Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [49]
Sidious and Dooku couldn’t have been more pleased with the result. Dooku, especially, since he had no interest in commanding an army of droids, and already had his hands full nursemaiding the likes of Nute Gunray, Shu Mai, and the hive-minded others who eventually would form the Council of Separatists.
Grievous had been a delight to train, as well. No need to coax him to release his anger and rage, as Dooku had been forced to do during the training of his so-called Dark Jedi disciples. The Geonosians had arranged for Grievous to be nothing but anger and rage. And as to the general’s combat skills, few, if any, Jedi would be capable of defeating him. There had been moments during the extensive combat sessions when even Dooku had been hard-pressed to outduel the cyborg.
But then, Dooku had kept some secrets to himself.
Just in case.
Manipulation of the sort that had gone into the transformation of Grievous went to the heart of what it meant to be a Sith—if, indeed, the words heart and Sith could be used together. The essence of the dark side lay in a willingness to use any means possible to arrive at a desired end—which, in the case of Lord Sidious, meant a galaxy brought under the dominion of a single, brilliant mind.
The current war had been the result of a thousand years of careful planning by the Sith—generations of bequeathing knowledge of the dark side from mentor to apprentice. Rarely more than two in each generation, from Darth Bane forward, Master and apprentice would devote themselves to harnessing the strength that flowed from the dark side, and to making the most of every opportunity to allow darkness to wax. Facilitating war, murder, corruption, injustice, and avarice when- and wherever possible.
Analogous to introducing a covert malignancy to the body politic of the Republic, then monitoring its spread from one organ to another until the mass reached such size that it began to disrupt vital systems …
The Sith had learned from their own internecine struggles that systems were often brought down from within when power became their reason for being. The greater the threat to that power, the tighter the threatened would cling.
That had been the case with the Jedi Order.
For two hundred years before the coming of Darth Sidious the power of the dark side had been gaining strength, and yet the Jedi had made only minimal efforts to thwart it. The Sith were pleased by the fact that the Jedi, too, had been allowed to grow so powerful, because, in the end, their sense of entitlement would blind them to what was occurring in their midst.
So, let them be placed on a pedestal. Let them grow soft and set in their ways. Let them forget that good and evil coexist. Let them look no farther than their vaunted Temple, so that they would fail to see the proverbial forest for the trees. And, by all means, let them grow possessive of the power they had gained, so that they might be that much easier to topple.
Not that all of them were blind, of course. Many Jedi were aware of the changes, the drift toward darkness. None, perhaps, more than aged Yoda. But the Masters who made up the Jedi Council were enslaved to the inevitability of that drift. Instead of attempting to get to the root of the coming darkness, they merely did their best to contain it. They waited for the Chosen One to be born, mistakenly believing that only he or she would be capable of restoring balance.
Such was the danger of prophecy.
It was into such times that Dooku had been born, placed because of a strong connection to the Force among an Order that had grown complacent, self-involved, arrogant about the power they wielded in the name of the Republic. Turning a blind eye to injustices the Republic had little interest in eradicating, because of profitable deals forged among those who held the reins of command.
While midi-chlorians determined to some degree