Star Wars Riptide

WE MUST HURRY,” SEER SAID TO SOLDIER, HER VOICE far away, her distant gaze on the infinite black outside the ship. “Mother wants us home.”

Soldier looked at her and saw the slight pulsing beneath her skin. He glanced behind him to Hunter, sitting in one of the crew seats. She gazed back at him, her green eyes still slightly dazed. He wondered if she recognized him, if she remembered what she had said to him when they had left the moon. He doubted it.

He took Seer by the arm. She hissed at his touch, and he felt the movement under her skin.

“You need meds,” he said. He should have brought more to the cockpit from the cargo bay. He hadn’t thought they would need more so soon.

“I need to go home,” she said, and grinned.

Soldier saw madness in the expression.

“I’m finalizing the course inputs,” he said cautiously, and released her arm. “We are going home, Seer. But you have to have meds. All right?”

She said nothing, and he chose to interpret her silence as agreement.

He steered Seer to the copilot’s seat, sat her down, and turned to Hunter.

“I need you to go back to the cargo bay and bring back the meds.”

Hunter’s eyes focused on him, more alert than he’d seen them in days. “Where are they?”

“Forward in the cargo bay. I left the container open. Bring as much as you can carry. Hypos, too. I can mix it here.”

Hunter nodded, stood.

He looked around the cockpit for Grace, under the seats, didn’t see her.

“Where’s Grace?” he asked.

Hunter shrugged and started to head off.

“Find her,” he said. “She shouldn’t be wandering the ship. And tell Runner to get back here, too.”

Soldier would need a copilot. Seer was of no use to him.

Khedryn sat on the floor, head and heart pounding. He pulled against the restraints on his wrist. He winced as they cut into his flesh, as a seep of warm blood made his hand sticky and ran down his forearm.

He tried to make sense of what was happening.

Who was the Umbaran? How had he killed Runner so easily, even deactivating his lightsaber? If he did not work for the Jedi, whom did he work for? And why had he left Khedryn alive?

Khedryn glanced around the dark corridor, looking for anything he could use to free himself. He saw nothing. He struggled again, but the pain put a stop to things almost right away. He cursed with frustration.

A sound to his right gave him a start.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

The little girl from the cockpit crept out of the darkness, as skittish as a fawn. She stared at Khedryn, and at the flexcuffs, her eyes as wide as plates.

“Where is Runner?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Khedryn said softly. “What’s your name?”

“I’m glad he didn’t hurt you,” she said, and started to back away.

“Wait, don’t go,” he said. “I need your help.”

He did not know if she heard him. She turned and ran back down the corridor without a second look, her movement almost as furtive and silent as that of the Umbaran.

Khedryn cursed under his breath. She was gone.

He sat there, alone with himself, trying hard not to think about what would happen next. His breathing sounded loud in his ears.

A sound startled him, metal sliding on metal—a utility knife slid toward him along the floor from the right. The girl emerged out of the darkness. Her shy smile gave way to a look of terror as the illness afflicting the clones distorted her features. Her cheeks bulged, roiled. She screamed, reached up to touch her face, and Khedryn saw that the skin of her hands and arms looked the same. It was as if an army of insects was crawling under her flesh. Her terrified eyes met Khedryn’s.

“Stay there,” he said, stretching for the knife. “I’ll help you.”

But she did not stay. She turned, already weeping, and ran.

Khedryn got the knife, slid its blade out, and cut himself free of the cuffs. He massaged his wrist and thought about what to do. He could make a run for an escape pod, hoping the Umbaran and the clones were too occupied with one another to worry about his escape. After all, the Umbaran said he was not after Khedryn.

But then there was the little girl.

She’d freed him.

He could try to find her, maybe take her with him, but to where? Besides, she was sick and he did not know how to treat her.

Maybe the clones did. He thought of the hypos that littered the floor of the cockpit. They had medicine there.

To help the girl, he would have to make sure the Umbaran didn’t kill the clones. Or he’d have to at least get some of the meds.

The idea ran counter to his instincts, and the last time he hadn’t run when he should have, he had ended up with an Anzat assassin sticking a feeding appendage into his braincase.

But there was the girl to consider.

And he was nothing if not stubborn.

He simply could not abandon the little girl. It wasn’t in him. He’d been a vulnerable child once, back in the ruins of the Redoubt. Skywalker and Mara Jade could have abandoned him and the others, but they hadn’t. They had rescued them all. He wouldn’t abandon the girl. Whatever the Umbaran intended for Khedryn, for the clones, it wasn’t good. He’d have been happy to leave the other clones to their fate, but not the little girl.

Damned Jedi were rubbing off on him.

Sweat slicked his grip on the utility knife. He tried to control his breathing as he moved as quietly as he could through the ship’s dark corridors. He listened from time to time, but heard nothing. In truth, he did not expect to. The Umbaran moved in silence and melded with the shadows as well as someone in an adaptive suit.

He needed to get lucky.

He pulled his last piece of chewstim from his trouser pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it in his mouth.

He’d been unlucky his whole life.

He blew a bubble with the chewstim, popped it quietly.

But he was nothing if not stubborn.

The medicine had brought Hunter back to herself. She remembered almost nothing since leaving the frozen moon. She’d awakened to herself in the cockpit of another stolen ship, the stars wide and dark and deep.

Power surged and ebbed in her, like bursts of electrical current. Her emotions vacillated between controlled ecstasy and contained anger. Her connection to the Force felt deeper, more profound than it ever had in the past. She assumed it was the result of her closer connection to Mother. She’d never felt such potential within herself.

She wished that Alpha had survived, but she understood why he had not—he had failed Mother’s test, had fallen to the Jedi.

So said Seer, and Seer spoke truth.

And Seer had said that they would soon meet Mother. Hunter looked forward to that moment.

She moved through the supply ship’s forward section and took a turbolift down to the belly. The doors opened onto a long corridor lit only by overhead emergency lights. She hit the comlink on the lift and said, “The lighting is out down here.”

No signal. The comm, too, was out.

“Grace,” she called. No response.

She stepped into the hallway and the lift doors closed behind her. Immediately she felt something amiss, a pressure in the air, a tension. She’d been bred by the doctors to stalk prey and she’d learned to trust her instincts.

Excitement caused power to crackle on the end of her fingertips. She put the slim, curved hilt of her lightsaber into her palm but did not activate the blade. Quieting her breathing, she listened but heard nothing.

“Runner?” she called.

She let her eyes adjust to the darkness, then moved to one side of the corridor, where she could keep a wall on her flank, and started off. She walked in silence, a hunter stalking unknown prey. With each step she took, she felt more certain that something had happened to Runner.

Did they have a stowaway? Had the Jedi from the moon gotten aboard somehow?

With her genetically engineered senses, she caught the faint coppery tang of blood in the air. She followed it, moving slowly, alert to any sound other than the ordinary hum of the ship’s engines.

Ahead, a form lay crumpled in the corridor. She eyed it for several seconds, wary.

No movement. No sound but her own steady breathing.

The darkness made it difficult to see, but the body was too big to be Grace. As she neared it, she noted the long ragged cloak favored by Runner, the boots.

“Runner,” she said in a whisper. The body did not move.

She made up her mind, darted forward, and knelt beside it.

Congealing blood covered the floor near Runner, soaked the soles of her boots. She turned his body over. His face was purpled from blows. The hole in his chest had been opened by something sharp and nonenergized, certainly not a lightsaber.

She ran her hands over Runner’s eyes to close them and stood. An object on the floor caught her eye. She picked it up—a crossbow quarrel with a tip like a razor.

Running her thumb over it, she glanced down the corridor to her left, then to her right. She licked her lips, feeling exposed. A sound from down the corridor to her right caught her attention, the whisper of a boot on the floor. She could see nothing. The dim overhead lights barely illuminated the corridor, made the hallway a play of shadows.

A strange feeling struck her. At first she mistook it as the normal ebb and flow of the power within her. She thought that the medicine was diminishing her connection to the Force to prevent the illness from progressing too rapidly. But the feeling did not abate. She felt as if she were circling a drain, falling into a hole, and the rate at which she was falling was accelerating.

The darkness around her deepened. To her left and right, the light in the corridor dimmed to sparks.

She backed against the wall and ignited her blade. The familiar red line comforted her, and in its light she sought her foe. She let her anger build, her anxiety, and used it to connect her more deeply to the Force. But the connection felt loose, attenuated, and getting weaker.

“I know you’re out there,” she said.

She reached out through the Force as best she could, hoping to feel the presence of her opponent.

She felt nothing, just another hole, another vacancy in her perception.

Her calm slipped, replaced by alarm, by burgeoning fear. She bared her teeth and hissed.

Her eyes fell on Runner and she dropped the quarrel. Her blade began to flicker. Fear put down roots in her stomach and spread to the rest of her. She watched, wide-eyed, as the line of her weapon thinned, sizzled, and went out.

Darkness.

She felt entirely separated from the Force, a feeling she had never before experienced, a striking solitude that made her mouth go dry. She was breathing too heavily, betraying her position. She slid along the wall, as quiet as a shadow, her hand sweating around the hilt of her lightsaber, dead metal in her fist.

She needed to get back to the lift, back to Soldier and Seer and Grace. Feeling the wall with one hand, she slowly made her way back the way she’d come.

By the time her mind had processed the sound—the hiss of a fired quarrel—a painful, powerful impact in the side of her chest drove the breath from her lungs and knocked her to the floor.

She wanted to scream from the pain, but she could not seem to fill her burning lungs with air. She climbed to all fours, tried to lift herself up, couldn’t. She saw the shaft of the quarrel sticking out of her rib cage. Blood poured out of her side.

Two feet appeared on the floor before her.

She grabbed at the legs, the movement causing her to hiss with pain, but they stepped out of reach and she skittered on the floor, slick with her own blood, and ended up flat on her stomach. She was dying, alone, separated from the Force, separated from her daughter, her community.

The feet stood before her again.

A supreme effort allowed her to heave her body over. She stared at the ceiling, her breath becoming ever shallower, the pain diminishing as she died.

Her killer took shape in her vision, his silhouette emerging from the darkness as if part of it. Pale hands pulled back a hood to reveal a bald head and a pale face devoid of emotion. His dark eyes looked like holes, the pits into which Hunter’s connection to the Force had drained away.

She tried to speak, to ask him how he had done what he’d done, who he was, why he had killed her, but she could not draw enough breath to speak. Something heavy seemed to be on her chest, preventing her lungs from working. Sparks started to appear in her vision, motes of orange and red that announced a brain receiving too little oxygen.

The apparition of death removed something from under his cloak. A crossbow.

While Hunter fought for breath, for a few more seconds of life, he methodically cocked the crossbow, laid another quarrel atop it, and took aim at her chest. He stared into her face as he pulled the trigger. She felt the impact dully, with no additional pain and then felt nothing more, ever again.

* * *

The darkness on the cargo deck made navigating the ship slow work. Khedryn could not remember the way Runner had brought him; stress had erased it from his memory, and his hurried flight from the Umbaran had further foiled his sense of the ship’s layout. He picked his way along as best he could, following the occasional signs painted on walls. He needed to find the turbolifts, he knew that.

He rounded a corner and froze. Ahead, he saw two bodies. He flattened himself against the wall and watched for a time, listening. He heard nothing.

He approached the bodies at an oblique angle, cautiously, as he might a dangerous animal. He feared he would see the little girl there, her small form broken and bloody on the deck.

He sighed with relief when he saw that one of the dead was Runner and the other an adult female. Two of the Umbaran’s crossbow quarrels stuck out of the female’s chest. Blood pooled on the deck.

The clones’ lightsabers lay near their bodies. With a shrug, he took them and latched them to his belt, even though he had no idea how to operate them. And even if he had, he wouldn’t use it. He’d be more likely to hurt himself with it than an enemy.

He checked the clones for any mundane weapons but found none.

The Umbaran had killed at least two of the clones already. The small utility knife Khedryn bore felt entirely inadequate in his hands.

He rose, looked down the hall. He knew how to get to the turbolifts from here. The Umbaran had probably headed to the cockpit.

Khedryn looked back the way he had come, wondering if the little girl was still on the cargo level. He hoped so, but he had no way to know. He toyed again with the idea of turning around and finding an escape pod. If he took a lift up to the crew deck, he knew, he’d be committed. He’d either succeed or die.

He made up his mind and walked the corridors back to the turbolifts. He hit the button and waited for one to come down. Knowing that the door could open to reveal the Umbaran or one of the clones, he stood to one side, coiled, sweaty fingers wrapped around the hilt of his knife.

The door slid open. The lights were out and he saw movement within. A form emerged and he lunged, the knife held ready for an overhand stab.

Having eliminated two of the clones, Nyss had only to contend with Soldier, the child, and the other female adult, Seer. He needed to move fast to take them down before they noted the absence of Runner and the female.

Merged with the darkness, he hurried to one of the turbolift banks and took a lift up to the crew deck. He flattened himself against the wall as the doors slid open. Hearing nothing, he slid out into hallway.

Ahead maybe fifteen meters was the cockpit. The door stood open. He heard voices within: Soldier; Seer. He heard no alarm in them, so he presumed they had not yet grown concerned about the absence of the other two clones.

Hugging the wall, he glided forward, a vibroblade in one hand, his mind keeping a tight hold on his suppressive field. He lingered in the corridor outside the cockpit. His gear included two stun grenades. He took one from his satchel, pressed the button to activate it, and readied himself.

“The course is set, Seer,” said Soldier.

“Mother is waiting,” replied Seer. “You have done well, Soldier.”

“We’ll see,” Soldier answered.

Nyss loosed his grip on his suppressive field. The lights in the hallway and cockpit dimmed slightly as he extended his power which always manifested in a cloud of dark air, like a black fog.

“Did the lights just dim?” Soldier asked.

Seer made no answer that Nyss could hear.

Nyss intensified the field slowly, incrementally separating the clones from the Force. If he was lucky, they would notice only when it was too late.

The hole in which he existed extended outward from him, deepened, darkened. He felt Seer slipping into it, her connection to the rest of the universe slowly draining away. Soldier, too, fell into it, but only partially. Soldier lingered around the rim, and Nyss was unable to fully sever his connection to the Force.

Odd. Nyss had never before felt resistance to his power.

Perhaps Thrawn actually had cloned a breakthrough Force user.

“Are you all right?” Soldier asked Seer. Nyss heard growing suspicion in his tone.

“Something … is wrong,” Seer said.

Nyss heard a gasp, a muffled thump. He imagined Seer falling to the floor.

“I don’t feel Mother,” Seer said, her voice soft, despondent.

A high-pitched scream from right behind Nyss made him spin around. The girl, her wild red hair haloing a terrified expression, stared wide-eyed at him, one hand raised to her mouth.

How had she sneaked up on him?

He raised his vibroblade for a throw, but the girl turned and ran before he could loose it.

“Grace!” he heard Soldier shout from the cockpit. The hum and sizzle of an activating lightsaber broke the quiet.

Nyss cursed, whirled, and flung the stun grenade blindly, just as Soldier pelted through the cockpit door, red blade and red anger going before him.

Nyss looked away and covered his ears as the grenade exploded with a bright flash and a bang loud enough to almost shatter eardrums. The moment it went off, he drew his other blade and assumed a fighting posture.

Soldier, caught in the tail end of the grenade’s effect, staggered from the blast, wincing.

Nyss bounded toward him and shouldered him into the bulkhead. While Soldier grunted from the impact, Nyss stabbed his vibroblade into the clone’s right forearm. He kept the cut clean and avoided slicing through bone. He did not want Soldier dead, just manageable.

Soldier’s grunt turned to a shout of pain, blood poured from the wound, and he dropped his lightsaber, as Nyss had intended.

Still pressing his body against Soldier’s, Nyss kicked the weapon away. He thought the fight was over, but the clone, only partially affected by Nyss’s power, unleashed a Force-augmented punch to the side of Nyss’s face.

Instinct and training saved Nyss. He rolled with the blow, which otherwise would have shattered his jaw. Instead, it merely staggered him, knocking him back two steps and loosening a couple teeth.

“If you’ve hurt Grace …” Soldier said, shaking his head as if to clear it. Blood poured from the cut on his arm. Rage poured from everywhere else.

Nyss had never before fought a Force user who actually could use the Force in his presence. He knew that surprise was the sole reason he had the upper hand at the moment.

Knowing he could not let up, he took a chance, putting his head down and charging the clone. The Prime braced himself, then slammed a fist down on Nyss’s back, the power in the blow cracking Nyss’s ribs.

Nyss endured the pain, grabbed the clone around his legs, and heaved him to the floor. They hit the deck in a tangled heap, punching and clawing at each other. The clone’s blood smeared Nyss’s face, turned the grapple into a slick, sticky mess.

Nyss struggled to keep his suppressive field in effect, to intensify it, but instead of him pulling Soldier into the hole, Soldier, fueled by his anger, seemed to be pulling Nyss out of it, dragging his existence into the light. Nyss had lived in his hole so long, his existence separate from all but his sister, that the thought of a forced connection to others nearly caused him to panic.

His terror met Soldier’s anger and each held the other in balance, Soldier’s powers weakened but not entirely suppressed, Nyss’s solitary existence threatened but preserved.

Nyss clawed at Soldier’s eyes, and Soldier turned his head to the side. Nyss slammed his head into Soldier’s face—once, a second time. He felt Soldier’s nose give way, felt the spray of blood as the nose exploded.

But Soldier did not lose consciousness. With his good hand, he clawed at Nyss’s eye, got a finger into the socket. Panicked, Nyss whipped his head to the side, dislodged the finger, and slammed his head down into the clone’s face. The blow caused Nyss to see sparks but fully shattered the Prime’s already broken nose. Bone crunched. More blood sprayed. The clone, momentarily stunned, went limp.

Nyss snaked an arm free of the clone’s grasp, reversed his grip on his vibroblade, and slammed the hilt into the side of Soldier’s head.

The Prime groaned and went still. Nyss collapsed on top of him, breathing heavily. The adrenaline drained out of him, and its absence left him with nothing but pain.

Blood from Soldier’s arm continued to leak from the wound. Cursing, Nyss sat up, wincing at the pain in his ribs. Rising to his knees, he tore a strip of cloth from his cloak. With it, he made a makeshift tourniquet and tied it around Soldier’s arm to stop the bleeding. He’d need to find a medkit and a tube of Newskin as soon as possible.

He stood, and the corridor spun. He blinked, stayed still until the sensation passed, then staggered into the cockpit. Seer lay on the ground, unconscious. She had a bruise on one side of her face. She must have struck an instrument panel when she fell. He considered killing her, but figured the One Sith could find some use for her.

He checked the various lockers in the cockpit and found a medkit and a roll of deckstrip. He took the tube of Newskin from the medkit, filled Soldier’s wound with it, then covered it with gauze. With the deckstrip, he bound the hands and ankles of Soldier and Seer and heaved them against the rear wall of the cockpit.

When he was done, he raised Syll on the comlink. “I have control of the ship, the Prime, and Jaden Korr’s ally, the spacer.”

“Are you all right?” Syll asked. She must have heard the strain in his voice.

“Yes,” Nyss said. “The Prime is not fully susceptible to our power. So it was … more difficult than I expected.”

He checked the instruments, saw the coordinates that Soldier had input into the navicomp. He did not recognize the system, but then he did not know the Unknown Regions very well.

The clones would never make it to their destination, whatever it might have been, but Wyyrlok or the Master might find it useful to know where they had gone.

“I’m sending you some coordinates,” he said to Syll. “Record them for later.” After he’d sent them, he said, “I’ll hail Jaden Korr. Be ready.”

Behind him, Soldier moaned. He would awaken soon.

* * *

Khedryn halted in mid-attack, the knife held high.

The form in the lift was the little girl.

She froze with fear and they stared at each other, both of them wide-eyed.

She took a step backward into the lift. Her skin bubbled and bulged, and he knew her sickness was worsening.

He quickly lowered the blade and tried to make himself look harmless. “No, it’s okay. I’m sorry.”

She took another step back into the lift, skittish, and looked like she might bolt, though she had nowhere to go. He put the knife in his pocket and spoke in a calm voice.

“I didn’t know it was you, sweetie. I thought—”

The lift door started to close. He lunged forward, caught it with his hand, and held it open.

At his sudden motion, she let out a little peep of fear.

“Never mind what I thought,” he said. He knelt down to look her in the eyes and make himself look smaller. She seemed to be calming now that he’d put the knife away. “I won’t hurt you. You know that, right?”

She nodded.

“But there’s another man on board. He might hurt you and your … friend. He’s bald, with—”

She was already nodding.

“Do you know where he is?” Khedryn asked.

“Up there,” she said, pointing back at the lift. She brushed her ratty red hair out of her eyes. “He was … fighting Soldier. Soldier was bleeding.”

Khedryn needed to get to the crew deck.

“Is your medicine up there?” he asked.

She nodded.

“All right. Go hide in the cargo area. Wait until someone comes for you. Either me or … someone else.”

She eased past him and started to go.

“Wait,” he called, and she turned. “Do you know how to launch one of the escape pods?”

She looked at him as if he were speaking another language.

“All right. Never mind. Just go hide. Everything will be fine. Okay? Okay? I’m going to make sure that your … people can take care of you.”

She nodded.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Grace,” she said, and looked at the ground, shy. She behaved like any little girl anywhere in the galaxy.

“Figures,” he said, smiling.

He took a deep breath, turned, and boarded the lift. Inside, he hit the button that would take him to the crew deck, to the Umbaran, to the clones.

He could not justify to himself what he was about to do, not rationally. He just felt as if he could not let Grace down.

The doors started to close and she was still standing there, her head tilted to the side, looking at him. Her expression unnerved him. He caught the doors with his hand before they closed all the way.

“What is it?”

She hemmed and hawed, shifting from foot to foot.

“What is it, Grace?”

She looked up at him, a shy smile on her face. “Why are your eyes like that?”

The question was so surprising under the circumstances that Khedryn was truly stunned into silence. He took his hand from the door to run his palm over his hair and the doors started to close.

Grace stood there, waiting, as the doors formed a wall between them.

“They got this way because they’ve looked at too many weird things.” He smiled and made a silly face.

She giggled.

“Now, go,” he said, and the doors closed. He chuckled all the way up to the crew deck. By the time the lift doors opened, however, his mirth was gone. An empty corridor stretched before him, a long, dim tunnel. The Umbaran had probably disabled the lights.

Soldier’s mind clawed back to awareness. His head throbbed with each beat of his heart. Blood congealed in his beard, his hair. He groaned, blinked away the grogginess, and realized that his hands were bound behind his back. His ankles, too, were bound with deckstrip. He was seated on the floor, still in the cockpit of the supply ship. The overhead lights had been turned off. The dim glow of instrumentation provided the only illumination.

His first thought was of Grace, her scream, and a rush of adrenaline cleared his mind. Sitting up, he glanced around, alarmed. Seer sat next to him, propped against the wall, her head tilted to the side, still unconscious. A vicious bruise, already turning purple, marred the symmetry of her features. She had smashed her face into the instrument panel when she fell, when she and Soldier had both felt the odd sensation of falling away from the Force.

He twisted his head around and did not see Grace. She might have gotten away, or … something else might have happened to her.

The thought of harm coming to her—the only one of the Community’s surviving children—caused a surge of anger. As his anger grew, so did his power. He pushed the power into his body, used it to augment his strength, and tested the bindings on his wrists.

They bit like teeth into his flesh. Ignoring the pain, he tried to muscle them apart. But he could not. He could not draw fully on the Force: something was interfering with the connection.

A sibilant voice from the front of the cockpit said, “You won’t be able to break the bindings. There’s no need to struggle. I have no intention of harming you.”

“I can’t say the same,” Soldier said. He tried again to break them, failed. “What did you do to me? To us?”

“You feel separate from the Force?” the Umbaran asked.

“How did you do it?” was all Soldier asked.

The Umbaran chuckled. “By pushing a bit of my world out into yours.”

Soldier did not understand. He imagined he never would. He could see the Umbaran only in silhouette, standing with his back to Soldier and Seer as he studied something on the ship’s instrumentation.

“Who are you?” Soldier asked. “What do you want?”

“I want you,” the Umbaran said. “You’re of interest to the Master.”

You’re of interest. Soldier had often heard phrases like that from the doctors in the cloning facility. It always heralded something unpleasant.

“Why?” he asked. “I’m no one.”

“That’s not true at all,” said the Umbaran.

“Then take me. Let Seer and Grace go.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. Quiet now,” the Umbaran said. “I’ve got a call to make.”

Junker emerged from hyperspace in the outer reaches of the system. The light of a distant red dwarf cast the cockpit in crimson. Marr set to work on the scanners.

“System has two gas giants and a thick asteroid belt. Nothing else.”

“Where’s the supply ship?”

“Searching,” Marr said, keying in a broad sensor sweep. “I have it. It’s on the other side of the asteroid belt. Our silhouette is so small that I doubt they’ve detected us this far out.”

“Agreed,” Jaden said. He engaged the ion engines and streaked toward the asteroid belt. In an effort to avoid detection, he kept Junker on the same plane as the bulk of the asteroids, trying to use them as cover. His mind raced along with Junker. He needed to come up with a way to board the supply ship.

Before they reached the asteroid belt, the ship-to-ship communicator pinged. Jaden and Marr both stared at it in surprise.

“That’s an open hail,” said Jaden.

“From the supply ship,” Marr said, and they shared a glance.

“Maybe Khedryn has gotten free and is trying to raise us,” Jaden said. He opened the channel.

A soft, sibilant voice carried over the comm and destroyed whatever hope he’d had for Khedryn’s escape.

“I know that you can hear this, Jaden Korr. Listen carefully to what I am about to say. My name is Nyss and I have taken control of the medical supply ship out of Fhost. The clones you were after are dead or captured. Khedryn Faal is now in my custody.”

“The clones are dead?” Marr asked, incredulous.

Jaden stared at the comm, trying to make sense of the sudden turn of events. He pushed the transmit button. “You are to turn Khedryn Faal over to us immediately.”

Nyss’s voice answered, his soft tone turned hard. “You give exactly no orders here, Jedi. Do you understand? You will do exactly what I say and only what I say.”

Jaden’s fist clenched in frustration. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I will explain that in person, Jedi.”

The request puzzled Jaden. “You want to meet?”

“I want to trade. Khedryn Faal for you. Otherwise, I’ll kill him.”

Jaden cut off the transmission and looked over at Marr. Lines furrowed the Cerean’s brow.

“Thoughts?” Jaden asked.

“He is probably lying. How could he have gotten aboard? How could he have killed all the clones? He could be one of the clones. All of this could be a ploy to get at you.”

“A lot of unknowns,” Jaden said, nodding.

“Too many,” Marr said.

Nyss’s voice carried over the comm “You have sixty seconds. After that, I will kill Khedryn Faal.”

Jaden slammed a fist on the transmit button. “Harm him and I’ll hunt you across the galaxy.”

“Fifty-eight seconds.”

Frustration almost pulled a curse from Jaden. It did pull a curse from Marr.

“What do we do, Master?” the Cerean asked.

Jaden could feel his worry for Khedryn. He made up his mind.

“We trade. He wants me for some reason. He can have me. But I plan to be more than he can handle. The important thing is to get Khedryn to safety. Agreed?”

Ambivalence twisted Marr’s face into a landscape of worry.

“Forty seconds,” Nyss said.

“Agreed,” Marr said reluctantly. “I don’t see any other option.”

Khedryn slid out of the lift, his fingers white around the hilt of the knife. Voices from ahead sent his heart spinning and froze him to the floor. He heard the sibilant whisper of the Umbaran and …

Jaden’s voice?

Or was it Soldier’s?

He crept forward, hunched, hugging the wall, trying to merge with the darkness. He winced at the soft sound of his shoes on the deck. The corridor offered almost no cover at all, so he tried to move rapidly, hoping speed would do where stealth was not possible. The last thing he wanted was the Umbaran and his crossbow to catch him at a distance, without cover. Khedryn had never missed a blaster more in his life.

The cockpit doors were open, the cockpit dark beyond, lit only by the dull glow of instrumentation. Staying close to the wall, Khedryn moved closer.

The voices fell silent. Fearing he’d been heard, Khedryn froze. His breathing sounded like a bellows in his ears. He expected the Umbaran to appear in the cockpit doorway at any moment, crossbow cocked.

More voices from inside the cockpit. Khedryn heard no alarm in them and assumed he had not been heard.

Hoping the conversation would mask the sound of his final approach, he hurried to the doorway, crouching low, and peeked his head around the doorjamb.

The Umbaran sat in the pilot’s seat facing away from Khedryn. The comm chirped with an incoming message, and Jaden’s voice carried over the speaker.

Jaden hit the transmit button to speak to Nyss. “Done. A trade, then. Me for Khedryn.”

“Very good,” Nyss answered. “That is a spacer’s freighter. Get into a hardsuit and exit your ship.”

“A hardsuit?” Marr exclaimed, off comm.

“Fly toward the supply ship in the suit,” Nyss continued. “When you are near enough, I will release Khedryn Faal in an escape pod.”

Jaden’s mind began to move through possibilities, tactics.

“You have five minutes to exit your ship,” Nyss said. “I’ll be watching.”

The connection closed.

* * *

The sound of Jaden’s voice summoned a fierce grin from Khedryn. The realization that Jaden and Marr had somehow trailed him filled him with a rush of emotion. He looked past the Umbaran through the cockpit, hoping to catch a glimpse of Junker, but saw only the black. No matter. They were out there.

He understood what had happened and why the Umbaran had let him live—he wanted to trade him for Jaden. Jaden, of course, had accepted.

Blasted Jedi were easy to play.

Once again Khedryn considered making a run for an escape pod. With Junker out there somewhere, all he needed to do was get into the black and they could reel him in. Jaden would not have to put himself at risk. Khedryn had seen what the Umbaran could do to Force users, suppressing their power somehow. He had to warn Jaden, or get off the supply ship somehow.

But there was still the little girl to consider. He had no doubt that the Umbaran would kill her or simply let her die of her disease. Khedryn could not abandon her. He would not be able to look Jaden or Marr in the face if he did.

The Umbaran sat in the pilot’s seat, staring at the comm.

Khedryn eased into the cockpit, hunched low, knife ready.

A stirring to his right drew his attention.

Soldier sat on the deck against the wall, his hands and ankles bound with deckstrip. The female clone, Seer, lay beside him, her eyes closed, either dead or unconscious.

Soldier’s eyes fixed on Khedryn, flashed first with surprise, then suspicion. Khedryn knew what he had to do. He put a finger to his lips for silence.

“I don’t like this,” Marr said, shaking his head. “I don’t like this at all.”

Behind them, R-6 beeped agreement. Jaden had almost forgotten that the droid was in the cockpit.

“Keep monitoring that ship and let me know of anything unusual,” Jaden said to R-6. To Marr, he said, “Where are the hardsuits?”

As they jogged through the corridors, Marr said, “He could shoot you out of space the moment you leave Junker.”

“He could try,” Jaden said, and put his hand on his lightsaber hilt. “Though that supply ship has little in the way of armament.”

“He could ram you, Master. There’s any number of ways. A single leak in the suit and it’s over.”

“He’s gone to a lot of trouble to just kill me, don’t you think? He wants me alive for some reason.”

A tilt of Marr’s enormous head conceded the point. “Presumably not for a reason you’ll like. None of this makes sense.”

“I agree,” Jaden said, and they started walking again. “But do you have a better idea?”

Marr’s eyes found the floor and he shook his large head. “No.”

“The supply ship has a weak tractor beam. He’ll try to reel me in once I’m out of Junker. Don’t let that happen unless Khedryn is clear. Listen, Marr. The critical thing is to get Khedryn to safety. Understand? Get Junker’s tractor beam on his pod as soon as he’s out. After he’s secure, we’ll improvise something.”

“Improvise something?”

“Trust me when I tell you that’s the life,” Jaden said with a smile. “Nothing ever goes according to plan. Half the time I’m just making it up as I go. Get used to it, eh?”

Marr smiled, then nodded at one of the lockers near the airlock. “Right there,” he said. He opened the locker to reveal three hardsuits, one with a helmet suitable for a Cerean. “You know how to put it on?”

“Been a while, but yeah.”

Jaden handed Marr his lightsaber and then, piece by piece, donned the hardsuit. He felt like he was donning the archaic armor of the Clone Wars. He checked each joint seal as he went. When he missed something, Marr corrected it. Soon, Jaden was armored against outer space. He hooked his lightsaber to the outside of the suit.

“Helmet on,” Marr said. “Test the seal.”

Jaden pulled on the helmet, activated the electromagnetic seal. His breathing sounded loud in the dome of the helmet. The HUD on the faceplate showed a good seal at the neck and everywhere else.

Marr tapped the helmet. “Comlink,” he said.

Jaden tested it and found it worked fine.

“You know how to operate the thruster controls?” Marr asked.

Jaden nodded. A simple joystick array built into the right wrist provided propulsion control. He could control it with his thumb.

Marr once more double-checked the suit’s joint seals.

“I said it’s been a while,” Jaden said, “but I’ve done this a time or two. The joints are good.”

“You’ve done it a time or two, but I’ve done it dozens of times. A seal can show green but be weak. That can pops a leak in the black, you’ll be dead before I can help.”

“Right,” Jaden said, sobered. “We stay on live comm. Tell me right away when Khedryn is off the supply ship. Then tell me when he’s aboard Junker.”

“Will do.” Marr thumped the suit on the shoulder. “You’re good.”

Jaden turned, but Marr’s curse pulled him around.

“One more thing,” Marr said, grabbing something out of his pocket. He unsealed Jaden’s helmet, removed it, and offered him a piece of chewstim.

“For luck,” the Cerean said. “It’s tradition on this ship.”

Jaden took it and popped it into his mouth.

Marr put the helmet back on and resealed it, then circled Jaden, eyeing the suit. “You’re all green, Master.”

“Then let’s do it.”

Jaden moved to the airlock, the boots of the hardsuit thumping on Junker’s deck. Marr opened the interior airlock door and Jaden stepped inside. Marr closed the door behind Jaden and then his voice sounded over the suit’s comlink, reverberating in the helmet.

“I’ll be in the cockpit. May the Force be with you, Master.”

Jaden activated the decompression sequence and prepared to open the outer door.

“And with you, Marr.”

As Khedryn watched, the Umbaran shifted in his chair and activated the comm. A female voice answered his hail. Khedryn used the opportunity to crawl over to Soldier. He said nothing, merely brandished his small knife. Soldier’s gaze hardened, but Khedryn shook his head to indicate that he intended no harm. He slit the tape around the clone’s ankles.

“How close are you?” the Umbaran asked.

“Nearly in-system,” the female voice answered.

Khedryn put his mouth to the clone’s ear and said, “For Grace.”

Soldier noticeably tensed at the mention of the little girl’s name. Khedryn wondered if the girl was Soldier’s daughter. Soldier turned so that Khedryn could get at the tape that bound his wrists.

“What are you planning?” the female asked over the comm.

“I’m planning to get Jaden Korr aboard the ship, then we take—”

Khedryn slit the binding on the clone’s wrist, and when he did, the tip of his knife tapped the metal of the deck.

The Umbaran spun in his seat and leapt to his feet, twin vibroblades appearing in his hands as if by magic.

Khedryn clambered to his feet, his own inadequate knife in hand, and started to slide for the cockpit doors.

“You!” the Umbaran said, and moved toward Khedryn.

When Soldier stood, free of his bonds, the Umbaran stopped and his eyes widened. Khedryn almost grinned.

“Umbaran,” Soldier said, his voice heavy with a promise of violence.

For a moment, all three stood there, Khedryn in the door, the Umbaran a few paces away, Soldier along the wall.

The Umbaran’s eyes narrowed. The darkness around him deepened.

An idea hit Khedryn.

“Here!” he said, and tossed to Soldier one of the lightsabers he’d taken from the dead clones.

Soldier snatched it out of midair and ignited the blade, bathing the cockpit in red light. “Hunter’s blade,” he said.

The Umbaran shifted on his feet and the cockpit grew darker. Khedryn imagined energies he could not see swirling around him. The Umbaran stared at Soldier, at the blade Soldier held, and it began to thin, to sputter.

“Not this time,” Soldier said between gritted teeth.

The blade thickened, thinned, thickened, flickered, grew solid once more.

Khedryn was bearing witness to a battle of wills that he did not understand.

“Go,” Soldier said to Khedryn.

“We take him together,” Khedryn said, holding the pathetic knife in his hand.

Soldier’s lips curled with rage—not at Khedryn, but at the Umbaran. “Who are you to me, spacer? If Seer tells me to kill you after I kill the Umbaran, I will do exactly that. Go. Get off the ship. And do not follow us. Tell the Jedi I said that. Tell him not to follow us.”

Khedryn understood none of that. “I freed you, Soldier—”

“Go!”

“Neither of you are getting off this ship,” the Umbaran said. The vibroblades in his hands began to hum, an answer to the hum of Soldier’s lightsaber.

Khedryn looked at Soldier, at the Umbaran, out at the black.

Junker was out there—Marr, Jaden.

He turned and ran back the way he had come. Soldier would kill the Umbaran and care for Grace. Khedryn would convince Jaden to leave the clones alone, and they would return to Fhost to gamble and drink.

Or not, if he knew Jaden.

He reached the lift in moments, the clash of energized blades loud behind him. He did not slow. The doors opened; he piled in, hit the button for the cargo deck, and started down. The lift moved far slower than he would have liked. He did not know the layout of the ship, but he figured he could access the escape pods from the cargo deck. He just needed to find them.