Marai
Our caution became even more important. The Mandalorian issue armor and uniforms can automatically fade into any background, almost as good as being invisible. But the dead man had obviously not considered that a plant used to detecting heat and motion would still see him. The Harpooner vine had thrown a javelin sized thorn right through his entire body, and dragged him in.
There was a scream in the air ahead of us. Nothing living made that noise. It was a ship passing low and fast. Then there was a thudding sound as it smacked into the treeline
"Marai, can you hear me?" I signaled for the others to stop. The Handmaiden had learned from watching us.
"Go ahead, Atton."
"That battle is still going on up there. I just picked up another contact headed down here. I've powered down any system that can be read at a distance, and all we have are these short range com links now. I think that ship landed close by. Or maybe it's all the way on the other side of the moon."
"I would say about a kilometer ahead." I told him. "We heard it coming in."
"Then hope they aren't Onderoni. I don't think I can handle much more of their idea of a friendly welcome."
"Understood." I raised my hand, making the patrol sign for spread out and advance. Then I remembered that the Handmaiden hadn't served with us. I looked back, but she had figured it out.
There was a burst of steam ahead, and loud cursing in of all things, Duros.
I paused at the edge of a new clearing. I could see the moist dirt still adhering to the roots of a tree that had been rammed over. The ship was a little smaller than ours, and half a dozen Duros were gathered in a clump arguing. Not the smartest thing to do on Dxun. I could see furtive movement.
"Stay here." I whispered. I moved toward that movement, but not close enough to become a target. Once I had assured myself of what was there, I moved back.
"Bounty hunters?" Bao-Dur asked.
"Yes."
"How do you know?" The Handmaiden asked.
"They're armed to the teeth, sensor equipped city boys." I replied. "They're arguing whether they should change into something that will protect them and have been discussing at length what to do with the money.
"We can add to their problems or leave them to it."
"How so General?" Bao-Dur cocked his head. "Boma beasts?"
"Yes." I pointed at the ship. "They crashed right in the path to their water source." I lifted a sonic grenade and flipped it into the air. "And you know how much Boma beasts hate noise..."
"No need." The Handmaiden made a fluid pointing gesture. One of the Duros had moved closer to that side. Whether he saw a movement, or maybe detected a scent, he drew down on the foliage.
"General, have you considered that we are also in their way?"
I looked around. "Sith-spit!" We hurried to the side as the idiot let off a long rippling burst into the shrubs.
We used to joke in the 2nd Corellian Marines that you don't shoot a Boma because it just makes them mad. Anything smaller than a heavy blaster just cooks sections of their skin.
There was a trumpeting roar, and three dozen Boma charged as if given orders. We dived for cover as the clearing was rent by screams, roars, and more blaster fire. They passed through and over the Duros as if they weren't there, stampeding toward the ship. I suddenly did a math equation
Three dozen animals averaging 300 kilos each for a grand total of just under 11 tons-
-versus a half kiloton ship made up of a lot of bolted together parts-
-equals...
They hit the ship like three dozen half ton hammers. The oleo struts on the landing gear protested for maybe three seconds, then the ship settled toward us as they sheared off. The hull was made of sterner stuff, and while they could batter it, they did not damage it beyond one of them slamming the sensor dish off and flattening it.
After a while, they started to settle down. Then they began to wander aimlessly past us toward the pool I had felt a few hundred meters away.
We climbed down and examined the records. The leader had been Dezanti Zhug, of the Zhug family. The Handmaiden told us that they were a family of Duros that had been banished from their home world, and made money as Bounty Hunters on Nar Shaddaa.
We collected their IDs so that we could eventually notify their next of kin, and moved on.
Bao-Dur had moved to point, and he motioned for us to stop. Then he motioned for us to join him.
The outpost lay in the valley below us. He handed me his electro-binoculars. I looked through them then lowered them slowly.
The Mandalorians were back.
Bao-Dur
I remember the battle of Dxun as if it were yesterday. We had spent six months of training before the Jedi were willing to begin. Even then they had to push. Admiral Quintain, Lord Quintain after Kostigan's Drift was trying to throw not grains, but buckets full of sand into the gears. It was his command that would lead the assault and he wanted it to be perfect, every soldier in line, every weapon polished, every 'I' dotted, and 'T' crossed.
I was one of only about 20 Zabrak from Iridorn assigned to the assault force.
Assault force. Yeah, right. I had ended up assigned to the headquarter motor pool because Lord Quintain wanted all of his personal vehicles in perfect condition.
There's an old story about a warrior like the Admiral. He would stand and hold his ground until he had every man supply and piece of equipment he needed, but he was never satisfied. He had the best trained army of his time but it fought few battles, and they finally had to replace him with some one a lot more aggressive. The few battles the Admiral had led so far had been like Kostigan's Drift, bar brawls with several thousand men on each side. He had won a couple, but the cost was always steep.
The closest I would be to the battle is with maybe the fifth wave, after everything was secure enough for the Admiral to risk his lily white behind. That is when all of those bright and shiny vehicles would arrive.
I had stepped out for a breath of air as the last of an interminable line of staff meetings broke up. I recognized only two of the three people that had been walking toward me, a tall man with brown hair someone had said was Padawan-teacher Kavar, and the robed and masked form of Revan. They were walking down the ramp to their speeders with a woman that looked like a porcelain doll, but walked like a panther.
"That man could not lead a dying animal to a watering hole." Revan was snarling. She always sounded like an angry Kastan Cat to me. She could fight rings around Quintain and just about every admiral here from what I had been told. Her work in a simulator as flag officer had been clean and crisp, and the enemy ended up beaten with light casualties.
"I know that Revan, but we are here to help them-" Kavar
"Help them what?" The blonde woman a head and a half shorter than them asked. "Kill a lot of our men for no purpose?"
They all stopped, and the shorter woman glared up at the others. "It will be me and mine in that 'sweeping arc' the idiot wants on the ground. Infantry tactics do not translate to fleet action."
"We must-" Kavar began.
"Must nothing! I know that they will follow where I lead, but I am not going to let a Chair borne, High Family Moron kill my men to give him another victory like Kostigan's Drift!"
Revan sighed. "She is right, Kavar. The man thinks of infantry as ships. Unless she has a free hand, we will lose the entire assault force to no purpose."
Kavar nodded sharply. "We will get fleet to put someone else in charge of the ground assault." They came down, and the small woman mounted her speeder bike as the other two jumped in a landspeeder. She hit the ignition, and the engine smoked. She dived off as it burst into flames.
I grabbed the extinguisher, and sprayed the gas over the smoking engine. She stood there, glaring at the machine. "Bad enough we have morons in command, but we have thumb fingered wrench benders doing the maintenance!" She looked at the landspeeder where her friends were already seated. "Go on. "I'll be there if I have to walk."
The speeder took off. I knelt, touching the engine with one hand. "There's your problem." I took out my hydro spanner. "They set the fuel injection too high."
"They did?" She knelt beside me.
"Yep. The problem is, these Aratech 490s need tweaking straight from the factory. The droids on the assembly line tend to torque the injectors down just a bit too tight, and that means it tends to be a little rough when they start. Your average mechanic will just jack up the fuel to air ratio, but that means you get fuel dumped into the system when you start them unless you choke them just right."
She watched me as if she intended to memorize every motion. Later I found she had.
I reset the injectors to the correct measure, then reached up and thumbed the ignition. The engine came to life. It sounded bad, but I listened. "Fuel varnishing. It'll clear in about five klicks, or sooner if you floor it."
"You're pretty handy."
"So they tell me." I wiped my hand then put it out. "Bao-Dur, clan Zika."
"Marai Devos, Jedi." She shook it. "Want a job?"
I laughed. "If it's away from this shiny prison, yes."
Three days later, over the protest of the entire staff motor pool, I was assigned to the Corellian 2nd Marine Division. It wasn't spit and polish, but it was a lot of work, and I was promoted so I was able to tell those 'wrench benders' how to do it right.
If you've looked at the Galaxy map, you know that on the Northern or left flank of the Mandalorian Salient, they had advanced as far as Carida. That was where Quintain wanted to hit them. But the Jedi wanted to hit instead at Onderon. The larger of the planet's two moons was the command and control center of the entire left flank, the supply route for all of the rest of their advance force ran through there as well. By taking it, we would cut off the entire advanced forces. It also left an opening to take Tanab and cut off almost 3 million Mandalorian troops on the right.
Being assigned to the headquarters motor pool of the 2nd was better than the command headquarters. The officers tended to talk more, and you could pick up a lot. Marai Devos had trained these men to an old Jedi sword's edge, and she could have charged a hurricane, and they would have cheered and followed.
But she wasn't part of the command structure. The Commander of the 2nd Regiment of the 2nd Corellian Marines was Colonel Neelis, a warrior of Quintain's stripe. More worried about spit and polish than how well the weapons worked. The four men that were his staff officers couldn't have organized an orgy in a whorehouse.
I started calling her General after Neelis complained that 'Since Jedi seem to think they rank ahead of the rest of the human race, maybe we should call you General!'.
I wasn't the only one.
The fleet came out into a dream come true. Feints by Karath, Malak and Dodonna had drawn away the fleets protecting the twin planets of Onderon and Dxun. The dozen or so Mandalorian picket ships were blown to hell, and we closed on the twin worlds. Quintain was broadcasting his surrender demands as the ships prepared to start a bombardment if necessary.
The enemy commanding Officer, First Blade Cassus Fett however threw a wrench into the works.
"I know what 'Blade to blade' means, Revan." Marai was shouting at her vid screen. I was delivering a maintenance report to the staff supply officer and got a chance to hear it. "It means Fett doesn't want to come out and fight like a man, and Quintain doesn't know what he's doing to his own damn troops!"
"I understand that." Revan replied levelly. "But Quintain has agreed because of his sense of honor-"
"He thinks honor is a word in the dictionary between Honky-tonk and Honorarium!" She roared. Then she sighed. "It means Revan, that we have to take our troops and fight the Mandalorian Garrison on Dxun with exactly the same number of troops. No more.
"By my estimate there are 135,000 troops there. That means we send in the 4th and 11th Corps, our best men. But damn it, the first rule of infantry tactics is that the defender has a 2 to 1 advantage against the attacker in regular terrain, increasing to six to one in emplacements and every mother's son of them are in bunkers redoubts and bloody fortresses! That means instead of sending the minimum of 700,000 troops we need, we're sending less than 200,000 men into a meat grinder.
"How the hell do you expect me to maintain an army this idiot is busy destroying to make himself look good in the history books!"
"Then it can't be done?"
"Oh it can be done!" Marai shouted. "But the reunion will be ten or fifteen of them sitting around afterward because all the rest of us will be dead!" She switched off then threw the vid unit through the bulkhead. She stalked out into the silent room.
"Want me to fix that, General?" I asked.
She glared at me. "Bao-Dur, do one thing for me."
"Anything you want, General."
"When I have earned that rank, call me by it. But until then zip it!"
The briefing was small. I was there because the motor pool had to land not with the fifth wave, but the second. As the Motor pool chief, I had to be there so I knew where we were setting up. We had the commanding officers of the entire Assault force, the two Corps, the commanding officers of the six divisions, and of the 18 Regiments that were landing. Along with them were commanders of the shuttles and assault ships squadrons.
Everyone was nervous.
"Attention!" Someone shouted, and everyone snapped to their feet. A stream of Jedi came down the aisle in a formation four wide and 20 deep. Eighty of them, men and women of almost as many planets, about thirty of their number of alien races. They split to take the front two rows, and one of them mounted the dais.
"Be seated." General Ondine of Coruscant said. She signaled the briefing officer and our nightmare began The Fourth Corps would land to the south near the main shield complex and disable it so that the 11th could drop in north of them. Once on the ground they would link up, then sweep west through the densest concentration of enemy forces.
There was fifteen kilometers between the drop zones, and all they had to do to kill us all was keep us from linking up. The briefer tapped that section.
"This middle section will be taken by the Jedi, and two divisions, the 2nd Corellian Marines, and the 14th Alderaani Scouts."
"Them and what angels?" A voice snapped. One of the pilots stood. "The heaviest concentration of AD is right there, and they'll chop my guys into lunch meat! I will not lead them into an abattoir on their words! They want to play hero, let them fly the damn shuttles!"
The Jedi on the podium stood. "You are?"
"Lieutenant Carth Onasi. Telosian contingent."
She walked up. I wasn't surprised that it was Marai. "Ten of my people will be flying shuttles, the rest will be in them Lieutenant." She replied. "As for you, you will fly into that abattoir. And I will be in your crew compartment with the 2nd Marines when they do. So I expect a bumpy trip."
She walked back to her seat.
Ten percent losses on the landing, 75% on the first wave alone. It took six weeks of fighting until it was finally over. 94,000 dead, 20,000 wounded, 5,000 missing. I had ended up not at landing area Baker, but at LZ Connor, named after the pilot of a crashing shuttle that had dug a runway for us with his death. I fought alongside the 2nd and the 14th as they were whittled away by enemy fire, blades, and the damn planet itself.
We captured the command center, and that was when our friend Admiral Quintain decided to show up.
The men of the 2nd and 14th were intermingled. We had fought too long and hard side by side to think of ourselves as anything but brothers. Of the 13,000 men that had landed, less than a thousand remained. A lot of them weren't here. The hospital ship had landed and loaded everyone that would live into kolto tanks, so less than a hundred of us were still there. Of the Jedi that had landed only fifteen were still alive.
We had found a stash of Fett's favorite tihaar and were passing the bottles around. Fett wouldn't need it. He'd eaten his sidearm when we surrounded his headquarters.
Quintain's squadron of speeders came racing in, bright metal work glistening to stop in the quad. He stepped down, probably expecting an ovation from his 'brave warriors'. That was what that REMF that had shown up an hour earlier had been saying, but we'd stripped him to his skivvies and tied him up, stuffing him in the trunk of his staff speeder.
What he got was a hundred men doing what any smart infantryman not under fire would automatically do. We were eating, drinking, and about half of us were sleeping.
Quintain stepped own, and I could see the disapproval in his eyes. He motioned to one of his officers, a natty lieutenant in starched dress uniform who stalked over to us.
"Who's in charge here?" He demanded.
One of the figures that had been asleep stretched, and sat up. Marai was filthy and she was in her underwear waiting like the rest of us for supply to catch up. "That would be me." She said, standing.
"Name, Rank!" The lieutenant snapped.
"Devos, Marai. Padawan." She put her hands on her hips. "Now my question, lieutenant, is who the hell are you to bother my men."
"How dare you-"
She made one of those ten meter Force leaps, landing in front of him, a third his size, but quite willing to rip his head off and he knew it.
"How dare you!" She roared back. She stormed past him toward Quintain. "Lord Quintain, with all due respect, you have no balls."
"Who-"
"You brought a thousand ships, a million and a half infantrymen and you still have no balls. You sent 120,000 men into this mess, and maybe we have 30,000 that are still alive.
"All because you had to do the 'honorable' thing without thinking." She stopped less than a meter from him. "So have your victory parade somewhere else, take your holos, and bask in your glory, and leave us out of it! You have more than enough men that are not only alive but clean well fed and need something to do while the real soldiers were fighting!"
Quintain pulled out his notebook. "What units are these?"
"This is what's left of the 2nd Marines and 14th Scouts." She said then she reached up, and caught his collar. "And if I hear one word of complaint from any rear echelon puke about my men, I will take every one of your staff officers, and shove them so far up your butt that you'll need a tractor beam to go to the bathroom. Do I make myself clear, Admiral sir?"
They sped away.
"atta girl, General!" Someone shouted.
She turned, and looked around. "Where the hell is the tihaar?"
"Right here, General." I held out the bottle.
I was suddenly fifteen years back in time, and was raising my rifle to sight on one of the men down there when I felt a hand gently push my rifle aside. "They wouldn't like that." Marai whispered. She hooked a thumb. Behind us were four Mandalorians.
Marai
I could almost read Bao-Dur's mind as we looked down. I looked up, turning, and across from him, I saw the Handmaiden mirror my movements.
If you have ever seen a predator in his natural environment, you will know what we saw. For a moment, it was merely the jungle behind us. But some of the more innocuous animals make noises, and they had fallen silent. Then the trunk and bark of a tree ten meters away moved separately. I had an instant to recognize the thermoptic armor.
"Handmaiden?"
"I see them too." She replied in a level voice. If they had their helmet sensors up, they could hear our heartbeats easily at this distance. She spoke as if she knew they could hear us. "But they are not preparing to attack."
I looked at them. Bao-Dur was humming, and I recognized a song that had been popular in the 2nd Marines back then. It should have been played as a 'sprightly air' but he was humming it like a dirge.
His blaster rifle came up, and I gently pulled it aside. He looked at me confused. We were in the war zone, the enemy was right there. Why was I stopping him? "They wouldn't like that." I whispered.
He rolled slowly, looking back at the men. I could feel his tension like the string of a bow.
I stood, facing them silently. The Mando'a aren't much for personal in your face bluster. Either do it or go away. We stood there face to face at that distance, waiting for the other to say something. Bao-Dur knew it from experience, the Handmaiden from our example. We were pillars of stone, we were trees talking a mile a minute at their pace of a word perhaps every hour.
"Impressive." One of them said in Basic. "Most visitors take one look at our neighbors and runs screaming to safety."
I nodded. "They can be a bit, persistent. May I ask why you have occupied this moon again?"
"What's it to you?" One of the others spoke in Mando'a. The helmet of their leader turned, and I didn't have to hear the soft voiced ripping that loud mouth was getting.
The leader turned his head back to look at us. "The People of Onderon don't seem to like this vacation spot. So we gained permission, and have moved back in peacefully for a short time." He motioned, and all of them came out. "Will you do the courtesy of explaining how you ended up on this garden spot?"
"Our ship was damaged in the disagreement above. We landed here to make repairs."
"That would be faster than trying to convince the General to let you land on Onderon." The leader touched his ear where the connection for his helmet com link was. "We have been ordered to escort you to our encampment. Our leader wishes to speak with you."
We marched with them down a well-used path. I noticed furtive looks by the Handmaiden and Bao-Dur. In a jungle a path is also a target. I noticed a sensor module, and relaxed a bit. If the foe were an normal enemy, they would have been worthless. But as long as you didn't put them down where a Cannock could eat them, they were perfect as detectors for the animals that lived here.
We came into the valley, and the forest just ended at the edge of the greensward. I looked around. The lawn for lack of a better name looked neatly clipped, as if with owner's pride. But it is also called the dead zone. It is a cleared area where every movement is in the open. Crossing it without the Mandalorian camouflage or ghillie suits would be like crawling across a green tablecloth.
The outer enfilading redoubts had been professionally sealed. Not to remove them, merely to save them for more space and later growth. Left alone, the jungle would have already reduced them to piles of rubble or something would have denned in them. The gate was open, and I could see the dusting of mines ahead of us using the Force. Command activated, so we could walk through safely.
It was like walking into a remote village on the Mando'a home worlds. There were fifty or perhaps sixty men of fighting age, meaning older than thirteen. Half as many women, most with the lean lithe look of warriors themselves.
And children. Not the screaming and laughing hordes you would expect at a park on a day off, but a couple of dozen playing. But even play was in training for war.
We passed a group of men, the youngest maybe 14, the oldest a grizzled sergeant half again my age. They were cleaning weapons, inspecting armor, the boring maintenance duties you either did, or died in the field. Second place in war is a grave. Another area had been cleared, and a pair of Mando'a charged together like bulls. Beside it a circle where two women circled, swords at the ready.
There was a ramp downward, and we walked down it. The room was cluttered with equipment. It was an old command post bunker. About a third of the equipment was running. A man not in the colored armor worn by the juniors, but the satin sheen of bare metal was working at a computer. He growled then slammed a fist against the side of the machine. He turned, as if he'd expected us to be right there, pointing at one of the silent men with us.
"If you can't stick to patrol discipline, you can stay inside the perimeter Davrel. Now go get Zuka, tell him my systems are starting to go bug nuts again."
"Chu!" The figure double-timed away.
"Leave us." He said to the patrol leader. They trooped out.
"I am the Manda'lor of Manda'lor. Welcome to our settlement."
"A title I thought dead at Revan's hand." I said.
"Five years ago Revan gave me the helm and title." He replied. "She would have gone to Mandal'or itself, publicly freed us from our loss. But that was not to be."
"What are you doing invading the Republic again?" Bao-Dur growled. I touched his arm and he moved back.
"The question does have merit." I said, a superior gently chiding a subordinate.
"The People of Onderon use their moon for two things, tombs and a hunting preserve. If they knew we were here they would be... upset. I got permission from the Queen provided we were not spotted by her people. However this," he waved toward the people beyond. "Is obviously not an invasion force. We came here to regroup before our return home." He stood, waving at the moon at large. "From here were commanded half of the forces that attacked the Republic. Now, it is just a rest stop upon the way home."
"But why chose Dxun as your 'rest stop'?" I asked.
"If you think the Republic's politics are bloody, you have yet to see ours." He laughed. Something about that voice... "The Mando'a have an affinity for such places. In the jungle there are two forms of life. Those that feed, and those fed upon. Nowhere better to hone the edge for us. Those who fought us here should have considered that."
"I led one of the assaults here." I answered softly. "We were overruled."
"By Quintain. Whatever happened to that D'kut?"
"He was promoted to BuShips, but got back into battle at Malachor V. He died there."
"It would have been better for you if he had died in bed before the war began. We are here in secret because I felt the Onderoni would hold a grudge if they knew of our presence. The politics down there are... unsettled of late."
"I am trying to get down to Onderon." I told him. "I have business there."
"So it is transport you seek?"
"They seem to hold a grudge against my ship."
"I have a small shuttle capable of running their blockade. We make supply runs every few weeks. If you can wait three days, I will be glad to take you down. Until then, be welcome, and warm at our fire."
"May good company transcend our differences." I replied. He looked at me.
"You know our social forms."
"I lived among you for over five years." Suddenly it hit me. "Wait. Before you became Manda'lor, was your name Ordo? Canderous Ordo?"
He looked at me for a long time then he reached up and took off the helmet. Canderous Ordo, who had held me like a child almost eight years ago looked back. "You have grown thin, my little friend."
"And you have not changed at all." I said. "You're what, 73 now?"
"71. Have you gotten over what plagued you all those years ago?"
"Most of it."
"I have ordered that until we are a people once more, the rite of First Battle will not be practiced. In deference to... an old friend." He picked up his helmet again. "My quartermaster Kex will see to your needs if you have any. I would suggest having a care in the jungle beyond. With the battle going on above, we have pulled in our patrols, and the native wildlife will have moved back in." He put the helmet on again.
"Now if you will excuse me, I have work to do."
