Crosscurrent

by Paul Kemp

  Jaden nosed back up hard, throwing Khedryn to the floor as he angled back into the rings, still spinning and wheeling.

  “A good explosion,” Relin said, as if he were evaluating a grav-ball shot. His vantage at the rear of the ship would have allowed him to see it directly.

  Jaden said, “We’ll stay flying hard until we see whether they buy the ruse.”

  Khedryn sat in the core of his ship, listening to her strain, waiting for the telltale shake from a laser cannon’s near miss.

  Nothing.

  “There is nothing behind us,” Relin said.

  Khedryn looked to the ceiling, and exhaled. He patted his ship. She had saved him again.

  “Find something big enough to accommodate us,” he said. “And set her down. Then everyone get to the galley. We need to talk.”

  Saes watched on the viewscreen as the remaining Blades peeled out of the gas giant’s rings. Llerd monitored the chatter among the pilots through an earpiece, then relayed it to Saes.

  “The target has been destroyed, Captain,” Llerd said, his round face flush with the news. “Collided with rocks in the rings. We lost six Blades in the pursuit.”

  Saes nodded, surprised to find himself so unmoved by Relin’s death. He supposed whatever attachment he might have had with Relin had been eroded by time and lost long ago. He reached out his consciousness for his Master, trying to recall the feelings he’d had when he’d realized that Relin had been aboard Harbinger. He felt nothing, only emptiness, a hole.

  He was alone now, five thousand years in the future. His onetime Master had died a fool. Saes regretted the loss of the Blades, particularly since he would not be able to replace them, but he’d needed to end matters with Relin.

  “Put us in orbit around the planet’s moon. I will be in my quarters.”

  “When repairs are completed, should the helm plot a course to Primus Goluud?” Llerd asked.

  Saes heard 8L6’s servos whir as he stood and looked at the captain.

  “No,” Saes said. “Plans have changed.”

  * * *

  Khedryn tried to slow his still-racing heart as Jaden set Junker down in a deep, sheltered declivity on one of the large asteroids in the rings. His equilibrium was still off from the wild flight, and he swayed as he stood. After confirming that the cargo hold’s air lock had resealed and repressurized, he opened the hatch to check on his Searing.

  Still there, along with Marr’s speeder bike. Good. Khedryn loved that swoop.

  By the time he reached the galley, Relin was already there, sitting at the central table. Sweat glistened on his face, and his eyes looked like glassy, distant pools sunk in the deep pits of his sockets. His breathing came fast, like that of a rabid animal.

  “You are sick,” Khedryn said.

  Relin looked up, squinting at Khedryn. “Yes. Radiation.”

  Khedryn tried to look sympathetic. “I have nothing aboard, but we can do something for it back on Fhost.” He left a maybe behind his teeth, seeing no reason to further burden the Jedi over Farpoint’s limited medical facilities.

  Relin stared at him for a long moment. “Thank you.”

  “And the ribs? The arm?”

  Relin looked at his stump. “I am all right.”

  Khedryn could see otherwise but did not push. He held up a caf cup and changed the subject. “Caf? It’s a bitter, uh, caffeinated beverage served hot.”

  “Tea?”

  “Sure,” Khedryn said, and prepped some tea for the Jedi. It was old, something he’d picked up on a whim months ago, but it was tea.

  Jaden and Marr entered, neither talking. Jaden looked drawn behind his beard. Sweat dampened the fringe of his brown hair. Marr, of course, looked like Marr—solid, calm, as certain as an equation. Khedryn wondered how the Cerean managed such balance.

  “I will take some of that caf,” Marr said, staring at Relin with unabashed curiosity. “Jaden explained … matters to me.”

  “I’ll take some, too,” said Jaden. His voice had the sound of a man who had not slept in a few days.

  “Take a seat, please,” Khedryn said to them both, his tone more formal than he intended.

  Marr looked a question at him as he crossed the room but Khedryn, still composing his thoughts, ignored it. He spiked his caf with a jigger of pulkay, then poured caf for Jaden and Marr, joined it on a tray with Relin’s tea, and took it to the table.

  “Nice flying,” he said to Jaden.

  “It was,” Relin said, wincing in answer to one pain or another. “Well done, Jaden.”

  “Thank you,” Jaden said. He seemed to notice Relin’s physical condition for the first time. “Are you … all right?” he asked, the question as loaded as a charged blaster.

  Relin sat up straight, cleared his throat, and it turned into a soft cough. “I am fine.”

  Khedryn distributed the drinks. “He’s not all right. He’s sick. Radiation. And the arm and ribs.”

  “I know all that,” Jaden said, his eyes still on Relin. “That’s not what I mean.”

  Khedryn realized that the Jedi were having a conversation at some level invisible to him.

  “I am fine,” Relin repeated, but he glanced away.

  Jaden sipped his caf and looked unconvinced.

  To Relin, Marr said, “Assuming both ships got to near lightspeed, you would have traveled … a long way for five thousand years to pass relatively.”

  Khedryn knew Marr must have been discomfited to use words like near and a long way.

  “Yes,” Relin agreed. He looked at Marr. “My name is Relin.”

  “Marr. I have so many questions.”

  “They’ll have to wait,” Relin said.

  “I suppose so,” Marr said.

  “Good caf,” Jaden said to Khedryn, holding up the mug.

  “Thanks,” Khedryn said as he took station at the head of the table. He swallowed, then dived in headfirst. “I have been thinking hard about this, and … we are done. This is over.” He cut off whatever Jaden and Relin would have said with a raised hand and a raised voice. “Junker is my ship. Mine. And I am not risking her, or my crew, over a salvage job.”

  “This is more than that,” Relin said, his glassy eyes fixed like glow lamps on Khedryn.

  “You know that already, Captain,” Jaden said.

  Khedryn gave no ground. “I know it is to you two. To me, this is just another job, and it’s gotten too hairy. Do you know why I don’t have weapons on Junker, Relin? Because I run.” He wagged a finger between himself and Marr. “We run. I am a salvager. This is a salvage ship.”

  He realized that he was breathing heavily, that his tone was overly sharp. He took a moment to control himself. Between the calmness of the Jedi and the placidity of Marr, he felt like he was the only one who grasped the danger they had been in.

  Jaden started to speak, but Khedryn pointed a finger at him as if it were loaded.

  “And don’t you even consider trying that mind trick nonsense on me again.”

  Jaden half smiled, put his hands on the table, and interlaced his fingers. He studied them as if they were of interest, then looked up at Khedryn. “You were going to take me down to the moon. We had a deal, Khedryn.”

  That hit Khedryn where he lived. He did not renege on deals. “I know. But …”

  Jaden continued in his infuriatingly calm voice. “But our agreement aside, I want you to step back and consider what has happened here. You and Marr discovered a distress beacon on a backrocket moon in the Unknown Regions.”

  “Chance,” Khedryn said, but Jaden continued.

  “I received a Force vision of that same moon. In it, voices pleaded with me for help.” His voice intensified a degree. “For help, Captain.”

  “You received a Force vision?” Relin asked. “Did you see anything that suggested my presence or Harbinger’s?”

  Jaden had eyes only for Khedryn as he drove home his point.

  “We meet under extraordinary circumstances in Farpoint, then journey here,
and at almost the exact moment of our arrival an ancient Sith ship appears.”

  Relin piled on. “And that ship bears an extremely dangerous cargo.”

  Khedryn’s response was knee-jerk defensiveness. “So you say.”

  “So I say?” Relin said, heat leaking into his tone.

  Jaden held a hand up. “Please, Relin.”

  Khedryn shook his head. “Look, this was supposed to be a simple job. Instead it’s …”

  “Something bigger,” Jaden said.

  “I was going to say complicated,” Khedryn said. “But if it is about something bigger, then that makes it a Jedi concern. Not mine. Not ours. Right, Marr?”

  Marr drummed his long fingers on the table, taking it all in. He gave a noncommittal grunt that Khedryn liked not at all.

  “No, this isn’t just a Jedi concern,” Jaden said. “It concerns you, too. Consider all the things I mentioned, the synchronicity of them. It is not chance that we are here together at this moment.”

  “It could be chance,” Khedryn said halfheartedly, but he did not believe his own words. “Marr could put a probability to it, had he a mind. No, I am not doing this.”

  Relin slammed his fist on the table with the suddenness of a lightning strike, startling them all. Caf and tea jumped over cup brims. “You are a stubborn fool, Khedryn Faal.”

  Khedryn could handle anger more easily than Jaden’s inexorable reasonableness. “Better a live fool than a dead fanatic, which is the course you’ve charted for yourself. You’ve got radiation poisoning, broken ribs, a severed arm. You haven’t even paused long enough for treatment. You haven’t even asked for some pharma for the pain or bacta to help the healing.”

  Relin rose to his feet, anger in his eyes. Khedryn’s mouth went dry but he held his ground and made certain nothing on him shook.

  “I do not stop for treatment because I will not shirk doing what needs to be done. Even if it causes me pain. You cannot always run, Khedryn.”

  Khedryn stared into Relin’s haggard face, saw there a deeper pain than that of his wounds. He wilted under its weight, sighed, sat.

  “You spilled your tea,” he said quietly.

  Silence took the head chair for a time, everyone letting time deflate the tension. Relin sat, too, his anger at Khedryn seemingly dispelled as fast as it had appeared.

  “Marr is Force-sensitive,” Jaden said. “Did you know that? Did either of you?”

  Khedryn spilled some of his own caf. “What?”

  “How do you know that?” Marr said, and Khedryn thought he did not sound overly surprised.

  “I can sense it. Relin can as well, I am sure.”

  Relin nodded absently, mostly lost in the depths of his teacup.

  Jaden looked to Marr. “I apologize for springing this on you. I thought I would tell you after we returned to Fhost. If I mentioned it at all.”

  “What does that even mean, Force-sensitive?” Khedryn asked.

  “It means he has an intuitive connection to the Force,” Jaden said. “Were he younger, it would mean he was trainable. But given your age, Marr, even with your mathematical gifts, training is probably out of the question.”

  The possibility, even if remote, of losing Marr to the Jedi Order opened a hole under Khedryn’s feet, and he started to slip. He held up his hands. “Whoa. Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves a bit?”

  “Yes, we are,” Marr said, and looked at Jaden. “Why did you tell me this now?”

  “Because I want all of us to realize that the Force brought you to that signal. You may not have known it, but that is what happened. You selected the route back to Fhost, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  “He’s the navigator,” Khedryn said.

  “I chose the course,” Marr acknowledged.

  Jaden nodded, obviously unsurprised. “It was not chance that you chose this system. The Force is moving through you, through all of us.”

  “Not through me,” Khedryn said before he could wall the words off behind his teeth. He knew they sounded petulant. He felt the odd man out on his own ship.

  Jaden put a hand on Khedryn’s shoulder, and that only made it worse. “The Force touches all of us. Look at us. Look.”

  Khedryn did, and had to admit that it would have taken an odd coincidence to bring all of them together, at that place, at that time.

  Marr, staring at his hands, said, “I do not wish any training.”

  Jaden did not seem surprised. “Understood. I simply wanted you to see what is happening here. I want all of us to see it.”

  “Jaden is right,” Relin said.

  Khedryn tried to get his head around events, but could not. He faced the fact that perhaps Jaden was, in fact, right. Could he simply run as he usually did?

  “Time is our enemy,” Relin said. “Khedryn, please.”

  Khedryn downed the last of his caf, pleased to find the final sip heavy with bitterness from the pulkay. He was almost to the point of surrender. “What are you asking us to do?”

  “Help us accomplish what needs to be accomplished,” Jaden said. “I need to get down to the surface of the moon. There is someone down there who needs help.”

  Khedryn fired the last of his ammo. “And if you go down there and there’s nothing? Have you considered that? I’ve seen that happen before.”

  Jaden shook his head, a bit too fast, a bit too forcefully. “That won’t happen. Something is transmitting that signal.”

  “Jaden—” Khedryn began.

  Relin cut him off. “I cannot go down to the moon.”

  Khedryn set down his caf cup and stared across the table. “No, you want to get aboard the cruiser. You said that. It remains crazy even when repeated often. Antique or not, that ship packs more firepower in its shuttles than we do on all of Junker.”

  “Relin,” Jaden said. “I don’t think—”

  Relin held up his stump, perhaps forgetting that it had no upraised hand attached. “You seemed surprised when I mentioned Lignan earlier.” He swirled his cup. “Were you?”

  “Yes,” Jaden said.

  “And that tells me that you have never before heard of it or its power. Yet Khedryn mentioned Sith, so I know they still exist in this time. Putting the Lignan in their hands would be dangerous, yes?”

  Jaden nodded. “It would, if it does what you say.”

  Relin’s voice frosted. “You felt it. Do you doubt what I say, too?”

  “No,” Jaden admitted. “But …”

  Relin ignored him, continued. “And Saes, the captain of Harbinger, should he figure out what has happened, may try to do exactly that: take it to the Sith. Or he may hoard it for himself. But he is very dangerous in either case. I need to destroy either the Lignan or the ship. And if he leaves this system, we may never get another chance. I do not have much time. Harbinger’s hyperdrive is damaged. The whole ship is reeling from the misjump. This is the moment.”

  Khedryn thought he could see Jaden bend under some weight known only to him. The Jedi very much wanted to go down to the moon’s surface. When his expression fell, Khedryn knew that Jaden, too, had just surrendered.

  “You are right,” Jaden said. “The ore is the greater concern. I am being influenced by … personal concerns. The moon can wait. I will accompany you aboard Harbinger.”

  Relin stared into his teacup. “No. Unless you can suppress your Force presence altogether, you are unwelcome. Saes will detect you easily.”

  “You could screen me.”

  “Your presence is too strong, Jaden,” Relin said. “Masking it from Saes would be difficult and an inefficient use of my power.”

  Listening to their exchange, Khedryn perceived two men trying to give the other an excuse to do what he wished, all while purporting to want its opposite.

  “Heed your own words,” Relin said to Jaden. “The Force called you to the moon, and that is where you should go. Look to your feelings.”

  “I don’t trust my feelings.”

  The admission seemed to take Relin
aback. “You cannot accompany me, Jaden. This is for me to do.”

  “My Force presence is not strong,” Marr said, his words surprising everyone. “I could accompany you.”

  For a long moment, no one said anything.

  Khedryn was too stunned to speak. Finally, he said, “Why would you do that?”

  Marr sighed over his caf, shrugged, tilted his head, finally found words. “I told Jaden how I once calculated the probability that my life would go this way or that. Do you remember me telling you the same thing?”

  Khedryn nodded.

  “Do you know why I did that? It was not just the math. I wanted to confirm that my life would mean something, that I would do something important. But then … other things got in the way.”

  “Marr …,” Khedryn said.

  “I do not regret a moment. You are my great friend. But is salvage all I want to have left behind me? This is a chance to do something meaningful. I concur with Jaden that something other than chance brought us to this moment. It is more likely that you’d win at sabacc than all of this to happen by chance.”

  Khedryn smiled despite himself. “That’s sayin’ something.”

  Marr continued, “Our lives have led us up to this place at this moment. How can I run away from that?”

  Marr did not say it, but Khedryn understood Marr to be asking him the same question, and he had no good answer. For him, running away was simple habit. He’d been running away from roots and responsibility since he’d become an adult. It had worked pretty well for him.

  Marr looked to Relin. “I will go, if you will have me.”

  Jaden started to speak, stopped.

  Relin stared across the table at Marr. “You’ve only just met me, and you do not know what I have in mind.”

  “Whatever it is, it will require a ship. You’ll need a pilot who knows the ship, not to mention one with two hands.”

  Relin tilted his head to acknowledge the point. “The Lignan will affect you more strongly up close. You’ve felt some … unease since Harbinger appeared?”

  Marr nodded. “A headache, mostly.”

  “The feelings will be more acute when you are near its source.”

  “For you, too,” Jaden said to Relin.