Maul allowed himself a twitch of his lips. He pressed the lightsaber's controls. The humming died as the energy beams blinked out. He bent, keeping his eyes on the droid as he put the weapon on the floor and shoved it away with his boot.

He settled himself into a low defensive stance, angled toward the droid at forty-five degrees, left foot forward. He watched the flickering arabesque of death as

Hachete edged toward him. A droid like this knew no fear; but Darth Maul knew that to put his weapon down and face a live opponent barehanded would certainly terrify anybody brighter than a dueling droid. Fear was as potent a weapon as a lightsaber or a blaster.

The dark side raged inside him, sought to blind him with hatred, but he held it at bay. He held one open hand high, by his ear, the other by his hip, then reversed the positions, watching. Waiting.

Hachete stole forward another half step, crossing and recrossing the blades, looking for an opening.

Maul gave the droid what it was looking for. He moved his left arm wide, away from his body, exposing his side to a thrust or a cut.

Hachete saw the opening and moved in, fast, very fast, snapping one of the blades out to cut while bringing the other blade over for backup.

Maul dropped, hooked his left foot around the back of the droid's ankle, and pulled as he kicked hard at the droid's thigh with the other foot.

The droid fell backwards, unable to maintain its balance, and hit the floor. Maul sprang up, did a front flip, and came down with both boot heels driving into the droid's head. The metal skull crunched and collapsed inward. Lights flashed and the hard-shell photoreceptors shattered.

Maul dived again, rolled up in a half twist into the forraderi stance, ready to spring in any direction.

But there was no need-these four were done. It would take a technician days to repair Hachete, Cudgel, and Rapier. Chain was beyond repair useful only for parts.

Darth Maul exhaled, relaxed his stance, and nodded. His heart rate had accelerated perhaps five beats above normal at most. There was the faintest sheen of perspiration on his forehead; otherwise his skin was dry. Perhaps sixty seconds had elapsed from start to finish. Maul frowned slightly. Not his personal best, by any means. It was one thing to face and defeat droids. Jedi were a different matter.

He would have to do better.

He picked up his lightsaber, hung it from his belt. Then, his muscles warmed up now, he went to practice his fighting exercises.

He had barely gotten more than a few meters, however, when a familiar shimmering in the air in front of him brought him to a stop. Before the hooded figure's image had time to solidify, Maul dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

"Master," he said, "what do you wish of your servant?**

The Sith Lord regarded his apprentice. "I am pleased with the way you dealt with the Black Sun assignment. The organization will be in disarray for years."

Maul nodded slightly in acknowledgment. Such offhanded praise was the most he ever got in recognition of his work, and that only rarely. But praise, even from Sidious, did not matter. All that mattered was serving his master.

"Now I have another task for you."

"Whatever my master wishes shall be done."

"Hath Monchar, one of the four Neimoidians I am dealing with, has disappeared. I suspect treachery. Find him. Make sure he has spoken to no one of the impending embargo. If he has-kill him, and everyone he has spoken to."

The holographic image faded away. Maul straightened and headed for the door. His step was firm, his manner confident. Anyone else, even a Jedi, might have protested that such an assignment was impossible. It was a big galaxy, after all. But failure was not an option to Darth Maul. It was not even a concept.

Coruscant.

The name evoked the same image in the mind of nearly every civilized being in the galaxy. Coruscant: Bright center of the universe, cynosure of all inhabited worlds, crown jewel of the Core systems. Coruscant, seat of government for the myriad worlds of an entire galaxy. Coruscant, the epitome of culture and learning, synthesis of a million different civilizations.

Coruscant.

Seeing the planet from orbit was the only way to fully appreciate the enormity of the construction. Practically all of Coruscant's landmass-which comprised almost all of its surface area, its oceans and seas having been drained or rerouted through huge subterranean caverns more than a thousand generations ago- was covered with a multitiered metropolis composed of towers, monads, ziggurats, palazzi, domes, and minarets. By day the many crosshatched levels of skycar traffic and the thousands of spaceships that entered and left its atmosphere almost blotted out views of the endless cityscape, but at night Coruscant revealed its full splendo^ outshining at close range even the spectacular nebulae and globular clusters of the nearby Galactic Core. The planet radiated so much heat energy that, were it not for thousands of strategically placed CO2 reactive dampers in the upper atmosphere, it would long ago have been transformed into a lifeless rock by a rampant atmospheric degeneration.

An endless ring of titanic skyscrapers girded Coruscant around its equator, some of them tall enough to pierce the upper fringes of atmosphere. Similar, if shorter structures could be found almost anyplace on the globe. It was those rarefied upper levels, spacious and clean, that constituted most peoples' conception of the galactic capital.

But all visions of soaring beauty and wealth, no matter how stately, must be grounded somewhere, somehow. Along the equatorial strip, below the lowest stratum of air traffic, beneath the illuminated sky-walks and the glittering facades, lay another view of Coruscant. There, sunlight never penetrated; the endless city night was lit only by flickering neon holo-projections advertising sleazy attractions and shady businesses. Spider-roaches and huge armored rats infested the shadows, and hawk- bats with wingspans of up to one and a half meters roosted in the rafters of deserted structures. This was the underbelly of Coruscant, unseen and unacknowledged by the wealthy, belonging solely to the disenfranchised and the damned.

This was the part of Coruscant that Lorn Pavan called home.

The meeting place had been suggested by the Toy-darian; it was a dingy building at the back of a deadend street. Lorn and his droid, I-Five, had to step over a Rodian sleeping in a pile of rags near the recessed entrance.

"I've often wondered," the protocol droid said as they entered, "if your clientele all subscribe to the same service-the one listing the most disgusting and disreputable places in the galaxy to meet."