Riptide

by Paul S. Kemp

  “I know. But he is willing and I think we do him a disservice if we refuse. Besides, I believe the Force brought me here not only to meet Relin and destroy the Harbinger, but also to meet Marr. I see purpose in it.”

  Luke considered. “I concur. Permission granted. You may begin his training immediately.”

  “I’m afraid it will be rudimentary, given the facilities available to me here.”

  Master Skywalker laughed, a sound Jaden had heard only a few times. “Jaden, Master Kenobi started my training in the cargo bay of the Millennium Falcon. Did you know that?”

  “I did.”

  “The Force calls each of us differently. For you, it was enrollment at the Jedi Academy. For Marr …”

  Jaden grinned as he eyed the worn bulkheads of Junker. “… it’ll start as it did for you. In the belly of a freighter.”

  Jaden heard the smile in Luke’s voice when he spoke next. “You don’t plan to infiltrate an Imperial battle station and save a princess, do you?”

  Jaden laughed aloud. “I don’t think so, no.”

  “Good. Report back as circumstances allow. I will send assistance when I can, but it will be some time before I can dispatch anyone. There are … other matters transpiring here.”

  “Shall I return?”

  “No. You must do as the Force has led you. But Jaden …”

  “Grand Master?”

  “I don’t know where this will end, and I see danger ahead of you. And not just from the escaped clones. Some other forces are in play.”

  Jaden nodded. “The Anzat worked for someone.”

  “Indeed,” Luke said. “The dark side is at work through more than the clones. Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “I want to ask you something else, Jaden. You were offered a Master’s rank long ago, but declined. Why?”

  Jaden thought hard about the answer. “I did not think myself ready for the responsibility.”

  “You do now, though, which is why you’re willing to train Marr?”

  Jaden nodded. “I do. I do not have Master Katarn’s pedagogical skills, but I see now the importance of a Master’s … understanding of his apprentice.”

  “Quite so. It’s a heavy responsibility.”

  “I understand. I’m ready.”

  “I believe you are. Good hunting, Jaden.”

  “Goodbye, Master Skywalker.”

  “May the Force be with you.”

  And that was that. Jaden would train Marr. And he would pursue the clones.

  He felt more himself than he had in years.

  Soldier found Seer in the corridor that connected the cargo bay to the cockpit. She sat with her back to the bulkhead, a portacomp she’d found somewhere on her lap. He saw star charts visible on the small comp screen as she touched one after another with her finger, as if plotting a path through the universe. Sweat glistened on her face and bald head. Her bloodshot eyes looked fevered, but not with illness. She did not look up when he approached, but raised a hand to stop him from speaking. He ignored her.

  “We need to speak, Seer.”

  “Not now.”

  “Now.”

  Her brow creased in frustration. He alone among the clones did not regard her as his superior, though he knew to step lightly.

  “Speak, then,” she said, and closed the portacomp.

  He stepped past her and closed the hatch to the cargo bay, cutting off the moans and cries of the others.

  “You must have secrets to share,” she said to his back, her voice all seductive mockery. “I can’t wait to hear.”

  He steeled himself with an inhalation and turned to face her. “The most recent coordinates in the navicomp lead to a planet called Fhost. Data show it to be a backwater and very near. The onboard comp indicates that there is a medical facility in the primary city. There will be meds there. We know the mix the doctors gave us. We can get more.”

  She was shaking her head before he’d even finished. “No, Soldier. It’s not science, not doctors, that will save them now. Or you. It’s faith that will save us. All of us. And Mother.”

  “They’ll need meds. Soon. So will you. The symptoms of the illness are manifesting more quickly. The madness will, too.”

  “Do you think me mad, Soldier?”

  He shook his head too quickly. “No.” He almost added, “Not yet,” but resisted the impulse.

  “I sometimes think that you are, for not seeing what is before your eyes,” she said.

  He dared not pick up the conversational thread she’d left dangling. “Whatever we flew through sped up the onset of the illness. It will kill us all.”

  A sly look entered her dark eyes. “Not you, Soldier. Never you. The doctors made you perfect. In body and mind.”

  “Seer …”

  “But not in spirit, Soldier. You are not perfect in spirit. In spirit, you are the least of us.”

  He ignored the insult. “Some of them have only hours. You and Hunter have days. Maybe. I already burned through half the meds. The children are suffering. Unless Mother is very near, everyone will be dead before we reach her.”

  If we reach her, he thought. If there is a Mother.

  She slid up the wall to her feet and stepped toward him, eyes burning. He could feel the heat generated by her lithe body through the ragged fabric of his shirt. “Do you feel her? Mother?”

  He swallowed, looked away as he lied. “Sometimes. I think.”

  She ran her fingertips over the bare skin of his arm, and he tried and failed to deny the charge her touch put in him.

  “Poor Soldier, made faithless by the ingenuity of others. Fear not. I will show you the way. You will see and you will believe.”

  The heat of her belief and the proximity of her body penned him in, left him no room for a reply. He stood before her, frozen, the subject of a silent inquisition. She stared into his face, her eyes measuring him and, he feared, finding him wanting. His hand twitched near the hilt of his lightsaber. She seemed not to notice and her face broke into a smile. He could not tell if it was sincere or false and his inability to tell worried him. She had become skilled at cloaking her emotional state from the others. She took emotion from them, but gave none of herself.

  “In time, Soldier. You will believe, in time.”

  She looked away from his face, and he managed to take a breath. “Meanwhile?”

  “Meanwhile, set a course for Fhost. You’re right. We need meds. Mother is not close enough for us to get there in time.”

  The import of her words struck him like a blow. “Then … you know where she is?”

  She smiled and looked away. “Already you are beginning to believe.”

  He stared at her, having no words, then turned and walked toward the cockpit. Her belief—or maybe his—pulled a question from him. He asked it over his shoulder.

  “What does she say to you?”

  He heard Seer inhale deeply. “She says … come home. Home, Soldier.”

  He nodded and walked away.

  Before he’d cleared the corridor, she called after him, “What do you think the doctors would have done with us had we not sacrificed them to Mother? What was our purpose?”

  The question embodied his entire existence. “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” Seer said. “I do.”

  He wanted to believe, wanted to find purpose in the fact of his creation, but belief melted in the heat of his reason. He suspected—and feared—that he’d have to make a purpose for himself.

  RELIEVED AFTER HIS CONFERENCE WITH MASTER SKYWALKER, Jaden walked Junker’s corridors until he reached the cockpit. Khedryn and Marr sat in their accustomed seats running through a series of diagnostics. The cockpit door was propped open with a spare cooling coil, having been damaged by the Sith warriors Marr had fought aboard the freighter. Blaster fire had left black streaks, and bladed weapons had left deep scores in the metal.

  Marr had shown considerable mettle fighting the Sith, and the fact only confirmed Jaden’
s thinking: Marr was ready for more advanced training.

  For a time Jaden lingered in the corridor outside the cockpit, listening to his friends check one system after another. They made an impressive team, speaking little, accomplishing much. Jaden cleared his throat and stepped into the cockpit.

  “She’s almost ready,” Khedryn said, checking the instrumentation.

  Marr checked one final thing on the comp before looking up at Jaden. “What’s our heading, Jad—I mean, Master?”

  Marr’s use of the term “Master” sounded so incongruous that it stunned both Khedryn and Jaden into temporary silence. Jaden supposed he had better get used to it.

  “Fhost,” Jaden said.

  “From there?” Khedryn asked.

  Jaden stared out the transparisteel of the cockpit. A million stars of the Unknown Regions blinked at him.

  “I don’t know yet. The Order wants me—wants us,” he corrected, looking at Marr, “to find the escaped clones.”

  “Does ‘us’ mean you two, or all three of us?” Khedryn asked.

  “All three of us,” Jaden said. “Always.”

  His reply seemed to banish some lingering tension that had put lines in Khedryn’s forehead. “They sending help?”

  Jaden shook his head. “If there is any, it’ll be long in coming. We’re on our own.”

  Khedryn looked around for a cup of caf, saw none, patted his pockets for something, found nothing.

  Marr held out a piece of chewstim from the pack he kept in his shirt pocket.

  “Thanks,” Khedryn said.

  “Of course,” Marr said. He offered Jaden a piece, and Jaden passed with a shake of his head.

  “Might be just as well,” Khedryn said around the chew. “No point in the Order sending someone out here to sit on their hands. We don’t know where the clones are and probably won’t ever find out. If they’re smart, they’re long gone.”

  Staring out at the stars of the Unknown Regions, Jaden could not help but agree. They’d have a hard time tracking the clones in all that black.

  “Their possibilities are limited,” Marr said. “Look.” His fingers worked the instrument panel and called up a star chart of the near sectors of the Unknown Regions. “We know they’re in a cloakshape fighter. And we know the kind of space an ordinary cloakshape hyperdrive can put behind it.”

  “Cloakshapes are tinkerers’ ships,” Khedryn said. “All of them are modified, Marr. You saw that one. It had a modular cargo bay tacked on to its belly. Its hyperdrive could have been modified, too. Probably was.”

  Marr shook the mountain of his head. “I disagree. Hyperdrives are notoriously difficult to change out in cloakshapes, so I suspect it’s still standard. Maybe even slower than usual, given the cargo bay. And if it is and the clones went deeper into the Unknown Regions rather than into Republic space, then …”

  Marr closed his eyes, and Jaden felt him drawing on the Force to perform his calculations. “… they would be somewhere within this radius.”

  With his finger on the star map, Marr drew an imaginary circle around a vast expanse of space in the Unknown Regions. He worked at the comp for a moment, then added, “And if we exclude dead systems along the hyperlanes, we’re looking at this.”

  He tapped a key, and the semicircle of possible routes segmented into a few large slices radiating out from the known hyperlanes.

  “That’s still a lot of space,” Khedryn said.

  “It’s a start, though,” Jaden said. “Nicely done, Marr.”

  Marr beamed. “Thank you, Master.”

  The honorific was easier to hear the second time—for Jaden, at least, if not for Khedryn.

  “Good job,” Khedryn said to him awkwardly.

  “Did you speak to Grand Master Skywalker?” Marr asked Jaden.

  “I did. He approved your training.”

  Marr did not smile, merely swallowed and nodded.

  “Congratulations,” Khedryn said, the word pulled out of him by common courtesy and nothing else. He turned in his seat and cleared his throat. “Listen, Marr, given this … Jedi thing, I think we need to discuss your role aboard Junker.”

  The large expanse of Marr’s forehead creased in a question. “My role?”

  Khedryn’s eyes, good and bad, looked off at oblique angles from Marr. “Right. Your role. See, Jaden and I were discussing your training and—”

  Marr looked from Khedryn to Jaden, irritation in his eyes. “You two were discussing me?”

  Khedryn nodded. “And we think it would be difficult for you to remain first mate while you’re training.”

  “You do?” Marr said, eyeing each of them, annoyance creeping into his tone. “The two of you think that?”

  “Yes,” Khedryn said uncertainly, and looked to Jaden. “Right?”

  Jaden crossed his arms over his chest. “The training is difficult, Marr. And—”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “No, I presumed you knew that,” Jaden stuttered.

  Marr spun in his seat toward Khedryn. “Is there someone else around that you intend to employ as first mate?”

  Khedryn recoiled, looked everywhere but at Marr’s face, and ran a hand over his head. “No, not aboard. But I know some people—”

  “Who?”

  Khedryn’s tone sharpened. “What do you mean ‘who’? People.”

  “The hell you do. Listen, I’m first mate and engineer aboard this ship.” He looked at Jaden and Khedryn in turn, challenging them to gainsay him. Neither did. “And if the training requires me to make a change, then I’ll make it then. But it is my decision. Understood?”

  Khedryn busied himself on the instrument console, and Jaden thought he looked relieved. “Yeah, sure, fine.”

  Jaden smiled. Marr had mettle, indeed. “Are you ready to continue the training?”

  Marr looked to Khedryn, who waved him off. “I can handle the rest of the repairs and diagnostics. Go … move an object around with your mind or something. Maybe levitate a cup of caf into the cockpit for me.”

  As Jaden and Marr exited, Jaden heard Khedryn mutter, “What the hell’s gotten into him?”

  Mindful of Master Skywalker’s point that training could occur anywhere, Jaden led Marr toward Junker’s cargo bay.

  “Listen, Marr,” he said as they walked. “You are very old to begin training as a Jedi. Typically, it means that it will be harder for you to overcome old thinking patterns, and that your capabilities will be capped at some point far below that of a Jedi who began training very young. That said, you have some unique talents that we may be able to harness.” He thought of the Grand Master. “And there have been exceptions, but I want you to understand my thinking.”

  Marr stared straight ahead. “I understand.”

  “Good. Much of your training in the Force will come from your own focus. I’ll guide you, give you tools, and answer questions, but you need to expand on what you already know and use that to learn more, question more, and then to grow more.”

  Marr seemed to consider that. “Does it ever stop? The learning?”

  Jaden smiled. Marr’s first question was a good one. “No. Your relationship to the Force is dynamic. It changes over time, just as you change over time. I learn new things every day. I learned … a lot on the moon. That is part of what makes this path so rewarding. And so challenging.”

  Marr nodded.

  “Relin taught you about the mental space you reserve? The central place you hold in your mind?”

  “He called it the Keep.”

  “Right. Master Katarn—my Master—called it the Sanctum. The name doesn’t matter. The point is to recognize it as the wellspring of your relationship to the Force. Your understanding and perception will expand outward from it. You’ve already begun to do that. But think of the Keep as a place to which you can return to try a lesson anew.”

  Jaden tapped the control panel, and the gears of the cargo bay door hummed as the door slid open. A few shipping containers were a
ll that remained in the bay. The rest had been lost in a dogfight with Sith ships.

  Jaden had arranged a small shipping container into a makeshift table in the center of the bay. On it sat the hilt of the purple-bladed lightsaber he had built in his youth, the blade he had used to destroy the clone, Alpha. A small metal toolbox sat beside it.

  Marr stood in the doorway, not stepping in. Jaden did not push him to enter. Marr had to take the step alone.

  “That is your lightsaber,” Marr observed.

  “It is,” Jaden said.

  Marr stared at it for a moment, then stepped into the bay.

  Jaden fell in beside him. “A Jedi typically crafts his own lightsaber. It’s an important milestone. The way in which we come to that point varies for each of us. In my case, I built my first lightsaber, that saber, before I could drive an airspeeder.”

  Marr’s eyebrows rose. “An impressive feat of engineering.”

  “Not at all, Marr. The Force spoke and I listened. When I think back, I remember it feeling as if I were sleepwalking. It was … strange.”

  Marr approached the table, eyeing the weapon.

  “That’s all? You listened?”

  “Learning to hear the Force is the most important thing you can learn from me. Everything else follows from it. I think you already hear it plainly when you do mathematics.”

  Marr nodded slowly, his brow furrowed.

  “Pick it up,” Jaden said, gesturing toward the lightsaber.

  Marr took Jaden’s lightsaber and turned it over in his hands, examining the hilt from all angles.

  “Now take it apart,” Jaden said. He had chosen the lesson because he thought it would be well suited to Marr’s talents as an engineer.

  “This is yours, Master, and—”

  “Take it apart, Marr. It’s a weapon. It’s made to be durable. You won’t break anything.” Jaden eyed his chrono and set the timer. “You have five minutes.”

  Marr’s mouth fixed into a determined line and he sank into one of the chairs.

  Jaden liked his apprentice’s response. No complaint, no protest that he could not do it. Marr simply trusted himself and acted.

  Jaden could almost see the analysis going on behind Marr’s eyes. The Cerean’s pupils could as well have been spinning gears. After turning the weapon over in his hands a few times, he set it down, opened the small box of precision tools, and got to work.