Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (15 page)

“I’m doing my best to track him down.”

“This might be worse than we thought,” Dam-Powl said. “I must speak with Temple Master
Lha-Mi, and he will want to contact the Council.”

“There’s one more thing,” Lanoree said. “The Kalimahr, Kara. I think she was once
a Je’daii.”

“Once?”

“It’s confused. I couldn’t read her at all. But not in the same way that I can’t read
Tre Sana.”

One corner of Dam-Powl’s mouth lifted in a half smile. Unspoken acknowledgment of
whatever was between her and Tre.

“She claimed that the Force was stale within her.”

“Her name, again?”

“Kara. That’s all I have. Human, perhaps seventy years old. And big.”

“Big?”

“Huge.”

“Did she fall hard?”

“Master, I didn’t kill her.”

“Then how did you search her apartments?”

“We have your friend Tre to thank for that.”

Dam-Powl nodded, but she seemed more distant now, mind working. “Lanoree, take care,”
she said. “I have heard of such people, but they’re very, very rare. Most end up on
Bogan for a time and then come back to us. One remains.”

“Daegen Lok.”

“Yes, him. But a few … we in the Council call them Shunned. People in whom the Force
can never settle, nor find balance in light or dark, and who develop a disgust for
the Force itself. Most of them flee way out into the system, broken mentally and physically,
die.”

“I’ve never heard of the Shunned.”

“Few have. They’re not a group … just a name.” Dam-Powl stared from the screen for
a moment, smiling uncertainly. “Your own studies?”

“On hold,” Lanoree said. “But … Tre Sana is impressive.”

“He has his uses. Dangerous, damaged, there’s a lot of good in him. Drowned by selfishness,
unfortunately.”

“Well, he’s suitably annoying,” Lanoree said.

“Tell him he’ll get what he’s promised.”

“And will he?”

Dam-Powl seemed surprised. “Of course, Ranger. You think I’d not keep a promise?”

It was Lanoree’s turn to smile instead of reply.

“Find your brother,” Dam-Powl said, leaning closer to the screen. “Stop him. Any way
you can, and however you must.”

“You’ll be guarding the Old City, just in case?”

“Just in case,” Dam-Powl said. “May the Force go with you, Ranger Brock.”

“Master Dam-Powl,” Lanoree said, bowing her head.

The screen flickered to darkness. The Peacemaker’s nav computer chimed softly. Tre
Sana woke up.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Closer to the Stargazers,” Lanoree said. She heard the static-filled mumble of contact
from Khar Peninsula’s landing towers, but she turned them off and took manual control
of the ship. There was no time for political niceties now. “According to the computer
there’s only one old Dai Bendu temple in this quarter no longer used by them. If anything
Kara said was true, that’ll be where the Stargazers are.”

“So we land and get transport there,” Tre said.

“No. I’m landing us on the temple.”

“
On
it?”

“Strap yourself in. This might get bumpy.”

Tython is beautiful and powerful, enigmatic and dangerous, filled with mysteries and
open to those comfortable with the Force. It was here long, long before us, and these
mysteries persisted with no eyes to see them, no minds to contemplate them. And that
is why I fear Tython. It means everything to us, and yet we are nothing to it. We
are merely passing through
.

—Je’daii recluse Ni’lander, 10,648 TYA

Dawn was breaking as they glided over a stormy ocean toward the Khar Peninsula. And
if Rhol Yan was impressive, Khar was stunning.

The peninsula itself was around nineteen kilometers long and a kilometer and a half
wide, protruding from a much larger island out of sight over the horizon. Seven towers
reached up from its spine, incredibly tall, graceful, beautiful. Their upper levels
caught the sunlight, and as the Peacemaker approached, Lanoree and Tre could see the
sun’s influence slipping down the towers’ exteriors. Beneath them were countless other
tall structures, dwarfed by the more-than-one-kilometer-high towers yet impressive
in their own right. Almost every
building was ivory-colored, the only exceptions being many flat-topped buildings that
seemed to serve as gardens and parks. These gave splashes of exotic greens across
the Khar’s otherwise uniform hue.

The peninsula looked like a jewel cast into the sea. But Lanoree did not have time
to be impressed.

“What’s that?” Tre asked. He was standing behind her cockpit seat, leaning on its
back and annoying her every time he moved. She was concentrating too much to berate
him. He hadn’t yet had the audacity to sit in the spare flight seat beside her, and
for that she was pleased.

“Khar law enforcement,” she said. She’d already seen the four small, sleek ships,
rising ahead of them and was readying to give them the slip.

“They won’t argue with a Peacemaker.”

“Probably not. But I’ve not responded to flight control. Far as they’re concerned,
I’m coming in blind. Hold on.” Lanoree braced herself and punched a button.

The acceleration pressed her back into the seat, stealing her breath, trapping her
limbs, compressing her stomach and chest, and yet she still managed a low chuckle
when she heard Tre’s startled cry and the sound of him tumbling back into the living
area. He grunted and Ironholgs rattled, and Lanoree knew the droid had caught Tre.
Probably to prevent him from damaging anything in the ship. She laughed again.

The four Khar ships flashed past and disappeared from view. Lanoree checked their
positions on the scanner screen and made sure they weren’t swinging about to fire
on the Peacemaker. Then she swung low and sharp into the built-up conurbation of the
Khar Peninsula.

She twitched the ship left and right, passing around buildings, dodging airships and
smaller craft flitting here and there, and all the while glancing at a map display
on a small screen to her right. It showed the layout of this quarter, and at the edge
of the screen a green light pulsed. If her ship’s computer was right, that was the
location of Kara’s unused Dai Bendu temple, home to the Stargazers.

“You could have warned me,” Tre said.

“I did.”

“But you didn’t give me time to—”

“Hold on.” Lanoree swung the ship to the right, curving tightly
around the wide base of one of the seven massive towers. It filled her field of vision,
and a series of openings just above ground level provided parking bays for ground
speeders. They swarmed in and out like insects to and from a hive.

Tre picked himself up again and then jumped into the spare flight seat beside her.
She glared at him. He stared back.

“You did that on purpose,” he said.

“We don’t have time to mess around with landing permissions.”

“You’re Je’daii. Do you ever?”

“When it’s needed. I don’t like you sitting there.”

“So you do what you want, and shak on the natives?”

“Natives?” Lanoree slewed them around a big Cloud Chaser that had drifted down low,
careful not to get too close. “That’s demeaning. Is that how you think we think of
everyone else?”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” she said. But she frowned. She’d experienced antagonism from the settlers on
worlds other than Tython, and she usually attributed it to leftover opinions and allegiances
from the Despot Wars. But perhaps she had been fooling herself and picking on a simple
and clear reason for some people’s dislike of the Je’daii. Maybe it really was deeper
and more complex than that. “We only ever do our best for everyone.”

“You intrude. You serve yourselves and your Force. You fling me around your ship rather
than telling me what you’re doing.” He pointed from the window at the beauty and complexity
of Khar. “You’ll land and leave again, without permission and without telling anyone
why, and there will be another reason for everyone’s distrust.”

That troubled Lanoree. But only a little. She was on a mission to prevent a possible
system-wide catastrophe, and whether everyone in the system knew that or not did not
detract from its importance.

“You deal with us,” she said. “With Master Dam-Powl.”

“Do you think I have any choice?” Tre asked.

“Yes,” Lanoree said. “Plenty.”

“I’m a businessman,” he said. “I suppose … I’m as mercenary as the Je’daii in achieving
my aims.”

“You’re a criminal,” Lanoree said. “And I didn’t warn you about that turn because
I needed a laugh.”

“The complexity of a Je’daii,” Tre said, and she could not help smiling at his light
tone. He annoyed her. But there was something eminently likable about Tre.

“I still don’t want you in that seat,” she said.

He glanced across at her but did not reply.

A chime from the control panel—proximity alert. “Please hold on, Tre,” she said pointedly.
Then she put the ship into a dive. They drifted beneath one of the wide, garden-topped
buildings, dodging between the stocky feet that held the amazing structure upright,
and then she turned a sharp right and quickly climbed again.

“The temple is a kilometer ahead.” She checked the map, where the Dai Bendu temple
was marked a hazy green.

“You’re really going to land on the roof?”

“No. Changed my mind. Too exposed.”

“Good!”

“I’m going to take us in the front door.”

Tre did not even reply, but his shocked silence was enough. He grasped the seat restraints
and secured them across his chest and hips.

Lanoree knew that this was a tricky, risky maneuver, but they needed time. They’d
be far too visible on the roof of the temple; and right or wrong she had already made
the decision that there was no time to handle this through diplomatic channels. Dal
and the Stargazers knew she was here, and whatever their plans, they would be accelerating
them. She had to be creative.

The building was low, large, rectangular, with spires on four corners and a steeply
pitched roof. As Lanoree lowered the Peacemaker into the wide courtyard in front of
the temple she probed inside for Dal. She had no idea whether or not she’d be able
to sense him, but she had to try. She was nervous. Afraid of what a confrontation
might bring.

Another warning chime from the ship brought her around, and she realized that her
concentration had been drifting. She’d almost flown them into the ground.

People scattered away from the ship, dropping belongings, rushing for cover as its
powerful engines kicked up violent storms of dust. Benches were blown across the courtyard.
Trees were bent over and stripped of leaves. Lanoree floated the Peacemaker along
the front of
the temple until she saw its main wooden doors. Wide enough. They were closed. But
the ship was tough.

She nudged them forward and smashed the doors aside with the Peacemaker’s nose, taking
a significant chunk of masonry with them. Then she settled the ship down, nose inside
the temple, the body of the ship in the courtyard. Hardly inconspicuous, but she didn’t
plan on being here for long.

“Ironholgs, keep the engines powered up. We might be leaving in a hurry. Tre? Coming?”

He looked across at her, lekku forming a series of words that might have made his
mother blush. Lanoree grinned.

Dal was not there. No one was. But until very recently, they had been.

Inside the temple was one large central room with many smaller rooms around its edges.
The main room itself was full height, the walls and ceilings extravagantly decorated
with frescoes relaying Dai Bendu religious tales and history, tall windows allowing
in multicolored dawn light through stained-glass symbols. The nose of the Peacemaker
ship cooled and ticked, hull dappled with colors, the temple’s ancient wooden doors
smashed on the floor around it.

It was in some of the smaller rooms that they found evidence of recent habitation.

Sleeping rolls were scattered across the floor. Meals lay half-eaten on several long
tables, cold but not congealed. Candles still burned in some of the windowless inner
rooms. Here and there lay the remains of hastily smashed equipment.

And in one small room, Lanoree found something of Dal.

“Check the other rooms,” she said.

“They’ve gone,” Tre said. “Kara must have warned them.”

“Why tell us where they are and then warn them? Check the other rooms. I need to know
where they’re going.” Tre must have sensed something in Lanoree’s voice because he
did not argue, did not reply with another quip. He melted away, and she heard his
footfalls echoing through the temple room.

It was the smallest of things. Dal had always loved fruit, and mepples were his favorite,
the tangy, sweet flesh complemented by the
spicy zing of many small seeds. He always chewed right down to the long core stone,
and then when he finished the small fruits, he placed the stones end to end until
they formed a circle. Sometimes there were only five or six making the shape, on occasion
fifteen or more.