewport. I didn't feel like being thrown out an airlock, so in the future I preferred to ask the Emperor fewer questions.
"The defenders already have us in their sights," Valkorion explained. Turning to R3, he commanded, "Set the transmitter to this frequency," and dictated a string of digits.
The droid blinked an indicator at me and began tuning the comm system. A second later it reported completion.
"'Kneel before the dragon of Zakuul,'" Valkorion said, looking at me. "Say that over the channel and the camouflage will be lifted."
Smirking (mentally) at "the dragon of Zakuul," I repeated the password into the microphone.
For the first moment, nothing happened.
For the second, nothing happened either. I reached out with the Force, but could not detect any living beings around us.
"Master, there's no life around us," I noted. "Perhaps the servants who guarded this place died?"
Valkorion glanced at me with mild contempt.
"They were never alive," Valkorion said without emotion.
And in that same minute I saw something.
On the other side of the corvette's viewport, several gray-black points appeared in the green haze, spaced far apart—and they began rapidly growing in size.
"Holy shit," I breathed a second later.
Like the edge of a wildfire, the camouflage peeled outward, revealing the station's massive hull. A giant disk with four superstructures and a long spire below. A station so familiar from missions on both the Republic and Imperial fleets. The Hero of Tython had been held on one like this, rescued by Lord Scourge. Malgus—who declared himself Emperor—had been killed on one too…
But that wasn't even what inspired awe.
Ten enormous—about a kilometer long—Harrower-class Sith Empire dreadnoughts. Triangular giants with a split prow and a flattened superstructure—prototypes of Palpatine's Imperial Star Destroyers, the foundations of Vitiate's Sith Empire naval power.
"This is the Emperor's Ghost squadron," the Sith explained to me. "The remnants of the Fifth Fleet. Grand Moff Rycus Kilran once commanded it, but after the failure with Revan, I was… disappointed. The remnants of his fleet were modernized and became the guardians of my vault."
"You executed him?" I clarified.
"He got what he deserved," Vitiate answered vaguely. "Bring the ship into the dock, and we'll begin."
***
Moving through the station's grim, cold corridors that rang with hollow metal, I kept using the Force to keep myself from freezing.
The station computer had only just brought life support up to full, but a long time would still pass before the millennia of vacuum-cold faded.
Leaving the ship in the hangar, the Emperor's ghost and I moved through the station's interior toward its core.
"How did you create camouflage for an entire fleet?" I asked.
"Starslayer," the Emperor answered. Seeing I didn't understand, he began explaining condescendingly.
"When I was Sith Emperor, my subjects created a station that drained the energy of stars. With that station, the Sith could build ships equipped with superweapons in just a couple of years, instead of the usual decades. The Starslayer produced five fine examples of superweapons, each of which could turn any enemy to dust. The Right Hand allowed ships to be destroyed in hyperspace. The Requiem destroyed entire armadas with a single shot. Emperor's Ghost was a stealth ship. Spear of Power moved at superfast speeds. The Immortal had experimental armor that no known weapon could pierce. And all of them were lost with breathtaking stupidity," I felt contempt in the Emperor's voice. "The Republic destroyed the Starslayer and the Immortal while it was under repair. The Right Hand and the Spear were destroyed by saboteurs. My servants managed to unload from the station the schematics for most of the weapons produced there. To be honest, when the Eternal Fleet met Harrowers in Wild Space—with Requiems mounted on them—the Eternal had a rough time," it seemed the Emperor was smiling. "It was twice as pleasant to vent the crew into airlocks, knowing they served under Kilran."
Reaching the lift, I summoned the car, which at the Emperor's gesture carried us to the upper level.
"The 'Skyborn' captured ten dreadnoughts, but only one with a Requiem aboard," Valkorion continued. "I foresaw my fall, so I hid them here, in the nebula. Fortunately, by that point the masking-field prototypes—Emperor's Ghost—refined by Malgus's engineers were already concealing my vault. My servants refitted the squadron, investing into it the existing work of Darth Mekhis from the Starslayer and the secrets I knew of the Eternal Fleet."
"So what did you get?" I asked.
"Every ship in the Ghost squadron is equipped with a cloaking field and is invisible both to the naked eye and to sensors," the Emperor began. "The flagship is armed with a Requiem. All ships have a class 0.5 hyperdrive and Taerab Starship Manufacturing modifications for fuel efficiency."
The lift stopped at the required level. With a soft hiss, the doors slid apart.
"Our destination is in the center of this level," the Emperor explained.
Leaving the lift, we walked at an unhurried pace along a wide semicircular corridor. On the left wall there was a huge observation screen through which the destroyers' hulls were visible.
It brought back memories of how my game character, once upon a time, together with Kira Carsen, cut his way through crowds of Sith adepts toward the Emperor's throne room—the place where the Emperor's Voice enslaved the strike team and set the Jedi to serving him.
I voiced my thoughts aloud.
The Emperor was silent. Then he asked, "Why did you not dispose of her after you learned her true nature?"
The Emperor meant Kira Carsen's past. According to the story, the Hero of Tython learns Kira comes from a Sith family, and as a child she was a Child of the Emperor—a specially prepared infiltrator over whom the Emperor could seize control. During the battle for Tython, that nearly cost the Hero dearly.
"She's an excellent companion," I said. "Good with a blade, and capable in the Force."
"And only that?" the Emperor said doubtfully.
"Out of all the other companions, she was the only one who was a girl," I noted. "And she was pretty cute… back then."
Valkorion smirked.
"The flesh is weak," he said with clear subtext. "And feelings cloud the mind. I learned that on Zakuul, after I abandoned the use of Voices."
"Why was it necessary to use Voices?" I asked—a question that had interested me for a long time.
"Even with my power, one cannot be in two places at once," the Sith answered. "Though the Sith Empire disappointed me, I could not leave them without oversight. Otherwise they would have butchered the galaxy. But I could not abandon the Eternal Empire I was creating either. So I had to use Voices."
"But they couldn't withstand your power," I said. "Wouldn't it have been simpler to create clones of yourself? And inhabit them?"
Valkorion looked at me with interest.
"A wise thought," he judged. "But creating a body suitable to contain all my might—even with Sith alchemy—is no simple task. In essence, the Voices the Hero of Tython killed were clones. And unfortunately," the Sith continued, "my former Wrath, Lord Scourge, made an effort to destroy my cloning laboratory."
"He knew its location?" I asked, surprised. Sure, by the novel Revan, Scourge grew close to the Emperor—but to trust him that much…
As if reading my thoughts, Vitiate continued.
"After Revan's second captivity, in which Scourge aided me, I rewarded him with immortality," the Sith said. "Experimental technology. A great deal of rage, sorcery, and Sith alchemy."
"If I recall, you succeeded," I remembered.
"On the third attempt—yes," Vitiate said coldly. "The technology was unrefined."
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
"You cloned Scourge?"
"Exactly," the ghost nodded. "I could not rely on success at once, so, seeing the first body die, I created a second. But it too began to die with time. Then I realized the cloned body, created through Sith alchemy, had to be fed by the dark side. That's why the third Scourge lived in constant rage." A nasty, repulsive smile of a self-satisfied maniac appeared on the ghost's face. "It was amusing… Watching him spend three hundred years using the dark side just to stay alive. The more often he turned to the dark side, the more his body broke down. Each time he had to plunge into rage so deep that by the time of the Eternal Empire's invasion he went mad, flooding the world he chose to live on with his fury."
"And what happened to him after that?" I asked.
"Arcann," the Sith's lips curled upward. "My son never managed to overcome envy. Learning where Scourge was, he found him. To be honest, it was interesting to watch two of my creations, blinded by the dark side, try to kill each other. Only because I gave them life… Yes, it was truly amusing…"
"And which of them won?" I asked.
"Both died," Vitiate said with a bored expression. "Scourge fed on his opponent's emotions, and Arcann on the dark side could draw strength nearly without end. The result—they burned themselves out with dark side energy."
"And you don't pity your own child?" I asked, for form's sake. I already knew the answer.
"I learned to sacrifice everything in the name of my goals," Valkorion cut in.
I needed to change the subject urgently, because the silence had grown so tomb-heavy you could call in a funeral detail.
After the next turn, a wide staircase opened before us, leading to massive doors. Using Force Speed, I was at the top in an instant. The ghost kept pace.
"You managed to hide the ships from eyes and sensors," I returned to the topic of the squadron. "But won't the Jedi be able to sense life aboard the ships?"
Touching the control panel, I let ancient mechanisms awaken from a thousand-year sleep and dissolve the passage into the throne room for me.
"Who said the dreadnought crews are alive?" the Emperor threw disdainfully.
***
The station's architect had built the throne room in a circular shape, placing broad ramps with railings around the perimeter. The walls were hung with control panels and built-in terminals.
From the ramps, dizzying voids led into the station's depths.
The center of the hall was occupied by a wide, elongated platform, at the far end of which—away from the entrance—stood a massive, matte-black thing that inspired superstitious terror, and at the same time drew me in…
"The Eternal Throne," Valkorion commented. "More precisely, its copy—significantly improved—created to control the ships of the Ghost squadron. And, naturally, to rule your new Empire."
On both sides of the platform, in three ranks, blaster rifles at the ready, stood the ceremonial guard—Skytroopers, the droids that formed the backbone of Zakuul's Eternal Empire army. But what were they doing here?
"I don't understand," I admitted. "The Eternal Throne controlled the Eternal Fleet…"
"The Eternal Throne controlled droids," Vitiate cut me off. "Which controlled the Eternal Fleet. I controlled them through a relay on Zakuul. And I decided it would not hurt to create an independent fleet for myself," the ghost pointed at the throne. "Take it."
Approaching the throne, I realized it wasn't the same device I'd seen in trailers. This throne wasn't on the floor; it seemed to hang from a massive backplate fixed into a cylindrical apparatus beneath the ceiling. Around the front of the throne, but down on the floor, at an angle sufficient for viewing information while seated, were terminals.
Coming right up to it, I sprang lightly to the throne hanging a couple of meters above the platform and sat down. The monitors of the terminals at my feet lit up, and somewhere beyond the throne room I heard the faint rustle of mechanisms awakening from sleep.
At that same moment, the skytroopers pivoted right and stared at me. Something clicked in my head, and looking into the robots' lifeless eyes fixed on me sitting on the throne, I remembered why this device had seemed familiar.
"This isn't the Maelstrom Prison," I said to the Emperor. "This is the station where you tortured the Hero of Tython and the Jedi strike team."
The Emperor laughed with satisfaction. He laughed for several minutes before falling silent.
"It took you an hour to recognize the deception," Valkorion said with obvious pleasure as he approached me. "Malgus spent far longer on the fake and still never recognized the trap."
"What are you talking about?" My hand went to my lightsaber hilt automatically. There was no telling what to expect from Valkorion.
The Emperor gave me an approving look.
"I destroyed the Maelstrom with its pathetic garrison," he said coldly. "And I moved my station here. Malgus, for all his talents, never managed to solve the traps. With trembling he accepted from my loyal guards a pseudo-station, on which he placed his secrets—including those he obtained from the Rakata Foundry. And when the Dark Council came for him, while they fought, the guards removed from the station all technical secrets with which Malgus intended to build an Empire. And they brought it all here," Valkorion indicated the control panels on the armrests. "On this station I gathered the most significant secrets of my time. Each of them, alone, can bring systems to their knees. Together, they will bring the entire known galaxy into the fold of your Empire."
"You created an entire station just to trick and kill Malgus?" I blurted. "But you could have simply crushed him with the Eternal Fleet…"
"Zakuul was not ready for war yet," the Emperor clarified. "And who said Malgus is dead?"
"But the Dark Council sent a strike team for him, and they blew up the station," I recalled. "And Malgus died."
Valkorion smiled with satisfaction.
"Restore the station and fleet camouflage. Check station operations. Pay special attention to numbered accounts and warehouses," the ghost chuckled quietly. "After that, I will be waiting for you in my personal trophy hall."
The ghost vanished. As usual—without explaining where or why. And, really, it didn't matter. I'd learned the lesson. Valkorion, though he'd warmed after Yavin 4, still remained my teacher and master. He didn't need unnecessary questions, and I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the answers.
Obeying my mentor's will, I settled more comfortably on the throne and placed my hands on the armrests covered with buttons and regulators.
A short command—and from the center of the platform a beam of light erupted, transforming into a holographic diagram of the station with annotations. Sweeping my eyes over the hologram, I ran straight into empty eye sockets boring into me with man-made sensors from beneath snow-white armor.
The silent ceremonial guard did not take their eyes off me. It was unsettling, to be honest.
"Leave me," I ordered. "Stand outside the door," I added after thinking it over.
As one, the droids turned in sync and left. The moment the doors sealed behind them, I activated my comlink.
"R3," I called the astromech. The droid chirped in greeting. "Lock on to my signal and roll over here. I can't do this without you."