He knew he was not alone.
The dank and miasmal air was still, and even the disturbance he sensed in the Force was of the most subtle nature. Still, he had no doubt that he was being watched. The almost nonexistent light told him that he was standing in a wide part of the tunnel, with several side passages opening into it. It was from these that he suspected the attack would come.
Moving very slowly, he dropped his gloved hand to the lightsaber dangling at his belt.
He did not expect the assault to come from above, but he was not taken by surprise when it did. He sensed the electroshock net dropping down from overhead, and knew that if he tried to slash it with his energy blade, the power surge would reverberate back down his arm and through him with devastating effect. So instead he dived forward, executing a smooth shoulder roll that carried him beyond the reach of the mesh. He came to his feet and spun about, lighting both ends of his weapon as he did so.
And then they were upon him.
Darth Maul once again abandoned himself to the dark side, letting it guide his movements and power his strikes. He stood in the center of a maelstrom of hulking silhouettes, visible only in brief stroboscopic flashes as the whirling energy blades struck them down. He recognized them from his studies of Coruscant’s indigenes: Cthons, degenerate subterranean humanoids, considered by many scholars to be apocryphal. His master would be most interested to learn that they actually existed. Assuming, of course, he did not slay them all.
By the time they broke off the attack and retreated, howling, into the side tunnels, there were several fewer in existence than had been moments before. Maul had killed, as best he could count in the darkness, nine of the loathsome creatures.
He moved on, continuing to follow the trail and wondering if Pavan and the Jedi had encountered the Cthons, as well. If they had, he felt it strongly possible that they had not survived. Perhaps his job had been done for him. That would be a disappointment, as he would then be deprived of the pleasure of the kill, but at least the mission would be at an end.
Of course, he could not assume that this was the case, not until he found definite evidence. The human had certainly proven harder to kill than he had anticipated so far.
He pressed ahead through the everlasting night, alert for the possibility of more attacks.
As Lorn followed I-Five through the dark tunnel, he considered various possible solutions to his situation. There didn’t seem a lot of them. In all his years as a businessman, information broker, and even working for the Jedi, he certainly hadn’t come across anything this challenging before. Pursued by the Sith—who weren’t even supposed to exist—into the deepest pits of the city where flesh-eating cannibals stalked him … it was a challenge, no doubt about it.
Assuming that they made it back aboveground and were able to return to the civilized levels of society, what should his next move be?
He knew that the Padawan planned on taking him straight to the Jedi Temple so that he could share his information with Mace Windu and the other council members. But that event was not anywhere near the top of Lorn’s list of desires. Certainly the Jedi would be best at protecting him from the Sith—assuming their tracker had not been killed in the explosion—but as far as he was concerned it would be a solution almost as bad as the problem. To be a resource held and used by the Jedi? It was a sickening thought, one that awoke far too many memories Lorn had worked hard to put away. So instead of giving in to the feelings that threatened to overwhelm him, he considered his other obvious option: Run.
The key question was how to get on board a ship that could take him and I-Five far enough away to avoid being tracked by both the Sith and the Jedi. The spice transport I-Five had arranged passage on had already left, but there was certainly no dearth of ships at the spaceports. Once they were off Coruscant it would be easier. It was a big galaxy, after all. There couldn’t be that many Sith out there, or there would have been rumors that the Jedi would have picked up by now. And if there were only a few, Lorn reasoned, it wouldn’t really be in the Sith’s interests to spend much time tracking down one low-life information broker.
So that was the plan: get on a fast ship, maybe a smuggler, and leave Coruscant behind. He didn’t know how he was going to pay for passage yet, but he would figure something out. They could hightail it out to some backwater planet like Tatooine, hole up in the Dune Sea or the Jundland Wastes for a while, become part of the scenery. After a few years he could maybe open a tavern in some place like Mos Eisley. It wasn’t a particularly thrilling life to contemplate, but at least it was a life.
Of course, I-Five might not be too happy about all that sand. Droids tended to need a lot of oil baths in environments like Tatooine’s. Lorn looked thoughtfully at his partner walking ahead of him, the droid’s metallic shell catching the reflected light from his photoreceptors. He would need to discuss this plan with him, see if I-Five had any new angles about the money end of it. The droid always seemed to have the right idea to complement Lorn’s own. Of course, to do this he would have to get a few moments away from the Jedi.
Darsha. Her name was Darsha.
With an uncomfortable start, Lorn realized that he was feeling a little guilty at the thought of running out on her. He’d hated the Jedi with an all-inclusive passion for so long, it was hard to see any of them as individuals. After all, she had saved his life. It was difficult to get past the fact that she was a Jedi, but deep down he knew she was more than that: She was a person. Even likable, hard though that was to believe. And admirable in a number of ways, as well. Considering that her mentor had been killed in that explosion, she was carrying her grief fairly well. She’d saved all of them back there from the Cthons, too, no question about that.
But not because she liked you. Only for the information.
Lorn nodded to himself. He had to keep in mind that the Jedi did nothing that did not serve their own interests. Nothing. He would be doing himself no favors to walk into their clutches.
No, the best way out was to run. But to book passage on even a garbage scow was financially out of the question at this point.
And then he remembered—Tuden Sal! A few months past he’d given the owner of a successful chain of restaurants a tidbit of data that had helped the Sakiyan keep his liquor license. At the time Lorn had been flush and had charged only a few drinks—well, more than a few—but Sal had promised him a favor if the day ever came that he needed one.
As far as Lorn was concerned, that day was here. Tuden Sal was known to have strong contacts with several smuggling organizations, including Black Sun. He would know how to get them off Coruscant. Lorn felt revitalized by the possibility. This was a good plan—if he could just stay alive long enough to make it happen.
Ahead of him the droid slowed down. There was a change that Lorn could feel in the air. The echoes of their footsteps seemed to be hollower, more distant.
I-Five confirmed it.
“For those of you who are interested, the cavern we have just entered is roughly seven hundred standard meters wide, two hundred meters across, and festooned with stalactites starting forty or fifty meters above our heads. The ledge we are on, unfortunately, ends within seven meters, culminating in a drop that is—” The droid paused. “—currently not measurable with my modest sensory capabilities.”
Terrific, Lorn thought.
Darsha heard Lorn Pavan release a long-suffering sigh. “Let me guess,” he said, “we have to jump across.”
“Not unless you’ve suddenly gained greater levitation powers than our Sith friend,” the droid replied.
Darsha reached out with the Force. She sensed nothing other than the usual low-level life signs found everywhere.
“It feels empty,” she said.
“Well, thank you, Mistress of the Force, but pardon me if I don’t stop worrying,” Pavan replied sarcastically. “It seems like your track record with that skill is still a little on the nebulous side.”
She glared at Pavan. “It so happens
that even Jedi Masters—which I am not—can be taken by surprise by things that are not Force-sensitive. Creatures who make very little ripples in the psychic flow are sometimes as good as invisible.” Abruptly she remembered Bondara’s leap toward the Sith, and fell silent.
After a moment, I-Five said, “The good news is that there seems to be a bridge.”
Darsha moved forward to stand next to the droid. To keep her balance, she inadvertently put her hand on Pavan’s shoulder, felt him tense and move away.
What was it with him? she wondered. What did he feel the Jedi had done to him to make him hate her and her kind so? Darsha remembered the look on Master Bondara’s face when Pavan had introduced himself. Her mentor had known the man’s name. What did that mean? She wasn’t usually the prying type, but as soon as she got back to the Temple she’d do her best to find out.
Sure, she thought. As if there would still be a place for her in the Temple after all this. Fail the graduation exercise, get her Master killed, and wind up nearly eaten by a bunch of blind monsters. What kind of Jedi was that?
Not a very good one, she had to admit.
Darsha shook her head slightly, trying to banish encroaching despair. There is no emotion, there is peace. She had made mistakes, that was for sure, had probably lost any chance of ever becoming a Jedi. But until Master Windu or another member of the council officially reassigned her, she would continue to do her duty as best she saw it. She would get Lorn Pavan to the Temple because his information would be valuable to the council, could help maintain order against the misuse of power. It was what a Jedi would do, and so it was what she would do.
Thankfully, Pavan was not at all like Oolth the Fondorian. That one had been nothing but bluster and cowardice. Pavan was hard to read, but his actions so far had been those of a loyal, brave individual. The only thing that made him difficult to get along with was his hatred of the Jedi.
I-Five turned his photoreceptors up a few notches brighter and aimed them down at the bridge.
Several large ropes, gray and dusty with age, stretched out from the end of the tunnel beyond the limited light put out by the droid. Across the ropes had been laid an odd assortment of flat objects: boards, pieces of sheet metal, and other odds and ends. About the only thing they had in common was that they were all more or less flat and laid out in the direction the group wanted to go.
Lorn stepped out and jumped on one of the ropes. His balance was excellent, she noted, and he seemed to have a natural grace as he leapt. He saw her watching and pushed off extra hard on the last bounce, doing a quick somersault in midair.
“Ropes seem strong enough to me,” he said, landing in a perfect double-foot plant. He waited a moment before answering her unasked question. “I used to dabble in zero-g sports when I, uh, had a better lifestyle.”
The droid broke in. “If you two are finished playing primitive mating games, maybe we could see about traversing this bridge. There may be a Sith pursuing us, if you recall.”
“Excuse me?” Lorn said. “Mating games?”
Darsha felt indignant as well. “Your droid has a point. We need to keep moving.” Mating games, indeed, she thought as she stepped onto the bridge. Not likely.
Lorn wished he had a weapon.
Ahead of him, I-Five was armed with his finger blasters, as well as a few other tricks, and behind him Darsha had her lightsaber.
It wasn’t that he felt they were in any particular danger at the moment, but a weapon—any weapon—would have given him a better sense of control over his own safety. While it was true that being unarmed did make him very alert, that didn’t count for much with a sensor-equipped droid and a Force-sensitive Jedi for companions. Lorn felt he might as well be blind compared to them.
The going was slow; there were no handrails on the bridge, and it didn’t look like the planks, lids, and other objects they were walking on had been attached very firmly to the support ropes. Indeed, he got the opinion that they had been added after the trestle had been formed. By the Cthons, perhaps? It was impossible to say. The bridge, Lorn noted, was of a very strange construction. In addition to the thick support cables that ran along either side of the odd planks they walked on, there were vertical cables every few meters, some coming from the roof of the cavern, as might be expected, but others stretching from the bridge supports down into the darkness below.
What could all this be for?
He voiced the question.
“Based on the depth of the excavation,” I-Five said, “I postulate that this could have been used as an access point for the underground oceans.”
Possible, Lorn thought. Most of Coruscant, except for a few park areas, was built-over landmass. The water had to go somewhere.
“But why this bridge? I mean, it’s a pretty primitive construction. Why not have a better way of getting around?”
The droid paused and looked over its shoulder, photoreceptors gleaming. “Perhaps the Cthons are responsible. Why can’t you just be grateful that it’s here where and when we need it?” I-Five resumed his progress forward.
Lorn raised an eyebrow. “Who pissed in your power supply?” he muttered.
He heard a chuckle from behind him. Great. Shot down by his own droid, and a Jedi got the laugh.
“I’ve got to ask,” Darsha said. “How did you two wind up working together?”
“I’m impressed. You managed to come up with a topic even less interesting than his,” I-Five said.
“Perhaps you aren’t in need of a distraction,” Darsha said, “but I sure could use one after the last few hours.”
The woman had a point. Lorn, somewhat to his surprise, was the one who answered.
“I acquired I-Five a few years back when I first got started selling information. He was a protocol droid belonging to a rich family who left him with the children. The children were spoiled. They used to do things like make him jump off the roof to see how high he would bounce.”
The memory surprised him with its intensity. He recalled the smell of the junk dealer’s shop, a mixture of hydraulic fluid and the ozone of cooking circuits. It had been a humid day, and he was tired. He’d been fired from the Jedi Temple only a few days previously—not that they had called it that, of course.
There is no emotion; there is peace.
He’d read the words a thousand times when he had studied his enemies, fought their power over his life and Jax’s. The words had never made sense before, and they didn’t now.
“I figured that he might have some interesting secrets tucked away that I could use, so I bought him and brought him back on-line.”
Lorn remembered the first words the droid had spoken. They had hit him with their utter hopelessness and helplessness, reminding him of his own.
“I am I-FiveYQ, programmed for protocol.” There had been a pause after the initial main sequence had activated, and then the droid had asked, “Are you going to hurt me?”
Fury had blossomed in Lorn when he heard those words. He, too, had been broken into pieces recently, hurt savagely by those he had always been told would protect him.
The Jedi.
Darsha watched Lorn go quiet. Something seemed to have disturbed the man in the telling of his story, something that she felt reticent to press him on. She decided to ask the droid instead.
“So he fixed you up, and you talked him into being your partner?”
I-Five answered after a pause.
“Lorn had been treated badly recently by his … employers. He felt that I was a kindred spirit, at least in potential. He had a friend who was handy at reprogramming droids install a top-of-the-line AI cognitive module, and deactivated my creativity damper, as well. As a result, I am as close to full sentience as any droid can be.”
Intrigued, Darsha had to ask. “Who were his employers?”
I-Five glanced at Lorn before replying. “The Jedi.”
She had suspected as much. That explained Master Bondara’s recognition of the name. But why and how had the o
rder treated Lorn so terribly? As far as she knew, they always dealt fairly with all employees who were non-Jedi. It didn’t make any sense.
“How long have you trained at the Temple, Padawan Assant?”
It was plain, at least, that I-Five was a better droid than the one assigned to watch over the Fondorian in the safe house. That one hadn’t recognized her as a Padawan.
“I’ve lived at the temple practically all my life. My formal training started when I was four,” she said. And probably ended as of today, she added silently.
“I have been in business with Lorn Pavan for five standard years.”
Then the droid went silent and left Darsha to her own thoughts. She realized that he had given her a clue to the mystery of Lorn’s past.
She cast her thoughts back five years earlier. A new student had come to the temple back then, a two-year-old. Darsha remembered it because of the boy’s high midi-chlorian count. She hadn’t heard all the details of course, but the temple was a small pond, and ripples of any discord traveled quickly across its surface. Apparently the boy had been the son of a temple employee, who had been fired after he agreed to let his son be trained—why, she wasn’t sure.
She gave Lorn a measuring look. If he were that student’s father, and if his son had been taken from him without his consent, to be raised by the order—well, then it was certainly no wonder that he hated the Jedi.
She tried to imagine how she would feel in his place, but could not.
She looked at Lorn again and knew her suspicion was right. It certainly explained the man’s attitude toward her and Master Bondara. She felt a great upsurge of pity for him then, so much so that she had to look away from him lest he read it in her expression.
She turned her focus back to their surroundings. It still rankled her that she hadn’t noticed the Cthons before they had attacked, and she had vowed to herself not to let something like that happen again. Seeking out life-forms around her with the Force was a task with varying degrees of difficulty. Intelligent, Force-sensitive beings were usually easy to spot, of course, while lower-level forms—insects and animals, for example—did not broadcast nearly as much of a blip on her mental radar. It was true that her mastery of the Force was nowhere near perfect, but that was no excuse for not doing the best she could. Her Twi’lek Master had once explained to her that sensitivity and fine-tuning came with time. “As a Padawan,” he had said, “I could push boulders around with ease, but seeds were next to impossible.”
Star Wars: Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter Page 16
