The Phantom Menace (43 page)
Read The Phantom Menace Online
Authors: Terry Brooks
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.
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.
A
nakin 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.
Fear, hatred, anger …
The old trio Anakin fought every day of his life, though he revealed his deepest emotions to only one man: Obi-Wan Kenobi, his master in the Jedi Temple.
The Blood Carver stooped slightly on his three-jointed legs. “You smell like a
slave
,” he said softly, for Anakin’s ears alone.
It was all Anakin could do to keep from throwing off his wings and going for the Blood Carver’s long throat. He swallowed his emotions down into a private cold place and stored them with the other dark things left over from Tatooine. The Blood Carver was on target with his insult, which stiffened Anakin’s anger and made it harder to control himself. Both he and his mother, Shmi, had been slaves to the supercilious junk dealer, Watto. When the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn had won him from Watto, they had had to leave Shmi behind … something Anakin thought about every day of his life.
“You four next!” the tunnel master hissed, breezing by with its midsection whirled out like ribbons on a child’s spinner.
Mace Windu strode down a narrow side hall in the main dormitory of the Jedi Temple, lost in thought, his
arms tucked into his long sleeves, and was nearly bowled over by a trim young Jedi who dashed from a doorway. Mace stepped aside deftly, just in time, but stuck out an elbow and deliberately clipped the younger Jedi, who spun about.
“Pardon me, Master,” Obi-Wan Kenobi apologized, bowing quickly. “Clumsy of me.”
“No harm,” Mace Windu said. “Though you should have known I was here.”
“Yes. The elbow. A correction. I’m appreciative.” Obi-Wan was, in fact, embarrassed, but there was no time to explain things.
“In a hurry?”
“A great hurry,” Obi-Wan said.
“The chosen one is not in his quarters?” Mace’s tone carried both respect and irony, a combination at which he was particularly adept.
“I know where he’s gone, Master Windu. I found his tools, his workbench.”
“Not just building droids we don’t need?”
“No, Master,” Obi-Wan said.
“About the boy—” Mace Windu began.
“Master, when there is time.”
“Of course,” Mace said. “Find him. Then we shall speak … and I want him there to listen.”
“Of course, Master!” Obi-Wan did not disguise his haste. Few could hide concern or intent from Mace Windu.
Mace smiled. “He will bring you wisdom!” he called out as Obi-Wan ran down the hall toward the turbolift and the Temple’s sky transport exit.
Obi-Wan was not in the least irritated by the jibe. He quite agreed. Wisdom, or insanity. It
was
ridiculous for a Jedi to always be chasing after a troublesome Padawan. But Anakin was no ordinary Padawan. He had been
bequeathed to Obi-Wan by Obi-Wan’s own beloved Master, Qui-Gon Jinn.
Yoda had put the situation to Obi-Wan with some style a few months back, as they squatted over a glowing charcoal fire and cooked shoo bread and wurr in his small, low-ceilinged quarters. Yoda had been about to leave Coruscant on business that did not concern Obi-Wan. He had ended a long, contemplative silence by saying, “A very interesting problem you face, and so we all face, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Obi-Wan, ever the polite one, had tilted his head as if he were not acquainted with any particular problem.
“The chosen one Qui-Gon gave to us all, not proven, full of fear, and
yours to save. And if you do not save him …
”
Yoda had said nothing more to Obi-Wan about Anakin thereafter. His words echoed in Obi-Wan’s thoughts as he took an express taxi to the outskirts of the Senate District. Travel time—mere minutes, with wrenching twists and turns through hundreds of slower, cheaper lanes and levels of traffic.
Obi-Wan was concerned it would not be nearly fast enough.
The pit spread before Anakin as he stepped out on the apron below the tunnel. The three other contestants in this flight jostled for a view. The Blood Carver was particularly rough with Anakin, who had hoped to save all his energy for the flight.
What’s eating him?
the boy wondered.
The pit was two kilometers wide and three deep from the top of the last accelerator shield to the dark bottom. This old maintenance tunnel overlooked the second accelerator shield. Squinting up, Anakin saw the bottom of the first shield, a huge concave roof cut through with an
orderly pattern of hundreds of holes, like an overturned colander in Shmi’s kitchen on Tatooine. Each hole in this colander, however, was ten meters wide. Hundreds of shafts of sunlight dropped from the ports to pierce the gloom, acting like sundials to tell the time in the open world, high above the tunnel. It was well past meridian.
There were over five thousand such garbage pits on Coruscant. The city-planet produced a trillion tons of garbage every hour. Waste that was too dangerous to recycle—fusion shields, worn-out hyperdrive cores, and a thousand other by-products of a rich and highly advanced world—was delivered to the district pit. Here, the waste was sealed into canisters, and the canisters were conveyed along magnetic rails to a huge circular gun carriage below the lowest shield. Every five seconds, a volley of canisters was propelled from the gun by chemical charges. The shields then guided the trajectory of the canisters through their holes, gave them an extra tractor-field boost, and sent them into tightly controlled orbits around Coruscant.
Hour after hour, garbage ships in orbit collected the canisters and transported them to outlying moons for storage. Some of the most dangerous loads were actually shot off into the large, dim yellow sun, where they would vanish like dust motes cast into a volcano.
It was a precise and necessary operation, carried out like clockwork day after day, year after year.
Perhaps a century before, someone had thought of turning the pits into an illegal sport center, where aspiring young toughs from Coruscant’s rougher neighborhoods, deep below the glittering upper city, could prove their mettle. The sport had become surprisingly popular in the pirate entertainment channels that fed into elite apartments, high in the star-scrubbing towers that rose everywhere on the capital world. Enough money was
generated that some pit officials could be persuaded to turn a blind eye, so long as the contestants were the only ones at risk.
A garbage canister, hurled through the accelerator shields, could easily swat a dozen racers aside without damage to itself. The last shield would supply it with the corrective boost necessary to compensate for a few small lives.
Anakin watched the flickering jump light on the tunnel ceiling with focused concentration, lips tight, eyes wide, a little dew of sweat on his cheeks. The tunnel was hot. He could hear the roar of canisters, see their silver specks shoot through the shield ports to the next higher level, leaving behind blue streaks of ionized air.
The pit atmosphere smelled like a bad shop generator, thick with ozone and the burnt-rubber odor of gun discharge.
The tunnel master twirled up to the exit to encourage the next team.
“Glory and destiny!” the Naplousean enthused, and slapped Anakin across the brace between his wings. Anakin stayed focused, trying to sense where the currents would be at this level, where the little vortices of lift and plunge would accumulate as they formed and rotated between the shields. Ozone would always be in highest concentration in the areas where the winds would be strongest and most dangerous. And for every volley of canisters, following a prearranged formation through the shields, another volley would soon follow, taking a precisely determined series of alternate routes.
Easy. Like flying between a storm of steel raindrops
.
Anakin’s fellow racers took their places in the tunnel’s exit, jockeying for the best position on the apron. The Blood Carver gave Anakin a jab with his jet-tipped right wing. Anakin pushed it aside and kept his focus.
The Naplousean tunnel master lifted its ribbon-limb, the tip curling and uncurling in anticipation.
The Blood Carver stood to Anakin’s left and closed his eyes to slits. His nostril flaps pulsed and flared, filled with tiny sensory cavities, sweeping the air for clues.
The Naplousean made a thick whickering noise—its way of cursing—and ordered the contestants to hold. A flying maintenance droid was making a sweep of this level. From where they waited, the droid appeared as a flyspeck, a tiny dot buzzing its way around the wide gray circumference of the pit, issuing little musical tones between the roar and swoosh of canisters.
