Free End Game by James Luceno Page A

a being had fled. Not the Mandalorian Meltch nor his pair of lethal Rodians; not Trezza or his well-trained Nautolan ward, Kilindi. All had stood their ground and died with honor. Spinelessness was something that had never entered Maul’s imaginings. What, then, was he now supposed to think of the Jedi, whom he had been raised to hate since infancy?
    On Coruscant, before leaving for Tatooine, Maul had found it impossible to contain his enthusiasm. At last we reveal ourselves, Master , he had said to Sidious. And in the end that long-awaited moment of revelation had led to nothing more than disappointment. Watching the departing starship, Maul had wondered: Could he succeed in tracking the Jedi and the Queen a second time?
    How would his failure impact the overall mission?
    At the time he had tried to make excuses for himself, blaming his inability to overpower Qui-Gon on the leg wound he had sustained during his brief capture by Togorian pirates. Or the slave boy might have been to blame—a seeming nexus of Force energy, the boy had somehow abetted Qui-Gon in the fight. But Maul had known better than to make excuses to his Master, or even mention the run-in with the Togorians.
    But if he had it to do over again, he wouldn’t make it a challenge.
    Even if that meant depriving himself of the thrill of combat and the pleasure of seeing the pained surprise in Qui-Gon’s eyes when Maul’s blade pierced him. He would simply race in at top speed with his lightsaber already ignited and decapitate Qui-Gon Jinn where he stood. That way he might also have been able to pilot the speeder through the ship’s open hatch, kill Qui-Gon’s Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and capture the Queen …
    How his Master would have praised him then! Instead Maul had been forced to weather Sidious’s obvious disenchantment in abject humiliation. Darth Sidious had dismissed the setback, almost as if attributing Maul’s failure to—what? Surely not fate , since his Master was as much as overseeing that. That left only Maul’s lack of ability.
    His weakness .
    Currently the two Jedi, the Queen, and her entourage of handmaidens and protectors were on Coruscant, and Maul had been ordered to Naboo to assist the loathsome Neimoidians in rooting out possible pockets of resistance while Sidious modified the plan.
    Even Sidious despised having to deal with the Neimoidians. So the assignment to advise them felt like a punishment, as had happened following Maul’s massacre of the leaders of the Black Sun crime syndicate. Then Maul had been banished from Coruscant after confessing to Sidious that he had identified himself as a Sith Lord to one of the crime bosses before killing him.
    In previous missions undertaken for his Master, Maul had felt allied to the dark side, but something had changed since Tatooine. Was he now in some sense engaging the Force itself, through its proxies, the Jedi? Should he have been more circumspect and lured the Jedi to him instead of initiating the attack?
    Would his Master even allow him a second chance?
    He wouldn’t have believed that his hatred for the Jedi could deepen, but it had—for making him appear ineffectual in the eyes of Darth Sidious and for putting him in such an untenable fix …
    Enough thinking , Maul commanded himself.
    The solution was that he couldn’t allow himself to fail again.
    Convinced that he had put the past to rest, Maul came to a halt in the Infiltrator’s cabin.
    However, as if his legs had a will of their own, he was suddenly back in motion, pacing from the control console to the acceleration chairs.
    If I had it to do over again …

    Holoimages of Naboo didn’t do it justice.
    A blue-green gem in an otherwise lackluster star system, the planet was one of the most pristine Maul had ever seen. This was as it should be, being the homeworld of Darth Sidious in his guise as Senator—perhaps soon to be Supreme Chancellor—Palpatine. Years earlier Maul had fallen prey to a plot that would have