Twist of Fate/Part 1

1,389 BBY One week later

Alecto followed one of Lord Zedum's faceless sentinels through the fortress toward the sound of screaming. The hideous wails echoed off the walls, a soprano descant above the bass ripples in the Force. Alecto kept her hood up to shadow her face, her knee-length coat snug to her lithe form but open to keep her lightsaber within reach.

The guard escorted her to a chair beside the Pau'an Sith Lord, who sat watching the show with a wistful expression. Garzen hung suspended by his wrists and ankles, parallel to the floor, his arms and legs straining at their joints and his naked body rashed by lightsaber burns and dribbling blood onto the grate below. He gritted his teeth, and Alecto felt the Human call on the dark side. One of Zedum's men paced below him, his black torturer's apron already splattered with blood; the masked man shaved off a slice of Garzen's thigh with his lightsaber, and the Human lost his grip on his power as he shrieked.

"Alecto," Lord Zedum's silky voice recalled her to the present. He gestured with his walking stick to the seat beside him. "Join me."

She sat; even seated, the gaunt Pau'an was a head taller than her. He observed the torture as if watching an artisan create a new work before his eyes. Alecto kept her face impassive as she watched Zedum's torturer mutilate Garzen still further, immersing herself in the dark side to draw strength from it.

"Senator Glavial Iltek still lives," Zedum mused.

Alecto breathed in slowly through her nose. The Sith Lord was not one to appreciate an apology; there could be no signs of weakness. "He does, Master."

She sensed more than saw Zedum's men behind her, and dug her fingers into the arms of her chair even as the dark side urged her to fight, to put in their place these faceless drones who dared to intimidate her.

"They knew I was coming, Master," she added quickly. "There were two Jedi."

The Pau'an drummed the fingers of one hand on his own arm rest a few times, then sighed. "Yes, I suspected as much. Hence…"

He trailed off, gesturing to Garzen. Alecto felt the dark side coil up to her as her anger spiked. "He betrayed us to the Republic?"

"No, no," Lord Zedum said, waving off the suspicion. "Certainly not. No, one of his men was a Republic spy.  He'll suffer accordingly, of course.  No, Garzen's sin was not betrayal, Alecto, but negligence.  First he fails to secure the Gizer data, and now a Republic spy beneath his very nose?  Such carelessness."

The Pau'an's tone was a lament, but Alecto risked a sideways glance and saw his lips curled back into a hideous smile. She looked again at Garzen's ravaged body—the price of carelessness—and her stomach turned.

"Who were the Jedi?" Zedum's voice cut through her abstraction.

"I didn't get a good look at one, but the other was Tirien Kal-Di," Alecto answered through her teeth.

"Kal-Di," Zedum hissed. "The Jedi who killed my dear lamented friend Zygro."

Alecto doubted whether Zedum had ever lamented a death, or had a friend. "Yes, my lord."

"A pity you didn't kill him," Zedum noted. His lips were back from his teeth again, and this time it was not even a mockery of a smile. "You might have had something to show for this mission."

"This isn't beyond saving," Alecto insisted.

Zedum gave her a cold sneer. "Senator Iltek is back in the warm embrace of his beloved Jedi on Coruscant. Tell me, will you slay him beneath the eyes of the Supreme Chancellor and his blue guards, or go for the grand gesture and assassinate him in the Jedi Temple itself?"

Alecto ignored the mockery; to match the Sith for venom was to court death. "You said the Council wants the Perlemian, not Senator Iltek. Iltek may be beyond our reach, but the Perlemian isn't."

Working to keep her voice unhurried and ignore Garzen's groaning wails—Zedum's torturer cut out the Human's tongue while Alecto was speaking—she outlined her plan. Zedum watched her, his sunken eyes narrowed, running the tip of his tongue over his sharp teeth.

"Perhaps," he mused. "Perhaps. An ambitious undertaking…"

"What good is a Sith without ambition?" she countered.

The Pau'an smiled. "Indeed. Well, my dearest Alecto, perhaps you do deserve another chance."

He reached out and gingerly brushed her cheek with one long finger. Alecto forced herself to remain still and expressionless, restraining a sneer of loathing and resisting the urge to draw the lightsaber from beneath her coat and take the hand off the Pau'an's wrist and the smile off his face.

"Do try harder this time, won't you?" he crooned. As he traced a long nail down her jawline, he took her chin between thumb and fingers and squeezed, digging his fingers in until her teeth started to ache. "It would pain me to see you up there next."

He glanced at Garzen, lips twisting, then released Alecto's jaw. She stretched her mouth but didn't give him the satisfaction of rubbing the sting out of it as Zedum sat back in his chair and said, "Off you go then, Alecto."

She rose, looked at the two bodyguards hovering behind her chair, bowed once, and strode toward the door.

"Ah-eh-oh!" Garzen croaked. "Ah-eh-oooooh!"

The Mirialan sensed Zedum's eyes on her, so she spared the Human a glance. Smoke curled from his hollowed eye sockets, but his face was turned in her direction. Alecto considered, then raised a hand, holding her thumb and forefinger close together as she pinched off the air to Garzen's lungs.

"You're drooling, Garzen," she crooned as the Human thrashed and a globule of red-flecked spittle spattered at her feet. "It's disgusting."

"Now, now, Alecto," Zedum chided her from behind. "He can't receive that easy an end. Be on your way."

Releasing him, Alecto strode from the room. The door remained open—doubtless so everyone else in the building could share her intimate understanding of Lord Zedum's limited tolerance for carelessness. She turned to the corridor that would lead her back to her ship…then paused.

Since her earliest days among the Sith, Alecto had learned the art of making herself small. She might never match her competitors for brute strength, but she could deceive and outwit them instead, and hide from a losing fight. Drawing her presence in the Force down slowly, giving the impression she was growing farther away, she ghosted to the door frame and leaned against the wall.

Listening past Garzen's choked moans, she heard one of the normally silent bodyguards ask, "Will she succeed, my lord?"

"Entirely possible," Zedum mused. "She isn't without talent, and I hope I've provided her sufficient motivation."

"She would look good up here," growled a deeper voice from elsewhere in the room; the voice of Garzen's tormentor. It was followed by a hiss of searing meat and another moaned scream.

"I enjoy observing you create your art, Ondar." Alecto heard the smile in Zedum's voice. "But that would be wasteful. Whether or not she can make any productive use of it, Alecto is strong in the Force.  If she succeeds, so much the better.  And if not, we always need a next generation of Sith.  Perhaps our gestation facilities could make better use of her than I."