"Where is it?"

She gestured to the ceiling and offered him her arm.

Mirta was still looking for a reason not to hate Fett, and she was ready to look pretty deeply. She decided she could start by loving him for his sheer guts. Nothing fazed him, nothing stopped him, and nothing made him feel sorry for himself. They stood outside the barn and waited in silence. It looked like a tiny hut set against Slave I, laid up in her horizontal mode nearby.

A low rumble interrupted the rural peace.

Fett looked up as a dull black wedge shot across the sky and vanished behind a forested hill. Mirta lost it, but then it circled back again, came to a dead halt in midair about two hundred meters above them, and descended smoothly on burners. It landed on its blunt tail section and then extended struts to tilt through ninety degrees and come to rest horizontally like a conventional starfighter. The canopy lifted and Yomaget climbed out, slid onto the ground, and kissed the matte fuselage.

"Cyar'ika," he said to the ship, running a tender hand over the skin. "I think I'm in love."

"Nice," said Fett.

"Puts the uliik in Bes'uliik."

"Yeah, I can see it's a beast. What's different?"

"We applied the micronized beskar skin, Mand'alor. She's a toughened shabuir now. Care to show her to the Verpine?"

"It'd get their attention."

"If they share their ultramesh technology with us, we might be able to lighten the air frame and improve her top end in atmosphere. If we skin her completely in solid beskar, she's going to be invulnerable, but heavy."

"We'll keep the heavy ones. Maybe the Verpine can come up with a better fuel solution."

"Well, if you're not going to take her for a spin, I will," said Medrit. He scrambled up onto the wing and eased himself into the cockpit, looking as if he would fill it. "Shab, a Mando-Verpine assault fighter.

That'll cause some sleepless nights on Coruscant."

"If we can mine and process the ore fast enough."

Yomaget looked hopeful. "We could ask those helpful insectoid chaps to lend us an orbital facility or two."

"I'll go see them," Fett said. "Got to think long-term on this. No point handing over too much to Roche early in the game."

Medrit spent the next hour taking the prototype Bes'uliik through its paces over the Keldabe countryside while the rest of them watched.

Yomaget captured the aerobatics on his holorecorder, looking satisfied.

"Might slip this hologram out to a few contacts," he said. "We're not a modest people, are we?"

"Remind them that most of our adult population can fly a fighter, too," Fett said. "For starters."

He went back inside the barn. He didn't manage a smile, but Beviin turned to Mirta and cocked his head. "Believe it or not, that's a happy man."

Maybe he was a better judge of mood than she was. She was relieved just to hear Fett use the phrase long-term.

Times were changing. The rest of the galaxy might have been tearing itself apart, but the Mandalore sector—which now informally controlled Roche, if a protectorate agreement counted—was a haven of optimism after a decade or more of grim existence. That night, Mirta found the Oyu'baat tapcaf packed with new faces, and the singing was raucous.

If Jacen Solo, her mother's murderer, had been roasting slowly over the Oyu'baat's open fire instead of the side of nerf, Mirta might even have joined in.

SENATE BUILDING, CORUSCANT

Jacen's official airspeeder brought him up to the main Senate entrance. He could have entered the building by any number of more private platforms, but he had no intention of sneaking in via the back doors; being seen

counted for a lot, and he still had his heroic image to protect.

A line of citizens waited outside the doors that admitted members of the public to the viewing galleries. Some just wanted to watch the day's business, but there was a small group who were clearly protesters.

It wasn't just the FREE OMAS banner that three of them were carrying among them. There was a taste of anger in the Force, vivid despite the permanent background of fear and uncertainty.

"Drop me here," Jacen said. "I'll walk."

"They'll harass you, sir," said the Gran chauffeur. "I ought to take you straight up to your floor."

"They've got a right to see who's governing them." It wasn't as if they could cause him any harm. "I find that talking to people generally clears up misunderstandings."

Jacen had expected at least one mass protest or a riot broken up by water cannon and dispersal gas. GAG intelligence showed that Corellian agents still operating on Coruscant were doing their best to make that happen. But the general willingness of the population to accept the change of regime surprised him. The stock exchange had suspended trading for a few hours, and some shares had bounced around: but the traffic still flowed, the stores were full of food, HoloNet programming was uninterrupted, and everyone was getting paid.

Unless you were Cal Omas or a civil liberties lawyer, the military junta was temporary and benign. There was a war on, after all. It was to be expected.

I ought to write a study on this. How to take over the state: smile, look reluctant, and keep the traffic flowing.

And it was just Coruscant. The rest of the GA worlds went on running their planetary business as they saw fit, unmolested, and that meant there was no need to stretch the fleet and the defense forces by deploying them to keep order on thousands of other worlds—their own, in many cases. All

The rest of the Alliance is detail. I have its heart and mind.

"Good morning," Jacen said. The group of protesters stared at him with a collective, slowly dawning oh-it's-really-him expression. Even a face that had been on HNE as regularly as his took some recognizing out of context. He extended his hand to them, and one man actually shook it.

Most species responded well to placatory courtesy. "I just wanted to reassure you that Master Omas will get a scrupulously fair hearing. We've let him go home, too."

When folks were worked up for yelling and seemed to want to be dragged away by CSF heavyweights, they were totally upended by having the object of their fury listen to them. Jacen's patient smile met disoriented surprise. A couple of CSF officers began wandering across, probably expecting trouble, but Jacen dissuaded them with a little Force influence and they stopped a few meters away to observe.

More important, though, was the HNE news droid trundling around the Senate Plaza. There was always at least one on duty here, just hanging around to get stock shots, but now it had an actual story. Jacen watched it approach in his peripheral vision.

"Doesn't matter how you dress it up," said the young woman holding one end of the FREE OMAS banner. "The GA is being run now by the Supreme Commander and the head of the secret police, and nobody voted for you."

Jacen managed an expression of slightly wounded innocence. "You're right, I didn't run for office, which is why I won't remain joint Chief of State any longer than I have to. Would you like to see something?

Inside the building?"

The woman looked at him suspiciously. "There's always a catch."

The news droid was right behind them now. Sometimes the Force placed things in his grasp. Suddenly he realized that everything was being handed to him and all he had to do was react, just as Lumiya had told him, and not analyze everything.

"Your choice," Jacen said. "I just want to show you the Chief of State's office. Anyone else want to come along?"