CHAPTER 23.

Lorn wished he had a weapon.

Ahead of him, I-Five was armed with his finger blasters, as well as a few other tricks, and behind him Darsha had her lightsaber.

It wasn't that he felt they were in any particular danger at the moment, but a weapon-any weapon- would have given him a better sense of control over his own safety. While it was true that being unarmed did make him very alert, that didn't count for much with a sensor-equipped droid and a Force- sensitive Jedi for companions. Lorn felt he might as well be blind compared to them. The going was slow; there were no handrails on the bridge, and it didn't look like the planks, lids, and other objects they were walking on had been attached very firmly to the support ropes. Indeed, he got the opinion that they had been added after the trestle had been formed. By the Cthons, perhaps? It was impossible to say. The bridge, Lorn noted, was of a very strange construction. In addition to the thick support cables that ran along either side of the odd planks they walked on, there were vertical cables every few meters, some coming from the roof of the cavern, as might be expected, but others stretching from the bridge supports down into the darkness below.

What could all this be for?

He voiced the question.

"Based on the depth of the excavation," I-Five said, "I postulate that this could have been used as an access point for the underground oceans."

Possible, Lorn thought. Most of Coruscant, except for a few park areas, was built-over landma.s.s. The water had to go somewhere.

"But why this bridge? I mean, it's a pretty primitive construction.

Why not have a better way of getting around?"

The droid paused and looked over its shoulder, photoreceptors gleaming. "Perhaps the Cthons are responsible. Why can't you just be grateful that it's here where and when we need it?" I-Five resumed his progress forward.

Lorn raised an eyebrow. "Who p.i.s.sed in your power supply?" he muttered.

He heard a chuckle from behind him. Great. Shot down by his own droid, and a Jedi got the laugh.

"I've got to ask," Darsha said. "How did you two wind up working together?"

"I'm impressed. You managed to come up with a topic even less interesting than his," I-Five said.

> "Perhaps you aren't in need of a distraction," Darsha said, "but I sure could use one after the last few hours."

The woman had a point. Lorn, somewhat to his surprise, was the one who answered. : "I acquired I-Five a few years back when I first got started selling information. He was a protocol droid belonging to a rich family who left him with the children. The children were spoiled. They used to do things like make him jump off the roof to see how high he would bounce."

The memory surprised him with its intensity. He recalled the smell of the junk dealer's shop, a mixture of hydraulic fluid and the ozone of cooking circuits. It had been a humid day, and he was tired. He'd been fired from the Jedi Temple only a few days previously-not that they had called it that, of course.

There is no emotion; there is peace.

He'd read the words a thousand times when he had studied his enemies, fought their power over his life and Jax's. The words had never made sense before, and they didn't now.

"I figured that he might have some interesting secrets tucked away that I could use, so I bought him and brought him back on-line."

Lorn remembered the first words the droid had spoken. They had hit him with their utter hopelessness and helplessness, reminding him of his own.

"I am I-FiveYQ, programmed for protocol." There had been a pause after the initial main sequence had activated, and then the droid had asked, "Are you going to hurt me?"

Fury had blossomed in Lorn when he heard those words. He, too, had been broken into pieces recently, hurt savagely by those he had always been told would protect him. The Jedi.

Darsha watched Lorn go quiet. Something seemed to have disturbed the man in the telling of his story, something that she felt reticent to press him on. She decided to ask the droid instead.

"So he fixed you up, and you talked him into being your partner?"

I-Five answered after a pause.

"Lorn had been treated badly recently by his ... employers. He felt that I was a kindred spirit, at least in potential. He had a friend who was handy at reprogramming droids install a top-of-the-line AI cognitive module, and deactivated my creativity damper, as well. As a result, I am as close to full sentience as any droid can be."

Intrigued, Darsha had to ask. "Who were his employers?"

I-Five glanced at Lorn before replying. "The Jedi."

She had suspected as much. That explained Master Bondara's recognition of the name. But why and how had the order treated Lorn so terribly? As far as she knew, they always dealt fairly with all employees who were non-Jedi. It didn't make any sense.

"How long have you trained at the Temple, Padawan a.s.sant?"

It was plain, at least, that I-Five was a better droid than the one a.s.signed to watch over the Fondorian in I the safe house. That one hadn't recognized her as a Padawan.

"I've lived at the temple practically all my life. My formal training started when I was four," she said. And probably ended as of today, she added silently.

"I have been in business with Lorn Pavan for five standard years."

Then the droid went silent and left Darsha to her own thoughts. She realized that he had given her a clue to the mystery of Lorn's past.

She cast her thoughts back five years earlier. A new student had come to the temple back then, a two-year-old. Darsha remembered it because of the boy's high midi-chlorian count. She hadn't heard all the details of course, but the temple was a small pond, and ripples of any discord traveled quickly across its surface. Apparently the boy had been the son of a temple employee, who had been fired after he agreed to let his son be trained -why, she wasn't sure.

She gave Lorn a measuring look. If he were that student's father, and if his son had been taken from him without his consent, to be raised by the order- well, then it was certainly no wonder that he hated the Jedi.

She tried to imagine how she would feel in his place, but could not.

She looked at Lorn again and knew her suspicion was right. It certainly explained the man's att.i.tude toward her and Master Bondara. She felt a great upsurge of pity for him then, so much so that she had to look away from him lest he read it in her expression.

She turned her focus back to their surroundings. It still rankled her that she hadn't noticed the Cthons before they had attacked, and she had vowed to herself not to let something like that happen again. Seeking out life-forms around her with the Force was a task with varying degrees of difficulty. Intelligent, Force-sensitive beings were usually easy to spot, of course, while lower-level forms-insects and animals, for example-did not broadcast nearly much of a blip on her mental radar. It was true that her mastery of the Force was nowhere near perfect, but that was no excuse for not doing the best she could. Her Twi'lek Master had once explained to her that sensitivity and fine-tuning came with time.

"As a Padawan," he had said, "I could push boulders around with ease, but seeds were next to impossible."

The thought reminded Darsha that it was time to check on possible pursuit again. Ever since they had entered the underground tunnels she had periodically scanned behind them for any signs of the Sith. She had not sensed his approach before the Cthon attack and was still hoping that he had been killed along with Master Bondara. But she couldn't take the chance of becoming complacent. She closed her eyes, keeping a slight cognizance of her immediate surroundings with the Force, and cast her awareness backwards, along the path they had traced across the old bridge, across the ledge, back into the tunnel.

A cold pillar of darkness formed in her mind as her awareness reached the tunnel. Power and energy seemed to radiate off of it like electricity from a thundercloud.

He was right behind them!

"Lorn, I-Five-the Sith is behind us, almost to the bridge!"

There was no response from either of them. Darsha opened her eyes and for a moment forgot about the imminent threat of the Sith.

They had found the reason why the Cthons had not pursued them.

CHAPTER 24.

Darth Maul advanced along the dark pa.s.sage as fast as he dared. His sense of the Jedi and her companions grew stronger. Events had stretched out much longer than they should have; it was well past time to put an end to this. Even so, he realized he was letting his eagerness overcome his caution. He deliberately slowed his pace, forcing patience. It would not do to be caught in some trap deep underground, to have half of the Sith in the galaxy lost due to carelessness.

He probed the darkness with renewed caution, sensing nothing dangerous ahead. The path of the Jedi was very fresh now; he could sense her presence. Not much farther. And then he felt her find him. A clumsy probe it was, weak and hesitant. He was disappointed by it. It would be no real challenge to face someone so little steeped in the ways of the Force. Definitely not in the same cla.s.s as her Master, the Twi'lek who had de-stroyed his speeder bike. He had been a worthy adver- sary. Not as good as Maul, of course, but that was to 'be expected.

He saw a faint light up ahead as he came around a curve in the tunnel. The echoes of his footsteps changed, and he realized he had reached a larger open s.p.a.ce. He sent mental investigative tendrils of the Force outward, finding the boundaries of the ledge he stood on and the bridge just ahead. He sensed the Jedi on the bridge, perhaps halfway across, with Lorn Pavan and his droid just ahead of her, and beyond them.

Maul frowned. There was an odd quality ahead of them in the darkness-an empty spot in the mental topography of his probe. The light, which he now realized had to be from the droid's photoreceptors, gave him a brief glimpse of something huge and oddly insubstantial, like a weaving pillar of smoke ahead of the three on the middle of the bridge. Whatever it was he saw produced no corresponding vibration in the Force. This was most odd.

Curious, he tried again. And again his probe met with nothingness.

No, not exactly nothingness-the sensation was almost like encountering a surface so slick that one could find no purchase on it. It was like trying to see something that radiated only ultraviolet light. A strange phenomenon, but one he paid little attention to, because he now noted that the Jedi and Pavan were coming back along the bridge toward him.

He was surprised-pleased, but surprised. Surely the Padawan knew she could not defeat him. What, then, was her purpose? Had the other human continued ahead he would have been certain it was a delaying tactic, such as the Twi'lek had attempted earlier. But no- Pavan was accompanying the Jedi, along with his droid.

Once again Darth Maul admitted to being impressed by his prey. They were brave enough to come back and face him, and smart enough to realize, finally, that it was pointless to keep running. Naturally they would die, but perhaps he would grant them some small measure of mercy, would be a trifle quicker in killing them than he had originally planned.

The woman had activated her lightsaber. As if that would make the slightest bit of difference, he thought.

He stepped forward onto the bridge and walked out to meet them.

Darsha had never seen anything like the creature that faced them on the bridge. It was huge, a great long body that stretched back at least as far as a hover-bus. As she watched, segment after segment wound over the side of the bridge, which shuddered in response as the motion brought the creature up from underneath and onto the structure with them. Its skin was composed of segmented overlapping plates, dotted here and there with small nodules that were perhaps two centimeters in diameter. Its head was capped by two great black eyes and a pair of curved mandibles, each easily as long as her leg. Below them were an array of small, clawed arms, and below that a series of short, thick legs.

The most amazing thing about it, however, was that its chitinous exoskeleton and internal organs seemed to be completely transparent.

Apparently it had no internal skeletal structure, though how a creature that size could exist without the support of bones in a one-gravity field was beyond her understanding. Darsha saw a flash of reflected light from within its midsec-tion, a few segments back from the head, and stared in disbelief. Momentarily illuminated by I-Five's photoreceptors was a pile of bones- human bones-that shifted in the thing's gut as it heaved more of its quaking ma.s.s up onto the bridge. Also in the monster's digestive tract was a more recent acquisition-a partially digested Cthon.

Thankfully, the droid's light failed to show it in great detail.

"Why didn't this thing show up on your sensors?" Lorn hissed at I-Five as the two backed hastily away from the giant beast.

"Perhaps you forget it was the less-expensive unit you had installed? Not the one with the extra sensitivity hi-band- something about saving money, as I recall. . ."

Those two would probably die arguing, Darsha thought as she backpedaled carefully, trying to keep her balance on the swaying bridge. The big question as far as she was concerned was why the Force hadn't warned her of this thing's presence. While it was true that sentient beings were on the whole easier to sense than nonsentient ones, a living creature this size and this close would have made a noticeable dent in the energy field even if it had a brain the size of a jakka seed.

As she retreated, Darsha sent a questing mental beam toward the creature-and felt it disappear. There was no psychic reverberation at all.

How could that be? Her surprise nearly caused her to topple into the abyss. Her eyes told her the monster was there before them, her body felt the bridge swing and vibrate as it raised more of its bulk up out of the depths, but as far as sensing it via the Force, she felt nothing. This was impossible. Maybe she wasn't an adept in the same league as Masters Yoda or Jinn, but she'd have to have zero- point-zero midi-chlorians in her bloodstream not to get some kind of reading on something that huge! The creature reared up, some of its legs quivering in the light of I-Five's photoreceptors.

There was a sound, a kind of dry rasping, which it seemed to make by rattling its segmented chitinous plates. It towered over them and opened its mouth.

Darsha activated her lightsaber as the droid fired both finger blasters, hitting several pairs of legs and scarring the creature's torso. It shrieked and slammed the upper length of its body back down on the bridge, nearly shaking the group off. They had to drop p.r.o.ne to keep from falling- which was lucky, because the stream of fluid that arced from the dark rictus of its mouth pa.s.sed over their heads instead of coating them. Even as she clung to the metal plank beneath her, it was clear to Darsha that the stuff being spat by the monster was the same substance that made up the gray silken material of the bridge.

This thing had made the bridge.

Something about all this seemed familiar, but she couldn't recall how or why. A vagrant stream of the silk drifted toward the Padawan, and without thinking, she moved her lightsaber to intercept it. The silk burned as it hit the yellow energy beam, vaporizing into a cloud of smelly vapor.

The three got to their feet and started moving quickly back down the bridge toward the tunnel. Behind them the monster hitched itself forward, its multiple legs clinging to the silken bridge.

Well, I-Five's blasters hadn't worked, Darsha told herself. Let's see how well it stands up to a lightsaber.

Lorn was really wishing he had a weapon right about now. Forget hand blasters-he was far past desiring something that small. Maybe a tripod- mounted V-90, or a few plasma grenades. As long as he was wishing, how about a ship- mounted turbolaser-with him safely inside the ship.

Where had this creature come from? One minute they were walking along the bridge, the next it was just there.

Retreat was the obvious choice. But just before this thing reared its ugly head, hadn't he heard Darsha say something about the Sith being right behind them?

Talk about being trapped between the Black Hole of Nakat and the Magataran Maelstrom.

At that moment he realized what the creature was.

When Lorn had worked for the Jedi he'd had access to a lot of literature about them and many related topics. After he'd learned that Jax was off- limits to him he'd spent weeks studying everything he could about the Jedi: their history, their powers, their strengths and weaknesses. He hadn't found anything that could help him, but he had come across some interesting and esoteric bits of knowledge-including, in one old text, stories about a supposedly extinct species of giant invertebrates that could, after a fashion, hide from the Force. What had it been called?

Taozin-that was it.

Apparently they weren't extinct.

At that moment Darsha dived past him and I-Five toward the monster, her lightsaber flashing.

"Darsha! Stop! It's a taozin!"

Darsha came out of her forward roll near the base of the creature, lightsaber extended. She thrust forward, angling the cut of the weapon to carve out a huge chunk of the monster's belly. Let's see how hungry you are after your prey bites back, she thought.

She executed the move as perfectly as she ever had in practice; Master Bondara would have been proud. The only problem was that it didn't work.

She watched in disbelieving shock as the yellow glow of her blade diffused as she sank it into the creature, losing its coherency and radiating in all directions. Darsha dodged back, narrowly avoiding the backsplash of her own weapon. The blade regained its congruency as she withdrew it from the creature's abdomen. The beast spasmed and roared angrily, its translucent flesh rippling in reaction; the strike had evidently hurt it, though not nearly as much as she had antic.i.p.ated.

Darsha was so astonished by the result of her attack that she almost let the beast seize her with those sharp mandibles and pull her into the mouth that gaped overhead. At the last moment she scrambled back, waving the lightsaber to evaporate the gout of wet silk that it vomited toward her. At least the energy blade was good against that. She noted that the silk expellant became opaque only after it left the thing's mouth.

She realized belatedly that Lorn had called out something to her a moment ago. It hadn't registered at first, but now it did.

A taozin?

She remembered a few references to the beasts in her first history cla.s.s. Thought to be extinct, they had been one of the few living creatures ever encountered that could not be perceived through the Force.

Apparently someone had imported one to Coruscant some time in the past.

There was an old Jedi adage that Master Bondara had been fond of quoting: Any enemy may be defeated-at the right time.

This, Darsha realized, was not the right time.