Crosscurrent

CHAPTER FOUR

Harbinger's bridge crackled with activity. "Forty-five seconds to jump," said the helmsman to Dor, then, into his communicator, "Forty-five seconds. Confirm, Omen."

The speakers crackled with Omen's answer. "Confirmed. Forty-five seconds. Forty-four."

Dor put his clawed hand on the weapons officer's soft shoulder. "You have twenty-five seconds to destroy that Infiltrator. Or explain to the captain why you could not."

Saes's blade spat a blurry shower of sparks as he unleashed a series of powerful blows. Relin allowed the strength of the attacks to move him backward as he dodged left, right, leapt, spun, and parried, biding his time. At last he deflected an overhand strike in a shower of energy, slid his blade free, and stabbed at Saes's middle. His one-time Padawan slid left, spun, and drove Relin's blade to the deck with an overhand strike. Saes threw a reverse elbow with his off arm, augmented with strength from the Force, but Relin anticipated the blow, parried with his forearm, lurched his blade free, and drove a Force-augmented kick into Saes's midsection. The impact lifted Saes from his feet and drove him fifteen paces across the room, though he flipped in flight and landed on his feet in a crouch.

"Your skill with a lightsaber remains wanting," Relin said, advancing. "You rely on strength over technique."

Anger tensed Saes's body, darkened his visible skin from crimson to deep red. "It is well, then, that I've learned other methods."

Blue Force lightning gathered on the black claws of his fingertips, crackled a dire promise. Before Relin could respond, Saes gestured and the energy cut a jagged path across the room.

Relin dodged too late and the energy struck him, put a cold spike into his heart, and threw him against the far wall. Despite the agony, he managed to use the Force to cushion the impact and fell to the floor, his breathing ragged as the last of the lightning crawled over him and expired.

He climbed to his feet, lightsaber held low, and eyed Saes. His Padawan had grown in the Force since they had parted.

As if reading his thoughts, Saes saluted him with his lightsaber. Relin imagined him grinning behind his mask. "More than you know, even."

The pitch of the hyperdrive's hum changed, accelerated, took on the regular cadence of a rapidly beating heart. Relin felt the vaguely nauseating swirl in his stomach that he often felt when a ship was about to enter hyperspace.

Staring at Saes, he decided that he would not bother with escape. He had accomplished his mission. Now he would right a wrong before he died.

He fell into the Force, let its energy course through his body, enhance his reflexes, his strength, his endurance. Saes answered Relin's stare with his own, his eyes black holes in the white mask, and lightning sizzled on his fingertips, tracing a spiral path up the red blade of his lightsaber.

"We end it," Relin said.

Former Master and Padawan strode across the chamber toward each other, lethal purpose in both their minds.

Relin's comlink crackled. "I am hit! Master!"

Drev's alarmed voice eroded Relin's resolve, carried away the anger that had been driving his thinking. Strength went out of him.

Saes, sensing the hesitation, bounded forward, lightsaber raised in a killing stroke. Relin parried but too slowly. Saes's blade severed Relin's left arm at the elbow.

Blinding pain exploded in Relin's mind; a scream broke through the wall of his gritted teeth. He felt himself fall, but as if from a distance. The world seemed to slow. His senses felt attenuated, all except for the throbbing, acute agony of his arm. His heart kept time with the pulse of the hyperdrive, and each beat sent a knife stab of pain up his bicep.

Saes loomed over him, his lightsaber sizzling, the masked embodiment of Relin's failure.

"No right, no wrong," his former Padawan said, and raised his weapon. "Only power."

Relin's chrono beeped a warning, and Relin smiled through his pain.

The expression caused Saes a moment's hesitation and in that moment the charges in the hyperdrive chamber exploded. A column of flame and a concussive wave burst from the chamber's doors and rolled over Saes and Relin. The blast flattened Relin to the floor-he felt his ribs crack, adding that agony to that of his arm and seared face-and blew Saes across the room, slamming him against the wall with the force of a battering ram. Shrapnel rained down. The entire ship lurched from the explosion.

Saes and Harbinger fled from his mind. Relin sat up, still half dazed, but able to think of only one thing.

"Drev!"

"It is… all right, Master. I believe I have matters righted. Though I now admit to being wrong, The Sith appear willing to fire pre-jump." Drev laughed and Relin thought he heard the hint of hysteria in it. "What just happened aboard Harbinger?"

Relin could hear the continuous thrum of laserfire through the comlink, could hear the stressed grunts and rapid breathing of his Padawan. He glanced at Saes, unmoving on the floor of the chamber, and fought down his need for revenge. He could not fix himself through murder, and anger had already caused him to exercise poor judgment.

He deactivated his lightsaber, and left his arm and his former Padawan behind him on the deck of the Sith dreadnought.

"I'm coming. Stay out of the way of those guns."

"The dreadnoughts are near the end of the jump sequence. I've got to stay in their jump field until the last moment or those guns will get a clear shot."

"Harbinger isn't jumping," Relin said as a secondary explosion ripped through the hyperdrive chamber. Smoke poured through the double doors, and he lifted his cloak to his mouth to prevent a coughing fit that would feel like a knife stab to his broken ribs. Alarms sang their song of dismay while he sped as best he could from the chamber. Even if his charges had not completely destroyed the hyperdrive, Harbinger would not risk a jump with a damaged drive. He and Drev had done something to help Kirrek. Not everything. But something.

Klaxons blared on the bridge. Tension animated the faces of the bridge crew, hung in a pall over the quiet. Dor stalked over to the helmsman's station.

"Abort the jump sequence!" he ordered, his claws sinking into the helmsman's shoulder deep enough to draw blood.

"Trying, sir. Something is… wrong."

Crew stood from their stations, watching the helm and the viewscreen.

"Stay at your posts," Dor ordered, and stared them back into their seats. "Sit!"

They did as he bade, while Dor hovered over the helmsman's shoulder like a guardian spirit. Harbinger could not jump with a damaged drive. The ship would be torn apart.

"Not responsive, sir," the helmsman said, and Dor heard panic creeping into his voice.

"Emergency shutdown, then," Dor ordered, and disliked the tension in his own voice.

The helmsman worked his console, then slammed a fist on the readout. "Not responsive. Jumping in twenty-three seconds."

"Get the engineers down there," Dor said.

"I've tried," the communications officer said. "No one is responding. A security team is in Corridor Three-G, outside the hyperdrive antechamber, but they report that the blast doors are closed and sealed."

"Have them go around, and quickly!" Dor said, and the comm officer repeated his order.

The ship lurched as another explosion rocked the rear section. The distinct bass hum of the activating drive, more felt than heard, vibrated Dor's bones. He turned to the bridge security officer, a Massassi a head taller than Dor and with as much metal under his flesh as he had bone.

"Get a team to the hyperdrive with explosives and blow the power linkages! Now!"

The security officer nodded and sped off the bridge, barking orders into his comlink, but Dor knew nothing could be done in time. They were going into hyperspace, on fire and with a damaged drive. He sagged into the command seat as the helmsman counted down the seconds remaining to them all.

"Nineteen. Eighteen."

Captain Korsin's voice from Omen cut through the silence. "We are getting odd readings from your jump field."

Dor stared at the viewscreen and saw the bulk of Omen beside them. The Jedi Infiltrator did a fly-by of Harbinger's bridge, twisting and turning through a shower of laserfire, smoke streaming from one of its damaged engines. Dor cursed the Jedi in the Infiltrator, cursed the blasted Jedi on board who had done a half job on the hyperdrive so that they would all die in hyperspace.

"You shoot that ship out of the sky," Dor snapped at the weapons officer. "And you do not stop shooting until I countermand the order. If we're to die, so is that Jedi."

"Sir? The jump-"

"Do it!"

The weapons officer nodded and the sky around Harbinger lit up with intensified laserfire.

"Sections ten, eleven, and twelve on D deck have fires," said someone. "Dispatching fire teams."

Dor waved a hand in acknowledgment. It mattered little.

"Captain Saes, did you receive my last transmission?" Korsin asked.

"Twelve. Eleven… "

Despite the ache in his severed arm and the spike of pain in his ribs, Relin used what mental strength remained to him to augment his speed with the Force. His emotions swirled: fear for Drev, anger at Saes, disappointment with himself. The Force swelled in him and he drew on it fully to pelt through the corridors, a blur of motion. Alarms sounded everywhere in the ship. Droids, crew members, and teams of Massassi security forces hurried through the corridors.

Concealed by the chaos, Relin sped toward the ship's spine and its escape pods.

"Harbinger is still readying to jump," Drev said. An explosion sounded in the background. Drev cursed as an alarm sang. "Engine one is down."

"They cannot jump. I destroyed the drive."

"Still showing an active drive, Master."

Relin cursed, hesitated, almost turned. But he did not. Wounded, fatigued, he would not be able to fight his way back to the hyperdrive. Perhaps he had damaged it enough to at least foul Harbinger's jump coordinates.

"Get clear, Drev," Relin said. He reached one of the long corridors that connected the forward and rear sections of the dreadnought. Doors dotted its length. Each would open onto one of the ship's 288 escape pods.

"Engine two is down. I'm on thrusters only."

Laserfire still sounded in the background. Relin cursed. The Infiltrator would be an easy target maneuvering on only thrusters.

"Get out of that ship. I'll pick you up in a pod."

"I am not in a suit, Master," Drev said, coughing. "And you know how long it takes me to put one on."

Relin did know. Drev's Askajian frame made donning a flexsuit a lengthy process. He imagined the cockpit filling with smoke, imagined losing another Padawan.

Relin moved to the nearest escape pod docking door and cut his way through it with his lightsaber, nearly short-circuiting the weapon's power pack in the process, and piled into the cramped interior of the pod. He did not bother with the instrumentation or pause to strap himself into one of the four seats. Instead he simply found the emergency release button and struck it.

The pod exploded away from the dreadnought, throwing Relin against the wall. Wounded arm and shattered ribs protested the impact, but Relin endured. He reached out with the Force for his Padawan. The contact reassured him. He felt the lightness of his Padawan's spirit, his joy in life.

"I'm clear. Put the ship on auto-evasive, get into a flexsuit, and get out. I'll find you in the pod."

"No," Drev said, and Relin heard the smile in his Padawan's voice. "Harbinger is going to jump. Your plan did not work, Master. We cannot let both of those ships get back to Sadow. You said so yourself."

It took Relin a moment to understand what his Padawan intended. He rushed to the small viewport in the pod and scanned space for the Infiltrator. He spotted it under the dreadnought, swooping up and circling back toward the bridge. Even on thrusters Drev spun the Infiltrator in evasive arcs that danced through the laserfire.

Relin spoke in a low tone, the same tone he might use to calm an excited bantha.

"Drev, listen to me. Listen. There is another way."

Drev's laugh, full and loud, was his only answer. Relin imagined his head thrown back, his chin bouncing with mirth.

Funereal silence hung over the bridge. All eyes were on the viewscreen, waiting for the black of realspace to give way to the star streaks of hyperspace, then to the nothingness of oblivion.

"Seven seconds to jump."

The Jedi Infiltrator came into view, operating on only thrusters, and swung around to face them. Laserfire crisscrossed the viewscreen and the Infiltrator danced among the blasts. Thrusters flared and the sleek Jedi ship accelerated directly at them, growing larger, dodging through the anti-ship fire.

"What is he doing?" someone said.

Dor knew exactly what he was doing, and despite the fatalism that had taken hold of him, he would rather die in a jump malfunction than at the hands of a Jedi.

"Blow him from space!" he shouted at the weapons officer.

"I cannot get a lock," the officer said. "I cannot get a lock!"

The ship streaked toward the bridge, twisting, turning, wheeling. Laserfire converged on it at last, struck it once, twice. Flames exploded from one wing, from the nose, but the ship grew larger, larger, until it nearly filled the viewscreen. One of the crew screamed, a defiant snarl. Dor caught a split-second glimpse inside the Infiltrator's bubble cockpit of the Jedi pilot, a young human, or perhaps an Askajian, and he was smiling, his mouth and flabby cheeks wrinkled with mirth, his eyes hard with resolve.

"Brace for impact!"

The smell of smoke and his own seared flesh brought Saes to his senses. He opened his eyes to a wailing alarm and the irregular vibrations of the damaged hyperdrive. It sounded not so much like a healthy heartbeat as one in fibrillation.

For a moment he stared up at a blinking light on the ceiling, still dazed, his thinking slowed by the viscosity of his thoughts. Events replayed in his mind-Relin, the flash of an explosion in the hyperdrive chamber. The pain of his seared flesh sharpened as the muzzy-headedness began to clear. He sat up on his elbow.

Relin was gone. He reached out with the Force but did not feel his former Master on the ship.

Smoke poured from the hyperdrive chamber. A broken power conduit spat sizzling sparks just within the chamber's double doors. Saes climbed to his feet, grunting with pain, and activated his communicator.

"Dor, shut down the jump immediately. The drive is damaged."

The dull boom of an enormous impact shook the ship, nearly knocking Saes to the ground.

"Dor! Status! What just happened?"

The whine of the hyperdrive increased in pitch; the vibrations grew more rapid, more intense, the dissonance nauseating. Saes felt the vibrations under his skin, deep in his bones. Harbinger was going to jump with a damaged drive. If they even made it into hyperspace, the ship would be torn apart. He limped to the hyperdrive chamber, dodging the power conduit, trying to raise Dor as he did.

"Abort the jump! Dor!"

Relin saw the tongue of fire reach out from Harbinger's bridge and lick the black of space. It held there for a moment, frozen, then shrank to nothingness, as did his hope. He stared dumbfounded, the pain in his body forgotten in the wash of pain in his spirit. His Padawan's laughter, even as Drev had died, lingered in his memory, replayed again and again.

He stared out the viewport of the escape pod at the thick black smoke pouring from the scar of the ruined bridge, as if he could will time to reverse itself. But the smoke continued to pour forth and his Padawan was still dead. Bodies floated free in space, the corpses fixed forever by the vacuum into contortions of pain and expressions of surprise.

Relin felt as if he'd been hollowed out, as if he'd become a hole, as scarred as Harbinger by Drev's death.

And moment by moment, anger seeped into the hole and began to fill it. Anger at himself, at Drev, at Saes and all of the Sith. He felt like Harbinger's floating dead, frozen forever in pain. He knew it was dangerous to give play to such feelings, but they felt too close, too real, to deny.

"You laugh too little," he said, and tears fell. He suspected he would never laugh again.

Despite the danger, he had to see the damage up close, to bear witness to his Padawan's grave, to remember. He seized the pod's controls and piloted in close to examine the destruction.

Drev had opened a hole in the dreadnought, a screaming mouth with jagged pieces of charred metal for teeth. Cables squirmed from opened bulkheads, spitting energy. Metal glowed red-hot here and there, but dimly, losing its battle against space to retain heat. He saw nothing recognizable as the Infiltrator. The ship had been vaporized by the impact.

So, too, had Drev.

Secondary explosions tore through the front section of the ship and it began to glide to starboard, toward Omen.

Relin imagined the dreadnoughts smashing into each other, burning like twin comets, and almost smiled. That, too, was an event to which he would bear witness. The Lignan from neither ship would get to Kirrek, and Drev's death would not be in vain.

"Good-bye, Saes."

But Relin realized quickly that neither one was aborting its jump sequence.

He saw his danger, then cursed and turned the escape pod about.

More explosions boomed in the distance, their force communicated to Saes through ominous vibrations in the hull. The ship lurched hard, turned abruptly. The gravitic stabilizers did not compensate fully for the sudden movement, and the ship's momentum sent Saes scrambling. Another alarm sounded and a mechanical female voice proclaimed, "Proximity alert. Danger. Proximity alert."

Saes ran to a viewport and the scene outside the ship pulled his mouth open.

Harbinger had listed to starboard and was accelerating toward Omen. Saes cursed as the Harbinger's sister ship grew larger.

"Move your ship, Korsin!"

He imagined the two crews scrambling to avoid impact. Both were near the end of a jump sequence, and the ion engines were offline.

Omen did start to move at last, but Saes could see that it was too late. He gripped the viewport's frame so tightly that his claws scored the metal.

The dreadnoughts were on slightly different planes, but the bottom of Harbinger's fore section scraped the top of Omen's aft engine section. The scale of the collision gave it an unexpected slowness that looked almost graceful. Harbinger bucked as the two enormous masses fought for positional dominance. Metal strained, screamed, buckled, the sound like the rumbles of angry gods. More explosions boomed. Pillars of flame erupted here and there from the mixed metal of the collision, garlands of orange heat decorating the void of space. Explosive decompressions echoed along Harbinger's length, along Omen's. Here and there, bodies were blown from vented compartments and floated free in space. And through it all, Harbinger's hyperdrive continued to gather energy.

"Jump sequence initiated," said the same mechanical voice that had announced the collision.

Saes turned from the viewport and saw that the air in the hyperspace chamber was distorted by the storm of loose energy. Waves of power pulsed from the chamber.

"No!" he shouted, but the mechanical voice was implacable.

"Hyperdrive activated."

Relin turned the engines to full, tried to accelerate away from Harbinger in time. A quiet, steady beep was the only alarm on the minimally equipped pod, and Relin's heartbeat outpaced it two to one.

He had not cleared enough distance before Harbinger jumped. The pod jerked to a halt, throwing Relin forward. It was stuck in the dreadnought's wake, pulled along in its energy draft. Though he suspected it was futile, he redirected more power to the engines. They whined, fought against the pull, but failed. He slammed himself into a seat and snapped on a restraining harness, fumbling with the latch.

Black turned blue and the churn of his stomach told him that Harbinger had entered hyperspace and dragged the pod along behind it. He could tell immediately that something was wrong, that the hyperspace tunnel was unstable. The pod began to spin, then flip over, again and again, careering wildly, a cork caught in a river's rapids.

Gritting his teeth, Relin tried to keep his bearings, but he could get no frame of reference. He caught sporadic glimpses out of the viewport and saw the black of realspace flickering intermittently with the streaks of hyperspace.

They were stuck in a bad jump. If he could not get out of it…

The escape pod was not built to withstand hyperspace unattached to a mother craft, and its gravitic compensators could not adequately handle the velocity. They did their best, but Relin was flattened against his seat, his blood flow affected. He was moving in and out of consciousness and tried to use the Force to keep himself sensate.

The pod shook as it spun, creaked. He would not have long before the integrity of the pod failed and it decompressed. Through squinted, watering eyes, he saw instruments that provided nonsensical readings, saw starlines swirling in and out of existence, trading time with realspace. The effect was disorienting. Each time the black of space oozed through the streaks of hyperspace, the pod lurched as if it had struck something.

Harbinger tore through space before him, swirling in his spiraling vision as if it, rather than he, were spinning wildly. Strands of energy streamed from the dreadnought's edges like glowing garlands. Pieces of Harbinger flew from it, and Relin winced as they sped past the pod like bullets down a barrel. Some of the debris was caught in the flashing transitions between hyperspace and realspace and blinked out of sight, presumably left behind in the black, a scattered trail of metal bread crumbs someone could follow all the way to Harbinger's ruin and Relin's death.

Another jarring collision at the boundary between hyperspace and realspace rattled the pod, caused Relin to bite a wedge in his tongue. Blood warmed his mouth; pain spiked his mind.

He had to pull the pod out of hyperspace.

Mentally and physically exhausted from his efforts aboard Harbinger, Relin nevertheless found a final reserve of strength. Getting the pod to exit hyperspace could be done, but only with the aid of the Force.

He inhaled, dwelled in the Force, and with it fought against the pressure of the velocity as he attempted to take control of the pod's flight through the maddening swirl.

He perceived time slowing. His breathing steadied. His thoughts and reflexes came faster. He heard the beeps of the alarm but it seemed as though a standard hour passed between each. The instruments still provided no worthwhile readings, so he would have to rely entirely on feel.

He felt as if he were being stretched thin, as if he existed everywhere at once, and nowhere at all. He took hold of the pod's controls, managed to right its flight and end its spin. He waited for the right moment, waited, waited, and when he felt it arrive, he jerked the controls hard to starboard, toward the black of realspace.

Instead the black disappeared in a wash of blue and his abrupt change of direction sent the pod to spinning, worse than before. Anger and frustration built in him until it burst out in a shout that seemed to echo into forever.

"Saes!"