Niathal would have consulted Jacen on contact with the Fondorian President—Shas Vadde—but time was short, and that was the excuse she would give him. She kept an eye on the chrono while contact was made with Vadde’s office, realizing for the first time that being Supreme Commander as well as joint Chief of State was an awkward mix when making diplomatic contact. Being asked to rejoin the GA could never be called exploratory talks when the request came from the senior commander of a task force on war footing.
“Chief of State,” said Vadde. “This strikes me as a decision already taken in search of a retroactive justification.”
He was right; they were going through the motions. “President Vadde, I can only ask again that you agree to rejoin the Galactic Alliance and contribute to the common defense of the member worlds.”
“Having just reached some kind of economic recovery after the Yuuzhan Vong, and as our economy is substantially dependent on shipbuilding and the defense industry, we’re under no illusion that we’re seen as anything other than another handy fleet resource for the defense of Coruscant.”
He was awfully pious for a leader of a world that strip-mined every moon, asteroid, and stray pebble in the Tapani sector. “I’ll give you until twenty-three fifty-nine to put the request to your cabinet, and respond formally to me.”
“I can give you our answer now.”
“Nevertheless, I feel obliged to allow you that time.”
It was a warning, and sometimes the cold wind blowing from the brink did sober people up. The fleet would begin the attack any time after midnight. There was no advantage of surprise left for either side at this late stage.
“Noted, Chief of State. Remember that we’re no use to you broken.”
Maybe there was some room for maneuver; she’d keep an eye on that. Jacen Solo, though, was going to be disappointed if he didn’t get his chance to show what firm government meant.
“Ma’am,” said the comms officer, “there’s some HNE mobile broadcast units straying into the area.”
“We haven’t declared an exclusion zone.”
“Shall I issue a warning?”
“Tell them they might well be in crossfire at any time. They take their chances.”
“One has already requested an interview with Colonel Solo. Apparently he’s given them clearance to accompany the troop landings on the first orbital.”
“He’d better win, then,” said Niathal. “Or he’ll be taking prime airtime to advertise how to repeat our failures at Corellia.”
And if he did—he’d be doing it on his own.
CREW COMPARTMENT OF TRA’KAD, ORI’RAMIKADE RV POINT, SOMEWHERE NEAR THE TAPANI SECTOR, 2200 HOURS: AWAITING ORDERS FROM ADMIRAL DAALA
“Will your brother know when you’re around?” Mirta Gev asked.
Jaina almost stopped chewing. It was the first time that Mirta had mentioned Jacen, and as she could only want lethal revenge on him for her mother’s death, it showed either tact or tactics. Mando women didn’t do tact. Jaina took in another slab of uj’alayi and used the silence enforced by chewing to gather her thoughts. The cake was like a solid mortar mix made from nuts, syrup, dried fruit, and spices, cloyingly sweet. It was as much exercise as nourishment. She worried that her teeth would collapse long before the rest of her.
“Yes, he probably will,” she said. And he’d be baffled by the impressions he got back, to say the least. “We’re twins. They say that even non-Force-sensitive twins are linked across distance somehow. With Jedi—it’s real. Except he disguises his Force presence, so I’d never know he was around.”
Mirta had the same eyes as her grandfather: she looked as if she were permanently assessing the risk of something bad happening, and whether she could shoot it or sell it. “You could always follow the trail of bodies, I suppose …”
It was going to happen sooner or later. What did you say to someone whose mother had died under your brother’s interrogation? Sorry didn’t quite cut it. Somehow the fact that Ailyn Vel had been a bounty hunter and assassin, ostensibly hired to kill the Solo family, didn’t give Jaina quite the fuel of righteous indignation that she imagined when she was face-to-face with the human wreckage scattered by those casual decisions.
It’s okay. Ailyn was just going through the motions, using Dad to lure her own father to his death. She wasn’t after us, really. And she was hired by Dad’s cousin to assassinate us anyway—it’s not as if he hadn’t tried before. Families. Aren’t they great?
“If there was anything I could do to atone for him, I’d do it,” said Jaina. “I’ll do what I can to stop him doing it again. I’m sorry, by the way. But you know that.”
“So it’s true he killed your aunt Mara.”
It was freshly shocking each time. Jaina still couldn’t see him going that far, but then he’d tortured Ben, thinking he was doing him good. If he did anything, he might not have planned for it to go that badly wrong.
Was there a real difference between sick and evil? “I don’t know, Mirta.”
“Think he’s capable of it?”
“I don’t know him anymore. I don’t even know where to start.”
Mirta leaned her head back against the bulkhead, arms folded. There were a dozen troops in the Tra’kad assault vessel: Jaina and eleven Mandalorians in full armor, all waiting for the order from Admiral Daala that might not actually come. The other ten were members of Fett’s elite special forces, the Ori’ramikade—supercommandos, the troops who’d saved Caluula Station and her parents from the Yuuzhan Vong. It was a very tangled social web; it was also sobering to tally the net score of incidents and realize that the Solos had done more lasting harm to Fett than Fett had to them.
“Aliit ori’shya tal’din,” Mirta muttered.
“What’s that mean?”
“Family is more than bloodline. Meaning that families are about who raises and cares for you, not who your birth parents are. Or, put another way—your real relatives can treat you worse than chakaaryc strangers.”
Jaina could work out the meaning. She wasn’t picking up much of the language, though; every Mandalorian seemed to be at least trilingual—Basic, Mando’a, and Huttese—and they spent a lot of time with their helmets on, talking among themselves. Whatever language the ten commandos were using on their helmet comlinks, Jaina was only aware of the body language, hand gestures, and head movements; it was an animated discussion conducted in apparent silence. The effect was unnerving, as if they had senses that she didn’t, and she was missing the bigger picture. She wondered if they were gossiping about her. They radiated amusement.
Aha.
It was always edifying to see your own characteristics reflected in others. The next time that some ordinary being treated her with suspicion, she’d think how her Force abilities looked from the outside.
Mirta turned her head and said something to the commandos. A stream of unintelligible words emerged from the helmets, followed by laughter.
“It’s all they can think about,” Mirta muttered. “I’m glad it’s only once every five years.”
“What is?”
“Galactic bolo-ball tournament. It’s taken over the HoloNet.”
Wrong again, then. Jaina’s misfortunes weren’t as riveting as a sporting event. Life didn’t center on her small circle, another reminder that there was a wider world she seldom saw. “Where’s Fett?”
“Slave I. Where else?”
The small Mandalorian flotilla included Fett’s ship, the tank-like Tra’kad, and a squadron of Gladiators and Aggressors. The holochart set in the bulkhead showed other vessels idling at the RV point: a carrier, judging by the hatches, and a Sentinel landing craft that looked heavily modified. The carrier was tiny: no more than a hundred meters long.
“Beviin?” Jaina felt almost protective toward him. He seemed to pick up Fett’s pieces far too often. “Didn’t see him embark.”
“Ba’buir told him to stay behind. Either to placate Medrit, or to keep an eye on Ba’buir.” Mirta did a
quick little shake of her head. “I mean Grandmama. It’s the same word in Mando’a. I mean Sintas.”
At least Beviin wasn’t going to get himself killed following Fett’s whim. Jaina always had a stake in her missions, so it was hard to imagine how soldiers would take risks like this for credits or out of some loyalty to a man who simply hired them out. She stopped short of judging them, though. She’d seen the state of Mandalore, and she’d never had to worry about where the next meal was coming from.
“How did you manage to hate a man you’d never met, Mirta?” Jaina could sense the emotions between Mirta and her grandfather pretty clearly; Mirta longed to love him, but seemed battered by constant disappointments, and Fett was trying hard to get it right, bemused by failure. “Did your mother even remember him? You didn’t even know Sintas.”
“I grew up hearing how Fett had abandoned Grandmama, and Mama, and that she wouldn’t have been struggling to pay the bills or having to take dangerous bounties if he’d taken some responsibility.”
“Yes, but to hunt him down to kill him? For years? Most folks get a lawyer.”
“Mama had a bad time as a kid. Moving from place to place. Always getting in fights because she was different.” Mirta shrugged but didn’t elaborate. “She even married a Mandalorian to improve her chances of finding Ba’buir. My father.”
“Wow,” said Jaina. That was dedicated hatred. She didn’t ask why Mirta had followed her father’s culture, or why she hadn’t worked out earlier that Ailyn was a little obsessive. “I’m sorry.”
“And Ba’buir wasn’t what I grew up expecting, some womanizing thug blowing his fortune in cantinas. He was just this … wasted, austere, lonely man … hard to even like, and yet I found I was proud of him.”
Mirta let out a long breath and reached for her helmet. It was a cue that she’d had enough of baring her soul. Jaina counted it as a plus that she’d even bothered to talk, let alone in those frank terms.
“I still love my brother, but there’s nothing left to like about him,” Jaina said. “Love’s a very separate thing. It has an independent life of its own.”
“Well, if you have to earn love on points, it’s not love, is it? It’s approval.”
Jaina peeled a chunk of uj’alayi stuck to her finger, and decided the syrup would make great gasket sealant. One of the commandos, the tattooed man called Carid, took off his helmet and cocked his head on one side in an aw-come-on gesture. “Hey, plan the celebration you’ll have after your marriage. What’s the point of surviving a mission if you’re going to be this depressed?”
That was Mando sympathy. “It’s a Fett thing,” Mirta said.
“Ah, I bet Orade will teach you how to laugh. You’ll get the hang of it.”
Mirta seemed to manage a twitch of a smile at the mention of her betrothed. The minutes ticked away. Jaina had the sense of being in the engine room of an ancient seagoing ship, surrounded by pipes and hydraulic systems, rather than drifting imperceptibly in space. A scraping sound made her look up at the deckhead.
“Buy’cese,” said Carid. Mirta sealed her helmet, and he looked past her at Jaina. “Put your breather on, Jedi. That’s someone docking up top. Just in case the seals don’t hold.”
“Fix them with this,” Jaina said, holding up her last wrapped chunk of uj’alayi. Everyone laughed, and she heard them this time. “I’m always happy to be test aircrew in a totally unproven vessel …”
“It’ll hold,” said Ram Zerimar. “Time was when Mando’ade rode war droids into deep space, no fancy hulls, raw vacuum that far from your shebs.” He indicated a tiny gap between gloved thumb and forefinger. “That’s how we won an empire. You going soft or something, Car’ika?”
“Oh, I know, we were tough then. We’d go two weeks without breathing, and half a dead pygmy borrat was enough to feed a whole clan for a week.” Carid folded his arms across his barrel of a chest and stretched out his legs. “If any of our babies couldn’t lift a beskad by the time they were weaned, we’d harden ’em up by catching them a full-grown Trandoshan and making ’em kill it with their pacifier and eat it raw. Ah, those were the days.” He belched. “Pardon me. We’re just too cultured and sensitive now, you know.”
Jaina bit her lip to stifle a laugh. One of the overhead hatches opened, and Fett slid down the ladder to land among them.
“Docks with Slave I just fine,” he said, hooking his thumb in his belt. They really were testing the Tra’kad on the job. It didn’t seem to faze any of them. “We got mission details now.”
“It’s a go, then?” Jaina asked.
“No, but we know what we have to do when we get the signal.” Fett passed around datachips. “Latest floor plans and layouts here. We’ll either be taking out power grids to disable cannon batteries on the orbital yards, as needed, or falling back to Pellaeon’s flagship Bloodfin to defend it if he gets in trouble.”
“Pellaeon? Even in a little toy Turbulent?” It was a woman under the helmet, then: that must have been Isko Talgal. Beviin spoke of her in hushed tones. “What’s going to put a dent in that?”
“Daala’s keen that someone should look out for him personally.”
“Does she know something we don’t?”
“Daala has a contingency plan for everything. Somewhere, she’s briefing someone to take out the Mandos if we don’t behave. That’s why she’s so hard to kill.” Fett smelled faintly of jetpack fuel and antiseptic. Smells were more noticeable in the cramped compartment. “My personal orders—if you run into Jacen Solo, you leave him. Unless you really need to kill him. No hunting, no trophies, no avenging the Mand’alor. He’s Jaina’s, when she’s good and ready. Or else me and Beviin have wasted valuable time on her.”
“Got it, Mand’alor,” Carid said.
Jaina wasn’t sure if it was a Mandalorian courtesy, or just that Fett wanted her to share some misery by way of general payback. She let it pass. “What do you want me to do? You all seem to know what your roles are.”
“You’re the ace pilot, Jedi.” Fett jerked his head in the direction of the aft bulkhead, as if there was something behind them. “Spare Bes’uliik in the carrier. Up for it?”
Jaina felt a pang of excitement and then instantly guilty. It seemed wrong to find any small pleasure in life so soon after Mara’s death. She’d been the same after her brother Anakin was killed, as if feeling anything other than permanent grief was somehow betraying him. I’d hate to think anyone I left behind couldn’t live fully again. I have to get past this. She thought of Mara having a good laugh about Jaina edging past five-year-olds with blasters, and seized the chance.
“Can I at least get a look at the controls first?” she asked. “It’s hard learning on the job in combat.”
“We can test cross-decking to the carrier at the same time.”
Fett wasn’t joking. The Tra’kad pilot brought the vessel down on the deck of the carrier and settled it flush against a hatch. The Tra’kad’s belly hatch opened; Jaina, feeling like a bug tipped out of a box, jumped down to the deck five meters below, easing her landing with the Force. Four dark gray wedge-shaped fighters sat on the hangar deck, a tight fit, and the familiar scent of hot drive, lube oil, and coolant was reassuring. She stood admiring their lines; it was a pilot’s machine, all right. Fett climbed down rungs set in the bulkhead, boots clanging as the spikes in the toe caps caught the metal.
“Mirta?” Fett never raised his voice, not even when he called out to someone. “You, too.”
“Leave her to me, Ba’buir.” Mirta walked up to a Bes’uliik and pressed something on her forearm plate to open the canopy. “Have we got time to get aloft for a few minutes?”
“Knock yourself out,” Fett said, and climbed back up the rungs to vanish into the belly of the Tra’kad.
“Two-seater,” Mirta said. “Up you get. You’re driving.”
“You’re qualified on these?”
“If you mean can I fly one, yes.” Mirta was remarkably agile even in armor, and was up on the a
irframe and lowering herself into the copilot’s seat before Jaina had a chance to worry. “Only qualification is not killing yourself. We’re not great form-fillers in Keldabe.”
The canopy clicked into closed position and the cockpit was suddenly muffled against the sounds outside. Mirta, wedged right behind Jaina’s seat, pointed out the drive ignition button.
“Push it.”
Jaina pressed the button carefully with a cautious fingertip. The Bes’uliik made a little ack like a living animal’s cough, and then the airframe shivered as the initial throaty rumble of the drive rose in pitch to a steady, singing, pure note.
“If you’re nervous, Jaina,” Mirta said, “remember I’m the one putting all my faith in you.”
Yeah. No pressure.
Jaina followed the hand signals of a Mandalorian in bronze armor to roll back, and moved the yoke intuitively, surprised when the fighter responded as she expected. The hangar deck turbolift lifted; she watched the cross sections of decks pass the cockpit as they rose, and heard airtight hatches hiss and snap closed beneath them. Eventually she was looking up at star-dappled space; she was ready to take off.
“Nothing to crash into,” Mirta said. Her arm snaked past Jaina’s cheek and pointed at the various instruments. “Almost X-wing panel layout, except the weapons systems are this side. Take her out, Jaina.”
I’m a Jedi. I can fly anything.
“Full domestic spec?” Jaina asked.
“Export, and that still beats what you fly at home …”
Jaina let vague familiarity take over her hands, and her Force ability to sense position and every little nuance of the Bes’uliik’s handling did the rest. She was clear of the small flotilla before she realized it and getting a sense of how tight the turns could be. It felt wonderful. It was like any well-designed, lovingly crafted tool: it felt like an extension of her body, not a platform designed around the weapons with grudging space left for the being who had to deliver them.
“Easy to be seduced by it, isn’t it?” Mirta said.
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