by Martha Wells
And now.
Sitting in the midst of the mess hall, feeling the eyes of the other prisoners upon him, sensing the slow accumulation of tension gathering around him like an electrically charged flow of ionized particles, Maul realized that the inmates of Cog Hive Seven, both individually and collectively, were already planning his demise.
Let them. It will only make your task easier.
From everything he’d gleaned so far, the prison was an open sewer, its circular layout fostering an illusory sense of false-bottomed freedom among the incarcerated. In actuality, the prisoners’ ability to roam unimpeded between fights only heightened the steadily percolating sense of animosity among them, the willingness to rip one another to pieces at the slightest provocation.
Maul allowed his thoughts to cycle back to the electrostatic detonators that the droid had implanted in the chambers of both his hearts, tiny seeds of death that the population of Cog Hive Seven carried around with them every day. In the end, for all of these pathetic creatures, freedom was nothing but the promise of oblivion. No matter what they’d done to land themselves here—whatever they were running from or dreamed of or hoped to achieve—those detonators, mere microns in diameter, represented the totality of their lives, and the ease with which they could be taken away.
You are to locate Iram Radique, Sidious had told him, back on Coruscant, during their final moments together. And then, perhaps sensing the physical reaction that Maul himself had not quite been able to suppress, the Sith Lord had added, It will not be as easy as it sounds.
According to Sidious, Radique was a highly reclusive arms dealer, legendary throughout the galaxy, a ghost whose base of operations was located somewhere within the Cog Hive Seven, although no one, even Sidious himself, could confirm this fact.
Radique’s true identity was a closely guarded secret. As an alleged inmate in the prison, he operated exclusively behind a constantly shifting palimpsest of middlemen and fronts, guards and inmates and corrupt officials both inside and outside its shifting walls. Those who served him, directly or indirectly, might not know who they were working for, or if they did, they could never have identified his face.
You will not leave Cog Hive Seven, Sidious told him, until you have identified Radique and met with him face to face to facilitate the business at hand. Is that understood?
It was. Maul looked around the mess hall again at the hundreds of inmates who were now staring at him openly. At the next table, two human prisoners—they appeared to be father and son—were sitting close together as if for mutual protection. The older one, a powerfully built, scarred veteran of a thousand battles, was holding a piece of string with knots tied along carefully measured intervals, while the younger one looked on in mute fascination.
Three tables down, a group of inmates hunched over their trays, groping with utensils. When one of them lifted his head, Maul realized that the man’s eyes were missing—as if they’d been gouged out of his skull. Had that happened in one of the matches? The man’s hand found his fork, and he began, tentatively, to scoop food into his mouth.
Across the room, another inmate, a Twi’lek, was glaring directly at Maul. Beside him, a Weequay with a sunbaked face like a desert cliff and a half dozen topknot braids stood expressionless. Watchful. Any of them could have been Radique, Maul thought, or none of them.
Maul scanned the rest of the mess hall, absorbing all of it in a swingle sweeping glance. There were a hundred alliances here, he sensed, gangs and crews and whole webs of social order whose complexity would require his close attention if he was going to find his way among them to complete the mission for which he’d been dispatched. And time was not something that he had in unlimited quantities.
It was time to get to work.
Picking up his tray, he dumped the remains of his meal in the nearest waste bin, and cut diagonally across the mess hall. There were groups of inmates clustered around the exit. He turned left, following the wall to a hatchway in the corner, from which the smell of cheap prison food came wafting out, mixed with the stench of cleaning solution.
Exactly what he was looking for.
He slipped inside.
Introduction to the OLD REPUBLIC Era
(5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)
Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.
But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.
The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.
Then, a thousand years before A New Hope and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.
One Sith Lord survived—Darth Bane—and his vision for the Sith differed from that of his predecessors. He instituted a new doctrine: No longer would the followers of the dark side build empires or amass great armies of Force-users. There would be only two Sith at a time: a Master and an apprentice. From that time on, the Sith remained in hiding, biding their time and plotting their revenge, while the rest of the galaxy enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace, so long and strong that the Republic eventually dismantled its standing armies.
But while the Republic seemed strong, its institutions had begun to rot. Greedy corporations sought profits above all else and a corrupt Senate did nothing to stop them, until the corporations reduced many planets to raw materials for factories and entire species became subjects for exploitation. Individual Jedi continued to defend the Republic’s citizens and obey the will of the Force, but the Jedi Order to which they answered grew increasingly out of touch. And a new Sith mastermind, Darth Sidious, at last saw a way to restore Sith domination over the galaxy and its inhabitants, and quietly worked to set in motion the revenge of the Sith …
If you’re a reader new to the Old Republic era, here are three great starting points:
• The Old Republic: Deceived, by Paul S. Kemp: Kemp tells the tale of the Republic’s betrayal by the Sith Empire, and features Darth Malgus, an intriguing, complicated villain.
• Knight Errant, by John Jackson Miller: Alone in Sith territory, the headstrong Jedi Kerra Holt seeks to thwart the designs of an e
ccentric clan of fearsome, powerful, and bizarre Sith Lords.
• Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, by Drew Karpyshyn: A portrait of one of the most famous Sith Lords, from his horrifying childhood to an adulthood spent in the implacable pursuit of vengeance.
Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars novel set in the Old Republic era.
Even at the beginning of our journey I feel like a rock in the river of the Force. Lanoree is a fish carried by that river, feeding from it, living within it, relying on the waters for her well-being. But I am unmoving. An inconvenience to the water as long as I remain. And slowly, slowly, I am being eroded to nothing.
—Dalien Brock, diaries, 10,661 TYA
She is a little girl, the sky seems wide and endless, and Lanoree Brock breathes in the wonders of Tython as she runs to find her brother.
Dalien is down by the estuary again. He likes being alone, away from all the other children at Bodhi, the Je’daii Temple of the Arts. Her parents have sent her to find him, and though they still have some teaching to do that afternoon, they’ve promised that they will walk up to the boundary of the Edge Forest that evening. Lanoree loves it up there. And it scares her a little, as well. Close to the temple, near the sea, she can feel the Force ebbing and flowing through everything—the air she breathes, the sights she sees, and all that makes up the beautiful scenery. Up at the Edge Forest, there’s a primal wildness to the Force that sets her blood pumping.
Her mother will smile and say that she will learn about it all, given time. Her father will look silently into the forest, as if he silently yearns to explore that way. And her little brother, only nine years old, will start to cry.
Always at the Edge Forest, he cries.
“Dal!” She swishes through the long grasses close to the riverbank, hands held out by her sides so that the grass caresses her palms. She won’t tell him about the walk planned for that evening. If she does he’ll get moody, and he might not agree to come home with her. He can be like that sometimes, and their father says it’s the sign of someone finding his own way.
Dal doesn’t seem to have heard her, and as she closes on him she slows from a run to a walk and thinks, If that was me I’d have sensed me approaching ages ago.
Dal’s head remains dipped. By his side he has created a perfect circle using the stones of chewed mepples, his favorite fruit. He does that when he’s thinking.
The river flows by, fast and full from the recent rains. There’s a power to it that is intimidating, and, closing her eyes, Lanoree feels the Force and senses the myriad life-forms that call the river home. Some are as small as her finger, others that swim upriver from the ocean almost half the size of a Cloud Chaser ship. She knows from her studies that many of them have teeth.
She bites her lip, hesitant. Then she probes out with her mind and—
“I told you to never do that to me!”
“Dal …”
He stands and turns around, and he looks furious. Just for a moment there’s a fire in his eyes that she doesn’t like. She has seen those flames before, and carries the knotted scar tissue in her lower lip to prove it. Then his anger slips and he smiles.
“Sorry. You startled me, that’s all.”
“You’re drawing?” she asks, seeing the sketchbook.
Dal closes the book. “It’s rubbish.”
“I don’t believe that,” Lanoree says. “You’re really good. Temple Master Fenn himself says so.”
“Temple Master Fenn is a friend of Father’s.”
Lanoree ignores the insinuation and walks closer to her brother. She can already see that he has chosen a fine place from which to draw the surroundings. The river curves here, and a smaller tributary joins from the hills of the Edge Forest, causing a confusion of currents. The undergrowth on the far bank is colorful and vibrant, and there’s a huge old ak tree whose hollowed trunk is home to a flight of weave birds. Their spun golden threads glisten in the afternoon sun. The birdsong complements the river’s roar.
“Let me see,” Lanoree says.
Dal does not look at her, but he opens the pad.
“It’s beautiful,” she says. “The Force has guided your fingers, Dal.” But she’s not sure.
Dal picks a heavy pencil from his pocket and strikes five thick lines through his drawing, left to right, tearing the paper and ruining it forever. His expression does not change, and neither does his breathing. It’s almost as if there is no anger at all.
“There,” he says. “That’s better.”
For a moment the lines look like claw marks, and as Lanoree takes a breath and blinks—
A soft, insistent alarm pulled her up from sleep. Lanoree sighed and sat up, rubbing her eyes, massaging the dream away. Dear Dal. She dreamed of him often, but they were usually dreams of those later times when everything was turning bad. Not when they were still children for whom Tython was so full of potential.
Perhaps it was because she was on her way home.
She had not been back to Tython for more than four years. She was a Je’daii Ranger, and so ranging is what she did. Some Rangers found reasons to return to Tython regularly. Family connections, continuous training, face-to-face debriefs, it all amounted to the same thing—they hated being away from home. She also believed that there were those Je’daii who felt the need to immerse themselves in Tython’s Force-rich surroundings from time to time, as if uncertain that their affinity with the Force was strong enough.
Lanoree had no such doubts. She was comfortable with her strength and balance in the Force. The short periods she had spent with others on retreats on Ashla and Bogan—a voluntary part of a Padawan’s training, should they desire to go—had made her even more confident in this.
She stood from her cot and stretched. She reached for the ceiling and grabbed the bars she’d welded there herself, pulling up, breathing softly, then lifting her legs and stretching them out until she was horizontal to the floor. Her muscles quivered, and she breathed deeply as she felt the Force flowing through her, a vibrant, living thing. Mental exercise and meditation were fine, but sometimes she took the greatest pleasure in exerting herself physically. She believed that to be strong with the Force, one had to be strong in body.
The alarm was still ringing.
“I’m awake,” she said, easing herself slowly back to the floor, “in case you hadn’t noticed.”
The alarm snapped off, and her Peacemaker ship’s grubby yellow maintenance droid ambled into the small living quarters on padded metal feet. It was one of many adaptations she’d made to the ship in her years out in the Tythan system. Most Peacemakers carried a very simple droid, but she’d updated hers to a Holgorian IM-220, capable of limited communication with a human master and other duties not necessarily exclusive to ship maintenance. She’d further customized it with some heavy armor, doubling its weight but making it much more useful to her in risky scenarios. She spoke to it, its replies were obtuse, and she supposed it was the equivalent of trying to communicate with a grass kapir back home. She had even named it.
“Hey, Ironholgs. You better not have woken me early.”
The droid beeped and scraped, and she wasn’t sure whether it was getting cranky in its old age.
She looked around the small but comfortable living quarters. She had chosen a Peacemaker over a Hunter because of its size; even before she’d flown her first mission as a Je’daii Ranger, she knew that she would be eager to spend much of her time in space. A Hunter was fast and agile but too small to live in. The Peacemaker was a compromise on maneuverability, but she had spent long periods living alone on the ship. She preferred it that way.
And like most Rangers, she had made many modifications and adaptations to her ship that stamped her own identity upon it. She’d stripped out the table and chairs and replaced them with a weights and tensions rack for working out. Now, she ate her food sitting on her narrow cot. She’d replaced the holonet entertainment system with an older flatscreen, which doubled as communications center and
reduced the ship’s net weight. Beside the extensive engine compartment there had been a small room that housed a second cot for guests or companions, but because she had neither she had filled the space with extra laser charge pods, a water-recycling unit, and food stores. The ship’s four laser cannon turrets had also been upgraded, and it now also carried plasma missiles, and drone missiles for long-distance combat. At the hands of the Cathar master armorer Gan Corla, the cannons now packed three times more punch and were effective over twice the range as those standard to Peacemakers.
She had also altered and adapted the function and position of many cockpit controls, making it so that only she could effectively fly the ship. It was hers, it was home, and that was how she liked it.
“How long to Tython?” she asked.
The droid let out a series of whines and clicks.
“Right,” Lanoree said. “Suppose I’d better freshen up.” She brushed a touch pad and the darkened screens in the forward cockpit faded to clear, revealing the star-speckled view that never failed to make her heart ache. There was something so profoundly moving to the distance and scale of what she saw out there, and the Force never let her forget that she was a part of something incomprehensibly large. She supposed it was as close as she ever came to a religious epiphany.
She touched the pad again and a red glow appeared, surrounding a speck in the distance. Tython. Three hours and she’d be there.
The Je’daii Council ordering her back to Tython meant only one thing. They had a mission for her, and it was one that they needed to discuss face-to-face.
* * *
Washed, dressed, and fed, Lanoree sat in the ship’s cockpit and watched Tython drawing closer. Her ship had communicated with sentry drones orbiting at thirty thousand kilometers, and now the Peacemaker was performing a graceful parabola that would take it down into the atmosphere just above the equator.