Part 2 (2/2)
He offered not a word of explanation throughout the long shuttle flight from Kaas City, and she endured his silence with something like relief. At least he wasn't berating her. Her mission had become a complete failure. She'd had to practically hack her way to the s.p.a.ceport and off the planet-but not before running a search through landing records in recent days. There she found a reference to the Mandalorian. He had the temerity to travel under what appeared to be his real name: Dao Stryver.
Once again she renewed the vow to see him humbled as she had been, no matter how long it took. Perhaps death was too good for him. A quick one, anyway.
Darth Chratis commandeered a private data access chamber seventy floors beneath the surface of the world, one equipped with a giant holoprojector, and ordered that the two of them not be interrupted. Ax trailed obediently behind him, increasingly mystified. Not once in her years of training had he shown any interest in this aspect of Imperial rule. Interstellar bookkeepers was his derogatory term for those who preferred service in the data mines to a more direct pursuit of power. She went to sit in the data requisitioner's place, but he waved her aside.
”Stand there, ” he said, pointing at a position directly in front of the screen and taking the seat himself.
With brisk, angular movements, he began inputting the requests. This as much as anything convinced her that events were taking a very strange turn indeed.
Menus and diagrams came and went in the giant screen. Ax found it difficult to follow, but she sensed that her Master was leading her through the vast and convoluted structure that was Imperial records to one location in particular.
”This, ” he said, tapping the keyboard with finality, ”is the recruitment database. ”
A long list of names appeared in the screen, scrolling by too fast to read.
”Every person to enter the Sith Academy is listed here, ” he went on. ”Their names, origins, bloodlines-and their fates, too, where applicable. The Dark Council uses this data to arrange matches and to antic.i.p.ate the potential of offspring. The fortunes of numerous families rest on the nature of this data. It is therefore protected. Ax. It is very secure. ”
She indicated her understanding, thus far. ”I'm in there, ” she said.
”Indeed you are, and so am I. Watch what happens when I input Lema Xandret. ”
A new window appeared, showing a woman's face. Round-featured, blond, keen eyes. It meant nothing to Ax. The s.p.a.ce below the picture was filled with words highlighted in urgent red. At the bottom of a long list of entries were two bold lines: Termination ordered.
File incomplete: target absconded.
Ax frowned. ”So... she was a traitor? A Republic spy?”
”Worse than that. We keep fewer records on the Jedi than we do on people like this. ” Darth Chratis swiveled in the seat to face her. ”Tell me, my apprentice, what happens when a Sith is recruited. ”
”The child is removed from its family and placed in the Academy. There its life begins anew, in the service of the Emperor and the Dark Council-as mine did. ”
”Exactly. It is a great honor for a family when a child is selected, particularly if their bloodline has not been so honored before. Most parents are pleased, as they should be. ”
”And those who are not are executed, ” she said. ”Was Lema Xandret one of them?”
A cadaverous smile briefly enlivened the withered landscape of Darth Chratis's face. ”Exactly. She was something unremarkable-a droidmaker, I think. Yes, exactly that. From a long line of unremarkable droidmakers, with no trace of Force sensitivity. She produced a child with the potential to be Sith, and so the child had to go. ”
Ax's Master didn't show amus.e.m.e.nt often. It disturbed her more than his rage.
”The file says 'target absconded, '” she said.
”First she tried to hide the child-a late bloomer, who she feared would not survive training on Korriban. When that failed and the child was taken anyway, she ran with the rest of the child's family-uncles, aunts, cousins, anyone at risk from reprisals-and has never been heard of since. ”
”Until now. ”
”From the mouth of a Mandalorian, ” Darth Chratis said, ”to your ears. ”
”Why me?” she said, sensing that her Master was studying her closely. ”Because my family attempted to hide me, too?”
”Perhaps. ”
”What I was before I met you is unimportant, ” she a.s.sured him. ”I am untroubled regarding my family's fate. ”
”Indeed. I trained you well. ” Again that desiccated smile. ”Perhaps too well. ” He leaned closer.
”Look here, Ax. Into my eyes. ”
She did so, and the red horror of his gaze filled her.
”The block is strong, ” he said, and it was as though the words came from inside her head. ”It's standing between you and the truth. I release it. I release you, Ax. You are free to know the truth about your past. ”
She staggered back as though struck, but no physical force had touched her. A silent detonation had gone off in her mind, a depth charge deep below her conscious self. Something stirred there. Something strange and unsuspected.
Ax looked up at the picture in the holoprojector.
Lema Xandret stared back at her with empty eyes.
”She was your mother, Ax, ” her Master said. ”Does that answer your question?”
Numbly, Ax supposed it did. But at the same time it posed many more.
Darth Chratis used the chamber's holoprojector to conduct a secure audience with the Minister of Intelligence. Ax had never met the minister before, nor seen him in any kind of communication, but the immense trust her Master showed by allowing her to remain in the room was utterly lost on her. Her head still rang from the liberation from her Master's conditioning. Not because of what it revealed, but because of what little difference it made to her.
Her family's lack of Force sensitivity had been the one thing of which she was certain about her life before becoming a Sith. She had a.s.sumed that her family had been killed, but that had never bothered her. She had certainly never worried about it, and it wouldn't have bothered her now but for one thing.
The block was removed. Memories should have come flooding back about Lema Xandret and her early life.
But there was nothing. Block or no block, there was nothing left. Lema Xandret remained a complete stranger.
With half a mind, she attended to the conversation her Master was having with the minister.
”That's why the Mandalorian sought to interrogate the girl. She's a potential lead. ”
”A lead to Xandret?”
”What other conclusion can we come to? She must be alive-in the same bolt-hole she fled down in order to evade execution, I presume. ”
”What would the Mandalorians want with her?”
”I don't know, and the fact that we don't know makes it vital that we find her first. ”
”As a matter of principle, Darth Chratis, or Imperial security?”
”The two are often inseparable, Minister, I think you'll find. ”
The man on the screen looked uncomfortable. His was the highest rank any mundane person could attain in the Empire's intelligence arm, yet to a Sith Lord he was considered fundamentally inferior. Disinclined he might be to acknowledge that a single missing droidmaker warranted his attention, even one who tried to hide a Force-sensitive child from the Sith, but to disobey was inconceivable.
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