SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Reread the Satine interlude, it's pretty strongly implied she's actually the Duchess and Kenobi's love child who she's pretending isn't hers because she think a Jedi child would go over well politically.
Princess of Mandalore (Youjo Senki/Star Wars)
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A niece looking like her aunt, the genetic horror.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Certainly not unlikely, but thoughts like this from Satine seem to indicate Tanya's official heritage is a lie
Notice how father is in scare quotes there.
So, yes, I think it's likely Obi-Wan really is the father and the thing Anakin is misunderstanding is he thinks Obi-Wan is aware of it, not that there's a relation.
Especially because it's followed by this bit:
This is from a chapter when Tanya's about ten years old (chapter three). If it was just the physical resemblance, I would think people were making a mountain out of a molehill, but we've more to go on than that.
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it wont be, that for sure
how would they see that thrue her helmet???
hmm well, considering i had to drop a massive hint to get people even talking about over spaces battles I'm glade some one spotted!
hmm what no she daughter of Adonai Kryze junior and Tanya Keldau, your thinking too hard.
... No comment
that would be funny, though not something Jedi are known to do...
The thing about people saying you look like someone that could be or is your parent is way too subjective. I've had people that only met one of my parents swear i am like their mini-copy, yet as soon as they meet both i am my own person.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Yes... That's why I posted those other quotes and said if it was just a physical resemblance I wouldn't think it meant much.
Chapter 17
Chapter 17
714FNM (24BBY)
Month 8
Coruscant, Mandalore Tower
Tal Merrik
What game is she playing? Last night was... Well, it could have gone better. I had to deal with the announcement of a breakaway state from the ruling government of the Mandalorian Sector, which was not something I wanted to deal with.
I was likely going to have a talk with the Chancellor about this at some point if the situation kept getting worse, which is something I'd rather not do. If only the government was a bit stronger, then that upstart wouldn't dare pull something like this. Hopefully, Satine could deal with it but her limp-wristed pacifism was going to be the end of the Mandalore sector. It's more likely that Vizsla would have to step in instead. If his group took out the Silver faction without announcing themselves as Deathwatch, but did so later, it would gain a lot of favor with Mandalorians who are still on the fence.
My day was already full dealing with the insanity that was this farce of a CEO trying to take over the Mandalorian sector and now I had to deal with the little representative Kryze. Looking down at the paperwork again I asked, "You wish to take a sabbatical?" trying to confirm exactly what was going on.
The blonde-haired girl and her trademarked typical green dress sat in front of me in a comfortable chair I had for such meetings in my personal office. Outside the window of my office the traffic passed leisurely casting shadows into the richly decorated room in the midday sun.
"Yes Senator Merrik, I have decided to proceed with your offer of taking some time off after that whole fiasco last month." She said it with a smile that was uniquely 'her'. As if this was a simple request and not some sort of play.
I am not a blind man, I could see the connection. She denied leaving Coruscant when things were running fine in the Mandalore sector but the moment this White Silver decided to declare independence, all of a sudden she wanted to go back to the sector, because of the embarrassment of winning a fight against street thugs? A likely story, yes? No, no she was being called back by Satine and was probably going to be her chosen envoy to run around the sector to try and prevent individual planets from joining White Silver.
On one hand, this would be good for sector stability, as this White Silver fellow was not part of any plans for the sector's future and I would rather he met failure than success. On the other hand, allowing her to go running off to meet and greet the political blocs of every planet in the sector would surely further her plans to no doubt replace me in my position in the Senate. So the question is, am I willing to let a short-term good endanger the long-term stability of my role in the Senate?
Thankfully, Count Dooku's latest political speech had quite an impact on the Republic. That alone has already resulted in over a dozen sectors pulling out of the Republic to join this newly forming Confederacy. My time in the Senate would probably be cut short anyways, as soon as the successful coup took place, and I doubted Vizsla would keep this child around with her connections to Satine. She'd likely be banished outside the sector just for being politically connected to the Pacifists and the senatorial seats, which would be transferred to the Confederacy, would remain in my hands.
Sighing, I filled my name out on the sheet and said, "You chose a remarkably bad time to put in a request like this. I imagine the sector is going to be set alight with that whole Silver Codex situation coming to fruition. Always knew that thing was going to be a problem." Shaking my head I continued, "What planets are you planning to visit exactly?"
"Nothing too strenuous, I want to stay as far away from the current situation with the Silver Codex as I can, I will probably be visiting Concordia, Harswee, Jakelia, and then finally Ordo. All in all, it should take a month to visit all those planets, maybe make a few stops along the way depending on what travel arrangements I end up making."
I nodded, noting that all those planets were more in the southern edge of the core of the Mandalore sector. Gargon was closer to the Hydian Way but also further to the north so theoretically she would be safe from any direct attacks if the White Silver decided to play any assassination games. Unfortunate opportunity lost, if she was a little bit closer I might have leaked her itinerary to Dooku. Still might… yeah he did take some interest in possibly removing her and I was not going to say no to a political rival being knocked off the board. But looking at the schedule, accounting for the weeks of travel she would be doing back in the Mandalore Sector and the weeks needed to travel back, I'd be free of her till almost to the end of the year. Actually, that wasn't a bad idea.
Nodding my head I looked up at the young representative and said, "Well…try not to get into any trouble during the trip. Though things are fairly quiet in the Senate, if you wanted to stay in the Mandalore Sector till the start of next year, to visit with your family on Mandalore, that would be fine. I can handle the negotiations with the Ithorians while you're away."
Tanya nodded her head and seemed to understand my implication and said, "That sounds quite reasonable, yes I think I will avail myself of a little bit of a longer trip than originally planned for. Make the final stop at Mandalore before returning to Coruscant."
Smiling, I handed back her datapad and said, "Enjoy your vacation Tanya and tell Satine that I stand with her on any decisions she makes with this Silver Codex tomfoolery."
She nodded her head and said, "I will do so, see you when I return in the new year Senator Merrik." before she stood up from her seat to leave.
"See you in the new year Tanya." I said with a pleasant smile, hoping that I would not.
Coruscant Spaceport, Private Dockyard
Struc Ordack
"Well isn't this just a cozy ship." I said, looking at the familiar sight of a Lancer pursuit craft. The Lancer was a 34m long vessel, and about that wide as well with the main body in the shape of a saucer. From the sides poked two engine assemblies, as well as a third from the rear and a pilot's compartment protruding out of the front.
From the military-grade variants I had served on, I'd expected two forward-mounted laser cannons to either side of the pilot's compartment. It looked like this particular model, being made for civilians, only had the dorsal-mounted cannon. No doubt the tractor beam that was also a favorite of the military variants was also missing. This one didn't have much of a paint job, the burnished iron color with a few silver streaks being the only thing of note.
Skota was standing next to me shaking her head, "I would have thought the princess would have waited for the Coronet or maybe even taken regular transport back to the Mandalore sector. Buying her own ship seems a bit excessive. Where'd she even get the money for this?"
"Proper investments." came the voice of X4, who was coming up the gangway towards the dock where we had found the ship. He was carrying a suitcase most likely full of Tanya's possessions. Before any of us could ask what he meant X4 continued. "And knowing who to speak to, the manager of the local branch of Mandel Motors currently had three of these modified Lancer Pursuit Craft for show and was selling them individually at around 120,000 credits each. However, a discount for royalty of 20% with a bulk deal brought down the price to 200,000 credits for all three of them."
I looked at X4 and asked the question I'm sure all of the Royal Guard on the dockyard was thinking at that exact moment. "Multiple? As in, she owns how many of these now?"
"Three," Tanya said interrupting X4 and she and her handmaiden walked across the landing area towards us. "I technically own three of these. I would have only bought one but X4 convinced me that having a couple extra would be beneficial for the mission."
"What mission?" I asked, narrowing my eyes, glad that I had my helmet off otherwise they wouldn't have seen it.
"Need to know as of right now, we can talk once we are inside the ship." She said matter of factly, walking past us into the vessel which lowered the ramp as she pressed a button on her vambrace.
Looking to the other Royal Guards I saw them all shrugging in confusion before I led the way on board the ship.
The interior of the ship was rather sleek, though I noted that there seemed to be a larger cargo space than the military variant I'd served on. As soon as we were aboard Tanya pressed a few buttons and the door started to close. She then said, "X4 please show them the rooms we will be staying in."
The droid nodded before pointing to a door. "Through that doorway is a Passageway that leads to two bunk rooms, one with two beds and the other with four the Royal Guard can use. ." He pointed toward the front of the ship and said, "The pilot's cabin and the captain's cabin would of course be the room for Mistress Tanya and her Handmaiden, past that is the cockpit. Captain Stuc you're rated for flight I believe, correct?"
I nodded, "We'll have to go up there later to let you familiarize yourself with the controls." X4 commented before continuing, "it's a two-person gunship style seating arrangement."
I simply nodded. X4 turned to point to the door opposite the crew area, "Through there is the common area and galley." and pointing towards the back of the ship indicated the cargo area we came through. "In case of emergency, the escape pods are near the front of the ship by the pilot's area"
As soon as X4 was done, Tanya spoke up, "Now that everyone's familiarized with where everything is, get yourself settled in. Captain Struc, see about getting us on our way to the Mandalore Sector and at 1600 hrs we will hold a meeting to discuss the mission."
Part of me wanted to ask what mission since as far as I was aware this was a simple transport mission back to the Mandalore Sector but the other part of me, the part that kept me alive during the Civil War, noticed that the princess said she was going to do it at 1600 hrs. Strange that she dropped into military time for this, it wasn't like she had spent any time there.
"Understood," I shook my head and looked to the other Royal guards before saying, "Tabi, Ordo, Kastel, and Mok you're getting the room with four beds. Skota and I will take the room with two. As for the piloting situation, I'll be up at the front of the ship and since I have the opportunity might as well give you all a little bit of flight training in case an emergency happens. Let's start with Mok." I said looking towards the slicer.
I got a chorus of 'yes sirs' before everyone started to move about. I followed Tanya and the handmaiden towards the front of the ship before they sealed themselves off in the captain's quarters to have some sort of privacy. I finished walking to the front of the ship and found the droid had not been lying. The seats were still in a gunship configuration which was at least something familiar. Taking the pilot seat, I had Mok take the copilot seat and negotiated with Coruscant Port Authority to get our ship permission to leave the planet.
It wasn't a long conversation and we were soon in the air heading through the atmosphere. A few negotiations with traffic control later and we were in space. I did enjoy the handling of the vessel, she was rather fast for her size and maneuverable. The three-engine placement allowed the ship to turn on a dime.In theory, I couldn't actually test it without shaking everybody about inside, and when you're transporting royalty that's not really the smartest move.
Once I had the ship on course and set her to hyperspace, I stretched back and got up from my seat heading back to the area with Mok following behind me. I saw most of the Royal Guard were sitting on a bench or the dining table and someone apparently had access to the holo-net as they were watching some of the Silver Ranger show on a panel at the side of the room.
Checking my vambrace, I saw we were only about 5 minutes from Tanya's meeting time so I asked the obvious question. "Anyone else think that this is really suspicious?" Immediately all five hands of the royal guards in front of me went up in the air.
"That's about what I figured, any ideas what's going on?" I asked while taking a seat at the table.
"No idea," Tabby said matter of factly, "all I know is that there is a bit of trouble starting in the Mandalorian Sector and all the sudden she wants to go home."
"What kind of trouble?" Ordo asked, looking up from his book.
"The 2nd Mando Civil War kind, that Silver Codex writer finally made an appearance and declared himself independent from the Mandalorian Sector and is, you know, stirring the pot," Skota said from where she sat matter of factly.
"Still can't believe that the Silver Codex was written by that guy. The man was a slave driver during the bombardment of Keldabe. There's no way he'd be all for the personal freedoms that were implied in the first codex." Mok said, matter of factly.
"A slave driver to one is a hero to another," Kastel said, "lot of Old Mandalorians think if you served in the defense of Keldabe during that siege, you were doing the right thing even if you pulled crap like explosive collars on your workers."
"Was that ever confirmed? I heard that was more of a legend." The slicer asked out of curiosity.
"It cannot be confirmed or denied because the factory blew up. There wasn't even an attempt to excavate it thoroughly to discover if it was true or not. A lot of the leadership of Keldabe stayed in place well into New Mandalorian control so if there was any evidence it was all destroyed through the rebuilding efforts or outright paid to be destroyed by Mr. CEO-turned-demagogue-leader." I answered.
"Smart move on his part, publishing that codex the way he did before he revealed himself allowed people to become comfortable with his ideas," Kastel said matter of factly, shaking his head.
"And this is why you don't build your ideology off of things you read online from anonymous people. You end up with a situation where you've built your worldview around the teachings of a man who's probably going to lead the sector into a civil war if he is allowed to run rampant." Skota, being the voice of reason in the group, said what needed to be said.
"Then it is fortunate that he didn't write it." Tanya's voice broke up our conversation and I turned around to face her. Of all the things I expected to see her wearing, full Mandalorian armor with her helmet under her arm and her handmaiden just behind her in her own armor would be the last thing on the list.
Stepping into the room she put her helmet on the table before standing before us. "The CEO of Mandal Hypernautics did not write the Silver Codex. I did."
There was a moment's pause as everyone took that in before Tabi laughed. "You're joking, right? Whoever wrote the Silver Codex couldn't have been a New Mandalorian, you're always doing whatever Satine says."
"Do I look like I'm joking? But yes, I always do whatever Duchess Satine says." Tanya said, looking at Tabi, leaving the implied implications of that statement for him to finally puzzle out.
"The Silver Codex is state-sponsored?" I asked, surprised by this turn of events.
"No, not state-sponsored per se, state accepted would be a better term," Tanya said, shaking her head. "I wanted to create a Middle-of-the-Road option to try and draw people who were annoyed with the New Mandalorians and also appeal to New Mandalorians who wanted to experience some of what the Old Mandalorians were talking about. A way to encourage peace as it were, as well as open up economic opportunities. Unfortunately, I didn't suspect that a corporate-minded CEO would use this as an opportunity to create a splinter state and attempt to usurp New Mandalorian rule. That one is on me, which is why I have to do something to discredit this False Silver before he sparks another Mandalorian Civil War."
"You're not going on vacation, you're going to Gargon," Ordo said it first, but all of us were thinking it.
"Yes, that would be the correct assumption in this situation," Tanya said with a shrug. "I cannot allow this False Silver to destroy the work I've created with the Silver Codex. It took me several years to create a document that would stimulate discussion without causing a civil war and this man is doing everything in his power to ruin all those years of work."
"Alright," I said standing up, "so let me see if I understand the situation correctly, we are going to be going to Gargon so you can get killed by an unknown number of Mandalorians who have pledged themselves to a document you created and ended up on the wrong side of an ideological civil war between the actual creator and a false prophet as it were."
"I hate the fact you used the word, 'prophet' but yes we are going to Gargon, mostly to find some way to bring down the CEO before he can plunge the sector into war. But no, I will not be dying as I plan on living until retirement."
I shook my head at that, "I've seen you fight, I'll admit you're pretty good but this will be against trained Mandalorian warriors, people who have spent their lives fighting. I don't know how well you've been trained but I don't think you can take on those warriors, you might be able to take on the CEO himself, as I doubt he's trained as well as he could have while running a major corporation."
"Captain Struc, would you say that those Gargon Manadalorian's training is up to your Royal Guard standards?" Tanya asked, looking directly at me.
"No, not to my standards anyway." Mostly because I regarded us to be some of the highest trained Mandalorians in the sector.
"So if I were to train to meet your standards, do you think I would have a chance?" She said with a smile.
I crossed my arms, not liking where this conversation is going before saying, "Theoretically yes, though I don't like what you are implying there."
"I mean the implications are quite simple. If I meet your standards of training, would not the chances of successfully bringing down False Silver increase."
I sigh and shake my head. "Yes, but here's a question that I'm more interested in. Does the Duchess know that you've made it your mission to stop this False Silver?"
"Theoretically no, and for the simple reason, this operation cannot be seen as being directed by the Duchess. Any attack from the Duchess will be used by False Silver to increase his notoriety and bring the sector closer to civil war. If the real White Silver makes an appearance though, it destroys their efforts to raise an army to fight for the Mandalore Sector. That would be preferable as the real White Silver can then disappear again back into anonymity."
"Alright, I'm starting to see the general idea of your plan here," I said, leaning back on the table. "I'll run through the few flaws I see and you can try and answer them as we go. Once we enter the Mandalorian Sector, you have to be in certain places and no doubt people will know if you don't show up in this ship… the multiple ships that's why you bought multiple ships."
"Correct," Tanya said matter of factly, "the two other ships are under control of crews X4 hired. X4?" She looked at the droid who walked into the room.
"Light Cargo Ships 2 and 3 will be picking up a cargo of Mandalorian goods on each planet that Mistress was meant to land on before returning to Coruscant. I'll have to adjust their schedules as necessary but they should serve as proper decoys."
"Not only that, Vai and two Royal Guards of your choosing can be on board one of those cargo ships making various appearances in very public places so people assume I am where I'm supposed to be."
"Sounds like you need more handmaidens," I uttered, noting that would decrease the forces at her disposal by three warriors.
"Something I'll take note of in the future and will rectify." The princess explained with a shrug.
"Okay then so you have decoys out so people don't know where you are, this I can understand. Your armor though is fairly distinctive and Royal Guard armor is really distinctive. How are we going to handle that?"
"I have contacted an armorer by the name of Zum and explained a portion of the situation." He's going to meet us on Concordia and supply us with sets of armor so we don't stand out in ways we don't want to."
"So you've got your alibi and how you're going to fight incognito figured out. Do we have any contacts on Gargon that can support us?." Holding out my hand I listed each point with a finger.
"Bo Katan is currently in Gargon and she has some contacts with the local factions. Hopefully, with her aid, we can expand our forces and make this operation more of an even fight."
I let my finger up. "Anyone else have something to point out here?" I asked hoping someone would come up with a better way to stop this mission from happening because frankly she had thought out quite a bit and the fact she was willing to undergo training to increase her chances of pulling it off spoke quite well for her.
Everyone was apparently in too much shock about the reveal of White Silver's true identity so no one said anything relevant to stopping this insanity. Tabi on the other hand had a question. "So you named yourself White Silver because you have a crush on the Silver Ranger right?"
I had to let out a smirk as the princess's face went red and flustered a bit. "I will have you know I worked very hard on selecting that name and it was not chosen for some crush. White is symbolic of purity, silver is symbolic of redemption, it means pure redemption."
"Wait, really? that's how you chose the name?" Tabby said with a laugh, "Also, did anyone else notice she did not deny the crush?"
That got an exhale out of me as most of the room was on the verge of hysterics and Tanya just looked, well she looked annoyed.
So I thought I would sidestep the issue of having to rescue Tabi from getting shoved out the airlock by saying "Alright here's the deal. We will train you up to Royal Guard standard, if you can't meet that standard we're going to tell Duchess Satine all about your little plot to go run off and get killed to prevent a civil war. If you can meet that standard we'll keep our traps shut on the subject unless we're asked directly by Duchess Satine if we were involved. An acceptable deal Princess Kryze?"
Tanya turned and nodded, "Quite acceptable, Captain."
"Alright then," I said whilst getting up, "Let's get started. We have a long flight ahead of us and no time like the present to start your training. Skota, you're our ref and medic, if it looks like someone is going to die, you have authority to end the spar." I may have been a little brutal with my explanation of what was about to happen in the hopes I could scare her off at the last moment but she simply smiled and said, "Right this way." and started towards the door.
Eventually, everyone was in the Lancer's cargo hold, the spectators seated on a few crates or leaning against them. Tanya and I were in our armor at the center of the hold, which had been cleared of cargo beforehand, creating a pseudo sparring circle. "The first test will be on your skills in hand-to-hand combat. No weapons, we rely only on our armor and our skills. The longer you can stay standing, the more chances you have to impress me. If you impress me you will pass this test."
Tanya merely nodded and entered a fighting stance, left arm and leg forward, right leg back with her toes pointed to the side, and her right hand in a fist by her hip. I followed suit with my own fighting stance, my left foot slightly forward, my right foot slightly behind me to provide a stable footing, and both arms raised, ready to attack or defend whatever Tanya decided to throw at me. I sent a nod for Skota to begin the spar.
"In 3, 2, 1, Fight."
Instead of both of us rushing in to pummel each other, we both slowly move closer inch by inch. Just before our hands touch each other, I grab her left wrist with my right hand and push it up and away from her torso. In retaliation, Tanya launches her right fist for a body shot, which I grab hold of with my left hand. With both of her arms trapped, I pull her closer and deliver a rising knee to her abdomen, then release her left hand to deliver an elbow drop to her back, and finish the combo with a left roundhouse kick to her side.
The kick pushes Tanya to the ground and I pursue immediately for follow-up attacks. Tanya uses the momentum of the kick to roll into an upright position, just in time to deflect my roundhouse kick away. I quickly plant the leg that I had just used for the roundhouse kick, to the floor and pivot for a spinning hook kick. Tanya gives my leg a simple push so my kick passes above her head, after which Tanya closes the distance so she could launch her own blows.
That second kick served two purposes, it kept Tanya distracted from striking me when my back was turned as well as spinning me around so that I am now facing her and ready to deflect any attack with my hands. Several probing punches and jabs are deflected or blocked before I begin my counterattack. I twist my torso to the side, so that Tanya's right straight deflects off my armor. Before Tanya can retract her arm, I grab her wrist with my right arm and pull her forward, unbalancing her. A rising knee to her gut stuns her long enough for me to put her in a chokehold. There is just enough space between the helmet and breastplate to squeeze an arm around her neck.
Tanya struggled to free herself, I merely leaned back so my arm lifted her off the ground so she couldn't get any leverage. Tanya quickly changed tactics and started to elbow my stomach in the hopes of loosening my hold. While my arm stayed tight around her neck, the elbow strikes forced my torso to lean forwards. With contact to the ground reestablished, Tanya quickly wrapped her hands around the back of my helmet before pulling it over her shoulder so that she could jump up and knee my helmet. Tanya put her weight onto my neck which pulled my head lower so that she could hit my helmet again with another knee strike before removing herself from my hold. She immediately took advantage of her freedom to kick my right knee, causing me to kneel before delivering a third blow with her knee to my helmet, which put me on my back.
My instincts screamed to get away from the ground, horrible things happen to those that lay on the ground in a hand-to-hand fight. I let my instincts guide me and rolled to the side, avoiding Tanya's incoming stomp. From there, I quickly stood up and continued to block and parry attacks, waiting for the right opening to turn the tide. That opportunity came when Tanya tried a roundhouse kick of her own. I quickly moved forward and intercepted her kick by blocking it with both of my forearms before wrapping my left arm around her leg. With her leg trapped, I hooked her other one with my right leg. With both of her legs in the air, Tanya's back is inevitably slammed into the floor. Before she could move, I dropped my knee into her chest to pin her and landed a straight punch to her helmet.
"Alright, that is enough." Skota signaled the end of the spar before she walked up towards Tanya to inspect her condition. She gently removed Tanya's helmet and activated a flashlight to check for a concussion. I stood back and waited while Skota examined Tanya for any long-lasting injuries.
"Well, she'll be dizzy for a couple of hours but the helmet's padding help absorb most of the impact. But getting slammed to the ground is going to cause her brain to bounce around inside her skull, that final punch to her face did not help. I'll also need to check you for injuries too, getting kneed in the head is not conducive to your health and well-being."
I simply nodded and removed my helmet so that Skota could inspect it. While Skota was checking for signs of a concussion, I watched as Vizla and Ordo helped Tanya up to take a seat on a nearby crate. It looked like the princess was lucid enough to know that she lost as her face was furrowed with frustration and intense concentration as she attempted to think up a new plan.
"Need I remind you that the goal isn't to win? The goal is to impress me," I see her eyes widen in shock as I continue my verdict. "and you certainly lasted much longer than I thought, even landed several good hits. For now, you passed my standard for hand-to-hand combat. Tomorrow we'll test your physical conditioning so better get as much rest as you can before then."
"Thank you, Captain Struc. I won't let you down." With a nod Tanya made her way to the room with Vizla lending her shoulder for support.
Once the door to the cargo hold was shut, I looked toward my fellow guards as they stayed behind. "Something on all of your minds?"
Mok was the first to respond, "Are you sure this is a good idea boss?"
"Not really, no." Came my immediate reply. "The right thing to do would be to call Duchess Satine right now and tell her what Tanya is planning. But with the fate of our sector at stake, we can't afford to throw away a plan that could work in defusing the situation before a civil war broke out."
Skota chimed in, "You are putting the fate of the sector into the hands of a teenage girl."
"A teenage girl who could go toe-to-toe with me, and you all know from experience that is no easy feat." I saw Ordo and Tabi cringe at the memory of the beat down I had given them under the guise of extra melee training after the clubbing incident.
"I believe that she can do it." Ordo spoke for the first time since arriving at the cargo hold. "I've been Tanya's friend for several years now, I know what she is capable of when she puts her mind to it."
"No signs of head trauma, but just to be safe I'll check up on you again in a few hours." Skota delivered her assessment as she tucked away her flashlight.
"Thanks, Doc."
"If you really want to thank me, don't get any injuries that require an operating room for me to fix."
"I'll be sure not to cause permanent damage," I replied.
"That's probably the best I'm going to get."
I then turn my attention to the rest of the guards that stayed in the cargo hold. "So while we are all here, just in case Lady Kryze proves herself, who's going to be Vizla's escort while the rest of us are in Gargon."
Tabi raised his hands, "I volunteer, after Concordia, they are going to Harswee and a local would help a lot in maintaining the ruse so that we don't have to need a local guide."
"Good idea, anyone else wanna volunteer?"
"I'll go, Lady Kryze is going to need your fighting skills, Skota's medical skills, and Mok's slicing skills on Gargon. Plus having 2 rookies to protect Vizla might not be enough in case there is a kidnapping attempt or something." Kastel said from his seat at the back.
"That settles that then, if there is nothing else I'm going to sleep off this headache."
After accepting their farewells and goodnights, I exited the cargo hold to head to my room and laid down on my bed. The fact that Tanya could have won that spar if she didn't make a few mistakes was a surprise. I knew that she was trained by a 'defense instructor' but what Tanya did is not something you can teach, especially when the New Mandalorian philosophy is the main philosophy governing the sector. No, that was talent and finely honed instinct. Not fine enough to beat a veteran but with the right training, she'll be a force to be reckoned with.
Mandalore, Royal Palace
Korkie Kryze
Shaking my head I stood outside of one of the Palace's meeting rooms, listening to aunt Satine talk to various public officials about White Silver's announcement. By the sounds of it they were arguing about what to do and the general consensus was no one knew what to do.
Being openly hostile could cause a civil war, while letting them just do whatever they want was even more worrying.The fact of the matter was Gargon was on the periphery of the Mandalorian Sector and it had not really integrated into the economy since the New Mandalorians took over. So there was an argument being made to just ignore them. And to be fair, that argument sounded like it was winning since no New Mandalorian wanted to engage in an open war against any other Mandalorian.
Sighing, I shook my head and stepped away, heading towards the gardens. I could not feel more annoyed at being vindicated. A few years back Tanya had said that the Silver people were different from the warmongers of ancient times. Well it looks like Tanya was wrong, something that didn't happen often but I was happy to be proven right this time. Just wish it didn't come with the potential for a war.
Entering the garden I found someplace to sit and look at the city taking a breath to try and center myself. I really wasn't sure what Satine was going to do about my sister. She pretty much openly flirted with the ideology of the Silver Warmonger and nearly got me to go along with it as well.
I didn't like the ancient warmongers and their ideology was the reason I didn't know my parents, but if my sister was willing to defend something with such passion, I was willing to give it a read at least. And what I had read wasn't terrible and it did seem to take the emphasis off of war and more on defense and the economy. But of course, that was all a front wasn't it, something to sucker people into the ideology so that they would go along with the Silver Warmonger's plans.
"Korkie." Satine's voice called from over my shoulder, causing me to look in her direction.
"Auntie Satine," I said with a smile as she walked over to take a seat next to me on the bench.
"Been a busy day isn't it?" she commented looking out over the city. "Thought you'd like to know that Tanya's on her way home, she was apparently a bit embarrassed about getting in that fight a few weeks ago and decided to do a working vacation by visiting a few worlds in the Mandalorian Sector before coming home."
I smiled at that, even if I was annoyed with her political leanings I would be happy to have my sister home. Though, I was sure Auntie Satine was going to give her an earful for that whole fight situation.
I've been in the room when that had popped up on the news and Satine had been drinking one of her teas at the time. The moment that popped up on the news she nearly choked on her tea and had to spit it out and before immediately trying to contact Tanya.
"That's good, it'll be good to find out what she's been up to," I said with a smile. Ha, I was more curious about what she had been up to that ended up with her getting in a fistfight in an alley. From what footage I found on the hall it looked like she's been there with several people including Vai.
"Yes, she'll be here in a little more than a month or so, I just hope that this whole Silver nonsense is wrapped up before then." She said, sounding concerned.
I leaned in over to give her a hug saying, "Everything would be alright auntie."
Gargon City Outskirts
Fenn Rau
"Well, this is not how I thought this mission would go," I muttered as I ducked lower as a series of blaster bolts fired over my position. I tracked the second Silver Codex back to this planet rather quickly. And then I'd go about getting myself to this planet to continue the investigation, find out who was responsible, and bring them to justice if need be.
Being prepared for what I thought was every eventuality from nomadic warlord to gangster pirate. What I had not prepared for was a corporation-owned army and for the creator of the Silver Codex to literally announce his position as declaring independence.
I had also not been prepared for them to seize all the ships in the landing area or to seize the holo communications station.
The information coming in and out of Gargon was, at this point, completely under his control. Which meant I was on my own. Being on my own was not good for my odds of survival. There was no doubt someone would figure out that one of those ships belonged to a member of the royal guard and would start hunting me. So I went about improving my odds, I got as far away from the city as possible and joined up with the local nomads. The nomads of this world were a lot more religious than most Mandalorians, still back in the olden days with many other practices. They weren't Concordia-sect religious, demanding that you never take off your helmet if you want to consider yourself a Mandalorian. But they did tend to revel in the fighting of war. So the moment I had told them that Gargon was declaring war on the Mandalorian sector, they had asked if they could help the Mandalore vs Mandalore war.
If I was not a member of the Royal Guard and my family had not been serving the rulers of Mandalore for generations I might have made the classic mistake of saying "well there is no Mandalore vs Mandalore war. As Duchess Satine refused that title." But I was someone who'd been a part of the Royal Guards for a long time. So I immediately said 'yes they could,' that 'we needed to keep this fake Mandalore from attaining more power.'
Which is how I got into this situation ducking behind rubble on the outskirts of Gorgon as black-clad troopers fired their blasters with pitiful accuracy but plenty of volume at myself and the various colored nomadic Mandalorians who for the most part are using slug throwers and are much more accurate.
This little fight had been going on for about 20 minutes now and it was taking that long mainly because the nomadic Mandalorian in charge of stealing the speeders had apparently not been able to unlock the warehouse they were stored in.
Said speeders were military grade and most likely were going to be used by the fake Mandalore for whatever conflict he intended to unleash on the sector. A speeder with a cannon mounted on a tripod on the back could do a lot of damage. Which is why I wanted us to have them, as we could probably keep the fighting going a good long time if we had them. The nomads were not entirely animal riders, most of them rode around on speeders so it was not like they didn't have the tech know-how to operate these machines.
We just needed to get them out of here first which was getting harder and harder as more and more of the enemies seem to be popping up.
Taking a stand I unleashed a volley of fire from my carbine sending two of the, what I could best guess, were durasteel armored Mandalorians who had been trying to make their way across the open square to whatever gods they believed in.
But before I could duck back down I got shot in my shoulder causing me to tumble out of sight, probably for the best as more shots rang out through where I had been standing.
Checking myself over to make sure I had no permanent damage, I looked at the nomadic Mandalorian on my right and said, "Do we have any other plans in case we can't get those doors open?"
Amanda Lauren, a nomad, looked at me and then held up a grenade, "When all else fails just blow it up."
Well, I couldn't deny that was not a bad plan, if we couldn't have it, deny it to the enemy. So I didn't and instead said, "How long till we are forced to use the 'blow kriff up' plan?"
She reloaded her slugthrower with ammunition before loading it by moving the lever at the trigger before saying, "We're having a good little bit of fun fighting these Dar'manda pretending to be Mando, if things get a little bit more desperate after like 20 minutes maybe, then we'll call it but until then just enjoy sending these fake Manda to their graves."
Said Mandalorian nomad then popped up and fired off a few shots while another took a shot to his helmet. He fell back stunned for a moment but then he rolled over and got back into a sitting position next to me, giving a thumbs up.
I just shook my head with amusement before getting ready for my own attempt at popping up the fire off a few rounds when I heard an explosion in front of us.
Said explosion was quickly followed up by an increase in fire from behind the enemy's position. Popping my head up I saw a third unknown force had appeared, not wearing the black armor of the fake Mandalorians, instead wearing several variants of color mostly sorted around browns.
There was one Mandalorian there that had a more flashy colored armor that was dual-wielding pistols, a Mandalorian in red jetpack flew over the black-clad troopers and fired shots directly from above, killing several of them before landing closer to our position. They began backing us up, continuing the rain of fire at the black clad troopers who were starting to panic by looks of it, several of them already running full sprint in the other direction.
As soon as the enemy force gave up the fight and ran, the figure slotted their pistols into their holsters and turned towards us.
"Howdy boys and girls, sorry if you didn't need the help but well I'm not a fan of these fake soldiers pretending they're Mandalorians." The figure said, stepping towards us.
Shaking my head I stood up fully and said, "Bo Katan, I did not expect to run into you here."
Bo Katan stopped and looked in my direction, probably with a look of confusion on her face before she recognized the armor.
"I know I did not expect to see real Mandalorian Royal Guard armor, guess we're two for two on that." She said walking in my direction, "What are you doing here Royal Guard?"
"The duties of any Royal Guard, preventing upstarts from causing problems for the leadership of Mandalore. What about you? What are you doing here Bo Katan?" I said with some suspicion.
"I was asked to do a little bit of investigation as to who was publishing this False Silver Codex. But once I found out who they were, they seized my ship, and well they kind of got on my bad side. So I've been working with some of the local gangs to cause issues for False Silver here since I had nothing better to do."
"Ahuh, and who requested that you do this investigation?"
"Probably the same person who requested you to do your investigation. Kind of annoyed that they didn't trust me to get the job done but you know how it is. I'd say the fact that we're both here says we at least can confirm this is the jackass that put out the second codex."
I nodded at that, and shrugged, "Well it seems we have an aligned goal. Care to work together to, as you say, screw with this jackass." I said offering a hand.
"Sure, why not, the more hands on deck, the better." Bo Katan said, taking my hand and giving it a shake.
Concordia, 'Abandoned' Mine
Zum Murdoc
"Well, Zum old buddy you've made a fuck up of this." I'm uttered looking at the contract that had appeared on my desk a few years back when I first got access to a functioning base of operations to work on armor again.
All those years ago I was a little bit desperate, so desperate that my droids had actually been ransacking the place when we first showed up looking for anything of value that we could either sell or meltdown to be sold.
All these years later my financial position was a bit better thanks to various contracts I had taken over the years but the first contract was… well first if you don't count the one to produce armor for the young Lady Kryze. The first one was to an individual who needed a large portion of armor created to arm his Garrison of self-defense force for Gargon.
I had simply thought nothing of it at the time since it was an opportunity to make armor again. Apparently, it was a bit more than that as my client was now declaring the independence of the Mandalorian sector and stirring up a nest of radicalism.
"I sure know how to pick people to work for," I muttered as I looked at the contract again. I had produced quite a bit of armor and had helped a bunch of other armorers move their gear to that planet to produce more and now, now I'm an accessory to what is this? Treason? Terrorism? Whatever it is, it's not good for me.
I just had to help the man responsible for this, I'll either end up dead or out of the picture enough that I wouldn't be cast as a main villain in whatever plot he was putting out there or at least wouldn't tell people that I was the one who had been arming him with armor and weapons.
Weapons probably being the bigger deals as armor was a self-defense thing, everyone was okay with that now, but weapons were still up in the air. Granted all I've been doing was smuggling a few rifles here or there from stash piles I knew about from the last Civil War and the Clan Wars and all the gear was frankly really out of date or pretty beat up.
But the laws tended to not care if the things were already in the sector when it came to moving weapons around, in fact, they tended to lean towards punishment even if they were already in the sector. That's why I had been up to this point mostly selling the weapons outside the Mandalorian sector, moving them out of the sector in hopes that if I was ever caught I'd get a slap on the wrist since I was demilitarizing the Mandalorian sector. I should have stayed with that mentality, if I did I would probably not be in this situation.
Fine, I stood up and grabbed the contract, wondering if I should destroy it or stash it somewhere in case of evidence that could be used to keep me from a short drop with a sudden stop. Actually, I should probably check and see what the New Mandalorians use for executions. I hadn't really paid attention to that particular part of the justice system they set up I only knew that the Traditionalists had preferred hangings and firing squads for dealing with people who are given the death sentence and that was usually enough to keep people in line unless they were a mad murderous psycho.
Shaking my head I considered my options, maybe going under the radar and leaving the sector till this all blew over was the right direction to go. Or perhapsI should reach out to Satine, she has been more reasonable in recent years. Maybe she'd be willing to hear me out on why this was a terrible misunderstanding that had led me to the wrong side of the conflict and would like to make it right somehow.
Yeah, she's been getting more reasonable but as I thought about it I didn't think she'd be that reasonable, not yet at least. The day she called me to make armor for her was the day that she'd be reasonable enough to accept an apology for something like that and I don't think that would ever happen. She was too sold on the idea of the pacifist ways to ask for armor to ever be built in her name.
As I sat back trying to think of a way out of this situation I heard a beeping from one of the panels on the upper decks of the mining facility where I stayed and where most of the security systems were located. I set down the datapad that had the contract on the table and walked up the stairs to see what the beeping was all about. I wondered where Bo had gone to, I hadn't seen her since I had gotten back 2 days ago. But then again I wasn't her father, I was just an old friend of the family. She could run off and do whatever she wanted and I didn't need to be paying that much attention to it.
Looking at the screen I quickly realized what the beeping was about, it was detecting three ships entering the atmosphere. And on a direct course for the mining facility, all three of them appear to be Lancer Pursuit Craft…
And like that, I was moving, heading to get to my ship in hopes of getting out of here quickly. Why were three Lancers landing at this mining facility? Those ships were only used by the Royal Guard, as far as I was aware, so that means it was on Royal Guard business. Well according to all information I knew, the only people who knew about this facility were both Bo Katan and Tanya, both of whom were close to Satine to various levels. And it was not without reason to think they had turned me over after recognizing some of the armor I'd created in the forges below as the same kind of armor being worn by whatever Gargon army was in control of said planet.
I'd just managed to get outside as the first of the three ships landed on the three remaining landing pads, the other two soon joined quietly sitting down in front of me. At that moment I had two options, run for my ship or try and talk my way out of this till I got a position to get to my ship without getting shot. I decided that to try and talk really was the only option that probably wouldn't get me shot.
At least that's what I thought till the doors opened on two of the ships and a couple droids stepped out and started doing checks of the vessel. If the Royal Guard were doing a 'smash and grab the evildoer' I was sure the droids would stay on the ship till the guards were out. The third vessel opened and out stepped Tanya, Vai, and a retinue of Royal Guards.
"Zum, wonderful you're exactly where I thought you would be." She said with a cheery tone.
I blinked a couple times confused before saying, "Lady Kryze, to what do I owe the pleasure of your arrival and security detachment."
Tanya simply smiled and said, "If I were to ask you to make five suits of armor to a set of specifications I provided, would you keep silent about it?"
"You need me to reforge your armor?" I asked to be curious as to where this was going.
"No no, these are new sets of armor, fresh sets and they will need to be as polished as you can get them."
"You want silver armor?" I asked incredulously, "Tanya, I know there's a thing called a rebellious phase but running off to join a madman and his pursuit of a corporate empire is a bit much I think."
That got a laugh from everyone in front of me though I didn't find this very funny.
Tanya simply smiled and said, "No we won't be joining the False Silver, I will be dealing with him very harshly in fact."
I blinked and looked at the Royal Guard Captain, "It's your job to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't get killed right? Are you okay with her implication that she's going to go out there and try and kill Bresug Gerr and his attempt for an empire?"
"No, but we've had three weeks on that vessel and I've tried to break her of this through every form of training I can come up with. She just keeps coming back. I find it rather respectable the amount of determination she's put into dealing with this 'False Silver' so I'm going to help her with it to make sure she comes out of this alive."
"Why do you keep saying False Silver?" I asked before 2 + 2 became 4 in front of my eyes, "Tanya, did you write the Silver Codex?" My head turned from looking at the Royal Guard as my finger still pointed towards him.
"Correct armorer," Tanya said as a droid stepped out from behind the Royal guards and opened a briefcase presenting quite a substantial amount of credit chips. "X4 has kindly donated profits from one of his ventures to help in our operation to undo the False Silver's influence. This should be enough to purchase any materials you need for the armor we want constructed and a little bit extra to keep silent about who the real White Silver is."
I stood there taking this in thinking for a moment trying to figure out if I'd lost my mind or if this was really happening before I decided, screw it. Nodding my head, I took the suitcase and shut it, and said, "You have a deal, six suits of silver armor coming right up."
"Six?" Tanya said, sounding confused.
"Let's just say I have a personal score to settle with your so-called False Silver and this is a great opportunity to settle it." A great opportunity to kill the witness to my mistakes and keep my family from suffering any ill reprisals from the New Mandalorian government.
Turning to head inside I said, "I probably have all the resources inside to make the armor you need. Any fine details we can talk about as we're working though I will expect you folks to help out around here while we get this sorted." Also, I turned towards the group, "Six armors counting me, but there's nine of us here. What's the deal with that?"
"Vai and two of the other guards will be taking one of these ships on to make appearances around the Mandalorian Sector over the next month or so. Just to build an alibi for my location during these events."
I nodded "Seems reasonable. Alright, six sets of silver armor coming right up. Do you want them all the same or semi-customized?" I called stepping into the darkness of the mountain.
"Really customized," Tanya said following with the majority of her guards as Vai and two others started moving materials from one ship to the other, I assumed that was their luggage.
Concordia, Wilderness
Rahm Kota
Being assigned to guard over a bunch of jumped-up farmers with the Force was in my opinion not the best use of my abilities. But I had gone along with it because the order had asked me to look after them. And because I had always heard stories about how fearsome and terrifying Mandalorians were on the battlefield. Having served in prolonged conflict for most of my life I kind of was interested in seeing what was so terrifying about these Mandalorian warriors.
In some ways, I was impressed by what I had found. Their whole culture seemed to vibrate with a knowledge that fighting was a natural state of the world and thus they must be ready to fight at any moment. But then, I was disappointed to hear some people's descriptions of Mandalorians, they were simply monsters and no better than the Hutts. From what I had seen by traveling this world they were just people, proficiently trained in the ways of combat, but people nonetheless.
I was sure that in another life I would count many of these people as friends as I found many of the Mandalorians compatible with my sense of duty. And it was this sense of duty that pushed the need to send a letter via cargo transport back to the Jedi Order, telling them that I was going to investigate the ongoing insurrection on Gargon.
I probably should have used the holo-net to inform them of this, but they probably would have told me no. The Jedi were always focused on preserving the stability of the Republic, but I swore they were a bit slow to take action sometimes and I was sure that if I told them I was going to do it through holo-net they would say no due to my job being one of guarding the farmers with Force powers in the Agricorp. However if I sent it through cargo transport and simply said the holo-net was down when I made the decision, I would have enough leeway to get away with doing what I thought was right and that was to try and handle this situation before it became a threat to the stability of the region.
Of course, how I was going to get to Gargon was a bit of an issue. Simply put, I have not been given a vessel for the trip to this moon, which is why I could probably get away with not having a holonet connection. But in times like these, I fell back on the most trusted tool in my possession. I let the Force guide me. However, I do say the Force had guided me into the middle of nowhere this time.
And traveling for two and a half weeks to end up at some old mining base by the looks of it. Well, off any known roads and quite in the middle of nowhere, even middle of nowhere Concordia.
I would question if the Force had made a mistake if there weren't two ships landed in front of the mining base and a crew of Mandalorians in silver armor currently loading up the smaller of the two vehicles for what looked like a space flight or fights as there were quite a lot of weapons being loading as well.
There were four males, two female Mandalorians, and a droid slowly loading up the ship. One of the females appeared younger by the slight shortness she had compared to the others and was acting more in an observation role. The auburn-haired girl was observing the others as if she was the leader and making sure that everything was loaded. A strange thing and she looks so young, I would assume the larger individual with a heavy pauldron on his left shoulder was the leader just from how Mandalorians usually work, their command structure usually centers around the toughest being the one in control. I wondered what that could be about before I noticed that the girl had stopped and started looking in my general direction. No, I was far enough back in the tree line that there was no way she could see me and I was having to use vision-enhancing binoculars just to make out some of the details. So how she had such a reaction was intriguing and I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew why the Force had sent me here.
Smiling, I got up from where I had been laying down and started moving out of the tree line toward their general direction wondering what would happen. I was not afraid they'd shoot me or anything like that, if they tried I was pretty sure it would be an even fight but I raised my hands nonetheless to show I was no threat.
The moment I came into view the girl immediately grabbed her helmet and shoved it on top of her head obscuring her identity. She then said something to the other Mandalorians who immediately grabbed their own helmets and turned to face my general direction, some of them raising their weapons.
Smiling as I approached, I said, "Good morning."
The second-largest individual was pointing a blaster in my general direction and said. "Good morning Jedi, may I ask what you're doing out in the middle of nowhere?"
"Would you believe me when I say that I'm out for a walk?" I said with a smile. But when none of them chuckled or gave any other impression other than 'we're going to shoot you if you don't give us the answers we want' I continued with. "I believe you've heard about the whole mess going on in Gargon, a very terrible thing in my opinion. I have the distinct feeling it will destabilize this region quite a bit and the Jedi Order exists to stop such violent upheavals. But I don't have an easy way to get to the planet so I thought I'd let the Force guide me and the Force led me here."
The Mandalorians shared a look between each other that I couldn't understand, considering their helmets were rather featureless. Though I somewhat assumed that they might have some sort of internal communication system and were having a bit of a conversation in a way that I couldn't hear them.
The shortest of the group, the auburn-haired girl who'd hid her identity spoke up next. "Well, your Force seems to have been directing you in the general direction of us as we are going to Gargon, though I'm not sure about letting you onboard our ship for this trip. We can't exactly be seen as being working with the Jedi for the operation that needs to be done."
"Well, the Jedi Order hasn't exactly sanctioned my mission to deal with this problem. I'm sure they will get around to it eventually."
The shorter figure pressed her palm to her helmeted face and then appeared to continue whatever conversation they were having through whatever back channels those helmets afforded them. After a bit, she finally said, "Fine you can come along, but you're expected to pull your own weight. "
"Sounds reasonable, Miss?" I asked, fishing for a name.
"White Silver will do."
I blinked then looked around me at the other silvered armored Mandalorians. Before looking at the figure again noting she had put out her hand to shake.
"Strange, aren't the problems going on on Gargon related to someone calling himself White Silver?"
"A thief and pretender," Silver said, still holding up their hand. "We intend to make sure that thievery is undone and that is all we will do, not try to take this person's attempt at destabilizing the sector and push it on if that's what you're concerned about."
I nodded my head understanding the implicit implication, that what mattered was that our goals were aligned not why we were doing it so I took her hand and shook it, "Sounds like a deal then."
Nodding her head she looked to the droid and said, "Silver X, escort the Jedi to a room he can stay in."
"Yes, mistress." the droid said, stepping forward before saying to me, "Please follow, Master Jedi."
Laughing and I started to follow but not before saying, "So why do you all have code names around the word silver?"
"And white." White Silver said matter of factly, before turning to look at her Mandalorian warriors most likely having another private conversation that I couldn't hear since I didn't have a helmet.
Shrugging, I followed the droid into the ship.
Writers note: so much writing, so much writing… and I'm talking about chapter 18, not 17… as for this chapter story moving along, hope everyone enjoys it.
Edited b: Markus Gollinger, Warmach1ne32, luke the man
Community edited by: Alexander Paulsen, Ryan Pirtle, Sound Logic,Asphalt Falls, The Mad Ghoul
Community editable doc (Chapter 17) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
Art thanks Sky66 who Commissioned the Artist J-likes-to-draw
Supporters: Neso, Markus, Mackenzie Buckle, Silver Wolf, Falk H, Mana Rope, Daniel Martinez, michael, Devilstar101, Hats88, DrkShdow
714FNM (24BBY)
Month 8
Coruscant, Mandalore Tower
Tal Merrik
What game is she playing? Last night was... Well, it could have gone better. I had to deal with the announcement of a breakaway state from the ruling government of the Mandalorian Sector, which was not something I wanted to deal with.
I was likely going to have a talk with the Chancellor about this at some point if the situation kept getting worse, which is something I'd rather not do. If only the government was a bit stronger, then that upstart wouldn't dare pull something like this. Hopefully, Satine could deal with it but her limp-wristed pacifism was going to be the end of the Mandalore sector. It's more likely that Vizsla would have to step in instead. If his group took out the Silver faction without announcing themselves as Deathwatch, but did so later, it would gain a lot of favor with Mandalorians who are still on the fence.
My day was already full dealing with the insanity that was this farce of a CEO trying to take over the Mandalorian sector and now I had to deal with the little representative Kryze. Looking down at the paperwork again I asked, "You wish to take a sabbatical?" trying to confirm exactly what was going on.
The blonde-haired girl and her trademarked typical green dress sat in front of me in a comfortable chair I had for such meetings in my personal office. Outside the window of my office the traffic passed leisurely casting shadows into the richly decorated room in the midday sun.
"Yes Senator Merrik, I have decided to proceed with your offer of taking some time off after that whole fiasco last month." She said it with a smile that was uniquely 'her'. As if this was a simple request and not some sort of play.
I am not a blind man, I could see the connection. She denied leaving Coruscant when things were running fine in the Mandalore sector but the moment this White Silver decided to declare independence, all of a sudden she wanted to go back to the sector, because of the embarrassment of winning a fight against street thugs? A likely story, yes? No, no she was being called back by Satine and was probably going to be her chosen envoy to run around the sector to try and prevent individual planets from joining White Silver.
On one hand, this would be good for sector stability, as this White Silver fellow was not part of any plans for the sector's future and I would rather he met failure than success. On the other hand, allowing her to go running off to meet and greet the political blocs of every planet in the sector would surely further her plans to no doubt replace me in my position in the Senate. So the question is, am I willing to let a short-term good endanger the long-term stability of my role in the Senate?
Thankfully, Count Dooku's latest political speech had quite an impact on the Republic. That alone has already resulted in over a dozen sectors pulling out of the Republic to join this newly forming Confederacy. My time in the Senate would probably be cut short anyways, as soon as the successful coup took place, and I doubted Vizsla would keep this child around with her connections to Satine. She'd likely be banished outside the sector just for being politically connected to the Pacifists and the senatorial seats, which would be transferred to the Confederacy, would remain in my hands.
Sighing, I filled my name out on the sheet and said, "You chose a remarkably bad time to put in a request like this. I imagine the sector is going to be set alight with that whole Silver Codex situation coming to fruition. Always knew that thing was going to be a problem." Shaking my head I continued, "What planets are you planning to visit exactly?"
"Nothing too strenuous, I want to stay as far away from the current situation with the Silver Codex as I can, I will probably be visiting Concordia, Harswee, Jakelia, and then finally Ordo. All in all, it should take a month to visit all those planets, maybe make a few stops along the way depending on what travel arrangements I end up making."
I nodded, noting that all those planets were more in the southern edge of the core of the Mandalore sector. Gargon was closer to the Hydian Way but also further to the north so theoretically she would be safe from any direct attacks if the White Silver decided to play any assassination games. Unfortunate opportunity lost, if she was a little bit closer I might have leaked her itinerary to Dooku. Still might… yeah he did take some interest in possibly removing her and I was not going to say no to a political rival being knocked off the board. But looking at the schedule, accounting for the weeks of travel she would be doing back in the Mandalore Sector and the weeks needed to travel back, I'd be free of her till almost to the end of the year. Actually, that wasn't a bad idea.
Nodding my head I looked up at the young representative and said, "Well…try not to get into any trouble during the trip. Though things are fairly quiet in the Senate, if you wanted to stay in the Mandalore Sector till the start of next year, to visit with your family on Mandalore, that would be fine. I can handle the negotiations with the Ithorians while you're away."
Tanya nodded her head and seemed to understand my implication and said, "That sounds quite reasonable, yes I think I will avail myself of a little bit of a longer trip than originally planned for. Make the final stop at Mandalore before returning to Coruscant."
Smiling, I handed back her datapad and said, "Enjoy your vacation Tanya and tell Satine that I stand with her on any decisions she makes with this Silver Codex tomfoolery."
She nodded her head and said, "I will do so, see you when I return in the new year Senator Merrik." before she stood up from her seat to leave.
"See you in the new year Tanya." I said with a pleasant smile, hoping that I would not.
Coruscant Spaceport, Private Dockyard
Struc Ordack
"Well isn't this just a cozy ship." I said, looking at the familiar sight of a Lancer pursuit craft. The Lancer was a 34m long vessel, and about that wide as well with the main body in the shape of a saucer. From the sides poked two engine assemblies, as well as a third from the rear and a pilot's compartment protruding out of the front.
From the military-grade variants I had served on, I'd expected two forward-mounted laser cannons to either side of the pilot's compartment. It looked like this particular model, being made for civilians, only had the dorsal-mounted cannon. No doubt the tractor beam that was also a favorite of the military variants was also missing. This one didn't have much of a paint job, the burnished iron color with a few silver streaks being the only thing of note.
Skota was standing next to me shaking her head, "I would have thought the princess would have waited for the Coronet or maybe even taken regular transport back to the Mandalore sector. Buying her own ship seems a bit excessive. Where'd she even get the money for this?"
"Proper investments." came the voice of X4, who was coming up the gangway towards the dock where we had found the ship. He was carrying a suitcase most likely full of Tanya's possessions. Before any of us could ask what he meant X4 continued. "And knowing who to speak to, the manager of the local branch of Mandel Motors currently had three of these modified Lancer Pursuit Craft for show and was selling them individually at around 120,000 credits each. However, a discount for royalty of 20% with a bulk deal brought down the price to 200,000 credits for all three of them."
I looked at X4 and asked the question I'm sure all of the Royal Guard on the dockyard was thinking at that exact moment. "Multiple? As in, she owns how many of these now?"
"Three," Tanya said interrupting X4 and she and her handmaiden walked across the landing area towards us. "I technically own three of these. I would have only bought one but X4 convinced me that having a couple extra would be beneficial for the mission."
"What mission?" I asked, narrowing my eyes, glad that I had my helmet off otherwise they wouldn't have seen it.
"Need to know as of right now, we can talk once we are inside the ship." She said matter of factly, walking past us into the vessel which lowered the ramp as she pressed a button on her vambrace.
Looking to the other Royal Guards I saw them all shrugging in confusion before I led the way on board the ship.
The interior of the ship was rather sleek, though I noted that there seemed to be a larger cargo space than the military variant I'd served on. As soon as we were aboard Tanya pressed a few buttons and the door started to close. She then said, "X4 please show them the rooms we will be staying in."
The droid nodded before pointing to a door. "Through that doorway is a Passageway that leads to two bunk rooms, one with two beds and the other with four the Royal Guard can use. ." He pointed toward the front of the ship and said, "The pilot's cabin and the captain's cabin would of course be the room for Mistress Tanya and her Handmaiden, past that is the cockpit. Captain Stuc you're rated for flight I believe, correct?"
I nodded, "We'll have to go up there later to let you familiarize yourself with the controls." X4 commented before continuing, "it's a two-person gunship style seating arrangement."
I simply nodded. X4 turned to point to the door opposite the crew area, "Through there is the common area and galley." and pointing towards the back of the ship indicated the cargo area we came through. "In case of emergency, the escape pods are near the front of the ship by the pilot's area"
As soon as X4 was done, Tanya spoke up, "Now that everyone's familiarized with where everything is, get yourself settled in. Captain Struc, see about getting us on our way to the Mandalore Sector and at 1600 hrs we will hold a meeting to discuss the mission."
Part of me wanted to ask what mission since as far as I was aware this was a simple transport mission back to the Mandalore Sector but the other part of me, the part that kept me alive during the Civil War, noticed that the princess said she was going to do it at 1600 hrs. Strange that she dropped into military time for this, it wasn't like she had spent any time there.
"Understood," I shook my head and looked to the other Royal guards before saying, "Tabi, Ordo, Kastel, and Mok you're getting the room with four beds. Skota and I will take the room with two. As for the piloting situation, I'll be up at the front of the ship and since I have the opportunity might as well give you all a little bit of flight training in case an emergency happens. Let's start with Mok." I said looking towards the slicer.
I got a chorus of 'yes sirs' before everyone started to move about. I followed Tanya and the handmaiden towards the front of the ship before they sealed themselves off in the captain's quarters to have some sort of privacy. I finished walking to the front of the ship and found the droid had not been lying. The seats were still in a gunship configuration which was at least something familiar. Taking the pilot seat, I had Mok take the copilot seat and negotiated with Coruscant Port Authority to get our ship permission to leave the planet.
It wasn't a long conversation and we were soon in the air heading through the atmosphere. A few negotiations with traffic control later and we were in space. I did enjoy the handling of the vessel, she was rather fast for her size and maneuverable. The three-engine placement allowed the ship to turn on a dime.In theory, I couldn't actually test it without shaking everybody about inside, and when you're transporting royalty that's not really the smartest move.
Once I had the ship on course and set her to hyperspace, I stretched back and got up from my seat heading back to the area with Mok following behind me. I saw most of the Royal Guard were sitting on a bench or the dining table and someone apparently had access to the holo-net as they were watching some of the Silver Ranger show on a panel at the side of the room.
Checking my vambrace, I saw we were only about 5 minutes from Tanya's meeting time so I asked the obvious question. "Anyone else think that this is really suspicious?" Immediately all five hands of the royal guards in front of me went up in the air.
"That's about what I figured, any ideas what's going on?" I asked while taking a seat at the table.
"No idea," Tabby said matter of factly, "all I know is that there is a bit of trouble starting in the Mandalorian Sector and all the sudden she wants to go home."
"What kind of trouble?" Ordo asked, looking up from his book.
"The 2nd Mando Civil War kind, that Silver Codex writer finally made an appearance and declared himself independent from the Mandalorian Sector and is, you know, stirring the pot," Skota said from where she sat matter of factly.
"Still can't believe that the Silver Codex was written by that guy. The man was a slave driver during the bombardment of Keldabe. There's no way he'd be all for the personal freedoms that were implied in the first codex." Mok said, matter of factly.
"A slave driver to one is a hero to another," Kastel said, "lot of Old Mandalorians think if you served in the defense of Keldabe during that siege, you were doing the right thing even if you pulled crap like explosive collars on your workers."
"Was that ever confirmed? I heard that was more of a legend." The slicer asked out of curiosity.
"It cannot be confirmed or denied because the factory blew up. There wasn't even an attempt to excavate it thoroughly to discover if it was true or not. A lot of the leadership of Keldabe stayed in place well into New Mandalorian control so if there was any evidence it was all destroyed through the rebuilding efforts or outright paid to be destroyed by Mr. CEO-turned-demagogue-leader." I answered.
"Smart move on his part, publishing that codex the way he did before he revealed himself allowed people to become comfortable with his ideas," Kastel said matter of factly, shaking his head.
"And this is why you don't build your ideology off of things you read online from anonymous people. You end up with a situation where you've built your worldview around the teachings of a man who's probably going to lead the sector into a civil war if he is allowed to run rampant." Skota, being the voice of reason in the group, said what needed to be said.
"Then it is fortunate that he didn't write it." Tanya's voice broke up our conversation and I turned around to face her. Of all the things I expected to see her wearing, full Mandalorian armor with her helmet under her arm and her handmaiden just behind her in her own armor would be the last thing on the list.
Stepping into the room she put her helmet on the table before standing before us. "The CEO of Mandal Hypernautics did not write the Silver Codex. I did."
There was a moment's pause as everyone took that in before Tabi laughed. "You're joking, right? Whoever wrote the Silver Codex couldn't have been a New Mandalorian, you're always doing whatever Satine says."
"Do I look like I'm joking? But yes, I always do whatever Duchess Satine says." Tanya said, looking at Tabi, leaving the implied implications of that statement for him to finally puzzle out.
"The Silver Codex is state-sponsored?" I asked, surprised by this turn of events.
"No, not state-sponsored per se, state accepted would be a better term," Tanya said, shaking her head. "I wanted to create a Middle-of-the-Road option to try and draw people who were annoyed with the New Mandalorians and also appeal to New Mandalorians who wanted to experience some of what the Old Mandalorians were talking about. A way to encourage peace as it were, as well as open up economic opportunities. Unfortunately, I didn't suspect that a corporate-minded CEO would use this as an opportunity to create a splinter state and attempt to usurp New Mandalorian rule. That one is on me, which is why I have to do something to discredit this False Silver before he sparks another Mandalorian Civil War."
"You're not going on vacation, you're going to Gargon," Ordo said it first, but all of us were thinking it.
"Yes, that would be the correct assumption in this situation," Tanya said with a shrug. "I cannot allow this False Silver to destroy the work I've created with the Silver Codex. It took me several years to create a document that would stimulate discussion without causing a civil war and this man is doing everything in his power to ruin all those years of work."
"Alright," I said standing up, "so let me see if I understand the situation correctly, we are going to be going to Gargon so you can get killed by an unknown number of Mandalorians who have pledged themselves to a document you created and ended up on the wrong side of an ideological civil war between the actual creator and a false prophet as it were."
"I hate the fact you used the word, 'prophet' but yes we are going to Gargon, mostly to find some way to bring down the CEO before he can plunge the sector into war. But no, I will not be dying as I plan on living until retirement."
I shook my head at that, "I've seen you fight, I'll admit you're pretty good but this will be against trained Mandalorian warriors, people who have spent their lives fighting. I don't know how well you've been trained but I don't think you can take on those warriors, you might be able to take on the CEO himself, as I doubt he's trained as well as he could have while running a major corporation."
"Captain Struc, would you say that those Gargon Manadalorian's training is up to your Royal Guard standards?" Tanya asked, looking directly at me.
"No, not to my standards anyway." Mostly because I regarded us to be some of the highest trained Mandalorians in the sector.
"So if I were to train to meet your standards, do you think I would have a chance?" She said with a smile.
I crossed my arms, not liking where this conversation is going before saying, "Theoretically yes, though I don't like what you are implying there."
"I mean the implications are quite simple. If I meet your standards of training, would not the chances of successfully bringing down False Silver increase."
I sigh and shake my head. "Yes, but here's a question that I'm more interested in. Does the Duchess know that you've made it your mission to stop this False Silver?"
"Theoretically no, and for the simple reason, this operation cannot be seen as being directed by the Duchess. Any attack from the Duchess will be used by False Silver to increase his notoriety and bring the sector closer to civil war. If the real White Silver makes an appearance though, it destroys their efforts to raise an army to fight for the Mandalore Sector. That would be preferable as the real White Silver can then disappear again back into anonymity."
"Alright, I'm starting to see the general idea of your plan here," I said, leaning back on the table. "I'll run through the few flaws I see and you can try and answer them as we go. Once we enter the Mandalorian Sector, you have to be in certain places and no doubt people will know if you don't show up in this ship… the multiple ships that's why you bought multiple ships."
"Correct," Tanya said matter of factly, "the two other ships are under control of crews X4 hired. X4?" She looked at the droid who walked into the room.
"Light Cargo Ships 2 and 3 will be picking up a cargo of Mandalorian goods on each planet that Mistress was meant to land on before returning to Coruscant. I'll have to adjust their schedules as necessary but they should serve as proper decoys."
"Not only that, Vai and two Royal Guards of your choosing can be on board one of those cargo ships making various appearances in very public places so people assume I am where I'm supposed to be."
"Sounds like you need more handmaidens," I uttered, noting that would decrease the forces at her disposal by three warriors.
"Something I'll take note of in the future and will rectify." The princess explained with a shrug.
"Okay then so you have decoys out so people don't know where you are, this I can understand. Your armor though is fairly distinctive and Royal Guard armor is really distinctive. How are we going to handle that?"
"I have contacted an armorer by the name of Zum and explained a portion of the situation." He's going to meet us on Concordia and supply us with sets of armor so we don't stand out in ways we don't want to."
"So you've got your alibi and how you're going to fight incognito figured out. Do we have any contacts on Gargon that can support us?." Holding out my hand I listed each point with a finger.
"Bo Katan is currently in Gargon and she has some contacts with the local factions. Hopefully, with her aid, we can expand our forces and make this operation more of an even fight."
I let my finger up. "Anyone else have something to point out here?" I asked hoping someone would come up with a better way to stop this mission from happening because frankly she had thought out quite a bit and the fact she was willing to undergo training to increase her chances of pulling it off spoke quite well for her.
Everyone was apparently in too much shock about the reveal of White Silver's true identity so no one said anything relevant to stopping this insanity. Tabi on the other hand had a question. "So you named yourself White Silver because you have a crush on the Silver Ranger right?"
I had to let out a smirk as the princess's face went red and flustered a bit. "I will have you know I worked very hard on selecting that name and it was not chosen for some crush. White is symbolic of purity, silver is symbolic of redemption, it means pure redemption."
"Wait, really? that's how you chose the name?" Tabby said with a laugh, "Also, did anyone else notice she did not deny the crush?"
That got an exhale out of me as most of the room was on the verge of hysterics and Tanya just looked, well she looked annoyed.
So I thought I would sidestep the issue of having to rescue Tabi from getting shoved out the airlock by saying "Alright here's the deal. We will train you up to Royal Guard standard, if you can't meet that standard we're going to tell Duchess Satine all about your little plot to go run off and get killed to prevent a civil war. If you can meet that standard we'll keep our traps shut on the subject unless we're asked directly by Duchess Satine if we were involved. An acceptable deal Princess Kryze?"
Tanya turned and nodded, "Quite acceptable, Captain."
"Alright then," I said whilst getting up, "Let's get started. We have a long flight ahead of us and no time like the present to start your training. Skota, you're our ref and medic, if it looks like someone is going to die, you have authority to end the spar." I may have been a little brutal with my explanation of what was about to happen in the hopes I could scare her off at the last moment but she simply smiled and said, "Right this way." and started towards the door.
Eventually, everyone was in the Lancer's cargo hold, the spectators seated on a few crates or leaning against them. Tanya and I were in our armor at the center of the hold, which had been cleared of cargo beforehand, creating a pseudo sparring circle. "The first test will be on your skills in hand-to-hand combat. No weapons, we rely only on our armor and our skills. The longer you can stay standing, the more chances you have to impress me. If you impress me you will pass this test."
Tanya merely nodded and entered a fighting stance, left arm and leg forward, right leg back with her toes pointed to the side, and her right hand in a fist by her hip. I followed suit with my own fighting stance, my left foot slightly forward, my right foot slightly behind me to provide a stable footing, and both arms raised, ready to attack or defend whatever Tanya decided to throw at me. I sent a nod for Skota to begin the spar.
"In 3, 2, 1, Fight."
Instead of both of us rushing in to pummel each other, we both slowly move closer inch by inch. Just before our hands touch each other, I grab her left wrist with my right hand and push it up and away from her torso. In retaliation, Tanya launches her right fist for a body shot, which I grab hold of with my left hand. With both of her arms trapped, I pull her closer and deliver a rising knee to her abdomen, then release her left hand to deliver an elbow drop to her back, and finish the combo with a left roundhouse kick to her side.
The kick pushes Tanya to the ground and I pursue immediately for follow-up attacks. Tanya uses the momentum of the kick to roll into an upright position, just in time to deflect my roundhouse kick away. I quickly plant the leg that I had just used for the roundhouse kick, to the floor and pivot for a spinning hook kick. Tanya gives my leg a simple push so my kick passes above her head, after which Tanya closes the distance so she could launch her own blows.
That second kick served two purposes, it kept Tanya distracted from striking me when my back was turned as well as spinning me around so that I am now facing her and ready to deflect any attack with my hands. Several probing punches and jabs are deflected or blocked before I begin my counterattack. I twist my torso to the side, so that Tanya's right straight deflects off my armor. Before Tanya can retract her arm, I grab her wrist with my right arm and pull her forward, unbalancing her. A rising knee to her gut stuns her long enough for me to put her in a chokehold. There is just enough space between the helmet and breastplate to squeeze an arm around her neck.
Tanya struggled to free herself, I merely leaned back so my arm lifted her off the ground so she couldn't get any leverage. Tanya quickly changed tactics and started to elbow my stomach in the hopes of loosening my hold. While my arm stayed tight around her neck, the elbow strikes forced my torso to lean forwards. With contact to the ground reestablished, Tanya quickly wrapped her hands around the back of my helmet before pulling it over her shoulder so that she could jump up and knee my helmet. Tanya put her weight onto my neck which pulled my head lower so that she could hit my helmet again with another knee strike before removing herself from my hold. She immediately took advantage of her freedom to kick my right knee, causing me to kneel before delivering a third blow with her knee to my helmet, which put me on my back.
My instincts screamed to get away from the ground, horrible things happen to those that lay on the ground in a hand-to-hand fight. I let my instincts guide me and rolled to the side, avoiding Tanya's incoming stomp. From there, I quickly stood up and continued to block and parry attacks, waiting for the right opening to turn the tide. That opportunity came when Tanya tried a roundhouse kick of her own. I quickly moved forward and intercepted her kick by blocking it with both of my forearms before wrapping my left arm around her leg. With her leg trapped, I hooked her other one with my right leg. With both of her legs in the air, Tanya's back is inevitably slammed into the floor. Before she could move, I dropped my knee into her chest to pin her and landed a straight punch to her helmet.
"Alright, that is enough." Skota signaled the end of the spar before she walked up towards Tanya to inspect her condition. She gently removed Tanya's helmet and activated a flashlight to check for a concussion. I stood back and waited while Skota examined Tanya for any long-lasting injuries.
"Well, she'll be dizzy for a couple of hours but the helmet's padding help absorb most of the impact. But getting slammed to the ground is going to cause her brain to bounce around inside her skull, that final punch to her face did not help. I'll also need to check you for injuries too, getting kneed in the head is not conducive to your health and well-being."
I simply nodded and removed my helmet so that Skota could inspect it. While Skota was checking for signs of a concussion, I watched as Vizla and Ordo helped Tanya up to take a seat on a nearby crate. It looked like the princess was lucid enough to know that she lost as her face was furrowed with frustration and intense concentration as she attempted to think up a new plan.
"Need I remind you that the goal isn't to win? The goal is to impress me," I see her eyes widen in shock as I continue my verdict. "and you certainly lasted much longer than I thought, even landed several good hits. For now, you passed my standard for hand-to-hand combat. Tomorrow we'll test your physical conditioning so better get as much rest as you can before then."
"Thank you, Captain Struc. I won't let you down." With a nod Tanya made her way to the room with Vizla lending her shoulder for support.
Once the door to the cargo hold was shut, I looked toward my fellow guards as they stayed behind. "Something on all of your minds?"
Mok was the first to respond, "Are you sure this is a good idea boss?"
"Not really, no." Came my immediate reply. "The right thing to do would be to call Duchess Satine right now and tell her what Tanya is planning. But with the fate of our sector at stake, we can't afford to throw away a plan that could work in defusing the situation before a civil war broke out."
Skota chimed in, "You are putting the fate of the sector into the hands of a teenage girl."
"A teenage girl who could go toe-to-toe with me, and you all know from experience that is no easy feat." I saw Ordo and Tabi cringe at the memory of the beat down I had given them under the guise of extra melee training after the clubbing incident.
"I believe that she can do it." Ordo spoke for the first time since arriving at the cargo hold. "I've been Tanya's friend for several years now, I know what she is capable of when she puts her mind to it."
"No signs of head trauma, but just to be safe I'll check up on you again in a few hours." Skota delivered her assessment as she tucked away her flashlight.
"Thanks, Doc."
"If you really want to thank me, don't get any injuries that require an operating room for me to fix."
"I'll be sure not to cause permanent damage," I replied.
"That's probably the best I'm going to get."
I then turn my attention to the rest of the guards that stayed in the cargo hold. "So while we are all here, just in case Lady Kryze proves herself, who's going to be Vizla's escort while the rest of us are in Gargon."
Tabi raised his hands, "I volunteer, after Concordia, they are going to Harswee and a local would help a lot in maintaining the ruse so that we don't have to need a local guide."
"Good idea, anyone else wanna volunteer?"
"I'll go, Lady Kryze is going to need your fighting skills, Skota's medical skills, and Mok's slicing skills on Gargon. Plus having 2 rookies to protect Vizla might not be enough in case there is a kidnapping attempt or something." Kastel said from his seat at the back.
"That settles that then, if there is nothing else I'm going to sleep off this headache."
After accepting their farewells and goodnights, I exited the cargo hold to head to my room and laid down on my bed. The fact that Tanya could have won that spar if she didn't make a few mistakes was a surprise. I knew that she was trained by a 'defense instructor' but what Tanya did is not something you can teach, especially when the New Mandalorian philosophy is the main philosophy governing the sector. No, that was talent and finely honed instinct. Not fine enough to beat a veteran but with the right training, she'll be a force to be reckoned with.
Mandalore, Royal Palace
Korkie Kryze
Shaking my head I stood outside of one of the Palace's meeting rooms, listening to aunt Satine talk to various public officials about White Silver's announcement. By the sounds of it they were arguing about what to do and the general consensus was no one knew what to do.
Being openly hostile could cause a civil war, while letting them just do whatever they want was even more worrying.The fact of the matter was Gargon was on the periphery of the Mandalorian Sector and it had not really integrated into the economy since the New Mandalorians took over. So there was an argument being made to just ignore them. And to be fair, that argument sounded like it was winning since no New Mandalorian wanted to engage in an open war against any other Mandalorian.
Sighing, I shook my head and stepped away, heading towards the gardens. I could not feel more annoyed at being vindicated. A few years back Tanya had said that the Silver people were different from the warmongers of ancient times. Well it looks like Tanya was wrong, something that didn't happen often but I was happy to be proven right this time. Just wish it didn't come with the potential for a war.
Entering the garden I found someplace to sit and look at the city taking a breath to try and center myself. I really wasn't sure what Satine was going to do about my sister. She pretty much openly flirted with the ideology of the Silver Warmonger and nearly got me to go along with it as well.
I didn't like the ancient warmongers and their ideology was the reason I didn't know my parents, but if my sister was willing to defend something with such passion, I was willing to give it a read at least. And what I had read wasn't terrible and it did seem to take the emphasis off of war and more on defense and the economy. But of course, that was all a front wasn't it, something to sucker people into the ideology so that they would go along with the Silver Warmonger's plans.
"Korkie." Satine's voice called from over my shoulder, causing me to look in her direction.
"Auntie Satine," I said with a smile as she walked over to take a seat next to me on the bench.
"Been a busy day isn't it?" she commented looking out over the city. "Thought you'd like to know that Tanya's on her way home, she was apparently a bit embarrassed about getting in that fight a few weeks ago and decided to do a working vacation by visiting a few worlds in the Mandalorian Sector before coming home."
I smiled at that, even if I was annoyed with her political leanings I would be happy to have my sister home. Though, I was sure Auntie Satine was going to give her an earful for that whole fight situation.
I've been in the room when that had popped up on the news and Satine had been drinking one of her teas at the time. The moment that popped up on the news she nearly choked on her tea and had to spit it out and before immediately trying to contact Tanya.
"That's good, it'll be good to find out what she's been up to," I said with a smile. Ha, I was more curious about what she had been up to that ended up with her getting in a fistfight in an alley. From what footage I found on the hall it looked like she's been there with several people including Vai.
"Yes, she'll be here in a little more than a month or so, I just hope that this whole Silver nonsense is wrapped up before then." She said, sounding concerned.
I leaned in over to give her a hug saying, "Everything would be alright auntie."
Gargon City Outskirts
Fenn Rau
"Well, this is not how I thought this mission would go," I muttered as I ducked lower as a series of blaster bolts fired over my position. I tracked the second Silver Codex back to this planet rather quickly. And then I'd go about getting myself to this planet to continue the investigation, find out who was responsible, and bring them to justice if need be.
Being prepared for what I thought was every eventuality from nomadic warlord to gangster pirate. What I had not prepared for was a corporation-owned army and for the creator of the Silver Codex to literally announce his position as declaring independence.
I had also not been prepared for them to seize all the ships in the landing area or to seize the holo communications station.
The information coming in and out of Gargon was, at this point, completely under his control. Which meant I was on my own. Being on my own was not good for my odds of survival. There was no doubt someone would figure out that one of those ships belonged to a member of the royal guard and would start hunting me. So I went about improving my odds, I got as far away from the city as possible and joined up with the local nomads. The nomads of this world were a lot more religious than most Mandalorians, still back in the olden days with many other practices. They weren't Concordia-sect religious, demanding that you never take off your helmet if you want to consider yourself a Mandalorian. But they did tend to revel in the fighting of war. So the moment I had told them that Gargon was declaring war on the Mandalorian sector, they had asked if they could help the Mandalore vs Mandalore war.
If I was not a member of the Royal Guard and my family had not been serving the rulers of Mandalore for generations I might have made the classic mistake of saying "well there is no Mandalore vs Mandalore war. As Duchess Satine refused that title." But I was someone who'd been a part of the Royal Guards for a long time. So I immediately said 'yes they could,' that 'we needed to keep this fake Mandalore from attaining more power.'
Which is how I got into this situation ducking behind rubble on the outskirts of Gorgon as black-clad troopers fired their blasters with pitiful accuracy but plenty of volume at myself and the various colored nomadic Mandalorians who for the most part are using slug throwers and are much more accurate.
This little fight had been going on for about 20 minutes now and it was taking that long mainly because the nomadic Mandalorian in charge of stealing the speeders had apparently not been able to unlock the warehouse they were stored in.
Said speeders were military grade and most likely were going to be used by the fake Mandalore for whatever conflict he intended to unleash on the sector. A speeder with a cannon mounted on a tripod on the back could do a lot of damage. Which is why I wanted us to have them, as we could probably keep the fighting going a good long time if we had them. The nomads were not entirely animal riders, most of them rode around on speeders so it was not like they didn't have the tech know-how to operate these machines.
We just needed to get them out of here first which was getting harder and harder as more and more of the enemies seem to be popping up.
Taking a stand I unleashed a volley of fire from my carbine sending two of the, what I could best guess, were durasteel armored Mandalorians who had been trying to make their way across the open square to whatever gods they believed in.
But before I could duck back down I got shot in my shoulder causing me to tumble out of sight, probably for the best as more shots rang out through where I had been standing.
Checking myself over to make sure I had no permanent damage, I looked at the nomadic Mandalorian on my right and said, "Do we have any other plans in case we can't get those doors open?"
Amanda Lauren, a nomad, looked at me and then held up a grenade, "When all else fails just blow it up."
Well, I couldn't deny that was not a bad plan, if we couldn't have it, deny it to the enemy. So I didn't and instead said, "How long till we are forced to use the 'blow kriff up' plan?"
She reloaded her slugthrower with ammunition before loading it by moving the lever at the trigger before saying, "We're having a good little bit of fun fighting these Dar'manda pretending to be Mando, if things get a little bit more desperate after like 20 minutes maybe, then we'll call it but until then just enjoy sending these fake Manda to their graves."
Said Mandalorian nomad then popped up and fired off a few shots while another took a shot to his helmet. He fell back stunned for a moment but then he rolled over and got back into a sitting position next to me, giving a thumbs up.
I just shook my head with amusement before getting ready for my own attempt at popping up the fire off a few rounds when I heard an explosion in front of us.
Said explosion was quickly followed up by an increase in fire from behind the enemy's position. Popping my head up I saw a third unknown force had appeared, not wearing the black armor of the fake Mandalorians, instead wearing several variants of color mostly sorted around browns.
There was one Mandalorian there that had a more flashy colored armor that was dual-wielding pistols, a Mandalorian in red jetpack flew over the black-clad troopers and fired shots directly from above, killing several of them before landing closer to our position. They began backing us up, continuing the rain of fire at the black clad troopers who were starting to panic by looks of it, several of them already running full sprint in the other direction.
As soon as the enemy force gave up the fight and ran, the figure slotted their pistols into their holsters and turned towards us.
"Howdy boys and girls, sorry if you didn't need the help but well I'm not a fan of these fake soldiers pretending they're Mandalorians." The figure said, stepping towards us.
Shaking my head I stood up fully and said, "Bo Katan, I did not expect to run into you here."
Bo Katan stopped and looked in my direction, probably with a look of confusion on her face before she recognized the armor.
"I know I did not expect to see real Mandalorian Royal Guard armor, guess we're two for two on that." She said walking in my direction, "What are you doing here Royal Guard?"
"The duties of any Royal Guard, preventing upstarts from causing problems for the leadership of Mandalore. What about you? What are you doing here Bo Katan?" I said with some suspicion.
"I was asked to do a little bit of investigation as to who was publishing this False Silver Codex. But once I found out who they were, they seized my ship, and well they kind of got on my bad side. So I've been working with some of the local gangs to cause issues for False Silver here since I had nothing better to do."
"Ahuh, and who requested that you do this investigation?"
"Probably the same person who requested you to do your investigation. Kind of annoyed that they didn't trust me to get the job done but you know how it is. I'd say the fact that we're both here says we at least can confirm this is the jackass that put out the second codex."
I nodded at that, and shrugged, "Well it seems we have an aligned goal. Care to work together to, as you say, screw with this jackass." I said offering a hand.
"Sure, why not, the more hands on deck, the better." Bo Katan said, taking my hand and giving it a shake.
Concordia, 'Abandoned' Mine
Zum Murdoc
"Well, Zum old buddy you've made a fuck up of this." I'm uttered looking at the contract that had appeared on my desk a few years back when I first got access to a functioning base of operations to work on armor again.
All those years ago I was a little bit desperate, so desperate that my droids had actually been ransacking the place when we first showed up looking for anything of value that we could either sell or meltdown to be sold.
All these years later my financial position was a bit better thanks to various contracts I had taken over the years but the first contract was… well first if you don't count the one to produce armor for the young Lady Kryze. The first one was to an individual who needed a large portion of armor created to arm his Garrison of self-defense force for Gargon.
I had simply thought nothing of it at the time since it was an opportunity to make armor again. Apparently, it was a bit more than that as my client was now declaring the independence of the Mandalorian sector and stirring up a nest of radicalism.
"I sure know how to pick people to work for," I muttered as I looked at the contract again. I had produced quite a bit of armor and had helped a bunch of other armorers move their gear to that planet to produce more and now, now I'm an accessory to what is this? Treason? Terrorism? Whatever it is, it's not good for me.
I just had to help the man responsible for this, I'll either end up dead or out of the picture enough that I wouldn't be cast as a main villain in whatever plot he was putting out there or at least wouldn't tell people that I was the one who had been arming him with armor and weapons.
Weapons probably being the bigger deals as armor was a self-defense thing, everyone was okay with that now, but weapons were still up in the air. Granted all I've been doing was smuggling a few rifles here or there from stash piles I knew about from the last Civil War and the Clan Wars and all the gear was frankly really out of date or pretty beat up.
But the laws tended to not care if the things were already in the sector when it came to moving weapons around, in fact, they tended to lean towards punishment even if they were already in the sector. That's why I had been up to this point mostly selling the weapons outside the Mandalorian sector, moving them out of the sector in hopes that if I was ever caught I'd get a slap on the wrist since I was demilitarizing the Mandalorian sector. I should have stayed with that mentality, if I did I would probably not be in this situation.
Fine, I stood up and grabbed the contract, wondering if I should destroy it or stash it somewhere in case of evidence that could be used to keep me from a short drop with a sudden stop. Actually, I should probably check and see what the New Mandalorians use for executions. I hadn't really paid attention to that particular part of the justice system they set up I only knew that the Traditionalists had preferred hangings and firing squads for dealing with people who are given the death sentence and that was usually enough to keep people in line unless they were a mad murderous psycho.
Shaking my head I considered my options, maybe going under the radar and leaving the sector till this all blew over was the right direction to go. Or perhapsI should reach out to Satine, she has been more reasonable in recent years. Maybe she'd be willing to hear me out on why this was a terrible misunderstanding that had led me to the wrong side of the conflict and would like to make it right somehow.
Yeah, she's been getting more reasonable but as I thought about it I didn't think she'd be that reasonable, not yet at least. The day she called me to make armor for her was the day that she'd be reasonable enough to accept an apology for something like that and I don't think that would ever happen. She was too sold on the idea of the pacifist ways to ask for armor to ever be built in her name.
As I sat back trying to think of a way out of this situation I heard a beeping from one of the panels on the upper decks of the mining facility where I stayed and where most of the security systems were located. I set down the datapad that had the contract on the table and walked up the stairs to see what the beeping was all about. I wondered where Bo had gone to, I hadn't seen her since I had gotten back 2 days ago. But then again I wasn't her father, I was just an old friend of the family. She could run off and do whatever she wanted and I didn't need to be paying that much attention to it.
Looking at the screen I quickly realized what the beeping was about, it was detecting three ships entering the atmosphere. And on a direct course for the mining facility, all three of them appear to be Lancer Pursuit Craft…
And like that, I was moving, heading to get to my ship in hopes of getting out of here quickly. Why were three Lancers landing at this mining facility? Those ships were only used by the Royal Guard, as far as I was aware, so that means it was on Royal Guard business. Well according to all information I knew, the only people who knew about this facility were both Bo Katan and Tanya, both of whom were close to Satine to various levels. And it was not without reason to think they had turned me over after recognizing some of the armor I'd created in the forges below as the same kind of armor being worn by whatever Gargon army was in control of said planet.
I'd just managed to get outside as the first of the three ships landed on the three remaining landing pads, the other two soon joined quietly sitting down in front of me. At that moment I had two options, run for my ship or try and talk my way out of this till I got a position to get to my ship without getting shot. I decided that to try and talk really was the only option that probably wouldn't get me shot.
At least that's what I thought till the doors opened on two of the ships and a couple droids stepped out and started doing checks of the vessel. If the Royal Guard were doing a 'smash and grab the evildoer' I was sure the droids would stay on the ship till the guards were out. The third vessel opened and out stepped Tanya, Vai, and a retinue of Royal Guards.
"Zum, wonderful you're exactly where I thought you would be." She said with a cheery tone.
I blinked a couple times confused before saying, "Lady Kryze, to what do I owe the pleasure of your arrival and security detachment."
Tanya simply smiled and said, "If I were to ask you to make five suits of armor to a set of specifications I provided, would you keep silent about it?"
"You need me to reforge your armor?" I asked to be curious as to where this was going.
"No no, these are new sets of armor, fresh sets and they will need to be as polished as you can get them."
"You want silver armor?" I asked incredulously, "Tanya, I know there's a thing called a rebellious phase but running off to join a madman and his pursuit of a corporate empire is a bit much I think."
That got a laugh from everyone in front of me though I didn't find this very funny.
Tanya simply smiled and said, "No we won't be joining the False Silver, I will be dealing with him very harshly in fact."
I blinked and looked at the Royal Guard Captain, "It's your job to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't get killed right? Are you okay with her implication that she's going to go out there and try and kill Bresug Gerr and his attempt for an empire?"
"No, but we've had three weeks on that vessel and I've tried to break her of this through every form of training I can come up with. She just keeps coming back. I find it rather respectable the amount of determination she's put into dealing with this 'False Silver' so I'm going to help her with it to make sure she comes out of this alive."
"Why do you keep saying False Silver?" I asked before 2 + 2 became 4 in front of my eyes, "Tanya, did you write the Silver Codex?" My head turned from looking at the Royal Guard as my finger still pointed towards him.
"Correct armorer," Tanya said as a droid stepped out from behind the Royal guards and opened a briefcase presenting quite a substantial amount of credit chips. "X4 has kindly donated profits from one of his ventures to help in our operation to undo the False Silver's influence. This should be enough to purchase any materials you need for the armor we want constructed and a little bit extra to keep silent about who the real White Silver is."
I stood there taking this in thinking for a moment trying to figure out if I'd lost my mind or if this was really happening before I decided, screw it. Nodding my head, I took the suitcase and shut it, and said, "You have a deal, six suits of silver armor coming right up."
"Six?" Tanya said, sounding confused.
"Let's just say I have a personal score to settle with your so-called False Silver and this is a great opportunity to settle it." A great opportunity to kill the witness to my mistakes and keep my family from suffering any ill reprisals from the New Mandalorian government.
Turning to head inside I said, "I probably have all the resources inside to make the armor you need. Any fine details we can talk about as we're working though I will expect you folks to help out around here while we get this sorted." Also, I turned towards the group, "Six armors counting me, but there's nine of us here. What's the deal with that?"
"Vai and two of the other guards will be taking one of these ships on to make appearances around the Mandalorian Sector over the next month or so. Just to build an alibi for my location during these events."
I nodded "Seems reasonable. Alright, six sets of silver armor coming right up. Do you want them all the same or semi-customized?" I called stepping into the darkness of the mountain.
"Really customized," Tanya said following with the majority of her guards as Vai and two others started moving materials from one ship to the other, I assumed that was their luggage.
Concordia, Wilderness
Rahm Kota
Being assigned to guard over a bunch of jumped-up farmers with the Force was in my opinion not the best use of my abilities. But I had gone along with it because the order had asked me to look after them. And because I had always heard stories about how fearsome and terrifying Mandalorians were on the battlefield. Having served in prolonged conflict for most of my life I kind of was interested in seeing what was so terrifying about these Mandalorian warriors.
In some ways, I was impressed by what I had found. Their whole culture seemed to vibrate with a knowledge that fighting was a natural state of the world and thus they must be ready to fight at any moment. But then, I was disappointed to hear some people's descriptions of Mandalorians, they were simply monsters and no better than the Hutts. From what I had seen by traveling this world they were just people, proficiently trained in the ways of combat, but people nonetheless.
I was sure that in another life I would count many of these people as friends as I found many of the Mandalorians compatible with my sense of duty. And it was this sense of duty that pushed the need to send a letter via cargo transport back to the Jedi Order, telling them that I was going to investigate the ongoing insurrection on Gargon.
I probably should have used the holo-net to inform them of this, but they probably would have told me no. The Jedi were always focused on preserving the stability of the Republic, but I swore they were a bit slow to take action sometimes and I was sure that if I told them I was going to do it through holo-net they would say no due to my job being one of guarding the farmers with Force powers in the Agricorp. However if I sent it through cargo transport and simply said the holo-net was down when I made the decision, I would have enough leeway to get away with doing what I thought was right and that was to try and handle this situation before it became a threat to the stability of the region.
Of course, how I was going to get to Gargon was a bit of an issue. Simply put, I have not been given a vessel for the trip to this moon, which is why I could probably get away with not having a holonet connection. But in times like these, I fell back on the most trusted tool in my possession. I let the Force guide me. However, I do say the Force had guided me into the middle of nowhere this time.
And traveling for two and a half weeks to end up at some old mining base by the looks of it. Well, off any known roads and quite in the middle of nowhere, even middle of nowhere Concordia.
I would question if the Force had made a mistake if there weren't two ships landed in front of the mining base and a crew of Mandalorians in silver armor currently loading up the smaller of the two vehicles for what looked like a space flight or fights as there were quite a lot of weapons being loading as well.
There were four males, two female Mandalorians, and a droid slowly loading up the ship. One of the females appeared younger by the slight shortness she had compared to the others and was acting more in an observation role. The auburn-haired girl was observing the others as if she was the leader and making sure that everything was loaded. A strange thing and she looks so young, I would assume the larger individual with a heavy pauldron on his left shoulder was the leader just from how Mandalorians usually work, their command structure usually centers around the toughest being the one in control. I wondered what that could be about before I noticed that the girl had stopped and started looking in my general direction. No, I was far enough back in the tree line that there was no way she could see me and I was having to use vision-enhancing binoculars just to make out some of the details. So how she had such a reaction was intriguing and I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew why the Force had sent me here.
Smiling, I got up from where I had been laying down and started moving out of the tree line toward their general direction wondering what would happen. I was not afraid they'd shoot me or anything like that, if they tried I was pretty sure it would be an even fight but I raised my hands nonetheless to show I was no threat.
The moment I came into view the girl immediately grabbed her helmet and shoved it on top of her head obscuring her identity. She then said something to the other Mandalorians who immediately grabbed their own helmets and turned to face my general direction, some of them raising their weapons.
Smiling as I approached, I said, "Good morning."
The second-largest individual was pointing a blaster in my general direction and said. "Good morning Jedi, may I ask what you're doing out in the middle of nowhere?"
"Would you believe me when I say that I'm out for a walk?" I said with a smile. But when none of them chuckled or gave any other impression other than 'we're going to shoot you if you don't give us the answers we want' I continued with. "I believe you've heard about the whole mess going on in Gargon, a very terrible thing in my opinion. I have the distinct feeling it will destabilize this region quite a bit and the Jedi Order exists to stop such violent upheavals. But I don't have an easy way to get to the planet so I thought I'd let the Force guide me and the Force led me here."
The Mandalorians shared a look between each other that I couldn't understand, considering their helmets were rather featureless. Though I somewhat assumed that they might have some sort of internal communication system and were having a bit of a conversation in a way that I couldn't hear them.
The shortest of the group, the auburn-haired girl who'd hid her identity spoke up next. "Well, your Force seems to have been directing you in the general direction of us as we are going to Gargon, though I'm not sure about letting you onboard our ship for this trip. We can't exactly be seen as being working with the Jedi for the operation that needs to be done."
"Well, the Jedi Order hasn't exactly sanctioned my mission to deal with this problem. I'm sure they will get around to it eventually."
The shorter figure pressed her palm to her helmeted face and then appeared to continue whatever conversation they were having through whatever back channels those helmets afforded them. After a bit, she finally said, "Fine you can come along, but you're expected to pull your own weight. "
"Sounds reasonable, Miss?" I asked, fishing for a name.
"White Silver will do."
I blinked then looked around me at the other silvered armored Mandalorians. Before looking at the figure again noting she had put out her hand to shake.
"Strange, aren't the problems going on on Gargon related to someone calling himself White Silver?"
"A thief and pretender," Silver said, still holding up their hand. "We intend to make sure that thievery is undone and that is all we will do, not try to take this person's attempt at destabilizing the sector and push it on if that's what you're concerned about."
I nodded my head understanding the implicit implication, that what mattered was that our goals were aligned not why we were doing it so I took her hand and shook it, "Sounds like a deal then."
Nodding her head she looked to the droid and said, "Silver X, escort the Jedi to a room he can stay in."
"Yes, mistress." the droid said, stepping forward before saying to me, "Please follow, Master Jedi."
Laughing and I started to follow but not before saying, "So why do you all have code names around the word silver?"
"And white." White Silver said matter of factly, before turning to look at her Mandalorian warriors most likely having another private conversation that I couldn't hear since I didn't have a helmet.
Shrugging, I followed the droid into the ship.
Writers note: so much writing, so much writing… and I'm talking about chapter 18, not 17… as for this chapter story moving along, hope everyone enjoys it.
Edited b: Markus Gollinger, Warmach1ne32, luke the man
Community edited by: Alexander Paulsen, Ryan Pirtle, Sound Logic,Asphalt Falls, The Mad Ghoul
Community editable doc (Chapter 17) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread
Art thanks Sky66 who Commissioned the Artist J-likes-to-draw
Supporters: Neso, Markus, Mackenzie Buckle, Silver Wolf, Falk H, Mana Rope, Daniel Martinez, michael, Devilstar101, Hats88, DrkShdow
Last edited:
Abnormalus
Reader of Stories
- Location
- 127.0.0.1
I am definitely interested in seeing where this goes, It is very fun seeing Tanya out of her comfort zone, but rapidly approaching it, regardless of what she tells herself.
With the tricked out armor and the color theme, I guess she's about to form the
Super Sentai Mandalorian Rangers?
Also getting some Zero, from Lelouch of thr Rebellion vibes.
Super Sentai Mandalorian Rangers?
Also getting some Zero, from Lelouch of thr Rebellion vibes.
- Location
- Michigan, USA
Go go Mando Rangers, those Mighty Silver Mando rangers.
..on a more serious front, i am liking how things are going and wish to read more, i eagerly wait for the next installment of PoM.
..on a more serious front, i am liking how things are going and wish to read more, i eagerly wait for the next installment of PoM.
There might be some possible equipment and strategies that Tanya might develop independently for herself and associates that actually can be used to fight anyone from heads of governments to space wizards assuming that the following HK-47 lore are applicable:
HK-47 lore on how to kill Jedi
HK-47 lore extra on how to kill super Sith. The Jedi stuff is still applicable for most Sith.
HK-47 lore on how to kill Jedi
HK-47 lore extra on how to kill super Sith. The Jedi stuff is still applicable for most Sith.
- Location
- United States
Hm, so in a way looking from out side. It would appear that the true White Silver will show up with her own close followers all of whom wear silver armor with the support of local gangs, nomads, and even a Jedi. Which I believe they did say about working together before. All of which to deal with a False Silver who's in charge of a corporation. Which will probably end with them leaving after resolving the issue with seemingly no interest in truly taking up the leadership role.
Suppose is question about thoughts on Satine. Also if it's realized who two certain individuals are and are associated with.
Is also the whole thought of giving power to those who don't want it...So by the True White Silver showing up and having the opportunity to take power but then choosing to just leave it behind/not take it. Could probably earn the respect of some people. Though might be a bit of a rise in Mandalorian's wearing silver, or even silver becoming a more prominent color in places.
....Hm, I wonder if it would be more impressive if we got basically White Silver vs False Silver while elsewhere everyone else notable is dealing with the armies of the False Silver. Of which includes giant droid. Which do exist.
Then someone makes a holo-vid or movie based on this. Or aquires recordings from security cameras, helmet recordings, the likely holo-recorder, etc all compiled together into a epic documentery or something.
But anyways, wonder how Jedi side of things will go after this?
Though with Vai...might be interesting if an attempt actually is made but before it can be acted upon a Warden of the Sky hiding among the crew quietly interferes with no one else aware.
Also recently came across some things on wookipedia. Wonder what Tanya would think if she learns about them? Let alone how what some of them appear in is called the Vow of the Silver Dawn.
Do know the whole Star Tours but not really gonna count that. But suppose could be an omake material if the Earth system / Urthha was present on the very edge of the outer rim.
But anyways, just the fact that there is a world named Earth but not our Earth.
Suppose is question about thoughts on Satine. Also if it's realized who two certain individuals are and are associated with.
Is also the whole thought of giving power to those who don't want it...So by the True White Silver showing up and having the opportunity to take power but then choosing to just leave it behind/not take it. Could probably earn the respect of some people. Though might be a bit of a rise in Mandalorian's wearing silver, or even silver becoming a more prominent color in places.
....Hm, I wonder if it would be more impressive if we got basically White Silver vs False Silver while elsewhere everyone else notable is dealing with the armies of the False Silver. Of which includes giant droid. Which do exist.
Then someone makes a holo-vid or movie based on this. Or aquires recordings from security cameras, helmet recordings, the likely holo-recorder, etc all compiled together into a epic documentery or something.
But anyways, wonder how Jedi side of things will go after this?
Though with Vai...might be interesting if an attempt actually is made but before it can be acted upon a Warden of the Sky hiding among the crew quietly interferes with no one else aware.
Also recently came across some things on wookipedia. Wonder what Tanya would think if she learns about them? Let alone how what some of them appear in is called the Vow of the Silver Dawn.
Do know the whole Star Tours but not really gonna count that. But suppose could be an omake material if the Earth system / Urthha was present on the very edge of the outer rim.
But anyways, just the fact that there is a world named Earth but not our Earth.
not intended but quite enjoying the idea of those connections.
hmm probably not much, she is already aware there are some weird cultural influences on the galaxy such, if she ever runs into i guess she has more thought but from my position writing her now I can't think of any.
Yeah.
And the fact that she owns three gunships makes me want a future scene where they tractor beam and stack each other into a discount Voltron.
Which is highly impractical with star wars tech, but hilarious to think about
- Location
- United States
That comment just ended up reminding me of how there was a time where a bomber ended up having another stuck on top of it...
For further information for those interested, here is a video of various equipment used by Mandalorians.
It is worth considering that HK-47 did have scorn for some of the equipment used by the Mandalorians, in particular the use of blasters and that the standard Mandalorian melee shield was crap since it only affects physical attacks while the upgraded Mandalorian power shield does work against energy-based attacks. Apparently despite the cultural interest in body armor, the Mandalorians does not appear to have developed powered armor like some others have.
The links to HK-47 on the principles of assassination equipment and strategy against force users which can be applied to many beings can be found below.
If her front companies include entertainment with sentai rangers and samurai dramas similar to Abarenbo Shogun (though that might be too close to Tanya's identity), maybe others might prefer spaghetti western style stories of Mandalorian style characters.
It is worth considering that HK-47 did have scorn for some of the equipment used by the Mandalorians, in particular the use of blasters and that the standard Mandalorian melee shield was crap since it only affects physical attacks while the upgraded Mandalorian power shield does work against energy-based attacks. Apparently despite the cultural interest in body armor, the Mandalorians does not appear to have developed powered armor like some others have.
The links to HK-47 on the principles of assassination equipment and strategy against force users which can be applied to many beings can be found below.
If her front companies include entertainment with sentai rangers and samurai dramas similar to Abarenbo Shogun (though that might be too close to Tanya's identity), maybe others might prefer spaghetti western style stories of Mandalorian style characters.
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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Warmach1ne32
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- Location
- Indonesia
For those of you who are interested, the Mandal Hypernautic Foreman Mok and Skota met was based on a real person, my dad.
My granddad was friends with the owner of a ceramics company and thanks to nepotism, my dad got the job to work as a procurement officer. Over time he gets saddled with more work like being foreman of the various properties the company has, as well as managing export and imports which is another full time job, all while not being paid for being a foreman or the import export job. Eventually his contract ended, and he started his own business selling phones, which is going pretty well since he has experience running 3 jobs at once for a few years. As for the company that my dad left, it was also laundering money from a syndicate, so it got cracked down by the government, so there is that.
Moral of this story is, fact is sometimes stranger than fiction and Nepotism is bad for a lot more reasons than merely hiring incompetent workers.
My granddad was friends with the owner of a ceramics company and thanks to nepotism, my dad got the job to work as a procurement officer. Over time he gets saddled with more work like being foreman of the various properties the company has, as well as managing export and imports which is another full time job, all while not being paid for being a foreman or the import export job. Eventually his contract ended, and he started his own business selling phones, which is going pretty well since he has experience running 3 jobs at once for a few years. As for the company that my dad left, it was also laundering money from a syndicate, so it got cracked down by the government, so there is that.
Moral of this story is, fact is sometimes stranger than fiction and Nepotism is bad for a lot more reasons than merely hiring incompetent workers.
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- Location
- Belgium
Thats quite a story thanks for the inspiration for that in the story pretty neat
- Location
- United States
Huh, not a Vibrobayonet/Legends but a normal one? Both exst in Star Wars but the Vibrobayonet was utalized by the Mandalorian Supercommandos.
Certainly interesting, especially as he was one of those Jedi who used non-clones. So technicly I guess was more involved with the other branch instead of the Grand Army which was the clones branch.
And with this Anakin belives he's met both parents and has gained an understanding that will probably influence things with Padme. Such as using it as an example.
Hm...kinda want to wonder about the possibility to using a subtle amount of the mind trick or something. Probably not but felt like saying it.
Yep, they've failed. Was told multiple times but just couldn't help themselves. That's a problem when your body double is dating a guard. But then again Tanya doesn't help things on her end either. This will lead to an annoyence, though at least the skirt thing is gonna be countered though it would be countered by something larger. Well unless it's not paperazi or journalist or whatever and not instead someone wanting to target Tanya and think of going after who they think she's with...I mean she'd likely get involved, but not for expected reasons.
Yep...
But anyways, Fenn Shysa , BL-series Battle Legionnaire
...Also while searching for something else found this: Candorian plague
Apparently was on Mandalore at one time decimating things. It's related to the Blue Shadow Virus.
Hexcalibur
Not So Ordinary Sword
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- It
I get the feeling that Vai got made, though she probably also avoided a abduction attempt. Didn't Duku planned to kidnap Tanya a few chapters ago?
Warmach1ne32
Machine of War and Quests
- Location
- Indonesia
I mostly added that bayonet as a last resort weapon, did not think to put a Vibro function on it as I thought it would be unnecessary when it is made of beskar. I also don't think Vibroblades can pierce beskar armor. Not sure if they can pierce fake Mando armor tho.
Also that is not Fenn Shysa btw. The Red and Blue Mando at the club has no relation to the Protectors. She is a merc hired by spoiler to act as their middleman.
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3 is extreme but that squeeze happens a lot with business. Someone leaves or retires and somebody 'clever' in management tries to see how long they can go without replacing the body so their numbers look better. "If nobody is screaming then it must not be a serious issue". Next thing you know you've got cascading burnout as the people who were willing to go the extra mile and be team players leave because they've lost goodwill toward the company.
Warmach1ne32
Machine of War and Quests
- Location
- Indonesia
Keep in mind that this is Indonesia in the 80s, corruption is everywhere and government officials are taking bribes from foreign corporations/nations for access to mine our resources (a few mines are still operating in Papua (the Indonesian part of New Guinea) with horrible working conditions and probably next to no pay, and run by foreign corporations from the US and Europe).
Add to the fact that it is run by a Syndicate, which is basically the cartel in Indonesia, to launder their money, I doubt management cared that their workers are overworked as they will just get another guy off the street. My dad just had the unfortunate luck to be the first in line due to nepotism. Like it is an extremely bad era to live in when inflation reach the point where Rp1,000 is worth 1/30th of a dollar and now it is worth 1/14th of a dollar. Before the 80s I think the original exchange rate was like Rp1,000 is worth 1/5th of a dollar.
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- Location
- United States
Not quite sure why, but I wonder what would happen if Tanya instead of using her natural hair color instead died her hair white? Just think it might've been funny in someway if she tried to pass as an Echani who was a Mandalorian. But then again other physical features would've disproved that rather quickly due to other physical details they have, such as silver eyes. Well unless one went all they way and got the equivilent of colored contact lenses or something. But still the whole chalk-pale skin.
...So yeah, though considering things probably wouldn't be surprised if the was an Mandalorian Echani somewhere. Even better if they supported the original Silver Codex.
Though did find these:
Also apparently Mandalore has 2 moons. There's Concordia, but I wonder if anything can be done involving it's second one. Doesn't seem like much is done with it but considering the other 2 it probably has besker as well.
starwars.fandom.com
Actually, on the topic of the Czerka Corporation, I wonder if they might be trying to make modified designs of Mandalorian starships? They have made engines, armor, and even starfighters before.
Got a bit side tracked but anyways. They have experience with making starships or at least starfighters, and they've in the past once before took a Mandalorian design and modified it. So I'm wondering if they'll take some Mandalorian starships and modify them. Just imagine adding something like a plasma railgun or something.
...So yeah, though considering things probably wouldn't be surprised if the was an Mandalorian Echani somewhere. Even better if they supported the original Silver Codex.
Well it would itself need to be made of beskar as well. Though there are some who consider beskar used for weapons as taboo such as that one religious group.
Though did find these:
- Beskad
- A traditional sword made of beskar.
- It was sometimes compared to a machete.
- Kal
- Accompanied the above and is a dagger.
- Munit'kad halberd
- A vibro axe made of beskar
- Whistling bird
- GALAAR-15 blaster carbine
- Mandalorian assault rifle
- Assault blaster rifle
- Mandalorian assault rifle modified by Czerka Corporation. Was for it's time one of the most precise weapons.
- Apparently was a thing back during Old Republic and it seems they might still be producing them as their used during the Galactic Empire era as well.
- I would not be surprised if the Czerka Corporation is creating other modified stuff that originated as Mandalorian designs.
- Teroch-type gunship
- Interesting how from the picture this can in a way land on water. I think. Not sure really.
- Mandalorian warship (Venator-style)
- Mandalorian cruiser
Also apparently Mandalore has 2 moons. There's Concordia, but I wonder if anything can be done involving it's second one. Doesn't seem like much is done with it but considering the other 2 it probably has besker as well.
Mandalore's second moon
Along with Concordia, the terrestrial planet Mandalore had a second moon which orbited around it. Mandalore's second moon was one of two satellites that orbited the homeworld of the Mandalorian people.[1] Located within the Outer Rim Territories, more specifically within Mandalore space, the...
starwars.fandom.com
Actually, on the topic of the Czerka Corporation, I wonder if they might be trying to make modified designs of Mandalorian starships? They have made engines, armor, and even starfighters before.
- Czerka-93U hunting rifle
- Czerka 4000
- 411 Holdout Blaster
- Czerka 431
- Juggernaut war droid
- The Juggernaut war droid was used by the Republic before.
- GE3-series protocol droid
- K-57B engine system
- K-57CE engine
- HP-S-5 starfighter armor
- L-41C weapon power converter
- Czerka Arms products
- They have a lot of stuff....
- Master-Com
- Outland rifle
- ZX miniature flame projector/Legends
- HK-series assassin droid
- Adventurer slugthrower rifle
- Aurra Sing's weapon
- 6-2Aug2 hunting rifle/Legends
- Mark IV assault droid
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/HK-51_series_assassin_droid
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/"Autoguard"_Cybernetic_Reflex_Suite
- Droid brain defense system
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/"Thumper"_under-barrel_grenade_launcher
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/IL-5_Ocula
- Here's a starfighter they made.
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Incinerator-class_plasma_railgun
- Of course they made a railgun.
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Invader_(hoverbike)
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Advanced_shield_disruptor
- Was a prototype during Old Republic but they might've refined it.
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/LRRL-75_rocket_launcher
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Multi-Environment_Tracked_Transport
- A Sandcrawler they made
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/CZ_wrist-mounted_flame_projector
- You know the flamethrower Boba Fett uses? It's a modified version of this.
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Executive_Cruiser
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dart_carbine
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/ZX-10_Combat_Droid
- Impresively, if any units were sliced they'd be deactivated. So had to destroy them if fighting them.
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/CZ-198
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Branch-class_vehicle
- A cruiser they used.
Got a bit side tracked but anyways. They have experience with making starships or at least starfighters, and they've in the past once before took a Mandalorian design and modified it. So I'm wondering if they'll take some Mandalorian starships and modify them. Just imagine adding something like a plasma railgun or something.