“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, but 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.
“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 done 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 visit
ors 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!”
Chapter Three
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 understood 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.”
“Not likely. Who do you think took Bentado’s hand?”
From behind in the anteroom, a loud click. “I’ve worked the latch, Caretaker,” Jaye said, rising. The massive inner door to the rotunda groaned open for the first time in centuries.
“Small fingers,” Hilts said. “Helps to have someone following you.” Jaye waited for his master and Iliana to enter before following, fresh glow rod in hand.
Where Omen’s home below had a humongous occupant, nothing stood in this smaller rotunda but a single chair beside a brazier. Hilts stepped eagerly toward it. Yes, it was what he thought it was. The command chair. The Grand Lord’s throne.
Close enough to touch the seat, Hilts paused and looked around. It was a strange place for it, alone here in this room atop the Temple. He squinted into the void above. Jaye’s single glow rod wasn’t enough to light the place. “Do you see something up there?”
“I think I know,” Iliana said. Grabbing Jaye, she violently ripped the tunic from the startled clerk’s back. Without a word, she balled the cloth up and tossed it into the brazier. With the help of the flint tool chained to the side, she soon had a small fire going. Smoke wafted up to slits near the ceiling apex.
Made chilly, Jaye fretted. “Someone outside might see the smoke.”
“I don’t care,” Iliana said. “I’ve got nothing left but to fight it out.”
Hilts looked at his aide and shrugged. It did get surprisingly cold up here—cold enough to discomfit even a traveler from the stars. “Just stay close to the fire,” he said, before glancing upward.
For a moment he thought he saw the stars outside. Then with another look, he realized that he had—in a way.
“A planetarium!”
Embedded in the rounded ceiling were crimson stones, glowing warmly as the fire below flickered. One by one, he picked out the stars of Kesh’s summer sky—and saw many smaller ones he wasn’t familiar with.
“Are those Lignan crystals up there?” Iliana asked.
Hilts laughed. “Why not?” Omen’s crew would have had plenty of them.
He turned his attention back to the chair, the missing piece from the starship’s bridge. It wasn’t hard to imagine Yaru Korsin here, sitting at night, contemplating his people’s return to the stars. He thought again about Korsin’s line from the Testament. What was behind the throne? Nothing here that he could see—just empty wall. Was it something in the star map? No, that was above.
Indifferent to the display overhead—and to any sense of history—Iliana flopped onto the chair, throwing her booted legs over the armrest.
Hilts gawked at her. “You’re going to sit there?”
“I’m not going to. I am.” Casually, she unclipped her lightsaber and tossed it from hand to hand. “Those people outside will either bring the Temple down underneath us, or they’ll find us here. If I’m going to wait, I’m going to sit.”
“Whatever.”
“You know, this room is pretty useless,” Iliana said, cracking her wrists. “It only shows the sky at one time of the year.”
Hilts nodded. It was more decorative than useful. But his thoughts were still on the chair—and Korsin’s Testament.
“Do you have a knife?”
“Of course,” Iliana said, using the Force to whip a glass blade from a compartment in her boot. The weapon paused in midair, hovering near Hilts’s face.
“Thanks a lot,” he said, taking it and kneeling behind the chair.
Behind the throne. Tentatively, almost fearfully, Hilts slid the tip of the shikkar into the tough skin of the back of the seat. The Sith didn’t outfit their ships for comfort, he saw—but even the rough hide of the command chair was no match for the Keshiri blade. Careful to cut no more than he had to, Hilt
s withdrew the knife and slipped his hand inside the furnishing.
Continuing to sit, Iliana watched the old man fish around aimlessly, his arm up to his elbow inside the chair. “You look like a fool,” she said.
He felt like one, too—and was about to stop when his hand reached the level of the armrests. “There’s something in here,” he said. “Sewn inside!” He drew his hand out quickly, ripping the upholstery more as he did.
The glass vial contained a single rolled-up sheet of transparent film—flimsier than the thinnest parchment the Keshiri had ever crafted. As he brought it closer to the failing fire, figures began to take shape.
“What’s that writing in?” Iliana asked, suddenly interested.
“It’s the old cant of the Tapani—the language of the humans under Sith rule,” Hilts said. “The language of Korsin’s mother.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I studied it—and she wrote it.” He nudged Iliana’s legs off the armrest and brought the film as close to the fire as he dared. “Takara Korsin. Korsin’s father left her for Jariad’s mother.” His eyes scanned the page. He’d spent the previous year studying a text on the language. Slowly, surely, he worked it out.
“It’s marked personal,” he said. “Brought by a trusted courier to Korsin.” Swallowing, he recited:
“I know you tire of hearing of my visions, my son. If you do as you always have, I expect you won’t read this until your mission is well under way. I’m pleased that you’ve been given command of an important assignment for Naga Sadow—even as it grieves me, as it does all our kind, to know that your victory is for his glory alone.
“Yes, I’ve had another of the visions. I saw our descendants ruling a great people one day—free from the Red Sith. We will have something that will be our own. When they are guided well, I see new horizons opening up for our people—new places to conquer.
“Yaru, only you are wise enough to guide our people. Devore will be his own ruin; I sense strength in his chosen mate, Seelah, but that is not enough. You alone know how to manage the ambitions of many—how to shape your anger, and sculpt it to fit the purpose ahead.
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #8: Secrets Page 2
