Crosscurrent

by Paul Kemp

  Kell smiled, took Reegas by the shoulders, stared into his eyes, and freed his feeders. Reegas’s mental resistance intensified. He struggled against Kell’s grasp, opened his mouth as if to scream, but managed nothing more than a stifled gasp.

  The feeders squirmed up Reegas’s nostrils, burst through tissue and into the brain beyond. Reegas stiffened as blood leaked from his nose.

  Kell fed. His consciousness broadened, but the weak soup of Reegas’s mind gave only the barest hints of Fate’s purpose. Kell’s consciousness drifted back to give him perspective, and he saw the network of daen nosi that composed the universe, the sum of the choices of all sentient beings, but he perceived no order, merely an inchoate design with no meaning.

  Irritated and disappointed, he devoured all of Reegas’s sentience, all he was and would be, with minimal satisfaction. Reegas was sustenance, nothing more. He withdrew his feeders, slick with the bloody stew of the human’s mind, but let them dangle from his face. Reegas’s body fell to the floor with a thud.

  The emptiness in Kell yawned, and he gave it a name: Jaden Korr. Now more than ever he knew he would learn the truth of Fate only when he dined on the soup of the Jedi. Fate had brought them both to The Hole. Fate would bring them both to the moon of Krayt’s vision. There, Kell would have revelation. The coordinates in the data crystal were the point in space–time where he would rendezvous with Jaden Korr, where he would finally learn the truth behind the veil.

  A human woman, one of the dancers dressed in a gauzy green outfit that showed as much as it covered, walked into the room. Seeing Kell standing over Reegas, she froze just inside the doorway. The cup she held fell to the floor, spilling keela. Her mouth hung open, her eyes bulged. A small, abortive scream emerged from her throat. Perhaps her mouth was too dry to muster much more.

  Kell’s feeders snaked into his cheek sacs, leaving a spatter of blood on the floor. He eyed the woman and held a finger to his lips.

  “Shh.”

  He blocked himself from her perception and walked out of the hole in the wall, following Jaden Korr and Khedryn Faal.

  Her screams started when he hit the street.

  The swoop and speeder bike blazed into the lightless airspace over Farpoint’s landing field. Jaden shielded his mouth from the dust with his sleeve and looked back toward Farpoint from time to time, but saw no signs of pursuit.

  A few dozen ships, freighters mostly, dotted the dusty plains of the field below, framed in ad hoc halo lighting mounted on tripods. Upturned faces greeted the arrival of the swoop and speeder.

  “Start the remote launch sequence,” Khedryn shouted over the wind to Marr.

  The Cerean was already tapping keys on his speeder’s datapad, controlling the craft with only one hand and his legs. The wound in his arm caused him to wince as he worked.

  “You are used to rapid exits, I see,” Jaden said over the swoop’s engine.

  Khedryn nodded. “Comes with the work. Where’s your ship?”

  “The Z-Ninety-five.” He pointed to the far edge of the field at his yellow-and-white starfighter. “Over there.”

  Khedryn squinted against the dust and erupted into a laugh as short and abrupt as a blaster shot. “Does the Order put all their Jedi into flying cans these days? That thing’s an antique even out here.”

  Jaden smiled. “It’s a bit more than it looks.”

  “I hope so,” Khedryn said. “Because it looks like something I’d have trouble selling for scrap.” He angled the swoop for it. “I’ll drop you there. Let’s get offplanet, then we can talk about this business proposition you have. And you can explain to me how I—how we—cheated in the sabacc game.”

  “I’d prefer that we stay together,” Jaden said.

  “You would? Other than the fact that you fly a ship as old as the galaxy and I don’t, why is that?”

  Jaden heard the suspicion in Khedryn’s tone. He assumed it came with life on Fhost. “You’ll have to trust me. We can talk on your ship.”

  “Trust?” Khedryn smirked over his shoulder. “We don’t do a lot of that out here.”

  “If I had meant you harm, I could have done it already.”

  Khedryn nodded, looked over to Marr. “This fellow better be a Jedi or we’re going to be in real trouble.”

  “He could be a Sith,” Marr said absently.

  “You a Sith?” Khedryn asked, half smiling.

  “Of course not.”

  “He says he’s not,” Khedryn said to Marr.

  “Sith are liars,” Marr said.

  “That’s true,” Khedryn said.

  “You both know better than that,” Jaden said, not quite sure if they were jesting or not. “You can trust me. I am telling you both that you can trust me.”

  Khedryn and Marr stared at each other across the void between their speeders. Finally the Cerean shrugged.

  “I trust Marr’s instincts,” said Khedryn. “So you’re in luck. But I’m captain on Junker, even when a Jedi is along for the ride. Understood?”

  “Understood. I have an astromech on my ship that you could—”

  “I do not allow droids on my ship.”

  The statement took Jaden aback. “Never?”

  “Never. I don’t even like them dealing my cards, but there’s nothing for that. Still want to hitch that ride?”

  “Yes,” Jaden said. He activated his wrist comm. “Arsix, activate the remote launch sequence and the autopilot. Get her into orbit around Fhost’s largest moon and wait there. If you don’t hear from me in two standard weeks, jump back to Coruscant and alert Grand Master Skywalker.”

  Jaden felt Khedryn tense at the name.

  “The job will take two standard weeks?” Khedryn asked.

  “That’s going to depend on where it is.”

  “You don’t know where it is?”

  “No,” Jaden answered. “But you do.”

  To Marr, Khedryn said, “This is a mysterious man.”

  “So it seems, Captain.”

  “I know what I said outside The Hole but I don’t consider this a firm deal until I hear more,” Khedryn said to Jaden.

  “Understood.”

  They watched Jaden’s Z-95 levitate upward on its thrusters, sending swirls of dust into the air before it turned and accelerated into the night sky. Jaden felt odd watching R6 go off without him.

  “To whom will I confess?” he said, his voice overwhelmed by the swoop’s engines.

  “Droid works fast,” Khedryn said. “Seems we’re not the only ones used to rapid exits.”

  “Comes with the work,” Jaden said. “How do you know Master Skywalker?”

  Khedryn looked back at him, his lazy eye off to the side. “Let’s talk about that aboard Junker, too. There she is now.” Khedryn nodded down at a Corellian freighter visible in wall lights through the open top of one of the field’s many makeshift hangars. He circled, then started to descend.

  “A YT-Twenty-four-hundred,” Jaden said. “Sticks out a bit here, doesn’t it?”

  “I salvage junk. I don’t fly it.”

  Jaden saw. The disk-shaped freighter normally sported a cylindrical escape pod connected to the starboard side of the circular fuselage, but Junker featured an attached Starhawk shuttle.

  “Must have taken some work to replace that escape pod with a Starhawk. How’d you manage the fittings?”

  “By not using droids.”

  Junker’s engines were already venting gas and warming. Jaden noted further modifications to the ship. A pair of universal docking rings—rarely seen outside of military rescue ships—and a complicated assembly on the rear that looked vaguely similar to a laser cannon.

  “Is that a tractor array on the rear?”

  Khedryn nodded. “Short-range, yeah. Sometimes we dock with a derelict and take what’s worthwhile. Sometimes we have to tow the whole thing back for disassembly.”

  “And you make a living at that? Doesn’t seem like there’d be enough floating free out there.”

 
; “You’d be surprised. You just have to know where to look.”

  “Indeed.”

  They descended through the open top of the hangar and set down beside Junker. Khedryn and Marr bounded off their speeders.

  “How are we doing, Marr?” Khedryn asked the Cerean.

  “Thrusters are already hot. We lift off in twenty-five minutes, Captain.”

  “Get to the cockpit and finalize the launch sequence. Then we see to that arm. Jaden, help me get these speeders aboard.” He stopped. “Wait: Did you catch a shot back in The Hole, too?”

  “Trivial,” Jaden said, showing the wound.

  Khedryn examined it with a practiced eye while Marr hurried into Junker.

  “Looks a little more than trivial. But if you say so.”

  Khedryn and Jaden muscled the speeders up the landing ramp and into Junker’s hold. Jaden’s arm screamed every time he flexed his biceps, but he bore it.

  “Hurts, yeah?” Khedryn asked.

  Jaden tilted his head to acknowledge as much.

  “We’ll see to it when we get aboard. A blaster wound, even a graze, is nothing to take lightly.”

  “I’ve had blaster wounds before.”

  “Yeah, me, too. That’s how I know they’re not to be taken lightly.” Khedryn chewed his lip, as if gathering his thoughts. “You asked how I knew Luke Skywalker.”

  Hearing the Grand Master’s first name rather than his title sounded incongruous to Jaden. He had not heard anyone other than the Grand Master’s close friends and family refer to him as Luke in many years.

  “My parents were children on Outbound Flight. They survived the crash in the Redoubt. I was born there, thirty-five standard years after the crash, give or take.”

  The admission surprised Jaden—he imagined there were few survivors still alive. He was not sure what to say. He did the math in his head. “You were an adolescent when Grand Master Skywalker and Mara Jade Skywalker rescued you.”

  “I was.” Khedryn’s expression softened, and he leaned against his swoop. “Mara was kind to me, to all of us. I was saddened when the vids reported her death.”

  Jaden flashed on his vision, the sound of Mara’s voice in his ear on the windswept surface of the frozen moon.

  “As was I. Your parents?”

  Khedryn’s expression turned blank, but Jaden saw the pain beneath it.

  “They died there, before we were rescued.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Khedryn waved a hand to shoo away the memory. “Long time ago. Since then, I’ve been doing a little of this, a little of that, but I’m mostly settled on salvage these days.”

  The roar of swoops flying over the hangar drew their eye, and both pulled blasters; Jaden’s free hand went to the hilt of his lightsaber. The running lights from half a dozen swoops and speeders buzzed past, blotting out the stars.

  “Reegas’s thugs?” Jaden asked.

  “Could be. Let’s get these aboard and get out of here,” Khedryn said.

  Junker’s hold was packed to the crossbeams with storage containers, raw materials, unusable pieces of electronics and vehicles, and two landspeeders.

  “Over there,” Khedryn said, nodding at an open space in the hold.

  Once they had the speeders in the hold and secured, Khedryn lifted the landing ramp.

  “You used the Force to affect that final sabacc hand?”

  “I did. I would’ve changed the outcome of the hand when you lost the crystal, but Reegas or one of his lackeys nearby had some kind of handheld electronic cheater. By the time I realized that, you’d already lost.”

  Khedryn slammed a fist on the seat of the swoop. “That spawn of a diseased bantha was cheating? And he called me a cheater?” He regarded Jaden from under his heavy brow. “I guess I owe you then, eh?”

  Jaden did not bother to answer.

  “This still isn’t a firm deal, though. Business is business.”

  Marr’s voice broke over the ship’s speaker. “Ready for launch.”

  Khedryn spoke into his collar comlink. “We are on our way up.”

  When they reached the tight confines of the cockpit, Marr was already seated and working the instrumentation.

  Jaden took in the consoles, the scanners. Junker had an amplified sensor array, probably to allow more thorough reception and scanning at longer distances. Jaden eyed Marr, trying to get a better sense of his Force sensitivity. He determined it was faint. Marr probably had no idea.

  Khedryn sat, activated the communicator. “Farpoint Tower, this is Junker. We are hot and gone.”

  He did not wait for an acknowledgment before flying the freighter out of the lit hangar and into the dark. Thrusters angled the ship skyward, and the night sky and its field of stars filled the transparisteel cockpit window.

  “Chewstim?” Khedryn asked Marr.

  The Cerean removed a square of chewstim from one of the dozen or so pockets in his jacket, offered it.

  “Thanks.” Khedryn unwrapped it, chewed, blew a bubble, popped it. “And we’re off.”

  Junker’s engines fired and the ship pelted toward outer space and, Jaden hoped, toward answers.

  Khedryn and Marr flew Junker outside the orbit of Fhost’s moons, clear of gravity wells. The ship and cockpit took on the quiet serenity of a craft moving through the vacuum.

  “What is our course?” Marr asked. The Cerean looked first to Khedryn, then to Jaden.

  “About time for that talk, eh?” Khedryn said to Jaden, and swallowed his chewstim.

  Jaden nodded. “About time.”

  “Come into our office,” Khedryn said, and he and Marr led Jaden to the galley in the center of the ship. Neither Khedryn nor Marr had removed his blaster. Jaden understood their caution. He would have to earn their trust.

  A large, custom viewport in the galley’s ceiling offered a view of space. The stars blinked down at them. A metal dining table and benches affixed to the floor afforded seating. A bar and built-in cabinets dominated one of the walls.

  Khedryn went to the bar, took a caf pot large enough for a restaurant from an overhead storage bin, filled it with water, dropped in three pouches of grounds, and activated it. In moments the red brew light turned green. Khedryn removed the lid, and the smell of caf filled the galley. He poured two large mugs full and waved a third at Jaden.

  “Caf? The ship and her crew run on it.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Jaden said, and composed his thoughts.

  Khedryn returned to the table with three steaming mugs of caf. Jaden took a sip and tried not to recoil at its bitterness.

  “We prefer it strong,” Marr said.

  “Any stronger and you’d have to eat it with a fork,” Jaden said.

  Khedryn put his hands on the table and interlaced his fingers. Jaden noted the scars, the calluses. Marr put his hands under the table, near his blaster.

  “Before we start,” Khedryn said. “Let me ask you something. Back in The Hole, when you stopped me in the common room, did you use the mind trick on me?”

  Jaden saw no point in lying. “I did.”

  Khedryn stared into his face, his eyes askew. “Don’t do it again.”

  “All right.”

  “Now, what’s your proposal?”

  Jaden dived in. “The coordinates Reegas wanted. I want those, too.”

  Both Khedryn and Marr tensed.

  “I figured,” Khedryn said. He leaned back in his chair and threw an arm over its back, striking a casual pose. “You a salvager, Jedi? Or is there something else there?”

  Jaden did not answer the question. “The rumors in Farpoint said the signal was an automated distress signal.”

  “We think,” Khedryn said. “But there’s no life down there. Nobody for a Jedi to save.”

  Except myself, Jaden thought.

  “We don’t know that,” Marr said. “There could be life. I did not perform a thorough scan.”

  Khedryn stared at Marr as if the Cerean had just admitted to being a Sith. “Right. T
hanks, Marr.”

  Jaden said, “I understand it originated on a moon at the far end of the system.”

  “And?” Khedryn asked.

  Jaden tried to hold his calm even while he flashed back on his Force vision. He realized with alarm that he could be wrong, that Khedryn and Marr might have found a moon, but not the moon from the vision. He tried to read their faces as he said, “It’s a frozen moon orbiting a blue, ringed gas giant.”

  Khedryn and Marr shared a glance.

  “You have been there?” Marr said.

  Jaden exhaled, relieved. “No. But I’ve seen it.”

  “What?” Khedryn asked.

  “Tell me about it,” Jaden said. “What drew your attention to it? How’d you pick up the signal?”

  Marr took a long draw on his caf cup. His short, graying hair formed a ruff around the mountain of his skull. He furrowed his brow as he thought back, the lines forming cryptic characters on his forehead. “We were returning from another … situation and had to take a roundabout course back.”

  Jaden understood the Cerean to mean that they had been involved in something illicit, that it had gone wrong, and that they’d had to run. He gestured for Marr to continue.

  “We stopped in a remote system so I could recalculate our course and we caught a signal of the kind you described.”

  Jaden’s skin turned to gooseflesh. “Did you record it?”

  “Of course,” Marr said. “But I haven’t yet been able to break its encryption.”

  Khedryn drained his cup, set it down on the table. “Let’s slow down here.” He ran a hand through his dark hair, sniffed the air. “Stang but I need a shower. I smell like The Hole.”

  Jaden ignored the conversational detour. “You want to get back to the why.”

  “No,” Khedryn said. “I want to get to the how much. That’ll tell me what I need to know about the why.”

  Jaden cleared his throat, studied his hands, finally said, “I can offer you two thousand credits now and another seven thousand after I confirm the moon is what I’m after and we return.”

  “Two thousand credits up front?” Khedryn leaned back in his chair, the hint of derision in the curl of his lip. “Marr?”