"Good time to buy, too." The barman slid a gla.s.s bowl of some unidentifiable snack toward him. "Now that AruMed's expanding, the prices will go crazy."

Fett sipped the ale, almost totally distracted by the simple freedom of having a drink in public. He tried the snacks, too, which turned out to be salt-sweet and crunchy, like fried nuts. "Shares are doing well."

"It's those scientists they poached from SanTech. They say it's going to mean a big share of the gene therapy market."

SanTech. Fierfek. I guessed wrong. "Not Kaminoans, then?"

The bartender laughed. A man farther along the bar turned to look at him. "Ever seen one?"

Steady. "Yes. Knew one very well indeed."

The silence deepened. There was quiet, and then there was the silence of people taking serious notice, and the two did not sound the same.

"Customer here the other day said one had turned up at Arkanian Micro, but I think he was having a laugh," said the barman.

Arkanian Micro: well, if you deal in cloning, that's one more place to head. It was a knife-edge point in the conversation. Fett's stomach churned, and that rarely happened.

Wrong planet. But maybe the right track.

"I knew a pathologist at Arkanian Micro," said a man sitting a little farther along the bar. "She said some interesting things about Kaminoans."

Ah, you're testing me. Do I work in the industry? Am I bluffing to get insider information? "What, that they'd never go outside in the sunlight? That they're obsessed with perfection?"

The man considered him carefully. "That they're gray with long necks and incredibly arrogant once you get past the polite exterior."

Well, that confirms you've met one, or your friend has. Thanks. Fett busied himself with his ale. Not many people knew that much about Kaminoans; over the centuries, only a handful of people had even known they existed, let alone seen them or had enough contact with them to describe their outlook on the non-Kaminoan world. But industry insiders here knew, all right. "Did Micro give them a nice dark hole to live in?"

"It was an issue," said the man, and looked satisfied.

So Kaminoans had probably defected to Arkanian Micro on Vohai. The intelligence was flimsy, but given that there was normally no Intel at all on Kaminoans, it had a great deal more credibility.

Fett had already worked out his route to the Outer Rim by the time he drained his ale, put his credits on the counter, and stood up to leave.

"I like this neighborhood," he said.

On the way back to Slave I, he did what he had done so many times: he used his datapad to carry out an automated purchase of an a.s.set. He bought half a dozen homes in Upper Parkway and transferred them to one of his holding companies; they'd double in value inside the year. It was as near as he ever came to indulgence, but he would never live in any of them. They were an investment.

He never gambled. He speculated.

What are you investing for? Why did you ever invest? When did you stop and think what you were going to do with it all?

He hadn't. He was in it to succeed, to show how good he was. And the only person who would have cared how well he did, what a clever boy he'd been, was long dead.

Fett flexed his fingers discreetly as he sat in the back of the taxi, feeling the joints and tendons burn. The pain was still occasional rather than ever-present, but he knew it would get worse as his condition deteriorated. A few a.n.a.lgesics, when pain finally impaired his efficiency, would keep him going. No, he wasn't dead yet.

But if Ko Sai had been one of the Kaminoans-he noted that plural-who fled to Arkanian Micro, then her research on aging hadn't gone with her. The company would have exploited it to the full by now. Anti-aging was always the preoccupation of affluent civilizations.

It earned big credits.

Maybe the talk in the bar was just rumor. No, enough hard detail had been revealed, and industry gossip tended to have a basis in reality.

But maybe Ko Sai had never managed to halt or reverse the aging process.

Then you're really dead, Fett. So shape up.

As soon as he was clear of the taxi he stripped off the robe and tunic, bundled it in the holdall, and put his helmet back on with genuine relief. It wasn't just a barrier against a world where he didn't truly belong: it was a piece of a kit, a weapon in its own right.

He relaxed as the familiar welter of text and icons cascaded down the margin of the HUD and told him all was well with Slave I. He checked the various security cams remotely, staring through images of empty bays and secure hatchways at the permacrete strip in front of him. Even before Slave I came into view in one of the bays, he settled on an image of Mirta Gev. Still locked in the prisoner bay, she lay on the deck with her legs hooked over a bulkhead rail, fingers meshed behind her head, performing sit-ups.

He hadn't come across women like her before. He hadn't come across many men like her, either. Whatever was driving her, she was serious about it. Discipline was a fine quality.

He came perilously close to liking her again.

Fool. She's ballast.

He opened Slave I's forward hatch via his HUD link at thirty meters from the ship, climbed into the c.o.c.kpit, and flicked open the internal comm system.

"Change of plan," he said. "We're going to Parmel sector, Outer Rim."

He waited for sounds of protest. Nothing. He checked the cam again to make sure Mirta was still there.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yes." She sounded a little out of breath and stood looking into the cam's lens. "You'll pay me sooner or later. I'm young. I've got time to wait."

She had no idea how pointed that observation truly was. Fett wondered if she knew he was ill, but there was no way she could know he was dying.

"Vohai," he said, and wondered why he volunteered the destination. She was making him drop his guard. n.o.body managed that. He made a conscious effort to be himself again, untouched by anything beyond his own needs. "Sit up front where I can keep an eye on you."

He released the security locks on the aft compartments and fired up Slave I's sublight drives. Mirta belted herself into the copilot's seat just as the ship lifted, the acceleration flattening her like a punch.

Fett paused. "I don't bother with the g-force dampers on takeoff."

Why did I say that? He'd developed a rhythm of bare-bones conversation over the years. His pa.s.sengers were never volunteers. n.o.body wanted him to catch up with them. This was how it went: they whined, and he slapped them down, with a blunt word or sometimes a blunt object.

Mirta didn't whine. He still felt the compulsion to slap down.

She stared ahead from the viewscreen. "I didn't pay for a ticket so I'm not complaining."

There was no answer to that. Fett took Slave I out on manual to check that he could still pilot without computer a.s.sistance. So far, so good. The illness was still just pain, not yet infirmity. Roonadan dwindled beneath them into a rusty red coin, and the viewport filled with star-specked void as Slave I cleared the planet. Then he took the risk of losing his main psychological aid to remaining aloof, and eased off his helmet. He expected Mirta to react; but she just glanced at him and then looked away again, apparently more interested in the starfield ahead.

"You're a clone, aren't you?" said Mirta at last.

She gets right to the point. "Got a problem with that?"

"No. I met a clone once."

"So did Ailyn. She killed him."

"Only because she thought he was you."

I don't want to chat. He didn't answer.

Mirta persisted. "But this clone said he'd fought at Geonosis."

"Couldn't have."

"Why?"

"Those clones were designed to age fast." Fett did a quick mental calculation, doubling the years. "He'd be a decrepit hundred-forty-year-old now."

"He was alive all right."

The clone army had been designed to mature in ten standard years, and then they carried on aging at twice or more the rate of ordinary men. Fett remembered feeling sorry for them as a kid, but his father had told him to be proud because they were perfect warriors.

Sometimes he remembered that they were also his brothers. Whenever he met a stormtrooper going about Vader's business, he'd always wondered whether some remnant of his father's template-of himself-was behind that white visor. But he never asked.

"When did you meet him?" Fett asked carefully.

"Last year. I got in his way on a job."

"Bounty hunting?" Where? Don't rush her.

"Yes."

"A one-hundred-forty-year-old clone?"

Mirta studied his face for a moment, impa.s.sive. "He looked a lot like you, except for the scars."

"He'd be too old to even walk."

"Oh, he could walk all right. And handle a weapon. Big scary guy with a custom Verpine rifle and this long, thin, three-sided knife."

No clone from the Grand Army of the Republic could have survived, let alone have left the service. Their whole life was fighting: how could they have coped on their own? But clones were men, and they had been scattered across the galaxy in the war, so it was inevitable that some had fathered children. This had to be one of them. He was almost rea.s.sured to know that the clone bloodline hadn't been erased completely, but he wasn't sure why.

"You sure?"

"Yeah. He said his clan name was Skirata."

Skirata.

Fett jerked his head around and knew instantly that he'd displayed too much interest. But he knew that name. Back on Kamino in the years before the war with the Separatists started, his father had had a friend called Skirata: a short, tough, fanatical man who trained clone commandos and-according to his father-was the dirtiest fighter he'd ever known. He seemed to like that about him.

"What else did he say?"

"That he and some of his brothers left the army after Palpatine came to power. He wasn't very talkative. You're definitely related."

That made Fett pay much closer attention.

No clone from the Kamino labs could have survived this long-except unaltered ones, like him.

Or . . . one whose accelerated aging process had been halted. Only Ko Sai knew enough to be able to do that.

"I'm interested," he said.

"Why?"

He'd rarely needed to lie, but he lied now. "They'd be my brothers too, wouldn't they?"

And then he wasn't sure how much of that was actually untrue. He had always been alone, just the way he liked it, and now he was suddenly curious about not being that way.

Mirta leaned back in the seat and looked up at the deck-head. The heart-of-fire was strung around her neck, which struck him as an odd thing for a bounty hunter to do with an object she'd retrieved. She was just a young girl, and girls liked baubles, but she didn't seem the type to go in for jewelry.

"He looked like you, more or less," she said at last. She tugged at the necklace like worry beads. "He had full Mando armor. Light gray. And these pale gray leather gloves with an unusual grain." She held both hands out above her lap, palms down, fingers spread, as if she was imagining those gloves on her own hands. "Really immaculate gloves."

Fett thought gray and an image of Taun We's long silver-gray neck and neat, yellow-eyed head dominated his field of view, as vivid as his helmet's display, right there in front of him and yet somehow not there.

If Mirta wasn't spinning him a line, then someone had managed to get hold of Ko Sai's data. And they'd made use of it.

But maybe she knew more than he gave her credit for. His father had taught him to watch out for traps. This was so close to what he wanted to hear that it triggered every suspicious nerve in his body, which was all of them.

If those clones survived, why haven't I heard about them before? If this kid's trying to set me up for something, she's got a lot to learn.

Even Ailyn had tried to kill him once. He glanced sideways at Mirta.

"Fierfek, you look just like him when you do that." She looked rattled. "It's the way you tilted your head."

Whoever the man with the gray gloves was, he seemed to have made an impression, or else she was an expert actress. She had a tight grip on the heart-of-fire as if to protect it.

Fett decided to make sure she was secured in the aft section when he needed to sleep. She still seemed to think that the goods she had to sell was Ailyn's location; maybe she didn't realize that she now had two things he wanted, and that was information on both his dead wife and-impossible, but he couldn't ignore it-his living brothers.

If she had known, she'd have asked him to pay for it.

But Mirta had the necklace. It was somehow all he could recall of Sintas Vel at that moment.

He suddenly missed her, and he knew he had no right to.

SENATE LOBBY 513, SENATE BUILDING. CORUSCANT: 0835 HOURS.

Admiral Pellaeon resigned as Supreme Commander of the Galactic Alliance Defense Force at 0800, a little too late for the main morning holonews bulletins, but early enough to interrupt drive-time programming for a few moments. He had objected strenuously-in private-to the powers granted to the Galactic Alliance Guard, but said nothing publicly.

He was an old man. n.o.body outside Omas's cabinet-and presumably the military-thought it unusual that he should let a younger officer take his place.

Jacen watched the news on the chamber's holoscreen, sound muted.

While he wasn't surprised that Pellaeon had finally gone, he still wasn't prepared for the speed at which events were moving. He wondered if Lumiya had influenced matters somehow.

But she denied it. She sat beside him in the deserted lobby chamber, doc.u.ment case on her lap, face invisible under that dark red cowl and veil. The chamber was normally full of lobbyists and media seeking audience with Senators, but it was too early for the majority of the power brokers to be about their business. The Jedi council, though, was meeting Niathal in the Supreme Commander's suite: and it was interesting that she had not gone to see them, but that they had come to her.