Lumiya is trying to kill you."

Ben gave a little grunt that might have been disbelief and seemed to mull over the idea rather than show alarm. "Because she's still got this vendetta with Dad?"

"Mainly because you killed her daughter."

"Uh . . . okay, I'll take her word for it."

Mara shielded Ben as he got into the speeder. It was always a vulnerable moment: she'd taken a few targets as they ducked into vehicles, caught off-balance for a moment. The hatches closed with a sigh of air, and she turned to look at him closely.

"I mean it, Ben. She's dangerous and she's subtle, so until we neutralize her, you have to be on your guard. She's got connections within the GAG. It could be anyone."

"If she was going to have this spy of hers in the Guard kill me, she'd have done it by now." He slouched in the pa.s.senger's seat. "But I'll be careful. Wow, this is getting messy. What with Jacen on Fett's list for killing his daughter, and me killing Lumiya's . . . I suppose that's what the job's about, isn't it? You collect enemies. Hey, the boys have got a bet going on when and how Fett's going to come after Jacen."

Mara wasn't sure if Ben was making light of the threat for her sake or just indulging in normal teenage dismissal. Fett was the least of her worries. "And . . . have you placed your bet?"

"Oh, Jacen can take him. But it's kind of weird that Fett hasn't made a move. The longer he waits, the more people get freaked, I suppose."

"If Fett comes for Jacen," she said, "let him handle it. Okay?"

The speeder climbed into one of the automated skylanes and headed for the Rotunda Zone. Ben gazed out of the side screen in silence.

"So can you tell me what this mission was?" Mara asked.

Ben did that three-second pause that meant he was framing his words carefully. "I had to bring back a prototype vessel. I wasn't in any more danger than I could comfortably handle."

That was a relief. It was just an errand, although why Jacen hadn't known about it baffled her. "And you missed your birthday celebration."

"You know how folks say that you get to a point in life when birthdays don't matter? That's how it felt."

"Sweetheart, that's only when you get a lot older. Not fourteen."

If anything could break Mara's heart, it was that: Ben's childhood had pa.s.sed him by. "Next year, I promise, we'll have a family get-together.

Really mark the day."

"You think the war will be over by then?"

"If it's not, we'll still have a party. All of us."

"Uncle Han and Aunt Leia, too? Even after I tried to arrest Uncle Han?"

And that was the bizarre reality of a civil war: a teenage boy sent to detain his aunt and uncle, and then fretting over whether they'd attend his next birthday party. Mara sometimes tried to add up the days she'd lived that weren't about killing and warfare, and there were so very, very few. She wanted a different future for Ben.

"Yes, even after that," she said. "Ben, does Jacen know you're back?"

"Yeah." He didn't volunteer any more. "It's okay. I report back for duty at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow. I haven't gone AWOL."

"I'll have one last try, then. Ben, I worry about you. Your dad and I would really sleep a lot better if you left the GAG and came on missions with us."

Mara braced for incoming. But Ben thought visibly for a while, and when he spoke his tone was soft and unsettlingly adult-unsettlingly old.

"Mom, have you ever had to do something you didn't want to do, but knew you had to?"

Mara certainly had, so many times that she took it for granted. And at any given time, whether working for the Empire or for the New Republic, or whatever the stang her paymaster called itself, she'd always thought it was right.

"Yes, sweetheart, I have," she said, and knew she now had no moral high ground from which to look down upon her son, or anyone else for that matter. "And the problem was that when I looked back, I found I'd done the wrong thing sometimes. But it'll be years before I'll know if what I'm doing now is right."

"You have to go with the best data you have at the time."

It was a weary man's statement, not a boy's. Ben was a soldier. He was what she and Luke had made him. She'd wanted a Jedi son, and now she had one.

"Next year," she said. "Next year, we'll have that party, come what may."

chapter three.

Mishuk gotal'u meshuroke, pako kyore.

(Pressure makes gems, ease makes decay.) -Mandalorian proverb SLAVE I. EN ROUTE TO BADOR, KUAT SYSTEM.

Mirta Gev had settled for being tolerated by her grandfather, and although she made an effort to love him, it was hard. Part of her still wanted to make him pay for the life her mother-and grandmother-had endured. And part saw a man who had every form of regard shown him except love, and pitied him. Overall, she saw a man who put up duracrete barriers and defied anyone to breach them. As he took the Firespray out of Mandalore's...o...b..t and prepared to jump to hypers.p.a.ce, his expression was set in apparent blank disdain for the everyday world. She decided his helmet presented the softer face of the two.

At least she got to sit in the copilot's seat. That seemed to be the nearest that Boba Fett could ever get to approving of her as his own flesh and blood.

"Your clone's not an active bounty hunter," said Fett. There was never any preamble in his conversations, no small talk, no intimacy. He was all business. "I checked every bounty hunter and wannabe on the books, but none is called Skirata. Plenty of people on Mandalore knew Kal Skirata, and then-gone. Vanished."

"But he was on a hunt, I know that. He told me to get out of his way." Did Fett believe her? She'd st.i.tched him up and tried to lure him to his death, so she could hardly blame him if he was having second thoughts about the clone. The man was real, all right. "So we're retracing his steps?"

"Yours."

"How are you going to pa.s.s yourself off as a client looking to hire a bounty hunter?"

"I'm not. You are."

Mirta suddenly realized why he'd agreed to let her ride along. "My, I do come in handy, don't I?"

"Earn your keep. Rules of any partnership."

Mirta thought that sounded remarkably like her dead mother. Ailyn Vel was more a chip from the granite block of Fett than she'd ever admit, but that was impossible. She'd been a baby when Fett had left her grandmother, too young to pick up his callous ways.

"How do you cope?" Mirta asked.

"What?"

"How do you cope with being alone?"

"Are you going to yap all the way to Kuat?"

"You can't bring yourself to tell me to shut up, can you?"

"I cope because I like it that way," Fett said.

"Well, Mama was all I had and I don't like it that way."

Fett paused, and there was the faintest movement of his lips-as if he was stopping himself from saying something he'd regret. He ought to have understood, she thought. He'd lost his father at the hands of a Jedi, too.

"Yeah," he said. "What about your dad?"

"He died in a hull breach. Not even in combat."

"Why'd Ailyn marry a Mando? Sintas must have warned her we're bad news."

Mirta found she was clutching the heart-of-fire pendant tight in her fist. It was just half of the original stone. The other slice, split from it with a blow from the b.u.t.t of Fett's blaster, was buried with Ailyn Vel in a modest grave outside Keldabe, in an ancient wood that the vongese hadn't managed to destroy.

I can't feel anything from this stone. It ought to tell me something. I'm Kiffar. Part Kiffar, anyway.

"She hung around Mando'ade to get a better idea of how to hunt you.

Then she met Papa. It didn't last."

"Romantic."

"She cared about him."

"And she let him make a Mando of you."

"I spent two summers with Papa on Null, after he and Mama split up.

He taught me everything he could. And then he got killed."

She didn't say it to shut Fett up. He was hardly a talkative man anyway, but there was quiet, and then there was breath-holding silence.

That was what she heard now.

"That's too bad," he said.

"Don't try to out-orphan me, Ba'buir. I know what it's like."

She struggled between the hatred she'd been taught to feel for him and the evidence of her own eyes that he wasn't a monster-at least not the monster painted by her mother. The very thought felt disloyal to the dead. After almost two months, she'd reached the stage where she had days when her mother wasn't her first waking thought, and didn't haunt her dreams. That felt like betrayal, too.

But life had to go on. She had to make sense of this, and not let Ailyn Vel's death be for nothing.

"No need to discuss it, then." He inhaled. He looked like he'd been holding his breath all that time. "Are you okay living where you are?"

"Yeah."

"I could buy you a house of your own. Anywhere."

Mirta never knew when he was going to flip over into awkward generosity. Beviin said he had his moments. He might, of course, have been trying to get rid of her with the lure of a place on a far planet.

"I'm okay where I am, thanks." No, that sounded dismissive. "I meant that I like living with Vevut's family."

Fett said nothing. She knew what he was thinking now.

"Yes, I do like Orade," she said. "He's a good man."

"You're a grown woman. None of my business."

But everyone knew she was a Fett now, and that carried with it some burdens. It took a brave man to risk a Mand'alor for a grandfather-in-law, especially one with Boba Fett's reputation. Mirta shut her eyes and tried to listen for whispered messages from the heart-of-fire.

"Why can't you get information from that?" Fett asked suddenly.

"I'm only part Kiffar. I don't have the full ability to sense things from objects." She opened her eyes again. Fett was still an implacable statue of detachment. She studied his profile to see what of him might be in her. "It's called psychometry. They say some Jedi can do it, too."

Mentioning Jedi might not have been a good idea, but Fett didn't show any reaction. "The stone absorbs memories from the giver and receiver," he said. "Sintas said so." Ah. Under the veneer there might have been a man who wanted to either relive happier times or hide the ones he preferred to forget. The stone held a little bit of Sintas Vel's spirit, and a little bit of his. There was more veneer to him now than core, Mirta suspected, but she'd seen him cry, and n.o.body else had ever seen the adult Boba Fett weaken, she was sure of that. Maybe he hadn't even cried as a kid.

"I'm trying hard, Ba'buir."

"Worst thing you did was tell me you knew what happened to Sintas."

It was a slap in the face. When she'd said it, she hadn't even known if it would do the trick and lead him into her mother's ambush. Now she regretted hurting a dying man, even if she had been raised to loathe him.

"We'll find out how Grandmama died, I promise."

"After I get that clone," Fett said, all gravel and calculation, "I'll find a full-blooded Kiffar to read the stone."

Mirta took it as a cue to shut up. Playing happy families wasn't the Fett way. She wondered how many other families had the record of violent death and attempted murder that theirs did. I hope what's in me is more like Papa. Then she recalled Leia Solo deflecting her blaster shot at Fett, and knew that it was Ba'buir blood in her veins after all- Grandpapa's.

"Stand by," said Fett.

He didn't deploy full dampers when Slave /jumped. He never did. The acceleration to lightspeed and beyond felt like being punched in the chest and then sat on by a Hutt. She made a point of biting her lip discreetly as the stars streaked to lines of blue-white fire and the crushing sensation pa.s.sed.

That had to hurt him, too. He was a sick man. Mirta fumbled in her pocket, pulled out some painkiller capsules, and held them out to him. He took them without a word. His fingertips were cold.

It felt like a long, silent lifetime to Kuati s.p.a.ce. Mirta filled it with planning how she would disembowel Jacen Solo if and when she got the chance. There was already a line forming for the privilege. Ba'buir wouldn't say what he had in mind for him; all she was certain of was that Boba Fett never turned his back on a score that required settling.

"Decelerating in half a standard hour," he said.

She wanted very badly to love him, but couldn't. If she had found out what happened between him and her grandmother, she might have found it easier, but she knew it might also have confirmed her legacy of revenge. One thing she'd learned fast was that it was a subject to avoid.

It wasn't that she was afraid of asking; she just couldn't get past the silent routine. He could make the world outside vanish if he wanted to.

Bador was a striking contrast to Mandalore. Slave /swept on a descent path past orbiters and over cities studded with straight roads and open plazas. Mirta checked her datapad to orient herself.