Crosscurrent (37 page)

“Let’s go, Khedryn.”

“Go?” Khedryn said, and hurried after him, looking back over his shoulder at the fighter.

“We are either dead or we’re not. Their choice.”

Khedryn fell in beside him, partially hunched as though in anticipation of a blow.

Jaden did not flinch—though Khedryn did—when a shriek tore through the sky, not the cannons on the CloakShape fighter, but the wail of engines failing, of superstructure collapsing.

Jaden turned, already flashing back to his vision, and looked up to see the sky on fire. An enormous ship—it could only be
Harbinger
—streaked across the upper atmosphere, leaving a fat line of fire kilometers long.

“Stang,” Khedryn said in a hush.

With the suddenness of a blaster shot, the cruiser exploded, the fireball starting in the rear engine section and racing forward along the length of the ship until the entire vessel vaporized into a billion-billion tiny, glowing particles that lit the sky like pyrotechnics.

Jaden watched, not breathing, as they started to fall to the surface, a rain of evil. He lived alternately in the present and the memory of his vision. He felt the oily touch
of the Lignan, the familiar nudge in his very being impelling him to darkness. The feeling did not elicit in him the horror he remembered from his vision and he wondered what that meant. He resisted the pull—his will, his ability to choose, was something internal, unconstrained by the external.

The CloakShape fighter’s engines fired and Khedryn and Jaden watched it accelerate skyward, its form a black silhouette against the still-glowing sky.

“It is heading right into the debris,” Khedryn said. “What are they doing?”

Jaden understood exactly what they were doing. They were taking in the Lignan’s power.

“I will have to come after you,” he said again, more softly, unsure how he felt about the words.

Another boom sounded far above them, not an explosion but a sonic boom, a ship entering or leaving atmosphere. At first Jaden assumed it was the CloakShape exiting the moon’s atmosphere, but instead he saw a familiar disk cutting its way through the sky, falling out of the ruin of
Harbinger
’s death.
Junker
looked wounded, incomplete without
Flotsam
attached to its fittings and Khedryn in its cockpit.

Jaden imagined it passing the CloakShape fighter and its crew of dark side clones on its way down, imagined paths crossing, lines meeting at angles, currents intersecting. He thought of Relin and felt profound sadness. He knew the ancient Jedi would not be aboard
Junker
.

“That is
Junker!
” Khedryn said. He took Jaden by the shoulder, shook him with joy. Jaden winced from the pain but could not stop smiling himself.

With the ship so close, Khedryn tried to raise Marr on his suit’s comlink. No response.

“Look at the way she’s flying,” Khedryn said, joy giving way to concern in his tone. “She’s on autopilot.”

Jaden reached out with the Force, felt Marr’s faint Force presence, felt, too, that the Cerean was near death.

“Let’s move,” he said, and they ran for
Junker
as it started to set down.

K
hedryn’s voice exploded over the comlink.

“He’s awake!”

Jaden jumped up from the table in the galley, spilling caf, and hurried to the makeshift medical bay aboard
Junker
. Khedryn had converted one of the passenger berths off the galley into a rudimentary treatment room. Transparent storage lockers held a disorganized array of gauze, scissors, stim-shots, antibiotics, bacta, synthflesh, and any number of other miscellaneous medical supplies and devices. Jaden had to credit him for thoroughness if not orderliness. Khedryn and Marr had already seen to their wounds as best they could. They could get better treatment when they returned to Fhost.

Marr lay in the rack, a white sheet covering him to the chest. He blinked in the lights, trying to shake the film from his eyes. Khedryn held his hand the way a father might a son’s.

“Jaden,” Marr said, and grinned through his pain. Jaden had never been so pleased to see a chipped tooth and could not contain a grin of his own.

“It is nice to see your eyes open, Marr. Things were touch-and-go for a while. You’d lost a lot of blood.”

Marr looked away and spoke softly. “My eyes
are
opened.”

Jaden did not know how to respond, so he filled the
moment with a question for which he already knew the answer.

“Relin did not get off
Harbinger?
”

Marr shook his head, still looking away. “He never intended to.”

“No,” Jaden said. “He didn’t.”

Jaden saw in Relin his own fate. A slow drift toward the dark side. He had never gotten an answer to his questions. He remained as adrift as he had before receiving his Force vision. He wondered at the purpose of it all.

Wireless pads attached to Marr’s body fed information to the biomonitoring station beside his bed. Jaden eyed the readout. Khedryn followed his eyes.

“Not bad, eh?” Khedryn said, smiling. Deep purple colored the skin under his eyes. His broken nose looked more askew than his multidirected eyes. A flexcast secured his shattered wrist, though he’d need surgery when they reached Fhost. “Tough as ten-year-old bantha hide, this one.”

Marr smiled. Blood loss had left him as pale as morning mist. Jaden sat next to the bed, looking on two men who had shed blood for his cause.

“That nose looks bad,” he said to Khedryn.

Khedryn nodded. “I thought I’d wear it this way for a while. Goes with my eyes. But maybe it’s a bit much. What do you think, Marr?”

“Keep it as is,” Marr said. “Then I won’t have to worry about you spilling secrets to dancing girls.”

“Good point. Fix it I will. As soon as we get back to Fhost. The nose and the wrist.”

“How did you break it?” Marr asked Khedryn.

Khedryn swallowed, put a finger to the side of his nose. “Long story, my friend. I will tell you the whole thing over our third round of keela back in The Hole.”

“We found the bodies on
Junker
,” Jaden said.

“Massassi,” Marr said. “That’s what Relin called them.”

Jaden knew the name, though he had never thought to see one in the flesh. “What happened on that ship, Marr? They looked to have died from decompression.”

“Long story, my friend,” Marr said. “I will tell you everything over our
fourth
round of keela. Good enough?”

“Good enough,” Jaden agreed.

“You’re buying, Jedi,” Khedryn said.

“I am, indeed.”

Silence descended, cloaked the room. Only the rhythmic beep of the monitoring station broke the silence. Jaden knew he had to report back to the Order, tell Grand Master Skywalker of the cloning facility, the escaped clones, the Lignan and what it could do, but for the moment he simply wanted to enjoy the company of the two men who had bled with him.

“What’s next for you, Jedi?” Khedryn asked. “You’re welcome to fly with us for a time.”

Marr nodded agreement.

Jaden was touched by the offer. “Thank you, both. But I’m not sure that will work well. As soon as possible, I will report back to the Order via subspace. Then I’ll have to track down the clones.”

“Clones?” Marr asked. He started to sit up, hissed with pain, lay back down.

“Like Khedryn said,” Jaden said. “Long story.”

Khedryn ran a palm along his whiskers. “No reason we can’t help with that, Jaden. Few know the Unknown Regions as well as us.”

“What?” Jaden and Marr asked as one.

“You heard me,” Khedryn said. “Man can’t salvage his whole life, right?”

“There’s no pay in it, Khedryn,” Jaden said, and immediately wished he had not.

Khedryn winced as if slapped. “I am not a mercenary, Jedi. I just try to get by. But I value my friends.”

Jaden noted the plural. “I do, too. Hunting those clones will be dangerous work.”

“Yeah,” Khedryn said, and stared off into space.

“How about some caf?” Marr said to Khedryn, lightening the mood.

“Sure,” Khedryn said. “Jaden?”

“Please.”

Khedryn patted Marr’s arm, rose, and left the room. The moment he exited, Marr spoke.

“Relin taught me how to use the Force.”

Jaden was not surprised. “I wish he had not.”

Marr’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“Knowledge can be painful, Marr. It just raises questions.”

Marr looked away, his eyes troubled, as if remembering a past pain. “Yes. But what is done is done. I am not sorry he taught me.”

“Then I take back my words. I am not sorry, either.”

Marr studied Jaden’s face for a moment. “Will you teach me more?”

The question took Jaden aback. “Marr, as I explained—”

Marr nodded. “Yes, my age. The narrow focus of my sensitivity. I understand all of that. But still I ask.”

Jaden heard the earnestness in Marr’s question. “I will confer with the Order.”

“I can ask nothing more. Thank you.”

Khedryn’s shout carried from the galley. “A spike of pulkay?”

Marr nodded at Jaden, and Jaden shouted back to Khedryn.

“Yes. For both of us.”

“I knew I liked you, Jedi,” Khedryn called, and Jaden smiled.

“Relin asked me to tell you something,” Marr said.

Marr’s tone made Jaden feel like an ax was about to fall. “Say it.”

Marr closed his eyes, as if replaying the encounter in his mind. “He said that there is nothing certain, that there’s only the search for certainty, that there’s danger only when you think the search is over.” Marr paused, added, “He said you would know what he meant.”

Jaden digested the words, his mind spinning.

“Do you know what he meant?” Marr asked.

“He thinks—thought—that doubt keeps us sharp. That we should not consider its presence a failure.”

Marr chewed his lip. “I saw what happened to him, Jaden. I think he was wrong.”

Jaden had seen what happened to him, too, and thought he might be right. And as his thoughts turned, Marr’s observation became the gravity well around which the planets of recent events orbited, aligned, and took on meaning. In a flash of insight Jaden surmised that events had not been designed to rid him of doubt; they had been designed for him to embrace his doubt. Perhaps it was different for other Jedi, but for Jaden doubt was the balancing pole that kept him atop the sword-edge. For him, there was no dark side or light side. There were beings of darkness and beings of light.

He smiled, thinking he had found his answer, after all. He looked at Marr, seeing in Marr so much of himself when Kyle Katarn had agreed to take Jaden as Padawan.

“I will teach you more about the Force, Marr.”

Marr sat up on an elbow. “You will?”

Jaden nodded, thinking of Kyle. Had his Master known that breaking down certainty was the only thing that might save Jaden from darkness in the long run? He suspected Kyle had known exactly that.

“You may come to wish you’d never learned from me.”

Khedryn walked in, cursing, hot caf splashing over the rims of the cups. He distributed the caf, took a long sip, sighed with satisfaction.

“This is the life, gentlemen,” he said to Jaden and Marr. “An open sky filled with opportunities for rascals.”

Jaden chuckled, looked out the viewport, and grew serious. “There be dragons.”

“What does that mean?” Marr asked.

“We will see,” Jaden answered, and drank his caf.

Paul S. Kemp
is the author of the
New York Times
bestselling novel
Star Wars: Crosscurrent
, as well as nine Forgotten Realms fantasy novels and many short stories. When he’s not writing, he practices corporate law in Michigan, which has inspired him to write some really believable villains. He digs cigars, single malt scotch, and ales, and tries to hum the theme song to
Shaft
at least once per day. Paul Kemp lives and works in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, with his wife, twin sons, and a couple of cats.

What is a legend? According to the Random House Dictionary, a legend is “a nonhistorical or unverifiable story handed down by tradition from earlier times and popularly accepted as historical.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “a story from the past that is believed by many people but cannot be proved to be true.” And Wikipedia says, “Legends are tales that, because of the tie to a historical event or location, are believable, though not necessarily believed.” Because of this inherent believability, legends tend to live on in a culture, told and retold even though they are generally regarded as fiction.