[Legacy Of The Force] - 08(138)

“Because if I put him down like the vermin deserves, your family can blame that rotten Boba Fett again when the truth wears off, when you need an excuse to stop feeling bad about what you had to do. No, you clear up your own mess. I wondered-am I standing back to let the Solos and Skywalkers fight each other because I want them to suffer? No. It’s only Jacen who deserves it, and on balance I’d prefer to see him live a long time in a lot of pain. Like I’ve said before…. he’s no use to me dead.”

Jaina tried to work out if she was on the receiving end of a subtle gloating lecture from Fett, or if he’d brooded about this long enough to have a lot of words looking for an outlet. Even her Force senses strained to pick up clues. He really did seem to be thinking aloud, trying to find some answers.

Jaina felt suddenly irrelevant. “You can manage quite long sentences, can’t you?”

“It’s all billable time, Solo.”

“You hate Jedi, I understand that. Seeing your father killed, having to survive on your own…”

“No. You don’t get it. But if any of your kind could, it’d be you.”

Fett put his weight on one arm and jumped to his feet, looking pretty fit for his age. He walked off down the slope toward Keldabe and didn’t look back. With the 360-degree sensor in his HUD, he didn’t need to. Jaina wasn’t sure she’d had an answer at all, but she had a stack of extra questions. She broke her own rule and scrambled after him.

“Hey, don’t give me the cryptic treatment, Fett.” Jaina reached up from behind for his right shoulder, and a little Force pull made him turn. That probably didn’t help, given the topic. “Jedi killed your father. You hunted mine. I went on hating you and feeling pretty unfriendly about Mandalorians for a long time. We all do it.”

“I’m trying to keep this simple.”

“What?”

“Mace Windu killed Dad. The barve ends up taking a walk out Palpatine’s window, so I don’t get to blow his brains out. Add a few years of lashing out at any Jedi, and then I stop and ask why I carry on. Because Force-users are all trouble. Sith, Jedi, no difference, although the Sith al-ways paid well. Every big war since the Old Republic apart from the Vong has been about you two having your sectarian conflicts and dragging everyone else in. I say it, guys like Venku say it, and then folks start thinking that maybe galactic peace doesn’t include you.”

“You’d starve if you didn’t have a war to go to.” “Making virtue out of necessity.”

“And we’re peacekeepers. You can’t always do that by-appealing to folks’ better nature.”

“Yeah, I forgot. The compassionate Jedi.” He held out his palm. “Give me your lightsaber. I left all mine at home.” “Why?” “Give.”

Jaina took the hilt off her belt, and thought that only a Jedi who put excessive faith in her Force certainties would hand a lightsaber to an irritated Fett. He snapped the blade casually into life-he’d handled the weapons more than he admitted, that was clear-and sliced the humming beam clean through the branch of a small tree. Then he shut it off, tossed the hilt back to her, and bent to grab the severed wood.

“A weapon for a civilized age, you reckon?” Fett thrust the end of the branch into her face so she could see it was a clean cut, not a lot of sap. “You cut someone’s head off, you trap enough oxygenated blood in the brain for two minutes’ consciousness, maybe. Then go and retrieve your dad’s body parts and see how well you sleep some nights.” Fett walked away again, and this time Jaina let him go. It was a little while before she recovered enough to think of yelling after him to demand how many of his kills had been instantaneous, but that was probably for the best. One mo-ment she was close to thinking they had a good understanding; the next, it was war again.

Was this his plan all along, to set her up to harm her own brother so the most powerful Jedi families could tear themselves apart?

You can go crazy thinking like this. He’s just a man. It’s your own brother who’s plotting and planning.

Fett hadn’t planned to see his daughter getting killed, and he hadn’t known Jaina was going show up asking him to make her a Jedi hunter. He was an injured but dangerous bystander, landing a punch any way he could.

Okay, Jacen, would you think twice about killing me if I got in your way like Mara did?

Jaina thought she knew the answer, but the next minute she doubted herself. Combat training was definitely out for the day. She decided to use the downtime to try building bridges with another Mandalorian who probably didn’t want to talk to her: Gotab, or whatever his name had been when he’d still used a lightsaber.