He had found no one who would admit to being an eyewitness to the battle, but several had seen the highspeed chase between the skycar and the speeder bike. Some had said there were Jedi involved, some said one or none. Some swore a droid was piloting the skycar. Some were certain a Jedi had been riding the bike, others were not. He had also learned that a black-clad figure-possibly, according to one, the figure who had been on the speeder bike-had been somehow implicated in yet another explosion, this one in a block of cubicles a few streets away. Several people had been killed in that blast, including a human bounty hunter. There had also been a fracas at a nightclub owned by a local Black Sun vigo, one Yanth the Hutt, in which a cowled character had been somehow implicated.

None of this seemed to make any kind of sense.

He had spoken to one witness who seemed certain that the two Jedi in the skycar had been a Twi'lek male and a human female. That would be Anoon Bondara and Darsha, Obi-Wan surmised. But he still had no clue as to whether they had survived the explosions. His informant said they had been riding with a human male and a droid.

> After some consideration, Obi-Wan decided his best bet would be to investigate the nightclub. If Yanth, the owner, was a member of Black Sun, he might know more about all this than the street rabble.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," he murmured to himself as he headed for the nightclub.

CHAPTER 21.

As from a far distance, Darsha heard the sounds of a struggle. It seemed to rise and fall, the sounds breaking over her like oceanic waves as her mind struggled to find its way back to consciousness. She wished dimly that whatever was going on would stop, so that she could slip back down into the depths of the black well out of which she was reluctantly rising. She had been through a lot of pain and fear lately, and she felt she deserved a rest. But the altercation didn't subside; instead it grew louder. Now she recognized one of the voices: it was Lorn Pavan's.

The other voices seemed to be nonhuman-mostly grunts and guttural bellows. It was obvious that he was in some kind of trouble. In her semiconscious state Darsha didn't see any real reason why she should come to his aid. She didn't like him, and he'd made it perfectly clear that he wasn't overly fond of her. There didn't seem to be any personal animosity involved on his part; he just despised Jedi in general. In a way, that was even more insulting. Darsha would rather someone base their dislike on her personality, not on an abstract that she represented. She could deal with enmity easier than bigotry.

It was becoming painfully obvious, however, that the struggle she was hearing wouldn't resolve itself anytime soon. And suddenly, in a rush of returning wakefulness, Darsha remembered what had happened: the attack by unseen foes in the tunnels, the electroshock net that had trapped them.

She had been knocked out by the net's power field. Wherever she was now, it couldn't be any place healthy.

Darsha opened her eyes and managed to raise her head enough to see what was going on, even though doing so sent a stab of pain like a blaster bolt through her skull. What she saw kicked her adrenal glands into overdrive. Pavan was struggling with several creatures-hard to tell in the dim light exactly what they were, other than bipedal and definitely subhuman. He had apparently managed to knock one of them unconscious; the limp form lay on the mossy stone floor next to the droid, who seemed to be out of commission, as well.

Darsha pushed herself up to a kneeling position. The movement attracted the attention of several of the creatures who were circling Pavan, looking for an opening. They turned and shambled toward her, their snarling mouths stretched wide. She saw the undulating skin that covered their eye sockets, and the horror of the sight caused her heart to stutter.

Darsha gathered the Force to her. Still on her knees, she thrust out both arms, fingers splayed wide, hurling twin waves of invisible power toward them. The unexpected surges struck them, causing them to stagger back. They howled in mingled fear and anger, an eerie ululation that reverberated in the chamber.

Darsha took advantage of the momentary respite to stagger to her feet. She reached instinctively for her lightsaber, and wasn't really surprised to find it missing from its belt clip. She had no time to look for it, because now several more of the subhumans were lumbering her way.

Though they moved slowly, it was hard to avoid them, given how many there were in the relatively small chamber.

Pavan, who had two of them hanging on to each arm, saw she was awake. " Cthons!" he shouted to her. "They're cannibals!"

His words sent a chill of fear and repugnance down Darsha's spine.

Like most people who lived on Coruscant, she had heard the legends of the sightless sub-humans, but had never considered them based in reality.

Fear gave her new strength and focus, and once again she drove them back by throwing Force waves at them. But they were stronger than they looked, and extremely tenacious; though battered off their feet by her power, they picked themselves up and came back for more, moaning and howling.

Pavan was doing worse than she was, having only his fists and feet to fight with. The Cthons were dragging him toward one of the darker recesses of the chamber.

"I-Five's been deactivated!" he called to her. "He can help us!"

Yes, of course! Darsha thought. She'd had firsthand experience of how strong the droid was when he'd carried both her and Pavan to safety after the skycar's crash. She looked at I-Five and could just see in the dim light that the master switch on the back of his head was in the off position.

Could she reactivate him? She wasn't sure. There was no way she could reach him physically, and she wasn't at all confident in her control of the Force, particularly under these circ.u.mstances. It was one thing to use it like a bludgeon against an enemy, but quite another to flip a small switch several meters away.

She pushed the doubts away. She had to do it-or she and Pavan were quite literally dead meat.

She focused her mind on the droid, felt the tenuous, intangible connection between her thoughts and the cool metal of the control switch.

She pushed against it with her mind, feeling the resistance.

A Cthon grabbed her from behind.

Darsha bit back a cry of shock and surprise. She felt her attenuated mental grip on the tiny nub of durasteel almost slip free, and with all the power of her will she thrust the Force tendril against it.

Then the Cthon yanked her backwards, and she felt its clammy fingers, like the hands of a corpse, reach up and close about her neck.

A shrill screech, unlike anything she had ever heard before, suddenly filled the air. It was more than just unpleasant; it was actively painful. It drilled into both ears and expanded in the center of Darsha's head like something alive and voracious. The Cthon released her and she staggered forward, clapping her hands over her ears. That helped somewhat, but not nearly enough.

But it was obvious that the stridency was causing the Cthons far more pain than she was feeling. Which made sense, certainly; here in the eternal darkness the creatures would have grown over generations to depend on their ears far more than their vestigial eyes. Their shrieks and moans of agony were barely audible above the continuing screech, which Darsha now realized was coming from I-Five. The reactivated droid was standing. He moved quickly, pushing through the dazed group of subhumans toward Lorn Pavan while the earsplitting sound continued to emanate from his vocabulator. The Cthons who had been dragging Pavan away were writhing in pain like their comrades, leaving him free.

Darsha followed in the droid's wake. I-Five grabbed Pavan and headed for the dark aperture of a tunnel in the chamber's far wall. No matter where it led, it had to be someplace better than where they were now.

But the chances of their reaching it were not looking good. Though obviously still in pain, the Cthons were starting to rally, no doubt motivated by the sight of their dinner making an escape. Darsha hurled more invisible blows to either side, clearing a path for the three of them. But a large group was gathering ahead to block their escape.

Darsha looked about desperately for something to use as a weapon-and saw her lightsaber lying perhaps five meters away on a mound of mingled offal and techno-trash. With a gasp of surprise and grat.i.tude, she reached out for it with her hand and her mind. The device flew from its position across the intervening s.p.a.ce. A Cthon somehow sensed it sailing through the air and made a clumsy leap that almost intercepted it. He sprawled on the ground at her feet, and Darsha felt the lightsaber smack into her hand. She thumbed the activator b.u.t.ton and heard the satisfying thrum as the yellow blade boiled out to its full length.

She gripped the weapon in both hands, weaving it in a figure- eight defensive pattern. It was hard to concentrate, as I- Five was still emitting his painful siren cry and her head was feeling like it would come apart at any minute. She hoped that some of the Cthons would at least get hit by the shrapnel. Against the combined threats of her lightsaber and the droid's howl, the subhumans had no choice but to fall back. The three entered the tunnel at a dead run, I-Five in the lead and Darsha bringing up the rear. Their former captors' enraged cries followed them, but that was all. The phosph.o.r.escent lichen that covered the chamber's walls continued only a short way into the underground pa.s.sage and then died out, save for sporadic patches that did little or nothing to relieve the darkness. I-Five illuminated his photoreceptors, revealing a brick-lined tunnel barely high enough for Lorn to stand upright. It did not run in a straight line, but instead meandered gently, first left, then right. I-Five shut off the screeching sound once they were out of sight of the Cthons' chamber. They dropped from a run to a fast walk. Darsha had to hustle to keep up with the long- legged strides of the other two, and each time her boots contacted the hard pavestones she felt a new spear of pain go through her head. She wished devoutly that one of the Force's attributes was an ability to cure headaches. As if reading her mind, the droid began making another sound: a low trilling that was as unlike the discordant noise of before as it was possible to be. It seemed to somehow penetrate her bones and muscles-indeed, her very cells-and subtly vibrate them, flushing away the toxins and pains that had filled them. After a few minutes the sound ceased, leaving her feeling, if not in top shape, at least markedly better.

After walking for another few minutes, I-Five stopped. Pavan and Darsha stopped, as well, the latter deactivating her lightsaber as she did so.

"My sensors indicate no one is following us," the droid said.

"Let's keep moving anyway," Pavan replied. "You were wrong before, remember?"

"Don't be so hard on him," Darsha said. "After all, he just saved our lives again."

"Much as I crave validation, I feel constrained to point out that you saved us this time," said I-Five. *I couldn't have done anything if you hadn't reactivated me." Though the droid was speaking to Darsha, he was looking at Lorn Pavan.

Pavan hesitated a moment, scowling. Then he looked at Darsha and said, "He's right. Thanks."

It obviously had taken a herd of wild banthas to drag the words out of him. Why did he hate Jedi so much? Darsha wondered. Aloud, she said, "No problem. You saved my life back in the skycar. Now we're even."

Pavan gave her a look that seemed equal parts grat.i.tude and resentment. He said to I-Five, "Let's find the fastest route back to the surface. Even the Raptors look friendly compared to what lives down here."

The droid nodded and started walking again. The two humans followed. Neither of her companions spoke further, which suited Darsha just fine. She strode along behind Lorn Pavan, wondering once again what caused his intense antipathy toward her and her order.

She could simply ask him, of course. The only reason she hadn't done so yet was because there hadn't been any time to; they'd been on the run from the moment they'd met. But her instincts told her that now would not be a good time to bring it up, so she kept quiet. Maybe after they emerged from these labyrinthine catacombs-if they ever did-she would broach the subject. For now it seemed best to just let it lie.

"I'm surprised the Cthons gave up so easily," Pavan said abruptly to the droid. "They didn't even follow us into this tunnel."

"I've been wondering about that, as well," I-Five said. "Two possibilities come to mind-neither of them particularly pleasant to contemplate. The first is that they may be planning another trap of some sort."

"That's what I was thinking," Pavan replied. "What's your second scenario?"

"That there may be something up ahead that even the Cthons fear."

Pavan did not reply. They trudged on through the bowels of the planetary city, and Darsha mulled over the droid's words. They certainly didn't paint a cheerful picture of the immediate future. Something even worse than the Cthons?

CHAPTER 22.

Darth Maul followed his instincts. They led him a short distance along the transit tube and down a stairwell, and from there into a dark tunnel. He moved swiftly but cautiously. He knew that this deep in the guts of the planet there lived creatures that even a Sith Lord would have a hard time dealing with. But they would not keep him from overtaking his quarry and completing his mission.

He would kill Pavan first, for two reasons: because he was the primary target, of course, but also because Maul would then be free to take his time killing the Jedi. He did not antic.i.p.ate her putting up much of a fight. His impression was that she had been naught but an apprentice to the Twi'lek he had killed, and thus not much of a potential opponent.

But she was still a Jedi, and he could toy with her for a bit before delivering the fatal blow. He felt he deserved some entertainment as partial recompense for all the trouble they had put him to.

The subterranean course he followed was as dark as a coal sack nebula. Even Maul, whose eyes were far more sensitive to light than a human's, could barely see enough to make his way. But he was not depending on vision so much as on the perturbations in the Force to guide him. Now he could sense them ahead-he would not go astray.

Nevertheless, he felt impatient. He wanted to run, to rapidly close the distance to his prey, to be done with all this. But only fools rush into unknown and hostile territory, and Darth Maul was no fool.

He had pushed his hood back the better to hear anything that might warn him of a threat. Then he paused abruptly, listening to faint vibrations.

He knew he was not alone.

The dank and miasmal air was still, and even the disturbance he sensed in the Force was of the most subtle nature. Still, he had no doubt that he was being watched. The almost nonexistent light told him that he was standing in a wide part of the tunnel, with several side pa.s.sages opening into it. It was from these that he suspected the attack would come.

Moving very slowly, he dropped his gloved hand to the lightsaber dangling at his belt.

He did not expect the a.s.sault to come from above, but he was not taken by surprise when it did. He sensed the electroshock net dropping down from overhead, and knew that if he tried to slash it with his energy blade, the power surge would reverberate back down his arm and through him with devastating effect. So instead he dived forward, executing a smooth shoulder roll that carried him beyond the reach of the mesh. He came to his feet and spun about, lighting both ends of his weapon as he did so. And then they were upon him. Darth Maul once again abandoned himself to the dark side, letting it guide his movements and power his strikes. He stood in the center of a maelstrom of hulking silhouettes, visible only in brief stroboscopic flashes as the whirling energy blades struck them down. He recognized them from his studies of Coruscant's indigenes: Cthons, degenerate subterranean humanoids, considered by many scholars to be apocryphal. His master would be most interested to learn that they actually existed. a.s.suming, of course, he did not slay them all. By the time they broke off the attack and retreated, howling, into the side tunnels, there were several fewer in existence than had been moments before. Maul had killed, as best he could count in the darkness, nine of the loathsome creatures.

He moved on, continuing to follow the trail and wondering if Pavan and the Jedi had encountered the Cthons, as well. If they had, he felt it strongly possible that they had not survived. Perhaps his job had been done for him. That would be a disappointment, as he would then be deprived of the pleasure of the kill, but at least the mission would be at an end.

Of course, he could not a.s.sume that this was the case, not until he found definite evidence. The human had certainly proven harder to kill than he had antic.i.p.ated so far. He pressed ahead through the everlasting night, alert for the possibility of more attacks.

As Lorn followed I-Five through the dark tunnel, he considered various possible solutions to his situation. There didn't seem a lot of them. In all his years as a businessman, information broker, and even working for the Jedi, he certainly hadn't come across anything this challenging before. Pursued by the Sith- who weren't even supposed to exist-into the deepest pits of the city where flesh-eating cannibals stalked him... it was a challenge, no doubt about it. a.s.suming that they made it back aboveground and were able to return to the civilized levels of society, what should his next move be? He knew that the Padawan planned on taking him straight to the Jedi Temple so that he could share his information with Mace Windu and the other council members. But that event was not anywhere near the top of Lorn's list of desires. Certainly the Jedi would be best at protecting him from the Sith-a.s.suming their tracker had not been killed in the explosion-but as far as he was concerned it would be a solution almost as bad as the problem. To be a resource held and used by the Jedi? It was a sickening thought, one that awoke far too many memories Lorn had worked hard to put away. So instead of giving in to the feelings that threatened to overwhelm him, he considered his other obvious option: Run.

The key question was how to get on board a ship that could take him and I-Five far enough away to avoid being tracked by both the Sith and the Jedi. The spice transport I-Five had arranged pa.s.sage on had already left, but there was certainly no dearth of ships at the s.p.a.ceports. Once they were off Coruscant it would be easier. It was a big galaxy, after all. There couldn't be that many Sith out there, or there would have been rumors that the Jedi would have picked up by now. And if there were only a few, Lorn reasoned, it wouldn't really be in the Sith's interests to spend much time tracking down one low-life information broker.

So that was the plan: get on a fast ship, maybe a smuggler, and leave Coruscant behind. He didn't know how he was going to pay for pa.s.sage yet, but he would figure something out. They could hightail it out to some backwater planet like Tatooine, hole up in the Dune Sea or the Jundland Wastes for a while, become part of the scenery. After a few years he could maybe open a tavern in some place like Mos Eisley. It wasn't a particularly thrilling life to contemplate, but at least it was a life.

Of course, I-Five might not be too happy about all that sand. Droids tended to need a lot of oil baths in environments like Tatooine's. Lorn looked thoughtfully at his partner walking ahead of him, the droid's metallic sh.e.l.l catching the reflected light from his photoreceptors. He would need to discuss this plan with him, see if I-Five had any new angles about the money end of it. The droid always seemed to have the right idea to complement Lorn's own. Of course, to do this he would have to get a few moments away from the Jedi. Darsha. Her name was Darsha. With an uncomfortable start, Lorn realized that he was feeling a little guilty at the thought of running out on her. He'd hated the Jedi with an all-inclusive pa.s.sion for so long, it was hard to see any of them as individuals. After all, she had saved his life. It was difficult to get past the fact that she was a Jedi, but deep down he knew she was more than that: she was a person. Even likable, hard though that was to believe. And admirable in a number of ways, as well. Considering that her mentor had been killed in that explosion, she was carrying her grief fairly well. She'd saved all of them back there from the Cthons, too, no question about that.

But not because she liked you. Only for the information.

Lorn nodded to himself. He had to keep in mind that the Jedi did nothing that did not serve their own interests. Nothing. He would be doing himself no favors to walk into their clutches.

No, the best way out was to run. But to book pa.s.sage on even a garbage scow was financially out of the question at this point.

And then he remembered-Tuden Sal! A few months past he'd given the owner of a successful chain of restaurants a tidbit of data that had helped the Sakiyan keep his liquor license. At the time Lorn had been flush and had charged only a few drinks-well, more than a few-but Sal had promised him a favor if the day ever came that he needed one.

As far as Lorn was concerned, that day was here. Tuden Sal was known to have strong contacts with several smuggling organizations, including Black Sun. He would know how to get them off Coruscant. Lorn felt revitalized by the possibility. This was a good plan-if he could just stay alive long enough to make it happen.

Ahead of him the droid slowed down. There was a change that Lorn could feel in the air. The echoes of their footsteps seemed to be hollower, more distant. I-Five confirmed it.

"For those of you who are interested, the cavern we have just entered is roughly seven hundred standard meters wide, two hundred meters across, and festooned with stalact.i.tes starting forty or fifty meters above our heads. The ledge we are on, unfortunately, ends within seven meters, culminating in a drop that is-" The droid paused. "-currently not measurable with my modest sensory capabilities."

Terrific, Lorn thought. Darsha heard Lorn Pavan release a long-suffering sigh. "Let me guess," he said, "we have to jump across." "Not unless you've suddenly gained greater levita-tion powers than our Sith friend," the droid replied. Darsha reached out with the Force.

She sensed nothing other than the usual low-level life signs found everywhere. "It feels empty," she said.

"Well, thank you, Mistress of the Force, but pardon me if I don't stop worrying," Pavan replied sarcastically. "It seems like your track record with that skill is still a little on the nebulous side."

She glared at Pavan. "It so happens that even Jedi Masters- which I am not-can be taken by surprise by things that are not Force-sensitive.

Creatures who make very little ripples in the psychic flow are sometimes as good as invisible." Abruptly she remembered Bondara's leap toward the Sith, and fell silent.

After a moment, I-Five said, "The good news is that there seems to be a bridge."

Darsha moved forward to stand next to the droid. To keep her balance, she inadvertently put her hand on Pavan's shoulder, felt him tense and move away.

What was it with him? she wondered. What did he feel the Jedi had done to him to make him hate her and her kind so? Darsha remembered the look on Master Bondara's face when Pavan had introduced himself. Her mentor had known the man's name. What did that mean? She wasn't usually the prying type, but as soon as she got back to the Temple she'd do her best to find out.

Sure, she thought. As if there would still be a place for her in the Temple after all this. Fail the graduation exercise, get her Master killed, and wind up nearly eaten by a bunch of blind monsters. What kind of Jedi was that?

Not a very good one, she had to admit.

Darsha shook her head slightly, trying to banish encroaching despair. There is no emotion, there is peace. She had made mistakes, that was for sure, had probably lost any chance of ever becoming a Jedi. But until Master Windu or another member of the council officially rea.s.signed her, she would continue to do her duty as best she saw it. She would get Lorn Pavan to the Temple because his information would be valuable to the council, could help maintain order against the misuse of power. It was what a Jedi would do, and so it was what she would do.

Thankfully, Pavan was not at all like Oolth the Fondorian. That one had been nothing but bl.u.s.ter and cowardice. Pavan was hard to read, but his actions so far had been those of a loyal, brave individual. The only thing that made him difficult to get along with was his hatred of the Jedi.

I-Five turned his photoreceptors up a few notches brighter and aimed them down at the bridge.

Several large ropes, gray and dusty with age, stretched out from the end of the tunnel beyond the limited light put out by the droid.

Across the ropes had been laid an odd a.s.sortment of flat objects: boards, pieces of sheet metal, and other odds and ends. About the only thing they had in common was that they were all more or less flat and laid out in the direction the group wanted to go.

Lorn stepped out and jumped on one of the ropes. His balance was excellent, she noted, and he seemed to have a natural grace as he leapt.

He saw her watching and pushed off extra hard on the last bounce, doing a quick somersault in midair.

"Ropes seem strong enough to me," he said, landing in a perfect double-foot plant. He waited a moment before answering her unasked question. "I used to dabble in zero-g sports when I, uh, had a better lifestyle."

The droid broke in. "If you two are finished playing primitive mating games, maybe we could see about traversing this bridge. There may be a Sith pursuing us, if you recall."

"Excuse me?" Lorn said. "Mating games? " Darsha felt indignant as well. "Your droid has & point. We need to keep moving." Mating games, indeed, she thought as she stepped onto the bridge. Not likely.