Reluctantly, Arrant reactivated the device.
“We need to team up to accomplish this,” Bruit said. “No one will suspect us, and Arrant doesn’t need to know any more than he has to.”
“He’s not that clever.”
“The Tooms have the means to get the job done. We’re going to make a move against everyone at Eriadu—”
Arrant silenced the device and pushed it away from him. “I don’t know what to say.”
The judicial agent nodded, tight-lipped.
Arrant got to his feet and spent a long moment gazing out the window. When he turned, his expression was bleak. He touched a key on the intercom pad, and seconds later his protocol droid secretary entered the office.
“How may I be of service, sir?”
Arrant glanced up at the droid. “I need to make two holocalls. The first will be to the chief executive of InterGalactic Ore, to discuss terms of a possible merger.”
“And the second, sir?”
Arrant took a moment to reply. “The second call will be to Viceroy Nute Gunray, to discuss terms of granting the Trade Federation exclusive rights to the shipping and distribution of Dorvalla’s lommite ore.”
In a dank, fungus-encrusted grotto on the Neimoidian homeworld, Hath Monchar and Viceroy Nute Gunray received a startlingly sudden holovisit from Darth Sidious. First to reach the holoprojector and the cloaked apparition that was the Dark Lord of the Sith, Monchar inclined his lumpish head in a servile bow and spread his thick-fingered hands.
“Welcome, Lord Sidious,” he said.
Though his eyes remained concealed by the cloak’s raised hood, Sidious seemed to be gazing through Monchar at Gunray, who was perched atop his claw-footed mechno-chair a few meters away.
“Viceroy,” Sidious rasped. “Dismiss your underling, so that we may speak in private about recent events on Dorvalla.”
Monchar stared openly at Sidious, then whirled on Gunray. “But, Viceroy, I was the one who made contact with Lommite Limited. I deserve at least some of the credit for what has occurred.”
“Viceroy,” Sidious said, with a bit more menace, “advise your underling that his contributions in this matter were inconsequential.”
Gunray glanced nervously at Monchar. “You had better leave.”
“But—”
“Now—before he gets angry.”
Monchar’s gut sac made a sickening growl as he hurried from the grotto.
Gunray slid off the mechno-chair and approached the holoprojector. He had a jutting lower jaw, and his thick lower lip was uncompanioned. A deep fissure separated his bulging forehead into two lateral lobes. His skin was kept a healthy gray-blue by means of frequent meals of the finest fungus. Red and orange robes of exquisite hand fell from his narrow shoulders, along with a round-collared brown surplice that reached his knees.
“I apologize for the indiscretion of my deputy,” he said. “He is high-strung from too many rich foods.”
Sidious’s face betrayed nothing. “Apology accepted, Viceroy.”
“Hath Monchar regards me much as I regard you, Lord Sidious: with a mix of awe and fear.”
“You need fear me only if you fail me, Viceroy.”
Gunray seemed to take the remark under advisement. “I have been anticipating your visit, Lord Sidious. Though I confess that I had no idea you were aware of events on Dorvalla—much less that the Trade Federation had an interest in the planet.”
“You will find that there are few matters of which I am unaware, Viceroy. What’s more, we have not seen the last of Dorvalla. There is something we will need to attend to in due course.”
“But, Lord Sidious, the matter has been resolved. Lommite Limited and InterGalactic Ore have merged to become Dorvalla Mining, but the Trade Federation will transport the ore, and will now represent Dorvalla in the Galactic Senate.”
“More important, you have a permanent place on the directorate.”
Gunray bowed his head. “That, too, Lord Sidious.”
“Then the stage is set for the next act.”
“May I ask what that will entail?”
“I will inform you at the appropriate time. Until then, there are other matters I will see to, to secure the power base of the Trade Federation and to strengthen your personal position.”
“We are not deserving of your attention.”
“Then strive to make yourself deserving, Viceroy, so that our partnership will continue to prosper.”
Gunray gulped loudly. “I will do little else, Lord Sidious.”
In his lair on Coruscant, Darth Sidious deactivated the holoprojector and turned to face Darth Maul.
“Do you find them any more trustworthy than before?”
“More frightened, Master,” Maul said from his cross-legged posture on the floor, “which may achieve the same end result.”
Sidious made an affirmative sound. “We are not through with them yet—not for some time to come.”
“I begin to understand, Master.”
Sidious’s mouth approximated a grin of approval. “You did not disappoint me at Dorvalla, Darth Maul.”
“My Master,” Maul said, slightly bowing his head.
Sidious studied him for a moment. “I sense that you enjoyed being out on your own.”
Maul lifted his face. “My thoughts are open to you, Master.”
“I see,” Sidious said slowly. “Temper your enthusiasm, my young apprentice. Soon I will have another task for you to discharge.”
Maul waited.
“Familiarize yourself with the workings of the criminal organization known as Black Sun. And while you’re doing that, return to your warrior training. Your lightsaber may very well come in handy for what I require next.”
Before Maul was a Sith—before he was Darth Maul—he was a young man, made to hide his true nature as he learned the ways of combat.
In the shadows, though, Darth Sidious taught him about the cruelty and power of the dark side of the Force.
It was the only world he knew, and he yearned for the chance to embrace what he knew to be his destiny.
But then his past came to reclaim him, and his whole world changed….
RESTRAINT
An all-new Darth Maul short story
by James Luceno
Above the frozen floor of the Vale of Pale Tears, young Maul zigzagged for cover, the scuffed toes of his combat boots digging into fragile ground, black-gloved hands seeking purchase where the grade steepened. Once more the gritty soil shifted under his feet and he fell hard on his right knee. Low-energy blaster bolts fired from below struck the slope to all sides of him, flinging hot shingle into his unprotected face. A bolt caught him in the calf as he scrambled upward, and he cursed his carelessness. As it was, his utility suit was holed from previous strikes, and his body was rashed with coin-sized welts and burns. If the goal of the pursuit had been elimination rather than capture, he would already be lying dead on the frigid bank of the valley’s meandering river.
A tall pinnacle of eroded stone provided momentary shelter. Maul narrowed himself behind it as blaster bolts added to the abuses nature had wrought. Breathless in the thin air and favoring his right knee, he lowered himself to peer from behind the base of the pillar. Ordinary eyes wouldn’t have been able to trace the movements of his would-be captors, but eyes enhanced by the Force allowed him to outsmart the camouflage provided by their suits. In the lead hurried the human, Meltch Krakko, who would have shot Maul years ago if not for Trezza’s intervention. Flanking him loped two of the short-snouted Rodians Meltch had trained, Hubnutz and Fretch, skilled in both tracking and sharp-shooting.
Even holding his genuine powers back, he had enjoyed a solid lead until a surprise move by Meltch had forced Maul to divert from his original plan. Splashing through the iced river, clambering into the rugged terrain of the valley’s north wall … Beings from hot, humid worlds shouldn’t have been able to keep up with him. But along with the mimetic suits, the Rodians were sporting respir
ator masks. As for Meltch, he was built for any climate, any terrain, and decades of combat on diverse worlds had transformed him into a kind of super-soldier. Not extraordinary in the way Maul was, but powerful in another way.
A profane way, as he had been taught to think of it.
Pressing his back to the pocked spire, he scanned his immediate surroundings, then lifted his gaze to the summit of the slope, limned against the cloudless blue-green sky. This part of Orsis was a landscape more suited to the planet’s outermost moon, and the reason the valley and its sinuous river were known as Pale Tears. Descending raggedly from the face of a volcano ten kilometers high, the river spilled onto a deeply fissured tableland, and over the eons had fashioned from the valley wall a veritable forest of mesas and towering pinnacles, cleaved by crevasses and dotted with spiny cacti whose translucent juice was said to cause hallucinations in some species.
A blaster bolt whizzed past the vestigial horns that crowned Maul’s hairless black and red skull, and he shot to his feet. A quick follow-up glance revealed that his pursuers were attempting to surround him, covering for one another as they raced between protective out-croppings, trusting in the masking properties of their high-tech outfits. Maul raised his blaster and drew a bead on the nearest Rodian, forefinger trembling on the trigger, as if urging him to shoot. And he would have, if not for the blowback that would follow from seeing what he shouldn’t have been able to see. Frustrated, he bared his teeth to the cold dry wind sweeping down from the glacier and muttered another curse. Only when he was compelled to remain in the profane world did his feet slip out from under him and his lungs strain to deliver sufficient oxygen to his muscles. Only in the profane world was he forced to play the inferior quarry to safeguard his strength in the Force.
Better to wait, he told himself. Better to lead the three of them to higher ground, where the air was even thinner and the mimetic suits would be hard-pressed to provide concealment. There he would turn the tables in what might at least appear to be an ordinary way.
In his thoughts, his Master spoke to him: Imagine your trail, and the Force will open it.
Backing out of the pinnacle’s meager shadow, he deliberately showed himself for an instant before commencing another upward slalom. Blaster bolts dogged his churning footsteps, then caught him in the same calf—and in the right shoulder. This time he engulfed the pain, and used it to fuel his mounting anger. But Meltch had to be wondering why his prey wasn’t slowing down or accepting defeat. So Maul stumbled before resuming his pace. A climb of some four hundred meters brought him just short of the valley rim, where water and wind had created a maze of spires and pinnacles.
How simple it would be to soar through them, leaving scarcely an imprint of my boots. But not here, not now; not in the profane world.
Well-aimed bolts caromed and ricocheted from the spires, filling the air with particulate debris. Maul turned once to return fire, missing wildly, as he should. The shooting stopped as he threaded his way deeper into the stony labyrinth, edging through tight passages, crawling through others, leaping narrow chasms. With the rim in sight, he began to formulate a plan for catching his pursuers unaware. Meltch would be harder to fool than the Rodians. By now the Mandalorian knew all of Maul’s tricks, and indeed was responsible for his learning some of them. But Maul had learned some of Meltch’s tricks that the human hadn’t meant to teach, and was counting on the fact that the Mandalorian would send the Rodians to outflank him, while he himself continued to hound Maul from behind.
Emerging from the spires, he crouched for a moment in the whistling silence. At the head of the valley loomed a snow-capped conical mountain, lording over all it surveyed, a sole cloud wafting from its summit like a lavender banner. Cautiously, Maul ascended to the top of the slope, only to spy Meltch not 50 meters in front of him, standing with his back to a jagged rend in the broken terrain. How Meltch had gotten past him, Maul couldn’t guess. Some Death Watch technique, he supposed. But Maul wasn’t supposed to be able to see him, so he steeled himself and advanced into the pain. Meltch’s first bolt struck him in the right shoulder, spinning him partway around, but Maul completed the turn of his own volition and began a mad dash for the edge of the snaking crevasse. With near-misses from the Mandlorian’s blaster prodding him forward, he realized suddenly that his eyes had deceived him. More gaping than it had appeared from his earlier vantage, the chasm should have proved an impossible leap for a fifteen-year-old Zabrak—even for one who had spent almost a decade in combat training. Meltch would expect him to stop short of the edge and surrender, but instead he quickened his pace and jumped, arms and legs pumping as if to grant him greater momentum.
He allowed himself to slam into the far wall, using the Force to cushion the impact and hooking his hands over an outcropping a few meters below the rim. Having found a narrower gap, Meltch and the Rodians weren’t long in reaching him, gathering in their supposed invisibility on the rim to gaze down at him. Maul had himself convinced that his rash move—his leap of faith—had earned him the respect of his fellow warriors. But only until they began to taunt him by kicking debris from the rim in the hope that Maul would lose his grip and plunge to an accidental death.
Scarcely the first under the Mando’s watch.
Anger consumed Maul. How much longer would he be required to conceal his real abilities, to be made to seem mediocre—like some still struggling neophyte—when he was so much more?
Calling on the Force again, he launched himself from the chasm, somersaulting and half-twisting in mid-air, so that when his boots struck the resilient ground he was facing the backs of his hunters with his blaster in hand. By the time the three of them whirled—Meltch’s lined face contorted in bafflement—Maul was already triggering bolts, as if firing at beings he couldn’t see but knew to be in front of him.
Still trusting in the suits, they scattered, shooting blindly on the run. Though not a bolt found Maul, the Force guided his to their targets, and each pained outcry elated him. The blaster was almost depleted when Meltch deactivated his suit and shouted for Maul to stand down. But Maul ignored him. Swept up in the grip of sadistic delight, he kept firing, the dark side writhing through him like an aggrieved serpent.
And one day he would be able to unleash bolts of electricity from his fingertips!
Above him, cutting through the reports of the overheated blaster and the Mando’s calls for capitulation, an amplified voice Maul had known since childhood ordered him to cease fire.
Around the smoothed top of a low, bone-dry hill, an airspeeder came into view, settling into levitation mode as it put down at the edge of the chasm, a short but powerfully built Falleen seated at the controls. Aiming a glance at Meltch and the now-visible Rodians, the reptilian biped leapt from the speeder and approached Maul, snatching the blaster from his grip and tossing it aside.
“What were you thinking?” Trezza said under his breath.
Meltch had holstered his weapon and was gazing into the dark chasm, at the spot where Maul had seemingly been hanging on for dear life. When he swung around his eyes were narrowed in suspicion.
“How did you—?”
“I pushed off from a ledge,” Maul said.
Meltch took a second look and scowled. Turning back to Maul, he said, “How did you manage to target us?”
“The suits were glitched. They couldn’t decide how to blend you into the background.”
Meltch glanced to the Rodians, who shook their heads. Furious, then, he stormed past Trezza. Maul sensed the punch coming long before the Mando put his weight behind it. Standing still, he turned his head in the direction of the gauntleted blow and managed to remain on his feet. Spitting blood to the ground, he glared at the Mando.
Meltch snorted and offered up his square chin. “Go ahead, Maul, since you seem bent on making this personal.”
“You’ve made it personal for two years.”
“To push you to your limits,” Meltch said. “To make you a warrior.” Meltch held Maul
’s yellow-eyed gaze. “Personal or professional. You can’t have it both ways.”
A head shorter than both Maul or Meltch, Trezza stepped between them. It was never a good sign when a Falleen took on color, and Trezza’s face was shifting through the spectrum.
“Enough,” he said. “No points for either side.”
Meltch scoffed. “He’ll never make the grade, Trezza. Not until he decides to be honest with us. Until then, we’re wasting our time.”
In the training camp’s headquarters astride the turbulent sea, Trezza inspected the burns that covered Maul’s torso, which like his head and face was marked with esoteric black and red sigils.
“These require treatment.”
Trezza summoned a medical droid forward, but Maul shoved it away with his feet.
“Not from bacta,” he snarled. “I’ll heal myself.”
“And revel in the pain.”
“There is no pain.”
“So you’ve said.”
Maul looked at him. “You can’t understand.”
“Admittedly,” Trezza said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you appear to have forgotten more than you’ve learned.”
Maul tugged the upper portion of the utility suit over his shoulders. “Perhaps I’ll know a thing or two when I’ve lived as long as you have.”
Trezza shrugged. “Continue dishonoring your oath, and you’ll be fortunate to see sixteen years.”
“That’s my concern.”
“Ultimately, it is.”
The Falleen had been silent during the return trip from the high valley, releasing pheromones meant to pacify Maul, even though he was largely immune to their effects. Nearing two hundred standard years, Trezza had spent half his life training mercenaries and paramilitaries for planetary governments throughout the Republic—not to mention supplying professional combatants for the Petranaki Arena on Geonosis and the Cauldron on Rattatak, and forging assassins and intelligence agents for royal houses and criminal cartels alike. An even more skilled fighter than Meltch, he was also the closest Maul had to a protector—in the ordinary world.
Star Wars: Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter Page 29