Sacrifice

a solid Mandalorian woman, because she could shoot straight, cook passably well, and had the shoulders of an armor-smith. Mando'ade valued the frontier kind of female, not decorative trophies who couldn't even dig a defensive entrenchment.

She's just like Sintas. Not as pretty, but she's so much like her.

He hadn't known Ailyn long enough to tell if Mirta took after her mother. Sin. I used to call her Sin, and she called me Bo. Did Mirta have a nickname? What had Sintas told Ailyn about him, and what had Ailyn told Mirta, to breed such hatred toward him?

Fett pulled his attention back to the present and followed the Trandoshan, aware of a full 360-degree vista around him, the dulled pain in his guts, and the fact that the closer he got to death, the more he thought about people who hadn't been on his mind in a long, long time.

The turbolift doors opened onto a floor of the same thick purple carpet as the lobby, with small salons leading off it. Gaming tables rattled, clicked, and flashed with lives ruined and fortunes lost. Even through his helmet's filter, he could smell the cloying amalgam of a hundred different perfumes distilled from plants facing extinction and parts of animals he didn't even want to think about.

The Trandoshan led them along a corridor to an imposing set of gilded doors, then beat a lumbering retreat. The doors parted and Fett found himself visor-to-nose with a Hamadryas who didn't seem to know how to blink. Behind him, a group of six splendidly dressed gamblers—three human males, two females, and a Weequay—sat around a gilt-framed sabacc table with Fraig. There were two more heavies standing by the kitchen doors, probably on drinks patrol.

"Master Fett," said Fraig, not looking up from the table. "How good to meet you."

Fraig had a great hand. Fett could see it embedded in the table's display as he loomed over him. It was a pity to interrupt. His guests were trying to