Lost Tribe of the Sith 05 - Star Wars Purgatory

with. But you’re not a slaveuntil we have that weapon.” The brothers ignited their lightsabers in unison. “So what’s it going to be?”
    Ori closed her eyes. She didn’t deserve what had happened to her, but he didn’t deserve any of it. And he was all she had.
    Pressing the button, she deactivated the lightsaber and threw it to the ground.
    “Right call,” Sawj Luzo said, deactivating his lightsaber and taking hers. Both brothers stepped back to their mounts and climbed aboard.
    “Oh,” Flen said, reaching for something strapped to his uvak’s harness. “We did have a gift from the Grand Lord—to start your new career.” He threw the long object, which landed at Ori’s feet with a thump.
    It was a shovel.
    Its metal blade made it truly a treasure: she could see it was forged from one of the few bits of debris from
Omen
’s landing. That material had been worked and reworked over the centuries, as Kesh’s paucity of surface iron had become known. A final reward for her former life. Shovel in her hands, she heard the Luzos laughing as they soared away to the north.
    Ori looked around at what she had left. The hut. The barn. Mound after mound of the man’s mud. And the trellises, home to the dalsas that had brought her here to begin with …
    “NO!”
    Anger boiling inside her, she lashed out, striking the frail structures with the shovel. One mighty swing tore the frame apart, sending the flowers crashing to the ground. The hejarbo-shoot wreckage exploded, blown to splinters by the force of her mind.
    Infuriated, she charged through the farm, hacking Jelph’s wobbly cart to pieces. So much anger, so little to destroy. Turning, she saw the symbol for her dispossession: the composting barn. Swinging, she smashed thedoor from its hinges and charged inside. Raging through the Force, she yanked at the sorry tools on the walls, sending them flying in a whirlwind of hate. And there was that mound of manure, large and noxious. Twirling, she brought the blade of the shovel down onto it …
    Clang!
Striking something beneath the surface of the dung, the shovel ripped free from her hands, causing her to lose her footing in the muck.
    Calming as she got to her feet, Ori looked in amazement at the pile. There, beneath the stinking mess, was a soiled cloth covering protecting something large.
    Something metal.
    Recovering the shovel, she began to dig.
    He had felt terrible, leaving Ori with a job that would take her all day. But he had his own trap to check, here under the lush canopy. Jelph hadn’t caught anything in months, but his best chances always seemed to coincide with the auroras.
    Approaching the secluded knoll, he found his treasure, hidden beneath the giant fronds. He breathed faster in anticipation. All through the recent days of turbulence and tranquillity, he’d felt somehow that something was about to happen. This might be the day he’d been waiting for, after so much time …
    Jelph stopped. Something was happening, but it wasn’t here. Looking through the foliage to the west, he had that gut feeling again. Something
was
happening, and it was happening now.
    He ran for the boat.
    Ori found the strange thing sitting beneath the manure-covered tarp. There actually wasn’t that much of the foul stuff piled over it; just enough to give the appearance that what lay beneath was something other than it was.
    And what it was, was big—easily the length of twouvak. A great metal knife, painted red and silver, with a strange black bubble sitting atop its rear. Protrusions swept back, winglike, in a chevron, each tipped with two long spears that reminded her of lightsabers.
    She’d forgotten the smell, now, breathing faster as she ran her hand across the surface of the metal mystery. It was cold and imperfect, with dents and burn marks all along its length. But the true surprise yet awaited her. Reaching the rounded section in back, she pressed her face against what seemed like black glass. Inside, tucked into an amazingly small space, she saw a chair. An engraved plate sat just behind the headrest, bearing characters looking similar to the ones she’d been taught by her mentors:
    Aurek-class Tactical Strikefighter
Republic Fleet Systems
Model X4A—Production Run 35-C
    Ori’s eyes widened. She saw it for what it was.
A way back in
.
    All his life, Jelph Marrian had feared the Sith. The Great Sith War had concluded before he was born, but the devastation done to his homeworld of Toprawa was so