A/N: Hi guys! Happy Halloween and season 2 of the Mandalorian! I'm back after a much-needed break with brand new shiny chapter right on top of the brand new shiny episode. I have a nice backlog of chapters, so you can expect an update a week at least until the season is over.
Thanks for reading 3
Chapter 17 - We Need to Talk About Kyen
The Razor Crest touched down on the planet's dusty surface, the ship groaning as it settled on the ground. Din looked out at the deserted landing pads and the sandblasted settlement with a frown. He would have preferred to land somewhere uninhabited and wait for Sinead to finish going through the records, but the ship had been running on fumes, and he didn't want to risk getting stranded in the middle of nowhere.
He looked down at his gloved hand, moving his fingers experimentally. Sometimes an ache would run down his arm, the only evidence that a nexu had tried to rip his arm off.
The sight that met him when he stood and turned nearly made his heart leap out of his chest: the child had found a fusing pen, probably taken it from the toolbox that stood in the corner of the cockpit. A treson cluster had burst behind a panel close to the door, and Din had had to hastily pull the half-melted components out and weld the rest back together as best he could.
"No, you don't." Din pulled the pen from the kid's hands, stifling a small smile when the kid sighed as loudly as his little body was capable of, his face wrinkled into a frown. He left the pen on top of the console and lifted the kid into his arms. "Come on," he mumbled to the child, who tried reaching for the pen.
Sinead sat on her bunk in the hull, scrolling through the datapad with a vacant look in her eyes. She glanced up when he climbed down the ladder.
"We landed?"
"On Mon Scon. Ship's almost out of fuel."
"Okay," she said and returned to her work.
Din stood silently, unsure what to do, unsure what he wanted to do. She hadn't said a word since she started going through the record. Instead, she seemed to grow smaller and smaller, the light from the datapad making her look washed out and ill. His arm prickled, and he almost managed to convince himself that it was residual bacta.
Once outside, it became clear why the landing pad was empty; cold gusts of wind tore across the ground. The sun directly overhead gave no warmth, only pale light that seemed to suck the colors out of everything, and every step threw up a cloud of dust that blew away in the wind.
There was a fuel pump on every landing pad, and Din flipped a switch to start the process. It made a coughing sound and briefly let out a smell of burning plastic before the wind whipped it away. He closed his eyes and counted to 10.
"Guess we have to go find someone."
The child cooed in response.
It took some time before Din got someone willing to help. The locals huddled in their houses or under warped awnings made to catch the worst of the sand. At last, an old and wizened human told Din to grab a toolbox and follow him, and once they got to the fuel pump, it took him a few minutes to clean out the buildup of sand.
The man walked back to the city, bent low to shield himself from the wind which had begun to come in harder and harder. Din leaned against the fuel pump and waited.
The ramp came down, and Sinead appeared in the opening. "You okay out here?"
"The pump didn't work. Should be done soon."
She nodded and disappeared back into the ship, leaving the ramp down, allowing sand to blow through the opening.
Din heaved a sign and was about to close the ship back up when a shadow through the haze caught his eyes; four shadows to be more precise who were moving closer to the ship.
A blaster bolt fizzed over his shoulder and hit the ship dangerously close to the fuel port, where it ricocheted off the metal with a ping. He dropped to the ground and drew his blaster, trying to keep his body between the kid and the attackers.
"Oh Mando!" a familiar voice called out.
Yurru. Shit.
"You're very popular these days!" The human bounty hunter came into view, most of her face hidden behind a mask. He could see his cold eyes glint behind the visor. The three others were strangers. Hired help, maybe. "It was quite the mess you made back on Nevarro. Didn't believe my ears when I heard what you did. You're the last person I expected to break the code."
Standing up, Din started moving away from the ship one careful step a time, keeping his eyes trained on Yurru. She was the only one smart enough to wear a helmet; the other three wore goggles to protect their eyes, but it was clear they were having trouble with sand blasting against their unprotected skin.
Yurru inspected her blaster. "Just this morning, I said to Vorkit, I said 'wouldn't it be nice if the target came to us for a change.' And just like that, you fall into our lap." Her eyes narrowed. "Got nothing to say?"
He was only half-listening while searching the surroundings for any sort of cover that wasn't a highly explosive fuel pump. The kid felt heavy in his arms.
Yurru shrugged. "Doesn't matter anyway. Vorkit!"
"Yeah?" one of her companions said, scratching at his uncovered ear. The lens on his goggles was cracked.
"Check the ship. See if the target's in there."
Din didn't move as Vorkit went to the ramp and squinted into the dark ship. "Hey! Anyone in there?"
Yurru snarled. "Get in there and look."
Vorkit grumbled but still walked up the ramp, holding his blaster rifle at the ready.
"Now," Yurru said with a sigh. "I still haven't decided what to do with you. Dragging you back to Nevarro by the short and curlies will definitely put me among the greats, but there's something very satisfying in letting the traitor end his days in a shallow grave on some insignificant planet."
Din shifted his stance, so he was ready to move out of the way. If it came to it, he would be able to take a couple of blaster bolts, but the kid would not.
A thunderous explosion tore through the air, and the bounty hunters hit the ground. Din turned and saw her.
Sinead stalked down the ramp, her face set in an angry snarl, lit by red light emanating from a whip - the whip - she held in her hand. She swung it in an arc that alighted the air with kyber fire. The beskar didn't behave like metal; it flew through the air with precision and grace, irregular bursts of energy pulsing down the length of chain. The laser melted the sand to glass wherever it touched.
The whip cracked down on one of the bounty hunters who flew back, his chest caving in on itself. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Sinead whirled around and brought the whip down on the last bounty hunter. He crumbled in a wet, smoldering mess. An acrid smell of burning flesh filled the air.
Yurru aimed her blaster at Sinead, but before she had a chance to shoot, Din took her down with a shot to the chest.
Sinead turned in a circle, surveying the carnage around her. The whip burned a black line where it touched the ground.
"Is the kid okay?" She powered down the weapon, the red laser disappearing back into the hilt, leaving behind the beskar core.
"Yeah, I think-" Din looked under the cloak at the child, who started up at him with his big, dark eyes- "I think so."
She poked the bloody mess with the tip of her boot. "Who were they?"
"Bounty hunters." He went to Yurru's body and rifled through her pockets, coming up with a small pouch filled with credits and a tracking fob emitting a steady beep, which he crushed under the heel of his boot. "Let's go."
Sinead scanned the horizon. The wind came in even harder, and the settlement was almost totally obscured by a wall of sand. "Let's."
Sand had piled up on the ship's floor by the time they got back, and Sinead started to sweep it outside while Din placed the kid on the bunk. He turned to face her.
"I thought you said the nau'orar was somewhere safe," he said in a forced calm voice.
"Yes. The safest place is with me."
He scoffed, which finally made her turn, the whip swinging gently with her movement. "What was I supposed to do? Bury it on a random planet? Hide it somewhere and hope no one finds it?"
He gritted his teeth. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Now it was her turn to scoff. "I didn't know you. If you knew, what would've stopped you from taking the damn thing and leaving me for dead?"
She, very annoyingly, had a point. If the roles were reversed, he wouldn't have told her either. Hell, it wasn't until she literally risked her life for the child that he told her the truth about him.
"I could still do that."
"I have a feeling you won't." For a long moment she looked at him, head cocked to the side, and an unreadable look in her eyes. Wordlessly, she offered him the weapon.
It was lighter than he thought. The metal rings clinked as he turned it in his hands, the light catching on the beskar in an almost hypnotic way. Crystals had been fused to the metal, probably what powered the whip. The hilt fit in his hand like it had been made for him, perfect Mandalorian craftsmanship. Another piece of their culture stolen away like everything else. It belonged in the covert.
He thrust it back to Sinead.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Sinead said. "I nearly killed myself the first time I turned it on." She bundled it into a rag and stowed it in the little crevice between the bunk and the wall.
"Where'd you learn how to use it?"
"Got a leather whip to practice with, you know, I figured it was better to lose an eye than my head if something went wrong. And, I don't know ... once you get the hang of it, it's not that hard."
Din tore his eyes away from the whip's hiding spot. "I'm gonna find somewhere else to stay."
"Preferably without any bounty hunters."
"Yeah."
... ... ... ... ...
She almost missed his name.
The words blurred together in a long string of blue light. She had stopped thinking about them as names, as living, breathing sentients who had fought or toiled in the refineries on Loovria. It hurt too much.
It took a second for her brain to comprehend what it was looking at, and then it felt like all oxygen had been sucked out of the room.
K. Beck.
Human.
She nearly fell off the ladder in her haste to get to the cockpit, where Mando sat quietly with the kid on his lap. He startled when she stumbled into the room.
"I found him!" She tapped on the datapad in rapid motion, making the colors warp.
Mando took the datapad and looked, while Sinead threw herself into her seat just to jump up and start pacing.
"Says he was sold to a royal house on Seavo."
"So let's go."
"He was a fighter in the arena."
A small seed of horrible doubt took root in the pit of her stomach. The image of Kyen in the arena, bloody blade at his side, refused to form in her mind. Combat was the antithesis of him. He was a farmer, not a fighter. "He did what he had to do. We've all done things we regret in the name of survival. You gonna plug in the course?"
Mando gave her back the datapad and started the navicomputer. She could feel him glancing at her as the ship changed course.
"What?"
He fiddled with a row of switches for some time before sitting back into his chair, clearing his throat. "You know, there's ... there's no guarantee that he's still alive."
"I've had years to think about this. The possibility has struck me. I still have to know."
"Fine."
She desperately tried to hold on to the elated feeling from before, not wanting to let Mando drag her down. He was right, of course. Her search could very well end at the foot of a grave. At least she would know what happened to him.
Letting out a deep breath, she leaned back in her chair and waited.
... ... ... ... ...
Seavo, it turned out, was a small and unimportant planet in a small, unimportant system located on the edge of wild space, where travelers were few and far between. It had no tactical significance and had therefore been largely ignored by most of the galaxy-wide conflicts. The surface consisted mostly of icy seas and slivers of rocky land. Mando steered the ship towards the biggest settlement which clung to the side of a cliff like a mollusk, nestled inside a large bay. As they came closer, Sinead could see watercrafts bob in the water.
The Crest landed on the small platform between rusty light freighters that looked like they hadn't been used for a long time. The people of Seavo had little use for space travel.
The smell of saltwater overwhelmed her senses when the ramp came down, and a chill immediately snuck into her bones. Growing up in space and subsequently ending up on a desert planet meant that she hadn't had much exposure to the sea, which was fine by her.
On the opposite side of the bay, overlooking the settlement, stood a dilapidated palace like a great shadow against the overcast sky. Even from a distance, it was clear that it had seen better days.
Sinead tamped down on the growing excitement which had bubbled up as soon as the palace came into view. Kyen might be in there. He wasn't, because when had she ever been that lucky, but until they got an explicit confirmation, she could pretend there was only a crumbling wall between them.
"You ready?" Mando looked at her.
"Doesn't look like anyone's home."
"Let's go find out."
The path to the palace led down through the settlement, steep and uneven. None of the houses were the same, but somehow, they all followed the same chaotic pattern. Some had grown together or had entirely new floors added on, made from whatever they'd managed to scavenge. Sinead recognized the cockpit of a hammerhead corvette stuck to the side of a building like an outhouse.
"They're very crafty," Sinead said.
"They have to be. There aren't enough resources to go around."
"I guess when all you have is endless seas and useless rock, you gotta make do."
Most of the people they passed were human, all of them casting curious or low-key hostile looks at Sinead and Mando.
It became clear that no one had lived in the palace for a long time. Even standing at the bottom of the bay, she could see that parts of the roof had caved in and the windows were black voids in the lichen-covered walls.
A human woman worked by a larger house, prying rusty metal plates off the outer wall and discarding them on the ground. She stopped to push a lock of wiry hair out of her face, and Sinead chose that time to clear her throat. The woman turned with a scowl, and Sinead gave her a winning smile. "Excuse me, I'm looking for someone to tell me about the palace up there."
"Who's asking?"
"Names Jesha."
"Why're you asking?"
She shrugged. "Just wondering why such a beautiful building has been allowed to fall into disrepair."
The woman gave the palace a dark look. "Psh. What use do we have for beautiful buildings, hm? If you haven't noticed this ain't Coruscant. Fancy houses don't keep your family fed. Good riddance."
Sinead crossed her arms to ward off the icy wind. "What happened?"
"Lord of the house finally got what was coming to him is all I know. All I care to know." She looked Sinead up and down, her scowl slipping just a fraction. "Keep on the main road until you hit the docks, you'll find an old fisherman by the name of Baston, peddling his excuse for redfish. He might be able to tell you more. His youngest is mixed up in all of this. Tell him that Dista sent you."
Sinead shot her a genuine smile. "Appreciate it."
The woman grimaced. "Yeah, yeah, just let me get back to work." She brandished her crowbar in a vaguely threatening manner and waited until they started down the street.
The sharp smell of fish and brine permeated the air long before the docks came into view. The last buildings fell away, and Sinead got an uninterrupted view of the sea that glittered in the sun, throwing up clouds of freezing mist whenever a great wave broke against the harbor wall. The air was filled with bird squawks and shouts from fishermen. A single fishing trawler was docked and in the process of being unloaded. Straining her eyes, Sinead could see more vessels out on the ocean as small black dots. It all reminded her of the great spaceports she'd spend most of her childhood in, trying not to get in the way of burly workers who didn't have time to entertain a curious girl.
In one end of the docks, out of the way of most of the traffic, a collection of stalls made from bleached driftwood sold fish lying on beds of ice or hung on racks, dried and salted. The birds were more concentrated here, watching the fish with empty, evil eyes.
They quickly found Baston manning one of the stalls. He was a short man with a thick grey beard, selling fish that were indeed rather sad looking. He grinned when they neared, not at all discouraged by Mando's intimidating presence.
"Hello there! S'not often we get strangers here. What can I get you?"
Sinead was about to answer when the kid made a noise and kicking his little feet, eyes fixated on the row of dried fish behind Baston.
"I guess we'll take a fish for the kid." Sinead gave him a couple of credits, and he plucked a dried fish off the rack and handed it to the child.
"What brings you all the way out here? New faces are a rare treat this close to Wild Space." Baston's eyes strayed briefly to the Mandalorian. He was remarkably calm in the face of Mando.
"Dista sent us. She said to ask you what happened up in that big house." Sinead gestured to the dark palace.
A shadow came over Baston's face. "Why do you want to know?"
"I …" she bit her lower lip. "I'm looking for someone. Might have been through the palace some time ago."
Baston nodded to himself. "Happened some cycles ago. Don't know how long in your time, don't have much use of that out here." He was silent for a moment, his lips moving while he gathered his thoughts. "One of the king's men went an' killed him. The king was a bastard, but what followed wasn't much better to tell you the truth."
"He took over?" Sinead asked.
"For a little while. Think he got bored. We're fishermen, we haven't much need for governing around here, not really." Baston seemed like a totally different man once the smile fell from his face. "Never thought I'd be missing the old king, but this man was something else. Don't think I ever saw such a nasty man in all my life. What a terror. Say, who were you looking for again?"
She took a deep breath. "He might have been a slave in the palace. From Loovria."
Baston nodded slowly. "Old king had a few of those. Like I said, he was a bastard. What's the name? I might have known him?"
Sinead's stomach knotted in fear and nauseating hope.
"Kyen Beck."
Baston's face twisted in fury. "You think this is funny?"
"What are you talking about?"
He came out from behind his stall, jabbing a finger at Sinead, who took a step back. Mando shifted the kid to his other arm, ready to draw his blaster.
"How dare you! Coming here, asking me questions like this! I don't want that tyrant back, not again."
"I have no idea what you're talking about!"
He finally seemed to catch on. "You … you really don't know?"
She folded her arms across her chest. "Obviously not."
"Who do you think killed the king? Beck terrorized us for more than a cycle before pissing off to who knows where!"
At first the words didn't register. Kyen terrorizing anyone? That couldn't be true.
"You're wrong." Her voice was hollow.
Baston spat on the ground, all signs of the jolly old man gone. "Not something I'm liable to forget."
"You know where he is now?" Mando said, not relaxing his stance.
"Not here. He stole a ship and took a crew. My guess is he's out tyrannizing the Outer Rim, the good-for-nothing pirate. Calls himself Red Vekkass last I heard."
Kyen? A pirate?
"No!" The word exploded out of her mouth, making passerby's stop and stare. "Kyen would never do that!"
"Apparently, you don't know him as well as you think you do. My idiot son went with him, thinks a life of crime is better than staying here in safety."
"You're wrong!" Her face was flushed and the sudden anger made her dizzy.
"Sinead-" Mando began, grabbing her elbow to pull her back.
She wrenched her arm away from him. "Don't touch me!"
The kid made a worried sound, his little face contorted in a frown.
Mando clenched his fist and let it fall to his side. "Move. Now." His voice was dangerously low.
"But-"
"Now."
Once they were off the dock, Sinead exploded. "Kyen would never do something like that! Not in a million years."
Mando stopped abruptly and put the child down on a barrel and turned to face her with his arms stiffly by his side. "It's been years. You said yourself, we all do things in the name of survival."
Sinead looked like she'd been slapped. She felt like she'd been slapped. "Not like this." Her eyes prickled, and she stared up at the sky. "You don't understand ..."
He remained silent.
"I ..." She took a shuddering breath, forcing the tears not to spill. "I wasn't born a slave. Already told you that ... my parents ran goods across the galaxy. We were ... pirates boarded the ship. They killed everyone ... except for me." She swallowed thickly, feeling at once hollow and drowning in memories she usually kept buried deep in her mind. "That's how I ended up on Srilurr." And I never told anyone except Kyen - and you.
If Mando had been still before, he was now a statue, glinting coldly in the morning air.
"Kyen wouldn't do that. Not to me."
Mando cleared his throat, flexing his fingers. "I ... I didn't know."
"Nobody did." She breathed deeply, trying to keep herself from falling to pieces; if she were falling anywhere, it wouldn't be in front of Mando and the kid, who was watching silently from the sideline.
"Do you want to go after him?"
And just like that, grief was replaced with red-hot anger that pooled in her stomach and made her eyes twitch. How dare he ask her that? Like she would just give up after all that time and effort!
Small hands touched her calf, and she looked down into big black eyes. Somehow the child had gotten down from his perch and was gripping her around the leg, giving her the most worried look she'd ever seen on such a small face. The anger didn't ebb out, but slowly it receded enough for her to rein it in.
Picking him up, he settled against her chest, where he left a greasy handprint on her jacket. "Let's just get out of here." Her voice shook with barely concealed anger.
Mando nodded and stepped to the side, letting her lead the way back to the ship in silence.