by James Luceno
Darth Maul
DARTH MAUL
SABOTEUR
JAMES LUCENO
THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP
NEW YORK
A Del Rey Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright 2001 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM.
All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of
Random House, Inc.
www.starwars.com
www.starwarskids.com
www.randomhouse.com/delrey/
eISBN 0-345-44735-2
v.1
Also by James Luceno
The ROBOTECH Series (as Jack McKinney, with Brian Daley)
The Black Hole Travel Agency Series (as Jack McKinney, with Brian Daley)
A Fearful Symmetry
Illegal Alien
The Big Empty
Kaduna Memories
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles The Mata Hari Affair
The Shadow
The Mask of Zorro
Rio Passion
Rainchaser
Rock Bottom
Star Wars The New Jedi Order Agents of Chaos I Heros Trial
Star Wars The New Jedi Order Agents of Chaos II Jedi Eclipse
Star Wars Cloak of Deception *
*Forthcoming
Nearly every world in the Videnda sector had something to recommend itwarm
saline seas, verdant forests, arable grasslands that stretched to distant
horizons. The outlying world known as Dorvalla had a touch of all of those. But
what it had in abundance was lommite ore, an essential component in the
production of transparisteela strong, transparent metal used galaxywide for
canopies and viewports in both starships and ground-based structures. Dorvalla
was so rich in lommite that one-quarter of the planets scant population was
involved in the industry, employed either by Lommite Limited or its contentious
rival, InterGalactic Ore.
The chalky ore was mined in Dorvallas tropical equatorial regions. Lommite
Limiteds base of operations was in Dorvallas western hemisphere, in a broad
rift valley blanketed with thick forest and defined by steep escarpments. There,
where ancient seas had once held sway, shifts in the planetary mantle had thrust
huge, sheer-faced tors from the land. Crowned by rampant vegetation, by trees
and ferns primeval in scale, the high, rocky mountains rose like islands,
blinding white in the sunlight, the birthplace of slender waterfalls that
plunged thousands of meters to the valley floor.
But what was once a wilderness was now just another extractive enterprise. Huge
demolition droids had carved wide roads to the bases of most of the larger
cliffs, and two circular launch zones, large enough to accommodate dozens of
ungainly space shuttles, had been hollowed from the forest. The tors themselves
were gouged and honeycombed with mines, and deep craters filled with polluted
runoff water reflected the sun and sky like fogged mirrors.
The ceaseless work of the droids was abetted by an all but indentured labor
force of humans and aliens, to whom the mined ore served as a great equalizer.
No matter the natural color of a miners skin, hair, feathers, or scales,
everyone was rendered white as the galactic dawn. All agreed that sentient
beings deserved more from life, but Lommite Limited wasnt prosperous enough to
convert fully to droid labor, and Dorvalla wasnt a world of boundless
opportunities for employment.
Still, that didnt stop some from dreaming.
Patch Bruit, Lommite Limiteds chief of field operationshuman beneath a routine
dusting of orehad long dreamed of starting over, of relocating to Coruscant or
one of the other Core worlds and making a new life for himself. But such a move
was years away, and not likely to happen at all if he kept returning his meager
wages to LL by overspending in the company-run stores and squandering what
little remained on gambling and drink.
He had been with LL for almost twenty years, and in that time had managed to
work his way out of the pits into a position of authority. But with that
authority had come more responsibility than he had bargained for, and in the
wake of several recent incidents of industrial sabotage his patience was nearly
spent.
The boxy control station in which Bruit spent the better part of his workdays
looked out on the forest of tors and the shuttle launch and landing zones. To
the stations numerous video display screens came views of repulsorlift
platforms elevating gangs of workers to the gaping mouths of the artificial
caves that dimpled the precipitous faces of the mountains. Elsewhere, the
platform lifting was accomplished with the help of strong-backed beasts, with
massive curving necks and gentle eyes.
The technicians who worked alongside Bruit in the control station were fond of
listening to recorded music, but the music could scarcely be heard over the
unrelenting drone of enormous drilling machines, the low bellowing of the lift
beasts, and the roar of departing shuttles.
The walls of the control station were made of transparisteel, thick as a finger,
whose triple-glazed panels were supposed to keep out the ore dust but never did.
Fine as clay, the resinous dust seeped through the smallest openings and filmed
everything. As hard as he tried, Bruit could never get the stuff off him, not in
water showers or sonic baths. He smelled it everywhere he went, he tasted it in
the food served up in the company restaurants, and sometimes it infiltrated his
dreams. So pervasive was the lommite dust that, from space, Dorvalla appeared to
be girdled by a white band.
Fortunately, everyone within a hundred kilometers of Lommite Limiteds operation
was in the same predicamentminers, shopkeepers, the beings who tended the
cantina bars. But what should have been just one big happy lommite family
wasnt. The recurrent incidents of sabotage had fostered an atmosphere of
wariness and distrust, even among laborers who worked shoulder to shoulder in
the pits.
Group Two shuttles are loaded and ready for launch, Chief, one of the human
technicians reported.
Bruit directed his gaze to the droid-guided, mechanized transports that were
responsible for ferrying the lommite up the gravity well. In high orbit the
payloads were transferred to LLs flotilla of barges, which conveyed the
unrefined ore to manufacturing worlds along the Rimma Trade Route and
occasionally to the distant Core.
Sound the warning, Bruit said.
The technician flipped a series of switches on the console, and loudspeakers
began to hoot. Miners and maintenance droids moved away from the l
aunch zone.
Bruit looked at the screens that displayed close-up views of the shuttles. He
studied them carefully, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
Launch zone is vacated, the same technician updated. Shuttles are standing by
for liftoff.
Bruit nodded. Issue the go-to.
It was a routine that would be repeated a dozen times before Bruits workday
concluded, typically long past sunset.
The eight unpiloted craft rose from the ground on repulsorlift power,
pirouetting and bringing their blunt noses around to the southwest. The air
beneath them rippled with heat. When the shuttles were fifty meters above the
ground, their sublight engines engaged, flaring blue, rocketing the ships high
into the dust-filled sky.
The ground shook slightly, and Bruit could feel a reassuring rumble in his
bones. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. For the next hour, he could
relax somewhat. He had turned from the view of the launch zone when his bones
and his ears alerted him to a shift in the roaring sound, a slight drop in
volume that shouldnt have occurred.
Sudden apprehension tugged at him. His forehead and palms broke an icy sweat. He
whirled and pressed his face to the south-facing transparisteel panel. High in
the sky he could see two of the shuttles beginning to diverge from course, their
vapor trails curving away from the straight-line ascent of the rest of the
group.
Fourteen and sixteen, the technician affirmed. Im trying to shut down the
sublights and convert them back over to repulsorlift. No response. Theyre
accelerating!
Bruit kept his eyes glued to the sky. Give me a heading.
Back at us!
Bruit ran his hand over his forehead. Enable the self-destructs.
The technicians fingers flew across the console. No response.
Employ the emergency override.
Still no response. The overrides have been disabled.
Bruit cursed loudly. Vector update.
Theyre aimed directly for the Castle.
Bruit glanced at the indicated tor. It was one of the largest of the mines, so
named for the natural spires that graced its western and southern faces.
Order an evacuation. Highest priority.
Sirens shrieked in the distance. Within moments, Bruit could see workers
hurrying from the mine openings and leaping onto waiting hover platforms. Two
fully occupied platforms were already beginning to descend.
Tell those platform pilots to keep everyone aloft, Bruit barked. No onell be
any safer on the ground than in the mines. And start moving those droids and
lift beasts out of there!
A colossal bipedal drilling machine appeared at the mouth of one of the mines,
engaged its repulsorlift, and stepped off into thin air.
Thirty seconds till impact, the technician said.
Jettison the shuttles guidance droids.
Droids away!
Bruit clenched his hands. The two rudderless shuttles were plummeting side by
side, as if in a race to reach the Castle. The technicians had already managed
to shut down fourteens sublight, and sixteens flared out while Bruit watched.
But there was no stopping them now. They were in ballistic freefall.
In the control station, droids and beings alike were crouched behind the
instrument consolesall except for Bruit, who refused to move, seemingly
oblivious to the fact that concussion alone could turn the booths
transparisteel panels into a hail of deadly missiles.
The shuttles struck the Castle at almost the same instant, impacting it above
the loftiest of the mines, perhaps fifty meters below the tors jungled summit.
The Castle disappeared behind an explosive flare of blinding light. Then the
sound of the collisions pealed across the landscape, reverberating and
crackling, echoing thunderously from the twin escarpments. Immense chunks of
rock flew from the face of the tor, and two of its elegant spires toppled. Dust
spewed from the mine openings, as if the Castle had coughed itself empty of ore.
The air filled with billowing clouds, white as snow. Almost immediately the ore
began to precipitate, falling like volcanic ash and burying everything within
one hundred meters of that side of the mountain.
Bruit still didnt budgenot until the roiling cloud reached the control station
and the view became a whiteout.
Lommite Limiteds headquarters complex nestled at the foot of the valleys
western escarpment. But even there a half a centimeter of lommite dust covered
the lush lawns and flower gardens LLs executive officer, Jurnel Arrant, had
succeeded in coaxing from the acidic soil.
The soles of Bruits boots made clear impressions in the dust as he approached
Arrants office, with its expansive views of the valley and far-off tors. Bruit
tried to stomp, brush, and scuff as much dust as he could from his boots, but it
was a hopeless task.
Jurnel Arrant was standing at the window, his back to the room, when Bruit was
admitted.
Some mess, Arrant said when he heard the door seal itself behind Bruit.
You think this is bad, just waitll it rains. Itll be soup out there.
Bruit thought the remark might lighten the moment, but Arrants piqued
expression when he turned from the view set him straight.
Lommite Limiteds leader was a trim, handsome human, just shy of middle age.
When he had first come to Dorvalla from his native Corellia, he had not been
above rolling up his shirtsleeves and pitching in wherever needed. But as LL had
begun to thrive under his stewardship, Arrant had become increasingly fastidious
and removed, choosing to let Bruit handle day-to-day affairs. Arrant favored
expensive tunics of dark colors, the shoulders invariably dusted with lommite,
which he wore as a badge of honor. If his nonindigenous status had been held
against him initially, few had anything disparaging to say about the man who had
single-handedly transformed formerly provincial Lommite Limited into a
corporation that now did business with a host of prominent worlds.
Arrant glanced at the white prints Bruits boots had left on the carpet. Sighing
with purpose, he motioned Bruit to a chair and settled himself behind an old
hardwood desk.
What am I going to do with you, Bruit? he asked theatrically. When you asked
for enhanced surveillance equipment, I provided it for you. And when you asked
for increased security personnel, I provided those, as well. Is there something
else you need? Is there something Ive neglected to give you?
Bruit compressed his lips and shook his head.
You dont have a family. You dont have a girlfriend that I know about. So
maybe you just dont care about your job, is that it?
You know that isnt true, Bruit lied.
Then why arent you doing it? Arrant put his elbows on the desk and leaned
forward. This is the third incident in as many weeks, Bruit. I dont understand
how this keeps happening. Do you have any leads on the shuttle crashes?
Well know more if the guidance droids can be located and analyzed, Bruit
said. Right now theyre buried under about five meters of dust.
Well, get on it. I want you to devote all your resources to rooting out the
sab
oteurs responsible for this. Do you think you can do that, Bruit, or do I
have to bring in specialists?
They wont be able to learn any more than I have, Bruit rejoined.
InterGalactic Ore is becoming as desperate as LL is successful. Besides, its
not just a matter of industrial rivalry. A lot of the families that work for
InterGal have vendettas with some of the families we employ. At least two of
these recent incidents have been motivated by personal grudges.
What are you suggesting, Bruit, that I terminate everyone and ship in ten
thousand miners from Fondor? Whats that going to do to production? More
important, whats that going to do to my reputation on Dorvalla?
Bruit shrugged. I dont have any answers for you. Maybe its time you brought
this to the attention of the Galactic Senate.
Arrant stared at him. Bring this to Coruscant? Were not in the midst of an
interstellar conflict, Bruit. This is corporate warfare, and Ive been in the
trenches long enough to know that its best to resolve these conflicts on your
own. Whats more, I dont want the senate involved. It will come down to a
contest between Lommite Limited and InterGalactic, as to who can offer the most
bribes to the most senators. He shook his head angrily. Thatll bankrupt us
quicker than this continued sabotage.
Bruit had his mouth open to reply when a tone sounded from Arrants intercom,
and the voice of his protocol droid secretary issued from the annunciator.
Im sorry to disturb you, sir, but you have a priority holotransmission from a
Neimoidian, Hath Monchar.
Arrants fine brows beetled. Monchar? I dont know the name. But go ahead, put
him through.
From a holoprojector disk set into the floor at the center of the office rose
the life-size holopresence of a red-orbed, pale-green Neimoidian draped in rich
robes and wearing a black headpiece that aspired to be a crown.
I greet you in the name of the Trade Federation, Jurnel Arrant, Hath Monchar
began. Viceroy Nute Gunray conveys his warmest regards, and wishes you to know
that the Trade Federation was sorry to learn of your latest setback.
Arrant scowled. How is it that whenever tragedy strikes, the first ones I hear