"Let me put it another way," Darsha continued. "I have achieved my goals, even if I do not complete my mission."

Lorn nodded, but did not reply. It sounded like just the kind of ambiguity all the Jedi Knights were so fond of spouting-but like the smile, it didn't anger him to hear it coming from her. He wasn't sure what that meant.

He wasn't sure he wanted to find out.

CHAPTER 28.

Darth Maul stalked the underground pa.s.sage back the way he had come, his rage boiling into the darkness like superheated steam. His power in the Force was magnified by this; unlike the foolish Jedi, the Sith harnessed the intensity of their emotions, refusing to pretend that such things did not exist. Any creature foolish enough to impede his speedy progress to the surface would be sorry indeed. He pa.s.sed through the Cthons' cavern and saw no sign of the subterraneans.

Doubtless his previous pa.s.sage through their domain had given them ample cause to make themselves scarce. Which was just as well-though he would have welcomed the opportunity to mow some of them down given the mood he was in, time was of the essence.

The intensity of his connection to the Force brought back a memory: another day of intense focus of his power. The day he had constructed his lightsaber. Maul was not wont to revisit his past, unless doing so somehow served his master, but the satisfaction of the creation, the perfection of focus and the highly charged connection to the Force that had wrought his weapon stood out now in his memory.

The specialized furnace, which he had created from plans taken from his master's Sith Holocron, had radiated an intense heat as it shaped the synthetic crystals needed for his lightsaber. But rather than leaving the kiln chamber and allowing them to form on their own, he had remained near the device, concentrating on the metamorphosing gems, using the Force to purify and refine the lattice of the molecular matrices.

Most Jedi used natural crystals in their lightsabers; Adegan crystals were the gems of choice. Most of the other components of a lightsaber were easily obtained-power cells, field energizers, stabilizing rings, flux apertures-but not the crystals themselves. They had to be mined in the Adega System, deep within the Outer Rim Territories. The difficulty of using natural materials meant that the alignment process could take a long time-and the calibration had to be perfect, because mismatched crystals could destroy not only the lightsaber, but its creator. Finding and aligning the crystals was a Jedi test, but it was not the way of the Sith. The dark masters of the Force preferred to create their own synthetic crystals, to match the harmonics in the searing heat of a crucible and thus take their creation of the weapon to a deeper level.

Maul had sat by the furnace, focusing his hatred of the Jedi to a fiery peak and expanding his control of the Force, which he used to manipulate the molecular structures of the four gems required for his double-bladed weapon. The choice to make two blades instead of one had been an easy one. Only an expert would even think of trying to handle a double-bladed weapon, and he would be no less than an expert. The glory of the Sith required it, as did his master.

Not even the compressed ferrocrete walls of the pressurized chamber could entirely contain the intense temperature required to form the crystals. Hour after hour had pa.s.sed, the searing heat washing over the apprentice. But his control had not wavered; the pain had not swayed his focus. Layer after countless layer of the crystals had been laid down, aligned, and perfected. It had taken days, days without food or water or sleep, but eventually he had sensed their readiness. Then he had deactivated the furnace and cracked it open. There, sitting in the formation cru- cibles, had been his four perfect crystals.

Maul grinned into the darkness. Yes, it was a good memory, an attainment that reminded him of his powers, that rea.s.sured him of his eventual and inevitable triumph. He had been thwarted thus far by an odd chain of events, but that would change soon.

He was back in the transport tube now. Ahead of him he could see light shining down from overhead, where he'd cut through the ventilation grid. Maul gathered the Force to himself and jumped straight up, rising several body lengths to shoot through the opening. A derelict human, deep in the throes of some narcotic delusion, was lying on the street nearby.

He saw the Sith rise from the depths, gave out a little gasp, and pa.s.sed out as Maul's boots touched the pavement.

Not far away, the wreckage of the Twi'lek Jedi's skycar and its attendant debris still partially blocked the streets. The Sith Lord considered how he might best locate his quarry. Once he reacquired their trail he could easily locate them. The weakness of that strategy was that he would still be following them. There had been far too much of that.

Much better to get ahead of them somehow and be waiting for them. Maul recalled the method by which he'd located the Neimoidian earlier. Perhaps the planetary net cams would be useful to him again; if he could find the most recent location where the humans had been seen, he could save time tracking them by going straight to it.

But to begin his search he needed a data terminal, and there were none to be found in this urban jungle. He was reminded of something Lord Sidious had once told him: "For every solution there are two problems."

Darth Maul considered for a moment, then activated his wrist comm and holoscreen monitor. He commed the Infiltrator, tapped into its main computer, and used that to access the port datalink, bypa.s.sing the regular navigation request screens until he located a menu offering access to other networks. His master's pa.s.sword again opened locked doors, and within a few seconds he had called up several data sources.

The first was a holomap of this section of the Crimson Corridor.

Maul located his current position and tapped in the last known vectors for the humans and the droid.

The planetary data bank gave him the information he wanted. It was as he had suspected; they were heading in the direction of the Jedi Temple, using the droid's global positioner to guide them. Fortunately they still had a long way to go, not only toward the Temple, but uplevels, as well. He zeroed down to street level and identified several exits from the subterranean pa.s.sages that they might have used.

Next he tapped into Coruscant's security network and called up a listing of surveillance cams near those exits. He flashed through hundreds of images from the last few minutes, finding nothing that would help him. He left the link open and shifted to check recent crimes in the area. Not surprisingly, hundreds of incidents popped up for the last few hours in the Crimson Corridor: street fights, petty theft, other common crimes. He noted in pa.s.sing an oddity: a droid was being sought for scamming the banking system. But he found nothing recent that had happened in the target areas that would serve him.

Darth Maul scowled. He needed transportation; that way he could get nearer his target zones. He considered the problem.

As he did so, his comm flashed that he had an incoming message. He felt a finger of worry touch him. It could be only his master. The thought of not answering did not occur to the Sith. He toggled the secure communications mode, dumping his connection to the security net, and waited for the readout to confirm his scrambled signal.

Sidious's voice crackled over the comlink. "Time grows short, my apprentice. What is the state of your current project?"

"My master, I have obtained the holocron. I am holding it for your inspection. There have been... delays in finding the human whom the Neimoidian spoke with, but they are now within my grasp. I shall not fail you."

Darth Sidious was silent for a second before he replied.

"See that you do not. When they are dead, contact me, and I will instruct you in how to deliver the holocron. Be very careful not to reveal our presence, Lord Maul-it is not yet time."

"Yes, my master."

Darth Maul moved toward the clearing where the Jedi's skycar had crashed. It would be a good location to try what he had planned. He reached out with his senses. There was no sign of Jedi anywhere close now.

Cautiously Maul shielded his strength, hooding his power in the Force lest any approaching Jedi notice. It was sensible that those of the Temple would investigate the crash of one of their transports, but it was still cause for discretion. He had little doubt that he could defeat any living Jedi, but there were many of them here on the capital of the Republic. Even he was not foolish enough to try to take them on all at once. With the Jedi searching, events were complicated that much more.

It had certainly turned out to be a much more interesting mission than he had thought it would be.

Maul settled himself in the shadows beyond the area where the skycar had crashed, and reaccessed the planetary security grid, using the same technique he had before. Few taxi drivers could be enticed to enter the Crimson Corridor, and even the security forces did not enter the zone without good cause. But good cause was something he could supply.

This time, instead of activating the menu, he scanned the current patrol routes for this quarter of the city. High above, still several kilometers away, were a pair of patrol officers on speeder bikes, circling on their regular beat. Maul noted their designations and then accessed the dispatch queue for emergency calls. He fed data directly into the dispatch computer. Eventually an audit might reveal his call to be a ruse, with no comlink recording, but it would serve for now.

The bait he chose was the droid banking crime. The police would be wary of any dangerous call-outs for the area, but they would perhaps be less concerned with a white-collar crime conducted by someone's mechanical servant. It was the best inticement he could come up with on short notice.

Having set out his lures, the Sith apprentice waited to see what he might catch. He did not have to wait long. A few minutes after he'd entered the data into the security net, two police speeder bikes came roaring in from uplevels, strobe lights flashing. From the shadows in which he crouched, Darth Maul prepared to move.

Abruptly he halted. At the edge of his perceptions was something else. He reached for it, projecting jagged tendrils of the Force to discover what lay unseen. And then, as his probe reached it, it swung lower into view, hovering above the crash site.

It was a PCBU-a droid-piloted police cruiser backup unit. The Crimson Corridor had been the site of a number of officer murders over the years, which was why the PCBU had been developed. It carried two state-of-the-art swivel laser cannons mounted on the top and bottom of the unit, as well as a variety of sensors, scanners, and disrupters. Maul watched it approach.

He had not expected the arrival of such a heavily armed craft, but it would delay his plans only slightly.

He waited until the unit had pa.s.sed him, following the two speeder bikes, and then acted. He seized the Force and used it to propel himself high into the air, to land on the top of the PCBU. His lightsaber blades ignited as his feet hit the surface of the craft, and he quickly sheared the upper gun free of its mount, spinning the double-ended blade after this to cleave through the transparisteel c.o.c.kpit bubble and the droid pilot. The PCBU began to descend, its autopilot taking over now that the droid was no longer activated.

Either the speeder bike patrol officers had noted the descent of the craft, or the driver of the PCBU had had time to get off a signal, because they spun their bikes around and flew toward him.

Excellent.

One speeder bike was ahead of the other. Maul deactivated one of his lightsaber's blades and hurled it toward the first of the oncoming speeders like a spear. It pierced the officer's armored chest while the Sith, again a.s.sisted by the Force, jumped from the descending PCBU toward the other officer.

By the time he had landed on the speeder his lightsaber had rejoined him, s.n.a.t.c.hed back to him by a feathery runner of the Force.

Within moments the second police officer was dead, and Darth Maul had his transportation. With no witnesses, there was little chance of anyone suspecting the use of the Force, and the entire operation had been accomplished quickly enough that, in all probability, neither of the two officers had had a chance to send a distress signal.

Immediately he lifted off on one of the speeder bikes, heading uplevels to get ahead of his quarry. He set the speeder into a vertical spiral and checked his wrist comm as he rose. Again, he noted nothing unusual in the target area. However, one of the cam pickup sites seemed unusually devoid of traffic. Something about it...

Darth Maul replayed the scene again at a slower speed. Yes, right there-a flicker of something. He watched the security cam footage play again, slowing it even more. Nothing, nothing... and then, abruptly, there he was.

It was unmistakably his target: the information broker known as Lorn Pavan.

The Sith checked the time stamp on the data. The image had been recorded only about twenty minutes ago. He accelerated the speeder toward the location given on the screen.

He had them now.

CHAPTER 29.

Lorn poked the Raptor leader in the back with the barrel of his blaster as they reached the alley. "Hold it," Lorn said. He turned to IFive and Darsha. "Any warnings from the science and sorcery team?" he asked. "And don't start whining again about the cheap sensor suite I had installed in you," he added to the droid.

"Well, it was less expensive than the Mark Ten."

"But more expensive than the other five choices. A lot more expensive." Lorn glanced at Darsha as he spoke, intending to ask her if she was receiving anything on the Force bandwidth, and was somewhat surprised to see that she was smiling. What was even more surprising-downright shocking, actually-was the way he found himself reacting to that smile.

He liked it.

He liked her.

This was bad.

He knew he would soon have to break clear of her. There was just no way he was going back to the Temple. Sure, she was nice-looking, but he'd had nice-looking before, lots of times since Siena had left him.

This was definitely not the direction in which his best interests lay. It was best to cut this off, right here and right now. Raise the blast shields, secure the air locks, bolt the hatches.

But instead, to his horror, Lorn realized he was smiling back.

As they walked toward the alley, Darsha enjoyed the patter between Lorn and I-Five. It was clear that they cared as much for each other as two friends would, two equals. Unusual, but at the same time it seemed quite natural.

She'd rarely had the opportunity to develop that kind of bond. The Jedi didn't discourage friendships, of course, but the intensity of her studies and the time they demanded made it difficult to cultivate anything more than casual friendships with the other Padawans. Probably the closest she had to a friend at the Temple-aside from her Master, of course-was Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi, and if she had the opportunity to speak with him more than once a week, she counted herself lucky.

As she listened to Lorn and I-Five, she kept her senses alert for any potential dangers ahead or behind. The only obvious latent trouble was Green Hair; the Raptor was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with hatred that he had been so easily captured, and that he was being made to lead enemies to his gang's secret exit route uplevels. He would bear very close watching, but IFive and Lorn seemed to have the situation in hand.

Behind them, she could feel no sign of the Sith, which either meant that they had finally made a successful escape, or was merely evidence of the fact that she still had a long way to go before she could stay in the Force at all times. Earlier, while fighting the Raptors, she'd stepped back into a full communion with it, every sense sharpened and honed, as she had done with the taozin. But she was not yet to a point where she could remain there. She had many years to go before she could be anywhere as good as Master Bondara had consistently been.

Lorn was arguing with I-Five about the latter's sensors. Darsha quested outward with the Force, feeling only the minimal vibrations of animal life in the alley-a few spider- roaches, armored rats, those sorts of creatures. Certainly nothing that represented much of a threat.

"... more expensive than the other five choices. A lot more expensive," Lorn was saying to the droid. He glanced at her as she finished the sentence. She grinned, and was very surprised to feel a depth to his answering smile. Could he possibly be attracted to her?

There was certainly no hostility in him at the moment, which was a far cry from his att.i.tude toward her when they had first been thrown together.

It was tempting to probe his emotions, to use the Force on an empathic level to see if she was right. But even as the urge to do so came over her, she quelled it. It would be taking unfair advantage.

Besides, looking at him now, Darsha realized that she didn't need to use the Force. The attraction was definitely there on his end, obvious to anyone.

How interesting.

Which begged the question: How did she feel in response?

Lorn suddenly looked away, and Darsha knew he was uncomfortable, unsure of how to deal with this new dynamic between them. A strong sense of guilt came from him: this wasn't a question of probing; she'd have to be blind to the Force not to notice. She could certainly understand where the guilt was coming from. After years of hating the Jedi, to find himself attracted to one would have to be a considerable shock.

Now was neither the time nor the place to explore this, Darsha told herself. With any luck, there would 'be better opportunities later. For now, she decided to save face-his and hers.

"I don't sense any large life-forms in the alley, for what it's worth," she told him.

Lorn nodded, still looking away, and prodded the Raptor again with his blaster. "Okay, killer- lead on."

Off balance a bit, still focused on the fact that she'd just noticed his attraction, Darsha almost missed the Raptor's sudden surge of anger. It reminded her that they were by no means out of the woods yet.

Lorn followed Green Hair into the alley, his mind still very much on the wordless interchange that had just taken place between him and Darsha. Had she somehow felt what he was thinking, used the Force to peer at his naked emotions? He hoped not. But let's face it, he told himself, she was a Jedi. She certainly had the ability to do such a thing, and in Lorn's experience, people who had skills tended to use them.

He tried to feel angry, to feel invaded by her action, but all he felt was curiosity-curiosity as to whether there was any attraction on her side. And that bothered him even more than the invasion of privacy.

I-Five broke into his thoughts. "I concur with Padawan a.s.sam's conclusions about life-forms, but you might be interested to know that there are two active power relays in the first fifteen meters of-"

"Lorn, watch it! He's going to try something!" Darsha shouted from behind.

Sure enough, the Raptor dived toward a pile of trash just under a small architectural overhang on the left side of the alley. Lorn leapt after him, trying to see what the gang member was reaching for under the garbage. Green Hair hit the ground first, however, tearing into the trash. His palm slammed toward a large yellow activation reader. Lorn had seen readers like these before; they were capable of being utilized only when someone with the right identification pattern touched them. That pattern could be the user's DNA, a subcutaneous chip, or sometimes a skin decoration, like a tattoo. Whatever the activation mode, Lorn knew that if he didn't move fast, he would very shortly find out what the switch was for.

Lorn caught the boy's wrist and pulled his arm up behind his back, hard. Green Hair let out a cry, and Lorn grabbed his other hand, as well.

He dragged the struggling youth back to where I-Five and Darsha stood.

"Got anything we can use to immobilize him?" he asked the droid.

"What a clever idea," I-Five said, handing Lorn a length of rope he had picked out of the trash. "Too bad it didn't occur to you before we were nearly vaporized."

Lorn secured Green Hair's wrists, then turned the youth around to face him. "All right, what's the switch for?"

Green Hair just stared at him, mouth defiantly clamped shut.

Lorn glanced at I-Five, who said, "I traced the circuit to an energy source high on the alley wall-about there." The droid pointed up at a rusty vent about three meters above the group. Abruptly his pointing finger deformed, the end irising open. A beam fired four times, each hair-thin line of ruby light striking a corner of the vent. Lorn smelled the tang of vaporized metal faintly over the ripe organic scents that filled the alley.

The vent cover fell off and hit the ground below with a clang, and he could see the harsh end of a tripod-mounted blaster just inside the hole. Motorized, no doubt, and cued to zap anyone not near the activation switch.

Wouldn't that have been a nasty surprise.

Lorn shook his head, then glanced at Darsha. "Here's a thought," he said. "Maybe we ought to try one of those mind tricks you wanted to use earlier."

Darsha gave him a wry look, then turned her attention to Green Hair. She made a subtle gesture with one hand as she said, "You will show us the way uplevels, with no more tricks."

Fascinated, Lorn watched as the Raptor's eyes defo-cused and he repeated, "I will show you the way uplevels, with no more tricks."

It was eerie, seeing the ease with which she controlled the boy, and Lorn found himself wondering, not for the first time, if she could do the same thing to him.