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Instead Padmé was dead and Obi-Wan was running for his life, as stripped of everything as Vader was. Without friends, family, purpose …

Clenching his right hand, he cursed the Force. What had it ever provided him but pain? Torturing him with foresight, with visions he was unable to prevent. Leading him to believe that he had great power when he was little more than its servant.

But no longer, Vader promised himself. The power of the dark side would render the Force subservient, minion rather than ally.

Extending his right arm, he took hold of the lightsaber and turned it about in his hand. Just three standard weeks old, assembled—as Sidious had wished—in the shadow of the moonlet-size terror weapon he was having constructed, it had now tasted first blood.

Sidious had provided the synthcrystal responsible for the crimson blade, along with his own lightsaber to serve as a model. Vader, though, had no fondness for antiques, and while he could appreciate the handiwork that had gone into fashioning the inlaid, gently curved hilt of Sidious’s lightsaber, he prefered a weapon with more ballast. Determined to please his Master, he had tried to create something novel, but had ended up fashioning a black version of the lightsaber he had wielded for more than a decade, with a thick, ridged handgrip, high-output diatium power cell, dual-phase focusing crystal, and forward-mounted adjustment knobs. Down to the beveled emitter shroud, the hilt mimicked Anakin’s.

But there was a problem.

His new hands were too large to duplicate the loose grip Anakin had favored, right hand wrapped not on the grip but around the crystal-housing cylinder, close to the blade itself. Vader’s hands required that the grip be thicker and longer, and the result was an inelegant weapon, verging on ungainly.

Another cause of the injury to his left arm.

The Sith grew past the use of lightsabers, Sidious had told him. But we continue to use them, if only to humiliate the Jedi.

Vader yearned for the time when memories of Anakin would fade, like light absorbed by a black hole. Until that happened, his life-sustaining suit would be an ill fit. Even if it was well suited to the darkness in his invulnerable heart …

The comlink chimed.

“What is it, Commander Appo?”

“Lord Vader, I’ve been informed of a discrepancy in the prisoner count. Allowing for the Jedi you killed on Murkhana, two prisoners are unaccounted for.”

“The others who survived Order Sixty-Six,” Vader said.

“Shall I instruct Commander Salvo to initiate a search?”

“Not this time, Commander. I will handle it myself.”

Down there?” Starstone said, halting at the head of a creepy stairway Shryne was already descending. The stairs led to the basement of a rambling building that had been left unscathed by the battle, and was typical of those that crowned the verdant hills south of Murkhana City. But she had a bad feeling about the stairway.

“Don’t worry. This is only Cash’s way of keeping out the riffraff.”

“Doesn’t appear to be slowing you down any,” she said, following him into the stairway’s dark well.

“Glad to see that your sense of humor has returned. You must have been the life of the dungeon.”

And Shryne meant it, because he didn’t want her dwelling on Bol Chatak’s death. In the long hours it had taken them to get from the landing field to Cash Garrulan’s headquarters Starstone seemed to have made peace with what had happened.

“How is it you know this person?” she asked over his shoulder.

“Garrulan’s the reason the Council first sent me to Murkhana. He’s a former Black Sun vigo. I came here to put him out of business, but he turned out to be one of our best sources of intelligence on Separatist activities in this quadrant. Years before Geonosis, Garrulan was warning us about the extent of Dooku’s military buildup, but no one on the Council or in the Senate seemed to take the threat seriously.”

“And in return for the intelligence you allowed Garrulan to remain in business.”

“He’s not a Hutt. He deals in, well, wholesale commodities.