Free End Game by James Luceno

END GAME

    A new Darth Maul short story by James Luceno

    The Sith Infiltrator was in hyperspace when Darth Maul engaged the autopilot to give himself time to think. Reflection was so foreign to him that the impulse to look inward left him momentarily astonished—though not enough to keep him seated at the ship’s controls. Shrugging out of the acceleration chair’s harness, he rose and paced from the control console to the aft arc of passenger seats; then from the entrance of the lift to the power-cell array access panels. Though Tatooine was light-years behind him, he couldn’t shake the planet from his thoughts, and despite the Scimitar ’s speed and cloaking ability, it was as if the sleek ship, too, were incapable of outracing the past.
    If I had it to do over again …
    In his thoughts he was dropped into the speeder bike’s open cockpit, racing across Tatooine’s desolate landscape; in the next moment, executing an impromptu though acrobatic leap that carried him to the yellow ground, his lightsaber in hand, its energy blade meeting that of the Jedi Master whose name he had since learned was Qui-Gon Jinn.
    Probe droids Maul had dispatched upon landing on Tatooine had located the bearded human Jedi in the stands of the Podrace stadium and later in the settlement known as Mos Espa. One of the trio of Dark Eyes had also discovered the Queen of Naboo’s starship where it had put down in the wastes of the Xelric Draw. Intent on availing himself of every advantage, Maul had waited for Qui-Gon to set out on foot for the gleaming ship before launching his surprise attack. Qui-Gon and a human slave boy had hurried across the oven-like wastes while Maul watched from the padded comfort of the speeder’s seat. Maul’s eyes were better adapted than human eyes to the glare of Tatooine’s twin suns, his lithe body better suited than the Jedi heavyweight’s to fighting in soft sand …
    And yet nothing had gone as planned.
    Somehow Qui-Gon heard the sibilant whine of the speeder’s repulsorlift and had whirled aside at the last instant. With some 250 meters separating Qui-Gon and the slave boy from Queen Amidala’s vessel, Maul would have had time to whip the speeder through a turn and make a second pass. Instead, in his eagerness to face off at last with a celebrated Jedi lightsaber Master, he had leapt into action …
    Qui-Gon’s shrewd readiness had almost taken Maul off his guard. But the first ferocious clash of their blades had told him that the Jedi was equally surprised. And why shouldn’t he be—about being attacked not only by a Dathomiri Zabrak who had appeared out of nowhere, but also by one trained in the dark arts and wielding a crimson-bladed lightsaber? Regardless, Qui-Gon had quieted his mind and brought his imposing might to bear against Maul’s agility. He had matched Maul’s furious strokes with a disciplined intensity all his own. In the midst of their no-quarter contest the Jedi had even managed to order the slave boy to flee for the safety of the waiting ship, where Maul had nearly forgotten all about him.
    The Force favors this Jedi! Maul recalled thinking.
    After all the droids, assassins, gangsters, and soldiers he had vanquished, finally a worthy opponent. Not since he had fought and been defeated by his own Master, Darth Sidious, had Maul been so committed to a challenge.
    Then, just when Qui-Gon’s stamina was beginning to flag and the fight was tipping in Maul’s favor, the incomprehensible had occurred: Qui-Gon had fled . Instead of standing fast and fighting to the finish, he had bounded onto the lowered boarding ramp of the Royal Starship as it was lifting off, leaving Maul—sandblasted as much by disenchantment as raw anger—to watch the craft disappear into Tatooine’s blue sky.
    Many a being had run from Maul, but never a worthy one.
    When, on orders from his Master, he had single-handedly butchered the trainers and trainees at the Orsis combat academy five years earlier, not