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By Root 1774 0

him, and placing around his neck the order’s signature pendant. Plagueis had declined an offer of enrollment twenty years earlier, but had continued to do business with the Grand Mage and many of the order’s most prominent members, several of whom were regulars at the Gatherings on Sojourn. The Order of the Canted Circle was content to serve as an exclusive club for some of the galaxy’s most influential beings; its aims were narrow in focus and its rituals universally allegorical, replete with secret phrases and handshakes. Plagueis understood the need to instill members with a sense of furtive fraternity, but he couldn’t risk having the high officials dig too exhaustively into his background. Larsh Hill’s past, on the other hand, was exemplary—even the decades he had spent working with Plagueis’s father. Once initiated, Hill would become Damask Holding’s principal agent on Coruscant, and his son, San, would become Hego’s right hand, in preparation for his eventual role as chairman of the InterGalactic Banking Clan.

Returned from the short holocommunication with Sidious, Plagueis was filled with a sense of triumph. Before night fell on the Fobosi district, the members of the Gran Protectorate would cease to be a concern. Pax Teem and the rest believed they had found shelter aboard one of Coruscant’s orbital facilities, but the Sun Guards—save for a pair Plagueis had kept in reserve in the order’s initiation room—were on the way to them now, in forces sufficient to crush whatever defenses Santhe Security might be providing. Sidious had played his part perfectly, and had redeemed himself fully in Plagueis’s eyes. The time had come to bring his apprentice deeper into the Sith mysteries he had been investigating for most of his life; to introduce him to the miracles he was performing on Aborah.

From a series of arch-topped doorways lining the circumference of the room came the sounds of solemn chanting as perhaps three dozen of the order’s black-robed members began to file in and take their places along the perimeter of the Canted Circle. Last to emerge was the high official, who wore a mask and carried the circular, emblematic pendant draped over both hands, which he held as if in prayer. Rituals of a similar sort had been enacted by the ancient Sith, Plagueis thought, as Larsh Hill genuflected before the high official.

At the same instant Hill’s right knee touched the polished stone, a jangle of foreboding laddered up Plagueis’s spine. Turning ever so slightly, he saw that 11-4D had rotated its head toward him in a gesture Plagueis had come to associate with alarm. The dark side fell over him like a shroud, but instead of acting on impulse, he restrained himself, fearful of betraying his true nature prematurely. In that instant of hesitation, time came to a standstill, and several events happened at once.

The high official gave a downward tug to the pendant he had placed around Hill’s neck, and the old Muun’s head toppled from his shoulders and began to roll down the tipped stage. Blood geysered from Hill’s neck, and his body fell to one side with a thud and began to jerk back and forth as one after another of his hearts failed.

Yanking their hands from the roomy, opposite sleeves of their robes, the hooded members of the order made sidelong throwing motions, which sent dozens of decapitator disks screaming through the air. Muuns to both sides of Plagueis fell to their knees, their last breaths caught in their throats. A disk buried deep in his forehead, one of the Sun Guards twirled in front of Plagueis like a crazed marionette. Blood fountained, turning to mist. Struck in at least three places and leaking lubricant, 11-4D was trying to limp to Plagueis’s side when another disk whirled into its alloy body, touching off a storm of sparks and smoke.

Plagueis pressed his right hand to the right side of his neck to discover that a disk had made off with a considerable hunk of his jawbone and neck, and in its cruel passing had severed his trachea and several blood vessels. He cupped the Force against the injury to keep himself