"I figured I'd find you two here," the new arrival said.

The stout one smiled and made room on the padded bench seat. "Step into our office and we'll buy you a drink."

The third man sat, but declined the offer with a shake of his head. "Maybe later."

The other two traded looks of surprise. Maul read the lip movements of the taller one: "If he's not drinking, then something serious has come up."

The third man nodded. "The chief has called a special meeting. He wants us at his place in half an hour."

"Any idea what it's about?" the stout one asked.

"It has to be the shuttle crash," the man opposite him surmised. "Bruit probably has a line on the culprits."

Maul recognized the name. Bruit was Lommite Limited's chief of field operations. The three men were probably security personnel.

"Like there was any question about the culprits," the stout one was saying.

"It's bigger than that," the third man said, lowering his voice almost to the point where Maul had to strain to hear him. "Word has come down from Arrant on how we're going to respond."

The stout man sat away from the table that bisected the booth. "Well, it's about time."

"I'd say that calls for another round of drinks," his partner said.

Maul continued listening, but his eyes were no longer fixed on the men but on something he had glimpsed on the wall above the booth. It resembled the bioluminescent flitter he had captured earlier on. This one, however, wasn't moving from its spot on the wall. The reason became apparent once Maul probed it through the Force. Not only was it a fabrication, it was also a listening device.

Maul scanned the room, then turned to face the mirror. The device wasn't very sophisticated; its large size was evidence of that. Even so, that didn't mean that whoever was eavesdropping on the security men had to be inside the cantina. But Maul suspected that they were. Without looking at it, he focused his attention on the artificial flitter and screened out all extraneous soundsthe pulsing music, the dozens of separate conversations, the noises of glasses clinking or being filled with one inebriant or another. Once he could discern the muted beeping of the device's transmitter, he listened for signs of the receiver with which it was in communication.

At a round table in the adjoining room sat a Rodian and two Twi'leks, ostensibly engaged in a game of cardssabacc, in all likelihood. Maul watched them for a moment. Their playing was desultory. He observed their facial expressions as the security agents continued to converse. When one of the men said something of interest, the Rodian's faceted eyes would flash and his short snout would curl to one side. At the same time, the Twi'leks' head-tails would twitch and their pasty faces would flush ever so slightly.

The Rodian's left ear was sporting an earbead receiver, while the Twi'leks' receivers took the form of dermal patches, disguised as lekku tattoos.

Maul was certain that the trio were in the secret employ of Lommite Limited's onworld competitor, InterGalactic Ore. He recognized the Rodian from the disk Sidious had given him. It was possible that they were the saboteurs themselves.

His eyes darted back to the listening device and the security men. Creatures of habit, they probably occupied the same booth night after night, completely unaware that their conversations were being monitored. Such carelessness exasperated Maul to the point of fury. The men were deserving of whatever harm would surely come their way.

***

The three security men left the cantina on foot and wended their way to a ribbon of trail that wove through a dense stand of forest. Maul followed from a discreet distance, keeping to the shadows when Dorvalla's moon came up, full and silver-white.

The trail eventually arrived at a tight-knit community of flimsy dwellings, many of them raised on stilts to keep them above pools of runoff water left by the rain. The humidity was oppressive.

The dwelling that was the trio's destination was an elevated cube with a metal roof angled to channel rainwater into a ferrocrete cistern. The cube's only door was accessed by means of a ladderlike stairway. A rusted landspeeder with a cracked windscreen was parked in a muddy front lot.

Maul kept to the trees while a thickly built human responded to the stout agent's raps on the door frame.

"Come on up," the man said. "Everyone else is already here."

Bruit. Darth Maul waited until the three agents were inside, then he hurried from the shadows and planted himself under an open side window. Not content with his choice, he ducked beneath the house and clambered up one of the stilts to wedge himself between the floor joists of the front room. In the room above, someone was pouring liquid into several glasses.

Maul extracted a miniature recording device from the breast pocket of his utility suit and placed it against the underside of the rough-hewn floorboards.

"Here's the long and short of it," Bruit said while the glasses were being filled. "Arrant has decided that we need to level the playing field. We're going to strike at InterGal at Eriadu. Our shipments will reach the planet, and theirs won't."

Someone whistled in astonishment.

"Does the boss realize what he's letting loose?" perhaps the same man asked. "This is going to lead to a shooting war."

"This comes straight from Arrant," Bruit said. "He's been in the trenches before. Those are his words, and this is his show."

"His show and our livelihood," someone pointed out. "There has to be a better way of settling this. What about petitioning the senate to intervene?"

"A cure that can be worse than the disease," another answered, much to Maul's amusement. "The senate will defer to committees run by corrupt bureaucrats. It will take months for it to get to the courts."

"No senate, no courts," Bruit said. "That much has already been decided. It's up to us."

"So what happens at Eriadu?"

"We've been able to learn the hyperspace route InterGal's ships are going to take. They'll arrive by way of Rimma 13, and are scheduled to decant from hyperspace at 1400 hours, Eriadu local time. The folks we're employing to execute the strike will be able to calculate the precise reentry coordinates."

"Who are we employing?"

"The Toom clan."

Expressions of dismay flew from all corners.

"Cutthroats," someone said.

"Exactly," Bruit said. "But we need to team up to accomplish this, and Arrant's willing to spend the necessary credits. By using them, no one will suspect us, and Arrant doesn't care, because he doesn't want to know any more than he has to. He wants to keep his hands clean while I make the connections. Besides, the Tooms have the means to get the job done."