Star Wars Riptide

JUNKER’S AIRLOCK VENTED, THE EXTERIOR DOOR OPENED, and Jaden faced the void. He put his thumb on the thruster control stick and propelled himself into space. A single burst set him in motion and inertia did the rest. In moments he was floating free, hundreds of meters from Junker. The freighter looked tiny against the vast background of stars.

“I’m clear,” he said.

“I have you,” Marr answered.

“Khedryn?”

“Not yet,” Marr said.

“Hail the supply ship. Tell him I’m aborting if Khedryn isn’t released immediately.”

Jaden used the thrusters to stop his movement and hold his position. The supply ship hung in space, small at ten kilometers’ distance. The asteroid belt in the system looked like dark clouds floating between Jaden and the system’s orange star. He felt pensive, as if something were about to happen.

“Is something odd going on, Marr?”

“Not that I can tell, Master.”

Nyss felt Soldier fighting against his power, the clone’s anger a match for his emptiness. Eyeing the red line of Soldier’s lightsaber, its glow a direct affront to his ability, Nyss knew that he had to escape. Perhaps he and Syll together could completely cut Soldier off from the Force, but Nyss could not do it alone.

At Soldier’s feet, Seer stirred, groaned. Soldier looked down and Nyss seized the opportunity, pelting out of the cockpit. Soldier roared and gave chase.

Ten strides down the hallway, Nyss hit the button to summon the lift and spun around to face Soldier’s onslaught. Soldier unleashed two-handed overhand slashes that Nyss parried with his blades. The cortosis coating his blades not only allowed them to withstand the slash of a lightsaber—at least for a few passes—they also caused Soldier’s weapon to spark wildly. Contact with cortosis for a long enough time could temporarily short out a lightsaber, but Soldier’s blade moved so quickly that the contact between the weapons was momentary at best. But eventually, Soldier’s lightsaber would destroy Nyss’s blades.

Nyss dropped to the floor and swept a kick at Soldier’s legs, but the clone anticipated the attack, leapt over the sweep, and slashed downward at Nyss’s leg.

Nyss pulled his leg close—the lightsaber put a gash in the deck, showering the corridor in sparks—rolled aside, and rode the momentum to his feet. The clone growled and lunged at Nyss, his blade a whistling red line of slashes, stabs, and cuts. Sweating, panting, Nyss positioned his vibroblades to form a wall, answering every blow of the clone with a parry. He did not even try to counterattack. He was trying to hold his ground and play for time.

The door to the lift opened behind him.

Bursting into motion, Nyss unleashed a desperate series of stabs, blocking the clone’s lightsaber out wide with one vibroblade and stabbing at his chest with the other. The clone flipped backward, temporarily disengaging, and Nyss ran for the lift. When he got inside, he slammed his hand against the button to close the doors.

Soldier roared, bounding after him.

The doors started to close, but too damned slowly.

Desperate, Nyss flung one of his blades through the shrinking opening between the doors. Soldier, unprepared for the throw, pulled up short and deflected the vibroblade with his lightsaber.

The doors closed and the turbolift started downward.

The red line of Soldier’s blade shot through the metal of the doors. As the lift descended, the weapon cut a sparking vertical gash in the side—but in a few seconds, the lift had moved out of reach.

Nyss did not let himself relax. He paced the lift as it descended to the cargo bay. The supply ship had four escape pods, and he knew where he needed to go to get access to them.

The lift reached the cargo deck and the doors parted. An impact on the roof of the turbolift caused the entire car to vibrate. Soldier.

Nyss crouched low as the red line of a lightsaber scythed out of the ceiling and began to cut a circular hole in the roof. Sparks and slagged metal rained down.

“You are not getting away from me!” Soldier shouted. “And if you’ve harmed Grace …”

He left the threat unspoken, but Nyss understood it well enough. He bolted out of the lift and headed for the escape pods.

Khedryn doubled back for the second time. Sweat dripped into his eyes. His breathing was coming too fast. He had to be going in the right direction this time, didn’t he? The darkness made it hard to know whether he was retracing the same path. The cargo compartments and the corridors connecting them all looked the same.

He saw writing on the wall ahead, got close enough to read it in the dim glow of the emergency lights. Stenciled letters pointed him to the emergency escape pods. He breathed a sigh of relief and ran, following the arrows. He reached an intersection and turned.

On the far end of a long compartment, a metal stairway descended ten meters into a bay lined with four doors—the escape pods. He hurried for the stairs. He’d be aboard Junker in moments.

Something whistled past his ear, pinged into the bulkhead, and ricocheted to the floor. He froze and looked down to see what it was: a crossbow quarrel.

He whirled, cursing, and saw the Umbaran running toward him.

Khedryn turned and ran, hunching to make himself small. Another shot pinged off the bulkhead. The Umbaran must have had some kind of repeating mechanism on the crossbow. He darted across the large compartment. The distance might as well have been a parsec. He didn’t figure there was any way he could make it.

He zigzagged as he ran, wincing at the expectation that he’d be shot from behind at any moment.

A shout and growl sounded from over his shoulder and he looked back. Soldier barreled around the corner behind the Umbaran, his lightsaber lighting the way before him.

The Umbaran saw Soldier, too. He slung his crossbow and ran for the escape pods.

Khedryn reached the stairs, pelted down them, and hit the first escape pod door. It opened and he ran in. He heard the Umbaran tearing down the stairs behind him. Khedryn wished he could have launched all the pods, leaving the Umbaran there to face Soldier, but there was no time.

The pod door hissed shut. Khedryn stared through the tiny viewport in the thick door and made an obscene gesture at the Umbaran as he ran by.

Afterward he strapped himself into one of the four seats, activated the pod’s systems, and hit the emergency launch button.

“Three, two, one,” said the computerized voice, and the pod shot out of the belly of the supply ship like a blaster shot.

It galled Nyss to flee, but he was at a disadvantage fighting Soldier. Not only could Soldier use the Force to resist his power, but Nyss couldn’t just kill Soldier—he had to keep him alive.

Nyss would need his sister to capture the clone. They could regroup aboard the scout flyer, develop a new plan. He punched the button to open one of the escape pods and the doors hissed open.

Soldier’s heavy tread thumped down the stairs after him, the hum of his lightsaber the harbinger of his wrath.

Nyss hurried into the pod, closed the door, and started the emergency launch sequence. He focused his mind on the hole of his existence, the emptiness, and let it spread from him.

Soldier appeared on the other side of the door, his bearded face filled with rage. He raised his flickering lightsaber for a stab into the pod’s door, a blow that would render the pod unspaceworthy, would force Nyss to face him.

The hole Nyss projected deepened. He strained to make it as dark a void as he had ever before managed.

Soldier stabbed the blade into the viewport, but only the hilt slammed into the transparisteel. For a moment, surprise supplanted rage.

Nyss’s power had suppressed the blade’s crystal.

Soldier slammed a fist into the viewport, his mouth open in a snarl.

Nyss turned away and sagged against the door as the pod shot away from the supply ship, from Soldier.

The velocity of the spherical craft pinned Nyss to the wall for a moment. Breathing heavily, he activated his comlink.

“The clones have retaken the ship. I’m in a pod. Fix on my signal and pick me up. Quickly. Weapons hot.”

“On my way,” said Syll. “Weapons hot.”

Jaden floated in the space between Junker and the supply ship.

“No response, Master,” Marr said. “He’s not answering our hail.”

Jaden stared at the supply ship as if he could see through its walls and see what was happening within.

“Something is going on,” he said.

“Maybe you should return to Junker. We can take the ship’s boat, force a dock with the supply ship, and get aboard that way.” Marr’s voice hitched. “Wait.…”

Motion drew Jaden’s eye as the bubble of an escape pod—its metal glinting in the light of the star—launched from the supply ship’s starboard side.

“Marr—”

A second pod shot from the belly of the supply ship.

“Master, two escape pods just—”

“I see them.”

Static barked in Jaden’s ear as a signal cut into their frequency. Khedryn’s voice echoed in Jaden’s helmet, carried across kilometers of space.

“Jaden? Marr?”

“Khedryn!” Marr said.

Khedryn said, “The clones are back in control of the supply ship! I’m in the escape pod.”

“How?” Marr asked.

“Which pod?” Jaden asked.

“Which pod? There’s another?” Khedryn asked. “The Umbaran must be in it. He fled the ship, too, when the clones took back control.”

“You’re in the pod that launched first,” Jaden said.

“I don’t know. I’ve got thruster control. I’ll jig for you.”

One of the pods, the one that had launched first, did a jig in space.

“Got it,” Marr said. “Do you see us?”

“Coming at you,” Khedryn said. The pod’s thrusters flared and the metal ball darted toward Junker and Jaden.

Behind Jaden, Junker’s ion engines flared to life.

“I’m coming to get you both,” Marr said.

“Both? Where are you, Jaden?” Khedryn asked.

“I’m in a hardsuit,” Jaden said.

“Stang, man. I’m gone awhile and you start thinking you’re a spacer! Marr, you let him go floating in the black?”

“He was insistent,” Marr said.

Another streak of motion drew Jaden’s eye and wiped the growing grin from his face. A ship bounced out of hyperspace not far from the other escape pod.

“Master, another ship just entered the system.” A pause then, “Its weapons are live.”

Nyss saw the sleek lines of the scout flyer emerge from hyperspace. He engaged the pod’s thrusters, the scout flyer’s ion engines flared, and the distance between the two ships shrank rapidly. The pod lurched.

“Tractor is on you,” Syll said over the comlink. “Pulling you in.”

“There is a second escape pod.”

“I see it.”

“Is the Jedi outside their freighter?”

A moment passed while Syll consulted scanners. “He is.”

“Destroy the pod and the freighter. We’ll pluck the Jedi out of space after that.”

They’d still have to figure out what to do about the Prime, but at least they’d have Korr.

The pod slammed hard into the scout flyer and metal groaned.

“Have you,” Syll said.

“On my way,” Nyss said. He slipped from his seat as the docking rings mated.

Jaden watched the second escape pod attach itself to some kind of small craft, a scout ship, maybe, saw the scout ship wheel in their direction, and understood right away what was happening. Marr’s voice over the comlink only confirmed it.

“That ship is coming right at us. Weapon’s locking onto Junker.”

“Get the deflectors up!” Jaden said to Marr.

Before the words had cleared his mouth, the scout ship’s wing-mounted weapons lit up. Lines of red plasma stretched across the black gulf. The freighter, its deflector array inactive, took the blast in its port side. Flames exploded outward into space, the silence of it making it surreal. Explosive decompression ejected bits of metal and mundane debris into space. The ship listed, spitting flames and smoke.

“Marr!” Khedryn and Jaden shouted.

They could hear the Cerean’s stressed breathing over the comlink. His voice, however, was calm. “We’re all right. Ar-Six, seal off the compromised compartments. Deflectors are live. Engines are functional.”

Jaden eyed the scout, which was now wheeling toward Khedryn’s pod. A single shot against the pod would vaporize it. Jaden needed to buy a few moments.

“Khedryn, hard to port! As much as the thrusters can give you! Now!”

Khedryn must have heard the urgency, and he did not question the order. The pod’s thrusters fired, and it cut a hard turn to port.

Jaden estimated its velocity and the distance, and fired the thrusters of his hardsuit, taking a trajectory that would put him near the pod—or so he hoped.

Unprepared for the abrupt turn of the pod, the scout ship wheeled again to follow. Jaden cut through space toward the pod. So, too, did the scout ship.

“Faster, Khedryn,” he muttered.

“That’s all it’s got, Jedi. Where are they?”

“Right behind you,” Jaden said.

Khedryn cursed, his breathing loud over the comm.

The scout leveled off, put itself on a firing line to the pod. Jaden had to do something, and do it now!

He fell into the Force as the scout ship’s wings flared and the weapons fired. To him, events seemed to slow. The lines of the ship’s lasers extended outward from its guns, slowly reaching across space, crayon lines drawn by an invisible child.

Power filled Jaden, and with it he reached out for Khedryn’s pod, roped it with his mind, and yanked it hard toward him. Despite his use of the Force, the differential mass between his body and the escape pod did not allow for a clean pull. His movement toward the pod increased even as the pod sped more rapidly toward him.

Still, it was enough. Though the proximity of the shot caused the pod to lurch hard, the red lines stretched through space behind it. Jaden grunted with the effort to maintain his mental hold on the small craft.

“What just happened?” Khedryn shouted.

“You were almost hit,” Jaden said, as he blazed through space toward the pod.

“Let’s try to avoid that.”

“Let’s,” Jaden said, smiling. But now the distance between him and the pod was closing rapidly, too rapidly. If he hit it too hard, he’d lose a seal on his suit and that would be that.

Meanwhile, behind it, the scout ship cut hard toward the pod, reestablishing a firing line.

Jaden put their distance apart at three hundred meters … two hundred … one hundred. The scout was in position. But so was Jaden. He ignited his lightsaber. The hardsuit would restrict his mobility, but he’d have to make due. He’d received his training in zero-G a long time ago. He’d use the Force to steady himself in space, otherwise any action in zero-G would precipitate an equal and opposite reaction that would make precision movement almost impossible.

Twenty meters.

“Thrusters hard to starboard,” he said to Khedryn, and fired the suit’s thrusters.

The pod’s port thrusters fired, angling the vessel to starboard. The scout jigged to stay on it.

Jaden, still holding the pod with the Force, slammed hard into it feetfirst. He grabbed at a protuberance—a comm antenna—with his free hand just as the scout ship fired.

Still enmeshed in the Force, he sensed the trajectory of the blasts, the line of their approach. His lightsaber spun through space, the Force-augmented motion stressing the hardsuit. The shots slammed into the yellow line of his blade, and he deflected them back at the ship’s cockpit. They split the space between them and knifed into the cockpit, which exploded into flame. The scout ship, bleeding smoke, streaked toward the pod.

“Port, Khedryn! Port!” Jaden shouted, watching the scout get closer and closer. The ship would slam into them both.

Straddling the pod, Jaden pushed with the Force against the oncoming ship, the pressure assisting the pod’s thrusters. He crouched low as the scout ship wheeled over and past them, so close he could have touched it with his fingertips. The ship continued its trajectory and velocity, not turning around, heading into the deep system. Perhaps the blasters had damaged its controls. Or perhaps killed the pilot.

“Khedryn,” Jaden said. “Are you all right?”

“Good,” Khedryn said. “I think.”

“Get us aboard, Marr,” Jaden said to the Cerean.

“Tractor beam has the pod,” Marr answered.

An alarm rang in Jaden’s suit, the sound surprisingly subdued given the urgency of its warning.

“I’m leaking,” he said.

“What?” Khedryn asked. “What did you say?”

Khedryn’s face appeared in the tiny viewport of the escape pod, his misaligned eyes fixing on Jaden’s faceplate. Worry twisted his bruised, bloody expression. He hit a button to activate the comm.

“Did you say you’re leaking?”

“Affirmative,” Jaden said.

Khedryn cursed.

“On my way,” Marr said.

Jaden deactivated his lightsaber and held out his arms, examining the hardsuit. It was venting air through a pinhole in the ankle seam and at the right elbow.

“I see them,” Khedryn said. “Two holes.”

Jaden did not comment. He wanted to preserve oxygen. His HUD told him he had twenty-nine seconds before the tanks emptied. Twenty-eight.

“I have twenty-seven seconds,” he said. “Twenty-six.”

“Hang in, Jaden,” Khedryn said. He put his palm on the glass of the viewport. “Hang in.”

Jaden nodded in his suit. He steadied heart and mind, trying to consume as little air as possible while watching Junker turn and blast toward him. Twenty seconds. Nineteen.

He was getting dizzy as his oxygen depleted. Junker’s tractor beam pulled the pod through space at a breakneck pace, even while Marr piloted the freighter toward them.

“I’m at twelve seconds,” Jaden said.

“Where the hell are you, Marr?” Khedryn asked.

“Ar-Six has the helm, Khedryn.”

“What?” Khedryn asked, indignant. “A droid is flying my ship?”

Spots formed before Jaden’s eyes. “Almost out,” he tried to say, but the words sounded garbled.

Marr’s voice echoed in his helmet. “Do you see the airlock, Master?”

Jaden tried to focus on Junker as it spun its side to the pod to show the hole of an open airlock. A form hovered there in the lighted box of the compartment: Marr in a hardsuit. His thruster flared and he shot toward Jaden. Jaden’s vision went in and out. He heard Khedryn’s voice in his head, but the words seemed far away, whispers he could not quite comprehend.

Marr appeared before him, his concerned face visible through the lit faceplate of the hardsuit. Jaden tried to speak but could not. Marr’s words cut through the clutter of his fading consciousness.

“I have you, Master.”

And then they were moving back toward Junker. Jaden stared at the open airlock, like a mouth in the side of the ship.

“It’s hungry,” he tried to say, smiling, but his lips would form neither words nor a smile, and a part of him recognized the ridiculousness of the observation.

Khedryn was barking over the comlink, but Jaden could not understand him, could not hold his eyes open.

* * *

The scout flyer shivered from an impact. An alarm screeched. In moments, Nyss smelled smoke.

“What happened?” he asked. “Syll, what happened?”

His sister did not respond. He hurried through the dim, close corridors of the flyer, the smell of smoke getting more acute. When he reached the cockpit and tried to push the door open, he found that something was blocking the door.

“Syll,” he called. “Syll!”

Nothing.

He muscled open the door and saw that it was his sister’s form that had obstructed it. Panic seized him; it sent his heart racing and stole his breath. He knelt at her side and turned her over so that he could see her face. Blood, warm and sticky, made her hair glisten. He probed her scalp for the wound, felt the indentation in her skull, and drew back as if she were hot.

“Syll,” he said.

She said nothing. Her eyes stared at him, empty, glassy, and he knew she was dead. She must have struck her head on something when the ship lurched.

The hole he lived in, the sanctuary in which he existed, separate from other living things, yawned under him. Staring at Syll’s face, he felt himself spiraling around the edge of the void. The darkness in the cockpit intensified as he plummeted.

But as he continued to look at Syll’s face, grief stopped his descent. Anger filled the void and halted his fall.

He was alone in the universe, forever alone.

He ground his teeth and clenched his fist and shouted aloud.

Someone would pay for his loss, his solitude.

He would kill the Jedi’s allies, kill the clones, kill them all, kill everything.

He spared a glance out the cockpit and saw nothing but a field of stars. There was no sign of the escape pod or Junker or the supply ship. The scout flyer was hurtling into the deep system, away from the star.

He triggered the autopilot to avoid a collision and realized his hands were shaking. He calmed himself and gently lifted Syll from the floor. Feeling numbed by his anger, he set her into her usual copilot’s chair and strapped her in.

“It’s beautiful, Syll,” he said, nodding out at the deep system. “The dark, I mean.”

He’d never felt such pain in his life.

Soldier’s anger began to diminish the moment the Umbaran’s pod shot out of the ship. He stood there for a time, chest heaving, rage abating, staring at the empty escape pod sockets. Bleeding from the wound in his arm, Soldier turned and staggered through the cargo bay. He deactivated his blade. “Grace!” he called. “Grace!”

He did not think of Seer or Hunter or Runner. He thought only of Grace. For a reason he could not understand, her survival meant everything to him.

“Grace! Grace!”

His voice echoed off the walls, resounded through the bay. The alchemy of his emotional state transformed his concern for Grace into power. The Force filled him. He threw his head back and shouted his frustration into the air in a prolonged howl of pain and fear.

“Grace!”

He gestured with his left hand and flung a shipping container halfway across the cargo bay. It slammed into a stack of other containers as metal crumpled and medical equipment spilled out onto the floor. He gestured with his right hand, and another container flew out of his way, his rage opening a path before him. He clenched his fist and a third container began to crumple in on itself, his power squeezing it down to half its size, a quarter.

Grief filled him, lodged in the mental space his anger had abandoned. He fell to his knees and his eyes welled. He did not wipe the tears as they fell.

He had failed Grace, failed all of them. His life had mattered to no one.

“Soldier?” said a small, diffident voice behind him.

He whirled, the smile already wide on his face.

Grace stood three meters from him, her red hair hanging lankly before her pale face. For the first time, her thinness struck him. She was not eating enough.

He held out his arms and she ran to him. He wrapped her up, feeling the horrific movement beneath her skin. She already needed another hypo. He held her close, weeping.

“Come with me,” he finally said. “You need meds.”

“Are you okay?” she asked, and he could only laugh and nod.

She did not resist as he took her hand and led her toward the cockpit.

“Is my … mother dead?”

Soldier squeezed her hand. Hunter’s lightsaber hilt hung from his belt. “I think so, yes. I’m sorry, Grace.”

Grace said nothing. Soldier felt her grief, but it was dulled, distant. She’d seen so much already in her life that tragedy moved her little. He hated that, hated the scientists who’d made them and condemned them all to a wretched life and forced them to kill for their freedom, hated that they could not simply live, find enjoyment in what they would. Grace would have that, even if the rest of them had not.

“What about the man?” Grace asked.

“What man?”

“The man with the funny eyes.”

She meant their captive, the spacer, the ally of the Jedi. “I don’t know for certain. But I think he is off the ship.”

“I think so, too,” she said, and squeezed Soldier’s hand. “I hope he is. He was nice.”

Jaden heard voices, opened his eyes. Marr’s enormous head hovered over his face, forehead creased by worry lines.

“Master, can you hear me?”

From somewhere off to the side, R-6 made a sympathetic whistle.

“I can hear you,” Jaden said, blinking to clear his blurred vision.

Relief filled Marr’s eyes. He kept a hand pressed against Jaden’s chest, as if to prevent him from trying to sit up.

Jaden was aboard Junker, in the corridor outside the airlock. His hardsuit helmet lay beside him on the deck. He had been running out of air.…

“How did you—”

“We got you aboard, pressurized the airlock, and dragged you in here,” Marr said. “You weren’t entirely without air for more than a few seconds. Your blood oxygen is probably quite low, though. Just relax. Breathe. Let your head clear.”

There was the sound of running footsteps on the deck, then Khedryn’s voice. “Is he all right?”

“He’s fine,” Marr said.

“I’m fine,” Jaden said, staring at the ceiling, not quite ready to try and sit up. “How are you?”

Marr turned to look at Khedryn and swore. It was the first time Jaden had ever heard the Cerean curse.

Khedryn’s trousers showed a long rip in the thigh. One side of his face was purple and swelling, making the mismatch of his eyes all the more pronounced. Blood stained his shirt here and there. His hair stuck out at wild angles. His nose looked as crooked as a Hutt.

He waved a hand to dismiss their concern. “I’m fine. Just keep getting uglier. I blame you two.” He stood beside Marr and stared down at Jaden, not with concern, but … something else.

“Help me up, will you?” Jaden asked.

Marr assisted him until he was seated upright. Dizziness assailed him, and he put his hands down on the deck to steady himself. R-6 made a concerned beep.

“I’m fine, Ar-Six.”

Khedryn, Marr, and R-6 crowded around him. Khedryn took one side, Marr the other, and they helped him to his feet.

“Where’s the supply ship?” Jaden asked.

Khedryn and Marr glanced at each other. R-6 beeped the droid equivalent of a shrug.

“We just got aboard, Master,” Marr said. “No one is on the scanners.”

“It’s good to have you back aboard,” Jaden said to Khedryn.

“Good to be back,” he said.

Marr put a hand on Khedryn’s shoulder in welcome.

“Let’s get to the cockpit,” Jaden said. He shed pieces of the hardsuit as he went. When they reached it, they could see the supply ship through the canopy, moving away from them. They could not see the scout flyer. Marr bent over the scanners.

“The supply ship is under ion-engine power, heading to a jump point. We can’t catch it.”

“No,” Jaden said. “But we can follow it. We’ve still got the beacon aboard.”

“A beacon,” Khedryn said. “That’s how you tracked me?”

“Took one of your signal beacons from the hold,” Jaden explained.

Marr, still eyeing the scanner, said, “The scout flyer is headed away into the deep system. The second escape pod docked with it.”

“Then the Umbaran is aboard it,” Khedryn said.

“An Umbaran?” Jaden asked. “The person who called himself Nyss?”

“Yeah, he’s Umbaran. And he … did something to the clones, Jaden. Cut them off from the Force somehow.”

Jaden shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

Khedryn ran a hand over his jaw, testing it as if it hurt. “I’m only telling you what I saw. When the clones fought him, they couldn’t use the Force. Even their lightsabers were nonfunctional. They were working and then they weren’t.”

“You’ve never heard of anything like that, Master?” Marr asked.

“Never. You’re sure?” Jaden asked Khedryn. “Maybe it was a device of some kind.”

“Some kind of neurological scrambler, perhaps,” Marr offered. “Or maybe something unique to the clones, a vulnerability attributable to their illness.”

Khedryn shook his head. “I don’t think so. It seemed to be the Umbaran himself. Look, I don’t pretend to understand it. But that’s how it seemed to me. He cut the clones off from the Force. Well, all but one.”

“What do you mean?” Jaden asked. “Which one?”

Khedryn swallowed and would not meet Jaden’s eyes. “Soldier, he called himself. I helped him get free of the Umbaran so I could …” He trailed off, then said, “One of the clones is a little girl. I couldn’t leave her to the Umbaran.”

Jaden understood completely. “I would have done the same thing.”

Jaden’s words caused Khedryn to puff a little with pride. “Well, yes. Right.”

“So why did he want you, Master?” Marr asked. “And what’s his interest in this?”

Jaden shook his head. Matters remained muddled. He had no clear insight into events. Khedryn seemed to want to say something.

“Khedryn?” Jaden asked. “What else?”

Khedryn cleared his throat, then looked away. “Jaden, I don’t know how to tell you this.…”

All at once, Jaden understood. “I know already. One of them is a clone of me.”

R-6 whistled in surprise.

Khedryn looked up, his swollen eye nearly bugging out of his head. “How did you know?”

“I fought him back on Fhost.”

Khedryn looked appalled. “And you—Well, that must have felt … weird.”

Jaden shrugged. “Which one is it? Soldier?”

“Yes,” Khedryn said. “And, Jaden, he was … different from the other clones.”

“What do you mean?” Marr asked.

“Different how?” asked Jaden.

“Not as sick as the others, maybe not sick at all. They seemed crazy, but he just seemed … confused. Angry, but not crazy. When they wanted to kill me, he tried to stop them. There’s something about him.…” He looked up. “He’s got your eyes. You know what I mean? He’s looking for something.”

Jaden did not know what to say.

“He’s more like you than in just looks,” Khedryn said thoughtfully. “And he seemed able to at least partially resist the Umbaran’s power. Maybe you can, too?”

“Maybe,” Jaden said, oddly troubled to hear that he and the clone shared a temperament.

People are not equations, Marr had said. Jaden wondered.

“We need to get after them,” he said.

“The Umbaran or the clones?” Marr asked.

“The clones.”

Khedryn cleared his throat. “He said not to follow. Soldier said that. Why follow? There’s only three left. One is a child.”

“I would never hurt a child, Khedryn,” Jaden said.

“I know that.”

“But that clone killed people on Fhost. They’re dangerous still.”

Khedryn sighed. “Jedi, I just want to catch my breath for a moment. You know?”

“I do,” Jaden said, nodding. “But there’s no time.”