Mara paused, wanting at the same time to yell at him for terrifying her and to grab him in a ferocious hug. She settled for swallowing both reactions and ruffling his hair. He'd never live it down back at the barracks otherwise.
"You couldn't call us?" she said. "You couldn't even tell Jacen where you were?"
Ben frowned slightly. "I'm sorry. I was on a mission and I didn't want to give away my location."
"We can talk about it later. Let's have lunch." She gestured toward the exit. "It's okay. Your dad will be happy just to see you back safe.
No yelling. I promise."
Ben slid off the pedestal in uncharacteristic silence, and they walked to the speeder platforms. Mara kept a careful eye on the crowd, not entirely sure if she'd recognize or even sense Lumiya if she was around. Lumiya might even send one of her minions, and she had people within the GAG. The biggest threat might be one of Ben's own troopers.
"What are you frightened of, Mom?" Ben asked.
Mara didn't take her eyes off the crowds around them. She scanned constantly, as she had been trained to do. "Okay, you might as well know.
Lumiya is trying to kill you."
Ben gave a little grunt that might have been disbelief and seemed to mull over the idea rather than show alarm. "Because she's still got this vendetta with Dad?"
"Mainly because you killed her daughter."
"Uh . . . okay, I'll take her word for it."
Mara shielded Ben as he got into the speeder. It was always a vulnerable moment: she'd taken a few targets as they ducked into vehicles, caught off-balance for a moment. The hatches closed with a sigh of air, and she turned to look at him closely.
"I mean it, Ben. She's dangerous and she's subtle, so until we neutralize her, you have to be on your guard. She's got connections within the GAG. It could be anyone."
"If she was going to have this spy of hers in the Guard kill me, she'd have done it by now." He slouched in the passenger's seat. "But I'll be careful. Wow, this is getting messy. What with Jacen on Fett's list for killing his daughter, and me killing Lumiya's . . . I suppose that's what the job's about, isn't it? You collect enemies. Hey, the boys have got a bet going on when and how Fett's going to come after Jacen."
Mara wasn't sure if Ben was making light of the threat for her sake or just indulging in normal teenage dismissal. Fett was the least of her worries. "And . . . have you placed your bet?"
"Oh, Jacen can take him. But it's kind of weird that Fett hasn't made a move. The longer he waits, the more people get freaked, I suppose."
"If Fett comes for Jacen," she said, "let him handle it. Okay?"
The speeder climbed into one of the automated skylanes and headed for the Rotunda Zone. Ben gazed out of the side screen in silence.
"So can you tell me what this mission was?" Mara asked.
Ben did that three-second pause that meant he was framing his words carefully. "I had to bring back a prototype vessel. I wasn't in any more danger than I could comfortably handle."
That was a relief. It was just an errand, although why Jacen hadn't known about it baffled her. "And you missed your birthday celebration."
"You know how folks say that you get to a point in life when birthdays don't matter? That's how it felt."
"Sweetheart, that's only when you get a lot older. Not fourteen."
If anything could break Mara's heart, it was that: Ben's childhood had passed him by. "Next year, I promise, we'll have a family get-together.
Really mark the day."
"You think the war will be over by then?"
"If it's not, we'll still have a party. All of us."
"Uncle Han and Aunt Leia, too? Even after I tried to arrest Uncle Han?"
And that was the bizarre reality of a civil war: a teenage boy sent to
detain his aunt and uncle, and then fretting over whether they'd attend his next birthday party. Mara sometimes tried to add up the days she'd lived that weren't about killing and warfare, and there were so very, very few. She wanted a different future for Ben.
"Yes, even after that," she said. "Ben, does Jacen know you're back?"
"Yeah." He didn't volunteer any more. "It's okay. I report back for duty at oh- eight-hundred tomorrow. I haven't gone AWOL."
"I'll have one last try, then. Ben, I worry about you. Your dad and I would really sleep a lot better if you left the GAG and came on missions with us."
Mara braced for incoming. But Ben thought visibly for a while, and when he spoke his tone was soft and unsettlingly adult—unsettlingly old.
"Mom, have you ever had to do something you didn't want to do, but knew
you had to?"
Mara certainly had, so many times that she took it for granted. And at any given time, whether working for the Empire or for the New Republic, or whatever the stang her paymaster called itself, she'd always thought it was right.
"Yes, sweetheart, I have," she said, and knew she now had no moral high ground from which to look down upon her son, or anyone else for that matter. "And the problem was that when I looked back, I found I'd done the wrong thing sometimes. But it'll be years before I'll know if what I'm doing now is right."
"You have to go with the best data you have at the time."
It was a weary man's statement, not a boy's. Ben was a soldier. He was what she and Luke had made him. She'd wanted a Jedi son, and now she had one.
"Next year," she said. "Next year, we'll have that party, come what may."
chapter three
Mishuk gotal'u meshuroke, pako kyore.
(Pressure makes gems, ease makes decay.)
—Mandalorian proverb
SLAVE I. EN ROUTE TO BADOR, KUAT SYSTEM
Mirta Gev had settled for being tolerated by her grandfather, and although she made an effort to love him, it was hard. Part of her still wanted to make him pay for the life her mother—and grandmother—had endured. And part saw a man who had every form of regard shown him except love, and pitied him. Overall, she saw a man who put up duracrete barriers and defied anyone to breach them. As he took the Firespray out of Mandalore's orbit and prepared to jump to hyperspace, his expression was set in apparent blank disdain for the everyday world. She decided his helmet presented the softer face of the two.
At least she got to sit in the copilot's seat. That seemed to be the nearest that Boba Fett could ever get to approving of her as his own flesh and blood.
"Your clone's not an active bounty hunter," said Fett. There was never any preamble in his conversations, no small talk, no intimacy. He was all business. "I checked every bounty hunter and wannabe on the books, but none is called Skirata. Plenty of people on Mandalore knew Kal Skirata, and then—gone. Vanished."
"But he was on a hunt, I know that. He told me to get out of his way." Did Fett believe her? She'd stitched him up and tried to lure him to his death, so she could hardly blame him if he was having second thoughts about the clone. The man was real, all right. "So we're retracing his steps?"
"Yours."
"How are you going to pass yourself off as a client looking to hire a bounty
hunter?"
"I'm not. You are."
Mirta suddenly realized why he'd agreed to let her ride along. "My, I do come in handy, don't I?"
"Earn your keep. Rules of any partnership."
Mirta thought that sounded remarkably like her dead mother. Ailyn Vel was more a chip from the granite block of Fett than she'd ever admit, but that was impossible. She'd been a baby when Fett had left her grandmother, too young to pick up his callous ways.
"How do you cope?" Mirta asked.