Lorn saw no reason to elaborate on his own personal distaste for the Jedi to Yanth. "They claim to have very little discretionary funds for this sort of thing," he said. "Besides, I wouldn't put it past them to use their mind tricks to force me into handing it over for free." He glanced surrept.i.tiously at his chrono and said, "So, are you interested or not? I can always take it directly to the Naboo representative here on Coruscant."

Yanth waved a pudgy hand in a placating gesture. "Patience, my friend. Yes, I am interested. But-and please don't take this as a reflection on you -I would be a fool not to test its authenticity before handing you a stack of credits."

Lorn kept his face carefully expressionless. If Yanth suspected the time crunch they were in, the Hutt would have no compunctions about using it as leverage to gouge a cheaper price. On the other hand, time was most definitely running out. "And just how do you plan on doing that?" he asked the Hutt.

Yanth simply smiled and slid several facets of the crystal aside at various angles, manipulating it much as one might a child's geometric puzzle. After a moment a beam projected from the holocron's uppermost surface, resolving into a midair display of glowing words and images that slowly curtained up the length of the holographic frame before vanishing.

Lorn was too far away to read the text-not only that, but he was behind the display, so that the words and alphanumerics appeared reversed to him. The text seemed to be in Basic, however, and the images looked like schematics for Naboo N-l starfighters and Trade Federation ships.

Yanth rotated a facet, and the images cut off. "Opening one of these holocrons can be somewhat tricky," he said. "Neimoidians as a species are not overly clever."

I-Five said, "Excellent. Now you know the article is genuine. We are asking a million credits."

"Done," Yanth replied, much to Lorn's surprise. "It is worth ten times that." The Hutt turned to a control console near at hand and pressed a b.u.t.ton.

Lorn permitted himself another glance at his timepiece. They could still reach the s.p.a.ceport, if everything continued to proceed smoothly.

In another hour Coruscant, the mysterious Sith killer, and the police would be vanishing into the void behind them.

Darth Maul neatly and quickly excised the lock on the underground cubicle with one blade of his lightsaber, as he had earlier at Hath Monchar's building. He stepped inside quickly, letting the door slide closed behind him. Harsh glow lamps flickered on automatically, illuminating a living s.p.a.ce even smaller and tawdrier than the one the Neimoidian had rented. The compartment was empty; the only possible place where someone might hide was the refresher, and it was the work of only a few seconds to make sure that was empty, as well.

Maul stepped to a section of wall that held a vid-screen and message unit. He activated the latter. An image formed in midair; the image of a Hutt. He recognized the creature: Yanth, an up-and-coming gangster in the Black Sun organization-one of the few who had survived the slaughter Maul had recently unleashed. The Hurt's image spoke. "Lorn, I thought we were going to meet sometime today, to discuss a certain Holocron you wished me to look at. It's not polite to keep buyers waiting, you know." Maul turned and strode out of the cubicle, moving quickly.

CHAPTER 13.

All too soon, Darsha a.s.sant found herself back in the underbelly of Coruscant.

When she had escaped the area earlier that day, she had estimated that by now she would have been stripped of her rank and rea.s.signed to the agricultural corps. She had envisioned herself in the process of packing her belongings and saying her good-byes. That she might instead be returning to the scene of her disgrace with her mentor had certainly never occurred to her.

And yet, here she was, seated beside Anoon Bondara in the latter's four-person skycar, heading back toward the Crimson Corridor and the monad where she had lost the Fondorian and nearly lost her life, as well.

The ways of the Force were nothing if not unpredictable.

"That's the one," she said, pointing toward the tower that rose up ahead, stark against the afternoon sun. "Down there."

Master Bondara said nothing as he angled the skycar out of the flow of traffic. They slipped into a vertical descent lane and began dropping.

The mist that seemed always present around the hundred-meter mark, demarcating the thriving upper levels from the slums below, wrapped around them momentarily and then faded away, to be replaced with an aerial view of the dark streets. Though it was still daylight above, down here it was at best a dim perpetual twilight.

She watched the wall of the building slip past, and pointed out to her mentor the ascension gun's grapnel, still hooked to a ledge. They followed the cable into the miasmic depths.

When they were ten meters above the pavement, Master Bondara turned on the landing lights. The section of street below them was illuminated.

Darsha, looking over the side, could see shadowy figures, long conditioned to prefer darkness to light, scuttling away.

There was no sign of the Fondorian. In all probability his body had been dragged away by scavengers. There was, however, a smear of purplish blood on the pavement and, nearby, the body of a hawk-bat, its neck broken in the fall. Master Bondara trained one of the lights on that and looked at it. His lekku slumped slightly, along with his shoulders. And, watching him, Darsha realized that her last hope of salvaging the mission was finally, irrevocably dead.

"What shall we do now?" she asked him softly.

He was silent for a long moment. Then he sighed and said, "Return to the Temple. We must report what has happened to the council."

So there it was, she thought. Oddly enough, now that she knew hope was dead, she did not feel the crushing sorrow that she had antic.i.p.ated.

Instead she felt a surprising sense of relief. The worst had happened, and now she would find a way to deal with it. As with most looming disasters, the reality was almost anticlimactic compared to the dreadful antic.i.p.ation.

Up to this point her concern about the mission had left little room for her to feel sympathy for Oolth the Fondorian. Now, however, looking at the stain of his blood on the walkway, she felt compa.s.sion well within her. He had been an obnoxious poltroon, and no doubt a conscienceless criminal, but few people deserved a death as horrible as his had been.

Master Bondara fed power to the repulsors, and the skycar began to rise.

Lorn watched as one of the Hurt's flunkies delivered a large case to his master. Yanth opened it, and Lorn grew dizzy at the sight. It was filled with crisp Republic credit standards in thousand-denomination notes. Yanth turned the case toward him, displaying the wealth, and Lorn could feel his fingers twitching with the desire to take possession of it. He hadn't seen that much hard cash in-he had never seen that much cash in one place before.

"One million nonsequential Republic credits," Yanth said, as casually as if he was discussing the weather. "You take them- I keep this." He held up the holocron. "Everybody's happy."

Lorn didn't know or care about everybody, but he was sure of one thing-he was happy. He watched, still hardly able to believe this was happening, as I-Five stepped forward to take possession of the money that would transform their lives. He glanced at his chrono. Just enough time to get to the s.p.a.ceport, if they left now.

I-Five was reaching for the case when the door behind them suddenly flew open. A Chevin bodyguard staggered backwards into Yanth's sanctum, a force pike dropping from his nerveless fingers. It clattered across the floor to the foot of the dais. The leathery-skinned being looked down at his chest, in the middle of which was a smoking hole, and then collapsed.

Through the door stepped a nightmare.

Lorn stared in shock at the apparition. The Chevin's killer was almost two meters tall and dressed entirely in black, including hooded cloak, boots, and heavy gauntlets. He carried a lightsaber unlike any Lorn had ever seen: It boasted not one but two energy blades, emanating from either end of the hilt. But as intimidating as his weapon was, it was his face that struck true horror into Lorn's heart. The killer pulled back his hood, revealing a countenance that was a sinister variegation of red and black tattoos around gleaming yellow eyes and blackened teeth. From the bald scalp sprouted ten short horns, like a demonic crown. He stared balefully at the others in the room, then spoke in a guttural voice.

"None shall survive." Lorn was completely frozen to the spot, unable to offer any resistance, as the killer stepped toward him. His eyes shone like twin suns as he raised the lightsaber.

I-Five grabbed the case full of money from Yanth and hurled it between Lorn and his attacker just as the Utter swung the lightsaber in a flat arc that would have separated the Corellian's head from his neck. The case intercepted the blade's swing; the plasmatic edge sliced through the case, scattering burning credits everywhere. The force of the blow was so strong that It probably would still have decapitated Lorn, but its momentum was slowed just enough to give the droid time to dive forward, knocking his friend out of harm's way. Lorn felt the heat as the blade's incandescent tip seared through his hair.

The Sith-for there was no doubt in Lorn's mind that he was facing one of those legendary Dark Lords out of the mists of the past-recovered almost in-stantly and swung around to attack again. But by this time both Gamorrean guards had pulled their blasters and were firing. The Sith spun the double-bladed weapon before him, deflecting the blasterfire back at the guards. That was all Lorn had time to see before I-Five yanked him to his feet and pulled him through the doorway.

They fled down the narrow corridor that led from Yanth's sanctum, pa.s.sing several more dead guards And two piles of melted, twisted metal that had once been droids. Yanth's headquarters was beneath a nightclub he owned called the Tusken Oasis; Lorn and I-Five stumbled up a short flight of stairs and burst out into a blue-lit chamber full of sabacc tables, dejarik game boards, and scantily clad females of various species dancing on pedestals. They hurtled through the room and out the entrance.

"Where are we going?!" Lorn shouted as they ran down the street.

"Away from there!" I-Five shouted back. Lorn wanted to protest that it wouldn't make any difference; he had looked into the eyes of the Sith, and he had seen his doom there, as plainly as the tattooed whorls that surrounded those eyes-an implacable fate that would hunt him down no matter how far and how fast he ran. But he had no breath in him to speak no breath left for running either, but the fear of what he had seen in those eyes kept him running anyway. Maul saw his quarry slip past him, but could do nothing to stop their flight while his attention was oc-cupied by the two Gamorreans. Using one hand to spin the lightsaber in a blazing pattern that blocked the particle beam bursts, he gestured with his free hand, plucking the invisible lines of the Force and sending reverberations that caused the blasters to fly from the surprised guards' grips. Before they had time to recover from their surprise, Maul leapt forward, skewering first one and then the other with quick, deadly thrusts. The lifeless Gamorreans sagged to the floor, and Maul wheeled quickly about to deal with the Hurt.

Despite his bulk, Yanth could move quickly when he had to. He slithered off the dais and grabbed up the force pike dropped by the Chevin. He hurled it at Maul, who slashed it in two with a sweep of his own weapon.

The generator in the pike's shaft shorted out in a shower of sparks.

Yanth had not waited to see the results of his attack. His ma.s.sive bulk moved rapidly, slithering through the singed and blackened credit notes that littered the floor, the holocron crystal still clutched in one hand.

He had almost reached the exit when Maul leapt, executing a twisting forward flip that covered the length of the large chamber and deposited him directly in front of the Hutt. Before Yanth could recover from his surprise, Darth Maul plunged one of the lightsaber's blades deep into the Hurt's chest. The stench of burning flesh and blubber filled the room. Yanth died with a croaking gurgle, the gelid ma.s.s of his body sagging bonelessly to the floor.

Maul deactivated both blades. He reached out with his free hand, and the holocron leapt from the dead Hutt's grasp into his own. Stuffing it into a belt compartment, he turned and ran from the room. At the top of the stairs he plunged recklessly through the gambling chamber, hurling guests and workers aside with savage Force-laden gestures.

He reached the street and paused, looking first one way, then another for his prey. Pavan and the droid were not in sight. Maul gritted his teeth.

They would not be permitted to slip away again! One way or another, he was determined to end this ch.o.r.e. It had already gone on far too long.

He sought the dark side once more, bade it illuminate the path his quarry had taken. Then he began to move, shoving his way through the hapless press of street people.

Though his appearance alone was enough to cause most of the hard cases on the street to give him a wide berth, his progress was still too slow.

Enough of this! Maul thought. He unleashed the dark side, using the Force like a battering ram against those who got in his way.

Maul angled to the middle of the narrow avenue. His speeder bike was parked not far away; he could activate the slave circuit by remote control and have it here within a few minutes at most. But there was an even quicker way to overtake them. He called upon the Force, moving easily five times faster than a human could travel at a dead run. There was no way they could escape him now.

Within moments he was in sight of his quarry. Another few seconds and he would catch up to them- and then the lightsaber would do its work once more, slashing through metal and flesh, and at last bringing this dreary task to an end.

He grinned and lengthened his gargantuan stride even further, sailing over the fire-blackened husk of a parked landspeeder. Pavan and the droid looked back and saw him coming; he could see the fear in the human's face. It was most satisfying to witness.

One more leap, and both of them would be his.

And then an invisible hammer struck him in mid-leap, pounding him to the ground. What was this? Who dared to interfere? Maul looked up, saw a skycar settling to the ground alongside Pavan and the droid. The repulsor beams from its undercarriage had struck him down when the vehicle pa.s.sed directly over him. The skycar was less than five meters away; he could see the driver and his pa.s.senger clearly. They were Jedi.

CHAPTER 14.

Darsha had sensed the disturbance in the Force at the same time as Master Bondara. They had almost reached the cloud level when they felt the dark vibrations from below; they stared at each other simultaneously in shock, and then the Twi'lek put the skycar in a steep dive back down toward the street. Neither spoke; Darsha wasn't sure how the blast of hatred and destruction reverberating from below had affected her mentor, but she had been left shaken and nauseated by the intensity of the empathic burst. Someone down there was well- versed in the use of the Force and powerful to boot. There had been several deaths already, and more intended, no question about it. She didn't know who had died or who was in danger, but they could not ignore such a strong and savage use of the Force. They had to find out who was responsible, and stop him, her, or it if they could.

Master Bondara leveled off at twenty meters above street level, moving as fast as was prudent through the urban maze. The skycar's headlights illuminated the narrow thoroughfare, and as they rounded a corner they saw, perhaps a hundred meters ahead, the one who had to be responsible for the pulsation they had felt: a tall biped in dark robes, covering ground in a series of gigantic strides that had to be Force-a.s.sisted.

Who-or what-could he be? Not a Jedi, that much was certain. He wielded the Force with the surety of a Master, but no Jedi ever gave off such darksome emanations.

There was only one explanation-but even as the thought occurred to her, Darsha felt her mind flinching away from it. It couldn't be. It was impossible.

She had no time to wonder about it. Up ahead they could see the two who were the dark one's targets; that much would be obvious from their terror-stricken flight.

The dark one would reach his prey in one more gargantuan leap.

Darsha could think of only one way to stop him, and it was evident from the direction in which Master Bondara was taking the skycar that he had thought of the same tactic.

The skycar pa.s.sed right over the robed figure at a height carefully calculated to deliver a force from the repulsors sufficient to stun but not kill. It worked; as the vehicle lurched and moved on, Darsha looked behind them and saw the mysterious a.s.sailant lying in the street, the fuliginous robes a darker blot against the general darkness. Then Master Bondara brought the skycar to a stop near the two fugitives. Darsha noted with surprise that one of them was a droid.

"Get in," Master Bondara said to the human. "He's unconscious, but I don't know how long he'll be-"

"Not long," the droid said, and pointed back toward the pursuer.

Darsha glanced back and saw to her astonishment that the dark one was already rising to his feet. She could scarcely believe he had recovered from the re-pulsors' hammering so fast.

"Get in!" Master Bondara shouted. "Now!"

The human, who had been staring at Darsha and her mentor with a strange expression-mingled relief and revulsion- seemed to wisely decide that they were by far the lesser of two evils. He vaulted into the skycar's backseat, followed by the droid. Darsha cast another glance behind her and saw the dark one leaping toward them. This close, she could see his face, and a more fearsome visage she could not recall ever having encountered. Then her neck was jerked painfully as Master Bondara hit the ascent control and the skycar rocketed upward.

But not swiftly enough. The vehicle shuddered from a blow delivered to the stern undercarriage, and then lurched to one side. As Master Bondara fought the controls, Darsha saw a black-gloved hand catch the c.o.c.kpit's rear gunwale.

He must have used the Force to help him jump, she thought, as the skycar was already a good ten meters off the ground. Even as the thought went through her mind, she thrust out both hands in a pushing gesture, hurling an invisible but nonetheless powerful blow concentrated at that hand. It lost its grip, and the craft jerked again as the dark one fell back to the street. "Let's get back uplevels!" she shouted. But even as the words left her, she saw the look on Master Bondara's face. "We can't, "he said. Darth Maul's fury at seeing Pavan and his droid s.n.a.t.c.hed from his clutches yet again was almost mitigated by the realization that the Jedi had entered the picture. Finally, a foe that might be worthy of his attention-someone who could truly test his mettle! Shrugging off the effects of the repulsor field, he charged after the rising skycar, igniting his lightsaber and slashing at the drive mechanism that made up part of the vehicle's undercarriage. His blow did some damage-that he could tell by the way the craft pitched to one side. Gathering the Force around him, Maul leapt and managed to seize the gunwale with one hand. Before he could heave himself into the c.o.c.kpit, however, he felt the younger Jedi strike out at him with considerable power, enough to cause him to lose his hold and plummet back to the street.

He landed lightly, the Force cushioning his fall. Even before his boots touched the ground he had his wrist comm activated and was speaking into it the code command that would activate his speeder bike and bring it homing in on his signal. As he did this, he watched the skycar stabilize and then shoot forward. In the s.p.a.ce of a second it had rounded a corner and disappeared from view. No matter, he told himself as he awaited the speeder bike's arrival; the skycar would be easy enough to track via the Force, especially with the Jedi on board.

Pavan and his droid had had more than their share of luck this day. But now their luck had most definitely run out. "The vertical adjustment on the repulsor array has been damaged," the Jedi piloting the craft said. "What does that mean?" the woman asked. She was younger than her companion; younger than Lorn, too.

"It means," I-Five said, before the Jedi could answer, "that while we can move laterally and descend, we can't rise above this level."

Lorn glanced over the side. It was hard to estimate their alt.i.tude in the pervasive gloom, but it looked to him that they were about twenty meters above the street. The skycar was moving at a fast clip. There was little air traffic at this level, which was fortunate, given the limited room for maneuverability granted by the narrow, twisting streets.

He looked at the Jedi. He was a Twi'lek who appeared to be in his mid to late forties. Lorn could not recall having seen him around the Temple. Of course, that meant nothing; there were plenty of Jedi with whom he had had little or no contact.

The irony of it all would have made him laugh, if it wasn't still so blasted terrifying. To be rescued from the deadly grasp of a Sith by a Jedi! Still, he had to admit it was providential that they had come along when they did. Since it looked like he and I-Five wouldn't be heading offworld any time soon, the Jedi Temple was probably the safest place for them now- though it galled him to admit that, even to himself.

So much had happened within the last few minutes- and practically all of it disastrous-that he hadn't even begun to come to grips with it yet. The Jedi shot around another corner, and Lorn felt inertia press his body against the low- powered tractor field designed to prevent injury in the case of accidents.

"Take it easy!" he said. "There's no way he can catch up with us on foot now." ^ "He's not on foot," the woman said tensely. Darth Maul leapt onto the speeder bike as it flashed past him. He wrapped both hands around the acceleration grips on the handlebar and opened them up. The repulsor engine's hum climbed as the speeder shot forward. Maul leaned into the turns as the speeder zoomed around corners. There was no need to activate the heads-up tracking display. The Jedi and his quarry gleamed like twin beacons in his mind; he could feel them in the skycar ahead of him. The speeder bike was moving at half again their speed. He would overtake them in mere minutes. Maul grinned savagely. It would be the work of a moment to dispose of Pavan and the droid. Then he would see just how good the Jedi were. It had been far too long since he had felt his lightsaber clash against another, had heard the grating scream of energy blades in conflict, had smelled the ozone tang. Far too long. "Why is the Sith after you?" Master Bondara shouted over the slipstream's howl. Though Darsha had come to the same conclusion, it was still shocking on a very deep level to hear Master Bondara articulate her thoughts. She had learned much about the Sith during her studies, of course, but all of the lectures and data seemed unanimous in the conclusion that the ancient dark order was no more. And yet, what else could he be, this creature of the night who even now pursued them? He was adept in the use of the Force, but it was quite obvious he was not a Jedi. That didn't leave a whole lot of choices.

She saw the human and the droid look at each other, and realized they had come to a silent agreement about something. Then the droid spoke.

"We are information brokers," he said, and something-or rather, the absence of something-in the timbre of his voice surprised Darsha. She could hear none of the built-in obsequiousness that droids, particularly those of the protocol series, evidenced as a rule. He had a confidence in his tone and manner that was startling enough for her to notice, even given the duress of the moment. "I am known as I-Five, and my a.s.sociate is Lorn Pavan," the droid continued. Darsha saw Master Bondara glance quickly at Pavan, and then return his attention to piloting.

He knows the name, she thought. "We were recently contacted by a Neimoidian named Hath Monchar, who wished to sell us a holocron containing details of a trade embargo to be imposed on the planet Naboo by the Trade Federation."

Master Bondara said nothing in reply for a moment. Then he asked, "Is this in retaliation for the new tax recently imposed by the Republic Senate on the Trade Federation?"

"Yes," Pavan replied. "The Federation fears the new tax will cut into their profits."

"Naboo is highly dependent on imports to maintain its way of life,"

Master Bondara said. "Such sanctions could prove devastating to its people." He steered the skycar around another corner. Pedestrians, knowing the potential danger from the repulsor beams of a vehicle traveling this low, scattered left and right. "That doesn't explain why the Sith is trying to kill you," Master Bondara continued.

Darsha admired the Jedi's equanimity; he might have been having this conversation in one of the quiet, comfortable reading chambers of the Temple instead of in a damaged skycar traveling a dangerous route at maximum velocity.

"You can see why the Neimoidians don't want this information to get out," I-Five said. "We're not sure why or how the Sith are involved. But Hath Monchar was killed by the one who's now pursuing us."

"What happened to the holocron?" Darsha asked.

"We were in the process of selling it to a Hurt named Yanth," Pavan replied, "when the Sith broke in. My guess is that the Hutt is dead, and the Sith either destroyed the crystal or has it with him."

"This information must be brought to the council immediately,"

Master Bondara said. "You two will be kept safe until the threat of the Sith has been dealt with." Darsha glanced at Lorn Pavan and saw mingled frustration and resignation in his expression. "Jedi," he muttered to himself. "Why did it have to be Jedi?"