by Tim Lebbon
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Closer to the Stargazers,” Lanoree said. She heard the static-filled mumble of contact from Khar Peninsula’s landing towers, but she turned them off and took manual control of the ship. There was no time for political niceties now. “According to the computer there’s only one old Dai Bendu temple in this quarter no longer used by them. If anything Kara said was true, that’ll be where the Stargazers are.”
“So we land and get transport there,” Tre said.
“No. I’m landing us on the temple.”
“On it?”
“Strap yourself in. This might get bumpy.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SAFE AND SOUND
Tython is beautiful and powerful, enigmatic and dangerous, filled with mysteries and open to those comfortable with the Force. It was here long, long before us, and these mysteries persisted with no eyes to see them, no minds to contemplate them. And that is why I fear Tython. It means everything to us, and yet we are nothing to it. We are merely passing through.
—Je’daii recluse Ni’lander, 10,648 TYA
Dawn was breaking as they glided over a stormy ocean toward the Khar Peninsula. And if Rhol Yan was impressive, Khar was stunning.
The peninsula itself was around nineteen kilometers long and a kilometer and a half wide, protruding from a much larger island out of sight over the horizon. Seven towers reached up from its spine, incredibly tall, graceful, beautiful. Their upper levels caught the sunlight, and as the Peacemaker approached, Lanoree and Tre could see the sun’s influence slipping down the towers’ exteriors. Beneath them were countless other tall structures, dwarfed by the more-than-one-kilometer-high towers yet impressive in their own right. Almost every building was ivory-colored, the only exceptions being many flat-topped buildings that seemed to serve as gardens and parks. These gave splashes of exotic greens across the Khar’s otherwise uniform hue.
The peninsula looked like a jewel cast into the sea. But Lanoree did not have time to be impressed.
“What’s that?” Tre asked. He was standing behind her cockpit seat, leaning on its back and annoying her every time he moved. She was concentrating too much to berate him. He hadn’t yet had the audacity to sit in the spare flight seat beside her, and for that she was pleased.
“Khar law enforcement,” she said. She’d already seen the four small, sleek ships, rising ahead of them and was readying to give them the slip.
“They won’t argue with a Peacemaker.”
“Probably not. But I’ve not responded to flight control. Far as they’re concerned, I’m coming in blind. Hold on.” Lanoree braced herself and punched a button.
The acceleration pressed her back into the seat, stealing her breath, trapping her limbs, compressing her stomach and chest, and yet she still managed a low chuckle when she heard Tre’s startled cry and the sound of him tumbling back into the living area. He grunted and Ironholgs rattled, and Lanoree knew the droid had caught Tre. Probably to prevent him from damaging anything in the ship. She laughed again.
The four Khar ships flashed past and disappeared from view. Lanoree checked their positions on the scanner screen and made sure they weren’t swinging about to fire on the Peacemaker. Then she swung low and sharp into the built-up conurbation of the Khar Peninsula.
She twitched the ship left and right, passing around buildings, dodging airships and smaller craft flitting here and there, and all the while glancing at a map display on a small screen to her right. It showed the layout of this quarter, and at the edge of the screen a green light pulsed. If her ship’s computer was right, that was the location of Kara’s unused Dai Bendu temple, home to the Stargazers.
“You could have warned me,” Tre said.
“I did.”
“But you didn’t give me time to—”
“Hold on.” Lanoree swung the ship to the right, curving tightly around the wide base of one of the seven massive towers. It filled her field of vision, and a series of openings just above ground level provided parking bays for ground speeders. They swarmed in and out like insects to and from a hive.
Tre picked himself up again and then jumped into the spare flight seat beside her. She glared at him. He stared back.
“You did that on purpose,” he said.
“We don’t have time to mess around with landing permissions.”
“You’re Je’daii. Do you ever?”
“When it’s needed. I don’t like you sitting there.”
“So you do what you want, and shak on the natives?”
“Natives?” Lanoree slewed them around a big Cloud Chaser that had drifted down low, careful not to get too close. “That’s demeaning. Is that how you think we think of everyone else?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No,” she said. But she frowned. She’d experienced antagonism from the settlers on worlds other than Tython, and she usually attributed it to leftover opinions and allegiances from the Despot Wars. But perhaps she had been fooling herself and picking on a simple and clear reason for some people’s dislike of the Je’daii. Maybe it really was deeper and more complex than that. “We only ever do our best for everyone.”
“You intrude. You serve yourselves and your Force. You fling me around your ship rather than telling me what you’re doing.” He pointed from the window at the beauty and complexity of Khar. “You’ll land and leave again, without permission and without telling anyone why, and there will be another reason for everyone’s distrust.”
That troubled Lanoree. But only a little. She was on a mission to prevent a possible system-wide catastrophe, and whether everyone in the system knew that or not did not detract from its importance.
“You deal with us,” she said. “With Master Dam-Powl.”
“Do you think I have any choice?” Tre asked.
“Yes,” Lanoree said. “Plenty.”
“I’m a businessman,” he said. “I suppose … I’m as mercenary as the Je’daii in achieving my aims.”
“You’re a criminal,” Lanoree said. “And I didn’t warn you about that turn because I needed a laugh.”
“The complexity of a Je’daii,” Tre said, and she could not help smiling at his light tone. He annoyed her. But there was something eminently likable about Tre.
“I still don’t want you in that seat,” she said.
He glanced across at her but did not reply.
A chime from the control panel—proximity alert. “Please hold on, Tre,” she said pointedly. Then she put the ship into a dive. They drifted beneath one of the wide, garden-topped buildings, dodging between the stocky feet that held the amazing structure upright, and then she turned a sharp right and quickly climbed again.
“The temple is a kilometer ahead.” She checked the map, where the Dai Bendu temple was marked a hazy green.
“You’re really going to land on the roof?”
“No. Changed my mind. Too exposed.”
“Good!”
“I’m going to take us in the front door.”
Tre did not even reply, but his shocked silence was enough. He grasped the seat restraints and secured them across his chest and hips.
Lanoree knew that this was a tricky, risky maneuver, but they needed time. They’d be far too visible on the roof of the temple; and right or wrong she had already made the decision that there was no time to handle this through diplomatic channels. Dal and the Stargazers knew she was here, and whatever their plans, they would be accelerating them. She had to be creative.
The building was low, large, rectangular, with spires on four corners and a steeply pitched roof. As Lanoree lowered the Peacemaker into the wide courtyard in front of the temple she probed inside for Dal. She had no idea whether or not she’d be able to sense him, but she had to try. She was nervous. Afraid of what a confrontation might bring.
Another warning chime from the ship brought her around, and she realized that her concentration had been drifting. She’d almost flown them into the ground.
People scattered away from the ship, dropping belongings, rushing for cover as its powerful engines kicked up violent storms of dust. Benches were blown across the courtyard. Trees were bent over and stripped of leaves. Lanoree floated the Peacemaker along the front of the temple until she saw its main wooden doors. Wide enough. They were closed. But the ship was tough.
She nudged them forward and smashed the doors aside with the Peacemaker’s nose, taking a significant chunk of masonry with them. Then she settled the ship down, nose inside the temple, the body of the ship in the courtyard. Hardly inconspicuous, but she didn’t plan on being here for long.
“Ironholgs, keep the engines powered up. We might be leaving in a hurry. Tre? Coming?”
He looked across at her, lekku forming a series of words that might have made his mother blush. Lanoree grinned.
Dal was not there. No one was. But until very recently, they had been.
Inside the temple was one large central room with many smaller rooms around its edges. The main room itself was full height, the walls and ceilings extravagantly decorated with frescoes relaying Dai Bendu religious tales and history, tall windows allowing in multicolored dawn light through stained-glass symbols. The nose of the Peacemaker ship cooled and ticked, hull dappled with colors, the temple’s ancient wooden doors smashed on the floor around it.
It was in some of the smaller rooms that they found evidence of recent habitation.
Sleeping rolls were scattered across the floor. Meals lay half-eaten on several long tables, cold but not congealed. Candles still burned in some of the windowless inner rooms. Here and there lay the remains of hastily smashed equipment.
And in one small room, Lanoree found something of Dal.
“Check the other rooms,” she said.
“They’ve gone,” Tre said. “Kara must have warned them.”
“Why tell us where they are and then warn them? Check the other rooms. I need to know where they’re going.” Tre must have sensed something in Lanoree’s voice because he did not argue, did not reply with another quip. He melted away, and she heard his footfalls echoing through the temple room.
It was the smallest of things. Dal had always loved fruit, and mepples were his favorite, the tangy, sweet flesh complemented by the spicy zing of many small seeds. He always chewed right down to the long core stone, and then when he finished the small fruits, he placed the stones end to end until they formed a circle. Sometimes there were only five or six making the shape, on occasion fifteen or more.
There were nine now on the floor, and the circle was incomplete. If he’d left this as a sign for Lanoree he would surely have finished the circle. But the last core had been flung aside, as if he’d departed the temple in a hurry.
Lanoree stared at the almost circle and wished the ends would meet. At least then Dal might be welcoming her pursuit and drawing her on, some sibling rivalry remaining.
“Not like this,” she whispered. “Not desperate.” She touched one fruit stone gently, then moved around the small room. It was a mess. Clothing lay scattered across the floor, plates were speckled with dried remnants of old food. On the stone wall a network of metal pins showed where something had been on display. Plans? Maps? There was no way of knowing.
She picked up a jacket, pressed it to her face, inhaled. But there was nothing there that she recognized.
She had to know where he was going, how much information—if any—he had about those old plans, how far along the device might be. Perhaps even with the blueprints it would be impossible to replicate Gree technology to the detail required. But there was little here to indicate anything one way or another, and Lanoree felt a flush of desperation. She had come so close, and yet now Dal might be heading anywhere.
Looking around the small room one more time, she tried to remember the last good times she and her brother had spent together. Her thoughts drifted this way often, usually when Dal intruded unexpectedly in her mind. She knew it was long before their journey across Tython. Maybe as far back as when they were children, younger and more innocent to the truths of things.
But even then he had been different.
“I should have listened to you,” Lanoree whispered. She had always harbored guilt about his death, because she believed it was her reveling in the Force—and her determination to push him toward it—that had ultimately driven him away. Now that same guilt sang in once more, but it was over something worse than death.
She might have made him whatever he had become.
“Anything?” she shouted. She left that room quickly, kicking the mepple stones apart. “Tre? Anything?” Emerging into the main room, she glanced at the Peacemaker’s nose blocking the shattered doorway at the other end. The vessel’s engines pulsed with potential.
Tre darkened a doorway across the temple and ran toward her. He was carrying something. He looked pale. “We’ve got to go.”
“Why?”
“They left quickly, but not before setting a timer.”
Lanoree’s senses sharpened, her veins flooded with energy. “How long?”
“Moments.”
They ran to the ship, up the ramp, and even as Lanoree jumped into the flight seat, the window lit up with an incredibly bright light.
“Ramp!” she shouted, but Ironholgs was already closing it. A wave of fire roared across the temple and engulfed the ship. The explosion blasted in, incredibly loud inside the ship, hull shaking and everything outside blurring as walls shook and part of the roof was lifted from the huge building.
Tre shouted, voice barely heard.
Momentarily blinded by the fire flash Lanoree coaxed them aloft. Impacts sounded across the hull as the building started to collapse. The flight stick shuddered in her hand and she eased back, trying to remember the layout of the courtyard. If she backed them into another building they’d be in just as much trouble.
Another explosion pounded against them and Lanoree pressed her lips together, grabbing the stick with both hands. The time for caution was over. She pulled and turned, eyes scanning the instrument panel. Proximity alerts sounded and a wall of blazing masonry smashed down across the window, ancient stones bursting apart. Then they were away, vision clearing, and the ship almost seemed to lighten in relief as she lifted them away from the courtyard.
Tilting them slightly to dislodge any detritus left on the hull, she looked down in time to see the temple implode—roof collapsing, spires tumbling inward and adding to the billowing clouds of dust and flame that roared up and out.
“That was close!” Tre said from the other seat. He was gripping the armrests, his lekku pale and agitated.
“The old girl can withstand more than that.”
“I mean us!”
Checking the scanner for law enforcement, knowing they’d be here soon, Lanoree glanced one more time at the burning ruin of the old Dai Bendu temple. “I think Kara might be upset.”
“I think maybe she knew exactly what was going to happen.”
Lanoree did not reply, but she couldn’t help agreeing with Tre’s assessment. So far she’d been steered here and there, guided by words from people she didn’t know or trust. Kara deserved another visit.
But not yet.
“What did you find?” she asked.
“What was left of a comm unit,” Tre said. “They smashed things up pretty bad, but I think one of the memory cells is whole in this one.”
“Give it to the droid.” She offered Tre a half smile. “Don’t worry, that was nowhere near close.”
“Compared to things you’ve done, perhaps. But I value my skin. I don’t do ‘close.’ I don’t even do ‘near.’ I do ‘safe and sound.’ ”
“Then why did you agree to help a Ranger?”
“I didn’t have much choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Lanoree said. And she thought of Dal again, the choices he had made, and how perhaps she had forced some of them upon him.
She flew them high, arcing up from the Khar Peninsula
and back out over the ocean, where there was not so much traffic. Tre left her alone, and Lanoree spent some time assessing the ship’s condition and checking for damage. There was nothing significant. Drifting up until they were skimming the edge of space, she left the ship to fly itself and went back to see what Ironholgs had found.
Tre was seated on the cot, and the droid was still working. The comm unit was more smashed up than Tre had believed, and Ironholgs whistled that it might take some time to extract any information remaining in the memory cells.
Lanoree realized for the first time how cramped the Peacemaker felt. It was designed to carry two pilots and four passengers with ease, but it had been her home for so long, and hers alone. She was not used to sharing this space with anyone or anything other than Ironholgs. And she could switch him off.
“So, this is cozy,” Tre said, as if reading her thoughts.
“Fresher’s through there,” she said, pointing at one of three hatches leading from the back of the main compartment. “Middle door’s to the engine room and laser cannon charge unit. You stay out of there. The third door’s to spare living quarters, but it’s my storeroom. Food, water, spare laser charge pods. I suppose you might be able to clear enough space to sleep.”
“I’m fine here,” Tre said. His lekku twirled slightly, random movement that betrayed little.
“For now,” Lanoree said. “You’ve got to know, I don’t like passengers.”
“Hey, I didn’t ask to come along.”
She could not argue with that. Lanoree opened a compartment and took out two drink sachets. She flung one at Tre and it bounced from his shoulder. He caught it, examined it briefly, then ripped the corner and drank. He raised it in a silent toast and nodded his thanks.
“So what’s your story?” Lanoree asked. “Dam-Powl told me you were dangerous.”
“You don’t believe her?” he asked.
“Maybe you’ve been bad. Perhaps you’re dangerous to some. But not to me.”
Tre Sana looked down at his hands as if considering what they had done in the past. His smile was contemplative. “I’ve done things I can never tell you about,” he said, “to people you’d never want to know.”
