You know they're flirting, 17 ;)

You'll find in this chapter that I did a lot of sketchy off-road driving on my holiday and it rubbed off on my writing a bit too much. I wish I could be courageous Korkie, but am in truth much more like our nervous captain. I had such a nice time in the week I was writing this that the chapter has come out very light-hearted. You can listen to Joy (Guilt) by dust and embrace the chaos. Enjoy!

Chapter 56: To Think Him Brave

The Mand'alor was good at everything. He was as eloquent in parliament as he was fierce in battle and he could make anyone laugh and his golden hair always seemed to catch the light and even the horrendously-sutured wound on his forehead had healed into a scar that only made him better-looking. Even his tirade about the petty gossip within the Rebel Alliance was somehow skilful. He was impeccably scathing without seeming at all mean-spirited; it was more like an act of performance, of catharsis, than of actual complaint. And he'd been going for at least five minutes now without signs of letting up.

"Aw, Fenn, you should hear them," Korkie sighed. "You'd vomit. Love everywhere."

He frowned at a warning light on the dash and then hit some sort of override that made it disappear. They were driving across the rocky plains of the southern continent in an area identified by scanning flights as potentially cultivable land. It was time now for closer surveyance. It was a job, really, for the engineers and agriculturalists, except that the surviving population of modern Mandalore didn't really boast either of those professions, and the Mand'alor, only short weeks after his return from his visit to the Alliance to Restore the Republic, had decided to go himself, bringing his equally unqualified Alor'ad alongside him.

Fenn wasn't complaining, exactly. It was a relief to get out of Keldabe, where they couldn't seem to escape the need for meetings, and flimsi-work, and all the other bland tasks of bureaucracy. He only wished they had a proper speeder to fly in. The industrial situation in Keldabe was dire; they could not yet produce any vehicles of their own nor did they really have the economic means for any meaningful trade, which meant relying almost exclusively on privately-owned speeders and ships. Military ventures, of course, took precedence in the vehicle market. So here they were, surveying agricultural sites in a resurrected land-cruiser. They'd made no progress, Korkie had pointed out – actually, they had regressed – since his mother had made the rickety overland journey to Keldabe to challenge the General Iadon more than thirty years ago. The land-cruiser had held up thus far but Fenn had no trust in such an ancient vehicle and he was not sure that the Mand'alor, for all his endless talents, was particularly good at driving.

"And it's not much better in the court in Keldabe than it is on Hoth," Korkie went on. "Here, I have to listen to Bo-Katan and Sewlen dance around things like they haven't had my whole lifetime to work this out. Then there's Ursa and Alrich falling in love all over again, and I'm pretty sure Erian is sneaking out in his lunch breaks to see one of the clerks from downstairs…"

He gave a theatrical rub of his forehead. Fenn wished he'd keep both hands on the steering wheel.

"I can't tell you what a relief it is to be out here with you and away from all that bantha-shit," Korkie concluded. "You're the last ally I've got."

Fenn frowned. Had he missed something about an actual dispute?

"Ally?"

Korkie read his confusion in that strange way he always could – he always seemed to know a little more about someone than they had ever said aloud – and laughed.

"Sorry, Fenn. I'm being melodramatic. I mean that you're my only friend who's not in love, or nagging me to partner up again."

"Right."

So that was why he'd been selected to accompany him. Fenn tried to appraise this without emotion, although he wasn't sure whether this made it any less likely that Korkie would be able to read his mind. Fortunately, Korkie did not seem to be much interested in doing so. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, navigating the rock-strewn desert before them, but his mind seemed to be somewhere else entirely. He was driving a little faster than Fenn thought was probably necessary.

"I mean, I can see where they're coming from," he admitted, eventually. "Haven't dated since I was a teenager."

Fenn shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"I thought we weren't talking about love."

But Korkie seemed to be talking more to himself than to his passenger.

"He was beautiful," he muttered. "He was a truly beautiful person."

It felt wrong for Fenn to even hear him say this. It was more wrong still, surely, to feel that lift in his chest.

He.

"But, I mean, it's not like I believe in principle that one has to remain loyal to their twenty-one-year-old dead boyfriend. I'm not that good. Stars, I've had a few very casual… whatever."

Fenn would have quite liked to open the door and leap from the vehicle had they not been going at such breakneck speed.

"But that doesn't count," Korkie went on, oblivious. "What I mean to say is that I just don't know that everyone necessarily needs a partner. Both of my parents used to say that if they hadn't had each other they'd have had no one. They'd have chosen to have no one."

It was really time for Fenn to contribute something to the conversation. But he could come up with nothing meaningful.

"I think that's fine," he said.

Korkie, somewhat pacified, shot him a glance.

"You got anyone, Fenn?"

"No."

"You had anyone?"

"Years ago."

Korkie seemed pleased by these answers. He smiled his stupid ray of sunshine smile.

"See? It's normal."

Fenn nodded.

"I know."

"I don't think anyone should be with someone just for the sake of it," Korkie mused. "Just to avoid being alone. I think it has to be the right person."

"Sure."

"My parents were right for each other."

"They were. I remember."

Korkie brightened.

"You do?"

Fenn snickered.

"'Course I do. I was there in the palace, the day you killed Darth Maul. And all the months after that, until there was no palace anymore."

Korkie's eyes widened. They hit a pothole he probably should have avoided.

"Were you?" he asked.

Fenn resisted the urge to reach over and grasp the steering wheel and tried to focus instead on the conversation.

"Yeah. I was a young soldier in the Peace Corps. I'd probably only been in the job about one lunar cycle when Maul and all the rest of them arrived."

Korkie raised his brows, seemingly impressed.

"Baptism of fire."

"Tell me about it," Fenn agreed.

He felt more comfortable now that he had something to say. Now that they were no longer talking Korkie's love life of past, present and future.

"The worst bit," Fenn went on, "was getting thrown into a wall by that invincible Sith and then seeing some kid prince lop his head off, easy as you like."

Korkie laughed generously, waved a dismissive hand.

"I don't know about easy. Dad helped."

Fenn shook his head. He hadn't thought about that day in a long time. But the memories returned to him with startling clarity.

"You saved your mother's life. Carried her on your back. Before Obi Wan arrived. I remember."

Ever-modest – another of his talents – Korkie didn't argue the point. Instead, he frowned vaguely.

"How old does that make you, Fenn?"

Fenn paused a few moments, like he hadn't already done the maths several months ago.

"Seven years older than you."

Korkie's face was impassive.

"Hmm."

Of course it was impassive. Fenn's age was of entirely no consequence to him. He turned his gaze to the windshield.

"Storm setting in."

And a proper one at that. Steely clouds ushered in an early nightfall. Korkie did not slow in his driving.

"These plains were famous for their floods, remember?"

Fenn certainly could remember. Again, he wished they had a proper ship. The first strike of rainfall was heavy and loud against the windshield. Followed swiftly by several more, and then a deluge. He knew Korkie already thought he was overcautious, but couldn't resist a remark.

"You'll have to slow down, I think. Visibility's very poor."

Poor was an understatement. The windshield had rapidly become a stream of ceaselessly running water. But Korkie did not slow.

"I love the rain."

Fenn took a breath through his teeth.

"You'll never see another day of rain in your life if you don't slow down."

"We need to get across the river before it rises," Korkie countered, calmly.

It was some sort of miracle they hadn't hit anything yet. Fenn didn't care about sounding overcautious anymore.

"Star's sakes! Slow down, please. You can't possibly see anything. We don't have to cross the river tonight. We can change the schedule."

Korkie swerved to avoid a large boulder that loomed only as a blurry shadow before them.

"I can see more than you think I can," he said. "My brother taught me how to do this."

Fenn gripped the edges of his seat.

"Isn't Anakin Skywalker a sort of once in a generation talent?" he asked.

"He is," Korkie agreed. "Anakin would be going much faster."

Fenn groaned.

"I didn't think this was your idea of fun, Mand'alor."

"It didn't used to be," Korkie admitted. "But after the year I've had-"

He dodged another boulder. The cruiser thumped over an undulation that had them bouncing in their seats.

"-I just feel like I need to breathe."

Fenn had been breathing just fine, thank you very much, until just now. He forced a juddering exhalation from his nose. Korkie, finally sensing his distress, grimaced apologetically.

"Stars. Sorry, Fenn. I'll slow down. No good only me breathing."

The land-cruiser slowed to a trundle. Fenn rested his head back against the seat and looked to the ceiling.

"Thank you."

"Sorry again."

"It's alright."

He turned his head to look at Korkie. He seemed an entirely different person, now, driving sedately through the muddying soil. No longer a complete madman.

"How close is the river?"

"Really close. Five minutes, if we go fast."

Fenn hadn't the faintest idea how he could see – or sense – it. The world all around them roared with the cascade of rain.

"It would be good to get across," he admitted. "Better to camp on the higher ground."

Otherwise, it would be days until the water sank low enough to permit crossing again. They would probably return to Keldabe, call the whole scouting mission off.

"I suppose I could handle five more minutes," Fenn muttered.

Korkie slowed the vehicle almost to a halt, looked at him earnestly.

"I don't want you to die of a heart attack before we get there."

Why did he say it? Because he wanted to cross the river? Or perhaps because he wanted Korkie to think him brave.

"I'll be fine. Might be fun."

Why had he done it? Because he wanted to cross the river? No. He had done it because he needed to breathe, in this open landscape, surrendered to the Force and to the power of the water striking the earth. He had done it to escape the town where everyone bowed and called him Mand'alor; there was nothing quite so suffocating as being idolised. He had done it because he was haunted by the strangest homesickness in Keldabe, a yearning for the home he had physically returned to, yet was so distant from him, and which felt so impossible to ever truly resurrect. He had done it because it was about time he outgrew his fear of flying. He had done it because they were alone together, and he wanted this journey to last forever, and he had wanted Fenn to think him brave.

And he had, to be fair, done it quite well. He'd done it almost faultlessly. He'd weaved through the rocky desert as he imagined his brother had done in a pod-racer on Tatooine in the week before his birth. He'd made it to the river without a scratch on the land-cruiser. A nasty jolt, or two, to the suspension. But no calamity. Not until the river.

"I wasn't going to crash," Korkie said. "Really, I wasn't."

They were sitting in the stalled vehicle – mercifully, on the high side of the river – on a jaunty sort of angle, two of the land-cruiser's passenger-side wheels perched upon a boulder. Korkie was receiving his just punishment: the impact had distorted the roof panel so that it buckled and came away at one corner, and a stream of rainwater was running squarely onto his head.

Fenn took a steadying breath.

"Of course you were going to crash. You were going too fast."

"I wasn't. The Force was- I just got-"

Korkie's words caught in his throat. The Force had been guiding him. They had been on course to make it through unscathed. But they had been going too fast by Fenn's eyes, and for all his determined optimism Fenn had been frightened, and with the skid across the riverbed his hand had grabbed Korkie's thigh and the Force had gone slipping from him and Korkie had crashed the vehicle just as they had made it over the river.

But the hand had retreated now and it probably wasn't much good to explain all that.

"I was going too fast," Korkie sighed.

He dropped his head, allowed the rainwater to blind him. He didn't want to look at his Alor'ad, who would surely never trust him again. Perhaps there would never be another stupid excuse for an excursion like this, just the two of them, out in the open plains.

But Fenn Rau tipped his head back and laughed. A real, earnest laughter that Korkie could not help but fall into. There was only the rain and the rising laughter and the growing fog in the windows around them. Fenn leaned over, made a sort of tent with his hands over Korkie's head. The rainwater streaked down Fenn's forearms and onto the seat between them.

"Don't bother," Korkie choked out. "I'm already soaked through."

Fenn sat back and his hands retreated, but not before they made a quick swipe to push Korkie's rain-plastered hair back from his eyes. Korkie thought of the cut on his forehead and the clumsy suture job and how terribly annoyed he thought he had been with his overprotective Alor'ad but some very silly part of him now wished he had some sort of scratch to show from this journey together. Something to touch and to remember.

"It's really a great relief," Fenn told him, "to know that even you are a di'kut sometimes, Mand'alor."

Korkie wiped at his eyes. Rainwater and tears of mirth.

"You are seeing me now, Fenn, in my truest form."

They had laid top-to-toe in their undersized tent and listened to the roar of the rain above their heads. Fenn had stared up at the streaking darkness and expected a sleepless night. The world was too loud and this moment too bizarre. The closeness between them. The jutting contours of his companion's ankle by his head; Korkie had somehow fallen asleep near immediately and kicked himself halfway out of his sleeping sack.

But sleep, which had often eluded Fenn, and had done so more than ever in the wake of Saxon's surprise attack on Concord Dawn, had somehow found him. He had fallen asleep when the crashing of the rain had filled his entire mind and woke now to the faint glow of sunlight and a miraculous silence.

A hand brushed his knee.

"Good morning."

Fenn did not ask how Korkie knew he had awoken; he had long given up trying to understand what the galaxy must have looked like through those eyes.

"Morning. Sleep well?"

"Very. You?"

Fenn sat, his close-cropped hair brushing the roof of the tent.

"Mostly fine. You kicked me in the head overnight."

Korkie lay supine with his arms behind his head - completely open, completely vulnerable, as no soldier should ever lie - a dimpled half-smile upon his face, his bright eyes sparking with amusement.

"Did I?"

"Mhmm. With your bare foot."

"Lucky you."

Fenn rolled his eyes.

"The adoration of your people is starting to get to your head, Mand'alor."

"Ugh. Tell me about it."

Korkie gave a rueful smile as he finally rose to sit. A hand raked his blonde curls as though they weren't already sitting in perfectly charming disarray.

"Rain's stopped," he remarked, beginning to pull on his socks and boots. "Not much of a monsoon, in the end."

"Felt like it," Fenn grumbled.

It occurred to him that he really had no idea where they were camping. They had erected the tent during the thunderous downpour and falling light, the adrenaline of the crash still dizzying, and had more or less collapsed inside.

"Shall we?"

"After you."

Fenn followed Korkie from the tent and rose from his crouch into the gentle gold of a new dawn. A new world.

"By the stars…"

The river flowed beneath them, swollen but sedate. Fenn felt almost affronted by it; the cheerful glistening of the water seemed to deny the ugliness of the night. The soil beneath their feet felt sturdier than the desert sands Korkie had slalomed the land-cruiser through. Beneath the river the land was crowded with boulders but here on the higher riverbank the boulders were few, leaving expansive stretches of uninterrupted earth. Their wrecked land-cruiser, still tilted precariously, was the only evidence of the last night's chaos.

"Makes it more impressive, really, that you managed to hit this one."

Korkie's eyes flitted up only briefly, with a flash of his brilliant smile, in acknowledgement of the joke. He was crouching, running the soil through his fingers, a faint frown of bewilderment returning to his brow.

"Might be the spot the scanners were picking up," he mused.

"Might be," Fenn agreed.

Korkie waved a free hand; the sample kit emerged from the battered land-cruiser and settled elegantly at his feet. Fenn tried not to look too stunned. He hadn't seen Korkie use the Force beyond the battlefield. It felt different, somehow; Korkie was now a familiar hurricane in combat but today looked like a Jedi of old in Temple meditation. He decanted the soil with quiet focus. The droids would run the necessary analyses and decide what, if anything, could be grown here.

But Fenn had the strangest feeling. He was no Jedi but he trusted his gut. He was quietly sure that the Mand'alor, in his wild-eyed half-blind rally race across the continent, and with the phenomenal crash that had ended it, had delivered them to fertile land.

Another of his blasted talents. He might have infuriated Fenn, if he hadn't adored him.

Tiber Saxon believed in moderation. There was no need for a weapon of mass destruction, as the Empire had wasted so many crystals and credits and sentient lives to produce. Tiber need not reduce buildings to rubble. The Empire had done that for him one generation ago. He needed only destroy the Mand'alor and a few of his more charismatic lieutenants. The regime was not built upon much.

"You have the beskar?"

"Yes, Sir."

The soldiers of Mandalore spent too much time tangling on sparring mats. Tiber had not been much of a soldier, nor had he been idle. Gar had liked to humiliate him with the allocation of mundane tasks.

Teach the children, Tiber.

"Gladly, brother," Tiber murmured, thumbing through the pages of flimsi before him.

He had noted the design with silent interest many years ago. It had begun as a project allocated by another tutor in an engineering tutorial; the work had never been turned in, of course. The Countess Wren had raised such deplorable children. The girl had been busy sketching out her plans when she should have been listening to Tiber's lectures on military strategy. Not much had interested Sabine Wren. That had been the first sign.

There had been tight-lipped calculations and conduction testing in the workshop and lectures skipped and then just as the obsession had peaked, everything had disappeared. Sabine Wren had returned to her usual sulking disposition in her Academy tutorials and run away to the Rebellion before the year's end. Gar had wasted time and men clinging to the Clan's loyalty. But Tiber had been paying attention from the beginning and he had what he needed.

Sabine Wren had almost succeeded in covering her tracks. There had been substantial work to do in Tiber's months of exile, to progress to the prototype that Wren had likely already made and then destroyed several years ago. But she had exposed the idea of it to him and that had been enough.

"And our test subject?"

The slight quaver in the voice of a young soldier who had not yet taken a life in cold blood.

"Yes, Sir."

"Armour and position them, Leonn."

The young soldier would soon learn.

The test subject was a Dizonite who looked old enough to be Leonn's father. They had planned to test on a human, but the bounty placed on the resistant natives of Dizon Fray by the Empire had been too tempting to turn down. Tiber was of the opinion that the biology would be transferrable enough.

The age of him made it worse, somehow. Leonn's mother had taught him to respect his elders, before she'd gone and got herself killed on a bad bounty job. Before she'd left him on his own to figure out why Mandalore had fallen into such a miserable heap. It had been the Clan Kryze who had brought them to ruin, picking fights with an Empire they could not defeat. The Duchess and her pacifism, the so-called Mand'alor with his confused half-sanctioned Jetii violence. It had not been this rebel, who had been protesting an Imperial refuelling station on his home planet, who had failed Leonn and his ancestors.

But Leonn was grown enough to recognise a test when he saw one and there was no reason, really, to get weak over this one. One sentient life. What was one sentient life in this war? He jostled their prisoner into position and strapped the armour as firmly as he could; it angled awkwardly against the Dizonite's alien figure. Leonn remembered standing before his mother in the days before his height even reached her hips. The jolting, yanking of a few misfitting plates of armour going onto his body. The best protection she could give him, before the next job.

Be brave, she'd told him. And he'd stood tall, so that she might think he was.

"This goes for a lot on the black market, you know."

The Dizonite's humour wasn't convincing, a reedy tremble to his voice. He knew, Leonn trusted, that he was not being gifted the beskar. Not for long, anyway.

"And times are tough, by the look of things."

A nod at Leonn's own armour. Plastoid. Leonn did not enlighten him on Tiber's reasoning. It was better, he thought, that their captive die confused, with some hope, perhaps, of salvation.

"Really, I'm not much of a hostage. Nor a soldier, by your people's standards. I don't really know what there is to gain-"

A steadying crescendo of anxiety. Leonn affixed the last of the panels and extricated himself from the cell. It wasn't worth getting weak over but his gut felt sick.

"Ready, Sir."

The strange weapon swung into view and hummed slowly to life. Like some ridiculous science experiment of his Academy days. Crazy Sabine Wren had sketched these sorts of things when she was supposed to be taking notes in Tiber's lectures.

The weapon – an Arc Pulse Generator, Tiber called it – pulsed like muted lightning and struck the impenetrable armour. The Dizonite gave a gasp, then was gone.

Leonn blinked.

There was a pile of beskar on the floor. And nothing else.

Leonn felt like his heart might have stopped in his chest. He had seen nothing like this. Such bloodless violence. A life not fought for, not taken, but simply extinguished. There was something like fire in Tiber Saxon's pale eyes.

This would change Mandalore forever.

Korkie returned to Keldabe to a stressed-out Erian bearing well over a hundred outstanding messages. It had been well worth it, to get out and breathe like that. For that howling laughter and the rain on his face. To have Fenn at his side, not as his Alor'ad but as his friend. To have a break from all the bantha-shit and flimsi-work and egotism and-

"-but who is the Minister for Agriculture, Mand'alor?" Erian asked, bewildered.

He held the data-chip Korkie had given him bearing the droid's soil analysis.

"Ah," Korkie sighed. "I forgot. We don't have one yet. Do you know anything about farming, Erian?"

His clerk looked at him, aghast.

"Nothing, Mand'alor."

Korkie would have appointed himself – interim Minister for Agriculture, of course – just for the laugh of it had he not already had far too much on his plate. Fenn had already taken to teasing him for his unwitting discovery. Another qualification to add to your curriculum vitae, Mand'alor.

"We'll have to find one, Erian. There must be someone who knows something about all of this. Could you investigate? Find me a few candidates?"

"Certainly, Mand'alor. I'll just-"

The clerk was cut off by the bleeping of his own comm and fumbled to answer it. Korkie gave him a vaguely consoling pat on the shoulder and turned to the mess of flimsi at his desk. Would his mother have laughed or cried at the state of his administration? Korkie liked to think she would have been sympathetic. She'd had to make do, once. He'd seen the holo-footage of the ununiformed, unarmed makeshift guards standing at undisciplined attention at the newly reclaimed General's house. He'd heard the stories of tearing down the palace curtains to make clothing for the poor.

"Ah, good, you're back."

Sewlen Jerac, in her hospital garb, strode into the office and shepherded the beleaguered Erian into the adjacent room.

"Take your call and then give yourself a few minutes for a ration bar and some water," she encouraged, and closed the door.

Blessed, bizarre silence. Korkie turned to his sort-of-Ba'vodu in confusion.

"What are you doing here?"

"There was a shoulder to re-enlocate in the dojo."

Korkie wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"Gross."

That explained why she was in the building. But not why she'd ambushed him in his office.

"Then I heard you'd made it back. After crashing your land-cruiser."

Korkie rolled his eyes.

"Unscathed. Completely. I promise."

"Nevertheless," Sewlen tutted. "It's usually my adolescent patients I have to caution against doing something like that."

Korkie groaned. He loved Sewlen dearly but he really didn't have time in his schedule today – not that poor Erian had even had time to put together a schedule for the day – for a lecture on road-safety. She seemed to be getting more maternal with age.

"I wasn't going to crash," he protested. "Fenn-"

He really had to quit blaming Fenn. It was both unfair to his Alor'ad and incriminating to himself.

"Never mind."

"Mhmm," Sewlen hummed, expression bland.

But Korkie could feel in the Force that he'd already given away too much. For a surgeon – weren't they supposed to be infamous for their lack of communication skills? – she was very good.

"It's as you always say, Sewlen," he tried, leaning into some humour. "Men are the inferior sex. Testosterone is bad for your health."

Sewlen smirked.

"Indeed."

Ah, kriff. The wrong sort of knowing smirk. Korkie hastened to clarify.

"In relation to risk-taking, I mean. Driving too fast."

Sewlen nodded, a benign half-smile failing to conceal her amusement.

"Was Fenn alright?"

"Fenn's fine. Uninjured."

"Emotionally?"

So Sewlen knew, then, that Fenn Rau was far too sensible the type to ever agree to pushing for a land-speed record in the pouring rain.

"He took it very gracefully," Korkie summarised.

A twitch of the doctor's mouth.

"I'm glad to hear the friendship survived."

Oh, she was very good. Korkie did not miss the scepticism on that crucial word. Which was a problem, really, because Korkie was already fighting against that himself – there were expectations, weren't there, for the Mand'alor to be above these sorts of things? – and it was a matter best dealt with alone.

He gave the most cavalier shrug he could muster and busied himself with a return to his piles of flimsi.

"More than can be said for the land-cruiser."

"Can I give you a piece of advice, Korkie?"

The surgeon's voice was sharp; Korkie's hand stilled as he lifted his eyes from the desk.

"Aren't you always doing that?"

"Seriously. Not doctor's advice."

Korkie sighed. He pushed the flimsi aside and sat on the desk before her.

"Tell me, Ba'vodu. Only you'll have to be quick because poor Erian has one hundred-"

"If you wait too long," Sewlen told him. "The feeling dies."

The gravity of it was immense. Korkie looked at her in vague shock. But it was the surgeon, now, busying herself to avoid his gaze.

"Anyhow, that's what I had to say and as you said, you have a hundred things to do-"

Korkie hurried to protest.

"Sewlen, I'm sorry, that was terribly rude of me. I have as much time as you need. I-"

"I don't need anything," Sewlen told him. "I just thought you should know. That it's not really possible to just… put it off, forever. Waiting for the right time."

"Right."

"I told the theatre team I'd only be half an hour. They'll have another case ready to go."

"Sewlen, are you sure you're-"

"I'm perfectly alright. Thank you. Please don't crash any more high-speed vehicles, no matter what your testosterone is telling you to do."

Korkie gave a gracious grin.

"Well, it was just my luck, really, Ba'vodu, that the land-cruiser was so kriffing slow. I'll see you later?"

"Sure."

She gathered up her data-pad and scrub cap and just as Korkie thought he might finally have a chance to re-gather his bearings – what had he even been doing, this morning? – a new figure emerged through the office door, blocking Sewlen's path.

He really ought to introduce a more formal system for those wanting to speak to the Mand'alor. But the morning had become so chaotic there was really no choice but to lean into it.

"Sabine!" he greeted. "Fortuitous timing. I'm court-martialling you."

The colour drained completely from Sabine's face. Korkie had been too distracted by Sewlen to take notice of her Force signature. He sensed now that something was very wrong.

"Stars, Sab'ika. Sorry. That was just a joke. Are you-"

"Have you heard?" she asked.

Her voice was like gravel. He hadn't ever seen Sabine like this before.

"Heard what?"

They stared at each other in perplexed silence for a few moments.

"I heard, Sabine," Korkie supplied, "that you've been gossiping to Kawlan about-"

"Not that."

"Mhmm. Didn't think so."

Sabine took a breath. Clenched and unclenched her fists as her sides.

"Tiber's forces responded to the Empire's call to wipe out the natives on Dizon Fray. General Tano and a few others went to help with the resistance. They say that Tiber's forces took prisoners. That they…"

When in her whole blasted life had Sabine Wren been lost for words like this?

"Yes, Sabine?"

"They're saying that Tiber…"

There were tears in her dark eyes.

"Korkie, I- I-"

She was a grown soldier. But she suddenly looked a child.

"Sab'ika…"

Sabine swallowed effortfully.

"I think you should court-martial me."

Korkie scoffed.

"For something Saxon's done? Not likely."

"You don't understand."

Another beat of silence. Korkie rubbed at his forehead.

"I'm afraid I really don't."

"Do you want to come sit with me a few minutes, Sabine?" Sewlen offered. "I was just leaving. We can find somewhere quiet and give this some time to-"

"We don't have time," Sabine protested. "I mean, I- I don't know if we have time. We-"

"Sabine."

Korkie reached out, held her by her narrow shoulders, pressed some calm into her through the Force. And it was the story of the karking morning, wasn't it, that just at that moment, Erian should emerge from the side-room looking somewhat revived by Sewlen's ration bar-

"Tiber's made a Mando-killing superweapon and I gave him the plans for it!" Sabine blurted, with a cascade of tears.

Sewlen had the tact to hold it together. Erian gaped.

"You did what?"

Sabine sobbed. Sewlen glared at Erian. Korkie gave the young soldier's shoulders a squeeze and tried to think of what his parents might have said to him.

"That's fine, Sabine. That's alright, really. We'll fix this."

She lifted her eyes to meet his.

"I'll do anything," she pledged. "Whatever you need of me. I'm so sorry."

"I know, Sab'ika. I trust we'll make this right together."

And Korkie thought that he might actually be doing an alright job at it, as unqualified as he parentally was, when the door to the Mand'alor's office blew open once again.

"Have you heard?" Bo-Katan demanded. "Tiber Saxon has-"

She paused, frowned.

"Why are you crying, Sabine?"

Korkie groaned.

"Oh, by the stars…"

Sewlen swooped in to conduct a hasty rescue but it was too late. Voices babbled and crescendoed again. Erian looked like he was going to pass out.

"I was a child!" Sabine was wailing. "Getting brainwashed at the Academy every kriffing day!"

"Are you hearing this, Korkie?" Bo-Katan demanded. "Named 'the Duchess' for your pacifist mother?"

Korkie was in fact hearing very little of it. Although everyone was certainly yelling as though intent on reaching his pacifist mother in her unmarked grave.

"Ne'kaan!" he hollered. "Please. Everyone."

It was the worst he'd seen since the argument among the Alliance to Restore the Republic on the eve of Scarif. And they were in the office the size of a cupboard, no less.

"Really. We can fix this. So long as we can hear ourselves think."

He mounted a brave smile, found his clerk's desperate gaze across the room.

"This rather simplifies our morning, no? Forget the Minister for Agriculture, Erian. I'll call Alor'ad Rau."

Sewlen didn't even have the heart to tease him for it.

"Then we'll go to the planning room and we can all have a cup of tea."

Ne'kaan (as I'm sure you can infer from the context) = shut up

Hope you all enjoyed the fun and games. I'm back at work now and my mood is accordingly plummeting. Next chapter will be more back to business as the Mandalorians take on Saxon and the Rebellion, too, finds itself in some trouble.

xx - S.