The credit for the idea to make Matthias a Mandalorian all goes to Lenneth le-Fay. Thank you for the wonderful suggestion, and I hope you like what I do with it in the future!
"So where're we headed?" Jesper asked soon after the stars turned to streaks and Inej turned away from the navicomputer.
"Jedha," she replied. "The desert moon of the planet NaJedha. Kuwei tells me that one of the rare materials used to build the Death Star was mined extravagantly there." She frowned. "Kyber crystals, I think he called them?"
Jesper resisted the urge to clutch at his necklace, his conversation with Nina flooding back to him. A kyber crystal powers a Jedi's lightsaber, she'd said.
She'd also said it was where the Death Star's energy beam came from.
"Right." He tried to make his tone casual. He didn't succeed. "So, we're heading into a warzone like Jedha simply because some random crystal came from there? Wandering around on a moon with an Imperial presence that high just to follow a lead seems. . . risky."
Inej's mouth quirked to the side, though Jesper couldn't for the life of them see what was so funny about his (perfectly valid) point. "Why, Jesper. You're almost starting to sound invested in our cause," she teased. "A true Rebel."
He pressed his lips together, then admitted, "You. . . may have won me over. And. . . Eadu." He took a deep breath. "Alderaan." Inej's back tensed at the mention of them. "I don't care what moral compass you have - those actions were irrevocably wrong. I can't just sit by and let more things like that happen."
She looked at him then, dark eyes peculiarly intense, and for a moment she was as inscrutable as Kaz. He could almost imagine her being a phenomenal smuggler.
She said, "Welcome to the team."
Nina asked, "We're going to Jedha to investigate kyber crystal?"
"Yes," Inej said, then glanced at the still-lit lightsaber in her friend's hand, the icy blue one in Kuwei's. She'd only seen it a few times, but she was pretty sure that had belonged to Nina's old master. . . "Your 'sabers are making different noises," she observed.
"Yup." Nina lifted a hand to summon a helmet from where Kaz had had it hanging on the wall. "It's the training setting, so we can practice duelling without, you know, cutting each other's arms off."
"Always a benefit." Inej watched as Nina shoved the helmet onto Kuwei's head, blast shield down. The kid squawked in protest and batted her hand away, but the motion lacked coordination. With the shield down, he couldn't see a thing.
"Hey! What are you doing?"
"You're relying too much on your eyes," she said cryptically, "and your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them."
"But without sight how am I supposed to tell if- Ow!" He yelped as her lightsaber made contact with his left arm. It tore through the fabric of his borrowed jacket slightly, but his pride seemed more wounded than his body. "If you do something like that!"
"Close your eyes," Nina instructed, "and reach out with your senses. All of them. Not just your hearing and touch - your Force sense as well. Learn to see without using your eyes."
"How-"
"Reach out." Inej had never heard Nina's voice like that. It was soft, firm. Gentle. "Breathe. In, out. In, out. Now. . . reach out."
Something in Kuwei's posture slackened as he breathed, then he went still - calm. Inej hadn't even realised he was trembling until he stopped.
"Now," Nina continued, still in that soothing voice, "what do you feel?"
"I feel. . ." He trailed off as he tried to find the right words. "You." He breathed in. "Me." He breathed out. "Captain Ghafa, watching, and Captain Brekker at the door, pretending not to be listening." Inej raised an eyebrow at Kaz when she glanced over to see him there; he scowled. "Jesper in the cockpit, trying not to fall asleep. Matthias and Wylan, talking quietly in their bunkroom. And. . ." He took a deep breath. "Her."
"Who?" Inej asked, before she could stop herself. Nina shot her a glare, but looked equally confused.
"The woman," Kuwei replied vaguely. Inej got the sense his eyes were closed behind that mask. "The woman in the corner. She feels. . . bright." He turned his head in the direction of the corner he was referring to, despite the fact that he still couldn't actually see anything.
Inej and Nina turned to look; Inej frowned. There was no one there.
"There's no one there, Kuwei," she said, brow clouded. "Right, Nina?" She turned to her friend, only to be brought up short by the shocked expression on her face. "Nina?"
Her friend shook herself, and the expression was gone, but she still watched the corner warily. Too warily. "Right," she said slowly, eyes narrowed. "There's no one there."
For a desert moon, Jedha was freezing.
Inej shivered, unconsciously pulling her jacket tighter around herself, and glanced to her left where Kaz was walking. Though strolling might be a better word for it; he moved with an ambiance she'd rarely seen in him before, even with his only partially-healed leg.
Kaz glanced over then, and cocked an eyebrow. "What?" The word was somewhat aggressive.
"Nothing." She glanced around again.
Jedha City was a mishmash of old buildings, market stalls and sand, and the population was equally diverse. The typically beige and brown desert backdrop was contrasted by the crimson robes of some of the inhabitants, the dark jackets, and - of course - the hard white of stormtrooper armour. One trooper stood outside the entrance to a side alley, hand on their blaster; Inej carefully avoided their helmeted gaze as she and Kaz strolled past.
She would've preferred to do this with someone else - anyone else - but Jesper had insisted that Kaz knew the area, and Kaz had agreed. They'd had a glare-off until she'd conceded to allow him to come with her to scout out the area.
"Why are we here, Inej?" he asked now, glancing around furtively. "It's empty, crowded. The Empire sucked this place dry and left lowlife scum to feed on the bones. There's nothing for your high-and-mighty Rebellion here."
Inej didn't answer. Instead she said, "And how can you look at what the Empire's done to places like this and remain apathetic?"
"I'm not apathetic," came the gruff reply. Inej raised her eyebrows, even as she scanned the market stalls again - for what, she didn't know. "I just like being alive." He sighed. "How do you even know we're in the right place?"
"Faith." She still wasn't looking at him, but she could imagine his raised eyebrow. "The Force guided us here, so there must be something here for us."
"The Force." Kaz snorted. "Great. I'm already dealing with three Forcies on this trip, now you of all people have to go and-"
"What do you mean, me of all people?" There was something dangerous to her voice, even as she hushed it, seeing the stormtrooper patrol march past.
"I mean that you never spouted this before!"
"No. I didn't. But I've always believed in it." At his stunned expression, she shrugged. "My parents were members of the Church of the Force, even when the Empire outlawed it. We nearly died in one of the Empire's raids." A moment of quiet, as Kaz opened his mouth, then she continued, "But I still believe in it. I fear nothing," she intoned, "for all is as the Force wills it."
Kaz huffed. "You're starting to sound like a-"
"A true believer."
Both of them whirled. They'd crept close to a small monument in the centre of the square, made of the same sandy-coloured stone that the city walls were made of. Inej didn't bother reading the inscription - something praising the eternal Empire, no doubt - but instead frowned at the human man sitting on the lower step of the monument, his gaze just about even with hers.
"It is rare," he continued, grinning. His mouth was full of yellow teeth, "to meet someone with such faith. Especially in this era." He pulled back a frayed brown hood to reveal dark, dark eyes. "What is your name, sister?"
"Inej," she replied, vaguely confused, but with a good feeling about this.
He smiled further. "'Holy'. Accurate, indeed." He inclined his head. "I am the Apparat, once one of the Guardians of the Whills, of Jedha's temple and its cache of kyber crystals."
"Fine job you did of that," Kaz muttered.
The Apparat didn't seem bothered. "It's true: all the kyber is gone, now. Gone into the gaping maw of the Imperial machine. There is nothing left in the temples but prayers and dust. But we remain." He smiled at Inej; she felt herself smile back. He held a fist over his heart. "We keep our faith, and our love, and one day the Empire will fall before the power of the Force. One day, the Jedi will rise again."
"I-" Inej was cut off by Kaz squeezing her arm tightly. When she glanced at him, he pressed his lips tightly together and nodded to her left. A swarm of stormtroopers were wading their way through the crowd towards them.
Inej tensed up as one began to speak. "Is this one causing trouble again?" He sounded bored, irritated - annoyed. "Is he bothering you?"
"Yes!" Kaz cut in before Inej could. "He's being such a nuisance. Please, do something."
She whirled on him, eyes wide and rant springing to her lips, but he dragged her away before she could splutter more than a word or two, glancing over her shoulder to watch the Imperials seize the Apparat with no regards for his age or comfort.
"Keep believing!" the Apparat shouted over their heads, and then they were swallowed up by the crowd.
Inej yanked her hand away. "Don't touch me-"
"What were you doing-"
"The man had lost his temple! We could at least be decent-"
"I get that you have a heart of gold, Inej, but I don't consider being decent as getting yourself killed. Though I suppose you did join the Rebellion-"
"Don't you dare make this about that." Her voice was as frigid as Jedha's climate. "Would it really kill you to by nice for once?" His face didn't move. "Even to me?"
He said, very slowly, "Why would I be nice to you?"
Something shattered. Inej couldn't tell if the noise was internal or external as she stared at Kaz, at the grim line of his mouth, dissecting what he'd just said, turning it over in her mind-
A blaster went off. Someone screamed.
Instinct took over, and Inej devoted zero rational thought to shoving herself and Kaz against the wall and yanking her blaster from the holster at her belt. Everyone else in the street were of the same mind and soon there was a screaming horde of people rampaging past them, away from the firefight.
"Free Jedha! Imperials out!"
Inej glanced up. There was a Jedhan citizen standing on the roof of the building opposite them, holding what looked like a grenade in his hand. He tossed it at the entourage of stormtroopers streaming towards the sounds of blasterfire; they scattered, some of them in multiple pieces.
Jesper hadn't been kidding: Jedha really was a warzone.
A loud boom shook the street; Inej clamped her hands over her ears, gritted her teeth-
There was a little girl crying.
There was a little girl crying, and wandering in her direction, no mother in sight. Inej threw herself away from the wall to scoop her up in her arms and bolted with her back to the relative safety of the wall.
A woman, emboldened by Inej's action, thundered down the street. At the little girl's cry of "Mama!" Inej gratefully turned her over to her.
"We have to go," Kaz insisted. "You heard the Apparat - all the kyber is gone. There's nothing here for us."
She shook her head wildly; dark hair stuck to her forehead. "No. The Force-"
"You think the Force got you into this mess?" Kaz bit out, lifting his blaster and shooting down three stormtroopers before they could so much as flinch.
"No," she panted, "I think it was you."
"What did I do-!"
But she was already running, away away away, into a less populated area, into a dark, quiet alley, so she could give herself a moment to just breathe.
She was dimly aware of Kaz catching up with her, his shoulders shuddering in sync with hers, but she just tilted her head back, let cool air rush into her lungs, lifted her eyes towards the blue sky high above-
And the moon-sized battle station hanging there.
"No." It was more fact than denial. "No."
"What?" Kaz glanced up. "Oh, karabast-"
"We need to go."
"For once, Inej," he glanced at her sidelong, "we are in agreement." He pushed himself to his feet, and she followed suit. "This has been fun but. . . Let's go." She hesitated, and he snapped at her, "Now."
They'd been meant to stay on the ship, to ensure for a swift departure, Inej had said. Nina broke that requirement within the hour.
She was sure Inej would understand.
After all, it was a feeling that compelled her to do so, so considering Inej trusted the Force (and, by extension, Nina's abilities) almost more than Nina herself did, Inej would almost certainly be one hundred percent okay with it.
The rest of the crew would take a little more convincing, which was why Nina snuck out between one moment and the other, hoping that no one would notice until she got back.
Jedha, as they'd been extensively warned, was cold. And it only got colder as Nina followed that feeling away from the docking bay they'd commandeered and closer to the edges of the walled city - and the desert beyond.
Nina gritted her teeth and suppressed a shiver. It wasn't just the cold - there was a gaping emptiness here, like the beating heart of the environment had been ripped out and sucked dry. It terrified her, feeling that yawning abyss where there should be light. Bright, brilliant light.
She wandered down one alley into its dead end, and was just peering up at the city's mammoth walls when she heard someone call her name.
"Nina."
She whirled, hand automatically flying to the lightsaber hidden under her poncho, heart beating in her throat. There was no one in the alley behind her, not even in the street beyond. She'd strayed into the quiet part of town.
"Nina."
Her head snapped round so fast she got whiplash. A twinge of pain ran up her neck but she didn't care, she was panting now, because that had almost sounded like-
"Nina Zenik." Oh yes - it was definitely her. The derision in her voice could never be mistaken. "Is that any way to treat a lightsaber?"
She automatically gripped the saber tighter, even as she turned one last time to face the entrance to the alley. And there she was - Zoya Nazyalensky in all her tall, raven-haired glory. But that was impossible because she was dead and was she. . . glowing?
"Oh, Force," Nina said aloud, "you're a ghost."
Zoya raised an eyebrow. "Glad you're smart enough to work that out, at least."
"You're as horrible as ever," she replied without thinking, more observation than insult, then instantly being horrified. "Oh, Force-"
"And you're as disrespectful as ever, I see," Zoya shot back. It was almost a game, this trade of derogation. Their old daily sparring match. "Not to mention reckless. Do you even know how you're going to train that Kuwei boy?"
Nina clenched her jaw and averted her gaze. "No, Master."
"Well," Zoya huffed what sounded suspiciously like a sigh, "just teach him everything I taught you and he'll turn out fine."
Was that a compliment? It sounded like a compliment.
"That Jesper is Force-sensitive as well," Zoya added, almost as an afterthought.
"He doesn't want to be trained."
"Glad to see you've learned to respect other people's decisions." Nina gritted her teeth; she had been somewhat. . . pushy. . . when she was younger. "Not to mention their secrets."
"Speaking of secrets," Nina said loudly - forcefully. "Why didn't you tell me about Alina Starkiller?"
Zoya pinched her lips together, and Nina prepared herself for a scathing retort. It had always been their way, her master and her.
"I didn't want to admit it," was what came instead. Nina was left stunned - she couldn't tell if that was an admission, an apology, a vulnerability, or all three, "and it was wrong, little one. I was wrong."
Nina wasn't sure whether to fume or cry at the term of endearment. When she was newly Zoya's padawan, no longer a youngling, she'd hated being referred to as 'little'. She wasn't a youngling anymore; she'd grown up. So, naturally Zoya had made a point of calling her 'little' as often as possible, if only to wind her up.
"Oh." The word was quiet.
"Nina, after Alina Fell, I spent the rest of my life and a large chunk of my afterlife wondering why she did. Wondering how to prevent it from happening to you."
"I am never," Nina began hotly, "ever going to become a Sith."
"Aren't you?" Zoya's eyes were sad, even if her words were cold. "That's what Alina said. She hated the Dark Side, too - and therein lies the problem. You both hate too much."
"I will not-"
"There is a wildness to you, little one," Zoya went on, heedless of her heated denial. "The seed of the Dark Side. Alina had it too, though hers generally manifested itself in under-confidence, rather than over-confidence. But it makes me wonder. . . was it planted there by your master?" Nina was so stunned at the string of admission she was being treated to today that it took her a while to know how to respond. "By me?"
She found her voice again. "You were the greatest master-"
"Your next Rebel base will be on Yavin Four," Zoya went on, unfazed by Nina's righteousness. "When you go there, I want you to seek out some of the inhabitants for me - one of them is an ex-temple guard, an old friend of Alina's. Tell them about her, and also that I sent you to pick up something of hers left buried long ago." Nina remained quiet. Zoya asked, "Is that clear?"
Nina smiled slightly. "Glad to see you haven't lost your bossiness, Master," she said, "or your penchant for vague, senseless instructions."
Zoya smiled as well, almost against her will. "Get out of here, Nina," she said, and the humour in her voice belied the importance of her words. "Time is running out." She pointed to the sky just before she dissolved into stardust.
Nina frowned, then glanced where she'd been pointing.
Her heart stopped.
"I have a bad feeling about this. . ." she muttered, staring at the moon-sized battle station hanging in the cerulean Jedhan sky.
There was a thundering up the ramp, and Matthias suppressed a flinch as Nina burst into the main meeting area of the Barrel, face red and hair dishevelled.
"We need to get out of here. Now," she said by way of greeting before barrelling into the cockpit and strapping herself in.
"Why-" Wylan started to say, and Matthias bristled as he was cut off by Inej bolting up the ramp after her.
"Because the Death Star is currently floating in the sky above Jedha, and I don't think it's there for altruistic reasons!" There was a brittle edge to her voice; its pitch rose to hysterical heights near the end of the sentence. Kaz, emerging into the ship just behind her, tried to put a hand on her shoulder but she shook it off. "We need to go."
"On it," Jesper shouted, already halfway to the cockpit. Matthias made to follow Inej as she darted in there, and he'd just secured himself in the spare passenger seat when Jesper had launched them out of the docking bay and into the sky. Nina gave a little moan next to him.
"Quiet," Inej snapped, attention diverted from the controls long enough to snap at her friend. Matthias was alarmed by her harshness - wasn't Inej the mildest, most forgiving person on this ship? - but he supposed she was under a lot of stress right now. Her focus was like a laser: narrow, sharp and, when it was turned on you, it burned. "Where can we go? What coordinates-"
"Yavin Four," Nina cut in breathlessly. "The next Rebel base will be on the moon of Yavin Four."
Inej didn't question it; she just punched the name into the navicomputer and tapped her finger against the console nervously.
"Prepare for liftoff," Jesper warned, apparently finished with the pre-flight checks. The ship's lurching coincided with the loud boom that shook the ground; for one terrible moment Matthias thought the ship hadn't been shot at.
But it hadn't been the ship.
It had been Jedha itself.
"Mother of moons," Matthias breathed, staring out at the dust billowing beyond the viewport. The ground was receding beneath them, except the ground wasn't there. A miscellaneous mess of rocks and sand howled in a storm outside the ship and even inside, sheltered by the thick transparisteel, Matthias could feel the outwards push from the explosion.
He felt sick.
It wasn't the violence or the death that bothered him, no: Matthias was from the planet Mandalore. The warrior culture he'd been surrounded with growing up meant he was no stranger to feuds. Or conflict. Or death.
But this?
Firing on a suffering planet from a safe distance away? Killing thousands of innocent bystanders, civilians, without even giving them the chance to fight back?
Where was the honour and glory in that?
What place did such slaughter have in the honourable and glorious Empire he thought he'd been raised in?
Matthias had never understood why Wylan had chosen to defect to the Alliance to Restore the Republic. He'd grown up during the Clone Wars, listening to his parents harp on about how weak the Republic was, and how they needed a strong, central government to combat it. He'd thought that they'd finally found that government with the Empire.
And sure, he'd gone along with the Rebellion's plans. He'd plotted to help take down Koroleva, Emperor Morozova, because they were tyrants. They were everything wrong with a power structure like this. But he hadn't wanted the power structure itself dissolved.
But this weapon. . .
As much as he didn't want to admit it, the Death Star hadn't been built by those two alone. It had been built by all the rich sycophants that had perished on Eadu, undoubtably on the backs of slaves. It was the embodiment of wanting money for the sake of money, power for the sake of power, and not caring about anything else, whether it be innocence, suffering or honour.
The Empire couldn't be fixed. No new leader could be reinstated that would make everything better. Because there were thousands of sycophants in the galaxy, and an Empire was the perfect breeding ground for such parasites.
This Empire was rotten to the core.
Matthias wished it hadn't taken the deaths of billions to make him see that.
Jesper banked hard to the left to avoid a chunk of rock the size of a house. Flying through these conditions, Matthias mused, was like flying through an unstable asteroid field. He dearly hoped Jesper, being an reprobate smuggler, had experience in doing so.
"Alderaan, Eadu. . ." Matthias murmured, half to himself. "Why fire on Jedha?"
"Because of us." It was Inej who said it. All the tension had bled out of her shoulders, and now she just seemed lost. "Because they heard about Rebel activity on Eadu, and decided to destroy Jedha before we could learn anything from it. Before we could gather more kyber crystals, learn how it works. How to stop it." She laughed mirthlessly. "Maybe they even managed to plant a homing beacon on our ship during the escape from Eadu's blockade, and have been tracking us this whole time. It certainly explains our 'shit luck' on Dantooine."
"But we know how to stop it," Matthias said. "We have Kuwei. He can tell us, can't he?"
"I hope so." Inej was letting Jesper fly alone, now that they were out of the atmosphere and into space. "And I hope the Empire thinks that he died with his father. I hope that this is one informant they don't try to dispose of."
Matthias suppressed a shudder.
