[Legacy Of The Force] - 08(7)

Mirta was a persistent girl. “Ba’buir, you want me to start the drives?”

“No.”

“Are you okay?”

“Is Goran there?” She didn’t need to know how he felt right then. He wasn’t even sure himself, beyond a terrible guilty dread. “Has he got the room ready?”

“Of course he has. Goran’s never let you down.”

That was true. “Is Beluine’s accommodation sorted out?”

“Yes, but…”

“Then someone better tell him the Oyu’baat is as five-star as we get in Keldabe.”

“You’re psychic, Ba’buir.”

Fett wasn’t, but he knew his personal physician well enough to predict that he wouldn’t think a room in the rustic Oyu’baat tapcaf good enough for a fancy Coruscant doctor. Tough. I’m the customer. If the ruler of Mandalore could put up with a rickety farm outhouse with brutally basic plumbing, the Oyu’baat was fit for Beluine. It was clean and warm. As long as he didn’t try playing a round of cu’bikad with the patrons, he’d be fine.

“Tell him he can always be replaced by a med droid, “he said.

When Fett banked the speeder around the last stand of trees, he could see Mirta leaning against the aft hull plates of Slave I, arms folded across her chest, and Goran Beviin waiting beside her in his slate-gray farm overalls.

“No good acting like you don’t care, “Beviin said as Fett opened the cargo hatch from the remote on his forearm plate and steered the speeder onto the ramp. “You might have left her, but she’s still your wife.”

Fett secured the speeder. “Ex-wife.”

“The rooms and med droids are ready, anyway.”

Fett didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. Beviin was a good man, Fett’s chosen successor if anything went wrong-like death, like illness, like just plain old age-and he’d put up with a lot of demands since they’d located Sintas Vel’s body.

Fett’s wife wasn’t dead.

Dead would have been hard after she’d been missing for more than thirty years. Dead would have been easier than finding her encased in carbonite, stored like junk among some dead gangster’s forgotten possessions, and then working out what he’d say to her.

How do I tell her that our daughter Ailyn’s dead?

How do I tell her everything that’s happened since she went missing? That’s she’s got a granddaughter?

At least Mirta could do her own telling. Fett released the hatch and she climbed into the cockpit, a battered bag over one shoulder. She was in her midtwenties, although she had a scrubbed look that made her look like a kid, and that meant she wouldn’t be that much younger than her grand mother when she was revived.

But I don’t know that. Sintas could have been captive for years, and only carbonited recently. She could be nearer my age. She was a few years older than me…

Either way, it was going to be a very hard reunion    . The last time he saw her, he’d left her injured in an alley. It was an ignominious exit to add to abandoning her and their baby daughter. And now all the pain was going to come erupting to the surface again, all the memories he’d locked in his past as surely as carboniting them so he never had to look at them.

“The med droid’s got full psychiatric programming, too, Bob’ika, “Beviin said quietly.

People usually came out of carbonite in a bad way, anything from blind and disoriented to totally and permanently insane. She’d really thank him for that. If he only knew what her chances were.

“Thanks, Goran, “said Fett. “Tell Medrit I’m grateful.”

“Ah, we’ve always got room for guests. Kih’parjai. It’s nothing.”

“Okay, look after the shop while I’m gone.”

The war between the Galactic Alliance and the Confederation was forgotten for the time being. Fett settled into the pilot’s seat and waited until he saw Beviin walk clear of the downdraft before he flicked the controls, and Slave I throbbed into life. The north Mandalorian countryside receded below into a patchwork, and the sky through the viewport darkened to violet and then black as they left the atmosphere. There was no going back now.

“What if she ends up insane?” asked Mirta.

“Han Solo was carbonited and he’s strutting around just fine.”

“I’ll look after her, “she said.

“I can take care of her.”

“Pay someone else to do it, you mean.”

So Mirta was in one of her combative moods today. That meant she was scared. He understood why, but he had his own problems to deal with when it came to facing Sintas again.

How old was I when I walked out? Nineteen? And then Mirta will want to drag up the reasons why I left. It’s going to be rough.