Chapter 1:
Kelan had to admit to himself that he'd seen worse spaceports than this, as he and the other passengers, his nervous neighbour included, finally emerged into the open air. Though the ramshackle appearance and crazy-quilt arrangement of the 'port brought back unpleasant memories of the arboreally-overgrown and geographically-isolated Mandalorian capitol city, Keldabe, it was apparent that, like Keldabe, the slightly dilapidated landing pads, hangars and service buildings were nonetheless perfectly functional. Further rumination along these lines would have to wait, however, as the plainly-dressed but casually dangerous-looking two human males waiting at the bottom of the spacecraft's ramp required immediate seeing-to.
Sighing inwardly, Kelan shouldered his duffle bag and marched down the ramp to confront them.
As he approached, the shorter of the pair, a grizzled man of perhaps fifty standard years cracked a smile. Despite the biting wind sweeping through the 'port, his only concession to the weather was a light vest worn over a short-sleeved tunic that showcased an impressive collection of scars running up his arms and over parts of his face.
"Su'cuy, ner vod!" the scar-faced elder boomed, fairly bellowing the traditional Mandalorian greeting. "On behalf of His Exalted Majesty, Ludo III, and the Captain of His Majesty's Blood Guard, Morut Verdlaar, we are pleased to bid formal welcome to you, Kelan Breck, to Lomin, royal capitol of the planet Marivan."
Kelan studied the man, trying to determine if he was speaking in jest or seriousness. On the one hand, Mandalorian mercenaries were infamously informal. On the other, petty Outer-Rim monarchies, like the one ruling this planet, tended to be notoriously prickly regarding matters of protocol, and as Kelan reminded himself, he was here for a job, after all. Unfortunately, the greeting he'd just received had been delivered in the lilting brogue of Mandalore's Kelita region, and it was well-known that the Kelita people were almost morbidly good-humoured, even by Mandalorian standards, making it difficult to gauge their true intentions about any given matter at the best of times.
Kelan would know. His own family had come from that region, after all.
"Is this a formal delegation, then?" he asked, warily.
"Hardly," the younger Mandalorian, an impressive specimen appearing to be about twenty-five standard years, admitted cheerfully, "I mean, you haven't even met any actual royal officials yet, but Garzan here does love a bit of pomp and circumstance when he can get away with it."
"Quiet, Ulik," Garzan demurred, fastidiously elbowing his associate with enough force to stagger the younger man; no easy feat, Kelan noted, given that Ulik was easily two metres tall and looked more as though he'd been hammered out of durasteel than born of a woman.
"As I was saying," Garzan continued, while Ulik gingerly tested his ribs, "welcome to Marivan, or Lomin, or Kingsport, or whatever. Glad to have you with us, even though we may not ever mention it again."
"Yeah," Ulik added enthusiastically, gasping only slightly. "Welcome to the Blood Guard."
Kelan reached for the hand the youthful behemoth proffered in tandem with the declaration. In truth, he felt very little enthusiasm for the idea of an extended stay on a backwater like Marivan, but after coming all this way, it would hardly do to be rude, even to self-proclaimed "True" Mandalorians. However, he still found it difficult to suppress a wince as Ulik's oversized paw enveloped his own. He'd expected that the Blood Guardsman would have a grip to do a Wookiee proud, but bracing oneself for such a thing and actually experiencing it were two very different matters.
"All right," Kelan grunted, wondering how much longer he could hold out before the grinning Ulik, who seemed to have no intention of letting go, crushed his hand completely. "Now that we're all fellow Blood Guard- hrrrgh -informally of course, what happens next?"
"Well," Garzan began, "what happens first is that Ulik lets you go while you've still got some function in that hand, right, Ulik?"
Still grinning, the younger Mandalorian released Kelan with an exaggerated show of reluctance.
"Next," Garzan continued, "we've got to get you down to the palace to settle in, meet the rest of your fellow Blood Guard, and be appraised of your duties and responsibilities to the Royal Family; you've got beskar, right?"
Kelan hesitated, the Mando'a word throwing his concentration off for a fraction of a second. "Armour? Yeah, right here," he indicated his duffle bag, "and here," he continued, opening his jacket to reveal the distinctive "supercommando" pattern blast-vest, temporarily divested of shoulder plates to reduce its profile under the loose, non-descript civilian windbreaker.
Garzan nodded in satisfaction.
"Right then, let's get going. The rest of the lads will be wanting to meet you, after you've been properly introduced to His Exalted Majesty."
Kelan took note that both Garzan and Ulik chuckled a little at the mention of King Ludo's formal title; apparently, it sounded quite as silly to them as it did to his own ears. Still, he could discern no hint of malice in it; it sounded like was the sort of response that might be provoked by the antics of a pompous but fondly-regarded younger sibling. Mentally filing that factoid away for future reference, Kelan turned and followed the two Blood Guards off of the pad and towards a somewhat dingy cluster of low-roofed utility sheds with sliding garage-doors at the edge of the 'port's landing apron.
As Ulik jogged on ahead to deal with the conspicuously large and intimidating combi-lock securing the nearest of the sheds, Kelan took a moment to take in the surroundings. Despite the relatively small size of the spaceport, it was surprisingly busy, with steady, buzzing streams of people and cargo embarking and debarking from the transports settled on the facility's numerous landing pads. The accompanying hum of activity seemed to stretch away from the 'port and out into the city beyond, notwithstanding that, as Kelan had noticed on his transport's final approach for landing, the 'port itself was separated from the city of Lomin by a substantial row of hills cut through by a single highway, possibly to minimize damage to the city proper in the event of a catastrophic crash or similar accident.
That detail in and of itself was interesting, as most municipal spaceports on more developed worlds relied on shield-generators to contain potential damage, while more backwards ones tended to place the 'port as far away as possible, suggesting that the Marivani were either too poor to maintain the machinery to generate such shielding or too paranoid to rely on it solely. Given that Mandalorians were apparently involved with the planet's government, Kelan reflected, it could go either way, though the level of activity going on around him tended to suggest the latter possibility as the more likely.
At the same moment that his mind arrived at that conclusion, his body arrived in front of the storage shed, just as Ulik was finally removing the external lock and raising the garage door. Inside was a nondescript landspeeder of a make that Kelan didn't immediately recognise.
It too, was grey.
That detail in and of itself would have ordinarily been unremarkable, but the absolute greyness that seemed to characterize the Marivani planetary landscape as a whole was beginning to strike Kelan, who'd actually lost track of the number of planets he'd visited on contract, as more than a little surreal. The ground beneath him appeared to be grey, as were the trees bordering the edge of the landing apron, which, no surprise, was also grey, while several vague avian shapes glided silently overhead beneath a sky so flat and grey it looked more like a gigantic bedsheet draped over the edge of the world. Kellan began to idly wonder if the native Marivani were grey as well. The preliminary research he'd done had indicated that the planet's native population was human, probably a lost colony from the first great hyperspace expansions, but his reading hadn't been as thorough as it probably should have been...
The sudden roar of the landspeeder's unexpectedly powerful-sounding repulsorlift drive shattered Kelan's reverie, snapping the distracted mercenary back to the here and now.
"Are you coming then?" Garzan asked, indicating one of the passenger doors, his tone half-amused, half-quizzical.
"Yeah, let's get going," Kelan agreed, slinging his duffle bag into the vehicle and trying to shake off his embarrassment at being caught off-guard. Something about this place was playing havoc with his sense of reality, and it was beginning to irritate him.
The inside of the landspeeder, Kelan noticed as he slid inside, did not match its exterior. Outwardly, the vehicle looked for all the stars like a typical economy model that might be found anywhere from here to the Deep Core of the Galaxy, but the interior was festooned with armour-paneling, sensor packages and discreetly stowed blasters of various types and sizes, many of them of exhibiting the blocky, brutalist aesthetic of the WESTAR corporation.
"You'll find a lot of things on Marivan aren't quite what they seem," Garzan confided, following Kelan's gaze.
"I'd never even heard of the place until a couple of weeks ago," Kelan confessed.
"No reason you should have," Garzan laughed. "This is the arse-end of nowhere, make no mistake, but it's not such a bad place for all that, and the Blood Guard's had a pretty big hand in keeping it that way."
"How's that?" Kelan inquired. Even more so than Marivan itself, readily-available information on the "Blood Guard" was scarce, and Kelan had only ultimately accepted their contract proposal on the word of a mutual associate whose advice he trusted... most of the time.
As Ulik guided the landspeeder out of the spaceport and towards the city proper, Garzan began his story.
"Up until about a hundred years ago, the most high-tech bit of machinery on Marivan was the water-powered millwheel. Life would have been simple, but for the fact that pirates eventually discovered the planet and started using it as a supply depot, periodically dropping out of the sky to demand tribute in food, precious metals and slaves, and massacring anyone who resisted. The Marivani had never seen anything like it; they were completely paralyzed. The pirates might as well have been angry gods, with their starships and blasters, otherworldly apparitions who could only be appeased, not resisted. The pillaging went on for generations, until one day the son of one of the local noblemen was visiting an outlying village during a pirate raid, and ended up being taken captive along with the villagers. Now, that lad had a rough few years ahead of him, but the in and the out of it is that being sold into slavery gave him two very great advantages: one was that he came to understand that there were worlds beyond Marivan, and that the pirates that had plagued his planet for so long were really just insignificant thugs in the greater scheme of things."
"And the other?" Asked Kelan, curious almost despite himself.
"Ah," Garzan smiled, "the other was that he eventually happened to encounter the grandfather of our beloved commander-in-chief, Morut Verdlaar."
Kelan had to resist an impulse to roll his eyes at Garzan's ebullient tone, a reaction which the elder Mandalorian had apparently been expecting, to judge by his widening grin.
"The outcome of this momentous meeting," Garzan continued, still grinning, "was that the young nobleman, Ludo, convinced Verdlaar's grandfather that it would be profitable to effect his release from his present owner...by any means necessary."
"Sounds like an audacious character," Kelan offered, non-committally.
"Oh, he was, no mistake," Garzan agreed. "Met him myself years and years ago. He was still a formidable figure in his old age, I can tell you, but the point is that not only did slavery not break his spirit, it only served to stir his ambition instead. He had a vision of a new Marivan, one that was strong enough to defend itself and stand proud among the other worlds in the galaxy, and Verdlaar was the key to his plan."
"Which was to hire Verdlaar and his particular band of mercenaries to destroy the pirates and then crush the other Marivani nobles so that he could become undisputed ruler of the whole planet," Kelan guessed.
"Got it in one," Gharzan confirmed, but his face darkened slightly with annoyance at the tone of Kelan's interjection, and an uncomfortable silence fell inside the landspeeder, broken only by occasional snatches of tuneless humming from Ulik in the driver's seat, which if anything only made the atmosphere inside the vehicle even more awkward.
"I'm not saying he shouldn't have," Kelan finally offered, forcing himself to remember that in his profession, getting off on the wrong foot with one's co-workers could be a shortcut to premature termination of one kind or another, "but couldn't they have offered terms before subjugating everyone by force?"
"Don't be so quick to jump to conclusions, lad," Garzan replied evenly, while making no attempt to mask his annoyance. "The fact is, diplomacy was their weapon of first resort..."
Yes, thought Kelan, because there's nothing like having a company of us Mandalorians in full supercommando armour on the other side of the table to put someone in the mood for negotiations.
"...but without the pirates to worry about, a lot of the nobles went right back to the territorial warfare that had been the rule before the raids began, starting with the ones bordering Ludo's family's territory."
"So Ludo and Verdlaar conquered them, which led to increased territory to defend, which led to jumpy neighbours, which led to more fighting and more territorial expansion; I know how this works," Kelan interjected.
"I don't think you understand how Marivani culture works," Garzan grunted in reply. "It was like the old days on Mandalore, only worse. Everyone fighting everyone else because five hundred years ago, one man's draft animal took a drink in another's stream, and osik like that. Ludo wanted to put an end to the vendettas, to get people to realize that all these internal squabbles were holding Marivan back and making all the Marivani vulnerable to hostile outsiders."
Garzan's face softened.
"Look, when word got around that you'd taken the contract, I read up on you; got in touch with a few old friends who knew your parents. I know this isn't the life you wanted, but there's no shame in it either. We follow the old ways here, after a fashion, but we also keep the peace, let the little people get on with their lives undisturbed. Surely even a 'New' Mandalorian like yourself can appreciate that."
Chastened, Kelan nodded agreement and fell silent. Much as he might dislike what Garzan represented in his mind, the man himself had shown him nothing but courtesy and good fellowship, and besides that, the older Mandalorian was right. In his heart of hearts, Kelan knew that he could have followed any number of paths in making his way among the stars, and yet he'd fallen into the life of a hired blaster regardless. Kelan hated himself for that, not only because he'd chosen that course, but also because the skills of the trade had all come so very easily to him...
"Lomin City," Ulik announced cheerfully from the driver's seat.
Eager for a distraction from his thoughts, Kelan glanced through the viewport beside him. The awnings of an open-air marketplace were flashing past outside, incongruously colourful against the ancient stone buildings they stood beneath.
"Not very inviting weather for Market Day," he thought out loud, gazing up through the viewport at the grey roof of a sky overhead.
Garzan laughed. "For this time of year, this is as good as it gets, but don't worry, it's not always like this. I promise, Marivan'll grow on you."
Kelan sincerely doubted the likelihood of Garzan's promise ever being made good, but chose to say nothing, resolved as he was to not precipitate another argument for the time being. Instead, he resumed his observation of Lomin as the landspeeder continued on through the city. It reminded him vaguely of Theed, the capitol of the planet Naboo, which he'd once had occasion to visit over the course of a contract, with its mass of antique architecture and broad, paved streets, but where Theed was all curvaceous limestone arches, and swooping, copper-plated domes, the stone edifices that rose above Lomin's streets were of the same, stolid shades of grey that seemed to dominate almost everything else on the surface of Marivan, roofed with wooden or clay shingles and built in such a squared-off, blocky style that Kelan found his eyes involuntarily drawn to the paired, slab-like WESTAR-35 blaster pistols mounted on the back of the seat in front of him.
The one break in this sea of grey was the Marivani themselves as they went about their business in the streets. Like the awnings in the marketplace, their clothes displayed a bewildering variety of colours, often extremely loud ones, which Kelan guess must have been a reaction to the seemingly otherwise-monochrome environment they inhabited. He found it hard to believe that the colours could have come from any plants or minerals native to this planet. Perhaps they produced their own chemical dyes, or more likely traded off-world for them.
As Kelan was pondering the mystery of Marivani fabric dyes, the landspeeder turned a corner onto a broad plaza dominated at its centre by a large stone plinth supporting a monumental duo of carved humanoid figures gesturing skyward. Going by the diadem crowning one of the statues, and the stylised supercommando armour exhibited by the other, Kelan could only surmise that they were meant to commemorate the grandfathers of the current king and his Mandalorian enforcer.
Remembering the desultory discussion he'd had with Garzan concerning the same, just a few minutes previously, Kelan glanced across the landspeeder's cabin, anticipating that the older mercenary with have something more to say on the subject, but Garzan was preoccupied with speaking into a commlink. Since the exchange was taking place entirely in Mando'a, Kelan could only pick up the odd, isolated word, but the gist of it seemed to be that Garzan was alerting whomever was on the other end that he, Ulik and Kelan would be arriving shortly, their destination in all likelihood being the turreted stone block some ways beyond the far end of the plaza, just visible through the windscreen now over Ulik's gargantuan shoulder.
As if in answer to the unspoken question, Garzan replaced the commlink in a vest-pocket and gestured in the general direction of the citadel, which was growing steadily larger as the landspeeder drew nearer. It was a fortress-dwelling of massive and ancient design, its outward face dominated by an immense gated door that appeared large enough to admit a mid-sized Corellian freighter.
"Lomin Castle," the Blood Guard announced grandly. "Welcome to your new home."