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The Start

[NSFW, 18+, Graphic Violence and Sexual Content] ( 1 Day Before Present Time – “Bear” The Raider – Outer Rim Planet 223 )

They had killed them quickly and it had been good. Bear had been right in assuming the mercenaries guarding the merchants caravan were carrying unloaded weapons. Few guns that he saw upon the road were loaded now. The firepower lay within the towns, guarded carefully, and those that wandered for trade or better fortune could not find ammunition or failed to conserve it. This was the Outer Rim. His men had carved through them, bathed the battered asphalt of the road in their blood, and begun the celebration that followed each hunt in earnest.

“Strip ‘em?” Asked Lizard, named for his sun-scaled skin and the look of his eyes through the small sun-goggles he wore. This world was sick with radiation. A stripped atmosphere leaving it naked to the abusive rays of a massive sun.

Bear nodded. “Be quick. That was an Imperial shuttle that went over us.”

They had no use for the clothes. They were well-clothed. Their armors, patchwork, were already threaded with bits of metal and cloth. He watched as Lizard bent and slashed a nose from one of the mercenaries and threaded it to the necklace he wore. Bear had the most noses and ears of any in this troop. It was why he lead them. It was why he needed to watch them now.

The merchants had lead four skinny banthas behind them, loaded heavily with goods. Bear watched as those packs were opened. Cigarettes, Imperial Credits (the Imperial Republic’s currency), and dirty water. Fresh water was hard to find now and unnecessary. The radiation did not hurt in small doses. A man might piss blood or lose some teeth but he would not die. Drugs helped with those things and they liked them anyways. On the right dose of smack Bear could rip most men apart with his hands. The Merchants did not carry it but their cigarettes would help him get it from the Black Skulls across the hills.

It had been a successful morning.

“Bear?” Came a voice. Cracked and feminine.

Bear turned and saw Bird there, gangly as she was, on all fours with her pants thrust down. The pale skin of her backside was dirty from the road and sweat ran down the small of her narrow back and vanished between her cheeks. His prick swelled. Hard suddenly. He’d almost forgotten her in the high of their success.

It took a moment to move her with his big hands. Pushing her down, lowering her as he claimed a place on his knees behind her. He coughed up a thick wad of phlegm and spat it on the head of his dick, closed his eyes, and sank into her. She gave a rough grunt of discomfort that he ignored. Pounding into her.

She braced herself against his weight with her small hands for some time, pushing back against him, and then it was as though the air went out of her lungs and she went suddenly and abruptly quiet. The strength left her hands and she crumpled beneath him. Bear did not care. He kept pumping, feeling his moment on the horizon.

A shot rang out and he opened his eyes. A big, booming, distant shot that sounded almost as though it came from across the ridge and upon the otherside. So far off that at first he did not feel concerned.

Then, as he looked across his men as saw them return to their work, he saw Lizard. For a moment, Lizard was looking into the hills, and then he was lifted from his feet as though struck by some imaginary fist. It picked him up and rolled him across the roadside, where he landed, absolutely still. The sound of the shot rolled out a short time later. Followed by another as SoreFoot, to his left, crumpled.

“Bird.” He said, and cinched a fist on the back of her vest. She was light and he was strong and even with his body aching with his oncoming climax she offered no resistance.

“Fuck, come on!” But she did not move. He looked down and saw a neat hole behind her ear on one side and a hole the size of his fist on the other. Her brains were splattered in a wide arc across the asphalt and her eyes were pinched closed, features twisted in a grotesque and feral mask of a woman being roughly and unlovingly fucked.

Bear pissed himself. A hot jet of urine arced from his softening prick as he stood ram-rod straight upon the road. He saw the last of his men, Wolf Moon, turn toward him in blind panic. Their eyes met and then Wolf Moon’s head exploded. One moment it was the man’s bearded face and the next it was just a shower of blood and pale bits of bone and flapping flesh. The body went down in a pile, arms twitching grotesquely.

Looking up into the hills, Bear searched for the men who had snuck up on them. He saw nothing. It was not the Black Skulls or more Boot Thiefs. It was only the barren desert hardpan and the broken, rocky ledge. He raised his axe, terrified, and shook it. Then, impossibly far away, Bear saw the flicker of a muzzle flash. He had time to think that nobody in the Outer Rim could make that shot before everything went dark.

( 1 Day Before Present Time – Simultaneous – “The Mandalorian” Garrus Stark – Outer Rim Planet 223 )

It stretched beyond the limit of his eyes and forged itself into an uneven and craggy horizon some miles ahead. Experience had taught him to measure those miles, one after another, in a scale of hours. Time was a more precious currency than miles. Value in the Imperial Republic’s Outer Rim was determined by a survivor’s measure. Imperial Credits and fresh water had become more invaluable than diamonds or gold. Even corpses, the fresher the better, had their worth in trade. This world did not always have time for the rituals and rights to which humanity had at one time been accustomed. This world was an angry, red world. The sand shifted coarsely across the hardpan on hot breezes by day and billowed against the raging, chilled winds of evening. Beneath his feet, cracked and sand-swept, a broken road stretched on like a long dead snake. Dunes had slid across large sections of it, hundreds of feet at a time, and there were places where the breeze had brushed back the sand and revealed uneven, glossy black glass where the world had been melted under the poisonous blanket of nuclear fire that had swept away the civilization that had once owned this world. Planet 223 had become an example to the galaxy at large.

He walked on and squinted against the sun, despite the power mask that he wore. Beskar and Titanium, the mask gave him the look of some nightmarish haunt. His eyes were green, inhuman slashes that ran jagged down the front of his mask. His nose and mouth were veiled beneath smooth, tactical and featureless metal. The mask took hot air and filtered it into something cooler. It veiled his voice into a low, raspy mechanical growl. In the mornings when he rose from his camp and pulled it into place it turned him from a man, fair-haired and sharp-featured, into the monstrous apparition that the raiders of the road and even the brave Caravaneers from the east had come to fear. Something all feared. Even the Imperials. Looking now, he let the automated computer sharpen the lenses like binoculars. The horizon immediately grew into focus, swelled up to reveal the broken and ruinous cityscape of Dodge City. He was close. He would not camp for the day. He would not stay upon the road. His ship waited and it was finally time to get back to the planet where he had found love and destiny.

Turning, he cut his way from the asphalt and onto the hardpan. The sand was not soft. His boots did not sink or leave impressions. This was a desolate place. It was an unforgiving and calloused place. The sun was high and merciless in the sky. Unprotected skin burned quickly here, burned near to the point of blistering within two afternoons of exposure. The experienced travelers of the road covered themselves and he was no different. Dust clung to his coat, it invaded all spaces. It took a great deal of oil to keep the leather from cracking and drying and still, in the folds where the skin of it bunched, the sand found places to hide. It was discolored now. The deep, charcoal gray was now thinner. That suited him fine. He was no carpet bagger. The trenchcoat had the unenviable job of taking the beating of the hardpan. It hid the armor beneath it, the weapons, and all else that would have made him such an obvious and easy target. The high collar of his coat, the cut of it, and the helmet were what defined him. They were his face. The only face the Galaxy would ever know.

The road lay in a depression between two rocky hills and he climbed the one to the left. Few people braved the hardpan at all on their own. Fewer still were brave (or foolish) enough to stray from the road. His Geiger counter buzzed gently within his mask, numbers scrolling abruptly in the Heads-Up Display it provided. This place was familiar to him and he did not startle. Radiation was a frequent danger on this planet but the hill only provoked the meter to spark a soft, pickle green. The crescent Geiger was metered into three sections. Green, which while irradiated was not inherently dangerous. Yellow, where prolonged exposure to any area or deciding to eat a material registering this high could bring on minor symptoms of Radiation Sickness. And Red, which if not avoided quickly and entirely could rapidly ruin an otherwise survivable day.

He slowed on account of the terrain. The hardpan was unforgiving in every account. A slip could plunge him into a crevice filled with mutie snakes. It could cost him a broken ankle. Time had ensured he would not take his footing for granted and he had taken to measuring his experience in years. He had spent far longer than most travelling the Outer Rim planets . Countless years surviving in hard worlds. This was not the first world slagged by the Empire, left broken and dead, inhabited by drifters and desperate deplorables hungry for freedom and the way to survive. He slowed and that experience paid itself back to him. The display of his helmet flickered to alert him of movement two-hundred meters ahead of him. He picked his way across the boulder-strewn hillside as quietly as he could manage and settled upon its crest. There, under the slits of his helmet’s eyes, the ruins of a Caravan lay strewn across the black skin of the road and the hardpan.

A pair of merchants had passed not long ago with an accompaniment of mercenaries. They wore patchwork armor and hardened faces and each lead a pair of skinny banthas burdened with bundles of material for trade and sale. The banthas were large and grotesque, as unthreaded as could be, but docile and capable and toilless as they moved along. This was the Outer Rim. The mercenaries carried blaster carbines but not one of them looked as though they were a capable shot or practiced. He had appraised them from the ridge, low and quiet as they passed, with the same scrutiny he afforded all strangers now.

Now, strewn upon the road, the ruin of their caravan lay open as a group of eight began pillaging through it. The banthas, too far from threaded to be eaten, had been butchered crudely regardless and would be left to rot in the desert sun. The mercenaries had formed two loose lines against the ambush and been cut down where they stood. It had been fast. Not a single man had survived long enough to lose his nerve and make a break from the road. They were riddled with horrible rents and their patchwork armor was cleaved over and over. Bodies upon the hardpan did not make pools of blood. The desert, hungry for the wet, drank it up so quickly it was as though it had not been there at all. A waste for raiders, most of whom were cannibals, so survival and bestial ingenuity had taught them to line their wagons in plastic. They dragged these behind them. The raiders were dressed in clothing stitched together with the prizes of their kills. Teeth. Bones. Ears. Noses. They were festooned across their chests and necks in horrible necklaces.

They were armed with a variety of weapons. Spears fashioned from sign-posts and machete cleavers. The truth, sad and ugly, was that few men brandishing blasters had ammunition for them. Raiders, often drug addicts with a predisposed taste for mayhem, were notorious for charging at groups of armed men. Blaster power cells were expensive and difficult to find, harder to conserve, and so the Raiders had descended upon them and ignored their lofted firearms and weak threats. A few heads lay in the sand, eyes wide with the horror of inevitability, seeing nothing and echoing the moment of grim realization that fell upon them. A few had drawn their knives. Too little. Too late.

The man looked down upon the carnage dispassionately. His eyes counted and recounted the Raiders numbers and took stock of the ridges nearby. None of the men looked up from their pillaging to search the roadside for signals or to give any. The eight were alone. Two of them, a particularly well-decorated man and a small, stringy woman, were fucking like dogs beside the road. The Imperial Republic had not been kind to the Outer Rim planets. Some had been slagged in the purges that followed the Emperor’s succession. This planet had gotten it worse than most because it had harbored the Rebellion. The man unshouldered his rifle and laid its long barrel on the sun-blistered surface of stone. The helmet was synced with the weapon’s scope and allowed him to magnify the scene. The ruined caravan’s strewn loot drew his immediate interest. Cigarettes, which were being gathered in a small heap at the roadside, and a few small rations were being piled into a wooden cart took his immediate interest. Drinking water was being stacked more neatly beside the Raider’s carts and he studied the big plastic jugs. It looked dirty. Unclean. It did not interest him.

Despite eight blaster rifles there appeared to be no ammunition in the loot. The firearms had been left where the men holding them had fallen. They were in fair condition. Most likely, either through neglect or time’s course, a few would not fire. Still, in his mind, he saw the potential for parts. Repair or trade, it did not matter. There were pans, pots, and playing cards. The Raiders ignored them all. They could not trade with towns and did not care to. They traded only with the gangs that existed miles away. It was a grim exchange. The loot of the dead for drugs and liquor. This was not the humanity many had envisioned. The man frowned, took aim, and exhaled.

He squeezed the trigger and felt the rifle kick, too focused to register the booming retort of the high-caliber round exploding from the barrel. The woman, her twisted and sallow face blistered from the sun, crumpled beneath the large man thrusting roughly into her. His eyes were closed and he did not register the sound of the shot. Two shots took two more of the men while the Raiders began to take notice and stare up at the ridges that flanked them. He was unwilling to use Disruptor or Disintegrator rounds on petty raiders. The massive slugs were overkill as it was. The first took the impact hard and was much lighter than he expected, lifting clean off his feet and rolling across the road. The other crumpled immediately, one hand lifted to point (wrongly) to the hill opposite where the man firing at them still crouched, and went still. He fired on until the eight was reduced to one bewildered and frightened man with pants half-done and his pecker shriveling. For a moment he though the Raider saw him. His horrible features tightened in a crude, ugly grimace up towards the proper hill. He lifted one hand, carrying a rusty and carnage-stained axe, and shook it. The last shot struck true and did not quite remove his head. Instead, as the man in the mask looked on, the top of the Raider’s skull evaporated in a puff of red and pink mist as the large-caliber round turned his head into a canoe. The body fell straight back, stiff as a board, and the booted feet twitched madly.

The planet had been a nightmare. Thirty days prior he had landed on its surface with Corbin Cross, one of the boss’ least favorite men, Garrus had sensed the ambush from the start. But Corbin, while a good gun and dependable man, had not listened. They had shot their way out, barely, as an entire two platoon formation of Storm Troopers opened fire. Corbin had been wounded and he had left him after it was done, well-armed and hidden, before he’d taken the cargo skiff they had driven out to the rendezvous and ran it out towards the spaceport several days away to draw them off. The Imperials had given chase, taking the bait and leaving Corbin to hide and wait for him to rescue him. But, they had managed to disable the skiff, nearly killing him in the crash. He’d left them dead on the hardpan and been walking since, evading their scouting parties, killing those that could not be avoided. And now, having come across the Raiders, he had found his way back to town. The single speeder bike, veiled behind the skiff, was a ruinous thing. Dark smoke belched from its exhaust – signs of leaking manifolds and broken exhaust trim valves. But it ran. And it would do so – long enough for him to get back to his ship.

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( 1 Day Before Present Time – Two Hours Later – Corbin Cross – Outer Rim Planet 223 )

Don’t try comms. They’ll be listening for signals.

The Mando had, thankfully, not said much. He had never said “I told you so”. He’d never said, “You nearly got us killed.” What he had said, two brisk sentences, had been designed to keep Corbin alive and Corbin had listened. They had never gotten along much. Mando was a tough one to connect with. It wasn’t just the helmet, or the mythos, or the legend. It was his silence. The man spoke so little that often standing with him was akin to standing alone. It had always felt arrogant to Corbin. And now, suddenly, it did not.

When the ambush had sprung itself – nearly all Boss Jewel’s hired hands were killed in the first few seconds. Blaster bolts had ripped through the air and torn through the men, lightly armored or unarmored entirely, punching searing holes through their bodies and throwing them back onto the cargo decking of the spaceport. The stink of singed flesh and blood had quickly filled the air. Dockhands, civilians, anyone close was gunned down. Imperial Stormtroopers were remarkable shots. They moved as units. Silent, coordinated, fearless. They overwhelmed you with numbers and firepower. Corbin had scuffled with squads before but never entire platoons. The experience was sobering. The difference between a talented gun and experienced soldier was immense.

And then there’d been The Mandalorian.

He moved steadily from cover to cover, leading with the muzzle of the blaster rifle he carried. Each shot that Corbin had watched him take had found a Stormtrooper. And while, so far as Corbin could tell, the Mandalorian’s blaster rifle could penetrate the Stormtrooper’s armor at this range, he always seemed to land a shot in the gaps that the armor did not cover. Under the arms. At the neck. They crumpled heavily under the impacts. Most were dead, Corbin reckoned, before they hit the ground. He’d returned fire, too. But he’d mostly found himself pinned by some crates. Unable to move without exposing himself. The Mandalorian had moved constantly. In and out of cover. Taking angles that Corbin would never have seen that minimized his exposure – turning the entire battle line of Stormtroopers so they could never all get angles on him. Corbin watched him lean from a stack of crates and gun down an entire squad in a few short seconds, only to displace and move again, getting close to the Imperials and throwing confusion into their formations.

He moved more like a soldier than any mercenary that Corbin had known. But he moved more fluidly than any soldier. The Mandalorian never appeared frustrated, afraid, or anxious. Instead, the armored figure had effortlessly moved through them. He cut them down with cold, ruthless efficiency. Gavin watched as he shot a man in the chest and dropped him to his knees, only to move past him and put two more rounds into the back of his head along the way, blowing his helmet and brain out through the front of the trooper’s visor. Another had been too near, and the Mandalorian had swept the Trooper’s barrel aside and in the same, fluid movement drew a vibroblade and passed it along the unarmored throat until the trooper dropped gurgling, bleeding out. It was a veritable ballet of death.

The grenade that nearly killed him had been thrown to flush him out of his position. Corbin had seen it too late, mesmerized by The Mandalorian, and only turned to watch it strike the deck nearby. It’d landed a few feet behind him before going off with a massive “BOOM” that knocked him off his feet and sent him spinning to the ground. The Mandalorian had found him there after beating the Stormtrooper’s back into cover and that’d been when he’d said those first sentences to him. Told him not to forget. Then, he’d given Corbin a few spare power cells for his blaster, some rations, and removed the large piece of shrapnel in his side before binding it with a bacta infused dressing. The drainage culvert Corbin had selected was cramped but it was dark, hard to see from the outside, and it’d have to do. And it had – for days.

The Imperials had not left. Instead, through the mechanical filtered voices, he’d learned a few precious and important things. The first was that they were hunting The Mandalorian and had not found him. The second was that, for all his maneuvers, Marlin Jewel had stumbled upon a hornet’s nest with several of his last deals in contraband and brought the wrath of a young, eager Imperial Moff named Yannix upon his head. The show of force on this desolate world was a fraction of what would fall upon the estate if the Moff was not appeased. They had to get back. And this, hiding in a culvert, was not helping.

The Bacta had healed him. Mostly. It was not as efficient as a proper dip but he’d never have anticipated one. The wound had closed and the flesh had knitted together in pale scar tissue. It still hurt to move – but it would not be a danger to reopen. He slid his blaster pistol, an Imperial model DL-17, infront of him.

The drainage culvert was mostly empty and stunk of mildew. Corbin began to shuffle his way forward, inching along, leaving behind the mess of waste and wrappers that would leave evidence of his grim existence here. He had not slept well in days. The cramped quarters, the stink of the pipe, the constant presence of the makeshift Imperial Garrison being set up above his position did not lend itself to sleeping. He wanted a shower. A bed. A meal. But it all seemed so impossible. He’d made a life out of surviving, in finding a way through hard situations, but this was the hardest he had known. His best plan was to get onboard one of the Imperial Shuttles undetected. There, he could seal the bridge, and hopefully get off the ground. Once he was airborne he could purge the oxygen in the rest of the craft and kill those inside. He’d try and find the Mandalorian if no TIE Fighters were scrambled to intercept him. But they likely would be.

He found himself pained at the thought of leaving his savior behind. Surprising, really.

At the mouth of the pipe he fought the urge to loudly suck in fresh air. The sweetness of it was so sharp it made his head spin and he gathered himself, here in the dark, grateful to be here. If they found him and killed him here, at least, it wouldn’t be in that forsaken pipe. His clothes were covered in a thick layer of grime. It was a surprise he did not feel the urge to wretch. Instead, inspired by his thoughts of the Mando, he simply slid his blaster forward and checked it. It looked operable. The Power Cell inside fully charged. It was not an impressive pistol but it was common, dependable, and did the job for a sidearm. It was a shame that if he found cause to use it here his plan had failed and he was most certainly dead. There were too many. Maybe forty or more of the Troopers moving around.

Getting to his knees set off a fierce ache in him – and he remembered suddenly he’d been holed up in a drainage culvert for days and had not stood, or even brought his knees up bent, in as long as a week’s time. They did not respond as he was used to. It would take time. Time he did not have. And he realized suddenly that getting to the shuttle would be a much harder proposition than he first believed. Two crafts loomed on the landing pad. The first was not his target. A Sentinel-Class transport was too large, too slow, and too hard to pilot alone. It was also still functioning in some ways as the home of the Platoon of Stormtroopers currently nearby. His target was the Lamda-Class shuttle further along. And now, looking at the near 100 yard stretch between his position near the pipe and the shuttle, he felt his heart sank.

Corbin dragged himself to his feet. The 100 yards he had to cross was cluttered with containers, both Imperial and otherwise, and it was dark. The Storm Troopers had no idea anyone had survived at the Space Port besides a few locals, which were human, and had treated them dismissively as cattle. That was good. He had areas of cover and the area wasn’t entirely locked down. Skilled fighters, or not, the years since the Rebellion’s collapse had made Imperial Forces a far cry from the paranoid police force that so many remembered. It was strange how he could always summon up the optimism. It was something others had always thought was wild. And still, even as that confidence filled him again, he felt a sinking ache in his gut at the prospect of crossing to the shuttle.

The blaster pistol had always been a comfort to him – it was not one now. There were easily a dozen, or more, blaster rifles and pistols between his position near the drainage pipe and the shuttle that represented life. He was underfed, weak from days spent in the pipe, and alone. Still, he had to try. There was nothing but for him to try. Corbin liked his life but had long suspected the luck would run out. When he was younger, of course, he’d all the confidence of youth. Death happened to those more foolish, less talented, and less lucky than he’d been. Now, he knew better. Death simply happened. It didn’t consider who, or when, or where. He checked the pistol one last time. He flexed his legs. And then Corbin, feeling more aware of his own mortality than he ever had, made up his mind to cross to the shuttle or die trying.

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( 1 Day Before Present Time – Same Time – The Mandalorian – Outer Rim Planet 223 )

“Query: Master, Corbin Cross has proven to be fairly useful for a meatbag, but retrieving him seems an unnecessary risk. Are you certain we should?”

The droid looked disarmingly similar to a protocol droid – tall and bipedal. Two rectangles for eyes glowed gold, a narrow profile of features that held the vague structure of a humanoid face, but there was something cold and empty in its lack of expression. Still, Garrus felt a smile tug at his lips beneath the expressionless mask of his helmet. Six One’s disdain for organic beings was something he’d come to find humor in. It lightened an otherwise grim moment. Still, he did not answer the droid, and instead fed a fresh cell into the HD-507a Blaster Rifle with a metallic “CLACK!” as his palm shoved it into the receiver.

“Resigned Statement: Very well, Master. Are you going to attempt a quiet insertion?”

It was his preferred method and he was not surprised the droid had made the assumption. Still, partnerships were about compromise, and The Mandalorian could not refute the cold-blooded truth that he hated the Imperials. Now, more than ever. A hard exit, or an easy one, did not matter. In his mind he saw two paths converging to the same impossibly true end. It did not matter. Either end drenched in blood. They all did. And so he turned to leave the cockpit and head into the hold, rifle in his hands, and spoke without looking back to the droid.

“No time. Come in firing.” He said.

“Delighted Exclamation: Oh, yes, Master! I will be sure to eliminate all of those filthy IR meatbags.”

The droid’s reply was filled with audible excitement. And, almost as quickly, he heard the familiar tones as the console echoed preemptive warm-up commands for The Unbroken Promises’ various weapon systems. The ship’s corridors were familiar haunts. It had been his home for many years. The durasteel decking gave metallic clicks beneath the weight of his purposeful strides. Under the leather duster his armor moved with him, flawless in fit, molded to the powerful stretch of his body. Atop it, crossing his back and flanking his shoulders, his bandoliers were presently empty. He turned into his quarters, spartan in décor, and moved to the far wall where his fingers made familiar movements over the false wall’s hidden keypad until it retracted. Within, veiled in an internal vault, he found what he needed to fill the pouches of his bandolier with spare energy cells for his blaster rifle and projectile cylinders for his sidearm. A few grenades were hung on the leather sling as well.

Inside his helmet, through the onboard commlink, he heard the droid’s voice.

“Preemptive Statement: Master, thirty seconds until we are in weapon’s range. We are, so far, undetected on their scanners.”

“I’ll be at the port loading ramp. Engage their vehicles first. Make it loud. Drop the ramp when we’re in position.”

“Affirmative, Master.” The droid responded.

Moving, Garrus found his way to the cargo bay. His gloved hands cleared the weapon hot. The familiar weight of it in his arms, the familiar strength of his hands closing around it, and the way he shouldered it. All at once they closed into weapon’s range and he felt the familiar sounds of The Unbroken Promises’ twin missile launchers unload their ordinance. “THUMP” went the starboard tube. “THUMP” went the port. And briefly in the hold a flare of heat as they sent the high-explosive concussion missiles streaking towards their targets.

“Six One, give me the feeds.”

“Affirmative, Master.” Came the reply.

And at once, within his helmet, he saw Six One’s perspective as the missiles flashed out across the hardpan of the ruined planet. They elevated as they neared the spaceport, coming on quickly now, as The Unbroken Promise sped full tilt towards the spaceport. The missiles arched swiftly down. Striking, savagely, the Lamda-Class Shuttle amidships and detonating in a plume of fire and molten steel. The shuttle lifted briefly off the pad, as though it was attempting to take off, before it erupted from stem to stern in a mushroom cloud of heat and fire. It was gone a moment later. A fin from its tail went spiraling across the spaceport, crumpling as it went. He saw the white shapes of troopers scattering in confusion. The other missile struck the larger troop transport in the nose. The explosion broke the ship’s back, lifting the tail nearly thirty meters into the air, before it fell back heavily and buckled on the decking. Men died as they were consumed by the flames and shards of steel and armor as it splintered in all directions. A larger, secondary explosion rippled across its back to the stern as fuel lines ruptured and the sublight engines cooked off in spectacular plumes of flame and fire.

“Master, ten seconds.”

It was all gone then. The feeds from the ship’s cockpit, the noise and the thoughts. All at once he toggled his helmet’s display to feed him with targeting data. How familiar it was. The sterile oxygen fed through the scrubbers of the helmet. He was not like those Troopers. Not like the smugglers, the farmers, the settlers, or the politicians. He was heir to a legacy. Forged of steel. Forged of blood. Forged of battle. The oath lived in him, as it had generations before. This was the way. The way it had been for all those who had given their life for a cause, for honor. For the countless men who had died in battle besides brothers he would perhaps never know. They were all but extinct now. Scourged from the galaxy by the Empire. Broken. Ruined. And all those had given their lives. All of those had poured themselves into battle for one another, for the creed, for the timeless bonds of brotherhood forged in war after war after war. They were gone now. Ghosts forgotten to time. But they were not.

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( 1 Day Before Present Time – Corbin Cross – Outer Rim Planet 223 )

He had made it half-way to the shuttle when he was spotted. And they’d opened up on him. He’d barely made the crate for cover before blaster bolts lanced crimson death through the air, cutting past him to strike the duracrete decking and strike the large loading crate he’d tucked himself behind. He’d simply been too slow. There’d simply been too many. In truth – he suspected most wouldn’t have made it nearly as far. His number came up and Corbin did what he could, cleared the pistol a final time with a quick glance, and leaned out. The first two Troopers had moved up on him quickly, closing the distance, not respecting his ability to defend himself. He used them to send a message. His first shot caught the left-most trooper in the throat and torn it out, sending him backward to paw feebly at it as he bled out on the landing pad. The other had snapped a panic shot off that had missed him. Corbin flinched, but recovered quickly, firing a shot in reply. The blaster bucked gently in his hand before his bolt hit the Trooper square in the chestplate and staggered him, absorbing the impact. He fired two more times. The first glanced off the Trooper’s helmet and whirred harmlessly into the night sky. The other caught him in the much thinner armor near his underarm and punched deep, burning through him, a lethal hole that clearly took some lung with it and the trooper sagged heavily before going to the ground.

The others began to take tactical positions that pinned him where he remained. He barely made it back behind the crate as they returned fire. But none advanced. Wary, suddenly, now that he’d killed one of their ranks and potentially mortally wounded a second. This was it, though. He knew that. With grenades, maybe, he could fight his way to one of the shuttles or a nearby speeder to try and make a break for it. But he had none. And this was not a good position to be stuck in. Sooner, not later, they would begin to use suppressing fire to keep him pinned before flanking him. The only question was where they would flank from first. His guess, the most accessible position they had, was to his left. And so, dropping to a knee, he levelled the blaster and trusted his luck.

He saw movement and fired. His bolt didn’t land but the trooper turned to consider where it came from. He’d chosen correctly. The next shot struck the trooper in the belly, soaked by the armor, but he landed two more that knocked it on its back and it did not move. Unconscious, or dead, Corbin did not know. The second trooper was trying to run past and he fired a volley that missed him. Cursing, Corbin immediately replaced the pistol’s power cell and unloaded the entire thing on the Trooper’s position. In cover, the Trooper was not in harm’s way, but he couldn’t fire either. Corbin reloaded. He had two cells left.

And then he felt something pass overhead.

The blast knocked him off his feet. He wasn’t sure exactly what had happened until he landed on his back and turned, taking note of the fireball lifting into the sky where the Lamda-Class shuttle had just been a moment ago. Now, all that was left was a swirling mess of twisted steel and flames, a few dead Troopers littered the landing pad. Corbin was beginning to rise, his eyes darting to a few of the cargo skiffs and speeders at the far end of the dock, his gut telling him this was his chance. But the second explosion knocked him flat again as the Troop Transport bucked off the pad under the force of a missile strike that tore it asunder and broke its back. Secondary explosions began to belch fire from its belly hatches before the engines cooked off and Corbin, for the first time, took a moment to recognize what was happening.

“Mando?!” He shouted into the commlink.

“We’ll cover you.” Came the cold, mechanical voice of The Mandalorian.

“I’m moving slow.” He reluctantly confessed in answer.

The Unbroken Promise was unspectacular looking form the outside. The Corellian Disc Freighter was a design from the middle of the Galactic Civil War, a YT-1930, and its flanks were painted an unimpressive grey trimmed only in red and green. It looked battered and aged. And, while maintained meticulously (he knew) did not appear nearly as dangerous as it was. The ventral quad cannon opened up as it descended side-long in a skid-like maneuver to the pad. It moved rapidly, selecting vehicles as targets, and cycled through dual blasts of heavy laser cannon fire that ripped targets to pieces. From hidden compartments two repeating blasters dropped, moving by the Droid’s command he knew, and opened up on the Troopers beginning to recover and respond to this new threat.

A virtual torrent of repeating blaster fire opened up as both ventral cannons machine-gunned down Troopers caught in the open. Their bolts passing entirely through men and their armor as though they were paper, knocking them aside with murderous ease. Corbin was moving already, abandoning his cover, struggling forward in the open as the docking ramp opened. The Mandalorian had his rifle at his shoulder and was firing. Corbin didn’t bother to look back. He did not need to. All he knew was gratitude. And surprise. The Mandalorian had returned.

The armored figure leapt down and in an instant Corbin felt lighter. The Mandalorian had curled an arm around his back and lifted, displaying an almost unnatural strength. The world tilted, grew fuzzy, but the last he knew was a sense of being lifted off his feet entirely. And the vague, absent sense of relief.

He was saved.

----------------------

(Present Time – “The Mandalorian” Garrus Stark - Jakku )

She circled to her right, away from his own right hand, with footwork much improved since their previous turn together. Here, upon the empty pad, they were free to train in the ruinous shadow of abandoned buildings and docking facilities. The morning sun was only just rising to spread a slow blush of crimson and gold along the horizon, bathing them in fresh morning light. She circled to her right, and he cut her off, forcing her back the way she had came. She switched her feet to compensate and her left hand, predictably, lifted to afford her vulnerable jawline its protection. It was sound technique. And that pleased him. She’d learned the hard lesson of passive defense and taken it to heart. But his challenge of her path to his left hand forced her back, revealing her intent, allowing him to once again pin her on her heels. Boxing was, between them, the most brutal of courses. She lacked reach, size, and strength. She lacked experience. In their other endeavors of training she had found ways to adapt, overcome, and compensate with skill or precision. But here, now, she retreated too readily with both feet and thought. The lesson that she would learn was a hard one. They had been sparring for twenty minutes and already her body wore a new host of bruises. She had not, as of yet, mounted any real offense. Respect did not keep them from this. He did not spare her his correction. The world was a cold place and she had asked, insisted, that he give her the means by which she might one day defend herself. Her independence and freedom so ferociously hard-earned that it provoked her to desire to keep it by any and all means. But, to wandering eyes, what followed would have been hard to watch. For, in his estimation, she required a reminder of failure’s cost. He popped her with a left-handed jab that caught her glove, skipped off it, and deflected against the top of her head. She moved through it easily, her left hand raised, but he doubled the effort and she stepped away, trying to create space and distance. Between them, in styles, she had long ago learned to adapt to the difference in their physical prowess. In Judo, and other aspects of training, she had moved more quickly. In fencing she had rapidly shown promise. But boxing was a difficult problem for her to solve. And now, abruptly, he punished her. Her attempt to claim space forced her to step back and to her left, avoiding his left hand, and circling her directly towards his right. He unloaded, savagely, a brutal hook that her glove mostly caught but sent her staggering. And he was on her then, digging his glove into her lean ribs, thudding blows that sought soft tissue and to drive the air from her. Patient, relentless, digging as she weaved, covered, and weaved again. Trying to keep her left hand by her ear, protecting her head, and using her elbow and arm to “chicken wing” her ribs and keep them covered. His punishment was savage. Relentless. And here, here the dichotomy between their nights together and others seemed most stark. It was not a fair fight. His size, his power, and more importantly a life within Mandalorian culture had honed him for this. He took his time, buying space, until at last her left glove slipped down to try and cover her ribs after a particularly rough blow cut past her arm and struck her solidly. “Oof.” She grunted as the air nearly left her. And then there was a low “thud” as his gloved right hand smashed brutally into her temple, driving her down into the deck and ending, for now, their brief but brutal contest. “You defeat yourself before you begin.” He said steadily. The blunt nature of his criticism often riled her. He did not console her with the encouraging sign of her lifted hand. Nor did he address that the job had taken him away from her a month, returning him only the day prior, or any rumors as to it she may have heard. This was the way it had always been between them. And, more pressingly, she had not found a way to beat him by hand.

Jakku was, in a strange way, beautiful. The bleak purity of it stretched out beyond, endless, in the shifting and rolling tides of dunes. It was home, of course, to the usual scum and less-fortunates that the galaxy offered. It was a hard life here. But there was a purity in it, he found, which was why he lingered here rather than the seductive promise of Nar Shaddaa. The girl had never seen his face. None had since he had sworn to the code. All she knew of him was the mask’s cold visage, pale green slits where his eyes should be, and unchanging beskar forged around him. The voice she heard was filtered through a vocal modulator. And, still, there was some fondness between them. She did not look capable of living alone in this place but she had, and had been doing so for long before he had helped her improve her martial arts. “But you kept your left up this time.” He said steadily, watching her rise, his hands working the padded gloves off. This was the most she had seen of his skin. Hints of the man beneath. His hands were bare, scarred, and broad-palmed with long, capable fingers. The bulk of his armor lay aside, resting on the walkway of The Broken Promise, the ship that was his home. An old Corellian disc freighter, The Broken Promise looked every bit as rundown and hard luck as the planet that currently held her. Pale grey armor plating had been coated with slate grey paint once, long ago, and now showed fading and peeling from wear and tear. The edges, chased in Crimson, had faded to a well-worn burgundy. The massive exhaust port for her ion engine loomed over them and they retreated under the port-side of it into the shade and towards the ramp that lead into the cargo hold. The armor, a rig of matte black plates and nano-weave fibers, lay crumpled there. And the Mandalorian, wearing his helmet, wore only a slate-grey body glove that veiled all his flesh (save for his hands) from view. She was the only human, for as long as he could remember, that had even seen him in this much undress. The bottom half of his body was still clad in armor. Tactical leggings with tactical knee pads, greaves, and beskar thigh plates. “I got a deal for you.” He said then, changing topics, watching her through the mask of his helmet.

#@reyjustrey

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