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comlink from Gunray’s trembling grasp and deactivated it. “Enough of your bumbling. I need to inform Lord Sidious of our situation.” In the hangar where the Sith Infiltrator was docked, Maul used his wrist link to re-task the probe droids. Less than a day had passed since he had been in Theed, but in that short time the situation had been upended.
    Darth Sidious had been informed that the Queen’s starship had been found abandoned in the vast Lianorm Swamp. Gunray had tried to assure Sidious that Amidala and the Jedi would soon be located, but Sidious knew better. The fact that Amidala had unexpectedly set the ship down in the swamps had provided Sidious a clue as to her motives. The Sith Lord had instructed Maul to be mindful, and to let the Jedi make the first move.
    Soon after, OOM-9 confirmed Sidious’s suspicions that Amidala and the Gungans were assembling an army.
    In a subsequent holotransmission, Sidious had made it plain to Maul that the Jedi, bound by their oaths to the Order, could not take sides. The most they could do was protect the Queen.

    With the Neimoidians present during the follow-up communication, Maul had had to read between the lines of what his Master was saying. When Sidious said that the Queen’s foolish actions had surprised him, Maul understood that he was exaggerating. His Master wouldn’t have persuaded or allowed Amidala to return to Naboo unless he had known in advance that she would attempt to enlist the Gungans in her cause to win back the planet. Obviously, Darth Sidious favored the idea of a grand battle. Open rebellion would justify the actions of the Trade Federation in fighting back. More important, Sidious had granted Gunray permission to kill the Queen and as many Gungans as he deemed necessary to secure victory. The pretense of a peace treaty was no longer necessary.
    Sidious had dismissed Maul’s concern that the Jedi might be using the Queen for their own purposes, but Maul wasn’t yet convinced that wasn’t the case. If the Jedi weren’t permitted to fight alongside Amidala, why had they returned? If their purpose was to draw Maul out, then someone had to have apprised them that Maul was on Naboo, and the only being who could have done that was Darth Sidious.
    Sidious was as eager to encourage a battle between the Trade Federation and the Gungans as he was an ultimate contest between Maul and the Jedi. He wanted to be assured that his apprentice had what it took to be a true Sith.
    Maul programmed a series of coordinates into the probe droids and let them fly. Then he climbed aboard the speeder bike to follow them.
    There was only one site where Amidala, the Jedi, and the Gungans could be plotting their counteroffensive.
    The so-called Sacred Place at the northern end of Paonga Strait, in the swampy basins of the Gallo Mountains.

    Not since whatever elder race had built and once occupied the Sacred Place had it played host to as many sentients and droids. Not merely the Gungans from Otoh Gunga and other bubble cities, and Amidala, her retinue, and the Jedi, but also OOM-9’s squadrons of STAPs, searching in all the wrong places, and the droid commander’s long-range reconnaissance platoons of battle droids, many of which had become mired in the soft ground. For a change, Maul found something to appreciate in the incompetence of the Neimoidians’ army, for it served his purpose.
    He sat crouched in a shallow waterway a couple of kilometers south of where the Gungans and the rest had gathered, his presence in the Force deliberately diminished and his wrist link pressed close to his ear, tuned to the frequency used by the probe droids he had sent ahead as listening devices. Filtered by the forest’s leafy canopy, the ambient light was almost aquatic. Around him in all directions rose the ruins of grand stone buildings fronted with hieroglyphic stairways, raised agricultural fields, columned temples, and carved statuary—all of it being slowly disassembled by the