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  Something felt off.

  Flares went up from the freighter and burst in the air—green, red, red, green.

  That was the correct sequence.

  He circled one more time, staring down through the swirl of snow, but saw nothing to cause alarm, no other ships on the island or in the surrounding sea. He pushed aside his concern and chalked his feelings up to the usual tension caused by dealing with miscreants and criminals.

  In any event, he could not afford to mess up a drop of several hundred million credits of hardware because he felt skittish. The ultimate buyer—whoever that was—would be unhappy, and The Exchange would take the lost profits from Zeerid in blood and broken bones, then tack it on to the debt he already owed them. He’d lost track of exactly how much that was, but knew it was at least two million credits on the note for Fatman plus almost half that again on advances for Arra’s medical treatment, though he’d kept Arra’s existence a secret and his handler thought the latter were for gambling losses.

  “LZ is secure.” He hoped saying it would make it so. “Going in.”

  The hum of the reverse thrusters and a swirl of blown snow presaged the thump of Fatman’s touching down on the rock. He landed less than fifty meters from Arigo’s ship.

  For a moment he sat in the cockpit, perfectly still, staring at the falling snow, knowing there’d be another drop after this one, then another, then another, and he’d still owe The Exchange more than he’d ever be able to pay. He was on a treadmill with no idea how to get off. Didn’t matter, though. The point was to earn for Arra, maybe get her a hoverchair instead of that wheeled antique. Better yet, prostheses.

  He blew out a breath, stood, and tried to find his calm as he threw on a winter parka and fingerless gloves. In the cargo hold, he had to pick his way though the maze of shipping containers. He avoided looking directly at the thick black lettering on their sides, though he knew it by heart, had seen such crates many times in his military career.

  DANGER—MUNITIONS.

  FOR MILITARY USE ONLY.

  KEEP AWAY FROM INTENSE HEAT

  OR OTHER ENERGY SOURCES.

  In the crates were upward of three hundred million credits’ worth of crew-served laser cannons, MPAPPs, grenades, and enough ammunition to keep even the craziest fire team grinning and sinning for months.

  Near the bay’s landing ramp, he saw that three of the four securing straps had come loose from one of the crates of grenades. He was lucky the crate hadn’t bounced around in transit. Maybe the straps had snapped when he set down on the island. He chose to believe that rather than admit to his own sloppiness.

  He did not bother reattaching the straps. Arigo’s men would have to undo them to unload anyway.

  He loosened his blasters in their holsters and pushed the button to open the bay and lower the ramp. The door descended and snow and cold blew in, the tang of ocean salt. He stepped out into the wind. The light of the setting sun made him squint. He’d been in only artificial light for upward of twelve hours. His boots crunched on the snow-dusted black rock. His exhalations steamed away in the wind.

  Two of the men from Arrigo’s freighter detached themselves from their ship and met him halfway. Both were human and bearded. One had a patched eye and a scar like a lightning stroke down one cheek. Both wore blasters on their hips. Like Zeerid, both had the butt straps undone.

  Recognizing neither of them rekindled Zeerid’s earlier concerns. He had a mind for faces, and both of the men were strangers.

  The drop was starting to taste sour.

  “Where’s Arigo?” Zeerid asked.

  “Doin’ what Arigo does,” Scar said, and gestured vaguely. “Sent us instead. No worries, though, right?”

  No Scar shifted on his feet, antsy, twitchy.

  Zeerid nodded, kept his face expressionless as his heart rate amped up and adrenaline started making him warm. Everything smelled wrong, and he’d learned over the years to trust his sense of smell.

  “You Zeerid?” Scar asked.

  “Z-man.”

  No one called him Zeerid except his sister-in-law.

  And Aryn, once. But Aryn had been long ago.

  “Z-man,” echoed No Scar, shifting on his feet and half giggling.

  “Sound funny to you?” Zeerid asked him.

  Before No Scar could answer, Scar asked, “Where’s the cargo?”

  Zeerid looked past the two men before him to the third, who lingered near the landing ramp of Arigo’s ship. The man’s body language—too focused on the verbal exchange, too coiled—reinforced Zeerid’s worry. He reminded Zeerid of the way rooks looked when facing Imperials for the first time, all attitude and hair trigger.

  Suspicion stacked up into certainty. The drop didn’t just smell bad, it was bad.

  Arigo was dead, and the crew before him worked for some other faction on Ord Mantell, or worked for some organization sideways to The Exchange. Whatever. Didn’t matter to Zeerid. He never bothered to follow who was fighting who, so he just trusted no one.

  But what did matter to him was that the three men standing before him probably had tortured information from Arigo and would kill Zeerid as soon as they confirmed the presence of the cargo.

  And there could be still more men hidden aboard the freighter.

  It seemed he’d descended out of atmospheric blackout and into a crossfire after all.

  What else was new?

  “Why you call that ship Fatman?” No Scar asked. Arigo must have told them the name of Zeerid’s ship because Fatman bore no identifying markings. Zeerid used fake ship registries on almost every planet on which he docked.

  “ ’Cause it takes a lot to fill her belly.”

  “Ship’s a she, though. Right? Why not Fatwoman?”

  “Seemed disrespectful.”

  No Scar frowned. “Huh? To who?”

  Zeerid did not bother to answer. All he’d wanted to do was drop off the munitions, retire some of his debt to The Exchange, and get back to his daughter before he had to get back out in the black and get dirty again.

  “Something wrong?” Scar asked, his tone wary. “You look upset.”

  “No,” Zeerid said, and forced a half smile. “Everything’s the same as always.”

  The men plastered on uncertain grins, unclear on Zeerid’s meaning.

  “Right,” Scar said. “Same as always.”

  Knowing how things would go, Zeerid felt the calm he usually did when danger impended. He flashed for a moment on Arra’s face, on what she’d do if he died on Ord Mantell, on some no-name island. He pushed the thoughts away. No distractions.

  “Cargo is in the main bay. Send your man around. The ship’s open.”

  The expressions on the faces of both men hardened, the change nearly imperceptible but clear to Zeerid, a transformation that betrayed their intention to murder. Scar ordered No Scar to go check the cargo.

  “He’ll need a lifter,” Zeerid said, readying himself, focusing on speed and precision. “That stuff ain’t a few kilos.”

  No Scar stopped within reach of Zeerid, looking back at Scar for guidance, his expression uncertain.

  “Nah,” said Scar, his hand hovering near his holster, the motion too casual to be casual. “I just want him to make sure it’s all there. Then I’ll let my people know to release payment.”

  He held up his arm as if to show Zeerid a wrist comlink, but the parka covered it.

  “It’s all there,” Zeerid said.

  “Go on,” said Scar to No Scar. “Check it.”

  “Oh,” Zeerid said, and snapped his fingers. “There is one other thing …”

  No Scar sighed, stopped, faced him, eyebrows raised in a question, breath steaming out of his nostrils. “What’s that?”

  Zeerid made a knife of his left hand and drove his fingertips into No Scar’s throat. While No Scar crumpled to the snow, gagging, Zeerid jerked one of his blasters free of its hip holster and put a hole through Scar’s chest before the man could do anything more than take a sur
prised step backward and put his hand on the grip of his own weapon. Scar staggered back two more steps, his mouth working but making no sound, his right arm held up, palm out, as if he could stop the shot that had already killed him.

  As Scar toppled to the ground, Zeerid took a wild shot at the third man near the Doghouse’s landing ramp but missed high. The third man made himself small beside the Doghouse, drew his blaster pistol, and shouted into a wrist comlink. Zeerid saw movement within the cargo bay of Arigo’s ship—more men with ill intent.

  No way to know how many.

  He cursed, fired a covering shot, then turned and ran for Fatman. A blaster shot put a smoking black furrow through the sleeve of his parka but missed flesh. Another rang off the hull of Fatman. A third shot hit him square in the back. It felt like getting run over by a speeder. The impact drove the air from his lungs and plowed him face-first into the snow.

  He smelled smoke. His armored vest had ablated the shot.

  Adrenaline got him to his feet just as fast as he had gone down. Gasping, trying to refill his lungs, he ducked behind a landing skid for cover and wiped the snow from his face. He poked his head out for a moment to look back, saw that No Scar had stopped gagging and started being dead, that Scar stayed politely still, and that six more men were dashing toward him, two armed with blaster rifles and the rest with pistols.

  His armor would not stop a rifle bolt.

  A shot slammed into the landing skid, another into the snow at his feet, another, another.

  “Stang!” he cursed.

  The safety of Fatman’s landing ramp and cargo bay, only a few steps from him, somehow looked ten kilometers away.

  He took a blaster in each hand, stretched his arms around to either side of the landing skid, and fired as fast he could he pull the trigger in the direction of the onrushing men. He could not see and did not care if he hit anyone, he just wanted to get them on the ground. After he’d squeezed off more than a dozen shots with no return fire, he darted out from the behind the skid and toward the ramp.

  He reached it before the shooters recovered enough to let loose another barrage. A few bolts chased him up the ramp, ringing off the metal. Sparks flew and the smell of melted plastoid mixed with the ocean air. He ran past the button to raise the ramp, struck at it, and hurried on toward the cockpit. Only after he’d nearly cleared the cargo bay did it register with him that he wasn’t hearing the whir of turning gears.

  He whirled around, cursed.

  In his haste, he’d missed the button to raise the landing ramp.

  He heard shouts from outside and dared not go back. He could close the bay from the control panel in the cockpit. But he had to hurry.

  He pelted through Fatman’s corridors, shouldered open the door to the cockpit, and started punching in the launch sequence. Fatman’s thrusters went live and the ship lurched upward. Blasterfire thumped off the hull but did no harm. He tried to look down out of the canopy, but the ship was angled upward and he could not see the ground. He punched the control to move it forward and heard the distant squeal of metal on metal. It had come from the cargo bay.

  Something was slipping around in there.

  The loose container of grenades.

  And he’d still forgotten to seal the bay.

  Cursing himself for a fool, he flicked the switch that brought up the ramp then sealed the cargo bay and evacuated it of oxygen. If anyone had gotten aboard, they would suffocate in there.

  He took the controls in hand and fired Fatman’s engines. The ship shot upward. He turned her as he rose, took a look back at the island.

  For a moment, he was confused by what he saw. But realization dawned.

  When Fatman had lurched up and forward, the remaining straps securing the container of grenades had snapped and the whole shipping container had slid right out the open landing ramp.

  He was lucky it hadn’t exploded.

  The men who had ambushed him were gathered around the crate, probably wondering what was inside. A quick head count put their number at six, so he figured none had gotten on board Fatman. And none of them seemed to be making for Arigo’s ship, so Zeerid assumed they had no intention of pursuing him in the air. Maybe they were happy enough with the one container.

  Amateurs, then. Pirates, maybe.

  Zeerid knew he would have to answer to Oren, his handler, not only for the deal going sour but also for the lost grenades.

  Kriffing treadmill just kept going faster and faster.

  He considered throwing Fatman’s ion engines on full, clearing Ord Mantell’s gravity well, and heading into hyperspace, but changed his mind. He was annoyed and thought he had a better idea.

  He wheeled the freighter around and accelerated.

  “Weapons going live,” he said, and activated the over-and-under plasma cannons mounted on Fatman’s sides.

  The men on the ground, having assumed he would flee, did not notice him coming until he had closed to five hundred meters. Faces stared up at him, hands pointed, and the men started to scramble. A few blaster shots from one of the men traced red lines through the sky, but a blaster could not harm the ship.

  Zeerid took aim. The targeting computer centered on the crate.

  “LZ is hot,” he said, and lit them up. For an instant pulsing orange lines connected the ship to the island, the ship to the crate of grenades. Then, as the grenades exploded, the lines blossomed into an orange cloud of heat, light, and smoke that engulfed the area. Shrapnel pattered against the canopy, metal this time, not ice, and the shock wave rocked Fatman slightly as Zeerid peeled the ship off and headed skyward.

  He glanced back, saw six, motionless, smoking forms scattered around the blast radius.

  “That was for you, Arigo.”

  He would still have some explaining to do, but at least he’d taken care of the ambushers. That had to be worth something to The Exchange.

  Or so he hoped.

  Darth Malgus strode the autowalk, the steady rap of his boots on the pavement the tick of a chrono counting down the limited time remaining to the Republic.

  Speeders, swoops, and aircars roared above him in unending streams, the motorized circulatory system of the Republic’s heart. Skyrises, bridges, lifts, and plazas covered the entire surface of Coruscant to a height of kilometers, all of it the trappings of a wealthy, decadent civilization, a sheath that sought to hide the rot in a cocoon of duracrete and transparisteel.

  But Malgus smelled the decay under the veneer, and he would show them the price of weakness, of complacency.

  Soon it would all burn.

  He would lay waste to Coruscant. He knew this. He had known it for decades.

  Memories floated up from the depths of his mind. He recalled his first pilgrimage to Korriban, remembered the profound sense of holiness he had felt as he walked in isolation through its rocky deserts, through the dusty canyons lined with the tombs of his ancient Sith forebears. He had felt the Force everywhere, had exulted in it, and in his isolation it had showed him a vision. He had seen systems in flames, the fall of a galaxy-spanning government.

  He had believed then, had known then and ever since, that the destruction of the Jedi and their Republic would fall to him.

  “What are you thinking of, Veradun?” Eleena asked him.

  Only Eleena called him by his given name, and only when they were alone. He enjoyed the smooth way the syllables rolled off her tongue and lips, but he tolerated it from no others.

  “I am thinking of fire,” he said, the hated respirator partially muffling his voice.

  She walked beside him, as beautiful and dangerous as an elegantly crafted lanvarok. She clucked her tongue at his words, eyed him sidelong, but said nothing. Her lavender skin looked luminescent in the setting sun.

  Crowds thronged the plaza in which they walked, laughing, scowling, chatting. A human child, a young girl, caught Malgus’s eye when she squealed with delight and ran to the waiting arms of a dark-haired woman, presumably her mother. The girl must ha
ve felt his gaze. She looked at him from over her mother’s shoulder, her small face pinched in a question. He stared at her as he walked and she looked away, burying her face in her mother’s neck.

  Other than the girl, no one else marked his passage. The citizens of the Republic felt safe so deep in the Core, and the sheer number of beings on Coruscant granted him anonymity. He walked among his prey, cowled, armored under his cloak, unnoticed and unknown, but heavy with purpose.

  “This is a beautiful world,” Eleena said.

  “Not for very much longer.”

  His words seemed to startle her, though he could not imagine why. “Veradun …”

  He saw her swallow, look away. Whatever words she intended after his name seemed stuck on the scar that marred her throat.

  “You may speak your mind, Eleena.”

  Still she looked away, taking in the scenery around them, as if memorizing Coruscant before Malgus and the Empire lit it aflame.

  “When will the fighting end?”

  The premise of the question confounded him. “What do you mean?”

  “Your life is war, Veradun. Our life. When will it end? It cannot always be so.”

  He nodded then, understanding the flavor of the conversation to come. She would try to disguise self-perceived wisdom behind questions. As usual, he was of two minds about it. On the one hand, she was but a servant, a woman who provided him companionship when he wished it. On the other hand, she was Eleena. His Eleena.

  “You choose to fight beside me, Eleena. You have killed many in the name of the Empire.”

  The lavender skin of her cheeks darkened to purple. “I have not killed for the Empire. I fight, and kill, for you. You know this. But you … you fight for the Empire? Only for the Empire?”

  “No. I fight because that is what I was made to do and the Empire is the instrument through which I realize my purpose. The Empire is war made manifest. That is why it is perfect.”

  She shook her head. “Perfect? Millions die in its wars. Billions.”

  “Beings die in war. That is the price that must be paid.”

  She stared at a group of children following an adult, perhaps a teacher. “The price for what? Why constant war? Why constant expansion? What is it the Empire wants? What is it you want?”