by Paul S. Kemp
“That is Mother,” Soldier said softly. “Talk to him. The Jedi.”
Marr swallowed, then uttered a word that he hoped still applied.
“Jaden.”
THE PRESENT
HIS MASTER TURNED AS MOTHER SHRIEKED BEHIND THE closed door. He did not look like himself, and Marr feared the worst. Jaden’s eyes fixed on Marr, on Soldier, his brow furrowed.
“I know you,” he said. His lightsaber ignited, making his drawn face look sallow. He wobbled on his legs, put a finger to his temple, and winced as if he were being bombarded by a rush of memories.
Marr wanted to go to him, to help him, but Soldier held him fast and activated his lightsaber. The red blade sizzled and hummed beside Marr’s ear.
Jaden recovered himself, held his yellow blade in his hand, regarding Soldier and Marr. Marr saw recognition in his Master’s eyes, but not understanding. He looked lost, confused. Marr well knew why.
A shriek from the chamber behind Jaden drew all their eyes. The child crept up behind Soldier and Marr, looking for comfort—or protection.
Marr knew that something awful lurked behind the door.
“Talk to him,” Soldier repeated.
“Master,” Marr said, and the word felt odd on his lips. “Do you … really know me? Master?”
Jaden’s brow furrowed. He lowered his lightsaber. “Marr?”
The tension and dread Marr had been carrying drained out of him in a rush. He let himself hope that his actions might have worked, that his Master, whole in mind, stood before him.
“Yes,” he said, unable to hold in a smile. “It’s me. Yes.”
Jaden’s expression hardened and fixed on Soldier. “Soldier, isn’t it? Let him go.”
Soldier’s grip tightened on Marr’s throat. “I can’t. I need to get off this station. You and he are showing me the way.”
Something huge moved in the chamber behind Jaden. Footsteps thumped. The floor vibrated under their impact. Marr felt the dark-side power pouring through the vertical slit. It made him nauseous.
“This is not the time for this,” Marr said.
“I can’t let you leave,” Jaden said, as stubborn as ever. “You murdered half a dozen people in the medical facility on Fhost. You’re a Sith.”
Marr felt Soldier sag under the accusation. “I’m not a Sith. I’m not a Jedi. I’m just … a soldier. The others killed the innocents on Fhost. Not me. I’m … better now, Jedi. I was lost but … not anymore.”
Jaden looked unconvinced, his lightsaber a yellow line that he would not allow Soldier to cross.
Soldier’s voice was desperate. “We just want to leave, Jedi. We just want to leave and be left alone.”
“We?”
“He has a child with him, Master,” Marr said.
“Grace,” Soldier called over his shoulder.
The child emerged from the darkness behind them. Jaden’s expression softened when he saw the girl. His eyes sought Marr’s and, with them, he asked a question.
“He could have killed us both already,” Marr said. “I was vulnerable. So … were you.”
“But I didn’t,” Soldier said.
Another shriek came from the chamber beyond, closer now. The door bulged. A monsoon of dark-side energy squeezed through the door’s seal.
“Soldier …” the girl said, fear causing her voice to shake. She sagged to the floor and Soldier released Marr and went to her, pulling her close. She buried her face in his chest as he stroked her hair.
“It will be all right. Didn’t I say it would be all right?”
Marr saw Jaden’s resolve erode.
“He’s not a Sith,” Marr said, knocking the last bricks out of the wall of Jaden’s resistance.
Jaden, staring at Soldier and Grace, deactivated his lightsaber.
Soldier released Marr and Marr went to Jaden, stared into his face, looking for any sign that he wasn’t who he should be. He saw nothing of the Jaden-clone’s mannerisms or expressions. Jaden appeared to be Jaden. Marr allowed himself to hope.
“It’s good to see you,” Jaden said. He put his hand to the hole in his temple. “I must have gotten hit on the head.”
“You did,” Marr said, hoping that Jaden would not probe too deeply into events until Marr had organized his lies. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Everything’s blurry right now,” Jaden said. He held up his wounded hand, the stumps of his fingers seeping blood. “I reinjured these somehow.”
“The fight with the Umbaran, I imagine,” Marr said. “We’ll figure it out later. For now, we need to get off this station. All of us.”
Jaden looked past him to Soldier. “What about the other clones? There were more than just you and Grace.”
Soldier stood with his hand on Grace. “We’re all that’s left.”
Jaden stared him in the face, and Marr wondered what it must be like to look upon and interact with a clone of yourself.
People are not equations, Marr had said to his Master. Maybe not. But he hoped people were their choices and their memories. If they were, then Jaden was Jaden. If they weren’t, then Jaden was … something else.
“That’s the way out,” Jaden said, nodding at the chamber behind him.
Soldier activated his lightsaber and tossed Marr his. Marr and Jaden ignited their blades. Grace fell in behind them.
The door slid open to reveal horror.
“Seer,” Soldier said, the word so profoundly sad it might as well have been a one-word elegy.
Grace whimpered and buried her face in Soldier’s cloak. Soldier put his hand on her head, a gesture so loving that it unsettled Jaden.
Jaden recognized the face of the female clone from Fhost. Seer, Soldier had called her. But little else about her remained human.
Her torso and hairless head were pale and bloated, like a drowned corpse’s. Veins and arteries stood out so prominently from her skin that they looked as if they might soon burst. They glowed with light the same way the filaments in the walls glowed.
A nest of filaments wrapped her entirely from the waist down. If she still had legs, Jaden could not see them. She looked like a demon, a half-serpent born of the dark side and Rakatan technology.
A cocoon of energy surrounded her body and leaked in blue bolts from her eyes and fingertips. She focused her gaze, and the weight of her regard caused Jaden to take a half-step back. The power she embodied staggered him.
“Seer,” Soldier said, his voice thick with despair. “Are you still there, Seer?”
“She’s gone,” Jaden said, wincing against the power pouring off her.
“But Mother is here,” said the form, her voice deep, echoing through the large chamber. “And now you will pay. Everyone will pay!”
Jaden knew they had to get through her to get back to the lifts. He did not hesitate.
“Keep the girl safe,” he said to Marr, and charged.
Before he had taken three steps, Force lightning, jagged and sparking, flew from Mother’s bloated fingers and slammed into him. He interposed the yellow line of his lightsaber and spun it in rapid circles, attempting to wind the lightning up around his blade, but its power was too much. It blasted through his defenses, struck his body, the pain like a dozen stabbing knives, and threw him sidewise five meters. He landed prone and filaments snaked out of the floor and wall, writhing, reaching for him. He slashed them with his lightsaber and bounded to his feet to see Soldier also charging Mother.
A rope of filaments exploded out of the floor, grabbed Soldier by the ankles, lifted him high, and slammed him back into the floor, once, twice. He looked like a rag doll.
“Soldier!” Grace cried.
Marr, with one hand still on Grace, pulled his blaster free and unloaded at Mother. The first shot struck her in the chest and left a black, smoking hole in her bloated, pale flesh. The second did the same and she roared with pain, her body spasming, writhing. Before Marr could fire another shot, Mother held up her hand and Marr’s blaster flew from h
is hand to hers. She crushed the weapon in her fist and gestured at Marr with pinched fingers.
The Cerean rose from the ground, gagging, legs kicking.
“Run,” Marr grunted at Grace, but she stood still and stared, transfixed.
Jaden fell fully into the Force, gestured with outstretched arms and two flattened palms at Mother, and unleashed a blast of power. The energy struck her full in the side, blowing her a meter sidewise and causing her to release Marr, who fell to the floor.
Jaden attacked, leaping high toward the ceiling, flipping at the apex of his leap, and taking his lightsaber in a two-handed grip so that he could split Mother in half.
But she’d already recovered from his blast. She turned her dark eyes on him, raised a hand dismissively, and seized him with her power.
He was no match for her. Her power held him against the ceiling and began to press. His breath went out of his lungs in a whoosh. His chest started to collapse. He interposed his own power to offset her, but her push was inexorable.
He watched Marr sprint to Soldier’s aid, cut him free of the filaments that bound him, and help him to his feet. Jaden wanted to order them to run, to take the girl and get out of there, but he could not call out, could not do anything but use every ounce of his Force-strength to keep Mother from crushing his ribs and organs.
Marr and Soldier charged Mother. Filaments writhed out of the floor and walls to attack them from all sides. Soldier’s blade flashed as he ducked, spun, leapt, and whirled, closing on Mother with every step, leaving a mess of smoking, squirming filaments in his wake. Marr, less graceful but still effective, cut his way through the filaments as he might thick foliage, slashing two-handed, spinning, using the limited techniques Jaden had taught him.
As they neared her body, she roared, and baleful green Force lightning poured from her in all directions, sheathing her in power. Jaden, on the fringe of it, felt the energy sear his flesh, smelled the stink of burning flesh, opened his mouth in a scream for which he could draw no breath.
Soldier and Marr tried to catch up the lightning in their blades, but it was too much, came at them from too many angles, and both of them fell to the ground, writhing with pain.
With Mother’s attention elsewhere, Jaden felt her grip on him lessen. Despite his pain, he drew on the Force and let power explode outward from him. It freed him from her grasp and he flipped as he fell. He hit the floor on his feet, crouched, and exploded into a leap toward her, his lightsaber held high. He reached her before she could swat him aside. His blade hummed as he slashed and opened a gash in her chest.
Energy, dark and cold, exploded outward from the wound, from the walls, the floor. It blew Jaden backward and slammed him into the wall. He cushioned the blow with the Force, and that just barely kept it from cracking his skull.
Mother’s eyes widened and she staggered backward, shrieking. She spasmed and raged, a storm of energy filling the room as her fury grew.
They were no match for her. Jaden could see that.
“Run!” he said, climbing to his feet. “Now!”
The four of them sprinted past Mother and toward the slit of the door. It did not open, so all three of them slashed at the wall with their lightsabers. It felt like cutting flesh. Mother screamed behind them, and Jaden felt her shift her girth, felt the regard of her eyes on his back.
“Move!” he said, and pushed Marr, Grace, and Soldier through the hole they’d cut. “Move!”
He slipped through behind them as Force lightning ripped through the hole, slammed into his back, and drove him face-first across the corridor.
“Master!” Marr said, but Jaden was already on all fours and trying to stand. Dizziness caused him to wobble, but Marr and Soldier kept him standing. Mother’s voice boomed from behind them.
“You will not escape me!” she said. “Only I will leave this station.”
The door slid open behind them. Mother’s form loomed. Jaden loosed a blast of power at her, Soldier did the same, and they all ran for their lives.
The wail of an alarm brought Khedryn back to consciousness. He lay there, blinking at the dim emergency lights glowing in the ceiling above him, unsure of where he was. He’d gotten stuck in the alien lift, and he’d fallen the rest of the way down the shaft. He must have hit his head when he landed.
The power had gone out, but backup seemed to have been restored.
He ran his fingers over his scalp and felt the sore, seeping lump on the back of his skull. His glowrod lay on the ground near him, still working. He rolled over and crawled for it, his legs and back aching with every movement. He might have cracked something in his feet or legs, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t broken anything too badly.
He picked up the glowrod and aimed it around the room to give himself a better look. He’d fallen through one of the tubes that extended downward from the ceiling. He crawled underneath one of them and looked up into it. It seemed to extend upward forever.
Control panels like those in the chamber above stood on the floor under the bottom of each tube. He touched one and it did not operate. Cursing, he touched another, but still nothing. How would he ever get back up? He touched a third and it came to life, starting to scan his body as the one above had done.
He stepped out of the light before the scan had finished. His breathing came easier now that he knew the control panel and lift were operational. He would be able to get back up.
But now he needed to figure out where to go. A single vertical slit in the wall looked like the only way out of the chamber. He walked toward it and it slid open with a wet susurration. Before he stepped through, his comlink crackled and he heard a series of questioning beeps from R-6. Alone in the belly of the dark station, he latched onto the sound of the droid as a lifeline. Khedryn resolved in that instant to learn better droidspeak.
“Nice job, Ar-Six. I’ll tell you right now that you’re welcome on my boat anytime.”
The droid whirred with satisfaction.
“Patch me through to Jaden and Marr.”
The droid beeped when he made the connection.
“Jaden,” Khedryn said. “Do you read? Jaden?”
Mother’s screams of rage haunted them as they ran wildly through the station’s corridors. Jaden, Marr, and Soldier hacked their way through any doors that did not open at their approach.
“She’s getting closer!” Grace cried.
“Move, move, move!” Soldier said.
Jaden’s comlink crackled and Khedryn’s voice carried over the connection.
“Jaden, do you read? Jaden?”
“Where are you?” Jaden asked, his voice tight, tense as he ran, as Mother shrieked.
“We docked. I’m at the bottom of the lifts. The Umbaran attacked me. He’s on the station. Watch yourself.”
“He’s dead,” Jaden said.
“Good, then—”
“Worse is coming,” Jaden said.
“Worse? What do you mean?”
“I mean get out of there, Khedryn,” Jaden said. “I don’t know if we’ll make it.”
“Listen, Jedi, I’m not leaving you two—”
Suddenly an idea struck Jaden. “Khedryn, get up to the clones’ supply ship. Set the engines to overload.”
“What?”
“Blow the ship, Khedryn! I want the whole orbital station to go up.”
“No,” said Soldier. “The meds are on that ship. Grace has to have them.”
“It’s the only ship big enough to do enough damage,” Jaden said. “And we’re all dead if we don’t blow the station. We can’t stop Mother. We’ll get her meds some other way.”
To that, Soldier said nothing.
“That’ll kill us all, Jaden,” Khedryn said.
“We’ll get off before it blows. Or if we don’t, you will. Do it, Khedryn.”
“Move your butts, then, Jedi.”
“Watch out for the bodies,” Jaden said. “There could be more up there.”
“I saw them already. They’r
e just dead bodies, Jaden.”
“They aren’t dead,” Jaden said. “Mother uses them.”
“ ‘Mother’ what?”
“Just watch yourself.”
Khedryn had heard the alarm in Jaden’s tone. He’d never before heard anything like it from the Jedi. He stepped up to one of the control panels, activated it, let its light scan his body. The tube above him adjusted in size to accommodate his form, then stretched downward to gulp him. He closed his eyes as the warm flesh surrounded him and held him tight.
He ascended rapidly and breathed a sigh of relief when he reached the top of the lift. The floor vibrated, shaking with some distant impact. He ran back the way he had come, through corridors and rooms dimly lit by glowing filaments that flashed and blinked crazily.
Imagining the relative position of Junker’s docking point to that of the supply ship, he turned left and sped down a hall.
He saw the hole of the supply ship’s docking tube ahead and raced toward it.
Forms emerged from side corridors, animated corpses with hands extended, shuffling piles of dried flesh, sinew, and teeth. At first Khedryn thought their veins and arteries were glowing, but no—the same filaments that lined the walls of the station also lined their bodies. It was if something had grown within them, taken them over.
They were humanoid, bipedal, but their condition did not allow him to identify their species. Shock stopped him in his tracks, and one of the corpses got a hand on his shoulder. As bony fingers sank into his flesh, he cursed, grunted against the pain, and punched the corpse in the face. Its head, already barely attached to a thick spine, flew off and slammed against the wall. The body collapsed at his feet. He drew both his blasters as he whirled and fired wildly. His first shot hit nothing but wall, but his second hit the thin, exposed rib cage of another corpse. It exploded into shards of bone and desiccated flesh. He threw himself against a wall and pulled the trigger as fast as he could, aiming at anything that moved.