Eldon Ax licked her wounds all the way to Dromund Kaas.

The damage to her body was most easily treated. Many of the cuts and gashes she left to scar naturally, believing as her Master had taught her that a lesson quickly forgotten is a lesson poorly learned. The rest she treated with the help of the medkit built into her interceptor's c.o.c.kpit, avoiding painkillers and anesthetics completely. It wasn't pain that worried her. That was good for her, too.

The damage done to her confidence would take much longer to heal-not to mention her prospects of advancement. Darth Chratis would see to that. It didn't matter that her record on solo missions had been perfect up to this one. It didn't matter how highly she had been awarded by the Sith Academy. All that mattered was success.

The interceptor burst back into reals.p.a.ce and the Empire's grim-faced capital, Kaas City, hove into view.

"I will kill you, Dao Stryver, " Eldon Ax swore, "or die trying. "

The debrief went as badly as she feared.

"Tell me about your mission, " her Master instructed in clipped tones from his meditation chamber. Ax had been admitted into his presence before his morning rituals were complete, and she knew well how that annoyed him.

She bowed and did as she was instructed. Her Master doled out orders with an unbendable desire to test her willingness to obey. She knew better than to outright defy him, even when she was doing her best to keep her failure from him.

It was during her mission that the Mandalorian had found her. And it was this encounter she did her best to conceal from her Master, inasmuch as that was possible.

"Tell me more, " said Darth Chratis, rising slowly out of his sarcophagus. In order to focus most effectively, he occupied at least one hour a day in a coffin-like sh.e.l.l that allowed no light or air, forcing him to rely solely on his own energies to survive. "You have not sufficiently explained the reasons for your failure. "

She couldn't read his mood. His face was a mess of deep wrinkles and fissures from which two bloodred eyes peered out at the world. His knife-thin lips were twisted in a perpetual sneer. Occasionally, a tongue so pale it was almost transparent appeared to taste the air.

"I will not lie to you, Master, " she said, kneeling before him. "While infiltrating an enemy cell, my ident.i.ty was revealed and I was forced to defend myself. "

"Revealed?" The bloodless lips twitched. "I do not sense the foul stink of the Jedi about you. "

"No, Master. I was exposed by another-one whose people were once allies in our war against the Republic. "

That was the gambit she had settled upon, to turn the blame for the incident back on the person who had caused it.

"So. " Darth Chratis stepped free from the confines of his sarcophagus. The soles of his feet made a sound like dry leaves being crushed. "A Mandalorian. "

"Yes, Master. "

"You fought him?"

"Yes, Master. "

"And he defeated you. "

This wasn't a question, but it demanded a response. "That is true, Master. "

"Yet you are still here. Why is this?"

Darth Chratis stood directly before her now. One withered claw reached down to touch her chin. His fingernails were like ancient crystals, cold and sharp against her skin. He smelled of death.

She looked up into his forbidding visage and saw nothing there but the implacable demand for the truth. "He did not come to fight me, " she said. "This I believe, although it makes no sense. He asked for me by name. He knew what I am. He asked me questions to which I knew no answer. "

"He interrogated you?" That prompted a frown. "The Emperor will be displeased if you revealed any of his secrets. "

"I would rather die a lingering death at your hands, Master. " Her reply was utterly sincere. She had been a Sith in training all her life. The Empire was as much a part of her as her lightsaber. She would not betray it to a pack of prideful mercenaries who worked with the Empire when it suited them.

But how to convey the truth of this to her Master when it was here, on this critical point, that her story fell apart?

"He asked me nothing about the Empire, " Ax told her Master, remembering the scene with grueling clarity. Her a.s.sailant had disarmed her and pinned her with a net resistant to all her efforts to escape. A dart had paralyzed her, leaving only the ability to speak. "He did not torture me. I was wounded solely in self-defense. "

She held out her arms to show Darth Chratis the injuries she had sustained.

He regarded them with no sign of approval.

"You are lying, " he said with ready contempt. "You expect me to believe that a Mandalorian hunted down a Sith apprentice, interrogated her, asked her nothing about the Empire, and then left her alive afterward?"

"Were I lying, Master, I would be sure to do so more plausibly. "

"Then you have become unhinged. How else can I explain it?"

Ax lowered her head. There was nothing more she could say.

Darth Chratis paced across the angular narthex in which he conducted his audiences. Displayed on the walls around him were relics of his many victories, including bisected lightsaber hilts and shattered Jedi relics. Absent were the tributes to his many Sith enemies. Although Darth Chratis hadn't earned the fear and respect of his peers simply by outperforming them, he didn't boast about those he had forcibly removed from his path. His reputation was enough.

Only one in three apprentices serving under him survived their training. Eldon Ax wondered breathlessly whether the time had come for her to join those who had failed. Her life had been too short-just seventeen years!-but she wouldn't raise a hand to defend herself, if her Master chose to end it now. There would be no point. He could strike her down as easily as swatting a fly.

Darth Chratis stopped, turned to face her again.

"If this Mandalorian of yours didn't ask about the Emperor's plans, what did he ask you?"

At the time, the questions had puzzled her. They still puzzled her now.

"He was looking for a woman, " she said. "He mentioned a ship. The names meant nothing to me. "

"What names, exactly?"

"Lema Xandret. The Cinzia"

Suddenly her Master was standing over her again. She gasped. He had made no sound at all. The cold, strong grip of the Force was back at her throat, pulling her irresistibly upright until she was standing on tiptoes.

"Say those names again, " he hissed.

She couldn't wrench her gaze away from his. "L-Lema Xandret. The Cinzia. Do you know what they mean, Master?"

He let her go and turned away. With two swift gestures, the ruin of his body was wrapped from head to feet in a long, winding cape, as black as his soul, and his right hand gripped a long, sharp-pointed staff.

"No more questions, " he said. "Come. "

With long strides, he left the room.

Eldon Ax took a long, shuddering breath, and hurried in the wake of her Master.

The sorting and storing of Imperial data was a growth industry on Dromund Kaas, albeit one kept carefully hidden from view. Vast inverted skytowers drilled deep into the jungle's fertile soil, entombing centuries of multiply redundant records tended by tens of thousands of slaves. Extensive compounds spread out around the entrances, maintaining the highest possible security. To one of these compounds Darth Chratis led Eldon Ax.

He offered not a word of explanation throughout the long shuttle flight from Kaas City, and she endured his silence with something like relief. At least he wasn't berating her. Her mission had become a complete failure. She'd had to practically hack her way to the s.p.a.ceport and off the planet-but not before running a search through landing records in recent days. There she found a reference to the Mandalorian. He had the temerity to travel under what appeared to be his real name: Dao Stryver.

Once again she renewed the vow to see him humbled as she had been, no matter how long it took. Perhaps death was too good for him. A quick one, anyway.

Darth Chratis commandeered a private data access chamber seventy floors beneath the surface of the world, one equipped with a giant holoprojector, and ordered that the two of them not be interrupted. Ax trailed obediently behind him, increasingly mystified. Not once in her years of training had he shown any interest in this aspect of Imperial rule. Interstellar bookkeepers was his derogatory term for those who preferred service in the data mines to a more direct pursuit of power. She went to sit in the data requisitioner's place, but he waved her aside.

"Stand there, " he said, pointing at a position directly in front of the screen and taking the seat himself.

With brisk, angular movements, he began inputting the requests. This as much as anything convinced her that events were taking a very strange turn indeed.

Menus and diagrams came and went in the giant screen. Ax found it difficult to follow, but she sensed that her Master was leading her through the vast and convoluted structure that was Imperial records to one location in particular.

"This, " he said, tapping the keyboard with finality, "is the recruitment database. "

A long list of names appeared in the screen, scrolling by too fast to read.

"Every person to enter the Sith Academy is listed here, " he went on. "Their names, origins, bloodlines-and their fates, too, where applicable. The Dark Council uses this data to arrange matches and to antic.i.p.ate the potential of offspring. The fortunes of numerous families rest on the nature of this data. It is therefore protected. Ax. It is very secure. "

She indicated her understanding, thus far. "I'm in there, " she said.

"Indeed you are, and so am I. Watch what happens when I input Lema Xandret. "

A new window appeared, showing a woman's face. Round-featured, blond, keen eyes. It meant nothing to Ax. The s.p.a.ce below the picture was filled with words highlighted in urgent red. At the bottom of a long list of entries were two bold lines: Termination ordered.

File incomplete: target absconded.

Ax frowned. "So... she was a traitor? A Republic spy?"

"Worse than that. We keep fewer records on the Jedi than we do on people like this. " Darth Chratis swiveled in the seat to face her. "Tell me, my apprentice, what happens when a Sith is recruited. "

"The child is removed from its family and placed in the Academy. There its life begins anew, in the service of the Emperor and the Dark Council-as mine did. "

"Exactly. It is a great honor for a family when a child is selected, particularly if their bloodline has not been so honored before. Most parents are pleased, as they should be. "

"And those who are not are executed, " she said. "Was Lema Xandret one of them?"

A cadaverous smile briefly enlivened the withered landscape of Darth Chratis's face. "Exactly. She was something unremarkable-a droidmaker, I think. Yes, exactly that. From a long line of unremarkable droidmakers, with no trace of Force sensitivity. She produced a child with the potential to be Sith, and so the child had to go. "

Ax's Master didn't show amus.e.m.e.nt often. It disturbed her more than his rage.

"The file says 'target absconded, '" she said.

"First she tried to hide the child-a late bloomer, who she feared would not survive training on Korriban. When that failed and the child was taken anyway, she ran with the rest of the child's family-uncles, aunts, cousins, anyone at risk from reprisals-and has never been heard of since. "

"Until now. "

"From the mouth of a Mandalorian, " Darth Chratis said, "to your ears. "

"Why me?" she said, sensing that her Master was studying her closely. "Because my family attempted to hide me, too?"

"Perhaps. "

"What I was before I met you is unimportant, " she a.s.sured him. "I am untroubled regarding my family's fate. "

"Indeed. I trained you well. " Again that desiccated smile. "Perhaps too well. " He leaned closer.

"Look here, Ax. Into my eyes. "

She did so, and the red horror of his gaze filled her.

"The block is strong, " he said, and it was as though the words came from inside her head. "It's standing between you and the truth. I release it. I release you, Ax. You are free to know the truth about your past. "

She staggered back as though struck, but no physical force had touched her. A silent detonation had gone off in her mind, a depth charge deep below her conscious self. Something stirred there. Something strange and unsuspected.

Ax looked up at the picture in the holoprojector.

Lema Xandret stared back at her with empty eyes.

"She was your mother, Ax, " her Master said. "Does that answer your question?"

Numbly, Ax supposed it did. But at the same time it posed many more.

Darth Chratis used the chamber's holoprojector to conduct a secure audience with the Minister of Intelligence. Ax had never met the minister before, nor seen him in any kind of communication, but the immense trust her Master showed by allowing her to remain in the room was utterly lost on her. Her head still rang from the liberation from her Master's conditioning. Not because of what it revealed, but because of what little difference it made to her.

Her family's lack of Force sensitivity had been the one thing of which she was certain about her life before becoming a Sith. She had a.s.sumed that her family had been killed, but that had never bothered her. She had certainly never worried about it, and it wouldn't have bothered her now but for one thing.

The block was removed. Memories should have come flooding back about Lema Xandret and her early life.

But there was nothing. Block or no block, there was nothing left. Lema Xandret remained a complete stranger.

With half a mind, she attended to the conversation her Master was having with the minister.

"That's why the Mandalorian sought to interrogate the girl. She's a potential lead. "

"A lead to Xandret?"

"What other conclusion can we come to? She must be alive-in the same bolt-hole she fled down in order to evade execution, I presume. "

"What would the Mandalorians want with her?"

"I don't know, and the fact that we don't know makes it vital that we find her first. "

"As a matter of principle, Darth Chratis, or Imperial security?"

"The two are often inseparable, Minister, I think you'll find. "

The man on the screen looked uncomfortable. His was the highest rank any mundane person could attain in the Empire's intelligence arm, yet to a Sith Lord he was considered fundamentally inferior. Disinclined he might be to acknowledge that a single missing droidmaker warranted his attention, even one who tried to hide a Force-sensitive child from the Sith, but to disobey was inconceivable.