Andra watched as her brother sipped a cup of the herbal tea she had brewed, set the cup down, then put his head back down against his vambraces.
"Any improvement from the cup last night, or the first one today?" She asked.
"No." Mizran answered, annoyed. He squinted at the morning sunshine. He pulled his helmet over his head, his visor shielding his eyes from the agony of looking at light. "Headache's the same. Still exhausted."
Andra picked up the mug Mizran had been drinking from. She gazed pensively into the little liquid that remained within. "It's not helping like it usually does. You shouldn't have worked so much overtime at the mine last week. Chantarum's poisonous."
In the distance, machinery rumbled as chantarum ore was transferred from mine vehicles to heavy landspeeders, then rushed through the refinery. Crews of stormtroopers loaded the finished product onto transports that ferried the volatile metal to the Chimaera orbiting above.
"Since the Empire's taken over, the mine's been busy." Andra remarked.
"They'll poison the water." Mizran mumbled. "At this rate, soon the whole tribe will be sick."
BREAK
Din Djarin sat upon the throne of Mandalore and smiled. Morning sunlight gleamed through the high crystal ceilings of the palace. The matter at hand involved granting the license to reopen to Club Insomnia. Grogu sat in his pram, joyfully babbling baby speak. It was a good day.
"Is that right?" Din indulged the kid's nonsensical conversation.
Grogu squealed with flung the Razor Crest knob into the air, levitated it with the Force, and giggled as it spun and sparkled in the morning sunlight.
Din chuckled, amused by the kid's joy. Footsteps echoed into the room. Bo-Katan took a seat on one of the council chairs in front of the Mandalorian throne, followed by Axe and Koska.
"Have Niko and Amberlyn come?" Bo-Katan asked.
"Not yet." Din said. "You're early."
No sooner did Din finish speaking than more footsteps echoed off of the walls of the high hall. Niko and Amberlyn approached the throne.
Bo-Katan stood and welcomed them with an enthusiastic grin. "Good news," she said. "You can reopen Club insomnia."
Conflict instead of relief radiated from the young Mandalorians.
"Didn't you get our holo?" Niko asked.
"We did." Bo-Katan affirmed. "It said Aclik had been responsible for the attack."
Din and Axe exchanged glances of uncertainty.
Bo-Katan continued. "We believe, that with enhanced security, the risk of another attack on your club is low. The economic and cultural benefits however, are high. You may reopen."
Broad, bright smiles spread across Amberlyn's and Niko's faces. They thanked their leaders for the new lease on life for their business and hurried off to make preparations for a grand reopening.
BREAK
Andra dropped her shovel as she worked to plant vegetables in her garden. She shoved her helmet over her head with a pained, frustrated shout.
Mizran rested under a shade tree not far from the garden, trying to find a comfortable position to allay the effects of the chantarum poisoning. "What's wrong?" He asked.
Andra joined her younger brother under the boughs of the tree. "Say, what does Chantarum poisoning feel like for you?"
"Starts out with a headache and you just can't concentrate—" he began, then stopped. His eyes widened behind his helmet's visor as he looked up at his sister. "The water! You drank water earlier. Are you—"
"My head hurts." She said, a palm pressed to her helmet.
"Come with me." Mizran hurried inside the house. He rummaged through a bag in his bedroom and pulled out a mining collective-issued blood analyzer. He returned to Andra in the cabin's kitchen. "Chantarum checker. Take off your glove. I need to check your blood."
Andra stopped the bleeding on her finger while Mizran read the results of the test. "Better make a cup of that tea for yourself." He said. "You have it too."
"But if I have chantarum poisoning from the water—" Andra reasoned, "so will the rest of the tribe!"
The mechanical drone of mining equipment wore on. It had gone on all night, long past the usual hours of the mine, and ground on all day without a break.
Inside the mine, another squad of troopers returned with a load of ore. The troopers bent over their mining vehicle, breathless. One of the men fell to the floor twitching. Two troopers carried him off, loading him onto the next transport ferrying purified chantarum to the Chimaera.
Onboard the Chimaera, a knock came at the door of Aclik's office. Sensing one of his top officers, Aclik opened the door with the Force.
"A report on the mining operations, sir." The officer offered.
"Go ahead." Aclik tented his fingers and leaned forward expectantly.
"The stormtroopers are falling ill, sir. Chantarum poisoning. We've already lost three troopers. Perhaps we should slow down?"
"No." Aclik said. "Call in the nearest Imperial vessel with prisoners aboard. We will only slow until they arrive. We will use the prisoners for labor."
Grogu ran and lept around the palace throne room, propelling the Razor Crest ball through the air with the Force, chasing it like some crazed Loth cat. The baby stopped, confused, when the ball suddenly skidded away from him. He looked in the direction where it had gone. There stood Luke Skywalker.
Grogu babbled eagerly as he ran to the Jedi and hugged his robe. Luke picked the kid up.
"I've come to train him." Luke called across the room to Din.
An almost imperceptible nod of the Mandalorian's helmet showed his approval. Din leaned back on his throne, relaxed and delighted as he watched Skywalker train his son to use his powers.
BREAK
Back on Salinius, transports again touched down. Stormtroopers led reluctant prisoners to their doom in the mines.
Andra finished a cup of the herbal remedy she had originally concocted for her brother. She gulped down the last bitter bit of the tea—no wonder why Mizran didn't like it. Bundles of herbs lay lined up on the kitchen counter. She had spoken to her older brother, Clan Crystal's armorer a few hours earlier. She had volunteered to prepare the herbs for the medicinal tea and take it to the rest of her tribe to fight the effects of the chantarum poisoning.
Andra ventured down the main street of her tribe's town. She shuddered at the Imperial insignias that had been planted where Clan Crystal's signet once stood. In the fading evening light, her gloved hand covered her glowing beskar breastplate. A tight squeezing in her chest made it hard to complete the task of getting the herbs to her clan.
High above Salinius, Aclik studied in a lab aboard the Chimaera. As he watched the amorphous chantarum flow back into the shape of a sphere at the command of a simple signal, an idea struck him. Aclik laughed victoriously as he envisioned shape shifting droids made entirely of this toxic, explosive metal.
BREAK
Din stretched out a finger for Grogu to grab as the two of them strolled down Sundari's streets. Business was booming. Shops had been opened. Grogu leaned forward in his pram and squeaked, begging as they passed another food stall.
"You just ate!" Din exclaimed, only half feigning exasperation.
Grogu giggled.
Engines roared as a ship came in on the nearby landing platform. Din could tell from the shadow cast on Sundari's dome what the craft was—
Omega's ship, the Marauder.
A group of chatty medical students disembarked from the Marauder and dispersed into Sundari. Omega stood in the door of the ship.
"Din" she said, greeting the Mandalorian.
"Omega" he hollered back. "You just got back from Tatooine?"
"Yes." She said. "Come up here."
Din entered the ship with Grogu's pram drifting along behind.
"Took eight senior Med students to Mos Eisley." She said.
"Quite the rough introduction to being medics." Din remarked.
"It's an adventure." Omega shrugged. "They gotta learn somehow" she picked up a datapad. "While you're here, it's time to check your cybernetics"
Din scoffed, outwardly maintaining a tough persona, that of the leader of a warrior culture. Inwardly, the memories came back— memories of lying on Mt. Tantiss's throne room floor, drowning in his own blood, telling Grogu goodbye. Memories of half awakening weeks later in a Bacta suit, in unimaginable pain, his insides having been destroyed by the Darksaber and replaced by kaminoan biotechnology. More recent memories came to mind—those of the daily discomforts of being part man, part machine.
"Din, it's okay. You're okay." Omega's sure hand against Din's shoulder grounded him, bringing him back to reality. She showed him to the chair at the Marauder's navigational console, then waved a medscanner over him.
Omega considered the results on her datapad screen. "Everything's alright for now." She said. "Eventually some things will need replaced, but right now you're okay."
"Thanks." The one word answer rang hollow, Din's mind remained checked out, seeking refuge from the awful memories these checkups conjured.
Omega's compassionate, curious gaze remained on the Mandalorian. He did notice that. Her interactions with him seemed to carry a level of caring that exceeded the high standard she exercised with her patients and students. Din got the hunch that Omega fancied him as more than a friend.
Footsteps padded across the landing platform and a shadow swept across the door of the Marauder. Din stepped outside to see Luke Skywalker getting ready to leave.
"Din, Grogu" Luke greeted "I'm off to a few planets to seek Jedi artifacts. I'll return in a few weeks." He looked to Grogu. "Practice what we worked on."
Luke climbed into the cockpit of his X-wing, R2-D2 whistled farewell, and Grogu waved as the Jedi jetted off into the sunset.
BREAK
Aclik watched eagerly from behind a ray shield. He tapped a control on a data pad. Blobs of chantarum adhered to lab walls melted into glistening streams of silver liquid. They flowed together into one puddle in the center of the lab. The puddle quivered, then took shape—a tall, slender, droid with the body of a human and a featureless face. Its fingers morphed into sharp blades, dripping with enough toxic liquid chantarum to kill. Aclik grinned. He had done it. With everything this metal could do, he could at last take on his enemy.
Andra dragged herself back into her older brother's forge. "Calan, it's too bad. The tribe— they're all poisoned. Too much for the tea to help." She slumped on the bench just inside the forge. "We have to do something."
"We'll have to leave." Calan answered grimly. "I heard Mandalore's been reestablished. I thought it was bantha fodder, but it's our only hope—we have to go to Mandalore."