of the Force, of himself. And he understood both now.
In fact, he felt the Force anew, felt it with the same unabashed joy he’d felt when he’d first awakened to it as a child, an awakening that had led him to construct a lightsaber from spare parts in his uncle’s workshop. He did not remember actually making the lightsaber. It felt like a dream. He thought he might have been in a trance the whole time, but he did remember activating the weapon for the first time, marveling at the beauty of its thin, unwavering purple line, the quiet hum of its power. When he’d shown his handiwork to his uncle, his uncle had scarcely believed it.
“Stang, boy! Turn that thing off before you cut a hole in the wall!”
His uncle had contacted the authorities immediately and within two days Jaden had been enrolled in the Jedi Academy. It had been a whirlwind of shuttles and space flights that had ended with Jaden shaking Grand Master Luke Skywalker’s hand for the first time.
“Welcome to the Jedi Academy,” Luke had said to him.
Looking out on the stars, the glowing clouds of gas, Jaden realized that he had not thought about Uncle Orn in years. Orn had taken Jaden in when Jaden’s adoptive parents had been killed in a shuttle accident. As a boy, Jaden had called his uncle “Uncle Orn the Hutt” because he was so fat. Jaden smiled, recalling his uncle’s ready grin and wheezing laughter. Orn had been killed in the Yuuzhan Vong invasion of Coruscant. Jaden had been away on a mission and had learned of it after the fact.
As sudden and intense as a lightning strike, he flashed on a sense memory: the smell of his mother’s red hair, a scent like wildflowers. He hung on to the memory, for he remembered so little else of his parents. He knew them mostly through family holos and vid recordings.
And he had no family left, not anymore. He was altogether alone. He practiced Jedi nonattachment not by choice, but by default. Odd, how his life had unfolded.
Khedryn’s voice interrupted his ruminations. “Scans got nothing. The clones are gone. Or they’re so far out, the scanners can’t ping them.”
“I figured as much,” Jaden said, still staring out the viewport, still wrestling with memories. A ship full of genetically modified Force-using clones had fled the moon in a stolen ship. They were alone, too, he supposed. At least in a way.
“Probably better that way,” Khedryn said. “Junker’s in no condition to follow. We’ve got at least a couple more hours of repairs before I’m putting her into hyperspace. Marr vented her altogether and she took a beating from those Sith fighters. Not to mention your flying, which almost tore her apart.” He chuckled. “How’s the hand?”
“It’s all right,” Jaden said, turning to face him.
Seeing him, Khedryn cocked his head in a question. His good eye fixed on Jaden, while his lazy eye stared past Jaden’s shoulder, maybe at his reflection in the viewport.
“You all right?” Khedryn had a mug of caf, and sipped from it.
“Yeah, fine,” Jaden said. “I was just … thinking about my family.”
“Didn’t know you had any.”
“I don’t. Not anymore.”
“Me neither.”
Jaden knew. Khedryn’s parents had been survivors of the crash of Outbound Flight. They’d died long before Grand Master Skywalker and Mara Jade had pulled Khedryn, along with a handful of other survivors, from the asteroid on which the ship had crashed.
Khedryn grinned and hoisted his caf mug. “We’ve got each other now, though, don’t we?”
Jaden smiled. “We do.”
Khedryn had saved Jaden’s life back on the moon.
“Fresh caf in the galley,” Khedryn said. “Pulkay where it always is, in case you want a jolt. Do you some good, Jaden. You look like a man who’s thinking too much and drinking too little.”
Jaden grinned. “Is that right?”
“Damned right, that’s right. Pondering, ruminating, looking for meaning here and there. That’s you. Sometimes things just are what they are.”
“You don’t believe that.”
Khedryn’s face lost its mirth and he looked into his cup, swirled the contents, slammed down what remained. “I surely kriffin’ do not. Not after what happened on the moon. But I don’t like thinking about the meaning of it all too much. Gives me a headache. Let’s get a refill, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jaden said, and they walked Junker’s corridors toward the galley. Khedryn stopped now and again to examine this or that joint on a bulkhead, a viewport. He’d tap the wall with his mug a few times and nod