by Tim Lebbon
It certainly fit what she knew her brother was attempting. And that was something that, she hoped, Maxhagan could not know.
The descent from the warehouse was down an old, rarely used spiral staircase, their feet clanging on metal treads, glow rods making shadows dance. Lanoree recalled all her training at Qigong Kesh, craving the peace of that Silent Desert as she cast her senses out and around them. She smelled for danger, listened for held breaths, searched the deep shadows with Force-enhanced sight, and if her mind touched one other mind intent on violence, she would know.
After a while they reached a long, winding tunnel that led toward the tower. She flicked on her glow rod. Just as she judged that they were beneath the central core of the tower, the tunnel opened out into an excavated cavern, a massive place with a floor sloping in from all sides toward a sinkhole in the middle.
“Oh,” Tre said. “Oh!” He pressed a hand over his nose in disgust, and Lanoree could only agree. They’d been smelling the rank tang of sewage for a while, but actually seeing this place seemed to make everything so much worse.
The effluent of the whole tower flowed here. Perhaps ten thousand people of a dozen species, all venting their waste into toilets and disposal units in dwellings and offices, taverns and restaurants. Rainwater already stinking with pollutants was used to flush, and now they could see the resultant rain of shak showering down from the high ceiling. Countless pipes and gullies led here, their stinking contents falling in blessed darkness to splash onto the floor. And the floor was moving, a thick stew of repulsiveness flowing slowly down the slope toward the large hole in the cavern’s center. From there Lanoree guessed it fell into an underground lake or a deep fault in the planet’s crust; thousands of years of a city’s refuse rotting in the darkness.
“You bring me to the nicest places,” Tre said.
Lanoree didn’t reply, because that would have meant opening her mouth. She consulted her wrist computer one more time, then switched it off. The plans were of no use to them now. Pan Deep was somewhere not shown on the schematics, and she thought she knew how to find it.
Tapping Tre’s shoulder, she pointed around the perimeter of the massive cavern with the glow rod.
“You want to walk around there?” he asked.
Lanoree nodded and moved on. She had already seen the overhang at the left, the space beneath protected from anything falling from above. It led to the entrance of a corridor hidden behind a projection in the wall, and once inside the floor immediately sloped upward.
She paused. Tre almost walked into her.
“What?” he asked.
“This is a hidden place, not on the plans. Might not be the right place. But I’ll soon know. Give me a moment.” She tried to relax, closing her eyes and breathing deeply, letting the Force flow. In moments the stink was gone, her senses cleansed and purified by the Force, ready for what she sought.
“What are you looking for?” Tre asked.
“Energy source.” She cast her senses outward.
It was a dark place, heavy with the weight of Greenwood Station’s central tower above and the many people who lived there. The air itself seemed to carry a taint of wrongness. Perhaps it was because of the city’s military manufacturing, but she thought it more like a trace from the minds of those who worked and lived there. She had seen many people, and all of them seemed to be constantly moving, or talking or eating and drinking. Few stood still for a moment simply to muse upon their lives. Perhaps to do so would be to admit the awful truth of their existence.
Lanoree shivered. Nox was long known to be a planet out of balance, and here more than anywhere.
She delved beyond that shadowy trace and searched for power. In the tower above there were countless sources, but down here there were only a few weak, old generators winding down.
And then she encountered a dark void of heavy shielding. She probed deeper, pushing hard, and her Force senses forged through.
Bright light. Heavy potential. Staggering power.
“This way,” she said. “We’re going up again. But not too far.”
More corridors, and every step took them farther away from the stink. They’d been moving for some time, and Lanoree was hungry and thirsty. But she was also excited. The last time she’d been this close to Dal had been on that dreadful, painful morning at Anil Kesh.
“Here,” she said. The tunnel they were moving along had rough walls and an uneven floor, but up ahead she could see a steady glow. And nearby, the gutter thoughts of a violent man.
She flicked off her glow rod. Darkness fell, but it was not complete. She grabbed Tre’s arm and pulled him close, breathing against his ear. “Guards.”
Drawing her sword she moved forward. Tre came behind her, blaster in hand. Her heart beat fast. She touched the guard’s mind again, wincing back from his thoughts of violence and—
Only at the last instant did she realize her mistake. His thoughts had been a screen, a ploy. And as the blaster fire erupted she touched his real mind and the visions of starlit triumph that burned within.
Lanoree flowed, and the Force flowed through her. Movement and reality slowed, yet she moved with it, her perceptions and reactions enhanced. She swept her sword around and deflected two laser blasts, and advanced quickly.
The man crouched behind a column attached to the tunnel’s side. He wore a loose robe, similar to those of the Dai Bendu monks, but any semblance of holiness was wrecked by the weapon in his hand and the fury she sensed in him.
A shot came from behind her and impacted the wall far along the tunnel, smashing rock into dust and blasting a flash of fire along its length. In that light Lanoree saw more figures rushing their way. Time was short.
I won’t lose him again! she thought, and in three leaps—sword sweeping aside laser blasts meant for her chest—she was on the man. She saw a moment of fear in his eyes and then she parted his head from his shoulders, crouching and facing the approaching Stargazers even as she felt blood splash across her neck.
Tre scurried along the tunnel and pressed himself to the wall opposite her, aiming and firing his blaster along its length. A grunt, the sound of an impact, and then a woman started screaming.
“Wait here!” Lanoree said.
“But—”
She did not pause to answer his rebuttal, instead running forward with her bloodied sword raised before her. She Force-shoved ahead and heard three voices cry out as their owners were flung back. A blast sizzled past her ear and she smelled burned hair, scorched clothing. That was good. The Force gives you power, and power breeds confidence, Master Kin’ade had told her at Stav Kesh, but confidence can be your enemy. Lanoree was never one to forget her mortality.
Tre fired past her, keeping their attackers’ heads down as she closed the distance between them. Don’t discount the injured one on the ground, she thought, and then she was among them, slashing left and opening a Noghri woman from throat to sternum, ducking and rolling, standing, thrusting to her right and catching a man beneath the arm. He cried out and stumbled sideways, her sword jammed between his ribs. He fell. As she was pulled forward he turned—tearing blade through more flesh, bones cracking—to point his blaster at her face.
Lanoree clenched her left hand and aimed a Force punch, sending the blaster spinning away. Two of the man’s fingers were still clasped around the grip.
He slumped away from her, dying, and she stood on his hip to withdraw her sword.
A blast from behind her and a brief, gurgled cry. She spun around. The injured woman was slumped against the stone wall, her throat and lower jaw an open wound, raw edges still sizzling from the laser blast that had killed her.
Ten paces along the corridor, Tre lowered his weapon. “She was almost on you.”
Lanoree nodded her thanks. That was too close. Clumsy! she thought. But now was not the time to analyze her mistake.
“So now they know we’re here,” Tre said.
“I think they’ve known for a while. Come on.
”
They trotted along the tunnel, Lanoree casting her senses forward and around them. The flurry of terrible violence had set her heart pounding and blood rushing, and her pulse filled her ears. She knew control, and carried the talents to calm herself, but she also knew that the heightened awareness of the fight could be her friend. The Force complemented her; she was her own greatest weapon.
They ducked through a doorway, climbed a flight of stairs, and suddenly the stone wall disappeared and a metal corridor began. She probed ahead, but her vision was clouded now, her Force senses blurred. Pan Deep might sometimes serve the Je’daii, if Maxhagan was to be believed, but it also strove to protect itself from them.
She ran on. To slow down now, to take stock, would be to lose whatever advantage they still possessed. The fighting would have been heard, and perhaps Dal and his remaining Stargazers would not have expected her to win through so quickly. The confusion of combat would work to her advantage.
Through another doorway, and then there was a room.
Behind her, Tre gasped.
The room was large. Its walls were smooth, their lines clean. The ceiling and floor were white, like nothing they had previously seen on Nox. It resembled more the interior of a luxury spacecraft than a subterranean manufacturing base. At its center stood a wide table, upon which rested an object swathed in a loose white sheet. Scattered across the table were instruments and components, and around the room were several wheeled cabinets, home to more tools, parts, and obscure technology. It was more like an operating theater than a laboratory.
Huddled in one corner were six Selkaths dressed in plain white lab coats, all of them terrified.
And standing beside the table, Dal.
“Lanoree!” he said. His surprise was evident in his eyes and the way he threw up his hands, and as he grinned she was a teenager again, seeing her brother and reveling in his presence. A flush of emotion swept through her—pleasure and sadness, loss and love. He came forward as if delighted at her being there, and for a moment Lanoree was consumed by memory. And that was the only moment her lost brother required.
Tre screamed, and something struck Lanoree’s head. As she saw the floor rising to meet her, darkness swallowed her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
OTHER WAYS
Alchemy should have no part in a Je’daii’s experience. It is a dark force, arcane and dangerous. It has the power to upset balance. There are other ways.
—Temple Master Vor’Dana, 10,456 TYA
At Anil Kesh Lanoree finds herself, without even realizing that she was lost.
Their first few days there are strange. There is an orientation process to go through because of the disruptive influence of the Chasm below the temple, and Lanoree becomes immersed in the talks, meditations, and instruction. She and several other Journeyers spend their time in darkened, windowless rooms away from any sight of the Chasm, and a Sith Master guides them through varying stages of sickness and uncertainty. The Sith is a wise old man, and he has done this many times before. He sees their discomfort fade—not lessening, because the Chasm will always affect anyone strong in the Force, but simply tempered.
And in his wisdom, he perceives that Dal is enjoying all this.
Lanoree’s brother says very little over those first few days at the temple, but he exudes a sense of peace that she has not seen in him before. He enjoys witnessing his sister and the other Journeyers suffering.
They are given several tours of the Anil Kesh Temple, which is even larger and more incredible than Lanoree thought. Each of its three giant support legs houses a complex honeycomb of living quarters, the structures designed to afford as much strength as possible to the supports. Within the legs are dampeners the size of Cloud Chasers, designed to absorb the incredible pressures placed on the temple by frequent and violent storms originating in the Chasm. Huge tanks of pneumatic fluid are stored at regular intervals, and there are also several access ports in each leg for escape craft. None has ever been used, and their tour guide assures them that none are needed. Everything here is large and amazing, the architectural and engineering talent on display awe-inspiring. Their guide seems to take some satisfaction in this.
The massive central body of the temple is supported by these legs, hanging directly above the Chasm. And floating around the temple itself, the Tho Yor. Hanging by means unknown, it drifts around Anil Kesh, so it is believed, in tune with the Force.
This central area is the heart of Anil Kesh. There are several large laboratories here, along with teaching rooms, private studies for Temple Masters, libraries, holo suites, and meditation chambers. There are also launch bays from which drones and other equipment are sometimes dropped into the Chasm. Lanoree is surprised to learn how infrequently this now happens. Every experiment that could safely be carried out on the Chasm has already been performed countless times, and still so little is known about the bottomless gorge.
Future discoveries, they are told, must arise from more esoteric means.
Yet a blazing, pulsing beam of energy is still fired down into the Chasm from the very heart of Anil Kesh, seeking information and readings.
On the fourth day, the Sith Master frees them from his instruction and tells them that their new Masters will be introducing themselves that evening. The rest of the day is their own.
“I’m going to look at it,” Lanoree tells Dal. “I’m going outside to see.” She means the Chasm. Even uttering those words causes a flutter of trepidation and excitement in her stomach. She is about to confront something that is still a mystery to even the greatest Je’daii, and she wants to do so with her brother.
But it’s too late.
“It’s nothing, really,” he says matter-of-factly. “Deep. Stormy. I’ve been out there four times a day since we’ve been here. I’m more interested in the temple than the Chasm, though. Have you seen how long the temple legs are? Have you felt how much it flexes in the wind?”
He is toying with her, and he knows that she knows. But he doesn’t care. His vision is elsewhere now, always, and soon something is going to happen. Maybe one day she’ll wake up, Dal will be gone, and she’ll never see him again. Or perhaps it will be worse than that.
“I’m going to look at it,” she says again, and as she pushes past Dal she feels rather than sees his silent chuckle.
There are steps that lead up onto a gangway and outside. The heavy metal doors are always kept locked on the inside, as though something from beyond might wish to gain entry. But the dangers are far less physical. She spins the locking handle on a door, and it swings inward.
The blast of air is shocking. Loaded with warm raindrops, gushing against her like the breath of an unimaginable monster, it carries the smell of something mysterious and deep. Rain patters across the floor and spreads inside, and Lanoree feels a moment of panic—what has she let in?
She makes a quick decision and steps outside, pulling the door closed behind her.
Above her arcs one of the three great curving arms of the temple. They act both as counterbalances to the legs and also as transmitters and receivers, gathering atmospheric charge to fuel Anil Kesh’s experiments and sending out messages from the Temple Masters to other Je’daii across Tython and beyond. Its mass shelters her somewhat from the storms.
But she can still look down.
She walks to the edge of the wide viewing platform and grips the railing. She feels the weight of Anil Kesh behind her, and the protective arms seem to hold her within their shadowy grasp. The temple feels on the breath of the Chasm, and its sturdy legs absorb every subtle impact of the wind. “ ‘You always move, seeking to draw my eyes,’ ” she says. It is a line from a love poem she once read in an old paper book of her mother’s, and she wonders whether the poet had ever visited this place.
Looking down, she wonders whether all Je’daii are in love with the Chasm.
It is mystery. It is depth and infinity on the surface of this world they deign to call their home. Its breath is warm
and loaded, and deeper down through the mist of torrential rain, she can see the frequent flash of Force lightning, erupting in the darkness and illuminating nothing. It is dizzying and thrilling, terrifying and wonderful. She grips the railing so hard that her fingers hurt and her knuckles turn white, not sure she can ever let go.
There is a brief, ecstatic moment when she is tempted to lift herself over the railing and fall. It will end in death, but she will also get to see the Chasm’s depth, to know its secrets.
It cannot be bottomless. They only say that because no Je’daii has reached its bottom and lived.
“Or none have gone down there and returned,” she whispers, the words immediately stolen by the wind. She is drenched through by the rain. The storm whips curtains of water back and forth across the Chasm below her.
She feels a hand on her shoulder, and instantly fears it is Dal come to do her harm. I am the Chasm, he said, perhaps meaning that he is a mystery to her now, with a mind that no Je’daii will ever be able to fully understand.
Lanoree freezes. She cannot fight back because she is too shocked and too overcome with a sense of infinity.
But then a warm voice says, “Come inside, Lanoree, where we can begin our talk.”
That first meeting with Master Dam-Powl extends long into the night.
“I told you to never get in my way.”
Darkness. Pain. She heard her own ragged breathing, felt the troubled beating of her heart. Her head throbbed and pulsed, the core of a raging sun in the center of her brain. And she knew that voice.
“I never thought they’d send you after me.”
She opened her eyes, but the brightness hurt. She closed them. The pain was a weight crushing every part of her. Her scalp was wet and warm, and everything was red.