CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SAD HISTORY
Perhaps there is a madness in remaining on Tython while not strong in the Force. One would not submerge long beneath the surface of the sea if one did not possess gills. One would surface. One would escape. So to stay here, now … that way, insanity lies.
—Unknown Tythan, circa 9,000 TYA
When Master Dam-Powl knocks on her door and disturbs her from sleep, Lanoree knows that something is wrong. She has been expecting it. Like the sense of imminent danger always apparent at Anil Kesh because of the Chasm below, her own perception of Dal has been of a coiled spring. Now, the time has come. Dal has sprung.
“He’s a fool!” Dam-Powl says as they march along the corridor. “I saw trouble in him the moment you arrived. As did Master Kin’ade.”
“At Stav Kesh?” Lanoree asks.
“Of course. You think the Je’daii Masters don’t talk among ourselves about those on their Great Journeys?”
“What has he done?” Lanoree asks.
“He fled into the Abyss of Ruh. Put lives in danger.”
“He’s gone?” breathes Lanoree.
“Oh, no. Not gone. They pulled him out and are bringing him back. They’re just coming in to land.” Dam-Powl climbs a staircase and a heavy door slides open before her. Wind roars, rain splashes in across the floor, and Force lightning thrashes about the square of night sky revealed.
Oh, Dal, what have you done? Lanoree thinks. He has been gone for four days, taken with others by Master Quan-Jang on a visit to the Riftlands to collect specimens for the alchemical labs here at Anil Kesh. At first she welcomed his absence; it gave her the opportunity to study in peace with no concerns about what Dal might be doing. But her dreams these past three nights had been troubled. It was almost as if she knew that something terrible was going to happen. She follows the Je’daii Master outside. There is someone else out there already, standing at the edge of the platform and looking east. A Cloud Chaser is visible, drifting down toward one of Anil Kesh’s landing zones.
“Master,” the young man says, turning to greet them. He barely glances at Lanoree. “Master Quan-Jang reports that the Journeyer said nothing. But he appears fit and well.”
“Good,” Dam-Powl says. “The others?”
“Sickened from their time in the Abyss.” He looks pointedly at Lanoree then. “It is a place of dark, dangerous energies.”
Lanoree glances over the handrail and looks down into the Chasm. She feels woozy, and it’s Dam-Powl’s hand that steadies her.
“Breathe long and deep,” the Master whispers. “The Force is very strong in you, and so the Chasm plays with you.”
“That’s what you think it is?” Lanoree asks. “Playing?”
Dam-Powl smiles enigmatically. “A turn of phrase.”
“So what will happen?”
“Happen?”
“To Dal?”
It’s the other Je’daii who replies. “We ensure that he’s fit and well, unharmed from his escapades. And then we will arrest him and escort him from Anil Kesh first thing in the morning.”
“Escort him where?”
The Je’daii’s face is grim. “Once beyond the temple, he can go where he wishes.”
“Banishment,” Lanoree says.
“I think we’ll actually be saving his life.”
So is this how my brother’s sad story ends? Lanoree wonders. But she thinks not. Dal has a weight to him, increasing the farther he removes himself from the Force. In her dreams, at their worst, his end comes with terrible greatness.
“I’d like to wait here for him,” she says. The Cloud Chaser has touched down now, visible between skeins of low cloud. “Speak to him when he arrives.”
“I’ll wait with you.” The Je’daii bows. “Journeyer Skott Yun.”
Lanoree starts to object, but she realizes it was not a request. “Lanoree Brock,” she says.
“I know.” Skott Yun smiles.
“Afterward, bring him down to me,” Dam-Powl says. “I’ll go to make sure the medical bay is ready to receive those others still sickening.”
Yun bows his head as the Master turns and leaves.
Lanoree watches her go, surprised at Dam-Powl’s confidence in Dal’s well-being.
“I’ll fetch your jacket for you,” Yun says. “It can grow cold out here.”
It takes Quan-Jang and the others a surprisingly long time to reach the temple from the landing zone. Yun tries talking, but Lanoree is too distracted and troubled to enter into any meaningful conversation. Most of the time she stands with her eyes closed, her thoughts her own.
It is Yun who finally announces their arrival. They arrive at the temple on foot, Master Quan-Jang in the lead. There are ten people behind him, three being carried on stretchers. Even though she sees Dal with them, he seems to walk alone.
“I’ll go to meet them,” Yun says. “Wait here and I’ll bring your brother.”
Lanoree waits, and watches. They climb the leg onto the temple, and Yun meets them at the far end of the viewing platform.
Dal seems even more apart from them all than she first thought. There is no expression on his face, and he doesn’t seem to acknowledge where he is at all. He’s more hurt than Master Dam-Powl let on, Lanoree thinks. But she still wants him close so that she can assess his condition for herself. And she realizes that though it has only been four days, she has missed her brother.
Quan-Jang and the others move off into the temple, and Yun touches Dal’s shoulder. Then the two of them walk toward Lanoree, across the viewing platform that is buffeted by winds from below and heavy, warm raindrops from above.
“Dal,” she says as they reach her, but his expression gives her pause. So serious. So adult. There’s something expanded about him, as if since she saw him last he has grown to fit the world he will live in. He seems assured, too, and confident, even though his skin appears burned, his eyes puffy and red.
“I came to say good-bye, Lanoree,” he says. The words are strange and unexpected. He turns to leave, and Skott Yun stands before him.
“You’re to be arrested and—” the Journeyer begins.
“There are such depths,” Dal says. He is speaking directly to Lanoree. She wonders whether these are the last words they will ever share.
“What did you see?” she asks.
“Things you never can.” His eyes are so bright they seem to glow. “Such promises and opportunities down in the Abyss! Such depths, of history and potential. And now I must go elsewhere, to find something more. And so—”
“Dalien Brock,” Yun says, “you’re to accompany me to—”
Dal strikes out. Lanoree sees it coming and is surprised that Yun did not. But though the Journeyer may be comfortable at Anil Kesh, he has yet to visit Stav Kesh to learn the martial arts. Dal’s fist connects with his chin, and as Yun leans back, Dal spins and kicks him in the face. Another punch as he falls, and Lanoree hears bones break even before Yun strikes the metal platform.
“Dal!” Lanoree shouts, but she sees her brother’s determination. I cannot lose him now! She goes for him, reaching out, wishing to hold him and try to undo everything that has passed between them since leaving home. It is a naive wish, and one that suits a child more than the Je’daii woman Lanoree is becoming. But familial love is a powerful force in itself.
From the corner of her eye she sees Skott Yun lift himself on one elbow and then raise his other hand, pointing toward Dal.
“No!” she shouts. “Don’t try to—” She will always wonder whether her voice gave Dal warning, and whether in fact she wanted that.
The moment she speaks, Dal crouches and spins on one heel, his robe billowing as he brings one hand out from beneath its folds. His blaster coughs. Skott Yun cries out and is shoved across the platform by the impact. Blood bursts from his back, and his clothing smokes.
“Dal,” Lanoree breathes, feeling weak and suddenly hopeless. This is the point when everything goes too far.
“Good-bye, Lanoree,” he says again. And then he is gone, dashing across the platform and climbing a sloping ladder fixed into the temple’s curved wall.
She should stay to help Yun. She kneels briefly by his side and examines the wound, and though still breathing, she knows that he will not survive. Lanoree should stay to tell Master Dam-Powl what has happened.
But instead she chases her brother. Up onto the temple’s high wall, across its curved roof where deep ditches channel water and moss makes the surface treacherous, following his distant shadow through the increasing downpour until he scurries down one of the massive legs toward solid ground.
Her first Great Journey ends, and her pursuit of her brother begins.
“Your brother did this?” Tre gasped.
“So he said.”
“But how?”
“A word in the right ear. A rumor, a threat, a challenge. A murder.”
“It’s … monstrous. It’s terrifying.”
Lanoree could not argue.
The air was filled with violence. Smoke, screams, the pounding and roaring of weapons, and the groaning and grinding of the giant dome under stress. They had emerged onto a balcony just above the base of the central tower. To the west was the previously damaged area of the dome, with its massive buttresses and chaotic-looking repairs sealing it from the toxic air outside. And to the south, an attack was under way.
Several large parts of Greenwood Station’s dome had been destroyed, the ragged holes still smoking and dropping burning, molten detritus to the buildings and streets far below. The dome’s atmosphere screamed as it was vented to the outside, as if in distress at mixing with the toxic clouds beyond. At the nearest of these wounds in the protective skin, Lanoree could see several large, bulky shapes—battle droids—hunkered low by the hole and firing laser cannons into the city. The barrage seemed to be indiscriminate, and many fires were already taking hold. The battle droids edged forward and the first of them dropped, retros beneath its many arms firing to ease its descent.
A missile streaked from the tower above them and struck the droid. It bloomed fire, fell out of sight into a manufacturing district, and exploded. More missiles curved away from the tower, sweeping in graceful arcs and impacting the dome around the shattered area above. Some droids erupted in fiery death, others tumbled across the outside of the dome. More dark shapes replaced them and the barrage began again.
At another smashed section an attack ship hovered. A plasma cannon started pulsing into the ground close to the column’s base. Each impact was huge and shook the city, the ground, the air itself. Explosions of fire and smoke mushroomed up, and Lanoree could not help wondering how many people were dying with each impact. Beneath the central column, she thought, just where Dal would have told them Pan Deep lay. More rockets were fired from the tower, but as they approached the dome’s underside they evaporated into clouds of blazing white vapor. The attack ship had defenses. Lanoree could hardly imagine the destruction involved if it succeeded in getting inside.
“We’ve got to go!” Tre shouted above the noise, grabbing her arm. The balcony vibrated with each impact, and if the attack ship shifted its targeting by just a few degrees …
“Come on,” Lanoree said. She grasped Tre’s hand as he pulled away, squeezed to calm him. “Trust me!” Then she hauled him to the edge of the balcony and tipped over.
Any normal person would have been killed instantly by the fall. But Lanoree eased them down with the Force, slowing their descent and landing them with barely a jolt on the street below. People ran around them in confusion and terror. No one even seemed to notice them.
“Don’t ever do that again!” Tre shouted, almost hysterical.
“Next time I won’t hold your hand.” Lanoree ran, and Tre went with her.
Far to the south, hidden by smoke and the haze of many weapons, a ground battle seemed to be taking place. She could not make out the details, but she could just see the sparking impacts of artillery fire speckling the outside of the dome’s shell several kilometers in the distance, and the constant thump, thump of returning fire sang through the air. Hundreds of bright lights dropped from punctures in the dome. Battle droids, or perhaps even ground assault troops.
A much heavier impact sounded, like Nox itself shrugging. Lanoree felt a deep vibration that set buildings swaying. Glass smashed, wreckage showered down all around as weaker buildings started to break down. The air inside the dome seemed to momentarily blur, and outside the city’s huge skin the skies lit up.
“Incoming plasma bombs,” Lanoree said. “They’re being diverted for now. But they’ll get through soon enough.”
“So how can you help?”
“Help?”
“You’re a Je’daii, aren’t you?”
“We’re not magicians, Tre. You know that as well as anyone.”
“But this is—”
“We get out,” Lanoree said, “as fast as we can. Dal thinks we died down there, and all this is just to make sure. Whatever escape route he had is hidden to us, and he’ll be away and gone by now. But this, what he’s caused or initiated, is all for nothing. Because we’re going to survive, and we know he’s still alive.”
“Look!” Tre pointed. In the distance to the north a section of dome had slid open, and several ships rose from across the city and headed for the outside. Lanoree could tell from the way they moved that they were battleships, not civilian transports. This was not yet an evacuation.
As the first ship passed through the dome opening it exploded, blossoming into a ball of fire and erupting ammunition that rained down in a beautiful, awful shower across that part of the city. The other warships powered through the destruction, another of them exploding outside and then impacting the dome half a kilometer away. The others rose clear, and though they were little more than blurred shapes beyond the dome, Lanoree saw them swing around and streak to the south.
“Come on,” she said. “I don’t think we have long.”
“Until what?”
“Until we’re a part of Greenwood Station’s tragedy.”
Lanoree led the way. She headed for the portion of dome already bombed years ago by the Je’daii. What she had learned of Pan Deep—that the Je’daii had spared it because they commissioned high-end military tech themselves—did not sit well with her. But it was not relevant to her mission to consider that right now. And she more than anyone knew that the Je’daii often harbored secrets.
She spoke into her comlink. “Ironholgs, prep the ship for takeoff. There’s trouble—we’ll be coming in fast. Initiate ship’s defenses. Shoot anything that comes close that isn’t us. Got that?”
Her ship’s droid crackled and spat in reply.
“And start the tracker scanner, frequency two-four-zero. You should find the signal soon enough, probably just off planet. Lock on and track it.”
“What signal?” Tre asked.
“I put a tracker on Dal’s clothing,” she said. “I just hope he hasn’t found it.”
“Or changed his outfit.” Tre was trying to joke, but Lanoree could not smile. Such a small thing as a change of clothing might doom everything she had ever known. She was already living in history in the making, the tragedy of Greenwood Station that would become known across the system. If she failed to catch Dal, and his attempt to initiate the Gree tech went wrong, then everything would be history. And there would be no one left to know it.
There’s still time! she thought. Because she knew the device was not yet ready. The scientist had mentioned that it needing charging. She’d sensed no energy source there, nothing that might indicate that its dark matter drive had been primed or loaded. She would have known. Her teachings with Dam-Powl had given her an insight into such shadowy matters.
An arcane device that only needed charging before it was ready … a tracking chip that might or might not remain on Dal—everything was suddenly so nebulous and unreliable.
A war played out around them as they fled. People ran back and forth in panic—parents herding children, adults running in shouting groups—but Lanoree could see some organization starting to become apparent. Though they wore no sign or uniform, one group of men and women seemed to be part of some sort of Greenwood Station security force. They were breaking down the fencing around a compound housing several militarized Cloud Chasers, airships supporting heavy gun platforms and with grav units fitted to landing gear to aid flight. As Lanoree and Tre passed, the first of the airships started to hum with power.
Other people bearing weapons rushed across the street ahead of them, heading south toward where the bulk of the fighting seemed to be taking place.
“They’d do better to flee,” Lanoree said.
“They’re defending what they have!” Tre said.
“This is a full-on assault, ultimate destruction. Not an invasion.”
They paused beneath the cover of an old factory’s slumping wall. Perhaps one day this place would have been repaired, but it looked like it hadn’t been used for some time, and the building’s metal framework was corroding beneath the toxic atmosphere.
“Look. Invasion.” Tre pointed south at another cloud of lights drifting down from the many damaged areas of dome. Gunfire was being exchanged, and it took several seconds for the crackling sound to become audible.
“Droids,” Lanoree said. “They’re not sending troops in because—”
A massive explosion rocked them from their feet. The ground pounded at her as she fell, and the air itself seemed to vibrate in her lungs, through her chest. Lanoree rolled against the building and looked back and up, astounded and sickened by what she saw.
A plasma bomb had found its way through the city’s defenses and impacted close to the dome’s highest point, more than a kilometer above the ground. The explosion had ripped the dome open, the shattering destruction running down through the central column and bursting from it in blooming flowers of flame and blazing metal. The wide tower was crumbling from the top down, and around it the dome’s mammoth support structures were cracking and dipping, great spreads of dome rupturing and falling away. The explosion continued to expand, probing inward and touching the ground at last. A firestorm swept across the air, incinerating everything in its path. The destruction was so huge, and so far away, that it seemed to happen in slow motion.
“Lanoree,” Tre said. He grabbed her arm. “Lanoree!”
“Yes,” she said. Tre helped her up and they moved on.
They reached the building through which they’d entered the dome not so long ago. As they went inside, they left behind a very different Greenwood Station.
They worked their way back through the ruined and hastily repaired area of the city, retrieving their masks from where Lanoree had hidden them. But the masks had leaked away the last of their oxygen, so Lanoree cast them both aside.
“We’ve got a kilometer to go across that landscape,” she said. “Follow me. Step where I step. Run as fast as you can. And try not to take deep breaths.”
“We’ll die out there,” Tre said.
“No. And once we’re on the Peacemaker, I have medicine that will clean your skin and lungs.”
“I don’t have skin and lungs exactly like yours, human,” Tre said, smiling nervously.
Lanoree grabbed his shoulder, squeezed. “Close enough. Come on.”
She Force-shoved the exterior air lock door open and ran out onto the toxic, poisonous surface of Nox.
Behind them, the battle raged and the destruction continued. Out of the dome they could see more, though the air was constantly hazed with stinking clouds of gas. Attack ships stood some distance off, firing at the dome. Way beyond the dome a huge glow filled the sky, and Lanoree guessed that the spaceport adjacent to the dome in the east had been bombed. Those few defensive ships that took off from inside and made it out without being destroyed streaked south toward the attackers, and most were blasted from the air before even entering combat. One or two made it through, spiraling up and around as their laser cannons opened up. Explosions bloomed. Burning wrecks arced down to the planet’s surface. It was only the skill of their pilots that kept them aloft, but the attacking force appeared to be far superior.
Lanoree already felt the acidic burn on her skin and tasted it at the back of her throat, and the destruction and deaths behind her weighed heavy. Her spine tingled. The back of her neck smarted as if the accusing dead stared.
“Ironholgs!”
The droid responded immediately. The ship was ready for take-off, the tracker was acquired and locked on. But Dal’s ship was already breaking away from orbit, and soon he would be beyond the range of their instruments.
They reached the Peacemaker and boarded, and Lanoree did not feel as pleased, as safe, as she should have.
“Okay?” Lanoree asked.
“Perfect.” Tre nodded, though he looked ready to vomit. His lekku hung pale and sickly, and his eyes and nose were running.
“Strap in,” Lanoree said. “They’ll probably see us lifting off and—”
Greenwood Station took three more direct impacts from plasma bombs. The blasts shook the Peacemaker, and Lanoree quickly fired the engines and took her ship aloft, afraid that the explosions might cause tremors or eruptions around the city. She flicked on all sensors, checked systems, initiated weapon systems, and only then took time to look toward the dome.
The ruptured dome was falling in great burning, melting sheets. The city inside had become a pit of molten chaos, and billowing pillars of smoke and flame rose high above it. The sparkling, expanding clouds from the plasma impacts bloomed outward; and when they met the rank atmosphere, they formed sickly rainbows that in other circumstances might even have looked beautiful.
Lanoree punched it. And even flying up and away from the dying city, the stark flashes of its demise lit up the interior of the Peacemaker’s cockpit.
“All those people,” Tre said, and Lanoree had never heard him sound so wretched. “We went there, and this is the result.”
“It wasn’t us,” Lanoree said. “It was Dal.”
“But if we hadn’t chased him here—”
“If he’s not stopped, this could happen everywhere!” she said. “It shows how determined he is. And how mad.” She lowered her voice, almost talking to herself now. “There’ll be no reasoning with him.”
A chime on the control panel, and Lanoree groaned.
“What?” Tre asked.
“Company.” On the scanner three sparks were following them, closing rapidly. Lanoree banked the ship steeply and accelerated, the hull shaking around them, groaning with the huge stresses she was placing it under. But she knew her ship as well as she knew herself—its breaking points, its capabilities.
Still the shapes closed on them.
“Fighters from Knool Tandor,” Lanoree said.
“And now they have a Je’daii ship to add to their score sheet,” Tre said.
“I’ll draw them out of the atmosphere—the Peacemaker’s better in space.”
“I can shoot.”
“You told me you’d never been in space!”
“Well, maybe once or twice. But I’ve fired land-based laser cannons a hundred times. I have a good eye.”
“Top turret. Go.”
Tre unclipped and scampered back into the living area, and Lanoree charged up the laser cannons.
“And put on the comlink so we can talk!” she shouted back at him. Strange. Right then, she was almost glad she had Tre here.
She saw the terrible irony in the situation. Dal had made Knool Tandor believe that Greenwood Station was in league with the Je’daii. Not only that, but some of that city’s highest-standing residents might already have been assassinated by a Je’daii sword. And now here they were, in the midst of their attack on Greenwood Station … and a Je’daii was attempting to flee the planet, the Peacemaker ship giving her away. She had come here incognito but might be leaving the seeds of a wider war behind.
Right now, escape was her priority, and stopping Dal. Everything else could be smoothed over afterward.
A few moments later she heard the static and scratch of Tre turning on the comm headset in the top laser turret.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. We’re fired up, I think I have this. Foot pedals to turn the turret, tracking screen, combat display, touch trigger.”
“You damage my gun and I’ll gut you!” Lanoree said.
“Yeah, yeah, Je’daii, you and which army?”
Lanoree laughed softly, always keeping her eyes on the closing targets. They had fanned out behind the Peacemaker and were approaching in a wide pincer. Soon the shooting would begin.
“Front cannons will be in my control,” Lanoree said. “But I’ll be busy flying this thing as well. You’ve got the best field of fire behind us, and you’ll have visual.”
“I’ve got visual.”
“You see—?” Lanoree was cut off by the dull thuds of the upper turret’s laser cannons firing. Eyes on the screen, she twitched the ship to the left and hit the boosters. Then she switched on the Peacemaker’s deflector shields and kept one hand hovering over their control lever. She’d have to angle the shields in accordance with which direction the next attack was coming.
“Missed!” Tre shouted into her ears. She heard the gentle hum of the turret’s motors working as Tre turned, and then the first ship streaked ahead of them.
They were still in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Lanoree swung left, but heat flare glared across the windows, and she had to rely on scanners to keep tabs on the attacking Knool Tandor ships. They were fast and very maneuverable.
“Tre?”
“Can’t see much—think I winged it.”
Lanoree flicked a switch so that the targeting computer display sprang up before her. Even before locking on she let off a burst of fire, strafing across where the lead ship might fly. It twitched left and climbed.
She thrust forward with all the power the ship had, and the attackers fell back a little. But she knew hers would be a momentary lead; their ships would be at least as fast as the Peacemaker.
“Right,” Tre muttered, and his cannon let off several sustained bursts. “Yes! One down, one down!”
“Good shooting,” Lanoree said, but she was distracted. “Shift deflector shield to the rear, angle the ship out of the atmosphere, keep an eye on trajectories and the bright sparks of the two remaining ships.” Still talking to herself even though Tre was there. For a moment she wondered what she’d have done if he weren’t with her … but then everything would have been very different. It was through his contacts on Nox that she’d been able to find Dal.
The ship reached the highest extremes of Nox’s polluted air, the stars speckling into view, and it was almost as if she felt it come alive in her hands. The Peacemaker was fine in atmospheres, but it was in the vacuum of space where it truly came into its own.
“We’re away from Nox.”
“Good, I can see again,” Tre said.
“Grav units phasing in,” Lanoree warned.
“Oh, great, there goes my stomach.”
She grinned. “They’re following.”
“Didn’t think they’d give up. You’d be a good prize.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I don’t think they’d worry about—”
The Peacemaker shook as a volley of shots smacked across its left flank.
“Where’d that come from?” Tre shouted.
“Two more from out of the sun.”
“Yeah, but …” His laser fired again, and he was muttering all the time, words Lanoree could not quite make out. On the scanner she saw another ship flare briefly into a hail of smaller parts, then expand into a cloud, then fade away.
“Still three out there,” she said. Another ship powered toward them … then disappeared. “I’ve lost it.”
“Me, too.”
“You can’t see it?” she asked.
“No. Gone. Can’t you Force-see it, or something?”
Lanoree ignored the quip and swung the ship sharply left and up, aiming for where she thought the ship might have gone. Climbing directly away from the Peacemaker and above them, it might for a moment have disappeared from her scanners, shielded by its exhaust and angle of climb. It was a good trick, but one Lanoree knew. She’d used it once or twice herself.
She saw the glimmer of starlight on metal before her scanner even picked it up. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, comfortable in the Force. Then she looked again, past the grid lines of the targeting computer, past the pulsing lights and scrolling figures of laser preparedness, target distance, altitude and attitude. And when the time came, she touched the fire pad once.
A single shot streaked ahead of them, and eight kilometers away the ship flowered into a blazing bloom.
“Whoa,” Tre said. “Good shot.”
“Those last two are coming in fast,” Lanoree said. “One port, one starboard.”
“I’ll take starboard.”
The laser cannons thudded. Lanoree took the ship through a roll and then powered directly up and away from Nox. Gravity grasped the vessel as if sad to let go. The whole ship shook. She took manual control of the underside turret and swept it to port, watching the targeting grid on the left of her screen as the central four quadrants turned red. She fired several bursts, but already knew that she’d missed.
Tre shouted, “Look out, they’re—” and then the whole ship shook as a plasma torpedo exploded half a kilometer away, ignited by the ship’s shielding system. Lanoree let the blast tip the ship to starboard, knowing that fighting the effect would waste time and effort. Then she took control once again.
“Everything at that port ship,” she said, opening fire. Tre’s cannon thumped, and she saw the streaking trails of laser blasts converging in the distance.
On the scanner, the blooming star of destruction.
“Yes! One more down!” Tre said.
“The other’s making a run for it,” Lanoree said.
“Let’s go! I’ll put a shot into its afterburner.”
Lanoree considered for a moment, then turned away from the fleeing ship. It was already thirteen kilometers away, the distance between them growing fast. “No time,” she said. “And no point.”
Tre was silent for a while, then she heard his sigh. Relief, perhaps. And gratitude that they were still alive.
“Stay up there awhile,” Lanoree said. “They might have gotten a message off, could be we have more company.”
“Yeah,” Tre said.
Lanoree muted the comm. In truth, there would be no more company, because she’d blocked the fighters’ communications as soon as she’d seen them. But she wanted to take a moment on her own, compose herself, submit herself to the Force and every soothing, empowering aspect it meant to her.
She breathed deeply and took a final look back down at Nox.
Even from this far out, the dying city of Greenwood Station was the largest, most obvious feature on the planet they were leaving behind.