Riptide

by Paul S. Kemp

  When nothing else moved in the hallway, he picked his way through the carnage and ran aboard the supply ship. He remembered how to get to the cockpit and went directly for it. As he moved through the corridors and lifts, he flashed back on the events of the previous hours—being taken captive by the clones; the Umbaran; the little girl, Grace.

  He hoped she was all right.

  Once in the cockpit, he got the engines live and firing, but the ship’s internal safeties prevented him from putting them on a loop that would result in an explosion. He opened the ship’s internal network to the outside and raised R-6.

  “Ar-Six, I’m on the supply ship and the engines are hot. I need you to crack the internal safeties so that I can blow the engines.”

  R-6 beeped a question.

  “You have ten seconds, droid.”

  R-6 whooped in alarm. Khedryn watched the readout on the comp station as R-6 worked the system. The data scrolled past so fast that Khedryn could not read any of it. He turned to face the cockpit door, blasters at the ready, should the clones or the corpses show. Neither did, and R-6 had the safeties overridden in moments.

  “Good job, Ar-Six,” Khedryn said, and set the engines on a power loop that would eventually cause them to explode. The whole ship would go and, given its size, it would do enormous damage to the station.

  “Jaden and Marr are en route,” Khedryn said. “Get Junker ready to run.”

  The supply ship’s engines began to spool up on their way to self-destruction. Khedryn sprinted back toward the station’s lift. He encountered a single animated corpse, a straggler with an oversized skull and odd tusks. Without slowing, he blew it to shards with his blasters.

  “And stay down,” he said.

  He saw the lift room ahead.

  A buckle in the floor almost knocked him down. A scream resounded from deeper in the station, so filled with hate and rage that Khedryn covered his ears. The filaments in the walls glowed a hot red.

  “We’re coming up,” said Jaden’s voice over the comlink. “Mother is coming, too.”

  “Make it quick,” Khedryn said. “The supply ship is ready to blow.”

  Jaden, Marr, Soldier, and Grace piled into the lift room. Mother’s movement behind them caused the ground to shake. It was as if she were getting bigger with each passing moment, absorbing more and more of the station as she went.

  “Get in and go,” Jaden said. He used the Force to pull the door to the chamber closed and, holding it, backed up toward one of the control panels. Soldier scooped Grace up in his arms; the control panel’s light scanned them both, the tube extended, adjusted its size, and up they went. Marr followed.

  Mother slammed against the outer door. Her power drove Jaden a step backward, but he held the doors closed. Mother screamed again, a sound rich with hate, frustration, rage. The doors began to bulge inward.

  The light on the control panel scanned Jaden, and the tube above him adjusted size, descended toward him.

  He could no longer hold it. The door to the chamber burst open and Mother lurched into the room, her human torso even more bloated and discolored than before, the serpentine portion of her body now ten meters long.

  Filaments burst out of the floor and walls and grasped for Jaden. He slashed them with his lightsaber as Mother roared. The tube scooped him up, and Mother’s shriek trailed away as he streaked upward in the lift.

  Khedryn sprinted into the room with the lifts. He went to the shafts, looked down but saw nothing. He waited there, heart racing, breath coming fast.

  A vibration under his feet signaled the rise of the lifts. He went from one to another, watching for the sign of something coming up. In one of the lift tubes he saw a rapidly rising bulge and backed off as it expelled not Jaden or Marr but Soldier and Grace. Blood leaked from Soldier’s nose and the side of his face looked as if he’d been hit with a brick. Burst capillaries in one of his eyes had turned it red.

  “You!” Khedryn said, and fumbled for his blaster.

  Soldier gestured with his free hand, tore the blaster from Khedryn’s grasp, but did not ignite his lightsaber.

  “I’m not your enemy,” the clone said. “The Jedi and the Cerean are right behind us.”

  Before Khedryn could say anything, Soldier stepped forward and handed him back his blaster.

  Khedryn looked at it, took it. “What happened?” he asked, knowing how stupid the question sounded.

  “Weird things,” Grace said, and smiled at him.

  Khedryn could not help himself. He smiled in return. “I’m glad to see you,” he said to her, and her grin turned shy.

  The tube nearest Khedryn flexed, bulged, and spat out Marr. The Cerean’s eyes looked as worried as Khedryn had ever seen them.

  “What is it?” Khedryn said.

  “Where’s Jaden?”

  “Not here yet.”

  “You started the autodestruct on the supply ship?”

  Khedryn nodded. “What is going on? What is ‘Mother’?”

  As if in answer, the floor under them lurched, buckled. Grace squealed in alarm.

  “A lie,” Soldier said. “Mother is a lie.”

  Another lurch of the floor. Marr ignited his lightsaber. Soldier did the same. The tube on the far side of the room bulged and disgorged Jaden, his hair and eyebrows singed, his clothing burned, his breathing ragged.

  The floor lurched again, nearly knocking all of them off their feet. Then it began to bulge upward, rising toward the ceiling. A scream of pure, unadulterated rage burst up from one of the shafts and set Khedryn’s hair on end.

  “Run!” Jaden said. “Run!”

  Khedryn needed to hear nothing else. He turned, along with the rest of them, and sped for Junker.

  Heat and smoke filled the dimly lit corridors. The filaments in the walls blinked through a series of colors, rapidly, crazily, the frenetic brain activity of a dying organism.

  Jaden and Soldier led the flight, their yellow and red lightsabers cutting through the doors that didn’t open at their approach. Soldier held the child in his free arm, her head buried in his neck and beard. Jaden used the Force to pull walls and doors together behind him, hoping to slow Mother. Mother shrieked behind them, and the impact of her body and power on the obstacles Jaden had put in her path sounded close, too close.

  “Run!” Khedryn shouted. “Run!”

  Another explosion sent them lurching, threw them all up against the wall, and knocked Soldier off his feet. Jaden and Marr pulled him upright and they ran on. The child was crying.

  Ahead, the corridor split.

  “Junker’s that way,” Marr said, pointing to the left with his lightsaber.

  “Where’s the Umbaran’s ship?” Soldier asked.

  “That way,” Marr said, nodding right. “Near your ship.”

  Soldier took Khedryn by the arm. “How long before the supply ship blows?”

  Khedryn shook his arm free. “Moments. There’s no time.”

  Behind them, Mother screamed her fury and pain. They could feel walls collapsing before her approach.

  “She needs the meds,” Soldier said, nodding at Grace. “I have to get aboard that ship.”

  “You could get them back on Fhost,” Marr said.

  “I’m not going back to Fhost,” Soldier answered.

  “Jaden?” Khedryn asked.

  His mouth a hard line in the red glow of his lightsaber, Soldier turned to face Jaden. The Jedi stared into Soldier’s gray eyes, the same eyes Jaden saw every morning when he looked in the mirror.

  Jaden could not let him go, could he?

  The soft cries of the child, her disease causing her flesh to visibly roil, made up his mind for him.

  “Where will the two of you go?” Jaden asked him. “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jaden nodded; Soldier nodded.

  “Go,” Jaden said to him.

  Without another word, and still cradling Grace in one of his arms, Soldier turned and ran for the
Umbaran’s ship. He must have used the Force to augment his speed, for he vanished in a blink.

  “I don’t think he can make it,” Khedryn said. Not to the supply ship and then the Umbaran’s ship.

  “Maybe not,” Jaden said. “But I had to let him try.”

  Another scream from Mother, another explosion in a distant part of the station, set Jaden’s, Marr’s, and Khedryn’s feet to running.

  “Have the ship ready to go, Ar-Six!” Khedryn said over his comlink, and the droid beeped agreement.

  Ahead, they saw the docking tube, the open hatch of Junker’s airlock. They sprinted for it, but before they reached it a nest of filaments burst from the walls, squirming like snakes, and grabbed at them.

  Jaden’s blade was a blur as he cut through them, leaving them writhing and smoking on the floor. Marr did the same, and they kept moving. Jaden looked back and saw Mother’s form filling the smoky corridor behind them.

  “Go!” he said. “Go, go!”

  He fell into the Force, gestured, and pulled the door nearest them closed.

  Mother’s shriek of frustration shook the walls.

  He turned, darted onto Junker behind Khedryn and Marr, and closed the airlock hatch.

  “Get us clear,” he said to R-6 over the comlink.

  Immediately Junker started to pull away from the docking tube. The tube stretched but did not release them. Filaments shot from its sides, grabbed at protuberances on Junker’s hull, tried to reel the ship back in. Through the viewport, Jaden could see the side of the station near where they had been docked pulsing, as more and more filaments gathered there, shooting out across the void to grip Junker. Jaden could feel Mother’s presence just on the other side of the station’s wall, waiting for them.

  “Engines full!” Khedryn shouted into his comlink.

  R-6 powered the freighter’s engines to full and the ship strained against the station’s grasp, against Mother’s grip.

  On the other side of the station, the supply ship exploded. There was an enormous ball of flame. Immediately, secondary explosions blossomed here and there on the station, growing in size and intensity, one after another rippling along its surface. Curtains of flame shot out into space. An explosion rocked the station near the tether and the part of the station in orbit lurched, severed from the tether, and began to fall toward the planet.

  Meanwhile, the explosion that cut the tether spread along its length toward the planet, a giant wick burning its way to the subsurface part of the station.

  Jaden watched it all in horrified fascination, while Junker’s engines strained against the grasp of the filaments. The station fell planetward, dragging Junker with it. Marr, Khedryn, and Jaden stared out the viewport, their lives entirely dependent upon Junker’s engines.

  “Come on, baby,” Khedryn said. “Come on.”

  As one, ship and station fell toward the planet, picking up speed every second. Jaden could feel Mother’s power pouring out of the station. The filaments held Junker like a net. The engines screamed, trying to keep both ship and station from falling.

  “Divert everything to the engines!” Khedryn said to R-6. “Everything!”

  The pitch of the engines changed, grew deeper; the lights dimmed as R-6 redirected all power but life support and artificial gravity to the engines.

  The surface of the planet rushed up to meet them, to crush them, to bury them in fire and rock along with Mother.

  All at once the filaments snapped and Junker sprang free, shooting into space like a blaster shot. The sudden acceleration was too much for the artificial gravity to compensate for immediately, and Jaden, Marr, and Khedryn slammed against the wall.

  Jaden, his face pasted against the viewport, watched the station fall to the planet, the filaments squirming, trailing a wake of Mother’s hate and rage.

  The station struck the surface and silently flowered into a ball of fire. Mother’s anger, her power, vanished in the flames. Secondary explosions below the surface veined the planet in orange lines, as the subsurface portion of the station blew.

  * * *

  Khedryn, Marr, Jaden, and R-6 crowded into Junker’s cockpit. Khedryn ran diagnostics—Junker seemed mostly intact, he was pleased to see—while Marr plotted coordinates for a jump to hyperspace.

  To Khedryn, both of the Jedi—he now thought of Marr as a Jedi—seemed oddly reserved.

  “Do you think they got clear in time?” he asked Jaden.

  His question seemed to bring Jaden back from wherever his mind had been. The Jedi looked up and his eyes focused on Khedryn.

  “Soldier?”

  “And Grace,” Khedryn said.

  Jaden looked past him, out the cockpit, and into space. “I don’t know. I think so. I hope so.”

  Khedryn hoped so, too.

  Jaden cleared his throat, smiled, and stood. “I need to go report to the Order. Heading back to Fhost, Captain?”

  Khedryn nodded. “Heading back to Fhost.”

  “After I finish the report, I’ll throw on some caf,” Jaden said. “Meet you both in the galley.”

  “Spike it with pulkay,” Khedryn said. “We all deserve a drink.”

  Jaden just laughed as he walked out of the cockpit.

  “I mean it,” Khedryn said to his back. He did mean it. He needed a drink.

  After he’d gone, Khedryn swung his seat toward Marr, and found the Cerean staring after Jaden, a worried look on his face.

  “You all right?”

  Marr smiled, but Khedryn knew it was forced. “Fine.”

  “What’s with you two? You’re both acting odd.”

  Marr fixed his gaze on Khedryn, the worry in his eyes magnified. “What do you mean ‘odd’? Odd how?”

  Khedryn sank back in his seat. “Ease up, Marr. I just mean that the two of you seem different. Probably just everything that happened. Relax.”

  But Marr did not relax. He stared after Jaden, his tension palpable to Khedryn.

  “I didn’t see anything odd in him,” Marr said. “I think he’s exactly the same. Exactly the same.”

  In the tiny confines of one of Junker’s lavatories, Jaden showered, toweled off, and stood before the small, polished metal mirror. His already narrow face looked drawn and his expression looked haggard, his gray eyes sunk deeply into their sockets and underscored by dark circles. A lot had happened over the past few days.

  He needed to change the dressings on his wounds. But first he needed a shave.

  He checked the sundries cabinet built into the wall and found a can of lather and an archaic razor Khedryn must have left there for passengers.

  With the stink of the station washed from his body if not his mind, he methodically lathered his face and slowly pulled the razor down his cheeks and his throat, neatening the borders of his goatee.

  As he did, his mind turned to Soldier, and he wondered how alike they were. They shared a similar biology, if not an absolutely identical one. They were, in a very true sense, brothers—twins even. And yet they had led very different lives and made very different choices.

  People were not equations.

  No. People were choices.

  But how much did biology constrain the choices? Theoretically, Soldier could have turned from the dark side at any time. But didn’t theory crash on the rocks of reality? Weren’t Soldier’s choices constrained by his biology, at least to some degree?

  Weren’t Jaden’s?

  He finished his shave, wiped off the lather, and stared at himself in the mirror. Something looked off. It took him a moment to realize what it was—a small scar he’d had on his right cheek since adolescence was gone. He’d cut himself with one of Uncle Orn’s tools and it had not healed right.

  “How could that be?” he muttered.

  He put his face right next to the mirror, wondering if maybe it had just faded, but no, he didn’t see it there at all. He stared at his image in the mirror a long time.

  Uncomfortable possibilities started to swirl around in his mind. He
tried to hold them at bay, but they kept rearing up in his consciousness. He chuckled, trying to laugh them away, but they lingered, stubborn.

  “That’s not possible,” he said, denying something that he refused to name. He remembered his entire life. No one possessed the kind of technology it would require to transplant a lifetime of memories.

  No, he was him. He could be no one else.

  But he had been unconscious for a time after his fight with the Umbaran. He remembered how he had felt when he had awakened—the confusion, the inability to remember.

  But all that was consistent with a head injury.

  His eyes fell to his wounded fingers, the wounds opened anew.

  Opened anew.

  Marr had said as much, and Marr would not lie to him.

  But Marr had eyed him strangely. Jaden had assumed it to be concern over his injuries, but couldn’t it have been something else?

  Couldn’t it?

  He looked at himself in the mirror, and he wondered.

  * * *

  Out in the far reaches of the system, Soldier studied the star charts in the Umbaran’s scout flyer. They were in what the navicomp called the Unknown Regions. Indeed, all of space was an unknown region for Soldier, all of life.

  He had met his clone. And seeing Jaden Korr had shown him what he could be.

  He had sought purpose for decades, had thought he’d found it in Seer and their quest for Mother. But that had been a lie, a false hope born of desperation and loneliness. He had been alone even when he wasn’t alone, different from the other clones, isolated, separate. Seer had seemed to understand his pain and had tried to give him a salve for it in their quest.

  But Mother had been her quest, not his. His was … something else.

  Grace sat curled up in the copilot’s seat. She looked so fragile to him, so pale, so light, as if she might blow away in a strong wind. He had given her the meds. Her illness was controlled—he had saved enough from the supply ship to keep her symptom-free for years. During that time, he would protect her, raise her to have a better life than his, perhaps even find her a cure somewhere out there.

  Yes, he had his purpose.

  She opened her eyes, looked up at him, smiled. He smiled in return.

  “It’s dark in here,” she said.