Kell trailed the Starhawk by fifty kilometers, well out of visual range given the snowstorm. And the Starhawk's scanners would never pierce Predator's sensor baffles. Jaden's ship showed up clearly on Predator's scanners, though, and Kell traced its flight as it closed on the source of the Imperial beacon. He knew when they reached it, for the Starhawk slowed, circled. Kell kept Predator as a distance, waiting for Jaden to set down.
He did not have to wait long.
He delayed a quarter hour before piloting Predator in the direction of Jaden's ship, but stayed high enough to make visual detection difficult.
Below, he saw a building complex, its walls gripped in ice, the spike of the communications tower blinking red through the storm. He snapped photos with his ship's nose cam, intending to send them to Wyyrlok via subspace when he got back into outer space.
Despite the beacon's warning, he expected little danger from anything or anyone other than Jaden. He supposed there could be some leftover and still-functioning automated security apparatus, but he could not imagine anything organic surviving for long on the moon.
He set Predator down a kilometer away from the Starhawk and hurried to the hold. The stasis chambers stood empty-he had fed on all his stored meat-but they piqued his hunger for Jaden. His feeders twisted in his cheek sacs.
He donned his mimetic suit and activated it, holstered his blaster, sheathed his vibroblades. He threw a thick envirosuit over the whole and climbed into his covered speeder.
Wind buffeted the cargo bay the moment he opened the door, The speeder rocked on its repulsorlifts. Snow and ice blew in, dusting the windscreen. Kell activated Predator's security system as he drove the speeder out of the bay.
Gliding over the frozen landscape, he downloaded the Starhawk's location from Predator's computer and accelerated to full speed, chasing Fate. He stopped the speeder fifty meters from Jaden's landing site, threw up the hood of his weather-cloak, and climbed out.
The wind and cold rifled his cloak, wormed under his insulation, and stabbed at his skin. The faint aroma of sulfur hung in the freezing air, probably due to volcanism.
With an effort of will, he elevated his core body temperature until he felt comfortable. He trudged to the top of a snow dune-the wind tried to pull him from his perch-and glassed the Starhawk's landing site with a pair of macro binoculars.
The ship sat on its skids atop a clear field of packed ice, apparently sealed tight. He increased the magnification of the binoculars and confirmed that security screens covered the viewports.
Most likely Jaden had already exited the ship.
Examining the area around the ship, he thought he might have seen indentations in the snow that could have been footprints leading toward the facility, but he'd have to get closer. He glassed the facility itself.
Snow covered all but the communications tower and the rectangular central facility. He noted the single-story steel-and-duracrete construction, the lack of windows, the sealed hatches for doors. The whole place sweated Imperial functionalism, with nothing wasted on aesthetics.
Probably a research facility of some kind, Kell supposed. He imagined a lower level or two below ground. An experiment gone awry would explain the beacon's message.
Walking sideways down the dune, he returned to the speeder and used its onboard scanners to check the complex for radiation. His body could endure radiation exposure that would kill most other sentients, but he saw no reason in taking chances.
Detecting nothing dangerous, he drove the speeder up to the Starhawk. He stripped off his envirosuit, exposing the mimetic suit, and pulled up its hood and mask. As he disembarked the speeder, he upped his core temperature still more. The mimetic suit turned him white, even mimed a tumble of blowing snow.
Drawing his blaster, he walked the area around the ship until he found the footprints. They were so deep that the wind and snow had not yet effaced them. Two pairs of boots dug a chain of little pits in the snow in the direction of a large entry hatch in the main complex.
Jaden was not alone. He was accompanied by either Khedryn Faal or Marr Idi-Shael. Their soup Kell did not crave, not anymore. His appetite was limited to Jaden Korr.
He hurried back to the speeder, parked it out of sight of the Starhawk, and headed for the hatch.
His mimetic suit turned him into just more blowing snow.
He was a ghost.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When Jaden and Khedryn found the central computer room, it had been ransacked. All of the comp stations appeared to be destroyed, some obviously slashed by lightsabers, others simply smashed with something heavy. Ruined display screens, servers, and CPUs dotted the floor. Pieces of shattered data crystals crunched underfoot like caltrops.
"Someone did not like computers," Khedryn said.
Jaden had hoped to find an answer in the core computing room. Instead he'd found the same ruin that characterized the rest of the complex. He felt pressure building in his chest, at the base of his skull.
For the first time, he began to worry that the complex had nothing to show him.
But how could that be?
He went from table to table, sorting through the debris.
"Anything usable, Khedryn. There has to be something here. Look! Look!"
Khedryn joined him, the two of them sifting the strata of destruction like archaeologists.
Khedryn pulled a water-stained hard-copy schematic from the debris, holding it gently by one corner. "Looks like the layout of this facility." He studied it for a moment, turned it over, slowly unfolding it.
"Careful," Jaden said.
Khedryn got it unfolded in one piece and studied it. "It mentions a lower level in the key but does not show it."
"Good find. Keep looking."
Jaden needed something more solid, something that would show him where the Force wanted him to go. He could not consult his feelings. They were too clouded with doubt. He wanted facts. He wanted-needed-to understand the facility's purpose, the reason for all the mystery.
Reaching under a desk against the wall, he found some stray data crystals, frayed power cords, and a single computer that was not obviously damaged. The batteries would be long dead.
"I need a power cord," he said over his shoulder.
"Here," Khedryn said, grabbing one from the floor near his feet and tossing it to Jaden.
Jaden held his breath as he plugged one end into the computer, the other into an outlet, and turned on the power.
He blew out a relieved breath when it hummed to life. He thought Khedryn must surely have heard his heartbeat.
"There are data crystals under that desk. Grab them. Any that are intact."
Khedryn did. There were dozens.
They tried one after another, quickly finding all of them encrypted or unusable. Jaden's elation faded. The facility seemed intent on keeping its secrets.
"Second to last," Khedryn said. "Holocrystal."
He tossed it to Jaden. Jaden snatched it out of the air and shot him a glare for being so careless. Khedryn responded by making bug eyes.
Jaden inserted the crystal into the functioning computer and tried to extract usable data. As he had with all the others, he moved through a series of files and found most of them corrupted. He executed two or three and the computer's holoplayer projected only a scrambled image and indecipherable audio.
Khedryn shook his head and walked away in frustration.
Toward the end of the file string, Jaden hit on a log of files that appeared less damaged than the others.
"Here," he said to Khedryn, and ran the files.
"What do you have?"
"Let's see."
The computer holoprojector lit up, and a shaky hologram materialized before them. Dr. Black-they could read the name on his lab coat-a paunchy, graying human with a receding hairline and eyes set too close together, spoke without much inflection.