in his wild eyes. He was lost to reason.
Nyss released his hold on his suppressive field, willed it to expand—but he was too late. The clone made a cutting gesture with his hand, and a blast of energy blew Nyss across the cargo bay and into the toppled stasis chamber. The impact sent a shock of pain through him.
Growling like a beast, the clone bounded across the cargo bay, blades held high and spitting sparks. Nyss leapt to his feet and let the clone come.
Rage prevented the clone from sensing when he first entered Nyss’s suppressive field. He stabbed both blades at Nyss’s abdomen, but Nyss flipped backward atop the stasis chamber. The blades sank halfway into the metal, melting a good chunk of it to slag and warming the rest.
“Where are the other clones?” Nyss said calmly. Shadows coalesced around him, as they always did when he used his power.
The clone pulled his blades free and crosscut for Nyss’s legs. Nyss flipped over the blades, over the clone, and landed behind him, all the while intensifying his suppressive field. The darkness in the cargo bay deepened, as if the sun outside had moved behind thick clouds.
The clone spun in a reverse crosscut at Nyss’s neck and Nyss ducked under it; the clone stabbed with his off hand at Nyss’s abdomen and Nyss sidestepped it.
“Where? Tell me where they went.”
The clone roared in frustration and anger, spraying snot and spit. He raised both blades above his head for a killing strike. Nyss realized that he would get nothing from the clone. He sharpened his suppressive field as the clone swung his lightsabers down in arcs intended to cut Nyss in half twice over.
Nyss did not bother to dodge the blows as the weapons descended, merely stared into the face of the clone, whose expression turned from satisfied rage to profound surprise.
Nyss’s intensified field had momentarily severed the connection between the power crystal in the lightsaber and the Force. The clone held only hilts in his hands.
With regret, Nyss thrust one of his vibroblades into the clone’s chest. Warm blood gushed from the wound, soaked the weapon, his hand. The clone, wide-eyed, openmouthed, stared at Nyss until the light went out of his eyes and he fell to the floor of the cargo bay.
Syll, her crossbow at the ready, sprinted up the boarding ramp and took in the scene. Her lower lip curled in distaste when she saw the mess. “You’re all right?” she asked him.
“I’m fine,” he said, staring down at the clone, whose eyes remained open, filled with madness even in death.
“It’s amazing how far the One Sith have improved Thrawn’s cloning technology.” He knelt and wiped his blade on the clone’s coarse cloak. “These are the very best that Thrawn’s scientists could produce.”
Syll stood next to him, looking down at the body of the clone. “The Prime is the best that Thrawn could produce. And he did what Thrawn wanted. Thrawn just didn’t live to activate him.”
“Six more of the clones are unaccounted for,” Nyss said.
“We should search the ship,” she said, but Nyss was already shaking his head.
“A waste of time. They went to Farpoint.”
Syll glanced about the cargo bay, at the bodies, the mess. “Why?”
Nyss shrugged. “Supplies, maybe.” His gaze fell on the female clone, dead from decoherence. “They’re sick, very sick. They may not understand what they have. I don’t understand what they have.”
Syll knelt and picked something up off the floor. She held it up for Nyss to see—a used pre-prepped hypo.
“And there’s another,” she said, pointing at a second hypo on the floor. “And another.”
He read the preprinted labels on the hypo. “Perhaps they know what they have after all.”
“They went to Farpoint for medicine,” said Syll.
“Let’s go get them.”
They ran out of the cloakshape fighter, through the woods, and back to the scout flyer.
The relative darkness of the flyer’s cockpit was a welcome respite from the outside glare. Syll monitored local frequencies as Nyss engaged the ship’s thrusters. The ship rose straight up above the forest’s canopy. A 3-D map of Fhost’s surface appeared in Nyss’s HUD, a small red light blinking over Farpoint.
“There’s a landing field west of the city,” he said. “We’ll put down there, see if we can locate the clones.”
Syll held up a finger for silence, listening to something she was hearing on local frequencies.
“Someone has attacked Farpoint’s medical facility,” she said.
Nyss reprogrammed the HUD to show him the medical facility, a ten-story spike driven into the center