The body was freshly killed. One quick, inartful slash to the throat had been the end of the uvak. Hilts studied the smelly beast baking in the noon sun. It surely was the creature he’d seen approaching—slain here, right in the middle of the terrace.
“I guess the stables didn’t suit our visitor,” Hilts said.
Jaye cowered behind him. “Do … do you want the weapon?”
Hilts looked around, feeling through the Force. Something was here. “Yes,” he said. “Give it to me.”
Jaye fumbled through the knapsack and produced the lightsaber. Hilts hadn’t owned one as Caretaker—what was the point?—but on their way out of Tahv, he’d pilfered one from the corpse of a massive warrior. He never knew what he might need.
“Do you know how to use it?” Jaye asked.
“Sure. Just get them to stand right in front of me, and I’ll turn it on.”
Levity didn’t lift the unease. Hilts wasn’t practiced in the use of the Force for defense, either. He’d had the same training as a boy that other Tribe members had, but apart from deflecting chunks of falling aqueduct, he’d had little use for the Force’s physical manifestations in recent decades.
Still, he knew a bad feeling when he felt it—and this wasn’t more acid in his throat. In fact, he recognized this particular sting …
“The wardroom,” Hilts said, sensing the source of the twinge up ahead. “Stay outside. If you hear trouble, run and never return.”
There may have been no statues of Seelah Korsin in the palace in Tahv, but the figure in the bas-relief carved outside the hospital was unmistakable. As Yaru Korsin’s wife, Seelah was the Mother of the Tribe; but before that, she’d been Devore Korsin’s wife, and the mother of a traitor. Hilts had never seen Seelah in any depictions, but looking at the smooth skin, the coiffed hair, and the perfect figure in the marble, he knew he’d seen her twin—and recently.
“Iliana Merko,” he called, stepping through the doorway. “It’s Caretaker Hilts. I know you’re here. I think we should talk.”
2
“Iliana? Iliana?”
Hilts gaped as he saw the figure in the shadows. The last two weeks had been hard on everyone on Kesh, but he barely recognized the leader of the Sisters of Seelah. Iliana sat huddled in the cold corner of the dark storeroom, gently caressing a skull.
She sobbed gently, not registering his presence. Hilts looked back nervously to the outer room and its rows of marbled surgical tables—and then down to the lightsaber in his hand. He clipped it back to his belt. Iliana Merko was a dangerous faction leader, but the figure before him was something else. Her once-bright hair was dirty and tangled; her once-flawless skin was smudged with dirt and blood—and amazingly, with something he’d never thought he’d see on her face: tears.
“She died here,” Iliana said, bringing the skull to her forehead. “Alone.”
Hilts looked down. Here in the cool darkness, some portion of a skeleton had survived, clumped in a corner. Realizing who the skull belonged to, he spoke cautiously. “How do you know it’s Seelah?”
“I know,” Iliana whispered. Opening her gloved hand, she revealed a ring bearing the Korsin family seal. A Tapani commitment band.
“They just left her here,” Hilts said, kneeling to look at the remains. The femurs appeared whole, but only tiny shards remained of the bones beneath. Time hadn’t done this, he thought—and as he noticed the cane nearby, history fell into place. He’d known that Seelah’s betrayal had been exposed, and that Nida Korsin had punished her mother. But the records never said whether it was exile or death. Now The Blocks down below made sense. The barrier would keep a crippled Seelah here as much as it kept others out. “Exile,” he said quietly.
“She was betrayed!” Iliana angrily blinked back tears. “She deserved better than this!”
“And she’d still be dead, whatever memorial she had.” Watching the woman gently return the skull to the floor, Hilts rose and stepped back. “You’re alone here. What happened to …”
“The Sisters of Seelah?” Iliana kept her face to the wall as she composed herself. “We fought hard when the factions fell upon one another. But then we fell apart—just like everyone else.” She shook her head and looked back with golden eyes shot with red. “We had nothing to follow. Seelah was born a slave!”
“I guess so.”
“I know it,” she said, balling her gloved fists in anger. “As a girl, I once had a Force vision of Seelah. She asked me to avenge her.”
Hilts thought about the bas-relief outside. “So that’s how you knew how she did her hair.”
“But what I never told anyone is what she was doing in the vision,” she said. “There was this monster, this red monster, looking just like that Ravilan in the message. And she was washing its feet!” She lashed out with the Force, shattering the precious bones against the wall. “Its stinking, disgusting feet!”
Hilts nodded. Yes, he’d want to be avenged for something like that.
Iliana pushed past him and stomped into the wardroom. “Apparently some of the other Sisters had had similar visions.” She rubbed her eye clean of a lingering tear, and then flicked it away, as if it were only grit. “We couldn’t stand together long after that.”
Among the marble biers, Iliana paused. In a flash, her hand went to her lightsaber. “There’s someone out there,” she snapped, eyes on the doorway. “They’re here!”
Hilts hurried into the room, past her. “It’s okay. He’s with me.” He called out for his assistant. Jaye timidly appeared from outside.
Iliana lowered her lightsaber and rolled her eyes. “The figurer? The world’s coming to an end and you’re still keeping pets!”
“I’ve got to have something to take care of,” Hilts said. “It’s my job, after all.” He interposed himself between the woman and Jaye. “But what did you mean, ‘They’re here’?”
“They’re looking for me,” Iliana said.
“Who?”
“Everyone. Korsin Bentado. What’s left of Force Fifty-seven. Those crazy Golden Destiny people,” she said. “Everyone who’s left. All the final grudges are being settled before we all die.”
“They followed you?”
“They will,” Iliana said. “I took pieces out of enough of them before I left. I was flying west the last time their trackers saw me. There’s nothing farther west than this.”
Hilts twirled Jaye around and shoved him back toward the door. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “Follow me—I’ll explain as we go.”
The tall woman glared defiantly at him. “I’m not your little clerk. Why should I follow you anywhere?”
The Caretaker stared up at her. “Because we may need help to find what we’re looking for—and you’re at a dead end. You said so yourself.” He gestured toward the exit. “Meanwhile, I actually have a plan.”
Iliana breathed deeply and stepped toward the exit. “I’m sure it’s a foolish plan,” she said as she passed.
“My, you’re a hateful thing,” Hilts said. “Do you come by this naturally?”
She looked down at him and gave a rumpled smile. “Forged myself in Seelah’s spirit.”
The woman whose skull you just kissed—and then smashed against a wall, he wanted to say. Hilts smirked. Iliana had chosen Seelah to idolize, as anyone nasty would have done. He’d never trust her—Sith never trusted anyone, anyway—but he was beginning to understand her. “Make for the portal up ahead,” he said. “At the least, you’ll see something no one alive has seen …”
Hilts watched as Iliana traced the contours of the dark metal with her fingertips. So something did exist that could impress her.
The Ship of Destiny.
“It’s wonderful,” she said.
Omen sprawled beneath the arched ceilings of the Temple, gently lit by the glow rods Jaye was igniting. It had long been said that Omen resembled a lanvarok, an ancient Sith wrist-weapon. But no one on Kesh had ever seen a lanvarok—nor had anyone seen Omen for centuries. The founders had d
one their best to preserve it, using only polished stonework around it and limiting the number of entrance passageways, yet the battered vessel still wore a layer of dust.
And battered it was. Even ripped open in places. What did it take to soar in the stars? Hilts wondered. What kind of protection? Quite a bit, judging from the twisted tongues of metal half peeled from the hull. And so much metal! More in one place than anyone alive had ever seen, despite the fact that much of the precious material currently in circulation had been scavenged from fragments of Omen left on the mountainside after its crash.
What a calamity that must have been, Hilts thought, observing its size. It was a wonder both ship and mountain had survived.
Iliana claimed the first steps inside for herself, as he had known she would. That was fine with Hilts: he was content to follow along with one of the glow rods Jaye had brought. Seeing the Keshiri quaking timidly on the marble floor outside the hatch, Hilts waved him in.
“It’s a sacrilege to be here,” Jaye stammered. “I’m a Keshiri, not worthy—”
“Forget about that. We need more light.”
Hilts found Iliana in a forward section of the vessel. There, as everyplace else aboard, Omen had seen a catastrophe. The ceiling overhead was bowed and buckled. Forward windows were shattered, their panes twisted outward. Had something knocked them out from within? Hilts had no idea.
Nor had he any notion of what he was looking at on either side. Smooth, ebon panels alternated with ruptured ones, exposing the crisped, wiry guts of the ship. Hilts studied one, and then another, recognizing the Sith characters but not all of the terms. Telemetry. Hyperspace. Astrogation. They read as magic words to him. Scholars with the Tribe had attempted to keep the knowledge of space travel alive, but that had faltered like everything else in recent centuries.
Iliana tapped repeatedly at the black panels, as if pressing harder would bring the ship to life. Yes, she’d be looking for a way offworld, Hilts thought. Like everyone else.
The woman slammed her fist on a panel, cracking it. “Nothing works here!”
“No,” Hilts said. “One thing works.” At the rear of the bridge, Jaye knelt, spellbound, before a gently glowing display. Sith numbers appeared on its face, one melting into the next as seconds passed. It was the device their beloved Sandpipes had been designed to emulate: Omen’s chrono.
“It’s still working,” Iliana said, stupefied.
Hilts shrugged. Everything aboard the vessel required some kind of energy; maybe the timekeeping device didn’t use much. He stepped closer and touched the hypnotized Keshiri’s shoulder. “Today the day you thought it was, Jaye?”
Jaye’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Finally, his voice dry, he responded. “Yes. The Sandpipes were off by eight days. Just like my theory …”
Hearing the words trail off, Hilts looked fondly at his clerk. “Very good, Jaye. I’m impressed.” He and Jaye had spent their entire lives studying big questions, knowing they’d never learn whether their solutions were correct. Here Jaye had seen his calculations vindicated, once and for all. It struck Hilts as strange. It was wrong to think that Sith and Keshiri could aspire to the same goals—and yet he and Jaye had. And now Jaye had his answer.
Hilts felt a sudden pang of jealousy and averted his eyes to the center of the room. What he was looking for wasn’t here.
“Was this where the command chair went?” Iliana pointed to a bare platform. “The thing you came here to find?”
“I always knew it wouldn’t be inside Omen,” Hilts said, stepping toward the dais. “I figured you just had to have a look around.” It was well known from the Keshiri paintings that Korsin had removed his captain’s seat to the colonnade on days when he received visitors. It certainly wasn’t out there now—nor here.
Iliana looked anguished. “I don’t understand. With such a ship, why did Korsin move everyone off the mountain, to Tahv?” She loomed over Hilts as he squatted beside the empty spot. “Maybe their generation couldn’t have repaired it—but to stop work entirely and leave? I was right. Korsin was a fool!”
“He wanted the Tribe to commit to their lives on Kesh,” Hilts said. “He knew better than anyone what shape the ship was in. They weren’t going anywhere. You saw the room outside us—there’s no way Omen can leave unless they dismantle the place. They built the shelter around it.” He stepped to the gaping hole forward and looked out at the stone walls beyond. “This isn’t a stable for an uvak, Iliana. It’s a tomb.”
Remembering the face from the Testament, Hilts imagined Korsin’s voice describing his strategy. Korsin would have ordered the enclosure to protect it from the elements, and the other castaways would have agreed. But once the Different Ones—Ravilan’s grotesque people—were out of the way, Korsin would have increasingly turned the survivors’ attention toward ruling Kesh. That was the best they could hope for. Sealing the Temple and leaving the mountain ended the temptation.
Until now.
Movement caught his eye, and he gasped.
“Someone’s outside!”
Hilts ducked beneath the shattered viewport. Lights outside cast long shadows against the curved walls. Iliana violently shoved Jaye to the deck and dashed forward to join Hilts. The two carefully peered out as figures entered the Temple bearing glow rods.
The Caretaker counted eight newcomers that he could see, but he could hear the voices of others. Some he recognized instantly. There was bald and burly Korsin Bentado, recognizable as the leader of the Korsinites but badly damaged from the past week’s violence, having lost his left hand somewhere. Three other figures wore the once-shiny tunics of the Golden Destiny, the faction obsessed with the Tribe’s offworld origins; their flashy uniforms had lost their luster.
And one looked familiar. “I know that man,” Hilts whispered to Iliana, pointing to a young blond warrior. Edell Vrai had been one of the few regular visitors to the museum, fascinated by Korsin-era architecture as well as tales of Omen, a topic he could go on and on about. Hilts expected Edell to be delighted to see the spacecraft of his dreams at last. And yet the figure outside wore a sour expression.
“It sickens me,” he heard Edell say. “This—this thing—is nothing but a carrier for chattel!”
Hilts nearly stood at Edell’s words, but Iliana pushed him back down. Together they listened as Edell and his companions, some from different factions, spoke with disdain of the damaged starship.
“A carrier for vermin, you mean,” another said.
“It began our race’s imprisonment here,” Bentado added. “It is an omen—but for despair.”
“You’re right,” Edell said, his words echoing throughout the chamber. “We have to destroy it.”
Hilts and Iliana looked at each other, stunned. Outside there were rousing calls of agreement, from people who’d never agreed about anything.
“It is right,” Bentado’s deep voice boomed. “A last, defiant stab. Our people will end—but they will end with a fist clenched in hatred against fate.”
“I know just how to do it, too,” Edell replied. “One last act of cooperation. We will succeed.”
Hilts felt sick as he heard boots on the floor outside, tromping toward the exit. He’d expected the newcomers to try to board Omen, as they had. But this was something else. Had the rush toward self-destruction claimed everyone’s senses?
Yes, he thought. Yes, it has.
“They can’t destroy anything this size,” Iliana said, her voice raspy as she looked around the bridge. “There are no explosives left. What are they going to do, stab it with lightsabers?”
Hilts didn’t know—but he knew not to doubt Edell. “He’ll find a way,” he said, rising. He grabbed her arm. “Quickly! We have to find what Korsin left behind, before it’s too late!”
3
Edell had been thinking about this plan for a while, Hilts realized as he peeked through the narrow window of the dome. Situated atop the roof of the Temple, the fancy cupola offered a clear view of the main
quadrangle—and from here, Hilts had observed all the activity in wonder.
With the sun setting over the vast western ocean, the Sith warriors’ workday was just beginning. At least thirty were here, some in the garb of their different factions; others had abandoned their partisan dress altogether. Many had arrived while Hilts and his two companions awaited their opportunity to leave Omen without notice, and all were now engaged in a massive engineering project. Or, rather, a demolition project. Warriors clung to the sides of the giant watchtower, looping long leather cables around the supports. The tower was a marvel, improbably top-heavy with observation decks high aloft; it wouldn’t take enormous effort to bring it down.
Hilts saw exactly where it was intended to land. Edell stood on the plaza, directing warriors on how to position their uvak teams. With the beasts on the ground and in the air pulling the cords in unison, Edell clearly expected the heaviest deck of the stone tower to land right on top of the chamber that held Omen.
“That room was well constructed,” Iliana said, looking over his shoulder. “Could this harm it?”
“It’ll crack like an uvak egg under a hammer,” Hilts muttered. He knew Edell—intense, but studious. Edell knew how the classical structures had been built, and he’d seen Omen’s lair up close. “They may not blow the ship up, but they’ll definitely bury it.”
Iliana sneered. “It was already dead and buried.”
Hilts could only shake his head and stare. There were so many out there, all working at their common, destructive cause. He even recognized Neera, deformed leader of Force 57, throwing her enormous muscled back into the work alongside the other warriors.
“Aren’t some of those your Sisters of Seelah with her?” Hilts squinted into the creeping darkness. “Don’t you lead them? Won’t they listen to you?”
“Haven’t you seen what’s been going on lately? No one follows anyone now,” Iliana said, shrugging. “But they’ll work together in this. People need a mission.”
Hilts blinked. The unity he’d hoped for—in the cause of crushing all hope. He studied Iliana. “You could live—by joining them.”
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories Page 20
