Jaden leaned in close, his skin stippled with goose bumps, listening to an echo from the past, decades-old ghosts calling to them through time.
Marr said, "As I said, I haven't been able to decrypt it-"
"No need," Jaden said, and turned it off. "It's Imperial. I can tell from the cadence. Probably an automated distress call, as you suspected."
In the privacy of his mind, the voice from his vision sang out: Help us. Help us.
"Take me to this moon," Jaden said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Junker was prepared to jump. Khedryn blew and popped bubbles with such rapidity, they sounded like a repeating blaster.
"You always jaw a chewstim before a jump?" Jaden asked him.
"Before liftoff, before a landing, before a jump. Sometimes just because I think things will get hairy."
Jaden smiled at Khedryn's superstition while he raised R6 on subspace. The astromech's questioning beep answered his hail. Jaden stared out into the black of the deep system as he spoke and made his last confession to his droid.
"Two standard weeks, Arsix, then return to Coruscant. Tell Grand Master Skywalker that I was doing what I thought I must. Do you understand?"
Khedryn and Marr pretended not to hear as R6 beeped acquiescence.
"Clear to jump," Marr said.
Khedryn swallowed his chewstim. "Do the math and let's turn her loose."
The Cerean tapped keys on the navicomp so quickly that Jaden could barely follow. Complex calculations appeared on the screen, numerological puzzles so baffling to Jaden that they might as well have been another language. Marr solved them as if by magic, relying on the navicomp processor only to confirm his calculations. His Force presence flared as he worked.
"Confirm," Marr said, after tapping a key, and the navicomp did so. Another string of numbers, another solution.
"Confirm."
Jaden had heard of Cerean math savants but hardly expected to encounter one on the fringes of the Unknown Regions, copiloting a salvage ship, much less one with Force sensitivity. He felt Khedryn's eyes on him.
"Like magic, ain't it?" said Khedryn, smiling.
"You have no idea," Jaden answered.
Marr seemed not to hear them, lost as he was in a world of numbers and operators. It took the Cerean longer than it would have taken the navicomp to plot their course, but not much.
"Course plotted," Marr said.
"Off we go," Khedryn said, and engaged the hyperdrive.
Stars stretched, giving way to the blue spirals of hyperspace.
"It will take three separate jumps," Khedryn said. "Why not grab some sleep? You look like you could use it. There are racks in the rooms off the galley. I will wake you when we arrive."
Jaden was tired, bone-tired, and still feeling the ache of the blaster wound. "I think I will. Thank you, Captain. Thanks for everything, both of you."
"No need for thanks," Khedryn said, and winked his lazy eye. "Just be sure to pay me on time."
Jaden picked his way through the ship-memorizing the layout, a habit of his-found a rack in a room off the galley, and lay down. He stared up at the metal of the low ceiling, shadowed in the dim light, wondering what he would find when he reached the moon.
Help us. Help us.
In time the exhaustion won out and he fell asleep.
***
Kell piloted Predator into the night sky and out of the atmosphere over Fhost. He placed the data crystal he'd taken from Reegas into the ship's navicomp. Using the data from Junker stored on the crystal, it began plotting a course. He studied the coordinates but did not recognize the system. It appeared at least three jumps away, deep into the Unknown Regions.
The ship's comp had little data on the region. Unsurprising. He would simply have to improvise as the situation demanded.
He prepared an encrypted burst transmission on the obscure HoloNet frequency he used to communicate with Darth Wyyrlok. As a matter of course, he used only audio transmissions. He sent the ping and had to wait only a few seconds before the channel opened. It was as though it were waiting for him.
"I have encountered a single Jedi and have obtained a copy of the coordinates for the moon we discussed. Something on the moon is transmitting an automated signal, but I do not yet know its content. The moon's coordinates are embedded in this message."
"You have done well, Kell Douro," Wyyrlok returned. "Therefore the Master smiles upon your efforts from his journey in dreams."
Kell ignored the praise. "Once I enter the Unknown Regions, I will be out of contact except via subspace burst. If I need to report to you, I will do so on the following subspace frequency." He tapped in the frequency and sent it.
"Received. Name the Jedi you have encountered."
"Jaden Korr."
Saying the name recalled to Kell's mind the power of Korr's soup. His feeders leaked partway from his cheeks, but he retracted them.
"We know of him. He was apprenticed to Katarn and is, therefore, dangerous."
"I want him," Kell said.
The channel hung open for a time, the silence a chasm. Kell imagined Wyyrlok somehow communing with Krayt.
"You believe his mind holds the truth that you seek."
The words were not a question.
"Our lines are intertwined. I have seen it."
"As have we," said Wyyrlok, and Kell heard a smile in the Chagrian's tone. "In him you will find your truth. He is, therefore, yours to do with as you will. Good-bye, Kell Douro."
Kell closed the channel, activated his sensor cloak, and started his jump sequence.
Only afterward did he think it odd that Darth Wyyrlok had not ordered him to report back on what he found on the moon. No doubt Wyyrlok assumed Kell would do so of his own accord.
The hyperdrive activated and he watched stars turn to lines, implying the grid of daen nosi that undergirded the universe. He would understand the truth of the grid when he fed on Jaden Korr.
***
THE PAST:5,000 YEARS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF YAVIN
The misjump tore at Harbinger's superstructure, clawed at the durasteel. The scream of stressed metal turned the maddening, flickering tunnel of hyperspace and realspace into a shouting throat without end. The ship was flying down the gullet of the universe.
Harbinger bucked from side to side, shook as pieces of it flew free of the front section and slammed into the trailing end. Escape pods tore free from their berths and hurtled into oblivion.
Saes barely heard the alarms. He held on to the bulkhead, watching the dismemberment of his ship. Panicked, distorted chatter carried through his comlink, voices of the dead from beyond the grave. He seized at the Force to find calm and took comfort in its power. As it filled him, his perception sharpened. He felt the terror in some members of his crew, the fearful resolve in others. He wondered, in passing, what might have happened to Omen. Had Relin sabotaged its hyperdrive as well? In any event, the collision of the two dreadnaughts would surely have disrupted Omen's jump.
Sensation tickled the back of his skull. Realization lingered at the edge of his consciousness. He became aware that the air felt charged, pregnant with potential. At first he attributed it to the twisting of space-time occurring as a result of the misjump, but then he recognized its true source.
The Lignan.
Despite Sadow's prohibition against using the ore, Saes did not hesitate, not for a moment. The Lignan offered salvation.
He attuned himself to the potential offered by the ore, immediately felt it augment his relationship to the Force, sharpen it. The emotional rush felt similar to the flood of feeling he'd experienced after his first kill.
But the increased power was not enough. He could sense that. He was only drawing from its emanations, its penumbrae. He needed to be closer to it to utilize it fully.
He took a final look out the viewport at the chaos outside, then turned and sped through Harbinger's corridors, down its lifts, through its hatches. Time was his enemy. Harbinger was dying.
>
Along his route he passed crew members working frantically at their stations.
"The bridge is gone, Captain!" someone shouted, but Saes paid the words no heed.
"A third of the landing bay was damaged in the collision, sir!"
A protocol droid appeared before him, tottering on the shifting floor.
"Captain, it appears something has gone wrong with the hyperspace jump. I believe that-"
Saes blew past the droid, sending it clattering against the wall and to the floor.
Before he reached the cargo hold, the ship began to shake violently, its solidity responding to some destructive vibratory frequency created by the velocity and the jump error. He had only moments. With his Lignan-enhanced perception, he felt the rising tide of terror sweep through the crew. He ran into a Massassi security team emerging from a side corridor. Even their sharp ferocity had been dulled by concern over events. Still, they recognized him and bowed their heads as the ship shook under their feet.
"Accompany me to the cargo bay! Quickly!"
Bred and trained to obey, the hulking Massassi asked no questions. They ran before him, their boots thunderous on the deck, lanvaroks bare, gravelly voices shouting.
"Out of the way! Captain coming through! Out of the way!"
Crew hugged the walls as the Massassi and Saes stormed past. Many fell in behind them. By the time Saes descended the lift and reached the double doors that opened onto the cargo hold, he had more than a score of his crew trailing in his wake-engineers, security personnel, even a few Blade pilots still in flight gear.
The cargo bay doors did not respond to his open code, so the Massassi pried them open with their clawed hands and lanvaroks. Power blew out of the hold, enough to cause Saes to rock on his feet.
"Sir?" asked one of the Massassi, wide-eyed, too, from the ambient dark side energies.
The ship lurched, throwing many of the crew against the wall. As one they uttered an alarmed moan.
Saes squeezed through the open doors into the vastness of the cargo hold. Loading droids dotted the deck, several stuck on their sides, wheels and treads spinning helplessly. The stacks of storage containers lay in disordered piles like the ruins of some lost city.
He did not need a droid or crew member to point him to the containers containing the Lignan. It drew him like a lodestone drew iron shavings. With each step he took closer to the ore, his mind and spirit opened further until he could not contain a laugh. It was as though he had been drawing power from a nearly exhausted well, and now drew it from an ocean.
He was vaguely aware of his crew trailing after him as he followed the power back to its source, to the stack of rectangular storage containers that held mounds of the ore. He felt giddy, rapturous from its effects.
He drew on the power the ore offered, filled himself with it, sank ever more deeply into the Force. Power coursed through him. His crew backed away, eyes wide-all except the Massassi, who fell to one knee and bowed their heads.
The ship screamed outrage at the stresses of the misjump. With a minor exercise of will, Saes used his enhanced telekinetic power to throw open several of the storage containers holding the Lignan. Ore spilled out onto the deck, bounced around. Power spilled out into the air, collected around Saes. He reached deeper until he was nested fully in the Force, alight with the Lignan's power.
An impact jarred the ship. The hollow boom of an explosion told of some distant destruction to fore. The buck of the ship sent three of the shipping containers skidding along the deck toward him, toward the crew. The Lignan allowed him to use his telekinetic powers to stop them cold with minor effort.
He reached out with the Force, with his augmented power, until his consciousness encapsulated the entire ship. The task challenged him. Dark energy swirled around him. Force lightning shot in jagged lines from his curled fingers, from his eyes. His crew turned and ran, all except the Massassi. They remained, though uncertainty filled their bestial faces.
Grunting, Saes took mental hold of the dreadnought, the pieces of it floating in its wake. His mental fingers closed over the hull and reinforced it, then righted the ship's course.
As he exerted himself, the loose Lignan ore on the deck flared red, sizzled, and crumbled to dust. Apparently it could offer only so much before burning out. He burned through it like a wildfire through brush, like the mining cruisers through the crust of Phaegon III's moon.
He gritted his teeth, his entire body shaking with the challenge of keeping the ship intact. The effort squeezed more Force lightning from his hands, his eyes, his entire body, and soon he was sheathed in a swirling cyclone of the energy. He roared as his power alone kept the ship from shattering.
More and more Lignan burned out around him until he stood in a field of dull gray rock, miniatures of Phaegon III's moon. His heart pounded against his ribs, gonged in his ears. Corded veins and sinew made a topographic map of the exposed flesh of his forearms. The strain bore down on him, drove him to his knees. He was failing. He had to pull the ship out of its jump or they would all die.
He drew from the last well of his strength. The cargo hold lit up like a pyrotechnic display as more of the Lignan flashed and died. He held Harbinger in his mind's eye and felt the intermittent, flawed tunnel of hyperspace around it, felt the ship as a needle through the fabric of space and time, darning in and out of hyperspace and realspace.
Using the Force to time a moment when the ship moved into realspace, he tried to deactivate the damaged hyperdrive, but failed. The pitch of the damaged drive turned to a scream as it poured radiation into the ship and burned out as completely as the used Lignan.
Saes answered its scream with one of his own, straining to hold the ship together and jerk it back into realspace. With a roar of Force power, he changed its course and tore it from the grips of the misjump.
The ship was steady beneath him. The scream of strained metal was silent.
Exhausted, he sagged fully to the ground, his breath ragged but his mind exultant.
"Sir?" said one of the Massassi.
Saes inhaled and stood on wobbly legs. The Massassi moved to assist him but he waved them off. He gathered himself and walked across the cargo hold to a viewport.
Outside, he saw the calm of realspace, a distant blue planet, an orange sun. The stars in the background of space did not look familiar to him, though. He did not know where in the universe they were, but he knew he had saved the ship. The power of the dark side had saved the ship.
***
THE PRESENT:41.5 YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF YAVIN
Jaden awoke to the metallic shriek of a thrown hatch lever. The door opened to reveal Marr's lined face and smooth gray hair. The Cerean's goatee was so precisely groomed that Jaden imagined Marr gave its angles and length as much attention as he did jump solutions.
"We will be there soon," Marr said.
"How long was I out?"
"Six standard hours and eleven minutes. There is caf in the galley."
Jaden stood, chuckling at the Cerean's precision. Marr turned to go, but Jaden halted him with a question.
"How did you and Khedryn meet, Marr? With your gifts, it seems as if… you might have done something else."
"My gifts," Marr said softly, and trailed off. He looked up. "Perhaps I did do something else."
"Of course. I meant no offense."
"I took none." He turned once more as if to go, but stopped himself and faced Jaden. "When I was young, I once spent a week calculating the probabilities that my life would take this or that turn." He smiled, and Jaden noticed for the first time that one of his front teeth was badly chipped. "I even deduced a small possibility that I would become a Jedi. Amusing, isn't it?"
Jaden chose his words carefully. "Perhaps you could have been."
Marr seemed not to hear him. His deep-set eyes floated in some sea of memory where he had experienced a loss. "I was wrong about all of it, of course. It was a silly exercise. Life does not follow a predictable path. There is n
o way to capture the infinite variables involved. I think it reflected more my view of myself, or maybe my hopes back then, than anything else."
"Life is not predictable," Jaden agreed, thinking of the course of his own life, thinking of an air lock activation switch he wished he'd never seen.
"Later I decided that I needed to live life, not think about living it, not mathematically model living it. Not long after that I met Captain Faal. He's a good man, you know."
"I see that. And so are you. Where did you receive your training in mathematics?"
Marr frowned. "Not at a university. I had a series of private tutors, but I am mostly self-taught. Born to it, I guess."
"It's intuitive," Jaden said, unsurprised.
"Yes."
Jaden nodded, considered the idea of telling Marr that he was Force-sensitive, but decided against it. Why burden him? Jaden had been happier using the Force in ignorance. "Come on, let's get to the cockpit. I need to see this moon."
They found Khedryn already in the cockpit, his feet up, relaxed in his chair. He nodded at the cerulean swirl visible through the window.
"Beautiful, isn't it? I've heard it can drive you mad to stare at it. I've been doing it for years, though."
"That may not support the claim you suppose it does," Marr said, smiling, and took his seat.
Khedryn grinned. "Six years I've put up with this, Jaden. Six years."
"Six standard years, four months, and nineteen days," Marr corrected.
"You see?" Khedryn said to Jaden, and Jaden could not help but smile. The camaraderie between the two was infectious. Long ago Jaden had felt similarly in the company of his fellow Jedi, but those feelings had vanished. In the company of two rogues on the fringe of space, he found himself feeling as light as he had in months.
"Coming out of hyperspace," Marr said. "In three, two, one."
"Disengaging," Khedryn said, and disengaged the hyperdrive.
Blue gave way to black. Stars appeared in the dark blanket of space. The day side of a blue gas giant filled half the viewport. Clouds of gas swirled in its atmosphere, echoing the swirl of hyperspace. A midnight-blue oval, a storm hundreds of kilometers wide, stared out of the planet's equatorial region, an eye that would bear witness to Jaden's fate. Thick, churning rings of ice and rock, the largest ring system Jaden had ever seen, whirled around the planet at an angle fifteen degrees off the equator.