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.
“Maybe she’ll be able to tell us how she ended up here,” he said, swallowing everything he wanted to say. It was fifty years too late. “Get the repulsorlifts.”
He clamped a unit on each edge of the slab and glanced around the room. There were just crates of varying sizes, sealed and dusty. He had no choice but to take them and go through them in detail later, in case they shed any light on Sintas’s fate.
Mirta checked the boxes and began attaching repulsors to them. She never needed to be told to make herself useful; she learned fast and got on with the job, uncomplaining, and did it thoroughly. It was only the emotional things, the issues about family and heritage, that seemed to provoke her into surly scolding. She walked the boxes out across the landing area and steered them up Slave I’s cargo ramp with a practiced hand, then jogged back and moved the next crate. Fett stayed with Sintas’s slab, unable to leave her alone in this miserable place.
“You ready?” Mirta asked, peeling off her liner-gloves and whacking them hard against her thigh plate to get the dust out. She put them back on and slipped her gauntlets over the top. “I’d ask you if you were okay, but I’d never get an answer.”
“I’m okay,” Fett said. “Are you?”
“No. I’m scared. I don’t know how to tell her about Mama. I don’t know how I’ll handle it if she ends up crazy and would have been better off dead anyway. But I’ll deal with it.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Give me some warning. How did you two part the last time you met?”
Fierfek, there’s no way around this, is there?
“I shot her,” Fett said. “And it was for her own good.”
“Yeah, somehow I didn’t think it would be a moonlit walk along a shore on Naboo and a tearful promise to stay friends.”
“It was to stop her opening a booby trap.” Fett flicked the controls on the repulsors and eased the carbonite slab off the trestle, aiming it at the exit doors. Mirta stepped to one side to avoid it. “Just a small blaster burn. She would have been fine in a few hours. She always healed fast.”
“You didn’t wait to find out?”
“She wasn’t dead when I left her.”
“Well, she did better than Shysa, then.”
He should never have mentioned Shysa. It was a mistake; he kept making them with Mirta. He made them with all women, in fact. Sintas didn’t know how lucky she was that they split before he could really foul up her life. “Shysa was a mercy killing.”
Mirta turned her back on him, displaying a saffron plate decorated with gold sigils and glyphs that he’d seen on the Vevut clan’s armor. She was definitely serious about Ghes Orade, then. That meant Fett would have a grandson-in-law soon, and with it a kinship to Novoc Vevut and the rest of the clan; it was all getting too much for him, too involved, too rooted. Fett craved loneliness right then—yes, loneliness. It was a much simpler emotion to handle.
“You sound as if you’re straining out a confession a word at a time, Ba’buir,” she said. “So either spit it out or let’s concentrate on worrying about … Ba’buir.”
“Grandmother” and “grandfather” were the same word in Mando’a. The language had no gender, not that he spoke it beyond the odd word that Mirta had forced on him. It was the first time that something had grated on him. He was Ba’buir, nobody else. That reaction made him realize that he’d become a little too invested in the name.
“I didn’t want to do it,” he said. “I didn’t even want to be Mandalore. But if I hadn’t shot Shysa, he’d have died a rotten death. I owed him better than that.”
“You could have done the decent thing and still handed over the kyr’bes to someone else.”
Fett had learned that word early in their relationship: the crown, the mythosaur skull reserved for the office of Mand’alor. “I gave Shysa my word that I’d honor his dying wish.”
Mirta paused and glanced back over her shoulder at him but didn’t say anything else. He wondered if she believed him. He found he was completely unable to go on talking, and passed off his silence in settling the carbonite slab down on a bench in the cargo hold and draping it with the velvetweave cloth.
It was one way of dealing with a painful memory—sticking a different one in its place. A change could be as good as a rest. On the journey back to Mandalore, Mirta kept getting out of the copilot’s seat and disappearing into the hold. When he went aft to see what she was doing, he found her sitting next to Sintas, one hand on her shoulder, talking quietly to her.
“She can’t hear you,” he said.
“Some say carbonited people do.”
They said Han Solo did, but Fett saw no reason to upset Mirta more than she was already. “She’ll hear you soon enough.”
Mirta carried on anyway. “Maybe I’m rehearsing a difficult speech.”
She was right, but she didn’t know that it wouldn’t be one-way traffic. Fett decided to face all that if and when it happened, and wished he’d been half the man his father had been. Jango Fett would have known what to say.
Slave I touched down at Beviin’s farm in Keldabe at dusk. A small grim-faced welcoming committee met the ship, and Fett could only feel discomfort that he had an audience to observe yet again what a shabby job he’d made of being a husband and father. Dr. Beluine was there as commanded, incongruous in his soft city clothes, his white-blond hair whipped by the breeze. Beviin and his partner Medrit Vasur looked at the carbonite slab with matching frowns. It was rare to see Beviin wearing anything but a cheerful grin.
Medrit raised an eyebrow. “I’m no expert, of course, but that was a handsome woman you had there, Fett.”
Fett noted the past tense and the implication of his ingratitude for the lucky hand he’d been dealt and followed the slab into Medrit’s workshop. The couple’s grandchildren, Shalk and Briila, tagged along to watch the spectacle, eyes wide.
Jintar, their father, moved in from nowhere and scooped both of them up in his arms. So he was back from the war, then; his right hand was heavily bandaged. The next time he went to fight, Shalk would be old enough to join him and learn the craft of warfare. He’d be eight next birthday, Beviin had said. It seemed far too young, and yet Fett had been at his father’s side at that age, and had loved every moment. Dangerous missions had been a rare treat.
“Come on, ad’ike,” Jintar said to them. “Nothing to see here. It’s rude to stare at the Mandalore.”
“Is the lady dead?” Briila asked. “Can we have her stuff?”
“Sleeping,” said Jintar, and winked at Fett.
Medrit had cleaned up one of the side rooms in the workshop for the carbonite removal process. It was where he recharged blaster power packs with Tibanna gas. Beluine looked horrified as the slab was lowered into the release vat.
“It’s okay,” Medrit said, looming over the doctor. He was tall enough to make a Wookiee think twice. “I’ve thawed plenty of this stuff. It’s how we used to ship nerf carcasses when I worked on Olanet.”
“How very reassuring.” Beluine opened his bag to take out a tray of pneumatic dispensers and vials of medication. “I must write a paper on that for the Galactic Journal of Endocrinology …”
Now the onlookers had thinned out to just Fett, Mirta, Beluine, Medrit, and Beviin. Medrit stood with his hand on the controls. “Say the word, Mand’alor.”
It was said that carbonite freezing was how people had traveled interstellar distances before hyperdrive. Fett’s most vivid experience of the technique had been Han Solo’s incarceration, and the consequence of Solo’
s flailing around blind after being released from the block was still something Fett saw each day in the mirror when he shaved.
“Don’t worry, Bob’ika.” Beviin grinned nervously, daring to joke when everyone else looked on the grim edge of mourning. “We don’t have any sarlaccs here.”
Only Beviin could get away with that. He was the closest Fett had to a friend.
“As soon as she’s free of the carbonite, I need to get her heart rate and blood oxygen up right away to minimize tissue damage,” said Beluine. He held a hypospray as if it were a miniature blaster, and in his other hand he had an oxygen delivery device like an aquata breather. “Stand clear.”
“Ready, Doc?” Medrit asked.
“Ready.”
Medrit pressed the switches and the ferrocrete vat erupted with cold vapor and loud hisses as gas escaped. Fett thought it was noisier than he remembered, and then he realized it wasn’t the escaping by-products of the thaw but the weak panting squeals of a woman in agony. Beluine dived forward, blocking his path, and reached into the miniature storm that had formed above the vat.
“It’s okay, Ba’buir, it’s okay, it’s okay …” Mirta leaned in, too, taking the spent hypo from Beluine’s hand while he applied the breather. Sintas wasn’t screaming—she’d never been a weakling, not her—but the sounds she was making were incoherent, the panic of any terrified animal with something unfamiliar pressed to its mouth by a stranger. “You’re safe, it’s okay. You’re going to be all right.”
When the vapor dissipated, Mirta held Sintas’s hand while Beluine slapped a monitor on her arm. Sintas was thrashing about, trying to sit up, and staring totally uncoordinated, eyes rolling. She pulled her arm away from Beluine, grabbing blindly for anything. Mirta caught her arm.
“You’re among friends,” she said quietly. “Easy. Udesii. Just relax and let the doctor take a look at you.”
Sintas looked right through Fett, her face all white terror made more stark by the ink-black Kiffar tattoos, the qukuuf. She was blind. He was ready for that, but he wasn’t ready to look into her eyes again, dark blue, at once both everything he thought he’d ever wanted and the deserved judgment on what he hadn’t given her. The last fifty years collapsed in on themselves leaving Fett nineteen again; besotted for a brief while, and then an older, numbed man wondering why the only thing he could manage was to walk away to leave her in some filthy alley, knowing he was abandoning his daughter again, too.
I didn’t even ask about Ailyn. I just gave Sintas the hologram and told her not to lose it again.
“Well, she can move,” Beluine said. “No paralysis. Excellent.”
“Shab, he’s a sharp one,” Medrit muttered. “I’d never have diagnosed that in a million years.”
Mirta and Beviin lifted Sintas and laid her on a repulsor trolley, wrapping her in blankets. She was calming down now, or at least exhausting herself into a quieter state. Fett dared to step closer. Beviin put a discreet hand on his back to steady him.
“Madam,” Beluine said. “Can you hear me?” He checked the device on her arm. “Can you tell me your name?”
She jerked her head in the direction of the doctor’s voice. “I … heard …”
“That’s good. Let’s try again. Can you tell me your name?”
Sintas seemed totally distracted by the question. She settled on her back, eyes open and apparently staring at the workshop ceiling.
“I … I don’t know. Don’t know … who are you? Where’s … oh stang I don’t know who …”
Sintas had been frozen in her midthirties. She was a shuddering wreck coming out of the agony of carbonite suspension, but she was still a beautiful woman.
I owe her. She’s not my wife now, but I owe her something for all those years I was never a husband or a father.
Fett had no way of articulating that aloud, because he’d never learned to go beyond that single, all-defining father–son relationship, but he wouldn’t abandon her this time. At least he had some breathing space now to work out how to fill in her missing history.
If she’d been in her fifties, sixties, seventies, he’d have done things differently, he swore it. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t even old enough to be Mirta’s mother. Mirta looked stricken but her eyes were dry. She was a Fett, all right.
“Let’s get her to her room,” Fett said. “Dr. Beluine needs to carry out his examination.”
“Amnesia’s really common in carbonite cases,” Beviin said kindly, following the repulsor into the main body of the house. “But how much of the past would you want her to forget for good?”
“It’s not her who needs to forget,” Fett said. “It’s me.”
chapter four
Sweetheart, are you okay? Don’t take any stupid risks. You’re not responsible for saving the Galactic Alliance single-handed.
—Shula Shevu, newly married, in an encrypted message to her husband
BASTION, IMPERIAL REMNANT: MOFF ASSEMBLY HALL AT RAVELIN
It was always sobering to be a spectator at your own funeral.
Pellaeon stood at the window overlooking the parade ground and watched the ornate cannon carriage that would carry his remains. Like him, it was a survivor from a different age, archaic in design but still able to fulfill its function in war. The paired bloodfins drawing it came to a halt at precisely the center of the paved expanse, remained motionless for a count of ten, and then wheeled right to follow a perfectly straight line through the archway and out into the streets of the capital, the brilliant scarlet crests that earned them the name bobbing like flames in the morning sunlight. Pellaeon was sure they were a subspecies of ghannoidal certecyes, but they had that striking red crest like the marine predator, and bloodfin was much easier to pronounce. A token platoon of Imperial Guards marched behind in their everyday number five uniforms, not parade best.
However many times Pellaeon saw the rehearsal, it was impressive. Bloodfins were notoriously hard to train in the art of dressage or precise cavalry displays. He made a mental note to congratulate the ceremonial staff; the carnivorous quadrupeds were formidable mounts, quite capable of fighting on their own even when their rider was dead, and they were not known for their obedience off the battlefield.
Bastion had to rehearse the state funeral regularly because such magnificent displays of pomp and precision didn’t happen overnight. A leader might die at any time, and Bastion liked to be prepared. Pellaeon sipped his caf, aware of the hum of conversation at his back, and watched the carriage and the guard platoon vanish into Ravelin’s early-morning quiet.
“Doesn’t that depress you, sir?” asked Reige.
“Only if I’m taking part.” Pellaeon held out the translucent cup for a refill. “I’ll worry when I see hundreds of guards in their parade best.” He watched the reflection of the room behind him in the transparisteel sheet of the window, and noted each Moff’s arrival and whom he huddled with to chat before the meeting started. “Two minutes, Vitor, and then we begin.”
It was a regular weekly assembly of the Moff Council of the Empire, nothing extraordinary or unscheduled, but in the last twenty-four hours Pellaeon had been made aware of activity on the informal diplomatic front. He could still rely on Moff Sarreti to keep him up to speed on backroom politics even though the man was retired.
All those Moffs, and so very little Empire to play in. It was bound to make them restless.
Pellaeon glanced around the table during the meeting, playing the game of working out which of the Moffs wanted to assassinate him, and which saw some advantage in keeping him alive. Luckily, the only ones who were competent to take him on were also the most militarily able, and so were his allies. Nature had her checks and balances. They broke for caf.
All you need is patience, gentlemen. I’m ninety-two. Just sit it out.
“Admiral, may I refill your cup?” Lecersen was one of the old-school Moffs, a man who believed in duty. He even kept himself combat-fit and clipped his hair extra-short to a suede-like bloom across his sk
ull. “I think this meeting is going to last a little longer than usual.”
Pellaeon sipped thoughtfully. “Did I ever tell you I was psychic?”
“I believe not.”
“Oh, I am. I believe a great opportunity is going to come our way, one that will change our destiny.”
Lecersen stifled a smile. “It’s very general, sir.”
“I’ll go out on a limb. I predict that at least one of our colleagues here has heard of a wondrous potential connected to the ongoing nastiness between the Galactic Alliance and the Confederation.”
Lecersen allowed the full grin to take over his face, and cast a cautious eye over the cluster of men who treated Grand Moff Quille as a center of gravity. “I must remember to ask you to advise me when placing odupiendo racing bets.”
Pellaeon didn’t know Jacen Solo as well as he would have liked, but one thing he did know was that the man was both manipulative and impatient, a combination that meant he tended to start playing his games early. It was only a matter of time before the rebuff of his offer to talk about joining the Galactic Alliance camp was countered with a discreet word to the Moffs about what luscious opportunities their senile leader had passed up without telling them. In fact, if Jacen didn’t do it, Pellaeon would lose his faith in the enduring power of self-interest, which had kept the galaxy turning about its core since the planets had cooled enough to support bacteria. Where Niathal stood in this he wasn’t yet sure; but he knew her well enough to judge that her failing was her inability to stop Jacen, not her active sanction of Jacen’s excesses as joint Chief of State.
“Admiral, something significant has come to our attention,” Quille said. “I wonder if we might discuss it in the wider context of the war.”
“The Empire has managed to stay out of the conflict so far,” said Pellaeon. Thank goodness for that, Jacen Solo. Faith is restored, and the galactic disk still turns. “What do you mean by context?”
“Threats and opportunities, Admiral. The war is sucking in more worlds, and the Jedi Council has upped sticks and moved out of Coruscant, which is a worrying development. It suggests more fragmentation in existing alliances, and that might make our neighboring sectors unstable. But it might also give us an opportunity to expand our sphere of influence.”
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