The Last Jedi

Forty-Four


Tesla had served the Dark Lord long enough to know when the Sith was agitated. He felt his Master’s present agitation as a chaotic, eddying current that seemed to have neither direction nor destination. He did not let on that he felt this, however. Nor did he ask what was disturbing his Lord. To hint that he thought Darth Vader was in any way shorn of his usual cold, imperturbable self-possession could prove disastrous.

And yet Probus Tesla knew better than most that his Lord was a being—somehow the word man seemed inadequate and inappropriate—of towering passion … but a passion that, like an incipient volcanic eruption, was shielded within the walls of an impenetrable furnace. It was what gave Darth Vader his aura of power, Tesla thought—that sense that there was a deep, hot molten core beneath the icy exterior.

Now, as they made their way toward Vader’s private quarters, Tesla simply waited for his Lord to make his wishes known—which he did not do until he had dismissed the stormtroopers and given the Imperial officers orders to extend the station sensors farther into the asteroid field.

“You followed my orders regarding Thi Xon Yimmon?” Vader asked him when they were alone.

“Yes, Lord. I observed him carefully and closely.” True.

Tesla expected Vader to ask next what he had observed.

He didn’t. Instead he asked, “Did you sense any … disturbances in the Force while I was absent?”

What had he sensed? That he was being observed, probed by rivulets of Force sense? “Not that I couldn’t account for. Why do you ask? Has something happened, Lord Vader?”

The gleaming, black mask was opaque, but Tesla did not imagine the momentary stillness behind it, as if the Dark Lord were calculating how much to reveal. He felt a tickle of disappointment. Darth Vader didn’t trust him, that was clear. He swallowed the disappointment; he would win that trust.

“A door opened,” Vader said, “and out of it poured light and darkness … twilight. Like the moment before dawn. It was … unexpected.”

“I don’t understand,” Tesla said stupidly.

Vader made an abrupt gesture. “You didn’t feel it, then?”

“When would—”

“No matter. If you had felt it, you’d know. You wouldn’t need me to put a time or date on it. You would know.”

Tesla bit his lip, using the pain to focus his emotions. Once again he had been found wanting, but he would not allow it to affect him. “You asked about Yimmon. If I had observed him.”

Vader moved restlessly, then turned to face his Inquisitor. “And what did you observe?”

Tesla had thought much about this—about the peculiar feeling of being watched when he was in contact with Yimmon. But how to explain it to his Lord without revealing the depths of that contact?

He did not answer the question directly. “The dual cortex possessed by the Cereans is a significant adaptation,” he began. “It allows them, I think, to be … quite above the sort of tactics we have used. I believe that whether he is experiencing pain, sensory deprivation, or anxiety, our ‘guest’ is able to literally detach himself and rise above what he is feeling. It’s as if he is able to allow one part of his brain to feel the emotions connected to his suffering, then buttress it with the strength of the other.”

Vader’s masked face was turned toward Tesla, but of course he could read nothing in the opaque optical shields. He cleared his throat and forged on.

“It has been theorized that a Cerean’s lower faculties reside in one cortex and his higher ones in the other.” He had researched that exhaustively and was pleased with his findings.

Vader stirred, and Tesla had the absurd idea that his mind had been elsewhere.

“That would be a remarkable adaptation,” Vader said now. “Let the primitive lower brain absorb the physical and psychic shocks, then soothe it with the higher faculties.”

“My thought, Lord Vader,” Tesla said, taking a quick step toward the Sith, “was that it is an adaptation that could be used against him.”

Vader was still watching him. “You found contact with him … disturbing.”

It wasn’t really a question, and Tesla hesitated, knowing that he had allowed something to seep from beneath the shield he’d erected around his own emotions. “Yes. I did. Until I determined why he made me uncomfortable.”

Vader’s regard was swift and piercing. “A sensation of being watched.”

Tesla felt as if every bit of blood had drained out of his head. Could Darth Vader penetrate him that easily? “I … I find that an accurate description.”

Vader turned away and moved to stare at the viewscreen that showed the prisoner in his expansive cell, sitting, as ever, in meditation. “Could he be the source of …” He didn’t finish the thought.

“The source of what, my Lord?”

“Of the strange … twilight effusion I felt in the Force.”

Tesla shook his head. “I don’t know, Lord.”

“No. You don’t.” Vader swung about to face him. His gaze, as always, was inscrutable, expressionless—still, Tesla felt sweat break out beneath his heavy robes. “That is, Master, I have no reason to believe him a Force adept as such, though …”

“Yes?”

“When I was in the room with him, I did sense something beyond what I expected. I believe that to be the result of a combination of his extreme intelligence and his species’ dual cortex. In fact, the answer to breaking Thi Xon Yimmon—to making him permeable—might lie in surgically disconnecting his cortices so that the one cannot defend or buttress the other.”

Darth Vader was still for a long moment, so still for so long that Tesla felt a vague annoyance that he should have come to what he felt was a remarkable idea, only to have his Master focus less on what should have been of vital interest—crushing the resistance—and more on some freakish “twilight effusion” of the Force that Tesla had not even felt.

Vader abruptly turned back to the viewscreen in a swirl of black robes. “Arrange for our ‘guest’ to be taken to the infirmary. I will program the surgical droid myself.”

Tesla fought to muzzle the burst of accomplishment—of pride. He had done it; he, Probus Tesla, though but an Inquisitor, had solved a conundrum that the Dark Lord himself had been unable to solve. “Yes, Lord Vader. At once.” He turned and strode toward the entrance to his Master’s quarters.

Vader’s next question was soft, almost purring; yet Tesla felt it as a bucket of ice water poured down his back. “Tell me, Tesla—how did you come to know what you have told me about Yimmon?”

The words arrested him just shy of the door. “I … I have done a great deal of research—”

“You sensed this. You felt the dual regard.”

“I … Yes.”

“Yet I did not,” Vader said musingly. “Perhaps because I was working to contain him, while you were contained. You walked through the intersection of his dual consciousness.”

“I—I realize that you told me to observe only, my Lord. Which I did, though I admit I got closer to him than I intended. For that I am truly—”

Vader seemed not to have heard him. “Interesting. That the experiences of even an inferior Force-user may prove instructive.”

Inferior? Anger flared in Tesla’s breast, then quickly guttered. Of course he was inferior. For one blinding second he’d forgotten to whom he was speaking. That was dangerous. Extremely dangerous.

Vader continued, “You walked through his mind. Did you leave your footprints there?”

In an obscure corner of Probus Tesla’s consciousness, the part that was not quaking in scalded fury cowered in terror. “My Lord, I …”

“Tell me.”

The compulsion was stronger than mere words, leaving Tesla with the impression that Vader held his will in one gloved hand.

“I—I merely suggested that Whiplash had fallen. That his network of friends and associates on Coruscant was gone. That it was only a matter of time before the entire resistance was as dead as Jax Pavan.”

The release was sudden and violent. Tesla reeled back against the wall, gasping for breath.

Vader’s voice was once more unnervingly calm. “Go. Prepare for the surgery.”

Tesla went, wondering if it had been his disobedience that had caused that flare of rage in his Master … or the mention of a dead Jedi. He had a feeling it had been the latter.