Chương 42: SENTINEL - Chapter 42
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 sustenance 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?"
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