Paul Kemp: Crosscurrent

He retracted his feeders, slick with blood, mucus, and brains, and they sat quiescent in their sacs.

Sighing, he collected the human's corpse, bore it to the air lock, and set the controls to eject it. Through the centuries, he had left such litter on hundreds of planets.

As he watched the automated ejection sequence vacate the air lock, he consoled himself with the knowledge that one day he would feed on stronger soup that would reveal to him the whole truth of Fate.

Reasonably sated, he returned to the cockpit of Predator and linked his comm receiver to the navicomp, as he had been instructed. In moments the autopilot indicator winked out-reminding Kell of the way the Corellian's eyes had winked out, how the human had transformed from sentience to meat in the span of a moment-and another force took control of Predator. Kell settled into his chair as the ship sped through the malaise of Korriban's atmosphere toward the dark side of the planet.

A short time later Predator set down in the midst of ancient structures. Lightning illuminated weathered pyramids, towers of pitted stone, crystalline domes, all of them the temples and tombs of the Sith, all of them the geometry of the dark side. Black clouds roiled and jagged runs of lightning formed a glowing net in the sky.

Kell rose, slid into his mimetic suit, checked the twin cortosis-coated vibroblades sheathed at his belt, and headed for Predator's landing ramp. Before lowering it, he took a blaster and holster from a small-arms locker and strapped them to his thigh. He considered blasters inelegant weapons, but preferred to be over-armed rather than under.

He pressed the release button on the ramp. Hydraulics hummed and the door lowered. Wind and rain hissed into Predator. Korriban's air, pungent with the reek of past ages, filled his nostrils. Thunder boomed.

Kell stared out into the darkness, noted the clustered pinpoints of red light that floated in the pitch. He shifted on his feet as the lights drew closer-a silver protocol droid. He attuned his vision to Fate, saw no daen nosi. Droids were programming, nothing more. They made no real choices and so had no lines. The false sentience of the droid unnerved Kell and he cut off the perception.

The anthropomorphic droid strode through the wind and rain to the base of the landing ramp and bowed its head in a hum of servos.

"Master Anzat," the droid said in Basic. "I am Deefourfive. Please follow me. The Master awaits you."

The droid's words rooted Kell to the deck. Despite himself, Kell's twin hearts doubled their beating rate. Adrenaline flowed into his blood. The feeders in his cheeks spasmed. He inhaled, focused for a moment, and returned his body to calmness, his hormone level to normal.

"The Master? Krayt himself?"

"Please follow," the droid said, turned, and began walking.

Kell pulled up the hood of his suit but did not lower the mask; he strode down the ramp and stepped into the storm. Korriban drenched him. With a minor effort of will, he adjusted his core body temperature to compensate for the chill.

The droid led him along long-dead avenues lined with the ancient stone and steel monuments of the Sith Order. Kell saw no duracrete, no transparisteel, nothing modern. On much of Korriban, he knew, new layers had been built on the old over the millennia, creating a kind of archaeological stratification of the Sith ages.

Not here. Here, the most ancient of Sith tombs and temples sat undisturbed. Here, Krayt wandered in his dreams of conquest.

A flash of lightning veined the sky, painting shadows across the necropolis. Kell's mimetic suit adjusted to account for the temporary change in lighting. As he walked, he felt a growing regard fix on him, a consciousness.

Ahead, he saw a squat tower of aged stone-Krayt's sanctuary. Spirals of dark energy swirled in languid arcs around the spire. Only a few windows marred its otherwise featureless exterior, black holes that opened into a dark interior. To Kell, they looked like screaming mouths protesting the events transpiring within.

The droid ascended a wide, tiered stairway that led to a pair of iron doors at the base of the spire. Age-corroded writing and scrollwork spiraled over the door's surface. Kell could not read it.

"Remain here, please," the droid said, and vanished behind the doors.

Kell waited under Korriban's angry sky, surrounded by the tombs of Korriban's dead Sith Lords. Checking his wrist chrono from time to time, he attuned his senses to his surroundings and waited on Krayt's pleasure.

Footsteps sounded behind him, barely audible above the rain. He changed his perception as he turned, and saw a thick network of daen nosi that extended through the present to the future, wrapping the galaxy like a great serpent that would strangle it.

Relin and Drev sat in pensive silence as their Infiltrator streaked through the churning blue tunnel of hyperspace. They watched their instrumentation intently, hoping for the telltale beep denoting detection of the hyperspace beacon secreted aboard Harbinger. Lingering silence would mean they'd lost Saes.

"Scanners functioning normally," Drev said. After a sidelong glance at Relin, he began to hum, a free-form, lively tune from his homeworld.

"Must you?" Relin asked, smiling despite himself as he adjusted the instrumentation.

"Yes," said Drev, also smiling, but without looking up from his instruments. "I must."

Relin admired his Padawan's ability to find joy in everything he did, though Relin thought-and taught-that it was more important to maintain emotional evenness. Extremes of emotion could lead to the dark side.

Still, he wondered sometimes if Drev was the only one doing the learning in their relationship. It seemed Relin smiled only when in Drev's presence. Saes's betrayal had cut the mirth out of him as skillfully as a surgeon.

Drev tapped the scanner screen with a thick finger. "Come out, come out, whither you hide."

Presently, the scanner picked up a faint signal. Relin and Drev exhaled as one and leaned forward in their seats.

Drev chuckled and put a finger on the scanner screen. "There. They did it."

Relin let the navicomp digest the scanner's input and cross-referenced the coordinates. "The Phaegon system."

Without waiting for instruction, Drev pulled up the on board computer's information on the system.

"There's nothing there," Drev said, eyeing the readout. "What is he doing?"

"Still looking, maybe," Relin said, and took the controls. "We will know soon enough."

The signal grew in strength as the Infiltrator hurtled through hyperspace.

"He's deep in-system," Relin said. "We emerge ten light-seconds out."

Drev nodded and input the commands into the navicomp. "The system has four planets, each with multiple moons. An asteroid belt divides the third from the fourth."

"Use it as cover until we understand what Saes is doing."

"Deactivating the hyperdrive in five, four… "

"Activating signature scrambler and baffles," Relin said. At the same moment, he used the Force to mask his and Drev's Force signatures, lest Saes perceive their arrival.

"… two, one," Drev said, and deactivated the hyperdrive.

The blue tunnel of hyperspace gave way to the black void of stars, planets, and asteroids.

Instantly a wave of dark side energy, raw and jagged, saturated the ship. Unready for the assault, Relin lost his breath, turned dizzy. Drev groaned, lurched back in his seat as if struck, then vomited down the front of his robes.

"Where is that coming from?" Relin said between gritted teeth.

Drev shook his head, still heaving. He reached for the scanner console.

"Leave it," Relin said, and adjusted the scanners himself.