[Legacy Of The Force] - 08(18)

“You trust Shevu?”

“Yes. There’s such a thing as Force certainty, and I have it in that young man.”

Niathal revised her view of the GAG captain. His attitude was courageous dissent, then. She’d have to persuade him out of that. “A GAG insider would be helpful to us all.”

“We become exploitative for all the right reasons, don’t we?”

“We do.”

“Until next time, then.”

Luke swung back into the StealthX cockpit in a gymnastic move that would have taxed a much younger man, and braced his body using his knees while the seat restraints closed around him. Then the canopy closed, he gave her a thumbs-up gesture as if he were just an ordinary pilot taking a fighter for a test flight, and the safety bulkhead closed to release the vacuum in the docking skirt. He was gone.

Poor Ben, Niathal thought. She wished him luck, and decided she would make some for him if she got the chance.

No, Jacen. You won’t get away with this. Not in my navy.



PHAEDA, IMPERIAL SECTOR: TREASURY REPOSITORIES, DERAPHA

The slab of carbonite lay on a trestle draped in synthetic gray velvetweave, looking for all the world like a funeral bier.

Fett inhaled the musty air and held out his chip from the Registry of Testaments and Legacies, his authorization to collect the belongings of a dead scumbag called Rezodar. The lawyer’s minion took it, checked it, and stood back to let Fett and Mirta cross the threshold of the storeroom.

Fett didn’t know Rezodar, and didn’t care. He could guess the gangster’s lifestyle. This was Phaeda, after all. On a bad day it made Nar Shaddaa look classy. He hadn’t been back here since the height of the Empire, another element of his past come back to haunt him on this difficult day.

“I’ll leave you to clear the store, sir, “said the minion. “Three hours maximum. Everything must go. A droid is available if you need help loading.”

There was only one thing Fett wanted. The rest…. he’d jettison it, even give it to the deserving poor, orgiven that this was Phaeda-the undeserving criminal classes.

“That’ll be all, “he said, and took a few steps forward. The distance to the trestle felt almost as impossibly long as the expanse of sand in the arena at Geonosis that he’d had to cross to retrieve his father’s body. And then there had been Ailyn’s body, and reinterring his father’s remains-Fett had played pallbearer far too often in the past year. He wasn’t a squeamish man, but he was coming close to the limit of his tolerance.

But Sintas is alive. And so are you, although you might as well be dead some days.

“What order do you want to do this in?” Mirta asked.

She’d been quiet since he’d dropped his bombshell on her about Shysa. She stood on the opposite side of the shrouded carbonite slab and took off her helmet, the new one that Grade’s father had made for her to match armor plates she had now painted a deep saffron. When she tidied her short curly hair with one hand, there was a brief mo-ment when she looked a lot like her grandmother. It was the mouth. The eyes were definitely from his side of the family.

“Let’s check the carbonite first, “Fett said. It wasn’t what he meant, but it was easier than saying that he only cared about Sintas and everything else was ballast.

He took the top edge of the velvetweave. The drape of the fabric clung to the little mountains and valleys of a face, a once-familiar land. Then he drew back the sheet; and it felt like the moment he saw Ailyn’s battered face when Mirta opened the body bag, the shock of the face of a stranger he ought to have known, but whose life he had missed almost completely.

“Oh…., “said Mirta.

It took a lot to shut the girl up, but it was the second time Fett had heard that choked-off gasp today.

Even in the monochrome contours of the carbonite shell, Sintas was recognizable. Worse: she was beautiful. He bent his knees slightly to check her profile against the light, but she looked much as he’d remembered-high cheekbones, long straight hair, a small pointed chin. Her arms were at her sides; her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping. He’d seen a few carbonited beings in his time and they had been frozen in some paroxysm of pain or terror, because it wasn’t a pleasant way to be put into suspended animation, but Sintas looked peaceful.

Maybe the barve froze her down dead.

It gave Fett a brief sense of respite and he hated himself instantly for it. Dead Sintas wouldn’t drag up the unhappy past, or hang around demented and in torment. Dead Sintas was what he thought he already had.

Face up to it, fett. You were never scared of anything. What would Dad think of you, too frightened to hear the truth again? You never could handle this stuff. It’s how you ended up in this position.