Lightning surged through him and all the processors making up the Core's network. He projected all his anger and grief into the surge, and the strength of it surprised even him. For PROXY, for Juno, for Kota, and for himself he fried the planetwide mind into slag.

Slave droids jerked about in a ghastly dance. The sound they made was awful to hear, the dying scream of a mind that had never before had to contemplate its own demise. It should have been immortal. It had planned to rule the galaxy. Now it was just a tangle of wires experiencing a brainstorm that would inevitably destroy it. "Order!" it roared and raged. "Order must be restored!"

The paroxysm of the droids took minutes to ebb, during which time the apprentice kept up the blistering power of his rage, ensuring that he erased every last trace of the memories pulled from PROXY'S braincase. Nothing of him would remain there. The Emperor would never know how forces had gathered to unseat him, for good or for ill. There would be no witnesses, living or droid.

When the last metal body was still and silent, along with all the processors and every blinking light, he let himself sag down onto his knees, then slip around with his back against the processor's plastic casing. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

Chapter 31