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 surprised 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 have 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?”
Behind his respirator, he smiled as he might when entertaining the questions of a precocious child.
“Want is not the point. I serve the Force. The Force is conflict. The Empire is conflict. The two are congruent.”
“You speak as if it were mathematics.”
“It is.”
“The Jedi do not think so.”
He fought down a flash of anger. “The Jedi understand the Force only partially. Some of them are even powerful in its use. But they fail to comprehend the fundamental nature of the Force, that it is conflict. That a light side and a dark side exist is proof of this.”
He thought the conversation over, but she did not relent.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why conflict? Why would the Force exist to foment conflict and death?”
He sighed, becoming agitated. “Because the survivors of the conflict come to understand the Force more deeply. Their understanding evolves. That is purpose enough.”
Her expression showed that she still did not understand. His tone sharpened as his exasperation grew.
“Conflict drives a more perfect understanding of the Force. The Empire expands and creates conflict. In that regard, the Empire is an instrument of the Force. You see? The Jedi do not understand this. They use the Force to repress themselves and others, to enforce their version of tolerance, harmony. They are fools. And they will see that after today.”
For a time, Eleena said nothing, and the hum and buzz of Coruscant filled the silent gulf between them. When she finally spoke, she sounded like the shy girl he had first rescued from the slave pens of Geonosis.
“Constant war will be your life? Our life? Nothing more?”
He understood her motives at last. She wanted their relationship to change, wanted it, too, to evolve. But his dedication to the perfection of the Empire, which allowed him to perfect his understanding of the Force, precluded any preeminent attachments.
“I am a Sith warrior,” he said.
“And things with us will always be as they are?”
“Master and servant. This displeases you?”
“You do not treat me as your servant. Not always.”
He let a hardness he did not feel creep into his voice. “Yet a servant you are. Do not forget it.”
The lavender skin of her cheeks darkened to purple, but not with shame, with anger. She stopped, turned, and stared directly into his face. He felt as if the cowl and respirator he wore hid nothing from her.
“I know your nature better than you know yourself. I nursed you after the Battle of Alderaan, when you lay near death from that Jedi witch. You speak the words in earnest—conflict, evolution, perfection—but belief does not reach you
r heart.”
He stared at her, the twin stalks of her lekku framing the lovely symmetry of her face. She held his eyes, unflinching, the scar that stretched across her throat visible under her collar.
Struck by her beauty, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to him. She did not resist and pressed her curves against him. He slipped his respirator to the side and kissed her with his ruined lips, kissed her hard.
“Perhaps you do not know me as well as you imagine,” he said, his voice unmuffled by the mechanical filter of his respirator.
As a boy, he had killed a Twi’lek servant woman in his adoptive father’s house, his first kill. She had committed some minor offense he could no longer recall and that had never mattered. He had not killed her because of her misdeed. He’d killed her to assure himself that he could kill. He still recalled the pride with which his adoptive father had regarded the Twi’lek’s corpse. Soon afterward, Malgus had been sent to the Sith Academy on Dromund Kaas. “I think I do know you,” she said, defiant.
He smiled, she smiled, and he released her. He replaced his respirator and checked the chrono on his wrist.
If all went as planned, the defense grid should come down in moments.
A surge of emotion went through him, born in his certainty that his entire life had for its purpose the next hour, that the Force had brought him to the moment when he would engineer the fall of the Republic and the ascendance of the Empire.
His comlink received a message. He tapped a key to decrypt it.
It is done, the words read.
The Mandalorian had done her job. He did not know the woman’s real name, so in his mind she had become a title, the Mandalorian. He knew only that she worked for money, hated the Jedi for some personal reason known only to herself, and was extraordinarily skilled.
The message told him that the planet’s defense grid had gone dark, yet none of the thousands of sentients who shared the plaza with him looked concerned. No alarm had sounded. Military and security ships were not racing through the sky. The civilian and military authorities were oblivious to the fact that Coruscant’s security net had been compromised.
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