Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (26 page)

“Nice doing business with you,” Maxhagan said, grinning. He pushed a small memory
pod across the table, holding out his hand palm up. Lanoree swept up the pod. And
against all her instincts, she shook his hand. “Good luck.”

“I don’t rely on luck,” Lanoree said. She left the tavern without looking back, sensing
Tre behind her all the way. Eyes followed them out. They passed the Zabrak waiting
outside, and Lanoree nodded at her.

“He could have told us more,” Tre said as they walked back across the square. “You’re
not expecting there to be much on that pod, are you?”

“There was plenty he wasn’t telling us,” Lanoree said. “But the place will be easy
to find. Trust me.” As she walked, making sure they weren’t followed, she slipped
the pod into her wrist computer and accessed the Peacemaker’s main computer. She instructed
it to read the pod—carefully, and with full protective protocol in case Maxhagan had
tried to pass on a parasite—and search for construction plans of Greenwood Station.
“Come on. No time to waste.”

She imagined her parents’ faces were she to tell them that Dal was still alive. And
she remembered their expressions the one time she had gone home since becoming a Ranger—as
if they had lost her as well.

Lanoree could not breathe a word of this to her mother and father until it was over.
And even then, she would only tell them if everything ended well.

If she had to kill Dal, that secret would follow her to the grave.

The ship located the newest construction plans it could find for Greenwood Station’s
central core and transmitted them to Lanoree’s wrist unit. As the midnight siren sounded
across the dome, Lanoree and Tre entered an abandoned warehouse in District Four.
They were very close to the central column here, and, looking up, Lanoree could see
the countless lights belonging to those who lived there. So many up
there profited from what lay below, but that was always the case. The ruling classes
always set themselves higher.

From the plans, Lanoree could see that the subterranean Greenwood Station was not
a quiet place. The foundations of the newer city were made from old, tumbled buildings
of the past. There were artificial structures deep underground, their uses not always
obvious. There were also transport routes, massive tunnels carved into the city’s
substructure along which the largest of its products were transported to its spaceport
ready for export. Along with life-support systems, water reservoirs, waste-management
plants, power centers, and storage facilities, the city was almost as expansive belowground
as it was above.

But the place she sought, Pan Deep, was not actually that far below the rest of Greenwood
Station. What set it apart was that it was built within the central tower’s deep foundations.

It took some time to negotiate their way through the first subterranean level toward
the tower. Lanoree sought to keep their movements covert; she was already uncomfortable
that Maxhagan knew their destination and certain that he had withheld information
from them. But she’d grown weary of his games. She was sure he was a consummate liar,
but she had to assume he was telling the truth about Dal and Pan Deep.

It certainly fit what she knew her brother was attempting. And that was something
that, she hoped, Maxhagan could
not
know.

The descent from the warehouse was down an old, rarely used spiral staircase, their
feet clanging on metal treads, glow rods making shadows dance. Lanoree recalled all
her training at Qigong Kesh, craving the peace of that Silent Desert as she cast her
senses out and around them. She smelled for danger, listened for held breaths, searched
the deep shadows with Force-enhanced sight, and if her mind touched one other mind
intent on violence, she would know.

After a while they reached a long, winding tunnel that led toward the tower. She flicked
on her glow rod. Just as she judged that they were beneath the central core of the
tower, the tunnel opened out into an excavated cavern, a massive place with a floor
sloping in from all sides toward a sinkhole in the middle.

“Oh,” Tre said. “Oh!” He pressed a hand over his nose in disgust,
and Lanoree could only agree. They’d been smelling the rank tang of sewage for a while,
but actually seeing this place seemed to make everything so much worse.

The effluent of the whole tower flowed here. Perhaps ten thousand people of a dozen
species, all venting their waste into toilets and disposal units in dwellings and
offices, taverns and restaurants. Rainwater already stinking with pollutants was used
to flush, and now they could see the resultant rain of shak showering down from the
high ceiling. Countless pipes and gullies led here, their stinking contents falling
in blessed darkness to splash onto the floor. And the floor was moving, a thick stew
of repulsiveness flowing slowly down the slope toward the large hole in the cavern’s
center. From there Lanoree guessed it fell into an underground lake or a deep fault
in the planet’s crust; thousands of years of a city’s refuse rotting in the darkness.

“You bring me to the nicest places,” Tre said.

Lanoree didn’t reply, because that would have meant opening her mouth. She consulted
her wrist computer one more time, then switched it off. The plans were of no use to
them now. Pan Deep was somewhere not shown on the schematics, and she thought she
knew how to find it.

Tapping Tre’s shoulder, she pointed around the perimeter of the massive cavern with
the glow rod.

“You want to walk around
there
?” he asked.

Lanoree nodded and moved on. She had already seen the overhang at the left, the space
beneath protected from anything falling from above. It led to the entrance of a corridor
hidden behind a projection in the wall, and once inside the floor immediately sloped
upward.

She paused. Tre almost walked into her.

“What?” he asked.

“This is a hidden place, not on the plans. Might not be the right place. But I’ll
soon know. Give me a moment.” She tried to relax, closing her eyes and breathing deeply,
letting the Force flow. In moments the stink was gone, her senses cleansed and purified
by the Force, ready for what she sought.

“What are you looking for?” Tre asked.

“Energy source.” She cast her senses outward.

It was a dark place, heavy with the weight of Greenwood Station’s
central tower above and the many people who lived there. The air itself seemed to
carry a taint of wrongness. Perhaps it was because of the city’s military manufacturing,
but she thought it more like a trace from the minds of those who worked and lived
there. She had seen many people, and all of them seemed to be constantly moving, or
talking or eating and drinking. Few stood still for a moment simply to muse upon their
lives. Perhaps to do so would be to admit the awful truth of their existence.

Lanoree shivered. Nox was long known to be a planet out of balance, and here more
than anywhere.

She delved beyond that shadowy trace and searched for power. In the tower above there
were countless sources, but down here there were only a few weak, old generators winding
down.

And then she encountered a dark void of heavy shielding. She probed deeper, pushing
hard, and her Force senses forged through.

Bright light. Heavy potential
. Staggering
power
.

“This way,” she said. “We’re going up again. But not too far.”

More corridors, and every step took them farther away from the stink. They’d been
moving for some time, and Lanoree was hungry and thirsty. But she was also excited.
The last time she’d been this close to Dal had been on that dreadful, painful morning
at Anil Kesh.

“Here,” she said. The tunnel they were moving along had rough walls and an uneven
floor, but up ahead she could see a steady glow. And nearby, the gutter thoughts of
a violent man.

She flicked off her glow rod. Darkness fell, but it was not complete. She grabbed
Tre’s arm and pulled him close, breathing against his ear. “Guards.”

Drawing her sword she moved forward. Tre came behind her, blaster in hand. Her heart
beat fast. She touched the guard’s mind again, wincing back from his thoughts of violence
and—

Only at the last instant did she realize her mistake. His thoughts had been a screen,
a ploy. And as the blaster fire erupted she touched his real mind and the visions
of starlit triumph that burned within.

Lanoree flowed, and the Force flowed through her. Movement and reality slowed, yet
she moved with it, her perceptions and reactions enhanced. She swept her sword around
and deflected two laser blasts, and advanced quickly.

The man crouched behind a column attached to the tunnel’s side. He wore a loose robe,
similar to those of the Dai Bendu monks, but any semblance of holiness was wrecked
by the weapon in his hand and the fury she sensed in him.

A shot came from behind her and impacted the wall far along the tunnel, smashing rock
into dust and blasting a flash of fire along its length. In that light Lanoree saw
more figures rushing their way. Time was short.

I won’t lose him again!
she thought, and in three leaps—sword sweeping aside laser blasts meant for her chest—she
was on the man. She saw a moment of fear in his eyes and then she parted his head
from his shoulders, crouching and facing the approaching Stargazers even as she felt
blood splash across her neck.

Tre scurried along the tunnel and pressed himself to the wall opposite her, aiming
and firing his blaster along its length. A grunt, the sound of an impact, and then
a woman started screaming.

“Wait here!” Lanoree said.

“But—”

She did not pause to answer his rebuttal, instead running forward with her bloodied
sword raised before her. She Force-shoved ahead and heard three voices cry out as
their owners were flung back. A blast sizzled past her ear and she smelled burned
hair, scorched clothing. That was good.
The Force gives you power, and power breeds confidence
, Master Kin’ade had told her at Stav Kesh,
but confidence can be your enemy
. Lanoree was never one to forget her mortality.

Tre fired past her, keeping their attackers’ heads down as she closed the distance
between them.
Don’t discount the injured one on the ground
, she thought, and then she was among them, slashing left and opening a Noghri woman
from throat to sternum, ducking and rolling, standing, thrusting to her right and
catching a man beneath the arm. He cried out and stumbled sideways, her sword jammed
between his ribs. He fell. As she was pulled forward he turned—tearing blade through
more flesh, bones cracking—to point his blaster at her face.

Lanoree clenched her left hand and aimed a Force punch, sending the blaster spinning
away. Two of the man’s fingers were still clasped around the grip.

He slumped away from her, dying, and she stood on his hip to withdraw her sword.

A blast from behind her and a brief, gurgled cry. She spun around. The injured woman
was slumped against the stone wall, her throat and lower jaw an open wound, raw edges
still sizzling from the laser blast that had killed her.

Ten paces along the corridor, Tre lowered his weapon. “She was almost on you.”

Lanoree nodded her thanks. That was too close.
Clumsy!
she thought. But now was not the time to analyze her mistake.

“So now they know we’re here,” Tre said.

“I think they’ve known for a while. Come on.”

They trotted along the tunnel, Lanoree casting her senses forward and around them.
The flurry of terrible violence had set her heart pounding and blood rushing, and
her pulse filled her ears. She knew control, and carried the talents to calm herself,
but she also knew that the heightened awareness of the fight could be her friend.
The Force complemented her; she was her own greatest weapon.

They ducked through a doorway, climbed a flight of stairs, and suddenly the stone
wall disappeared and a metal corridor began. She probed ahead, but her vision was
clouded now, her Force senses blurred. Pan Deep might sometimes serve the Je’daii,
if Maxhagan was to be believed, but it also strove to protect itself from them.

She ran on. To slow down now, to take stock, would be to lose whatever advantage they
still possessed. The fighting would have been heard, and perhaps Dal and his remaining
Stargazers would not have expected her to win through so quickly. The confusion of
combat would work to her advantage.

Through another doorway, and then there was a room.

Behind her, Tre gasped.

The room was large. Its walls were smooth, their lines clean. The ceiling and floor
were white, like nothing they had previously seen on Nox. It resembled more the interior
of a luxury spacecraft than a subterranean manufacturing base. At its center stood
a wide table, upon which rested an object swathed in a loose white sheet. Scattered
across the table were instruments and components, and around the room
were several wheeled cabinets, home to more tools, parts, and obscure technology.
It was more like an operating theater than a laboratory.

Huddled in one corner were six Selkaths dressed in plain white lab coats, all of them
terrified.

And standing beside the table, Dal.

“Lanoree!” he said. His surprise was evident in his eyes and the way he threw up his
hands, and as he grinned she was a teenager again, seeing her brother and reveling
in his presence. A flush of emotion swept through her—pleasure and sadness, loss and
love. He came forward as if delighted at her being there, and for a moment Lanoree
was consumed by memory. And that was the only moment her lost brother required.

Tre screamed, and something struck Lanoree’s head. As she saw the floor rising to
meet her, darkness swallowed her.