[Legacy Of The Force] - 02(69)
You brought me up-more or less.
“Boba,” she said. She still had that soothing, musical voice. He wasn’t sure how long Kaminoans lived, but she had to be coming to the end of her life. “I regret that I don’t have the skills to help you.”
You’re the nearest I ever had to a mother. And that scares me sometimes.
“I guessed as much,” said Fett. “I just want your data. And some information.”
She’s completely cold. I was just another experiment she was pleased with.
“My data belongs to Arkanian Micro.”
“The data belongs to the Kaminoan government, but seeing as they aren’t paying me, I’ll take it to cover my expenses.”
“I can’t hand it over.”
“So I’ll take it.” Fett slipped the data breaker from a pouch on his belt and flipped it over in his left hand. He selected the docking interface that fit Arkanian Micro’s computer system; the device had a dozen different plugs that rotated into position on a wheel. “Or copy it, anyway. I don’t plan to sell it-yet.”
Taun We blinked slowly. She had the eyes of the Kaminoan ruling class: gray, not yellow, not low-caste blue. “It will ruin Arkanian Micro.”
“Tough.”
“And it will ruin me. Do you feel no compassion for me, Boba?”
“No. I don’t believe I do. Not now.”
Taun We appeared to be considering the revelation, head tilting slowly from side to side on the long column of her slender neck like a tree swaying in a breeze. He wondered if that reaction was just her expertise in human psychology taking a knock: she didn’t know his mind as well as she thought. She still reminded him of a nahra artist, a Kaminoan mime-dancer. He’d always been baffled by nahra as a kid, because Kaminoans didn’t feel a thing and yet they loved a kind of ballet that mimed emotions they didn’t appear to have.
That summed up their lives-and his, he realized.
Time for analysis later. Get to work.
Still holding his blaster on the scientist, Fett took three paces to the computer console and slid the data breaker into the port. The device sparkled with blue and green status lights to show that it was searching and downloading, and he let it gather a lot more data than he needed. He wasn’t a thief, but other Arkanian Micro data might come in handy-and even save his life. He was just taking custody of a copy of it.
“I don’t make deals,” he said. The status bar indicated that five thousand exabytes of data had been swallowed whole. Complete genomes took a lot of memory. “But here’s a promise. Tell me all you know about Ko Sai, and I won’t hand this data over to the highest bidder. That’ll make sure you’re still of use to Arkanian Micro.”
“She’s dead.”
“I still want to know everything.”
Taun We paused for a moment, blinking slowly at the blaster. “Are you going to take me back to Kamino by force?”
“No. I don’t need the credits.”
“But would you kill me, Boba?”
He paused. For this, I would. “Yes.”
She still seemed puzzled, not hurt, or afraid, or betrayed. “Very well. Ko Sai thought the cloning program would be destroyed, so she defected to the Separatists during the Battle of Kamino to save her life’s work.”
“And her own skin.”
“We are not materialistic, Boba. It was not about payment. It was about pride. About excellence.”
Fett slipped the data breaker back in his belt. “Get on with it. Where did she go?”
“I have no idea where her journey took her next.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was … traced.”
“By who?”
Another pause. Whatever it was, it was giving Taun We problems. “Clone intelligence units. And one of your father’s commando instructors.”
Fett swallowed hard. He hadn’t expected that. “And?”
She indicated the braided Wookiee pelts strung from his right shoulder plate. “She fell prey to the Mandalorian penchant for souvenirs.”
“Interesting,” said Fett. No, it’s astonishing, it’s terrifying, it’s hope, it’s everything. “So the clones got their revenge.”
“We assumed so. Packages arrived. Parts of a Kaminoan body whose genetic profile was Ko Sai’s.”
Fett found that unnecessarily brutal. Kill a prisoner if you were paid to, kill them if you needed to; even retrieve parts if you had to. But mailing Ko Sai home a piece at a time sounded like a vengeful, elaborate message. “And her data?”
“We can only assume they took that, too. It has never been recovered.”
“What was special about it?”