"Looks like she got it."

Habuur said nothing and remained apparently relaxed in the durasteel seat even though the muscles in her jaw had started to twitch. Shevu got up and beckoned Ben to follow him outside.

The captain closed the doors. "Go and get Girdun for me. I want to check out this Mirta Gev again. If she's on her way here, I'd like to welcome her to the capital personally, especially if she's armed like madam in there."

"Are you happy leaving her with Girdun?"

Shevu frowned slightly. "That's a very grown-up question."

"He feels pretty nasty."

"That's a Force judgment, is it?"

"Yes."

"It's spot-on. He's a former New Republic Intelligence officer. He's used to different rules than the ones we had to follow as police." Jacen had cobbled together a very mixed bag of men and women for 967 Commando; Ben found some of them frightening, and he could see the differences in cultures, as Shevu called it, among those from the Intelligence Service, the police, and the military. "But he wouldn't dare cross me on this."

"Okay." Shevu was very much in command, even if the two men had the same rank. "Right away."

Shevu went back into the interrogation room, and Ben went in search of Captain Girdun, trying to walk briskly and not break into a run. He found the man in the barracks'

gymnasium. The 967, being newly formed, didn't have a proper headquarters yet and had taken over a Fleet Reserve training center.

Girdun, who never looked at ease in his black uniform, stood talking to a couple of sergeants. Somehow it took Ben a few seconds to see the ranks of people behind him, sitting cross-legged on the floor with their hands on top of their heads, fingers meshed.

Some of them looked like the kind of people Ben would avoid at all costs, and some looked pretty ordinary. Most were male.

"Latest haul," said the sergeant. "Nice tip-off, kid."

Ben still scanned the gymnasium-silent except for the heavy sense of people breathing nervously-in the way of someone who felt he ought to recognize one of the prisoners.

He did.

His gaze jerked to a halt on a blond boy a few years older than he was. Barit Saiy sat in the ranks of Corellians arrested during the night, staring at Ben with an expression of utter loathing.

"Yeah, great tip," said Gurdin, distracted. "What did you want me for?"

Ben knew at that moment that he would never be a child again. He wished more than anything that he could.

Chapter Fourteen.

Ke barjurir gar'ade, jagyc'ade kot'la a dalyc'ade kotla'shya.

Train your sons to be strong but your daughters to be stronger.

-Mandalorian saying ZERRIA'S BAR, DRALL, CORELLIAN SYSTEM.

"Mand'alor!" said a voice Fett didn't recognize. "Gal'gala?"

The soldier took off his Mandalorian helmet and gave Fett a stiffly formal nod. A baby's handprint in charcoal paint adorned the helmet of his gray-blue armor, a curious foil for the Verpine rifle slung over his left shoulder.

"This is Ram," said Beviin. "Ram Zerimar. He's our star sniper. For those delicate jobs."

Zerimar nodded politely. Fett wanted to ask about the handprint but didn't.

Mirta gave Fett one of her subtly admonishing looks. He was attuned to them now. "And he says he wants to buy you a drink," she said.

"Later." Fett returned Zerimar's nod. Not even my own men see me without the helmet.

"Let's talk first."

There was nothing like half a dozen fully armored Mandalorian warriors to guarantee you a table to yourself in a crowded bar. Beviin introduced them: Zerimar, Briike, Orade, Vevut-and Talgal, the only woman, and one who looked as if she ate Yuuzhan Vong for appetizers. Apart from Beviin, none had fought with him against the Vong and he didn't know them. He studied their faces while they looked suspiciously at Mirta.

"Bounty hunter," said Fett. "Mirta Gev. Mandalorian father."

They thawed instantly. Fett watched their shoulders relax. They all muttered "su'cuy gar"

like a chorus. It was a pretty logical greeting for warriors, apparently: "So you're still alive." Warriors didn't expect much from life and they frequently didn't get it.

"So how do you feel about defending Centerpoint Station?" Fett asked.

There was a disinterested silence. He watched them chew it over for five seconds, and he suspected they'd have spat it out like rotting meat if he hadn't been Mand'alor.

Orade-buzz-cut blond hair, broken nose, a brush of gold beard on the point of his chin-folded his arms on the table and made a fresh sc.r.a.pe in the polished surface. "What do you think?"

"I think Sal-Solo is a self-serving s.a.d.i.s.tic liar, but then most of my customers are. He's also going to lose, and losers can't pay." Actually, I can't be bothered. I've got bigger things on my plate. "But I'll hear him out. How do you feel about it?"

"Unenthusiastic," said Vevut. Another stranger: he had long, black, woolly braids bound with gold rings, and the dark skin of his left cheek was scored by an impressive scar. He drained his ale and clicked his fingers at a nearby droid. "Maybe we wait and see before we commit ourselves."

"If you really thought it was worth it, you'd get the whole one hundred behind you, Mand'alor," said Beviin. "But I'm with Vevut. Wait and see. Things have changed since the Vong invasion."

Vevut turned in his seat, armor creaking, to look meaningfully at the service droid. It lurched toward him. "Yeah, we're not so desperate for work. Farms keep us busy enough."

"Sir!" said a droid's voice. "Sorry to keep you."

"About time. I'd like another ale."

The droid pirouetted, reflections of the bar's garish lighting bouncing off its polished dome, and tilted as if bowing.

"I am Forre Musa, an artist droid, dedicated to your entertainment," said the droid.

"I'd rather have another ale," said Vevut, voice low. Mirta's eyes kept darting toward the doors. Fett's peripheral vision never lost sight of her hands. "But what kind of entertainment?"

"Oh, it's of the highest intellectual quality, sir," Forre Musa said. "I can read you important works of political allegory, comments on current affairs with a unique perspective, great literature--all my own work, of course-and sagas. What's it to be?"

"We'd rather hear some jokes," said Mirta.

"I don't do jokes. I am a serious artist."

Mirta raised her blaster. "Shame," she said, and fried his speech circuit with one clean, point-blank shot. "We could do with a laugh."

The bar hung on one silent second as the fizz of shorting circuitry cut through the buzz of conversation. Then everyone went on drinking. Vevut and the others roared with laughter. Mirta appeared to have pa.s.sed their test of destructive humor.

Even the Dabi bartender seemed pleased. He rearranged the gla.s.ses and polished one thoughtfully while his other pair of arms rummaged in a drawer and pulled out an insurance claim flimsi.

"I'm glad you did that," he said, scribbling happily on the form while also working up a good shine on the gla.s.s. "He was killing trade here. The droid company wouldn't give me a refund."

"Glad to help the local economy," said Mirta.

"Free ale all around."

"I like her," Vevut said.

"Then teach her to play Cheg," said Fett. He indicated the Cheg table in the center of the bar. "I want to talk to Beviin."

Cheg was a remarkably noisy, violent pursuit for a tabletop game. Fett watched for a few moments as Mirta caught on to the rules rather too fast, whacking the small puck across the tabletop with her knuckles as she shoulder-charged Orade for possession of it.

"It's okay, I told them to stay off the subject of Ailyn's bounty in front of her," said Beviin. "So how did you pick up a stray? Never known you to do that."

"She offered to lead me to Ailyn because she's done a job for her."

"You can find Ailyn easily enough on your own. Solo's been seen on Corellia. All you have to do is wait."

"The kid's got my wife's necklace. I want to find out how." Fett wondered whether now was the time to come clean with Beviin about his illness, but he decided yet again that it could wait. "And some other personal stuff I'm interested in."

"You like that kid."

"I ought to s.p.a.ce her. She spent the flight here beating me up for being a rotten Mandalore."

"So she's not blind."

"You got a problem with the way I do things?"

"Yeah, and so have a few others now. Don't get me wrong. n.o.body's after the job-n.o.body that I know, anyway. But the Vong war was a wake-up call. We need more than a symbol."

"Mandalores aren't administrators. Mandalorians can run their own communities-anywhere.

They just need . . . general leadership when it's called for."

"Well, maybe it's called for now. Everyone's still rebuilding across the galaxy and it's time we did, too."

Fett sat with his hands flat on the table. He could hear the guffaws of laughter and occasional exclamations in a language he should have understood but didn't.

"Mandalore's still in one piece. So is the rest of the sector."

"Just. And you don't spend much time there."

"A lot of Mandos don't," Fett said.

"They're not the Mand'alor."

"Why does this matter now?"

"People get an idea and start to think differently. It spreads. We lost a lot of people in the war. Makes everyone think hard, that does."

"Ask me straight. Don't hint."

"Come home and help our people."

"How?"

"Shysa pulled us together once. Now it's time for you to do the same."

"I'm a soldier. The war's over." And I'm dying. I'm the one who might need to find a new Mandalore, not you. "You need someone who can run an economy."

"Then what's the use of being Mand'alor? No heir, no clan, no sense of duty. You're not Mandalorian. You just wear the armor."

It was a dangerous retort, but Beviin didn't seem to care. Fett didn't even take it as a challenge-just a Mandalorian's forthright view that he felt fully ent.i.tled to express.

There had always been a Mandalore, chief of clans, the leader anointed by the last Mandalore or the one who s.n.a.t.c.hed the t.i.tle from him, always on his deathbed, which was invariably in combat. The ancient mask that was the Mandalore's mark of rank was always at risk.

Maybe it's obvious I'm dying. Maybe they're looking for who'll lead them next.

"You're saying I should be a conventional head of state. We don't have a state like that."

"These days we might need one."

"Get a bureaucracy and sit in meetings and get slow and flabby like every other world?"

"There's more to it than that and you know it." It was oddly difficult to take offense at Beviin. "We need to make sure we're warriors with a citadel to defend, so we can pick our battles and not rely on the whims of aruetiise. Foreigners. It's the spirit of the times, like I said."

It didn't sound crazy put that way, but Fett felt it had nothing to do with him.

Mandalorians were defined by family above all else, and that was one thing he'd sought and never found after his father was killed. I tried: Sintas, my Journeyman Protector days...

Thinking about his estranged family was painful. But remembering why he'd been exiled from Concord Dawn was something he couldn't allow himself to do. He locked down his emotions.

Death really messes you up. He was alone. He was fine that way.

Beviin seemed to be waiting for a reply.

"And who's driving this spirit of the times?" Fett asked.