Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (12 page)

“Gazing at the stars,” Lanoree said, and she remembered so much about her young brother—his
anger that their ancestors had been brought to Tython, his wishes, his interests.
They had never been her own. And yet there had always been that place inside her,
the troubling presence of dark and light dancing their own fight.

“I’m not ashamed of it,” Kara said. “Many in the system look outward. Most only in
their dreams, because day-to-day life doesn’t allow otherwise. But me … I’m rich.
I can
invest
.”

“So you give the Stargazers money to seek a way to leave.”

Kara shrugged, and her immense body shivered and shook with waves of flab.

“You know my brother.”

“Brother?” Her confusion seemed genuine.

“Dalien Brock.”

That shuddering shrug again. “Honestly, I’ve never even met them. I fund several of
their small temples around Kalimahr, give them somewhere to meet and talk. I pay for
their contemplations.” She turned away from Lanoree, perhaps to lie. “They are only
one of my interests.”

Lanoree tried to touch Kara’s mind but could not. The woman was a riot of feelings,
thoughts, sensations; and if there was sense in that white noise Lanoree could not
find it.

“They’re more than just a project to you,” Lanoree said.

“I’m a dreamer with money,” Kara said.

“So you fund them out of pure philanthropy.”

“Yes.” Kara continued grazing at the table, eating such dainty amounts for a woman
so huge.

“I hear of Gree technology,” Lanoree said. Again, she watched for a reaction. Again,
that strange scratching at her mind. Perturbed, she reached out, trying to sense who
or what might be trying to read her. But there was nothing. Perhaps the feeling really
did come from the inside. Maybe such questions were touching hidden desires planted
there all those years ago by her younger brother’s interests. However much she tried,
she could not deny her fascination with what had come before Tython.

Kara glanced at her and then started eating some more.

“The Gree,” Lanoree pressed.

The woman turned her back on Lanoree once more and settled closer to the table, her
hover system gently touching the crystal floor. She sighed heavily, seeming to change
shape within her clothes. Her shoulders relaxed.

“I’m tired,” she said. “Your audience is over. Speak to the Stargazers, if you must.
Their nearest temple is in the eastern quarter of the Khar Peninsula. An old abandoned
Dai Bendu temple that I own. Now leave.”

“I haven’t finished,” Lanoree said. “Tython, the whole system, might be in terrible
danger from what your Stargazers are doing.”

“Leave!” Kara continued eating. And just for a moment, Lanoree recognized something
about her. A manner, a presence, a bearing.

“You’re Je’daii?” Lanoree gasped. It seemed amazing, and yet it would explain that
strange, insistent scratching at her mind. The shadow of Bogan passed across Lanoree’s
mind, and she was even more confused.

“Once,” Kara said, laughing bitterly. “But no more. The Force is stale within me.
Now leave, Ranger. I have my security, and they’re the best money can buy.”

And now suddenly she threatens me
, Lanoree thought.

A cough, a thud, and Kara slid over onto her side, rolling from the hover platform
and seeming to spill across the floor. Breath rattled in her throat.

“What have you—?”

“She’s out, that’s all.” Tre was holding a small weapon in one hand, barely the size
of a finger. Stun tube. It carried one charge, but was effective for several hours.
Or maybe less for someone of this size. He raised an eyebrow. “So now that you’ve
spoken with her, do you want to find everything she
wasn’t
telling us?”

“You’ll bring her guards down on us!” Lanoree looked around the large room. She could
not help partly agreeing with Tre’s actions. And whether she liked it or not, the
time for talk was over. “Now that it’s done, we won’t have long.”

They started searching. Tre was haphazard, pulling open cupboards and throwing aside
cushions from the several huge, low seats that lay around the place. But Lanoree tried
to concentrate her efforts.

She let the Force flow and sought where a Je’daii might hide her secrets.

Was she once really Je’daii?
she wondered.
Or did she merely say that to confuse me?
Kara was a player of games, that was for sure, answering some questions and dodging
others. She seemed very open about her desires and ambitions. Yet there was still
a mystery to her, and something far deeper and more complex than this fat woman confined
to her own apartment. Rich she might be, and powerful, and she undoubtedly had a long
reach. But Lanoree’s recognition of something about her—something Je’daii—was even
more confusing.

There were some who trained with the Je’daii but then left Tython. It was usually
at the Padawan phase, when children once strong with
the Force seemed to lose that strength as they reached adulthood. There was no shame
to it. And the Je’daii themselves admitted that on occasion they might make mistakes
and take into training those who would never be comfortable and at balance with the
Force.

My brother, for one
, Lanoree thought. She stared at the slumped figure of Kara, rich benefactor of the
Stargazers, and wished she could ask her more.

“Hurry!” Tre said. “The sentries might be coming even now.”

“Why would they?”

“Like she said, the best security that money can buy. They’ll have sensors for weapon
discharges.”

“Oh, great,” Lanoree said. More conflict was the last thing she wanted here. Her brief
time on Kalimahr had already been more eventful than she had hoped.

She looked down past her feet at the ground far below. A chaos of lights swarmed around
the base of the tower, but there were three white lights rising quickly up the tower’s
outer wall. Air elevators. She touched her collar and activated her comm.

“Ironholgs, I need you to bring the ship. We’re on the two-hundredth floor of Gazz
Spire, eight kilometers southeast of the landing tower.”

Nothing.

“Did you hear me?”

Ironholgs answered, a splutter of static and groans. As usual, he sounded like an
old man being woken from a comfortable sleep, but she already heard the background
whine of the Peacemaker’s engines being prepped.

“What?” Tre asked.

“Company. We’ll be leaving soon.”

His wide-eyed fear could not have been feigned. “Leaving how?”

“Let’s worry about that when the time comes. Now search.” Lanoree turned and faced
the wide panoramic windows looking out over Rhol Yan archipelago, trying to relax,
remembering her Force-skills training and relishing the balance she could feel inside.
Darkness and light, seeing and seeking. She surveyed the vast room, looking for where
something might be hidden. A woman like Kara had plenty to
hide, and not all of it the currency of secrets. She was a rich woman with a grand
apartment and material wealth. She would have
things
to hide, too.

At the far corner of the room was a wall display of martial objects—blades, spears,
maces, other striking weapons, all of them powered by the bearer alone. It did not
surprise Lanoree that Kara might be a collector of such antiquities, and they did
not interest her. What might be behind the display did.

There was no obvious door, but she sensed a hollow beyond the wall.

And she did not have time to find the hidden opening mechanism.

Lanoree drew her sword and struck. Sparks flew, and an intense surge of energy webbed
across the display of old weapons, lighting them briefly with the Force. She struck
again and a wall panel gave way. Several crossbows clattered to the floor.

Lanoree shouldered her way through the opening into the narrow space behind the wall.

“Those elevators are pretty close!” Tre called.

“Lock the doors. Barricade them. Give us as much time as you can.” Her voice sounded
muffled in the small, unlit room, as if swallowed by something soft. Lanoree took
a small glow rod from her belt and flicked it on.

The light flooded the room, and seeing what was in there gave context to the curious
musty smell.

Books. Perhaps a dozen of them, each sitting on a plinth in a separate display case.
It had been a long time since she’d even seen a book. Her parents had one—an old instruction
tome written by the great Je’daii Master Shall Mar more than three millennia ago—and
they showed it to her whenever she asked. She loved the printing, the care and attention
that went into the production processes. But these …

She opened the first case, caught a whiff of must and age, and as she opened the book
she realized that it was unique.

Not printed. Not mass-produced. This was handwritten.

Tre’s voice called, muffled by the wall between them. “They’re outside!”

Lanoree knew they did not have very long. “Ironholgs, how far
away are you?” Her droid replied that the Peacemaker was moments away. “Good. Drop
low, wait until you see me, then come in close.” A quizzical buzz from the comm. “Don’t
worry. You won’t be able to miss us.” Opening the rest of the display cases, she winced
at the damage she might be doing to these books. But time was not on her side. Flipping
pages, her heart settling yet her mind moving faster than ever, at last she found
what she was looking for.

She slipped the thin book into her jacket and left the room.

“Quickly!” Tre whispered. He was in the center of the large room, standing on one
of the low seating areas so that he did not have to look down. Lanoree thought he
was actually shaking with fear, his lekku touching nervously beneath his chin.

Kara groaned, her bulk shifting in a sickly, fluid movement. A comlink on the table
beside her was glowing softly, call unanswered. Her security would already know that
something was very wrong.

Lanoree dashed across to the wide, tall windows and beckoned Tre Sana after her.

“There?” he asked.

“You think we can leave any other way?”

Something crashed against the wide doors, three heavy impacts. A low table that Tre
had upended against the doorway tilted and fell, smacking against the crystal floor.

Lanoree squinted through the window at the sea of lights below and around them, and
then she saw the shape she wanted. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“Battle droids,” Tre said, arriving by her side. “All the rich hire them, private
security, get them chipped and reprogrammed, more heavily armed. Some of them fought
in the Despot War. I’ve even heard that some retain memories of their battles with
the Je’daii, don’t like them,
hate
them, and some even dream of—”

“You’re babbling,” Lanoree said. “And droids don’t dream.”

“I told you, I don’t like heights.”

More impacts from beyond the room. And then a louder, deeper thud vibrated through
the floor and the doors burst open in a blast of smoke, flame, and torn metal.

Lanoree drew her sword again and faced the door. Three droids entered, short, thin
units designed for speed and offering narrow targets
for any aggressor to hit. Their fist-sized heads twirled as they scanned the room.

Lanoree pressed her hand to Tre’s chest to still him, and she felt his heart hammering
against her palm.

And then without warning the droids opened fire.

Lanoree swept her sword left and right, catching and deflecting blasts from their
weapons. Tre shrank down behind her. She concentrated, her stance perfectly balanced,
and with her free hand she Force-punched a droid back against the wall. It struck,
fell, and then quickly rose again. It was scarred with several old blast injuries.
Battle hardened.

“Get ready!” Lanoree shouted.

“For what?”

“You’ll know when it happens.” She angled the sword and deflected several blasts back
against the window. Crystal shattered, and a large slab of the window burst outward
with a heavy
crump!
Wind whistled into the room, sweeping food-laden plates from the table, and Lanoree
saw Kara’s eyes flicker open.

Sword still shifting before her, Lanoree clawed her left hand, lifting one droid and
flinging it at another. A blast caught it and it blew apart, a brief shriek of tortured
metal followed by a hail of white-hot components ricocheting around the room.

Lanoree knew she didn’t have much time. She could Force-jump across the room and take
on the two remaining battle droids, but right then destroying them was not the priority.

The priority was escape.

She turned, grabbed Tre around the waist, and leaped from the shattered window.

The wind stole her breath. It grabbed them and spun them around as they spiraled down
from Kara’s overhanging apartment, drawing them in close to the tower so that windows
flitted by in a blur. It roared in her ears. Lanoree squinted, ignoring Tre’s scream
of terror as they plummeted, struggling to hold him.

Laser blasts flashed by them and there was nothing she could do, no way she could
gather her thoughts to protect them from the sustained fire coming from the shattered
window above. She only hoped—

The Peacemaker drifted from the shadow of the tower and dipped below them, dropping,
engines roaring, matching their speed so that the impact as they struck its upper
surface was as gentle as possible. Lanoree grunted and clasped Tre as they hit, flailing
with her other hand that still held the sword. Given a choice of which to drop, she
knew the weapon would win out. But she hoped she did not have to make that choice.

Laser blasts ricocheted from the ship’s curved hull, but Ironholgs remote piloted
the ship perfectly. They flew a gentle circle around the tower so that the droids
could no longer hit them with fire from above, then the craft hovered to give them
the chance to get inside.

The Peacemaker’s top hatch whispered open.

“After you,” Lanoree said.