Maul watched the mess hall clearing out.
After the other inmates left, he had remained standing against the wall, observing the guards along the upper perimeter as they went about their patrols. He marked their passage along with the servo droids that circulated in and out of the hall along with the other inmates. At first nothing seemed to have changed. In the glare of the overhead lights he watched how the guards and the droids and the inmates all interacted, how they moved among one another, observing their patterns. There were places that they moved and stood and waited, and there were gaps—openings in the gallery that led back to the cells, vacancies where no light fell.
He’s been known to visit Ventilation Conduit 11-AZR.
It smelled like a setup, pure and simple. Yet it might also be the opportunity that he’d been waiting for. Remembering what Coyle had said, Maul felt a sharp wedge of tension pressing low and tight beneath his sternum—a sense of urgency to go forward and assert himself among those who would try to cut him down, to betray him and undermine his mission here. It was what his Master would have wanted.
You’ll go in as a criminal, Sidious had told him, and live among those animals, within the confines of your new identity of a mercenary and assassin, relying only on your own wit and cunning—not only for the purposes of the mission, but for your very survival. You must assume that every inmate will be looking for an opportunity to stab you in the back at any moment.
Straightening up, Maul took one more look at the mess hall until he found what he was looking for. In his mind, an idea had already begun to take shape. It was primitive, but it would work.
Off to his left, a crew of inmates that Coyle had identified as the Gravity Massive—perhaps six or seven in total, headed up by their Noghri and his Nelvaanian sidekick—had continued to loiter near the exit, all staring at him intensely. Maul stepped directly toward them. Drawing nearer, he saw all their exposed right arms beginning to tense and flex together, like the individual muscle fibers on a single organism. None of them took a step back.
“Are you Strabo?” Maul asked.
The Noghri didn’t flinch. “Who’s asking?”
“The Bone Kings.” Maul glanced back at the other gang on the opposite side of the mess hall. “They want a meeting.”
The inmate’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“That scum over there.” Maul turned and shot a glance across the mess hall to where the Bone Kings were standing on their side, glaring at him more intensely than ever. “They told me to give you the message.”
“What kind of meeting?”
“I don’t know,” Maul said, “and I don’t care.” He locked the Noghri in his glare, defying him to look away. “They said it’s happening in Ventilation Conduit 11-AZR.”
Turning, he walked away, not bothering to look back. By the time he got to the exit, an inmate from the Bone Kings crew, the bearded human that Coyle had identified as Nailhead, was blocking his way. The man was a monster in human form, scars rippling across his forehead, with a sharpened fragment of bone rammed through his nose. There was dried blood in his beard, and his teeth were crooked yellow pegs set at uneven intervals in his mouth.
“Hey, puke,” he said.
Maul stared at him.
“I’m Vasco Nailhead. I run the Bone Kings.” The man allowed a grin to flash across his face. “Suppose you tell me what you were saying to the Gravity Massive about us back there?”
“Ask them yourself,” Maul said. He started to take a step, and the man’s hand stopped him.
“I’m asking you.” The man leaned in close enough that Maul could smell the blood in his beard. His breath reeked like an open grave. From the cuff of his shirtsleeve, something sharp and yellowish gray gleamed, just barely visible at throat level, ready to slash. “Now, I’m gonna ask again, real nice. What did you say? Was it about what we done to them this morning?”
“They want a meeting,” Maul said.
“Is that right?” Nailhead licked his lips. “And just whereabouts did they say this little rendezvous was supposed to take place?”
“Ventilation Conduit 11-AZR.” Maul leaned in close. “Oh, they told me one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“They said get ready to bleed.”