Sacrifice

Sorry, sweetheart. Had to do it.

  She turned her attention back to Lumiya. Now Lumiya was showing up at confrontations with the Confederation. Perhaps everyone was looking in the wrong direction, and Lumiya was working for Corellia.

  The last time she’d seen her on the resort satellite, Ben wasn’t even around—but Jacen was. Who was Lumiya going after, Ben or Jacen? If Lumiya’s presence was making Jacen forget what being a Jedi was all about, then maybe Mara needed to keep tabs on Jacen, too.

  That was easier said than done. She needed to try a more direct approach there, maybe talk to him for once. Nobody else had managed to. It was hard to get Jacen to listen, and even harder to get hold of him these days. He took the secret in secret police literally.

  Then something vanished from the Force.

  Ben—

  It was like a shape flashing past her peripheral vision, and a familiar background noise stopping abruptly, leaving a dead, soundless ringing in the ears.

  Ben’s gone—

  Ben had disappeared from the Force.

  Mara’s hand was on the controls to jump to hyperspace and head back to Coruscant at top speed when the sense of her son flooded back as if the sound had been turned on again. Her stomach rolled.

  Maybe it’s me.

  He’d done it before as a little boy, scared by the last war, the one against the Yuuzhan Vong. It was uncontrolled and instinctive. But what Mara had just experienced felt like something more deliberate. When she concentrated on him, he felt fine—no, more than fine. He felt elated.

  It still bothered her. She set a course for home and before she jumped, she felt him vanish and return again.

  He seemed … delighted. She could feel the profound wonder in him. So he was doing it deliberately. No son of hers was going to pull that stunt on her: she’d had enough of Jacen doing it without Ben learning to hide in the Force as well. She’d go back and check on him, but pick her time to confront him about his new skill.

  Maybe he won’t get any farther than short bursts.

  But he was Ben, and Ben had proved capable of astounding feats. He’d master it, all right. She just knew it.

  Suddenly she didn’t feel quite so guilty about giving him a tagged vibroblade. A mother had to keep ahead of the game somehow.

  SOUTH SIDE LANDING STRIP, KUAT CITY

  “So,” said the clone. He hauled Mirta to her feet and dusted her down, and she tolerated it. His animal watched her with red-rimmed yellow eyes, and she grabbed her helmet from where he’d dropped it, expecting the creature to spring at her. “What part of stay out of my way didn’t you understand?”

  Mirta opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind but Fett cut in. “Nice of you to drop in, but can we continue this discussion elsewhere?”

  “Ah, the almighty Mand’alor. Hanging a gang boss over a balcony in the center of town. Yeah, that’s subtle.” The clone motioned the animal into the cargo bay, where it lay rumbling ominously like a distant storm. It was the ugliest thing Mirta had ever seen: loose gold fur that made it look like its skin was several sizes too big for it, six legs, and a truly ghastly mouthful of fangs. “Thanks for getting everyone’s attention.”

  “I was looking for you,” Fett said. He closed the hatch. “We have to go. Shut up and secure yourself for takeoff.”

  “You abducting me?”

  “Would you rather have a chat and a cup of caf while we wait for the Kuat police and all of Fraig’s scumbags to show up?”

  “Okay, I borrowed the speeder anyway. Sort of. Tell you what, drop us off on Coruscant and we’ll be on our way.” The clone grabbed his helmet with both hands and lifted it off. He didn’t look any less intimidating, but after a couple of seconds he broke into an unexpected grin that completely transformed him. He looked more like Fett’s brother than his twin, not identical at all. “They say there’s some family resemblance, but I don’t see it myself …”

  Fett paused for a telling moment and then stalked off to the cockpit. Mirta wasn’t certain whether to land a punch on the clone or thank him for showing up.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Jaing Skirata. You?”

  “Mirta Gev.” Then she realized it didn’t have the required impact. “Fett’s granddaughter.”

  Jaing raised his eyebrows and burst out laughing. The animal lifted its head and whined. Mirta went forward to the cockpit to strap herself in for takeoff, unhappy at the laughter still ringing behind her.

  “You let him ambush you,” said Fett.

  Mirta seethed. “I didn’t pick him up on my sensors and I didn’t even see him coming at me. He flattened me before I could kalik him.”

  “Stab?”

  “You’re learning.”

  “And you’re not.” Fett punched the controls, and Kuat dwindled to a disk beneath them. “You didn’t check visually. Don’t rely on the helmet tech all the time.”

  “Hey, you didn’t spot him, either. That’s got to be stealth armor.”

  “He’s a Null.” There was some history there, she could see that. “They were black ops clones. The Kaminoans’ attempt to improve on my dad’s genome for cloning. You can see it didn’t work.”

  “He says his name’s Jaing. And did they really shove your head down—”

  Fett just turned his head. He still had his helmet on, and even though few things scared Mirta these days, he had a way of being glacially slow and silent that was unsettling. She was just trying to get him to talk, looking for the long-buried man within. It was a forlorn hope. She gripped the console in front of her as Fett tapped in the coordinates for Coruscant, 000—and Slave I jumped to hyperspace.

  “Jaing’s not as bad as I thought,” Mirta said.

  “They were all psychiatric cases.” Considering he probably hadn’t seen them since he was a kid, Fett’s recollection seemed painfully vivid. “They say Jaing tracked Grievous in the war. Master assassin, sniper, general pain in the backside. Don’t underestimate him.”

  “The war before last, you mean.”

  “It’s all one long war to me.”

  It was time to shut up, she decided. Fett was braced against the pilot’s seat, looking uncomfortable; it could be folded down so the pilot could stand at the controls, or raised to form a ledge. He usually opted for the latter. She had a feeling that he was in too much pain to sit down.

  “Course laid in,” he said. “Let’s go talk to him.”

  Mirta pulled out another painkiller, grabbed his hand, and slapped the capsule into his palm. “And when we drop him off on Coruscant, you see Doctor Beluine. Okay?”

  Fett grunted. That was as near as she’d get to agreement. She could see his dread of mortal weakness.

  “I’m not relying completely on drugs yet,” he said. “All the time I hurt, I know how far it’s progressed.”

  Jaing was sitting cross-legged on the deck of the cargo bay, face-to-face with the animal, which was gazing into his eyes and making little whining, grumbling sounds as if trying to get him to understand something. He seemed oblivious to its smell. They both looked around when Fett and Mirta came through the hatch.

  “What is he?” Mirta asked.

  “You asking me or Lord Mirdalan?” Jaing held his gloved fingers up in front of the animal’s face, some kind of signal that produced instant attention and made it lie flat on the deck. Jaing got to his feet. “He’s an it. Strills are hermaphrodites. I promised Mird’s last owner I’d look after it when he passed to the manda. Strills live a lot longer than we do.”

  “Heard of them, but never seen one.”

  “They’re nearly extinct on Mandalore. Mird—well, you might say it’s a black ops strill. Saw a lot of commando action in a few wars.”

  Fett shoved his thumbs into his belt in that I’m-fed-up-with-waiting pose. “When you two finish the nature lesson …”

  Jaing had more lines, fewer gray hairs, and a heavier build than Fett. Mirta could see the cords of muscle in his neck. And he had no scars. He looke
d like a man who’d spent a lot of time in the sun without a helmet, and who’d laughed a lot. Genetically, this was Fett, but they couldn’t have been more different.

  “Ain’t I gorgeous?” He grinned, and she realized she was staring at him.

  “A vision,” Fett said sourly, and removed his helmet.

  “I think I aged better, Bob’ika.”

  “It’s the fact that you reached this age at all that interests me.”

  “So why do you want me? Need a loan? You’ve been looking for me for weeks, ’cos I’ve been hearing all kinds of people putting out the word for me—”

  “I’m dying,” Fett said.

  Jaing chewed over the news, head slightly to one side. “Sorry to hear that. You’re not the only clone who met a premature end.”

  Fett usually cut to the chase. Now he stood silent for a while, jaw muscles twitching. Mirta wondered if he was hurt by the rebuff. She guessed that he was working up to the hardest thing he ever had to say.

  He was. “I want your help, Jaing.”

  Jaing just stared at him. The staring went on for a long time. Mirta wondered who would give in first. Then it went on a little too long.

  “Oh, for fierfek’s sake,” she sighed. “It’s the cloning. His tissues are breaking down and he’s got tumors. He needs to know what stopped you aging at double the rate, because his doctor can’t help him and neither can the Kaminoans, not even Taun We.”

  Fett pursed his lips slightly. “What she said.”

  “So Taun We’s still going strong, too, the old aiwha bait. Well, well.” Jaing looked Fett up and down. “You had trouble with your leg, I heard. Had to have a transplant. Yes?”

  “You’re very well informed.”

  “I’m still a Tipoca boy at heart. I stay in touch with events in the old country.”

  “What have I got to pay you to quit gloating and give me what I need?”

  “No offense, but you can shove your credits where your armor don’t reach, Mand’alor.”

  “You don’t know what I need yet.”

  “I can guess.”

  “Ko Sai’s research.” Fett gave Jaing’s gloves a pointed glance. “Because I know you found it. You certainly found her.”

  “You get more with honey than with sour-sap, Boba. Didn’t getting your head shoved down the ’freshers teach you anything?”

  Fett had no idea how to ask for help. Mirta wasn’t sure if it was some male bravado thing or just that he’d never learned, but he wasn’t getting far with Jaing, who seemed equally hard and obstinate.

  “Can you help him?” she said. “Gedet’ye? Mandalore needs him alive, and so do I.”

  The clone was still staring into Fett’s face. “Remember leading an Imperial force against clone troops on Kamino?”

  Fett nodded, utterly impassive. “Yes.”

  “You didn’t feel that we were family then.”

  “Didn’t see any of you defending your brothers, either.”

  “And you deposed Shysa, you hut’uun. The man who put us back on our feet as a people. Where were you when the Empire was bleeding us dry?”

  Hut’uun was the worst insult any Mando could throw at another, but Fett didn’t seem to notice or care. Mirta found out more about her grandfather’s murky past every day. So there was no reason to feel her mother and grandmother had been singled out for his total disregard, then: he didn’t give a stuff about anyone, except his father, who seemed to have been elevated to an icon of perfection since his death. So Ba’buir fought against his own brothers. Maybe he hadn’t seen the irony. If he had, she suspected he’d made a point of looking the other way.

  “I’m not proud of anything I’ve done,” Fett said, no hint of emotion in his voice. “But I’m not ashamed of anything, either. I just do what I have to. You don’t know what went on between me and Shysa, and maybe you never will.”

  “He was there when we needed him,” said Jaing. “And you weren’t. That’s all I need to know.”

  Fett didn’t so much as blink. “I take it you won’t be handing over Ko Sai’s data, then.”

  Jaing glanced at Mirta as if he felt sorry for her. She wondered how different her life might have been if Jaing had met Sintas Vel instead of Boba Fett.

  “There isn’t any data,” he said at last. He was still looking at her, not Fett. “Sorry, kid.”

  Fett didn’t even blink. “You must have taken all your vitamins, then, because you should be dead by now.”

  “I didn’t say the research didn’t exist. I’m saying that we destroyed it after we took what we needed.”

  Fett absorbed that slowly. Mirta’s heart sank in that conflicting way it had now, part of her desperate to find a reason to love her ba’buir, and half of her wishing Leia Solo hadn’t blocked her shot when she’d tried to kill him.

  Do something to make me forgive you. Please. Anything.

  “You could have made a fortune from it,” Fett said.

  “We didn’t want it used again. Ever.”

  “You can’t stop cloning. You never will.”

  “No, but we put a dent in the Kaminoans. That’s better than nothing. I don’t like Kaminoans.”

  “I can tell.” Fett glanced at Jaing’s fine gray gloves. “But I’ve worked for worse.”

  “They paid you. They bred us like animals.” Jaing looked as if he’d remembered something satisfying. “So Taun We’s still alive. I always wondered.”

  “Leave her alone, Jaing. She’s old now.”

  “So am I, no thanks to her. So how long have you got to live?”

  “A year. Maybe two, if my luck holds.”

  “How long before you have to hand over command?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The last thing Mandalore needs at the moment is a power vacuum.”

  Mirta saw a glimmer of hope. “So help him, Jaing.”

  “Best I can do is a blood sample,” he said. “But I think you’ll hand it over to the Kaminoans, Boba, or your doctors will, and we really wouldn’t be very happy about that. Not at all.”

  “We?” Mirta felt she was getting on better with Jaing. She’d use her advantage as the harmless, tragic granddaughter. If Jaing wouldn’t cooperate, she might find one of his brothers who would. “How many of you are there left?”

  “You don’t need to know that. Look, I’ve got grandchildren, too, Boba, and great-grandchildren. I’ve got family on Mandalore. So I care what happens when you’re gone.” As soon as he said it, it took on a terrible reality for her, and she wondered if it had the same impact on her grandfather. The great Boba Fett’s on the way out. “Much as it pains me, your bu’ad here is right—Mandalore needs you for the foreseeable future.”

  Fett made a very good job of looking bored. Maybe he was. Mirta doubted it. He was negotiating for his life, and if Fett was anything, he was a survivor. He didn’t know how to die gracefully like everyone else.

  “So I get the blood if I keep the Kaminoans out of it.”

  “Not that simple,” said Jaing.

  “It never is.”

  “You give me blood and tissue samples, and I’ll get something made up for you. If I can.”

  “And I’m supposed to trust you.”

  “As much as I’m supposed to trust you. And don’t even think about taking a sample from me the hard way.”

  “Okay.” Fett’s jaw twitched again. “Thank you.”

  He made it sound like a foreign language, awkward and unfamiliar in his mouth. Mirta resisted the urge to react. Well done, Ba’buir. Was that so hard?

  Jaing wasn’t done, though. “There’s a condition, of course.”

  “There always is.” Fett crossed his arms. “What?”

  “Get your shebs back to Mandalore, listen to Kad’ika’s advice, and build a strong, united, stable state. Prove you’re even half the man that Jaster Mereel and Fenn Shysa were. All you want to do is emulate your old man, Boba. But you’re too scared to exceed him, aren’t you? You can’t be better than Jan
go. That would never do.”

  Mirta flinched. Mentioning his father without due reverence seemed to be the one thing that really got Fett riled. His voice didn’t change, but he unfolded his arms with slow care.

  “My father,” said Fett, “finally destroyed the Death Watch. That’s his legacy to Mandalore.”

  “Sectarian feud. Irrelevant to most Mando’ade’s lives. Now, are you going to give me a sample?”

  “What kind of scientists have you got access to that I haven’t?”

  “Some things,” Jaing said softly, “can’t be bought. I have my resources, believe me. Got a medpac with a sharp in it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Draw some blood, then.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Mirta.

  With Fett, it wasn’t a case of simply rolling up sleeves. He had so much equipment on his forearms that Jaing ended up holding the flamethrower attachment, whip assembly, and assorted projectiles. Fett was an armory on legs. Mirta didn’t expect him to flinch when she finally found a vein, and he didn’t. The few moments while she applied pressure to the blood vessel with her thumb to stop the bleeding afterward were the longest of her life, because he wouldn’t meet her eyes, and it reminded her that she could touch him and still not reach him.

  Jaing held the vial of red-black blood up to the light and admired it. “That’ll do nicely. Give him some candy for being a brave boy, Mirta.”

  “What now?” Fett asked, unmoved.

  “You drop me off, and I’ll let you know what we get.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll deliver it personally to Keldabe.”

  “Better make it snappy, then. Or you might be in time for my funeral.”

  “Oh, I’ll be back, and so will plenty of other Mando’ade. You asked us, remember? You asked us to come home.” He turned to Mirta. “When the old chakaar dies and they divvy up his armor, make sure you get the flamethrower. Because his plates are duse. Not even proper beskar.”

  So Jaing wasn’t out of touch with events on Mandalore, and he thought Fett’s durasteel armor was garbage. The strill padded closer to Jaing and yawned extravagantly with an expression that said it was totally underwhelmed by the discussion. Mirta could smell its breath, which—oddly—wasn’t unpleasant at all.