Invincible (26 page)

For a moment, the two men stood looking at each other, Fett waiting for Jaina’s parents to leave, her father letting him know that wasn’t going to happen. Outside the bay, Jaina glimpsed another Mandalorian in full armor standing behind C-3PO. She couldn’t see him well enough to identify, but judging by his size and the way he was keeping an eye on Fett’s back, she guessed it was Fett’s de facto second in command, Beviin.

It was Leia who finally broke the standoff. “We’re not going anywhere,
Mand’alor.
” Unlike Han, she was careful to address Fett by his title. “If you’ve got something to ask, go ahead. Otherwise, Han is right—Jaina needs to rest.”

Fett’s gaze shifted to Leia, a narglatch sizing up a mother shenbit. He gave a barely perceptible nod, then turned to Jaina.

“I know Mirta and her team connected with you at the FlakBlaster emplacement,” he said. “What I don’t know is how they did.”

Jaina closed her eyes.
Those
memories—the memories of what had happened to Mirta and the first couple of Mandalorians—were all too clear.

“They only got a handful of Moffs—maybe half a dozen,” she said. “I don’t know which ones, because the Moffs weren’t my target—and the last part of the battle is still pretty hazy for me.”

“How hazy?” Fett demanded.

Jaina opened her eyes and saw him studying the wound on her forehead, no doubt hoping that she had missed the part of the battle where his commandos finished off the rest of the Moffs and escaped.

“Not
that
hazy.” She concentrated for a moment, trying to recall what she had seen in those last few minutes of fighting. “Your team had trouble getting through the bodyguards, then Caedus arrived.”

“And?”

“And he rescued the rest of the Moffs,” Jaina said. “I don’t think you should have sent in the team after their
Tra’kads
got hit. All you did was strengthen Caedus’s hand.”

Fett’s eyes flashed with irritation. “Caedus wasn’t supposed to
have
a hand,” he said. “You were supposed to take him out.”

Jaina resisted the urge to tell him that it was Mirta who had spoiled the plan. There was no point in adding to the pain he was already feeling—and it might even be dangerous.

Her father, unfortunately, lacked Jaina’s self-restraint. “You can’t blame Jaina for that,” he said. “The way I heard it, she would have had him if Mandalorians could follow orders.”

Fett’s eyes flashed. “Mandalorians don’t follow
Jedi
orders,” he said, speaking through clenched teeth. “We know how they treated the clones.”

“Probably because they had a sense of who the clones were
really
serving,” Leia countered. “Blind obedience deserves even less respect than mercenary—”

“I think we’ve all said enough about that,” Jaina interrupted. She shot a warning glance first at her parents, then at Fett. “Unless you three are
trying
to start another war?”

All three fell silent and stared at one another.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Jaina said. “Mirta chose her moment without knowing where Caedus was—I remember that pretty clearly—but I doubt we were
ever
going to know where he was. Caedus was one step ahead of us all the way.”

Fett tore his gaze away from Leia, and turned to Jaina. “Thanks,” he said. “What about Mirta?”

Jaina’s stomach grew hollow, and she was suddenly unsure whether he was asking how she died or whether she had survived. Unfortunately, the answer was the same either way.

“She was the first to go,” Jaina said. She saw the blood drain from Fett’s face, but there was no hint of surprise. He might not have heard about Mirta’s fate, but he
had
known. “I’m sorry, Boba.”

Fett dipped his head absentmindedly, then asked, “You’re sure?”

Jaina nodded. “It happened a long time before this—” she gestured at the split above her eye. “So I’ve got a pretty clear memory of it. Caedus threw her into a high corner, and she came down on her head.”

“Not what I meant, Jedi,” Fett said. “You’re sure she was dead? Not moving?”

“I don’t…let me think.” Jaina closed her eyes, trying to recall if there had been time to stretch her Force awareness toward Mirta, if there had even been time to glance in that direction. She saw nothing; she had no memories of Mirta after that at all. “I don’t remember—I don’t even know if there was time to look.”

“So you don’t
know
that she’s dead, do you?” Fett asked. There was as much hope as blame in his voice. “For all you know, she could be alive. You left without checking.”

Jaina considered the accusation, recalling how frenzied the battle had been—and began to feel very guilty.

“I probably
did,
” she admitted. “But I don’t want to give you false hope. It was a long fall, and I know Mirta. If she’d been able to move, she would have been fighting.”

“Of course. She’s a Mandalorian.” What Fett left unsaid—but Jaina knew he was thinking—was that Mandalorians didn’t abandon fallen comrades, wounded
or
dead. “But she wouldn’t have been moving if she was just—”

“Mirta wasn’t our concern.” The pronouncement came from the entrance to the convalescence bay, where Luke had just arrived in his customary dark robe. He stepped inside and went to stand face-to-face with Fett. “You have no right to come here and blame Jaina for anything. You inserted yourselves into our mission thinking we would serve as your shields.”

“And you made sure we paid the price.” There was more pain in Fett’s voice than Jaina would have thought him capable of showing. She suddenly understood why he had
really
come here—and it had less to do with discovering the truth than with finding someone to blame for it. He flicked a thumb in her direction, then continued, “She might have got him if you had stuck to your plan, Jedi.”

“Or if you had offered to work
with
us instead of trying to use us,” Luke replied calmly. “And the first option, by the way, is still open.”

“Not for us,” Fett shot back. He turned to Jaina. “Thanks for the briefing, Jedi.”

Fett spoke in a tone that suggested he really meant
thanks for nothing,
and Jaina decided that not only could she not abide serving as his scapegoat any longer—but it might be dangerous to do so. As he turned to go, she stretched a hand toward him.

“Wait.”

Fett stopped and turned his head toward her without pivoting his body. “You remember something else, Jedi?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Jaina said. “I don’t know what happened to Mirta, and I’m sorry for that. But you’re the one who chose to go after the Moffs under Caedus’s nose.”

“Mandalore has a treaty to honor,” Fett said simply. “I had to do something.”

“There were a lot of things you could have done,” Jaina retorted. “But you
wanted
Caedus to know you were behind all this, and now you’ve dragged Mandalore into the middle of the war in a big way. And for what? Your personal vendetta.”

Fett’s eyes narrowed. “You sure this is any of your business?”

“You made it my business when you sent Mirta to Nickel One,” Jaina said. “She wasn’t there because of what
I
wanted. Did you really think that baiting Caedus wouldn’t cost you? That he wouldn’t tear off a piece of you—and that he’s not going to
keep
tearing off pieces?”

“I
thought
I had trained someone to take him down,” Fett retorted.

“And I will,” Jaina said. “But this is war, not an assassination, and in a war,
everybody
takes casualties.”

Fett studied her for a moment, the anger in his eyes slowly turning to enigma. When she did not continue, he finally asked, “You done, Jedi?”

Jaina nodded. “Pretty much.” She did not bother wondering whether she had gotten through to him. Boba Fett had always been a creature of bitterness and revenge, and she supposed he was too old to change now. “Shoot straight and run fast, Boba.”

Fett actually smiled. “Thanks for the advice, Jedi,” he said. “Die proud.”

He stepped around Luke and left the convalescence bay, leaving both of Jaina’s parents scowling after his back.

“Don’t blast him, guys,” she said, chuckling. “That’s Mando for ‘good luck.’”

Her father’s frown only deepened. “Weird language,” he said, looking back toward her. “You don’t really expect him to take any of that advice, do you?”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t matter if he did,” Luke said. “What’s left of the Fifth Fleet is already on its way to bombard Mandalore.”

Han whistled. “That’s going to be a mess.”

“A big mess,” Luke agreed. “But it’s going to keep the Mandalorian
Bes’uliike
tied up defending their home planet—when they
could
be out here tipping the balance of power back out of Caedus’s favor.”

Leia cocked a brow. “
Back
out of his favor?” she asked. “Does that mean you’ve seen something decisive?”

Luke nodded. “Indeed I have.” He smiled and produced a piece of flimsiplast from inside his robe. “According to Hapan Intelligence, Bwua’tu is on his way to take over operations in the Roche system.”

Jaina did not like the implications of that. As Caedus’s most competent and trusted admiral, Bwua’tu was usually placed in charge of war theaters where her brother
wasn’t.

“So Caedus is going back to Coruscant?” she asked. Jaina did not like
that
possibility at all; without Shevu, it would be nearly impossible to pinpoint an opportunity when they stood a reasonable chance of actually getting to Caedus. “That’s going to complicate things.”

“Actually, it won’t,” Luke said. “I don’t think Caedus
will
be returning to Coruscant.”

Han cocked his brow. “You think it’s a trick?”

“Not the way you’re thinking,” Luke said. “But I have a feeling that finding Caedus won’t be a problem.”

Leia’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve seen something, haven’t you?” She pointed at the intelligence report in his hand. “And I’m not talking about something on a piece of flimsiplast.”

“No, it’s not an intelligence report.” Luke stepped to Jaina’s bed, his eyes fixed on the crimson stains running across her throat. “It’s a lot more certain than that.”

What does an Imperial Star Destroyer wear to a formal occasion? A bow TIE!

—Jacen Solo, age 14

I
N A GALAXY WHIRLING MADLY OUT OF CONTROL, WHERE THE WAR
erupted in another system every day and whole cities could be blasted away by simple fiat of the GA Chief of State, nobody much cared when a young human walked into the seedy cantina of the Nova Station refueling depot and took a seat at the bar. The other patrons—a motley assortment of humans and nonhumans—simply looked over long enough to see that he appeared harmless. The red-skinned Twi’lek bartender paid him even less attention; he just glanced up from the newsflimsi he had been reading, then turned his attention back to his reading.

So Ben did not understand why he had that prickly feeling all over…the feeling that almost always meant he was being watched. Before beginning his journey back to the secret Jedi base on Shedu Maad, he had taken all the proper precautions to ensure that he wasn’t being followed. He had Force-zapped the locator chip under his shoulder blade even before leaving the GAG prison, then traveled around Coruscant changing transportation at random and altering his appearance multiple times. He had even taken Tahiri’s lightsaber apart and inspected it for tracking devices, then slipped into a hospital and used the Force to convince a friendly technician to run him through an electromagnetic pulser to disable any bugs he
hadn’t
found. And still, he kept having these prickly feelings, as though someone had actually followed him to Nova Station—and might be capable of following him all the way back to the secret Jedi base on Shedu Maad.

When Ben did not take the hint and leave, the bartender reluctantly tore himself away from the newsflimsi and came over. He tossed a plastoid coaster on the grimy counter—it stuck where it landed—then curled a lip, showing the sharp yellow teeth on one side of his mouth.

“What will it be, my friend?” he asked.

“A Sapphire Fogblaster—spun, not mixed,” Ben said, naming the drink his instructions had specified to order. “And a menu—I’m starved.”

“The menu is there.” The Twi’lek pointed at a display above the dispenser island behind the bar. The sole entry read
NELAB STEW
: 10
CREDITS
. “A
spun
Fogblaster is eight credits.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “What’s nelab stew?”

“You don’t want to know—especially if you’re going to eat it. Me, I’d rather stay hungry.” The Twi’lek remained in front of Ben, studying him with open suspicion. “You even have the credits for the Fogblaster?”

Ben started to object to the rudeness, then realized it was probably a fair question. He had worn his stolen GAG armor only long enough to intimidate a spaceport cargo manager into quietly shipping Shevu’s body to Shula on Vaklin as a “service to the Guard.” After that, he had begun a series of Force-influenced clothing trades that had inevitably resulted in a long chain of downgrades. At present, he was drowning in an oversized tunic-and-tabard combination that a portly pedway chronovendor had hesitantly exchanged for a shimmer-silk cloak, which Ben had obtained an hour earlier from a spaceport juggler. The clothes had been barely presentable when they were acquired, and now they were rumpled, dirty, and foul smelling.