Star Wars Riptide

THE PRESENT

HIS MASTER TURNED AS MOTHER SHRIEKED BEHIND THE closed door. He did not look like himself, and Marr feared the worst. Jaden’s eyes fixed on Marr, on Soldier, his brow furrowed.

“I know you,” he said. His lightsaber ignited, making his drawn face look sallow. He wobbled on his legs, put a finger to his temple, and winced as if he were being bombarded by a rush of memories.

Marr wanted to go to him, to help him, but Soldier held him fast and activated his lightsaber. The red blade sizzled and hummed beside Marr’s ear.

Jaden recovered himself, held his yellow blade in his hand, regarding Soldier and Marr. Marr saw recognition in his Master’s eyes, but not understanding. He looked lost, confused. Marr well knew why.

A shriek from the chamber behind Jaden drew all their eyes. The child crept up behind Soldier and Marr, looking for comfort—or protection.

Marr knew that something awful lurked behind the door.

“Talk to him,” Soldier repeated.

“Master,” Marr said, and the word felt odd on his lips. “Do you … really know me? Master?”

Jaden’s brow furrowed. He lowered his lightsaber. “Marr?”

The tension and dread Marr had been carrying drained out of him in a rush. He let himself hope that his actions might have worked, that his Master, whole in mind, stood before him.

“Yes,” he said, unable to hold in a smile. “It’s me. Yes.”

Jaden’s expression hardened and fixed on Soldier. “Soldier, isn’t it? Let him go.”

Soldier’s grip tightened on Marr’s throat. “I can’t. I need to get off this station. You and he are showing me the way.”

Something huge moved in the chamber behind Jaden. Footsteps thumped. The floor vibrated under their impact. Marr felt the dark-side power pouring through the vertical slit. It made him nauseous.

“This is not the time for this,” Marr said.

“I can’t let you leave,” Jaden said, as stubborn as ever. “You murdered half a dozen people in the medical facility on Fhost. You’re a Sith.”

Marr felt Soldier sag under the accusation. “I’m not a Sith. I’m not a Jedi. I’m just … a soldier. The others killed the innocents on Fhost. Not me. I’m … better now, Jedi. I was lost but … not anymore.”

Jaden looked unconvinced, his lightsaber a yellow line that he would not allow Soldier to cross.

Soldier’s voice was desperate. “We just want to leave, Jedi. We just want to leave and be left alone.”

“We?”

“He has a child with him, Master,” Marr said.

“Grace,” Soldier called over his shoulder.

The child emerged from the darkness behind them. Jaden’s expression softened when he saw the girl. His eyes sought Marr’s and, with them, he asked a question.

“He could have killed us both already,” Marr said. “I was vulnerable. So … were you.”

“But I didn’t,” Soldier said.

Another shriek came from the chamber beyond, closer now. The door bulged. A monsoon of dark-side energy squeezed through the door’s seal.

“Soldier …” the girl said, fear causing her voice to shake. She sagged to the floor and Soldier released Marr and went to her, pulling her close. She buried her face in his chest as he stroked her hair.

“It will be all right. Didn’t I say it would be all right?”

Marr saw Jaden’s resolve erode.

“He’s not a Sith,” Marr said, knocking the last bricks out of the wall of Jaden’s resistance.

Jaden, staring at Soldier and Grace, deactivated his lightsaber.

Soldier released Marr and Marr went to Jaden, stared into his face, looking for any sign that he wasn’t who he should be. He saw nothing of the Jaden-clone’s mannerisms or expressions. Jaden appeared to be Jaden. Marr allowed himself to hope.

“It’s good to see you,” Jaden said. He put his hand to the hole in his temple. “I must have gotten hit on the head.”

“You did,” Marr said, hoping that Jaden would not probe too deeply into events until Marr had organized his lies. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Everything’s blurry right now,” Jaden said. He held up his wounded hand, the stumps of his fingers seeping blood. “I reinjured these somehow.”

“The fight with the Umbaran, I imagine,” Marr said. “We’ll figure it out later. For now, we need to get off this station. All of us.”

Jaden looked past him to Soldier. “What about the other clones? There were more than just you and Grace.”

Soldier stood with his hand on Grace. “We’re all that’s left.”

Jaden stared him in the face, and Marr wondered what it must be like to look upon and interact with a clone of yourself.

People are not equations, Marr had said to his Master. Maybe not. But he hoped people were their choices and their memories. If they were, then Jaden was Jaden. If they weren’t, then Jaden was … something else.

“That’s the way out,” Jaden said, nodding at the chamber behind him.

Soldier activated his lightsaber and tossed Marr his. Marr and Jaden ignited their blades. Grace fell in behind them.

The door slid open to reveal horror.

“Seer,” Soldier said, the word so profoundly sad it might as well have been a one-word elegy.

Grace whimpered and buried her face in Soldier’s cloak. Soldier put his hand on her head, a gesture so loving that it unsettled Jaden.

Jaden recognized the face of the female clone from Fhost. Seer, Soldier had called her. But little else about her remained human.

Her torso and hairless head were pale and bloated, like a drowned corpse’s. Veins and arteries stood out so prominently from her skin that they looked as if they might soon burst. They glowed with light the same way the filaments in the walls glowed.

A nest of filaments wrapped her entirely from the waist down. If she still had legs, Jaden could not see them. She looked like a demon, a half-serpent born of the dark side and Rakatan technology.

A cocoon of energy surrounded her body and leaked in blue bolts from her eyes and fingertips. She focused her gaze, and the weight of her regard caused Jaden to take a half-step back. The power she embodied staggered him.

“Seer,” Soldier said, his voice thick with despair. “Are you still there, Seer?”

“She’s gone,” Jaden said, wincing against the power pouring off her.

“But Mother is here,” said the form, her voice deep, echoing through the large chamber. “And now you will pay. Everyone will pay!”

Jaden knew they had to get through her to get back to the lifts. He did not hesitate.

“Keep the girl safe,” he said to Marr, and charged.

Before he had taken three steps, Force lightning, jagged and sparking, flew from Mother’s bloated fingers and slammed into him. He interposed the yellow line of his lightsaber and spun it in rapid circles, attempting to wind the lightning up around his blade, but its power was too much. It blasted through his defenses, struck his body, the pain like a dozen stabbing knives, and threw him sidewise five meters. He landed prone and filaments snaked out of the floor and wall, writhing, reaching for him. He slashed them with his lightsaber and bounded to his feet to see Soldier also charging Mother.

A rope of filaments exploded out of the floor, grabbed Soldier by the ankles, lifted him high, and slammed him back into the floor, once, twice. He looked like a rag doll.

“Soldier!” Grace cried.

Marr, with one hand still on Grace, pulled his blaster free and unloaded at Mother. The first shot struck her in the chest and left a black, smoking hole in her bloated, pale flesh. The second did the same and she roared with pain, her body spasming, writhing. Before Marr could fire another shot, Mother held up her hand and Marr’s blaster flew from his hand to hers. She crushed the weapon in her fist and gestured at Marr with pinched fingers.

The Cerean rose from the ground, gagging, legs kicking.

“Run,” Marr grunted at Grace, but she stood still and stared, transfixed.

Jaden fell fully into the Force, gestured with outstretched arms and two flattened palms at Mother, and unleashed a blast of power. The energy struck her full in the side, blowing her a meter sidewise and causing her to release Marr, who fell to the floor.

Jaden attacked, leaping high toward the ceiling, flipping at the apex of his leap, and taking his lightsaber in a two-handed grip so that he could split Mother in half.

But she’d already recovered from his blast. She turned her dark eyes on him, raised a hand dismissively, and seized him with her power.

He was no match for her. Her power held him against the ceiling and began to press. His breath went out of his lungs in a whoosh. His chest started to collapse. He interposed his own power to offset her, but her push was inexorable.

He watched Marr sprint to Soldier’s aid, cut him free of the filaments that bound him, and help him to his feet. Jaden wanted to order them to run, to take the girl and get out of there, but he could not call out, could not do anything but use every ounce of his Force-strength to keep Mother from crushing his ribs and organs.

Marr and Soldier charged Mother. Filaments writhed out of the floor and walls to attack them from all sides. Soldier’s blade flashed as he ducked, spun, leapt, and whirled, closing on Mother with every step, leaving a mess of smoking, squirming filaments in his wake. Marr, less graceful but still effective, cut his way through the filaments as he might thick foliage, slashing two-handed, spinning, using the limited techniques Jaden had taught him.

As they neared her body, she roared, and baleful green Force lightning poured from her in all directions, sheathing her in power. Jaden, on the fringe of it, felt the energy sear his flesh, smelled the stink of burning flesh, opened his mouth in a scream for which he could draw no breath.

Soldier and Marr tried to catch up the lightning in their blades, but it was too much, came at them from too many angles, and both of them fell to the ground, writhing with pain.

With Mother’s attention elsewhere, Jaden felt her grip on him lessen. Despite his pain, he drew on the Force and let power explode outward from him. It freed him from her grasp and he flipped as he fell. He hit the floor on his feet, crouched, and exploded into a leap toward her, his lightsaber held high. He reached her before she could swat him aside. His blade hummed as he slashed and opened a gash in her chest.

Energy, dark and cold, exploded outward from the wound, from the walls, the floor. It blew Jaden backward and slammed him into the wall. He cushioned the blow with the Force, and that just barely kept it from cracking his skull.

Mother’s eyes widened and she staggered backward, shrieking. She spasmed and raged, a storm of energy filling the room as her fury grew.

They were no match for her. Jaden could see that.

“Run!” he said, climbing to his feet. “Now!”

The four of them sprinted past Mother and toward the slit of the door. It did not open, so all three of them slashed at the wall with their lightsabers. It felt like cutting flesh. Mother screamed behind them, and Jaden felt her shift her girth, felt the regard of her eyes on his back.

“Move!” he said, and pushed Marr, Grace, and Soldier through the hole they’d cut. “Move!”

He slipped through behind them as Force lightning ripped through the hole, slammed into his back, and drove him face-first across the corridor.

“Master!” Marr said, but Jaden was already on all fours and trying to stand. Dizziness caused him to wobble, but Marr and Soldier kept him standing. Mother’s voice boomed from behind them.

“You will not escape me!” she said. “Only I will leave this station.”

The door slid open behind them. Mother’s form loomed. Jaden loosed a blast of power at her, Soldier did the same, and they all ran for their lives.

The wail of an alarm brought Khedryn back to consciousness. He lay there, blinking at the dim emergency lights glowing in the ceiling above him, unsure of where he was. He’d gotten stuck in the alien lift, and he’d fallen the rest of the way down the shaft. He must have hit his head when he landed.

The power had gone out, but backup seemed to have been restored.

He ran his fingers over his scalp and felt the sore, seeping lump on the back of his skull. His glowrod lay on the ground near him, still working. He rolled over and crawled for it, his legs and back aching with every movement. He might have cracked something in his feet or legs, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t broken anything too badly.

He picked up the glowrod and aimed it around the room to give himself a better look. He’d fallen through one of the tubes that extended downward from the ceiling. He crawled underneath one of them and looked up into it. It seemed to extend upward forever.

Control panels like those in the chamber above stood on the floor under the bottom of each tube. He touched one and it did not operate. Cursing, he touched another, but still nothing. How would he ever get back up? He touched a third and it came to life, starting to scan his body as the one above had done.

He stepped out of the light before the scan had finished. His breathing came easier now that he knew the control panel and lift were operational. He would be able to get back up.

But now he needed to figure out where to go. A single vertical slit in the wall looked like the only way out of the chamber. He walked toward it and it slid open with a wet susurration. Before he stepped through, his comlink crackled and he heard a series of questioning beeps from R-6. Alone in the belly of the dark station, he latched onto the sound of the droid as a lifeline. Khedryn resolved in that instant to learn better droidspeak.

“Nice job, Ar-Six. I’ll tell you right now that you’re welcome on my boat anytime.”

The droid whirred with satisfaction.

“Patch me through to Jaden and Marr.”

The droid beeped when he made the connection.

“Jaden,” Khedryn said. “Do you read? Jaden?”

Mother’s screams of rage haunted them as they ran wildly through the station’s corridors. Jaden, Marr, and Soldier hacked their way through any doors that did not open at their approach.

“She’s getting closer!” Grace cried.

“Move, move, move!” Soldier said.

Jaden’s comlink crackled and Khedryn’s voice carried over the connection.

“Jaden, do you read? Jaden?”

“Where are you?” Jaden asked, his voice tight, tense as he ran, as Mother shrieked.

“We docked. I’m at the bottom of the lifts. The Umbaran attacked me. He’s on the station. Watch yourself.”

“He’s dead,” Jaden said.

“Good, then—”

“Worse is coming,” Jaden said.

“Worse? What do you mean?”

“I mean get out of there, Khedryn,” Jaden said. “I don’t know if we’ll make it.”

“Listen, Jedi, I’m not leaving you two—”

Suddenly an idea struck Jaden. “Khedryn, get up to the clones’ supply ship. Set the engines to overload.”

“What?”

“Blow the ship, Khedryn! I want the whole orbital station to go up.”

“No,” said Soldier. “The meds are on that ship. Grace has to have them.”

“It’s the only ship big enough to do enough damage,” Jaden said. “And we’re all dead if we don’t blow the station. We can’t stop Mother. We’ll get her meds some other way.”

To that, Soldier said nothing.

“That’ll kill us all, Jaden,” Khedryn said.

“We’ll get off before it blows. Or if we don’t, you will. Do it, Khedryn.”

“Move your butts, then, Jedi.”

“Watch out for the bodies,” Jaden said. “There could be more up there.”

“I saw them already. They’re just dead bodies, Jaden.”

“They aren’t dead,” Jaden said. “Mother uses them.”

“ ‘Mother’ what?”

“Just watch yourself.”

Khedryn had heard the alarm in Jaden’s tone. He’d never before heard anything like it from the Jedi. He stepped up to one of the control panels, activated it, let its light scan his body. The tube above him adjusted in size to accommodate his form, then stretched downward to gulp him. He closed his eyes as the warm flesh surrounded him and held him tight.

He ascended rapidly and breathed a sigh of relief when he reached the top of the lift. The floor vibrated, shaking with some distant impact. He ran back the way he had come, through corridors and rooms dimly lit by glowing filaments that flashed and blinked crazily.

Imagining the relative position of Junker’s docking point to that of the supply ship, he turned left and sped down a hall.

He saw the hole of the supply ship’s docking tube ahead and raced toward it.

Forms emerged from side corridors, animated corpses with hands extended, shuffling piles of dried flesh, sinew, and teeth. At first Khedryn thought their veins and arteries were glowing, but no—the same filaments that lined the walls of the station also lined their bodies. It was if something had grown within them, taken them over.

They were humanoid, bipedal, but their condition did not allow him to identify their species. Shock stopped him in his tracks, and one of the corpses got a hand on his shoulder. As bony fingers sank into his flesh, he cursed, grunted against the pain, and punched the corpse in the face. Its head, already barely attached to a thick spine, flew off and slammed against the wall. The body collapsed at his feet. He drew both his blasters as he whirled and fired wildly. His first shot hit nothing but wall, but his second hit the thin, exposed rib cage of another corpse. It exploded into shards of bone and desiccated flesh. He threw himself against a wall and pulled the trigger as fast as he could, aiming at anything that moved.

When nothing else moved in the hallway, he picked his way through the carnage and ran aboard the supply ship. He remembered how to get to the cockpit and went directly for it. As he moved through the corridors and lifts, he flashed back on the events of the previous hours—being taken captive by the clones; the Umbaran; the little girl, Grace.

He hoped she was all right.

Once in the cockpit, he got the engines live and firing, but the ship’s internal safeties prevented him from putting them on a loop that would result in an explosion. He opened the ship’s internal network to the outside and raised R-6.

“Ar-Six, I’m on the supply ship and the engines are hot. I need you to crack the internal safeties so that I can blow the engines.”

R-6 beeped a question.

“You have ten seconds, droid.”

R-6 whooped in alarm. Khedryn watched the readout on the comp station as R-6 worked the system. The data scrolled past so fast that Khedryn could not read any of it. He turned to face the cockpit door, blasters at the ready, should the clones or the corpses show. Neither did, and R-6 had the safeties overridden in moments.

“Good job, Ar-Six,” Khedryn said, and set the engines on a power loop that would eventually cause them to explode. The whole ship would go and, given its size, it would do enormous damage to the station.

“Jaden and Marr are en route,” Khedryn said. “Get Junker ready to run.”

The supply ship’s engines began to spool up on their way to self-destruction. Khedryn sprinted back toward the station’s lift. He encountered a single animated corpse, a straggler with an oversized skull and odd tusks. Without slowing, he blew it to shards with his blasters.

“And stay down,” he said.

He saw the lift room ahead.

A buckle in the floor almost knocked him down. A scream resounded from deeper in the station, so filled with hate and rage that Khedryn covered his ears. The filaments in the walls glowed a hot red.

“We’re coming up,” said Jaden’s voice over the comlink. “Mother is coming, too.”

“Make it quick,” Khedryn said. “The supply ship is ready to blow.”

Jaden, Marr, Soldier, and Grace piled into the lift room. Mother’s movement behind them caused the ground to shake. It was as if she were getting bigger with each passing moment, absorbing more and more of the station as she went.

“Get in and go,” Jaden said. He used the Force to pull the door to the chamber closed and, holding it, backed up toward one of the control panels. Soldier scooped Grace up in his arms; the control panel’s light scanned them both, the tube extended, adjusted its size, and up they went. Marr followed.

Mother slammed against the outer door. Her power drove Jaden a step backward, but he held the doors closed. Mother screamed again, a sound rich with hate, frustration, rage. The doors began to bulge inward.

The light on the control panel scanned Jaden, and the tube above him adjusted size, descended toward him.

He could no longer hold it. The door to the chamber burst open and Mother lurched into the room, her human torso even more bloated and discolored than before, the serpentine portion of her body now ten meters long.

Filaments burst out of the floor and walls and grasped for Jaden. He slashed them with his lightsaber as Mother roared. The tube scooped him up, and Mother’s shriek trailed away as he streaked upward in the lift.

Khedryn sprinted into the room with the lifts. He went to the shafts, looked down but saw nothing. He waited there, heart racing, breath coming fast.

A vibration under his feet signaled the rise of the lifts. He went from one to another, watching for the sign of something coming up. In one of the lift tubes he saw a rapidly rising bulge and backed off as it expelled not Jaden or Marr but Soldier and Grace. Blood leaked from Soldier’s nose and the side of his face looked as if he’d been hit with a brick. Burst capillaries in one of his eyes had turned it red.

“You!” Khedryn said, and fumbled for his blaster.

Soldier gestured with his free hand, tore the blaster from Khedryn’s grasp, but did not ignite his lightsaber.

“I’m not your enemy,” the clone said. “The Jedi and the Cerean are right behind us.”

Before Khedryn could say anything, Soldier stepped forward and handed him back his blaster.

Khedryn looked at it, took it. “What happened?” he asked, knowing how stupid the question sounded.

“Weird things,” Grace said, and smiled at him.

Khedryn could not help himself. He smiled in return. “I’m glad to see you,” he said to her, and her grin turned shy.

The tube nearest Khedryn flexed, bulged, and spat out Marr. The Cerean’s eyes looked as worried as Khedryn had ever seen them.

“What is it?” Khedryn said.

“Where’s Jaden?”

“Not here yet.”

“You started the autodestruct on the supply ship?”

Khedryn nodded. “What is going on? What is ‘Mother’?”

As if in answer, the floor under them lurched, buckled. Grace squealed in alarm.

“A lie,” Soldier said. “Mother is a lie.”

Another lurch of the floor. Marr ignited his lightsaber. Soldier did the same. The tube on the far side of the room bulged and disgorged Jaden, his hair and eyebrows singed, his clothing burned, his breathing ragged.

The floor lurched again, nearly knocking all of them off their feet. Then it began to bulge upward, rising toward the ceiling. A scream of pure, unadulterated rage burst up from one of the shafts and set Khedryn’s hair on end.

“Run!” Jaden said. “Run!”

Khedryn needed to hear nothing else. He turned, along with the rest of them, and sped for Junker.

Heat and smoke filled the dimly lit corridors. The filaments in the walls blinked through a series of colors, rapidly, crazily, the frenetic brain activity of a dying organism.

Jaden and Soldier led the flight, their yellow and red lightsabers cutting through the doors that didn’t open at their approach. Soldier held the child in his free arm, her head buried in his neck and beard. Jaden used the Force to pull walls and doors together behind him, hoping to slow Mother. Mother shrieked behind them, and the impact of her body and power on the obstacles Jaden had put in her path sounded close, too close.

“Run!” Khedryn shouted. “Run!”

Another explosion sent them lurching, threw them all up against the wall, and knocked Soldier off his feet. Jaden and Marr pulled him upright and they ran on. The child was crying.

Ahead, the corridor split.

“Junker’s that way,” Marr said, pointing to the left with his lightsaber.

“Where’s the Umbaran’s ship?” Soldier asked.

“That way,” Marr said, nodding right. “Near your ship.”

Soldier took Khedryn by the arm. “How long before the supply ship blows?”

Khedryn shook his arm free. “Moments. There’s no time.”

Behind them, Mother screamed her fury and pain. They could feel walls collapsing before her approach.

“She needs the meds,” Soldier said, nodding at Grace. “I have to get aboard that ship.”

“You could get them back on Fhost,” Marr said.

“I’m not going back to Fhost,” Soldier answered.

“Jaden?” Khedryn asked.

His mouth a hard line in the red glow of his lightsaber, Soldier turned to face Jaden. The Jedi stared into Soldier’s gray eyes, the same eyes Jaden saw every morning when he looked in the mirror.

Jaden could not let him go, could he?

The soft cries of the child, her disease causing her flesh to visibly roil, made up his mind for him.

“Where will the two of you go?” Jaden asked him. “What will you do?”

“I don’t know.”

Jaden nodded; Soldier nodded.

“Go,” Jaden said to him.

Without another word, and still cradling Grace in one of his arms, Soldier turned and ran for the Umbaran’s ship. He must have used the Force to augment his speed, for he vanished in a blink.

“I don’t think he can make it,” Khedryn said. Not to the supply ship and then the Umbaran’s ship.

“Maybe not,” Jaden said. “But I had to let him try.”

Another scream from Mother, another explosion in a distant part of the station, set Jaden’s, Marr’s, and Khedryn’s feet to running.

“Have the ship ready to go, Ar-Six!” Khedryn said over his comlink, and the droid beeped agreement.

Ahead, they saw the docking tube, the open hatch of Junker’s airlock. They sprinted for it, but before they reached it a nest of filaments burst from the walls, squirming like snakes, and grabbed at them.

Jaden’s blade was a blur as he cut through them, leaving them writhing and smoking on the floor. Marr did the same, and they kept moving. Jaden looked back and saw Mother’s form filling the smoky corridor behind them.

“Go!” he said. “Go, go!”

He fell into the Force, gestured, and pulled the door nearest them closed.

Mother’s shriek of frustration shook the walls.

He turned, darted onto Junker behind Khedryn and Marr, and closed the airlock hatch.

“Get us clear,” he said to R-6 over the comlink.

Immediately Junker started to pull away from the docking tube. The tube stretched but did not release them. Filaments shot from its sides, grabbed at protuberances on Junker’s hull, tried to reel the ship back in. Through the viewport, Jaden could see the side of the station near where they had been docked pulsing, as more and more filaments gathered there, shooting out across the void to grip Junker. Jaden could feel Mother’s presence just on the other side of the station’s wall, waiting for them.

“Engines full!” Khedryn shouted into his comlink.

R-6 powered the freighter’s engines to full and the ship strained against the station’s grasp, against Mother’s grip.

On the other side of the station, the supply ship exploded. There was an enormous ball of flame. Immediately, secondary explosions blossomed here and there on the station, growing in size and intensity, one after another rippling along its surface. Curtains of flame shot out into space. An explosion rocked the station near the tether and the part of the station in orbit lurched, severed from the tether, and began to fall toward the planet.

Meanwhile, the explosion that cut the tether spread along its length toward the planet, a giant wick burning its way to the subsurface part of the station.

Jaden watched it all in horrified fascination, while Junker’s engines strained against the grasp of the filaments. The station fell planetward, dragging Junker with it. Marr, Khedryn, and Jaden stared out the viewport, their lives entirely dependent upon Junker’s engines.

“Come on, baby,” Khedryn said. “Come on.”

As one, ship and station fell toward the planet, picking up speed every second. Jaden could feel Mother’s power pouring out of the station. The filaments held Junker like a net. The engines screamed, trying to keep both ship and station from falling.

“Divert everything to the engines!” Khedryn said to R-6. “Everything!”

The pitch of the engines changed, grew deeper; the lights dimmed as R-6 redirected all power but life support and artificial gravity to the engines.

The surface of the planet rushed up to meet them, to crush them, to bury them in fire and rock along with Mother.

All at once the filaments snapped and Junker sprang free, shooting into space like a blaster shot. The sudden acceleration was too much for the artificial gravity to compensate for immediately, and Jaden, Marr, and Khedryn slammed against the wall.

Jaden, his face pasted against the viewport, watched the station fall to the planet, the filaments squirming, trailing a wake of Mother’s hate and rage.

The station struck the surface and silently flowered into a ball of fire. Mother’s anger, her power, vanished in the flames. Secondary explosions below the surface veined the planet in orange lines, as the subsurface portion of the station blew.

* * *

Khedryn, Marr, Jaden, and R-6 crowded into Junker’s cockpit. Khedryn ran diagnostics—Junker seemed mostly intact, he was pleased to see—while Marr plotted coordinates for a jump to hyperspace.

To Khedryn, both of the Jedi—he now thought of Marr as a Jedi—seemed oddly reserved.

“Do you think they got clear in time?” he asked Jaden.

His question seemed to bring Jaden back from wherever his mind had been. The Jedi looked up and his eyes focused on Khedryn.

“Soldier?”

“And Grace,” Khedryn said.

Jaden looked past him, out the cockpit, and into space. “I don’t know. I think so. I hope so.”

Khedryn hoped so, too.

Jaden cleared his throat, smiled, and stood. “I need to go report to the Order. Heading back to Fhost, Captain?”

Khedryn nodded. “Heading back to Fhost.”

“After I finish the report, I’ll throw on some caf,” Jaden said. “Meet you both in the galley.”

“Spike it with pulkay,” Khedryn said. “We all deserve a drink.”

Jaden just laughed as he walked out of the cockpit.

“I mean it,” Khedryn said to his back. He did mean it. He needed a drink.

After he’d gone, Khedryn swung his seat toward Marr, and found the Cerean staring after Jaden, a worried look on his face.

“You all right?”

Marr smiled, but Khedryn knew it was forced. “Fine.”

“What’s with you two? You’re both acting odd.”

Marr fixed his gaze on Khedryn, the worry in his eyes magnified. “What do you mean ‘odd’? Odd how?”

Khedryn sank back in his seat. “Ease up, Marr. I just mean that the two of you seem different. Probably just everything that happened. Relax.”

But Marr did not relax. He stared after Jaden, his tension palpable to Khedryn.

“I didn’t see anything odd in him,” Marr said. “I think he’s exactly the same. Exactly the same.”

In the tiny confines of one of Junker’s lavatories, Jaden showered, toweled off, and stood before the small, polished metal mirror. His already narrow face looked drawn and his expression looked haggard, his gray eyes sunk deeply into their sockets and underscored by dark circles. A lot had happened over the past few days.

He needed to change the dressings on his wounds. But first he needed a shave.

He checked the sundries cabinet built into the wall and found a can of lather and an archaic razor Khedryn must have left there for passengers.

With the stink of the station washed from his body if not his mind, he methodically lathered his face and slowly pulled the razor down his cheeks and his throat, neatening the borders of his goatee.

As he did, his mind turned to Soldier, and he wondered how alike they were. They shared a similar biology, if not an absolutely identical one. They were, in a very true sense, brothers—twins even. And yet they had led very different lives and made very different choices.

People were not equations.

No. People were choices.

But how much did biology constrain the choices? Theoretically, Soldier could have turned from the dark side at any time. But didn’t theory crash on the rocks of reality? Weren’t Soldier’s choices constrained by his biology, at least to some degree?

Weren’t Jaden’s?

He finished his shave, wiped off the lather, and stared at himself in the mirror. Something looked off. It took him a moment to realize what it was—a small scar he’d had on his right cheek since adolescence was gone. He’d cut himself with one of Uncle Orn’s tools and it had not healed right.

“How could that be?” he muttered.

He put his face right next to the mirror, wondering if maybe it had just faded, but no, he didn’t see it there at all. He stared at his image in the mirror a long time.

Uncomfortable possibilities started to swirl around in his mind. He tried to hold them at bay, but they kept rearing up in his consciousness. He chuckled, trying to laugh them away, but they lingered, stubborn.

“That’s not possible,” he said, denying something that he refused to name. He remembered his entire life. No one possessed the kind of technology it would require to transplant a lifetime of memories.

No, he was him. He could be no one else.

But he had been unconscious for a time after his fight with the Umbaran. He remembered how he had felt when he had awakened—the confusion, the inability to remember.

But all that was consistent with a head injury.

His eyes fell to his wounded fingers, the wounds opened anew.

Opened anew.

Marr had said as much, and Marr would not lie to him.

But Marr had eyed him strangely. Jaden had assumed it to be concern over his injuries, but couldn’t it have been something else?

Couldn’t it?

He looked at himself in the mirror, and he wondered.

* * *

Out in the far reaches of the system, Soldier studied the star charts in the Umbaran’s scout flyer. They were in what the navicomp called the Unknown Regions. Indeed, all of space was an unknown region for Soldier, all of life.

He had met his clone. And seeing Jaden Korr had shown him what he could be.

He had sought purpose for decades, had thought he’d found it in Seer and their quest for Mother. But that had been a lie, a false hope born of desperation and loneliness. He had been alone even when he wasn’t alone, different from the other clones, isolated, separate. Seer had seemed to understand his pain and had tried to give him a salve for it in their quest.

But Mother had been her quest, not his. His was … something else.

Grace sat curled up in the copilot’s seat. She looked so fragile to him, so pale, so light, as if she might blow away in a strong wind. He had given her the meds. Her illness was controlled—he had saved enough from the supply ship to keep her symptom-free for years. During that time, he would protect her, raise her to have a better life than his, perhaps even find her a cure somewhere out there.

Yes, he had his purpose.

She opened her eyes, looked up at him, smiled. He smiled in return.

“It’s dark in here,” she said.

“This is as bright as the lighting allows,” he said. The Umbaran must have designed it so. “We’ll get it changed when we can.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

He thought about the answer a long while. “I don’t know. We’ll find a place, make a home there.”

She seemed to accept that. Curling back up in the seat, she was soon asleep once more. Her tiny snores made him smile.

Soldier sat in the dim cockpit of the ship, staring out at the limitless expanse of the Unknown Regions, a vast empty darkness broken by feeble points of light.

So much emptiness, he thought.

He picked a system from the navicomp and put in the coordinates.

He decided that he must focus on the lights.

With that, he engaged the hyperdrive.