*Author's note: This chapter has been reposted because I did not realize the name of a character was also a racial slur. This has been fixed and I apologize to anyone who saw that.
Maul reported for duty to the Falleen named Criss. He repeated the name to himself several times; he did not see any of these beings as worthy of his effort to remember their names. But it was mandatory when working undercover, so he committed himself to the necessary memorization.
Wabo the Aqualish had quite the estate. Ord Mantell was known for the luxurious lifestyle it offered the right people, and the manufacturer who put the blaster rifles in the grasping hands of Series B1 battle droids was certainly one of those.
Bordered by a high durasteel wall, the gleaming, white main house stretched for half a klick and, according to Criss, sported some thirty rooms, ten bedrooms, fifteen bathrooms, a bar, a theater, an extravagant game room, a state-of-the-art wine cellar. Its hangar soared ten stories high and housed Wabo's Luxury 3000 space yacht, as well as two smaller shuttles for short business travel. Acres of green fields surrounded the main buildings, dotted with stables for Yabo's prize racing fathiers. Above it all soared a tall observation tower for security, which rather reminded Maul of the sort one observed in prison yards—a jarring addition to the idyllic scene.
Lord Maul's interest lay in the hangar, in the 3000 yacht with its flattish elongated nose and its rows and rows of windows that looked like the ribs of some huge prey animal, picked clean by desert scavengers. He smiled as Criss led him around the vessel, pointing out its various features, and then dropped the ramp to invite him inside.
It would be dead soon enough. And so would its owner.
"Right now we're all concentrating on this vessel," Criss explained, "getting it ready to go to Cato Nemoidia in two weeks. After that …" he shrugged. "So I can pay you short-term, but it's kind of up in the air after that." Short for a Falleen, pudgy around the middle, Criss wore his hair not in the traditional tail but in a bun, to avoid entrapment in machinery, no doubt. Grease stained his tan leggings and shirt and the tools on his belt clinked and clanked together as he led Maul around the handsomely appointed interior.
Their last stop was the interior utility compartment, where Fleet the Human and Rictus the Bith were struggling to diagnose some problem with the interior heating system.
"Hey, welcome aboard," said Fleet, an abnormally short Human with curly blond hair and squinty blue eyes. "Maybe you can help us figure out this heating thing. We get it working for a little bit and then …" He blew a low rumbling noise.
"You must have a coolant leak," said Maul.
"Can't find one," said the Bith, throwing up two grease-stained hands.
"Let me in there," said Maul. Zabraks had an excellent sense of smell, and in two seconds he said, "You've got one. I can smell it."
He was also smelling for tension, deception, that sneaky sense of underhandedness in the Force that might lead him to an individual he could exploit. A light tingle sang out to him in the dark side, but he couldn't tell if it were the Bith or the Human.
Heat suffused the stuffy, small space they had to work in. They had to use a small camera droid to crawl among the pipes under the floor and discover the leak Maul had smelled. Then they had to lift out the entire floor of one of the freshers to reach the leak and fix it.
Hours plodded by as the four beings crawled about in hot, dark spaces, aiming spotlights and kicking recalcitrant droids that kept stalling in the inconvenient midst of repairs. Swearwords floated out of the pit in Bith, Basic, Zabrak, and Falleen. More than once the repulsordroid holding the section of floor in place made an odd clanking, coughing noise and everyone jumped, sure the heavy section of floor loaded down with the highest end Chandrilan tile was about to come down on their heads.
Maul wiped sweat from his forehead and worked, alert to the daggers in the dark side that passed between the Falleen, the Bith, and the Human. Suspicious; distrust; anger. Something was afoot here that predated his arrival.
At last the work was complete. Maul was the first one out of the work pit, moving to stand near the repuslordroid as it prepared to lower the floor back into place for stabilization. No sense having Buyo Wabo fall through the floor into the work pit in the middle of the journey.
Without warning, a mechanical croak started at the high end of the scale and groaned into the low, ending in a metallic raspberry that presaged an important failure. The repulsordroid's eyepieces blinked, blinked again, and went dark.
Crawling out of the work pit, the Bith and the Falleen barely missed having their legs crushed as the floor section crashed back into place. Broken tiles tinkled around hoarse screams.
"Kriff, Cathal, what are you trying to do, kill us?" screamed Fleet the Human, beady eyes even beadier, face reddening in anger. "What did you do to that repulsordroid?"
Everyone stared at Maul.
Maul held up both hands. "I didn't touch it!"
"I saw you!" accused the Human, which was impossible, since Maul had been standing more than a meter away from it.
Maul tasted the Force and perceived the sour tang of cowardice. Fleet the Human was attempting to cast suspicion on him. For what reason, Maul was not certain … but he intended to find out.
"I must have bumped the droid by accident," he said, obliging the Human by taking the blame. He would put him at his ease … then he would scrutinize his every move and thought. No one impugned a Dark Lord of the Sith and lived to tell the tale.
Cathal accepted his per diem pay and made a conspicuous exit from the grounds. He then concealed himself and watched as his coworkers left, one by one, shouting good naturedly to one another.
"See you at Allure?"
"Nah, I've had enough for tonight. I'm going to go tomorrow."
"Kriff, after today? I've got to knock back a few!" This from Criss, whom Maul recalled was the drunken driver of last night's wayward water skiff.
He did not see Fleet the Human. A Sith mind trick, and he was back inside the perimeter wall and on his way back to the hangar.
"Apprentice. This cannot be allowed." Master's hand pointed to gouges next to the lock of the lower hangar door. "Every Sith artifact not in the ancient Temple at Korriban and not stolen by the Jedi, we house here. You reside here. If anything should happen to my collection, you are personally responsible."
"Most likely it's the homeless denizens of the tunnels, attempting to find shelter, Master."
"Nonetheless. An apprentice who shows insufficient respect for our heritage will not be tolerated. I want the culprit found, and no excuses."
"Yes, my master."
A Sith apprentice learned to walk as silently as the shadows of night. Maul stretched out with his senses, testing the Force for that peculiar, cowardly tang that belonged only to Fleet the Human.
He found him, alone in the tool room, a clean tarp spread upon the floor. Maul closed himself completely in the Force, peering through the window in the door, as Fleet the Human laid down a brand new hydrospanner and several good quality wrenches.
A quick twist in the Force opened the lock and then the door.
The Human spun about, beady eyes suddenly the size of half-credit coins, his aura stinking of guilt. His gasp echoed through the room.
"Cathal! You scared me. I thought I locked that door."
Maul cast the tools on the tarp a meaningful look. "I see why," he said.
"N-no, it's my night to stay late and clean these tools," stammered Fleet.
"They look rather clean to me." Maul crossed his arms over his chest.
"Yes, I was just finishing." Fleet raised his chin defiantly.
"Of course," said Maul. "Then what is this?" He bent and lifted a large strappy bag, big enough and tough enough to easily transport a brand new hydrospanner and several wrenches.
"It's mine."
"Empty?"
"I carry my club clothes in it."
Maul turned the bag inside out and shook it, keeping his eyes on the man. He knew the unnerving effect his orange-yellow stare could have, especially when accompanied by the tenderest touch of the dark side.
"I, I—"
"Let's come clean about this. I have caught you in the act of theft. Which was no doubt why you tried to cast suspicion on me this afternoon, my first day of work."
"I—I didn't mean to … I really thought you had …"
Fear made such a satisfying harmonic in the dark side.
Now to turn it to terror.
Maul snapped his hand out to the side, holding the bag. He waited a threatening second and let it drop. He drew himself to his full height. Crossed his arms over his chest. Flexed those muscular arms, then his shoulders. Took a step forward.
It was all in how one stepped forward. How one applied the Force.
"L-look, I'm sorry about this afternoon. I'll tell Criss you didn't do it. I-I'll—"
Maul dropped his arms, balled his fists. Curled his arms, stalked forward two more steps.
"What do you want?" The little Human's reedy voice hit a tremulous note.
Maul stopped. Stood. Crossed his arms over his chest again.
"I want you to let me in one night after hours. You will tell no one. I will name the evening."
Two round blue eyes blinked. Fleet the Human gaped like a sea creature.
"Do we have a deal?"
"Y-yes. Yes, we do."
Maul brought the responsible party, a piteously underweight Devaronian in rags, before his master, dragging him by one horn and one pointed ear.
"This is the culprit?"
"Yes, my master. I found him scrabbling at the lower hanger lock with this." Maul produced the crowbar in his other hand.
"Good, good." Sidious reached out and took the crowbar, hefting it with first one hand, then two.
"I believe we need to make a training exercise of this," he said, squinting down at it, a thoughtful note creeping into his voice. "Your kills so far have been clean. Too clean."
He held the crowbar out. "You will take this. Strike him down with it, with precision. I want him conscious."
Maul let the being go and aimed just below one of the horns, demonstrating all the control he knew his master required.
With a hideous groan cut oddly short, the Devaronian hit the floor. A convulsion shook his limbs for some moments. Two pink eyes rolled back into his skull.
Sidious watched dispassionately until the convulsion passed. The being stank, that issue growing only worse with the puddle that spread beneath his hips.
At last the Devaronian looked up at them and blinked.
"Your lightsaber, Apprentice."
Maul knew what his master meant. He lifted it from his belt and lit it.
"Using your lightsaber, you will gently open this being from stem to stern. I say gently because the aim is to flay, not pierce."
The question escaped him. "Master?"
"Not every kill is a clean kill, apprentice. At times the need is to extract information or revenge. We do what must be done, and we have done with it. Distasteful though it is, one must indure oneself to torture, young Maul." He gestured dispassionately with one hand toward the supine Devaronian, who clearly understood Basic. His glassy pink eyes rolled from face to face. His mouth gaped in terror, some froth from the seizure still streaking his chin.
The biting stench of charred flesh hung in the air for quite some time, as did the man's tortured screams. Maul flayed the abdominal skin and muscles open, exposing the entrails, then burnt them, slowly, here and there … here and there. The odor overwhelmed his delicate olfactory sense, yet he dare not retch. Each time he looked up, Master's eyes observed his every twitch, hands poised to strike plasma at the slightest expression, the softest cough.
When he was finally dead, Master ordered him dismembered and left outside the lower hangar door to ward off any further attempts at entry. They left the pieces there until they could no longer stand the smell; then it was the apprentice's task to dispose of them in the sewer.
That energy in the Force is now yours to direct.
Yes, my master.