Crosscurrent

  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?”

  * * *

  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.

  “I will speak with the pilots later,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Saes cut off the connection to Llerd and opened another, through the Force. He reached out, but tentatively, the way he might have gingerly touched a fingertip on an object that he feared might be too hot.

  Immediately he felt a familiar presence.

  “Welcome back, Relin,” he whispered, surprised to find himself pleased.

  He went to one of the display cases built into the wall of his quarters. Five ancient Kaleesh hunting masks leered out from behind the glass, each of them hand-carved from the bones of an erkush, a fierce reptilian predator native to Kalee. Shamanic runes covered the brow and cheeks of each mask, invoking the spirits to lend the wearer strength, speed, skill.

  Saes opened the case, took a familiar, age-yellowed face from the ancient gallery, fitted it over his own face, and tied it on. He felt himself transformed in that single act, reconnected to the wondrous, faceless savagery of his ancestors.

  He would confront Relin while wearing the mask he had worn when he had been Relin’s Padawan. It seemed fitting that things end just so. He strode from his chamber, hunting a Jedi.

  Snow drifted halfway up the metal and duracrete walls of the facility. Spears of ice hung in thickets from every overhang. Three-quarters of a communications tower jutted upward from the tundra like an accusatory finger blaming the sky for its fate. A faint, snow-blotted light at the tower’s top flashed intermittently, keeping time with the beacon playing over Flotsam’s cockpit speaker, keeping time with Jaden’s heart.

  “Looks abandoned,” Khedryn said.

  Jaden came back to himself, swallowed in a mouth gone dry. “Yes.”

  “Definitely looks old enough to be Imperial,” Khedryn said.

  Jaden forced a nod, though a sense of déjà vu gripped his gut. For an instant he lived in the dreamspace between his Force vision and his real senses and he was suddenly unsure that he wanted to set foot on the moon.

  Fighting down the doubt, he reached out through the Force, expecting to feel the bitter recoil of contact with the Sith from his vision.

  Nothing.

  He took his hand from the stick, made a claw of his fingers, looked at their tips, the fingertips that leaked Force lightning when he was overcome by anger or fear.

  Nothing.

  “Are you all right?” Khedryn asked, taking the copilot’s stick. “What are you doing?”

  Embarrassed, Jaden made as though he were flexing his fingers against stiffness. “Nothing. I am fine.”

  “Maybe a flyover before we set down?” Khedryn said. He did not release the stick and seemed pleased to be in control of the ship.

  “Agreed,” Jaden said.

  Khedryn decreased altitude and speed, flying low over the complex.

  With many of the buildings having lost their battle to the snow, Jaden found it difficult to make out the contours of the complex. Small mounds suggested tertiary structures, though it was hard to tell.

  “Could be a shield generator,” he said, pointing at a dome-shaped mound of snow.

  “You would know better than me,” Khedryn said.

  The central building, a rectangular, single-story mass of ice-rimmed metal, looked like any number of facilities Jaden had seen before. The structure could have been anything from a hazardous materials storage depot to a training complex.

  “That looks like an entrance,” Khedryn said, pointing at a shadowed portico on one side of the central facility. “Can’t see if there’s a hatch.”

  Khedryn fiddled with the instrumentation, tweaking his scanner. “There is still power in the main complex, though not much of it. Life support is online but barely. Some kind of backup or emergency power probably. Good construction to last this long.”

  “Yes,” Jaden said absently, looking at the blowing snow, remembering the ghostly touches of Lassin, Mara, Kam Solusar. The beacon still played over the cockpit speakers, their pleading voices—Help us. Help us.

  “If life support is functioning, someone could still be alive in there.”

  “Unlikely,” Khedryn said. “It’s been decades. Can we turn that off, Jaden? Jaden?”

  Jaden killed the sound of the beacon.

  They completed their flyover, having learned little.

  “Well?” Khedryn said, and looked across the cockpit at Jaden, one eye on him, one eye off on some distant point. “Having second thoughts?”

  “No. Let’s put her down,” Jaden said. He knew he would not find his answer sitting in Flotsam’s cockpit.

  The repulsors engaged, pressing Relin and Marr into their seats as Junker streaked toward the landing bay. Leaving the piloting entirely to Marr, Relin sorted through Harbinger’s schematics in his mind, and decided on the best approach for his attack. Agitated, he unstrapped himself, stood, and checked his lightsaber and gear, speaking to Marr as he did so.

  “About one hundred and fifty meters in, you will see a wide corridor open off the landing bay on our starboard side. It is a freight corridor. Put Junker down against it with the port cargo bay door facing it.”

  Sweat dampened the wall of Marr’s brow. “If you want to block the corridor, it will have to be a belly landing. No skids.”

  “Right,” Relin agreed. He had not thought of that. “No skids.”

  Were Junker to land on its skids, Harbinger’s crew could simply walk or crawl underneath to get into the corridor and at Relin.

  “You should strap yourself back in,” Marr said. “That will be a bumpy landing.”

  Relin sat, and buckled himself in. “I will not need long. A few minutes at most and you get Junker out of there. Lots of side corridors open off the freight corridor. They will not know where I have gone, and I am … skillful at avoiding detection.”

  “Understood,” Marr said as they sped down the throat of the landing bay, the guide lights casting the cockpit in red. Marr did not slow once they were within the launch tunnel, and Junker scraped one of Harbinger’s bulkheads. Metal shrieked and Relin imagined a shower of sparks trailing in their wake. Marr cursed and got the ship off the wall.

  “Calm, Marr,” Relin said, though he did not feel it himself. The touch of the Lignan had his spirit churning.

  They cleared the launch tunnel and moved into the broader landing bay, pelting past a few shuttles on landing pods and a couple of treaded cargo droids. A few of Harbinger’s black-uniformed crew scrambled out of ships or trotted along the landing bay deck, watching them pass, questions on their faces. Relin imagined the reports that must have been heading to Saes and the command crew.

  “It’s enormous in here,” Marr said, eyeing the whole scene with a look of faint wonder, perhaps realizing that he was flying in the landing bay of a ship that had fought in a war five thousand years previous. Or perhaps just surprised that they had made it that far.

  Relin pointed with his stump when he saw the freight corridor.

  “There.”

  Marr nodded and did not slow.

  “Brace yourself,” the Cerean said.

  Three droids were unloading cargo from a lev pallet. Marr slammed into them, crushing all three, while spinning Junker on its repulsors and slamming its port side against the freight corridor opening. The impact rattled Relin’s teeth. Junker protested with
a groan of stressed metal. Relin protested with a grunt of pain. It felt as if someone had stuck a knife in his ribs.

  “Are you all right?” Marr asked, unstrapping himself.

  Relin caught his breath, unbuckled his safety straps, rose, and thumped Marr on the shoulder. “Yes. Well done.”

  Marr activated the security system right away. Metal shields slid over every viewport: Junker closing its eyes.

  “That will protect the ship from small-arms fire. But she is still vulnerable to more powerful weapons. I should not leave her here long.”

  “I do not think they will try to blow her up on their own landing deck, at least not before they surround her with a makeshift blast wall. We could have loaded her with explosives for all they know. No, I think droids build a blast wall while a security team tries to gain entry.”

  As if to make Relin’s point, blasterfire barked from outside the ship, dull, harmless thumps against the bulkheads.

  “None of which will stop some fool pilots from taking shots at the ship,” Relin said. “We must hurry.”

  He turned to go but Marr’s hand pulled him back around. The Cerean did not make eye contact.

  “How often do Cereans fall to the dark side? In your time, I mean.”

  Relin understood the origin of the question. The touch of the Lignan, and Marr’s conscious use of the Force, had brought him face-to-face with the two poles of potential. Relin remembered that feeling himself from his early days in the Order, the feeling that he stood on a very thin line, and that he might step over it at any moment.

  “The dark side can reach anyone,” Relin said, pained by the truth of the words.

  Marr considered, nodded, released Relin’s arm.

  “Thank you,” he said. “For showing me what you showed me.”

  Relin was touched, but kept his feelings to himself. “I need to go, Marr. Now.”

  * * *

  Relin and Marr sprinted through Junker’s corridors, Marr leading, until they reached the port cargo bay. The bay felt cavernous, as empty as Marr had seen it in years. His speeder bike, Khedryn’s Searing swoop, and a few sealed shipping containers were all that remained. They had spaced everything else.