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The feeders wormed their way into the warm, moist tunnels of the Corellian’s nostrils, and rooted upward. Anticipation caused Kell to drool. He stared into the human’s wide, bloodshot eyes as the feeders penetrated tissue, pierced membranes, entered the skull cavity, and sank into the rich gray stew in the human’s skull. A spasm racked the human’s body. Tears pooled in his wide eyes and fell, glistening, down his cheeks. Blood dripped in thin lines from his nose.

Kell grunted with satisfaction as he devoured potential futures, as the human’s lines ended and Kell’s continued. Kell’s eyes rolled back in his head as his daen nosi lengthened and he temporarily became one with the soup of Fate. His consciousness deepened, expanded to the size of the galaxy, and he mentally sampled its potential. Time compressed. The arrangement of daen nosi across the universe looked less chaotic. He saw a hint of order. Revelation seemed just at the edge of his understanding, and he experienced a tingling shudder with each beat of his hearts.

Show me, he thought. Let me see.

The moment passed as the human expired and Kell let him drop to the floor of the bay.

Revelation retreated and he backed away from the corpse, gasping. He came back to himself, mere flesh, mere limited comprehension.

He looked down at the cooling body at his feet, understanding that only in murder did he transcend.

He retracted his feeders, slick with blood, mucus, and brains, and they sat quiescent in their sacs.

Sighing, he collected the human’s corpse, bore it to the air lock, and set the controls to eject it. Through the centuries, he had left such litter on hundreds of planets.

As he watched the automated ejection sequence vacate the air lock, he consoled himself with the knowledge that one day he would feed on stronger soup that would reveal to him the whole truth of Fate.

Reasonably sated, he returned to the cockpit of Predator and linked his comm receiver to the navicomp, as he had been instructed. In moments the autopilot indicator winked out—reminding Kell of the way the Corellian’s eyes had winked out, how the human had transformed from sentience to meat in the span of a moment—and another force took control of Predator. Kell settled into his chair as the ship sped through the malaise of Korriban’s atmosphere toward the dark side of the planet.

A short time later Predator set down in the midst of ancient structures. Lightning illuminated weathered pyramids, towers of pitted stone, crystalline domes, all of them the temples and tombs of the Sith, all of them the geometry of the dark side. Black clouds roiled and jagged runs of lightning formed a glowing net in the sky.

Kell rose, slid into his mimetic suit, checked the twin cortosis-coated vibroblades sheathed at his belt, and headed for Predator’s landing ramp. Before lowering it, he took a blaster and holster from a small-arms locker and strapped them to his thigh. He considered blasters inelegant weapons, but preferred to be overarmed rather than under.

He pressed the release button on the ramp. Hydraulics hummed and the door lowered. Wind and rain hissed into Predator. Korriban’s air, pungent with the reek of past ages, filled his nostrils. Thunder boomed.

Kell stared out into the darkness, noted the clustered pinpoints of red light that floated in the pitch. He shifted on his feet as the lights drew closer—a silver protocol droid. He attuned his vision to Fate, saw no daen nosi. Droids were programming, nothing more. They made no real choices and so had no lines. The false sentience of the droid unnerved Kell and he cut off the perception.

The anthropomorphic droid strode through the wind and rain to the base of the landing ramp and bowed its head in a hum of servos.

“Master Anzat,” the droid said in Basic. “I am Deefourfive. Please follow me. The Master awaits you.”

The droid’s words rooted Kell to the deck. Despite himself, Kell’s twin hearts doubled their beating rate. Adrenaline flowed into his blood. The feeders in his cheeks spasmed.