Darth Plagueis - James Luceno [27]
The task before him was at once invigorating and daunting, and in the eye of that cycloning storm he could hear the faraway voices of all those who had laid the goundwork of the Sith imperative—the Grand Plan; those who had enlivened the hurricane with their breath and lives: Darths Bane and Zannah, and on down through the generations that had included Cognus, Vectivus, Ramage, and Tenebrous. One hundred years earlier, Tenebrous’s Twi’lek Master had opened a small rend in the fabric of the Force, allowing the dark side to be felt by the Jedi Order for the first time in more than eight hundred years. That had been the inauguration, the commencement of the revenge of the Sith. And now the time had come to enlarge that rend into a gaping hole, a gaping wound, into which the Republic and the Jedi Order would to their own hazard be drawn.
6: THE HUNTERS’ MOON
An afternoon breeze carried the scent of fresh blood. Shrieks of agony and death pierced tendrils of mist snagged by the gnarled branches of greel trees. The reports of weapons—old and new, projectile and energy—reverberated from the escarpment that walled the ancient fortress to the west, behind which the system’s primary was just now disappearing. As if some fantastic statuary perched atop a place of worship, Magister Hego Damask stood on the uppermost rampart, his black cloak fluttering, attuned to the sounds of slaughter. And to the clamor of parties of beings returning from their separate hunts, blood of whatever color and consistency stirred by primal violence, voices lifted in ancient song or throaty chant, the gutted carcasses of their prey strapped to antigrav litters, ready for roasting over bonfires that blazed in the fort’s central courtyard, or for preservation by skilled taxidermists. Veermok, nexu, mongworst; krayt dragon, acklay, reek. Whatever their preference.
A nod to the planet that had birthed it, the moon was known as Sojourn, a name whispered by those who knew it slightly, and even by those who had visited repeatedly over the centuries. The system could be found in the registries, but only if one knew where to look, and how to decipher the data that revealed its location.
Here, once every standard year, Damask and the dozen Muuns who made up Damask Holdings hosted a gathering of influential beings from across the galaxy. Their names might be known to a few, but they were largely invisible to the masses and could move among them unrecognized, though they were responsible—in no small measure—for events that shaped galactic history. They were conveyed to Sojourn in secret, aboard ships designed by Rugess Nome and owned by Hego Damask. None came without an invitation, for to do so was to risk immediate destruction. What they shared, to a being, was Damask’s belief that financial profit mattered more than notoriety, politics, or vulgar morality.
Founded generations earlier by members of the InterGalactic Banking Clan, Sojourn had begun as a place of relaxation for the clan’s wealthiest clientele. A perquisite for those of exalted privilege. Later, under the management of the elder Damask—Hego’s biological father—on his retirement from chairmanship of the IBC, the moon had become something else: a place where only the most important players were brought together to exchange ideas. It was on Sojourn that the galactic credit standard had been established; the chancellorship of Eixes Valorum first proposed; the makeup of the