by Tim Lebbon
Normally a calm sea, the Force within her was now a raging river of confused currents.
“I thought they’d have more sense.”
Dal, she thought, and tried to sit up. Someone helped. That surprised her, but she was already gathering her senses. Stay like this. Be weak. Be wounded.
“I knew you were onto me on Kalimahr—”
“How?” Her voice echoed and thumped in her head, pounding her skull, but she could not help asking the question.
Dal did not answer. “Didn’t think you’d be able to follow. Thought I’d shaken you. But you’re persistent.”
Was that something conflicted in his voice when he talked about her? Lanoree could not tell. He had changed so much, and she knew that without even seeing him.
In the distance, a deep rumble. What was that? Where is Tre? She remembered his scream, guessed he was dead, and felt a surprising sadness. Tre was not a good Twi’lek, but he was trying to make himself better. Trying to make up for his past.
Lanoree opened her eyes again and looked at her brother. He was blurry to begin with, swaying in her vision like a scar serpent waiting to strike. She closed one eye and her sight settled. Dal manifested, down on one knee before her as if questioning one of the elder gods.
“You’ve grown up,” Lanoree whispered. Dal laughed. She recognized the sound, but there was something grating in it, something mad.
And he had grown up. Gone were his boyish good looks, replaced by a weathered countenance that carried every day of every year that had passed. He’d lost some of his hair, and what remained was speckled gray. There was a scar on his left cheek. He could have done something about the hair and scar, but she saw no vanity in him at all, no evidence of self-awareness about his appearance. His robe was plain and rough. Everything that Dal was now resided in his mad, glittering eyes.
Another thud! She felt it through her behind rather than heard it. Dal glanced up at the ceiling.
“I’ve grown in every way,” he said. “See. Feel.”
“I don’t want to—”
“But I’m telling you to!” he screamed. Lanoree winced as his voice seared into her head, driving spikes of pain into her eyeballs. Perhaps she’d fractured her skull. She tried to feel, to sense, as they’d taught her in Mahara Kesh when she finished her Great Journey without her brother. But she was confused. The Force flowed through her, but it seemed to stutter. She could not examine herself, so instead she delved toward Dal’s mind.
And withdrew just as quickly.
He grinned, nodding slowly. “You see?” he asked. “You feel?”
Lanoree nodded, tides of pain washing through her. She sensed nothing at all of the Force within him. No light, no dark; no Ashla, no Bogan. But he bore an incredible strength that she had only just started to recognize nine years before. It had grown into something solid. She could only call it madness, and yet …
And yet Dal’s aims and ambitions were defined, and his route to achieving them firmly set. His madness had method.
“Not many people are completely without your Force, eh, Lanoree? Not many. Not him.” He nodded toward a corner and Lanoree looked, relieved to see Tre propped there. He bled from a wound across his forehead and left eye, and twitched in unconsciousness. “Not even most of my Stargazers.” There were three other people around the room, now, other than the Selkath technicians. They were of differing species but all dressed similar to Dal. Their look resembled that of a religious order, but they were much more than that. And few religions went that heavily armed.
“Not many people want to be,” Lanoree said.
“See, that’s why you didn’t find me,” Dal said. “Down there in that old dark place. Because you were looking the wrong way. You were searching as if I’d lost something and fled, not found something and set off on my own path. You were looking for a wounded, dying animal. Not the man I’ve become.”
“I was looking for my brother.”
“And I’ve already told you, you left the brother you always wanted back in Bodhi with our parents. He’s dead, now. Long dead.”
There was another distant impact, and Lanoree absorbed it, examined it. She was more conscious and aware now. She thought it was an explosion.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
Dal stood and approached the covered object on the table. It was the size of a Noghri’s head, and beneath the sheet it appeared completely spherical. “It’s almost finished,” he said. “Almost ready. You know what this is?”
“Yes,” Lanoree said, bluffing. She knew his aims, and what he planned to use to make them real. But really she had no idea what the device was.
Dal rested his hand on the object almost reverentially. “Everything I always wanted.” He whispered it almost to himself.
“Dal—”
“Shut up.” He didn’t even look at her as he spoke, and a sudden change came over him. “You’re sure?” he asked the group huddled in the corner. “You’re certain?”
“Yes,” one of the technicians said. He took one step forward. “Your request was … forgive me, vague. We’ve worked hard. It was a task we relished. And the device is ready to do everything you want of it. It’s … perfect. One of the finest of our creations, and it pushes at the edge of all our accumulated science. Once it’s charged—”
“Enough!” Dal said, holding up a hand. He glanced at Lanoree.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” she said.
“And you have no idea what I’ve seen.” He nodded at his Stargazers.
The violence was sudden and shocking. The Stargazers—a human, a Twi’lek, and a Cathar—drew blasters and power bows and opened fire on the scientists. Lanoree winced but watched, unable to close her eyes. The Selkaths danced and juddered as blasts and bolts ripped into them. Blood splashed, fire sizzled across skin, clothes erupted into flames. In the space of five heartbeats the scientists were dead, the last one sliding down the wall to slump across her murdered companions.
Calm, Lanoree told herself, calm, and she sought the Force, readying to use it to save herself. The time must come soon. She had to stop him here and now, and nothing here would end well.
Dal looked at Lanoree. She could not read his eyes. She felt for her sword, but the scabbard was empty. And now me? she thought. Panic came and she washed it away, seeking the familiar Force to prime herself for action. But her pain was still raw, and shock stoked the storms and uncertainties inside her.
“You’d lose,” Dal said. “Maybe you’d take a couple of us with you. But my Stargazers are ready for you. The first touch on their mind and a blaster would open your skull, or a power bolt would cook your heart.”
Lanoree breathed long and slow, and the moment stretched on.
“I wish …” Dal said. She looked for weakness but saw none. He was expressing frustration, not regret.
“Wish what?”
“I wish you’d understood. I wish you could have opened your mind to our past. Your Force is so constricting! You think it gives you power, you’re taught that it’s great, but it binds you. You’re blinkered by it, but my eyes are wide open. We see the stars! We have a place in the universe that was taken from us by the Tho Yor. They stole us away, brought us here, denied us the future we deserved. And I’m going to take it back.”
“You’ll kill everyone.”
“No,” Dal said, smiling. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Dark matter? Gree technology, Dal? You’re playing with something beyond anything we can even hope to understand.” Lanoree nodded at the bodies still steaming and twitching in the corner. “You heard them. Even they said that thing is at the edge of known science, and edges break away.”
“Gather it up,” Dal said to his Stargazers. He turned his back on Lanoree.
There was another explosion somewhere far away.
“Dal, what have you done?” she asked. She stood slowly, holding onto a wheeled tool cart for support. The Cathar watched her, his gun at the ready.
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“Started a little fight.” Dal turned to face her again. For an instant she felt a flush of memories, but they were all good ones of her time with her brother. They did not belong here.
“With whom?”
“I arranged that the Knool Tandor dome would find out about Pan Deep’s continuing business with the Je’daii, and they hate them. Many survivors from the bombed domes live there now. Landed one of my Stargazers there, and by now she’ll have killed several of their corporations’ presidents with a Je’daii sword.”
“Where did you get—?” Lanoree asked, but then it fell into place. “Kara.”
“Greenwood Station will be blamed for the murders and its alliance with the Je’daii,” Dal said, his expression unchanging. “Skirmishes are common on Nox. And it won’t be the first conflict between Knool Tandor and another dome.”
“Covering your tracks,” Lanoree said.
Dal shrugged. Behind him, his Stargazers had wrapped the device in the sheet. It did not seem at all heavy, and the Twi’lek held it to her chest. They were waiting for Dal to leave.
“Just like you did on Tython,” Lanoree continued. One hand delved into her utility belt beneath the robe, rolling the item she sought between thumb and forefinger. A tracker, small and sharp. “Leaving your bloodied clothes for me to find. Letting our family believe you dead.”
“I liked being dead,” Dal said. “It gave me freedom from your constant efforts to push the Force on me when I never, ever wanted it.” Another low rumble and a vibration from above. “Soon I’ll be believed dead again, and gone from here. Free to pursue my own fate.”
“Dal, you don’t know what—”
“I should kill you.” Dal pulled a blaster from beneath his robe and stood with it pointing down at the floor. He was incredibly still, like a statue. Even his eyes seemed to have died.
He’s inside, Lanoree thought, and she wondered what he was finding in there, what he was thinking and the decisions he was making, and she knew that now was the time to push. She would push hard and violently, smashing aside those mental defenses he might believe he had built against her.
“But I can’t,” Dal said. He turned aside and holstered his blaster.
Lanoree brought out her hand and flicked the tracker, closing her eyes, concentrating, and guiding it quickly across the room until it attached to Dal’s right boot. Then she opened her eyes and looked around, but no one had seen anything. Perhaps she had been lucky. Perhaps.
Dal did not even spare her a final glance. With a single nod at the Cathar he left the room the same way Lanoree and Tre had entered. The Twi’lek carrying the device followed, along with the human Stargazer.
The Cathar remained, gun aimed at Lanoree. It was a heavy blaster, and its muzzle still glowed warm. Lanoree clenched her fingers, readying a Force punch.
“Try,” the Cathar said.
“You know I can’t just stand here and let him leave.”
“You won’t be standing there for long.”
Lanoree twitched her finger and a tool flipped from the wide table, clanging against the wall. The Stargazer didn’t even blink.
“He doesn’t want to hear you die,” the Cathar said.
“That’s kind of my brother.”
“He is kind. The only kind man I’ve ever met.”
Lanoree glanced at the huddled, bloody bodies in the corner.
“They were unkind,” the Cathar said. “They hid down here instead of looking to the stars.”
She sensed movement from the other side of the room. She did not look, but she knew that Tre was stirring.
“He’s going to kill everyone,” she said. “Once he initiates that device, the dark matter will form a black hole and everyone in the system—”
“He knows that won’t happen. The stars call. They tell him.”
“Oh, so the stars speak to him,” Lanoree said, laughing softly. “And he’s not mad?”
The Cathar blinked slowly, but she was not even putting a chink in his convictions. Come on, Tre, she thought.
Tre groaned. The Cathar glanced his way. Lanoree Force-shoved with everything she had. Tools and loose components rattled across the table and flew at the Stargazer, a cabinet tipped and bounced across the floor, a hail of bolts and snipped wires became a stinging rain that raked across his chest and face, ripping skin and blinding him.
She ducked down and Force-punched, shoving the Cathar back against the wall beside the door. His blaster fired, the shot smashing a hole in the ceiling. Molten material and rock fragments showered down. Then the Stargazer clasped at his belt, weeping blood from ruptured eyes, and a look of ecstasy broke across his face.
“Oh, no,” Lanoree muttered. She looked at Tre and saw that he was barely conscious, and with every shred of strength and effort she had of the Force, she reached for him and dragged him halfway across the room toward her. His eyes opened comically wide as he slid without being touched, and as he reached her and she clasped his clothing Lanoree shouted, “Bomb!”
The explosion was deafening, shattering, assaulting her body and mind and senses, and she felt herself thrown around like a snowflake in a storm.
With her parents it was the arts. Her mother wrote the most beautiful poetry, and her father was a sculptor, his work venerated all across Masara. But Lanoree’s calling lay in science and alchemy, and how the Force could be used for both. She discovers that at Anil Kesh. And she revels in it.
Master Dam-Powl shows her the way. The Cathar Temple Master has taught at Anil Kesh for sixteen years, and at the end of their first long night of discussion, she tells Lanoree that she has the potential to be her greatest pupil.
“Do you say that to everyone?” Lanoree asks, proud but suspicious.
“I’ve said it to no one before,” Dam-Powl replies.
Over the next few days the studies begin, and Lanoree is amazed. She immerses herself in Dam-Powl’s instruction, and in doing so her troubles with Dal fade away. They don’t disappear completely—there is always a shadow and a sense of impending change in her life—but she sleeps better than she has since leaving home, feels happier, and realizes that her mind has always been too focused on her brother. Dam-Powl makes her understand that this is her Great Journey as well. And though Lanoree cannot give up on Dal, for the first time she places herself before him.
With the Chasm beneath them, Anil Kesh has a different feel from all the other temples. Every moment there is rich, filled with potential, and edged with a sense of danger. Lanoree has never felt so alive. It is as if the cells of her body are charged, her mind on fire. When she mentions this, Dam-Powl smiles and nods.
“We balance on the precipice of knowledge,” she says. “The unknown lies below us, always threatening to draw us down or rise up and swallow us. The Force is charged and powerful here. Anyone familiar can feel and sense it, but if you’re powerful with the Force …” She grimaces and presses a fist to her forehead. “Sometimes it hurts. But it’s a hurt worth weathering.”
Dam-Powl introduces her to sciences that Lanoree has only ever heard or read about. She knows of Je’daii who are disturbed by some of what occurs at Anil Kesh, but she listens to the Master wide-eyed and with an open mind. She finds plenty to concern her but so much more that fascinates. She’s aware of Dam-Powl’s watching her carefully, taking stock. She is eager to please.
In the storage pens in one of the temple’s supporting arms are the altered animals. Taken from the Abyss of Ruh, a dangerous place deep in the Rift six hundred kilometers to the east, these strange and fearsome creatures have been genetically manipulated using the Force to serve the Je’daii. Lanoree is amazed at the changes in them—none are hurt or damaged, and it’s as if their alterations are the true wish of evolution.
Dam-Powl takes her through a network of laboratories. In one, weapons are altered and adapted using Force-driven metallurgy. In another, weapons specific to the Force are being tested. Chemicals are changed and transmuted; solids have their structures re
-formed; and the wild power of the Chasm beneath them is harnessed in thick-walled compounds, dancing and flashing, striking and snapping like a living thing.
It is in the last room that Dam-Powl shows her that Lanoree knows her future lies.
“The talents needed for this are deep,” the Je’daii Master says, “the risks great. But the rewards are huge. I’m going to teach you.”
Lanoree stares at the two Je’daii in the center of the room. Before each of them is a shape. Something that should not live, yet it flexes and breathes. A thing that should not be, yet here it is.
“Wrought from their own flesh and blood,” Dam-Powl says, “and nurtured using the Force.”
Lanoree is terrified and thrilled. She has heard of this, but never thought it was true. Never suspected she would see it for herself.
“The alchemy of flesh,” she whispers. Despite her fear, she is eager to begin.
“Tell me you can get us out of here.” Tre’s voice. His urgency pulled her quickly back to her senses. That, and the stench of sewage and death.
Everything ached, and in a few places she hurt terribly. Her head still throbbed as if someone were jumping up and down on it. She smelled blood, and knew it was her own. But Tre was far from gentle as he grabbed her beneath the armpits and tried to haul her upright. Lanoree shoved him back and sent him stumbling into the shattered table.
She looked around and tried to take stock. It looked bad.
The Cathar Stargazer had exploded his suicide vest, demolishing the wall and bringing down most of the ceiling. The doorway was blocked by torn metal and smashed stone, and fractured rock had fallen behind it. The rest of the ceiling was spattered with his blood, a great swath of it burned black by the bomb’s fire flash. The remainder of the large room was a mess—scientists’ bodies scattered from the corner where they’d been massacred; tools and components everywhere; the large central table ruptured and splintered. If she hadn’t pulled Tre behind there with her, they’d have both died.
There was a wide crack in one wall, and through this seeped a steady stream of effluent. A pipe or chute had been ruptured somewhere, and the leak was speeding up rather than slowing down.