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Princess of Mandalore (Youjo Senki/Star Wars)

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Chapter 19
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    • Chapter 19
    714FNM (24 BBY)
    Month 9



    Gargon, Nomad's Forest Hideout
    Fenn Rau

    'I need to rough it out more,' I thought as I pulled myself out of the sleeping bag I've been resting in. Shaking myself awake, I got up and stretched out all of the kinks and knots I got from sleeping on the floor. Once I took a sip of water I stepped out of my tent, catching a breath of fresh air and enjoying the midday sun.

    Last night I was involved in a raid on a train line that ran from the city to a local spice mine, and got back to camp by sunrise. I'm not exactly a fan of getting drugs into the streets, but denying resources to an enemy was a legitim atate and time honored strategy. What my allies do with that spice, I did not care. All that mattered was one of the few natural resources that kept the city of Gargan running was being denied which would raise discontent among the populace and hopefully, that discontent would get directed at the person who was antagonizing the Nomads instead of the Nomads themselves.

    It was 50/50 in my mind on who they would put the blame on but denying the resources running into the city had a good chance of at the bare minimum preventing Bresug Gerr from prospering. For the past couple weeks all I've been doing was organizing efforts to starve the city of resources, striking places of weakness in order to gain resources for ourselves and occasionally transferring resources to parties within the city that supported our cause.

    This was, so far, the recipe for success. Though things had taken an odd turn as one of the clans we've been working with, Clan Morson, had broken contact with us. There are roughly 12 major nomadic clans of Gagon, all of which are against Bresug's vision of the sector. Clan Myra and Urlan are mercenary clans that didn't sign up with Gerr due to the fact that their main patrons are other nomadic clans, and they were paid to join in by the other clans. Clan Skale, Senlu, and Ylvan are merchant clans and as clans aren't willing to get involved in an actual war, while they could defend themselves and a few of their number volunteered to join, they prefer to supply the other clans with whatever they need rather than fighting themselves. Clan Grom, Azul, Byran, and Kol are mining clans that specialize in a certain resource, beskar, iron, gold, and coal respectively, and are not in favor of the place coming under the control of a corporation and so they volunteered their wealth and skills to the fight. Last but not least are Clan Glint, Kolt, and Morson, herdsman clans that watch over great herds of cattle and had all been in favor of the fighting, up until recently with Clan Morson.

    Before Clan Morson left, they got word that the chieftain's daughter was captured when Black Iron mercenaries managed to track down her cell of Morson warriors after they had successfully raided a Hypernautic warehouse. The Black Irons left a comm unit for us, their terms were that they would release the Morson heir and all of the other clan members that they captured for a signed agreement that Clan Morson would stay out of the conflict. Having no other choice, the chief brought the rest of Clan Morson with him to Gargon city.

    It is likely that supply trains are now being tagged with trackers and since the Nomads don't have a means to find and detect these trackers without the right frequency, they have to manually search every looted item for the physical tracker itself. And when you have a train full of resources, it is like finding a Kal in several haystacks. Thankfully, Clan Urlan proposed a solution, through the use of an Ion Pulse Blaster they can fry any tracker or electronic that Black Iron would put on the cargo. Of course it is only available in very limited numbers due to the amount of effort needed to make one by hand, so only half a dozen of these Ion Pulse Blasters were distributed to all of the cells, with more being made.

    While this helps prevent what happened to Clan Morson from happening again, it only highlights a major issue that the Nomads are currently facing, in that we are bleeding manpower. With each battle, more and more fighters are injured and need time to recover. While this is mitigated somewhat thanks to beskar armor, it does not make them invincible. Blaster bolts still felt like getting hit with a fist when in beskar armor, and multiple hits at the same area will bruise or crack bones. One notable example was that a Nomad got hit in the liver and was down for a week. Another got cracked ribs after getting hit in the chest from a dozen blaster bolts during an ambush.

    I was going to need to get in contact with Bo Katan soon, she was still operating in the city, working with gangsters who were unsatisfied with the current affairs to attempt to unseat Bresug Gerr. Their information network proved invaluable in giving us the time and place of various assets for us to raid and take as well as avoid patrols. However, Bresug's mercenaries and militia outnumber our fighters 5 to 1 with that gap growing larger each day as more of our fighters are injured and more mercenaries join Bresug's Silver banner. Bleeding Gargon City of resources isn't going to be enough, we need to deal a crippling blow soon before the Nomads are ground down by attrition.

    Looking across the camp I saw men in various types of armor and shades of color working on various tasks. Some are cleaning plates in the nearby stream, others are fixing their speeders, and a few are cleaning their guns, standard things you'd see of men on campaign. Even though they probably didn't get to fight and they seem to have thrown themselves wholly into this one. Guess it was just one of those remnants of the ancient ways that wasn't as prevalent with the New Mandalorians or even with the Traditionalists at this point. The willingness to drop everything and get involved in a fight when it was presented.

    All I did was invite them to go join the fight and they started talking about the ancient gods and their ancestors. From what I knew about Gargon's history, they didn't actually get involved in the Clan Wars or the Mandalorian Civil War. Too busy with their own affairs so they hadn't gone through the near collective trauma of those conflicts, not only that, they've also been separated from most of the fighting for the last 500 years. In a way I was looking at a window into the past, not as bad as say the people of Shogun reportedly were, but perhaps these people had more in common to pre-Mandalorian Excision Mandalorians, than any of the Mandalorians who ran around the sector nowadays, which was an interesting thought when you picked at it.

    I recognize some of the nomads that joined me on last night's raid are reheating the leftovers in the mess area. A few plates of grilled meats, poultry stew, and roasted vegetables seemed to be the order for today. I have to admit, the Nomads knew how to cook with only salt, pepper, and a few herbs they found in the surrounding forest. I was skeptical when they used an actual shovel to grill their meat; Clan Glint's Chieftain has assured me that they always wash it with soap and then put it over an open flame to kill any germs so it is probably cleaner than the plates we were using to eat it. After I was proven wrong when I tried it for the first time, the chef had been pretty smug that his dishes could compete with those high-class food in Mandalore, using only a shovel, herbs and mushrooms he foraged from the forest, and sea salt.

    'Now I'm feeling hungry.' My thoughts were interrupted when a Mandalorian in brownish armor ran up to me and gave one of the more ancient salutes. "Boss, Rath's squad is back from scouting Garvel. They brought along a few people who say they're here to join up with us."

    "Couple more hands wouldn't hurt." I said matter of factly as I cracked my neck looking for Rath and the new arrivals.

    "The issue is that there's a Jedi with them."

    "A Jedi?" I said, turning to look at him. I knew there was a chance that the defenders of the Republic might show up. I just didn't expect one would show up so quickly. "Take me to this Jedi." I said, grabbing my helmet from my tent before putting it on.

    The younger Mandalorian led the way to Rath near the edge of the camp where he and several other Mandalorians were guarding two Mandalorians in silver and white armor and a Jedi in their all too recognizable robes.

    Looking over the pair one was a man in rather standard silver and white armor, thick plate for the chest plate, and was carrying a blaster rifle by the looks of it. The other silver armored man had a very similar set of armor, though he was bigger and taller than the first and had a larger pauldron on one shoulder most likely the one that would be facing the enemy while firing. They were wearing modern standard designed armor, in fact a lot of their armor looked very standard as if they had been created at the same time. The Jedi on the other hand was an older man with green hair and a chin beard.

    Looking the three over I said, "I am Fenn Rau, coordinator of the nomadic clans against Mandal Hypernautics corporation. Who are you and why are you here?"

    The bigger guy with the heavy shoulder pad nodded his helmet and said, "I'm Zero and this is Strike we're here to stop Bresug Gerr at the behest of our leader." The bigger man said with a strange tone to his voice almost like the helmet was altering it a bit. Then he pointed to the Jedi, "That's Jedi Master Rahm Kota, he invited himself along."

    I nodded and said, "Wearing the colors of the enemy yet claiming to fight the enemy is an interesting way of introducing yourselves."

    The other Mandalorian spoke up, "Our leader is the real White Silver and is simply here to remove the fabrication of the False White Silver as they would put it."

    Under my helmet my eyebrow raised, I found the idea that the "real White Silver" had stepped up rather amusing but very unlikely. However, I wasn't going to dismiss two Mandos in modern Beskar armor and a Jedi if I could help it. So I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt depending on what the Jedi said. Turning to the Jedi I said, "Are they telling the truth? There's no way the Jedi Order is in favor of Bresug Gerr's little coup here, so unless you've been conned into letting these people into finding our camp I'm going to have to assume you're the most likely to know if they're telling the truth or not."

    The Jedi, Kota nodded his head, "They're telling the truth as far as they're concerned. I can confirm they are interested in unseating this Bresug Gerr and I have met their leader myself, who claims to be the real White Silver. Are they telling the truth past that point? Hard to say, though I will say that their leader does have a philosophical mind, so it's not impossible that the leader is the real deal from what I understand about the original Silver Codex."

    "Hmm," I thought about for a moment then finally shrugged, "Fine, I'm assuming you're here to help as well?" I said looking at the Jedi who nodded. "Great then, a couple pairs of hands and a Jedi could help in this operation. Anything else I should know before I go get a bite to eat?"

    "We have agents inside the city who have been gathering in town." the larger Mandalorian, Zero said. "Some of the information you might be interested in."

    Folding my arms across my chest I said, "I'm listening."

    The other more nondescript Mandalorian spoke up his helmet, definitely altering his voice though something about the cadence was familiar. "We have a slicer inside their system and they've reported that Bresug Gerr has outside help who are bringing in droids to support his operations. We've confirmed this with another agent, who is gathering intel as well, that Clan Morson is being set for execution tomorrow."

    "They what!?" Someone yelled, turning to look over my shoulder I saw several other clan leaders had been coming up to meet the group and they overheard the last bit of the story. Stepping quickly they joined us and demanded to know more, "What do you mean they're setting Clan Morson to be executed tomorrow? I thought that they already agreed to surrender and stop fighting. Why are they going to be executed?"

    "We're just reporting what we've heard, Clan Morson is scheduled to be executed tomorrow at the Hutt Colosseum. We think that they have no interest in negotiating with nomads that didn't side with them, early on."

    "They're breaking ancient codes of hospitality and negotiation at this point. Frack this Osik, we're burning that city to the ground." One of the other clan leaders said marching off in the direction of his men. The rest started mumbling their agreements before breaking off heading in their own direction and I was left there to sigh annoyance as this was obviously a tactic to draw us into a protracted fight at the edges of the city.

    A tactic that by all accounts appears to have worked. I'd have to move up trying to get in contact with Bo to see if we could at least get some cooperation between the clans and gangs in this coming fight. Might be the difference between a lot of dead Nomads or a dead CEO.

    Turning to the people who just stirred up the hornet's nest I said, "Well I hope you're ready for a fight you've just incidentally caused a massive one."

    "Works for them," Rahm Kota said, "the whole idea is to get their leader to Bresug Gerr and put an end to this whole situation so the sooner the fight happens the better I believe."

    Turning to the Jedi I asked, "Did the Order send you here just to cause mayhem or what?"

    The Jedi smiled, "The Order didn't send me, I just thought I could do the most good here."

    I shook my head, "Let's hope your forces are strong enough that we can avoid mass casualties. It would probably take 12 to 14 hours for everything to put in position so the fighting won't happen till tomorrow. I'll have someone around here to show you to a tent for you guys can get a break. I don't know how long you've been about, but I figure the walk up the mountain was probably not the greatest journey so get rested. Tomorrow is going to be the fight of our lives."

    Saying that I turned and walked back towards the command tent grabbing a Mandalorian aid and telling him to try and get the chieftains to meet me at the tent. I'll see if I could get them organized better than throwing themselves at the defense perimeter of Gargon city, for now I have leftovers with my name on it.


    Gargon City, Central District Hotel Suite


    Ursa Wren

    'This whole place really needed to be burned to the ground.' That's a thought I kept having as my clan members brought the intel they gathered to me.

    We had arrived on the planet 3 days ago with a simple mission and a small detachment of 15 of my clan. We were to gather as much intel we could, steal blueprints or weapons, and push things along to ensure the fall of this fake Mandalore. The Mandalorian sector already had two running around with that Duchess of Kalevala, we didn't need this silver one trying to break in as well.

    And that is why as members of the House Vizsla, Clan Wren had answered the call to bring down this pretender. Wasn't even a very good pretender at that, at least the New Mandalorian fake was trying to unify people. And the secret Mandalore of Pre Vizsla understood the importance of not pissing off everyone. This Bresug Gerr pretender had apparently learned his statesmanship from the traditionalists like Governor Vrox. Everyone's a Mandalorian unless you have a goal then only the people you care about are the Mandalorians.

    This whole operation and plan felt more and more haphazard the longer we explored it and most likely it would have fallen apart on its own without the pushes we were going to give it. But, this presented an opportunity, an opportunity that doesn't come along very often.

    Support weapons and gear of various types could fall into our hands if we played our cards right. Which would increase the chances of the eventual anti-New Mandalorian movement.

    Over the last few days we had felt out every possible faction on Gargon, from the clans of the Nomads to the clans of the gangsters and Mafia that ran the city. We knew what factions were displeased and what factions were willing to deal with Bresug as long as he looked strong. And we were finding plenty of opportunities to push things along. We'd already stolen quite a bit of gear under the appearance of rebel gangs or nomadic raiders. If we don't leave witnesses well anyone would come up with a story that makes the most sense. At the moment we had several caches of gear waiting for the right opportunity to be used.

    And tomorrow was proving to present the biggest opportunity of them all. Apparently Bresug Gerr sent Clan Morson an ultimatum to come to Gargon city with his clan to negotiate his daughter's release or they would execute her. Seeing no other choice, the chieftain complied and the clan was promptly captured to be publicly executed tomorrow. How the chieftain's daughter got captured, I don't know the exact details but according to my men, the Black Iron Mercenaries have a few competent members under their employ as they were able to track them down after they raided a warehouse of speeders and defeated them, resulting in their capture.

    Other than the fact, he broke ancient clan tradition as well as using a family member to force their compliance. This act would definitely set the rest of the nomads against him and if my clan were to swoop in at that time to save the Nomads. Well then the nomads would owe a favor to Clan Wren and since Clan Wren is a member of House Vizsla, they may answer the call for a war with the New Mandalorians.

    I had learned enough of the plan over the years to know that Vizsla didn't want to start a massive war but create enough discontent that the people would remove the New Mandalorians themselves. But I thought he was a bit on the hopeful side.

    War is the way of Mandalore, one does not earn the title of Mandalore through peace. It is fought for and he would have to fight for it too. Of course, my husband mentioned that Vizsla likely doesn't want to go through the trouble of repairing the damage a 2nd Clan War would have caused on Mandalore, but I still think a hostile takeover wouldn't break anything important. Other than the Royal Guards, there aren't any Mandos that are still combat capable among the pacifist Hut'uun, they'd just roll over and wait for death when we take over.

    Anyway, I looked at the clan suite Hypernautic provided for us as some of my agents in their yellow and gray armor prepped their equipment. Tomorrow will be a good day. No doubt the fighting would be fierce but the Black Iron mercs and their few Mandalorian leaders would not do much against real Mandalorians. As for the foolish Silver Militia, while they may be made up of Mandalorians, from what I had seen they were foolish youngsters. People who hadn't matured to the point they understood what they were signing up for and hadn't completed their training as real Mandalorians should. I suspected they would be cannon fodder when the fighting started. And it would not just be my Mandalorians in the fight, we are preparing weapons to be dropped off with the Nomads as we freed them. The more guns in the field the better chances of survival, and from what I understood about the local plans, it would be at least 50 Mandalorian Nomads, tough Mandos who'd spend all their lives on the frontier. Perhaps not the greatest of warriors but better than the Silver Militia and some of the Black Iron Mercenaries that gave their allegiance to Bresug Gerr.

    I didn't know if tomorrow would bring a complete victory, but I am fairly sure. Bringing the whole city down would be a great thing to sing about, but punching the fake Mandalore in the nose and stealing something from him in his own house would do wonders to break his hold on people's minds. It would be a massive embarrassment to his honor, if he had any, but it would do more harm than just that.

    As long as someone's winning, the people will believe anything you tell them. But the moment you start losing, well that's when people start asking questions. And having something stolen from you in such a public way will have people asking questions, perhaps even choosing sides.

    No doubt the gangsters who were allowing him to use the city would formally sign up against him if he appeared weak and unable to defend himself. After all, what use is a leader if they can't even guarantee the safety of their home city. Not much use really and that's why the gangsters and mafia types would make their own moves once it became apparent that he couldn't protect the city.

    Yes, tomorrow would be a good day to start the fall of Bresug Gerr. And it must be a good day to steal as much equipment as we could get our hands on. As much as his soldiers were absolutely terrible I would give Gerr one thing, he didn't skimp on the funding of their equipment. We stole a few of Hypernautic's excess silver armor and confirmed that they were high quality, not beskar but they have many modern systems integrated into the armor. The guns were also Concordian made, how he'd gotten those we weren't sure. As far as we knew Concordia Crescent was only sold on Concordia which would mean that he had to have agents on Concordia to purchase the equipment. If that was true, you'd have to hunt them down to make sure they didn't continue selling gear that we plan to use when the New Mandalorians were pushed out.

    But that was for the future, for tonight I needed to get the men back to the suite we were in so that everyone can have a good night's rest and be ready for the fight tomorrow.



    Gargon, Downtown Motel
    Kuth Mok

    Uncomfortably, I moved my left shoulder a bit, feeling the heavy weight of my prosthetic arm hanging there. A constant reminder of the event that changed my life, when rival clans worked together to attack MandalTech to deny it to the New Mandalorians, and many lives, including my parents, were killed in the attack. Once the Civil War ended, I dedicated my life to preserving the peace so that no child has to lose their loved ones. I joined the Journeyman Protectors as their slicer and helped catch criminals with them before I heard that the Royal Guard were searching for skilled slicers for their electronic security, I volunteered and the rest is history.

    We are currently gathered in a cheap motel we rented for our stay. It is about what you expect from a cheap motel, two double beds, a bathroom and a closet. We are each sitting on the double beds, boys on one bed and the girls are on the other. After a day of gathering intel, we have just debriefed each other on what the other team did. I sent a summary of what we have found to X4 so he could send it to Struc. That Hypernautic hired pirates to loot ancient Mandalorian Wars era battle for their beskar, half of the beskar they looted is stored off-world, Mandal has a foreign supporter that is supplying them with new Battle Droids as well as "Supervisor Droids" to oversee and defend their factories, and the that Clan Morson is about to be executed in the Colosseum tomorrow at noon.

    X4 sent back a message that Struc's team are on their way to meet with the Nomads and X4 would let them know once they make contact. Buses in and out of the city were heavily monitored, and as far as we could tell, leaving the city was not going to do us any good. We may not be able to get back in for one, for two the chances of being picked up by the Silver Militia, who were a cult from what we could understand, were going to grow and they were most likely already monitoring the ways in and out of the city, though moving about inside the city was a bit easier since people apparently unless directly connected to the cult just assumed you were already in it.

    With nothing else to do, we decided to go out and buy some lunch. We found a local diner near the motel and enjoyed the deli meat that is served there. It was really good, I wouldn't mind eating that every so often. When we got back to the motel, it was well into the afternoon. Sitting around the room, we were basically stumped, unsure how to proceed with the operation. That was until Tanya tilted her head, obviously getting a message from X4.

    Leaning forward and turning her helmet comms to internal she said, "The Nomads are pissed about the whole execution thing, they're going to strike the city tomorrow."

    "Probably for the best if our intel's right." I said, "If they're bringing in droids next week, the defenses will just grow to the point where the Nomads will be ineffective in hitting the city. Their window of opportunity to strike is closing, not to mention that also means that that execution is going to draw them into a prolonged fight, the casualties will be horrendous."

    "No doubt," Tanya said, her left hand cradling the chin of her helmet as she thought, "but that does mean that the defenses inside the city will all be pointed outwards to meet this attack. Assuming that this is their plan to draw the nomads out into a single fight and destroy them as best they can, they'll have everything they have along the edges of the city and internal defenses will be minimal."

    I lean forward at that, "Yeah, they might be minimal but that doesn't mean they're non-existent. There's not much we can do with only the four of us and if we start causing trouble, we're likely to get shot dead before we can do anything permanent."

    "Four people in the right location can do a lot." Ordo said, matter of factly. "It's how to use them in those locations that matters."

    Tanya tilted her head in his direction in a nod before continuing, "What do we know about the Colosseum?"

    I shrugged before saying, "Old Hutt style, lots of cameras for filming the proceedings and projecting them on large screens so everyone can see them. Usually used for fights to the death between people and other creatures though that varied. It looked like it could hold a couple thousand people."

    Tanya nodded, "They'll probably want an audience for this, people to spread the message even if they miss the camera showing so they'll let a population into the stadium. Click, you're a skilled slicer, yes? If you are inside the stadium what do you think you could do to make this execution go off with many hitches?"

    "That's right," then said, "it's old Hutt, they weren't exactly great with their security systems on civilian infrastructure and a colosseum like that is civilian infrastructure. I could turn off the lights or drop the floor out into the under area that all stadiums usually have. Even put on a personal message on the big screen TVs if you wanted to."

    Tanya immediately leaned forward with interest, "What you're saying is if we can get you inside that stadium you can feed so much chaos that the people marked for execution would have a chance of escaping into the streets if we gave him a little help. Which considering they were about to be murdered, would most likely help us in taking down False Silver once we equipped them with weapons and armor. The chaos would draw troops from the edges of the city allowing the Nomads a much easier time to break inside."

    "I don't like where this is going but yes that is an opportunity that could be available if we were inside the colosseum. Creating chaos like that doesn't mean we're going to win just means-"

    "It means, more opportunities might present themselves. Perhaps we will simply get out of the city with the escaping Nomads. Perhaps we'll find an opportunity to make allies within the city and strike at Bresug Gerr in his own Tower, everything will be upheaved."

    I sigh as she was speaking the truth, chaos that would churn through the streets would present many opportunities for many people. Whatever peace Bresug Gerr had created would be made unstable and the chances of striking Bresug Gerr in his home would never be better.

    Letting out a breath of annoyance I said, "Alright but how are we going to get in the Colosseum?"

    Tanya nodded before saying, "As I said, they want a captive audience in the stadium and would likely just let us in themselves. If we play our cards right, they might even think we're part of their little Silver Militia and let us get into places we're not supposed to be."

    That was an intriguing thought, leaning forward I had to think about that, as Tanya continued. "False Silver has seemed to have created this whole plan on the idea that the real Silver would never come forward or that they would never attempt to infiltrate his base. They believe that using the color will simply allow him to mark his easily persuaded people and those who are the most loyal. But that gives us an opportunity, we can get into this little execution and move around without much notice because we're members of the Silver Militia, of course we're loyal to White Silver and Mandel Hypernautics."

    I nodded my helmet, then said one problem, "By that same logic we are now wearing the colors of the enemy. If we make any moves and run into anyone who's against the enemy we have a good chance of getting ourselves shot don't we?"

    "If we allow him to keep the colors." Tanya said, still rubbing the front of her helmet as if it was her chin. "You said you could put anything up on the screen? If we were to pre-record a video could you put it up on the screen for the whole stadium to watch?"

    Exhaling deeply I thought for a moment and said, "Theoretically yes, if the stadium's security systems have not been upgraded from Hutt standard too much, I could put anything you want on their cameras."

    "So if we were to create a video pointing out a few inconsistencies between the Silver Codex and his statements as well as claim that the real Silver was in the stadium here to take back their name, that would cause a bit of confusion. Sure there'd be some diehards but there'd be others who'd take a step back at the very minimum and wait to see who wins."

    "If the video is done right, we might be able to just wait for a few of the people to come to our side." Ordo said matter of factly.

    "And how exactly is the video going to be done right?" I asked, looking at the kid.

    "There are some definite breakaway points between his speech on the matter and the first codex." Tanya said. "Trying to strike those issues from anonymity across the galaxy would not be effective but if the person is in the building. There's a promise of coming violence that can add to the argument. It doesn't matter who's under the mask, if a person's telling you that you are a liar, these are the reasons why, and I'm going to personally prove you're a liar just wait a few moments till I'm upstairs, all that matters is that that person is there and coming."

    Sighing, I shook my head and said, "Fine, I understand your point. We'll create a video for tomorrow and then we will infiltrate the colosseum to free the clan. Hopefully your plan works out, and from there we'll see what happens."



    Gargon City, Colosseum
    Tanya Kryze

    It would appear my assumptions on the state of security are correct and wrong at the same time. As I suspected all the black clad mercenaries were not present near the colosseum. Most likely been sent to the edges of the city in preparation of whatever assault was to come.

    It would seem that whoever was in command of this execution was smart enough to keep some sort of security around the colosseum. Though considering who they were, it was possibly a plus to me if everything worked out. All the silver wearing soldiers around here who had fallen for the False Silver's words would either be my enemy or my ally, it all depends on how things went.

    In order to try and mitigate any suspicion, we'd split back up into groups of two, two couples could get in a lot easier than four. Plus if something went wrong one group would be free to rescue the other with any luck.

    With nothing to do whilst we are waiting in line, I look around. The crowds being funneled into the stadium / colosseum were quite large, most appear to be silver wearing loyalist fools. There were a few corporate men by the look of their suits and they're less than notable bits of armor. The city itself is very utilitarian, similar in feel to what New York City was like when I entered the Unified States for the first time after the war. Large concrete skyscrapers all around, advertisements everywhere, and scores of sentients crowd the streets.

    I also saw a few other Mandalorians entering the Colosseum, what their plans were? I don't know. Were they loyal to the False Silver? Were they there because they hated the nomads? Did they just want to see if things would go to hell? Anything could be possible so where they would fall on the line in the chaos we were about to unleash, I didn't know.

    What I did know was that we were almost at the ticket booth. Once we are inside, we'd make our way to the technical box where we would meet up with Mok and Skota to see what we could do to get ourselves in control of the stadium. All we needed was for everything to go perfectly.

    Which was why I was incredibly worried. Because, well, I remembered my last life and I know the old adage that no plan survives contact with the enemy, though I would admit most of the times I had been the enemy that threw the situation into chaos. Didn't mean that it wouldn't be true here also. It would be quite easy for the situation to flip around on me and for something to go absolutely wrong.

    And of course just as I was thinking about that, I felt a hand grab my shoulder, as we were almost at the front of the queue. Turning my head, I saw a man in silver armor looking at us, his face hidden by the helmet but it was tilted in a way of showing that he was curious and meant no harm. He had one hand on my shoulder and another one on Ordo as he said, "Hey, you two any good with a blaster?"

    If my face was revealed the look of incredulousness said that question would have probably caused a fight. Thankfully Mandalorian helmets cut down on such situations when you thought about it. "We're excellent shots, why do you ask?" I asked, thankful that my voice was being changed to something a little bit deeper.

    "Great, a few conscripts pissed off the Ingra by refusing to take part in the execution. He has stripped them of their armor and lined them up next to the nomads, so we need a few more hands."

    "I don't know about-" Ordo started but I stopped him by putting a hand on his shoulder.

    "Very unfortunate that they would betray their oath to the Silver Codex like that, we will gladly join the execution squad to put down these disobedient dogs."

    "A bit harsh but Ingra loves being dramatic so more power to ya." the Mandalorian said before pulling us out of the line.

    Over the internal comms of my helm and I heard Engiz ask, "What's the plan? This wasn't in the initial draft."

    "I'm altering the plan, this is an opportunity that can be used for our benefits." I responded back before touching my vambrace to change the signal strength in hopes of reaching the others.

    "Proceed on mission, we've been sidetracked but will be in place to cause as much chaos as possible when the party starts."

    Luckily we got a response from Click, "Fine, wander off and have your own adventure. I'll just handle the tech stuff, just don't get killed. Pretty sure if you do, we're all going to get prices on our head set there by The Duchess."

    I chuckled at that not believing she would go that far. Although I do admit she seemed to have a fonder view of our relationship than most bosses would, so maybe I was selling short how far she would go.

    We were quickly pulled through several hallways until we were filed out into a waiting room with a bunch of other Mandalorians in silver. Most of them had other colors mixed in with their silver and white markings, a few green, few red, a couple blue, and one potential person over there had pink, in total there are about 30 people. But otherwise nothing too interesting about the group. Before we even had a chance to get settled in, two Mandalorians in black armor came in and started passing out blaster rifles. GALAAR-15s are basically oversized WESTAR-35, but otherwise a good blaster. I actually already had one on my back hidden by the extension of my shoulder cape in better condition than the one that had been handed to me. This one looks like it had seen a few years of service in some war somewhere based on its damage marks. A quick check of my ammunition count also found that there was only about enough gas in it for two or three rounds.

    Smart move when you think about it, if something goes wrong you don't want the people you're giving guns to have the best things. You want them to have the worst with the least amount of ammunition possible.

    The compentence ended there though, since no one was asking me for my pistols or checking me for my rifle and many of the other Mandalorians had their own weapons. Not as good as a GALAAR-15 I've noted but still, a sign that they weren't thinking through this plan thoroughly. Granted, unless everyone wrote their name on their blasters, it is very easy for someone to claim that someone elses blaster is their own. So to make sure this doesn't happen and prevent the hassle, they don't bother to confiscate personal weapons.

    If I was an assassin I'd get pretty damn close to their leader with a full stack of ammunition with the rate this is going. This man was really needlessly self-destructive and was basically a prime example of why Mandalorians need to move past the ideology of conquest.

    Before I could really give much thought on the subject, a man in silver with black striped armor, stepped into the room, started looking us over, and then nodded his helmet with approval. He had markings on his helmet, indicating he was familiar with combat, especially aerial combat and was wearing a jetpack painted black and white striped.

    "Yes you'll do, congratulations children of the Silver Codex. Today we prove that we are the loyal members of the new order that is going to be created on this planet and in time throughout the sector. Today we show what happens to those who try and play games with their loyalty. In a few minutes we will march out there and listen to a speech from our leader who could not be here today due to extenuating circumstances. After the speech is given we will take aim and execute the traitors and show that they were never real Mandalorians but just wasteland refuse."

    Well shit, the man was such a coward he wasn't even going to be here to see them die with his own eyes, but that was probably for the best. Oh, it would be nice to end this today, have the fight right there in the arena and get this situation handled but that probably would have meant more guards here. The less guards I had to fight in the arena the better.

    The figure looking over us once again said, "It is an honor to have such loyal members of the Silver Militia with me today. I know, like most of you, the first codex probably intrigued you. I've had your doubts about the viability of the work. But the second codex has shown that he is willing to improve his methods and revealing his identity has shown that he is putting his money where his mouth is. With his financial backing we will have the ability to finally unseat the New Mandalorians and put the sector back on course to a prosperous future. Pledge now your allegiance to the White Silver and the future Mandalore of the Mandalorian sector!" He said putting his fist across his chest and some sign of salute.

    Oh come on, the codex supported the New Mandalorians and advocated their viability for a prosperous future. The fact people would fall for this either shows their gullibility to side with anyone who says something against someone they dislike or they're just lying about supporting the codex and simply were looking for opportunities to screw over the New Mandalorians. Frankly, I didn't care to find out the real answer.

    Maybe having that real answer would be helpful but at this point it was pretty much certain what I needed to do and I didn't need the real answer of why so many had sided with this fanatical moron. I just knew that I needed to make an example of him and those who would follow him, starting with this genocidal maniac who was going to attempt to kill an entire clan of Mandalorians just because they didn't decide to immediately side with this dictator. At this rate I really was going to have to come up with a second volume of the codex to release secretly just to make it clear to not follow dictators into genocidal wars or stupid civil wars.

    Oh and this corporate stooge was definitely a dictator at this point. I hadn't heard anyone say anything about any of the clans declaring him a Mand'alor or that he just declared himself that and let people believe he was the original White Silver while also forcing people to side with him through military might. That's a dictator, not an elected leader as I proposed in my codex.

    But those were arguments to be made another time. For now I kept my mouth shut as I didn't want to make any moves until we were in position. Not to mention the fact that we were about to be sent out there to execute not only a clan but members of the Silver Militia who apparently started asking questions, theoretically the people I've been reaching out towards. It said a lot about the man in front of me that making too much noise would result in front row tickets to a firing line. So I would wait for my opening carefully. I put my hand across my chest and mentally pledge allegiance to myself because I'm going to make sure they know who the real White Silver is by the end of this.

    Nodding in approval he said, "Alright then, let's get out there and kill some traitors."

    With that what were probably his sergeants started ordering us through a set of double doors into a ramp that led up into the main area of the colosseum.

    Quickly these sergeants forced us into a line facing a line of people with their hands tied behind their backs and blindfolds on them. Thankfully though their helmets have apparently been removed and thrown in front of them into the sand on the ground of the arena.

    Once the line was settled the leader of the militia took a step in front of us and yelled to the crowd. "These traitors have been found disloyal to our leader and though White Silver is not here to pass judgment in person, we shall do it in his name. He is however able to speak to us for a moment to give us a message on the merits of loyalty to our leaders."

    He pointed off to a screen as two things happened, there was a series of booms from the distance sounding like a firefight of some kind. No doubt the False Silver would be preoccupied for a moment as he dealt with that so the execution would be postponed a few seconds. It gave me time to deal with the second thing that happened.

    The second was Click coming over my communications saying, "We're in, when do you want the video?"

    "Wait until White Silver's broadcasted himself, give him about a moment to get a few words out then interrupt him."

    "Got it." he responded and I stood in the line waiting. I wasn't one for theatrics most times but I understood enough about Mandalorian culture to understand the merits of theatrics in a few cases.

    False Silver had come onto the scene with a propaganda video, in order to appear as in control and legitimate as possible.

    In order to shake that perception of control, what was needed is to be just as theatrical.



    Gargon City Outskirts
    Rahm Kota

    Well this brought up old memories, all around me were men charging screaming and shooting blasters thankfully not at me.

    In front of me we're up a bunch of semi entrenched troops who apparently had not been taught that a trench needs to actually be used for cover. Either that or they've been told the armor they were wearing were beskar since a lot of them had been standing in line waiting to shoot at us as we drove into range of their blasters on speeder bikes and speeder cars.

    They've learned very quickly that their armor was not beskar and to not do that by now. As quite a few of them had died to the initial volley of speeder mounted cannons and dismounted Mandalorians moving from cover to cover.

    Zero and Strike are somewhere around here, we have been riding in the same speeder. But well, the Black Mercenaries have a blaster cannon of some kind and it shoots our speeder out from underneath us, sending us flying in several directions. Where they'd ended up, I don't know. All I do know is that my Jedi robes were covered in mud, I had a blaster pistol in one hand, and a deactivated lightsaber in the other. Though I was thinking about turning it on with every moment a shot near missed me. I was hunkering down behind a concrete slab that used to be a building, one that appeared to have been blown up in preparations to remove all cover from the killing field.

    They apparently did not know that when you remove all cover from the killing field you're supposed to remove the debris left behind by the demolition that several Mandalorians and myself could still use to hide behind.

    Considering my situation, from where I stood I could see several Mandalorians pushing up slowly using their armor to absorb some of their blaster fire from a distance away. Unfortunately though some of them got hits and didn't get back up while others were able to hold their position even under constant stream of fire. There was a particular chance that this little advance into the city could fail if that fire rate kept up. I wasn't exactly about to let that happen, we had come this far and what had White Silver called me? Ah right, a good Force multiplier.

    "Well time to do my part." I muttered and with my lightsaber activated, I stepped into the field. Focusing on defense I deflected a few bolts back at them which caused more bolts to come my way as they saw my glowing lightsaber. But the important thing is that they took their eyes off the Mandalorians around me who saw the opening. They popped out of their hidey holes and started firing into the enemy line, catching those who were trying to shoot me by surprise.

    After a few moments I started to advance reflecting bolts back at the line as Mandalorians covered me. In fact three or four of them fell in behind me shooting past my shoulder. It was rather comical in a way but how it may look didn't matter. What mattered was that this was effective as we quickly crossed the distance between the impromptu line we had been forced into and the enemy's terribly entrance position.

    Jumping down into the trench I pointed my lightsaber at the closest black clad soldier and said "Yield now or face the consequences of your actions."

    The soldier in particular looked at the Mandalorians piling into the trench behind me, adding their guns to the line, and simply dropped his weapon and himself on the ground. The one behind him though put up more of a fight immediately attempting to shoot me. I deflected it back at him and he fell back to the ground. The third one came around a corner and then said something in Mando that I didn't catch before running the other direction. Turning to look over my shoulder I saw that the Mandalorians Nomads were cleaning up the trench in the other direction too, though the ones that were behind me were ready to advance the direction I was facing.

    I smiled and said, "Gentlemen, have a few men capture any prisoners that surrendered, they may have useful information we could use later. Everyone else, we have a clan to save and a company to overthrow." Turning toward the direction of the trench, lightsaber close at my side, feeling a bit of nostalgia from my youth.

    I basically grew up in trenches like these, though it was in much better condition than this one is. My planet of birth had been stuck in a trench war for generations and I'd come accustomed to fighting since I was a kid. So clearing out a trench? that has become second-hand nature to me. Though I hadn't done it in a good 30 years, it does come back to me like riding a speeder bike.

    Pushing on into the trenches, I tried to force surrenders whenever I could, a few took me up on my offer, those that didn't either ended up getting themselves killed or shot by the Mandalorians with me. In one of the more improved sections of the trenches though, I found the first person to make it past the Mandalorian shooting over my shoulders.

    As we passed by a section of the trench that seemed to go into a bunker, someone sprung free of their hiding place. I heard the loud and reverberant gong and one of the Nomads went down followed by a sound of a weapon being slammed to the ground from an impact followed by another bong. Quickly, I turned and had my lightsaber up just in time to meet the attacker's weapon.

    A shovel smashed into my lightsaber and cut itself in half causing the Mandalorian who's sprung that trap to jump back looking at their weapon and confusion before looking at me again. Quickly noted that she is not one of the black clad mercs, she was wearing blue and red armor. With yellow accents around the face of the helmet.

    Taking a step back, the Mandalorian gave it a couple of practice swings before promptly dropping it. Looking at me she said, "Well, I feel out matched." The Mandalorian said, revealing a female voice, something that became more apparent as I took a closer look at her armor."Tell you what? How about we call this a draw and you just let me run into the city?"

    I raised an eyebrow and said "I see no problem with that, I doubt one extra blaster inside the city would be much more help than you were here."

    "Yeah, I know. I'm done with this." she said matter of factly waving her hand at your lightsaber. "I signed up to fight other Mandalorians. I did not sign up to die by laser sword. I'm going to go back into that city, find a ship leaving this God forsaken mud hole, and get off of it."

    "Aren't you breaking your code or allegiance you made by betraying your leader in such a way?" I asked.

    The Mandalorian shrugged and shook her head, "Nope, I just need the money. Now that I got it and everything's going to shit, I have no interest in dying for an idiot."

    'Reasonable response,' I thought before lowering my lightsaber and nodding my head.

    "Well then you're free to go, don't cause any trouble, stay out of our way, and hope we never see each other again today."

    "Same," the woman said with a nod of her head before vaulting up the sides of the trench before running off into the city.

    I took a breath of air lightly winded before checking on the two Mandalorian she'd knocked unconscious with that shovel. From a quick check of their pulse and sense of the Force I figured they were merely unconscious and would survive but I stood up and tried to look around for other Mandalorian Nomads.

    Thankfully, I didn't have to look long as Mandalorian Nomads jumped into the trench around me, some jumped over to the other side to charge into the city, others taking note of their fallen comrades and seeing to them. The big silver Mandalorian, Zero, has stepped down into the trench next to me.

    "Damn good work probably just saved a whole bunch of lives with that little lightshow you pulled back there."

    I smiled and nodded, "That is the way of the Jedi, how's the situation looking?"

    Zero shrugged, "Not sure," he said while looking everywhere "from what I've seen, this attack has basically broken the defensive line and black mercs are either retreating or dead."

    "So we've crossed the first hurdle. Now the question is how well are they going to do in urban warfare and if they have any other tricks up their sleeve?"

    I nodded, there was always the possibility that they could drain the attack dry as we pushed into the city. Hopefully we would be able to avoid too many casualties. I was curious so I asked, "What kind of tricks could they have?"

    The big man shrugged before saying, "It's Mandel Hypernautics, they were involved with everything from shipbuilding to armored personnel carriers. I wouldn't put anything past them and just because we're attacking before they receive their next shipment of droids doesn't mean they don't have any droids at all."

    I nodded my head in understanding before saying, "We don't know what's ahead of us but we know we have to go into the city, otherwise your leader might be in trouble and we will be nowhere near to help them."

    Zero nodded his helmet before saying, "Hope they don't do anything too stupid." He pulled himself out of the trench on the other side but offered a hand to help me up as well. I brushed some mud off my robes and then looked into the city. This was not going to be an easy fight and clearing buildings is always a messy fight, especially when we are the attackers. I had to guess these buildings were constructed with a general idea that assaults could happen and needed to be defended by Ancient Mandalorians who expected such conflicts. Shaking my head I said, "Let's go." before turning my lightsaber back on and walking towards the city.



    Gargon City, Mandel Hypernautic's HQ
    False Silver

    "Sir, the Nomad's have broken through the outer defense perimeter." Came the panic yell from one of my newer hires. A supposed strategist from the planet Alzar, who was given to me to support this little uprising. He claimed he was a somewhat seasoned veteran though with how panicky he sounded, I highly doubt that.

    I knew I should have gone for someone a little bit more experienced but he was a cheap employee and the position he occupied was easily replaceable in the future if need be. Shaking my head I said, "Do not worry, Haurs things are unfolding as I expected."

    A lie but I had built plenty of redundancies into this defensive operation so the possibility that the Nomads would break through the first line was well within expectations. I would have preferred to have blocked them at the first line but I would destroy the Nomads today and that was all that mattered.

    Stepping back from the holographic display of the city, where the enemy had been marked as breaking through the first line. I moved across my office to the front of my favorite fireplace next to the camera crews who had been setting up for my next speech, the one I was to deliver at the execution of the so-called Mandalorians of Clan Morson.

    "Just tell the commanders in the field to follow their operational tactical manuals that I purchased from your homeworld and everything will go fine. They are some of the best fighters in the Galaxy under my employ here. Losing the front line happens but as long as we win in the long run no one will care." I commented over my shoulder to Haurs before I took a seat in my favorite chair enjoying the soft fabric of the seat.

    Looking at my Propaganda Minister, Sinno Qing, I said, "How are things at the stadium? Are they waiting in anticipation for my arrival?"

    He looked up from the cameras and nodded with a general thumbs up. "They're on the edge of their seats. They can hear the fighting so they must be wondering what's going on."

    "Perfect, then all I need to do is appear to be in complete control and submit my legend in their minds. Let's get this show on the road, Qing."

    Qing nodded before shouting orders to the camera crew, focusing it in, getting everything just right. One of them ran past me and quickly lit the fire of the fireplace, to give the appearance of being warmed by it and make me appear completely at ease and in control.

    Taking a breath I put my silver helmet on the left arm rest of my chair. I hated the color silver, it looked gaudy and ugly but I had to work with what I had. As soon as I had governorship of the Mandalorian Sector in my hands I'd probably go back to black and do my best to vaporize the idea that I'd been White Silver for most people's minds. They would know me by my name and not some strange title thought up by a fool of a person who created a great tool in my rise. If I ever found out who they were I'd probably thank them before having them executed to make sure the secret died with them.

    Qing nodded his head to my direction and started counting down with his hand indicating that we were about to start. So I put on my best smile and waited for the red light to turn on, signaling I was live.

    Immediately when the red light turned on, the screen over the Qing'shead which gave me a look of the Colosseum and there was quite a lot of silver in that audience, though there were other colors as well. I saw that go-getter fool of a cult leader, Ingra, managed to get everything set up. At least there was a solid line of silver armored soldiers waiting to execute the Nomads, all in line with my plan for the eventual removal of White Silver from my identity. What better way to excuse my stopping the use of the color than to blame honorable fools like them by tarnishing it with their blood.

    The fool gave one of his salutes which was fine by me. Keeping a smile I said, "Good morning my people, for today is a sad day. As you may have heard, the Nomads have chosen to attack Gargon City with the goal of plundering and pillaging what is rightfully ours and so they must be destroyed. A fitting end to those who would rebel against their leader. As easily as we shall remove those so-called Mandalorians from the city, we shall remove these Mandalorians with a firing line of blaster fire."

    "But before that I would like to speak to you about the importance of following your leader. For without a leader, the Mandalorian people are nothing. We must always have a strong leader in command, someone who can guide our people to greatness. Someone-" before I could continue, there was an interruption in the transmission from the stadium as the Colosseum's camera shifted from where it had been showing me to the audience below to the large screen of the Colosseum itself. What had been a stable connection was no longer stable, as there was a general interruption before another figure, slightly hidden by shadow, appeared on the screen.

    Signaling the crew with my hand to cut the sound transmission by running my hand across my neck, I asked, "What's going on?"

    "I don't know sir." Qing said in confusion as he looked over the shoulder of one of the technicians in charge of keeping the connection going.

    "Someone's hacked into the system and is transmitting their own video."

    "Oh perfect, who the hell would do that? It's one of those gangsters, isn't it. They must have hired a slicer to screw with me, more people I'm going to have to hunt down and deal with." I muttered looking back up at the screen to see what was going on. "Turn on the audio. I want to know what's going on."

    "The Mand'alor must show no favor to any particular clan. The Mand'alor must heed the will of the Mandalorians. The Mand'alor must act for the good of all Mandalorians. The Mand'alor must allow the Mandalorians a common representative body. The Mand'alor must be above the petty politics of the day. Only the Mand'alor may call the Mandalorian people to war."

    "You know, this was a rather reasonable statement when I wrote it. I thought it would be quite clear that I was not in favor of a return to the god king complex of the Crusaders but apparently all it took for people to believe otherwise was a Second Codex written by someone else who couldn't even project an idea without sounding like a corporate stooge."

    "What?" I muttered sitting forward in my chair, someone was actually trying to claim they were the real White Silver now of all times. I would have figured no one would have been that stupid, you needed an army to hold such a title without worry of being assassinated by a dozen other factions wanting to pull their own little Crusade against the New Mandalorians. I mean, I guess there was the possibility of the real White Silver coming to Gargon but that was unlikely. No coward who would write their thesis as an anonymous codex would have the balls to come attack me in my castle.

    The shadow figure continued with their own speech, "And to think people would so easily turn on their fellow Mandalorians by the words of another. Why are we here? Because someone decided that executing an entire Mandalorian clan is a bright idea. Oh, I can predict the general outcome of the idea of execution, 'They're not true Mandalorians, just nomadic steppe herders' or some other culturally superior Osik but I made it quite clear in my codex what a Mandalorian is. They teach their kids to be Mandalorian, they wear the armor, they learn self defense, they have an understanding of our language, and they are trying to improve the lives of other Mandalorians not bring them down."

    "The Resol'nare was quite clear in pointing out what makes a Mandalorian a Mandalorian. You have to muddy the waters by adding more definers, making more people less Mandalorian with each iteration of definer until you only have a certain group in command. And what are the rest of the people who aren't in command? Serfs and slaves. We've seen that before and we've seen how that ends. This path this False Silver is setting Gargon on will bring nothing but destruction not only of this planet and its people, but its culture and history. You'd actively harm Mandalore and most of all it offends me."

    "Because I thought I made it quite clear that the Silver Codex did not need a leader. It is a philosophy, not a movement. Why else would I have let it propagate without one and strictly implied that the true leader of Mandalore was Duchess Satine? And from where I had been sitting for the last few years with my silence away from the realm of politics, things have been going well. The Duchess has in her own way acknowledged that the codex has done wonders in improving the economy along the ways I had suggested. From my perspective things are good and they're only going to get better as time goes on, as we build up a strong Mandalorian economy. And then this Silver has set that back, so I leave you with a choice dear watchers and readers of the codex. Either let this fool take you and Gargon to hell, for that is where you're going if you stay with him, or stand by me as we do the job of sending those who would follow this False Silver's madness there."

    The screen cut out as the stadium erupted into confused chatter, people unsure of what's going on and probably questioning my authority. Grabbing my helmet I tap the communications on it and put it on, quickly contacting Ingra. "Get a handle on that situation now! I will find out who this Fake Silver is and deal with them in a moment." I said before muting whatever command he was about to say and looking at Qing.

    "Where did that transmission come from? If you don't know where it is, figure it out and send someone there to kill them before this turns into a chaotic shit show." Out of the corner of my eye I watched as the cameras turned back to look at the stadium. I could see Ingra getting out of position as he yelled at the line of Silver Militia to open fire, they apparently weren't obeying.

    "Sir, the video wasn't sent from anywhere outside the stadium, someone in the stadium put that on."

    "What? Who the Haran is bold enough to try putting that up in a Colosseum full of people who support me?" I asked, watching out of the corner of my eye as Ingra walked forward and grabbed a blaster from a Militia before aiming it at the Nomads. A bit brutal but it would get the job done in reasserting control I assumed.

    Then a blaster shot sounded a bit elongated like he may have fired two shots and short concession and then the noise went quiet, looking at the screen I expected to see one of the nomads dead. Instead I saw a female Mandalorian in silver armor standing in front of the Nomads, a black scorch mark on the front of her armor where she had apparently taken the hit, in her hand was a smoking blaster pistol. Across from her was Ingra with the blaster he'd been holding had been turned to slag by a direct shot from her pistol and he was looking at it confused.

    That's when the chaos really began as the cameras then panned up as more than a dozen Mandalorians with jetpacks in silver and yellow began to open fire into the chaos from above. The cameras quickly went out as their crews either fled or were shot.



    Gargon Colosseum
    Tanya Kryze

    What the hell did I just do? I have been listening to myself give a speech on why the False Silver is a fool and wrong, when I noticed the Silver Militia's leader, I remembered his name was Ingra, was getting very annoyed and moving to try and get control of the situation.

    I've seen him grab a blaster off a Militia who looked to be having some sort of midlife crisis by the way he had lost grip of the weapon. And start to aim it at the Nomads.

    And well I… I snapped into action. I knew I could disable that blaster if I was able to get a shot off at him and I knew that I could prevent the death of a Nomad if I got in front of him because my armor is made out of pure beskar. I simply knew that I could survive a hit and so I let myself take the hit whilst blasting the blaster out of his hands at the same time.

    What had been presented to me was a classical hero situation. Something that got your name spoken of in legend. It was a golden opportunity to continue the chaos already starting to grow as arguments in the stands broke out into fist fights.

    And logically the risk to my life had been minimal. The weapon was old most likely it's ammunition was barely functional and considering they'd strip the nomads of their armor to murder them, I knew that the beskar can handle it.

    Sure it had hurt, like I had been punched by Visha without any strength enhancement magic but I was alive, his gun had been slagged, and I was holding him at gunpoint. The situation was firmly in my hands.

    Although a part of me was feeling an old familiar smile on my lips. The rush of blood running through my veins, the sensation of adrenaline pumping my heart. And I was forced to wonder if I've let my old habits pick themselves back up. Did I just risk my life because I knew I had control of the situation thanks to my Mandalorian training or did I risk it because of an old familiar high creeping up on my skin wanting to go all out?

    Well, if it was the second then I was not going to let it take control of me. Not this life, my thumb slipped to the switch next to the trigger flipping it into stun mode. I would try not to kill them, simply to prove myself better than what I was in my last life.

    Before I could make any demands things went sideways. A dozen or more Mandalorians on jetpacks landed in the arena unloading their guns into Silver Militia who didn't immediately start dropping their weapons and fell to the ground.

    Ordo, as well as a dozen other Mandalorians who were wearing silver rushed by my side, some going past me to free the Nomads. While I kept my gun on the Silver Leader in case he tried anything.

    "Let me guess, you're the one claiming to be the real White Silver." He called as the battle devolved around us. Some silver wearing folks ran, others stood and fought, most fell to the ground trying to not get shot though there was a good mix of Hypernautic employees standing up and pulling out guns to take part in the festivities.

    "What tipped you off? The fact that I'm competent?" I goaded while keeping my focus on the man.

    "Wonderful, it means I don't have to track you down." With that he activated a pair of jets on his boots, hurtling himself towards me. I dodged out of the way while firing to stun bolt at him though the speed was enough that I missed. The man was able to stop himself directly behind me before trying to grab me, which I was able to jump out of the way of. It would appear he had decided the best course of action, now that he no longer had a gun, was to close distance and engage me in melee combat.

    A very poor tactic as I had a pistol in my hand and was able to fire a stun bolt into his fist as he tried to hit me in the helmet, when he took a swing. Stepping back, I drew my second pistol, which was not on stun.

    He attempted to dodge out of the way but Ordo came up behind him and smashed the galaar15 rifle over his head. Moments later my blaster bolt hit his knee, a well known weak spot in armor, which caused his leg to give out. Ingra went down to his knees, and looked up at me. I took the opportunity that he is a sitting duck and fired my pistol set on stun at point blank range. Even if there is beskar in that armor, if there was any, he was going down.

    With a gasp he tumbled forward as I stepped out of the way of his body before shaking my head and getting a hold of the situation. The 16 yellow and gray Mandalorians had gotten most of the colosseum pacified. The Silver Militia that had stood with their had been wiped out. Those that hadn't were either hiding or running away. Besides, the group that had been part of the attempted execution had changed their minds either because I'd gone through their thick skulls with the speech or for not wanting to be seen as the bad guys, I'll take either one.

    They quickly untied the Nomads and a few others I assumed had also pissed off the local government.

    One of the yellow and gray Mandalorians holstered their pistol before walking towards me.

    "So we were going to free those people?" she said looking past me "I was under the impression that everyone in silver would be the bad guys today."

    "The situation is a lot more confusing than that." I said with a shug. "I thought I was going to have to fight his entire Colosseum with whatever people managed to rebel. Looks like we both pulled an idiot's array today."

    The Mandalorian chuckled at that before nodding. "Yeah, luck is on our side. Now quick question, was that you on the screen claiming to be the real White Silver?"

    The way she tilted her helmet seemed to imply a bit of a threat so I tilted mine in a similar way "Perhaps, perhaps I'm just an agent. Either way numbers are about even so fighting amongst each other over whatever displeasure you have with the Silver Codex seems foolish when we could simply ally and deal with the false Silver and then I would go back into hiding as I've been before. As I said I'm not interested in leading movements just creating a different way of looking at things."

    The Mandalorian nodded before extending her hand, "Ursula Wren."

    I nodded and took the hand for a shake, "Silver will do."

    "Alright Silver, what are you going to do about your men over there? Situation in the streets is going to be very confusing because everyone's wearing silver armor and fighting each other." Wren said matter of factly.

    I nodded before looking at the motley crew of Mandalorians wearing silver who decided to join me. Looking around, I saw a Mandalorian with a white cape and immediately got an idea. Ripping off a strip of the fabric I tied it around my arm before tossing the cape to the next Mandalorian. "Tie that strip around your arm, this fabric will determine who's with me or staying out of this fight versus who's sided with the false Silver."

    The Mandalorian nodded before ripping some fabric and tossing it to the next. While they did that, I tapped the comms and said to Team 2. "Situation in the arena is secure, come on down. We need to figure out what our next move is."

    Turning to Wren again I asked, "So do you have a plan for taking Bresug Gerr out or shall we wing it?"

    Wren shrugged as several of her Mandalorians brought over several crates, opening them revealed stockpiles of weapons.

    "The plan was to cause mayhem and arm the Nomads. Looks like the mayhem is already well underway so arming the nomads and seeing what comes from that seems reasonable enough. Do you have a plan?"

    "The outline of one." I said.

    "Well then White Silver, why don't you show me how good of a not leader you are?" Wren said in a jesting tone.

    Writers note: my god if this not the longest chapter I ever written I'll eat my cowboy hat. Yes, I have a cowboy hat… it's cool. Anyways what we got with this chapter is part one of the choice that is the Gargon city fight, with chapter 20 having simler length and fishing it out. Chapter 21 will most likely finished this whole storyline, and will have few events before I get to the year of BBY 23. What will happen in year 23 don't know yet leaning toward there being more slice of life content in that year considering there was some folk who wanted to see that kinda content before war. (If it stays on course and starts in 22BBY as canon had it)

    So feel free to suggest ideas for the coming year of 23 BBY, also if you have a lot of knowledge about things that happens in 23BBY drop it on me, I don't want to let a thing slip by me like what almost happened to the speech on rauxes.



    Edited by: Markus Gollinger, Warmach1ne32,
    Community edited by: Ryan Pirtle, Justin R, Jay Kim, X.Y 2006
    Community editable doc (Chapter 19) 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: Afforess, Gremlin Jack, Weise, Xodarap4, Yamato, Duncan Sproule, James Moorhouse, Dankermaler, Hats88, DrkShdow, Devilstar101, Michael, Mana Rope, Falk Hüser, Daniel Martinez, Silver Wolf, Mackenzie Buckle, Markus, Neso, Staradder, Lmc9389, Staradder, victor a lopez-barron, Qweunn, KrasieK, Zollus
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Laserscorching over the heart, where you'd take a shot for a fellow mandalorian and a strip of white fabric around the arm?
    Now that's the signs of the next Mand'alore if there ever was one.
     
    Words of Tanya taking a hit for the nomads will probably spread. Hopefully there are cameras running that captured that moment.
     
    Found an error. You suddenly switched to 2nd person in the middle of a paragraph.

    And tomorrow was proving to present the biggest opportunity of them all. Apparently Bresug Gerr sent Clan Morson an ultimatum to come to Gargon city with his clan to negotiate his daughter's release or they would execute her. Seeing no other choice, the chieftain complied and the clan was promptly captured to be publicly executed tomorrow. How the chieftain's daughter got captured, you don't know the exact details but according to your men, the Black Iron Mercenaries have a few competent members under their employ as they were able to track them down after they raided a warehouse of speeders and defeated them, resulting in their capture.
     
    canned Tomatoes said:
    Now that's the signs of the next Mand'alore if there ever was one.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    yep hope that dose not come to bite her in the ass

    Rikkimoro said:
    Found an error. You suddenly switched to 2nd person in the middle of a paragraph.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    fixed in the commutie sheat will updates it here tonight when goes out on fanfiction and Ao3

    MagnusTheRed said:
    I smell good artwork from this scene
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    would be intreseting
     
    Chapter 20
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 20
    714FNM (24 BBY)
    Month 9


    Gargon City, Central District
    Tanya Kryze

    Well, things turned out alright so far. After the situation at the stadium had been de-escalated and handled, I was able to negotiate a working agreement with the Wrens, the recently freed Nomads, and the Silver Militia members who decided I was a better Silver than Bresug.

    There were not that many Silver Militia left, there were probably around two or three hundred around the stadium. A hundred of them stayed to join me, the other hundred seemed to have vanished into the night hopefully to stay out of trouble, and the last hundred or so had to be subdued through combat.

    There were some deaths, it has to be expected in battle. To think that there would not be any deaths would be foolhardy, but so far my hands are still clean. The stun setting is a wonderful, wonderful thing and the fact it could theoretically bypass beskar, actually made it more effective than a regular blaster bolt. That being said, it wasn't like I didn't severely wound a few people during the battle. Thankfully, bacta does a tremendous job of putting a person back on their feet, especially since I had avoided aiming for their vitals so they probably might make a full recovery. If they didn't, well that's what they get for signing up with a warmongering fascist.

    Anyways, after we'd managed to get the whole stadium under control, I introduced myself to the clan leader of Clan Morson, Mlyr Morson, who was very grateful for the timely save. We didn't have much time for anything more than general introductions before we pushed onwards from the stadium towards Mandal Hypernautics Tower. With Wren's forces providing overhead intel, we started making our way towards the center of the city where Mandal Hypernautics had their main headquarters. But not before taking the idiotic Ingra's jetpack for my own use, it's not like he'll be using it anytime soon. I had hoped that the journey would be quick and we'd be able to smash our way in and get this over within half an hour.

    But of course I was mistaken in thinking that he wouldn't have any security in the city. We rounded a corner and came face to face with a group of black armored mercenaries attempting to use speeders as an impromptu barricade to prevent us from reaching their employer's headquarters.

    As soon as a couple of Silver Militia turned the corner, three heavy blasters on tripods opened fire killing one of the Militia while the other was able to jump back into cover but not without taking enough fire that left his armor scorched..

    Peeking around the corner I take a swift scan of the chokepoint. If I had complete control over the force behind me I would probably pull back and try to find another way around. There was no way that every position was well and truly guarded like this one.

    Now, in any other circumstances we could simply overwhelm their position as I counted only 20 mercenaries and we had at least six to seven times that but there's one rule in all universes that's true of every battlefield. Heavy blasters can even the odds on all defensive operations.

    However looking over my shoulder at the Nomads and Silver Militia I could see they were itching for a fight. Thus it was up to me to figure out how to take that position with minimal casualties. Thankfully that was an easy thing to do.

    Signaling Wren to land, I waited for the female Mandalorian warrior to decend next to me and said, "The heavy blasters don't appear to be on mounts that allow them to aim up. If your warriors attack from the rooftops, I can clear a path for us to take the barricade from this position."

    The woman peeked out around the corner to see for herself before pulling back and nodding her head in agreement. "I think we can hit them pretty hard as long as you don't mind losing the honor of being the first across the barricade."

    I laughed at that before saying, "Honor is something the living get to brag about, better to make sure as many of us live to do so than to have a few of us toasting the dead who gained on you."

    Wren nodded her helmeted head, before jetpacking her way up with her other 15 compatriots following her. Checking my Galaar blaster, I waited for a sign that the attack had begun.

    Until then I checked up on the situation amongst my… retinue, I guess. Ordo was talking with many of the Silver Militia assuring them I was the real deal and generally keeping them on my side. Which was an important task considering we were about to charge over a No Man's Land of death and despair but that's future Tanya's problem. Skota had gathered everyone with medical or first aid training to form a medic squad, to pull downed fighters to safety and administer aid. Mok on the other hand, elected to stay close to me so he could be my bodyguard as well as prevent me from charging headfirst into danger situations, like putting myself in front of a blaster in the Colosseum.

    As for the Nomads we picked up from the Colosseum, they were generally led by the Morson Chieftain, a Mandalorian who wore fairly old armor by the looks of it in bronze and orange. It was times like this I was glad I had memorized Color Theorem. Bronze meant nobility which could be a way to distinguish those from the main family from branch members. Orange stood for "I long for freedom in life" considering nomadic peoples tended to be a traveling lot, I would assume that's where the orange came in. Looking at the Nomads, I noticed there are a lot of orange colored armors. In fact, based on their coloration perhaps that color had been adopted as a clan color? I wouldn't know until I asked Chief Morson about it after we're victorious.

    One of the female Mandalorians with brown armor noticed me looking over her and decided to approach me. She came to a stop leaning against the wall I was laying against though in a much more relaxed posture. "Howdy there White Silver, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for saving me." The girl said with a rather musical tone to her voice.

    "No problem,though I wouldn't be thanking me just yet. We still haven't gotten out of the city and we still haven't removed the pretender. So we still have a long ways to go before I've made good on saving you."

    Glancing at her through the edge of my visor I saw the older helmet of the Mandalorian girl shake side to side. "No, I don't mean in a general 'you're saving me and my people'. Back at the stadium the one that psycho was going to shootwas me, till you took the it for me."

    "Really?" I asked, a bit surprised. I didn't notice who exactly I was saving at the time, which was understandable I think since I hadn'tstudied the identities of every member of Clan Morson, so they all very much just blended into each other at the moment. 'Well, I'd better say something.' I thought, "It's an honor to have saved a princess, don't get to do that very often."

    The girl giggled, "No, no I don't think most people do. So why don't we make this one a bit special?" Before I could register what was happening the princess's hands were on the sides of my helmet and she was laying her head against mine. Well two Keldabe kisses in two days, that was unexpected and in both cases my cheeks were absolutely burning. It only lasted a moment but she quickly broke it, adding, "For luck." before skipping away to her fellow Nomads.

    Today was a day that I was glad that Mandalorians wore full helmets because I wasn't sure I would be able to keep up my air of authority without the blank gaze of the T-visor. Looking over towards Ordo wondering what he thought of the situation, I saw that he was still busy speaking with several of the Silver Militia members and so was not looking my way at the time, which is good as I didn't want to have to explain more than I had to. Though by the amount of Silver visors looking my way as well as Mok's poorly disguised coughing, there were definitely those who'd seen what had just happened.

    With no good options I just decided to ignore it and look back around the corner wondering what was taking Wren so long. As is hearing my thoughts, I see several grenades fall from the rooftops above the blockade exploding amongst the heavy blaster crews.

    Already the jetpacked Mandalorians were decending with dual pistols shooting at anything that moved. There were a few people attempting to shoot back at them, so it wasn't like we could sit back here and wait for everything to be settled.

    "Come on boys and girls, we've got a barricade to break." I barked activating my newly acquired jetpack and launching myself at the now distracted barricade, a few Mandos with jetpacks of their own following suit while the others quickly ran to cover the distance. They had to cover 25 yards to get to the barricade and the entire time there was always the chance one of the defenders would get back on the heavy blasters and lay into us.

    Thankfully they were too preoccupied with the airborne warriors as we made the first 15 yards without even noticing us. At the last 10 yards, one of them did notice and tried to grab the heavy blaster but Ordo and I, stopping at the same time, raised our rifles and unloaded several bolts into him. Unfortunately we were out of stun range so that man, as he toppled over the heavy blaster, was undoubtedly dead. Just because I had some qualms about outright murdering people, now that I wasn't being paid to do so and because I'm sure Satine isn't a big fan of such, didn't mean I was going to risk my life unnecessarily, especially for the enemy.

    With the heavy blasters cleared, we quickly flew over the barricade and joined the fight, although with the numbers on our side, it wasn't much of one and more of a clean up. We quickly subdued the mercenaries as several of them surrendered once they saw their barricade was overrun, and we took a moment to get ourselves collected. I saw several of the Nomads ransacking the bodies of the dead and wounded for equipment and supplies. I was not going to say no, since we needed everything we could get. Instead I moved to the edge of the barricade and looked out towards our destination, Mandal Hypernautics Tower. We were still a good six-seven blocks away and it looked like there were a couple more barricades between here and there. We were going to need to come up with a few new tricks if we wanted to pull this attack off.


    Gargon City, Downtown
    Struc Ordack

    "How many defensive lines do they have?" I muttered as another round of heavy blaster fire came over a barricade at the formation of Nomads. The plan to breach the city had been successful. After our speeder got hit with a blaster cannon and multiple heavy blasters sprayed our position, forcing us to scatter and seek whatever cover we could. I eventually managed to gather a squad of Nomads, crawled into a trench, and systematically cleared it and the trench's command bunker. I ordered everyone to rest and regroup here to give time for our logistics train to catch up and resupply us before we continued our push into the city. Once everyone was rested, resupplied and regrouped we advanced into the city.

    As far as I could tell, there were three units of nomads fighting towards the central area and Mandal Hypernautics headquarters. Two of which were slightly behind my particular unit, led by the other clan leaders. Our group pushed a little bit harder since I plan to link up with Tanya at the Colosseum before pushing for the headquarters.

    Tanya on the other hand had other ideas, since she decided to just push on ahead without us. I was going to have a long talk with her about this, when this is over. The Royal Guard were meant to defend her from enemy action not chase after her as she charges after them. Oh who was I kidding, this was standard behavior for a teenage Mandalorian, they're all far too hot blooded, ready to commit war crimes if you looked away for 5 seconds. The fact that she wasn't committing any so far was a blessing, and probably due to her being raised as a New Mandalorian.

    Anyways, as it was we were probably one or two blockades from Tanya's position. Assuming she hadn't pushed even further into the city from the Colosseum and equally assuming that the enemy were not reoccupying any blockades after her forces pushed on. I had to hope that the enemy was at least being pushed because otherwise her forces would probably be surrounded and destroyed. I'd probably need to either go into hiding to avoid the Duchess's anger or hope I didn't make it back alive.

    When this was over I didn't care that she was the Duchess's niece, I was going to put her through as much training as a Royal Guard could get away with, to drill some sense into the girl's head but those are thoughts for the future, right now I need to figure out how to get past this blockade.

    This one had 4 heavy blasters and it was keeping the main thorough way covered. Anybody that exposed themselves for more than a second, gets cooked immediately. So for now, several Nomads are keeping the gunners busy by blindfiring shots around corners. I thought about sending the Jedi, Kota, forward but the amount of fire coming down the street was likely a little bit too much for even a Jedi to handle. In my opinion, I doubt he'd be able to keep up with his lightsaber.

    So we needed some sort of strategy to keep the enemy supressed. Well there was one thing, though it wasn't exactly the royal guard's way of doing things. It was more of a bounty hunter way. Better to use your skills than lose them, I finally decided before turning back to the majority of the party. "Zero you're with me and I'll need six volunteers, we're going to try and flank the position through the buildings."

    One of the Nomads looked at the building before saying. "Not sure about that sir, that building is under the protection of the Kroggooss and they'll be a bit unhappy if a nomad even steps into the place. Trying to walk through there during the shootout is probably going to piss them off."

    I looked at the building letting out a deep sigh, knowing I would have to negotiate before saying, "Alright, I'll talk to them before going through." I walked up to one of the entrances and knocked loudly.

    After a few minutes someone came to the door. The armor, a general brown in color, they didn't have their helmet on, were tan skin bald and looked rather displeased. "What do you want? Silver Cultist."

    Oh, a great way to start off I thought before saying. "Access to the building to flank Mandal Hypernautic's goons that are blocking the street."

    The man leaned out and looked at the side of the building that faced the road that was currently pinned down and blaster fire. "Looks like most of the blasts are not penetrating the wall armor," he said before turning back to me. "So this is not a concern of the family, if you wish to flank them, might as well go down the street to the other side of our complex though there's a blockade there too."

    "Thanks for that information," I said before continuing, "listen I understand a bit about how things work when it comes to profit margins in the underworld and all that. Tell your boss that we are trying to unseat the CEO of Mandal Hypernautics before he causes a major shitstorm centered on this planet, which would be very unhelpful for your criminal network."

    The balding man nodded and closed the door in my face. I waited hoping that he wasn't going to just leave and pretend I never appeared at his door. But after a bit the door opened again and he returned now with a heavy set man sporting a slick looking haircut and a handlebar mustache.

    "So you guys are creating all this chaos in the streets to unseat the Silver Shebs? Interesting." he said looking at the mix of nomads and myself. He shook his head before saying, "Absolute madness, although I'm not a big fan of MH, why should I risk my legitimate casino in your squabble? If I let you through ,there's now a target on my casino's front door. I'm sorry but the Skanah has the ships that can destroy my entire casino with a push of a button."

    Well this was interesting. I don't usually meet with the leader of an organization, but when I do they'd usually give a yes or no answer especially when the meeting would be between people who are armed or well just two people. I narrowed my eyes before I looked past him to see the cameras inside the main lobby. Smiling, I realized what he's doing, he's asking for an excuse.

    Quick drawing my pistol I fired a stun bolt directly into the balding guard's chest causing him to topple over. The overweight boss feigned surprise rather confidently before saying, "Oh no, I knew I should have brought more guards to prevent me from being taken prisoner."

    "Yes, yes you should have." I said jokingly, while aiming my pistol slightly off the side of his head but making it appear like I was threatening him. "Lead us to the other side of the building so we can give the MH's goons a surprise."

    "Well you're the man with the gun, what could a legitimate businessman, like me, could do?" the mob boss said, leading the way through the facility. Nodding in assurance to the others, I led the way after him. Quickly, we made our way through rows of slot machines and sabok tables. The mob boss let us through the facility several guards looking at us with anger as they had their hands on their own guns. I doubt they actually knew what the mob boss was doing right now, so it is very likely real anger.

    Finally the mob boss unlocked the door to the back of his casino and opened it before saying, "Well have fun out there and don't come back."

    Lowering my pistol, I nodded and stepped through the exit, quickly surveying the situation finding that we had indeed come out on the other side of the building in an alleyway. And since the blockade was placed on the main roads it was not visible from where you are. I looked around the lip of the alley to see the rear of the barricade.

    "Zero, have any explosives?" I asked the big man as he was already walking past me while reaching into his bag of tricks. Stepping up to the corner, he pulled out what looks like a thermal detonator pressing a few buttons on the sides to arm it before throwing it around.

    Now thermal detonators are a terrifying thing to be using, in fact I believe they are currently illegal in a few sectors because they tend to blow up a lot more than you would expect. The moment I saw that thing appear, I backed away and wondered if it would be possible to retreat into the casino.

    Zero increased my level of fear by saying, "No worries, off-brand and expired. It's just a cheap grenade." As he finished, the streets behind him exploded into a firestorm, the fire rushing out in plumes of heat, carbonizing the street and walls quite thoroughly.

    Looking over his shoulder he said, "Maybe not as expired, you can never tell with those things."

    "Yeah," I said, looking at his bag of tricks wondering just how many he had in there, "just be careful with those things, don't want to turn ourselves into ashes."

    Zero responded with a chuckle and with a humorous tone said, "No worries Strike, I have everything under control."

    As he said that the building across from us opened up and a group of Mandalorians in green armor came charging out, their weapons raised pointing towards the alleyway that had just exploded. They looked generally confused at the fire and burnt streets until another man, his armor looking a bit too small on him, stepped out of the building.

    Looking at the scorched street, he shook his head before walking over to us. "Are you part of the Nomads we've been working with to take down MH?"

    I nodded my head as that was basically the truth.

    He nodded his head in return before saying, "Good these men are under your command, I have more troops throughout the city causing mayhem. They should keep the road to Mandal Hypernautics open long enough for you to make it there and kill the Shabuir and get rid of him before we end up bombarded by Republic Judicials for non-compliance or whatever Osik they'll come up with, got it?"

    I nodded my head and said "Got it."

    The man nodded back, starting to turn before he turned back and said, "Oh and tell your White Silver that she's made a good speech. Half my clan weren't in on the whole 'bringing down Mandal Hypernautics' thing till they saw her little performance today. I bet a few other clans will also side with dethroning the Skanah now, Never going to have a better opportunity than now."

    "Speech?" I asked, confused. I don't remember anything about a speech or X4 didn't mention that the plan had a speech. I'm going to have to ask her about that.

    "Yeah, give a speech at the Colosseum, damn good one. Unbrainwashed a good portion of the Silver Sheb'urcyin." He said before turning aside "Anyways have fun murdering the Dar'Manda. Walking around in Mandalorian armor acting like this planet is his, makes me sick." The Mob boss continued his rant as he left, leaving me with confusion as to what the Haran Tanya have been up to during the time we've been out of contact with her.



    Gargon City, Industrial District
    Bo-Katan Kryze

    Well, today had taken a rather violent turn from my expectations. I've been running with the Tutt clan, the clan I had a few contacts with thanks to Lerus Tutt. And we've been causing quite a bit of mayhem inside the industrial districts of the city. The best I could do under the situation since my ship had been impounded not too long after I got a message out about what was going on to Tanya and Satine.

    If I could have I would have fled, getting involved in this whole crazed plot to take over the Mandalorian sector was not exactly on my agenda. I mean, I am part of Death Watch, sure, but that was at least a reasonable plot to take over the sector based around putting the New Mandalorians out of power. Because they were, well, they had been screwing with a lot of Mandalorians who wanted no part of their pacifism.

    This guy though was Vrox levels of stupid, the kind of Mandalorian that had seen the fall of the sector into its current state. I suspected the whole reason he was letting everything go crazy was the old adage of letting all the little factions fight each other so your faction got stronger. Vrox's methods worked for a good long time until the Republic smashed him and the traditionalist up. Gerr's current attempt though will not work out as well, considering he is working out of just one planet and it's not even the most important planet of the sector.

    But that wasn't really my concern, my concern was my current situation. I had planned to take today off, I heard about the executions, but most of the Mandalorians I was with had decided that trying to attack the Colosseum full of the Silver wackos was crazy. We could do it but the result would just be Gerr redoubling his efforts to find our holdup spots and attempt to murder us. I've been trying to get in contact with the Nomads but our main contact points are pretty spotty right now. One of our agents had been grabbed up in one of the Black Iron merc's raids, so we were still in the process of figuring out if they had sliced our communication networks and had our drop off points exposed.

    That plan had been thrown out the window when the explosions started on the edge of the city. Which pretty much told us the Nomads were on the attack and to top it all off, the broadcast from the Colosseum showed a crazy turn of events. Out of all the possible scenarios to happen at that execution the White Silver, or at least someone claiming to be, the real White Silver popping out of nowhere and starting a riot was not one of them. Whatever happened after that? I don't know, as the feed has been cut. But by the explosions that started up across the city, in time to the ones that have been going on at the edges, I'd say people were pissed mad and willing to tear down the imposed system by Gerr.

    Which presented plenty of opportunity. Gathering up the mafia clans I've been working with, we'd set out and started causing some more trouble ourselves. We attacked several barricades before they were completed, killing the MH troops and any mercenaries that had still maintained their loyalty to Gerr.

    We are also pushing our way towards MH HQ ourselves. I don't know if we'd actually make it but with the amount of chaos going on, there wasn't going to be a better shot than today.

    Things have been going good until we hit the latest barricade. We were just outside the Industrial Park area around the MH Tower, which meant they had access to all the resources they could bring to bear. Including a Starfighter that was hovering over the streets firing its blaster cannons at anyone who tried to approach.

    I would try to take a shot at it with my backpack missile but the pilot knew their stuff and was turning most of the street to slag if anyone even tried to step out to get a shot at it. And because the Industrial Park area was built in such a way that there was a large street between it and the main area of the city, I couldn't simply get to the top of a building and attempt to shoot it from up there. There would be no cover and he'd probably see me the first chance I got.

    Currently we were waiting for more forces to try and meet up with us hoping that some of the other Mandalorian crime families would take the moment to open up their stores and find any missile launchers or other weapons that could be used. In this situation we needed to overwhelm the fighter with as much fire from as many positions as possible. And currently one backpack mounted missile was not going to do it.

    As I hunkered down behind the remnants of a speeder car to get a look over at the industrial park I heard the sound of jetpacks landing to my rights. Turning I saw something I did not expect to see, a group of Mandalorians in gray and yellow armor in an armor set I recognized. Slipping back out behind the barricade, to put a building between me and the Starfighter, I stood up and said, "Ursa Wren, you're not who I expected to see."

    The female Mandalorian turns her head when her name is called. She had been in the process of intimidating one of the mafia lieutenants who was helping me organize the Mandalorians on my side of this conflict. "Bo-Katan, last thing I heard about you, you've been brought back into the fold of the false Mand'alor. Would have thought you'd gone full pacifist by now. What are you doing here?"

    "Oh a little this and a little that, trying to unseat the False Silver, you know how it is. So am I to take this as a Wren clan operation or Vizsla house operation?" I was careful not to say Death Watch. Too many unknown ears around but I wouldn't be surprised if many of these Mandalorians would side with Death Watch if given the opportunity.

    "House Vizsla operation of course." Wren said with a nod, "Can't let rogue regions like this interfere with our own operations after all. Not to mention there's a lot of resources to take by bringing him down and a lot of allies to be made, even strange ones."

    "Strange ones?" I asked seriously. Well the forces that rounded the corner behind her answered my question that rather quickly.

    A hundred silver Mandalorians and several dozen nomads came into view led by a female Mandalorian in white and silver armor wearing a shoulder cape holding a Galaar blaster rifle. There was a blaster scorch mark on the armor and a small set of wings engraved on one plate. Only evidence I needed to recognize her as the one who took the shot from Gerr's agent in the Colosseum.

    Before I could ask any questions to Wren, the white armored Mandalorian woman came up to us and said, "What's the situation here, Ursa?"

    "Trying to find that out now." Ursa said, sounding a bit smug.

    "We got a Starfighter around the corner." I said, "We can easily take it out with our jetpack missiles but we'll need at least three or four people to do it."

    The female Mandalorian nodded before turning the Ursa. "Think you can take it out?"

    "Please, remember who you are talking to. We got more than enough missiles to pull that off."

    The silver and white Mandalorian nodded before saying, "We're in sight of our goal, let's keep pushing and putan end to this madness."

    With that, the Silver Mandalorian moved past me to take up a position with the other Mandalorians waiting for an opportunity to move in the industrial district. The rest of her forces follow in line behind her. Shaking my head I used my jetpack to get up to the roof with Ursa joining me as well as the other 15 warriors she brought along.

    "So strange allies," I said, "last thing I heard Pre wanted White Silver gone, since she had created a bit of disquiet amongst the clans. What's the deal? Why are you working with her?"

    Ursa shrugged as she started walking towards the side of the building that would give us the ability to shoot at the Starfighter. "My orders were to see if I could bring down Gerr, he never said anything about dealing with the real White Silver. And as to why I'm not making any moves against her, it's quite simple. Little bit of chaos in Mandalore always ensures that we have the strongest leaders, that girl showed herself to be quite capable in not only being a leader but providing the chaos. If Pre wants to destroy the real White Silver then he can do it himself. She'll be a good challenge compared to the false Mand'alor currently sitting on the throne. And if Pre loses well, if the other clans pledge loyalty to her then I guess she's now the inheritor and Leader of Death Watch."

    As I followed after her, we got lower to the ground to stay under what cover there was on the top of the building while also being close enough to give fire support. Looking over to WrenI asked, "Sure that's the right move? White Silver seems anti Death Watch in her writings."

    Wren nodded her head, "Yes, I've read her work. She took quite a few shots at Tor Vizsla's Old Ba'jurne Kyr'tsad Mando'ad, but the fact of the matter is, she's not New Mando levels of pacifism. I've seen her fight for the last hour and a half. Besides a preference for using stun modes, she has no problem harming people to get what she wants. At the bare minimum even if she doesn't become the Death Watch Mand'alor it'll give Death Watch a purpose the New Mandalorians have robbed from us. An enemy we can actually fight to show our superiority over their ways."

    I shook my head at that, always surprised by how traditionalist some of the Traditionalists were but I said, "Well guess that depends if this White Silver is actually the real one or just another fake using the name for a power grab."

    "Yeah, I guess it does. But we'll know soon enough how she handles False Silver, which will determine her philosophy." Wren commented.

    Nodding my agreement, we came to a stop next to the wall and prepared for all the other Mandalorians to signal they were in position. As soon as they did, we all stood up at once and fired a barrage of missiles at the Starfighter. The pilot apparently had not been watching the roofs too. Good and it received about a dozen of the 16 missiles fired its way, engines flared and it began to spin, crashing into the streets, and taking out a portion of the industrial district's front wall.

    The mercs on the ground were apparently stunned by this and we're not paying attention to the situation around them. As White Silver leads her forces in a charge right onto them.

    Looking down I got a good view of the fights. I was able to watch the White Silver easily take out their fair share of Mandalorians and mercenaries. Something about the fighting style was actually kind of familiar. I couldn't place it off the top of my head, quick and sudden strikes, always having a gun in the off hand to fire off a few shots before getting into melee. Feels like I should know that fighting style from somewhere.

    Shaking my head, I jumped over the side of the building and used my jetpack to cushion my fall. The fighting was still going on and it's time to push into the industrial area and take out MH's CEO.

    Gargon City, Central District


    Zum Murdoc

    "Tank!" a nomad screamed as the massive squarish steel beast hovered down the street. Mandal Hypernautics symbols all over the damn thing as its turret turned to fire off a cannon blast from one of its twin guns into a building that several gangsters had taken cover in.

    The side of the building collapsed downwards causing the structure to tilt fairly noticeably towards the tank. Said tank started to drive away from the damage it had caused towards the formation of nomads and gangsters that made up our assault force.

    We've been making good progress, blasting through barricades. And I believe we were just behind Tanya's group, as noted by a destroyed Starfighter by the entrance of the Industrial Park. However before we could get into the Industrial Park, this beast had rolled out down the street laying into us with missiles and mass driver fire.

    Damn thing was easily gliding across the ground having no issue as it slaughtered nomads and gangsters alike.

    Thankfully, I have come prepared. I tossed a few of the old expired thermal designators in its direction as it came around the corner with it set to proximity mode. After which I simply grabbed the two closest people, the Jedi and the Royal Guard and pulled them down behind some cover just as the street was engulfed in a fireball as the tank drove over it.

    'Hopefully that would kill it.' I thought as I peeked over to see what had happened. Unfortunately that did not happen as the tank kept moving towards our lines, the crew firing off shots at anyone they could see. Although, as it moved I noticed that it seemed to have terrible situational awareness, as it didn't even see us right next to it. Either the crew was untrained and how to avoid soldiers flanking it or we're just too focused on fighting what was in front of them.

    With a look at the Jedi I said, "Hey can you do one of those Force hold things to keep that thing steady for a moment?"

    The Jedi looked over at the tank and shrugged, "I could give it a shot. If it was on treads I'd probably not have much luck but since it's floating it's possible, but it'll only be able to hold it for like 15 seconds."

    I nodded my head and said, "Alright, probably enough time." before climbing over the debris and running towards the tank. The armored tank was about to drive onward towards the running nomads when it suddenly stopped, held there as if some unknown Force was compelling it to not move. Quickly, I got up onto the back of the thing looking for any hatches or vision slits, something I could use to stop this thing.

    Today was my lucky day, as apparently the turret was meant to hold a missile firing section. I could tell this because there was a large section of the roof not finished, the armor obviously being bolted on at the last moment in a rush to get this tank out onto the field.

    As I found that out, the tank started moving again while shooting its guns making my job a bit harder but not impossible. Pulling out my plasma cutter, I get to work cutting a fist sized hole through the paneling of the roof, exposing a missile tube that looked like it went all the way down into the main turret head.

    Reaching in my backpack I pulled out three of the off-brand thermal detonators and tossed them down the hole after setting them to go off by remote detonation. With that accomplished, I jumped off the back of the tank and ran behind some debris left over from the down Starfighter.

    Not bothering to look, I pulled out my detonator and pressed the trigger.

    There was a loud bang followed by a roaring sound of a large fire followed by the sound of something heavy falling to the ground.

    Getting up to look, I saw the tank was no longer moving, its repulsors had died in the explosion. It's currently broken down, with its turret having popped off with fire pouring out from every possible hole that it could find as its ammo burned.

    A hatch sprang open and someone attempted to pull themselves out of the hull of the tank but he was already on fire and his attempt was aborted when a Nomad put him out of his misery with a shot to his head. General celebration broke out at the defeat of the tank as the Nomads and Mafia types looked over the exploded vehicle while I admired my handiwork. Now I kind of wish there had been a way to capture it, it would have made a good sale on the open markets. If there were any more of those tanks around here I'd have to see about getting control of them.

    Getting up from behind the Starfighter I saw the other two members of my group, the Jedi and the Royal Guard as well as the Royal Guard leading the Nomads walking over towards me.

    "Good work there." the Jedi said, nodding his head at the burning wreck.

    "Thanks, it's always fun to blow stuff up." I said looking at the burning debris.

    Strike nodded his head. "Now nothing stands in the way of us catching up with White Silver."

    "And nothing stands in the way between us and Bresug Gerr." The Royal Guard responded matter of factly. "I hope your White Silver doesn't get herself killed storming the place. But considering the destroying Starfighter, I'm wondering just how skilled of a fighter she is. Where is she from anyways?"

    I chuckled at that obvious fishing statement so I decided to give them a wrong answer, "They're from Concordia."

    "Concordia? That's the last place I would expect this person to be from." The royal guard said it's a bit suspicious.

    "Exactly why no one's looking there. Last place you look is always where you'll find it."

    The Royal Guard made a noise that said he didn't believe me but that didn't matter I'd throw it up a little bit of flack for Tanya distracted investigations on where she had come from in this guise of the White Silver that was the best I could do and hopefully it would be enough.

    Shaking my head I said, "Well we better get in there, find out just how much of this place has been burned down or going to be burned down for the day is over." I started to walk into the facility, noticing quite a lot of bodies and wounded of MH mercs.

    'Little Tanya and her allies had cleaned the road pretty good.' I thought as I walked along hearing the others following. Of course that didn't mean that the road was clear. As we made our way forward I saw several groups of Black Iron troops come out into the devastated pathway between the front entrance and the building Mandal Hypernautics operate out of. They took one look at the disaster around them and either lowered their weapons and started to try to check people who were wounded or they fled. One guy did turn his gun on us but the amount of guns that turned on him in return did get him to just drop the gun and run, so I think we'd broken the spirit of MH's soldiers or Tanya had.

    Either way as I came to a stop I could see that the front doors of MH's main facility had been blasted open with bodies lining the hallway past that.

    The royal guard came up to stand by us and shook his head. "This White Silver of yours really goes hard, for the enemy leadership doesn't she?"

    I think all three of us members of group two shook our heads in agreement by saying, "She sure does."



    Gargon City, Mandal Hypernautics Tower
    Bresug Gerr

    Madness absolute insanity, the city was practically burning with ravaging nomads and gangsters rising up against my forces in every corner. All because some damn Jedi pawn had decided to pretend to be a Mandalorian.

    Well I was making it as clear as possible exactly what she was. We're sending out footage of the Jedi amongst the nomadic Mandalorians currently besieging the city as well as a short message explaining how this is obviously a method to divide the followers of the Silver Codex that this was a fake White Silver.

    Was it having an effect? I didn't know. I was hoping it was though and I doubted that all Mandalorians would sign up with a Jedi operation. The Jedi were using their pawns and the New Mandalorians to control us in the sector and now they were using pawns and the White Silver to try and unseat real Mandalorians like myself, preventing us from bringing the sector back under our control. The Republic's crimes knew no end, first they destroyed our sector and now they come for our very culture.

    And I made those comments very clear in the recording. However that is a non-issue, the major issue was that White Silver was at the head of a column of troops making their way through my headquarters, destroying anyone who tried to block their way, and over-running positions that I thought were rather defensible when I designed this building.

    I've been through the Siege of Mandalore. I knew how soldiers conduct room clearing so I designed this building with a few tricks to make it harder for attackers to clear it. Apparently I did not plan for Mandalorians attacking my headquarters as they were just mulching through the mercenaries I hired and the defenses I designed.

    No matter, I've sent out a recall order so that all of my forces currently outside should now converge here to help maintain control of my office and then retake control of the entire facility. I've worked 16 years to build up this corporation from the disaster I've been left in at the end of The Siege of Mandalore. There was no way I was going to let some white armored Dala take it from me. Not without a fight and not without making sure that she'd be seen as the villain.

    In fact that was a good line of thought, standing up I said, "Prepare the communication satellite. We will send out one last message calling out the Jedi and the New Mandalorians for supporting this attack against us. That'll make sure that no Mandalorian will ever believe they are the real White Silver."

    Qing, my propaganda Minister, nodded in agreement and started yelling at the men to get the cameras rolling. Calmly I walked over to the fireplace and took my seat, putting the helmet down at my feet. Before putting on my best smile waiting for the lights to turn red.

    As the light turned red, the doors to my office exploded into wooden shrapnel hitting the back of the chair I was sitting in. Probably saving my life from a nasty wood splinter lodging itself in the back of my neck, the one place where Mandalorian armor was a bit lacking sometimes.

    Quickly, I stood up and grabbed the sword from my above fireplace. I left my pistol across the room so I couldn't exactly shoot whoever was about to come through but I would meet them with blades if that's all I had.

    And walked a female Mandalorian with a cape over one shoulder and a blaster rifle in her hands. She looked about the room and said with a rather calm voice, "Everyone drop your weapons and no one needs to be harmed." I glanced to my side and saw that my propaganda staff and regular staff were all in the midst of either drawing for weapons or going for cover but I noticed with some concern that most were going for cover, I'll have to purge those who did that. Before I could make any moves though I noted that the red light was on the camera. This was still being broadcasted, well I'd make this a spectacular broadcast.

    Turning my eyes back to the girl I said, "That's not happening Fake Silver, the True Mandalorians of this planet will not concede to your New Mandalorian puppets or your Jedi overlords. I will show the Galaxy that the Republic is not against using terrorists to accomplish their goals."

    The silver and white helmets slowly turned to look at me tilting to the side before shaking itself. "Terrorists, that's a interesting term to be throwing around False Silver. Earlier today you were going to execute Nomadic Mandalorians, why would you do that when you're supposedly trying to unify the Mandalorians? That's a rather terrorist-ic act."

    "They were not real Mandalorians they were-" the Dala cut me off.

    "Not real Mandalorians? Well that's strange, according to the Codex I created, they're following all the rules Mandalorians should follow to be considered a Mandalorian. Which means you're saying rules that were not in the Codex, these rules happen to be the Old Traditionalist rules. That no Mandalorian is a True Mandalorian unless they're born in Mandalore."

    "Well of course, real Mandalorians are made strong by the planet of Mandalore." I said, still pointing my sword at her waiting for her to make a move. The smoke was still billowing into the room from the explosion of the doorway, so I had no idea what was behind her. I had a feeling there had to be more troops ready to spring out.

    "Funny, that last time I checked, your super traditionalist ways were defeated by the New Mandalorians who besides deciding to give up weapons after the fighting were more than willing to fight you then."

    "They were Hut'uun and Kalevalians, they wouldn't have managed that without the Republic's aid or the Jedi's interference just like how you would not have managed to make it all the way here without the Jedi."

    "Jedi? What Jedi? In case you missed it, I came from the Colosseum and fought my way here. There was no one else with me but other Mandalorians. Mandalorians you don't deem Mandalorian but still I beat the ones that you were arming in Mandalorian armor. How many of your black armored goons actually have Mandalorian clan status or are they just mercenaries you hired from throughout the Galaxy and told to wear the armor to make you look official?"

    "I would do no such thing, they are true and proper Mandalorians."

    "They have no sense of tactics, no sense of how their armor can take a hit, and for the most part ran when the situation got too hard. They're not Mandalorians, they're goons hired from throughout the Galaxy. Just like you're a goon who's gotten two big for his britches. What did you think after the Siege of Mandalore? When the planet finally fell and you fled? What? Did you think that it was now your turn to take the reins as Mandalore?"

    "Of course that's what you thought. You thought the moment you got away with all the crimes you committed to maintain the support structure of the traditionalist in the Mandalore system, it would all be washed away and no one was ever going to come looking for you?"
    "What do you mean Silver Faker?" I said disliking the tone of contempt she seemed to have about her and in her voice. She acted like I was below her in some way.

    "I mean what I said I'm putting you under arrest for crimes committed during the Siege of Mandalore, which do not have any end date according to current law. And you're under arrest for attempted rebellion against the Mandalorian state. Any attempt to resist arrest will be met with hostility until attempted resistance ends. Anyone who attempts to stop the arrest will meet the same fate."

    "Are you trying to scare my men? Who do you think I am? These are my trusted associates that would never betray me for some crazed lunatic pretending to be me."

    "Really? Same." Out of the smoke came out a range of shots going past our little stare off I was having with the fake Silver and into my staff. Some fell over dead others fell over unconscious, all of them were disabled in one way or another as weapons were targeted in the attack. The side of the room that once contained twenty Mandalorians, five are still standing but they were nursing hand wounds. Out of the smoke came several more silver Mandalorians wearing their helmets on. It wasn't hard to figure out what just happened, the girl had used her helmet to mark down the location of every member of my staff and then transmitted the data to their helmets allowing for a perfectly executed alpha strike.

    I hate to admit it, but I knew I had lost. There will not be any victories today, the results are either simply dying going to jail. And I did not want to go to jail.

    With my course of action decided, I charged and attempted to slice the girl's head off with a swipe from my sword while saying, "You little Mir'sheb!" as I did.

    Once she was in range of my beskad, I unleashed a flurry of slashes at her. I noticed that she rotated her blaster by the trigger guard so that her blaster is upside down. I ignored that and focused on removing her head from her body. She evaded a majority of my attacks and those she can't dodge she parried with her blaster like an improvised shield. After a horizontal slash was ducked under, she immediately closed in and held my elbow in place with her right hand, before punching me in the face with her blaster's butt.

    The blow crunched my nose before I felt a pair of legs lock on my neck and pulled me forwards to the ground. After my back slammed into the floor, I was turned on my belly before she put me in an elbow lock. I tried to get up but she just stomped on my head and kept applying more pressure on my sword arm until I was forced to let the sword go. Once I let go of the sword she released me, allowing me to roll away from her. I can only watch and nurse my aching arm as she picks up the sword to inspect it.

    "Excellently balanced, I think I'll keep this until I find the original owners. Care to tell me where you plundered such a weapon? I doubt you got this through legitimate means, considering who you are."

    "Shut up, Fake Silver. Mandalore knows who its true heroes are, not the ones placed there by the Jedi." As I was in the process of standing up, I was not expecting the kick to the face I got, but there it was. The blow landed on my chin and I ended up spitting out blood and maybe a tooth as the girl drew a pistol and aimed it at my head.

    Taking my seat, she arranged it so she could sit in it and look down on me before saying, "As I was saying, you are going away for crimes against Mandalore. You are not a hero, you never were a hero, and you were never White Silver. You misquoted every aspect of the Codex in order to get what you wanted out of it. This was a traditionalist plot, the last gasp of a dead ideology that would see our sector brought to war for no other reason other than the fact that conflict is cool."

    "The Silver Codex is not about conflict being cool, it's about preserving our warrior ways while looking towards the future, not falling back into our warrior ways and killing each other until we wipe ourselves out completely like what you are doing. Why are you so confident in trying to keep this disgusting lie up? What point is there in lying to a room full of people who are going to make sure you go to jail?"

    I spit on her boot, "Because it is not a lie it's the truth. I'm the White Silver and we will not be put down by New Mandalorian dogs anymore."

    She looked down at me, her helmet radiating disgust before looking up around the room. Her visor looked at the camera before she said, "You're broadcasting this entire thing to the public? Well that's the first smart thing I've seen you do since I arrived on this planet. I'll let them make up their own minds, of course it would be smarter if you actually were making any reasonable points and weren't giving me a perfectly good place to make the stance that I'm the real White Silver."

    "Oh yeah? and how are you going to do that?" I said smugly knowing there was no way to do that, the public would make up their own minds and most likely the public would follow my narrative, not hers.

    "Quite simple, by breaking your belief with the hammer of logic and a stun bolt to shut you up." She raised her gun and everything went black.



    Footage






    The silver armored woman sighed, her voice sounding slightly distorted as if being changed by a voice alternator. Before she looked up at the camera." Let's begin a lesson, shall we?"

    "Lesson one, I am the White Silver. This," she smashed her heel into the sternum of the armored CEO, "is False Silver, a man who thought he could take control of my Codex through sheer wealth and zealotry while assuming that I would stay out of it, because I decided to stay out of all the debates that raged for the last few years. Which I've greatly enjoyed perusing through by the way."

    "You see, that was the goal of my Codex. I have no interest in leading a movement. I have an interest in creating a debate. One to see if we can make a stable middle ground between the Old and the New and as far as I could tell we're well on our way to meeting that middle ground as people are finding things about the Codex that they like and implementing them. And that is perfectly fine with me."

    "What I am not fine with is pointless war. Let me be clear, my friends, those who have seen my conduct here will know that I am no novice to war. To conflict and strife. Indeed this is to be expected of any respected Mandalorian! Mastery of battle is in our blood and I do take pride in the ability I have cultivated, as should every respectable Mandalorian. But I know my heart thunders in sympathy for every scattered child of Mandalore, a burning hate that consumes every fiber of my being!"

    "I hate war!" There was a pause, a stunned silence. "I hate the battlecry of men and women too young to know life before they fall nameless and alone. I hate the cold calculus of orbital bombardment. I hate the savage desperation of a charge and the bloody duty of a defensive line."

    "I hate homes blasted to ruin. I hate industry turned to nothing but bombs and blasters. I hate the brilliance of programming twisted to produce insidious droids that do nothing but snuff out life. I hate battles across fields of grain and I hate forests turned to ash. I hate cities turned to rubble and the abundant beauty of nature turned to mud and craters. I hate wars that rage across worlds, across systems, across the galaxy!"

    "Pointless war takes everything good and turns it into a wasteland, it fills our graves and deprives our children! It steals from us! Robs us of our best and brightest and leaves us friendless and alone! Isolated from the galaxy and residing on a desert world of our own making!"

    "The New Mandalorians turn away from all conflict, turn away from strength and our ancient customs in the hope of never seeing a war again. I understand them, truly I do! But I do not agree with them. No, I do not. I do not fear strength, the blaster, our armor, our heritage! I do not fear our ability to fight for what is right! No Mandalorian should! The right to unify Mandalore shall fall to the men and women who shall carry swords but know when to keep them sheathed! We are not animals! Rabid and wild and less than sapient! We are MANDALORIAN! Each and every one of us! We can reason and debate and turn away from battle until we have no other choice! It is only then, when we have demonstrated our patience and rationality that we shall draw the sword and strike down our enemy with a ferocity that will shock and awe the galaxy! That is THE WAY!" White Silver seemed to take a moment to compose herself before she spoke again.

    "Duchess Satine has shown herself to be adaptable and has allowed the Silver Codex and its followers to implement some of the ideas into the New Mandalorian culture. She is a true leader amongst our people, a duly elected leader, and more on our side than animals like this." She kicked Bresug Gerr away from the chair. "Who would use Mandalorian lives for his own gains and then declare anyone who speaks out against him to not be a True Mandalorian and deserving of death."

    She held her thoughts on that for a moment before continuing. "Now that I've made that clear, let me make a few other things clear. Out of respect for my leader, I have arrested the False Silver and will deliver him to her agents. If you dislike the fact that I'm handing him over to Duchess Satine then you should really be wondering why you even care. Do you care because you believe he's the real deal? The real Silver or because he made a second Codex that corrupts the first? Then I guess you weren't really a follower of the first Codex were you? You are likely just some Death Watch reject looking for someone to tell you what to do, which is to rise up and rebel against your rightful leader as proclaimed by the majority of clans within the sector."

    "Make it clear that's who you are in the future because here's what's going to happen from this day onwards. If anyone attempts to claim the title of White Silver. If anyone tries to use it for rebellion like this fool tried to do, one of two things will happen. You will raise my ire and I will hunt you down personally, before turning you over to the Royal Guard like what I will do with him. Or, this is the more likely scenario, if you don't have the immense wealth this fool did, you will be hunted down by whatever factions already exist waiting for their own opportunity to shut you up. And let me tell you, you better hope I find you first because I will merely send you to jail. Any faction that truly wants to take over this sector and has had their plans in the works for who knows how long, won't let you live to see another day."

    Standing up from the chair she said, "Now I'm going to go deal with getting this man sent to the Royal Guard. After that I'm going to disappear, maybe go on vacation. I think I deserve it after toppling this warmongering idiot's tyrannical regime. I'll let the people debate and discuss the Silver Codex while I work on a more updated version of the Silver Codex with new lessons learned over the years as well as feedback from various constructive criticisms I gathered from various discussion boards and forums. However, don't even think about making your own 2nd edition like what this fool tried to do, because not even an army would save you from me."

    She nodded to someone off screen and the feed cut off.



    Anteevy, The Ge'tal Nau'ur Droten
    General Secretary Liliya Vhekayno Shepest

    "Well that was unexpected, but not unwelcome." I said as the footage ended and the projector was deactivated. Turning away from the screen, I looked at the six other members of the Workers Council. Men and women of high regard and leaders who had helped me overthrow the government of clan heads 10 years ago, when I was just a teenager. They were my closest allies, though I always kept an eye on them just in case. I knew every single one of their deepest darkest secrets and if they ever tried to betray me, well those secrets coming out would be the least of their problems.

    The gathered assembly looked rather concerned, as they sat around the redwood table in the finely decorated room, set aside for such private meetings. They're worried, which was to be expected. We had decided to meet today at the Ge'tal Nau'ur Droten to talk about the support I had given to White Silver in recent months. An overarching strategy to hopefully destabilize the sector and allow true workers to take control of it. Though to tell the truth I had hoped they would be more successful than this. My overarching plan had been quite simple and would have spelled the downfall of the monarchists and the corporatists.

    Finally, Konk Cova, Head of the National Police Force, spoke up. "Ma'am, the whole plan just went up and smoke as far as I can see. Could you explain how this is not unwelcome news?"

    I gave her an amused look before saying. "While yes the plan was to have White Silver stir the nest and show that the original so-called ideology was bunk and trash as well as show that the New Mandalorians are weak and unable to defend the people or the people's right to work. Unfortunately, it would seem the White Silver we supported was a fake which is a lot more interesting when you think about it. Because now, a movement that didn't have a leader does, in a way it is proclaimed that it is in favor of New Mandalorians or at least align themselves with them in such a way that they seem indivisible. Sure our plans to destabilize the sector have failed, but now we know that there is a capitalist watchdog there and we would not have known that without this experiment. A brute reactionary who will fight when the New Mandalorians won't."

    "Of course, now we can plan around her." the leader of the national Police said, smacking her fist into her palm.

    "Exactly, imagine what would have happened when the eventual Separatist War started up and we didn't know about her before going into it? I imagine many of our droids would have been destroyed in the fighting as she would have rallied her silver minions to her cause the moment we attempted to liberate the sector."

    Nodding the officer in charge of diplomacy with the Separatists spoke up, "This was a terrible gamble though. If Dooku found out we were involved in it, we could face reprisals for jumping a scheme ahead of time."

    "Dooku may be annoyed, yes but he's a man in a bad position. He needs all the allies he can get to pull off this Sepratist plot so he will most likely just shrug it off. Besides that, it's not like we've wasted any resources on this operation if anything we've only gained. The Legionnaire droids we constructed are still in our hands to do with as we please, we've gained a steady supply of beskar which will increase the number of our beskar clad soldiers, and have made inroads with local pirates to mine the rest of those old forgotten wrecks for as much beskar as we can get. Overall, a very worthwhile gamble."

    "The only thing we've lost in this whole operation was maybe a bit of surprise but the gains in my opinion far outweighs any loss. Though perhaps we should hire an assassin to make sure that False Silver keeps his mouth shut. We can't have him talking about exactly who he was working with who was supporting him if we can help it. If everyone agrees I will see about arranging a bounty on his head for death."

    There was a round of the nods in agreements before they smiled at how well things have been going.

    When I was born on this planet it had been like a Siberian wasteland with the population living underground in caves to shelter themselves from the frostbiting winds. Well that had not improved much but people lived a bit more comfortably now thanks to the droids we have been building. Wonderful technology that was, it removed the need for the worker in some cases allowing production to be fully automated. Turning to look out the window I saw the blasted ice sheets of the planet reminding me of home.

    The Ge'tal Nau'ur Droten was a tower in the largest cave of the underground system that the people of Anteevy lived in. The top floor is actually punctured through the cave's roof into the surface allowing us to have a splendid view of the night sky that was constant on this planet and the glowing ice. Outside a droid was currently cleaning ice from the window. A constant fight on this planet was ice, it got everywhere in ways that the winters of my homeland had never done. Smiling at the droid, I can only think if only we had some of those in the Russy Federation, the production rates would have been astounding and the vile imperialists would never have made it as far into the glorious motherland. But that was another life, one far removed from this one.




    Writers note: and there we are the end of the false silver ark, chapter 20 was bit ride with lots of combat, lot moving parts, hope everyone likes this lot of little moments sctaered about in here that I can't wait to see the reaction to, chapter and starting after the epilogue chapter that will be 21 will be getting to lighter faire for a while.



    Edited by: Markus Gollinger, Warmach1ne32, FallQM
    Community edited by:Justin R
    Community editable doc (Chapter 20) 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: Afforess, Gremlin Jack, Weise, Xodarap4, Yamato, Duncan Sproule, James Moorhouse, Dankermaler, Hats88, DrkShdow, Devilstar101, Michael, Mana Rope, Falk Hüser, Daniel Martinez, Silver Wolf, Mackenzie Buckle, Markus, Neso, Staradder, Lmc9389, Staradder, victor a lopez-barron, Qweunn, KrasieK, Zollus, Mintea, Jog256,
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Now I'm wondering how many from Tanya's second life got reincarnated here.
    Pity Bo didn't recognized her favorite niece's fighting style.
     
    StrangerDanger51 said:
    And the reveal.

    Tanya isn't the only one who got reincarnated to the star wars galaxy.
    Click to expand...
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    hmm sure seems it
    Stratagemini said:
    Huh. Is this fantasy Trotsky?
    Click to expand...
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    maybe there like 4 options...
    ToothMaker said:
    Huh, so it's not someone originally from Earth, it's someone born in the setting of Youjo Senki?
    Click to expand...
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    mhmmm
    Hexcalibur said:
    Now I'm wondering how many from Tanya's second life got reincarnated here.
    Pity Bo didn't recognized her favorite niece's fighting style.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    ah... i would suspect no more... unless i come up with interesting story I'm not going to randomly grab people
     
    So, on reread I have one question?

    Who was the Mando Female who used a shovel a chapter before? I almost said "Visha! Is that you?"
     
    See's talk about a Mando possibly being Visha, remembers how earlier Tanya said the name Visha and the possibility of them using that name.

    ...Well if that's Visha and she remembers her past life she might have questions if it's revealed.
     
    L4oftheWEST said:
    "I hate war!" There was a pause, a stunned silence. "I hate the battlecry of men and women too young to know life before they fall nameless and alone. I hate the cold calculus of orbital bombardment. I hate the savage desperation of a charge and the bloody duty of a defensive line."

    "I hate homes blasted to ruin. I hate industry turned to nothing but bombs and blasters. I hate the brilliance of programming twisted to produce insidious droids that do nothing but snuff out life. I hate battles across fields of grain and I hate forests turned to ash. I hate cities turned to rubble and the abundant beauty of nature turned to mud and craters. I hate wars that rage across worlds, across systems, across the galaxy!"
    Click to expand...
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    Heh, nice reversal of the Major's speech you made here. This fully aligns with Tanya's philosophy that pointless war is a waste of resources, including human ones, without coming off as her usual uncanny psycho self by actually calling them that. The emotional theatrics were a great PR move, and she didn't even notice how much better it came off than if she'd tried to explain it logically.

    The one other time I recall seeing that speech in a YS fic it was a straight delivery in The Leader, and it killed my interest in it on the spot.
     
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    Chapter 21
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 21
    714 FNM (24 BBY)
    Month 9



    Mandalore, Sundari Royal Palace
    Satine Kryze

    "Just when we thought the situation couldn't get more complicated, this happens." Prime Minister Almec said as he looked at the holoprojector that had been showing us the transmission from Gargon. I'd been holding a meeting with him and the Jedi in the Royal Palace to discuss what to do about this situation, when the Royal Guard assigned to monitor transmissions from Gargon notified us of another broadcast. Based on what we were seeing, there seemed to be a full scale revolt going on.

    Given that it was important to know what was going on, I had ordered the transmission routed to the room's holo-projector. As a result we had a front row seat to witness the real White Silver making her debut as a political leader.

    There were many things I expected to happen today but watching Tanya, because that's who was under that helmet I am not a fool, beat up a dictator and basically declared me as the True Mand'alor was not one of them. On the one hand, I felt a deep well of anger because she had gone behind my back and engaged in unwarranted violence where she could have been killed in all sorts of ways, as demonstrated when I accidentally snapped the expensive wine glass I was holding when the two came to blows on the screen. Luckily, I was able to deflect suspicion by saying that I merely startled due to the sudden violence on screen. On the other hand, I was somewhat proud of her. The philosophy she had espoused was still developing; with the goal of creating a middle ground that would be acceptable for both sides. Her recent display made it quite clear that the middle ground that she was proposing saw me as the true Mand'alor and I did my best to show that I have attempted to integrate some of their ideology into my policies.

    After a moment to reflect, it appeared she had done a good job salvaging the White Silver ideology while also signaling that only truly elected people could be Mand'alores. This could do well for bringing people to my side of things but also meant that I had to do more to build broad support when I could. Perhaps I would have to revisit the subject of a Self-Defense Force, perhaps a small one. I'll give it some thought and then write up a proposal for the council to vote on the subject at a later date. At least then it would support the idea that I wished to have a middle ground. Yes, that would be acceptable.

    "So, what are we going to do about this potential terrorist?" Almec said, finally turning to look at me, catching me by a bit of surprise. Then I remembered he didn't know that Tanya was White Silver, and it would be best to keep it that way, the less people knew the better. From his perspective, all that happened was that a vigilante had just stormed into the room and knocked out an issue for the government, becoming the new issue in the process. I would need to be careful to make sure I didn't give away that we could trust this White Silver.

    "I don't think we need to do much, in all honesty. She said that she's not going to make any appearances unless provoked, so the only option we can while maintaining our non-violent stance is to wait and see." I finally said "And if she hands over the criminal to the Royal Guard for judicial punishment, I see no reason to make an enemy of this White Silver."

    Almec raised his eyebrow before shaking his head and saying "A bit too soft in my opinion, but you are right. We are not Traditionalists, so for now the safest option is to wait and see. However, even if this White Silver does keep to her word about not wanting to take over the government and sees you as the true leader of our people; she now has created a solid political faction within our people. If she grows to dislike your rule, who knows what could happen?"

    "True," I said, acknowledging his beliefs with a nod, "we'll have to announce condemnation of a vigilante taking such extralegal actions against a criminal. Hopefully that will encourage White Silver not to make any more public appearances. As for her political base, I don't see what we can do on that matter, most of the White Silver's philosophy is an acceptable middle ground between the New and the Old Mandalorian way. Perhaps we can find some way to bring White Silver's people closer to New Mandalorian principles. I will need time to think of some strategy for this situation."

    Almec nodded, looking unsure on the matter but his most pressing questions seemed to have been answered. It was then that my old friend Obi-Wan spoke up, "I don't think you need to give such a condemnation really, at least not for this action. Rahm Kota was involved in the effort it would seem, going by the images that were sent out, and he is known for being a bit of a troublemaker. Since Rahm, let's just say 'enjoys', inserting himself into situations he really shouldn't, it is possible to blame the actions of this White Silver as the result of his encouragement."

    That caused my eyebrow to raise as I thought about the implications. "If memory serves, White Silver's document had implied working with the Jedi was necessary. Perhaps there was a way to use this impromptu alliance between White Silver and the Jedi to try and rehabilitate a bit of their image amongst the Mandalorian people."

    "You have a point," I said, "though not the one you thought you did. I wish to give a condemnation for both White Silver and Rahm Kota. Taking extralegal actions like this should not be done by a private individual and it must not receive support, even implied, from our government."

    Obi-Wan rubbed his chin as he tried to decipher my meaning before he smiled, "Always the politician, Satine. I will convey this condemnation back to the Council. Do you want him recalled as well?"

    I shook my head instead. "That is for the Council to decide as far as I'm concerned. As long as he is made aware that this behavior is unwelcome, it should be fine."

    Obi-Wan nodded his head before saying, "The situation seems to have solved itself and our missing Jedi has reappeared. I'll contact the Council and let them know that the situation is well in hand. As soon as Rahm returns to Mandalore I will probably be called back." smiling he continued, "I guess this is a goodbye for now Satine."

    I smile back before saying, "It will probably take a few days to send a task force of Guards to Gargon and back. If you want, we could have a bit of dinner to catch up on non-political subjects."

    Obi-Wan smiled before saying, "I think I'd like that, I'll contact you to schedule something once I've talked to the Council. May the Force be with you,Duchess Satine, Prime Minister Almec."

    "Farewell, Master Jedi." Almec said before turning to me as Obi-Wan headed for the door. "Though there are good reasons we shouldn't push too heavily on Silver's followers. We will need to keep watch on this organization - if left alone they could become a problem in the future."

    "What do you suggest we do?" I said out of curiosity.

    "There is a division of the Mandalorian Guard meant for activities such as these. If you allow me to organize an operation, we could infiltrate any political movement serving Silver's cause and make sure they don't get too radical."

    "Hmm, very well. You have my permission to infiltrate any political movements that those who follow Silver try to form. Do keep in mind that they are potential allies, not our enemies yet." I said with a shake of my head.

    "Of course, I simply wish to have an advanced warning in case they prove themselves to be an enemy of the state. "

    "I know, Prime Minister. You simply wish for a safe and secure Mandalore. You have permission to look into this situation."

    He nodded his head and said, "Thank you my lady. I will take my leave then to start organizing things. Better to have the gears in motion sooner rather than later."

    As the doors closed behind him, I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. This day was full of surprises, both good and bad. Events were moving at a rate I could not keep up with and in a direction I only vaguely had control over. I am going to have to have a nice long talk with Tanya when she finally returns to Mandalore about this whole White Silver business. I needed to get some sort of explanation for why she thought it was a great idea to infiltrate a rebellious planet and overthrow its corrupt regime with only her Royal Guards. Though I had to chuckle a bit at it all. As teenage adventures go for a Mandalorian, that had to be one worthy of being put in books. It was almost as extraordinary as my adventure with Obi-wan during the Clan Wars when I was her age.

    Sitting back in my chair in the now empty meeting room, I considered how I was going to handle the Silver political movement that would surely spring up from this whole affair.

    Tanya had portrayed me as a New Mandalorian who was willing to look for a compromise. Something I hadn't previously wanted to be due to how the Clan Wars ended years ago. I had to be uncompromising towards the Old Mandalorians to keep them in line so that we have a chance of bringing peace to the sector. Now that the people had experienced peace as a status quo, I could afford a few concessions, especially if they have merits.

    Question was, what could I do to try and appease the Silver Mandalorians? The Self Defense Force Tanya had suggested could be a good start, maybe we could create some sort of non-military use for the organization that could occupy them when we were not in conflict. Perhaps disaster relief or emergency rescue?

    I needed something that would show that I was willing to work with the Silver centrists but was ultimately not going to infuriate the New Mandalorians; something that could maintain a defensive status and was in touch with the roots of Mandalorians without reverting to the aggressiveness of the old ways.

    The answer was quite clear in hindsight, armor. The Silver Codex showed armor as a defensive tool, something that could be militarized or could just be used to save your life. Off the top of my head, there were three things I could do based around armor that could appease the Silver Mandalorians without causing the New Mandalorians to go into an uproar.

    The first is removing more of the restrictions on armor, there weren't many left anyway. I have already done a lot to undo some of the damage I may have caused in my fervor to end conflict as quickly as possible.

    The second idea is that I could return some of the beskar that had been taken in the early days of my reign. At the time, the act had been necessary to de-escalate situations and make acquiring beskar armaments more costly but things were different now. A good majority of it had been used in the creation of some of the structural parts of the city of Sedin or for the shields used by my Mandalorian Guards. I believe there was still quite a large amount of beskar held in reserve. Perhaps it was time for that reserve to be decreased? Unfortunately, there was no easy way to track down a person who had given up their armor to help establish a new Mandalore and for the most part they've been paid for giving it up. All I would need to do now was to look into a reasonable distribution method to give some of the beskar to the people in general without the majority ending up in subversive hands.

    The third idea I'd have could be accomplished quite easily without angering the New Mandalorians too much or needing to run it through the government. Quite simply I would need to pay a visit to Kalevala and contact an old friend, Zum Murdoc, so that he could reforge my old armor into something I could wear. That would show my commitment to the defensive Mandalore without giving up my ideals of pacifism.

    I haven't spoken to Zum for nearly a decade though. Tracking him down would be difficult, maybe Bo knew where he was. I would have to contact her anyway. Once I get in contact with Zum, I'll see if I can contract him to do the job. I could use the Royal Guard Armorsmiths for the project but I think having it done by my Clan's Armorsmith would aid my attempt at unity more than having some faceless Armorsmith who mass-produced armor all the time to do it, no offense to them, they were just doing their jobs. It is like the difference between a royal chef and a cook of a family diner, both can be delicious but the royal chef just has a higher standard of quality.



    Coruscant, Jedi Council Chamber
    Mace Windu

    Shaking my head I said, "I expected the situation to get out of hand in some way. However I didn't expect there to be an identity theft situation going on or for the person whose identity was stolen to appear in such a way."

    Expecting this either, I did not. But pleasantly surprised I am, this situation seeming to resolve itself well.

    "I did not either. Though pleasantly surprised, the situation seems to have resolved itself well." Yoda said, "An end to potential issues in the Madalorian sector, this young silver has put, no?"

    I responded, "Is this the end of it or is this just the start of something more? With so little information we could be seeing the rise of something worse than what was there before. The first White Silver was at least a known entity, we understood 'his' motives and methods. This aggressive White Silver is one that blindsided us all and predicting her actions will be challenging." I sighed and shook my head. "At least we know where Rahm Kota got off to, perhaps he could fill in a few of the blanks we're having right now."

    Master Yoda, who was sitting next to me chuckled, "Always rushing to the front that one is, seeking atonement for his youth or simply acting on instincts I do not know."

    I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head before saying, "It's hard to say, he's a good Jedi though. Even if he does get into some trouble now and again, I can't hold it against him for wanting to help people even where the council wouldn't intervene."

    "True, kind heart he has,Even if appearing more gruff than he is, he tries."


    Master Rancisis decided to return our attention to the matter at hand. "While this is all well and good that Master Kota is uninjured, what are we going to do about this Silver business? I believe we were worried that this could have presaged a backslide in the Mandalorian sector. With this new development I'm not sure what the future holds."

    "A backslide, this is not. What these events represent, a ripple or tide, uncertain I am. Positive though, these developments I suspect to be." Master Yoda said with a nod.

    Master Mundi shared his thoughts on the matter. "Maybe what's concerning about this new White Silver is that we don't know anything about her. She could be the original or she could be another fake. We've already had one 'impostor', she could be another. I'd hate to think that Mandalore would be brought low by fighting over the title of White Silver."

    "This issue, not significant I suspect to be. With False Silver cast down, her goals accomplished, return to hiding, White Silver will. Remaining in public presence, conflicts with the Duchess and less debates, the likely results are. Seclusion, White Silver's claimed motives best supports." Yoda said, nodding his head and thought before he continued, "An interesting term, they used, False Silver." He chuckled with humor that I didn't understand.

    "I don't see what's so interesting or funny about it." I said, raising an eyebrow. As far as I could see it was just a term used to label the fake Silver. "What possible interest or joke could there be in such a term?"

    "Private joke, reminded I was." He said, shaking his head before continuing. " The original, this white silver claims to be, remaining visible in the Mandalorian Sector, serves her purposes not. A focal point for violence, conflict she would become. Depart, she must."

    "How can you be so sure?" I asked, Yoda was known for having a good handle on situations but this seemed out of context especially in light of the unexpected events that had just concluded. .

    "Read the Silver Codex, once or twice I have. A defensive doctrine, it is. Designed for conquest, it is not" He said, "A companion to the Jedi code, it could have been. In other times, under other influences. "

    I resolved to read it over a bit closer the next time I got the chance, but first, I decided to ask the question that none of the others had voiced. "Are you going to attempt to ensure that this doctrine gets the right influences? It's not like we know who this White Silver is and could simply try to talk them into adopting ideas of the Jedi order."

    Yoda tapped the side of his cane in thought before simply saying, "Ways there are, I think, to bring White Silver's focus to ideas from the Jedi order. Leave Kota on Concordia, I suggest. Discussion among White Silver's supporters, his presence alone will spread.In roads too, I can make, with the young representative from Mandalore. Lead to eventually meeting with this White Silver, these actions may, if thoughtful dialogue occurs."

    "Seems highly unlikely," I mused out loud, "more likely Silver is going to stay far away from us. But it's as good a start as any." I said with a shrug. Without more information we can only take actions that make the most sense and trust in the will of the Force.

    Master Yoda nodded his head in agreement before saying "Small is our influence, thus small in size, our actions must be. Only negatives, would a large action create. Worry not about this situation. A friend of the Order,I feel White Silver will be. A friend in an unexpected place? Perhaps, believe this I do." He said in his knowing way. "Should White Silver become a friend? Trust in her, we shall."




    Gargon, Mandal Hypernautics Conference Room
    Tanya Kryze

    It had been less than 24 hours since the fall of False Silver and after all of the stressful combat I had been in the day before, I could use a break. But there was no time for me to rest.

    I had jumped from street combat, which had been frankly exhilarating and adrenaline pumping, to political combat. Now that False Silver had been toppled, those involved in his removal were fighting for the scraps.

    Most of the mercenaries and Silver Mandos that had been outside the Hypernautics compound during my confrontation with False Silver had been subdued by local gangs or nomads who had eventually found their way to the compound during the fighting. What had happened to them, I don't know for sure but I could guess that a bunch of them were no longer wearing armor and a good portion of them were probably going to not see the light of day for a long time, if ever.

    Criminal organizations didn't tend to treat enemy combatants kindly, I believe. How they would treat friends is still up in the air.

    As of a few hours ago I received a request for a meeting to determine the fate of Mandal Hypernautics. AKA the criminal gangs wanted a piece of the pie, which was understandable. No doubt a lot of businesses had been thrown under the bus by the CEOs attempt at global conquest.

    I wasn't exactly going to want to keep Mandal Hypernautics. The biggest factor was I didn't have any way to control it but I was still partial to figuring out a way to get some benefit from the company.

    That being said, the Nomads had already taken what they wanted. I heard reports that every speeder bike as well as all of the trucks in the Mandal Hypernautics stockpile were missing. No doubt they would be using them for years; they were welcome to take them. The Nomads had done me a favor with their portion of the assault so they deserved a reward.

    As for the Royal Guard who had been on the planet when we arrived, he and Rahm were taking his ship back to Mandalore already with the CEO tied up on board. I was sure the Mandalorian gangsters of Gargon wanted the CEO and they do have a claim to him for the various crimes he'd committed against their planet. But, as I had made clear earlier, I believe they would have killed him and buried him in a ditch somewhere, after maybe a week of torture, which would do me no good.

    His death would have made him into a martyr. Rotting prison leaves him as just a criminal. Sending him to aunt Satine also went a long way to show the loyalty of the Silver Mandalorians to the established government. This hopefully would dispel any rumors that I was planning to try and overthrow my aunt and prevent any other attempts to use the Silver Mandalorians as fodder for whatever other movement wanted to try and overthrow my aunt.

    Of course, this did damage some of my attempts to try and create a solely neutral faction as people would claim I was submissive to the New Mandalorians, but I had been pushed into this position by events out of my control. If I needed to run with those events while I regained control of my message that's what I would do.

    As for the Wrens, I didn't know what had happened to them. They were here yesterday after we completed the mission but they had vanished soon afterwards heading off to do whatever the Wrens did. I don't know what their objectives had been in taking part in this conflict but I was glad they had been here, their jetpacks had made the mission a lot easier, and I owed them a bit of a favor in the future. One I would deliver on if I ever got the chance. Speaking of jetpacks, the one I took from that brute in the arena is now safely stored in the ship and Zum volunteered to adjust it to my specifications once he returned to Concordia.

    As for the situation with the mafia, I guess I would have to find out what they wanted. The meeting had been scheduled for today and I obtained the use of Hypernautic's conference room to do it. Not only because I wanted to know I was in a secure facility, which technically it was and I was glad to , but because the office could be considered neutral ground until today's meeting was over.

    Well that and the offices were rather nice. The table appears to be wood from Jakalia and was very well made. Not to mention it had a window view overlooking Gargon City.

    My Mandalorian Royal Guard and Zum are with me for today's meeting. They were standing about the room acting as guards. Obviously they're to make sure nothing terrible went down considering how armed they were. Mok was currently getting control of the security systems which was still a work in progress, Skota and Struc are having a conversation on the matters of how many wounded there were right now. I had brought quite a few of both the Silver Mandalorians and the Black Iron mercenaries into the compound and tried to organize their medical staff to work together to take care of the wounded. The fighting was over, there was no need for people to die if possible. It would just be a waste of perfectly good human resources at this point for every person who died.

    No doubt one of my sticking points in the coming of negotiations would be to secure the safety of both those parties. The Silver Mandalorians because they were, well to put it bluntly, my followers and the black mercenaries because showing your enemy a bit of mercy when you have control can create positive outcomes. Unlike with the Francois in my last war, thankfully this faction was thoroughly beaten. There would be no last minute fleeing to a southern continent and since their leadership was destroyed, being too harsh on them gained me nothing I wanted. Finally Ordo and Zum are standing to my left and right side in that order, appearing as tough as they could and ready for the Mafia clans to arrive. Which I believed would be any moment now.

    At that thought, a beeping sound alerted us to the elevator on this floor opening. It revealed two, I would guess Mandalorian, mobster leaders and their four compatriot guards. I could tell they were the leaders due to the quality of their attire as well as the fact that the blasters each had looked modern and new compared to the ones carried by their grunts which look like they were old relics.

    They gave my team of guards a wary look, something I could tell since their leadership apparently had not decided to don helmets for this occasion though they were wearing plates of Mandalorian armor.

    After a moment, the wider one spoke first, "I'm Clan leader Grel of Clan Tutt, this is Kagg, leader of Clan Kroggooss. We're here to negotiate with the new owner of Mandal Hypernautics. Secure that you are not going to attempt to take over the planet like the last owner."

    I nodded my helmet before saying, "I am White Silver and fortunately I have no interest in taking over this planet. In fact I would be more than willing to sell Mandal Hypernautics if there was a willing buyer amongst you."

    "Yes about that, that's not going to happen." Grel said, shaking his head, "As in we can't let you sell Mandal Hypernautics."

    I raised my brow under my helmet, "And why is that?"

    Kagg spoke up in a deep voice and began explaining, "To make it simple, Gargon has an intricate balance of power that Mandal Hypernautics played a part in. That balance of power has been upset and if it were to be sold to anyone on this planet it would disturb it even more likely resulting in another little uprising like what happened yesterday. We need a stable, unambitious, and relatively neutral party to help maintain stability. Of course we'll still want to see some direct benefits as well."

    I nodded my head and rubbed the chin of my helmet with thought. It seems Gargon is more dicey than I'd originally thought, which I guess is to be expected when it doesn't have a stable government. It means I can't just dump Hypernautics to someone else without the power structure being in danger of collapsing again. Annoying but I had thought about something like this happening before saying, "That makes an unfortunate amount of sense. What if I were to sell it to someone off-world? Would you have an issue with that?"

    "No off-world company is likely going to buy it, but even if they did, that might just encourage the New Mando Duchess to step onto this planet. We don't need her Mandalorian guard or her royal guard poking around our business." Grel said, "Matter of fact, I think it would be best if you leave soon." before continuing with the statement, "Yes I know you made a statement saying that you serve the Duchess, but you are already being decried as a potential terrorist and vigilante by said Duchess's government so I don't think you're going to be working directly with her."

    I could be excused for missing that announcement since I had been too busy putting out fires, both figuratively and literally, to watch the news. Though that was to be expected, no government would publicly endorse a revolutionary even if they dethroned a tyrannical dictator without being seen as a backer.. In this case, someone had just burst onto the scene and enacted political violence, you don't do that and not get a bit of a side eye from the current leadership even if you're on their side. I could try and clear that up with them down the line but for now I needed to focus on here. The hot potato of Mandal Hypernautics.

    He continued "Any other off-world company that was interested would be taking a large risk and would want something out of it. Their involvement would likely result in conditions hazardous to our own businesses which itself would be…destabilizing."

    "Well if I can't sell it off-world and I can't sell it to one of you I guess I'll have to maintain ownership in some way." I said, shaking my head.

    I did not have any plans to continuously run a company, though if I did, a starship company wasn't a bad option. Perhaps I would find someone amongst the staff here who could be trustworthy enough to not go rogue, wasn't there a foreman that had helped us? A 'He rubbed my back, I'll rub his' type of deal. If I found that his qualifications were good enough to actually run Hypernautics that is, I would rather have someone qualified to run it than a loyal incompetent for this business. If I was very very lucky, all I would need to do was pay him well and give him plenty of paid vacation leave so he wouldn't betray me. That shouldn't be too hard.

    "I was expecting a list of demands, so let's hear them." I said, folding my hands in front of me on the table as I looked across it at the pair of my bosses that were standing at the other end.

    "Oh, we do have some demands but they're not that difficult to fulfill. Don't try and take over the planet. Don't sell the company to the Hutts, we've already dealt with them and we do not want to go through the hassle of doing it again. And most importantly, you'll need to at least visit some of the yearly meetings where we discuss the running of Gargon, or one of your agents acting as your representative will. A few product discounts and non-essential supply contracts to ensure we are all able to enjoy equitable benefits from a lasting partnership."

    Ah, they were trying to chain me to their alliance, give me a growing interest in, and possibly some slight affection for Gargon so that they can deal with me in a political sense instead of a company trying to take advantage of their planet for unknown reasons.

    That is unexpected but not a terrible thing. Speaking up I said, "I guess I could see about arriving at some meetings like that. though I am a rather busy person so if I send a representative don't feel too insulted, as I said I don't need a company and obtaining it was not my objective for this campaign. I'll need to review any potential contracts. There will be a hard cap on the quantity of discounted ships and total value of contracts. We'll base the latter on net profit. If I'm involved I'm not going tolerate rampant undermining of the company's health"

    Kagg nodded and said, "Base it on gross profits, that's fine as long as you're not going to try and take over the planet. If you can deal with us as equals, we won't give a damn if you're there or not. We just want this planet to be quiet and apolitical so we can go about our business the old fashioned way; selling spice, running guns, and making a little money from gambling."

    That line of dialogue sparked a memory in me but thought I had years before on how to rejuvenate the economy of the Mandalorian sector. This caused me to tilt my head in thought, Gargon is on the edges of the Mandalorian sector but it is still a part of it and it is right next to the Hydian Way.

    In essence it was a perfect position to play Las Vegas to Mandalorian Sector's Nevada. "How much business comes through Gargon?" I asked, trying to suss out more details.

    "A decent amount," Grel said. "We get a lot more when things are quiet around here, though it's mostly smugglers that show up on this planet."

    "Strange, you would think that with such opportunities out here you'd have more."

    "Opportunities?" Kagg asked, sounding confused yet interested.

    "Yes, opportunities. This planet is within the Mandalorian sector and in essence protected from outside military action as long as it doesn't pull another attempt at overthrowing the Duchess. You have natural vistas of beauty across the planet, the streets are for the most part kept clean and clear, by your enforcers I imagine. Really, just add a few more elements to it you could run an advertising campaign for this planet being some sort of resort world for the rich and stupidly wealthy to spend their money. Of course you would need to move the spice production outside the city. Drugs have a way of making such places look worse than they really are but otherwise you could make quite a lot of money legitimately on this planet. It would also free you from having to rely on some of the more troublesome offworld criminal elements that you currently must cater to."

    The two mob bosses exchanged looks before turning to look at me again. They both reached out for a chair and pulled it out to sit down having apparently found reason to take a seat, something they had refused up to this moment. It seems the allure of money could bring even the criminals to negotiations with me.

    "There had been discussions about something like that before. We thought Gerr would actually help us in that matter but as you know, all of his enforcers were a prelude to attempted global conquest." Grel started off.

    "Plus we needed those enforcers to not be any of our own faction's enforcers." Kegg continued. "Balance of power you see. If one of us has control over the local police, well things could get very nasty very fast."

    "If someone were to take up the mantle of training a stable police force that would not interfere too deeply with our businesses, as long as it doesn't screw with the tourists, we could see about cleaning up this city enough for your idea of a resort world to be pulled off." Grel continued, "After all, it wouldn't take all much work to accomplish. Most of the hotels and casinos are already here, we would just need to relocate the more criminal elements to the outskirts of the city or other towns where they could continue their work. We'd maintain this city as the resort world's capital."

    Ahh I didn't have to do much at all, they were already discussing this idea but were having issues finding someone trustworthy for the operation. "So you need someone to act as a guarantee that the planet will be safe for the people who come to visit. That shouldn't be too hard, I already have quite a few followers here thanks to False Silver. If I were to find some of the more sane people amongst them It would be possible to put together a police force and add some talented auditors and administrators loyal to me to prevent corruption. If this force is independent of Mandal Hypernautics and responds only to the Clan Council of Gargon, I'm sure that would work well for all of us."

    "Clan Council?" Grel said, sounding a bit confused.

    "You're not the only people on this planet, after all the Nomads also live here. You give them a vote, it makes the whole thing seem more legitimate. In fact it is almost a legitimate government even if some of its elements are a bit on the extralegal side. You can get recognition through the Mandalorian Senate and representatives to Coruscant which would spread your advertising campaign for this being a resort world quite far. I believe a lot of Core World business types have to travel the Hydian Way to the Corporate Sector. if there's a place they can stop off for a day or two for some rest and recreation, and to see the sights of course, well I'm sure they will take it up."

    I swear I could see the dollar signs in their eyes as they were both smiling at the idea. "Of course it will take some time," I continued, "building a proper representative government usually does and I'm sure the Nomadic clans will have a few stipulations about the criminal elements that'll be forced out of Gargon City. You'll probably be expected to pay a bit of extra taxes to public works to capitalize on all the distance and other public exploration projects that would intrigue the corporate bosses that will be traveling this way, possibly with their families as well if you play your cards right. In fact, If you're willing to decrease the value of our future contracts I'd be open to committing a larger amount towards funding such governance and public welfare projects."

    "Yes, yes," Grel said, rubbing his chin in thought, "I can see the opportunity now. We'll have to run this by," he stopped to seem to think it over before saying, "the Gargon City Clan Council. After all, it would take a lot of investment to start moving things around so that the main city could be softened up for the political class. But I think a lot of them would be interested in this idea. It is only a matter of getting the Nomads to sign on to a non-aggression treaty so they don't raid us when times get too bad."

    "That shouldn't be too hard really. Simply let the nomads set up their own 'wilderness' hotels outside the city, closer to the vistas. If they're making a bit of money off the Vista elements and you're making a bit of money off the City elements you're both making money, enough to not interfere with each other too often I would think. I've got a few ideas for locating startup capital without too many strings attached."

    That got a chuckle from the pair of mob bosses before Kegg said, "Well I don't know if this plan will work out or whether the Council would agree, but I do say I'm glad Mandal is out of the hands of that moron and in yours. Cuz you at least have a brain that actually thinks about long-term stability that I can support whole-heartedly."

    I nodded my head, "The Silver Codex is all about stability, stability of the Mandalorian people to continue our existence on the galactic stage. Now that war is not as acceptable as it once was."

    That got nods from the group as they stood up from their seats, "We'll tell the other bosses what you're planning and that you will not be selling the business. How long are you planning to stay on Gargon anyways?"

    "No more than a week, I think. Have to set up some sort of new corporate structure so the company can rebuild itself, set up the basic structure of this Gargon Police Force or whatever will name it, and once you get an official vote from the Clan leaders of the city, I will have it going to effect."

    "Efficient," Kegg commented, "Well then thank you for your time, White Silver and enjoy Gargon for the few days you'll stay." They nodded their heads and turned to leave, leaving me to my thoughts on how I was going to fix Mandal Hypernautics.



    Gargon, Mandal Hypernautics Tower
    Bo-Katan Kryze

    Man that fighting style sure was familiar, so very, very familiar that after I had about 10 hours of sleep and recovery I finally figured out where I'd seen that fighting style before.

    Knowing where I'd seen it before certain things started falling into place quickly. From there I had simply gone and asked for a meeting with the new CEO of Mandal Hypernautics, the so-called White Silver.

    What I expected when I entered the building was not what I thought I would find but interesting nonetheless. The disorganized chaos that had been the Mandal Hypernautics building after the fighting the day before, seem to have been dealt with as one of the members of White Silver's retinue had taken charge of the medical staff and was doing all they could to put the place back together, at least where there were people. Another member was a slicer by the looks of it had taken control over the automatic systems of the place, including droids which were helping with either cleaning the place up, moving dead bodies around, or moving medicine from storehouses to the makeshift infirmary that had once been a cafeteria by the looks of it.

    One other member, the one who Rau had come into town with, was apparently organizing the defeated Black Iron mercenaries and the Silver zealots into multiple detachments to help clean up the place and gather up all the equipment that had been left around. Whatever happened to those non-mandalorians, I didn't know. If I had to make a guess they'd probably be given tickets on the first boat out of here if they wanted it. As for the Mandalorian zealots though, I had no idea but I doubted they would go very far from Gargon. Many would jump at the chance to follow their patron codex writer even if it led into a job in business. Given a job in the new Mandal Hypernautics and some impassioned rhetoric no doubt they'd join up with whatever organization White Silver would come up with.

    Shaking my head at the ridiculousness of the situation I pressed a few buttons on the elevator and headed up to the floor I'd been told to go to. It was near the top and as the doors opened I saw a finely furnished meeting room with several portraits in the cubic style on the walls depicting various 'Battles of long past', though I think one of them might have been the Siege of Mandalore, the more recent one at least.

    Past the wooden table is White Silver herself looking all official with that little cape on her shoulder. On one side, I believe his name was Onyx, was standing there trying to look tough as he held a blaster in his hands. To her right was Zum or, well there were very few people who wore armor on their shoulders that was that oversized and I had a very good feeling I knew who was under his armor.

    "Miss Bo-Katan, to what do I owe the honor of your visit?" White Silver said whilst leaning forward tenting their hand into a pyramid shape as they looked across at me.

    Pulling my helmet off I smiled and said, "Well I have some questions that only you can answer, Miss White Silver. I just wanted to know what the connection between you and Satine really is?"

    The helmeted head of White Silver tilted and said, "She is the elected leader of our people that is all."

    "Are you sure about that?" I said taking a few steps forward before pulling the chair out and sitting down across from her. "I got the feeling that the connection was a bit more personal considering I was hired to come to this planet to find out who was in charge of the False Silver operation and who they were. Then all of a sudden, as soon as that information I spent quite a bit of money getting is acquired, you show up in response to it."

    "A fortuitous series of coincidences, I came as soon as Bresug broadcasted that he was White SIlver. Merely fortunate timing, nothing more." White Silver said while shaking her head.

    "Right, right. By the way sorry I left the place in a mess, Zum. My ship broke down and I got called to help with this whole thing, so I didn't really have time to clean up." The taller guard immediately stiffened up, as if he had not been expecting to be found out. Telling me I very well may have just hit the nail on the coffin as to what was going on.

    What was going through White Silver's head I didn't know; but they were staring at me rather calmly through their helmet–not twitching or anything–good sabacc face. At least in body language terms.

    "By the way," I continued, "that is an interesting fighting style you have there, it reminded me of my niece's style. Always trying to keep range but once the distance is closed using the gun as much as possible. I dare say you two would be evenly matched."

    The silence was deafening so I continued, "Incidentally, have you cleaned this room? Made sure there are no bugs or anything left behind by the previous occupants."

    "I had one of my retinue make sure this room is earless, the only ones who can hear what's going on in this room are you, me, and these two.

    "Ah good good no one can hear me say what I'm about to say. I am so proud of you Tanya… but your aunt is going to kill you when she finds out what you did."

    There was silence before a deep sigh was released before a hand went to the helmet and pulled it off revealing the auburn hair I hadn't seen in a long while. "Hello to you too Auntie Bo. Satine is not going to find out what happened here cause I had Vai act as my alibi on Harswee." Tanya said. With a sigh she placed the helmet down on the table, "And you are not going to tell her, because I assume you wouldn't want your own reputation to be connected to this whole conflict." She smiled, in a way that said 'if I go down, you're going down with me'.

    "Good thinking and of course I'm not going to tell Satine." I laughed, "Who do you think's going to get the blame when this finally comes out? No, if you're dead, I'll be disintegrated. We just need to keep this whole situation under wraps that you posed as White Silver in order to solve a problem for your aunt."

    Tanya seemed to stop and thought before saying, "Yes posed…" which immediately clued me in that this was not just a simple pose.

    Leaning forward I said, "You are posing right? You didn't write that document right? Please tell me you did not write that document. Because if this gets out, it will get you killed. Writing that document under Satine's nose will get you disintegrated."

    "I didn't write it under her nose…" Tanya finally said. Causing my jaw to drop a little bit. My sister, the most up her own ass pacifist had taken part in the creation of the Silver Codex? She had condoned its creation? I felt a bit proud of that. There was still a bit of mandalorian left in her after all. Sure it was tempered by that stupid Coruscanti Osik, but she was willing to negotiate to bring back some of the militarism of the past as long as it was used in the defense of Mandalore in some way.

    Finally I got a hold of myself and said, "That is unexpected. If you didn't do this behind her back and you're telling the truth," and mentally I was wishing and hoping that Tanya was telling the truth on this matter. "Then that changes a few things about this whole situation. You've just been upgraded from dead to definitely being banished from the house if it ever comes out that you were the one who led the attack yesterday."

    "Hopefully it will never come out," she said. "and I'll be able to retire as White Silver and no one will ever pull that stunt again."

    "Yeah that's probably for the best." I said. "You may not be aware of this but there are factions that have been looking for White Silver because they don't like your little manifesto. If they ever found out who you really are, that would not be good for your lifespan." I don't know if Pre would be so active as to attempt to murder Tanya. I am pretty sure I could probably keep him under control, using my original plan of 'don't go after family members if you ever tried any attempt to overthrow the government' when there are other factions out there that could return the favor when they know that family members are valid targets.

    "Excellent," she said, "By the way, do you know anything about running a corporation?" I shook my head and tilted my head before saying, "No, why?"

    "The mafia on this planet have basically refused to buy the company due to power balance issues. I'm looking into ways of fixing that issue. I have a couple people I might tap for giving the reins over the company to while it's resolved on its own but until then I'm the CEO of Mandal Hypernautics or at least White Silver is. I don't have time to be running a corporation so I'll probably have to find someone to run it for me. Though I do trust you quite a bit Auntie Bo, so I thought I would offer it to you first."

    "Damn kid," I said rubbing the back of my neck, "sorry to say I don't have the background for that. Though I guess I could help out, I know a few people on this planet that might be willing to work with you and as well as getting the company in a position where you could theoretically sell it or keep it as long as you kept it at arm's length."

    "That would be excellent and once we get all of its assets figured out I'll see about getting you a payment for the aid you can give me. If you're willing, I have a couple other projects on this planet that might interest you in one way or another depending if you're interested and helping me with such projects."

    Sitting back I thought for a moment before saying, "Sure why not." The reality was I was not really doing anything other than living off the stipend that was the Kryze name or maybe a bounty here or there when I was bored. Picking up a stable job out in the middle of nowhere could be interesting and helping my niece was, well, just what a good family and clan member should do.



    Gargon, Hypernautic Conference Room
    Tanya Kryze

    The situation on Gargon had taken a week to resolve but I think it is finally under control, the remnants of False Silver's fleet had either surrendered to me, the local mob bosses, or retreated out of the system with their ships, mostly to strike out and try to take up piracy. Unfortunately I would produce more work for the Royal Guard it would seem, though give it enough time and they would be dealt with.

    No doubt most would end up in Hutt space which was unfortunate but that's where the criminals tended to gather when times were bad for them.

    To add on to the good news, the last of the Black Iron mercenaries have been forced to surrender. It seems there had been several pockets that had basically tried to hole up in areas of the city I was unaware of. They had been planning to fight till the end out of some fear they wouldn't talk about. Thankfully, I had been able to negotiate their surrender as long as they handed over all their weapons to an as yet unnamed organization that would help keep the peace on Gargon and its territory. From there they had either been absorbed into the local gangs or got as many flights out of Gargon as possible, although some had signed up to take part of my Mandalorian organization that had yet to have a name. Those have been thrown in with the former members of the Silver Militia and were being trained into something resembling a peacekeeping force thanks to Bo-Katan who, at the very least, have been hired as a trainer.

    Some may say it's unfair to give a contract to someone in your own family, I might say at least I could trust Bo-Katan with this planet. Considering that she had some contacts within the local population, I believed she could easily get the former bastards who'd been a pain in the neck of the local population to not cause trouble. Beat a man until he learns to teach the people who are locals respect and you'll get a respectful man, at least that's what I was hoping would happen.

    As for the corporation of Mandal Hypernautics itself, the formerly overworked warehouse manager had gracefully accepted my offer to be the interim CEO until someone better was elected and was accepting that he would have to take orders from X4 going under Silver X in order to operate with me. The man just wanted to make money for his own options, as a fellow corporate cog, I completely understood his motivation, so giving him an option to make money seemed the best way to reward him. My own goals were simply to get the company working again and maybe produce a stable income to help with the ideas of turning Gargon into a resort world.

    A general issue that I had come to find annoying while going over the books, I found that large portions of the stockpiles of supplies and weapons had been stolen at some point. I wasn't sure who was responsible for this but it was a reality I would have to deal with, hopefully it would not be too much of an issue for the company.

    Besides that, I worked out some general contracts with the local gangs. Starter contracts as it were to keep things simple. I would prefer not to work with criminals but when the planet is run by criminals you really had no other option. I guess I could abandon the company and just let whatever happens, happen but that seems irresponsible especially if I could get the mobsters to see how profitable more lawful businesses could be. Stable well-paying industry would do more good for the sector than letting everything fall apart,

    Otherwise, the company could run itself, producing ships for the local clans and for the Hutts in the military capacity. I really wasn't needed to oversee it at this point so we were preparing to leave finally and something I was happy to be on my way about. I had other things to do other than dally around Gargon trying to make sure everything was perfect. The more visible I was, the worse it would be for the Silver Codex and I could immediately deal with the issues going on with Mandal Hypernautics from a distance remotely.

    It was time to go to Ordo for a meet up with Vai, to get back to being a senator and no longer a well and unfortunate folk hero by some of the stuff I've seen online.



    Gargon Orbit, En-route to Mandalore
    Rahm Kota

    Laying on the bench in the back part of the ship I relaxed trying to find my center after that adventurous trip to Gargon. I was probably going to be in trouble with the Jedi Council for that little gamble but it all worked out I believed. I would probably get a slap on the wrist, might even be forced to leave the sector by those in control of Mandalore, but that's what usually happened when I did what I felt was right.

    Near the front of the ship the Mandalorian Royal Guard was flying us into orbit to take us to the Mandalorian system where I could get a flight back to Concordia. He seemed focused on the controls but he finally spoke up as he seemed to have the navi-computer finalized.

    "Thank you for the help during the fighting Master Kota. I don't think we would have been able to push past the first trenches with as few casualties if you hadn't been there."

    I smiled and said, "No need, it was what a Jedi should do, not to mention it felt like old times."

    "Old times?" the Royal Guard asked from his seat.

    "Long story short, I'm from a world that spent most of the last hundred years at war with itself. A lot of trench warfare so I'm familiar with tactics of that particular kind of combat." I said trying to stretch out a twinge in my back.

    Rou chuckled and asked, "Any chance that that planet is part of the Mandalorian Dyaspora? Sounds like one of ours."

    Causing me to laugh a bit at that before saying, "No no it's not, as far as I'm aware it was never part of the Diaspora or had any connections to Mandalore. If there had been, it was long since wiped out. That being said, I do feel certain kinship with your people. Facing a long and drawn out war that never seems to end is a shared experience but I think we can all agree it is something we'd rather not experience."

    "Ain't that the truth." he said, turning his seat to look out into space for a moment.

    Whatever he was going to say was interrupted as someone began banging on one of the cell doors. "Let me out of here! Let me out! You cannot do this to me!"

    Letting out a breath of annoyance, Rau got up and cracked his neck. He walked past me and pressed the button for the door, catching the CEO's fist with his left hand as he attempted to escape and then punching him square in the jaw, knocking him out. Rau pushed him back into the cell before closing the door. "That'll keep him out for another couple hours. Hopefully he won't make more of a racket next time he wakes up."

    "Here's hoping." I said, amused by the whole scene before saying, "Though that was a bit harsh, aren't there rules for transporting prisoners that prevent physical violence."

    The Royal Guard shrugged before shaking his head, "Technically yes, also technically the rules are more like guidelines anyways when it comes to terrorists in the Mandalorian Sector. You can't treat them too softly though, they'll eat you alive."

    "I know that," as he walked past me to get back into his seat before he continued. "and frankly this is going to be a long flight, if he gets the idea that banging on the door will get him anything but a punch in the face he'll be making a racket the entire time. Just being an annoyance and maybe hoping to get a moment where we slip up and he thinks he can overpower us is not something I want to deal with."

    "Very unlikely," I noted out loud before saying, "well since that's the treatment of terrorists, how come you didn't go after White Silver?"

    "Not enough guards. If I had the resources and the manpower I would have taken her in as well. What she did was a vigilante act even if it was in favor of the current government, no one's above the law. By the way, do you have any details on her base of operations? In case the Duchess sends me after her, I would like to have some idea on where I can pick her up."

    I shook my head and said, "No idea at all, I happened to meet her at a local spaceport on Concordia as I was looking for a ride to Gargon. They said they were going that way, only found out who they were after the ship left the planet."

    "Concordia," he said rubbing his chin, "that says a lot, must be one of the exiles. Would have thought Pre would have gone down harder on the Silver Codex if she was from there but then again he's always a bit of a softy when it comes to the Traditionalists."

    "That does explain why she never took her helmet off though. She must be one of those religious types, the Children of Mand'alor or whatever. They believe you can't be a true Mandalorian if you don't wear the helmet all the time."

    "Must be." I said, hiding amusement that my accidental leak seemed to have created a backstory for White Silver. I've met the Children of Mand'alor and to be frank White Silver was not one of them. The fact that I caught her without her helmet when I first met her was proof enough for that but the mindset was slightly different as well with her prioritizing the people of Mandalore, instead of honor. I was not going to correct the Royal Guard. What Silver is doing seems like a good influence on the sector, so helping the Royal Guard track her down now is not really advisable. Let him believe that she might be a member of the Cult of The Children of Mand'alor. Besides, keeping the location of her secret base to myself was well within my rights. If I ever came to believe that White Silver was a problem I could always release this information at a later time.



    Gargon, Gargon City Outskirts
    Ursa Wren

    I watched as another set of recently captured ships took off, loaded to bear with as much equipment as I had been able to squirrel away over the last few days, which was a sizable amount. One thing I had to give the CEO credit for, is that he produced a lot of equipment, a lot of it that could be repurposed for Death Watch or just simply for my own use if Death Watch never made the move that they promised.

    Each ship was filled with blaster rifles and armor, both beskar and non-beskar variants. I would prefer if all of them were beskar but in an emergency non-beskar could do it for some of the extremities. The chest plate and helmet are the most important parts that require true beskar to protect the chest, head, and vital organs. Arm and leg shots are survivable wounds but a blast to the head is not something anyone can walk away from without a true beskar helmet. The ships were also loaded with beskar ingots we'd stolen from warehouses. Crates of them, where had these crates come from? I didn't know but I was not going to say no to bringing them on board. I have an armorsmith who could work on them for my people and I'm sure I could send some of it to Death Watch for their own projects.

    Most importantly of all, was spreading the word that Clan Wren had been helpful in taking down this entire operation which may lead to some volunteers from this planet when Death Watch finally made its move. All in all this was a good operation and a bit of fun with no losses on my side. While Kan did take a shoulder wound, he was fine for the most part. A doctor should be able to fix him up, worst case he'll just get a replacement arm.

    Really, the largest problem was that I could only get away with about 15 new ships with the loot on board and my own ship that I'd used to get here. I'm sure that is quite a lot of material spread across all those ships, but there was so much more material left behind for White Silver. I attempted to stash some resources for pick up at a later date, but I decided it was best not to push too hard on that. If I got greedy then I'd draw too much attention and would return to find everything gone.

    Silver was the most unexpected part of this whole operation and an element I was quite interested in watching develop. Oh sure, I'll tell Pre everything I know about White Silver when I saw him, especially since I was interested in seeing what kind of threat her faction would grow to be against Death Watch.

    The pacifists are not a threat, they are merely a roadblock, a very effective roadblock but one that could be overcome if the right cards were played. White Silver though is an actual threat that could very well genuinely challenge us and they would likely protect the roadblock.

    Granted they seem to believe that the roadblock was going to become more Mandalorian as the years went on, something I doubted. Duchess Satine had thoroughly left all that made Mandalore Mandalorian behind for the ideology of the New Mandalorians. I doubted she'll all of a sudden change her beliefs and start wearing traditional armor to show solidarity with the average Mandalorian.

    I predict White Silver would be betrayed by The Duchess and her lackeys who would then come down harder on the average Mandalorian once White Silver had outlived her usefulness. There was no way she would let any threat, even one that seemed to believe that they were on the same side, exist.

    I know that would be interesting to watch. That would create true chaos in Mandalore and possibly create the environment needed to overthrow her. It would lead to a three-way fight between the Silvers, the News, and Death Watch; but chaos is where the true Mandalore is crowned. You can get as many votes as you want, but strength of arms and the determination to win are what true leaders require.

    Considering how easy Pre's rulership of the Mandalorians on Concordia had been, I almost thought he had gone soft. This new challenger would either toughen him up or he would lose, as is the way.

    From what I had seen of White Silver, she had the abilities to participate in this "Great Hunt' just as effectively as Pre could. If she won in a contest against Pre, I'd probably side with her since she gave the feeling of a true Mandalorian, a controlled warrior. Helping her take the throne from the New Mandalorians would be well and good for the people. Assuming of course she won, if not I would stay with my family ties to House Vizsla. Either way, my homeworld of Krownest would be well and truly out of the conflict zone. Thanks to today, probably one of the most well-armed planets in the entire sector as well.

    Smiling, I turned from the landing pads and walked into my shuttle, negotiating my way past several large boxes just full of gear, equipment, and other things that would be useful for my planet or could be sold for things that were useful. Eventually I found my way into the cockpit and pressed some buttons to close up the ship. It was absolutely full and probably at the limits of what it could carry while still being able to take off.

    Pressing a few more buttons I plotted a course for home and sat back with a smile. This had been a good operation and spoke well of the future of the Mandalorian people. Two good choices for a future leader was always a good day for the Mandalorian people.



    Concordia, Governor's Castle
    Pre Vizsla

    Looking outside my castle's window, I watched the skyline of Concordia whilst considering what the future might bring. Things were not looking good, not looking good at all considering the recent developments on Gargon. I took a sip from the glass of fine papuur'gal in my hand.

    Trying to put together an anti-New Mandalorian League is one of the most difficult and strenuous tasks I have been given in my life. So many factions hated the New Mandalorians and so many factions had issues with the New Mandalorians that finding support to build a network of support should not be that hard.

    The problem though, the one that always seemed to come up, was that while no one liked the New Mandalorians running the sector, they had been rather unintrusive for the last decade. So the less hard line parties were not exactly interested in rocking the boat as much as they used to be.

    My opinion is that they would only become interested again if something were to happen outside the sector, such as the coming war between the breakaway Rim States and the Republic. That conflict will most likely present a massive opportunity for mercenaries, bounty hunters, and many other fields of martial skill for the Mandalorians.

    Being the pacifist, there is no doubt Satine would put down some rules against taking active action in the whole affair, trying to prevent any violence. This would force more and more people to my side and was part of my plans to remove her from power.

    The growing problem was that her hard line stance on pacifism had been softening over the last few years. She seemed to be becoming less of a fanatic for it and I suspected that could be an issue for me in the long run. If she decided to not institute any rules to prevent Mandalore from choosing a side in the coming conflict I would have nothing to use as a rallying cry of New Mando abuses against mandalorian culture.

    How would that conflict begin? I wasn't sure yet but I could feel that I would know very soon. Until the conflict actually started, I had to make my decisions based on the disposition of those around me and prior to now it was one where Satine would most likely do something to piss off the moderate hardliners and send them back to my side.

    At least that had been everyone's disposition before Gargon, watching the first White Silver get knocked down by the second White Silver, who knew if she was the real White Silver or not but she had definitely defeated the first one. This presented an issue because obviously this new White Silver represented a potential heir to the title of Mand'alor. Even if she denied the leadership title now, she would most likely act in the upcoming conflict, where Satine will be forced to abstain. I can see it now, the moment the Duchess made a move to make sure Mandalore stayed out of the war, I would need to act fast. Because if I was not successful in my coup–in removing her from power or killing her–this White Silver would take up the role as my main opponent.

    And that would be a major problem for my plans making Mandalore great again. As long as it was just me versus the Duchess, the centrists who disliked the New Mandalorian's pacifism would side with me as they would prefer to get rid of the Duchess. But if it becomes a fight between my Death Watch and these Silver Mandalorians, well it'll result in the next Mandalorian Civil War just without a Mandalore playing both sides against each other. That would be bad for the image of Death Watch as more connections would be drawn between my Death Watch and my uncle's Death Watch.

    Considering how brutal that prior incarnation of Death Watch had ended up being, it would not be good for recruitment and could be the end of the whole business right away. I would need to be careful, a lot more careful than I had been planning for, just because this White Silver may reappear at any time and raise an army to fight me. I would need to also think of a strategy to undercut the New Mandalorian's new ally, but how? The Silver Mandalorians are going to follow their leader and their leader had basically stated they followed the Duchess since she was duly elected.

    Perhaps I could undermine this mindset by showing that that election was a bit of a farce. Shake the confidence in their leadership's understanding of history and maybe they would not remain die-hard supporters. Perhaps force a few of them to consider other Mandalores, ones with a proper election of Clan Leaders.

    A man could dream but perhaps I should look into finding more supporters outside the sector. So far the Silver Codex is really only taking off inside the sector. Mandalorians who were part of the Diaspora were either ambivalent or never heard of it. If I could find supporters from outside the sector, they could provide weapons, arms, and equipment, not to mention the manpower needed in case the operation went under. Supposedly, I would have a droid army delivered to me. I have been on schedule for our plan to make Death Watch look like the true heroes of the situation merely waiting for when Satine obviously failed to prevent the Republic from invading Mandalore, as they always tend to do whenever a problem showed up.

    But trusting Dooku for everything was unlikely to work out. He was a former Jedi and there was one thing that I knew about Jedi, they don't like Mandalorians. I am sure he was planning to use me as much as I was planning to use him, which was why I needed backup plans now more than ever. There are plenty of other leaders of the Separatists that I could talk to including Alzar. A few who were part of Mandalorian culture that might be willing to support our operations to free Mandalore from the Republic's tyranny and the New Mandalorian overseers they had installed.

    The question now is which one to work with in order to obtain the best deal? I didn't trust these other groups, much as they didn't trust me. I was sure they would want to take over the Mandalorian sector if they got the chance and damn the Darksaber. They wouldn't consider it a valid claim to the throne of Mandalore just as they had never considered the various 'original' Masks of Mandalore which had popped up over the last 3000 years since the original went missing as grounds for valid claims.

    I needed to plan and think, come up with a solution that would allow for a successful coup and removal of the Duchess. Otherwise I'd have to just give up and consider the truly distasteful possibility that the Old Ways might really be on their way out.




    Writers note: I'm currently writing chapter 24, so I don't really remember all the secret details we hid in here can't really teases everything in the ending notes, but it's safe to say, the standard has changed. Hope everyone enjoys. Also make sure to check out art from Sky 66 and Maryon on the thread it's great.




    Edited by : Warmach1ne32, Markus Gollinger, Lord feunoyr, Luke theman, Elseud, FallQm,
    Community edited by: Commander: NightDK, Canned Tomatoes (did some suggestions that sound more like Yoda) William Hitchens, Joshua Richardson
    Community editable doc (Chapter 21) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread



    Supporters: Afforess, Gremlin Jack, Weise, Xodarap4, Duncan Sproule, James Moorhouse, Dankermaler, Hats88, DrkShdow, Devilstar101, Michael, Mana Rope, Falk Hüser, Daniel Martinez, Silver Wolf, Mackenzie Buckle, Markus, Neso, Staradder, Lmc9389, Staradder, victor a lopez-barron, KrasieK, Zollus, Mintea, Jog256, Ethan Dowie, Maxim Blashkevych
     
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    • Sorry Tanya! Satine already know that's you on the holo.
    Though I wonder if Yoda suspect that Silver was her?
     
    You kind of messed up Yoda's speechpattern which is following japanese grammar.

    I'm looking forward to see that mess of social connections getting untangled.
    edit: Added some suggestions to the editable doc, it's kind of clunky if you are doing that anonymously
     
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    I'm absolutely looking forward to the conversation between Satine and her sister following the Duchess stopping by the family estate to pick up her armor. Or before the trip, if she checks with her sister to get in touch with Zum first. I seem to recall her sister yoinked it for Tanya several years prior, figuring she'd never notice it was missing after all. :D
     
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