( 32 BBY - The Invasion of Naboo )
The Twin suns of Tatooine made the sands of the desert writhe and squirm with heat waves, even as Maul's fever made him feel like he was burning up from the inside.
His skin was tender and swollen, with cracked scabs oozing into the bandages wrapped around his back and neck. The inside of his robe and the seat of his chair was slick with a mix of pus and sweat. He would have passed out hours ago if it wasn't for a sith technique he was using to ignore his body's needs.
The bacta injections and bandages he kept on the Infiltrator just weren't enough to deal with the burns, not after his wounds had been soaked in the filthy rain of Raxus Prime. Weeks later, they were still swollen and infected. His vision occasionally swam, not just from the heat outside the ship, but a hazy knife of unconsciousness that tried to force its way through his iron will. All he had to keep himself going was his hate, and anger for that damned old man.
The Jedi Master had been warned, why else would there be a bomb on his ship? That Count had told him, he must have! When Sidious was finally done with Dooku, Maul would cut down him and his entire brood!
Maul's vision was swimming even as he grit his teeth and shook his head. Forcing the weakness out of his mind, if not his body, Maul tightened his grip on the armrests of his chair as his probes rushed over the dunes of Tatooine. He needed immersion in a bacta tank, and time to recover, but there was no chance of that.
Before he had the chance to fully heal, his Master had called with a new mission, one that couldn't wait. This moment was important. Too important to wait. Sidious had long been preparing for this, the culmination of a lifetime of political maneuvering. Everything on Naboo had to go perfectly, and Maul had to make sure of it.
He couldn't refuse Sidious. If he did, he would need to give a reason why. Need to admit that the paranoid old man was ready for him, waiting. Maul hadn't been cautious. Hadn't been careful. Maul had challenged the Jedi directly, honorably, like a Sith of old would. Of course the Jedi scum would betray that challenge in a cowardly way.
How could he tell his Master that he nearly died? That his skin was seared by plasma fire that he only barely kept at bay with the force? A Sith did not survive by displaying weakness, especially not to those they would one day attempt to usurp. If it hadn't been for the power lent to him by the Force Nexus, Maul would have been incinerated.
Luckily, it hadn't seemed like Maul would need to do much on this mission. The Trade Federation would blockade the planet, invade its surface, capture the Queen, and force her to sign a treaty in an afternoon. Maul would spend the whole time meditating, and nursing his strength, only there in case something went wrong.
Then the Nemoidians had bungled.
The Republic had sent two Jedi, the Viceroy panicked, and tried to kill them. The Jedi escaped, freed the Queen, and managed to flee to Tatooine before Maul was finally called in to fix their mess.
One of his probes issued an alert, Darth Maul opened up a connection to it. In binary, the drone warbled a few notes of a report on a Naboo cruiser it found parked outside the city. Maul was relieved. No doubt, that was where Queen Amidala was.
Sidious orders had been to eliminate the two Jedi first, but now that he was on this scalding cesspit, dripping with sweat even inside the shelter of his ship, he wondered if he really could face the Jedi Master and his Padawan together? At full strength, it would be a challenge, but as he wasn't sure he could defeat them together. Whatever Sith techniques he used, his reactions were still slowed, his muscles weakened by the infection lingering in his lungs and lymphatic nodes.
Gritting his teeth, he was forced to admit it wouldn't be wise to challenge the two directly. If they separated, he could try to pick them off individually, but for now he would just have to focus on his true objective, Queen Amidala. Sidious would not be impressed by Maul passing over a battle with the Jedi, but he had more important things to focus on right now, like seizing the position of Supreme Chancellor.
The two Jedi were a side objective, and Maul just wanted to get off this miserable world. No point in waiting around when the opportunity was right there.
Without hesitating, Maul took off in his infiltrator. He circled around above the city, locking onto the parked ship with his jamming equipment. He briefly considered just blasting the ship to pieces on the ground, but decided against it. It wouldn't do for him to assume the Queen was aboard, only to learn later that she'd somehow escaped. His scanners revealed about two dozen lifeforms aboard the ship, but with only a few blasters among them. Only one lightsaber, so the Jedi had separated.
Maul switched on the Scimitar's autopilot, before dropping the rear ramp and leaping out. The Dark Side howled in his ears as he slowed his descent, before crashing directly on the bridge of the ship. This was no graceful Jedi touchdown, but a Sith call to battle. Durasteel bent and warped outward from him in rippling waves, leaving a misshapen crater in the nose of the ship.
The pilot in the chair looked at him shocked, a middle aged man with a receding hairline and his hands at the controls. He was probably trying to figure out what was causing his dropped signal.
Either way, the pilot was fast enough to throw himself out of the way when Maul plunged his lightsaber through the transparisteel screen. The pilot scrambled to his feet, and ran down the corridor as Maul carved his way aboard the ship.
Maul's ship signaled to him that people were trying to flee the cruiser, and he sent an order to blast anyone who tried to flee, as well as deploying some probes to circle the area and give warning if an unlucky stranger dared to interfere.
Stalking forward down the ship's hall, Maul detected a mind lying in ambush just in the next room. The Dark Side revealed to him a blaster, and fear, barely kept in check by determination. Guided by the force, Maul threw his saber staff forward to slash through the man and the tight corner he was hiding behind, feeling his mind wink out.
In the tight confines of the ship, Maul didn't have much chance to use both of his saber blades, but found no real challenge in the few who tried to stop him. Most of them weren't even soldiers with blasters, but pilots and handmaidens armed with anything sharp or heavy they could find.
Mind after mind winked out in the force, and Maul felt little satisfaction as none of them were his target. His ship's computer reported that it had blasted at least one group that had tried to flee, but after seeing the blaster shots raining from above, the ship's passengers had hidden in the hangar bay.
Feeling a fearlessly determined mind up ahead that was trying to rapidly calculate an escape, Maul suspected he'd finally found his target in the Queen's private chamber. He hit the switch, and the door hissed open. Maul barely heard the blaster shot, which he deflected back at its source on reflex.
The shooter was a woman in her mid twenties with her face painted white and her hair raised in elaborate rolls and curves. The Queen of Naboo collapsed in a smoking heap, the air in the chamber filled with the smell of burning skin and clothes, her mind disappearing in the force.
Smirking to himself, Maul turned to leave back the way he came, only to feel another approaching. This wasn't another one of the Palace Militia, but a Jedi, and from how frantic his thoughts were, certainly the Padawan. A Master would be more in control of himself.
Maul hesitated. The Queen was dead, he had accomplished his main mission and could leave now. Then he scowled, realizing he would be running away from a padawan. The shame of it was too great, the weakness it demonstrated. This method of attack had been cowardly enough. A true Sith craved the chance to test his strength, and Maul would not back down from a mere learner just because he wasn't at his peak strength.
Maul stepped into this level of the ship's connecting hallway, and waited with his lightsaber drawn.
At the other end of the ship, coming up from the engineering deck, came a blue eyed, brown haired human man in his mid twenties, wearing the tan robes of a Jedi. He looked at Maul, then past him to the Queen's bed chambers, before his face set in grim determination.
Without a word he drew his own lightsaber, burning blue in the hallway between them.
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