—three weeks prior—
Bo-Katan Kryze overlooked the city of Sundari. It wasn't long ago when she was last in this throne room, betrayed by Maul and her own soldiers. But it wasn't too late for things to change either, and they already had quickly. It had only been a few days since her speech to the Mandalorian people, and both former and current Mandalorian warriors all across the galaxy had begun pouring into the planet.
Both Mandalore's and Concordia's Clans and Houses, Former True Mandalorians, Clone deserters, mercenary groups, remnants of the old New Mandalorian police force, even those whose long-forgotten ancestry they found yet again came to the world with one goal in mind; protect this system from the outsider threat. Their military numbers swelling from under a thousand to at least 100 times that, and they were still growing by the day.
The only issue was the quality of the new recruits was shoddy, to say the least. Some were more than capable, like the deserters, the Clans, or the True Mandalorians. Veterans of fierce and destructive wars. Others like the mercenaries and the former cops were somewhere in-between. They knew how to fight, yes, but both were going to be a terrible surprise when they realize fighting the Imperium is going to be nothing like shooting drunken pirates or arresting angry ex-lovers.
But worse yet, was the civilians who found beskar in their family's basement and ran here to help. They were like Cor, but at least Cor was a bounty hunter until he joined up, a begrudgingly good one at that. The ones joining now, they aren't even that. Soft-skinned civvies who would run the minute they see one of their own get blown apart by a bolter round.
She appreciated the help, of course, but they complicated matters. She needed someone to train them, at least to not buckle under stress, and she wasn't sure how much time she even had left.
As she thought to herself, Cor walked up to the leader of Clan Kryze. "Hey princess, Veso said we have company coming up here. Old friends." Bo dreaded what she just heard, but she knew she had to accept whatever they had to offer, she had no other choice.
Sighing to herself, she responded. "Tell them to enter."
Cor simply nodded in response as he yelled at one of the Deathwatch men on guard to open the door. Into the room strode men and women clad in red and black beskar plate, horns jutting from their helmets in the style of their, currently missing, leader. Seeming to lead the pack was someone she knew all too well, she used to think of him as not only a good soldier and ally but as a good friend as well. Gar Saxon.
"We come to bring you assistance, Bo-Katan of Clan Kyrze." The man stated simply and plainly, with no fanfare or verbosity. Straight to the point, as he always was.
"I didn't think you were even going to show." Bo-Katan replied, looking into the man's golden visor.
Removing his helm, Gar Saxon responded. "To defend Mandalore against a threat such as this, I'm more than willing to swallow my pride." As he did so, he walked over to the lady Mandalorian and grasped his hand in her's, pulling her close in a show of comradery. "It will be good to fight side-by-side once more." He said solemnly as he pulled away.
"Has there been any word on the status of Maul?" Bo-Katan asked simply, hiding the contempt she held the Sith lord in deep within her chest.
"No, not since Ord Mantell." Gar stated, a hint of simultaneous anger and sadness in his voice. Despite his disappearance, he loved the man as any subject should rule their leader, and deep down against everything he knew, he hoped it wasn't a purposeful absence.
Bo-Katan was quite the opposite in this regard. Being reassured of his absence and seeing the grip he somehow still had over the traitors almost made her want to chuckle. But now wasn't the time, she wasn't even sure if that time would ever actually come to pass, so she buried the emotions deep into her chest.
"I assume he will come around eventually. He was never one to run away forever." Bo-Katan replied simply, Gar meeting her response with a grimace. The two stood in silence for what felt like a few minutes before Bo finally spoke up again. "So, you want to help, correct?"
"I told you, I'd swallow my pride to defend this world from annihilation."
"Then I have something to ask you to do. You're one of the best instructors I have ever known. You trained me along with half of the warriors here under Vizsla's rule, and I wish to ask you to do some training once again." Bo stated calmly, a smirk rising across her face.
"And who do you want me to train?" Gar retorted.
"We have had a massive influx of, let's just say, citizen soldiers both from on-world and throughout the Galaxy. They mean well, and we need the numbers, but they won't be much other than warm bodies to throw without proper training and guidance." Bo said plainly.
Gar looked shocked at this request, almost offended. "You are accepting civilians into this army? Civilians whose ancestors abandoned The Way?" Saxon almost shouted.
"I didn't really have any choice. Without them our numbers would be cut in half, we can only take so many trained professionals throughout the Galaxy, Gar." Bo responded.
Sighing, Gar closed his eyes and lowered his head before picking his head back up and looking back towards his former and new comrade. "Fine. The Supercommandos will provide training, we don't know how much time we have, but it should be enough to at least get the civvie soldiers trained enough to not run into fire. Is there anything else you'd like me to do?"
Bo-Katan shook her head slowly no. As she did so, she commanded one of her soldiers to escort her new allies to the barracks housing the civilian volunteers, and they left the room. Sighing as she sat down, she looked back towards Cor, his eyesore of a set of armor and cynical smile blaring into her vision.
"Cor, any word on the Pykes and Hutts? We need the weapons soon, some armored vehicles especially, a lot of them. All we got here is speeders we can retrofit E-WEBs and some anti-tank weapons on and our Kom'rks and fangs we got left. We also need those damned ships. Mandalore can pay, but we need them."
"Nope, all channels we had were cut back when Maul decided to snip Vizsla's head. You could have asked Gar-" Cor began before the shape of a Twi'lek sprinted into the throne room. Wearing Beskar like the other Mandalorians her twin tails fell from two holes in her helm. She almost tripped as the guards ordered her to stop and raised their weapons at her. As she did she froze, holding an ancient-looking datapad in her hand as she shook slightly.
"Guards, lower your weapons," Bo-Katan commanded as she stood up again. "You, explain yourself. Who are you and what do you want?"
"I, I, I'm Sana Jurmar. I am one of the volunteers." She explained, shaking as she held her hands up next to her head. "I found something in my parent's house you need to see, Lady Mandalore."
"I'm assuming it isn't the armor. Come closer, I'll hear you out." Bo-Katan lightheartedly joked with the obviously fearful Twi'lek. "And please, don't call me Mandalore, I haven't earned that title yet."
Sana nodded before shakily removing her helm and giving the data slate to the Mandalorian leader she had heard so much about. As Bo-Katan looked over the ancient archaic device, Sana began talking again.
"I, I'm from Ryloth if you couldn't tell. My family was once Mandalorians during the Wars, I think they handled logistics. I don't know for-" Before she could finish, Bo-Katan cut her off.
"By the Holy Mines, this isn't just some data slate. This is a manifest for an entire Old Mandalorian fleet!" Bo-Katan gasped. She was seldom surprised anymore, even the massive human war machines sent to her mere days ago that killed 5 of her own men in less than half a minute could do it, but this, this made her heart jump.
"This can't be true, we're lucky to find Rippers still in the armories, but this? Cor!" Bo-Katan shouted at the man a few feet away from her. "Transmit the coordinates on this manifest to Veso, have him search everything, Old Republic decommissioning archives, New Mandalorian informational holo-vids and articles, pirate and smuggler holosites, anything!"
"Aye aye, captain!" Cor responded mockingly as he activated his wrist-mounted communicator. Something Bo-Katan would ignore, this was far too important to waste time scolding Cor for.
"Did your family tell you if anyone has visited these coordinates?" She asked the still-nervous Twi'lek in front of her.
"N-no. They said our family is the only one alive who knows anyone about this. They said the fleet was built as some sort of failsafe that was never enacted, and everyone else who could ever know about it is long dead." Sana spoke softly. Bo-Katan couldn't believe, well, any of this.
She hoped beyond hope that this was right, that this information could be what they need to save themselves. But what would be the chances? The entire Old Mandalorian military was destroyed by the Old Republic, that way the empire could never rise again. Even though coordinates were so far to the galactic east that the hypothetical fleet could have missed the all-consuming eye of the Republic, the odds of that AND no one knowing about it for thousands of years wasn't just astronomical, that was cosmic.
Lost in her own thoughts as the Twi'lek continued unprompted, she was forced out of her trance almost 15 minutes later by the all-too-familiar voice of Cor. "Hey, Princess, you might want to hear this. Egghead has something important to say."
Bo, snapped out of her stupor turned on her communicator, and began to listen intently.
"My Lady, you won't believe this." Veso began to speak before getting cut off.
"Please, no fanfare, cut to the chase," Bo-katan said, borderline in tears at this rate.
"The coordinates show up nowhere, and I mean nowhere on the holonet. Nowhere on Old Republic records, nowhere on New Mandalorian info centers. I even checked the deep holonet, and scrubbed it with droid-crawlers. Nothing." Veso said, almost out of breath. Bo-katan was about to throw the data slate before Veso began again. "But then, I got the crawlers to scrub Sundari's old data-libraries. Some of the stuff there dates back to when the Taung first came here."
"I found 1 mention of the coordinates, buried so deep in the archives and behind so many ancient clearance codes it took the crawlers a few minutes to get through. But, by the Mines, I found it."
Veso then began to read what sounded like some sort of memo, ordered directly by Mandalore the Ultimate himself. "By order of Mandalore the Ultimate, the 4th Expeditionary fleet shall by this decree relocate to coordinates (001, 099, 042) and dock at all pre-built stations. This decree is mandatory. Failure to obey this decree may result in punishments from demotion to execution. Glory to Mandalore and Glory to Kad Ha'rangir."
Bo-Katan almost fainted at that moment, looking up at the ornate glass and dura-steel ceiling of the mighty Mandalorian throne room. They just gave themselves a fighting chance, all because of one barely noticed order 4000 years ago.
"Order a detachment of our forces to prepare for immediate off-world operations." Bo-katan snapped at Cor receiving a simple nod in response. "And you, Sana, I want you to join the detachment."
The barely functioning, anxiety wracked Twi'lek began to attempt a retort, but the Mandalorian leader simply shook her head. "This is your duty as a Mandalorian, Sana." Eyes full of wonder met Bo-Katans, silence gripping the room before Bo-Katan finished. "This is The Way."