She couldn't hear them, but she was sure they were still out there. Shysa knocked on the door with her knuckles, then pounded on it with the flat of her palm. "Hey! Let me out! I'll try the game again."

There was no answer.

"It's a stupid game anyway," she muttered. She rubbed a sore spot on her hip where one of the hard leather balls had struck her. They wanted her to see the balls coming, to block them with her hands. Shysa knew she could do it. She was very fast. Her dad always said so.

But she couldn't do it with the blindfold on.

The men were getting frustrated. "Now what?" The Twi'lek had shouted at the one called Jarn. "Now fekking what? She's worthless, and if her daddy ever finds out who took her, we're all fekking dead."

"My dad will gut you," Shysa said. "He's done it before."

She didn't actually know if that was true. It was something she heard her brothers say. "Touch that last slice of uj cake and I'll gut you." But it felt good to say. The way Jarn turned chalky white felt even better.

One of the others grabbed her arm and marched her back into the dark room. Shysa didn't want to go. "I have to go to the 'fresher."

"Later."

"I mean it. I have to go."

But the door shut, and she was alone in the dark again.

Fett straightened. "I found her."

Luke bolted upright in his chair and blinked in shock. "You found Shysa?"

"No. Shmi Skywalker. She and her son Anakin were listed on a cargo manifest filed by Gardulla the Hutt. No other Skywalkers listed."

"Cargo manifesto?"

"They were slaves." The bounty hunter hit a few buttons and the screen flashed red.

"Access denied," a mechanical voice chirped. "Only authorized owners may view past records." Fett removed a data chip from his belt and plugged it in.

"Welcome, Boba Fett. Please take a moment to update your property records." He bypassed the screen quickly, but not before Luke saw a familiar face. He sat back and folded his arms over his chest, watching the bounty hunter silently through the holo field.

"She didn't tell you how she escaped Jabba's palace, did she?" Fett asked without looking up.

"She told me she paid you to get her out."

"And I got her out."

"Does she know she's still listed as your property?"

"It's never come up."

One of his queries returned, flashing blue on the screen. "There's no father for Anakin. That's unusual."

"It is?"

"A slave's pedigree can affect the price. If the father was a slave, it would be listed. That probably means he was a free man."

"I'm learning so much from you," Luke said with a grimace. "Why is this important again?"

"It's important if your grandfather is still alive. Maybe once upon a time a Jedi shared a night of passion with Grandma Shmi, and now he's tracking down his descendants." The bounty hunter flexed his hands briefly before returning them to the console. "The Jedi used to be fairly proficient at kidnapping force-sensitive children."

Luke rolled his eyes. "They didn't kidnap them. Their parents brought them to the Jedi to be trained."

"You have the ability to influence what people say. What they think. How do you know their parents acted of their own free will?"

"A Jedi would never use their powers like that."

Fett's hands moved over the controls and a projection of an old bounty listing appeared. "Tellask Vord. He was stationed in the outer rim during the Clone War and managed to escape the purge. He used to meet women in spaceport cantinas and 'convince' them to go back to his room. One night he pulled that trick on the daughter of a Zeltron arms dealer." The listing vanished. "The Zeltron wanted his head, but I still have his lightsaber. It's green. Like yours."

"He wasn't a Jedi," Luke insisted. "He fell to the dark side."

Fett snorted in response. "Just like your father?"

"I don't expect you to understand."

"Which is more likely? That Anakin Skywalker was a good man who fell to some mystical mind control, or that Anakin Skywalker was an angry and resentful man who realized that he didn't have to play by the Jedi Order's rules?"

Luke tried not to grit his teeth. "You didn't know my father. Don't pretend you did."

"You're right. I didn't really know him. But neither did you." Fett turned his attention back to the data listing for Shmi Skywalker. "Maybe your grandfather broke one too many rules and had to disappear. Taking advantage of a slave woman isn't exactly keeping with the Jedi code."

"Oh, so now my grandfather's a kidnapper and a rapist?"

"Slaves don't have the same options as free people. Can a slave say no?"

Luke sat up and glared at the other man. "I don't know. Could my sister?"

A tense silence held in the cockpit for a few seconds. Luke could feel his pulse throbbing in his neck and he took a deep breath. Damn it. He was usually better at resisting Fett's barbs. It was the stress. The awfulness of this situation. In the midst of his fear for his niece, anger felt like refuge. Maybe it was for Fett as well.

"I'm sorry," he said to his brother-in-law, who for all his faults, was a father living in a nightmare. Fett didn't respond immediately, but when he did, his voice carried it's usual lack of inflection.

"It's a technicality. It's only legal on Tatooine, and the way things are happening, probably won't be legal for much longer." He turned away and busied himself with the nav computer.

Luke gazed out at into the blackness of space, trying to center himself. He could feel Leia, even at this distance. He could feel the crushing, breathless fear that she carried without flinching. He could feel Jonah's frustration and despair.

He couldn't feel Shysa. She had so much of her mother in her. There had to be something he could do. Some way he could help.

"When I was searching for other Jedi," he said slowly. "There was a something I heard from two different sources. A rumor that the Emperor tried a few times to clone Jedi."

Fett looked up, but Luke couldn't tell what he was thinking. "It wouldn't surprise me."

"There was never anything on the record about it. It must not have been successful, otherwise the Emperor would have had a whole army of Force users. But I'm just wondering…"

"If they took her to clone her." Fett was very still.

"It's only a theory. But if they did, there might be a way to track that. I mean, your genetic code is pretty well known. If some of those markers showed up in a lab or a facility, someone might have noticed it."

The bounty hunter turned his seat back to the data console. "Might be worth checking out."

Luke couldn't tell if he really thought so, or if this was a gesture of reconciliation. His gaze drifted back to the projection, to the still image of Shmi Skywalker. "She's a lot younger here than any holos we had at the farm," he mused. "I didn't realize her hair was so dark."

"Reminds me of Shysa," Fett said without looking up.

"Actually, yeah, now that you say that. I always assumed that her hair came from your side."

Fett didn't respond.

He just wanted to be alone. He'd offered the bunk, or one of the hammocks the boys used, but Skywalker refused, so it was Fett who left the cockpit. He followed his usual routine on long trips. He used the 'fresher, drank some water, ate a few protein cubes. He laid down on the bunk and closed his eyes.

He didn't sleep.

Only three weeks ago he was on the way to Coruscant, and Shysa was asleep on the same bunk. Sprawled out on her stomach, mouth open, drooling. She insisted over and over again that she wasn't tired. She spent hours in the cockpit, climbing all over his lap and asking a million questions. She could already pilot Slave I around Mandalore, next year he would start teaching her how to use the nav computer.

Next year.

If…

There was a dark, relentless pulse in his head, red and black behind his eyes. He opened them and stared up at the ceiling. A long, curling black hair was caught at the open edge of the bunk, and he pulled it free. He wrapped it around his index finger, careful not to break it.

It was six years ago when Leia told him she was pregnant. She was so happy. She showed him the med report with the projected due date, and because he couldn't help wondering what worked after several months of nothing working, he counted back. And then neither one of them spoke for a while. Finally Leia sat down on their bed. "It's not possible, is it?"

"It's not...probable."

"It's more than improbable. It's...the odds would have to be…" She buried her face in her hands. "What was I thinking?"

It was his idea. He took full responsibility for it. Leia had been preoccupied with the idea of having another child, but month and after month passed without results and it baffled and frustrated her. Jonah, after all, was conceived in a moment of improbability, and the previous year an entirely unplanned pregnancy ended in loss. The fact that they couldn't seem to get the timing right with effort seemed like a cruel joke.

The midwife in Keldabe told her not to worry. That she was older now, and should expect for these things to take longer. She relayed this to him, with a grim set to her mouth that made him want to shoot something. Or someone. He was twelve years older than his wife. It was ridiculous that anyone could make her feel old when she was just shy of thirty.

So he made a plan for her birthday. Something to make her feel young and exciting. Reasonable precautions were taken, but the evening had contained a wide variety of activities. In hindsight, reasonable precautions were insufficient.

He looked at Leia as she flopped back on the bed, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. "We have to tell Fenn. We have to get the test done. Then we can decide-"

He sat down beside her on the bed. "I don't want to know."

"What?" She lifted herself up on her elbows and stared at him in confusion.

"You can have the test done if you want. It doesn't matter to me."

She slowly sat upright, her face drained of color. "Boba. What are you saying?"

"We wanted a baby and now we're having a baby," he replied. "Why does it matter how it happened?"

For moment Leia said nothing. Then she reached over and took his hand.

"Kyd isn't from either of us," he continued, "But he's our son. It'll be the same for this one. I don't need to know."

Her fingers tightened around his. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She nodded soberly. "I think I do. There's the medical history to consider, and...I just need to know. But I won't tell you if you don't want me to. And no matter what the results are, it's our child. Yours and mine."

And Shysa was. From the first moment Fett saw her, screaming her tiny head off, he was inexplicably proud of her defiance. She was bright and determined. Full of life. The Mandalorians had a word for it. "Shereshoy," people would say with approval. She soaked up everything around her like a sponge.

That pulse was back. Even with his eyes open he could feel it throbbing.

He gave up on rest and picked up a datapad. If he couldn't sleep, he could at least be productive. They might learn something useful on Toydaria. Or they might find nothing. He had to be prepared for all possible outcomes.