Tahiri stood silent and wide-eyed. She looked as if she was seriously considering the implications. Like him, she’d learned from her time among the Yuuzhan Vong: She knew that there was nothing like blood on your hands to make you grow up and understand all the things you had to sacrifice for duty. Caedus retired to his day cabin and sat reading the previous day’s intelligence reports on the journey home.
When he was still Jacen Solo, Caedus had been warned that command—rule—was lonely, but now he knew what Tenel Ka had meant when she told him it was the price of being a leader.
He was utterly alone now, rejected even by his daughter, Allana.
That … that was my sacrifice.
He had convinced himself it was Mara Skywalker. Then he had convinced himself it was Ben’s adulation he’d sacrificed by killing her. Now he knew that whatever the ancient Sith tassels had prophesied in their arcane language of knots and colors, his sacrifice was an ordinary man’s precious connection to other beings—love, trust, and intimacy. He could never recover any of it. Allana was gone from him forever. His only comfort was that the galaxy would be safer for her.
Lumiya had said the cost would be high. But this was the price of order and justice. This was the price of stability, and his was just one life out of many, a price he considered worth paying however much it hurt. Tahiri would discover that, too, and she had just taken her first step on that path, a small gray area of right or wrong to most beings, but one that a Sith apprentice had to be able to handle.
This is duty.
There was a bleep at the cabin door: Shevu. Caedus felt the man coming down the passage, heralded by a sense of wariness and … distaste in the Force. Shevu was a former police officer, a Coruscant Security Force man, and he brought his culture with him. He didn’t like Caedus and he didn’t approve of his methods; that was as clear as day. But Caedus trusted him precisely because it was clear even to a non-Force-sensitive. A man who didn’t try to hide his feelings but did the job well anyway gave Caedus nothing to fear.
This is duty, too. Shevu understands what must be done.
“Sir, shall I leave these reports on your desk, or would you prefer to discuss them?” Shevu said.
“Leave them.” Whether the man liked him or not, there was nothing to be gained by alienating him further. He was very good at his job. “You look tired.”
“Sleepless nights, sir.”
Shevu was being brutally honest. Caedus could sense that: a little anger, a little fear, something worrying him, a yearning to see someone he cared for. Distractions like that could become corrosive.
“Problems?”
“Family stuff, sir.”
“You have a girlfriend, yes?”
“Not any longer, sir.”
“Ah.” Yes, Caedus understood abandonment by those who claimed to love and understand him. “I’m sorry. Isn’t it time you had a few days off?”
“I haven’t taken any leave, sir.”
“Burning out isn’t being a good officer, Shevu. I need you sharp. Take seventy-two hours and come back refreshed. I can’t do anything about the lady, other than say that I understand the toll that duty takes on relationships.”
Shevu’s surprise was palpable. “Thank you, sir.” His mood felt as if it had lifted a little. “Most generous.”
Caedus watched the doors close behind him and was reassured that he hadn’t turned into a monster, whatever Ben Skywalker might have thought. Different situations required different incentives, and Shevu—Shevu couldn’t be scared into compliance, or he would have been no good at an intelligence-based, dangerous job. He couldn’t be cajoled, for the same reasons. He had to be treated with honest respect.
The man was as straight as a die. There were few like that, and worth the keeping.
KELDABE, MANDALORE
Jaina dropped out of hyperspace in the X-wing and hoped that making herself slow and obvious would prevent a misunderstanding about her intentions in a Galactic Alliance fighter.
I must be out of my mind. I should have contacted Fett in advance. But if he’d said no … then I’d still be here. And I’d be in worse trouble. And it’s always harder to turn someone away when they show up in person. And Fett respects physical courage. And …
And she was a Jedi entering Mandalorian space. That was all there was to it. But she had to get past the gatekeeper to get to Fett to win him over with her straight talking, and this was no time to lose her nerve.
“Keldabe ATC, this is X-wing Amber Nine, requesting permission to enter Mandalorian airspace.” She checked again that every weapons system was powered down so that nothing, absolutely nothing, gave them the wrong impression about her intentions. Maybe a shuttle would have been a better idea, but she had no idea how she might be received, and being cannoned up made her feel better. The X-wing held its position. “Keldabe, this is Amber Nine. Are you receiving me?”
“Keldabe ATC to Nine Amber,” said a female voice that didn’t sound remotely ruffled by the intrusion of a GA fighter. Maybe they shot them down every day for practice. It was going to be a hard way to find out. “Pare sol. Wait one.”
Would they even recognize her? The X-wing was obvious enough, but she wasn’t a known face like Jacen or Mom. She was just a pilot, not even in GA orange, deliberately low-key in a somber flight suit with her hair tied back. All she needed to do, though, was to land and do the humble thing, to throw herself on the mercy of Boba Fett, and she was still gambling that saving the salient point about her real identity might get her a little farther. If she said right now that she was Jaina Solo, there was no telling if some Mandalorian patriot might fancy settling the family score on behalf of Fett.
If a bunch of Mandalorians had shown up asking for Dad … I know how I’d react.
Jaina had never been in Mandalorian space before. Mom had, in her Rebel youth; she said the Mandalorians lived in tree-houses, and their leader, a blond man called Shysa, had been very charming. Jaina waited, cultivating a patience she never knew she had.
Her Force senses told her something was approaching, but she sensed no danger. It felt oddly benign, in fact; if she hadn’t known better, she would have said amused. Yes, there was definitely something approaching her. Nothing showed up on the X-wing’s monitors other than a medium-sized ship with a heavy drive, something like a spaceport tug or some utility vessel. Perhaps it was going to escort her in.
It was very close now. Jaina still couldn’t see anything, but it was approaching from her port side. It was only when she turned her head as far as she could, unable to sit still any longer, that she saw a black void where stars should have been, and picked out a large, unlit shape heading straight at her. Had it detected her?
It was on a collision course. Jaina got ready to run.
Then the lights came on.
The brilliant blue-white light seared her eyes for a split second, but when she blinked away the afterimage she was looking at a grim slab of a vessel that was a mass of cannon turrets, turntables, hatches, and angles. There was no other way to describe it: it was a flying tank.
“Keldabe welcomes careful aruetiise if their credit’s good,” said ATC over the comlink. “Nine Amber, what’s the purpose of your visit?”
Here we go. Just do it. “I’ve come to see Boba Fett.”
“Amber Nine, identify yourself.”
“Keldabe, I’m not GA anymore.” I sound like a criminal. They might have been detaining her. It was hard to tell. “I’ve come alone.”
“Follow your escort.”
She was still in one piece; that was something, although she would have to work out what aruetiise meant. The tank rotated ninety degrees in the horizontal and pulled away in front of her, dipping its starboard side like a wing to indicate to her to follow. She’d expected to be met and checked over by a Bes’uliik, and was almost disappointed not to encounter the new Mandalorian fighter. They said it was faster than an X-wing. Corellia and other planetary forces were lining up to buy them.
/> Aunt Mara would have had fun with one of those.
The memory ambushed Jaina several times a day. She thought it was better than forgetting, however much pain that would have saved her. She had learned that when Anakin died. Before she reached the upper atmosphere of Mandalore, the ungainly-looking tank was joined by a smooth delta-shaped fighter, and Jaina had her wish: it was the Bes’uliik she’d seen on the holonews channels. The vessel maneuvered between her and the tank, so close that she could see the helmeted pilot turn to give her a hand signal familiar to any pilot. Follow me.
The tank peeled off and vanished, showing remarkably little heat signature on Jaina’s sensors. “What was that?” she asked.
“You want to place an advance order?” said a male voice. It was the Bes’uliik pilot. “MandalMotors calls it the Tra’kad—the StarSaber.”
It was an elegant name for an inelegant vessel, and Jaina put it on her list of things to worry about much later. Landing on Mandalore needed every scrap of her attention. She was suddenly in busy airspace over heavily wooded country scattered with small villages. Keldabe loomed in her viewscreen, a massive, disorganized fortress set on a granite pedestal ringed by a moat-like river. She could identify the MandalMotors tower from the logo painted on it, that grim animal skull with a flare emerging from one empty eye socket.
And her passive scanners were picking up a formidable array of ground-to-air defenses. Keldabe was ready for all comers.
She brought the X-wing down in a smooth descent, tailed by the Bes’uliik. The apron area was packed with vessels from battered Gladiators and smart new KDY armed transports to—and this rattled her composure a little—old X-wings in garish paint schemes. Most vessels were disgorging passengers, all of them wearing that distinctive full-body armor in a riot of colors; red, deep yellow, and forest green seemed to be very popular.
The X-wing’s undercarriage shivered as it landed. Jaina was past the point of no return.
“Holiday?” she asked over the comlink, trying to be casual.
“Return of the expatriates,” said the Bes’uliik pilot. “Millions of Mando’ade live on other worlds. The Mand’alor asked for volunteers to rebuild the planet. So they came. They’re getting their land allocations.”
“I had no idea you were so scattered.”
“That’s why you can’t get rid of us. It’s like trying to hammer mercury—it just breaks up and comes back together again.”
Jaina noted that for future anxiety sessions, shut down the systems, and prepped to pop the hatch, wondering if Amber Nine would end up appropriated by the locals and painted bright purple like an old X-wing sitting in a corner of the strip.
“Get down from the cockpit, aruetii, and we’ll check you out.”
Now … do I take my lightsaber or not?
Jaina took the risk and left it in her grab-bag in the cockpit. She jumped down and stood on the permacrete, an anonymous gray flight suit in a sea of clattering Mandalorian armor. The air smelled of fresh-sawn resin trees and hot metal. “Just tell me what aruetii means.”
“Foreigner,” said the pilot. He pulled a short-stock BlasTech blaster from his belt with a casual movement and ran a hand scanner over her with the other. “Outsider. Not one of us. Even traitor. Okay, you’re clean.”
She thought he would have been far from pleased if he’d picked up her lightsaber on that scan. “What happens to me now?”
“Someone’s coming to check you out. Can’t let just any old riffraff pester our Mand’alor, can we?”
Should she admit who she was now? The man had a blaster. If he took the revelation badly, she’d have a choice of taking whatever came next, or drawing on her Force skills unarmed while surrounded by hundreds of Mandalorians, every single one of them with some weapon, even the children. It would all get out of hand before she knew it. And she needed Fett’s help badly.
“Absolutely,” she said.
Jaina was already having to think differently, to suppress all her own training that said she should have been treating this environment as a serious threat and preparing to defend herself. The feeling of helplessness was both utterly alien and disturbing. The Bes’uliik pilot didn’t say anything else to her, and just stood with his blaster resting in the safety position against his shoulder. They waited. People were starting to stare. Eventually a speeder bike edged through the crowd on the perimeter and headed straight for her.
“She’s all yours,” said the pilot. “Unarmed.”
The rider was a man in royal blue armor, and she sensed that he was agitated, but in a distracted way that said he was worrying about something else.
“I’m Goran Beviin,” he said, looking wary. A short but serious-looking metal saber hung from his belt as well as a blaster. “The Mand’alor is tied up at the moment. So you can tell me all about it. Get on.”
It was tempting just to come clean and tell him she was Jaina Solo, yes, that Jaina Solo, but a black object dangling from his shoulder plate distracted her. It was alien hair, somehow familiar. Mandalorians loved their trophies. Fett went in for braided Wookiee scalps. It was pretty disgusting, but she wasn’t here to be judgmental about their customs. She needed Mandalorian help.
“Is that Yuuzhan Vong?” she asked, trying to be casual.
“Indeed it is,” said Beviin. “Nothing I like better than killing crab-boys.”
That was the sum of their conversation until they reached Keldabe. Mom had been right: there were some tree-houses along the way. But the city was just that, a tight urban chaos of granite blocks, wood, plastoid, and durasteel, with the houses packed together like a close-quarters battle. There were still signs of war damage on many walls, and even MandalMotors’ hundred-meter tower bore scorch marks. A few new offices and other buildings looked grander, but this didn’t appear to be a rich city or even a planned one; it looked like a battered survivor.
Beviin stopped the speeder in front of what could only be a cantina, its doors parted and the smell of cooking and brewing wafting onto the street. Above the entrance was lettering Jaina couldn’t read, and—helpfully—a few words of Basic: UNIVERSE TAPCAF—NO STRILLS INSIDE—BARTER ACCEPTED.
Jaina followed Beviin inside. He took off his helmet, laid it on the counter, and ruined another stereotype for her: he wasn’t some granite-faced thug but an ordinary gray-haired man about her mother’s age, with the kind of face that looked on the edge of a big smile all the time. And the Fett-inspired image of Mandalore that she’d nursed for so long kept crumbling. When her eyes adjusted to the light, she found herself in a cantina full of armored Mandalorians, not all human, helmets stacked under tables. They were watching a big holovid screen in intent, reverent silence, mesmerized by a bolo-ball match.
“Meshgeroya,” Beviin whispered, as if he was interrupting an act of worship. “The beautiful game. Our other national pastime.”
Something small and furry zipped past Jaina’s foot, but she didn’t dare look too closely. One of the patrons, a stocky man with white hair and a vine tattoo curling up his neck, glanced at her and guffawed.
“Throw her back,” he laughed. “You know it’s wrong to catch ’em that small.”
Beviin was looking her over suspiciously. “She’s come to see Fett, Car’ika.”
“We’re much cheaper than he is, lady,” said the tattooed man. “Who do you want hunted?”
“It’s okay.” Jaina winced at how uncomfortably close the joke brushed to reality. She leaned against the bar, wondering why she’d been brought to a cantina and not taken to some government building or even Fett’s residence. “I know where my quarry is.”
The place smelled of spice, yeast, and fried food, and most of the patrons were drinking a black ale or small glasses of a clear liquid that almost certainly wasn’t water. Her Force senses told her they were all much, much more worried about the final score than they were about having a stranger among them. Were they really that relaxed, or did they just think that nobody could touch them here?
&
nbsp; “I’m sorry to stare,” Beviin said mildly, “but I know you, and I’m trying to think where I’ve seen your picture. Never mind. It’ll come to me.” His palm rested on the pommel of that saber, probably just a comfortable way to stand in full armor, but Jaina couldn’t stop herself working out how she’d parry a blow from the thing using only the Force. “But you’re not going to tell me until you have to, are you?”
“Fett knows me and my family,” she said. She assumed Fett might recognize her; she thought she’d met him once when she was a kid, but someone had said it might have been an imposter. “He’ll know why I’ve come.”
The bolo-ball provided a neutral distraction. She was almost caught up in it, so deafened as the room turned from total silence to explosive yells of “Oya!” when the favored team scored, that the sensation that ran up her spine and made her hair bristle caught her by surprise.
Impossible.
No, that’s just not possible.
“What’s wrong?” Beviin asked. He reached across the bar, grabbed a handful of something from a bowl, and munched thoughtfully. “You think that goal was offside?”
Jaina whipped around, ready to run, and the doors opened. Something was wrong—very wrong. The Force was telling her something that couldn’t be true.
Two Mandalorians walked in, one in armor with no two plates the same color, and one in green, clearly much older and walking as if his joints were painful.
The older man eased off his helmet and placed it on the counter. Yes, he was old. He looked as if life had drained him dry. His stare cut straight through her and she found herself staring back, wishing she’d announced herself the moment she landed.