The farm was a rambling collection of buildings scattered around a stone farmhouse with impressive dirtworks and defensive walls. The other structuresincluding the outbuilding that Fett was staying inweren’t so well defended, just variations on the traditional circular vheh’yaime set in deep pits and so thickly thatched that they were camouflaged. But the farmhouse was the last bastion in the event of an attack.
At the back of the building, and connected to it by an underground tunnel, stood a workshop with a smithy. Fett could hear the rhythmic hammering of metal across the clearing. There was no smoke curling from the roof. It vented many meters away to hide the location, and Fett was sure there was a network of tunnels extending a long way into the hills to the west of the farm. It was one of the ways the Mandalorians had foughtand beatenthe Yuuzhan Vong.
Beviin walked down the steps cut into the hard-packed soil and leading down to the front door. It opened and Dinua, his adopted daughter, stood with hands on hips.
“Boots,” she said ominously, pointing at the clods of dung and mud. Two small children clung to her legs. “You too, Mand’alor. And you can take those coveralls off as well, Buir.”
“Okay, okay” Beviinspy, fixer, veteran commandowas driven back by a resolute woman. But Dinua had fought and lulled Yuuzhan Vong from the age of fourteen, so making a mess on her clean floor wasn’t to be attempted rashly. “We’ll go the long way around.”
They tramped around the perimeter of the farmhouse, following the sound of ringing metal.
“She’s a good girl,” Beviin said. “Just a bit irritable now that Jin-tar’s away fighting. She’s not one for staying at home. But the little ones are too young for both parents to be away”
So some had already taken mercenary work. Fett didn’t think Beviin’s farm was doing that badly, but maybe Jintar was too proud to accept his father-in-law’s support.
“But you and Medrit are good with kids.”
“Yeah, but this way, one parent stays alive …”
That was the harsh reality Fett had grown up with. It bred hard people.
As the door to the workshop swung open, a blast of warm air registered on his sensors. The interior was bathed in a red glow; sparks flew in arcing showers. How Beviin stood the noise, Fett would never know. His helmet controls had decided the volume was above danger level, and buffered the sound.
A mountain of a man in a singlet, burn-scarred leather apron, and ear defenders was hammering a strip of red-hot metal. Every time he raised his arm, sweat flew from him and hissed into steam on the hot surfaces. He folded the strip with tongs as he hammered, layering the metal with a steady rhythm that said he was a master armorsmith. After a while, he realized Fett and Beviin were standing watching; he gestured with an impatient jab of his finger to show he was going to finish working the metal before he’d stop to talk.
It was actually fascinating. Fett could see from the length and emerging form of the metal bar that he was making a beskad, the traditional saber of the ancient Mandalorians. Beviin had one, an antique blade fashioned from Mandalore’s unique ironbeskar. Fett had watched him swing the weapon so hard into a Yuuzhan Vong officer that he’d had to stand on him to pull it free.
“There.” Medrit Vasur cooled the rough form of the saber in a tub of hissing liquid and turned it this way and that to check the line. He took off his ear defenders, and his face cracked into a beatific smile of satisfaction as he wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm. “Now, that’s going to be a thing of beauty.”
“Med’ika, I haven’t told him yet,” said Beviin.
“Shall I blurt it out, then?”
“You’re the metallurgist …”
“Mand’alor,” Medrit said stiffly, “you’re looking at a test forging from a new lode of beskar.”
It took Fett a slow second to grasp the importance of what Medrit had said. “But the Empire strip-mined Mandalore. They took all the iron.”
“They missed a bit. A big bit.”
“How? And how big?”
“This is a big planet with a tiny population, and even the Imperials didn’t survey all of it. They stripped the shallow veins. This is a deeper lode, and we’d never have found it if the vongese hadn’t left craters you could sink a small moon in.” Medrit picked up a cloth and wiped his face. Fett couldn’t feel the full impact of the temperature in the workshop, but Beviin had started sweating visibly; he left a mucky smear across his forehead as he wiped it. “There’s a crew a hundred klicks north of Enceri still doing test drills, but it looks like a big, big lode that was exposed.”