A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars

  20

  Mandalore, Sundari Outskirts, 41 BBY.

  After speaking with the others, minus an absent Obi, and learning the status of the negotiations I had decided to go visit Jaster’s camp and see if anything had come of the information I’d learned about the woman I now knew as Bo-Katan Kryze and where she had run off to—and see if perhaps the Mandalorians had followed her home to eliminate that problem. I hoped they had.

  Making my way through the camp, I knocked and let myself in to Jaster’s tent, finding the man as I usually did around this time, reading a book and drinking. He looked up and smiled. “Tanya. Good to see you’re up and moving.”

  “It’s good to be out of the tank,” I nodded, pulling a chair over and taking a seat.

  “Well, I’m glad you came. There’s some business I need to discuss with you. First, the rest of the Death Watch.” I sat up a bit straighter and he continued, “We found a few of them, but not Katan, and no one my men could identify as a leader. It looked like they were bugging out when my people got there, and everyone important already left.”

  “A shame,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Do you think they’ll try to continue their plan to destroy the opposing factions? Retaliate against the Jedi? Or go into hiding?”

  “Hard to say,” Jaster shook his head. “You killed their leader and took their symbol of authority, and the backup they might have used in Tor’s helmet for good measure. They’re probably scrambling to find another Mandalore. Hopefully, they’re too busy fighting among themselves to bother with us. I’ve got some people trying to track them down, but it’s gonna be hard. These fuckers have been hiding for years, so I’m not expecting much. I’m realistic. If we don’t find anything soon, we’ll pull back and settle in to watch.”

  I nodded. Unfortunately, if an enemy combatant or group went to ground among the local population, and they happened to also be part of the local population, then it was nearly impossible to determine who was the enemy and who was a civilian, until someone started shooting. Thankfully I had never encountered that tactic myself in the Empire, but I was aware of it from my time on my original Earth, and news of the war between America and whoever they were fighting when I last checked in the middle east. Likewise, the Viet Kong had used the tactic against the Americans in the Vietnam war, and the Afghani had used it against the Soviets in the ‘80s.

  “But I thought you’d appreciate knowing that.”

  “I do, thank you.”

  Jaster nodded and continued. “There is some good news, however. You did us a service, putting down Tor Vizsla and the rest of those fuckers, even if a few of ‘em got away. Final count was twenty-six dead. You said one escaped, and you let the wounded go.”

  “Fourteen wounded. Left their medic unharmed, so fifteen I let go,” I clarified. “I felt it was better to bog them down with a bunch of wounded. Especially since many of them were maimed.”“Yes, we saw the pile of leftovers,” Jaster murmured, shaking his head. “We’re watching hospitals and suppliers of prosthetics, hoping to use those to track them down.” He took a sip from his drink before picking up where he’d left off. “That’s a lot of armor. A lot of beskar. That’ll fill out a lot of armor pieces and give us several sets for younglings getting to the age where it’s time to start wearing armor. Bunch of weapons and other supplies, too. They even had a few ships they left behind.”

  “Glad I could help.”

  Chuckling, Jaster nodded. “Well, it’s not going unrewarded. We took the rest of ol’ Tor’s armor and melted it down into beskar ingots. When you come of age and stop growing, come bring it back and we’ll make armor out of it for you. And in the meantime,” he stood and put down his glass, before moving over to the side of the tent, where a steel box sat. Picking it up, he brought it over and placed it down on the floor between us, before sitting back down. Pushing it towards me with one foot, he knocked back the rest of his drink and grabbed his bottle to refill it. “Our armorer made you a little something.”

  I looked down into the box and found several rectangular ingots of a gray metal run through with wavy lines that reminded me of Damascus steel. Sitting on top of it was a piece that had been hammered out and had adjustable leather straps attached. I picked it up and turned it over, raising an eyebrow as I studied it.

  “It’s a chest piece that’ll go under your clothes. The straps can be adjusted or replaced as needed and it’s segmented so that you can stretch it out and adjust it a bit as you grow. Mostly, it’s meant to protect the heart and be easy to conceal,” he explained, and I nodded, finding and testing the switches and locking mechanisms on the back that would let it unlock, expand, and then lock into place again.

  Undoing my robe belt, I stood and pulled off my robe top, before slipping it on. A bit of playing with the straps got it comfortably secured down over my red under layer, then I pulled the top back on, followed by my belt. When I sat down, I couldn’t tell it was there just by looking. I shifted and moved, testing my range of motion, and found it was comfortable and didn’t get in the way. “Thank you. I was already considering armor after this incident. It’s good to know I have something I can count on already. I saw how well it performed against my lightsabers and blaster bolts.”

  “Heh. Yeah, that’s beskar. One of a few things that can shrug off plasma weapons. Now, there was a bit more.”

  “Oh?” I asked, gesturing between the armor and the material to make more armor—and the offer to have it made for free in the future. “What more could there be?”

  “Ships aren’t cheap, girl,” he laughed. “Between the other four, there’s over half a million in credits. I’ve got my people going over the one you brought in. She’s yours, if you want her. She’s a GAT-12 Skipray. New. Top of the line heavy fighter and patrol boat. Armed to the teeth. She’s even got a hyperdrive, so she can get you wherever you need to go. Nav computer’s a little crap though. Talk to my people and they can help you get one to replace it if you want. Any other modifications you want, they can help with. We’ll cover whatever costs there are.”

  Ah, so they’re still coming out way ahead in this deal, regardless of what I decide. But it seems to have bought the goodwill we wanted, so I’ll consider it worth it. In that case, if they’re offering to foot the bill on parts and will help handle labor, I should take advantage.

  “I’ll need to look at the ship to see what I can do to make it more suitable to long term habitation and missions,” I deferred for now, and Jaster nodded.

  “Take your time. But before you go rushing off to play with your new toy,” he grinned and I chuckled, nodding a bit as I admitted that yes, I was a bit excited to go have a look at the ship, “there’s one last thing. The matter of the Darksaber.”

  Frowning, I nodded. “I saw it wasn’t in my effects when Obi brought them to me.”

  “Your Master Dooku has it for the moment,” Jaster answered the unasked question. “We spoke about it and neither of us can agree to a solution. A Jedi made it about a thousand years ago. Mandalorians of the time, members of the Vizsla clan, struck against the Jedi in the heart of their power and took it for themselves. We’ve had it since then. The Death Watch turned it into their symbol of leadership when they split off after I formed the super commandos. It’s been in the hands of Mandalorians longer than it has the Jedi, and by any laws you care to look at in the known galaxy, that means it’s ours. Your master don’t see it that way and feels like it should be returned to the Jedi. I tried arguing that we would take it as payment for the Serenno job, but the stubborn old man wouldn’t budge.”

  “That sounds like Master Dooku.”

  “Now, the way I see it, you killed Tor and claimed it. It’s yours by right. You can’t keep it, and you know why, but you’re the one with the most say in what happens to it from here.”

  Frowning, I thought aloud as I considered it. “If I give it to you, it’s going to anger the High Council. Not that I wasn’t before, but this will just give them another excuse. It would also mean disregarding Master Dooku’s advice. If I return it to the Jedi, I risk damaging relations between your people and mine.”

  “There is a third option,” Jaster suggested, casually. His voice was entirely too casual, but his emotions told me this was the option he was hoping I chose, and he’d probably let me work through the other two on my own just to make this one sound better.

  “And that is?” I asked, curious why he was so interested in it.

  “The Jedi can keep the Darksaber. I want you.”

  I blinked. Crossing my right leg over the left at the knee, I straightened up in my seat, a bit of the old Lt. Col. von Degurechaff slipping through as I raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me? Explain.”

  Jaster grinned, lifting his glass in my direction. “That’s why. Part of it, anyway,” he admitted. “Way I see it, the Darksaber’s just a thing. Sure, people need symbols, and most often things become those symbols. A nation, a world, a flag, a song, a mask, a lightsaber, a code. All just things and ideas. But,” he held up a finger, before slowly pointing between himself and me, “sometimes, what they need more than a thing or some lofty ideal is a person. Just as I am for the True Mandalorians, Satine is for her people, and Tor Vizsla was for the Death Watch. People rally others behind them much more effectively than any thing or idea. We need a symbol of the partnership between the Mandalorians and the Jedi. A symbol that the past is behind us. Dead and buried. That we’re both looking to the future.”

  Slowly, I nodded along. “I see. How would we go about that?”

  “You become a Mandalorian. The first Mandalorian Jedi.”

  Considering for a moment, I asked, “What does that process entail?”

  “It’s pretty simple, really. A Mandalorian clan has to adopt you.” His lips quirked up into a smirk. “I’m sure we can find one. Then, you recite the Resol’nare. That’s it.”

  “What is the Resol’nare?”

  “The whole thing verbatim is: I adhere to the Resol’nare. The core of what it means to be a Mandalorian. A sacred law giving us purpose. Education and armor, self-defense, our tribe, our language, our leader—all help us survive. We must educate our children as Mandalorians, obey the commands of the Mandalore, speak Mando’a, and defend our clans.”

  “Mm. But what does that entail, exactly? It sounds vaguely… religious.”

  Jaster raised an eyebrow. “No more so than the Jedi code, no? How did that go again?”

  Frowning, I thought back to the few times I had heard it. Somehow, I had always avoided reciting it, after the first time I heard Master Yoda teaching it to the younglings. It had… not sit right with me.

  “There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.”

  Even as I said it, I disagreed with it—vehemently. It may largely hold true for some species, but not all. Certainly not humans!

  No emotion? That was a blatant lie. Humans were emotional by default. Even the most logical and pragmatic of men, arguably the less emotional half of the dyad of humanity that were men and women, still felt emotion. It was a core part of the human experience. Emotion drove us, pushed us to higher heights and lower lows. Without emotion, we would be… cattle. Stupid, slow, dimwitted, uncaring, unaware of our surroundings. Peace was certainly a goal worth attaining, but not at the cost of giving up the very thing that fueled human ingenuity, creativity, and the will to survive.

  No passion? Just as with emotion, that was a lie where humans were concerned. We were a very passionate species. Social animals. We needed it. Craved it. Without it, we lost the will to live. With it, we achieved wonders. On a world with just humans, with only the knowledge we could scrape from the physical world, and no special powers we split and harnessed the atom.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  No chaos? Life was chaotic! By its very nature, biological life could best be described as organized chaos. Sure, there was harmony, or order, but there was also chaos. The randomness factor. The one bee going contrary to the hive. Without chaos, life stagnated and eventually died. Without order, life eventually ate itself. Both were needed for life to truly thrive.

  No death? Death forced the old to give way to the new, so that things didn’t stagnate. It was a forced reset. No one wanted to die, not really, and it was in our nature to fight it off tooth and nail, struggling for every last breath, but it was the conclusion to life. Maybe there was some way to live on in the Force—these Force Ghosts the Masters had spoken of when I’d told them what I was—but transcending to some sort of energy state didn’t mean your physical body didn’t die.

  The only part I truly agreed with was the bit about ignorance and knowledge. Ignorance should be combated at every turn and knowledge should be prized, free for all to learn.

  Compared to the Jedi Code, the Resol’nare actually seemed… pretty reasonable, all things considered. Still, I would need to know more before I decided one way or another.

  “Who is the Mandalore?”

  “I suppose that depends on who you ask. To the Death Watch, that was Tor Vizsla. To the True Mandalorians, it’s me. The New Mandalorians don’t follow a Mandalore. We’re settling what that means between our two groups right now. It’s one of the last things we’ve got to hammer out. We’re thinking on spitting things between a civilian leader and a military leader. A… I think they wanted a President, and a Mandalore. The President would be voted in, the Mandalore is decided as the position always has been, by whoever’s the strongest. Don’t like the Mandalore? Think they’re doing a shit job? Kick their ass, take the title, and do it yourself if you think you can do better.”

  “And I’d follow your orders?”

  Jaster wagged a hand back and forth in a so-so gesture. “You’d have a lot of latitude. You’d still be a Jedi and we wouldn’t want to step on their toes too much. In the field, when you’re working with us, you would follow my orders. Otherwise, if you’re out doing your thing somewhere else, I’m not going to call you up and start barking orders.”

  Lacing my fingers together in my lap, I said, “Explain the rest. Please start with my duties and responsibilities, and then my rights and any benefits. Do we get healthcare? Dental? Vision? Paid vacation? Retirement—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down,” Jaster laughed, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’ll explain everything you need to know. And then you can tell me what you meant with the rest of that.”

  I nodded and settled in to listen as he spoke.

  “Come. Out. You. Piece. Of. Shit!” I grunted, heaving my weight against the last bolt holding in the nav computer of the Skipray I’d acquired from the Death Watch. I felt the bolt round off and grunted as I skinned my knuckle on the underside of the panel. Reaching up, I licked the blood off and took a moment to focus and use the Force to heal the wound.

  Glaring at the offending bolt, I shifted around, angled my body properly, pulled one of my lightsabers out, and growled, “I wasn’t asking.”

  “Problem down there?” Jango’s voice called, and I felt his boot tap mine as I heard him sit down. “Need a hand?”

  “No. Can’t be stuck if it’s liquid,” I shook my head and carefully activated the lightsaber, then touched it to the end of the bolt. The bolt and nut holding it in place quickly melted away and I shut off the saber, avoiding the melting metal falling to the deck of my ship. Even just thinking those words brought a smile to my face.

  I rolled the crawler I was laying on out from under the panel I’d been working under. Standing, I gave Jango a nod before reaching out with the Force and carefully pulling the nav computer out. “Need something?”

  “Came to let you know the replacement nav computer is here, as is the other stuff you ordered,” he shrugged, kicking back in the gunnery chair he was seated in nearby.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Since when are you my delivery boy?”

  The man chuckled. “Since Jaster made his offer.”

  I considered that, then nodded. “I see,” I nodded, lifting the computer and shining a light under it to make sure I’d properly disconnected all of the cables. Only once I was certain did I pull it the rest of the way out. “I’m still thinking about it.”

  “I would say there’s no rush, but,” Jango hemmed, and I sent him a curious look as I set the nav computer down, then poked my head outside and grabbed the replacement. “Negotiations are gonna finish up soon, then it’ll be off to Serenno.”

  “And it will look better if I fight beside you after accepting, rather than before,” I surmised, and he nodded.

  Grabbing a screwdriver, I opened up the nav computer the ship had come with, then the one I had ordered. Curiously, the units themselves were the same size, fit the same slot, and all the connectors seemed to match. And yet, the older model I’d bought used that had been pulled from a freighter had no practical limit to the number of hyperspace destinations it could store and had an up-to-date list of them, while the newer model that had been in the Skipray could only store four. Four!

  I’d been over the software and firmware with my laptop and it wasn’t a limitation of the programming, as far as I could tell. A bit of perusing the forums looking for this specific issue with this model ship had turned up nothing, but similar issues had cropped up in other ships that had the same model of nav computer. From what I had seen, it was a physical limitation.

  In order to sell a cheaper unit and cut costs, they had cut corners—one of those being in the hyperspace navigation department. The cheaper models had onboard memory that was effectively equivalent to a tiny USB drive, while the more expensive models came with a full hard drive equivalent. Both models had the bus for the bigger drive, however, so it was a simple matter of finding a drive and sticking it in. Except those were proprietary to that manufacturer and they didn’t sell them on the open market.

  So while the computer itself was overall better and faster than the old ones, it didn’t have the storage needed to do anything but store four sets of hyperspace coordinates. To make up for that, it had the ability to link up with other ships in a fleet running the same computer and, if one of them designated a hyperspace destination that wasn’t in their computer, it could follow without storing the new coordinates permanently. It was a shitty workaround for a shitty problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

  “Coming through,” someone called from behind and I had to move aside and move my project out of the way for a pair of Mandalorian mechanics bringing in new hardware.

  “Is that the sonic shower?” I asked, hopefully.

  “Yes ma’am,” one of the men answered with a grin. “We’ve got the kitchen unit coming in behind this. Should have them both installed in a few hours.”

  “Thank you,” I smiled, nodding as they set their load down and left to bring in their tools and get to work. Finding the storage device I needed, I moved it over to the newer computer, plugged it in, and began plugging everything back in and slotting it into place.

  The Skipray was a small ship. Larger than a fighter, certainly, but smaller than Master Dooku’s ship. It didn’t have room for quarters, let alone private quarters. It was twenty-five meters from nose to tail, but only forty-four percent of its overall length, just eleven meters, was dedicated to potentially livable space. In terms of width, the main part of the ship was nine point eight meters wide, with the crew area taking up forty percent of that, or three point six eight meters. Thirty-six feet by twelve feet in Imperial, of course isn’t a lot, but it’s doable, if you cut down on needless things and use space saving measures.

  Originally, the inside of the ship had a lot of wasted space. The cockpit for the pilot wasn’t something I could skimp on, so I left it alone. Behind that however were other seats I just wasn’t going to use! I had no need for permanently attached chairs because magnetic folding chairs that could be temporarily bolted to the deck were a thing—a thing that was cheap, easily sourced, and even easier to store when not in use.

  Next were the weapons and instrument panels. I’d spent a few days mounting some new screens up front and some extra buttons and switches, and now I could fly and handle weapons and sensors all from the cockpit—no need for extra operators. That meant I was able to completely remove those panels and had freed up the entire forward compartment behind the cockpit. I’d added a small storage compartment for four temporary chairs, but the space was otherwise open and unused—and perfect for having somewhere I could exercise and meditate, after I laid down a mat that could be rolled up. I’d placed a small holo-com in the corner, just behind the cockpit.

  Behind that, there was a lot of space dedicated to conduit and piping—too much, really. I’d had them rip it all out and had redone all of it. Wiring went on one run along the central part of the ceiling, just to the other side of the turret maintenance/access hatch and ladder—the ladder for which I had removed and had instead installed a rope ladder that, when not in use, was tucked away against the ceiling. The pipes were separated by type and traveled along the ceiling in several runs, save for water and waste, which were under the floor space—much of the solid deck having been replaced with decking that was easy to access and remove.

  That opened up the central space to be just as wide as the front of the ship. With that extra space, I’d ordered more space saving equipment be installed.

  The head was removed with the wall, so we were replacing it with a fresher—a combination head, sink, and sonic shower just big enough for one person to stand in and turn around, or sit down in when the bowl for the head was pulled down and the sink pushed up into the wall. The sonic shower could be used to launder clothes, so that took care of that issue and removed the need for a washer or drier. That went just behind what had once been listed as the weapons/tech compartment, along the starboard side wall.

  A small refrigerator/freezer and electric oven/stove combination went across from the fresher, on the port side wall. Then a cabinet for cutlery and dishes, and a small sonic washer for those.

  That left everything up to the aft hatch leading to the power plant/hyperdrive compartment as fair game. A lot of open space. So on one side, I’d installed a large, full size foldaway bed for myself that could be unfolded from the wall, with a set of rails that would allow me to lift it up so someone could bunk under it if need be. Across from it, I’d installed a workbench for working on lightsabers, blasters, armor, and the like, which could be folded down to the floor to reveal a pair of single bunk beds, if I needed to carry crew. Next to it was a locker where I had first aid materials stored and would be keeping ammunition and spare parts.

  There was a cargo compartment below, accessible from a hatch inside the crew area, rated for twenty metric tons of space. It effectively doubled the available space within the ship. And while I would absolutely be packing it with enough food for a crew of five for a month, I’d have lots of room left over after that, if I didn’t want to use it for cargo. I wasn’t sure what to do with it for the moment, aside from storing enough spare parts to completely replace the environmental system if it failed. Maybe I would install a reserve fuel tank. It seemed like the most reasonable thing to do—being able to outlast an enemy could be very useful.

  Definitely putting in a compartment to hide things though. I’ll move the holocron over as soon as I get back to Sundari and get a chance to get it off Master Dooku’s ship.

  Finally, there was the aft compartment itself. There was really nothing I could do with it and I didn’t want to risk damaging sensitive systems, so other than checking it over and going over the manual to familiarize myself with everything, and storing a few spare parts for common things that tended to break at the least opportune times, I had decided to leave it be.

  There were a few other things I had either taken care of or was in the process of dealing with, for the ship. The paint job was atrocious, some hideous purple and orange camouflage—so it was being stripped of paint and repainted. I was expecting to mostly use it for planetary insertions, recon, and support, not for space combat, so I went with blue and gray on the bottom and classic black/brown/green camouflage on top. Also, there was the issue of the rear wings…

  For whatever asinine reason, the designers had went with the ‘rotating wing’ design, allowing the wings to freely rotate on their axis in a ring rotation sleeve around the engine. This introduced an entirely new point of failure and a bevy of very stupid and avoidable ways that it could fail and get the wings stuck in a configuration where the ship couldn’t land without damaging them. Also, it completely screwed with the fighter’s aerodynamics while in atmosphere, catching cross winds and jostling the ship needlessly—and since it wasn’t a large ship, it couldn’t just ignore the wind and bull its way through, which meant it had to waste power fighting against it or get tossed around.

  Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t just replace them with standard wings, or even just weld the damn thing together. So, I’d installed a dial for where I wanted them to sit, and I’d just keep them in the horizontal landing configuration unless I needed to change it for some reason.

  Eventually Jango left. I moved on to verifying the new storage unit worked for the nav computer, then gave the computer I’d bought to the Mandos to keep for spare parts. I plugged in my laptop and set about reprogramming a bunch of things to tie various targeting and firing control systems together to make it easier on myself in the future—if I was firing the guns mounted on the wings, I also wanted to use the nose gun; if I was firing the turret, I only wanted to use the nose gun if the ship was pointed such that their fields of fire overlapped.

  At some point, the workers cleaned up and left, and declared the ship done—flightworthy and ready to go. I finished up my work, then closed her up and went through the preflight check. Extending my senses through the ship, I felt that it was good to go. There was just one thing left to do…

  Looking at the ship registry waiting for a name, I considered what to call it for a few moments. Eventually, a chuckle left my lips and I began typing: Rusted Silver.

  With that decided, I lifted off to take her for a spin. Flying out into the desert, I throttled up and ran her up to her top speed, then into military speed for a few minutes, before easing her back down.

  I was disappointed with her atmospheric speed, to say the least.

  The Skipray apparently topped out at about 1200 kph, or 745mph. The speed of sound was roughly 767mph on Earth and close enough on most Earth-like planets with atmosphere approaching that of Earth. At military speed, that is top safe speed plus ten percent, she ran 819mph—just a bit over Mach 1.

  It was… pathetic.

  I could get out and fly faster than that under my own power, if I had my computation orb!

  How, how was a spacefaring vessel allowed to go this slowly in atmosphere and that not be a problem?!

  Hang on. I’m missing something obvious, I frowned, remembering that Jango’s ship—or rather, Jaster’s ship that Jango had ferried me around on—had gone way faster. Thinking back on what I had done differently, I let out a quiet, “Oh,” and rolled my eyes, before flipping the switch to engage the deflector shield.

  It was stupid, but I was expecting a star ship to go faster than an aircraft made for atmospheric flight. And they really should. They didn’t though, because space ships were made to go in space. Space, where there was no atmosphere, and thus no drag. Which was really, really, really dumb considering they should be aerodynamic for in-atmo maneuvering, and it was a sign of over-reliance on fancy tech when you could just design the ship to go fast without it…

  It was a design flaw. A failure on the designers’ part.

  I wanted to test it in atmosphere with the shields down, just so I would know how it flew without them, if they went out.

  I absolutely didn’t just completely forget to flip them on in my excitement.

  No one could prove otherwise.

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