Chapter Text
The mission to Coruscant had gone well enough. Amidala’s survival had been a frustrating but acceptable failure. Zam’s death was the same. He hadn’t specifically gone into this job planning to kill her, but he couldn’t have her spilling secrets. It was unprofessional, and he’d invested far too much in this job to see it go awry now.
Still, shooting Zam with the Kamino-special dart had been a good enough way to plant the crumbs on the trail. Those darts were one of the planet’s only exports; or at least one of the only exports that were common enough in the galaxy for word of them to reach the pampered heart of the Core that a Jedi was likely to see.
He needed the Jedi to find Kamino, after all. He just didn’t have to make it easy.
Jedi were never a complication he relished, though they were unfortunately one he’d known he’d eventually have to deal with on this job. They were easy enough to lead around by their noses when necessary, though, so Jango was confident that he would have at least one self-righteous prick on his doorstep soon enough.
They’d follow Jango’s breadcrumbs right into the trap he had spent ten years helping prepare for them, like the good, obedient little dogs they were.
The sharp slash of Jango’s teeth reflected back at him from the dark transparisteel of Slave I’s viewscreen, the white-streaked black of hyperspace beyond it. And to think: if they did the research they should have done before Galidraan, before they slaughtered his people, they might even still escape this fate engineered for them. Jango didn’t have a lot of investment in Tyrannus’ whole plot, even if he was viciously satisfied with the idea of the end goal. The ‘plan’ felt needlessly convoluted to Jango, but thankfully it was quickly not going to be his problem anymore.
This was the last major component; the arrival of the Jedi on Kamino. It was well underway, the jaws of the trap sliding silently closed around an unsuspecting Order, and as soon as that happened, Jango’s job would be done.
Then he’d also be a liability, of course. He wasn’t an idiot.
It would wrench to leave the Slave, but he already had a far less unique ship acquired and ready for him and Boba, waiting for them in a berth on Centra VIII under an alias that was untraceable to Jango Fett. They wouldn’t be waiting for Jango’s last payment from their oh-so-generous employer, either, though Jango had already started agitating for just that when Tyrannus had finally set him on this job to lure in a Jedi. The man had immediately started implying that Jango should continue his employment with him: stay on as a consultant, as a trainer. Stay under Tyrannus’ thumb, under his watch.
More convoluted plots Jango didn’t have the patience for. He didn’t know what Tyrannus hoped to achieve by rubbing the Jedi’s nose in the fact that their army wore the face of someone with every right to hate them, and frankly he didn’t care.
He had Boba, and he had the very generous sum of credits he’d been siphoning out of his official accounts while out on jobs, and soon they would both have their freedom. Ten years had been more than enough time to stagnate on that fucking watery nightmare of a planet. He was looking forward to showing Boba the galaxy, teaching him all the things Jaster had taught him, under a thousand different skies.
Jango had no illusions he was any kind of credit to Jaster anymore. He may have reclaimed his armor, but he’d forsaken leadership of his people after allowing them to be
slaughtered
. He had taken up the semblance of the title of
Mand’alor
to call to him those who would still answer, but only when it had suited his own needs.
But Boba would be different. Jango’s son would be different. He would be the legacy Jaster had deserved — just as soon as Jango got them out of this gundark’s nest he’d traipsed willingly into for the sake of the promise of a child who could be everything he’d lost in himself after Korda VI, after Galidraan, after slavery and the spice ship, and everything that had followed.
Three more days to Kamino. Give the Jedi a maximum of three days on Coruscant to figure out the dart, if they were especially useless. Five days for whoever was sent to actually get all the way out to this deserted corner of the galaxy, provided they had a decent hyperdrive. If the Jedi was exceedingly lucky, and had good contacts, they might already be in hyperspace behind him.
Three days, six on the outside if the Jedi was slow, and Jango would get out. All he needed was one good excuse to get Boba off planet with him, then a decent distraction, and they’d be gone to where no one would be able to find them until whatever chaos Tyrannus was planning for the galaxy was over and done with.
Three more days, and they’d leave this all behind.
Three more days and they’d be free.
~~~
Jango’s first hint that something had gone drastically sideways with no warning was the dark, silent landing bays of Tipoca city that filled his viewscreen when he dropped carelessly below the last dense layer of dark clouds.
It was too late to hide his approach. He’d gotten lazy, he reflected, as everything slowed. The weariness of the long solo hyperspace journey sloughed off, leaving crystal clarity in its wake.
Sloppy.
He was in full view of a thousand dark windows that should be full of light, the lights of his ship a beacon in the dark skies over a dark churning sea, a target.
He didn’t change trajectory, no matter how his hands tightened on the yoke. He didn’t change a single thing about his approach, just proceeding as if everything was completely normal.
Kamino had been somewhere associated with safety and stability, over the last 10 years. He’d gotten careless.
The training program was reaching its culmination. The drills were constant, and relentless. The clones were currently running in three shifts; one sleeping, one on the first half of their day, one on the second half, in a constant rotation.
There wasn’t a single moment, day or night, that the bays shouldn’t be completely full of bustling, busy activity; drills and drills and endless training, repetition until every movement was instinct.
The lack of hail, the stillness, the absence of a single body in view, be it clone, trainer, or Kaminoan, it was all a mute rebuke of his complacency.
Something had happened to bring the entire enormous, sprawling city to this dark, mute stillness.
Jango didn’t know what it could possibly be, but he knew, in his gut, that in the two weeks he was gone, something monumental had changed here.
A lifetime of instincts told him to bail. This was clearly a trap of some kind: it was obvious. The empty, open bay doors, the darkened lights, it was all inviting him to charge in, to investigate, to find out what happened here.
Decades as a warrior, a bounty hunter, a hunter of men , who knew everything about how to lure in a target, how to bait a trap? All of it was telling him to turn his ship straight around, that whatever was in there isn’t worth his life.
It might not be.
He was going to spring this trap anyway.
Boba was down there.
He had to be.
And if he wasn’t, then somewhere in that city there would be the information he needed to find out whose existence he needed to burn from the galaxy for hurting his son.
He would find it even if he had to paint every wall with blood, tear apart the city and sink every bloody scrap to the sea floor.