Me, Myself and Mandalorians:21

Twenty-One


Our arrival back at Coruscant was a somber affair. With our numbers reduced by the adventures on board the Indomitable and the previous siege, the troopers that were expected failed to materialize, and all explanations fell on deaf ears.

Due to his command role during the boarding action, Noa Arkaan was dismissed forthwith from the employment of the Grand Army of the Republic, as was the Wookiee known as Orikih. Harl Raven was also given a posthumous discharge, and his out-standing wages were with-held, much to the anger of Arkaan and Orikih. As for myself, being an accessory and major player in the events leading to 'the unnecessary and criminally negligent destruction of a possible future military asset', I was dishonourably discharged and told in no uncertain terms that my continued presence in the Core Worlds of the Galactic Republic would be considered illegal and that a self-imposed exile would be the best thing for both myself and the GAR.

The ARC lieutenant A-78, known as Shane, disappeared as soon as the Iron Fist docked, and we later discovered that after being debriefed, he was sent immediately off on another mission. I believe Arkaan received a short message from him, but never shared the contents with me, and Senaar refuses to talk about it.

The Jedi Marcla disappeared the day after our 'sentence' was announced, recalled by the Jedi Council to some other unknown assignment. She left as mysteriously as she arrived, quietly and leaving no sign of her presence bar our memories.

As for General Jaro Hoday and the 78th Assault Battalion, the news was possibly the worst received. Despite the strenuous objections of Hoday himself and all the officers, the 78th itself was disbanded, due to some obscure policy whereby units that take enough casualties are disbanded and their personnel re-assigned to existing units needing replacements. Hoday took the news badly and make it clear that if the 78th ceased to exist, then so would his allegiance to the Jedi Order. His bluff was called, and was taken before the Jedi Council, where it is reported that he was reprimanded and assigned to menial duties within the Jedi Temple to contemplate his words. His attempted resignation was ignored and refused to be heard on the matter, and cautioned that his anger on the subject was considered too much of the Dark Side to be dismissed.

It was for this reason that Hoday absconded, and is now currently on-board the Tracyn'senaar with myself, Noa Arkaan and Orikih, in hyperspace en route to the home of now ex-Colonel Arkaan. His thoughts on the subject have shaken my faith in what I understood to be the infallibility of the famous Order, and for a now possibly former Jedi Knight to take refuge with a man who's people are known for their enmity towards the Jedi and, indeed, as I have recently discovered, fought many-a-time against them as allies of their ancient enemy, the Sith, is a situation I have not heard of, and one that the galaxy at large is almost certain never to hear of either.

For the Jedi to work with a race known for killing Jedi in their hundreds must have been difficult, and perhaps the reverse was true as well. From my talks with Senaar and Arkaan, their hatred of the Jedi is apparent, and the decisions made about the 78th and Hoday have only served to deepen their feelings towards the Order. Should my own feelings mirror their own? I, who have grown up on one of the worlds where a Jedi presence is strongest and spent most of my short life hearing about their heroic deeds and lofty ideals?

Perhaps judgment on such opinions are better served after more experience with both groups, but I fear my own opinion would be coloured by the increased exposure I have to the Mandalorians.

Jay glanced up from where he was sat hunched around a cheap datapad that had replaced the broken interface in his arm. The severance wage from the GAR hadn't been much, since they had seen fit to fine all of the advisors, and a replacement for his arm was too expensive. With the help of a sympathetic GAR tech, they'd managed to salvage the motherboard and had transferred the main data and memory to a standard clone issue datapad, and he had spent most of the past week trying to get used to it.

He was seated at the mess table of the Tracyn'senaar, with the remains of a light meal surrounding him. Arkaan had disappeared to get some sleep in his bunk some hours ago, and Hoday and Orikih were playing a game of sabacc with a battered deck of cards on a low table, both of them seated on a pair of beaten-up couches pushed up against a pair of bulkheads.

Their departure from Coruscant had been less-than-quiet, with Arkaan barely acknowledging the orders to hold from traffic control before accelerating away, burning hard for open space. Two frigates had moved to intercept, but had mysteriously broken off before getting within range, allowing them to make the jump to lightspeed.

"What will you do now?" asked Jay, staring at Hoday.

"What?" he replied, looking up as though he hadn't heard Jay, keeping his hand hidden from Orikih.

"Well, aren't you a fugitive from the Jedi? I don't think they're going to just let you walk away from being a Jedi."

"They don't really have a choice. And, to be honest, I hadn't thought that far ahead. I don't want to be a member of an organization that treats men like that."

A hatch hissed open, and Arkaan walked in, rubbing the palm of one hand into an eye-socket, still bleary from waking up. He looked up at them and frowned.

"Why are you looking so glum?" he rasped.

"I was just telling Jay how you were right," said Hoday quietly.

"In what way?"

"About the Jedi. They're just not prepared for leading men like that. None of us were. Command needs to be given to the clone officers themselves, or the men who trained them."

"They?" Arkaan raised an eyebrow. "Finally decided to you're not one of them?"

"I stopped being a Jedi the moment they gave me command of the 78th."

"So did the rest of the Order," said Jay quietly and Hoday nodded slowly in agreement.

"My, aren't we getting all philosophical," piped up a voice from a speaker.

Hoday started and Arkaan and Jay both laughed at the same time, stopping as suddenly as they started to stare at each other in surprise, before laughing aloud again.

"What was that?" asked Hoday, looking around.

"He's rude," replied Senaar. "Can I space the Jedi?"

"No," said Arkaan sharply, looking up the ceiling. "He's an ex-Jedi, and he's coming with us."

"Finally seen the light, has he? You need to stop taking in strays, cyar'ika, it's starting to get a little crowded in here."

"Shut up, Senaar. What do you want, anyway?"

"We're coming up on a course correction, do you want me to handle it? Or would you like to get those big, handsome hands all over my consoles?"

Arkaan rolled his eyes.

"You do it. Do all of them without asking for the rest of the journey. Just give us a half hour warning before we arrive."

"Whatever you desire, master."

Hoday raised an eyebrow at Arkaan, who shook his head in reply and walked out back towards his cabin, leaving the others in the common area.

One wall of his cabin slid aside to reveal a small wash area, and he turned on a water spout, filling a basin with water and splashing some of it onto his face. Another smaller spout squirted out some cleaning fluid, which he mixed with the water and pressed another button to warm the water up.

He quickly stripped off and got some clean clothes from a storage unit under the bed, laying them out on top of the scrunched up sheets and turned back to the basin.

"Should I be worried about you?"

Arkaan sighed and turned to see the armoured woman leaning against the wall next to the basin, her arms crossed across her chest. She straightened slightly and pulled off her helmet, throwing it across the room to land on his bed, revealing her flushed face and messy hair, compressed from being in the helmet. Smiling at him, she leaned back against the wall and raised her eyebrows at him, waiting for a reply.

"Why would you be worried?" he replied, turning back to the basin and using a piece of cloth to wash himself.

"Well, your ship talks like me, sounds like me and probably loves you like I do. And she's right, you do seem to be taking in a lot of strays recently."

"What's it to you? You're dead, remember?"

"Not to you."

"I've already asked you to leave me alone, Mesh'ika. You've been dead for three years, is it too much to ask you to stay that way?"

"You're starting to sound like a glitched audio, Noa."

"Then take the hint and leave me alone."

"I can't do that."

"Why not?"

She moved around behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest. Despite knowing she wasn't real, he could still somehow feel the pressure of her arms around him, the cold metal of her gauntlets and breast-plates pressing against his bare skin and making him wince slightly. She laid a cheek against his back and he looked down at the basin, wishing the sensations would end.

"Because you need me," she whispered.



***



Hoday entered the cockpit at the same time as Jay was easing himself into the pilots seat, both hands planted on the arm-rests either side of the padded and contoured seat.

"What are you doing?"

Jay immediately jumped out of the seat, a guilty look on his face, whilst Hoday looked around for the source of the voice. He was still getting used to the disembodied voice of Senaar, and the ship's AI took every opportunity to make the Jedi jump.

"I just wanted to watch," said Jay quietly, sitting back down and directing his voice towards a console to his right.

"Don't touch anything."

"I wouldn't know what I'm doing anyway, so don't worry."

"I could do it," muttered Hoday.

"But you won't. I'll space the whole cockpit if you touch anything either, jet'ika."

"Jeteekah? What's that?"

"It means 'little Jedi', and I don't think she meant it in a friendly way," said a voice from behind them.

They both turned to see Arkaan leaning against the frame of the open doorway. Some of the hairs around his head were still damp, and the stubble on his chin had disappeared, to be replaced with a neatly trimmed moustache and short goatee, clinging to the bottom of his chin. He had on a light beige tunic with black combats and high brown bantha-leather boots that came up to his knee.

"Is that more of your Mando'a?" asked Hoday.

"Yep. It's probably something you're going to have to get used to, but considering you can understand Orikih, I don't think it'll be too much of a problem for you."

"Oh, a linguist, is he?" said Senaar sarcastically, and a torrent of insults erupted from the speakers, all spoken in a dozen different languages, and some of them very creative.

It continued until Arkaan reached over and slapped a button on the wall, cutting off the audio and he sighed.

"Just drop us out of hyperspace and get us moving again, Senaar. You can insult us all later."

"I'll hold you to that."

A set of Mandalorian numbers began to countdown in a corner of the cockpit viewport. After a single vertical line disappeared, the purple-blue tunnel outside elongated and exploded into a million lines, all streaking towards the outer edges of the viewport.

As they decelerated, the lines shortened and disappeared, to be replaced by a dull star-field, with yellow, red and white stars combining to create a sky unique to this part of the galaxy. Nothing but stars could be seen, since this course correction, like the millions of others scattered throughout galaxy, took place in deep space, well away from any planets, stars and asteroid fields, away from the dangerous and potentially lethal gravity wells that could end their journey through hyperspace in a spectacular and ultimately fatal conclusion.

Before any of them could try and see what stars they could recognise, their view was thrown to one side as Senaar made the course correction, settling the Tracyn'senaar onto a new heading before starting another countdown.

Again, the last sigil disappeared, but this time the vessel accelerated into lightspeed. In a reversal of the earlier scene, the stars elongated before morphing into the mottled tunnel of hyperspace. Arkaan leaned forward and gripped the back of the pilots chair, making the leather squeak slightly beneath his fingers. The acceleration always made him slightly dizzy, and standing up didn't help at all.

"Course correction complete," said Senaar quietly. "You can leave me and my cockpit alone now."

"She's got a real attitude on her," said Hoday.

"I made her that way. Keeps things interesting."

"If you say so. Come on, kid, let's see if Orikih's got any more tihaar."

Hoday all but pulled Jay out of the pilots seat, pushing him in front and following him back from the cockpit towards the common area. Arkaan stepped forward and slid himself into the seat Jay had just vacated, swinging it around and putting his booted feet up on a console and leaning his head back.

"I was listening earlier, you know."

Arkaan looked up at the speaker beside him with weary resignation on his face.

"Good for you."

"What was her name? I heard you call her Mesh'ika."

"Meshurok Drayv. I called her Mesh'ika, or Mesh'la."

"How did she die?"

"Does it matter?"

"I know you based me on her, Noa. I know I was supposed to be a cheap replacement, something to ease the pain. You owe me this much."

"I owe you nothing, Senaar."

He sat in silence, mulling over his thoughts and memories. Closing his eyes to stop tears, he sighed softly to himself as he remembered, casting his mind back to that day three years, the day he never wanted to remember…the day he never wanted to forget.

"It was a bar-fight," he said quietly. "A stupid fight that escalated that we weren't even involved with. You remember Chinsky's? In Keldabe?"

"The place we go to every year where you get absolutely batnor on tihaar and ne'tra gal?"

"That's the place. It was in there. We'd just stopped by to have a drink before heading home, and some aruetiise came in, rowdy chakaare looking for a fight. A couple of the regulars went to throw them out, when someone pulled a blaster and started shooting. My Mesh'la took one in the throat and one in the stomach. Neither of us were wearing armour, and the medics couldn't save her. She suffocated."

"I'm sorry," whispered the speaker.

"Did you squeeze the trigger?" replied Arkaan angrily.

"No."

"Then don't apologise for something that wasn't your fault." He sighed. "Just…give me some space. Let me know when we're close to dropping out of lightspeed."

"Have you told the others we're not going to Mandalore yet?"

"No, but they'll find out soon enough."

"Who's the job with?"

"An old friend. Lex Uliik."