The skirmish had taken no more than a few seconds. Lorn and I-Five began searching the three unconscious bodies.
"What are you doing?" the Padawan asked.
"What does it look like?" Lorn replied. "We're taking from those who don't need and giving to those who do-namely us. We've got to have credits to get uplevels."
Darsha started to say something, then thought better of it. She didn't like scavenging off the bodies, but she could see the necessity.
Green Hair stirred and moaned. Lorn prodded him with the blaster. "Up," he said. Green Hair got to his feet, not looking too happy.
"I'm sure you boys have a way uplevels," Lorn said to him. " Let's go find it."
Darsha could feel the boy's resistance. She started to make a hand motion to focus the Force on him and give Lorn's suggestion a better chance of working, but Lorn held out a palm to her. "No mind tricks, Darsha-I want him alert."
She started to say something, then shrugged. He seemed to have a plan, which was more than she had at the moment.
Lorn prodded the Raptor with his newly acquired blaster. He felt much better now that he had a weapon.,
True, it wasn't much-only a BlasTech DH-17, without optical sighting arrays and with its power charge nearly depleted, but it had made a satisfying sizzle when he'd fired it during the short battle. He'd also picked up a vibroblade. These weapons might not help him if the Sith caught up with them, but they were better than facing his nemesis empty- handed.
There was another reason to celebrate. Since he and I-Five had been the only ones to check the unconscious bodies of the Raptors, Darsha had missed I-Five's find. The droid had flashed it at Lorn when she had been watching Green Hair. It was a small comlink-no doubt keyed to the Raptor who had owned it, but both Lorn and I-Five had hacked comlinks often enough that he knew getting around basic security would be no problem at all.
The three of them set out, following their unwilling guide, alert for any deception on his part. He led them toward an alley about two hundred meters from the direction he'd come.
Now if I-Five could just get a few minutes away, or have a chance to socket the comlink into his data plug, he could call Tuden Sal and set up a meeting. Things were looking better and better, Lorn told himself. He and his partner just might be able to get themselves safely offplanet after all.
Of course, it would mean dropping Darsha-a prospect that, he had to admit, he wasn't looking forward to nearly as much as he thought he would. After all, she had helped keep him alive through this nightmare. He tried to remind himself that she was doing it purely to get the Neimoidian's information into the hands of the Jedi-but at this point she knew practically as much as he did. While he might be able to supply some more details, Darsha was as capable of delivering the gist of the data to the Jedi Council as he was.
Though it galled him to admit it, the truth was that he was growing somewhat fond of her. True, she was younger than he was by a considerable factor, but there was still a certain attractive quality to her.
Remember, he told himself sternly, she's a Jedi.
Or a Padawan, to be pedantic. A Padawan on her first solo mission-that much he'd gleaned from listening to conversations she'd had with I-Five. Tough cut of the cards, Lorn thought, to lose her Master, her mission, and even her informants on the first trip out. Why did she keep going? What made her want to bring them back to the Temple? Couldn't she see what manipulators the Jedi were?
Lorn wanted to find out. As they walked, he dropped back a couple of paces until he was alongside her, leaving I-Five to keep tabs on Green Hair.
"Padawan Assant," he said, somewhat stiffly, "I hope you don't mind my asking, but-just what made you choose the Jedi path? They're not-I mean-" He stopped, unsure how to continue. He glanced at her and saw her watching him.
Even in this dim light, her eyes were so incredibly blue.
"Never mind," he said gruffly. He started to walk faster, to bring himself back up to I-Five, but she put her hand on his arm. He looked at it, then at her.
"I was chosen," she said. "Chosen by the Force."
She told him that she had never been part of a family. "When the Jedi came and told me I could be a part of theirs, it all made perfect sense."
Of course it did, he thought. You weren't taken I from a father who loved you by an order who then I fired him because they thought it best that his son I have no attachments.
He felt angry at her answer. He wanted to somehow break that composure, shatter that maddening calm, that sanctimonious righteousness she shared with all the others of her order.
"But now you might not be able to keep on being a Jedi," he said. "Doesn't that make you angry? These people, this order that you consider your family,
"I casting you out?"
"Do you know of the Jedi Code? "
Lorn nodded. " Yes. I've heard it plenty of times."
" 'There is no emotion; there is peace,' " she quoted. "This doesn't mean I won't be upset if I can't stay at the Temple- just that emotion does not rule me. I am joined with the Force for my entire life. Down there, facing the taozin, I had a chance to really understand what that means.
"Whether or not I become a Jedi doesn't matter now. I have felt the balance of the Force at a deeper level, and I know that I have done-and will continue to do-what I can to help maintain that balance. I'll do it with the Jedi, or on my own-but I will do it. I am at peace, even though I may suffer disappointment."
His confusion must have shown on his face, because she smiled. There was a time when a smile like that on the face of a Jedi would have infuriated him, probably would have even made him try to wipe it off with his fists.
He didn't feel that way now.
"Let me put it another way," Darsha continued. "I have achieved my goals, even if I do not complete my mission."
Lorn nodded, but did not reply. It sounded like just the kind of ambiguity all the Jedi Knights were so fond of spouting-but like the smile, it didn't anger him to hear it coming from her. He wasn't sure what that meant.
He wasn't sure he wanted to find out.
Chapter 28
Darth Maul stalked the underground passage back the way he had come, his rage boiling into the darkness like superheated steam. His power in the Force was magnified by this; unlike the foolish Jedi, the Sith harnessed the intensity of their emotions, refusing to pretend that such things did not exist. Any creature foolish enough to impede his speedy progress to the surface would be sorry indeed.
He passed through the Cthons' cavern and saw no sign of the subterraneans. Doubtless his previous passage through their domain had given them ample cause to make themselves scarce. Which was just as well-though he would have welcomed the opportunity to mow some of them down given the mood he was in, time was of the essence.
The intensity of his connection to the Force brought back a memory: another day of intense focus of his power. The day he had constructed his lightsaber. Maul was not wont to revisit his past, unless doing so somehow served his master, but the satisfaction of the creation, the perfection of focus and the highly charged connection to the Force that had wrought his weapon stood out now in his memory.
The specialized furnace, which he had created from plans taken from his master's Sith Holocron, had radiated an intense heat as it shaped the synthetic crystals needed for his lightsaber. But rather than leaving the kiln chamber and allowing them to form on their own, he had remained near the device, concentrating on the metamorphosing gems, using the Force to purify and refine the lattice of the molecular matrices.
Most Jedi used natural crystals in their lightsabers; Adegan crystals were the gems of choice. Most of the other components of a lightsaber were easily obtained-power cells, field energizers, stabilizing rings, flux apertures-but not the crystals themselves. They had to be mined in the Adega System, deep within the Outer Rim Territories. The difficulty of using natural materials meant that the alignment process could take a long time-and the calibration had to be perf
ect, because mismatched crystals could destroy not only the lightsaber, but its creator. Finding and aligning the crystals was a Jedi test, but it was not the way of the Sith. The dark masters of the Force preferred to create their own synthetic crystals, to match the harmonics in the searing heat of a crucible and thus take their creation of the weapon to a deeper level.
Maul had sat by the furnace, focusing his hatred of the Jedi to a fiery peak and expanding his control of the Force, which he used to manipulate the molecular structures of the four gems required for his double-bladed weapon. The choice to make two blades instead of one had been an easy one. Only an expert would even think of trying to handle a double-bladed weapon, and he would be no less than an expert. The glory of the Sith required it, as did his master.
Not even the compressed ferrocrete walls of the pressurized chamber could entirely contain the intense temperature required to form the crystals. Hour after hour had passed, the searing heat washing over the apprentice. But his control had not wavered; the pain had not swayed his focus. Layer after countless layer of the crystals had been laid down, aligned, and perfected. It had taken days, days without food or water or sleep, but eventually he had sensed their readiness. Then he had deactivated the furnace and cracked it open. There, sitting in the formation cru- cibles, had been his four perfect crystals.
Maul grinned into the darkness. Yes, it was a good memory, an attainment that reminded him of his powers, that reassured him of his eventual and inevitable triumph. He had been thwarted thus far by an odd chain of events, but that would change soon.
He was back in the transport tube now. Ahead of him he could see light shining down from overhead, where he'd cut through the ventilation grid. Maul gathered the Force to himself and jumped straight up, rising several body lengths to shoot through the opening. A derelict human, deep in the throes of some narcotic delusion, was lying on the street nearby. He saw the Sith rise from the depths, gave out a little gasp, and passed out as Maul's boots touched the pavement.
Not far away, the wreckage of the Twi'lek Jedi's skycar and its attendant debris still partially blocked the streets. The Sith Lord considered how he might best locate his quarry. Once he reacquired their trail he could easily locate them. The weakness of that strategy was that he would still be following them. There had been far too much of that. Much better to get ahead of them somehow and be waiting for them.
Maul recalled the method by which he'd located the Neimoidian earlier. Perhaps the planetary net cams would be useful to him again; if he could find the most recent location where the humans had been seen, he could save time tracking them by going straight to it.
But to begin his search he needed a data terminal, and there were none to be found in this urban jungle. He was reminded of something Lord Sidious had once told him: "For every solution there are two problems."
Darth Maul considered for a moment, then activated his wrist comm and holoscreen monitor. He commed the Infiltrator, tapped into its main computer, and used that to access the port datalink, bypassing the regular navigation request screens until he located a menu offering access to other networks. His master's password again opened locked doors, and within a few seconds he had called up several data sources.
The first was a holomap of this section of the Crimson Corridor. Maul located his current position and tapped in the last known vectors for the humans and the droid.
The planetary data bank gave him the information he wanted. It was as he had suspected; they were
heading in the direction of the Jedi Temple, using the droid's global positioner to guide them. Fortunately they still had a long way to go, not only toward the Temple, but uplevels, as well. He zeroed down to street level and identified several exits from the subterranean passages that they might have used.
Next he tapped into Coruscant's security network and called up a listing of surveillance cams near those exits. He flashed through hundreds of images from the last few minutes, finding nothing that would help him. He left the link open and shifted to check recent crimes in the area. Not surprisingly, hundreds of incidents popped up for the last few hours in the Crimson Corridor: street fights, petty theft, other common crimes. He noted in passing an oddity: a droid was being sought for scamming the banking system. But he found nothing recent that had happened in the target areas that would serve him.
Darth Maul scowled. He needed transportation; that way he could get nearer his target zones. He considered the problem.
As he did so, his comm flashed that he had an incoming message. He felt a finger of worry touch him. It could be only his master. The thought of not answering did not occur to the Sith. He toggled the secure communications mode, dumping his connection to the security net, and waited for the readout to confirm his scrambled signal.
Sidious's voice crackled over the comlink. "Time grows short, my apprentice. What is the state of your current project?"
"My master, I have obtained the holocron. I am holding it for your inspection. There have been… delays in finding the human whom the Neimoidian spoke with, but they are now within my grasp. I shall not fail you."
Darth Sidious was silent for a second before he replied.
"See that you do not. When they are dead, contact me, and I will instruct you in how to deliver the holocron. Be very careful not to reveal our presence, Lord Maul-it is not yet time."
"Yes, my master."
Darth Maul moved toward the clearing where the Jedi's skycar had crashed. It would be a good location to try what he had planned. He reached out with his senses. There was no sign of Jedi anywhere close now.
Cautiously Maul shielded his strength, hooding his power in the Force lest any approaching Jedi notice. It was sensible that those of the Temple would investigate the crash of one of their transports, but it was still cause for discretion. He had little doubt that he could defeat any living Jedi, but there were many of them here on the capital of the Republic. Even he was not foolish enough to try to take them on all at once. With the Jedi searching, events were complicated that much more.
It had certainly turned out to be a much more interesting mission than he had thought it would be.
Maul settled himself in the shadows beyond the area where the skycar had crashed, and reaccessed the planetary security grid, using the same technique he had before. Few taxi drivers could be enticed to enter the Crimson Corridor, and even the security forces did not enter the zone without good cause. But good cause was something he could supply.
This time, instead of activating the menu, he scanned the current patrol routes for this quarter of the city. High above, still several kilometers away, were a pair of patrol officers on speeder bikes, circling on their regular beat. Maul noted their designations and then accessed the dispatch queue for emergency calls. He fed data directly into the dispatch computer. Eventually an audit might reveal his call to be a ruse, with no comlink recording, but it would serve for now.
The bait he chose was the droid banking crime. The police would be wary of any dangerous call-outs for the area, but they would perhaps be less concerned with a white-collar crime conducted by someone's mechanical servant. It was the best inticement he could come up with on short notice.
Having set out his lures, the Sith apprentice waited to see what he might catch. He did not have to wait long. A few minutes after he'd entered the data into the security net, two police speeder bikes came roaring in from uplevels, strobe lights flashing. From the shadows in which he crouched, Darth Maul prepared to move.
Abruptly he halted. At the edge of his perceptions was something else. He reached for it, projecting jagged tendrils of the Force to discover what lay unseen. And then, as his probe reached it, it swung lower into view, hovering above the crash site.
It was a PCBU-a droid-piloted police cruiser backup unit. The Crimson Corridor had been the site of a number of officer murders over the years, which was why the
PCBU had been developed. It carried two state-of-the-art swivel laser cannons mo
unted on the top and bottom of the unit, as well as a variety of sensors, scanners, and disrupters. Maul watched it approach. He had not expected the arrival of such a heavily armed craft, but it would delay his plans only slightly.
He waited until the unit had passed him, following the two speeder bikes, and then acted. He seized the Force and used it to propel himself high into the air, to land on the top of the PCBU. His lightsaber blades ignited as his feet hit the surface of the craft, and he quickly sheared the upper gun free of its mount, spinning the double-ended blade after this to cleave through the transparisteel cockpit bubble and the droid pilot. The PCBU began to descend, its autopilot taking over now that the droid was no longer activated.
Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter (star wars) Page 20
