Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories

by Miller, John Jackson

  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 waiting 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.

  SENTINEL

  1

  3960 BBY

  “I think … I might have ruined my life.”

  “Sounds like you met a woman,” the purple-faced bartender said, pouring. “Do you want me to leave the bottle?”

  Only if I can smash it over my head, Jelph Marrian thought. It was sweetwater, anyway—nothing that would help him forget. Sweat dripping from his matted blond hair, he drank deeply. The empty mug glistened, its shaped facets catching the firelight. Jelph twirled it in his hand, following the reflections. Since arriving on Kesh, he’d only drunk from orojo shells. But the Keshiri produced such wonderful glassware—even here, to serve guests in a pauper’s way station.

  The bartender passed him a bowl of porridge. “Friend, you look like you’ve run all the way from South Talbus.”

  “And more.” Jelph didn’t add that he’d been running practically without pause since the previous evening. Now, as the sun set again, he’d stopped, parched and ravenous, here in a hovel nestled in the lengthening shadows of the capital city’s walls. Jelph simply nodded to the pleasant old Keshiri and retreated to a corner with his meal. The natives on Kesh always felt freer to be familiar with human slaves than they were with the Sith. They must not have much trouble telling us apart, he imagined; tonight, his soaked, tattered clothes were probably a tip-off that he wasn’t born on high.

  In fact, of course, Jelph was the only mortal on Kesh born “on high.” He came from space, although he called no planet home. The three years the former Jedi Knight had spent in his little farmhouse on the Marisota River were the longest he’d lived in one place in years. He’d been fortunate to find it. Jelph had discovered the abandoned homestead just days after crashing his starfighter in the jungle highlands, when hunger made him bold enough to go exploring. The original occupant had left long before, probably fearing the stories that the Marisota River was cursed. Sensing the dark side of the Force all around, Jelph had begun to agree—until he ventured north and realized that, in fact, the whole planet was under a curse. Kesh belonged to the Sith.

  Jelph had devoted his entire adult life to preventing the return of the Sith to the galaxy. Toprawa had been devastated by the Jedi’s war with Exar Kun; Jelph had been born into a world that had already lost all hope. Fatherless, he heard from his mother only horror stories of the Sith occupation. When she disappeared one morning never to return, the young Jelph might have lost hope, too—had it not arrived in the form of Jedi scouts. The woman they introduced him to would save his life.

  Krynda Draay had also lost someone on Toprawa—her Jedi husband—and had assembled a Covenant, a collection of Jedi Knights willing to do anything to prevent the Sith’s return. Assisting her watchful seers were the Shadows, agents serving her son, another Jedi of great vision. Master Lucien had somehow removed Jelph from the Jedi rolls, giving the young man complete and total mobility. For years, Jelph had been the perfect secret agent, traveling the Outer Rim investigating potential Sith threats while the true Jedi Order occupied itself with matters of less importance. He’d been satisfied with his success …

  … until early in the Republic’s war with the armored Mandalorians, when everything changed. Jelph never learned exactly what had happened, beyond that some schism had decapitated the Covenant, revealing his existence, among others. Now regarded by the Jedi as an outlaw, Jelph found flight his only opti
on. What irony that, in selecting Kesh as his refuge, he’d found the very thing that he had sworn to stamp out!

  Jelph finished the meal and rubbed his eyes. He’d done everything right until now. After life as a Shadow, hiding from the Sith on Kesh hadn’t been difficult. He knew how to shroud his presence in the Force. And the existence of a class of human nobodies made it easy for him to blend in, so long as he lived in the hinterlands and kept his contacts to a minimum. In short order, he had picked up the local dialect and accent, giving him access to the necessities of life. A life spent tending his farm during the days—and working to repair his damaged starfighter at night.

  The starfighter. He had completed repairing most of the damage done to the Aurek by the meteor storm; it remained only to reinstall the communications console and select the time and manner of his departure. Then he would have truly been the sentinel he’d intended to be, warning the Republic and Jedi of the Sith, and reclaiming his name.

  But he had met her. Ori Kitai was of the Sith, and he had gotten too close to her, despite his better judgment. He’d let her distract him from his mission. He’d allowed her into his home. And now she had discovered his starfighter—and had gone, presumably to warn the Sith.

  Or had she?

  He’d left the farm quickly. There’d been no other choice. He preferred not to launch the starfighter without the communications system, which would take a week to reinstall. Catching Ori first was at least worth a try. But he cursed himself now for not studying the clues more closely. Yes, someone had gone through the shed, killed her uvak, and uncovered the starfighter. But it wasn’t clear who had done what. Yes, Ori was missing, and her footprints led away up the trail. But other people riding uvak had recently been there, too, and left. Only enfranchised Sith rode uvak—but all of them were supposedly hostile to Ori, whom they now regarded as a slave. Had something changed? She hadn’t left with them, in any event.

  His bet was that the Tribe didn’t yet know about his secret. If the Sith uvak-riders had discovered his vessel, they would’ve left someone to protect it. That left Ori. The previous day, when he’d been up in the jungle, he’d felt a profound pang of betrayal from her through the Force. He’d seen the destruction she’d wrought on his tiny farm. And now she was heading toward the capital city with knowledge capable of spreading destruction on a galactic scale.

  She had to be. Ori’s tracks had vanished before the crossroads, but Jelph remained certain she was bound for Tahv. There was nothing but jungle to the east, and no one to tell downstream in the abandoned towns of the Ragnos Lakes. With the monsoon rains choking the Marisota River, fords were out to the few southern cities. That left the capital, a city he had never visited. The center of evil on Kesh, home of Grand Lord Lillia Venn and her whole misbegotten Tribe.

  He looked out the window toward the now-purposeless city walls. Where might Ori be? Where would she go?

  “You don’t look happy, my friend.” The worried old Keshiri took the empty bowl. “I always try to have something to serve for the poor. I’m sorry it’s not better.”

  “It’s not that,” Jelph said, remembering himself.

  “Ah. The woman.” The old man retreated behind the counter. “I may not be one of your kind, young human, but I can tell you something universal. You let a woman into your life, and anything can happen.”

  Jelph stepped toward the door, turned, and bowed. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  The last visitors filed out of the zoo. That was what Ori had always called it, but the true name was something more complicated. Originally a special park honoring Nida Korsin and the Skyborn Rangers, it had since had the names of two or three other Grand Lords affixed to it, though that didn’t seem a particularly high honor to Ori. There had once been wild animals inside, the last members of some of Kesh’s predator species. But the Sith had long since hauled them out and killed them for sport.

  Now the facility served as the public home for the uvak mounts used in rake-riding—those few uvak who survived their bouts in that violent sport, anyway. Sith citizens and Keshiri alike came to marvel at the mighty beasts, being pampered and prepared for their matches at the nearby Korsinata.

  Lately, though, they had come to see something else. Or, rather, someone.

  Ori found her mother where she expected to find her—mucking out the uvak stalls. Jelph had been exactly right: Grand Lord Venn had made a public spectacle out of Candra Kitai’s fall from power. Under the watchful eyes of the burly night guard, the deposed High Lord continued the work that she’d done all day for the viewing amusement of the passersby. Still wearing her ceremonial gown from Donellan’s Day, now soiled and frayed, Candra stood on tiptoes, delicately relocating foul deposits with a large shovel.

  Looking down from her perch on the roof of the shelter, Ori waited until the guard was right beneath her. Then she leapt downward, kicking out to knock the sentry senseless. Kneeling, she grabbed the man’s lightsaber and dragged him into the stall behind the grounded uvak.

  Eyes watering from the stench, Candra looked up at her daughter with a tired expression. “You came back.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s been weeks and weeks.”

  “More like two,” Ori said, studying her mother. Such a short time since the royal fête, and she could barely recognize the woman. The gray hair always carefully hidden by the Keshiri beauticians was out in straggly force now. Candra stank of every vile thing she’d encountered in her work. Her hands, however, remained free from calluses. Ori could see why as Candra robotically returned to her work, gingerly holding the shovel and making little headway.

  “They keep feeding them slop that makes them ill,” Candra groaned. “I know they’re doing it on purpose.”

  “You’ll never get this job done shoveling that way,” Ori said, springing up and seizing the tool. Looking at it for a moment, she suddenly remembered she was not a farmer and threw it aside. “You’ve been here all this time?”

  Candra feebly pointed to the empty stall across the walk. “They let me sleep over there sometimes.” Wearily, she looked up at Ori. “You look tired, dear. Have you rested?”

  Ori snorted. She’d run all the previous night and day from Jelph’s farm after discovering his secret in the shed, finally reaching Tahv an hour before. Now, at last, she was here—and she had something to trade. What was he? Where was he from? REPUBLIC FLEET SYSTEMS, the old characters had said. The Republic, she remembered from her studies, was the tool of the Jedi—the puppet body through which the Jedi Knights ruled the weaklings of the galaxy.

  It was definitely information worth something to someone. But who?

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” she told her mother.

  “I can’t just leave,” Candra said. “They’ll find us, wherever we go—and we’ll both end up right back here.”

  Looking quickly back outside the stall, Ori pulled the older woman into the shadows. “I’m not going to break you out. I’ve … discovered something. Something that will restore us—restore you. You have to get me in to see the High Lords.”

  Candra looked at her, bewildered, for a long moment before returning her eyes guiltily to the shovel. “I’d better get back to work, before someone else comes to check on—”

  Ori grabbed her mother’s wrists before she could move. “Mother, I need to know who to talk to!”

  Shaking her head, Candra fought to evade her daughter’s stare. “No, Ori. I don’t know what you think you’ve found, but nothing will make a difference. We’ve lost.”

  “This will make a difference!” Ori had no doubt about that. Quickly she explained. There was another starship on Kesh, one in addition to Omen. A new one, hidden on a farm beside the Marisota River. Ori’s whisper grew louder with excitement. “This isn’t just about our family, Mother! It’s about reuniting the Tribe with the Sith!”

  Candra simply stared at her, unbelieving. “You’ve gone mad. You’ve made this story up, to try to get back in—” />
  Hearing the guard begin to stir, Ori looked frantically at Candra. “You know the politics. I need to know what to do. Who can I go to?”

  At the word politics, Candra’s eyes seemed to focus. Looking back mournfully at the shovel, she spoke in low tones. Three of the High Lords were newly appointed stooges of the Grand Lord, she said. But that left four others who might listen—two apiece from the former Red and Gold factions. They formed the balance of political power, and might well reward the Kitai family for bringing them the news first.

  “If this is for real, you have to get them down there, to see it for themselves,” Candra said. “Send them messages through Gadin Badolfa, the architect. He sees them all, and I still trust him. Don’t tell them exactly what you’ve found—that way, they’re not compromised for coming to meet you.”

  Ori ruminated. The much-demanded Badolfa was highly placed in Sith society, as well connected a figure as one outside the hierarchy could be. The High Lords might not believe the invitations were legitimate, even coming through a trusted family friend like Badolfa—but there wasn’t much choice.

  She dragged the guard’s body back out of the stall. She’d passed a nice trough earlier that would make a good temporary home for him; the other guards would assume he was drunk on duty. But she’d keep the lightsaber. It had been only a day since the Luzo brothers had taken hers, but it felt good to have one in her hand again. “Mother, are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”

  Leaning on the handle of the shovel, Candra looked long and hard at her daughter. “No, this is the place for me right now. I’d only slow you down.” She looked down at the floor of the stall and grimaced. “And if this plan of yours doesn’t work, don’t trouble yourself for me here. I don’t expect to be around much longer anyway.”