Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (16 page)

There were nine now on the floor, and the circle was incomplete. If he’d left this
as a sign for Lanoree he would surely have finished the circle. But the last core
had been flung aside, as if he’d departed the temple in a hurry.

Lanoree stared at the almost circle and wished the ends would meet. At least then
Dal might be welcoming her pursuit and drawing her on, some sibling rivalry remaining.

“Not like this,” she whispered. “Not desperate.” She touched one fruit stone gently,
then moved around the small room. It was a mess. Clothing lay scattered across the
floor, plates were speckled with dried remnants of old food. On the stone wall a network
of metal pins showed where something had been on display. Plans? Maps? There was no
way of knowing.

She picked up a jacket, pressed it to her face, inhaled. But there was nothing there
that she recognized.

She had to know where he was going, how much information—if any—he had about those
old plans, how far along the device might be. Perhaps even
with
the blueprints it would be impossible to replicate Gree technology to the detail
required. But there was little here to indicate anything one way or another, and Lanoree
felt a flush of desperation. She had come so close, and yet now Dal might be heading
anywhere.

Looking around the small room one more time, she tried to remember the last good times
she and her brother had spent together. Her thoughts drifted this way often, usually
when Dal intruded unexpectedly in her mind. She knew it was long before their journey
across Tython. Maybe as far back as when they were children, younger and more innocent
to the truths of things.

But even then he had been different.

“I should have listened to you,” Lanoree whispered. She had always harbored guilt
about his death, because she believed it was her reveling in the Force—and her determination
to push him toward it—
that had ultimately driven him away. Now that same guilt sang in once more, but it
was over something worse than death.

She might have made him whatever he had become.

“Anything?” she shouted. She left that room quickly, kicking the mepple stones apart.
“Tre? Anything?” Emerging into the main room, she glanced at the Peacemaker’s nose
blocking the shattered doorway at the other end. The vessel’s engines pulsed with
potential.

Tre darkened a doorway across the temple and ran toward her. He was carrying something.
He looked pale. “We’ve got to go.”

“Why?”

“They left quickly, but not before setting a timer.”

Lanoree’s senses sharpened, her veins flooded with energy. “How long?”

“Moments.”

They ran to the ship, up the ramp, and even as Lanoree jumped into the flight seat,
the window lit up with an incredibly bright light.

“Ramp!” she shouted, but Ironholgs was already closing it. A wave of fire roared across
the temple and engulfed the ship. The explosion blasted in, incredibly loud inside
the ship, hull shaking and everything outside blurring as walls shook and part of
the roof was lifted from the huge building.

Tre shouted, voice barely heard.

Momentarily blinded by the fire flash Lanoree coaxed them aloft. Impacts sounded across
the hull as the building started to collapse. The flight stick shuddered in her hand
and she eased back, trying to remember the layout of the courtyard. If she backed
them into another building they’d be in just as much trouble.

Another explosion pounded against them and Lanoree pressed her lips together, grabbing
the stick with both hands. The time for caution was over. She pulled and turned, eyes
scanning the instrument panel. Proximity alerts sounded and a wall of blazing masonry
smashed down across the window, ancient stones bursting apart. Then they were away,
vision clearing, and the ship almost seemed to lighten in relief as she lifted them
away from the courtyard.

Tilting them slightly to dislodge any detritus left on the hull, she looked down in
time to see the temple implode—roof collapsing,
spires tumbling inward and adding to the billowing clouds of dust and flame that roared
up and out.

“That was close!” Tre said from the other seat. He was gripping the armrests, his
lekku pale and agitated.

“The old girl can withstand more than that.”

“I mean us!”

Checking the scanner for law enforcement, knowing they’d be here soon, Lanoree glanced
one more time at the burning ruin of the old Dai Bendu temple. “I think Kara might
be upset.”

“I think maybe she knew exactly what was going to happen.”

Lanoree did not reply, but she couldn’t help agreeing with Tre’s assessment. So far
she’d been steered here and there, guided by words from people she didn’t know or
trust. Kara deserved another visit.

But not yet.

“What did you find?” she asked.

“What was left of a comm unit,” Tre said. “They smashed things up pretty bad, but
I think one of the memory cells is whole in this one.”

“Give it to the droid.” She offered Tre a half smile. “Don’t worry, that was nowhere
near close.”

“Compared to things you’ve done, perhaps. But I value my skin. I don’t do ‘close.’
I don’t even do ‘near.’ I do ‘safe and sound.’ ”

“Then why did you agree to help a Ranger?”

“I didn’t have much choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” Lanoree said. And she thought of Dal again, the choices
he had made, and how perhaps she had forced some of them upon him.

She flew them high, arcing up from the Khar Peninsula and back out over the ocean,
where there was not so much traffic. Tre left her alone, and Lanoree spent some time
assessing the ship’s condition and checking for damage. There was nothing significant.
Drifting up until they were skimming the edge of space, she left the ship to fly itself
and went back to see what Ironholgs had found.

Tre was seated on the cot, and the droid was still working. The comm unit was more
smashed up than Tre had believed, and Ironholgs whistled that it might take some time
to extract any information remaining in the memory cells.

Lanoree realized for the first time how cramped the Peacemaker
felt. It was designed to carry two pilots and four passengers with ease, but it had
been her home for so long, and hers alone. She was not used to sharing this space
with anyone or anything other than Ironholgs. And she could switch him off.

“So, this is cozy,” Tre said, as if reading her thoughts.

“Fresher’s through there,” she said, pointing at one of three hatches leading from
the back of the main compartment. “Middle door’s to the engine room and laser cannon
charge unit. You stay out of there. The third door’s to spare living quarters, but
it’s my storeroom. Food, water, spare laser charge pods. I suppose you
might
be able to clear enough space to sleep.”

“I’m fine here,” Tre said. His lekku twirled slightly, random movement that betrayed
little.

“For now,” Lanoree said. “You’ve got to know, I don’t like passengers.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask to come along.”

She could not argue with that. Lanoree opened a compartment and took out two drink
sachets. She flung one at Tre and it bounced from his shoulder. He caught it, examined
it briefly, then ripped the corner and drank. He raised it in a silent toast and nodded
his thanks.

“So what’s your story?” Lanoree asked. “Dam-Powl told me you were dangerous.”

“You don’t believe her?” he asked.

“Maybe you’ve been bad. Perhaps you’re dangerous to some. But not to me.”

Tre Sana looked down at his hands as if considering what they had done in the past.
His smile was contemplative. “I’ve done things I can never tell you about,” he said,
“to people you’d never want to know.”

“Not much can shock me,” Lanoree said.

“No. Of course not. You’re a Ranger.” Something of his defense dropped then—she thought
perhaps he let it—and she saw behind the slightly awkward, scared-of-heights Twi’lek
to the man beneath. And his eyes were ice, his heart a solid lump, and she suddenly
believed every word Dam-Powl had told her.

“Fresher,” he said softly. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Don’t get lost,” Lanoree said. She turned her back on him and faced the living area,
and as she heard the fresher hatch open and
close behind her, she breathed a silent breath.
Dam-Powl, just who have you burdened me with?

“Droid. Get busy.”

Ironholgs snickered some choice abuse at her, melted more wires, made more connections.
The compartment smelled of electrics, and Lanoree turned the climate conditioning
to full to clear the air.

She sat in the flight seat and watched the scanners for trouble.

“Oh, great,” Tre said. “That’s just great.”

Lanoree jerked from a gentle doze, angry with herself for drifting off.
That’s not professional
, she thought.
That’s not good
. She climbed from the cockpit and went back to where Tre was looking down at Ironholgs.

The droid had wired a small mobile screen to the shattered comm unit, and now several
lines of broken information glowed softly.

“Safe and sound?” Lanoree grinned at him.

The screen showed seventeen recent communications between the Stargazers and an unnamed
recipient on Nox.

Nox. Third planet of the system, it was also the most polluted, rich in mineral deposits,
and now home to dozens of cities devoted entirely to manufacturing. Five centuries
before, the atmosphere had become so polluted that the cities were enclosed with giant
domes, and ironically the richest conurbation was now Keev Crater, which manufactured
dome components and charged a heavy premium to oversee their upkeep and maintenance.
The air outside the domes was acidic and poisonous, and heavily corrosive to any craft
exposed to it for too long. Skirmishes were not unknown between competing domed cities.
During the Despot War, some had sided with the Despot Queen Hadiya and some with the
Je’daii and a few with whomever paid the most. Many of those divisions still ran deep.

Lanoree had been to some dangerous places, but Nox might well be the most dangerous
planet in the system.

“Well, drop me off before you go,” Tre said.

“Sure. I’ll open the door.”

Tre glared at her. “I mean it.”

“So do I. They have a head start on us already, and there’s no telling
what sort of ship they have. If Kara funds them, there’s a good bet there’s money
from elsewhere, too. It won’t be some old space freighter they’re riding to Nox. If
I land to—”

“I’m getting off this ship.”

“I’m getting off this planet.” Lanoree turned her back on Tre and slipped into the
flight seat. “Come up here and strap in,” she said. “No time to worry about niceties.”

The Peacemaker shuddered and roared as it escaped Kalimahr’s gravity, and the cool
embrace of cold, dead space had never been more welcome.

Their time at Stav Kesh is the most intense period of learning Lanoree has ever experienced,
both psychologically and physically. She and Dal train hard all day—meditation, combat,
Force movement—and in the evenings they prepare food, clean the training classrooms
and halls, wash clothes, and learn how to care for weapons. They also descend to the
caves beneath the temple, places warmed by deep magma lakes, and here they tend the
fruit and vegetable crops grown in vast hydroponic gardens. Food, cleaning, maintenance,
water, clothing … no one is simply given things at Stav Kesh, and they have to work
together to ensure the temple’s smooth running.

Dal seems to find some form of acceptance in their training. Lanoree can still feel
the turmoil of the Force around him as he fights its influence, but for the most part
his childlike smile has returned.

For a while, she starts to believe that he is almost at peace.

Until the Darrow sphere.

“The Darrow sphere is your next great test,” Master Kin’ade tells them one morning.
The Zabrak Master has taken over from Master Tave several times now, and Lanoree likes
her very much. Short, slight, her tattooed skin as dark as Bodhi caf, she might be
the most deadly person Lanoree has ever met. Yet with that talent for combat comes
an easy manner and a gentle balance, evident in her smooth movements and tranquil
expression. Her relationship with the Force is as natural as breathing.

Master Kin’ade has taken them high up toward the top of Stav Kesh, close to the mountain’s
top. It is even colder up here than elsewhere,
exposed to higher winds and with a thinner atmosphere. There is very little actual
climbing to do, but the walk is long and energetic, and by the time they reach the
small plateau at the mountain’s top they are all sweating. More accustomed now to
the thin air at these altitudes, Lanoree still feels light-headed and adrift. The
wind starts to freeze their sweat. Their thin training robes are ineffectual. None
of them wants to be there.

Except Master Kin’ade. She lowers the rucksack she has been carrying to the ground
and turns to face them all. “No time for sightseeing,” she says. “Here. Watch.” She
upends the rucksack, and something falls from it.

But it does not hit the ground.

The sphere glows, hums, shines. It darts up past Kin’ade’s horned head and hovers
high up, drifting left and right as if looking at the views. It is the size of a human’s
head … and then larger … and then smaller again, fistlike, hard. It flits from place
to place and glides. It is smooth, and glimmers like a fluid, hard and spiked with
countless protuberances. There are so many contradictions to the sphere, it is so
ambiguous, that when it attacks, it takes Lanoree a few moments to figure out what
is happening. By then her leg is bleeding and her arm aches, and the other students
are in disarray.

The Darrow sphere attacks and then retreats, rises and falls, fires darts of light,
and impacts against flesh. One moment it seems intent on killing them all, the next
it drifts away, glowing an almost serene shade of blue as it seems to contemplate
the views.