doctors would have done with us had we not sacrificed them to Mother? What was our purpose?”
The question embodied his entire existence. “I don’t know.”
“I do,” Seer said. “I do.”
He wanted to believe, wanted to find purpose in the fact of his creation, but belief melted in the heat of his reason. He suspected—and feared—that he’d have to make a purpose for himself.
RELIEVED AFTER HIS CONFERENCE WITH MASTER SKYWALKER, Jaden walked Junker’s corridors until he reached the cockpit. Khedryn and Marr sat in their accustomed seats running through a series of diagnostics. The cockpit door was propped open with a spare cooling coil, having been damaged by the Sith warriors Marr had fought aboard the freighter. Blaster fire had left black streaks, and bladed weapons had left deep scores in the metal.
Marr had shown considerable mettle fighting the Sith, and the fact only confirmed Jaden’s thinking: Marr was ready for more advanced training.
For a time Jaden lingered in the corridor outside the cockpit, listening to his friends check one system after another. They made an impressive team, speaking little, accomplishing much. Jaden cleared his throat and stepped into the cockpit.
“She’s almost ready,” Khedryn said, checking the instrumentation.
Marr checked one final thing on the comp before looking up at Jaden. “What’s our heading, Jad—I mean, Master?”
Marr’s use of the term “Master” sounded so incongruous that it stunned both Khedryn and Jaden into temporary silence. Jaden supposed he had better get used to it.
“Fhost,” Jaden said.
“From there?” Khedryn asked.
Jaden stared out the transparisteel of the cockpit. A million stars of the Unknown Regions blinked at him.
“I don’t know yet. The Order wants me—wants us,” he corrected, looking at Marr, “to find the escaped clones.”
“Does ‘us’ mean you two, or all three of us?” Khedryn asked.
“All three of us,” Jaden said. “Always.”
His reply seemed to banish some lingering tension that had put lines in Khedryn’s forehead. “They sending help?”
Jaden shook his head. “If there is any, it’ll be long in coming. We’re on our own.”
Khedryn looked around for a cup of caf, saw none, patted his pockets for something, found nothing.
Marr held out a piece of chewstim from the pack he kept in his shirt pocket.
“Thanks,” Khedryn said.
“Of course,” Marr said. He offered Jaden a piece, and Jaden passed with a shake of his head.
“Might be just as well,” Khedryn said around the chew. “No point in the Order sending someone out here to sit on their hands. We don’t know where the clones are and probably won’t ever find out. If they’re smart, they’re long gone.”
Staring out at the stars of the Unknown Regions, Jaden could not help but agree. They’d have a hard time tracking the clones in all that black.
“Their possibilities are limited,” Marr said. “Look.” His fingers worked the instrument panel and called up a star chart of the near sectors of the Unknown Regions. “We know they’re in a cloakshape fighter. And we know the kind of space an ordinary cloakshape hyperdrive can put behind it.”
“Cloakshapes are tinkerers’ ships,” Khedryn said. “All of them are modified, Marr. You saw that one. It had a modular cargo bay tacked on to its belly. Its hyperdrive could have been modified, too. Probably was.”
Marr shook the mountain of his head. “I disagree. Hyperdrives are notoriously difficult to change out in cloakshapes, so I suspect it’s still standard. Maybe even slower than usual, given the cargo bay. And if it is and the clones went deeper into the Unknown Regions rather than into Republic space, then …”
Marr closed his eyes, and Jaden felt him drawing on the Force to perform his calculations. “… they would be somewhere within this radius.”
With his finger on the star map, Marr drew an imaginary circle around a vast expanse of space in the Unknown Regions. He worked at the comp for a moment, then added, “And if we exclude dead systems along the hyperlanes, we’re looking at this.”
He tapped a key, and the semicircle of possible routes segmented into a few large slices radiating out from the known hyperlanes.
“That’s still a lot of space,” Khedryn said.
“It’s a start, though,” Jaden said. “Nicely done, Marr.”
Marr beamed. “Thank you, Master.”
The honorific was easier to hear the second time—for Jaden, at least, if not for Khedryn.
“Good job,” Khedryn said to him awkwardly.
“Did you speak to Grand Master Skywalker?” Marr asked Jaden.
“I did. He approved your training.”
Marr did not smile, merely swallowed and nodded.
“Congratulations,” Khedryn said, the word pulled out of him by common courtesy and nothing else. He turned