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.
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.
“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.
“Look,” Tre said, pointing. “Another door there.” He was almost shouting, and blood ran from his ears. Lanoree also heard the fading whine from her tortured eardrums, but that was the least of her worries.
“That Cathar’s bomb can’t have done that,” she said, pointing at the rent in the wall. It was on the opposite side of the room from the doorway the explosion had blocked.
“There was another explosion when I was trying to wake you,” Tre said. “Far away, up there. To feel it down here it must have been big. What’s happening? What have we started?”
“A war. And Dal started it. Come on. We’ve got to stop him leaving Greenwood Station.”
“I feel sick,” Tre said. “It stinks. My head hurts. I think my skull might be—”
“I’ll break it myself,” Lanoree said. “Come on! Help me with this door.” She searched the room for her sword, knowing she would not find it, mourning its loss. Tem Madog himself had forged that sword for her. She’d rather have lost an arm.
Perhaps it had been dropped somewhere beyond that blocked doorway. Or maybe Dal had taken it with him.
They tried the door, but it was electronically locked.
“Cover your ears,” Lanoree said. She concentrated on the lock and Force-shoved, crushing the mechanism and shorting the circuits. The door slid open, and a flood of sewage washed in around their feet. She and Tre clasped hands to keep their balance. The thought of falling into that mess …
When the levels of filth had equalized, they left the room and emerged into one of Pan Deep’s corridors. It was long and empty, and several other doors led off it. They were all closed, marked only with laboratory numbers, and Lanoree had no wish to open them. Soft, reactive lighting glowed behind ceiling panels, and on the walls were touch panels, 3-D holo screens, and several indentations that might have housed implement printers. This was advanced tech for a place so hidden away. The money pumped into Pan Deep must have been vast.
They saw no one else. Perhaps the six murdered scientists were the only ones who worked here. Or maybe Dal had paid others to stay away.
Not much of a head start, she thought, but he’ll know his way up, would have an escape route planned from here and from the city. She could barely believe the enormity of the events that Dal had set in motion. Initiating a battle between two domes—cities whose specialty was the design and manufacture of weapons of war—was as good as murdering the battle’s victims himself. All to cover his tracks.
It was brutal. It was inhuman. He claimed freedom from the Force, but willingly removing himself from its influence had made him a monster.
Pan Deep was not as large as she’d imagined. At the end of the corridor they emerged into a rough cavern, at the other end of which a string of lights led into a tunnel that sloped slowly upward. The cavern floor was swilling with sewage and the stink was almost unbearable, but Lanoree knew that a person could get used to a lot in extreme circumstances. Even Tre was surprising her. He’d quickly stopped complaining and wiped the blood from his face and ears, and now he nudged her shoulder and pointed.
“Think he’ll have set traps?”
“He thinks we’re dead,” she said.
Another blast rumbled down from above, spilling grit and dust from the cavern ceiling. From somewhere close by came a shattering, grinding crack, shaking the floor and setting the air itself vibrating.
“And we don’t have time for caution,” Lanoree said. “I think they’re using plasma bombs up there. We’ve got to get clear of Greenwood Station and back to the Peacemaker, or this will be our grave.”
“Laid to rest in a bath of shak,” Tre said. “Well, I guess I had it coming.”
Lanoree laughed out loud. Tre’s eyes went wide with surprise. And then they ran.
It was a journey through a nightmare—flowing sewage, crumbling walls, three security grilles that Lanoree had to Force-shove open before they could continue—and what made it worse was the uncertainty of what they were moving toward. The farther they went, the louder the noises of battle. But they had little choice.
Frustration and fear drove her on. Not fear for herself so much as for the countless people who Dal’s scheme would put at risk, and not only those now dying in the conflict initiated here. Seeing the shape of the device beneath the dust sheet had been strange—that something so small might contain such energies. The pursuit had clouded her thoughts about the hypergate, and the truth or not of its existence. But seeing Dal again, and his madness, and being so close to the device that might be born of Gree technology had all combined to focus her thoughts.
It was just possible that the device would work, which would be amazing, and the consequences of that she could not allow herself to consider. But it was much more likely that it would doom them all.
The farther they fled from beneath the massive tower’s foundation, the greater the impact of the explosions. When she reached her Peacemaker she would contact the Je’daii Council and tell them of events here, and maybe they could intervene in time to prevent a greater tragedy. But doing so might be admitting their continued interest in Greenwood Station and the laboratories and expertise of Pan Deep. Perhaps they would be happier to let the domed city meet its fate and fade away from memory.
Their route took them upward, and Tre commented several times that they should have already reached street level. But they had no time to pause, and when Lanoree consulted her wrist unit, the schematics were confused. She could not pin down their location on the plans.
People passed by them in both directions, none sparing them a glance. They were all wide-eyed and scared.
At last they reached a set of heavy blast doors. Lanoree used the Force to fry their controls, and Tre found a heavy iron bar to pry them open. Heat and noise flooded in, the stenches and sounds of chaos, and Lanoree stumbled through onto a wide balcony several stories above the ground. They had emerged just above the base of the central tower, overlooking Greenwood Station’s western side. The sounds, sights, and chaos of war were almost overwhelming.
They were confronted with a scene that took their breaths away.