Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 06 - Sentinel

are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”
    Leaning on the handle of the shovel, Candra looked long and hard at her daughter. “No, this is the place forme right now. I’d only slow you down.” She looked down at the floor of the stall and grimaced. “And if this plan of yours doesn’t work, don’t trouble yourself for me here. I don’t expect to be around much longer anyway.”

Chapter Two
    Hate: pure, and oppressive. Tahv was a monument to it. Jelph felt it in every alley, at every crossroads. The dark side of the Force permeated this place, as nowhere he had ever visited.
    Many times while growing up on Toprawa, Jelph had thought he was going insane. He was beset with constant headaches; each waking moment took a toll on him. Only later did he realize that the cause had been his developing Force sensitivity, responding to the psychic scars Exar Kun and his kind had wrought on the world, years before.
    But their evil was past. The psychic acid that coursed through the streets of Tahv was alive. It was everywhere. The building he hid against was home to an old Sith man violently castigating a Keshiri servant. The window across the way, beyond which a young couple plotted the deaths of their neighbors. The sentry down the walk, whose memories held things beyond Jelph’s worst imaginings.
    Jelph tried to shut out the impressions coming at him through the Force without attracting attention to his psychic presence. It was nearly impossible. The Sith happily broadcast their hatred and anger, like wild animals baying at the stars.
    Collapsing against a wall, Jelph doubled over. Too late, he realized it hadn’t been a good idea to eat before coming here. He rose, gasping and wiping the sweat from his forehead. How many Sith lived here? he wondered. In Tahv? On Kesh? He’d never known. He was ostensibly a scout for the Jedi, even if they didn’t recognize him as such; he’d wanted to deliver a full report on his eventual return. But every time he’d gone near any population center, he’d fallen ill. Including now, when he most needed his faculties.
    Jelph struggled to collect his thoughts.
Ori
. He needed to find Ori. Her name, her face would be his lifeline. She was why he was here—and why he hadn’t left.
    He knew her presence through the Force very well, but had no hope of finding it in the sea of harsh feeling that was Tahv. He wondered how she had ever survived here. Her dark nature had never seemed to him in the same class with the other Sith of Kesh, however much she postured. Ori was proud, not venal; indignant, not hateful. He would have recoiled at her touch, had she been otherwise. He
had
to be right about her.
    But what if he was wrong? Was she even here?
    Jelph was about to surrender to the despair surrounding him when he saw something that stirred a memory. In one of their first meetings, Ori had bragged about how none of the other Sabers had her knowledge of the city’s aqueduct system. It was her territory to patrol, with her apprentices. Jelph looked up to see one of several towering stone edifices stretching high across the city, bringing down water from the highlands. First constructed by the Keshiri, the system had been improved by the early Sith, who added storage reservoirs dozens of meters off the ground. Ori was right: from up there, all of Tahv could be seen.
And hopefully not felt
, he thought.
    He crossed into the shadows beneath a massive aqueductsupport, a pillar nearly the size of a city block. The dark side sensation wasn’t so bad there. Jelph scaled the support, careful to stay constantly in the darkness until he reached the top.
    With a wide ledge on either side channeling rushing waters, the stone flume was the size of a city street. Lying prone on the ledge, Jelph marveled that the Keshiri had been able to build, in effect, a river in midair long before the Sith had arrived. What might they have accomplished unmolested? Shaking his head, he reached for his shoulder pouch and removed his macrobinoculars.
    Studying the area, he noticed a mountain range looming far to the west. It filled him with dread. He’d heard that the Sith kept their wrecked starship there, in a temple. Would they be able to use materials from his fighter to repair it? Or would one Sith simply try to leave in his fighter, planning to return later for the others? Either way, finding Ori was the important thing now. Turning his attention back to the city below, he set the visor to night vision