CHAPTER FIVE
SHARP EDGES
It will be the Great Journey. Journeyers may walk, or ride on beasts or in mechanical vehicles, but it will be their first self-sustained adventure across Tython’s surface, visiting each temple to learn and refine their talents in the Force. Tython is a tumultuous place, and our new home still has countless hidden corners and depths unplumbed. Every Journeyer will encounter different dangers. Many will find their travels treacherous and troubling. And there are inevitably some who will not survive. But to exist in smooth balance within the Force, one must first confront its sharp edges.
—Nordia Gral, first Temple Master of Padawan Kesh, 434 TYA
“I like the sense of floating. For someone like me it’s … freeing. Almost like there’s nothing to me at all. I sometimes think I’m one of the cloud creatures that live deep within the Obri atmosphere. Huge, immaterial. That’s what I sometimes think.”
“They’re speculation,” Lanoree said. “A mystery. No one’s ever really seen one.”
“I know,” Kara said. “I like the idea of that, too.”
Lanoree was not sure whether Kara was a poet or a madwoman. Either way, perhaps she would tell Lanoree what she had come to discover.
After leaving the Pits, Lanoree and Tre had traveled to the base of this tower. Tre had announced their presence to the sentry system. An air elevator had whisked them up to the two-hundredth floor. The view as they rose was staggering, and they had both stared silently from the clear elevator pod. As Lanoree had felt the silvery light of Kalimahr’s three moons purging the stink of the Pits from her skin, she had meditated on the Force. Cleansing her mind. She would not forget the smells and sounds, and the deaths she had witnessed, but she no longer carried them with her.
“Well, it scares the shak out of me,” Tre said. He was standing close to one of the inner walls, back pressed to it, hands splayed flat. His lekku were wrapped protectively around his throat.
“Thank you for seeing us,” Lanoree said. “I understand you value your privacy.”
“I do,” Kara said. “But how could I turn down a request from a Je’daii Ranger?”
“Many do,” Lanoree said.
“The system is filled with fools.” Kara glided across the clear crystal floor of her apartment’s huge main room and approached a low table that was adorned with all manner of food and drink. “Refreshments?”
“Water, please.”
A droid poured, but Kara brought Lanoree her drink. This close, the Ranger saw just how huge the woman was. She was human, but her immense size made her appear like a different, unique species. She rode on a suspension unit that was hidden by her flowing robe. She was bald, as if her head had outgrown her hair, and where her robe parted Lanoree saw rolls of heavy flab and pale skin. There was a perfume to her that was not unpleasant, but beneath that was her own natural stench. Her arms had been artificially lengthened so that they could reach around her girth. Her face was so bloated that her eyes seemed to stare at each other. But however freakish she appeared, Lanoree knew that she could not underestimate Kara for one moment.
Handing the drink to Lanoree, Kara held on for just a moment too long, staring into the Ranger’s eyes.
“What?” Lanoree asked.
“A Je’daii, so pure,” Kara breathed. “Forgive me. It’s been years.” Those enigmatic words hanging in the air behind her, she floated back to the table and started eating.
Lanoree took a sip to steady her nerves, looking down at her feet as she swallowed. This large main room of the apartment was cantilevered over the top of the high tower, and its floor was composed of a thin, incredibly clear crystal. It gave the impression of standing on air, and at midnight the view below was staggering. Lights shifted and moved on the ground below, passing along the network of streets and squares surrounding the immense structure. And closer to the floor’s underside, the flashing nav beacons of small Cloud Cruisers and other craft darted back and forth around the tower.
Lanoree glanced at Tre. He was still at the edge of the room, trying his best not to look down. But he was also close to the door. She thought perhaps it was not only fear that kept him there but caution, and for the first time she was grateful for his presence.
“You’ll know why I’m here,” Lanoree said.
“I will?”
“My reasons already seem more widely known than I’d like.”
“Ah, yes. I heard about the attempt on your life.”
“Is that what it was?” Lanoree asked.
“A Noghri assassin explodes himself close to you. What else could it be?”
Unwillingness to be caught, Lanoree thought, but she did not reply.
“Yet you have me at a disadvantage,” Kara said. “I never leave here. I exist for myself and by myself.”
“I’m sure you have a long reach,” Lanoree said. She saw Tre breaking a smile behind Kara, but kept her own expression neutral.
“I make provisions to know what I need to know,” Kara said. She laughed softly. “I’m very, very rich. My businesses run themselves, but I still feed off information. It’s my obsession. And the only true universal currency.”
“Stargazers,” Lanoree said. She watched for any reaction, but other than a slight pause before replying, Kara gave nothing away.
“I know of them. Little to do with me.”
“You fund them.”
“I donate. They’re a charitable cause.”
“A sect of madmen,” Tre said.
“Only to those who don’t understand.”
“You’d seek to leave the system?” Lanoree asked.
“You wouldn’t?”
“No.” Lanoree shook her head, confused. A strange question. “This is home.”
Kara stared at her, and for an instant Lanoree felt something strange, as if an outside consciousness were scratching at the wall of her mind. Then the feeling was gone. But she tried to grab hold of it, analyze. It was like nothing she had ever felt before.
“Have you ever been to Furies Gate?”
“No,” Lanoree said.
“I have,” Kara said. “Many years ago, before I became like this, I was quite a traveler. It’s a minimum of three hundred days to reach that small planet, and not many make the journey. There’s really no reason to go there. But I felt … the need. The urge to push my boundaries. I’ve always felt that way, and I’ve done so physically as well as mentally. Even my appearance is a product of that urge. I spent twenty days there, at Fury Station, and most of the time I simply … looked. Out, into the Deep Core. Out, beyond anything anyone in the Tythan system knows. I wanted to see the glimmer of a Sleeper ship returning, one of those craft sent out over the millennia to return to the wider galaxy. I wanted to travel onward myself but knew that death would likely be the result. But even since turning my back on Fury Station and returning here, I have continued to look outward.”
“Gazing at the stars,” Lanoree said, and she remembered so much about her young brother—his anger that their ancestors had been brought to Tython, his wishes, his interests. They had never been her own. And yet there had always been that place inside her, the troubling presence of dark and light dancing their own fight.
“I’m not ashamed of it,” Kara said. “Many in the system look outward. Most only in their dreams, because day-to-day life doesn’t allow otherwise. But me … I’m rich. I can invest.”
“So you give the Stargazers money to seek a way to leave.”
Kara shrugged, and her immense body shivered and shook with waves of flab.
“You know my brother.”
“Brother?” Her confusion seemed genuine.
“Dalien Brock.”
That shuddering shrug again. “Honestly, I’ve never even met them. I fund several of their small temples around Kalimahr, give them somewhere to meet and talk. I pay for their contemplations.” She turned away from Lanoree, perhaps to lie. “They are only one of my interests.”
Lanoree tried to touch Kara’s mind but could not. The woman was a riot of feelings, thoughts, sensations; and if there was sense in that white noise Lanoree could not find it.
“They’re more than just a project to you,” Lanoree said.
“I’m a dreamer with money,” Kara said.
“So you fund them out of pure philanthropy.”
“Yes.” Kara continued grazing at the table, eating such dainty amounts for a woman so huge.
“I hear of Gree technology,” Lanoree said. Again, she watched for a reaction. Again, that strange scratching at her mind. Perturbed, she reached out, trying to sense who or what might be trying to read her. But there was nothing. Perhaps the feeling really did come from the inside. Maybe such questions were touching hidden desires planted there all those years ago by her younger brother’s interests. However much she tried, she could not deny her fascination with what had come before Tython.
Kara glanced at her and then started eating some more.
“The Gree,” Lanoree pressed.
The woman turned her back on Lanoree once more and settled closer to the table, her hover system gently touching the crystal floor. She sighed heavily, seeming to change shape within her clothes. Her shoulders relaxed.
“I’m tired,” she said. “Your audience is over. Speak to the Stargazers, if you must. Their nearest temple is in the eastern quarter of the Khar Peninsula. An old abandoned Dai Bendu temple that I own. Now leave.”
“I haven’t finished,” Lanoree said. “Tython, the whole system, might be in terrible danger from what your Stargazers are doing.”
“Leave!” Kara continued eating. And just for a moment, Lanoree recognized something about her. A manner, a presence, a bearing.
“You’re Je’daii?” Lanoree gasped. It seemed amazing, and yet it would explain that strange, insistent scratching at her mind. The shadow of Bogan passed across Lanoree’s mind, and she was even more confused.
“Once,” Kara said, laughing bitterly. “But no more. The Force is stale within me. Now leave, Ranger. I have my security, and they’re the best money can buy.”
And now suddenly she threatens me, Lanoree thought.
A cough, a thud, and Kara slid over onto her side, rolling from the hover platform and seeming to spill across the floor. Breath rattled in her throat.
“What have you—?”
“She’s out, that’s all.” Tre was holding a small weapon in one hand, barely the size of a finger. Stun tube. It carried one charge, but was effective for several hours. Or maybe less for someone of this size. He raised an eyebrow. “So now that you’ve spoken with her, do you want to find everything she wasn’t telling us?”
“You’ll bring her guards down on us!” Lanoree looked around the large room. She could not help partly agreeing with Tre’s actions. And whether she liked it or not, the time for talk was over. “Now that it’s done, we won’t have long.”
They started searching. Tre was haphazard, pulling open cupboards and throwing aside cushions from the several huge, low seats that lay around the place. But Lanoree tried to concentrate her efforts.
She let the Force flow and sought where a Je’daii might hide her secrets.
Was she once really Je’daii? she wondered. Or did she merely say that to confuse me? Kara was a player of games, that was for sure, answering some questions and dodging others. She seemed very open about her desires and ambitions. Yet there was still a mystery to her, and something far deeper and more complex than this fat woman confined to her own apartment. Rich she might be, and powerful, and she undoubtedly had a long reach. But Lanoree’s recognition of something about her—something Je’daii—was even more confusing.
There were some who trained with the Je’daii but then left Tython. It was usually at the Padawan phase, when children once strong with the Force seemed to lose that strength as they reached adulthood. There was no shame to it. And the Je’daii themselves admitted that on occasion they might make mistakes and take into training those who would never be comfortable and at balance with the Force.
My brother, for one, Lanoree thought. She stared at the slumped figure of Kara, rich benefactor of the Stargazers, and wished she could ask her more.
“Hurry!” Tre said. “The sentries might be coming even now.”
“Why would they?”
“Like she said, the best security that money can buy. They’ll have sensors for weapon discharges.”
“Oh, great,” Lanoree said. More conflict was the last thing she wanted here. Her brief time on Kalimahr had already been more eventful than she had hoped.
She looked down past her feet at the ground far below. A chaos of lights swarmed around the base of the tower, but there were three white lights rising quickly up the tower’s outer wall. Air elevators. She touched her collar and activated her comm.
“Ironholgs, I need you to bring the ship. We’re on the two-hundredth floor of Gazz Spire, eight kilometers southeast of the landing tower.”
Nothing.
“Did you hear me?”
Ironholgs answered, a splutter of static and groans. As usual, he sounded like an old man being woken from a comfortable sleep, but she already heard the background whine of the Peacemaker’s engines being prepped.
“What?” Tre asked.
“Company. We’ll be leaving soon.”
His wide-eyed fear could not have been feigned. “Leaving how?”
“Let’s worry about that when the time comes. Now search.” Lanoree turned and faced the wide panoramic windows looking out over Rhol Yan archipelago, trying to relax, remembering her Force-skills training and relishing the balance she could feel inside. Darkness and light, seeing and seeking. She surveyed the vast room, looking for where something might be hidden. A woman like Kara had plenty to hide, and not all of it the currency of secrets. She was a rich woman with a grand apartment and material wealth. She would have things to hide, too.
At the far corner of the room was a wall display of martial objects—blades, spears, maces, other striking weapons, all of them powered by the bearer alone. It did not surprise Lanoree that Kara might be a collector of such antiquities, and they did not interest her. What might be behind the display did.
There was no obvious door, but she sensed a hollow beyond the wall.
And she did not have time to find the hidden opening mechanism.
Lanoree drew her sword and struck. Sparks flew, and an intense surge of energy webbed across the display of old weapons, lighting them briefly with the Force. She struck again and a wall panel gave way. Several crossbows clattered to the floor.
Lanoree shouldered her way through the opening into the narrow space behind the wall.
“Those elevators are pretty close!” Tre called.
“Lock the doors. Barricade them. Give us as much time as you can.” Her voice sounded muffled in the small, unlit room, as if swallowed by something soft. Lanoree took a small glow rod from her belt and flicked it on.
The light flooded the room, and seeing what was in there gave context to the curious musty smell.
Books. Perhaps a dozen of them, each sitting on a plinth in a separate display case. It had been a long time since she’d even seen a book. Her parents had one—an old instruction tome written by the great Je’daii Master Shall Mar more than three millennia ago—and they showed it to her whenever she asked. She loved the printing, the care and attention that went into the production processes. But these …
She opened the first case, caught a whiff of must and age, and as she opened the book she realized that it was unique.
Not printed. Not mass-produced. This was handwritten.
Tre’s voice called, muffled by the wall between them. “They’re outside!”
Lanoree knew they did not have very long. “Ironholgs, how far away are you?” Her droid replied that the Peacemaker was moments away. “Good. Drop low, wait until you see me, then come in close.” A quizzical buzz from the comm. “Don’t worry. You won’t be able to miss us.” Opening the rest of the display cases, she winced at the damage she might be doing to these books. But time was not on her side. Flipping pages, her heart settling yet her mind moving faster than ever, at last she found what she was looking for.
She slipped the thin book into her jacket and left the room.
“Quickly!” Tre whispered. He was in the center of the large room, standing on one of the low seating areas so that he did not have to look down. Lanoree thought he was actually shaking with fear, his lekku touching nervously beneath his chin.
Kara groaned, her bulk shifting in a sickly, fluid movement. A comlink on the table beside her was glowing softly, call unanswered. Her security would already know that something was very wrong.
Lanoree dashed across to the wide, tall windows and beckoned Tre Sana after her.
“There?” he asked.
“You think we can leave any other way?”
Something crashed against the wide doors, three heavy impacts. A low table that Tre had upended against the doorway tilted and fell, smacking against the crystal floor.
Lanoree squinted through the window at the sea of lights below and around them, and then she saw the shape she wanted. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“Battle droids,” Tre said, arriving by her side. “All the rich hire them, private security, get them chipped and reprogrammed, more heavily armed. Some of them fought in the Despot War. I’ve even heard that some retain memories of their battles with the Je’daii, don’t like them, hate them, and some even dream of—”
“You’re babbling,” Lanoree said. “And droids don’t dream.”
“I told you, I don’t like heights.”
More impacts from beyond the room. And then a louder, deeper thud vibrated through the floor and the doors burst open in a blast of smoke, flame, and torn metal.
Lanoree drew her sword again and faced the door. Three droids entered, short, thin units designed for speed and offering narrow targets for any aggressor to hit. Their fist-sized heads twirled as they scanned the room.
Lanoree pressed her hand to Tre’s chest to still him, and she felt his heart hammering against her palm.
And then without warning the droids opened fire.
Lanoree swept her sword left and right, catching and deflecting blasts from their weapons. Tre shrank down behind her. She concentrated, her stance perfectly balanced, and with her free hand she Force-punched a droid back against the wall. It struck, fell, and then quickly rose again. It was scarred with several old blast injuries. Battle hardened.
“Get ready!” Lanoree shouted.
“For what?”
“You’ll know when it happens.” She angled the sword and deflected several blasts back against the window. Crystal shattered, and a large slab of the window burst outward with a heavy crump! Wind whistled into the room, sweeping food-laden plates from the table, and Lanoree saw Kara’s eyes flicker open.
Sword still shifting before her, Lanoree clawed her left hand, lifting one droid and flinging it at another. A blast caught it and it blew apart, a brief shriek of tortured metal followed by a hail of white-hot components ricocheting around the room.
Lanoree knew she didn’t have much time. She could Force-jump across the room and take on the two remaining battle droids, but right then destroying them was not the priority.
The priority was escape.
She turned, grabbed Tre around the waist, and leaped from the shattered window.
The wind stole her breath. It grabbed them and spun them around as they spiraled down from Kara’s overhanging apartment, drawing them in close to the tower so that windows flitted by in a blur. It roared in her ears. Lanoree squinted, ignoring Tre’s scream of terror as they plummeted, struggling to hold him.
Laser blasts flashed by them and there was nothing she could do, no way she could gather her thoughts to protect them from the sustained fire coming from the shattered window above. She only hoped—
The Peacemaker drifted from the shadow of the tower and dipped below them, dropping, engines roaring, matching their speed so that the impact as they struck its upper surface was as gentle as possible. Lanoree grunted and clasped Tre as they hit, flailing with her other hand that still held the sword. Given a choice of which to drop, she knew the weapon would win out. But she hoped she did not have to make that choice.
Laser blasts ricocheted from the ship’s curved hull, but Ironholgs remote piloted the ship perfectly. They flew a gentle circle around the tower so that the droids could no longer hit them with fire from above, then the craft hovered to give them the chance to get inside.
The Peacemaker’s top hatch whispered open.
“After you,” Lanoree said.
Tre scrambled across the ship’s smooth back and tipped inside headfirst.
Lanoree dropped in beside Tre, landing softly on her feet, and the hatch closed above her. At home once more, she hardly even swayed as the ship powered away from Rhol Yan and out across the dark sea.
“Are you mad?” Tre shouted. “Insane? What if your ship hadn’t been there, what if—”
She raised one hand, silencing him, and took a deep, calming breath. “A simple thank you would be fine.”
With the Peacemaker’s computers patched in to Kalimahr’s nav sats and the ship flying across the ocean toward the Khar Peninsula, Lanoree wanted to use the time to take stock. At first Tre Sana tried to talk, but she held up a finger in warning and nodded at her cot.
“Sit. Still. Quiet. You’re on my ship now. It was easy getting you on board. It’d be even easier for me to fling you off.”
“You call that easy?” he spat.
“The cot! And silence.”
Tre sat, his lekku so pale they were almost pink. He was all front, but Lanoree could see his relief at having a chance to rest.
She turned the cockpit seat toward the front and sat back for a moment, staring at the sea flashing by below. Moonlight caught the waves. Ships’ lanterns speckled the surface, and here and there the navigation lights of airborne craft moved across the night. It was clear, and a swath of stars smeared the sky. Her ancestors had come from somewhere out there, and now her brother was preparing to risk everything to travel there once again.
Her brother, and others.
Lanoree was aware of the dreadful danger Dal’s efforts might be putting Tython and the wider system in, and it chilled her to even imagine him getting close to his aims. But at moments like this, looking up at the stars, she could not hold back her interest. Her fascination. In many ways she was as curious as anyone about their origins, but she went about feeding that curiosity in different ways.
Kara had appeared quite open about her affiliation with the Stargazers. Her Je’daii past was a mystery, especially as she now exuded dislike for their society and beliefs. If the information she’d imparted was correct, she had willingly sent them to a Stargazer temple, and perhaps one step closer to Dal. Yet she had also been hiding secrets.
Lanoree had brought one of them with her.
Quietly, she took the book from her jacket and placed it on the control panel before her. She sensed no movement from Tre. If he so much as stood from the cot in the living area behind her, she would be aware, and she did not need any Je’daii senses to know this. The Peacemaker ship was as much her home as the one with her parents had ever been, and she knew every waft of air, every creak of loose paneling, and every shadow cast by the ceiling lights or control panel indicators. She was safer here than anywhere.
The book was leather bound, its cover worn around the edges and blank. It was thin; perhaps fifty pages. Age emanated from it, a combination of its hand-worn appearance; the faint smell of dust; and the mere fact that it was a book of paper, card, and ink. There were those who still produced books, but only as novelty or special items.
This was the real thing.
How many have touched this? she wondered. How many have stared at it as I am now, readying themselves to see inside? Haunted by history—the scent of lost times, the feel of ages—it represented something that no flatscreen or holo display ever could.
She opened the cover and looked at the first page. The little that was printed there was in a strange symbology she only faintly recognized. She ran her fingertips across the page and felt grittiness beneath them, the dust of ages.
Stroking a pad on the arm of her seat, she listened for Tre as a small globe rose from the Peacemaker’s control panel. He was silent and still.
Lanoree picked up the globe and twisted it to aim at the book. It floated beside her right cheek, and when she touched the pad again it flickered on and started to hum softly. A faint blue light splashed on the book, and beneath it the symbols started to shiver.
It took longer than she had expected. The print seemed to flow and shift, though only within the globe’s blue light, and at last the shimmering settled into words she could read.
The Gree, and Everything I Have Found of Them in the Old City. The name below was Osamael Or. And that name rang in Lanoree’s memory.
Frowning, she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes to concentrate. Who was it? Where did she know that name from? She looked again, out at the stars so far away from everything she knew and loved, and the concept of exploration came to her. What was she, if not an explorer? A Ranger of the Je’daii, a traveler of this system that still contained countless unknowns even though it had been inhabited for ten thousand years. There was so much more to know—mysteries, confusions, ambiguities. There were …
“There are depths,” she whispered. These, too, were the words of Osamael Or, and she remembered where she had heard them before. A bedtime story from her father, told so long ago and never remembered again until now. Even after everything that had happened with her and Dal, the Je’daii temples, the search, and what she had found of him. Even then she had not thought of that time almost twenty years before when her father sat in the chair beside her bed, long hair loosened to flow across his shoulders, hands folded on his chest as he relayed the cautionary tale of Osamael Or and his final, greatest adventure—in the depths of the Old City, where he insisted there were secrets still to be found. So he embarked on his next expedition alone, because by then no one wanted to go with him anymore. They said he was mad. They said there were more important things to do across Tython, and that the surroundings were too dangerous. This was nine thousand years ago, you have to remember, back at a time when dreadful Force Storms still ravaged the planet and the Je’daii were sometimes swept along with them, instead of taking power and balance from them. There were many like Osamael Or back then. Frontiersmen, they called themselves, but for Osamael Or the greatest frontiers did not necessarily exist at the greatest distances. So he went down into the Old City on Talss alone. And he was never seen again. They searched for him. His family felt a sense of responsibility, though they thought him mad as everyone else. So they looked, but nothing was ever found, and no one was willing to go deep. “There are depths,” Osamael had told his sister the night before he went, and she repeated his final words whenever anyone asked her about her brother. Because she was the one member of the family who insisted he was still alive. “He’s still exploring down there, in those depths,” she’d say. “He’s going deeper, and finding more, and one day he’ll emerge with news that will astound us all.” But he never did come back. And that’s why the Old City is such a dangerous place, my sweet Lanoree. Because there are depths.
“Osamael Or’s diary,” Lanoree whispered, awed. For her to be holding this, now, nine thousand years later … he must have come back.
A chill went through her, as if someone from a great distance touched the deepest part of her, and knew her.
She turned the page and started reading.