by James Luceno
With bolts continuing to streak into the room, Maul worked his way into the program that managed the tractor beam array and retasked it. The system kept asking him if he was absolutely certain that he wanted the changes applied, but once he had convinced it, the consequences were almost immediate.
Where moments earlier cargo containers had been floating gently into the bay, they were suddenly soaring in at rapid speed. The large vessel parked outside the station was unaffected by the increased pull of the tractor beam, but the containers themselves were arriving too quickly for the load lifters to handle. Instead, they were piling up on the deck, erecting what amounted to a towering wall between the mercenaries and the Nightsisters, though without preventing the latter from being able to reach the connector leading to the facility’s passenger hub.
Grasping the eventual outcome, several of the soldiers broke from cover in an attempt to make it to the far side of the cargo bay, only to end up crushed by incoming containers. A couple of the load lifters also wound up hemmed in, becoming part of an impromptu partition that was close to spilling out of the pressurized bay.
With enemy attention diverted to the wall, Maul was able to leap safely from the control room to the deck and return to Talzin’s side.
“Technological magic,” she said, though not without a hint of appreciation.
Maul helped her to her feet and wrapped his left arm around her waist.
With the Nightsisters bringing up the rear, the two of them hurried into the corridor and through the first of several hatches: Maul using the Force to open it as they approached, Talzin using the Force to close it, and the pair of Nightsisters using their energy quarrels to destroy the control panel.
All the way through the connector, their teamwork was repeated. Maul wasn’t sure if his actions would ultimately be seen as inspired or ill-conceived. But his belief that he was being tested was given credence as he and Talzin were passing through the final hatch and into Orsis Orbital’s passenger hub, and the revelation was so powerful it stopped him in his tracks.
“Why are you waiting?” Talzin said. “Our ship isn’t far.”
“You can stop pretending,” he told her.
She gave her head a confused shake. “About what?”
“About Dathomir, the Nightbrothers, and the rest. I know that you were sent by my Master.” She stared at him in puzzlement.
“I know, because I perceive him. My Master is here.”
Sirens wailed throughout the passenger hub, and emergency lights brought a scarlet glow to some of the concourses and hangars.
Sweating profusely beneath his body armor, Warlord Kirske paced behind the soldiers he had deployed in a bay at the far end of the connector his four quarries were said to have entered. Other soldiers had been ordered to engage station security, and a contingent of Weequay mercenaries had been dispatched to secure the Nightsisters’ ship, just in case Talzin and the rest made it that far. That left a mere skeleton crew aboard Kirske’s own starship.
Considering the ruination the Dathomiri Zabrak had engineered in one of the cargo bays, Kirske had begun to wonder if it was he who had been set up. Meltch had been almost dismissive about the so-called Nightbrother, and yet Trezza’s Dathomiri trainee was proving to be more dangerous than Mother Talzin herself. Could the Mandalorian have cut a separate deal with some other Rattataki warlord to draw him into a trap? Certainly Kirske had no shortage of enemies on the contested world.
Kirske glanced in the direction of the connector egress and whirled on one of his Siniteen lieutenants. “What’s taking them so long? Why haven’t they exited? And why is it so kriffing hot in here?”
Carefully, he wedged a clawed finger into the ring collar of his tunic and gave it an outward tug, hoping to release some of the heat that was building up under his breastplate. The leathery scalps of the Weequay nearby were beaded with sweat.
“My lord, our forward scouts report no sign of them,” the Siniteen said at last.
Kirske tried to sharpen his view of the connector egress, but found his distance vision slightly blurred. To his eyes, the far side of the bay looked as if it were obscured by fog. The optical illusion may have been the result of sweat running into his eyes. Or perhaps not. Just in case, he made note of the location of the nearest bay egress.
In a utility room below the bay in which Kirske’s soldiers were deployed, Maul and the Nightsisters stood on a maintenance gantry several meters above the room’s flooded deck. The deluge owed to ruptures in the broad pipes that coursed overhead, opened by slashes from Maul’s Dathomiri blade. As fast as the water gushed from the pipes, Talzin—motioning broadly with her arms—was turning most of it to steam, and clouds were beginning to rise through the slotted deck plates of the bay above.
“It won’t be as powerful as the storm I conjured on Orsis,” Talzin said, “but it should do.” Like Maul and the two Nightsisters, she was wearing one of the emergency respirator masks Maul had snatched from a nearby airlock after he and Talzin had both sensed the ambush awaiting them at the end of the connector. They had picked their way down into maintenance corridors that ran beneath the passenger hub’s concourse level. Where earlier Talzin had been unable to bring her magicks to bear, her powers to alter water were apparently unaffected by the techno-sterility of the rest of the station.
Talzin continued to make magical passes with one hand, while the other dug deeply into a pocket in her robe. Mumbling in Dathomiri, she extracted a crystalline ampoule and began to fling its amber contents in the clouds of superheated steam. Motioning with both hands she swirled the clouds, directing them to rise more rapidly, as if blown upward by powerful fans.
The four of them waited until they heard coughing and retching sounds from above; then made their way to the end of the gantry and ascended a ladder that accessed the upper bay.
Victims of Talzin’s soporific and near-impenetrable fog, the warlord’s soldiers were stumbling about as if inebriated or bent over and vomiting onto the deck. The two Nightsisters waded into their midst with swords flashing. The few Weequays and Siniteens who hadn’t succumbed fully to Talzin’s strange brew opened fire with their blasters, but were quickly cut down. Leaving the swordplay to the masked Dathomiri, Maul tore into the Vollick’s rear guard with fists and feet, bruising bodies and breaking bones as he fought his way to the warlord himself. Out of the fog came a hail of fire from the Vollick’s close-in defenders, forcing Maul to hit the deck, bleeding from a bolt that had grazed his upper right arm. Clambering to his feet, he resumed the charge, but by then the warlord and his top lieutenants had beat a retreat through one of the exits. Only Talzin’s voice kept Maul from giving pursuit.
“Our ship!” she called.
Waves of her hands caused the spreading mist to coalesce into a liquid sphere, which she then burst with a single magical pass, showering the deck with water. Yanking the respirator from her face and hurling it aside, she gestured in the direction in which the ship was berthed.
“Quickly!”
Talzin hadn’t expected Maul to heed her command, and wondered as she ran why he was running with them. Did he actually intend to accompany them to Dathomir? She had begun to doubt that she had the power to subdue him a second time, or to persuade him to come. So what had changed? Had combat forged a primal connection of some sort? Or was he now prepared to accept his fate, despite what he had said about having perceived the presence of his Master?
Racing into the hangar, they saw that the deck was littered with fallen Weequays. None of the discolored bodies showed evidence of obvious wounds, but to a soldier they were dead. Clearly the Vollick had deployed them to keep Talzin and the rest from reaching the starship. Could they have turned on one another? She scarcely had time to consider it when she saw Maul come to an abrupt stop and drop to one knee with his head bowed.
“Master,” Talzin heard him say.
A human male stepped into view. Of average height, he wore a dark robe whose hood was raised over his head, con
cealing his face. Talzin could feel his power, not only in the Force, but in the dark side, as it was known to some. Even the Nightsisters could sense the man’s strength, and fell back a step in uncertainty, their energy bows aimed at the deck. For a long moment, he and Talzin regarded each other in portentous silence. Then the robed man gestured to Maul.
“This one does not belong to Dathomir,” he said in Basic, his words heavy with meaning. “He is mine.”
Talzin recalled what Nightsister Kycina had said about having given infant Maul to a distinguished, powerful human. “Then you didn’t merely abandon him to the Falleen.”
“On the contrary,” he said.
She glanced at Maul. “You have trained him well.”
In the shadows fashioned by the robe’s raised hood, the man’s hairless upper lip curled. “I don’t need you to verify what I know to be true, woman.”
“Of course,” she said, though without a hint of apology.
He motioned to their ship. “You’ll find the body of your fallen Nightsister aboard.” Talzin nodded her head in gratitude.
He folded his hands into the opposite sleeves of his robe. “Now, be gone from here before I have a change of mind.”
Unaccustomed to taking orders, Talzin hesitated, but not for long, and ultimately gestured to the Nightsisters to board the ship. Alongside her, Maul was still kneeling with his head lowered.
Casually she allowed her dangling left hand to graze the bloody wound that had been opened in his arm. Then she walked, limping slightly, to the boarding ramp. There she brought her left hand to one of the talismans that dangled from her neck, and impressed Maul’s blood upon it.
With this, I will always know where to find you.
Acknowledging Maul’s Master with a final glance, she climbed the boarding ramp and disappeared into the ship.
When the starship had departed, Sidious moved to an observation window that overlooked multihued Orsis. Maul followed, dropping into a kneeling posture and waiting for his Master to speak.
“You did well, Maul,” Sidious said at last. “It pleases me that you showed restraint and betrayed none of your deep training in the dark side of the Force.”
“I did so in the hope of one day becoming your apprentice,” Maul said.
Sidious turned partly from the view to gaze down at him. “Then consider yourself one step closer.”
Maul let out his breath in relief. “Thank you, Master.”
Sidious paced away from the window. “The time has come for you to learn certain things about the nature of our undertaking. As I told you, I have for more years than you have been alive been putting into motion the stages of a Grand Plan—a plan you may play a part in if you can continue to demonstrate worthiness and abiding loyalty. You should know, though, that this plan was not fully devised by me, and has in fact been in the making for a millennium. It springs from the minds of many beings, all of whom serve a great tradition.” He paused to look at Maul. “A tradition of far greater import than the Dathomiri brotherhood Talzin surely told you about. It is the tradition of the ancient order known as the Sith.”
Maul narrowed his eyes in thought. “You told me of the Sith when I was young, Master.”
“What I kept from you then is that I am the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious. My Master both named and conferred the title on me, and at my discretion, you may one day be afforded the same honor by me.”
Maul swallowed hard. “I will strive to prove my worth to you, Master.”
“Yes, you will,” Sidious said, then added: “From this point on I will begin to tutor you in the ways of the Sith, and gradually I will allow you to learn some things about my alter-ego, and about our ultimate purpose. For now, it must suffice that we are opponents of the Republic, and the sworn enemies of the Jedi Order. It will be our task to see the former brought down and the latter expunged from the galaxy. Where I will remain the guiding hand in this, it will fall to you to execute missions that could pose a risk to my position should the true purpose of our acts be discovered.” Maul’s heart pounded.
“Nothing less than perfection will be sufficient, Maul,” Sidious said. “Do you understand?”
“I understand, Master.”
“Then let’s put that to the proof, shall we?”
Maul looked up. “Another test?”
Sidious’s brow furrowed. “Another?”
“As you engineered with Mother Talzin?”
Sidious grinned faintly. “What happened on Orsis and aboard this station was not set in motion by my hand, Maul. In fact, you were betrayed by one who told Talzin where to find you, and then aided and abetted her plan to capture you.”
Maul’s eyes widened. “May I know the identity of my betrayer, Master?” Sidious thought it over. Finally he said: “Meltch Krakko.” Maul gawked at him in surprise.
“Did Trezza know, Master?”
Sidious shook his head. “Trezza knew nothing. However, I fear that we may not be able to contain the damage that has been done. The Mandalorian knows too much, and though I have always trusted Trezza, we can’t risk that word of your disappearance and all that followed may spread.” He fell silent, touching his chin. “I will deal with the Vollick warlord. But it will be your task to deal with Trezza and the others at the school.”
Maul gazed at him in question.
“They need to die, Maul. Instructor and trainee alike, to the last of them.” Maul’s heart turned to stone. “I live to do your bidding, Master.” Sidious nodded. “And as long as you do, you will continue to live.” Maul reclined in the compact cabin space of the drop ship that was returning him to Orsis, the blue, white, and brown world filling the viewport alongside his seat, thinking about the task ahead.
He decided that he would miss Daleen and Kilindi, and Trezza especially. But he accepted that their deaths were essential to Darth Sidious’ plan—a Grand Plan, in which Maul was now an accomplice. At any given moment there could be as many as five hundred beings at the academy, and he wrestled with ideas for ensuring that all of them died.
Sidious had forbidden the use of a lightsaber, but he had said nothing about exercising restraint.
Maul looked forward to confronting Meltch, and of finally being able to demonstrate his full abilities to the Mandalorian.
