Withdrawn Hope

[Darth Viscera]

Darth Viscera gazed down at the traffic of Imperial Center. Every day, billions of airspeeders ferried their passengers to and fro across the city-planet. From the heights of the throneroom of the Imperial Palace, the view was indeed quite hypnotic. More importantly, it provided an ambience during his times of contemplating the force, both aesthetically and mentally.

"My Lord, the data you requested," the wall-mounted intercom chirped, and a flood of Aurabesh filled the small holoscreen nearby.

His command chair rotated, and he examined the new text. He cringed as he finished the first paragraph, and the holoscreen found itself elevated and flung to a far corner of the dim room. Its transparisteel components shattered as the durasteel frame smashed into the wall.

She will pay for this atrocity, allowing the greatest Sith Master in our history to descend to the path of the light.

He allowed himself a moment to let the thought sink in. His master, Anbira Hicchoru, was now a Jedi. How many years had he spent, eagerly awaiting training from his master? It had driven him to the brink of insanity, finding Anbira at the point of death after trying to take his own life. Indeed, he still had mental scars which needed healing from that unfortunate incident.

And now....a loss of hope.

He had always held some hope of reconciliation with Anbira, looked forward to the day when his training would be complete. With this news, it was as though a vital piece of him had been...simply discarded.

He opened his mind to the force, searching violently for the presence of Anbira.

Anbira...speak to me!

He sent the short force message out, and ground his teeth.

[Darth Vader]

:: The chilling, familiar sound of mechanical breathing filled Viscera's mind in reply ::

hhhhoooooohhhhhh.....paaaahhhhhhhh......hhhhoooooh hhhhhh......paaaahhhhhhh

[Darth Viscera]

Vader.

The thought of his long-dead master made him cringe. He had trained under the Dark Lord of the Sith for a time at Byss, more than a generation ago. During the Endor fiasco, Vader's presence in the force had faded, then winked out abruptly...until now.

Something was not right. The Diktat could sense a slight disturbance in the dark side of the force, eminating from Vader's force message.

It is Vader, yet it is somehow...not Vader.

The Diktat thought quickly, and an idea sprung to mind.

Master, this cannot be possible. If you truly are whom your iron lung so blatantly proclaims you to be, you will meet me at your former residence on Imperial Center.

The Diktat allowed himself a slight grin. Following the recapture of Imperial Center, he had restored Darth Vader's palace on the capital planet to its original state, using what historical datarods on the structure and its contents still existed, and his own memory. Truly, only the real Darth Vader would be able to join the Diktat in his palace.

[Darth Vader]

:: In the depths of space, the Dark Lord's craft immediately changed course, for Coruscant. Soon, he would meet his former apprentice once more ::

[Darth Viscera]

Darth Viscera stood atop the castle of Vader, gazing down upon Monument Plaza and the nearby Victory Lake. Repulsorships floated across the lake, byproducts streaming from exhaust pipes built into the tops of their hulls, the smaller ships gathering fish from concentration nets built into parts of the body of water and then processing and transferring the food to distributors back at the harbor.

The star Corusca was hardly visible in the sky, obscured by dark clouds. The situation was made further melancholy by the constant rainfall, which seemed to add a perpetual gloom to this sector of the planet. Nevertheless, giant construction droids labored on in the distance, repairing the damage caused to Imperial Center by the changing of hands which had occurred several times in the last dozen or so years. A fortification hung in the sky, suspended by repulsordrives and housing more than a thousand troops of the Imperial army. A hundred thousand fortifications exactly like this ringed the Imperial throne world, providing an ominous backdrop to those who would seek dissention, and lest other galactic powers would seek war.

A statue of the infamous Jedi warlord known as Gue had once stood below, but had been replaced by the Republic after his abandonment of the planet, the rubble of the marble structure used as a foundation for the New Republic's tribute to their own brand of chaos. Shortly after the Imperial invasion fleets had once more entered the system, the Rebel statue had itself become rubble, the remainders of the duracrete obelisk in turn used as the foundation for the monolithic tribute to the New Order.

A likening of Emperor Palpatine stood now, and the statue had captured his relatively youthful figure from the time of his assuming the office of Chancellor, before the dark side had consumed his very essence. Alongside the Emperor stood the statue of the Dark Lord of the Sith, Vader's left fist clenched, seeming to stare through those who would stop to admire the monument.

Darth Vader’s castle had been rebuilt with what information had been stored at the Imperial Archives, but much had been lost-namely the methods the Dark Lord of the Sith had used to control the security of his residence. A holography system and sensor-jamming suite remained, effectively transforming the castle into a giant labyrinth for those who lacked significant force powers. Trespassers would likely lose their way, and die of starvation while attempting to find their way home.

Apart from the security system, however, the castle was Spartan, to say the least. The wooden walls remained unadorned, devoid of simple things such as windows. One would think a man of such power would have acted differently in the design of his private sanctuary, yet the castle was merely a large, private space-a fortress devoted to solitude.

TTT