Crosscurrent

by Paul S. Kemp

  "Saes!"

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE PRESENT:41.5 YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF YAVIN

  Khedryn used a digital calibrator to fine-tune another power exchange relay in Junker's propulsion systems. He'd been optimizing his freighter's ion engines for hours. Like all good salvage jockeys, he was as much tinkerer as pilot, and he refused to let a maintenance droid touch his ship.

  "Has to be it," he muttered, tweaking a manifold on the exchange.

  He pulled a portascan from his belt, attached it, and checked the relay's theoretical efficiency. The readout showed 109 percent of manufacturer's spec, drawing a smile.

  He intoned his personal motto as if it were a magic spell. "Push until it gives."

  He pulled his communicator from his belt, smug even in his solitude, and flicked it open.

  "Marr, efficiency on number three power exchange is one hundred nine percent. Let that settle in, my Cerean friend. Just bask in it."

  His navigator and first mate's calm voice answered. "Basking, as ordered."

  Khedryn grinned. "Didn't I say I would get it there?"

  "You did. I believe that means I owe you a distilled spirit of your choice."

  Khedryn nodded. "I believe it does, at that. Unfortunate that this rock doesn't have much of that in the way of quality. Pulkay it is, then."

  "Are you still at the hangar?"

  "Of course. Where are you?"

  "I'm in The Hole. There is an empty chair at the private sabacc table."

  Khedryn checked his wrist chrono. He was already late. "Stang!"

  "Indeed," said Marr, calm to the point of annoyance. "I will simply continue to bask."

  Khedryn slammed the relay cover closed and sprinted from the open-top hangar, shedding his tool belt as he ran.

  "Pick that up," he called to a nearby maintenance droid.

  "Yes, sir," said the droid.

  "And don't touch my ship!"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I'm coming now," he said into his communicator. "Tell Himher to hold the first hand."

  Marr's voice remained unperturbed.

  "I will see what I can do to delay the start of the game. Reegas is here. And there appears to be some interest in our recent… discovery."

  That halted Khedryn before his Searing swoop bike. He squinted in Fhost's sun. "The signal, you mean? How did that leak to anyone?"

  "If memory serves, and I am certain it does, the leak originated in your consumption of several jiggers of spiced pulkay combined with a desire to impress a trio of Zeltron dancing girls. I believe it worked."

  Khedryn ran a hand over his cheeks, rough with three days' growth of whiskers. "Three? Zeltrons? Really?" He thought of their smooth red skin and curves, his own average appearance. "Were they drunk, too?"

  "That seems probable."

  Khedryn saddled up on his swoop and started it. The engine growled like a feral rancor. He had forgotten his helmet. No matter. "You still basking?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, I should've had my mouth occupied with things other than our discovery, but I guess that's burned fuel I'll never get back. On the upside, it should make the sabacc game more interesting. Someone will offer on it, if it comes to that."

  "Given your luck, I suspect it will come to that."

  "Right." He revved the Searing. "You're really quite excellent for my ego. Are you aware of that?"

  "I am."

  "I'm en route."

  "Please try not to collide with anything."

  Khedryn pocketed the communicator and covered his mouth and nose in a scarf against the dust. He angled upward to fifty meters of altitude and loosened the reins on the engine. Below him, ships of questionable space-worthiness and even more questionable registration dotted the thirty square kilos of flat, dusty ground and the handful of decrepit hangars that served as Farpoint's official landing field.

  A control tower built of cast-off parts and scrap metal stood sentry in the middle of the field. Landing beacons blinked here and there in the swirl. A sonic boom rolled over Khedryn's ears, indicating a ship entering atmosphere.

  A few speeder bikes and another swoop darted through the sky over the field at lower altitudes than Khedryn. Treaded cargo droids unloaded goods from an old freighter, and crews in dungarees worked at their ships' engines and landing gear. Other than Junker, not a single vessel on the field was less than two decades old. Expensive technology trickled out to the fringe of the galaxy only after it had been replaced by something newer and became affordable on the secondary market.

  Once clear of the field, Khedryn ducked low behind the swoop's windscreen and gave the Searing its head. He squinted into the spray of dust and wind and sped for Farpoint, glinting ten kilos in the distance, and looking not so much like a town as a junkyard.

  The rusting, broken remains of a decades-old star cruiser formed the core of the town. The cruiser had crashed on Fhost sometime before the Yuuzhan Vong War, and no one knew what had happened to the crew. No one even knew the make of the ship, not anymore, though it must have been big. The wreckage had created a debris field eight kilometers long.

  Khedryn thought it likely that it had been a wayward Chiss ship, but if so, the Chiss had never come back to recover it. Over time the rusting hulk had accreted a community of scoundrels around it, almost as though it had its own gravity that pulled only at criminals and rogues, or just those for whom the Galactic Core meant not luxury but overcrowded cities and too many laws.

  Over the decades, Farpointers had torn apart, added to, and remade the ruins of the cruiser so many times over that only the more or less intact bridge section remained recognizable as something that had once flown-though now it was a warren of cantinas, brothels, and drug dens, not a command center for a starship. Of course, the vice dens of the one-time bridge were the command center of Farpoint, and that was about all that needed to be said.

  Viewing the rickety, slipshod sprawl of Farpoint from altitude always reminded Khedryn of the first time he had seen it. He'd been a deckhand on a cargo freighter running medicines into the Unknown Regions, and Farpoint had reminded him so much of the ruins of Outbound Flight in the Redoubt that he had been unable to breathe. In that moment, he knew he'd found a home.

  Only a few clear memories of his time in the Redoubt remained to him. He had drunk most of them away in the years after his rescue. But he did remember the way the planetoid had looked as he'd been shuttled away on the transport, the rusted, ruined remains of Outbound Flight as stark against the stone as exposed bone. He remembered the anger the survivors had harbored against the New Republic and the Jedi. He had not shared it, despite the stories of C'baoth's betrayal.

  He'd soon grown up, put life on the Redoubt behind him, and ridden ships from the Empire of the Hand to the Galactic Core. He had resided for a time on Coruscant and Corellia, but he had called only the Redoubt and Farpoint home, the first out of necessity, the second out of grudging affection. Everywhere else he'd been, hundreds of planets in scores of systems, had been nothing but way stops.

  Rats always find a hole, he figured. And Farpoint, it turned out, was his hole.

  Above him, the setting sun turned the ambient mineral dust in Fhost's atmosphere into bands of orange, yellow, and red that bisected the sky, a rainbow that wrapped around the world. Khedryn wondered how long it would be before the planet's natural beauty-not only the sunsets, but also the gashed canyons and sheer cliffs that bordered the Great Desert-turned it from a backrocket launching point to the Unknown Regions and into a tourist destination. He tried to imagine tourists and respectable citizens of the Galactic Alliance mingling with the rogues and scoundrels who skulked in Farpoint's ruins. The thought made him laugh out loud.

  He decreased altitude and speed-the roar of the swoop growing throatier-as he hit the outskirts of the town. Ramshackle buildings made from cast-off materials leaned like drunks against the more sturdy structures built from the crashed starship's bones. The large reptiles native to t
he planet's deserts-ankaraxes-pulled carts and wagons through the packed dirt streets, snarling in their harnesses, side by side with ancient landspeeders and even a few wheeled vehicles.

  Khedryn weaved his way through the street traffic-leaving a trail of curses in various languages in his wake-until he reached The Black Hole, his cantina of choice.

  Corrugated shipping containers, welded together like a child's building toy, made up the bulk of The Hole. Smoke, discordant Yerk music, laughter, and conversation leaked out of the rough-cut holes that served as windows. He spotted Marr's parked speeder bike, put the Searing beside it, powered it down, activated its antitheft security, and hopped off onto the packed-dirt road, avoiding the inevitable mines of ankarax dung.

  A trio of Zabrak lingered on the street outside The Hole, the horns jutting from their heads as irregular in size and formation as Farpoint's buildings. They chatted in their rapid, coarse language, each with a tin cup of pulkay from The Hole's stills in their hand. Khedryn knew them by appearance but not name. He nodded and they returned the gesture.

  A hulking Houk sat on a crate outside The Hole's door. A light blaster cannon that looked old enough to have served in the Yuuzhan Vong War-normally a crew-served weapon-hung across his scarred chest, suspended by a strap of ankarax leather.

  "Khedryn Faal," the Houk said in Basic, his voice as deep as a canyon, and pulled open the metal slab that served as a door.

  "Borgaz," Khedryn returned. He stopped before the door, noticing the new words painted over old ones in an uncertain hand:

  ***

  NOT EVEN LIGHT ESCAPES THE HOLE.

  He puzzled over it for a moment, frowning. "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "Milsin calls it marketing. A catchphrase."

  "A catchphrase?"

  Borgaz wobbled his head from side to side, the Houk equivalent of a human shrug.

  Milsin owned and operated The Hole and was always trying this or that gimmick he picked up from watching vids from the Core.

  Shaking his head, Khedryn entered The Hole.

  The dim interior of the place smelled of unwashed bodies, stewed ankarax, the pungent cheese produced locally by a small community of Bothans, and some offworld spice that Milsin must have purchased from a passing freighter. The eclectic collection of tables and chairs, some plastic, some wood, some resin, some metal-gathered from hither and yon over the years-mirrored the eclectic clientele. Rodian, Chiss, human, even a Trandoshan, drank, ate, gamed, and argued at The Hole. A duo of well-attired Bothans sat on crates and played the twelve-stringed soundboards of their people in a tuneless attempt at Yerk music that Khedryn barely heard anymore. Old vidscreens hung on the walls, the largest over the bar. HoloNet reception was hit or miss so far out, so most of them played recordings of shows and sporting events that had aired in the Core four standard months earlier. Nothing was produced locally, not even news. It was as if The Hole, as if all of Farpoint, existed in the past, four months behind the Core.

  Khedryn nodded at familiar faces as he maneuvered his way through the tables. Milsin, an elderly human as thin as a whipweed, as bald as an egg, but as tough as an ankarax, waved at him from behind the bar.

  "Spiced pulkay," Khedryn called, and Milsin nodded.

  "See him?" called Stellet, captain of Starfire and a friendly rival of Khedryn's. Stellet was speaking to his Wookiee tablemate, presumably a new add to Starfire's crew. "That man's a junk jockey. Swims in engine lubricant. Handles a wrench better than he handles a woman."

  Khedryn made an obscene gesture but offset it with a smile as he approached Stellet's table. "I've been on the rickety boat you call a ship, Stellet. I expect to be salvaging it when it burns out on your next run to Chiss space."

  Stellet laughed, raised his glass in a mock toast. "Sit?"

  "Can't. Got a game to play."

  A gravelly voice from a nearby table pulled Khedryn around. "You smell of fine perfume, Khedryn Faal," said Kolas, a tawny-furred Cathar still working on the kind of banter that predominated at The Hole.

  Khedryn leaned over him-he smelled of spoiled pulkay-and said, "You mean ankarax dung, or an open sewer, or something unpleasant. Keep trying, Kolas."

  Those at the tables near Kolas jeered the Cathar. Kolas's whiskered face screwed up in confusion. He growled with embarrassment and hid behind his drink.

  Khedryn thumped Kolas on his massive shoulder, picked up his pulkay from the bar, and spotted Marr down the hall, near the archway to the back room of The Hole. His first mate's elongated head seemed to float over the more vertically challenged crowd. Marr was tall even for a Cerean.

  Before Khedryn could raise a hand in greeting, a human thrust himself into Khedryn's space. The man was taller than Khedryn by a head. His neatly trimmed beard and short brown hair book-ended intense, haunted gray eyes, the kind Khedryn had seen in religious fanatics. Khedryn put him at forty years, maybe, about the time human men looked back on their lives, found them wanting, and turned stupid.

  "You're in my gravity well, friend," Khedryn said, and tried to push past.

  The man would have none of it and blocked his way. He felt as solid as Kolas. Over the man's shoulder, Khedryn saw Marr take note of the confrontation and move his way. Several other patrons took notice, too, and half stood. The man seemed to sense the precariousness of his situation.

  "Captain Faal," the man said. He backed off a step and put his hands in his pockets. "If I could have a moment."

  "Not now."

  The man stared into Khedryn's face. "Please, Captain. I will be brief."

  Khedryn took him in. From his dungarees and boots, Khedryn made him as a salvage man. He wore a blaster, but that was part of the Farpoint uniform.

  "Is this business?" Khedryn asked.

  The man nodded. "Potentially lucrative."

  "That's the only kind I'm interested in. We should talk, but in a bit. I've got a sabacc table waiting for me."

  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.