Star Wars: Crosscurrent by Paul S. Kemp Page B

smiled at the echo of Wyyrlok's syntax—the Jedi clearly had urgent business with Faal.
    And that information allowed Kell to put together the puzzle of Krayt's vision, to see Wyyrlok's sign. And perhaps his own.
    He had heard the gossip that Junker had happened upon a promising salvage opportunity, of course, but such stories were not uncommon in Farpoint. He had thought there was little to distinguish it from any others.
    But now he suspected otherwise, because the Jedi must have thought it different from the others. And that meant that Kell had found his sign. He would get his answer when he determined where the salvage opportunity was located. He would have wagered much that it was on the icebound moon in orbit around a blue, ringed gas giant, the image of which Wyyrlok had impressed on Kell's mind.
    Kell imagined lines crossing, knotting together, the warp and weft of Fate's skein meeting in the corrugated confines of The Black Hole and leading outward into the Unknown Regions and Kell's destiny.
    Over the Bothans' music, over the hum of conversation, laughter, and vidscreens, Kell had heard the Jedi say his name to Khedryn Faal.
    Jaden Korr.
    The name sent a thrill through him. He savored the syllables, the sounds an incantation that would summon him to revelation.
    "Jaden Korr," he whispered.
    The Bothan musicians built their song to a climax, staring at and past Kell without seeing him. Kell allowed his perception to see fate lines as the Bothan music died. The room became a net of glowing tethers, but Kell had eyes only for the tendrils of red and green that spiraled around the gray-eyed Jedi.
    He wound through the crowd, almost invisible to those in The Hole. Perhaps someone saw him for a moment, but he flickered in and out of perception with such smoothness that they probably registered him only out of the corner of an eye, as a fleeting shadow.
    Or a ghost.
    A table erupted in shouts as someone scored in the grav-ball game blaring on one of the vidscreens. Korr stood in place, arms crossed, staring after Khedryn Faal, motionless and placid amid the frenetic activity of dancing girls, servers, and patrons in The Hole.
    Kell fell in with the activity. His feeders roiled in his cheeks as he closed on Korr. He could not take his eyes from the back of Korr's head, could not pry his thoughts from the imagined taste of the Jedi's soup, the sharp, creamy flavor implied by the power that flashed when the Jedi had used his mind trick.
    Kell's appetites were driving him, he realized, making him incautious. He recognized this, but he recognized, too, that if revelation were ever to be his, it would come through the soup of a Force-user.
    Perhaps this Force-user , he thought.
    He glided behind Korr, near enough to touch him, and stopped there. His feeders twitched. The effort to keep himself shielded—even from a passive Force-user—strained him. His daen nosi tangled themselves with Korr's, squirming, silver, green, and red serpents wrestling for dominance.
    The sounds and smells of the cantina fell away, leaving him and Korr alone in the swirling potentiality of Fate, the roiling mix of their daen nosi . Kell leaned forward, inhaled the air around Korr.
    Korr cocked his head, turned. Unready for the sudden spotlight of the Jedi's Force-enhanced awareness, Kell's perception screens failed him.
    Thinking quickly, he clutched at the Jedi's coat and stumbled into him as if drunk, the collision of their flesh echoing the collision of their fates.
    "Pardon," Kell said in Basic, and tried to stagger past. He bumped a waitress carrying a wooden tray laden with glasses of pulkay, but she did not even break stride.
    The Jedi took Kell by the bicep, held him in place. Kell's left hand fell to the hilt of one of his vibroblades.
    "Are you all right?" Korr asked.
    Kell looked up and met the Jedi's deep-set gray eyes, underlined by dark circles, and saw the stress and longing written in the broken capillaries of his conjunctiva. For a