Lockdown: Maul

by Star Wars

  The moment of clarity vanished in the hot rush of his own anger. Maul lowered his head, tightening up his core, hearing a new growl rising up—his own growl this time, emanating from the most deep and primal pit of his being. He opened himself to it, the deep venom of wrath taking control, fast and sleek and powerful. It would not be long now. Dismissing the bright slash of heat across his cheek and the bridge of his nose as he had dismissed the odd shimmer of insight that had immediately preceded it, he fell into a low crouch, letting the wampa come at him again.

  Its next move would be its last.

  Maul sprang straight upward into it, driving his horned head into the thing’s lower jaw, pulverizing its mandible and slamming needle-sharp bone fragments into its cranial vault. Maul could actually feel the joints and fissures shattering inside the wampa’s skull and knew intuitively that he’d dealt it a killing blow.

  But when he looked up again, the thing was on its feet and advancing toward him, howling and keening, a blind colossus. The head-butt had left its face a caved-in mass of blood and exposed bone. Somewhere within the cauldron of his anger, Maul felt a wave of disbelief.

  How was it still fighting?

  In defiance of all logic, it launched itself at him, all claws and teeth, a mass of unwavering death. Planting his feet against the wall behind him, Maul grabbed the thing by its remaining horn and put every ounce of his strength into twisting its head to the side. He wrenched the thing’s head away from him, and realized at the last second that he couldn’t hold it back. Whatever was inside the wampa was far more durable than he’d initially expected.

  The thing lunged again, sinking its teeth into Maul’s shoulder, hitting crucial nerve bundles. All the strength disappeared from his hand and wrist, his body turning traitor at the worst possible moment. His arms fell slack and he stumbled backward, staring up at his adversary. Darkness like he’d never known before was swarming through his peripheral vision, thick and pulsating, tightening with every second. For the first time the impossible occurred to him—the prospect that he might actually lose.

  He lifted his head, wiped the blood from his eyes.

  Look at it, a voice spoke from deep inside him—not the voice of Sidious but an instinct of self-preservation that far predated his service to his Master. Do you not see?

  Maul looked. Something was wrong with the wampa—something deeply, profoundly wrong that went beyond genetically predisposed violence and a history of predatory killing. And just that quickly, he knew how to end it.

  Summoning whatever remained of his strength, Maul fired himself at the beast. Hooking his hands into claws, he plunged them through its fur, ripping into the soft tissue of its torso. The wampa screeched and wailed. Maul barely heard it. Shoving his hands deeper, he sank both arms in up to the elbow, beneath its rib cage and into its thoracic cavity, groping until he found what he was looking for—the slick, pulsating mass of its heart.

  Maul grabbed it, laced his fingers together, and squeezed.

  The wampa’s heart burst between his fingers like a dense and fibrous flower. At once the thing tumbled backward with a kind of graceless, shambling sprawl, slumping against the wall with a low moan, as if released from bondage beyond any chains or shackles. It gave a final braying cough, shuddered once, and fell still.

  Maul licked the blood from his teeth and spat. He stumbled back, tried to catch himself, and failed. Fatigue was already taking hold, a dense and miserable web that made the simplest motions difficult. The blood he’d lost was not so easily countered. The darkness was coming again, and this time he knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold it off.

  The last thing he saw was the cell around him shifting and beginning to rise.

  Then blackness.

  12

  FACE TIME

  The Twi’lek known as Zero stepped around the corner and into the mess hall. He emerged as he always did, without fanfare, always within a crowd of inmates large enough to mask his point of entry. As far as appearances went, his was a model of absolute subtlety: one moment he wasn’t there, the next he was.

  All around him, the hall was already getting busy. The dinner hour had just begun. Falling silently into line behind two prisoners who’d just picked up their trays, he edged closer to them.

  “Any news?”

  At the sound of his voice, the other two inmates turned and glanced back at him with a squint of recognition. “Hey, Z,” one of them said, his mouth twisting into a gap-toothed grimace. “Where you been keeping yourself?”

  “Here and there,” the Twi’lek answered vaguely. “Who’s asking?”

  “Just curious, is all. We were all wondering what happened to you when that bomb went off.”

  The Twi’lek frowned and shook his head. “That was no bomb.”

  “No?”

  “The kitchen staff found a pressure cooker full of chemicals lodged inside the dishwasher.” He glanced at the line of inmates waiting to be served their evening meal. “Guess we’ll all be eating off dirty trays for a while.”

  The second inmate blinked, processing the information. “Somebody sending a message? Creating a diversion, like?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What, then?”

  Zero didn’t answer, scanning the room in front of him. The inmate to his right, a convicted smuggler and three-time loser named Miggs, gave a shrug. “Yeah, well, whaddaya gonna do, am I right?”

  With a distracted nod, Zero stepped forward. They carried their trays into the serving line, bypassing a half-dozen members of the Gravity Massive, their faces bruised and swollen. At least one of them was still actively bleeding through his makeshift bandages.

  “You hear what happened to them?” Miggs asked.

  “Run-in with the Bone Kings,” Zero said. “Word is they hashed it out in the tunnels last night before the bout.”

  “Figures.” Miggs held up his tray so that the service droid on the other side of the counter could slop a ladle of colorless protein gel into it. “Ugh, this stuff smells even worse than usual.”

  Behind him, Zero raised his own tray. With a click of recognition, the kitchen droid paused and then turned to lift the lid on a different serving tureen, extending tongs from its manipulators to serve Zero a steaming portion of succulent-smelling meat and fresh vegetables.

  “Traladon steak, medium rare, with Ramorean caponata and a side of fresh sufar greens,” it announced.

  “Thank you.” Zero nodded and took the tray, carrying it forward while the droid went back to the vat of gray, semi-liquefied gel for the next convict in line.

  “You see that fight, by the way?” he asked.

  “You kidding?” Miggs glanced at the con who had followed them into the main dining area, to their usual table at the far end of the room. “Halleck and I clocked the whole thing on holo from the gallery, watched it like eight times already, right?”

  Sitting down, the inmate behind him, Halleck, bobbed his head up and down. “Squall of a thing, too. You shoulda clocked on it, Zero, for real.”

  “Is that so?” The Twi’lek cut off a thin slice of steak and sniffed it before putting in into his mouth. “What happened?”

  “That red-skinned freak, the one they call the Tooth? What’s his name, Jagannath?” Miggs shoveled in a bite of his own food and gulped it down, wiping the corner of his mouth with his shirt cuff. “They put him in there again, and the powers that be or whatever, they match him up against this crazy snow beast—”

  “A wampa?” The Twi’lek cocked an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware that they actually still have one of them here.”

  “Had one,” Miggs said grimly, picking up his fork again. “So anyway, it starts out pretty much exactly like you’d expect. This wampa’s just pounding the unholy guts out of old Redskin—really making him work for his dinner, right? I mean, it’s not even fair. We’re all thinking Mr. Tooth is gonna lose a lot more than his tooth this time, you know what I’m saying?” Another bite, loaded in, chewed twice, and s
wallowed. “Then all of a sudden, just when you think it’s over—bam!” Miggs slammed his fist on the table and paused for dramatic effect. “The Tooth, like, actually reaches in and tears open the thing’s chest—”

  “Is that so?”

  “—and then he shoves his hand into the thing’s stomach up to his elbows, grabs the thing’s heart, and, like, crushes it in his bare hands.”

  “Mm.” Zero took another bite of steak. “Impressive.”

  “I’m not even yanking you, man—they showed the whole thing. And then, boom, the wampa just kinda sags back and dies on the spot.”

  Miggs shook his head again. “Totally nonlinear. Makes you think, though.”

  Zero stopped chewing. “Does it?”

  “Yeah, I mean …” Miggs picked up his fork, nudged his food around the tray, and put it down again. “ ’Cause, I mean, when you cogitate on it—if they’ve got a wampa in here, then seriously … who knows what else they got locked up downside, you know?”

  “Such as …?”

  “Well, I mean, like the Wolf Worm.”

  Zero gazed at him opaquely. “You really believe that?”

  “Dunno, man. I heard rumors, is all. Way down inside the prison where nobody ever goes.”

  The Twi’lek was about to comment when he felt something bump against him hard enough to knock his tray sideways. He turned around and saw the inmates standing directly behind him.

  Bone Kings. Four of them. Zero studied their faces, one by one.

  “Nice meal, Ze-ro,” the bald, bearded inmate in front said, drawing the name out with deliberate, singsong mockery while he eyed the half-finished steak and greens on Zero’s plate. “You know, there something I’ve always been meaning to ask you. How come you always get to eat better than the rest of us?”

  “I would think that would be abundantly obvious,” Zero said. “I walk a higher path than you do.”

  “Is that so?”

  “In almost every conceivable regard,” Zero said, “yes.”

  A silence fell between them. He recognized the man in front of him as Vas Nailhead, boss of the Kings. Nailhead was a flesh-eater, known among the gladiatorial fighting circuit for devouring at least some part of every living thing he’d ever killed. Word was that he enjoyed a cult following and was one of the few inmates to receive fan mail, packages, even the occasional wedding proposal—although rumors circulated that he actually had a family and relatives back on Tepasi.

  “Funny thing is …” Nailhead leered at him, spit bubbles clustered at the corners of his lips—he was literally foaming at the mouth. From inside the left sleeve of his uniform, a long hard shape protruded against the fabric, its sharpened tip just visible at the end of his sleeve. “I bet your blood comes spilling out just as easily as anybody else’s here. What do you think?”

  On either side of him, in his peripheral vision, Zero saw Miggs and Halleck rising gamely to their feet into a protective stance. He gestured for them to sit down.

  “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I’m sure that Mr. Nailhead was just getting ready to apologize for his unseemly behavior.”

  “Wrong again, Ze-ro.” Without waiting for an answer, Nailhead reached down and grabbed Zero’s collar, yanking him to his feet so abruptly that the Twi’lek’s tray flipped over and went clattering to the floor, spilling the remains of his steak and greens across the tiles beneath their feet. The sharpened shaft of bone in Nailhead’s sleeve had edged up so and was now pushing into the soft place beneath Zero’s neck.

  “See, we learned something new last night when we faced off against the Gravity Massive in the tunnels,” Nailhead said. “Us and them. Worked it out together, you might say.”

  “Oh?” The Twi’lek’s gaze remained absolutely steady. “And what might that be?”

  “We don’t need you nearly as much as you need us. Fact is, the only reason you run the place like this is because these maggots think you do. Once they stop thinking it, you stop running it.”

  “Fascinating,” Zero said. “It’s a miracle that none of you was hurt, thinking so hard.”

  Nailhead grunted. “Not half as fascinating as it’s gonna be when we haul you off to the tunnels and rip out your throat.”

  “Is that what Delia would want?”

  Nailhead stiffened. He pushed the sharpened bone slightly deeper into the soft tissue of Zero’s throat, fixing him with his stare. “What did you just say?”

  “Your sister,” the Twi’lek answered. “She still sends you letters, doesn’t she? Because she thinks about you. She remembers what life used to be like on Tepasi. After everything you’ve done, she hasn’t stopped hoping you’ll come back and be the boy that she remembers. The one who could always sing and make her laugh with every verse of ‘Sweet Fronda Fane.’ ”

  Nailhead drew in a shallow, audible breath and cocked his head ever so slightly. Behind the erumpent tangle of his beard, all the ferocity had drained from his expression, leaving his face strangely slack and vacant.

  “How did you …” He swallowed and continued, his voice oddly hoarse. “How did you know about that?”

  “I’ve been here a long time,” Zero said. “You learn all sorts of things when you’ve been here as long as I have. A person of interest such as myself hears things. About your family and your sister in particular. And of course, I can always pass on messages in either direction.”

  Nailhead released him and took a step back. For an instant a spark of what could have been actual civility shimmered in the cloudy depths of his eyes—a distant clarity that reflected back on the man he might have been beneath years of suffocating depravity.

  “Perhaps it’s time you return to your friends, Mr. Nailhead.” Zero spoke in the same gentle, patient tone with which he might suggest an evening stroll through the common area. “It sounds as if you still have some thinking to do.”

  Nailhead took another step away, his hands hanging limp at his sides. He said nothing, didn’t even blink, just turned and began making his way back across the dining hall to where the other Bone Kings were waiting.

  “Whoa,” Miggs exhaled as he and Halleck watched Nailhead depart. “Zero, man, that was crazy, even for you. How did you—”

  He looked back at the table and stopped.

  Zero was already gone.

  13

  CAUTIONARY TALE

  Maul was waiting just inside the cell when the Twi’lek came back from the mess hall, hiding in the shadows to the right of the hatchway. At the sound of approaching footsteps, he stepped into view.

  For a moment Zero just stared at him. To his credit, he didn’t bother trying to run. He didn’t even look particularly surprised.

  “Jagannath,” he said. “You’re looking surprisingly well, all things considered.”

  Maul said nothing. In the twelve hours since his last fight, he’d recovered almost completely from the wounds that the Wampa had inflicted on him. His face still bore the blood-encrusted slash marks from its claws, but he’d regained full use of his arm, and his strength actually seemed to have intensified in response to the attack, like an organism that had thrived from being pruned down close to the taproot.

  “You know,” Zero said, “I was wondering when we’d get a chance to meet.”

  “You didn’t make it easy,” Maul said. “Sending that guard to come after me in the tunnels.”

  “Well, of course, someone like me can’t afford to cast too long a shadow. I’m sure you understand. In any case,” Zero said, giving Maul a small smile, “you didn’t seem to have any trouble handling yourself.”

  “I expected a setup,” Maul said.

  “In which case I’m glad that I didn’t disappoint you. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I need something.”

  “A refreshing lack of pretense.” The Twi’lek smiled again. “Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything?”

  Maul remained standing, allowing his silence to answer for him. In the hour th
at he’d spent waiting inside the cell, anticipating Zero’s return, he’d searched it thoroughly. The investigation had proven highly fruitful. Although outwardly similar to every other cell in Cog Hive Seven, Zero’s quarters had been customized with a thousand subtle luxuries that might escape casual observation. Beneath the bunk he’d discovered a small library, a secret storage chamber stocked with a private supply of food, drink, and utensils, and whole caches of electronic components in various states of assembly.

  “Something to eat, perhaps?” Zero asked, reaching under the bed to pull out a narrow cabinet of prepared meals. “My own dinner was somewhat rudely interrupted, so I hope you’ll forgive me if—”

  “I want Iram Radique.”

  “I—” Zero stopped what he was doing and looked up, his expression unreadable. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I know he’s here. I seek an audience with him privately, as soon as possible. And you seem to be the one who can arrange such a thing.”

  The Twi’lek said nothing. Maul stood riveted to his gaze.

  You must be relentless, Sidious had told him. Use every means at your disposal to gather information. We have an extremely finite amount of time in which to arrange for the purchase of the nuclear device from Radique and its delivery into the hands of the Bando Gora. But throughout it all you must keep in mind that in Cog Hive Seven, the name of Iram Radique will always be spoken with dread.

  In this case, however, Zero surprised him. He looked at Maul blankly for a moment, his lips tightening, then twitching—and then burst out laughing, a spontaneous bray of amusement that seemed, for the moment at least, to cost him every ounce of his composure.

  “I must apologize,” the Twi’lek managed when he finally appeared to pull himself together. “You see, it’s just … oh my…” Attempting to catch his breath, he wiped the tears from his eyes and looked up at Maul. “Iram Radique, you say? You don’t ask much, do you?” With another chuckle, he shook his head. “Tell me, is there anything else I can get for you in the meantime? Your own private starfighter, perhaps? An audience with the Galactic Senate? The lost moons of Yavin?”