Crosscurrent

by Paul Kemp

  “Kam Solusar,” Jaden said, the words slipping free before he could stop them.

  The clone sneered, and in that expression lost any resemblance to Master Solusar, who so often wore a smile.

  “I do not know that name,” the clone said. “I am Alpha.”

  Alpha wore mismatched attire: clothing salvaged from the facility, bits of stormtrooper armor on both shoulders, the forearms, and the hands, and a rough, handmade cloak fashioned from the hide of some creature that must have lived under the ice in the moon’s seas. In the clone’s movements, Jaden caught the suggestion of an imposing physicality, controlled savagery. He looked larger than Kam, more there.

  Jaden cleared his throat, stepped forward. He lowered his lightsaber but did not deactivate it. “I have come here to … help you.”

  The clone held his sneer. “We require no help from you. Only the ship that brought you.”

  “We?”

  “Are you Jedi or Sith?”

  Jaden took a half step sideways, as if to avoid the ugly import of the question. He reached the edge of the cloning cylinder and winced when he saw within it.

  Bodies lay piled in a grotesque heap, a tangle of decayed limbs, torsos, heads, and tattered clothing—a compost heap of butchery. Empty eye sockets stared up at Jaden. Age-ruined lips showed teeth bared in snarls.

  “Beautiful, is it not?” asked the Kamclone. “Mother is where life begins and ends.”

  The stink caused Jaden’s eyes to water. He guessed that almost every person in the facility had ended up inside the cylinder, inside Mother.

  Fighting down his disgust, he asked, “How many are you? How many survived?”

  “How many of them?” the clone said, and a knowing malice slinked into his dead eyes. “Or us?”

  The clone stepped to the edge of Mother and started walking the circumference of the cylinder toward Jaden.

  Instinctually, Jaden walked the circumference in the same direction, away from the clone, the two of them pacing the face of a chrono, keeping time under the shadow of the inevitable.

  The clone nodded at the cylinder, an insane reverence smoothing his expression. “We return here from time to time to thank Mother for our lives. She can create it from the root of a hair, Dr. Green once told me. You were right, Dr. Green,” he said to one of the corpses.

  Jaden felt entirely exposed. More of them could appear at any moment. He reached out with the Force. He perceived no one else, but it was possible they could screen their presences.

  They continued their circling, the pace quickening. Jaden knew what must come but he delayed it, discontented with the realization that all he had endured, all he had asked others to endure, had resulted in no answers. The clones had showed him nothing. The Kamclone was mad. Perhaps they all were. Perhaps he himself was, too.

  “Why do you walk away from me?” the Kamclone said.

  “Because it does not have to be this way.”

  “It does,” the clone said, his right hand twitching. “Mother is hungry.”

  Jaden stopped pacing, and his abrupt stop seemed to take the clone by surprise. “I cannot help you,” he said.

  “You can,” the clone said, also stopping. “And you will. You will give us your ship.”

  “No.”

  From under his cloak, the clone drew his lightsaber and activated it. A long, unstable red blade cut the shadows, spitting angry sparks.

  The clone’s façade ran like candlewax, the heat of his rage melting the calm mask of his expression to reveal the savagery beneath. Eyes narrowed, teeth bared, he snarled … and in the sound Jaden heard the violent nature that had slaughtered hundreds of people and thrown their corpses into a cloning pit turned mass grave.

  “Mother is hungry!”

  Jaden prepared himself, sank into the calm of the Force.

  The clone ran one way around the pit and Jaden ran the opposite. They met after fifteen strides, still on Mother’s edge, both lightsabers humming. Jaden ducked low under the clone’s decapitating cross-stroke and stabbed at his abdomen.

  The clone reverse-backflipped, balancing on the pit’s edge, then immediately charged Jaden again. He feinted low and unleashed a vicious overhand blow, then another, and another. Jaden parried each one, but the blows began to numb his arms. He let the Force soothe his muscles and augment his strength, and answered with a flurry of blows of his own.

  The clone gave no ground, and Jaden could not penetrate his defenses. They crossed blades at the chest, weapons sizzling, the sparks from the clone’s blade searing scorch marks into Jaden’s suit. The clone grunted, shoved Jaden two meters backward, and lunged after him.

  Jaden leapt over his head, flipping, his blade slashing down as he flew over the clone, but the clone parried. Jaden landed on his feet on the edge of the pit and the clone was upon him, forcing his lightsaber high and landing a Force-augmented kick in his chest. Ribs snapped and Jaden staggered backward.

  Following up on the opening, the clone leapt forward and cross-cut Jaden at the knees. Jaden leapt over the slash, used an overcut to drive the clone’s blade into the deck, where it threw up a shower of sparks. Jaden spun, and angled a reverse-cross-cut for the clone’s head.

  The clone lurched backward but the tip of Jaden’s blade opened a gash in his throat. Staggered, gasping, the clone swung wildly with his lightsaber while unleashing a telekinetic blast against Jaden’s chest.

  Jaden used the Force to deaden the blow, but his broken ribs ground against one another and he hissed with pain. By now the clone had recovered enough to charge. He attacked high, low, overhand, cross-cuts. Jaden parried them all while backing off. The clone did not relent, pressing Jaden further, faster. Jaden answered where he could but the clone’s blade seemed everywhere. Jaden parried left, right, again, again, until he felt a sharp, stinging sensation and both his lightsaber and three fingers went flying off into the darkness.

  A side kick from the clone ruined his already broken ribs and sent him down into Mother. He fell amid the corpses, swimming in the gore, feeling as if dead hands were clutching at him. Stinking, wet fluid soaked him. Before he could sit up, the clone leapt into the pit after him and landed on his feet with his legs to either side of Jaden. Jaden could not see the Kamclone’s face, could see only the sparking line of his red lightsaber held high for a killing stroke. Jaden focused his mind on the blade as it came down. He threw up an arm, grabbed the clone’s wrist, and steered the blade wide.

  The clone grunted in frustration, knelt, and grabbed Jaden’s throat with his free hand.

  “Do not resist. You should be honored to provide sustenance to Mother,” he said, and began to squeeze.

  Desperate, and still holding the clone’s right wrist to keep the sizzling red line of his lightsaber at bay, Jaden used his wounded right hand to claw at the clone’s grip, trying to dig his remaining fingers under the clone’s and pry loose some space for an inhalation. Failing that, he tried to roll aside, to shift his weight and gain some leverage, or free a leg to kick out, but the clone’s Force-augmented strength was greater than Jaden’s.

  Jaden gagged, tried to shake loose by flailing his head, but failed. His lungs forced him to try to draw air. Unable to pull in oxygen, he saw spots. The clone grunted against Jaden’s fading grip, his dark eyes wild, saliva dripping from his gritted teeth.

  Jaden’s arms were deadwood hanging off his shoulders. As he lost strength, the clone’s lightsaber moved closer to his throat. The sparks from the unstable blade struck Jaden’s face and arm, pockmarking his skin with tiny scorch marks, igniting little flashes of pain. His heart banged in his ears. He was failing. He was going to die.

  The realization summoned something from deep within the dark crevices of his mind where he kept secrets even from himself. Force lightning exploded from his hand, squeezed out by the exigency of his circumstances. The blue lines spiraled around the clone’s hand and lightsaber.

  The clone gasped with surprise, loosened his grip, disengaged. Jaden
gulped a lungful of air while the darkness within him swelled and the outburst of Force lightning intensified. Jaden knew that fear had unlocked the darkest part of himself, knew, too, that he could free that part, surrender to it, and save his body while destroying himself.

  But he thought of Kyle, of his training, of Relin, and denied the impulse. The Force lightning died.

  The clone recovered, growled, raised his lightsaber high.

  Jaden reached behind his back, pulled out the lightsaber he had built in his youth, his ignorant youth, a lightsaber not so different from that held by the clone.

  The clone lunged forward.

  Jaden activated his lightsaber and drove the point into and through the clone’s abdomen.

  The clone’s roar turned to a groan, but his momentum carried him forward along Jaden’s blade, and as death turned his eyes glassy, he completed his overhand stroke.

  The sparking red blade cleaved the bodies beside Jaden and fell from the clone’s hand. It lay there, a red line spitting sparks. It had no auto-off, and its energy burned into the corpses and sank part way into the muck. Jaden stared at its red swirl a long time, the dead eyes of the clone fixed on his face all the while.

  Finally Jaden thumbed off his lightsaber and the clone’s body fell free. He pushed the corpse to the side. Grunting with pain, he bent and picked up the clone’s lightsaber, held it beside his own purple blade as best he could with his damaged hand.

  Purple and red lines—two lines, two choices.

  He deactivated both weapons, slowly stood. Exhaustion made his body shake. Pain turned his vision blurry. He limped to the edge of the cloning cylinder, of Mother.

  Desiccated skulls and empty eye sockets bore witness to his passage. Open mouths screamed at him to cast himself in, to join them. The stink made him wince. At least he thought it was the stink.

  With effort, grunting with pain, he slowly climbed out of the pit.

  When he reached the top, he turned and stared down at the chaotic mass of bodies, all of them twisted together, contorted, as if frozen in a struggle to move over and past one another, or perhaps just pressed into one common mass where struggle no longer mattered. He thought all of it must be a metaphor for something, but his pain- and fatigue-addled mind could not decide for what.

  He started to cast the clone’s lightsaber back into the mass of flesh at the bottom of the pit, put it to rest beside his own, but decided against it. Instead, he latched it to his belt, turned, and found himself staring into the eyes of an Anzat. Surprise almost caused him to step back and fall again into the pit.

  * * *

  In the silence of the cargo bay, drenched in the power of the Lignan, Relin dwelled on his failures. He had failed Saes, failed Drev, failed the Order. He’d even failed Marr, awakening him to the Force so that his first experience with it was the touch of the Lignan.

  Anger turned to rage turned to hate. He welcomed it. The proximity to the Lignan intensified the feelings.

  His world zeroed down to three things only—himself, his hate, and the object of his hate, Saes. His life had been nothing more than a series of failures. He intended to end it by rectifying the worst of them—Saes.

  The hum of the cargo bay lift penetrated the haze of his emotional state. He stood, lightsaber in hand, Lignan in his being, and waited. He heard the lift doors open, heard the sound of boots on the cargo bay floor, and felt Saes’s presence through the Force, the black hole into which Relin had poured his early life. The stacked cargo crates blocked Saes from view, but Relin knew he was there.

  Saes’s voice carried from somewhere behind the containers. “Your anger pleases me. Your handiwork in the lift would earn admiration even from the most savage of my Massassi. Well done, Master.”

  The last word struck Relin like a punch in the stomach, and he knew Saes intended it to do exactly that. “I am not your Master.”

  “No, but you taught me everything I know. Perhaps not the way you intended, but it is to you that I owe my freedom from the slavery of the light side.”

  Through the Force, Relin tried to pinpoint Saes’s location. Augmenting a jump with the power of the Force, he leapt atop one of the storage containers. The vantage gave him a better view of the cargo bay. Above the maze of storage containers, he saw the closed lift doors. But no Saes.

  “Show yourself,” he said. “Let us finish this.”

  The overhead lights flickered, dimmed, casting the bay in shadow.

  Saes’s voice carried from behind him. “Do you know what has happened, Relin? Do you know where we are? When we are?”

  Relin turned toward the sound of the voice, his body coiled. “I know. It does not matter. Nothing matters now.”

  “Because your Padawan is dead?”

  Rage clenched Relin’s jaw so tightly his teeth ached.

  Saes chuckled. “Your anger runs deep, not just about your Padawan, but about … me.”

  Relin swallowed the fist that formed in his throat. Words rushed up from deep inside, words he’d never said even to himself—Your betrayal broke my heart—but he held them behind the wall of his gritted teeth. He saw now that his descent had begun with the doubt that had rooted in him after Saes had turned to the dark side. His slide had simply been slow but, ultimately, inexorable.

  “Come out,” he said. “It is time we finished things.”

  Saes’s voice came from Relin’s left. “It is not too late. Join me. This is a new time, a new place, ripe for a new beginning.”

  Relin was already shaking his head.

  But Saes continued: “Have you considered that it was never the purpose of the Force that you save me, but that I save you instead? Join me, Relin.”

  The idea pulled at Relin. He felt rudderless, lost. He could join with Saes—

  “If you do not, your Padawan will have died in vain.”

  And with those words, Saes overstepped. Relin’s rage bubbled over into action. He took telekinetic hold of the storage containers near the sound of Saes’s voice and slammed two of them together. Metal twisted, crashed; the doors of the containers broke open from the impact and more Lignan ore spilled out onto the deck.

  He slid another container into them, then another. He realized he was shouting, an incoherent roar of rage with its provenance in a life he now deemed wasted. He stopped, his breath coming hard.

  “Come out!”

  Saes leapt atop a storage container opposite the one on which Relin stood. A sea of Lignan covered the deck between them, dividing them. Shadows played over the ridges on Saes’s bone mask. His lightsaber hung from his belt.

  “You stink of rage,” Saes said. “Where is the calm of the Force of which you so often spoke? The placidity of combat? Or perhaps that was all a lie, as so much you said and believed was?”

  Relin let his anger consume his spirit, fill him entirely, and with it he drew on the Force, adding to his strength, his speed.

  “Addictive, is it not?” Saes said. “The Lignan, I mean.”

  With that, Saes raised his hand and blue Force lightning exploded from his fist. Relin did not try to avoid it. Instead, drawing on the Lignan and fueled with hate, he interposed his lightsaber, drew the lightning to it like iron to a magnet, then spun the blade once over his head and flung the dark side energy back at Saes. More Lignan flared on the floor below as Saes drew on it and absorbed his own Force lightning to no visible effect.

  Standing in the shadows of the cargo bay, they regarded each other across the deck of Lignan.

  “How should we proceed then?” Saes said.

  Relin answered by deactivating his lightsaber.

  He was no Jedi, not anymore, and would not fight with a Jedi weapon. Besides, only one form of combat could sate his rage. He tossed his lightsaber down into the pile of Lignan ore below him.

  Saes took his point, tilted his head in acknowledgment. He detached his curved lightsaber from his belt and tossed it after Relin’s. He flexed his clawed fingers, inhaled deeply.

  “So
be it, then.”

  Relin shouted and used a Force-enhanced leap to launch himself into the air toward Saes. Answering with a growl, Saes leapt into the air to meet him. They met midway, colliding over the Lignan, both of them filled with the dark side, stronger, faster.

  Relin wrapped one arm around Saes, slammed his brow into Saes’s face with the other. The bottom half of the bone mask shattered, raining shards down on the Lignan. Saes’s lower tooth tore a ragged hole in Relin’s forearm before it dislodged and added itself to the mask fragments raining onto the deck.

  Saes slashed his claws across Relin’s face. Relin used the Force to resist the blow, but it still dug jagged furrows into his forehead and tore into an eye, though he barely felt the pain.

  They fell together, twisting, punching, slashing at a speed and with a force that looked blurry even to Relin. They hit the ground in a tangle of punches and kicks. Hate fueled their blows. Blood sprayed, bones cracked, the Lignan flared all around them as each drew on it in turn.

  “I hate you for what you did,” Saes spat between his fangs.

  “I hate me for what I am,” Relin said. He rolled away from Saes and from his knees fired a telekinetic blast that drove Saes through the Lignan ore and into a storage container. “But I hate you more.”

  He took mental hold of an entire storage container—Lignan ore fell from its open door like droplets of blood—lifted it from the deck, and dropped it on Saes.

  Saes caught it in his own mental grasp before it hit. Grunting, Lignan ore flaring to life around him, he threw it back at Relin.

  Relin dived aside and the container slammed into another. For the first time, Relin felt the waves of controlled rage radiating from Saes, an anger to match his own. Odd that Relin had never felt it before, in all the time they had spent together as Master and Padawan.

  Saes stood and stalked through the Lignan scattered across the floor, the ore flashing as he passed it, consumed by his hate.

  “You think rage days old can match mine, nurtured over decades? You think power born of infantile anger can equal mine? I have whet the blade of my hate for years, for this moment!”