Star Wars Riptide

A CYLINDER AS LARGE AS A STAR CRUISER HUNG IN GEOSYNCHRONOUS orbit over the rocky face of the dark side of the planet. The cylinder tapered to a point at one end, fattened to a rounded end on the other. In form, it reminded Jaden of a kind of shell. Its surface, the deep greenish black of ocean depths, was smooth, without any visible viewports or docking stations.

The narrow end of the cylinder faced away from the planet, toward the system’s star, while the wide end faced the planet’s surface. A thick tether of the same green material extended from the wide end, reached all the way to the planet’s surface, and vanished in a dimple of the rocky crust.

“Looks like the damned planet has a tail,” Khedryn said, and Jaden agreed.

The entire structure emitted dark-side power, a breeze of evil wafting into space, polluting the entire system. This power felt different, though, a flavor of the dark side that Jaden had never before encountered.

“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 for 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.

“Wait,” the Iteration said. “I found it. And something else.”

The Iteration’s tone caused Nyss to pull up and slow the ship. At that speed, he maneuvered easily through the slow-moving asteroids of the field, but the freighter vanished from sight, lost amid the floating rocks.

“There, above the nearest planet,” the Iteration said.

“I don’t see it,” Nyss said, looking out the cockpit.

“Get above the belt.”

Nyss saw the scan readout in his HUD, which indicated a huge structure in geosynchronous orbit above the rocky surface of a desolate planet. He pulled the flyer above the plane of the asteroid belt and caused the image in the transparisteel canopy to magnify.

There, he saw it clearly—an enormous, greenish lozenge floating above the planet, connected to the surface by a miles-long shaft. He did not need further scans to know that the station was a mechano-organic construct. He recognized the telltale signs of Rakatan technology, the same technology reflected in the mindspears he carried.

“What is that?” the Iteration asked.

“A Rakatan station,” Nyss said.

The Iteration did not respond. Perhaps his memory implants did not include anything about the Rakatan Infinite Empire.

Nyss saw two ships docked to the station: the medical supply ship hijacked by the clones, and the small ship’s boat that had been attached to the YT freighter.

Jaden Korr and the Prime were both aboard the station, it seemed.

He gave one last look back for the YT, saw nothing, fired the engines to full, and shot across space toward the station.

Jaden ignited his yellow blade and Marr activated his purple one. Among the walking dead Jaden noted humans, Rodians, Kaleesh, and a dozen other species, many of which he did not recognize. Thin lines glowed under their flesh, the same glowing filaments that lined the walls. Somehow they were connected to the station, or the station was connected to them.

“Let the Force flow through you,” Jaden said to Marr.

The dead picked up speed, their shambling stride giving way to a faster walk. Their mouths were open but no sound emerged. They were an army of clawed hands and teeth.

Jaden fell into the Force as they approached. He unleashed a blast of power that struck the leading corpses and they exploded in a shower of bone and dried flesh. Marr did the same, managing to knock several to the ground.

Again Jaden unleased a blast, again destroying corpses by the dozens. And then the dead were upon them: empty eyes, clawed fingers, teeth, and the swirl of dark-side energy that animated them.

Jaden whirled among them, his yellow blade a scythe harvesting the dead. He kept one eye on Marr as he slew, watching his apprentice slash with his blade, fire his blaster, slash, stab, and fire. Jaden decapitated a corpse and loosed a blast of energy that exploded another five. His weapon rose and fell, rose and fell. He lost count of how many he felled, how many Marr felled, how long they’d been fighting. The animated corpses were slow, mindless, more annoyance than threat.

After a time, he and Marr stood alone in the corridor amid the dried remains of hundreds of dead. One of the bodies stirred at Jaden’s foot. He crushed its skull under his boot and deactivated his blade.

“Are you all right?” he asked Marr.

Marr deactivated his blade but did not holster his blaster. “Fine, Master.”

“That was a delaying tactic,” Jaden said. “The clones passed unmolested.”

“But who is trying to delay us?” Marr asked.

“Let’s go find out,” Jaden said, and they sprinted down the corridor.

Sweat made Khedryn’s hands slick on the controls. He had no choice but to keep flying at speed, to risk Junker getting pulverized against an asteroid to avoid its destruction by the Umbaran’s lasers. Spinning Junker ninety degrees, he shot through a narrow gap between two asteroids about to collide. He slammed the stick down, cutting under a third large asteroid, then pulled it up and nearly scraped the surface of another. If he’d been standing on Junker’s exterior, he could have reached out and touched one of the huge rocks.

R-6 beeped a question, and it took a moment for Khedryn to realize its import.

Where was the laser fire? He checked the scanner, but the asteroids clouded the readings so severely that it was hard to know if the Umbaran was still in pursuit. He slowed a bit, wheeled around a large asteroid, dived below a smaller one.

No fire.

“Did we lose him?” he asked aloud.

R-6 beeped uncertainly.

Khedryn dived, spinning, until Junker broke free of the asteroid belt into open space. He pulled up on the stick, ready to dart back into the cover of the field should his scanners pick up the Umbaran’s ship.

They didn’t.

He patted Junker’s instrument panel and allowed himself a relieved breath. He hoped the Umbaran had blown himself up in the asteroid belt, but a scan of the area showed otherwise.

The scout ship was headed fast toward the Rakatan station on the dark side of the planet.

Khedryn cursed—he seemed to do more of that without Marr around—and ordered R-6 to get the transceiver operational as soon as possible. He had to warn Jaden and Marr.

“I’m going aboard the station,” he said to R-6. “They’re going to need help.”

The droid beeped with concern.

Nyss did not appreciate the size of the Rakatan station until they closed with it. It was larger than a star cruiser. It dwarfed the scout ship, and that was only the orbital portion of the station. He maneuvered along the side of the station, right behind the medical supply ship, and, as he had anticipated, a docking appendage extended outward and connected ship to station. More appendages extended underneath the ship, cradling it, holding it steady.

“What is this place?” the Iteration asked.

“This is where you’ll be reborn,” Nyss answered, standing. He gathered his gear: knives, crossbow, quarrels, the mindspears. “Use the Force. Tell me if you sense the Jedi.”

The Iteration closed his gray eyes and concentrated for a moment. He opened them and said, “I don’t, but he could be too far away.”

“Follow me,” Nyss said.

He opened the ship and entered the dark, moist tunnel of the docking tube. The moment he stepped on the warm, slightly giving surface of the station, filaments in the walls and floor began to glow.

“This way,” he said, and headed in the direction of the shaft that connected the orbital station to the larger station built into the planet’s crust. “You’re going to take me to the Prime.”

The Iteration fell in behind him, his lightsaber hilt in his hand.

Jaden imagined that the clones had gone down the tether that connected the station to the planet. Leaving a heap of ancient corpses in their wake, he and Marr headed in that direction. Jaden kept a wary eye open for any more animated remains emerging from side rooms.

There were no doors as such, just thin seams in the wall that parted at their approach. Finned squares in the ceiling might have been vents, or speakers, or both.

“I think this must have been a prison, or maybe a lab,” Marr said. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. It also accounts for all the bodies.”

They moved quickly and quietly through corridors and chambers of no discernible purpose. Whatever equipment had once been in the rooms had been removed long before. Some could have been cells, as Marr speculated, though they might just as easily have been a barracks for ancient soldiers.

Thin lines of light blinked in the walls from time to time, and the touch of their boots on the floor elicited little sunbursts of light around the contact. Jaden had the odd sensation that the station was noting their passage. Static squawked from his comlink, as if the connection to Junker had just been severed. He pinched it to activate it.

“Khedryn, do you copy? Khedryn?”

More static.

Marr tried his comlink and had the same result.

“Could be the walls,” he offered.

“Could be,” Jaden said, and they kept going.

Dark, rectangular touchpad panels were attached to the wall at intervals. Jaden put a finger on one, and colored patterns of light—but no text—moved across the screen. He did not touch anything more on the pad and it powered down. Here and there they noted small, irregularly shaped apertures in the walls. Hair-thin filaments hung from the edges.

“The technology is unlike anything I’ve seen,” Marr said, reaching out a hand to one of the filaments.

Jaden grabbed his wrist to stop him. The filaments came to life, writhing in response to the proximity of Marr’s hand. The hole twisted partially closed with a wet, mushy sound.

“I think these are some kind of power sockets,” Marr said. “Or a communication port. The filaments are probably the link. They’re laced all through the walls.”

“Let’s keep moving,” Jaden said.

They continued to pick their way through the ancient station until they reached the large, domed, circular chamber that connected to the tether. Seeing it, Marr blew out a whistle.

Holes about a meter in diameter dotted the floor at intervals. Jaden and Marr approached them, looked down, and saw that the holes opened onto shafts that fell away into darkness, presumably descending miles to the surface of the planet below. Damp air redolent with organic decay wafted up the shafts. More of the ancient dead, maybe. An upright touch panel stood beside each hole.

Marr touched one of the control pads and it ignited with light. A beam from the panel shot out at him, flashing over his body.

Jaden moved to shove the Cerean out of the beam, but Marr held up his hands.

“It’s all right,” he said, as the beam bounced across him.

He nodded at the control panel, where a silhouette of his body had appeared on the screen. Orderly flashes of color blinked in the margins of the screen, communicating information Jaden could not understand. When the light show stopped, the shaft at Marr’s feet narrowed a bit, as if sizing itself to fit to his body, and lines of glowing filament lit in its walls, illuminating its downward length for kilometers.

Marr glanced at Jaden, eyebrows raised. “I thought the tether was a lift system of some kind. It appears I was right.”

Jaden eyed the shaft. “Do we just slide in?”

“It looks that way.”

The thought of taking a ride down a kilometers-long mechano-organic shaft into an unknown environment held little appeal for Jaden. But there was nothing else for it, so he touched his hand to the nearest control panel and it scanned his body as the other had done with Marr. The scan felt like a soft breeze on his skin, and when it was done, the shaft at his feet twisted closed a bit to accommodate his form. Lines of glowing filament lit it up. They looked like they went on forever. Jaden assumed the shafts all had to let out at the same place, though he could not be sure.

“If we end up separated, you stay put and I’ll find you,” he said. “Ready?”

Marr nodded, and they each sat at the edge of their respective hole and began to lower themselves into the shaft. The moment Jaden’s legs entered the shaft, the walls bulged out from the sides, took his legs in a warm, gentle grip, and started to pull him in, a sensation that felt disquietingly like being swallowed. He did not resist it.

“Marr,” he called, as the shaft pulled him the rest of the way in. “Are you all right?”

His last word stretched out into a shout of surprise as the bulges holding him in the shaft rippled down its length, taking him with it, descending so fast he might as well have been falling. He gritted his teeth and tried to keep his stomach from rushing up his throat. He was engulfed in the warmth of the walls, the glow of the lines of light.

He fell a long while before the descent began to slow, then finally, to stop. The shaft released its grip on him when he felt firm floor under his boots.

The shaft had deposited him in a large circular chamber, a mirror of the one above, but with tubes descending from the ceiling rather than holes opening in the floor. Control panels for each of the tubes stood at intervals around the room.

The stink of decay, much stronger now, filled the air. His sensation of the dark side felt more concentrated, too. The soft rainfall of power had become a downpour. Jaden tried to filter it out while he nested himself in the Force and reached out with his mind for the clones.

The intense, uncomfortable feedback of contact with a dark-side user pulled at his consciousness. They were not far.

Beside him, the nearest tube bulged like a serpent’s belly and disgorged Marr. The Cerean stood for a moment with his hands on his hips, staring back up the way he’d come.

“Remarkable,” he said, then turned to face Jaden, his head cocked in a question. “Do you feel that? The dark side is …”

“… stronger,” Jaden finished for him.

Marr nodded. “If the station is Rakatan, and is powered in part with dark-side energy, we could be sensing the power center of the station.”

“We’ll soon know,” Jaden said, and led Marr in the direction he’d felt the clones. A vertical seam in the wall slipped wetly open to reveal a corridor beyond. Filaments glowed like veins in the walls.

They walked through, the dark side growing stronger with each step.

Having watched Jaden and Marr in Flotsam, Khedryn knew the Rakatan station would dock with Junker when he got close. He flew the ship in, maneuvered it near and watched in wonder as the station birthed a docking tube and reached out for Junker. Once the ship was settled, Khedryn unstrapped himself from his seat and patted R-6 on the dome.

“Keep the engines hot, little man. And keep working on that transceiver.”

R-6 whistled an affirmative.

Khedryn took a blaster from the cockpit weapons locker and stuffed it into his hip holster. He started to head off, thought better of it, and took a second blaster from the locker and put it in a thigh holster.

“Can’t have too many,” he said to R-6. “Lock the ship down when I’m clear. And contact me immediately when you have the transceiver up.”

Again R-6 whistled an affirmative.

Khedryn hurried to the airlock and opened it. The warm, organic stink of the Rakatan station wafted into the ship, and … something else, something that caused his hair to stand on end.

“Maybe I’m getting sensitive to the dark side,” he muttered, and stepped off Junker.

He barely noticed the filaments that formed a dense, glowing matrix in the walls and floor. Explosions of light ignited under his feet as he ran over the smooth, warm floor. He tried not to think too hard about the technology. The docking tube opened onto a large corridor. He headed right, toward the tether, remembering that Marr had thought it might be a lift of some kind. He tried to raise Jaden and Marr on his comlink as he went, but he received only a blast of static in response. Perhaps the energy of the station further restricted the already limited range in which the comlinks would operate without Junker’s transceiver.

He stopped when he came to a pile of bodies—sentients of all kinds, crushed, dismembered. There was no blood at all, just the remains of ancient, dried-out corpses. A cursory look told him that Jaden and Marr were not among the dead. Probably the bodies had been there for centuries.

“Jaden!” he shouted, and went from a walk, to a jog, to a run. It was a risk to shout—the Umbaran could be near and Khedryn would never spot the stealthy bastard. But he did not care. He had to warn them. “Marr!”

The filaments in the walls responded to his shouts, flaring red and green in answer to his voice. He clutched a blaster in each hand, eyeing every shadow and dark corner suspiciously.

Ahead, he thought a wall blocked his path, but as he approached, a vertical seam in the wall split wetly and opened into another chamber.

“Stang,” he said, and hurried through.

The door squeezed closed behind him. He’d never felt more isolated in his life.