—Baltan Carid, explaining the finer points of Mando’a and Mandalorian culture to Jaina Solo over a buy’ce gal—a large ale
DOCKING TUBE, MED SPRINTER: CLINGING TO THE HULL OF IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER BLOODFIN
I can’t leave Tahiri.
But I might not get out of here alive, either.
Caedus was staring into the Mandalorian’s face now, or at least his helmet. There were no eyes to fix on, just a T-shaped nothing set in a pocked and scarred violet metal visor.
It seemed to go on for minutes, but it could only have been seconds. The man had a tight grip on his ankle. The muzzle of his blaster was in Caedus’s belly.
And then the man didn’t fire.
Caedus didn’t even need a second; a fraction’s hesitation was all he needed to get free. It was a trick that had bought him time with Mara, not a full illusion but enough to check someone at the reflex level—the face of a loved one even though they knew the identity of the enemy they were facing.
He had no idea what might stop a Mandalorian.
He opted for Ailyn Vel’s face.
“Doesn’t suit you, dar’jetii,” said the Mandalorian wearily, and then simply held his blaster to Caedus’s kneecap as Tahiri clung to him in the tangle of limbs and weapons. “Ah, Fett, you spoilsport, I have to have some fun …”
He fired into Caedus’s leg. Then he just let go.
The agony was suddenly somewhere else. It wasn’t happening to Caedus at that moment, but to another Caedus a long way away. He put his last, best effort into Force-punching the hatch overhead—not pushing, nothing so refined—and bursting it open. At the moment he did that, he pushed off hard with his uninjured leg and rocketed through the docking ring into the sprinter with Tahiri clutched to him.
The next thing he knew he was on the med sprinter’s deck, Tahiri sprawled beside him. He slammed the inner hatch controls and the hull sealed. He needed to get clear; whatever had smashed into him outside was going to pursue him, but Tahiri needed help now. He concentrated everything on holding that blood back, every Force trick he could muster, and scrambled for clamps and dressings and fluid lines.
She was unconscious. He expected to feel a barrage of cannon fire just before his ship broke up and he had a few final seconds of feeling that he’d fought in vain. But he was still in one piece, and nothing was hammering on the hull. He couldn’t understand why he had several clear minutes—he was certain it really was that long, not the effect of adrenaline and panic on his brain’s time perception—and nothing had happened to him while he put a line into Tahiri’s arm and pumped plasma into her as he put a proper compression dressing on her thigh.
He’d managed to get the suit stuck in the dressing, too, but she wasn’t bleeding out now.
And he was still alive.
It really was his destiny. Nobody could be that lucky without a reason.
Caedus hit the automated controls as he stumbled past the pilot’s console and sent the med speeder shooting vertically away from Bloodfin’s hull.
“It’s okay, Tahiri,” he said, centering himself again. “We’re both going to live to fight another day. It’s our destiny.”
IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER BLOODFIN
“Leave him!” Fett said. “Orade, back off. I said he was Jaina’s and I mean it.”
Orade’s voice came out of nowhere. Jaina realized she could hear the comlink from Mirta’s helmet as it lay on one side on the deck.
“Yes, Mand’alor … you can’t blame a boy for trying, though.”
“Let me go after Jacen,” Jaina said. “He’s hurt, he’s tired, he’s got an injured apprentice—”
“In what?” Fett said. “The Bes’uliik? Great. And then what do you do when you catch him? You’re not ready to do what needs doing. We’ll make you ready.”
Fett had hold of Mirta’s shoulder as if he was going to shake the daylights out of her. Instead he just reached out to touch her hair, a couple of awkward smoothing gestures that suggested she was burning his fingers. It struck Jaina that he might never have stroked his own daughter’s hair. It was disturbingly poignant. True to type, Mirta bristled and Fett shoved his thumb in his belt. The brief attempt at being grandfather and granddaughter had evaporated.
“I’m fine, Ba’buir,” Mirta said. “Me and Jaina, we’re a good double act.”
“You’re a maniac,” Jaina said. “Tahiri could have killed you.”
“She had to get past the beskar first, and anyway, you got her.”
“No, you got her … you severed an artery.”
“Well, that’s for killing an old man.”
Jaina tried to imagine how Mirta felt being so close to the person who’d killed her mother and not being able to get at him. Jaina was now in a world of unsettling emotions post-combat, of feeling the rush dissipate, and thinking of who might have been killed and who might have done the killing, and an odd urge to find everything both funny and terrifying at the same time.
Fett cut in. “Let’s get back below. In case it slipped your minds, we’ve still got a few troopers to calm down.” He cocked his head suddenly as if he was listening to comm chatter. “Okay. Talgal says she’s done that. It would be nice if someone told me when they were storming a hangar deck.”
The hatch overhead opened and Carid dropped down with Vevut, the pair of them hitting the deck with loud thuds. Carid lifted off his helmet and shook his head like an animal shaking water out of its coat.
“I enjoyed that,” he said, all smiles. “No offense, jetii, but kneecapping your brother made my day, it surely did. If the Mand’alor hadn’t been such a spoilsport and made me stop, I’d have enjoyed putting that bolt in his—”
Vevut slapped Mirta’s back enthusiastically. “Kandosii! Now that’s a daughter to have in the family. Does Orade know you can stab like that?”
Mirta grinned at him and shoved him in the shoulder, all rough Mandalorian affection. “I can cook, I can dig trenches, I can stab a chakaar …” And she laughed. It was quite transformational; she was a different woman. She seemed far more at ease with her father-in-law than she ever did with her grandfather, and Jaina wondered if seeing that hurt Fett.
Fett just shook his head and walked off down the passage, stooping slightly because there was so little headroom. Jaina and the others trooped after him. Somehow it felt much harder to climb back down those shafts now the adrenaline had ebbed. They picked their way out of the citadel and into the ship itself, suddenly finding crew everywhere and shock troopers in white—some, not all—being herded at blasterpoint along the main passage. Others, helmets under their arms, were talking to crewmates as if nothing had happened. Clearly not all of them felt obliged to die in a ditch for the Moffs. They might well have been more sympathetic to Pellaeon, after all.
“What a mess,” Fett said, head turning in a slow scan as he seemed to take in Bloodfin’s sorry condition. The ship was a mass of scorched paint and buckled hatches; it looked like every vertical surface had been damaged somehow. “Brand-new ship. Disgraceful.”
“Could have been much worse,” Carid said defensively. “We were pretty careful, under the circumstances. If Daala starts bleating about the paintwork, she can shove it.”
“I think she’s got other issues,” Fett said. “I’m going to find Pellaeon’s body. We’re not savages, after all.”
Jaina trailed after him at a discreet distance, knowing he could see her in his helmet’s 360-degree vision, but not wanting to crowd him. She let him enter Pellaeon’s day cabin and stood back to wait, but then she heard him talking to someone. The lighting was returning to normal all around the ship; machinery whined and hummed as systems came back online.
“It’s a dirty deal, Reige.”
“Is Daala coming?”
“Yeah. I’ll leave you two to sort this.”
Reige’s voice sounded shaky. “Well, this crew will serve her out of respect for the admiral. We’ll settle the score for him.”
Jaina edged forward
. Fett was talking to a man in his thirties in naval uniform, a lieutenant commander, and there was a body under a blanket laid on the couch. Jaina noted the immaculate boots protruding. Poor old Pellaeon. This was hardly the first person she’d known well, lost touch with, and then next seen as a casualty of war, but it seemed a terrible thing to reach such an age and then be killed, alone and betrayed.
Reige nodded politely to her. Fett came out of the cabin and walked slowly away. Jaina caught up with him.
“After all those years,” she said. “What a terrible thing.”
“It’s war,” Fett said.
“I meant that if you reach your nineties, you should have a reasonable expectation of dying peacefully at home.”
Fett sounded as if he’d snorted. “Not Pellaeon. He died well. Men like that don’t want to fade out quietly.”
Jaina wondered if Fett had that kind of end in mind. She couldn’t imagine him sitting on a porch in Keldabe in his dotage.
“Mirta’s handy in a fight,” Jaina said. Why am I trying to be sociable? “I hope you’re proud of her.”
Fett shrugged, still walking. “She’s a fighter. I know.”
“I learned a lot today. I even found myself doing a Beviin. You know. Red mist, crazy, swinging away like a maniac.”
“He’ll be delighted.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that you’ve let me learn so much?” she asked. “I know a lot about how Mandalorians fight now.”
“So what have you really learned, Solo?” Fett re-coiled his fibercord line. It vanished into a housing on his armor, and it didn’t seem possible that so much cord could fit in there. It reminded her of a conjuring trick. “Our weapons? Everything from a Bes’uliik to our bare hands. Our technology? We’re still using tech four thousand years old. Our secret headquarters? We’re everywhere. Our numbers? We don’t even know. How to assassinate our leaders? We don’t need any. If I got shot tomorrow, they’d all regroup and carry on without me. The only secret we have is how our metalworkers forge beskar. And we’re not even reliant on that.”
Jaina shrugged. “When you put it like that, it’s zero.”
“Everyone can see how we win, but it’s another thing to do it.”
“I was saying thank you, actually.”
“You’re welcome, Solo. By the way, did you know your brother can change his appearance in a fight, to look like someone else?”
“No,” Jaina said. Jacen liked his illusions, though; it didn’t surprise her. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks again, Fett.”
If he walked much farther, he’d end up treading vacuum. He was trying to make some space to think in, she could tell that.
And he left Jacen for me.
Jaina pondered that for the rest of the day.
AFT ENGINEERING FLAT, FORMER IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER BLOODFIN
Daala walked along the row of bodies, looking as if she were carrying out a parade inspection on troops who just happened to be lying flat on their backs.
She paused a couple of times to put her weight on one polished boot, the other leg extended gracefully for balance, and leaned over slightly to frown at a name on a badge. Quille’s coup days were over. One Moff earned a closer inspection and an exploratory prod with her boot.
“That’s one of the misogynist parasites I wanted to kill personally for Liegeus,” she said. “Fett, I’m disappointed.”
“Shab, we always forget to check ID when folks open fire on us …” Carid lifted his helmet and wiped his forehead with the palm of his glove. “We’ll fix our quality-control process, ma’am. I can stand him up again, and then you can put a round in him if you like.”
Daala said nothing and didn’t take her eyes off the Moffs, but stepped back and patted Carid’s helmet with unerring accuracy as he held it in one hand.
Fett understood her, even if the comment was veneered in a joke. “Ten percent discount for killing the right barve too fast at the wrong time.”
“You’re a gentleman, Fett. Come on, we’ll leave the sanitation crew to their task. Let’s keep this ship immaculate for poor Gil.”
So Bloodfin was her ship now, another toy taken from the squabbling boys who wouldn’t let her play the last time. She walked along the passageway with the confidence of ownership, but she didn’t go into the day cabin where Pellaeon had been murdered. Instead, she carried on through the ship and down a couple of decks to the wardroom, where small clusters of gray-uniformed officers were sitting around small tables, talking in low voices. They looked like men—they were all human males, which no doubt made Daala bristle—who’d suddenly realized what it meant to be exiled a long way from home. They jumped to attention when they spotted Daala. She pressed all their admiral-on-deck buttons without even trying.
“As you were, gentlemen.” She gave them a little nod and a hand gesture that said not to bother with protocol right then, and settled herself in one of the more luxuriously upholstered seats in a private corner. There were blaster burns everywhere. “So that’s the new Sith approach, is it, Fett? Shooting a man Gil’s age, after all the years of service he’s given the galaxy. Do you think the Jedi can get rid of them this time?”
Fett thought of Jaina Solo, stuck with the dilemma that removing Sith the permanent way meant becoming like them, at least for a short while. Expedience messed up those high-flown morals. “If they do, they’ll only come back again. Swing of the pendulum.”
“As long as you’ve got Jedi, you’ll get Sith,” said Daala. “One begets the other.”
Fett tried to recall his history lessons, the sort that Mandalorians knew even if nobody else did. “Yeah. Gets tiresome.”
“Come on, Fett, you did all right out of Vader.”
“Sith paid Mandalorians for millennia. We had a war with them, too, and guess who didn’t win. It’s a cycle of sectarian brawls. Everyone else gets hit by the flying bottles. I’ve done my bit to remove the problem, but they just keep coming back.”
“Folks say the same about Mandos.”
Daala examined her nails, deep in thought. A steward darted out from behind the counter with drinks on a tray, a real human steward and a real ionite tray, because the Imperials were particular about that kind of thing. Daala nursed the glass for a while but didn’t drink. Fett didn’t touch his at all.
“I think there can be a third way,” she said. “No Jedi Council. Keep them in their box, away from politics, and certainly never arm them.”
“Ordinary barves running their own affairs? You crazy woman, Daala. It’ll never catch on.”
She fondled the glass again, and didn’t put it down this time. “You have a better idea?”
“No. But arrogant stupidity doesn’t always come bundled with midi-chlorians. It’s everywhere.”
“So who succeeds Jacen Solo when someone finally drops him down a reactor shaft, come the glorious day? Because it won’t be that poisonous little Vong-bait Tahiri—over my dead body. And hers, of course.”
Fett didn’t like many beings in the galaxy. He was indifferent to 99 percent, and most of the remainder were on his target list. But he could manage a scrap of approval for Daala. She talked his language.
“You sound like a woman who cares what happens in the Core,” he said.
“If I did—you’re the resident Jedi countermeasures expert. Would you be too retired to do some consultancy work for me?”
Fett indicated his forearm plate, a weapons platform in its own right. The flamethrower needed servicing, he noted. “Consult this. I’m always negotiable.”
“Seriously.”
“If you’re ever in the position where you need a place to lock up your Jedi—we can do you a good price on beskar restraints, and we’ll always have the troops to make use of them.”
“Let’s keep that in mind.” Daala raised her glass, and Fett thought she was going to make some informal deal. But she indulged in a little sparing sentimentality, and he approved of that too. “To Gil Pellaeon. The last of the Empire’s true gentle
men. Safe harbor, my friend.”
Fett just inclined his head. The galaxy liked its heroes better dead, when they didn’t hang around doing inconvenient things like shaming everyone else and setting glittering examples. Or being fallibly mortal. The worst thought he’d ever had in his life was that if his father had survived, he might not have lived up to the dead paragon that still shaped his every waking moment. It was one of the few missing pieces he didn’t want to track down, and he still hadn’t found time to shoot the barve who’d planted and watered the doubt in his head.
So what if Jango Fett wasn’t the holy Fenn Shysa. He was my dad, he loved me, and I loved him. That’s enough of a hero for me.
“I forgot how effective your iron can be against Force-users,” Daala said, dragging him out of his thoughts. “You’d be amazed what ended up at the Maw Installation when the Emperor’s closets got cleared out.”
Daala never disappointed. She was solid granite, always on the ball, always looking for the angle, even when she could have relaxed her guard. Fett liked being kept sharp. “I always wondered what the Empire did with the beskar ore they strip-mined out of Mandalore.”
“Found they couldn’t make it work the way your people could, that’s what they did …”
Fett enjoyed the idea of all that beskar needing Mandalorian expertise.
“Yeah, you need to ask a Mando metalworker, and ask him nicely.”
“I’m glad we understand each other, Fett.”
“Crystal clear, Daala.”
“Mind if I visit your fine but challengingly rustic world?”
“Come and have an ale at Mirta’s wedding.”
“I’ve got a son and a granddaughter. Where did the years go?”
Fett almost asked where she’d found time to have a family. But the way years just collapsed on themselves, and how you woke up one morning to find you were suddenly fifty years older than the last time you checked, reminded him of the looming task of coming clean with Sintas.