Sacrifice

As long as I can keep Jacen on a choke chain, of course, and, he doesn't ruin it for me. If he gets out of hand . . . well, there's always Fett.

"Have you ever kept nuna?" she asked.

"Not in the apartment . . ."

"I'm told they tend to form rival groups within the flock, and they can get very territorial. Squabbles break out. Now, let wild bursas into the coop, and it's bedlam—they go into a killing frenzy, grab as many nuna to eat later as they can, and escape. They don't care which group they eat. That's your Mandalorians."

"It's a lovely analogy, but it's lost on me."

"Forget strategy. Mandalorians don't care who wins. They just want to eat, drink, fight, and maintain their self-image."

G'Sil gave her a long, wary stare. "You're the Supreme Commander. I assume you can assess a military risk."

"You want my assessment? Fett has no intention of expanding his small sphere of influence. Mandalorians might have been a mighty empire a few millennia ago, but they can't handle the difficult business of running a modern, complex democracy. They know it, so they just want to live their primitive warrior fantasy and revel in their reputation."

"Which is earned."

"I accept that they're phenomenal soldiers."

"They kicked out the Empire and the Yuuzhan Vong, without any help from us."

"That still doesn't mean they want to dominate the galaxy. There are fewer than three million of them on Mandalore now, and they don't have anything like a government structure that could organize them well enough to take