Zeerid had not released her hand, nor she his. “If your Master was here when the bombs hit, then he … he died in the blast. And it was just some anonymous Imperial pilot, Aryn. There’s no one for you to find, no one for you to hunt down.”

She was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking. “He did not die in a blast.”

“Aryn—”

She jerked her hand from him, and some of the grief and anger she felt sharpened her tone. “I felt it, Zeerid! I felt him die! And it was no bomb blast. It was a lightsaber. Right here.”

She touched her abdomen, and the memory of the pain she’d felt when Master Zallow had died made her wince.

Zeerid’s arm and hand still stretched across the seat toward Aryn, but he did not touch her. “I believe you. I do.”

He circled the ruins in silence. “So, what now?”

“I need to go down.”

“That is not a good idea, Aryn.”

He was probably right, but she wanted to touch it, to stand amid the rubble. She fought down the impulse and tried to quell her emotions with thought, reason. “No, don’t go down. There is another way in.”

“There’s nothing standing.”

“The Temple extends underground. One of the rooms where backup surveillance is stored is fairly deep. It may have survived the blast.”

Zeerid looked as if he wanted to protest but did not. Aryn was grateful to him for it.

“Where is the other way in?”

“Through the Works,” Aryn answered.

MALGUS’S PRIVATE SHUTTLE bore him toward Coruscant’s surface. Eleena and her team had left Valor in a convoy of three shuttles an hour earlier. They would already be well into their mission.

He sat alone, the steady rasp of his respirator the only sound in the compartment. Staring at his reflection in the transparisteel window of the shuttle, he tried to sort his thoughts.

Wild ideas bounced around his brain, thoughts that he dared not latch onto for fear of where they would carry him.

He knew only one thing with certainty—Angral was wrong. The Dark Council was wrong. Perhaps even the Emperor was wrong. Peace was a mistake. Peace would cause the Empire to drift into decadence, as had the Republic. Peace would cause the Sith to become weak in their understanding of the Force, as had the Jedi. The sacking of Coruscant was evidence of that decadence, that weakness.

No, peace was atrophy. Only through conflict could potential be realized.

Malgus understood that the role of the Republic and the Jedi was merely to serve as the whetstone against which the Empire and the Sith would sharpen themselves, make themselves more deadly.

Peace, were it to come, would dull them.

But, while Malgus knew that the Empire needed war, he had yet to determine how to bring it about.

“Entering the atmosphere, my lord,” said his pilot.