Lightsabers alive and oscillating in front of her, Vosa landed astride the thing, her feet finding their balance with preternatural ease, hacking downward through the upper part of its head.
Down below, Maul yanked himself from the worm’s mouth, scrambling back to right himself. He heard a cry, and looked over his shoulder to see that the thing, in all its massive weight and appetite, had turned, writhing sidelong to pin Vosa beneath it.
The worm turns, and there are always more bones.
It was coiling the full extent of its hideous body in an attempt to simultaneously hold her down and devour her. On the far side of the medbay, Eogan was struggling to fire on it with the blaster that he’d taken from Radique’s hands, but none of that was going to have any effect on what was happening to Komari Vosa.
The worm was going to eat her alive.
Maul met Vosa’s eyes. Yet even now, he saw, in what was surely her final moment of life, there was no surrender in her response, no hint of fear in the way she fought it. Watching her, Maul felt a realization stirring beneath the rage to which he’d given himself over, an unfamiliar sense of connection, primitive and undeniable.
She was no Jedi.
She was no Sith.
She was something completely other, and the idea of giving this worm the privilege of ending her life now was not to be tolerated, not by Maul, not today.
He charged at it, the makeshift lightsaber swinging sideways in both hands as he thrust it directly into the thing’s gaping maw, then planted his feet and spun the blade in a 360-degree arc. His right arm felt like it was on fire. His right shoulder was screaming at him. He ignored it, sweeping the saber around again, carving the very teeth from its mouth, slashing at the mandibles from the inside, then spinning it the other way until he’d chopped the mouthparts themselves to ribbons.
The effect was immediate. With a piercing scream that Maul heard both in his mind and in his ears, the worm spasmed and slashed its tail, rolling sideways, as if bewildered by the fact that—after everything that had happened—it had somehow been bested.
At last it fell still.
Maul staggered backward, dragging himself from the thing’s maw, and saw Komari Vosa staring at him, hollow-eyed, from the other side of the medbay. She looked exhausted but triumphant.
“You did that.” Reaching up, she shoved the blood-soaked hair from her brow and gave him a wicked grin. “You killed it.”
Maul said nothing. His gaze traveled from the great dead bulk of the worm to where Eogan Truax was standing, and he remembered what he had forgotten.
“It doesn’t matter.”
She frowned at him. “Why?”
“There are electrostatic charges implanted in both of my hearts,” Maul told her. “They’re going to go off at any second.”
“But—”
“I’m going to die in this place.” He glanced at the crate on the far side of the medbay. “The material for the weapon is in there. Take it.”
Something tightened in the pit of his stomach, and he turned from her, walking toward the hatchway. “In giving it to you, I will be accomplishing the will of my Master.”
“Wait,” she said, moving toward him cautiously, hands raised. “What do you mean, an electrostatic charge?”
“There is nothing you can do.”
Something in her voice froze him in the doorway.
“I see now that I was wrong to attack you. When you stated that you wanted to deliver a weapon into our hands, I anticipated an ambush—some kind of trap.” Her voice faltered slightly. “I am not used to extending such trust.”
Maul said nothing.
“I am a Force user, you know,” Vosa’s voice said, and he could tell from the sound of her voice that she was drawing nearer to him. “Maybe there’s something I could do after all.”