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  Bodies flew backward, slammed into one another, into the walls, against and through windows. The transport he’d rode on lurched from the blast. The doors of the medical facility flew from their mounts and crashed to the ground.

  The sirens continued to wail.

  Partially vented, he came back to himself.

  Moans and pained whimpers sounded from all around him. A child was crying. Bodies lay scattered about like so many rag dolls. Shattered glass covered the ground. Speeders and swoops lay on their sides. Loose papers stirred in the wind.

  Unmoved, Malgus walked the now-clear path into the medical facility.

  Inside, patients and visitors cowered behind chairs, desks, one another. Malgus’s breathing was the loudest sound in the room. No one dared look at him.

  “Where are the Jedi?” someone said.

  “The Jedi are dead in their Temple,” Malgus said. “Where I left them. There is no one to save you.”

  Someone wept. Another moaned.

  Malgus found an overweight human man in the pale blue uniform of a hospital worker and pulled him to his feet by his shirt.

  “I am looking for a Twi’lek woman with a scar on her throat,” Malgus said. “She suffered two blaster wounds and was brought here earlier today. Her name is Eleena.”

  The man’s eyes darted around as if they were seeking escape from his head. “I don’t know of any Twi’lek. I can check the logs.”

  “If harm has come to her here …”

  A heavyset nurse, her red hair pulled back into a tight bun, rose from behind a desk. Her uniform looked like a blue tent on her stout body. Freckles dotted her face. “I know the woman you mean. I can take you to her.”

  Malgus cast the man to the floor and followed the nurse through the corridors. The air smelled of antiseptic. Walls and floors were clean white or silver.

  Staff and medical droids hurried through the halls, barely noticing Malgus, despite his disfigurement. A female voice over the intercom almost continually called doctors to this or that treatment room, or announced codes in various places in the facility.

  Malgus and the nurse took a lift up to a treatment ward, walking past rooms overcrowded with patients. A woman’s crying carried through the hall. Moans of pain sounded from other rooms. A team of surgeons hurried past, their faces hidden behind masks spattered with blood.

  The nurse did not look at Malgus when she spoke.

  “The Twi’lek woman was dropped at the doors by an unmarked transport. We did not realize she was … Imperial.”

  Malgus grunted. “You would not have treated her had you known?”

  The nurse stopped, turned on her heel, and stared Malgus in his scarred face.

  “Of course we would have treated her. We are not savages.”

  Malgus did not miss the woman’s subtle emphasis on we.

  He decided to allow the nurse her moment of defiance. Her spirit impressed him. “Just take me to her.”

  Eleena lay in a bed in a small treatment room with three other patients. One of them, an elderly man, was curled up in a fetal position on the bed, moaning, his sheets bloody. Another, a middle-aged woman with a lacerated face, watched Malgus and the nurse enter, her expression vacant. The third appeared to be asleep.

  A fluid line was hooked to Eleena’s unwounded arm and several cables—cables!—connected her to monitoring equipment. The facility must have been stretched to use such dated technology. Her blaster wounds, at least, had been treated and bandaged. The arm with the wounded shoulder had been stabilized in a sling.

  Eleena saw him, sat up, and smiled.

  He realized that she was the only person in the galaxy who smiled when she saw him.

  “Veradun,” she said.

  Seeing her face and hearing her voice affected him more than he liked. The anger drained out of him as if he had a hole in his heel. Relief took its place and he did not fight it, though he realized that he had let his feelings for her grow dangerously strong.

  When he looked at Eleena, he was looking at his own weakness.

  Angral’s words bounced around his consciousness.

  Passions can lead to mistakes.

  He had to have her, and he had to stay true to the Empire.

  He had to square a circle.

  He resolved to find a way.

  He went to her bedside, touched her face with his callused hand, and started disconnecting her from the fluid line and cables.

  “You will be treated aboard my ship. In proper facilities.”

  A man’s voice from behind him said, “You there! Stop! You can’t do that!”

  Malgus looked over his shoulder to see a male nurse standing in the doorway. The man quailed when he saw Malgus’s visage but he held his ground.

  “She is not cleared for discharge.” The man started into the room as if to stop Malgus, but the female nurse who had led Malgus to Eleena interposed her wide body.

  “Leave them be, Tal. They are leaving.”

  “But—”

  “Leave it alone.”

  Malgus could not see the fat nurse’s face but he imagined her trying with her expression to communicate to the male nurse that Malgus was a Sith. He asked Eleena, “Can you walk?”

  Before she could answer, he scooped her up in his arms.

  “I can walk,” she said halfheartedly.

  He ignored her, brushed past the nurses and into the corridor. For a time, Eleena looked into the rooms they passed, at the wounded, the dying. But soon it became too much and she buried her head in Malgus’s chest. Malgus enjoyed the feel of her in his arms, the warmth she radiated, the musky smell of her.

  “You are thoughtful,” she whispered. The feel of her breath on his ear sent pangs of desire through him.

  “I am thinking of geometry,” he said. “Of squares and circles.”

  “That’s an odd train of thought.”

  “Perhaps not as odd as you think.”

  When they exited the facility, she saw the dozens of bodies strewn about the ground. Medical teams hovered over several, treating their wounds. Faces turned to Malgus, eyes wide, but no one said a word as he walked toward the transport.

  “What happened here? To these people? It was not like this when I arrived.”

  Malgus said nothing.

  “They are afraid of you.”

  “They should be.”

  When they got aboard the transport, Malgus instructed the pilot to fly them to Valor, the orbiting cruiser he commanded. Then he laid Eleena down on a reclinable couch and covered her with a blanket. She touched his hand as he tucked her in.

  “There is gentleness in you, Veradun.”

  He pulled his hand away from her and stood. “If you ever call me Veradun in public again I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  Her smile melted in the heat of his anger. She looked as if he had punched her in the stomach. She sat up on her elbow. “Why are you saying this?”

  His voice came out loud and harsh. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes! Yes!” She threw off the blanket, rose, and stood before him, her body quaking. “But why are you so angry? Why?”

  He stared into her lovely face, swallowed, and shook his head. His anger was only partly her fault. He was angry at Adraas, Angral, the Emperor himself. She was just a convenient focus for it.

  “You must do as I ask, Eleena,” he said, more softly. “Please.”

  “I will, Malgus.” She stepped forward, raised a hand, and traced the ruined lines written in the skin of his face. Her touch put a charge in him.

  “I love you, Malgus.” She peeled away his respirator to reveal the ruins of his mouth. “Do you love me?”

  He licked his scarred lips, his thoughts whirling, again no words coming.

  “You don’t have to answer,” she said, smiling, her voice soft. “I know that you do.”

  Zeerid checked his appearance in the small mirror in the ship’s refresher and chided himself for neglecting to shave. He activated the ship’
s maintenance droid and stepped out into the bustle of the docks.

  Cargo carts and droids whipped past at breakneck speeds, signal horns clearing the path before them. Treaded droids motored along the walkways. Crew members and dockworkers plied their trade, loading and unloading crates of cargo with the help of crane droids. One of the dockmasters, a fat human with a bald head but a long beard and mustache, walked among the chaos, occasionally shouting an order to someone on the dock, occasionally mouthing something into his comlink. He carried a huge torque wrench in one hand and looked as if he wanted to whack something, or someone, with it. The air smelled faintly of vented gas and engine exhaust, but mostly it smelled like the lake.

  The city of Yinta Lake ringed the largest freshwater lake on the planet, Lake Yinta. Geothermal vents kept the water warm even in winter and the differential between the water temperature and the autumn air caused the lake to sweat steam, so the air always felt thick, greasy. It reminded Zeerid of decay, and every time he returned he felt as though the city had decomposed a little more in his absence.

  Yinta Lake had begun as an unnamed winter getaway for the planet’s wealthy—those who’d made their fortunes in arms manufacturing—the mansions forming a thin ring around the lakeshore. Back then, the ring had been called the wealth belt.

  Over time, the presence of the wealthy had attracted a middling-sized spaceport to bring offworld goods to the onworld money. That had brought workers, then merchants, then the not-so-wealthy, then the very poor.

  And by then the unnamed vacation spot had become Yinta, a town, and it had not stopped growing since. Now it was a metropolis—Yinta Lake—an accretion disk of people and buildings that collected around the gravitational pull of the lake.

  In time, shipping had polluted the lake’s water, the wealthy had mostly fled, and the city had begun a slow spiral into decrepitude. The once grand mansions on the shore of the lake had been sold off to developers and converted to cheap housing. The wealth belt had become slums and loading docks.

  Zeerid had grown up in the slums, smelling the acrid, rotting odor of the lake every day of his childhood. He had provided better for his daughter, but not by much.

  The deep, bass boom of a horn carried across the city, the call of one of the enormous flatbed cargo ships that moved goods and people across the lake and up and down the river that fed it. Zeerid smiled when he heard it. He’d awakened to that sound almost every day of his childhood.

  He stepped into the tumult, feeling oddly at home and very much looking forward to seeing his daughter.

  From the haircut, muscular build, and upright posture, Vrath made the pilot as former military. Vrath, too, was ex-military, having served in the Imperial infantry.

  The man smiled as he walked and Vrath found that he liked the man immediately.

  Too bad he’d probably have to kill him.

  Holding the nanodroid solution dispenser in a slack arm, Vrath knifed through the crowd toward the pilot. He cut in front of him, slowing him, just another body in the press, and squeezed a dollop of the suspension on the ground at their feet.

  Vrath pasted on a fake grin and held up his other hand in a frantic wave to no one.

  “Rober! Rober, over here!”

  He hurried off as if to meet someone but watched the pilot sidelong throughout.

  The pilot never even looked down, did not seem to notice Vrath at all. Suspecting nothing, the man stepped in the oily suspension Vrath had left on the floor before him. Others stepped in it afterward, but that would not matter. In moments all traces of it were gone.

  Vrath fell in behind the pilot and took the targeted nano-activator from his pack.

  Zeerid should not have been smiling, and certainly should not have been at ease. He knew, as he always did, that he was one mistake, one unlucky break away from someone discovering Arra and using her against him. Or worse, harming her. The thought made him sick to his stomach.

  He could not let himself get sloppy.

  He hopped on the back of a droid-driven cargo cart and rode it until he neared one of the port’s exits. The spaceport and all the vehicles in it rusted in the moisture-rich air of Yinta Lake; the brown smears on walls and in corners looked like bloodstains.

  The exit doors slid open, and he hopped off the cargo cart. The collective voice of the streets hit him immediately. The shouts of air taxi drivers vying for fares—Yinta Lake had to have more taxis than any other city in the Mid Rim—street vendors hawking all manner of foods, vehicle horns, the rush of engines.

  “Heading to the inner ring, sir?” said one of the taxi drivers, a tiny slip of a man. “Hop right in.”

  “Lowest rates in Yinta, sir,” said another, a gray-haired old-timer, cutting in front of the first.

  “Vinefish fresh off the grill,” shouted a vendor. “Right here. Right here, sir.”

  To his right, a Zeltron woman, perhaps lovely once, but now just haggard, leaned against a wall. When she smiled, she showed the stained teeth of a spice addict.

  He winced. Shame warmed his cheeks.

  Only the hundred thousand in his pocket and what it could do for Arra kept him on course.

  Aircars and speeders lined the street, even a few wheeled vehicles. He pushed through the throng of pedestrians and picked his way through the buzz of traffic to a public comm station across the street.

  Once the pilot had cleared the spaceport, Vrath surreptitiously pointed the activator at him and powered it on. The nanodroids adhering to the pilot’s boot came to life.

  The press of another button synced the activator to the particular signature of the droids on the pilot and only those droids. He did not want to pick up any of the others that had adhered to other pedestrians.

  The bodies of the tracking nanodroids, about the size of a single cell and engineered in a hook shape, would contract to embed themselves in the pilot’s boot sole. From there, they would respond to Vrath’s ping from a distance of up to ten kilometers. Their power cells would keep them responsive for three standard days.

  More than enough, Vrath knew. The Exchange had to get the engspice to Coruscant quickly or the market would be lost. He’d be surprised if they didn’t try to move the spice tonight.

  He watched the pilot cross the street and head to a public comm station. Turning his ear in the direction of the station, Vrath activated his audio implant.

  Zeerid closed the doors of the station for privacy, cutting off the outside noise, and tapped in Nat’s number. He never called her from his ship’s comm unit or his personal comlink for fear that someone in The Exchange was monitoring him. An excess of paranoia had saved his life more than once, most recently on Ord Mantell.

  Nat did not answer so he left her a message.

  “Nat, it’s Zeerid. I’m onplanet. If you get this soon, bring Arra and meet me at Karson’s Park in an hour. I can’t wait to see you both.”

  He disconnected and hailed a taxi.

  A thin Bothan driver, his face reminiscent of an equine, stared at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Where to?”

  “Just drive. Stay low.”

  “Your credits, pal.”

  Even from afar, Vrath was able to listen through the synthplas walls of the commstation. By the time the call was finished, he had a name for the pilot—Zeerid—and names of people the pilot appeared to care about—Nat and Arra.

  He climbed into an air taxi and monitored the tracking droid activator. The droid driver looked back at him.

  “Where to, sir?”

  “Karson’s Park, eventually,” Vrath said. “But for now, follow my instructions precisely.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zeerid had shown discretion in calling Nat from a public comm station, so Vrath expected him to take a winding route, maybe change vehicles a few times. He settled in for a long ride.

  Even if he lost him, he knew how to find him again.

  The aircar lifted off the ground and merged with traffic. Zeerid had the driver take a serie
s of abrupt turns for about ten minutes. Throughout, he kept his eyes behind him, trying to see if anyone was following. For a time, he thought another taxi might have been tailing him, but it fell away and did not return.

  The glowing sign for a casino he knew, the Silver Falcon, shone ahead.

  “Right here, driver.”

  He paid the Bothan, hopped out, headed into the casino’s front door and out its back. There, he hailed another taxi and went through the same exercise.

  Still no one that he could see. He breathed easier.

  He hailed another taxi, one that could house a hoverchair, this one droid-driven.

  “Where to, sir?”

  Even the droid showed some rust from the air. Its head squeaked when it turned.

  “I need to purchase a hoverchair.”

  The droid paused for a moment while its processors searched the city directory.

  “Of course, sir.”

  The taxi lifted off and took him to a medical supply reseller. Medical devices filled the cavernous warehouse, tended to by a single elderly man who reminded Zeerid of a scarecrow.

  There, eighty-seven thousand credits got Zeerid a used hoverchair sized for a seven-year-old and a crash course on how to operate it. Zeerid could not stop smiling while the wholesaler’s utility droid loaded the chair in the back of the taxi.

  “Don’t see bearer cards all that often,” the old man said, eyeing Zeerid’s method of payment.

  “Credits are credits,” Zeerid said. He knew what the man must have been thinking.

  “True. I used to be a nurse, you know. That chair is a good device.”

  “She’ll love it,” Zeerid said.

  The old man rubbed his hands together. “If that’s all then, sir. I’ll just need you to fill out a few forms. The bearer card is untraceable, as you know.”

  “Can we do it another time?” Zeerid said, and started walking for the door. “I really have to go.”

  The old man tried his best to keep up the pace. “But sir, this is a regulated medical device. Even for resale I need your name and an onplanet address. “Sir! Please, sir!”

  Zeerid hopped into the taxi.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said, and closed the cab door. “Karson’s Park,” he said to the droid.