and her grin turned shy.
The tube nearest Khedryn flexed, bulged, and spat out Marr. The Cerean’s eyes looked as worried as Khedryn had ever seen them.
“What is it?” Khedryn said.
“Where’s Jaden?”
“Not here yet.”
“You started the autodestruct on the supply ship?”
Khedryn nodded. “What is going on? What is ‘Mother’?”
As if in answer, the floor under them lurched, buckled. Grace squealed in alarm.
“A lie,” Soldier said. “Mother is a lie.”
Another lurch of the floor. Marr ignited his lightsaber. Soldier did the same. The tube on the far side of the room bulged and disgorged Jaden, his hair and eyebrows singed, his clothing burned, his breathing ragged.
The floor lurched again, nearly knocking all of them off their feet. Then it began to bulge upward, rising toward the ceiling. A scream of pure, unadulterated rage burst up from one of the shafts and set Khedryn’s hair on end.
“Run!” Jaden said. “Run!”
Khedryn needed to hear nothing else. He turned, along with the rest of them, and sped for Junker.
Heat and smoke filled the dimly lit corridors. The filaments in the walls blinked through a series of colors, rapidly, crazily, the frenetic brain activity of a dying organism.
Jaden and Soldier led the flight, their yellow and red lightsabers cutting through the doors that didn’t open at their approach. Soldier held the child in his free arm, her head buried in his neck and beard. Jaden used the Force to pull walls and doors together behind him, hoping to slow Mother. Mother shrieked behind them, and the impact of her body and power on the obstacles Jaden had put in her path sounded close, too close.
“Run!” Khedryn shouted. “Run!”
Another explosion sent them lurching, threw them all up against the wall, and knocked Soldier off his feet. Jaden and Marr pulled him upright and they ran on. The child was crying.
Ahead, the corridor split.
“Junker’s that way,” Marr said, pointing to the left with his lightsaber.
“Where’s the Umbaran’s ship?” Soldier asked.
“That way,” Marr said, nodding right. “Near your ship.”
Soldier took Khedryn by the arm. “How long before the supply ship blows?”
Khedryn shook his arm free. “Moments. There’s no time.”
Behind them, Mother screamed her fury and pain. They could feel walls collapsing before her approach.
“She needs the meds,” Soldier said, nodding at Grace. “I have to get aboard that ship.”
“You could get them back on Fhost,” Marr said.
“I’m not going back to Fhost,” Soldier answered.
“Jaden?” Khedryn asked.
His mouth a hard line in the red glow of his lightsaber, Soldier turned to face Jaden. The Jedi stared into Soldier’s gray eyes, the same eyes Jaden saw every morning when he looked in the mirror.
Jaden could not let him go, could he?
The soft cries of the child, her disease causing her flesh to visibly roil, made up his mind for him.
“Where will the two of you go?” Jaden asked him. “What will you do?”
“I don’t know.”
Jaden nodded; Soldier nodded.
“Go,” Jaden said to him.
Without another word, and still cradling Grace in one of his arms, Soldier turned and ran for the Umbaran’s ship. He must have used the Force to augment his speed, for he vanished in a blink.
“I don’t think he can make it,” Khedryn said. Not to the supply ship and then the Umbaran’s ship.
“Maybe not,” Jaden said. “But I had to let him try.”
Another scream from Mother, another explosion in a distant part of the station, set Jaden’s, Marr’s, and Khedryn’s feet to running.
“Have the ship ready to go, Ar-Six!” Khedryn said over his comlink, and the droid beeped agreement.
Ahead, they saw the docking tube, the open hatch of Junker’s airlock. They sprinted for it, but before they reached it a nest of filaments burst from the walls, squirming like snakes, and grabbed at them.
Jaden’s blade was a blur as he cut through them, leaving them writhing and smoking on the floor. Marr did the same, and they kept moving. Jaden looked back and saw Mother’s form filling the smoky corridor behind them.
“Go!” he said. “Go, go!”
He fell into the Force, gestured, and pulled the door nearest them closed.
Mother’s shriek of frustration shook the walls.
He turned, darted onto Junker behind Khedryn and Marr, and closed the airlock hatch.
“Get us clear,” he said to R-6 over the comlink.
Immediately Junker started to pull away from the docking tube. The tube stretched but did not release them. Filaments shot from its sides, grabbed at protuberances on Junker’s hull, tried to reel the ship back in. Through the viewport, Jaden could see the side of the station near where they had been docked pulsing,