by Star Wars
His Master’s response to the news of Iram Radique’s identity had not been what he’d hoped. Sidious had listened impatiently while Maul told him about the Weequay, and how he’d narrowly escaped being pulled to pieces without betraying his abilities as a Force user.
In the end, his Master had simply nodded, as if all of this should have happened far more expediently than it had, and demanded that Maul contact him when the deal was finished. He’d said nothing about the Bando Gora or the difficulty of brokering an arrangement between the cult and Radique. That detail had been left for Maul to arrange—hence, his return to the factory floor, where he’d nearly died.
He stepped forward, listening carefully until he recognized the sound of the Chadra-Fan’s humming in the darkness.
“Ah, Jagannath.” Coyle turned, already smiling up at Maul expectantly. “You have come for what is yours, yes?”
“Is it ready?”
“Just finished.” Still humming, the other inmate turned and walked away, leading him around a pile of loosely assembled bones, then digging through debris both mechanical and organic until he found a flat metal case, holding it up for Maul’s inspection. “Three hundred thousand credits.” A glimmer of pride lit the Chadra-Fan’s eye. “Authentic enough to fool the most discriminating inspection. Do you approve?”
Maul looked down at the stacks and rows of bundled currency, then picked one up from the top and held it to the light. The craftsmanship, while thorough, probably wouldn’t hold up to close scrutiny—but it would open the doors that he needed to go through to arrange the final details with Radique.
At this point it would have to suffice.
Amid the press of reeking bodies that filled the corridor, Maul pushed his way along with the metal case at his side. A bulky Bone King bumped shoulders with him, too close to be accidental. Without turning or even breaking stride, he drove his fist into the King’s solar plexus, leaving him doubled over on the floor, gasping for air.
He stopped in his tracks.
His gaze had fallen on an inmate standing absolutely motionless amid the flow of bodies around him. For a moment the entire world went still. All sound dropped away.
It was him.
The one he’d seen standing side by side with Zero on the factory floor.
Radique.
The Weequay was gazing back at him through the crowds of inmates, the clawbird perched on his shoulder. Maul watched as he pulled a scrap of greasy-looking bantha suet from the pocket of his uniform and held it up unhurriedly for the bird to snatch from his fingers. In the blink of an eye, the food disappeared, and the Weequay dug out another chunk. The bird gobbled it even faster than before, its head bobbing in an eager attempt to get the morsel down its throat.
With the metal case that Coyle had given him still at his hip, Maul shoved his way through the crowd, knocking over other inmates. But when he got to where the Weequay had been standing, the other was gone.
Maul turned and looked in every direction. The corridors were clearing now as the last stragglers returned to their cells for matching. The clarion blared on.
You’re so close now. You can’t stop.
Maul turned and almost ran headfirst into the guard standing there.
“You heard the clarion.” The guard glared at him. “Why aren’t you in your cell?”
“I’m on my way now,” Maul said.
“Hold it, maggot.” The guard glared at the metal case in Maul’s hand. “What’s that?”
“I salvaged it from the pile in Nightside.”
“What’s inside?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” The guard yanked the case from Maul’s hands and popped it open, lifting the lid and tipping it upside down.
A loose pile of bones fell out, clattering to the floor. Kicking them aside, the guard tossed the case and glared at Maul. “Get to your cell now.”
41
THE MAIN MONKEY BUSINESS
Good things were happening.
Sadiki sat with her boots propped up on her desk, sipping coffee and smiling. She and ThreeDee had finished watching the slaughter of the guards from the comfort of her office, where she wouldn’t have to worry about getting blood on her suit. As pure spectacle, it didn’t disappoint. Too bad she hadn’t had time to auction the holovid broadcast rights—or, even better, take bets on the outcome. Not that anyone in their right mind would have bet on a group of unarmed prison guards against Strabo and Nailhead and their followers. She had no doubt there would be repercussions to what she’d done—one didn’t trifle with Jabba the Hutt without getting some pushback in one form or another—but at the moment she was feeling relatively … what?
“Invulnerable,” she said aloud, and the droid perked up.
“Excuse me?”
“Bulletproof. That’s where we are right now.” Sadiki took another sip of coffee. “It’s a good position to be in, ThreeDee.”
“Yes, Warden. However, I can’t help but wonder—”
“Shush.” Sadiki held up her hand. “You’re spoiling the moment. How long till the next fight?”
“It’s starting any minute now. The algorithm—”
She checked the screens in front of her, took her feet off her desk, and stared downward at the display. “Wait a second,” she said, looking up at the droid. “Where’s Dakarai?”
“I don’t know.”
“This isn’t right. There’s got to be some mistake.” She watched as the algorithm selected its two combatants. “Find my brother. Find him now.”
“I’m sure I don’t know where he is.”
Sadiki cursed. “Where’s the override?”
ThreeDee made a quick chirping sound, and its breastplate dialed open to extrude a slender adapter, plugging it into the console next to Sadiki’s desk. “Accessing algorithm override,” it said, and there was a long pause. “I can’t override the system. I’m afraid the combatants have already been locked in.”
“My brother can fix it,” Sadiki said.
“I’m afraid that’s simply not possible.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s the one who locked them in.”
Sadiki frowned at the display. “Dakarai’s in the system somewhere. He’s accessed it remotely somehow. It doesn’t make sense; why would he do that?”
The droid swiveled its head to regard her, its photoreceptors pulsating busily.
“Respectfully, Warden, when was the last time you saw Master Dakarai?”
Sadiki didn’t answer. She was still looking at the screens.
Dakarai, she thought, what are you doing?
42
BLEED THE FREAK
Maul made it back just seconds before the reconfiguration began. He’d just stepped through the hatchway when it sealed shut behind him, the floor and walls already starting to shift. As the now-familiar clamor of gears and clockwork filled the air, he turned his gaze upward to where he knew the warden and the rest of the galactic gambling community would be watching. His involvement in the next bout seemed to be a foregone conclusion.
What would it be this time? Fire? Ice? The sarlacc from the Great Pit of Carkoon?
The cell reeled and swung as the architecture of the prison fell into its newest alignment. Maul held fast to the handgrips of the bench, riding it out. At this point it really didn’t matter what they pitted him against. Now that he’d seen Radique face-to-face—
The cell came to a halt.
Maul cocked his head, listening for whatever opponent the algorithm had selected for him. Whatever it was, he would kill it as quickly as possible and get on with his business at hand.
The wall of the cell came open.
Maul looked into it, muscles tensing for the attack—
And felt all his resolve go swirling away in a sudden rush of bewilderment.
The Weequay stepped out to face him.
* * *
For a moment he couldn’t speak. The Weequay was walking toward him with the clawbird r
esting on his shoulder. Maul stared, his senses heightened by the intensity of his shock, as the bird lifted one of its talons, shifting its position, to reveal the knots of khipus tied around its feet.
“You were supposed to die already, Jagannath,” the Weequay said. “Torn to pieces on the factory floor. I should have finished you myself.”
He was still coming. Maul was struck again by the ineluctable suspicion that everything that had happened to him since the moment of his arrival here—from the ongoing matches to the riddles to the machines that had nearly ripped him to pieces—had all been part of some larger trial or examination overseen by Sidious, and that perhaps now he had arrived at the greatest test of all.
“Wait,” Maul said. “I won’t kill you.”
“You’re right about that.”
Maul reached up and yanked open his collar to reveal the bundles of credits that he’d stuffed inside his uniform before leaving Nightside. He held them up. “Three hundred thousand credits. They’re yours.”
The Weequay didn’t answer. Instead, he raised his arm, and the bird took flight, arrowing across the cell like a shadow cut loose from the object that cast it, streaking straight for Maul’s face, talons extended. Ducking, Maul swung one fist to knock it aside, but the bird dove down under his arm at the last second and came up screaming, claws fastened to his face, pecking furiously at his eyes.
Maul grabbed the bird blindly, ripped it from where it had fastened itself to his face, and tried to fling it to the floor, where he could stomp it to death, but it squirmed free and took flight, still cawing and shrieking across the cell in a trail of feathers. He raised his head and wiped his eyes. His vision was a curtain of blood beyond which the Weequay arose, the vaguest of shapes, though nearer than ever.
“I know exactly what you are,” Radique’s voice said, very close. “And I know who sent you here.” He was raising something over his head—some kind of melee weapon, some dagger or pike whose specifics Maul couldn’t immediately discern—already intent on delivering the deathblow. “Now I will give you what you deserve.”
A supernova of pain exploded through Maul’s right flank, and his right arm went numb even as he lifted it in an attempt at self-defense.
But the paralysis went far deeper than that. For the first time since he’d arrived at Cog Hive Seven, Maul had no idea how to proceed. Killing Radique now would mean the end of his mission—total failure in the eyes of his Master and the Sith.
Yet anything less would cost him his life.
“You serve the Bando Gora,” the Weequay’s voice was saying, from somewhere behind the scarlet veil.
“No,” Maul said. “That’s not—”
From behind him, the pounding of wings.
Maul reacted on instinct, swinging his left arm back to pluck the clawbird out of the air. His right arm remained useless—whatever the Weequay had done to him with the melee weapon seemed to have severed his control of it, at least temporarily. Gripping one of the bird’s wings with his left hand, Maul bit down on the other wing and clamped it between his teeth, spreading them apart to their fullest span.
Keep it disoriented. Work it into a frenzy until it cannot tell friend from enemy. It’s the only way.
The bird fought him with everything it had, twisting and writhing, pecking frantically, screaming in his grasp. Its talons raked his face, carving deep furrows across his cheekbones. But Maul did not let it go.
He swung it through the air, slashing it across the Weequay’s face in a definitive stroke, simultaneously breaking its back while raking the thing’s claws over the Weequay’s eyes. The bird fell to the floor, a broken thing, its wings protruding at awkward, irrational angles.
Maul wiped the blood from his face. At last his vision had begun to clear. Stepping back, he raised his left hand in one final attempt to communicate with the Weequay.
“Hear me,” he said. “I’m not here representing the Bando Gora. I need to buy a weapon from you. I need—”
Radique attacked him again, a quick, brutal series of blows to neck and face. They came almost too fast to register, a fierce storm of blows, and Maul was aware of the floor shifting beneath him, dropping him to his knees. When the Weequay’s pike smashed into his skull again, Maul realized that right here and now, in the midst of his crisis, Radique was going to beat him to death.
It was going to end here.
Master. The uncertainty of it loomed over him, clouding his thoughts. What should I do? How can I—?
Wham! Another blow, the most vicious one yet, split the thought in half, and Maul dropped to his stomach. He knew that failure would cost him everything, that he would never be able to return to Sidious and the Grand Plan, and yet—
Maul’s thoughts cycled back to his early childhood, further back than he’d ever dared reflect, to his earliest training, the endless, hostile torture that he’d endured on Mygeeto. As painful as it had been, there was knowledge there, a realization that in the end, the galaxy was a cold and uncaring place that would never protect him. And if he was going to survive, it would only be because he would never give up.
Never.
Give.
Up.
Not then.
Not now.
Never.
Something broke open inside him, a vein of pure instinct that ran even deeper than his commitment to the mission. On his feet at once, he grabbed the Weequay by his seclusion braids, jerked the other’s head back, and thrust his own head forward, driving the horns of his skull against the inmate’s throat.
Radique’s windpipe burst open, splintering beneath the attack. His body fell limp, and Maul released the braids, letting him drop to the floor.
Maul stepped back from the corpse.
He stood there for what felt like a long time.
It was over.
Master, I had no choice.
But there was only silence.
43
KALDANI SPIRES
“I suppose this means you may congratulate your apprentice,” Darth Plagueis observed, “on a job well done.”
He had just turned his attention from the holovid screen to gaze out the window of his penthouse at the top of Kaldani Spires, down on the unsuspecting crowds thronging Monument Square, far below.
On the opposite side of the room, Sidious stood simmering with his fists clenched, the muscles of his jaw tight with anger. He could not discern Plagueis’s expression reflected in the glass, nor could he guess his Master’s thoughts from his tone of voice. All around them, Plagueis’s lavishly appointed penthouse had fallen absolutely silent, a reverential stillness prevailing over the richly brocaded carpeting, resonating from the elaborate furnishings, tapestries, and artifacts that adorned the rooms and corridors. Sidious could hear the pounding of his own outraged pulse.
They had just finished the holo of Maul’s most recent bout—the first one that they’d watched together, although Sidious had been monitoring each of his apprentice’s fights carefully from the time Maul had first arrived on Cog Hive Seven. Today, without warning or precedent, Plagueis had summoned him here so that they could watch the fight together.
It was as if he’d known what would happen.
“His mission was to assassinate Radique without relying on the Force,” Plagueis mused, as he turned back to face Sidious. “Was it not?” As was so often the case, the elongated, grayish blue face behind the transpirator mask was neither smiling nor frowning. Instead Damask wore the distant, abstracted expression of a profoundly advanced intellect lost deep in his own counsel. “Which means that he’s finished there, yes? Ready to be extracted?”
Sidious managed a single nod. Deep within him, the rage grew more intense, and he still did not trust his own voice.
“And yet,” Plagueis said, regarding him thoughtfully, “you seem … less than pleased.”
With the deliberate effort of a man releasing a clenched fist, Sidious made a conscious effort at composure. He’s testing me. Examining my motives. And aga
in, the question cycled back through his head: How much does he know?
“Of course I’m pleased,” Sidious said, careful to maintain unbroken eye contact with Plagueis as he spoke each word. There could be no indication of treachery here, no hint of the true purpose behind the mission. “Maul has done exactly as I requested.”
“Not that I’m questioning you, of course,” Plagueis said. “As I’ve said before, your business with the Zabrak, especially when it comes to this sort of thing, is exactly that—your business.” He paused just long enough for Sidious to wonder if all of this was, in fact, just a passing remark, the equivalent of an idle thought that passed through a consciousness as heightened as Plagueis’s. “I do wonder, however, about what might happen if Maul revealed his true identity as a Sith Lord while still imprisoned in this place. The implications for our plan might prove … substantial.”
“Impossible,” Sidious said. “Maul’s loyalty to us is above reproach. He would gladly lay down his life before compromising the secrecy of his mission.”
“Of course.” Plagueis shook his head. “I just wish to remind you that there are still aspects of this operation that may not be completely under your control. Or mine.” For a moment his expression was sympathetic, indulgent in away that, as a younger man, Sidious had once enjoyed but now—if he was honest—found placatory, almost patronizing. “It is a painful yet necessary reminder, Darth Sidious. Beings such as ourselves, ones who enjoy the promise of nearly unlimited power, live with the paradoxical risk of forgetting that there are some elements of the galaxy that we cannot control.”
“Are you suggesting that the mission was a miscalculation from the beginning?”
“Such speculation is meaningless now.” Plagueis waited again, and Sidious sensed him closing in on his final point. “No, I suppose my true purpose, looking back on what has already happened, is to question why you felt it necessary to go to such elaborate lengths, taking inordinate chances that might potentially leave our plans vulnerable, in order to find this arms dealer.”