Her stomach crawled up her throat as they plummeted, spinning wildly, toward the planet below. Her perspective alternated crazily from flaming pieces of Fatman, to Coruscant below, to the sky above and the distant silhouette of the Imperial cruiser, to Fatman again. The motion was pulling the blood from her head. Sparks blinked before her eyes. She had to stop the spinning or she would pass out.

She made her grip a vise around Zeerid and used the Force first to slow, then to stop the spin. They ended up hand in hand, passing through clouds, falling at terminal velocity toward Coruscant’s surface.

MALGUS WATCHED the freighter disintegrate into flaming debris over Coruscant. He expected the faint touch of the Jedi’s Force signature to disintegrate with it, but he felt it still.

“Magnify,” he said, leaning forward in the command chair. The image on the viewscreen grew larger.

Chunks of jagged steel and a large portion of the forward section of the ship burned their way toward the surface.

“Did an escape pod launch before the ship exploded?”

“No, my lord,” Jard said. “There were no survivors.”

But there had been. The Jedi, at least, had survived. He could still feel her presence, though it was fading with distance, a splinter in the skin of his perception.

He considered dispatching fighters, a search party, but decided against it. He was not yet sure what he would do about the Jedi, but whatever it was, he would do it himself.

“Very good, Commander Jard. Well done, Lieutenant Makk.” He turned to Vrath. “You are done here, Vrath Xizor.”

Vrath shifted on his feet, swallowed, cleared his throat. “You mentioned the possibility of payment, my lord?”

Malgus credited him with bravery, if nothing else. Malgus rose and walked over. He stood twenty centimeters taller than Vrath but the smaller man held his ground and kept most of the fear from the slits of his eyes.

“It is not enough that you’ve killed a rival and destroyed the engspice your employer wished to prevent reaching the surface?”

“I did not—”

Malgus held up a gloved hand. “The petty squabbles of criminals hold little interest for me.”

Vrath licked his lips, drew himself up straight. “I brought you a Jedi, my lord. That was her on the holo.”

“So you did.”

“Will I … be paid, then?”

Malgus regarded him coolly, and the small man seemed to withdraw into himself. The fear in his eyes expanded, the knowledge that he was a lone prey animal surrounded by predators.

“I am a man of my word,” Malgus said. “You will be paid.”

Vrath let out a long breath. “Thank you, my lord.”

“You may take your ship to the planet. The coordinates will be provided to you and I will arrange for payment there.”

“And then I can leave?”

Malgus smiled under his respirator. “That is a different question.”