Chapter 18
Chapter 18
714FNM 24 BBY
Month 9
Mandalorian sector, Ratio
Tanya Kryze
I pressed a few buttons and my game piece moved into position so that it could strike my opponent's game piece. And thankfully my knowledge of this particular game paid off as I was able to defeat it successfully.
"Not bad, Silver." Rahm Kota said, looking over the board from his seat. "Do you play strategy games often?"
I shook my head, my face hidden behind the helmet. I had planned to get used to wearing a helmet 24/7 when we actually got to Gargon as I would need to keep my identity a secret. I wanted the Silver Codex to prosper on its own without the baggage that my family line could bring along with it. But the last minute inclusion of a Jedi into our plans had thrown that out the window and I would need to get used to it real quick.
Thankfully, I don't believe he had seen my face and considering the stakes that were involved, I removed the dye from my hair returning it to its natural auburn state in case my helmet cracked or something else happened. As far as the people in politics knew, my hair was blonde and I was running around the Mandalorian Sector putting out political fires with two of my Royal Guards. If somehow my helmet came loose or I was glimpsed when I didn't have it on, like what happened with Rahm Kota where he had seen me from behind, all they would know was that the girl behind White Silver had auburn hair, something I could easily cover up.
"I would love to play more games of strategy," I said matter of factly, "but I'm quite busy with my outside endeavors for peace such as this journey."
"Endeavors for peace? With the amount of weaponry I've seen on board the ship, that's a strange statement." The Jedi knight— or master, I didn't know him very well so it could be either— pressed a few buttons and sent a creature across the board, killing him. One of my pawns, as it were.
"Not bad." I said, noting that he had created an opening in my line that could be exploited by one of his units on his turn to get pretty close to my commander. I pressed a few buttons and sent a unit to cover that hole. I know I was playing a little bit reactionary but I was waiting for the right moment, for a push into his lines.
"Peace is a tool of great economic prosperity. Peace allows development of technologies that will make people's lives better. This peace is easily broken by those who simply want to take what was made for themselves, one must be prepared to defend peace. If you're not ready to defend your peace, someone will take it from you."
The Jedi nodded his head as he rubbed his chin beard then pressed a few buttons sending another attack towards my lines on the holographic table. "Wise words for one so young, and not a bad philosophy. Almost believe you're working on another codex if you really are the maker of the first."
"I probably will be forced to make another one." I muttered, pressing some buttons to block his attack and move a unit forward to threaten the side of a quick moving assault unit. "I only wanted to make a codex with the idea of looking at our history from another point of view. One where we were not always violent aggressors but could be defensively focused, a view to try and calm relations between the New Mandalorians and the Older Mandalorians, the Traditionalists. This False Silver has done a lot of damage to that idea. After I reveal to the sector that he is not the creator of the codex and clear the document of his fraudulency, I'm going to have to come up with a new edition of the work to try and prevent people from using my defensive focus and in such a manner going forward."
"Such assurance in your victory," the Jedi noted, "combat is not a game, White Silver. I don't know what life you led before your foray into philosophy but just because you think you're in the right does not mean you will win. You could fail and everyone in this ship could be dead by the end of your mission."
"Possibly." I said moving a unit to meet his latest attack. He was a bit on the reckless side with his units, I noted. "But I think things will work out in our favor. Aboard this ship are four of some of the best trained Mandalorians that you can find in the Mandalorian Sector. Adding to that my not too terrible fighting ability, that's a pretty good strike team. We also have access to a well-trained armorer who's been modifying our gear for the last week before we took off. And it would seem your Force is in our corner; why else would a Jedi Knight find his way to an abandoned mining facility that we used for this operation?"
I was poking at that little subject, if it was the Force that was ...concerning. Hope there wasn't 'Being X level shenanigans' going on, but if it wasn't I would like to know who had sent him. Very few people should know where I trained in my youth and no one should know I had been there when Kota found me.
The Jedi nodded his head and then said, "I did feel the Force would guide me to where I needed to be on this, why else would I have found my way to the Mandalorian Sector before something like this would happen." He sent another attack force forward attempting to pierce my lines on the right side.
"Coincidence," I said matter of factly as I reinforced those lines. "At least for why you're in the system. While we are on this topic, I don't know much about the Force, being just a normal person. So I'll make no statements about finding your way to our little band of heroes."
Rahm Kota chuckled at that for some reason before he asked, "I have to wonder, why did you let me on board your ship? Strange Jedi Knight that just pops out of the wilderness. It seems a bit odd that a band of Mandalorians would allow me to come along."
"The scars," I said plainly. "I could tell you'd been in combat more than a fair bit and considering you still have all of your limbs, that means that whatever combat you've seen you've won fairly successfully. Frankly, the bigger concern in my mind is your connection to the Jedi Order. Being accused of being pawns of the Jedi would not help in this operation."
Rahm Kota nodded his head before asking, "If that's such a big concern, why did you let me on then?"
"Jedi are massive force multipliers, no pun intended. Usually, whichever side of any conflict they get involved in has them, wins. To deny that is to deny your own eyes. Having a Jedi on your side is worth the potential issue and could be easily denied through various methods. If you are willing to wear a helmet and lay off the lightsaber work that would be the easiest since it would be much harder to make sure you appeared to have wandered into the situation at the last moment instead of being sent here directly by the Jedi Order. Besides that, I had a good feeling."
"A good feeling?" Kota said, sitting forward.
"As I said, wherever Jedi go, they tend to be on the winning side. If the Force is real and it sent one of its agents to help set things right, then I know that I'm on the right course to making sure Mandalore gets to continue the peaceful period of economic growth it needs." With that said, I pressed a few buttons sending my leader's main contingent forward, this entire time I've been stretching his lines out slowly and steadily during the assaults until there was only a small area between his command force and mine. It was easy to pierce the line and send my force directly into his.
"Oh, that was bold." Kota said.
"That is game, set, and match." I said sitting back in my seats waiting for him to realize that I was right in that assumption. Rahm Kota could pull forces back to try and help his leadership unit get out of the situation it was in, but every time he did so, that would allow me to push a unit into their lines, carving them up even more. Might take three to four turns to completely finish it but the game was, in essence, already over.
"Damn." he muttered, looking at the board.
Standing up I said, "Well that was fun, care to play again tomorrow? I have to go check on my equipment for this mission."
He nodded in agreement and I left the table heading towards my room. Once inside I closed and locked the door and took off my helmet to get some 'fresh' air. I had been wearing the helmet nearly constantly for three days and I would probably have to wear it for another three days before we arrived at Gargon. I had a feeling by the time this mission was over I might be called out for being 'paler than a vampire'.
I moved over to my armor to check it over, to make sure it was in good condition. A Mandalorian was only as good as their equipment, some would say. Well, I would just like to make sure my equipment didn't jam on me in a life and death situation and cost me my life.
It had as many Beskar plates as my Kryze armor and it looks suitably impressive when worn. A majority of it is silver in coloration, not bothering with paint in most cases since I did not want to link my colors of green to the silver and white needed for this operation. But it was painted in a few places with white stripes and to complete it Zum had provided me with a white shoulder cape which apparently had been a large fad with the Traditionalist Mandalorians before the end of the Civil War. I wasn't much of an artist so I hadn't painted anything else on the suit, leaving the simple white lines running up the armor for what it was, though it did look a bit plain.
Normally I would leave it that way but I was considering ways of possibly altering it if I was going to successfully steal back the title of White Silver. For this identity, I needed to make sure that everyone knew what the armor of White Silver looked like. I wasn't exactly sure what I could add to do that. If I get the chance, I would probably modify it again. Well, hopefully after this mission I could just lock this in a closet on Concordia and never think about it again. However, that is a bad investment to leave hanging around like that. Zum had gone all out putting on every little trinket he apparently could think of into the armor from a vambrace energy shield to a utility belt filled with neat little gadgets. Either X4 had overpaid or the CEO of Mandal Hypernautics had screwed him over in some way and he really wanted to make sure he was brought down because this stuff probably would have eaten enough money for two pairs of suits and Zum had been able to produce all six without issue.
As for the weapons I had acquired for this mission: a pair of Westar 35 pistols, a Galaar 15 Blaster with a folding stock (which I asked Zum to add in case I needed a steady shot), and a bayonet in case I needed to stab someone. Simple and safe weapons that any Mandalorian could get their hands on that I could easily have keyed to work with the targeting systems on my helmet. My helmet was a feat of engineering, a marvel in its own right, as Zum had included a voice distorter which would be a useful little gizmo for the political talks that I'm sure would happen when I started reaching out to potential allies on the planet's surface. Other than that, it also has a HUD that displays where my Westar pistols are aiming and multi-spectrum vision modes to see in the dark or to spot heat signatures.
However it's my vambraces that I am considering adding to my family armor. On my left is an energy shield and a flash projector that shines blinding light from my palm and, when not in use, it retracts into the vambrace. On my right is a fibrecord whip, which is basically a grappling hook, that can also electrocute a target with a press of a button; a special surprise which took inspiration from a western I watched in my second life. Zum managed to fit an old deactivator pistol into the vambrace and it would pop out with a flick of my wrist, ready to shut down a droid or stun a person. After False Silver is dealt with, Zum mentioned that he'll try to make a version that can achieve something similar but with a blaster pistol but for now a deactivator is the only thing small enough to fit without being noticable.
As Rahm Kota had said, there was a chance that every single person on this ship could die if I relied on them alone, but I was not going to limit my potential manpower like that. There was no way that the people of Gargon were fully sold on a corporate authority taking over their planet. I simply needed to align myself with these rebels and make sure they were successful in bringing him down. Stories of a Silver Knight coming to support their efforts would then spread throughout the sector as time went on and hopefully that would undo the majority of the damage False Silver did to the codex.
It was possible that would not happen, but I had a feeling that I was making the right choices. I've spent a lot of time in the Mandalorian Sector and I understood their culture as best as I think anyone could, and nothing spoke more to Mandalorians than bold action. What I was banking on was a massively bold move that I hoped would do the job.
I sat down on my bed and picked up the chest plate which had been painted mostly white and was about to get to work cleaning it when I had a bit of a thought that brought a chuckle to my lips. Pulling out a knife from the utility belt I brought the mostly painted white armor over to my desk and laid it down and then carefully started to chip away the paint over the right breast. I was no artist but I was not exactly going to a fashion contest and I believe I managed to successfully carve in what I wanted. A pair of silver wings right above my heart with two silver tail feathers coming off the central body of the wings. It wasn't much, but it would do for customizations. I could always have this improved later but a reference to the Silver Wings Assault Medal that I'd earned a lifetime ago was enjoyable to my eyes.
Gargon orbit, Ratio
Tanya Kryze
I have never had the urge to learn to fly a spacecraft. To fly with a jetpack however— to be as close to personal flight and what I dearly loved about it— that I had gone out of my way to learn. Flying a spacecraft was something I hadn't needed to know, however since I'd taken the Captain's quarters and was the closest person to the pilots section that had changed. In case of an emergency, the Royal Guard Captain had gone out of his way to make sure that I was given lessons as well in the two seat cockpit of the ship.
I don't know how well I was doing but I could at least follow orders well enough. I had to admit I had a good view of the planet we were heading to from my position. Outside the window the snowy planet of Gargon was slowly coming into view. Though 'snowy' was possibly not the correct word for the planet, as a large percentage of the planet was mountainous. High mountains which collected a lot of moisture with colder air\ created snowy peaks, and as a result there were very few safe landing places on the planet. One was in Gargon City, the crime filled metropolis, and from what I understood was the main headquarters of Mandel Hypernautics and this new empire they were planning to build. The other places are small towns and villages that provided food to the roaming nomads of the planet in exchange for protection from other nomads who would want to steal it.
It was a very disorganized mess from what I understood, but it was a system that worked for these people and quite a few of them were Old Mandalorians who had been originally banished from Mandalore after the Clan Wars. Since it was still in the Mandalorian Sector but not under the control of New Mandalorians, being firmly under the control of— let's call them Gangster Mandalorians— at least I hope the gangster element was Mandalorian on this planet. I have been studying as much as I could and it looked like at one point the Hutts had a stake on the planet but were no longer interested.
"I hope everyone packed a warm suit of underclothing, because that planet's chilly this time of year." Skota, the Royal Guard Medic, said from the hallway behind the cockpit looking through to the outside.
"I'm more concerned with that small fleet." Guard Captain Struc said, "Pay note to the 50-odd ships in orbit around the planet; most appear to be retrofitted freighters. A lot of them appear to be Mandalorian design, specifically some of the export models Mandel Motors had been producing for the Hutts."
Well, considering my meeting with their representative months ago, it's possible that these were rip-off designs produced by Mandel Hypernautics and were all sold to the Hutts. There's nothing too big besides three ancient dungeon ships that look like they'd been rushed back into service. The large cubes were slowly moving into geosynchronous orbit above what I would have to guess was Gargon City, and they looked like they were armed for a fight.
"Any idea if they're going to prevent us from landing?" I asked though I didn't really figure they would.
"It looks like they're preventing anyone from coming through the main spaceport, I just put in a request and they told me to 'Blast off'. However a smaller port town just south of Gargon is still taking ships."
"So Hypernautics has complete control over people going in and out of the city but not the planet itself? That's a good sign." I said.
"They don't have complete control over the planet?" Rahm Kota said from somewhere behind me. "You'd think he'd make sure to have at least that before he sprung this attempted rebellion."
"Technically, Gargon is not part of the traditional structure of the sector." I responded, "Yes, the Mandalorian Senator represents Gargon, as it's located inside the sector, but it has never sworn fealty to the New Mandalorian Duchess, so this isn't really much of a rebellion yet as a change of management. No doubt though this will lead to a rebellion if left unchecked." I supplied the theoretical answer to this question before continuing. "He likely doesn't want people getting in and out of the city just yet while he secures the loyalty of the planet's gangs. Once he has the gangs under his command, he can move on to try and secure the loyalty of the nomads. After that he'll probably have no issue with allowing in unlucky people who are unaware he has usurped the name of White Silver and put them to work in his army or factories, building weapons for whatever rebellious plans he's got."
"Still, that seems like a rather small force to hold the orbital high ground." Rahm Kota commented.
"It's small, but it's big enough to be comparable to the New Mandalorian Royal Guard, which would be the most likely force to be sent against such an operation. In addition to that, there's no guarantee that he doesn't have more ships hidden around the moon somewhere just to draw the Royal Guard into a false sense of security before springing the trap." The Guard Captain said, matter of factly.
"Always best to keep some of your cards hidden, if your enemy underestimates you, they are in for a nasty surprise."
"Well let's hope he's made a massive mistake with this whole rebellion business then." Rahm Kota said as I heard him turning to walk away.
"Anyways," Captain Struc said, "I have been given the okay for landing at the village of Garval, shall I proceed with a landing, Steel?"
I chuckled at the use of the code names that we had decided on for the mission. Technically I was still the White Silver and I would need to obtain that name when we finally completed the mission but until that moment it was better to use different names for conversations with other people. "Just take us in Strike, let's find out what awaits us on that planet."
With that said, our little ship began a swift descent to the planet, soon arriving at the fairly small town a good 30-40 miles away from the city of Gargon. Stepping off the ship I had to note that the planet was, in fact, very cold and was glad I had packed some warm under-armor clothing. It is a fairly bustling town, mostly blocky double story buildings but they are fairly small; likely homes or small businesses.it feels very familiar to the 'Small town USA' area that I hid in my second life after the war. Only instead of paved roads, it's still using packed dirt.
The space port, if you could call it that, is basically a wide plateau outside the town where multiple ships can land. I could see the port building had a tower, a hangar right next to it, as well as fuel tanks nearby. Everything it needed to be a rural space port, I even saw a Gozanti freighter out in the distance surrounded by dozens of smaller freighters and shuttles.
The rest of the guards, Zum, and Kota joined me outside. I tapped the side of my helmet to activate the radio, "S4, stay onboard the Ratio and try to keep everyone in contact with each other. You'll have better communication systems than most of us will, most likely."
"Will do, Mistress," came the robotic voice before I turned to face the other members of my band. After a day of thinking it became obvious very quickly that X4's codename is too long so I had changed it to the more abbreviated S4.
"Alright so here are our objectives: we need to make contact with both the nomads and also with anyone interested in preventing Mandel Hypernautics from taking over the planet. With their help, we'll see if we can put Mandal Hypernautics out of business."
"Rahm, Zero, and Strike, I think if I put you in charge of finding the nomads you can pull it off, don't you agree?" I was speaking low enough that they could hear me but no one outside our group would be able to. Best to be careful as we didn't know what ears were on us already.
Rahm nodded his head and said, "Putting your faith in the Force, are you?"
"No," I responded quickly, "Strike and Zero are more likely to find the nomads than not but I also can't have you going into Gargon city until we have the initiative in our hands. As I said, better for you to appear uninvolved with the effort until the last moment as if you just showed up for the fight."
He nodded his head before the Struc asked. "So the three of us will be outside the city searching for the nomads. What are the four of you going to do?"
"We're going to find our way into the city and split up into two teams of two. Our job is to either find allies in the city or gather information about what Mandal Hypernautics are up to. We'll try and stay in contact through our comms but too much of that could draw attention so we'll be careful on that and neither one of us will be trying to start any fights, understood?"
"I'm not a big fan of you guys splitting up." Struc noted.
"Two people are a lot more maneuverable than four." I simply responded, "Onyx and I will be one team and Skota and Mok will be the other."
"Wait, what?" Ordo said, sounding confused.
I simply shrugged it off, and gave the comment, "A male and a female Mandalorian walking together are more likely to be taken as a couple out for a stroll than being foreign spies."
"Okay, let's mix up, great plan. How are we going to get into the city though?" Mok asked, sounding a bit concerned.
Before I could give an answer I saw someone coming up from the port office. A tall older gentleman by the looks of it using a cane to walk in our direction.
"Hello there, I hope you have money to pay for your stay." The gentleman said, his face scarred with age. He took a look at us and then said with a grimace of displeasure, "Oh no, you people aren't here to join that damn Silver cult are you?"
I looked to the others using the turn of my helmet to hide that my hand had slipped to my vambrace to turn on the voice changer before looking back at the older gentleman and asked, "And what if we are?"
"I would be forced to offer you a reduced price for your stay and tell you when the bus arrives. Otherwise the fracking black Mando Mercs will be breaking down my door to say I'm being anti-codex."
I thought I felt a blood vessel pop just above my eyes. Thank Mandalore for our helmets because I could keep a rather unimpressed look even as I was wanting to wring the neck of the False Silver. "How many credits is the normal payment for a stay at your fine establishment?"
"20 credits today, and you have to buy fuel separately if you want to refill your tanks."
I nodded and reached into my pocket pulling out 20 credit ingots and handing it over to him. "That should cover today and there's a droid on board who will continue to pay until we return if that's alright with you?"
A man raised an eyebrow before he said, "As long as he pays a full 20, I don't give a kriff where the money comes from. Anything else I can do for you, madam?"
"Yes, when is this bus supposed to arrive? And can you keep quiet about where our ship is if anyone comes asking?" I asked, handing him another 20.
The man blinked, looked at the money, nodded at his head, and pocketed it before saying, "Next bus to Gargon arrives in 33 minutes.Not a lot of people will be on it so you should have a quiet and uneventful ride. As far as I'm concerned, this ship's not even here. I have no idea who dropped it off, have fun in Gargon, madam." The gentleman said before turning and walking away.
Turning back to my companions said "And I believe that has been settled. We'll make contact with S4 in four hours. We should keep making contact with him occasionally to maintain that we haven't run into issues and we don't need to rush anything, agreed?" The other Mandalorians and Jedi nodded before I turned to face in the direction of the road. "Now Onyx, Scalpel, and Click let's go find that bus stop."
Gargon, 2 miles out of Garval Village
Struc Ordack
"Not really seeing how this is going to find the nomads." Zum said as Rahm sat on a rock across from me and Zum.
We wandered our way out of town to find the nomads. I would have preferred to have tried to talk to the townsfolk but Rahm seemed to know where he was going and, well, tracking nomads was not exactly something I'd ever done. I battled on Mandalore during the Civil War and though there were a few nomadic clans there, most had already settled into cities or clan fortresses.
We'd gotten a good way away from the small town before Rahm saw a rock and sat down on it. Since then we'd been here for the last 20 minutes waiting to see exactly where we were going. To be fair the scenery is pretty nice to look at, blue skies, snow capped peaks in the distance, tall grass all around with many boulders scattered around the area, likely a result from erosion. It's sights like this that can make me see the appeal of getting away from the hustle and bustle of city life.
"He's probably listening to the Force, Jedi are known to sit and just feel the Force for hours on end." I reasoned.
"I know that, but why is he doing that now?"
"Beats me, probably asking it for directions? I don't know how it works so I'll let the expert do his thing." I shrug whilst half-heartedly answer.
"Patience is a virtue, my friend." Rahm said from the rock he is on, causing me to look at him.
Pointing towards a nearby tree stump he said, "That tree over there has damage from a lance hitting it," pointing to another area he said, "there's a bit of afterburn on that rock," Finally he pointed at the ground between Zum and myself which caused us to look down. There was a piece of metal that could be any other piece of metal as far as I was concerned. "and speeder bike damage, most likely had a wipeout around here. If I had to make my guess the nomads use this area for travel, possibly to get to the town for trade. We only need to wait a few moments and then I'm sure a group of them will come sailing over the horizon on some sort of trade trip towards the local town."
"Right, that seems a bit hopeful." I mentioned. I turned to Zum and asked, "Have any better ideas?"
The old armorer shrugged saying, "This is not exactly something I usually get up to. Most nomads have their own armors and those that don't exactly call on space traveling ones like myself. Probably use the local town armorer for most of their gear."
"My best guess would be to walk back into town and just start asking questions. Maybe someone will have a direction we can head towards." I offered in hopes of speeding this whole thing along.
"I don't think that'll be necessary." Rahm said, raising his hands in a surrendering manner. "The other reason I chose this specific position was it was so open I was sure that if the nomads had any scouts in the area that they would spot us from several miles away and organize some sort of reaction to a couple strange Mandalorians and someone who looks mysterious."
I turned to look at him wondering why he had his hands up, "What kind of react-" I didn't get to finish as I heard the cocking of a slugthrower behind me. It's times like this I miss the smart microphones in my Royal Guard helmet. I would have heard him coming long before he came this close.
"Raise your hands carefully, Aruetii." Someone said from behind us in perfect Mandoa.
I was going to say something when Rahm spoke in accented Mandoa. He's using some of the ancient words instead of the more modern basics that had slipped in over the millennium. "We mean you no harm, wanderers. We are fellow warriors, searching the mountain for friends."
"Friends are hard to come by in times of need," came a voice from behind me, "but if you don't know them how can they be friends?"
"If an enemy of my enemy is not my enemy, are they not at least an ally worthy of considering a friend."
"And what enemy would be my enemy?"
"The one who would threaten your nomadic lifestyle and enslave you to the factories of the great City of Gargon."
I heard an audible spit, I hoped he wasn't wearing a fully sealed helmet, before the Mando said, "That city was never great, it was always a cesspool. But you have a point." I saw Rahm lower his hands, and I took that as a sign that the threat had passed so I lowered my own.
Turning to look over my shoulder I saw a Mandalorian with what appeared to be red armor looking at us, with a thankfully open helmet. He is armed with a slug thrower that looked older than the Mandalorian Civil war. Granted, every slugthrower looked older than the Civil War, yet this looked well taken care of as its wooden stock has the shine of lacquer and the metal has the subdued shine of blackened beskar.
"What's the deal? Why do you want to help us against the Silver Shabiir when you are wearing his colors?"
Zum spoke up first, "The situation is complex but I will but I'll simplify it to the important part.. We don't believe he's the real White Silver and we're here to prevent his continued use of the name."
The red Mandalorian chuckled. "Can't even hold his own cult to him, what a weak Mandalore. I'm Rath of Clan Glint. If you're really the enemy of the Silver Shabiir, then I welcome you to our rebellion. If not, we can always use more nutrients and we're always in the market for more beskar. Don't betray us. Got it?"
I nodded and said, "We understand. We are not going to betray you. Our interests align."
"Good." He put his hand to his helmet, "I'm going to call a speeder so we can get you guys to the camp. The leaders are going to have questions you're going to need to answer. All clear fellas." Before our eyes, three other Mandos rose from the tall grass around us.
I nodded before taking a step back till I was next to where Rahm and Zum was standing and asked, "How do you know Mandoa?"
"Oh that? Mando poetry is quite popular and was a required reading for a few years. And considering the amount of times Jedi have ended up in conflict with Mandalorians I thought it was the best to actually be able to speak your language. You never know when it may come in handy."
I left it at that and said, "You're a strange Jedi, aren't you."
"I prefer the term 'prepared' Jedi." He said with all seriousness, causing me to chuckle.
Mandalore, Sundari
Obi-Wan Kenobi
"Well this place seems to have built up well." I mused looking at the cityscape, from the window of the transport I was in.
"Master?" Anakin asked from my side looking out the same window.
"It's been a 17 years since I've been on this planet. Looks like it was well on its way to recovery, as when I was here all those years ago, they didn't have dome cities like this." I explained as he nodded his head.
"Strange that they built domes over their cities. I'm not a fan of sand as much as the next person but it seems a little bit of an overreaction."
"Well that may be true for Tatooine but Mandalore's atmosphere has a tendency to have poisons in it, limiting their exposure is often for the best." I explained as I looked out the window seeing the Royal Palace starting to come into view. I had not expected to ever come back to Mandalore, after I left all those years ago I'd pretty much had the assumption that I'd never be here again. But the Force works in mysterious ways. News of the Silver Codex Rebellion, as some of the Masters had called it, had quickly reached the Jedi Temple. Normally this sort of intersector conflict would have taken a bit longer to get up the chain of command of worry, as the Jedi Order usually sent people to deal with these situations upon requests and didn't insert itself often. The problem is that a Jedi may have inserted themselves into the conflict prematurely, and so the Order needed to find out what was going on.
As I had become the resident Mandalorian expert due to my history, I had been assigned to pay a visit to Mandalore with my young Padawan.
Shaking my head I muttered, "What was Rahm Kota thinking, getting himself involved in this?"
But the universe didn't answer, all I got was Anakin asking, "Do you think Tanya's here?"
I shrugged and said, "I don't know, I know she was a proponent of the Silver Codex so I imagine that politics have made her go into seclusion until this whole situation is handled. She could be here or she could be on any of the other Mandalorian worlds."
"Hmm, that's too bad." Anakin sounded a little bit sad not to be able to talk to her. He told me about their meeting at the Jedi Temple so I imagine it was simply a slow journey to friendship those two were on. Which is good; having friends in Mandalore could not hurt relations with the system.
"I'm sure that she'll turn up soon enough. After all, even if she's in political hiding they're going to want to keep her safe and the safest place in the Mandalorian Sector is the Royal Palace."
That seemed to bring a smile to young Anakin's face but before I could give that too much thought the transport came to land on one of the platforms in front of the Royal Palace.
"Well, here we are." I muttered, walking towards the door and stepping out with Anakin right behind me. There waiting for us were a couple of Royal Guards who immediately asked us to follow them, eventually leading us into the Royal Palace's large greeting room.
There I saw a face I had not seen in years. Upon the throne was Duchess Satine, next to her was an older man with a beard and they were deep in discussion as we entered. "Duchess Satine." I said, giving a bow. Though I didn't see it, I suspected Anakin did the same.
"Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're not someone I expected to see." She said, while looking down at us. "Pray tell, why have you come to Mandalore?"
Standing up to my full height I said, "One of our Order may have gotten himself involved in the current situation within Gargon and we were simply sent to be at your service if the Gargon situation was to go out of control."
"That situation is completely under control," the elder man said, "Gargon is a backwater planet at the best of times and barely even part of the sector. We are already in the process of working out treaties with the other planets to lay a blockade on any goods coming in and out of the system to the rest of the sector until the madness that seems to have taken it over is undone."
I rubbed my beard in thought, "An economic war. That seems a bit passive but it could work." The Duchess got up from her seat as I mused on the plan.
"It may be passive but it should be effective in stopping the spread of Mandal Hypernautics' influence," she said, "Though I wonder why the Jedi Order are so concerned over one of their own interfering in the situation that they'd send two of their Jedi to look after me. Is it perhaps because they worry that this will give the CEO exactly what he wants? For this Jedi to attempt to set things right the way only Jedi know how and fail, causing the CEO to have perfect propaganda to use to attempt to inflame the passions of the people against me?"
I swallowed deeply. She'd got it in one. I've never been good at politics but Satine had decades of practice with running the Mandalore system. Sure, I was good at diplomacy, but that was different. Getting two sides to stop fighting each other was one thing; getting two sides to work together was another.
"My Duchess is insightful as to the Council's worries." I admitted.
She nodded and said, "It's an unfortunate thing. The wounds of the Republic Excision still run deep and the CEO is playing deeply into those wounds." She shook her head before continuing. "Hopefully your rogue Jedi doesn't cause too many problems. I've worked very hard to bring peace to this planet and I'd hate to see it all go up in flames."
I nodded my agreement before saying, "I'm sure with a little search of Concordia we can find him and get this whole matter settled. But until we do, the Council thought it best to take preemptive measures."
The Duchess nodded her head before saying, "I will arrange a few Royal Guards to help you in this search and we'll see if we can get you a place to stay while you find your rogue Jedi." She then smiled and said, "I'm glad to see you again, Ben."
I smiled back and said, "It's good to see you too, Satine."
"Perhaps we'll have a walk later. I have meetings to attend but I wouldn't mind showing you the progress that's been made in the city."
"I'd like that."
She nodded and moved past me, heading off to whatever meeting apparently needed to be done to deal with the current situation unfolding over Gargon.
The older man walked past me and gave me another strange look, a mix of annoyance and amusement. But he quickly left, leaving me and Anakin in the room.
Turning to Anakin I said, "Well, I guess we'd better see about finding a hotel." I stopped that thought when I saw he was looking at the door Satine had gone through with a look that almost said he understood something all of a sudden. "Anakin?" I asked, confused.
Anakin quickly shook his head and said, "Nothing master, we should probably find a hotel or something."
Gargon City, Warehouse District
Thisish Skota
"This is a terrible plan." I muttered as Mok continued his work trying to break into Mandal Hypernautics' warehouse's electronic lock.
"This is a great plan," Mok responded as a cable sparked inside the box he was working in. "Ah I'm sure that wasn't important." he said before continuing his work.
I wasn't exactly thrilled at the notion of it being two man teams, let alone letting the princess go off on her own with that kid, but I trusted Struc to know what he's doing and if he thought that Tanya had something I guess I would have to go along with it.
I hated this whole operation. I lost a lot of friends and family during the Clan War and was thoroughly not a fan of conflict. The only reason I joined was that Duchess Satine wanted the best of the best to be in her Royal Guard and being a professional surgeon for several years after graduating from the University of Alderaan meant that I likely had the most attractive resume for a medical position. The Royal Guard were not expected to go out and fight, and with the Duchess's connection to the New Mandalorian philosophy of pacifism I thought at most I would have to deal with food poisoning or an injury caused by a fall with a very rare case of attempted assassination. When I was assigned to be the princess's medic, I thought it would be much of the same: take care of her health and be there with a cure just in case someone slipped her a poison or something.
However, now here I was helping her attempt a murder or a coup. Really, what was the plan for the girl? If I was to believe what we had been told, this was an operation to clean the name of the Silver Codex which I wasn't exactly a fan of. Sure it was better than the Traditionalist's way, but it still saw violence as necessary in its text.
I'd prefer not to not even be involved in this whole operation, but I swore an oath when I joined the Guard and I wasn't going to break it just because I had issues with some possible outcomes of the operation.
Perhaps real violence would scare the girl straight and she would end this notion of the Silver Codex and let it die on the vine. Although after Struc's tests I find it highly unlikely. I just had to hope though that we didn't all end up dead as well.
My personal problems aside, we'd split up from the princess and the kid to explore the city trying to gather intelligence. Right off the bus there had been a recruitment agent to try and get people to sign up for their new Silver Guard, apparently some kind of civil militia that the CEO was putting together.
The black uniformed Mandel Hypernautics agent was somewhat pushy, but he'd let us go after a little talk from Tanya. One thing I'd give her, it felt like she could talk her way out of pretty much anything.
Mok and I had made our way deeper into the city and found ourselves in a warehouse district. The guards had been fairly consistent throughout the city, black clad mercenaries watching corners often led by what I could guess were real Mandalorians in older armor with a white emblem of their mercenary group. They seemed to be less prominent near this particular section of the Warehouse district. I suspected it was so deep inside the city that they weren't considering anyone would try and raid it, which was reasonable. From the few speeder trucks that had gone by it looked like it was a warehouse for raw materials. Why would anyone steal iron that hadn't even been processed? Why would you want to get into the facility even if it was the least valuable element in the supply train?
Well our resident slicer has a reason, the answer is that the facility itself is still hard-wired into the network that Mandel Hypernautics used for its intake and resource management. Once we tapped into it we could be able to see the entire network and all of the information inside.
So we've done exactly what we've been told to do by gathering intel. We'd quickly broken into the facility, then found our way to the foreman's office and started to get to work finding out what was going on and what was coming in.
"Anything of interest?" I asked leaning against the foreman's desk and watching the door in case said foreman decided to return.
"Nothing yet, a lot of shipments of raw resources, apparently they've been buying beskar from some old debris fields that date back to the Mandalorian Wars."
"Chakaar." I muttered.
"Yeah, apparently the quality of the beskar is still pretty good. It's actually talked about here that they are thinking of adding a bonus for the pirates they've hired to deliver these resources to another facility."
"Another warehouse?" I asked out of curiosity.
"No, that's the interesting thing. All the facilities I'm seeing here are marked as 'GG' most likely for Gargon and I can find them on maps of the city. This facility that they're apparently sending resources to is not on Gargon, it's marked as 'AT'. I guess it's some other planet they have a facility on."
"How many resources have been sent to that planet?"
"Half of whatever has been recovered from the debris fields." he commented as he looked through the records before he stopped and tilted his head. "That's interesting."
Tilting my helmet so I can look at him and the door as best I could I asked, "What did you find?"
"There's references here of a shipment of something coming in but it's not made clear exactly what it is, only that it's heavy equipment. Whatever it is, the shipment will be here in a week and it's theorized it'll increase production quotas across the board."
"Oh that doesn't sound too terrible." I stated, before I heard the unlocking of the door. Turning my head I saw what I would guess was the foreman entering the room. He had been looking down at some paperwork but he stopped as soon as he looked up and saw us. The surprise on his face fading to resignation and tiredness.
"If you're going to steal from me, here is my wallet and the safe is behind the bookshelf. I am just done with everything and I am not paid enough for this." He said as he took out his wallet and pointed at the bookshelf on the left side of the room.
Mok and I shared a look before I said, "We're not here to steal from you, we're just investigating. If you're willing to keep quiet about us being in your office, we'll keep quiet about being here."
"Fine by me, but please get off my desk. I have to file this procurement order for steel with the Southern Steel Mill within 20 minutes so that they can actually fulfill it before they close for the day." he said matter of factly, stepping past me as Mok got up, and took his seat.
As the room filled with the sound of typing, the foreman started to vent, "You know, my dad was friends with one of Mandal Hyper's department heads, classmates or something. He told me that there was a job opening at his department for a warehouse manager. I had just finished college so I was all bright eyed and innocent for work and I was under the impression that I would just be keeping track of resources coming in and out, but no. All of a sudden the department head told me to fill in for a foreman that called in sick. So I had to travel to several construction sites, inspect their progress, and write a report to the department head. You'd think this was only temporary: nope! The foreman died due to an allergic reaction to a drug at the hospital so now I'm stuck working two jobs while the department head finds a replacement, which he probably won't, the lazy bastard. After a week I had the system down so the work is somewhat manageable and I just sleep in the parking lot."
I hid a wince while Mok rubbed the back of his neck hearing the unfortunate foreman's story. "Then a month later, the department's procurement officer quit so who does my boss call for a replacement? You guessed it, me. I now have to talk to a dozen suppliers for several dozen different materials all around Gargon to find the best price between them all, write a procurement report to order it, file a report that my warehouse had received the materials, and then I have to send those materials on their way to the various sections that needed them. I've had to juggle three jobs for months now and to top it off, I'm not even getting paid for the extra jobs I'm covering."
While my mouth opened in shock, Mok made an audible hiss before saying, "Why not just quit?"
"Remember that procurement guy that quit? He was found dead in an alley. 'Mugging gone wrong' was the headline that day. I might loathe this job but if the choice is between this or death, I'd choose this. But after two years of this I might reconsider." The foreman finished his typing before he opened a drawer to reveal a report and started to write on it.
"Now I have to deal with spies, nomads raiding the warehouses, and all kinds of bantha dung because a man had the bright idea of 'Oh we're going to rebel against the entire sector'," the man said, ranting and writing at the same time. "I just want to finish my contract, take my money, and go open a nice little shop somewhere but no. I have to deal with people breaking into my office to look through my work files."
"Sorry." Mok said sheepishly.
The older man sighed and said, "No, no apology necessary, you're just doing whatever job you're being paid for too." He took a closer look at us and said, "Really, white and silver? I thought no one was dumb enough to actually wear the cultist's colors."
"What's the problem with white and silver?" I asked, a bit concerned at his statement.
"Well, other than the craziness of the CEO's claiming he's White Silver, he let some extremist cult leader take control of the Silver Guard. Anyone he finds wearing those colors he basically forces them to join at a gunpoint. If they don't, well, he says you don't deserve the armor and shoots you."
"Damn." I muttered. That was a bit of a problem I would have to contact Tanya about. Reaching up to my helmet, I tried to contact the Ratio as Mok continued to talk to the warehouse foreman.
"Do you mind if I ask a question?" the slicer asked.
"You put up with me venting my problems and life story for several minutes so it's the least I could do. As long as it won't get me in trouble, I'll tell you anything you want to know."
"Thank you. There's a shipment coming in a week later that the documents said will increase production by 50% or something. Do you have any idea what that's about?"
"Oh that, CEOs made some contract with droid manufacturers to make a bunch of, what's the right term, 'slave-driver droids'? Basically some droid tool makes sure the factories keep working or at least defend the factory against any more nomad attacks. Still trying to figure out if he's gone completely evil or if he's just trying to defend the factories. Me and a couple other foremen are betting on the former."
"You're betting if he's gone completely evil?" Mok asked, a bit of shock in his tone.
"There's not much else to do on Gargon nowadays. I just want to make my profits and be on my way off of this damn planet. But I'll tell you right now, I totally expect the CEO to take over the spice production from the gangsters before the year is out and try to sell it on the open market to fund his ambitions, probably to the Hutts."
"Agent Scalpel?" finally came the voice of X4 over the radio.
"S4 I need you to send a message to Steel: The silver armor is a death warrant amongst the Silver Militia. Be careful and avoid any leadership." I said into the comm after muting the external speaker.
"Will do Scalpel, message is sent."
"Good." Thankful that the message went through, I turned to Mok and said, "Let's get moving, we still have a lot of intel to dig up and we've got to figure a way back out of the city to meet up with the others."
Mok nodded and said, "Thanks for the help sir, we'll be on our way."
"I've never seen you before in my life." he said as he continued to write his fifth paper.
Harswee, Harswee City
Vai Viktis Vizla
I breathed in and out trying to temper my annoyance. "We really should be with Tanya," I muttered. As I walked with Tabi down the main street of Harswee city. I was still pretending to be Tanya, wearing her trademark greens, hair a little bit shorter, and a pair of sunglasses. You probably wouldn't be able to tell us apart at a distance. It helped that we didn't know anyone on any of the planets we were visiting and we're not going on any official state visits. These were simple appearance missions which meant we could stay at regular hotels and leave when we wanted to.
"My dear, you really need to stop worrying about Tanya. I saw her fight during that whole gang incident and I doubt she'll get into too much trouble. Frankly, I think she can find her way out of most trouble. I wonder who trained her?" Tabi commented as he walked next to me still in his full armor, though he'd taken his helmet off to let the breeze take his long hair.
Being that this was his homeworld, I had elected to let him take the lead on our little walkabout. I needed to put in appearances around towns to at least appear to be on the move and to be Tanya, build our alibi as it were. I'd never been to this world before so it was an easy call to make.
"Maybe, but I have never really been that far away from her when she needed help." I let out an exhausted breath. I could tell Tabi who trained Tanya but it's probably best to keep that under wraps as long as possible.
Tabi smiled and simply put his arm around me. "She's your friend, of course you're worried. But you're where she needs you the most. Putting in appearances like this will keep her identity secret and allow her to continue her political career."
I was going to say something but we were interrupted by Kastel, "I'd say 'you should get a room' but remember to stay in character."
"Right." we both said, separating a bit. I didn't want to screw up Tanya's reputation.
The world of Harswee was heavy. I wasn't exactly sure how high the gravity is compared to most planets but it was enough that the people here tended to be stronger and shorter. Not by too much, but enough to deal with the extra relative weight. Kastel and I had been trying to ignore it, but after a few days of wandering we noticed that we couldn't be out for as long as we would like. It was too exhausting for us to walk for more than 30 minutes before we needed to rest. Which was a shame because as far as Mandalorian worlds went, this place was rather beautiful.
For generations this planet had been producing fabrics and other fine materials for the Mandalorian Sector. It was believed that the original population had been human and was one of the first human races to be incorporated into the Mandalorian Way which was why they had been able to maintain parts of their culture, specifically rug making.
I've seen some high quality rugs and some mighty fine clothing, and to frame those items for sale they built mighty fine looking buildings. Unlike the slab style that had taken over most of the Mandalorian system, this particular planet had never lost the artistry of their structures. Not as blocky as some of the architecture coming out of the rest of the Mandalorian sector, but you could see elements of it there.
The buildings often had pointed roof towers coming out of the top and seem to be designed to cast as much shade as possible on the street, most likely because of the higher temperature. Most of the planet is a desert world, but the area we were in was more like a jungle climate and quite muggy.
Looking around, I still had to shake my head and say, "Still can't believe the amount of clothing shops your people have."
"When the most effective crop around here is only useful for cloth production and when no one else is thinking about clothing as a style, it gives them a lot of options to sell to. Off-worlders have come here for boutique sessions, usually very rich and famous people from other sectors wanting to get a new style. A few Mandalorians have also requested our services over the centuries. Well, they tended to be more worried about their armor, less about their clothing."
I chuckled at that since he wasn't wrong but before I could make any other comments he continued, "If it wasn't for the Binder we'd probably still be living similar to Mandalore in the past. By the time we built the space port on this planet, we would probably have still been selling just regular linen clothing. But his wise efforts made sure that our planet has a growing economy even with most of the sector at war. There's a story about, oh, 300 years ago, two clan chieftains both bitter rivals, came to this planet to get a new style."
"What happened?" I asked to add curiosity.
Tabi shrugged, "They went to the same shop a day apart got the exact same style and the next time they met they basically murdered each other and escalated their rivalry into a blood feud. I think it's still going on."
"Haha." I couldn't stifle the laughter coming out of me at the idea that there are two clans fighting each other mainly because of something so ridiculous as wearing the same clothes. It was so Mandalorian and yet so hilarious.
"Really they should have known better, at the time they were doing 'its combat skirts' and kilts were all the rage. Well, they're still a bit fashionable now even if not as much as they were then."
I had to ask. "Do you have a combat kilt?"
He smiled and leaned in, taking my chin with his hand, "My dear, if it's all the rage I have at least one, and it would not take much to get me into one or out of one, just a word."
My cheeks turned a little bit red at that thought.
"Oh, for the love of Mando, remember who you are right now. Tabi, keep that attitude in the bedroom." Kastel whispered rather loudly coming up close to us.
I quickly stepped back and said, "Right, right remember who I am, yes. Hey, maybe we should go to that shop over there, it looks cooler than out here."
Tabi looked over at the little ice cream shop I had pointed to and now I just had then looked past it and said, "Hey 'Tanya' how well do you know your measurements? Because it looks like there's a good place to get an upgrade on your clubbing gear. Might be a good way to pay her back for making you so worried."
Looking to where Tabi was indicating I quickly saw the sign for the shop, Combat Clubbing. Right underneath it was a sign saying 25% off combat skirts. Said skirt was in the window and on the shorter end of decent.
I laughed as I realized the implication and said, "I'm quite familiar with Tanya's measurements." Getting her something to wear that was out of her comfort zone and making her wear it the next time we went to a club would be the perfect revenge for making me worried about her. I was all too familiar with her measurements. I even knew how large of a heel she could handle since she tended to wear shoes with a bit of heel in order to make our heights closer. Her being only 5'8 and me being 5'10, if people were paying attention they would quickly figure out that I was not Tanya. Unless you looked when she was wearing a bit of a heel on all her shoes, in which case she looked closer to 5'9.
Taking my hand, Tabi said, "Then let me lead the way my dear." I smiled and laughed as we walked towards the shop and laughed even louder as I heard Kastel comment behind us.
"I can't believe I volunteered for this Osik." he muttered with discontent.
Tabi opened the door and I was about to step in when I thought I heard a clicking noise. Confused, I looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary so I shrugged and walked into the shop.
Gargon City, Central District
Engiz Ordo
Following behind Tanya whilst keeping a good eye on her, I watched the city go by. The architecture was somewhat impressive, if a bit dingy. The buildings had a lot of the Mandalorian block style which showed their settler's roots. Those nearer to the center of the city, where we were now, had a lot of domed roofs to their building's designs, not too different from images I'd seen of Hutt territories. Considering there was a Central Palace in the middle of the city, now run by a cabal of gangsters as a casino, it was hard hard to forget that this planet had once been part of the Hutt Empire, though one of its more far flung and eventually abandoned territories.
Besides those thoughts I noticed that there were quite a few non-Mandalorians on this planet. Sure, there were plenty of people in armor and a lot of them didn't have Mandalorian visors or were wearing markings that indicated they were from other parts of the galaxy. If anything Gargon reminded me a bit of Coruscant with the amount of different people walking about and the neon lights. Quite a number of the buildings were more than 20 stories tall which led to darkness on a lot of the streets. The alleyways were basically pitch black so you had to rely on the neon lights to guide your path.
Tanya seemed to know exactly where she was going, easily navigating the streets, leading the way towards the wealthier parts of the town. I wondered what was going through her mind. I always knew that she had a bit of a fighter in her, but I didn't know until recently she had attempted to bridge her combative instincts with the peaceful ways of her aunt. To have what she had created taken and perverted the way it had been, it is easy to imagine that she was furious and apoplectic about the whole thing.
Of course it's hard to say if that was really what was going through her head. Even when she wasn't wearing a helmet she always seemed to have complete control of what she was revealing. All I knew for sure was she did not like whoever had taken her Silver Codex and was planning to take it back somehow. However, even if we could maintain her secret identity if she murdered the False Silver, as she called him, as far as I was aware there was a good chance her aunt would figure out who had done it. And if she did… well, considering how authoritarian she could get about her peaceful ways, I worried that Tanya might find herself in some trouble.
I would approach the subject, but I was sure she was already well aware of those possibilities and was coming up with her own plans for them. If not, well, either way this False Silver needed to be handled. Preventing a civil war was more important than her own political aspirations and if she was willing to give those political aspirations up, it just showed how dedicated she was to the people of Mandalore and a real peace. It Solidified my belief that she was someone special; the maverick Mandalore needed to set it all straight.
Before I could get too deep into that thought though, Tanya stopped and held her hand up. "Onyx, over there." Looking past Tanya I saw two of the black-clad Mandalorian mercenaries walking down the street following what appeared to be a higher up in Mandal Hypernautics. He wasn't wearing any armor but had a blaster at his side as well as the company logo on his shoulder. I knew that Tanya was trying not to look at him so I did the same, only using a corner of my visor to keep track of them. As we watched them they entered what appeared to be some sort of club though the guards seemed to be somewhat lacking as they waved people in and out without issue.
Over the internal com, I heard Tanya say, "Man looks like the type to have loose lips and be too far up for the company for his own good. I'd guess those two guards are there to keep an eye on him while drinking and not to protect him. That's what a good human resource officer would do in this situation if they couldn't fire the man directly."
Speaking back over the internal comm, "What's the plan then?"
"Oh that's quite simple, we just sit in hearing range and see what we can get." She said leading the way.
I shrugged, as that made as much sense as anything so I followed her in.
Inside of the club was, well, a club. There were people talking, flashing lights, and loud music. Though it was not as loud near the back of the facility, I quickly noted as we moved our way in that direction.
There were a handful of guards peppered around the place. Most of them were wearing Mandalorian armor of one form or another but not the black suited types that we've seen following the Hypernautics employee. Following the higher-up would mean being a bit easier to spot so Tanya took us on a circuitous route around the border of the room to a table just on the other side of the booth he took a seat in. His two guards remained standing at the edge of his table.
Then we sat just out of the guards' sights and listened in. Oddly enough the first thing we heard was not from the booth we were trying to eavesdrop on, but from the booth on the other side of us as a couple locals had a discussion.
"Did you hear about Clan Morson?" one of them said.
"Yeah that's a terrible thing, inviting a clan to negotiate and then locking their representatives up."
"They're not. They've been judged enemies of the state and he's executing them tomorrow in the old Hutt arena."
"Fucking psycho. Bossman really needs to deal with this guy. He's going too hard too fast. You don't execute an entire clan just because they didn't side with you when you gave them an offer. Chances are that's how you get other independent clans to unify against you."
"What do you expect? The man's from Mandalore, every single one of them is a psycho. They don't even consider the rest of us who live in the Mandalorian sector Mandalorians. We're all just armor thieves to them unless you were born and raised in Mandalore."
"Yeah, Skanah is probably going to have a lot of people watch the execution just to make a point of the whole deal and have the armor stripped from them to be given to his Silver Mandalorian army."
That was a little harsh. But then again not exactly wrong. The Traditionalist Mandalorians have always been a bit racist to anyone who had not really been born in Mandalore for a good hundred years. And my uncle, the patriarch of Ordo, had told me several times that even though the Traditionalists were out of power, their belief system hadn't exactly gone the way of the Mythosaur. Though if the man harbored those beliefs, it was strange the way he was enlisting non-Mandalorians into his army.
"Trying to define who's Mandalorian and who's not for your benefit. Of course," Tanya muttered over the internal comm, her head shaking slightly. She continued by saying, "I'm starting to think this would have been a self-solving problem if he wasn't using the Silver Codex the way he was. Even with him using it, this might still be a problem that would solve itself, but it would leave the Silver Codex too damaged to serve its original purpose. It might also take too long for us to let the situation be resolved on its own."
"And how exactly are we going to solve the problem, Steel?" I asked "I mean, have you thought about what you're going to have to do if you have to kill him?"
"Hopefully it won't come to that. What we need to do is humiliate him in such a way that no one will believe he's the White Silver. Past that, well, it depends on what he does." The way she said it was just so cold and impersonal I got the feeling she was not even worried about the possibility of having to kill him which was concerning to say the least.
Before I could probe deeper, the conversation we had been waiting for started. A figure in red and blue Mandalorian armor sat down across from our target. Distinctly different from the black mercenaries guarding the Hypernautic rep.
With an odd accent she said, "Is the White Silver too busy to have these meetings, or does he forget we could cut support for his little uprising if we judge him to be too much of an issue?"
"He knows who supports him and he sends his regards, he would be here himself but matters of state required his attention. As for your support, he is very glad to have it and is willing to continue all deals as long as you still provide the required assets."
"Yes, the required assets, the Battle Legionnaires, will be here soon enough, but we were under the impression that White Silver was wise enough not to stir the pot on his own planet. The council is worried that the rebellion may become a counter-rebellion and we'll end up arming our enemies."
"It won't happen. Once the nomad clans are brought under our control this planet will be secure and we can get to work spreading the rebellion to other worlds, but we need droids to build our army. We do not have the manpower to waste."
"The droids will be here but we may need to negotiate a more equitable price if they're going to be used as a law enforcement unit and not for the defense we were told."
"That's fine, the boss is working with a crew to start tearing into a few more debris fields and we'll have more resources at our disposal to send your way. Not as good of a quality of metal in those fields, but there'll be more of them."
I heard an audible sigh of contempt before she said, "Fine, I'll send a message and inform them of the negotiations proceeding well enough and the droids will be here within the week. However, can we meet somewhere more private? This place feels like it has ears in the walls."
The figure started looking about the room and Tanya grabbed my wrist and indicated we needed to get out of here.
Following her lead we made our way out of the room in hopes of avoiding the gaze of the figure with a strange accent. We were able to get outside quickly and I was able to take a breath but before I could get a word out Tanya pulled me towards an alleyway and said over the intercoms. "Push me against the wall, hand on my hip, helmet to helmet. Now!"
I was left stunned for a second and nearly got out a "What?" before she said, "Do it now!" And I did as she demanded> I pushed her against the wall, put my forehead to her forehead in a Keldabe kiss and put my hand on her hip. I had no idea why I was doing this but an order is an order.
Tanya quickly put her own arm around mine to hold the back of my helmet, forcing our bodies closer, the chest plates of our armor touching. I was left with many questions, one was 'had Tanya always been that short 'cause I had to crane my neck a bit to look down at her so our foreheads met properly?' Two, 'why was my face so hot and was this some sort of dream?' And three, 'why the hell was this happening?'
I got an answer to three as through the corner of my visor I saw the red and blue armored Mandalorian from before go across the mouth of the alleyway looking for something they stopped and looked directly at us and shook their head and continued walking.
After a few minutes Tanya finally broke the hold, "That was a little too close for comfort." She said looking down the alleyway towards the street.
"Sorry." I said, still fairly warm after that.
"No, not you. You were perfectly close. I meant getting nearly caught by that unknown supporter." She said while looking like we hadn't just 'helmet kissed'.
"Have you ever heard of something called a Battle Legionnaire, Engiz?"
I shook my head and said, "No, that's obviously a droid of some kind but I've never heard of it before."
"Hmm well whoever is producing them is obviously not a friend of Mandalore. We need to keep note of that when this operation is over. Let's get moving Onyx, we've got plenty more places to check out, information to dig up, and plans to make."
"Yes ma'am." I said, trying not to think about what she meant that I was perfectly close?
Writers note: and I present the longest chapter yet, the last bit of around the sector world building and events before the fighting begins. I would say more but ah tired.
Edited by:Markus Gollinger, Warmach1ne32, luke the man
Community edited by:Ryan Pirtle, Jake Breker, Angellica Gearcrooner
Community editable doc (Chapter 18) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
Commissioned Artist a_yoshikage
Supporters: Neso, Markus, Mackenzie Buckle, Silver Wolf, Falk H, Mana Rope, Daniel Martinez, michael, Devilstar101, Hats88, DrkShdow, James Moorhouse, Matthew D, Duncan Sproule, Yamato
714FNM 24 BBY
Month 9
Mandalorian sector, Ratio
Tanya Kryze
I pressed a few buttons and my game piece moved into position so that it could strike my opponent's game piece. And thankfully my knowledge of this particular game paid off as I was able to defeat it successfully.
"Not bad, Silver." Rahm Kota said, looking over the board from his seat. "Do you play strategy games often?"
I shook my head, my face hidden behind the helmet. I had planned to get used to wearing a helmet 24/7 when we actually got to Gargon as I would need to keep my identity a secret. I wanted the Silver Codex to prosper on its own without the baggage that my family line could bring along with it. But the last minute inclusion of a Jedi into our plans had thrown that out the window and I would need to get used to it real quick.
Thankfully, I don't believe he had seen my face and considering the stakes that were involved, I removed the dye from my hair returning it to its natural auburn state in case my helmet cracked or something else happened. As far as the people in politics knew, my hair was blonde and I was running around the Mandalorian Sector putting out political fires with two of my Royal Guards. If somehow my helmet came loose or I was glimpsed when I didn't have it on, like what happened with Rahm Kota where he had seen me from behind, all they would know was that the girl behind White Silver had auburn hair, something I could easily cover up.
"I would love to play more games of strategy," I said matter of factly, "but I'm quite busy with my outside endeavors for peace such as this journey."
"Endeavors for peace? With the amount of weaponry I've seen on board the ship, that's a strange statement." The Jedi knight— or master, I didn't know him very well so it could be either— pressed a few buttons and sent a creature across the board, killing him. One of my pawns, as it were.
"Not bad." I said, noting that he had created an opening in my line that could be exploited by one of his units on his turn to get pretty close to my commander. I pressed a few buttons and sent a unit to cover that hole. I know I was playing a little bit reactionary but I was waiting for the right moment, for a push into his lines.
"Peace is a tool of great economic prosperity. Peace allows development of technologies that will make people's lives better. This peace is easily broken by those who simply want to take what was made for themselves, one must be prepared to defend peace. If you're not ready to defend your peace, someone will take it from you."
The Jedi nodded his head as he rubbed his chin beard then pressed a few buttons sending another attack towards my lines on the holographic table. "Wise words for one so young, and not a bad philosophy. Almost believe you're working on another codex if you really are the maker of the first."
"I probably will be forced to make another one." I muttered, pressing some buttons to block his attack and move a unit forward to threaten the side of a quick moving assault unit. "I only wanted to make a codex with the idea of looking at our history from another point of view. One where we were not always violent aggressors but could be defensively focused, a view to try and calm relations between the New Mandalorians and the Older Mandalorians, the Traditionalists. This False Silver has done a lot of damage to that idea. After I reveal to the sector that he is not the creator of the codex and clear the document of his fraudulency, I'm going to have to come up with a new edition of the work to try and prevent people from using my defensive focus and in such a manner going forward."
"Such assurance in your victory," the Jedi noted, "combat is not a game, White Silver. I don't know what life you led before your foray into philosophy but just because you think you're in the right does not mean you will win. You could fail and everyone in this ship could be dead by the end of your mission."
"Possibly." I said moving a unit to meet his latest attack. He was a bit on the reckless side with his units, I noted. "But I think things will work out in our favor. Aboard this ship are four of some of the best trained Mandalorians that you can find in the Mandalorian Sector. Adding to that my not too terrible fighting ability, that's a pretty good strike team. We also have access to a well-trained armorer who's been modifying our gear for the last week before we took off. And it would seem your Force is in our corner; why else would a Jedi Knight find his way to an abandoned mining facility that we used for this operation?"
I was poking at that little subject, if it was the Force that was ...concerning. Hope there wasn't 'Being X level shenanigans' going on, but if it wasn't I would like to know who had sent him. Very few people should know where I trained in my youth and no one should know I had been there when Kota found me.
The Jedi nodded his head and then said, "I did feel the Force would guide me to where I needed to be on this, why else would I have found my way to the Mandalorian Sector before something like this would happen." He sent another attack force forward attempting to pierce my lines on the right side.
"Coincidence," I said matter of factly as I reinforced those lines. "At least for why you're in the system. While we are on this topic, I don't know much about the Force, being just a normal person. So I'll make no statements about finding your way to our little band of heroes."
Rahm Kota chuckled at that for some reason before he asked, "I have to wonder, why did you let me on board your ship? Strange Jedi Knight that just pops out of the wilderness. It seems a bit odd that a band of Mandalorians would allow me to come along."
"The scars," I said plainly. "I could tell you'd been in combat more than a fair bit and considering you still have all of your limbs, that means that whatever combat you've seen you've won fairly successfully. Frankly, the bigger concern in my mind is your connection to the Jedi Order. Being accused of being pawns of the Jedi would not help in this operation."
Rahm Kota nodded his head before asking, "If that's such a big concern, why did you let me on then?"
"Jedi are massive force multipliers, no pun intended. Usually, whichever side of any conflict they get involved in has them, wins. To deny that is to deny your own eyes. Having a Jedi on your side is worth the potential issue and could be easily denied through various methods. If you are willing to wear a helmet and lay off the lightsaber work that would be the easiest since it would be much harder to make sure you appeared to have wandered into the situation at the last moment instead of being sent here directly by the Jedi Order. Besides that, I had a good feeling."
"A good feeling?" Kota said, sitting forward.
"As I said, wherever Jedi go, they tend to be on the winning side. If the Force is real and it sent one of its agents to help set things right, then I know that I'm on the right course to making sure Mandalore gets to continue the peaceful period of economic growth it needs." With that said, I pressed a few buttons sending my leader's main contingent forward, this entire time I've been stretching his lines out slowly and steadily during the assaults until there was only a small area between his command force and mine. It was easy to pierce the line and send my force directly into his.
"Oh, that was bold." Kota said.
"That is game, set, and match." I said sitting back in my seats waiting for him to realize that I was right in that assumption. Rahm Kota could pull forces back to try and help his leadership unit get out of the situation it was in, but every time he did so, that would allow me to push a unit into their lines, carving them up even more. Might take three to four turns to completely finish it but the game was, in essence, already over.
"Damn." he muttered, looking at the board.
Standing up I said, "Well that was fun, care to play again tomorrow? I have to go check on my equipment for this mission."
He nodded in agreement and I left the table heading towards my room. Once inside I closed and locked the door and took off my helmet to get some 'fresh' air. I had been wearing the helmet nearly constantly for three days and I would probably have to wear it for another three days before we arrived at Gargon. I had a feeling by the time this mission was over I might be called out for being 'paler than a vampire'.
I moved over to my armor to check it over, to make sure it was in good condition. A Mandalorian was only as good as their equipment, some would say. Well, I would just like to make sure my equipment didn't jam on me in a life and death situation and cost me my life.
It had as many Beskar plates as my Kryze armor and it looks suitably impressive when worn. A majority of it is silver in coloration, not bothering with paint in most cases since I did not want to link my colors of green to the silver and white needed for this operation. But it was painted in a few places with white stripes and to complete it Zum had provided me with a white shoulder cape which apparently had been a large fad with the Traditionalist Mandalorians before the end of the Civil War. I wasn't much of an artist so I hadn't painted anything else on the suit, leaving the simple white lines running up the armor for what it was, though it did look a bit plain.
Normally I would leave it that way but I was considering ways of possibly altering it if I was going to successfully steal back the title of White Silver. For this identity, I needed to make sure that everyone knew what the armor of White Silver looked like. I wasn't exactly sure what I could add to do that. If I get the chance, I would probably modify it again. Well, hopefully after this mission I could just lock this in a closet on Concordia and never think about it again. However, that is a bad investment to leave hanging around like that. Zum had gone all out putting on every little trinket he apparently could think of into the armor from a vambrace energy shield to a utility belt filled with neat little gadgets. Either X4 had overpaid or the CEO of Mandal Hypernautics had screwed him over in some way and he really wanted to make sure he was brought down because this stuff probably would have eaten enough money for two pairs of suits and Zum had been able to produce all six without issue.
As for the weapons I had acquired for this mission: a pair of Westar 35 pistols, a Galaar 15 Blaster with a folding stock (which I asked Zum to add in case I needed a steady shot), and a bayonet in case I needed to stab someone. Simple and safe weapons that any Mandalorian could get their hands on that I could easily have keyed to work with the targeting systems on my helmet. My helmet was a feat of engineering, a marvel in its own right, as Zum had included a voice distorter which would be a useful little gizmo for the political talks that I'm sure would happen when I started reaching out to potential allies on the planet's surface. Other than that, it also has a HUD that displays where my Westar pistols are aiming and multi-spectrum vision modes to see in the dark or to spot heat signatures.
However it's my vambraces that I am considering adding to my family armor. On my left is an energy shield and a flash projector that shines blinding light from my palm and, when not in use, it retracts into the vambrace. On my right is a fibrecord whip, which is basically a grappling hook, that can also electrocute a target with a press of a button; a special surprise which took inspiration from a western I watched in my second life. Zum managed to fit an old deactivator pistol into the vambrace and it would pop out with a flick of my wrist, ready to shut down a droid or stun a person. After False Silver is dealt with, Zum mentioned that he'll try to make a version that can achieve something similar but with a blaster pistol but for now a deactivator is the only thing small enough to fit without being noticable.
As Rahm Kota had said, there was a chance that every single person on this ship could die if I relied on them alone, but I was not going to limit my potential manpower like that. There was no way that the people of Gargon were fully sold on a corporate authority taking over their planet. I simply needed to align myself with these rebels and make sure they were successful in bringing him down. Stories of a Silver Knight coming to support their efforts would then spread throughout the sector as time went on and hopefully that would undo the majority of the damage False Silver did to the codex.
It was possible that would not happen, but I had a feeling that I was making the right choices. I've spent a lot of time in the Mandalorian Sector and I understood their culture as best as I think anyone could, and nothing spoke more to Mandalorians than bold action. What I was banking on was a massively bold move that I hoped would do the job.
I sat down on my bed and picked up the chest plate which had been painted mostly white and was about to get to work cleaning it when I had a bit of a thought that brought a chuckle to my lips. Pulling out a knife from the utility belt I brought the mostly painted white armor over to my desk and laid it down and then carefully started to chip away the paint over the right breast. I was no artist but I was not exactly going to a fashion contest and I believe I managed to successfully carve in what I wanted. A pair of silver wings right above my heart with two silver tail feathers coming off the central body of the wings. It wasn't much, but it would do for customizations. I could always have this improved later but a reference to the Silver Wings Assault Medal that I'd earned a lifetime ago was enjoyable to my eyes.
Gargon orbit, Ratio
Tanya Kryze
I have never had the urge to learn to fly a spacecraft. To fly with a jetpack however— to be as close to personal flight and what I dearly loved about it— that I had gone out of my way to learn. Flying a spacecraft was something I hadn't needed to know, however since I'd taken the Captain's quarters and was the closest person to the pilots section that had changed. In case of an emergency, the Royal Guard Captain had gone out of his way to make sure that I was given lessons as well in the two seat cockpit of the ship.
I don't know how well I was doing but I could at least follow orders well enough. I had to admit I had a good view of the planet we were heading to from my position. Outside the window the snowy planet of Gargon was slowly coming into view. Though 'snowy' was possibly not the correct word for the planet, as a large percentage of the planet was mountainous. High mountains which collected a lot of moisture with colder air\ created snowy peaks, and as a result there were very few safe landing places on the planet. One was in Gargon City, the crime filled metropolis, and from what I understood was the main headquarters of Mandel Hypernautics and this new empire they were planning to build. The other places are small towns and villages that provided food to the roaming nomads of the planet in exchange for protection from other nomads who would want to steal it.
It was a very disorganized mess from what I understood, but it was a system that worked for these people and quite a few of them were Old Mandalorians who had been originally banished from Mandalore after the Clan Wars. Since it was still in the Mandalorian Sector but not under the control of New Mandalorians, being firmly under the control of— let's call them Gangster Mandalorians— at least I hope the gangster element was Mandalorian on this planet. I have been studying as much as I could and it looked like at one point the Hutts had a stake on the planet but were no longer interested.
"I hope everyone packed a warm suit of underclothing, because that planet's chilly this time of year." Skota, the Royal Guard Medic, said from the hallway behind the cockpit looking through to the outside.
"I'm more concerned with that small fleet." Guard Captain Struc said, "Pay note to the 50-odd ships in orbit around the planet; most appear to be retrofitted freighters. A lot of them appear to be Mandalorian design, specifically some of the export models Mandel Motors had been producing for the Hutts."
Well, considering my meeting with their representative months ago, it's possible that these were rip-off designs produced by Mandel Hypernautics and were all sold to the Hutts. There's nothing too big besides three ancient dungeon ships that look like they'd been rushed back into service. The large cubes were slowly moving into geosynchronous orbit above what I would have to guess was Gargon City, and they looked like they were armed for a fight.
"Any idea if they're going to prevent us from landing?" I asked though I didn't really figure they would.
"It looks like they're preventing anyone from coming through the main spaceport, I just put in a request and they told me to 'Blast off'. However a smaller port town just south of Gargon is still taking ships."
"So Hypernautics has complete control over people going in and out of the city but not the planet itself? That's a good sign." I said.
"They don't have complete control over the planet?" Rahm Kota said from somewhere behind me. "You'd think he'd make sure to have at least that before he sprung this attempted rebellion."
"Technically, Gargon is not part of the traditional structure of the sector." I responded, "Yes, the Mandalorian Senator represents Gargon, as it's located inside the sector, but it has never sworn fealty to the New Mandalorian Duchess, so this isn't really much of a rebellion yet as a change of management. No doubt though this will lead to a rebellion if left unchecked." I supplied the theoretical answer to this question before continuing. "He likely doesn't want people getting in and out of the city just yet while he secures the loyalty of the planet's gangs. Once he has the gangs under his command, he can move on to try and secure the loyalty of the nomads. After that he'll probably have no issue with allowing in unlucky people who are unaware he has usurped the name of White Silver and put them to work in his army or factories, building weapons for whatever rebellious plans he's got."
"Still, that seems like a rather small force to hold the orbital high ground." Rahm Kota commented.
"It's small, but it's big enough to be comparable to the New Mandalorian Royal Guard, which would be the most likely force to be sent against such an operation. In addition to that, there's no guarantee that he doesn't have more ships hidden around the moon somewhere just to draw the Royal Guard into a false sense of security before springing the trap." The Guard Captain said, matter of factly.
"Always best to keep some of your cards hidden, if your enemy underestimates you, they are in for a nasty surprise."
"Well let's hope he's made a massive mistake with this whole rebellion business then." Rahm Kota said as I heard him turning to walk away.
"Anyways," Captain Struc said, "I have been given the okay for landing at the village of Garval, shall I proceed with a landing, Steel?"
I chuckled at the use of the code names that we had decided on for the mission. Technically I was still the White Silver and I would need to obtain that name when we finally completed the mission but until that moment it was better to use different names for conversations with other people. "Just take us in Strike, let's find out what awaits us on that planet."
With that said, our little ship began a swift descent to the planet, soon arriving at the fairly small town a good 30-40 miles away from the city of Gargon. Stepping off the ship I had to note that the planet was, in fact, very cold and was glad I had packed some warm under-armor clothing. It is a fairly bustling town, mostly blocky double story buildings but they are fairly small; likely homes or small businesses.it feels very familiar to the 'Small town USA' area that I hid in my second life after the war. Only instead of paved roads, it's still using packed dirt.
The space port, if you could call it that, is basically a wide plateau outside the town where multiple ships can land. I could see the port building had a tower, a hangar right next to it, as well as fuel tanks nearby. Everything it needed to be a rural space port, I even saw a Gozanti freighter out in the distance surrounded by dozens of smaller freighters and shuttles.
The rest of the guards, Zum, and Kota joined me outside. I tapped the side of my helmet to activate the radio, "S4, stay onboard the Ratio and try to keep everyone in contact with each other. You'll have better communication systems than most of us will, most likely."
"Will do, Mistress," came the robotic voice before I turned to face the other members of my band. After a day of thinking it became obvious very quickly that X4's codename is too long so I had changed it to the more abbreviated S4.
"Alright so here are our objectives: we need to make contact with both the nomads and also with anyone interested in preventing Mandel Hypernautics from taking over the planet. With their help, we'll see if we can put Mandal Hypernautics out of business."
"Rahm, Zero, and Strike, I think if I put you in charge of finding the nomads you can pull it off, don't you agree?" I was speaking low enough that they could hear me but no one outside our group would be able to. Best to be careful as we didn't know what ears were on us already.
Rahm nodded his head and said, "Putting your faith in the Force, are you?"
"No," I responded quickly, "Strike and Zero are more likely to find the nomads than not but I also can't have you going into Gargon city until we have the initiative in our hands. As I said, better for you to appear uninvolved with the effort until the last moment as if you just showed up for the fight."
He nodded his head before the Struc asked. "So the three of us will be outside the city searching for the nomads. What are the four of you going to do?"
"We're going to find our way into the city and split up into two teams of two. Our job is to either find allies in the city or gather information about what Mandal Hypernautics are up to. We'll try and stay in contact through our comms but too much of that could draw attention so we'll be careful on that and neither one of us will be trying to start any fights, understood?"
"I'm not a big fan of you guys splitting up." Struc noted.
"Two people are a lot more maneuverable than four." I simply responded, "Onyx and I will be one team and Skota and Mok will be the other."
"Wait, what?" Ordo said, sounding confused.
I simply shrugged it off, and gave the comment, "A male and a female Mandalorian walking together are more likely to be taken as a couple out for a stroll than being foreign spies."
"Okay, let's mix up, great plan. How are we going to get into the city though?" Mok asked, sounding a bit concerned.
Before I could give an answer I saw someone coming up from the port office. A tall older gentleman by the looks of it using a cane to walk in our direction.
"Hello there, I hope you have money to pay for your stay." The gentleman said, his face scarred with age. He took a look at us and then said with a grimace of displeasure, "Oh no, you people aren't here to join that damn Silver cult are you?"
I looked to the others using the turn of my helmet to hide that my hand had slipped to my vambrace to turn on the voice changer before looking back at the older gentleman and asked, "And what if we are?"
"I would be forced to offer you a reduced price for your stay and tell you when the bus arrives. Otherwise the fracking black Mando Mercs will be breaking down my door to say I'm being anti-codex."
I thought I felt a blood vessel pop just above my eyes. Thank Mandalore for our helmets because I could keep a rather unimpressed look even as I was wanting to wring the neck of the False Silver. "How many credits is the normal payment for a stay at your fine establishment?"
"20 credits today, and you have to buy fuel separately if you want to refill your tanks."
I nodded and reached into my pocket pulling out 20 credit ingots and handing it over to him. "That should cover today and there's a droid on board who will continue to pay until we return if that's alright with you?"
A man raised an eyebrow before he said, "As long as he pays a full 20, I don't give a kriff where the money comes from. Anything else I can do for you, madam?"
"Yes, when is this bus supposed to arrive? And can you keep quiet about where our ship is if anyone comes asking?" I asked, handing him another 20.
The man blinked, looked at the money, nodded at his head, and pocketed it before saying, "Next bus to Gargon arrives in 33 minutes.Not a lot of people will be on it so you should have a quiet and uneventful ride. As far as I'm concerned, this ship's not even here. I have no idea who dropped it off, have fun in Gargon, madam." The gentleman said before turning and walking away.
Turning back to my companions said "And I believe that has been settled. We'll make contact with S4 in four hours. We should keep making contact with him occasionally to maintain that we haven't run into issues and we don't need to rush anything, agreed?" The other Mandalorians and Jedi nodded before I turned to face in the direction of the road. "Now Onyx, Scalpel, and Click let's go find that bus stop."
Gargon, 2 miles out of Garval Village
Struc Ordack
"Not really seeing how this is going to find the nomads." Zum said as Rahm sat on a rock across from me and Zum.
We wandered our way out of town to find the nomads. I would have preferred to have tried to talk to the townsfolk but Rahm seemed to know where he was going and, well, tracking nomads was not exactly something I'd ever done. I battled on Mandalore during the Civil War and though there were a few nomadic clans there, most had already settled into cities or clan fortresses.
We'd gotten a good way away from the small town before Rahm saw a rock and sat down on it. Since then we'd been here for the last 20 minutes waiting to see exactly where we were going. To be fair the scenery is pretty nice to look at, blue skies, snow capped peaks in the distance, tall grass all around with many boulders scattered around the area, likely a result from erosion. It's sights like this that can make me see the appeal of getting away from the hustle and bustle of city life.
"He's probably listening to the Force, Jedi are known to sit and just feel the Force for hours on end." I reasoned.
"I know that, but why is he doing that now?"
"Beats me, probably asking it for directions? I don't know how it works so I'll let the expert do his thing." I shrug whilst half-heartedly answer.
"Patience is a virtue, my friend." Rahm said from the rock he is on, causing me to look at him.
Pointing towards a nearby tree stump he said, "That tree over there has damage from a lance hitting it," pointing to another area he said, "there's a bit of afterburn on that rock," Finally he pointed at the ground between Zum and myself which caused us to look down. There was a piece of metal that could be any other piece of metal as far as I was concerned. "and speeder bike damage, most likely had a wipeout around here. If I had to make my guess the nomads use this area for travel, possibly to get to the town for trade. We only need to wait a few moments and then I'm sure a group of them will come sailing over the horizon on some sort of trade trip towards the local town."
"Right, that seems a bit hopeful." I mentioned. I turned to Zum and asked, "Have any better ideas?"
The old armorer shrugged saying, "This is not exactly something I usually get up to. Most nomads have their own armors and those that don't exactly call on space traveling ones like myself. Probably use the local town armorer for most of their gear."
"My best guess would be to walk back into town and just start asking questions. Maybe someone will have a direction we can head towards." I offered in hopes of speeding this whole thing along.
"I don't think that'll be necessary." Rahm said, raising his hands in a surrendering manner. "The other reason I chose this specific position was it was so open I was sure that if the nomads had any scouts in the area that they would spot us from several miles away and organize some sort of reaction to a couple strange Mandalorians and someone who looks mysterious."
I turned to look at him wondering why he had his hands up, "What kind of react-" I didn't get to finish as I heard the cocking of a slugthrower behind me. It's times like this I miss the smart microphones in my Royal Guard helmet. I would have heard him coming long before he came this close.
"Raise your hands carefully, Aruetii." Someone said from behind us in perfect Mandoa.
I was going to say something when Rahm spoke in accented Mandoa. He's using some of the ancient words instead of the more modern basics that had slipped in over the millennium. "We mean you no harm, wanderers. We are fellow warriors, searching the mountain for friends."
"Friends are hard to come by in times of need," came a voice from behind me, "but if you don't know them how can they be friends?"
"If an enemy of my enemy is not my enemy, are they not at least an ally worthy of considering a friend."
"And what enemy would be my enemy?"
"The one who would threaten your nomadic lifestyle and enslave you to the factories of the great City of Gargon."
I heard an audible spit, I hoped he wasn't wearing a fully sealed helmet, before the Mando said, "That city was never great, it was always a cesspool. But you have a point." I saw Rahm lower his hands, and I took that as a sign that the threat had passed so I lowered my own.
Turning to look over my shoulder I saw a Mandalorian with what appeared to be red armor looking at us, with a thankfully open helmet. He is armed with a slug thrower that looked older than the Mandalorian Civil war. Granted, every slugthrower looked older than the Civil War, yet this looked well taken care of as its wooden stock has the shine of lacquer and the metal has the subdued shine of blackened beskar.
"What's the deal? Why do you want to help us against the Silver Shabiir when you are wearing his colors?"
Zum spoke up first, "The situation is complex but I will but I'll simplify it to the important part.. We don't believe he's the real White Silver and we're here to prevent his continued use of the name."
The red Mandalorian chuckled. "Can't even hold his own cult to him, what a weak Mandalore. I'm Rath of Clan Glint. If you're really the enemy of the Silver Shabiir, then I welcome you to our rebellion. If not, we can always use more nutrients and we're always in the market for more beskar. Don't betray us. Got it?"
I nodded and said, "We understand. We are not going to betray you. Our interests align."
"Good." He put his hand to his helmet, "I'm going to call a speeder so we can get you guys to the camp. The leaders are going to have questions you're going to need to answer. All clear fellas." Before our eyes, three other Mandos rose from the tall grass around us.
I nodded before taking a step back till I was next to where Rahm and Zum was standing and asked, "How do you know Mandoa?"
"Oh that? Mando poetry is quite popular and was a required reading for a few years. And considering the amount of times Jedi have ended up in conflict with Mandalorians I thought it was the best to actually be able to speak your language. You never know when it may come in handy."
I left it at that and said, "You're a strange Jedi, aren't you."
"I prefer the term 'prepared' Jedi." He said with all seriousness, causing me to chuckle.
Mandalore, Sundari
Obi-Wan Kenobi
"Well this place seems to have built up well." I mused looking at the cityscape, from the window of the transport I was in.
"Master?" Anakin asked from my side looking out the same window.
"It's been a 17 years since I've been on this planet. Looks like it was well on its way to recovery, as when I was here all those years ago, they didn't have dome cities like this." I explained as he nodded his head.
"Strange that they built domes over their cities. I'm not a fan of sand as much as the next person but it seems a little bit of an overreaction."
"Well that may be true for Tatooine but Mandalore's atmosphere has a tendency to have poisons in it, limiting their exposure is often for the best." I explained as I looked out the window seeing the Royal Palace starting to come into view. I had not expected to ever come back to Mandalore, after I left all those years ago I'd pretty much had the assumption that I'd never be here again. But the Force works in mysterious ways. News of the Silver Codex Rebellion, as some of the Masters had called it, had quickly reached the Jedi Temple. Normally this sort of intersector conflict would have taken a bit longer to get up the chain of command of worry, as the Jedi Order usually sent people to deal with these situations upon requests and didn't insert itself often. The problem is that a Jedi may have inserted themselves into the conflict prematurely, and so the Order needed to find out what was going on.
As I had become the resident Mandalorian expert due to my history, I had been assigned to pay a visit to Mandalore with my young Padawan.
Shaking my head I muttered, "What was Rahm Kota thinking, getting himself involved in this?"
But the universe didn't answer, all I got was Anakin asking, "Do you think Tanya's here?"
I shrugged and said, "I don't know, I know she was a proponent of the Silver Codex so I imagine that politics have made her go into seclusion until this whole situation is handled. She could be here or she could be on any of the other Mandalorian worlds."
"Hmm, that's too bad." Anakin sounded a little bit sad not to be able to talk to her. He told me about their meeting at the Jedi Temple so I imagine it was simply a slow journey to friendship those two were on. Which is good; having friends in Mandalore could not hurt relations with the system.
"I'm sure that she'll turn up soon enough. After all, even if she's in political hiding they're going to want to keep her safe and the safest place in the Mandalorian Sector is the Royal Palace."
That seemed to bring a smile to young Anakin's face but before I could give that too much thought the transport came to land on one of the platforms in front of the Royal Palace.
"Well, here we are." I muttered, walking towards the door and stepping out with Anakin right behind me. There waiting for us were a couple of Royal Guards who immediately asked us to follow them, eventually leading us into the Royal Palace's large greeting room.
There I saw a face I had not seen in years. Upon the throne was Duchess Satine, next to her was an older man with a beard and they were deep in discussion as we entered. "Duchess Satine." I said, giving a bow. Though I didn't see it, I suspected Anakin did the same.
"Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're not someone I expected to see." She said, while looking down at us. "Pray tell, why have you come to Mandalore?"
Standing up to my full height I said, "One of our Order may have gotten himself involved in the current situation within Gargon and we were simply sent to be at your service if the Gargon situation was to go out of control."
"That situation is completely under control," the elder man said, "Gargon is a backwater planet at the best of times and barely even part of the sector. We are already in the process of working out treaties with the other planets to lay a blockade on any goods coming in and out of the system to the rest of the sector until the madness that seems to have taken it over is undone."
I rubbed my beard in thought, "An economic war. That seems a bit passive but it could work." The Duchess got up from her seat as I mused on the plan.
"It may be passive but it should be effective in stopping the spread of Mandal Hypernautics' influence," she said, "Though I wonder why the Jedi Order are so concerned over one of their own interfering in the situation that they'd send two of their Jedi to look after me. Is it perhaps because they worry that this will give the CEO exactly what he wants? For this Jedi to attempt to set things right the way only Jedi know how and fail, causing the CEO to have perfect propaganda to use to attempt to inflame the passions of the people against me?"
I swallowed deeply. She'd got it in one. I've never been good at politics but Satine had decades of practice with running the Mandalore system. Sure, I was good at diplomacy, but that was different. Getting two sides to stop fighting each other was one thing; getting two sides to work together was another.
"My Duchess is insightful as to the Council's worries." I admitted.
She nodded and said, "It's an unfortunate thing. The wounds of the Republic Excision still run deep and the CEO is playing deeply into those wounds." She shook her head before continuing. "Hopefully your rogue Jedi doesn't cause too many problems. I've worked very hard to bring peace to this planet and I'd hate to see it all go up in flames."
I nodded my agreement before saying, "I'm sure with a little search of Concordia we can find him and get this whole matter settled. But until we do, the Council thought it best to take preemptive measures."
The Duchess nodded her head before saying, "I will arrange a few Royal Guards to help you in this search and we'll see if we can get you a place to stay while you find your rogue Jedi." She then smiled and said, "I'm glad to see you again, Ben."
I smiled back and said, "It's good to see you too, Satine."
"Perhaps we'll have a walk later. I have meetings to attend but I wouldn't mind showing you the progress that's been made in the city."
"I'd like that."
She nodded and moved past me, heading off to whatever meeting apparently needed to be done to deal with the current situation unfolding over Gargon.
The older man walked past me and gave me another strange look, a mix of annoyance and amusement. But he quickly left, leaving me and Anakin in the room.
Turning to Anakin I said, "Well, I guess we'd better see about finding a hotel." I stopped that thought when I saw he was looking at the door Satine had gone through with a look that almost said he understood something all of a sudden. "Anakin?" I asked, confused.
Anakin quickly shook his head and said, "Nothing master, we should probably find a hotel or something."
Gargon City, Warehouse District
Thisish Skota
"This is a terrible plan." I muttered as Mok continued his work trying to break into Mandal Hypernautics' warehouse's electronic lock.
"This is a great plan," Mok responded as a cable sparked inside the box he was working in. "Ah I'm sure that wasn't important." he said before continuing his work.
I wasn't exactly thrilled at the notion of it being two man teams, let alone letting the princess go off on her own with that kid, but I trusted Struc to know what he's doing and if he thought that Tanya had something I guess I would have to go along with it.
I hated this whole operation. I lost a lot of friends and family during the Clan War and was thoroughly not a fan of conflict. The only reason I joined was that Duchess Satine wanted the best of the best to be in her Royal Guard and being a professional surgeon for several years after graduating from the University of Alderaan meant that I likely had the most attractive resume for a medical position. The Royal Guard were not expected to go out and fight, and with the Duchess's connection to the New Mandalorian philosophy of pacifism I thought at most I would have to deal with food poisoning or an injury caused by a fall with a very rare case of attempted assassination. When I was assigned to be the princess's medic, I thought it would be much of the same: take care of her health and be there with a cure just in case someone slipped her a poison or something.
However, now here I was helping her attempt a murder or a coup. Really, what was the plan for the girl? If I was to believe what we had been told, this was an operation to clean the name of the Silver Codex which I wasn't exactly a fan of. Sure it was better than the Traditionalist's way, but it still saw violence as necessary in its text.
I'd prefer not to not even be involved in this whole operation, but I swore an oath when I joined the Guard and I wasn't going to break it just because I had issues with some possible outcomes of the operation.
Perhaps real violence would scare the girl straight and she would end this notion of the Silver Codex and let it die on the vine. Although after Struc's tests I find it highly unlikely. I just had to hope though that we didn't all end up dead as well.
My personal problems aside, we'd split up from the princess and the kid to explore the city trying to gather intelligence. Right off the bus there had been a recruitment agent to try and get people to sign up for their new Silver Guard, apparently some kind of civil militia that the CEO was putting together.
The black uniformed Mandel Hypernautics agent was somewhat pushy, but he'd let us go after a little talk from Tanya. One thing I'd give her, it felt like she could talk her way out of pretty much anything.
Mok and I had made our way deeper into the city and found ourselves in a warehouse district. The guards had been fairly consistent throughout the city, black clad mercenaries watching corners often led by what I could guess were real Mandalorians in older armor with a white emblem of their mercenary group. They seemed to be less prominent near this particular section of the Warehouse district. I suspected it was so deep inside the city that they weren't considering anyone would try and raid it, which was reasonable. From the few speeder trucks that had gone by it looked like it was a warehouse for raw materials. Why would anyone steal iron that hadn't even been processed? Why would you want to get into the facility even if it was the least valuable element in the supply train?
Well our resident slicer has a reason, the answer is that the facility itself is still hard-wired into the network that Mandel Hypernautics used for its intake and resource management. Once we tapped into it we could be able to see the entire network and all of the information inside.
So we've done exactly what we've been told to do by gathering intel. We'd quickly broken into the facility, then found our way to the foreman's office and started to get to work finding out what was going on and what was coming in.
"Anything of interest?" I asked leaning against the foreman's desk and watching the door in case said foreman decided to return.
"Nothing yet, a lot of shipments of raw resources, apparently they've been buying beskar from some old debris fields that date back to the Mandalorian Wars."
"Chakaar." I muttered.
"Yeah, apparently the quality of the beskar is still pretty good. It's actually talked about here that they are thinking of adding a bonus for the pirates they've hired to deliver these resources to another facility."
"Another warehouse?" I asked out of curiosity.
"No, that's the interesting thing. All the facilities I'm seeing here are marked as 'GG' most likely for Gargon and I can find them on maps of the city. This facility that they're apparently sending resources to is not on Gargon, it's marked as 'AT'. I guess it's some other planet they have a facility on."
"How many resources have been sent to that planet?"
"Half of whatever has been recovered from the debris fields." he commented as he looked through the records before he stopped and tilted his head. "That's interesting."
Tilting my helmet so I can look at him and the door as best I could I asked, "What did you find?"
"There's references here of a shipment of something coming in but it's not made clear exactly what it is, only that it's heavy equipment. Whatever it is, the shipment will be here in a week and it's theorized it'll increase production quotas across the board."
"Oh that doesn't sound too terrible." I stated, before I heard the unlocking of the door. Turning my head I saw what I would guess was the foreman entering the room. He had been looking down at some paperwork but he stopped as soon as he looked up and saw us. The surprise on his face fading to resignation and tiredness.
"If you're going to steal from me, here is my wallet and the safe is behind the bookshelf. I am just done with everything and I am not paid enough for this." He said as he took out his wallet and pointed at the bookshelf on the left side of the room.
Mok and I shared a look before I said, "We're not here to steal from you, we're just investigating. If you're willing to keep quiet about us being in your office, we'll keep quiet about being here."
"Fine by me, but please get off my desk. I have to file this procurement order for steel with the Southern Steel Mill within 20 minutes so that they can actually fulfill it before they close for the day." he said matter of factly, stepping past me as Mok got up, and took his seat.
As the room filled with the sound of typing, the foreman started to vent, "You know, my dad was friends with one of Mandal Hyper's department heads, classmates or something. He told me that there was a job opening at his department for a warehouse manager. I had just finished college so I was all bright eyed and innocent for work and I was under the impression that I would just be keeping track of resources coming in and out, but no. All of a sudden the department head told me to fill in for a foreman that called in sick. So I had to travel to several construction sites, inspect their progress, and write a report to the department head. You'd think this was only temporary: nope! The foreman died due to an allergic reaction to a drug at the hospital so now I'm stuck working two jobs while the department head finds a replacement, which he probably won't, the lazy bastard. After a week I had the system down so the work is somewhat manageable and I just sleep in the parking lot."
I hid a wince while Mok rubbed the back of his neck hearing the unfortunate foreman's story. "Then a month later, the department's procurement officer quit so who does my boss call for a replacement? You guessed it, me. I now have to talk to a dozen suppliers for several dozen different materials all around Gargon to find the best price between them all, write a procurement report to order it, file a report that my warehouse had received the materials, and then I have to send those materials on their way to the various sections that needed them. I've had to juggle three jobs for months now and to top it off, I'm not even getting paid for the extra jobs I'm covering."
While my mouth opened in shock, Mok made an audible hiss before saying, "Why not just quit?"
"Remember that procurement guy that quit? He was found dead in an alley. 'Mugging gone wrong' was the headline that day. I might loathe this job but if the choice is between this or death, I'd choose this. But after two years of this I might reconsider." The foreman finished his typing before he opened a drawer to reveal a report and started to write on it.
"Now I have to deal with spies, nomads raiding the warehouses, and all kinds of bantha dung because a man had the bright idea of 'Oh we're going to rebel against the entire sector'," the man said, ranting and writing at the same time. "I just want to finish my contract, take my money, and go open a nice little shop somewhere but no. I have to deal with people breaking into my office to look through my work files."
"Sorry." Mok said sheepishly.
The older man sighed and said, "No, no apology necessary, you're just doing whatever job you're being paid for too." He took a closer look at us and said, "Really, white and silver? I thought no one was dumb enough to actually wear the cultist's colors."
"What's the problem with white and silver?" I asked, a bit concerned at his statement.
"Well, other than the craziness of the CEO's claiming he's White Silver, he let some extremist cult leader take control of the Silver Guard. Anyone he finds wearing those colors he basically forces them to join at a gunpoint. If they don't, well, he says you don't deserve the armor and shoots you."
"Damn." I muttered. That was a bit of a problem I would have to contact Tanya about. Reaching up to my helmet, I tried to contact the Ratio as Mok continued to talk to the warehouse foreman.
"Do you mind if I ask a question?" the slicer asked.
"You put up with me venting my problems and life story for several minutes so it's the least I could do. As long as it won't get me in trouble, I'll tell you anything you want to know."
"Thank you. There's a shipment coming in a week later that the documents said will increase production by 50% or something. Do you have any idea what that's about?"
"Oh that, CEOs made some contract with droid manufacturers to make a bunch of, what's the right term, 'slave-driver droids'? Basically some droid tool makes sure the factories keep working or at least defend the factory against any more nomad attacks. Still trying to figure out if he's gone completely evil or if he's just trying to defend the factories. Me and a couple other foremen are betting on the former."
"You're betting if he's gone completely evil?" Mok asked, a bit of shock in his tone.
"There's not much else to do on Gargon nowadays. I just want to make my profits and be on my way off of this damn planet. But I'll tell you right now, I totally expect the CEO to take over the spice production from the gangsters before the year is out and try to sell it on the open market to fund his ambitions, probably to the Hutts."
"Agent Scalpel?" finally came the voice of X4 over the radio.
"S4 I need you to send a message to Steel: The silver armor is a death warrant amongst the Silver Militia. Be careful and avoid any leadership." I said into the comm after muting the external speaker.
"Will do Scalpel, message is sent."
"Good." Thankful that the message went through, I turned to Mok and said, "Let's get moving, we still have a lot of intel to dig up and we've got to figure a way back out of the city to meet up with the others."
Mok nodded and said, "Thanks for the help sir, we'll be on our way."
"I've never seen you before in my life." he said as he continued to write his fifth paper.
Harswee, Harswee City
Vai Viktis Vizla
I breathed in and out trying to temper my annoyance. "We really should be with Tanya," I muttered. As I walked with Tabi down the main street of Harswee city. I was still pretending to be Tanya, wearing her trademark greens, hair a little bit shorter, and a pair of sunglasses. You probably wouldn't be able to tell us apart at a distance. It helped that we didn't know anyone on any of the planets we were visiting and we're not going on any official state visits. These were simple appearance missions which meant we could stay at regular hotels and leave when we wanted to.
"My dear, you really need to stop worrying about Tanya. I saw her fight during that whole gang incident and I doubt she'll get into too much trouble. Frankly, I think she can find her way out of most trouble. I wonder who trained her?" Tabi commented as he walked next to me still in his full armor, though he'd taken his helmet off to let the breeze take his long hair.
Being that this was his homeworld, I had elected to let him take the lead on our little walkabout. I needed to put in appearances around towns to at least appear to be on the move and to be Tanya, build our alibi as it were. I'd never been to this world before so it was an easy call to make.
"Maybe, but I have never really been that far away from her when she needed help." I let out an exhausted breath. I could tell Tabi who trained Tanya but it's probably best to keep that under wraps as long as possible.
Tabi smiled and simply put his arm around me. "She's your friend, of course you're worried. But you're where she needs you the most. Putting in appearances like this will keep her identity secret and allow her to continue her political career."
I was going to say something but we were interrupted by Kastel, "I'd say 'you should get a room' but remember to stay in character."
"Right." we both said, separating a bit. I didn't want to screw up Tanya's reputation.
The world of Harswee was heavy. I wasn't exactly sure how high the gravity is compared to most planets but it was enough that the people here tended to be stronger and shorter. Not by too much, but enough to deal with the extra relative weight. Kastel and I had been trying to ignore it, but after a few days of wandering we noticed that we couldn't be out for as long as we would like. It was too exhausting for us to walk for more than 30 minutes before we needed to rest. Which was a shame because as far as Mandalorian worlds went, this place was rather beautiful.
For generations this planet had been producing fabrics and other fine materials for the Mandalorian Sector. It was believed that the original population had been human and was one of the first human races to be incorporated into the Mandalorian Way which was why they had been able to maintain parts of their culture, specifically rug making.
I've seen some high quality rugs and some mighty fine clothing, and to frame those items for sale they built mighty fine looking buildings. Unlike the slab style that had taken over most of the Mandalorian system, this particular planet had never lost the artistry of their structures. Not as blocky as some of the architecture coming out of the rest of the Mandalorian sector, but you could see elements of it there.
The buildings often had pointed roof towers coming out of the top and seem to be designed to cast as much shade as possible on the street, most likely because of the higher temperature. Most of the planet is a desert world, but the area we were in was more like a jungle climate and quite muggy.
Looking around, I still had to shake my head and say, "Still can't believe the amount of clothing shops your people have."
"When the most effective crop around here is only useful for cloth production and when no one else is thinking about clothing as a style, it gives them a lot of options to sell to. Off-worlders have come here for boutique sessions, usually very rich and famous people from other sectors wanting to get a new style. A few Mandalorians have also requested our services over the centuries. Well, they tended to be more worried about their armor, less about their clothing."
I chuckled at that since he wasn't wrong but before I could make any other comments he continued, "If it wasn't for the Binder we'd probably still be living similar to Mandalore in the past. By the time we built the space port on this planet, we would probably have still been selling just regular linen clothing. But his wise efforts made sure that our planet has a growing economy even with most of the sector at war. There's a story about, oh, 300 years ago, two clan chieftains both bitter rivals, came to this planet to get a new style."
"What happened?" I asked to add curiosity.
Tabi shrugged, "They went to the same shop a day apart got the exact same style and the next time they met they basically murdered each other and escalated their rivalry into a blood feud. I think it's still going on."
"Haha." I couldn't stifle the laughter coming out of me at the idea that there are two clans fighting each other mainly because of something so ridiculous as wearing the same clothes. It was so Mandalorian and yet so hilarious.
"Really they should have known better, at the time they were doing 'its combat skirts' and kilts were all the rage. Well, they're still a bit fashionable now even if not as much as they were then."
I had to ask. "Do you have a combat kilt?"
He smiled and leaned in, taking my chin with his hand, "My dear, if it's all the rage I have at least one, and it would not take much to get me into one or out of one, just a word."
My cheeks turned a little bit red at that thought.
"Oh, for the love of Mando, remember who you are right now. Tabi, keep that attitude in the bedroom." Kastel whispered rather loudly coming up close to us.
I quickly stepped back and said, "Right, right remember who I am, yes. Hey, maybe we should go to that shop over there, it looks cooler than out here."
Tabi looked over at the little ice cream shop I had pointed to and now I just had then looked past it and said, "Hey 'Tanya' how well do you know your measurements? Because it looks like there's a good place to get an upgrade on your clubbing gear. Might be a good way to pay her back for making you so worried."
Looking to where Tabi was indicating I quickly saw the sign for the shop, Combat Clubbing. Right underneath it was a sign saying 25% off combat skirts. Said skirt was in the window and on the shorter end of decent.
I laughed as I realized the implication and said, "I'm quite familiar with Tanya's measurements." Getting her something to wear that was out of her comfort zone and making her wear it the next time we went to a club would be the perfect revenge for making me worried about her. I was all too familiar with her measurements. I even knew how large of a heel she could handle since she tended to wear shoes with a bit of heel in order to make our heights closer. Her being only 5'8 and me being 5'10, if people were paying attention they would quickly figure out that I was not Tanya. Unless you looked when she was wearing a bit of a heel on all her shoes, in which case she looked closer to 5'9.
Taking my hand, Tabi said, "Then let me lead the way my dear." I smiled and laughed as we walked towards the shop and laughed even louder as I heard Kastel comment behind us.
"I can't believe I volunteered for this Osik." he muttered with discontent.
Tabi opened the door and I was about to step in when I thought I heard a clicking noise. Confused, I looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary so I shrugged and walked into the shop.
Gargon City, Central District
Engiz Ordo
Following behind Tanya whilst keeping a good eye on her, I watched the city go by. The architecture was somewhat impressive, if a bit dingy. The buildings had a lot of the Mandalorian block style which showed their settler's roots. Those nearer to the center of the city, where we were now, had a lot of domed roofs to their building's designs, not too different from images I'd seen of Hutt territories. Considering there was a Central Palace in the middle of the city, now run by a cabal of gangsters as a casino, it was hard hard to forget that this planet had once been part of the Hutt Empire, though one of its more far flung and eventually abandoned territories.
Besides those thoughts I noticed that there were quite a few non-Mandalorians on this planet. Sure, there were plenty of people in armor and a lot of them didn't have Mandalorian visors or were wearing markings that indicated they were from other parts of the galaxy. If anything Gargon reminded me a bit of Coruscant with the amount of different people walking about and the neon lights. Quite a number of the buildings were more than 20 stories tall which led to darkness on a lot of the streets. The alleyways were basically pitch black so you had to rely on the neon lights to guide your path.
Tanya seemed to know exactly where she was going, easily navigating the streets, leading the way towards the wealthier parts of the town. I wondered what was going through her mind. I always knew that she had a bit of a fighter in her, but I didn't know until recently she had attempted to bridge her combative instincts with the peaceful ways of her aunt. To have what she had created taken and perverted the way it had been, it is easy to imagine that she was furious and apoplectic about the whole thing.
Of course it's hard to say if that was really what was going through her head. Even when she wasn't wearing a helmet she always seemed to have complete control of what she was revealing. All I knew for sure was she did not like whoever had taken her Silver Codex and was planning to take it back somehow. However, even if we could maintain her secret identity if she murdered the False Silver, as she called him, as far as I was aware there was a good chance her aunt would figure out who had done it. And if she did… well, considering how authoritarian she could get about her peaceful ways, I worried that Tanya might find herself in some trouble.
I would approach the subject, but I was sure she was already well aware of those possibilities and was coming up with her own plans for them. If not, well, either way this False Silver needed to be handled. Preventing a civil war was more important than her own political aspirations and if she was willing to give those political aspirations up, it just showed how dedicated she was to the people of Mandalore and a real peace. It Solidified my belief that she was someone special; the maverick Mandalore needed to set it all straight.
Before I could get too deep into that thought though, Tanya stopped and held her hand up. "Onyx, over there." Looking past Tanya I saw two of the black-clad Mandalorian mercenaries walking down the street following what appeared to be a higher up in Mandal Hypernautics. He wasn't wearing any armor but had a blaster at his side as well as the company logo on his shoulder. I knew that Tanya was trying not to look at him so I did the same, only using a corner of my visor to keep track of them. As we watched them they entered what appeared to be some sort of club though the guards seemed to be somewhat lacking as they waved people in and out without issue.
Over the internal com, I heard Tanya say, "Man looks like the type to have loose lips and be too far up for the company for his own good. I'd guess those two guards are there to keep an eye on him while drinking and not to protect him. That's what a good human resource officer would do in this situation if they couldn't fire the man directly."
Speaking back over the internal comm, "What's the plan then?"
"Oh that's quite simple, we just sit in hearing range and see what we can get." She said leading the way.
I shrugged, as that made as much sense as anything so I followed her in.
Inside of the club was, well, a club. There were people talking, flashing lights, and loud music. Though it was not as loud near the back of the facility, I quickly noted as we moved our way in that direction.
There were a handful of guards peppered around the place. Most of them were wearing Mandalorian armor of one form or another but not the black suited types that we've seen following the Hypernautics employee. Following the higher-up would mean being a bit easier to spot so Tanya took us on a circuitous route around the border of the room to a table just on the other side of the booth he took a seat in. His two guards remained standing at the edge of his table.
Then we sat just out of the guards' sights and listened in. Oddly enough the first thing we heard was not from the booth we were trying to eavesdrop on, but from the booth on the other side of us as a couple locals had a discussion.
"Did you hear about Clan Morson?" one of them said.
"Yeah that's a terrible thing, inviting a clan to negotiate and then locking their representatives up."
"They're not. They've been judged enemies of the state and he's executing them tomorrow in the old Hutt arena."
"Fucking psycho. Bossman really needs to deal with this guy. He's going too hard too fast. You don't execute an entire clan just because they didn't side with you when you gave them an offer. Chances are that's how you get other independent clans to unify against you."
"What do you expect? The man's from Mandalore, every single one of them is a psycho. They don't even consider the rest of us who live in the Mandalorian sector Mandalorians. We're all just armor thieves to them unless you were born and raised in Mandalore."
"Yeah, Skanah is probably going to have a lot of people watch the execution just to make a point of the whole deal and have the armor stripped from them to be given to his Silver Mandalorian army."
That was a little harsh. But then again not exactly wrong. The Traditionalist Mandalorians have always been a bit racist to anyone who had not really been born in Mandalore for a good hundred years. And my uncle, the patriarch of Ordo, had told me several times that even though the Traditionalists were out of power, their belief system hadn't exactly gone the way of the Mythosaur. Though if the man harbored those beliefs, it was strange the way he was enlisting non-Mandalorians into his army.
"Trying to define who's Mandalorian and who's not for your benefit. Of course," Tanya muttered over the internal comm, her head shaking slightly. She continued by saying, "I'm starting to think this would have been a self-solving problem if he wasn't using the Silver Codex the way he was. Even with him using it, this might still be a problem that would solve itself, but it would leave the Silver Codex too damaged to serve its original purpose. It might also take too long for us to let the situation be resolved on its own."
"And how exactly are we going to solve the problem, Steel?" I asked "I mean, have you thought about what you're going to have to do if you have to kill him?"
"Hopefully it won't come to that. What we need to do is humiliate him in such a way that no one will believe he's the White Silver. Past that, well, it depends on what he does." The way she said it was just so cold and impersonal I got the feeling she was not even worried about the possibility of having to kill him which was concerning to say the least.
Before I could probe deeper, the conversation we had been waiting for started. A figure in red and blue Mandalorian armor sat down across from our target. Distinctly different from the black mercenaries guarding the Hypernautic rep.
With an odd accent she said, "Is the White Silver too busy to have these meetings, or does he forget we could cut support for his little uprising if we judge him to be too much of an issue?"
"He knows who supports him and he sends his regards, he would be here himself but matters of state required his attention. As for your support, he is very glad to have it and is willing to continue all deals as long as you still provide the required assets."
"Yes, the required assets, the Battle Legionnaires, will be here soon enough, but we were under the impression that White Silver was wise enough not to stir the pot on his own planet. The council is worried that the rebellion may become a counter-rebellion and we'll end up arming our enemies."
"It won't happen. Once the nomad clans are brought under our control this planet will be secure and we can get to work spreading the rebellion to other worlds, but we need droids to build our army. We do not have the manpower to waste."
"The droids will be here but we may need to negotiate a more equitable price if they're going to be used as a law enforcement unit and not for the defense we were told."
"That's fine, the boss is working with a crew to start tearing into a few more debris fields and we'll have more resources at our disposal to send your way. Not as good of a quality of metal in those fields, but there'll be more of them."
I heard an audible sigh of contempt before she said, "Fine, I'll send a message and inform them of the negotiations proceeding well enough and the droids will be here within the week. However, can we meet somewhere more private? This place feels like it has ears in the walls."
The figure started looking about the room and Tanya grabbed my wrist and indicated we needed to get out of here.
Following her lead we made our way out of the room in hopes of avoiding the gaze of the figure with a strange accent. We were able to get outside quickly and I was able to take a breath but before I could get a word out Tanya pulled me towards an alleyway and said over the intercoms. "Push me against the wall, hand on my hip, helmet to helmet. Now!"
I was left stunned for a second and nearly got out a "What?" before she said, "Do it now!" And I did as she demanded> I pushed her against the wall, put my forehead to her forehead in a Keldabe kiss and put my hand on her hip. I had no idea why I was doing this but an order is an order.
Tanya quickly put her own arm around mine to hold the back of my helmet, forcing our bodies closer, the chest plates of our armor touching. I was left with many questions, one was 'had Tanya always been that short 'cause I had to crane my neck a bit to look down at her so our foreheads met properly?' Two, 'why was my face so hot and was this some sort of dream?' And three, 'why the hell was this happening?'
I got an answer to three as through the corner of my visor I saw the red and blue armored Mandalorian from before go across the mouth of the alleyway looking for something they stopped and looked directly at us and shook their head and continued walking.
After a few minutes Tanya finally broke the hold, "That was a little too close for comfort." She said looking down the alleyway towards the street.
"Sorry." I said, still fairly warm after that.
"No, not you. You were perfectly close. I meant getting nearly caught by that unknown supporter." She said while looking like we hadn't just 'helmet kissed'.
"Have you ever heard of something called a Battle Legionnaire, Engiz?"
I shook my head and said, "No, that's obviously a droid of some kind but I've never heard of it before."
"Hmm well whoever is producing them is obviously not a friend of Mandalore. We need to keep note of that when this operation is over. Let's get moving Onyx, we've got plenty more places to check out, information to dig up, and plans to make."
"Yes ma'am." I said, trying not to think about what she meant that I was perfectly close?
Writers note: and I present the longest chapter yet, the last bit of around the sector world building and events before the fighting begins. I would say more but ah tired.
Edited by:Markus Gollinger, Warmach1ne32, luke the man
Community edited by:Ryan Pirtle, Jake Breker, Angellica Gearcrooner
Community editable doc (Chapter 18) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
Commissioned Artist a_yoshikage
Supporters: Neso, Markus, Mackenzie Buckle, Silver Wolf, Falk H, Mana Rope, Daniel Martinez, michael, Devilstar101, Hats88, DrkShdow, James Moorhouse, Matthew D, Duncan Sproule, Yamato
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