A few months later, Death Watch hideout, Concordia
Although the New Mandalorians had rejected Mandalore's warrior ways and instead became pacifists like the Alderaanians and the Naboo, there were still those who clung to the old ways. Exiled to Mandalore's moon of Concordia, the remaining warriors had initially fought each other for control of the moon before uniting under the banner of Death Watch, known in Mando'a as Kyr'tsad, and swearing vengeance on the New Mandalorians and their allies. Believing that Mandalore should return to its warrior ways as conquerors of the galaxy, one of the first tasks set by Death Watch was to purge those they considered traitorous and a disgrace to what it means to be a Mandalorian, instantly making an enemy out of Clan Jansek in the process.
Somewhere within the abandoned mines of Concordia, a Death Watch warrior entered a bunker where the Death Watch's secret leader, Governor of Concordia Pre Vizsla, awaited to strike on Clan Jansek. Silently, the warrior kneeled in front of Vizsla.
"Sir, all our forces are ready to attack as you ordered," he said. He didn't look up, and kept his head down.
"And the bomber?" Vizsla asked without lifting his gaze from the holotable he was looking at.
"In position," the warrior said before standing up. "And all the targets are in their embassy as our intel suggested."
A small smile appeared on Vizsla's face as he looked up from the table. "Detonate the bomb in Sundari just before you commence your attack on their stronghold," he said as he turned back to the table where he examined the hologram of Jansek Stronghold. "Those cowards became nothing more than traitors when they turned on us and sided with the Duchess and her weak-willed pacifists. An example must be made. They will pay for their treachery with their blood. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," the warrior said, nodding before turning to leave; but he stopped when Vizsla spoke again.
"One more thing. The boy is the future of Clan Jansek. Do what you must," Vizsla said as he leaned into the table and looked at his warrior with a dangerous smile. The man didn't speak at first. He slowly turned his head and nodded.
"It will be done, sir," he said, quickly turning his head back to the front before leaving the bunker.
**********
30 minutes later, Jansek Stronghold, Belsak
"Careful, ad'ika. You don't want to put too much pressure or you'll damage the entire mechanism," Hamar said. He sat on Karel's bed as he watched him tinkering with a broken chronometer, having clearly inherited his love for engineering from his father.
"I know, Dad. Can I go help you with the ship when I'm done with this?" Karel asked.
"Sure. The company just gave me a new experimental hyperdrive to test and you're helping me install it," Hamar replied. Karel smiled before going back to work on the chrono. Neither of them noticed Asha leaning against the door frame.
"How are my two favorite engineers in the galaxy?" she joked, entering the room to kiss her husband, followed by a disgusted growl from Karel before she leaned down to hug him and plant a kiss on his forehead. After working on the device for a few more minutes Karel passed it to his father, who inspected his work rigorously before approving it with a smile and ruffling his hair affectionately. The family then made its way through the mansion where they ran into Toruk and started talking in the hallways. Then a man appeared with a datapad in his hand.
"Sir, there's been an explosion in our headquarters in Sundari!" the man yelled as he rushed over to Toruk and handed him the datapad.
"What?" Toruk asked, shocked, reading the datapad in a hurry. He gasped in horror as he saw the pictures of the building now reduced to a pile of rubble with bodies spread across the site.
"Yes, sir. There was an explosion five minutes ago. There were no survivors..." the man added, almost in a whisper. Before Toruk could respond, a woman came rushing from the other side of the hallway with another datapad in her hand.
"Sir, three unidentified ships have entered the atmosphere. They've made no attempt to identify themselves and they don't respond to our transmissions," the woman explained as she showed him the datapad. Silence filled the hallways for a moment before realization dawned on Toruk.
"We're under attack! Take defensive positions," Toruk ordered them, before turning to his son and his family. "You three have to get out of here."
"But I just removed my ship's hyperdrive. We have no time to install it," Hamar replied.
"Take my shuttle. Hurry!" his father said. The four of them ran to the main entrance of the building. As the Aka'jor-class shuttle was landing to pick them up, a volley of blaster fire and missiles coming from the clouds landed on the clearing outside of the stronghold. One of the rockets landed directly on top of the shuttle and the explosion knocked them back, killing many members of the clan that were standing nearby but leaving the family mostly unharmed.
"Get to the bunker. You'll be safe there. Don't open the doors until this is over," Toruk ordered as he stood and picked up two WESTAR-20 blaster pistols that were laying next to one of the men killed in the explosion.
"And what about you?" Hamar asked as he helped his wife and son stand up.
"I'll hold them off. You have to protect your family," Toruk replied, pressing a pistol to his son's chest.
"You are my family! I'm not leaving you here," Hamar replied as his eyes started to water.
"You're not leaving anyone, we're covering you," Toruk insisted as he hugged his son and his daughter-in-law, telling them something Karel was too shocked to listen to. Toruk kneeled to face the boy and dropped the other pistol on the ground. He took the boy's head in his hands, lifted his gaze and looked into his eyes. "Karel, listen to me. You are a Mandalorian. You are a warrior. Everything that we are lives in you. As long as you remember who you are and where you come from, you'll never be alone. Do you understand?"
"I-I..." Karel stuttered, confused and scared, not knowing what to do. Toruk grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him before bringing his hands to his cheeks again.
"Karel. Do you understand?!" Toruk asked again. Karel looked into his grandfather's eyes and managed to calm himself.
"I understand," the boy replied, fixing at his grandfather with a determined look.
"Good," Toruk whispered, then sighed in defeat. He knew that this would be his end, but if he was going to die he would do it fighting to protect what he loved. A death fit for a Mandalorian. Toruk hugged his grandson tightly one last time before looking up to see three ships preparing for another attack, surrounded by dozens of jetpack-equipped Mandalorian warriors.
"Go! Now!" Toruk ordered, as Hamar picked up Karel to carry him back into the mansion. As they walked up the stairs, Karel lifted his gaze to see his grandfather looking directly at him. His expression was... confusing. He seemed almost at peace, yet still determined to go out with a fight. His eyes shone with the ferocity of a shriek-hawk, yet also gave the serenity of looking into space. Giving his grandson one last sad smile, Toruk turned to face the oncoming onslaught, ready for what would no doubt be the last glorious moments of his life. As the door closed, Karel felt a single tear run down his cheek.
The family rushed through the building, past the throne room and into the armory. Asha punched in a code on the control panel in the wall and it opened, revealing a secret passage. The three hurried into the tunnel with no time to close off the entrance behind them as they heard footsteps nearby. They ran through the hidden passage until they reached a turbolift, which led to a vast chamber built 100 meters underground. Inside the chamber lay a vault whose purpose was to hold the most prized possessions of Clan Jansek, as well as serving as an emergency bunker capable of withstanding the blast of a hundred megaton plasma bomb. As they rushed towards the bunker, a hissing sound came from the turbolift and Hamar sought cover behind a support pillar while his wife and son stayed behind some stacked crates. The turbolift door opened and a single male warrior in Mandalorian armor and a dark blue flight suit emerged. The man started looking around the chamber and walked to the center of it, hitting his helmet as his communications had trouble working so deep underground. After a few moments it became clear that he wouldn't leave soon, so Hamar decided to distract him while his family got to safety.
"You get in the bunker, I'll get his attention," Hamar whispered to Asha, who shook her head in rejection to his idea. "It's the only way."
"We'll see you inside," she whispered to him. Hamar passed her the blaster Toruk had given him, then kissed his wife briefly before before moving out from his cover to find a better place from where to ambush the warrior. Asha took it before turning to face her son who she had instructed to stay quiet.
"Follow me and don't stop for anything," she ordered as she held him by the shoulders. Karel nodded as he and his mother waited for Hamar to distract the warrior. He silently climbed one of the pillars and reached a catwalk behind the man. Hamar jumped and pinned him to the ground as his wife and son started running to the blast doors of the vault and she started typing the access code. The fight was mostly even but the warrior slowly gained the upper hand. The blast door unlocked with a hiss, which drew the attention of the armored warrior as he found the target he came for. The man, laying on his back as Hamar tried to subdue him, gave him a headbutt and managed to free one leg which he used to kick Hamar off of him. Standing up, he unholstered his right blaster to fire on the boy. Hamar tackled him back to the ground, knocking the weapon out of his hand and making the shot hit the blast door as it opened instead.
"Get in the vault!" Hamar yelled, struggling against the warrior who was now pinned against a support pillar.
Hamar planted a trio of punches on his exposed ribs before the man hit him with a knee strike to the stomach. The warrior then grabbed Hamar by the collar of his tunic and struck him with a headbutt before switching their positions. He slammed Hamar against the same pillar before punching him repeatedly and throwing him against a stack of boxes, knocking him out.
"Dad!" Karel yelled. He released himself from his mother's grasp as he instinctively ran to his father's aid, disregarding his mother's orders.
"Karel, wait!" Asha yelled to her son, running after him.
Jumping on the warrior as he turned, Karel managed to wrap his legs around the man's chest and planted several punches on his throat with as much force as he could muster. The man seemed almost unfazed by this, however, and after being stunned for a few seconds, he grabbed Karel by the sides before tossing him to the ground. He unholstered his other blaster and readied to fire on the boy as Asha fired a shot at the man which went stray, but distracted him enough to turn his attention on her. She approached the warrior to engage him, and her blaster fell next to Karel, who froze not knowing what to do. As the two battled for control of the remaining blaster, the weapon fired.
"Mom!" Karel shouted before picking up her blaster and firing three shots at the man, two to the chest and one to the head, killing him instantly.
Asha looked down to see two burn marks in her chest as she pressed her hands against it. She turned to look at her son one last time, who was staring in horror at her with tears in his eyes.
"Karel..." she whispered. She took a few steps back and collapsed on the floor, having died to protect her son.
"Mom... Mom!" Karel yelled in disbelief. He tossed the blaster away, running to his mother's side as his father started to regain consciousness.
"What? Karel? Asha?" Hamar muttered as he took in the situation. "Asha!" he yelled as he ran to her and saw his son crying desperately next to his dead mother. He fell to his knees next to his son and started sobbing. "How? How did..."
"It's... It's my fault. That man... tried to kill you. I ran to help you and she... I'm sorry," Karel muttered between sniffs as he cried desperately, feeling responsible for his own mother's death.
Hamar hugged his son to comfort him, but there wasn't much he could do. They stayed there for a moment before entering the bunker, taking the bodies of Asha and the warrior with them and remotely closing the hidden passage to stop anyone else from entering the chamber. Inside the vault, Hamar settled his wife's body on top of an empty table. He closed her eyes with his palm and kissed her on the forehead.
"Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la, ner cyar'ika," Hamar whispered, covering his wife's body with a blanket as he did. He turned to his son who was at his side, his eyes on the brink of tears once again.
**********
When they rose from the bunker the next morning, the sight was truly horrifying. They found Toruk's body laying on the snow in the small clearing in front of the mansion with multiple blaster shots all over his body, having no doubt fought until his last dying breath to protect his family. Throughout the next two days they gathered the bodies of all their fallen clansmen and cremated them in silence, all but Toruk and Asha. They buried them on a hill overlooking the stronghold, using parts from the shuttle's wreckage as headstones. On the third day they managed to send a message to Mandalore and reinstall the hyperdrive of the Black Hawk, which was safely stored at the stronghold's underground hangar. They returned to Mandalore and informed the Duchess of the attack before turning over the body of the Death Watch warrior. Horrified and devastated, she ordered an investigation into the events and demanded that it become the chief concern of the Mandalorian Guard. The following day, the body and armor of the man disappeared from the police records and the investigation was left unsolved shortly after. Now convinced that the New Mandalorians had failed him and his family, Hamar quit his job and left Mandalore with his son. They returned to Belsak to retrieve his old armor that he used during the war. Once a warrior, then a pacifist, and now a man responsible for raising a child in a dangerous galaxy all by himself.
