Crosscurrent (20 page)

Five thousand years.

Thoughts bounced around in his mind, unconnected, inchoate. His mind felt unmoored.

Five thousand years.

He struggled to focus, to analyze the situation, but he knew nothing. He had no information with which to perform an analysis. He had no knowledge of the state of the galaxy. What of the Sith Empire? The war with the Jedi? His homeworld?

It occurred to him that he and his crew were artifacts, living fossils heaved from the strata of a misjump.

“Anything could have happened in five thousand years.”

The droid said nothing, merely cocked its head as if intrigued by Saes’s reaction.

Saes’s connection to the Force began to ground him. Five thousand years had passed, but the Force remained constant. He fought down the panic.

“Say nothing of this to anyone,” he said to 8L6. “I must think.”

The droid nodded, its servos whirring, and turned back to its station.

“Blades are entering the rings in pursuit,” Llerd said,
the eagerness in his voice betraying a desire to see something die.

Saes realized that Relin would be as lost as he, two men of purpose suddenly left purposeless. Neither had an Order to which to report. The Battle of Kirrek was long over. Yet it suddenly seemed more important than ever that he kill Relin.

In the need for that act he found his purpose.

Meanwhile, he had a damaged but functioning dreadnought, a hold filled with Lignan, and a full crew of soldiers. He had little doubt he could make his presence felt. Once he understood the state of the galaxy, he could make contact with the current Sith Order, if it existed. He could use the Lignan as a way either to secure a place in the hierarchy or seize control of the Sith himself.

And if an Order no longer existed, he would remake it.

Finding his mental footing, he said to Llerd, “Do not monitor or scan local subspace channels. Understood?”

Llerd looked puzzled but acknowledged the order.

Saes did not want local comm chatter, should there be any, to prematurely indicate to the crew what had happened to
Harbinger
.

He turned his eyes back to the viewscreen, watching his Blades hunt his former Master through a storm of stone and ice.

He wondered, in passing, who else was aboard the ship with which Relin had docked. Not other Jedi, surely.

Kell had watched, his spirit aflame, as the damaged cruiser streaked out of the darkness toward
Junker
, as fighters of a kind Kell had never before seen launched from the belly of the cruiser and pursued
Junker
into
the thick bands of rock and ice that caged the blue gas giant.

“Lines intersect and grow tangled here,” he said. His heart was racing.

He needed only to unknot them and revelation awaited. This he knew. And he knew Jaden Korr to be the key.

He used a nose cam to take pictures of
Junker
, of the cruiser, of the fighters, and stored them in a holocrystal. He watched
Junker
dart toward the rings, watched the sleek fighters follow. He did not fear that Jaden would die in the rings. Jaden’s destiny was to die while Kell fed on his soup.

He scanned all frequencies until he picked up the signal from the moon that had started it all, the signal that would, in the end, summon Kell to the altar of understanding.

He amplified it, let the heartbeat of its repeating cadence fill the cockpit. Having performed services for the Empire decades earlier, he recognized the signal as Imperial in origin.
Predator
possessed an advanced decryption package, and Kell loosed it upon the message. In moments he had it decrypted.

“Extreme danger,” said a female voice. “Do not approach. Extreme danger. Do not approach.”

Pelting through
Junker
’s corridors, Khedryn led Relin to the tractor beam control compartment at the rear of the ship. A small, rectangular viewport provided a view outside the ship. They could see the fighters from
Harbinger
gaining on them, narrow slivers of black and silver metal hurtling through space toward
Junker
with ill intent. Khedryn noted the laser cannons mounted on each wing. The cruiser loomed behind the fighters, huge and dark.

“Lose the escape pod, Marr,” Khedryn ordered over his comlink. “I don’t want Jaden flying my girl with a sack on her back.”

“Copy that,” said Marr.

Seconds later they saw Relin’s escape pod spinning through space in
Junker
’s wake. One of the Blades fired its wing-mounted laser cannons, and green lines turned the pod into flame and scrap.

“Stang, those things are fast,” said Khedryn.

“Blades are flying cannons,” Relin said. “They have low-powered deflectors. One hit is all it takes.”

“TIE fighters,” Khedryn said. “Sith designs are the same no matter the time.”

“Do you have deflectors?” Relin asked, strapping himself in at the console.

“Didn’t I already say that this is a salvage ship?” Khedryn said, watching the Blades grow larger. “I have nothing that can even slow that kind of firepower.”

Relin examined the controls. “Can the tractor beam be aimed with any precision?”

“Aimed, yes.” Khedryn showed the Jedi the scan and lock display, the fire controls. “But precision? I use it for towing. It’s not a weapon.”

“It will be today. How do I communicate with the cockpit?”

Khedryn thought he knew what Relin intended. “Tell me you’re not planning to do what I think you’re planning to do? We’ll be in the midst of the rings. The mass shifts alone—”

“If they follow us into the thick of the rings, we’ll need to try something. The communicator, Captain.”

Khedryn swallowed his protest. He activated the onboard intercom.

“Cockpit, do you read?”

“Clear, Captain,” Marr answered. “Fighters are closing. We are in the outskirts of the rings.”

In his mind’s eye, Khedryn imagined the rings around the gas giant. Taken together, they were a storm of enormous size—five kilometers thick, more than a thousand kilometers wide, and riddled with chunks of rock and ice that varied in size from pieces less than a meter to mammoth hulks 150 meters in diameter.
Junker
’s deflectors could handle the tiny particles, but if Jaden hit anything of size …

“Don’t let that Jedi ruin my ship, Marr,” Khedryn said. “Increase power to the forward deflector—for whatever good it will do.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“You don’t ruin my ship, either,” Khedryn said to Relin.

Relin ignored him, inhaled, closed his eyes, and seemed to lose himself in meditation for a moment.

Through the viewport, Khedryn watched the Blades swoop in behind
Junker
. The slits of their cockpit covers looked like a cyclopean eye squinting to aim.

Laser cannons fired and green lines cut the space between the two ships. Jaden dived
Junker
so hard and fast that Khedryn’s stomach waved a greeting to his throat.

“I told you not to ruin my ship!” he said into the intercom. He scrambled into a seat and strapped himself in as Jaden pulled hard on the stick and put
Junker
’s nose up.

Relin snapped open his eyes.

“Jaden, when we get into the rings, I plan to use the tractor beam against the Blades. Can you compensate?”

A long pause. “You tell me when and which way to expect the drag. I can compensate.”

“Copy that.” To Khedryn, Relin said over his shoulder, “Maybe they won’t follow us in.”

Khedryn nodded but knew better. He had not been born lucky.

A patter of ice and small rocks, the steady beat of a snare drum, announced their entry into the fringe of the rings. Khedryn felt
Junker
decelerate and allowed himself a relieved breath. At least Jaden wasn’t crazy enough to try to run the rings at full speed.

The Blades devoured the distance between them. They moved in and out of view as
Junker
flew deeper into the rings and the debris field thickened. One of the Blades hit a chunk of ice, spun wildly, and exploded in flame against a spinning rock that reminded Khedryn in shape of a clenched fist.

Ever-larger chunks of ice and rock whirled by, a blizzard that would allow Jaden no room for even a single mistake.

“Stang,” Khedryn said, clutching the base of his seat in a white-knuckled grip. He reminded himself to breathe and tried to slow his heart.

“Getting thick now,” Marr said.

“Stop stating the obvious!” Khedryn shouted, but forgot to activate the intercom. It was just as well.

As if to make Marr’s point, another of the Blades struck a chunk of rock and exploded into a shower of flaming metal.

“Ready yourselves,” Jaden said, and
Junker
began to spin.

Jaden dwelled in the comforting warmth of the Force. He barely saw the swirl of ice and rock whirling through the space before
Junker
. He felt each rock, each bit of ice, large or small, as if it were an extension of his body. All were connected to one another and he was connected to them. He abided in the cohesiveness of the universe, the ship an extension of his will.

Action preceded conscious thought. His hands were a blur on the console.
Junker
dived, climbed, spun, wheeled, and careered through the empty spaces between ice and rock. The patter of particles against the cockpit viewport sounded like applause.

Laserfire cut glowing lines along their port side and Jaden turned starboard, dived, then burst out from the bottom of rings and into open space. For a moment he caught the glimpse of the frozen moon of his vision, a pearl against the black of space, before he veered hard right and lost sight of it.

Laserfire once more turned the sky green, crisscrossed the space before them, cut the darkness aft and starboard. Jaden put
Junker
into a spiraling roll as he nosed the ship back up through the rings.

Marr, his voice tight, spoke into the intercom. “What do you see back there?”

“Two are down,” Khedryn said, his voice as sharp as a vibroblade’s edge. “The rest are in pursuit. These jocks are good.”

Jaden knew. Several of them were Force-sensitive.

But they were not as good as he was.

The ship’s internal compensators could not keep up with
Junker
’s rapid shifts and the g’s pasted Khedryn to his seat. His vision clouded now and again when blood rushed too quickly to his head or too quickly out of it. Jaden had
Junker
wheeling so wildly through space that Khedryn feared for the ship’s integrity, never mind the rocks.

“Hold together, girl. Hold together.”

The Blades appeared and disappeared in the viewport, flickering in and out of sight like a faulty image on one of The Hole’s vidscreens. Rocks and bits of ice large and small moved in and out of his field of vision with dizzying
speed. The rapidly changing visual field made Khedryn nauseous. Before him, Relin seemed as impassive as stone.

“Ever gone angling?” Relin said softly to no one. His hand gripped the tractor beam controls.

Junker
spun and veered hard to starboard. Khedryn tried not to think about the stress the vessel would endure between Jaden’s piloting and Relin’s use of the tractor beam.

“Engaging the tractor beam, Jaden,” Relin said. “Drag on starboard.”

He aimed the tractor beam at a large planetoid in the rings.
Junker
lurched hard and slowed as the beam tethered it to the chunk of rock.
Junker
’s momentum pulled the rock out of its orbit, and Relin held it for only a fraction of a second before cutting it loose.

Junker
lurched hard the other way but Jaden somehow compensated, and the rock, now spinning, crashed into another large rock, then another, and the leading Blades, unready for the sudden movement of the planetoids, wheeled out of the way too late. Two more vanished in a spray of metal and flames.

“Another two down,” Khedryn said into the intercom, his voice cracking.

Laserfire split the sky, exploding a large rock to
Junker
’s aft, spraying the ship with particulates. More laserfire lit up the sky. Jaden wheeled down, spun, pulled up hard. Relin aimed the tractor beam again, latched on to one of the Blades themselves.
Junker
lost velocity from the drag and the other Blades gained.

“Port,” Relin said to Jaden, and used the beam to foul the Blade’s trajectory. With no room for error, the fighter hit a rock and broke into two flaming bits, one of which spun into another Blade, sending it into a rock.

The rest of the Blades, swooping and diving in and
out of the field of rock and ice, fired. Jaden nosed up but one of the beams hit
Junker
along the port side, shaking the entire ship. The lights flickered and an alarm rang.

“I cannot keep this up for much longer,” Jaden said over the intercom. Khedryn could hear the stress in his voice.

Khedryn agreed. It was only a matter of time before they caught a laser. He spoke loud enough to be heard on the intercom.

“Jaden, can you get us out of the fighters’ sight line for a moment?”

Jaden did not hesitate. “Yes.”

“What are you going to do?” Relin asked.

“I am going to space what’s in my hold. It’ll hit a rock, explode, maybe fool the fighters if we can stay out of their sight. They can’t scan us in here. We make them think we’re dead, then lay low.”

“I’ll have to accelerate to full to open some space,” Jaden said. “It will get iffy.”

“Do it,” Khedryn said, his mouth dry. “And the price of my cargo is added to the price you owe me.”

Relin said into the intercom, “A hard dive out the bottom, we space the cargo, then a hard climb back in. We’ll have moments.”

“Good thought,” Jaden said.

Laserfire exploded a nearby rock, spraying
Junker
with debris. Jaden climbed hard.

“Will what’s in the hold explode with enough pop?” Relin asked Khedryn.

“I don’t know,” Khedryn said. He had speeders in there. They’d blow, though the thought of spacing his Searing made him almost as ill as Jaden’s flying.

Relin pulled two oval-shaped metal devices from his pocket as laserfire shook the ship. “These are mag-grenades. Attach them to a speeder and press that
button. They’ll blow when the speeder does. Understood?”