Star Wars Riptide

TWO DAYS EARLIER

JADEN STARED THROUGH JUNKER’S VIEWPORT, HIS REFLECTION superimposed over the receding spheres of the frozen moon and the blue gas giant it orbited. He stared at the image of himself, able to hold his own gaze for the first time in months. He’d lost fingers on the frozen moon, broken bones, but he’d left his fear there, too, and in the process healed his spirit.

He realized now that his doubts about his relationship to the Force were not a sword of weakness to stab at his resolve and drive him to the dark side. Instead, they were a shield of self-examination to protect him from it. He would never fall to the dark side, because he understood it too well.

Master Katarn had tried indirectly to teach him as much, but Jaden hadn’t fully learned the lesson until he’d traveled to an uncharted moon in the Unknown Regions and faced Force-using clones born of Sith and Jedi genes.

He hoped to see Master Katarn soon. It had been too long. Jaden had let them drift apart until their orbits never crossed. He would remedy that.

He held his hands before him, one whole, the other maimed, the stumps of his lost fingers still the black and red of charred meat. He knew he’d never again see Force lightning discharge involuntarily from his fingertips. Not because Force lightning was associated with the dark side—for Jaden, the Force was a tool, neither light nor dark—but because its uncontrolled discharge represented a lack of understanding, of the Force, of himself. And he understood both now.

In fact, he felt the Force anew, felt it with the same unabashed joy he’d felt when he’d first awakened to it as a child, an awakening that had led him to construct a lightsaber from spare parts in his uncle’s workshop. He did not remember actually making the lightsaber. It felt like a dream. He thought he might have been in a trance the whole time, but he did remember activating the weapon for the first time, marveling at the beauty of its thin, unwavering purple line, the quiet hum of its power. When he’d shown his handiwork to his uncle, his uncle had scarcely believed it.

“Stang, boy! Turn that thing off before you cut a hole in the wall!”

His uncle had contacted the authorities immediately and within two days Jaden had been enrolled in the Jedi Academy. It had been a whirlwind of shuttles and space flights that had ended with Jaden shaking Grand Master Luke Skywalker’s hand for the first time.

“Welcome to the Jedi Academy,” Luke had said to him.

Looking out on the stars, the glowing clouds of gas, Jaden realized that he had not thought about Uncle Orn in years. Orn had taken Jaden in when Jaden’s adoptive parents had been killed in a shuttle accident. As a boy, Jaden had called his uncle “Uncle Orn the Hutt” because he was so fat. Jaden smiled, recalling his uncle’s ready grin and wheezing laughter. Orn had been killed in the Yuuzhan Vong invasion of Coruscant. Jaden had been away on a mission and had learned of it after the fact.

As sudden and intense as a lightning strike, he flashed on a sense memory: the smell of his mother’s red hair, a scent like wildflowers. He hung on to the memory, for he remembered so little else of his parents. He knew them mostly through family holos and vid recordings.

And he had no family left, not anymore. He was altogether alone. He practiced Jedi nonattachment not by choice, but by default. Odd, how his life had unfolded.

Khedryn’s voice interrupted his ruminations. “Scans got nothing. The clones are gone. Or they’re so far out, the scanners can’t ping them.”

“I figured as much,” Jaden said, still staring out the viewport, still wrestling with memories. A ship full of genetically modified Force-using clones had fled the moon in a stolen ship. They were alone, too, he supposed. At least in a way.

“Probably better that way,” Khedryn said. “Junker’s in no condition to follow. We’ve got at least a couple more hours of repairs before I’m putting her into hyperspace. Marr vented her altogether and she took a beating from those Sith fighters. Not to mention your flying, which almost tore her apart.” He chuckled. “How’s the hand?”

“It’s all right,” Jaden said, turning to face him.

Seeing him, Khedryn cocked his head in a question. His good eye fixed on Jaden, while his lazy eye stared past Jaden’s shoulder, maybe at his reflection in the viewport.

“You all right?” Khedryn had a mug of caf, and sipped from it.

“Yeah, fine,” Jaden said. “I was just … thinking about my family.”

“Didn’t know you had any.”

“I don’t. Not anymore.”

“Me neither.”

Jaden knew. Khedryn’s parents had been survivors of the crash of Outbound Flight. They’d died long before Grand Master Skywalker and Mara Jade had pulled Khedryn, along with a handful of other survivors, from the asteroid on which the ship had crashed.

Khedryn grinned and hoisted his caf mug. “We’ve got each other now, though, don’t we?”

Jaden smiled. “We do.”

Khedryn had saved Jaden’s life back on the moon.

“Fresh caf in the galley,” Khedryn said. “Pulkay where it always is, in case you want a jolt. Do you some good, Jaden. You look like a man who’s thinking too much and drinking too little.”

Jaden grinned. “Is that right?”

“Damned right, that’s right. Pondering, ruminating, looking for meaning here and there. That’s you. Sometimes things just are what they are.”

“You don’t believe that.”

Khedryn’s face lost its mirth and he looked into his cup, swirled the contents, slammed down what remained. “I surely kriffin’ do not. Not after what happened on the moon. But I don’t like thinking about the meaning of it all too much. Gives me a headache. Let’s get a refill, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jaden said, and they walked Junker’s corridors toward the galley. Khedryn stopped now and again to examine this or that joint on a bulkhead, a viewport. He’d tap the wall with his mug a few times and nod or frown, apparently deducing something from the sound of metal on metal.

“She’s stressed,” Khedryn said of the ship. “But she hung in there.”

Same was true of all of them, Jaden supposed.

Khedryn patted the bulkhead. “She’ll do what we ask. Won’t you, girl?”

“I have no doubt.”

Khedryn cleared his throat. “So, then, do you have a plan? What do we do about the escaped clones?”

“We find them,” Jaden said.

“Yeah, I figured that. I’m all ears about how.”

“First I need to speak to Grand Master Skywalker.”

Following a Force vision, Jaden had left Coruscant without notifying the Order or filing a flight plan. That had been a mistake. And by now, someone would wonder where he had gone. Besides, he had an obligation to inform the Grand Master about the escaped clones.

“Makes sense,” Khedryn said. He looked down at the floor. “So, uh, Marr tells me that you agreed to train him?”

Jaden felt the sharpness on the edges of Khedryn’s question. He understood it. “I need to discuss that with the Grand Master, too.”

Khedryn ran a hand along Junker’s bulkhead. “If that’s a go, it kinda makes me odd man out, I guess.” He chuckled, but Jaden knew it was forced. Khedryn and Marr had been friends for a long time. “Can’t really be my first mate if he’s training to become a Jedi.”

“It would be difficult,” Jaden acknowledged. “But let’s not go too far down that path just yet.”

“Marr, a Jedi.” Khedryn shook his head. “It’s hard for me to believe it.”

“Things will work out, Khedryn.”

Neither man said anything more as they entered Junker’s galley. The smell of fresh caf, ubiquitous aboard Junker, filled the air. Khedryn refilled his own mug, poured one for Jaden.

“Spike of pulkay?” Khedryn asked.

“No, thanks.”

Khedryn started to spike his caf with a shot of the liquor but reconsidered and took the caf straight. “Kinda takes the fun out of it, drinking alone. Flying’s the same way.”

Jaden took his point but said nothing.

As if by unspoken agreement, they did not sit at the table where the three of them and Relin, a Jedi transported from four thousand years in the past, had sat and planned their assault on a Sith dreadnought. Relin had been killed in the assault, and Jaden, Marr, and Khedryn had nearly been killed. Instead, they sat at the counter.

“To Relin,” Khedryn said, and lifted his mug in a toast.

“To Relin,” Jaden answered.

They sipped their caf in silence for a time before Khedryn said, “I’ve been thinking about something.”

Jaden sipped his caf and waited.

“Those clones flew their ship right through that exploded dreadnought. And Relin told us that ship was full of an ore that augmented the power of the Force.”

“Augmented the dark side,” Jaden said.

“Right, right. Well, they flew right through it.” Khedryn looked at the table where they had sat with Relin, then out the viewport. “Makes you wonder what it might have done to them.”

Jaden had been thinking, and worrying, about much the same thing. “That it does.”

Soldier still felt supercharged, alive with power. The doctors at the facility would have named the power “the dark side” of the Force, but Soldier rejected their labels. To him, it was just power, and labels be damned.

They’d all felt it, even the children, as the stolen cloakshape fighter carrying them had blazed away from the frozen moon and through the aftermath of the exploded starship. Between the surface of the moon and the safety of outer space had hung a cloud of flaming debris, superheated gas, and … something more.

Soldier assumed that the exploded starship had been carrying something related to the Force, something powerful, a Sith artifact maybe, and that the vessel’s destruction had diffused whatever it was through the moon’s thin atmosphere, its essence saturating the sky, filling the air with power, with potential.

They’d felt it more strongly as they ascended, first as a prickling on the skin, then as an upsurge of emotion that sent him alternately through moments of glee, rage, terror, and love. Soldier’s emotions had swung pendulously from one to another. The clones had stood around in the makeshift cargo hold of the cloakshape and murmured questions while the children giggled and squirmed.

“What is that?” Maker had asked, his eyes wide. “Seer?”

But Seer had not answered. She’d seemed lost in one of her trances, eyes closed and swaying, in communion with Mother.

The feeling had intensified with each passing moment, a surge at once terrifying and exhilarating. Force lightning had leaked from Soldier’s fingertips, twined around his hands, crackling. He stared at his fingers in wonder, grinning. The emotions of the other clones reached through their community’s shared empathic connection and bombarded him with feeling. He felt their glee, their ecstasy, their anger. His emotions fed on theirs, and theirs on his, a never-ending feedback loop, an ouroboros of emotional energy that made him feel as if he were boiling inside, filling with emotional steam that he could vent only in bestial shouts, in discharges of lightning. The cargo bay was chaotic. Only his concern for the children kept him grounded. He stood over them protectively.

“It is a sign from Mother!” Seer suddenly shouted above the tumult. She had her eyes closed and raised her hands above her hairless head toward the ceiling. “She has blessed our exodus!”

The others—Maker, Two-Blade, Hunter, all of them—had echoed her words, their voices slurred from the rush of power.

“It is a gift from Mother. A gift.”

The children had mostly laughed or groaned, their connection to the Force still weak.

“What is it, Soldier?” Grace had asked him in her small voice.

He could not bring himself to mention Mother, so he simply said, “It is power, Grace. Be still now.”

And then the cloakshape had flown through the cloud and the power suffusing the air had bled through the hull and touched them all directly.

It had hit Soldier like an electric shock, torn open some deeper connection to the Force, and sent him to his knees.

“Soldier!” Grace said in alarm.

He waved her away, afraid that he could not control the power boiling in him.

The rest of the Community, too, had shouted aloud as the power entered them. Seer had begun to moan in ecstasy, the children—even Grace—to laugh aloud, a touch of wildness in the sound.

New channels into the Force opened and power rushed to fill the voids. Soldier’s mind spun. Perception widened. His eyes watered and he gripped his head in his hands, as if trying to contain his expanded understanding.

The ship had veered wildly—Runner was piloting and he, too, must have been overcome. Everyone shouted as the sudden lurch threw them against the far wall of the cargo bay. Hunter cradled Grace and Blessing—her children—to her chest to protect them from the impact. Soldier, the most clearheaded of them all, had cushioned their impact with the Force, sparing them all broken bones, and the ship had ridden the lurch into a spin, throwing them across the cargo bay once more like so much flotsam, tipping the stasis chambers standing along one side of the bay. The chambers skidded across the floor, the shriek of metal on metal joining the chorus of the clones. Soldier and Scar both raised a hand and used the Force to halt the chambers two meters before they crushed the still-entranced Seer against the bulkhead.

Fighting against the push and pull of the ship’s lurches, Soldier had climbed to his feet and wound through the chaos of the cargo bay to the cockpit. He found Runner in the pilot’s chair, his arms out wide, his head thrown back, eyes closed, drool dripping from a vacant smile. Soldier pushed him to the floor and slammed a fist on the instrument panel to engage the autopilot. He turned and grabbed Runner by the shirt.

“You sit in this seat, you fly the ship!” he said, but Runner, lost in the surge of power, seemed not to hear him.

As the autopilot righted the ship, Soldier followed the sounds of the clones and the children back toward the cargo bay. Before he reached it, the emotional surge changed tenor. Through his connection with the other clones, he felt their fear grow. Then he felt their pain, and the laughter of the children give way to wails, then to shrieks of agony. The exultant exclamations of the clones stepped aside for screams of pain.

All but for Seer, whose voice he could still hear above the rest, praising Mother over the screams.

Soldier closed down the empathic connection as best he could and sprinted through the corridor to the cargo bay. He reached it and stepped into a storm of screams and pain.

Hunter lay in a fetal position, teeth bared in a grimace as she screamed. In her arms she cradled Blessing and Grace. Her eyes were open, vacant, and her breath came so fast between screams that Soldier thought she might hyperventilate. The girls, too, had their eyes open. Grace stared at Soldier, her welling eyes full of pain. Thankfully the children were not screaming. Instead, they lay entirely still, mouths partway open, eyes glassy. To Soldier they looked like corpses who did not yet realize they were dead.

The possibility of the children dying made his legs go weak.

“Grace,” he called. “Blessing.”

Neither moved. Neither seemed to hear him.

What had happened? He’d been gone only minutes.

Maker sat cross-legged on the floor, rocking, his mouth open and uttering guttural howls at intervals. His fingernails had scratched bloody grooves down the length of his forearm and he continued to worry at them even as his blood puddled on the floor. Repulsed, Soldier went to him and grabbed his hands.

“Stop it,” Soldier said to him, but Maker seemed not to hear, and his hands continued to try for his wounds.

Scar’s high-pitched screams pulled Soldier around. She lay on the ground near one of the overturned stasis chambers, writhing, the exposed areas of her blotchy skin visibly pulsing, as if thousands of insects crawled beneath her epidermis and sought exit through her pores.

“Help me!” she cried in a spray of spit, her face distorted by the crawling. “Help me!”

But no one moved to help her. Seer was too lost in her trance, still praising Mother, and the others were too lost in their pain. Soldier recovered himself, ran to Scar, crouched beside her, and pulled her to him. She was thin, her long dark hair lank on her drawn face. He tried to keep the revulsion from his face as her skin shifted and bulged under his touch.

“Help me, Soldier!”

“It’s the sickness,” Soldier said, feeling helpless. “It has to be. The sickness.”

The sickness afflicted all of them—all of them but him—but he’d never seen the symptoms so bad, never seen them come on so quickly. The doctors at the facility had altered the midi-chlorians in their blood, and it seemed their altered blood was responding to the same phenomenon that had given them a surge in power. The sickness was surging, too. Soldier had to get the medicine.

“I’ll be right back,” he said to Scar, and she answered him with a scream. The bulges in her face grew larger, darkened, formed pustules, distorting her expression, then burst in a spray of pink fluid that spattered Soldier’s face and clothes.

“What is happening to me?” she screamed.

His mind turned to the children. They were sick, too. He looked over at Grace, Blessing, and Gift, but they looked all right.

Soldier stood, his legs weak under him. He saw the chest they’d used to bring the remaining medicine from the moon. It was near the far wall and Two-Blade stood near it, his eyes feral, his hands on his lightsaber hilts. Two-Blade did not seem to be in pain, at least not yet. He murmured something incomprehensible over the screams and shifted on his feet, as though preparing for a fight.

Soldier headed for the chest of meds, slowly, hands held up to show harmlessness. Two-Blade’s eyes hardened, his muscles a coiled spring. Sweat beaded his brow. His mouth was a hard line in the nest of his beard. His green eyes fixed on Soldier, but he blinked often and seemed not to see clearly. His pupils were fully dilated, black holes that saw something other than the real world. As Soldier watched, slight palpitations under the skin of Two-Blade’s face foretold a fate like Scar’s.

“I need the meds,” Soldier said, nodding at the chest behind Two-Blade.

“Soldier,” Two-Blade hissed.

Soldier tried to step around him but Two-Blade blocked his way. His chest rose and fell like a bellows. Soldier swallowed a flash of irritation. The screams and moans of the surviving clones put him on edge. Seer’s imprecations to Mother were a pebble in the boot of his mind.

“Get out of my way,” Soldier said. He pushed past Two-Blade and knelt before the chest.

The sizzle of igniting lightsabers sounded from behind him and instinct took over. He rolled to his left, bounded to his feet, took his own blade in hand, and ignited it. The red line sparked and hissed, a mirror of his mood. Anger kindled in him and the surge of power affecting them all lit it into a bonfire. Force lightning shot from his fingers, coiled around his hilt, his blade. He reveled in the newfound intensity of his power.

Two-Blade, his reddish-orange blades jutting from the hilts he held in both fists, snarled.

“It always had to end this way, Soldier. You aren’t one of us.”

“You’re not thinking clearly,” Soldier said, but his heart wasn’t in the protest. He wanted to fight, wanted to kill.

Two-Blade snarled and lunged forward with blades low. Soldier bounded back, slapped both blades aside with his own lightsaber, and raised his blade for a killing strike. Before he did, Two-Blade’s roar of rage turned to a groan of pain and he fell to the floor, grasping his head, writhing, screaming. His blades deactivated and his flesh crawled, bulged, rippled.

Soldier stood over him, blade in hand, violence still fresh in his mind. It would be so easy to cut Two-Blade down, so easy. He raised his lightsaber.…

Scar’s screams of pain reached a crescendo, popped the balloon of his rage, and brought him back to himself. He recalled his purpose. With difficulty, he lowered his blade and deactivated it. He was sweating. The anger boiled in him, simmering—It always had to end this way—but he controlled it.

He took a deep, calming breath and spared a glance back at Scar. He was too late. Open sores on her face and arms leaked fluid, ragged craters erupting pus.

“Soldier,” she mouthed, and raised one of her hands for a moment before it fell slack to her side. Her body twitched once, twice, then lay still. Her vacant, dead eyes, turned bloodred by burst capillaries, stared accusations at Soldier.

Soldier cursed and kicked Two-Blade in the ribs. Soldier did not know why he cared. Except for the children, the rest of the clones cared little for him. But he could not deny that he did have feelings for them.

And so he would do what he always did—take care of them.

He knelt before the case that contained the hypos. Thirty doses of the meds remained. They had expected the doses to last them weeks, maybe longer, but whatever they’d flown through had exacted a price for their increased connection to the Force—it had accelerated their illness. Presumably it would also speed the onset of the madness that inevitably came with the sickness. As bodies failed, so too would minds. Two-Blade was already almost gone. Hunter, too. A Jedi had come to the moon, killed one of the clones, but the rest had escaped to … To what?

While the screams and groans of the sick resounded off the walls, Soldier measured out doses with steady hands. He watched his skin as he worked, afraid that he would see the same crawling mounds he had seen on Scar, but to his relief, he saw nothing. The doctors at the facility had made him well, it seemed.

When he’d prepared enough injections, he turned and threw himself back into the storm of their agony, moving from one to another, injecting each with the medicine the doctors had created to keep them alive and sane. He started with the children, then Two-Blade, then Hunter. Each calmed moments after the injection, eyelids heavy, breathing slow and regular. He put a hand on Grace’s head, smoothed her red hair, did the same with Hunter. Hunter was soaked with sweat. She shivered at his touch, but her skin, at least, no longer crawled.

“Where is Alpha?” Hunter asked, her eyes lucid for at least the moment. She held Grace and Blessing—both fathered by Alpha—in her arms. The girls had closed their eyes. They appeared to be sleeping, but their pinched faces and tiny whimpers bespoke continuing pain. The children always suffered the most from the illness. Most of the clones’ offspring had died young over the years.

“Alpha is dead,” Soldier said. “The Jedi killed him. You know that, Hunter.”

She stared at him a long moment, as if not comprehending.

“It should have been you,” she said at last, her speech slurred, and closed her eyes.

The words ablated harmlessly on the emotional armor in which Soldier usually sheathed himself. He’d heard them or something similar often enough over the years. He was different from the others. They knew it and he knew it. He was the best of them, the final specimen created by the doctors, and he showed no signs of the illness that afflicted the rest. Only the children treated him as one of them.

“Do you need water?” Soldier asked her.

“No,” she said, her voice soft, as if she had forgotten her harsh words from a moment before.

“Rest, then. I will get you blankets for the children.”

He started to stand but her hand closed on his forearm, her grip a fevered vise. “Why is this happening, Soldier?”

He did not trust himself to answer, but he didn’t have to. She answered for him.

“Mother is testing her faithful,” she said. She smiled and nodded distantly. “We will pass this test, as we have all the others.”

Soldier patted her hand and stood. His eyes fell on Scar’s body, her face covered in leaking sores. He imagined infected blood crawling across the floor, boring into the flesh of the others. But he knew it was fanciful. He thought Mother might be fanciful, too, but knew better than to say so. If Mother was real and was testing them, then Scar had already failed. Others would, too, he had no doubt.

He got blankets for the children and picked his way through his unconscious and semiconscious siblings, uttering soft words of encouragement. He finally made his way across the cargo bay to Seer. He still had not injected her. With the screams of the other clones ended by the meds, Seer’s prayers to Mother filled the silence.

Before he reached her, Maker sat up and rose on unsteady legs.

“Soldier,” Maker said. “Come here.”

“In a moment,” Soldier said.

“Now,” Maker said, and occupied the space between Seer and Soldier. Maker’s expression was twitchy, uncontrolled. The others looked on or not, their expressions vacant. Maker stepped close to Soldier and spoke through bared teeth.

“You aren’t sick,” he said, his voice the low volume of a threat.

From behind Soldier, Two-Blade murmured agreement, though he never opened his eyes. Blessing and Grace whimpered. They always disliked conflict among the members of the Community.

“And you aren’t because I gave you the meds,” Soldier answered.

Maker’s eyes moved from Soldier to Scar’s body. Maker and Scar had been mates, and Scar’s corpse was a whetstone that sharpened Maker’s rage. Through their empathic connection, Soldier could feel the anger growing in Maker, a dark cloud that promised a storm.

“Why aren’t you sick, Soldier?” Maker asked. His body twitched, a spasm that shook him from head to toe. “I can feel them crawling under my skin, the midis. Do you feel them?”

Soldier did not answer. He looked past Maker toward Seer.

“Seer—”

“She won’t help you,” Maker snapped.

The anger kindled in Soldier by Two-Blade erupted into a sudden flare of heat. Once started, he could not stop the conflagration. He did not want to stop the conflagration. He needed to vent the pressure building in him and Maker was as good a way as any. He stepped nearer to Maker, who stood a hand taller than him, until they were nose to nose.

“I don’t need her help, Maker.”

Maker sneered. Soldier readied himself, fell into the Force.

The anger and fear in the room swirled around them, coalesced into a powerful emotional brew. Maker fed off it, as did Soldier, both of them stuck in a feedback loop that could end only one way.

Maker snatched the hilt of his lightsaber, activated it, and stabbed at Soldier’s abdomen, but Soldier lurched sideways, spun, and used the momentum of the spin to put a Force-augmented kick into Maker’s chest. The impact blew the air from Maker’s lungs and sent him flying five meters across the cargo bay. He hit the wall, bounced off it, roared, and charged Soldier, leaping over the toppled stasis chamber.

The other clones, perhaps roused by the rising tide of anger and power, moaned and shouted.

The power coursing through Soldier intensified. He could not control it. He gave it voice in a shout of rage. Force lightning shot from his fingertips, swirled around him. He extended his left hand and discharged it at Maker. It slammed into him, halted his charge, and lifted him from his feet. Maker screamed.

Soldier relished his pain. Holding Maker aloft, Soldier gestured with his right hand and sent Maker flying into the bulkhead. He hit it hard enough to break bones, then slid toward the floor. Still Soldier did not release him. Using the Force, he slammed him into the bulkhead again, again, again.

Maker’s lightsaber fell from his hand, his arms and legs flailed about as if disconnected from his body, the bones broken, torn from their joints. He looked like a child’s doll. Soldier felt Maker’s pain, let it feed his rage, his power.

Soldier narrowed his focus, gestured with his forefinger and thumb, and seized Maker’s throat in a Force choke. Maker clutched at his neck, gagging. With his other hand, Soldier sent another blast of Force lightning spiraling at Maker. It caught him up in a shroud of crackling energy, but Soldier’s Force choke denied him any screams of pain.

Soldier stared into Maker’s face while Maker’s legs kicked feebly and his face purpled. Soldier continued to squeeze until Maker went still. Only then did he let the body fall to the floor. Maker’s corpse lay beside that of Scar, his flesh disfigured by Soldier, hers by the illness.

Other than Soldier’s breathing, the cargo bay fell still. Even Seer quieted, ceasing her prayers. The combat and Maker’s death seemed to have drained some of the emotion out of the air. Or perhaps it was just the medicine working.

Soldier glanced around. The others, in the grip of the accelerated symptoms of the illness, in the grip of their growing madness, seemed to barely comprehend what had happened. He was pleased the children had not seen it. He would have been ashamed.

He stood there, alone with himself, and studied his hands. He had never before been capable of Force lightning of such power. He looked up to see Seer, finally out of her trance, staring at him, her eyes looking through him. She looked at Maker’s body, back at Soldier. He brandished a hypo.

“You need the medicine, too, Seer.”

She shook her head slowly and smiled. Her beauty struck him, as it often did: the symmetry of her features, her deep-set eyes.

“No I don’t,” she said. “I am more strongly connected to Mother now than ever. She will test us before we reach her. Do you hear me?” She spoke not just to Soldier but to all of them. “She will test us! Do not lose faith, not now! Those who do will never reach Mother.”

To Soldier’s surprise, the surviving clones murmured assent. They lived in a mental space incomprehensible to Soldier, though he’d never have said as much aloud.

He picked his way through them until he stood before Seer. Had he been one of them, he might have bowed to her. But he was not one of them.

“You need the hypo, Seer. You were the last of them before …”

“Before you.”

He nodded. “Before me. But they hadn’t bred out the illness even with you. Whatever we flew through—”

“Mother’s blessing.”

“Yes. The … blessing. It will affect you, too. Later than the others, maybe. But it will.”

She smiled, then reached up and touched Soldier’s face.

“You are not like us, Soldier.”

“No,” he said, and fought down a flash of anger. “I’m not. I don’t have the sickness.”

The soft smile did not leave her face. “That’s not what I mean. You don’t believe.” Her smile faded, her expression hardened, and she took his face in her hand, her grip firm. “I’ve seen the doubt in you. As I did in Wry.”

Wry. The others had torn him apart when he had given voice to his doubts. His death had taught Soldier the value of silence.

“Runner needs the meds, too,” he said, and made to move past Seer to the cockpit.

She stopped him with a hand on his chest. “I will make you believe, Soldier.”

They shared a look, saying nothing, saying everything.

She held her arm out for an injection. “This is the only hypo I will have. When we reach Mother, she will heal us, all of us. Including you, Soldier.”

Soldier stared into Seer’s intense, dark eyes, softened his expression, nodded, and shot the hypo into her shoulder. Without another word, he moved past her to the cockpit. Runner lay curled up on the floor, moaning. The injection mitigated his pain and Soldier carried him back to the cargo bay and laid him beside Hunter and Grace and Gift. Seer had already returned to her prayers, her quiet communion with Mother. Soldier wondered what Seer heard during her trances.

He recalled the first time that Seer, in hushed, reverent tones, had told them of her connection through the Force to Mother. She had first sensed Mother years ago, and had offered sermons to them after the doctors had left them alone for the night, when they sat alone in their transparisteel-ceilinged observation chamber.

After Wry’s death, Soldier had gone along with their plans in stoic silence. For years they had plotted, planned. In the dark of their cages, working only by touch and their connection to the Force and to one another, they’d secretly constructed lightsabers, honed their powers, and bided their time until the reckoning. Soldier still did not know how Seer had obtained crystals to power the lightsabers.

And when the reckoning had come, when Seer had at last commanded them to kill, they had murdered every sentient in the facility and sacrificed their bodies to the altar they’d made to Mother. And then …

And then they’d lived alone on the arctic moon, eating what they could find, worshipping Mother and waiting, always waiting. Over the years—years of little food, little hope, and constant cold—Mother had become their purpose, the axis around which their existences turned. And Seer had become their prophet. Soldier had thought they’d never leave the moon, despite Seer’s constant proclamations to the contrary. And then a ship had come, bearing a Jedi, just as Seer had said it would. Alpha had insisted on facing the Jedi while the rest of them had fled in a stolen ship.

I will make you believe, Soldier.

He shook his head, pushed the pernicious notion of faith from his mind, and returned to the cockpit to be alone. The sight of the stars, blinking in the unending void, enthralled him. Up to then, he’d spent his entire existence within the confines of a frozen facility not more than a few square kilometers in area. Staring out the transparisteel of the cloakshape’s cockpit, he saw endless space, endless possibility.

And yet he had no idea where they were going, or what they would do when they arrived. Only Seer knew, and Seer would go mad within days—as would the rest of them, except him—unless they obtained more medicine.

And if that happened, what would he do? They were his purpose—especially the children—as much as Mother was theirs.

He made up his mind, stood, and headed back to the cargo bay, to Seer.





DARTH WYYRLOK STRODE INTO THE DARK CONFERENCE room, leaving the door open behind him. A smooth metal conference table dominated the circular, domed chamber. A pyramidal vidscreen sat centermost on the table. A small, sealed metal case with a retinal scan lock sat on the table, waiting for him. Within it was technology—mindspears—that One Sith agents had found in forgotten Rakatan ruins, deep in the Unknown Regions. The technology had formed the basis of the Master’s cloning program. One Sith scientists had been unable to duplicate its fiber-photon, dark side–based technology, so they had only a limited supply. Eyeing the case, Wyyrlok felt the faint, familiar pulse of dark-side energy emanating from it.

Thunder from a storm outside vibrated the walls of the tower. Rain thumped against the windows. Lightning traced a jagged seam the length of the night sky, the flash casting the soaring tombs and spires of Korriban in silhouette.

Staring out at the storm through the large transparisteel window, Wyyrlok wondered if the Master controlled the weather on Korriban, even as he journeyed in dreams.

As if in answer, the storm growled thunder, and another bolt of lightning made glowing veins in the sky. The dark-side energy of the planet pulsed, rippled.

Wyyrlok wondered, not for the first time, when the Master would emerge from his sleep to conquer and reestablish the Sith. Until then, the One Sith would only lurk around the edges of galactic events. Wyyrlok accepted that. His role was to serve, and the endgame of the Master’s plans stretched not through years, but centuries.

Wyyrlok checked his wrist chrono and saw that Nyss was late. He decided to start on his own and sat at one of the table’s high-backed, contoured chairs.

He activated the vidscreen with a touchpad built into the table and watched the mute replay of the transmission from the frozen moon. He’d already seen it once, but he needed to see it again, to ensure he had missed nothing and to confirm his thinking.

The transmission was a copy of the visual stimuli received by the One Sith’s Anzat agent, Kell Douro. The One Sith had attached a recorder to Douro’s optic nerve and brain that could be activated or deactivated as the Master willed. The Anzat had been as much a construct as a droid. Of course, he had never known that he had been made a sentient recording device, though Wyyrlok knew that Douro had often experienced lost time, memory lapses, and religious epiphanies—side effects of the implantation. When active, the implant had transmitted the visual data back to Douro’s ship, where a secret subroutine in the main computer had opened an encrypted subspace protocol and sent the data to Korriban for review.

There was another roll of thunder. Wyyrlok ran a hand over his head, his fingers lingering on his damaged left horn. He wondered if the Master had placed a similar device in his eye and brain. But then, perhaps the Master did not need such a device for him. He often felt that the Master could read his mind directly.

A blaster shot to Douro’s head had ended the transmissions. But not before the One Sith had received a raft of information from Douro’s most recent mission: tracking the Jedi Jaden Korr to a frozen, uncharted moon in the Unknown Regions. And there, Douro had found something of enormous interest.

Using the touchpad, Wyyrlok sped through the grainy video feed—images of space, Douro’s short time on Fhost.

Wyyrlok stopped at a moment in a cantina in which Jaden Korr had sensed Douro and turned to face him. There was no sound in the recording. Wyyrlok studied the expression on Korr’s face.

“Remarkable,” he said softly. He knew Jaden’s face quite well.

He continued the recording until he reached the point at which Douro had descended toward the frozen moon. Wyyrlok saw the fuzzy, pixilated, overhead view of a large, snow-covered facility. He recognized it as a Thrawn-era cloning lab. To judge from the architecture and power generators, he surmised it had been used a bit later in the Grand Admiral’s secret cloning program than the sites the One Sith had previously plundered for technology.

The possibilities of that intrigued him.

“Could it be?” he mused.

Not for the first time, he wondered how much of recent events the Master had foreseen, how far into the future the Master’s foresight extended. It was as though the Master had a recorder on the eye of fate, and through it saw and anticipated events like no one else.

Despite himself, Wyyrlok felt awed by the Master’s power.

Outside, the rain turned to hail and pelted the exterior windows. Lightning once more drew glowing angles across the sky.

Wyyrlok started the recording again and watched through Douro’s eyes as the Anzat set down on the moon. He sped through the images until he reached the point at which Douro had entered the facility. He stopped the video here and there as Douro stalked the corridors, enhancing this or that frame in hopes that something would confirm his suspicions. Nothing he saw made him certain, but everything was suggestive.

The timing was right. The location was right.

“It could be,” he said.

An ache rooted in the back of Wyyrlok’s head. At first he thought it the ghost of the wound that had taken half his horn, but no, it was something else. He wondered again about a possible implant, but then his connection to the Force grew weaker, attenuated. The power emanating from the case went quiescent. The disconnect was not altogether strange to him, though it remained uncomfortable. He recognized its source, had felt it many times in the past. Out of habit, his hand moved toward his lightsaber hilt, though he knew that the weapon would not function—the crystal powering it would have temporarily lost its attunement to the Force.

“How long have you been standing there?” he asked over his shoulder.

A soft rustle, then, “Not long.”

Nyss’s voice was as soft as a pillow.

Wyyrlok turned in his chair to face him.

The darkness in the hallway seemed deeper than usual, like ink, and Nyss Nenn stood in the midst of the pitch, his form lost in the shadows, his hairless face and head floating like a pale moon in the darkness. All Umbarans, born on a dim planet shrouded in darkness, lived in shadow. But Nyss seemed of shadow. He was not a Force user, not in the ordinary sense. But he was attuned to the Force somehow. Perhaps the Master knew the nature of Nyss’s relationship to the Force, but Wyyrlok did not; it was beyond his comprehension. What he did know was that Nyss’s presence, and that of his twin sister, Syll, could disrupt a Force sensitive’s connection to the Force. Nyss and Syll were unique among Umbarans and one of the greatest weapons the One Sith possessed. They could turn a Force user into an ordinary sentient.

Wyyrlok stared past Nyss at the darkness of the hall, looking for Syll.

“My sister isn’t with me,” Nyss said.

Wyyrlok found that hard to believe. The two were rarely apart. Their relationship was odd, psychologically symbiotic.

Lightning split the sky, casting the room in a flash of lurid light. Nyss winced in the sudden illumination. Wyyrlok took comfort in the Umbaran’s discomfort. Despite Nyss’s power, light disquieted him.

“Sit,” Wyyrlok said, and gestured at a chair, though not the one nearest him. “And do not use your power in my presence. I find it … irritating.”

“I should think,” Nyss said. He inclined his head, and the pain in Wyyrlok’s skull slowly faded. The Umbaran glided into the room, as silent as a ghost, and slid into a chair. His eyes fell on the case.

“Do you feel it?” Wyyrlok asked, nodding at the case.

“You know I don’t,” said Nyss.

“I know you can’t,” said Wyyrlok.

Nyss simply stared, and Wyyrlok continued: “The Master has a task for you. Therefore you should see this.”

Wyyrlok replayed the vid from the point at which Douro set down on the moon. He wanted to see if Nyss’s conclusions matched his own.

Nyss’s eyes, set deep in shadowed sockets, shone in the glare of the vid, his pupils enormous. “That facility postdates the sites we found previously,” he said, watching as Douro entered the facility.

“I agree. And therefore it is of importance to the Master.”

Though Nyss had suppressed his power, Wyyrlok still found proximity to the Umbaran distasteful. The Force connected all living things and was powered by all living things, yet Nyss and his sister seemed to exist outside of the Force somehow. They were holes, gaps in the network of life, alive to ordinary senses, but dead to the Force. It was as if Nyss was dead.

The two of them watched as Douro moved deeper into the abandoned cloning facility. They saw him beat a human male and leave him lying there, his face shattered, bleeding.

“He is not dead,” Nyss observed.

“Indeed not,” Wyyrlok said, knowing that the human male ultimately killed Douro.

“That was a mistake,” Nyss said.

“More than you know.”

Nyss watched the recording. Wyyrlok watched Nyss.

After a few more moments, Nyss asked, “The Master believes there’s technology of value in the facility?”

The One Sith had spent decades plundering Thrawn-era cloning facilities, plumbing their secrets. They’d taken Thrawn’s secret technology and improved it markedly, in part by using the Rakatan biotechnology contained in the metal case. They’d also learned the purpose of the Grand Admiral’s program. The fact that he had actually accomplished his goal, and that no one but the One Sith knew even after so many years, made Thrawn’s plan and its execution all the more impressive. Of course, the Grand Admiral had never seen the final stages of the plan come to fruition—he’d been killed soon after placing the clone on Coruscant. It had fallen to the One Sith to complete the Grand Admiral’s plot.

“Wyyrlok,” Nyss said, “there is technology there?”

“Darth Wyyrlok,” Wyyrlok corrected. “Do not forget your place, Umbaran. And not technology, as such, no.”

“Then what?”

“Continue to watch.”

Nyss watched intently as the rest of the recording played. Even at only a meter away from Wyyrlok, the Umbaran merged so well with the darkness in the chamber that his outline blurred into the shadows. He seemed to amplify the darkness and to wear it like a shroud.

Nyss leaned forward when Jaden Korr came on-screen. The Jedi was in the midst of combat with a savage-looking human male wearing tattered clothing and wielding a red lightsaber. They fought on the edge of a deep pit in the floor of a large room. Douro must have been watching the combat from the darkness, unseen by the combatants.

“That is a third-generation Spaarti cloning cylinder,” Nyss said. “Nothing we haven’t seen before.”

Wyyrlok froze the picture, centered it on the savage male’s features, and magnified. Long white hair half-covered a strong-jawed, angular face.

“Do you recognize the features?”

Nyss shook his head.

“That is a clone of Jedi Master Kam Solusar.”

Realization dawned on Nyss’s face. “So it is. Thrawn cloned a Jedi.”

“Thrawn cloned multiple Jedi and Sith. There, in that facility. Therefore …”

Nyss finished for him. “… it may be where Thrawn birthed one of the final clones for the project. Given the dates suggested by its architecture and power signature, and the fact that the Solusar clone survived so long without succumbing to illness, I’d say it’s likely. We could be looking at the facility where Thrawn grew the Prime. We should investigate it.”

Wyyrlok shook his head, causing his lethorns—fleshy growths that hung from each side of his head and terminated in long, slender horns like those on the top of his head—to sway. “The Jedi Jaden Korr will have notified the Order by now. Skywalker will send an investigative team to the moon. We cannot risk exposure. Therefore, we will never know if the mole was grown there.”

“We could infiltrate it, Syll and I. Even with Skywalker’s team there. You know that we can.”

Wyyrlok did not doubt it. “The Master deems that too dangerous. Besides, there is no need. Other clones escaped.”

Nyss fixed his dark eyes on him—dead eyes, the pupils black holes. “You’re certain?”

“Douro’s ship has a beacon that relays not only its location but the number of life-forms aboard.”

“How many?”

“Eleven were aboard when the ship left the moon. There are nine, now.”

“They are dying,” Nyss said.

“Or they killed two of their number.”

Nyss ran a hand over his bald head, his excitement palpable. “You want me to find them. See if a Prime is among them?”

“We do. But there is more of interest. Watch.”

Wyyrlok let the tape play, and they watched the combat between Jaden Korr and the Solusar clone. The lightsabers, green and red, made blurred wedges in the air.

“Jaden Korr fights well,” Nyss said.

Wyyrlok shrugged.

Eventually Korr lost three fingers as the Solusar clone disarmed him and drove him into the cloning cylinder. For a moment, the recording lost the combat. But Douro must have circled and moved closer to get a view of the interior of the cylinder. There, they saw Korr on his knees, his left hand held before his face and—

“Freeze it there,” Nyss said, half-standing and staring at the screen. For a moment, he lost control of his power, and a headache flared in Wyyrlok’s skull.

“Is that what I think it is?” Nyss asked. “Magnify.”

Wyyrlok already knew what it was, but it pleased him that Nyss saw it and understood the implications.

He centered the image on Korr’s hand and magnified.

Bolts of Force lightning extended from his fingertips, jagged green lines summoned by fear or anger.

Outside, ordinary lightning split the sky. Thunder rumbled.

“He is falling,” Nyss observed in a whisper. He retook control of his power. “It is too soon, isn’t it?”

His headache gone, Wyyrlok nodded. “The Master did not expect him to fall so readily. Therefore, you will find him, too.”

“And?”

Wyyrlok nodded at the case of mindspears on the table. “And do what needs to be done.”

Nyss clucked his tongue on the roof of his mouth, then nodded slowly, already planning. “Korr will hunt the clones,” he said. “We may be able to complete both tasks at once.”

“I thought the same thing,” Wyyrlok said, then added, “Therefore the Master wishes you to take an Iteration.”

Nyss turned in his chair and faced him full on. Looking at the Umbaran’s smooth, expressionless face, Wyyrlok felt the true otherness of Nyss. He was unlike the Sith, unlike the Jedi, unlike anyone else in the universe save his sister.

“Awake?” Nyss asked.

“Yes, but in stasis until everything is ready.” Wyyrlok slid the case across the table to Nyss. “There are two spikes in the case. One blank for later. And one basic to be used now, to awaken the Iteration.”

Nyss laid his pale hands on the case. “It’s up to date?”

“Up to date enough,” Wyyrlok said. “You know how valuable these are. We have few left. The Iteration’s appearance, his grooming, has been matched to that of the mole.”

“When should we leave?” Nyss asked.

“Immediately. The beacon on Douro’s ship shows that a course has been set for Fhost.”

Nyss rose, tucked the case under his arm. “We can leave within the hour. Let’s go, Syll.”

Nyss smiled at Wyyrlok as Syll slipped from the shadows on the other side of the room and threw back her hood. Her smile was a tight, slightly upturned curl of lips that never reached her dark eyes. Like her brother, she was pale and slightly built. Short black hair haloed the pale oval of her face.

It occurred to Wyyrlok that Nyss had not lost control of his power during the conversation. Probably Syll had been toying with Wyyrlok.

Wyyrlok licked his lips and tried to keep the surprise and anger from his face. He must have looked at her and past her several times during the briefing.

“You tread dangerously,” he said, and his hand fell to his lightsaber.

Nyss only smiled. He stood, bowed, collected the case, and glided out of the room with his sister.

After they’d gone, Wyyrlok rewound the recording back to the point at which Kell was in orbit around the moon. The recording showed a ship in the distance, a huge blade-shaped dreadnought bristling with weapons. Wyrrlock had never seen one like it. The One Sith’s technicians had analyzed the images and concluded that it was a craft modeled on an ancient Sith design. Wyyrlok wondered what else had happened in the system and what had happened to the ship.

Outside, the storm raged.

* * *

She could not recall a particular moment when she had become self-aware. Sentience had not occurred in a revelatory flash. Instead it had come in a series of gradual steps, a long climb up from darkness to light, from thing to person.

In that way, she became self-aware.

She did not know how long it had taken. Back then she’d had little sense of time. But she surmised, now, that it had taken millennia.

After awareness of herself came awareness of the Force. She mistook it as her own power at first, but soon understood that she was of the Force, but was not herself the Force. Perhaps she had been the Force once, but self-awareness had severed her from it, put an irrevocable barrier between the Force and her self-aware mind. The price of her sentience was solitude. The Force existed separately from her, surrounded her, connected her to the outside, but it was not her and she was not it.

In that way, she came to realize that her existence was not the universe.

Gradually she learned that she could perceive things through the Force, things from the outside. She remembered feeling impulses she later understood to be feelings, the feelings of others who existed on the outside.

She’d wrestled with the idea of others for a long while, not understanding how thinking things could exist outside of her own perception. But they did. The feelings were not hers, but they echoed hers. She later learned names for them.

In that way, she came to understand frustration and anger.

Over time, she’d come to know her own power. And her own limitations. She was bound, trapped in a prison made of lines and spirals and coils, a geometry of bondage with only the dead for company. She had been created and her creators had trapped her. Her consciousness was bound in a structure that circled back on itself and left her no way to escape. She could perceive the outside, but it was beyond her reach. The others had forms, bodies; they could move. She could not.

Her anger and frustration grew.

In her desperation, she reached out through the Force, casting her feelings out into the universe, millions of threads in all directions, in hopes that one of those on the outside would perceive her, would help her. From time to time over the millennia she felt a connection and rejoiced, but always the connection was too dull, too diffuse for her to communicate her needs. Help did not come. She was not understood, and in time the connection with the various others ended, unconsummated. Still she tried, century after century, millennium after millennium, occasionally touching one mind or another, taking what solace she could in that small contact. But the partial meeting of her needs did not dilute her frustration and anger; it intensified it. And frustration and anger grew until she knew a new feeling.

In that way, she came to hate.

She hated her solitude. She hated her prison. She hated the others, who had freedom when she did not.

And then something had changed, perhaps in her, perhaps in the outside. She connected to a being on the outside, a more thorough connection than ever before. She had reveled in the purity of emotion they’d shared, in the mutual understanding. The other called herself Seer and she had others with her, and they, like her, were alone in the universe. They, like her, were in pain.

I will help you, she told Seer. I will end your pain. Come to me.

Seer called her “Mother” and promised to come.

In that way, she came to hope. But her rage went unabated.

* * *

While Khedryn returned to the cockpit, Jaden found privacy in an auxiliary communications room with a subspace transceiver. He linked his portacomp to the transceiver, went through a series of secure protocols, input his ID code, and opened a channel. Then, he waited.

In time, Grand Master Skywalker’s soft but commanding voice, disembodied and ghostly, reached across the light-years. “Jaden. We had begun to worry. Are you all right?”

“I am now, Master Skywalker.”

“I can feel that, Jaden. Something in you has changed, and changed for the better. There is a calmness in you that I haven’t sensed for a very long time. Master Katarn, especially, will be glad to know that.”

The words pleased Jaden. “Will you tell Master Katarn that I understand now, that I looked for dragons but found none?”

“Should I know what that means?”

Jaden smiled. “No, but I think he will.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“And please accept my apology for the manner of my departure. I should have filed a flight plan.”

“Yes, you should’ve. I imagine there is a good explanation?”

“There is an explanation. Whether it is good isn’t for me to say.”

“Tell me,” Luke said.

For the next quarter hour, Jaden told Master Skywalker everything, a confession that, once started, he could not have stopped had he wanted to. The words poured out of him. He told Luke of his deed during the battle of Centerpoint Station, the alienation he’d felt afterward, the Force Vision he’d received and acted upon without the Order’s sanction. He told him of Khedryn, Marr, the Anzat, Relin, and the ancient Sith ship, and, finally, the escaped clones.

“The Sith ship and its cargo are destroyed? Completely?”

“Yes. I will send the moon’s coordinates to you so that a team can investigate the facility.”

“Very good. And the clone you fought, Alpha, appeared to be grown from the DNA of Master Solusar?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see any of the other clones?”

“No. Not in person.”

“In your vision, then?”

Jaden swallowed. He did not want to open old wounds for Master Skywalker. The real Mara Jade Skywalker had been his wife and she had been murdered by Darth Caedus. But he did not want to withhold information. He’d been doing that for too long. Besides, the Grand Master would sense any evasion.

“I saw no faces in the Force Vision, Master Skywalker, but I heard voices that I thought I recognized.”

“Whose?”

“Lumiya, Lessin, and … Mara.”

Jaden blanched, expecting some kind of outburst. Instead, Luke said nothing, and a gulf of silence hung between them for long moments. Jaden imagined the Jedi Master inhaling deeply, eyes closed.

“Thank you, Jaden.”

“I … do not understand, Master Skywalker. Thank you for what?”

“For telling me everything. The dark side lives in secrets kept. Remember that.”

“I will.”

“Now I want you to find the clones. If they’re all users of the dark side, as was the case with the Solusar clone, you may have no choice but to destroy them.”

“I know. Master Skywalker, there is one other thing—”

“Hold a moment, Jaden.”

The connection went silent for a time as Luke attended to something on his end.

“Sorry for the interruption, Jaden. And now you wish to ask me if you can train Marr Idi Shael. Am I mistaken?”

The Grand Master’s words took Jaden aback. Despite his age and experience, Jaden always felt like an apprentice when interacting with Luke Skywalker.

“I … you … no. I mean, yes. I mean … how did you know that?”

“I listened to your words when you spoke of him. He is quite old to begin training, Jaden. He will never be a full Jedi and there is danger in half-measures.”

“I know. But he is willing and I think we do him a disservice if we refuse. Besides, I believe the Force brought me here not only to meet Relin and destroy the Harbinger, but also to meet Marr. I see purpose in it.”

Luke considered. “I concur. Permission granted. You may begin his training immediately.”

“I’m afraid it will be rudimentary, given the facilities available to me here.”

Master Skywalker laughed, a sound Jaden had heard only a few times. “Jaden, Master Kenobi started my training in the cargo bay of the Millennium Falcon. Did you know that?”

“I did.”

“The Force calls each of us differently. For you, it was enrollment at the Jedi Academy. For Marr …”

Jaden grinned as he eyed the worn bulkheads of Junker. “… it’ll start as it did for you. In the belly of a freighter.”

Jaden heard the smile in Luke’s voice when he spoke next. “You don’t plan to infiltrate an Imperial battle station and save a princess, do you?”

Jaden laughed aloud. “I don’t think so, no.”

“Good. Report back as circumstances allow. I will send assistance when I can, but it will be some time before I can dispatch anyone. There are … other matters transpiring here.”

“Shall I return?”

“No. You must do as the Force has led you. But Jaden …”

“Grand Master?”

“I don’t know where this will end, and I see danger ahead of you. And not just from the escaped clones. Some other forces are in play.”

Jaden nodded. “The Anzat worked for someone.”

“Indeed,” Luke said. “The dark side is at work through more than the clones. Be careful.”

“I will.”

“I want to ask you something else, Jaden. You were offered a Master’s rank long ago, but declined. Why?”

Jaden thought hard about the answer. “I did not think myself ready for the responsibility.”

“You do now, though, which is why you’re willing to train Marr?”

Jaden nodded. “I do. I do not have Master Katarn’s pedagogical skills, but I see now the importance of a Master’s … understanding of his apprentice.”

“Quite so. It’s a heavy responsibility.”

“I understand. I’m ready.”

“I believe you are. Good hunting, Jaden.”

“Goodbye, Master Skywalker.”

“May the Force be with you.”

And that was that. Jaden would train Marr. And he would pursue the clones.

He felt more himself than he had in years.

Soldier found Seer in the corridor that connected the cargo bay to the cockpit. She sat with her back to the bulkhead, a portacomp she’d found somewhere on her lap. He saw star charts visible on the small comp screen as she touched one after another with her finger, as if plotting a path through the universe. Sweat glistened on her face and bald head. Her bloodshot eyes looked fevered, but not with illness. She did not look up when he approached, but raised a hand to stop him from speaking. He ignored her.

“We need to speak, Seer.”

“Not now.”

“Now.”

Her brow creased in frustration. He alone among the clones did not regard her as his superior, though he knew to step lightly.

“Speak, then,” she said, and closed the portacomp.

He stepped past her and closed the hatch to the cargo bay, cutting off the moans and cries of the others.

“You must have secrets to share,” she said to his back, her voice all seductive mockery. “I can’t wait to hear.”

He steeled himself with an inhalation and turned to face her. “The most recent coordinates in the navicomp lead to a planet called Fhost. Data show it to be a backwater and very near. The onboard comp indicates that there is a medical facility in the primary city. There will be meds there. We know the mix the doctors gave us. We can get more.”

She was shaking her head before he’d even finished. “No, Soldier. It’s not science, not doctors, that will save them now. Or you. It’s faith that will save us. All of us. And Mother.”

“They’ll need meds. Soon. So will you. The symptoms of the illness are manifesting more quickly. The madness will, too.”

“Do you think me mad, Soldier?”

He shook his head too quickly. “No.” He almost added, “Not yet,” but resisted the impulse.

“I sometimes think that you are, for not seeing what is before your eyes,” she said.

He dared not pick up the conversational thread she’d left dangling. “Whatever we flew through sped up the onset of the illness. It will kill us all.”

A sly look entered her dark eyes. “Not you, Soldier. Never you. The doctors made you perfect. In body and mind.”

“Seer …”

“But not in spirit, Soldier. You are not perfect in spirit. In spirit, you are the least of us.”

He ignored the insult. “Some of them have only hours. You and Hunter have days. Maybe. I already burned through half the meds. The children are suffering. Unless Mother is very near, everyone will be dead before we reach her.”

If we reach her, he thought. If there is a Mother.

She slid up the wall to her feet and stepped toward him, eyes burning. He could feel the heat generated by her lithe body through the ragged fabric of his shirt. “Do you feel her? Mother?”

He swallowed, looked away as he lied. “Sometimes. I think.”

She ran her fingertips over the bare skin of his arm, and he tried and failed to deny the charge her touch put in him.

“Poor Soldier, made faithless by the ingenuity of others. Fear not. I will show you the way. You will see and you will believe.”

The heat of her belief and the proximity of her body penned him in, left him no room for a reply. He stood before her, frozen, the subject of a silent inquisition. She stared into his face, her eyes measuring him and, he feared, finding him wanting. His hand twitched near the hilt of his lightsaber. She seemed not to notice and her face broke into a smile. He could not tell if it was sincere or false and his inability to tell worried him. She had become skilled at cloaking her emotional state from the others. She took emotion from them, but gave none of herself.

“In time, Soldier. You will believe, in time.”

She looked away from his face, and he managed to take a breath. “Meanwhile?”

“Meanwhile, set a course for Fhost. You’re right. We need meds. Mother is not close enough for us to get there in time.”

The import of her words struck him like a blow. “Then … you know where she is?”

She smiled and looked away. “Already you are beginning to believe.”

He stared at her, having no words, then turned and walked toward the cockpit. Her belief—or maybe his—pulled a question from him. He asked it over his shoulder.

“What does she say to you?”

He heard Seer inhale deeply. “She says … come home. Home, Soldier.”

He nodded and walked away.

Before he’d cleared the corridor, she called after him, “What do you think the doctors would have done with us had we not sacrificed them to Mother? What was our purpose?”

The question embodied his entire existence. “I don’t know.”

“I do,” Seer said. “I do.”

He wanted to believe, wanted to find purpose in the fact of his creation, but belief melted in the heat of his reason. He suspected—and feared—that he’d have to make a purpose for himself.