Star Wars_ Darth Maul 02_ Shadow Hunter - Michael Reaves [11]
The ship had been provided for him by Lord Sidious only recently, and he was still getting used to it. It handled well and easily, however. He approached Coruscant over the south pole. He was not concerned about being spotted, even though Coruscant had the most sophisticated and far-reaching system of detection arrays of any world in the galaxy. The Infiltrator boasted a state-of-the-art stygium crystal cloaking device and thrust trace dampers capable of confounding even Coruscant’s warning grids.
He chose as his landing site a rooftop pad on an abandoned monad in an area of the city awaiting urban demolition and renewal. He left the cloaking device activated and deployed his speeder bike through the cargo hatch. The bike was a stripped-down model, designed for maximum speed and maneuverability. Maul continued his journey across the cityscape on it.
Lord Sidious had been able to learn that Hath Monchar maintained an apartment on Coruscant in a well-to-do section of the city several kilometers south of the Manarai Mountains. Maul did not know the exact address, but that did not matter. He would find the missing Neimoidian, even if he had to search the entire planetary city.
It was impossible even to conceive of a time when he had not been in thrall to Darth Sidious. He knew that he had come originally from a world called Iridonia, but knowing that was like knowing that the atoms composing his body had originally been born in the primordial galactic furnaces that had forged the stars. The knowledge was interesting in a remote, academic way, but no more than that. He had no interest whatsoever in learning any more about his past or his homeworld. As far as he was concerned, his life began with Lord Sidious. And if his master ordered an end to that life, Maul would accept that judgment with no argument.
But that would not happen as long as he served Lord Sidious to the best of his abilities. Which, of course, he would. He could not even imagine a situation or circumstance that would prevent him from doing so.
Faintly, from behind him, came the wail of a siren. Maul glanced back over his shoulder and saw he was being pursued by a police droid on a speeder similar to his own. The sight did not surprise him; he knew he was breaking several traffic laws due to his speed and course. Just as he knew there was no way the droid was going to catch him.
Maul pushed the speeder bike to maximum velocity, rocketing through the ferrocrete labyrinth on a plane between two levels of skycar traffic. The speeder had no stealth capabilities, but that did not matter; his speed and his control were more than sufficient to leave the pursuing droid behind. He knew the droid was comlinking ahead, calling for reinforcements to surround him and bring him to a stop.
He couldn’t let that happen.
There was a break in the lower traffic flow ahead. Maul altered the speeder’s thrust angle and dived through it, descending several stories until he dropped through a fog layer that hovered perhaps thirty meters above the ground. They could still track him, of course, but he knew that, as long as he was not endangering any lives other than his own, he would not be as high a priority to them. Besides, he had almost reached his destination.
He arrived without further incident and parked the speeder bike in one of the local lots, paying for the rest of the day in advance. Then he stepped onto a slide-walk that carried him toward one of the many outposts of the Coruscant Customs Bureau.
Several times he noticed people looking at him; his appearance was capable of turning heads even on so cosmopolitan a planet as Coruscant. It would take considerable concentration to blind these crowds to his presence by using the Force, though it could be done. But it did not matter who saw him at this point. If all went according to plan, he would be off Coruscant in less than a day, his mission completed.
He