Star Wars_ Darth Bane 03_ Dynasty of Evil - Drew Karpyshyn [20]
There were no further details; budget reports were rarely interested in the why. Bane, however, was very interested. What was a Jedi Knight doing on Doan? More important, how had he died?
Ever since first seeing the report, Bane had been mining his sources to try to find the answers. He had to tread carefully where the Jedi were concerned; for the Sith to survive they had to remain hidden in the shadows. But through a long chain of bureaucrats, household servants, and paid informants, he had assembled enough facts to realize the situation was worthy of more thorough investigation.
And so he had sent for Zannah.
Seated behind the desk at the center of the screens and holoprojectors, he could hear her coming down the hall, the hard heels of her boots clacking against the floor with each stride. Resting on the left side of the desk was a data disk containing all the information he had compiled on Medd Tandar and his visit to Doan. He reached out for it without thinking and froze. For a brief instant his hand hovered in the air, trembling involuntarily. Then he quickly snatched it back, hiding it beneath the edge of the desk just as Zannah entered the room.
“You sent for me, Lord Bane?”
She made no acknowledgment of the tremor, yet Bane was certain it had not gone unnoticed. Was she playing him for a fool? Pretending not to see his weakness in the hope he would become careless and let his guard down? Or was she silently gloating while she bided her time, waiting for the dark side to simply rot his body away?
Zannah was only ten years younger than Bane, but if the dark side was extracting a similar physical toll on her it had yet to show itself. Unlike her Master, she had never been infested with the orbalisks. It would still be many decades before the corruption of the dark side caused her body to wither.
Her curly golden hair was still long and lustrous, her skin still smooth and perfect. Of average height, she had the figure of a gymnast: lean, lithe, and strong. She wore fitted black pants and a sleeveless red vest embroidered with silver, an outfit that was both stylish by current Ciutric standards and practical, in that it would not hinder movement.
The handle of her twin-bladed lightsaber hung from her hip; over the past few years she had never come into her Master’s presence without it. The hooked handle of Bane’s own weapon was clipped to the belt of his breeches … it would have been foolish to leave himself unarmed and vulnerable before the apprentice who had sworn to one day kill him.
I’m still waiting for that day, Bane thought. Out loud he said, “I need you to make a trip to the Outer Rim. A planet called Doan, where a Jedi was murdered three standard days ago.”
“Anyone powerful enough to kill a Jedi is worthy of our attention,” Zannah admitted. “Do we know who is responsible?”
“That is what you need to find out.”
Zannah nodded, her eyes narrowing as she processed the information. “What was a Jedi doing on an insignificant planet in the Outer Rim?”
“That is something else you need to find out.”
“The Jedi will send one of their own to investigate,” she noted.
“Not right away,” Bane assured her. “The Doan royal family is calling in political favors to delay the investigation. They’ve sent a representative to meet with the Jedi Council on Coruscant instead.”
“The royal family must be rich; those kinds of favors don’t come cheap. Small world, but not widely known—yet with wealthy royals. Valuable resources? Mining?” she guessed.
Zannah had always been able to grasp bits of information and put them together into something meaningful. She would have been a worthy