Read Online Invincible by Troy Denning - Free Book Online

what Allana had done, Caedus still loved her. He was her father, and he would always love her, no matter how much she hurt him. He had been wrong to try to escape that. Caedus needed to hold on to that love whatever it cost him, to cling to that love even as it tore his heart apart.
    Because that was how Sith stayed strong. They needed pain to keep the Balance, to remind them they were still human. And they needed it so they would not forget the pain they were inflicting on others. To make the galaxy safer, everyone had to suffer—even Sith Lords.
    And so there would be no angry outbursts when he confronted the Moffs over their unauthorized adventures, no demonstration killings, no Force chokings or threats to have his fleets attack theirs, no intimidation of any sort. There would be no consequences at all, for how were they to know of the worrisome things he had been seeing in his Force visions lately—the Mandalorian maniacs and the burning asteroids, his uncle’s inescapable gaze—if he failed to tell them? Whether blunder or master stroke, the taking of the Roche system was as much his doing as the Moffs’, Caedus saw now, and he was beyond punishing others for his mistakes. Starting today, Darth Caedus was going to rule not through anger or fear or even bribery, but as every true Sith Lord should, through patience and love and…pain.
    Caedus finally crested the winding pedramp he had been ascending and found himself looking down a long tubular tunnel coated in the gray-yellow foamcrete the Verpine reserved for their royal warrens. At the far end—guarding one of the shiny new beskar -alloy blast hatches that had done absolutely nothing to stop the Remnant’s aerosol attack—stood a squad of white-armored stormtroopers. Their gray-striped shoulder plates identified them as members of the Imperial Elite Guard, and the two tripod-mounted E-Webs set along the walls suggested they were serious about preventing unauthorized access to the chamber beyond.
    The stormtroopers were still turning in his direction, no doubt trying to decide whether the single black-clad figure striding toward them was anything to be alarmed about, when Caedus raised a gloved hand and made a grasping motion. The squad leader raised his own hand as though returning the greeting—then was knocked off his feet as both E-Web supply cables tore free of the power generators and came flying down the corridor with weapon and tripod bouncing along behind them.
    The remainder of the squad swiftly moved to firing positions, dropping to a knee in the middle of the corridor or pressing themselves against the tunnel wall, and brought their blaster rifles to their shoulders. Caedus sent a surge of Force energy sizzling down the corridor, reducing the electronic opticals inside their helmets to a blizzard of static. They opened fire anyway, but most of the bolts went wide, and those that did not Caedus deflected with the occasional flick of a hand.
    He was still ten paces away when the squad leader pulled his helmet off and, bringing his weapon to bear, began yelling for the others to do the same. Caedus raised his arm, catching the leader’s bolts on his palm and deflecting them harmlessly down the tunnel. As the second and third man prepared to open fire, he flicked a finger toward the leader’s blaster and sent it spinning into them. It slammed the second man into the wall and knocked the third’s weapon from his hands.
    Caedus summoned the leader forward with two fingers, using the Force to bring the astonished soldier flying into his grasp.
    “I have no intention of harming anyone beyond that door,” Caedus said, making his voice deep and commanding. “But I have no time to waste, so I won’t hesitate to kill you or your men. I trust that won’t be necessary?”
    The sergeant’s eyes bulged as though his throat were actually being squeezed shut—which it was not—and his face paled to the color of his armor.
    “N-n-no, sir. N-not at all.”