Ned POV
The young Sith expected me to make them kill each other.
I could see the assumption in how they entered the training hold: shoulders narrow, eyes wide, hunger dressed as discipline. They had been raised by an order that mistook rivalry for education. Give them a room, a weapon, and a superior watching, and they knew the old ritual. One bleeds. One rises. The master calls it truth.
I gave them drones.
Ugly things. Repair frames with dulled cutters, loader arms with padded impact plates, small crawler bodies carrying shock lines and paint rounds. Order arranged them in two circles under the red ship lights.
Lana stared at the machines as if insulted.
Sorel Vane understood first and disliked me for it.
Varis stood beside me with his hands folded behind his back. "They will consider this beneath them."
"Then they can learn from below."
"You are enjoying yourself."
"No."
He looked at me. "You should try it sometime. Sith education becomes more legible."
I ignored that because it was almost funny and I had no room for the mercy of humor.
There were twenty-three acolytes in the hold. Some had followed Varis from terror. Some from calculation. Some because every other adult who had owned their future was dead. Lana stood near the front, still young enough for anger to be beautiful before it became routine. Sorel stayed half a step behind, measuring exits.
"Pair lines," I said.
They moved into dueling spreads.
"No."
Confusion.
"Four units. Protect center. Advance together. No one wins alone."
One boy with pale ritual scars lifted his chin. "That is soldier work."
"Yes."
"We are Sith."
"You are survivors standing on my ship."
The room tightened.
Good. Truth should change air pressure.
I walked among them while Order activated the drones. They began to circle: metal feet clicking, arms opening, sensors blinking like small unsympathetic eyes.
"The old way taught you to seek the moment when your rival weakens. Useful for producing murderers. Wasteful for producing victory."
Varis murmured, "Old Sith have won many wars with murderers."
"And lost a civilization to them."
The first exercise lasted nine seconds.
The acolytes broke formation instantly. Pride scattered them faster than fear. Lana attacked cleanly but alone, cutting a drone's arm before two others struck her legs with shock rods. Sorel tried to direct his unit and was ignored. The scarred boy leapt over the center mark to claim a kill and exposed the smallest girl behind him.
The drones painted them red.
Order stopped the round.
"All dead," she said.
The acolytes breathed hard, offended by simulated corpses.
"Again," I said.
They failed twelve times.
On the thirteenth, Sorel learned to speak before moving. On the fourteenth, Lana stopped chasing kills and began removing threats from other people's blind sides. On the seventeenth, the scarred boy took a blow meant for the smallest girl and looked shocked that his body had performed usefulness without permission from his pride.
Then the betrayal came.
It was not dramatic. Real betrayal rarely is before poets improve it.
One acolyte, older than Lana, named Teryn by the ship record, shifted behind Varis during reset. His pulse slowed instead of rose. His right hand drifted toward the bone knife hidden under his sleeve. Order highlighted the motion for me.
I did not move.
Lana did.
She stepped backward without looking, caught Teryn's wrist, turned under his arm, and drove the practice shock-blade into his ribs hard enough to stop his breath. The bone knife clattered to the floor.
Silence.
Teryn collapsed to one knee.
Lana kept the blade against him and looked at me.
Not asking if she had done right.
Asking what kind of right I rewarded.
"Why?" I asked Teryn.
He spat. "Varis killed our masters."
Varis's expression did not change.
"No," I said. "I did."
"He brought you."
There it was. The cleanest accusation in the room.
I looked at Varis. For one moment the training hold became Nereth's tower again, broken and black, and my armor's emotion regulation rose like a hand over my mouth.
I let it.
"Yes," I said. "He did."
The acolytes waited for me to kill the boy.
So did Varis.
I did not.
"Teryn lives," I said. "Because he attacked a dangerous man and failed before endangering the ship."
Lana's eyes narrowed.
"Lana," I said.
She did not flinch.
"You stopped him. Good. But you watched his hand because you wanted a chance to prove yourself, not because you cared whether Varis lived."
Her mouth tightened.
"That is old Sith thinking. Useful. Small."
Small hurt her more than cruel would have.
Good.
"Again," I said.
Varis waited until the drones began moving before speaking quietly.
"You spare treachery."
"I classify it."
"Dangerous habit."
"So is killing every tool because it has an edge."
He looked across the hold at Lana, who had returned to formation with murder banked behind her eyes.
"That one will not love you."
"I did not ask."
"You will one day wish you had."
The round began.
This time, they lasted nearly a minute.
The smallest girl called a warning. The scarred boy obeyed. Sorel shifted the center. Lana cut only when cutting preserved the line. It was still ugly, still frightened, still full of children pretending they had never been children.
But it held.
When Order ended the round, four drones lay disabled and no acolyte bore red paint over the heart.
They looked at me differently.
Not with love.
Not even loyalty.
But the first recognition that survival under me would require a shape larger than appetite.
"Cruelty is not strength," I told them. "Not if it destroys what must be held. Rage is not doctrine. Fear is not command. A blade is not wise because it is sharp."
Varis smiled faintly. "Law dressed as mercy."
"Sith mercy was laziness in a better robe."
That silenced even him.
Present me remembers Lana kneeling at the end of that day with blood on her hands from Teryn's mouth where he had bitten himself rather than cry out. She stared at my sword, then my armor, then the faint black seams where nanites repaired a blaster scar across my forearm.
She was already studying the problem of me.
I mistook that for fear.
Many intelligent men have died by mistaking study for surrender.
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