"Just overheard their arrangements. Oh-five-hundred start, leaving from his private landing pad and transferring to an unmarked Intelligence cutter in Coruscant orbit. Sneaky, eh? But it helps when you know their code names for various VIPs." He checked his chrono. "If I ever end up back in Intelligence, remind me to make them better. Got to go."

Shevu raised an eyebrow. "He loves his work."

"Are you okay with this?" Ben asked.

"Okay with what?"

"Gejjen."

"I'm not a spook," Shevu said. "Never was. But if Gejjen has Omas killed, it'll destabilize the whole GA. So I'm okay with it."

"Do you think he will?"

"I'd want proof that he wouldn't. Personally, I think we should blow our cover and stop Omas from going, but that just compromises our whole operation. So we're riding along with you to make sure Omas gets home in one piece."

Shevu never made any comments on whether he thought Omas was a traitor betraying the GA, or a visionary taking a ma.s.sive risk for peace.

He didn't get involved with politics and opinions. He just stuck to the law as best he could. And that wasn't easy in the GAG.

"What are you waiting for?" Shevu asked.

"I just wondered if you think I'm right to do this."

"That's not my call." Shevu busied himself with holocharts of Vulpter, opening three-D images of the s.p.a.ceports and public buildings.

"You've got your orders."

Lekauf gave Ben a nudge in the back. "Come on, I've got to turn you into a pa.s.sable sniper by tomorrow morning."

The indoor range had that ozonic discharged-blaster smell with a tinge of burned plastoid. Something in the air made Ben's eyes sting. It was an expensive facility that Lekauf said had been cobbled together from equipment originally intended for Intelligence: hologram simulations, regular targets, and even something he called "dead meat."

"I'm not sure I'm going to be much use with a rifle," Ben said.

"Aw, come on." Lekauf was unconvinced. "You're a Jedi. You're not like the rest of us. You've got this visuospatial ability we haven't-my granddad used to tell my dad amazing things about Lord Vader. Really uncanny accuracy in three dimensions, whether he was flying a ship or using a weapon. I used to think Dad was making it up until I saw real Jedi doing that stuff."

"Why not a blaster?"

"Loads of reasons. We need overkill. We need something that doesn't light the place up like fireworks. And we want something that can be silenced. Believe it or not, that thing is quite discreet."

Ben steadied the Karpaki against his shoulder, sighted up a few times, and took his firing position. He was quite pleased to get that far without making a fool of himself. "You seem to have a good opinion of Vader."

"My granddad thought the world of him. When he got badly burned on a mission and had to be discharged from the Imperial Army, Lord Vader made sure he was taken care of for the rest of his life. Whatever some people say about Vader, monsters don't look out for lieutenants."

"That's good to know," said Ben. He liked the idea of his grandfather having his kind moments, and that some people still thought well of him. Not everyone had been sympathetic to the Rebellion. Ben imagined Vader doing the difficult things that Jacen was facing now.

And that I'm facing.

At the end of the range, a shadowy man walked quickly across Ben's field of view and vanished. Ben's instinctive reaction was that this person was real, and breaking safety regulations, so he lowered his weapon and called a warning. Lekauf burst out laughing.

"Ben, that's your target.'"

"That wasn't a hologram. It was solid."

"Uh, yeah . . ." Lekauf put his hand on the control console and the "man" walked back into view again to sit on a chair in the target zone.

"It's a gel-form. It's an adjustable droid made of gel and plastoid to mimic flesh and bone. So you . . . well, so you get used to a target moving like a real person. That one's been adjusted to match Gejjen's build and gait based on holonews footage, so you get used to what he'll look like and how he'll probably fall."

Ben was transfixed. It was just a dummy, just a clever piece of training technology. He checked it in the Force-yes, it was just a machine-but he still felt awful about it.

"That's pretty yucky."

"You know how much those things cost?"

"What happens when I shoot . . . it?"

"It gets up and repairs itself."

"Okay." Ben found it disturbing to watch the figure walking around in the small bay at the end of the range. Through the rifle's optics, it was clearly a featureless, translucent gel figure with the shadowy framework of artificial bone within. "You sure it doesn't feel anything?"

"It just moves, Ben. It doesn't think. It's not even a proper droid. More like a puppet." He looked at the chrono display on the wall.

"You've got less than nineteen hours to get up to speed."

"No pressure, then . . ."

"In your own time, fire when ready."

Ben recalled his recent training. "Why not center ma.s.s?"

"That's the army way-kill or wound, you've still put the target out of action. Police snipers have to worry about hostages and stuff, so they're trained to incapacitate instantly-head shot. a.s.sa.s.sination doesn't have to be as instant, just dead. But a head shot's still best."

Lekauf crooked his forefingers and thumbs five centimeters apart and made a gesture as if he were putting on a blindfold. "That's the zone you're aiming at. A five-centimeter band around the head at eye level. Put one in there and you've got a kill. But with the kind of frangible round you'll be using, as long as you hit the head or neck at all, the result's the same."

"What if I can only get a shot at center ma.s.s?"

"He won't respond to cardiopulmonary resuscitation after a round hits him, believe me." When Lekauf was getting technical, Ben knew he was enjoying his subject. "Optimum is still the head shot, though."

"But there's wind speed and everything."

"This Karpaki has smart sensor optics. Senses the windage and allows for it. They've improved a bit in recent years."

"If it's that clever, then why do I have to train?"

"To get used to shooting someone who's not trying to kill you. Who doesn't even know you're there. Not the Jedi way, is it?"

It was just a dummy. But it moved like Gejjen.

Ben aimed.

It was just like using a lightsaber, really. Letting the Force guide the hand, the eye . . .

He squeezed the trigger as the gel-form sat down on the chair, and the round caught the point of its right temple. Gel and fragments plumed in the air, and the dummy slumped forward.

Lekauf, arms folded, considered the inert form with the eye of a connoisseur. Ben was taken aback by how uncomfortable it made him feel, especially when the gel-form suddenly sat upright, then stood.

He was sure he couldn't shoot it a second time.

"And again," said Lekauf.

Ben spent the next hour getting used to antic.i.p.ating movement, waiting for the gel-form to settle for just long enough to take the shot.

It was harder than he thought: the dummy made no impression in the Force, which limited Ben's senses. And it kept getting up and walking around each time, a distressing gel ghost of a man he was going to kill.

There was no emotion in it. That made it hard. But he was getting good single shots. He tried to see it as a technical exercise, like light-saber drill, an action totally separate from the nasty business of taking off heads, and imagined the gel-form with the short dark hair of Dur Gejjen.

"Ben," Lekauf said quietly, "I'll be there and so will Shevu.

You've got backup if anything goes wrong. If you can't get at him, or you don't get a clean shot, we'll make sure he drops and stays down. Don't sweat it."

"But that'll expose you two."

"Like I said, it's just in case things don't go according to plan.

Makes sense to build in some contingency in case we don't get another chance-because it'll be easier than hitting him on Corellia."

Ben pondered. "We don't even know the location. I could be doing this in the middle of a field or a crowded restaurant."

"You sabotaged Centerpoint. This is going to be a lot easier."

"When I did that, I still thought it was fun."

"Come on, you can do it."

There was something about Lekauf's faith and admiration that galvanized Ben. He concentrated on the dummy and tried to see himself not as shooting a helpless automaton or even a corrupt politician, but as solving a problem. A couple of hours later, he was. .h.i.tting the five-centimeter zone 95 percent of the time.

"Better have a break now," Lekauf said.

Ben checked to make sure the adjacent lanes were clear and walked up the range to look at the gel-form. The more times he'd hit it, the slower the self-repair became. Its internal power supply needed recharging. It was struggling to get up, and Ben found himself increasingly disturbed as he watched the pathetic, anonymous figure scrambling to roll onto its chest and get on all fours. He forced himself to stop looking at it.

It was all the worse for there being none of the real aftermath of injury that he'd seen once too often.

"Lunch," Lekauf called, more insistently this time.

Ben wasn't certain he was that hungry.

BEVIIN-VASUR FARM, TEN KILOMETERS OUTSIDE KELDABE, MANDALORE.

Goran Beviin looked up from the trench, a pitchfork in one hand and a muddy grin on his face. It was beginning to rain and he was up to his ankles in animal dung, but it seemed to make him perfectly happy.

"And they said being acting Mandalore would go to my head," he said, rubbing his nose on his sleeve. "So you came home fast, then."

Fett kept his distance. "Found what I was looking for. You didn't expect me back."

"I did. Some of the clan chieftains didn't. You have a habit of wandering off for a few years at a time." Beviin heaved himself out of the trench and wiped his palms on the seat of his pants. He looked very, very pleased with himself. "If you'd been away any longer, I'd have called you, but since you're back . . . Want to see something amazing?"

Fett wondered if now was a good time to tell Beviin the truth about his illness. The man had to know sooner or later. He could have formally declared himself Mandalore while Fett was gone, and probably found a lot of support among the clans, but he hadn't; he'd gone on shoveling dung and running his farm. He was happy with his life as it was. The galaxy would have worked better with a few more Beviins around.

"Okay," Fett said. "Amaze me."

Beviin beckoned and trudged through the mud toward the farm buildings. The fine drizzle was turning into rain, and the land looked bare-not in the ruined sense of the postwar devastation that blighted so much of the planet, but as if it had settled down to sleep for the coming winter. Despite the derivation of the Fett surname-derived from the word for "farmer"-and his father's childhood on his parents' Concord Dawn farm, Fett knew nothing about agriculture. He wished he could learn, sometimes, to better understand who his father had once been.

"Mirta behaving herself?" Beviin didn't look back over his shoulder. "Well, at least she hasn't tried to kill you again. It's a good sign. Kids can be such a handful."

Fett felt the mud suck at his boots. "She's a useful pair of fists in a fight."

"She'll produce wonderfully ferocious great-grandchildren for you, Bob'ika." Beviin paused a few beats. Fett tried to take in the phrase great-grandchildren, and it left him stranded. "So whatever it was you went to do ended in a fight, did it?"

"Just had to ask questions emphatically"

"You going to tell me about it?"

It seemed as good a time as any, and Fett didn't see the point of sugarcoating it. "I'm terminally ill. Two years, tops. Eight, nine months if I carry on like this."

Beviin still didn't turn around. He walked on for a few more meters, head lowered against the rain, and then stopped in his tracks and finally faced Fett. He looked genuinely upset. Fett couldn't recall anyone being upset for him before, except his father. Lack of caring worked both ways.

Maybe Sintas had felt for him. He hadn't noticed.

"You're not going to sit back and let it happen, are you, Bob'ika?

We can do something, surely."

Using the way-too-familiar form of his name didn't bother Fett at all now. "I found a clone who survived."

"So they did get a little more out of Ko Sai than revenge and a few souvenirs, then."

"There's no research data. Just the clone, Jaing Skirata. He wouldn't give me a blood sample, but he says he's got good medical resources." Now that Fett was back on Mandalore and Jaing was light-years away, though, the whole premise struck him as flimsy. The man hadn't even accepted a meal from him, which would have at least left useful traces of his genetic material on the utensils. Fett had nothing except time counting down and a suspicion that his judgment was failing just like his health. "I'll explain later."

"Why didn't you tell me? I could have tracked some clones for you.

Enough of them deserted and ended up here."

"Ones who'd had the accelerated aging stopped?"

"I don't know, but I could have worked from those leads. Shab, Bob'ika, couldn't you have squeezed a little sample out of him anyway?"

"It's done now. And there was never a guarantee that Taun We or Beluine could make anything from it anyway."

Beviin looked disappointed for a moment, as if Fett had let the side down by not simply grabbing what he needed. But Jaing had been right. Fett needed Taun We to decode whatever it was in that clone's cells that stopped the degeneration, and Taun We would have turned that research over to her new bosses at Arkanian Micro. That was a bad deal for the clone, and a bad deal for Fett, because if anyone was going to make credits out of that data, it was him, and Mandalore needed those- Well, there's a funny thing. Now I'm thinking long-term.