Riptide (novel)

Riptide is a paperback novel by Paul S. Kemp. It is the sequel to Crosscurrent, also by Kemp, and was released on October 25, 2011.

Publisher's summary
''When a ship full of Sith warriors arrived in Galactic Alliance space, the fight to destroy it accidentally uncovered a deadly menace: a long-hidden group of clones, secretly created as insidious weapons capable of wielding the Force and heedless of the differences between light side and dark side. Now the clones have escaped -- and evidence suggests they are flawed by genetic disease and violent madness.''

''Jedi Knight Jaden Korr pursues the clones, hoping to heal them but prepared to destroy them. What he doesn't know is that Sith agents are hot on his heels, determined not only to recover the clones for their Master but to capture Jaden for their own dark-side purposes. In a life-or-death battle, Jaden will confront a shocking reality that will rock him to his core and bring him face-to-face with the question of what makes a man... and a Jedi.''

Plot summary
The story begins when Jaden Korr wakes up aboard an unknown ship, wondering where his friends, Khedryn Faal and Marr Idi-Shael, are. He soon realizes that he is aboard a station and that he will confront something truly monstrous.

The novel shifts about two days earlier, just after the events of Crosscurrent, aboard the Junker. Korr and Faal discuss what will happen to Idi-Shael, since Korr is considering having him join the Jedi Order as an apprentice. Another topic they bring up is the ship full of Jedi-Sith clones that had escaped the unknown frozen moon where Alpha and Kell Douro died.

Aboard the Predator, the Jedi-Sith clones that escaped are undergoing a collective madness and illness that had been accelerated after they flew through the fiery remains of the Harbinger from the previous novel (this was thanks to the Force-enhancing Lignan contained in the Harbinger). The only exception from this illness is Soldier, who was the last clone produced by the dead scientists on the frozen moon, and the most faithless of the clones' belief that they will be saved by Mother. According to the clones' prophet, Seer, Mother is an entity who will bring all of them salvationfrom the illness&mdash;and they are travelling to her. Meanwhile, Mother, who really exists, lies in wait for the Jedi-Sith clones to come to her.

On the One Sith world of Korriban, Darth Wyyrlok holds a private meeting with Nyss Nenn and Syll, two mysterious Umbaran siblings who, while not necessarily Force-sensitive, somehow suppress a Force-users through their own power. Wyyrlok shows the Nenn siblings holovid footage inadvertently taken by the late Kell Douro through his optic nerves, which had been secretly installed thanks to the One Sith. The footage shows Jaden Korr's fight with Alpha and Wyyrlok and Nyss notes that during the fight, Korr had used Force lightning, a dark side trait. They all note that it is too early for Korr to turn to the dark side, and the Nenns agree to do what they can to stall for Jaden to fall at the proper time. One of the tactics they employ is awakening the Iteration, a clone of Korr.

After Korr tells Grand Master Luke Skywalker the events that had occurred in the unidentified system, Skywalker agrees to send out help for him to track down the Jedi-Sith clones, but it won't come for quite a while, leaving Korr to take care of the situation with Faal and Idi-Shael. Skywalker also allows Korr to teach Idi-Shael to become a Jedi. Then Korr and Faal bring up Idi-Shael's training and how it will affect his position with the spacer aboard the Junker, but the Cerean is steadfast that he will remain even as a Jedi. Then his training with Korr begins even as they manage to track the Jedi-Sith clones down to Fhost.

On Fhost, most of the clones have already died from the illness, leaving Soldier, Seer, Hunter, Runner, Grace to leave the Predator and continue their journey. The clones travel to Farpoint so that they can hijack a medical shuttle for the medication that has allowed the surviving clones to live through the illness so far. However, when they arrive at the medical station, much trouble had been caused by them, alerting the city's local authorities just as Korr and his party and the Nenns arrive. Korr confronts the clones, surprised to find that Seer is a clone of the late Lumiya, Runner is a clone of Korr's own Master Kyle Katarn, and a Soldier is a clone of himself. Korr fights Soldier and Runner, but is defeated, allowing the clones to make it to the hospital's roof, where, despite Faal trying to stop them, they hijack the shuttle and take it off-world. They take Faal with them so that he can tell them how Korr tracked them down (he can't tell them immediately because he was knocked unconscious by Runner). Meanwhile, Nyss Nenn had already stowed aboard the shuttle before the clones took it.

In the aftermath of the chaos in Farpoint, Korr and Idi-Shael, after they collect Korr's R6 astromech droid, manage to track down the shuttle because of a beacon Korr placed on it before his fight against the clones. As they follow the stolen shuttle into space, Syll follows the shuttle because of her brother's own signal.

After the clones drop the shuttle out of hyperspace in a random system to interrogate an awakened Faal as to how Korr found them on Fhost. Faal admits that it was simple happenstance in their search for the clones, so Seer orders Runner to eject Faal out into the vacuum of space. Nenn takes this time to cut out the shuttle's lights and attacks Runner in a fight that he wins by ending the clone's life. He cuffs Faal up, hoping to use him as leverage on Korr, and then kills Hunter. He fights Soldier, who turns out to be the clone of Jaden Korr who the One Sith also want, and despite Soldier being partially immune to Nenn's Force-repressing ability, the Umbaran defeats the clone in time for Korr and Idi-Shael to arrive, and in time for Syll to arrive. Nenn blackmails the Jedi over communications into trading himself in exchange for Faal, which Korr has no choice but to agree to as he suits himself up in a hardsuit and rockets over to the medical shuttle. However, Faal, who had been cut free by Grace earlier, reluctantly, and briefly, allies with Soldier, cutting him free of the bonds Nenn tied him up in, and this commences another fight between Soldier and Nenn as Faal flees to one of the shuttle's escape pods. Nenn, not wanting to kill Soldier as per Darth Wyyrlok's orders, also flees, allowing the surviving clones to retake control of the medical shuttle. However, as Syll reels him onto their ship, he orders her to blast Faal's escape pod even as Korr rockets toward it. The attempt to kill Faal fails when Korr uses his lightsaber, and his power in the Force, to deflect the laser blasts back at the ship, killing Syll. Idi-Shael saves Korr, who had two leaks in his hardsuit thanks to Syll, and Faal in time, while Nenn, in his grief over his sister's death, vows to kill everyone associated with Korr and Soldier after he captures them for the One Sith.

The medical shuttle travels into an irradiated system where Mother, an entity imprisoned in a space station likely constructed by the ancient Rakatan Infinite Empire. The Junker and Nyss track the shuttle there as the clones meet Mother. Mother, however, turns out to be a false promise when she takes hold of Seer's body and uses her as a vessel to go free in the galaxy. Meanwhile, Korr and Idi-Shael confront Nenn again, and after Nenn knocks Idi-Shael unconscious, Korr manages to kill the Umbaran by strangling the life out of him. However, because of the fight against Nenn, Korr falls unconscious, allowing the Iteration to use an ancient Rakatan device known as a mindspear to transfer Korr's mind out of his body, effectively killing him and storing his memories and personality in the device. Idi-Shael fights the Iteration and defeats him, but holds off on killing him to use the mindspear to transfer all that was Korr into the Iteration. Korr is reborn in his own clone body, unknowing of it, and staggers to the direction of Mother, just as he did at the beginning of the novel. Idi-Shael, who had hidden Korr's previous body so he wouldn't discover what had happened to him, is taken captive by Soldier, but in the incoming threat of Mother, they all decide to become allies, especially when Korr sees that Soldier, who had never personally caused any of the trouble back on Fhost, just wants to save Grace from the illness plaguing her. Korr, Idi-Shael, and Soldier fight Mother, but after she proves to be too strong for all of them to take on, they decide to flee with Grace as Korr instructs Faal to load the docked medical shuttle's power core to blow, damaging much of the space station. However, Soldier decides to take himself and Grace over to the medical shuttle to take what medication he can to help Grace while Korr, Idi-Shael, and Faal, who they meet as they continue to flee from Mother, make it the rest of the way to Junker. Unfortunately, it is unable to break them out of the station's hold even as it suffers from numerous explosions following the destruction of the medical shuttle, which causes the station to fall to the planet it was in orbit in. Despite the power of Mother, Junker manages to break free and shoot out into space while the station with Mother crashes in a fiery explosion, killing the entity.

As Junker proceeds to return to Fhost, Korr notices that a scar that he had all his life is gone, and begins to have suspicions even as Idi-Shael begins acting odd around him, in light of the fact he knows Korr is not in his real body.

The novel ends with Soldier and Grace, who managed to collect the medication off of the destroyed medical shuttle in time and escape in Nyss' ship, flying out into the Unknown Regions to start a new life together.