Star Wars_ Darth Bane 02_ Rule of Two - Drew Karpyshyn [64]
“He’s our leader,” Paak muttered sullenly. “He tells us what to do.”
“So does the Republic Senate,” Zannah chimed in. “Isn’t this the very thing you’re fighting against? Obedience to a master—any master—is still slavery.”
She said the words with utter conviction even though she didn’t believe them. At the same time, she reached out with the Force to touch the minds of everyone in the room. It was possible to use the dark side to dominate another’s will, but that would not serve her purpose here. The effects of mental domination would begin to fade after a few hours. By the time of Chancellor Valorum’s arrival, any direct influence she exerted over Kel and his friends would be completely gone.
Zannah preferred a more subtle and insidious approach. Instead of using the Force to bend them to her will, she was gently prodding their collective psyche, pushing their thought patterns to make them more emotional, more aggressive. By itself the process was useless, but combined with persuasive words to further stir the blood, the effects could be more powerful—and more permanent—than the brute force of simple mind control.
However, the words couldn’t come from her. She was a stranger here; they didn’t trust her. Their natural instincts would be to reject her arguments; in their artificially induced hyperaggressive state they would quickly turn against her. They needed to be convinced by someone they knew. Someone like Kel.
“You say you want independence,” the handsome Twi’lek told them. “You say you will fight for your freedom. Yet when I offer you this chance, you want to slink away like a Kath hound banished from its pack.”
“We should wait for the Armistice Celebrations,” Cyndra insisted. “We need to stick to the original plan.”
“A plan is nothing until you act on it,” Kel replied. “We talk about what we will do in the future, but when the Armistice Celebrations come, how easy will it be to find another excuse to wait yet again?
“Secret meetings will not bring change to the galaxy. Plans alone will not make the Senate tremble or bring the Republic to its knees. We must take action, and the time for action is now!”
Zannah recognized her words being spoken with Kel’s voice. She had fed them to him over weeks of intimate conversations, planting the seeds of ideas, then watching them grow. Now he spoke the words with passion and fire, delivering them as if he truly believed they were his own.
Bane would be pleased. This was true power: to twist another to your purpose, yet have him believe he was in control. Kel was her puppet, but his pride and ego had blinded him to the strings she used to make him dance.
“We stand on the precipice of a momentous event,” he continued. “In three days we will strike a great blow against the tyrants of the Republic, the first step in our long and glorious march to independence and true freedom!”
A spontaneous cheer of assent rose up from the room, and Zannah knew Kel had won them over. Only Paak and Cyndra showed any signs of reluctance, but as the rest of the group began working on the details of the plan to capture Chancellor Valorum, even they set aside their hesitations.
The meeting lasted long into the night, and when it was over she and Kel went back to the small apartment she had rented as part of her cover story.
“You were magnificent tonight,” she breathed.
“This is the last time I can see you until all this is over,” Kel warned. “The others are counting on me. I can’t have any distractions.”
As an answer she reached out and grabbed his wrist, then pulled him close in a tight embrace.
He left the next morning. Zannah kissed him goodbye and went back to sleep. Later, she rolled out of bed and began to gather her things. Her mission here was over; she knew she would never see Kel alive again. It was time to return to Ambria.
The camp was in ruins. The tents were leveled, their canopies shredded and torn. Wooden supply crates had been smashed into sawdust and splinters, their contents tossed and scattered on the wind. Hundred-kilogram fuel cells lay strewn about the campsite,