Sacrifice

"You think anyone's stupid enough to try invading like the Empire did?" Beviin said. "After we kicked Vong shebs like that?"

"Ba'buir's cussing," said Shalk gravely. "Can I say shebs, too?"

"No, you can't." Dinua clicked her teeth in annoyance. "Buir, please, not in front of the kids. Mand'alor, how are you going to announce the find? Other than the old-fashioned Mando way, by showing up at the border with an invading army?"

"Do we have to announce it?"

"If we want foreign revenue."

"We don't have a finance minister, but the job's yours."

"I'm serious."

"Commission a few starfighters and see who notices," Fett said.

"Maybe this Kad'ika has a point-—that we don't have to be on one side or the other. There's a third side, as . . . Goran says." It was only courtesy to address him by his first name in his own house. Fett had so little nonhostile interaction with anyone that basic etiquette felt like a minefield. "Our own."

"I could make sure the aruetiise notice," said Beviin. "But maybe a surprise is better."

"What kind of surprise?"

"The kind that makes you look up and run for a bomb shelter,"

Beviin said. "With a MandalMotors logo on the fuselage."

"We've got no territorial ambitions beyond the sector. We've got at least a dozen planets here to worry about."