Korriban.
He had felt like this on Korriban. When along with the Padawans and their Masters they had gone into the great valley of the Sith, into their very tombs. That radiating energy had caused them to feel dizzy and sick.
He paused. He must be near Sith artifacts. Maybe a Holocron. That would explain it.
Well, he had conquered the feeling then, as a boy of sixteen. He could do it again. He just had to keep going-Then the voices began.
You know now where your path lies.
It lies with us.
A shift happened, as though a new sensor had clicked on inside his body. His head cleared. Suddenly everything went sharp and bright. He felt the call, and it lured him, as if a string had been tied to his breastbone and tugged. Tugging him toward the source. Power lay there. Why was he resisting it?
This is what Emperor Palpatine was trying to tell him. Exploring the dark side of the Force wasn’t dangerous. It was natural.
Go to the source of the power. You will see then what you can do. More than you ever thought possible.
He moved forward. Ahead of him was an open door. Identical to all the others, brushed durasteel, but he could feel the pull. He slid up against the wall next to the opening and peered inside the chamber. It was several stories high, and this was the top, where a catwalk ran around the circular space. Along the walls, ancient weapons were stored in cases. Ferus didn’t recognize them, but he did recognize their powerful aura of doom. He took a few steps forward onto the catwalk and looked down.
Below, ten stories down, he saw the top of Darth Vader’s helmet. He stood in the center of the open chamber, his back to Ferus, intent on what was in his open palm. A Holocron.
A Sith Holocron. Vader held it in his gloved hands, as if gaining power from it.
Ferus felt a powerful urge. With the Holocron in the room, would he be able to draw power from it and engage his enemy? His hatred for Vader surged and joined with the waves of the dark side of the Force. He felt it pulse through his body. He remembered how he had destroyed the room at the garrison simply by joining his anger to the Force. He could fight Vader. At this moment he felt powerful enough to bring the whole tower down with him. He could come at him from above.
He would have vengeance for Roan.
And it would be sweet.
A tiny voice ordered him to step back. He tried to ignore it. There was still a voice there, a voice of a Jedi - of Siri, of Obi-Wan, his own younger voice -that told him the dark path was the path of madness and no return and he must resist. He wanted to stamp on that voice, grind it under his boot. Instead, it grew. He couldn’t hear and couldn’t breathe. He stepped back and pressed himself against the wall.
His last memory of Roan rose in his mind. The memory that gave him so much pain. He thought of the look in Roan’s eyes. Roan had said good-bye, but also… do not let this corrupt you.
Roan had always known him better than he knew himself.
He eased away. He still felt shaky. He had to understand that the dark side of the Force would find the arrogance that lay dormant in him and inflame it. He wasn’t ready to confront Vader. He was coming close to an edge he couldn’t even see.
He mustn’t be deflected. He still felt instinctively that the key to defeating Vader was in discovering his true identity. Ferus hurried down the hall and turned the corner. There had to be a central console for the droids to access. The time to find it was now, before … before he made a mistake. There was danger here, and it wasn’t from prowler droids and storm troopers.
He found it, at last, outside the entrance to the operating suites. A medical diagnostic station. Ferus could use his EmPal access code to start, then see what kind of security walls he ran into.
He quickly found the records. They were coded, of course, but this wasn’t the impenetrable code of Darth Vader. It was no doubt an encryption that had been done by an Imperial coder, installed when the system had been set up, and used by a records droid who inputted the password each time it accessed the system. Which meant if Ferus could find the string, he could break the code.
He slipped a device out of his belt and into the drive. Strictly illegal, but it had its uses.
Within seconds, he had found several likely strings of code. They were frequently entered so any one could be a password. He inputted them one after the other. By the tenth, he had the password. Lucky. He was in.
Ferus quickly searched back to the end of the Clone Wars, when the first reports of Darth Vader had surfaced It was shortly after the Emperor seized full power.
There were constant shipment orders before that time. The Emperor had been creating this secret surgical center for months. There were no patients, however. Down in the EmPal that everyone knew about, there was a constant stream of the wealthy and powerful. But up here, there didn’t seem to be any. This was such an exclusive club that there weren’t any members. Had it been set up just for Palpatine’s needs alone? Or were records expunged as soon as the patient was treated?