“Luke, the question to ask yourself is this,” Mara said, pulling on her jacket and checking her personal weapons. “What will you do when you catch her?”
Luke swallowed hard. “I know what I have to do.”
“And what was that conversation we had the other day, about being fit for the role? Me trained killer, you honest guardian of right?” Lightsaber, vibroblades, hold-out blaster, flechette launcher, and the last of my transponders. Check. “Here’s the plan. You keep an eye on Jacen while I go after her.”
“I’m coming, too,” Jaina said. “I’d hate to miss Alema if she shows up.”
Things were getting back to normal, then. Mara would apologize when they were on their way and Luke was making sure that he knew what Jacen was up to—in case Lumiya was staging an elaborate diversion to draw them all away from Coruscant.
Luke looked at his hands. “I know you’re right. It doesn’t feel right, but I know I shouldn’t be going after her bent on vengeance, and I don’t know what it’s going to take to make me kill her. And nothing short of that makes sense now.”
Mara nodded and hit the comm to the hangar ground crew. “Stand by an X-wing, please.” She pulled on her gloves, the fingerless ones that gave her a good grip but still let her feel the weapon. “I’m going back, starting from the apartment, and tracking her from there. She wants to leave a nice trail? She’s found just the right person to follow it.” I’ll sort this out, because it’s my fault it got this far.
“I should have gone straight after her, and then you wouldn’t have talked me out of this,” said Luke.
“Jaina’s dead right. You have too much history with Lumiya, and you’re too stoked up. You have to kill cold.”
Luke looked heartbroken for a moment. It wasn’t disappointment that he was losing the argument to her, because there was no argument. It was common sense. Just because they were family didn’t mean that military best practice went out the window. But something had struck him that he didn’t like, something more than Lumiya’s constant threats to Ben.
“I hate it when you’re right,” he said, and managed a smile. “Jacen says Ben’s asleep, and it seems that way. So he’s okay.”
“There you go,” said Mara. She still hadn’t told Luke that Ben could shut down in the Force. She’d have a little chat with her son about that first. “We’re off now. Keep tabs on Jacen. Go and have a concerned avuncular chat with him over caf if you have to. But be around in case that’s where your ex is heading.” She patted Luke’s cheek and winked, wanting to make light of it so he didn’t see how much Lumiya was getting to her. “I might be going gray, farmboy, and I don’t have her dramatic dress sense, but at least what I’ve got is all flesh and blood …”
Luke almost laughed. Mara tapped her forefinger to her brow in a mock salute and walked off with Jaina. When she got in the turbolift, she checked her datapad to see where Ben’s transponder had gotten to.
If you’ve left that blade in your locker, Ben …
A little earlier, it had shown up on the datapad’s small screen as a static blip in Galactic City, in GAG HQ. Now—it didn’t.
Mara never panicked, but she reserved the right to professional apprehension. She switched the scale of the chart.
“What’s wrong?” Jaina asked.
“Nothing.” Where are you? “Nothing at all.”
Mara flicked through ever-larger scales of screen until she picked up the transponder blip again, and the coordinates didn’t make sense.
Ben appeared to be on Vulpter.
What takes you there, Ben? Vulpter’s not in the war.
If she told Luke, with the head of steam he’d built up, she knew he’d go in with all cannons blazing.
So she simply smiled at Jaina, ready to let Lumiya play her game of tag before Mara finally separated her smug head from her metal body, ending her feud with the Skywalkers once and for all.
I’m coming, cyborg. It’s time.
chapter nine
I don’t want to worry, you, sir, but I’ve just heard something on the metal commodities market that might concern us. Someone’s talking about offering futures in Mandalorian iron. And MandalMotors shares are being snapped up for the first time in years.
—Investment analyst, Galactic Alliance Treasury
MANDALMOTORS RESEARCH WING, KELDABE, MANDALORE
“What do you think, then, Fett?”
Jir Yomaget was the kind of man who probably had to be anesthetized to get him into a business suit. He stood with his arms folded, gazing rapt at an airframe that Fett hadn’t seen before, an incongruously scruffy and disturbingly young man in dark green coveralls and partial armor.
“Prototype?”
Yomaget nodded. “Started life as the Kyr’galaar. Up to three crew, or two with extra payload, atmosphere-capable, configurable for anything from planet pounding to hunter-killer roles, and fast. Now tell me it’s not gorgeous.”
Research wing was a flattering term for the collection of scruffy sheds and hangars. But the ramshackle appearance of the exterior belied the technology within. MandalMotors had struggled to get back on its feet under a Galactic Alliance that wasn’t handing out reconstruction grants to Mandalore. Now it had an edge it could exploit.
“How fast?” asked Fett.
Yomaget probably didn’t look at his wife and kids with as much adoration as he was lavishing on the assault fighter. “Point four hyperdrive. The ultimate shock weapon.”
“And you never offered me the chance to purchase.” Fett had modified Slave I to a point-seven. “That beats an X-wing.”
“Unfinished prototype.”
It was about fifteen meters nose-to-tail with an eight-meter span, a faceted charcoal-gray wedge of a ship that had none of the insectoid lines of the StarViper. Fett walked around it, noting empty racks and housings, and took a guess that it would pack four laser cannons and maybe a couple of other weapons. The tail ended in a flat section with grilles and vents that looked like the ports on a datapad.
The skin was totally plain, its angled surfaces unbroken except for the mythosaur logo picked out in a lighter gray on the side hatches: no brightwork, no sharp-edged recesses, and the tinted transparisteel canopy seemed to merge into the superstructure. Fett would have ducked underneath it to take a look at the blaster pods and store pylons, but the fighter sat too low for him to do it comfortably. He couldn’t face being gripped by pain and having to crawl out like an idiot.
“So it’s fast. And pretty.”
“Deflective stealth hull, cooled vents, scanner-absorbent coating.” Yomaget flourished a forearm plate attachment, tapped it, and the canopy popped. It parted into two top-hinged hatches, and he swung himself into the cockpit. “Also hinges from the lower edge, in case the pilot has to bang out. Now, the avionics … synthetic vision, panoramic cockpit display, eye-controlled switch selection, aiming, the works.”
“Sounds like you had a contest to see how many gizmos you could cram into one fighter.”
“All we’ve been able to do since the Vong war ended is reestablish our basic production models and work up some better ideas.” Yomaget leaned over the side of the fighter. “They all ended up in here.”
“So …”
“Well, you wanted to know what we might manufacture with the new beskar. Personally, I’d be inclined to incorporate it into the airframe. Micronized beskar skin, or laminate beskar armor.”
“Beviin would call that over-egging the cake.”
“Think of this as the demonstrator.”
“That would make it the fastest, least vulnerable fighter on the market. The weapons load might be a compromise.” Fett wasn’t sure if he had the power or right to tell MandalMotors what to do with their product. This wasn’t Coruscant, where national security overrode commercial concerns by law. “Add the top-end armaments, though, and I wouldn’t want that sold to anyone else.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll de-enrich the spec for export. We live here, remember. We all lost
family to the Vong.” Yomaget jumped down from the cockpit with an agility Fett envied. Then he pressed the forearm plate attachment, and the fighter made a faint grinding sound before tilting back on its tail section and lifting through a full ninety degrees to sit upright, a mechanism not dissimilar to Slave I’s. “It can land vertically in a footprint of a little over thirty-two square meters.”
Fett walked a few meters away to get a better idea of the shape. It didn’t look like any other vessel he’d seen. “I bet it does tricks, too.”
“Our shares have rocketed and we haven’t even unveiled this.”
“I bought a few. Someone had to make sure the majority shareholding stayed in Mandalorian hands.”
“Just as well we don’t have a law against insider dealing.”
“I don’t intend to sell. Might sign them over to someone on the condition they never sell on to … aruetiise.”
“Is that a go-ahead for production?”
“Full spec for us, de-enriched for them.” Fett walked away briskly, feeling his unconnected acts of prudence falling together into a policy of sorts. “Make sure the export hyperdrive spec is a fraction better than an X-wing, no more.”
Yomaget trailed after him. This was defense policy on the fly, and the clans didn’t get consulted. And they wouldn’t care, Fett knew.
“We’re going to arm the Confederation, then,” said Yomaget.
“We’ll arm anybody, including the GA, if they can pay.” Fett hadn’t even thought about the next move: it just happened. “Provided Colonel Jacen Solo comes here in person to negotiate the deal.”
“You’re a subtle man, Fett.”
“I’ve never been called that before.”
“Fifty percent of production for our own defense?”
Defense. That was one word for it. “Agreed.”
Mandalorians liked a sensible compromise. The best deals were where both sides were happy, or where one was happy and the other dead. Fett stopped short of asking to fly the first beskar fighter off the production line. He wanted that privilege to go to Beviin, the nearest he would ever have to a friend.
He looked forward to seeing the reaction when MandalMotors opened their order book. Jacen Solo would have the choice between letting the GA’s enemy buy better fighters than his, and showing up here. Fett had no doubt which he’d choose, but it would be fun seeing him have to handle the messy presentational issues in public. That could be arranged.
“It’ll be called the Bes’uliik,” Yomaget called after him. “The Basilisk. I always had a soft spot for the ancient battle droids. Good old Mando name and old-fashioned Mando iron in a state-of-the-art package.”
Fett nodded to himself. Bes’uliik. It had a nice ring to it. A name from the past, a name that wouldn’t go away, however hard the rest of the galaxy tried to make it—ever.
Bes’uliik.
It was the kind of news that made other men walk away whistling.
CHARBI SPACEPORT, VULPTER, DEEP CORE
Ben pressed as close to the viewport as he could to peer at the permacrete below. It was hazy daylight outside, but his body said it was still last night and he needed more sleep.
As far as the rest of the spaceport was concerned, the well-maintained but very old Incom tourer was not a Galactic Alliance Guard ship carefully contaminated with Corellian dust, Corellian food waste, Corellian fabric, and any number of other touches designed to show a forensics team that the vessel definitely came from Corellia. And the battered intersystem delivery cutter tailing Cal Omas’s shuttle wasn’t a spy vessel with top-of-the-line comms, spoofing devices, and an overpowered hyperdrive.
Jori Lekauf wasn’t a GAG assassin, either. He was just a nice ordinary young Corellian on an adventure with his younger cousin in an elderly ship he’d saved every spare credit for a couple of years to buy. The trouble was that Ben could believe that all too easily, even though he’d seen the range of weapons Lekauf carried under his jacket.
“If I’d kept my hair red, the family resemblance would have looked more convincing,” Ben said. He wanted another caf to keep him alert, but he had a vision of being desperate to visit the refreshers at a critical point in the operation if he drank any more. “Your hair’s reddish, really.”
“More sandy blond,” Lekauf said. “One redheaded human is noticeable, but two is asking to be remembered by witnesses. If we have any, that is.”
“Could have dressed as Ubese … with masks.”
“I think that’s been done before.”
“I’m just worrying.”
“I know.”
It was a long wait. Shevu would make contact with them when he landed. His last transmission said he was a few minutes behind Omas’s shuttle, which wouldn’t attract suspicion; Charbi was a busy port freighting cheap and shoddy goods, and ships landed almost too close together for safety and comfort. Nobody cared who you were as long as port fees and taxes were paid.
They said Vulpter had once been a lovely planet. It didn’t look lovely now: the skies had that polluted smoky haze that meant there were wonderful red sunsets here, and not much else to be grateful for. And this was after they’d tried to clean up the environment. The vast landing strip—landing field, more like—was scattered with dozens upon dozens of craft in varying stages of disrepair, some taking on board supplies and fuel, some berthing next to freight warehouses where conveyor belts disgorged crates into their holds. Their outlines shimmered in the heat haze from idling drives. And there were all kinds of species wandering around on foot between the vessels, stretching their legs—anywhere between one pair and four of them, it seemed. The only concession to landing field safety was a tracery of red and white painted lines across the permacrete bearing the warnings PEDESTRIANS DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE and BEWARE GROUND TRAFFIC.
But everyone was crossing the lines as they pleased, and battered speeders with Charbi Port Authority livery swerved around them, honking in annoyance.
Ben decided it was the last place anyone would expect two heads of state to conduct a top-level meeting.
“Stand by,” Lekauf said quietly, pressing his fingertip to his ear. “It’s the captain … yes, sir … copy that.” He looked up. “About twelve minutes before Omas lands. Shevu’s right behind him in the landing queue.”
Ben perked up. The Karpaki was folded in two inside his jacket, right on the limit of what he could hide, and the vibroblade was tucked in his hip pocket. He’d rehearsed it all in his mind on a continuous loop of what-ifs and if-onlys: rifle to drop Gejjen, preferably at very long range, and vibroblade to escape if seized.
It would have been better to get Gejjen as the man disembarked, while he was exposed on the landing field for a few moments without bystanders milling around. But Jacen wanted the meeting recorded. It was a case of following Gejjen—or Omas—to the room they’d hired by the hour, then slipping a strip-cam through a gap under the doors. The building blueprints showed plenty of places to insert the flimsi-thin device. Each room’s doors were set in a recess, so—for once—it was a simple matter of squatting down as if picking up a piece of litter and shoving the strip-cam into the gap.
“Should have put a hidden bug in Omas’s coat or folio or something,” Lekauf muttered. “Then we sit here, pinpoint Gejjen’s ship, and slot him on the ramp as he leaves.”
Ben fidgeted with the vibroblade, wondering how his mother would have tackled a job like this. “You can’t stick bugs on people without them finding out sooner or later.”
“Yeah, with our luck he’d have changed his jacket. They used to have this stuff called tracking dust, you know. Just like powder. If the target inhaled it, you could pick up signals from it for ages afterward.”
“Makes you wonder how much all this stuff costs,” said Ben. “I mean, we’re dirt-cheap, but we have to abandon this ship.”
“It’s an old crate. Saves the Defense Department the cost of disposal.”
And leaving it behind would add weight to the setup that Corellian dissident
s had killed their own Prime Minister for giving in to the GA. That was the plan, anyway.
Ben switched seats in the cramped interior to look out from the starboard side. Gejjen’s ship should have landed by now, according to its flight plan: one pilot, three passengers, maximum five-hour stopover. That was what it said on the CPA information database that his datapad—scrubbed of all identity, in case of capture—showed him.
Ben avoided looking at the chrono on the bulkhead. He just waited for the word from Lekauf.
“So how do you feel being an officer now?” Ben asked.
“Weird. But my granddad would have been so proud. I wish he’d been alive to see it.”
Lekauf never mentioned his parents. It was always his grandfather. It struck Ben that almost everyone he’d grown up with or worked with either had no family or had key members missing or totally absent. It wasn’t normal. He thought about how routine killing was for his whole family, and knew that most of the beings in the galaxy got through their entire lives without ever killing anyone, deliberately or accidentally.
It was strange that families like his got to make the really big decisions for worlds of normal, ordinary, nonlethal people.
Ben concentrated on centering himself, edging a little toward that state where he vanished from the Force. He pulled himself back just as he felt a drifting sensation that could have been disappearance, or nodding off.
“Plug yourself in,” Lekauf whispered. “It’s a go.”
Ben activated his comlink and earpiece, and shut down the environmental controls to leave the tourer.
When Lekauf opened the hatch, the air and noise hit Ben like a solid wall. It smelled of factories and sulfur. They ambled down the ramp, working hard at looking ordinary, and made their way toward the terminal buildings as if they were killing time, not politicians.
Lekauf scratched his ear, repositioning the earpiece. “Got you, sir. Position?”
Ben picked up Shevu’s voice clearly. “He’ll pass thirty meters to the left of you unless he deviates. Heading for Building G. You pick him up and I’ll follow you in.”