"He's a sick man, Ghes, and if you tell anyone, I'll be the one doing the breaking."

Ghes Orade would have faced a cannoned-up Chiss fleet armed only with a sharp stick, and laughed about his chances of survival, but he was scared stiff of her grandfather. Mirta wondered if she was doomed to have all her romances doused liberally with freezing water because everyone now knew she was a Fett. She leaned on the barn door-the building had been a drying shed-and two indignant faces turned to her.

"What are you doing to him?" she demanded. "Has he had a relapse or something?"

Fett was breathing hard as if he was in a lot of pain, hands clenched against his chest, face white and waxy. A woman she'd never seen before stood over him, holding a large-bore needle-tipped syringe up to the light and checking the reservoir. Another man in a ragbag of a.s.sorted armor was standing with his back to the door. He didn't turn around.

"Jaing kept his promise," Fett said, breathless. "Or he's having the last laugh and poisoning me. We'll see."

"There's a slower and less painful way of getting this where it needs to go," said the woman, flicking the syringe with her finger to clear air bubbles. "But there's no point messing around given the state you're in, Mand'alor. Direct into your bone marrow. Two shots to go."

"Just do it." He took his hands off his chest and parted his shirt.

Mirta was surprised how bony he was: he looked such a fit, strong man in full armor. She never wanted anyone else to see him like this. "Is this the best Mandalore can offer me? A veterinarian who spends her working day with her arm up a-"

"Believe me, I prefer treating nerfs. Keep still. Or I'll miss and puncture a lung. Or worse."

"How long is this going to take?"

"Mand'alor, do you know what the alternative site to the sternum is for this treatment?"

"Amaze me."

"The pelvic bones."

Fett's expression was predictably blank, and he didn't say another word. He looked away, and anyone else would have thought it was casual annoyance at having his schedule interrupted, but Mirta knew him well enough by now to see he was in excruciating pain. She took the risk of stepping forward and folding her hand around his. He took it, too. She thought he'd break every bone in her fingers when the vet lined up the needle-so big that Mirta could see the hole in the tip-and pressed it hard into his breastbone, as if she were preparing a nuna for roasting.

There was an awful squelch. Orade swallowed loudly.

"If you're going to faint or throw up, son, go do it outside," the vet said irritably. "Failing that, find some a.n.a.lgesics. Where do you keep them?"

"Forget it," Fett said. "I need to know if you're doing me any damage."

"It's okay, Ba'buir,'" Mirta whispered. "You'll be okay."

"If the Sarlacc didn't finish me off, she won't, either."

The vet, all smiling menace, inserted the syringe in a gla.s.s vial to refill. "Last one. Shut your eyes and think of Mandalore."

Mirta glanced over her shoulder at the man in the multicolored armor. He slipped off his helmet.

"Just making sure he doesn't die before he does something useful for Manda'yaim," said the man. "If it works, and it should, then he'll start to show signs of recovery in a few days."

He looked a lot like Fett-and Jaing-and the resemblance was unsettling. The Kiffar part of her, the one that cared about bloodlines, told her this was her kin. Clones got around a bit during the war. She probably had a lot more genetic relatives than she'd first thought.

Fett crushed Mirta's fingers again and didn't make a sound.

The vet straightened up and opened a bottle of pungent-smelling liquid to clean her hands. "Normally, I swat my patients across the rump and let them get on with grazing. But seeing as it's you, I'll skip that and suggest you take it easy for a day or so. Expect a big bruise."

Fett gave her a silent nod of acknowledgment as she left, and fastened his undershirt. Then he looked up at Mirta. "Say h.e.l.lo to your uncle Venku." He indicated the man in the motley armor, who still hadn't acknowledged her. "Alias Kad'ika."

It was all making sense now. Kad'ika had to be the son of a clone trooper. There must have been a lot of them out there, and she wondered how many of them had any social graces or senses of humor, or if they all took after Ba'buir.

"Just doing my bit for Mandalorian unity," Venku said, slipping his helmet back on as if her close inspection was making him uncomfortable.

"Wouldn't do for the Mand'alor to snuff it just when we're on the rise again."

He leaned over Fett and put two fingers against the pulse in his neck. Mirta expected her grandfather to flatten him for daring to lay hands on him, but he simply looked at the a.s.sorted plates of beskar'gam with idle curiosity and tolerated the examination.

"Your heart rate's up," Venku said. "Get some rest."

"Field medic."

"Yeah, they say I have a healing touch." Mirta found that hard to believe. Venku straightened up. "Any problems-tell the folks at Cikartan's tapcaf in town. They'll know how to contact me."

Venku made for the door. As he brushed past her, he stopped and tapped his finger against the heart-of-fire dangling from her neck. He obviously never worried about getting a punch in the face.

"Interesting," he said.

He was a chancer, a man who could obtain things-and obviously information as well. It was worth a try.

"It's a heart-of-fire," she said. "It belonged to my grandmother. I need a full-blooded Kiffar to help me read the memories imprinted in it."

He paused for a few moments. "Mando'ade come from all kinds of places. If I find anyone who can read the stone, I'll let you know." Then he was gone.

Orade nudged Beviin.

"Go on," Orade said. "Tell him. It'll make him happy-okay, happier.

Happy people heal faster."

Fett put his armor plates back on. "What's going to make me happy?"

Beviin had the beatific smile of a man who'd finished laying up stores for the winter and just enjoyed a big meal. "Yomaget's got something to show you."

Fett grunted. He was the least expressive man Mirta knew, but he seemed vaguely disappointed. "He's got the Bes'uliik s.p.a.ceworthy, has he?"

"Bang goes the surprise."

"It's the thought that counts." He stood up and was instantly transformed from her sick Ba'buir into Boba Fett, ruthless and relentless. But he didn't stride out the door right away. She took a guess that he was feeling the effects of the treatment and wasn't going to admit it, not even in front of people who knew exactly what was wrong.

"Where is it?"

She gestured to the ceiling and offered him her arm.

Mirta was still looking for a reason not to hate Fett, and she was ready to look pretty deeply. She decided she could start by loving him for his sheer guts. Nothing fazed him, nothing stopped him, and nothing made him feel sorry for himself. They stood outside the barn and waited in silence. It looked like a tiny hut set against Slave I, laid up in her horizontal mode nearby.

A low rumble interrupted the rural peace.

Fett looked up as a dull black wedge shot across the sky and vanished behind a forested hill. Mirta lost it, but then it circled back again, came to a dead halt in midair about two hundred meters above them, and descended smoothly on burners. It landed on its blunt tail section and then extended struts to tilt through ninety degrees and come to rest horizontally like a conventional starfighter. The canopy lifted and Yomaget climbed out, slid onto the ground, and kissed the matte fuselage.

"Cyar'ika," he said to the ship, running a tender hand over the skin. "I think I'm in love."

"Nice," said Fett.

"Puts the uliik in Bes'uliik."

"Yeah, I can see it's a beast. What's different?"

"We applied the micronized beskar skin, Mand'alor. She's a toughened shabuir now. Care to show her to the Verpine?"

"It'd get their attention."

"If they share their ultramesh technology with us, we might be able to lighten the air frame and improve her top end in atmosphere. If we skin her completely in solid beskar, she's going to be invulnerable, but heavy."

"We'll keep the heavy ones. Maybe the Verpine can come up with a better fuel solution."

"Well, if you're not going to take her for a spin, I will," said Medrit. He scrambled up onto the wing and eased himself into the c.o.c.kpit, looking as if he would fill it. "Shab, a Mando-Verpine a.s.sault fighter.

That'll cause some sleepless nights on Coruscant."

"If we can mine and process the ore fast enough."

Yomaget looked hopeful. "We could ask those helpful insectoid chaps to lend us an orbital facility or two."

"I'll go see them," Fett said. "Got to think long-term on this. No point handing over too much to Roche early in the game."

Medrit spent the next hour taking the prototype Bes'uliik through its paces over the Keldabe countryside while the rest of them watched.

Yomaget captured the aerobatics on his holorecorder, looking satisfied.

"Might slip this hologram out to a few contacts," he said. "We're not a modest people, are we?"

"Remind them that most of our adult population can fly a fighter, too," Fett said. "For starters."

He went back inside the barn. He didn't manage a smile, but Beviin turned to Mirta and c.o.c.ked his head. "Believe it or not, that's a happy man."

Maybe he was a better judge of mood than she was. She was relieved just to hear Fett use the phrase long-term.

Times were changing. The rest of the galaxy might have been tearing itself apart, but the Mandalore sector-which now informally controlled Roche, if a protectorate agreement counted-was a haven of optimism after a decade or more of grim existence. That night, Mirta found the Oyu'baat tapcaf packed with new faces, and the singing was raucous.

If Jacen Solo, her mother's murderer, had been roasting slowly over the Oyu'baat's open fire instead of the side of nerf, Mirta might even have joined in.

SENATE BUILDING, CORUSCANT.

Jacen's official airspeeder brought him up to the main Senate entrance. He could have entered the building by any number of more private platforms, but he had no intention of sneaking in via the back doors; being seen counted for a lot, and he still had his heroic image to protect.

A line of citizens waited outside the doors that admitted members of the public to the viewing galleries. Some just wanted to watch the day's business, but there was a small group who were clearly protesters.

It wasn't just the FREE OMAS banner that three of them were carrying among them. There was a taste of anger in the Force, vivid despite the permanent background of fear and uncertainty.

"Drop me here," Jacen said. "I'll walk."

"They'll hara.s.s you, sir," said the Gran chauffeur. "I ought to take you straight up to your floor."

"They've got a right to see who's governing them." It wasn't as if they could cause him any harm. "I find that talking to people generally clears up misunderstandings."

Jacen had expected at least one ma.s.s protest or a riot broken up by water cannon and dispersal gas. GAG intelligence showed that Corellian agents still operating on Coruscant were doing their best to make that happen. But the general willingness of the population to accept the change of regime surprised him. The stock exchange had suspended trading for a few hours, and some shares had bounced around: but the traffic still flowed, the stores were full of food, HoloNet programming was uninterrupted, and everyone was getting paid.

Unless you were Cal Omas or a civil liberties lawyer, the military junta was temporary and benign. There was a war on, after all. It was to be expected.

I ought to write a study on this. How to take over the state: smile, look reluctant, and keep the traffic flowing.

And it was just Coruscant. The rest of the GA worlds went on running their planetary business as they saw fit, unmolested, and that meant there was no need to stretch the fleet and the defense forces by deploying them to keep order on thousands of other worlds-their own, in many cases. All Jacen and Niathal had to worry about was Coruscant, because the political and strategic reality was that Coruscant. . . was the GA . . . was Coruscant.

The rest of the Alliance is detail. I have its heart and mind.

"Good morning," Jacen said. The group of protesters stared at him with a collective, slowly dawning oh-it's-really-him expression. Even a face that had been on HNE as regularly as his took some recognizing out of context. He extended his hand to them, and one man actually shook it.

Most species responded well to placatory courtesy. "I just wanted to rea.s.sure you that Master Omas will get a scrupulously fair hearing. We've let him go home, too."

When folks were worked up for yelling and seemed to want to be dragged away by CSF heavyweights, they were totally upended by having the object of their fury listen to them. Jacen's patient smile met disoriented surprise. A couple of CSF officers began wandering across, probably expecting trouble, but Jacen dissuaded them with a little Force influence and they stopped a few meters away to observe.

More important, though, was the HNE news droid trundling around the Senate Plaza. There was always at least one on duty here, just hanging around to get stock shots, but now it had an actual story. Jacen watched it approach in his peripheral vision.

"Doesn't matter how you dress it up," said the young woman holding one end of the FREE OMAS banner. "The GA is being run now by the Supreme Commander and the head of the secret police, and n.o.body voted for you."

Jacen managed an expression of slightly wounded innocence. "You're right, I didn't run for office, which is why I won't remain joint Chief of State any longer than I have to. Would you like to see something?

Inside the building?"

The woman looked at him suspiciously. "There's always a catch."

The news droid was right behind them now. Sometimes the Force placed things in his grasp. Suddenly he realized that everything was being handed to him and all he had to do was react, just as Lumiya had told him, and not a.n.a.lyze everything.

"Your choice," Jacen said. "I just want to show you the Chief of State's office. Anyone else want to come along?"

The security guards weren't happy, but what Jacen wanted, Jacen got. He led a straggling group of protesters, day visitors, and the HNE droid through the glittering lobby and up in the turbolift to the floor of offices where the public was almost never allowed, the seat of galactic government itself.

A few civil servants in the corridor did a double take but carried on about their business. Niathal must have seen him come in on the security holocams, because she was wandering around the lobby, clutching a couple of datapads. Jacen acknowledged her with a smile and walked up to the carved double doors of the Chief of State's suite of offices.

The doors were sealed-taped shut. The bright yellow tape with the CSF logo and the legend do not tamper was purely cosmetic, but it made the point far better than the impregnable but invisible electronic lock.

"That's Chief Omas's office," Jacen said over the head of the HNE droid. He stood back casually to let it get a better shot of him explaining earnestly to this random sample of the electorate. "It's for the elected head of state. It stays sealed until someone is elected to fill it. Neither I nor Admiral Niathal has moved in. That matters very much to us."

The thing about Mon Cals was that you could never tell if they were rolling their eyes or just taking notice. Niathal was probably rolling hers, though. Jacen could feel her amus.e.m.e.nt at his expense.

The little crowd muttered and oohed and ahhed. It was a perfect media moment. The protesters seemed at a loss for words, but Jacen was anxious that they not look humiliated.