Lockdown: Maul

by Star Wars

  Through cracked lips, he forced the words: “Where am I?”

  He wasn’t sure if he’d actually spoken aloud, although he must have, because the two inmates stopped their conversation and peered down at him. Neither of them was human, he saw—one was an Aqualish, the other a Twi’lek, the one that the other prisoners called Zero.

  “You shouldn’t push yourself, Artagan,” the Aqualish said. Its words came out as a series of barks, but Artagan—who’d spent more than enough time among such species, fighting for credits—mentally translated the words into Basic. “You need rest. You’re badly hurt, and you really can’t afford to make it worse than it already is.”

  Artagan tried to move, and felt the pain explode back through the hastily bandaged stump of his leg. The entire lower half of his body felt like it was on fire.

  “Water,” he croaked. “Need … a drink.”

  “When you were in medbay,” the Aqualish continued, “you said some things to that Zabrak that you probably shouldn’t have.” He paused. “Information about Mr. Radique. Certain details that you really shouldn’t have shared. We can agree on that, can’t we?”

  “R-Radique?” Artagan just stared up at him, stranded somewhere between shock and disbelief.

  “Those guards wanted to kill you and your son on the spot for your escape attempt,” the Aqualish continued, and glanced over at Zero. “Now, it’s true that Mr. Radique was able to protect you from being terminated …”

  Artagan said nothing.

  “But his protection won’t last forever,” the Twi’lek said. “We need to know what you told the Zabrak, Artagan. Details. And please be as specific as possible.”

  “I just told him—”

  “Yes?”

  The old man opened his mouth and closed it again. “Where’s … my son?”

  The Aqualish and the Twi’lek exchanged a glance.

  “Yes, your son,” the Aqualish said. “Perhaps he might be able to help us with our questions.”

  “No.” The old man shook his head. “Leave him alone. Leave him out of it!”

  From somewhere inside the prison, the alarms began to sound.

  27

  VARACTYL

  Izhsmash removed the little panel from the back of the force-feedback climate control valve using a slender metal shim and a pair of tweezers.

  “Lovely,” he muttered. “The wiring’s on a trip switch stepped down all the way back to the primary alarms.” Leaning in, he separated the wires. “Hand me the keypad.”

  Strabo thrust it over in disgruntled silence. Ever since the regrettable incident in the prison laundry, his status within the Gravity Massive had plummeted from leader to toady. Meanwhile, within that same stretch of time, without a word being spoken, Izhsmash had somehow risen to the level of de facto captain of the Massives. The reversal was humiliating. Yet there was little to be done—the rest of the crew somehow seemed to sense that Jagannath had appointed Izhsmash as their new captain, and that was the end of it.

  Now he and the Nelvaanian were standing on a two-meter-wide expanse of latticework in one of the countless sublevels of the prison. Steam pipes and four-hundred-degree thermal vents bracketed the concourse on either side like heavy cylindrical pillars. From the other side of the wall that formed a seemingly abandoned stretch of holding cells, something screamed and thumped, emitting a short, loud hooting call. Whatever was in there, it sounded huge. And angry.

  He shot a glance at Izhsmash. “You’re sure this is the spot?”

  “This is where Jagannath told me to hack in.” The Nelvaanian picked at the wiring, threading the keypad into place. “No idea how he’s going to keep from tripping the alarms, though. Personally, I think we’re all dead.” He glared at Strabo. “Hold that light steady, will you?”

  Strabo almost shot back a retort but held his tongue. He was only here because he too had received a message from Jagannath telling him that his presence was necessary for this operation. Apparently his sole reason for existence now was taking orders from others.

  “What if—” he began. But that was as far as he got before the hatchway to his immediate right exploded off its hinges.

  Strabo leapt back with a cry of surprise. What he saw defied all expectation—an orange-skinned Deathspine varactyl, four meters high, came bursting forth into the concourse, its tail thrashing and whipping the air. The bird-lizard was shrieking and hooting wildly, slamming its body against the far wall, and immediately Strabo understood why. The Zabrak, Jagannath himself, was sitting astride its back, clutching its beaked face with both hands, jerking it right and left.

  Jagannath? Strabo’s mind whirred. How did he get in there in the first place? Then he saw it, just a glimpse through the open hatchway—the ceiling of the varactyl’s cell, with the open panel that had been dislodged from above.

  Directly in front of him, the bird-lizard bucked and swung itself 180 degrees around, braying all the louder as it tried to throw Jagannath from his perch. Its hind leg came forward, hooking one clawlike foot into the Zabrak’s torso and slashing his skin. But the red-skinned inmate hung on with a kind of brute-force determination that Strabo had never seen before in any species. He was suddenly grateful that he’d decided not to defy Jagannath’s orders to come here—and glad that he’d never had to face the Zabrak in a bout.

  By now the entire prison was responding to the disruption. Guards’ boots were pounding way up the hall. From the walls, alarms wailed and keened. Looking off to the right, in the midst of everything, Strabo saw Izhsmash working furiously over the keypad that he’d patched into the prison’s surveillance system, swiftly tapping in digits with a focused intensity that was completely at odds with the mayhem around him.

  What’s he doing? Why is he—

  A blur of activity snapped Strabo’s attention forward again. Jagannath had managed to grip the varactyl by its crest and wrenched its armor-plated skull hard to the right, slamming it directly into one of the steam pipes along the far wall.

  The creature shrieked again—a wailing mournful cry that turned out to be its swan song. The steam pipe burst apart, shooting a thick, scalding blast of focused heat directly into the thing’s face, boiling its flesh and scalding its eyeballs in their sockets. The effect was immediate. Strabo’s nostrils stung with the stench of burned feathers and flash-fried skin as the varactyl’s flesh peeled back to expose the thickly plated vault of its cranium. Its body collapsed with the Zabrak still astride it.

  Voices murmured behind him, and he glanced back over his shoulder. Curious inmates had joined the guards who were crowding up the hall now, drawn by the noise and activity.

  “What happened?” somebody asked.

  “Lizard broke loose,” Izhsmash muttered. He’d already finished whatever he’d set out to do with the wiring, yanking the keypad loose and shoving through the open panel, then closing it up just in time. “Jagannath stopped it.”

  “Yeah, I guess he did.”

  In front of him, Jagannath had taken hold of the varactyl’s boiled skull. With a final jerk, he snapped it completely free from its neck and yanked it upward. The scorched gray rag of the thing’s tongue tumbled free and dangled from its mandible like a limp rag of surrender.

  Silence fell through the hallway. Dismounting, the Zabrak hoisted its massive skull up over his head, the inmates and even some of the guards taking a step back as he carried the grisly trophy forward down the length of the concourse. At the end, he turned and kept walking.

  “Where’s he going with that thing?” one of the guards asked aloud.

  Strabo heard another guard answer, under his breath, “You want to ask him?”

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Coyle peered admiringly at the skull in front of him. “Didn’t take you long to procure, did it?”

  Maul said nothing. He’d carried the bird-lizard’s skull down the factory floor and dropped it unceremoniously at the Chadra-Fan’s feet, and what he felt now, more than anything, was exhausted. Staying on top of
the thing long enough to kill it had required more strength than he’d expected, and at some point during the fray its powerful claws had dug a deep gash into his right flank. Blood was oozing slowly but steadily from the wound.

  Yet it would all be worth it if things went as planned.

  “Are you all right, Jagannath?”

  “I’m fine,” Maul said shortly. “Just make sure you’re ready with your end of the deal.”

  “I’ve already spoken to Zero about the necessary supplies.”

  Maul nodded. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “You should rest, my friend. You think they’ll be matching you again soon?”

  “Very soon,” Maul said. “If all goes as planned.”

  “Meaning what exactly?”

  Maul didn’t respond, just turned to walk away.

  “Jagannath, wait.”

  Maul looked back. Reaching out, Coyle slipped something into his palm, a small, sealed packet. Maul glanced down and saw that it was full of finely crushed powder.

  “What’s this?”

  “White metaxas root,” the Chadra-Fan said. “It’s flavorless and odorless, but a few granules will kill almost anything that ingests it.”

  Maul tossed it aside. “I don’t need this.”

  “Suit yourself, but it might come in handy.”

  Maul left the packet where it fell. All he needed right now was rest. If he could spend even a few moments recuperating in his cell and fashion some kind of makeshift dressing for the wound, he knew he’d be all right. And if Izhsmash had been able to take advantage of the distraction he’d created to hack back into the prison’s algorithm again—

  And that was when the second set of alarms—the clarion call that meant the beginning of the next bout—began to shatter the world with sound.

  28

  SUBMERGED

  By the time Maul had made his way back from the factory floor to the main gallery, the rest of the prison population was already on their way to lockdown. Alarms howled louder here, the clock ticking down. Holding his side where the varactyl had slashed him, he shoved his way through the foul-smelling herds of inmates, cutting a path down the corridor that led to his own cell. Stepping inside, he found a guard standing there.

  “Hey, Tooth,” the guard said. “Welcome back.”

  It was Smight, the young CO who had kept jamming the barrel of his blaster against Maul’s spine on the way up to the warden’s office.

  But he looked different now—there was something twitchy going on in the corners of his mouth, some twisted species of chemically enhanced depravity that Maul had not seen on the young CO’s face before now. His eyes gleamed dully in the recessed lights. Maul wondered if the guard was on something, if he’d speed-jacked some glitterstim before coming here, to nerve himself up for whatever his purpose was.

  “They’re matching you again, you know,” Smight was saying, cracking his knuckles as he spoke. He shot a glance at the chrono on his wrist. “In about two minutes.”

  “Then you better get out of my cell,” Maul said.

  “In a rush, huh? Got someplace you need to be?” The guard sniggered and cast his eyes at the open wound on Maul’s flank. “Maybe you shouldn’t have been tussling with that varactyl, huh? Match hasn’t even started and you’re already bleeding.”

  Maul said nothing.

  “Which reminds me,” Smight added. “Warden sent me up here with something special, just for you.” Reaching to his belt, he withdrew a pair of zip-tie restraints, Nylasteel, like the ones they’d used on the wampa. “Take a seat.”

  Maul sat on the bench and Smight slapped the zip-ties around his ankles, jerking them tight to the steel posts that anchored it to the floor. When he finished, he gave Maul one last, wild look.

  “What’s the matter? You got nothing to crack wise about?”

  “You should be more careful what you put in your body,” Maul said.

  “What?”

  “Spice. It will kill you. If I don’t do it first.”

  Smight’s face seemed to narrow with hostility. “Have a good fight,” he said, and stepped out, as the hatch sealed behind him.

  Maul didn’t move. The alarms outside had stopped. There was a long, anticipatory silence, and then a sudden metallic creaking sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once as the prison itself began the process of reconfiguration.

  Now he would find out if Izhsmash had been able to accomplish what he’d asked. The zip-ties would make it more difficult, but not impossible. There was nothing to do but wait.

  The cell lurched into motion. It turned and swung around to the right, jerked upward once again, and tumbled head to foot 180 degrees, leaving him dangling upside down by the handgrips and the zip-ties on his ankles. Other cells were moving around his; he could hear the noise of their passing. At length, his rotated back down to its original position and stopped, the wall and ceiling panels adjusting themselves, tightening around him.

  Maul listened for sounds on the other side of the wall. The list of inmates had not told him what type of species Rook was. What would it be this time? A growl? A snarl? A human voice?

  He heard nothing. He looked at the walls around him. The cell didn’t feel any smaller. But something had changed, the entire room tightening around him in some almost imperceptible way.

  Seconds later, the cell began to fill with water.

  It came spraying down from a pipe in the ceiling, an ice-cold gush of stinking gray liquid that drenched him instantly as it clattered across the metal floor and began pooling around his feet and ankles. From where he sat, Maul looked up at the pipe with annoyance but no real sense of surprise.

  Rising to his full height, he jerked on the zip-ties that fastened him to the bench, already knowing that they wouldn’t yield. He grabbed the bench and yanked. The steel posts weren’t going anywhere, either, nor had he expected them to. For the moment, this seemed to be where he was fighting from.

  The water had risen past his knees and was coming up to his waist. The entire ceiling seemed to be pouring down on him, and the acoustics of the room had begun to change, obliterating the echoes and leaving only a steady, discordant roar. It was happening so fast that it felt less like the water was coming down and more like he was sinking into it.

  He could feel the sheer weight of liquid tonnage itself pressing in around him, rising to engulf his chest and shoulders, and then creeping up higher around his neck. Tipping back his head, he exhaled and watched his breath plume out in a visible cloud. The temperature in the cell had dropped twenty degrees in two minutes. He felt both his hearts quickening, pumping blood to his extremities, readying himself for whatever came next.

  Where was Rook? Was he coming? Or had Izhsmash failed to hack the algorithm as he’d requested?

  He gave another glance at what remained of his surroundings. The cell had grown darker, as if the lights themselves had been swallowed up by the flood.

  Drawing in deep breaths, saturating his lungs with as much oxygen as he could, Maul plunged his head under the surface, acclimating his vision to the turbid murkiness below. At first he saw nothing. Lights shone faintly from the submerged walls, hazy in the depths. He could see nothing else down there.

  Not yet.

  He burst to the surface again, as high as the restraints would allow him to rise. The water was almost above his head, leaving only a narrow, cramped layer of stale oxygen above the surface. He went down again, and when he lifted his head, the water level had risen to the ceiling. There was a centimeter or two of air at the very top.

  Maul sucked at it, feeling it disappear against his lips.

  Across the cell, he felt the low, grinding reverberation of a hatch sliding open underwater. He pulled himself down but saw nothing.

  An instant later, below the surface, something brushed against his leg. Squinting into the depths, Maul made out a pair of bulbous, glassy black eyes staring back at him.

  An instant later, it struck.

  29<
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  SPECTATORS

  Sadiki was in her office, watching the live holo of the underwater match, when her brother burst in behind her.

  “Good,” she said, “you’re just in time. It’s starting now. Take a seat.”

  Dakarai didn’t move. He stood over her, his pale face mottled with high splotches of red in his cheeks and forehead. In his silence, his indignation was all the more apparent. It seemed to ripple off his skin in nearly visible waves.

  “What’s wrong?”

  But of course she already knew. They had been through all this before. In the final weeks before Cog Hive Seven became fully operational—when Dakarai had realized how much of his original design was going to have to be jettisoned in order for them to move forward—he’d become sulky and remote, withdrawing even more thoroughly from her, disappearing for days at a time. His silence had taken on an almost palpable weight. Only by promising him absolute autonomy when it came to the algorithm and the bouts had Sadiki been able to placate him.

  And now she had violated that rule as well.

  “I can see that you’re upset.” Sadiki rose to her feet with a sigh. “Forgive me. I know this particular match isn’t what your algorithm called for. But Dakarai, you have to trust me on this. The Zabrak is becoming a real problem for us. He needs to be broken. And this fight—”

  He thrust a thin sheaf of flimsiplast in her face. Sadiki took it from him and glanced down at it. It was a printout of the algorithm’s actual match, which was supposed to have pitted two completely different inmates against one another.

  “I know,” Sadiki said. “But I’m telling you—”

  “Warden.”

  Sadiki turned and glanced at the holoscreen that had gone active above her head. Gaming Commissioner Dragomir Chlorus’s face glared down at her, inflamed with fury.

  “Commissioner,” Sadiki said. “I’m beginning to think your position doesn’t keep you busy enough.”

  “Sadiki, what do you think you’re doing?”