Bloodlines

by Karen Traviss

  Fett didn’t like anybody much, but he didn’t dislike her, although the thaw didn’t extend to having her sit up front with him.

  He laid in a course to Roonadan. His stomach rumbled: maybe he should have grabbed some of Beviin’s coin-crabs after all. He whiled away the next few hours watching the stock prices from HNE and wondered what he might say to Taun We when he finally caught up with her.

  He had no doubt that he would.

  Fett dozed, reclining in his seat. When he slept, it was never deeply. The padded rim of his helmet was just soft enough to stop short of cutting into his neck but too hard for complete comfort when he let it take the weight of his head. Sometimes he would drift in a few seconds of hazy disorientation, half awake, sounds magnified, able to see through a transparent barrier; he wasn’t in the confines of his helmet but somewhere else he didn’t recognize. It was a recurring impression. Taun We had once told him it was the legacy of being gestated in a glass tank like the other clones, and that they all had distant memories like that.

  It was a kinship of sorts. He found his mind wandering, thinking how they must have felt to know their days were numbered, just like his were now. And that was another kinship.

  I’m dying. Maybe dying feels like this. I ought to know by now.

  The navigation sensors woke him with an insistent pulsing tone to warn him Slave I had dropped out of hyperspace, and he snapped upright and alert. His joints hurt; he ignored the pain.

  In the viewscreen the red-streaked crescent of Roonadan grew larger until it was the entire sky. It was another heavily populated planet whose habitable zones were crammed with cities, but at least it wasn’t as grim as Bonadan. Fett punched up the local data on his console and began his descent.

  Roonadan still had a few green spaces and attractive buildings, and even a few wide rivers snaking through the northern hemisphere. It was the kind of place that was home to a mix of the highly educated scientists who developed products, the people whose task it was to make their lives more pleasant, and the majority who worked in the factories and laboratories that produced the goods that the elite invented.

  It was exactly the kind of place Taun We might be, if she could take the sunlight. Kaminoans didn’t like clear skies.

  Fett disguised Slave I’s armaments with a sensor screen and prepared to land. If anything went wrong, he had the firepower of a small warship to get out of trouble—turbolasers, ion cannon, torpedoes, and concussion missiles. He’d added conventional armor-piercing detonite ordnance on the last refit just in case he was ever low on power and stuck in a tight corner. Leaving things to chance was for amateurs.

  Banking over the capital city of Varlo, Fett thought Slave I should be his final resting place. He didn’t want her left behind; he had a sudden vision of setting a course out of the galaxy in his final days and letting the ship carry him as far as she could on her fuel cells and then drifting forever where nobody would follow. It was reassuring.

  Pack it in. You’re not dead yet.

  But if that’s not an admission that you haven’t a clue what your life’s been about, then I don’t know what is.

  He picked up the automated air traffic control and set down at the first spaceport he could find. Slave I settled gently on her landing struts, the dampers yielding as she sank half a meter and then came to rest. The drive cooled, sending a characteristic decelerating ticking through the hull that eventually fell silent.

  “Fett?” He glanced up at the screen that gave him a complete view of the cargo bay. Mirta had stood up and was stretching her arms like an athlete, pulling one arm across her body then the other. “Are you taking me with you?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re just going to leave me locked in here while you go off.”

  “I wouldn’t let anything happen to this ship. You’re safe as long as she is.” He set the intruder defenses and stood up to check his personal weapons. Roonadan didn’t have a no-weapons law like its sister planet Bonadan, but it was Corporate Sector and so some restraint was called for. “And don’t mess with the controls back there. You won’t like what happens if you do.”

  He waited for an argument, but she just sat down again and started dismantling her blaster. He paused to watch: she was calibrating and cleaning it. The kid certainly took her weapons seriously. Most people just expected their hardware to work properly without maintenance, which was a good way to end up dead. Fett was impressed that she wasn’t among them.

  He stepped out of the cockpit hatch and walked to the terminal building, checking data on the display that appeared in his visor as he walked. The planet was a research-and-development center. Somewhere there’d be a place where people whose job was to keep an eye on what companies did would gather to discuss business. Fett reasoned that it was a good place to start.

  And like all commercial planets with plenty of job openings, Roonadan attracted a cosmopolitan population. A man in Mandalorian armor with a jet pack attracted almost as little attention as a Duros, but a lot less than the two blue-skinned Chiss who were wandering around the concourse in blue suits that matched their skin exactly. Fett took the opportunity to slip into one of the passport control lanes and select his most benign identicard for presentation to the female official securing the barrier.

  The woman scanned the readout on the screen in front of her, then eyed his battle-scarred armor suspiciously. She didn’t ask him to remove his helmet. “What brings you here … Master Vhett?”

  There was a lot to be said for Mando’a, even if he didn’t speak much of it. “Looking for security work.”

  “What kind?”

  Now that was helpful. “Pharmaceuticals. Banks and personal protection got too rough.”

  She looked at him warily as if trying to squint past the visor. “I thought you Mandalorians were supposed to be hard cases.”

  “I’m not getting any younger.”

  “None of us are.” She handed him back his bogus ID card. “They’re always hiring here. Industrial espionage is our national sport.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Head into town on the monorail and you’ll find the job agencies on the main route. And if you don’t get hired in five days, you’re out of here, okay? We don’t like vagrants.”

  So she had some knowledge of Mandalorians, but not of him. Vhett was just the pure Mando’a form of “Fett.” It was surprising how close you could skate to the truth without anyone noticing. He touched his glove to his helmet in what he hoped was a deferential gesture and strode on.

  Most of the time, one of his tactics was being Boba Fett and not disguising the fact. When you had that kind of reputation, it did a lot of the work for you: bounties found it was definitely smarter to surrender to him than to try to run, because there was nowhere to hide from Fett. But he felt a little discretion might get him closer to Taun We a lot faster. Time wasn’t on his side.

  Sometimes, too, it amused him to play a man down on his luck when he was actually one of the wealthiest individuals in the galaxy. But fortune wouldn’t be worth a mott’s backside if he didn’t find a cure.

  So when are you going to draw up a contingency plan? You never were much for long-term strategy. There’ll come a point where you have to decide whether to go on looking for Ko Sai’s data or to prepare for death. So what are you going to do with all those credits?

  Boba Fett took the monorail into town with a dozen people who didn’t have personal transport. They ranged from the obviously poor to the eccentric, and two Rodian tourists studying holomaps of Varlo. One of the passengers, a man a lot taller than Fett, was swathed in a black cloak with a hem that swept the dust and debris on the carriage floor, giving the cloth a permanent gray border.

  Nobody even glanced at Fett. These weren’t people who dealt with bounty hunters; he might have been a household name, but the households where his name was known tended to be those who could afford plenty and were motivated to pay it to solve their problems in a very permanent way. The people here didn�
��t fit the bill.

  Fett got off at the terminus and merged into an anonymous crowd of shoppers. The stores here were midmarket, the kind that clerical and technical staff would use. He walked into a clothing store and looked at the selection of men’s fashions displayed as holograms above a dais.

  “Is this the best you’ve got?” he said to the salesman.

  “If sir wants to impress, sir needs to shop on the waterfront,” said the salesman stiffly. “If sir has the credits, that is.”

  Fett assumed he meant one of the artificial rivers that he’d seen from the air. He looked over a voluminous dark tunic and cloak not unlike the one he’d seen the man wearing on the monorail. “I’ll take this. And a holdall.”

  “Size?”

  “Measure me.”

  “Might I see your credit chip, sir?”

  Fett dumped two cash-credit discs—one hundreds—on the counter. “Will this do nicely?”

  The salesman took a stylus from his jacket, flipped the discs over, and checked the holostamp under the stylus’s beam of UV light. “Yes … sir.” He flicked the stylus with his thumbnail and the instrument spat a thin beam of red light. “If sir would mind removing his armor, then I can measure.”

  “Over the armor.”

  “Sorry?”

  “The armor stays. I’m not the trusting type.”

  The salesman hesitated for a moment but swept the laser across Fett from side to side and then top to toe, studied the precise measurements on the stylus’s display, and shrugged.

  “Large,” he said.

  “I can see you’re a professional.” Fett took the holdall and the clothing and headed for the nearest public refreshers.

  It was cramped in the cubicle, but he slipped off his jet pack and rocket launcher, dismantled them into sections and put them in the holdall. The cloak and tunic draped over his armor just fine after that. Then he hesitated before removing his helmet.

  It was the ultimate disguise. Apart from his doctor and a few Kaminoans, nobody knew what he really looked like any longer. He might even have changed too much for Taun We to spot him. He stared into the mirror above the basin and with a few seconds’ detachment saw a man on the edge of genuine old age, hair mostly gray, face largely unlined, having been protected from sunlight for almost as long as he could remember.

  Even the scars from the time he escaped the Sarlacc’s acid gut weren’t that conspicuous now. He could pass for any fit man in his early seventies.

  Fierfek, in a suit I might even look like a gentleman.

  And that was what he needed to be right now.

  If he was going to find out where the scientists at AruMed lived, he had to look as unlike a bounty hunter as he could.

  Boba Fett strode out of the refreshers and into public view without his helmet for the first time in his adult life.

  chapter seven

  Luke, you know very well that it’s about a lot more than stopping Corellia having her own deterrent. It’s tempting to reveal that little surprise in the Kiris Cluster to show people why we mean business. But for the time being we’re just going to have to sit on it and hope we can persuade Corellia to disarm before our justification shows up on Coruscant.

  —Cal Omas to Luke Skywalker and Admiral Niathal,

  in a confidential discussion of the true scope

  of the Corellian threat

  GALACTIC CITY PUBLIC LANDING AREA 337/B.

  They nearly crash-landed. So what? It wasn’t the first time the Millennium Falcon had come close to disaster, and it wouldn’t be the last. Han tried to look nonchalant.

  But it had still given him a few moments of white-knuckled terror, the kind he didn’t like Leia to see but that she could probably feel anyway. They both sat in silence on the lowered ramp of the Falcon, savoring the light breeze. Small taken-for-granted things felt precious when you’d survived by the skin of your teeth.

  The Falcon stood in one of the hundreds of open-air bays that flanked the landing strip, just another aging vessel. Her hull made the occasional click as the metal cooled, and an ominous pool of coolant was growing under the drive housing. Han had put a pail under the leak to collect it, and now he could hear the fluid running over the rim of the container. The pipework around the drive had sheared at the welds.

  “Well,” said Leia at last, staring into the distance. As ever, she looked as if nothing serious had happened, just a little tired and close to irritation. “That was character forming.”

  “Don’t suppose you could try Force-welding as well?”

  “Try Jacen. He might be able to do just about anything these days.”

  “So what happened exactly?”

  She shrugged. “No idea. It was like getting a Force booster pack from nowhere.”

  He’s my kid and I don’t know who he is anymore. But he comes up trumps when he’s needed. So maybe I should shut my mouth. “That was handy.”

  “Jacen feels like he’s very close,” said Leia. “Let’s do grateful, shall we?”

  “Oh, I can manage grateful all right.”

  “Good.”

  Leia closed her eyes for a moment. “And Jaina’s on her way.”

  My sensible girl. At least one of my kids still makes sense to me. “Who else knows we’re here? Maybe we should have Luke and Mara over, too. Throw a barbecue right here. Invite the neighbors.”

  “Maybe fly a really anonymous ship until things cool down?”

  “Well, this baby isn’t flying anywhere for a while.”

  Han stood and walked back up the loading ramp. Okay, get another vessel and head back to Corellia. Move to a new apartment. Breach Thrackan’s security and shoot him. Then worry about another war. The coolant level on the console indicator was showing zero. He went down to the drive bay, where he could smell scorched alloy and the throat-tingling whiff of the fluid. Stang, he was tired of all this. Was it ever going to end? A year with Leia, a normal year when nothing happened, nothing went wrong, none of the kids was in danger. Was that too much to ask?

  When he came out through the main starboard hatch again, Jacen was sitting on the ramp with his arm around Leia’s shoulders, forehead resting against hers. Leia looked up, just a little warning glance, but Han didn’t need to be told to show his son some appreciation. It was a reflex: he grabbed him as he stood up and hugged him so hard that he felt Jacen’s ribs through his robes.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” Jacen said softly. “Don’t scare me like that again, though.”

  “I was going to say the same to you.” This wasn’t the time to mention taking sides. “You okay? You look worn out.”

  “Not as worn out as you.”

  “Things have been a little tense around here. Thrackan’s put out a contract on us. You, too.”

  “It’ll be fascinating to see him try.” Jacen’s frown seemed permanent now. “But you—”

  “Hey, I might be ancient to you, but I can take Thrackan, thanks.”

  “My actions on Centerpoint provoked him. I feel responsible for your safety. What’s the point of having a Jedi for a son if he can’t look out for his dad?”

  “You leave me to worry about Thrackan,” said Han. Yeah, you attacked Corellia, and you’re my son, and I’m not sure how I deal with that. “It won’t be the first time. Just wait. He’ll send Fett. I can handle Fett.”

  Leia gave a small snort of amusement. “You can brandish walking sticks at each other. He’s not getting any younger, either. Why would Thrackan hire him?”

  “Because he thinks Fett will psych me out.”

  “He thinks right, then …”

  Han took it as making light of her fears, but Jacen didn’t seem amused.

  “Come back to my apartment, Dad.” His tone was almost pleading. “Just in case someone’s got your apartment here under observation.”

  “Wouldn’t you know about that already?” said Han. Jacen’s Force-senses seemed to beat scanners these days. He watched his son’s face fall for a second.

  �
��What makes you say that?”

  “I don’t know what kind of Force stuff you picked up while you were away all those years, but it sure comes in useful.”

  “Ah,” said Jacen. He seemed reassured. Han wasn’t sure what had rattled him. “Might as well take every precaution we can. Threepio’s making a very convincing job of telling people he has no idea where you’ve gone, even the Noghri. He sounds positively annoyed about it—”

  Jacen stopped and looked around. Something had distracted him—something Han couldn’t see or hear, as usual. Then Han caught a flash of orange out the corner of his eye and turned to see a Galactic Alliance pilot walking between laid-up vessels on the apron of the landing strip. For an illogical moment his stomach churned, and then he focused on long brown hair pulled back in a tail and the fact that the pilot had an astromech droid keeping pace beside her.

  Jaina. In a pilot’s uniform.

  “So when did she get that out of the wardrobe?” said Han. “She didn’t tell us she was going back on active service—”

  “No fighting,” Leia said firmly.

  Han was dismayed at how fast he moved from being glad to be alive to challenging his daughter’s choices. He was still relieved to see her. She just reached out and squeezed his hand, oddly formal, and then did the same to Leia. She simply nodded at Jacen, which didn’t bode well.

  Han supposed that a Galactic Alliance pilot hugging people in public might have drawn some attention. He wished she would patch things up with Jacen, though.

  “I’m not going to ask any obvious questions.” Jaina patted R2’s dome. “But I thought you could use some help with repairs.”

  “Thanks.” Han ignored Leia’s warning and the comment was out of his mouth before he could think too hard. “And why are you decked out in an orange flight suit?”

  “Because I’m doing my job, Dad.”

  “Did Zekk get you back into this?”