NEW JEDI ORDER: BOBA FETT: A PRACTICAL MAN

by Karen Traviss

  “For once, I need a live Jedi,” Fett interrupted. “You’ll do. Cut the speech and listen up.”

  “Shoot me. You know what the Vong will do to me.”

  “I said shut up.” Fett squatted over him. “We gave you a heads-up on this attack and Vong technology but your people ignored it. I’m offering again. Set up a secure message system and we’ll supply the intel until our luck runs out.”

  Cham, still administering first aid, rammed a one-shot of painkiller into the man’s exposed neck. Fett had to hand it to the Jedi. He didn’t even flinch.

  “You’re slipping, Fett,” he said hoarsely. “Feeding us misinformation is amateurish.”

  “I’m risking the life of every Mandalorian to get you this, barve-face.” Fett was so exasperated that he pulled open the Jedi’s jacket and stuffed the latest data chip into his belt. “Do your magic tricks. See what your precious Force tells you about our intentions. Now take it and run. We’ll stall the Vong, but get it back to your intel people and don’t blow our cover. We’re traitors, okay? As long as we’re traitors, we can get intel. Keep your source secret.”

  The Jedi struggled to prop himself up on his elbow. His nose was millimeters from Fett’s visor. Fett still didn’t like Jedi, not even real soldiers like this one. “But you’re crippling us. You’re killing people. Why not just fight?”

  “Because the mindlessly heroic last stand is great for holovids but it’s not how wars work.” Fett hauled the Jedi to his feet. He was a solid man, vividly gray-haired in the way of those who’d once had jet-black curls. Fett pressed the lightsaber into his hand; the hilt seemed dwarfed by it. “The crabs have to believe we’re serious. A few lives against the whole galaxy, including keeping them away from the Mandalore sector. Do the math.”

  The Jedi stared at his weapon. “You finally grew a conscience?”

  “No. I took the job of protecting Mandalore, and a contract is a contract. There’s no future for any of us if the Vong take over.”

  “I never-”

  “No speeches. Move it. We’ll get you past the Vong.”

  Tiroc nudged him. “Crab approaching, Mand’alor. Check your HUD.”

  “I see him. Got a vessel, Jedi?”

  “That’s where I was headed.”

  “Tiroc, see he gets to it and escort him out of the sector.”

  The Jedi stopped dead in the narrow exit from the alley, almost jamming Tiroc in it. He turned his head to Fett.

  “Kubariet,” he said. “I’m a Jedi Knight. Kubariet. Only the one name.” Then Tiroc shoved him in the back and they were gone.

  So far, so good. But it couldn’t last, and it didn’t. In the next breach Beviin came in through the rubble-strewn breach in the wall with exaggerated slowness, a custom Merr-Sonn heavy blaster in one fist and the Yuuzhan Vong subaltern on his heels. The creature pushed past Beviin and one of the claws protracting from his armor caught his shoulder plate, scoring a line in the blue paint.

  It could have ripped Beviin open like a canister. But his armor was forged from beskar, real Mandalorian iron that even Yuuzhan Vong weapons might not penetrate. He reached into his belt and drew his ancient beskad, a short razor-edged saber forged from the same iron as his armor.

  This is going to get ugly fast. There’d be a body, and he’d have to hide it. Fett’s linked icons showed that Cham and the two women had made the same call and started powering their armor-mounted weapons.

  “Where is the Jedi?” the warrior demanded. His head weaved from side to side and his amphistaff writhed along his forearm. “He ran in here. I tracked him here.”

  “Not here, friend.” Briika stepped between him and Dinua. “Want us to go look for him?”

  “What have you done with him? Tell me!”

  The warrior wheeled around and nearly hit Beviin with his claw-spiked arm again. The bounty hunter slid his blaster casually into its holster and clasped the leather-wrapped hilt of the beskad.

  “Careful, now,” he said. “You could have someone’s eye out with that thing.”

  Villips weren’t like comlinks that needed opening and operating. Villips were like being there in person, always on, always watching. The warrior had to be silenced, and fast.

  Fett didn’t even have to give the signal.

  Beviin went for the villip hooked on the warrior’s shoulder and sliced it across its base with a single sweep, sending it flopping to the ground in a spray or fluid. For a split second the warrior just stared, jaws parted-his lipless mouth seemed permanently open- and then the narrow alley plunged into bedlam.

  ‘Trait-”

  It was the last word the warrior said. The living armor shitted before their eyes to protect his neck and head, but Beviin managed to hit him in the jaw with his return swing, and a beskad was a heavy weapon. The blade embedded itself in the warrior’s jaw, leaving him gurgling and thrashing as his amphistaff changed briefly from snake to iron bar. As the warrior dropped to his knees, the amphistaff slipped free and Fett threw himself on it instinctively, punching his glove-mounted vibroblade through it and pinning it to the ground. Its tail thrashed. Suvar rushed over to decapitate it with his own blade.

  It was a couple of seconds that felt like hours. The subaltern was still screaming and writhing as Beviin struggled to pull his saber free. Briika leapt on the warrior between the scythe-like claws to drive her vibroblade deep into him but it skidded off the Vonduun crab armor. She let out a grunt and stabbed again. And still he kept struggling.

  “Shut him up for fierfek’s sake-”

  “Shabla claws. Look out.”

  Beviin let go of the saber and grabbed the warrior’s armored throat with his crushgaunts.

  “Let’s play a game, shabuir.” He squeezed, and the subaltern’s eyes stared. His mouth opened wide. “It’s called beskar beats crab-shell.”

  Crushgaunts had been illegal for centuries. The micronized beskar in them meant they could exert enough pressure to shatter thick bone and maybe more. The shell armor seemed to be putting up a fight, but Beviin-a mild man most of the time, in Fett’s experience-hung on, cursing in completely incomprehensible Mando’a, until there was a sound like cracking ice and the warrior let out a long gurgle. The armor twitched, its claws snapping impotently a couple of times before stopping.

  A second’s silence followed.

  Beviin, slightly breathless, gazed at his gloves with a distracted smile. “We were crazy to ban these.”

  “Remind me to rescind that when I get back,” Fett said.

  It was a good thing that nearby cannon barrage had drowned the screams. Beviin struggled to pull the saber out of the body and finally had to put his boot square on the warrior’s chest to do it.

  “So the armor dies when the soldier does?” Suvar grabbed the dead amphistaff, sliced chunks off the subaltern and his armor, and stuffed the remains into his pouches and pockets until they bulged. “Bio samples, not trophies, okay? We need to get as much information on these . . . things as we can.”

  Beviin reached over and sliced off some scalp complete with wispy black hair. “Trophy. Now let’s go, shall we?”

  It took five Mandos to tackle one Yuuzhan Vong this time. But they’d learned a lot about how to kill them in just that one brief tussle. They’d learn plenty more.

  Briika scrambled to her feet, a little unsteady. The explosions were getting closer. “All we have to do is start up a crushgaunt factory. Easy. I mean ... oh ... “

  She seemed breathless. She looked down at herself, and then sank to her knees again, hands pressed against her chest plate.

  “Buir? Buir!” Dinua grabbed her mother’s shoulders and as her arms dropped the dark blood welling from under the armor plate was suddenly visible. It was pooling between her knees. It was all over the dead subaltern. “She’s been stabbed. The crab armor spike went right through her suit. Get her plates off!”

  “No, that might be holding her together,” Cham said. “Get her back to Slave I, fast.”

  “
She’s bleeding out-”

  Beviin picked her up in his arms with no apparent effort.

  “You promised ...” she said.

  Fett was about to say something brutally pragmatic but he was wrong, and he knew it. “Faster it we both lift her with jet packs.”

  “That’ll take some doing.”

  “Do it. Dinua, burn that body. If the Vong find him they’ll know it wasn’t a lightsaber that sliced him up.”

  Dinua looked close to protest. But she simply nodded and adjusted the flamethrower on her wrist, then looked back at her mother.

  “K’oyacyi, Buir.” Hang in there. Mama.

  It was one thing carrying a wounded comrade between two-Fett couldn’t recall ever doing that, of course-but maneuvering a jet pack in addition was hard. He thought she’d die before they touched down: she kept repeating “You promised ...” ever more weakly, and when they reached Slave I, she was barely conscious.

  Beviin eased off her helmet while Fett activated the emergency med droid that he kept and had never needed to use. The unit, a round-ended cylinder the length of his arm, darted around her like an insect, attaching sensors.

  “Transfusion needed,” it announced. “Hypovolemic shock. Stabilize, tie off blood vessels in-”

  “Transfuse, then, you hut’uun’ said Beviin. Droids had no bedside manner. “I got you, Briika, it’s okay. You’re fine.”

  “You promised,” she said, suddenly very lucid. “Dinua. Gai bal manda.”

  “I did,” he said. He took off his helmet. “I swear. Don’t you worry about that. K’oyacyi. Hang in there.”

  The med droid slipped catheters into Briika’s arm and neck, and Beviin kept looking to the hatch as if willing Dinua to show up. Fett reflected on the variable nature of penetrating wounds, and how unreliable stabbing was as a method of stopping an enemy. Beviin stood by the hatch, blinking rapidly and occasionally shaking his head as if arguing with himself.

  The med droid started bleeping.

  “No pulse,” it said. “Unable to resuscitate.”

  It hadn’t even started the incision. Beviin didn’t say a word; he simply pushed himself away from the hatch to begin cleaning up the blood that was drying in dark patches on Slave I’s scrupulously clean deck. Dinua arrived at a run, boots clattering in the hatchway, a matter of minutes too late.

  “Dinua ...” Beviin always kept his word. He caught her by the arm before she got to the body. “Ni kyr’tayl gai sa’ad.” He glanced briefly at Fett, and the translation was for him, not her. “I know your name as my child.”

  He didn’t have to say that her mother was dead or that he was sorry. The instant adoption told the girl all she needed to know.

  Dinua held her helmet upside down in both hands and gazed into it, eyes fixed and glassy, as if frozen in the act of putting it on. And Fett could suddenly feel hard metal in his own hands: crouched in the shadows, bone-dry red dust stinging his eyes, staring at a silver-and-blue helmet and both utterly destroyed and totally numb at realizing his father was gone forever. He knew better than anyone how she felt, and for a brief moment he experienced a rare connection.

  “It’s okay to cry,” Beviin said quietly. “We all cry sooner or later. I have, that’s for sure.”

  He was talking to Dinua, but it still made Fett start. She sniffed loudly and flipped the helmet upright between spread fingers.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “That’s my girl.”

  There were no orphans in Mandalorian society- not for long, anyway.

  Except me. Fett was fine with that. Nobody could ever replace his father. It was better that they didn’t try.

  Nom Anor: observations.

  The Mandalorians are just like any other infidel, it seems. They are as weak and corrupt; they traded their entire galaxy for a few years of immunity for their wretched little sector. In a way, I’m . .. disappointed. I had higher hopes of them.

  A few years? Perhaps less than that. Perhaps a few months.

  I had expected them to be better warriors, I admit. Their reputation for savagery has been exaggerated from what I’ve seen of them in this war. But they still remain very useful for intelligence gathering and sabotage, and I shall keep them very much undercover even from our own warriors. They think their culture is eternal, but they’ll be erased when I have no further use for them. The more I look at them, the more weakness I see.

  Armor. Iron armor. Lifeless shells.

  How... weak.

  Slave I: crossing Mandalore sector, two standard weeks later.

  Fett was impressed by the ability of the average Mando to keep his mouth shut and close ranks even without being asked.

  The regular overnight intelligence summary transmitted to Slave I recorded two contacts between Mandalorian vessels and the New Republic, where noncombatant Mandos were treated as hostiles just as Fett needed them to be. Both pilots obliged in keeping up appearances by returning fire and in one case destroying the New Republic fighter.

  “Carry on hating us,” Fett said aloud. “Now we’ll keep the intel we get and use it ourselves.”

  Mandalorian engineers were already working on developing enhanced weapons specifically for use against the Yuuzhan Vong. Word had spread within the Mando community about the real nature of the deal with the invaders, but that was as far as it got. Nobody else’s business, of course: outsiders wouldn’t understand anyway. Aruetiise. He saw no reason to learn the language, but the odd word was useful.

  The invaders continued their advance across the galaxy, albeit more slowly than he expected. If- when-they turned on the Mandalore sector, he’d be ready for them.

  Until the next call, or the next opportunity to gather information, he opted to remain the Boba Fett that everyone expected him to be, more bounty hunter than Mandalore, because life still went on where the Yuuzhan Vong hadn’t yet reached.

  Fools. Life won’t be going on much longer.

  Some of the Mandalorian clans told him they planned to dig in and resist the Yuuzhan Vong, and some planned to do something called ba’slan sbev’la, which Beviin translated as “strategic disappearance.” It was hard to wipe out a people who could vanish for years and then show up again as an avenging army, all without the guiding hand of a conventional government.

  Yes, they’ll show up again. Don’t doubt it.

  Fett respected their ability to sort out their own affairs. He was contemplating the nature of identity, with one eye on the movement of share prices displayed on the console, when Slave I picked up a vessel on an intercept course.

  It was a New Republic X-wing, just like old times. For once, this one wasn’t in his database, like every other individual ship catalogued by thermal signature, electromagnetic profile, and other telltale characteristics that helped him identify it. It was genuinely unknown. He didn’t have its pilot on his list.

  And it meant business, judging by the speed it was approaching. He monitored Slave I’s automatic defense system and decelerated to watch its reaction on the scan. When it came within a thousand kilometers, it slowed and Slave I’s comm beeped for attention, displaying the source and router.

  Ah. The message was coming via one of the nodes he’d listed on the intelligence datachip. Fett opened the link.

  “Target practice, or do you want to talk?” he asked.

  The voice didn’t surprise him. He’d never admit that it relieved him, though.

  “It’s Kubariet,” said the pilot. “I’d never fire on an ally.”

  “Think of yourself as my enemy’s enemy.”

  “Close enough for me. Rendezvous point?”

  “Go about and follow me into Vorpa’ya.”

  “Concord Dawn’s closer.”

  “I can’t return there. And you don’t need to know why.”

  “That’s okay, Fett, because I already do. I work with New Republic Intelligence.”

  “And you still found your way here. Impressive.” The Jedi didn’t laugh; they never did. But he followed
Fett.

  Vorpa’ya was a dump. There was no other accurate description. Nerf farming and had land management had left it as a Tatooine waiting to happen. The two vessels landed at a careful distance on an overgrazed plain that threw up clouds of gritty dust, and Fett waited for Kubariet to open his canopy and jump out. When he did, he wasn’t in Jedi robes but a regular pilot’s flight suit.

  “It’s a deal,” said Kubariet.

  Fett couldn’t recall any Jedi who talked like that. “About time.”

  “It was useful information. I’m sorry we didn’t crack on to that right away.”

  “Fine.”

  “So, what’s your fee?”

  “I don’t want your credits. Just kill more Vong.”

  Kubariet looked studiously blank. “My apologies. But now we can at least keep the fleet off your back and put them in the picture.”

  “No.”

  “But-”

  “Every time we meet the New Republic, we’ll remind them we fight for the Vong. It has to be that way for this game to work.”

  “But you’re fighting two wars at once. Fighting for the New Republic and defending yourself against us, too.”

  “We’ll manage okay.”

  “Too proud to admit you’re our ally?”

  “No, wary of leaks in your organization that might blow our cover. Nom Anor’s been right here for eighteen years and we never spotted him.” Fett decided he could do business with this Jedi at least. “And we’re not on your side. We’re on our side. The longer the Vong think I’m their pal, the more time I buy for Mandalore.”

  “They’ll come for you in the end.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then you’ll have to show your hand.”

  “I know that, too, and if and when that happens, we’ll show them what Mandos can really do. It’ll be a nice surprise for them. They’ll hardly recognize us.”

  The _we_ slipped out. For a moment Fett wondered about all the times he used I and the very few occasions when he said we, and accepted that he now felt a communal sense of responsibility for Mandalore and whoever passed for Mandalorian.

  “Can I ask you to consider something, Fett?”