When he’d prepared enough injections, he turned and threw himself back into the storm of their agony, moving from one to another, injecting each with the medicine the doctors had created to keep them alive and sane. He started with the children, then Two-Blade, then Hunter. Each calmed moments after the injection, eyelids heavy, breathing slow and regular. He put a hand on Grace’s head, smoothed her red hair, did the same with Hunter. Hunter was soaked with sweat. She shivered at his touch, but her skin, at least, no longer crawled.
“Where is Alpha?” Hunter asked, her eyes lucid for at least the moment. She held Grace and Blessing—both fathered by Alpha—in her arms. The girls had closed their eyes. They appeared to be sleeping, but their pinched faces and tiny whimpers bespoke continuing pain. The children always suffered the most from the illness. Most of the clones’ offspring had died young over the years.
“Alpha is dead,” Soldier said. “The Jedi killed him. You know that, Hunter.”
She stared at him a long moment, as if not comprehending.
“It should have been you,” she said at last, her speech slurred, and closed her eyes.
The words ablated harmlessly on the emotional armor in which Soldier usually sheathed himself. He’d heard them or something similar often enough over the years. He was different from the others. They knew it and he knew it. He was the best of them, the final specimen created by the doctors, and he showed no signs of the illness that afflicted the rest. Only the children treated him as one of them.
“Do you need water?” Soldier asked her.
“No,” she said, her voice soft, as if she had forgotten her harsh words from a moment before.
“Rest, then. I will get you blankets for the children.”
He started to stand but her hand closed on his forearm, her grip a fevered vise. “Why is this happening, Soldier?”
He did not trust himself to answer, but he didn’t have to. She answered for him.
“Mother is testing her faithful,” she said. She smiled and nodded distantly. “We will pass this test, as we have all the others.”
Soldier patted her hand and stood. His eyes fell on Scar’s body, her face covered in leaking sores. He imagined infected blood crawling across the floor, boring into the flesh of the others. But he knew it was fanciful. He thought Mother might be fanciful, too, but knew better than to say so. If Mother was real and was testing them, then Scar had already failed. Others would, too, he had no doubt.
He got blankets for the children and picked his way through his unconscious and semiconscious siblings, uttering soft words of encouragement. He finally made his way across the cargo bay to Seer. He still had not injected her. With the screams of the other clones ended by the meds, Seer’s prayers to Mother filled the silence.
Before he reached her, Maker sat up and rose on unsteady legs.
“Soldier,” Maker said. “Come here.”
“In a moment,” Soldier said.
“Now,” Maker said, and occupied the space between Seer and Soldier. Maker’s expression was twitchy, uncontrolled. The others looked on or not, their expressions vacant. Maker stepped close to Soldier and spoke through bared teeth.
“You aren’t sick,” he said, his voice the low volume of a threat.
From behind Soldier, Two-Blade murmured agreement, though he never opened his eyes. Blessing and Grace whimpered. They always disliked conflict among the members of the Community.
“And you aren’t because I gave you the meds,” Soldier answered.
Maker’s eyes moved from Soldier to Scar’s body. Maker and Scar had been mates, and Scar’s corpse was a whetstone that sharpened Maker’s rage. Through their empathic connection, Soldier could feel the anger growing in Maker, a dark cloud that promised a storm.
“Why aren’t you sick, Soldier?” Maker asked. His body twitched, a spasm that shook him from head to toe. “I can feel them crawling under my skin, the midis. Do you feel them?”
Soldier did not answer. He looked past Maker toward Seer.
“Seer—”
“She won’t help you,” Maker snapped.
The anger kindled in Soldier by Two-Blade erupted into a sudden flare of heat. Once started, he could not stop the conflagration. He did not want to stop the conflagration. He needed to vent the pressure building in him and Maker was as good a way as any. He stepped nearer to Maker, who stood a hand taller than him, until they were nose to nose.
“I don’t need her help, Maker.”
Maker sneered. Soldier readied himself, fell into the Force.
The anger and fear in the room swirled around them, coalesced into a powerful emotional brew. Maker fed off it, as did Soldier, both of them stuck in a feedback loop that could end only one way.
Maker snatched the hilt of his lightsaber, activated it, and stabbed at Soldier’s abdomen, but Soldier lurched sideways, spun, and used the momentum of the spin to put a Force-augmented kick into Maker’s chest. The impact blew the air from Maker’s lungs and sent him flying five meters across the cargo bay. He hit the wall, bounced off it, roared, and charged Soldier, leaping over the toppled stasis chamber.
The other clones, perhaps roused by the rising tide of anger and power, moaned and shouted.
The power coursing through Soldier intensified. He could not control it. He gave it voice in a shout of rage. Force lightning shot from his fingertips, swirled around him. He extended his left hand and discharged it at Maker. It slammed into him, halted his charge, and lifted him from his feet. Maker screamed.
Soldier relished his pain. Holding Maker aloft, Soldier gestured with his right hand and sent Maker flying into the bulkhead. He hit it hard enough to break bones, then slid toward the floor. Still Soldier did not release him. Using the Force, he slammed him into the bulkhead again, again, again.
Maker’s lightsaber fell from his hand, his arms and legs flailed about as if disconnected from his body, the bones broken, torn from their joints. He looked like a child’s doll. Soldier felt Maker’s pain, let it feed his rage, his power.
Soldier narrowed his focus, gestured with his forefinger and thumb, and seized Maker’s throat in a Force choke. Maker clutched at his neck, gagging. With his other hand, Soldier sent another blast of Force lightning spiraling at Maker. It caught him up in a shroud of crackling energy, but Soldier’s Force choke denied him any screams of pain.
Soldier stared into Maker’s face while Maker’s legs kicked feebly and his face purpled. Soldier continued to squeeze until Maker went still. Only then did he let the body fall to the floor. Maker’s corpse lay beside that of Scar, his flesh disfigured by Soldier, hers by the illness.
Other than Soldier’s breathing, the cargo bay fell still. Even Seer quieted, ceasing her prayers. The combat and Maker’s death seemed to have drained some of the emotion out of the air. Or perhaps it was just the medicine working.
Soldier glanced around. The others, in the grip of the accelerated symptoms of the illness, in the grip of their growing madness, seemed to barely comprehend what had happened. He was pleased the children had not seen it. He would have been ashamed.
He stood there, alone with himself, and studied his hands. He had never before been capable of Force lightning of such power. He looked up to see Seer, finally out of her trance, staring at him, her eyes looking through him. She looked at Maker’s body, back at Soldier. He brandished a hypo.
“You need the medicine, too, Seer.”
She shook her head slowly and smiled. Her beauty struck him, as it often did: the symmetry of her features, her deep-set eyes.
“No I don’t,” she said. “I am more strongly connected to Mother now than ever. She will test us before we reach her. Do you hear me?” She spoke not just to Soldier but to all of them. “She will test us! Do not lose faith, not now! Those who do will never reach Mother.”
To Soldier’s surprise, the surviving clones murmured assent. They lived in a mental space incomprehensible to Soldier, though he’d never have said as much aloud.
/> He picked his way through them until he stood before Seer. Had he been one of them, he might have bowed to her. But he was not one of them.
“You need the hypo, Seer. You were the last of them before …”
“Before you.”
He nodded. “Before me. But they hadn’t bred out the illness even with you. Whatever we flew through—”
“Mother’s blessing.”
“Yes. The … blessing. It will affect you, too. Later than the others, maybe. But it will.”
She smiled, then reached up and touched Soldier’s face.
“You are not like us, Soldier.”
“No,” he said, and fought down a flash of anger. “I’m not. I don’t have the sickness.”
The soft smile did not leave her face. “That’s not what I mean. You don’t believe.” Her smile faded, her expression hardened, and she took his face in her hand, her grip firm. “I’ve seen the doubt in you. As I did in Wry.”
Wry. The others had torn him apart when he had given voice to his doubts. His death had taught Soldier the value of silence.
“Runner needs the meds, too,” he said, and made to move past Seer to the cockpit.
She stopped him with a hand on his chest. “I will make you believe, Soldier.”
They shared a look, saying nothing, saying everything.
She held her arm out for an injection. “This is the only hypo I will have. When we reach Mother, she will heal us, all of us. Including you, Soldier.”
Soldier stared into Seer’s intense, dark eyes, softened his expression, nodded, and shot the hypo into her shoulder. Without another word, he moved past her to the cockpit. Runner lay curled up on the floor, moaning. The injection mitigated his pain and Soldier carried him back to the cargo bay and laid him beside Hunter and Grace and Gift. Seer had already returned to her prayers, her quiet communion with Mother. Soldier wondered what Seer heard during her trances.
He recalled the first time that Seer, in hushed, reverent tones, had told them of her connection through the Force to Mother. She had first sensed Mother years ago, and had offered sermons to them after the doctors had left them alone for the night, when they sat alone in their transparisteel-ceilinged observation chamber.
After Wry’s death, Soldier had gone along with their plans in stoic silence. For years they had plotted, planned. In the dark of their cages, working only by touch and their connection to the Force and to one another, they’d secretly constructed lightsabers, honed their powers, and bided their time until the reckoning. Soldier still did not know how Seer had obtained crystals to power the lightsabers.
And when the reckoning had come, when Seer had at last commanded them to kill, they had murdered every sentient in the facility and sacrificed their bodies to the altar they’d made to Mother. And then …
And then they’d lived alone on the arctic moon, eating what they could find, worshipping Mother and waiting, always waiting. Over the years—years of little food, little hope, and constant cold—Mother had become their purpose, the axis around which their existences turned. And Seer had become their prophet. Soldier had thought they’d never leave the moon, despite Seer’s constant proclamations to the contrary. And then a ship had come, bearing a Jedi, just as Seer had said it would. Alpha had insisted on facing the Jedi while the rest of them had fled in a stolen ship.
I will make you believe, Soldier.
He shook his head, pushed the pernicious notion of faith from his mind, and returned to the cockpit to be alone. The sight of the stars, blinking in the unending void, enthralled him. Up to then, he’d spent his entire existence within the confines of a frozen facility not more than a few square kilometers in area. Staring out the transparisteel of the cloakshape’s cockpit, he saw endless space, endless possibility.
And yet he had no idea where they were going, or what they would do when they arrived. Only Seer knew, and Seer would go mad within days—as would the rest of them, except him—unless they obtained more medicine.
And if that happened, what would he do? They were his purpose—especially the children—as much as Mother was theirs.
He made up his mind, stood, and headed back to the cargo bay, to Seer.
DARTH WYYRLOK STRODE INTO THE DARK CONFERENCE room, leaving the door open behind him. A smooth metal conference table dominated the circular, domed chamber. A pyramidal vidscreen sat centermost on the table. A small, sealed metal case with a retinal scan lock sat on the table, waiting for him. Within it was technology—mindspears—that One Sith agents had found in forgotten Rakatan ruins, deep in the Unknown Regions. The technology had formed the basis of the Master’s cloning program. One Sith scientists had been unable to duplicate its fiber-photon, dark side–based technology, so they had only a limited supply. Eyeing the case, Wyyrlok felt the faint, familiar pulse of dark-side energy emanating from it.
Thunder from a storm outside vibrated the walls of the tower. Rain thumped against the windows. Lightning traced a jagged seam the length of the night sky, the flash casting the soaring tombs and spires of Korriban in silhouette.
Staring out at the storm through the large transparisteel window, Wyyrlok wondered if the Master controlled the weather on Korriban, even as he journeyed in dreams.
As if in answer, the storm growled thunder, and another bolt of lightning made glowing veins in the sky. The dark-side energy of the planet pulsed, rippled.
Wyyrlok wondered, not for the first time, when the Master would emerge from his sleep to conquer and reestablish the Sith. Until then, the One Sith would only lurk around the edges of galactic events. Wyyrlok accepted that. His role was to serve, and the endgame of the Master’s plans stretched not through years, but centuries.
Wyyrlok checked his wrist chrono and saw that Nyss was late. He decided to start on his own and sat at one of the table’s high-backed, contoured chairs.
He activated the vidscreen with a touchpad built into the table and watched the mute replay of the transmission from the frozen moon. He’d already seen it once, but he needed to see it again, to ensure he had missed nothing and to confirm his thinking.
The transmission was a copy of the visual stimuli received by the One Sith’s Anzat agent, Kell Douro. The One Sith had attached a recorder to Douro’s optic nerve and brain that could be activated or deactivated as the Master willed. The Anzat had been as much a construct as a droid. Of course, he had never known that he had been made a sentient recording device, though Wyyrlok knew that Douro had often experienced lost time, memory lapses, and religious epiphanies—side effects of the implantation. When active, the implant had transmitted the visual data back to Douro’s ship, where a secret subroutine in the main computer had opened an encrypted subspace protocol and sent the data to Korriban for review.
There was another roll of thunder. Wyyrlok ran a hand over his head, his fingers lingering on his damaged left horn. He wondered if the Master had placed a similar device in his eye and brain. But then, perhaps the Master did not need such a device for him. He often felt that the Master could read his mind directly.
A blaster shot to Douro’s head had ended the transmissions. But not before the One Sith had received a raft of information from Douro’s most recent mission: tracking the Jedi Jaden Korr to a frozen, uncharted moon in the Unknown Regions. And there, Douro had found something of enormous interest.
Using the touchpad, Wyyrlok sped through the grainy video feed—images of space, Douro’s short time on Fhost.
Wyyrlok stopped at a moment in a cantina in which Jaden Korr had sensed Douro and turned to face him. There was no sound in the recording. Wyyrlok studied the expression on Korr’s face.
“Remarkable,” he said softly. He knew Jaden’s face quite well.
He continued the recording until he reached the point at which Douro had descended toward the frozen moon. Wyyrlok saw the fuzzy, pixilated, overhead view of a large, snow-covered facility. He recognized it as a Thrawn-era cloning lab. To judge from the architecture and power generators, h
e surmised it had been used a bit later in the Grand Admiral’s secret cloning program than the sites the One Sith had previously plundered for technology.
The possibilities of that intrigued him.
“Could it be?” he mused.
Not for the first time, he wondered how much of recent events the Master had foreseen, how far into the future the Master’s foresight extended. It was as though the Master had a recorder on the eye of fate, and through it saw and anticipated events like no one else.
Despite himself, Wyyrlok felt awed by the Master’s power.
Outside, the rain turned to hail and pelted the exterior windows. Lightning once more drew glowing angles across the sky.
Wyyrlok started the recording again and watched through Douro’s eyes as the Anzat set down on the moon. He sped through the images until he reached the point at which Douro had entered the facility. He stopped the video here and there as Douro stalked the corridors, enhancing this or that frame in hopes that something would confirm his suspicions. Nothing he saw made him certain, but everything was suggestive.
The timing was right. The location was right.
“It could be,” he said.
An ache rooted in the back of Wyyrlok’s head. At first he thought it the ghost of the wound that had taken half his horn, but no, it was something else. He wondered again about a possible implant, but then his connection to the Force grew weaker, attenuated. The power emanating from the case went quiescent. The disconnect was not altogether strange to him, though it remained uncomfortable. He recognized its source, had felt it many times in the past. Out of habit, his hand moved toward his lightsaber hilt, though he knew that the weapon would not function—the crystal powering it would have temporarily lost its attunement to the Force.
“How long have you been standing there?” he asked over his shoulder.