The Phantom Menace (42 page)

Maul gazed into the sky, where only a few STAPs remained. The aerial platforms answered solely to their droid pilots, but he thought of a way to make use of them. Summoning one, Maul launched himself into the air with a Force jump as the STAP soared overhead. Dangling from the platform’s starboard footrest with one hand, he called his lightsaber to the other, and ignited its blades.

Some of the Gungan riders saw him coming and took aim. Maul twisted his body, either evading flights of energy lances and spheres or fending them off with the lightsaber. Letting go of the STAP when he was still twenty meters from Ganne and the general, he called on the Force to send himself tearing through a score of mounted Gungans. It was clear that they had never seen anything like him. But then, who had? What Sith in the past thousand years had been allowed to wield a lightsaber in open battle? Was that in itself not enough to qualify him as a
true
Sith?

The rubbery Gungans all but disintegrated at the touch of the twin blades Maul had hoped to reserve for the Jedi. Their billed heads flew in all directions. His slashes halved them down the middle or through the midsection, and they squawked as they died. Their nostrils flared and their eyes bulged from their heads, and the white sand beach grew puddled with their blood. Maul maneuvered closer to Ganne, cutting the legs out from under the Gungans’ mounts or impaling them on his lightsaber.

He launched himself into the air when he was still five meters from the Boss and the general. The latter lost his head to one of the blades, and Ganne was knocked from his mount by Maul’s extended left hand. Agile despite his girth, the Gungan Boss clambered to his feet and scrambled for his electropole, but Maul was on him before he could use the weapon, disarming him and hauling him by his long ears through the chaos of the melee, into the tree line that defined the edge of the battlefield.

The Gungan’s hooded eyes rolled around in his head, and spittle drooled from his thick lips. Maul brought the lightsaber close to Ganne’s face, but then deactivated it. This weak-willed primitive didn’t need to be threatened, he told himself. He simply needed to be manipulated into revealing the truth.

“The route to Otoh Gunga,” Maul said, motioning meaningfully with his gloved hand.

Responding to the Force suggestion, Ganne’s eyes grew even blanker. “Yousa needen to be knowen desa ways to Otoh Gunga,” he said in the Gungan’s pidgin tongue.

“Tell me,” Maul said.

“Mesa tell yousa. Yousa take yous mackineeks through da Rellias Straits.”

Maul yanked Ganne’s ears behind his head. “You’ll open the gates when we arrive.”

“Mesa open dissa gates when wesa riven.”

Satisfaction and loathing mixed in Maul’s malicious grin. Hauling Ganne to his three-toed feet, he began dragging him toward Trade Federation lines.

Information provided by the obedient but confused Gungan Boss allowed the Trade Federation S-DST to maneuver safely through the treacherous Rellias Straits and into the much larger Lake Paonga. No sooner did it arrive than parties of Gungan warriors began to appear on the shores to bombard the hovercraft with plasma boomers. Maul put a quick end to the attacks by securing Boss Ganne to the craft’s curved bow. The sight of Ganne made to serve as a figurehead gave the warriors pause, and for the remainder of the journey to Otoh Gunga, the Gungans did little more than brandish their electropoles and give voice to war cries.

With the STAPs annihilated, OOM-9 commanded the battle droids to sow the lake with depth charges, some of which touched off underwater explosions that transformed the formerly placid lake into an expanse of frothing turmoil. But no Gungan bodies were observed among the objects the explosions brought to the surface. Even before OOM-9’s drone submersibles returned from their scouting missions, Maul realized that word of the invasion and fall of Rellias had spread quickly to Otoh Gunga, and the city had been evacuated. Gazing north over the chaotic waters, he asked himself where Boss Rugor Nass could be hiding. Then he stormed to the bow of the hovercraft to haul a sodden Boss Ganne onto the forward deck.

Motioning again with one hand, Maul interrogated him. This time, however, consternation warped the features of the Gungan’s broad face. Even if Ganne wanted to divulge the answers, something inside him was battling the compulsion to betray the Gungans’ most deeply held secret.

Maul snorted.
Maybe not so primitive, after all
.

And from his cummerbund he drew the lightsaber and thumbed it to life.

Ganne’s disclosures came slowly and painfully, but not without honor.

OOM-9 waited until Maul had rolled the Gungan’s blistered body into the water to say: “Commander, Viceroy Gunray wishes you to be informed that a holotransmission has been received from Coruscant. Queen Amidala and the Jedi are on their way to Naboo.”

Maul raced back to Theed, riding low and cutting a livid swath through the grasslands. Gunray and Haako had secreted themselves in the Palace throne room, but the security droids snapped to attention on seeing Maul and allowed him to enter. Instead of being grateful to Darth Sidious for having persuaded Queen Amidala to return to Naboo, the Neimoidians were rueful—sorrier than ever to have been drawn into a conspiracy with a Sith Lord. Maul knew that they would change their tune once the Queen ceded control of Naboo to the Trade Federation, but they lacked vision. Maul had to chase them from the throne room and out into Theed’s deserted central plaza, where he began to advise them on how to prepare for Amidala’s homecoming.

“You can start by stationing more droids around the Palace,” he said, “and ordering the patrols to sweep the area every five minutes instead of every fifteen.”

Haako tried to argue that Theed would be better protected if the patrols were widely dispersed, but Maul refused to sanction it. “You may
think
you have everyone rounded up in the camps, but you’re wrong. Some of Amidala’s security forces surrendered without resistance, but the rest are at large”—Maul gestured broadly—“hiding in the countryside, waiting for a signal that will recall them to Theed.”

“A signal?” Gunray said. “That’s not possible.”

Maul suppressed an urge to wring the viceroy’s neck. “What’s impossible is your luck in occupying this planet despite your bungling. Do you expect Amidala to simply sit down with you two and work out the terms of her surrender?”

“Isn’t that why she is returning?” Gunray said.

Maul’s hands clenched in fists of rage. “She’s returning to run you out of the Palace and send your ships scampering toward Neimoidia!”

Gunray stiffened in panic. “Sweep the plaza every five minutes!” he instructed one of the officer droids.

“Maintain constant surveillance,” Maul said, “using all spectrums. And increase security at all the detention camps.”

Gunray had just repeated the commands when his comlink chimed.

Maul nodded for him to acknowledge the transmission.

OOM-9’s metallic monotone issued from the comlink’s small speaker.
“Viceroy, the Droid Control Ship tracked the course of Queen Amidala’s starship. Only moments ago one of our patrols found it in the swamps.”

Delight shone in Gunray’s eyes. “Have you arrested her?”

“Negative, Viceroy. Like the Gungan city of Otoh Gunga, the starship was abandoned.”

A faint shriek escaped Gunray.

Maul regarded him with loathing. “The Queen and the Jedi have returned. And somewhere in the swamps, I suspect that the Gungans are gathering their Grand Army.” He smiled wickedly. “You may yet have an actual war on your hands, Viceroy. You had better be prepared to fight every bit as hard as the natives will.”

“Find the Queen!” Gunray barked into the comlink. “Make it your top priority to arrest her!”

At the end of his rope, Maul snatched the comlink from Gunray’s trembling grasp and deactivated it. “Enough of your bumbling. I need to inform Lord Sidious of our situation.”

In the hangar where the Sith Infiltrator was docked, Maul used his wrist link to re-task the probe droids. Less than a day had passed since he had been in Theed, but in that short time the situation had been upended.

Darth Sidious had been informed that the Queen’s starship had been found abandoned in the vast Lianorm Swamp. Gunray had tried to assure Sidious that Amidala and the Jedi would soon be located, but Sidious knew better. The fact that Amidala had unexpectedly set the ship down in the swamps had provided Sidious a clue as to her motives. The Sith Lord had instructed Maul to be mindful, and to let the Jedi make the first move.

Soon after, OOM-9 confirmed Sidious’s suspicions that Amidala and the Gungans were assembling an army.

In a subsequent holotransmission, Sidious had made it plain to Maul that the Jedi, bound by their oaths to the Order, could not take sides. The most they could do was protect the Queen.

With the Neimoidians present during the follow-up communication, Maul had had to read between the lines of what his Master was saying. When Sidious said that the Queen’s foolish actions had surprised him, Maul understood that he was exaggerating. His Master wouldn’t have persuaded or
allowed
Amidala to return to Naboo unless he had known in advance that she would attempt to enlist the Gungans in her cause to win back the planet. Obviously, Darth Sidious favored the idea of a grand battle. Open rebellion would justify the actions of the Trade Federation in fighting back. More important, Sidious had granted Gunray permission to kill the Queen and as many Gungans as he deemed necessary to secure victory. The pretense of a peace treaty was no longer necessary.

Sidious had dismissed Maul’s concern that the Jedi might be using the Queen for their own purposes, but Maul wasn’t yet convinced that wasn’t the case. If the Jedi weren’t permitted to fight alongside Amidala, why had they returned? If their purpose was to draw Maul out, then someone had to have apprised them that Maul was on Naboo, and the only being who could have done that was Darth Sidious.

Sidious was as eager to encourage a battle between the Trade Federation and the Gungans as he was an ultimate contest between Maul and the Jedi. He wanted to be assured that his apprentice had what it took to be a
true
Sith.

Maul programmed a series of coordinates into the probe droids and let them fly. Then he climbed aboard the speeder bike to follow them.

There was only one site where Amidala, the Jedi, and the Gungans could be plotting their counteroffensive.

The so-called Sacred Place at the northern end of Paonga Strait, in the swampy basins of the Gallo Mountains.

Not since whatever elder race had built and once occupied the Sacred Place had it played host to as many sentients and droids. Not merely the Gungans from Otoh Gunga and other bubble cities, and Amidala, her retinue, and the Jedi, but also OOM-9’s squadrons of STAPs, searching in all the wrong places, and the droid commander’s long-range reconnaissance platoons of battle droids, many of which had become mired in the soft ground. For a change, Maul found something to appreciate in the incompetence of the Neimoidians’ army, for it served his purpose.

He sat crouched in a shallow waterway a couple of kilometers south of where the Gungans and the rest had gathered, his presence in the Force deliberately diminished and his wrist link pressed close to his ear, tuned to the frequency used by the probe droids he had sent ahead as listening devices. Filtered by the forest’s leafy canopy, the ambient light was almost aquatic. Around him in all directions rose the ruins of grand stone buildings fronted with hieroglyphic stairways, raised agricultural fields, columned temples, and carved statuary—all of it being slowly disassembled by the roots of massive trees whose seeds had sprouted in the grooves between building blocks and in crevices in the flat stones that paved the plazas.

Since the start of his eavesdropping, Amidala and Boss Rugor Nass had cemented their alliance. Responding to a covert signal, several dozen members of the underground had streamed into the ruins, and the Queen’s chief security officer, Panaka, had returned from a scouting mission in Theed. Maul wasn’t surprised that Panaka had been able to infiltrate the city despite increased security—anyone schooled in military tactics could have done so simply by spending a few moments observing the routines of the battle droids, and then working around them. Maul hadn’t bothered pointing out the weaknesses to Gunray, because he now wanted the Neimoidians to fail, despite his Master’s plan.

But the Gungan force was not without its weaknesses.

Amidala’s plan called for the use of the Grand Army as a diversion to draw battle droids from Theed to engage the Gungans on the grassy plains. At the same time, she and her elite team would penetrate the Theed Palace and capture Gunray. The Queen was correct in assuming that the droid army would collapse without sentient leadership, but she was mistaken in her belief that Gunray would have to shunt battle droids from Theed. Clearly she had no real awareness of the size of the Neimoidian army. Amidala’s only shot at victory rested with the pilots of the Naboo Space Fighter Corps, who would have to take the fight to the Droid Control Ship in stationary orbit above the planet.

But Maul was left to wonder how Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi figured into Amidala’s plan, since they were supposedly not allowed to intervene in the battle. Certainly they would accompany Amidala into Theed, but would they remain by her side while she attempted to slip into the Palace?

Maul wondered, too, to what degree his Master would want him to intercede. Was he obliged to notify Gunray of Amidala’s plans? Should he attempt to lure the Gungans into a slaughter in Theed? There was still time to sabotage the berthed N-1 starfighters he had found in Theed’s main hangar …

This will work to our advantage
, Darth Sidious had said on learning of the Queen’s ploy to ally with the Gungans.

Did Sidious mean to his and Maul’s advantage, or to Sidious and
Hego Damask’s
advantage? If Sidious and the Muun had designs on Naboo, then the greater the carnage the greater the sympathy for Senator Palpatine in the coming election. Whatever the reasons, Maul’s task remained as before: to kill two Jedi. The rest of it—the blockade, the invasion, the counteroffensive—was nothing more than theater. So what if the Trade Federation lost its army and ten thousand Gungans died? Who cared, after all, about Naboo or its young Queen?