constant cold—Mother had become their purpose, the axis around which their existences turned. And Seer had become their prophet. Soldier had thought they’d never leave the moon, despite Seer’s constant proclamations to the contrary. And then a ship had come, bearing a Jedi, just as Seer had said it would. Alpha had insisted on facing the Jedi while the rest of them had fled in a stolen ship.
I will make you believe, Soldier.
He shook his head, pushed the pernicious notion of faith from his mind, and returned to the cockpit to be alone. The sight of the stars, blinking in the unending void, enthralled him. Up to then, he’d spent his entire existence within the confines of a frozen facility not more than a few square kilometers in area. Staring out the transparisteel of the cloakshape’s cockpit, he saw endless space, endless possibility.
And yet he had no idea where they were going, or what they would do when they arrived. Only Seer knew, and Seer would go mad within days—as would the rest of them, except him—unless they obtained more medicine.
And if that happened, what would he do? They were his purpose—especially the children—as much as Mother was theirs.
He made up his mind, stood, and headed back to the cargo bay, to Seer.
DARTH WYYRLOK STRODE INTO THE DARK CONFERENCE room, leaving the door open behind him. A smooth metal conference table dominated the circular, domed chamber. A pyramidal vidscreen sat centermost on the table. A small, sealed metal case with a retinal scan lock sat on the table, waiting for him. Within it was technology—mindspears—that One Sith agents had found in forgotten Rakatan ruins, deep in the Unknown Regions. The technology had formed the basis of the Master’s cloning program. One Sith scientists had been unable to duplicate its fiber-photon, dark side–based technology, so they had only a limited supply. Eyeing the case, Wyyrlok felt the faint, familiar pulse of dark-side energy emanating from it.
Thunder from a storm outside vibrated the walls of the tower. Rain thumped against the windows. Lightning traced a jagged seam the length of the night sky, the flash casting the soaring tombs and spires of Korriban in silhouette.
Staring out at the storm through the large transparisteel window, Wyyrlok wondered if the Master controlled the weather on Korriban, even as he journeyed in dreams.
As if in answer, the storm growled thunder, and another bolt of lightning made glowing veins in the sky. The dark-side energy of the planet pulsed, rippled.
Wyyrlok wondered, not for the first time, when the Master would emerge from his sleep to conquer and reestablish the Sith. Until then, the One Sith would only lurk around the edges of galactic events. Wyyrlok accepted that. His role was to serve, and the endgame of the Master’s plans stretched not through years, but centuries.
Wyyrlok checked his wrist chrono and saw that Nyss was late. He decided to start on his own and sat at one of the table’s high-backed, contoured chairs.
He activated the vidscreen with a touchpad built into the table and watched the mute replay of the transmission from the frozen moon. He’d already seen it once, but he needed to see it again, to ensure he had missed nothing and to confirm his thinking.
The transmission was a copy of the visual stimuli received by the One Sith’s Anzat agent, Kell Douro. The One Sith had attached a recorder to Douro’s optic nerve and brain that could be activated or deactivated as the Master willed. The Anzat had been as much a construct as a droid. Of course, he had never known that he had been made a sentient recording device, though Wyyrlok knew that Douro had often experienced lost time, memory lapses, and religious epiphanies—side effects of the implantation. When active, the implant had transmitted the visual data back to Douro’s ship, where a secret subroutine in the main computer had opened an encrypted subspace protocol and sent the data to Korriban for review.
There was another roll of thunder. Wyyrlok ran a hand over his head, his fingers lingering on his damaged left horn. He wondered if the Master had placed a similar device in his eye and brain. But then, perhaps the Master did not need such a device for him. He often felt that the Master could read his mind directly.
A blaster shot to Douro’s head had ended the transmissions. But not before the One Sith had received a raft of information from Douro’s most recent mission: tracking the Jedi Jaden