Chapter 2
Dawn light, pale and thin as it was, trickled through the thick canopy and into the makeshift camp I'd nearly had to force the girl- Mara, I corrected myself- into. I had wanted to press on last night, get the job done. But yesterday's forced march had taken its toll on her and once the adrenaline faded barely twenty minutes into the ride, she'd passed out.
Given that she'd been awkwardly folded around the back of my speeder at the time, that had very nearly killed both of us.
After I finished calling myself seven different kinds of idiot, I'd overruled her protests and dragged her off a ways to sleep for the rest of the night. Then I sat down and meditated, letting my awareness flow out in a half-conscious doze while the energy of the world around me revitalized me. It was an old Jedi trick I'd picked up years ago. It wasn't quite as good as a proper night's sleep, but it did the job well enough and left me alert enough respond to any threats that might present themselves.
None did, however, and I rose with the sun.
"Wake up," I said as I pulled the purloined bed roll off Mara. She mumbled something incoherent and rolled back over.
So with a twist of my wrist and a moment of focus, I flicked the entire bedroll into the air and tossed her out of it.
She hit the ground with a yelp, more surprised than anything else and scrambled to her feet. Her hair whipped wildly through the air as she turned frantically. Shock and fear flashed through her in equal measure, enough so that I started to almost feel bad about it.
Then she caught sight of me and the fear melted into relief.
"What was that for?!" she demanded, pinning me with an annoyed look.
"Time to go," I said. She scowled and opened her mouth but I continued before she could speak. "Go back to town if you don't like it."
She scowled harder, but shook her head.
"I'm awake now."
I nodded and tossed her a nutrient bar.
"Good." I hopped on the speeder and gestured with my head. "Get on and eat while we ride."
She grumbled quietly, but complied, shoving the bar into her mouth and climbing onto the speeder behind me. It took some doing, but we eventually figured out a setup that was almost comfortable, even if I was practically sitting in her lap while she bent over me to hold onto the speeder. A twist of the handlebars later, we were moving.
Trees passed at a steady clip, just as smoothly as the day before. I quickly settled back into the rhythm and, once I was comfortable with it, spoke up. I had a source of information on my target, it was about time to learn more about them.
"Tell me about the pirates."
"Wha- Oh!" I had to correct the speeder after her aborted flinch. "Sorry. I, uh. They attacked a few days ago, I- I'm not really sure how many."
Her knuckles turned white.
"I was working one of the fields with my parents when Miss Rania sounded the alarm. We tried to run, but they had speeders. It, we never had a chance."
"They caught up in seconds and cut us off from town. Then, then that bastard walked up and murdered my father." Mara shook her head. "I blacked out then. The next thing I remember is waking up next to my mother back in their camp."
"She." Mara shivered. Her voice was thin. Weak. "She didn't last very long."
She fell silent.
I pretended not to notice the salty water dripping onto my neck.
(*)(*)(*)
It took nearly an hour for Mara to cry herself out. I spent the time alternating between looking for her captors' path to backtrack, and kicking myself for being an insensitive idiot.
Eventually, though, the sniffles faded, and an uncomfortable silence reigned.
The resilience of children was as astonishing as always. Before long, I could feel curiousity, hesitation, and even embarrassment begin to grow in her, pushing aside the grief and pain, if only for a time. Something had caught her interest, but she was too afraid and embarrassed to bring it up.
After my earlier blunder, there was really only one response I could give.
"Ask," I said.
"Wh-What? Ask what?"
I turned enough to give her a sidelong look. She blushed.
"Right." she said after another moment of indecision. "This is really Mandalorian armor, right?"
"Yes."
"But Mandalorians are supposed to be eight feet tall unstoppable super-soldiers that spit fire!" She paused for a moment then hurried to continue. "Not that you don't kick all kinds of ass or anything! It's just... but-"
"But I'm not exactly what you pictured," I finished for her.
She nodded.
"I am Mandalorian," I said, gently but firmly. "Mandalorians are not a race or species. We come in all shapes and sizes. We are a people, united not by blood but purpose.
A Mandalorian found me when I was young. A foundling it's called, a child separated from their family by loss or circumstance and entrusted to our care. He took me in and raised me as his own, trained me in the ways of the Mando'ade."
A fond smile touched my lips.
"When I came of age, I swore an oath. The same oath sworn by every Mandalorian. To act with honor and dignity. To fight with valor and discipline. To stand unflinching against all who would threaten me and mine. To follow the Creed of Mandalore." Heat and conviction filled my voice, and I barely noticed. "I swore my oath and donned this armor, and I became something more. Whatever I was before, whatever I may become in the future, I am Mandalorian."
As I finished, I realized she was staring at me. I could feel her gaze boring into the back of my skull.
I did my best not to squirm.
"That sounds... nice," she said at last, quietly enough that I doubted I was meant to hear it.
My helmet hid my own blush.
(*)(*)(*)
"Huh."
The word slipped out before I could stop it as I stared up at the duracrete wall slicing through the forest. The top of the wall stopped just short of the first branches, three meters of so off the ground. It fit through the trees as if it had simply grown up between them, slicing a straight line a dozen meters long. On either side of it, another, identical wall shot off at an angle, repeating again until it wrapped around the compound in a hexagonal shape.
I could make out the top of a building just barely rising above the wall, meshing with the trees also growing inside the walls. To the side, a small gatehouse was just barely visible from here. A small fleet of speeders, including another modified sled, was parked just outside it, ready for their next raid.
I had to admit, these pirates were better funded than I'd expected.
"Alright," Mara said from above me. Her voice was tight with tension and determination. Her knuckles were white against the trunk of the tree we hid behind. "What's the plan?"
"We wait." As I spoke, I was already cycling through vision modes and scanning the exterior of the compound. A group determined enough to build a full compound this far out in the woods, especially one led by a Death Trooper, couldn't possibly fail to have guards posted.
"Wait?!" Mara hissed. "They're right there!"
"Yes." A trio of pirates carrying repeaters, all in the same quasi-uniform of yesterday's group, chose that moment to round the rear of the compound. I started a timer. "They are."
Frustration radiated from her in tangible waves.
"We can't just stand here! We should-" She cut herself off as she finally caught sight of the patrol. I felt the rage spike through her. Her gun twitched. I snagged the barrel before it could really move.
She glared down at me.
I shook my head and pushed the gun down further. Her glare intensified, but I was unmoved. After a long beat, she relented. We both watched the patrol in tense silence.
"Patience," I said as they vanished into the trees on the other side. "Discipline. We do not move before we are ready."
"Oh I'm ready alright." Her furious gaze never moved from the trees the patrol had vanished into. "They'll-"
A stray sound pricked against my attention then and I tuned out the rest of her grumbling. It was a low, buzzing hum, faint but growing stronger. I recognized the sound, I knew I'd heard it before, but what it came from I couldn't say.
A moment later, it clicked.
With a muttered oath, I threw myself up at Mara and pushed her back into the tree. She made a strangled sound of surprise before I managed to perch myself on her chest and slap a hand over her mouth. She tried to speak and I squeezed, forcing her lips shut.
"Quiet," I hissed, as forcefully as I dared. "Don't move."
She froze staring at me, eyes wide in surprise and fear.
I did my best to ignore it. I lowered myself against her as tightly as I could manage, wrapping my legs around her waist and all but hugging her.
The hand not holding her mouth shut tapped a series of buttons on my vambrace and I gave a silent prayer. The indicator for my armor's rudimentary stealth systems flashed green.
The systems were not complicated, little more than a way to diffuse my life signs over a larger area. It was meant to make me appear to hostile sensors as a sensor ghost, or maybe even a cluster of small animals. Even then, though, it was rarely able to fool anything smarter than the most rudimentary droid brain.
Fortunately, that was all I needed it to do.
Bare seconds after my stealth systems had engaged, an old Imperial probe droid floated out of the trees directly behind me. The hum of its repulsor was finally loud enough for even Mara to hear. Confusion cut through her emotions and her gaze flicked over my shoulder.
The blood drained from her face.
We stood there frozen for a second that stretched into eternity. The droid swept passed us without even slowing down.
I waited for a ten count, then finally let out the breath I'd been holding and dropped off of Mara, my armor dropping the stealth field as I went. She let out a shaky breath of her own, and slid down the tree.
"R-right," she said a moment later. "Let's get ready."
I didn't bother to fight my smirk.
Together, we circled around the compound, noting potential ingress and egress points and observing the patrols. I never managed to catch a glimpse of the Death Trooper, but between the patrols and what I could feel inside, I thought I had a good read on their total number. Soon enough, a plan started to come together.
"Okay," I said once I'd worked out the last few steps. Mara's attention snapped to me with an almost audible sound. "Here's the plan. After the next pass of the probe, I'm going to use the trees to get into the camp and get into position. You stay here and wait for the signal. Your job will be to take them out while they're distracted. Use the trees to get an angle into the camp. Understand?"
She nodded and tried not to show her nerves.
"Good. Now stand still, the droid's almost here."
I hopped up and latched onto her once more, activating my suit in the process. The droid slid past us without a fuss, and I dropped to the ground. She scowled at me and muttered unpleasantries under her breath that I ignored.
"Remember, short bursts, don't spoil the shot. Aim, pull the trigger, get to cover, then worry if you hit."
"I remember."
I nodded and wished her luck. "Jate'kara."
With that, I scampered up the side of the tree and out onto the limbs. It was a fairly simple matter to move through the canopy. The branches were thick and sturdy well away from the trunks and the foliage never really thinned. Which, unfortunately, also meant getting through without making undue noise and giving the game away was slower than I'd have preferred.
I made it to the first tree inside the wall eventually, though, and chanced a glance out of the canopy. It was a fairly simple thing, consisting of three prefab buildings around a large central fire pit.
The centermost building, the one I glimpsed over the wall originally, was a large dome. I could feel a handful of presences within, their emotions raucous and turbulent, reaching fever pitch in time with the game of huttball I could hear.
To the left of that, and closest to my position was a generic office, little more than a large box with a couple of windows. An antenna rose out of some machinery sticking out from behind it and disappeared into the canopy overhead.
The last building, nearly directly across the compound, was a large shed that, from what little I could see through its open door, had to be the pirates' barracks. To my mild surprise, I couldn't feel any presences inside it, sleeping the day away. It was rare to see a pirate band where none of them were napping.
Off to one side, all the way back against the wall, stood a small lean-to, a familiar metal spike driven into the ground underneath it. There was no chain attached to this one, but a dull red stain on the ground told me all I really needed to know.
A trio of pirates lounged around the unlit fire pit, chatting as they sat in the small circle of daylight allowed through the canopy. They were relaxed, clearly not on duty, but just as clearly tense. Their weapons never strayed far from their hands, and their attention drifted to the gate and its single guard every few moments.
Perfect.
I waited for a long minute, and right on time, the last patrol came stomping through the gate. The trio's attention snapped over to their returning comrades, and I used the opportunity to drop silently down the trunk.
The moment I hit the ground, I took off running, dashing across the short distance to the office. From there, it became obvious the machinery with the antenna was a comm system, but one of significantly more power than I'd expected at first glance. The specific make was unfamiliar to me, but the signal array and hyperspace link were obvious. The system could broadcast halfway across the Rim without breaking a sweat. It had to be expensive.
Which made it a perfect target, I thought.
I grabbed one of the three det charges off my belt, keyed it for remote detonation, and slapped it onto the base of the antenna. It lit up in a dim, steady red glow, signaling its readiness and I moved on.
It was the work of only a few careful moments to get behind the center building, where I began to feel for the presences inside. The returning patrol had settled in already and were cheering and/or jeering at the game right alongside their comrades. I felt along the back wall of the building to the point closest to all of them and placed my last two det charges.
Job done, I continued along to the other edge of the barracks, where I could look back over the rest of the compound.. The gate guard was still in position, and still the only one in sight with their blaster drawn and ready to fire.
He was going to be first.
My resolve set, I drew my blaster and pushed into motion, one finger hovering over the detonator. I made it all of three steps.
Maybe I made some noise, or stepped on something I didn't notice, but something gave me away. The gate guard abruptly turned toward me, paled, and began to shout. Answering shouts rang out almost immediately from the group in the middle, then the large building, and finally a shrill mechanical wail filled the air. I pushed the detonator almost on instinct.
The explosions were deafening.
Shouts of warning turned to fear and pain. The three at the campfire whirled back toward the building, but the gate guard stayed focused on me. His rifle swung around. My blaster kicked and his body spun to the ground with a scream.
The three turned back, fear and shock giving way to anger as they spotted me charging toward them. All three had their blasters drawn now, and brought them to bear on me. I fired again, and one of them stumbled back with a yelp, his blaster and the last knuckle of one of his fingers falling to the forest floor.
I cursed and started to dodge, dancing through the fire of the other two pirates. Blaster bolts stitched through the air centimeters from my beskar even as I returned fire, catching one of them in the chest. He collapsed without a sound, moments before I closed the remaining distance to his partner.
She drew a large knife with a curse and swung at me, missing my neck by a hair.
Drawing on my powers, I slammed to a halt and grabbed her wrist before she could retract it. With a moment of focus, I threw myself up and spun, as a wave of force knocked her legs out from under her. She was pulled along with my spin, flipping through the air and slamming into the ground head first.
A wet snap sounded.
I landed neatly beside her corpse, only for my senses to scream in warning. Without a second thought, I threw myself to the side.
The third pirate, still half a finger short, barrelled through where I'd been a moment before. Obscenities rolled from his lips as he spun around looking for me. Behind me, I could feel the pirates from the buildings just starting to emerge, bloodlust and violence fresh on their minds, and I saw an opportunity.
The pirate in the middle finally found me again and lunged.
I threw myself around him, dodging his fingertips by centimeters. A thought and gesture bounced me off thin air, reversed my momentum and sent me barrelling at him from behind. I pushed off the ground with one hand and rolled between his legs before he could react, only to land directly in front of him, facing the building and the collection of other pirates just starting to peek out of it.
My right hand swung up.
The pirate above me hesitated, jaw slack with surprise. My hand tightened into a fist
Fire burst from my vambrace in a searing column. It washed over his chest and face in a wave. He began to scream and thrash, staggering backwards. The other pirates recoiled, shocked at the sudden brutality.
A burning, still-screaming corpse fell to the ground behind me.
Stillness reigned for a single, eternal heartbeat.
"Kriffing shoot it!" A stentorian roar destroyed the moment of peace, and any chance the pirates would break.
I followed the sound to find the Death Trooper glaring out of a window, rifle raised and already firing. The other pirates as one shook off their momentary stupor and hurried to catch up.
In the fraction of a second I had, my blaster flicked out and caught a devaronian in the shoulder. He staggered, but caught himself and started firing nearly as soon as the others.
Then I had no more time to think. The world spun and danced along with me, shifting my steps to pass among the blaster bolts without ever quite touching them. Each step brought me closer and closer to the building, and the cover within.
I made it all of a meter before a sudden burst of realization splashed against my senses.
"Jedi!" The Death Troopers' bellow was unmistakable, even over the blaster fire. "Jonz, C, blind fire!"
I had just enough time to process the words when the universe shrieked in warning. My feet moved without my input, turning an easy hop into a sudden stumble moments before a blaster bolt slammed into the ground beside me.
My rhythm ruined, sparks flew off my chest plate as another bolt hit me. The impact nearly spun me around. I turned into the motion, letting it flow into a somersault and then back into motion.
More blaster fire rained down all around me, a decent chunk of which clearly wasn't even aimed at me, if it was aimed at all, and it was all the more effective for it. I was forced to constantly scramble at the last instant to dodge fire that no one could predict.
Sparks began to fly off me more and more often as I failed to keep up. Each hit shook my concentration and my confidence, making it all the more difficult to dodge the next.
My advance stalled, then became a retreat.
Under a withering hail of fire, I fled, darting into cover behind the office building, and nearly collapsed. My breath came in pants. My heart thundered in my ears.
That had not been pleasant.
I didn't have long to rest. Already, the Trooper was barking orders at his men, rallying them to flush me out. I could feel their rage and excitement rising. They could taste blood in the water. It wouldn't be long before they came after me again.
With a grunt of effort, I crept to the edge of the building and peeked out, ready to duck back at any moment.
The Trooper had arranged his pirates in three three-man kill teams, each one with the lead element holding a physical shield, ranging from a table on its side to a bit of door, while the other two aimed over his shoulder. Overlapping fields of fire was the name of the game. If I stepped out, all three groups would have a free shot on me.
The Trooper himself, however, was separate, he and the devaronian I'd shot earlier formed a fourth team. They didn't have a shield, but they did have the burning bottle the devaronian had just thrown over the building.
My eyes went wide but before I could react, the Trooper casually shot it out of the air. The bottle exploded, sending a rain of glass and burning liquid raining behind the office. On me.
With an effort of will, I threw up an umbrella of force. The glass and flame slid off it and into the loam around me, where leaves and other detritus almost immediately began to burn. Neither Mara nor I would survive a proper forest fire, so I had to spend precious seconds strangling the flames before it could get any bigger.
Which meant I didn't notice the thermal detonator until it landed.
I cursed and threw myself away from it as far and fast as I could, but the shockwave caught me regardless, sending me tumbling out and into the open. The Trooper barked something I couldn't make out over the ringing in my ears, and blaster fire rang out. Rapid short bursts that I heard but didn't feel.
Then sense reasserted itself.
I shot to my feet and spun toward the pirates, already starting to move. One of the kill teams was dead, bodies slumped over the table they'd brought out as cover, while the other two had whirled toward the compound's wall.
Mara, I realized with a grin.
The Trooper had seen me rise, and I could see on his face he knew what it meant. I reached for my blaster, but it wasn't there. With a curse, I charged at him, dodging the few shots he managed to get off at me before I was in range.
My grapple shot out and caught him across the chest, wrapping around his upper arms and pulling them flush. He let go of his rifle with one hand and grabbed the grapple line, then pulled. The move yanked me off my feet and sent me flying through the air, right at the devaronian.
I grinned.
With a flex of my left hand, my flock of whistling birds, the self-guiding rocket darts installed in my vambrace came to life. With their eponymous shriek, three of the darts launched from my arm and in an instant tore into the devaronian's right eye.
I landed moments before his corpse.
The second I hit the ground, I threw myself back toward the Death Trooper, who was just beginning to turn around. His arms were still trapped by my grapple, his gun at an angle and unable to be brought to bear. I threw myself at the back of his knee, bringing him down with an oath.
I turned through the motion, swinging around and climbing up his armor before he could react. With my feet on his shoulder and one hand around his chin, I grabbed and pulled with everything I had.
His neck snapped with a pop.
Silence fell over the compound once again. The five surviving pirates stared at me with wide eyes.
Another burst of fire from the trees reduced their number to four.
They ran for the gate.
None of them made it.
(*)(*)(*)
"Good work," I told Mara as she walked through the gate. I gingerly got back to my feet and gave her a once-over. There were no obvious injuries, but her hands were scraped up pretty well, presumably from climbing the trees. "And thank you."
"Anytime." She flashed me a satisfied grin.
I grunted and started walking back into the compound. She fell into step with me, but where I walked around the corpses, she went out of her way to walk over them.
I wasn't sure that was exactly healthy, but she had more than enough reason for it.
"So what're we doing still here?" she asked a minute later.
"Looking for information," I said. I led her into the office building. The interior was ruined, with an enormous hole in the back, and a layer of dust covered everything. The desk, and the datapads on top of it, were still intact however.
"These pirates were unusually well-funded. They may have a backer."
Mara frowned. "You mean it's not over?"
"Can't say." I turned on the datapads and started skimming through the contents. The death trooper kept surprisingly detailed paperwork for a pirate, though, and it didn't take me long to find his balance sheets. Mara waited impatiently.
Half a minute later, I had to put it down and suppress the urge to go mutilate his corpse.
"It's over," I said instead. Mara's attention latched on to me like a physical weight. "This band was selling slaves to the Remnant. Probably where you were headed."
And judging by the numbers in this ledger, a few of those slaves were even Force sensitives, something the Remnant had always paid a premium for. Gods help the poor bastards.
She deflated, her relief nearly palpable.
"So there won't be any more?"
"There's always more pirates," I said. "But none related to this group."
She grumbled something half-heartedly while I grabbed the other datapad and flipped through it. It was similar minutiae as the first, but a file toward the end caught my attention. It was a holo, recently recorded, and the only one on the datapad. Curiousity stoked, I set the pad down and started the playback.
The holo had to be from an armor-cam, and whoever was recording, the trooper I assumed, was riding a speeder across familiar fields of grass, Mara's town in the distance. Closer, a trio of figures could be seen pushing through the grass, running flat out toward the town.
The recording didn't have sound, but I didn't need it to know the trooper was laughing.
He and another pirate on a speeder corralled the fleeing figures, darting ahead to cut them off from town and herd them away, only to fall back and begin the chase again. One of the figures fell, and I could hear Mara's sharp breath.
The trooper swooped past the trio and slid to a stop, dismounted, and walked back to loom over them. A holographic double of Mara cowered behind what had to be her parents. They said something to the trooper, I couldn't tell what. Whatever the trooper's response, it drove Mara's father to throw himself at the trooper with a roar.
He died before he managed his second step.
Mara and her mother both screamed. The trooper walked up and kicked the body.
Mara's face twisted into a rictus of hate. One hand snapped out and the trooper rocketed back like he'd been fired out of a canon. The recording dissolved into chaos for a couple of seconds, before the trooper was back on his feet and charging back at them. The other pirate, still on his speeder, shot a stun bolt into her Mara's back, and she collapsed, twitching and insensate.
The recording ended, her mother clutching her limp body and crying.
"That answers several questions," I said into the ensuing, brittle silence.
Mara didn't respond.
I looked over. She was still staring at the holo, her gaze locked on her dead family. I turned it off with a quiet sigh.
"C'mon." I prodded her hip, the highest point I could reach. "Let's get you home."
"R- right." She let me lead her back out of the camp and back to the speeder.
She was silent all the way back to town.