by Star Wars
He charged at it, the makeshift lightsaber swinging sideways in both hands as he thrust it directly into the thing’s gaping maw, then planted his feet and spun the blade in a 360-degree arc. His right arm felt like it was on fire. His right shoulder was screaming at him. He ignored it, sweeping the saber around again, carving the very teeth from its mouth, slashing at the mandibles from the inside, then spinning it the other way until he’d chopped the mouthparts themselves to ribbons.
The effect was immediate. With a piercing scream that Maul heard both in his mind and in his ears, the worm spasmed and slashed its tail, rolling sideways, as if bewildered by the fact that—after everything that had happened—it had somehow been bested.
At last it fell still.
Maul staggered backward, dragging himself from the thing’s maw, and saw Komari Vosa staring at him, hollow-eyed, from the other side of the medbay. She looked exhausted but triumphant.
“You did that.” Reaching up, she shoved the blood-soaked hair from her brow and gave him a wicked grin. “You killed it.”
Maul said nothing. His gaze traveled from the great dead bulk of the worm to where Eogan Truax was standing, and he remembered what he had forgotten.
“It doesn’t matter.”
She frowned at him. “Why?”
“There are electrostatic charges implanted in both of my hearts,” Maul told her. “They’re going to go off at any second.”
“But—”
“I’m going to die in this place.” He glanced at the crate on the far side of the medbay. “The material for the weapon is in there. Take it.”
Something tightened in the pit of his stomach, and he turned from her, walking toward the hatchway. “In giving it to you, I will be accomplishing the will of my Master.”
“Wait,” she said, moving toward him cautiously, hands raised. “What do you mean, an electrostatic charge?”
“There is nothing you can do.”
“Maul, stop.”
Something in her voice froze him in the doorway.
“I see now that I was wrong to attack you. When you stated that you wanted to deliver a weapon into our hands, I anticipated an ambush—some kind of trap.” Her voice faltered slightly. “I am not used to extending such trust.”
Maul said nothing.
“I am a Force user, you know,” Vosa’s voice said, and he could tell from the sound of her voice that she was drawing nearer to him. “Maybe there’s something I could do after all.”
74
DIASTOLE
When Vosa’s hands reached out to touch his chest, Maul had to fight back an instinctive desire to lash out and knock her away.
“Don’t move,” she said, eyes closed. “If this is going to work, I need to see inside.”
He forced himself to hold still, jaw clenched, arms rigid at his sides. He could feel his hearts pounding together in unison, cardiac muscle contracting, ventricles paddling their way through a sea of leftover adrenaline from their battle as they counted down the final helpless seconds of his life.
But now there was something else inside him, too, a subtle, probing presence that he identified as a telekinetic representation of Vosa herself winding its way through the chambers of his heart.
“What are you—” Eogan asked from behind her.
“Quiet.” She waited, and glanced at Maul. “Hold your breath.”
Through gritted teeth, Maul said: “Why?”
“Because everything moves when you breathe, and I’ve only got one shot at this.” Raising one hand slightly, she spread her fingers and then brought them together as if taking hold of some invisible object. “Your hearts are always in motion. I’ve got less than a second when all four chambers are at rest.”
Maul felt a bright shock of pain cut through his left chest. He fought the urge to react—it took every ounce of willpower that he had—and then it was gone.
Vosa opened her eyes and looked at him. “That’s it.”
“Whoa,” Eogan said, sounding impressed. “How did you do that? You’re sure you got them both?”
“No,” Vosa said, “but if I’m wrong, we’ll all know soon enough.” She glanced at the crate on the floor of the medbay. “Come on, let’s move this thing out of here before another one of us ends up dead.”
The journey back to the hangar was largely uneventful. Carrying the crate between the three of them, with Eogan helping to compensate for Maul’s steadily weakening right arm, they made good time. Only once did they come across any sign of life—a small-scale standoff in the prison’s metal shop between a heavily armed group of new inmates and the last remaining guards. From what Maul could see, the guards were winning, but only because they knew the terrain. He watched without any particular interest as two of the corrections officers ambushed one of the inmates from behind and tossed him into one of the huge steel baling and shredding machines. The prisoner didn’t have time to scream.
Beneath him, the floors of Cog Hive Seven gave a sudden galvanic lurch. The familiar clamor of clockwork began to reverberate through the walls.
“What was that?” Vosa asked from her end of the crate.
Maul and Eogan exchanged a single glance. Then Eogan nodded her onward. “It means we have to hurry.”
By the time they got to the corridor outside the hangar, the walls were peeling apart, sliding sideways and slamming together in an ill-fated attempt to align themselves into new levels and layers. The slamming and scraping noises down here were close to deafening. Vosa kept throwing wild glances around her as they stepped over the gaps opening up in the floor around them. In every direction, the great metal landscape was racked by constant, erratic shuddering.
“Is this normal?” she shouted.
Eogan ducked as a massive sheet of steel flew past his head, spiraling in midair and imbedding itself in the opposite wall. “Nothing’s normal here,” the boy muttered. “The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”
Maul trained his eyes on the corridor ahead. As preoccupied as he was with getting the crate aboard the Bando Gora’s ship, there was no mistaking the fact that this reconfiguration was different—that gears and sprockets of Cog Hive Seven were bent on ripping themselves to shreds. Whether this was some kind of automated self-destruct mode or simply the inevitable outcome of the matching algorithm run amok, he neither knew nor cared. They were running out of time.
Then he realized something else was happening as well.
The walls were closing in.
He spied the docking port and moved faster, forcing Eogan and Vosa into a near-run to keep pace.
“Going somewhere?” a voice behind them asked.
Maul’s head snapped around to see the fully projected hologram of Jabba poised on his repulsor platform, leering back at them like the last lord of creation. Standing directly in front of the hologram, Maul could see a Trandoshan mercenary, a blaster rifle gripped in his hands. The mercenary leveled the weapon at them until the blaster’s barrel became a perfect, staring O.
“I see you’ve made a friend,” Jabba said, nodding at Vosa. “Sewage always sinks to meet the lowest level. Why am I not surprised?” He didn’t wait for their reply. “What’s in the crate?”
“None of your concern,” Maul said. “We’re leaving with it.”
“Leaving?” The Hutt chortled and cast a glance at the walls of the hangar. “No, I think you’ll be staying here. I like the idea of seeing you and your new companions being crushed to a pulp inside this metal coffin.”
Vosa’s hands went to her lightsabers. “Last chance, Jabba.”
“Not this time, scum.” With a grimace, the Hutt gestured, the repulsor platform pivoting around, and the Trandoshan opened fire.
Maul was already moving. Dropping his end of the crate, he leapt forward, activating his lightsaber midair, and executed a weightless Ataru-style spin, ducking the volley of blasterfire and swinging the blade in an arc at the Trandoshan’s neck. The blow decapitated his opponent so swiftly that, for a mo
ment, the mercenary’s headless body remained erect at the edge of the floating platform before tumbling off, disappearing into a gap that had just opened below them.
Jabba’s eyes rolled up to meet Maul’s. The crime lord was saying something, but the words were blocked out by the bleating cacophony of mechanical noises, and it hardly mattered anyway. With an offhand swing of one arm, the Hutt indicated the docking berth.
Maul jumped back down to where Eogan and Vosa were waiting, and together they carried the crate up the gangway toward the port where Jabba’s ship, the Star Jewel, was ready for departure.
75
500 REPUBLICA
The lights were dimmed for the evening, and Palpatine emerged from his shower, freshly toweled and draped in a Dramasian shimmersilk robe, to find Hego Damask seated in the dressing room, waiting for him.
“Master.” The senator paused in his tracks, his slippered feet coming to rest on the richly brocaded rug. “Welcome.” The unheralded appearance of the Muun here in his apartment, at this hour of the night, caught Palpatine off guard, even as he was forced to admit that Damask, as Lord Plagueis, had been in his unconscious thoughts for some time. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”
Plagueis nodded. “There are times when those seem to be the only pleasures left,” he replied cryptically, and then waved the thought away. “But never mind that. You must forgive me the melancholy ruminations, Lord Sidious, even as you forgive the uninvited visit.”
“Any visit from you is welcome.”
“Even now?” the Muun inquired. “Under these circumstances?”
Sidious gazed at him for a moment before nodding. “Ah,” he said. “You refer to the recent developments on Cog Hive Seven. Yes. I’ve been informed.”
“There is no Cog Hive Seven any longer, it seems,” Plagueis replied ruminatively. “At this point all scanners report nothing but a loose metallic debris field somewhere in the Outer Rim.”
“As requested.”
“Indeed,” the Muun agreed. “Apparently the entire space station ripped itself to shreds …” He paused, meeting Sidious’s gaze. “Immediately after the departure of your apprentice. And he did complete his mission perfectly, did he not?”
“Yes,” Sidious said with a nod.
“According to our initial bioscans, there were no survivors,” Plagueis said, almost gently. “Including your primary target, Iram Radique.”
Sidious stared at the Muun for a long, searching moment, wondering if there was something else beneath Plagueis’s words, an entire substratum of meaning that he’d overlooked until now. Had Plagueis begun to guess at his true purpose in sending Maul to Cog Hive Seven? How would he react to the revelation of what had happened in those final moments, if he ever found out that the Bando Gora had been there and taken possession of the nuclear device whose procurement had been his ultimate goal there?
Yet Plagueis was apparently already moving on to other things.
“As you have already learned,” he said, “the Force has a purpose and will for all things that even you and I have only now begun to discover. By exploiting its fullness, we stand to inherit untold power and glory.” Plagueis paused. “Together.”
Sidious said nothing for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Very well,” he said, and then, with some difficulty, managed an indulgent smile. “Although I cannot help feeling that in some way, by risking the possibility of exposure, I have failed you as well.”
“Have you?” Plagueis regarded him inscrutably. “It seems early to make such a sweeping condemnation.” Then, with a slow exhalation of air that signaled the conversation was over, he rose to his feet. “It is late, Senator Palpatine, and I know that your hours of privacy and leisure are becoming increasingly limited, so I’ll show myself out.” His yellow eyes gleamed. “We’ll speak again soon.”
He left Sidious standing in his dressing room. It was a long time before the Sith Lord moved again, stepping away from the place where he’d been standing, and going to seal the hatch of the dressing room, closing himself inside.
76
AFTERIMAGE
In the cargo hold, Maul squatted in the corner, staring protectively at the crate in front of him. He could feel the lethal warmth and vitality of the weaponized uranium, and knew that its deliverance here into the hands of Komari Vosa meant that he had been successful. But it meant little to him.
Although he been released from Cog Hive Seven, the electrostatic charges deactivated and dislodged from his hearts, some part of him still felt caged.
He had not yet heard from his Master.
Rising to his feet, he paced the length of the hold, turned, and walked back again, his eyes never leaving the crate. Until such time as Darth Sidious came to him directly to commend him on the success of his mission, he remained restless and pensive.
The hull of the Star Jewel trembled slightly around him, its great engines gnashing their way from the Tharin sector through the Sisar Run on its way back to Hutt space, where Maul would part ways with Eogan, Komari Vosa, and the weapon itself.
From there, the future was uncertain. He was acutely aware of Sidious’s instructions not to reveal himself as a Sith Lord or rely upon the Force.
Unless …
No. There could be no mistaking the message. Sidious had intended for him to unleash the full strength of the dark side, and the final moments in the prison—with the worm, with Vosa herself—had been another test, in which he only hoped he’d proven himself worthy.
So why hadn’t Sidious come to him yet? And when would he hear from his Master again?
He began to pace the hold again, then stopped at the sound of the hatchway hissing open behind him.
“Maul.”
Spinning, he dropped his hand to the hilt of his lightsaber, where it remained, even as he recognized the face of the woman emerging from the shadows.
“What do you want?”
At first Vosa didn’t answer. It was impossible to say what she was looking at. From the angle of her head, Maul assumed that her attention was fixated on the crate he’d been guarding … although she might have been looking at him.
“Just checking on our cargo.”
Maul didn’t move. There seemed to be no appropriate reply to this comment, and he gave none.
“Jabba’s chef is preparing dinner in the galley,” Vosa said. “I’m fairly sure that he won’t poison us … but we should let the boy eat first.” Then, venturing a step nearer: “You do eat, don’t you?”
Maul glared at her, held up one hand. “That’s close enough.”
“He worships you, you know. The boy. What he saw you do back there—”
“The galaxy will harden him soon enough,” Maul said. “If it doesn’t kill him first.”
“Perhaps you should take him with you. As an apprentice.”
Maul eyed her speculatively. “What would you know about apprentices?”
“Nothing,” Vosa said in a quiet voice, and then gave a vague, noncommittal nod in the direction of the crate. “I don’t need to know the details of your mission on Cog Hive Seven. I know that your mission there was in service to a sovereign purpose far beyond yourself.”
“As was yours,” Maul said. He’d expected her to deny it, to assert that the Bando Gora served only their own purposes, but Vosa actually nodded again.
“Perhaps that’s so,” she said. “Yet when I look at you, and the way that you and I fought that worm together, I can’t help but wonder …”
“Don’t,” he growled.
“I only meant to say—” She faltered, weighing her words carefully. “We’re neither of us the people that we once were. Who’s to say where we might end up?”
Maul flicked his gaze in her direction, his yellow eyes meeting hers for a fraction of a second. What he felt there, that uncanny familiarity, felt more dangerous and potentially ensnaring than it had back on Cog Hive Seven, and he dismissed it at once.
“How long until we arrive?”
“You’
re impatient?”
Maul dismissed it. “Simply ready to put this business behind me.”
“I see.” Vosa smiled at his tone, as if she’d expected nothing less. “Not long now.”
“Then leave me.”
“Perhaps I’ll see you up above?”
But Maul had already turned his back on her to stare down at the crate in the corner of the hold. It wasn’t until he heard her leave and the hatch seal shut behind her that he took his eyes off the crate and turned to glance back at the door through which she’d already disappeared.
To Christina. The one my heart loves.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I’d like to extend many thanks to my editors Frank Parisi at Random House, and Jen Heddle and Leland Chee at Lucasfilm. Erich Schoeneweiss at Random House also injected the proceedings with his own inimitable enthusiasm and insight. I’m grateful to Keith Clayton, whose support goes back to the beginning. Thanks as always to my wonderful agent, Phyllis Westberg, for making it all come together.
For inspiration and support in the trenches, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my good friend Dom Benninger, who was always ready with insight and the excellently Photoshopped cover art when I needed it most (Au Revoir, Crazy Bando Gora Chick!). Thanks also to Michael Ludy, an old-school student of narrative structure and this bewildered storyteller’s oldest friend. Vigilant readers will also find the influence of Geddy Lee, Neil Peart, and Alex Lifeson among these pages, three gentlemen whose music animates much of the action as I initially conceived it in my mind. And of course, to George Lucas, without whom all of this never would have existed in the first place.
Closer to home, it is my pleasure and honor to thank my family—my son, Jack; my daughter, Veda; and especially my wife, Christina, to whom this novel is dedicated, for their patience and love during the long road that Maul took over the past two years.
