Even from space, Loracan wasn't much to look at. Most of the surface was a briny blue-green, and from the Bottom Line's position when it dropped out of hyperspace, Tamar could make out two separate island continents, both featureless and pale. Nonetheless the planet hung in front of them, filling the cockpit's viewport, and felt like some kind of omen.

"Now what?" she asked, slightly hushed, as she stood behind Mekr's pilot seat.

"I called ahead and contacted the local government, such as it is. They dug up their registry of mining facilities on the southern continent and sent me a copy."

"Smart of you."

"I can do smart, don't act surprised. Anyway, I ran through the list. Found one facility registered to a barve named Horum Auchs, founded eight years pre-Empire."

"I'm surprised it's not buried in the sand by now," Jind said from the co-pilot's seat.

"Those deserts there are mostly salt crystals, mixed in with other mineral strains," Mekr said. "And the mining outpost is in a mountain range. The register contained their spatial coordinates. Shouldn't be too hard to find, even if Auchs threw up a sensor-jamming net."

"Can you get a line to Marin?" Tamar asked Jind.

He tapped his comm console. "Go ahead."

Tamar raised her voice. "Are you there, Mar'ika?"

"Standing by," her daughter said. "Do you have coordinates for me?"

"That we do," said Jind. "Sending them now. You know where to meet us."

"Copy, coordinates received. You getting anything on scanners yet?"

"Not yet," said Mekr. "We'll let you know when we do."

"Good. On my way now."

The line clicked off. As Bottom Line began to shudder through Loracan's upper atmosphere Mekr said, "She a good flyer, your girl?"

"She's her father's child." Tamar tried to sound glib. They were all shielding their anxiety with banter. Typical Mando behavior.

"Well, for once I'm glad to hear it," said Mekr. "Now get to a seat and strap in, Tam'ika. This ride could get bumpy any second."

-{}-

Very few ships passed through the skies of Loracan and ever fewer fell out of space directly toward the southern continent, which hosted only a quarter of the world's already meager population. When the redoubt's sensors announced that a ship was doing exactly that, Kaynar Auchs knew his enemies were coming.

After being forced to accept that his clan-mates wouldn't rally around him as these Skiratas had their dead, he struggled to decide the next step. He'd tried to contact Shalk Jeban for updates but the old man had never responded. If they'd gotten to Jeban they might find him here, but they'd also be tracing Kaynar's other associates. That meant his best hope to escape vengeance meant taking Yaga and fleeing to the Outer Rim, sulking on backwaters and taking worse jobs for worse pay, always afraid vengeful Skiratas might find him. Kaynar hadn't done all this to live the rest of his life cowering and afraid.

When his sensors announced one mid-sized vessel dropping fast, directly on his location, he'd had just enough time to set and arm a few portable missile launchers he'd kept aboard Ultimatum. The devices were patched into the old mining station's sensors and when a ship got close they'd automatically track and fire. That probably wouldn't be enough to take down a bunch of Mandos who'd come prepared to fight it was the best he could do. Surprise might buy him enough time to punch out with Ultimatum and get his son to safety.

The launchers he'd rigged would take care of themselves, so he hurried Yaga into Ultimatum and prepared to take off. The camo netting spread over them blocked sensor-sweeps in both directions but the data from the missile launchers fed into his shipboard computer and give him a telemetry on the ship bearing down. Firing his engines would release heat to give himself away, camo net or no, and he settled with warming his repulsors and kicking into a gentle hover over the landing pad while the enemy approached.

Yaga was strapped tight into the co-pilot's seat. They'd hastily put on their armor and checked their weapons in preparation for anything. The boy was tense but not panicked. He'd been through life-threatening situations before and, deservedly or not, he trusted his father to protect him.

Kaynar promised himself he'd do that much, no matter what else happened. He may have never amounted to much as a Mando warrior, but he was still a father.

They watched together in tense silence as the ship crew closer, closer. It was barely slowing down at it barreled through the atmosphere. It finally started to decelerate just as it approached the trigger range for the missile launchers. Kaynar's hands tensed on the ship's control yoke. His breath held. Closer, closer. When four missiles shot into the sky he kicked the repulsors to full. Ultimatum burst through the camo net, pulling it from its stakes and dragging the whole thing with them until he banked hard enough to shake it off.

When it fell away like a discarded wrapper Kaynar saw everything bright in the midday sun: the jagged yellow-stone mountains, the endless stretch of white salt plain, the clear pale-blue sky, the dark shape of the enemy freighter as it juked hard to evade the chasing missiles. The warheads converged on it nearly as one. The first three exploded hard against its shields but the fourth got through, tearing a smoking hole out of the hull and forcing the ship to drop altitude as its engines strained.

Kaynar didn't want to see if it crashed. He had his opened and he took it. He pointed Ultimatum skyward and threw all power to the engines.

His eyes were on the skies but his son's were on the sensors, and Yaga was the one who bleated "Watch out!" just before their whole ship rocked violently. A second ship streaked in front of his, then wheeled around to attack from behind. He only saw it for a second but he instantly recognized an ancient X-wing fighter, S-foils wide and ready for attack.

"Where did it come from?" Kaynar snarled and reached for the shield controls.

"I don't know! I think it came from the mountains!" Yaga cried.

When Kaynar tried to raise shields, the computer beeped angry denial. "Shab it. Take the guns," he told Yaga.

By then the enemy ship was behind them. Before his son could get the turret firing the entire ship shook with the hard impact of a warhead. Alarms in the cockpit screamed from all directions. The sky fell away and the viewport filled with featureless white, rising fast to take them. The control yoke shook hard, like it was trying to throw him off, but he didn't release. As he tried to wrestle them away from a hard crash he fired repulsors and dropped landing gear, anything to soften the blow. The white fell closer, swallowing their vision, and then they hit ground.

He released the yoke and grabbed the sides of his chair to keep himself pinned as the entire cockpit shook hard. The violence of first impact was the worst but the jarring vibrations continued as their broken ship slid across the salt plain. Finally they came to a lurching, violent halt. The cockpit's alarms still wailed. Some of the computers were lit and functional, others dead. He didn't need them to know this ship wouldn't fly again.

The ones he'd failed to kill would be on them soon. He knew it, and felt the abyss of absolute failure yawn beneath him. It would be so easy to fall in and admit what he'd known all his life: he was an embarrassment as an Auchs, as a Mando warrior, as a father, and all attempts at rectification had brought humiliation and death. It was easy to fall because it was all true.

But he looked sidelong at Yaga. The boy was badly jarred from the crash but stirring. His hands fumbled to release his crash webbing. Even after all this, his son knew what to do.

"Are you all right?" Kaynar asked as he stared to undo his own.

"I'm okay, buir. Just a little knocked around."

"You're not hurt."

"No. I'm okay."

"Good." Kaynar released his restrains and started to rise. "Get your buy'c, ad'ika. Get your weapons. We'll go down fighting."

The Skiratas were coming for them, and there was no way out, but Kaynar wouldn't let them touch his son until they'd gotten through him.

-{}-

The crashed ship left a long dark streak across the flat white plain. A pillar of black smoke from its shattered engine section rose straight into the windless air. Marin slowed her X-wing, lowered landing struts, and set it down ten meters from the ship's final resting spot.

When she popped the cockpit she dropped straight down, using the Force to soften her landing. Her boots crunched audibly on the ground's mixture of mineral particles and salt crystals and she could feel the sun beating hard on her helmet and shoulder-pads. Ninet's armor felt tight all around her, the T-visor beskar helmet constraining. She tried to tell herself that was as it should be. She was doing this as a Mandalorian and nothing else. She'd left her lightsaber in her cockpit and the Jedi part of her too. Hopefully she could go back to being one, once this was over.

The Bottom Line had taken a bad missile hit but was lurching in their direction. As Marin slowly approached Auchs' ship she knew she could wait for them; it would be for the best. But as she walked she dared reach out with the Force, just a little, to sense how many people were inside. Just two people,, both jarred and frightened.

Two Skiratas dead on Mandalore. Two Auchs dead here. That would be justice on Mando terms. It would be right.

She lost the chance to hesitate when the hatch on the side of the ship popped open. Laser blasts immediately flew her way and instinct told her to use a lightsaber that wasn't there. She did her best to dodge but a few blasts pounded her beskar breastplate as she moved. Marin pulled her blaster and fired three shots in reply. She could see one Mando clearly, halfway through the hatch. Her blasts forced him back a step and she charged. The warrior kept firing with one hand and reached for his belt with the other. Marin saw the grenade arc toward her and her armor took a few direct hits in the same moment. Instinct grabbed her and this time it succeeded. She plucked the grenade from the air with her mind and tossed it aside. It rolled away and detonated, shaking the plain, but this reaction had clearly stunned her attacker.

That gave her the opening she needed. Marin charged in, firing blast after blast into the Mando's armor. When she got close enough she lunged. Beskar crashed against beskar as they both tumbled through the airlock and into the ship.

Marin came out on top, but he was bigger than she was. She tried a flat-handed chop down on his neck but he caught her by the wrist. She felt his body twist beneath hers and saw him grab the blaster on the floor. Her other hand shot down and caught it by the barrel. When she tried to wrest it away it went off in his hand, heating the barrel under her gloved palm.

That was when someone shot her in the head. Her helmet ringed around her as she fell back. She knew in an instant the beskar dome had saved her life. The man she'd been fighting was rearing to his feet and reaching for a knife strapped to his belt. Behind him, standing in the portal to an adjoining hallway, was a second Mando. This one looked smaller, lighter, maybe female, and they had a long-barrel rifle hefted in both hands.

The Force was the only tool she had left. She used it. An invisible hand wrenched the rifle's long barrel into a right angle. The Mando using it bleated in surprise, distracting the bigger one for just a second. Marin threw herself upright and grabbed for his knife. She got one hand on his wrist but he was stronger and the blade dipped close enough to cut the black body-suit at her side and tear the skin over her left ribs.

Even as pain spread through her body, she knew he hadn't hit any organs. She could still fight. She cracked her helmet hard against his, knocked him a step back, then called on the Force again. A burst of power shattered his right elbow and she finally wrenched the knife from his broken arm.

The man- this had to be Kaynar Auchs- staggered back and shouted, "Who are you? What are you?"

She could only tell him the truth. "I killed your brother! Not Ninet! Not Dorn! Me!"

The man stared in shock but his partner leaped in to take Marin on her flank. Twisting hurt her side but she ignored it. She grabbed her attacker's blaster in one hand and used the Force to strengthen her grip, crushing it. A swipe of the leg was enough to knock the younger Mando off-balance and drop him hard to the deck with the crunch of a broken leg.

But then Kaynar was on her. He'd pulled another knife- a narrow, nasty stiletto- and thrust at her. Marin knew how to fight with blades. She pivoted so the stiletto scraped across her beskar, then flipped her own knife out and slid it under the man's chest-plate and into his ribs.

That didn't stop him. His free hand lashed out and grabbed her neck. She had no armor for protection as he squeezed hard against her windpipe. She dug the knife in, as deep as she could, but he didn't release and she couldn't breathe. He wouldn't let go until both of them were dead.

She knew that through instinct, through the Force. Because the Force was all she had she reached deeper. She felt the man's anger and frustration and despair, his hatred for her, his hatred for himself, for his brothers, for everything that had placed them here on this miserable deserted world with knives in each other, dying in a fight neither of them wanted.

And when she felt his hate it was so easy to find hate of her own, hate for all those same things and more. Hate was her last weapon she had and she called on it, let it funnel through her and come manifest through the Force. As her knife dug deeper into Kaynar's side her other hand grabbed his neck as his grabbed hers, and as he squeezed her windpipe hard enough to crush she summoned much greater power. Light came from her fingers as blue sparks. They spread in a flash and danced across his body and through it, rending every cell with raw destructive energy.

Pain made him release her throat. He tried to stagger back as she gasped for air but she wouldn't let him. Marin drew her knife roughly from his chest, switched the angle of the blade, and slashed it fast across his neck.

Blood sprayed out across her helmet, casting her vision red. All she heard through Kaynar's helmet was a muffled gurgle as he dropped to his knees. Still gasping, she wiped the blood from her visor with her free hand. Vision cleared just in time to see Kaynar Auchs pitch to one side, land hard on his shoulder, then roll onto his back. Blood still pooled from his slit neck. His face was invisible behind its mask when he died.

And as she stared down at his corpse Marin realized how it had happened, how easy it had been to surrender to her anger and the Force flow out of her in the most destructive way. She'd marched into this fight telling herself it was duty to her family, to the people she'd loved and lost, and she'd do it as they did, as Mandos, not as a Jedi.

She hadn't killed Kaynar as a Mandalorian or a Jedi. She'd been something much worse than either.

That was when she remembered the other Mando. They were on the floor, backed against the far bulkhead, holding a blaster pistol in two shaking hands. Marin staggered toward them. The blaster went off and the shot sailed over her shoulder. She dropped the knife and kept walking. The Mando fired again. It took her in the shoulder-plate, staggered her, but she kept on. She used the Force, hesitantly, cautiously, to take the blaster's barrel and twist it beyond use.

The young Mando dropped the gun and cowered on the floor. Marin crouched in front of him and removed his helmet with both hands. She found herself looking at the smooth thin face of a terrified boy. He must have been thirteen, fourteen. The same age she'd been when her lucky slash had killed Gevern Auchs and changed her life, his life, Kaynar's life and her mother's life and too many more to count. And she knew, from the mental echoes of Kaynar Auchs' last moment, that his son was the one thing spared from all his hate.

"I'm sorry," Marin said. It pained her through just to get it out. "I'm so sorry."

She got up. She staggered backwards for the airlock. The boy stayed on the floor, staring at her, terrified and waiting to die.

When her back hit the airlock portal Marin turned and stumbled out into the light.

The Bottom Line had set down. She wrenched off her helmet, exposing her face to the bright sunlight and air thick with salt-smell even on the dry plain. She watched as the landing ramp came down. Tamar was the first one out. Right behind her was a Mando in aged bronze beskar she knew as Jovar's.

More followed after them, including Jind and Mekr. Marin stayed where she was, between them and the open hatch. Her mother got to her first and when she took off her helmet, Tamar's eyes were immediately drawn to the bruises on her throat.

"It's okay." Marin's voice cracked. "I got him. He's dead."

"Are you sure?" Mekr asked as he trotted up to her. "Just one?"

"Just one. I'm positive." As her mother examined the wounds on her side she added, "Jedi powers. Remember?"

Tamar lifted her head and their eyes met. Tamar would be able to sense one more life on that broken ship, but she didn't need the Force to see the silent plead on her daughter's face, or to understand.

"She's right," Tamar said. "There's nobody aboard."

Disappointment rippled through the Mandos ringing the crash site, all gleaming in their pointless heavy armor. Jind suggested, "We should still look around. Check the equipment, the computers-"

"Enough," Tamar called. She ran her fingers gently on her daughter's neck "Leave it be. We did what we came to do. We should focus on fixing Bottom Line."

"All right," Mekr grunted. "I don't think we'll need to scavenge spare parts…"

Marin gave her mother a tiny touch of thanks in Force. Tamar lowered her hand and said, "We need to patch you up. Fix your side wound. Your throat."

"I know," Marin said. "Let's get back to the ship."

Tamar and Jind moved to help her. She stepped forward before either of them did. She walked straight and stiff, trying to ignore the pain in her side. The landing ramp loomed ahead of her, a pale ascending portal. She was almost there when a shock of pain ran out from her side and robbed the strength from her legs.

Marin landed on hands on knees. A few Mandos moved to help but Tamar held them back. She could feel everything her daughter felt and knew she'd welcome no touch. The fullness of everything she'd done here today- everything she'd done for the past eight years leading to this point- finally hit Marin and it was worse than any pain. Her breaths became short and fast and her body heaved from the stomach like she was trying to vomit up everything inside but nothing came. Her vision blurred but no tears rolled to cool her reddened face. She stared at the dirt and trembled and knew all their eyes were on her, witnessing a pain none of them could understand, not even her mother.

When Marin finally found the strength, she pushed herself to her feet and staggered up the ramp without looking back.