“No. You are the Iteration.”
The word meant nothing to him.
“I’m going to speak a phrase,” the Umbaran said. “And when I do, you’ll know what you are.”
He shook his head. Nothing the Umbaran said made sense, nothing about his situation made sense. How had he gotten here? He remembered very little after his graduation from the Jedi Academy.
The Umbaran smiled, an expression more sinister than mirthful, and started to speak. He did not comprehend the words. He blinked and … knew.
He was a clone of Jaden Korr. He was an agent of the One Sith. He was to infiltrate the Jedi Order and be activated when the One Sith deemed the time right.
“I am … an agent of the One Sith.”
The Umbaran nodded. “Yes.”
“Why did you activate me now? I’m not a member of the Jedi Order.”
“No. But you will be.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will in time. Now, who are you?”
“I am the Iteration.”
The Umbaran nodded, hit a key on the comp panel.
The Iteration was able to move. At the same time, the darkness that seemed to hover around the Umbaran decreased somewhat and the Iteration’s connection to the Force returned in a rush of power that made him gasp.
The Iteration took a step, another, ginger on limbs that had never before borne his weight. The cloning tank used electro-impulses to stimulate muscle development and growth, but he knew to take care with his first steps.
Behind the Umbaran, the door to the small chamber slid open and two figures in cowled cloaks strode in. Each towered over the Umbaran, over the Iteration, and both held electro-staffs in their fists. Their red hands featured scales and black claws. The cowls and dim light hid their faces, but the Iteration caught a suggestion of scaled eye ridges above reptilian eyes.
“Syll is awaiting him aboard my ship,” the Umbaran said to them. “Get him aboard and put him in stasis.”
“Yes, my lord,” the two answered, their voices deep and guttural.
“Stasis?” the Iteration said. “But I just …” He struggled for the right word. “… woke up.”
“I needed to make sure you could withstand the shock of the awakening and the first memory transfer.”
“The first? And if I would’ve died?”
The Umbaran shrugged. “I would’ve used another.”
“Another?”
“Get him aboard,” the man said to the guards.
As the guards took him away, he asked over his shoulder, “Why did you awaken me? What am I to do?”
“Nothing, yet. You’re just along for the ride until I need you.”
“Until you need me for what?”
“Until I need you to iterate,” the Umbaran said, and the Iteration imagined the thin line of a smug smile drawn across the Umbaran’s pale face.
Soldier felt an odd sense of separation, a peculiar sense of otherness. A gulf opened in him, growing as the stolen ship blazed ever farther from the moon.
The moon had been his birthplace, the place where he had spent his entire life.
The place he had long ago grown to hate, but that was also his home.
He felt as if his life up to that moment had been the before, and that he had just begun the after. But the after felt uncomfortably vast. Suddenly adrift in infinite space, in infinite possibilities, he felt as he always had when he was floating in one of Dr. Green’s sensory deprivation tanks—alone, unmoored from himself, a tiny ship bobbing across the surface of a limitless ocean.
The frigid, unnamed moon and its cloning facility had been the Community’s home for decades. He and the other clones had been specimens for Imperial scientists, living in cages made of transparisteel, their existences an unending series of tests, questions, needles, training.
It had been awful, but they’d had structure, purpose.
Now they had neither.
The scientists had wanted to clone a unique Force user. And they had succeeded, in a way. But their success had been their undoing. The Community had earned their freedom with murder, killing everyone else in the facility and giving them to Mother.
And now they were riding Seer’s promises into the velvet of space.
And where would they go?
First to Fhost.
Then to Mother.
Perhaps Soldier’s possibilities were not as infinite as he supposed. Perhaps he had had more purpose, more structure, than he realized.
The readout showed the ship to be clear of gravity wells. Soldier took one last look around the system, the distant red star, the gas giants.
Seer entered the cockpit and folded her lithe body into the copilot’s seat. “The universe is large and you feel alone,” she said.
Soldier tried to hide his surprise. Seer had articulated