Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (22 page)

“The scumhead is listed?” Lanoree asked.

“No, but someone who knows someone who knows him is.”

“Right. Easy.”

Tre started walking.

“You could have waited to use it,” she said, walking alongside the Twi’lek.

“Just keeping up appearances.”

“I thought you hadn’t been here before?”

“I haven’t. But I know how to get by here. Trust me.”

Lanoree tried to smile and roll her eyes, but Tre was not even looking at her.

Someone had been run over by a train. Lanoree saw the commotion as they approached
a wide road that led to a tunnel mouth beneath the dome’s lower edge. A woman was
screaming in grief, and a small crowd had gathered around a sickening red smudge on
the road’s rough surface. Most people quickly walked on. The trains must have been
huge and heavy because there wasn’t much left.

“No security? No help?” Lanoree asked.

“There’s some, if you can afford it,” Tre said. “But Greenwood Station is like any
other city on Nox—run by the Corporations. They’re the law, and the people work for
them. What security does exist is concerned
with maintaining production, ensuring the safety of Corporation members—most of whom
probably live in the central tower—and protecting the city from attacks from other
cities.”

“That still goes on?”

“More often than you think. Come on. Nothing to see here.” They walked on, and Lanoree
spared one final glance for the grieving woman.

“Sounds more like Shikaakwa,” she said.

“Oh, it’s nowhere near as organized,” Tre said.

They crossed the wide train track and entered a district closer to the central manufacturing
zones. The ground shook with a constant vibration, and the workers’ accommodation
buildings were much more regimented. People moved through the streets, red-clad workers
on their way to or from work; and here and there were groups of armed guards, watching
for trouble but apparently expecting none. Their weapons were obviously displayed,
and they all looked mean.

Lanoree touched the weight of her sword and kept her face down. It was doubtful that
anyone would identify her as Je’daii simply by looking at her, but she could not disconnect
from who she was so easily. She feared her eyes, her expression, would betray her.

“Here,” Tre said, nodding at a gray accommodation tower. “Not the scumhead, but an
associate. Equally unpleasant.”

“Can’t wait,” Lanoree said.

Inside the tower, up fourteen flights of stairs because the elevator was broken, and
when Tre knocked at a door, there was no answer. Lanoree kicked it in. The person
who’d been pressed, listening, to the other side fell back and tripped over a piece
of furniture, spilling drug slips and bottles of a rancid-smelling drink. Lanoree
Force-shoved the door closed and pressed it into its broken frame.

“Well,” Tre said. “Lanoree, meet Domm, a business contact of mine.”

“Still keeping fine company I see, Tre Sana,” Domm said from the floor.

“She’s virtually asleep right now,” Tre said, going with the flow. Lanoree was impressed.
“You’d hate to see her awake and angry.”

“I know a Je’daii when I meet one.”

Lanoree was on the fallen man in an instant, sword drawn and pressed across his throat
before he could draw another breath.

“You know one of these, too?” she asked.

“No,” Domm said. He was Zabrak, but terrible wounds disfigured his face, leaving a
tracery of scars behind. His breath stank of chemical staleness. “But my father did.
One of your sort parted his head from his shoulders twelve years ago.”

“Where?”

“Kaleth.”

“Then he shouldn’t have been there,” Lanoree said. “We were protecting our own. That’s
what I’m doing now. And you know the Je’daii … protecting their own, we’re more than
happy to take heads.” She pressed down on the sword, knowing exactly how much pressure
to exert before drawing blood.

“I’m looking for Maxhagan,” Tre said.

“So?”

“Come on, Domm.”

“Find him yourself.”

“You tell us, it’ll save us time,” Lanoree said. “Don’t be like your father.”

A flash of fear was replaced by defiance in Domm’s eyes. He even managed to smile
against the sword’s pressure. “You won’t just slaughter me,” he said.

Yes, she will
. Lanoree pushed the thought.
She’s mean and desperate, and she’ll take my head from my shoulders without even breathing
heavily
.

Domm’s smile dropped and he looked nervously back and forth between Tre and Lanoree.
He smiled, defeated. His anger faded away, and Lanoree wondered if he really cared
about his dead father at all. Maybe it was just a convenient reason to hate.

“Let me up,” Domm said.

“No.”

“I need to stand and—”

“No,” Lanoree said again. “You’ll get up, feign weakness, lean against that cupboard
over there. Then you’ll try to distract us and take the blaster that’s stuck beneath
its upper table. You might even
get off one shot. But then I’ll kill you, and that’ll be an inconvenience to me. So,
no, you’re not getting up. And now my pressure on this sword will continue to increase
until you tell us where Maxhagan can be found.”

Domm’s eyes had grown wide as he heard the thoughts plucked from his mind.

Lanoree smiled. “And if you could read my thoughts, you’d know I tell the truth.”
She leaned down on the sword and its keen edge pressed against the heavy scar tissue
on his throat. Skin split. Blood flowed.

“District Six,” Domm said. “Market. He runs a stall … selling … imported water.”

Lanoree frowned, but could sense no lie in Domm’s words.

“Hiding in plain sight,” Tre said. “I think he’s telling the truth.”

“He is,” Lanoree said. She started to ease back on the sword.

“You should kill him,” Tre said. His words were light, unburdened by feeling.

“Kill him?”

“He knows you’re a Je’daii. Knows we’re here. And we’re already at a disadvantage.
One call from him to anyone in Greenwood Station and we’re compromised.”

Lanoree never looked away from the man beneath her sword. There had been many whose
flesh had parted around this blade, but all of them had been fighting back at the
time. Shooting down the pilots had been unavoidable, though their deaths pained her.
She was not in the habit of killing for killing’s sake.

“There’s another way,” she said. She sheathed her sword and sat up astride Domm’s
chest. He did not move; he seemed to sense that this was far from over.

“We don’t have time!” Tre said.

“This won’t take long.”

Lanoree calmed herself and gathered the Force, and Master Dam-Powl’s face and voice
came to her.
There are some who are troubled by what you and I excel at, but they don’t understand
the potential. Maintain control, keep yourself balanced, and it will serve you well
.

Lanoree felt the power of the Force swirling and flowing within and around her, personified
by Ashla and Bogan, their attraction and repulsion
perfectly balanced, and Lanoree suspended weightless, faultless, between them. She
lifted skin dust from the floor and chose four particles, and they became her servants.
Concentrating on them, expanding them in her vision and giving them a touch of the
Force, she dropped them into Domm’s upturned eyes.

He blinked and cried out, but could not move. His eyes watered, and then he squeezed
them closed. But by then it was too late.

“I’ll wait outside,” Lanoree heard Tre say, and he sounded like a child afraid of
the dark. But her eyes were closed, and she did not see him leave.

“Keep calm, keep quiet,” she whispered with a slight Force push, and Domm grew motionless
beneath her. She delved down, vision growing dark, the sense of touch intense and
shocking as the dust particles forged through his eyes and back into his brain. She
felt the warm wetness of his insides. She sought, the dust sought; and when she found
the places she wanted, she paused, gathering strength and molding the Force to her
will. This was the dangerous part. She felt Bogan looming and darkness closing, and
balance drifted. Power grew around her, and she breathed deeply, trying to ward off
the ecstatic sensations flooding through her. The pleasure of control. The ecstasy
of darkness.

The dust transformed into elements of her will, and Domm started to choke as her will
was done.

Keep calm
, Lanoree thought, and this time she was speaking to herself. Bogan grew large and
heavy, and she felt the irresistible lure of shadow—freedom from constraint, reveling
in power.

And she fought her way back to balance, the denial of Bogan difficult but ultimately
triumphant. The sense of loss was staggering for a time, but it quickly faded.

This was her talent, Dam-Powl had told her. The alchemy of flesh, however minute that
element of flesh might be. Transformation, transition, and Lanoree tried to hold down
the sense of pride at her achievement. She had not touched the experiment on her ship
since the start of this mission, but she had not lost anything that she had learned.

She stood from Domm and went to the door that Tre had left open behind him.

“It’s done,” she said, and Tre’s voice answered from the corridor beyond.

“You had the face of Dam-Powl. Her darkness.”

“And her control,” Lanoree said. Of course. Dam-Powl must have performed something
similar on Tre. But Lanoree didn’t mind frightening him. Tre afraid might serve her
well.

“Is he …?”

“I seared his memory. For a time he’ll remember nothing, not even his name.” Domm
writhed on the floor and struggled to stand.

“For a time?” Tre asked.

“I’m not sure how long.” And she was not. It could be mere days, or perhaps much longer
until Domm returned to the damaged person he had been, a dark shadow in his mind where
the memory of what had happened was a charred emptiness. “Better than murder.”

“If you say so.” Tre was standing in the corridor, back against the wall.

“Now tell me you know where District Six’s market is,” she said.

Tre nodded. There was no easy smile this time.

There are depths
.

—Osamael Or, circa 1,000 TYA

Part of a Journeyer’s pilgrimage is to learn how to survive in the wild, and now they
are hunting.

Lanoree stalks through the forest of giant fungi, breathing through her mouth so that
the meaty scent of the huge mushrooms does not throw her senses. Her footfalls are
completely silent; she can sense the areas of dried fungus skin that might crackle
when she steps, or those places where a hollow in the ground is covered with moss.
Her breathing is light and slow. And her mind is connected with their quarry: a small
mammal. She can feel its rapid heartbeat and breathing, and if she really concentrates,
she can see through its eyes. It perception is so much different from hers. Everything
it sees is shaded by the Force.

It used to trouble her that so much wildlife on Tython was so in tune with the tides
of the Force. But she has grown to learn that theirs is a passive relationship. It
is only Je’daii who can harness the Force and use it to perform great deeds.

Her movements urge the mammal onward, down into the shallow ravine, past the growth
of pink mushrooms that blankets one wall, and then she sees a flurry of movement ahead.

A whistle in the distance, and then Lanoree runs between the milky white stems. She
revels in the silent movement, the breeze riffling her loosened hair, sweat lifted
from her brow. When she arrives at the edge of the ravine and looks down, Dal is holding
up the creature pierced on a spear he fashioned himself. She smiles.
We make a good team
, she thinks. But then that familiar pang of guilt stabs in once again.

They are six days out from Stav Kesh, and every moment that passes Lanoree knows she
is lying to herself.

Dal will never accept the Force, nor adjust to its ebb and flow.

Silently he skins, guts, and butchers the creature, builds a fire, and starts cooking
the meat. Everything he does is methodical and skilled. He’s learning so much. Lanoree
remembers overhearing their father talking to their mother once.
He’s like a sponge
, their father said.
Every question of his I answer inspires two more. His thirst for knowledge is insatiable.
He’s going to be a great Je’daii one day
.

It saddens her how her parents could have been so wrong.

Dal’s skills hide a deeper void within him. A dark void, where all around expect the
Force to dwell. And at last, as he starts serving the meat with a soft, sweet root
vegetable they gathered earlier, she asks the question that has been burning at her.

“Are you sad?”

He gives her a plate. The food smells wonderful. Dal’s expression does not shift;
he knows exactly what she means.

“Eat your dinner,” he says. “We’ve a long way to go yet.”