Almania.
It was a largely forgotten world in an empty corner of the galaxy, far off the main hyperspace routes. Decades ago, it had enjoyed a brief glimmer of fame as the birthplace of the then-Emperor and Dark Lord of the Sith, Dolph Kueller. But these days it stood in isolation from galactic strife. These days, Almania spun quietly into anonymity, a silent and largely ignored reminder that once upon a time, a lifetime ago, a man born here had worn the Emperor’s mantle and held the strings of the galaxy in his fist.
Now that reminder had dwindled to a single fleet orbiting overhead and a ground force of Imperium troops intermingling with everyday citizens on the busy streets of the Capital.
For the past two decades, Almania had also been home and sanctuary to Dolph Kueller and Kyla Mim. The former Dark Lord and his Heir, acknowledged and marked as such by the ancient spirits of the Sith themselves. Two fully trained Sith Lords, bound in unity by the Force itself, and the two children they had raised almost to adulthood on this isolated world. Here, Kyla Mim and Dolph Kueller had truly grown into the intensity of the Force Bond forged between them. Here, they had found balance in the rough tumble of madness and sanity that had plagued them both for years. Here, they had watched Elaysia grow into an elegant young woman and Anwyn into a teenager brimming with potential.
From their isolated sanctuary, they had monitored what was happening in the wider galaxy: the rise of the New Order under Supreme Leader Snoke, and the Knights of Ren. In paranoia true to form, Kyla had insisted on curtailing all their excursions beyond Almania and they had retreated into even deeper isolation. She had felt her husband rail at that, the lingering ego that was all Kueller resisting the notion that he who had been Emperor should hide in the dust of a hidden rim world. But together Mim and Kueller posed a threat to Snoke’s leadership that no true Sith could ignore. It was inevitable he try to find them.
The Supreme Leader achieved that goal one cool Almanian day, a day that started like any other. Kyla was running the children through morning drills in the training grounds of their private compound. Dolph was nearby, his presence a steady, familiar pulse at the back of her mind and deep in her soul. It was familiar. Normal. Mundane.
And it shattered in an instant with the sudden blare of sirens, a flash of savage alarm from her husband and the inexplicable sense of death screaming overhead. Mass death, terrible loss, the sudden final shriek of too many souls sniffed out in an instant.
In a heartbeat, reality sunk in.
The Imperium super star destroyer, jewel of Emperor Kueller’s long-ago fleet, command ship for their orbital forces, was… gone. Wiped out. Obliterated in a single shot of a planet-killing laser fired from the belly of a New Order ship. Kyla stared across the training ground at her anxious, still children.
“Mim, what do we do?”
That was Elaysia, clear-eyed and pragmatic as always, blaster loose in its holster and hand curling around the rancor-tooth handle lightsaber at her side. At her side, Anwyn looked less steady; his eyes too wide, his breathing too fast.
~Kyla. Their ships can’t get past the fleet in orbit. They’re landing ground troops. I’m coming to you.~
Dolph’s voice sounded in her skull, steadying her as his presence had steadied her for years.
“Your father is coming. Be ready to fight. The New Order has found us.” Kyla pinned them both with her steady gaze. “Hear me clearly on this. We run.”
Elaysia accepted it faster; she watched the protest rise and then die in her daughter’s emerald eyes. Anwyn had always been a different creature.
“This is our home!”
“It will be our graveyard if we stay,” Mim promised.
The alien sense of other Force users began impinging upon her peripheral awareness. The Knights of Ren would track the strongest presence in the Force and time was running out. Shock troopers would be right on their heels to counter any Imperium forces impeding their path to the two targeted Sith Lords. Did Snoke know about the children? If he did, would he consider them a threat? Alone, the individual Knights were minimal threat but they could bind themselves in the Force, a passing mimicry of the Bond that lay between Mim and Kueller, and in combination they were a dangerous enemy.
Dolph was coming.
Mim’s mind was a whirl of ordered chaos, retrieving the most relevant of the many contingency plans mapped out over the years. She discarded any that ended with them remaining on Almania. Her mental map of their home now had a vibrant red beacon that was the approaching Knights and another, much closer, glowing emerald pulse that was her husband.
Dolph was coming.
“Prepare The Darkest Knight for immediate launch. Mask yourselves until your Father or I tell you otherwise.” Again, protest burned in Anwyn’s eyes, the adolescent need to fight surging. Kyla pinned him with her own gaze until it quelled, wasting precious heartbeats they didn’t have.
Her strong-willed son nodded, Elaysia already tugging at his arm. Then they were gone, their presence occluded from her awareness even as they raced from the training ground. The sounds of ground assault already filled the air. The Imperium fleet overhead had engaged the New Order vessels too closely to allow for orbital bombardment. At least one protocol had been successfully engaged. Kyla exhaled, and waited.
Dolph was here.
Her husband arrived in a storm of his own Force presence, unveiled and honed to razor’s edge in a way she hadn’t seen since the old days. Then again, Mim felt her own strength flooding her veins, ready to draw on the reserves they hadn’t needed for years.
Those emerald eyes flashed over her. “The children are at the ship?”
“They’re close. The Knights are here.”
He nodded, and within a few steps he was there. In her space, touchable and steady, strong hands gripping her arms. “We will survive this, Ky. I promise you.”
How like him to be sentimental, even in a moment of crisis. But as ever, he knew her better than she knew herself and she smiled crookedly at him.
“You always keep your promises, Satal. Are you ready?”
Cerulean eyes met emerald. Ancient. Knowing. Familiar. These two had been sneaking glances at each other for a decade before the Bond emerged and there was a knowing that went beyond its arcane depths.
The Knights of Ren drew closer, the sounds of battle grew louder, and Dolph Kueller dipped his head to kiss his wife.
Mim welcomed the physicality of his gesture, anchoring herself against the familiar touch of him. The truth of this man, who had been like unto a god. Who had ruled systems and fleets and commanded the Sith with cunning and strength. This man who had found his greatest challenge in convincing her that he could teach her what she needed to know, who had done just that and more. This man who had been her Lord, her teacher, who had done the impossible in earning her loyalty and obedience and given it all up to stand by her side as equal – lover, husband, the other half of her very soul. She focussed her awareness in on that piece of him that lived within her, always, letting the usual controls and restrictions fall aside.
And with it, the essence of the two Sith exploded within the Force.
The place where the Bond lived surged like wildfire, amplifying and reflecting the two against one another. Mim became Kueller. Kueller became Mim. They were one, unified and whole, a glorious creature ready and primed for battle.
And the brilliance of it lit them up like a beacon in the Force, overshadowing any echo their children may have offered as a target.
Distantly, they felt the Knights of Ren react. Pause. Take stock. Pivot and turn in unison towards the joined Sith Lords. Mim and Kueller separated, skin no longer touching but souls merged as they turned towards their oncoming enemy.
There was no time for thought now. They moved like living weapons, lightsabers igniting and casting crimson shadows on the walls as they raced towards the intruding Force users.
Outside the remaining sanctuary of their private compound, the invading ground forces had engaged Almanian troops. The Capital city had become a battlefield; a place of chaos, blaster crossfire bringing its own madness as New Order Stormtroopers battled Imperium ground forces.
They walked within that madness.
Like a four-armed beast, Mim and Kueller danced and spun in total unity, leaving death wherever they passed. They fought like Sith for the first time in years, forsaking their blasters and relying on lightsabers and the Force. As Kyla sent a bevy of Stormtroopers crashing into a wall with a surge of Force energy, Kueller diverted blaster fire from her with his lightsaber. They spun and she returned the favour as he dropped a half-toppled pillar on a pair of Heavy Stormtroopers and their blaster cannon. There was no pause for breath or thought or words. Their impulses came from within the Bond, shared and understood.
They dominated the battlefield. Almania’s Imperium forces aligned behind them as per their training, and for a moment it seemed they would turn the tide. Then two things happened simultaneously.
The Knights of Ren arrived and their private comms line crackled.
“Mim, we’re cut off.”
Four words in their daughter’s voice, then the line went dead. Elaysia knew enough not to use familial titles, locations or specifics of destinations in a battlefield message. But Mim and Kueller absorbed the message with sinking hearts. The children needed one of them. The Knights has to be diverted.
Survival was beginning to look more challenging.
In the silence of the Bond, Kueller soothed his wife’s alarm.
~Go. I have this.~
There was no time for question or refusal, and no space for ego in this moment. Kueller had decades more experience than her and that edge could be the only thing that mattered today. Mim diverted a line of blaster fire with her saber, and sent a savage jolt of kinetic energy across the battlefield.
The Imperium were holding their own against the New Order stormtroopers now. The Knights of Ren would be her husband’s responsibility.
Kyla fled, lightsaber splitting the air before her as she darted away from the main conflict. She buried the ache at leaving him deep in her soul, drawing hard on the ruthless edge of pragmatism that had defined her character for her entire life.
They would survive this. He had promised and Kueller always kept his promises.
In the streets beyond, there were clashes everywhere, Imperium and New Order forces meeting and rupturing the peace of this ancient world. Mim did not enter into them, abandoned the Almanian forces to their own fate. She had one priority alone and that was the survival of their children.
Their compound had been close to the commercial spaceport where Mim had docked The Darkest Knight. If she could have wrangled her own private landing pad inside the compound, she would have done so years ago, but this had been her compromise. It took little time to find the children, withdrawn behind a collapsed wall as they peeked out to study the Heavy Stormtroopers already blockading the spaceport.
Deep in her soul, she felt the quicksilver surge of Satal’s adrenaline as he engaged the Knights of Ren.
“We don’t have time for this,” Kyla muttered as she regarded the blockade.
She had never had need to release the full devastation of her Force powers, preferring to rely on stealth and a hunter’s guerilla tactics. Dolph was the one more likely to take a frontal assault, blazing in his own ferocity. But today? Today was a very different day.
Today this line of soldiers stood between her family and their safety and the one burning truth that defined Kyla Mim was that she would not lose her family again.
The rending echo of Kueller was overshadowed within the Bond as Kyla abandoned restraint and strode into view of the blockade. She had no need to reach for the darkness, to draw on her anger. Rage and fury were almost choking her, strangled behind the cold edge of hatred.
This was her home.
This was her family.
Nothing that threatened Kueller could be allowed to live. This truth had underpinned her nature from the days she stood as loyal student and Heir. But deeper than that, built into her bones and flesh and blood, was the rock-steady truth that Kyla Mim would burn the galaxy alive before she lost her family again.
The Force trembled around her, the air almost visibly crackling as she raised a hand and directed pulse after pulse of dark kinetic energy at the line of Heavy Stormtroopers. The Sith Lord rode the sweet, enticing edge of the Dark Side as they fell before her. And those who didn’t, who dared to rise again and stumble towards their weapons?
Her other hand lifted and the crackling truly was visible now. Sparks of electricity danced between her fingertips. Mim’s first lesson in the lightning may have been a disastrous humiliation but over two decades she had refined her control. The lightning lanced from both her hands, sparking in brilliant spears to leap between her enemies, searing them, killing them, burning them alive.
Her family would survive this.
Their enemies would die screaming.
Mim stood alone in the silence of death, the rancid burnt-barbecue smell rising with swirls of smoke from the carnage of two dozen destroyed New Order Stormtroopers.
Behind her, she heard the movement of her children emerging, still safely masked within the Force. A distant pulse of approval and glory from Dolph almost made her smile.
“Prepare the ship,” Kyla advised softly. She focussed on the soul-bright presence of her Husband.
–Satal. I’m on my way-
-Stay there. I have the Inquisitors. This will be over soon-
Bravado and Kueller went hand in hand, but he could rarely lie to her anymore. It took a level of cunning he couldn’t manage while in a fight for his life, and Mim relaxed. With the Inquisitors at his back, Dolph could surely manage the Knights. And…
The children needed her.
She could feel the waves of their uncertainty, knew that even their intense training would falter in this level of unexpected conflict. They would make rash choices. They would be hurt. They needed her.
Mim made the only call available to her and gestured sharply to the ragged, smoking hole blown into the security wall surrounding the spaceport. “The ship. Now.”
The spaceport was largely untouched, but it was its own sphere of chaos. Other Almanians fortunate enough to have their own vessel docked there, or desperate enough to try to steal one, were racing frantically around them. Kyla led her children through it all, her fingers already tapping at the ship’s slave unit that never left her reach. As they approached the landing pad, she heard the familiar rumble of The Darkest Knight’s engines surging to life in response.
Her focus remained on her immediate surroundings, blaster in one hand and saber in the other, refusing the temptation of seeking an update from her Husband. The sense of him was tense but still confident as she boarded the ship. The sound of engines rumbling through the deck plates, the coolness of the interior with its familiar scent soothed her immediately. Almania had been home for a mere two decades. This ship had been her sanctuary much longer than that.
Once up the ramp, Kyla turned left for the cockpit, barely noticing the movement at her heels as the children – still Masked – moved to their own pre-flight tasks. Sliding into the worn leather of the pilot’s seat was a soothing familiarity, easing her ragged nerves.
Mim pushed down the urgency pulsing in her veins and forced herself to a slow and methodical pre-launch check. It had been over six months since The Darkest Knight last settled onto this landing pad, given her moratorium on excursions once Snoke began his rise to power. She wasn’t prepared to risk her family by rushing through this.
Dolph could take care of himself. Surviving was what he did.
Yet her unease lingered through the swift pre-flight checks, completed as Elaysia stepped into the cockpit. Kyla pressed on the controls, letting the engines rumble to a deeper pitch, before guiding the vessel off the landing pad in an easy push of the controls. Through the view screen, the ground dropped away into a cloud of smoke and blaster fire. She spent a few silent moments guiding The Darkest Knight away from the landing pad and towards her Husband’s location. He burned like a beacon in her head, confidence slowly giving way to a deepening alarm. It was disturbing, driving her anxiety up, but something… something else beat insistently at her brain. Relentless.
The nagging sense of something wrong suddenly crystallised and Mim spun the chair towards her daughter. Stared over her shoulder at the empty space where a lanky, half-grown teen should be. “Where is your brother?”
Elaysia blinked. Once. Again.
She had been trained in misdirection and subterfuge, but the girl had her Father’s eyes and it had been years since Kyla had failed to recognise when those eyes were keeping something from her. Mim straightened to look at her eldest child straight on, the muscles along her jaw clenching.
“Father needed him,” Elaysia insisted.
The surge of irritation was followed by a sickening worry. She should have anticipated this from her impulsive younger son. The boy hero-worshipped his Father; of course he would seek to run to his side. He was of an age for this sort of nonsense.
“Strap yourself in,” was all Mim said, spinning back to the control board and slapping a hand down on it. The ship dipped, inclining into a sharper turn as she urged them more swiftly up and away from the spaceport’s crowded airspace.
The Sith Lord narrowed her focus into her Husband’s presence, trying to map out his location. Anwyn would surely have made it there by now. Would he be foolish enough to intercede? Half trained, without patience or sufficient cunning… the Knights would eat him alive or worse, force Dolph to split his focus and risk everything.
Slowly, Kyla became aware that below the controlled sense of her Husband, there was…. tension. Exhaustion, stress, building ruthlessness. He was in trouble.
The Capital city was closing in fast when Dolph’s presence abruptly… flared. Then inverted. She could feel him reaching, drawing in the energy of everything around him. Slowly at first, then expanding inwards with greater speed. He was like a black hole in her mind, sucking in the energy and essence of everything around him… absorbing, coalescing, consuming. The only thing he didn’t draw to him was her and Elaysia, still Masked from his reach.
This… she knew what this was, only from his memories… she knew what would come next…
Devastation.
“Hold on,” Kyla managed, yanking sharply at the controls and pulling the Knight up and away in a sickening, stomach-dropping maneuver. They had to get away from the Capital – now!
“Mim, what’s going on? What about Father?”
Kyla didn’t answer. In her head, Kueller exploded – and far below, so did the Capital. It was like the Lightning, but more. So much more. It was a storm of chaos, built from the Force itself, lancing straight up from the Capital into the sky. Further. Into orbit. Its madness reaching to the two Fleets locked overhead in deadly combat and encompassing them in its sheer destruction.
“Oh Void…” Elaysia’s whispered curse filled the silence as the girl saw the nav system flashing alerts as – one after another – the ships overhead were obliterated by the Force Storm sent from the hands of Kueller. “What is that?!”
“That,” Mim answered grimly as she fought the controls to keep the vessel steady, “is your Father.”
–Satal?!-
His name was a fierce shout fuelled by her tension as she battled to keep the Knight ahead of the storm. Her call stretched far beyond the sanctuary of the Bond. It was wide open, on all frequencies her soul could reach, and it was unanswered. All she felt was the whisper at the back of her mind that spoke to his presence, his ongoing existence. Unconscious but alive.
Thank the Void, alive.
And the Storm was rolling onwards and outwards, stretching now to consume the entire Capital City. It moved with gathering ferocity and a life of its own, with no signs of stopping. Already it stretched beyond the orbit of Almania, rolling out across the more distant ships of the two Fleets. The nav system was shrieking alarms as it registered the oncoming edge of the devastation, chasing them up through the stratosphere and away from the planet.
Glancing sharply from one board to another, Mim recognised with a sense of grim despair that they had to leave. This planet, probably this entire system, would be utterly annihilated by the Storm. Kueller did nothing by halves.
Somewhere down there, her son was Masked – or dead. She could only hope he had been close enough to Dolph to be protected in the eye of the storm.
Somewhere down there was her Husband, exhausted and unconscious and vulnerable.
Elaysia pulled herself into the co-pilot’s seat, fighting the turbulence rocking the ship to buckle herself into the safety webbing. Kyla’s focus was split, half on navigating their way to survival and half on the weak fluttering presence deep in her skull.
“Mim, I’ve got this,” the girl at her side said, hands moving confidently over the nav boards. The girl was her Father’s daughter in truth; flying came naturally to her and always had. The Darkest Knight trembled then settled into a smoother flight as Elaysia took control.
Just in time.
The sense of Kueller within her flickered, a sudden sharp surging to awareness and then –
….Nothing…
Gone. Absence. A void where there had been something for twenty years.
Mim’s body jerked in reaction, her hands clawing outward, seeking frantically for the presence that had been there moments ago. Weak but there and now… not. Even when they had Masked, in training or on a hunt, she had sensed something, an existence, a bare pulse she had hardly been aware of.
This was such complete absence, the reality of it didn’t sink in.
–Aren? Satal?–
The names came out muddled and mixed up, with ragged memories of her first husband tangling insanely in her shock. The loss of Aren Mim had broken her, drove her mad for years. It had been a wound inside her, a gaping emptiness so profound she couldn’t understand it.
“Aren!”
Fighting against an echo of the long-ago madness, Mim focussed her awareness down, inwards, onto the frantically thudding heart and the gasping breaths rattling her lungs. She fought her terror and her body, to slow her breath before it hit hyperventilation.
Aren? Aren had already died on her, and Satal had inherited that weakness.
Her heart rate eased with the controlled breaths. In. Out. In. Out.
But Dolph was a different creature entirely. Dolph was a survivor. Dolph always survived. When push came to shove, Kyla needed the certainty that her Husband’s core truth sat firmly within the man who had been Emperor… and not the man who had hunted at her side and died on a moonless planet on the darkest night that ever was. She needed him to be Kueller now, to trust in his survival instincts. Aren had failed her. But Dolph never had.
She had to believe that he would not fail her now.
Mim’s vision cleared from blackness enough to see stars slip into hyperspace. Elaysia was bent over the controls, taking them into the only escape route left to them as Dolph’s Force storm rolled on through the system. Kyla breathed. In and out. Her heart still thudded in her chest but she could relax the hands digging rents into the armrests, and she could focus on her daughter.
Turning towards her, Elaysia stared with dry, wounded eyes. “We’ve lost everything,” she said softly into the muted quiet of the cockpit.
Kyla licked dry lips and shook her head.
“No, Elaysia. We survived. Snoke’s mission was to secure our deaths. In our survival, we have won and we have defeated him.”
She studied Elaysia’s pale, tense face. The girl had done well, doing what needed to be done in the moment of Kyla’s shocked incapacity. Mim stretched forth her hand to rest fingertips on Elaysia’s hand.
The girl clutched back at her grip, mother and daughter watching one another in the surreal blue light of hyperspace.
“We will find them both again. And in the meantime, every day that we live, we defeat him.”
The Darkest Knight carried them further away from the other piece of her soul with every single heartbeat, but this one promise settled inside her with absolute certainty.
They would survive. Kueller and his children could do no less, and Mim would ensure it.
Because he could not be dead. She would not permit it to be so.