“I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Any objections to Orade?”
“Mirta’s well over thirteen. She can make her own choices.”
“He’s a good lad.”
“I know.” Fett’s own inability to cope with partners was no reason for him to have any opinion on his granddaughter’s life. But he meant it about breaking Orade’s legs. It was a paternal reflex that came out of nowhere. “I did a deal with the Verpine government today. We now have a nonaggression pact with Roche provided they share tech with us.”
Vevut stopped rasping sharp edges. “Hey, I didn’t even hear us fire any shots …”
“They heard the word beskar.”
“I do believe good times are on their way again, Mand’alor.”
“If you feel like sitting in when we talk weapons with them, your views would be useful.”
“Okay. I’ll leave my bug spray at home as a mark of respect.”
“I’d better tell the clans. In case anyone’s thinking of signing up for Kem Stor Ai. The Verpine would be upset about that.”
It was a good relaxed way to run a nation. Fett sent word out via his datapad and waited for objections, not expecting any. Apart from questions like the discounts that might now be available on custom Verpine weapons, the chieftains took the news in their stride.
It was as if Mandalorians saved all their passions for two things: their families and their wars. Fett returned to Beviin’s farm via the river and paused to look at the vast mass grave again.
Most species found the words unmarked mass grave the stuff of horror, the worst possible end to life. And yet Mandalorians chose it. Fett, on the cusp between Mando and aruetii despite his title, tried to see his people as the aruetiise saw them, to fully understand the fear just a few million of them could cause simply by existing. Detached, he saw an invading army wiping out whole species, fighting galactic wars, destroying everything in its path; and he saw mercenaries and bounty hunters, unemotional masked dealers in death. The image burned into the collective galactic psyche was one of violent savages, thieves, and looters, whose temporary loyalty to anyone but their own could be bought but never guaranteed.
It happened to be almost completely trueexcept the bit about loyalty. Most people didn’t understand the nature of a contract.
And they never got close enough to see Mandalorians at peace. Come to that, not many Mandalorians did, either. It was a restless galaxy.
Fett resigned himself to existing in no-man’s-landtoo Mando for the outsider but not Mando enough for some of the clansand made his way back to Slave I, which was still the haven in which he preferred to sleep. He hoped Beviin wasn’t offended. Worrying about someone else’s feelings was a novelty, and Fett knew what Beviin would say about the psychology of sleeping in a spacecraft when a perfectly comfortable homeany number of homes-was available.
When Fett reached the ship and unlocked the hatch by remote, he found a message waiting for him. It could have been relayed straight to his HUD, but Jaing Skirata did things his own idiosyncratic way.
I SEE YOU DID RIGHT BY MANDALORE. I’LL DO RIGHT BY YOU.
Fett hadn’t judged wrong, then. He dropped his dose of capsules into his palm and washed them down with a mix of water and the cocktail of liquid drugs that Beluine had prescribed. It was just slowing down his decline, not stopping it.
Jaing hadn’t said he’d succeeded.
Death’s a motivator, not a threat. You’ve still got things to achieve before you become fertilizer. You’ll just have to do them sooner rather than later.
Fett switched on the monitor in his cramped quarters and sat back with a pack of dry rations to watch the news as Corellia went into meltdown, and the Verpine government of Roche announced talks with Mandalore to agree to a mutual aid and trade treaty.
Then he took out the black book his father had left him. He’d listened to every message recorded in it more than a hundred times, and studied his father’s image in it. When he was afraid he was beginning to forget what Jango Fett once looked like, he’d take it out and run the messages again.
He hadn’t forgotten: not a pore, not a hair, not a line. But he ran it again anyway, and decided tomorrow might be a very good day to go public on the Bes’uliik.
JEDI COUNCIL CHAMBER, CORUSCANT: EMERGENCY MEETING
“This one,” said Master Saba Sebatyne, “would like to be assured that the Alliance had nothing to do with Gejjen’z death. It was unnezzzezary.”
Luke couldn’t blame her for jumping to conclusions. It was his first thought, too, and his second was that the GA’s agentsor even Jacenhad a hand in it. But the assassin had, it seemed, sealed himself in his ship and blown it up, a Corellian-registered ship scattering solidly Corellian evidence. Luke had seen crazier things than that. It was a zealot’s act, and all too common.