Before they could bring them to bear, Relin redirected the blasterfire from their fellows at them and blew holes in both their chests, spattering the bulkheads with their black blood.

Relin ducked into the alcove where the two dead creatures had sheltered, using their corpses as partial cover. Marr saw him in profile, the pained grimace on his face, the angry set of his jaw. A blaster had winged his arm with the severed hand, though it appeared a minor wound. Scorch marks ringed the frayed holes in Relin's robes and shirt.

Blasterfire pinned him to the wall.

He was moving too slowly, Marr knew. He should already have been gone. They had not expected so much resistance right away. Harbinger's crew knew where he was, where Junker was, and more and more of them would marshal here to stop him. Relin looked back at Marr and again gestured angrily for him to seal the ship.

"Close it!" Relin shouted.

Blasterfire forced him to press himself against the wall.

From outside in the landing bay, something heavy thumped against Junker and the high-pitched whine of some kind of motor carried through the bulkheads. Marr knew the crew in the landing bay would soon either try to cut their way in or simply blow the ship from the deck. He had little time. If they got into Junker, he'd never leave Harbinger.

He reached for the button that would close the cargo bay door, let his hand hover over it, and… stopped.

He remembered the greasy touch of the Lignan on his spirit, its coldness, its sharpness. He did not fully understand its danger, but he knew Relin's warnings about what the Sith could do with it were true. Relin could not be allowed to fail. He lowered his hand and met Relin's gaze.

Perhaps Relin saw Marr's resolve.

"No!" Relin shouted. "Go, Marr! Go!"

Marr nodded, but not at Relin.

"I am the keep," he said to himself.

Pulses of blasterfire slammed into the bulkheads near Relin, turning the metal black and warm. Anger, frustration, and pain warred for predominance in Relin. Every breath made his side feel as if he were being stabbed. He was moving far too slowly, he knew. More Massassi would be coming. Saes would be coming. He had underestimated their ability to respond.

A shout of rage crept up his throat, but he held it in, pulled it close, used it to focus his mind. The Force flowed strongly through him, but he was unable to use it to reduce his fatigue or replenish his spirit or body. His power, heightened by the Lignan, answered only to his anger, only to his hate. With it, he could only destroy and kill, not heal.

He knew what that meant but no longer cared.

He had left what he once was five thousand years in the past. Now he was something different, someone else. He wanted only to destroy and kill, to avenge Drev's death, to redeem the two great failures of his life in a conflagration of fire and blood. His grief had metamorphosed into hate, and the change pleased him.

But first he needed to get out of the corridor and deeper into the ship. He'd inhaled as best he could and readied himself to move when a roar from Junker's cargo bay drowned out the sound of blasterfire. For a moment he could not place the origin of the sound, but then it occurred to him-it was an engine.

Flotsam set down twenty meters from the large central structure. The craft's landing threw up a cloud of snow. Jaden unstrapped himself from his seat. Khedryn did the same.

"You needn't come, Khedryn."

Khedryn smiled, his floating eye staring out the cockpit viewport, his other on Jaden's face.

"That's as true a statement as you've uttered, Jedi. But I think I'll come along anyway." He winked his lazy eye. "There might be something here worth salvaging."

Jaden smiled, grateful for the companionship. "Let's gear up, then."

Both donned environment suits, sealed the helmets, tested the comlinks, and opened the starboard side exit.

The frozen air and snow of an icy world blew in and dusted the floor at their feet. The envirosuits blunted the force of the cold, but Jaden's skin still goose-pimpled. He stood at the top of the ramp, staring out at the drifts and the swirling snow.

Khedryn's voice sounded in his helmet. "Jaden? Let's move. Even with the suits we don't want to be out in this any longer than necessary."

But Jaden needed to feel the air, taste it. He deactivated the seal on his helmet, and it disconnected with a slight hiss.

Khedryn took him by the arm. "What are you doing?"

"I need to do this, Khedryn."

"Why?"

Jaden did not answer, but Khedryn let him go, muttering about eyes and cursing randomly.

Jaden lifted off the helmet and gasped at the smell of the air, the cut of the wind against his skin. He was living his Force vision, the imagined and the real melding into one in the frozen air of the moon.

He inhaled. The air felt like fire in his throat and he imagined himself purged by the pain. Moisture from his breath formed clouds in the air before him, collected in his beard, froze there. The wind hissed past his ears. In the distance, he heard the crack of ice.

All of it as it had been in his vision.

He knelt, removed a glove, and took a handful of snow from the deck, letting it melt in his hand. He looked out through the swirl and saw the red light of the communications tower looming over the rest of the complex, blinking at him through the snow.

Help us. Help us.

He would.

Standing, he slid his glove back over his freezing hand, resealed his helmet, then activated his lightsaber. The heat it threw off warmed him.

"Follow me," he said to Khedryn.

Khedryn drew his blaster and followed him toward the facility. "I am increasingly concerned that all Jedi are crazed."

Jaden smiled but otherwise left the comment alone. Khedryn tapped a control pad on his suit's forearm and remotely closed and secured the Starhawk.

The deep snow clutched at their feet, as if trying to slow their advance and give them time to reconsider. Jaden looked up, eyed the slate of the sky, imagined not snow falling but reified evil.

"Do you think they're all right?" Khedryn said over the comlink, apparently misunderstanding his look. "Would you know if… something happened?"

"The Force is with them," Jaden said.

"You said that before, but it's not an answer."

"I do not have many of those."

The facility looked to Jaden not like an ordinary building, but like a tomb that held an enormous evil better left alone. He was unsure that he should dig it up, yet he felt he had no choice. He faltered in his steps.

Khedryn stepped to his side. "Come on, Jaden. Keep moving. There is a hatch ahead."

Jaden continued on, walking beside a skew-eyed salvager on a moon not found on any star charts.

"Hey, was I in your vision?" Khedryn asked him.

"No."

"That's not reassuring," Khedryn said, and chuckled.

Jaden laughed, too, glad once more for Khedryn's presence.

They neared the hatch, and Jaden was certain that whatever fate the Force had for him lurked behind it.

Marr held a blaster in one hand and with his other the steering bars of Khedryn's Searing swoop. The swoop's motor was so loud it sounded like an ongoing explosion.

Marr's heart beat so fast he could hardly breathe. Recalling Relin's words, he turned inward, focused his mind on the keep within him, thought of how he felt when immersed in a difficult calculation, a distant, warm isolation that brought him calm.

His heart and breathing slowed, replaced by a pleasing serenity.