Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 04_ Backlash - Aaron Allston [115]
It was no suicide jump, of course. She plummeted several meters, landing lightly on the first ledge down. A flick of her finger and an exertion in the Force caused the sentry on this hill facing to look around for the source of a phantom noise and miss seeing the rest of her descent. Soon enough, she made her way into the verge of trees, out of sight.
She would have to be just as careful here as under the eyes of the Bright Sun members. The forest now teemed with hunters and scouts and Nightsisters and Jedi, all intent on doing harm to one another. Vestara was, in theory, allied with any and all of them, but traps and sudden surprises made accidents not just possible but potentially deadly.
She headed for the spot Halliava had told her about, a place where a small creek passed beside a naturally occurring cross-shaped stone, and waited for Halliava, who might be some time shaking her pursuers.
It was not too lengthy a wait. Half an hour passed, and then, with stealth suited to a trained Sith, Halliava appeared from behind a draping fern frond. She moved forward to embrace Vestara. For the first time, her true emotions showed; she looked worried and chastened. “The Sisters will listen more closely to you next time. I will listen. We have suffered a serious setback.”
Vestara gave her a raised-brow, I’m sorry I was right expression. “You could not know what the Jedi were capable of. I barely knew. But you have not lost. Far from it. The common Dathomiri still fear the Nightsisters. They have simply been heartened by surviving last night’s assault. Today they’ll add up the numbers they’ve lost, they’ll begin telling stories of the Nightsisters from days gone by, and they’ll become afraid again.”
“Yes.” Halliava sat on the cross-shaped stone. “But the Jedi. They are very skilled, very powerful. For men, anyway. I barely lost them as they tracked me. They might find me again, so we must hurry.”
“Did you bring my things?”
“Of course.” From the pouch hanging at her belt, Halliava withdrew two items, each wrapped in cloth to keep it from making noise. She unrolled each in turn and handed it to Vestara. The first was her lightsaber; the second, a comm-equipped data tablet similar to a data-pad.
Vestara took the data tablet and keyed in a security code. Her hopes were not high; every day since she had caught Halliava in secret conference with a fellow Nightsister, she had conceived more details for the Dathomir stage of her actions, and had approached the Witch with her hastily spun offer and explanation, she had checked her comm device for word from her kind. It had not come.
But today there was a blinking icon on the interface, an icon meaning that an encrypted message had arrived.
Vestara did not let excitement show on her face, did not let it speed up her actions. She simply keyed in the decryption code and held the device before her.
The tablet screen resolved into an image: a human woman in Sith robes, a woman unknown to her, with sharp, angular features, black hair, and an almost savage aspect to her expression. Vestara nearly laughed. The Sith woman had clearly been picked because she was closest to media depictions of the Witches of Dathomir; all she needed to do was tousle her hair and put on animal skins to be suitable as a Nightsister. Well, that, and spray on some false tan; she was very pale.
The woman spoke. “Vestara, greetings. We have received your initial communication and your follow-up reports with great interest. Of course we would be delighted to aid your new sisters in their quest. The weapons you have requested have been assembled, and we have chosen a worthy Sith Saber to trade for a Nightsister that each group may benefit