“Oya, vod’ika” he said to the girl. Non-Mandalonans thought it was just a way of saying cheers, but it was much more than that: Survive, little sister: Hunt, enjoy life, celebrate your people. “Ova manda.”
“Oya,” said the girl. “I’m Dinua.”
“And my name’s Briika,” said her hard-eyed mother. Her name came from the word tor “smile,” and Beviin enjoyed that kind or irony. She could shrivel anyone with that stare. “Those crushgaunts are illegal. But you know that.”
“I just like antiques,” Beviin said. He patted the scabbard on his belt, rattling an ancient saber in its sheath. “I’ve got a proper beskad, too. On the road for a reason?”
“Got to make a living now my old man’s dead.”
No Mando ever left a widow or orphan to struggle, They shared luck when it came their way, because life was hard and there was no telling when you would be the one in need of some. “Might be able to help there.”
Beviin had enough credits in his pocket already to see him and Medrit through the coming year. If Udelen had more work to offer in the weeks to come, there was plenty to go around for Briika and Dinua.
Just like Fett, he couldn’t always handle all the work he might be offered.
Nom Anor: intelligence report to Prefect Da’Gara. Yuuzhan Vong fleet. Time to invasion: eight standard weeks. 25 A.B.V. In the Infidel calendar.
The Mandalorians appear to be best suited for infiltration, retrieval, assassination, and sabotage. In the year I’ve been using them, they’ve proved reliable, i Their small numbers make them worthless as an army, although they might make an excellent enslaved divi-sion at a future date.
Goran Beviin did an efficient job of removing B’Lepb, and a civil war is still in progress. He recruits equally efficient comrades: even their children are sav-age fighters.
When I spoke to their leader, the one they call Mandalore-Boba Fett-I feared for a white that he might uant more answers than I could give him. But the kind of destabilization and execution they excel at is a normal, everyday occurrence within this corrupt galaxy; he has no reason to wonder why I ask what I do of his people.
He’s seen and fought wars before. Like me, he’s a realist. A practical man. I almost look forward to meeting him.
Mandalore is already on my list as a world that will he harder to subdue.
Keldabe. capital of Mandalore: outskirts of the city.
Keldabe looked like a run-down factory complex that someone had dumped in a forest and abandoned because it was too much trouble to dispose of it properly.
I don’t even live here. And I’m the head of state.
Fett took Slave I low over the Mandalore forests forty-five degrees north of the equator and reminded himself that it was at least a good planet to defend if push came to shove. The resident population hovered around a modest four million; Coruscant had small neighborhoods with more citizens than that. Like Concord Dawn and the rest of the sector, this was hard frontier country, |ust jungle, forest, desert, and plains on which farmers made little impact. In galactic terms, it was a small city that outsiders mistook for a world.
That’s fitting. A few Mandalotians are an army, after all
The comm on the console chirped. “Mand’alor, Udelen’s ship just landed at the spaceport.”
“I’ll be right behind him,” said Fett. “Keep an eye on him in the meantime.”
“We keep an eye on everyone.”
Slave I could navigate for herself, but Keldabe was one location that even a novice pilot could fly by sight. It was-in basic terms-a very large hill-fort ringed by a bend in the Kelita River and beyond that woodland studded with settlements. The sprawl of buildings that made up MandalMotors was the biggest feature in the landscape, and if Fett used the plant’s hundred-meter rower as a navigation transit with the comm mast for the spaceport, he could line up and drop neatly onto the landing strip.
Mandalore was MandalMotors, thousands of tiny engineering workshops, subsistence farms, ore mining, and an awful lot of trees-and that was the sum of it. Without the beskar deposits, the unique Mandalorian iron ore, there was nothing remarkable about the place except the people. And the beskar had been largely stripped by the Empire.
Maybe if they were more formally organized… no, Fett shook away the thought. Mandos were as organized as they needed to be to survive.
And, being Mandos, they didn’t lay on a red carpet and a band to welcome their leader either. Fett settled Slave I on her dampers in a designated bay like anyone else, and walked across the strip.
He opened his comlink to the tower. “Which ship?”
“The blue one that looks like a T-77.” There was a pause, as if the control room skipper had leaned out of earshot to consult someone else. “There’s a grenade launcher trained on it, ret’lini-just in case.”