Fett didn’t know how much time they had. In the end, the Yuuzhan Vong would come for Mandalore to remake it as a world of living machines and parasitized slaves like every other planet. It was only a question of when. Fett took off his left gauntlet and ran his fingertips over the smooth composite of Slave 1’s console, one of the few original parts of the ship left from his father’s time. Refit after refit had changed her capabilities almost beyond recognition, but if Jango Fett were to return now, he would snap the pilot restraint into a sitting position, check the console for dust and smears like he usually did, and feel right at home. He wouldn’t feel at home in an enslaved galaxy with one brutal culture that had erased any trace of Jaster Mereel’s heritage.
Fett checked his fingertips for dust. Slave I was spotless. She didn’t look like what she really was, either. This was going to be a little war of deception. He hoped Nom Anor appreciated irony.
Beviin was chewing it over. “We still can’t fight the crabs alone. What about the New Republic? They’ll need whatever intel we get.”
“Can’t trust them. We didn’t spot Nom Anor. Those disguises they use mean they could be anybody.”
“We might have to trust them.”
“We could slip them the data we’ve got now. Test the water. Find out the hard way.”
“And if the New Republic blows our cover, for whatever reason, and the Vongese take their revenge on Mandalore…
“-then we fight to the last, or we go and find those other galaxies the Yuuzhan Vong say are out there.”
“It’s too far.”
“And death’s too final. So we’d better win.”
“Your father would be proud of you, Bob’ika” Beviin was younger than Fett, but he still called him by the kid’s form of his name. Sometimes it irked Fett and sometimes it didn’t. Right then, it was fine. “For a man who says he doesn’t care about anyone else, you always come good for the Mando’ade when you’re needed.”
“I’m Mandalore. It’s just my job.”
“‘Course it is,” said Beviin. “I believe you.” The Aggressors and Gladiators holding position at the rendezvous point looked pathetically small. Behind them, the waves of Yuuzhan Vong ships speckled the void. It was as eloquent a summary of the odds as Fett had ever seen: bad, and not even worth counting.
It wouldn’t have bothered Jango Fett, though. And so it wouldn’t bother him.
Nom Anor: notes for assault on Birgis.
Fett refuses to use villips and insists on
keeping
his
own communications derives. I regret I must keep this infidel technology too. then.
I didn’t expect him and his mercenaries to accept them, I admit. And trying to use viliips in isolation, without yorik-kul or vonduun, would be unsatisfactory anyway. The Mandalorians seem especially
repelled
by enslavement by the yorik-kul, which I find ironic for a race whose history is full of pillage, occupation, and daughter. But slavery is something that seems to haunt them: it must have played a painful role in their own history. They obviously fear it.
They don’t fear death, though. They don’t embrace it, but they say that you live for as long as someone remembers your name. They never remove those helmets, so I can’t judge from their expressions, but the tone of their voices tells me that the erasure of their culture by ours will be worse than death for them.
I suspect this is the key to keeping them loyal. Mandalore will remain untouched for as long as I need them. But enslavement will be the only way to handle them in the end.
Birgis: perimeter of spaceport, one standard week after invasion of Helska 4.
Beviin had to assume the Vongese knew what they were doing when it came to overrunning galaxies, but they didn’t seem to care about stealth.
The main spaceport on Birgis-which served both civil and military vessels on this small planet-was the most obvious asset they could have targeted. From the observation point on the far perimeter, hidden in long grass, he could see the assault speeders patrolling the landing strips in a flurry of flashing lights. Others showed no lights at all but were detailed green targets in his night-vision visor. The military vessels and vehicles were an eclectic mix of the squadron based here and the remnants of others that had escaped the relentless invasion fleet and regrouped onsite.
Destroying those assets on the ground would be the hardest task Beviin could imagine. Playing the double agent was fine until you had to preserve the illusion by hitting your own side convincingly-lethally.
And the New Republic didn’t even know yet that the Mandalorians were now their allies.
“I still say we should have hit the main civilian power station if they wanted a diversion,” Cham muttered, propped on one elbow as he lay in the cover of the grass calibrating a portable missile-launcher. “Still, they’re paying. Their call.”