Mace Windu walked between the Shadow Syndicate enforcers with measured strides. He could tell they were unsettled by his lack of apprehension. Most outsiders who came this far must be cowering. Mace, on the other hand, had no more than a passing acquaintance with vulnerability. Fear did not come easily to him, either, even in the present circumstances of the galaxy.
The final doors flew open. A heavily tattooed red-skinned Zabrak looked up from a datapad, ready to look imperious, only for his mouth to open in shock once he recognized Mace. "Leave us," he told his enforcers.
"But-"
"Leave."
The enforcers skittered out, leaving Mace alone with Darth Maul.
"Master Windu," Maul eventually began. He steepled his fingers as he leaned forward. "I must admit, your appearance is quite the surprise."
"I hope you might join me in striking a blow against the Emperor."
"Do your not have your Rebel friends?"
Mace inclined his head. "They do not grasp the mysteries of the Force. While their attention to military matters is commendable, letting Sidious acquire the object in question could prove catastrophic."
"Ahh." Maul leaned back. There was an innate sense of melodrama to him that Mace couldn't help but appreciate after years cooped up with Rebels hiding themselves and living under an oppressive cloak of fear. "I assume that this relic is in transit? Newly rediscovered, and Sidious is only just hearing about it?"
"A collector of various ancient relics has recently passed. Her heirs have appraised some items already, and one is quietly asking about the value of what can only be an Orb of Scrying."
That made Maul snap to attention. "An Orb of Scrying. Yes, yes. I will help you, Master Windu – on one condition."
"And what would it be?" Mace asked, despite knowing exactly what Maul would say.
"The Orb goes to me."
"Acceptable."
Maul blinked in shock. "So you value this so much you would give up one of your precious friends."
"If Sidious gets his hands on it, he will destroy the last vestiges of hope in the galaxy," Mace explained. "Your vendetta is laser targeted and personal, and I have every confidence in Obi-Wan's ability to defeat you." If Obi-Wan wasn't dead already.
"Kenobi will be mine," Maul snarled. "And make no mistake; I will destroy him."
Mace raised an eyebrow that was not quite doubting enough to incite Maul into violence or a further hissy fit. "If you say so. Now, do you wish to hear about the Orb's current location?"
Telit Paduri had, before her demise, been a wealthy Pantoran heiress, collector of all manner of odds and ends, and sponsor of archaeological expeditions of various shades of legality and legitimacy. She had died childless, so her effects and estate had been seized and split between a number of loyal Imperials, most of whom had no appreciation for the dangers the collection might contain, only that the objects were expensive and they might net quite the profit selling them through means legal or illegal. The Orb's current owner was Planetary Governor Orva Blovis, who'd acquired the largest share due to her position, and had little idea of antiques, preferring to concentrate on sending Talz to labor camps and other things fitting for an over-the-top villain in a children's cartoon.
Mace and Maul could have impersonated some manner of appraisers or potential customers, but that would've left more of a trail than either of them was comfortable with. As a result, they were sitting in the cold, ostensibly having a late season picnic at the edge of the park that did not quite border on Blovis's mansion.
Mace poured tea from a thermos to the mugs he'd brought. "Did you bring what I asked?"
"Of course," Maul purred. "I could never forget your precious sandwiches."
There was no-one close enough to hear them and there were no audio sensors in the park yet, but it was best to start off with banal topics and code nonetheless. Mace nodded at confirmation that Maul had brought the replacement Orb – a nice enough piece of glasswork by a reclusive species which Telit Paduri would gladly have acquired that was wholly unremarkable in the Force – and grabbed a sandwich. The other necessary piece of equipment, an omni-slicing stick with an automated program that could slice through most types of lock, sat securely in his pocket.
Perhaps he should not have been surprised at the presence of meat – Zabraks were carnivores, after all – but being raised by a Mirialan meant that left to his own habits, he was mostly vegetarian. He kept his comments to himself and started some idle small talk about the weather as he cautiously reached out with the Force.
Blovis's mansion was no fort, being a heritage building that had previously been a small government office, but it had security adequate for a Planetary Governor on her short stays off Coruscant. Mace had lately become an expert in examining security systems with the Force, so he was confident the cameras lining the outer walls had gaps in their coverage, and that the security doors should open. It was harder to probe further in, but if all else failed, the mansion was old enough that they should be able to crawl through the droid access.
"I've broken into much better equipped housing," Maul idly said as a response to a comment about the weather. "It seems our dear governor hasn't prized upgrades to her vacation home that highly."
"So it would seem," Mace agreed. There was no sense of danger in the Force. "What do you think of the cameras?"
Maul closed his eyes. Mace did his best not to shudder at the sudden oily chill of the Dark Side. "Terrible quality. The switch from day to night mode on that model is delayed. We should be able to walk through at dusk even without the gaps."
Mace made a noise of assent and tried to find inner peace and stability. It was hard in this Sith Empire, and made harder by his choice of company. Yet who else could he turn to? His fellow Jedi were dead or gone to ground, and there were few others who knew enough to care. Separatists and Republic loyalists had made common cause in their opposition to Sidious.
The small voice at the back of Mace's head said he'd make peace with any Inquisitor or even Vader if it meant the end of Sidious and his Empire. That did not mean he had to be happy about it.
"Dusk, then," he said, and let the conversation turn to speculation about the interior over a datapad with the plans.
They met again just before dusk like two old friends going for a walk together. Mace cast an appraising glance at Maul's headwrap – there mostly to disguise his markings and horns – and deemed it adequate for the task.
Besides, if anyone discovered the substitution, Mace would rather Sidious assume Maul had done it in his obsession for Obi-Wan. Mace himself Sidious thought dead, and he'd rather the state of affairs continue.
The satellite town Blovis had purchased a mansion in was not heavily trafficked at this time, though the occasional sunset watcher passed them on the way. The stargazers would not be out for another few hours. In the meanwhile, the roads leading to the mansion weren't heavily trafficked, and few people passed them.
Darkness draped the lands. Mace led Maul past the mansion, then sidled through a gap in the cameras at the corner until they were at the wall. A short walk brought them to an emergency exit.
Maul leaned his palm onto the wall and pinched his brow in concentration. Mace was happy to let him handle the lock.
Then the door clicked open. "Good job," Mace murmured.
"Was that ever in doubt?" Maul replied, though he did sound rather self-satisfied.
They slid in and locked the door behind them. Mace brought up the holomap of the plans at the minimum possible brightness.
"Ah, a camera," Maul said in a low voice. "Did you bring the equipment for overwiring their output?"
"No, we're going through the droid access tunnels."
Maul's offended expression was funny enough Mace came disturbingly close to cracking a smile. Maul snarled and hissed as a follow-up; Mace had to turn and concentrate on unscrewing the screws holding the access panel closed with the Force lest his expression further distract Maul from their mission.
The access panel was small, but the droid access – built for the larger cleaning droids of the pre-Ruusan Reformation era in which the mansion had been built – was slightly roomier. Mace could crawl on elbows and knees but only barely.
"I'm too old for this," Maul grumbled while Mace consulted the holomap and the Force.
"Are you even forty yet?" Mace replied and shut off the holomap. "There's a vertical shaft twenty meters thataway. The Orb should be on level five."
Maul let out an expressive groan that was probably accompanied by an eye roll, but due to the geometry of their circumstances, Mace couldn't see him. He also couldn't respond with the appropriate raised eyebrow, so he started crawling.
The access shaft was hard against his knees and elbows. They slowly crawled to the vertical shaft accompanied only by the sounds of their breaths and Maul's occasional hisses. Then they shimmied up the shaft, counting the storeys.
The join of flesh and metal on Mace's right hand ached. He acknowledged the feeling and let it go.
Finally they reached the fifth level and crawled into a horizontal passage. Mace reached out with the Force to glean any hint of where the Orb of Scrying might be.
"Ah." A spark of something flashed across Maul's presence in the Force. "To our left. Perhaps two access hatches forward."
Mace wondered how Maul could've sensed the Orb first. A Jedi Master, trained in detection of Sith objects, versus-
"Dark calls out to dark," Maul whispered reverently.
"Two access hatches," Mace repeated.
No audible reply, but a sharp sense of amusement in reply to Mace's unease. Maul may or may not be a Sith anymore, but he was still a creature of the Dark Side. The attitudes and habits would persist.
Mace gently grasped the screws holding the access closed and turned them with the Force. It was hard to peer at the details of another room without visual aid, but he levitated them to a location that ripped open no shatterpoints. He did the same with the panel itself.
The room was dark. Mace was not so foolish as to turn on the lights.
"Intriguing," Maul said behind him.
Mace was reminded that Zabraks had superior night vision. He only had the Force.
This close, Mace could feel the Orb's presence. He slowly made his way to the chest it was in, one of many, and knelt before it. The room had not been trapped, but the lock...
A small creak of machinery accompanied Maul kneeling next to him. "Did you forget your omni-slicing stick?"
"I merely wonder whether this is trapped," Mace replied.
"If Blovis cared enough to trap it, they would have trapped the room," Maul said dismissively. "Quit wasting time."
Mace observed the world through the Force very carefully as he inserted the stick into the lock. No warnings came and no shatterpoints opened or emerged. A few weaker ones closed, reflecting decisions not made which might have changed the world years down the road. The two larger ones that had hovered near him, one since he'd learned of the Orb of Scrying and another since Maul had agreed to his plan, remained unchanged.
The chest clicked open. Mace raised the lid with the Force.
Inside the chest, the Orb of Scrying rested on a pile of wooden steles that had been covered by a red velvet cloth. The collection had obviously been packed haphazardly, with some underling or other directed to quickly grab what looked most valuable, rather than a curator being allowed to set up appropriate long-term storage. There was some space at the end that had been filled with thin leather-bound volumes.
Maul levitated the Orb of Scrying into his hands and grinned. "Finally," he whispered. "Finally I shall have my revenge." Mace gently nudged him with the Force, then, and he levitated the decoy into the Orb of Scrying's place.
The shatterpoint loomed large but did not close or burst open. Was it not related to the Orb, then?
With the stain of the dark side removed from the chest, Mace noticed there was something else in the Force. Very cautiously he reached out and tugged.
There was something there. It was stuck. Mace pushed it to the side and tugged again-
A Jedi holocron rose out of the chest, small and dull and nothing the unenlightened would ever miss. Mace snatched it out of the air and stuffed it in his pocket as the shatterpoint opened.
"Will that be missed?" Maul asked.
"It was not mentioned on any manifest," Mace replied. He was not the only one alert for anything that could be a holocron, and the Empire had much greater resources with which to track them. "Let's go."
He carefully closed and locked the chest with the Force, then led the way to the droid access. It was harder to descend than ascend, and as they crawled Maul's horns hit Mace's backside in his eagerness at least once, but they exited the same route as they'd entered without anything remarkable happening.
The night air bit at Mace's exposed skin when they opened the exterior door. He pulled himself to his full height and took his pleasure from being able to straighten his kinked spine.
The cameras must have kicked into dark mode. Mace very cautiously led Maul through the dark spot between cameras. He only relaxed once they were on the path.
Above them, the sky was clear, and the stars twinkled. They walked next to each other in some mimicry of old friends towards one of the open hills earmarked for stargazing back in the era of the Republic. Maul had his own illicit transport in the seedy spaceport, and Mace would leave on a ship in the morning. If the authorities noticed their actions, they would look suspicious – but a normal amount of suspicious, like spice runners or some other regular features of the underworld.
The ground was chilly beneath them and the grass just slippery enough to cause Maul's mechanical legs some trouble. Mace, however, was busy looking up at the sky.
No-one else was here this late in the autumn. Mace sank to the ground and let himself relax.
"I take it you have no further need for my presence?" Maul asked.
"No," Mace said. The second shatterpoint reared open. Obi-Wan, perhaps? Mace did not think he had that amount of influence on Maul.
"Farewell, then," Maul said.
The shatterpoint shuddered and began to close. "Wait."
Maul turned and stared at him, one brow ridge raised. The Force was silent in anticipation.
"If you see an opportunity to give Sidious grief, let me know," Mace finally said.
"You would work with a darksider, Master Jedi?" Maul sneered. "How far you have fallen."
"Perhaps I am simply desperate for company," Mace said mildly. "You are not the most objectionable person I have worked with, lately."
Maul did not reply, but the shatterpoint opened and stripped a layer of cloying cold off the Force as it went. Mace breathed more easily now: the night was cold and slightly damp, but his spirit was not.
"Perhaps we shall meet again," Maul eventually allowed. "Good night, Master Windu."
"Good night, Maul," Mace said as Maul turned and left with a sense of a new undertow whirling beneath the waters of his mind. It seemed Mace had succeeded in giving him something to think of. Perhaps he would find a better path for himself.
For now, though, Mace was left alone with his thoughts. The holocron burned in his pocket, a glimpse to a past where his people had been plentiful. All he'd had to give up to gain it was one of the few members of his Order potentially alive.
The Orb of Scrying was dangerous enough it had been worth it. The holocron was merely a bonus. That did not mean Mace didn't wish the Rebellion had had the resources to make a fake for him.
The stars shone above him and the Force was, for the moment, content. Perhaps Maul had realized some inner truth as a result of the journey. Perhaps Obi-Wan was already dead. In any case, the decisions had already been made, and there was no room for regret.
Mace leaned back and gazed at the stars. He had a flight in the morning. Before that, though, he could gaze at the specks of light, bright against the darkness of the void, and let the Force drape across him like a mantle of stardust.