“No need for you all to enter, I agree. And you’ll vouch for them.”
“Given the size of your fleet, what could a few small ships do anyway?”
“Mand’alor, I’ll escort you,” Beviin interrupted. Planning and thought never came into it. He heard himself react. We rally to the Mandalore. This is bow we survive. I’ll follow you in.”
“When I find out what in means,” said Fett, “then do it.”
Beviin powered down his weapons and swung the Gladiator in behind Slave I as the vessel edged forward coward the giant scarred rock of a warship, “Ke’pare,” he whispered down the comlink. Fett didn’t speak Mando’a, but neither would these Yuuzhan-whoever-they-were. Almost no aruetii did. “Ke baslana meh mhi Kyrayc.”
Stand by, and get out if we don’t make it.
They’d know what to do, and when to do it. It was hard-wired and hard-trained into all of them.
The gray asteroid became a mountain range that filled his field of view as he trailed behind Slave I’s thrusters at a safe distance into a mouth-like opening of the warship.
“Oya,” Suvar responded. Go get ‘em. And stay alive. Funny word, oya. It adapted to any situation. Oya. Beviin seized it tor courage. He had the feeling he had seen nothing yet.
Nom Anor: docking bay of the miit ro’ik.
The warriors ask if the Mandatorians are the droids the infidels use. They cluster around the little fighter craft and stare at the metal figures that climb out. They might as well be, because they seem to have surprisingly little fight m them for professional soldiers; we’d have fought back by now.
They are excellent saboteurs, though.
I hope Fett avoids using his jetpack. The warriors would be enraged to see artificial combustion, the first abomination. They’re already disgusted that I let these infidel Mandatorians bring their machines into this miit ro’ik, and they dislike my use of the infidel comlink, but I’m an Executor, and they don’t dare argue with me.
I can’t see these infidels’ faces, but I know they’re amazed by the perfection they see. Fett is looking everywhere, studying everything, if the movements of his head are anything to go by. I hear be has impressive scars: but they were merely an accident. His lackey, Beviin… be follows his master.
They might well fit into the natural order of things, after all.
Yuuzhan Vong miit ro’ik warship.
Beviin couldn’t be heard outside his helmet, but he still whispered as he walked along the living corridor behind Fett into the heart of the ship.
“How was I supposed to know what he was?”
“You weren’t.” That ugly barve Udelen-Nom Anor-had fooled everyone. How he disguised a mutilated face like that was a miracle. Fett had a good look at his real face now. “And better that we find out what we’re dealing with than get a surprise like the rest of the galaxy.”
“This isn’t going to he like the good old Sith and Jedi puppet show, is it?”
“I don’t know. All that matters is if there’s something in it for Mandalorians.”
Fett didn’t expand, not then. He had his father’s nose for trouble, and he smelled it this time like never before. The ship itself was bad enough: for all the vibrant color on every surface and crew member, it was like being in a stinking cave infested with unrecognizable vermin. There wasn’t a smooth, spotless durasteel bulkhead or reassuring
piece
of
normal cleanly-oiled engineering to be seen.
Yes, it had a distinct scent, the smell of damp forest and weed drying on beaches and a hint of blood.
It was like being in something’s guts. It was like being back in the Sarlacc.
And it was the smell of Udelen when he met him at Keldabe spaceport. I didn’t see this coming. I should have. And now I know-well, maybe this is the best position to be in.
Fett ran every recording and analysis device in his helmet as he walked through the ship, from penetrating radar to thermal imaging. Every so often he stopped and touched the-no, not bulkheads, walls. He couldn’t shake the idea of stomach walls. He wiped his fingertips along them, feigning awe and curiosity, and then discreetly transferred whatever organic traces he’d picked up on his gloves to one of the pouches on his belt.
“Samples,” he said quietly. “Anything small-any bits of this thing you can steal-pocket it. Okay?”
“Got you,” said Beviin.
What he needed most of all, though, was a slice of the Yuuzhan Vong invader who walked ahead of him, a snake-like thing coiled up one arm. It was alive.
“Pet?” he asked. Jabba always kept some weird wildlife that amused him. Maybe Yuuzhan Vong did the same. “A familiar?”