There was no destination code, because the destination was everywhere.
“I haven’t sent any flash traffic since the typhoon that fizzled out six years ago,” he said, hurrying onto the eastern balcony. “I sure hope they believe me!” Working the pulleys, he looked back to see her still standing in the doorway. “Quarra, what are you waiting for?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the thoughtcrier,” he said. “The semaphore stations will get the news out only so fast. You’ve got to call out!”
She froze, suddenly realizing where she was—and what she had been doing—when the news came. She’d worked so hard to keep everything secret. Her voice cracked. “But … I’m not supposed to be here!”
“Quarra!”
She had no choice. This was it. This was It, if the pronoun had any meaning in Alanciar. The feeling in the Force was stronger, now. Fouler. Darker.
Quarra knew, now, why she was here. Though it wasn’t necessary to face the mainland, she turned, shut her eyes, and concentrated hard. Yes, there were minds out there to the populous northeast, waiting to relay her call. One word, the word the Alanciari had feared for two thousand years since the Herald had washed up on an island near their shores.
“Sith!”
3
Edell Vrai had expected many sensations on seeing land ahead. The one he hadn’t planned on was regret.
Twenty-five years of work had gone into this day, the greatest moment in the history of humanity on Kesh. At last, Edell, High Lord of the Tribe and captain of the Sith expedition, had done it. He had discovered the new world—but few were there to see it.
Someone should be recording this, the captain thought. Too bad we didn’t bring a scribe.
Edell gripped the railing at the gondola’s prow and squinted into the eastern night. The telescopes his Keshiri at the construction yards had supplied had been of little use. He’d expected to see more lights on the new continent, as Omen’s cams had seen in its suicidal plunge to Kesh’s surface. But the only sight had been inky shapes rising from the surface, like ribs poking through a shriveled corpse.
“Adjust speed,” he called to his crew astern. “We’re kilometers away yet. We don’t know what the winds on shore will be like.”
“Yes, Captain!”
Edell’s regrets vanished. Captain. The title Yaru Korsin had arrived on Kesh with. There had been no captains of anything among the Sith in two thousand years, no vessels to command larger than the gornyk-shell pontoons farmers ran on the rivers. It had always been assumed that the designer of the method for crossing the sea would have the honor of leading the expedition—but on the near side of fifty, Edell felt fortunate to have finally made it. He’d been a young man when the quest began, after all. Thin and fresh-faced, with neatly coiffed blond hair, he’d been a member of Golden Destiny, the most forward-thinking of the Tribe factions before the Crisis. He liked to think now that he was still a young man: he’d grown into his features, and he cut a dashing figure as the chief engineer of the realm. But in the last decade, he’d despaired of ever reaching his goal. So much had gone wrong.
Distance was the problem. The Keshiri whom Korsin encountered lived on Keshtah, a continent alone in the ocean. That’s what the Keshiri described, and that’s what the Sith found in their own travels. But their collective knowledge of the map had been limited by something: the stamina of an uvak. As the Neshtovar had before them, the Sith flew many exploratory flights from Keshtah’s shores; those who returned had reported sea in every direction, and no islands upon which to alight. Reefs were visible in places not far beneath the waves; perhaps there had even been dry land there at one time. But if any rider had actually crossed the ocean on uvak-back, none had ever reported it. The Sith, of course, knew their world to be round; even the native Keshiri had figured that one out on their own. But it appeared that Keshtah was all there was.
The great map that Grand Lord Korsin kept beneath the Temple had removed not one, but two matters from doubt. There actually was more land, and a lot of it. But the diagram also depicted how far away it was: disappointingly, desperately far. The western route was shorter, but it fought the currents. East was the only option.
Now there was a Grand Lord in Tahv again, and Edell had been friendly with him since the older man’s time as curator of the palace museum. Varner Hilts wasn’t mathematical, but he respected and employed people who were—and as a teenager, Edell had spent many days studying with them the construction techniques of the grand edifices. So as soon as the Restoration had begun, Hilts had charged Edell with solving the transit problem. And solving it forever: a single trip wouldn’t do. It had to be replicable, and ready for mass production. The other continent, Korsin had shown, was inhabited. Occupation had to follow discovery.
Years of experiments followed. Boats were out of the question: the jungle forests of Keshtah yielded nothing that would survive the rough waves. Hejarbo plants were plentiful, but their shoots only barely protected Keshiri farmers from rain. They didn’t withstand the pressures facing a ship’s hull. Vosso and the few other hardwoods from the far interior were too dense to float. Others were too rubbery.
Edell spent the second decade of his work in the study of those materials, hoping to find something that would make the trip possible. Failure heaped upon failure, and many aides grew disgusted with him and became rivals, testing their own plans. Hilts had made him one of the youngest High Lords in history to ensure that he had full access to resources, but Edell had no time for court politics—or family. He refused to yield. His ancestors had crossed the stars. The Force could negate the rules of nature. A true Sith should be able to cross a planetary puddle!
The solution that ultimately struck him was far afield from engineering, and resembled alchemy to his peers. Perhaps it was. The hot seams of the Sessal Spire emitted a variety of noxious gases, including methane. Using glass vessels shaped by Keshiri crafters, Edell and his team trapped methane and used a simple water catalyst to isolate hydrogen, the lightest element known. With a production line set up, Edell developed structures the gas could carry aloft. Again, the Keshiri artisans were up to the task, fashioning an amazingly thin containment fabric that stiffened against pressure. Edell’s “rising bell” shape proving the most stable, and he added a gondola crafted from several layers of latticed hejarbo, just strong enough to carry the weight of a crew and their provisions. What would not float on water would float on air.
Three years had passed since he’d gotten that far, and then despair had fallen again. There was no method of controlling direction, exposing the balloons to all the violent whims of the ocean winds. The jet streams here in Kesh’s southern hemisphere could provide a mighty assist, but they proved untamed. In the south, a change in the moods of the Sessal Spire and the other volcanoes could send a flier anywhere. Sometimes the southlies carried riders up and up, presumably releasing them to perish upon the mighty polar icepack. And farther north, the equatorial route just sent riders to a watery death in the doldrums—or so they assumed, for none had ever returned from any of the test flights.
At last, earlier this year, with his enemies protesting against his extravagant expenditures, Edell had had a revelation. The craft didn’t need to be smaller, but larger. Large enough to support the weight of two or more uvak, suspended in harnesses aft, beneath the keel of the gondola. No uvak could make the crossing under its own power without tiring, but carried aloft, the beasts could rest, be fed, and even sleep when they weren’t needed. When they were, their beating wings provided enough propulsion to control direction, provided the pilot tending them sensed the wind patterns properly.
Edell stepped to the gondola’s right side and looked back down through the darkness at one of the bleating creatures bobbing in its skeletal yoke. It was as confused as ever about its predicament but flapping its wings on command. “Looks like Starboard’s doing his bit,” Edell said. “How’s Port doing?”
“Port’s happy a
nd fed,” replied Peppin, the Candra’s combination uvak-wrangler and pilot. “Just tell her where you want to go.”
The captain smiled. Uvak would indeed take them across the ocean—just not in a way anyone had imagined!
Edell felt the wind picking up as he headed amidships. A salty breeze. They’d been descending, thanks to controlled releases of gas, since they’d spotted land minutes earlier. To the north, he saw the two companion vessels, identical to his, emerging from the clouds. Good. His little fleet had made it, every ship.
The Candra, the Lillia, and the Dann Itra. Edell had despaired at the naming of the airships, which honored Grand Lords from around when the Time of the Rot began. It was a recent trend in the thinking of Grand Lord Hilts. Years had been spent renewing the Tribe’s connection with its founders; now, their leader felt, it was necessary to rehabilitate other figures from its history. Even those who had, by action or inaction, contributed to the chaos that followed them. In her long-ago tenure, Candra Kitai had been memorable for no other deed than closing the local zoo. And yet here she was, a soapstone facsimile of the woman fastened outside the gondola’s hull. The decorations weren’t part of Edell’s designs for the vessels. If his ship needed to lose weight to gain elevation, the honorable lady Candra would be the first thing to take the plunge.
Tiny red lights appeared on the decks of Lillia and Dann Itra: lightsabers, flashing on and off. Edell returned the signal. They’d all seen the land and were slowing. Edell didn’t really know the other captains who had been appointed—more political nonsense—but they would follow his lead. Their ships, like his, carried ten-person crews: captain, pilot, clairvoyant, and five warriors, plus two Keshiri ambassadors. Familiar purple faces might come in handy if they had to make contact with the natives. But contact wasn’t the plan for this trip. Instead, Edell planned an overflight reconnaissance of “Keshtah Major” followed by a return, crossing the relatively small ocean to his homeland’s western coast. A larger force already being prepared would follow, once they knew Korsin’s map was no fantasy.
That was fine with Edell. Leave the fighting to others; he would take the glory of discovery, sailing Candra straight to Tahv, where all his doubters could see him arriving from the sunset.
It was about time.
Seated ahead of the uvak-tender, a dark-skinned woman in her twenties spoke up. “Send the impression, Captain?”
“Do it.”
Edell watched as Taymor, one of the more able Sith at thought projection through the Force, concentrated. She wasn’t trying to project any more than a feeling at this juncture—the sensation of success, of accomplishment. Distance wasn’t necessarily a bar to users of the Force, but no one in the Tribe had ever tried to send a message around the world before. They’d keep to simple emotions now. There’d be time to experiment with more, later.
“Done,” Taymor said, smirking as if to remind the others that she’d just done something unprecedented for the Tribe on Kesh.
Edell rolled his eyes and returned to the prow. This was how it was with the Sith. Every gathering, no matter how small, became a talent show. He suddenly respected Yaru Korsin a lot more. Starships must have been nightmares to run. No wonder Omen had a private cabin for the captain. Edell had wished for one several times on the voyage already.
Something Candra also lacked was a good forward observation post, he thought again as he reached for one of the sturdily wound leather cables connecting the gondola to the gas envelope. It wasn’t a problem for a daring Sith willing to shimmy up, as he was, but he had already added it to his mental list of design needs for the future.
Gloved hands on the cord, he started pulling himself up—only to be interrupted by a call from behind. “Captain!”
Edell looked back in the dark to see Taymor frowning. “What now?”
“There’s a lot going on here,” the telepath said, fingers splayed around her temples. “In this place. A lot of emotions. A lot of energy.” Her brow furrowed.
The captain chortled. “You’re just reading us, Taymor.”
“No, High Lord. It’s out there.” She pointed ahead.
Edell squinted. “I don’t know what you mean.” He climbed the cable and looked forward. The lumps in the east were more than islands—the tips of long peninsulas, with harbors between. Structures were visible atop various promontories, straight lines in the milky blackness. Leaning outward and craning his neck, he saw tiny multicolored lights peeking through the haze that covered the inland regions. The lights flickered, changed, and went out.
Where are the bright cities Yaru Korsin wrote about? Swaying in the wind, Edell tried to focus through the Force, to see if he could feel anything Taymor had. He sensed only tension, apprehension, anticipation, and excitement—all of which could have been coming as easily from his lusty Sith shipmates as from anywhere else.
He looked back to his crew. “We don’t have anything to worry—”
Kra-koooom! At once a flash appeared over his shoulder. In the sky a kilometer to the north, Lillia exploded!
Momentarily blinded, Edell nearly lost his grip on the cable. Catching himself, the captain twisted around and struggled to focus his eyes. Lillia’s gas envelope had been completely replaced by a burgeoning blossom of flames—and her gondola was nowhere to be seen.
“All stop!”
Also to port but nearer to Candra, Dann Itra wobbled and turned. Edell felt a lurch, too, as Candra’s steering uvak decided they wanted to be anywhere else. “Peppin, get control of those animals!”
The airship quaked. Edell’s shipmates rose from their positions, some seeking to help the navigator, others gawking at the blast, which had now resolved itself into a hot ashen shower, peppering the ocean far below. Edell’s mind raced.
“It’s just lightning!” he yelled. Everyone knew how volatile hydrogen was; danger from electrical charge was always a risk. He thought back on the wind he’d felt. There was no obvious storm brewing, but maybe this had to do with the approaching land, and the weather here. It was why they’d brought three ships. Breathing deeply, he felt better for a moment—
—until he looked down again and saw the bright, blazing missile lancing upward from the land. Three meters long, its head afire, the black javelin arced toward Dann Itra.
Kra-koooom! Edell closed his eyes this time, but the superheated shock wave threw him from his perch. The High Lord slammed awkwardly to the deck, his right knee smashing straight through the top level of hejarbo flooring.
Candra spun now, straining the cables connecting the gondola to the balloon. As Edell struggled to right himself, he heard the uvak scream. No, not Candra’s uvak, he saw as he reached the railing. In the sky below, Dann Itra’s damaged gondola tumbled violently downward, end-over-end, followed almost gently through the furious cloud by a rent portion of the canvas envelope. Edell clambered halfway across the railing, screaming through the Force for Dann Itra’s occupants to bail out—only to see another pike fired from the ground strike the flailing wreckage midair, shattering it to bits.
Sensing the deaths of his fellow Sith, Edell felt something else. The Force had been used against him! Such precision firing? It was the only way. But whoever heard of Force-using Keshiri?
“Captain! They’re firing at us now!”
Below, the air itself seemed to scream. The captain clutched the railing and swore. It was indeed a historic moment. Like Yaru Korsin, Edell Vrai and his Sith had made first contact with the natives of a new continent.
But this time, the natives were stronger!
4
Snap-krack! The massive ballista on Point Vigilance fired again, its mechanical recoil echoing across the harbor to the signal station on Defiance.
“Yes! Yes!” Jogan yelled from the station tower, leaping in place. His excitement rattled the northern balcony more than the explosions had. “Get ’em!”
Quarra sagged against the railing, mystified at the scene to the northwest. A rancid haze high aloft was the only
clue to the previous existence of the first airship. The second had left a bilious pillar of smoke, twisting downward as it chased its unhappy payload.
Sith. Sith! Quarra cursed herself for failing to sense their evil approaching. Her job, her whole civilization, was about staying alert, and she’d let herself become preoccupied. Her fault! But then, who had known what to look for, anyway? No one alive on Alanciar had ever been touched by Sith evil. Not until a few minutes earlier, when she had opened her mind to send the warning message to the mainland. She’d felt them then: writhing tendrils of darkness, reaching into the night, supremely confident of her inferiority—and of their ultimate success.
“Success.” She’d almost felt the word, curdling in an alien mouth.
Two of the airships had fallen after that, but who knew how many more the Sith had? Who knew they had them at all? Airships weren’t mentioned in the Keshtah Chronicles, the tome that said all that had ever been known about the dark side of the world. If the Sith had airships, why hadn’t they used them before? Were they new? Was this a test?
If it was, the forces of Alanciar were passing it. Over the waters, another weapon fired, hurling a whistling cloud into the night. “That’s right! That’s right!” Jogan hooted. “Take that back home with you!”
Quarra looked up suddenly. “Home!” She bolted back inside the belfry.
Immediately she slammed into something painfully solid. They’d doused the few glowlights in the belfry, as per general orders, but she’d forgotten where Jogan’s workbench was. Now it was on her—or she was on it. Quarra rolled, struggling to untangle her leg. Jogan’s styluses tumbled from their holders, clattering onto the floor beside her. She swore, but her voice was lost in the sound of another launch from the opposite coast.
Outside, Jogan cheered. “Blast it! Blast it!”
Quarra thought the same words. She ground her teeth and kicked the table free. Turning, she scrambled over the fallen goods and stumbled toward the staircase.
Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories Page 24