But if Ko Sai had been one of the Kaminoans-he noted that plural-who fled to Arkanian Micro, then her research on aging hadn’t gone with her. The company would have exploited it to the full by now. Anti-aging was always the preoccupation of affluent civilizations. It earned big credits.
Maybe the talk in the bar was just rumor. No, enough hard detail had been revealed, and industry gossip tended to have a basis in reality.
But maybe Ko Sai had never managed to halt or reverse the aging process.
Then you’re really dead, Fett. So shape up.
As soon as he was clear of the taxi he stripped off the robe and tunic, bundled it in the holdall, and put his helmet back on with genuine relief. It wasn’t just a barrier against a world where he didn’t truly belong: it was a piece of a kit, a weapon in its own right. He relaxed as the familiar welter of text and icons cascaded down the margin of the HUD and told him all was well with Slave I. He checked the various security cams remotely, staring through images of empty bays and secure hatchways at the permacrete strip in front of him. Even before Slave I came into view in one of the bays, he settled on an image of Mirta Gev. Still locked in the prisoner bay, she lay on the deck with her legs hooked over a bulkhead rail, fingers meshed behind her head, performing sit-ups.
He hadn’t come across women like her before. He hadn’t come across many men like her, either. Whatever was driving her, she was serious about it. Discipline was a fine quality. He came perilously close to liking her again.
Fool. She’s ballast.
He opened Slave I’s forward hatch via his HUD link at thirty meters from the ship, climbed into the cockpit, and flicked open the internal comm system.
“Change of plan,” he said. “We’re going to Parmel sector, Outer Rim.”
He waited for sounds of protest. Nothing. He checked the cam again to make sure Mirta was still there.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes.” She sounded a little out of breath and stood looking into the cam’s lens. “You’ll pay me sooner or later. I’m young. I’ve got time to wait.”
She had no idea how pointed that observation truly was. Fett wondered if she knew he was ill, but there was no way she could know he was dying.
“Vohai,” he said, and wondered why he volunteered the destination. She was making him drop his guard. Nobody managed that. He made a conscious effort to be himself again, untouched by anything beyond his own needs. “Sit up front where I can keep an eye on you.”
He released the security locks on the aft compartments and fired up Slave I’s sublight drives. Mirta belted herself into the copilot’s seat just as the ship lifted, the acceleration flattening her like a punch.
Fett paused. “I don’t bother with the g-force dampers on takeoff.”
Why did I say that? He’d developed a rhythm of bare-bones conversation over the years. His passengers were never volunteers. Nobody wanted him to catch up with them. This was how it went: they whined, and he slapped them down, with a blunt word or sometimes a blunt object.
Mirta didn’t whine. He still felt the compulsion to slap down.
She stared ahead from the viewscreen. “I didn’t pay for a ticket so I’m not complaining.”
There was no answer to that. Fett took Slave I out on manual to check that he could still pilot without computer assistance. So far, so good. The illness was still just pain, not yet infirmity. Roonadan dwindled beneath them into a rusty red coin, and the viewport filled with star-specked void as Slave I cleared the planet. Then he took the risk of losing his main psychological aid to remaining aloof, and eased off his helmet. He expected Mirta to react; but she just glanced at him and then looked away again, apparently more interested in the starfield ahead.
“You’re a clone, aren’t you?” said Mirta at last.
She gets right to the point. “Got a problem with that?”
“No. I met a clone once.”
“So did Ailyn. She killed him.”
“Only because she thought he was you.”
I don’t want to chat. He didn’t answer.
Mirta persisted. “But this clone said he’d fought at Geonosis.”
“Couldn’t have.”
“Why?”
“Those clones were designed to age fast.” Fett did a quick mental calculation, doubling the years. “He’d be a decrepit hundred-forty-year-old now.”
“He was alive all right.”
The clone army had been designed to mature in ten standard years, and then they carried on aging at twice or more the rate of ordinary men. Fett remembered feeling sorry for them as a kid, but his father had told him to be proud because they were perfect warriors. Sometimes he remembered that they were also his brothers. Whenever he met a stormtrooper going about Vader’s business, he’d always wondered whether some remnant of his father’s template-of himself-was behind that white visor. But he never asked.