Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories

by John Jackson Miller

  “I’d be careful if I were you,” she said. “You Sith—and your airships—have a way of blowing up.”

  Yawning, he stretched out in the back of the cart. Quarra looked back to Uhrar and thought about the other thing she’d just done. The thing she hadn’t told him about.

  She’d sent the message as a general question, perfectly understandable given the recent attack. What should she do if a Sith Lord fell into her hands?

  The response signal from Sus’mintri came almost immediately: Bring him to us. We know what to do.

  It couldn’t have been any clearer—or more authoritative. The War Cabinet’s official identifier code was attached. She imagined the imprimatur going out to all the wardmasters, now. She wondered what it meant. Surely, they’d want to round up the Sith survivors. But bringing them to the capital? Maybe the secret appendices to the oft-republished Chronicles told of some way to safely restrain the Sith indefinitely.

  Maybe they were wanted for execution and dissection.

  She looked back at Edell, sleeping. She had just enough time to get him to Vaal Hall for whatever he wanted to do and return with him to Meori Cove to save Jogan. But even if she took him into a trap, she could still rescue Jogan—and she might have the full force of the Alanciar military behind her in the attempt.

  She could save Jogan—and be a hero, too, having done her job and more.

  You’re right, Sith Lord. I can have everything.

  12

  Sus’mintri had started centuries before as just another military outpost at the edge of the plateau, overlooking the lower country of the Western Shield as it spread out to the ocean. Its location between the shoreline battlements and the industrial heartland, however, had placed it at the nerve center of Alanciari signal communications—exactly where the War Cabinet wanted to be.

  Until ten years ago, the leaders of the various military, industrial, and educational directorates had met separately. Vaal Hall in Sus’mintri consolidated operations into a dull brick one-story residence—inconspicuous, were it not for the colossal white silo rising next to it in the large, walled courtyard. Unlike Jogan’s tower at Point Defiance, the Vaal Hall tower had multiple levels of signaling lights, pointing in all directions. The occupants of Vaal Hall could communicate with anyone, from the shipbuilders in the far-flung northeast to the guards at its own gate, just a dusty path away.

  A brown-clad Keshiri guard looked to the signal tower, and then back at Quarra. He spoke loudly to be heard over the alarm whistles. “They’re telling me to let you in, Wardmaster.” He rapped at the wagon with his sidearm. “Both of you,” he said with nervous disdain.

  The gate opened, and Quarra’s muntok team trundled inside. The doors hadn’t been closed but an instant when Edell peeked out from underneath the tarp in the back. “Both of us? What does that mean?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she stammered, climbing from the seat. He had his lightsaber in hand. The long drive from Uhrar had left her bone-tired and him increasingly agitated; she’d hoped it would dull his edge in case a trap awaited.

  She’d half expected to be greeted by squads of sharpshooters, awaiting her delivery. But the only things in the courtyard were her and her cart. A bad smell was in the air. Above, signal lights on the tower blinked quietly.

  And the door to Vaal Hall was wide open.

  “I don’t like this,” she said, not meaning to be heard.

  “That makes two of us,” Edell said, slipping over the wagon’s side and thudding to the ground. Grabbing her shoulder, he turned her to face him. “They weren’t just expecting you, were they? They were expecting me, too.”

  Looking every direction but at him, Quarra struggled for words. “You never told me what you wanted to do here. ‘See the country, visit the capital, meet the War Cabinet.’ ” She shrugged. “I’m a bureaucrat, Edell. I can’t just walk you through the front door.”

  Edell stared darkly at her for another second before breaking into a smile. “No, I’m going to walk you through the front door.” He cast the rain slicker to the ground and lit his lightsaber. “As ever—you lead the way.”

  The Keshiri in the hallway had been dead for at least a day, perhaps more. Quarra recognized their uniforms of office—a couple of guards first, followed by a mix of administrators and aides farther in. The building hadn’t been stormed; there was no evidence of a vigorous defense at the doorway. Just surprised, mutilated Keshiri. Some of the burn marks looked to her like lightsaber wounds. But not all.

  She covered her mouth. “I worked with these people.”

  “Not anymore,” Edell said, stepping over the corpses. He looked down the hallway, on alert. “This floor isn’t anything, is it? Everything important is underground.”

  “Yes,” she said, wishing she’d dared to sneak along a weapon from her visit to her office. Edell’s malice she’d grown accustomed to. The feeling here, however, was of pervasive evil. And it was spreading.

  The glow lamps were already lit at the foot of the stairs. Off the main hallway they found a sitting room, nicely appointed except for the dead Keshiri guard lying at the foot of a large tapestry. Edell looked up at the image. An elderly Keshiri female. Her thinning white hair framed a tired, almost wan expression.

  “That’s an ugly woman,” he said.

  “You’re just saying that because you know who it is,” she said. “Adari Vaal.” She’d stood many times in this room while waiting to see the War Cabinet, admiring the tapestry that stood under perpetual guard. It depicted the great Keshiri as she’d looked at the end, not the young figure from the historical revues. The pure endurance the image suggested had perked her up in the past.

  Now the tapestry’s honor guard was dead—as was everyone else. The War Cabinet’s meeting room was a mortuary, all the major figures of Alanciari politics slumped under the table or across it. Again, no sign of a last stand. Whoever had entered had come in the night, and with total surprise.

  “No,” Edell said, golden eyes wide. “This isn’t where he’d stay. Follow me.”

  “Who?”

  “Just follow me—and stay close!”

  * * *

  Korsin Bentado sat in a tall-backed chair, looking like an arachnorid in a jungle web. And a web, it was. Quarra had called the room the “worldwatch” moments earlier, and Edell had been certain of the existence of such a place all along. All the signalers had to be routing their messages through somewhere. He’d assumed there were subsidiary hubs—a sensible move, for reasons of both speed and redundancy. But as he’d seen the martial nature of Alanciari life, he realized how much was centralized. A message from Point Defiance to Garrow’s Neck might be a direct connection, but everything else routed through the center first.

  The center was here, and Bentado was at it, looking much changed. His head bore the scars of burns several days old. Not debilitating, but obviously painful—his bushy brows singed completely off. Red and purple stained his uniform.

  “You survived,” Bentado said, his deep voice craggier than Edell remembered. “I thought it was you I sensed. Come in, Vrai. See what we’ve done with the place.”

  Edell stepped inside the doorway, guarded on either side by Bentado’s Sith henchmen. Quarra waited nervously behind.

  “Bring your guide,” Bentado said, wincing as he stood. “She’s the reason you’re here.”

  Edell deactivated his lightsaber and took Quarra’s wrist to lead her inside. It was the room he’d suspected, all right. A large round facility buried beneath the tower, with personnel running up and down the steps bearing dispatches. Meter-square gratings in the ceiling cast light upon a raised surface in the middle of the room. There sat a great map of Alanciar, astonishingly similar to the one that existed in the palace in Tahv, except for the complex network of signal stations and fortresses indicated on it.

  Edell looked at the messengers. Many he recognized from Bentado’s massive Yaru crew, but others were from different vessels. Mostly human warriors, but there w
ere also a few of their Keshiri ambassadors in the mix—including Squab, who brought a sheaf of parchment to his limping master.

  “Rough landing,” Bentado said. “We cut the gondola loose as soon as we cleared the top of the ridge.” He grinned through broken teeth. “Your hydrogen was a bad idea.”

  “It got us here,” Edell said, growing more aware. He belonged here, among the other Sith—but something wasn’t right. He walked to the map, and then looked back at the room. “They’re great builders here. But this can’t be the hub for all their communications.”

  “No. There are at least thirteen buildings in this city, processing messages. We found one after we landed—it’s what led us here. One of the facilities even gets messages from Force-users, if you can believe that. But all the important messages are copied here—or begin here. Once we found the place, it was just a matter of getting inside without drawing attention.” He laughed. “I usually leave finesse to others. But you can see some of my handiwork around the building.”

  Edell looked up the steps to the tower. “That’s how you rounded up the other survivors of your Fleet.”

  “And drew you here,” Bentado said, nodding at Quarra. “We use the signal station to call out for everything, even to have the gates opened. It was one thing when we got the Keshiri to deliver food inside the gate. But the fools have been delivering us their prisoners, too!”

  Edell looked at Quarra. She stood in stone-faced astonishment, her hand over her mouth. He could see the recognition seeping into those enormous eyes. The organization that had provided Alanciar its strength had also proved its weakness. He’d held some inkling this might be possible; it was part of what had drawn him so relentlessly to Sus’mintri. But Bentado had arrived first, and with the same idea. The glory would be his.

  “Cancel the alarms, everywhere,” Bentado ordered. Squab shuffled back to the foot of the stairs with the command. Less than a minute later, the shrill whistles above Sus’mintri stopped—as they soon would across the entire continent. “Bring everyone to a ready state, for when the next wave arrives.”

  “The next wave?” Edell asked.

  “The next wave of Sith. There were airships left behind in Keshtah. I expect we’ll see them soon.”

  Edell raised his eyebrows. “Then we need to get word back home before they leave. You may be able to order the Keshiri around from here. But I expect whatever you say, the Alanciari will still shoot at our airships!”

  “I agree,” Bentado said, smiling darkly. “And that’s exactly what I want them to do!”

  13

  Edell reeled. “You want the Keshiri here to destroy our ships?”

  “Not our ships,” Bentado said, looming over the giant map. A dozen miniature airship models sat off the western edge. “They will destroy the ships of the Tribe.”

  “But we’re all part of the Tribe.”

  “Are we?” The scar above Bentado’s eye tilted.

  “We spent so much time trying to rebuild,” Edell said, barely conscious of Quarra watching intently from the side. “I don’t see what sense it makes to tear it apart.”

  “Don’t play innocent. You and your Golden Destiny people were tearing the Tribe apart for years, just as my people were.” He gestured to the Sith in the room. “Perdition, Edell! You were right alongside us in the Crisis showing us how to destroy the Temple!”

  “It wasn’t one of my better moments.”

  “No, of course not,” Bentado said. “But I don’t propose to destroy what we rebuilt. I’m talking about a Second Tribe, here on Alanciar.”

  “A second—” Edell was startled. He’d never considered such a thing.

  “It’s simple,” the bald man explained. “There’s no path to the Grand Lordship so long as Hilts lives. And Iliana”—his mouth curled evilly around the name of the royal consort, drawing the word out to twice its length—“she’ll see to it that Hilts will live until you and I are too old to care.”

  Bentado limped around the map. “You said yourself the Keshiri here were superior to ours back home—and I don’t just mean this waste of flesh here that Hilts saddled me with,” he said, slapping a heavy hand on Squab’s gnarled shoulder. “Yaru Korsin found sculptors and painters. We have found a warrior race. Builders and armorers!”

  “The Alanciari are something,” Edell said, nodding toward Quarra. “Truly amazing. But they’re all Keshiri. The potential exists in the people of our old continent, too.”

  “Do you have two thousand years to train them?” Bentado snorted.

  Edell looked back at the human guards by the door. They’d heard it all, and done nothing. His people, Bentado had said. His handpicked crews, Edell realized. How many had come from Bentado’s old Korsinite League? Why hadn’t he paid more attention?

  Bentado ran his gloved hand over the surface of the map. “It’s perfect, you know. A perfect solution. The problem with the Sith is what it always was. We’re taught the glorification of self, and the subjugation of others. The individual is truly free only when all chains are broken, when no one can limit his actions by resisting his will. The perfect Sith must control everything, and everyone.” He lifted the airship miniatures with the Force. The little dirigibles bobbed in the air, hovering like the real thing.

  “But effecting that control—that is where the matter always fails. There are too many variables. Too many slaves aspiring toward something other than your glory. Too many would-be Sith working in opposite directions.” With a flick of his wrist, the mini airships went tumbling across the table. “Pandemonium!”

  Edell said nothing. Bentado always spoke like this. The man belonged on stage with the other actors.

  “When I was young,” Bentado continued, “I thought Yaru Korsin had the solution. You remember. He’d tricked the Keshiri into believing in him. He didn’t conquer—he walked in and turned the key. He had the first part right, but not the second. The result was his own death—and a lost millennium. But here—” Bentado paused to pick up a model of a signal station. “Here I can do it all again, and do it right. Like Korsin, I’ve been cast down from the sky upon these shores. Here, there’s a working system of government to be bent to my will, glove to my hand. And here, there are no Sith.”

  Edell considered the words. Whatever he thought of the source, the idea was interesting. A solitary Sith Lord might never get a multitude to work on his or her behalf—unless it was already working. Alanciar was a beating heart, keeping its armies prepared through force of habit. It only required a Sith Lord to step in at the top, without disturbing the operations of the great machine.

  “It’s a good idea, High Lord,” he said finally. “Very good. Someone should remember it for when we take on the Galactic Republic.”

  Bentado smiled.

  “There is one problem with doing it in Alanciar, of course,” Edell said. “You’re not the only Sith here.”

  “The people in this building are loyal,” Bentado said. “They’ll work for me.”

  “For how long, cooped up here? They’re human. They can’t go outside or the Keshiri will spot them as different right away.”

  “They didn’t spot you!”

  “He had help,” Quarra said, speaking up for the first time. “Motivated help. I promise no one else will help you once they find you’re here.” Glaring, she pointed toward the exit with her thumb. “And you’ve killed our leaders. In the bunker or no, my people will eventually come looking for them.”

  Edell read frustration on his rival’s face. No, Bentado wouldn’t have thought very far. And he knew something Bentado didn’t, that he hadn’t even told Quarra. “The next airships may arrive sooner than you expect. We need to begin thinking of how to bring them in safely. This plan of yours—it’s interesting. But we’ll accomplish more as one Tribe.”

  “Then may the best Tribe win!”

  “No. We’re not going to do this again.” Edell shot a glance at Quarra, urging her toward the exit with his eyes. Seeing her begin to move, he st
epped over to the guards. “High Lord Bentado has established control over the Keshiri of this continent. You will help him until reinforcements arrive. Then we’ll work together to consolidate power here—in the name of the Tribe, and Grand Lord Hilts.”

  Bentado let out an exasperated sigh. “You always were a bore.” He commanded the guards. “Take him!”

  Bentado’s thugs at the door took one step forward, but no more; Edell was already in motion, lightsaber activated. One arcing blow to both their midsections cleared the path. “Quarra, let’s go!”

  Quarra bolted through the door, past Edell and his glowing lightsaber. He turned in the doorway to follow her—and screamed. Quarra looked in horror as lightning lit the dark hallway. From the worldwatch, Korsin Bentado stepped deliberately forward, his one hand alight with strange blue tendrils of energy. Edell quaked under the assault, dropping his lightsaber.

  Her eyes darted to the floor, and the sight she’d seen when she entered: the Sith hadn’t bothered to strip the dead Keshiri guarding the room of their weapons! Hitting the ground, Quarra grabbed a repeating hand-ballista, rolled, and fired. Glass shards launched past Edell. Bentado howled in pain as one lodged in his stub of a left arm, terminating the electric display.

  Still crackling, Edell fell backward into her free arm. She fired again, driving Bentado and his aide Squab back to cover. Her weapon emptied, she drew Edell’s fallen lightsaber from the floor into her hand with the Force.

  Now Quarra led the way, helping the staggered Sith through the maze of hallways. She smashed the fireglobes lighting the place as she went; darkness would be her friend for a change. She could hear Bentado’s crew moving into the halls again behind her, but she knew where she was. She hadn’t understood all the Sith had said, but she had to tell the world outside: the system had been compromised!

  Huffing, she reached the anteroom outside the War Cabinet’s chamber. Across the room were the steep stairs leading to the surface level. But as she turned for them, Edell fell to the floor, still in agony from the Sith attack. She didn’t know what Bentado had done to him, but Edell clearly had never experienced it before.