about that?”
Marr looked down and shook his head. “No. But maybe they just want a life for themselves. People aren’t equations, Khedryn.”
Khedryn smiled. “That’s odd to hear coming from you.”
“What do you think, Master?” Marr asked.
“You are awfully quiet, Jedi,” Khedryn said.
Jaden put down his mug. “I think you’re both right. Biology isn’t destiny or we’re all just droids of flesh. Choice is what makes us human. But biology does constrain choice. Can the clones choose a path other than the violence for which they were bred?” He shrugged, swirling the caf in his mug. “Maybe. But the clone I faced on the moon was insane, and powerful in the dark side of the Force. If the others are like him, they’re potentially dangerous. At the least we must take them into custody.”
“At the least,” Khedryn said.
Marr nodded, but Jaden felt his ambivalence. He had no words to dispel it.
“Maybe we’ll never find ’em,” Khedryn said. “Won’t be our problem, then.”
Ahead, Soldier saw the haphazard city of Farpoint rise out of the dust of the plain. To the west stood an expansive landing field littered with ships. A few swoops and speeder bikes dotted the sky.
Most of the buildings within the city were single-story, ramshackle structures built of corrugated metal, native wood, and whatever other materials builders could scavenge. The few multistory buildings of the city sat in the city center, the tallest about ten stories. It hit Soldier as they approached that their profile reminded him of something.
A ship’s bridge.
In fact, the entire outline of the city looked like an elongated version of a cruiser or dreadnought, as if a giant had smeared a ship across the surface of Fhost. The city had been built on its skeleton. Over time, it had accreted additional structures, lost others, but the outline was still vaguely visible.
He wondered about the ship’s origin as he steered the speeder along the cluttered, narrow streets of the city. What had the ship’s crew been looking for? Had they found it, before they died?
“What are you thinking?” Seer asked him.
“Nothing,” he said.
Dust coated everything. Speeders, swoops, wheeled and treaded vehicles, even primitive wagons pulled by a large reptile of some sort made the streets a crowded mash up of technology. Sentients of many species stood in shop doors and strode the walkways. The aroma of sizzling meat and exotic-smelling smokes leaked from some of the structures.
Soldier had never seen so many people in one place, so much activity. He wished to just get out and walk around, take it in.
“There,” Seer said, pointing.
A cylindrical ship, the center of it a large cargo bay that looked like a distended belly, descended from the blue sky toward the city center.
Five uniformed sentients on swoop bikes—they looked like tiny bugs beside the supply ship—flew escort. The ship flew toward the tallest of the buildings, built from the remains of a crashed ship’s bridge tower.
“The medicine you want is on that ship,” Seer said.
“How do you know?” Soldier said.
“You know how she knows,” Runner snapped.
As they watched, a portion of the roof of the ten-story building—the medical facility, Soldier surmised—folded open to reveal a rooftop landing pad.
“We’ll have to get up there, then,” Soldier said. Their speeder would not go airborne. They’d have to enter the hospital at ground level and get up to the landing pad.
A signal horn beeped behind them. Soldier had stopped in the middle of the street to watch the descending supply ship. A Weequay, the skin of his face as wrinkled as old leather, shouted at them and brandished a fist from his open-top speeder.
“Move it!”
Soldier felt Runner’s anger spike.
“Don’t,” he said, and reached back to grab Runner’s arm, but it was too late.
Runner made a sweeping gesture with one hand, and the Weequay’s speeder looked as if it had been hit broadside with an enormous wave. It teetered on its side and slid across the street, onto the sidewalk, crushing several pedestrians, and into an adjacent building. Metal shrieked and bent. Glass shattered. The building half-collapsed with an angry rumble. One of the Weequay’s speeder’s engines sputtered and burst into flames. Black smoke poured into the air.
Passersby shouted, pointed at Runner. The wounded screamed. Vehicles stopped, the people within gawking. Pedestrians streamed toward the site. Soldier cursed, honked his signal horn to clear a path, and accelerated the speeder away.
“What are you thinking?” he shouted at Runner over his shoulder. “Idiot.”
“Shut your mouth, Soldier. They won’t connect the accident to us, and the damage