Cutting sideways along the well-lit expanse of the prison’s central gallery, Maul glanced up at the ventilation shafts that ran overhead, each one stenciled with call signs and architectural designations. A series of worn letters were faintly visible overhead: VC 09-AMA.
He kept walking, fingertips tracing the beads of condensation from the walls, feeling it growing colder to the touch. The ceiling was sloping downward, the walls closing in as he made his way forward. Air filtration systems, atmospheric reprocessing units with fans the size of starship turbines, roared out their incessant threnody overhead, but the noise wasn’t enough to block out the sound of the prison’s gallery behind him. In between slabs of machinery, black lenses gleamed, following his every step. When the walkway ended in a T, he turned right, passed by the first corridor, and checked the shaft above him: VC 11-AAR.
Closer, then.
The big fans had gone quieter, and now Maul could hear his own footsteps echoing down the passageway. He stopped and sniffed the air, smelling stale water and engine lubricant. The cameras would still be watching him here, of course. That didn’t matter. If the prison administrative staff wanted to stop him, they could have shut down the concourse in front of him at any time.
He moved on, checking the ventilation markings every few meters now. When he reached 11-AZR, the walkway intersected with another passage. Maul stopped, turned right, and took three steps until he came across a series of curved steel rungs bolted into the wall, leading up to a maintenance hatch.
He froze.
Behind him, in the direction from which he’d come, something was coming, making a steady pounding noise. Maul held his breath and listened.
It sounded like wings.
Glancing up, he saw it coming, a black shape flying straight at him down the passageway. He ducked just in time, and it brushed past his face close enough that he felt the oily, musky-smelling slickness of its black feathers against his cheek. Pivoting in midair, the thing flapped its wings, settling itself on an electrical conduit, staring down at him with black, incurious eyes.
Maul looked up at it.
It was a clawbird, almost a half meter high, small for its breed. Maul had seen holos of them hunting womp rats on Wayland, with claws like vibroblades and a serrated beak that could rip through flesh like butter. But what was a mutated avian species from an Outer Rim planet doing in a prison?
Still staring at him, the clawbird opened its mouth and emitted a harsh, scolding caw. It sounded like laughter. The cry rattled down the length of the corridor. Maul scowled at the thing. It was making too much noise, and he couldn’t hear anything else over the din.
“Get out of here,” Maul told it. “Go.”
The bird stayed and croaked louder than ever, as if determined to betray Maul’s location to anyone in the area. Bending down, he found a loose metal bolt on the floor and pitched it at the bird, sending it upward with a startled croak. It flew away down the passage.
In the silence, Maul cocked his head, listening again. Now he could make out what he’d come to hear.
Footsteps.
Rapid but not panicked, coming faster now. Big, by the sound of it, but not clumsy or uncertain. Boots. Authoritative.
Maul climbed up the steel rungs toward the ceiling of the shaft. Bracing his feet against an overhanging electrical switchplate, he gripped the edge of the maintenance hatch and drew himself up until he disappeared into the shadows. He kept his body absolutely rigid, every muscle locked in place, staring straight down at the intersection of the two passageways below.
Directly below him, a figure emerged into view. The faint glow of equipment illuminated the helmet and face shield, the heavy broadcloth fabric of his uniform rustling as he approached.
A guard.
Maul found himself staring down at the top of the corrections officer’s helmet. From here it was impossible to see his face. Not that it mattered.
“I know you’re out there,” the CO said, looking from side to side. His hand was resting on his belt, not on the blaster but on something else, a flat black console of the dropbox strapped to his hip, with a green-glowing display that Maul couldn’t read from this angle. “Why you looking for Zero?”
Maul gripped the hatch in front of him more tightly, allowing himself one deep breath. A drop of moisture, ice cold and oily, fell from one of the overhead condenser units. It struck the top of his head, rolled down between his horns and off his scalp, and slithered down the side of his face to his chin.
“Zero already knows you’re different,” the CO was saying. “Heard you’re an assassin. Saw you fight. You’re not here by accident.”
Maul held absolutely still.
“The way he sees it, there’s only one reason that somebody like you would come out to the far corner of the galaxy and start asking for him,” the guard continued. “You came here to kill him. Am I right?”
Maul waited. The CO had stopped looking from side to side now. His eyes were riveted to something straight ahead of him.
The droplet fell from Maul’s chin and hit the guard’s helmet with a soft but audible plop. The CO stiffened, tilted back his head, and looked straight up at Maul, the whites of his eyes reflecting yellowish red in the light spill.
“I thought so,” he said. “You know what? I don’t even need this blaster to take care of you.” He indicated the dropbox strapped to his belt. “I got your numbers plugged in already, maggot. I touch this button, set off those bombs inside your chest, you’re dead before you hit the floor.”
“Where’s Zero?” Maul asked.
“You’re kidding, right?” His fingers flickered over the switches of the belt console, and Maul was almost positive that he hadn’t yet heard the noises at the far end of the walkway, whispers and footsteps that had become steadily more audible over the past few seconds. “You actually think he’d let you get the drop on him like this?” Now the CO’s entire demeanor had changed, developing an edge, losing whatever playfulness it might have had. “You never had a chance.”
“I don’t think so,” Maul said.
The distant sounds were clearer now, the whispering no longer bothering to keep itself stealthy, the footsteps no longer muffled. Maul watched as the CO started to react, the man caught completely by surprise by what was happening, but it was already too late. A storm of stomping feet came thundering down through the passage, an avalanche of noise clanging off the metal and shaking the length of the corridor from end to end. From either side of the walkway below, the sudden roar of inmates’ voices filled the closed space with howls and bellows of rage.
“What—?” The guard swiveled around, not sure where to look first.
They hit him from both sides at once. From where he was positioned overhead, Maul had a perfect view of the carnage below. A wall of bald human inmates burst forward, the Bone Kings barreling down one end of the walkway, while a second mass of bodies, the Gravity Massive, led by the Noghri Strabo, came stampeding from the opposite direction to meet their enemies head-on. The guard disappeared between them, immediately trampled underfoot.
Maul waited, timing his response to an internal clock whose nuances were a matter of pure reflex. The prisoners were already screaming. In the closed space above, he heard bones snap, the brittle crunch and crackle of cartilage being crushed, bodies flattened underfoot.
Now.
Hanging by his legs, extending both arms just above the battle, Maul thrust both hands down into the fray. He seized the guard by his helmet strap and yanked him upward, using his helmet like a battering ram to smash open the maintenance hatch and shove the man up inside. Alarms began to beep and wail from all sides.
Maul scrambled into the utility shaft alongside the guard, his hand locked around the CO’s throat.
“Switch those off,” he ordered.
“Can’t,” the guard panted. “It’s not—”
Maul pushed the guard back toward the open hatchway. “Turn them off or I’ll throw you down to them. They’ll rip you to pieces in a heartbeat.”
“I’m telling you, I can’t! Alarms have to be deactivated by central control! I swear!”
Maul took hold of the man’s right hand, pinning it down on the chain coupling where the hatch cover fit into its housing, and slammed the hatch down on it hard. The guard shrieked, his voice shattering as it reached the upper registers.
“Where’s Zero?” Maul asked softly in his ear.
“I don’t know!” The guard’s face had gone terribly pale except for two bright spots of red high up in his cheeks. Tears of pain stood out in his eyes. “Nobody knows!”
“How can that be? There are cameras everywhere.”
“Not on him! He comes and he goes! Even the guards don’t see where or how he gets in and out!”
“Then why did the Chadra-Fan send me here?”
“I told you, Zero thought you were here to kill him!”
“You tell him that I’m looking for him,” Maul said. “You tell him I want a real meeting, not a setup.”
“He doesn’t work that way!”
“Where’s his cell?”
“It’s on Level 8, Cell 22. Around the far corner—you have to look for it, but it’s there, I swear. Now please just let me go!”
Maul decoupled the hatch and let it hiss open. The guard groaned, withdrawing his fractured arm with a shuddering whimper, cradling his hand and wrist like a small dead animal dangling limply from his sleeve. Slowly he looked at Maul. Something savage had trickled into his eyes, filling them with rage.
“Inmate 11240,” he said, resting his good hand on the activation stud for the dropbox. “You’re as good as dead, maggot.”
Maul studied him. “We’ll see.”
The CO hit the button.
And nothing happened.