Anil Kesh, that three-legged metal spider, looked curiously aloof as it perched over the Great Chasm on Tython. Though its central, conical copula had suffered a few scorching hits in the recent battle, most of the structure was still intact, its skin the same slick gray as before.
The same could not be said of the surrounding landscape. The Rakata invaders had fought fiercely to get inside the Chasm and access the ancient Kwa infinity gate inside. Pillars of smoke rose from the rugged rocks and hills and a few fires still burned around the crashed remains of starships: some Je'daii starfighters, some Rakatan gunships. Of the Rakatan vessels far less remained. Most of those had been destroyed the bursts of violent energy that had escaped the Tho Yor, leaving little recognizable behind.
If Anil Kesh seemed aloof from the devastation, the Tho Yor seemed triumphant. The black stone double-pyramid hovered above the hills, Chasm, and temple all, as though in demonstration of supremacy. For as long as the Je'daii could remember the nine Tho Yor had hovered above the Je'daii's nine temples; the ancient arks that had brought them to Tython had become objects of mystery, seemingly inert for all those millennia.
Not so anymore. The Rakata invasion had fundamentally changed things for the Je'daii in many ways, but Lanoree Brock suspected the Tho Yor marked the biggest change of all.
Her gunship-sized Peacemaker had survived the battle with only minor damage. She'd been flying high over Anil Kesh when the Tho Yor had come alive and blasted dozens of Rakatan vessels out of the sky. She'd heard that the other Tho Yor had done the same thing, as if they'd all awoken at once to aid Tython's defense.
Lanoree didn't understand any of it, lest of all why the Tho Yor had only awakened now, after the Rakata had ravaged the Tythan system for a year, spreading death and darkness.
As she stood on the rock beside her set-down Peacemaker she stared up at the Tho Yor, wondering, and trying not to be angry. Wind blew across the rocks, stirring her long brown hair and red scarf, carrying the smell of hot ash.
As a child Tython and all its unexplained mysteries had filled her with wonder. She'd become a Je'daii ranger in order to better explore all this system had to offer. Experience had dulled her enthusiasm. The apparent death of her brother a decade ago had robbed the universe of much of its joy. The war with the Rakata had been grueling beyond measure.
The most irrevocable damage, though, had been done shortly before the Rakata came. When she'd been forced to kill her brother for a second, final time.
Their parents were both Je'daii masters, and they'd started their training as journeyers together. Dalien Brock had come to hate the Force and believe that his destiny lay among the uncharted, unknown stars beyond the Tythan system. He'd abandoned his training, murdered another journeyer, and faked his own death. Lanoree had been just a child then herself, and nothing she could have done would have stopped Dal's descent into madness.
That was what her parents had told her again and again after Dal's second, final death. Reason might believe it, but the heart never could.
He'd been trying to activate an ancient gate when Lanoree had been forced to kill him. That had been in the Old City; he'd uncovered and reactivated a mysterious device, apparently of Gree origin. Yet they said the gate, now destroyed, at the Chasm's bottom was Kwa.
It had made little sense then and made none now. Everyone else was stunned and relieved to know that the Rakata invasion was finally over. Lanoree was horrified by the realization that Dal had gone mad, and she'd had to kill him, and it had all been for nothing.
She felt sick and empty and as she stared at the Tho Yor she hated it for all its well-kept secrets.
Lanoree stayed like that for a long time before she heard a Hunter starfighter set down beside her Peacemaker. She turned and watched as the cockpit popped open and a single figure emerged. The gray-skinned Twi'lek removed his helmet, tucked it underarm, and walked toward her with a tired gait. Hawk Ryo projected his own flavor of sadness in the Force.
Hawk was older than Lanoree, and she'd learned things from him on the few missions they'd shared as Je'daii rangers before the war. As he came up alongside her he nodded. She nodded back. They both turned eyes upward, toward Anil Kesh and the Tho Yor.
"I still don't understand any of it," she told him. "The infinity gate in the Chasm…"
"Destroyed," Hawk said.
"And the Tho Yor-"
"Awakened, all of them. At least, those that survived."
"I didn't realize we'd lost any."
"Three were destroyed by the Rakata bombardments before they had a chance to awaken."
"I still don't understand why they awakened at all."
"I do," Hawk said. "Somewhat." He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Lanoree could feel him reach out with the Force. "I can feel her inside it," he said.
"Who?"
"My niece. Tasha."
Lanoree didn't understand. She knew of the younger woman and had met her on a few occasions. She'd been a Je'daii seer, not a warrior, and as such their paths had rarely crossed. Sometimes, bitterly, Lanoree had envied those Je'daii who fought the war with dreams rather than blood and tears, but she knew that was unfair.
What she didn't know was how Tasha had awakened the Tho Yor. "Your niece… is she inside it?"
"I think so." Hawk didn't open his eyes. "I spoke with Master Ters Sendon. He said they spoke with the Kwa holocron and followed its instructions. Tasha sacrificed her flesh in the core of Anil Kesh… But that wasn't the end of her. I feel her inside the Tho Yor. I believe she's in all of them."
He made it sound as though she'd transcended her mortal body to join the Force in some deeper way. Lanoree looked up at the Tho Yor and refocused on it. Like most Je'daii, she'd tried to probe the objects with the Force before and gotten nothing, not even a hint of how they stayed suspended in the air. Yet this time there was something different about the Tho Yor. She caught the faint whisper of life from it, though it was not like that of any sentient she'd known.
Mysteries and mysteries, still. Lanoree ached for understanding.
"Master Sendon said the only thing of Tasha that survived was the holocron," Hawk said. "Maybe we can consult that for some guidance."
"Maybe," Lanoree whispered.
"Her mother… her father, my brother… It's not going to be easy explaining this to them."
Lanoree nodded, remembering Tasha's parents: one Je'daii, one crime lord. It was an unlikely family and the young Twi'lek had seemed like she was trying to escape from it into the Force. In a sense, perhaps she had.
"Is it true the infinity gate in the Chasm activated before it was destroyed?"
"I believe so."
Then Dal, who'd gone mad trying to make a dark matter activation device for a hypothetical Gree hypergate, truly had died for nothing. She'd killed him for nothing. Lanoree didn't even want to weep; she wanted to collapse on the stone and never get up.
But she felt a tug from the Force. She and Hawk both looked up to see the Tho Yor slowly dwindling as it rose higher in the air.
Hawk gasped. "Do you feel that?"
Lanoree got nothing clearly, just vague whispers. "No..."
"It's Tasha. I can feel her."
The Tho Yor rose higher. It ascended to the blue sky smoothly, not budging an inch in high wind. Maybe this was it, Lanoree thought. The Tho Yor had come to Tython ten thousand years ago. Maybe now, finally, their mission was accomplished and they were going back to where they came from.
She ventured, "Is Tasha saying… goodbye?"
Hawk's eyes narrowed. "No… No, not at all. She's saying… follow me."
Lanoree frowned. The two of them stood side-by-side as the Tho Yor got smaller and smaller, until it was just a speck of black against blue. Finally, Lanoree turned back to her Peacemaker. Hawk followed her inside the crammed ship and watched as she activated the communications system.
"Anil Kesh, this is Je'daii Ranger Brock, with Ranger Ryo," she said. "We've just watched the Tho Yor retreat. Do you have any explanation for us?"
The stupefied voice on the other end said, "No, Rangers. But we're getting reports of other Tho Yor ascending as well."
"Can you keep monitoring them?" asked Hawk.
"Of course. This is a science station. But… they seem to be gaining speed. They're reaching upper atmosphere now."
"Understood." To Lanoree he said, "Get us to the temple."
Lanoree didn't argue. She fired up her Peacemaker's engines and pushed them off the rock, leaving Hawk's Hunter behind. It took them only a minute to set down on one of Anil Kesh's landing pads. Lanoree's stomach turns a little as she stepped into the familiar halls of the central copula. As a journeyer she'd loved the science temple for all its wonders. As an adult, she could only look back at it as the place where she'd lost Dal the first time, and after the first time she'd lost him forever.
Hawk walked forward with more certainty, leading her to the observation center on the top edge of the copula. A Zabrak Master, Ters Sendon, was with the technicians there, and he immediately turned to the arrivals.
"Ranger Ryo, I am so sorry about your niece," he said. "I wish I could have offered myself in her place, but Master A'nang insisted only a seer could do what had to be done."
"A'nang?" asked Lanoree.
"The keeper of the holocron," Sendon added gravely.
He gestured to a table in the corner. Placed on it, standing upright on a four-legged stand, was a device with eight smooth triangular sides arranged in a double-pyramid shape. Like a tiny Tho Yor, Lanoree thought.
Hawk took a step toward it, like he wanted to touch it and ask why his niece had to sacrifice herself, but he didn't get a chance. One of the technicians announced, "The Tho Yor are leaving the atmosphere now."
"All of them?" asked Lanoree.
"Nearly," said Sendon. "In addition to the three that were destroyed by the initial attack, one- the great Tho Yor at Akar Kesh- remains on Tython."
"But the rest have fled," said Hawk.
"That's right. You can see on our sensors, they've all risen out of Tython's atmosphere. They seem to be converging in lower orbit."
Hawk and Lanoree crowded the readout screen. Five markers denoted Tho Yor from different sites on Tython, now joining together in a loose diamond formation over the planet. As they watched the ancient arks pushed further. Soon they cleared orbit, passing the paths of Ashla and Bogan, vectoring further and further toward the Tythan systems' outer edge.
"Can you still feel her?" Lanoree whispered to Hawk.
"Not anymore," he said. "She's… too far away."
"What do you mean?" asked Sendon. "Are you saying you felt Tasha in the Tho Yor?"
"Just a little. It was like she was reaching out to me as it left. Not saying goodbye, though. It felt like she was asking me to come with her."
Lanoree didn't see how they could do that. Unlike the Rakata, the Je'daii and their civilization had never gained the power of faster-than-light travel. In best conditions it took over three hundred days to travel from Tython to the outer edge of the star system.
These Tho Yor, using propulsion nobody had ever understood, were travelling faster than that, though still within the limits of lightspeed. Hours passed and the five arks passed further and further through the Tythan system. Sendon got on the comm with Masters at other temples, and their conference about this sudden event revealed only collective confusion.
Still the Tho Yor soared on. Finally Lanoree said, "We need to ask that Kwa holocron what's going on."
"I think," Sendon said, "That is a wise idea."
He led the two rangers to the far side of the room and picked up the device, cupping its bottom half in both hands. Lanoree felt him touch it with the Force. A luminous image appeared above it, featuring a creature unlike any alien she'd ever seen, draped in hood and robes.
"Peace," the figure said. "I am A'nang of the Kwa, last of the Tython Kwa, master of the holocron. Ask, seeker, and I will guide you."
"Master A'nang," said Sendon, "We have done as you asked. Seer Ryo has sacrificed her body and joined with the Tho Yor. They were weapons, as you've promised, and they've driven the Rakata from our system."
"I am glad of that. It proves the Je'daii are a strong order, in tune with the Force. You have proven that you deserve to survive."
"Proven to whom?" asked Lanoree. "Did you create the Tho Yor?"
"No, it was not the Kwa. Their creators are beings beyond your understanding, or ours."
"Master A'nang," Sendon said, "The Tho Yor have left Tython. They appear to be leaving our solar system entirely. Yet I could feel part of Tasha still inside them. It felt like she was asking me to follow."
A'nang seemed to consider. "Like their makers, the full purpose of the Tho Yor are beyond our comprehension. Yet if the devices beckon, you must follow."
"Follow how? Our technology can't match their speed."
"The Rakata have brought many things to the Je'daii, not all of them horrible. There are things you may yet learn from them."
"You mean their technology? But the Tho Yor are leaving now!"
"If you are truly meant to follow, you will be given a chance to do so." The reptilian mouth twisted in an almost-human smile. "Trust in them, as you would trust in the Force."
The holocron winked off. Lanoree felt a spike of anger; she'd wanted to ask about the infinity gate, and the Gree that had supposedly built the Old City. She'd wanted to ask about Dal.
Instead the Je'daii turned their attention to the sensors. Over the course of the war, monitoring stations had been installed across the system to trace the advance of Rakatan warships. Now the Tho Yor were being tracked as they flung themselves further and further to the edge.
The Je'daii waited. The Je'daii watched. And soon it became apparent that the Tho Yor were not fleeing. They were heading to Furies' Gate, the last and lonely planet in the Thythan system. Lanoree had never ventured that far out, but she knew that Hawk had. He'd said he liked to stare into the interstellar void and wonder what lay beyond. Like Dal, before darkness and desire destroyed his mind.
The Tho Yor did not sail past Furies Gate. Rather they slowed, loosened formation, and appeared to settle in orbit around that outermost planet.
"They're waiting," Hawk whispered. "Waiting for us to come to them."
"And then what?" asked Sendon.
Lanoree knew. "They'll take us beyond." To the place her brother had always wanted to go.
"But we don't have the technology. And the Rakata… even if we can recover one of their ships, they're powered by the dark side of the Force!"
"Maybe there's another way." Hawk narrowed his eyes.
Sendon shook his head in disbelief. Lanoree stared at the sensor, and those five bright diamonds hovering at Furies' Gate. Whatever lay beyond attracted and repulsed her. It had destroyed her brother. Yet she knew that just as the Je'daii had been drawn from all across the galaxy to Tython, they could not stay here forever.
The gate had opened. The destiny of the Je'daii Order lay in the stars beyond.
And she knew hers did too.
TO BE CONTINUED IN
STAR WARS: LEGACY'S END III: RETURN OF THE WHILLS