4 days earlier

"So explain to me again, why is this necessary?"

Kar'tan Venn slid out from under the partially disassembled A-wing to stare at his partner, Cairn Tracyn, who was casually leaning against the engines, poking at several of the fighter's loose wires. Above him one of the glowpanels flickered erratically. Kar'tan made a mental note to replace it, thought better and smudged a reminder in grease on the side of the fuselage.

"I need this A-wing to fly faster," Kar'tan replied, slightly exasperated.

"Are you serious? Why would you possibly want this death trap to go any faster? It will probably shake itself to pieces." He picked at a flake of paint that was already well on its way to peeling off.

"Do you seriously think I'm going to leave it in the condition it was in when we bought it?"

"I hope not." Cairn said as the piece chipped off between his fingers.

Kar'tan considered throwing a loose hydrospanner at his long-time partner. Instead he opted for logic over brute force.

"Remember the plan. I'm the quick and agile bait, you're the heavily armed trap. That tends to work better when the ship I'm in is actually quick and agile."

"You wouldn't need to be if you came up with better plans than using yourself as a target," Cairn said, "And seriously, how often have we found ourselves in a situation where we need to pull off that kind of stunt anyway?" Kar'tan could hear a bit of smugness creeping into Cairn's argument.

"Really?" he asked, incredulous, "Because I can name several: Moddell, Tharin, Rhen Var, Tharin again, Dantooine, Caridia, and things would definitely have been a lot easier if we'd been able to implement this particular strategy on Bajic."

"Okay, yeah, sure, the job on Bajic would have been easier, but not as fun."

Kar'tan sighed, "Yes, you're right, dodging asteroids was fun, but we're never going to get our hands on that Imperial Privateer's Bounty if you don't start thinking more tactically,"

He paused to fidget with a loose thrust modulator.

"Besides, I thought I explained this before: I'm replacing the A-wing's compression chambers with a pair from a Sienar TIE model," he explained, "It has better structure for compression and if I can combine it with Incom's injector assembly, I should be able to cure the engine's explosive unreliability."

Cairn took a step back as Kar'tan returned to work.

Chewing his lip thoughtfully, he shot back, "Yeah, but that doesn't change the fact that you have no idea whether or not this will work!"

Kar'tan was keen to defend his position, "I've done the calculations! There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing, it should be safer than a stock pair of engines... in theory."

Cairn gave him a reproachful look, to which Kar'tan responded without getting out from under the A-wing. "We did the same basic thing to the ARC, you know, and you were absolutely thrilled with the results of that modification."

"Hardly," Cairn shot back, as he began wandering around the hangar. He cleared a space on top of a weapons crate and sat down. "The ARC was a completely dependable vehicle with dozens of missions under it's belt, and we performed a tried-and-true modification that made it a much more capable craft. What you're doing here is hot-rodding an absolute piece of junk based on a stranger's suggestion on how to get more speed! Everything on the ARC was compatible with existing hardware. How many parts have you had to modify already? Not to mention that the craft itself is completely different structurally." He paused for a moment, "I mean, how many times have you actually taken this thing out anyway? Once, Twice?"

"Three times."

Unfortunately, Cairn had him on this detail. As much as Kar'tan loved it, and as much as they needed it for his pirate-baiting plans, this A-wing was in sad shape.

Still, even in the midst of a well conceded point, Kar'tan wasn't about to stop bickering now, they were on a roll.

"That's why I'm installing the Sienars, they'll be much safer at the speeds I intend to run the engines at."

"Says you," returned Cairn, "Besides, if you go up and smear yourself on an asteroid, I'll have to hit our next mark all on my own."

Kar'tan stopped working, forgetting his modifications for a moment. "You found another one already?"

"It's fresh from Keldabe; Imperial again." Cairn pulled a datapad from his pocket; the contract datacard he had taken from the bounty office was still sticking out of it. "There's a lot of jargon in here, hold on." Cairn stopped for a moment, and as he extricated himself from underneath the A-wing, Kar'tan wondered how his friend could get anything out of the Imperial legalese. Any time he looked at a contract for more than signing all he got out of it was a large headache. "Basically, there's a civilian thief wanted on Kuat for raiding a major Imperial ground armory. Fellow by the name of 'Opus Crane;' apparently, he made off with quite a lot of kit."

Kar'tan wiped his hands on a shop rag and erased the grease reminder off the A-wing's side. "Looks like you're going to have to wait a bit longer." he said to himself. Working on the various space and planetcraft filling the galaxy was a rewarding, if simple, existence, one that would easily put food on the table. If he was a less adventurous man, Kar'tan would have been content to stay in the shop his whole life, but adventure had its benefits. "Let me hit the refresher and then we'll get going," Kar'tan said as he walked towards the front of the hangar.

Inside the spartan accommodations of the shop's lavatory, he pondered the bounty's information and cleaned himself off. The oil, dirt, and grease from the rusty A-wing sloughed off easily under the soapy water; Kar'tan had been working all morning, and it felt good to get out of the sweaty work clothes and back into the bodysuit he wore under his armor.

"That's the fourth one in as many months," said Cairn from the opposite side of the door. "Commenor, Duros, Correllia, and now Kuat. Either the mess at Endor hit them harder than I thought, or their security in that region is slacking."

"I've been wondering about Endor," responded Kar'tan, "Imperial Propaganda has been considerably quiet about the whole affair."

"Now that you mention it, the Emperor hasn't made any official statements since then either," said Cairn, pausing thoughtfully. "Eh," he sighed, "It doesn't matter."

Kar'tan nodded in tacit agreement as he exited in fresh clothes.

Without further discourse, the pair of bounty hunters entered the workshop's armory. On the far wall, their colored Beskar armors stood waiting, almost like a pair of strill pups eager to get on the hunt. To either side of the suits their stockpile of weapons were laid out on low shelves.

Looking at the other, more violent half of his life, displayed in front of him like a scrapbook, Kar'tan reflected that his identity extended to the unique armor he wore. Like all Mandalorian armor sets, it was not designed in a manufacturing plant to fit unfathomable quotas, but in a smithy to the needs and desires of each wearer.

The Beskar plates, the part most remembered by outsiders, were colored to reflect the wearer's personality, life goals, or general taste. Kar'tan's own blue primary reflected his intense loyalty to his clan. He often supposed that to most foreigners Cairn's black armor was meant to intimidate, but in Mandalorian society it spoke of his intense thirst for justice. The fact that it scared the osik out of his prey was simply an added bonus. Even more, because of their established theme as team mates, the pair was colored as a matching set - Kar'tan had black secondary, Cairn had blue - so that even outsiders could tell that they worked as a team.

On top of basics like color, many Mandalorians decorated their armor with trophies for memorable events, recovered plates to remember loved ones, or small sigils for their clan. Some even customized the armor to reflect lessons that they had learned about where it can break, where to keep extra detonators, or where to keep knives for rare occasions when their hands were bound.

In particular, Kar'tan's helmet was noticeable in a crowd because he had elected to reinforce it with a thicker skullcap and cheek plates after a rather nasty run in with a wookiee that left him unconscious for nearly a day, an event Cairn would likely never let him live down.

Arrayed on the wall behind the disassembled plating were the accouterments that added further personality to the otherwise cold exterior of a Mandalorian's armor. Cairn wore a simple kama rig that his father had recovered from the clone wars. Next to that hung the cloak he used for urban and cold weather operations.

Kar'tan, in a moment of what he considered good fashion sense, had long ago added a leather duster to his ensemble after he saw a fugitive in a longcoat fleeing a hunting party on Dxun. The flailing cloak had made it hard for the group's marksmen to get a bead on their target's weak points and had even dissipated some of the lethal energy.

As a birthday gift, his father had improved on the idea, giving the coat a Beskar-weave under-layer. The finely woven metal inside the cloak-like jacket made it resistant to any form of energy weapon without ruining its flow.

However, the one absolute constant among all Mandos was the helmet; its T-shaped visor was the unmistakable symbol of Mando'ade sheb-kicking.

To a man, the iron warriors were feared on the battlefield; when the armor was entirely assembled, the wearer was nearly invincible, and every Mando worth his clan wore it like a second skin.

A Corsec Officer had once told Kar'tan, under cover and out of armor, that the most effective way to deal with a fully armored Mando was to drop a building on him, and even that was often not feasible nor was it guaranteed to stop the soldier. Kar'tan still wished he'd had his helmet on to record that bombshell, but ever since then, he had pushed himself even harder to live up to that expectation.

While Kar'tan reminisced, the pair finished donning their armor, and though they were on home turf, armed themselves as usual.

From the left shelves, Cairn gathered his fearsome gallery of knives and inserted each one into the various slots on his armor. The last time Kar'tan counted, there were 37, but he was certain that his partner had picked up at least two more since last week. On a separate shelf, Cairn's stock Model 434 stood on its stabilized mount, clean and dry. After the long years they'd spent working together, Kar'tan wondered how much action the blaster had actually seen. The last time he'd pulled it was during an interrogation, and even then, the gun had been disabled.

To the right sat Kar'tan's more varied portable arsenal. He didn't collect weapons like candy, but the habitual accumulation of trophies was a typically Mandalorian trait. Two blasters, an SE-14r pistol and a chopped E-11 Kar'tan had affectionately titled the E-1-1-A, were surrounded by a small set of balanced combat knives. Rather than overload his armor with daggers or pistols, Kar'tan generally preferred to fill his spare pockets with detonators, detonite, and welding jelly. In the past, the distraction provided by a ball of flame or a shower of sparks had been invaluable for a last-minute escape, and blocking an exit through destructive ingenuity often made their prey that much easier to capture.

Their armory was steadily growing, and other shelves contained various armaments that had come in handy throughout the years. Each one had a story or a special purpose: Verpine Shatter Guns and Rifles, a venerable DC-15 blaster rifle, a PLX missile launcher, several concussion rifles, an E-Web, and a DXR-6 Disruptor Rifle, to name a few. Most of these weapons were too difficult to carry from job to job, but the bounty hunters still practiced with them often. Common sense and experience had taught them to keep every skill sharp, just in case.

Kar'tan left his backup Shatter Pistol on the shelf. The likelihood that he would need a projectile weapon was slim to none, as most investigative bounty work didn't require so much stealth. Maybe the next time we do proper mercenary work, he thought.

Now fully loaded, the pair left the workshop for their pre-mission supply run through the local market. The town they had grown up in was small, like most Mandalorian settlements, and the refurbished hangar they used as a home and workshop was only a stone's thrown away from anything they needed, especially the pub.

In nearly any place but Coruscant, and perhaps Nar Shaddaa, their armor would have attracted nervous glances and stuck out like a pair of broken thumbs, but not on Mandalore. Here, the market was an absolute riot of color; a sea of brightly hued armor sets shining in the noonday sun denoted visitors from clans all over the region. The two bounty hunters merged with the ocean of bobbing helmets; they were just another team stocking up on supplies.

The market vendors at midday were still well stocked and equipped with the standard, semi-pleasant demeanor befitting all merchants at this end of the galaxy. The market here served as a trading post for a large portion of this continent's countryside, which meant that the selection was pleasantly varied: a patient buyer could find tools for nearly any task performed on or off Mandalore.

The journey through the aisles often made Kar'tan feel like a bit of a tourist as he watched visitors from other clans examine tools and foodstuffs for quality, but the locals always made him feel at home with a wave or a Mando handshake. Cairn tended to be more subdued than Kar'tan,, but being on home soil seemed to make him more at ease with those he didn't know personally.

The rows stretched on, and the pair slowly made their way to the most important booth in the line: Rahnin's Blaster Supply. The owner had accrued an enormous selection over the years, and his supply almost never fell below his customer's demand. Kar'tan believed the vendor was the most reliable supplier in the market, but the bounty hunter's locality made him a trifle biased.

Nevertheless, reliability was important to a bounty hunter, without the proper tibanna cartridge a blaster was little more than a sculpture or a club. Riding on several years of experience, the duo always took the time to restock before every "outing" and kept a thick supply of cartridges on hand.

As Kar'tan browsed, Cairn approached with his hands behind his back.

"I got you something," he said, slyly.

Cairn lifted his hands, revealing a holdout blaster for his partner.

"An SSK-7. I've always wanted one of these."

"Think of it as an early birthday present," Cairn said with a grin.

"You can't use a business purchase to get out of buying me a birthday present."

"Just did," replied Cairn, his grin increasing in size.

Kar'tan twirled the small, but powerful and illegal pistol in his hands.

"Regardless, I'm impressed, you seemed to have found this in good nick."

"Yeah," said Cairn, "now you have a replacement for the pistol you claim a Cannock ate."

"I claimed it, because it happened!" Replied Kar'tan, aggravated.

"So you've said, for the hundredth time, I might add."

"You might add," Kar'tan retorted sarcastically, "you're just not sure"

"Oh I'm sure," returned Cairn, "More sure than the time you picked up that chiss fellow. I must say, he looked so wonderful in drag."

Their verbal sparring continued unabated while they finished their supply run. Kar'tan was impressed; Cairn had picked up several interesting new insults from somewhere, and his grasp of Jabiimi racial slurs even surprised a passing Toydarian merchant.

Kar'tan checked off his list: tibanna, throwing knives, rope, Imperial data readers, various detonators, and food. Unfortunately, there never seemed to be enough room in the ARC for everything they needed on a job, thus the only food they bought was for the hyperspace flight to Kuat; the rest would have to be purchased on site, a task that Kar'tan, a foreign food enthusiast, looked forward to with a particular zeal.

Their hangar loomed in the distance. The building itself was rather large for a home, by Mandalorian standards, but it housed their part time workshop and all the vehicles that the boys had "acquired" over the years: The A-wing, a SoroSuub X-34, several air speeders, two Canderous Tanks, and their pride and joy, an InCom Aggressive ReConnaissance - 170 fighter/bomber from the Clone Wars that they had affectionately titled the ARC.

While most of the other craft produced during the Clone Wars had been stolen or donated to museums, their ARC was purchased at the beginning of their joint career and nearly every spare credit had been put into making it the perfect bounty hunter's tool.

Prisoners, or "bounties," sat in the center seat; its control panel had been removed and its hatches and cabin were reinforced to prevent escape. The gun controls had been rerouted to the pilot's seat, mimicking what Incom would later do with the T-65 X-wing.

While an ARC fighter normally carried a bank of 6 proton torpedoes to compliment its heavy guns, Kar'tan had pulled the expensive missile launcher and replaced it with ventral mass cannons. This upset the balance slightly towards the rear, but the weight fluctuation in the lower frame allowed for the extra set of Sienar weapons that Cairn had demanded be attached to the upper fuselage. The new L-s7.2 cannons, with their faster cycling rates, caused roughly the same amount of damage, but were better designed for hitting a fleeing craft nimble enough to avoid the ARC's large wing guns.

In comparison to the frail, but nimble TIE fighters, the ARC was a slow, lumbering powerhouse, but Incom's robust design policies meant that after a few engine modifications, the customized craft could move nearly as quickly as a stock model.

The one thing the ARC still lacked was a decent sensor package. The Clone Wars Era reconnaissance module had served them well, but Kar'tan knew that it would need to be upgraded soon.

The duo climbed in for launch, and Cairn took the helm while Kar'tan manned the aft cannon. After all of their pre-flight checks, the snubfighter lifted smoothly away from the hangar's retractable roof.

Kar'tan's position at the tail gun gave him a spectacular view as late afternoon Mandalore dropped away. High in the sky they were bathed in midday light as space enveloped them. Far to the north, a storm was ravaging the small town of Enceri; the dark clouds appeared to be heading towards their home, but the businesses below carried on without any concern for the oncoming storm.

"What did you say?" Cairn radioed to him. Kar'tan shook himself out of his reverie. He hadn't realized he had spoken.

"I don't know, what did I say?" Kar'tan said, trying to remember himself.

"Something about, 'aren't you telling me,' or something. What was that about?"

He shrugged. "Who knows, just something that sprang to mind. You know, like when we're talking to a client that we know isn't telling us everything."

Kar'tan gave the planet a last look before they lurched into hyperspace. The storm was mostly forgotten as he began planning how they were going to pursue their bounty.

"Opus Crane," he said with a laugh. "Sounds like some ugly bird."