The Commandos alongside Kal, among 25 other hand-picked, best of what is left, Mandalorian Veterans of wars new and old swarmed around the hangar. Like worker bees they worked on loading and unloading one of the massive 80-meter-long carrier ships, taking out massive boxes of supplies in order to retro-fit the ship into a more nimble assault craft, and ultimately to make sure if anything went wrong the warriors still in the hangar wouldn't lose any of their needed supplies. As they did so, the assault tank still stashed inside the vessel was finally moved out, the repainted green hull of the AAT gleaming in fluorescent light as it was slowly moved and parked next to the similarly painted Saber.

As the preparations were made, and the carrier began to fill its new, unplanned purpose, the Commandos and Kal slowly began to walk up the ship's ramp and to the pilot room, weapons scruffing against armor, the blade Kal had taken from his enemy sheathed at his side. However, just before they could make it aboard, Kal felt a soft, barely noticeable tug of his arm. Looking behind himself, he saw the newly adopted member of the clan. Sana. Her unpainted, silver beskar plate gleamed under the hangar's light.

"Kal, I want to come with you." Sana said plainly and confidently. Sighing, Kal turned back to the Twi'lek, his tan armor meeting Sana's silver.

"Sana…" Kal removed his helmet, placing it on the ramp he stood upon before continuing. "I told you, you're needed here. This operation is better undertaken by a small strike force… We can't leave this hangar under guarded, if we do, this entire operation will fall apart."

"Why will one person make that much of a difference, Kal? We already have over 50 Mandalorians here. The last time we got attacked, we lost just as many as that, if not more. What makes you think we'll be alive when you come back? Why do you think we need to stay here so much?" Sana retorted.

"Because if we all leave here Sana, we will lose whatever ground we gained here." Kal placed his hand on Sana's shoulder as he did before. "And they won't attack because we have the home-field advantage now. In all likelihood, they are waiting for us all to leave this hangar so they can attack us again. With everything we have set up here, all of our defenses, all of our preparations, all of our traps, and the fact we at least partly know what we are dealing with now, if they do attack us again they'd be the ones bleeding out. Not us."

"So why would I going with you make that any different?" Sana replied, anger flaring in her voice, she could tell all of this, no matter how true it was, was simply an excuse to keep her here.

Kal simply stayed silent for a moment before finally speaking the truth. "Because I am not risking losing any more family, Sana… Not after what happened with Corr. Not anymore."

Sana simply looked the old man in the eyes, stunned at his response. As she did so, the old Mandalorian turned away and ordered his men aboard the ship, Sana slowly turning and walking away as the ramp retracted and closed, leaving the Twi'lek and her fellow Mandalorians at their, hopefully still temporary, home of operations.

As the ship's repulsor and sub-light engines engaged, filling the hangar with a faint blue glow, Sana turned back around and looked at the departing vessel, giving a solum wave goodbye to the friends she knew she might never see again.

0

The cold void of space clung to the boxy grey and yellow ship like a blanket, the massive vehicle flying low and slow against the dark metal space station they were tasked with taking. It had been a couple of hours since they left the hangar, the sheer amount of time taken an unfortunate necessity to avoid any attention from the enemies that dwelled within the station. Even though they knew they didn't have spacecraft of their own, they all knew there that they had other ways of detecting the Mandalorian reclaimers, and detection simply wasn't a risk they were willing to take.

Inside the vessel, all unnecessary systems were completely shut down, the inside the ship the cargo bay was bathed in red emergency lighting as the momentum of the first, and final, engine burst continued to carry them onward through the vacuum. Inside, the collective group of Mandalorians prepared their weapons. Tightening fibercord cables, pressurizing flame throwers, reloading blasters and Disruptor weapons, the men and women aboard the vessel know this fight was going to be a difficult one, one many of them wouldn't walk away from alive. But they were prepared for that, prepared for the best and for the worst. They knew the enemy now, even if just slightly, and that knowledge was power. Power they would use to win.

Kal walked into the open cargo space of the carrier, holding his blaster rifle in one hand, gripping the hilt of the captured alien sword in the other. As he did so, he began to speak, his helm distorting his voice as he began his speech.

"Men and women of Mandalore, I understand I have asked a lot of you already. We have suffered here, suffered beyond imagining. Many of our clans lay dead, we've lost warriors, irreplaceable men and women of courage and honor to an enemy we don't even know the name of. I know many of you wish to leave, to abandon this fight and our duty to our people. I understand this wish."

"We have fought and bled for a chance of salvation for our people, we have suffered endless deaths with no way to call for help, and a direct order to either return with our objective or not return at all. I understand the wish to leave this all behind, take your chances somewhere else in this galaxy and abandon The Way. But we can't do that, its never been an option, and I know you all know that."

"We can't leave, and that's because of who we are. We aren't some mercenary group, we aren't soldiers of fortune after the prospect of credits. We are Mandalorians. To leave would be to spit on the graves of those who fell to get us to this point, to give up would be to abandon the righteous cause we fight for now. We may have lost so much, but those we have lost have passed the torch to us so that we may fight in their stead. The Righteous shall live forever, for we know our actions will echo throughout history!"

"We will fight, and if we die the torch of those who have fallen will live forever more, and we will pass it forever onward. We will get to those Droids, kill anything that moves, and take this station. Our resolve will win us this day, our actions will prove just, and Mandalore will have her fleet!"

Kal unsheathed the alien sword and held it high in the air, his voice rising to a crescendo.

"For Mandalore! For the Righteous! For the Fallen!" The warriors around him erupted at this final statement, roars of applause and warcries filling the chamber as the men and women stood up, heading towards the numerous escape pods scattered throughout the vessel. As they did so, Kal looked over his shoulder towards the Mandalorian piloting the ship, giving him a short, sharp nod as they prepared their immediate evac back to the station below.

Entering one of the pods alongside his sons, he glanced back to see his fellow veterans doing the same. All 30 of the soldiers packed into the small, cramped pods, ready for their coming departure. As they did so, Kal looked over to his sons and began to speak.

"Everything goes as planned, got it you 4? We get in there, Atin gets to work on booting up the Droids, and when they are online we let them do their things. You all stick with me. No heroics, only look out for each other." Kal said plainly.

"And what about the others?" Niner replied, looking towards his father figure.

"They know what they are getting into, their jobs are to kill anything they see. It isn't going to be like the last few times, we aren't going to lose everyone just to do the same to them, these men are better than that, better trained than that. I know half of the men in the group. I picked them for this mission because I knew would be able to kill these aliens with most of them being able to save their own skin in turn. Most if not all of them have experience in killing Force users, everyone here is a Jedi killer. They know how to deal with these things, and more importantly, they are coming into this prepared."

"And what if that's not enough?" Darman retorted back.

"Look, if everything goes without a hitch, we can win this. Understood?" Kal said plainly. In response, the Clones simply nodded and readied themselves for the coming storm.

The pods slowly but surely detached from their mother vessel, floating through the void like feathers on a stiff breeze, they slowly but surely found their way to the docking bays through the use of nearly minuscule ion thrusters. As they all connected with the myriad of separate airlocks scattered all across the grey surface of the vast space station, the men and women inside the small pods readied for everything and anything that would come their way.

0

Guarding one of the numerous entrances to the vast, almost unending warehouse full of strange, robotic Mon'keigh Men of Iron stood a group of two Guardian Defenders. One stood, Shuriken Catapult held in one hand as he stared down the vast wide-open space. The other simply watched the long, winding hallway they stood guard in front of. As he did so, the attuned hearing of the citizen soldier picked up a slight, almost imperceptible whistling sound. However, even before he could turn around, it was already too late.

Falling to the ground, an amount of neuro-toxins enough to kill a Rancor coursing through his veins and causing the man to lose all motor capabilities. The alien man's last sight before everything went dark was the shape of multiple beskar-clad warriors moving towards his position, his comrade on the floor seemingly dead, and the shape of a long, metallic dart sticking out of his neck.

Moving to their new position, the Mandalorians stood watch as Omega Squad led by their Buir made their way to the entrance as well, the formation of Clones and Mandalorians lining up against either side of the entrance's nearly 40-meter-wide hallway, their backs to the wall.

Nodding, Kal gave the signal for the Mandalorian veterans to begin working their way into the warehouse, the 25 former True Mandalorians forcing their way into the wide open space, hiding behind derelict Droids and machinery as they did so. Following them were the form of Omega Squad and their Kal'Buir, weapons trained and ready to fire on anything that moves.

Pointing forwards with two fingers, Commando Niner signaled his squad forward, towards the obvious shape of a massive command console at the very end of the room, at least a few hundred meters away. Doing their best to silently run towards the object, the men finally made it after a few minutes of concerted effort, Commando Atin began his magic on the ancient computer, crossing wires and connecting a fusion battery to the ancient electronics of the system in an attempt to hot-wire it on.

As they did so, a cold, deadly silence fell over the room, and in an instant, the sound of blaster fire erupted from every angle of the vast unending warehouse, precise bolts of yellow and red flying and hitting unknown and unseen targets from far away. The plan was working, and the veterans had found the enemy lurking in the shadows.

"Atin, you better get working fast." Niner told his brother, weapon trained on the endless, dark expanse, barely visible columns of light occasionally lighting the dark desolate space.

All around them, Mandalorians hunted their prey, using their jetpacks to jump their hot-pink and Egyptian blue enemies with fury and haste, killing many with blaster and flamethrower before they could even have the chance to return fire, their superior speed being useless in the face of utter shock and awe. Those who did react barely had enough time to fire off their desperately needed volleys of Shuirken fire, only a few being able to injure or kill their attackers before their weapons were too silenced. 10 of their number were already dead, killed with an element of surprise they had become all too accustomed to having.

However, they were only the force stationed to guard this area, a mere patrol to the storm that was coming. As the Mandalorian warriors mopped up the inexperienced civilian soldiers, 2 squads of 5 blue armored alien men appeared at the entrances of the warehouse, helmets of bone white and plumes of finely decorated hair flowing in the wind of battle. More skilled than the previously killed Guardian Defenders, but much less so than the Howling Banshees some had encountered before.

Firing on the attacking Mandalorians, the warriors soon learned that these alien counter-attackers while in principle similar to the ones they had just killed, were completely different creatures when it came to their skill. Molecule-thick metal disks of death spun through the air at near super-sonic speeds, hitting their beskar-clad targets with pinpoint accuracy. The volleys of the newly arrived Dire Avengers killing scores of Mandalorian Veterans.

Noticing this, many of the Mandalorian warriors hid behind the safe cover of the ancient machinery that dotted the floor of this place, the rapidly fired disks jamming themselves deep into dura-steel and plastoid. As they did so, multiple of the still numerically superior Mandalorian warriors pressed a number of buttons and keys on their wrist-mounted control pads, leaning over as their jetpack-mounted rockets launched and targeted their alien adversaries.

Seeing this, many of the Aeldari warriors too ran to cover as the hail of rockets rained down upon them. A wise strategy, but one that ultimately wouldn't work as well as they planned. As the rockets exploded over their heads, pellets of tiny pellets of death fell upon them, a steel rain of wanton murder. Piercing the mesh armor of their foes, the elite Eldar fell one by one as dura-steel pellets tore their bodies apart, killing over 8 of their newly arrived foe.

Looking over to Niner, Darman commented snarkily. "Looks like they got it covered, Commander. Don't try to rush old Atin."

As he did so, more of the blue-armored Dire Avengers made their way into the warehouse. 5 more warriors, led by one, single warrior armed with two of their strange flechette launchers attached to his wrists. This seemed to embolden the few surviving Dire Avengers, the Eldar jumping out of cover and rushing the hiding Mandalorians.

With their supply of rockets exhausted, the men decided to instead stand and fire their blaster rifles and Disruptors at the reinforced foe. Killing few, but at the cost of multiple of their own. The Veteran Mandalorians now stood at little over 16 men left, the dead and the dying beginning to litter the floor as they did in every battle they had fought here before this.

Seeing this, Niner yelled back over to his brother still knelt over the console, frantically attempting to get whatever power was left in this station to the motionless Droids the soldiers all across them have been using for cover.

"Atin, how close are we?"

"Closer… We are getting closer…" The man almost yelled to himself, a deep fear of failure spilling forth from his mind and into the words he spoke.