Chapter 50: A Better Mandalore

Ariarne woke sweat-drenched and nauseous with visions of smoke and rubble. Ash on beskar. Mandalore. She rose from her pallet and hurried through the ship to the 'fresher, stuck her face in the sink and splashed the heat from her face. The footsteps she knew so well now followed quickly behind her.

"You okay?"

Ariarne straightened, caught Luke's reflection.

"Yeah. Of course."

No matter what she tried, he always seemed to wake when she did. Waiting, perhaps, for the day she saw his sister or his father in danger.

"What did you see?"

"Mandalore."

Ariarne turned to face him, rubbing at her eyes.

"I think something bad's going to happen to Korkie. I need some kriffing air."

He hurried out of her way and followed a few steps behind her as she emerged from the ship and into the no-less-smothering air of the swamp. Ariarne sat upon the ship's ramp, knees to her chest, head in her hands. What had she seen? An attack. Some sort of attack. She'd never seen that place before. But the soldiers had been Mandalorian. And she'd felt Korkie's grief, somehow, had known it was no one else's. Something that would not go to plan, some war he could not control.

Luke sat beside her.

"Want me to call him?"

Ariarne groaned and sat up straight.

"Master Yoda says I can't act on these feelings," she muttered. "That the fear is dangerous."

She sighed, looked to the thick white cloud as though it might give her some sort of answer.

"Besides, he's already preparing for a war. I don't think I could tell him anything useful. Just that I don't think it's going to go very well."

"We could go," Luke offered. "I'd come with you. We could just take the ship and go."

"And do what?"

She'd been sharper with him than she'd meant to be, grimaced her apology.

"I mean… I don't think we can help. We're better off learning and training and then one day…"

One day. The promise she kept telling herself. That one day she would be someone different from this stressed-out teenager prone to bad dreams and bad feelings. That one day she'd be a knight in Force-cloaked armour, work the sort of miracles that Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi had worked in the stories that Korkie had told her from so long ago.

"That's probably smarter than my idea," Luke conceded.

Ariarne managed a faint smile but it faded quickly.

"I just don't know how I'm supposed to not feel scared when I see those things," she professed. "Master Yoda thinks I'm dangerous, Luke."

Luke shrugged. He was one of the kindest people she had ever known; she looked at him and knew that not a single part of him believed that she was dangerous, or bad. Ariarne just wasn't quite sure whether that kindness made him good, or an idiot.

"I don't think he has much confidence in me either," he offered.

Ariarne sighed, repeated her usual consolation.

"I guess we must be doing okay," she reasoned. "He's still teaching us."

Luke smiled.

"We're doing more than okay. I think he likes you."

Ariarne snorted, shook her head.

"He's lonely."

Luke sobered, nodded his agreement.

"I don't know how he survived out here on his own all these years."

"The Force, I guess."

It was half-facetious, half in earnest. The Jedi Master's many eccentricities seemed more and more logical with every day that passed. Ariarne wasn't sure exactly how long they had been on Dagobah, but she was beginning to understand how this place could become one's universe.

"Speaking of which," Luke mused. "Will we practice some katas before he wakes up?"

"Still determined to convince him we're ready for lightsabers?"

"We are ready for lightsabers!"

Ariarne smiled and rose to follow him back into the ship for her boots. She ignored the voice at the back of her mind that told her that she still was a very long way from being ready for anything, really. She closed her eyes, briefly, and asked that the Force might be with Korkie when she could not. The Force was not a nursemaid. But she couldn't do much more than ask.

"Where are we going, Viceroy?"

Saxon fastened the last of many weapons to his belt and set off at a decisive march.

"We are going to Krownest with the Imperial troops. The rest of the Super Commandos will go to Rau's secret base. Two traitors dealt with in one day."

"And what am I to do, when we go to Krownest?"

Tristan Wren had played along all these years. Obeyed Saxon's every order and agreed, if not heartily, in the mess hall when his fellow cadets spoke of traitors to Mandalore and the unparalleled disgrace of the Kryze lineage. He had accepted it when he had been taunted for the disgrace in his own Clan – his sister the runaway rebel. He'd borne it all because he'd known that this was his best chance of keeping his parents, and the growing population of Mando'ade they represented on Krownest, safe. But if he were asked to kill them, he could not play along anymore. He might as well be killed himself and at least rob Saxon the chance to use him as leverage against his family.

"There aren't enough of us Mando'ade left to go needlessly slaughtering whole Clans," the Viceroy mused. "Rau's forces will be eradicated; there is no sense reasoning with them. But I am granting you the chance to bring the Clan Wren back into line."

Ah. So he was to be leverage, then. Would a smarter, braver soldier take his own life and save his family the heartache? Tristan wasn't sure. So long as they were all alive, there had to be some hope of turning the tide against Saxon. Somehow.

"I will help them see reason, Viceroy."

They strode with clunking beskar boots towards the hangar, already full of soldiers preparing to fly. Rau's secret base. Tristan wished he had some way to warn them. But Saxon had confiscated his comm and kept him directly in his line of sight all day. He would, presumably, even sleep under guard. Unless perhaps his droid companion could…

"That R2 unit's not coming," Saxon declared, casting his gaze down at the trailing R2-D2.

Haar'chak.

"I can't fly without him," Tristan appealed.

Saxon almost laughed.

"You can't fly in any case, Wren. Besides, you're travelling onboard with me. You don't think I trust you enough to let you pilot your own fighter, do you?"

Tristan sighed his concession of the point. Saxon peered more closely at the R2 unit.

"Is this the droid that tried to kill me?"

On multiple occasions.

"No, Viceroy," Tristan protested hurriedly. "I borrowed a few of the spare exterior parts after it was scrapped to build my own."

Saxon continued to glare at the droid, sceptical. His hand darted to his belt and sent a blaster bolt at the astromech, who met the attack with a spark of his own electro-prod. The droid rattled with the impact but escaped substantial harm. Saxon's eyes widened and then narrowed.

"Get out of here, Artoo!" Tristan urged.

The droid was saved only by the approach of the two Super Commandos entrusted with leadership in the raid on Concord Dawn. It would be undignified for the Viceroy of Mandalore to be caught in battle against a faulty astromech.

"There are to be no survivors," he ordered, turning to his lieutenants. "Except Kryze. If Kryze is there, I want him captured in good condition."

He stowed his blaster at his belt again.

"When we find Kryze," he resolved, "I will take his scalp myself and there will be no more doubt as to my right to rule Mandalore."

Alrich watched the touchdown of the Viceroy's ship with tension building in his jaw. Another visit, too soon after the last. Alrich knew that Gar Saxon would not be easily reassured by explanations of his wife's absence. A Countess who played by her Viceroy's rules really had no reason to be off-planet. He would purport she had gone hunting, perhaps.

And then he saw the Viceroy disembark, with a soldier beside him.

Wasn't it absurd, that even layered so deeply in all that beskar, Alrich knew his son? He knew his height and the slope of his shoulders and the rhythm of his gait. He knew his son instantly. And he knew there was trouble.

Alrich wondered if today was the day to finally be a proper Mandalorian and grab one of his wife's stowed blasters. But it would be no use in his hands against this invasion. Behind Saxon and his son, a wave of marching stormtroopers rolled into view. Alrich stood in the entrance hall, empty-handed, and waited.

"I hear the Countess is off-planet," Saxon snapped, without greeting. "I hear she is on Concord Dawn with Rau."

Tristan's shoulders slumped. Alrich gaped. His son would never have… never willingly…

"I am the leader who will rebuild Mandalore and I require the loyalty of the Clan Wren in its entirety," Saxon declared. "I will settle for no less. No runaway sisters or traitorous mothers. I take you all as my loyal soldiers or the Clan Wren can be eradicated with Rau's."

He handed Tristan his comm.

"Cadet Wren, call your mother."

Ursa was woken from sleep by the insistent bleeping of her comm in the darkest hour of the cloud-blanketed night. She rolled from her pallet, awake in an instant. Tristan had not answered her comm before bed. And now-

"Tristan?"

He stood in full armour, in gleaming white. She hated that armour. It pained her to see him wear it. The cut of the helmet all wrong, an imitation of a storm-trooper's silhouette.

And beside him. Gar Saxon. On his knees between them both, shackled, unarmoured – always unarmoured, her artist husband – Alrich.

"Are you alone, Countess Wren?"

Her son, calling her by her mockery of a title. Ursa hurried from the dormitory and steadied herself against the cool metal of the hallway outside.

"Yes."

The words that she needed did not come to her. The air barely came to her lungs.

What are you doing, my love?

"Take Sabine and tell no one else and come immediately to Krownest," he instructed. "The Viceroy requires the full cooperation of the Clan Wren."

"Bring reinforcements and the massacre starts," Saxon warned. "You know there are stormtroopers on Krownest enough, Countess Wren, to exterminate your settlements entirely."

The people of Krownest, who survived in a perpetual winter. Who celebrated each precious birth of another Mando'ad with a bonfire and a peasant's feast. In whom Ursa had finally begun to feel hope for the rebirth of her great civilisation. Her people. She was a Countess only in the Empire's twisted hierarchy, but she had come to feel the responsibility of that role. She was supposed to protect them.

"Stay on the line until you reach us," Saxon instructed. "We will not have you crying to Rau."

The Viceroy's vibroblade was poised beside Alrich's neck. Ursa obeyed, ducked into the neighbouring dormitory, woke her daughter with hissed instructions and a hand lifted to stifle her voice.

"We have to go home, Sabine, right away."

Ursa dragged her daughter, arms full of beskar, into the hallway and tugged her in rapid strides towards the hangar.

"What's going on?" Sabine mumbled, blinking the sleep from her eyes.

She caught sight of the scene in the entrance hall of the stronghold on Krownest and was immediately wakened.

"What in the hells is this? Has Tristan been karking radicalised?"

Ursa said nothing.

"Is going home going to help this?" Sabine pressed.

"We have no choice, ad'ik."

"You are coming home," Saxon advised, on the other end of the comms, "to save the lives of your family and your settlements. It would be a waste, would it not, to purge Krownest as Mandalore was purged?"

"This is kriffed up," Sabine grumbled.

But even her ever-resourceful daughter, who had been a rebel longer than Ursa, did not have any answer. They boarded a light freighter and rose from the third moon of Concord Dawn, shrouded thick cloud and endless darkness, the spectral ghosts of Saxon and Tristan watching over them.

Bo-Katan woke to the wailing of alarms and her vod'ika's hands upon her shoulders.

"There are ships in atmosphere. It's Saxon's kriffing troops. Get everyone up."

Korkie was gone from the dormitory and into the next before Bo-Katan could find words; she spoke no one, staring at the two empty pallets.

"Where in the hells are Ursa and Sabine?"

But there was no time for questions. The screaming of Rau's air scanner sirens was punctuated by cannon fire. Their enemies had arrived and no one had so much as a piece of armour on them. The hallway rumbled with footsteps and echoed with yells.

"Get to the fighters!"

"Get the ad'ika downstairs!"

"The shields are nearly gone already-"

This was not the base they had fortified; they had spent recent days in preparation for Saxon's arrival on Rau's known base on Concord Dawn. The stronghold on the third moon had been perfectly cloaked, known of by no one. Had never picked up a single aerial scanner upon its radars. How Saxon could possibly have come to know…

No questions. No reasons. No thoughts. Bo-Katan pushed it all away as she stomped into her boots, jammed on her helmet. They never should have abandoned the ways of the extremists. It was better to sleep in one's armour.

The building rocked and the shields must have been down. She gathered the weapons with which she shared her pallet and ran for a vantage point.

They'd not prepared for this. It would be very ugly.

Korkie fired a blaster cannon – a weapon he never would have chosen to use, with so much destructive power and so little control – at the swooping fighters and felt his mother's tears in his eyes. It was never supposed to have happened like this. They had planned the trap to be laid, the ambush in which Saxon could be captured with minimal casualties. But they'd fortified the wrong kriffing base. Fallen asleep dreaming of battle in the morning. And now the dawn was nowhere to be seen amidst the rising smoke.

There were troop-freighters descending and warriors kicking off with their jetpacks, arcing in towards him. Korkie could not bring himself to use the blaster cannon against them. He laid it on the already debris-strewn ground and lifted the two 'sabers from his belt. It would be the last time he held the Darksaber, perhaps. The last time he deserved to hold it, certainly.

He lunged and deflected, spread his arms wide, covered all the ground he could. But he could not stop them all. He severed hands at chinks in armour and thought of his brother. He felt the heat of passing fire and could somehow hear everything and nothing. Saxon's troops were pressing on now, into the complex, meeting the soldiers that were not Fenn Rau's, that were not Bo-Katan's, but his to protect-

He reached deep into the Force – deep into his fear – and lifted a troop-freighter. With a great pull in the Force, he swept it through a band of white-armoured soldiers. He thought of his mother's broadcast from rocky Brentaal that he had studied in his history classes. Qui Gon Jinn's landslide. A soldier's helmet beneath her hand.

The path of the violent is doomed for failure. Violence begets death, and Mandalore has known too much of it.

There was another rush of sound that Korkie felt in his bones more than in his screaming brain. The weight on a body in his side and the world turned upside down – and up and down and up and down and up and down again – with an enormous flare of heat. He lay, flat on his back, entangled with another set of beskar limbs.

Fenn Rau clambered up, pulled Korkie to his feet.

"Keep your eyes open, Mand'alor."

He shot at the bomber with what was perhaps Korkie's abandoned blaster cannon. There was a terrible ringing in Korkie's ears. He felt vibrations at his wrist and looked at it in disbelief. Of all the times for his karking comm to go off…

Korkie silenced it, just for the faintest reprieve in all that his body was trying to process. It buzzed again, insistent. Fenn looked at him in bewilderment.

"Are you taking a karking call?"

Korkie couldn't explain what had compelled him to do so except that his brain really wasn't working right. He almost laughed. He was going mad. He had answered his comms in the middle of a battle and been rewarded with C-kriffing-3PO projected before him.

"Artoo, what is it that you want me to- I'm not sure the master would approve- oh, alright, alright-"

Korkie's brain seemed to bounce in his skull as they jogged out to meet a new wave of troopers emerging from what looked, mercifully, to be the last of Saxon's ships. The projection of the protocol droid jolted and wavered.

"Artoo says that Gar Saxon is on Krownest and has the whole Clan Wren hostage!"

"Right," Korkie grunted, between violent blows, with a voice that did not seem to be his own. "Thanks, Threepio."

The droid startled.

"Do we know each other, Sir?"

There was no time for pleasantries. Korkie swept Siri Tachi's blade to meet an adversary's cortosis and silenced the comm with a touch to his helmet. He raised his voice to reach Fenn, fighting another opponent a short distance away.

"We need to get to Krownest. Everyone we can to Krownest. Saxon's there."

Fenn twisted and came to meet Korkie's back with his own.

"There's a battle to win here, Kryze."

"No," Korkie panted, dodging another blow. "There isn't."

He kicked the offending soldier in the chest just as Grievous had struck him all those years ago; his boots did not draw blood as the cyborg's claws had, but the power in the Force would leave a terrible bruise or something worse. He whirled his two 'sabers in tandem and bought them a few precious metres of space.

"We're not winning here, Fenn," he repeated. "The base is lost. We let it go."

Fenn's chest heaved. He said nothing and his face was hidden beneath his helmet but Korkie felt his grief, his anger.

"We need to end this," Korkie resolved. "Saxon has done this and I'm going to end it now. I won't play any more games with him."

He realised, dimly, that he was angry. That he was going to Krownest to fight in anger. And there just wasn't time for anything else. He brought a hand to his helmet again, broadcast his voice to all his soldiers.

"Saxon is not here. He is on Krownest. All soldiers to the hangar now. We chase the hut'uun and end this war."

Fenn's grip tightened on his blaster cannon and Korkie wondered, for the faintest flicker of a moment, whether his own soldier was going to turn on him. The thought was there, somewhere, in the Force. But Fenn sent an ion bolt into the attacking soldiers instead, and they began to fight their way back to what was left of their ships.

"This plan better work," Fenn muttered.

"This isn't a plan," Korkie grumbled. "But I'm going to make it work."

They were met by Saxon's forces as soon as they entered Krownest's atmosphere, their ship escorted to the runway as though they might have decided to give up and run away at the last moment, after coming all this karking way. Sabine ran a hand over the incomplete set of beskar plates that were her only consolation in this bizarre nightmare. She'd grabbed whatever she could from her pallet. Here was concealed a blade, and there a set of detonators, and in the heels of her boots fuel and fire.

"Without the armour."

The first words spoken to her by the stormtroopers that greeted them on their landing.

"No."

Sabine strode past them, hands raised and empty.

"I'm unarmed, aren't I?"

She'd not had the time or arm capacity to grab her helmet as she'd stumbled from bed; she was barely even armoured. And from the looks of things, Saxon had them well outnumbered. From the vantage point of the fortress's landing pad, she could see Imperial soldiers approaching the nearby villages. Kriff's sakes. Tristan had got them into a whole lot of trouble and she wasn't exactly sure how she was going to get them out of it.

"What is all this about, Saxon?" Ursa demanded wearily. "Get your vibroblade off my husband's neck, please."

The Viceroy did not comply.

"I know about your betrayal, Countess Wren. I know about Rau. His forces are being destroyed as we speak."

Sabine's heart caught, spasmed and sunk.

"It would be a shame to be forced to eradicate the population of Krownest too," Saxon mused. "Your villagers, I suppose, could be spared. But in any case, your family will need to be made an example of."

Ursa's expression darkened. Sabine's hand twitched for her hidden blade and then stilled. The position wasn't quite right. Saxon was far too close to her father and not close enough to her.

"You said we would bring them back into line, Viceroy."

Even through the modulation of his helmet, Sabine knew her brother's voice.

"And you believed him, did you, Tristan?"

"Not now, ad'ika," Alrich groaned, ever their patient father, even with a blade at his throat.

"There is no mercy for traitors such as these," Saxon decreed. "The choice is yours, Cadet Wren. Prove your loyalty as the executioner or die with your family."

Tristan cast down his helmet in disgust.

"Then I will die a Wren."

The concealed blade was somehow hot against Sabine's chest. A detonator towards the stormtroopers, a rush as Saxon with the blade… Would she sacrifice her father for a chance at saving the rest of them? She might have done, or perhaps they would have all died, as Wrens, whatever her brother had meant by that, had Saxon's attention not been snared by the drone of arriving aircraft.

"See those settlements? See the stormtroopers? I need all soldiers down there. That's his threat against the Wrens, presumably. As soon as he knows he's in trouble, he'll give them orders to kill."

Fenn Rau, un-helmeted in his fighter – even a born soldier needed some time to kriffing breathe, on a day like this – rubbed at his aching forehead and activated his radio-comms.

"And let me guess, Mand'alor: you're going into that fortress completely alone?"

"We barely have the soldiers to cover those stormtroopers. It's the best way."

And Korkie certainly wasn't wrong about that; well less than half of the soldiers at the base had made it to Krownest. Fenn tried to console himself that it was a shortage of ships that had spread them so thin. He didn't know how many had died on Concord Dawn.

"Mand'alor," Fenn sighed. "You are honestly strill-brained crazy."

Korkie didn't indulge him with his usual good humour.

"That was an order, Fenn."

"If he gets himself killed-"

Bo-Katan's voice, now, over the radio comms.

"-then we're going to need to be on the front foot against the rest of Saxon's forces."

Korkie sounded pleasantly surprised to not be argued with further.

"Thanks, Ba'vodu."

"That wasn't me giving you permission to get yourself killed."

"Good thing I never asked your permission."

Rau reluctantly peeled off with the rest of the fighters and down towards the nearest settlement. He hoped the people of Krownest were armed. They would be badly outnumbered otherwise. He watched his Mand'alor fly onwards to the fortress. Had the nagging feeling that today might be the day he'd have to disobey an order.

The lone echo of beskar boots on stone floor. The Mand'alor seemed to be the only sentient in the building capable of any movement, of any words. Sabine wasn't sure she was even still kriffing breathing. It was either a miracle, or it was to be the end of hope on Mandalore in this age, perhaps forever.

"You send all your best troops to kill us in the dead of the night and find a convenient excuse not to attend?"

Korkie Kryze held his helmet at his hip, let his emotion shine through. Sabine had never seen him like this before. It took a moment for her to place it. The pacifist Duchess's gentle son was angry.

"I knew you were a piece of work, Saxon, but I didn't know you were a coward."

"Do not call me coward," Saxon gritted out.

Korkie sighed.

"Then take your blade from the neck of an unarmed, unarmoured civilian, Saxon, and face your challenger."

There was the briefest moment of hesitation. But Saxon lifted his vibroblade and turned away from Alrich. Sabine finally felt herself breathe again.

"I didn't think you believed in the old ways," Saxon mused.

Korkie looked terribly weary, his face smeared and shadowed with ash.

"I'll believe anything today, Saxon. Your time is up."

He believed in anything or perhaps he believed in nothing at all. He could have been faithless; he did not beam with his usual radiant sun. But there was no denying his determination, shining through the dull of his battle-worn armour.

"Your mother would be disappointed in you."

"My mother is dead."

And it shouldn't have caused Sabine the grief that it did, to hear those callous words from his lips. She had seen the way his eyes had filled, beholding the mural on Lothal, her depiction of the Duchess's risen spirit. The way his voice had wavered and the search for words had become near impossible. But today he did not waver. He did not hesitate. Instead, he dangled his buy'ce from his fingers a thoughtful moment and then set it down.

"By custom, the Mand'alor sets the parameters, no? No helmets. This thing gives me a karking headache."

With a shrug, Saxon complied and followed suit. His hair gleamed silver in the winter sunlight.

"You wish to be beheaded as your ancestors were, Kryze?"

Korkie shook his head, lifted two 'sabers from his belt.

"Are we going to talk all day, Saxon? Or are you going to show me the soldier you pretend to be?"

Saxon raised his vibroblade.

"Let us fight."

They met in a vicious clashing of sabers, Korkie's dark grey armour blurring with Saxon's gleaming red and white. Korkie carved elegant paths of blue and black, while the silver of Saxon's blade was accompanied by scorches of flame. Korkie wore a blow on his shoulder but knocked Saxon from his feet. The warrior sprang back up, off-balance, but strong enough still to hold the dancing 'sabers at bay.

Sabine's eyes darted to the stormtroopers. Four, five, six… They were outnumbered and out-armed. Korkie had better win it for them.

And surely he would win it; Saxon was a fierce warrior but did not have the Jetii's augmented strength or uncanny ability to predict a strike before the change in footwork gave it away. This was the warrior who had destroyed General Grievous. The clashes of blades and heavy strikes of beskar against the stone floor echoed in the hall. It was a vicious fight and one that Saxon was slowly, but surely, tiring of.

Korkie had his opponent pressed against the wall when the enormous panes of glass were shattered; Saxon had ignited his jetpack, burst through the windows to create space where he had none. Korkie followed, launched into the blinding white-cloud sky. Sabine hurried to the balcony, only dimly aware of the footsteps behind her. The two figures grappled, their cries of pain muffled by the blanketing snow, and crashed to the slick ice of the lake. Saxon gained a brief upper hand as a blossom of blood rose on Korkie's forehead, but was tossed by a forceful kick of Korkie's boots against his chest. The Mand'alor surged, his blades drawing ever-closer to Saxon's throat, when-

A blaster bolt streaked out and struck Korkie, a glancing blow, across his upper back. He arched in pain and lost his advantage. Sabine whirled, furious, to find a stormtrooper with his blaster raised. She struck him with the beskar at her forearms, jolted the weapon from his grip.

"You have no jurisdiction here," she snarled, as they scrabbled for the blaster. "Your Empire will not interfere with us any longer."

She realised, dimly, that she'd done something very stupid and initiated a battle she could not win. But there was a voice from further back in the fortress – "Mum, catch!" – and a chorus of blaster fire. Blaster bolts seemed to be flying from somewhere high above them. Her opponent fell to the ground and her brother appeared, offering another blaster from his belt with a sheepish smile.

"I'm kind of offended you thought I'd actually been radicalised."

Sabine, despite it all, rolled her eyes, before shooting at the next approaching stormtrooper.

"What was I supposed to think? You had Dad on his kriffing knees in your stupid karking stormtrooper beskar-"

"I obviously didn't have any choice, Sabine, after Mum forgot to encrypt one of her bloody comms-"

The shots from above, Sabine realised, were being fired by a blue-armoured soldier that could only have been Fenn Rau. The last of the stormtroopers fell as he landed on the balcony beside them and all eyes turned to the battle on the snow. Sabine unshackled her father's wrists and lifted a leg to clamber over the balcony rail.

"We do not intervene," her mother warned, laying a hand upon her shoulder. "By our custom-"

"There's no need," Tristan added. "Korkie's got him."

And he did. Saxon was wounded now, one leg dragging, struggling to lift his vibroblade in anything other than desperate defence. Sabine vaulted the railing anyway and started across the snow, ignoring her mother's protests.

She knew the customs. But she wasn't going there to fight.

Korkie had always known he was far from the perfect Jedi. He had known grief and had known anger. But he had seldom known hate. And he certainly had never expected that he would ever hate Saxon, who in truth he barely knew, and who, in all the many griefs and losses that Korkie had known, had actually never hurt him. Not until today. Today, Saxon was the man who had launched an attack in the night against his sleeping soldiers. Who had exposed his failures as the Mand'alor. Who had been too much a coward to fight himself. Who had dared to speak to Korkie of his mother, whose legacy he had sullied with his cowardice. And today, Korkie hated him.

He pressed Saxon back, back again, and further still, until his beskar boots met the ice of the lake and he slipped. Siri Tachi's lightsaber met his fingers at the joint in his armoured glove and the cortosis blade, finally, clattered to the ground. Korkie stood over his enemy, blades poised. Saxon knelt before him, grey-faced and panting, his neck exposed between 'sabers of black and blue.

"And would you like for your body, Saxon, to be displayed upon the walls as my ancestors' were?"

Saxon lifted his chin, steely-eyed.

"If I did nothing else right," he admitted, "at least I have made a soldier of you."

Korkie breathed. There was blood trickling down his face. He felt every burning muscle in his arms. It would be the gentlest movement of the wrists. The head would roll and the ice would soon stop the bleeding.

"Mand'alor!"

A voice from very far away – and yet, when Korkie looked up, not from such a great distance at all. Sabine Wren was jogging towards him through the snow.

"I've got what you need."

She was brandishing the pair of vibro-cuffs that had shackled Alrich Wren.

"You are building a better Mandalore than the eras gone past."

Korkie nodded, stunned. For the first moment since the alarm had wailed on the third moon of Concord Dawn, he emerged from the haze of fear that had turned to anger.

"Thank you, Sabine."

The young woman bent low to cuff the kneeling soldier and the danger reared up before Korkie could stop it. Saxon's hand to his belt. The blaster he'd not dispossessed. The crack of blaster fire. Saxon slumped to the ground.

"Sabine, are you-"

"I'm fine, I-"

They both turned, slack-jawed, to the fortress, where Ursa Wren was lowering her long-range blaster.

"I told you from the start, Mand'alor," she called out, as she strode to join them. "You're too good to kill him. But I'm not."

There are a lot of heroes in this chapter, but an extra gold star for Sabine. We've got to minimise poor Korkie's moral distress wherever possible.

Next chapter, the dust will settle slowly on Krownest (or the snow perhaps... not much dust on Krownest). There's a lot to unpack in a post-Saxon Mandalore. The Emperor takes note. Han and Leia complete a mission.

The sad news is I'm going away for a week so next chapter will be in about a fortnight. Catch you then! And as always, big big THANK YOU for reading :)

xx - S.