PARAGON - Chapter 15

4985 BBY

The water was as warm as it was every day, streaming from the marble slot high on the wall down onto Seelah's body. There had been no refresher, no modern conveniences for the Sith stranded on Kesh for fifteen standard years. But they had learned to live with what they had.

The glistening droplets of meltwater clinging to her brown skin had come from a glacier half a continent away. Keshiri uvak-fliers, their beasts laden with massive kegs, had ferried the water from that faraway place to the Sith's mountain retreat. Rooftop attendants heated the water to her exact specifications, channeling it through a system thoroughly cleansed daily for mildew and other pollutants.

Below, Seelah meticulously raked at her wrist with pumice brought from the foot of the Sessal Spire, kilometers away. Keshiri artists had crafted the stones into pleasing shapes for her. The natives were more interested in appearance than function—but, in this, they had an ally. Seelah looked with her usual disdain at the stall, constructed for her personal use by her Sith brethren immediately after she'd moved into Captain Korsin's chambers. The place was more a temple than a home.

Well, she couldn't have everything. Not here.

Fifteen years. That's what it was by the Keshiri calendar, too—although who could trust that? She stepped dripping from the shower, wondering where the time had gone. Not to her body, she saw in the colossal mirror—working glass was another thing the Keshiri were good at. Twice a mother and living on food suited for farm animals back home, and yet Seelah looked as fit as she ever had. It had taken work. But time was one thing she'd had.

"I know you're here, Tilden," Seelah said. Tilden Kaah, her Keshiri attendant, always stayed out of sight from the mirror, never remembering she could sense him through the Force. Now he stood by the doorway, averting his large opal eyes and presenting a robe in his shaking hands.

Fifteen years hasn't changed him, either, Seelah thought with a silent chortle as she snatched the robe. But why shouldn't he look? All that drab purple skin—to call it lavender was flattery. And white hair—the color of age and uselessness. If Keshiri had found other Keshiri beautiful before, it was only because they hadn't yet seen the Sith.

And, besides, it was Tilden's job to worship her. One of the younger high priests of the Keshiri faith—which recognized Seelah and her fellow Sith as ancient deities from the heavens—Tilden lived to follow her everywhere. She rather enjoyed torturing him like this in the mornings. She was the sacrilege that started his day.

"Your son is hunting with the riders until tonight," he said. "Your daughter is in Tahv with the educators your people sent."

"Fine, fine," she said, discarding the gown he'd set out in favor of a brighter one. "Get to something important."

"Fine, fine," she said, discarding the gown he'd set out in favor of a brighter one. "Get to something important."

"Milady is expected in the ward this afternoon for the reviewing," he said, looking up from his parchment. Finding her fully dressed and standing before the great window, he smiled gently. "Otherwise, you are at your leisure."

"And the Grand Lord?"

"His Eminence, our savior from above, has begun his meetings with his advisers. The usual people, born on high like milady. His giant friend is there, too." He looked down at his notes. "Oh, and the crimson man has asked for an audience."

"Crimson man?" Seelah's gaze remained on the foaming ocean far below. "Ravilan?"

"Yes, milady."

"Then I should go." Seelah stretched mightily before turning abruptly to search for her shoes. Tilden had them. They were the only articles of clothing rescued from the crash of Omen that she continued to use. The Keshiri still hadn't figured out decent footwear.

"I—I didn't mean to turn this into a working day so early," Tilden stammered, fastening her shoes. "Forgive me. Were you finished bathing? I could have the minders recycle the water."

"Relax, Tilden—I want to go out," she said, pinning back her dark hair with a sculpted bone clip, a gift from some local noble she couldn't remember. She paused in the polished doorway. "But have the team step up the water deliveries—and have them bring it in from the far side of the mountain range. It's better for the skin from over there."

Seelah yawned. It wasn't even high sun and the daily pantomime was already well under way. Captain Yaru Korsin, the Keshiri's savior from above, sat in his old bridge chair, listening just as he used to on the command deck of Omen. But now the shattered wreck of the vessel lay behind him, sheltered in a part of the sturdy structure not used for habitation, and his battered chair was incongruously plopped in the middle of a marbled colonnade, stretching out hundreds of meters. Here, high in the open air of the Takara Mountains—recently renamed for his precious mother, wherever in blazes she was—Korsin held court.

The architecture and location made for a good show for the Keshiri townsfolk who occasionally flew up here. That was according to design. But it was also big enough to accommodate every foolish supplicant that Korsin wanted to cram into his day. Seelah saw Gloyd the gunner, Korsin's "giant friend," at the front of the line as usual.

The lumpy-headed Houk's jowls quaked as he presented his latest crazed idea: using one of the surviving boring lasers that still had a charge to fire signals into space. Boring seemed the right word to Seelah—and Korsin didn't appear enthralled, either. How long must Gloyd have been prattling before she arrived?

"It'll work this time," Gloyd said, mottled skin sweating. "All we've got to do is get the attention of a passing freighter. An observatory. Anything." He wiped his forehead. Seelah never thought the genetic lottery had been kind to Houks to begin with. But now it looked as if age and sun were causing Gloyd's hide to melt from his skull.

"The intensity will dissipate to the inverse of the square of the distance from Kesh," came a human voice from behind Korsin. Parrah, Omen's relief navigator and now their main science adviser, stepped forward. "It'd be just more cosmic background noise. Didn't they teach you anything where you came from?"

Probably not, Seelah mused. Gloyd had been a castaway even before he joined the Omen crew. While other outsiders avoided the Stygian Caldera, Gloyd's team of brigands had figured something truly amazing must be there. There was: the Sith Empire. Few of Gloyd's companions had survived the discovery. But as gunner and foot soldier, he'd done combat with Jedi plenty of times in his earlier life, making him useful to Naga Sadow and, later, to Yaru Korsin.

But lately? Not so much. "I don't think it's going to work, old friend," Korsin said, spying Seelah out of the corner of his eye and winking. "And we just can't run the risk of burning out any more equipment. You know the score."

They all did. Even as they built their stone shelter for Omen in the months after the crash, the crew had steadily brought out equipment. Some of it they expected to restore to life with a few fabricated parts; the rest was immediately usable. And used.