He double-checked to ensure Razor was still sealed tight. It wasn’t. The rear door was open. He cursed. He swore he’d closed it. He hit the button to close it but it still flashed as unsealed and open. Something was keeping it open, or there was a malfunction in the circuit.

He would have to close it with the rear switch or cargo would fall out as he flew. He started Razor’s auto-launch sequence, rose, and headed for the rear of the ship. Halfway there, he realized he’d left his blaster and blades in the cockpit. He’d stripped them off when he’d grabbed some shuteye.

No matter. He wouldn’t need them.

ARYN FELT LIGHT-HEADED as she walked up the shuttle’s landing ramp. She held her lightsaber hilt in her hand, held anger in her heart.

She slowed when the Twi’lek stirred, groaned, and turned over to watch her approach.

Aryn held up her free hand and almost said, I won’t hurt you, but walled off the words before they escaped her mouth.

She did not want to lie.

The woman scrabbled backward crabwise, eyes showing no fear, taking Aryn in, until she bumped into the bulkhead. She slid up the wall so that she was standing. Aryn stopped two paces from her. They regarded each other across the limitless gulf of their respective understandings.

Outside, the sirens howled. Aryn could no longer see Zeerid. More important, he could no longer see her.

The Twi’lek’s eyes fell to Aryn’s lightsaber hilt. Aryn felt no fear radiating from the woman, just a soft, profound sadness.

“You have come to kill me.”

Aryn did not deny it. Her mouth was dry. She belted her own lightsaber, took Master Zallow’s in hand.

“I see your anger,” the Twi’lek said.

Aryn thought of Master Zallow and hardened her resolve. “You don’t know me, woman. Do not pretend that you do.”

She ignited Master Zallow’s lightsaber. The Twi’lek’s eyes widened and a flash of fear cracked her calm façade.

“I don’t,” the Twi’lek acknowledged. “But I know anger when I see it. I know it quite well.”

A sad smile illuminated her face, overcoming the fear in her expression. She was thinking of something or someone other than Aryn and the sadness she radiated increased, sharpened.

“Anger is just pain renamed,” she said. “This I know well, too. And sometimes … the pain runs too deep. Pain drives you, yes?”

Aryn had expected resistance, a fight, a protest, something. Instead, the Twi’lek seemed … resigned.

“You will kill me, Jedi? Because of Darth Malgus? Something he did?”

Hearing Malgus’s name uttered stoked the heat of Aryn’s anger. “He hurt someone I loved.”