His tunnel from 500 Republica out to the Works stretched levels below the street, dank, cold, and dark, filled with all manner of vermin. Lord Sidious had worked to have it sealed over the years, avoiding criminal activity which could lead to someone observing his own use of it.
He found himself forced, as always, to steal time from the Senate floor to travel out to the Works and young Maul. Or at least, thus always when Sereine was home. She had felt repelled enough the night she encountered Sate Pestage; she and Maul must never meet. For any duration of time she was home, he gave Maul strict orders that he was not to approach 500 Republica for any reason. Sidious imagined his apprentice had probably guessed that his master slept with her, but Maul neither commented nor questioned.
The one time his two loyal servants had encountered one another, only one was aware of it. Palpatine had taken Sereine to a restaurant—difficult enough, because she wanted no one aware that she was seeing a client—and placed Maul surreptitiously close enough to observe the sensation of total absence of the Force in a being.
Sidious then used the little his own master had left him about masking oneself in the Force to experiment with technique until Maul informed him he felt the same sensation from his master that he had in the restaurant. Sidious then taught the technique to his apprentice, and they practiced upon one another.
The training of a Sith apprentice presented few opportunities for humor, but this exercise had created a sort of game between them. If they, two dark side Force users intimately familiar with one another, could mask themselves well enough to startle one another, chances were either of them could stand right next to even Master Yoda without fear of detection. This had been Sidious's goal, and over the past six months, he believed they had at last perfected it.
Sidious had also perfected the art of the silent entry. Many of his priceless Sith artifacts, he had stored out here at LiMerge with Maul, so of course the place was under strict lock and key; yet Sidious had his ways of sneaking silently in. Added to the obvious benefit of practice, the opportunity to spy upon his apprentice and curtail any untoward behavior was always of value. Sidious made sure to wear soft shoes out here and tread gently.
He discovered his apprentice bent dutifully over his desk, deep in a study Sidious had assigned: the writings of Lord Momin on the preservation of consciousness after death. Sidious stood quietly, counting the minutes.
At length his apprentice stretched, got up, turned—and gasped.
Maul fell immediately to one knee and bowed his head. "My master!"
Sidious chuckled. "Rise, Lord Maul. I have work for you."
Maul rose from the floor with his customary grace. "Yes, my master."
"I am losing my patience with Sendy Veritine. It's time to eliminate him. This I leave to your discretion. I want this done as quietly and as unobtrusively as possible. I will be evaluating you on this result, Lord Maul."
Maul bowed his head. "Yes, my master. If I may ask … a time frame?"
"As soon as possible."
The canisters, employed by a lesser associate of Darth Sidious, hadn't been meant to kill, only to frighten. The first step was to see if the family had stayed in the apartment. Lord Maul slipped out to discover this that evening; it was fairly easy to ascertain.
Maul crouched, in the long shadows of the evening, watching as lights came on in the structure. So … the family was still there. The next task would be to shadow Veritine for a while and plan.
In the Force, he could feel that some small consciousness was observing him.
"I've got to see this creepy guy you saw watching my house," said Joven. "How'm I going to know if it's him if you're not there?"
"I can't skip school anymore!" said Rahr. "My dad'll kill me."
"So I go home and if it's someone there, I don't even know if it's the same guy or not."
They clustered outside the gate of Public School 212, on Level Twelve, lit by floodlights and patrolled by school security.
"Who else would be in your house?" said Rahr, his white eyes without pupils milky in the light. Around them, hordes of kids of all races babbled in at least five different languages, pressing toward the gate and a hot school breakfast. "Anyway don't do it. It could be dangerous!"
"It's my house! You think I want anybody in our house and we don't know it? Maybe my dad will just take us back home if he finds out."
"I'm gonna get in trouble!"
The next fifteen minutes found them headed back up to the surface, Rahr complaining and arguing all the way.
They ducked into the lobby of the apartment house across the street and stood at the windows to watch. "I hope you at least brought candy or something, since neither of us got breakfast," grumbled Rahr. Joven searched his pockets and produced the nerfsticks nobody had wanted a few days ago. They stood there and gnawed at the dried meat, watching people pass and pass and hovercars run up and down the street.
Rahr looked over. "Hey, Eructohead. You might want to take that jacket off. Anyone can see this bright red jacket coming a klick away."
Joven took it off and turned it inside out, showing the gray lining instead, and put it back on.
The sound of repulsorwheels drew up behind them, along with an imposing presence. They turned to find a tall, jointed janitorial droid behind them with glowing yellow eyes and scuffed paint that had once been white, with a head like an overturned bucket.
"Children are not allowed to loiter unattended in the lobby. Your ID's, please," it said.
"Um …" said Rahr.
"Sorry, we don't live here," said Joven.
"Then you must leave. Children your age are supposed to be in school."
They headed for the door. "This is stupid," said Rahr. "You think we can sneak back into school?"
"Wait," said Joven, pointing, as they walked out onto the sidewalk and the steel double doors closed behind them. "The plastic over the door is out of place."
"I didn't see anybody."
"We were being hassled by a janitor droid, lunkbrain."
"You think someone's in there? Where is your mom, anyway?"
Joven didn't want to answer. "She's not home. And my dad's at the Naboo Delegation, at work."
"How do we find out? There's plastic over all the windows. I'm not going up there to look."
"I'm not going up there!" Then Joven thought a minute. "This is stupid. If we didn't come here to look, we might as well have stayed at school."
"Don't go in there!"
"I'm not. I'm just going to see if there's a place I can see anything." Joven ran across the street, dodging hovertraffic. He skirted the small crater in the sidewalk, now cordoned off and filled in with drying permacrete, and approached the boarded windows. He bent, looking for a wide enough crack.
The street noise was too loud for him to hear anything inside, but he could look through the living room from here toward the kitchen and the hall that led to his and his parents' bedrooms.
Joven crouched, and waited. Just when he believed it had all been his imagination, a hooded figure in tall black boots appeared from the hallway and walked into the kitchen. Fear made his stomach spasm, and he turned and ran back across the street. He looked up to see a hovercar bearing down upon him and screamed again.
Rahr grabbed him by the arms. "What happened? What happened?"
"There's someone in there! There's someone in our house! Some man in a black cloak and hood."
Rahr pulled him to the tables of a small sidewalk café. "Sit here and let's watch."
A waitdroid approached. "Would you require a menu?"
Rahr looked up. "Yeah, sure."
The droid put down interactive datapads with the menu of the day and retreated.
Across the street, the door board opened and a dark figure stepped out and turned, closing it. "I saw that guy there last night!" said Rahr.
"That was locked. I bet it's broken now." Joven jumped up. "Come on, or we're going to lose him!"
"What?"
"We can stay far enough behind. We're kids; who's going to notice us?"
"I'm not going to follow that guy."
"Well, I am!" Joven jumped up and darted across the street as the cloaked figure headed east. He turned when he reached the sidewalk to find Rahr close behind him.
"I think you're crazy, but I'm not letting you follow him alone."
"He's walking really fast. Hurry, or we'll lose him."
They wove in and out of foot traffic, trying to keep the hooded man in sight. Rahr grabbed Joven's arm.
"No way! Is he really-?"
"Using our clubhouse," finished Joven. "I think we need to find a new one."
The dark man lifted their clubhouse grate and disappeared into it. They watched as unseen hands pulled the grating back into place.
They walked over and peered down. Seeing nothing, Joven reached to lift the grate himself.
"Are you nuts?" hissed Rahr. "He'll hear us!"
"Not if he's far enough ahead. Besides, we're down here all the time. He doesn't know we saw him or that we're even following him."
"I have a bad feeling about this," said Rahr.
They lifted the grate and climbed down. Since they had staked out the place for a clubhouse, they had followed the tunnel that led from it both ways, so they knew it very well at least for a klick or so. It was easy to hang back, listening to the click of boot heels and creeping silently along.
Here and there, other storm grates lit the path, so it wasn't entirely dark. A rivulet of water from the last rain trickled along a trench in the middle. They passed chittering sewer rats and a dweller from the lower levels in rags scurrying back in their direction.
The boot steps clicked farther out than the boys had ever been. At present, they came to a wide opening; a cavernous room housing a huge, shiny gray shuttle, clearly meant to go offworld, with a central sphere and two curving wings and a long, long fuselage. Next to it stood a tall tri-winged Republic shuttle.
The dark man crossed the hanger and disappeared through a door and was gone.
"Wow …" whispered Joven.
"Shh," said Rahr.
"Somebody has some major credits," whispered Joven. "Why would they want to poke around in our house?"
"Look at those ships," whispered Rahr, who wanted to be a pilot one day. "Look at that one! That's a fighter! I didn't even know they made one like that!" He crept closer, transfixed.
A steel door slid out from an unseen pocket in the wall and blocked the hanger with its magnificent vessels from view.
"Boys," said an impossibly deep voice behind them. "That's far enough."
Fear ripped the breath from Joven's lungs. Rahr yelled out. They both turned to find a freakishly tall old man in a cloak standing some distance away, watching them.
"Who …" Joven had trouble finding his tongue. "Who are you?"
"My name is Yan," said the stranger. "And my question for you gentlemen is, why aren't you in school? And, do your parents know you aren't at school?"
Joven studied his shoes. "Um … well, no."
"I thought as much." The stranger lifted an arm. "Come away from there, and don't ever return here. This place is strong with the dark side of the Force. It's no place for two young boys."
Joven's feet felt like boulders. This man was almost as scary as the one they'd followed out here. He looked sideways at Rahr and saw Rahr rolling his white eyes toward him.
The tall man gave his arm a small shake. "It's dangerous for you to be here. Let's go back streetside."
Rahr shrugged and stepped forward. Joven followed. The tall man swept his arm behind them but didn't actually touch them.
"What are your names, gentlemen?" he asked as they walked.
"Joven Veritine," said Joven. "And this is my friend Rahr."
"Rahr Who?"
"Rahr Fahn," said Rahr. "We go to Public School 212."
"And what are you doing down here?"
Joven sneaked glances at him as they walked. He was an old man, old enough to be Joven's grandfather. His voice reminded him of weekend horror holofilms and his walk was a king's walk. Joven didn't know what to tell him, so he didn't tell him anything.
The old man's boot heels clicked in the silence.
"How come we didn't hear you before, and we hear you now?" said Joven.
"Occupational secret," said the old man. "What are the two of you doing down here? Surely you know it isn't safe."
"We have a club house up there with some friends," said Rahr. "We've been halfway here before. We've just never been the whole way here before."
"Well, don't ever come the whole way here again," said the old man. "Whoever owns that place does not want to see children lurking about."
"They own some rad spaceships, I can tell you that," said Rahr. "There's a Republic shuttle in there, and a … thing, whatever that fighter is. It looks like a Star Courier, but it's not."
The old man gave Rahr a glance and raised his eyebrows. "You know your spacecraft, young man."
"He wants to be a pilot," said Joven.
"You didn't answer my question," said the old man. "Why are you down here?"
Joven decided to tell him. "Because there was a guy breaking into our apartment. We decided to follow him."
"You've had some trouble of late," said the old man. "Someone firebombed your apartment."
Joven whipped his head around to stare. "You know that?"
"I saw you the other day. Don't ever do that again. You could have blown your hand off. Not to mention injuring someone on the street."
"I tried to wait until it was clear," mumbled Joven. "I just didn't want it blowing up next to Mom's bedroom."
"If you knew it was there, you could have had your parents call someone to come and take it away."
"My parents are scared enough," said Joven.
"What's happened?" the old man said, and Joven explained.
"Someone has a vendetta against your father for some reason."
Joven shrugged. "At least we know where they live, now." He pointed up at their grate. "And that's our clubhouse, up there. We meet after school, eat snacks … shoot the poodoo."
The old man chuckled softly.
Rahr climbed up and moved the grate. Joven climbed up and out and turned around and peered down. "Do you need help, mister?"
The old man laughed and climbed out as nimbly as they did. He replaced the grate and pointed down at it. "Stay out of there," he ordered. "Leave it to me. I may be able to discover who owns that lair you discovered."
He turned, and as an afterthought, called over his shoulder. "Go back to school!"
The boys stared after him, and Joven said, "Who was that?"
Rahr elbowed him in the ribs. "Joven. That guy is a Jedi."