Mere hours before, in the cockpit of his ship, the Slave I, Boba Fett received a transmission from whom he believed to be Jagged Fel; the foot-long holographic representation of the Imperial Head of State looked exactly like him, and all of his inflections of mannerisms were consistent with what Fett had recognized from the man. So there was no reason why the bounty hunter didn't believe him to be who he appeared to be.
"Mandalore Fett," the hologram said, "you and your granddaughter must return to Hagamoor 3 right away. It's about the cure. My scientists may have discovered a breakthrough that you should see for yourself. How soon can you get here?"
Fett took a moment to himself as he looked at the Slave I's current position in space and calculated how long it would take for his ship to reach Hagamoor 3.
"It should be a few hours, Head of State Fel," Fett replied. He held his tone steady; the prospect of a breakthrough with the cure to the nanovirus plaguing the world of Mandalore nearly made him want to jump for joy, even at his old age. "I'll contact Mirta and let her know to meet me there."
"That won't be necessary," Fel replied. "I've already contacted her myself. She's already on the way from a job that was just completed near Bakura."
"She didn't tell me," Fett said.
"I just told her a few minutes ago," Fel explained. "You'll arrive well ahead of her by a few hours."
Fett took a moment before he replied with, "Fine. But I won't visit the lab until after Mirta's arrived."
"Great, I'll see you there," Fel replied. He then signed off, leaving Fett to plot a jump to Hagamoor 3.
But before he did, he decided to contact Mirta.
"Jango-Vau-Skirata-One-One-Three-Eight," was the first thing she said as soon as her holographic representation appeared before him; that was the code that verified her identity. No one else knew that code, not even Mirta's own husband Ghes Orade; Fett was the only other person in the galaxy who could have known that code. Moreover, Mirta wasn't wearing her helmet, which only made it more likely that it was her; if the transmission was faked, the impostor would have decided to leave the helmet on so there would be less work for the holoprojector.
"Canderous-Jaing-Etain-Eight-Four-Seven-Two," was Fett's reply. Again, only he and Mirta knew the code that verified his own identity.
"I'm on my way from Bakura right now," Mirta confirmed. "You?"
"I'll be five hours ahead of you," Fett stated. "See you there."
Hours later, the Slave I dropped out of hyperspace in the Antemeridian system. Hagamoor 3's Orbital Control cleared Fett's ship for approach, and the bounty hunter piloted the Slave I down through the atmosphere for another visit of the research station.
Fett docked his ship without any trouble in the station's hangar bay, and when the Slave I had been powered down, he sat in place, looking at his ship's chronometer for when Mirta would arrive.
A few minutes later, the gangways of all the Imperial ships that were docked around the Slave I opened up and several jetpacked Mandalorians poured out from each of them. They all began assaulting the legendary Firespray-31 with various blasterfire, rockets, grenades, and bouts of yellow-orange heat from their flamethrowers.
And while Fett had coated the Slave I with near-indestructible beskar, he knew that if he didn't get his ship's defenses online again soon, as he was trying to now, he would be a dead duck.
Thankfully, it didn't take long for the Firespray's defensive guns to begin firing upon the Mandos. And while the mercs' own beskar armor withstood the vaporizing effects, the sheer concussive force penetrated their armor's defensive capabilities and practically turned their owners' insides into jelly, killing them and dropping them to the deck. Naturally, the flying Mandalorians flew much more defensive flight paths around the hangar bay even as they kept up their respective volleys upon the Slave I.
And now, even as Fett started to get his ship powered up again and his vessel's defensive lasers were set to automatic to take out the assaulting Mandos, he wondered how the hell he was lured into this trap. How had his scanners not picked up any lifesigns when he arrived? Did his attackers set up some kind of dampening field around the Imperial ships to mask their lifesigns? Was it part of their armor? If that was the case, how was he not notified of this as their Mandalore?
Could they be working for Belok Rhal?
The suddenness of that thought distracted him for a brief but all too critical moment before a multitude of simultaneous grenade explosions blew open the Slave I's cockpit. The blast ripped the pilot seat from where it was bolted down, and Fett himself was blown back out of the chair to crash through the door that led further back into the ship.
And before he had time to recover, with his ears still ringing and his body wracked with pain, a thin metallic cable quickly wrapped itself around his right ankle and abruptly pulled him back through the damaged cockpit so that he could soar out above the hangar bay's deck. When he looked up, with his ears still ringing, he saw Belok Rhal, fully armed, armored, and helmeted, as the one who was flying around, his right gauntlet having fired the cable that wrapped itself around Fett's ankle.
Fett brought out his blaster to fire at Rhal; even though he knew that would do little to no damage to his beskar armor, Fett hoped that the physical forces of the laser shots could at least knock Rhal off-course and hopefully plow him against a wall. So the Mandalore fired away upon the traitor, and, indeed, the shots were beginning to send Rhal into wild tumbles in the air; with any luck, Fett might be able to free himself from this, after all.
But Rhal took that to his own advantage, and instead slammed Fett into a wall instead. Rhal then allowed his Mandalore to collapse to the deck below before allowing the cable that he attached to his ankle to unwrap itself and retract into his gauntlet. Fett's blaster, meanwhile, clattered well away from his grasp, several meters from where he crashed.
Fett's hearing had still yet to recover, yet he managed to push himself to his feet as the surviving Mandalorians around him dropped to the deck on their feet, their jetpacks deactivated. Rhal was the last to land, and he was only a few feet from Fett; it was obvious, at that point, that the rest of Rhal's mercs wouldn't interfere in what would come next.
Fett made the first move by striking out his vibroblade toward a weak spot near Rhal's neck. But Rhal parried the attack with his own vibroblade before swinging his opposite arm for Fett's head. Fett ducked beneath the attack and then tackled Rhal to the deck, where he made yet another vibroblade strike for Rhal's neck. Rhal then rolled Fett onto his back before his blade could penetrate anything, and then the treacherous Mando pile-drove an elbow down upon Fett's chestplate.
Fett barely felt the blow thanks to his own beskar, and that allowed him to make yet another strike at Rhal's neck. The latter managed to duck his head quickly enough so that the vibroblade refracted off of his helmet instead, and then Rhal grabbed at Fett's blade-wielding hand and pounded it to the deck; that was all it took for the vibroblade to clatter away from Fett's grip. Fett managed to get a leg out from beneath Rhal's weight and shove-kicked him off; as Rhal collapsed to his back, Fett leaped for his vibroblade.
But just as Fett landed for the blade, Rhal had fired a mini-rocket from his left gauntlet. It struck about a meter from where Fett landed, which sent the Mando flying away from his melee weapon.
When Fett landed, he found himself looking right at the blaster that had clattered from him when he had hit the wall while he was in flight with Rhal. He grabbed the gun and rolled to his back to fire the weapon as Rhal charged in toward him. The treacherous merc only flinched from the lasers but was otherwise unimpeded as he made it to Fett, where he kicked the blaster out of his hand. Fett swiped the legs out from his opponent, once again getting him to his back.
But when Fett stood up again, ready to make a run for his blaster, Rhal, still on his back, fired yet another mini-rocket at point-blank range for Fett's chestplate.
The blow not only knocked Fett off his feet and back against the wall behind him, but it also knocked him unconscious before he hit the deck.
With that, Rhal had won the fight before he even stood back up to look over his fallen opponent.
"Strip him," he demanded from two of his goons. "Make sure he has nothing to free himself."
Minutes later, all of the Imperial ships that Rhal's men and women confiscated rose away from the hangar bay and into Hagamoor 3's skies, where they waited for two minutes. By the end of those two minutes, several Mandalorian ships dropped out of hyperspace and zoomed down through the atmosphere to join their apparent Imperial brothers and sisters.
Then, all of the ships, Imperial and Mandalorian alike, fired down upon the facility, completely reducing it to a smoking ruin.
When that was done, all of the ships turned away, left Hagamoor 3's atmosphere, and plotted a unified jump back to the world of Mandalore.
But before they actually jumped, a few of the Imperial shuttles, which were all now on autopilot, each had several jetpacked Mandos fly away from their airlocks The shuttles' automated course took them on a collision course with the Antemeridian system's star; and all of them had the bodies of the Imperials from Hagamoor 3's research facility, unarmored stormtroopers and scientists alike. They all arrived near the star in a few minutes, where they burned away into their constituent atoms.
. . .
"What happened here?" Jag asked the Imperial inspector next to him.
Before him, Inspector Velias, and Jaina, a team of more than a hundred investigators searched through the ruins of the nanovirus research facility, attempting to find anything that could explain what happened here. And just like Jag, Jaina, and Velias, they all wore environmental suits to protect themselves from Hagamoor 3's inhospitable atmosphere.
"An attack, Head of State Fel," Velias answered. "Unfortunately, we haven't been able to determine who the attackers were yet."
"Nothing from Orbital Control?" Jaina asked.
"Everyone aboard Orbital Control was found dead early this morning," Velias answered. "And all records were thoroughly scrubbed clean from the systems."
"Whoever did this was obviously efficient," Jag observed.
"But who'd wanna destroy all this, and why?" Jaina asked.
"That's what we're trying to find out, ma'am," Velias replied evenly. "The only lead we have is the possibility that this was done by traitors in the Remnant."
"What makes you say that, Inspector?" Jag asked.
"All of the ships that were stationed here are gone," Velias explained. "And I don't mean that they were destroyed with the facility. I mean they weren't here in the destruction; they must have left beforehand."
"What about everyone who worked here?" Jaina asked. "Any sign of them?"
Velias shook his head. "None. Although we did find select traces of DNA from-"
Jaina's commlink beeped. "Excuse me," she said as she stepped away from Jag and Velias.
When she answered it, a two-inch version of Jedi Master Kyp Durron appeared before her.
"Master Durron, what is it?" Jaina asked curtly.
"Jaina, you're gonna need to have a look at the news," Kyp replied in a grave tone.
While still holding her commlink in one hand, Jaina brought out her datapad and set it up to connect to the HoloNet. When she got to the news, she nearly dropped both devices because of what was on the news.
She saw footage of stormtroopers—Imperial Remnant stormtroopers—discharge a beaten and bruised Boba Fett, sans armor, from the gangway of an Imperial shuttle... onto the surface of the world of Mandalore!
In mere seconds, Fett was reduced to a pile of goop as the Imperial shuttle blasted away from the surface.
The footage was then replaced by the helmeted personage of Mirta Gev making a formal declaration at the very spot where her grandfather died.
"For the death of our Mandalore, and my grandfather, Boba Fett, I, Mirta Gev, declare that we, the nation of Mandalore, shall go to war with the Imperial Remnant!"