Written by Paul S. Kemp, 2/3/2011
Originally published in Insider #124
A haze of smoke hung in the air, the black residuum of the Imperial fleet’s pre-landing bombardment of Alderaan. Rage burned in Malgus, its seed grown from the word he kept hearing over Imperial communication channels: Retreat.
The Empire had lost Alderaan. Hours before Malgus had walked its surface as a conqueror, but now…
Now signal fires dotted its surface, rallying points for the Republic forces.
A counterattack was coming. Reports indicated a Republic fleet en-route to Alderaan.
Retreat.
Retreat.
He clenched his fists so hard it made his fingers ache. His breathing sounded like a rasp over wood. His skin stung from burns. A Republic commando had exploded a grenade in his face, and combat with a Jedi witch had damaged his lungs. Lacerations and contusions made a grim mosaic on his flesh.
But he felt no pain. He felt only anger.
Hate.
A sense of frustration that made him want to shout. His personal shuttle roared low over the scorched landscape. Below him, buildings and bodies smoldered in the ruins of an Alderaani town. Around him, Imperial ships prowled the sky, flying escort. He tried to unknot his fists, failed. He wanted-
The presence of a light-side Force user bumped up against his Force sensitivity, a sudden flare in his perception. He looked down and out the viewport. He saw nothing but charred ruins, rubbled buildings, burnt out vehicles. He pinched the comlink he wore.
“Turn us around.”
“My lord?” asked his pilot.
“Come about, cut speed to one quarter, and reduce altitude by one hundred meters.”
“Yes, my lord.”
As the shuttle wheeled around and slowed, Malgus overrode the safeties and lowered the landing ramp. Wind whipped into the cabin, carrying the smell of a charred planet, a planet Malgus had intended to kill, but instead had only wounded.
Someone had to pay for that.
He took the hilt of his lightsaber in hand and sank into the Force. The burned-out buildings below stuck out of the scorched earth like rotted teeth, crooked and black.
“Slower,” he said to the pilot.
He reached out through the Force, probing for the light-side presence he had felt.
At first there was nothing, and he wondered if he had been mistaken, or if the light-side user had perceived Malgus and suppressed his power. But then…
There.
He felt it as an irritation behind his eyes, an itch only violence could scratch. He shed his cloak and stepped to the edge of the landing ramp. The wind pulled at him. Anger swelled in him, buoyed him up. The Force anchored him in place. He pinched his comlink again.
“Hover above the ruins until I return.”
“Return, my lord? Where are you going? You’re seriously wounded.”
Malgus deactivated the comlink and leapt off the ramp into the open air. He ignited his blade as the ground rushed up to meet him. Using the Force to cushion the impact, he hit the ground in a crouch.
He stood in the center of a street pockmarked with craters and littered with broken glass and overturned speeders. An aircar burned 10 meters from him, vomiting gouts of black smoke into the sky. Somewhere a wind bell chimed furiously in the gusts.
“I’m here, Jedi!” Malgus shouted, his voice booming over the ruins.
Behind him, he heard the hum of an activating lightsaber, then another.
He turned to see a male Zabrak, a Jedi, emerge from one of the burned-out buildings that lined the street. The blue line of a lightsaber glowed in each of his hands. He studied Malgus sidelong.
“Malgus,” the Jedi said.
Malgus did not know the Jedi’s name and he did not care. The Zabrak was merely the focus of his anger, a convenient target for his rage.
Malgus fell into the Force, roared, and bounded down the street, his anger lending him speed.
The Jedi held his ground. At twenty meters, the Jedi raised his lightsabers aloft to either side and drew them both down with a flourish.
Too late the rumble of the falling buildings penetrated the haze of Malgus’s anger. An avalanche of duracrete and transparisteel crashed down on him from either side of the street…
* * *
The creases on his father’s Imperial uniform looked sharp enough to cut meat, but his tone was as soft as the belly that overflowed his trousers.
“Come with me, Veradun.”
Veradun followed his father to the enormous menagerie they kept on the grounds of the family’s estate. His father, a biologist in the Imperial Science Corps, collected animals from countless worlds. The family had their own private zoo, financed by the Empire. Veradun had helped tend the creatures since he’d been a small boy.
Shrieks, chitters, howls, and a pungent animal stink greeted their entrance. His father’s voice knifed through the noise.
“You know why I enjoy these animals so much?”
Veradun shook his head. He saw himself reflected in the lenses of his father’s eyeglasses.
“Because we can learn from them.”
“Learn what?”
His father smiled cryptically. “Come on.”
Father put a hand on his shoulder and steered him through the maze of habitats, cages, and tanks, until they reached the transparisteel cube of the kouhon tank. A thick layer of sand, dotted with a few loose rocks and some loose fur, was all that was visible. The segmented arthropod, its body as long as Veradun’s arm, lay hidden somewhere underneath the sand of the tank. Veradun walked around the tank, trying to spot any sign of the kouhon. Nothing.
Meanwhile, his father lifted a feeder rat from a nearby cage and held it over the kouhon’s tank.
“I fed it earlier,” Veradun said.
“I know.”
His father dropped the rat into the tank and it froze the moment it hit the sand. It sniffed the air, whiskers twitching.
The sand near it bulged.
The rat squealed with fear but before it could move, the kouhon erupted from the sand under it, seized the rodent in its scissor-like mandibles, and bit it in half. Blood spilled, painting the sand red.
The kouhon crawled fully from the sand, its head all mandibles and dead black eyes. Dozens of pairs of legs propelled its segmented body over the bloody bits of the rat. But it did not eat, and after a moment it burrowed back into the sand, leaving the rat’s carcass unmolested;
“Why do you think it killed the rat?” his father asked. “It was not hungry. As you said, you fed it not long ago.”
“Instinct,” Veradun said. “It’s a savage creature.”
“Good, Veradun. Good. Indeed, the kouhon kills for no reason. Does that make sense to you?”
“No, but…it’s an animal.”
His father kneeled to look Veradun in the face. “Right. And you’re not. The kouhon teaches us that senseless savagery is the province of animals, not men. Savagery is useful only if it’s controlled and put in service to an end. Do you understand?”
Veradun considered, nodded.
“The end is everything,” his father said.
* * *
Malgus stood in a pocket under a mountain of rubble, legs bent, the power from his upraised hands preventing several tons of duracrete and steel from crushing him. Dust made his already troubled breathing more difficult. He coughed as the words of his father echoed in his mind.
He’d been sloppy, so lost in his need for revenge that he’d failed to properly evaluate the Jedi’s power. He’d surrendered his reason to bloodlust. But no more. With an effort of will, he contained his anger, controlled it, made it a whetstone against which he sharpened his power. Using the Force, he blew the rubble up and away from him. It fell with a crash into the adjacent buildings. A Force-augmented leap carried him out and over the heap. The Jedi’s eyes widened as Malgus hit the street. Malgus sneered and charged.
He closed the distance between them rapidly. The red line of Malgus’s lightsaber moved so quickly it blurred into a red smear. The Jedi parried again and again, the sizzle of blade on blade resounding through the ruins. Malgus’s onslaught – a blizzard of slashes, cuts, and stabs – allowed the Jedi no room for a counterattack. The Jedi retreated before the offensive, desperately intercepting Malgus’s blows.
Malgus could have ended the Jedi in any of several ways, but he needed the satisfaction of a lightsaber kill.
* * *
“This is my favorite,” his father said.
“The viirsun?”
Veradun had always found the avian boring. A small ground bird with drab, brown and black feathers, it did little of interest other than care for its offspring, a male that was soon to leave the nest.
“Not the viirsun, no,” his father said.
“Then what?”
The viirsun’s habitat – native plants, a single tree, a few rocks – was built behind a transparisteel wall. As they watched, the mother regurgitated some partially digested insects into the mouth of her nearly grown offspring. Veradun had seen the same thing a hundred times, but his father watched intently, as if he’d never seen it before.
“What are you looking at?” Veradun asked. He saw nothing unusual.
“Watch.”
After devouring the insects, the offspring stood and strutted about the habitat, testing its legs. The mother watched, preening her feathers. In time, the offspring returned to the mother, stood over her, and began pecking at her with its beak. At first Veradun thought it wanted more food, but the pecking became more and more violent. Wings flapped, feathers flew. The mother attempted retreat but the offspring pursued, seized her neck in his beak and shook violently, once, twice. The offspring dropped her to the ground and began to feed.
Veradun had never seen anything like it.
“The offspring isn’t a viirsun,” his father explained. “It’s a mimnil. In its immature state, it looks like a juvenile viirsun. It kills the original offspring and replaces them. When it’s ready to molt, it attacks its adoptive mother. I’ve been watching this one for a while.”
A mimnil. Veradun had never suspected.
“I…still don’t understand.”
“Often things that pretend weakness await only the right moment to show strength. Do you understand, now?”
Veradun considered, nodded.
“You must trust no one,” his father said. “Least of all those who appear weak.”
* * *
Malgus’s lightsaber traced glittering red arcs through the air. He spun, slashed, stabbed, pushing the Jedi backwards. But always the Jedi parried. He seemed to be biding his time.
He was baiting him, Malgus realized. Feigning weakness.
Malgus relented in his attack, backed off a few steps, and reached out through the Force. Immediately he felt the faint, intentionally suppressed signature of another light-side user to his right. The Jedi’s ally was hidden in the rubble, moving closer.
Malgus loosed a furious series of overhand strikes that forced the Zabrak to retreat rapidly. Sidestepping a stab from the Jedi, Malgus rode his motion into a Force-augmented spinning side kick that hit the Jedi in the ribs and sent him cartwheeling into the wall of a nearby building. At the same time, he reached out with the Force for the hidden light-side user, brushed aside the resistance he felt, and pulled the Jedi out of hiding.
A human male in his twenties rose up out of ruins, dangling like a fish on the hook of Malgus’s power. His legs kicked futilely; the green blade of his lightsaber cut at empty air; he gagged as Malgus’s power squeezed shut his throat.
“Vorin!” shouted the Zabrak.
“So much for your ambush,” Malgus said, and closed his fist, crushing Vorin’s windpipe. He let the body fall to the charred earth. A flash of anger, quickly suppressed, shot from the Zabrak as he bounded over the rubble at Malgus. Malgus watched him come, his red blade held slack at his side.
At 10 meters, Malgus extended his free hand and loosed veins of blue Force lightning. They struck the charging Jedi: swept through his defenses, swirled around him, and began to burn flesh.
Shouting with pain, the Jedi leaned forward into the lightning – teeth bare, blue blades held before him – and staggered toward Malgus. Despite his burns, he came onward. One step, another, another, but he was failing, wilting in the heat of the lightning. Malgus channeled more power and the Jedi fell to his knees, screaming. The lightning spiraled around the Zabrak, blasting dark holes in his body. The lightsabers fell from his hands and he writhed in agony, screaming his pain into the sky.
Malgus ended his attack. The Jedi, ruined, fell to the ground and rolled over onto his back. His breathing sounded worse than Malgus’s.
Malgus strode to his side and stood over him.
He found that he admired the Jedi’s mettle. .
He deactivated his lightsaber.
* * *
After watching the mimnil devour the viirsun, his father had taken him to a new cage that must have been a recent addition to the zoo, for Veradun had never noticed it before. A tarp covered it concealing the contents.
“What’s in it?” Veradun asked.
His father looked somber. “The third lesson.”
Veradun’s gaze went from his father, to the cage, and back to his father.
“I think you’ll be a great warrior, Veradun,” his father said. “A tremendous asset to the Empire.”
Veradun heard the sadness in the words but did not understand them.
“Your instructors tell me they’ve seen few with your potential in the Force.”
“I’m honored by their praise.”
His father smiled distantly. “A shuttle arrives for you tomorrow, to take you to the academy on Dromund Kaas. I want you to know that I’m proud of you. Always remember that.”
“I will. And I’m doubly honored by your praise, father.”
His father kneeled, embraced him, stood, and walked away.
“Where are you going?” Veradun called. “What about the third lesson?”
“Look in the cage,” his father said. “Perhaps you’ll figure it out yourself.”
Veradun watched his father go, then turned and unveiled the contents of the cage the way he might unveil a secret – slowly, carefully, and with a sense of trepidation.
He let the tarp fall to the ground.
The cage was entirely empty. For a moment he wondered if his father had made a mistake.
But his father never made mistakes.
He stared at the empty cage for a long while, considering. Finally, he thought he understood.
* * *
The Jedi, his face twisted with pain, stared up at Malgus. One of the horns on his head had cracked from the heat of the Force lightning. The Jedi’s eyes went to the deactivated lightsaber in Malgus’s fist and he cocked his head.
Malgus read the question in his eyes.
Mercy from a Sith?
Malgus smiled. He stepped forward, activated his blade, and stabbed the Jedi through the chest.
“Sleep,” he said.
The Jedi’s eyes held the question for the few moments it took for them to go vacant. Malgus stood, deactivated his blade, inhaled, and walked away. The question in the Jedi’s eyes was one he had asked himself countless times, the one his father had tried to help him answer those many years earlier.
The answer had never fully satisfied him, but he supposed that was the point.
Sometimes there was just an empty cage.
Callum's Cantina 