So in my reading I've realised that Gar Saxon is Viceroy, not Governor, of Imperial Mandalore. So his title has changed since I last wrote him. Oh well.

I'm working all weekend so here's an early chapter to enjoy :)

Chapter 49: Loose Wires

"You've made it!"

Korkie strode down the ramp and onto the landing strip of Fenn Rau's hidden settlement on the third moon of Concord Dawn. It was the first time, since he had left his mother behind and fled his home with Padme Amidala at his side, that Korkie had set foot on Mandalorian territory.

"Sorry about the wait. I had to stick around a few days and make sure the gremlin was actually going to train those kids properly before I left them there."

It had occurred to Korkie that the Grand Master's emotionally stunted teaching style mightn't have been compatible with the Temple-naïve teenagers he had brought to Dagobah. But Ariarne and Luke had seemed to enjoy their early lessons, once they had recovered from the offence of their initial near-rejection. And they had each other, Korkie supposed, to balance out Yoda's traditionalist doctrine. He'd left them learning to perform handstands, the princess's usual gowns exchanged for a spare pilot's jumpsuit. Ariarne had been an assiduous student and Luke had done his best to follow her example. Korkie had felt a little guilty, watching Ariarne throw herself into every round of meditation. He hadn't realised how lost she had been, untrained in the Force. He had made the right decision in taking them to the Grand Master. Even Luke, who complained endlessly about the food and about Yoda's cryptic manner of speaking, was uncovering his own powers with wide-eyed awe.

"The timing is perfect now," Korkie mused, falling into step with the warrior beside him. "No more Death Star. No more distractions."

"Our time has come," Fenn agreed.

This was by far the most Mando'ade, certainly, that Korkie had seen since he had left Mandalore on that horrible day. Not only Bo-Katan's gathered forces but Rau's too, eating in the mess hall, sparring in the dojo, maintaining their weapons and ships with callused fingers and cuts upon their knuckles. They all seemed to be drawn by some strange magnetic pull, heads turning as they passed, their eyes without fault finding the Darksaber at Korkie's belt. Curt nods and rumbles of, "Mand'alor."

This was not the world of the Alliance, where he'd played the rogue of the Council and been teased by his subordinates for his unenthusiastic piloting or posh accent. This was something new and foreign, and Korkie would have to get used to it.

"Everyone will be eager to get started," Fenn muttered, who had been intermittently pausing and making beckoning gestures, so that they had a collection of soldiers, now, following behind as they approached the meeting room. "Shall we?"

Korkie sat at the head of the table and it felt bizarre. He beheld his Ba'vodu, Ursa Wren, Sewlen Jerac. Soldiers he considered his elders and superiors. But Bo-Katan nodded in quiet approval at his positioning. So many expectant eyes upon him. Fenn Rau's, too. He was expected to speak.

"I have been away from home too long."

The words hung in respectful silence.

"It is good to be amongst my people and to speak my language again," he went on. "And I will not leave again. There will be no other battle for the Mando'ade to fight until our home is won."

A glint, now, of approval in the Force. But the soldiers listened still and did not give much away.

"The Empire is reeling from the destruction of its superweapon. But I have no doubt they will strike back. Now is our time. We will not let this moment slip."

A rumble of assent, the knocking of beskar against the table.

"I invite the voices of those who have lived these years in the struggle for Mandalore during my time with the Alliance to Restore the Republic. As I said, I have been too long away."

Fenn Rau nodded, gave a soldier's almost-smile.

"Wren and I know what it is to be Mandalorian leaders under the thumb of the Empire. The occupying troops arrived shortly after the firebombing of Mandalore and they have not left. They employed Concord Dawn as a means of capturing travelling rebels and Krownest as a military base and weapons testing precinct. Their means are financial as much as military. They control all of our trade. We have garnered little attention, so far, since my allegiance has changed. We are purporting to capture rebels, still, and liberating them in secret. But we are under close watch."

Ursa nodded.

"They have increased their presence on Krownest. And Saxon visits often. My allegiance is still outwardly to Saxon but Sabine's defection could not be covered up. But Saxon's forces are stretched. The additional troops on Krownest came at the expense of airspace presence in the Mandalorian system. We facilitated several successful escape routes for the Alliance to Restore the Republic in the wake of the Battle of Yavin."

"Saxon is alone," Fenn emphasised. "He is the last of us loyal to the Empire still. They have rewarded him with a planet to call his own. But they have not given him the sort of troops that they have given to worlds such as Basteel and Jedha. They are relying on the near-extinction of the Mando'ade. He is under-resourced."

"He has built his fortress in the dust-field that was once Keldabe," Ursa outlined. "All of his troops are based there. There has been no rebuilding in Sundari. It is difficult enough to survive in the once-fertile south. Saxon has a standing army of five-thousand Imperial troops and less than fifty fully-trained Mando'ade known as the Imperial Super Commandos. He is training a new generation of cadets, from families such as my own."

Her expression darkened.

"Tristan has gone. We had no choice. It was the only way to promise the loyalty of my Clan. Our communications are limited, but he has been able to provide many valuable insights. Their weapons are of good quality but their ships outdated. Their rations limited. The Empire is providing slaves from the Outer Rim but even still, there are not enough people to work the land that the Empire ruined."

Slaves on his home planet. Korkie felt a sick twist in his guts. Thought of his brother. But Fenn and Ursa's reports gave reason for optimism.

"Hungry and lonely," he mused. "Ripe for a revolution. Just like last time."

Fenn regarded him with cautious smile.

"This revolution will look a little different, I think, Mand'alor."

Korkie inclined his head in partial acquiescence.

"We will be armed. But Mandalorian lives are more precious now than they were even in the days of my mother's revolution. We do not kill without reason. Not if we have a choice."

He gave a crooked smile.

"Those poor cadets, I imagine, are just aching for a reason to be rid of Saxon and be proper Mandalorians again…"

"Alright, Artoo, nothing less than victory today, you hear me?"

The young Mando pilot hefted the R2 unit into his fighter, wiped a smudge of grease from his dome. The droid gave an indignant bleep of Binary. There were some miracles he could not work.

I cannot completely compensate for your fifth-centile reaction times.

"Oi!" he scowled. "Don't insult my piloting. Have you forgotten that you were due for scrapping before I rescued you?"

R2-D2 could have told Tristan Wren that he was not insulting him. It was an objective truth: his reaction times were on the fifth centile for his species – someone's had to be, it was simply the law of normal distribution. But R2-D2 had not forgotten the near-scrapping ordeal and so kept his analysis to himself. The experience had been terrifying and undignified. He'd tried to crash Gar Saxon a few too many times to be considered a coincidence and had been thrown in the compactor as faulty. Utterly insulting. He was not faulty, of course, but malicious.

You only saved me because you crashed and ruined your last two R2 units and no one wanted to give you a third, he reminded his rescuer.

The young soldier rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, alright. But I've got a lot better since then, huh? I'm not a half-bad pilot now."

After Anakin, everyone was at least a half-bad – if not three-quarters-bad, or full-bad – pilot.

You have a lot of work to do.

"Yeah. I know. Let's go then, buy'ce-kovid."

Mando'a had taken some getting used to, even after installing C-3PO's program for the language from the protesting protocol droid (who had, with the memory wipe, forgotten that they were ever companions who had provided willing assistance to one another). It just didn't run so smoothly through R2-D2's programming as Basic had. But he heard little else these days and the language did, to its credit, contain some useful profanity that expressed certain sentiments better than either Basic or Binary could. He was beginning to comprehend its intricacies now, the meanings that were not so readily coded. Being called helmet-head, which R2 could only assume was a comment on his shape,was most likely a term of endearment; these Mandalorians coded their armour and helmets with strongly positive connotations. Not like the Duchess that R2 had once known. Had Satine called him buy'ce-kovid, it would have been an insult.

"You paying any attention back there?" Tristan commed, as they lifted off and into a formation of similarly ineptly-piloted fighters. "Our stabilisers need manual ignition, remember?"

Because you crashed and broke the automaticity, R2 reminded the young Mandalorian, switching the stabilisers on.

"Why is it that you remember every single one of my crashes but never your karking job?"

How could I forget all the times you nearly killed me? I have nightmares about you on my sleep cycle.

"Son of a strill," Tristan grumbled.

R2's new employer was not much of a pilot, but he did understand Binary, which was his saving grace. Most Mandalorians, as C-3PO was learning in Gar Saxon's court, seemed to reject the notion of learning any language other than Mando'a as unpatriotic. R2 wouldn't have had anything at all in his life to look forward to if he had not been able to converse with Tristan, (who tended to call it "bullying" and not "conversing", as R2 did). It was for this reason, and because the young soldier admittedly took reasonable mechanical care of him, that R2 had not yet tried to crash him.

"That utreekov cut me off!" the boy wailed. "Piece of shit. Can't bring himself to share a single kriffing target."

There was a great deal of complexity to organic language, and poor old C-3PO, somewhere beneath them in the Viceroy's complex, despite his thousands of wires and years of programming, was hopeless at coding it. R2 was certain his friend was going to end up in the scrap pile sooner or later. He had tried many times to perform covert maintenance work of a nighttime but there seemed no way to grant C-3PO the more Mandalorian personality which would make him tolerable to Saxon. There seemed to be some irreversible fault in his wiring: he would always be overly verbose and speak truths that the organic sentients obviously did not want to hear. Which was probably because he had been assembled by a nine-standard-year-old human who had not been very tactful either.

Matters had been made worse, of course, on the night that Sundari had been bombed into a field of rubble and R2 had been forced to put his companion back together without any organic assistance. He'd done a fair reassembly job but not to the standard that Anakin would have performed. C-3PO was as loose-wired as ever and showed no signs of firming up, no matter how many nocturnal repair jobs R2 tried. This was not altogether a bad outcome. C-3PO remained predictable to him, and this predictability was safe and useful, and generated the sort of warm sentiment between them that organics called friendship. Their friendship was somewhat unreciprocated these days, as C-3PO had lost the memories of all of their shared experiences and instead knew R2 just as all the other members of Saxon's court did: as a temperamental and unwieldy astromech only fit to fly with the least-favoured pilot in the cadet class. But it was better than nothing. They had survived, which was more than could be said for the vast majority of organics who had been in Sundari on the night that the Empire had arrived.

He had seen her there, on the ground beyond the burning palace. Her life-partner had left, and then her son, and then finally her sister, and the Duchess Satine had stayed. Stayed forever, somewhere beneath that whirling sand, beneath the layers of snow that blanketed the desert in winter. She had laid so perfectly still, her eyes open and stuck, the lights of the space battle reflected in their glassiness. R2 had wanted to do something for her. To move her. To commemorate her. But the bombs had continued to fall and he had done nothing. He had been collected by the troops who had surrendered and sworn loyalty to the Empire and had been carted to the pile of rubble that had once been the city of Keldabe, which could at least be rebuilt without the need to construct a dome.

R2-D2 had never been wiped. He remembered the dead Duchess just as he remembered Anakin's disappearance in the Coruscant night and the way that Padme had sobbed and trembled and how the Duchess had sent Padme into space with her only son, who had not even yet grown to adulthood, as her protector. He remembered being left behind, first by Anakin and then by Padme, and he'd known that they'd all had some terrible sort of short-circuiting of their own wires in those horrible days but it did not make the memories any less difficult.

Presently, they were struck by clanging fire from practice-cannons.

"Dead weight," Tristan grumbled. "I am flying with dead karking weight, you hear me, Artoo?"

I'm very old and I am tired, R2 professed.

The young soldier made a noise at the back of his throat that sounded like he wanted to be disapproving but could not quite bring himself to do so.

"Alright, old man, take it easy," he grumbled, swooping them out of formation and into their forced retirement on the landing strip. "I'll give you a wipe and a refurb, huh? Free up some space for you."

Don't you dare.

The boy leapt from the cockpit, approached R2 with brows raised at the intensity of his reply.

I'd rather be scrapped, he insisted.

"By the gods, you're cheerful," Tristan reproached. "How did I find such a melancholy R2 unit? I didn't think your programming even allowed this sort of…"

He grunted with the effort of extracting R2 from the ship and back onto solid ground.

"…complexity," he decided.

I hold many stories.

"And you look like it," the boy agreed, beholding his battered dome.

R2 had invested most of the spare parts he'd found into C-3PO's repair. His own damage was mainly cosmetic.

"You'll have to tell me your old war stories, one day," Tristan mused, as they made their way back to the repairs garage. "Bet you were here when the Empire came, huh? Before I was even born."

R2 gave a long, low whistle.

It's a very, very long story.

The question had been in Ariarne's mind from the very start and it would not go away. It took her several weeks, however, on Dagobah, to work up the courage to ask it. She'd established that beneath his cranky exterior and austere teachings, Master Yoda could be warm. He expressed approval of her efforts in meditation, even. But she suspected that this question would have her sliding right back to when he'd tried to argue her off Dagobah at the very beginning.

"Master Yoda," she ventured, in the early hours of a misty morning while Luke was still asleep. "You've known so many Jedi Knights."

The wizened creature nodded, said nothing.

"I was wondering…"

He would hate her for asking it. But it was too late now. He'd probably already read her mind.

"Do you know of anyone, maybe, who might have been my parents?"

But the Grand Master did not rebuke her; his ears drooped, and he motioned her to sit.

"No, Padawan. Born of parents who never knew the Order, most likely, you were."

So they could be anyone, anywhere.

"Do you think that they were Force-sensitive?" she asked.

"No way of knowing, there is."

Anyone in the whole kriffing galaxy.

"I suppose not," Ariarne agreed.

Yoda took a deep, slow breath and Ariarne found herself falling into his rhythm.

"Lineage matters not, young one," he told her. "All of us, luminous beings in the Force, we are. And connected, all of us are. Far more powerful, this is, than the bond of blood."

Ariarne nodded.

"Alive, your parents are, in the Force. No matter what has happened. Mourn them, you need not. Miss them, you need not."

"But they're not with me."

It was selfish and she knew it. Everything that Master Yoda had counselled her against.

"With all of us, they are."

"But I don't know them. I don't hear them."

And Yoda gave what almost could have been a smile.

"Know them, you do," he told her. "Take time, it does, to learn to feel this."

So perhaps the Jedi Code was not all about detachment and loneliness, as Korkie had warned them on the journey to Dagobah. Perhaps it was about the connection that all of them had but could not name. About learning to feel it and know it.

"Learned this, I have," Yoda went on, "in the years since the Order was destroyed. All of the Jedi I once had known…"

His gaze was distant and his words ran dry. All of the Jedi he once had known… nearly all of them, at least. Dead or disappeared. He had lived so many years alone.

"Will you come to visit the New Order, Master Yoda?"

The ancient teacher shook his head.

"Allow it to grow, I will, without the webs of the past."

He lifted his chin, a pulse of hope in the Force.

"Learn my teachings through Luke and yourself, they will."

They had spent weeks on the third moon of Concord Dawn training, accustoming the new allies to each other's styles, while debating – Korkie would be a failure of a Mand'alor if it were called arguing – exactly the best way to topple Saxon and reclaim Mandalore. There was the possibility of an ambush on a routine visit to Krownest, or a direct invasion of Keldabe, or a concerted effort to sway the loyalty of Saxon's soldiers from beneath him. They were no closer to an answer when the call came through.

"Sorry to interrupt, Korkie," Mon Mothma began, noting the Darksaber in his hand and the sweat upon his brow. "The Alliance has received a call from Imperial Viceroy Saxon. I think he was expecting to reach you through us. Would you like to be commed in?"

Korkie nodded, still breathless, pushing the sweat-plastered hair from his brow.

"As long as you can encrypt my location. You'd best get out of the frame, Fenn."

His sparring partner agreed but lingered close by to listen in. Mon Mothma looked down at her comm controls and the holo-projection of Gar Saxon appeared opposite her. He stood some distance from the camera, a protocol droid in the frame by his side. White-armoured Super Commandos flanked them in the background.

"Greetings Mothma, Kryze. I speak on behalf of the Viceroy Gar Saxon, of Keldabe."

Saxon growled some rebuke, and the droid got to the point.

"The rebel presence in Mandalorian airspace has not gone unnoticed," it reported. "It is clear to us that there exists some collaboration between the Alliance to Restore the Republic and the so-called Mandalorian Protectors of Concord Dawn."

Fenn Rau gave a poorly stifled groan off-projection.

"Tell me," Korkie mused, "does your Master really not speak any Basic, or is he using a protocol droid to translate because it makes him appear a more patriotic Mandalorian and less like an Imperial sell-out wearing storm-trooper beskar?"

Saxon's face was obscured by his helmet but Korkie did not miss the clenching of his fists in anger; he had understood the Basic.

"Ah, the latter, then. Saxon, I'll speak to you in Basic or Mando'a, but don't make the droid do your dirty work. It's cowardly."

Saxon strode forward and spoke in a guttural stream of Mando'a.

"Play the translator if you wish, Kryze. I am giving you the courtesy of a warning. The rebel presence in Mandalorian airspace must end immediately, or I will be forced to pay Rau a visit."

"Rau has nothing to do with this," Korkie assured him. "Don't discredit my efforts."

"Don't try to tell me that this is all the work of you and your mad aunty."

Korkie shrugged.

"More or less."

"Then perhaps Rau is in need of further support from my forces," Saxon drawled. "In any case, he can expect a visit."

Korkie rolled his eyes.

"I really don't know why you're telling me all of this. I have nothing to do with Rau. And what is it that you want me to tell Mon Mothma, exactly?"

"To get her rebels out of our airspace."

"Mothma," the protocol droid translated, "the Viceroy Saxon requests that you remove your rebels from Mandalorian airspace."

Mon blinked her vague surprise at being addressed. Saxon and Korkie ignored the interruption.

"Is the Emperor cross with you, Saxon? For your failure to fight his war for him?" Korkie taunted. "Are you frightened of your boss, Viceroy?"

Saxon took a step forward, brandished a finger.

"I have no boss. Not the Emperor and not you."

Korkie tutted.

"I don't think the Emperor would take kindly to you saying that about him. You wouldn't have Mandalore if you'd not surrendered to him."

"And you wouldn't have the Darksaber had your dar'Manda father not shot that Sith-"

"I don't recall you being particularly useful, Saxon, in the battle against Darth Maul," Korkie mused. "Wasn't he your boss before the Emperor?"

"I have no-"

"Thanks for the invite, Mon," Korkie sighed, switching the Basic. "But I don't think I need to be in this call any longer. The conversation is hardly productive. I don't think he had much to tell us."

Mon gave a tight smile.

"That's fine. Thank you, Korkie."

"Thank you all," the protocol droid bade, eliciting a rebuke from Saxon and a clanging blow to his head.

The holo-call cut out and Korkie turned to Fenn Rau, sitting on the dojo mat, looking up at him with a grimace.

"So I suppose the secret's out, then."

Korkie sighed.

"I don't think I really convinced him otherwise."

He came to sit on the mat opposite his sparring partner.

"Makes the plan simpler," Fenn reasoned. "If Saxon's coming here, we ambush him."

Korkie frowned.

"I don't know. Why would he warn us?"

"Because he's undermanned," Fenn reasoned, "and he doesn't want to come here unless he must. He's hoping I pull out like a coward and get the Emperor off his back without a fight."

"I think he's coming no matter what," Korkie muttered. "And I think he's coming prepared."

"Then we'd better prepare ourselves, hmm?"

Fenn gave Korkie's shoulder a brief squeeze, rose to his feet with creaking complaint in his knees and extended a hand to help him up. Korkie accepted the hand and rose to stand. The sweat was cooling on his brow and a sort of sick heaviness settling in his gut. They'd meant to act before Saxon. He'd waited too long, perhaps. Too diplomatic, too indecisive, of a Mand'alor. Fenn would have done better. He wished he could give it away, sometimes. He knew how to fight a battle, for sure, but not a karking war. Despite all the debates, he'd enjoyed being one of many leaders on the Alliance Council.

"I suppose it's time," Korkie sighed. "I've just got a call to make while we walk."

They followed the now familiar path to the meeting room, Fenn gathering their companions as they walked, Korkie dialling his comm.

"Hey Anakin?"

"Yeah?"

"I know you're busy on Tatooine and all that, but just so you know…"

There was a whole war ahead of him, but he could not help but snicker with the absurdity of it all.

"I think I've found Threepio."

The rescued rebels of Cyrkon emerged from the Millennium Falcon still exuding sheer disbelief that their hearts still beat and their lungs still breathed. It had been tight there, for a few moments. But Han had never been too worried. He strolled down the ramp, inspecting the improvements made to the still-rickety rebel base on Hoth. The frozen air would knock reality back into the giddy survivors real fast.

"I don't suppose you're going to pay me for that?"

Leia Skywalker, wearing a jacket that somehow doubled her in size, folded her arms.

"Does this look like an organisation with credits to spend on your Hutt debts?"

"I've put a hell of a lot of work into that job," Han countered, reaching level ground and coming to stand before her. "Lot of fuel, lot of piloting, lot of-"

"Spare me the details, Solo," Leia groaned, rubbing at a twinging muscle at the back of her neck. "You're not the only sentient on this ice block who's been putting in work."

She anticipated his question before he could ask it.

"While you and Chewie made your little trip to Cyrkon-"

"Little trip?"

"-I've been to Naboo and to Sullust rescuing the last of the Alderaanians. Empire didn't get a bit enough kick out of blowing up the planet, apparently. Wanted to kill every last one of them."

Han rolled his eyes.

"Naboo, huh? Sounds like a holiday to me."

Leia shrugged.

"The weather beats Hoth, sure. But Sullust nearly got very ugly. You ever seen a rockrender before?"

Han shook his head.

"Well, the good news is, they've got an appetite for dense minerals. Which means sure, they like the odd rebel pauldron or chest guard, but they love a stormtrooper in full armour."

Han's eyes widened.

"Aren't you a little young to be so cavalier about giant reptiles eating your enemies?"

"They don't eat the stormtroopers," Leia assured him. "Just their armour. The troopers tend to get pretty banged up in the process, though."

She flashed him a grin.

"Besides, I'm not too young for anything. Except maybe a heart attack. What do you say to one more mission? I've heard the Kupohan need a hand in the Llanic system."

She might have been too young for a heart attack, but she sures as hells was trying to give Han one.

I'm not too young for anything. That smile, beaming up at him. She was playing him for an idiot.

"I've got debts to pay, Skywalker," he reminded her. "And you can't help me pay them."

Leia shrugged again, non-plussed.

"Jabba won't find you if you stick with us."

"Jabba has bounty hunters, sweetheart. Good ones."

She raised her brows.

"The one you shot in the cantina didn't look very good at his job."

Han didn't realise she'd seen him shoot Greedo. She was perhaps even crazier than he'd realised, getting into the Falcon in the first place.

"Besides," Leia reasoned. "Korkie says things are about to get ugly on Mandalore. He's going to need all the help he can get with us keeping the Empire busy elsewhere. You'd do Korkie a favour, wouldn't you, even if you wouldn't help me?"

Han rolled his eyes.

"I did Korkie enough favours on Yavin. I don't owe him any more."

He folded his arms, glared down at her.

"Now why is it, exactly, that you want me coming to the Llanic system with you so badly anyway?"

He'd meant to put her on the back foot but somehow it was his own heart seizing in his chest. Heart attack. He wasn't too young for a heart attack. Those brown eyes looking up at him were going to give him a kriffing heart attack.

"Because you're good at your job, Solo," she told him, with impossible composure.

Her face gave nothing away. But was that her pulse he could see bounding at her neck?

"Fine. Llanic. One more mission. But only 'cause…"

He was rapidly running out of excuses.

"Only 'cause it'll be a bad week for smuggling, if Mandalore's getting ugly. Best cut-throughs use Mandalorian airspace."

Leia nodded with a smile on her face which said she knew it was a lie.

"After that, I've got a fun one for you. The Empire's Weapons Factory Alpha on Cymoon…"

"Don't start," Han warned.

"And then – you'll like this, Solo – I think Mako-Ta is looking promising as a site for rebel space docks..."

Gar Saxon had endured nothing but silence from the Emperor ever since the destruction of the Death Star – Saxon could have told him it was a terrible idea, to invest all those credits and minerals into a superweapon instead of training a single decent soldier – and his efforts to get through to the Emperor instead saw him rewarded with a holo-call from the glaring Sith apprentice, who had done nothing for Saxon but inform him that Mandalore had more than enough Imperial presence – "Do our Forces not outnumber your own people, Viceroy?" – and that he would have to manage his own affairs while she eliminated "the last vestiges of the rebellion". Saxon did not point out to her that Mothma and Kryze were still very much alive and well by his own witness, and that if the rebellion had truly been down to its last vestiges, whatever that meant, exactly, then surely she needn't expend so much manpower and energy hunting them down.

"Vestige, Viceroy, refers to a trace or remnant of something that is disappearing or no longer exists," the stupid tarnished golden protocol droid informed him.

Saxon had maimed the droid more times than he could count but it always somehow seemed to return the next day, mended, like some blasted ghost of the long-eradicated Kryze monarchy. It was, regrettably, useful as a translator for all of the blasted foreign traders that the Empire had allowed access to Mandalore and Saxon had restrained himself from destroying it entirely.

"Don't speak unless spoken to," he reminded the droid.

If the Emperor would not help him, Gar Saxon would help himself. Even in the worst-case scenario, in which the Clans Kryze, Rau and Wren were all united – and he had the most unsettling intuition that this was indeed the case – they would not be powerful enough to usurp him. His legion of stormtroopers might have been ori'buyce, kih'kovid but the numbers had to count for something. And Korkie Kryze might have had a few impressive scalps to his belt but he had never, so far as Saxon knew, been tested against another Mando'ad. He had the weak constitution of his mother and Saxon had a sentimental weapon against him: his very own member of the Clan Wren.

"Cadet Wren."

Saxon cornered the young soldier in his bunkroom, where he was known to spend his spare time in futile efforts to improve his loose-wired astromech instead of fortifying his armour and weapons like his more respectable peers.

"Viceroy Saxon."

He was a man now, of eighteen-standard, but his voice quavered like a boy's. Saxon smiled.

"Is your mother well, Cadet Wren?"

Tristan blinked in surprise.

"My mother is well, Viceroy."

"You speak to her?"

"On occasion. When the training schedule permits."

Saxon nodded his approval and reached out a hand.

"Give me your comm, Cadet Wren."

The young soldier paled.

"You know how to contact my mother, Viceroy."

"She is not answering me. And she does not appear to be at home on Krownest with your father. Give me your comm or I will take it from you."

The boy's fingers darted towards the astromech.

"Do not wipe it," Saxon warned, his vibroblade jutting forward to sear the cadet's wrist.

The comm was proffered with shaking hand. Saxon accepted it with a tight smile.

"Thank you, Cadet Wren."

He turned the device over in his hands, began to peruse its call log.

"I don't know why you seem so anxious," Saxon mused. "Has she called you from some location she should not have, hmm? Grown careless? Failed to adequately encrypt…"

Yes. She had. Saxon noted a set of coordinates upon Concord Dawn's third moon. Interesting. He'd not known Rau to have a base there. He pocketed the device.

"I'm afraid I can't give it back, Cadet Wren, for obvious reason. You will work closely by my side in the coming days. You may be at the bottom of your class but you will have the privilege of participation in a military venture."

The young soldier grimaced, rose to stand. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides but when his gaze finally lifted to meet Saxon's he was steady.

"Whatever is required of me, Viceroy."

So Artoo and Threepio's return was supposed to be primarily for comic relief... and somehow I have made myself very sad. Artoo has seen too much. But it's nice to have them back, no? I will confess that much like Korkie, I had for some time forgotten about them.

Next chapter, as Korkie has predicted, things get ugly on Mandalore.

I'm feeling like I've stretched myself very thin so if there is some aspect of the story that you want to see more (or less) of, please sing out.

xx - S.