The suit ran a diagnostic, and Relin watched the results in the helmet's HUD. His breathing sounded loud in the drum of the transparisteel and plastic helmet. He activated the comlink.
"Testing."
"Clear," said Drev, his voice like a concert inside the helmet.
The diagnostic came back clean.
"Suit is live and sealed," Relin said.
"We remain unnoticed," Drev said, his tone sharp, serious. "For now."
While Relin had been trying to encourage seriousness in his Padawan for months, at the moment he regretted the turn of Drev's mood. He missed his Padawan's mirth in the face of danger. To craft Drev into a Jedi, it seemed that Relin would have to turn him into something other than Drev.
"How close?" Relin said. He slipped a dozen mag-grenades and a variety of other equipment into one of the suit's ample thigh pockets, then strapped a blaster pistol to his belt, beside his lightsaber and its power pack.
"Twenty thousand kilometers and closing fast," Drev said. A hitch in his voice told Relin something was wrong. "That moon. Master, it's a ruin."
"I know," Relin said. "That is what Sith do. They destroy. They take. That is all the dark side can offer. Now focus, Padawan. Match vectors with the nearest transport returning to Harbinger, but only for a moment. I will board it, and that will get me into one of the dreadnought's landing bays." He considered the grenades in his pockets. "From there, I'll see what I can do."
For a time, Drev said nothing, then, "Are you sure this is the way, Master? If you succeed, that takes care of only one of the dreadnoughts."
"That we may not accomplish everything is no reason to do nothing. We cannot let that cargo get to Kirrek. Or at least not all of it. We stop what we can here, doing whatever we must. If I destroy or disable the first ship, we'll figure out a way to do the same to the other."
"Understood."
"Entering the air lock," Relin said. He opened the interior air lock door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him. He disengaged the safety and pressed the button to open the exterior door. A red light flashed for three seconds to indicate the pending evacuation. Relin held the safety bar as the hatch slid open and the air rushed out into space.
"Coming up on the transport now, Master."
Relin moved to the open hatch as Drev eased the Infiltrator over the transport and matched its course and speed as best he could. The awkward transport was a flying storage crate, a gray wedge of a hold with a transparisteel bubble cockpit tacked on to its underside. Like all Sith ships, it still managed to look like a flying blade.
Dark side energy leaked from its cargo hold in palpable waves, making Relin temporarily dizzy.
"Master?"
They would be spotted in moments. He had to move.
"Have you ever gone angling, Drev?" Relin asked.
"Angling?"
"Fishing. You know."
"No, Master. I have not."
Relin tried to smile, failed. At that moment, he would have paid a thousand credits to hear Drev's laugh. "Neither have I."
"May the Force be with you, Master."
Relin picked a spot on the spine of the transport, closed his eyes, felt the Force. His mastery of the telekinetic use of the Force was not advanced enough to pull a moving ship to him, but that was not what he intended to do.
"A scanner has picked up our ship," Drev said, tension in his voice.
"Our usual encrypted channel, Drev. And minimal chatter."
"Yes, Master. And… don't miss," Drev said, and chuckled.
Smiling, Relin reached out with the Force, took mental hold of the Sith transport, and leapt out of the Infiltrator into open space.
"I am clear," he said, and Drev peeled off.
THE PRESENT:41.5 YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF YAVIN
The screams from outside Jaden's window turned to laughter as an open-top speeder streaked past. He heard music booming from the speeder's speakers. The sounds faded as it flew away.
It took a moment for him to understand what had occurred.
Adolescents, he realized. Probably on a late-night thrill ride.
"Stang," he whispered, but he did not deactivate his lightsaber. Its hum filled the room, a comforting sound. The images from the vision remained sharp in his mind.
The whir of R6's servos announced the droid's entrance into the room. Seeing Jaden standing in his nightclothes with his lightsaber burning, R6 cut short his beeped greeting to whistle a concerned question. Jaden did not fully understand droidspeak, but he usually got the gist of R6's communications. Or perhaps he assumed R6 said or asked whatever Jaden wished him to say or ask.
"I guess that makes you my confessor," he said to the astromech. "Congratulations."
R6 beeped the question again, and Jaden smiled.
"Nothing. A bad joke. And I am fine. I had an… unusual dream."
But Jaden knew it had not been a dream. It had been a Force vision.
R6 hummed understanding and whistled out the first stanza of a lullaby.
Jaden smiled at the droid, though his mind was still on the vision. He had never before had one so vivid.
What had it meant?
Dead Jedi and Sith resurrected, an icy moon in the Unknown Regions, a rain of evil, and the repeated cry for help. He could not make sense of what he had seen, so he tried to recall what he had felt-the uncomfortably familiar touch of the dark side, his increasingly attenuated connection to the light side, and, bridging the two, his Master's words: the Force is a tool, neither light nor dark.
"How can that be? A tool? Nothing more than that?"
R6 beeped confusion.
Jaden waved a hand distractedly. "It cannot be," he said, answering his own question. The Force had been Jaden's moral compass for decades. Reducing it to a tool, mere potential, left him… rudderless. He looked at his hand, the hand from which he had discharged Force lightning.
"There be dragons," he muttered, deactivating his lightsaber.
R6 whirred a question.
"I am trying to discern the vision's meaning, but I am… uncertain."
He had been uncertain since the Battle of Centerpoint Station, though he had been struggling with doubt before that. His certainty had been one of the unrecorded casualties of the battle. He had… done things he regretted. The Corellians had simply wanted their independence. In hindsight, Jaden saw the whole affair as a political matter unworthy of Jedi involvement. He had killed over politics. The Jedi Order had killed over politics.
Where did that leave them as an Order? How were they different from the Sith? Hadn't they used the light side to engage in morally questionable acts? And where did that leave Jaden? He felt soiled by his participation in the battle.
"Once, we were guardians of the galaxy," he said to R6, and the droid stayed wisely silent.
Now the Jedi seemed guardians of particular politicians. What principles did they stand for anymore?
The Force is only a tool.
He shook his head as he pulled on his robes. The Force had to be more than that. Otherwise he had lived a lie for decades. His lightsaber was a tool. The Force was… something more. It had to be.
He feared the Jedi had come to think that because they used the light side of the Force, everything they did must therefore be good. Jaden saw that thinking as flawed; even dangerous.
Since the battle for Centerpoint, he had isolated himself from the Order, from Valin, from Kyle. He felt purposeless and unwelcome. He thought his doubt must be plain to them all. He knew he would be transparent to the Masters. He had no one with whom he could share his thoughts.
"No one but you," he said to R6.
His blaster and the small, one-handed hilt of his second lightsaber lay on his side table. He strapped on a holster, put the blaster to bed in it, and hooked his secondary saber to the clip at the small of his back. He did not know why he kept the old lightsaber, holding it close to him like a good-luck charm. He supposed its blade was the purple tether that connected him to a simpler past. He had crafted the blade when the Force had been nothing to him but a word. He had possessed no wisdom, yet he had utilized the Force to build a blade.