Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (19 page)

Heat built around the Peacemaker’s nose, shimmering their view and then hazing it
out completely. The window’s shields closed automatically, and Lanoree kept her eyes
on the scanners to maintain manual control.

“Really,” she said. “It’ll be bumpy.”

“Trying to get rid of me?” Tre asked. “Don’t worry. I think I’ll stay here. Strapped
in.”

Even after six days, she
still
didn’t like him sitting in the cockpit beside her, because she couldn’t talk to herself
anymore.

The Peacemaker started to vibrate as it carved its way down into the planet’s toxic
atmosphere. Lanoree swung the ship to the left and down, increasing the speed and
angle of descent, and every now and then she glanced sidelong at Tre to see how he
was taking this. Spaceflight was simple compared to the traumas of entering an atmosphere.
And despite all he’d said, he seemed calm and confident with what was happening.

“Almost there,” she said.

“Good.” He exhaled deeply, as if suddenly aware that she was watching. “Don’t like
this at all.”

They dropped, and soon Lanoree leveled them out, flying above Nox and feeling the
ship’s responses at being back in an atmosphere again through her hands. The Peacemaker
was rattled but unbroken. It cruised.

Lanoree skimmed them along the coast of one of the largest continents,
flying low enough to avoid basic radar-based scanners but not too low to be dangerous,
and a while later she edged them inland toward their destination.

There was no saying whether Dal and the Stargazers were here yet. Just as when they’d
entered Nox’s atmosphere, Lanoree knew that they were flying blind.

The destruction was worse than she could have imagined.

Lanoree remembered some of the Despot War. She’d been only thirteen at the time, but
she would never forget watching her parents leaving home, false smiles hiding the
fear that they might leave their children as orphans. She had watched the holos and
heard the reports, but her real knowledge of the war came from what she’d read and
seen of it down through the intervening years. At the time it was happening, war was
always confused. The truth emerged afterward.

She’d learned about the Despot Queen Hadiya uniting Shikaakwa’s crime barons under
her charismatic rule and then attempting to exert her influence across the rest of
the settled worlds. There had been a surprisingly enthusiastic rallying to her cause,
as she promised safety and wealth and a freedom from Je’daii interference. Denying
the Force, demonizing it to all who followed and listened, her aggression had been
brutal but short-lived. The Je’daii swore to confront any moves made against them,
and also to protect all those who did not wish to be subjugated beneath Hadiya’s rule.

After a period of phony war, during which there were many small skirmishes in space
and on some of Kalimahr’s moons, Hadiya had taken the war to Tython. Working in secret
she had built a formidable army, well equipped and heavily armed, and had taken the
Je’daii somewhat by surprise. The invasion was massive, brutal, and the battles fierce.
But the Je’daii had the Force on their side, and everything Hadiya hated had worked
against her. The defining moment of the war had been catastrophic. Following Hadiya’s
death at Kaleth and the defeat of her armies, it had taken a long time to count the
true cost of the conflict. A hundred thousand Tythans dead. Ten times that many of
Hadiya’s forces, and many more seriously injured. Wounds ran deep, and remained so
even now, more than a decade later.

Before Lanoree now was one such wound.

She knew about the manufacturing domes on Nox that had been bombed by the Je’daii—attacked
for providing arms and weapons for Hadiya’s armies—and she had seen holos of the act
itself. But holos were at a distance, imagination was limited by experience. Nothing
could prepare her for seeing the truth with her own eyes. It was startling to see
how effective a Je’daii military strike could be, and though Lanoree had seen plenty
of combat, she had never been involved in a full-scale war.

She didn’t even know the name of the first ruin they passed. Her Peacemaker flitted
quickly by, but the scale of the devastation was still staggering. The city must have
been eight kilometers in width, and now very little of its original protective dome
remained. The ruins inside were a charred, melted mess, holding lakes of rancid water
and pointing accusatory slivers of wrecked buildings at the sky.

It was a relief to pass the destruction and fly across undisturbed ground, even if
that landscape was so obviously polluted and poisonous. Very little grew here. And
if any creatures were able to live and breathe in the rank air, they did not make
themselves known.

They passed another dome on their starboard side, several kilometers distant yet still
plainly visible as a scar on the landscape.
Every scar tells a story
, Lanoree thought, and this tale must have been terrible. A portion of the dome remained,
shattered and starred by multiple projectile impacts, and detritus from the city was
scattered across the surrounding plains. The explosions that had finished this dome
must have been immense.

She felt sickness welling inside, and a sense of hopelessness enveloped her. The Force
offered so much, yet still there was the need for conflict, pain, and death. A thousand
people might be peace loving and committed to living their lives well, but it took
only one to plant a seed of poison that would spread through the population. How many
of the Despot Army’s million dead would still be alive today were it not for Hadiya?
Perhaps most of them. Some might harbor dislike of the Je’daii or some vaguely unsettled
sense of mistrust. Hatred, even. But without someone with Hadiya’s charisma and determination,
such feelings remained inside, unfocused. She had made them manifest, and on her hands
was the blood of a million victims on both sides.

“Seeing it really brings it home,” Tre said. He sounded so distressed, so genuine,
so not like Tre Sana. Lanoree could almost like him.

She turned the Peacemaker and tracked Greenwood Station on her scanner. It was a riot
of movement—ships lifting and landing, and large ground transports moving around the
massive dome. But she was more concerned with traces of ships closer to her. If Greenwood
Station had anything like an organized military, or a defense force funded by the
great manufacturing conglomerates, they would detect the Peacemaker soon.

And her arrival had to remain covert. That was essential, because if Dal and his Stargazers
knew where and when she had arrived, their reaction would be instant. This was a much
wilder place than Kalimahr, and they had hardly been careful there.

Twenty-six kilometers out from Greenwood Station, two small sentry ships rose from
the landscape a kilometer ahead and accelerated toward the dome.

Lanoree reacted instantly, flicking a switch to block their communications systems.
She heard a few panicked words—

“Greenwood Four? Greenwood Four, you reading this? Je’daii incoming, Peacemaker class,
must be the one we’ve been waiting for! We’ll lead it in but I’m not engaging that,
no way, we’ll leave it to Greenwood’s pulse cannons to—”

—before shutting off the comlink.

“They sound friendly,” Tre said.

Lanoree ignored him. She stroked a pad on the joystick and the weapons system fired
up, casting a gleaming blue grid across the cockpit window. The two sentry ships were
outlined in red, and a series of readings down the left-hand side showed the Peacemaker’s
readiness. Three lines turned quickly from white to green—targeting, plasma missile,
laser cannon, all online.

“Really?” Tre asked.

“I’m not here to start a war,” Lanoree said. “And you heard them. They’re expecting
me. Dal must have warned them, maybe lied about why I’m here. If Greenwood Station
gets to know I’m here, war’s what it might be.”

She relaxed into her seat and felt the Force flowing through her,
nerve ends tingling, senses sharpened. She tweaked the joystick to the left and stroked
the trigger, and one of the ships exploded in a haze of fire and smoke.

The second sentry took evasive action, swinging up and to the right in an attempt
to drop back behind the Peacemaker. But fast though they were, these small atmospheric
craft were not designed for such complex maneuverability. Lanoree followed, and as
the ship reached the apex of its arc and slowed with the increased effort, she fired
the laser cannons. The sentry’s right wing exploded, and the craft started a long
spin to the ground.

Lanoree drifted around and finished it off. No need to let the pilot suffer any longer
than was necessary.

She breathed deeply and thought briefly of the people she had killed—their lovers
and friends, their families and stories. Je’daii were taught to empathize with anyone
they were forced to injure or kill, but Lanoree never attributed these thoughts to
the Force. They were all about being human.

“Great shooting!” Tre said. He clapped his hands together once, lekku meeting above
his head in a celebratory embrace.

“I just killed two people,” Lanoree said.

“But you had to!”

“Doesn’t make it any nicer. We’ll be landing soon. Part of Greenwood Station’s northern
sector was bombed during the war, we’ll get in through there.”

“You mean we’re landing
outside
the dome?”

“Do you think they’ll welcome a Peacemaker into their landing bays?”

Tre fell silent as Lanoree flew them toward the distant dome.

The ship settled, ticking and creaking as its engines wound down and its hull began
to cool. Lanoree usually liked this part of a long flight, imagining that the Peacemaker
was sighing with satisfaction at a job well done and slumping, ready to recharge its
muscles. But this was nowhere near the end of her journey.

She’d changed her clothes, donning a long flowing robe that hid her sword but made
her feel like a Dai Bendu monk.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Honestly?” Tre Sana asked. “After everything I’ve said, I still think I’d rather
stay on board than go out there.”

“Come on, Tre. You said my ship stinks.” She grinned and keyed the code for the ship’s
hatch.

A hiss, a groan, and the hatch swung down into a ramp, a breeze swirling around them
as atmospheres equalized. Even behind the air mask she wore, Lanoree swore she could
smell the rancid atmosphere of this place. And if she hadn’t been able to smell how
toxic it was, it was easy enough to see.

They exited the ship into a drifting yellowish haze. Tre followed her down the ramp,
the spare mask she’d found for him clinging to his face in all the wrong places. It
was made for a human, not a Twi’lek, but it would have to do. She didn’t plan on their
being outside for any longer than was necessary.

They’d landed in a dip in the ground, and Lanoree had skillfully drifted the ship
in against an overhanging spur of rock. It rested in shadow, but anyone looking even
casually would be able to find it easily. She wished she had time to camouflage it
somehow—dust, or even some of the ragged creeping plants that she now saw grew here
and there. But time was not on her side. She was very aware of the march of time and
that each moment moved Dal closer to carrying out his insane plan.

She signaled the ship to seal up behind them, and paused to watch the ramp fold in
and shut tightly. She caught a glimpse of Ironholgs just as the hatch closed. The
droid would protect the ship with everything it had, but she was still worried. This
might well have been the most hostile environment she had ever landed in.

Greenwood Station was a smooth curve in the distance, just visible through the haze.
She’d confirmed with Tre that this was indeed dawn on Nox, Tythos a blur just above
the horizon past the dome. The atmosphere was so heavy with toxic pollutants, pumped
out over millennia of mining and manufacturing, that Nox was denying the star itself.

Lanoree probed outward, sensing for trouble. There were life-forms close by, but not
many, and they were not sentients. She felt nothing dangerous, although she would
never lower her guard. Her
senses and caution were heightened now, and would remain so every moment she was here.

“This is nice,” Tre said, voice muffled by his mask.

“Keep quiet,” Lanoree said. “These masks don’t carry much air, and you’ll waste it.”

They walked across the desolate landscape toward the dome. By all accounts Nox had
once been a verdant world, and although much warmer than Tython, it had supported
vast forests of giant trees with huge leaves to bleed heat to the sky, beneath which
complex ecosystems existed. It was rumored that one large island on Nox had been home
to more species of birds and mammals than the whole of Tython. But settlers had quickly
made use of its rich metal deposits and endless wood supplies to build giant smelting
plants, extracting 90 percent of the metals used across the system. Over the space
of a thousand years, most of the forests had vanished into ash, and with them the
creatures they had supported. It had been a merciless despoliation of the planet,
but at the time the system had been a new, mysterious frontier, and those brought
there by the Tho Yor were desperate to make a home for themselves. The Je’daii were
finding their own path on Tython, and Nox’s settlers had let need, and greed, guide
their hands. It was desperately sad, but Nox was now beyond saving.

Anything left was clinging to life. Mutation had increased, and there was little plant
or animal life left on Nox that would have been recognizable by someone from seven
thousand years before.

Trees were gone, and the only plant life remaining was a low-growing, creeping scrub,
thin leaves gasping carbon dioxide from the tortured air, roots growing deep in their
search for nutrients. Small lizards scurried here and there. Lanoree saw snake trails
in the dusty soil, though she never spied a serpent. She guessed they kept themselves
out of sight, perhaps living most of their lives belowground where the air could not
kill them, the rains could not melt.