Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (33 page)

There was a possibility that Lanoree could even close the gap between them and shoot
Dal down before he landed. Her customized laser cannons were powerful and accurate,
and the Peacemaker carried four drone missiles that were effective at eight hundred
thousand kilometers. But if she missed, he would be alerted to her presence.

Yes, that was why she didn’t open fire. The advantage of surprise. She convinced herself
of this as she made ready to take to the surface, and Tre watched her every move.

“I wish I could come with you,” he said for the tenth time.

“No, you don’t,” Lanoree said.

“True. I don’t. You take me to the nicest places.”

“Says the Twi’lek who took me to the Pits.”

Tre watched as Lanoree prepared herself. She changed her clothing, and lacking her
lost sword, she plucked a spare sword from a cabinet beneath her cot. It was the weapon
she had trained with before Master Tem Madog had forged her own. She hefted it in
her hands, swung it several times, and remembered its weight. It was a surprising
comfort.

“It becomes you,” Tre said.

“It’ll have to do.” She sheathed the sword—the screech lizard sheath remained at her
hip—and knelt by the cot again. She removed two blasters from the cabinet and slipped
them into her belt. Tre watched, eyebrows raised. Lanoree only shrugged.

A chime from the cockpit signaled that their descent had begun. She felt the familiar
shifting in her stomach as they entered the atmosphere and the Peacemaker’s grav units
faded out, and she watched Tre, wondering if he’d vomit again. But he held himself
together.

She indicated that he should strap himself in, then sat next to him on the cot.

“You don’t want to land the ship yourself?” he asked.

“I will. Once we’re close to the surface. But Tre”—she squeezed his shoulder—“I’m
leaving you in my Peacemaker. My ship. This is my home, and I’m trusting you to treat
it well.”

“I’ll guard it,” he said.

“Ironholgs can do that, and the ship has its own defenses. Just … don’t touch anything.
Anything!”

“Trust me,” he said, smiling. His eyes were watery and weak, his skin pale, lekku
limp.

“I have to,” she said.

The Peacemaker rocked and kicked as it sliced down into Sunspot’s violent atmosphere.
Lights glowed, warnings chimed from the control panels, and the screens darkened as
heat burned across the hull.

Lanoree climbed into her flight seat, taking control of the ship. She checked the
scanner, uploaded a terrain map onto another screen, and accessed the ship’s computer
to download as much information as she could find about the area.

Dal and his Stargazers had landed at a small mining outpost called Ran Dan’s Folly.
According to her records the mine worked a deep source of petonium and marionium,
both elements used to power ships’ drives and that could also be weaponized. The mine
had been in existence for almost a hundred years, and there seemed to be nothing spectacular
about it that set it aside from any other Sunspot business concern. A tragedy thirty
years ago in which a hundred miners lost their lives. A strike eighteen years ago
that led to violent riots and an eventual buyout by the workforce and their families
off planet. Shipping and trade deals with parties on at least three planets, including
Tython. If Ran Dan’s Folly was a source of dark matter, nothing had ever been noticed,
and no one knew.

No one but Dal.

Lanoree experienced a brief, chilling fear that her brother had found the tracking
device she’d planted on him and placed it on another ship. She’d followed for three
days, and all the while he had been heading for Tython. Perhaps he had a supply of
dark matter already sourced and waiting to be implanted in the device. Maybe even
now he was on Tython, down in the Old City, going deeper than anyone had ever been
and readying to activate the hypergate. Any moment now …

“If it’s even there,” she muttered. She was still unsure. In all this, the hypergate’s
existence was the one nebulous factor. But whether it existed or not, the danger was
just as pressing.

“This is Dal,” she said, watching the scanner as it tracked his ship until it landed.
The red spot became blue as it fell motionless, and Lanoree dipped the Peacemaker
to the south so that she could approach Ran Dan’s Folly over a blazing rift in the
planet’s surface. She needed as much cover as possible.

She also needed a plan.

But time was short. Malterra and Sunspot grew closer. Dal was still one step ahead.

She would have to make this up as she went along.

Lanoree crouched behind a rock, looking at the mine and the haphazard collection of
buildings around it, and wondered how anyone could
live there. The minehead itself was at the base of a slope of shale and tumbled rocks,
encased in a rickety steel structure with two giant lifting cranes protruding through
the roof. The surrounding buildings were low, built almost entirely from rock, and
connected by chains, presumably for navigation between buildings during the terrible
storms that swept the area. There were no windows. Three heavily armored land cruisers
were parked close against the buildings’ walls, and the wrecks of several more were
scattered around the area, slowly corroding into the sterile ground.

Further along the low valley were three landing pads for whatever freighters and other
craft could be used in such an atmosphere. Dal’s ship rested on one of these pads,
and Lanoree knew now why she had not been able to run him down. His ship was a Deathblaster,
and one that had seen action, perhaps even during the Despot War. A great swath of
its left flank was scorched black, and areas of the hull had obviously been replaced
and repaired judging by their color and styling differences. It was a mean-looking
craft, sister ship to the renowned Deathstalkers, except large enough to carry a payload
of bombs, equipment, or passengers. They were even rarer than Deathstalkers now—many
had been destroyed during the Despot War; many more dismantled afterward by the Je’daii;
and those that survived were usually in the hands of mercenaries, Shikaakwa warlords,
or at remote criminal settlements out on some of Mawr’s moons. From the speeds Dal’s
ship had attained, there was a good chance that it had been customized.

She checked the area one more time from behind the rock pile, then ran at a crouch
toward the Deathblaster. She kept to the shadows, knowing that Dal would have left
some of his Stargazers preparing the ship for a rapid escape. Probing out gently,
she sensed two minds, their thoughts untroubled. The Stargazers were excited; their
plans were coming to fruition. She wondered what Dal would say if he knew how much
they had lowered their guard.

The moment begged for action, not diplomacy. And though disabling them would have
been her preference, Lanoree could not risk even the slightest chance of these two
coming around while she was down in the mine. Before she moved, she sought comfort
in the Force for what she was about to do.
Desperate measures for desperate times
,
she thought. And she remembered how so many had died in agony on Nox.

Close to the ship’s still-hot engines, the Iktotchi woman didn’t know what had hit
her as Lanoree’s sword parted her head from her shoulders and severed the long, distinctive
horns. She darted up the ramp into the ship, where the second Stargazer stood comically
motionless, head cocked at the strange sound of steel cleaving flesh he’d heard from
outside.

“Don’t—” he said, and Lanoree stabbed him through the heart. He was dead before he
slumped to the deck.

She glanced around the ship’s hold. Empty, and now deserted but for the dead. She
ran back down the ramp and headed for the mine. The blazing air burned her lungs,
and she knew she should have donned a protective suit and breathing apparatus. But
she did not want her movement and senses impeded in any way, and soon she would be
belowground.

At the main mine building she paused and crouched down, peering inside through cracks
in the old, dilapidated structure. There was no movement, and she sensed no one inside.

She heard an explosion in the distance. Startled, she turned and raised her sword.
Kilometers away, beyond a low rise to the north, the sky glowed with the huge, pulsing
fires of an active volcano. Clouds of smoke and ash billowed kilometers high, lit
from within by wild electrical storms. Deadly lava bombs arced through the air. The
ground rumbled as if from fear.

Inside the enclosure she approached the two elevators that provided access into the
mine. Both were still, shaft doors open, but only one of the cages had descended.
If she activated the other, she would alert anyone below.

She looked into the dark, empty elevator shaft. It was a long way to fall.

Sheathing her sword, Lanoree delved into her utility belt and brought out three short
lengths of thin, strong rope. She tied two together and formed a harness beneath her
arms and around her wrists. Then she clasped the end of the third length tightly in
her left hand and, without giving herself time to consider the madness of what she
was doing, she leaped, swinging the rope around one of the taut elevator cables, catching
the other end, bracing her feet against the steel cable and pulling tight. She shook
for a moment as she found her balance, and the air was filled with a gentle hum as
the cable vibrated from the impact.

Starting to slide down, she tested the strength of her boots dragging against the
cable, only hoping the strong leather would not be burned through by friction in the
descent. That would hurt.

She sped up. Darkness whisked by. She probed outward with her Force sense and felt
the open space around her, the shaft square and braced at regular intervals with heavy
steel props.

Faster than she’d expected the bottom rose toward her, and she pulled at the ropes
and pressed her feet hard against the cable to slow down. She misjudged slightly and
struck the elevator cage’s roof hard, driving the wind from her lungs and causing
a clanging thud that would have been heard by anyone nearby. But there was no reaction,
no shout of alarm. After she’d gathered her breath, Lanoree lowered herself down between
the elevator car and the shaft’s wall.

At first glance the mine reminded her of the tunnels beneath Greenwood Station’s central
tower. There were occasional, flickering lights along the narrow corridor leading
in two directions, and the walls and ceiling were roughly formed. But it was
hot
. Heat simmered from somewhere down below, the floor sizzled her worn boots, and a
faint glow seemed to flood into the corridor far away to the left.

She sensed something moving rapidly toward her along the corridor. Holding her old
practice sword before her, Lanoree was struck by the gust of hot air and thrown to
the ground. She rolled to one side and tried to catch her breath, but the fearsome
wind stole it away. The scorching blast—the result of drastic temperature differentials,
perhaps—simmered her clothing and stretched her skin. She squeezed her eyes tightly
shut.

Sunspot was trying to bake her alive.

The hot wind growled against the walls and then faded away, and Lanoree took a deep
breath.

She smelled sweat.

Opening her eyes, trying to stand, she sensed the heavy rock swinging for her head,
gathered all her Force talents to deflect the injury, but she was far too late.

A brief pain, and then darkness fell.

A Je’daii needs darkness and light, shadow and illumination, because without the two
there can be no balance. Veer to Bogan, and Ashla feels too constraining, too pure;
edge toward Ashla, and Bogan becomes a monstrous myth. A Je’daii without balance between
both is no Je’daii at all. He, or she, is simply lost
.

—Master Shall Mar, “A Life in Balance,” 7,537 TYA

The blood spite is a shadow with teeth. It trails long tendrils around her that, though
thin and easy to break, constrain her. She plucks and kicks at them, and the smell
and taste when they snap reminds her of the grassy plains at Bodhi Temple, long summer
afternoons, evenings of music and talk with her family. The thing’s body darts in
again and again, carried on feathery wings that make no noise at all as they beat
at the dusky air. Lanoree sends a clumsy Force punch and the spite reels. Its tendrils
flail and teeth clack at nothing.

Its teeth are its hardest point. Wings, tendrils, body, all are light and airy, giving
it the feel of a fancy or memory more than a living thing. Its teeth give it form.

The spite attacks again. Lanoree feels warm fluid spatter across her neck, and she’s
not sure whether it’s the spite’s sap or her own blood. Her moment of panic abates.
She is without weapons, but never without the Force. And while this being’s strange
nature might make it immune to any mental assault, Lanoree has studied at Stav Kesh.