Zeerid crawled over to her, cursing with pain throughout. He peeled off his mask and lay on his back next to her. They stared up at the sky together.

“Is anything broken?” she asked him.

He turned to look at her, shook his head, looked back at the sky. “If we get out of this, I’m becoming a farmer on Dantooine. I swear it.”

She smiled.

“I’m not joking.”

She held her smile; he began to chuckle, louder, and the chuckle turned into a laugh.

She could not help it. A wide smile split her face, followed by a chuckle, and then she joined him in full, both of them giggling hysterically at the dawn sky of a new day.

VRATH’S HANDS SWEATED on Razor’s stick. Despite Malgus purporting to be a man of his word, Vrath felt certain the Imperial cruiser would shoot him from space after he exited the landing bay. For a moment, he considered veering off deeper insystem, accelerating to full to get out of Coruscant’s gravity well, then jumping into hyperspace, but he did not think he would make it.

More important, he feared that even if he did make it, Malgus would hunt him down on principle. Vrath knew that Malgus would do it because Vrath would have done the same. He’d looked into the Sith Lord’s eyes and seen the same relentlessness he tried to cultivate in his own. He would not cross Malgus.

He let the ship’s autopilot ride the coordinates provided to him by Valor into Coruscant’s atmosphere. It would put him down in one of Galactic City’s smaller spaceports, probably one commandeered by Imperial soldiers.

Presently, the spaceport hailed him and sent him landing instructions. He affirmed them and sat back in his chair.

He resolved that he would not leave Razor once he put down on Coruscant. He wanted no further interaction with conquering Imperials. He wanted only to wait until peace negotiations on Alderaan were concluded, however long that might take, and then get off Coruscant.

MALGUS KNEW ARYN LENEER had somehow survived the destruction of her ship and he suspected she had survived the descent to Coruscant’s surface. He did not want Angral to learn of her escape. Such knowledge would be … premature.

He would need to track her down. To do that, he needed to determine why she had returned to Coruscant in the first place.

“I will be in my quarters,” he said to Commander Jard.

“If anything requires your attention, I will alert you immediately.”

When he reached his quarters, he found Eleena sleeping. Her blasters, tucked into their holsters, lay on the bed beside her. She slept with one hand on them. He watched the steady rise and fall of her chest, the half smile she wore even while sleeping. She had shed the sling on her arm.

Staring at her, he acknowledged to himself that he cared for her. Deeply.