by James Luceno
Relin’s thoughts collided with Marr’s suggestion. “Jump? We are still in the planet’s gravity well, as is Harbinger. And there’s the moon’s well, too.”
“We are at the outside of the gas giant’s well, and the moon’s is weak. I can account for all of that in such a short jump.” He paused, cocked his head. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Relin looked at the HUD. Debris from the rings blocked the moon and Harbinger from view. “You are talking about using the hyperdrive to jump between a planet and its moon. A second in hyperspace, maybe less.”
“I do not see an alternative. Do you?”
Relin did not. “I have never heard of this being done.”
“Nor I,” said Marr. “But maybe now we see the actual purpose to which my talent is to be put.”
Relin decided that he would have to trust in Marr’s gift, have to trust in the Force. Hypocrisy stabbed at him.
“Do it,” he said. He looked at the chrono, counting down the time. “You have less than an hour to get the calculations done.”
Marr leaned forward in his seat and started to turn off the magnified HUD display. Junker had shifted some, and he could once more see the moon and Harbinger.
“Leave it up,” Relin said.
As Marr began his work, Relin sat in his seat and gazed at Saes’s ship, letting memories put a spark to the kindling of his anger. Staring at the dreadnought, he recalled the black scar of twisted metal, all that remained of its primary bridge, all that remained of Drev.
The pain in his ribs and arm faded in the flames from the pain in his heart. The ambient energy from the Lignan stoked his quiet rage and he let the flames grow, heedless of what they were consuming.
He magnified the HUD further, growing Harbinger in his sight as anger grew in his core. And the alchemy of that anger transformed the pain of loss into the power of hate. He held it in and gave no outward sign of his feelings, though he thought he must soon burst.
“Hurry, Marr,” he said, his voice choked by the emotional turmoil within him.
Marr said nothing, simply continued his calculations. Even with his mathematical gifts, he relied heavily on assistance from the navigation computer. Relin could not follow all of the formulae, but he could see that Marr was making remarkable progress.
Jaden glided through the rings at one-half power, Flotsam twisting and turning to avoid rocks and ice as necessary.
Khedryn eased back in his chair, hands crossed behind his head. “A bit more controlled than your previous piloting, Jaden.”
Jaden smiled distantly as he stared out of the slit of the cockpit window, his mind on something else altogether. Khedryn wondered if the Jedi regretted confessing to him.
Khedryn said nothing more as they circumnavigated the gas giant, using its rings for cover. Eventually they caught up with the blue superstorm that looked like the planet’s eye, half of it lost in the night side, the other half still in light and staring. Jaden watched it as if hypnotized.
“You all right?” Khedryn asked, concerned that Jaden might drift Flotsam into a rock.
“Fine,” Jaden said, his voice soft.
They planned to come around the gas giant and put the moon more or less between them and Harbinger, hoping that their small size would allow them to hide in the moon’s scanner signature.
A HUD in the cockpit window showed the countdown. If all went as planned, Flotsam and Junker would break from the rings at the same time.
Khedryn took out the chewstim Marr had given him, ripped it in half. He held a piece out.
“Jaden?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Hold it until we actually go,” Khedryn said.
Jaden nodded. Together they watched the chrono and waited.
Marr completed the calculations with ample time to spare, then double-checked them.
“I am confident in these calculations,” the Cerean said.
Relin only nodded, his mind already moving to what he would do when his feet hit Harbinger’s deck. He felt an unexpected exhiliaration at the thought of destroying the ship and killing so many aboard, including Saes. He would turn Drev’s grave into a burning pyre that would consume them all. He would—
Marr’s hand closed on his shoulder, and he flinched at the touch. His skin felt hypersensitive.
“Relin, you are unwell.”
Relin knew he was sweating, breathing too rapidly. “I am all right.”
He looked at the chrono: ten seconds.
He had traveled five thousand years into the future to have his life hang on the thread of the single moment they would spend in hyperspace. He flashed on the wild trajectory of the escape pod when it’d been caught in Harbinger’s wake, the sickening twists and turns of the misjump.
Marr put his hand on the lever that would engage the hyperdrive.
“I will power us down the moment we emerge from hyperspace. Are you ready?”
Relin took a deep breath, feeling it against his broken ribs. “Yes.”
They stared at the chrono as it counted down the final seconds.
“Prepare yourself for the Lignan,” Relin said.
Marr engaged the hyperdrive.
Khedryn and Jaden popped the chewstim in their mouths as Jaden took Flotsam out to the edge of the rings. Open space beckoned before them, the moon bifurcated by the sun’s light. Khedryn dared not scan for Harbinger lest the cruiser’s passive scans pick up the probe.
Both of them watched the HUD chrono roll to zero.
“Mark,” Khedryn said.
Jaden accelerated to full and blazed through space for the moon.
Kell lurked in the black between the moon and the gas giant’s rings. He had positioned Predator as best he could to ensure that his scanners would pick up any ship exiting the rings in the direction of the moon.
Predator’s cockpit had grown cold, but Kell modified his metabolism to maintain a comfortable body temperature. He sat in the darkness of his cockpit, staring into the void of space, wondering at its hidden meanings, seeking the truth of its many lines.
His mind drifted on clouds of memory. He thought of the other Anzati he had met through the centuries. They did not see the daen nosi. One had thought Kell mad. In return, Kell had slowly consumed his soup for a standard month, keeping him alive until the very end.
Kell was not mad. He was blessed, unique, chosen to see the truth of existence as written in the lines of the universe’s fate. And soon he would have its cipher.
When he heard his sensor console beep to indicate a contact, he knew it was Jaden Korr. He knew, too, where Jaden was going and that he would kill him there.
He examined the scan signature of the small craft darting out of the rings. A Starhawk, moving fast, heading for the dark side of the moon. Not Junker, but its attached shuttle.
Where was Junker?
Kell pushed the thought from his mind, waited a ten-count to give the Starhawk a nice lead, then brought Predator back online and fell in behind it.
The Imperial beacon indicated danger on the planet’s surface, but given the age of the beacon and the extreme environmental conditions of the moon, Kell expected to find nothing but ice-choked ruins.
Still, he would prepare for any eventuality, as always.
Relin did not blink but felt as though he had. His visual senses registered only a blue afterimage rather than a hyperspace tunnel. One instant Junker floated at the edge of the rings, the next it floated under Harbinger and the cold metal and hard angles of the dreadnought filled his sight lines.
Power from the Lignan filled the space around the dreadnought like a fog. Relin felt it seep into him, feeding his seemingly boundless anger, his limitless need for revenge. He resisted at first, but it was halfhearted.
It was right that he feed his anger, feed it until it grew into a monster. Drev’s fate merited anger. To feel something else would be to disgrace the memory of his Padawan.
“Do you feel it, Marr?”
Marr bared his teeth between clenched jaws
, the chip in the incisor like a tunnel through which the Lignan’s effects could leak.
“I feel it,” Marr said, taking a moment to angle the ship properly and verify velocity. “Powering down. Diverting everything to the power crystal array.”
He hit the emergency shutdown for almost every system on the ship, including life support, and repurposed the power to the crystal array. Junker’s cockpit turned as dark as space and only their breathing broke the sudden silence, Relin’s ragged with pain, guilt, and power, Marr’s smooth but elevated. The ambient temperature dropped several degrees in a moment. The viewscreen remained active, though its clarity faltered and static clouded the image. A thick red beam from Junker’s top split the screen, slammed into Harbinger’s shields, and exploded into a spiral of red lines, an antique corkscrew boring into the Sith ship’s deflectors.
“Is it supposed to look like that?” Relin asked.
Marr inhaled deeply and put a hand over his stomach. “I am nauseated. The ore does not affect you?”
“Not like it does you,” Relin said, and left it at that. “I could screen you.”
Marr shook his head, his face wrinkled with discomfort. “Do not waste your energy. I can bear it.”
Relin recalled one of the first lessons taught to Force-sensitives by the Jedi. He remembered being taught it himself by Imar Deez, remembered teaching it to Drev. The words came out of his mouth without thought, a reflex, as Junker coasted through the cold of space toward Harbinger.
“Imagine in your mind a fortress of stone and steel, with crenellated walls. Within it stands a keep, itself walled.”
Marr looked a question at him.
“Do as I say,” Relin snapped. “It is a simple lesson and it will help.”
“All right.”
Relin mouthed the words spoken by generations of Jedi while his heart beat false in his chest, while the Lignan ate at his spirit. He was a liar and he did not care.
“Again, imagine a strong fortress, walled, unbreachable. Within it stands a keep, similarly fortified. Do you see it?”
“I have no training. I—”
“Do you see it?”
“I … can imagine it, yes.”
“You are the keep, Marr. The Force is the fortress. Feel it.”
“This—”
“Feel it. Open yourself to it.” He had said the same words to Drev, once. Remembering his Padawan threw coal into the oven of his rage, but he kept it from his voice.
“Do not analyze it. Feel it.”
Marr held Relin’s eyes for a moment, then closed his eyes and steadied his breathing.
Relin walked him farther down the path, feeling each moment more of a hypocrite. “Imagine how you feel calculating a course through hyperspace. Focus on that feeling. Hold on to it.”
It took almost no time, as Relin had known it would not. A Force-sensitive was usually habituated to drawing on the Force unconsciously. Marr did it every time he did mathematics. It usually took only a nudge to open up someone sensitive to simple uses of the Force. Through five thousand years it had remained just so.
Marr opened his eyes, the thickets of his eyebrows raised in wonder. “That is … surprising. This is what you do to keep it out?”
Relin hesitated, because he could not tell Marr that he no longer kept it out. Instead, he uttered another lie. “Yes.”
Junker glided under the smooth metal of Harbinger’s underside, past viewports, idle laser cannon turrets. Relin imagined that their sudden appearance under the ship had caused no small consternation among Harbinger’s crew. They would be scrambling to respond.
The landing bay, illuminated with lights around its perimeter, yawned ahead of them, the mouth of a beast. In moments they would be swallowed.
“We are near enough to hit the deflectors,” Marr said, his voice still filled with the wonder caused by his first conscious use of the Force.
As Marr steered Junker through the hole carved by the power crystal, Relin felt as if he were going down a drain.
Flotsam’s belly hit the moon’s upper atmosphere and the entire ship vibrated in the turbulence like shaken dice. Flames formed around the heat shield, licked up the sides, sheathing the ship in fire. Jaden could see nothing but orange out the cockpit window as the ship skidded through the atmosphere. In his mind, he heard the repetitious call of the beacon. He found himself staring at his fingertips, the fingertips on which his anger or fear sometimes formed Force lightning.
He did not trust himself anymore, he realized. Doubt was the fundamental core of his being. Relin had sensed it in him.
“Twenty seconds,” Khedryn said. “Switching to repulsors.”
Jaden leaned forward in his seat, wanting to see the surface the moment the fires dissipated, hoping that something on the moon would dispel his doubt, return him to certainty.
The orange gave way to a thick swirl of clouds. As they descended and the air thickened, the stresses on the ship changed from the steady, intense vibration of atmospheric entry into the irregular buffeting of powerful winds. Snow and ice streaked past the cockpit transparisteel, frosting its exterior.
Jaden recalled his Force vision, remembered the feel of the wind against his skin, the frost collecting in his beard, the surface under his feet.
“Winds upward of ninety kilometers per hour,” Khedryn observed as gusts rocked Flotsam.
Jaden stared through the swirl, heart thumping madly. They broke through the clouds, but the blowing snow and the ice-covered surface allowed him to distinguish nothing. All he saw was a blur of white. There was no revelation in sight.
“Get a fix on the beacon,” he said to Khedryn.
“Triangulating,” Khedryn said. He tapped a button and the beacon sounded on the interior speakers, louder than ever.
Jaden leveled Flotsam off at 150 meters and slowed its speed. Topographic scans showed vast, frozen plateaus, oceans of ice, bordered by enormous mountains.
“Got it,” Khedryn said, and the words put a flutter in Jaden’s stomach. “South-southwest, a quarter hour out. Near the moon’s equator.”
When Khedryn had linked the location of the signal to the navicomp, Jaden adjusted course accordingly. He realized that he was sweating. He accelerated to full in-atmosphere speed, and Flotsam cut like a knife through the wind, ice, and snow.
“Like following bread crumbs,” Khedryn said, nodding at the speaker through which the beacon’s call carried.
Jaden nodded. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end. He felt as if he were being watched. Before he could trace the source of the feeling, Khedryn asked, “What do you hope to find here, Jaden?”
Jaden did not hesitate. “An answer.”
He needed one. He could not continue as he had. He ran a sensor scan to ensure they were not being followed. Nothing.
Khedryn stared blankly out of the cockpit. “What is the question?”
Jaden smiled, thinking how close the words cut to his own thoughts.
When Jaden did not answer, Khedryn said, “I hope Marr and Relin are all right.”
“The Force is with them both,” Jaden said.
Khedryn nodded, absently reading the topographic scans, meteorological reports, atmospheric readouts.
“Trace elements in the atmosphere suggest volcanic activity here,” he said.
Jaden imagined hot spots on the surface of the planet where heat and magma leaked up to turn ice into bathing water. He imagined, too, that the oceans under the ice could be thronged with life.
“Air is frigid but breathable,” Khedryn said. “We’ll still need enviro-suits, though.”
Jaden only partially heard Khedryn. The navicomp showed them closing on the coordinates from which the distress signal originated. He leaned forward in his seat, straining to see through the weather.
He could not breathe when it emerged from the static of the weather like a lost city.
Khedryn squinted, staring through the cockpit transparisteel. “What is that?”
&n
bsp; * * *
Junker coasted, dark and cold, through the hole made by the power crystal.
Relin stared into the tunnel of the landing bay, remembering the last time he had entered it, five thousand years ago, riding the back of a shuttlecraft. Then, he’d had a comlink connection to Drev. Now he would enter it alone, unconnected to anyone, centered not in a sense of duty but in a sense of rage.
Content with that, he drank the power of the Lignan the way Junker’s crew drank caf.
“We are through,” Marr said, blowing out the words as if he had been holding his breath. “Powering up.”
Light returned to the cockpit, and the instrumentation went live with an audible hum.
“Junker is live,” Marr said.
“If they haven’t already, Harbinger will certainly pick us up now,” Relin said, not caring.
Marr nodded. “Engaging repulsors. In we go.”
Saes sat in meditation on the floor of his chambers, lost in the Force, trying to plan a role for himself in the new time. His comlink beeped to life, disturbing his calm. Ordinarily he removed it when meditating, but under the circumstances he had not wanted to be out of contact for even a moment.
Llerd’s voice carried over the frequency, barely controlled tension in the tone. Saes heard the bleat of an alarm in the background, the proximity alert.
“Captain, a ship jumped directly under us, and coasted through our deflectors into the landing bay.”
Saes opened his eyes, inhaled deeply. “A ship? What ship?”
“I have dispatched all available security teams and isolated the area should the craft prove to be loaded with explosives.”
“What ship, Lieutenant?”
A pause, then, “I believe it is the ship we pursued into the planet’s rings, sir.”
“Our pilots reported that ship destroyed,” Saes said.
He stood and threw on his robes, his anger building, narrowing down to a point.
“Yes, sir,” Llerd said. “It appears they were … incorrect.”
“They were duped,” Saes said.
“Yes, sir.”
In ordinary times, Saes might have executed the Blade pilots, but the times were not ordinary. He needed his crew, at least for the time being. He would devise a suitable, nonlethal punishment later.