Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (2 page)

“Let me see,” Lanoree says.

Dal does not look at her, but he opens the pad.

“It’s beautiful,” she says. “The Force has guided your fingers, Dal.” But she’s not
sure.

Dal picks a heavy pencil from his pocket and strikes five thick lines through his
drawing, left to right, tearing the paper and ruining it forever. His expression does
not change, and neither does his breathing. It’s almost as if there is no anger at
all.

“There,” he says. “That’s better.”

For a moment the lines look like claw marks, and as Lanoree takes a breath and blinks—

A soft, insistent alarm pulled her up from sleep. Lanoree sighed and sat up, rubbing
her eyes, massaging the dream away. Dear Dal. She dreamed of him often, but they were
usually dreams of those later times when everything was turning bad. Not when they
were still children for whom Tython was so full of potential.

Perhaps it was because she was on her way home.

She had not been back to Tython for more than four years. She was a Je’daii Ranger,
and so ranging is what she did. Some Rangers found reasons to return to Tython regularly.
Family connections, continuous training, face-to-face debriefs, it all amounted to
the same thing—they hated being away from home. She also believed that there were
those Je’daii who felt the need to immerse themselves in Tython’s Force-rich
surroundings from time to time, as if uncertain that their affinity with the Force
was strong enough.

Lanoree had no such doubts. She was comfortable with her strength and balance in the
Force. The short periods she had spent with others on retreats on Ashla and Bogan—a
voluntary part of a Padawan’s training, should they desire to go—had made her even
more confident in this.

She stood from her cot and stretched. She reached for the ceiling and grabbed the
bars she’d welded there herself, pulling up, breathing softly, then lifting her legs
and stretching them out until she was horizontal to the floor. Her muscles quivered,
and she breathed deeply as she felt the Force flowing through her, a vibrant, living
thing. Mental exercise and meditation were fine, but sometimes she took the greatest
pleasure in exerting herself physically. She believed that to be strong with the Force,
one had to be strong in body.

The alarm was still ringing.

“I’m awake,” she said, easing herself slowly back to the floor, “in case you hadn’t
noticed.”

The alarm snapped off, and her Peacemaker ship’s grubby yellow maintenance droid ambled
into the small living quarters on padded metal feet. It was one of many adaptations
she’d made to the ship in her years out in the Tythan system. Most Peacemakers carried
a very simple droid, but she’d updated hers to a Holgorian IM-220, capable of limited
communication with a human master and other duties not necessarily exclusive to ship
maintenance. She’d further customized it with some heavy armor, doubling its weight
but making it much more useful to her in risky scenarios. She spoke to it, its replies
were obtuse, and she supposed it was the equivalent of trying to communicate with
a grass kapir back home. She had even named it.

“Hey, Ironholgs. You better not have woken me early.”

The droid beeped and scraped, and she wasn’t sure whether it was getting cranky in
its old age.

She looked around the small but comfortable living quarters. She had chosen a Peacemaker
over a Hunter because of its size; even before she’d flown her first mission as a
Je’daii Ranger, she knew that she would be eager to spend much of her time in space.
A Hunter was fast and agile but too small to live in. The Peacemaker was a compromise
on maneuverability, but she had spent long periods living alone on the ship. She preferred
it that way.

And like most Rangers, she had made many modifications and adaptations to her ship
that stamped her own identity upon it. She’d stripped out the table and chairs and
replaced them with a weights and tensions rack for working out. Now, she ate her food
sitting on her narrow cot. She’d replaced the holonet entertainment system with an
older flatscreen, which doubled as communications center and reduced the ship’s net
weight. Beside the extensive engine compartment there had been a small room that housed
a second cot for guests or companions, but because she had neither she had filled
the space with extra laser charge pods, a water-recycling unit, and food stores. The
ship’s four laser cannon turrets had also been upgraded, and it now also carried plasma
missiles, and drone missiles for long-distance combat. At the hands of the Cathar
master armorer Gan Corla, the cannons now packed three times more punch and were effective
over twice the range as those standard to Peacemakers.

She had also altered and adapted the function and position of many cockpit controls,
making it so that only she could effectively fly the ship. It was hers, it was home,
and that was how she liked it.

“How long to Tython?” she asked.

The droid let out a series of whines and clicks.

“Right,” Lanoree said. “Suppose I’d better freshen up.” She brushed a touch pad and
the darkened screens in the forward cockpit faded to clear, revealing the star-speckled
view that never failed to make her heart ache. There was something so profoundly moving
to the distance and scale of what she saw out there, and the Force never let her forget
that she was a part of something incomprehensibly large. She supposed it was as close
as she ever came to a religious epiphany.

She touched the pad again and a red glow appeared, surrounding a speck in the distance.
Tython. Three hours and she’d be there.

The Je’daii Council ordering her back to Tython meant only one thing. They had a mission
for her, and it was one that they needed to discuss face-to-face.

Washed, dressed, and fed, Lanoree sat in the ship’s cockpit and watched Tython drawing
closer. Her ship had communicated with sentry drones orbiting at thirty thousand kilometers,
and now the Peacemaker was performing a graceful parabola that would take it down
into the atmosphere just above the equator.

She was nervous about visiting Tython again, but part of her was excited as well.
It would be good to see her mother and father, however briefly. She contacted them
far too infrequently. With Dal dead, she was now their only child.

A soft chime announced an incoming transmission. She swiveled her seat and faced the
flatscreen, just as it snowed into an image.

“Master Dam-Powl,” Lanoree said, surprised. “An honor.” And it was. She had expected
the welcoming transmission to be from a Je’daii Ranger or perhaps even a Journeyer
she did not know. Not the Cathar Je’daii Master.

Dam-Powl bowed her head. “Lanoree, it’s good to see you again. We’ve been eagerly
awaiting your arrival. Pressing matters beg discussion.
Dark
matters.”

“I assumed that was the case,” Lanoree said. She shifted in her seat, unaccountably
nervous.

“I sense your discomfort,” Master Dam-Powl said.

“Forgive me. It’s been some time since I spoke with a Je’daii Master.”

“You feel unsettled even with me?” Dam-Powl asked, smiling. But the smile quickly
slipped. “No matter. Prepare yourself, because today you speak with six Masters, including
Stav Kesh’s Temple Master Lha-Mi. I’ve sent your ship the landing coordinates for
our meeting place thirty kilometers south of Akar Kesh. We’ll expect you soon.”

“Master, we’re not meeting at a temple?”

But Dam-Powl had already broken the transmission, and Lanoree was left staring at
a blank screen. She could see her image reflected there, and she quickly gathered
herself, breathing away the shock.
Six Je’daii Masters? And Lha-Mi as well?

“Then it
is
something big.”

She checked the transmitted coordinates and switched the flight computer to manual,
eager to make the final approach herself. She had
always loved flying and the freedom it gave her. Untethered. Almost a free agent.

Lanoree closed her eyes briefly and breathed with the Force. It was strong this close
to Tython, elemental, and it sparked her senses alive.

By the time the Peacemaker sliced into Tython’s outer atmosphere, Lanoree’s excitement
was growing. The landing zone was nestled in a small valley with giant standing stones
on the surrounding hills. She could see several other ships, including Hunters and
another Peacemaker. It was a strange place for such a meeting, but the Je’daii Council
would have its reasons. She guided her ship in an elegant arc and landed almost without
a jolt.

“Solid ground,” she whispered. “Ironholgs, I don’t know how long we’ll be here, but
take the opportunity to run a full systems check. Anything we need we can pick up
from Akar Kesh before we leave.”

The droid emitted a mechanical sigh.

Lanoree probed gently outward, and when she sensed that the air pressures had equalized,
she opened the lower hull hatch. The smells that flooded in—rash grass, running water,
that curious charged smell that seemed to permeate the atmosphere around most temples—brought
a rush of nostalgia for the planet she had left behind. But there was no time for
personal musings.

Three Journeyers were waiting for her, wide-eyed and excited.

“Welcome, Ranger Brock!” the tallest of the three said.

“I’m sure,” she said. “Where are they waiting for me?”

“On Master Lha-Mi’s Peacemaker,” another Journeyer said. “We’re here to escort you.
Please, follow us.”

“I’m here representing the Council of Masters,” the Talid Temple Master Lha-Mi said.
“Forgive us for not welcoming you back to Tython in more … salubrious surroundings.
But by necessity this meeting must be covert.” His long white hair glowed in the room’s
artificial light. He was old and wise, and Lanoree was pleased to see him again.

“It’s so nice to be back,” Lanoree said. She bowed.

“Please, please.” Lha-Mi pointed to a seat, and Lanoree sat facing him and the other
five Je’daii Masters. This Peacemaker’s living quarters had been pared down to provide
a circular table with eight seats around it, and little more. She nodded a silent
greeting to Lha-Mi, Dam-Powl and the Cathar Master Tem Madog, but the other three
she did not know. It seemed that things had moved swiftly while she had been away,
especially when it came to promotions.

“Ranger Brock,” Master Dam-Powl said, smiling. “It’s wonderful to see you again in
the flesh.” She was a Master at Anil Kesh, the Je’daii Temple of Science, and during
Lanoree’s training there, she and Dam-Powl had formed a close bond. It was she more
than any other who had expressed the conviction that Lanoree would be a great Je’daii
one day. It was also Dam-Powl who had revealed and encouraged the areas of Force use
at which Lanoree was most skilled—metallurgy, elemental manipulation, alchemy.

“Likewise, Master Dam-Powl,” Lanoree said.

“How are your studies?”

“Progressing,” Lanoree said. There was a hidden place in her Peacemaker ship, and
a container holding a very personal experiment, and sometimes she spent long hours
at work there. Her alchemical skills still seemed fledgling sometimes, but the sense
of accomplishment and power she felt while using them were almost addictive.

“You’re a talented Je’daii,” Master Tem Madog said. “I can sense your experience and
strength growing with the years.” It was a durasteel sword forged by this master weapons
smith that hung by Lanoree’s side. The blade had saved her life on many occasions,
and on other occasions it had taken lives. It was her third arm, a part of her. In
the four years since leaving Tython she had never been more than an arm’s reach from
the weapon, and she felt it now, cool and solid, keen in the presence of its maker.

“I honor the Force as well as I can,” Lanoree said. “ ‘I am the mystery of darkness,
in balance with chaos and harmony.’ ” She smiled as she quoted from the Je’daii oath,
and some of the Masters smiled back. Some of them. The three she did not know remained
expressionless, and she probed gently, knowing that she risked punishment yet unable
to break her old habit. She always liked knowing who she was
talking to. And as they had not introduced themselves, she thought it only fair.

They closed themselves to her, and one, a Wookiee, growled deep in his throat.

“You have served the Je’daii and Tython well during your years as Ranger,” Lha-Mi
said. “And sitting before us now, you must surely believe that we mean you no ill.
I understand that this meeting might seem strange and that being faced with us might
seem … daunting. Intimidating, perhaps? But there is no need to invade another’s privacy,
Lanoree, especially a Master’s. No need at all.”

“Apologies, Master Lha-Mi,” Lanoree said, wincing inwardly.
You might have been out in the wilds
, she berated herself,
but be mindful of the Je’daii formality
.

The Wookiee laughed.

“I am Xiang,” one of the strangers, a female of the Sith species, said. “Your father
taught me, and now I teach under him at Bodhi Temple. A wise man. And good at magic
tricks.”