“If anything happens to me, will you take care of Dinua?”
Briika Jebar’s voice broke the silence on the shared comlink as the squadron waited for Udelen to appear. Beviin, fed up with waiting and reduced to staring through the Gladiator’s canopy at the veil of stars and gas clouds, jerked hack to the here and now.
“Yes,” he said. “But nothing’s going to happen to anybody. Anyway… yes.”
“Do I get a say in this?” asked Duma. Beviin wasn’t sure if she was reminding them she was a fourteen-year-old adult who could speak for herself, thanks, or if she preferred the idea of gat bal manda-adoption, literally name and soul-by someone else. It was usually the former. “And no, nothing’s going to happen to anyone.”
Death was the ever-present reality in this business. Beviin knew Dinua missed her father, and even if he could never he more than a friend and brother to Briika, his duty was to make sure her daughter-even as an adult-would never he an orphan. If only Fett had been truly part of the Mandalorian community, Beviin thought: someone would have adopted him so that he always had a family whether he needed one or not. But nobody had raised the issue with him. They probably never would. He wasn’t a family man, and there was still no room for anyone in his life except Jango’s ghost.
“I’ll take that as agreement,” said Beviin. “And I promise that if I ever adopt you, I won’t make you wear frilly dresses.”
Loud guffaws, Dinua’s included, filled his audio link, but Fett was silent: there wasn’t even a rebuke. On station around him, clustered around Slave 1, were the two women in their Aggressor fighters and the Detta brothers-Cham and Suvar-with Tiroc Vhon, all in Gladiators.
“The only thing anyone’s going to die of today is boredom,” Cham said. “We haven’t missed the time window, have we?”
“No,” Fett’s voice cut in. “We haven’t. He has-nearly.”
Beviin powered up his thrusters. “I’ll go scout around.
The Gladiator turned 180 degrees and looped away Coreward before coming back in a U-turn. It wasn’t boredom, although nothing was happening. The others might not have said it, but everyone was feeling that moment of doubt when you considered how little you knew for sure about your client, and-more to the point-how little you knew about the situation your client was about to get you into. The rendezvous was simply for a briefing. That was the point: not a battle, sight unseen, enemy unknown, but a briefing, so that they could regroup afterward with their new Intel and prepare themselves properly. If you took mercenary work, Beviin reasoned, you accepted that clients sometimes put you lower on their need-to-know list than their regular troops.
Yes, I’d adopt Duma. Medrit would agree.
But it wouldn’t come to that. Beviin flew back along the route he’d taken, checking his long-range scans for fast-moving objects or vehicles exiting hyperspace.
Gai bal manda: like all the Mandalorian ceremonies, it was short and to the point. Nobody had the time, patience, or credits to waste on lavish events. Get the business over, and hope still to he alive for a few bottles of narcolethe or net’ra gal later …
The proximity sensor blipped, and Beviin switched his attention from his HUD to the transparent canopy of the Gladiator.
He always preferred visual confirmation. For a moment he thought the scan was acting up, because the unknown ship-and it had to be a ship, given the speed at which it was moving-was showing a profile more like an asteroid, a mass of mineral readings, and it was big, well over a thousand meters and maybe two. But this wasn’t an asteroid belt. Sbab, the Glad’s instruments needed calibrating again. Some of his newly-earned credits would already be hemorrhaging from his pocket.
The ship appeared to be aft of him, and he didn’t trust the scan to keep him clear of trouble. Banking to starboard with a quick burn, he came about in a wide arc to get a visual on whatever was on his tail.
And there was a large object in range. That was about the best he could manage.
What he saw made no sense. It glittered in places where the harsh white light of the star caught it and … no, it was an asteroid after all. The shape was more regular and oval than the usual shattered chunks, and it wasn’t rotating and tumbling like the big ones usually did, but it-Oh. No, that’s trot happening.
In that way of glimpsing things out of context, Beviin had a split second of total illogical illusion: his brain told him explosion, debris, brace for impact. He almost ducked before he realized the massive lump of rock was following a course with all the purpose of a warship. Almost without thinking, he flicked his visor to maximum magnification and saw a craggy gray rock with unusually regular bands of black glossy material like some igneous mineral or tektite. Trailing from its bows, almost like the barbels of an ice-river vaban, were brilliant scarlet and blue branch-like growths, some with tapered purple sac-like pods attached to them.