Riptide

by Paul S. Kemp

  “What is it, Soldier?” Grace asked.

  “It’s Mother,” Soldier answered.

  In response to Seer’s approach, the filaments in the walls glowed in organized curtains of red, white, green, and yellow, cascading down the walls and across the floor.

  Soldier found them hypnotic.

  Grace gasped in wonder. “So pretty.”

  Soldier felt Grace’s awe, her wonder, and was pleased he had been able to bring her to Mother. If nothing else, he had done that, and it was of worth.

  With each step Seer took, a splash of color formed under feet, so that she walked to Mother on circles of light. The ropelike filaments around the cylinder squirmed like serpents as Seer drew near.

  Seer fell to her knees before Mother’s heart and bowed her head.

  “We heard your call and traveled far to reach you, Mother.”

  The filaments in the walls and floor answered with starbursts of red, green, and yellow. Seer looked around, exaltation in her eyes.

  “It’s beautiful, Soldier! Beautiful!”

  The flesh of her face formed lumps, appeared to bubble, made her expression a grotesque distortion of a smile.

  Grace pulled back from Soldier. “I don’t like this, Soldier,” she said.

  “It’s all right,” he said. He could feel her flesh moving under his touch.

  Power gathered in the chamber. The lights in the walls flared and flashed wildly.

  “Heal them, Mother,” Soldier said. “Please.”

  The floor around Seer formed lines and cleaved open. She knelt on a circle of the floor, an island. Thin filaments emerged from the opening that surrounded her. They waved in the air, glowing red and green. Seer looked at them, smiling, rapturous.

  Soldier, too, was smiling. The filaments would heal Seer, then Grace.

  The filaments extended upward until they towered over Seer, until she was surrounded by them.

  “I feel it, Soldier,” she said. “It’s happening!”

  All at once the filaments descended toward Seer, covering her in a gentle wave. Lights flashed along their length. Seer laughed, held up her arms. The filaments twisted around her arms, her torso, her legs. Her laughter suddenly took on a questioning tone.

  The filaments flared red, twisted tightly around her, snaked up her neck, and covered her face. Her laughtered died.

  “Mother!” she said. “Mother!”

  In moments, Seer was cocooned in the filaments, her form squirming desperately in their grasp. The filaments turned from red to green to yellow, the light pulsing. Seer’s body spasmed, and Soldier realized that the filaments were pumping something into her. Her body swelled and roiled until it was barely recognizable as human. Pustules formed on her skin, burst, bleeding sparks.

  “What is happening?” Grace cried.

  Soldier had no idea, but it clearly was not what Seer had expected. He activated his lightsaber and advanced toward her. The walls and floor flared angry red, bolts of energy shot from all directions, and a blast of power lifted Soldier from his feet and blew him from the room. He slammed into the wall of the corridor outside, his breath knocked from him in a whoosh. Grace ran to his side, her eyes filled with fear.

  “Soldier!” Seer screamed, pawing at the filaments that covered her mouth … that went into her mouth and down her throat. “Soldier!”

  More filaments squirmed out of the floor and covered her, wrapped her entirely, except for one eye and her open, screaming mouth. They glowed red, green, yellow, the current of light pulsing as more and more energy poured into her form. They pulled her down into the hole in the floor, and Grace screamed.

  Halfway under, Seer reached a hand in Soldier’s direction, terror in her visible eye. Her lips, engorged with power, fumbled over the words, but Soldier recognized them nevertheless.

  “Help me! Help!”

  He used the Force to pull his lightsaber hilt to his hand and ignited it. Fear for Seer, anger at Mother’s betrayal—both gave him power. The dark side surged in him.

  As he stood, the door to Mother’s chamber closed like a curtain, with not even a seam visible. He could hear Seer’s muffled, panicked screams coming from within. He could cut his way through. He took his blade in a two-handed grip.

  “Soldier,” Grace said, her tone surprisingly calm.

  Her voice cut through his anger, his fear, cut through all the clutter in his mind. He looked at her, his breath coming hard. Her flesh sagged in places, bulged in others. He could barely recognize her. Only her eyes remained unaffected, and they pleaded with him for help.

  “I want to go home,” she said.

  “We don’t have a home,” he spat, and hated himself for the despair he heard in his voice. He had spent himself, all his hopes, on Seer’s dream. And Seer had been wrong, her faith a lie, his belief in her a fool’s errand.

  “Please, Soldier,” Grace said.

  Before he could answer, a sound carried from deep in the station, a visceral scream that sent shock waves throughout the floors, walls, and ceiling. The filaments flared so bright he had to cover his eyes. Searing energy seeped from the walls, leaving blackened gashes behind. Touch panels exploded out from the wall and hung loose on dimly glowing filaments that looked like entrails. Smoke leaked into the air. An alarm began to sound and everything went dark.

  “Soldier, I’m scared,” Grace said.

  Soldier ignited his lightsaber and used its red light to find her. She huddled against one of the walls, her eyes wide, fearful. He knelt, hugged her, decided that he still had at least one purpose. He lifted her to her feet.

  “Stay close to me,” he said. “I’m going to take you home.”

  A door parted before Khedryn like a curtain of flesh, to reveal a large circular chamber beyond. Holes dotted the floor. Control panels of a kind he’d never seen before stood beside each of the holes. He approached them warily, holstering one blaster and trading it for a glowrod. Shining the beam down one of the holes, he saw that its smooth sides descended as far as he could see, presumably to the planet’s surface. His stomach fluttered at the thought of sliding down one of those tubes for several kilometers. But it appeared he’d have to do exactly that if he was to locate Jaden and Marr or the Umbaran.

  “Stang,” he said.

  He moved to one of the control panels, having no idea how to operate it. He touched the featureless plastic rectangle and it lit up. Lines of color spread across its surface, presumably communicating some kind of information, though he had no idea what.

  A beam of white light shot from the panel and played over his body, raising the hairs on his arms. He flinched, but it did no harm and a silhouette of his body showed up on the screen. The hole at his feet shrank, the sound moist, grotesque, and then was still, a mouth waiting to devour him.

  Desperate for something that would allow him to avoid stepping into the shaft, he clicked his comlink, clicked it again, again. Nothing.

  “Damned droid,” he said.

  He got down on the floor and lowered himself into the shaft. Its walls closed in on his legs, seized him, started pulling him in. He cursed as the shaft pulled him in farther. Claustrophobia threatened as the shaft closed on his stomach, his chest, his neck, his face.

  He swore, the sound muffled, as he felt himself pelting down the shaft, cradled in the station’s grip. He fell for time indeterminable, unable to see anything but the lines of light glowing deep in the walls of the station’s malleable walls.

  Abruptly the lines flared red, the flash so bright it left him seeing spots. He heard a deep vibration that sounded from somewhere far off, the reverberations causing the shaft to shake.

  And then the lights went out all around him. His downward motion stopped.

  He was stuck somewhere in the shaft, in darkness, gripped by the walls.

  The power had gone out.

  Panic set his heart to racing, stole his breath, turned his mouth dry. He tried to fight it, holding on to hope that a backup system would activate a
nd allow him to finish his descent, but long seconds turned to a minute and still he was stuck. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears, his breath loud and hot and damp on the walls. He tried to reach for his comlink, managed to elbow out enough space and give it a squeeze.

  “Ar-Six?” He disliked the fear he heard in his voice, but he could not dispel it. “Ar-Six.”

  Nothing, of course.

  He was stuck in the belly of an ancient station. No one knew where he was. And even if they did, how could they get him out?

  He let fly with a string of expletives, and the outburst helped steady him. He had managed to elbow out some room to click his comlink. Maybe he could maneuver himself out of the station’s grip and slide the rest of the way down.

  But what if he was still a kilometer up? He had no way to know how far he had descended. He’d been going fast, but …

  “To hell with it,” he said, and started to squirm. He could not sit idle.

  Grunting and straining, he pressed against the walls with his body and they began to loosen. His legs came free, dangling loosely beneath him, and for a moment he almost lost his nerve. But he’d be damned if he’d die in the gullet of some ancient space station. He worked until he got the opening under him wide enough to slip his shoulders through. Awkwardly, he reached for his glowrod and tried to maneuver his body out of his way so that he could look down the length of the shaft and see how much of a fall remained.

  He aimed the glowrod down, dropped it, and cursed. His hands lost their purchase and he fell through the hole he’d made.

  The sickening plummet into darkness put his stomach in his throat. He screamed as he fell, scrabbling at the smooth walls, unable to find any purchase to slow him, tearing his fingernails from their beds.

  He knew he was going to die. He would fall for a kilometer and finally slam into a floor somewhere, pulverizing himself.

  Even as he imagined his demise, he hit the ground hard, but after only a few seconds of sliding. The impact sent pain shooting up his feet, ankles, knees. He crumpled. His backside slammed to the ground and his head thumped into the floor. Lights exploded in his sight as everything went dark.

  Nyss prowled the corridors of the station, attentive to every sound in his search for the Prime and Jaden. Now and again he saw a corpse, some ancient, mummified remains of this or that species, some of which had not been seen in the galaxy for thousands of years.

  Under his vest, he carried one of the unused mindspears. The Iteration, lagging behind him, carried another. Perhaps the Iteration kept his distance because he felt Nyss’s power and it made him uncomfortable.

  The lighted filaments in the walls led him onward. Shadows painted the corridors and rooms. He moved in silence, invisible. He left the Iteration farther and farther behind and did not care. He wished to face both the Prime and Jaden alone, to cause both of them pain for what they had done to Syll. Then he would annihilate who they had been and make them into what the One Sith wished.

  Nyss halted. Ahead, he caught motion in the dim light of the corridor. He heard the sound of soft voices. He recognized Jaden Korr’s.

  Using his comlink, he said to the Iteration, “Remain where you are. I’ve found them.”

  He pulled his power close about him, melded with the darkness, and crept forward. All he needed was an opportunity.

  The station shook, as if with a distant explosion or impact. The lights blinked out. Darkness like ink shrouded the corridor. The alarms fell silent and quiet settled on the corridor, as if the station were drawing breath for a scream. The dark-side power that suffused the air, the walls, the floor began to recede, the aftereffect of some event Jaden did not understand.

  “Master?” Marr asked, and Jaden heard the nervousness in his tone.

  “Be calm,” Jaden said softly. “Feel the Force.”

  He activated his lightsaber, and its yellow light reared shadows at the edge of his vision. He felt as if he had just made himself a target.

  Marr spaced himself a pace from Jaden and activated his blade. Purple joined yellow.

  “What just happened?” the Cerean asked in a whisper.

  Jaden shook his head. The dark-side power invested in the station had diminished, as if it had moved or concentrated itself somewhere outside of his immediate perception. He fell into the Force and extended his perception beyond the visual.

  Immediately he thought he felt … something, but he could not lock his senses on it. It was as if his perception had encountered a hole. He’d never experienced anything like it. It was not one of the clones, but something else.

  All at once he remembered Khedryn’s words about the Umbaran’s ability to disconnect the clones from the Force.

  “We are not alone here,” Marr said, perhaps picking up the same thread.

  “No,” Jaden said, squinting into the darkness. “We’re not.”

  Screams knifed the silence and put Jaden on edge—the alarm reactivating. Overhead emergency lights came on, dim and flickering. The glowing filaments in the wall put on their patterned light show, but it was slower now, as if they’d lost the animus that had powered them previously.

  Jaden caught movement at the edge of his field of vision. He spun, blade ready.

  Nothing.

  “What is it?” Marr asked, his voice a hiss.

  “We need to move.”

  “Agreed.” Marr spoke into his comlink. “Khedryn, do you copy?”

  Still nothing but static.

  “He knows how to take care of himself,” Jaden said. “Come on.”

  They started down the hall, leading with their blades. Jaden felt as if they were walking down the throat of a beast. The slow flashing of the emergency lights made it impossible for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Marr tried his comlink again.

  “Khedryn, do you copy?”

  Still nothing.

  As they advanced, the lights grew dimmer. Jaden did not know whether to attribute it to system failure or … something else. The scuff of a boot on the floor turned him around. He saw nothing but darkness alternating with a play of shadows from the flashing lights.

  “Against the wall,” he said to Marr, and they backed up.

  Before they reached the wall, the darkness around them deepened so that the lights in the ceiling became as faint as distant stars. Jaden could see a few paces, no more.

  A feeling started in his stomach, a flutter, as if he were falling from a great height. His connection to the Force slipped from him, drained into some dark hole into which he could not see or reach. He grabbed at it, tried to focus his concentration and hold on to the one certainty of his existence, but it slipped away and left him alone, bereft, hollow.

  “What is happening?” Marr asked, his voice an octave higher than usual.

  “The Umbaran,” Jaden said.

  As one their lightsabers winked out.

  Marr felt dizzy, vaguely nauseous. He hadn’t realized how much he’d come to rely on his connection to the Force. Though he’d only recently become aware of the true nature of the connection, it had been there his whole life, and its absence left him profoundly uneasy. His legs felt weak under him. He gripped his deactivated lightsaber in a sweaty palm and reached behind him for the wall, wanting to steady himself.

  Something heavy and metallic slammed into the back of his skull. Sparks exploded before his eyes and pain buckled his knees. His vision went black for a beat and he was falling, falling. He tried to shout a warning to Jaden, but his mouth would not work. He regained enough sense to catch himself on his hands before his face slammed into the floor. He crouched there on all fours, head spinning.

  Incongruously, he noticed the smooth texture of the floor, its warmth.

  A kick from a booted foot slammed into his side, cracked ribs, and drove him over and flat on his back. He stared up at the ceiling, unable to breathe, unable to think, his broken ribs sending a stab of hot pain through his abdomen.

  A face appeared above him, pale, hairless—the Um
baran. His dark eyes were holes; his mouth was an angry slash. The darkness clung to him like mist, and Marr could not quite focus on his outline.

  He reached for his blaster but his arm seemed to be moving too slowly.

  The Umbaran loomed over him. A vibroblade appeared in his hand.

  “Master,” Marr tried to say, but it only came out a groan.

  Soldier and Grace hurried through the corridors of the station.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Grace asked. Her voice sounded so small.

  “Yes,” he said, but the word was a lie. He had been so awed by the station, by what appeared to be the vindication of Seer’s beliefs, that he had not paid close enough attention to the route they had taken to see Mother’s face. He had only a general idea of where they were going.

  The dimness of the corridors did not help. The overhead emergency lights blinked on and off, as did the glowing filaments in the walls and floor. Every room and corridor looked the same as every other.

  “I’m frightened,” Grace said.

  He knew. He could feel it coming off her. Hoping she could not feel his fear, he put his hand on her shoulder as they hurried along, his lightsaber hilt in his hand but not activated.

  He looked behind them regularly, terrified that Seer would appear somehow, or that some other manifestation of Mother would come to take him and Grace as it had taken Seer. The floor and walls shook with vibrations from time to time, and they reminded Soldier of Seer’s ecstatic shivers when she communed with Mother. The similarity alarmed him.

  “Come on, Grace,” he said, pulling her along. “We have to hurry.”

  A door parted before them to reveal a long, dark corridor. From ahead, between the wails of the alarm, Soldier heard a shout, grunts, the sounds of combat. He knelt down and looked Grace in the eyes.

  “Stay ten meters behind me and don’t make a sound.”

  Eyes wide, she nodded.

  Soldier rose and stalked forward.

  Jaden heard Marr’s pained groan, saw the Umbaran standing over him with a bare knife. Acting on instinct, he extended a hand, drew on the Force for a blast of power … and cursed. He had no power. It seemed the Umbaran could disrupt all connection to the Force: his own and that of his lightsaber crystal.