Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (30 page)

“Dal,” Lanoree breathes, feeling weak and suddenly hopeless. This is the point when
everything goes too far.

“Good-bye, Lanoree,” he says again. And then he is gone, dashing across the platform
and climbing a sloping ladder fixed into the temple’s curved wall.

She should stay to help Yun. She kneels briefly by his side and examines the wound,
and though still breathing, she knows that he will not survive. Lanoree should stay
to tell Master Dam-Powl what has happened.

But instead she chases her brother. Up onto the temple’s high wall, across its curved
roof where deep ditches channel water and moss makes the surface treacherous, following
his distant shadow through the increasing downpour until he scurries down one of the
massive legs toward solid ground.

Her first Great Journey ends, and her pursuit of her brother begins.

“Your brother did this?” Tre gasped.

“So he said.”

“But
how
?”

“A word in the right ear. A rumor, a threat, a challenge. A murder.”

“It’s … monstrous. It’s
terrifying
.”

Lanoree could not argue.

The air was filled with violence. Smoke, screams, the pounding and roaring of weapons,
and the groaning and grinding of the giant dome under stress. They had emerged onto
a balcony just above the base of
the central tower. To the west was the previously damaged area of the dome, with its
massive buttresses and chaotic-looking repairs sealing it from the toxic air outside.
And to the south, an attack was under way.

Several large parts of Greenwood Station’s dome had been destroyed, the ragged holes
still smoking and dropping burning, molten detritus to the buildings and streets far
below. The dome’s atmosphere screamed as it was vented to the outside, as if in distress
at mixing with the toxic clouds beyond. At the nearest of these wounds in the protective
skin, Lanoree could see several large, bulky shapes—battle droids—hunkered low by
the hole and firing laser cannons into the city. The barrage seemed to be indiscriminate,
and many fires were already taking hold. The battle droids edged forward and the first
of them dropped, retros beneath its many arms firing to ease its descent.

A missile streaked from the tower above them and struck the droid. It bloomed fire,
fell out of sight into a manufacturing district, and exploded. More missiles curved
away from the tower, sweeping in graceful arcs and impacting the dome around the shattered
area above. Some droids erupted in fiery death, others tumbled across the outside
of the dome. More dark shapes replaced them and the barrage began again.

At another smashed section an attack ship hovered. A plasma cannon started pulsing
into the ground close to the column’s base. Each impact was huge and shook the city,
the ground, the air itself. Explosions of fire and smoke mushroomed up, and Lanoree
could not help wondering how many people were dying with each impact.
Beneath the central column
, she thought,
just where Dal would have told them Pan Deep lay
. More rockets were fired from the tower, but as they approached the dome’s underside
they evaporated into clouds of blazing white vapor. The attack ship had defenses.
Lanoree could hardly imagine the destruction involved if it succeeded in getting inside.

“We’ve got to go!” Tre shouted above the noise, grabbing her arm. The balcony vibrated
with each impact, and if the attack ship shifted its targeting by just a few degrees …

“Come on,” Lanoree said. She grasped Tre’s hand as he pulled away, squeezed to calm
him. “Trust me!” Then she hauled him to the edge of the balcony and tipped over.

Any normal person would have been killed instantly by the fall. But
Lanoree eased them down with the Force, slowing their descent and landing them with
barely a jolt on the street below. People ran around them in confusion and terror.
No one even seemed to notice them.

“Don’t
ever
do that again!” Tre shouted, almost hysterical.

“Next time I won’t hold your hand.” Lanoree ran, and Tre went with her.

Far to the south, hidden by smoke and the haze of many weapons, a ground battle seemed
to be taking place. She could not make out the details, but she could just see the
sparking impacts of artillery fire speckling the outside of the dome’s shell several
kilometers in the distance, and the constant thump, thump of returning fire sang through
the air. Hundreds of bright lights dropped from punctures in the dome. Battle droids,
or perhaps even ground assault troops.

A much heavier impact sounded, like Nox itself shrugging. Lanoree felt a deep vibration
that set buildings swaying. Glass smashed, wreckage showered down all around as weaker
buildings started to break down. The air inside the dome seemed to momentarily blur,
and outside the city’s huge skin the skies lit up.

“Incoming plasma bombs,” Lanoree said. “They’re being diverted for now. But they’ll
get through soon enough.”

“So how can you help?”

“Help?”

“You’re a Je’daii, aren’t you?”

“We’re not magicians, Tre. You know that as well as anyone.”

“But this is—”

“We get out,” Lanoree said, “as fast as we can. Dal thinks we died down there, and
all this is just to make sure. Whatever escape route he had is hidden to us, and he’ll
be away and gone by now. But this, what he’s caused or initiated, is all for nothing.
Because we’re going to survive, and we know he’s still alive.”

“Look!” Tre pointed. In the distance to the north a section of dome had slid open,
and several ships rose from across the city and headed for the outside. Lanoree could
tell from the way they moved that they were battleships, not civilian transports.
This was not yet an evacuation.

As the first ship passed through the dome opening it exploded,
blossoming into a ball of fire and erupting ammunition that rained down in a beautiful,
awful shower across that part of the city. The other warships powered through the
destruction, another of them exploding outside and then impacting the dome half a
kilometer away. The others rose clear, and though they were little more than blurred
shapes beyond the dome, Lanoree saw them swing around and streak to the south.

“Come on,” she said. “I don’t think we have long.”

“Until what?”

“Until we’re a part of Greenwood Station’s tragedy.”

Lanoree led the way. She headed for the portion of dome already bombed years ago by
the Je’daii. What she had learned of Pan Deep—that the Je’daii had spared it because
they commissioned high-end military tech themselves—did not sit well with her. But
it was not relevant to her mission to consider that right now. And she more than anyone
knew that the Je’daii often harbored secrets.

She spoke into her comlink. “Ironholgs, prep the ship for takeoff. There’s trouble—we’ll
be coming in fast. Initiate ship’s defenses. Shoot anything that comes close that
isn’t us. Got that?”

Her ship’s droid crackled and spat in reply.

“And start the tracker scanner, frequency two-four-zero. You should find the signal
soon enough, probably just off planet. Lock on and track it.”

“What signal?” Tre asked.

“I put a tracker on Dal’s clothing,” she said. “I just hope he hasn’t found it.”

“Or changed his outfit.” Tre was trying to joke, but Lanoree could not smile. Such
a small thing as a change of clothing might doom everything she had ever known. She
was already living in history in the making, the tragedy of Greenwood Station that
would become known across the system. If she failed to catch Dal, and his attempt
to initiate the Gree tech went wrong, then
everything
would be history. And there would be no one left to know it.

There’s still time!
she thought. Because she knew the device was not yet ready. The scientist had mentioned
that it needing charging. She’d sensed no energy source there, nothing that might
indicate that its
dark matter drive had been primed or loaded. She would have known. Her teachings with
Dam-Powl had given her an insight into such shadowy matters.

An arcane device that only needed charging before it was ready … a tracking chip that
might or might not remain on Dal—everything was suddenly so nebulous and unreliable.

A war played out around them as they fled. People ran back and forth in panic—parents
herding children, adults running in shouting groups—but Lanoree could see some organization
starting to become apparent. Though they wore no sign or uniform, one group of men
and women seemed to be part of some sort of Greenwood Station security force. They
were breaking down the fencing around a compound housing several militarized Cloud
Chasers, airships supporting heavy gun platforms and with grav units fitted to landing
gear to aid flight. As Lanoree and Tre passed, the first of the airships started to
hum with power.

Other people bearing weapons rushed across the street ahead of them, heading south
toward where the bulk of the fighting seemed to be taking place.

“They’d do better to flee,” Lanoree said.

“They’re defending what they have!” Tre said.

“This is a full-on assault, ultimate destruction. Not an invasion.”

They paused beneath the cover of an old factory’s slumping wall. Perhaps one day this
place would have been repaired, but it looked like it hadn’t been used for some time,
and the building’s metal framework was corroding beneath the toxic atmosphere.

“Look. Invasion.” Tre pointed south at another cloud of lights drifting down from
the many damaged areas of dome. Gunfire was being exchanged, and it took several seconds
for the crackling sound to become audible.

“Droids,” Lanoree said. “They’re not sending troops in because—”

A massive explosion rocked them from their feet. The ground pounded at her as she
fell, and the air itself seemed to vibrate in her lungs, through her chest. Lanoree
rolled against the building and looked back and up, astounded and sickened by what
she saw.

A plasma bomb had found its way through the city’s defenses and impacted close to
the dome’s highest point, more than a kilometer
above the ground. The explosion had ripped the dome open, the shattering destruction
running down through the central column and bursting from it in blooming flowers of
flame and blazing metal. The wide tower was crumbling from the top down, and around
it the dome’s mammoth support structures were cracking and dipping, great spreads
of dome rupturing and falling away. The explosion continued to expand, probing inward
and touching the ground at last. A firestorm swept across the air, incinerating everything
in its path. The destruction was so huge, and so far away, that it seemed to happen
in slow motion.

“Lanoree,” Tre said. He grabbed her arm. “Lanoree!”

“Yes,” she said. Tre helped her up and they moved on.

They reached the building through which they’d entered the dome not so long ago. As
they went inside, they left behind a very different Greenwood Station.

They worked their way back through the ruined and hastily repaired area of the city,
retrieving their masks from where Lanoree had hidden them. But the masks had leaked
away the last of their oxygen, so Lanoree cast them both aside.

“We’ve got a kilometer to go across that landscape,” she said. “Follow me. Step where
I step. Run as fast as you can. And try not to take deep breaths.”

“We’ll die out there,” Tre said.

“No. And once we’re on the Peacemaker, I have medicine that will clean your skin and
lungs.”

“I don’t have skin and lungs exactly like yours, human,” Tre said, smiling nervously.

Lanoree grabbed his shoulder, squeezed. “Close enough. Come on.”

She Force-shoved the exterior air lock door open and ran out onto the toxic, poisonous
surface of Nox.

Behind them, the battle raged and the destruction continued. Out of the dome they
could see more, though the air was constantly hazed with stinking clouds of gas. Attack
ships stood some distance off, firing at the dome. Way beyond the dome a huge glow
filled the sky, and Lanoree guessed that the spaceport adjacent to the dome in the
east had been bombed. Those few defensive ships that took off from inside
and made it out without being destroyed streaked south toward the attackers, and most
were blasted from the air before even entering combat. One or two made it through,
spiraling up and around as their laser cannons opened up. Explosions bloomed. Burning
wrecks arced down to the planet’s surface. It was only the skill of their pilots that
kept them aloft, but the attacking force appeared to be far superior.

Lanoree already felt the acidic burn on her skin and tasted it at the back of her
throat, and the destruction and deaths behind her weighed heavy. Her spine tingled.
The back of her neck smarted as if the accusing dead stared.

“Ironholgs!”

The droid responded immediately. The ship was ready for take-off, the tracker was
acquired and locked on. But Dal’s ship was already breaking away from orbit, and soon
he would be beyond the range of their instruments.

They reached the Peacemaker and boarded, and Lanoree did not feel as pleased, as safe,
as she should have.

“Okay?” Lanoree asked.

“Perfect.” Tre nodded, though he looked ready to vomit. His lekku hung pale and sickly,
and his eyes and nose were running.

“Strap in,” Lanoree said. “They’ll probably see us lifting off and—”

Greenwood Station took three more direct impacts from plasma bombs. The blasts shook
the Peacemaker, and Lanoree quickly fired the engines and took her ship aloft, afraid
that the explosions might cause tremors or eruptions around the city. She flicked
on all sensors, checked systems, initiated weapon systems, and only then took time
to look toward the dome.

The ruptured dome was falling in great burning, melting sheets. The city inside had
become a pit of molten chaos, and billowing pillars of smoke and flame rose high above
it. The sparkling, expanding clouds from the plasma impacts bloomed outward; and when
they met the rank atmosphere, they formed sickly rainbows that in other circumstances
might even have looked beautiful.