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And yet Dooku loved the place.

The antithesis of his native Serenno, The Works was very much a home away from home for the human who had earned the title Darth Tyranus.

One structure in particular—columnar in shape, round-topped, propped by angular ramparts—rising from the defiled core of The Works like a stake driven into its heart. Strong in the dark side—made so by Darth Sidious—the building had been the place of Dooku’s apprenticeship, just as it had served as a training ground for Darth Maul before Dooku, and who knew who or how many other Sith disciples before Maul.

During the ten years preceding the outbreak of the war—when Count Dooku of Serenno was believed to have been peddling his Separatist agenda to disenfranchised worlds in the Mid and Outer Rims—he had, in fact, spent long periods of time in The Works, coming and going at will, or as required of him by Darth Sidious. Even in the three years since, he had been able to visit Coruscant without fear of detection, thanks in part to unique countermeasures the Geonosians had engineered into his interstellar sloop.

The modified Punworcca 116 rested on its slight landing gear in the building’s vast docking space. With its needle-tipped bow carapaces and the spherical cockpit module they gripped, the sloop was typically Geonosian in design. Its signature sail, however, had been obtained with Sidious’s help from a dealer in pre-Republic antiquities in the Gree Enclave. Furled into the ventral carapace now—seldom used any longer—it had been created by an ancient spacefaring race that had taken to the grave the secrets of supralight emission propulsion.

Having ordered the sloop’s FA-4 pilot droid to remain in the ball cockpit, Dooku was walking some of the stiffness of the long voyage out of his legs. His black trousers were tucked into black dress boots, and his black tunic was cinched by a wide belt of costly leather. Thrown back over his shoulders, the Serenno armorweave-lined cape shimmered behind him. He made no efforts to disguise himself for such trips to Coruscant. The silver hair, mustache, beard, and flaring eyebrows that gave him the look of a stage magician were as meticulously groomed as ever.

Normally measured, Dooku’s pace was rushed and somewhat haphazard—evidence to anyone who knew him that the Count was troubled. If asked, he might have admitted as much. Even so, in moments when he could put aside the reasons for his visit, he surveyed the docking bay with a certain fondness, recalling the years he had spent under Sidious’s tutelage, learning the ways of the Sith, practicing the dark arts, perfecting himself.

Mastering evil, Yoda would have said.

The problem was partly semantic, in that the Jedi Order had seen to it that the dark side of the Force had become equated with evil. But was shade more evil than stark sunlight? Recognizing that the dark side was on the ascendant, the Jedi—in service to the Force—should have known enough to embrace it, to ally themselves with it. After all, it was all a matter of balance, and if the preservation of balance required the dark side to be on top, then so be it.

With Dooku, Sidious hadn’t had to waste precious hours on lightsaber technique, nor on ridding Dooku of ill habits born of a lifetime spent in the Jedi Temple, for Dooku had long before rid himself of those. Instead, Sidious had focused on giving Dooku what had amounted to a crash course in tapping into the power of the dark side—a mere taste of which had proved intoxicating. Enough to convince Dooku that no course was left open to him but to abandon the Order; more, that his entire life had been preparation for his apprenticeship to Sidious.

That at long last he had found a true mentor.

The Sith saw no need to take on only young disciples, though they often did. Sometimes the training went smoother with disciples who had lived long enough to grow disillusioned or angry or vengeful. The Jedi, by contrast, were shackled by compassion.