Crosscurrent (16 page)

“Not good, Captain.”

“Not good. That’s right.”

“Why don’t you leave that to me,” Jaden said, fighting back irritation.

Khedryn stood. “Because you are sitting in my galley in my ship.” He walked over to bar, refilled his caf. “Marr?”

“Yes, please,” the Cerean said.

Khedryn returned to the table with the pot, refilled Marr’s cup, even topped off Jaden’s.

“I think this is where we part ways, Jaden Korr. This smells like some Jedi grand scheme, and I’ve seen what comes of those.”

Jaden understood the oblique reference to Outbound Flight. Jaden had seen what came of Jedi grand schemes, too. Centerpoint and everyone on it exploded in a Jedi grand scheme.

“That’s not really how we work,” Marr added, and Jaden detected the hint of an apology in the Cerean’s tone.

“Even after what Master Skywalker did for you?”

Khedryn stiffened, his fingers white around the handle of his caf pot. Still standing, he said, “I owe Luke and Mara Skywalker. Not the Jedi Order.”

Jaden felt his plans crumbling. His own fists clenched. He saw Marr tense and took a moment to calm himself. “I don’t want the salvage. I just … need to see it.”

Marr’s eyes formed a question. “Why?”

Khedryn said, “That sounds a bit more personal than you’ve let on.”

Jaden offered the truth. “No one in the Order knows I am here. This may have consequences for the Order, but this … isn’t about that.”

Khedryn slid into his seat, and his tone softened. “Explain, please.”

Jaden took a drink of caf, savoring the bitterness. “I had a vision. Given me by the Force.”

He noticed Marr staring intently at him with his blue eyes and wondered if Marr had experienced his own visions.

Jaden went on: “I saw in that vision what I believe—now more than ever—to be your moon.”

Khedryn smiled, shook his head. “I knew it was something like that. Those eyes.”

“And?” Marr asked. “You saw it in what context? What drew you all the way out here?”

Jaden licked his lips. “The vision involved … symbolism that wouldn’t make much sense to you.” He sighed. “Listen, I am asking you to trust me. I am not interested in salvage or taking anything that’s there. I just need … I just need to stand on it, see it, understand what it means.”

The silence sat heavy between them. The stars streamed past in the viewport above. Thoughts turned behind Khedryn’s and Marr’s eyes. Jaden could do nothing but wait for them to render their verdict. He would not take the coordinates by force or contrivance. He had already taken a life—warranted, he thought—but he had no intention of pushing matters further.

Khedryn finished another cup of caf. “See, Marr, this I can understand. The man has something personal at stake here. And he’s willing to pay five thousand credits up front to set foot on a frozen moon spinning out in the middle of nowhere. I can get behind that.”

“As can I,” Marr said thoughtfully.

“It’s done then,” Khedryn said.

“I said two thousand credits up front,” Jaden said.

“Did you?” Khedryn asked.

Jaden smiled and shook his head. “All right. Five it is.”

Khedryn smiled. “More caf?”

Jaden decided the man guzzled caf the way a star cruiser guzzled fuel. “No thank you,” he said, and looked Khedryn and Marr in the face. “And … thank you.”

“Marr will plot the course,” Khedryn said, extending his hand. “We’ll leave immediately. Done deal?”

Jaden shook his hand. “Done. And Captain …”

Khedryn raised his eyebrows, waiting.

“I look at you and I see the same eyes you see in me. So what is it you’re looking for?”

Khedryn smiled, but Jaden saw that it was forced. “Nah, that’s just my floater, Jedi.” He pointed at his lazy eye. “Helps me see the angles. Me, I’m just a junk jockey flying the black. I’m happy with that.”

“Of course you are,” Jaden said, but he knew better. Khedryn was searching for something out in the black of space, the same as Jaden.

Jaden looked to Marr, who was staring at Khedryn. “Marr, the recorded signal?”

Marr nodded. “Certainly.”

Marr disappeared for a time, returned with a data crystal and his portcomp. He inserted the crystal and pressed a few keys. The hollowness of an open channel started the recording, followed by a faint, repeated recitation, the encrypted sound unintelligible as language, but reminiscent in its repetition of an ancient rite, a magic spell of summoning.

Jaden leaned in close, his skin stippled with goose bumps, listening to an echo from the past, decades-old ghosts calling to them through time.

Marr said, “As I said, I haven’t been able to decrypt it—”

“No need,” Jaden said, and turned it off. “It’s Imperial.
I can tell from the cadence. Probably an automated distress call, as you suspected.”

In the privacy of his mind, the voice from his vision sang out:
Help us. Help us
.

“Take me to this moon,” Jaden said.

J
unker
was prepared to jump. Khedryn blew and popped bubbles with such rapidity, they sounded like a repeating blaster.

“You always jaw a chewstim before a jump?” Jaden asked him.

“Before liftoff, before a landing, before a jump. Sometimes just because I think things will get hairy.”

Jaden smiled at Khedryn’s superstition while he raised R6 on subspace. The astromech’s questioning beep answered his hail. Jaden stared out into the black of the deep system as he spoke and made his last confession to his droid.

“Two standard weeks, Arsix, then return to Coruscant. Tell Grand Master Skywalker that I was doing what I thought I must. Do you understand?”

Khedryn and Marr pretended not to hear as R6 beeped acquiescence.

“Clear to jump,” Marr said.

Khedryn swallowed his chewstim. “Do the math and let’s turn her loose.”

The Cerean tapped keys on the navicomp so quickly that Jaden could barely follow. Complex calculations appeared on the screen, numerological puzzles so baffling to Jaden that they might as well have been another language. Marr solved them as if by magic, relying on
the navicomp processor only to confirm his calculations. His Force presence flared as he worked.

“Confirm,” Marr said, after tapping a key, and the navicomp did so. Another string of numbers, another solution.

“Confirm.”

Jaden had heard of Cerean math savants but hardly expected to encounter one on the fringes of the Unknown Regions, copiloting a salvage ship, much less one with Force sensitivity. He felt Khedryn’s eyes on him.

“Like magic, ain’t it?” said Khedryn, smiling.

“You have no idea,” Jaden answered.

Marr seemed not to hear them, lost as he was in a world of numbers and operators. It took the Cerean longer than it would have taken the navicomp to plot their course, but not much.

“Course plotted,” Marr said.

“Off we go,” Khedryn said, and engaged the hyperdrive.

Stars stretched, giving way to the blue spirals of hyperspace.

“It will take three separate jumps,” Khedryn said. “Why not grab some sleep? You look like you could use it. There are racks in the rooms off the galley. I will wake you when we arrive.”

Jaden
was
tired, bone-tired, and still feeling the ache of the blaster wound. “I think I will. Thank you, Captain. Thanks for everything, both of you.”

“No need for thanks,” Khedryn said, and winked his lazy eye. “Just be sure to pay me on time.”

Jaden picked his way through the ship—memorizing the layout, a habit of his—found a rack in a room off the galley, and lay down. He stared up at the metal of the low ceiling, shadowed in the dim light, wondering what he would find when he reached the moon.

Help us. Help us
.

In time the exhaustion won out and he fell asleep.

Kell piloted
Predator
into the night sky and out of the atmosphere over Fhost. He placed the data crystal he’d taken from Reegas into the ship’s navicomp. Using the data from
Junker
stored on the crystal, it began plotting a course. He studied the coordinates but did not recognize the system. It appeared at least three jumps away, deep into the Unknown Regions.

The ship’s comp had little data on the region. Unsurprising. He would simply have to improvise as the situation demanded.

He prepared an encrypted burst transmission on the obscure HoloNet frequency he used to communicate with Darth Wyyrlok. As a matter of course, he used only audio transmissions. He sent the ping and had to wait only a few seconds before the channel opened. It was as though it were waiting for him.

“I have encountered a single Jedi and have obtained a copy of the coordinates for the moon we discussed. Something on the moon is transmitting an automated signal, but I do not yet know its content. The moon’s coordinates are embedded in this message.”

“You have done well, Kell Douro,” Wyyrlok returned. “Therefore the Master smiles upon your efforts from his journey in dreams.”

Kell ignored the praise. “Once I enter the Unknown Regions, I will be out of contact except via subspace burst. If I need to report to you, I will do so on the following subspace frequency.” He tapped in the frequency and sent it.

“Received. Name the Jedi you have encountered.”

“Jaden Korr.”

Saying the name recalled to Kell’s mind the power of
Korr’s soup. His feeders leaked partway from his cheeks, but he retracted them.

“We know of him. He was apprenticed to Katarn and is, therefore, dangerous.”

“I want him,” Kell said.

The channel hung open for a time, the silence a chasm. Kell imagined Wyyrlok somehow communing with Krayt.

“You believe his mind holds the truth that you seek.”

The words were not a question.

“Our lines are intertwined. I have seen it.”

“As have we,” said Wyyrlok, and Kell heard a smile in the Chagrian’s tone. “In him you will find your truth. He is, therefore, yours to do with as you will. Good-bye, Kell Douro.”

Kell closed the channel, activated his sensor cloak, and started his jump sequence.

Only afterward did he think it odd that Darth Wyyrlok had not ordered him to report back on what he found on the moon. No doubt Wyyrlok assumed Kell would do so of his own accord.

The hyperdrive activated and he watched stars turn to lines, implying the grid of
daen nosi
that undergirded the universe. He would understand the truth of the grid when he fed on Jaden Korr.

The misjump tore at
Harbinger
’s superstructure, clawed at the durasteel. The scream of stressed metal turned the maddening, flickering tunnel of hyperspace and realspace into a shouting throat without end. The ship was flying down the gullet of the universe.

Harbinger
bucked from side to side, shook as pieces
of it flew free of the front section and slammed into the trailing end. Escape pods tore free from their berths and hurtled into oblivion.

Saes barely heard the alarms. He held on to the bulkhead, watching the dismemberment of his ship. Panicked, distorted chatter carried through his comlink, voices of the dead from beyond the grave. He seized at the Force to find calm and took comfort in its power. As it filled him, his perception sharpened. He felt the terror in some members of his crew, the fearful resolve in others. He wondered, in passing, what might have happened to
Omen
. Had Relin sabotaged its hyperdrive as well? In any event, the collision of the two Dread-naughts would surely have disrupted
Omen
’s jump.

Sensation tickled the back of his skull. Realization lingered at the edge of his consciousness. He became aware that the air felt charged, pregnant with potential. At first he attributed it to the twisting of space–time occurring as a result of the misjump, but then he recognized its true source.

The Lignan.

Despite Sadow’s prohibition against using the ore, Saes did not hesitate, not for a moment. The Lignan offered salvation.

He attuned himself to the potential offered by the ore, immediately felt it augment his relationship to the Force, sharpen it. The emotional rush felt similar to the flood of feeling he’d experienced after his first kill.

But the increased power was not enough. He could sense that. He was only drawing from its emanations, its penumbrae. He needed to be closer to it to utilize it fully.

He took a final look out the viewport at the chaos outside, then turned and sped through
Harbinger
’s corridors, down its lifts, through its hatches. Time was his enemy.
Harbinger
was dying.

Along his route he passed crew members working frantically at their stations.

“The bridge is gone, Captain!” someone shouted, but Saes paid the words no heed.

“A third of the landing bay was damaged in the collision, sir!”

A protocol droid appeared before him, tottering on the shifting floor.

“Captain, it appears something has gone wrong with the hyperspace jump. I believe that—”

Saes blew past the droid, sending it clattering against the wall and to the floor.