In his personal quarters aboard the Exactor, Vader examined the damage the Zabrak Jedi’s lightsaber had done to his left forearm. After assuring himself that the pressure suit had self-sealed above the burn, he had peeled off the long glove and used a fine-point laser cutter to remove flaps of armorweave fabric that had been fused to the alloy beneath. The Jedi’s lightsaber had sliced through the shielding that bulked the glove and had melted some of the artificial ligaments that allowed the hand to pronate. Permanent repairs would have to wait until he returned to Coruscant. In the meantime he would have to entrust his arm to the care of one of the Star Destroyer’s med droids.

His own lightsaber rested within reach, but the longer he gazed at it, and at the blackened furrow in the alloy, the more disheartened he became. Had the hand been flesh and blood it would be shaking now. Only Dooku, Asajj Ventress, and Obi-Wan had been good enough with a blade to injure him, so how had an undistinguished Jedi Knight been able to do so?

With the loss of my limbs, have I also lost strength in the Force?

Vader recognized the voice of the one who posed the question as the specter of Anakin. Anakin telling him that he was not as powerful as he thought he was. The little slave boy, cowering because he was not the master of his fate. A mere accessory in the world, owned by another, passed over.

And now newly enslaved!

He lifted his masked face to the cabin’s ceiling and growled in torment. Sidious’s inept med droids had done this to him! Slowed his reflexes, burdened him with armor and padding. He relished having destroyed them.

Or … had Sidious deliberately engineered this prison?

Again, it was Anakin who asked, that small node of fear in Vader’s heart.

Was this punishment for having failed at Mustafar? Or had Mustafar merely provided Sidious with an excuse to weaken him? Perhaps all along the promise of apprenticeship had been nothing more than a ploy, when, in fact, Sidious merely needed someone to command his army of stormtroopers.

Another Grievous, while Sidious reaped the real rewards of power, confident that his newest minion posed no threat to his rule.

Vader dwelled on it, fearing he would drive himself mad, and at last reached an even more disheartening conclusion. Grievous was duped into serving the Sith. But Sidious had sent Anakin to Mustafar for one reason only: to kill the members of the Separatist Council.

Padmé and Obi-Wan were the ones who had sentenced him to his black-suit prison.

Sentenced by his wife and his alleged best friend, their love for him warped by what they had perceived as betrayal. Obi-Wan, too brainwashed by the Jedi to recognize the power of the dark side; and Padmé, too enslaved to the Republic to understand that Palpatine’s machinations and Anakin’s defection to the Sith had been essential to bringing peace to the galaxy! Essential to placing power in the hands of those resourceful enough to use it properly, in order to save the galaxy’s myriad species from themselves; to end the incompetence of the Senate; to dissolve the bloated, entitled Jedi order, whose Masters were blind to the decay they had fostered.

And yet their Chosen One had seen it; so why hadn’t they followed his lead by embracing the dark side?

Because they were too set in their ways; too inflexible to adapt.

Vader mused.

Anakin Skywalker had died on Coruscant.

But the Chosen One had died on Mustafar.

Blistering rage, as seething as Mustafar’s lava flows, welled up in him, liquefying self-pity. This was what he saw behind the mask’s visual enhancers: bubbling lava, red heat, scorched flesh—

He had only wanted to save them! Padmé, from death; Obi-Wan, from ignorance. And in the end they had failed to recognize his power; to simply accede to him; to accept on faith that he knew what was best for them, for everyone!

Instead Padmé was dead and Obi-Wan was running for his life, as stripped of everything as Vader was. Without friends, family, purpose …

Clenching his right hand, he cursed the Force. What had it ever provided him but pain? Torturing him with foresight, with visions he was unable to prevent. Leading him to believe that he had great power when he was little more than its servant.

But no longer, Vader promised himself. The power of the dark side would render the Force subservient, minion rather than ally.

Extending his right arm, he took hold of the lightsaber and turned it about in his hand. Just three standard weeks old, assembled—as Sidious had wished—in the shadow of the moonlet-size terror weapon he was having constructed, it had now tasted first blood.

Sidious had provided the synthcrystal responsible for the crimson blade, along with his own lightsaber to serve as a model. Vader, though, had no fondness for antiques, and while he could appreciate the handiwork that had gone into fashioning the inlaid, gently curved hilt of Sidious’s lightsaber, he prefered a weapon with more ballast. Determined to please his Master, he had tried to create something novel, but had ended up fashioning a black version of the lightsaber he had wielded for more than a decade, with a thick, ridged handgrip, high-output diatium power cell, dual-phase focusing crystal, and forward-mounted adjustment knobs. Down to the beveled emitter shroud, the hilt mimicked Anakin’s.

But there was a problem.

His new hands were too large to duplicate the loose grip Anakin had favored, right hand wrapped not on the grip but around the crystal-housing cylinder, close to the blade itself. Vader’s hands required that the grip be thicker and longer, and the result was an inelegant weapon, verging on ungainly.

Another cause of the injury to his left arm.

The Sith grew past the use of lightsabers, Sidious had told him. But we continue to use them, if only to humiliate the Jedi.

Vader yearned for the time when memories of Anakin would fade, like light absorbed by a black hole. Until that happened, his life-sustaining suit would be an ill fit. Even if it was well suited to the darkness in his invulnerable heart …

The comlink chimed.

“What is it, Commander Appo?”

“Lord Vader, I’ve been informed of a discrepancy in the prisoner count. Allowing for the Jedi you killed on Murkhana, two prisoners are unaccounted for.”

“The others who survived Order Sixty-Six,” Vader said.

“Shall I instruct Commander Salvo to initiate a search?”

“Not this time, Commander. I will handle it myself.”