Chapter Text
“... just think about it. You know where to find me.”
Din Djarin switches off the holoprojector and sits back in his seat, replaying Greef Karga’s message in his head again and again. He looks at the display on his gunship’s console; it’ll be hours before he lands on Nevarro and learns what favor Greef is asking of him. The magistrate gave no details but promised credits and contacts, which are exactly what Din needs. There’s never enough of either to support Bo-Katan Kryze’s quest to reclaim Mandalore from the Imperial forces still holding the barren world hostage.
“I do this job,” he had told her two days earlier, “and he’ll put us in touch with a weapons dealer on Canto Bight. You can’t rely on Maz Kanata’s generosity forever.”
“We can’t,” she snapped. “You think I don’t know that? It’s not who this weapons dealer is that worries me. It’s that he asked you specifically.”
“He knows I could use the work.”
“He shouldn’t have known anything in the first place.” She stared at him, baleful eyes trying to see through his helmet’s visor. “I’m not convinced you’re using this as an excuse to escape your duty, Mand’alor.”
She always knew how to twist the knife. She never forgot how desperate he was to escape the expectations, the responsibilities, the duty that was thrust upon him the moment he disarmed the Imperial moff Gideon. Even when he finally returned to her and the other Mandalorians rallying to her cause, she held his cowardice over him. They both knew he could not run forever without forsaking the creed he swore his life to, and so her words always hurt.
“My duty is to our people and to your cause,” he said. He always took care to speak calmly and evenly, to never betray the choking turmoil in his chest. “What my friend offers will support it. I trust him. He will deliver.”
Her knife could only dig so deep. She turned away sharply and walked over to the holoprojection that was always on display in the strategy room. She stared at a moon orbiting a planet, ghostly echoes of both of their homes. She reached out to the planet and her hand passed through the bluish light.
“Do you know how long I waited, how long I fought for this chance?” she said, longing and pain vibrating through every word. “I couldn’t begin until the Empire fell to those rebels. It took years to find our people and the resources to support them, years to get the intel I need to take back what’s-what’s ours.
“But you keep looking for a chance to leave, to turn your gaze elsewhere. That needs to end. No more distractions, no more reasons to run. You’re no longer a beroya, Djarin, but the one who won the Darksaber from our enemy. Your place is here.”
He looked up at the projection of Mandalore, the world he watched from the safety of Concordia, a world that was glassed, obliterated by the Empire in their final attempt to end Mandalorian resistance. He didn’t feel the pain and regret that shook Bo-Katan’s voice, but the cries of a lost people trying to go home. He just wished he wasn’t the reason why they came. He wished they looked to someone like Bo-Katan and not to the old dark hilt hanging from his belt, a right and claim he won for an entirely different reason. He wished that the fate of Mandalore didn’t depend on him.
He knew Bo-Katan wished it, too. Even now, her bitter gaze rested on the Darksaber. He turned his left side away from her, hiding it from view. He waited for the cutting words, the challenge to his supposed authority, but it never came.
“I know,” he said, looking up at the holo of Concordia. “I won’t miss your return to Mandalore.”
Din sighs and sits forward to check his calculations for Nevarro again. Another set of coordinates come to mind, information he hadn’t input into the ship’s computer yet, and he freezes, breath catching in his throat. Greef is expecting him and Bo-Katan will want him back well before she launches an assault on Mandalore’s Imperial base, but they don’t need him right away, do they? Could he not take a detour and enter the coordinates he memorized well over a year ago to see where they take him? How much time has he had to himself since finding his way back to Bo-Katan and her Nite Owls, how much time did he lose since rallying his own covert to her cause?
He leaves the ship alone and leans back in the cockpit, staring out the viewport at the swirling lights of hyperspace. His hand drifts to his left arm, fingers running over the dusty black band of fabric tied around it. He closes his eyes, remembering the promise he made under the watchful gaze of twin desert suns.
“It’ll be a while, but I promise we’ll see each other again.”
He swallows down the bitter taste in the back of his throat and shifts in his seat, looking for a more comfortable position to sleep. He still has hours to go before reaching Nevarro and there is nothing else to occupy his time. He folds his arms over his chest and closes his eyes, hoping for better dreams.
He almost has it. The hum of the Storm fades into the hollow howl of a blistering dry wind blowing across the Dune Sea. Twin suns beat down on the beskar as he treads over sand. A child is in his arms, laughing, a comforting weight. A figure cloaked in black walks ahead of them, a Jedi who knows the sands of Tatooine with the intimacy of someone who grew up on the unforgiving world. Din follows the Jedi across the desert until his feet sink too deep below the surface and he can’t move. He looks down but the child isn’t in his arms. He looks up and the Jedi stands before him, faceless under the cowl. A black blade thrums in their hand, the edge crackling with light.
Din jolts upright before the Darksaber plunges through beskar into his chest, gasping, hand pressing over the chestplate. No lightsaber can pierce it without time and brute force, but he still looks down at himself. Relieved yet exhausted, he slumps back in his seat and tries to calm down. But there is no sleeping now. He pulls his helmet off to wipe sweat from his face and peers out the viewport through gloved fingers at the distortions of light and color, squinting as his eyes adjust to the bright display. He looks down at himself and turns his helmet around so that the visor looks up at him, black and unreadable and unyielding. He glances at the knotted black fabric around his upper arm and closes his eyes, accepting the inevitable.
He pulls his helmet back on and checks that the ship is on autopilot before getting up and leaving the cockpit. He’ll spend the rest of the hours down in the cargo hold, keeping his thoughts too busy to wander again.
Din arrives on Nevarro with little fanfare. The Storm lands among other gunships, starfighters, transports, and freighters outside the city. He holsters his pistol and touches the hilt on his belt before exiting the ship. He walks down the ramp to hear someone exclaim, “Look at that piece of junk!”
Greef and Cara Dune, the system’s New Republic marshal, are waiting for him at the city’s weathered stone arch. Gray streaks Greef’s temples and beard, and he looks at ease with the wealth draped over his shoulders in imported fabrics. Cara cut her hair short and her face and arms bear new scars, though they had long scabbed over and flaked away into faint pale lines. Both wear visibly holstered blasters and Cara watches the black sands beyond the city limits with practiced vigilance while Greef slaps Din’s shoulder in greeting. Their smiles don’t reach their eyes as they steer him into the city.
“Been a long time, Mando,” Greef says. “Yet somehow, you haven’t changed one bit.”
“It’s the beskar,” Cara says. “Nice to see a friendly face dropping in every now and then. How long has it been, seven months? Eight? A year?”
Greef huffs. “Didn’t even answer my comm on Life Day.”
The streets of Nevarro have always been dusty and grimy, crowded with all sorts of locals and visitors, and smelling of foodstuff, body odor, aromatics, chemicals, and refuse. But even after so much time away, Din counts fewer heads, fewer vendors with their stalls and spreads of ill-gotten wares, fewer bounty hunters stocking up on supplies before leaving with their contracts and bounty pucks. One stall he’d regularly purchased disruptor charges from is gone, replaced by a growing trash heap. He hears the prices a vendor and customer are arguing over for salvage parts, and he tilts his head at Greef.
Greef shrugs. “Times are tough, my friend. War is good for sellers and nobody else.”
Tell me about it,” Cara adds. “Nobody wants to come out here to buy, sell, or trade. They’re scared of traveling outside the New Republic borders. I’ve had to escort people off-world and back. They paid well but I’m not a bodyguard.”
“And here I thought you’d gone straight and cleaned up the place,” Din says while following them inside the building serving as the magistrate’s headquarters.
A familiar face sits behind the desk by the door, muttering to himself while reading a datapad. He glances up at Greef, opens his mouth, and then sees Din. The Mythrol recoils, throwing himself and his chair back, gills flaring and hissing out musk. “Whatever it is, don’t get me involved! I’m still saving up to buy a new speeder after you flattened mine!”
Greef coughs and waves off the cloudy musk. “Oh, will you shut up about it! And what happened to the reports I told you to finish?”
“Almost done with them, boss, just give me one more week.’
Greef scowls. “That’s what you said last week. You want me to start adding years back to your debt?”
“What? No! You can’t do that!”
The magistrate stares at him until he sighs, shoulders and fins slumping as he drags his chair forward and picks up the datapad. “I’ll have them done by tomorrow morning.”
“That sounds better.” Greef taps Din’s shoulder and points to the back of the building. “This way.”
Cara doesn’t follow them. She goes to her desk across from the Mythrol’s and leans down in front of her terminal to squint at whatever information is scrolling across the screen. “We’ll talk later.”
Din nods and follows Greef to his office at the back, a room at the end of a dimly lit hall. It’s a cluttered space; the shelves are full of trinkets and unusual finds while crates of suspicious-looking salvage jostle for space with old furniture. Greef sidesteps a crate crammed full of pieces of broken ordnance to get behind a large cluttered desk, but he doesn’t sit in the dusty cushioned chair. Instead, he opens a drawer and retrieves a puck and tracking fob.
Din arches an eyebrow while Greef places them on the desk. “You asked me out here about a bounty?”
“Not just any bounty,” Greef says. He hesitates before adding, “This isn’t about the bounty. It’s about the client who gave me the contract.”
Suspicion prickles at the back of Din’s neck. “Who?”
Greef rocks back on his feet. “Years ago, I found myself on the wrong end of a deal with Crimson Dawn. Talks went south, blasters were drawn, and I ran for my life. I would’ve died if a mercenary who was at the meeting hadn’t gotten me to my ship before the local moff sent in his TIE fighters to clean up. I told the mercenary I was in his debt.”
“And now he’s collecting on it.”
“Yes. I’m surprised he didn’t ask sooner, or that he just wanted me to track someone down for him.” Greef activates the puck and it projects the face and shoulders of a human male. “This one worked for him as a forger. Stole a shipment of black market goods and ran. Sounds familiar? He asked me to put the best bounty hunter I have on the sleemo and I told him I had just the person in mind. You bring him back here alive and you’ll get credits and the Canto Bight contact.”
That can’t be all there is to this contract. Who’s willing to give the name and comm code of a weapons dealer in exchange for dragging back some thieving employee? Din picks up the puck and studies the bounty closely. The man staring back has a long angular face, a mess of short dark hair, and pale eyes. He reads the Aurebush underneath. “Juron Sal. Did your associate say what exactly he stole?”
“I didn’t ask. You know the rules.”
“Yeah,” Din says. “Remember how well that turned out the last time?”
Greef glances at the dusty ceiling. “I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up. Look, if you don’t want to take this job, I can pawn it off to someone else and you can go back to doing whatever it is you’re doing out there. But you won’t get the credits or the Canto Bight contact.”
A part of him wants to turn the job down. There has to be a catch, another reason for the price of the bounty on a thief’s head. But both Greef and Moff Gideon put high bounties on his own head, and he was a far more elusive target than this thief. He turns the puck this way and that, studying the bounty. Other than the man’s cold gaze, Juron looks remarkably unremarkable. Is he really worth two hundred thousand credits and a weapons dealer?
“This job sounds too good to be true,” he says.
“Think of it this way,” Greef says. “You’re taking advantage of a man’s wounded pride. He wants to make an example of this person he hired who then betrayed him. Paying a fortune for the services of the Mandalorian will do the trick. Don’t think too hard about it. Find the bounty and bring him here, and we'll both be rewarded handsomely.”
Din huffs. “Your finder’s fee?”
“Not just that. He sent me fifty thousand credits to sweeten the deal and guarantee your services. If you refuse the job, he’s taking them back and I'd really like to keep those credits. I’ll even give you an additional cut from it. So, what do you say? You want in?”
Din still isn’t completely sold on the explanation behind the bounty on the forger’s head but he can’t turn the contract down. He needs those credits and a new source of weapons for Bo-Katan’s forces. His fingers curl around the bounty puck as he stares at Juron’s face and nods.
“Yes.” He switches off the puck and slips it into one of the pouches on his belt. He reaches for the tracking fob. “What else did your associate say about Juron?”
Greef visibly relaxes in relief. “Not much more than what I already told you, but I had my people look into him. Family’s from Naboo but he has no ties there. Guess they didn’t like the kind of work he was doing.”
“So he has no friends on Naboo. What else?”
“He was last seen on a transport heading to the Raioballo sector. Now, the two most likely destinations are Dantooine and Lah’mu, and my credits are on Lah’mu. It’s remote, far from any hyperspace lane. It’ll be a long journey, though, so keep an eye on the fob.”
Din calculates the hours in his head. It could take three, even four days to reach the sector and then he has to check that the fob is pointing to Lah’mu, not Dantooine. “That’s a lot of fuel.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Greef says, exasperated. “I’ll tell the client you took the job. Should be as easy as they come. After all, there’s nobody you can’t track.”
There is, Din thinks immediately. I even have the coordinates and I don’t know where they are.
He switches the fob on and it starts blinking, a dull red light flashing every few seconds. He shifts position ever so slightly and the light flutters, excited to be pointed in the direction of his bounty. He shoves the fob in his belt. “How long until you finish fueling my ship? I need to get to him before he disappears into the Unknown-”
“Leaving already? Mando, it’s been a year since I last saw you! Juron isn’t going to up and disappear on you if you wait a day. Let’s go to the cantina. I could use a drink and you could catch me up on everything you’ve done since the last time you were here-”
Din shakes his head. “I don’t have time. I’m needed elsewhere so the sooner I finish this job, the better.”
Greef sighs. “Some things don’t change. Fine, is there anything else you need? Besides fuel, of course.”
He touches the pouch holding the fob and puck. “No, I have everything.”
“Of course you do.” Greef herds him out of the office. “Try coming around these parts more often. Makes us look good if there’s a Mandalorian walking around.”
They return to the front of the building. Cara is at her desk, feet propped up next to the terminal, her badge, and a couple datapads. As soon as she sees them, she drops her heels to the floor with a thud. The Mythrol jumps and drops the datapad.
“About time,” she grouses while standing and attaching the badge to her belt. “I’ll take it from here.”
Din looks at her and then at Greef. “What is it this time?”
“Relax,” Greef says. “We’re not asking for your help flooding another Imperial research facility with lava.”
The Mythrol shudders loudly while picking up his datapad and then drops it again when Greef loudly clears his throat.
“Tell the nerfherders out there to refuel Mando’s Wookiee ship. Hammer out any dents they see in the hull and patch up whatever doesn’t need a hammer. And tell them it needed to be done yesterday.”
Din sighs while the Mythrol rummages through his desk, looking for a comlink. “Stop calling it a Wookiee ship.”
“Why? It was built by Wookiees to be flown by Wookiees.”
“Do I look like a Wookiee to you?” Din asks.
Greef looks at him from head to toe. “How am I supposed to know?”
Cara rolls her eyes and smacks Din’s shoulder. “Let’s go outside.”
They don’t go far. Din leans against a post and watches the marshal pace in a circle, arms crossed while her brow furrows with thought. Up close, the scars are even more noticeable and he wonders where she picked them up. His gaze then drops to her badge, the gleaming emblem of the New Republic. He tilts his head; the badge is dented like it either fell from a great height or deflected a blaster bolt.
“They called you in?” Din asks.
“What?” She looks down at her badge and runs her thumb over the dent. “Yeah, they did. There were reports of suspicious activity in the Breago system, so Captain Teva tok a squadron out there to investigate. Came back saying a star destroyer was blockading Seikosha. New Republic scrambled starfighters and called in everyone near the Borderlands, including me.”
He had seen reports Koska Reeves brought to the strategy room, compilations of rumors rippling through the Outer Rim of unrest and a growing Imperial shadow. They used these reports to strike unprotected Imperial freighters and supply depots, but it never dawned on anyone that the New Republic was also reacting to those reports.
“What happened?”
Cara kicks at the ground, scuffing up black and brown dust. She dislodges a chunk of rusted metal, which bounces and pings off a passing droid; it whistles indignantly at her before hurrying after a Jawa.
“I still don’t know. We got there and the star destroyer was already gone. Left Seikosha space just hours before we arrived. We went planetside to sweet and secure everything and found a few surprises.” She points to the scars on her face and arms. “Felt good dropping in and putting down those stormtroopers but we didn’t find out what they were doing there. They didn’t even touch Cryospac.”
“Maybe they weren’t interested in stealing land speeders.”
“Yeah, what’s a repulsorlift factory compared to a shipyard?” She looks up at the clear sky. “Captain Teva was right. When he first recruited me, he said something was going on out there but the Core wasn’t listening. After Seikosha, I don’t know what more they need to start paying attention.”
She looks at him. “Have you heard anything?”
Has he? Try as he might, Din can’t recall any specific details from Koska’s last report, not that it would’ve had anything that a New Republic marshal could use. “Not recently. We stole a freighter full of medical supplies, but the bacta was years old. We had to eject the entire supply. That’s basically what our intel is used for. We steal from these remnant warlords and rescue hidden coverts. Kryze doesn’t… care what the New Republic is doing as long as they stay out of her way.”
Cara snorts. “I’m not surprised.” She nods to a young Trandoshan bounty hunter walking by, cradling a blinking fob in their hands. “All the intel I send to Teva comes from the guild. They had a cozier relationship with the Empire than I’d like but everyone here remembers what Moff Gideon did to the city. They prefer the New Republic because the Republic stays out of their way.”
“But now?”
“Now? I don’t know.” She gestures to him and starts walking down the street. He follows her, wondering if they’re going somewhere specific or if she just wants to take a walk.
“I did what you asked,” Cara says. “Teva told me there was a fight on Crait a couple months ago. Imps found an old Rebel base and his squadron went there to drive them out. They were outnumbered. He said his whole squadron would’ve died if Commander Luke Skywalker didn’t show up when he did.”
Din’s breath catches. His throat and chest tighten, and he clenches his hands while carefully asking, “What happened?”
“TIE fighters and stormtroopers got blown to bits and they secured the base. Skywalker left once he knew Teva’s squadron was safe.” Cara looks at him carefully. “I don’t know if that’s what you wanted to hear or-”
“No,” Din breathes out. He forces his hands to relax. “No, it is. Thank you.”
She doesn’t look convinced. “Really? That’s all you wanted to know?”
“Yes.” He doesn’t dare ask for more. It’s enough to know that Luke is out there, though he wonders who is watching Grogu when the Jedi is flying with New Republic starfighters. What was Luke even doing near Crait? Was he searching for more Jedi relics or did he come when Teva sent a distress signal?
“Okay, then,” Cara says. “If I hear anything new, I’ll comm you about it-”
“Just tell me you have information,” he says. “I”ll come to you.”
“Really? Thought you and Kryze were invading your homeworld to take it back?”
“I’ll make time,” Din says. “He’s my link to the kid. How else will I know if they’re - if Grogu’s okay?”
Cara stares at him, eyes narrowing. She doesn’t press the matter, though. She turns and resumes walking down the street, waving off a Jawa offering her a droid part. “Thanks, but I’m not interested. So, when are you inviting me to Mandalore?”
He tilts his head while hurrying after her. “Aren’t you a New Republic marshal now? I thought you had responsibilities here.”
“Do you think I like sitting around all day waiting for my superiors to tell me where the trouble is? Before Seikosha, I was getting real bored keeping the peace here. Now I’m lucky if there are enough people to throw out of the cantina for brawling tonight. Haven’t had a good one in weeks.”
Din huffs a laugh. “And you said your shocktrooper days were behind you.”
“What can I say? There are still people out there who believe in the Empire, and then there are people like me.” She turns to face him while still walking. “I’m serious. When you’re ready to take Mandalore back, come pick me up.”
He shakes his head, smiling. “Fine.” His comlink pings and he glances at his vambrace before tapping a command. “Yes?”
“Your Wookiee ship’s fueled up and ready to go,” Greef’s voice speaks inside his helmet. “You sure you don’t want to spend some time here before you head out?”
“I’ve got a job to do,” Din replies. “I’ll see you after I bring back Juron Sal.”
“Oh, fine. Good luck, Mando.”
He switches off the comlink and looks at Cara. She points down the street. “I’ll walk you there.”
Din buys a handful of flash charges before they leave the city, forking over more Republic credits than he feels comfortable parting with. He tucks the box under his arm while searching the field of gunships and freighters for the Storm and finally spots his ship after a minute of searching. Two mechanics are riding away from the Auzituck-class gunship on a small fuel transport. One of them, a Rodian, looks around and his large eyes fall on Din and Cara. The mechanic screams, throws himself at the transport’s lever, and it careens into the path of another transport. They swerve around each other and nosedive into Nevarro’s black sand, and the mechanics jump off of them to shout insults at each other.
Cara sighs and rolls her eyes. “I’ll deal with them. So, where to?”
They stop in front of the Storm, whose hull bears less carbon scoring than he remembers. Din taps a command on his vambrace and the gunship’s ramp lowers to the ground while the door slides open.
“Raioballo sector,” Din says. “Bounty’s probably hiding on Lah’mu. It’s the best place to lay low if you’re on the run, anyway.”
“Wish I could go with you,” Cara says wistfully. She taps on her dented badge. “LIke you said, I’m a marshal and I’ve got my responsibilities here. But comm me if you need a second person. Gives me an excuse to ditch my post for a few days.”
He’s tempted to ask now. It’ll be nice to travel with a familiar face, someone who knows him as someone other than a bounty hunter or the de facto Mand’alor of a homeless, restive people. It’ll be nice to not be constantly reminded of his burdens, of the path he is walking that takes him further away from where he wants to belong.
Instead, he nods in acknowledgement and turns away to walk up the ramp.
“I will.”
Two and a half days into his journey to the Raioballo sector, Din receives a transmission from Bo-Katan. She stares at him, chin up, helmet under her arm. The holo flickers constantly, struggling to maintain the connection in hyperspace, but he can see scratches and scorch marks from a firefight on her blue beskar chestplate and pauldrons. A dark splotch covers her left cheek and brow; either she’s comming him right after a fight or she chose not to use bacta on herself.
“You missed a fine battle on Eriadu,” she says. “We extracted a covert hiding from the local population. They will join the cause.”
Din sits forward, perching on the edge of his chair while studying her expression.
“What happened there?” he asks.
“What do you know about Eriadu? It’s full of Imperial sympathizers who prospered under the Empire. They’ve grown suspicious of a covert that only comes out after dark. If we hadn’t come when we did, the covert would’ve been driven out into the open and attacked, even executed.”
He shudders, recalling the gut-wrenching horror over the discovery of discarded helmets underneath Nevarro’s streets. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course not. You weren’t there. Did you know, after we left the system, they asked about you? Even in hiding, they heard rumors of the Darksaber returning to the hands of a Mandalorian. Stories spread, Djarin. They know what happened. You should be here to prove that the stories are true.”
He clenches his hands. “I will, after I fulfill this contract. I gave my word because the rewards will benefit your cause-”
“Our cause.”
He manages not to twitch. “I am doing this for our people. For Mandalore.”
Bo-Katan smiles bitterly. She pushes back her short red hair and lifts her helmet up with both hands to pull it over her head. “You’re a terrible liar, Djarin. You may not have wanted this, but you took the Darksaber from Gideon. Yours is the story people need to hear. You are the hope our people need so stop finding excuses to stray. Stop giving me reason to challenge you for the Darksaber.”
He inhales sharply. The question is on the tip of his tongue. Why not challenge him now and force a duel once he returns to the Mandalorian fleet? Her desire for the authority and power the blade brings to its wielders simmers, a constant presence bubbling under in all of their conversations. She won’t act on it, however. His story serves its purpose and there is no need to change it.
But how much longer can he keep doing this? “You should have taken it when I gave you the chance.”
“Did you think it would be so simple? Stories have power. They sway hearts and change the course of history. What stories do you think would be told if I claimed the Darksaber without merit? You earned the right to it, Djarin, and I will be the one who tells you if you stray too far from the privilege.”
He says nothing. He still remembers the glee in Gideon’s eyes, the malicious delight in his voice as he taunted Bo-Katan because they both knew she couldn’t take the Darksaber without killing Din. The stories about the Darksaber’s power wouldn’t allow for any other way out.
Bo-Katan sighs heavily, perhaps realizing she’d pushed the conversation too far. “When should we expect you back?”
“A week, maybe two. The bounty is hiding in the Raioballo system. Tracking him will take time.”
“I heard you’re one of the best in the bounty hunting business,” she says and pulls her helmet on. Her vocoder-filtered voice is even colder as she adds, “Best not disappoint your client.”
“I don’t,” he replies. “Is there anything else?”
“No, Mand’alor. Ret’urcye mhi.”
She ends the transmission before he can react, leaving him sitting in silence in the cockpit with her voice ringing in his ears and a heavy weight on his belt. His hand drifts to the hilt clipped to it, a weathered inert weapon holding centuries of bloody history within it. The Darksaber is inactive yet its hilt seems to thrum in his hand like a living thing. Luke explained that every lightsaber held a crystal within it and that he could feel echoes of every person who ever held the Darksaber through its crystal. Din wonders what impression Luke left behind when he held it against stormtroopers on Tatooine.
He wonders what Luke is doing now. Is the Jedi back with Grogu, teaching the child the ways of the Jedi, or is he still traversing the galaxy, searching for more artifacts and listening for New Republic distress calls? Is he moving among them as a commander again? News of Imperial remnants raising their heads in the wake of Gideon’s ruin have been spreading throughout the Outer Rim and even the New Republic is taking notice. The galaxy is becoming increasingly fraught with old tensions bubbling under new faces and Din wonders if war will break out again. If it does, will Grogu be safe?
He glances at the console. The coordinates are in his head and in the ship’s computer, never accessed and never used. Maybe… maybe now is the time to use them to find the child and his Jedi guardian. Once Din returns to the Mandalorian fleet, he may not get another chance.
After, he thinks. After I finish this job.
Bo-Katan’s words echo in his head and guilt wells up in his throat. Not yet. He made a promise to Grogu all those months ago, but it’s not time yet. He is a Mandalorian and he is the keeper of the Darksaber. His place is with his people until the Darksaber is no longer his. He doesn’t linger on the details of how that could happen, though.
He instead turns his attention to the display showing how far he still needs to travel through hyperspace to reach the Raioballo system. He glances at the fob next to it, blinking steadily, and then engages the autopilot. He’s tired of staring at the viewport and now that Bo-Katan is not here to aggravate him, he realizes he’s hungry.
He goes to the storage locker at the back of the gunship’s upper deck to pick through his ration packs. He sits in his quarters, eats without tasting anything, and then takes out the bounty puck to study Juron’s face again. He learns nothing new, so he tosses it aside and lies down to sleep on the narrow bunk. He doesn’t dream and he doesn’t rest; he wakes up groggy and disoriented and exhausted. He staggers to the tiny refresher attached to his quarters to splash a handful of precious water on his face, then pulls his helmet back on and returns to the cockpit.
He still has hours to go before the Storm reaches the edge of Raioballo space. He sits and checks his coordinates; the gunship’s trajectory is off so he adjusts his calculations. Din leans back and sighs, turning the blinking fob over and over in his hand while staring out the viewport at the distorted glimmer and glow of hyperspace.
At the edge of the Raioballo system, the fob points him towards Lah’mu so he points the Storm to the rural Outer Rim planet. It takes another two hours after exiting hyperspace to reach Lah’mu, a sparsely populated blue planet with a distinct ring. No radio tower or patrolling starfighters come out to intercept him as he closes in so he gets to sit quietly while the Storm breaches the atmosphere. Hazy gray clouds draping around Lah’mu give way to dark foamy seas, black beaches, and deep green hills and fields. He keeps an eye on the tracking fob while soaring over homesteads and villages; it blinks and beeps insistently, telling him that the bounty is hiding somewhere on this world.
The gunships’ scanners pick up a cluster of buildings surrounded by farmland and the fob starts blinking rapidly. He looks out the viewport while circling a small town, giving it a wide berth. A few of the locals look up to watch him pass by but others ignore him while going about with their daily tasks. Offworlders must come here frequently, meaning both he and Juron wouldn’t cause a stir when walking into town.
Din lands the Storm out in the low, rolling hills a klik or two away from the town. Nobody needs to come investigate his ship and his bounty certainly doesn’t need to know that someone is here to apprehend him. Din powers down the Storm and activates its defense grid. He shoves the tracking fob in his belt, looks for the bounty puck, and goes back to his quarters to retrieve it. He climbs down into the cargo hold to unlock the weapons locker, which has seen quite a few upgrades since he returned to Bo-Katan’s Mandalorian fleet. He still favors his IB-94 pistol and holsters it, then slings a sniper rifle over his shoulder. He attaches the jetpack to his backplate, checks his whistling birds launcher, counts the charges on his belt and bandolier, contemplates the beskar spear leaning against the wall next to the locker for a couple seconds, and then lowers the ramp. A cool damp breeze sweeps inside the Storm and swirls around him, beckoning him to come out onto Lah’mu’s rich black earth and verdant greenery. The ramp retracts and he checks that the gunship is sealed shut before activating his jetpack.
High in the overcast sky, he switches on the helmet’s scanners and surveys the town. Well-tread dirt roads wind around crop fields and disappear into the distant haze, presumably ending at either the sea or another village. Tame beasts that the townspeople brought with them to Lah’mu look up from inside their fenced paddocks and low in consternation as he flies over them, drawing the attention of the people and droids out in the fields. Din lands at the edge of town, a grid of grimy one-story buildings built during a time before the galactic civil war, and takes out the tracking fob.
Locals working inside or in front of their shops stop to watch him walk by with the fob out, blinking faster and faster as he closes in on his bounty. Nobody steps forward to ask or to interfere. They seem to prefer minding their own business, which suits him just fine.
The fob leads him to the doorstep of the town’s only watering hole, a rundown building with a metal tankard nailed to the wall next to the door. He puts the fob away and scans his surroundings before entering the tavern. It’s a homely establishment with furnishings that were either imported years ago or made by hand with bits of wood and duracrete. The tavern is currently closed but the light is one and someone is behind the bar. Din rests his hand on his holstered blaster pistol while strolling up to it. He leans on the sticky surface and taps on it, startling the bartender. A metal cup tumbles to the floor and rolls under the counter. Din stops it with his foot, picks it up, and sets it on the counter. He places the bounty puck down next to it and activates it to show the bartender his face, name, and bounty.
Juron Sal stares at his likeness for a second, two seconds, three, and then smiles.
“So you’ve come,” Juron says while picking up the cup and placing it behind the bar. “I’ve been waiting for you, Mandalorian.”
What? Din loosens the strap on his holster while studying the bounty. Juron shows no fear. In fact, he pushes the puck back across the counter and starts crouching to continue his task. Din yanks out his pistol and points it at Juron’s head.
“Hands where I can see them.”
Juron freezes. “I’m not armed, I swear If you were sent by Greef Karga of Nevarro-”
Din twitches. How does Juron know that? Did someone leak information to him about the bounty on his head? Why isn’t he trying to escape?
“-then I know I’ve been caught. It would be foolish to try to escape someone with your talents. But I have been expecting you. Let me show you what I have.”
He starts reaching under the counter and Din raises his other arm, priming the whistling birds. “Don’t.”
“You’re well prepared,” Juron says, “to kill someone over a bounty puck.”
He places one next to his and activates it to reveal the holo of a Kajain’sa’Nikto’s face and shoulders. Din stares at the Nikto’s face in confusion and then reads the Aurebesh underneath the bust. The name means nothing to him. What is going on?
“I’m not here to play games.”
“Nor am I. My employer hired you, but not to bring me in. Years ago, he helped a city magistrate escape from Crimson Dawn. That earned him a favor. He’s collecting on that favor now.”
Something is happening here and Din is in the thick of it. Greef owes someone a favor and that person called in that favor by asking him to put his best bounty hunter on a simple contract. The so-called bounty is hiding on Lah’mu, if one can even call it that, but he says the actual bounty is a Nikto that Din has never heard of. Why go through all this trouble to hire him? What do Greef’s associate and Juron have to hide?
He raises his pistol back up to Juron’s head. “What is this really about?”
Juron sighs and leans on the counter, clasping his hands. They’re pale and pristine with blunt, clean fingernails; this man has never seen a day’s worth of hard labor, or he must have access to high quality bacta to mend even the smallest scratch. “It’s about trust. This is a new lawless galaxy where allegiances change with moon phases and reputable people like Greef Karga choose to associate with representatives of the New Republic. My employer had to make sure Greef made good on his promise.”
Din huffs. “How do you know I’m proof that he did?”
The bartender smiles widely. It pushes his face out of shape and enhances the unease of his uncomfortably pale eyes sweeping over Din, sliding around the beskar like his armor is the actual prize. Din shudders and adjusts his grip on his pistol. The whistling birds launcher thrums on his left vambrace, ready to unleash its explosive charges.
“We know who you are, Mandalorian. Your reputation precedes you in ways both you and Greef fail to recognize or anticipate. Surely you asked yourself why my employer offered to put you in touch with a reputable arms dealer on Canto Bight.”
A chill ripples down his spine. Din leans forward, watching Juron very carefully. “I don’t bring my bounties in cold, but I might make an exception for you.”
Juron’s smile widens even more. “We hear things. It’s how my employer stays ahead in this game. And Lady Bo-Katan Kryze doesn’t hide what she desires most. My employer wants to invest in her. All you have to do is bring in this Nikto thief and we will fund your grand crusade against the Imperial remnants holding your homeworld hostage.”
Din hesitates. Why go through all this trouble with Greef and the Bounty Hunters Guild to offer to fund Bo-Katan’s mission? “You could have just asked.”
“You think someone like her would stoop to negotiate with people like us? Years ago, perhaps, when she was younger and more desperate. But you are a bounty hunter, Mandalorian. You understand us.”
“I also understand that no simple thief is worth an arms dealer’s comm code.” Din points his pistol at the Nikto’s puck. “What did he really do?”
“I thought the guild code didn’t allow for questions.”
“This Nikto wasn’t part of the contract so the code doesn’t apply to him. Don’t make me ask you again.”
Juron considers his words. “Fine. I’m not getting on the wrong side of a Mandalorian today. His name is Sa Vann. My employer hired him to move several cases of refined coaxium but the buyer never received them. We’ve been chasing Sa Vann ever since.”
This sounds like the story Greef tried to sell Din, except the thief is a Nikto and what was stolen was coaxium, which would warrant the services of an expensive bounty hunter. Still, if this bartender and his employer are willing to lie to Greef, who’s the say they aren’t also lying to Din?
“How do I know you’re telling the truth? You already lied to Karga. How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
“My employer is not foolish enough to lie to a Mandalorian who can track him and cut him down with a laser sword.”
His pale eyes flick down to the hilt on Din’s belt and a wave of fear swells up Din’s throat. Before Juron can react, Din lunges over the counter and grabs him by the collar. Din presses the muzzle of his blaster to the man’s forehead and Juron’s confidence cracks. He stiffens and his strange wide smile thins to a nervous, twitching line.
“I - I’ve heard stories,” he stammers. He tries to lean back and get away from the blaster but Din’s grip is firm. “We all have. A Mandalorian in unpainted beskar armor shot up his guild and stole a warlord’s bounty. A Mandalorian with a black saber was spotted at Takodana with Lady Bo-Katan Kryze and his armor wasn’t painted. If you know both things to be true-”
“They aren’t related,” Din says. “Not every Mandalorian paints their armor. And you still haven’t convinced me that I should bring in Sa Vann, not you.”
“I am proof you know how to follow instructions. Sa Vann is proof you are smarter than that. If you bring me in, he won’t give you the Canto Bight contact. If you decide to pursue Sa Vann, my employer will confess everything to Karga and release your well-earned rewards for you to collect when you return to Nevarro.”
He slowly moves his left hand under the counter and Din pushes the blaster muzzle hard against the man’s forehead. “Hands where I can see them.”
“You’ll want his tracking fob to go with the bounty puck, Mandalorian,” Juron says slowly. “I have it under the counter. I’m also taking my puck. It’s proof I did my job.”
No one can draw fast enough to outrun his trigger finger. Din tilts his head. “Fine. But slowly.”
Juron reaches under the bar and sets an inactive tracking fob on the counter next to the Nikto’s puck. He then takes his puck and pockets it, then raises both hands to show Din that they’re empty. Din finally lets him go. He deactivates the whistling birds but keeps his pistol on Juron while reaching for the fob. He activates it and the fob starts blinking dully, giving periodic beeps that tell him he is nowhere near the Nikto thief.
“Anything else I should know?” he asks while pocketing the new puck.
“Yes. I can tell you where he was last headed. You might be able to pick up his trail there.”
“And where is that?”
Juron gives him a name and his blood runs cold. There’s a pulse in his head and a pounding in his chest. His hands numb and prickle, and he struggles to holster his pistol without giving his shock away. He presses his fingertips together to stop their shaking and he takes a deep, deep breath before he asks.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Din nods and slowly turns away. “If I return with this Nikto and am not given what was promised to me, I will find you.”
“Then we’ll both have to make sure we hold up our ends of the bargain,” Juron replies. “Good luck, Mandalorian.”
Din walks out of the tavern to see a small group of locals gathered on the other side, warily watching what they must expect to be a confrontation. He shakes his head and keeps walking, and the crowd slowly disperses. Nobody pays him mind and he doesn’t look at any of them. His eyes are on the far horizon, the line between the green hills and the gray sky. Somewhere between that line is the Storm and he heeds to get back to it. He needs to get out of the open and within its walls, he needs to-
He activates his jetpack and leaps into the sky, soaring over the startled farmers and droids while putting them all far behind. Wind howls and tears at him as he flies to his gunship. He lands gracelessly several meters from it, kicking up clods of black dirt and turf. He slowly stands up but his first step to the Storm wobbles and his second step brings him back down to his knees. He can’t breathe. He bends forward, helmeted head pressing into the dark damp earth, and tries to catch his breath, tries to push against the ever tightening feeling in his chest. His armor is a barrier and a prison, hiding him from the world and suffocating him inside. He exhales harshly and chokes while trying to breathe in, and his head keeps spinning. He curls inward, squeezing his eyes shut, trying with all his might to breathe.
His back and knees ache, and he slowly tips to the side and rolls onto his back. He stares up at the sky; it is dim and the gathering clouds are heavy with rain. Still, he takes his time to get up, slowly sitting forward with a low groan. His back and joints ache. He’s not so young now and he feels every year of it as he gets to his feet and staggers over to the Storm. He punches in the code to open the hatch and limps up into the cargo hold. The hull seals shut behind him while he detaches his jetpack and shrugs the sniper rifle off his shoulder. He sets them next to the weapons locker, and then sits down on the floor. He slowly pulls his helmet off and drags his hand through sweaty dark hair, then leans back with a sigh. The sound echoes all around the cargo hold.
Once upon a time, this would not have bothered him. Once upon a time, he wouldn’t have given another thought to his solitary life. But he spent months traveling with Bo-Katan’s fleet, where there is no expectation of solitude; her flagship, her victory over the former moff, was a hub of activity with Mandalorians in every corridor and around every corner. There was camaraderie and a sense of belonging, of knowing the reason why they were all here.
And once upon a time, on another gunship in another life, he took in a child and traveled with him for months, searching for the elusive Jedi. He could almost hear Grogu’s laughter and curious sounds, the pitter patter of feet and the huff of annoyance as he followed Din around the Razor Crest. He could almost imagine the weight and warmth of the child pressing up against his side, burbling softly as he slept.
The solitude, Din realizes, is no longer tolerable. He pulls out the tracking fob and turns it over in his gloved hand, watching the blinking light, and wonders if it’s time to put aside his bounty hunting life.
Eventually, he gets up. He picks up his helmet but keeps it under his arm while climbing up the ladder to the upper deck. He enters the cockpit and sits down heavily, then looks out the viewport at Lah’mu’s verdant hills and black earth while slowly bringing the ship’s engines on-line. The Storm thrums as its many systems come to life one by one, readying the ship for the next destination. He looks down at the console; it prompts him for coordinates but he ignores it for now. He grips the control yoke and engages the thrusters, and the Storm rises.
The gunship soars above the lush hills and grasslands, and climbs into the clouds. Rain pelts the transparisteel panes as the ship gains altitude and speed. Water slides off and gives Din a clear view of Lah’mu’s massive ring and stars above the clouds. He looks down at the console’s prompt again, a request for coordinates and calculations, and a choking lump forms in the back of his throat. He swallows hard and enters them slowly, precisely, with purpose and dread.
The hyperdrive engages and the Storm lurches, then leaps into hyperspace to take Din home to Aq Vetina.
Hours after leaving the Raioballo sector, Din caves and enters a comm code. He waits, hoping his timing is right and that he isn’t intruding. He just needs someone to talk to, someone who would understand why he feels like crawling out of his own skin. But he gets no response. He tries again and again, five times in a row, but Paz Vizsla never responds. Defeated, he decides to send a transmission instead. Paz must be busy with the situation on Eriadu or with keeping an eye on Bo-Katan. He can comm Din back later.
“Vod,” Din says. “If you hear this, comm me. This… job, something about it doesn’t feel right. I gave my word and I can’t turn back, but I need you to be ready. I’m not making the same mistake.”
He pauses, pressing his lips together. The surviving members of their Nevarro covert don’t say they blame him for what happened after he fled with the child, but they haven’t forgiven him either. His decision, the brash impulsive choice to go back for Grogu, upended their lives and they barely got out. So many more were left behind, dead and bleeding in the sewers under the city. He can’t see that happen again, especially now that there is much more than a covert to protect. This job can’t sabotage Bo-Katan’s efforts and their people’s hopes.
“Your place is here,” Bo-Katan told him, again and again.
He sighs. “This is my last job for the guild, at least until Mandalore is ours again. Just wait for me, brother. I’ll see you soon. Ret’urcye mhi.”
He ends the transmission and looks out the viewport at hyperspace. He checks the readouts on the console; it’ll be hours before he reaches the Outer Rim world. He stares at the coordinates, wishing they were taking him elsewhere. What sort of homecoming is this, when he is about to step foot on the surface of his homeworld for the first time in decades not to visit the grave of his childhood but to fulfill a contract for credits and a comm code?
Din was a child when the Separatists came to his hometown of Elun on Aq Vetina. He lost his parents, his family, his friends, his community, his home, and he was saved by the Death Watch. They held out a hand for him to take and he never looked back. He could not take himself back or face the horrors of war. He still never knew why the Separatists came to Aq Vetina. What did they want from an agrarian world that sold foodstuff and fabrics and kept itself out of the war? Did someone make a deal with them or did they just want another world to conquer and keep? Nobody ever told him and he never looked.
He sleeps lightly in the cockpit, arms folded over his chest, head tilted to the side. He dreams lightly, too, of acrid black smoke and fire, of massive dark shapes and gleaming red eyes, of screaming and shreds of dark red fabric floating in the burning air. Buildings topple, blasted apart by battle droids or strafed into rubble by droid bombers. He stands in the middle of the town square, terrified and petrified as a bomber circles the burning town and turns to face him, photoreceptors burning bright red. It swoops down low to gun him down, engines whirring with power and speed, and he squeezes his eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable.
He wakes, eyes wide and brow beaded with sweat. He lurches forward with a gasp and presses his hand to the chestplate, pushing beskar against his pounding heart. Wheezing for air, he slowly looks up to see the reason why he woke up. The Storm had dropped out of hyperspace while he slept, and he now stares out the viewport at a brown, green, and blue planet slowly orbiting its star. It must be Aq Vetina. Something blinks furiously out of the periphery of his vision and he turns to realize it’s the tracking fob, not the console. His bounty, the Nikto thief Sa Vann, is still there. Din just has to find out where.
He takes the Storm down into Aq Vetina’s atmosphere and the sight that greets him weighs like a stone in his stomach. It is midday in this sector and the sky is clear, giving him an unobstructed view of red mountains and plateaus, glossy-leaved dark green trees and dusty plains, blue watering holes and rivers that feed the deep dark seas. The ship’s sensors reveal small cities and towns dotting the landscape. He doesn’t recognize them; he was too young to travel with his parents when they left Elun to do business elsewhere, and then it was too late to see the rest of his homeworld. The fob doesn’t react to any of them so he keeps going. After several minutes, the fob starts pinging furiously and he looks ahead at distant peaks. The sight takes his breath away. Decades later, and he still knows their shapes. He knows the woods beneath them. He knows the lazy lines of the rivers flowing down from the mountains through the woods below. He knows this place all too well.
What is the Nikto bandit doing here in the ruins of his home? The sensors pick up rubble, shells of homes and storehouses and workshops, overgrown remnants of roads that lead into and out of town. Sensors also pick up a lifeform drifting through the ruins but Din can’t tell if it’s local wildlife or Sa Vann. The lifeform turns and vanishes into the woods outside the crumbling town walls. The fob still pings; Sa Vann is here somewhere, and Din will need to land to find and flush him out.
He grips the yoke tightly while beginning the landing sequence but his hands still shake while steering the Storm past the ruined town and into the woods, the same woods where he once played as a child. He looks out the viewport at the waxy dark leaves as the gunship settles on the earth, and faded memories shake off the dust one by one. He remembers collecting branches for his father’s workshop. He remembers taking a nap with his mother in the shade of the trees, baskets of leaves in their laps. He remembers laughter and songs, the humming of red beetles that lent their color to Aq Vetina’s famed textiles, the rustling of leaves when the winds blew in from the mountains and the seas.
He blinks and looks down at the chrono. How long has he been sitting here? He shakes his head and powers down the engines before lurching onto his feet. He leaves the cockpit, hand gripping the blinking fob too tightly. Its shape and sounds keep him to task. He isn’t here to remember the past but to hunt in the present so that Mandalorians can have a future.
In the cargo hold, he opens the weapons locker and takes out his blaster pistol, several detonators, and a handful of flash charges. He hooks a pair of stun cuffs to the back of his belt and shoves his vibroknife in his boot. He looks at the beskar spear leaning against the wall next to the locker but reaches instead for his jetpack. He counts the whistling birds in this left vambrace and the amount of fuel left in his right, and then looks at the clipped Darksaber hilt. Does he really need to bring it with him when apprehending a coaxium thief? His fingers twitch at the thought of leaving it behind. Instead, he shuts the weapons locker and opens the door to exit the gunship.
His helmet’s filtration system could filter many things but it could not completely filter out the smells of the earth and woods around him. At the bottom of the ramp, he scans his surroundings but he can’t focus on the readout on his helmet’s display. He looks up at the late afternoon sky and watches birds with long tail feathers soar and hop from treetop to treetop, screeching at him and each other. A gentle breeze shakes the branches, scattering leaves. He brushes them aside, then taps on his vambrace to switch sensors and scans the woods again. The readout shows the outline of a broken wall and his heart starts beating loudly and hollowly in his chest. He takes out the fob and studies the frantically blinking light, then starts walking toward his former home.
For the first minutes, for the first several meters, he relies on his scanners and the fob to find his way. He doesn’t recognize the trees or the lay of the land around him. Then he spots a large trunk split in two, each half rising towards the sky, and he remembers climbing the left side of the tree, claiming to his friends that it was the taller of the two halves. Din walks up to it and stares up at the canopy, then drops his gaze to the ground in search of more memories. A trail looped around this tree; one way led to the river and the other back home. He circles the massive trunk but after thirty years, the footpath is gone. Nobody returned to Elun after the Separatists and Mandalorian Death Watch fought over it.
Trepidation, deja vu, knots his stomach and squeezes his throat tightly as he follows his memory of the footpath he used to tread as a child. All the while, the fob blinks frenetically, telling him he is on the right path. Sa Vann is here in the ruins of his home. Can he keep pretending that this is coincidence? Or did he just happen to be the one bounty hunter that Greef knows who was born on and rescued from Aq Vetina, the Outer Rim world that this Nikto thief just happened to choose as his hiding place?
Something cracks sharply and he looks down, but he didn’t step on a branch and snap it. He then looks at the fob to see a crack in the plastoid casing. He forces his fingers to uncurl and his hand to relax its deadly grip.
His foot collides with stone. He staggers, swearing, and looks down to see broken duracrete and plaster sticking out of the dirt and leaves. It looks like a building block, one of very many. He searches his surroundings and realizes he’s at the threshold of Elun. The town is almost unrecognizable; whatever buildings survived the Separatist attack had toppled over or hollowed up, or were taken apart by enterprising locals looking to salvage building material. Plants grow wild and thick between the cracks and at the base of broken walls. A tall tree sprouts from the rubble where a workshop used to stand. Din can’t remember the name of the family that owned it or what the workshop was for.
He treads cautiously down the main street, glancing between the scanner’s readout on his visor and the fob in his hand. His gaze always skitters to a stop in between helmet and fob to stare at the crumbling ruins all around him. The trees he remembers growing neatly between buildings have become tall, pushing aside rubble and burying everything under their thick knotted roots. Here and there — his heart drops at the sight of a faded reddish fabric caught in the branches of a blackened tree. He reaches up and the threads fray at his touch.
What else is he going to find here? Is he going to see the bones and tatters of townspeople who couldn’t escape the battle droids that swept through Elun? Speaking of which, he spots the rusting hulls of fallen B2 droids with green and growing things spilling out of gaping blast holes. His steps falter when he realizes that a strange light-colored object under a rusted droid hull is a bleached human skull. He shudders and then slowly walks over to it. A few strands of wavy dark hair is still attached to the scalp but there is nothing else to identify this person. Din wouldn’t remember anyway. A sour taste fills his mouth and he turns aside, breathing deep and fast to force the bile back down. He swallows hard and tries to walk away, but he can’t. He can’t walk away while this nameless person is still lying out here, trapped under the droids that probably killed them and forgotten by the rest of the galaxy. He crouches down and holds his breath while carefully pushing rubble and dirt over the skull, burying it because there is nobody left who can tend to the dead in their way.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
He was just a child, he was helpless, what could he even do? But after he swore to the creed and took up bounty hunting to provide for the covert, he never thought to come back. Now he is here, hunting for a bounty instead of giving his memories and the dead their due. How could he ever show his face here again?
The fob still blinks. His job isn’t done. He gets back up and follows it away from the makeshift grave. The fob leads him past more rubble, more droid hulls, more tattered red fabric and skeletal remains. He doesn’t stop to look, to bury them or burn them. He can’t be weighed down when people are waiting for him to come back.
Ahead of him is a town square overgrown with trees and bushes, doing much to obscure the sights of fallen battle droids and human remains. Din can’t help but scan the area for a cellar, an underground bunker, the last place he saw his parents and the first place he saw a Mandalorian. The heavy doors of the bunker lie on either side, rusted over and slowly degrading. Green things grow out of the cellar, hiding all traces and memories of his short and terrifying time here. But what of his parents? Where are they in this abandoned, forgotten plaza? He turns around, scanning the town square, forgetting the fob in his hand.
Something rustles in the underbrush on the other side of a collapsing wall. He reaches for his pistol while tracking the source of the disturbance and spots a heat signature scrambling past on two legs. He shoves the fob on his belt and takes out his pistol while tracking it. Something collapses behind him, a hollowed building toppling into itself, and he whirls around, pointing his pistol at a rising cloud of thick red and gray dust. Someone coughs hard and a silhouette waves at the dust while staggering out of it. A dusty, bedraggled Nikto limps over to the nearest wall and leans against it while gingerly touching their left ankle.
“Karking hell,” the Nikto swears in a voice as dry as dust. “That was an awful idea.”
The scanner alerts Din to the heat signature he’d been tracking moving out of range. He suspects that whoever is out there is trying to take position behind him and shifts ever so slowly on his left foot to point his shoulders at the Nikto and the interloper behind him. This thief isn’t working alone. Did Juron know this or is Sa Vann wilier than anticipated?
The Nikto bandit slowly straightens himself out, groaning while rubbing his shoulders, knees, thighs, and calves. A fresh gash cuts his left jaw and he winches while prodding it with a gloved finger. The bandit is poorly dressed for the elements and is lucky that the climate here is dry and hot most of the year. A holstered blaster pistol hangs from his crooked belt and Din watches it carefully.
“Are you Sa Vann?” Din asks when the Nikto fails to acknowledge him.
The Nikto looks at him, eyes roving over him appreciatively and uncomfortably. “Look at all that beskar. You must be a Mandalorian of some renown. So, what brings you here to this unassuming place?”
Din bristles while taking out the bounty puck and activating it. He rotates it so that the Nikto can see his own face and name. “You.”
Sa Vann smiles. “Ah. took you long enough.”
What? “What?”
The other heat signature moves, leaping over crumbling walls and opening fire. A blaster bolt ricochets off Din’s left pauldron and the other sears the leather on his bandolier. Din whirls around and returns fire, forcing the interloper to dive behind a collapsed roof. He tracks their movements but hears footsteps behind him and turns around. He blocks Sa Vann’s vibroknife with his right forearm and shoves the Nikto back. He aims for Sa Vann’s leg but the interloper shoots at his head and he misses. Sa Vann scrambles away, limping and cursing while trying to find cover, but Din launches his whipcord at the Nikto’s right ankle and pulls him to the ground. While Sa Vann lies in the dirt, stunned and breathless, Din turns around to find the other shooter. They tuck in against a cracked archway and he fires his blaster at the largest crack, forcing the archway to collapse. The interloper yells and runs for cover.
The tension in the whipcord suddenly laxes and Din turns back around. Sa Vann fumbles for his pistol while untangling himself from the cut cord without aggravating his injured ankle. Din ducks from a wild first shot and grunts when the second shot strikes his chestplate. He blocks a third shot with his left vambrace and shoots at Sa Vann’s shoulder. The Nikto curses and drops both his pistol and vibroknife while clutching the scorched wound.
“Duck!” someone yells and a small weighty object thunks and rolls on the ground.
Din turns to see a thermal detonator beeping rapidly less than two meters away. He activates his jetpack but blaster fire strikes it and his shoulders, making him stumble. He tries to take off and the detonator explodes, throwing him across the town square.
He coughs and tastes metal in his mouth. His head and ears ring at an agonizing pitch. Where is he? The ground is underneath him and he can feel his limbs move. He pulls his arms and knees under him and shoves heavy debris off his back. Something hot and wet drips down his face as he raises his head and stares at the muzzle of an ion blaster.
Sa Vann doesn’t look much better. He holds his head at an angle and dark liquid dribbles from the corner of his mouth. He blinks rapidly like he can’t get his eyes to focus. He’s on one knee and struggling to stay upright. His grip on the ion blaster is weak and trembling, and if it was only the Nikto Din had to worry about, he’d have the advantage and his bounty. But there are two blaster pistols pointing at the base of Din’s head. One is held by the interloper, a human woman wearing large goggles and salvaged armor on top of mismatched clothes. The other is held by someone who wasn’t on Din’s scanners at all, a Falleen mercenary whose weathered armor bears the fading symbol of the Black Sun syndicate.
Din twitches his left wrist, priming the whistling birds. He needs to act before they do because if they pull the trigger first, it’s over. He won’t return to Nevarro and he won’t return to Bo-Katan’s fleet. The coordinates to Luke and Grogu will remain untouched in the ship’s computer and eventually forgotten because nobody will know the promise he couldn’t keep.
“The intel was good,” Sa Vann wheezes. He coughs and spits blood on the ground. “Very good. How does it feel knowing you’ll die in the same graveyard as your people, Mandalorian?”
Din’s breath catches. Despite the heat of pulsing adrenaline, despite the slick sweltering under his neck seal, Din goes cold. How did the Nikto know that Aq Vetina was his homeworld? Does Sa Vann know his name, too? Who is he and what did Din walk into?
“I’m not dying here,” Din grits out. He readies the whistling birds. He just needs to twitch his wrist, to curl his fingers just right, to signal the silver darts to strike.
“No, you’re right. I need you alive,” Sa Vann agrees, and pulls the trigger.