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

by Tim Lebbon

  She starts calling after Dal more and more. The echoes of her shouts seem to argue, and sometimes she thinks she can hear choirs of Lanorees imploring her brother to return, to turn around, to come to her and home. Lanoree thinks she is hallucinating but can’t be sure.

  The ruins are so old that nowhere is untouched by time’s finger—sometimes they are ravaged, sometimes merely stroked by a reminder that entropy cannot be denied. She passes along large passageways with smaller tunnels leading off, and sometimes by alcoves in the walls that might once have been doorways but that have long since been closed off. These smaller tunnels offer tantalizing and terrifying possibilities, but Lanoree will not be shaken from her course. This is not an exploration, it is a rescue. There are much larger caverns—almost hallways—with strangely shaped pits in the floor that might once have held water, and upright structures with the remains of metal shapes. Perhaps this is technology, rotted away over time.

  She feels she is closing on Dal.

  A metal bridge spans a deep, dark ravine, from the depths of which flows a warm breath. The bridge groans as she crosses it. The darkness beckons. It smells of dusty bone and wet fur, and Lanoree crosses the last third of the bridge at a run.

  Beyond is another large cavern where ranked levels all around look much like seating areas, and a central dais bears the remains of several upright mechanical objects. Lanoree pauses to catch her breath.

  In the distance she hears a scream.

  Lanoree was being dragged. Voices sounded, urgent and angry, making no effort to hide. She felt heat on her body as they threw her down. She rolled onto her side, feeling for wounds. But there were only the bumps and bruises she was already familiar with, and a few more besides. She still wore her weapons and wrist unit. They hadn’t even bothered disarming her. Either they were clumsy, or they no longer viewed her as a threat.

  Hit on the head again, she thought. Master Kin’ade would be disgusted. She tried to see away some of the pain, losing it to the Force, and a calm numbness descended.

  “I’m almost done. I’ll let you watch.”

  Dal! But he was dead, wasn’t he? She’d come down here looking for him and found—

  But, no, that was another place, another time. That was in the past.

  Lanoree opened her eyes and gathered herself, sitting up, hugging her knees to her chest.

  The air in the mine shivered with heat. Several humans, growth stunted and dressed in reflective clothing and visored helmets, fussed around some mining equipment. Dal stood close to her, blaster in his hand aimed in her direction, and five Stargazers accompanied him. They were faceless to her, followers of his madness. It was Dal who held her attention.

  “You left me for dead,” she croaked. Her throat felt dry and swollen, her tongue like a rock in her mouth.

  “Yes, left you. I can’t make that mistake again.”

  Woozy, weak, Lanoree tried to touch his mind.

  Dal pointed the blaster at her face, his lips pressed tight, whole body tensed. She could Force-shove him aside, and perhaps she’d be able to get to her feet before the other Stargazers shot her. Maybe, somehow, she could distract them all. Perhaps, like Master Tave, she could lose herself in the Force, become unseen by them for long enough to disarm and defeat them.

  But she thought not.

  “So shoot me,” she said to her brother. As she spoke her mind was deluged with a flood of memories of their childhood, their dear mother and father, and the good times that were all now past. She was sad but incredibly angry as well.

  “You and your Force—”

  “Enough with the talk, Dal! Just shoot me and get it over with!”

  “You’ve come this far,” he said, smiling. “Don’t you want to see my second-greatest moment?”

  “Second?”

  “The greatest is yet to come.” He nodded past the mining equipment at where the device rested on the ground, exposed now, the Stargazers standing at a respectful distance. It was surprisingly plain: a round metal shell, several connecting ports around its circumference. It did not look amazing.

  The miners were checking display screens and working the machinery, and though it ran with barely a whisper, Lanoree wondered whether the deep rumbling she felt was caused by what they did here.

  “No,” she said. “I’m bored. You’re going to kill me, so why not now instead of later? Brother.” She spat the last word, hoping for a reaction. But his gentle smile remained. She was trying to goad him into action, hoping that before he pulled the trigger there would be a moment of hesitation, an instant of regret and doubt of which she could take advantage.

  But Dal was in charge here. Lanoree felt the flow of the Force and knew that she was just as powerful and rich in it as ever, but her sick, mad bother was still in control.

  “There,” a miner said. The machinery before him vibrated slightly and then grew still, and a square metal box rose from a hole in the floor of the mine. Lanoree had seen this before in holos and knew what it was—a marionium cube, bearing one of the most unstable yet desirable elements found in Sunspot’s mine.

  But what of the dark matter? Was everything she had seen, heard, learned wrong?

  “In the device,” Dal said. “You know what to do.”

  Three Stargazers stepped forward and lifted the cube, moving it toward the device.

  Lanoree thought of Force-shoving them against it, but she didn’t know what effect that might have. They were dealing with arcane, ancient technology, and she remembered her journey down into the Old City nine years before, the power she had sensed there, the fear it had instilled.

  I have to stop them! she thought. But I can’t risk triggering the device. Stuck between the two, she felt the gravity of both possibilities tearing at her.

  “No,” she said as the Stargazers slid aside a panel. The insertion was simple. The marionium glowed softly as they tipped it into Dal’s device, and then they closed the panel and stood back.

  “So what will it—?” one of the miners asked. He did not finish his question.

  The device finished it for him. It started to turn.

  Dal gasped, and Lanoree realized with dreadful certainty that he really had very little idea what he was doing. He was following old plans, chasing a childhood dream. He was running blind.

  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.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  REPULSION

  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.