Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (17 page)

It sweeps toward Master Kin’ade, who performs an Alchaka move and kicks the sphere
aside.

“Concentrate,” Kin’ade says. “Don’t panic. Don’t get flustered. Let the Force flow
with you, sense the sphere’s movement. Know its intent.”

Lanoree tries. She calms her mind and breathes long and deep, remembering all that
Master Tave has taught them. The Force within her is perfectly balanced. She feels
at one with it, neither master nor servant but—

The Darrow sphere sweeps behind her and delivers a paralyzing charge to her leg. She
groans and tips to the ground, massaging the spasming muscle and angry at herself.
She remains there for a while as
the pain dissipates, watching the other students fall to the sphere. The Wookiee manages
to get a hit in with one heavy fist. But perhaps the sphere let her, because she cries
out as the hairs on her arm stand on end and her fist sparks and sizzles.

“Enough,” Master Kin’ade says. She performs a graceful gesture with her hand and the
sphere sinks to the ground, fading until it is almost transparent. Lanoree has the
impression that it is still of its own mind, and that Kin’ade is barely controlling
it at all.

“What
is
that thing?” Dal asks. He is crouched across the small plateau from the rest of them,
nose bleeding, knuckles raw from where he has been trying to fight the sphere.

“This is the Darrow sphere,” Master Kin’ade says. “I created it myself to help student
training here at Stav Kesh, and this is the only one. A student of mine several years
ago called it Je’daii’s bane, and I almost changed its name. I like that.” She looked
up at the sky, smiling. “And like anything with two names, the sphere has its ambiguities.”
She nods at where the sphere came to rest, and Lanoree is not surprised to see it
gone.

“Where is it?” Dal asks.

“There,” Kin’ade says. “Or perhaps not. Are you too trusting of your senses, Dalien
Brock?”

“They’re all I have.”

A loaded hush falls over the breezy plateau, even the wind seeming to die down at
Dal’s words.

“No,” Kin’ade whispers. “They’re the very least of what you have. And so you can go
last.”

“Go last for what?”

Master Kin’ade ignores Dal and gestures Lanoree forward instead. Lanoree walks to
her, and as she approaches, the Master starts talking quietly. “Remember, the Force
does not lie, although if you’re out of balance you can make lies from it. Feel the
flow. Relish the balance.” She delves into her rucksack and brings out a blindfold,
a nose clip, earplugs, and a mask.

“If I wear all those—” Lanoree protests, but Master Kin’ade cuts in.

“Then you have to trust in the Force.”

Taking a deep breath, Lanoree nods. She puts them on, and it is like cutting herself
off from the world. The blindfold gives perfect
darkness. The earplugs mold to her ears and cut out all sound, leaving only her beating
heart. The nose clip steals all smell. She can taste snow on the air, but the sphere—

An impact on her leg and she cries out, staggering to the left. She can hear no instruction
from Master Kin’ade and realizes this is intentional. Lanoree tries to center herself,
breathing long and deep, sensing the Force within her and being a part of it, balanced
and level. She draws her sword and waits.

A sting on her shoulder. She shrugs it off.

Something moves past her face, close and quick.

She reaches out and senses everyone else around her, and then—

Spins on her left leg, crouching and lashing out with her sword. She feels the connection
and the impact travels up her arm. She rolls forward, then back onto her feet, holding
her left hand up with fingers splayed, throwing a Force punch, sensing it strike the
Darrow sphere. Her heart is thumping, breathing increasing, and she feels the flow
of blood and Force through her veins. It is ecstasy.

The sphere impacts against her back and knocks her sprawling. The blindfold is torn
from her eyes, the clip and plugs taken from her nose and ears. Input floods her senses,
and the pain kicks in.

“Not bad,” Master Kin’ade says. “Although you did let pride get the better of you.
Never assume the danger is gone unless you know for sure.”

Lanoree nods and sits up. The other students are all looking at the Je’daii Master
and the sphere floating at her shoulder, pulsing, shifting. All but Dal. He is looking
at Lanoree, and she cannot quite read the expression on his face. Resignation? Determination?

“Very well,” Master Kin’ade says, hand stroking accumulated snow from her vestigial
horns. “Next.”

They all try, and then there is Dal.

Lanoree watches him having the blindfold fitted and the earplugs and the nose clip.
He stands still and patient while Master Kin’ade does so, and she cannot sense any
tension or displeasure in him. Though he has seen each Journeyer suffer to some extent
at the mercy of the Darrow sphere, he seems calm. She does not probe—that would
be wrong, to try to touch his mind before such a test—but he exudes confidence.

Kin’ade steps back and glances at Lanoree, and then says, “Begin.”

Dal ducks left and right, scampers across the ground, tilts his head as if listening.
But it is all a show. The sphere drifts in slowly and then powers into his left ankle.
He does not see or sense it coming. Its movement is almost smug, and Lanoree wonders
how it knew that Dal was faking everything.

He hits the ground. Rolls. And she sees him pulling the blaster from his jacket.

“Dal!” she breathes.

He starts shooting. His shots are wild and aimless, and Lanoree and the others hit
the ground, Force-shielding themselves as stone splinters and erupts, falling snow
sizzles to steam, someone screams. She feels heat and pain across her hand and arm.

Dal shouts and drops the blaster. Lanoree can see its glow from where it has been
superheated, and then Master Kin’ade twists her clawed hand in Dal’s direction. He
rises and is immediately thrown back, spinning, fading from view in wafts of snowflakes.
For a moment she thinks the Master has thrown Dal too far and that he will plummet
over the parapet, falling three hundred meters to find his end on one of the rooftops
below.

Then he strikes the ground with a heavy thud. As she reaches for Dal with her mind
his fall into unconsciousness becomes, for a moment, her own.

A Je’daii needs nothing but confidence and comfort in the Force. Clothes for warmth,
a ship to travel in, food for energy, water to slake thirst, a sword to stab, a blaster
to shoot … all these are luxuries. The Force is everything, and without it, we are
nothing
.

—Master Shall Mar, “A Life in Balance,” 7,538 TYA

Lanoree relaxed in her reclined flight seat. She had plotted the fastest course she
could from Kalimahr to Nox, and now she was eager to see if Ironholgs could download
more information from the damaged memory cell. Nox was a big planet, and of its almost
ninety domed manufacturing cities, almost half might conceivably be capable of taking
on a commission for the Gree device. Lanoree had no doubt that the specific expertise
required would reduce that number to a mere two or three, but as yet she had no real
idea what that ancient technology might entail. She was flying blind into a storm,
but that was the only direction to take.

She’d contacted Master Dam-Powl and told her of the situation.
The Je’daii Master had promised that she could instruct those few Je’daii currently
on Nox to monitor incoming off-planet traffic, but it was a notoriously renegade planet,
and the majority of travel to and from Nox was unregistered. Finding Dal and the Stargazers’
ship would be like finding a particular pebble on a beach, especially considering
Lanoree still had no clue what type of ship they might be flying.

Dam-Powl had asked if Tre was still with her, and Lanoree had nodded. The resulting
silence had been loaded. But the Twi’lek had not moved from Lanoree’s cot to speak
to the Je’daii Master, and Dam-Powl had nodded and then signed off.

Lanoree stared at the stars and stroked the scarred mass on the back of her left hand.
She still remembered the day Dal had given her that. The beginning of the end.

“So you actually
live
in this thing?” Tre Sana asked.

“It’s my ship, yes.”

“It’s a bit … bland. Not much of a home. Don’t you get claustrophobic?”

“With this view?” Lanoree hadn’t even raised the back of the flight seat.

But perhaps Tre was growing bored, and confrontation would pass the time.

“I never did like space travel. Always makes me feel sick. We weren’t built to travel
through space. However well shielded a ship is, I’m not convinced I don’t get baked
by radiation every time I leave the atmosphere. Your grav unit’s configured wrong,
too. I feel twice my usual weight, and that’s making me feel even sicker.”

Lanoree raised and turned her flight seat, smiling. “Is that all?”

“No. It stinks in here. I know you’re probably used to it, but … electrics and grease
and the smell of
you
. And let’s face it, your ship is
small
. You sit where you sleep when you eat. And that fresher … I have to tell you, Je’daii,
I’ve been in some of the seediest taverns in the worst of the Nine Houses on Shikaakwa,
and even they have better amenities than you. How can you wash in recycled water?
Where’s the shower?” His face fell as if he had just recognized a terrible truth.
“And what do you eat?”

“Ah,” Lanoree said. “Food. Good idea.” She stood and entered
the living area, opening a small cupboard set in one wall. As she did so she nudged
the droid where it worked at a drop-down bench. “Anything yet, Ironholgs?”

The droid did not even reply. It was tweaking and adjusting a delicate arrangement
of wires and chips on the broken end of the memory cell, and it paused briefly as
if disturbed, then continued.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Lanoree said. “Now then, Tre. Here. Take your choice.” She
threw a handful of packets across her cot, several of them landing on Tre’s legs.

“What’s this?”

“Dried food. What, you think I’m hiding a hydroponic pod somewhere at the back of
the ship?”

Tre picked up a silvery packet and looked at it in disgust. His face wrinkled, lekku
drawing back as if from something poisonous. “You eat this stuff?”

“Hot water, some salt. Some of it can be pretty good. Although you’ve got dangbat
stir there. Got to admit, that’s not the best.”

“How long do you spend in this thing?” Tre asked, looking around, feigning disbelief.

Lanoree was starting to get annoyed. She hadn’t really wanted him along—didn’t trust
him, especially since she’d seen the true, harder Tre behind the quips and false face
he displayed. But she was stuck with him now, and he with her. Civility didn’t cost
much.

“Once, I was in deep space for over two hundred days, tracking a Special Forces cell
from Krev Coeur gone mercenary.”

“Two hundred …” Tre shook his head in despair.

“I don’t need what you need,” Lanoree said. She slipped a food packet into a metal
pocket behind the cupboard hatch and charged it with hot water. Delicious smells filled
the cabin, soon whisked away by the climate conditioner. “I know what Dam-Powl’s promised
you, and I’m sure you’ll get it. But vast estates don’t interest me. Fast ships, great
wealth, prominence, standing in the community. Overflowing credit accounts on a dozen
worlds.” She took the packet and started eating. “Men. Adoration. Even respect. I
don’t need any of that.”

Tre laughed. “Then you’re—”

“Because I know there’s more to life,” she said, cutting him off.
She was tired of his inanities and angry that he could be so superficial. In the face
of everything she knew, and all that he must know, such shallowness offended her.
“There’s the Force. It binds and holds us, and makes everything precious to me. It’s
our reason for being. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. And that’s much more
precious than fine foods or somewhere comfortable to wash.”

“You sound like one of the clans on Kalimahr praying to one of their Sprash Gods.”

“Difference being, I know the Force exists.”

Tre Sana smiled and nodded, never taking his eyes from hers. It was a strange moment.
Dam-Powl had made him unreadable, and Lanoree wondered why the Je’daii Master had
employed such a dangerous man. Or perhaps what she’d done to him that had made him
this way.

“But there’s not always balance, is there, Je’daii?” he asked, as if he knew everything.

“Eat,” she said. “It’s really not that bad.” She turned her back on him again, sat
in her cockpit seat, and thought of those experiments she had put on hold. There was
darkness there, if she did not use caution. But she was comfortable. She was balanced.
There was no reason at all to worry.

Lanoree stayed there for some time, and Tre must have read her need to remain undisturbed.
She was glad of that. She didn’t like having someone else in her ship, and despite
all her best efforts, being constantly reminded of his presence was putting her on
edge.