At first Bane found this troubling. He had just started his training and he was already behind. In such a competitive, ruthless environment he would be an easy target for every other student. But as he mulled it over, he began to realize he might not be as vulnerable as he'd thought.
He alone, of all the apprentices at the Academy, had been able to manifest the power of the dark side without any training at all. He'd used it so often he'd come to take it for granted. It had given him advantages over his opponents in cards and brawling. In war it had warned him of danger and brought him victory in otherwise impossible circumstances.
And he'd done it all on instinct, with no training, without even any conscious idea of what he was doing. Now, for the first time, he was being taught to truly use his abilities. He didn't have to worry about any of the other students… if anything, they should be worrying about him. When he completed his training, none of the others would be his equal.
Most of his learning came at the feet of Qordis and the other Masters: Kas'im, Orilltha, Shenayag, Hezzoran, and Borthis. There were group training sessions at the Academy, but they were few and far between. The weak and the slow could not be allowed to hold back the strong and ambitious. Students learned at their own pace, driven by their desire and hunger for power. There were, however, nearly six students for every Master, and the apprentices had to prove their worth before one of the instructors would spend valuable time teaching them the secrets of the Sith.
Though he was a neophyte, Bane found it easy to garner the attention of the Sith Lords, particularly Qordis. He knew the extra attention would inevitably breed animosity in the other students, but he forced himself not to think about that. In time the additional instruction he got from the Masters would allow him to catch up to and pass the other apprentices, and once he did he wouldn't need to worry about their petty jealousies. Until then he was careful to stay out of the way and not draw attention to himself.
When he wasn't learning from the Masters, he was in the library studying the ancient records. As the Jedi kept their archives at their Temple on Coruscant, so the Sith had begun to collect and store information in the archives of Korriban's temple. However, unlike the Jedi library, where most of the data was stored in electronic, hologrammic, and Holocron formats, the Sith collection was limited to scrolls, tomes, and manuals. In the three thousand standard years since Darth Revan had nearly destroyed the Republic, the Jedi had waged a tireless war to eradicate the teaching tools of the dark side. All known Sith Holocrons had been either destroyed or spirited away to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant for safekeeping. There were many rumors of undiscovered Sith Holocrons, either hidden away on remote worlds, or covetously hoarded by one of the dark Masters eager to keep its secret knowledge for himself. But all efforts by the Brotherhood to find these lost treasures had proved futile, forcing them to rely on the primitive technologies of parchment and flimsiplast.
And because the collection was constantly being added to, the indexes and references were hopelessly out of date. Searching the archives was often an exercise in futility or frustration, and most of the students felt their time was better spent trying to learn from or impress the Masters.
Perhaps it was because he was older than most of the others, or maybe because his years of mining had taught him patience, whatever the explanation, Bane spent several hours each day studying the ancient records. He found them fascinating. Many of the scrolls were historical records recounting ancient battles or glorifying the deeds of ancient Sith Lords. By itself the information had little practical use, but he could see each individual work for what it actually represented: a tiny piece of a much larger puzzle, a clue to a much greater understanding.
The archives supplemented what he learned from the Masters. It gave context to abstract lessons. Bane felt that, in time, the ancient knowledge would be the key to unlocking his full potential. And so his understanding of the Force slowly took shape.
Mystical and unexplainable, the Force was also natural and essentiaclass="underline" a fundamental energy binding the universe and connecting all living things within it. This energy, this power, could be harnessed. It could be manipulated and controlled. And through the teachings of the dark side, Bane was learning to seize hold of it. He practiced his meditations and exercises daily, often under the watchful eye of Qordis. After only a few weeks he learned to move small objects simply by thinking about it, something he would have thought impossible only a short time before.
Yet now he understood that this was only the beginning. He was starting to grasp a great truth on a deep, fundamental leveclass="underline" that the strength to survive must come from within. Others will always fail you. Friends, family, fellow soldiers… in the end, each person must stand alone. When in need, look to the self.
The dark side nurtured the power of the individual. The teachings of the Sith Masters would make him strong. In pleasing them, he could unlock his full potential and one day sit among them.
When the first wave of the attack came, the Republic fleet orbiting the skies of Ruusan was caught completely unprepared. A small and politically insignificant planet, the heavily forested world had been used as a base to stage devastating hit-and-run attacks against the Sith forces stationed in the nearby Kashyyyk system. Now the enemy had turned that same strategy against them.
The Sith struck without warning, materializing en masse from hyperspace: an almost suicidal maneuver for such a massive fleet. Before an alarm could even be sounded, the Republic ships found themselves being bombarded by three Dreadnaught cruisers, two corsair battleships, dozens of interceptors, and a score of Buzzard fighters. And at the head of the attack was the flagship of the Brotherhood of Darkness, the Sith Destroyer Nightfall.
In his meditation sphere aboard Nightfall, Lord Kaan was directing the assault. From inside the chamber he could communicate with any of the other ships, issuing his orders with the knowledge they would be instantly and completely obeyed. The chamber was alive with light and sound: glowing monitors and flashing screens beeped incessantly to alert him to the constantly changing updates on the status of the battle.
The Dark Lord, however, never even glanced at the screens. His perception extended far beyond the meditation sphere, far beyond the data spit out by the electronic readouts. He knew the location of each vessel engaged in the conflict: his own and those of the enemy. He could sense every volley fired, every evasive turn and roll, every move and countermove made by every ship. Often he could sense them even before they happened.
His brow was knotted in intense concentration; his breath came in long, ragged gasps. Beads of perspiration rolled down his trembling body. The strain was enormous, yet with the aid of the meditation sphere he maintained his mental focus, drawing on the dark side of the Force to influence the outcome of the conflict despite his physical exhaustion.
The art of battle meditation, a weapon passed down from the ancient Sith sorcerers, threw the enemy ranks into chaos, feeding their fear and hopelessness, crushing their hearts and spirits with bleak despair. Every false move by the opponent was magnified, every hesitation was transformed into a cascade of errors and mistakes that overwhelmed even the most disciplined troops. The battle had only just begun, and it was already all but over.