Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (35 page)

She tensed, readying to act whether it meant her death or not. Because this could
not happen.

There was a soft grinding noise as the device turned on the gravelly ground. Then
it rose and hung in midair, spinning faster and faster until it seemed to fade from
view, return, fade again. Lanoree felt suddenly sick. It was a physiological reaction
to something very wrong.

“Oh, Dal, you don’t know what you’re—”

The Force itself recoiled. Lanoree fell onto all fours and vomited, and she felt a
flexing
of the Force, like the natural reaction of a person wincing away from fire. For a
flicker, the Force was absent from that
mine, and in its place was only the device, still spinning and fading in and out of
existence.

And then the thing slowed to a halt in midair, exuding such a sense of malignant power
and unfathomable energy that Lanoree vomited again.

Weak, head spinning, she looked up at the others around her. The miners were on the
ground, holding their heads. But the Stargazers were jubilant, and Dal was the happiest
of all.

“It worked,” he breathed, awed and delighted. “It worked! We’ve done it! It’s ready,
now. It’s made its own dark matter and it’s ready—and, oh, Lanoree, I so wish you
could travel with me.”

She wasn’t certain whether that was a veiled plea, and she did not try to see. She
didn’t care. “You’ve become a madman and a monster, Dal. My only aim is to bring you
down.”

“Then this is the end for you,” he said softly. Elation quickly fading, he aimed the
blaster at Lanoree’s chest and pulled the trigger.

Lanoree runs, drawn by the cries, knowing she should be running
from
them because they are so terrible. But she has come down into the Old City to save
her brother, and now she fears she is too late.

She finds his clothes close to an underground lake. They are shredded and wet. She
sniffs the blood. It smells like family.

The surface of the lake shimmers as ripples calm to nothing.

Without caring what might hear, Lanoree screams her grief at the darkness. She sinks
to her knees and gathers the clothes to her chest, and even while Dal’s spilled blood
is still warm, his sister starts to mourn.

Immersion in the dark side of the Force can seem stronger, more freeing, more triumphant
than existing within balance. But only from the outside. Do not be tempted. Those
who are swallowed by the darkness lose not only balance and control. They lose their
souls
.

—Master Shall Mar, “A Life in Balance,” 7,541 TYA

At the last moment she grasped the Force with everything she had and brought it before
her.

Then there was darkness.

In her dreams she chases Dal through the Old City forever. He is always only just
ahead of her—a whisper around a corner, a laugh in the next ancient cavern, and on
the surface his shadow is just out of reach behind walls or around the sides of dunes.
One step ahead, however fast she runs, however slow she walks. But she has no sense
that he is teasing her. There’s a repulsion between them, and as she moves toward
Dal, he moves away from her. Perhaps that repulsion has always
been there, even from when they were children. She remembers many times playing together,
but now it also seems to her that those times were shadowed by the knowledge of Dal’s
growing wanderlust and his resentment of his family; and her childhood self was able
to ignore these aspects of him. She sees his child’s expression with adult eyes, and
knows what will come.

“I feel terrible,” the voice said, “but you look worse. Can you open your eyes? Open
your eyes. Please, Lanoree.” Lanoree tried, but her eyelids were too heavy, her head
throbbing and expanding to squeeze them closed.

“Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.” She tried to squeeze and a white-hot sun of
pain exploded in her chest and across her torso, stabbing into her neck, jaw, and
skull. She tried to scream, but taking in a deep breath only ignited the pain even
more.

“Okay, lie still and …” The voice faded, and Lanoree felt herself falling. The depths
below her were dark and filled with malignancy. They might have been in the Gree caverns
and halls beneath the surface remnants of the Old City, the stinking sewers of Greenwood
Station, or the blazing mines on Sunspot. Where she was did not matter. The darkness
promised death.

She swam in the dark, but had no strength to stop her fall.

She was moving. Heat buffeted her from all sides. The stink of burning overrode everything
else—an old, deep-set burning, molten rock and singed eons.
I’m still in the mines
, she thought, and she tried to open her eyes.

Whatever she was lying on struck something and jarred her, and she screamed at the
pain that surged through her veins like acid. She tried using the Force to smother
some of the agony, but it was only partially successful. Movement ceased and a shadow
appeared above her.

“Lanoree?”

She saw Tre Sana’s outline as he bent over her, his lekku silhouetted against the
soft red glow of their surroundings.
What’s happening?
she wanted to ask.
Is the mine on fire, is Dal destroying everything behind
him again, have they taken the Peacemaker … what are you doing here?
But all that emerged from her mouth was a deep groan.

“I’m getting you out,” he said. “Ironholgs is pulling. What did you do to him? He’s
not like any droid I’ve ever …”

Senses fading again, Lanoree tried her best to hang on. But she knew that she was
gravely wounded. She felt hollowed out, and wondered how much of a hole Dal had blown
in her with his blaster.

Dal, her brother, with his blaster …

This time when she fell the Force was there to catch her, and through agony she had
a moment of ecstasy as she felt it surround and flow through her.

The roof of the mine was on fire. Tre must have dragged her into a huge open chamber
belowground, though she could not remember moving through any on her way down. The
high ceiling was a splash of red and orange, yellow and white, swirling so slowly
in boiling flame that she could make out shapes and features. Some civilizations worshipped
fire, and now she knew why.

But if they didn’t move soon, they would be consumed.

“Almost at the ship,” Tre’s voice said. “Lanoree … you awake? We’re almost at the
ship. And for shak’s sake I’m going to need you, then.”

Almost at the ship?
she thought. Then she realized what she was seeing, and for a moment the all-encompassing
pain was swallowed by a creeping, prickling fear crawling from her mind and across
her whole body.

They were on Sunspot’s surface heading for the Peacemaker, and the planet’s sky was
ablaze.

Given context, the sheer size and scope of the scene above her made more sense. The
air itself appeared to have been ignited, and great swaths of flame rolled in random
directions, exploding against one another in cataclysmic impacts. Lightning arced
across her vision, purple streaks parting into thousands of white-hot forks. Sheets
of lightning waved. Even greater explosions boomed deep within the fiery atmosphere,
billowing outward in gouts that must have been ten kilometers in diameter.

“Malterra …” Lanoree whispered, and Tre’s shadow closed on her, lekku twitching frantically.

“What?”

“The other planet … Malterra … draws close.”

“You’re telling me.” He stood again and continued pushing. From somewhere she could
not see, Ironholgs clattered and clicked, and she heard the rapid padding steps of
the droid’s feet as it helped transport Lanoree back to her ship.

Whose choice was it to come?
she thought. But she knew right away. However much personality she projected onto
Ironholgs, it was still just a droid. It would have taken a person to make the decision
to venture out in this heat and chaos. Tre had come for her … and she had no idea
how long it had been.

“Tre.”

“Not now. Almost there.”

“Tre!” She groaned as waves of pain radiated from her chest. But the stretcher stopped
again, and he bent down so he could hear her above the lightning and fiery roars.
“How long …?”

“Almost half a day,” he said. “On the scanners I saw the other ship take off, and
when you didn’t come back …” His lekku shrugged.

“Oh, no …”

“Lanoree … you’ve got a hole in you the size of my fist. I’ve no idea how you’re still
alive. So shut up while I get you back to the Peacemaker, and then …” He started pushing
again, and she felt suddenly bad for him. He had no idea what to do.

But she did.

She remained silent, floating in a sea of pain as Tre finally reached the Peacemaker
and pushed her inside.

As the door hissed shut, Tre struggled to shift her from the makeshift stretcher to
her cot. She was hardly any help. She rested her head to one side and examined the
stretcher, and she was filled with admiration. It was a door from one of the mine’s
elevator cages, one side ragged from where it had been removed from its mount, and
at one end was fixed one of Ironholgs’s suspension units. It seemed to be smoking
a little, ready to expire.

Lanoree lifted her hand. “Tre. Here.”

He sat next to her on the cot, sweating, exhausted. She remembered
how sick he had been when she’d last seen him. Such a short time ago, but already
he looked thinner than she remembered, and older.

“Take my hand,” she said. Speaking sent pain lancing through her chest, but some things
needed to be said.

He did so, breathing heavily.

“Thank you.” She squeezed his hand and nodded, grimacing at another wave of agony
but never breaking eye contact with him. “And now … you have to … trust me.”

Tre’s expression barely changed as she instructed him which cabinet to open and what
to bring out. Even when he saw
what
he brought out, he seemed almost unmoved. Perhaps he had seen more of what Master
Dam-Powl could do than Lanoree had first suspected.

“Now help me sit up,” she said. “I don’t have very long.”

In that room long ago with Master Dam-Powl, before the tragedy with Dal and while
Lanoree was still wide-eyed with wonder and potential, the lessons she learned had
felt amazing.

Your future lies in the alchemy of flesh
, Dam-Powl had said.
I saw it in you the moment we met, and nothing has dissuaded me from that. It is a
talent, for some, that lies on the edges of acceptability. It is a strong, challenging
power, and you must be firmly balanced to attempt it. You must not let heavier desires
tempt you. The dark side lurks close to what I do here, Lanoree, and I am always vigilant.
Don’t be tempted. Don’t be drawn. Maintain your balance
.

The words had always remained with her. Remembering them now Lanoree did as instructed,
but there was too much pain, too much pressure. Her mind wanted to find balance in
the Force, but her heart forged onward. Dal would not wait for her to be ready. Every
moment she wasted here brought them all closer to tragedy.

“You might want to turn away,” she told Tre. But Tre only shook his head and sat in
the corner of the cabin, eyes half-closed. After she had saved herself, she’d do what
she could for him.

The experiment was as she had left it. Traveling alone, she had long spells when she
could concentrate on perfecting such alchemies, and though she was still young, she
knew that her talent was great. Proof
of that lay before her now. She lifted the cover and the flesh throbbed. Blood dribbled
from imperfect yet adequate veins. Vestigial limbs waved weakly and without purpose.
At one edge a blind eye opened, pupil milky white. Even if it did see, there was no
mind to understand.

The iris had her coloring because it was a part of her.

The life that animated this flesh was formed by Lanoree and drawn from the Force.
Over time she had molded the single collection of cells—taken from her own arm, a
splash of blood, and marrow—into this, an object with a form of life that was all
her own. Its movement still troubled her, as did its partial familiarity. But where
there was no brain, there was no mind, and without a mind it was meat. That was all.
Living, pulsing, replicating meat. She continued to tell herself that even as she
wondered whether it felt pain.

The power she sometimes experienced as she molded flesh to her own desires was shocking,
but right now she found meaning in her experiments at last.
It’s not just alchemy
, Dam-Powl had told her.
It’s not just learning the art for the sake of it. It’s practicing to be the artist
.

Lanoree gathered herself, resting her hands on either side of the experiment’s small
pedestal. Her wound was deep and wide, its edges weeping and its depth burning. But
at the moment Dal had tried to kill her, she had gathered herself behind the Force,
and it had swallowed much of the impact. If she hadn’t done that—an instant, an instinctive
action—her heart and lungs would have been blasted across the mine’s floor. Her brother
believed her dead. At least she had given herself a chance.