She laughed. "If he could handle Kas'im, then I doubt anyone else will stand a chance against him. Anyone but me."
"You?"
Githany smiled. "Bane likes me. I wouldn't say he trusts me, exactly… but he wants to trust me. Let me go to him."
"And what will you do when you find him?"
"Tell him I miss him. Explain that we've considered his offer, and we want him to join the Brotherhood. Then, when his guard is down, I'll kill him."
Kaan raised his eyebrows. "You make it sound so simple."
"Unlike Kas'im, I know how to handle him," she assured him. "Betrayal is a far more effective weapon than the lightsaber."
She left the tent a few moments later, taking the message drone and the coordinates Bane had sent along for the meeting. Kaan had every confidence she'd get the job done. And he saw no reason to share with her the small package that had arrived in the message drone's storage compartment.
Bane had sent it to Lord Kaan as a peace offering; a way to atone for Kas'im's death. It wasn't much to look at: text written on several sheets of flimsi, the writing cramped and hurried as if it had been recorded while listening to someone else speak. Yet within its pages it contained a detailed description of one of the most fearsome creations of the ancient Sith: the thought bomb.
An ancient ritual that required the combined will of many powerful Sith Lords, the thought bomb unleashed the pure destructive energy of the dark side. There were risks involved, of course. That much power was highly volatile, making it difficult to control even for those who had the strength to summon it. It was possible the blast could annihilate the entire Brotherhood along with Hoth's Army of Light. The vacuum at the center of the blast could suck in the disembodied spirits of Sith and Jedi alike, trapping them side by side for all eternity in an unbreakable state of equilibrium at the heart of a frozen sphere of pure energy.
Kaan doubted he'd actually have need of such a weapon to finish off the Jedi here on Ruusan. After all, he was winning the war. Still, as he began his pacing for another long and sleepless night, he couldn't help studying the ritual of the thought bomb over and over again.
Chapter 25
From a distance, Ambria looked beautiful. An orange world with striking violet rings, it was easily the largest habitable planet in the Stenness system. Yet anyone landing on the world would quickly realize that the beauty faded soon after entering the atmosphere.
Many centuries earlier, the failed rituals of a powerful Sith sorceress had inadvertently unleashed a cataclysmic wave of dark side energy across the surface of the world. The sorceress had been destroyed, along with almost all other life on Ambria. What survived was little more than barren rock, and even now plots of fertile ground were few and far between. There were no real cities on Ambria; only a few hardy settlers dwelled on its surface, scattered so far apart they might as well have been living on the planet alone.
The Jedi had once tried to cleanse Ambria of its foul taint, but the power of the dark side had permanently scarred the world. Unable to purify it, they succeeded only in concentrating and confining the dark side in a single source: Lake Natth. The homesteaders brave enough to endure Ambria's desolate environs gave the lake and its poisoned waters a wide, wide berth. Of course Bane had made his camp right on its shores.
Ambria was located on the fringes of the Expansion Region, only a quick hyperspace jump away from Ruusan itself. The evidence of several small battles that had been fought here between Republic and Sith troops during the most recent campaign was everywhere. Fallen weapons and armor littered the stark landscape; burned-out vehicles and damaged swoops were visible from kilometers away on the hard, cold plains. Apart from a few of the local settlers scavenging for parts, nobody had bothered to clean up the remains.
The ringed planet was an insignificant world: too few resources and too few people for the Republic fleets that now controlled the sector to worry about. Bane had heard that a healer of some skill, a man named Caleb, had come to the world once the fighting had ended. An idealistic fool determined to mend the wounds of war; a man not even worthy of Bane's contempt. By now, even that man might have forsaken this world once he'd seen how little salvageable remained here. For all intents and purposes, the world was forgotten.
It was the perfect place to meet Kaan's envoy. A Sith fleet would be quickly detected by the Republic vessels patrolling the region, but a small ship and a skillful pilot could sneak in without any trouble. Bane had no intention of setting up a meeting someplace where Kaan could send an armada to wipe him out.
He waited patiently in his camp for Kaan's emissary to arrive. Occasionally he glanced up at the sky or looked out across the horizon, but he wasn't worried about anyone sneaking up on him. He'd see a ship coming in to land from several kilometers away. And if they came to him in a ground vehicle, like the land crawler sitting on the edge of his camp, he'd hear the grinding of its engines or feel the unmistakable vibrations of its heavy treads as they churned their way over the uneven terrain.
Instead all he heard was the gentle lapping of Lake Natth's dark waters against the shore not five meters from where he sat. And all the while, his mind wrestled with the only question he still had no answer for.
Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody the power, the other to crave it. Once he had rid the galaxy of the Brotherhood of Darkness, where would he find a worthy apprentice?
The whine of a Buzzard's engines pulled him away from his thoughts. He rose to his feet as the ship dropped from the sky and circled his camp once before touching down a short distance away. When the landing ramp lowered and he saw who came down, he couldn't help but smile.
"Githany," he said, rising to greet her once she had crossed the distance between them. "I was hoping Lord Kaan would send you."
"He didn't send me," she replied. "I asked to come."
Bane's heart began to beat a little quicker. He was glad to see her; her presence awakened a hunger inside him he had almost forgotten existed. Yet he was troubled, too. If anyone could see through his ruse, it was her.
"Did you see the message?" he asked, studying her carefully to gauge her reaction.
"I thought you were over this, Bane. Self-pity and regret are for the weak."
Relieved, he bowed his head to continue his charade. "You're right," he mumbled.
She stepped in closer to him. "You can't fool me, Bane," she whispered, and his muscles tensed in anticipation of what she would do next. "I think you're here for something else."
He held his ground as she leaned in slowly, poised to react at the first hint of threat or danger. He let his guard down only when she brushed her lips softly against his.
Instinctively his hands came up and seized her shoulders, pulling her in closer, pressing her lips and body hard up against his own as he drank her in. She wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders and neck, returning his insistence with her own urgency.
Her heat enveloped them. The kiss seemed to last for all eternity; her scent wrapped around their entwined flesh until he felt he was drowning in it. When she at last broke away he could see the fierce eagerness in her eyes and still taste the sweet fire of her lips. He could taste something else, too.