[Legacy Of The Force] - 05(6)
“Oya!” It was muttered at first, then shouted a few times. “Oya!” It was a word with a hundred meanings for Mandalorians. This time it meant “Let’s go, let’s get on with it.” They always started their gatherings this way, and this was the nearest Mandalorians ever came to a senate. They didn’t go in for procedural nicety.
A chieftain with an ornately shaved beard and an eye patch stood up to speak without ceremony. “So, Mand’alor? he said. “Are we going to fight or what?”
“Who do you want to fight?” Fett noted that they reverted to Basic when addressing him, in deference to his ignorance of Mando’a. “The Galactic Alliance? Corellia? Some Force-forsaken pit on the Rim?”
“There’s never been a war we haven’t fought in.”
“There is now. This isn’t our fight. Mandalore’s got its own troubles.”
“The war’s escalating. Their troubles might come and find us.”
Fett stood by the long, narrow window that ran the height of the west-facing wall. It was more like an arrow loop than a view on the city. Mandalorians built for defense, and public buildings were expected to serve as citadels, even more so now. The Yuuzhan Vong had wreaked terrible vengeance on Mandalore for its covert work for the New Republic during the invasion, but the carnage had just made Mando’ade more ferociously determined to stay put. The nomadic habit was still there: it was more about a refusal to yield than love of the land. But they couldn’t lose a third of the population and shrug it off, not while many still remembered the Imperial occupation.
Sore losers, the Vong. But it’s not like I had any alternative. Better the New Republic than the crab-boys.
Fett scanned the hall, aware of Mirta’s fixed and almost baleful stare.
“What’s the first rule of warfare?”
On seats, on benches, leaning in alcoves, or just standing with arms folded, the leaders of Mandalorian societyor as many as could get to Keldabewatched him carefully. Even the head of MandalMotors, Jir Yomaget, wore traditional armor. Most had taken off their helmets, but some hadn’t. That was okay by Fett. He kept his on, too.
“What’s in it for us,” said a thickset human man leaning back in a chair that seemed to have been cobbled together from crates. “Second rule is how much is in it for us.”
“So … what is in it for us this time?”
Us. Fett was Mand’alor, chieftain of chieftains, commander of supercommandos, and he couldn’t avoid the us any longer. He didn’t feel like us. He felt like an absent husband who’d sneaked home to find an angry wife demanding to know where he’d been all night, not sure how to head off the inevitable argument. They made him feel uncomfortable. He examined the feeling to see what was causing it.
Not up to the job.
He might have been the best bounty hunter, but he didn’t think he was the best Mandalore, and that unsettled him because he had never been simply adequate. He expected to excel. He’d taken on the job; now he had to live up to the title, which was much, much easier in war than in peacetime.
Fenn Shysa must have thought he could do it, though. His dying wish was to have Fett assume the title, whether he wanted it or not. Crazy barve.
The thickset Mando shrugged. “Credits, Mand’alor. We need currency, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“To spend on importing food.”
“That’s the idea.”
“I suppose that’s one way of balancing supply and demand.”
“What is?”
“Back one side or the other in this war. That’ll reduce the number of mouths to feed. Dead men don’t eat.”
There were snickers of laughter and comments in Mando’a this time. Fett made a mental note to program his helmet translator to deal with it, and that felt like the ultimate admission of defeat for a leader: he couldn’t speak the language of his own people. But they didn’t seem to care.
“I’m with the Mand’alor on this,” said a hoarse male voice at the back of the assembly. Fett recognized that one: Neth Bralor. He’d known a few Bralors in his time, but they weren’t all from the same clan. It was a common name, sometimes simply an indication of roots in Norg Bral or another hill-fort town. “We lost nearly a million and a half people fighting the vongese. That might be small change for Coruscant, but it’s a disaster for us. No morenot until we get Manda’yaim in order. We’ll eat bas neral if we have to.”
A murmur of rumbling agreement rippled around the hall. A few chieftains slapped their gauntlets on their armor in approval. One of them was the woman commando Fett had met in Zerria’s on Drall, Isko Talgal. Her expression was still as grim, graying black hair scraped back from her wind-tanned face and braided with silver beads, but she banged her fist on her thigh plate in enthusiastic approval. Fett wondered what she looked like when she was unhappy.