Lockdown: Maul

by Star Wars

  “Father,” one of the voices was saying, “you know we can’t trust him. Why would you—”

  “He’s the only one who can help us,” a man’s voice cut in. “We need him.”

  “But what if it’s a trap?”

  “Better listen to your old man, kid,” a third voice growled. “I’m the only chance you’ve got.”

  Sadiki sat bolt upright in her seat. She recognized that voice.

  Voystock.

  She slapped the comm again, actually cracking the stud with the palm of her hand. “Madden, there’s a guard in there!”

  “Copy that, Warden, we just—”

  “He’s helping them escape, you idiot! Where are your people?”

  “Say again?”

  “The officers on duty, Madden. Where are your men?”

  “I don’t—” Madden’s voice blipped out, then came back again. “Whoever’s in the medbay has it sealed down from inside.” Now he sounded like he was trying very hard not to start stuttering, but he wasn’t doing a very good job. “I don’t know how it happened, we were just—”

  “Get in there now!”

  “You want us to blast it open?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  “But—”

  Sadiki cut him off and turned back to the screens, her headache utterly forgotten, superseded now by the pounding of her heart and the realization that she’d actually broken a sweat. Time itself seemed to have crystallized around her. On-screen, through the droid’s photoreceptors, she could make out the forms of two inmates, an older man and a boy not more than sixteen, both clearly visible as they leaned in. CO Voystock stood in the background, making an adjustment to one of the control modules. The GH-7’s manipulator was extending something—it looked like a hypodermic needle—toward the boy’s chest.

  In the distance she could hear the voices of guards outside the medbay, shouting commands and trying to get through the blast-doors.

  And implacably, above it all, the mocking voice of the IBC’s finest, Vesto Slipher, echoing in her head: You’ve never had an escape?

  Of all the times for the IBC to be conducting an impromptu audit, Sadiki thought, and fought the urge to drive her fist into the console in frustration. She tapped in a command and brought up the holofeed of the datacenter, hoping to find Dakarai, but her brother wasn’t there. Where was he?

  Outside the medbay, the sound of blasters filled the audio track, distorting through the droid’s aural pickups.

  And for the first time, Sadiki Blirr realized that she was in real trouble.

  19

  IN MY TIME OF DYING

  The power in the medbay was already out, and a cloak of darkness prevailed over its unfamiliar interior, save for the ambient glow of the diagnostic equipment, which cast a spectral blue glow on the figures moving through it, single file.

  “Hold it,” Voystock whispered, raising his hand without looking back. “That’s far enough.”

  Artagan glanced at him. He and Eogan were halfway across the medbay, creeping their way forward in almost total blackness. “How long can you keep the main power out?”

  “Leave that to me,” the guard said. “I’ll bring the droid around and take care of the programming to deactivate the charges.”

  Something shifted in the middle distance, and Artagan stiffened, glancing around. “Is there someone else in here with us?”

  “No.” Voystock shook his head. “I sealed the medbay up behind us. You saw me do it.”

  “I heard something.”

  “Shut up and stay put,” the guard said. “Don’t move. And don’t touch anything.” He ducked his head and vanished.

  “Father,” Eogan murmured a moment later, “you know we can’t trust him. Why would you—”

  “He’s the only one who can help us. We need him.”

  “What if it’s a trap?” the boy whispered, his voice going higher with urgency.

  “Better listen to your old man, kid,” said Voystock. “I’m the only chance you’ve got.”

  As if on cue, Artagan sensed something sailing past him in the blackness. Grabbing his son’s arm, he ducked and felt it graze his shoulder. As the thing turreted around, he saw the GH-7’s photoreceptors blink to life in the darkness, two perfect blue discs hovering before them.

  Artagan listened and heard it again, the sound of someone else in the medbay with them, closer now.

  “Voystock?” he hissed, turning in the direction of the sound. “Is that you?”

  No one answered. In front of them, barely visible, Artagan saw the droid moving closer, its manipulator extending a long hypodermic needle.

  “Father?” the boy asked.

  “It’s all right,” Artagan said. “It will only hurt for a second. Then the charges will be deactivated. Go ahead.”

  “But—” Eogan started to say something and the needle plunged through his prison uniform and directly into his upper thorax. The boy let out a sharp squawk of pain, but his words were lost beneath the sudden volley of blasterfire from outside the medbay. Artagan heard voices, guards shouting at one another, and the shooting started again.

  “What—?” Glancing around, Artagan Truax saw the GH-7 withdraw the needle from his son’s chest, pivot in the air, and go flying backward. “What is this? What’s going on?”

  Five meters away, Voystock stood up, rising to his full height. “What’s it sound like?” He turned around and faced the two inmates. Outside, the blasters had stopped firing again and Artagan heard a muffled voice barking orders, demanding whoever was inside to open up in there.

  “You promised we’d have fifteen minutes,” Artagan said. “I gave you the khipu! I gave you everything I had!”

  “What, this?” Voystock held up the string with the knots in it and threw it in Artagan’s direction. “Come on. You really think Radique would let you out of here that easily? After what you know about him?”

  “Father?” Eogan stared at his father. “What’s he talking about?”

  “What, he never told you?” Voystock asked. He was grinning now. “Go ahead, old man. Tell your son why you’re really here. Tell him how you brought him to this place.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eogan said.

  “Kid, I’ve heard just about enough from you.” Without taking his eyes off Artagan, Voystock jerked his right arm back and drove his elbow into the boy’s face. Eogan’s head snapped sideways and he went flying into a tray of sterilized medical instruments, vascular clamps, and orthopedic drills, knocking them to the floor with a resonating crash of surgical steel. He lay there motionless.

  “Eogan!” Artagan shouted, leaping up, then rounding on Voystock with a savage glare. “You’ll pay for that.”

  “Easy, old man,” Voystock said, his hand sliding down to the detonator console on his belt. “Nobody’s paying for anything just now. That whelp of yours just signed his death warrant, and by the gods, you’re going to watch him redeem it.”

  Artagan lunged at Voystock and fell on him, ripping away the guard’s belt, fighting with a ferocity that was ultimately pointless. Within a span of seconds, Voystock had rolled free and hammered Artagan twice in the stomach and once across the bridge of the nose before smashing his skull with the butt of his blaster, over and over.

  “Maybe next time …” Wham! “… you’ll listen …” WHAM! “… when somebody tries to teach you …” THUMP! “… some karking respect!”

  Voystock’s hand went down to the detonator console, but it was gone.

  Artagan groaned. With monumental effort, he managed to lift his head. His face and scalp were bleeding profusely from a half dozen different lacerations, but beneath it all something vital and defiant still shone in his eyes.

  “Looking … for this …?” Artagan was breathing heavily, barely moving air. In his right hand he held the dropbox that he’d ripped from the guard’s belt. He no longer looked steady on his feet, but his entire countenance was blazing with a kind of desperate
willfulness, a stark and uncompromising refusal to go down. “Come on and take it.”

  “I don’t need that thing anyway,” Voystock snarled, smearing blood from his own nose and raising the blaster. “Not when I’ve got this.”

  “But Radique said—”

  “Radique’s only instruction was not to let you escape.” Voystock pointed the blaster at Artagan’s leg. “He didn’t say anything about not killing you.”

  And he pulled the trigger.

  Artagan screamed. In the muzzle flash, he saw his own right leg explode in a gaudy bouquet of blood and gristle, leaving a ragged stump of gleaming bone exposed just below the knee. Curling back, he tried to scramble away and went sprawling backward across the floor.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Voystock stepped closer. “You’ll never walk again. You’ll never fight. You’re a cripple now. You’ll live in excruciating pain for the rest of your miserable life.” He raised the blaster, pointing it directly at the inmate’s head. “Maybe if you beg for mercy, I’ll spare you, grant you a quick death.”

  The old man stared up at the blaster, his face momentarily evacuated of all expression. Then he smiled.

  It was a warrior’s smile, full of pain and brokenness, and beneath it all a kind of cold-eyed clarity found among soldiers and killers whose entire lives had been spent plying their trade in the marketplace of mortal suffering. Beneath the blood, the old scars stood out clearly across his forehead.

  When he spoke, his voice was calm and steady.

  “On my home planet,” Artagan said, “it is no small thing to make up a man’s dying bed. It may only take a few seconds, and it may be nothing but the ground where he falls, but it is not a matter to be taken lightly. Are you sure that you are worthy of that honor, CO Voystock?”

  “Honor?” Voystock snorted. “Old man, who do you think you are?”

  “I am Artagan Truax.” His words had become low and hoarse but remained unwavering. Beneath his lids, the whites of his eyes were turning red, filling up with scarlet from internal hemorrhaging. “I have killed men in eleven systems. I have fought well and withstood much and have not given quarter. I will not be broken by the likes of you today, nor will my son. And I will not beg for mercy.”

  Voystock shook his head, finger tightening on the trigger. “Then you can—”

  The words broke off. There was a sharp vertebral crack as the guard’s head swiveled around backward 180 degrees.

  Artagan Truax looked up and saw the Zabrak standing over the guard’s dead body, holding him by the jaw and skull base. The one called Jagannath released his grip and Voystock sagged to the medbay floor in a boneless, lifeless heap.

  “Jagannath,” Artagan managed.

  The red-skinned inmate was looking down at him with no pity in his yellow eyes.

  “Talk,” he said.

  20

  OPEN SECRETS

  For a long moment the old man just stared up at him. His face had gone completely white except for his eyes, which had become bloody orbs. His breathing was hoarse and labored. He was shaking violently. Yet, for the time being, he still appeared to be lucid.

  “What did you do for Iram Radique?” Maul asked. “Why won’t he let you leave?”

  The old inmate’s lips moved, but the words they formed were too faint to hear. Blasters began firing again outside the sealed hatchway of the medbay. Leaning forward, Maul managed to catch his words.

  “Eogan …?”

  “Your son is here,” Maul said, glancing over to where the boy lay sprawled unconscious among a pile of surgical instruments. Then he looked back at the old man, taking in the sight of his maimed leg and the ever broadening lake of blood that surrounded him. “But you’re not going to be in any position to watch over him any longer. Not like this.”

  The old inmate’s face tightened. Already he seemed to grasp the severity of the situation.

  “I can protect him,” Maul said. “If you tell me what I need to know.” He leaned in again. “What did you do for Iram Radique?”

  The old man nodded. When he spoke again, his voice was husky, a forced whisper. “Saved his life.”

  “Radique’s?”

  Another nod.

  “When was this?”

  “Twenty years ago,” the old man said. “On Lakteen Depot. Near the Giju Run.”

  “Where is he?” Maul asked. “Where can I find him? Is he here inside Cog Hive Seven right now?”

  Artagan’s mouth trembled. “He’s—”

  Outside, the shouts of the guards got louder. Now the blasters outside were very close. Metal fragments were ricocheting off the inner walls, pinging and scraping into the medbay. Maul knew they’d have it open within moments.

  He turned, rising, and saw the older inmate’s gore-streaked face gaping at him, just inches away. He reached out and grabbed Maul’s wrist. Somehow, beaten almost to death and missing a leg, the old man had still managed to marshal his strength.

  “Where is he now?” Maul asked.

  The old man gaped at him, forcing the words out through sheer determination.

  “Eogan,” he said. “Eogan knows. Everything.”

  Before Maul could ask again, there was a sharp click followed by a humming noise as power came back on. Overhead fluorescents shuddered through the medbay around them, their intensity revealing the true ruin of the old man’s face.

  “Hold it right there!” a guard’s voice shouted. The doors slid open as guards burst into the room, blasters at the ready, flanking it on either side.

  Maul heard guards’ boots thumping toward him as they knocked him to his knees, grabbed his arms, and pinned them behind his back. He started to stand up and felt the unmistakable hot metal ring of a recently discharged blaster barrel pressing against the back of his skull.

  “Don’t move, maggot,” the guard behind him said. “We’ve got orders to take you directly to the warden.” The hot steel nudged harder against his skin. “But that doesn’t mean you might not have a nasty accident along the way.”

  Maul growled. Only then did he turn and glance back at the old man, who lay in a heap less than a meter away.

  Eogan knows. Everything.

  “Let’s go,” the guard said. “Now.”

  Maul turned his gaze from the old man and rose slowly to his feet to follow the guards out through the hatchway into the open corridor beyond.

  21

  SPINDLE

  They brought Maul up in the crowded service lift, two guards flanking him on either side with another at his back, jamming the barrel of his blaster against his spine. Gazing up into the reflective surface of the lift’s interior, he recognized the face of Smight, the young recruit who had first screened him when he’d arrived.

  “What are you looking at?” Smight asked him.

  Maul’s lower lip drew back enough to reveal his sharpened canines. “Touch me with that toy of yours again,” he said, his voice utterly expressionless, “and you’ll find out.”

  Smight’s face constricted, but he didn’t poke Maul with the blaster again.

  When the lift came to a halt, the COs ushered him into the gleaming office whose sleek and elegant interior couldn’t have been more dissimilar from the rest of the prison. Stepping through the doorway, Maul saw the dark-haired woman with cold blue eyes standing just inside behind the desk. Her gaze was steady enough, but the smile on her face looked as if it had been glued into place by a pair of none too steady hands.

  “Inmate 11240,” she said. “I’m Warden Sadiki Blirr. You’ll forgive me if I don’t shake your hand.”

  Maul said nothing.

  “We’ve had some unforeseen developments down in medbay this afternoon.” She nodded at the monitors behind her. “Our surveillance of that time period is incomplete, and I’m hoping you’ll be able to help me fill in the gaps.”

  Maul didn’t respond.

  “You heard the warden,” one of the guards said, not Smight this time but a heavyset man with thick black eyebrows. “Tel
l her what you did to Voystock.”

  “He had an accident,” Maul said.

  “You’re a karking liar,” the guard snapped, reaching for his blaster.

  “Actually,” Sadiki said, waving him off, not taking her eyes from Maul, “I’m not even remotely concerned with what happened to Officer Voystock—or who was ultimately responsible for him getting exactly what was coming to him. By all accounts, he was as lazy as he was stupid, and he died in the process of aiding and abetting an ultimately unsuccessful escape attempt. None of which is particularly unusual around here, except that he went about it with remarkable clumsiness and incompetence.” She gave a slight shrug. “Whatever fate befell him, I’m sure he deserved it. He will not be missed.”

  Now her smile was different, absolutely confident, even radiant, and Maul realized that his initial assessment of the warden had been wrong—the nervousness he’d perceived had been nothing more than an affectation, meant to throw him off his game. In a strange way, he almost admired it.

  “What I am extremely interested in,” Sadiki continued, reaching behind her desk and taking out a tablet so that Maul could see it, “are these electroencephalograph readings. Perhaps you recognize them?”

  Maul glanced at the screen, watching the easy waveforms oscillating across it, rhythmic sine waves of deep sedation.

  “This is a recording of your brain activity from your initial med screen upon arrival at the Hive,” the warden said. “And here you’ll see something very peculiar.” She tapped a switch and the waveform jumped, lurching into an erratic, spiking landscape of sharp peaks and dips. “What’s happening there?”

  Maul met her gaze with absolute indifference. “I have no idea.”

  “Really.” Something subtle twitched at the corner of the warden’s lips. “See now, that’s really interesting, because you’ve got my medical droid completely stumped. If you look here”—she pointed at the screen—“there are certain very specialized aspects of your cortex activating that the droid has never seen on any level of REM sleep. Apparently this particular waveform is called an omicron spindle. My droid says it’s only seen it in certain very proficient telepaths. Which makes you very special indeed.”