Lives & Adventures

by Ryder Windham

  The consequences will be most dire.

  Crouched behind the wide trunk of an ancient tree, Kilindi Matako stayed in the tree’s shadow as she surveyed the steep, rocky cliff at the edge of the forest. She glanced at Maul, who was hunkered down beside her, and whispered, “Ready?”

  Maul nodded. Six years had passed since his arrival on Orsis. Taller and stronger, he still did not know his own age, but based on his observations of similar humanoids, he assumed he was about thirteen years old. Although he was already considered a master of numerous martial arts, he still had difficulty working as part of a team.

  Except when he was partnered with Kilindi.

  Kilindi moved first, diving away from the tree so she rolled across dead leaves and came to a stop behind another trunk. A sudden burst of blaster fire tore at the ground between the two trees. A second burst pounded into the opposite side of the tree that Kilindi had moved behind. The trajectory of the blaster bolts indicated the shots came from the top of the cliff, about six meters above Kilindi’s position. She glanced back to where she’d left Maul, but he had already vanished. She waited.

  Barely ten seconds later, Kilindi heard a horrific scream from atop the cliff. A blaster fired, and then another voice wailed across the forest. When the screaming stopped, a third voice called out, “Mission accomplished. All clear.” The third voice was Maul’s.

  Kilindi moved around the tree and walked out into the open, heading for the base of the cliff. It took her almost a full minute to scale the wall of rock. As she climbed, she sighted three spherical remotes hovering out of the forest and rising into the air. She knew that the remotes belonged to Master Trezza, and that he used them to track cadets during exercises.

  When Kilindi reached the top of the cliff, she found Maul standing a short distance from two fellow cadets, the Rodians Hubnutz and Fretch. The Rodians were clutching at their respective right arms, sitting on the ground beside the shattered pieces of their blaster rifles.

  “Thanks a lot, Maul,” Hubnutz snorted sarcastically. “Nice of you to only fracture our arms this time.”

  A repulsorlift engine sounded from overhead, and Kilindi and the Rodians looked up to see Master Trezza’s shuttle approaching from Orsis Academy. The three remotes glided up to the shuttle and secured themselves to a rack on the vessel’s sensor array.

  “Oh, isn’t that terrific?” Fretch said. “Now we get to listen to Trezza lecture us on how we messed up.”

  “Yeah, Maul, you’re a real prince,” Hubnutz said as the shuttle landed.

  Maul ignored the Rodians and the shuttle as he stood at the edge of the cliff, gazing over and beyond the forest canopy, staring in the direction of the distant mountain range that was broken by Blackguard’s Gorge, where Sidious had acquired an old fortress to be used as his private retreat during visits to Orsis. With Trezza’s permission, Maul was allowed to travel by speeder bike to the fortress, where his Master continued to train him in the ways of the Force and also lightsaber combat.

  My Master is there now. Waiting for me.

  Fretch saw Trezza climb out of the shuttle, then angled his snout at Kilindi and added, “Hope you had fun showing off for your pet slave.”

  “I’m not a slave!” Kilindi said, her head tresses whipping off her shoulders as she whirled to face Fretch. “And I’m no one’s pet!”

  “Good one, Fretch,” Hubnutz said. “You hit a nerve in Maul’s slave.” The two Rodians laughed wheezily. Maul kept staring at the mountains on the horizon.

  Kilindi scowled. It was common knowledge that she had served as a slave before she arrived at Orsis Academy. If she had any inclination to respond to the laughing Rodians, she refrained when she saw Trezza walking toward them. Hubnutz and Fretch rose to their feet, grunting from the pain of their injured arms. Kilindi noticed that Maul had not budged, that he was still gazing over the forest. She whispered, “Master Trezza’s here.”

  Maul turned and directed his gaze to Trezza, who was carrying a datapad. Trezza came to a stop beside the Rodians, and the four cadets bowed to him. Trezza bowed his head slightly, then said, “Hubnutz and Fretch. You failed to defend the cliff.”

  “Maul busted our arms again,” Hubnutz whined.

  Trezza frowned with disappointment at the Rodians. “If you can’t defend yourselves against an opponent you already know, how do you ever expect to deal with the unknown? You must be—”

  “But Maul’s not like other people!” Fretch protested.

  Trezza’s green brow furrowed. “You interrupt me again, young Fretch, and you’ll find yourself in solitary confinement for a week.”

  Fretch bowed. “Forgive me, Master Trezza.”

  “As I’ve told you too many times before, you must be more mindful. You must learn to think like your enemy, to anticipate every measure with a countermeasure. If you are not prepared for the unknown, the unknown will strike you dead.”

  “Yes, Master Trezza,” the Rodians said in unison.

  Turning to Maul and Kilindi, Trezza said, “You are to be commended for your stealth. I confess, I could not keep track of you two. My remotes lost sight of you after you evaded the third patrol in the canyon, before you reached the forest. I know that canyon well. Did you stray into a cave?”

  “Yes, Master Trezza,” Kilindi answered.

  “Why?”

  Kilindi glanced at Maul. Maul said, “Because the remotes were revealing our position to our opponents. Before the exercise, I overheard Hubnutz and Fretch talking. They placed trackers on your remotes.”

  “You couldn’t have overheard us,” Fretch said. “Hubnutz and I were alone in the barracks when we talked.” And then Fretch noticed Trezza glaring at him.

  Hubnutz said, “It was Fretch’s idea!”

  Trezza sneered at the Rodians. “I’ll deal with you two later.” Returning his attention to Maul and Kilindi, he said, “Come with me. We have a very special appointment.” Trezza began walking back to his shuttle.

  Special appointment? Maul’s expression remained passive, but his mind raced as he wondered what Trezza wanted with him and Kilindi. He started walking with Kilindi, following Trezza, and was halfway to the shuttle when he said, “I forgot something.” He went back to the Rodians.

  Seeing Maul approach, Fretch said, “Thanks for squealing on us.”

  “Yeah,” Hubnutz said. “You’re a real pal.”

  “Don’t make things worse,” Maul said. “Trezza wants to see us shake hands.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  As Fretch carefully extended the hand at the end of his fractured arm, he glanced at the shuttle and said, “But Trezza’s not even looking at us.”

  Maul grabbed three of Fretch’s long green fingers and twisted them sharply. The noise of rapidly snapping bones made Fretch gasp and Hubnutz cringe. Fretch made a sick gurgling noise.

  “Either of you ever call Kilindi a slave again,” Maul said, “I’ll tear your arms off and feed them to you.”

  Maul released Fretch’s broken fingers and headed back for Trezza’s shuttle. He boarded the shuttle and took a seat in the passenger compartment across from Kilindi and Trezza. Trezza was consulting a timetable on his datapad, oblivious to what Maul had just done to Fretch. After the shuttle lifted off, Maul was not at all surprised to see they were headed for Blackguard’s Gorge.

  Trezza looked up from his datapad and said, “Kilindi, have you met Maul’s Master before?”

  “No, Master Trezza. But I have seen him on occasion, when he’s visited the Academy. May I ask…are we going to his retreat?”

  “Indeed, we are.” Trezza looked at Maul and said, “I remain astonished that your Master managed to obtain Blackguard’s Castle. The previous owner made it clear to everyone in the Orsis system that he had no intention to sell.”

  If Trezza had asked Maul how his Master had obtained the castle, Maul would have respectfully and truthfully answered that he did not know. Because Trezza’s comment had not been a que
stion, Maul remained silent. He knew Kilindi was also wondering why they were traveling to meet with his Master. He glanced at Kilindi, who was peering through a viewport to see the land below.

  Snaking between the treacherous cliffs of two snowcapped mountains, Blackguard’s Gorge was a long valley that had been named, according to legend, after an ancient space pirate who had used the gorge as his hideout for decades. The only structure in the gorge was Blackguard’s Castle, a modest fortress that hugged the shadowy vertical slab of a steep cliff. The castle was essentially invisible to the naked eye, because its rough exterior blended in perfectly with the colors and textures of the mountain. Even the landing pad, at a glance, resembled nothing more than a wide shelf of broken rock.

  Trezza’s shuttle touched down on the landing pad, and a tall, wide rock made a rumbling sound as it traveled on ancient mechanisms, sliding back from the mountain wall to reveal a concealed hangar. Exiting the shuttle, Kilindi was the first to spot Maul’s Master. He was standing in the spacious hangar’s entrance, holding a walking stick in one hand and wearing the sensor bracket that concealed the upper half of his face.

  “Greetings,” Sidious said to the group. “Please, come with me. Our guest is waiting inside.” He tapped his walking stick across the landing pad, motioning the others to follow him.

  Guest? Maul was intrigued. Except for him and occasionally Trezza, Maul was unaware of anyone ever visiting his Master at the castle.

  Sidious’s cruiser was parked on the far side of the hangar, which also housed a technical station, assorted tools and supplies, and a few empty cargo containers. The walls were solid rock. Sidious grinned impishly as he led Trezza, Kilindi, and Maul to the center of the hangar. Maul had a strange feeling inside the hangar, a feeling he couldn’t quite define. Almost like…we’re being watched.

  “You didn’t tell them about our guest, did you?” Sidious said to Trezza.

  “No,” Trezza said, shifting his datapad so he held it behind his back. He looked at Maul and Kilindi. “Recently, the Orsis Academy faculty and I realized we had a problem. A problem concerning you two.”

  Maul sensed Kilindi was alarmed by Trezza’s announcement. He found it hard to understand why she couldn’t at least pretend to remain calm.

  “Perhaps I should rephrase that,” Trezza continued. “The problem was not with you, but with our existing faculty. There was little more that the instructors could teach either of you about stealth tactics or hand-to-hand combat techniques, and yet you have two more years ahead of you at the Academy. In short, you require greater challenges than the other cadets. Now, I mentioned this problem to a certain businessman.” Trezza gestured to Maul’s Master, who smiled sheepishly. “Maul, your Master suggested a former instructor who only recently became available again. Your Master also made a generous donation to enable Orsis Academy to secure this instructor. And now, it is my honor to introduce both of you to—”

  Sidious cleared his throat loudly. Reaching up to adjust his sensor bracket, he said, “Excuse me, Master Trezza, but I’m very curious about something. I wonder how Maul and Kilindi will react if they meet their new instructor without knowing any more details in advance.”

  “But of course,” Trezza said. “Why don’t you and I move over beside your cruiser and give these young people some room? May I guide you?”

  Sidious tapped his walking stick against the floor and said, “That’s very kind of you, but I do know my way around here.”

  Leaving Maul and Kilindi at the center of the hangar, Sidious and Trezza went to the cruiser and turned to face the cadets. Sidious leaned close to Trezza and said, “Let me know when anything interesting happens.”

  Kilindi said, “I have a bad feeling about this.” And then she gasped and grabbed the back of her neck, her knees buckling. Maul caught her around the waist and pulled her against his body as he launched sideways, carrying her with him. In midair, his right hand swept up Kilindi’s back until his fingers touched a small dart in her left shoulder blade. He hit the floor with the girl on top of him, absorbing the impact as he plucked the dart out from her shoulder. He rolled away from her and was still clutching the dart as he rose to stand, gazing in the direction of the dart’s trajectory.

  He saw a figure, a man who wore dark gray body armor and whose head was concealed by a helmet with a distinctive T-visor. The armored man held a dart pistol in one hand and had a missile launcher secured to his back.

  A Mandalorian.

  Maul knew about Mandalorians, whose warrior heritage dated back thousands of years. He also knew that two factions of Mandalorians had battled each other in a long civil war, and that the war had ended recently. And he recalled that his own Master, after their arrival on Orsis six years earlier, had talked with Trezza about a former Academy instructor, a Mandalorian who had once fought Jedi.

  Maul was fast enough to see the Mandalorian’s incredibly swift approach. He was also fast enough to dodge the first kick that came at his head. But he wasn’t fast enough to stop Meltch Krakko’s fist from knocking him out cold.

  Running fast along the volcanic mountain slope on Orsis, Maul gnashed his teeth as another low-energy blaster bolt tore through the thin fabric of his utility suit and slammed into his back. He ignored the pain and kept running.

  His pursuers were Meltch Krakko and the two Rodian cadets, Hubnutz and Fretch, and the goal of their exercise was to capture Maul. Krakko and the Rodians were wearing mimetic suits, energy-powered cloaks that allowed for almost perfect camouflage in any environment. Since Krakko’s return to Orsis Academy two years ago, he had not only taken a special interest in training the Rodians in tracking and sharpshooting, but also in tormenting the fifteen-year-old Zabrak.

  For Maul, the current exercise was merely a warm-up for a bigger challenge on Orsis, an Academy rite of passage called the Gora. Named after the challenge’s location, an immense volcanic crater filled with dense forests, vast swamps, and bloodthirsty beasts, the Gora required a cadet to traverse the crater for seven days, surviving without food or equipment except for a single vibroblade. From what Maul had heard, being chased by camouflaged hunters was nothing compared to surviving the Gora.

  Maul approached the rim of the mountain’s valley, where glacial water and wind had carved a maze of tall, rocky formations. He darted into the labyrinth, never pausing to catch his breath. More blaster bolts zinged past his body. If his pursuers’ blasters had been set to kill, he would have been dead already, a fact that infuriated him. But because Sidious and Trezza had forbidden him from revealing his Force powers to Orsis faculty and cadets, he was obliged to let his pursuers shoot him occasionally. If he’d dodged every blaster bolt, they would have had ample reason to suspect he was a Force user.

  Without glancing back, he drew his own blaster, which was also set at nonlethal power, and returned fire. He felt his rage increase as he deliberately missed his attackers. Although their mimetic suits rendered Krakko and the Rodians practically invisible, Maul had no difficulty sensing their exact positions behind him. He could have shot each one of them with his eyes closed, but that would have been against the rules that Sidious and Trezza had established. And so he pretended to miss Krakko and the Rodians, let them believe he was an ordinary Zabrak, and sometimes allowed himself to be hit.

  A blaster bolt slammed into his calf, and another into his right shoulder. The pain did not slow Maul but he pretended to stumble anyway, all in his ongoing effort to conceal his powers. But as he ran forward, he saw he was heading straight for a deep chasm. Although he was confident that his incredible strength and agility would have enabled him to leap to the other side of the chasm, he knew it would be a mistake to make such a jump with Krakko and the Rodians watching. However, he was also determined to evade his pursuers, to show them that he was more daring than they could ever imagine.

  I’ll earn their respect.

  Maul kept running right up to the chasm’s upper ledge, then flung his body into the gap, aiming not for the o
pposite ledge but for the wall below it. He used the Force to cushion his impact against the wall, then extended his arms to hook his hands over an outcropping a few meters below the ledge. With his legs dangling in the air below him, he made every movement look desperate, even though he was not in the least afraid.

  He sensed movement above, and knew Krakko and the Rodians were searching for a narrower gap so they could follow him across the chasm. They succeeded less than a minute later, and Maul looked up to see them leaning out over the ledge. He assumed the exercise was over, that they would lower a rope to bring him up.

  A rock struck his horned head, and another hit his shoulder. He heard a scuffing noise from above and realized his pursuers were kicking rocks over the rim. As a rock struck the back of one hand that clung to the overhang, he knew he hadn’t earned their respect at all.

  They’re trying to kill me.

  Maul was done with restraining his powers, and pretending to be something that he wasn’t. Summoning the Force, he launched himself from the overhang and sailed up and out of the chasm. He somersaulted and twisted in midair, flipping his body over the three camouflaged hunters so that he landed on his feet, facing their backs. Startled, Krakko and the Rodians turned fast. Maul had already drawn his blaster and opened fire at them at point-blank range.

  Krakko grunted and the Rodians cried out in pain as the blaster bolts hit them. They jumped and rolled away from the chasm’s edge, firing back at Maul. For a moment, they moved as if their mimetic suits still gave them an advantage over their prey. Maul used the Force to avoid being hit while he rapidly squeezed and released his blaster’s trigger, moving his arm back and forth to aim and fire at each of his cringing targets. He didn’t miss once.

  Hubnutz and Fretch tried to find protective cover. Maul shot at their legs and continued shooting them after they fell and began screaming. Krakko deactivated his own mimetic suit so he was fully visible. Facing Maul, he shouted, “Stand down!”