Riptide

  “Very good,” Nyss answered. “That is a spacer’s freighter. Get into a hardsuit and exit your ship.”

  “A hardsuit?” Marr exclaimed, off comm.

  “Fly toward the supply ship in the suit,” Nyss continued. “When you are near enough, I will release Khedryn Faal in an escape pod.”

  Jaden’s mind began to move through possibilities, tactics.

  “You have five minutes to exit your ship,” Nyss said. “I’ll be watching.”

  The connection closed.

  * * *

  The sound of Jaden’s voice summoned a fierce grin from Khedryn. The realization that Jaden and Marr had somehow trailed him filled him with a rush of emotion. He looked past the Umbaran through the cockpit, hoping to catch a glimpse of Junker, but saw only the black. No matter. They were out there.

  He understood what had happened and why the Umbaran had let him live—he wanted to trade him for Jaden. Jaden, of course, had accepted.

  Blasted Jedi were easy to play.

  Once again Khedryn considered making a run for an escape pod. With Junker out there somewhere, all he needed to do was get into the black and they could reel him in. Jaden would not have to put himself at risk. Khedryn had seen what the Umbaran could do to Force users, suppressing their power somehow. He had to warn Jaden, or get off the supply ship somehow.

  But there was still the little girl to consider. He had no doubt that the Umbaran would kill her or simply let her die of her disease. Khedryn could not abandon her. He would not be able to look Jaden or Marr in the face if he did.

  The Umbaran sat in the pilot’s seat, staring at the comm.

  Khedryn eased into the cockpit, hunched low, knife ready.

  A stirring to his right drew his attention.

  Soldier sat on the deck against the wall, his hands and ankles bound with deckstrip. The female clone, Seer, lay beside him, her eyes closed, either dead or unconscious.

  Soldier’s eyes fixed on Khedryn, flashed first with surprise, then suspicion. Khedryn knew what he had to do. He put a finger to his lips for silence.

  “I don’t like this,” Marr said, shaking his head. “I don’t like this at all.”

  Behind them, R-6 beeped agreement. Jaden had almost forgotten that the droid was in the cockpit.

  “Keep monitoring that ship and let me know of anything unusual,” Jaden said to R-6. To Marr, he said, “Where are the hardsuits?”

  As they jogged through the corridors, Marr said, “He could shoot you out of space the moment you leave Junker.”

  “He could try,” Jaden said, and put his hand on his lightsaber hilt. “Though that supply ship has little in the way of armament.”

  “He could ram you, Master. There’s any number of ways. A single leak in the suit and it’s over.”

  “He’s gone to a lot of trouble to just kill me, don’t you think? He wants me alive for some reason.”

  A tilt of Marr’s enormous head conceded the point. “Presumably not for a reason you’ll like. None of this makes sense.”

  “I agree,” Jaden said, and they started walking again. “But do you have a better idea?”

  Marr’s eyes found the floor and he shook his large head. “No.”

  “The supply ship has a weak tractor beam. He’ll try to reel me in once I’m out of Junker. Don’t let that happen unless Khedryn is clear. Listen, Marr. The critical thing is to get Khedryn to safety. Understand? Get Junker’s tractor beam on his pod as soon as he’s out. After he’s secure, we’ll improvise something.”

  “Improvise something?”

  “Trust me when I tell you that’s the life,” Jaden said with a smile. “Nothing ever goes according to plan. Half the time I’m just making it up as I go. Get used to it, eh?”

  Marr smiled, then nodded at one of the lockers near the airlock. “Right there,” he said. He opened the locker to reveal three hardsuits, one with a helmet suitable for a Cerean. “You know how to put it on?”

  “Been a while, but yeah.”

  Jaden handed Marr his lightsaber and then, piece by piece, donned the hardsuit. He felt like he was donning the archaic armor of the Clone Wars. He checked each joint seal as he went. When he missed something, Marr corrected it. Soon, Jaden was armored against outer space. He hooked his lightsaber to the outside of the suit.

  “Helmet on,” Marr said. “Test the seal.”

  Jaden pulled on the helmet, activated the electromagnetic seal. His breathing sounded loud in the dome of the helmet. The HUD on the faceplate showed a good seal at the neck and everywhere else.

  Marr tapped the helmet. “Comlink,” he said.

  Jaden tested it and found it worked fine.

  “You know how to operate the thruster controls?” Marr asked.

  Jaden nodded. A simple joystick array built into the right wrist provided propulsion control. He could control it with his thumb.

  Marr once more double-checked the suit’s joint seals.

  “I said it’s been a while,” Jaden said, “but I’ve done this a time or two. The joints are good.”

  “You’ve done it a time or two, but I’ve done it dozens of times. A seal can show green but be weak. That can pops a leak in the black, you’ll be dead before I can help.”

  “Right,” Jaden said, sobered. “We stay on live comm. Tell me right away when Khedryn is off the supply ship. Then tell me when he’s aboard Junker.”

  “Will do.” Marr thumped the suit on the shoulder. “You’re good.”

  Jaden turned, but Marr’s curse pulled him around.

  “One more thing,” Marr said, grabbing something out of his pocket. He unsealed Jaden’s helmet, removed it, and offered him a piece of chewstim.

  “For luck,” the Cerean said. “It’s tradition on this ship.”

  Jaden took it and popped it into his mouth.

  Marr put the helmet back on and resealed it, then circled Jaden, eyeing the suit. “You’re all green, Master.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  Jaden moved to the airlock, the boots of the hardsuit thumping on Junker’s deck. Marr opened the interior airlock door and Jaden stepped inside. Marr closed the door behind Jaden and then his voice sounded over the suit’s comlink, reverberating in the helmet.

  “I’ll be in the cockpit. May the Force be with you, Master.”

  Jaden activated the decompression sequence and prepared to open the outer door.

  “And with you, Marr.”

  As Khedryn watched, the Umbaran shifted in his chair and activated the comm. A female voice answered his hail. Khedryn used the opportunity to crawl over to Soldier. He said nothing, merely brandished his small knife. Soldier’s gaze hardened, but Khedryn shook his head to indicate that he intended no harm. He slit the tape around the clone’s ankles.

  “How close are you?” the Umbaran asked.

  “Nearly in-system,” the female voice answered.

  Khedryn put his mouth to the clone’s ear and said, “For Grace.”

  Soldier noticeably tensed at the mention of the little girl’s name. Khedryn wondered if the girl was Soldier’s daughter. Soldier turned so that Khedryn could get at the tape that bound his wrists.

  “What are you planning?” the female asked over the comm.

  “I’m planning to get Jaden Korr aboard the ship, then we take—”

  Khedryn slit the binding on the clone’s wrist, and when he did, the tip of his knife tapped the metal of the deck.

  The Umbaran spun in his seat and leapt to his feet, twin vibroblades appearing in his hands as if by magic.

  Khedryn clambered to his feet, his own inadequate knife in hand, and started to slide for the cockpit doors.

  “You!” the Umbaran said, and moved toward Khedryn.

  When Soldier stood, free of his bonds, the Umbaran stopped and his eyes widened. Khedryn almost grinned.

  “Umbaran,” Soldier said, his voice heavy with a promise of violence.

  For a moment, all three stood there, Khedryn in the door, the U
mbaran a few paces away, Soldier along the wall.

  The Umbaran’s eyes narrowed. The darkness around him deepened.

  An idea hit Khedryn.

  “Here!” he said, and tossed to Soldier one of the lightsabers he’d taken from the dead clones.

  Soldier snatched it out of midair and ignited the blade, bathing the cockpit in red light. “Hunter’s blade,” he said.

  The Umbaran shifted on his feet and the cockpit grew darker. Khedryn imagined energies he could not see swirling around him. The Umbaran stared at Soldier, at the blade Soldier held, and it began to thin, to sputter.

  “Not this time,” Soldier said between gritted teeth.

  The blade thickened, thinned, thickened, flickered, grew solid once more.

  Khedryn was bearing witness to a battle of wills that he did not understand.

  “Go,” Soldier said to Khedryn.

  “We take him together,” Khedryn said, holding the pathetic knife in his hand.

  Soldier’s lips curled with rage—not at Khedryn, but at the Umbaran. “Who are you to me, spacer? If Seer tells me to kill you after I kill the Umbaran, I will do exactly that. Go. Get off the ship. And do not follow us. Tell the Jedi I said that. Tell him not to follow us.”

  Khedryn understood none of that. “I freed you, Soldier—”

  “Go!”

  “Neither of you are getting off this ship,” the Umbaran said. The vibroblades in his hands began to hum, an answer to the hum of Soldier’s lightsaber.

  Khedryn looked at Soldier, at the Umbaran, out at the black.

  Junker was out there—Marr, Jaden.

  He turned and ran back the way he had come. Soldier would kill the Umbaran and care for Grace. Khedryn would convince Jaden to leave the clones alone, and they would return to Fhost to gamble and drink.

  Or not, if he knew Jaden.

  He reached the lift in moments, the clash of energized blades loud behind him. He did not slow. The doors opened; he piled in, hit the button for the cargo deck, and started down. The lift moved far slower than he would have liked. He did not know the layout of the ship, but he figured he could access the escape pods from the cargo deck. He just needed to find them.

  JUNKER’S AIRLOCK VENTED, THE EXTERIOR DOOR OPENED, and Jaden faced the void. He put his thumb on the thruster control stick and propelled himself into space. A single burst set him in motion and inertia did the rest. In moments he was floating free, hundreds of meters from Junker. The freighter looked tiny against the vast background of stars.

  “I’m clear,” he said.

  “I have you,” Marr answered.

  “Khedryn?”

  “Not yet,” Marr said.

  “Hail the supply ship. Tell him I’m aborting if Khedryn isn’t released immediately.”

  Jaden used the thrusters to stop his movement and hold his position. The supply ship hung in space, small at ten kilometers’ distance. The asteroid belt in the system looked like dark clouds floating between Jaden and the system’s orange star. He felt pensive, as if something were about to happen.

  “Is something odd going on, Marr?”

  “Not that I can tell, Master.”

  Nyss felt Soldier fighting against his power, the clone’s anger a match for his emptiness. Eyeing the red line of Soldier’s lightsaber, its glow a direct affront to his ability, Nyss knew that he had to escape. Perhaps he and Syll together could completely cut Soldier off from the Force, but Nyss could not do it alone.

  At Soldier’s feet, Seer stirred, groaned. Soldier looked down and Nyss seized the opportunity, pelting out of the cockpit. Soldier roared and gave chase.

  Ten strides down the hallway, Nyss hit the button to summon the lift and spun around to face Soldier’s onslaught. Soldier unleashed two-handed overhand slashes that Nyss parried with his blades. The cortosis coating his blades not only allowed them to withstand the slash of a lightsaber—at least for a few passes—they also caused Soldier’s weapon to spark wildly. Contact with cortosis for a long enough time could temporarily short out a lightsaber, but Soldier’s blade moved so quickly that the contact between the weapons was momentary at best. But eventually, Soldier’s lightsaber would destroy Nyss’s blades.

  Nyss dropped to the floor and swept a kick at Soldier’s legs, but the clone anticipated the attack, leapt over the sweep, and slashed downward at Nyss’s leg.

  Nyss pulled his leg close—the lightsaber put a gash in the deck, showering the corridor in sparks—rolled aside, and rode the momentum to his feet. The clone growled and lunged at Nyss, his blade a whistling red line of slashes, stabs, and cuts. Sweating, panting, Nyss positioned his vibroblades to form a wall, answering every blow of the clone with a parry. He did not even try to counterattack. He was trying to hold his ground and play for time.

  The door to the lift opened behind him.

  Bursting into motion, Nyss unleashed a desperate series of stabs, blocking the clone’s lightsaber out wide with one vibroblade and stabbing at his chest with the other. The clone flipped backward, temporarily disengaging, and Nyss ran for the lift. When he got inside, he slammed his hand against the button to close the doors.

  Soldier roared, bounding after him.

  The doors started to close, but too damned slowly.

  Desperate, Nyss flung one of his blades through the shrinking opening between the doors. Soldier, unprepared for the throw, pulled up short and deflected the vibroblade with his lightsaber.

  The doors closed and the turbolift started downward.

  The red line of Soldier’s blade shot through the metal of the doors. As the lift descended, the weapon cut a sparking vertical gash in the side—but in a few seconds, the lift had moved out of reach.

  Nyss did not let himself relax. He paced the lift as it descended to the cargo bay. The supply ship had four escape pods, and he knew where he needed to go to get access to them.

  The lift reached the cargo deck and the doors parted. An impact on the roof of the turbolift caused the entire car to vibrate. Soldier.

  Nyss crouched low as the red line of a lightsaber scythed out of the ceiling and began to cut a circular hole in the roof. Sparks and slagged metal rained down.

  “You are not getting away from me!” Soldier shouted. “And if you’ve harmed Grace …”

  He left the threat unspoken, but Nyss understood it well enough. He bolted out of the lift and headed for the escape pods.

  Khedryn doubled back for the second time. Sweat dripped into his eyes. His breathing was coming too fast. He had to be going in the right direction this time, didn’t he? The darkness made it hard to know whether he was retracing the same path. The cargo compartments and the corridors connecting them all looked the same.

  He saw writing on the wall ahead, got close enough to read it in the dim glow of the emergency lights. Stenciled letters pointed him to the emergency escape pods. He breathed a sigh of relief and ran, following the arrows. He reached an intersection and turned.

  On the far end of a long compartment, a metal stairway descended ten meters into a bay lined with four doors—the escape pods. He hurried for the stairs. He’d be aboard Junker in moments.

  Something whistled past his ear, pinged into the bulkhead, and ricocheted to the floor. He froze and looked down to see what it was: a crossbow quarrel.

  He whirled, cursing, and saw the Umbaran running toward him.

  Khedryn turned and ran, hunching to make himself small. Another shot pinged off the bulkhead. The Umbaran must have had some kind of repeating mechanism on the crossbow. He darted across the large compartment. The distance might as well have been a parsec. He didn’t figure there was any way he could make it.

  He zigzagged as he ran, wincing at the expectation that he’d be shot from behind at any moment.

  A shout and growl sounded from over his shoulder and he looked back. Soldier barreled around the corner behind the Umbaran, his lightsaber lighting the way before him.

  The Umbaran saw Soldier, too. He slung his crossbow
and ran for the escape pods.

  Khedryn reached the stairs, pelted down them, and hit the first escape pod door. It opened and he ran in. He heard the Umbaran tearing down the stairs behind him. Khedryn wished he could have launched all the pods, leaving the Umbaran there to face Soldier, but there was no time.

  The pod door hissed shut. Khedryn stared through the tiny viewport in the thick door and made an obscene gesture at the Umbaran as he ran by.

  Afterward he strapped himself into one of the four seats, activated the pod’s systems, and hit the emergency launch button.

  “Three, two, one,” said the computerized voice, and the pod shot out of the belly of the supply ship like a blaster shot.

  It galled Nyss to flee, but he was at a disadvantage fighting Soldier. Not only could Soldier use the Force to resist his power, but Nyss couldn’t just kill Soldier—he had to keep him alive.

  Nyss would need his sister to capture the clone. They could regroup aboard the scout flyer, develop a new plan. He punched the button to open one of the escape pods and the doors hissed open.

  Soldier’s heavy tread thumped down the stairs after him, the hum of his lightsaber the harbinger of his wrath.

  Nyss hurried into the pod, closed the door, and started the emergency launch sequence. He focused his mind on the hole of his existence, the emptiness, and let it spread from him.

  Soldier appeared on the other side of the door, his bearded face filled with rage. He raised his flickering lightsaber for a stab into the pod’s door, a blow that would render the pod unspaceworthy, would force Nyss to face him.

  The hole Nyss projected deepened. He strained to make it as dark a void as he had ever before managed.

  Soldier stabbed the blade into the viewport, but only the hilt slammed into the transparisteel. For a moment, surprise supplanted rage.

  Nyss’s power had suppressed the blade’s crystal.

  Soldier slammed a fist into the viewport, his mouth open in a snarl.

  Nyss turned away and sagged against the door as the pod shot away from the supply ship, from Soldier.

  The velocity of the spherical craft pinned Nyss to the wall for a moment. Breathing heavily, he activated his comlink.