Cohmac reached out with the Force to find the other two passengers. Master Laret Soveral came clear to him almost instantly—she’d moved away from the cockpit, in pain but focused, and yet her spirit was suffused with sorrow.

Where Master Simmix should’ve been, where his calm powerful centeredness in the Force had always been, Cohmac found nothing.

“Master Simmix?” he called, willing himself not to know what the Force had already told him. For the first time in his life, he pushed the Force away, thought of it as a lie. Cohmac got to his feet and walked up the uneven deck toward the back of the ship. “Master?”

Laret Soveral appeared in the doorway, soot staining her face and robes. She was tall for a human female, with striking features and a commanding presence, even at this confusing, difficult moment. Her golden-brown eyes met his evenly. “I’m sorry, Padawan Vitus. Your master is again at one with the Force.”

Every tenet of Jedi doctrine proclaimed that Cohmac should feel happy for Master Simmix, who had been freed from the illusion of mortality and the weaknesses of the flesh.

Instead Cohmac felt as though his guts had been torn out by a rancor’s claws.

When he shouldered his way past Master Laret, she raised no objection, just let him go. Within a few steps, Cohmac found Master Simmix lying crumpled in one corner. The safety harnesses aboard this shuttle had not been configured for Filithar or any other limbless species; Simmix had laughed about it when they boarded, saying he would take his chances.

Why didn’t I insist? Master Simmix, always cautious with the lives of others, had sometimes been careless with his own. More than once, Cohmac had had to point that out. Generally it pleased Simmix when he did so; he said he’d outsourced his sense of self-preservation to his apprentice. And yet, this time, this one fatal time, Cohmac had let it go.

It was my job to remind him of the risks, Cohmac told himself as he knelt beside his master’s scaly green body and reverently closed his eyes. It had not been his decision alone to take the T-1 shuttle, and yet whatever portion of the blame belonged to him would forever be a heavy weight to bear.

“About time something went according to plan,” Isamer growled. Before him glowed the readouts that showed the location of the crashed Jedi vessel. He motioned to two of the guards. “You, get out there. If anyone survived, make sure they don’t survive much longer.”