Anakin screwed the plating of the pump back on. There hadn't been much wrong with it, but the parts had been very small, so Watto had given the pump to him while Mom worked on the rest of the moisture vaporator. Anakin went to the open vaporator and pushed the pump in. He felt the magnetic interlocks connect with the top and bottom and reached in to tighten the nuts unseen. His arms were only barely long enough to reach them.
The pump in place, he shimmied his arm out of the machine's innards and fetched the heavy maintenance panel from where it was leaning against the wall. Last year, he'd had to ask Mom to carry them, but this year he was strong enough to do it himself. And he could still do the smallest repairs, even if he could feel his fingers get in each others' way now.
After a bit of wrestling with the bolts, the panel was back on and the moisture vaporator was good to go. Anakin considered giving it a test run, but Watto liked to be present for those and he'd already retired for the night. Mom had been sent to scavenge parts from a speeder crash earlier and would be making dinner. Anakin put away his tools and locked the shop door behind him, leaving the moisture vaporator for another day.
The air felt heavy in his throat and the sky had a distinct darkened cast at the horizon. He quickened his steps in the face of the sandstorm.
Nonetheless, he couldn't help but feel something else thicken the air. It was like that memory of the day when Gardulla had lost him and Mom to Watto in a bet. He'd be worried – unlike Gardulla, Watto generally didn't starve or whip them, and couldn't afford to blow them up – but the air shimmered with excitement. Something big was coming. Something good.
Mos Espa's streets were emptier than usual and everyone still out seemed determinedly headed for home. All except one person.
He was of average human height or perhaps a bit shorter, and dressed head to toe in black, black clothes covered by a black cloak whose hood descended to his eyes. Only his face was visible, and that was partially black, too, with the rest vivid red. Anakin hadn't seen him or anyone of his coloration around, so he must be an offworlder. No-one came here voluntarily, so he was probably some new Hutt enforcer who'd gotten lost on his way to one of the palaces.
Then his eyes met Anakin's and he marched over. Anakin for a moment considered fleeing, but then saw sense and froze, eyes to the ground. He didn't know what he could've done to offend the man, but Hutts could afford to pay off damages for a damaged slave – or a dead one. He had to stay still. He'd have to do whatever the man wanted.
The stranger paused in front of him but didn't speak. Anakin risked a glance upwards and saw a glint from a tube of metal. Was that-
“Is that a real laser sword?” he asked, all fear evaporated in an instant. A Jedi! A Jedi had come to Tatooine!
“It's a lightsaber,” the Jedi corrected him, nonplussed.
“Have you come to free the slaves?” Anakin demanded. “There's a sandstorm coming up, you shouldn't be outside. Come, I'm sure Mom would be happy to feed you!”
He grabbed the Jedi's hand and dragged him towards the slave quarters. Mom always said the biggest problem in the universe was that no one helped each other, so they'd help this Jedi in his mission.
What few people had been on the streets and alleys with them trickled to nothing, the slaves all either huddled up inside or locked in with their owners. Watto and most other small-scale slaveowners rented houses here so their slaves couldn't kill them in their sleep, but some were less risk-averse and the rich of course had hired slave managers.
They arrived home well in time. The winds were whipping up, but not yet caking them with sand as Anakin palmed open the door of their quarters. “Mom! I'm home! I brought a guest!”
“I'll see about food,” Mom said as she walked into the main room, wiping oil from her hands onto a rag. She'd been working on the air filtration system, then. “Hello,” she told the Jedi. “I'm Shmi Skywalker. You've met my son, Anakin.”
“Indeed,” the Jedi sighed. He paused, considering something. “I am Maul,” he eventually offered. “Thank you for lending me shelter.”
Maul wasn't the kind of name Anakin had imagined a Jedi to have, but it was kind of wizard and Jedi were wizard too, so he could see a logic to it. “Are you here to free the slaves?” Anakin asked him.
“Anakin,” Mom chided him.
“But you said the Jedi would come to free us one day!”
“What if Maul's only here because his ship crashed?”
Anakin pouted. It was so unfair. All his life, he'd heard whispered stories about how someday the Jedi would come to free the Hutts' slaves like how they'd freed the Zygerrians' slaves so long ago. Now here was a real Jedi, in his home, and he wasn't going to do anything?
“I would prefer to keep the details of my mission secret,” Maul hesitantly said, “but yes. I am here to free the slaves.”
“Oh! You're keeping it secret from the Hutts!” Anakin realized. He didn't know if he should press for details, but – he couldn't contain himself. “How will you do it? I don't think the Hutts will just agree, even if a Jedi comes to ask, and if you have a surgeon droid remove everyone's chips, that's going to take forever and the Hutts would notice, and-”
“Anakin.”
Anakin sighed. He knew why Mom scolded him for pressing people, but he really wanted to know. And it wasn't like Mom would always scold him – that time he'd brought a lost Jawa home for a sandstorm, they'd all happily chatted about mechanics.
“Yes, I can't imagine that the Hutts would agree to any suggestion that lessened their profits,” Maul said. “And they would certainly notice if every slave suddenly started sporting surgery scars.” He leaned down and gazed at Anakin intently. His eyes were a glowing yellow. It was kind of wizard. “How would you free all the slaves of Tatooine, Anakin?”
“Um.” Anakin was suddenly aware of his mother's sharp gaze on them. “I guess you could see if there's some way to send a mass deactivation signal?” he hazarded. “All the detonators have a button to turn off the explosive, you see, and it's not like it needs contact, so there has to be a signal it sends.”
Maul nodded sagely. “Indeed, that would free the slaves – if it worked. Can you identify any factors that would cause your plan to fail?”
Anakin scrunched up his face. Were Jedi always like this? Though he supposed it was fair return for his earlier questioning and Maul had said he didn't want to speak about the details of his own plan. “The deactivation signal might be individual to the explosives, so we'd have to find a Hutt slave census to get everyone's chip IDs? Or we might not be able to send a powerful enough signal to reach everyone. I'm not sure we could use the thing the Hutts use to send the detonation signal to escaped slaves, and even though that reaches Anchorhead, I'm not sure if it reaches the other side of the planet...”
Maul nodded and listened silently as Anakin went through every possible thing he could imagine could go wrong with the plan. Mom handed him the plates and cutlery, too, and he set the table even if he was a guest.
“...and if the Hutts catch wind of us, they'll send enforcers after us and also detonate Mom and my chips and then we'll be dead,” Anakin concluded.
“Yes, that would be a concern for you,” Maul said. “Do you know where yours is?”
“Anakin's is beneath his left shoulder blade,” Mom called from the kitchen. She carried a pot of sherka grain porridge and set it on the table. She'd added some cast-off oilseed pressings that had halfheartedly rehydrated back to a pungent green. “I'm sorry we don't have anything better to serve.”
“I've eaten much worse,” Maul airily declared.
They ate in comparative silence. Mom and Maul both seemed to be contemplating something. The wind beat against the walls and whistled in the narrow spaces around them.
“The storm won't die down until the morning,” Mom eventually said. “We have a spare pallet and can gather some bedding.”
“The pallet will be enough,” Maul said. “I am used to sleeping rough.”
Mom looked at him with the same look she had when Kitster or Greedo or one of Anakin's other friends said they didn't need something she thought they did, but that didn't make sense. Maul was a Jedi. Sleeping rough wasn't something Anakin had thought Jedi did, granted, but obviously anyone sent to Tatooine would be someone who didn't need any luxuries. All of those on Tatooine were under Hutt control.
“At least let me give you a pillow and blanket,” Mom argued. “You'll need to be rested for what you're going to do.”
That gave Maul pause. “I ... Thank you.”
They cleared off the table, Anakin scrubbing the plates with clean sand while Maul hovered over him and Mom went to redivide the bedding. They didn't really have a spare pallet, unless Mom meant the tiny one Anakin had outgrown, so Maul was probably getting Anakin's and Anakin would have to sleep next to Mom. He was a bit big for it now, but he didn't mind, not really.
Mom carried Anakin's pallet, one of their few blankets, and a pillow she had been repairing to the little nook at the edge of the main room. “Here.”
Maul bowed. “Thank you, Lady Skywalker.”
Mom laughed. “Please, call me Shmi. Good night, Maul.”
“Good night, Shmi, Anakin,” Maul said as Mom pulled Anakin upstairs.
The door to the upstairs room closed behind them. “Do you really think he's going to free us?” Anakin whispered.
Mom knelt down in front of him. “Anakin,” she said, and he knew she was serious. “Whatever you do, don't mention his mission to anyone. Don't tell anyone he's here. Don't say you've met him. Don't mention him.”
“Not even to Kitster?”
“No. Not even to any of your friends.” Mom smiled. “Let's let it be a happy surprise if they get to be free. But if the Hutts hear even a peep about Maul's plans...”
“They'd kill him and us with him,” Anakin filled in. “All right. I won't mention it to anyone.”
“Good boy. Now, let's get ready for bed.”
Anakin nodded. He ended up curled up in his mother's arms, listening to the wind howl outside and sand beat the walls. He wondered how Maul was doing, sleeping alone on an unfamiliar world.
The storm had died down by morning, only the occasional gust of wind rattling the windows, and the dawn on the horizon was almost its regular color. It was too early for freepeople to be up, but the slaves would be rising and could go to their duties like usual.
Maul had left already. He'd folded up the blanket under the pillow. Anakin felt an odd disappointment settle over him as he ate breakfast.
He and Mom left for Watto's shop after Mom had dragged the pallet back upstairs. The moisture vaporator ran just fine under Watto's watchful eye and the day was utterly unremarkable. Nonetheless, something felt odd in the air, as if the sandstorm hadn't fully settled after all.
Maul woke early to a change in the Force. He rolled off whatever he'd been sleeping on and settled into a ready stance, lightsaber out but unlit. A few moments later he realized what had awoken him was the wind beginning to die down. He folded up the blanket he'd been given and slipped out into the predawn gloom, cloak drawn tight around him.
The sands battered him, whipping at every inch of exposed skin and prickling at his eyes. The storm had died down, but still demanded respect. Maul had long since learned that Nature was the greatest force of them all.
He let the Force guide his steps as he loped, eyes closed and hood drawn, away from the slave quarters and toward Mos Espa's freepeople and their dwellings. His discussion with young Anakin the prior evening had given him an idea, but he needed to see if he had the equipment to see it through.
Sidious had sent him to Tatooine based on a vision of Jedi coming here due to the invasion he was planning. Naboo was close; a craft with a hyperspace malfunction from the fighting might conceivably end up in this shithole.
Maul had planned to simply walk through the major city of the planet to get a lay of the land should the reappearance of the Sith end up involving high-speed speeder chases or lightsaber duels on rooftops. Instead, he'd come across a little boy extremely strong in the Force, blazing like the murderous suns in the sky and completely unaware of his cosmic power.
He'd considered killing the child – Sidious would have discarded Maul for him in a heartbeat, and there was no way Sidious would not have known of him once Maul made his report – but then he'd been mistaken for a Jedi and offered food and shelter. It did not often happen in the circles he was sent to, and for good reason. The child was so gullible it was hard to believe he'd made it to – well, whatever age he currently was – and his mother some caricature of hospitality. She must be extremely canny to have kept her son alive so long.
The other option had come to him as he'd listened to Anakin make and dissect a plan to free the slaves of Tatooine. Maul was a Sith. It was a sacred right to betray and defeat one's Sith master. He'd just take on Anakin as his own apprentice and pretend to be a Jedi, teaching him Jedi precepts that would slowly be corrupted with more and more of the word of the Sith before the final reveal of their mutual Sith nature and their jaunt to defeat Sidious. Then, some day, Anakin would betray and kill him, continuing the cycle. The thought warmed his hearts.
But to do that, he'd have to keep Anakin's presence secret and also free him and get the explosive from beneath his skin. Otherwise Sidious would simply call Maul over one day and the first item on the agenda would be detonating Anakin's explosive. Or perhaps the fifth. Sidious did have a keen sense for dramatic timing.
He would also have to free Anakin in a way that called no attention whatsoever to Anakin Skywalker. Hence he would have to free every slave on Tatooine.
The Force yielded to his will and told him where sentients slumbered and woke. He listened keenly until he came across a dwelling with one sleeping upstairs and three marinating in misery beneath, defeated like the Skywalkers' neighbors in the slave quarters. This would be his target.
He scaled the sand-pitted wall and reached out to crank open the window once he was at the sleeper's bedroom. He rolled in as fast as the Force made possible and closed the window behind himself.
One human man slept on an offensively soft bed, the kind of gaping maw that looked ready to swallow anyone who so much as touched it. His sleep-clothes were fine-woven and there were three hand-sized devices stacked on the nightstand furthest from the door. Score.
Maul considered how to arrange this. He'd kill the man and stage it as a suicide, with the detonators all deactivated, so it would seem like he felt guilty. Knowing the average slaveowner, it was not in the least plausible, but the slaves wouldn't look a gift eopie in the mouth.
There was a belted bathrobe hanging from a dresser. Maul pulled the belt to himself with the Force, knotted it into a noose, and considered where to hang the man. The ceiling was depressingly flat, the wardrobe structurally unsound, the door too risky – ah. There was a sufficiently hook-like structure at the top of the window.
Mindful of potentially squeaky floorboards, Maul inched towards the dresser and brought the noose closer to the man's neck. He touched the man's mind with the Force to force him deeper into slumber and levitated the noose onto him. He performed an extremely complex series of maneuvers to get the man out of the blankets and towards the window. He then attached the free end of the noose to the window while he kept the man up and asleep with the Force. Finally he let the man drop.
He'd misjudged: the man's neck didn't break with the fall. And, like everything that breathed, he instantly woke up when his airflow was cut off. Maul grabbed him, one arm bodily restraining the man's arms and the other hand plastered against his mouth to muffle the sounds of choking. Maul leaned down, down, drawing the man's weight down onto the rope but not so much the rope would break off-
Eventually, the thrashing stopped. Maul held the man like that for another minute, then another, before finally letting go. He wiped his bitten hand on his cloak and took a cautious step to the nightstand.
There was a name written onto each detonator with a flaking marker: Liuza, Faowe, and Rejana. Maul pulled a signal catcher from his belt and activated it. He then picked up Rejana's detonator from the top of the stack and began navigating the menus.
The option for making the chip explode was, of course, easy to find and at the top of each section. Rejana's personal information was also easy enough to find – Rejana Greved, sixteen, human, female, born into slavery on Nar Shaddaa, armpit of the galaxy, to Avinma Greved and an unknown father – but it took a bit of searching in the maintenance sub-menu to find the option for deactivating the chip.
He placed his signal catcher into record mode next to the detonator and pressed Deactivate. The signal catcher blinked twice in confirmation it had caught something and the detonator button now read Activate.
It would be best to gather some more data. Maul pressed Activate, then Deactivate again, and repeated the sequence with the other two slaves' detonators.
He finished up by placing the clearly deactivated detonators on the foot of the bed and slipped out into the dawn, taking care not to disturb the man's corpse as it hung. The sandstorm had fully died down by now.
Maul fled the scene of the crime like he had done many times before. This time it was easier, as Tatooine had no law enforcement. Still, he'd rather not risk notice.
His speeder bike was where he'd left it, outside city limits, but buried under a small mountain of sand. He lifted it all with the Force and to his delight discovered the bike still started, albeit stutteringly.
His little ship had also survived the sandstorm without so much as chipped paint. The shields Sidious had bought had done their job well.
The ship felt undisturbed and the Force did not cry with warning, but Maul still searched the entire craft before daring to relax. He sat down at the navicomputer and pulled out the signal catcher. A bit of poking revealed that the detonators' signal began with a 32-digit binary code that specified which chip was being addressed, then one of two 8-digit binary codes, depending on whether the chip was being deactivated or activated. Maul copied the deactivation code and thought.
There were just over four billion possible chip identifiers. The deactivation signals were short, but not infinitely so. He guessed perhaps a billion signals per second, perhaps a bit under. That would mean brute forcing sending a deactivation signal to each and every possible slave chip would take about five seconds. That was perfectly doable.
That left fabricating the dataspike that would do the job and installing it. Maul dug out an inconspicuous-looking one from his stash and connected it to his datapad. He went through his morning routine as he waited – light breakfast, exercise, an entire liter of water to replenish all that this Force-forsaken planet had extracted from him – and considered how to access the Hutt signal tower.
He had his local contacts, did he not? He palmed the dataspike and set off into the dawn that seemed intent to suck the moisture from his eyeballs.
Mos Espa's official entries had guards who wished to extort some protection fees from travelers. For a trained Force sensitive, they were trivial to bypass. The rest of the city, not so much, but Maul was trained in traveling undetected. The only security cameras seemed to be those of the Hutts, and the Hutts didn't care for what happened away from their properties.
It did not take long to feel Anakin's presence. Maul skirted around the edges of a Hutt-owned brothel and climbed into a scrapyard. Now, he wasn't looking for the son, but rather the mother-
“What are you doing here?” Shmi Skywalker whispered right next to him.
Maul did not quite ignite his lightsaber and behead her, but it was close. How had she managed to surprise him? It was embarrassing. “Do you know where Gardulla keeps the signal device she uses for detonation signals?”
“Third floor, behind the five-fold vaulted doors and in the steel isolation cage, but don't bother,” Shmi advised him. “Only her most trusted guards get to open the doors. Anyone else will trigger an alarm and a mass detonation signal. If you're going to send a deactivation signal, you're better off going for the hyperspace relay.”
“Will it do the same thing?”
“I've seen both.”
“They let a slave look at the detonation antenna?”
“I was the best they had.” Shmi smiled bitterly. “If I had done anything unapproved, they would've detonated Anakin's chip, and those of some random slaves. Gardulla was ... fond of such deterrence.”
Maul nodded. “Where's the hyperspace relay?”
“The control surfaces are inside the palace, but the actual thing is at the center of the roof. If you have wirecutters, you should be able to highjack the signal.”
“All I have is a dataspike.” He'd need something to convert it from code to actual signal – some sort of in-splicer for the signal – and he not only did he not anything on his ship, he didn't know where to get one.
A male voice yelled something indistinct in Huttese. “Come to the house at dusk,” Shmi said.
What was it that the Jedi kept saying? “May the Force be with you,” Maul said. Shmi looked at him, bemused, before scurrying off to do her owner's bidding.
The scrapyard was empty and her son inside. Maul slid between the scrap piles and into the city.
He rolled his shoulders and set off in a random direction. This was not the first time he'd had time to kill on a mission.
Perhaps he should surveil Mos Espa for Jedi and report on them to Sidious. His master would expect to hear from him within a few days. He would be well justified in leaving only a message if the Jedi weren't here – Sidious was very busy with managing the invasion. Maul would only respect his time.
Nothing touched upon Maul with the Force. No Jedi surveilled this wretched locale. The paths and rhythms the city reflected into the Force carried the aura of being long entrenched, engraved into the sandstone bricks that built the buildings. He wandered, people-watching, in a zigzag through the city until he reached its limits.
Gardulla the Hutt's palace gleamed in the distance. It was an ostentatious pile of sandstone plated with gold. Every visible surface assaulted Maul's eyes with its sheen. He wondered what sort of force field protected it from sandstorms.
Shmi had said the hyperspace relay was on the roof. Maul tried to squint but the glare was too strong to make out anything.
He considered for a moment. He had macrobinoculars on his ship, and would have to return there regardless for his message to Sidious. He should also scout the site of his self-given mission.
Decision made, he headed for his speeder and his ship. Tatooine's twin suns had risen high in the sky and beat down on him. He squinted his eyes against the loose dust in the air as he speeded off to the shade of his ship. The midday felt like it was baking the skin off his flesh.
His little ship was a welcome sight. He parked his speeder indoors to save it from melting and looked around.
The thing was a good ship, had been his home on missions for as long as he'd been old enough to go on them, and was sized for one Sith apprentice exactly. There was only one bed. The eating nook was tiny and stocked entirely with ration bars. The ship's only chair was the pilot's chair in the cockpit. It was a place to eat and sleep and a mode of transport, but the only company he could fit in was that of a corpse in storage. He could not bring his apprentice here. His apprentice would not find it a home.
Maul turned around slowly in the main room. The ship, in addition to being a compact space for one, was also very much Sidious's ship. The clothes he wore, the speeder he rode, the food he ate, his datapads, his tools, his very lightsaber, all were granted to him by his master, whom he was about to-
Maul knelt and turned the holocomm on with the Force. The call went out to Sidious. He waited, waited.
Eventually the tone indicated that he'd been redirected to Sidious's answering machine. He realized he hadn't checked the time difference to Coruscant.
“My Lord,” he began, eyes kept firmly to the floor. “I have scouted the city of Mos Espa. The Jedi are not here. I shall continue patrolling the city and its surroundings. Inform me if I am needed elsewhere.”
He ended the recording. The holocomm system beeped with acknowledgement of reception.
Now Maul needed to get out of his ship before Sidious called him anywhere. He grabbed a datapad, macrobinoculars, and a bag to hold it all. What else? A flask of water and ration bars. He ate and drank and filled a second flask as he went through the ship. Too much, and he couldn't carry it, and Sidious would be suspicious when he found the ship. Too little, and – well. Everything could be replaced. He grabbed all the untraceable cash and the block of valuable metal Sidious had given him before heading back out to the butchering suns.
He took his speeder through the blades of dust on the wind. The suns beat him, sucking dry his every breath and making his flesh itch with the need for relief. But he was a creature of the Dark Side. He would turn this suffering to strength.
The suns had noticeably dipped by the time he could sense the edges of Gardulla's palace through the heat haze. He left his speeder behind a dune that would perhaps give it a centimeter of shade and climbed his way to the top, boots sinking and slipping on the loose grains of sand.
Finally he reached the top and lowered himself onto his stomach. He flinched away from the sudden burning heat all over his front, but powered through. Pain was to be conquered.
He lifted the macrobinoculars from his belt and zoomed in on the Hutt palace. Engaging the anti-glare filters let him see the structure of the place: a mass of rectangular buildings that looked like they had grown into each other, like every time the owner had acquired more wealth she had commissioned a new wing for her palace until they grew into and around each other like eldritch abominations. The mass in the center was the largest and tallest and looked like it had been extended vertically at least once. One of the masses to the side was a landing pad, with a few makes of shuttle protected by some form of force field. Technological artefacts were tucked into the pad's perimeter and the wall next to it, leading up to the main section's flat roof. That was some sort of technical space, with what looked like an access hatch, a variety of cameras and other sensors – and in the center, a dome that must cover the hyperspace relay.
Maul zoomed in even more and turned on the analysis mode. Every edge was lit up with glow while flat panes disappeared into artificial dark. The roof's limits glowed gold and the hyperspace relay dome a cool gray. The dome's left edge had a double seam and, yes, the outline had a discontinuity. A door, then, that pointed away from Mos Espa.
Maul rose, blinking at the sudden influx of blinding light, and slid down to his speeder. He rode around the palace in a distant arc, keeping it only barely in view, then looked at it again with the macrobinoculars, mapping out the security measures and access points.
The hyperspace relay's access door was to the North, away from the city, and the lock on it seemed basic, which meant that the entire roof structure had some sort of protection. The vertical distance itself was easily scalable for a Force-sensitive, and Maul had a few potential routes picked out after his circumnavigation. The shuttle pad roof was likely too heavily alarmed, but the rest looked much more usable. Especially what was probably the roof of the guards' quarters. Maul could land feather-light and no-one had any reason to fear the guards escaping. The windows of the upper structure on that side were also extremely sparse, likely due to that being the direction of the prevailing wind and thus sandstorms.
The suns were almost at the horizon. Maul drank the dregs from his first flask and went to scout out ships at the spaceport. He sported a sizable dehydration headache. This gulp of water would not cure it, but he did not have that much left and wished to save it.
Spaceports came in a sliding scale of seedy to reputable. Maul had spent most of his time at the seedy end. Mos Espa was no exception.
He cast an appraising eye on each spaceship in turn, thinking of what would be worth the most to sell. He'd want to take his apprentice offworld in a ship Sidious had not procured, but he'd want to fence the stolen goods as soon as possible and trade for a new ship, followed by repeating the ship-trading process multiple times.
Then he could train his apprentice in the ways of the Jedi. He'd have to get a large ship, perhaps a cargo hauler, so they could train in the hold between hauls, and bunks for multiple people.
There were a few ships that looked generic enough their sale would not immediately be traced to Maul. He made note of their locations and began his trek to the Skywalker residence.
The suns were still up as he settled behind the slave quarters. They would skim the horizon in an hour or so. And all he could kill was time.
Slaves passed, skittering to their residences, walking up the exterior stairs of the odd dwelling structure the slaves had been given so they could exchange words with their neighbors. The air of despair was less pronounced here, everyone having made it through another day and not being called to their owners' service and thus the lethal possibility of their owners' disappointment until the morn.
“Here,” Shmi Skywalker said, just out of his lightsaber's immediate range.
Maul did not jump, no matter what anyone might've claimed. He took a disgruntled step forward and grabbed the thing she was holding out.
“Place your dataspike in the port, then cut and peel the yellow wire so that you can insert the bare copper into both ports. I drew an arrow so you know which way is up. I couldn't make a symmetric one with the parts I had available.”
“...thank you,” Maul said. Sidious would've simply expected him to remember which side of an otherwise symmetric object was up.
“How does your color vision compare to a standard human's?”
He saw slightly more into the infrared and greens were not as intense for him as they apparently were for humans. “I can distinguish all the colors a human can.”
“Take care to take the yellow wire, rather than the pale green one, the pink one, or the ones with yellow-green or yellow-red stripes.” Shmi looked at him appraisingly. Maul could feel his hackles rise. “Wait here, I'll bring you a wire stripper and electrical tape.”
Maul blinked, and then she was gone. Slavery seemed to have left her with an unnatural ability to scurry. If her son had inherited the ability to blend in, it would be a major asset in Sith training.
If Maul wanted to send Anakin on the sorts of missions he himself had been sent. He realized he didn't know how to acquire a reason for that sort of mission.
Shmi returned. “Here's the electrical tape; you can use it to attach the device to the rest of the cables so it doesn't fall out.” She handed him a roll of dark blue plastic tape. “Here's the wire stripper. Shove the wire in here, press the handle, and the plastic covering will be stripped off.” The mechanism of the jaws was ingenious. Maul couldn't help but approve. “And you need to drink some water.” She shoved a bottle of water into him.
“I drank-”
“Not enough.”
They stared at each other. Maul sighed around his dry throat and took the bottle. He uncapped in and swallowed, the water gliding smoothly down his throat and making him shiver with how good it felt. He drank greedily, wetting his lips and pouring all he could down his throat until he choked on it.
“You're not from the desert,” Shmi said, wistful, as she watched Maul cough.
He snarled. “What"–he coughed–"do you mean?”
Shmi shook her head. “An observation.” She took the now empty water bottle back. “Go,” she said, and after a moment, added, “May the Force be with you.”
Maul hadn't found out the appropriate response to the stock phrase, so he simply nodded and wiped the stray drops of water from his lips. The sky had reddened with dusk, now, and into that darkening transition from day to night he set out, walking to the speeder which he would soon abandon to the sands.
Gardulla the Hutt's palace glowed softly in the last rays of the suns. Maul hid behind the dunes, speeder not buried, not yet – he'd use it to travel most of the way back to the slave quarters before abandoning it – and waited for the crepuscular activities to die down. He had his macrobinoculars out, scanning the windows, and counted the passersby. Everyone had withdrawn inside, like diurnal species tended to do, and was scurrying hither and tither, hurrying to some destination or other.
By the time the stars came on and the galaxy's glow could be made out, all of the palace's residents had long withdrawn from any window Maul could see. He counted slowly to a hundred and rose.
The sand in his boots chafed uncomfortably at his heels and instep. He absentmindedly brushed the dust off his robes as he crested yet another dune before falling to the bottom. After a few more stumbles, he decided to simply roll down each hill, as that seemed faster and less likely to deposit sand in his underwear.
The sand had been swept away from the palace itself and he would bet good money that every door at ground level, grand or forgettable, was heavily alarmed. He, however, could ignore that all.
He looked through the amalgamation of conjoined structures to see if there were any motion tracking sensors or cameras. He thought he saw one pointing towards the shuttle pad and resolved to avoid that side. Nothing otherwise. Not even on the lip of the roof.
He pushed off the shifting sands with more force than necessary and only barely made it to his target, almost fumbling the landing. He froze, breathing shallowly, but no alarms blared and there was no sense of threat lingering in the air. He took a deeper breath and considered the best way up.
He leaped to the next intermediate roof, this jump more certain as it was from solid ground. Again, all that greeted him was silence and continuity.
A few more jumps brought him to the actual roof. He carefully stepped over pipes and loose wires as he sneaked to the center, mindful of alarms and anyone who might be awake beneath his feet.
The door itself did have a lock, but it was a simple combination lock. He memorized the initial numbers before he began rotating the pins and discs with the Force. The lock fell open with a click that felt infinitely loud in the post-twilight hush. He slipped through the door with as small a crack as possible, then closed it behind him and let his eyes adjust.
There was a wide tube in the center and an access hatch of some sort at about waist level. Maul carefully opened it. He was confronted with a dozen wires, none of which had any color in the night.
Force grant him strength. How was he supposed to tell which one was yellow?
He began sorting them by color. The darkest ones were probably blue or black or some other not-yellow color. He found four pale ones; three wires were striped and the other five were too dark to be yellow. It wouldn't be any of the striped ones, but which of the pale ones was it?
Think, he exhorted himself. It was not the pink one or the pale green one or the one with yellow-green or yellow-red stripes, Shmi had said.
He looked at the striped wires. One of them had stripes of the palest and darkest color – black-white, perhaps – and the paler color was different than in the other two striped wires. Those would be the yellow-green and the yellow-red one.
He compared the various pale wires to the two yellow-striped ones. Two of them were obviously out – the white one and one of the others – and a bit of twisting around allowed him to make the correct determination between the other two. He pulled the yellow wire to the front as he dug out the tools from his belt.
He went down on his shoulder and reached upwards to cut the yellow wire somewhere where it would be hard to spot. He placed the pliers down and shoved the wire stripper in. The bottom wire was easy as he could twist it down and shove it into the clamp of the wire stripper, but for the top wire he had to use the Force to assist in keeping it in place.
He checked that the data spike was still in the device Shmi had cobbled up before levitating it in. The arrow pointed up, as instructed, and he jammed the exposed ends of the yellow wire into the ports with a combination of fingers and the Force.
Now he just had to attach it to something. He dug out the electrical tape and wrapped it around the device and the rest of the wires in multiple layers.
That would have to suffice. Anything else, and it would be too obvious.
He shimmied himself out of the position he'd stuffed himself into and placed the tools back onto his belt. He closed the access hatch and slid out of the dome, making sure to lock it behind himself and rotate the dials to the positions they'd been in before.
The glow of the galaxy lit his way as he leapt deep into the dunes and began his slow walk to the speeder. He'd be so glad to dust this planet off his boots.
He kicked his speeder into gear and disappeared towards the horizon. He let himself go in the random direction he'd chosen until the palace disappeared from view. Only then did he turn in a sweeping arc toward the city.
He left the speeder half an hour's walk from Mos Espa, pointed on a diagonal, and considered the contents of the saddlebag. The water and the ration bars he took gladly, hanging the flask from his belt, and he stuffed as much cash into his pockets as possible.
He hesitated over the datapad. It was useful, high-powered and full of specialty algorithms. It was also wholly traceable to Sidious.
He opened the datapad and factory reset it. It would still be too distinctive, no doubt full of little fingerprints Sidious could use to track him-
He shoved the datapad back into the speeder's saddlebag and buried the whole thing under sand. He breathed, in and out, sand catching on his raw throat as his hands trembled without permission.
The moment he felt his limbs move according to his wishes, he tore himself away. The slave quarters were not particularly near. All there was to do was walk.
Perhaps he should not have been surprised when he was greeted by Shmi and Anakin Skywalker the moment he entered the vicinity of the slave quarters. Shmi mutely held out her hand. Maul handed her her wire stripper and electrical tape back. She placed them in a well-ordered toolbox she'd brought.
“Are we free?” Anakin whispered.
“The relay now broadcasts a deactivation signal constantly. It takes it about five seconds to go through every possible slave chip ID.”
“We're free,” Shmi decisively said. “Do you have a ship?”
“I rather thought we could steal one.”
Anakin gasped, but his mother simply smiled. “This way, then,” she said and walked off towards the spaceport.
The mother's presence was not something Maul had planned for, but given her mechanical skills and the fact she had considered her tools the best thing to bring with her to her free life, she was obviously useful. Sidious would've found a place for her already had he been in Maul's position. Maul ... would bring her along. He would find some use for her.
It was late enough – or perhaps early enough – that the spaceport's security was purely automated. Shmi pulled Anakin close to herself and gestured for Maul to follow. She led them through an odd pattern towards a side entry, pausing every now and then as if counting seconds.
Whatever she did, it worked, for there was no alarm when they reached the side door. She punched in a code that let them in unfettered.
Maul considered this. It would frame the Skywalkers for the chip deactivation and bring the wrath of the Hutts down on his apprentice – but leave Maul disconnected. Sidious would not necessarily discover what had happened.
Inside the spaceport facility, he began walking towards the ship he'd eyed earlier. Shmi grabbed his sleeve. “Where are you going?”
Maul pulled free of her grasp and hissed, “There is a ship there I wish to steal.”
“The Meria Shipyards TW-2182 light freighter?” Maul nodded. Shmi sighed. “There's no resale market for those; the in-atmosphere navigation thrusters require a full replacement the moment the warranty runs out. There's a much better Kuat QSP-15 this way. Come.”
She set off, a wide-eyed Anakin in tow. Maul followed, hearts beating so hard he could feel them in his throat. He felt like he'd lost some argument and had to restrain the urge to lash out.
The Kuat ship was a bit less well maintained than the Meria one had been, but the landing ramp came down with barely a whisper. “Be quick,” Shmi instructed, “I don't think I can get all the alarms or trackers off before we jump to hyperspace.”
“Don't hurt your head as I do evasive movements,” Maul snapped back and ran into the ship.
It wasn't the first time he'd stolen a ship. He ran down the main corridor and ripped off one anti-theft lock with the Force as he went by. Anakin exclaimed “You can do that?” somewhere behind him, but he was in the cockpit, turning on everything as fast as he could.
Maul spooled up the engines and slammed the ship up the moment it could rise. It shuddered, thrust asymmetric for a moment before the left engine caught up. He pulled up away from the spaceport.
The comm began blaring with an irate dockmaster cursing him about unpaid docking fees in Huttese. He flicked it off with the Force.
Anakin ran over to him. “The hyperdrive's locked!” he said, hanging on to Maul's shoulder.
“Then fix it,” Maul snapped as he shot the ship into the desert away from Mos Espa and Gardulla's palace. He hadn't spotted any point defense cannons or other methods of downing a ship, but he didn't want to risk being shot down.
The haze of the atmosphere lifted as he rose up to space. The stars brightened impossibly and a myriad compatriots of theirs lit up in the sky. Maul aimed in the vague direction of the stardust of the galaxy.
“Got it!” Anakin triumphantly said. “Where do you want to go?”
“Just a short jump to ... uh, not any planet,” Maul replied. “We can remove any unsavory devices there.”
Anakin nodded. “I guess this is good enough,” he said and pulled the lever.
“Wait, no-”
The stars smeared into streaks as Anakin sent them to some unchecked, unverified, unsafe coordinates. Maul let his hands fall from the controls as he contemplated his own stupidity. His apprentice was a newly freed slave boy. Unlike Maul, he hadn't been schooled in hyperspace travel. They would head into the middle of a star, or a planet, or plow right into one of Naboo's moons-
Then the ship shuddered back to normal space. The black sky was studded with an infinity of stars and there were no gravity wells to be found nearby.
Maul collapsed back in the seat. “Don't ever do that again,” he hissed.
“But you said-”
“Hyperspace travel is dangerous! If you put in the wrong route, you might hit a star and be squelched into paste!”
Anakin crinkled his face and drew a breath, but released it with a glance at the door. Maul was thus prepared for Shmi Skywalker's presence, if not for her hand on his shoulder.
“When did you last sleep?” she asked.
“Last night.” Maul shrugged off her hand. “I can manage.”
“But you don't have to. Anakin and I caught some sleep earlier and can search through the ship for any trackers or other surprises.”
There was some catch. There had to be. No-one would ever do something like this just for the purpose of being nice.
“We'll wake you up before we move anywhere,” Shmi continued. “The bunks are to the left. Go to sleep.”
Maul considered refusing, but he knew it was best to conserve his energy and he trusted himself to wake up if they landed or tried to haul him into the airlock. He rose and brushed past her, momentarily tolerating the renewed squeeze of his shoulder.
The bunks were too soft and smelled of someone else, but there was something comforting in cocooning himself in the crash webbing. He curled up under the blankets and kept his mind intentionally blank until he knew no more.
“Will the others know they're free?” Anakin finally asked.
Shmi put down the hydrospanner and straightened up. Anakin had come to sit next to the open access pit she was in, crumpled up and hugging his legs. “They'll know we left,” she said. “I took my toolbox and my money, and we left everything in neat array. They will know that we did not go to the desert and we went willingly, whatever they end up telling Watto.”
“But will they know they're free, too?”
“One day, someone will try to blow up a slave and nothing will happen.” Perhaps they'd already noticed, given Gardulla's proclivities. “Then they will know. And even before that, they'll whisper, given how we left. Some will push their luck and find out.”
“I miss them.”
Shmi wiped her hands on a rag and placed a hand on his knee. “They will be happy you're free. Be happy that they'll know they're free soon.”
Anakin thought on this before accepting it with a nod. “What do you think Maul will do next? He already freed all of Tatooine, but will we now free all the other slaves? Or go to the Jedi headquarters?”
“He seems to be a bit of a wanderer,” Shmi put diplomatically. “We'll next trade this ship for a better one and then discuss actions.”
“I hope we free all the other slaves as well,” Anakin said, a yawn eating his words.
“Go to bed, my little one,” Shmi said with a smile. “The ship will still be here tomorrow, and we shouldn't plan too much without Maul's input, now, should we?”
“Okay,” Anakin said and plucked himself off the floor with another yawn. Shmi watched him clomp away to the bunks and shut the door behind himself.
She went back to the sublight drive bypass conduits. The previous owner had installed very specific modifications that brought some extra maneuverability at the cost of endurance, but were mostly extremely specific and easy to trace, so they had to go. She'd probably put in a general tune-up instead.
She wondered what Maul would do next. He was very obviously not a Jedi, but rather a young man who'd stumbled his way into a con, and he was running away from something. The question was, what was he running from, and where would he flee?
Shmi hoped he wasn't running from the Jedi. That would crush Anakin.
If it had been the Hutts, he would've known more about how they held their slaves captive and wouldn't have had to lean so hard on her and Anakin for his plan of liberation. He'd also taken some interest in Anakin, though nothing of the sort which would make Shmi want to step in. Had her son been his target or a side track?
Yet whatever his mission, one act of kindness from Anakin and he'd decided to free not only them but every slave on Tatooine. Shmi was willing to work past many things for someone who'd brought freedom in his wake.
Maul was also young. An adult, yes, but new to it. Unequipped for the social niceties that were necessary for successfully inhabiting a society. He could fake them to some extent, but he had never been given the safety and shelter necessary to learn. Some crime cartel's enforcer, raised to desperately compete for acceptance.
And young enough to be her son, just. In another life, she might have a child that age, desperately adrift in the galaxy.
She had taught Anakin that the biggest problem with the galaxy was that people didn't help one another. Maul would learn that in time as well.
Shmi finished putting the original arrangement back together and ran a quick test. Everything worked. She finished up by putting the fastenings back and closing the access hatch behind herself.
They'd have to go through the ship, sorting the prior owners' effects by whether they should be kept, sold, or destroyed. One of the people who'd owned her in her teens had been an Ithorian on Kral Tekhar who flipped stolen ships. She was out of practice, but should know what to do.
She began by going through the refresher's contents. Half-used bottles of soap and shampoo should be tossed before sale, but smelled nice enough for a use. The rest of the hygiene supplies she loaded into the incinerator.
The walls were mostly unadorned and the built-in couches and such in all right condition and free of throws or other additions. Not much to do there.
She opened the door to the bunks. Maul was curled up on the bottom bunk on the left, wearing his clothes but ensconced in blankets as well, strapped in with crash webbing. And Anakin had decided to burrow into his arms. The mop of his hair was just visible beneath Maul's chin.
Shmi shook her head. Desert boy.
There were a few items on the ground, though. Anakin's boots – heavens, had Maul gone to bed with boots on? – Maul's belt, and the lightsaber.
Shmi glanced at the slumbering duo. Both asleep, heavily so.
She took a fortifying breath and pulled at the air. The lightsaber twitched on the ground, rolling once before leaping to her hand.
She immediately left the room and leaned on the wall of the corridor, panting heavily as she fought her heartrate down. Don't let anyone know you're a freak, her mother had warned her, spoken against using the gifts the galaxy had given her. No moving things without touching them. No looking at the depths of other people's souls. No speaking of the futures she'd seen.
But she had learned to use them without being noticed. She had foreseen Gardulla losing a bet to Watto and arranged for herself and Anakin to be on the table. She had had the heavy certainty that podracing would take her son from her. She had seen Anakin leave with a tall human man, looking back in tears, and had chosen to throw her skills behind Maul's plan to free them instead.
The lightsaber was heavy in her hands. She wasn't that much smaller than Maul, so the tube fit her grip well enough. She turned it over, around and around.
There was a button tucked into the handle. She pressed it.
Twin blades of red snapped into being, hissing in the silent air. Power hummed through her hand. It was of light, yes, but it was a saber, a weapon, a bringer of death that painted the walls with a glow the color of fresh blood.
A second touch of the button had the blades retract. The lightsaber went silent in her grip.
The lightsaber was real, then. Maul might have stolen it or found it, but it was real, with all the problems that would bring.
Shmi opened the door to the bunks again, this time entering properly. She gently placed the lightsaber on the ground and walked towards Maul and Anakin's bunk. Maul was stirring, so she lifted the blankets and pulled his boots off.
“What,” he snapped.
“Go to sleep,” she told him as he stared at Anakin's head in befuddlement.
“What are you doing,” he said as he fell into slumber at Shmi's suggestion.
She had, perhaps, overdone it. She hoped he'd remember it only as a dream.
What was done was done. She took off her shoes and outer layers, then slipped into the other bottom bunk. It was soft and warm. The detergent reminded her somewhat of the place that had owned her before Gardulla. It was easy to slip into unconsciousness here in the middle of nothing, listening to her son breathe.
Shmi woke to the sound of Anakin yawning. The lights were on low, Maul irately staring at the lump that had sought him out because he was warm and then pinned him to bed.
She rose and padded to the clothes lockers. “Anakin, time to get up,” she said as she went through the previous inhabitants' possessions. That shirt looked like it would fit her, and so would those trousers. At least one of the crew had been somewhere between her and Maul in size. The other clothes were from someone larger.
“What are you doing?” Maul asked as she began trying on all the clothes.
“We shouldn't look like slaves or fugitives,” she said. This shirt was a size or two too large. She tossed it at Maul. “See if this fits you.”
He stared at her with open suspicion. “Why would I want to wear this?”
“You'll look less distinct.” She found a plain white shirt that mostly fit, then stuffed it down black trousers. “And we'll blend in with the clientele.” She tossed on a jacket and considered herself. The ensemble would fit with the scum who asked Watto for installation help, as well as the various unsavory people who'd gone through Kral Tekhar. “We should also take a shower and toss anything that doesn't come with the ship. The bedsheets we can launder.”
Anakin nodded while Maul looked at her suspiciously. “Okay. Should I put on new clothes as well?” her son asked.
Shmi turned an appraising eye to the clothes. “I think you can use this as a jacket,” she said. “We should buy you something once we've gotten a new ship.”
“And do you have a plan on where to find this new ship?” Maul asked.
“Kral Tekhar has a number of people who fence stolen goods.”
Maul considered for a moment. “Acceptable.”
“Go through the clothes and see what fits you. Anakin, come, let's take a shower.”
Her son was absolutely thrilled to look at the various adjustment options on the sonic. He shed perhaps half his weight in sand while his clothes were going through the laundry routine.
Shmi shooed him to Maul's care and turned on the water once he was safely away. Anakin was a desert child. Shmi was not, and had missed the water. The ship jumped to hyperspace as she luxuriated under the warm spray and let it wash off her stresses and woes.
Kral Tekhar was a rocky moon of a pale blue gas giant. The atmosphere was thinner than humans usually preferred, leading to less weather and erosion. All business was conducted in pressurized domes.
“Take Anakin and the bags and wait here; I'll handle the negotiating,” Shmi instructed Maul as he brought them down.
Maul breathed in as if to object, but let it go. He, too, must've come to the conclusion that he was too memorable to be a good fit for their escape. His coloration was striking. Humans were dime a dozen.
“Wizard,” Anakin breathed as the pressurized dome irised open to admit them.
Shmi marched down the ramp as soon as they touched down. A pair of goons was coming out to greet her. She put on a cocky smile to match her clothes and the blaster on her hip. “I'm looking to trade. Who's in charge of operations?”
The goons did a quick once-over of the ship before replying. “Follow us.”
The place still ran on slave labor, she noted as she was led past hungry-looking faces staring at the ground. Kerro plants dotted the hallways as a backup carbon dioxide scrubbing system.
She was greeted by a human woman she recalled seeing once or twice at a distance. “Welcome to Kral Tekhar,” the woman said. “I'm Lave Rai.”
“Tav Alpia,” Shmi replied as she shook Rai's hand.
“You had a Kuat QSP-15, right?”
“Yes. Well-maintained, upgraded hyperdrive, refurbished sublight drives. Interior's clean and basic.”
“What makes you want to trade it in, then?”
“We're getting a new crewmember in a few months,” Shmi replied.
Rai's gaze flicked to her midsection. That assumption, then. “How many you got now?”
“A kid and an apprentice.”
Rai grunted. “Well. Good luck with that.” She pulled out a datapad – not one who trusted her memory of her merchandise, then – and tapped her fingers on her desk. “Hmm. Let's go take a look at your bird, then.”
They picked up the two goons as they returned to the ship. Shmi opened the ramp and led them in.
Maul was there, arms crossed, and Anakin was sitting on top of her toolbox. Good boy.
“That your apprentice?” Rai asked. “Good pick.”
Shmi made a noise of assent before giving Rai the guided tour, making sure to talk up every upgrade. Rai nodded along, running an appraising eye over everything. There was nothing wrong with the ship – Shmi knew its previous owners had been particular with maintenance – so she'd give them a good price.
“Well,” Rai said once Shmi had showed her the guts of the hyperdrive, “let's take a look at what you can trade it for. Come along.”
Shmi gestured for Maul and Anakin to stay on the ship as she followed Rai through the pressurized corridors. She was shown first a Slayn & Korpil light craft Rai was a bit too pushy about; nothing seemed obviously wrong, so either the frame was disintegrating on the inside or it was hot. The other two, a Sienar Omicron shuttle and a Rendili Stardust light freighter, were both less risky feeling. Shmi went for the Rendili Stardust based on gut instinct and ease of resale. She shook hands with Rai and went to pick up Maul and Anakin. They'd need comms, in addition to new clothes for Anakin. And hygiene supplies.
She opened the Kuat ship's landing ramp to Maul teaching Anakin how to use one of the stolen datapads. Their heads snapped up when she entered. “Do we have a new ship?” Anakin asked.
“Yes, a Rendili Stardust. Come, let's move over.”
Anakin, good boy that he was, peppered her with a myriad questions about the new ship. They probably wouldn't own it long enough to overhaul the electrical system like he – and she – desired, but he was free now. Let him dream.
The innards of the ship were gunmetal gray and in need of some wall hangings to make the place less echoey. Shmi followed Maul to the cockpit and helped him run the pre-flight checks. A few minutes later, they were off the ground. Kral Tekhar sank beneath them, shrinking to a size that let the blue gas giant peek from around it in a ring, and then they were in hyperspace. Shmi breathed out.
Maul spun his chair around and folded his hands in his lap. “Now that we have done the first set of essentials, it is time to discuss the further future,” he primly said.
So this was the price. Shmi hoped it would not be too great. She would not like to have to try and space him.
“The Force is an energy field that permeates all living things in the galaxy, from us sentients to the smallest bacterium. Most people are ignorant of its call. A few can speak to it and manipulate it. Those people are called Force sensitives.” Maul opened his hand, and one of the datapads flew to it.
“Wizard,” Anakin exhaled.
He was a freak. A freak, like Shmi and Anakin, and one who wanted them to know he was one.
He twisted his hand and the datapad levitated above it. “Some Force sensitives are permitted to join the Jedi. The Force is what gives Jedi their powers – their enhanced reflexes, greater luck, and clearer intuition. Learning to use these skills requires training.” He let the datapad drop into his hand during a dramatic pause. “Anakin Skywalker. The Force is strong in you. I wish to train you as my Jedi apprentice.”
Anakin's jaw fell open and he jumped to his feet. “Yes! Yes!” He froze mid-motion and spun to look at Shmi. “Maul can train me, right?” he asked.
“Of course.” Shmi smiled gently at him for the moment it took for him to return to tugging Maul's sleeve, and continued smiling the exact same smile as she made eye contact with a suspicious Maul.
“What's the first step in Jedi training?” Anakin asked.
Maul cast a final panicked look at Shmi before putting on the airs of someone who knew what he was doing. “We shall discuss lightsabers,” he told Anakin. “Come; we shall need more space than just the cockpit.”
Shmi watched them evacuate for the main hold. She should probably observe, just to see how much Maul actually knew.
There was always work to be done. She gave Maul a bit of time to get started by loading up their old clothes in the laundry and putting on sheets on the bed, then picked up her toolbox and went to inspect the cargo attachment points in the main hold.
Maul had disassembled his lightsaber and was levitating all the pieces in front of him as he went over them with Anakin. Kyber crystal, emitter core, focusing lens, housing, a remarkably small power source. Shmi could be excused for drawing close, a fact Maul noticed. He closed up the lightsaber with just the Force.
“Lightsaber blades come in many colors, determined by the kyber crystal. Most Jedi have a blue or green lightsaber, though some have other colors. Master Windu of the Jedi Council has a purple one, and a few Jedi have yellow ones.” Authoritative. He knew this.
“You said the kyber crystals bond with their Jedi with the Force,” Anakin said. “Is the color just random?”
This question caught Maul wrong-footed. “No, it's – it depends on the Jedi's favorite color,” he said. It felt like he'd made it up on the spot. “My favorite color is red, so my lightsaber is also red.”
Anakin nodded, accepting the explanation. “So mine would be blue.”
“Probably,” Maul hedged. “There are some exceptions.” He threw a glance at Shmi, then turned back to Anakin. “Anyway, as I was saying, lightsaber construction can be an involved process. Let's go over the plans again.”
Shmi listened in on the rest of the engineering lesson. Maul knew what he was talking about with regards to what Shmi could confirm, and spoke with founded authority for the rest. He'd built his lightsaber, then, and knew how to wield such a weapon.
He was on the run from something. Despite his lightsaber and training in the Force, he had fled rather than fight.
Sometimes, people ran away from fights they would win, either because they thought they would lose, or because they did not want to fight. If Maul was behind the slaveowner Larbin's death, as Shmi suspected he was, he wasn't one to shy away from violence. That left the former.
Or something capable of taking on Maul and winning.
A chill settled on her shoulders. It was an uncomfortable prospect, but one she would have to plan for.
After a dinner during which Anakin shared everything he'd learned that day with her to Maul's minor annoyance, she shepherded Anakin to bed. She wrapped him up in two beds' worth of blankets as she put his day clothes in the washer. Their next stop really should be to someplace with a clothes store.
She walked silently through the ship. They were all alone in the void, the only presences to sense theirs.
Maul was in the kitchen and dining area, datapad in hand. It showed a holonet search for basic Jedi philosophy. Did he expect to run into someone who knew what a Jedi was? He could've claimed to Anakin that Jedi philosophy involved doing handstands in vacuum and Anakin would've swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
“Ah, Lady Skywalker,” Maul said with a start, putting down his datapad. “I was thinking about our next stop. Do you think we could find someplace that removes slave chips on the down low?”
Dedicated to the bit he hadn't planned, and someone who saw them as kin, rather than disposable. “They do not advertise, but if we find someplace seedy yet unaffiliated with the Hutts, there should be some. It might be best to remove mine and Anakin's at different places.”
Maul nodded. “Yes. I see.”
Shmi sat down opposite to him. “You're running from something.”
Maul immediately bristled, snarling. His first reflex was violence, which he was barely restraining. Shmi wondered who had trained that into him. “I am a Jedi Knight-”
“You are running from something dangerous, and I want to be prepared for it when it comes,” Shmi continued in her level tone. “Train me.”
Maul went silent. “What.”
Shmi held out her hand and pulled at the air. Maul's datapad rose past his wide eyes and rotated slowly between them. Shmi glanced over the results of his holonet search. One of them seemed to be an official Jedi site. Perhaps they'd even get some actual Jedi philosophy. “Train me.”
“You're- Of course,” Maul breathed. “That's how you're able to sneak up on me. You can hide yourself.”
She could have said other things – that she could read him like an open book, knew his lies, could see the future – but she simply set down the datapad before him. “You know something is coming for you. Will you let me help you?”
Maul stared at him, a wide-eyed gleam in his eyes. “I will train you,” he promised.
“Good.” Shmi rose. “It's late; we can begin tomorrow.”
“But-”
“Get some sleep,” Shmi ordered. “Or Anakin will completely wear you out tomorrow, and I will help him.”
That made Maul sigh and turn off the datapad. “You're insufferable,” he grumbled.
He followed her to the bunks and curled up under a load of blankets even more ridiculous than Anakin's. He brushed off her offer to help with managing them, carrying them all himself in the dark.
The biggest problem in the universe was that no one helped each other. Offering help, Maul had some grasp on already, but the other side was to ask for help when necessary or useful, and receive it when offered. He'd learn, like Anakin had, though: example was the best teacher, and he now lived with them.