Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan (2 page)

Bastila Shan;
Jedi Knight (human female)

Canderous Ordo;
Mandalorian mercenary (human male)

Darth Nyriss;
Dark Councilor (Sith female)

Darth Xedrix;
Dark Councilor (human male)

Meetra Surik;
Jedi Knight (human female)

Murtog;
security chief (human male)

Revan;
Jedi Master (human male)

Lord Scourge;
Sith Lord (Sith male)

Sechel;
adviser (Sith male)

T3-M4;
astromech (droid)

HERE THE DARKNESS REIGNS ETERNAL
.
There is no sun, no dawn; just the perpetual gloom of night. The only illumination comes from jagged forks of lightning, carving a wicked path through angry clouds. In their savage wake thunder shreds the sky, unleashing a torrent of hard, cold rain
.

The storm is coming, and there is no escape
.

Revan’s eyes snapped open, the primal fury of his nightmare wrenching him awake for the third night in a row.

He lay still and quiet, turning his focus inward to ease the pounding of his heart as he silently recited the opening line of the Jedi mantra.

There is no emotion; there is peace
.

A sense of calm settled over him, washing away the irrational terror of his dream. Yet he knew better than to merely dismiss it. The storm that haunted him each time he closed his eyes was more than just a nightmare. Conjured up from the deepest corners of his mind, the storm had meaning. But try as he might, Revan couldn’t figure out what his subconscious was trying to tell him.

Was it a warning? A long-forgotten memory? A vision of the future? All three?

Careful not to wake his wife, he rolled out of bed and went into the refresher to splash some cool water on his face. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he stopped to study his reflection.

Even now, two standard years after rediscovering his true identity, he still had trouble reconciling the face in the mirror with the man he had been before the Jedi Council had turned him back to the light.

Revan: Jedi; hero; traitor; conqueror; villain; savior. He was all these things and more. He was a living legend; the embodiment of myth and folklore; a figure that transcended history. Yet all he saw staring back at him was an ordinary man who hadn’t slept in three nights.

Fatigue was taking its toll. His angular features had become thin and drawn. His pale skin accentuated the dark circles under eyes that stared back at him from deep hollows.

Bracing a hand on either side of the sink, he slumped his head and let out a long, low sigh, his black, shoulder-length hair falling forward to cover his face like a dark curtain. After several seconds he stood up straight, using the fingers of both hands to sweep his hair back into place.

Moving quietly, he made his way from the refresher and across the small living room of his apartment. He proceeded out onto the balcony, where he stopped and stared out across Coruscant’s endless cityscape.

Traffic in the galactic capital never stopped, and he found the constant buzz and blur of shuttles speeding by soothing. He leaned out over the railing of the balcony as far as he could, his eyes unable to pierce the darkness to make out the planet’s surface hundreds of stories below.

“Don’t jump. I don’t want to have to clean up the mess.”

He turned his head at the sound of Bastila’s voice behind him.

She stood at the threshold of the balcony door, the bedsheet draped around her shoulders to ward off the night’s chill. Her long brown hair—normally pulled back up from her forehead into a bun on top and a short ponytail below—hung loose and sleep-tousled. Her face was only partially illuminated by the glow of the city below, yet he could see her lips pressed into a wry smile. Despite her joking words, he could see real concern etched on her features.

“Sorry,” he said, stepping away from the rail and turning toward her. “Didn’t mean to wake you. Just needed to clear my head.”

“Maybe you should speak to the Jedi Council,” Bastila suggested. “They might be able to help.”

“You want me to ask the Council for help?” he echoed. “You must have had too much of that Corellian wine at dinner.”

“They owe you,” Bastila insisted. “If it weren’t for you, Darth Malak would have destroyed the Republic, eliminated the Council, and all but wiped out the Jedi. They owe you everything!”

Revan didn’t answer right away. What she said was true—he had stopped Darth Malak and destroyed the Star Forge. But it wasn’t that simple. Malak had been Revan’s apprentice. Against the wishes of the Council, the two had led an army of Jedi and Republic soldiers against Mandalorian raiders threatening colonies in the Outer Rim … only to return not as heroes, but as conquerors.

Revan and Malak had both sought to destroy the Republic. But Malak had betrayed his Master, and Revan had been captured by the Jedi Council, barely alive, his body and mind shattered. The Council had saved his life, but they had also stripped his memories and rebuilt him as a weapon that could be unleashed against Darth Malak and his followers.

“The Council doesn’t owe me anything,” Revan whispered. “All the good I’ve done can’t balance out the evil that came before.”

Bastila brought her hand up and put it gently but firmly over Revan’s lips.

“Don’t talk like that. They can’t blame you for what happened. Not anymore. You’re not the same man you were. The Revan I know is a hero. A champion of the light. You redeemed me after Malak turned me to the dark side.”

Revan reached up and wrapped his fingers around the delicate hand resting on his lips, then softly pulled it down. “Like you and the Council redeemed me.”

Bastila turned away, and Revan instantly regretted his words. He knew she was ashamed of her involvement in his capture and her role in erasing his memory.

“What we did was wrong. At the time I thought we had no other choice, but if I had to do it over again—”

“No,” Revan said, cutting her off. “I wouldn’t want you to change anything. If none of this had happened, I might never have found you.”

She turned back to face him, and he could see the hurt and bitterness lingering in her eyes.

“What the Council did to you wasn’t right,” she insisted. “They took away your memories! They stole your identity!”

“It came back,” Revan assured her, pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her. “You have to let go of your anger.”

She didn’t fight his embrace, though she stood rigid at first. Then he felt the tension melting away from her body as she lowered her head onto his shoulder.

“There is no emotion, there is peace,” she whispered, reciting aloud the same words Revan had sought solace in only a few minutes earlier.

They stood there in silence, holding each other until Revan felt her shiver.

“It’s cold out here,” he said. “We should go back inside.”

Twenty minutes later Bastila was fast asleep, but Revan lay on the bed with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling.

He was thinking about what Bastila had said about the Council taking his identity. As his mind had healed, many of his memories had returned, along with his sense of self. But he knew parts were still missing, possibly gone forever.

As a Jedi he knew the importance of letting go of bitterness and anger, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still wonder about what he had lost.

Something had happened to him and Malak beyond the Outer Rim. They had gone to defeat the Mandalorians, but they had returned as disciples of the dark side. The official story was that they had been corrupted by the ancient power of the Star Forge, but Revan suspected there was more to it. And he knew it had something to do with his nightmares.

A terrible world of thunder and lightning, shrouded in perpetual night
.

He and Malak had found something. He couldn’t remember what
it was, or where it was, but he feared it on a deep, primal level. Somehow he knew that whatever the terrible secret might be, it was a threat far greater than the Mandalorians or the Star Forge. And Revan was convinced it was still out there.

The storm is coming, and there is no escape
.

LORD SCOURGE RAISED
the hood of his cloak as he stepped off the shuttle, a shield against the wind and pelting rain. Storms were common here on Dromund Kaas; dark clouds perpetually blocked out the sun, rendering terms like
day
and
night
meaningless. The only natural illumination came from the frequent bursts of lightning arcing across the sky, but the glow from the spaceport and nearby Kaas City provided more than enough light to see where he was going.

The powerful electrical storms were a physical manifestation of the dark side power that engulfed the entire planet—a power that had brought the Sith back here a millennium before, when their very survival had been in doubt.

After a crushing defeat in the Great Hyperspace War, the Emperor had risen up from the tattered ranks of the remaining Sith Lords to lead his followers on a desperate exodus to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Fleeing the Republic armies and the relentless revenge of the Jedi, they eventually resettled far beyond the borders of Republic-charted space on their long-lost ancestral homeworld.

There, safely hidden from their enemies, the Sith began to rebuild their Empire. Under the guidance of the Emperor—the immortal and all-powerful savior who still reigned over them even after a thousand
years—they abandoned the hedonistic lifestyles of their barbaric ancestors.

Instead they created a near-perfect society in which the Imperial military operated and controlled virtually every aspect of daily life. Farmers, mechanics, teachers, cooks, janitors—all were part of the great martial machine, each individual a cog trained to perform his or her duties with maximum discipline and efficiency. As a result, the Sith had been able to conquer and enslave world after world in the unexplored regions of the galaxy, until their power and influence rivaled those of their glorious past.

Another burst of lightning split the sky, momentarily illuminating the massive citadel that loomed over Kaas City. Built by slaves and devoted followers, the citadel served as both palace and fortress, an unassailable meeting place for the Emperor and the twelve handpicked Sith Lords who made up his Dark Council.

A decade earlier, when Scourge had first arrived on Dromund Kaas as a young apprentice, he had vowed to one day set foot inside the citadel’s exclusive halls. Yet in all his years of training at the Sith Academy on Kaas City’s borders, he had never been granted the privilege. He had been one of the top students, marked by his superiors for his strength in the Force and his fanatic devotion to the ways of the Sith. But acolytes were not permitted inside the citadel; its secrets were reserved for those in direct service to the Emperor and the Dark Council.

The dark side power emanating from within the building was undeniable; he had felt the raw, crackling energy every day during his years as an acolyte. He had drawn on it, focusing his mind and spirit to channel the power through his own body to sustain him during the brutal training sessions.

Now, after almost two years away, he was back on Dromund Kaas. Standing on the landing pad, he could once again feel the dark side deep inside his bones, the sizzling heat more than compensating for the minor discomfort of the wind and rain. But he was no longer a mere apprentice. Scourge had returned to the seat of Imperial power as a full-fledged Sith Lord.

He had known this day would come eventually. After graduating from the Sith Academy he had hoped for a posting on Dromund Kaas.
Instead he had been sent to the fringes of the Empire to help quell a series of minor rebellions on recently conquered worlds. Scourge suspected the posting had been a punishment of some type. One of his instructors, jealous of the star pupil’s potential, had probably recommended that he be stationed as far from the seat of Imperial power as possible to slow his ascent to the upper ranks of Sith society.

Unfortunately, Scourge had no proof to back his theory. Yet even exiled to the uncivilized sectors on the farthest borders of the Empire, he had still managed to forge his reputation. His martial skills and ruthless pursuit of the rebel leaders caught the notice of several prominent military leaders. Now, two years after leaving the Academy, he had returned to Dromund Kaas as a newly anointed Lord of the Sith. More important, he was here at the personal request of Darth Nyriss, one of the most senior members of the Emperor’s Dark Council.

“Lord Scourge,” a figure called out over the wind, running up to greet him. “I am Sechel. Welcome to Dromund Kaas.”

“Welcome
back
,” Scourge corrected as the man dropped to one knee and bowed his head in a gesture of respect. “This is not my first time on this world.”

Sechel’s hood was pulled up against the rain, covering his features, but during his approach Scourge had noticed the red skin and dangling cheek tendrils that marked him as a pureblood Sith, just like Lord Scourge himself. But while Scourge was an imposing figure, tall and broad-shouldered, this man was small and slight. Reaching out, Scourge sensed only the faintest hint of the Force in the other, and his features twisted into a sneer of revulsion.

Unlike the humans that made up the bulk of the Empire’s population, the Sith species were all blessed with the power of the Force to varying degrees. It marked them as the elite; it elevated them above the lower ranks of Imperial society. And it was a legacy that was fervently protected.