He looked to the north. A faint streak of light nestled between the clouds and the hills. The aurora was beginning again. In a couple of nights, the northern sky would be afire. It would soon be time.
Casting a glance to the storehouse, he calculated how long he’d have to be away from the farm. It wasn’t safe to have her wandering around in his absence. She would have to go.
But he couldn’t let her leave.
Chapter Four
He had left at daybreak, long hejarbo pole in hand to push his craft upriver. Her tranquillity broken, Ori had issued a stream of protests. What did it matter what his customers needed for the autumn growing season? What did he owe those people? All he got for his work was a few items that he couldn’t coax out of the ground.
But Jelph had kept looking to the jungle highlands, and to the sky. He’d claimed he had more responsibilities than she knew. Ori had scoffed, longer and louder than she’d intended. That worried her, now, bringing back two of the snares he’d set for the rodents at the edge of the forest. Jelph hadn’t gone away mad, but he had gone away, despite her entreaties.
She didn’t like it. He’d been the balm she needed, making all of the heartache go away. She’d been dependent on her mother’s office for so much in life that it had been seductively easy to put her existence in his hands. But his leaving had reminded her that he could refuse her. She had power over no one.
And she couldn’t live without him. Without Jelph, there was no one else at all.
No one but Shyn. Up ahead, Ori spied the rear door to the composting barn, cracked open to permit circulation. Not even an uvak should have to live in that place, even if the stench came from its kind. Taking a deep breath, she approached. It had taken her most of the day to check and clear the traps, yielding a few of the varmints that Jelph used to supplement his diet. Wretched. At least seeing the uvak reminded her that she still had some freedom, some chance to—
Ori’s eyes narrowed. Something in the Force had changed. Dropping the traps, she ran to the barn and threw open the rickety door.
Shyn was dead.
The great beast lay bleeding on the dirt floor, deep gashes burned into its long golden neck. Immediately recognizing the wounds, Ori ignited her lightsaber and scanned the building. “Jelph! Jelph, are you here?” Except for a few tools lining the wall, nothing was in here, save the giant mound of filth near the front.
“I told you we’d find her here” came a young male voice from outside. “Just follow the stench.”
Ori emerged, weapon held high. The Luzo brothers, her nemeses in the Saber corps, stood out in front before uvak mounts of their own. Flen, the elder, smirked. “Stench of failure, you mean.”
“You looking to die, Luzo?” She stepped forward, unafraid.
The pair didn’t move. Sawj, the younger brother, sneered. “We’ve killed two High Lords this week. I don’t think we’re going to dirty our hands with a slave.”
“You killed my uvak!”
“That’s different,” Sawj said. “You may not know this, but we Sabers are charged with keeping order. A slave can’t keep an uvak!”
Filled with hate, Ori stepped forward, ready to charge—only to see Flen Luzo turn toward his uvak.
“Traders told us you liked to come here,” he said, opening his saddlebag. “We’re here to make a trade.” He tossed two scrolls to her feet.
Kneeling, Ori looked at the wax on the parchment. There was her mother’s marking, a design known only to her and immediate members of her family. Such a thing was reserved for validating a final testament. Unfurling the scroll, she saw that, in a sense, this was. “This says she plotted with Dernas and the Reds to kill the Grand Lord!”
“And the other says she plotted with Pallima and his people,” Flen said, grinning. “She signed both confessions, as you see.”
“You could have gotten anything under duress!”
“Yes,” Flen said.
Ori scanned the document. Candra Kitai now pledged her eternal loyalty to Grand Lord Venn, who would keep her alive as her personal—very visible—slave. Venn would now be naming three replacement High Lords of her own, Flen said, effectively blocking any moves by what remained of her rivals’ camps. Ori could guess from the sound of Flen’s voice that the brothers might find themselves suddenly elevated, for their loyalty.
“As I said,” Flen added, “we came for a trade. Your lightsaber, please.”
Ori threw the scrolls to the dirt. “You’ll have to take it!”
He simply crossed his arms. “Your mother told us that you would cooperate. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be the cause of her suffering.”
“She’s suffering already!” She took another step toward them.
“And then our Sabers will come down here in force and raze this little farm. And that farmer boy of yours,” he said, eyes glinting evilly. “They already have orders to do so, if I don’t bring back your lightsaber.”
Ori froze. Suddenly reminded, she looked frantically toward the river. He would be floating home soon.
Flen spoke in a knowing voice. “We don’t care what a slave does, or who she does it with. But you’re not a slave until we have that weapon.” The brothers ignited their lightsabers in unison. “So what’s it going to be?”
Ori closed her eyes. She didn’t deserve what had happened to her, but he didn’t deserve any of it. And he was all she had.
Pressing the button, she deactivated the lightsaber and threw it to the ground.
“Right call,” Sawj Luzo said, deactivating his lightsaber and taking hers. Both brothers stepped back to their mounts and climbed aboard.
“Oh,” Flen said, reaching for something strapped to his uvak’s harness. “We did have a gift from the Grand Lord—to start your new career.” He threw the long object, which landed at Ori’s feet with a thump.
It was a shovel.
Its metal blade made it truly a treasure: she could see it was forged from one of the few bits of debris from Omen’s landing. That material had been worked and reworked over the centuries, as Kesh’s paucity of surface iron had become known. A final reward for her former life. Shovel in her hands, she heard the Luzos laughing as they soared away to the north.
Ori looked around at what she had left. The hut. The barn. Mound after mound of the man’s mud. And the trellises, home to the dalsas that had brought her here to begin with …
“NO!”
Anger boiling inside her, she lashed out, striking the frail structures with the shovel. One mighty swing tore the frame apart, sending the flowers crashing to the ground. The hejarbo-shoot wreckage exploded, blown to splinters by the force of her mind.
Infuriated, she charged through the farm, hacking Jelph’s wobbly cart to pieces. So much anger, so little to destroy. Turning, she saw the symbol for her dispossession: the composting barn. Swinging, she smashed the door from its hinges and charged inside. Raging through the Force, she yanked at the sorry tools on the walls, sending them flying in a whirlwind of hate. And there was that mound of manure, large and noxious. Twirling, she brought the blade of the shovel down onto it …
Clang! Striking something beneath the surface of the dung, the shovel ripped free from her hands, causing her to lose her footing in the muck.
Calming as she got to her feet, Ori looked in amazement at the pile. There, beneath the stinking mess, was a soiled cloth covering protecting something large.
Something metal.
Recovering the shovel, she began to dig.
He had felt terrible, leaving Ori with a job that would take her all day. But he had his own trap to check, here under the lush canopy. Jelph hadn’t caught anything in months, but his best chances always seemed to coincide with the auroras.
Approaching the secluded knoll, he found his treasure, hidden beneath the giant fronds. He breathed faster in anticipation. All through the recent days of turbulence and tranquillity, he’d felt somehow that something was about to happen. This might be the day he’d been w
aiting for, after so much time …
Jelph stopped. Something was happening, but it wasn’t here. Looking through the foliage to the west, he had that gut feeling again. Something was happening, and it was happening now.
He ran for the boat.
Ori found the strange thing sitting beneath the manure-covered tarp. There actually wasn’t that much of the foul stuff piled over it; just enough to give the appearance that what lay beneath was something other than it was.
And what it was, was big—easily the length of two uvak. A great metal knife, painted red and silver, with a strange black bubble sitting atop its rear. Protrusions swept back, winglike, in a chevron, each tipped with two long spears that reminded her of lightsabers.
She’d forgotten the smell, now, breathing faster as she ran her hand across the surface of the metal mystery. It was cold and imperfect, with dents and burn marks all along its length. But the true surprise yet awaited her. Reaching the rounded section in back, she pressed her face against what seemed like black glass. Inside, tucked into an amazingly small space, she saw a chair. An engraved plate sat just behind the headrest, bearing characters looking similar to the ones she’d been taught by her mentors:
Aurek-class Tactical Strikefighter
Republic Fleet Systems
Model X4A—Production Run 35-C
Ori’s eyes widened. She saw it for what it was. A way back in.
All his life, Jelph Marrian had feared the Sith. The Great Sith War had concluded before he was born, but the devastation done to his homeworld of Toprawa was so complete that he had devoted his life to preventing their return.
He had gone too far, alienating the conservative leaders who ran the Jedi Order. Expelled, he had sought to continue his vigil, working with an underground movement of Jedi Knights devoted to preventing the return of the Sith. For four years, he’d worked in the shadows of the galaxy, making sure the masters of evil were indeed a memory.
Things had gone wrong again. On assignment in a remote region three years earlier, he’d learned of the collapse of the Jedi Covenant. Fearful of returning, he’d headed for the uncharted regions, sure that nothing could ever restore his name and place with the Order.
On Kesh, he had found something that might—wrapped up in his worst nightmare come true. He’d been caught in one of Kesh’s colossal meteor showers, crashing in the remote jungle as just one more falling star. Unable to raise help through Kesh’s bizarre magnetic field, he’d ventured down toward the lights he’d seen on the horizon.
The light of a civilization, steeped in darkness.
Still meters from the bank, he leapt from the boat. “Ori! Ori, I’m back! Are you—”
Jelph stopped when he saw the trellises, cut down. Taking in the damage, he dashed toward the barn.
The door was open. There, exposed in the evening twilight, sat the damaged starfighter he’d painstakingly floated down from the jungle, a piece at a time. He found something else, beside it: a metal shovel, discarded. “Ori?”
Stepping into the shadows of the barn, he saw the corpse of the uvak, food for the small carrion birds. Behind the building, he found the traps he’d sent her to check, abandoned on the ground. She had been here—and gone.
In front of the hut, he found other tracks. Wide Sith boots and more uvak prints. Ori’s smaller prints were here, too, heading past the hedge up the cart path that led to Tahv.
Jelph reached inside his vest for the bundle he always carried on trips. Blue light flashed in his hand. He was a lone Jedi on an entire planet full of Sith. His existence threatened them—but their existence threatened everything. He had to stop her.
No matter what.
He dashed up the path into the darkness.
Read on for an excerpt from
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Vortex
by Troy Denning
Published by Del Rey Books
BEYOND THE FORWARD VIEWPORT HUNG THE GOSSAMER VEIL of Ashteri’s Cloud, a vast drift of ionized tuderium gas floating along one edge of the Kessel Sector. Speckled with the blue halos of a thousand distant suns, its milky filaments were a sure sign that the Rockhound had finally escaped the sunless gloom of the Deep Maw. And, after the jaw-clenching horror of jumping blind through a labyrinth of uncharted hyperspace lanes and hungry black holes, even that pale light was a welcome relief to Jaina Solo.
Or, rather, it would have been, had the cloud been in the right place.
The Rockhound was bound for Coruscant, not Kessel, and that meant Ashteri’s Cloud should have been forty degrees to port as they exited the Maw. It should have been a barely discernible smudge of light, shifted so far into the red that it looked like a tiny flicker of flame. Jaina could not quite grasp how they had gone astray.
She glanced over at the pilot’s station—a mobile levchair surrounded by brass control panels and drop-down display screens—but found no answers in Lando Calrissian’s furrowed brow. Dressed immaculately in a white shimmersilk tunic and lavender trousers, he was perched on the edge of his huge nerf-leather seat, with his chin propped on his knuckles and his gaze fixed on the alabaster radiance outside.
In the three decades Jaina had known Lando, it was one of the rare moments when his life of long-odds gambles and all-or-nothing stakes actually seemed to have taken a toll on his con-artist good looks. It was also a testament to the strain and fear of the past few days—and, perhaps, to the hectic pace. Lando was as impeccably groomed as always, but even he had not found time to touch up the dye that kept his mustache and curly hair their usual deep, rich black.
After a few moments, Lando finally sighed and leaned back into his chair. “Go ahead, say it.”
“Say what?” Jaina asked, wondering exactly what Lando expected her to say. After all, he was the one who had made the bad jump. “It’s not my fault?”
A glimmer of irritation shot through Lando’s weary eyes, but then he seemed to realize Jaina was only trying to lighten the mood. He chuckled and flashed her one of his nova-bright grins. “You’re as bad as your old man. Can’t you see this is no time to joke?”
Jaina cocked a brow. “So you didn’t decide to swing past Kessel to say hello to the wife and son?”
“Good idea,” Lando said, shaking his head. “But … no.”
“Well, then …” Jaina activated the auxiliary pilot’s station and waited as the long-range sensors spooled up. An old asteroid tug designed to be controlled by a single operator and a huge robotic crew, the Rockhound had no true copilot’s station, and that meant the wait was going to be longer than Jaina would have liked. “What are we doing here?”
Lando’s expression grew serious. “Good question.” He turned toward the back of the Rockhound’s spacious flight deck, where the vessel’s ancient bridge-droid stood in front of an equally ancient navigation computer. A Cybot Galactica model RN8, the droid had a transparent head globe, currently filled with the floating twinkles of a central processing unit running at high speed. Also inside the globe were three sapphire-blue photoreceptors, spaced at even intervals to give her full-perimeter vision. Her bronze body-casing was etched with constellations, comets, and other celestial artwork worthy of her nickname. “I know I told Ornate to set a course for Coruscant.”
RN8’s head globe spun just enough to fix one of her photoreceptors on Lando’s face. “Yes, you did.” Her voice was silky, deep, and chiding. “And then you countermanded that order with one directing us to our current destination.”
Lando scowled. “You need to do a better job maintaining your auditory systems,” he said. “You’re hearing things.”
The twinkles inside RN8’s head globe dimmed as she redirected power to her diagnostic systems. Jaina turned her own attention back to the auxiliary display and saw that the long-range sensors had finally come on line. Unfortunately, they were no help. The only thing that had changed inside its bronze frame was the color of the screen and a single symbol denoting the Rockhound’s own location in the exact center.
&n
bsp; RN8’s silky voice sounded from the back of the flight deck. “My auditory sensors are in optimal condition, Captain—as are my data storage and retrieval systems.” Her words began to roll across the deck in a very familiar male baritone. “Redirect to destination Ashteri’s Cloud, arrival time seventeen hours fifteen, Galactic Standard.”
Lando’s jaw dropped, and he sputtered, “Tha … that’s not me!”
“Not quite,” Jaina agreed. The emphasis was placed on the wrong syllable in several words; otherwise, the voice was identical. “But it’s close enough to fool a droid.”
Lando’s eyes clouded with confusion. “Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”
“Yes,” Jaina said, glancing at her blank sensor display. “I don’t quite know how, but someone impersonated you.”
“Through the Force?”
Jaina shrugged and shot a meaningful glance toward a dark corner. While she knew of a half-dozen Force powers that could have been used to defeat Ornate’s voice-recognition software, not one of those techniques had a range measured in light-years. She carefully began to expand her Force-awareness, concentrating on the remote corners of the huge ship, and, thirty seconds later, was astonished to find nothing unusual. There were no lurking beings, no blank zones that might suggest an artificial void in the Force, not even any small vermin that might be a Force-wielder disguising his presence.
After a moment, she turned back to Lando. “They must be using the Force. There’s no one aboard but us and the droids.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” Lando paused for a moment, then asked, “Luke’s friends?”
“I hate to jump to conclusions, but … who else?” Jaina replied. “First, Lost Tribe or not, they’re Sith. Second, they already tried to double-cross us once.”
“Which makes them as crazy as a rancor on the dancing deck,” Lando said. “Abeloth was locked in a black hole prison for twenty-five thousand years. What kind of maniacs would think it was a good idea to bust her out?”
Lost Tribe of the Sith: Purgatory Page 3