Sacrifice

KELDABE, MANDALORE

  The fourth Bes’uliik off the production line rolled out of the hangar to meet the scrutiny of a small crowd of silent, armored men. They’d folded their arms in that typical go-on-amaze-me Mando way, but as soon as the fighter came alive and sent dust pluming with its downdraft, they all applauded and yelled, “Oya!”

  Yes, they thought it was okay. Fett watched it with a certain pride. The higher frequencies in its drives made his sinuses tingle.

  “Who says defense procurement drags its feet?” said Medrit. He didn’t seem bothered by the noise, even minus his helmet, but then blacksmiths had often been deafened by their trade. “Record time.”

  “Only another half a million of these,” Fett said, “and we’ll be in business.”

  “It’s never about numbers, Mand’alor. Never was.”

  There was something about the fighter—its effortless hover and tilt, combined with the distinct throbbing note of its propulsion—that made it exceptionally attractive. Fett doubted if it would have looked quite so pretty if it was pounding your city to molten slag. He planned to claim the offer of a test flight.

  Mandalore was resurgent, as Beviin liked to say, and it was gathering pace. A steady stream of Mandalorians was returning from diaspora. A few hundred thousand in a week was nothing for a trillion-body city-planet like Coruscant, but Mandalore was now creaking with the influx.

  “You’d think a big empty planet like this could cope with a few immigrants,” Fett said.

  “Poor infrastructure.” Medrit craned his neck to watch another Bes’uliik take off. “Got to fix that. Four million was always a nice stable population until the crab-boys messed everything up.”

  “How many incomers, worst scenario?”

  “Impossible to tell. But you asked for two million to come back, and I dare say we’ll get that.”

  Fett still marveled at the ability of people to uproot themselves, but then Mando’ade were traditionally nomads—and even he was happier in Slave I than with a roof over his head. “I’m always touched when people do things without my needing to hang them out of windows.”

  “Sometimes,” said Medrit, “you have only to ask. Go read the Resol’nare. The six basic tenets of being a Mando. One is to rally to the Mandalore when called.”

  “Handy,” said Fett. “But it doesn’t always happen.”

  Fett had begun to see the recurring parallels between Mandalore the world and Mandalore the leader, and why the two terms had become synonymous in the outside world. He’d always called himself a figurehead, a reminder of what Mandalorians seemed to think they should be, social template as well as someone to hang the blame on: but it came true. He was recovering, and so was the nation. Mandalore seemed to move inversely to the rest of the galaxy, which was busy going down the tubes and ripping itself apart yet again. But that was good for business if you sold arms and military skills, so the correlation was expected.

  “Time to celebrate,” Medrit said. “A little, anyway. Come on, everyone’s heading to the tapcaf. First round’s on you.”

  As he walked, Fett reflected that he was as close to satisfied with life as he’d been in a long time, except for the few nagging loose ends that had loomed large when he was dying, and still hadn’t gone away.

  One of them was Jacen Solo.

  It always came down to Jedi and their schisms in the end.

  “It’s true, I tell you. She’s been murdered.” Beviin was holding court in the Oyu’baat, a tapcaf that brewed a sweet, sticky net’ra gal and never ran out of narcolethe. “Big search going on in the Hapan Cluster. Serious trouble.”

  Fett visited the ‘caf once a week partly because Mirta said it was good for morale, but mainly because Beviin asked him to. Fett wanted Beviin to succeed him, even if most expected him to groom Mirta.

  “Cabinet in session, then?” he said.

  The chieftains and neighbors who drank here had become Fett’s cabinet, and if there was any serious attempt at government going on—Mando’ade regarded that as a deeply unhealthy and aruetyc thing—then it would only be tolerated over a buy’ce gal in the tapcaf.

  “Welcome to the foreign affairs committee,” said Beviin. “Mara Skywalker’s missing, presumed dead.”

  “How do they know she’s dead if the body disappears in a puff of smoke?” Carid muttered. He was playing a four-way board game with Medrit, Dinua, and Mirta that used short-handled stabbing blades. Fett watched from the sidelines, never able to work out the rules. “They do that, don’t they?”

  Fett thought of his lightsaber collection. “Sometimes.”

  Carid, using his helmet on the floor as a footrest, winked. “So where’s the forensics?”

  Dinua stabbed her blade into the board, and there was a murmur of “Kandosii.” “They sense it all in the Force.”

  “I’d joke, but I hear their son has gone missing, too.” Carid tutted loudly. “What kind of parents are these Jedi?”

  Fett wouldn’t have traded places with any of the Solos or Skywalkers. They were a tragically unhappy dynasty, and even if sympathy was something nobody paid him to have, he understood the loss of a parent, and a child.

  “Any mention of Jacen Solo?” he asked.

  “That name has cropped up.”

  “There’s a surprise.”

  “Mentions of a Lumiya, too. Alias Shira Brie.”

  Now, there was a name from Fett’s past. Some things never went away. “It all ran better under Vader.”

  “I’m still waiting for justice for my mama,” Mirta said quietly. “Because if nobody else can be bothered to slit Jacen Solo’s throat, I will.”

  She hadn’t mentioned that in a while. Everyone—everyone—was waiting to see what retribution Fett had devised for the Solo brat. The longer he waited, the more sadistically just they expected it to be. But Fett could see something different in Mirta’s eyes: if her grandfather was the most efficiently brutal bounty hunter in the galaxy, why hadn’t he brought her Jacen Solo’s hide?

  The Jedi were right about one thing. Raw anger was a poor basis for action. He’d teach her cold patience, the best legacy he could bequeath her.

  “Medrit,” said Fett, “I want to send Han Solo a gift.”

  “Nice carbonite table?”

  “Proper beskar crushgaunts, so he can throttle the life out of his vermin spawn. And maybe a couple of armor plates and a small blade.”

  “Gift-wrapped, signed Please kill your son before we have to?”

  “Just With deepest sympathy.”

  It was as deep as Fett could manage, anyway. It must have been terrible to have such a disappointment for a son.

  HAPES CLUSTER

  Luke thought it was prudent for Corran Horn to take over the Jedi Council in his absence. He wasn’t sure he could trust himself. It all felt very academic, even on a good day, and today was as far from one of those as he could imagine.

  But apart from the fact that he was now minus everything good in his heart except Ben, Luke felt like his old self for the first time in years. He felt clarity. He knew what he had to do, and there were no gray areas or ambiguities about who was right and who was wrong. For all his pain, the sense of clean focus gave him something to cling to.

  And old voices called to him.

  He cruised the Transitory Mists in the StealthX, wondering if it had been a phantom effect of the region’s ionization and sensor-scrambling phenomena that had guided him here. He magnified his presence in the Force again.

  The comm alert broke his concentration for a moment.

  “Luke,” said Corran’s voice. “This is kind of hard to ignore. Everyone’s getting anxious to saddle up and lend you a hand.”

  “There’s only one person I need to respond, my friend. And she’s coming. But … thanks.”

  “What do you mean, She’s coming?”

  “Lumiya. I can feel her strongly now.”

  “It’s a trap, Luke.”

  “For me and her, then.”

  “She’
s making it too easy.”

  “Corran, don’t worry about me …”

  “You know any one of us would gladly do it for you.”

  “I do. And that’s why I have to.”

  Lumiya was here; Luke could feel her because she wanted him to, he knew that. He wondered how many times she’d passed by him unnoticed and undetected, and congratulated herself on her stealth. He thought of the hand offered to him after they last fought, and how he hadn’t detected any ill will. That level of skilled deceit would have been impressive if he hadn’t felt so sickeningly betrayed by it—betrayed by his own gullibility.

  Mara used to say he bent over backward to see the good in everyone.

  “I won’t be trying too hard today,” he whispered. “In fact, not at all.”

  He didn’t even miss Mara right then. To miss someone, he had to accept that they were gone so he could yearn for them. Mara was still there, just frustratingly silent and unseen, and he dreaded the moment when he finally said to himself, Yes, she’s gone, she’s really gone, and she isn’t going to walk through the doors and complain how crowded the skylanes are these days.

  The Transitory Mists were bandit country, rife with piracy, and Luke didn’t care. He maintained a steady circuit off Terephon. Eventually, the feeling of someone darting through his peripheral vision became one of someone in the same room. He rotated the fighter 360 degrees in each plane, ignoring his sensors and his Force-senses for the moment because he wanted to see this thing coming, to look it in the eye and take in the entirety of it in the fundamental way of a grieving husband, not a Jedi Master.

  “I knew you’d find time for me,” he commed.

  Had she heard him?

  His comm crackled. Lumiya’s voice had never aged. He hadn’t noticed that before. “I saw no point in running, Luke. Let’s finish this.”

  The ship was exactly as he’d imagined: rough-skinned, red-orange, so organic in appearance that it might have suited the Yuuzhan Vong. The angular masts and webbed vanes at its cardinal points lent it an edge of predatory grace.

  “I had to make sure she died,” said Lumiya. “But you’ll understand that, sooner or later.”

  She didn’t open fire, and the sphere didn’t move. Luke considered taking one kill shot, but he’d done that before, and a pilot called Shira Brie had survived the appalling injuries he inflicted to be become the cyborg facing him now. No, she had to die for good.

  The sphere rotated to face Terephon and began to pick up speed, on a straight course for the planet. Luke set off in pursuit and the two ships accelerated, pushing their sublight limits in what Luke started to feel was a crash dive.

  Oh no, Lumiya, you don’t get away with a suicide run. You’re mine.

  He stayed within his thoughts: he had next to nothing to say to her now. The sphere was streaking ahead of him, pulling away. He hung on it, closing the gap, calculating how long he had to intercept before it hit the upper atmosphere and plummeted to the surface, robbing him of every closure he needed.

  And justice. Don’t forget that. It’s about paying the price for Mara’s life.

  The StealthX edged nearer its manual’s recommended safe velocity. Luke brought the fighter alongside the sphere, dipping one set of wings in warning to make it clear he’d intercept her. Maybe she didn’t realize that he had tractor capability: she would now. Luke dropped back behind her and applied enough traction to slow her and get her attention. He could have sworn something protested. It was the ship, complaining deep in his mind about the rough handling.

  Lumiya seemed to get the idea and decelerated. Luke broke contact before they hit atmosphere, and followed her down, buzzing her to force her to land on a flat-topped mesa overlooking a typically spacious Hapan-style city nestling among trees and vast gardens.

  He jumped out of the cockpit and waited for her to leave the safety of her vessel, standing with his lightsaber in both hands. Eventually an opening formed in the side of the sphere, and she emerged. Would the ship attack him as it had Mara? It made no move. He couldn’t even feel it now.

  “Come on, Luke, try to finish the job. Mara would have wanted that, yes?” Lumiya reached up to her face and tore away the veil that covered everything but her eyes. Then she reached behind her back and slowly drew out her lightwhip. “And this isn’t to make you feel shame for the extent of my injuries. I just want you to see who you’re fighting.”

  “I’m seeing.” Luke drew his lightsaber and temporary comfort flooded him. “And this ends here.”

  He knew the lightwhip by now. He’d relied on the shoto as an extra weapon in the past to counter the whip’s twin elements of matter and energy, but he was flooded with a new confidence that he could take her with just the lightsaber that had always stood between him and darkness. Holding it two-handed over his head, he rotated it slowly, stalking around her.

  Lumiya raised her arm to flick the whip and get the momentum for the forward stroke. And then she cracked it, sending forks of dark energy crackling into the ground at his feet, making him jump back before he sprang forward again and brought the lightsaber around in a right-to-left arc that she parried with the whip’s handle. He leapt out of range of the whirling tails again and again, then she paused and he edged closer again.

  “You hate me that much?” he asked.

  “I don’t hate you at all.”

  “You killed her. You killed my Mara.”

  “Nothing personal.” She looked as if she was smiling, but the movement was around her eyes rather than her cybernetic mouth. “Just doing what I swore an oath to the Emperor to do. To serve the dark side. Oaths matter, Luke. They’re all you’re left with in the end.”

  She drew back her arm and brought the lightwhip crackling through the air, missing Luke by centimeters. He lunged at her again and again, driven back each time. She’d slow sooner or later.

  But so would he.

  Then, as she began to raise her arm again, he ran at her, so close in that she couldn’t get the whip traveling at its maximum lethal speed. He forced her back, step by step, as she tried to maintain the distance she needed.

  One—two—three—four; she blocked him, handle held this way, then that, using the whip like a short lightsaber to deflect him, but Luke didn’t pause or shift direction to wrong-foot her. He drove her like a battering ram toward the edge of the mesa, pushing her within meters, then a step, of the edge.

  Lumiya held the whip handle in both hands like a staff and blocked his downward sweep. For a moment they were locked in a stalemate, pushing against each other and grunting with the effort, with only the sounds of exertion because they had nothing left to say to each other.

  Her rear foot began to slide backward as she struggled for purchase. The edge of the mesa was cracked and fissured. The smooth glittering stone began to crumble.

  Luke reached out and caught her hand as she fell, whip tumbling and bouncing down the steep rock face into oblivion. He leaned back, all his weight on his heels, knuckles clenched white with the strain of holding her weight, and for a second he wanted to see her face dwindling as she fell to her death, mouth open in a scream, but that wasn’t the way to end this.

  “I’d never let you fall,” Luke said, and pulled her back to safety. As she straightened up, he looked her in the eyes—calm, eerily calm—and swung his lightsaber in a single decapitating arc.

  Now he could breathe again.

  KAVAN: STORM WATER TUNNELS

  Ben sat in the tunnel with his mother for a long time, and that fact in itself was the start of his investigation.

  At first, he deluded himself that she was in a deep healing trance, even though the Force never lied, and the void that had opened in it would have been felt and understood by every Jedi.

  He’d run straight to her side, through country he didn’t know, and found her. He wanted to think she wasn’t dead because she was there, still much as he’d last seen her except for the blood and scrapes of a new fight.

  So he sat with her,
waiting.

  He wanted to clean her face and make her beautiful again, but his GAG training said not to remove evidence, not to tamper with a crime scene.

  Ben the fourteen-year-old son, lost and grief-stricken, willed his mother just to be in a deep trance. Ben the lieutenant knew better but didn’t mention it to his child-self, and was careful to note everything around him, take holoimages, make notes of smells, sounds, and other ephemeral data, and begin to form a logical sequence that would tell him how his mother had met her death.

  He was still sitting there, taking in every pore of her skin and every speck of brick dust on her jacket, when he heard someone picking his way over debris toward him.

  He couldn’t feel the person in the Force.

  “Hello, Jacen,” he said, and turned to look at him.

  Jacen’s mouth opened slightly while he stared first at Mara—a long, baffled stare—and then at Ben. He reached out his hand to him.

  “It’s okay, Ben. It’s okay. We’ll get whoever did this. I swear we will.”

  Ben was still shut down, hiding his Force presence, but Jacen had found him. It was time to go to his father. He wanted to be with him now.

  Maybe the killing of his mother had left a mark in the Force that Jacen had followed. Ben considered the possibility that he was too upset to notice it himself.

  He made a careful note of it anyway.

  chapter twenty-three

  Lawyers for former GA Chief of State Cal Omas have slammed the Justice Department for the delay in bringing charges against him. Omas, currently under house arrest, is said to be pressing for a public trial. A GAG spokesman said today that investigations were still ongoing.

  —HNE news bulletin

  THE OYU’BAAT, KELDABE, MANDALORE

  Venku—Kad’ika—came up to Fett and Mirta in the tapcaf and gestured over his shoulder.

  “He says he’ll do it,” said Venku. “He didn’t want to tell you he could read the stone there and then, in case he couldn’t. He hates disappointing people.”