number.”
Nyss ran a hand over his bald head, his excitement palpable. “You want me to find them. See if a Prime is among them?”
“We do. But there is more of interest. Watch.”
Wyyrlok let the tape play, and they watched the combat between Jaden Korr and the Solusar clone. The lightsabers, green and red, made blurred wedges in the air.
“Jaden Korr fights well,” Nyss said.
Wyyrlok shrugged.
Eventually Korr lost three fingers as the Solusar clone disarmed him and drove him into the cloning cylinder. For a moment, the recording lost the combat. But Douro must have circled and moved closer to get a view of the interior of the cylinder. There, they saw Korr on his knees, his left hand held before his face and—
“Freeze it there,” Nyss said, half-standing and staring at the screen. For a moment, he lost control of his power, and a headache flared in Wyyrlok’s skull.
“Is that what I think it is?” Nyss asked. “Magnify.”
Wyyrlok already knew what it was, but it pleased him that Nyss saw it and understood the implications.
He centered the image on Korr’s hand and magnified.
Bolts of Force lightning extended from his fingertips, jagged green lines summoned by fear or anger.
Outside, ordinary lightning split the sky. Thunder rumbled.
“He is falling,” Nyss observed in a whisper. He retook control of his power. “It is too soon, isn’t it?”
His headache gone, Wyyrlok nodded. “The Master did not expect him to fall so readily. Therefore, you will find him, too.”
“And?”
Wyyrlok nodded at the case of mindspears on the table. “And do what needs to be done.”
Nyss clucked his tongue on the roof of his mouth, then nodded slowly, already planning. “Korr will hunt the clones,” he said. “We may be able to complete both tasks at once.”
“I thought the same thing,” Wyyrlok said, then added, “Therefore the Master wishes you to take an Iteration.”
Nyss turned in his chair and faced him full on. Looking at the Umbaran’s smooth, expressionless face, Wyyrlok felt the true otherness of Nyss. He was unlike the Sith, unlike the Jedi, unlike anyone else in the universe save his sister.
“Awake?” Nyss asked.
“Yes, but in stasis until everything is ready.” Wyyrlok slid the case across the table to Nyss. “There are two spikes in the case. One blank for later. And one basic to be used now, to awaken the Iteration.”
Nyss laid his pale hands on the case. “It’s up to date?”
“Up to date enough,” Wyyrlok said. “You know how valuable these are. We have few left. The Iteration’s appearance, his grooming, has been matched to that of the mole.”
“When should we leave?” Nyss asked.
“Immediately. The beacon on Douro’s ship shows that a course has been set for Fhost.”
Nyss rose, tucked the case under his arm. “We can leave within the hour. Let’s go, Syll.”
Nyss smiled at Wyyrlok as Syll slipped from the shadows on the other side of the room and threw back her hood. Her smile was a tight, slightly upturned curl of lips that never reached her dark eyes. Like her brother, she was pale and slightly built. Short black hair haloed the pale oval of her face.
It occurred to Wyyrlok that Nyss had not lost control of his power during the conversation. Probably Syll had been toying with Wyyrlok.
Wyyrlok licked his lips and tried to keep the surprise and anger from his face. He must have looked at her and past her several times during the briefing.
“You tread dangerously,” he said, and his hand fell to his lightsaber.
Nyss only smiled. He stood, bowed, collected the case, and glided out of the room with his sister.
After they’d gone, Wyyrlok rewound the recording back to the point at which Kell was in orbit around the moon. The recording showed a ship in the distance, a huge blade-shaped dreadnought bristling with weapons. Wyrrlock had never seen one like it. The One Sith’s technicians had analyzed the images and concluded that it was a craft modeled on an ancient Sith design. Wyyrlok wondered what else had happened in the system and what had happened to the ship.
Outside, the storm raged.
* * *
She could not recall a particular moment when she had become self-aware. Sentience had not occurred in a revelatory flash. Instead it had come in a series of gradual steps, a long climb up from darkness to light, from thing to person.
In that way, she became self-aware.
She did not know how long it had taken. Back then she’d had little sense of time. But she surmised, now, that it had taken millennia.
After