Chapter 19

Discipline.

Discipline is all. It conquers pain. It conquers fear.

Most important of all, it conquers failure.

Discipline is what allowed Darth Maul to survive a thirty‑ meter fall into a pile of rubble and debris: the discipline of his teras kasi fighting skills, which gave him complete control over his body, allowing him to utilize midair acrobatics to direct his fall and so avoid striking ornamental projections, ledges, and other potentially lethal obstructions; the discipline of the dark side, which let him manipulate gravity itself, slowing his descent enough to hit the ground without becoming a lifeless bag of broken bones and ruptured organs, Even half stunned by the unexpected explosion of his speeder bike, Maul was able to aim his falling body in such a way as to survive.

But even someone in as superb shape as Maul could not come out of such an explosion and a fall completely unscathed. After the impact he lay, semiconscious, in the debris, remotely aware of a second explosion some distance away as the skycar blew up. He lay there, and he remembered.

There is no pain where strength lies.

To Darth Maul, it seemed that his master had always been there, a part of his life‑ implacable, indomitable, inexorable. Since before Maul learned to. walk, discipline had been his guiding beacon. Darth Sidious had molded him from a weak, puling child into the ultimate warrior, sculpting his body and his mind as a seamless weapon. Maul was willing to die for him, without question and without hesitation. Lord Sidious's goals were the goals of the Sith, and they would be achieved, no matter what the cost.

Maul's entire existence had consisted of training, of exercise and instruction. Early in his life, before his voice had deepened, Maul had learned the intricate movements and forms of the teras kasi fighting style, the patterns of movements based on the hunting characteristics of various beasts throughout the galaxy: Charging Wampa, Rancor Rising, Dancing Dragon‑ snake, and many more. He had practiced gymnastics in environments ranging from zero‑ g to gravity fields twice that of Coruscant's. He had mastered the intricate and dangerous use of the double‑ bladed lightsaber. And all for one purpose: to be the best possible tool of his master's will.

But he had not learned just how to fight. His master's teaching had encompassed far more than that. He had also learned stealth, subterfuge, intrigue.

What is done in secret has great power.

One of his earliest memories was that of being taken to the Jedi Temple. Both he and Sidious had been disguised as tourists. His master's command of the dark side had been sufficient to cloak them from being sensed by their enemies, as long as they did not enter the building. That had been unlikely anyway‑ the Jedi Temple was not open for tourism. They had stood there for the better part of the day, Darth Sidious pointing out to him the various faces of their foes us the latter came and went. It had been thrilling to Maul to realize that he could stand in the presence of the Jedi, could listen to his master whisper to him of their ultimate downfall, without them having any inkling of the fate that ultimately awaited them.

That was the great glory and hidden strength of the Sith: the fact that there were only two, master and apprentice. Their clandestine operations could take place practically under the very noses of the Jedi, and the fools would not suspect until it was too late. The day of the Jedi's downfall would be soon‑ very soon.

It could not happen soon enough for him.

Anger is a living thing. Feed it and it will grow.

The Twi'lek he had fought had not been the first Jedi he had crossed lightsabers with, but he was not far from having that honor. It had been exhilarating to know that he, Darth Maul, was better in combat than his hated foes. He longed to battle one of the truly great Jedi warriors: Plo Koon, perhaps, or Mace Windu. That would be a true test of his skill. And he had no doubt that such an opportunity would come to him.

His hatred of the Jedi was strong enough that it alone would bring such a confrontation into existence. Soon.

He came to his senses, realizing he was lying in a pile of trash not far from where the Jedi had engineered his own doom and nearly that of Maul's, as well. A Devaronian scavenger was about to appropriate his lightsaber, which lay nearby. Maul glared at the encroacher, who lost no time in making himself scarce.

Maul seized his lightsaber and rose to his feet. His muscles, bones, and tendons screamed in pain, but pain meant nothing. The only important question was, was his mission finally complete?

A hundred meters down the street lay the wrecked remains of the skycar. Maul investigated it. It had been smashed beneath large chunks of ferrocrete and durasteel that would take too long to move, even with the aid of the Force. He opened his senses, trying to determine if his enemies' bodies lay beneath the rubble. What the Force told him made him clench a fist in fury.

The skycar was empty.

It was possible that the explosion had flung them clear before the debris collapsed. If so, their bodies might have been dragged away by those who scrounged the streets. But he wasn't certain that was what had happened. Given the kind of luck the Corellian had had so far, Maul knew he would have to see Pavan's dead body‑ preferably after his head had parted company with his shoulders, thanks to Maul's lightsaber‑ before he would feel comfortable reporting to Lord Sidious that the problem was at last resolved.

Maul was actually starting to feel something of a grudging respect for this Lorn Pavan. Although some of the hustler's continued avoidance of his fate could he ascribed to luck, some, the Sith apprentice had to admit, was due to Pavan's survival instincts. Of course, he would not have lasted as long as he had downlevels if he had not had a roachlike ability to sense and avoid danger. Nevertheless, Maul was slightly impressed. Not that it mattered. His quarry's skill at staying alive would just make Maul's inevitable triumph all the more satisfying.

He began to search the area, questing along the filaments of the dark side, seeking the route they had taken. He saw the kiosk almost immediately. Even without the Force to guide him to it, he knew this could be the only logical escape route. Unfortunately, the skycar's explosion had covered the underground entrance with debris.

Maul was running out of patience. Five meters farther up the street he spied a ventilation grid that appeared to open onto the same underground conduit as the kiosk. He lit one end of his lightsaber and jabbed it into the grid. The blade sliced easily through the metal slats. In a second the grate had dropped down into the conduit, and Darth Maul followed it.

He landed lightly. The entire tunnel was shaking as with the roar of some titanic beast. Maul looked up to see a driverless freight transport bearing down on him at better than one hundred kilometers an hour.

Anyone else, even a trained athlete raised in a heavier gravity field, would have been crushed to paste. But Maul seized the Force, let it whip him up and to the side as if he were attached to a giant elastic band. The metal behemoth missed him by millimeters.

Maul found himself standing on the narrow lip of a walkway that ran along one side of the conduit. He looked about, questing with his eyes and his mind. Yes‑ they had escaped down here. The trail still remained.

They could run, but they couldn't hide.

Darth Maul resumed the hunt.

Lorn's first thought as he returned to partial consciousness was to wonder why someone had gone to the trouble to kidnap him off Coruscant and drop him on one of the galaxy's gas giant worlds‑ Yavin, possibly. Obviously this was what had happened, because gravity and atmospheric pressure were slowly crushing him into a boneless putty. His head, particularly. And whatever it was that he was breathing, it wasn't anything close to a comfortable oxygen‑ nitrogen mixture.

Or maybe he'd been parked in a too‑ close orbit around the event horizon of a black hole, and the tidal forces were pulling him apart. That would explain why his head hurt so abominably, and why he couldn't feel his hands and feet.

Lorn blinked, then saw dim light the color of verdigris. He realized he was lying on a cold stone floor, his arms and legs bound. The light, faint and sickly though it was, was still too much for his headache to deal with. Must've really tied one on this time, he thought. Maybe I‑ Five's right about those liver cells, not that I'd ever admit it to him.

But something was still wrong with this picture. He knew he could be a fairly obstreperous drunk on occa‑ mon, but he'd never reached the point of obnoxious‑ ness where he'd had to be trussed up. Hmm. Maybe he'd better open just one eye again‑ carefully, of course‑ and take another look around.

Staring at him from no more than a handbreadth away was a face unimagined in his worst nightmares.

Lorn gasped and instinctively jerked backwards, trying to get away from the monstrous apparition. The midden movement set off a thermal detonator that someone had unkindly implanted in his skull, and the pain was so amazingly intense that for a moment he forgot about the thing that had been inspecting him.

But only for a moment.

It moved closer to him, staring at him‑ no, Lorn corrected himself, not staring: you had to have eyes to tare. Just about every component of its face was repulsive in the extreme, but the eyes were unquestionably the worst. Worse than the dead bluish‑ white skin and the stringy, mosslike hair, worse than the wide lip‑ less gash of a mouth, like a cavern entrance filled with yellowed stalagmites and stalactites, worse even than the skull‑ like nub of a nose, with two vertical slits for nostrils.

The eyes were definitely worse than all that.

Because it didn't seem to have any. From the heavy ridges at the sloping base of the forehead down to the gaunt cheekbones, there was nothing but albino skin. Behind that skin, where the orbital sockets should have been, Lorn could see two egg‑ shaped organs moving restlessly, swiveling independently of one another. Occasionally they were occluded by darker hues, as if membranes beneath the skin were sliding over them.

Lorn had dealt with a large variety of alien species in the past few years. One grew used to seeing all kinds of creatures on the streets and skywalks of Coruscant. But something was terribly, obscenely wrong about this monster's appearance‑ him and the others like him, for now that Lorn's eyes had adjusted to the wan light, he saw that there were at least a dozen, maybe more, hunkered down in a semicircle around him.

He backed up still farther, scrabbling on his heels and elbows‑ not an easy task considering that his head still felt large enough to warrant its own orbit. The creatures moved closer to him, shambling grotesquely on bent legs and knuckles. Lorn glanced around desperately, looking for I‑ Five, feeling the beginnings of a scream welling in his throat. He saw Darsha Assant lying about two meters away from him on the filthy stone floor, and I‑ Five an equal distance on the other side. The Padawan seemed to be unconscious, but she was breathing normally as far as he could tell. He noticed with no great surprise that her lightsaber no longer dangled from her utility belt. I‑ Five was lying with his face turned toward Lorn, and the human could see that the droid's photoreceptors were dark. His master control switch had been turned off.

They were in a large chamber, the ceiling supported by groined pillars. The light‑ what there was of it‑ emanated from more of that phosphorescent lichen covering the walls. The place looked like a junkyard; pieces of broken equipment and machinery were lying here and there. It smelled like a charnel house.

Looking closer, he saw that scattered among the technological debris were what looked like gnawed bones of various species.

Lorn carefully adjusted his position, getting his legs underneath him. His head was still screaming like a Corellian banshee bird, but he tried to ignore the pain. If he could reach I‑ Five and flip the master switch on the back of his neck, the droid could probably make short work of these subterranean horrors. Their ears seemed to be abnormally large; no doubt they relied primarily on hearing to guide them through the darkness. One good screech from I‑ Five's vocabulator should send them stampeding back into the shadows where they belonged.

He was fairly certain he knew what they were now, although the knowledge gave him little comfort. Quite the opposite, in fact. Occasionally, since his fall from grace had landed him on the mean streets of Coruscant, he had heard rumors of devolved humanoid creatures called Cthons, lurking deep within the underground labyrinths of the planetary city. Dwelling in darkness for thousands of generations had robbed them of their eyes, so the story went. Supposedly they retained some rudimentary working knowledge of technology, which would explain the electroshock net they had used to capture Lorn and his comrades.

Supposedly also they were cannibals.

Lorn had never given any credence to the stories before now. He had assumed they were just tales used to scare recalcitrant children into obedience, just another of the many stories that sprouted like mushrooms on the downlevels streets. But now it was obvious that this particular rumor was all too real.

The Cthons moved closer. One of them positioned himself‑ or herself; though they were all naked save for ragged loincloths, their skins were so loose and flabby that it was hard to determine what sex any individual was‑ between Lorn and I‑ Five.

This is the way it ends, Lorn thought, feeling surprisingly little fear. What a unique career arc: To go from being a prosperous business affairs clerk in the employ of the Jedi to a fugitive about to be devoured by mutant cannibals in the bowels of Coruscant. Didn't see that one coming.

The Cthons moved closer still. One reached out a pale, hirsute arm toward him. Lorn tensed. He would fight, of course. He would not be led like a nerf to the slaughter. He could at least do that much.

I'm sorry, Jax, he thought as they closed in on him.