Star Wars: Crosscurrent Read Online Free PDF Page A

throat, eyed his flight suit and robes in embarrassment. "I am all right. Apologies, Master."
    Relin waved away the apology. He had been unprepared, too.
    "My meal tasted better the first time," Drev said, smiling, his cheeks bright red.
    "Smelled better, too," Relin said, chuckling as he pored over the scanner's output.
    "So, it's vomit that looses your sense of humor," Drev said. He stripped off his robe, balled it up, and retook his seat. He took a gulp of a flavored protein drink in a plastic pouch, swished it around his mouth. "I will keep that in mind. Maybe scatological humor will amuse you also?"
    Relin only half smiled. His mind was on their situation. What had they stumbled onto? He had never before experienced such a wash of pure dark side energy. Whatever Saes had been searching for, he must have found it in the Phaegon system. Drev must have sensed his seriousness.
    "What do you make of it?" Drev asked. "A dark side weapon? A Sith artifact maybe?"
    Relin shook his head. The energy was not intense, simply widespread. "We will soon know."
    He engaged the ion drive and started to take them into the asteroid belt, but thought better of it. He took his hands from the controls.
    "Take us in, Drev," he said.
    He felt his Padawan's eyes on him. "Into the belt?"
    Relin nodded. The Infiltrator's sensor scrambler and the churn of the asteroid belt would foil any Sith scanners.
    "Are you certain, Master?"
    "Still your mind," he said to his Padawan. "Feel the Force, trust it."
    Drev was one of the best raw pilots in the Order. With time and training in the use of the Force, he would become one of the Jedi's finest.
    "Take us in," Relin repeated.
    Drev stared out of the cockpit, at the ocean of whirling rocks. He paused for a long, calming breath, then took the controls and piloted the Infiltrator into the asteroid belt.
    He accelerated without hesitation and the ship darted through the field of slowly spinning rock, diving, ascending, rolling. Pitted stones flashed on the viewscreen for a moment, vanished as Drev cruised under them, over them, around them. One of the Infiltrator's wings caught an oblong asteroid and the ship lurched, started to spin.
    "Master—"
    "Calm, Drev," Relin said, and his Padawan zagged out of the way of another asteroid as he righted the starfighter.
    "Well done, Padawan," Relin said. "Well done."
    A smile split Drev's face as he continued through the belt.
    Relin monitored the sensors. "There is an asteroid on the edge of the belt, more than ten kilometers in diameter, in a very slow spin."
    "I see it."
    "Set us down there but stay powered up. Let us see what we see."
    Drev maneuvered them over the asteroid and set down the Infiltrator. Phaegon III loomed large in their viewscreen against a backdrop of stars.
    Drev was still smiling. Relin chose to ignore his Padawan's emotional high.
    "Give me a heads-up display and magnify."
    A HUD appeared off center in the cockpit window. Drev input a few commands and magnified the image.
    Plumes of smoke spiraled from the charred surface of one of Phaegon III's small moons. Saes's dreadnought and its sister ship hung like carrion birds in low orbit over the moon's corpse. A steady stream of transports moved between the moon's surface and the belly-slung landing bays of the two Sith ships.
    Drev lost his smile as he worked the scanners. "That is not—how can—? Master, that moon should be covered in vegetation." He looked up from his scan. "And life."
    Relin felt his Padawan's anger over the destruction. He knew where anger led. The young man moved from joy to rage as if his emotions were on a pendulum.
    "Stay focused on our task, Drev. The scope of the matter cannot affect your thinking. Do not let anger cloud your mind."
    Drev stared at him as if he were something appalling he'd found on the bottom of his boot. "The matter? It is not a mere matter. They incinerated an entire moon! It is an atrocity."
    Relin nodded. "The word fits. But you are a Jedi. Master