The Old Republic Series

by Sean Williams

  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.

  He watched the fire of atmospheric entry sheathe the ship, and pondered something he recalled from his time at the Sith Academy on Dromund Kaas.

  It was said the ancient Sith of Korriban purged their bodies with fire, learned strength through pain, encouraged growth through destruction.

  There was wisdom in that, Malgus thought. Sometimes a thing could not be fixed. Instead, it had to be destroyed and remade.

  “Remade,” he said, his voice harsh through the respirator. “Destroyed and remade.”

  “Darth Malgus,” said the pilot over the comm. “Where shall I fly you? I do not have a flight plan.”

  The fire of reentry had faded. The smolder in Malgus was growing into flames. Aryn Leneer’s unexpected presence had started him down a path he should have trod long ago. He was grateful to her for that.

  Below, the cityscape of Coruscant, pockmarked and smoking here and there from Imperial bombs, came into view.

  “The Jedi Temple,” he said. “Circle at one hundred meters.”

  If nothing else, he would soon have his own personal war. Aryn Leneer had come to Coruscant looking for him. And he had returned looking for her.

  They would meet on the rubbled grave of the Jedi Order.

  Aryn pointed over the windscreen at an enormous building of duracrete and steel that could have held ten athletic stadiums. The peak of the dome stood several hundred meters high, and the innumerable venting towers and smokestacks that stuck from its surface looked like a thicket of spears. Not a single window marred the metal-and-duracrete façade.

  “The Works,” Aryn said. “Or at least one of the hubs. Set down there.”

  As Zeerid piloted the speeder down, Aryn looked back over the urbanscape, orienting herself to the relative position of the Jedi Temple. She could not see the actual ruins from their location—the intervening terrain blocked it—but she could see the smoke plumes.

  The image of the ruined temple still haunted her memory.

  Zeerid put the speeder down atop a nearby parking structure. Few other vehicles shared the structure. A single speeder and two swoops—both tipped onto their sides—were all that Aryn saw.

  “Where is everyone?” Zeerid asked.

  “Hiding in the lower levels, maybe. Staying home.”

  Though it seemed a lifetime ago, the attack had happened only a day before. The populace was still in shock, hiding perhaps, picking up what pieces they could.

  They took a lift and autowalk to the Works hub. A large gate and security station provided ingress through the ten-meter duracrete walls. While the gate remained closed, the security station stood empty. Ordinarily it would have been well guarded. Aryn and Zeerid climbed over and through unchallenged.

  The mammoth structure of the hub, larger even than a Republic cruiser, loomed before them.

  Zeerid drew a blaster from his hip holster, then pulled another from a hidden holster in the small of his back and offered it to Aryn. She declined.

  “Thought I’d ask,” Zeerid said. “That lightsaber doesn’t do you much good at twenty meters.”

  “You’d be surprised,” she said.

  The arched double doors that offered entry looked like something from an ancient Alderaanian castle built for titans. They were enormous. Aryn’s Raven starfighter could have flown through them.

  “Power is still on and controls are still live,” Zeerid said, examining the console on the doors.

  Aryn tapped a code she’d learned years before into the console.

  Somewhere invisible gears turned, the groans of giants, and the doors began to rise.

  The doors opened and they entered, walking empty corridors that smelled of grease and faintly of burning. The metal floor vibrated under their feet, the snores of some enormous, unseen mechanical beast. The shaking increased as they moved deeper into the complex. Somewhere, metal ground against metal.

  They cut away from the wide main corridor through which they’d entered and moved through a network of halls and offices sized not for vehicles but for sentients.

  “I’ve never seen the inside of a hub,” Zeerid said. “Not much to look at. Where are all the mechanisms?”

  Aryn led him through a series of deserted security checkpoints until they reached a set of soundproofed doors that opened onto the central chamber under the dome.

  EARWEAR AND HELMETS REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT FOR ALL NON-DROIDS read a sign on the door.

  She pulled open the doors and sound poured out in a rush: the rhythmic clang of metal scraping metal, the hiss of vented air and gas, the discordant hum of hundreds of enormous engines and pumps, the beeps and whistles of maintenance droids.

  Zeerid’s arms fell slack at his side. His mouth hung open.

  The Works was difficult to comprehend all at once. The central chamber itself was several kilometers in diameter and hundreds of meters tall. Tiered flooring and a network of stairs and cage lifts made the whole of it look like a mad industrial artist’s take on an insect hive. Aryn always felt miniaturized when she saw it. It seemed made for an alien race ten times the size of humans: gears as large as starfighters, pipes wide enough to fly a speeder into, individual mechanisms that reached floor-to-ceiling, chains and belts hundreds of meters long. Hundreds of droids scurried, rolled, and walked among the workings, checking gauges, readouts, maintaining equipment, greasing mechanisms. The sound was overwhelming, a deafening industrial cacophony.

  Compared with the advanced technology apparent elsewhere on Coruscant—with its sleek lines, compact designs, and sheer elegance—the Works looked primitive, garish in its enormity, like a throwback to ancient times when steam and combustion powered industry. But Aryn knew it was an illusion.

  The Works stretched under Coruscant’s crust from pole to pole, generally accessible only through the hubs. Its pipes, lines, hoses, and conduits formed the circulatory system of the planet, through which water, heat, electricity, and any number of other necessities flowed. It represented the peak of Republic technology.

  “Follow me!” she shouted above the noise, and Zeerid nodded.

  Following signs and calling upon her memory, Aryn led Zeerid through the maze of raised flooring, lifts, and autostairs. Droids moved past them, oblivious, and it occurred to Aryn that the droids in the Works would probably have kept doing their work even if everyone on Coruscant were dead. The thought struck her as grotesque.

  Zeerid turned circles as they walked, trying to take it all in.

  “This is unbelievable,” he said to her. “I wish I had a holorecorder.”

  She nodded and hurried along.

  They soon left behind the mechanical tumult of the hub proper. As the sound faded behind them, the corridors narrowed and darkened, and the wall-mounted lights became less frequent. Pipes and conduits snaked on and through the ceiling, the floor, the entrails of plantw
ide convenience. Zeerid pulled a chemlight from one of the pockets of his flight pants, snapped it in half, and held it aloft as they advanced. Both of them were sweating in the still air of the tunnels.

  “There are security droids in these tunnels,” she said. “We don’t have a proper pass. They will try to stop us.”

  “Great,” Zeerid said. Then, “You sure you know where you’re going?”

  She nodded, though she was beginning to feel lost.

  From ahead she heard the whir of servos, the rattle of metal. A droid.

  She pulled Zeerid to a stop and activated her lightsaber, fearing a security droid. Dust danced in the green light of its glow. Zeerid pulled his blaster, held the chemlight up higher.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  A form moved in the shadows, small, cylindrical, a droid. Not a security droid but an astromech. It emerged into the light and she saw the flat, circular head and dun coloration of a T7. Scratches marred the droid’s surface, and loose wires dangled from one of its shoulder joints. But she knew its color and felt as if she were seeing a ghost, a specter from her past haunting the dark tunnels of the Works. Deactivating her blade, she said, “Tee-seven?”

  Her voice cracked on the words.

  When he beeped a greeting in droidspeak, she knew it was him, his mechanical voice redolent somehow of very human joys, triumphs, and pain, the soundtrack of her time in the Temple, of her life with Master Zallow. Tears pooled in her eyes as T7 wheeled toward them.

  “You know this astromech?” Zeerid asked.

  “It was Master Zallow’s droid,” she said.

  She knelt before T7, daubing at the dirt on his head as she might a small child. He whistled with pleasure.

  “How did you get here?” she asked. “How did you … survive the attack?”

  She struggled to follow his droidspeak, so rapidly did he spit out his beeps, whistles, and chirps. In the end, she determined that a Sith force had attacked the Temple, that Master Zallow had sent T7 away during the fight, and that T7 had sneaked back to the battlefield after all had gone quiet. Later, the Sith had returned, presumably to lay explosives, and T7 had fled to the lower levels.

  “I know about Master Zallow, Tee-seven,” she said.

  He moaned, a low whistle of despair.

  “Did you see his—Did you see him when it happened?”

  The droid whistled a negative.

  “Why did you go back after the battle?” Zeerid asked the droid.

  A long whistle, then a compartment in T7’s body slid open and T7 extended a thin metal arm from within.

  The arm held Master Zallow’s lightsaber.

  Aryn recoiled, stared at it for a long moment, memories crowding around her, falling like rain.

  “You went back to get this? Just to get this?”

  Another negative whistle. Another long, hard-to-follow monologue in droidspeak.

  T7 had gone back to see if anyone had survived but had found only the lightsaber.

  Once more, Aryn stared determinism in the face. The Force had brought her to Zeerid at the exact moment when Zeerid was making a run to Coruscant. And now the Force had caused T7 to find Master Zallow’s lightsaber so that the droid could give it to her.

  Aryn decided that it could not be coincidence. It was the Force showing her that the course she pursued was the right one, at least for her.

  She took the cool metal of the saber’s hilt in her hand, tested its weight. The hilt was larger than hers, slightly heavier, yet it felt familiar in her hand. She remembered the many times she’d seen it in Master Zallow’s hands as he had trained her in lightsaber combat. She activated it and the green blade sprang to life. She stared at it, thinking of her master, then turned it off.

  She clipped it to her belt, beside her own, and patted T7 on the head.

  “Thank you, Tee-seven. This means more to me than you know. You were very brave to return there.”

  The droid beeped with pleasure and sympathy.

  “Have you seen any other survivors?” Zeerid asked, and Aryn felt ashamed for not asking the question herself.

  T7 whistled a somber negative.

  Zeerid holstered his blaster. “What about security droids?”

  Another negative.

  “I need to get to the backup surveillance station,” Aryn said. “Is it still standing? Can you lead the way?”

  T7 chirped with enthusiasm, spun his head around, and headed off down the corridor, wires still dangling from his shoulder joint. Aryn and Zeerid fell in behind him. Aryn felt the weight of the extra lightsaber on her belt, heavy with the memories it bore.

  T7 led them on through the labyrinthine passageways of the Works, avoiding collapsed or blocked corridors, doubling back when necessary, descending ever deeper into the hive of pipes, gears, and machinery. Aryn was soon lost. Had they not encountered T7, they could have wandered for days before finding their way.

  In time, they reached an area familiar to Aryn.

  “We’re near now,” she said to Zeerid.

  Ahead, she saw the turbolift that would take them up into the lower levels of the Temple. T7 plugged into the control panel and the lift’s mechanism began to hum. As the doors slid open, Aryn braced herself to see something horrible, but there was nothing behind them save the empty box of the passenger compartment.

  The three of them entered, the doors closed, and the lift began to rise. Aryn could feel Zeerid’s concern for her. He watched her sidelong, thinking she did not notice. But she did, and his concern touched her.

  “I am glad that you’re with me,” she said to him.

  He colored with embarrassment. “Yes, well. Me, too.”

  The doors opened to reveal a long corridor. The emergency lights overhead flickered and buzzed. T7 started ahead, and Aryn and Zeerid followed.

  Aryn had walked the corridor before, long ago, yet to her everything felt different. It no longer felt like the Jedi Temple. Instead, it felt like a tomb. The Sith attack had destroyed more than merely the Temple’s structure. Something else had died when the structure fell. It had been a symbol of justice for thousands of years. And now it was gone.

  There was symbolism in that, Aryn supposed.

  She wanted out as soon as possible, but first she had to see if there was any record of the attack.

  T7’s servos, and Aryn’s and Zeerid’s footsteps, sounded loud in the silence. Rooms off the main corridor looked entirely ordinary. Chairs, desks, comps, everything in order. The attack had destroyed the surface structure but left the core intact.

  Maybe there was symbolism in that, too, Aryn thought, and let herself hope.

  When they reached the secondary surveillance room, they found it, too, entirely intact. The five monitoring stations each featured a chair, desk, and a computer, with a large vidscreen suspended from the wall above it. All of the screens were dark.

  “Can you get some power in here, Tee-seven?” asked Aryn.

  The droid beeped an affirmative, rolled over to a wall jack, and plugged in. In moments, the room came to life. The overhead lights brightened. Computers and the monitors hummed awake.

  “I want to see whatever we’ve got of the attack. Can you find that?”

  Again the droid beeped an affirmative.

  Zeerid wheeled a chair over to Aryn. She sat, her heart racing, her breath coming fast. Zeerid put a hand on her shoulder, just for a moment, then pulled up another chair and sat beside her. They stared at the dark security monitor, waiting for T7 to show them horror.

  The droid let out an excited series of whistles. He had located the footage. Aryn gripped the arms of the chair.

  “Play it,” she said.

  A single glowing line formed on the monitor and expanded up and down until it filled the screen. Images formed on it. The main security cam had a view opposite the main doors of the Temple, so it could record those coming in or leaving.

  Aryn’s mouth was dry. She was afraid to blink for fear of missing something, though t
hat was ridiculous since T7 could freeze, replay, and even magnify any image on the screen.

  They watched as a cloaked figure and a Twi’lek woman armed with blasters walked through the Temple’s enormous doors.

  “Does the Temple post guards?” Zeerid asked.

  Aryn nodded.

  Neither of them needed to say what must have happened to the guards.

  As the pair walked brazenly down the entry hallway, the cam showed people gathering on the balconies above, looking down.

  “They didn’t know what to make of him,” Zeerid said.

  Aryn nodded.

  “He is big,” Zeerid said.

  “Freeze on his face and magnify,” Aryn said to T7.

  The image froze, centered on the man’s hooded face, and magnified. She could make out nothing in the shadowed depths of his cowl except what looked to be the bottom of a mask of some kind.

  “Is that a mask?” Zeerid asked.

  “I don’t know. The Twi’lek, Tee-seven,” she said, and T7 pulled the image back, recentered on the Twi’lek, and did the same.

  The Twi’lek’s face filled the screen.

  “Skin color is unusual,” Zeerid said. He leaned forward in his chair, peering intently.

  She was beautiful, Aryn allowed.

  And she was a murderer. Or at least associated with one.

  “See the scar,” Zeerid said. He stood and pointed a finger at the screen, at the Twi’lek’s throat. There, a jagged scar cut an irregular path across her neck. “Between that and her skin, maybe we can identify her?”

  “Maybe,” Aryn said, and tried to swallow. She was less interested in the Twi’lek than she was in the hooded figure. “Continue, Tee-seven.”

  They watched as the two strode halfway down the hall. Aryn’s breath caught when she watched Master Zallow emerge from off cam to confront the Sith and the Twi’lek. Six other Jedi Knights accompanied him.

  “Freeze, Tee-seven.”

  The frame stopped, and Aryn studied Master Zallow’s face. He looked as he always had—stern, focused. Seeing him somehow freed her to grieve with something other than tears. She recalled some of their training sessions, how he had at first insisted that she fight with his style, but had later relented and allowed her to find her own path. The memory made her smile, and cry.