Sacrifice

"Come on," he said. "I've got some leads to follow up on the clone."

Mirta scrambled onto the pillion seat. Her armor clanked against his. She had the full set now, even a jet pack, courtesy of Beviin. "Has it ever taken you this long to track somebody? It's been months."

Don't push it. "I make it about sixty-five days."

"You believe he exists, then."

"You wouldn't lie to me again, and you wouldn't make up the name Skirata."

"No. You want me to come with you?"

"You think I need a nurse?"

"I said I wouldn't lie to you again."

Fett almost wished he hadn't told her. He really should have told Beviin first. That was a man he could trust. As the speeder swooped over Keldabe and out into the countryside beyond, the scale of the Yuuzhan Vong's retribution became all too clear again. The course of the winding Kelita River was visible for kilometers now because most of the woodland surrounding it had been flattened. Keldabe stood on a bend in the river, a defiant flat-topped hill glittering with granite, and MandalMotors's hundred- meter tower had somehow survived the war despite the damage it had sustained. The shattered stone and scorch marks were still there as a reminder that Mandalore could be battered, bruised, and temporarily subdued, but never completely conquered.

The small settlements of tree-homes in the branches of the slow-growing, ancient veshok forest had been wiped off the face of the map.

Beneath the speeder there were no longer patches of crops in clearings.

There was blackened soil and charcoal stumps of trees, and still nothing grew, not even the seedlings that usually emerged after fires.