Star Wars - Darth Plagueis

full powers of the Force,” Palpatine said. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
    Dooku blew out his breath. “Perhaps it’s something we can discuss in the future.”
    “You’ve made your decision, then?”
    Dooku nodded. “If one more Jedi dies because of indolence on the part of the Republic and moral equivocation on the part of the Council, I will leave the Temple and refuse to look back.”
    No sooner had Dooku left the office than Sidious was donning his cloak and hurrying off to his next appointment. Hailing a sky-cab in Senate Plaza, he instructed the Gran driver to deliver him to Tannik Spaceport.
    Relaxing back into the padded seat, he exhaled for what felt like the first time all day. In the space of a standard year he had gone from leading two lives to managing almost half a dozen: apprentice to Plagueis; Master to Maul; distinguished Senator; ally of Supreme Chancellor Valorum; and leader of a growing cabal of conspirators that included Pestage, Doriana, Greejatus—in line to replace him in the Senate—the Force-sensitive human Sim Aloo, intelligence analyst Armand Isard, Eriadu Senator Wilhuff Tarkin, and Umbaran telepath Sly Moore, whom he had made his covert aide.
    And leading a double life of his own: Dooku. Carrying out Jedi business while in private moments flirting with the dark side, hungry to bring the full power of the Force to bear in the mundane realm, his slow reorientation a curious inversion of Darth Gravid’s, whose similar reach for preeminence had exceeded his grasp.
    For the Jedi, Mastery was conferred when one attained a true understanding of the ways of the Force; for the Sith, that level of understanding was merely the beginning. The Jedi Order’s homespun cloaks announced: I want for nothing, because I am clothed in the Force; the cloaks of the Sith: I am the light in the dark, the convergence of opposing energies . And yet, while all Sith Lords were powerful, not all were brilliant or in complete possession of the powers the dark side granted them.Darth Millennial had rebelled against the teachings of his Master, Darth Cognus, and even Plagueis spoke of having reached a philosophical impasse with his Master, Tenebrous.
    A human Sith Lord whose short reign had elapsed some five centuries earlier, Gravid had been persuaded to believe that total commitment to the dark side would sentence the Sith Order to eventual defeat, and so had sought to introduce Jedi selflessness and compassion into his teachings and practice, forgetting that there can be no return to the light for an adept who has entered the dark wood; that the dark side will not surrender one to whom, by mutual agreement, it has staked a claim. Driven increasingly mad by his attempts to straddle the two realms, Gravid became convinced that the only way to safeguard the future of the Sith was to hide or destroy the lore that had been amassed through the generations—the texts, holocrons, and treatises—so that the Sith could fashion a new beginning for themselves that would guarantee success. Barricaded within the walls of a bastion he and his Twi’lek apprentice, Gean, had constructed on Jaguada, he had attempted as much, and was thought to have destroyed more than half the repository of artifacts before Gean, demonstrating consummate will and courage, had managed to penetrate the Force fields Gravid had raised around their stronghold and intercede, killing her Master with her bare hands, though at the cost of her arm, shoulder, and the entire left side of her face and chest.
    A Jedi Master of high standing, Dooku possibly already had some theoretical understanding of the dark side; perhaps more, if he had access to Sith Holocrons vaulted within the Temple. He could certainly be a nuisance to the Republic, though hardly an agent of chaos, as Plagueis and Sidious had been. Still, it would be interesting to see just how far Dooku might be willing to go …
    Palpatine would have to inform Plagueis of their conversation. Or would he? Was an apprentice ever permitted to conceal knowledge from his or her Master?
    No. Never. Especially not when there was a chance that Plagueis might learn of Dooku’s apostasy on his own, in ways that remained unfathomable.
* * *
    Executing a reckless series of maneuvers, the Gran driver had changed lanes and was descending rapidly for Tannik Spaceport—a semicircular docking pad located at the edge of the Manaai district and surrounded on all sides by towering monads. Reserved for