Revenge of the Jedi/Part 55

Four days earlier

Vedya Gasald huddled in her escape pod, her world a haze of agony. She had sustained injuries in training, of course—every Sith did—and some of her private voyages and researches had subjected her to conditions that would have slain a lesser being. The image of the voluptuous hedonist had served her well, lowering the guard of countless rivals who thought her unequal to true danger; she enjoyed the comforts of luxury, but she could face the challenges of combat at need.

But neither was she a masochist, subjecting herself to routine torments to wring one more drop of power out of the Force. That sort of clumsy courtship of the dark side was for Sith warriors and other thugs who could not think beyond the points of their lightsabers. To a true Sith Lord, being immersed in pain was no more a conduit for the dark side than deliberately courting fear or rage. All served their purposes, but a master of the dark side existed above and beyond them.

Vedya wondered if more of those base exercises might have prepared her better, but she knew she could never have willingly subjected herself to pain like this.

Fear had driven her across the dais and into her throne, but it had hurt to sit, and when the throne had revolved into her secret chamber, she had gotten to her feet and promptly fallen to her knees. She was not sure if the impact had broken her kneecap, or if that was but one of the Force lightning microfractures throughout her skeleton; at the time, she had tried to catch herself without thinking, and the impact of the handless end of her right arm on the floor had driven every other pain from her mind.

Terrified that Kal-Di would carve through her throne as easily as he had carved through her arm, she had hobbled to the escape pod. She had sensed the need for it; the Force had given her that much, at least. The Kiss of Death was doomed, and though none of the souls aboard knew it, they would all be dead before the day was done. Somehow, everything had gone wrong in a single day, but Vedya had no intention of dying along with her flagship.

The Force had been enough to get her into the escape pod and activate the launch sequence, but as she had sunk down with a crackle of splintering ribs, unable to even cry out with the damage Kal-Di had done to her vocal cords, she lay on the pod's floor, rasping in anguish.

The pod had no mirror, but perhaps that was a blessing; the burns on her face and scalp hurt every time she so much as changed her expression, and one side of her mouth slumped into a grimace she could not stop. Every time she felt herself drool, she had to decide between the painful movement it took to wipe the spittle away with what remained of her arm, and the saliva trail serving as a slow, oozing reminder of the grotesque she had been reduced to.

She hated Kal-Di, but "hate" was too small a word; even the blackest sorcery she knew in the tongue of the long-dead Sith race lacked a word strong enough. Her rivalries with Rawian Mensaret in her youth and Darth Saleej in adulthood did not begin to compare; those were casual workplace disagreements, the kind to be laughed over a day later. If she had a thousand years to torture Tirien Kal-Di, she would use every second for that purpose and still feel shortchanged when the millennium ended.

Her escape pod had detailed sensor systems, of course, but they were biometrically locked to her. She had started laughing—a hacking, wheezing whisper of sound—when she remembered she herself had insisted on the two options: a fingerprint scan and voice activation. When she did not stop after a moment, she banged her head on the escape pod floor; too far that way lay madness. But the blow cracked her weakened skull and knocked her out.

When she came to, she felt the Kiss of Death die—the thousands aboard vanishing in fire and pain, Darth Kra'all and Celop Faro among them. She should have called for Darshkére, she realized; she should never have sent him away. Surrounded with incompetents since Halicon and Vaszas died, she had sent her ablest servant back to guard the border, as if it was more precious than she herself. She tried to call out to him with her mind, but felt no response.

The Kiss of Death was not the only Sith ship to fall, and Vedya wondered when one of them would pick her up. Of course, her personal transponder beacon was one of the systems sealed against her, but any Sith ship nearby should have detected the launch. With the flagship lost, surely every ship of the fleet would seek any being who could explain why?

When the escape pod finally did shudder, caught in a tractor beam, Vedya had half a mind to berate her rescuers for their tardiness. As the seconds ticked by, though, she began to fear facing them. What would they think when they saw their master reduced to this mutilated freak? She could not even bind them to her will and mesmerize their senses; Kal-Di had robbed her of her voice, and so one of her greatest weapons. But she still had the Force; she need not speak a command to ensnare a mind. She attempted to focus for the coming challenge, but her wounds were so many, and it was so hard…

The pod banged a little; a ship had caught it. Vedya might have blown off the door, but she decided to conserve her power. Fighting through the pain, she sat up; turning her left side away from the doors they would not see her absent arm at first. She felt the vibrations of technicians working at the door from the outside, and perceived the steel-hearted darkness in the Force that was a number of dark siders, along with one bright spot of fury.

Probably an Acolyte, she thought; her Sith Lords knew better.

The door popped off, and Vedya blinked against the light, blinding after hours in the dark pod. She opened her mouth to command them to turn it down, then remembered she could not speak. She needed bacta to repair her throat at once…

"Well, I'll be damned," a sonorous voice boomed. "You were right."

Vedya felt that furious spot flare to rage; it was discomfitingly familiar. She squinted, trying to make out the figures.

"What in blazes did you do to her?" the man asked.

"Most of it was Kal-Di." The harsh, alien voice said his name with loathing Vedya shared. "But he didn't have the guts—"

"Give him time." The man's voice came closer. "Welcome, Lady Gasald."

"She can't speak. I think Tirien ripped up her voice box."

"Did he now? How very interesting.  Well, we'll see if we can't extract some information other ways."

"Shields are at thirty percent and failing fast," a new voice warned. "We need to go soon, or we won't be going at all."

"Right you are," the first man replied. "Well, get our guest out. We've got just the place for her."

The Force wrenched Vedya from the pod and threw her on a durasteel hangar bay floor. She exhaled soundlessly in pain, then again when coarse hands seized her brittle hair, her amputated stumps, and hauled her upright. Her injuries prevented her from speaking a word of command or crying out in pain, but when she got a good look at the faces of the beings around her at last, she discovered there was something else she could not do: scream.