Crosscurrent

CHAPTER TEN

Saes watched on the viewscreen as the remaining Blades peeled out of the gas giant's rings. Llerd monitored the chatter among the pilots through an earpiece, then relayed it to Saes.

"The target has been destroyed, Captain," Llerd said, his round face flush with the news. "Collided with rocks in the rings. We lost six Blades in the pursuit."

Saes nodded, surprised to find himself so unmoved by Relin's death. He supposed whatever attachment he might have had with Relin had been eroded by time and lost long ago. He reached out his consciousness for his Master, trying to recall the feelings he'd had when he'd realized that Relin had been aboard Harbinger. He felt nothing, only emptiness, a hole.

He was alone now, five thousand years in the future. His one-time Master had died a fool. Saes regretted the loss of the Blades, particularly since he would not be able to replace them, but he'd needed to end matters with Relin.

"Put us in orbit around the planet's moon. I will be in my quarters."

"When repairs are completed, should the helm plot a course to Primus Goluud?" Llerd asked.

Saes heard 8L6's servos whir as he stood and looked at the captain.

"No," Saes said. "Plans have changed."

Khedryn tried to slow his still-racing heart as Jaden set Junker down in a deep, sheltered declivity on one of the large asteroids in the rings. His equilibrium was still off from the wild flight, and he swayed as he stood. After confirming that the cargo hold's air lock had resealed and repressurized, he opened the hatch to check on his Searing.

Still there, along with Marr's speeder bike. Good. Khedryn loved that swoop.

By the time he reached the galley, Relin was already there, sitting at the central table. Sweat glistened on his face, and his eyes looked like glassy, distant pools sunk in the deep pits of his sockets. His breathing came fast, like that of a rabid animal.

"You are sick," Khedryn said.

Relin looked up, squinting at Khedryn. "Yes. Radiation."

Khedryn tried to look sympathetic. "I have nothing aboard, but we can do something for it back on Fhost." He left a maybe behind his teeth, seeing no reason to further burden the Jedi over Farpoint's limited medical facilities.

Relin stared at him for a long moment. "Thank you."

"And the ribs? The arm?"

Relin looked at his stump. "I am all right."

Khedryn could see otherwise but did not push. He held up a caf cup and changed the subject. "Caf? It's a bitter, uh, caffeinated beverage served hot."

"Tea?"

"Sure," Khedryn said, and prepped some tea for the Jedi. It was old, something he'd picked up on a whim months ago, but it was tea.

Jaden and Marr entered, neither talking. Jaden looked drawn behind his beard. Sweat dampened the fringe of his brown hair. Marr, of course, looked like Marr-solid, calm, as certain as an equation. Khedryn wondered how the Cerean managed such balance.

"I will take some of that caf," Marr said, staring at Relin with unabashed curiosity. "Jaden explained… matters to me."

"I'll take some, too," said Jaden. His voice had the sound of a man who had not slept in a few days.

"Take a seat, please," Khedryn said to them both, his tone more formal than he intended.

Marr looked a question at him as he crossed the room but Khedryn, still composing his thoughts, ignored it. He spiked his caf with a jigger of pulkay, then poured caf for Jaden and Marr, joined it on a tray with Relin's tea, and took it to the table.

"Nice flying," he said to Jaden.

"It was," Relin said, wincing in answer to one pain or another. "Well done, Jaden."

"Thank you," Jaden said. He seemed to notice Relin's physical condition for the first time. "Are you… all right?" he asked, the question as loaded as a charged blaster.

Relin sat up straight, cleared his throat, and it turned into a soft cough. "I am fine."

Khedryn distributed the drinks. "He's not all right. He's sick. Radiation. And the arm and ribs."

"I know all that," Jaden said, his eyes still on Relin. "That's not what I mean."

Khedryn realized that the Jedi were having a conversation at some level invisible to him.

"I am fine," Relin repeated, but he glanced away.

Jaden sipped his caf and looked unconvinced.

To Relin, Marr said, "Assuming both ships got to near lightspeed, you would have traveled… a long way for five thousand years to pass relatively."

Khedryn knew Marr must have been discomfited to use words like near and a long way.

"Yes," Relin agreed. He looked at Marr. "My name is Relin."

"Marr. I have so many questions."

"They'll have to wait," Relin said.

"I suppose so," Marr said.

"Good caf," Jaden said to Khedryn, holding up the mug.

"Thanks," Khedryn said as he took station at the head of the table. He swallowed, then dived in headfirst. "I have been thinking hard about this, and… we are done. This is over." He cut off whatever Jaden and Relin would have said with a raised hand and a raised voice. "Junker is my ship. Mine. And I am not risking her, or my crew, over a salvage job."

"This is more than that," Relin said, his glassy eyes fixed like glow lamps on Khedryn.

"You know that already, Captain," Jaden said.

Khedryn gave no ground. "I know it is to you two. To me, this is just another job, and it's gotten too hairy. Do you know why I don't have weapons on Junker, Relin? Because I run." He wagged a finger between himself and Marr. "We run. I am a salvager. This is a salvage ship."

He realized that he was breathing heavily, that his tone was overly sharp. He took a moment to control himself. Between the calmness of the Jedi and the placidity of Marr, he felt like he was the only one who grasped the danger they had been in.

Jaden started to speak, but Khedryn pointed a finger at him as if it were loaded.

"And don't you even consider trying that mind trick nonsense on me again."

Jaden half smiled, put his hands on the table, and interlaced his fingers. He studied them as if they were of interest, then looked up at Khedryn. "You were going to take me down to the moon. We had a deal, Khedryn."

That hit Khedryn where he lived. He did not renege on deals. "I know. But… "

Jaden continued in his infuriatingly calm voice. "But our agreement aside, I want you to step back and consider what has happened here. You and Marr discovered a distress beacon on a backrocket moon in the Unknown Regions."

"Chance," Khedryn said, but Jaden continued.

"I received a Force vision of that same moon. In it, voices pleaded with me for help." His voice intensified a degree. "For help, Captain."

"You received a Force vision?" Relin asked. "Did you see anything that suggested my presence or Harbinger's?"

Jaden had eyes only for Khedryn as he drove home his point.

"We meet under extraordinary circumstances in Farpoint, then journey here, and at almost the exact moment of our arrival an ancient Sith ship appears."

Relin piled on. "And that ship bears an extremely dangerous cargo."

Khedryn's response was knee-jerk defensiveness. "So you say."

"So I say?" Relin said, heat leaking into his tone.

Jaden held a hand up. "Please, Relin."

Khedryn shook his head. "Look, this was supposed to be a simple job. Instead it's… "

"Something bigger," Jaden said.

"I was going to say complicated," Khedryn said. "But if it is about something bigger, then that makes it a Jedi concern. Not mine. Not ours. Right, Marr?"

Marr drummed his long fingers on the table, taking it all in. He gave a noncommittal grunt that Khedryn liked not at all.

"No, this isn't just a Jedi concern," Jaden said. "It concerns you, too. Consider all the things I mentioned, the synchronicity of them. It is not chance that we are here together at this moment."

"It could be chance," Khedryn said half-heartedly, but he did not believe his own words. "Marr could put a probability to it, had he a mind. No, I am not doing this."

Relin slammed his fist on the table with the suddenness of a lightning strike, startling them all. Caf and tea jumped over cup brims. "You are a stubborn fool, Khedryn Faal."

Khedryn could handle anger more easily than Jaden's inexorable reasonableness. "Better a live fool than a dead fanatic, which is the course you've charted for yourself. You've got radiation poisoning, broken ribs, a severed arm. You haven't even paused long enough for treatment. You haven't even asked for some pharma for the pain or bacta to help the healing."

Relin rose to his feet, anger in his eyes. Khedryn's mouth went dry but he held his ground and made certain nothing on him shook.

"I do not stop for treatment because I will not shirk doing what needs to be done. Even if it causes me pain. You cannot always run, Khedryn."

Khedryn stared into Relin's haggard face, saw there a deeper pain than that of his wounds. He wilted under its weight, sighed, sat.

"You spilled your tea," he said quietly.

Silence took the head chair for a time, everyone letting time deflate the tension. Relin sat, too, his anger at Khedryn seemingly dispelled as fast as it had appeared.

"Marr is Force-sensitive," Jaden said. "Did you know that? Did either of you?"

Khedryn spilled some of his own caf. "What?"

"How do you know that?" Marr said, and Khedryn thought he did not sound overly surprised.

"I can sense it. Relin can as well, I am sure."

Relin nodded absently, mostly lost in the depths of his teacup.

Jaden looked to Marr. "I apologize for springing this on you. I thought I would tell you after we returned to Fhost. If I mentioned it at all."

"What does that even mean, Force-sensitive?" Khedryn asked.

"It means he has an intuitive connection to the Force," Jaden said. "Were he younger, it would mean he was trainable. But given your age, Marr, even with your mathematical gifts, training is probably out of the question."

The possibility, even if remote, of losing Marr to the Jedi Order opened a hole under Khedryn's feet, and he started to slip. He held up his hands. "Whoa. Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves a bit?"

"Yes, we are," Marr said, and looked at Jaden. "Why did you tell me this now?"

"Because I want all of us to realize that the Force brought you to that signal. You may not have known it, but that is what happened. You selected the route back to Fhost, didn't you? Didn't you?"

"He's the navigator," Khedryn said.

"I chose the course," Marr acknowledged.

Jaden nodded, obviously unsurprised. "It was not chance that you chose this system. The Force is moving through you, through all of us."

"Not through me," Khedryn said before he could wall the words off behind his teeth. He knew they sounded petulant. He felt the odd man out on his own ship.

Jaden put a hand on Khedryn's shoulder, and that only made it worse. "The Force touches all of us. Look at us. Look."

Khedryn did, and had to admit that it would have taken an odd coincidence to bring all of them together, at that place, at that time.

Marr, staring at his hands, said, "I do not wish any training."

Jaden did not seem surprised. "Understood. I simply wanted you to see what is happening here. I want all of us to see it."

"Jaden is right," Relin said.

Khedryn tried to get his head around events, but could not. He faced the fact that perhaps Jaden was, in fact, right. Could he simply run as he usually did?

"Time is our enemy," Relin said. "Khedryn, please."

Khedryn downed the last of his caf, pleased to find the final sip heavy with bitterness from the pulkay. He was almost to the point of surrender. "What are you asking us to do?"

"Help us accomplish what needs to be accomplished," Jaden said. "I need to get down to the surface of the moon. There is someone down there who needs help."

Khedryn fired the last of his ammo. "And if you go down there and there's nothing? Have you considered that? I've seen that happen before."

Jaden shook his head, a bit too fast, a bit too forcefully. "That won't happen. Something is transmitting that signal."

"Jaden-" Khedryn began.

Relin cut him off. "I cannot go down to the moon."

Khedryn set down his caf cup and stared across the table. "No, you want to get aboard the cruiser. You said that. It remains crazy even when repeated often. Antique or not, that ship packs more firepower in its shuttles than we do on all of Junker."

"Relin," Jaden said. "I don't think-"

Relin held up his stump, perhaps forgetting that it had no upraised hand attached. "You seemed surprised when I mentioned Lignan earlier." He swirled his cup. "Were you?"

"Yes," Jaden said.

"And that tells me that you have never before heard of it or its power. Yet Khedryn mentioned Sith, so I know they still exist in this time. Putting the Lignan in their hands would be dangerous, yes?"

Jaden nodded. "It would, if it does what you say."

Relin's voice frosted. "You felt it. Do you doubt what I say, too?"

"No," Jaden admitted. "But… "

Relin ignored him, continued. "And Saes, the captain of Harbinger, should he figure out what has happened, may try to do exactly that: take it to the Sith. Or he may hoard it for himself. But he is very dangerous in either case. I need to destroy either the Lignan or the ship. And if he leaves this system, we may never get another chance. I do not have much time. Harbinger's hyperdrive is damaged. The whole ship is reeling from the misjump. This is the moment."

Khedryn thought he could see Jaden bend under some weight known only to him. The Jedi very much wanted to go down to the moon's surface. When his expression fell, Khedryn knew that Jaden, too, had just surrendered.

"You are right," Jaden said. "The ore is the greater concern. I am being influenced by… personal concerns. The moon can wait. I will accompany you aboard Harbinger."

Relin stared into his teacup. "No. Unless you can suppress your Force presence altogether, you are unwelcome. Saes will detect you easily."

"You could screen me."

"Your presence is too strong, Jaden," Relin said. "Masking it from Saes would be difficult and an inefficient use of my power."

Listening to their exchange, Khedryn perceived two men trying to give the other an excuse to do what he wished, all while purporting to want its opposite.

"Heed your own words," Relin said to Jaden. "The Force called you to the moon, and that is where you should go. Look to your feelings."

"I don't trust my feelings."

The admission seemed to take Relin aback. "You cannot accompany me, Jaden. This is for me to do."

"My Force presence is not strong," Marr said, his words surprising everyone. "I could accompany you."

For a long moment, no one said anything.

Khedryn was too stunned to speak. Finally, he said, "Why would you do that?"

Marr sighed over his caf, shrugged, tilted his head, finally found words. "I told Jaden how I once calculated the probability that my life would go this way or that. Do you remember me telling you the same thing?"

Khedryn nodded.

"Do you know why I did that? It was not just the math. I wanted to confirm that my life would mean something, that I would do something important. But then… other things got in the way."

"Marr… " Khedryn said.

"I do not regret a moment. You are my great friend. But is salvage all I want to have left behind me? This is a chance to do something meaningful. I concur with Jaden that something other than chance brought us to this moment. It is more likely that you'd win at sabacc than all of this to happen by chance."

Khedryn smiled despite himself. "That's sayin' something."

Marr continued, "Our lives have led us up to this place at this moment. How can I run away from that?"

Marr did not say it, but Khedryn understood Marr to be asking him the same question, and he had no good answer. For him, running away was simple habit. He'd been running away from roots and responsibility since he'd become an adult. It had worked pretty well for him.

Marr looked to Relin. "I will go, if you will have me."

Jaden started to speak, stopped.

Relin stared across the table at Marr. "You've only just met me, and you do not know what I have in mind."

"Whatever it is, it will require a ship. You'll need a pilot who knows the ship, not to mention one with two hands."

Relin tilted his head to acknowledge the point. "The Lignan will affect you more strongly up close. You've felt some… unease since Harbinger appeared?"

Marr nodded. "A headache, mostly."

"The feelings will be more acute when you are near its source."

"For you, too," Jaden said to Relin.

Marr's brow was smooth, his eyes untroubled. "Even so."

"You're certain?" Relin asked.

"Too certain, I'd say," Khedryn said.

"Yes," said Marr, eyeing first Relin, then Khedryn. "I am certain."

"Very well," Relin said.

Khedryn shook his head, finished off his caf. "We are all crazy on this boat. I need another caf. Anyone else?"

Everyone nodded.

"Drinks all around, then," Khedryn said, and started to rise.

"I will get it, Captain," said Marr. The Cerean rose, placing his hand on Khedryn's shoulder as he passed, the small gesture a reminder of the years they had been friends.

"Let's talk specifics," Khedryn said to the Jedi. "What are your plans?"

Relin gestured for Jaden to go first.

"I fly down to the moon. Find what I am supposed to find."

"Alone?"

Jaden nodded.

"No," Khedryn said. "I am not leaving my ship down on that moon if you… find something unexpected. I can shuttle you down in Flotsam. We'll be able to dodge the cruiser's sensors and get you into the atmosphere. From there you can locate the source of the beacon. But I expect more when we're done. The Order owes me. Another five thousand on top of what we already agreed. Yes?"

"Agreed."

"You hear that, Marr?"

"Heard it, Captain."

Haggling over fees made Khedryn feel more like himself, more in control of events. He looked to Relin.

"And what about you? How do you plan to get aboard that cruiser?"

"I need Marr to fly me in."

"In where?"

"Into the ship."

Khedryn scoffed, then frowned when he saw that Relin was serious. "That isn't happening."

Relin's jaw tightened, and loosened, masticating his thoughts. "My Padawan died trying to bring that ship down. I am going back aboard and destroying what needs destroying. There's only one way for me to do that. We fly this ship right down its throat."

"Fly my ship, you mean."

"Yes, your ship." Relin's tone turned earnest. "Listen to me. Harbinger's weapons systems are down. They have to be. Otherwise they would have blown your ship from space already. Saes had to deploy fighters to attack you rather than his batteries. So Marr flies your ship out of the rings and into the landing bay before they can stop us."

"You look a lot less sick when you're talking about risking lives," Khedryn said. "The ship has active deflectors. How do you propose getting through those?" He felt a pang of guilt even asking the question.

Relin's expression fell. "The shields? I… don't know."

Khedryn did know but could not bring himself to mouth the words.

"There has to be a way," Relin said.

Khedryn stared at Marr, who was pouring caf, willing him to hold his silence, but the Cerean ignored him. "We could use the power crystal to open a temporary hole in the shields."

Khedryn blew out an irritated sigh.

Jaden looked startled. "You have a power crystal?"

Khedryn glared at Marr, at Jaden, at Relin. "We've used it twice, to board uncrewed derelicts when the autopilot kept the shields operational."

"Where did you get it?" Jaden asked.

"There's a whole lot of things floating in the black, Jedi. I told you that. Just need to know where to look."

Jaden looked around, as if he expected a power crystal to burst out of a closet. "Where is it?"

"In my pocket," Khedryn snapped, then recovered himself. "Mounted on the beam projector behind Junker's dish."

"It is a power sink," Marr said. "We'll have to divert most of our power to operate it. But it should work."

"The problem appears solved," Relin said. "Thank you, Marr."

"Yes, thank you, Marr," Khedryn said.

Relin went on as if he had not heard Khedryn's sarcasm. "Saes will not expect it. He thinks we're destroyed. The Blades flying patrol will be too far out and none of the fighters on the ship will scramble in time to intercept us."

"That is madness," Khedryn said. "Marr, did you hear this?"

"I heard it, Captain." Marr returned to the table, distributed the caf.

Khedryn raised his eyebrows. "And?"

"What other choice is there?"

"We go back to Fhost, forget this whole thing," Khedryn said, but everyone responded as if he had not spoken at all. Events had passed him by.

"That gets you aboard," Jaden said. "How do you get back?"

Relin hesitated a beat too long, Khedryn thought. "Marr need only drop me off and get back out. He could jump anywhere he wanted to after that. Or he could flee back into the rings until you and Jaden return from the moon."

Marr pulled back a chair, sat. "The fighters will pursue and I cannot pilot Junker through the rings. I'd have to jump out and return later."

Khedryn tried to sip his caf but his hand was shaking. Embarrassed, he put the cup down. "You are seriously entertaining this? This is not a plan. It's madness."

"That tells us how Marr gets out," Jaden said, and leaned forward. "How do you plan to get out?"

This time Relin answered a beat too quickly. "Escape pod, same as before."

Jaden and Relin shared a long look before Relin buried his eyes in the depths of his tea.

"When does all this happen?" Khedryn said, dreading the answer.

Relin looked up. "Now."

Kell held Predator at a distance from the cruiser and followed on his scanner as the fighters nosed up and out of the rings and returned from their pursuit of Junker. There were several fewer than had entered.

Kell decided that they had either lost the freighter or simply called off the pursuit. He knew they had not destroyed it. The skein of Fate was too strong. Jaden Korr's destiny was not to die in laserfire. It was to die in Kell's hands, as Kell devoured his soup and transcended.

Content that his destiny was unfolding as it should, he engaged Predator's low-output ion engines and piloted the ship near the edge of the rings. His baffles and screens would keep him invisible to the scanners of the cruiser. There he waited, a lurking spider.

The opalescent moon glittered against the black of space. He watched it turn, the featureless ball where his life would find fulfillment. He could have surveyed the moon, reported his findings back to Darth Wyyrlok. But he would not. He would wait, watchful, and descend to its surface only when Jaden Korr did so. Their lines were knotted together in a common fate, tethered to each other, and he would put down on the moon only when pulled down by Jaden. He could no more go to the moon's surface without Jaden than a Twi'lek could separate its lekku.

His hands were shaking, partly from hunger, partly from exaltation. He had not fed since leaving Fhost, nor would he. His next meal would be, had to be, Jaden Korr.

He powered down Predator but for the scanners, life support, and the speaker, which played the Imperial beacon, the sound that had summoned all of them to this one place, at this one time, and waited.

"I will prep Junker," Marr said, and rose to leave.

Khedryn put his hands on the table, pushed himself up as if he weighed a thousand kilos. "And I will… do something else. Stang, I cannot believe I agreed to this."

The two Jedi said nothing, and he turned to go. When he stood in the hatch leading out, Khedryn glanced back and said to Relin and Jaden, "Listen, when we get back to Fhost, we gamble, all of us together. Yes? As reckless as you two are, I might actually win some credits. As long as Jaden doesn't cheat. You have credits in your time, Relin?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then you've got something I can win. You play sabacc?"

"I don't know it."

"I will teach you." Apparently thinking better before his exit, he returned to the food locker, poured and drank a final jigger of pulkay. "I'll get Flotsam prepped. Then I will pray."

Jaden smiled him on his way. After Khedryn had gone, Relin, too, rose but Jaden halted him with a word.

"Stay."

Relin eased back into his chair, grimacing at the pain in his ribs.

But Jaden knew that physical pain was not driving him. He waited until he was sure Khedryn would not return.

Before Jaden spoke, Relin said, "You do not need to say it."

But Jaden did. "Anger is pouring off you. I feel it more strongly than I do the effect of the Lignan."

"Saes must pay. My Padawan-"

"You will lose yourself, Relin. And you cannot do that. You have made yourself steward of Marr on this mission."

Relin's lip curled in a snarl. "He understands the risk.

And it was your words that encouraged him to do something meaningful."

Jaden heard the contempt in Relin's tone and knew the man was nearly gone. Yet he could not deny Relin's accusation. "You bring him back with you. Understood? I want your word."

Relin brushed his dark hair off his forehead, and Jaden was struck with how pale and drawn the man appeared. "I will see that he returns."

Jaden knew he would get no more. The silence sat heavy between them. More than just five thousand years separated them.

"What did you do, Jaden?" Relin asked at last.

At first Jaden did not understand, but when he saw the knowing look on Relin's face, his heart jumped at the implicit accusation. "What do you mean?"

Relin leaned forward, his watery, bloodshot eyes nailing Jaden to his chair. "Anger pours off me? Well, doubt pours off you; uncertainty. I know what gives birth to that. What did you do?"

Jaden drew on his caf, hiding his face behind the mug's rim. In his mind's eye, he saw the faces through the viewport, pleading with him not to do it.

Relin smiled, though he managed to make it look unpleasant. "Something that shattered your image of yourself, yes?"

Jaden set down his cup and confessed. "Yes."

Relin chuckled, the first genuine mirth Jaden had heard from him. "The Jedi have not changed in five thousand years. Our expectation of ourselves always exceeds the reality. I have no wisdom for you, Jaden." He stood, extended a hand. "Good luck. I need to figure out a way to get my lightsaber charged."

Jaden stood, took his hand, a bit puzzled by Relin's parting words. He considered offering Relin the lightsaber he had crafted as a boy on Coruscant, since it required no power pack. But he knew Relin would not accept it.

"Marr will be able to help, I'm sure," Jaden said.

"I am sure," Relin said.

Before he exited the galley, Jaden said to his back, "May the Force be with you, Relin."

Relin did not slow.

Khedryn found Marr in Junker's cockpit, checking its instrumentation, testing systems. Khedryn hesitated in the doorway, thinking of all the flights he and Marr had sat beside each other in the cramped space while Junker hurtled through the black. The ship had carried them through some dangerous times. He cleared his throat.

Marr glanced over his shoulder but did not turn to face him.

"She ready?" Khedryn asked.

"Indeed," Marr said. "The damage was minimal, and she weathered the strain on the engines remarkably well. Probably due to your fine-tuning."

Khedryn recognized the praise as a gesture of reconciliation. He put a hand on the wall, felt the cool durasteel of his ship under his hand, and offered his own gesture. "Been a while since she's flown without both of us sitting up here."

"Indeed," Marr said, more softly.

Khedryn shook off the sentimentality, stepped forward, and performed a cursory glance over the instrumentation, not really seeing it.

"These Jedi go all in, don't they?"

Marr smiled, stood, turned to face him. "They do. Push until it gives, right?"

"Right." Khedryn smiled, too, but it faded quickly. "I am still not entirely sure why we are doing this."

"It is the right thing," Marr said.

"How are you always so certain, Marr? This isn't math."

"I am not always certain, but I am about this."

"Because you learned you're Force-sensitive?"

Marr colored. "Maybe. Partially."

Khedryn did not press. He thought of all the scrapes he and Marr had been through the past six years and realized that all of them had been of his own making. Marr had simply followed his lead and respected Khedryn's call. Khedryn figured he owed Marr the same, at least this once.

"Try not to get Junker shot up, eh? And you are on shuttle service and that's an order. If it gets too hairy, you abort and jump out of the system, no matter what Relin says. If you get aboard that cruiser, you drop off that Jedi and get out. Flotsam can get Jaden and me out of the system if need be."

Marr did not respond, and Khedryn liked the silence not at all. "That's an order, Marr. Understood?"

"I will do my best," Marr said.

Khedryn gave him a gentle shove. "You come back with the same look in your eyes as these Jedi and I'm throwing you off the ship for good."

Marr smiled, the tooth he'd chipped in a brawl Khedryn had started on Dantooine a jagged reminder of his loyalty. Khedryn looked out the cockpit window at the grainy, rough surface of the asteroid on which Jaden had set Junker down.

"This didn't exactly go as planned, did it?" he said.

"It rarely does," Marr said. "Variables. Always variables."

A fist formed in Khedryn's throat. He stared at his reflection on the transparisteel and swallowed it down. He wanted to say more to the best and only real friend he'd had since leaving the Empire of the Hand as a young man, but managed only to turn, reach out, and say, "Good luck."

Marr took Khedryn's hand, shook it. "And you."

Khedryn took one last look around Junker's cockpit, moved past Marr, and started to go, but Marr's voice pulled him around.

"Captain. For you."

Khedryn turned to find Marr holding out a stick of chewstim.

He took it, supposing it said all that needed to be said.

When Khedryn had Flotsam prepped and loaded with envirogear, he got on Junker's shipwide communicator.

"All hands to the galley one more time. Attendance is mandatory."

He took a roundabout way to the galley, walking Junker's corridors, cognizant of the fact that it, and Marr, might not return from Harbinger's landing bay.

If they made it to the landing bay.

He knew he was getting sentimental; knew, too, that he could not afford to do so. He was the captain and as such had certain obligations.

Beginning with this one, he thought.

When he reached the galley, he found Jaden, Relin, and Marr standing at the table, looking questions at one another.

"Time is short," Relin said.

"Gotta make time for this," Khedryn said.

He went to the food locker, pulled four drink glasses, and poured all of them a double from the only bottle of decent keela he kept on the ship. He carried the glasses to the other three men, handed one to each in turn. Relin sniffed at the glass.

"I do not consume alcohol," he said.

"You do now," Khedryn said. "Captain's orders."

Relin half smiled and relented with a shrug.

Khedryn held aloft his glass, and the others mirrored his gesture. With nothing better to say, he recited an old spacers' toast he remembered from his adolescence.

"Drink it down, boys, for the black of space is cold. Drink it down, boys, for it's always better to live hard and die young than live not and die old."

Everyone smiled. No one laughed. All drank.

Khedryn slammed his glass down on the table. "We go."