CHAPTER TWELVE
Snow drifted halfway up the metal and duracrete walls of the facility. Spears of ice hung in thickets from every overhang. Three-quarters of a communications tower jutted upward from the tundra like an accusatory finger blaming the sky for its fate. A faint, snow-blotted light at the tower's top flashed intermittently, keeping time with the beacon playing over Flotsam's cockpit speaker, keeping time with Jaden's heart.
"Looks abandoned," Khedryn said.
Jaden came back to himself, swallowed in a mouth gone dry. "Yes."
"Definitely looks old enough to be Imperial," Khedryn said.
Jaden forced a nod, though a sense of d?j? vu gripped his gut. For an instant he lived in the dreamspace between his Force vision and his real senses and he was suddenly unsure that he wanted to set foot on the moon.
Fighting down the doubt, he reached out through the Force, expecting to feel the bitter recoil of contact with the Sith from his vision.
Nothing.
He took his hand from the stick, made a claw of his fingers, looked at their tips, the fingertips that leaked Force lightning when he was overcome by anger or fear.
Nothing.
"Are you all right?" Khedryn asked, taking the copilot's stick. "What are you doing?"
Embarrassed, Jaden made as though he were flexing his fingers against stiffness. "Nothing. I am fine."
"Maybe a flyover before we set down?" Khedryn said. He did not release the stick and seemed pleased to be in control of the ship.
"Agreed," Jaden said.
Khedryn decreased altitude and speed, flying low over the complex.
With many of the buildings having lost their battle to the snow, Jaden found it difficult to make out the contours of the complex. Small mounds suggested tertiary structures, though it was hard to tell.
"Could be a shield generator," he said, pointing at a dome-shaped mound of snow.
"You would know better than me," Khedryn said.
The central building, a rectangular, single-story mass of ice-rimmed metal, looked like any number of facilities Jaden had seen before. The structure could have been anything from a hazardous materials storage depot to a training complex.
"That looks like an entrance," Khedryn said, pointing at a shadowed portico on one side of the central facility. "Can't see if there's a hatch."
Khedryn fiddled with the instrumentation, tweaking his scanner. "There is still power in the main complex, though not much of it. Life support is online but barely. Some kind of backup or emergency power probably. Good construction to last this long."
"Yes," Jaden said absently, looking at the blowing snow, remembering the ghostly touches of Lassin, Mara, Kam Solusar. The beacon still played over the cockpit speakers, their pleading voices-Help us. Help us.
"If life support is functioning, someone could still be alive in there."
"Unlikely," Khedryn said. "It's been decades. Can we turn that off, Jaden? Jaden?"
Jaden killed the sound of the beacon.
They completed their flyover, having learned little.
"Well?" Khedryn said, and looked across the cockpit at Jaden, one eye on him, one eye off on some distant point. "Having second thoughts?"
"No. Let's put her down," Jaden said. He knew he would not find his answer sitting in Flotsam's cockpit.
The repulsors engaged, pressing Relin and Marr into their seats as Junker streaked toward the landing bay. Leaving the piloting entirely to Marr, Relin sorted through Harbinger's schematics in his mind, and decided on the best approach for his attack. Agitated, he unstrapped himself, stood, and checked his lightsaber and gear, speaking to Marr as he did so.
"About one hundred and fifty meters in, you will see a wide corridor open off the landing bay on our starboard side. It is a freight corridor. Put Junker down against it with the port cargo bay door facing it."
Sweat dampened the wall of Marr's brow. "If you want to block the corridor, it will have to be a belly landing. No skids."
"Right," Relin agreed. He had not thought of that. "No skids."
Were Junker to land on its skids, Harbinger's crew could simply walk or crawl underneath to get into the corridor and at Relin.
"You should strap yourself back in," Marr said. "That will be a bumpy landing."
Relin sat, and buckled himself in. "I will not need long. A few minutes at most and you get Junker out of there. Lots of side corridors open off the freight corridor. They will not know where I have gone, and I am… skillful at avoiding detection."
"Understood," Marr said as they sped down the throat of the landing bay, the guide lights casting the cockpit in red. Marr did not slow once they were within the launch tunnel, and Junker scraped one of Harbinger's bulkheads. Metal shrieked and Relin imagined a shower of sparks trailing in their wake. Marr cursed and got the ship off the wall.
"Calm, Marr," Relin said, though he did not feel it himself. The touch of the Lignan had his spirit churning.
They cleared the launch tunnel and moved into the broader landing bay, pelting past a few shuttles on landing pods and a couple of treaded cargo droids. A few of Harbinger's black-uniformed crew scrambled out of ships or trotted along the landing bay deck, watching them pass, questions on their faces. Relin imagined the reports that must have been heading to Saes and the command crew.
"It's enormous in here," Marr said, eyeing the whole scene with a look of faint wonder, perhaps realizing that he was flying in the landing bay of a ship that had fought in a war five thousand years previous. Or perhaps just surprised that they had made it that far.
Relin pointed with his stump when he saw the freight corridor.
"There."
Marr nodded and did not slow.
"Brace yourself," the Cerean said.
Three droids were unloading cargo from a lev pallet. Marr slammed into them, crushing all three, while spinning Junker on its repulsors and slamming its port side against the freight corridor opening. The impact rattled Relin's teeth. Junker protested with a groan of stressed metal. Relin protested with a grunt of pain. It felt as if someone had stuck a knife in his ribs.
"Are you all right?" Marr asked, unstrapping himself.
Relin caught his breath, unbuckled his safety straps, rose, and thumped Marr on the shoulder. "Yes. Well done."
Marr activated the security system right away. Metal shields slid over every viewport: Junker closing its eyes.
"That will protect the ship from small-arms fire. But she is still vulnerable to more powerful weapons. I should not leave her here long."
"I do not think they will try to blow her up on their own landing deck, at least not before they surround her with a makeshift blast wall. We could have loaded her with explosives for all they know. No, I think droids build a blast wall while a security team tries to gain entry."
As if to make Relin's point, blasterfire barked from outside the ship, dull, harmless thumps against the bulkheads.
"None of which will stop some fool pilots from taking shots at the ship," Relin said. "We must hurry."
He turned to go but Marr's hand pulled him back around. The Cerean did not make eye contact.
"How often do Cereans fall to the dark side? In your time, I mean."
Relin understood the origin of the question. The touch of the Lignan, and Marr's conscious use of the Force, had brought him face-to-face with the two poles of potential. Relin remembered that feeling himself from his early days in the Order, the feeling that he stood on a very thin line, and that he might step over it at any moment.