Star Wars Riptide

NYSS FELT A SENSE OF LOSS AS THE SCOUT FLYER CAME out of hyperspace and realspace hit him like cold water to the face. Hyperspace was the hole in the galaxy that mirrored the hole in his being. He enjoyed his time in it, emptiness communing with emptiness.

Syll partially undimmed the cockpit’s transparisteel to reveal the mostly brown sphere of Fhost, backlit by its distant orange star.

Nyss engaged the ion engines and the ship blazed through the system. Planetary authorities did not comm them. Likely the technology on a backwater planet like Fhost could not even detect the scout flyer. Its baffles and cloaked propulsion system made it difficult for even up-to-date tech to get a fix on.

As they closed on Fhost, Nyss activated the tracking system attuned to the beacon the One Sith had placed on the cloakshape fighter. He waited for it to retrieve the signal. It took only moments.

He zeroed in on the location. A hologram of Fhost’s surface appeared above his comp station, the transparent image of the planet turning rapidly as the program pinpointed the location of the beacon.

“It’s twenty kilometers outside of the planet’s largest city,” he said. “Farpoint.”

“What’s there?”

“Nothing,” he said. “They may have ditched it.”

“Then we must hope they’re still on-planet.”

Nyss knew the clones were sick and prone to madness—all clones from Thrawn’s program were. If they were still on Fhost, they’d almost certainly do something to attract the attention of the authorities.

“Monitor the planetary authorities’ frequencies.”

Syll set the comm to scan planetary frequencies originating in Farpoint. Meanwhile, they closed on the planet and burned through its atmosphere. Planetary control still did not comm them.

Tracking the beacon, they flew low and set down in a wood half a kilometer from the clones’ ship. Once on the ground, they donned light-inhibiting goggles that doubled as macrobinoculars, checked their vibroblade knives, and slung their crossbows over their backs. Neither used blasters—too crude a weapon for their work. Their crossbow quarrels killed just as effectively as blaster fire and did so in relative silence.

They departed the ship via the small exit lift and glided through the forest. The goggles shielded them from the annoyance of the sun where the forest canopy did not provide shade. In silence they flitted from shadow to shadow. The sounds of the forest—the songs of native birds, the chirps of insects—did not change. Even the animals failed to note their passage.

In a short while they reached the edge of a large clearing. The cloakshape fighter sat in the center of the clearing, landing skids sunk deeply into the damp ground. The large cargo bay, added at some point in the past to the modular ship, hung from the craft’s middle like a fat belly. The cargo bay door yawned, revealing a dark interior.

Hidden in the tree line, Nyss increased the magnification of his goggles and eyed what he could see of the inside. Bits of machinery and ragged clothing were cast about like flotsam, a toppled stasis chamber. There was also a body, female. She looked dead. He watched for a while longer and saw no movement in the hold.

In the handcant he and Syll had developed as children, he signaled, One body. I’ll go in. You cover.

She nodded, unslung her crossbow, fitted it with one of the razor-tip quarrels they favored, and took sight at the doorway.

Nyss put a vibroblade in each hand, the familiar vibrations of the weapons welcome in his palms. He slipped from the shadows and darted across the clearing. He consciously restrained the Force-suppressing field he could generate around him. If any of the clones were inside, they would be alerted if their connection to the Force were severed.

He could smell the decay before he reached the ship. He lurked at the boarding ramp for a moment, head cocked, listening. Hearing nothing, he signaled back to Syll that he was going in, and then hurried up the ramp.

Inside the cargo bay, the smell hit him more strongly. He noted the bodies. Their clothing consisted of worn layers of Thrawn-era Imperial garb, their hair long, thick, and unkempt. Clones. He noted a male, a female, and two young children, a boy and girl.

The clones had children.

He could tell at a glance that the male was not the Prime—the face was wrong—so he took his time in examining the bodies. The woman had died first, and the burst boils and sores that covered her skin showed that she had died in pain, no doubt of some illness associated with genetic decoherence. He’d never seen a case so acute. He’d never heard of a case so acute. A long scar ran from the bottom of her throat to her navel, a zipper put there by one of Thrawn’s doctors decades earlier. He put his fingers on the lightsaber hilt still affixed to her belt. The crystal that powered it, connected as it was to the Force, felt like an itch behind his eyes.

He moved to the children, saw no visible wounds on them. He assumed that the decoherence had manifested differently in them, born as they were, rather than grown.

The adult male, on the other hand, had died in combat. His skin was seared on the arms and chest—perhaps from Force lightning, but that had not been his cause of death. Given the hemorrhaging in his eyes, the bruises on his throat, Nyss judged that he’d died of suffocation.

He stood, thinking. The clones from the moon were dying from complications associated with genetic decoherence. For some reason, the decoherence in these clones had resulted in symptoms far more acute than usual. Eleven clones had fled the moon in the cloakshape fighter. Assuming they had not disposed of other bodies en route, four were dead, the Prime not among them.

He whispered into his comlink. “Four dead inside. I’ll check the rest of the—”

The sizzle and hum of igniting lightsabers pulled him around.

A male clone, well over two meters tall, his long brown hair and thick beard obscuring much of his face, stood in the narrow hatchway that led from the cargo bay toward the cockpit. He was soaked in sweat and swayed on his feet. His glassy eyes fixed on Nyss.

A red lightsaber burned in each of his hands. Both of them sizzled, spitting sparks like a campfire.

“Get away from them,” the clone said, his speech slurred but his intent clear. He took a lurching step toward Nyss.

“I am looking for the rest of your … family,” Nyss said. He readied himself, held his blades under his cloak, shielded from the clone’s view.

The clone took another step toward him, his breathing loud and rapid. He sniffed the air in Nyss’s direction, as if for spoor.

“You want to kill them,” he said. The flesh of his arms shifted and bulged, as if something within him were trying to escape the prison of his skin. He stared wide-eyed at his arms, then his face, too, twisted and swelled, for a moment looking like a reflection in a festival mirror.

“No!” he said, spraying spit.

Nyss had never seen anything like it. “I can help you,” he said, a lie.

The clone shook his head like an animal and roared, and Nyss saw only pain and rage in his wild eyes. He was lost to reason.

Nyss released his hold on his suppressive field, willed it to expand—but he was too late. The clone made a cutting gesture with his hand, and a blast of energy blew Nyss across the cargo bay and into the toppled stasis chamber. The impact sent a shock of pain through him.

Growling like a beast, the clone bounded across the cargo bay, blades held high and spitting sparks. Nyss leapt to his feet and let the clone come.

Rage prevented the clone from sensing when he first entered Nyss’s suppressive field. He stabbed both blades at Nyss’s abdomen, but Nyss flipped backward atop the stasis chamber. The blades sank halfway into the metal, melting a good chunk of it to slag and warming the rest.

“Where are the other clones?” Nyss said calmly. Shadows coalesced around him, as they always did when he used his power.

The clone pulled his blades free and crosscut for Nyss’s legs. Nyss flipped over the blades, over the clone, and landed behind him, all the while intensifying his suppressive field. The darkness in the cargo bay deepened, as if the sun outside had moved behind thick clouds.

The clone spun in a reverse crosscut at Nyss’s neck and Nyss ducked under it; the clone stabbed with his off hand at Nyss’s abdomen and Nyss sidestepped it.

“Where? Tell me where they went.”

The clone roared in frustration and anger, spraying snot and spit. He raised both blades above his head for a killing strike. Nyss realized that he would get nothing from the clone. He sharpened his suppressive field as the clone swung his lightsabers down in arcs intended to cut Nyss in half twice over.

Nyss did not bother to dodge the blows as the weapons descended, merely stared into the face of the clone, whose expression turned from satisfied rage to profound surprise.

Nyss’s intensified field had momentarily severed the connection between the power crystal in the lightsaber and the Force. The clone held only hilts in his hands.

With regret, Nyss thrust one of his vibroblades into the clone’s chest. Warm blood gushed from the wound, soaked the weapon, his hand. The clone, wide-eyed, openmouthed, stared at Nyss until the light went out of his eyes and he fell to the floor of the cargo bay.

Syll, her crossbow at the ready, sprinted up the boarding ramp and took in the scene. Her lower lip curled in distaste when she saw the mess. “You’re all right?” she asked him.

“I’m fine,” he said, staring down at the clone, whose eyes remained open, filled with madness even in death.

“It’s amazing how far the One Sith have improved Thrawn’s cloning technology.” He knelt and wiped his blade on the clone’s coarse cloak. “These are the very best that Thrawn’s scientists could produce.”

Syll stood next to him, looking down at the body of the clone. “The Prime is the best that Thrawn could produce. And he did what Thrawn wanted. Thrawn just didn’t live to activate him.”

“Six more of the clones are unaccounted for,” Nyss said.

“We should search the ship,” she said, but Nyss was already shaking his head.

“A waste of time. They went to Farpoint.”

Syll glanced about the cargo bay, at the bodies, the mess. “Why?”

Nyss shrugged. “Supplies, maybe.” His gaze fell on the female clone, dead from decoherence. “They’re sick, very sick. They may not understand what they have. I don’t understand what they have.”

Syll knelt and picked something up off the floor. She held it up for Nyss to see—a used pre-prepped hypo.

“And there’s another,” she said, pointing at a second hypo on the floor. “And another.”

He read the preprinted labels on the hypo. “Perhaps they know what they have after all.”

“They went to Farpoint for medicine,” said Syll.

“Let’s go get them.”

They ran out of the cloakshape fighter, through the woods, and back to the scout flyer.

The relative darkness of the flyer’s cockpit was a welcome respite from the outside glare. Syll monitored local frequencies as Nyss engaged the ship’s thrusters. The ship rose straight up above the forest’s canopy. A 3-D map of Fhost’s surface appeared in Nyss’s HUD, a small red light blinking over Farpoint.

“There’s a landing field west of the city,” he said. “We’ll put down there, see if we can locate the clones.”

Syll held up a finger for silence, listening to something she was hearing on local frequencies.

“Someone has attacked Farpoint’s medical facility,” she said.

Nyss reprogrammed the HUD to show him the medical facility, a ten-story spike driven into the center of Farpoint. It looked like a dart, pinning Farpoint to the surface.

“Reports vary between three and six attackers,” Syll said, still listening.

“It has to be them,” Nyss said. “They’re trying to get the medicine they need.”

He climbed to altitude and engaged the engines. The scout flyer streaked through Fhost’s sky, rapidly closing the distance to Farpoint.

From a distance, the city looked like a ship that had been stretched on its ends until it broke apart, its pieces scattering across a couple of kilometers. The spire of the medical center rose out of the decrepitude, impossible to miss. Nyss noted a landing pad on the roof, its large doors folded open. As he watched, a YT-class freighter streaked in and descended onto the landing pad.

YT-class freighters were as common as desperation in the Outer Rim, but its appearance right there, right then, gave Nyss pause. Syll voiced his thoughts.

“The spacers and Korr flew a YT, according to the Anzat’s reports.”

“Yes,” Nyss agreed.

Perhaps they could hit two targets with one shot.

A few dozen swoops and speeder bikes dotted the sky over Farpoint. Sirens flashed red on several that flew near the medical center. Smoke spiraled into the sky from somewhere else in the city, far from the medical center.

“You take the stick,” Nyss said to Syll. “Take me over the landing pad, but don’t land.”

“What will you do?”

“I’m jumping,” Nyss said. “Be ready. When I have the Prime and Korr, I’ll signal you on our usual channel.”

“Go,” she said.

The medical center loomed large through the cockpit transparisteel. Nyss pulled on his goggles, then hurried into the rear compartment, where they stored equipment. There, he took an antigrav pack, strapped it on, and stepped into the airlock.

“Almost there,” Syll said over her comlink. “Reports have the clones in the stairwells and coming up. That has to be the spacer’s freighter. It’s got a modified ship’s boat instead of an escape pod.”

Nyss took hold of one of the bars bolted to the wall of the airlock and pressed the button to open the hatch. Wind and light and the scream of sirens blazed into the tiny compartment. Still holding the grip, he leaned out and looked down.

The scout flyer was almost upon the medical center. Nyss could see the landing pad ahead. The YT had set down near another ship, a large, cylindrical supply ship of some kind.

“Over in three, two, one. Mark.”

Syll slowed for only a moment, and Nyss did not hesitate. He leapt from the airlock, spread his arms and legs to catch the wind, and fell free toward the building’s landing pad.

The duracrete rectangle sped up to meet him. He waited, waited, then engaged the antigrav pack at the last moment. He fell the final ten meters at walking speed, hit the metal of the landing pad in a roll, bounced to his feet, and sprinted into the shadow of the large ship. There, he stripped off the antigrav pack. The shining star of Pharmstar Industries marked its side: it was a medical supply ship.

Loading droids milled about on the far end of the ship, preparing to unload it. Nyss drew the darkness to him and sank into the shadows near a stack of shipping containers. The droids did not see him.

He knew exactly what the clones intended. They were not attacking the medical center, at least not primarily. Into his comlink, he whispered, “They’re going to hijack the medical supply ship on the pad.”

Syll’s soft tones answered him. “Jaden Korr will try to stop them.”

As if summoned by her words, the landing ramp of the YT descended and he saw Jaden Korr and the Cerean, Marr Idi Shael, standing in the open hatch. Had Jaden been alone, Nyss might have made an attempt then and there.

As it was, he remained in hiding, unseen, and watched.

The moment Junker touched down, Jaden and Marr bounded out of the cargo bay and onto the landing pad. Khedryn’s voice carried over the comlink, ghostly.

“Be careful.”

Jaden looked back at Junker and saw Khedryn through the transparisteel off the cockpit, giving them a thumbs-up.

Marr ran for the doorway that opened onto the east stairwell. Jaden headed for the west stair, but diverted toward the medical supply ship. A half-dozen loading droids stood beside the ship, waiting for the lateral cargo bay doors to open so that they could begin unloading.

“May I help you, sir?” asked one of the droids.

Ignoring it, Jaden activated a beacon and tossed it high up on the ship’s side, where it stuck to the hull. He caught a peculiar ripple in the Force, an odd twinge, but it passed instantly. He looked around, saw nothing, and assumed it had something to do with the clones. He switched channels on his comlink and raised R-6.

“Ar-Six, I just placed a signal beacon on a ship that may try to leave the system.” He gave R-6 the signal frequency. “If that ship lifts off and you don’t hear from me, you inform the Order that I believe the escaped clones are aboard.”

R-6 beeped an affirmative, then added a bit more in droidspeak.

“Don’t worry,” Jaden said. “I’ll be careful.”

He augmented his speed with the Force and reached the door to the west stairwell just after Marr reached the east. The Cerean held his lightsaber in one hand, his blaster in the other. He opened the door and entered without looking back.

Jaden threw open the west door and entered the stairwell. The sound of alarms carried from far below. The flights of stairs formed a perimeter around a deep, square stairwell. He leaned over the railing and looked down. The angle did not allow him to see the stairs very clearly, but he heard doors opening and closing on several floors below him. He also heard the sounds of hurried footsteps, frightened whispers.

He activated his comlink and whispered to Marr, “I think there are civilians on the stairs. Be mindful.”

“I will,” Marr whispered in answer.

Nyss considered his options. He needed to get to Korr, but he needed Korr alone. He could not risk exposing the One Sith’s involvement unless he was certain of success. Indecision ate away the moments. It would do him little good to involve himself in a combat between Korr and the Prime.

“They are inside the building,” he whispered to Syll.

“If he dies, then it’s all for nothing.”

Nyss’s reply was sharp. “I know that. But if we’re discovered, it’s worse.”

To that, Syll did not reply.

Jaden started down the stairs—past the ninth floor, the eighth. On each floor, he opened the stairwell door and poked his head out into the hallway of the medical center proper, looking for anything unusual. The halls were empty but for the occasional furtive passage of a doctor or nurse. An alarm sounded. A voice over the speakers instructed all personnel and patients to remain in their rooms. When anyone saw Jaden, fear filled their eyes. He smiled and did his best to look harmless before returning to the stairwell. He continued in that fashion—the seventh floor, the sixth, listening for anything unusual, waiting, waiting.…

A sudden scream startled him; it was followed by shouts from three floors below, then the sound of an activating lightsaber, another, then another. Blaster shots, then more screams.

“My side, third floor, in the stairwell,” he said to Marr over his comlink, as he activated his lightsaber and leapt over the railing and down the shaft. He used the Force to slow his descent and grabbed the fourth-floor railing as he fell. The moment his free hand closed on it, he augmented his strength and pulled himself up, arresting his fall and flipping onto the stairway between the fourth and fifth floors.

He landed face-to-face with a startled nurse who had been trying to flee up the stairs to the fifth-floor landing. Two security guards lay dead on the fourth-floor landing behind her, the black holes in their chests still leaking smoke.

The woman opened her mouth to scream, but Jaden shoved her behind him before she could get a peep out.

“Get out of here,” he said, hearing footsteps coming up the stairs at a jog and feeling the dark side press against his consciousness.

One of the clones turned the corner of the stairs below him. He looked vaguely familiar to Jaden, but his long beard and shaggy hair made his features hard to discern. He wore a threadbare Imperial uniform a size too small, the whole covered in a gray cloak made from sewn blankets. The red blade of his lightsaber sizzled and sparked, its edges irregular.

The clone’s wild, bloodshot eyes widened when he saw Jaden. Jaden took advantage of the clone’s surprise. He drew on the Force, extended a hand, and struck the clone with a blast of concussive energy so strong it blew the clone back down the stairs and drove him into the floor. The clone lay there, dazed.

“Runner!” said a female voice.

Jaden took the stairs three at a time, bounded past the fallen clone, and saw two more—a woman, lithe and bald, and a man, tall, with long, straight brown hair and a beard. The woman carried a small girl. The man carried an unconscious woman, but when he saw Jaden, he let her slide to the ground and activated his lightsaber, red and angry.

Jaden lunged forward. The woman backed off a step, shielding the child, and the man met his charge, parrying Jaden’s overhand slash with his red blade.

Across the intersected blades, Jaden locked eyes with the clone—and gasped.

He was staring into gray eyes the mirror of his own.

The realization took a moment to register, and when it did, it hit him like a punch in the face, staggering him. He lost focus, lost his concentration. The realization pulled a single word from him as implications crashed down on him.

“How?”

The clone unleashed a blast of Force that drove Jaden up against the far wall. Jaden recovered himself enough to cushion the impact with the Force, but the clone followed up immediately, leaping forward and unleashing a crosscut at Jaden’s throat.

Jaden ducked under the red blade at the last moment and it cut a deep groove in the wall, causing a shower of sparks. He kicked out a leg and swept the clone’s legs, but instead of falling prone, the clone caught himself on one hand before hitting the ground, pushed off, and backflipped away from Jaden.

Battle cleared the surprise from Jaden’s mind, and the moment the clone’s feet touched the ground, Jaden unleashed a blast of power designed to slam him into the wall.

The clone snarled, held up a hand, palm outward, and met Jaden’s blast with his own. Power pressed against power and Jaden and the clone eyed each other across the landing, jaws fixed, eyes locked, neither gaining the advantage.

On the stairway above him and to his left, Jaden saw the clone he had dazed rise to his feet and shake his head, growling. His angry eyes fixed on Jaden. He gestured with both hands, and sent a burst of power at the Jedi.

Jaden held out his left hand—his maimed hand—at the last moment, intercepted the blast, and answered with his own power. The clone’s push caused him to stagger, but he nested himself in the Force and stood his ground against both clones. He held his hands out, the clones’ power pressing at him from right angles. The yellow line of his lightsaber, which he still held in his left had, sizzled before his eyes. The effort squeezed sweat from him, taxed mind and body. He took a step back, another, and found himself pressed against the wall. He could not hold out for long.

The female clone stared at him, a strange smile on her face. Her strong jaw and almond-shaped eyes clicked in Jaden’s memory and he recognized her as a clone of the Dark Jedi Lumiya. Her baldness had thrown him at first. The child, her face dirty, her long red hair matted, did not move at all.

“What do you want?” Jaden asked through gritted teeth.

“To go home,” the Lumiya-clone said.

“I can’t allow that,” Jaden said.

Her smile deepened. “You cannot stop us. No one can. Mother has called.”

As one, the two male clones took a step toward Jaden, their power pressing against him. He fell to one knee, grunting against their onslaught, barely holding on.

They took another step and he fell to both knees.

The larger of the two grinned. Jaden recognized him now, behind the beard and hair. He was a clone of Jaden’s Master, Kyle Katarn. Anger poured off both clones, anger born of years of frustration and mistreatment. It hit Jaden like a hailstorm. His elbows bent. He was failing, failing.

But he refused to give in.

He grunted, summoned a reserve of strength, extended his arms fully, pushed back against the clones, stood up, and held his ground.

“I won’t let you pass,” he grunted. “I can’t.”

His words erased the smile on the Lumiya-clone’s face. She shrieked, her calm façade shattering under the sudden expression of her rage. Power went forth from her, joined that of the other two clones, and slammed him against the wall.

“Kill him, Soldier!” she screamed. “Kill him!”

The Jaden-clone deactivated his lightsaber and raised his free hand, fingers spread like a claw. Jaden knew instantly what was coming and braced himself as blue Force lightning filled the distance between them.

Jaden adjusted his blade slightly and the lightning caught in it, snaked around its length, spiraled toward the hilt, hit Jaden’s hand, his forearm, his bicep.

The power burned his flesh while turning his spirit cold. He grimaced with pain. Trying to resist, he opened himself fully to the Force, but the clone’s power was too much.

He screamed, took his lightsaber hilt in both hands and spun it before him, winding the Force lightning back up along its blade and away from his body. But his focus on the lightning cost him, and a renewed push from the Katarn-clone slammed him against the wall. The side of his face hit the duracrete and he sagged to the floor, struggling to maintain consciousness.

The Jaden-clone, Soldier, walked toward him.

“Just let us go, Jedi,” he said.

Jaden’s tongue and lips would not make words, so he shook his head.

The lightning sizzled again, the power pushing him along the floor, burning his flesh, searing his spirit. He was still holding his blade, still managing to deflect the bulk of the energy. He just needed to regain his wits, his clarity of thought.

The other clone, the Katarn-clone, appeared before him. Jaden had not seen him approach. His red blade cut down to split Jaden’s head. Jaden blocked awkwardly with his blade, which was still enmeshed in Force lightning. The clone snarled, then loosed a Force-augmented kick to the side of Jaden’s face that caused him to see stars and sent him careering down the stairs. He hit the next landing, and, fearing a follow-up attack, staggered to his feet, wobbly, weaving, unable to see clearly. He saw them above him, tried to ready himself, but a misstep sent him tumbling down the next flight of stairs.

He hit his head again. Blackness beckoned and he could not resist it.

Marr fought to keep calm as he darted through the medical facility’s hallways. He sprinted past a few doctors, nurses, patients on gurneys, medical and maintenance droids.

“Who are you?” someone shouted.

He left unanswered questions and alarmed glances in his wake, holding his purple lightsaber in one hand, his blaster in the other. He could see the building’s schematic in his mind and headed directly for the stairwell access door.

He shouldered through it, blaster and blade ready, and nearly tripped over Jaden’s prone form.

“Master!”

He heard footsteps on the stairs far above them, voices, but saw no sign of the clones. He considered following, but only for a moment. His Master had ordered him not to engage them alone.

He knelt over Jaden. The side of his Master’s face was discolored, his lip split, his right eye filled with blood from burst capillaries. But he was breathing. Marr tapped Jaden’s cheeks but got no response.

He squeezed his comlink and raised Khedryn.

“Jaden is down, Khedryn. The clones are heading for the supply ship. Get it airborne or get everyone out of it.”

“Jaden is down? What does that mean?”

“Go, Khedryn,” Marr said, “Go, now!”

Cursing, Khedryn strapped on his blaster, jumped out of his seat, and tore through Junker, through the cargo bay, and down the landing ramp. He ran straight for the medical supply ship. When he got near the cockpit, he started shouting and waving his hands.

Through the transparisteel of the cockpit, he saw the crew still in their seats, probably going through some postlanding checklist, or perhaps trying to raise the medical facility—to no avail.

The three cargo doors hung open and the treaded loading droids were beginning to unload the materials. Khedryn hated droids—the blasted things performed their tasks without exercising judgment of any kind. The building could have been falling down and they’d continue unloading throughout.

“Raise the crew!” he shouted to the nearest droid. “Tell them to take off.”

The droids either did not hear him or wouldn’t acknowledge him.

He cursed and ran into the ship. The droids protested behind him—now they noticed him—but he ignored them. He pelted through the cargo bay, loaded with stacks of shipping containers, and made his way to the bridge, shouting the entire time.

Nyss slipped from the shadows and followed the freighter pilot onto the medical supply ship. He trailed him through the cargo bay and toward the cockpit, trying to determine exactly what was happening. “I’m on the supply ship,” he whispered to Syll.

Unable to rouse Jaden, Marr ran out of the stairwell and into the main hall of the medical facility. Wide eyes and alarmed glances greeted his appearance. Someone screamed, perhaps thinking him one of the attackers.

“I’m here to help,” he said absently, looking for a medical locker. He found one mounted on a nearby wall, cut it open with his blade, and removed a packet of Quickwake. He hurried back to the stairwell and cracked the Quickwake tube.

Its ammonia smell cleared Marr’s nostrils and made his eyes water. He placed it under Jaden’s nose. Right away Jaden turned his head away from the stench, gasping. His eyes opened, fixed on Marr.

“Master, what happened?” Marr asked.

“The clones,” Jaden said, and started to sit up. Marr assisted him.

“Up there,” Marr said, and nodded to the stairway. “I’ve alerted Khedryn.”

Leaning on Marr, Jaden climbed to his feet. “Khedryn can’t stop them.”

Khedryn burst through the cockpit door of the supply ship, breathing heavily. The captain, gray-haired and overweight, whirled to face him. The copilot, younger and thin, almost fell out of his chair with surprise.

“I know how this looks,” Khedryn said. “But you’ve got to listen to me. Get this ship off the pad, right now!”

The captain’s initial fear gave way to a look of confusion. “What?”

Khedryn had no time to talk about Sith-Jedi clones, so he lied. “I’m with building security. Criminals are making their way up through the facility right now. They want this ship. Get it out of here.”

That seemed to register. The copilot spun in his chair, starting work at the instrument panel.

The captain said, “It’ll take a few minutes to get the engines back online and close the cargo doors. She won’t fly with the cargo doors open. Corporate safety feature to preserve accidental dumping of cargo.”

Khedryn pinched his comlink. “How much time do they have, Marr?”

No response.

“Marr?”

Khedryn cursed.

“We could just seal the cockpit until the authorities come,” the copilot offered.

Khedyrn shook his head. He knew what a lightsaber could do. If the clones got aboard, there’d be no keeping them out of the cockpit.

“Get off,” Khedryn said.

“What?” the copilot said.

“No,” the captain said, shaking his head. “We can’t abandon the cargo—it comes out of our pay.”

“That’s why corporations have insurance, man. Get off, now. There’s no pay to collect if you’re dead.” When the captain hesitated, Khedryn drew his blaster and leveled it at him. “Now. I’m sorry, but this is for your own good.”

That did it. The captain and copilot stood and Khedryn pushed them through the ship, down the lift, through the corridors, and into the cargo bay.

“Marr?” Khedryn called over his comlink. “Marr?”

“Where are we supposed to go?” the copilot asked. “If they’re coming up the stairway, how do we get out of here?”

“Hide somewhere out on the deck. They don’t care about you. They just want the ship. Marr, do you hear me?”

The captain and copilot ran down the ramp, the captain’s belly bouncing every which way. They stopped at the bottom of the ramp, looked around. The copilot pointed to a stack of shipping containers near Junker and they sprinted toward it.

“Marr, if you can hear me, the crew is off the ship but we can’t get her away in time.”

Still no response. Khedryn began to worry.

He did not head back to Junker. Instead, he ran for the east stairwell.

Nyss lingered in the cargo bay of the supply ship and watched the spacer go. The droids worked around him, oblivious to his presence. He had no idea what had happened with Korr and the clones.

“Anything on the comm channels?” he asked Syll.

“Nothing new,” she answered.

There was little for him to do but wait. He could not risk revealing himself too soon.

Before Khredyn reached the access door to the stairs, it exploded outward from its hinges and clattered on the landing pad. He ducked and shielded his face from flying debris.

The clones hurried out of the doorway, one of the males bearing a wounded adult, the female carrying a child of about nine. The male clones each held a sparking red lightsaber in hand.

“Stop there,” Khedryn said, leveling his blaster.

They did not stop, so he fired at the foremost male—one shot, another, another. The clone, a towering human male with long hair and a thick beard, deflected the shots into the air and started to run toward Khedryn.

Khedryn backed toward the supply ship as fast as he could, still firing. Deflecting every shot, the clone closed on him rapidly. The other clones moved more slowly behind him.

Khedryn kept hoping that Jaden and Marr would emerge from the stairway, but neither did. He was in deep water and he knew it.

Shots came from somewhere in the sky above. They put black streaks on the landing pad near the clone’s feet and knocked him down. Khedryn looked up to see two police officers on armed swoop bikes circling back for another pass.

“Yeah!” he said, and fired at the clone again.

From his knees, the clone deflected his shots without so much as looking at Khedryn, then made a seizing gesture with his off hand.

Above, the swoops’ engines screamed, warring with the clone’s power and losing. The clone made a cutting gesture, his teeth bared in a snarl, and slammed both swoops to the ground near the stack of shipping containers. A fireball blossomed, consuming bikes and riders. The clone stood, his eyes fixed on Khedryn.

Very deep water.

Khedryn turned and sprinted for the supply ship, firing wildly over his shoulder as he went. He had no idea what he would do once he got aboard the ship—seal it up, maybe buy some time for more police to arrive, for Jaden and Marr to get there.

A blast of power hit him in the back and drove him face-first into the metal of the landing pad. His nose crumpled and exploded blood. His teeth scraped along the pad. Only a surge of adrenaline kept him conscious. He got to all fours, turned, and aimed his blaster at the approaching clone.

Before he could squeeze the trigger, the clone gestured and Khedryn’s blaster flew from his hand and into the clone’s.

Khedryn knew he could not get away. He staggered up onto unsteady legs, swallowed, and resolved to die with defiance.

When the clone had closed to within a few paces, Khedryn spat at his feet. Blood and one of his teeth went with the spit.

“Blast you, pal!”

The clone snarled and made a cutting gesture that blew Khedryn backward ten meters and slammed his head against the landing pad.

Pain and blurry sparks, then blackness.