Crosscurrent (12 page)

The man held his gaze and did not give way. “It would be better if we spoke now. Please, sit.”

The words sounded strange to Khedryn’s ears. They bounced around in his mind, repeating, repeating. He felt a tickle behind his eyes. His vision blurred for a moment and when it cleared he figured he should at least hear what the man had to say.

“Of course, friend. Let’s get a table—”

Marr’s long fingers fixed on Khedryn’s shoulder. “The game is waiting, Captain. Reegas is displeased already.”

Khedryn felt a moment’s light-headedness. “Reegas?”

“Yes.” Marr put his body between Khedryn and the human. The Cerean had a hand on his blaster and a question in his eyes.

Khedryn looked into the dark eyes of his friend, shook his head to clear it. What had he been thinking?

“Reegas, right.”

He looked around Marr at the man who had accosted him.

“What is your name, friend? And how do you know me?”

Disappointment colored the human’s face. “I know of you. And you’ll be interested in what I have to say, Captain.”

“No doubt. After the game, though.”

“Captain—”

“He said after,” Marr interrupted.

“What’d you say your name was?” Khedryn asked.

“Jaden Korr.”

“Korr here says he has a business proposition, Marr.”

Korr did not even look at the Cerean.

“We are always looking for business,” Marr said.

“I’ll find you after the game. You’re welcome to watch, if you like,” Khedryn said, and indicated the vidscreens. “Better’n watching a grav-ball game that was played four standard months ago.”

“I suppose it is,” Jaden said, studying Khedryn and Marr. “I may take you up on that, Captain.”

Sitting in the corner of The Hole near the Bothan musicians, Kell watched the bearded human confront Khedryn Faal and he knew almost immediately that he had found his Jedi. He imagined the sharp tang of the Jedi’s soup, licked his lips, and stood.

For two standard weeks he had prowled unnoticed among Farpoint’s streets, cantinas, and gambling dens. He had fed off the stored sentients in
Predator
’s hold while gathering information about Farpoint, its people, the comings and goings of ships, always with an eye toward spotting a Jedi.

He had found nothing. Until now.

The Jedi had been posing as a scrap dealer from the Core. He must have been shielding his Force signature. But Kell had felt the flash of power when the Jedi had used the so-called mind trick on Khedryn Faal. Therefore—Kell smiled at the echo of Wyyrlok’s syntax—the Jedi clearly had urgent business with Faal.

And that information allowed Kell to put together the puzzle of Krayt’s vision, to see Wyyrlok’s sign. And perhaps his own.

He had heard the gossip that
Junker
had happened upon a promising salvage opportunity, of course, but such stories were not uncommon in Farpoint. He had thought there was little to distinguish it from any others.

But now he suspected otherwise, because the Jedi must have thought it different from the others. And that meant that Kell had found his sign. He would get his answer when he determined where the salvage opportunity was located. He would have wagered much that it was on the icebound moon in orbit around a blue, ringed gas giant, the image of which Wyyrlok had impressed on Kell’s mind.

Kell imagined lines crossing, knotting together, the warp and weft of Fate’s skein meeting in the corrugated confines of The Black Hole and leading outward into the Unknown Regions and Kell’s destiny.

Over the Bothans’ music, over the hum of conversation, laughter, and vidscreens, Kell had heard the Jedi say his name to Khedryn Faal.

Jaden Korr.

The name sent a thrill through him. He savored the syllables, the sounds an incantation that would summon him to revelation.

“Jaden Korr,” he whispered.

The Bothan musicians built their song to a climax, staring at and past Kell without seeing him. Kell allowed his perception to see fate lines as the Bothan music died. The room became a net of glowing tethers, but Kell had eyes only for the tendrils of red and green that spiraled around the gray-eyed Jedi.

He wound through the crowd, almost invisible to those in The Hole. Perhaps someone saw him for a moment, but he flickered in and out of perception with such smoothness that they probably registered him only out of the corner of an eye, as a fleeting shadow.

Or a ghost.

A table erupted in shouts as someone scored in the grav-ball game blaring on one of the vidscreens. Korr stood in place, arms crossed, staring after Khedryn Faal, motionless and placid amid the frenetic activity of dancing girls, servers, and patrons in The Hole.

Kell fell in with the activity. His feeders roiled in his cheeks as he closed on Korr. He could not take his eyes from the back of Korr’s head, could not pry his thoughts from the imagined taste of the Jedi’s soup, the sharp, creamy flavor implied by the power that flashed when the Jedi had used his mind trick.

Kell’s appetites were driving him, he realized, making him incautious. He recognized this, but he recognized, too, that if revelation were ever to be his, it would come through the soup of a Force-user.

Perhaps this Force-user
, he thought.

He glided behind Korr, near enough to touch him, and stopped there. His feeders twitched. The effort to
keep himself shielded—even from a passive Force-user—strained him. His
daen nosi
tangled themselves with Korr’s, squirming, silver, green, and red serpents wrestling for dominance.

The sounds and smells of the cantina fell away, leaving him and Korr alone in the swirling potentiality of Fate, the roiling mix of their
daen nosi
. Kell leaned forward, inhaled the air around Korr.

Korr cocked his head, turned. Unready for the sudden spotlight of the Jedi’s Force-enhanced awareness, Kell’s perception screens failed him.

Thinking quickly, he clutched at the Jedi’s coat and stumbled into him as if drunk, the collision of their flesh echoing the collision of their fates.

“Pardon,” Kell said in Basic, and tried to stagger past. He bumped a waitress carrying a wooden tray laden with glasses of pulkay, but she did not even break stride.

The Jedi took Kell by the bicep, held him in place. Kell’s left hand fell to the hilt of one of his vibroblades.

“Are you all right?” Korr asked.

Kell looked up and met the Jedi’s deep-set gray eyes, underlined by dark circles, and saw the stress and longing written in the broken capillaries of his conjunctiva. For a moment he could not speak. He knew he had met a kindred spirit, that he and Jaden Korr sought the same thing—revelation. And Kell knew that he would find it when he fed on the Jedi’s soup.

“I am fine,” Kell said with an affected slur. “Thank you.”

The Jedi let him go. Kell weaved to an unoccupied table with a view of the sabacc table and slid into a seat.

He felt the weight of the Jedi’s regard on the back of his head. It diminished only when Korr walked past him and into the back room to watch Faal play sabacc.

Kell waited a few moments, then followed him in.

*  *  *

Clutching him by the arm, Marr steered Khedryn toward the sabacc table the same way he might a balky speeder.

“You are nineteen minutes and nine standard seconds tardy,” Marr said.

“You cannot just say
late?
You have to say
tardy?
”

“Nineteen minutes and
fourteen
standard seconds … tardy.”

“Why are you worried? You do not approve of my gambling anyway.”

The Cerean shrugged. “I would disapprove less if you did not lose so often.”

Khedryn smiled halfheartedly. He still felt discomfited from his encounter with Jaden Korr. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Jaden was staring at him, his deep-set eyes in shadow.

“You remember that time we carried those Sacred Way pilgrims to Hoogon Two so they could see the monument built there by their founder?” Khedryn said to Marr. “You remember how they looked when they got there and there was no monument?”

Marr nodded. “Haunted.”

“Right. Haunted.” He indicated Jaden with his chin. “He reminds me of them. He’s got that look. Like he learned something he wished he hadn’t and it called into question what he believes.”

“I can steer him off, if you’d like. He doesn’t look like much.”

Khedryn shook his head. “That’s bad business. He said
lucrative
, so let’s hear what he has to say.”

Reegas’s nasal voice pulled Khedryn’s head around to the sabacc table.

“Put your arse in a seat, Faal! And get your bug eyes on some cards!”

“Did he say
bug eyes?
”

Khedryn preferred to think that his lazy eye allowed him to see the world askew, from a different angle than most.

“I believe he did.”

“Huh,” Khedryn said. He fixed false mirth to his face and turned to the table.

Reegas’s bald head, already dampened with sweat, glistened in the overhead lights. He smiled through his paunchy jowls, and his overweight body slouched in his seat. A glass of straight keela sat before him on the table, as clear as water. His two Weequay bodyguards, their faces as dry and cracked as the leather of their blaster holsters, leaned against the back wall of the room. Both eyed Khedryn with the dead eyes of those who harmed others for a living.

“Sit! Sit!” Reegas called.

Khedryn thumped Marr on the shoulder. “Duty calls.”

“But that Cerean comes nowhere near this table,” said Reegas. “His brain is built for counting cards.”

Khedryn lost even the false mirth. “You spent too much time in Hutt space. Gotten yourself paranoid. I don’t cheat, Reegas.”

“No wonder you never win,” said Earsh, also seated at the sabacc table. The human’s long nose and his bushy sideburns, groomed to a point, made him look like he was sniffing the wind for easy marks. He had the twitchy nature of a rodent, and Khedryn knew he was into Reegas for at least three thousand credits.

“Oh, I am not here to win. I am here to make the game respectable. Otherwise it’s just a table full of thugs and scoundrels. Save you, Flaygin.”

The old man smiled a mouthful of rotted teeth. An old-timer in Farpoint, Flaygin had been a salvager himself
before he’d retired. Khedryn saw his own future in Flaygin’s thin gray hair, sun-wrinkled skin, and serial gambling. Flaygin missed the life because he’d never had anything else. Khedryn could see that.

Earsh grunted, tapped a credit on the table, spun it under his finger. “A junk jockey don’t make a game respectable. You pull any rubbish out of the sky recently, junk jockey?”

“Why?” Khedryn said to Earsh. “You lose your ship somewhere?”

Earsh’s expression hardened. His sideburns pointed accusations at Khedryn, though he could rarely hold Khedryn’s eyes. Khedryn figured his eyes made Earsh uncomfortable. “You calling my ship trash, Faal?”

Khedryn stood behind his chair, the comforting weight of his blaster on his thigh, his eyes all innocence. “Calling your ship trash would be an insult to trash.”

Earsh stood, a callused hand on his DL-21 blaster pistol.

Khedryn lost his smile. “A man skins his weapon at this table, he best be ready to use it. You think hard, Earsh.” He let his hand hover over his own IR-5.

“Sit down, Earsh,” ordered Reegas, tapping the table with a finger as if summoning his pet. “We need four to play.”

Earsh looked as if he had eaten something foul as he sat back down. “One day, Faal. One day.”

“Any day that takes your fancy, Earsh. Any day.”

“Please sit, Khedryn Faal,” said the dealer droid, Himher, and one of its dexterous, metallic hands gestured at his chair. Himher’s voice changed from male to female in midsentence, a manufacturing defect that had either slipped past quality control or reflected the odd sense of humor of a worker at the plant. How it had ended up in Farpoint, owned by Milsin, Khedryn had no
idea. Himher was a fixture at The Hole and always had been.

Khedryn accepted the droid’s invitation while Flaygin threw back a long drink of pulkay, slammed his empty glass down on the table, and said, “Now that the preliminary posturing is out of the way, maybe we can see some cards, eh?”

Everyone chuckled, but none sincerely.

“Corellian Gambit rules, players?” asked Himher.

All four nodded and Himher’s mechanical appendages turned to blurs. Khedryn sank into the game as cards floated across the table: flasks, sabers, staves, and coins. Credits slid across the tabletop, one hand after another. A steady stream of dancing girls took shifts either standing at Reegas’s side or sitting on his lap and sinking into the folds of his obese body. He gave a few credits to those he favored. Other spectators and hangers-on trickled in as the stakes grew larger, the game more intense. Khedryn did not need to turn around to know that Marr’s eyes were boring holes into his back. He could feel their weight.

Lengthy discussion and dueling insults went by the wayside as the game turned earnest. The room became quiet but for the hum of Himher’s servos and the occasional gasp or exclamation from one of those in the audience. Reegas sipped his keela with affected casualness, studying the other players over the rim of his glass. Earsh’s face reddened as the game went on. He slammed back pulkay about as fast as the servers could fill his cup. Khedryn barely touched his own drink.

His sobriety was not rewarded. Over the next four standard hours, Khedryn’s cards fell about as well as they usually did. He watched as bad luck and bad play eroded his pile of credits while growing Reegas’s into a mountain. He kept his rising irritation from his face, but
the clench of his jaw made it hard to separate his upper teeth from his lower. A headache nested in his left temple and he could not shake it. He played to push things, not to win, but it annoyed him to lose to Reegas.

“Refill me, will you, dear?” Reegas said to the haggard-looking blond dancing girl perched on his lap. He jingled his ice and wore a smug smile that Khedryn would have preferred to wipe off with a power sander.

“Me, too,” said Earsh, and the dancer snorted with contempt. “Hey!”