by Timothy Zahn
“Sorry. You startled me, that’s all.”
“You’re drawing?” she asks.
Dal closes the art pad. “It’s rubbish.”
“I don’t believe that,” Lanoree said. “You’re really good. Temple Master Fenn himself says so.”
“Temple Master Fenn is a friend of father’s.”
Lanoree ignores the insinuation and walks closer to her brother. She can already see that he has chosen a fine place from which to draw the surroundings. The river curves here, and a smaller tributary joins from the hills of the Edge Forest, causing a confusion of currents. The undergrowth on the far bank is colorful and vibrant, and there’s a huge old ak tree whose hollowed trunk is home to a flight of weavebirds. Their spun golden threads glisten in the afternoon sun. The birdsong compliments the river’s roar.
“Let me see,” Lanoree says.
Dal does not look at her, but he opens the pad.
“It’s beautiful,” she says. “The Force has guided your fingers, Dal.” But she’s not sure.
Dal picks a heavy pencil from his pocket and strikes five thick lines through his drawing, left to right, tearing the paper and ruining it forever. His expression does not change as he does so, and neither does his breathing. It’s almost as if there is no anger at all.
“There,” he says. “That’s better.”
For a moment the lines look like claw marks, and as Lanoree takes a breath and blinks—
A soft, insistent alarm pulled her up from sleep. Lanoree sighed and sat up, rubbing her eyes, massaging the dream away. Dear Dal. She dreamed of him often, but they were usually dreams of those later times when everything was turning bad. Not when they were still children for whom Tython was so full of potential.
Perhaps it was because she was on her way home.
She had not been back to Tython in more than four years. She was a Je’daii Ranger, and so ranging is what she did. Some Rangers found reasons to return to Tython regularly. Family connections, continuous training, face-to-face debriefs, it all amounted to the same thing—they hated being away from home. She also believed that there were those Je’daii who felt the need to immerse themselves in Tython’s Force-rich surroundings from time to time, as if uncertain that their affinity with the Force was strong enough.
Lanoree had no such doubts. She was comfortable with her strength and balance in the Force. The short periods she had spent with others on retreats on Ashla and Bogan had made her even more confident in this.
She stood from her cot and stretched. She reached for the ceiling and grabbed the bars she’d welded there herself, pulling up, breathing softly, then lifting her legs and stretching them out until she was horizontal to the floor. Her muscles quivered, and she breathed deeply as she felt the Force flowing through her, a vibrant, living thing. Mental exercise and meditation was fine, but sometimes she took the greatest pleasure in exerting herself physically. She believed that to be strong with the Force, one had to be strong oneself.
The alarm was still ringing.
“I’m awake,” she said, easing herself slowly back to the floor. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”
The alarm snapped off, and her Peacemaker’s ship’s grubby yellow maintenance droid ambled into the small living quarters on padded metal feet. It was one of many adaptations she’d made to the ship in her years out in the Tython system. Most Peacemakers carried a very simple droid, but she’d updated hers to a Holgorian IM-220, capable of limited communication with a human master and other duties not necessarily exclusive to ship maintenance. She’d further customized it with some heavy armor, doubling its weight but making it much more useful to her in risky scenarios. When she spoke to it, its replies were obtuse. She supposed it was the equivalent of trying to communicate with a grass kapir back home.
“Hey, Ironholgs. You better not have woken me early.”
The droid beeped and scraped, and she wasn’t sure whether it was getting cranky in its old age.
She looked around the small but comfortable living quarters. She had chosen a Peacemaker over a Hunter because of its size; even before she flew her first mission as a Je’daii Ranger, she knew that she would be eager to spend much of her time in space. A Hunter was fast and agile, but too small to live in. The Peacemaker was a compromise on maneuverability, but she had spent long periods living alone on the ship. She liked it that way.
And like most Rangers, she had made many modifications and adaptations to her ship that stamped her own identity on it. She’d stripped out the pre-fitted table and chairs and replaced them with a weights and tensions rack for working out. Now she ate her food sitting on her narrow cot. She’d replaced the holo-scan entertainment system with an older flatscreen, which doubled as a communications center and reduced the ship’s net weight. There had been a small room beside the extensive engine compartment that housed a second cot for guests or companions, but because she never hosted either, she removed it and filled the space left behind with extra laser blaster charge pods, a water recycling unit, and food stores. The ship’s several cannons had also been upgraded. At the hands of the Cathar master armorer Gan Corla, the cannons now packed three times more punch and had more than twice the range of those standard to Peacemaker ships. She had also altered and adapted the function and positions of many controls, making it so that only she could fly the ship effectively. It was hers, and it was home.
“How long to Tython?” she asked.
The droid let out a series of whines and clicks.
“Right,” Lanoree said. “Suppose I’d better freshen up.” She brushed a touch-pad and the darkened screens in the forward cockpit faded to clear, revealing the star-speckled view, which never failed to make her heart ache. There was something so profoundly moving about the distance and scale of what she saw out there, and the Force never let her forget that she was a part of something incomprehensibly large. She supposed it was as close as she ever came to a religious epiphany.
She touched the pad again and a red glow appeared surrounding a speck in the distance. Tython. Three hours and she’d be there.
The Je’daii Council ordering her back to Tython meant only one thing: They had a mission for her, and it was one that they needed to discuss face-to-face.
Washed, dressed, and fed, Lanoree sat in the ship’s cockpit and watched Tython drawing closer. Her ship had communicated with sentry drones orbiting at two hundred thousand miles, and now the Peacemaker was performing a graceful parabola that would take it down into the atmosphere just above the equator.
She was nervous about visiting Tython again, but part of her was excited as well. It would be good to see her mother and father, however briefly. She contacted them far too infrequently.
With Dal dead, she was now their only child.
A soft chime announced an incoming transmission. She swiveled her seat and faced the flatscreen, just as it snowed into an image.
“Master Dam-Powl,” Lanoree said, surprised. “An honor.” And it was. She had expected the welcoming transmission to be from a Je’daii Ranger, or perhaps even a Journeyer she did not know. Not a Je’daii Master.
Dam-Powl bowed her head. “Ranger Lanoree, it’s good to see you again. We’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival. Pressing matters beg discussion. Dark matters.”
“I assumed that was the case,” Lanoree said. She shifted in her seat, unaccountably nervous.
“I sense your discomfort,” Master Dam-Powl said.
“Forgive me. It’s been some time since I spoke with a Je’daii Master.”
“You feel unsettled even with me?” Dam-Powl asked, smiling. But the smile quickly slipped. “No matter. Prepare yourself, because today you speak with six Masters from the Council, including Temple Master Lha-Mi. I’ve sent your ship the landing coordinates for our meeting place twenty miles south of Akar Kesh. We’ll expect you soon.”
“Master, we’re not meeting at a temple?”
But Dam-Powl had already broken the transmission, and Lanoree was le
ft staring at a blank screen. She could see her image reflected there, and she quickly gathered herself, breathing away the shock. Six Je’daii Masters? And Lha-Mi, as well?
“Then it is something big.”
She checked the transmitted coordinates and switched the flight computer to manual, eager to make the final approach herself. She had always loved flying and the untethered freedom it gave her. Almost like a free agent.
Lanoree closed her eyes briefly and breathed with the Force. It was strong this close to Tython, elemental, and it sparked her senses.
By the time the Peacemaker sliced into Tython’s outer atmosphere, Lanoree’s excitement was growing. The landing zone was nestled in a small valley with giant standing stones on the surrounding hills. She could see several other ships, including Hunters and another Peacemaker. It was a strange place for such a meeting, but the Je’daii Council would have their reasons. She guided her ship in an elegant arc and landed almost without a jolt.
“Solid ground,” she whispered. It was her first time on Tython in four years. “Ironholgs, I don’t know how long we’ll be here, but take the opportunity to run a full systems check. Anything we need we can pick up from Akar Kesh before we leave.”
The droid emitted a mechanical sigh.
Lanoree probed gently outward, and when she sensed that the air pressures inside and outside the ship had equaled she opened the lower hull hatch. The smells that flooded in—rash grass, running water, that curious charged smell that seemed to permeate the atmosphere around most Temples—brought a rush of nostalgia for the planet she had left behind. But there was no time for personal musings.
Three Journeyers were waiting for her, wide-eyed and excited.
“Welcome, Ranger Brock!” the tallest of the three said.
“I’m sure,” she said. “Where are they waiting for me?”
“On Master Lha-Mi’s Peacemaker,” another Journeyer said. “We’re here to escort you. Please, follow us.”
They led the way, and Lanoree followed.
“Forgive us for not welcoming you back to Tython in more … salubrious surroundings,” Temple Master Lha-Mi said. “But by necessity this meeting must be covert.” His long white hair glowed in the room’s artificial light. He was old and wise, and Lanoree was pleased to see him again.
“It’s so nice to be back,” Lanoree said. She bowed.
“Please, please.” Lha-Mi pointed to a seat, and Lanoree sat facing him and the other five Je’daii Masters. This Peacemaker’s living quarters had been pared down to provide a circular table with eight seats around it, and little more. She had already nodded a silent greeting to two of the Masters, but the other three she did not know. It seemed that things had moved swiftly while she had been away, especially when it came to promotions.
“Ranger Brock,” Master Dam-Powl said, smiling. “It’s wonderful to see you again, in the flesh.” She was a Master at Anil Kesh, the Je’daii temple of science, and during Lanoree’s training she and Dam-Powl had formed a close bond. It was she more than any other who had expressed the conviction that Lanoree would be a great Je’daii one day. It was also Dam-Powl who had revealed and encouraged the areas of Force use that Lanoree was most skilled at—metallurgy, elemental manipulation, alchemy.
“Likewise, Master Dam-Powl,” Lanoree said.
“How are your studies?”
“Continuing,” Lanoree said. She built a workspace in her Peacemaker ship, and sometimes she spent long, long hours there. Her skills still sometimes felt fledgling, but the sense of accomplishment and power she felt while using them were almost addictive.
“You’re a talented Je’daii,” Master Tem Madog said. “I can sense your experience and strength growing with the years.” It was a sword forged by this master weapons-smith that hung by Lanoree’s side. The blade had saved her life on many occasions, and on other occasions it had taken lives. It was her third arm. In the four years since leaving Tython she had never been more than an arm’s reach from the weapon, and she felt it now, cool and solid, keen in the presence of its maker.
“I honor the Force as well as I can,” Lanoree said. “I am the mystery of darkness, in balance with chaos and harmony.” She smiled as she quoted from the Je’daii oath, and some of the Masters smiled back. Some of them. The three she did not know remained expressionless, and she probed gently, knowing that she risked punishment yet unable to break her old habit. She always liked knowing who she was talking to. And as they had not introduced themselves, she thought it only fair.
They closed themselves to her, and one, a Wookiee, growled deep in his throat.
“You have served the Je’daii and Tython well during your years as Ranger,” Lha-Mi said. “And sitting before us now, you must surely believe that we mean you no ill. I understand that this meeting might seem strange, and that being faced with us might seem … daunting. Intimidating, perhaps? But there is no need to invade another’s privacy, Lanoree, especially a Master. No need at all.”
“Apologies, Master Lha-Mi,” Lanoree said, wincing inwardly. You might have been out in the wilds, she berated herself, but be mindful of the Je’daii formality.
The Wookiee laughed.
“I’m Master Xiang,” one of the strangers said. “Your father taught me, and now I teach under him at Bodhi Temple. A wise man. And good at magic tricks.”
For an instant Lanoree felt a flood of emotion that surprised her. She remembered her father’s tricks from when she and Dal were children—how he would pull objects out of thin air, turn one thing into another. Back then she’d believed he was using mastery of the Force, but he had told her that there were some things not even the Force could do. Tricks, he’d said. I’m merely fooling your senses, not touching them with my own.
“And how is he?” Lanoree asked.
“He’s fine. He and your mother send their best wishes. They’d hoped you could visit them, but given the circumstances, they understand why that would be difficult.”
“Circumstances?”
Xiang glanced sidelong at Lha-Mi and then back at Lanoree. When she spoke again, it was not to answer her query. “We have a mission for you. It’s … delicate. And extremely important.”
Lanoree sensed a shift in the room’s atmosphere. For a few moments they sat in almost complete silence—Temple Master Lha-Mi, five Je’daii Masters, and her. Air-conditioning hummed, and through the chair she could feel the deeper, more insistent vibration of the Peacemaker’s power sources. Her own breath was loud. Her heart beat the moments by. The Force flowed through and around her, and she felt history pivoting on this moment—her own history and story, and that of the Je’daii civilization as well.
Something staggering was going to happen.
“Why do you choose me?” she asked softly. “There are many other Rangers, all across the system. Some much closer than me. It’s taken me nineteen days to get here from Obri.”
“Two reasons,” Xiang said. “First, you’re particularly suited to the investigations required. Your time on Kalimahr brokering the Hang Layden deal displayed your sensitivity in dealing with inhabitants on the settled worlds. The assassinations on Nox saved many lives and prevented many awkward questions for the Je’daii. And your defusing of the Wookiee land wars on Ska Gora probably prevented a civil war.”
“It was hardly a defusing,” Lanoree said.
“The deaths were unfortunate,” Lha-Mi said. “But they prevented countless more.”
Lanoree thought of the giant apex trees aflame, countless burning leaves drifting in the vicious winds that sometimes stirred the jungles there, the sound of millennia-old tree trunks splitting and rupturing in the intense firestorm, and the screams of dying Wookiees. And she thought of her finger on the trigger of her laser cannons, raised and yet more than ready to fire again. It was me or them, she thought whenever the dream haunted her, and she knew that to be true. She had tried everything else—everything—but in the end, diplomacy gave way to blood. Yet each time she dreamed, the Forc
e was in turmoil within her, dark and light vying for supremacy. Light tortured her with those memories. Dark would let her settle easy.
“You saved tens of thousands,” Xiang said. “Maybe more. The Wookiee warlord Gharcanna had to be stopped.”
Lanoree glanced at the Wookiee Master and he nodded slowly, never taking his eyes from hers. He had great pride, and he carried his sadness well.
“You said two reasons,” Lanoree said.
“Yes.” Xiang seemed suddenly uncomfortable, shifting in his seat.
“Perhaps I should relay the rest of the information,” Lha-Mi said. “The mission first. The threat that has risen against the Je’daii, and perhaps even Tython itself. And when you know that, you will understand why we have chosen you.”
“Of course,” Lanoree said. “I’m honored to be here, and eager to hear. Any threat against Tython is a threat against everything I love.”
“Everything we all love,” Lha-Mi said. “For ten thousand years we have studied the Force and developed our society around and within it. Wars and conflicts have come and gone. We strive to keep the dark and the light, Bogan and Ashla, forever in balance. But now … now there is something that threatens us all.
“One man. And his dreams. Dreams to leave the Tython system and travel out into the galaxy. Many people desire to do so, and it’s something I understand. However settled we are in this system, any educated being knows that our history lies out there, beyond everything we now know and understand. But this man seeks another route.”
“What other route?” Lanoree asked. Her skin prickled with fear.
“A hypergate,” Lha-Mi said.
“But there is no hypergate on Tython,” Lanoree said. “Only tales of one deep in the Old City, but they’re just that. Tales.”
“Tales,” Lha-Mi said, his eyes heavy, beard drooping as he lowered his head. “But some people will chase a tale as far and hard as they can, and seek to make it real. We have intelligence that this man is doing such a thing. He believes that there is a hypergate deep beneath the ruins of the Old City. He seeks to activate it.”