Star Wars - Darth Plagueis

stonily. After a quick glance around, he snapped a yellow, horn-shaped blossom from a dangling vine and tossed it to the ground in front of Venamis. “Consume it.”
    Venamis’s gaze went from the flower to Plagueis, and he let misgiving show on his face. “I know this plant. It will poison me.”
    “It will,” Plagueis told him in a manner that held no sympathy. “But I will make certain you don’t die.”

7: THERE WHERE THEY USED TO STAND
    In the depths of Aborah, Venamis hung suspended in a bacta tank, wireless sensors affixed to his narrow chest, neck, and fissured, hairless cranium.
    “You may be Tenebrous’s most important gift to me,” Plagueis said as he watched the Bith’s body bob in the thick therapeutic liquid.
    “His brain continues to recuperate from the effects of the coma-bloom alkaloids,” 11-4D remarked from the far side of the laboratory. “His physical condition, however, remains stable.”
    Plagueis kept his gaze on Venamis. The wound Venamis’s lightsaber had inflicted to Plagueis’s neck had healed, but the faint scar was a fresh reminder of his mortality. “That’s good, because I’m not interested in his mind.”
    In salute, the droid’s new appendages made a surgical slashing motion.
    Blood analysis had revealed a high midi-chlorian count, which to Plagueis was further indication that a being could have great potential in the Force and yet still be inept. He wondered: was it Venamis he had felt through the Force after the murder of Tenebrous? A Jedi would have made for a more interesting experimental subject, but a Dark Side Adept was perhaps better suited to his purposes. And soon enough the adjacent bacta tank would contain a Force-resistant Yinchorri, as well.
    Immediately following the contest on Sojourn, Plagueis had commanded members of the Sun Guard to locate the starship that had allowedVenamis to infiltrate the Hunters’ Moon, then move it and the poisoned Bith to Aborah. Larsh Hill and the other Muuns had been apprised that an intruder had been captured and disposed of, but no more than that. An investigation of the ship had yielded data that might have surprised even Darth Tenebrous, who had provided the ship. It seemed that well before he had confronted Plagueis or learned of his Master’s fate, Venamis himself had been scouting for potential apprentices. Plagueis could not help being impressed, though begrudgingly. The young Bith would have done well in Bane’s era. Now, however, he was an anachronism, and by extension, Tenebrous also.
    That Tenebrous had targeted him came as no shock to Plagueis. He and the Bith had reached an impasse decades earlier regarding execution of the Sith imperative. The product of one of the galaxy’s most ancient civilizations, Tenebrous believed that victory could be achieved through a mating of the powers of the dark side and expert Bith science. With the aid of sophisticated computers and future-casting formulas, the varied beings of the galaxy could be provided for, and the Jedi Order would gradually dwindle and disappear. Tenebrous had tried to persuade Plagueis that the Force did not play games of chance with the galaxy; and that while the fated ascendancy of the dark side could be predicted, its rise could not be influenced or hurried by the Sith.
    The Muuns believed in formulas and calculations as strongly as the Bith did, but Plagueis was not a fatalist. Convinced that Tenebrous’s brilliant equations were missing an important factor, he had argued that future events—whether predicted by machines or glimpsed in visions—were often clouded and unreliable. More important, he had been raised to believe in the elimination of competitors, and viewed the Jedi as just that. The Order wasn’t simply some rival corporation that could be secretly acquired; it had to be undermined, toppled, and dismantled. Deracinated. He had assumed that, given time, he would have been able to win Tenebrous over, but his former Master had obviously pronounced him unfit to don the mantle of Sith successor, and had looked elsewhere. The unbridled desires of sentients were a blessing to the Sith, for those desires birthed an abundance of zealous and audacious beings who could be used to further the cause. Plagueis had been instructed tobe on the lookout for suitable beings, just as Tenebrous had been when he had discovered Venamis. Perhaps Tenebrous had regarded the sneak attack as beneficial, no matter the results. Had Venamis been