by Tim Lebbon
A much heavier impact sounded, like Nox itself shrugging. Lanoree felt a deep vibration that set buildings swaying. Glass smashed, wreckage showered down all around as weaker buildings started to break down. The air inside the dome seemed to momentarily blur, and outside the city’s huge skin the skies lit up.
“Incoming plasma bombs,” Lanoree said. “They’re being diverted for now. But they’ll get through soon enough.”
“So how can you help?”
“Help?”
“You’re a Je’daii, aren’t you?”
“We’re not magicians, Tre. You know that as well as anyone.”
“But this is—”
“We get out,” Lanoree said, “as fast as we can. Dal thinks we died down there, and all this is just to make sure. Whatever escape route he had is hidden to us, and he’ll be away and gone by now. But this, what he’s caused or initiated, is all for nothing. Because we’re going to survive, and we know he’s still alive.”
“Look!” Tre pointed. In the distance to the north a section of dome had slid open, and several ships rose from across the city and headed for the outside. Lanoree could tell from the way they moved that they were battleships, not civilian transports. This was not yet an evacuation.
As the first ship passed through the dome opening it exploded, blossoming into a ball of fire and erupting ammunition that rained down in a beautiful, awful shower across that part of the city. The other warships powered through the destruction, another of them exploding outside and then impacting the dome half a kilometer away. The others rose clear, and though they were little more than blurred shapes beyond the dome, Lanoree saw them swing around and streak to the south.
“Come on,” she said. “I don’t think we have long.”
“Until what?”
“Until we’re a part of Greenwood Station’s tragedy.”
Lanoree led the way. She headed for the portion of dome already bombed years ago by the Je’daii. What she had learned of Pan Deep—that the Je’daii had spared it because they commissioned high-end military tech themselves—did not sit well with her. But it was not relevant to her mission to consider that right now. And she more than anyone knew that the Je’daii often harbored secrets.
She spoke into her comlink. “Ironholgs, prep the ship for takeoff. There’s trouble—we’ll be coming in fast. Initiate ship’s defenses. Shoot anything that comes close that isn’t us. Got that?”
Her ship’s droid crackled and spat in reply.
“And start the tracker scanner, frequency two-four-zero. You should find the signal soon enough, probably just off planet. Lock on and track it.”
“What signal?” Tre asked.
“I put a tracker on Dal’s clothing,” she said. “I just hope he hasn’t found it.”
“Or changed his outfit.” Tre was trying to joke, but Lanoree could not smile. Such a small thing as a change of clothing might doom everything she had ever known. She was already living in history in the making, the tragedy of Greenwood Station that would become known across the system. If she failed to catch Dal, and his attempt to initiate the Gree tech went wrong, then everything would be history. And there would be no one left to know it.
There’s still time! she thought. Because she knew the device was not yet ready. The scientist had mentioned that it needing charging. She’d sensed no energy source there, nothing that might indicate that its dark matter drive had been primed or loaded. She would have known. Her teachings with Dam-Powl had given her an insight into such shadowy matters.
An arcane device that only needed charging before it was ready … a tracking chip that might or might not remain on Dal—everything was suddenly so nebulous and unreliable.
A war played out around them as they fled. People ran back and forth in panic—parents herding children, adults running in shouting groups—but Lanoree could see some organization starting to become apparent. Though they wore no sign or uniform, one group of men and women seemed to be part of some sort of Greenwood Station security force. They were breaking down the fencing around a compound housing several militarized Cloud Chasers, airships supporting heavy gun platforms and with grav units fitted to landing gear to aid flight. As Lanoree and Tre passed, the first of the airships started to hum with power.
Other people bearing weapons rushed across the street ahead of them, heading south toward where the bulk of the fighting seemed to be taking place.
“They’d do better to flee,” Lanoree said.
“They’re defending what they have!” Tre said.
“This is a full-on assault, ultimate destruction. Not an invasion.”
They paused beneath the cover of an old factory’s slumping wall. Perhaps one day this place would have been repaired, but it looked like it hadn’t been used for some time, and the building’s metal framework was corroding beneath the toxic atmosphere.
“Look. Invasion.” Tre pointed south at another cloud of lights drifting down from the many damaged areas of dome. Gunfire was being exchanged, and it took several seconds for the crackling sound to become audible.
“Droids,” Lanoree said. “They’re not sending troops in because—”
A massive explosion rocked them from their feet. The ground pounded at her as she fell, and the air itself seemed to vibrate in her lungs, through her chest. Lanoree rolled against the building and looked back and up, astounded and sickened by what she saw.
A plasma bomb had found its way through the city’s defenses and impacted close to the dome’s highest point, more than a kilometer above the ground. The explosion had ripped the dome open, the shattering destruction running down through the central column and bursting from it in blooming flowers of flame and blazing metal. The wide tower was crumbling from the top down, and around it the dome’s mammoth support structures were cracking and dipping, great spreads of dome rupturing and falling away. The explosion continued to expand, probing inward and touching the ground at last. A firestorm swept across the air, incinerating everything in its path. The destruction was so huge, and so far away, that it seemed to happen in slow motion.
“Lanoree,” Tre said. He grabbed her arm. “Lanoree!”
“Yes,” she said. Tre helped her up and they moved on.
They reached the building through which they’d entered the dome not so long ago. As they went inside, they left behind a very different Greenwood Station.
They worked their way back through the ruined and hastily repaired area of the city, retrieving their masks from where Lanoree had hidden them. But the masks had leaked away the last of their oxygen, so Lanoree cast them both aside.
“We’ve got a kilometer to go across that landscape,” she said. “Follow me. Step where I step. Run as fast as you can. And try not to take deep breaths.”
“We’ll die out there,” Tre said.
“No. And once we’re on the Peacemaker, I have medicine that will clean your skin and lungs.”
“I don’t have skin and lungs exactly like yours, human,” Tre said, smiling nervously.
Lanoree grabbed his shoulder, squeezed. “Close enough. Come on.”
She Force-shoved the exterior air lock door open and ran out onto the toxic, poisonous surface of Nox.
Behind them, the battle raged and the destruction continued. Out of the dome they could see more, though the air was constantly hazed with stinking clouds of gas. Attack ships stood some distance off, firing at the dome. Way beyond the dome a huge glow filled the sky, and Lanoree guessed that the spaceport adjacent to the dome in the east had been bombed. Those few defensive ships that took off from inside and made it out without being destroyed streaked south toward the attackers, and most were blasted from the air before even entering combat. One or two made it through, spiraling up and around as their laser cannons opened up. Explosions bloomed. Burning wrecks arced down to the planet’s surface. It was only the skill of their pilots that kept them aloft, but the attacking force appeared to be far superior.
Lanoree already fel
t the acidic burn on her skin and tasted it at the back of her throat, and the destruction and deaths behind her weighed heavy. Her spine tingled. The back of her neck smarted as if the accusing dead stared.
“Ironholgs!”
The droid responded immediately. The ship was ready for take-off, the tracker was acquired and locked on. But Dal’s ship was already breaking away from orbit, and soon he would be beyond the range of their instruments.
They reached the Peacemaker and boarded, and Lanoree did not feel as pleased, as safe, as she should have.
“Okay?” Lanoree asked.
“Perfect.” Tre nodded, though he looked ready to vomit. His lekku hung pale and sickly, and his eyes and nose were running.
“Strap in,” Lanoree said. “They’ll probably see us lifting off and—”
Greenwood Station took three more direct impacts from plasma bombs. The blasts shook the Peacemaker, and Lanoree quickly fired the engines and took her ship aloft, afraid that the explosions might cause tremors or eruptions around the city. She flicked on all sensors, checked systems, initiated weapon systems, and only then took time to look toward the dome.
The ruptured dome was falling in great burning, melting sheets. The city inside had become a pit of molten chaos, and billowing pillars of smoke and flame rose high above it. The sparkling, expanding clouds from the plasma impacts bloomed outward; and when they met the rank atmosphere, they formed sickly rainbows that in other circumstances might even have looked beautiful.
Lanoree punched it. And even flying up and away from the dying city, the stark flashes of its demise lit up the interior of the Peacemaker’s cockpit.
“All those people,” Tre said, and Lanoree had never heard him sound so wretched. “We went there, and this is the result.”
“It wasn’t us,” Lanoree said. “It was Dal.”
“But if we hadn’t chased him here—”
“If he’s not stopped, this could happen everywhere!” she said. “It shows how determined he is. And how mad.” She lowered her voice, almost talking to herself now. “There’ll be no reasoning with him.”
A chime on the control panel, and Lanoree groaned.
“What?” Tre asked.
“Company.” On the scanner three sparks were following them, closing rapidly. Lanoree banked the ship steeply and accelerated, the hull shaking around them, groaning with the huge stresses she was placing it under. But she knew her ship as well as she knew herself—its breaking points, its capabilities.
Still the shapes closed on them.
“Fighters from Knool Tandor,” Lanoree said.
“And now they have a Je’daii ship to add to their score sheet,” Tre said.
“I’ll draw them out of the atmosphere—the Peacemaker’s better in space.”
“I can shoot.”
“You told me you’d never been in space!”
“Well, maybe once or twice. But I’ve fired land-based laser cannons a hundred times. I have a good eye.”
“Top turret. Go.”
Tre unclipped and scampered back into the living area, and Lanoree charged up the laser cannons.
“And put on the comlink so we can talk!” she shouted back at him. Strange. Right then, she was almost glad she had Tre here.
She saw the terrible irony in the situation. Dal had made Knool Tandor believe that Greenwood Station was in league with the Je’daii. Not only that, but some of that city’s highest-standing residents might already have been assassinated by a Je’daii sword. And now here they were, in the midst of their attack on Greenwood Station … and a Je’daii was attempting to flee the planet, the Peacemaker ship giving her away. She had come here incognito but might be leaving the seeds of a wider war behind.
Right now, escape was her priority, and stopping Dal. Everything else could be smoothed over afterward.
A few moments later she heard the static and scratch of Tre turning on the comm headset in the top laser turret.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. We’re fired up, I think I have this. Foot pedals to turn the turret, tracking screen, combat display, touch trigger.”
“You damage my gun and I’ll gut you!” Lanoree said.
“Yeah, yeah, Je’daii, you and which army?”
Lanoree laughed softly, always keeping her eyes on the closing targets. They had fanned out behind the Peacemaker and were approaching in a wide pincer. Soon the shooting would begin.
“Front cannons will be in my control,” Lanoree said. “But I’ll be busy flying this thing as well. You’ve got the best field of fire behind us, and you’ll have visual.”
“I’ve got visual.”
“You see—?” Lanoree was cut off by the dull thuds of the upper turret’s laser cannons firing. Eyes on the screen, she twitched the ship to the left and hit the boosters. Then she switched on the Peacemaker’s deflector shields and kept one hand hovering over their control lever. She’d have to angle the shields in accordance with which direction the next attack was coming.
“Missed!” Tre shouted into her ears. She heard the gentle hum of the turret’s motors working as Tre turned, and then the first ship streaked ahead of them.
They were still in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Lanoree swung left, but heat flare glared across the windows, and she had to rely on scanners to keep tabs on the attacking Knool Tandor ships. They were fast and very maneuverable.
“Tre?”
“Can’t see much—think I winged it.”
Lanoree flicked a switch so that the targeting computer display sprang up before her. Even before locking on she let off a burst of fire, strafing across where the lead ship might fly. It twitched left and climbed.
She thrust forward with all the power the ship had, and the attackers fell back a little. But she knew hers would be a momentary lead; their ships would be at least as fast as the Peacemaker.
“Right,” Tre muttered, and his cannon let off several sustained bursts. “Yes! One down, one down!”
“Good shooting,” Lanoree said, but she was distracted. “Shift deflector shield to the rear, angle the ship out of the atmosphere, keep an eye on trajectories and the bright sparks of the two remaining ships.” Still talking to herself even though Tre was there. For a moment she wondered what she’d have done if he weren’t with her … but then everything would have been very different. It was through his contacts on Nox that she’d been able to find Dal.
The ship reached the highest extremes of Nox’s polluted air, the stars speckling into view, and it was almost as if she felt it come alive in her hands. The Peacemaker was fine in atmospheres, but it was in the vacuum of space where it truly came into its own.
“We’re away from Nox.”
“Good, I can see again,” Tre said.
“Grav units phasing in,” Lanoree warned.
“Oh, great, there goes my stomach.”
She grinned. “They’re following.”
“Didn’t think they’d give up. You’d be a good prize.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I don’t think they’d worry about—”
The Peacemaker shook as a volley of shots smacked across its left flank.
“Where’d that come from?” Tre shouted.
“Two more from out of the sun.”
“Yeah, but …” His laser fired again, and he was muttering all the time, words Lanoree could not quite make out. On the scanner she saw another ship flare briefly into a hail of smaller parts, then expand into a cloud, then fade away.
“Still three out there,” she said. Another ship powered toward them … then disappeared. “I’ve lost it.”
“Me, too.”
“You can’t see it?” she asked.
“No. Gone. Can’t you Force-see it, or something?”
Lanoree ignored the quip and swung the ship sharply left and up, aiming for where she thought the ship might have gone. Climbing directly away from the Peacemaker and above them, it might for a moment have disappeared from her scanners, shie
lded by its exhaust and angle of climb. It was a good trick, but one Lanoree knew. She’d used it once or twice herself.
She saw the glimmer of starlight on metal before her scanner even picked it up. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, comfortable in the Force. Then she looked again, past the grid lines of the targeting computer, past the pulsing lights and scrolling figures of laser preparedness, target distance, altitude and attitude. And when the time came, she touched the fire pad once.
A single shot streaked ahead of them, and eight kilometers away the ship flowered into a blazing bloom.
“Whoa,” Tre said. “Good shot.”
“Those last two are coming in fast,” Lanoree said. “One port, one starboard.”
“I’ll take starboard.”
The laser cannons thudded. Lanoree took the ship through a roll and then powered directly up and away from Nox. Gravity grasped the vessel as if sad to let go. The whole ship shook. She took manual control of the underside turret and swept it to port, watching the targeting grid on the left of her screen as the central four quadrants turned red. She fired several bursts, but already knew that she’d missed.
Tre shouted, “Look out, they’re—” and then the whole ship shook as a plasma torpedo exploded half a kilometer away, ignited by the ship’s shielding system. Lanoree let the blast tip the ship to starboard, knowing that fighting the effect would waste time and effort. Then she took control once again.
“Everything at that port ship,” she said, opening fire. Tre’s cannon thumped, and she saw the streaking trails of laser blasts converging in the distance.
On the scanner, the blooming star of destruction.
“Yes! One more down!” Tre said.
“The other’s making a run for it,” Lanoree said.
“Let’s go! I’ll put a shot into its afterburner.”
Lanoree considered for a moment, then turned away from the fleeing ship. It was already thirteen kilometers away, the distance between them growing fast. “No time,” she said. “And no point.”