by Paul S. Kemp
“The clones have retaken the ship. I’m in a pod. Fix on my signal and pick me up. Quickly. Weapons hot.”
“On my way,” said Syll. “Weapons hot.”
Jaden floated in the space between Junker and the supply ship.
“No response, Master,” Marr said. “He’s not answering our hail.”
Jaden stared at the supply ship as if he could see through its walls and see what was happening within.
“Something is going on,” he said.
“Maybe you should return to Junker. We can take the ship’s boat, force a dock with the supply ship, and get aboard that way.” Marr’s voice hitched. “Wait.…”
Motion drew Jaden’s eye as the bubble of an escape pod—its metal glinting in the light of the star—launched from the supply ship’s starboard side.
“Marr—”
A second pod shot from the belly of the supply ship.
“Master, two escape pods just—”
“I see them.”
Static barked in Jaden’s ear as a signal cut into their frequency. Khedryn’s voice echoed in Jaden’s helmet, carried across kilometers of space.
“Jaden? Marr?”
“Khedryn!” Marr said.
Khedryn said, “The clones are back in control of the supply ship! I’m in the escape pod.”
“How?” Marr asked.
“Which pod?” Jaden asked.
“Which pod? There’s another?” Khedryn asked. “The Umbaran must be in it. He fled the ship, too, when the clones took back control.”
“You’re in the pod that launched first,” Jaden said.
“I don’t know. I’ve got thruster control. I’ll jig for you.”
One of the pods, the one that had launched first, did a jig in space.
“Got it,” Marr said. “Do you see us?”
“Coming at you,” Khedryn said. The pod’s thrusters flared and the metal ball darted toward Junker and Jaden.
Behind Jaden, Junker’s ion engines flared to life.
“I’m coming to get you both,” Marr said.
“Both? Where are you, Jaden?” Khedryn asked.
“I’m in a hardsuit,” Jaden said.
“Stang, man. I’m gone awhile and you start thinking you’re a spacer! Marr, you let him go floating in the black?”
“He was insistent,” Marr said.
Another streak of motion drew Jaden’s eye and wiped the growing grin from his face. A ship bounced out of hyperspace not far from the other escape pod.
“Master, another ship just entered the system.” A pause then, “Its weapons are live.”
Nyss saw the sleek lines of the scout flyer emerge from hyperspace. He engaged the pod’s thrusters, the scout flyer’s ion engines flared, and the distance between the two ships shrank rapidly. The pod lurched.
“Tractor is on you,” Syll said over the comlink. “Pulling you in.”
“There is a second escape pod.”
“I see it.”
“Is the Jedi outside their freighter?”
A moment passed while Syll consulted scanners. “He is.”
“Destroy the pod and the freighter. We’ll pluck the Jedi out of space after that.”
They’d still have to figure out what to do about the Prime, but at least they’d have Korr.
The pod slammed hard into the scout flyer and metal groaned.
“Have you,” Syll said.
“On my way,” Nyss said. He slipped from his seat as the docking rings mated.
Jaden watched the second escape pod attach itself to some kind of small craft, a scout ship, maybe, saw the scout ship wheel in their direction, and understood right away what was happening. Marr’s voice over the comlink only confirmed it.
“That ship is coming right at us. Weapon’s locking onto Junker.”
“Get the deflectors up!” Jaden said to Marr.
Before the words had cleared his mouth, the scout ship’s wing-mounted weapons lit up. Lines of red plasma stretched across the black gulf. The freighter, its deflector array inactive, took the blast in its port side. Flames exploded outward into space, the silence of it making it surreal. Explosive decompression ejected bits of metal and mundane debris into space. The ship listed, spitting flames and smoke.
“Marr!” Khedryn and Jaden shouted.
They could hear the Cerean’s stressed breathing over the comlink. His voice, however, was calm. “We’re all right. Ar-Six, seal off the compromised compartments. Deflectors are live. Engines are functional.”
Jaden eyed the scout, which was now wheeling toward Khedryn’s pod. A single shot against the pod would vaporize it. Jaden needed to buy a few moments.
“Khedryn, hard to port! As much as the thrusters can give you! Now!”
Khedryn must have heard the urgency, and he did not question the order. The pod’s thrusters fired, and it cut a hard turn to port.
Jaden estimated its velocity and the distance, and fired the thrusters of his hardsuit, taking a trajectory that would put him near the pod—or so he hoped.
Unprepared for the abrupt turn of the pod, the scout ship wheeled again to follow. Jaden cut through space toward the pod. So, too, did the scout ship.
“Faster, Khedryn,” he muttered.
“That’s all it’s got, Jedi. Where are they?”
“Right behind you,” Jaden said.
Khedryn cursed, his breathing loud over the comm.
The scout leveled off, put itself on a firing line to the pod. Jaden had to do something, and do it now!
He fell into the Force as the scout ship’s wings flared and the weapons fired. To him, events seemed to slow. The lines of the ship’s lasers extended outward from its guns, slowly reaching across space, crayon lines drawn by an invisible child.
Power filled Jaden, and with it he reached out for Khedryn’s pod, roped it with his mind, and yanked it hard toward him. Despite his use of the Force, the differential mass between his body and the escape pod did not allow for a clean pull. His movement toward the pod increased even as the pod sped more rapidly toward him.
Still, it was enough. Though the proximity of the shot caused the pod to lurch hard, the red lines stretched through space behind it. Jaden grunted with the effort to maintain his mental hold on the small craft.
“What just happened?” Khedryn shouted.
“You were almost hit,” Jaden said, as he blazed through space toward the pod.
“Let’s try to avoid that.”
“Let’s,” Jaden said, smiling. But now the distance between him and the pod was closing rapidly, too rapidly. If he hit it too hard, he’d lose a seal on his suit and that would be that.
Meanwhile, behind it, the scout ship cut hard toward the pod, reestablishing a firing line.
Jaden put their distance apart at three hundred meters … two hundred … one hundred. The scout was in position. But so was Jaden. He ignited his lightsaber. The hardsuit would restrict his mobility, but he’d have to make due. He’d received his training in zero-G a long time ago. He’d use the Force to steady himself in space, otherwise any action in zero-G would precipitate an equal and opposite reaction that would make precision movement almost impossible.
Twenty meters.
“Thrusters hard to starboard,” he said to Khedryn, and fired the suit’s thrusters.
The pod’s port thrusters fired, angling the vessel to starboard. The scout jigged to stay on it.
Jaden, still holding the pod with the Force, slammed hard into it feetfirst. He grabbed at a protuberance—a comm antenna—with his free hand just as the scout ship fired.
Still enmeshed in the Force, he sensed the trajectory of the blasts, the line of their approach. His lightsaber spun through space, the Force-augmented motion stressing the hardsuit. The shots slammed into the yellow line of his blade, and he deflected them back at the ship’s cockpit. They split the space between them and knifed into the cockpit, which exploded into flame. The scout ship, bleeding smoke, streaked toward the p
od.
“Port, Khedryn! Port!” Jaden shouted, watching the scout get closer and closer. The ship would slam into them both.
Straddling the pod, Jaden pushed with the Force against the oncoming ship, the pressure assisting the pod’s thrusters. He crouched low as the scout ship wheeled over and past them, so close he could have touched it with his fingertips. The ship continued its trajectory and velocity, not turning around, heading into the deep system. Perhaps the blasters had damaged its controls. Or perhaps killed the pilot.
“Khedryn,” Jaden said. “Are you all right?”
“Good,” Khedryn said. “I think.”
“Get us aboard, Marr,” Jaden said to the Cerean.
“Tractor beam has the pod,” Marr answered.
An alarm rang in Jaden’s suit, the sound surprisingly subdued given the urgency of its warning.
“I’m leaking,” he said.
“What?” Khedryn asked. “What did you say?”
Khedryn’s face appeared in the tiny viewport of the escape pod, his misaligned eyes fixing on Jaden’s faceplate. Worry twisted his bruised, bloody expression. He hit a button to activate the comm.
“Did you say you’re leaking?”
“Affirmative,” Jaden said.
Khedryn cursed.
“On my way,” Marr said.
Jaden deactivated his lightsaber and held out his arms, examining the hardsuit. It was venting air through a pinhole in the ankle seam and at the right elbow.
“I see them,” Khedryn said. “Two holes.”
Jaden did not comment. He wanted to preserve oxygen. His HUD told him he had twenty-nine seconds before the tanks emptied. Twenty-eight.
“I have twenty-seven seconds,” he said. “Twenty-six.”
“Hang in, Jaden,” Khedryn said. He put his palm on the glass of the viewport. “Hang in.”
Jaden nodded in his suit. He steadied heart and mind, trying to consume as little air as possible while watching Junker turn and blast toward him. Twenty seconds. Nineteen.
He was getting dizzy as his oxygen depleted. Junker’s tractor beam pulled the pod through space at a breakneck pace, even while Marr piloted the freighter toward them.
“I’m at twelve seconds,” Jaden said.
“Where the hell are you, Marr?” Khedryn asked.
“Ar-Six has the helm, Khedryn.”
“What?” Khedryn asked, indignant. “A droid is flying my ship?”
Spots formed before Jaden’s eyes. “Almost out,” he tried to say, but the words sounded garbled.
Marr’s voice echoed in his helmet. “Do you see the airlock, Master?”
Jaden tried to focus on Junker as it spun its side to the pod to show the hole of an open airlock. A form hovered there in the lighted box of the compartment: Marr in a hardsuit. His thruster flared and he shot toward Jaden. Jaden’s vision went in and out. He heard Khedryn’s voice in his head, but the words seemed far away, whispers he could not quite comprehend.
Marr appeared before him, his concerned face visible through the lit faceplate of the hardsuit. Jaden tried to speak but could not. Marr’s words cut through the clutter of his fading consciousness.
“I have you, Master.”
And then they were moving back toward Junker. Jaden stared at the open airlock, like a mouth in the side of the ship.
“It’s hungry,” he tried to say, smiling, but his lips would form neither words nor a smile, and a part of him recognized the ridiculousness of the observation.
Khedryn was barking over the comlink, but Jaden could not understand him, could not hold his eyes open.
* * *
The scout flyer shivered from an impact. An alarm screeched. In moments, Nyss smelled smoke.
“What happened?” he asked. “Syll, what happened?”
His sister did not respond. He hurried through the dim, close corridors of the flyer, the smell of smoke getting more acute. When he reached the cockpit and tried to push the door open, he found that something was blocking the door.
“Syll,” he called. “Syll!”
Nothing.
He muscled open the door and saw that it was his sister’s form that had obstructed it. Panic seized him; it sent his heart racing and stole his breath. He knelt at her side and turned her over so that he could see her face. Blood, warm and sticky, made her hair glisten. He probed her scalp for the wound, felt the indentation in her skull, and drew back as if she were hot.
“Syll,” he said.
She said nothing. Her eyes stared at him, empty, glassy, and he knew she was dead. She must have struck her head on something when the ship lurched.
The hole he lived in, the sanctuary in which he existed, separate from other living things, yawned under him. Staring at Syll’s face, he felt himself spiraling around the edge of the void. The darkness in the cockpit intensified as he plummeted.
But as he continued to look at Syll’s face, grief stopped his descent. Anger filled the void and halted his fall.
He was alone in the universe, forever alone.
He ground his teeth and clenched his fist and shouted aloud.
Someone would pay for his loss, his solitude.
He would kill the Jedi’s allies, kill the clones, kill them all, kill everything.
He spared a glance out the cockpit and saw nothing but a field of stars. There was no sign of the escape pod or Junker or the supply ship. The scout flyer was hurtling into the deep system, away from the star.
He triggered the autopilot to avoid a collision and realized his hands were shaking. He calmed himself and gently lifted Syll from the floor. Feeling numbed by his anger, he set her into her usual copilot’s chair and strapped her in.
“It’s beautiful, Syll,” he said, nodding out at the deep system. “The dark, I mean.”
He’d never felt such pain in his life.
Soldier’s anger began to diminish the moment the Umbaran’s pod shot out of the ship. He stood there for a time, chest heaving, rage abating, staring at the empty escape pod sockets. Bleeding from the wound in his arm, Soldier turned and staggered through the cargo bay. He deactivated his blade. “Grace!” he called. “Grace!”
He did not think of Seer or Hunter or Runner. He thought only of Grace. For a reason he could not understand, her survival meant everything to him.
“Grace! Grace!”
His voice echoed off the walls, resounded through the bay. The alchemy of his emotional state transformed his concern for Grace into power. The Force filled him. He threw his head back and shouted his frustration into the air in a prolonged howl of pain and fear.
“Grace!”
He gestured with his left hand and flung a shipping container halfway across the cargo bay. It slammed into a stack of other containers as metal crumpled and medical equipment spilled out onto the floor. He gestured with his right hand, and another container flew out of his way, his rage opening a path before him. He clenched his fist and a third container began to crumple in on itself, his power squeezing it down to half its size, a quarter.
Grief filled him, lodged in the mental space his anger had abandoned. He fell to his knees and his eyes welled. He did not wipe the tears as they fell.
He had failed Grace, failed all of them. His life had mattered to no one.
“Soldier?” said a small, diffident voice behind him.
He whirled, the smile already wide on his face.
Grace stood three meters from him, her red hair hanging lankly before her pale face. For the first time, her thinness struck him. She was not eating enough.
He held out his arms and she ran to him. He wrapped her up, feeling the horrific movement beneath her skin. She already needed another hypo. He held her close, weeping.
“Come with me,” he finally said. “You need meds.”
“Are you okay?” she asked, and he could only laugh and nod.
She did not resist as he took her hand and led her toward the cockpit.
“Is my … mother dead?”
Grace said nothing. Soldier felt her grief, but it was dulled, distant. She’d seen so much already in her life that tragedy moved her little. He hated that, hated the scientists who’d made them and condemned them all to a wretched life and forced them to kill for their freedom, hated that they could not simply live, find enjoyment in what they would. Grace would have that, even if the rest of them had not.
“What about the man?” Grace asked.
“What man?”
“The man with the funny eyes.”
She meant their captive, the spacer, the ally of the Jedi. “I don’t know for certain. But I think he is off the ship.”
“I think so, too,” she said, and squeezed Soldier’s hand. “I hope he is. He was nice.”
Jaden heard voices, opened his eyes. Marr’s enormous head hovered over his face, forehead creased by worry lines.
“Master, can you hear me?”
From somewhere off to the side, R-6 made a sympathetic whistle.
“I can hear you,” Jaden said, blinking to clear his blurred vision.
Relief filled Marr’s eyes. He kept a hand pressed against Jaden’s chest, as if to prevent him from trying to sit up.
Jaden was aboard Junker, in the corridor outside the airlock. His hardsuit helmet lay beside him on the deck. He had been running out of air.…
“How did you—”
“We got you aboard, pressurized the airlock, and dragged you in here,” Marr said. “You weren’t entirely without air for more than a few seconds. Your blood oxygen is probably quite low, though. Just relax. Breathe. Let your head clear.”
There was the sound of running footsteps on the deck, then Khedryn’s voice. “Is he all right?”
“He’s fine,” Marr said.
“I’m fine,” Jaden said, staring at the ceiling, not quite ready to try and sit up. “How are you?”
Marr turned to look at Khedryn and swore. It was the first time Jaden had ever heard the Cerean curse.
Khedryn’s trousers showed a long rip in the thigh. One side of his face was purple and swelling, making the mismatch of his eyes all the more pronounced. Blood stained his shirt here and there. His hair stuck out at wild angles. His nose looked as crooked as a Hutt.
