made her look like an archaic photographic negative, the opposite of what she resembled, a false image of reality.
He thought her beautiful.
Syll finished plugging Fhost’s coordinates into the navicomp of the scout flyer and Nyss went through the pre-jump checklist.
“Course is set,” Syll said. “Tracking beacon on the cloakshape fighter is active.”
Nyss nodded, set his palm on one of the cortosis-coated vibroblade knives he wore at his belt. The metal felt cool to the touch.
“We could use the Iteration,” Syll said. “Why leave him in stasis?”
In truth, Nyss wanted the clone in stasis because he did not want another’s presence to defile the time he spent with his sister. He preferred her company, and her company alone.
“If he’s conscious, he generates more memories. And the more memories he possesses, the more the Rakatan mindspear must wipe away before making him anew.”
From the fix of her jaw, he could see that his explanation did not fully satisfy his sister.
“If we need him, we’ll get him out,” he said finally. “Suitable?”
“Suitable.”
“This shouldn’t be difficult,” he said. “Smash and grab, as before.”
“Right.”
“Ready?”
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
He held a hand out for his sister. She took his hand in hers, their arms bridging the gap between their seats. Syll activated the light filters on the cockpit bubble. Nyss engaged the hyperdrive and they leapt together into the abyss. The streaks of hyperspace irritated their eyes—and normal space disappeared. They floated alone in the dark warm womb of the cockpit.
Nyss felt most at home while in hyperspace. Probably because it, like him, was separate from the galaxy, not subject to the ordinary rules that governed reality.
Through the dimmed transparisteel of the cockpit bubble, the star lines of hyperspace were grayed out and barely visible, a dark curtain parsecs wide.
He settled in to pass the time.
NYSS FELT A SENSE OF LOSS AS THE SCOUT FLYER CAME out of hyperspace and realspace hit him like cold water to the face. Hyperspace was the hole in the galaxy that mirrored the hole in his being. He enjoyed his time in it, emptiness communing with emptiness.
Syll partially undimmed the cockpit’s transparisteel to reveal the mostly brown sphere of Fhost, backlit by its distant orange star.
Nyss engaged the ion engines and the ship blazed through the system. Planetary authorities did not comm them. Likely the technology on a backwater planet like Fhost could not even detect the scout flyer. Its baffles and cloaked propulsion system made it difficult for even up-to-date tech to get a fix on.
As they closed on Fhost, Nyss activated the tracking system attuned to the beacon the One Sith had placed on the cloakshape fighter. He waited for it to retrieve the signal. It took only moments.
He zeroed in on the location. A hologram of Fhost’s surface appeared above his comp station, the transparent image of the planet turning rapidly as the program pinpointed the location of the beacon.
“It’s twenty kilometers outside of the planet’s largest city,” he said. “Farpoint.”
“What’s there?”
“Nothing,” he said. “They may have ditched it.”
“Then we must hope they’re still on-planet.”
Nyss knew the clones were sick and prone to madness—all clones from Thrawn’s program were. If they were still on Fhost, they’d almost certainly do something to attract the attention of the authorities.
“Monitor the planetary authorities’ frequencies.”
Syll set the comm to scan planetary frequencies originating in Farpoint. Meanwhile, they closed on the planet and burned through its atmosphere. Planetary control still did not comm them.
Tracking the beacon, they flew low and set down in a wood half a kilometer from the clones’ ship. Once on the ground, they donned light-inhibiting goggles that doubled as macrobinoculars, checked their vibroblade knives, and slung their crossbows over their backs. Neither used blasters—too crude a weapon for their work. Their crossbow quarrels killed just as effectively as blaster fire and did so in relative silence.
They departed the ship via the small exit lift and glided through the forest. The goggles shielded them from the annoyance of the sun where the forest canopy did not provide shade. In silence they flitted from shadow to shadow. The sounds of the forest—the songs of native birds, the chirps of insects—did not change. Even the animals failed to note their passage.
In a short while they reached the edge of a large clearing. The cloakshape fighter sat in the center of the clearing, landing skids sunk deeply into the damp ground. The large cargo bay, added at some point in the past to the modular ship, hung from the craft’s middle like a