The old man who’d come to stare at Fett with Kad’ika the other day walked slowly across the tapcaf. He peeled off his gloves and held out a frail hand dappled with age.
“I can do it,” he said. “Let me hold the stone.”
Mirta looked hesitant, then took off the necklace to hand it to Fett.
“You’re Kiffar by origin, then,” Fett said. Mandalorians came from any number of species and planets, but adopting the culture didn’t erase their genetic profiles. “Saves me a journey.”
“I … know the planet.”
“What’s your price?”
“Your peace of mind, Mand’alor. Nobody should search in vain for the resting place of loved ones.”
Fett wasn’t expecting that. The hand still held out in front of him was surprisingly steady. Fett held the heart-of-fire by its leather cord and lowered it into the man’s palm before sitting down and trying to seem unconcerned.
The old man folded his fingers around it and stood staring at his fist, his breathing slow and heavy.
“She was very unhappy, wasn’t she?”
It was a good guess. It was inevitable, in fact. The old man probably said it to all the wounded and lonely souls he came across. Charlatans and con men relied on the reactions of others. Fett said nothing to help him take a lucky guess, and there was no expression to betray him.
“And she found it hard to ever trust another man.”
Fett still sat in silence, one boot on the chair. Sintas had never trusted anyone. Bounty hunters weren’t the trusting kind, so it was a safe, easy deduction dressed up as revelation.
“Her worst days were when your daughter learned to talk, and asked where Dada was.”
Fett was starting to tire of this. He shifted in his seat, ignoring the voice that whispered it was probably true. How would he know, anyway? He couldn’t verify it. He and Sintas had parted by then and he saw nothing more of Ailyn.
Not until I saw her dead body.
“She thought you still cared when you recovered the hologram for her.”
Now that wasn’t a guess. It was specific. And it was … true. Fett didn’t dare look at Mirta. The inn was absolutely silent: the popping and crackling of the tapcaf’s log fire sounded like battlefield explosions.
“She said you were far too young to know what you were doing, and you said you only needed to know that she was beautiful, that she was a terrific shot, and that you could trust her as much as you could trust any woman.”
Fett’s scalp tightened and prickled. It was exactly what he’d said, and it was too stupid and juvenile a line for anyone to make up on the spot. No, he has to have information, he has to be putting on a show, he got the information from someone … but how?
The man took a deep breath and hesitated before speaking again.
“You told her that you’d make Lenovar pay for what he did to her, and she tried to talk you out of it—”
It was too much for Fett. “Enough.” He thrust out his hand, palm up. “So you can read the stone.”
Venku lowered his chin. Even without sight of the man’s face, Fett knew the expression behind the visor was fearless and protective anger.
The old Mando took a gentler approach than his bodyguard. “Just tell me what you want to know,” he said. “I know these things can be painful.”
Mirta didn’t give Fett a chance to answer. It was just as well: he couldn’t bring himself to say it. To onlookers, he was just being typically silent and surly.
“I want to know how she spent her last hours,” Mirta said. “I want to find her body.”
The old man put the heart-of-fire on the table while he removed his helmet. He had a fine-boned, thin face and a wispy beard that was whiter than his hair, which still showed traces of sandy blond. He was sweating: picking up the memories and traces of time embedded in the stone’s molecular structure seemed to be exhausting him.
And he didn’t have a Kiffar facial tattoo. But then neither did Mirta, despite the fact that Ailyn had embraced the Kiffar culture completely. In some lines of work, a permanent identifying mark had its drawbacks.
“It doesn’t give me the memories in order,” said the veteran. “It’s all random, like flashbacks. I see images, hear sounds, smell aromas, and so on. Making sense of it isn’t easy.”
He laid his helmet on the table and picked up the stone again, this time pressing it between both palms. Venku put a steadying hand on his shoulder, and Fett felt inexplicably uneasy.
“Do you want me to … find acts of violence?”
Fett glanced at Mirta, not for agreement but because he couldn’t help it. Her brow was creased in a little frown. Dry-eyed; focused. Not a pretty girl, but a good strong bone structure.
“You’ll find plenty of that,” she said. “She was a bounty hunter.”
“You’re not in here, Mirta …,” said the old Mando, eyes tight shut.
“She died before I was born. I want to know who killed her.”
There were a few more people now in the tapcaf than there had been. Fett indicated the door with a jerk of his thumb. “Out. I’ll let you know when you can finish your drinks.”
I want to know who killed her, too. It’s too long ago, but I want to know.
“She wore this all the time.” The old man looked almost in pain, and Venku squeezed his shoulder. “She was angry a lot of the time. Scared, too. There are so many people passing through here … but I keep coming back to a chart of Phaeda. Red skies, and someone she was following. Resada? Rezoda?”
Mirta didn’t blink. She seemed transfixed. “Grandmama didn’t tell anyone where she was going, or who she was hunting.”
The man opened his eyes and took a rasping breath. “Phaeda. Whatever it was, it happened on Phaeda.” He jerked back and stared at the stone. “And she fought to hang on to this. She fought hard.”
Fett managed not to swallow. He was sure they’d all hear it. “She lost.”
“I want to know,” said Mirta.
Venku stepped in. “He’s had enough. Maybe later.” He retrieved his helmet and tried to steer the old man away. “Come on.”
“I don’t know about the when,” the old man said, pulling from Venku’s grasp, “but I know it’s Phaeda. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
He handed the stone back to Mirta, placing it in her cupped palms with both hands as if it were a live fledgling. Fett had never been comfortable around that mystical kind of thing. He simply observed.
“It’s okay,” Mirta said. “You’ve told me a lot, and I’m grateful. Let me buy you an ale.”
“Maybe another day, ner ad’ika,” Venku said. “But thank you.”
Mirta watched the door close. As she turned back to Fett, the door opened again and disgruntled drinkers filtered back in, giving the two of them a wide berth.
“Well? Was he right, Ba’buir?”
Fett shrugged. It had shaken him, like all the painful memories that flooded back without his permission. “On the nail.”
“Well, we can follow that lead.”
Fett dreaded what else the old man had seen in the stone. Old man. He was only ten or maybe fifteen years older than Fett. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Phaeda.”
The tapcaf owner lined up fresh ales on the bar. “I see you’ve met Kad’ika, then, Mand’alor.”
“Yeah. Fascinating.”
“The old man with him—don’t see him around much. Gotab, I think. I used to think that was Kad’ika’s father, but apparently not.”
The name didn’t mean a thing to Fett, but he filed it mentally under subjects to investigate later. Phaeda. He’d scour Slave I’s databases, maybe hack into the Phaeda archives. Mirta was examining the stone closely.
“Must have cost every credit you had, Ba’buir.”
She passed the heart-of-fire to Fett and he turned it over in his fingers, touching the carving on the edge. Only the most skilled cutter could facet the uncut stones without shattering them, let alone carve them.
“It’
s rare to find one with all the colors in it. They’re usually red or orange, but the light ones with the whole rainbow … they cost.”
“I saw a blue one once,” Mirta said.
“I was sixteen. I couldn’t afford a blue one.”
Fett could afford one now, any number of them, even the rarest of deep royal-blue stones that showed their incredible range of multicolored fire only in bright sunlight. But he no longer had a lover to give them to. It had been a very long time.
“Tell me something about Ailyn,” he said. “Was she ever happy?”
Mirta chewed over the question. “I don’t think so.”
The only thing Fett knew about his own daughter beyond the people she’d killed and what she’d stolen was that she had never been happy, never called him Dad, and that she’d taught Mirta to hate him. He still hadn’t questioned the girl about that. The time never felt right.
“Were you ever happy?” Mirta asked.
Fett never considered if anyone wondered if he was happy or not. There seemed to be a blanket assumption that Boba Fett coasted along on a narrow path of dispassion, never angry, never happy, never sad.
“I was happy as a kid,” he said at last. “I stopped being happy on Geonosis and I never bothered trying again.”
But he’d been angry, all right: angry, grief-stricken, terrified, lonely, and hostile. He’d run through all the negative emotions at full intensity in those days after his father’s death, crammed in the spaces between doing what he had to do to survive, when he needed to be all cold logic. It was a switch he had to throw, off and on, off and on, until one day it didn’t switch on again, and the pain was gone. So were the joy and the love.
If he did what his dad wanted, it might come back. If he did an honorable job, and tried to at least understand the remnant of his own family, he stood a chance of recapturing some of what was ripped from him in that arena on Geonosis.
“Drink up, Ba’buir,” Mirta said. “I want to go and do some digging about Phaeda.”
GALACTIC ALLIANCE WARSHIP OCEAN, ON STATION JUST BEYOND CORELLIAN SPACE
“It’s awfully good of you to join us,” said Admiral Niathal. Jacen walked onto the bridge and tasted the mix of emotions around him, ranging from vague interest to nervousness. “I was very sorry indeed to hear of your loss.”
Jacen nodded politely. She sounded as if she really meant the condolence, but then she was pretty good at hitting the right note. He was visiting Ocean in his capacity as Chief of State to try out a little hearts-and-minds on a gathering of the various ally worlds. There was nothing like a meeting on a suitably mighty warship to show folks what was at stake. The Confederation was now planning a major push against the Core Worlds, intelligence suggested, so Jacen hoped everyone was paying attention.
Life was going on much as before. Recent days seemed to have been a lot of sweat for nothing. If he needed any more answers to Sith philosophical questions, he was on his own. Lumiya had managed to commit suicide-by-Skywalker. Jacen might not have been part of the Jedi Council, but the GAG were very efficient interceptors of messages.
Uncle Luke did it. He actually did it. Like my dad—you never know how far they’ll go, do you?
“So,” Jacen said, “Corellia seems to have been very quiet in my absence.”
“They were waiting for your return—that push on the Core looks imminent. They’d hate you to miss anything.” Niathal, annoyed or not about his extra day or so of absence, seemed to have an air about her of someone who was suddenly more comfortable with her new role, as if she’d taken advantage of his back being turned to forge fresh alliances and consolidate her power. It was almost like a fragrance; the aura that surrounded the love of power was something Jacen knew very well indeed. “The triumvirate is still doing the day-to-day running of affairs, but I’ve got our Intel folks and political analysts reading the signs about who might replace the dear departed Prime—” She stopped abruptly, and this time she was genuinely rattled. He could feel it. “I’m so sorry. That was grossly insensitive of me under the circumstances.”
“It’s okay.” Maybe there was a gentler side to Niathal after all. If there was, he’d exploit it to the hilt. “Can’t tread on eggs and suspend all normal conversation about deaths. The best thing we can do to honor my aunt’s memory is to win for her.”
“Indeed.”
“Murkhana seems tense. We’re past the deadline, yes?”
“We’re keeping a watching brief on that. Might well be Mandalorian psych tactics. Eight X-wings on standby to keep the peace is the price of GA harmony. On the other hand, if the Mandalorians do show up to support their Verpine allies by halting disputed production in their own inimitable way, then at least we might get a very useful look at the capabilities of their new assault fighter.”
“Some might think,” he said quietly, “that we’d prefer to see them attack Murkhana than not.”
“I never turn down intelligence, Colonel Solo.”
“Very wise, Admiral Niathal.”
Jacen wandered over to the bridge holochart that showed the entire Corellian theater. They still had a lot of ships. There was a limited action going on on the Coreward side of the chart. It always struck Jacen as over-detached to show real-time life-and-death struggles as charmingly aesthetic and silent graphics.
“Is this current?”
“Yes, sir,” said the officer of the watch. “Updated once a minute.”
“I think we’re missing something, Lieutenant,” Jacen said, dipping his fingertip into the maze of light to make his point. “Look, what you have here is actually a flotilla of corvettes, and this Destroyer here will move into this position, because she’s actually operating a—”
He trailed off, aware of the raised eyebrows and puzzled looks he was getting, but bathed in the growing warmth of revelation.
I can see all this.
“Can we check that out?” the officer of the watch called to a colleague. “Colonel Solo is rarely mistaken.”
Colonel Solo, Jacen thought, had just had the epiphany of his life.
It’s true. Lumiya was right. Oh, this is exquisite. I was blind before. How did I ever think I could succeed as a commander without this?
Lumiya had promised him a battlefield awareness and judgment that made ordinary battle meditation look like a finger painting—to sense and coordinate by the power of his mind and will alone, a power that only came to fruition in the Master of the Sith.
It’s me. It really is. It was Mara’s sacrifice after all, I accept that now.
But I still don’t understand the prophecy. And I don’t like what I can’t understand.
He was a Sith Lord. Now his work could truly begin.
It had happened.
And it was beautiful.
JEDI COUNCIL SHUTTLE, HAPES CLUSTER
Luke was grateful for something he still couldn’t understand.
He paused before he walked through the doors to the compartment, taking a few deep breaths. Cilghal looked up as he came in, and moved as if to leave.
Mara—no, Mara’s body—lay draped from the neck down in a plain white sheet on an examination table. Luke had steeled himself for something terrible, imagining her horribly disfigured or her features contorted; but she simply looked as if she were sleeping on her back, pale and peaceful, her red hair smoothly tidy in a way it never was when he watched her as she slept.
“It’s okay, Cilghal,” he said. “I don’t need to be alone with her.”
“Oh, yes, you do, Luke,” she said softly. “And I can come back later.”
“I don’t understand it,” he said. “But I get to hold her one last time, and I wondered if I ever would. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
He couldn’t see Cilghal’s face now. His eyes were hot and brimming. She patted his arm.
“You thought she would become discorporeal,” she said.
“We talked about it once or twice. I thought she might choose that when the time came. I’m glad
she changed her mind.”
“She certainly made sure we had evidence.” Cilghal paused for a second, inhaled sharply, and started again. “It was poison, one I’ve never seen before. But don’t doubt that she also wanted you to be able to say good-bye.”
Cilghal turned and hurried out.
Luke couldn’t speak or even look away from Mara, and he spent a long time staring into her face. If her eyes had opened, and she’d asked how long she’d overslept, he wouldn’t have been surprised. He lifted the sheet to clasp her left hand, and it was just the chill that made him flinch. After a while the skin felt warm from the heat of his own body.
Cilghal needed forensic evidence for the record. But Lumiya had killed Mara, and Lumiya had paid the price. There was no investigation to follow.
Yet that meant there was no need for Mara to remain now, and Luke was torn between wanting never to take his eyes from her and recalling how Yoda became one with the Force: then he might really see her again. But he understood so little of those elements of mysticism. Right then, he was grateful to settle for watching her.
“You really did want to see me, didn’t you?” he whispered, and leaned over to kiss her. He wondered if she would vanish in the next instant. He didn’t dare look away, and knew that it was only stopping him from accepting that she was gone. Even when he felt Ben walking toward the compartment, and heard him walk softly across the deck, he didn’t turn around. He reached out his left arm so Ben would walk up to him and accept the embrace while Luke watched over Mara.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said to her. “It’s Ben.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t find me, Dad,” he said. “I just had to go to her and be there.”
It was the first time Luke had spoken to Ben since before Mara had left: it felt like the first time in ages, in fact. Luke tried to think about what it must have been like for Ben to stand guard over his mother’s body, alone and scared, but he was still too mired in his own grief and shock.
“Dad … I know she’s telling us something. I’ve been thinking about it all the way back.”
Poor kid. Luke didn’t quite understand what he meant, but they could talk it through later. He was proud of his son’s strength and dignity. Ben could take the other news, too. He did a man’s job now.