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“How long after you cut him before that stuff starts to take effect?”

“Thirty, maybe forty seconds.” Assuming Serra knows what she’s talking about.

“That’s a long time for a bunch of soldiers to go toe-to-toe with a Sith.”

There really wasn’t anything she could say to reassure him, so she didn’t bother with an answer.

“Make sure your unit remembers that this is a two-stage attack,” she told him. “The first stage needs to distract him long enough to give me an opening. After that, hit him with everything we’ve got.”

“Can you really see the future?” the captain asked after passing on her instructions to the team.

“Sometimes. The future is always in motion. It’s not always clear.”

“Are we going to get out of this alive?”

“Some of us might,” she replied, not mentioning the vision she had of Jedder’s broken body lying lifeless on the mansion’s marble floor.

When Bane returned to Ciutric, he was surprised to find Zannah’s ship still gone, but he was grateful that she wouldn’t be waiting for him back at the mansion. He was in no shape to do battle with her now; he was even too tired to come up with a lie to explain his absence without raising her suspicions. Yet as his airspeeder approached his mansion on the horizon, he knew that even if Zannah had been waiting for him, his journey would still have been worthwhile. Andeddu’s knowledge was his now; over the past few days his brain had processed the raw information he had stolen to the point of full comprehension. He fully understood the ritual of essence transfer; he had learned the techniques that would allow him to move his consciousness from his own failing body into another. He just needed to select an appropriate victim.

Finding a new body to inhabit was the most difficult part of the ritual. He needed someone physically strong enough to withstand the massive quantities of dark side energy he would call on over the coming years, but at the same time he needed someone mentally vulnerable enough for him to overpower their will. The best candidate would be an engineered clone body, an empty shell with no thoughts or identity of its own. But creating a suitable clone could take years, and Bane wasn’t convinced he had that much time left.

He would have to try to possess the body of a living victim … a very dangerous course of action. He would only have one chance: no matter the outcome, his own body would be destroyed in the process. And if his target possessed a will strong enough to resist his assault, the attempt would fail, banishing his spirit to the void for all eternity.

He brought the airspeeder in for a landing and climbed from the vehicle, pausing only to grab his travel pack—a simple duffel bag with the Holocron tucked safely away inside. With slow, heavy steps he approached the front door of the mansion.

Has to be someone young. Under thirty.

He opened the door and stepped inside, letting it swing shut behind him.

Naïve and inexperienced. Maybe—

He froze. Someone else was in the mansion. He could feel the intruders everywhere: hiding around corners in the hallways, crouched on the stairs, ducking behind the furniture, perched on the balcony above.

All this flashed through Bane’s mind in less than a tenth of a second—just enough time for it to register before the sonic detonators on either side of him went off.

Their earsplitting shriek staggered Bane, causing him to stumble forward into the room and away from the door and possible escape. His hands instinctively flew up and clutched at his ears, his travel pack dropping to the floor. And then the enemy fell upon him.

They poured out like a swarm of insects, bursting into view from every side. Four soldiers armed with stun rifles sent a barrage of bolts raining down from the balcony; Bane—still reeling from the sonic detonators—barely had enough time to throw up a protective barrier to shield him from the assault.

As he did so, he felt something fighting him. Some power was trying to block his ability to call upon the Force