It was a statement, not a question. Sidious knew Darth Maul would not call to report failure, and there were no untoward signs in the energies that surrounded his image.

"Yes, my master. The Jedi Padawan died in combat. She fought well, for a neophyte. An explosion generated from our battle destroyed Lorn Pavan and his droid."

Darth Sidious nodded. He could feel the truth of the statement even at this distance. This was excellent news. Any leaks that could impact his plans had been sealed. Certainly there would be other challenges-he didn't trust the Neimoidians' abilities in combat any more than he did their veracity-but such obstacles would come only after his plan was too far along to be stopped.

"I will require you to bring the holocron to this location."

Sidious gave Maul the coordinates and the specialized instructions his apprentice would require to get past the security droids. Darth Maul acknowledged the instructions.

"Be most wary, my apprentice. Our stealth is vital. The Jedi will be most unhappy at the loss of two of their number, and will be searching for answers. You must see that they find none."

Darth Sidious did not wait for a response; none was necessary. With a gesture he closed the relay, breaking the connection.

It was time to make other preparations. Time to finally put into motion the plan that had taken decades to set up. The strategy that would culminate in the final destruction of the Jedi.

Soon.

Very soon.

Obi-Wan pushed the skycar to the maximum safe speed, swooping through the narrow maze of streets and buildings. Suddenly his attention was distracted by a rumble and a flash of orange light two streets over.

Yet another explosion, he thought wonderingly as he headed toward its source. He didn't know what was going on, but if it didn't stop soon, this sector of the city was going to look like it had been bombed from orbit.

He brought his skycar to a stop on a landing platform and walked cautiously closer to the inferno, using the Force once more to try to discern what had happened. His senses expanded into the building, detecting no life, but picking up the residual disturbances of a powerful struggle. He could sense Darsha's presence and the same tendrils of evil that had plagued him all day. Looking around, the Padawan noticed a sec- tion of burned rubble that had been blasted from the entrance.

Something gleamed in the debris, and he stepped forward to see what it was.

Shock sent waves of jangling sensations up his body, and he had to still himself, force his mind to unclench and accept what he was seeing.

He used the Force to grasp the shiny bit of metal, pulling it out of the rubble, bringing it to his hand.

It was the twisted, melted hilt of a lightsaber, its body scorched almost beyond recognition.

Almost.

In practice duels at the Temple, two Padawans traditionally exchanged salutes prior to their match, raising their lightsaber hilts to their foreheads before igniting the energy coils. Obi-Wan had noted more than once the carefully wound wire grip on Darsha's weapon, a unique design.

The same design he was looking at now.

The Force confirmed it, as if there were any doubt. Darsha a.s.sant was dead.

Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi stood quietly, looking at the hilt in his hand.

There is no emotion; there is peace.

How he wished it were so.

CHAPTER 33.

Lorn stared up at the brightest light he had ever seen.

He felt ... brittle, as though he might crack into countless pieces if he tried to move. There was a strange ringing in his ears, an odd smell in his nostrils. His eyes refused to focus. Everything seemed dreamlike. He had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there.

Abruptly the light-which he now realized was the sun-was blotted out by a familiar face.

"Good-you're awake. How do you feel?"

Lorn moved his jaw experimentally, found that he could speak without too much difficulty. "Like a battle dog's chew-toy." He sat up, his vision still blurred, a mult.i.tude of aches trying to drag him down.

"What happened?"

I-Five didn't reply for a moment. "You don't remember our recent...

situation?"

Lorn looked around him. He and the droid were on a small setback roof about halfway up the side of a building. The last thing he remembered...

He turned and looked in another direction. Perhaps fifty meters away was the building they had been trapped in by the Sith. He remembered Darsha opening the door, remembered seeing the Sith framed in the doorway-but nothing more than that. He said as much to I-Five.

The droid nodded. "Loss of short-term memory. Not surprising, given the trauma of recent events and the carbon- freezing." He helped Lorn to his feet. "Can you walk?"

Lorn tested his balance. "I think so."

"Good. The authorities will no doubt be here soon, but with any luck Tuden Sal will arrive before they do."

Tuden Sal. For some reason the name triggered more flashes of memory. "You froze us in carbonite."

I-Five nodded. "The waste-treatment chamber we were in was set up to contain volatile materials for transport. It was simply a matter of readjusting the parameters for-"

It hit him then, like a stun grenade at close range. "Darsha!"

The sunlight, so much brighter than he was accustomed to, faded momentarily back to the grayness of downlevels. I- Five's mechanical hand gripped his upper arm, steadying him.

Darsha, the Jedi Padawan, the woman with whom he'd shared the last tumultuous forty-eight hours- the woman who'd come to mean, in that short and I intense time, more to him than anyone except Jax and I- Five-Darsha was dead.

No. It couldn't be. The droid and he had managed to cheat certain death; surely there had been some way that she, too, might have.

He looked desperately at I-Five. Saw that the droid knew what was going through his head. And read, somehow, in the other's metallic, expressionless face, the truth.

They had escaped because she had bought them time-had bought it with her own heart's blood.

That part came back, too. She was .. . gone.

"What happened?" he asked dully.

"She managed to stack some of the flammable containers together during her battle and ignited them as she was struck down."

Struck down.

Lorn was quiet as they made their way to the roof's edge.

"Why aren't we dead?"

"Carbonite is extremely dense. It survived the explosion, and since we were encysted within it, so did we. There was a process timer, which I set to thaw us after a half hour. Then I thought it prudent for us to relocate."

Lorn nodded slowly. "What about the Sith? Did he survive, or did he die with-" He could not bring himself to finish the sentence.

"Unknown. If he did survive-which, were we dealing with anyone else, I would deem extremely unlikely-then in all probability he thinks we're dead. The carbon-freezing lowered all biological and electronic processes to a level far too faint for even a master of the Force to detect."

Lorn stretched his arms and twisted cautiously from side to side.

Other than a major headache, he seemed to be experiencing no adverse effects. All in all, he'd had hangovers that were worse.

A pinging sound came from I-Five's midsection. "That would be our ride," the droid said, pulling the comlink out of his torso compartment and activating it. He confirmed their location and toggled it off.

Within seconds a large black skycar with a canopied roof and dark windows dropped toward them, its side doors opening when it reached their level. Lorn looked in and saw that Tuden Sal himself had come to pick them up.

"I'm wondering what you two have gotten yourselves involved in this time," Sal said as the chauf-feured skycar lifted away from the scene. He glanced out the tinted window at the destruction below. "But given what I see down there, I'm not sure I want to know."

"A wise decision," I-Five said, as he leaned over to look out the side window. "The less you know, the less they can indict you for."

The skycar was drifting higher, heading toward a traffic lane that would take them to Eastport, where one of Sal's restaurants was located.

I-Five tapped Lorn on the arm and pointed out the side window.

"You may not want to see this," he said.

Lorn looked out the window and saw a tiny figure in black striding along one of the elevated walkways below. He felt his insides ice over as if he'd been plunged once more into carbonite. He got only a glimpse of the figure, who was pretty far away, but it looked like...

His throat was dry; he had to swallow twice before he could speak.

"Got enhancers on this crate?" he asked Tuden Sal, who was slouched on the cushioned bench across from him.

The restaurateur was a Sakiyan-short, stocky, and possessed of skin that looked like burnished metal. He nodded and tapped a control alongside the window panel. The aircar was the epitome of plushness: tiny drink dispenser, high-powered comlink, and an inter-species climate control. Instantly, in response to Sal's command, the tiny figure below became much larger, zooming to fill up half the window. His cowl was up, covering his face, and the enhancement threatened to break up the image into component blocks of digital artifacting, but Lorn recognized him nonetheless.

It was the Sith.

As he watched, the cowled killer pulled something from his belt compartment and held it up to look at. A request to Sal caused the enhancer to focus on it. Lorn wasn't surprised to see the holocron in the Sith's hand.

"Friend of yours?" Sal asked.

Lorn shook his head. "Not at all. But I'd like to keep track of him. Do you mind if we take a little detour?"

"No problem. I owe you, Lorn."

"Keep the enhancers at full, and stay as far back as you can," IFive advised.

Sal toggled a switch and gave the droid chauffeur the instructions.

They began to follow the cowled figure at the maximum visible distance, just barely keeping him in sight.

Darth Maul reined in his connection to the dark side and made his shadow within it as small as he could. His master was right: it would not do to succeed in silencing the enemies of the Sith only to reveal himself to others of them through a mistake.

The apprentice hailed a cab. With his speeder bike destroyed and the one he'd taken from the patrol no doubt dangerous to use by now, he needed transportation to take him nearer to the abandoned monad where his ship was located.

As the air taxi lifted off, its driver having been given directions, Maul kept an eye out for followers. It was unlikely there would be any, since almost all who had seen him had died, or were ten or more levels below- but his master had ordered stealth, and thus it would be.

Lorn and I-Five watched the dark figure alight from the cab and walk toward the upper entrance of an abandoned monad. They watched for a few more minutes until the Sith reappeared on the rooftop.

A few seconds later they saw him step into thin air and vanish.

"Nice trick," Tuden Sal said.

Lorn just stared, completely baffled for the moment, not sure whether to believe his eyes. Was this some new arcane power of the murdering Sith? But then he heard I-Five say, in answer to Sal's comment, "He must have a high-grade cloaking device. Probably crystal based."

Of course. Their nemesis had gotten into a cloaked s.p.a.ceship. It made perfect sense, Lorn thought. The Sith had accomplished his mission; he had gotten the holocron and, as far as he was concerned, killed everyone who knew anything about it. He was no doubt preparing to leave Coruscant.

Only I'm not dead, you murderer. You think I am, but I'm not.

The question was, what was he going to do now?

For the first time since this nightmare had begun, he was safe. The Sith thought he was dead. All Lorn had to do was lie low and the demonic killer would pa.s.s out of his life forever. He and I-Five could get off Coruscant and pile as many pa.r.s.ecs between them and the hub of the galaxy as they deemed necessary. They wouldn't be rich, but they'd be alive.

And the rankweed sucker who had killed Darsha would get away with his crime.

Lorn knew he could go to the Jedi and tell them what had happened.

They would no doubt mobilize their ranks and start hunting for the one who had killed two of their order. Even though Lorn and they had some bad history, there would be no problem convincing them to believe him-one of the few advantages of dealing with a fraternity of Force users.

But the wheels of any organization, no matter how self- consciously benign, turn slowly and ponderously. Even now, the Sith was no doubt getting ready to raise ship. Could even the Jedi find him once he fled this world?

Lorn stared out the window. Before him, spread from horizon to horizon, lay Coruscant in all its tessellated splendor. More than just about anybody else, he felt he could say that he had seen the best and the worst the capital planet had to offer. He had led a life that had been by turns dangerous, frustrating, terrifying, and heartbreaking.

There had been little joy in it. Still, he was reluctant to do anything that might result in his losing it.

He had never wanted to be a hero. All he had wanted was to live a quiet, normal life with his wife and son. But his wife had left him, and the Jedi- those whom the galaxy looked upon as heroes-had seduced him into giving them his son.

He would never have called any Jedi a hero-until he met Darsha a.s.sant.

He took a deep breath and looked at Tuden Sal. "We need a s.p.a.ceship," he said.

His friend nodded. "I-Five told me. No problem. Where do you want to go?"