Sacrifice

"And you're not." Fett punched the controls, and Kuat dwindled to a disk beneath them. "You didn't check visually. Don't rely on the helmet tech all the time."

"Hey, you didn't spot him, either. That's got to be stealth armor."

"He's a Null." There was some history there, she could see that.

"They were black ops clones. The Kaminoans' attempt to improve on my dad's genome for cloning. You can see it didn't work."

"He says his name's Jaing. And did they really shove your head down—"

Fett just turned his head. He still had his helmet on, and even though few things scared Mirta these days, he had a way of being glacially slow and silent that was unsettling. She was just trying to get him to talk, looking for the long-buried man within. It was a forlorn hope. She gripped the console in front of her as Fett tapped in the coordinates for Coruscant, 000—and Slave I jumped to hyperspace.

"Jaing's not as bad as I thought," Mirta said.

"They were all psychiatric cases." Considering he probably hadn't seen them since he was a kid, Fett's recollection seemed painfully vivid.

"They say Jaing tracked Grievous in the war. Master assassin, sniper, general pain in the backside. Don't underestimate him."

"The war before last, you mean."

"It's all one long war to me."

It was time to shut up, she decided. Fett was braced against the pilot's seat, looking uncomfortable; it could be folded down so the pilot could stand at the controls, or raised to form a ledge. He usually opted for the latter. She had a feeling that he was in too much pain to sit down.

"Course laid in," he said. "Let's go talk to him."