Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (11 page)

Since leaving Qigong Kesh he has seemed much more at peace, and she hopes this is
a good sign. Their journey to the southern coast of Thyr was an interesting one, meeting
people on the way, sharing stories with Journeyers undertaking their Great Journey
in the opposite direction, and having the opportunity to see some of Tython’s great
sights. And once at the coast, the great Cloud Chaser airport was a wonder to behold.
High on the cliffs above the roaring ocean, they sat together to watch several big
airships launch, drifting down and out across the ocean in silent majesty.

Their turn had come, and the flight south to the tumultuous continent of Kato Zakar
had been their last chance to rest.

Kato Zakar was often referred to as the Firelands because of its extremes of volcanic
activity. But much of this volcanism was located in the continent’s heartlands almost
thirty-two hundred kilometers south of the coast where they landed. Their destination
was much closer. In the high mountains almost five hundred kilometers inland lay Stav
Kesh, the Temple of Martial Arts.

The Strafe Plains are a tough, cold environment—windswept scrubland prone to frequent
localized Force Storms and scattered with leaning columns of ice-sharp silica and
dangerous magma-filled swallow holes that can appear without warning. Molded largely
by the elemental Force itself, the Strafe Plains are a manifestation of what draws
every living thing together. The Force as a tactile thing. Powerful. Sharp.

As the landscape rises steadily into the high mountains, Lanoree remains alert, watching
the wildlife of the Strafe Plains. It’s said that the common spinner birds can sense
a swallow hole’s imminent emergence, and that they will fly spirals around any area
about to erupt.

But it is not a hole that almost kills them both.

In places, piles of detritus thrown up from the holes form homes to creatures drawn
by the ease of tunneling through loose material. It is from one of these large, uneven
mounds that the attack comes.

Lanoree has never seen a flame tygah, but she’s heard of them. When she was a child
she believed them a myth made up by her parents to scare her. As she grew older, she
heard stories and saw those few rare holos made of the elusive creatures. And days
before their journey began, their parents warned them both.

It bursts from a hidden hollow in the top of the mound, broken trees and shattered
stone erupting as it lopes down the slope toward them.

“Dal!” Lanoree shouts, but he is already stepping forward to meet the beast. “No,
Dal, I can—”

“Shut up!” he shouts. He has drawn the old blaster from his belt.

The flame tygah is a big one, its length easily twice Lanoree’s height, its head as
high as her shoulder, each of its six heavy paws the size of her head. Fire drips
from the tips of its claws and shimmers in the prints it leaves behind. Its scaled,
oily hide flexes and reflects the sun in multicolored swaths; its tail swishes white
fire through the air; its eyes blaze; and its tooth-filled mouth glimmers with heat
haze. It is as beautiful as it is deadly.

Dal fires when the beast is thirty paces away. It does not even pause. He crouches
and shoots again, and Lanoree can see the recoil of the old weapon. The tygah grumbles,
a splash of blood scorches the air above its shoulder, and it speeds up its attack.

Lanoree could stop it, she is certain. She has a Force punch ready to stun it, and
once immobile she can move forward and cramp the
muscles in its legs, breathe the Force, and drive so much pain into the creature that
it will turn tail and flee.

If needs must, she can kill it.

But she hesitates. Back in Qigong Kesh she shamed Dal, placing that image of home
in his mind when he had not even invited her in. He needs to recover from that. If
she defeats the flame tygah for him, it will be just another display of how inadequate
he is and how strong she is becoming.

So she pauses but stands ready.

Dal dodges sideways, and fires almost point-blank into the creature’s flank. It roars
and shakes itself, and he leaps over its back, shooting once more even before he lands.
It is athleticism and strength that drives him, not power of the Force, but the effect
is still the same. The creature is confused and pained. As it swings around to lash
out with one huge paw, Dal is already crouched and ready to deliver the final shot
into its eye.

It rears up, fire shimmering from its claws in searing whips.

Dal smiles. Pulls the trigger.

Nothing happens.

As Lanoree sees the surprise on Dal’s face, the tygah lurches forward and slashes
at him with one big paw.

Dal is driven sideways, scraping and bumping across the rough ground. Snakes of fire
curl around his arms and shoulders.

Lanoree drives a heavy Force punch at the tygah and knocks it onto its side. One eye
on Dal—he is writhing on the ground now, rolling to extinguish the flames—she drives
another punch into the beast’s chest, pushing hard, feeling the Force power through
her and into the enraged animal.

It screams in pain, a surprisingly human sound. Fire erupts from its mouth and hazes
the air. Ash falls.

One chance
, Lanoree thinks, and she pauses and pulls back. She keeps her hands raised, readying
to throw a heavier, harder shove than she ever has before. For a moment she meets
the creature’s gaze, and it understands the pain she can deliver.

“Go,” Lanoree says, pushing against the thing’s mind even as she speaks.

The flame tygah glances once at Dal and then leaps away, bounding around the mound
it emerged from and then disappearing into the distance.

Lanoree lets out a relieved breath and then goes to Dal.

“I could have killed it,” he says.

“Your blaster misfired. It was almost on you.” Lanoree is surprised at the anger in
his voice, hurt.

“
I
was fighting it, not you.”

“I saved you, Dal,” she says.

“No.” He stands unsteadily, clothing still smoking where he has beaten out the flames.
He looks furious and sad at the same time. “No, the Force saved me.” He’s shivering
now from the burns he has suffered.

I can heal those
, Lanoree thinks. “You might have died.” She’s crying silent tears.

But Dal only looks bitter. “At least I’d have died free. My own man.” He turns his
back on her, and his coolness does more than make her sad.

For the first time, her brother scares her.

It will be the Great Journey. Journeyers may walk, or ride on beasts or in mechanical
vehicles, but it will be their first self-sustained adventure across Tython’s surface,
visiting each temple to learn and refine their talents in the Force. Tython is a tumultuous
place, and our new home still has countless hidden corners and depths unplumbed. Every
Journeyer will encounter different dangers. Many will find their travels treacherous
and troubling. And there are inevitably some who will not survive. But to exist in
smooth balance within the Force, one must first confront its sharp edges
.

—Nordia Gral, first Temple Master of Padawan Kesh, 434 TYA

“I like the sense of floating. For someone like me it’s … freeing. Almost like there’s
nothing to me at all. I sometimes think I’m one of the cloud creatures that live deep
within the Obri atmosphere. Huge, immaterial. That’s what I sometimes think.”

“They’re speculation,” Lanoree said. “A mystery. No one’s ever really seen one.”

“I know,” Kara said. “I like the idea of that, too.”

Lanoree was not sure whether Kara was a poet or a madwoman.
Either way, perhaps she would tell Lanoree what she had come to discover.

After leaving the Pits, Lanoree and Tre had traveled to the base of this tower. Tre
had announced their presence to the sentry system. An air elevator had whisked them
up to the two-hundredth floor. The view as they rose was staggering, and they had
both stared silently from the clear elevator pod. As Lanoree had felt the silvery
light of Kalimahr’s three moons purging the stink of the Pits from her skin, she had
meditated on the Force. Cleansing her mind. She would not forget the smells and sounds,
and the deaths she had witnessed, but she no longer carried them with her.

“Well, it scares the shak out of me,” Tre said. He was standing close to one of the
inner walls, back pressed to it, hands splayed flat. His lekku were wrapped protectively
around his throat.

“Thank you for seeing us,” Lanoree said. “I understand you value your privacy.”

“I do,” Kara said. “But how could I turn down a request from a Je’daii Ranger?”

“Many do,” Lanoree said.

“The system is filled with fools.” Kara glided across the clear crystal floor of her
apartment’s huge main room and approached a low table that was adorned with all manner
of food and drink. “Refreshments?”

“Water, please.”

A droid poured, but Kara brought Lanoree her drink. This close, the Ranger saw just
how huge the woman was. She was human, but her immense size made her appear like a
different, unique species. She rode on a suspension unit that was hidden by her flowing
robe. She was bald, as if her head had outgrown her hair, and where her robe parted
Lanoree saw rolls of heavy flab and pale skin. There was a perfume to her that was
not unpleasant, but beneath that was her own natural stench. Her arms had been artificially
lengthened so that they could reach around her girth. Her face was so bloated that
her eyes seemed to stare at each other. But however freakish she appeared, Lanoree
knew that she could not underestimate Kara for one moment.

Handing the drink to Lanoree, Kara held on for just a moment too long, staring into
the Ranger’s eyes.

“What?” Lanoree asked.

“A Je’daii, so pure,” Kara breathed. “Forgive me. It’s been years.” Those enigmatic
words hanging in the air behind her, she floated back to the table and started eating.

Lanoree took a sip to steady her nerves, looking down at her feet as she swallowed.
This large main room of the apartment was cantilevered over the top of the high tower,
and its floor was composed of a thin, incredibly clear crystal. It gave the impression
of standing on air, and at midnight the view below was staggering. Lights shifted
and moved on the ground below, passing along the network of streets and squares surrounding
the immense structure. And closer to the floor’s underside, the flashing nav beacons
of small Cloud Cruisers and other craft darted back and forth around the tower.

Lanoree glanced at Tre. He was still at the edge of the room, trying his best not
to look down. But he was also close to the door. She thought perhaps it was not only
fear that kept him there but caution, and for the first time she was grateful for
his presence.

“You’ll know why I’m here,” Lanoree said.

“I will?”

“My reasons already seem more widely known than I’d like.”

“Ah, yes. I heard about the attempt on your life.”

“Is that what it was?” Lanoree asked.

“A Noghri assassin explodes himself close to you. What else could it be?”

Unwillingness to be caught
, Lanoree thought, but she did not reply.

“Yet you have me at a disadvantage,” Kara said. “I never leave here. I exist for myself
and by myself.”

“I’m sure you have a long reach,” Lanoree said. She saw Tre breaking a smile behind
Kara, but kept her own expression neutral.

“I make provisions to know what I need to know,” Kara said. She laughed softly. “I’m
very, very rich. My businesses run themselves, but I still feed off information. It’s
my obsession. And the only true universal currency.”

“Stargazers,” Lanoree said. She watched for any reaction, but other than a slight
pause before replying, Kara gave nothing away.

“I know of them. Little to do with me.”

“You fund them.”

“I donate. They’re a charitable cause.”

“A sect of madmen,” Tre said.

“Only to those who don’t understand.”

“You’d seek to leave the system?” Lanoree asked.

“You wouldn’t?”

“No.” Lanoree shook her head, confused. A strange question. “This is home.”

Kara stared at her, and for an instant Lanoree felt something strange, as if an outside
consciousness were scratching at the wall of her mind. Then the feeling was gone.
But she tried to grab hold of it, analyze. It was like nothing she had ever felt before.

“Have you ever been to Furies Gate?”

“No,” Lanoree said.

“I have,” Kara said. “Many years ago, before I became like this, I was quite a traveler.
It’s a minimum of three hundred days to reach that small planet, and not many make
the journey. There’s really no reason to go there. But I felt … the need. The urge
to push my boundaries. I’ve always felt that way, and I’ve done so physically as well
as mentally. Even my appearance is a product of that urge. I spent twenty days there,
at Fury Station, and most of the time I simply … looked. Out, into the Deep Core.
Out, beyond anything anyone in the Tythan system knows. I wanted to see the glimmer
of a Sleeper ship returning, one of those craft sent out over the millennia to return
to the wider galaxy. I wanted to travel onward myself but knew that death would likely
be the result. But even since turning my back on Fury Station and returning here,
I have continued to look outward.”