BEVIIN-VASUR FARM, TEN KILOMETERS OUTSIDE KELDABE, MANDALORE

Goran Beviin looked up from the trench, a pitchfork in one hand and a muddy grin on his face. It was beginning to rain and he was up to his ankles in animal dung, but it seemed to make him perfectly happy.

"And they said being acting Mandalore would go to my head," he said, rubbing his nose on his sleeve. "So you came home fast, then."

Fett kept his distance. "Found what I was looking for. You didn't expect me back."

"I did. Some of the clan chieftains didn't. You have a habit of wandering off for a few years at a time." Beviin heaved himself out of the trench and wiped his palms on the seat of his pants. He looked very, very pleased with himself. "If you'd been away any longer, I'd have called you, but since you're back . . . Want to see something amazing?"

Fett wondered if now was a good time to tell Beviin the truth about his illness. The man had to know sooner or later. He could have formally

declared himself Mandalore while Fett was gone, and probably found a lot of support among the clans, but he hadn't; he'd gone on shoveling dung and running his farm. He was happy with his life as it was. The galaxy would have worked better with a few more Beviins around.

"Okay," Fett said. "Amaze me."

Beviin beckoned and trudged through the mud toward the farm buildings. The fine drizzle was turning into rain, and the land looked bare—not in the ruined sense of the postwar devastation that blighted so much of the planet, but as if it had settled down to sleep for the coming winter. Despite the derivation of the Fett surname—derived from the word for "farmer" —and his father's childhood on his parents' Concord Dawn farm, Fett knew nothing about agriculture. He wished he could learn, sometimes, to better understand who his father had once been.

"Mirta behaving herself?" Beviin didn't look back over his shoulder. "Well, at least she hasn't tried to kill you again. It's a good sign. Kids can be such a handful."

Fett felt the mud suck at his boots. "She's a useful pair of fists in a fight."

"She'll produce wonderfully ferocious great-grandchildren for you, Bob'ika." Beviin paused a few beats. Fett tried to take in the phrase great- grandchildren, and it left him stranded. "So whatever it was you went to do ended in a fight, did it?"

"Just had to ask questions emphatically"

"You going to tell me about it?"

It seemed as good a time as any, and Fett didn't see the point of sugarcoating it. "I'm terminally ill. Two years, tops. Eight, nine months if I carry on like this."

Beviin still didn't turn around. He walked on for a few more meters, head lowered against the rain, and then stopped in his tracks and finally faced Fett. He looked genuinely upset. Fett couldn't recall anyone being upset for

Maybe Sintas had felt for him. He hadn't noticed.

"You're not going to sit back and let it happen, are you, Bob'ika?

We can do something, surely."

Using the way-too-familiar form of his name didn't bother Fett at all now. "I found a clone who survived."

"So they did get a little more out of Ko Sai than revenge and a few souvenirs, then."

"There's no research data. Just the clone, Jaing Skirata. He wouldn't give me a blood sample, but he says he's got good medical resources." Now that Fett was back on Mandalore and Jaing was light-years away, though, the whole premise struck him as flimsy. The man hadn't even accepted a meal from him, which would have at least left useful traces of his genetic material on the utensils. Fett had nothing except time counting down and a suspicion that his judgment was failing just like his health. "I'll explain later."

"Why didn't you tell me? I could have tracked some clones for you.

Enough of them deserted and ended up here."

"Ones who'd had the accelerated aging stopped?"

"I don't know, but I could have worked from those leads. Shab, Bob'ika, couldn't you have squeezed a little sample out of him anyway?"

"It's done now. And there was never a guarantee that Taun We or Beluine could make anything from it anyway."

Beviin looked disappointed for a moment, as if Fett had let the side down by not simply grabbing what he needed. But Jaing had been right. Fett needed Taun We to decode whatever it was in that clone's cells that

stopped the degeneration, and Taun We would have turned that research over to her new bosses at Arkanian Micro. That was a bad deal for the clone, and a bad deal for Fett, because if anyone was going to make credits out of that data, it was him, and Mandalore needed those—

Well, there's a funny thing. Now I'm thinking long-term.

Beviin turned around and started walking again in silence. Fett's news had certainly taken the shine off whatever had made him so happy a little earlier.

The farm was a rambling collection of buildings scattered around a stone farmhouse with impressive dirtworks and defensive walls. The other structures—including the outbuilding that Fett was staying in—weren't so well defended, just variations on the traditional circular vheh'yaime set in deep pits and so thickly thatched that they were camouflaged. But the farmhouse was the last bastion in the event of an attack.

At the back of the building, and connected to it by an underground tunnel, stood a workshop with a smithy. Fett could hear the rhythmic hammering of metal across the clearing. There was no smoke curling from the roof. It vented many meters away to hide the location, and Fett was sure there was a network of tunnels extending a long way into the hills to the west of the farm. It was one of the ways the Mandalorians had fought—and beaten —the Yuuzhan Vong.

Beviin walked down the steps cut into the hard-packed soil and leading down to the front door. It opened and Dinua, his adopted daughter, stood with hands on hips.

"Boots," she said ominously, pointing at the clods of dung and mud.

Two small children clung to her legs. "You too, Mand'alor. And you can take those coveralls off as well, Buir."

"Okay, okay" Beviin—spy, fixer, veteran commando—was driven back by a resolute woman. But Dinua had fought and lulled Yuuzhan Vong from the

age of fourteen, so making a mess on her clean floor wasn't to be attempted rashly. "We'll go the long way around."

They tramped around the perimeter of the farmhouse, following the sound of ringing metal.

"She's a good girl," Beviin said. "Just a bit irritable now that Jin-tar's away fighting. She's not one for staying at home. But the little ones are too young for both parents to be away"

So some had already taken mercenary work. Fett didn't think Beviin's farm was doing that badly, but maybe Jintar was too proud to accept his father- in-law's support.

"But you and Medrit are good with kids."

"Yeah, but this way, one parent stays alive . . ."

That was the harsh reality Fett had grown up with. It bred hard people.

As the door to the workshop swung open, a blast of warm air registered on his sensors. The interior was bathed in a red glow; sparks flew in arcing showers. How Beviin stood the noise, Fett would never know. His helmet controls had decided the volume was above danger level, and buffered the sound.

A mountain of a man in a singlet, burn-scarred leather apron, and ear defenders was hammering a strip of red-hot metal. Every time he raised his arm, sweat flew from him and hissed into steam on the hot surfaces. He folded the strip with tongs as he hammered, layering the metal with a steady rhythm that said he was a master armorsmith. After a while, he realized Fett and Beviin were standing watching; he gestured with an impatient jab of his finger to show he was going to finish working the metal before he'd stop to talk.