Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (38 page)

“Your drugs are keeping it at bay.”

Lanoree landed the ship, and together they approached the Old City.

The landscape seemed overfamiliar, though she had been here only once. Almost as if
she had always wished to return. She led them through a shallow valley and past a
hill that might once have been a pyramid. They followed the footprints of four people
in the long, damp grass. Her heart was beating fast, and a sense of impending dread
crushed in around her.
They really believe they’re here to start a hypergate!
she thought, and the idea was staggering. If everything went wrong, they might doom
the system. But if the hypergate was real and the device actually worked, Dal might
be building a step to the stars.

What explorer could not feel a thrill of excitement at that?

At last they stood close to an entrance to the Old City’s underground, and Lanoree
recognized it as the way she had come before. A sense of déjà vu struck home, hard,
and much that had happened since that first fated descent felt like a dream.

“I don’t like this place,” Tre said, snapping her back to reality. “Feels …”

“Strange,” she said.

I sense that everything is about to change
, Master Dam-Powl had said.

Once again Lanoree pursued her brother beneath Tython’s surface, not knowing what
might lie beneath.

Not long after descending from the light they came across the first of Dam-Powl’s
safeguards.

The Cathar Stargazer woman had been sliced into several parts. Her head had rolled
down a slight slope and now rested, staring up at them. The rest of her lay scattered
across the tunnel floor. The blood was still wet and warm, its smell sickening. Her
eyes reflected Lanoree’s glow rod light accusingly, and Lanoree sensed the Force about
the trap that had been sprung here. Set into the wall was a series of laser pods,
all of them expended now. But they had fulfilled their purpose.

“Only Dal and two others left,” Lanoree said.

“And now they know there are traps.”

“I doubt they’ll fall for the next one.”

“Let’s hope we don’t,” Tre said.

“These are set by my people,” Lanoree said.

“Then there must be something down here worth protecting.”

Lanoree did not reply, because she had thought the same. The Je’daii Council had charged
her with stopping her brother, and they had surely assumed that she would have succeeded
long before now. This was the final step in his plan, and still he was ahead of her.
But they would not have guessed that. These traps were here to prevent
anyone
from entering the deeps of the Old City. And they had been placed recently.

They continued their descent. Lanoree probed ahead, her senses less befuddled down
here. Perhaps the Force Storm on the surface was calming, or maybe the solid bulk
of Tython between her and the storm acted as a shield. The Force felt disturbed, but
settled. She used it with confidence, and the next trap was obvious.

Dal and the others had also been aware of it. They had filled a robe with rocks and
thrown it ahead, and the shredded material and cracked rocks bore the scorch marks
of spent laser pods.

“They’re moving quickly,” Lanoree said.

“How can you tell?”

“That’s my brother.” Lanoree drew her sword as they moved on. She recognized some
of the caverns and tunnels, the large stepped descents and the strange engravings
on some of the walls, but she kept
focused. The pursuit, the Je’daii safeguards, they were all that mattered.

If it existed, she had no idea how far down the hypergate might be.

As they crossed a hallway with carved stone pillars and plinths bearing strange, time-worn
sculptures, she saw a flash in the distance. It illuminated a high, arched doorway
for a moment before fading, then came again. The white-hot scorch of a laser blast.

“Another trap triggered,” Tre said, and Lanoree nodded. They were close. She ran.

Perhaps expectation smothered caution. The chase was almost at an end, and her determination
to face Dal again before he triggered the device was a hot, driving thing. She probed
with her Force senses, detected nothing amiss, and trusted that. She did not take
into account that her senses were obscured and that the Force was once again shivering
at the storms above.

Whatever the reason, she led the way into danger.

The laser trap had been set across a wide tunnel, and smoke was still rising from
the heavy object that had been used to spring it. The rock had been neatly sliced
in two, severed parts glowing.
They can’t be more than a hundred steps ahead
, she thought, and as she concentrated on running quietly, shielding her mind, and
readying herself for what was to come, she saw a flurry of movement on her left.

“Lanoree!” Tre shouted behind her, and he pushed her forward. Maybe he tripped, shoving
her as he fell. Or perhaps he did so on purpose.

The hail of blaster fire echoed across the tunnel, smashing rock to molten pellets,
and the Stargazer had fired five times before Lanoree raised her sword. She deflected
two more shots and leaped across the tunnel with barely any effort. She landed beside
the man and swung the sword, severing both of his arms just below the elbows. Forearms
and blaster fell to the ground. The man gasped quietly, and took two steps back until
he was standing against the tunnel wall. He looked down at his gouting stumps, then
up at Lanoree, eyes wide.

She swung her sword through his chest, cutting him almost in two. As he dropped dead,
she turned around, ready to encourage Tre onward and tell him to be careful, because
now Dal and the last Stargazer knew they were close on their tail.

But Tre did not need telling, because he was dead. One blast had struck him high on
the side of his neck, scorching across the back of his skull. He had fallen onto his
front, arms still outstretched.

“Oh, Tre,” Lanoree whispered, because she didn’t know what else to say. She dashed
to his side, ready to snatch up his blaster and run on.

A bubble of blood formed at his nose.

She touched his hand, his wrist, and felt a weak pulse fluttering like a bird in a
trap. The wound looked bad, yet he still breathed.

But Lanoree knew there was no time.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she left Tre in the dark and ran on. Her only comfort was
in knowing that, were he conscious, he would understand.

As she had been that first time in the depths of the Old City, she was now alone.

Soon, Dal was alone as well.

Careful now, more attuned than ever to the ebb and flow of the Force through these
ancient subterranean rooms, Lanoree sensed the last Stargazer long before he knew
she was there. He was hiding on a high step that led up one massive wall, blaster
aimed back the way he and Dal had come.

Lanoree climbed higher. She moved quickly and quietly, barely even disturbing the
air around her, and every moment she watched for the movement that would show that
he had heard or seen her. But she was a shadow. When she was high enough, she moved
forward and dropped on the Stargazer from above.

She thought of questioning him about where Dal had gone and how he was armed, but
she could not take the chance. She’d seen one of these Stargazers explode suicide
belts without a second thought. And, she supposed, there was also anger behind the
swing of her sword. The Stargazer’s head bounced down three large steps, and she landed
softly on the ground just as it settled beside her. She was already running again.
Dal might not know that the last Stargazer was dead, but he would assume that he was
on his own now.

Him, and the sister he had shot and left for dead.

“Dal!” Lanoree shouted, surprising even herself. She paused, then smiled. It felt
good to call his name. And not because he was her brother and she still held out any
hope for him because, at last, she did not. No more hope. She enjoyed calling his
name because in her voice she could hear the anger and disgust she was feeling. So
many people he had killed to fuel his fantasy. Even his sister.

If their parents were to suddenly appear, he would kill them as well.

“Dal! I’m coming to stop you, now. No pleading! No more chances! Just you and me,
and last time down here you spilled your
own
blood.” Her voice echoed away, filling huge rooms and grand tunnels that might never
have heard such language before. She wondered at the Gree tongue and what these places
had seen and heard so long ago. She felt the heavy, dense power that filled the place,
and did not care. She was tired and enraged. Her balance was unsettled, but she let
the anger drive her on. It sharpened her senses.

Deeper, and her glow rod fought harder against the darkness than ever before. Perhaps
the farther down she went, the heavier the dark.

And then Dal was there, standing in a room that might once have been a bathing place.
He’d thrown several glow rods in a rough circle around him, and resting by his feet
was the device. He must have been carrying it on his own, and Lanoree was amazed that
something so powerful did not bear more weight.

“I think this is far enough,” Dal said.

“I’m not stopping now,” Lanoree said. She slowed, but kept walking toward Dal.

“I don’t mean you. I mean this. Here. It’s far enough.”

“Here?” She looked around. “But where is the—?”

Dal bent down to touch the device.

“Don’t!” She drew a blaster and aimed it at Dal’s head, sheathing her sword. And she
knew without any doubt that it would take nothing for her, now, to pull the trigger.

“Not a very graceful weapon for a Je’daii.”

“You stole my sword.”

“Looks like you have another, and you’re not afraid to get it bloody.”

“This one isn’t special.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, I dumped that other one in deep space.” He was still half crouched,
fingers splayed, and she watched his other hand.

I should shoot him right now
.

“Come with me,” Dal said.

“You shot me.”

“And yet you’re here. My tough sister.”

“The Force saved me. Ironic, don’t you think? You mock it so much, and yet it’ll be
your undoing.”

“It looks like a blaster will be my undoing.”

They stood that way for a while. Lanoree did not relax for a moment—her finger on
the trigger, her eyes on Dal, her Force senses ranging and yet never quite fully aware.
The storm was abating, but the Force on Tython was still stirred.

“You’re a bad man, Dal.”

“I’m fighting for what I believe in!”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not evil.”

“I won’t stop,” he said. “I won’t give this up, Lanoree. Not after so long. Can’t
you feel it? Can’t you
sense
it? You have
no idea—
”

“I don’t care,” she said.

Dal stared at her, the older, madder Dal she still did not know. “Can’t you just wonder?”
he asked softly. “Aren’t you at least curious about what might be out there?”

She did not reply.

“Where we came from,” he said. “Our origins. Our birth planets. Places where we belong
but which we were torn away from. Our heritage in the stars, Lanoree. Doesn’t even
a small part of you wonder?”

“Yes,” Lanoree said after a brief pause. “But not at the risk of everything I know
and love.”

“Then shoot me.” He reached lower.

Lanoree’s finger tightened on the trigger. And eased again. Instead, she closed her
eyes and took the greatest risk of her life.

She pushed a memory of them together. Pushed it with all her might. The Force left
her with a
clap!
and for a while she was actually alive in the memory as it formed in Dal’s mind,
as real there as she was in this ancient subterranean bathing place for the Gree.

They walk together beside the river back at Bodhi Temple, young, almost carefree,
watching the weave birds nesting in the trees and the
river water carrying clumps of roundweed as large as small islands. The young Lanoree
laughs in delight and sees Dal do the same. His eyes are wide with surprise. For that
moment he is back there with her—and Lanoree saw her brother’s eyes grow wide and
wet where he hunched over the device, and she thought,
Now!

She shoved again, but this was no mere memory. She gathered every flaming, blazing,
wretched image she had witnessed over the past days—the explosions and death across
Greenwood Station, the mines deep on Sunspot, those who had died beneath her sword,
the violent conflagration in the skies of Tython—and heaved them at Dal. His mind
recoiled and for an instant his face was a child’s, displaying shock and anger at
her deception.

Then her brother began to scream

He staggered back, crying at the wretchedness, the pain, the suffering she had pushed
his way. Lanoree Force-shoved him back. He stumbled, then tripped over his feet and
went down.

She moved beside the device, blaster clasped in one hand.
I stopped him!
she thought, and a great weight vanished from the depths of her chest. She pressed
her hand there and felt the heat of her healed wound.