“It’s a heart-of-fire,” she said. “It belonged to my grandmother. I need a full-blooded Kiffar to help me read the memories imprinted in it.”
He paused for a few moments. “Mando’ade come from all kinds of places. If I find anyone who can read the stone, I’ll let you know.” Then he was gone.
Orade nudged Beviin.
“Go on,” Orade said. “Tell him. It’ll make him happyokay, happier. Happy people heal faster.”
Fett put his armor plates back on. “What’s going to make me happy?”
Beviin had the beatific smile of a man who’d finished laying up stores for the winter and just enjoyed a big meal. “Yomaget’s got something to show you.”
Fett grunted. He was the least expressive man Mirta knew, but he seemed vaguely disappointed. “He’s got the Bes’uliik spaceworthy, has he?”
“Bang goes the surprise.”
“It’s the thought that counts.” He stood up and was instantly transformed from her sick Ba’buir into Boba Fett, ruthless and relentless. But he didn’t stride out the door right away. She took a guess that he was feeling the effects of the treatment and wasn’t going to admit it, not even in front of people who knew exactly what was wrong. “Where is it?”
She gestured to the ceiling and offered him her arm.
Mirta was still looking for a reason not to hate Fett, and she was ready to look pretty deeply. She decided she could start by loving him for his sheer guts. Nothing fazed him, nothing stopped him, and nothing made him feel sorry for himself. They stood outside the barn and waited in silence. It looked like a tiny hut set against Slave I, laid up in her horizontal mode nearby.
A low rumble interrupted the rural peace.
Fett looked up as a dull black wedge shot across the sky and vanished behind a forested hill. Mirta lost it, but then it circled back again, came to a dead halt in midair about two hundred meters above them, and descended smoothly on burners. It landed on its blunt tail section and then extended struts to tilt through ninety degrees and come to rest horizontally like a conventional starfighter. The canopy lifted and Yomaget climbed out, slid onto the ground, and kissed the matte fuselage.
“Cyar’ika,” he said to the ship, running a tender hand over the skin. “I think I’m in love.”
“Nice,” said Fett.
“Puts the uliik in Bes’uliik.”
“Yeah, I can see it’s a beast. What’s different?”
“We applied the micronized beskar skin, Mand’alor. She’s a toughened shabuir now. Care to show her to the Verpine?”
“It’d get their attention.”
“If they share their ultramesh technology with us, we might be able to lighten the air frame and improve her top end in atmosphere. If we skin her completely in solid beskar, she’s going to be invulnerable, but heavy.”
“We’ll keep the heavy ones. Maybe the Verpine can come up with a better fuel solution.”
“Well, if you’re not going to take her for a spin, I will,” said Medrit. He scrambled up onto the wing and eased himself into the cockpit, looking as if he would fill it. “Shab, a Mando-Verpine assault fighter. That’ll cause some sleepless nights on Coruscant.”
“If we can mine and process the ore fast enough.”
Yomaget looked hopeful. “We could ask those helpful insectoid chaps to lend us an orbital facility or two.”
“I’ll go see them,” Fett said. “Got to think long-term on this. No point handing over too much to Roche early in the game.”
Medrit spent the next hour taking the prototype Bes’uliik through its paces over the Keldabe countryside while the rest of them watched. Yomaget captured the aerobatics on his holorecorder, looking satisfied.
“Might slip this hologram out to a few contacts,” he said. “We’re not a modest people, are we?”
“Remind them that most of our adult population can fly a fighter, too,” Fett said. “For starters.”
He went back inside the barn. He didn’t manage a smile, but Beviin turned to Mirta and cocked his head. “Believe it or not, that’s a happy man.”
Maybe he was a better judge of mood than she was. She was relieved just to hear Fett use the phrase long-term.
Times were changing. The rest of the galaxy might have been tearing itself apart, but the Mandalore sectorwhich now informally controlled Roche, if a protectorate agreement countedwas a haven of optimism after a decade or more of grim existence. That night, Mirta found the Oyu’baat tapcaf packed with new faces, and the singing was raucous.
If Jacen Solo, her mother’s murderer, had been roasting slowly over the Oyu’baat’s open fire instead of the side of nerf, Mirta might even have joined in.