Part 23 (1/2)
”Tough.”
”And it will ruin me. Do you feel no compa.s.sion for me, Boba?”
”No. I don't believe I do. Not now.”
Taun We appeared to be considering the revelation, head tilting slowly from side to side on the long column of her slender neck like a tree swaying in a breeze. He wondered if that reaction was just her expertise in human psychology taking a knock: she didn't know his mind as well as she thought. She still reminded him of a nahra artist, a Kaminoan mime-dancer. He'd always been baffled by nahra as a kid, because Kaminoans didn't feel a thing and yet they loved a kind of ballet that mimed emotions they didn't appear to have.
That summed up their lives-and his, he realized.
Time for a.n.a.lysis later. Get to work.
Still holding his blaster on the scientist, Fett took three paces to the computer console and slid the data breaker into the port. The device sparkled with blue and green status lights to show that it was searching and downloading, and he let it gather a lot more data than he needed. He wasn't a thief, but other Arkanian Micro data might come in handy-and even save his life. He was just taking custody of a copy of it.
”I don't make deals,” he said. The status bar indicated that five thousand exabytes of data had been swallowed whole. Complete genomes took a lot of memory. ”But here's a promise. Tell me all you know about Ko Sai, and I won't hand this data over to the highest bidder. That'll make sure you're still of use to Arkanian Micro.”
”She's dead.”
”I still want to know everything.”
Taun We paused for a moment, blinking slowly at the blaster. ”Are you going to take me back to Kamino by force?”
”No. I don't need the credits.”
”But would you kill me, Boba?”
He paused. For this, I would. ”Yes.”
She still seemed puzzled, not hurt, or afraid, or betrayed. ”Very well. Ko Sai thought the cloning program would be destroyed, so she defected to the Separatists during the Battle of Kamino to save her life's work.”
”And her own skin.”
”We are not materialistic, Boba. It was not about payment. It was about pride. About excellence.”
Fett slipped the data breaker back in his belt. ”Get on with it. Where did she go?”
”I have no idea where her journey took her next.”
”What happened to her?”
”She was ... traced.”
”By who?”
Another pause. Whatever it was, it was giving Taun We problems. ”Clone intelligence units.
And one of your father's commando instructors.”
Fett swallowed hard. He hadn't expected that. ”And?”
She indicated the braided Wookiee pelts strung from his right shoulder plate. ”She fell prey to the Mandalorian penchant for souvenirs.”
”Interesting,” said Fett. No, it's astonis.h.i.+ng, it's terrifying, it's hope, it's everything. ”So the clones got their revenge.”
”We a.s.sumed so. Packages arrived. Parts of a Kaminoan body whose genetic profile was Ko Sai's.”
Fett found that unnecessarily brutal. Kill a prisoner if you were paid to, kill them if you needed to; even retrieve parts if you had to. But mailing Ko Sai home a piece at a time sounded like a vengeful, elaborate message. ”And her data?”
”We can only a.s.sume they took that, too. It has never been recovered.”
”What was special about it?”
”Ko Sai's triumph was controlling the aging process. She knew how to manipulate it better than any other biologist. We were interested only in accelerating it to mature clones faster, but I can see how many would find slowing the process and its therapeutic potential an attractive commodity. She claimed she was able to achieve it in the laboratory.”
Mirta had met an original Kamino clone, she claimed. A clone who couldn't, shouldn't be alive today. Fett found a slew of puzzle pieces dumped in his lap, all fitting together.
Impossible clones, dismembered Kaminoan scientist, missing cloning data. ”You got any names?”
Taun We stiffened. ”Do you remember that aggressive little human called Skirata? The one who . . . threatened my colleagues with a knife so frequently?”
Yes, he remembered Kal Skirata, all right. Sometimes his father swore he was the best of the bunch; sometimes he just swore at him and lashed out. Jango Fett rarely lost his temper, but Skirata had a talent for making that happen. He was ferociously and uncompromisingly Mandalorian.
As a lonely kid on Kamino, Fett had narrowly escaped being forced to learn Mando'a from Skirata's wildly unpredictable special forces trainees, six cloned ARC troopers who answered only to him. They were intelligence units; the Nulls, as everyone called them, the first batch of clones, and they had turned out crazy, hypersmart, and dangerous. They had disappeared when the war ended.
Yes, this was a neat pattern. Skirata lived for his clones. He'd want them to live out full lives like ordinary men. He would have wanted Ko Sai's data and expertise very badly.
Butchering her to get the genetic technology he needed to stop the accelerated aging would have been nothing to him, just a means to an end.
And if one of Skirata's clone troops was still alive and fully active today when he should have been the equivalent of a 140-year-old, it meant that they'd found a way to stop the accelerated aging process-Ko Sai's way.
That's what I need. That will save my life.
Fett was suddenly enveloped in a sensation of vivid awareness, like a pleasantly cool shower on a hot day; the colors around him seemed instantly vibrant, the sounds crystal clear, the smells sharp. Adrenaline coursed through him. He'd found what he was looking for-or the route to it, at least.
He'd never failed to track a bounty. Never. Even if a few had escaped in the end, he had always found them.
I'll find you, too.
”Useful,” said Fett. Holding the blaster level was making his forearm ache. He'd never felt that before. ”You keep quiet about this and I'll keep this data to myself. Got it?”
”Agreed,” said Taun We. ”And if-when you find Ko Sai's data, we would give you an excellent fee for its return.”
He suddenly thought of Sintas, her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears of joy as she held baby Ailyn.
No, Taun We couldn't possibly care about him like a real mother.
Taun We's first thought was for her science.
”Maybe I don't want to sell it,” said Fett.
”What do you plan to do with your legacy?”