Ben was glad Jacen had said destruction. It was the first clue he’d had of what dissuasion actually meant.
“This,” said Omas slowly, “is not unlike another conversation I’ve just had.”
The way he said conversation made it clear what he’d been arguing about with Niathal. So she wanted to take action, exactly as Jacen did. “We’ve slapped Corellia and made a martyr to a cause,” said Jacen. “An armed martyr to an armed cause.”
“But Corellia has seen what we’re made of, and that’ll make them think twice.”
“And we’ve now seen what they’re made of,” said Jacen. “And I have thought twice. If you give me command of a battle group, I can destroy the main shipyards and put an end to this now. If Corellia can be brought to heel, it sends the message that no single planet is bigger than the Alliance.”
“You’re asking me to declare war, Jacen, and that’s something I’d never get Senate backing to do. And I know where the Jedi council stands on this.”
“War’s coming anyway. If you draw a weapon on a Corellian, you’d better be prepared to use it. We drew it when we took out Centerpoint.”
Omas was doing a good job of disguising his fear, but Ben could feel it. It didn’t feel as if he was afraid of Jacen; it was more a vague and formless dread, as if events were drowning him.
“Talking of Corellians, would this attack not drive a huge wedge between you and your father?”
“It might well,” said Jacen. “But I’m a Jedi, and it’s precisely that kind of personal motivation we’re trained to disregard.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
“I’ll take that as a no.” Jacen seemed perfectly calm. “I can tell you, with the certainty of the Force, that failing to stamp out dissent completely now will result in the deaths of billions in the coming years. We stand on a tipping point where we can choose chaos or order.”
Omas meshed his fingers, hands on the desk, and stared at them. “I agree we have a volatile situation here. Yes, this is a tipping point. But I think that escalating military action will be what tips us over into war, not what limits it. I remember the Empire, Jacen. I lived through it. And I dread seeing us become that kind of government.”
Jacen just gave Omas a little nod and stood up to leave. “Thank you for listening to my concerns.”
They took the long walk back to the Senate lobby, down a broad corridor lined with blue and honey-gold marble inlay, and traveled down to the ground floor in a turbolift with walls so highly polished they were almost an amber mirror.
“Is politics always like that?” said Ben. “Why don’t you both say what you mean?”
Jacen laughed. “Then it wouldn’t be politics, would it?”
“And why does everyone keep saying, ‘Oh, I remember the Empire …’? Uncle Han says it was bad, and so does Chief Omas. If they’re both afraid of the same thing, why are they on opposite sides?”
Jacen seemed to find it very funny. Ben was embarrassed.
“I was only asking, Jacen.”
“I’m not laughing at you. It’s just very refreshing to hear someone cut through the nonsense and ask real questions.”
“So what are you going to do next?”
Jacen checked his comlink. “Dad’s still not responding. I need to clear the air with him. He’s angry about Centerpoint.”
“I meant about Chief Omas.”
“We’ll be patient. The solution will become clear—to both of us.”
“You and Omas.”
“No, you and me.”
Ben was delighted that Jacen seemed to take his opinions seriously. He was more determined than ever to conduct himself like a man and not a boy. He knew now that he would never play again.
They crossed through the forest of pillars of the Senate lobby and emerged into the hazy sunshine that bathed the plaza.
Strung out in a ragged line, a group of around two hundred people had gathered to protest in front of the Senate Building. Dozens of Coruscant Security Force officers had formed a loose line in front of the building, but it looked peaceful. The occasional shout of “Corellia’s not your colony!” made it clear who the protesters were. Coruscant was home to beings from almost every planet in the galaxy, and even when war seemed to be coming, they stayed here. Ben found that … odd. Wars were about front lines and distant planets, not about people who looked a lot like him and who almost lived next door.
“Something tells me we’d better not stop and sign autographs,” said Ben.
Jacen stopped to look back at the protest. “How many Corellians do you think live in Galactic City?” One of the protestors in the crowd had projected a huge holoimage onto the face of the Senate Building: it read CORELLIA HAS A RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE. “Five million? Five billion?”
“Do you think they’re dangerous?”
“I’m simply thinking what a complicated war this will be for Coruscant because so many Corellians live here.”
“But we’re not at war. Yet.”
“Not as far as governments are concerned,” said Jacen. “But feel what’s around you.”
Ben’s Force-senses were a fraction of Jacen’s, trained in not much more than physical skills and the beginnings of true meditation. He closed his eyes. He felt the vague tingling at the back of his throat, the hint of something dangerous but far away. The slight breeze across the plaza swept scents of foliage with it. The protest continued, now a little noisier, but still peaceful.
“I can feel a threat, but it’s a long way away.” Ben opened his eyes, worried that he had answered the wrong question. “Like a really bad storm coming. Nothing more.”
“Exactly,” said Jacen. “Billions of unsettled, unhappy people ready to fight. People who want things to be settled. People who need peace.”
“And that’s our job, right?”
“Yes,” said Jacen. “That’s our job.”
“And I’ll be working with you.”
Ben wanted to make sure. He was learning his first lesson in what Jacen called expedience. A few weeks ago he had been a commando, a hero, a real soldier who had helped sabotage Centerpoint Station and enraged the Corellian government. Now he had to be quiet and speak when he was spoken to. He needed to know if Jacen would only treat him as an adult when it suited him, like his father did.
On some planets, you were a man at thirteen and that was that; no going back, and no worrying about what your parents would say. Mandalorian boys became warriors after trials at thirteen, supervised by their fathers. Jedi were trained from childhood, too, but trials took an awful lot longer than that. Ben knew he wouldn’t be a Jedi Knight until he was well into his twenties.
It seemed like a lifetime away. Suddenly he envied Mandalorian boys he would never meet.
“Yes,” said Jacen at last. “Of course you will. It’s not always going to be easy, but you can handle it. I know you can. Some of the things we’ll talk about have to be kept between us, but that’s the way with military matters. Are you ready for that?”
As if he would discuss anything with his father. He wasn’t even comfortable discussing some things with his mother these days. “Like Admiral Niathal?”
Jacen smiled. Ben had guessed right again. “Yes, like the admiral, who I think is going to be an ally of ours.”
“I understand, Jacen. I know this is serious.”
“Good. That’s what I needed to hear.”
Ben basked in Jacen’s approval but knew that wasn’t the right thing to feel when they were talking about war. He was now very clear about the huge gulf between practicing with his lightsaber—which was a game—and then having to fight for real. People had already died. More would die in the future. Once the excitement of battle had worn off, he had thought about that a lot.
Right then, he wanted to know what had really happened to Brisha, the strange woman he hadn’t much liked on first sight, and the Jedi called Nelani, whom they had traveled with. Jacen would say only that they had been killed—no deta
ils, no explanation—but Ben recalled none of it even though he was certain that he had been somewhere with them.
Did Jacen tell Dad, and not me?
It was eating at him. He hated not remembering things that felt important, and this did feel serious and worth remembering.
“Something’s bothering you,” said Jacen as they walked away, leaving the Coruscanti protest behind them.
Yes: Brisha and Nelani. But Ben decided that part of growing up was knowing when to do as you were told, not like a child who didn’t know any better, but as a soldier who understood that sometimes there were things you didn’t need to know.
“Nothing important,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
MINISTER KOA NE’S OFFICE, CLONING FACILITY, TIPOCA CITY, KAMINO, TEN STANDARD YEARS AFTER THE YUUZHAN VONG WAR.
“You’re dying,” said the physician.
Boba Fett could see the man’s reflection in the wall-wide sheet of transparisteel as he stared out over the choppy seas. Light beige coat, white-blond hair, ashen face: he must have wondered why Fett had summoned him all this way to carry out more tests.
Because I think I need the Kaminoans’ special medical expertise, not just yours. And I’m right.
Tipoca City was a sad ruin of the minimalist elegance that it had been in his father’s day, but its few crippled towers were still more of a haven for Fett than Coruscant would ever be. He concentrated hard on the dark surface of the sea and waited a few moments to see if the aiwhas were gathering in pods again, then took in the doctor’s words and digested them.
They tasted familiar, inevitable, and yet were a ball of ice in his stomach. He resisted all movement in his facial muscles and presented a mask to the doctor that was as impenetrable as his Mandalorian helmet.
Dr. Beluine was one of only a handful who had ever seen him without it. Doctors could handle disfigurement a great deal better than most.
“Of course I’m dying,” said Fett. “I’m paying you to tell me what I can do about it.”
Beluine paused and Fett watched him glance at Koa Ne, the Kaminoan scientist now in charge of a cloning facility that was a shadow of its former self. Perhaps Beluine feared telling a professional killer that he had a terminal illness, or perhaps it was the pause of a good doctor trying to tell his patient the bad news as kindly as he could. Fett turned from the huge window, thumbs hooked over his belt, and raised his scarred brows in a silent question.
Beluine took the cue. “Nothing.”
You give up easy, Doctor. “How long?”
“You have a standard year or two, if you take it easy. Less if you don’t.”
“Don’t guess. I deal in facts.”
Beluine’s eyelids fluttered in a spasm of nervous blinking. “There are always uncertainties in prognosis, sir. But the degeneration of your tissues is accelerating, even in your transplanted leg, you have recurring tumors, and the medication isn’t controlling your liver function any longer. It might have something to do with the … unusual nature of your background.”
“That I’m a clone, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll take that as a don’t know.”
Beluine—Coruscant-trained, very expensive, very exclusive—had the look of a man on the brink of making a run for the door. “It’s understandable that you’d want a second opinion.”
“I’ve got one,” said Fett. “Mine. And my opinion is that I’ll die when I’m good and ready.”
“I’m sorry to give you bad news.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“If I had access to the original Kaminoan laboratory records, then perhaps—”
“I need to talk to Koa Ne about that. Show the doctor out.”
The Kaminoan politician, all politely unfeeling gray grace, indicated the doors, and the doctor slipped between them before they had fully opened. He was very anxious to leave. The doors hissed shut behind him.
“So where’s the data?” said Fett. “And Taun We?”
“Taun We has … left.”
Well, that was a surprise. Fett knew Taun We as well as anyone could—any human, anyway—and she’d seemed solidly loyal to her own kind. She’d looked after him as a boy when his father was away. He’d even liked her. “When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Any reason for the timing?”
“Perhaps the galaxy’s current political instability.”
“So she bolted in the end, just like Ko Sai.”
“I admit that some of my colleagues have shown a willingness to accept employment elsewhere.”
Kaminoans weren’t exactly keen on travel. Fett couldn’t imagine anywhere they’d find tolerable beyond their own closed world. “And they took your data with them.”
Koa Ne seemed hesitant. “Yes. We have never located Ko Sai’s original research.”
“So what’s Taun We taken?”
“Apart from her human developmental expertise? A great deal of minor data.”
The Kaminoans had lost their reputation as the top cloning technologists of the galaxy more than fifty years earlier when their scientists defected, but nobody had ever equaled their quality since. Anyone who could assemble that knowledge again would make a fortune—enough to boost a whole planet’s economy, not just a bank account.
If he hadn’t been dying, Fett would have been sorely tempted to grab the opportunity.
“Are you not concerned that Beluine might talk?” asked Koa Ne.
“He won’t talk any more than my armorer or accountant would.” Fett was looking for aiwhas again, letting the distraction order his thoughts, instinctively prioritizing the actions he now had to take. “They get paid for silence. So what if he tells the galaxy that I’m dying? I’ve been a dead man before.”
“It creates instability.”
“For who?”
“Mandalorians.”
“You don’t care about us.”
Koa Ne, like all Kaminoans, didn’t care about anything except Kamino, whatever impression the polite façade created. Fett’s ambivalent view of Kaminoans veered more toward dislike the older he became. They were for hire, just as he had been. He’d taken a fee for some dubious causes himself in his time. But there was still something less than admirable about a species that grew others to do their fighting for them.
“We have always had a special regard for you, Boba.”
He didn’t like Koa Ne using his first name. Have you still got any of my dad’s tissue samples? Still planning to make some use of him? No, you couldn’t keep the material intact that long, could you? “No point hunting Taun We. Even the leg she cloned for me is degenerating. Spare parts won’t help.”
“We have a use for that technology—”
“I don’t.”
“Taun We may yet be useful to you. She is most skilled.”
“Maybe you should have hired me to hunt Ko Sai a few decades ago, rather than go after Taun We now.”
“We have … reason to believe someone found Ko Sai. But we had sufficient expertise left to continue cloning without her, even if we had lost the original research on control of aging.”
“If anyone found it, they never tried to sell it. Who would sit on merchandise worth that much? Nobody I know.”
It was probably Ko Sai’s research that Fett needed now, but that was a trail that had gone very cold more than fifty years ago. Even he would have a tough job tracking it down.
But someone had it. Ko Sai had defected somewhere. There was always an audit trail to follow, as his accountant called it. And Taun We might be a lead to it. Maybe she had taken the same route out. Maybe she had the same paymasters; top-class cloners were rare.
“We both have reasons to recover as much data and as many personnel as we can,” said Koa Ne. If the minister had been human, Fett suspected he would have been smirking. “Will you help?”
“Making the most of me while I’m still alive?”
“Mutual benefit.”
“Benefit costs.” Fett
turned away from the window and picked up his helmet. “I don’t do help.”
He wondered if Koa Ne ever thought of his father, Jango, and knew that if he did that it was purely in terms of his utility to the Kaminoan economy. He shouldn’t have been offended that another professional viewed life so dispassionately: he did, after all. But this was his father, and that wasn’t a subject he reduced to credits or convenience. Using clones of his own father to defend Kamino against the clone army of the Empire had always stuck in his throat. It was the ultimate exploitation. His father would have shrugged it off as an inevitable part of the deal, he knew, but he suspected it would have angered him deep down.
One of Dad’s friends used to call them aiwha bait. I remember that.
“We can pay.”
“Okay. Dead or alive?”
“Alive, of course. A million to bring Taun We back alive, with the data.”
“Two million to recover her, and an extra million for the data. Three million.”
“Excessive. I do believe your father was paid only five million for what amounted to creating and training an army.”
“That’s inflation for you. Take it or leave it.”
The thought left a staccato trail in his mind like skipping a stone across water, joining up previously disjointed ideas.
When the Kaminoans had last given any thought to Jango Fett, there had been hundreds of thousands—no, millions of men like him, and now there were none.
Fett lowered his helmet over his head again and settled into the reassurance and identity of its confines as so many of them would have done, inhaling the deflected warmth and scent of his own breath in the brief moment before the seal closed and the environmental controls kicked in. Had the men been deployed for the good of Mandalorians, the galaxy might have been a very different place today.
But that wasn’t his problem.
A year left. Time enough, if I concentrate everything on it.
He had no idea why he had started thinking so much about the long-distant war lately. Perhaps it was because he had known what news Beluine would break to him.
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