Star Wars.

Darth Maul Saboteur.

By James Luceno.

Nearly every world in the Videnda sector had something to recommend it -- warm saline seas, verdant forests, arable gra.s.slands that stretched to distant horizons. The outlying world known as Dorvalla had a touch of all of those. But what it had in abundance was lommite ore, an essential component in the production of transparisteela strong, transparent metal used galaxywide for canopies and viewports in both starships and ground-based structures. Dorvalla was so rich in lommite that one-quarter of the planet's scant population was involved in the industry, employed either by Lommite Limited or its contentious rival, InterGalactic Ore.

The chalky ore was mined in Dorvalla's tropical equatorial regions.

Lommite Limited's base of operations was in Dorvalla's western hemisphere, in a broad rift valley blanketed with thick forest and defined by steep escarpments. There, where ancient seas had once held sway, shifts in the planetary mantle had thrust huge, sheer-faced tors from the land. Crowned by rampant vegetation, by trees and ferns primeval in scale, the high, rocky mountains rose like islands, blinding white in the sunlight, the birthplace of slender waterfalls that plunged thousands of meters to the valley floor.

But what was once a wilderness was now just another extractive enterprise. Huge demolition droids had carved wide roads to the bases of most of the larger cliffs, and two circular launch zones, large enough to accommodate dozens of ungainly s.p.a.ce shuttles, had been hollowed from the forest. The tors themselves were gouged and honeycombed with mines, and deep craters filled with polluted runoff water reflected the sun and sky like fogged mirrors. The ceaseless work of the droids was abetted by an all but indentured labor force of humans and aliens, to whom the mined ore served as a great equalizer. No matter the natural color of a miner's skin, hair, feathers, or scales, everyone was rendered white as the galactic dawn. All agreed that sentient beings deserved more from life, but Lommite Limited wasn't prosperous enough to convert fully to droid labor, and Dorvalla wasn't a world of boundless opportunities for employment.

Still, that didn't stop some from dreaming.

Patch Bruit, Lommite Limited's chief of field operationshuman beneath a routine dusting of orehad long dreamed of starting over, of relocating to Coruscant or one of the other Core worlds and making a new life for himself. But such a move was years away, and not likely to happen at all if he kept returning his meager wages to LL by overspending in the company-run stores and squandering what little remained on gambling and drink.

He had been with LL for almost twenty years, and in that time had managed to work his way out of the pits into a position of authority. But with that authority had come more responsibility than he had bargained for, and in the wake of several recent incidents of industrial sabotage his patience was nearly spent. The boxy control station in which Bruit spent the better part of his workdays looked out on the forest of tors and the shuttle launch and landing zones. To the station's numerous video display screens came views of repulsorlift platforms elevating gangs of workers to the gaping mouths of the artificial caves that dimpled the precipitous faces of the mountains. Elsewhere, the platform lifting was accomplished with the help of strong-backed beasts, with ma.s.sive curving necks and gentle eyes.

The technicians who worked alongside Bruit in the control station were fond of listening to recorded music, but the music could scarcely be heard over the unrelenting drone of enormous drilling machines, the low bellowing of the lift beasts, and the roar of departing shuttles.

The walls of the control station were made of transparisteel, thick as a finger, whose triple-glazed panels were supposed to keep out the ore dust but never did. Fine as clay, the resinous dust seeped through the smallest openings and filmed everything. As hard as he tried, Bruit could never get the stuff off him, not in water showers or sonic baths. He smelled it everywhere he went, he tasted it in the food served up in the company restaurants, and sometimes it infiltrated his dreams. So pervasive was the lommite dust that, from s.p.a.ce, Dorvalla appeared to be girdled by a white band.

Fortunately, everyone within a hundred kilometers of Lommite Limited's operation was in the same predicamentminers, shopkeepers, the beings who tended the cantina bars. But what should have been just one big happy lommite family wasn't. The recurrent incidents of sabotage had fostered an atmosphere of wariness and distrust, even among laborers who worked shoulder to shoulder in the pits.

"Group Two shuttles are loaded and ready for launch, Chief," one of the human technicians reported. Bruit directed his gaze to the droid-guided, mechanized transports that were responsible for ferrying the lommite up the gravity well. In high orbit the payloads were transferred to LL's flotilla of barges, which conveyed the unrefined ore to manufacturing worlds along the Rimma Trade Route and occasionally to the distant Core.

"Sound the warning," Bruit said.

The technician flipped a series of switches on the console, and loudspeakers began to hoot. Miners and maintenance droids moved away from the launch zone. Bruit looked at the screens that displayed close-up views of the shuttles. He studied them carefully, searching for anything out of the ordinary.

"Launch zone is vacated," the same technician updated. "Shuttles are standing by for liftoff."

Bruit nodded. "Issue the go-to." It was a routine that would be repeated a dozen times before Bruit's workday concluded, typically long past sunset.

The eight unpiloted craft rose from the ground on repulsorlift power, pirouetting and bringing their blunt noses around to the southwest. The air beneath them rippled with heat. When the shuttles were fifty meters above the ground, their sublight engines engaged, flaring blue, rocketing the ships high into the dust-filled sky.

The ground shook slightly, and Bruit could feel a rea.s.suring rumble in his bones. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. For the next hour, he could relax somewhat. He had turned from the view of the launch zone when his bones and his ears alerted him to a shift in the roaring sound, a slight drop in volume that shouldn't have occurred.

Sudden apprehension tugged at him. His forehead and palms broke an icy sweat. He whirled and pressed his face to the south-facing transparisteel panel. High in the sky he could see two of the shuttles beginning to diverge from course, their vapor trails curving away from the straight-line ascent of the rest of the group.

"Fourteen and sixteen," the technician affirmed. "I'm trying to shut down the sublights and convert them back over to repulsorlift. No response. They're accelerating!" Bruit kept his eyes glued to the sky.

"Give me a heading."

"Back at us!"

Bruit ran his hand over his forehead. "Enable the self-destructs."

The technician's fingers flew across the console. "No response."

"Employ the emergency override." "Still no response. The overrides have been disabled."

Bruit cursed loudly. "Vector update."

"They're aimed directly for the Castle."

Bruit glanced at the indicated tor. It was one of the largest of the mines, so named for the natural spires that graced its western and southern faces.

"Order an evacuation. Highest priority." Sirens shrieked in the distance. Within moments, Bruit could see workers hurrying from the mine openings and leaping onto waiting hover platforms. Two fully occupied platforms were already beginning to descend.

"Tell those platform pilots to keep everyone aloft," Bruit barked.

"No one'll be any safer on the ground than in the mines. And start moving those droids and lift beasts out of there!"

A colossal bipedal drilling machine appeared at the mouth of one of the mines, engaged its repulsorlift, and stepped off into thin air.

"Thirty seconds till impact," the technician said.

"Jettison the shuttles' guidance droids." "Droids away!"

Bruit clenched his hands. The two rudderless shuttles were plummeting side by side, as if in a race to reach the Castle. The technicians had already managed to shut down fourteen's sublight, and sixteen's flared out while Bruit watched. But there was no stopping them now. They were in ballistic freefall.

In the control station, droids and beings alike were crouched behind the instrument consolesall except for Bruit, who refused to move, seemingly oblivious to the fact that concussion alone could turn the booth's transparisteel panels into a hail of deadly missiles.

The shuttles struck the Castle at almost the same instant, impacting it above the loftiest of the mines, perhaps fifty meters below the tor's jungled summit.

The Castle disappeared behind an explosive flare of blinding light.

Then the sound of the collisions pealed across the landscape, reverberating and crackling, echoing thunderously from the twin escarpments. Immense chunks of rock flew from the face of the tor, and two of its elegant spires toppled. Dust spewed from the mine openings, as if the Castle had coughed itself empty of ore. The air filled with billowing clouds, white as snow. Almost immediately the ore began to precipitate, falling like volcanic ash and burying everything within one hundred meters of that side of the mountain. Bruit still didn't budgenot until the roiling cloud reached the control station and the view became a whiteout.

Lommite Limited's headquarters complex nestled at the foot of the valley's western escarpment. But even there a half a centimeter of lommite dust covered the lush lawns and flower gardens LL's executive officer, Jurnel Arrant, had succeeded in coaxing from the acidic soil.

The soles of Bruit's boots made clear impressions in the dust as he approached Arrant's office, with its expansive views of the valley and far-off tors. Bruit tried to stomp, brush, and scuff as much dust as he could from his boots, but it was a hopeless task.

Jurnel Arrant was standing at the window, his back to the room, when Bruit was admitted. "Some mess," Arrant said when he heard the door seal itself behind Bruit.

"You think this is bad, just wait'll it rains. It'll be soup out there."

Bruit thought the remark might lighten the moment, but Arrant's piqued expression when he turned from the view set him straight.

Lommite Limited's leader was a trim, handsome human, just shy of middle age. When he had first come to Dorvalla from his native Corellia, he had not been above rolling up his shirtsleeves and pitching in wherever needed. But as LL had begun to thrive under his stewardship, Arrant had become increasingly fastidious and removed, choosing to let Bruit handle day-to-day affairs. Arrant favored expensive tunics of dark colors, the shoulders invariably dusted with lommite, which he wore as a badge of honor. If his nonindigenous status had been held against him initially, few had anything disparaging to say about the man who had single-handedly transformed formerly provincial Lommite Limited into a corporation that now did business with a host of prominent worlds.

Arrant glanced at the white prints Bruit's boots had left on the carpet. Sighing with purpose, he motioned Bruit to a chair and settled himself behind an old hardwood desk. "What am I going to do with you, Bruit?" he asked theatrically. "When you asked for enhanced surveillance equipment, I provided it for you. And when you asked for increased security personnel, I provided those, as well. Is there something else you need? Is there something I've neglected to give you?"

Bruit compressed his lips and shook his head.

"You don't have a family. You don't have a girlfriend that I know about. So maybe you just don't care about your job, is that it?"

"You know that isn't true," Bruit lied.

"Then why aren't you doing it?" Arrant put his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. "This is the third incident in as many weeks, Bruit.

I don't understand how this keeps happening. Do you have any leads on the shuttle crashes?" "We'll know more if the guidance droids can be located and a.n.a.lyzed," Bruit said. "Right now they're buried under about five meters of dust."

"Well, get on it. I want you to devote all your resources to rooting out the saboteurs responsible for this. Do you think you can do that, Bruit, or do I have to bring in specialists?"

"They won't be able to learn any more than I have," Bruit rejoined.

"InterGalactic Ore is becoming as desperate as LL is successful. Besides, it's not just a matter of industrial rivalry. A lot of the families that work for InterGal have vendettas with some of the families we employ. At least two of these recent incidents have been motivated by personal grudges."

"What are you suggesting, Bruit, that I terminate everyone and ship in ten thousand miners from Fondor? What's that going to do to production? More important, what's that going to do to my reputation on Dorvalla?"

Bruit shrugged. "I don't have any answers for you. Maybe it's time you brought this to the attention of the Galactic Senate." Arrant stared at him. "Bring this to Coruscant? We're not in the midst of an interstellar conflict, Bruit. This is corporate warfare, and I've been in the trenches long enough to know that it's best to resolve these conflicts on your own. What's more, I don't want the senate involved. It will come down to a contest between Lommite Limited and InterGalactic, as to who can offer the most bribes to the most senators." He shook his head angrily. "That'll bankrupt us quicker than this continued sabotage."

Bruit had his mouth open to reply when a tone sounded from Arrant's intercom, and the voice of his protocol droid secretary issued from the annunciator.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but you have a priority holotransmission from a Neimoidian, Hath Monchar."

Arrant's fine brows beetled. "Monchar? I don't know the name. But go ahead, put him through."

From a holoprojector disk set into the floor at the center of the office rose the life-size holopresence of a red-orbed, pale-green Neimoidian draped in rich robes and wearing a black headpiece that aspired to be a crown. "I greet you in the name of the Trade Federation, Jurnel Arrant," Hath Monchar began. "Viceroy Nute Gunray conveys his warmest regards, and wishes you to know that the Trade Federation was sorry to learn of your latest setback."

Arrant scowled. "How is it that whenever tragedy strikes, the first ones I hear from are the Neimoidians?"

"We are a compa.s.sionate species," Monchar said, his heavily accented Basic elongating the words.

"Compa.s.sionate and Neimoidian don't belong in the same sentence, Monchar. And just how did you come to hear of our ‘setback,' as you call it? Or was it that the Trade Federation had a hand in the matter?"

The nict.i.tating membranes of Monchar's red eyes began to spasm.

"The Trade Federation would never do anything to impair relations with a potential partner." "Partner?" Arrant laughed ruefully. "At least have the decency to speak the truth, Monchar. You want our trade routes. I don't know how much you had to pay the Galactic Senate to obtain a franchise to operate with impunity in the free trade zones, but you're not going to buy your way into the Videnda sector."

"But you could ship ten times as much lommite ore inside one of our freighters as you can in twenty of your largest barges."

"Granted. But at what price? Before long it would cost us more to ship with you than we could possibly earn back. You wouldn't be wearing those expensive robes, otherwise."

Monchar took a moment to reply. "We would much prefer that our partnership begins on solid footing. We would hate to see Lommite Limited become ensnared in a situation that allows it no recourse but to join us."

Arrant bristled and shot to his feet. "Is that a threat, Monchar?

What do you intend to do, send your droids down here to invade us?"

Monchar made a motion of dismissal. "We are merchants, not conquerors."

"Then stop talking like a conqueror, or I'll report this to the Trade Commission on Coruscant."

"You're upset," Monchar said, nervously stroking his prominent muzzle. "Perhaps we should speak at some later date."

"Don't contact me, Monchar. I'll contact you."

Arrant deactivated the holoprojector and dropped back into his chair, forcing a long exhalation through pursed lips. "Scavengers," he said after a moment. "I'd sooner see LL go under than sell out to the Trade Federation." Into a brief succeeding silence came a persistent plopping sound from outside the office's floor-to-ceiling viewpanes.

"What now?" Arrant asked, swiveling his chair toward the sound.

"Rain," Bruit muttered.

Despite its rich deposits of lommite, or the recurrent attention it received from the Trade Federation, Dorvalla was to most observers an inconsequential speck in the sweep of star systems that made up the Galactic Republic. But among the few who had been monitoring the events on Dorvalla, none had followed them as keenly as Darth Sidious, the Dark Lord of the Sith.

"This rivalry between Lommite Limited and InterGalactic Ore intrigues me," Sidious was saying as he moved about the cavernous den that was both his sanctuary and repository. The hood of his cowl was raised over his lined face, and the hem of his robe trailed on the gleaming floor. His voice was a rasp, absent emotion but not without instances of intentional inflection. "I see a way that we might exploit this entanglement to our own gain," he continued. "A push here, a shove there, and both mining companies will collapse. Thus, we will be able to deliver Dorvalla to the Trade Federationthe ore, the trade routes, Dorvalla's vote in the senateand, in so doing, gain the further allegiance of Viceroy Gunray and his lackeys."

Sidious removed his hands from the ample sleeves of his robe.

"Viceroy Gunray claims to be persuaded of the worth of serving us, but I want him fully in our grasp, so that there can be no doubt of his heeding my commands. With Dorvalla secured, he will likely be promoted to a permanent position on the Trade Federation Directorate. We can then further our larger plan."

Sidious cast his hooded gaze across the room to a deeply shadowed area in which Darth Maul sat silent as a statue, his tattooed face lowered, so that all Sidious could see was the crown of vestigial horns that sprouted from his hairless skull.

"Your thoughts betray you, my young apprentice," he remarked. "You are puzzled by my steadfast interest in the Neimoidians."

Darth Maul lifted his face, and what scant light there was seemed to recoil. Where his Master represented all that was concealed and mysterious in the Sith, Maul was the personification of all that was to be feared. "From you, Master, I cannot hide what I feel. The Neimoidians are greedy and weak-willed. I find them unworthy."

"You left out duplicitous and sniveling," Sidious said.

"Most of all, Master."

Sidious came as close as he ever came to grinning.

"Less than admirable traits, I agree. But useful for our purposes."

He approached Maul. "To realize our goal, we will be forced to deal with all cla.s.ses of beings, each less n.o.ble than the last. But this is what we must do. I a.s.sure you that the Neimoidians will come to play an important role in our effort to bring new order to the galaxy." Maul's yellow eyes held Sidious's perceptive gaze. "Master, how will you help Viceroy Gunray and the Trade Federation secure Dorvalla?"

Sidious came to a halt a few meters away. "You will be my hand in this, Darth Maul."

Instantly, Maul bowed his head once more. "What is your bidding, Master?"

Sidious put his hands on his hips. "Stand, Darth Maul, and face me." He gave his apprentice a moment to comply before continuing. "Thus far your apprenticeship has been impeccable. You have never wavered in your intent, and you have executed your tasks flawlessly. Your skill as a sword master is peerless."

"My Master, " Maul said. "I live to serve you." Sidious fell briefly silentnever a good sign. "There are certainties, Darth Maul," he said at last. "But there is also the unforeseen. The power of the dark side is limitless, but only to those who accept uncertainty. That means being able to concede to possibilities."

Darth Sidious raised his right hand, palm outward.

Before Maul could prevent iteven if he had chosen to do sothe long cylinder that was his double-bladed lightsaber flew from its. .h.i.tch on his belt and went directly to his Master. But instead of grasping it, Sidious stopped the lightsaber in midflight, centimeters from his raised hand, and directed it to spin and rotate before him, leaving Maul to gaze at him in unabashed awe.

Sidious bade the lightsaber to ignite. From each end blazed a meter-long blade of rubicund fire, hypnotic in the intensity of its burning. The free-floating weapon pivoted left, then right, eliciting a thrumming sound that was as menacing as it was rousing.