The Fog of War/Part 1

1,387 BBY

Darth Hokhtan allowed Darth Vandak to precede him down the shuttle's ramp along with two Sith soldiers whose names he hadn't bothered to learn, then followed, Alecto and another two soldiers bringing up the rear. Lady Gasald's Kiss of Death paled in comparison to the finely tuned war machine that was the Unquenchable Fire, but the greater part of her strength was on display around the flagship. A Human who called himself Lord Faro led them to Lady Gasald's throne room, where she awaited them with a number of her Sith Lords, several of whom were infamous enough that Hokhtan knew them by sight. A smile curved Vedya Gasald's wine-dark lips as the Sarkhai Sith Overlord rose to greet them.

"Darth Hokhtan," she crooned, stepping forward and watching him bow. "It's good to see you."

"And you, my lady," Hokhtan replied.

She drifted to his side, trailing one long finger across Vandak's broad, powerful chest. The Anzat raised a dark eyebrow, and she smiled up at him. "Ah, Vandak. I've missed you so."

Vandak gave her the languid smile of a resting predator. "Lady Gasald," he replied, taking her fingers in his; his grip almost swallowed her hand, but he gently pressed his gray lips to her snow-white skin. "No quasar shines so bright as your eyes, and the Maw itself can not rival the darkness of your heart."

Darth Hokhtan saw a hint of disdain cross the face of Halicon Karzded, Lady Gasald's second-in-command, but the Sith Overlord herself did not share his annoyance. Laughing a high, girlish laugh, she caressed Vandak's cheek, her fingertips brushing one of the pouches that concealed his brain-eating proboscises.

"Every day apart from you is an eternity, Vandak," she lamented. "It is so seldom a woman meets a man of such…"

She drew her hand back with a mischievous smile, brushing her index finger along her septum. "…refined taste."

Hokhtan noticed hunger creep into Vandak's cold blue eyes, and he gave the Anzat a warning look as Vedya Gasald sauntered over to Alecto.

"Ah, and you must be the famous Darth Alecto," she mused.

"My lady," Alecto nodded.

"I like these," Gasald remarked, brushing her finger around Alecto's eye, touching each of her three arrowhead tattoos in turn. "Sharp and dangerous…just as I'm told you are."

"Useful qualities in a Sith Lord," Alecto replied.

"Mmm…among others," Lady Gasald observed. She traced one fingernail down Alecto's cheek and across her bottom lip. Alecto's reaction with minimal, but Vedya still grinned before sauntering back to her people.

"You know Lord Karzded, of course," she mentioned, laying a palm against the chest of the Theelin at the front; Hokhtan noticed her fingers dig into the muscle of his pectoral for a second.

"Halicon."

"Hokhtan."

They gauged one another until Lady Gasald laughed and moved on.

"Darth Vaszas…" she said, tracing her fingertips down the powerful arm of a red-robed Falleen, then gestured to a hulking Togorian nearly twice her own height. "…and Darth Kra'all."

A handful of her lesser Sith Lords were clustered behind Darth Kra'all, but Lady Gasald turned her attention back to Hokhtan without further introductions, crossing her slender arms. "I was so pleased Darth Saleej was willing to part with some of his best warriors for me."

Hokhtan knew the Council of Five had commanded his master to aid Lady Gasald, and he saw in the hints of cruel amusement around Halicon's eyes that they knew it too. Maintaining his hard composure, Hokhtan replied, "We are all one in darkness, my lady, and the enemy of one is the enemy of us all."

"Indeed," Halicon said. "We do so hope that Darth Saleej won't be terribly inconvenienced by your absence."

In fact, Hokhtan knew that Darth Saleej had been planning a campaign for Hokhtan himself, which the Sith Overlord now had to take command of personally with Hokhtan dispatched on this errand, and the absence of two of his deadliest warriors was equally unwelcome. To admit that would be to paint Darth Saleej as weak and show Vedya Gasald's greater influence with the Council of Five, but to play it off as a painless sacrifice would degrade his own standing, to say nothing of Vandak and Alecto.

"My master knows that his comrades sometimes find themselves unequal to the tasks before them," Hokhtan replied. "Under such circumstances, he would not stand by and see the Jedi capitalize on a moment of weakness."

He had the pleasure of seeing Halicon's lip curl back from his teeth, but did not allow himself a change of expression.

"The Jedi are no threat to me, Hokhtan," Lady Gasald replied, her voice still soft but now a silken sheath around a razor.

"Then what would you have us do here, my lady?"

As she retook her throne, she gestured vaguely, and the Falleen Darth Vaszas stepped forward, activating a holoprojector that showed them the galaxy, then narrowed its scope down to the Corellian Run.

"Milagro," Vaszas said.

Hokhtan stepped forward, examining the indicated system and the surrounding area of space. "If not the Republic, then Lakalt?"

"Yes," Vaszas answered. "Whoever controls the system possesses an important staging base against Denon, to say nothing of Milagro's own industrial capabilities."

Hokhtan rubbed his jaw, his thumb worrying one of the deep pits in his cheek. "Who controls it now?"

"No one," Vaszas said. "But our intelligence suggests Lakalt will move on Milagro soon."

"Still smarting from the loss of Malastare," Halicon Karzded observed.

Hokhtan did not bother looking at the Theelin, if only because he knew it would annoy him. Vaszas he took more seriously; the Falleen was at best a competent tactician and strategist, but he was a Darth, and his species' patience likely made him more useful as an advisor to Lady Gasald.

"We can move down the Harrin Trade Corridor rather than risking the fight with the Republic on the Corellian," Hokhtan noted. Alecto advanced to his side, studying the projection.

"We, Lord Hokhtan?" Halicon inquired.

Hokhtan frowned at him, but opted not to lower himself to quibbling about the honorific. "We are here to facilitate the capture of Milagro, are we not?"

"To be sure, Hokhtan, but these details of strategy are already seen to," Halicon told him. "My lady has given me the command to ensure our victory, and of course I already planned to use the Harrin."

Hokhtan gritted his teeth. Vaszas was a middling tactician, but Hokhtan would have given him an entire fleet and the ground complement to go with it before he would have given Halicon Karzded a picket ship. But a glance at Lady Gasald's contained, cruel smirk showed she was not amenable to persuasion. "Yours will be great glory then, Halicon…should we prevail. But if not for my skill at command, why ask my aid?"

The Theelin affected a look of surprise. "Hokhtan, you speak as if you're a man of only one talent. I'd never insult you by limiting you so.  You're a Darth, man, a skillful warrior despite your age.  Yours will be the vanguard in our ground assault."

Hokhtan clenched his jaw as he realized the trap into which he was being led, but to prevaricate would be to lose face not only with Lady Gasald, but with Vandak and Alecto. "More woe to Zirist Lakalt and the people of Milagro, then."

"Splendid!" Halicon said with a smile. "What with there being only the three of you, we'll divide you among—"

"Ah, I see your mistake, Halicon," Hokhtan interrupted. The vanguard was one thing, but he did not like Karzded's design of separating him from everyone loyal to him.

"My mistake, Hokhtan?" Halicon asked.

"You think it's only the three of us." Hokhtan permitted himself a tight smile, which seemed to unnerve some of Lady Gasald's Sith, then nodded to Vandak. The Anzat closed his eyes, tilting his head sideways and exposing his teeth in a look of strain.

"Are you well, Vandak?" Lady Gasald asked.

The Anzat recovered himself and smiled at her. "Of course, my lady."

She frowned, and Halicon seized the moment to assert himself again. "Anyway, Hokhtan, as I was saying—"

He stopped again as his comlink beeped. He reached for it, but Hokhtan raised a hand. "You needn't bother, Halicon. I'm certain they're concerned, but they're in no danger." He glanced at Vandak with affected nonchalance. "They're not in danger, are they?"

"Certainly not, my lord," the Anzat replied confidently. "They kill only when I command them to."

Hokhtan sensed unease ripple through the less disciplined of Gasald's Sith, and Darth Kra'all growled his displeasure, one massive paw clenching around the lightsaber hilt on his belt. Leaning forward, Lady Gasald narrowed her eyes and asked, "Hokhtan—dearest Hokhtan—I did not know you had brought others. Unless you mean your soldiers?"

Darth Hokhtan shook his head, sensing fear approaching the room like an advancing thundercloud and replying slowly to time his words for maximum effect. "Your forces are far too strong to be bolstered by so few Forceless with guns, my lady. No, Lady Gasald, we've brought far more than soldiers."

Vandak flicked a finger over his shoulder as if they had practiced the timing, and the door hissed open. There were sounds of struggle, but Lady Gasald's guards had obviously been unable to put up any real resistance, because the newcomers filed in one-by-one, most dressed in charcoal gray, though one wore red. Filing in behind Vandak soundlessly, they framed him like dark wings—a dozen Anzati, armed with knives and swords, blasters and rifles. Vandak was neither the tallest nor the most powerfully built, but he was so utterly at home in their midst that his lordship over them was obvious.

Several of Lady Gasald's Sith laid their hands on their weapons, and Alecto drifted back to Hokhtan's side, her hand on her own lightsaber and her violet eyes shining. But after a moment the other Sith looked to their mistress, unsure how to proceed, and in the thickening silence Vandak said, "You called upon me, my lady, and I could not return to you with merely these instruments of mortality."

He patted his paired lightsabers, shifting his eyes to Darth Kra'all as he did, as if daring the Togorian to challenge him. Kra'all growled, exposing his long teeth, but did not move, and Vandak smirked as he added, "And so I bring to you my own—my elite killers. My Shagzbad Nkalyon—the Brotherhood of Shadows."

Silence followed his pronouncement as the assembled Sith Lords took in the sight of the thirteen Anzati. More than one of Vandak's killers appraised Lady Gasald with open interest. Allowing them a moment to squirm, Hokhtan finally said, "And so you see, Halicon, it would be foolish to part Vandak from the elite of the Brotherhood."

"I…to be sure, Hokhtan—"

"And Darth Saleej would doubtless wish Alecto to learn the nature of command as well as direct combat," Hokhtan continued over him, "unless you had intended her to observe from the Kiss of Death?"

Now it was Karzded between two bad options. He could keep Alecto away from Hokhtan aboard the Kiss of Death, but her chances of dying there would be minimal. So it always went with these stratagems and reversals; the Sith Overlords played their games, and if the agents of their rivals for power happened to die at the hands of Jedi or the false Sith claimants, no tears would be shed. But neither Halicon Karzded nor Vedya Gasald was foolish enough to risk the Council's wrath by killing anointed Sith themselves.

"But then who would command our third wave, Hokhtan?" Halicon asked.

Hokhtan frowned as if confused, looking at Darth Vaszas. "My apologies, Vaszas; I had thought you were Lady Gasald's senior Darth. But if you've refused the command—"

"Of course not," Darth Vaszas said, just a hint of anger around his reptilian eyes.

Hokhtan cleared the frown from his face. "As I thought, then. As you said, Halicon, we're here to reinforce you with combat prowess, not usurp your commands.  If I have the first wave, Vaszas the second, and Vandak the third…you did intend Vaszas to take the second, yes?"

"And leave Vandak so long from the battle?" Lady Gasald asked.

"We shall take it as a challenge, my lady," Vandak answered. "To arrive last and yet kill the most."

Some of the Brotherhood smiled, one flexing his powerful hands. The one in red merely glanced at Vandak, then returned his eyes to Lady Gasald.

After a moment, Lady Gasald reassembled her smile. "A sound plan. I must thank Darth Saleej for his generosity in providing us your insights, Hokhtan.  Lord Karzded will distribute forces for the assault, and Darth Hokhtan will drive the tip of the spear into Milagro's heart."