CHAPTER TWELVE
CHASM
Ashla. Bogan. They’re just moons. My own destiny lies elsewhere … and it has such gravity.
—Dalien Brock, diaries, 10,661 TYA
Lanoree wakes from a dream of home in which she is dreaming of the stars, and Dal is sitting beside her. He is bathed in firelight, but most of his face is in shadow. Still she can read him from his stance and his stillness—he is staring at her with a terrifying coldness.
“What? Is there something …?” But she knows there is no threat from outside. They are a day away from Anil Kesh, camped beneath a copse of heart berry trees. They have eaten several berries each, and Lanoree’s stomach is warm and comfortably full, the berries’ goodness thrumming through her. There is wildlife in these foothills that might mean them harm—acid spiders, and rumors of a family of flame tygahs that crossed the Moon Islands—but she would sense if any of them came close. She would know.
“I am the Chasm,” Dal says. His voice is lower than before, deeper, as if echoing from somewhere deep.
“What do you mean?” She sounds like a scared little girl. She is scared.
Dal shifts, turning toward the fire so that its light reveals his face. He is still her brother but he looks older than before. Wiser. As if she is seeing a Dal who has already completed his Great Journey.
“I have depths waiting to be filled. Places you can never see, and go, because you’re Je’daii, and my depths are my own. Not steered by something else.”
“The Force doesn’t steer me, Dal.”
He snorts. She is even more scared. She went to sleep still knowing who her brother was, but now …?
“What happened?” she asks.
“I am the Chasm. I have depths to explore and fill.”
“Depth implies mystery and fullness. But in you I sense only void.”
“Your Force tells you that,” he says, almost spitting the words, “and you believe it.”
“No. I know that because of my love for you as a brother.”
For the briefest instant a look of regret seems to cross his face. But perhaps it is merely a flame from the fire casting a sympathetic shadow.
“My own Great Journey ends soon,” he says. “After I’ve taken everything I can from Tython, bled it of everything that can be of use, I’ll be leaving. Don’t get in my way.”
At dusk the next day they approach Anil Kesh.
Lanoree has heard many stories about this place, but nothing can prepare her for the reality. The temple itself is an incredible structure, graceful and brooding, huge and yet insectile in its shape and proportions, an engineering marvel that surpasses any other on Tython. Its Tho Yor floats about it, sometimes close, sometimes farther away. It’s believed that it drifts with the Force.
Beneath the temple, the Chasm. One of the most amazing places on Tython, and also one of the most enigmatic and dangerous, the Chasm is a seemingly bottomless pit within which Force Storms rage and mystery resides. No Je’daii has ever gone deep enough to find the Chasm’s bottom … or if they have, they have never returned. The stronger one is with the Force, the greater the Chasm’s detrimental influence—disorientation, pain, and eventually death. Many have tried. Some have died, and some have gone so deep that they returned insane, deluded. Suicide is common among those who ignore all warnings and their own better judgment to try.
One of Anil Kesh’s main aims is to plumb the depths of the Chasm, because it is Tython—and the Force—at its most mysterious. Lanoree has seen holos of Temple Master Quan-Jang discussing the Chasm, and even through these she can sense his awe and fascination. The Je’daii, he says, will find the bottom one day. It’s what might exist there that possesses them to keep trying.
I am the Chasm, Dal said. Standing close to Anil Kesh now, Lanoree expects him to be staring at this strange wound in the land, but he seems untouched and unconcerned. Unlike him, she can feel the draw of the Chasm and its incredible, primeval power. The Force is in turmoil within her. She feels sick.
To manage that sickness, she knows, will be one of her first lessons at Anil Kesh.
This is not the final destination of their Great Journey. But Lanoree cannot help feeling the sense of an ending hanging over them both.
Greenwood Station was a city that never slept. The sun had set and the dome was now illuminated by hundreds of huge lights suspended beneath the massive support ribs. They were a poor substitute for the sun, but Lanoree supposed this was their night. Shifts were changing, the air was filled with the smells of industry and cooking and sewage, and she and Tre were once again approaching Maxhagan’s imported-water stall.
She saw him from a distance, closing broken shutters across his tables and instructing several helpers on where to store those bottles not yet sold. He waved away a couple of late customers with an apologetic smile, then saw Lanoree. His smile remained, but it was no longer soft.
Lanoree did not break her stride, but she did feel comfort from the Force flowing through her. Muscles tensed, her sword sang with power, and her senses—always alert—became attuned to danger. Maxhagan was her focus, but if he meant her harm, then he would desire that focus. Any attack would come from those around him.
“Tre Sana!” Maxhagan called. “Lanoree! So good to see you both again!” Tre glanced around nervously to see if anyone else had heard his name, and Lanoree could not help smiling. She wondered how many enemies the Twi’lek had made over the years.
“I’m surprised you’d close up shop,” Lanoree said.
“Only for a while. People travel to work now, intent on their journey. Or others go home, or to the taverns, where water isn’t their prime concern. Also … I find that information is at its driest at this time of day.”
“I expect you’re filling and resealing the bottles, too, eh?” Tre asked.
Maxhagan looked genuinely hurt. “You doubt my product?”
Tre didn’t answer.
“Other water merchants come and go. They fill bottles from poisoned springs in the caves below Greenwood Station, drop in a few purifying tablets, seal them up, sell them as pure. None of them last long. That’s why I’m still here, selling purity after four years. That’s why they always come back to me.”
“Everyone buys their water from you?” Lanoree asked.
“Everyone that matters,” Maxhagan said. His face dropped abruptly. “But that’s enough about water. Follow me.” He turned and pushed his way through curtains at the back of his stall, and Lanoree and Tre had to climb over the tables to follow.
He led them across the busy square toward a doorway in one corner. At first she thought he was taking them down into one of his opulent rooms again, but then she heard the sounds of revelry and smelled spilled drink and spiced food. When Maxhagan entered the tavern, only a few inquisitive eyes turned their way. Most lingered more on Lanoree than the water seller, and she kept the hood of her robe raised. She never could shake the feeling that her Je’daii heritage was easy to see.
“In the corner, round table,” Maxhagan said. “I’ll bring drinks.”
“We’re not thirsty,” Lanoree said.
“But I am.” He shoved his way toward the bar, and Lanoree scanned the tavern. It was filled with workers, their jobs sometimes apparent, sometimes not. All manner of people, species, creeds. None appeared to be armed. She glanced at Tre, pleased that he’d concealed his blaster well.
By the time she’d examined the corner booth to make sure it appeared safe, Maxhagan was with them again. He must have had his bodyguards. But Lanoree was slightly disturbed that she could not make them out in the crowd.
“Did you find him?” she asked.
“Your brother? Yes.” He took a huge drink from an opaque glass.
“Where is he? Still on Nox?”
“No,” Maxhagan said.
Lanoree’s spirits slumped, but she kept her eyes on Maxhagan. Inside he was laughing. Playing with her.
“He’s not on Nox. He’s aside from it. In a place that in diplomatic terms is not here at all.”
“Explain,” she said.
“You’re young for a Ranger, aren’t you?” He sat back on the bench and relaxed, resting his hands on his ample stomach. It was the fact that he made his smile touch his eyes that troubled Lanoree the most.
“Not particularly. And what has my age got to do with anything?”
“Young Je’daii often don’t know as much as older Je’daii. They’re not told as much. Secrets have a way of being … passed down. I should know. I deal in secrets.”
Lanoree drank, taking the opportunity to look around the noisy, smoky tavern. She didn’t like Maxhagan using the word Je’daii so much, but no one seemed to be listening. Her Force senses alert, the irony that both men she sat with were shielded from her was obvious.
“Your brother is visiting a place that still sometimes carries out commissions for your people. It’s called Pan Deep. It’s in the base of the central tower, in its roots, its oldest foundations. Close enough to the surface to benefit from Greenwood Station’s life-support systems and infrastructure but deep enough to survive when the Je’daii bombed us during the war. Closed off enough to be … somewhere else.”
“I’ve never heard of—” Lanoree began.
“Of course not. It’s a secret. But don’t you wonder why Greenwood Station only suffered a flesh wound? The domes around were reduced to nothing. The people fried or crushed or blasted. But here …” He raised a hand as if indicating the ruptured dome, repaired now, where a Je’daii attack had scooped out a small portion of the city.
“So how do I get there? What does this place do?” she asked, but she already knew. Dal was having his device built there. A sense of urgency took her, and she calmed her excitement.
“High-end tech stuff,” Maxhagan said. “Very high. Military. Sometimes beyond. Really advanced science that I can’t even be bothered to try to understand.” He smoothed a hand back over his bald head and past his ear, smiling softly. “I’ve used the place myself, on occasion. I have an interest in it, and even more of an interest in those who would use it.”
“He’s there now?” Lanoree asked. “With his Stargazers?”
“He landed two days ago, and his ship is still in the spaceport outside the city. But I don’t know how many people landed with him.”
“Tell us how to get into Pan Deep,” Lanoree said.
“You’re that desperate to speak with your brother, Lanoree? And, Tre … you’re that eager to help?”
“Yes, and yes,” Tre said, answering for both of them.
Maxhagan glanced aside, and for the first time Lanoree saw movement across the tavern that sparked her senses. Two human men, short but strong, and neither seemed to be paying their drinks any attention. They stared down at the table where they sat, concentrating. Listening. The glint of metal in their ears.
Lanoree leaned across the table, pleased to see Maxhagan pull back. “You know who and what I am,” she said. “You might mock my youth, but you’re an older man who’s survived all these years doing what you do. That’s because you’re wise. You court safety. So you’ll know not to mess with a Je’daii, Maxhagan. We’ve paid you for information, which is gratefully received. So now we’ll be on our way.”
Maxhagan’s smile remained on his lips but faded from his eyes. “Are you threatening me?”
“Yes.”
With the three of them frozen that way, Lanoree ranged her senses out across the tavern. The two men, staring at the table. A Wookiee at the bar. A Zabrak just outside the door, a triple-barreled blaster concealed in her backpack but within easy reach. Three Noghri laughing uproariously in another corner, blades tied to their legs, claws equipped with artificial poison sacs. All Maxhagan’s people, all watching her.
If things went wrong, it would be a bloodbath. And Lanoree did not have time to be killing.
“Nice doing business with you,” Maxhagan said, grinning. He pushed a small memory pod across the table, holding out his hand palm up. Lanoree swept up the pod. And against all her instincts, she shook his hand. “Good luck.”
“I don’t rely on luck,” Lanoree said. She left the tavern without looking back, sensing Tre behind her all the way. Eyes followed them out. They passed the Zabrak waiting outside, and Lanoree nodded at her.
“He could have told us more,” Tre said as they walked back across the square. “You’re not expecting there to be much on that pod, are you?”
“There was plenty he wasn’t telling us,” Lanoree said. “But the place will be easy to find. Trust me.” As she walked, making sure they weren’t followed, she slipped the pod into her wrist computer and accessed the Peacemaker’s main computer. She instructed it to read the pod—carefully, and with full protective protocol in case Maxhagan had tried to pass on a parasite—and search for construction plans of Greenwood Station. “Come on. No time to waste.”
She imagined her parents’ faces were she to tell them that Dal was still alive. And she remembered their expressions the one time she had gone home since becoming a Ranger—as if they had lost her as well.
Lanoree could not breathe a word of this to her mother and father until it was over. And even then, she would only tell them if everything ended well.
If she had to kill Dal, that secret would follow her to the grave.
The ship located the newest construction plans it could find for Greenwood Station’s central core and transmitted them to Lanoree’s wrist unit. As the midnight siren sounded across the dome, Lanoree and Tre entered an abandoned warehouse in District Four. They were very close to the central column here, and, looking up, Lanoree could see the countless lights belonging to those who lived there. So many up there profited from what lay below, but that was always the case. The ruling classes always set themselves higher.
From the plans, Lanoree could see that the subterranean Greenwood Station was not a quiet place. The foundations of the newer city were made from old, tumbled buildings of the past. There were artificial structures deep underground, their uses not always obvious. There were also transport routes, massive tunnels carved into the city’s substructure along which the largest of its products were transported to its spaceport ready for export. Along with life-support systems, water reservoirs, waste-management plants, power centers, and storage facilities, the city was almost as expansive belowground as it was above.
But the place she sought, Pan Deep, was not actually that far below the rest of Greenwood Station. What set it apart was that it was built within the central tower’s deep foundations.
It took some time to negotiate their way through the first subterranean level toward the tower. Lanoree sought to keep their movements covert; she was already uncomfortable that Maxhagan knew their destination and certain that he had withheld information from them. But she’d grown weary of his games. She was sure he was a consummate liar, but she had to assume he was telling the truth about Dal and Pan Deep.
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.