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elendiliel · 2 years

Text

Oya Manda

This follows on from this fic, but hopefully it can stand alone. It's also the longest piece in this AU to date (one reason it's taken so long for me to finish it), so be warned.

There are also more references to @itsstrangelypermanent's OC Nuts and @imrowanartist's Yara, made with their authors' kind permission. I recommend reading more about them (medical logs and Deference for Darkness, respectively, are good starting points).

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“And you can confirm that Maul is currently in Sundari?”

“It’s not something about which one can be mistaken, if one has a shred of Force-sensitivity.” Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi conceded Jedi Knight Helli Abbasa’s point. He had a long history with the ex-Sith. “He’s holed up in the Mand’alor’s residence. My guess would be that he comes and goes via the sewer network. It’s extensive enough, and nobody in their right mind would go down there unnecessarily.” Maul was not in his right mind, if Helli were any judge. She had only sensed him from several rooms and an outer wall away, relying on passive scans so as to conceal her own presence, but was pretty sure he wasn’t playing with a full deck.

“A reasonable deduction. We’ll have to find some way to seal them off if we do stage an attack. Which, thanks to you four, is looking quite likely. Between the evidence you gathered,” meaning Helli and her new riduur Torrent, aided and abetted by Doctor Mij Gilamar, “Bo-Katan addressing the Senate as both her sister’s heir and the spokesperson for multiple factions, and Senator Amidala and her allies doing what they do best,” appealing as much to emotion as to logic, “I’d say the odds are in our favour.” (Helli wondered briefly how Padmé was still in the Senate after her Jedi husband’s dramatic announcement of their marriage – at her wedding breakfast. Maybe the news hadn’t got out yet. Helli hadn’t exactly been able to pay much attention.)

“That was a good idea of yours, allying with the other factions.” Lady Bo-Katan Kryze spoke casually, but Helli knew that was high praise, coming from the Mandalorian woman.

“Just rational.” Unity and diversity equalled the good kind of strength; every youngling knew that. It may have helped that Helli also came from a clan-based society, and a species with a long race-memory. The last rising of the clans on Alba had nearly defeated the occupying Sassenachs – could have done so, given better leadership and thus better tactics.

The three-way holographic conference soon became a logistical one, working through the details of the planned joint Mandalorian-Republic assault, especially those pertaining to the alliance’s men and woman on the inside. There was a lot to discuss. Maul was too slippery a customer for anyone to want to leave anything to chance.

It would take a little while for the Senate, Jedi and Mandalorians to get all their waterfowl in a row. Helli, Torrent and Mij made the most of that time, exploring Sundari, seeing the sights, investigating the restaurants and bars – and scouting out the territory in which they would soon be fighting. (The newlyweds also found themselves enjoying the kind of long, lazy lie-ins neither of them had ever really experienced before, counterbalanced by late but active nights.)

But it couldn’t last, of course. Five days after the conference, just as the party returned to their hotel after latemeal, a prearranged coded signal informed them that the invasion fleet was well on its way, and they had just enough time to start running the program they had been sent, which would slowly and insidiously take down Sundari’s outer defences and lock off Maul’s most likely escape route. It should by rights have been installed in the city’s security centre, but any incident there would alert Maul’s forces, and the team was already walking on eggshells after a dust-up with a few “Mauldalorians” (as Torrent’s shieldmate Spark, one of the program’s architects, called them). Helli had blurred their memories as best she could, but still didn’t want to take any chances. Instead, a variant on standard remote-desktop and virtual private network protocols fooled the relevant terminals into thinking the program had originated there – and concealed its real origin.

While it ran, the party used the time to dress for the occasion. Mij, a relatively traditional Mandalorian despite being cin vhetin, routinely wore his armour, but augmented it with his helmet, blasters and jetpack, which had been smuggled in to him by the same contact of Bo-Katan’s who had delivered Torrent’s new armour. Real beskar’gam, painted just like his plastoid suit. Every clone who fought to liberate Mandalore would be offered a place in a Mandalorian clan, and the armour to go with that status; Torrent happened to be the first to receive it.

Mij having tactfully made himself scarce, Helli helped her cyare don the more complicated beskar gear over the armourweave full-body kute and boots that went with it, as best she could while he insisted on helping her with the outer layers of her Jedi robes (the inner tunic, trousers and boots constituting her civilian attire). As ever, it didn’t take long for them to find the right rhythm. Upper body armour; outer tunic; shoulder bells, rerebraces, vambraces and gloves; tabard; cuisses and greaves; obi; jetpack, belt and holsters; tool belt, headset, vambrace and lightsabres; helmet. It was only when her beloved’s face was hidden that Hel fully realised that they were about to take part in a full-scale battle, not a skirmish, for the first time since she had admitted that she loved him. One or both of them might not come back, and the idea hurt.

Picking up on her almost-concealed disquiet (and somewhat disquieted himself), Torrent held her close, resting his forehead against hers as he had at their wedding. “Mhi solus tome,” the riduure said together, quoting the Mandalorian marriage vow, “mhi solus dar’tome, mhi me’dinui an. Ib’tuur mhi verde.” We are one together, we are one apart, we share all. Today, we are warriors.

She clung to him for just a moment longer, before they both found the strength to draw apart, just as the second signal arrived. The invasion fleet had engaged the enemy. That was the cue for Mij to run another program, hijacking the public address system to broadcast a single message on repeat, in both Basic and Mando’a. There is no cause for alarm. Please remain in your homes. You will be safe there. Normal service will be resumed shortly. Oya manda.

“I think our work here is done,” the doctor remarked. “Shall we see what’s going on outside?”

“Let’s.” Hel led the way out onto the balcony attached to Tor’s and her room. The view was spectacular – if one liked battles. Bo-Katan’s Mandalorians and jetpack-wearing clones – a mix of 104th, 212th and 501st, Hel thought, though it was hard to tell the last apart from Clan Kryze while they were all moving so fast – were fighting Maul’s loyalists in the skies above Sundari, and blaster fire lit up the streets below. Hel’s attention, though, was drawn to a knot of blue lightsabre blades a few blocks away. The two orbiting each other like stars in the most complicated system ever modelled had to be Master Kenobi’s and Anakin Skywalker’s; the pair moving in perfect unison, clearly wielded by the same person, looked to be Ahsoka Tano’s. Someone, probably Anakin, had changed their colour while she was away. And the darker blue one was Fives’, of course. Hel couldn’t see Master Koon’s single blade anywhere, but where the Wolfpack were, their alpha wouldn’t be far ahead.

Hel activated the comm in her vambrace, tuning it to Master Kenobi’s channel. (She’d use her headset once she joined the battle, but the others couldn't hear it.) “Recon team awaiting orders.”

“I’m very glad to hear it.” As expected, there was plenty of blaster fire in the background, some deflected by sabres, and the occasional explosion. “We’d like you three to join us as soon as possible. Can you see where we are from there?”

“Perfectly. ETA ten minutes.” Hel signed off and looked at Torrent and Mij. “You two take the high road; I’ll take the slightly lower road.”

“And you’ll probably be at the RV before us.” Torrent knew the song she was misquoting. “Ready when you are, general.”

Once Mij had concurred, there was no point wasting any more time. Nor did Hel give herself time to think before stepping up onto the top of the balcony railing and jumping to the roof of the building across the street, a leap that would have been impossible without the Force. She just let herself enjoy the race, sprinting, sliding, clambering across the trickier obstacles – and occasionally dodging blaster fire, which wasn’t usually a hazard back on Coruscant. The others kept up with her pretty well, despite Torrent’s being a little rusty with respect to the use of a jetpack and the odd airborne skirmish that crossed their path, but she was still the first one to reach the ground at the rendezvous point – the Peace Park, of all places.

Close to, she could see that the combatants were more spread out than she had initially thought, a mixture of Bo-Katan’s loyalists and 212th and 501st clones holding off Maul’s forces at multiple entrances to the (mercifully seemingly unharmed) park. Quite a mixture. Hel had read up on the various Mandalorian factions beforehand; she spotted Bo-Katan’s Nite Owls, Clan Kryze and Clan Wren prominent among them, the Protectors of Concord Dawn and a fair few others – Ka’ra, were those Children of the Watch? How in blazes had Bo-Katan managed that? They made Death Watch look positively liberal. Mij greeted some of the apparently independent fighters by name, including Skirata and Vau, whom Hel knew to be members of the Cuy’val Dar and trainers of the first generations of clones. Among the decent or somewhat decent ones. All of them were fighting side by side with volunteers from two of the best battalions in the Grand Army of the Republic.

(All the vode there were volunteers, Hel knew; things had changed since the last Chancellor’s fall from grace. While major military operations still needed Senate approval, the fine details were left officially to the Jedi, and unofficially to a committee composed of equal numbers of Jedi and clones, mostly but not entirely Council members and CCs. Everyone had an equal voice and an equal vote, except for Commander Cody, who had eventually been prevailed upon to accept the casting vote as well. The result was a far more democratic army, less efficient perhaps, but soon to be phased out in any case.)

“Me’vaar ti gar?,” Hel asked Kenobi without thinking, her lightsabres already arcs of turquoise and blue in the darkness, batting away incoming fire. (Not all of it from the enemy; a few allies didn’t react to her arrival in time to avoid her.) He, Anakin and their respective seconds-in-command, Cody and Captain Rex, were, predictably, in the thick of the fiercest battle along with Bo-Katan and a number of other Mandalorians and clones. On her way there, Hel had seen her own unit, Lightning Squadron, now reunited with Torrent, embedded with the Mando’ade and other vode guarding another potential entry point, and Ahsoka and Lieutenant Jesse helping to protect a third; all three groups were holding their own, and slowly gaining ground, especially with the three new additions to their number. (Mij had chosen to reinforce Ahsoka’s group.)

“The program worked perfectly, but Maul’s forces mobilised a little more quickly than we anticipated. The 104th and some of Bo-Katan’s fighters are creating a perimeter around the city centre and clearing out any opposition soldiers in the suburbs, while we make for the Mand’alor’s residence and capture Maul. And by the way, I know undercover work can be difficult, but please try not to go completely native.” Master Kenobi knew what he was talking about, Hel was well aware. He’d faked his own death for an undercover assignment, which hadn’t gone down well with Anakin.

“There are worse fates,” she shot back. “The drink here isn’t bad, and I’m getting used to the food.” Mandalorian black ale was good, in moderation, but she was finding the cuisine an acquired taste. It tended to bite back. “What’s so funny?” That was to Anakin, now smiling as at something amusing.

“Just thinking of the little mouse I used to spar with, who wouldn’t say two words she didn’t have to.” He was describing her twelve-year-old self, who would never have been so forward to a Council member. “You’ve really grown up.”

“Happens to us all.” Hel used the Force to send a grenade sailing away, imagining that she was just punching a thrown rubber ball (a standard accuracy drill for Alban children). “Well, most of us.”

“Fair point. Anyway, a few commando squads are here as well, tasked with taking down major military assets – the armoury, the security centre and so on. Delta, Omega and the Bad Batch.”

“Stars! Scorch, Darman and Wrecker on one mission? Stand by for fireworks!” Hel had worked with all three units before, and had a healthy respect for them – especially the demo men.

There wasn’t time for much more discussion. The opposition line had started to buckle under the increased pressure, and the alliance had to drive its advantage home. Which it duly did, until all the Mauldalorians were unconscious, too badly wounded to pose a threat or gone.

The other groups had met with similar success by that point and were ready to press on, but Bo-Katan wanted to be sure they wouldn’t be ambushed on the way to their goal. Hel had thought of that over the previous few days, and reeled off the details of a couple of likely opposition staging posts and the best places to set up defensive lines between them and the alliance’s quickest and safest route to their destination. She’d noted them down while pretending to be a normal tourist, without even thinking about it. She was becoming a soldier in truth as well as in name, and the thought alarmed her.

Bo-Katan didn’t argue with Hel’s advice (presumably she wasn’t as familiar with Sundari, or at least with Sundari under Maul’s rule), but designated two squads from her own men and women to do as she said. Each would be reinforced by a clone detachment, one led by Anakin and Rex, the other by Ahsoka and Jesse. Precautions taken, the motley army set off, alert for any and all surprises. It wasn’t even the right time to catch up properly with the rest of Lightning Squadron, though Hel did manage to comment on Echo’s new armour – designed to account for the injuries he had sustained at the Citadel and the legacy of his subsequent captivity, but still recognisably a 501st shell – before Bo-Katan glared at her for getting distracted. Hel gave almost as good as she got.

“I didn’t know jetiise could have mandokar,” one of Bo-Katan’s lieutenants commented in Hel’s ear. Her armour and Nite Owl helmet were painted grey and yellow, Clan Wren’s colours, and the way the woman carried herself – and fought – suggested high rank. Almost certainly the clan leader, Countess Ursa Wren. Hel remembered her from her Mandalorian intel file – a long-term ally of Bo-Katan, and a staunch supporter of Death Watch until Maul’s takeover, but married to a New Mandalorian artist named Alrich, who had taken his wife’s clan name (as Torrent had). They had a two-year-old daughter, Sabine, safe at the clan holdings on Krownest. No wonder Ursa had fought so fiercely earlier. She had a great deal to lose if the invasion failed.

“Your sample size isn’t big enough, then.” Hel acknowledged the compliment with a smile. “Given the variation within the Order, that’s not surprising.” It didn’t help that Hel was at least two standard deviations from the mean in many respects. When most people thought of Jedi, they imagined a calm, tranquil, inhumanly graceful being, remote, emotionless, a wielder of awesome powers, an artist with a laser sword. Not a creature made of fire and steel, as gifted with her fists and boots as with her sabre, who loved fiercely and recklessly but would break her own heart to do her duty, who struggled to lift a stone but could sense the cosmos around her in remarkable detail. Who climbed almost as well as a Suli high-wire walker, schemed like a Ketterdam gang leader and could probably beat a Ravkan Grisha, a Fjerdan drüskelle or a Shu khergud in single combat. Not that Hel ever wanted to test that.

That conversation, too, had to be cut short. Maul’s ground forces had apparently fallen back, but his snipers hadn’t. At least two of them opened fire on the advancing invaders; most of their shots missed completely, but Hel saw a vod from the 212th – she made a mental note to learn his name as soon as possible – fall back, clutching his wounded arm and probably cursing, blood already seeping between his fingers. Another round barrelled towards Hel’s head; recognising the sound of the snipers’ guns, she deflected it with her vambrace, not a sabre. Which was just as well. What had just ruined the paintwork on the piece of Torrent’s old armour clearly wasn’t a laser, but a lead bullet.

“Slugthrowers!,” she called out, cursing herself for not foreseeing that move. “Get to cover!”

The men and women around and behind her scattered, diving for whatever shelter they could find. Most of them made it unscathed, and most of the rest could be fixed up on the spot. Hel couldn’t let herself think about the others yet. As Master Kenobi warned the other units about the new threat (Maul would surely have other snipers around the city), she did her best to trace the incoming fire back to its origin, looking for the gunners. She wasn’t the only one – Fives and Echo were doing the same thing either side of her, as were some of the Mandalorians – but the snipers were well hidden. Getting past them was going to be tricky.

“Are you all right?” Torrent, having finished tending to the more seriously wounded, had joined the rest of the squad. Hel could picture his concerned expression behind his helmet. They had encountered slugthrowers before; she still had the scar.

“A bit bruised, but otherwise fine. The vambrace held.” The skin below it already ached, but was intact. That had only been a glancing blow, though. While the other clones’ plastoid armour might stand up to a direct hit, and the Mandalorians’ and Torrent’s beskar definitely would, the impact trauma underneath would not be pretty. And lightsabres were no use against slugthrowers. In the best-case scenario, they might slow and deflect the bullets; in the worst-case one, they would fill the air with vaporised lead. Not something anyone should be breathing.

“Thank you for the warning.” Master Koon sounded as calm as ever over the comms, despite the rifle fire in the background. More slugthrowers. “I believe we have encountered similar opposition here.”

Hel had also heard a very familiar, though faint, voice behind the Jedi Master. On a hunch, she tuned her headset to one of the Wolfpack’s internal frequencies. Sure enough, Captain Keeli was shouting at his medic partner Nuts, telling him to come down from there, di’kut, you’re crazy, all right, crazier, it’s not worth the risk… Hel smiled to herself. Nuts was almost as good a sniper as he was a medic, and had access to commando-level gear, but his real talent was for causing chaos. His name – bestowed by Keeli – didn’t just refer to his liking for warru nuts. And he usually got away with his antics, on the battlefield or off. Hel heard a single blaster-rifle stun-shot, and one of the slugthrowers fell silent.

She retuned her headset to the general channel just as Commander Wolffe reported that, “We’ve taken out one of their snipers, but don’t have a line of sight on any of the others.”

“It’s progress,” Hel reassured him. “Tell Nuts to get his shebs back down to safety sharpish. Just because you can’t see a sniper, it doesn’t mean they can’t see you.”

“Oh, Keeli’s ahead of you there.” The commander was almost laughing. “How did you know it was Nuts?”

“Who else would it be?” Without waiting for Wolffe to answer her mostly rhetorical question, Hel asked, “Crosshair, any luck your end?”

“Working on it.” The Bad Batch’s sniper sounded as calm as ever. Somehow.

“I’ll take that as a no. Sev?”

“Likewise,” was all Delta’s long gunner had to say. Neither Bo-Katan’s snipers nor Cody’s had had any luck, either. Master Kenobi was still studying the situation. “Helli, how easy is it to deflect bullets with the Force?”

“Doable, but far from trivial.” As Kenobi knew, Hel had done it herself, on an unofficial mission to Arkanis; it had taken all her focus and so much effort that she’d fallen asleep straight afterwards. “It looks like our best option, though.”

“No, it isn’t,” Spark countered. He activated his own comm. “Tech, is everything ready?”

“Technically, but I would prefer to have more time to test-”

“I know, vod, but there isn’t time. This’ll have to be the test. Switch on as soon as you can.” Time was running out, Hel knew all too well; every minute they wasted, Maul’s army could be regrouping, and Maul himself could be getting away. She realised that as far as he was concerned, locking down the sewers had been pointless. He could just cut his way in. They were gambling on his obsession with Kenobi keeping him in the city. She decided she liked those odds, but had seen better.

“Affirmative. Switching on.” Hel heard an electrical hum (as well as a worried-sounding GNK), increasing in volume, in the background of Tech’s transmission. As it stabilised, the slugthrowers stopped firing – not just the ones pinning their group in place, but others all around the city.

“It seems we have a clear run, at least to the next nasty surprise,” Bo-Katan said. “On to the palace, then. Ib’tuur jatne tuur ash’ad kyr’amur.”

“Ib’tuur jatne tuur naasade kyr’amur,” Hel almost agreed. Today is a good day for nobody to die.

“Okeyday, what have you and Tech been up to?,” she added to Spark as they moved on, blessedly and no doubt temporarily unhindered. (Crosshair, Sev and maybe Nuts had probably had something to do with that.)

“Believe it or not, you’re not the only one around here who does their homework. I read up on the last war between the Jedi and the Mandalorians, trying to figure out what sort of weapons we’d be up against. Slugthrowers were pretty popular, for obvious reasons. I know lightsabres are useless against them, but I remembered the Doctor jamming the ones on Arkanis, and I… might have overheard her telling you how to contact her. I gave her a call – she and Yaz send their congratulations, by the way – she explained the basic principles of a cordolaine signal, and from there it was just a question of roping in a few friends – Tech, Atin, Fixer, Yara from Halo, Crys from the 212th, a couple of others – and turning theory into reality. I’m afraid I had to use your clearance to requisition the parts we needed, but it’s all on Palpatine’s account – Yara managed to unfreeze enough of it. He’s a good kid, but his curiosity knows no bounds.”

“As that’s just saved I don’t know how many lives, I’m hardly about to complain. By the way, just how many all-nighters did you lot have to pull to get your contraption ready in time?”

Spark probably looked sheepish under his helmet. “One or two.” The sheepishness was short-lived. “While you’re a model of good practice.” His words dripped sarcasm.

“Fair point.” She really wasn’t, though proper all-nighters were rare for her. Her vode saw to that.

They lapsed into companionable silence, everyone alert for surprise attacks. Of which there were none, right up until their goal was in sight. One minute, all seemed clear; the next, there were Mauldalorians everywhere. If the Force hadn’t shouted a warning in Hel’s ear, and she hadn’t passed the message on, just in time, things would have been even worse. As it was, an ordered advance had suddenly become a complete and utter mêlée.

In the confined space of a city street, the fighting was not just fierce but concentrated. Hel didn’t have room to use her sabres a lot of the time, falling back on her fists, boots and knife, finding nerve clusters, major blood vessels to compress, tendons she could cut without doing any other damage (she’d learned well from Mij). Her vod’ikase flanked her in their usual formation (with Echo in his old position for the first time in months), moving as one as they cut a swathe through the press of bodies, stunning anyone in the wrong armour. (The rest of the alliance was also using stun-bolts where practical; minimal casualties had been one of the Jedi’s conditions when they agreed to help Bo-Katan.) The would-be Mand’alor and Ursa, fighting side by side, kept pace with them, as did Kenobi and Cody, complementing one another perfectly. Kar’ta’vode, Hel thought, finally able to categorise their relationship. Heart-brothers.

“We have to keep going,” Kenobi said as they reached the other side of the battle. His tone was Jedi-neutral, but Hel could sense how much it pained him to have to leave his and Anakin’s men behind. It hurt her almost as much, but she knew why even before he put the reason into words. “The sooner we capture Maul, the sooner this is all over.”

Nobody argued with that. Partly because they had to save their breath for the guards at each door that lay between them and the former Sith. Hel, as ever, tried diplomacy first when they reached the outer entrance. Her own brand, tailored to the situation. “I suppose you two would rather die than betray your Mand’alor?”

“Of course.” The guards spoke almost as one.

Hel looked briefly at Bo-Katan, who seemed to have cottoned on, and had drawn herself up to her full height, glaring regally at the guards through her visor. “Then let her in.”

“Lord Maul is our ruler,” one of the guards shot back. “And you’re all traitors.” He and his colleague drew their blasters.

“Well, it was worth a try,” Kenobi remarked when the men lay unconscious, having neither died for their false Mand’alor nor betrayed him. “But we can’t waste any more time trying that again.”

With Cody and Ursa left behind on guard, the rest of the party carried on. The Mand’alor’s residence was designed to channel any attacker making for the throne room through three sets of doors (not counting the outer pair), each of which was barred by two sentries. The first such pair put up a pretty decent fight – good enough that one of them had time to send an alert to his comrades before being stunned.

“You two had better stay here,” Hel told Torrent and Spark. “And I expect to find you in one living piece each when we’re done. Especially you.” She gave her riduur a somewhat inappropriate smile. “Preferably a good-looking piece.”

“You will, and I expect the same of you.” Torrent, ignoring protocol and an exasperated Bo-Katan, pulled her in for the quickest of hugs and keldabes. “K’oyacyi, cyar’ika.”

“K’oyacyi, ner cyare.” Aware that they were on the clock, Hel broke away and turned back to the others. The next set of guards went down about as easily as their comrades, and were replaced by Fives and Echo. And not even the ones on duty right outside the Mand’alor’s throne room could stand against two talented Jedi and a high-ranking Mandalorian. Kenobi insisted on facing his old adversary alone, at least at first, leaving the women to hold the door against any reinforcements while he confronted the young spider lounging at the centre of a web partly of another’s weaving.

It was the right call. The door had hardly shut on Maul’s whispered greeting – if one could call “Kenobi” a greeting – when Hel heard running footsteps and the clank of beskar’gam. “Incoming.”

“You block, I’ll shoot.” Bo-Katan had barely holstered her pistols since the invasion had begun.

“Fair enough.” The Mandalorian and the Jedi soon proved to be a near-deadly combination even by themselves. Nobody even got within two metres of them without being stunned or hit by a deflected laser from a comrade’s blaster, and subsequently sedated. But there had been enough counter-attackers for Hel to have grown uneasy about Master Kenobi in the time it took to subdue them.

With Bo-Katan keeping watch, she eased open the door to the throne room. As expected, the long-term opponents were duelling once again. It was an unnervingly evenly matched fight. Kenobi was more skilled, and far more focused, despite the memories that room surely held for him. (Hel was certain that Duchess Satine, the love of Kenobi’s life, had been murdered there in front of her cyare. The fierce, kind, clever, passionate woman’s presence lingered in that place even more strongly than it did around her beloved Jedi.) But Maul hadn’t just been through at least two battles and a few skirmishes, and he was fuelled by rage and the desire for revenge. It could go either way.

And neither is right, Hel realised. If Maul won, that would severely damage the invasion’s prospects of success, and rob the galaxy of a brilliant Jedi and a good man. But if Kenobi won – Hel knew enough about Mandalorian law and customs to work out how that would end. Not well. Why had nobody seen that before?

As she racked her brains for a third way, her eye fell on an object in a glass case beside the throne. Interesting… Almost as soon as she reached out to it through the Force, she knew what she had to do.

She sheathed her own sabre and held it out to Bo-Katan. “You have to be the one to defeat Maul. This is your fight; you have to finish it.”

Bo-Katan’s body language indicated utter bemusement. Hel sighed, and bit back a rather colourful Gungan curse-word. (Another unusual thing about her; she could, if she so chose, swear in more languages and dialects than most Jedi spoke.) “Look. To many Mandalorians, the one who wields the Darksabre is the Mand’alor, right? And it can only be won in combat. Whoever next defeats Maul will, to a lot of people, take his place. That should be you, as the legal ruler, and it can’t be a Jedi. That really would cause problems, and make this whole mess even worse.”

Bo-Katan still wasn’t convinced, so Hel pressed on. “Besides, Maul isn’t using the Darksabre, even though it would give him a significant advantage. He’s skilled enough to use it alongside his own blades, but he isn’t. I don’t think he can. I don’t think it’s chosen him.”

“Chosen him?” The concept didn’t make sense to the Mando’ad, but to the jetii it was suddenly obvious.

“Our sabres aren’t just weapons. In a sense, they’re alive. And the Darksabre is no different. In all the centuries people have been fighting over it, do you think anyone’s stopped to ask it what it wants?”

“And what do you think it wants?”

“I don’t have to think. It just told me. It wants an end. It was a Jedi’s weapon originally, remember, forged to protect and bring peace. It wants the killing to stop, and it wants to rest. I doubt it chose Vizla; it may have chosen Satine, but she can’t wield it now. I believe it’s chosen you – a warrior open to the idea of change.” Hel offered her own lightsabre again. “So win the blade properly, and end this.”

Bo-Katan took the weapon, slowly and carefully, weighing it in her hand, familiarising herself with the controls. “Will you be all right, if more reinforcements arrive?”

“I’ll be fine. I’m never really unarmed.” Hel drew Nahdar’s sabre and her knife. Bo-Katan was probably smiling. “You’d make a good Mandalorian.”

“That I doubt, but thank you. I can’t honestly say you’d make a good Jedi, but I think you’ll be a good Mand’alor – if you get on with what you have to do.”

Bo-Katan took the hint, darting through the still-open doors to the throne room, where the two combatants had reached a stalemate, blades locked together. Hel watched, senses alert for any ambushes from behind, as the other woman challenged the pretender to her throne, and as Maul accepted the challenge, using the Force to throw Kenobi across the room. The Jedi’s head hit the wall with a nasty-sounding thud (though, mercifully, not a crack), and he fell to the floor, totally still.

Maul was too focused on his new opponent (who, Hel absently noted, had adopted not the Soresu opening stance Kenobi favoured, but her own favourite, a textbook Niman one, which she hadn’t used that day; her sabre must be teaching its new wielder) to notice the young woman climbing along the walls to reach her ori’vod. Her medical scanner informed her that the head injury was serious, but no permanent damage had yet been done; she used the last of her bacta spray to maintain that state of affairs. There were several other wounds all over his body, but nothing that needed urgent treatment – thank goodness. She just had to wait for him to wake up.

Which he did less than a minute later, his eyes focusing first on her, then on the battle in the centre of the room. Against all odds, Bo-Katan was winning, using the weapons hidden in her armour as well as Hel’s sabre, but Maul was fighting back well. “Helli, what have you done now?”

“What I had to do. If you’d claimed the Darksabre, even unintentionally, Bo-Katan’s support would have splintered, and who knows what the Mauldalorians would do. This was the best way around that. How do you feel, by the way?”

“Like a military academy.” Hel’s heart rate spiked; was he more badly hurt than she’d thought? “Bits of me keep passing out.”

She managed to laugh at the weak joke. He was going to be all right – probably. “Well, do you think you can stop everything graduating at once? I need to monitor your condition.”

“I’ll do my best.” He contrived to sit up, leaning against the wall, to watch the duel. Bo-Katan really was doing well, using the rage Hel could sense rolling off her – she was fighting her sister’s killer, after all – without letting it control her. It must have helped that Maul was tired and injured from his fight with Kenobi, his legs sparking, a burn mark on one arm, his movements slower and jerkier than before, while Bo-Katan had had just enough time to rest and treat her wounds since the previous battle. And she had tricks up her sleeve – literally. As the Jedi watched, a grappling line from Bo-Katan’s vambrace wrapped around Maul, pinning his arms to his sides and pulling him to his metal knees. His vanquisher raised Hel’s sabre to end the fight – and his life.

“Don’t!” Hel was on her feet in a heartbeat. “Stun him with my blessing, but don’t kill him.”

“Why not?” Bo-Katan didn’t lower the blade, but she didn’t strike, either. “Because there’s still hope for him?”

“That, and my lightsabre will probably shock you if you try. It is mine, after all. And you’re wearing an awful lot of metal.” Bo-Katan accepted that, handed the weapon back to its owner and gave the grappling line a vicious tug. “Get up.”

Whatever Maul intended to say to that was cut off when Hel tied a bandage from her med-kit around his mouth. As Kenobi cuffed him, just to be on the safe side, she headed over to the Darksabre and examined its case. The locking mechanism looked pretty complicated, but there was a slight crack between the lid and one side. She inserted her sgian dubh into the crack and twisted it, popping the lid right off.

“That’s one way to do it,” Kenobi remarked. He reached into the case and withdrew the beskar lightsabre hilt, holding it out to Bo-Katan. “Yours, I believe.”

Hel wished she could see Bo-Katan’s face as she took the ancient weapon. She could guess the expression on it, though – triumph, shot through with sorrow. Her sister had died by that blade. But Bo-Katan was one large step closer to giving Satine and many others the justice they deserved.

The new Mand’alor led the way out of the palace, her captive in tow, her allies trailing behind, the soldiers they had left on guard falling into step with them along the route. When the procession emerged into the grey light before dawn and Bo-Katan ignited the Darksabre, holding it aloft for all to see, the still-ongoing battle stopped as though a spell had been cast. Every Mandalorian fell to his or her knees, followed by the clones; Anakin and Ahsoka, whose units had reinforced the main contingent, bowed low.

“Oya manda!,” Bo-Katan called. There is no direct translation of that phrase into Basic, but it expresses Mandalorian solidarity and endurance. A fitting cry for the end of a civil war.

“Oya manda!,” a host of voices, Mandalorian, clone, even Jedi, called back. Hel’s hand automatically found Torrent’s, her sunburst of a smile echoing his armour paint. They had done it. Yes, there was still a lot of work to do, but for one shining moment, they could enjoy the fact that Mandalore was truly at peace.

---

Mando'a glossary:

Riduur(e): spouse(s).

Cin vhetin: literally, white field; colloquially refers to adoption into a Mandalorian clan (regarded as a fresh start, a clean slate).

Beskar'gam: armour, especially Mandalorian steel armour.

Kute: undergarments of any kind (including the body glove under armour).

Ka'ra: stars; mythical council of fallen rulers.

Vod(e): brother(s), sister(s), sibling(s); often refers to clones (and honorary clones). 'Ika is an affectionate diminutive.

Me'vaar ti gar?: what's new with you? What's the situation?

Mando'ad(e): Mandalorian(s).

Jetii(se): Jedi (singular/plural).

Mandokar: "the *right stuff*, the epitome of Mando virtue - a blend of aggression, tenacity, loyalty and a lust for life" (from mandoa.org).

Di'kut: idiot (lit. without underclothes).

Shebs: rear (in any sense).

Ib'tuur jatne tuur ash'ad kyr'amur: today is a good day for someone else to die. (To quote mandoa.org again, "Mando saying (because they're not daft...)"; here on Terra, this was originally a Sioux/Lacotah war cry. Not Klingon.)

K'oyacyi: literally, "stay alive"; colloquial meanings include "cheers", "hang in there" and, as here, "come back safely".

Cyar'ika: darling, sweetheart.

Ner cyare: my love. (Cyare means beloved.)

More Grishaverse references worked their way in; in the books, Grisha are people who can manipulate certain types of matter (their equivalents here are probably some sort of Force-sensitive or magick user), and druskelle and khergud are Grisha hunters - the former are "just" highly trained humans, while the latter have been artificially altered, cyborg-style.

Any and all comments are always welcome.

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