Star Wars - [Darth Maul] - Saboteur (by James Luceno)

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Darth Maul

DARTH MAUL

SABOTEUR

JAMES LUCENO

THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP

NEW YORK

A Del Rey Book

Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of

Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of

Canada Limited, Toronto.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of

Random House, Inc.

www.starwars.com

www.starwarskids.com

www.randomhouse.com/delrey/

eISBN 0-345-44735-2

v.1

Also by James Luceno

The ROBOTECH Series (as Jack McKinney, with Brian Daley)

The Black Hole Travel Agency Series (as Jack McKinney, with Brian Daley)

A Fearful Symmetry

Illegal Alien

The Big Empty

Kaduna Memories

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles The Mata Hari Affair

The Shadow

The Mask of Zorro

Rio Passion

Rainchaser

Rock Bottom

Star Wars The New Jedi Order Agents of Chaos I Heros Trial

Star Wars The New Jedi Order Agents of Chaos II Jedi Eclipse

Star Wars Cloak of Deception *

*Forthcoming

Nearly every world in the Videnda sector had something to recommend itwarm

saline seas, verdant forests, arable grasslands that stretched to distant

horizons. The outlying world known as Dorvalla had a touch of all of those. But

what it had in abundance was lommite ore, an essential component in the

production of transparisteela strong, transparent metal used galaxywide for

canopies and viewports in both starships and ground-based structures. Dorvalla

was so rich in lommite that one-quarter of the planets scant population was

involved in the industry, employed either by Lommite Limited or its contentious

rival, InterGalactic Ore.

The chalky ore was mined in Dorvallas tropical equatorial regions. Lommite

Limiteds base of operations was in Dorvallas western hemisphere, in a broad

rift valley blanketed with thick forest and defined by steep escarpments. There,

where ancient seas had once held sway, shifts in the planetary mantle had thrust

huge, sheer-faced tors from the land. Crowned by rampant vegetation, by trees

and ferns primeval in scale, the high, rocky mountains rose like islands,

blinding white in the sunlight, the birthplace of slender waterfalls that

plunged thousands of meters to the valley floor.

But what was once a wilderness was now just another extractive enterprise. Huge

demolition droids had carved wide roads to the bases of most of the larger

cliffs, and two circular launch zones, large enough to accommodate dozens of

ungainly space shuttles, had been hollowed from the forest. The tors themselves

were gouged and honeycombed with mines, and deep craters filled with polluted

runoff water reflected the sun and sky like fogged mirrors.

The ceaseless work of the droids was abetted by an all but indentured labor

force of humans and aliens, to whom the mined ore served as a great equalizer.

No matter the natural color of a miners skin, hair, feathers, or scales,

everyone was rendered white as the galactic dawn. All agreed that sentient

beings deserved more from life, but Lommite Limited wasnt prosperous enough to

convert fully to droid labor, and Dorvalla wasnt a world of boundless

opportunities for employment.

Still, that didnt stop some from dreaming.

Patch Bruit, Lommite Limiteds chief of field operationshuman beneath a routine

dusting of orehad long dreamed of starting over, of relocating to Coruscant or

one of the other Core worlds and making a new life for himself. But such a move

was years away, and not likely to happen at all if he kept returning his meager

wages to LL by overspending in the company-run stores and squandering what

little remained on gambling and drink.

He had been with LL for almost twenty years, and in that time had managed to

work his way out of the pits into a position of authority. But with that

authority had come more responsibility than he had bargained for, and in the

wake of several recent incidents of industrial sabotage his patience was nearly

spent.

The boxy control station in which Bruit spent the better part of his workdays

looked out on the forest of tors and the shuttle launch and landing zones. To

the stations numerous video display screens came views of repulsorlift

platforms elevating gangs of workers to the gaping mouths of the artificial

caves that dimpled the precipitous faces of the mountains. Elsewhere, the

platform lifting was accomplished with the help of strong-backed beasts, with

massive curving necks and gentle eyes.

The technicians who worked alongside Bruit in the control station were fond of

listening to recorded music, but the music could scarcely be heard over the

unrelenting drone of enormous drilling machines, the low bellowing of the lift

beasts, and the roar of departing shuttles.

The walls of the control station were made of transparisteel, thick as a finger,

whose triple-glazed panels were supposed to keep out the ore dust but never did.

Fine as clay, the resinous dust seeped through the smallest openings and filmed

everything. As hard as he tried, Bruit could never get the stuff off him, not in

water showers or sonic baths. He smelled it everywhere he went, he tasted it in

the food served up in the company restaurants, and sometimes it infiltrated his

dreams. So pervasive was the lommite dust that, from space, Dorvalla appeared to

be girdled by a white band.

Fortunately, everyone within a hundred kilometers of Lommite Limiteds operation

was in the same predicamentminers, shopkeepers, the beings who tended the

cantina bars. But what should have been just one big happy lommite family

wasnt. The recurrent incidents of sabotage had fostered an atmosphere of

wariness and distrust, even among laborers who worked shoulder to shoulder in

the pits.

Group Two shuttles are loaded and ready for launch, Chief, one of the human

technicians reported.

Bruit directed his gaze to the droid-guided, mechanized transports that were

responsible for ferrying the lommite up the gravity well. In high orbit the

payloads were transferred to LLs flotilla of barges, which conveyed the

unrefined ore to manufacturing worlds along the Rimma Trade Route and

occasionally to the distant Core.

Sound the warning, Bruit said.

The technician flipped a series of switches on the console, and loudspeakers

began to hoot. Miners and maintenance droids moved away from the launch zone.

Bruit looked at the screens that displayed close-up views of the shuttles. He

studied them carefully, searching for anything out of the ordinary.

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