Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace Page 32

  Sidious had dismissed Maul’s concern that the Jedi might be using the Queen for their own purposes, but Maul wasn’t yet convinced that wasn’t the case. If the Jedi weren’t permitted to fight alongside Amidala, why had they returned? If their purpose was to draw Maul out, then someone had to have apprised them that Maul was on Naboo, and the only being who could have done that was Darth Sidious.

  Sidious was as eager to encourage a battle between the Trade Federation and the Gungans as he was an ultimate contest between Maul and the Jedi. He wanted to be assured that his apprentice had what it took to be a true Sith.

  Maul programmed a series of coordinates into the probe droids and let them fly. Then he climbed aboard the speeder bike to follow them.

  There was only one site where Amidala, the Jedi, and the Gungans could be plotting their counteroffensive.

  The so-called Sacred Place at the northern end of Paonga Strait, in the swampy basins of the Gallo Mountains.

  Not since whatever elder race had built and once occupied the Sacred Place had it played host to as many sentients and droids. Not merely the Gungans from Otoh Gunga and other bubble cities, and Amidala, her retinue, and the Jedi, but also OOM-9’s squadrons of STAPs, searching in all the wrong places, and the droid commander’s long-range reconnaissance platoons of battle droids, many of which had become mired in the soft ground. For a change, Maul found something to appreciate in the incompetence of the Neimoidians’ army, for it served his purpose.

  He sat crouched in a shallow waterway a couple of kilometers south of where the Gungans and the rest had gathered, his presence in the Force deliberately diminished and his wrist link pressed close to his ear, tuned to the frequency used by the probe droids he had sent ahead as listening devices. Filtered by the forest’s leafy canopy, the ambient light was almost aquatic. Around him in all directions rose the ruins of grand stone buildings fronted with hieroglyphic stairways, raised agricultural fields, columned temples, and carved statuary—all of it being slowly disassembled by the roots of massive trees whose seeds had sprouted in the grooves between building blocks and in crevices in the flat stones that paved the plazas.

  Since the start of his eavesdropping, Amidala and Boss Rugor Nass had cemented their alliance. Responding to a covert signal, several dozen members of the underground had streamed into the ruins, and the Queen’s chief security officer, Panaka, had returned from a scouting mission in Theed. Maul wasn’t surprised that Panaka had been able to infiltrate the city despite increased security—anyone schooled in military tactics could have done so simply by spending a few moments observing the routines of the battle droids, and then working around them. Maul hadn’t bothered pointing out the weaknesses to Gunray, because he now wanted the Neimoidians to fail, despite his Master’s plan.

  But the Gungan force was not without its weaknesses.

  Amidala’s plan called for the use of the Grand Army as a diversion to draw battle droids from Theed to engage the Gungans on the grassy plains. At the same time, she and her elite team would penetrate the Theed Palace and capture Gunray. The Queen was correct in assuming that the droid army would collapse without sentient leadership, but she was mistaken in her belief that Gunray would have to shunt battle droids from Theed. Clearly she had no real awareness of the size of the Neimoidian army. Amidala’s only shot at victory rested with the pilots of the Naboo Space Fighter Corps, who would have to take the fight to the Droid Control Ship in stationary orbit above the planet.

  But Maul was left to wonder how Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi figured into Amidala’s plan, since they were supposedly not allowed to intervene in the battle. Certainly they would accompany Amidala into Theed, but would they remain by her side while she attempted to slip into the Palace?

  Maul wondered, too, to what degree his Master would want him to intercede. Was he obliged to notify Gunray of Amidala’s plans? Should he attempt to lure the Gungans into a slaughter in Theed? There was still time to sabotage the berthed N-1 starfighters he had found in Theed’s main hangar …

  This will work to our advantage, Darth Sidious had said on learning of the Queen’s ploy to ally with the Gungans.

  Did Sidious mean to his and Maul’s advantage, or to Sidious and Hego Damask’s advantage? If Sidious and the Muun had designs on Naboo, then the greater the carnage the greater the sympathy for Senator Palpatine in the coming election. Whatever the reasons, Maul’s task remained as before: to kill two Jedi. The rest of it—the blockade, the invasion, the counteroffensive—was nothing more than theater. So what if the Trade Federation lost its army and ten thousand Gungans died? Who cared, after all, about Naboo or its young Queen?

  The real war was, as ever, between the Sith and the Jedi.

  The deaths of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan would send a message to the Jedi Council that the Sith had returned and the days of the Order were numbered.

  Maul decided that if he never saw Naboo’s grasslands again it would be too soon. But the long ride back to Theed—made all the more circuitous because of Gungans perched in the treetops with macrobinoculars—gave him time to formulate a plan of his own.

  He took the speeder bike directly to the hangar, where close to four hundred B1 droids were patrolling the area. That was far too many to be easily defeated by Amidala and her handful of security officers and pilots. With help from the Jedi it was possible that the Naboo could eventually overcome the battle droids, but Maul wanted to ensure that Amidala’s small force would be able to move on to the Palace without encountering too much resistance. More important, he didn’t want Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan worrying too much about her safety.

  In the small plaza that fronted the hangar he searched out the droid in charge of security.

  “What are your orders, Commander?” the droid said.

  “Redeploy your troopers,” Maul told it. “Leave sixty droids to defend the hangar and send the rest to reinforce the platoons safeguarding the Palace.”

  The droid took a moment to process the change in orders, though it was the control ship computer that asked: “Will that not leave the space force hangar vulnerable to attack, Commander?”

  “I will personally make up for the reduced count.”

  That seemed to satisfy the commander, and it lifted its arm in salute. “Copy, copy.”

  Instantly, and without a word, droids began to gather in the plaza, where they fell into formation and marched off in the direction of the Palace. Maul watched them go, then hurried into the cavernous building. There he spent a short time imagining Amidala’s arrival, the ensuing firefight, the starfighter pilots racing for their astromech-outfitted ships and launching out over the escarpment, the Queen and Panaka setting out for the Palace …

  Maul’s gaze swept the hangar’s broad entrance. A tunnel linked the hangar to the Palace, but Amidala would certainly assume that it had been booby-trapped, and would likely lead the Jedi and her infiltration team across the eastern fork of the Solleu River and through the narrow paths and across the skybridges of the Vis district. But a lightsaber duel fought along that route or in the woods that surrounded the Palace would be difficult to control. Somehow he had to waylay the Jedi before they exited the building. Again he scanned the dim interior, and his gaze fell on the tall blast doors that separated the hanger from the contiguous power generator building. On his earlier visit to the hangar he had done little more than peer into the plasma power station, but now, eager to know what lay beyond the blast doors, he hurried through them.

  A short walk took him to the edge of a curved inspection platform flanked by circular engineering consoles. A catwalk extended from the platform across a deep and wide circular extraction shaft studded with towering acceleration columns, within which plasma energy was intensified before refinement and storage. The flashing columns were linked at various levels by service catwalks no wider than the central walkway, which terminated at a narrow door on the far side of the shaft. Maul paced halfway to the door, then returned to the inspection platform and paced it a
second time, marking the length and calculating the distances between it and the catwalks above and below. Several times he leapt to higher or lower catwalks. Once he had committed the arrangement to both mental and muscle memory, he walked all the way to the far door and through it.

  The door opened on a soaring security hallway, interrupted at regular intervals by laser gates that sealed themselves in response to power outputs of the plasma activation process. Initially the firings seemed to occur randomly, but after he passed through the gates several times in both directions—cautiously at first, then as quickly as he could—Maul began to discern a subtle pattern. The pattern was by no means foolproof, and twice he came close to being fried by the firings, but in the end he had learned enough about the timing of the gates to provide himself with a slight advantage.

  Beyond the final gate, the walkway broadened to encircle a narrow-mouthed plasma slough core of indeterminable depth. In an upper-tier maintenance station he found a hydrospanner and dropped it into the core.

  If indeed the heavy tool hit bottom, the noise never reached him.

  Maul paced the circular rim of the core, gazing down into the blackness; then he turned from the view to imagine and direct how the lightsaber duel would unfold. He would use the laser gates to separate the Jedi. He looked around. Yes: he would kill one of them just there. As for the other …

  Well, he’d allow himself a surprise or two.

  Confident that his actions would please his Master, he raced to the Palace to await word that Queen Amidala and the Jedi had entered the city.

  A short time later, in the depths of the power generator, Maul had savored the pained surprise in Qui-Gon’s blue-gray eyes as the crimson blade ran him through. Now he paced the rim of the slough core, dragging the blade of his sundered lightsaber along the impervious metal. A dark side anointment, sparks showered down on Obi-Wan Kenobi, who dangled two meters below, with both hands clenched around a nozzle that projected from the core’s inner wall.

  Sweat dripped from Maul’s fearsome face, and hatred radiated from his yellow eyes. He snarled at the young Jedi with the long Padawan braid, but Obi-Wan wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him, or acknowledging his death at the hands of a superior opponent.

  In the split second it took Maul to realize that Obi-Wan was actually gazing at Qui-Gon’s lightsaber—where it had come to a rest on the inspection platform—and that Maul had sabotaged himself by drawing out his moment of victory, Obi-Wan leapt straight out of the core and somersaulted in midair, so that he was facing Maul when he landed behind him, with Qui-Gon’s Force-summoned weapon in his hand.

  As the green blade went through him, bisecting him at the hips, Maul had a fleeting memory of his life on Orsis, and of performing the same feat Obi-Wan just had, the first time he had used the Force among beings others than his Master.

  The power of the dark side had played a cruel trick on him. And that it had, said it all.

  Sidious is rid of another problem, for I am not yet a true Sith.

  Cut in two and falling, Maul thought: If I had it to do over again, I would keep that fact foremost in mind.

  But he was determined to be more lenient with himself than Darth Sidious would be. He would survive his defeat, and grant himself yet another second chance.

  STAR WARS—The Expanded Universe

  You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

  In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

  Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

  Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?

  Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?

  All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!

  Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.

  Anakin Skywalker stood in a long, single-file line in an abandoned maintenance tunnel leading to the Wicko district garbage pit. With an impatient sigh, he hoisted his flimsy and tightly folded race wings by their leather harness and propped the broad rudder on the strap of his flight sandal. Then he leaned the wings against the wall of the tunnel and, tongue between his lips, applied the small glowing blade of a pocket welder, like a tiny lightsaber, to a crack in the left lateral brace. Repairs finished, he waggled the rotator experimentally. Smooth, though old.

  Just the week before, he had bought the wings from a former champion with a broken back. Anakin had worked his wonders in record time, so he could fly now in the very competition where the champion had ended his career.

  Anakin enjoyed the wrenching twist and bone-popping jerk of the race wings in flight. He savored the speed and the extreme difficulty as some savor the beauty of the night sky, difficult enough to see on Coruscant, with its eternal planet-spanning city-glow. He craved the competition and even felt a thrill at the nervous stink of the contestants, scum and riffraff all.

  But above all, he loved winning.

  The garbage pit race was illegal, of course. The authorities on Coruscant tried to maintain the image of a staid and respectable metropolitan planet, capital of the Republic, center of law and civilization for tens of thousands of stellar systems. The truth was far otherwise, if one knew where to look, and Anakin instinctively knew where to look.

  He had, after all, been born and raised on Tatooine.

  Though he loved the Jedi training, stuffing himself into such tight philosophical garments was not easy. Anakin had suspected from the very beginning that on a world where a thousand species and races met to palaver, there would be places of great fun.

  The tunnel master in charge of the race was a Naplousean, little more than a tangle of stringlike tissues with three legs and a knotted nubbin of glittering wet eyes. “First flight is away,” it hissed as it walked in quick, graceful twirls down the narrow, smooth-walled tunnel. The Naplousean spoke Basic, except when it was angry, and then it simply smelled bad. “Wings! Up!” it ordered.

  Anakin hefted his wings over one shoulder with a professionally timed series of grunts, one-two-three, slipped his arms through the straps, and cinched the harness he had cut down to fit the frame of a twelve-year-old human boy.

  The Naplousean examined each of the contestants with many critical eyes. When it came to Anakin, it slipped a thin, dry ribbon of tissue between his ribs and the straps and tugged with a strength that nearly pulled the boy over.

  “Who you?” the tunnel master coughed.

  “Anakin Skywalker,” the boy said. He never lied, and he never worried about being punished.

  “You way bold,” the tunnel master observed. “What mother and father say, we bring back dead boy?”

  “They’ll raise another,” Anakin answered, hoping to sound tough and capable, but not really caring what opinion the tunnel master held so long as it let him race.

  “I know racers,” the Naplousean said, its knot of eyes fighting each other for a better view. “You no racer!”

  Anakin kept
a respectful silence and focused on the circle of murky blue light ahead, growing larger as the line shortened.

  “Ha!” the Naplousean barked, though it was impossible for its kind to actually laugh. It twirled back down the line, poking, tugging, and issuing more pronouncements of doom, all the while followed by an adoring little swarm of cam droids.

  A small, tight voice spoke behind Anakin. “You’ve raced here before.”

  Anakin had been aware of the Blood Carver in line behind him for some time. There were only a few hundred on all of Coruscant, and they had joined the Republic less than a century before. They were an impressive-looking people: slender, graceful, with long three-jointed limbs, small heads mounted on a high, thick neck, and iridescent gold skin.

  “Twice,” Anakin said. “And you?”

  “Twice,” the Blood Carver said amiably, then blinked and looked up. Across the Blood Carver’s narrow face, his nose spread into two fleshy flaps like a split shield, half hiding his wide, lipless mouth. The ornately tattooed nose flaps functioned both as a sensor of smell and a very sensitive ear, supplemented by two small pits behind his small, onyx-black eyes. “The tunnel master is correct. You are too young.” He spoke perfect Basic, as if he had been brought up in the best schools on Coruscant.

  Anakin smiled and tried to shrug. The weight of the race wings made this gesture moot.

  “You will probably die down there,” the Blood Carver added, eyes aloof.

  “Thanks for the support,” Anakin said, his face coloring. He did not mind a professional opinion, such as that registered by the tunnel master, but he hated being ragged, and he especially hated an opponent trying to psych him out.