Sacrifice

by Karen Traviss

  Fett was still rolling the EE-3’s scope in one hand, clearly distracted. “You need those credits.”

  Beviin realized that he must have sounded as if he was asking for help. “Not the best year I’ve had, no.”

  “I get more offers than I can handle at my age.” The hologrammic Fett began clamping the optics back to the blaster’s barrel. “Take a couple off my hands sometime.”

  “Mand’alor—”

  “Fett out.”

  As Beviin walked back to the Jara’ to seal the deal with Udelen, he pondered Fett’s odd blend of scrupulous detachment punctuated by rare acts of what in any other man might have been regarded as pure sentimentality. More offers than he could handle at his age? He was still top of his game. Offering to put work Beviin’s way had nothing to do with the fact that Fett had a fortune and Beviin was struggling most years, no sir. Fett had done a few selfless things—and even if he never admitted it, word got around—because he thought it needed doing.

  Because it was right. Fett had his moments. And in the next one he’d blow your head off because it was strictly business.

  Beviin returned to the Jara’. Udelen was still there, almost as if he hadn’t moved. Beviin glanced to the tables on the other side of the bar: the mother and daughter in red armor were still there, too.

  “Deal,” he said to Udelen.

  The man still had a full glass of clear liquid in front of him, and it didn’t appear to have moved, either. He reached inside his jacket—slowly and deliberately—and pulled out a credit chip.

  “I’ll know when you’ve completed the task,” he said, “and I’ll know how to get hold of you again to pay the balance. If I like the results, I’ll have plenty of work for you and your comrades.”

  Beviin liked the sound of that. He took the chip and slotted it into the dataport on his forearm plate to check that it was valid: fifty thousand creds, enough to transform his family’s life for a while. The pinpoint of blue light verified it.

  “Pleasure doing business,” he said.

  Udelen bowed his head a fraction, then walked out of the bar with the slow dignity of a funeral bearer. His gait reinforced Beviin’s feeling that this wasn’t just scumbag-on-scumbag violence. There was more to it.

  A coup. It had to be a coup. Funny way to go about it, but sometimes the easiest way to grab power was the least direct. Udelen didn’t look like a man who believed in the power of the ballot box. Beviin watched him go, and in a moment of curiosity he pulled off his crushgaunt and dipped a cautious finger into Udelen’s apparently untouched drink. It felt like water. He tasted it.

  It was water.

  Alcohol and business didn’t mix anyway. Beviin’s business was done, though, so he ordered drinks for the women in red armor and wandered over to their table to put the glasses in front of them. It was just good manners. Some of the patrons lining the bar watched Beviin as if he were trying a pickup line, but they were aruetiise, outsiders, and they didn’t understand his obligation.

  “Oya, vod’ika,” he said to the girl. Non-Mandalorians thought it was just a way of saying cheers, but it was much more than that: Survive, little sister: Hunt, enjoy life, celebrate your people. “Oya manda.”

  “Oya,” said the girl. “I’m Dinua.”

  “And my name’s Briika,” said her hard-eyed mother. Her name came from the word for “smile,” and Beviin enjoyed that kind of irony. She could shrivel anyone with that stare. “Those crushgaunts are illegal. But you know that.”

  “I just like antiques,” Beviin said. He patted the scabbard on his belt, rattling an ancient saber in its sheath. “I’ve got a proper beskad, too. On the road for a reason?”

  “Got to make a living now my old man’s dead.”

  No Mando ever left a widow or orphan to struggle. They shared luck when it came their way, because life was hard and there was no telling when you would be the one in need of some. “Might be able to help there.”

  Beviin had enough credits in his pocket already to see him and Medrit through the coming year. If Udelen had more work to offer in the weeks to come, there was plenty to go around for Briika and Dinua.

  Just like Fett, he couldn’t always handle all the work he might be offered.

  Nom Anor: intelligence report to Prefect Da’Gara, Yuuzhan Vong fleet. Time to invasion: eight standard weeks, 25 A.B.Y. in the infidel calendar.

  The Mandalorians appear to be best suited for infiltration, retrieval, assassination, and sabotage. In the year I’ve been using them, they’ve proved reliable. Their small numbers make them worthless as an army, although they might make an excellent enslaved division at a future date.

  Goran Beviin did an efficient job of removing B’Leph, and a civil war is still in progress. He recruits equally efficient comrades: even their children are savage fighters.

  When I spoke to their leader, the one they call Mandalore—Boba Fett—I feared for a while that he might want more answers than I could give him. But the kind of destabilization and execution they excel at is a normal, everyday occurrence within this corrupt galaxy; he has no reason to wonder why I ask what I do of his people.

  He’s seen and fought wars before. Like me, he’s a realist. A practical man. I almost look forward to meeting him.

  Mandalore is already on my list as a world that will be harder to subdue.

  Keldabe, capital of Mandalore: outskirts of the city.

  Keldabe looked like a run-down factory complex that someone had dumped in a forest and abandoned because it was too much trouble to dispose of it properly.

  I don’t even live here. And I’m the head of state.

  Fett took Slave I low over the Mandalore forests forty-five degrees north of the equator and reminded himself that it was at least a good planet to defend if push came to shove. The resident population hovered around a modest four million; Coruscant had small neighborhoods with more citizens than that. Like Concord Dawn and the rest of the sector, this was hard frontier country, just jungle, forest, desert, and plains on which farmers made little impact. In galactic terms, it was a small city that outsiders mistook for a world.

  That’s fitting. A few Mandalorians are an army, after all.

  The comm on the console chirped. “Mand’alor, Udelen’s ship just landed at the spaceport.”

  “I’ll be right behind him,” said Fett. “Keep an eye on him in the meantime.”

  “We keep an eye on everyone.”

  Slave I could navigate for herself, but Keldabe was one location that even a novice pilot could fly by sight. It was—in basic terms—a very large hill-fort ringed by a bend in the Kelita River and beyond that woodland studded with settlements. The sprawl of buildings that made up MandalMotors was the biggest feature in the landscape, and if Fett used the plant’s hundred-meter tower as a navigation transit with the comm mast for the spaceport, he could line up and drop neatly onto the landing strip.

  Mandalore was MandalMotors, thousands of tiny engineering workshops, subsistence farms, ore mining, and an awful lot of trees—and that was the sum of it. Without the beskar deposits, the unique Mandalorian iron ore, there was nothing remarkable about the place except the people. And the beskar had been largely stripped by the Empire.

  Maybe if they were more formally organized … no, Fett shook away the thought. Mandos were as organized as they needed to be to survive.

  And, being Mandos, they didn’t lay on a red carpet and a band to welcome their leader either. Fett settled Slave I on her dampers in a designated bay like anyone else, and walked across the strip.

  He opened his comlink to the tower. “Which ship?”

  “The blue one that looks like a T-77.” There was a pause, as if the control room skipper had leaned out of earshot to consult someone else. “There’s a grenade launcher trained on it, ret’lini—just in case.”

  Fett didn’t take offense at anyone thinking he needed backup. He’d never needed anyone to cover his back, but Mandalorians always had a plan B “just in case.” I
t was almost a reflex, the kind that was ingrained in a militarized society.

  Fett thought it was a courteous precaution even if he didn’t need it. He activated Slave I’s weapons panel via his helmet link, calculated the coordinates of Udelen’s ship, and let her do the rest. The icon in his HUD told him the port laser cannon had swiveled to the forward position to rest its aim on the blue airspeeder. His jet-pack was primed for evasive action. Just in case was deeply ingrained in Fett, too.

  He stood in front of the vessel at a sensible distance and waited for his potential client to come down the ramp.

  “I hadn’t expected Mandalore to be so … unspoiled,” said Udelen. “Somehow I thought it would be more industrialized. You even have some dwellings set in trees.”

  “We have all kinds of housing,” Fett said. What is he, a tourist? “Some locals still prefer trees to ground level.”

  “Who runs your government? Who are the administrators?”

  Why do you care? “Mandalorians like things informal and friendly. What did you want to discuss?”

  Udelen stopped for a fraction of a heartbeat so barely noticeable that even Fett nearly missed it. Maybe he didn’t like his questions being dismissed. He recovered instantly. “I came to tell you that your people can expect to be busy in the next few months. A war is coming.”

  “You must be new in this galaxy,” Fett said, totally unsurprised. “There’s always a war going on somewhere, always has been, always will be. It’s why Mandalorians have never gone out of business.”

  “It could escalate.”

  “Will it affect the Mandalore sector?”

  Udelen paused, and Fett didn’t care for his suddenly satisfied expression. “We can hope that it won’t.”

  Don’t play mind-games with me. I know blackmail when I hear it. “Whoever might be thinking of fighting here better hope so, too.”

  Fett didn’t think Udelen was quite as ugly as Beviin had described; there was a faint but distinctive smell about him, though. It reminded Fett of the sea spray churned up by the storms on Kamino in his childhood. Smells could always take you back.

  “I assume our arrangement extends to mercenary work, then,” Udelen said. “Usual rates.”

  “Not all Mandalorians are mercs. They choose the work they take.”

  “Then I’ll be asking you and a few troops of your choosing to stand by for rendezvous in two weeks’ time.”

  “Better tell me what to expect, so we bring the right tools for the job.” I’m not your army, chum. I’m my own boss. “We reserve the right to decline your offer, as always.”

  “You haven’t asked who the combatants will be.”

  “You weren’t going to tell me.”

  “True.”

  “So I’ll assume the worst.”

  Udelen almost smiled. Fett didn’t like that, either. Even while the credits kept coming, he decided he’d keep an open mind about his client’s largesse.

  The core of Mandalorian bounty hunters and troops Udelen seemed to like to have on call were doing okay financially. That was fine—as long as Udelen understood that the legendary Mandalorian discipline wasn’t dumb obedience. Even a Mandalore had to understand that.

  Fett watched the airspeeder lift off and disarmed Slave I’s cannon via his helmet link.

  But he knew the spaceport control tower would be tracking it until it left Mandalore’s orbit. Just in case.

  Nom Anor’s notes: final Intelligence assessment. ETA for vanguard of Yuuzhan Vong fleet: two days.

  Some days I almost find kinship with Mandalorians. Some of them actually prefer living homes, not built-things like other infidels. They create homes on platforms in the branches of trees. And then I see them as they are, with their passion for wholly artificial technology. Yes, I blow hot and cold over them, as the infidels say. But I don’t need to like them, only to understand how useful they are for the subtle things in war that the sheer force of our fleet can’t always achieve. They’ve helped me prepare the battlefield: now we’ll see how they respond to the prospect of the battle itself.

  I’ve asked Fett to rendezvous with me at a point on our invasion route. I want the Mandalorians to be among the first to see their new masters as we enter this galaxy.

  The fleet is nearly here. I won’t have to disguise myself and hide any longer.

  Rendezvous point with Udelen’s forces, strength and type unspecified, for a briefing at Outer Rim: 25 A.B.Y.

  “If anything happens to me, will you take care of Dinua?”

  Briika Jeban’s voice broke the silence on the shared comlink as the squadron waited for Udelen to appear. Beviin, fed up with waiting and reduced to staring through the Gladiator’s canopy at the veil of stars and gas clouds, jerked back to the here and now.

  “Yes,” he said. “But nothing’s going to happen to anybody. Anyway … yes.”

  “Do I get a say in this?” asked Dinua. Beviin wasn’t sure if she was reminding them she was a fourteen-year-old adult who could speak for herself, thanks, or if she preferred the idea of gai bal manda—adoption, literally name and soul—by someone else. It was usually the former. “And no, nothing’s going to happen to anyone.”

  Death was the ever-present reality in this business. Beviin knew Dinua missed her father, and even if he could never be more than a friend and brother to Briika, his duty was to make sure her daughter—even as an adult—would never be an orphan. If only Fett had been truly part of the Mandalorian community, Beviin thought: someone would have adopted him so that he always had a family whether he needed one or not. But nobody had raised the issue with him. They probably never would. He wasn’t a family man, and there was still no room for anyone in his life except Jango’s ghost.

  “I’ll take that as agreement,” said Beviin. “And I promise that if I ever adopt you, I won’t make you wear frilly dresses.”

  Loud guffaws, Dinua’s included, filled his audio link, but Fett was silent: there wasn’t even a rebuke. On station around him, clustered around Slave I, were the two women in their Aggressor fighters and the Detta brothers—Cham and Suvar—with Tiroc Vhon, all in Gladiators.

  “The only thing anyone’s going to die of today is boredom,” Cham said. “We haven’t missed the time window, have we?”

  “No,” Fett’s voice cut in. “We haven’t. He has—nearly.”

  Beviin powered up his thrusters. “I’ll go scout around.”

  The Gladiator turned 180 degrees and looped away Coreward before coming back in a U-turn. It wasn’t boredom, although nothing was happening. The others might not have said it, but everyone was feeling that moment of doubt when you considered how little you knew for sure about your client, and—more to the point—how little you knew about the situation your client was about to get you into. The rendezvous was simply for a briefing. That was the point: not a battle, sight unseen, enemy unknown, but a briefing, so that they could regroup afterward with their new intel and prepare themselves properly. If you took mercenary work, Beviin reasoned, you accepted that clients sometimes put you lower on their need-to-know list than their regular troops.

  Yes, I’d adopt Dinua. Medrit would agree.

  But it wouldn’t come to that. Beviin flew back along the route he’d taken, checking his long-range scans for fast-moving objects or vehicles exiting hyperspace.

  Gai bal manda: like all the Mandalorian ceremonies, it was short and to the point. Nobody had the time, patience, or credits to waste on lavish events. Get the business over, and hope still to be alive for a few bottles of narcolethe or net’ra gal later …

  The proximity sensor blipped, and Beviin switched his attention from his HUD to the transparent canopy of the Gladiator.

  He always preferred visual confirmation. For a moment he thought the scan was acting up, because the unknown ship—and it had to be a ship, given the speed at which it was moving—was showing a profile more like an asteroid, a mass of mineral readings, and it was big, well over a thousand meters and maybe two. But this w
asn’t an asteroid belt. Shab, the Glad’s instruments needed calibrating again. Some of his newly earned credits would already be hemorrhaging from his pocket.

  The ship appeared to be aft of him, and he didn’t trust the scan to keep him clear of trouble. Banking to starboard with a quick burn, he came about in a wide arc to get a visual on whatever was on his tail.

  And there was a large object in range. That was about the best he could manage.

  What he saw made no sense. It glittered in places where the harsh white light of the star caught it and … no, it was an asteroid after all. The shape was more regular and oval than the usual shattered chunks, and it wasn’t rotating and tumbling like the big ones usually did, but it—

  Oh. No, that’s not happening.

  In that way of glimpsing things out of context, Beviin had a split second of total illogical illusion: his brain told him explosion, debris, brace for impact. He almost ducked before he realized the massive lump of rock was following a course with all the purpose of a warship. Almost without thinking, he flicked his visor to maximum magnification and saw a craggy gray rock with unusually regular bands of black glossy material like some igneous mineral or tektite. Trailing from its bows, almost like the barbels of an ice-river vaban, were brilliant scarlet and blue branch-like growths, some with tapered purple sac-like pods attached to them.

  The pods seemed about the size of an X-wing.

  Beviin flicked open the comlink in his helmet. “Mand’alor,” he said. “Patch into my video circuit, will you?”

  “I can see it fine from here.” Boba Fett’s voice was perfectly calm. “In fact, I can see more of them …”

  “That’s navigating.” It was Briika’s voice on the comlink now. All their helmets and systems linked to share data. “That’s a fleet.”

  “We’ve seen fleets before.”

  “Not like that one, Mand’alor.”

  “We don’t know if it’s hostile or just freight passing through …” Beviin, doing what he’d been drilled to do without question or argument all his life, moved into formation with the other fighters to flank Slave I. “But it isn’t in my Mandos’ Big Book of Friendly Warships, so let’s not get caught with our kut’ike around our ankles, shall we?”