Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: Sentinel

Chapter Four

The little hut was taking shape. Under a dense canopy of foliage no uvak scout could penetrate, the new structure sat atop a relatively dry lump in the middle of the thicket. The hejarbo shoots grew much stronger up here in the jungle; if it weren’t for Jelph’s lightsaber, Ori never would have cleared the grounds.

Eight weeks had passed since the blast claimed the farm. Jelph and Ori had descended from the jungle only once, under cover of night, to investigate what was left. There wasn’t anything to see. The entire riverbank had fallen into the Marisota River. Dark waters eddied and swirled over the blast crater. All that remained was the stub of a weed-covered path terminating at the river’s edge. The pair had returned to the jungle that night confident that no one would learn there had ever been a starfighter on Kesh. Ori had laughed for the first time in days, quoting her mother’s favorite line.

«The Confidence of the Dead End.»

Since that trip, their focus had been entirely on carving a place for themselves in hiding. There was no returning, Ori now realized; not after her mother’s betrayal. Venn’s death certainly had been broadcast through the Force — and just as certainly, would have set the remaining High Lords against one another all over again. The game was renewed; maybe Candra might even find a role to play. Ori wanted nothing to do with any of it. That part of her was past.

And if no one mourned Lillia Venn, no one had come to look for Ori and Jelph, either. In fact, the two of them had spied fewer Sith and Keshiri in the surrounding lands of late than usual. Presumably, a Grand Lord vanishing mysteriously in an area feared as haunted since the tragedy of the Ragnos Lakes would have that effect.

It was fine with her. Ori had a new vision for herself now — based on an old story she’d heard as a child. Keshiri legend held that soon after the Sith arrived, some of their native population had escaped over the ocean. They’d chosen a one-way trip to privation and likely death over lives of service to the Tribe. Today’s more devoted Keshiri told it as a cautionary tale: choice of destiny was a luxury reserved for the Protectors, not their servants. The cost of arrogance, for a servant, was isolation.

Ori saw it differently. If the exodus really had happened, whoever had led those slaves away was the greatest Keshiri of all time. Their fates had been decided — and defied. Jelph was right. There had to be a way to win at life besides climbing to the top of a fractious order— only to be stabbed by a shikkar or poisoned by a presumed ally. Had Venn been happy, she wondered, being immolated in her moment of triumph? The Tribe members seemed as hopelessly bound to their paths as the Keshiri who remained slaves. And they thought they were smarter?

Looking to the sun vanishing between the trees, Ori began cutting down the last of the meter-length shoots that would form their side door. It felt strange using the Jedi’s weapon, she thought. All the lightsabers the Sith on Kesh used were red, but some of the original castaways kept captured Jedi lightsabers as trophies. She had seen a green one in the Korsin Museum. This one’s color was strange and beautiful, a brilliant blue found nowhere in nature. The only artifact of Jelph’s alien origin.

Well,not the only one, she thought, extinguishing the lightsaber.

That’s where he was now, she knew. As usual, he had risen at dawn to trap breakfast and gather their fruit for later. While offering nothing like the gardening conditions in the lowlands, the jungle provided other means of susenance year-round; in this latitude, she doubted she would notice when winter came. He spent the rest of his day building their shelter, before retiring, at dusk, as he always did, to keep vigil beside the device — the one part of his space vessel he hadn’t brought down to the farm. She walked there now, to the spot in the trees where Jelph sat on a stump for hours, staring at the dark metal case and fiddling with its instruments.

He hadn’t kept it from her. For the Sith, the «transmitter,» as he called it, could be as explosive a discovery as the starfighter. Jelph had kept it for what it represented: his lifeline to the outside. He’d never been able to get a message out; as he explained it, something about Kesh and its shifting magnetic field prevented such attempts. That might not be a permanent situation, but it could be centuries before it changed. Ori wondered if that same phenomenon had thwarted the castaways centuries before. All he was able to do was set the device to scan for signals from the ether, recording them for later playback. Perhaps, if some traveler came near enough, he might be able to get a message to the beyond. She now understood his trips upriver in earlier months: he came to the jungle to see what sounds he’d snared.

Normally, he heard nothing but static. But whatever Jelph had just heard had thrown him.

«I can’t go back,» he said, looking blankly at the device.

Ori looked at the flashing thing, not understanding. «What happened?»

«I caught a signal.» It took him several moments to be able to say the words. «The Jedi are at war with one another.»

«What?»

«A Jedi named Revan,» he said. «When I lived there, Revan was like us — trying to rally the Jedi against a great enemy.» Jelph swallowed, finding his mouth dry. «From the sound of it, something’s gone wrong. The Jedi Order has split. It’s at war with itself.»

Jelph replayed the recorded message for her. A fragment of a warning from a Republic admiral, it cautioned listeners that no Jedi could be trusted. The ages-old compact between Republic and Jedi had been sundered. Now there was only war.

The message ended.

Shaken, Jelph deactivated the device. «This. is our fault. The Covenant.»

«The Jedi sect you belonged to?»

«Yes.» He looked up in the twilight, unable to find any evening stars through the foliage. «And that’s the trouble. There aren’t supposed to be any Jedi sects. The Order is divided now — but we divided it first.» He shook his head. «May the Force help them all.»

He turned his gaze to the wilderness again. Ori let him sit in silence. It occurred to her that during all her days of complaining about the world she had lost, Jelph was living with the loss of a whole galaxy. And he was losing it again now.

At last, he stood and spoke. «I don’t know what to do, Ori. We kept the Tribe from discovering a way off Kesh. But I always held out hope that with the transmitter, I could make contact one day. Make contact,» he said, looking back at her for a moment, «to get us out of this place.»

«And to warn them about my people,» Ori said. Jelph looked away. There was no avoiding the truth.

«Yes.»

Ori touched his shoulder. «It’s only fair. I tried to warn my people about you.»

«Well, it’s pointless now,» he said, stooping to lift a stone from their future front garden. «If the Jedi are divided — or, worse, if Revan or someone else has fallen to the dark side — then bringing a planetful of Sith to their attention is the worst thing I could possibly do for the galaxy.»

«You don’t know that,» she said. «You could be wrong. The Jedi could still come here and wipe everyone out.»

«Yes, I could be wrong.» Laughing to himself, he looked at her. «You know, that’s the first time anyone’s heard me say that. Maybe if I’d said it more often back home, I wouldn’t be here now.» He tossed the stone into the stream and knelt again. «I’ve lived my whole life thinking I knew what I was supposed to do. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.»

Watching him, Ori saw the look she’d seen in him in her previous visits to the farm. It was the expression he’d worn when toiling in the muck. Then he had been doing something unpleasant, but he’d been doing it because he had to do it, to keep his garden alive and his customers happy. His duty.

Duty.The term didn’t mean the same thing to the Sith. In the Sabers, Ori had had missions she was charged to perform — but she had taken them on as personal challenges, not out of some loyalty to a higher order. The galaxy didn’t have the right to give her odd jobs. Truly free beings had lives. Slaves had duties.

And now Jelph was suffering, certain that he had some duty to perform, but unsure what it was. What service did he owe the galaxy — a galaxy that had already cast him out?

«Maybe,» Ori said, «maybe Sith philosophy has the answer for you.»

«What?»

«We’re taught to be self-centered. We don’t think us and them.It’s just you, versus everyone else. No one else matters.» Placing her arms around him from behind, she looked out at the dark stream, burbling quietly past on its way to feed the Marisota River. «The Sith cast me out. The Jedi cast you out. Maybe neither side deserves our help.»

«The only side worth saving,» he said, turning toward her, «is ours?»

She smiled up at him. Yes, she had been right from the beginning. He was so much more than a slave. «Give it a try, Jedi,» she said. «If I can do something selfless — then maybe it’s time for you to do something selfish.»

He looked at her for a long moment, a twinkle in his eye. Wordlessly, he broke the embrace and stepped over to the receiver. Uprooting it, he grinned at her. «Shall we?»

Ori watched him cradle the blinking machine for a moment before she realized what he intended. Exhaling, she stepped over and helped him carry the transmitter to the side of the stream. With one great heave, they tossed it in. Striking a shoal beneath the current, the contraption splintered noisily into shards. They watched together for a moment as bits of casing bobbed and vanished into the darkness. Then they turned back toward their house.

The cords were cut. It was time to live.