Crash and Burn

It took two days to get from Coruscant to Cyalax, and by that time Welk was in an irritated mood, a good precursor to a level of anger befitting a Sith Apprentice. He hadn't built up that rage yet, but it was coming, particularly since it was underlaid with a nervous feeling that always shortened his temper. He fidgeted in his chair and tried to avoid Darth Inferna's gaze.

"Prepare to return to Cyalax," Inferna said. Baby Desa kicked and fussed as she was placed in her child safety restraints, until Inferna gave her a withering look and growled something under her breath. Then she pointed at Desa and said, "She is as much trouble as her father is."

"Are you saying I've been a problem, Lady Inferna?"

"And a bit stupid, if you have to ask for clarification. Speaking of stupid, what was Princess Leia talking about?"

"Lady... I mean Empress Shira and the Chery fiasco," Welk said quickly, too quickly.

"Don't pretend to misunderstand me. She said that her daughter thought Jacen was alive. Why would Jaina think that if both of the Solo brothers died?"

"Bad Day-sin," Desa said. She waved her little hand around. "Go corner."

Welk flexed his new mechanical fingers and curled his metal hand into a ball. It was taken from standard emergency stores on the Flamebringer and fit poorly, sending tingles up and down his arm at inopportune times and sometimes failing to work. "Anakin is dead. That much I'm sure of. Your sister left him to die and without a bacta tank I don't think he had any chance of survival; he was fading fast when I left. Jacen... I didn't kill Jacen."

"Does Lady Lumiya know about this?" Inferna's lips curled into a crinkling, twisted smile.

"I had to find you again and go to Coruscant right away. I haven't talked to her yet except to send a brief report."

"And you told her that your mission was complete. Why didn't you send your TIEs down to get rid of Jacen for certain... and Anakin, for that matter?"

"I couldn't find them, Lady Inferna. There was too much heat from a fire to find one human by infrared scan. Jacen will die, though; he has no way of leaving, no way of getting across the line of mountains near the northern tropic, and no environmental suit. The planet's elliptical orbit will take it well below freezing for more than three standard months, and even at the equator he would probably freeze to death. North of the tropic there is no probably about it."

"Don't underestimate the Jedi, even if they are weakened. Lumiya may issue more orders to deal with the Solo problem, if they are a real problem. She won't kill you. You're still useful, and our pool of useful candidates to be Apprentices is small, especially with Melany gone. That leaves you, and... you. Keran isn't worth half his weight in flimsi and Desa is only two."

Cyalax was as gloomy as ever, a grayish ball from far away, turning into a grayish ball occasionally lit up with yellow flashes once they got closer, and equally bad through the clouds. There was always high wind and always rain on Cyalax, with the only habitable places artificial ones carved deep into large rock faces.

Once they were inside Lady Lumiya's complex, Inferna passed the baby off to a nanny droid and strode purposefully ahead, almost as if she'd forgotten about the up-and-coming apprentice. Desa's conception was a seemingly arbitrary condition of Welk's acceptance into Lumiya's Sith Order, since apprentices were so hard to find. But that method of creating new ones required a long wait, and it could be a crapshoot. Welk had little to do with the baby, and had confidence that she would be brought up better and trained better by people other than him. Heck, he wasn't even twenty years old yet, and about to face down the Sith Empress for failing to complete what should have been a simple task.

His palm was sweating and he felt a phantom tingling pain in the place where his other hand would have been if it was still attached to him. Still, he tried to create an aura of confidence around him, instead of one of fear. Lumiya would feed on that fear and make it worse as a means of playing with him. Of course, he had not gone five steps into her throne room before all his efforts were made useless. There was really no way to get close to Lumiya without feeling intimidated. He suspected that even Inferna felt it, and he looked to the older woman for affirmation, but he was too distracted by his own feelings to detect anything from her.

The walk was long, too long, and once more Welk found himself drawing up all of his resolve in order to keep himself from falling at the feet of the Dark Empress. He didn't dare look at Inferna; a glance might betray too much. All he could do was keep going forward with his head slightly down and wait for Lady Lumiya's blank stare, now boring two holes into his head to reveal what was inside, to stop.

"Lord Welk."

"Y-yes, my Lady?" His voice trembled, and he mentally berated himself for not being able to keep it steady.

"Your arm. What happened to it? The Force flows through all life, but the more parts of you that are not living, the less it is with you. Your carelessness has made you weaker."

"It was cut off by the Jedi Knight, Jacen Solo." Now the answer came forth from him as though he had no control over his own mouth.

"If you lose a limb in every duel, Welk, you will become like me. You will need to coordinate the abilities of others to extend your own. And you are not ready for that. You first need to learn mastery over yourself. I know that you lost twenty-four troopers - two of them officers - and did not even succeed in killing Jedi Solo."

Welk's mouth went dry and if it weren't for the acid in the back of his throat coming up and coating his tongue, he might not have been able to speak at all. "There was an unexpected attack on our men, my Lady."

"Silence. This time you are lucky, and it does not matter. Everyone on infected worlds is dead and the Dantooine virus is now also dead. We have no more samples of it and that plague should not come again. We have a new tool to use against the Jedi."

"Lady Lumiya," Inferna said, "does this mean that the Cyalax virus is ready?"

"You are always too eager to strike; too much like your sister, and that cost her her life. You will be one of the two who will demonstrate the effectiveness of the new virus to Lord Welk. Thank you for volunteering without my having to command you to do so." Lumiya raised one hand, and two armored troopers came into view from a side alcove. Lord Keran was bound between them with his hands behind his back. Thick gray tape with adhesive strong enough to bind and tear human flesh if pulled away covered his mouth and was wrapped around his head. His bloodshot hazel eyes darted wildly from one person to another. However, despite the sheen of sweat on his forehead and his mussed appearance, his emotion was completely absent from the Force. Only after staring for a few moments did Welk notice the wooden frame between the troopers. The frame was dark and held together with ropes, and there was a furry animal attached to it. Its claws sunk deep into the frame, and Welk took a half step back before catching himself and willing himself to stand firm. He didn't want to be any closer to the Force-nullifying effects of the ysalimir than he needed to be.

"Because your part in delaying significant military action against the Great Imperium was sucessful," Lumiya went on, "you will receive the viral vaccine. This strain will never harm you. Beware that a second strain is available if you should have ideas of betrayal."

"I would never seriously entertain the idea of acting on such a thought," Inferna said.

"I know." Lumiya climbed off her throne with a grace that nearly made her cybernetic limbs look like fake coverings for real limbs. "All, follow me."

In a dark room on the next lower floor of the complex, there were two transparisteel boxes; a pair of cells. Welk sat in the room in front of the cells and another thick layer of transparisteel, with nothing else before him but two data display screens. Lumiya stood motionlessly behind him.

The troopers forcibly stripped Lord Keran to his gray underpants and locked him in the first cell before they took the ysalimir frame away. Welk couldn't hear any noises, but he watched Keran pound on the clear wall of his cell, and a diagram of a human brain appeared on the first of Welk's display screens. He quickly identified the active regions of the older man's cortex - anger, fatigue, fear. Another smaller display was beneath the brain diagram and held only a number: 9,640. "That is his midichlorian count," Lumiya said. "It is an estimation based on the activity of the brain center that is activated by Force energies, and not as accurate as a blood test, but will suffice for our purposes. Feel him in the Force, not just his life, but his strength."

Darth Inferna went into the second cell, needing no special prompting. Welk averted his eyes as she started to remove layers of clothing, but then he chided himself for his embarrassed turning. They already had a daughter, who was conceived the old-fashioned way without the aid of special insemination tools.

She relaxed naturally, wearing a bodysuit that left nothing to the imagination except skin shading that Welk could fill in from memory. If she was younger, she might have even been attractive; her Force powers had been aging her face rapidly, and even though she managed to keep her body in shape, there was no mistaking that she overextended her powers and it was taking its toll. He glanced down at the second display screen and saw her brain only showing slight nervousness and that she was more alert than she appeared to be. Her midichlorian count showed as 9,890.

Inferna injected her own arm with a small syringe, and an hour later, both cells received a light mist of virus-saturated water. Welk watched Keran hold his breath and claw at the transparisteel until he fell unconscious and blue-purple, and then the man's reflexes took over, and he breathed in the vapor.

Nothing happened for the first day. Welk sipped a glass of water and watched the two Sith Lords stare into space. Keran continued to try to escape, but to no avail.

On the second day, Inferna's condition remained steady, except for a flash of anger when served a substandard dinner. Keran showed signs of mild illness - coughing, rubbing his runny nose. His midichlorian count, which had wavered but stayed within 20 of the initial count, began to drop and had dipped under nine thousand by the start of Day Three.

His panic intensified but he soon grew even more impotent. His Force lightning, hurled at his clear walls in green crackles, phased into yellow and to red, before he lost the ability to call it forth at all, no matter how much he raged and twitched. Keran faded from the Force and his number continued to drop... beneath the threshhold of Force sensitivity, down to four thousand, three thousand, and lower. Then his rate of weakening decelerated, and he remained with a midichlorian count of two thousand, give or take one percent.

Darth Inferna was unchanged.

Welk rubbed his dry eyes when Lumiya came in again to inoculate him and release the test prisoners. "Equilibrium," he said. "The Cyalax virus doesn't kill; it silently strips its victims of the Force. The other signs of illness are few."

"It will spread and infect the Jedi before they know what they're dealing with," Lumiya agreed. "By the time they figure it out, it will be too late to stop it. Anyone who is ill will be a carrier for eight standard days, and it can be carried by even those without the Force. Any species, any Force sensitivity will be brought down to or even slightly below the average."

This was it; this was the beginning of the end for the Jedi. And without the Jedi, the New Republic would have no hope of stopping the Sith. There might be military setbacks, but eventually they would fall, if no one but those on the side of Empress Shira had the Force at all. "The Force-stripping; it is permanent, isn't it?" Welk asked.

"Estimates of effectiveness are only two years standard," she said quietly. "An astute question, my Apprentice. But that is another reason that multiple strains are being created; we can keep the Jedi at bay for as long as necessary. I'm sending you to the Yavin system to ensure that the few Jedi still hiding in or around there are exposed to the virus. Then go to Coruscant and help Inferna spread it to the rest."

Welk accepted that mission happily. There wasn't much that could go wrong with something as simple as an undetectable biological attack that didn't do anything important for a few days. He could easily smuggle in a canister of mist with the active virus suspended in it, especially now that he was about to be fitted with a new arm before beginning his task, and he could ensure that the Jedi came in contact with it. He didn't even have to kill anyone; as a matter of fact, his orders were NOT to kill anyone. The more weakened Jedi there were, the easier it would be to turn the New Republic against them and move in as saviors of a kind.

Darth Inferna, on the other hand, didn't have the luxury of being able to carry suspicious-looking objects into the Senate Hall, and she didn't have any cybernetic parts that could be used to conceal such a device. She could call back her "aide" and wait for him to return from Yavin, but since the virus would only be effective for two years before wearing off noticeably, according to preliminary testing, she had a better idea. Even if those tests proved wrong, she was only thirty-nine, and could replace what was made useless in the quest to destroy the Jedi and the New Republic. She opened the door to her private quarters and signaled remotely for the nanny droid to power down.

"Mama!" said Desa.

"We're going back to Coruscant with the pretty lights," said Inferna, and briefly placed a cloth over Desa's mouth and nose.