by Tim Lebbon
But it is not a hole that almost kills them both.
In places, piles of detritus thrown up from the holes form homes to creatures drawn by the ease of tunneling through loose material. It is from one of these large, uneven mounds that the attack comes.
Lanoree has never seen a flame tygah, but she’s heard of them. When she was a child she believed them a myth made up by her parents to scare her. As she grew older, she heard stories and saw those few rare holos made of the elusive creatures. And days before their journey began, their parents warned them both.
It bursts from a hidden hollow in the top of the mound, broken trees and shattered stone erupting as it lopes down the slope toward them.
“Dal!” Lanoree shouts, but he is already stepping forward to meet the beast. “No, Dal, I can—”
“Shut up!” he shouts. He has drawn the old blaster from his belt.
The flame tygah is a big one, its length easily twice Lanoree’s height, its head as high as her shoulder, each of its six heavy paws the size of her head. Fire drips from the tips of its claws and shimmers in the prints it leaves behind. Its scaled, oily hide flexes and reflects the sun in multicolored swaths; its tail swishes white fire through the air; its eyes blaze; and its tooth-filled mouth glimmers with heat haze. It is as beautiful as it is deadly.
Dal fires when the beast is thirty paces away. It does not even pause. He crouches and shoots again, and Lanoree can see the recoil of the old weapon. The tygah grumbles, a splash of blood scorches the air above its shoulder, and it speeds up its attack.
Lanoree could stop it, she is certain. She has a Force punch ready to stun it, and once immobile she can move forward and cramp the muscles in its legs, breathe the Force, and drive so much pain into the creature that it will turn tail and flee.
If needs must, she can kill it.
But she hesitates. Back in Qigong Kesh she shamed Dal, placing that image of home in his mind when he had not even invited her in. He needs to recover from that. If she defeats the flame tygah for him, it will be just another display of how inadequate he is and how strong she is becoming.
So she pauses but stands ready.
Dal dodges sideways, and fires almost point-blank into the creature’s flank. It roars and shakes itself, and he leaps over its back, shooting once more even before he lands. It is athleticism and strength that drives him, not power of the Force, but the effect is still the same. The creature is confused and pained. As it swings around to lash out with one huge paw, Dal is already crouched and ready to deliver the final shot into its eye.
It rears up, fire shimmering from its claws in searing whips.
Dal smiles. Pulls the trigger.
Nothing happens.
As Lanoree sees the surprise on Dal’s face, the tygah lurches forward and slashes at him with one big paw.
Dal is driven sideways, scraping and bumping across the rough ground. Snakes of fire curl around his arms and shoulders.
Lanoree drives a heavy Force punch at the tygah and knocks it onto its side. One eye on Dal—he is writhing on the ground now, rolling to extinguish the flames—she drives another punch into the beast’s chest, pushing hard, feeling the Force power through her and into the enraged animal.
It screams in pain, a surprisingly human sound. Fire erupts from its mouth and hazes the air. Ash falls.
One chance, Lanoree thinks, and she pauses and pulls back. She keeps her hands raised, readying to throw a heavier, harder shove than she ever has before. For a moment she meets the creature’s gaze, and it understands the pain she can deliver.
“Go,” Lanoree says, pushing against the thing’s mind even as she speaks.
The flame tygah glances once at Dal and then leaps away, bounding around the mound it emerged from and then disappearing into the distance.
Lanoree lets out a relieved breath and then goes to Dal.
“I could have killed it,” he says.
“Your blaster misfired. It was almost on you.” Lanoree is surprised at the anger in his voice, hurt.
“I was fighting it, not you.”
“I saved you, Dal,” she says.
“No.” He stands unsteadily, clothing still smoking where he has beaten out the flames. He looks furious and sad at the same time. “No, the Force saved me.” He’s shivering now from the burns he has suffered.
I can heal those, Lanoree thinks. “You might have died.” She’s crying silent tears.
But Dal only looks bitter. “At least I’d have died free. My own man.” He turns his back on her, and his coolness does more than make her sad.
For the first time, her brother scares her.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHARP EDGES
It will be the Great Journey. Journeyers may walk, or ride on beasts or in mechanical vehicles, but it will be their first self-sustained adventure across Tython’s surface, visiting each temple to learn and refine their talents in the Force. Tython is a tumultuous place, and our new home still has countless hidden corners and depths unplumbed. Every Journeyer will encounter different dangers. Many will find their travels treacherous and troubling. And there are inevitably some who will not survive. But to exist in smooth balance within the Force, one must first confront its sharp edges.
—Nordia Gral, first Temple Master of Padawan Kesh, 434 TYA
“I like the sense of floating. For someone like me it’s … freeing. Almost like there’s nothing to me at all. I sometimes think I’m one of the cloud creatures that live deep within the Obri atmosphere. Huge, immaterial. That’s what I sometimes think.”
“They’re speculation,” Lanoree said. “A mystery. No one’s ever really seen one.”
“I know,” Kara said. “I like the idea of that, too.”
Lanoree was not sure whether Kara was a poet or a madwoman. Either way, perhaps she would tell Lanoree what she had come to discover.
After leaving the Pits, Lanoree and Tre had traveled to the base of this tower. Tre had announced their presence to the sentry system. An air elevator had whisked them up to the two-hundredth floor. The view as they rose was staggering, and they had both stared silently from the clear elevator pod. As Lanoree had felt the silvery light of Kalimahr’s three moons purging the stink of the Pits from her skin, she had meditated on the Force. Cleansing her mind. She would not forget the smells and sounds, and the deaths she had witnessed, but she no longer carried them with her.
“Well, it scares the shak out of me,” Tre said. He was standing close to one of the inner walls, back pressed to it, hands splayed flat. His lekku were wrapped protectively around his throat.
“Thank you for seeing us,” Lanoree said. “I understand you value your privacy.”
“I do,” Kara said. “But how could I turn down a request from a Je’daii Ranger?”
“Many do,” Lanoree said.
“The system is filled with fools.” Kara glided across the clear crystal floor of her apartment’s huge main room and approached a low table that was adorned with all manner of food and drink. “Refreshments?”
“Water, please.”
A droid poured, but Kara brought Lanoree her drink. This close, the Ranger saw just how huge the woman was. She was human, but her immense size made her appear like a different, unique species. She rode on a suspension unit that was hidden by her flowing robe. She was bald, as if her head had outgrown her hair, and where her robe parted Lanoree saw rolls of heavy flab and pale skin. There was a perfume to her that was not unpleasant, but beneath that was her own natural stench. Her arms had been artificially lengthened so that they could reach around her girth. Her face was so bloated that her eyes seemed to stare at each other. But however freakish she appeared, Lanoree knew that she could not underestimate Kara for one moment.
Handing the drink to Lanoree, Kara held on for just a moment too long, staring into the Ranger’s eyes.
“What?” Lanoree asked.
“A Je’daii, so pure,” Kara breathed. “Forgive me. It’s been years.” Those enig
matic words hanging in the air behind her, she floated back to the table and started eating.
Lanoree took a sip to steady her nerves, looking down at her feet as she swallowed. This large main room of the apartment was cantilevered over the top of the high tower, and its floor was composed of a thin, incredibly clear crystal. It gave the impression of standing on air, and at midnight the view below was staggering. Lights shifted and moved on the ground below, passing along the network of streets and squares surrounding the immense structure. And closer to the floor’s underside, the flashing nav beacons of small Cloud Cruisers and other craft darted back and forth around the tower.
Lanoree glanced at Tre. He was still at the edge of the room, trying his best not to look down. But he was also close to the door. She thought perhaps it was not only fear that kept him there but caution, and for the first time she was grateful for his presence.
“You’ll know why I’m here,” Lanoree said.
“I will?”
“My reasons already seem more widely known than I’d like.”
“Ah, yes. I heard about the attempt on your life.”
“Is that what it was?” Lanoree asked.
“A Noghri assassin explodes himself close to you. What else could it be?”
Unwillingness to be caught, Lanoree thought, but she did not reply.
“Yet you have me at a disadvantage,” Kara said. “I never leave here. I exist for myself and by myself.”
“I’m sure you have a long reach,” Lanoree said. She saw Tre breaking a smile behind Kara, but kept her own expression neutral.
“I make provisions to know what I need to know,” Kara said. She laughed softly. “I’m very, very rich. My businesses run themselves, but I still feed off information. It’s my obsession. And the only true universal currency.”
“Stargazers,” Lanoree said. She watched for any reaction, but other than a slight pause before replying, Kara gave nothing away.
“I know of them. Little to do with me.”
“You fund them.”
“I donate. They’re a charitable cause.”
“A sect of madmen,” Tre said.
“Only to those who don’t understand.”
“You’d seek to leave the system?” Lanoree asked.
“You wouldn’t?”
“No.” Lanoree shook her head, confused. A strange question. “This is home.”
Kara stared at her, and for an instant Lanoree felt something strange, as if an outside consciousness were scratching at the wall of her mind. Then the feeling was gone. But she tried to grab hold of it, analyze. It was like nothing she had ever felt before.
“Have you ever been to Furies Gate?”
“No,” Lanoree said.
“I have,” Kara said. “Many years ago, before I became like this, I was quite a traveler. It’s a minimum of three hundred days to reach that small planet, and not many make the journey. There’s really no reason to go there. But I felt … the need. The urge to push my boundaries. I’ve always felt that way, and I’ve done so physically as well as mentally. Even my appearance is a product of that urge. I spent twenty days there, at Fury Station, and most of the time I simply … looked. Out, into the Deep Core. Out, beyond anything anyone in the Tythan system knows. I wanted to see the glimmer of a Sleeper ship returning, one of those craft sent out over the millennia to return to the wider galaxy. I wanted to travel onward myself but knew that death would likely be the result. But even since turning my back on Fury Station and returning here, I have continued to look outward.”
“Gazing at the stars,” Lanoree said, and she remembered so much about her young brother—his anger that their ancestors had been brought to Tython, his wishes, his interests. They had never been her own. And yet there had always been that place inside her, the troubling presence of dark and light dancing their own fight.
“I’m not ashamed of it,” Kara said. “Many in the system look outward. Most only in their dreams, because day-to-day life doesn’t allow otherwise. But me … I’m rich. I can invest.”
“So you give the Stargazers money to seek a way to leave.”
Kara shrugged, and her immense body shivered and shook with waves of flab.
“You know my brother.”
“Brother?” Her confusion seemed genuine.
“Dalien Brock.”
That shuddering shrug again. “Honestly, I’ve never even met them. I fund several of their small temples around Kalimahr, give them somewhere to meet and talk. I pay for their contemplations.” She turned away from Lanoree, perhaps to lie. “They are only one of my interests.”
Lanoree tried to touch Kara’s mind but could not. The woman was a riot of feelings, thoughts, sensations; and if there was sense in that white noise Lanoree could not find it.
“They’re more than just a project to you,” Lanoree said.
“I’m a dreamer with money,” Kara said.
“So you fund them out of pure philanthropy.”
“Yes.” Kara continued grazing at the table, eating such dainty amounts for a woman so huge.
“I hear of Gree technology,” Lanoree said. Again, she watched for a reaction. Again, that strange scratching at her mind. Perturbed, she reached out, trying to sense who or what might be trying to read her. But there was nothing. Perhaps the feeling really did come from the inside. Maybe such questions were touching hidden desires planted there all those years ago by her younger brother’s interests. However much she tried, she could not deny her fascination with what had come before Tython.
Kara glanced at her and then started eating some more.
“The Gree,” Lanoree pressed.
The woman turned her back on Lanoree once more and settled closer to the table, her hover system gently touching the crystal floor. She sighed heavily, seeming to change shape within her clothes. Her shoulders relaxed.
“I’m tired,” she said. “Your audience is over. Speak to the Stargazers, if you must. Their nearest temple is in the eastern quarter of the Khar Peninsula. An old abandoned Dai Bendu temple that I own. Now leave.”
“I haven’t finished,” Lanoree said. “Tython, the whole system, might be in terrible danger from what your Stargazers are doing.”
“Leave!” Kara continued eating. And just for a moment, Lanoree recognized something about her. A manner, a presence, a bearing.
“You’re Je’daii?” Lanoree gasped. It seemed amazing, and yet it would explain that strange, insistent scratching at her mind. The shadow of Bogan passed across Lanoree’s mind, and she was even more confused.
“Once,” Kara said, laughing bitterly. “But no more. The Force is stale within me. Now leave, Ranger. I have my security, and they’re the best money can buy.”
And now suddenly she threatens me, Lanoree thought.
A cough, a thud, and Kara slid over onto her side, rolling from the hover platform and seeming to spill across the floor. Breath rattled in her throat.
“What have you—?”
“She’s out, that’s all.” Tre was holding a small weapon in one hand, barely the size of a finger. Stun tube. It carried one charge, but was effective for several hours. Or maybe less for someone of this size. He raised an eyebrow. “So now that you’ve spoken with her, do you want to find everything she wasn’t telling us?”
“You’ll bring her guards down on us!” Lanoree looked around the large room. She could not help partly agreeing with Tre’s actions. And whether she liked it or not, the time for talk was over. “Now that it’s done, we won’t have long.”
They started searching. Tre was haphazard, pulling open cupboards and throwing aside cushions from the several huge, low seats that lay around the place. But Lanoree tried to concentrate her efforts.
She let the Force flow and sought where a Je’daii might hide her secrets.
Was she once really Je’daii? she wondered. Or did she merely say that to confuse me? Kara was a player of games, that was for sure, answering some questions and dodging others. She se
emed very open about her desires and ambitions. Yet there was still a mystery to her, and something far deeper and more complex than this fat woman confined to her own apartment. Rich she might be, and powerful, and she undoubtedly had a long reach. But Lanoree’s recognition of something about her—something Je’daii—was even more confusing.
There were some who trained with the Je’daii but then left Tython. It was usually at the Padawan phase, when children once strong with the Force seemed to lose that strength as they reached adulthood. There was no shame to it. And the Je’daii themselves admitted that on occasion they might make mistakes and take into training those who would never be comfortable and at balance with the Force.
My brother, for one, Lanoree thought. She stared at the slumped figure of Kara, rich benefactor of the Stargazers, and wished she could ask her more.
“Hurry!” Tre said. “The sentries might be coming even now.”
“Why would they?”
“Like she said, the best security that money can buy. They’ll have sensors for weapon discharges.”
“Oh, great,” Lanoree said. More conflict was the last thing she wanted here. Her brief time on Kalimahr had already been more eventful than she had hoped.
She looked down past her feet at the ground far below. A chaos of lights swarmed around the base of the tower, but there were three white lights rising quickly up the tower’s outer wall. Air elevators. She touched her collar and activated her comm.
“Ironholgs, I need you to bring the ship. We’re on the two-hundredth floor of Gazz Spire, eight kilometers southeast of the landing tower.”
Nothing.
“Did you hear me?”
Ironholgs answered, a splutter of static and groans. As usual, he sounded like an old man being woken from a comfortable sleep, but she already heard the background whine of the Peacemaker’s engines being prepped.
“What?” Tre asked.
“Company. We’ll be leaving soon.”
His wide-eyed fear could not have been feigned. “Leaving how?”
“Let’s worry about that when the time comes. Now search.” Lanoree turned and faced the wide panoramic windows looking out over Rhol Yan archipelago, trying to relax, remembering her Force-skills training and relishing the balance she could feel inside. Darkness and light, seeing and seeking. She surveyed the vast room, looking for where something might be hidden. A woman like Kara had plenty to hide, and not all of it the currency of secrets. She was a rich woman with a grand apartment and material wealth. She would have things to hide, too.
