“I feel it, too,” Marr said, blinking as if against a stiff wind. “It feels angry, but also … there is sadness, despair.”
Marr had put his finger on it. Ordinarily the dark side felt to Jaden like manifest rage, its touch a storm of anger, but this felt more subdued, an anger mellowed by disappointment and suffering. He’d felt something akin to it from Soldier.
“Strange,” Jaden said, thoughtful. He erected a mental shield to block it out.
“Neither the cylinder nor the tether are made of metal or any identifiable composite,” Marr said, scanning both.
Jaden eyed the structure, unable to shake the image of the planet as an egg, the cylinder and tether the tail of a beast breaking its way out of the planetary shell, a world birthing a monster into a universe.
“It is organic,” Marr said, sounding surprised.
Jaden’s flesh goose-pimpled.
“Well, maybe it’s organic,” Marr said.
“What do you mean?” Jaden asked.
Marr pored over the data the scanners fed to his monitor. “It shows characteristics of being organic, but there are organized power lines within it. Even power nodes and relays. But they’re like veins and arteries as much as conduits. And the whole thing is hollow, filled with openings that look like corridors and rooms. I think that tether is a lift or … some kind of pathway down to the surface.”
“Stang,” Khedryn said. “It’s a ship of some kind?”
Marr shook his head. “More like a station, I’d say. But I don’t see how it could have been built this way. Everything is sealed and there are no … seams or welds or anything like that.”
“So what are you saying?” Khedryn asked.
Marr looked up from his monitor. “I think it was grown.”
R-6 let out a long whoop of surprise.
“Grown!” Khedryn exclaimed. “How could it have been grown?”
“Like a tree,” Marr said.
“That’s a big kriffin’ tree,” Khedryn said.
“I think it’s Rakatan,” Jaden said, voicing his thoughts. From what little information the Jedi archives contained, he knew the Rakatans had used mechano-organic technology infused with the dark side, at least during some of their reign. It seemed to fit.
“There’s no way to know for certain,” Marr said.
Khedryn pointed out the canopy. “Look! There’s the clones’ ship.”
The arrow of the ship hung in space beside the cylinder. A docking port extended from the cylinder, connecting to one of the ship’s airlocks; tendrils stretched from the cylinder to cradle the underside of the ship. It reminded Jaden of a fly trapped in a web.
“I don’t see another docking station,” Khedryn said. “There’s nowhere to put in.”
“Keep Junker at a safe distance. Marr and I will take Flotsam in close,” Jaden said, referring to Junker’s boat. “We’ll find a way in.”
Khedryn turned in his seat and fixed Jaden with his asymmetrical gaze. “I’m not staying behind.”
“Khedryn,” Jaden said, but Khedryn held up a hand to cut him off.
“You don’t give orders on this ship, Jaden. Besides, you two left me behind back on Fhost and look where that got us.”
The rebuke stung Jaden, and it must have showed.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Khedryn said.
“It’s all right,” Jaden said. “But listen. The clones are powerful Force users and this station was built using the power of the dark side. I don’t want you to take this wrong, but I don’t think this is a situation where you can be of much help to us.”
At Khedryn’s hurt expression, he added, “This time I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Of course you did,” Khedryn said. “And you might be right. But Marr ain’t exactly a Jedi Master.” He turned in his seat and reached out a hand to Marr. “No offense.”
Marr shrugged it off. “None taken. You’re right. I’m … new.”
Jaden put a hand on Khedryn’s shoulder. “But Marr’s better equipped to deal with what we’re going to face there, Khedryn. The clones came here looking for something.”
“Mother,” Khedryn said.
“Right. And … I think it’s best if you stay aboard, at least for now.”
Khedryn shook Jaden’s hand loose. “You’re trying to manage me. I don’t like it. You can’t shield me from danger, Jedi. I’ve been living on the edge my whole life.”
Jaden smiled, trying to use levity to diffuse the situation. “Seen a lot of organic space stations made by the Rakatans with dark-side technology, have you?”
Khedryn smiled sheepishly at that. “Point taken.”
“Look, you know I respect you and your capabilities. But this is something Marr and I should do alone. Besides, like before—well, I mean, like I intended before—we need a pilot to remain on Junker in case we need a rapid evacuation. We know the clones are aboard, but that’s all we know. We might need to leave in a hurry.”
“The droid can fly her,” Khedryn said.
“A real pilot,” Jaden said, and R-6 chirped indignantly. “No offense, Ar-Six.”
“Now he’s insulting you, too, droid,” Khedryn said. “Well, it’s been a real good few minutes in this cockpit, hasn’t it.” He turned to Marr. “You agree with this?”
Marr kept his face expressionless. “I do.”
Khedryn blew a heavy sigh. “Stang, but things are changing around here. Looks like it’s you and me then, droid.”
R-6 hummed sympathetically.
“All right,” Jaden said. “Let’s go, Marr.”
As they left the cockpit, he said to Marr, “He’ll be all right.”
“He will. You know, I’m in over my head here, too, Master.”
Jaden grinned. “That makes three of us, then. But let’s see if we can’t swim awhile anyway.”
They took position in Flotsam’s cockpit, ran a quick diagnostic, and got on the comm with Khedryn. The ship’s boat detached from Junker and floated free in space. Jaden engaged the engines and the small craft darted toward the enormous station.
“I’m curious as to what that tether connects to below the surface,” Marr said.
“As am I,” Jaden answered, imagining a hollow planet filled with Rakatan technology.
“I’ll swing Junker into the fringe of the asteroid belt,” Khedryn said. “Just to stay out of sight.”
Jaden heard R-6 beep and whistle indignantly.
“Right. The droid and I will take Junker into the belt.”
“Good thought,” Jaden said. The Umbaran or his allies could still find them somehow, though that seemed unlikely. Still, there was no reason to leave Junker exposed in open space.
Flotsam closed the distance to the station.
“I think we can assume the clones are not in their ship,” Marr said.
“Agreed. This is what they were looking for. They’re inside somewhere.”
“There has to be another docking port,” Marr said, studying the readouts of the station. “The station is too large for just the one.”
“Also agreed. Let’s get closer.”
Beside them, Junker’s engines flared and carried the freighter toward the black line of the asteroid belt. Jaden took Flotsam in close.
The nearness of the station caused the wash of dark-side energy to intensify. Jaden walled it off and kept it at bay. He eyed Marr. “Are you all right?”
Marr nodded. “I am. It feels unfocused.”
Jaden was impressed. Marr’s sensitivity was acute. “It does.”
Had the source of the power been a sentient being, Jaden would have assumed its attention to be elsewhere. As it was, he figured the technology used to build the station just emitted low-intensity dark-side energy in all directions.
“We’re nearing the belt,” Khedryn said. “Listen, should I say ‘Good luck’ or ‘May the Force be with you’? I’m confused now, what with all the changes.…”
Jaden and Marr both laughed.
“ ?
??Good luck’ will do,” Jaden said.
“Good luck, then,” Khedryn said, then more seriously, “And may the Force be with you both.”
“And with you,” Marr answered.
“We’ll be listening on this frequency,” Khedryn said.
Flotsam closed on the enormous Rakatan cylinder. Jaden piloted the boat in close, studying the smooth, glistening surface of the cylinder through the cockpit’s canopy. As they flew over it, the surface rippled and bulged, not unlike the skin of the sick clones.
“What was that?” Jaden asked.
Marr studied his monitors.
Jaden braced, imagined the cylinder forming a giant appendage and swatting the boat into space. But it didn’t, and the bulge in the cylinder rode along its surface as might a wave, matching vectors with Flotsam. Thin lines of white light glowed within it.
Realization struck. It must have hit Marr similarly.
“Slow down, Master,” Marr said, but Jaden was already disengaging the engines and stopping their forward momentum with the thrusters. The bulge in the cylinder’s surface stopped when Flotsam stopped. It grew larger, and an appendage extended outward from the station toward the ship.
“There’s our docking port,” said Jaden.
“Amazing technology,” Marr said.
Jaden maneuvered Flotsam with thrusters until its docking ring faced the station. He moved the boat closer and the bulge expanded, reached across the short distance, formed itself into a tube, and connected to Flotsam’s docking ring. More bulges formed in the cylindrical station, stretched into tendrils, and extended under Flotsam, holding it in place. The boat settled softly into the station’s grasp.
Jaden and Marr shared a look, unstrapped themselves, checked their gear, and headed back to the docking ring. The hatch twisted open.
A blast of warm, humid air from the station struck them. It carried the faint, sickly-sweet smell of organic decay.
Hair-thin filaments of light lined the tube, like veins. They flashed at intervals. Marr studied them, and Jaden imagined him measuring the frequency of the flashes, trying to find meaning in the pattern.
“The filaments are clearly a means of transmitting power, and probably information,” the Cerean mused.
They stepped into the tube. The surface gave somewhat under Jaden’s boots, like soft rubber. Marr put a hand on the wall, and a spiderweb of filaments glowed in the wall at the point where his hand touched it.
“It’s warm and sensitive to touch,” he said. He removed his hand and the glow from the filaments ended. “Those filaments are everywhere, integrated into the structure. It’s possible the entire structure is nothing but the filaments, so fine and closely knit that the walls appear to be a coherent solid.”
Jaden felt the dark-side energies growing more focused. He held his lightsaber hilt in his hand. “The Order’s scientists can study this later, Marr. Right now, let’s find the clones.”
“Right, Master.”
They moved through the docking tube and into the station proper. A vast, high-ceilinged corridor extended to their left and right. The glowing filaments meshed into small clusters above them, lighting the corridor in a dim, greenish glow.
Jaden let the Force fill him, closed his eyes, and reached out with his consciousness for the clones. He did not perceive them, felt only the inchoate, dispersed dark-side power contained in the station. The amount of the power was striking, but it was diffuse, like soft rainfall, like air, something all around them but only barely noticeable. Were it concentrated, it would have been a tsunami, a cyclone.
“Come on,” he said, and started in the direction of the tether. Perhaps the clones had gone down to the planet.
Before they’d moved thirty meters, cysts formed in the walls, hundreds of them, before and behind them, on both sides of the corridors.
“What are those?” Marr asked.
Thin slits formed in the cysts, split open, and expelled the mucus-covered, mummified remains of hundreds of sentient beings. They stood unevenly on bony legs as their empty eye sockets fixed on Jaden and Marr.
“Back to back,” Jaden said.
The clawed hands of the dead extended toward them and, as one, the feet of hundreds of the ancient dead lurched and plodded toward them.
Nyss and the Iteration said nothing as the scout flyer emerged from hyperspace. Immediately Nyss engaged the ship’s baffles. Most scanners would pass directly over the ship without noting it. A soft alarm indicated a radiation danger, so Nyss adjusted the deflector to filter out the harmful rays.
“I can feel the dark side of the Force,” the Iteration said. “It’s faint, but present.”
Nyss grunted acknowledgment. He cared little for what the Iteration felt.
“You don’t speak much,” the Iteration said.
Nyss did not look at the Iteration when he replied. “You are not someone to whom I wish to speak. In a standard hour you’ll be someone else.” He looked over at the clone and grinned harshly. “We’ll speak then.”
The Iteration shifted in his seat and said nothing, but Nyss could sense his discomfort. He supposed the Iteration lived in his own kind of hole. He’d been “alive” for mere hours and was, in effect, to let himself die soon. Had he not been appropriately programmed by the One Sith’s scientists, Nyss might have worried about him balking.
He scanned the system and picked up a ship, the freighter flown by the Jedi and the spacers. It hung on the fringe of the system’s asteroid belt.
Nyss engaged the ion engines and sped toward it. As they neared, the Iteration said, “The Jedi is not aboard that ship. If he was, I would sense him.”
“Then we’re free to blow it from space,” Nyss said.
He approached from an angle above the freighter and brought his weapons online.
An explosion caused Junker to lurch forward. R-6 whooped in alarm, and Khedryn grabbed at the stick as he nearly slammed his head into the instrument panel.
“What the hell was that?” he shouted.
The force of the explosion caused the ship to hurtle toward a nearby asteroid. The oblong ball of rock filled his field of vision, the details of its cratered surface looming larger and larger in his sight. Khedryn cursed and engaged the reverse thrusters.
Another explosion rocked the ship, and the red line of a laser cut the space beside them, slammed into an asteroid, and blew it to pieces. Shards of rock rained against Junker’s hull, pelting it with metal and stone. Khedryn had probably saved the ship through pure luck, reversing the thrusters at just the right moment.
“Someone is shooting at us!” he said, and R-6 whooped again. He directed deflector power to the rear and fired up the engines as an alarm began to blare in the cockpit. His instruments showed him a fire in the engine room.
“Get that fire out, droid,” he said to R-6.
He engaged the engines as another shot skinned Junker along the top. A boom sounded and for a fleeting, terrifying moment the entire instrument panel lost power, but backup brought it online fast. Khedryn shoved the stick forward and accelerated the ship deeper into the asteroid belt.
He checked the scanner as he flew, trying to get the signature of their attacker. He had it in a moment—the scout ship.
“The Umbaran,” he said.
The Umbaran had followed them somehow and his ship, like the creature himself, must have had some kind of cloaking or baffling technology. Khedryn had not even noticed him coming out of hyperspace. Junker had no weapons and Khedryn had no crew. He had to get out of there.
Hunching in his seat, he weaved his way through the asteroid field. His caf cup clattered to the deck and spilled its contents. He cursed and pulled the stick about wildly—spinning, speeding up, slowing down, diving, climbing. He remembered Jaden doing something similar, at full speed, and never touching an asteroid. But Khedryn did not have the Force to help him. He had only his instincts and his training. Sweat soaked him already.
R-6’s beeps and hoots of distress made fo
r a distracting sound track to the breakneck maneuvering. More red lines cut space beside them, and another asteroid exploded into bits. The blast wave sent Junker sidelong into another asteroid, and the impact jarred Khedryn’s teeth. The metal of the hull shrieked. Khedryn cursed again and again.
“I have a damned droid aboard but no weapons installed. Got that exactly backward, didn’t I? If we live through this, I’m fixing that at our next port of call.”
R-6 beeped agreement. Khedryn saw that the droid had remotely extinguished the fire in the engine room.
Another impact shook the freighter, another. Khedryn could not tell if the lasers were hitting him or if he was bumping into asteroids.
To R-6, he said, “Raise Jaden and Marr. Tell them the Umbaran is in the system.”
R-6 let loose with a frantic barrage of droidspeak that Khedryn did not understand, though he could tell the droid was either frustrated or alarmed. He checked the instrument panel and immediately saw why. The Umbaran’s attack had knocked out their transceiver. They could not communicate with Jaden and Marr. Junker was mute. And without the ship’s transceiver to amplify the transmission, their personal comlinks would not work except at very close range.
More laser blasts cut through space, caused Junker to veer, and sent them pelting toward a large asteroid. R-6 gave a long, high-pitched, distressed whoop while Khedryn pulled back on the stick and got Junker’s stern up. The belly of the ship skimmed the top of the asteroid, probably losing a layer of hull. Khedryn cursed again and, with nothing else for it, accelerated Junker to full.
* * *
Nyss focused on the glow of the freighter’s engines before him, following the YT’s movements as the two ships danced through the asteroid field. The YT’s pilot was good and the freighter maneuvered more easily without its ship’s boat. Nyss’s firing computer could not get a lock. The lasers had grazed the ship a couple times, had had a couple of near misses, but the confines of the asteroid belt made it difficult to establish a firing line.
“Scan to find the ship’s boat,” Nyss said to the Iteration, and the clone bent over the scanner console.
The YT dove and Nyss pushed the stick forward to follow. A huge asteroid floated before him and he pulled up rapidly, dragging the belly of the scout flyer across its surface and causing him to veer to starboard. He righted the ship, wheeled back to port, and tried to get a fix on the YT. He saw its engines below him, deeper in the asteroid field, and started to head down.