Lockdown: Star Wars Legends (Maul) (Star Wars - Legends) by Joe Schreiber

Author:Joe Schreiber [Schreiber, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780345535665
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2014-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

42

BLEED THE FREAK

Maul made it back just seconds before the reconfiguration began. He’d just stepped through the hatchway when it sealed shut behind him, the floor and walls already starting to shift. As the now-familiar clamor of gears and clockwork filled the air, he turned his gaze upward to where he knew the warden and the rest of the galactic gambling community would be watching. His involvement in the next bout seemed to be a foregone conclusion.

What would it be this time? Fire? Ice? The sarlacc from the Great Pit of Carkoon?

The cell reeled and swung as the architecture of the prison fell into its newest alignment. Maul held fast to the handgrips of the bench, riding it out. At this point it really didn’t matter what they pitted him against. Now that he’d seen Radique face-to-face—

The cell came to a halt.

Maul cocked his head, listening for whatever opponent the algorithm had selected for him. Whatever it was, he would kill it as quickly as possible and get on with his business at hand.

The wall of the cell came open.

Maul looked into it, muscles tensing for the attack—

And felt all his resolve go swirling away in a sudden rush of bewilderment.

The Weequay stepped out to face him.

* * *

For a moment he couldn’t speak. The Weequay was walking toward him with the clawbird resting on his shoulder. Maul stared, his senses heightened by the intensity of his shock, as the bird lifted one of its talons, shifting its position, to reveal the knots of khipus tied around its feet.

“You were supposed to die already, Jagannath,” the Weequay said. “Torn to pieces on the factory floor. I should have finished you myself.”

He was still coming. Maul was struck again by the ineluctable suspicion that everything that had happened to him since the moment of his arrival here—from the ongoing matches to the riddles to the machines that had nearly ripped him to pieces—had all been part of some larger trial or examination overseen by Sidious, and that perhaps now he had arrived at the greatest test of all.

“Wait,” Maul said. “I won’t kill you.”

“You’re right about that.”

Maul reached up and yanked open his collar to reveal the bundles of credits that he’d stuffed inside his uniform before leaving Nightside. He held them up. “Three hundred thousand credits. They’re yours.”

The Weequay didn’t answer. Instead, he raised his arm, and the bird took flight, arrowing across the cell like a shadow cut loose from the object that cast it, streaking straight for Maul’s face, talons extended. Ducking, Maul swung one fist to knock it aside, but the bird dove down under his arm at the last second and came up screaming, claws fastened to his face, pecking furiously at his eyes.

Maul grabbed the bird blindly, ripped it from where it had fastened itself to his face, and tried to fling it to the floor, where he could stomp it to death, but it squirmed free and took flight, still cawing and shrieking across the cell in a trail of feathers.

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