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Hurst pushed his chair away from the table and rose. “Eighteen, and still too dumb to know when to keep your mouth shut.” He shook his head from side to side in exaggerated disappointment. “Bloody bane of my existence is what you are.”

Throwing his fork down on his plate, Des pushed his own chair back from the table and stood up to his full height. He was taller than his father now, and his frame was beginning to fill out with muscles earned in the tunnels.

“Are you going to beat me now?” he snarled at his father. “Going to teach me a lesson?”

Hurst’s jaw dropped open. “What the brix is wrong with you, boy?”

“I’m sick of this,” Des snapped. “You blame all your problems on me, but you’re the one who’s drinking away all our credits. Maybe if you sobered up we could get off this stinking world!”

“You smart-mouthed, mudcrutch whelp!” Hurst roared, flipping the table so it crashed against the wall. He leapt across the now empty space between them and grabbed Des by his wrists in a grip as unbreakable as a pair of durasteel binders. The young man tried to wrench free, but his father outweighed him by twenty-some kilos, almost half of which was muscle.

Knowing it was hopeless, Des stopped struggling after a few seconds. But he wasn’t going to cower and cry. Not this time. “If you’re going to beat me tonight,” he said, “remember that it might be the last time, old man. You better make it a good one.”

Hurst did. He lit into his son with the savage fury of a bitter, hopeless man. He broke his nose; he blackened both his eyes. He knocked out two of his teeth, split his lip, and cracked his ribs. But throughout it all Des never said a word, and he didn’t shed a single tear.

That night, as Des lay in his bed too bruised and swollen to sleep, a single thought kept running through his mind, drowning out the loud drunken snores of Hurst passed out in the corner.

I hope you die. I hope you die. I hope you die.

He’d never hated his father as much as he did at that moment. He envisioned a giant hand squeezing his father’s cruel heart.

I hope you die. I hope you die. I hope you die.

The words rolled over and over, an endless mantra, as if he could make them come true through sheer force of will.

I hope you die. I hope you die. I hope you die.

The tears he’d held back during the brutal thrashing finally came, hot drops streaming down his purple, swollen face.

I hope you die. I hope you die. I hope you—

Bane woke with a start, his heart pounding and his body bathed in terror sweat as he thrashed against the covers tangled around his legs. For a brief second he thought he was back on Apatros in the cramped room filled with Hurst and the overwhelming stench of booze. Then he realized where he was, and the nightmare began to fade. A horrible realization swept in to take its place.

Hurst had died that night. The authorities had ruled it a natural death. A heart attack, brought on by a combination of too much alcohol, a life working the mines, and the overexertion of nearly beating his own son to death with his bare hands. They never suspected the real cause. Neither had Bane. Not until now.

Trembling slightly, he rolled over, exhausted but knowing sleep wouldn’t come again this night.

Fohargh wasn’t the first person he had murdered with the Force. He probably wouldn’t be the last. Bane was smart enough to understand that.

He shook his head to clear away the memory of Hurst’s death. The man had deserved neither pity nor mercy. The weak would always be crushed by the strong. If Bane wanted to survive, he had to become one of the strong. That was why he was here at the Academy. That was his mission. That was the way of the dark side.

But the realization did nothing to quell the queasy feeling in his stomach, and when he closed his eyes he could still see father’s face.

12

“No!” Kas’im barked, disdainfully slapping Bane’s training saber aside with his own weapon. “Wrong! You’re too slow on the first transition. You’re leaving your left side wide open for a