[Legacy Of The Force] - 02(41)

He had no doubt that he would.

Fett dozed, reclining in his seat. When he slept, it was never deeply. The padded rim of his helmet was just soft enough to stop short of cutting into his neck but too hard for complete comfort when he let it take the weight of his head. Sometimes he would drift in a few seconds of hazy disorientation, half awake, sounds magnified, able to see through a transparent barrier; he wasn’t in the confines of his helmet but somewhere else he didn’t recognize. It was a recurring impression. Taun We had once told him it was the legacy of being gestated in a glass tank like the other clones, and that they all had distant memories like that.

It was a kinship of sorts. He found his mind wandering, thinking how they must have felt to know their days were numbered, just like his were now. And that was another kinship.

I’m dying. Maybe dying feels like this. I ought to know by now.

The navigation sensors woke him with an insistent pulsing tone to warn him Slave I had dropped out of hyperspace, and he snapped upright and alert. His joints hurt; he ignored the pain.

In the viewscreen the red-streaked crescent of Roonadan grew larger until it was the entire sky. It was another heavily populated planet whose habitable zones were crammed with cities, but at least it wasn’t as grim as Bonadan. Fett punched up the local data on his console and began his descent.

Roonadan still had a few green spaces and attractive buildings, and even a few wide rivers snaking through the northern hemisphere. It was the kind of place that was home to a mix of the highly educated scientists who developed products, the people whose task it was to make their lives more pleasant, and the majority who worked in the factories and laboratories that produced the goods that the elite invented.

It was exactly the kind of place Taun We might be, if she could take the sunlight. Kaminoans didn’t like clear skies.

Fett disguised Slave I’s armaments with a sensor screen and prepared to land. If anything went wrong, he had the firepower of a small warship to get out of trouble-turbolasers, ion cannon, torpedoes, and concussion missiles. He’d added conventional armor-piercing detonite ordnance on the last refit just in case he was ever low on power and stuck in a tight corner. Leaving things to chance was for amateurs.

Banking over the capital city of Varlo, Fett thought Slave I should be his final resting place. He didn’t want her left behind; he had a sudden vision of setting a course out of the galaxy in his final days and letting the ship carry him as far as she could on her fuel cells and then drifting forever where nobody would follow. It was reassuring.

Pack it in. You’re not dead yet.

But if that’s not an admission that you haven’t a clue what your life’s been about, then I don’t know what is.

He picked up the automated air traffic control and set down at the first spaceport he could find. Slave I settled gently on her landing struts, the dampers yielding as she sank half a meter and then came to rest. The drive cooled, sending a characteristic decelerating ticking through the hull that eventually fell silent.

“Fett?” He glanced up at the screen that gave him a complete view of the cargo bay. Mirta had stood up and was stretching her arms like an athlete, pulling one arm across her body then the other. “Are you taking me with you?”

“No.”

“So you’re just going to leave me locked in here while you go off.”

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to this ship. You’re safe as long as she is.” He set the intruder defenses and stood up to check his personal weapons. Roonadan didn’t have a no-weapons law like its sister planet Bonadan, but it was Corporate Sector and so some restraint was called for. “And don’t mess with the controls back there. You won’t like what happens if you do.”

He waited for an argument, but she just sat down again and started dismantling her blaster. He paused to watch: she was calibrating and cleaning it. The kid certainly took her weapons seriously. Most people just expected their hardware to work properly without maintenance, which was a good way to end up dead. Fett was impressed that she wasn’t among them.

He stepped out of the cockpit hatch and walked to the terminal building, checking data on the display that appeared in his visor as he walked. The planet was a research-and-development center. Somewhere there’d be a place where people whose job was to keep an eye on what companies did would gather to discuss business. Fett reasoned that it was a good place to start.

And like all commercial planets with plenty of job openings, Roonadan attracted a cosmopolitan population. A man in Mandalorian armor with a jet pack attracted almost as little attention as a Duros, but a lot less than the two blue-skinned Chiss who were wandering around the concourse in blue suits that matched their skin exactly. Fett took the opportunity to slip into one of the passport control lanes and select his most benign identicard for presentation to the female official securing the barrier.