Chapter One (cont.)

There were four of them, top-of-the-line Duelist Elites from Trang Robotics, all armed in different ways: one with a steel rapier, one with a heavy cudgel, the third with a short length of chain, and the last with a pair of double-edged hachete fighting blades as long and wide as a human's forearm. They had been programmed with the skills of a dozen martial arts masters, and their reflexes were calibrated just a hair faster than human opti-mum. Their durasteel chassis were blaster-resistant. They had come factory-equipped with behavioral inhibitors that prevented them from delivering a death blow once their opponent had been beaten, but these inhibitors had been nullified by their new owner. A mistake against one would be fatal.

Darth Maul did not make mistakes.

The Sith apprentice stood in the middle of the training chamber as the four droids circled him. His breathing was calm, his heartbeat even and slow. He was aware of his body's reactions to the danger-aware and in control. Two of the droids-Rapier and Chain, he silently named them-were within his field of vision. The other two-Cudgel and Hachete-were not, being behind him. It did not matter; through his awareness of the Force he could sense their movements as plainly as if he had eyes in the back of his head. Maul raised his own weapon, the double-bladed lightsaber, and triggered the power control. Twin lances of pure energy boiled forth, hissing and crackling in crimson loops that began and ended at the two flux apertures on either end of the device. Any Jedi Knight could wield a single-bladed lightsaber; only a master fighter could use the weapon first designed by the leg-endary Dark Lord Exar Kun millennia ago. Unless one was in perfect attunement with it, the weapon could be as deadly to the user as to the opponent.

Rapier lunged at full extension, its metal knee joint bent al-most to the floor. The needle point flickered toward Maul's heart, almost too fast to see.

The dark side blossomed in Darth Maul, the power of it resonating in him like black lightning, augmenting his years of train-ing, guiding his reactions. Time seemed to slow, to stretch.

It would have been easy to chop the blade itself in half, as few metals could resist the frictionless edge of a lightsaber. But there was no challenge to that. Maul spun toward the point, twisted around the outside, and snapped his hands horizontally at chest level. The left blade of the lightsaber sheared through Rapier's sword arm. Both arm and weapon clattered to the floor.

Maul dropped to his left knee as, from directly behind him, Cudgel's full swing whistled over his head, barely missing his dorsal horn. Without looking, guided by the vibrations of the Force, he thrust backwards with the right blade, then forward with the left-one, two!-skewering both Cudgel and Rapier in their abdominal compartments. Sparks spewed from shorted ci-cuitry, and lubricating fluid sprayed in a reddish oily mist.

Using the momentum of the forward thrust, Maul dived over the collapsing droid before him, flowing smoothly into a shoulder roll. He came up twirling his lightsaber overhead, then stepped down solidly into the terŠs kŠsi wide stance called Riding Bantha. Even as he did the movement, part of him was monitor-ing his body's state. His breathing was slow and even, his pulse elevated by no more than two or three beats per minute from its resting rate.

Two down, two to go.

Chain charged, its weapon whirling over its head like the propeller of a gyrocraft. The heavy links lashed toward him. Maul spun on his right foot and shot his left leg out in a powerful side kick, slamming his boot into the droid's armored chest, stopping it cold. He dropped into a squat, spun the lightsaber like a scythe, and sickled the droid cleanly at the knees. Lower legs gone, it collapsed as Maul again twisted himself and his weapon, flowing into the form known as Rancor Rising. He brought the right blade up between Chain's mechanical thighs, hard, using his leg muscles to augment the strike as he pushed up from the squat to a standing position.

The force of his strike bisected Chain from its crotch right through the top of its head. There was a hard metallic screech as the droid came apart in two halves. Its feet and lower legs hit the floor slightly before the upper halves landed atop them.

The acrid smell of burned lubricating fluid and circuitry washed over Maul. What was, seconds ago, a functional piece of high-tech equipment was now a barely recognizable pile of scrap metal.

Three down, one to go.

Hachete moved to Maul's left, whirling its razor-edged blades in defensive movements-high, low, left, right, a blind-ing pattern of edged death waiting to blind the unwary and cut him down.

Maul allowed himself a twitch of his lips. He pressed the lightsaber's controls. The humming died as the energy beams blinked out. He bent, keeping his eyes on the droid as he put the weapon on the floor and shoved it away with his boot.

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