by Tim Lebbon
It was a relief to pass the destruction and fly across undisturbed ground, even if that landscape was so obviously polluted and poisonous. Very little grew here. And if any creatures were able to live and breathe in the rank air, they did not make themselves known.
They passed another dome on their starboard side, several kilometers distant yet still plainly visible as a scar on the landscape. Every scar tells a story, Lanoree thought, and this tale must have been terrible. A portion of the dome remained, shattered and starred by multiple projectile impacts, and detritus from the city was scattered across the surrounding plains. The explosions that had finished this dome must have been immense.
She felt sickness welling inside, and a sense of hopelessness enveloped her. The Force offered so much, yet still there was the need for conflict, pain, and death. A thousand people might be peace loving and committed to living their lives well, but it took only one to plant a seed of poison that would spread through the population. How many of the Despot Army’s million dead would still be alive today were it not for Hadiya? Perhaps most of them. Some might harbor dislike of the Je’daii or some vaguely unsettled sense of mistrust. Hatred, even. But without someone with Hadiya’s charisma and determination, such feelings remained inside, unfocused. She had made them manifest, and on her hands was the blood of a million victims on both sides.
“Seeing it really brings it home,” Tre said. He sounded so distressed, so genuine, so not like Tre Sana. Lanoree could almost like him.
She turned the Peacemaker and tracked Greenwood Station on her scanner. It was a riot of movement—ships lifting and landing, and large ground transports moving around the massive dome. But she was more concerned with traces of ships closer to her. If Greenwood Station had anything like an organized military, or a defense force funded by the great manufacturing conglomerates, they would detect the Peacemaker soon.
And her arrival had to remain covert. That was essential, because if Dal and his Stargazers knew where and when she had arrived, their reaction would be instant. This was a much wilder place than Kalimahr, and they had hardly been careful there.
Twenty-six kilometers out from Greenwood Station, two small sentry ships rose from the landscape a kilometer ahead and accelerated toward the dome.
Lanoree reacted instantly, flicking a switch to block their communications systems. She heard a few panicked words—
“Greenwood Four? Greenwood Four, you reading this? Je’daii incoming, Peacemaker class, must be the one we’ve been waiting for! We’ll lead it in but I’m not engaging that, no way, we’ll leave it to Greenwood’s pulse cannons to—”
—before shutting off the comlink.
“They sound friendly,” Tre said.
Lanoree ignored him. She stroked a pad on the joystick and the weapons system fired up, casting a gleaming blue grid across the cockpit window. The two sentry ships were outlined in red, and a series of readings down the left-hand side showed the Peacemaker’s readiness. Three lines turned quickly from white to green—targeting, plasma missile, laser cannon, all online.
“Really?” Tre asked.
“I’m not here to start a war,” Lanoree said. “And you heard them. They’re expecting me. Dal must have warned them, maybe lied about why I’m here. If Greenwood Station gets to know I’m here, war’s what it might be.”
She relaxed into her seat and felt the Force flowing through her, nerve ends tingling, senses sharpened. She tweaked the joystick to the left and stroked the trigger, and one of the ships exploded in a haze of fire and smoke.
The second sentry took evasive action, swinging up and to the right in an attempt to drop back behind the Peacemaker. But fast though they were, these small atmospheric craft were not designed for such complex maneuverability. Lanoree followed, and as the ship reached the apex of its arc and slowed with the increased effort, she fired the laser cannons. The sentry’s right wing exploded, and the craft started a long spin to the ground.
Lanoree drifted around and finished it off. No need to let the pilot suffer any longer than was necessary.
She breathed deeply and thought briefly of the people she had killed—their lovers and friends, their families and stories. Je’daii were taught to empathize with anyone they were forced to injure or kill, but Lanoree never attributed these thoughts to the Force. They were all about being human.
“Great shooting!” Tre said. He clapped his hands together once, lekku meeting above his head in a celebratory embrace.
“I just killed two people,” Lanoree said.
“But you had to!”
“Doesn’t make it any nicer. We’ll be landing soon. Part of Greenwood Station’s northern sector was bombed during the war, we’ll get in through there.”
“You mean we’re landing outside the dome?”
“Do you think they’ll welcome a Peacemaker into their landing bays?”
Tre fell silent as Lanoree flew them toward the distant dome.
The ship settled, ticking and creaking as its engines wound down and its hull began to cool. Lanoree usually liked this part of a long flight, imagining that the Peacemaker was sighing with satisfaction at a job well done and slumping, ready to recharge its muscles. But this was nowhere near the end of her journey.
She’d changed her clothes, donning a long flowing robe that hid her sword but made her feel like a Dai Bendu monk.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Honestly?” Tre Sana asked. “After everything I’ve said, I still think I’d rather stay on board than go out there.”
“Come on, Tre. You said my ship stinks.” She grinned and keyed the code for the ship’s hatch.
A hiss, a groan, and the hatch swung down into a ramp, a breeze swirling around them as atmospheres equalized. Even behind the air mask she wore, Lanoree swore she could smell the rancid atmosphere of this place. And if she hadn’t been able to smell how toxic it was, it was easy enough to see.
They exited the ship into a drifting yellowish haze. Tre followed her down the ramp, the spare mask she’d found for him clinging to his face in all the wrong places. It was made for a human, not a Twi’lek, but it would have to do. She didn’t plan on their being outside for any longer than was necessary.
They’d landed in a dip in the ground, and Lanoree had skillfully drifted the ship in against an overhanging spur of rock. It rested in shadow, but anyone looking even casually would be able to find it easily. She wished she had time to camouflage it somehow—dust, or even some of the ragged creeping plants that she now saw grew here and there. But time was not on her side. She was very aware of the march of time and that each moment moved Dal closer to carrying out his insane plan.
She signaled the ship to seal up behind them, and paused to watch the ramp fold in and shut tightly. She caught a glimpse of Ironholgs just as the hatch closed. The droid would protect the ship with everything it had, but she was still worried. This might well have been the most hostile environment she had ever landed in.
Greenwood Station was a smooth curve in the distance, just visible through the haze. She’d confirmed with Tre that this was indeed dawn on Nox, Tythos a blur just above the horizon past the dome. The atmosphere was so heavy with toxic pollutants, pumped out over millennia of mining and manufacturing, that Nox was denying the star itself.
Lanoree probed outward, sensing for trouble. There were life-forms close by, but not many, and they were not sentients. She felt nothing dangerous, although she would never lower her guard. Her senses and caution were heightened now, and would remain so every moment she was here.
“This is nice,” Tre said, voice muffled by his mask.
“Keep quiet,” Lanoree said. “These masks don’t carry much air, and you’ll waste it.”
They walked across the desolate landscape toward the dome. By all accounts Nox had once been a verdant world, and although much warmer than Tython, it had supported vast forests of giant trees with huge leaves to bleed heat to the sky, beneath which complex ecosystems existed.
It was rumored that one large island on Nox had been home to more species of birds and mammals than the whole of Tython. But settlers had quickly made use of its rich metal deposits and endless wood supplies to build giant smelting plants, extracting 90 percent of the metals used across the system. Over the space of a thousand years, most of the forests had vanished into ash, and with them the creatures they had supported. It had been a merciless despoliation of the planet, but at the time the system had been a new, mysterious frontier, and those brought there by the Tho Yor were desperate to make a home for themselves. The Je’daii were finding their own path on Tython, and Nox’s settlers had let need, and greed, guide their hands. It was desperately sad, but Nox was now beyond saving.
Anything left was clinging to life. Mutation had increased, and there was little plant or animal life left on Nox that would have been recognizable by someone from seven thousand years before.
Trees were gone, and the only plant life remaining was a low-growing, creeping scrub, thin leaves gasping carbon dioxide from the tortured air, roots growing deep in their search for nutrients. Small lizards scurried here and there. Lanoree saw snake trails in the dusty soil, though she never spied a serpent. She guessed they kept themselves out of sight, perhaps living most of their lives belowground where the air could not kill them, the rains could not melt.
By the time they were halfway to Greenwood Station, her skin was already starting to itch and burn where it was exposed to the atmosphere.
As they drew closer and the settlement emerged from the haze, the damage to the dome’s structure became apparent. It was as if a giant foot had stamped on the smooth dome, crushing the regular curve, reducing its surface area by a tenth, and cauterizing the damage with an uneven blackness. Closer still, and Lanoree could see that this blackness was a layer of twisted metal and melted panels, the damaged structure propped by giant buttresses of gray rock and thick, roughly formed stanchions. The repair work seemed slapdash and haphazard, but Greenwood Station’s business was tech, not construction. And its specialization was war.
She held up a hand and paused by a lake of sickly yellow water. Greenwood Station took up half of their view, and this close Lanoree was wary of guards or security droids.
“I want to go home,” Tre said, voice muffled.
“We’ll be inside soon,” Lanoree said. “It’s … huge.” She knew how large the domes were, of course. She’d seen the remains of those bombed by the Je’daii, and had viewed many holos during her time at Padawan Kesh. But being this close to Greenwood Station brought its true size home to her. The brief research she’d carried out on her way here meant nothing to seeing it herself.
Knowing that it was a space enclosed by one huge dome had perhaps given it limitations in her mind’s eye, but the truth was, this was a city. More than eight kilometers across, the dome structure rose sharply from the ground and then curved gently toward the pinnacle, a place out of sight that was supported by a giant tower. This interior tower housed the city’s ruling council, business owners, and other elite. Spread out from its base for more than three kilometers in every direction were the factories, transport roads and canals, habitation blocks, and leisure parks of this massive manufacturing city. Countless chimneys pierced the dome and rose higher, all of them spewing smoke and steam that billowed southward.
“The thought of being inside that is no comfort,” Tre said. “So do we just knock at one of the gates?”
“No. We sneak in.”
“Through the Scar,” Tre said.
“How do you know they call it that?”
Tre shrugged. “I thought it was common knowledge.”
More and more suspicious of Tre Sana, Lanoree led the way toward the smashed span of dome.
Though the bombing had been almost twelve years before, the rubble and remains were still scattered over a wide area. The dome’s survivors had repaired the breach and sealed the damaged area, but no one had seen any need to clear the ruins. It seemed that anything outside the boundary of Greenwood Station was irrelevant.
There were defensive positions across the dome’s curved surface. Lanoree could see pulse cannons and plasma mortars nestled in indentations in the structure, but she did not believe the positions were manned. She had heard of skirmishes between manufacturing domes—sometimes concerning resources or business, other times over causes unknown—but Greenwood Station was now so isolated by the ruins around it that it usually worked in peace.
“We’ll climb up there,” she said, indicating a path that rose through the debris. “Hopefully there’ll be air locks through the structure.”
“Good,” Tre said. “Let’s move. My skin’s on fire and my lekku are itching.”
They climbed an uneven mountain of debris—shattered rock, twisted remnants of structural material, and some opaque sections of the dome’s shell that had been blasted and half-melted. The transparent material was almost as thick as Lanoree was tall, and the shattered fragments were sometimes thirty meters across.
Soon they were inside the perimeter of the ruined section of dome. The going got tougher as the ruin became more confused, with fallen buildings mixed with melted rock and jagged sculptures of distorted material. Pools had formed here and there, some of them covered with such thick layers of ash and dust that they resembled solid ground. Lanoree had to pull Tre out of one pool, and he started shivering, soaked to the waist in rancid water.
“There,” Lanoree said at last, pointing to a cliff of fused dome and metal.
“What?”
“Air lock.” She Force-probed, sensed no one. “I don’t think it’s guarded. Come on.”
The air lock only became obvious when they were ten steps away. Lanoree lifted her hand and tried to gesture the door aside. She grimaced and concentrated harder, and the door finally obeyed with a tortured whine. It can’t have been used very much.
She was aware of Tre watching her with a mixture of fascination and fear of her talents, but she did not acknowledge his attention.
Air whooshed past them and they entered, Lanoree closing the door behind them. Pressures equalized. Several small lights came on and the air cleared, and then a fine mist sprayed all over them. Decontamination complete, Lanoree waved open the inner door.
She readied herself for confrontation. If there were guards beyond the door, the questions would come thick and fast, and she would dip into the guards’ minds, confusing them for long enough to put them out of action. She had no wish to kill anyone else unless she had to. But she would not hesitate if it meant getting one step closer to Dal.
And stopping him, of course. That was her mission. Sometimes she had to remind herself that this was not simply a search for her long-lost brother.
But there were no guards beyond the door, and no indication that this entrance was even monitored. A dilapidated corridor with flickering lights led away from the air lock, and they followed until they reached another door.
They removed their masks, and Lanoree hid them as well as she could above a loose ceiling panel.
“This must have all been built after the bombing,” Tre said. “I heard that Greenwood Station’s council sanctioned the murder of a Je’daii for every hundred city inhabitants killed in the attack.”
Lanoree was aware of the series of assassinations that went on for two or three years after the Despot War. Rangers were lured into traps and killed, diplomatic missions attacked; and even on Tython there had been deaths.
“They lost about two thousand here,” Tre continued.
“You’re knowing more and more about this pit,” Lanoree said. “Makes me wonder whether you have business interests here I should take notice of.”
“No interests.”
“But you’ve done business here.”
“Only by necessity.”
She rounded on him. “Then do me a favor, Twi’lek. Let me conduct my business with no more talk of the past.”
Tre smiled in apology and inclined his head.
; “Come on,” she said. “We’re wasting time.”
They worked their way through a series of roughly built corridors and halls, all deserted and stinking of disuse. Lanoree remained alert, and was more aware than ever of the comforting weight of the sword beneath her robe.
The air became heavier. The taint of burning grew and a hint of hot metal, and the sweeter smell of something perfumed the air, as if added to distract from the other smells. As they crossed one large, featureless room, Lanoree began to hear the sounds of a city.
Beyond the room, a short walk to a doorway. And then they were out of the repaired zone and standing on the rise of a hill at the inner edge of the dome, looking out across the vast, filthy, yet wondrous vista of Greenwood Station.
“Whoa,” Tre breathed beside her, and in that one word Lanoree was certain he had never actually been here. She almost said the same.
A couple of kilometers distant was the massive central tower upon which the graceful, curved structural ribs of the dome rested. Its dark facade glinted with countless lights that Lanoree assumed were windows, and larger openings might have been launch bays for the small airships that drifted back and forth through the confined space. Beyond that, just visible in the hazy distance, she could make out the far wall almost eight kilometers away.
Buildings crowded the ground all across the dome. Roads trailed here and there, and in a few places wide-open areas that might once have been parks seemed now to act as refuse dumps, with broken machinery or useless spare parts piled in reckless abandon. Fires burned on these dumps, and smoke from the conflagrations was being sucked up by mobile air cleansers, floating machines that vented to the outside via long flexible pipes.
Elsewhere, more solid chimneys rose and pierced the dome. There were hundreds of chimneys, and all were illuminated with bright neon strips. There seemed to be no relevance to the color of light used—greens, blues, reds, yellows, harsh whites—the whole aerial part of the dome was lit garishly, and perhaps beautifully. The sight shocked Lanoree, and for a moment she felt a lifting of her heart.