Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (20 page)

By the time they were halfway to Greenwood Station, her skin was already starting
to itch and burn where it was exposed to the atmosphere.

As they drew closer and the settlement emerged from the haze, the damage to the dome’s
structure became apparent. It was as if a giant
foot had stamped on the smooth dome, crushing the regular curve, reducing its surface
area by a tenth, and cauterizing the damage with an uneven blackness. Closer still,
and Lanoree could see that this blackness was a layer of twisted metal and melted
panels, the damaged structure propped by giant buttresses of gray rock and thick,
roughly formed stanchions. The repair work seemed slapdash and haphazard, but Greenwood
Station’s business was tech, not construction. And its specialization was war.

She held up a hand and paused by a lake of sickly yellow water. Greenwood Station
took up half of their view, and this close Lanoree was wary of guards or security
droids.

“I want to go home,” Tre said, voice muffled.

“We’ll be inside soon,” Lanoree said. “It’s … huge.” She knew how large the domes
were, of course. She’d seen the remains of those bombed by the Je’daii, and had viewed
many holos during her time at Padawan Kesh. But being this close to Greenwood Station
brought its true size home to her. The brief research she’d carried out on her way
here meant nothing to seeing it herself.

Knowing that it was a space enclosed by one huge dome had perhaps given it limitations
in her mind’s eye, but the truth was, this was a city. More than eight kilometers
across, the dome structure rose sharply from the ground and then curved gently toward
the pinnacle, a place out of sight that was supported by a giant tower. This interior
tower housed the city’s ruling council, business owners, and other elite. Spread out
from its base for more than three kilometers in every direction were the factories,
transport roads and canals, habitation blocks, and leisure parks of this massive manufacturing
city. Countless chimneys pierced the dome and rose higher, all of them spewing smoke
and steam that billowed southward.

“The thought of being inside that is no comfort,” Tre said. “So do we just knock at
one of the gates?”

“No. We sneak in.”

“Through the Scar,” Tre said.

“How do you know they call it that?”

Tre shrugged. “I thought it was common knowledge.”

More and more suspicious of Tre Sana, Lanoree led the way toward the smashed span
of dome.

Though the bombing had been almost twelve years before, the rubble and remains were
still scattered over a wide area. The dome’s survivors had repaired the breach and
sealed the damaged area, but no one had seen any need to clear the ruins. It seemed
that anything outside the boundary of Greenwood Station was irrelevant.

There were defensive positions across the dome’s curved surface. Lanoree could see
pulse cannons and plasma mortars nestled in indentations in the structure, but she
did not believe the positions were manned. She had heard of skirmishes between manufacturing
domes—sometimes concerning resources or business, other times over causes unknown—but
Greenwood Station was now so isolated by the ruins around it that it usually worked
in peace.

“We’ll climb up there,” she said, indicating a path that rose through the debris.
“Hopefully there’ll be air locks through the structure.”

“Good,” Tre said. “Let’s move. My skin’s on fire and my lekku are itching.”

They climbed an uneven mountain of debris—shattered rock, twisted remnants of structural
material, and some opaque sections of the dome’s shell that had been blasted and half-melted.
The transparent material was almost as thick as Lanoree was tall, and the shattered
fragments were sometimes thirty meters across.

Soon they were inside the perimeter of the ruined section of dome. The going got tougher
as the ruin became more confused, with fallen buildings mixed with melted rock and
jagged sculptures of distorted material. Pools had formed here and there, some of
them covered with such thick layers of ash and dust that they resembled solid ground.
Lanoree had to pull Tre out of one pool, and he started shivering, soaked to the waist
in rancid water.

“There,” Lanoree said at last, pointing to a cliff of fused dome and metal.

“What?”

“Air lock.” She Force-probed, sensed no one. “I don’t think it’s guarded. Come on.”

The air lock only became obvious when they were ten steps away. Lanoree lifted her
hand and tried to gesture the door aside. She grimaced
and concentrated harder, and the door finally obeyed with a tortured whine. It can’t
have been used very much.

She was aware of Tre watching her with a mixture of fascination and fear of her talents,
but she did not acknowledge his attention.

Air whooshed past them and they entered, Lanoree closing the door behind them. Pressures
equalized. Several small lights came on and the air cleared, and then a fine mist
sprayed all over them. Decontamination complete, Lanoree waved open the inner door.

She readied herself for confrontation. If there
were
guards beyond the door, the questions would come thick and fast, and she would dip
into the guards’ minds, confusing them for long enough to put them out of action.
She had no wish to kill anyone else unless she had to. But she would not hesitate
if it meant getting one step closer to Dal.

And stopping him, of course. That was her mission. Sometimes she had to remind herself
that this was not simply a search for her long-lost brother.

But there were no guards beyond the door, and no indication that this entrance was
even monitored. A dilapidated corridor with flickering lights led away from the air
lock, and they followed until they reached another door.

They removed their masks, and Lanoree hid them as well as she could above a loose
ceiling panel.

“This must have all been built after the bombing,” Tre said. “I heard that Greenwood
Station’s council sanctioned the murder of a Je’daii for every hundred city inhabitants
killed in the attack.”

Lanoree was aware of the series of assassinations that went on for two or three years
after the Despot War. Rangers were lured into traps and killed, diplomatic missions
attacked; and even on Tython there had been deaths.

“They lost about two thousand here,” Tre continued.

“You’re knowing more and more about this pit,” Lanoree said. “Makes me wonder whether
you have business interests here I should take notice of.”

“No interests.”

“But you’ve
done
business here.”

“Only by necessity.”

She rounded on him. “Then do me a favor, Twi’lek. Let me conduct
my
business with no more talk of the past.”

Tre smiled in apology and inclined his head.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re wasting time.”

They worked their way through a series of roughly built corridors and halls, all deserted
and stinking of disuse. Lanoree remained alert, and was more aware than ever of the
comforting weight of the sword beneath her robe.

The air became heavier. The taint of burning grew and a hint of hot metal, and the
sweeter smell of something perfumed the air, as if added to distract from the other
smells. As they crossed one large, featureless room, Lanoree began to hear the sounds
of a city.

Beyond the room, a short walk to a doorway. And then they were out of the repaired
zone and standing on the rise of a hill at the inner edge of the dome, looking out
across the vast, filthy, yet wondrous vista of Greenwood Station.

“Whoa,” Tre breathed beside her, and in that one word Lanoree was certain he had never
actually been here. She almost said the same.

A couple of kilometers distant was the massive central tower upon which the graceful,
curved structural ribs of the dome rested. Its dark facade glinted with countless
lights that Lanoree assumed were windows, and larger openings might have been launch
bays for the small airships that drifted back and forth through the confined space.
Beyond that, just visible in the hazy distance, she could make out the far wall almost
eight kilometers away.

Buildings crowded the ground all across the dome. Roads trailed here and there, and
in a few places wide-open areas that might once have been parks seemed now to act
as refuse dumps, with broken machinery or useless spare parts piled in reckless abandon.
Fires burned on these dumps, and smoke from the conflagrations was being sucked up
by mobile air cleansers, floating machines that vented to the outside via long flexible
pipes.

Elsewhere, more solid chimneys rose and pierced the dome. There were hundreds of chimneys,
and all were illuminated with bright neon strips. There seemed to be no relevance
to the color of light used—
greens, blues, reds, yellows, harsh whites—the whole aerial part of the dome was lit
garishly, and perhaps beautifully. The sight shocked Lanoree, and for a moment she
felt a lifting of her heart.

But the true purpose of this place became obvious when she examined the buildings,
roads, and storage structures more closely. She drew a small, powerful telescope from
the discreet utility belt she wore beneath her robe and held it to her right eye.

At the foot of the slope they stood on was an open area used to park military vehicles.
They looked newly made. Some were large and cumbersome, bearing heavy guns and massive,
spiked wheels. Others were sleek and small, designed for infiltration rather than
full-on attack. A few bore bulbous shells on their backs, inside which would be balloons
ready for rapid inflation to lift the craft out of harm’s way. Many ran on wheels,
others on segmented tracks, and some were equipped with repulsor units that would
enable them to glide and float just above the ground.

Farther away the factories began.

“Busy place,” Tre said. His voice was high and loaded with shock. “Where’s the demand?
I mean, for all this? It’s like they’re readying for war.”

“There’s always demand,” Lanoree said. “Some of Shikaakwa’s crime barons can never
have enough hardware. Kalimahr has its needs. And there are places on Ska Gora that
even the Je’daii don’t know much about. Someone’s always readying for war.”

Factories churned and roared, rumbled and throbbed. A gray haze hung in the air, even
though countless chimneys vented the steam and poisonous gases caused by this endless,
heavy manufacturing to the toxic outside atmosphere. Trains trundled on tracks along
the center of wide thoroughfares, high wagons packed with raw materials or finished
hardware. Three kilometers from where they stood, one train passed into a tunnel that
must lead outside. It seemed that, though cut off by the result of the war, Greenwood
Station was still very much involved in import and export.

Maintenance drones buzzed through the air, and Lanoree noticed that there was a huge
amount of construction work going on. Some buildings were being extended or repaired,
while others were being torn down, materials salvaged and set aside for new buildings.
The
noise from this work was a constant background rumble, and even from here she could
see at least five locations where major construction was under way. But impressive
though the sight was, her mind was already working on the problem at hand. Greenwood
Station was almost forty square kilometers of industrial buildings, living quarters,
storage warehouses, spaceports, and other built-up areas. Whether or not Dal and his
Stargazers were already here, the task of finding them seemed immense.

“Ringwood petals,” Tre said. He breathed in deeply.

“What?”

“Can’t you smell it on the air? Beneath everything else, the scent of ringwood petals.
They must pump it into the air to overcome the stench. It’s a flowering shrub from
Kalimahr. Beautiful.”

“You like flowers,” Lanoree said, voice flat.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

Tre was becoming more of an enigma to her, not less. She had the sudden urge to ask
about his history, his family and ties, get his true story out of him.

“You know people here,” she said. “You’ve done business here, so you know people.”

“Like I told you, I’ve never been myself.”

“That’s not a denial.”

Tre looked uncomfortable. His lekku waved and touched, until he remembered that she
could read them and he brought them under control. But his red face seemed to shine
redder than ever, and she saw shame rather than anger.

“What?” she asked.

“The people I dealt with here … they’re not nice.”

“I wouldn’t expect them to be.”

Tre looked away and nodded absently, as if conversing with himself. He frowned. Then
he looked back to Lanoree and seemed to have made a decision.

“Don’t judge me,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow in surprise. He didn’t seem like someone who cared what people
thought about him.

“I mean it,” he said. “I’ll take you to someone, if I can find him. But he’s … unsavory.”