“You received a location from Darth Angral?” Malgus asked the pilot. “A hospital?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Take me there.”

He boarded the transport, the doors whispered closed, and the ship soon lifted off into the hazy destruction of Coruscant’s night sky. They did not have far to fly. In under a quarter hour the pilot’s voice carried over the intercom.

“Coming up on the facility now, my lord. Where shall I set down?”

Below, Malgus saw the multistoried rectangle of the medical facility. Swoops, aircars, speeders, and medical transports crowded the artificially lit landing pad on its roof. Dozens of people moved among the vehicles—doctors, nurses, medics, the wounded. Bodies lay on gurneys here and there.

On the ground level the scene was much the same. Vehicles and people clotted the artery of the road and a mass of people thronged the main entrance to the facility.

“Set down at ground level,” Malgus ordered.

Some of the people on the roof noticed the transport’s Imperial markings. Faces stared skyward, uncertain, frightened, and a few people ran for the lifts. One tripped over a gurney and fell. Another ran into a medic and knocked him flat.

“Darth Angral temporarily commandeered this hospital to triage Imperial wounded,” the pilot said over the intercom. “They’ve all been moved to Steadfast by now.”

“Not all of them,” Malgus said, but not loudly enough to be heard over the intercom.

“There are a lot of people down there, my lord. I don’t see a clear spot to land.”

Malgus stared down at them, his rage bubbling. “Land. They will move.”

The transport wheeled around, hovered, and began to descend. The crowd below parted as the ship neared the duracrete. Malgus could hear the shouting of the crowd through the bulkheads.

“My lord, should I send for some troops? To guard you?”

“I do not require a guard. Keep the ship secure. I will not be long.” Malgus pressed the switch that opened the side door of the transport, and a cacophony of sirens and angry shouts poured through the opening.

Malgus, his own anger more than a match for that of the crowd, discarded his cloak, revealing his scarred face and respirator, and stepped out onto the landing ramp.

Upon seeing him, the crowd fell mute. Only the sirens continued to howl. A sea of faces stared up at him, pale in the streetlights, frightened, smeared with dust and blood, but above all, angry. Their collective rage and fear washed over him. He stood before it, eyeing one of them after another. None could hold his gaze.

He walked down the ramp and into their midst. They gave way before him. The moment he put his foot on the road the shouting renewed.

“Monster!”

“Murderer!”

“We need medical supplies!”

“He is alone. Kill him.”

“Coward!”