got good looks at the clones.”
Marr nodded absently, still plotting courses, trying to get a fix on the tracking beacon.
“One of them was of Lumiya, a Sith agent.”
Marr said nothing, lost in his task. He wouldn’t know who Lumiya was.
“Another was of my own Master, Kyle Katarn.”
That brought Marr up short. “I’m … sorry, Master. That must have been hard to see.”
Jaden plowed onward. “It was. But listen, Marr. The other clone was of me.”
Marr swung in his seat to face Jaden. “Of you?”
Jaden nodded.
“But … how is that possible?”
Jaden stared out the canopy. They were just moving through the atmosphere, the blue of Fhost’s sky fading to the black of outer space.
“I’m still trying to figure that out myself. The math …”
“Grand Admiral Thrawn was killed five years after the Emperor died.”
Jaden smiled absently. “You’ve been studying your history.”
“As you instructed me to do, Master. When did you enter the Jedi Academy?”
“Nine years after the Emperor died.”
Marr stared at him, the implication obvious. Jaden stated it anyway.
“The Empire had my DNA before anyone knew I was Force-sensitive. Not even my uncle knew.”
“Obviously someone in the Empire knew.”
Jaden shook his head. “Not possible.”
“I don’t understand. That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
“Then … what are you saying?”
Jaden struggled to maintain calm. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m just stating the facts.”
Marr sat quietly for a moment, and Jaden could see the gears of his mind turning. Finally, Marr said, “We don’t know that they took your DNA before you enrolled at the Academy. They could have taken it after. The cloning program may have continued long after Thrawn’s death. Someone else could have continued the program. And the pace of a clone’s aging can be controlled.”
“That’s possible,” Jaden acknowledged.
He tried not to grab too hard at Marr’s theory, though it struck him as profoundly better than the alternative.
A beep of greeting announced R-6’s appearance in the cockpit. He whooped and whistled.
“It’s good to see you, too, Ar-Six,” Jaden said, and patted the astromech on his domed head. “Connect to the subspace transmitter and inform the Order that we’ve left Fhost in pursuit of the clones. Give the details of the attack and …”
He trailed off. Marr eyed him sidelong.
“… and that’s it.”
R-6 plugged into Junker’s computer core and started to transmit.
“I’ve got the beacon,” Marr said, tapping a finger on the scanner screen.
“I see it,” Jaden said, checking the instrument panel. “Let’s get after them.”
The dull buzz of voices pulled Khedryn out of the blackness. At first he heard the voices only as garbled nonsense, the rise and fall of pitch and timbre, not words. The stabs of pain in his ribs, head, and nose sharpened as his mind began to clear.
When he remembered what had happened, he forced his eyes open and looked on dim surroundings. Overhead lights cast only a slight glow. He tried to focus through blurry vision. His head throbbed with pain.
More words, something about a mother, a hyperspace course.
He was on the floor, propped against a wall. His hands were bound behind his back, the bonds cutting into the skin of his wrists. Small items lay scattered on the deck. He stared at them a long while before he realized that they were hypos.
He heard another hypo discharge and its empty cylinder hit the floor. He looked up and around. He saw an elaborate instrument panel, four swivel seats, a large viewport that showed stars and open space.
He was on a ship, in a cockpit.
On the bulkhead above the viewport, he saw the star-burst symbol of Pharmstar Industries.
He was on the medical supply ship.
“He’s awake,” said a coarse voice from off to the side.
A large form stepped before him and blocked his view. He squinted through the pain and focused on worn boots, a ragged cloak, tattered clothing, a lightsaber hilt hanging from a belt. Glancing up, he looked into the blotchy, bearded face and wild eyes of the clone he’d shot at back on the landing pad of the medical facility.
A clone.
He’d been captured by the clones. The mad clones.
He tried to keep the flash of fear from his face, but he must have failed, because the clone before him grinned, showing yellow teeth.
“I think he knows where he is,” the clone said, chuckling. He stepped away from Khedryn, sat in the pilot’s seat, and started to work at the navicomp.
Khedryn’s mind, still clunky, tried to piece together events, draw conclusions. The clones had gotten off Fhost. Did that mean that Marr and Jaden were