The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  The alarm fell silent as the interior of Junker turned into a vacuum. Marr listened to the sound of his breathing inside his helmet, the hiss of the oxygen kit feeding him air. He watched the life-support readout on the console show the absence of oxygen.

  He turned in his seat and found himself staring at the muscular, red-skinned form of a Massassi. The cockpit door was open behind the creature, an open mouth that had vomited the Massassi into the cockpit. Broken capillaries turned the Massassi’s yellow eyes into a mesh of black. The creature swayed on its feet, already dying from lack of oxygen. For what seemed an eternity, the Massassi stared at Marr and Marr stared at the Massassi through his suit’s visor.

  Baring its fangs, the creature lunged for Marr, clawed hands outstretched. Marr tried to grab the Massassi’s wrists as the creature fell on him, but blood loss had left him with little strength, and the creature got its hands free of Marr’s grasp. The Massassi tried to pull Marr from his seat but the straps secured him.

  Marr reached for his blaster with a free hand, then realized he had no blaster. The Massassi, mouth wide and gasping for nonexistent air, hit the emergency release on Marr’s strap and both of them fell to the cockpit floor in a heap.

  The Massassi scrambled atop, his weight a vise on Marr’s chest. Its clawed hands pawed at Marr’s suit. Marr’s breathing rasped in the echo chamber of the helmet. He tried again to grab the Massassi’s arms but his strength was no match for the alien’s. He punched the creature in the face, shoulders, but the blows were so weak the Massassi barely seemed to notice them.

  The creature’s face loomed into Marr’s faceplate. Droplets of black blood fell from the Massassi’s ears, eyes, and nose, smearing the screen. Marr once more felt the odd sensation that he was watching events happening to someone else on a vidscreen. The Massassi’s claws closed on the suit’s neck ring, then tighter, around Marr’s throat, and started to squeeze.

  Marr’s body failed him. Strength rushed out of him as if through a hole. He could not lift even an arm to defend himself. He stared up through the smeared faceplate, barely able to see, barely able to breathe.

  The Massassi squeezed Marr’s throat, squeezed, then … released its grip and collapsed atop him, dead. The vacuum had done what Marr could not.

  For a time, Marr heard only the sound of his own rapid breathing. After a few moments, he rolled the Massassi’s bulk off him and sat up, feeling instantly dizzy. Every muscle in his body screamed. He tried to stand, but his legs would not support him and he sagged back to the floor. His body seemed disinclined to answer his demands.

  Crawling on all fours, he climbed over the Massassi and went to the instrument panel, intending to deactivate the emvent and repressurize Junker. He tried to wipe away the blood on his faceplate but that only made it worse. His eyes seemed unable to focus. So, too, his mind. He could not remember which buttons did what.

  Only then did he notice the hiss.

  His vac suit was bleeding air.

  He looked down and saw a gash in the suit’s belly, a laughing mouth put there by a Massassi claw. He stared at it dumbly, watching the edges flap as the oxygen kit fed air into the vacuum.

  He put both hands on the instrument console, leaned over it as if he could intimidate it into cooperating. Forcing himself to focus on the instruments, he tried to clear his mind enough to remember which sequence of buttons would repressurize the ship.

  When he thought he had it, he pushed them, then pulled the lever.

  Nothing happened.

  He sagged into the pilot’s seat, his vision fading. He was going to die unless he did something. He flicked on the autopilot and it blinked at him, awaiting a course.

  Focusing on the navicomp, blinking through his pain and dizziness, he hit a random button and stared at the coordinates displayed on the screen. He did not recognize them at first, then realized them for what they were: the provenance of the distress beacon coming up from the gas giant’s moon.

  It occurred to him that he would get shot down by Harbinger’s fighters before he ever hit the moon’s atmosphere but he realized it did not matter. Oxygen deprivation and blood loss were already killing him.

  He transmitted the coordinates from the navicomp to the autopilot.

  He looked out the cockpit window as Junker came around. The moon came back into view, the gas giant and its rings, Harbinger. He wondered briefly how Relin was, then sank into his chair, into the Force, and did not move.

  His mind wandered. He smiled, thinking that Khedryn could have at least allowed a medical droid aboard. But the captain was as stubbon as a bantha when it came to droids.

  He found breathing difficult, tiring. He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep.

  Relin stalked Harbinger’s corridors, more predator than prey. It was as if Marr had been the compass for his conscience, the Cerean’s presence the needle that pointed to right and wrong. Now, alone with his anger, with the Lignan, Relin gave full play to the darkness of his emotions. The shipwide alarm continued to howl but he tuned it out, hearing only the call of revenge. He did not bother to hide his presence in the Force; he transmitted it. He wished for Saes to find him. The power of the Lignan saturated him, eager to be used in service to his rage.

  While thinking through his attack in his time aboard Junker, he had planned to return once more to Harbinger’s hyperdrive chamber and rig the hyperdrive to irradiate or explode the entire ship. But now, flush with power, he had another idea.

  Moving through Harbinger’s corridors reminded him of the last time he had been aboard. He imagined he would hear Drev’s voice over his comlink—Drev’s laughter—but he knew he would never hear his Padawan’s voice again. His anger grew with every step. His power grew with every step. He used his growing connection to the Lignan to steer him through the ship, a left turn here, there a lift down or up.

  Laugh even when you die.

  Laughter bubbled up between Relin’s gritted teeth, steam through an escape valve, venting the overflow of his anger lest he explode from it.

  He turned a corner and found himself staring at three humans, all men, and a treaded mech droid. The humans wore helmets and surprised expressions. They stopped in their steps when they saw Relin and his lightsaber. One of them lifted the portable tool chest he bore to his chest, as if it could protect him.

  Nothing could protect them.

  The droid beeped a question.

  Relin smiled.

  All three of the humans dropped their tool chests, turned, and ran, shouting for help.

  Relin augmented his speed with the Force, leapt over the droid, caught up to the humans, and put his lightsaber through each of them, one after the other. He barely noticed their screams.

  A single Massassi security guard, perhaps hearing the tumult, trotted around the corridor to investigate.

  “You!” the Massassi said, reaching for his blaster. “Halt right there!”

  Relin gestured with his stump, closed a mental hand around the Massassi’s windpipe, and crushed it with a thought. The creature fell to the ground, legs drumming the floor, clawing at his throat.

  Stepping over and past the writhing Massassi, Relin continued on. He looked down at his hand and saw long fingers of Force lightning dancing out of his fingertips.

  He laughed louder, shouting his hate through Harbinger’s walls.

  “Saes!”

  Ahead, perhaps twenty meters, the doors of a turbolift opened to reveal six of Harbinger’s crew, all humans. He did not see a blaster among them.

  One started to step off, saw Relin, and stopped cold. His mouth opened, but he said nothing. Instead he retreated into the lift, said something to his fellow passengers, and frantically tapped at the control panel, trying to close the lift doors.

  “Quickly!” another said, while one in the back spoke into her comlink.

  Relin roared, increased his speed with the Force, and sprinted toward them. The six members of the crew flattened themselves against the far side of the
lift, made themselves a living mural, but there was nowhere for them to run. Terror filled their eyes and blood fled their faces. The doors began to close but Relin held them open with telekinetic force.

  Seeing that, the crew shouted for help, pressed themselves against the walls as if trying to meld flesh with metal. Relin stepped through the lift doors, laughing. The hum of his lightsaber competed with the screams, but not for long. He spun a circle, stabbing and slashing, pleased when his lightsaber met the soft resistance of human flesh. In a few moments the screams fell silent and only the hum remained.

  Relin stared at the carnage he had caused. Tears warmed his face, mingling with the blood of those he had killed. Without warning he vomited, Junker’s caf and his last meal joining the gore on the lift’s floor. That, too, he stared at for a time, until his eyes dried.

  Whatever had remained of him as a Jedi had just left him in a spray of puke.

  On the control panel he saw a button for the lower-level cargo bay. He knew he would find the Lignan there. The touch of the ore was the fishhook he’d swallowed and it was pulling him along by his guts.

  Ever gone angling, Drev?

  He had said those words a lifetime ago.

  He pushed the button.

  “When is the last time I felt anything?” he said, echoing Saes’s challenge to him in their last duel.

  “When indeed,” he said, chuckling darkly.

  * * *

  Alarms blared from speakers overhead, the sound muted by the erkush bone mask Saes wore. With each step, he felt more attuned to his tribe and ancestors than he had in a long while. He had lost himself entirely when he had joined the Jedi Order, forced by Jedi teachings to renounce the fierceness of character and passionate spirit that made him who he was. He had partially recovered himself when he had spurned the Jedi and embraced the teachings of the Sith. But he had never felt closer to whole than he did now, moments before he would murder his former Master. He was a hunter, a warrior, a Kaleesh.

  He threw back his head and screamed an ingmal hunting cry through the fangs of the mask. Startled faces emerged from hatches and side corridors, but he strode past them without offering an explanation.

  Through his connection to Relin, he felt his onetime Master’s growing anger over the loss of his Padawan. For a moment, but only a moment, Saes felt a flash of sympathy for Relin, a flash of kinship. He was pleased that Relin had felt the sting of loss, rather than only the distant, attenuated, abortive emotions the Jedi allowed themselves.

  Saes knew that all men should feel the pain of loss before they died. In that way, they would know they had lived. Relin was no exception, and Saes was pleased for him. Now he could kill him with true affection in his heart.

  Relin’s anger would lead him to only one place. There, Saes would confront him, and their story together would end. He activated his comlink.

  “Sir,” Llerd said. “Other than a trail of bodies, we do not yet have any idea of the Jedi’s location.”

  “He is on his way to the cargo bay,” Saes said. “The Lignan is drawing him.”

  “I will alert security and—”

  “No,” Saes said. “Order the bay evacuated. I will face him there. Alone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The lift hummed as it descended several levels to Harbinger’s cargo bay. Relin’s lightsaber sizzled, warmed the close confines of the lift. He stared at its light, hypnotized by the swirl of green. He knew it should have been red. He wished it were red.

  The doors opened and the naked power of the Lignan filled the lift compartment, filled Relin. Light-headed, giddy with power, he stepped into the cavernous cargo bay. Stacks of storage containers lined the walls. If the stresses of the misjump had knocked some to the floor or otherwise put the ship’s cargo into disarray, the crew had cleaned it up.

  Pieces of human-operated lift gear—lev pallets, treaded lifters—sat abandoned on the metal floor. He saw no one in the bay, not even a cargo droid, and he knew exactly what the emptiness meant. He walked across the floor, the lift closing behind him, the tread of his boots loud in the soaring chamber.

  Following the string of his rage, he walked through a maze of storage containers until he found the several dozen that held the Lignan ore. They were stacked several high, arranged in a box shape, so that they described the perimeter of an open square of deck ten meters on a side. Several of the containers had been partially crushed and remained open. A pile of ore bled onto the deck through the open seals. He walked gingerly among the ore, touching none. He did not need to touch it with his flesh. He was connected to it in his spirit. It knew him, and knew what he needed.

  The power in the air nearly lifted him from his feet. He was swimming in it. Elated rage buoyed his body, lit his spirit on fire. Force lightning formed flowing serpents around his fingers and forearms.

  He sat down cross-legged among the ore, amid the embodiment of his need to murder one Padawan to avenge another, and awaited Saes and battle.

  Jaden felt the weight of his solitude the moment he and Khedryn parted. He was surprised at how much he had come to rely on the presence of Junker’s crew. He had isolated himself for so long that he had forgotten the value of simple companionship. They were good men, Khedryn and Marr. Rascals, yes, but quality rascals.

  He moved as rapidly as he could through the facility. The beam of a glow rod and the glow of his lightsaber augmented the dim illumination from the emergency lights. He did not need to consult the folded schematic in his pocket to know the direction of the lift. The way there was engraved in his brain.

  Without Khedryn at his side, the metal walls of the narrow corridors felt increasingly oppressive, their unbroken gray smoothness a winter sky that sunlight never pierced. He wondered how the Imperial scientists had remained here for any length of time without going mad.

  Perhaps they hadn’t, he thought, recalling the progressively deteriorating physical condition of Dr. Black in the holo-log, Dr. Gray’s nervous hand spasm.

  His exhalations steamed in the cool air. The echo of his boots on the floor seemed to carry everywhere. And somewhere in the complex, at the base of the communications tower, the facility sent its heartbeat pulsing into space.

  Help us. Help us.

  He swallowed and ran a hand through his hair, taking a moment to gather himself. He was not fearful of encountering the clones, if any yet survived. Like all Jedi, he did not fear battle or death. But he was growing ever more fearful of encountering an answer to his question, and he felt certain the lift would take him to it.

  Static crackled over the open comlink connection he maintained with Khedryn. Something in the facility’s makeup must have interfered with short-range communication. Between outbursts of static, he heard Khedryn’s breathing, an occasional whispered curse, the thump of Khedryn’s boots on the floor as he made his way back to the ship. The sounds reminded Jaden that he was not alone, that he was still connected.

  “Everything all right?” he said in response to another of Khedryn’s curses. Static roared in to fill the silence after he’d spoken.

  “Fine,” Khedryn said, his voice a whisper, as if he feared to awaken whatever slept in the facility. “I’m tripping over debris, is all. This glow rod isn’t exactly a—”

  Static ate the rest of his reply.

  “Let me know when you get to the ship,” Jaden said.

  “Will do,” Khedryn said through the interference.

  Serenaded by ever more static, Jaden continued through the facility. Doors and side passages opened here and there. He caught a glimpse of a kitchen that smelled faintly of food rotted long ago, another recreation room with rusted exercise equipment, conference rooms—all of the mundane trappings of a research facility anywhere in the galaxy.

  Except for the blaster marks that scored the walls and ceilings, the black lines a cryptic script that chronicled the death of the facility.

  Ahead, at the end of a long corridor, he saw the closed double doors of the lift, bl
ackened and scarred by a barrage of blasterfire. A headless body lay on the ground near the lift doors, half propped against the wall, the arms thrown out wide as if to embrace. He noted the lab coat.

  Segments of stormtrooper armor containing bits of desiccated body parts littered the corridor between Jaden and the lift. Large pieces of security droids lay strewn about the hall, likewise dismembered—here a leg, there a torso, there a head, the eyes gone dark. Jaden recognized the work of a lightsaber, and a skilled combatant at that.

  Guilt dogged Khedryn’s steps. He knew Jaden was right—Khedryn would be no help facing any of the clones, should any have survived—but he still felt as if he was abandoning the Jedi.

  For all Jaden’s power, all his talent, he still struck Khedryn as remarkably fragile and entirely alone. And for all Khedryn’s cynicism, he liked Jaden.

  “Because I run,” Khedryn murmured, embarrassed to have ever uttered the words, notwithstanding their truth. He wished that he understood himself less well, that he could live in ignorance of his character flaws.

  He felt himself a coward.

  Yet his fear was warranted. He had gotten in much deeper than he had intended, and whatever had happened in the facility was better left undisturbed. He no longer felt like he was walking through a research facility. Instead, he felt like he was walking through the scene of a mass murder.

  Sweat soaked his clothes under his enviro-suit. His fingers girdled the handle of his blaster too tightly, and he consciously relaxed them. He soft-stepped his way back through the complex, trying even to quiet his breathing, hyper-aware of his surroundings.

  The holo-log had unnerved him. He had seen the concern root in the eyes of the doctors, seen the root blossom into fear.

  If the Force had led Marr to choose a course that brought them to the moon, then the Force could karking well curl up in a corner and die. Khedryn wanted nothing more than to be off the moon, back aboard Junker drinking pulkay.

  Marr had turned some corner around which Khedryn could not see. He’d given up Khedryn’s skewed view of the galaxy for the straightforward view of the Jedi. He had seemed eager to fly with Relin. Eager.