Archive of Our Own

Din stood placidly, surrounded by armed guards, hands relaxed at his sides as he waited with near-inhuman patience for his current employer to finish speaking and pay him already.

“...much better than each of the last sleemos who failed to get the job done. She actually gutted the last one. Not one of them was worth the credits. Outrageous! Reminds me of the time when...”

Din was not certain what species the employer was. The up-and-coming crime lord, Vyrdon, was more reptilian than sluglike, like a skinny bipedal dewback. Not a Hutt, although he'd modeled his complex after a Hutt palace. Like many others in recent years, he was gunning to fill the void left by Jabba the Hutt’s death and the string of nobodies who’d tried and violently failed to take over in the chaos afterward.

Vyrdon might stick around a bit longer than the others who had failed before him, though. He had spent the last year snapping up a sizeable chunk of surviving splinter factions and bending a few other upstart crime lords to his will. Hopefully he'd be a good source for work for a bit longer. Still, he hadn’t quite figured out a good security technique, in Din's opinion at least. Vyrdon’s security was on the lighter side for a crime lord—two by the door, four by the guests, one near Vyrdon’s seat, four of them in a loose perimeter around Din, all of them lightly armored and armed with a blaster model Din knew was prone to jamming. Plus half of the guards looked so young that this was probably their first security job. One of the guards near Din, a fresh-faced Zeltron, had a few inches on the Mandalorian and kept giving him smug looks and flexing his grip on his blaster.

Din was pretty sure he was supposed to be intimidated. He was not.

Around the room were some noncombatants Din wasn't too worried about: a few scantily clad fish-men and fish-women, waitstaff bearing platters of elaborate finger food, some musicians providing background music in the corner, and some attendants waiting to take away the floating carbonite slab Din had arrived with. They were all studiously avoiding looking at Din and feigning interest in Vyrdon’s monologue with varying degrees of success.

A few of Vyrdon’s guests were here too, fancy-robed businessmen and an elaborately groomed government official or two. They sat off to the side on plush cushions, waiting their turn to negotiate business deals or gain the crime lord’s favor. Unlike the others, these people were ogling Din with undisguised curiosity and a hint of wariness. Din was annoyed but used to the staring. He was pretty sure Vyrdon had staged them this way intentionally to show off for his guests that he had a Mandalorian on retainer.

“...and that’ll teach her to betray me, eh, my Mandalorian friend?”

Din tilted his head, but stayed silent. He only caught the last bit, but he was pretty sure that question was directed more at the guests than at him. One of the government officials had gone a paler shade of blue, and Vyrdon smirked.

Din repressed a sigh. He’d known what he signed up for—this was his fourth successful job for Vyrdon in as many months, and every preceding time he’d come here the crime lord had taken his sweet time to get to the point. But Vyrdon paid well, for all his rambling, and Din deeply appreciated semi-steady work, especially quick jobs that didn’t keep him away from his foundling for too long. Even if he had to put up with Vyrdon’s oversharing and being gawked at and the obnoxiously amateur guards surrounding him. He’d had a very long day and just wanted to go back to his ship, feed his kid, get his own food, and curl up on his cot for the next twelve hours.

At last, Vyrdon broke into a chuckle. “But you’re not here for that! Klouz! Come, come, bring the man his credits.”

One of the women next to Vyrdon’s chair walked a large pouch over to Din. He opened it, glancing inside while keeping an eye on the four guards surrounding him. He wasn’t expecting anything—Vyrdon, as usual, seemed satisfied and had no reason to double-cross him—but it paid to be cautious, and if there was going to be a betrayal, it’d most likely be now. Fortunately, no one made a move, and the bag was stuffed with the promised amount of credits. Din hit the control on his vambrace to release his tether to the carbonite slab, then nodded to permit the attendants to escort the bounty off to wherever Vyrdon wanted her.

Job done. He’d gotten his credits. Now he had to figure out how to politely excuse himself before his foundling got bored and tried to open the ship’s armory again.

If he hadn't already. Din had caught the kid in the armory quite a bit lately, swinging vibroblades and carefully examining blasters, and once, trying to heft the stock of the enormous amban rifle onto his tiny shoulders. (Din's knees may have gone a bit gooey. It had been really adorable.) The child’s determination to try out the entire arsenal filled Din with both overwhelming pride and paranoia in equal measure. He had tried installing locks, but with those sorcery powers, the effort had only served to teach the child how to break in to locked doors. (Din was very proud, despite the frustration.)

The problem was not that the child wanted to learn how to use his weapons. That was a welcome development; Din was thrilled the kid was taking an interest. The problem was that he was doing it unsupervised. Din had started teaching him the way his own buir had taught him, starting small with his own vibroblade and gradually moving on to more dangerous weapons under close supervision. But the kid just wasn't satisfied and wanted to skip ahead to the flashier stuff.

At least the child seemed to readily absorb the many, many lessons on basic weapon safety Din had tried to impart. But still, it was only a matter of time before the kid got his claws into the grenade bin, and grenades in the hands of a small child were just not a good idea. Maybe he should find a nice isolated planet and dedicate an afternoon to teaching “The Varied Dangers and Useful Applications of Explosives” and see if that sunk in as well as the “We Do Not Look Down the Barrels of Blasters” lesson.

“Mandalorian, stay!” Vyrdon crowed as Din turned to leave. “Celebrate with me! I’m having a triple execution tonight. It’s going to be deliciously painful. Three different methods too. An absolutely exquisite experience."

“I have other business to attend to. If you have no more work for me, I’ll be on my way.”

"Oh-ho! What a busy man you must be, to turn down a treat such as this! Are you not even interested in a brief description? A little teaser?”

“No.”

Vyrdon shook his head in over-the-top incredulity. “What a shame, what a shame! Fine, very well—”

A sudden noise made Din’s hand move automatically to his blaster. The door had slid open to admit a Rodian in a shipyard uniform, bent over and breathing hard.

The guards on either side of the door seized the Rodian’s arms before he managed to shout. “Esteemed Vyrdon—”

“Can’t you see I am in the middle of business?” Vrydon snapped, gesturing at Din, who let his hand drop away from his blaster so as not to be perceived as about to attack.

“Esteemed, please! The prisoners, they’ve escaped!”

Din was suddenly grateful for the interruption. Vyrdon would now be too busy to keep talking to him. This was the perfect opportunity to slip back to his ship. And he probably should, before Vyrdon decided to blame him somehow for his own lax security. Din edged his way around the nearby guards distracted from the commotion and started for the door.

Vyrdon, meanwhile, had beckoned at the guards to bring the Rodian closer and release him. “Which ones?”

“The three behind the kidnapping, the ones in tonight’s entertainment—they escaped!”

“Then find them! I want every bit of this place searched!”

“They’ve already stolen a ship—”

“Ha, idiots! Activate the ship's tracker. They can’t get far.”

“They knew that, Esteemed! That’s why they took the bounty hunter’s ship.”

Din halted mid-step. He whipped to face the Rodian and advanced, vocodor crackling in a low growl. “They what.”

The Rodian shrunk away from him, looking slightly more terrified and repeating what he’d said, but Din couldn’t process the words. He only heard them the first time, echoing in his head over and over—They took the bounty hunter’s ship They took the bounty hunter’s ship They took the bounty hunter’s ship—

Vyrdon and the Rodian spoke back and forth with frantic urgency as attendants and guards scurried around, but Din was no longer listening, terror and rage making his knees go weak and his lungs seize.

His ship was gone. His ship, which had his foundling on it. There were three prisoners on his ship, flying away, with his foundling, going who knew where, and he had no way to go after them.

But Din had not gotten this far in his life or career by losing his head, and his thoughts quickly sharpened into cold, strategic calculation. Tracing the path back to the shipyard where he had landed. Analyzing each of the ships he had seen there for their speed compared to the Razor Crest. Some of Vyrdon’s guests must have arrived on expensively fast ships. It would be easier to steal one of their ships than Vyrdon’s because the visitors had fewer guards in this fortress. Fewer guards meant easier stealth and thus less time spent fighting anyone who tried to stop him. He probably had about four minutes before the Razor Crest breached the planet’s atmosphere, another five before they were able to reach hyperspace, so he needed to act right now.

And then Din’s plan hit a snag almost immediately as Vyrdon furiously rose from his chair and bellowed to his guards and attendants. “SHOOT THEM DOWN!"

Din’s rifle pointed at Vyrdon so quickly it was as if he’d summoned it from thin air, and his other hand aimed a blaster at the nearest of the guards, who had all fumbled to point their own weapons at him in response. The panicked bustling in the room ground to a halt. One of the guests let out a terrified meep.

“Do not shoot the ship down,” Din ordered.

Vyrdon’s tantrum simmered as he held his hands up, although he spoke through gritted pointed teeth. “My apologies, Mandalorian. I will compensate you three times what your ship’s worth, but those prisoners—”

“Something very valuable is on that ship, and if anything happens to it I’ll kill you and everyone here.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll compensate you for that too. It took a lot to get those men into my prison, and I will see them dead. Letting them escape is not an option.”

“Not good enough.” Eleven armed people. More between him and the shipyard. Eight and a half minutes until his foundling was in hyperspace. Not enough time to fight that many, steal a ship, and catch up to the Crest.

“Not good—? You’ve chosen a poor time to bargain, Mandalorian. You’re surrounded. I could have you killed right now."

Din moved forward so the rifle was closer to Vyrdon’s face, every line of his body a threat.

“...But I am willing to humor you. How much do you require?”

“I don’t want compensation.” Every second he spent here was another second his foundling was moving farther away. He didn’t have enough time. The kid was nearly in hyperspace, and soon he could be anywhere in the entire galaxy, or he could already be hurt or dead and Din was just standing here—

“Then what the kriff is your problem? Are you working with them? Did they pay you off?”

“My son is on that ship,” Din snapped, with a bare hint of hysteria.

Vyrdon blinked. “...I didn’t know Mandalorians had sons.”

Din nearly threw his hands up in frustration, already regretting everything. He should have brought the kid with him. He should have forced Vyrdon to shut up and pay him so he could get back to the ship sooner. He should have landed the ship in the nearest town and walked three hours to the fortress. He should have shot Vyrdon immediately and bolted for the shipyard. He should have never taken this kriffing bounty from this kriffing idiot in the first place. Anything that didn’t end up with him, here, shipless and surrounded by enemies while the minutes before his foundling was out of reach ticked away.

Vyrdon pressed on. “A proposition, then. Those men were in my prison because they attempted to kidnap my sister and hold her for ransom. I want to see them die, and die painfully. I’m sure you can relate. I will lend you my fastest ship. Track them down and bring me proof of their deaths. I’d rather kill them myself, so if you bring them back to me alive, I’ll reward you handsomely. And if you don’t return within two days, or if you disable the tracker on my ship, I will use every bit of power and influence I have to track you down and kill you painfully in those men’s place. Do we have a deal?”

Din didn’t hesitate. “Deal.”

Vyrdon flicked his hand, and the surrounding guards lowered their weapons. Din lowered his in turn.

The crime lord’s grin was slimy and wide. “Pleasure doing business. Klouz, show this Mandalorian to my ship.”

45 minutes earlier…

The child pressed his face to the transparisteel window as the Razor Crest glided to a stop. There were so many ships here, in a delightful variety of shapes, some he recognized and some he didn’t. There were also a few anxious-looking people in drab uniforms outside who didn't look very happy to see them, but they weren't angry, just indifferent, so that was okay. And there were also long familiar stretches of purple sky and rusty sand beyond the landing platform. The child didn’t remember what this planet was called, but he remembered coming here a few times before, or at least landing here before, since Buir hadn’t let him off the ship. But last time they’d come here to drop off a bounty, they had gotten ice cream afterwards. Maybe they would again!

The child’s ear twitched as he heard Buir start to flick switches, and he tore himself away from the view to position himself by the engine control panel.

Buir reached for the panel, then paused. “You want to do it this time, ad’ika?”

“Uh-huh!” The child pressed the six buttons in the correct sequence, just as he’d watched Buir do a million times. He bounced on the balls of his feet, beaming as the ship’s engines whirred and powered down.

Buir was wearing his helmet, but the child could tell he was smiling warmly as he patted the child's head. “Gar serim. Good job. You’re learning well.” Buir leaned his shoulder forward so the child could clamber up onto his pauldron. The child giggled as Buir bounced a bit to make sure he was secure before heading down the ladder and to the back of the ship.

The child watched attentively as Buir pressed the release button on the carbonite freezer so the bounty popped free of the freezer chassis. Bounties always looked funny frozen, but this one especially so because she had been frozen mid-sneeze. The planet she had tried to hide in had a lot of plants most species were allergic to, Buir had explained. The bounty was allergic too, so she had thought that that planet would be the last place a bounty hunter would look for her.

The child thought that was pretty dumb, because Buir could find anybody because he was the best bounty hunter in the whole parsec and probably the entire galaxy. And the child was going to be just like him when he grew up!

Although the day he would grow up seemed very far away. Buir promised that he had grown a few inches since his Finding, but that was ages ago, and all the other children he’d known were much bigger now. He was still so much smaller than Buir, which was just incredibly unfair, even if, as Buir pointed out often, his size had certain stealthy advantages.

The child snapped out of that train of thought as Buir guided the carbonite slab out so it floated parallel to the floor and activated the remote tether on his vambrace so the slab would follow him. Then he gently knelt down and placed the child on the floor.

“Alright,” Buir said, still kneeling. “I’m going to go turn this in, and come right back. But it might take a little longer than usual.”

The child hopped up and latched onto the top of the carbonite slab, then strained to pull himself up.

“Are you listening?"

The child shook his head, ears flapping at the sides of his face. With one great effort, he succeeded in climbing up on top of the slab. He was eye-level with Buir now. Buir would have to listen to him.

“Go too!” he proclaimed.

“No.”

“Yes!”

Buir sighed. He did that a lot. “Trust me, you don’t want to come. This client likes to talk. That's why it will take so long. Unless the deal goes bad, it’ll be very boring. And if the deal does go bad, I want you here.”

“Wanna help.”

“You can help me by staying here and getting some rest, okay? It’s been a long day for both of us.” Buir stroked the child’s ear a moment before scooping him up against his protests, carrying him to the bed compartment, and depositing him down inside.

Buir obviously didn’t get it. He wanted to go! When the child folded his arms and puffed his chest out, Buir sighed again.

"Not tired!”

“It’s important to be well-rested for battle.”

“Not. Tired."

“Really? I’m pretty tired.”

“Wanna go too!”

“I know you do. But who’s going to guard the ship while I’m getting the credits?”

The child considered this a moment—guarding the ship did sound kind of important—before repeating, quieter this time and a bit dejected, “Wanna go.”

“No. If the deal does go bad, you’ll be safer here.”

"Never getta go."

Buir hesitated a moment. “Look, maybe when you’re a bit...”

“Bigger?” The child glared, surly.

Buir straightened and slung the amban rifle onto his back. “Older. Now go to sleep. There’s still some snacks in the food crate if you get hungry, and if you really can’t sleep, you can practice your vibroblade drills. But please sleep. I’ll be back for you in maybe an hour. Hopefully less. After I get back and we both have a good rest, we'll go get something good to eat."

“Ice cream?”

Buir pressed the crown of his helmet to the child’s forehead, and the child leaned in to press back. “Ice cream it is. Be good.”

And with that, Buir let down the exit platform and left the ship, the carbonite slab trailing in his wake. The child’s ears lowered as he watched the fluttering of Buir’s cape until the platform closed and Buir was no longer visible. Buir always, always came back, no matter what, but the child had a bad feeling about this deep in his stomach.

But then his ears perked as a new, happier thought occurred to him. He now had the entire Razor Crest all to himself! And if he couldn’t go with Buir, he certainly wasn’t going to waste this opportunity to train without Buir there to stop him. After all, Buir had said he could practice vibroblade drills, hadn’t he?

The child toddled over to the armory door, pressed his hand onto it, and concentrated until he could sense unfamiliar metal parts. Buir must have changed the lock again. If he really, really focused, he could use his sorcery to twist the inner workings of the lock just so…

Pop! The child grinned, then skipped across the room to hit the armory controls. The doors sprung open, and the child gleefully surveyed the wide array of weaponry. Sure, he knew full well that Buir had intended for him to practice with his vibroblade, the one Buir had given him three months ago for his finding-day. It had once been the smallest vibroblade in Buir’s armory, more a shiv than a blade, the length of Buir’s longest finger from hilt to blade tip. But now, it belonged to the child, his very first weapon that was all his own.

And the child loved his vibroblade! It felt good in his hand, and he’d used it to slay many, many frogs under Buir’s watchful eye. But sometimes, he wanted to try something bigger and more grown-up.

The child focused on a real vibroblade high above him, one that was as long as he was tall, and reached for it. Slowly the vibroblade rose into the air, free of the pegs on which it had rested, and gradually descended until the child could grasp it. The blade was heavy, and required both hands for the child to lift instead of just one like it would have for Buir, but Mandalorians didn't back away from a challenge like that, so neither would he.

Letting loose a Mando’a battle cry one of his ba'vodu had taught him last time they were at the covert, the child swung the blade in a wide arc. The vibrations of the blade shook his whole body, so he practiced shifting his weight to keep his precarious balance. He swung again and again, imagining stormtroopers falling left and right as he jumped higher, higher, and pushed a little higher with a bit of mental energy. YES! He sliced through the air victoriously, feeling like a real warrior. He was going to be a great bounty hunter like his buir, going to be the best Mando’ad ever, and he was going to go on hunts and keep Buir safe and earn lots of credits for the covert!

He played for maybe twenty minutes before he wore himself out. Time to give training a break for the day. He held the vibroblade out in front of him, then concentrated hard again, reaching out, until the vibroblade drifted out of his hands and ascended higher and higher. But lifting it back up wasn’t the hard part. The child focused, fingers moving minutely, as he carefully, carefully nudged the vibroblade closer to its resting pegs. When it finally touched down, the child’s shoulders relaxed and he let himself thump back on his rear. Lifting things wasn’t hard, but fine control while lifting things could be tricky. He tilted his head as he examined his work. The vibroblade was slightly off-center, but Buir probably wouldn’t notice, right?

The child looked longingly at the blasters for a moment. He liked blasters a lot more than vibroblades—”A strategic choice, given your size,” Buir had agreed—but as Buir had told him repeatedly, blasters were much more dangerous to practice, especially in a small, confined, metal space like the Crest. Maybe, after Buir got back and they got ice cream, Buir would take him for blaster practice.

The child finally pushed the button to shut the armory doors and then, with a little burst of concentration, relocked them. He yawned. He felt a little drained, both physically and sorcery-wise, and Buir would probably be back soon. His bed sounded a lot more inviting now.

The child climbed back into the bed compartment, shut the door, and crawled to the back. At the end of the bed compartment, opposite the door, Buir had drilled in a few metal rungs that led halfway up the wall to a small lipped shelf just the child’s size for him to sleep on. The child clambered up the ladder and settled into his blankets and pillows, burying his face into his current favorite toy, a stuffed mudhorn.

Comfortable at last, the child thought longingly of beebleberry ice cream as his eyes drifted shut.

He had been dozing for a while when the sound of the back exit platform opening made him stir. He heard shouting and a series of heavy, fast-falling footsteps rush on board. Moments later, the ship’s engines roared to life, and the Crest started to lift.

The child blinked back to full alertness. The bad feeling in his stomach was back. Usually Buir checked on him as soon as he returned to the ship. The immediate takeoff indicated that the person who hired Buir had probably tried to hurt him and they needed to make a quick getaway. Maybe Buir was just making sure they were clear of danger first.

The child slid down the ladder to his bed and left his mudhorn behind as he opened up the compartment door. Last time Buir had run back to the Crest and taken off this quickly, he’d been hurt very badly. So badly that he had not been able to protest as the child did his best to heal him. They'd both slept a long time after that, and had stayed at the covert even longer.

The child didn’t see any blood on the floor as he waddled to the ladder to the cockpit, but an uncomfortable worry twisted his insides. What if Buir was hurt again?

The child peeked into the cockpit from the top of the ladder and let out a startled squeak. Buir was not in the cockpit at all. Three strangers were there instead, one with dark green skin sitting in the pilot seat and pushing buttons, one with blue skin half-sitting on top of the child’s booster seat and squashing it, and one human like Buir standing behind the pilot seat, arms flailing and yelling, “No, not that one! This one!”

The ship jolted as the green man shoved a thumb down on one of the buttons, knocking all the men off balance and nearly flinging the child off the ladder.

“Ugh! You drive like a tipsy tauntaun, Harre, let me drive—”

“I’ll take the guns—does this thing have guns?”

“Yeah, but they’re pilot-controlled. Bounty hunter travels alone; it’s a one-man ship.”

The men shuffled around so that the human who had been standing sat in the pilot seat instead. The blue man who had been squashing the child’s booster seat ripped it out from under himself and scowled at it.

“The kriff is this thing?” he demanded, pulling the child's second-favorite toy, a stuffed womp rat, from where it was wedged between the cushion and the seat.

“Who cares, just get us out of here before Vyrdon’s fleet catches us!”

The child flinched as the blue man tossed the stuffed rat aside, where it bounced under the console. He ripped the cushion out of the seat frame, tearing at the fabric and poking his fingers in like he was looking for something. “Not smuggling anything inside...”

Then the ship banked sharply to the left, and the booster seat slipped from the blue man’s grasp to the floor as he scrabbled to steady himself. The child clung to the cockpit ladder, feet sliding off the rung as the ship tilted nearly on its side.

“Oh, sure, I can’t fly, but you—”

“Evasive maneuvers!”

“Evading what?”

"Arc-web blaster cannon!"

“They got a what?"

The ship jerked left and right and up and down until all the child could do was wrap his arms around the ladder bar and hang on for dear life.

But after thirty seconds of maneuvers, there were no explosions, not like when he and Buir were in a firefight. The person flying the ship seemed to notice too, because the ship stopped lurching.

“...It’s not even warming up anymore.”

“Yeah, you’re right. They’re not firing at us. Why aren’t they firing at us?”

"Maybe it's just for show?"

"Who has a dummy arc-web blaster cannon?"

“Doesn’t matter, just get us to hyperspace!”

“I’m trying, shut up!”

Hyperspace. The child recognized that word. That was where the stars formed bright streaks of light and his stomach felt wooshy. Buir had mentioned one time, when they were chasing a bounty's ship through space, that they needed to catch him before he reached hyperspace, because bounties were harder to find after they went there.

Buir was still on the planet with the purple sky and all the ships! They had left him behind! And these guys were obviously bounties. The child couldn’t let them go to hyperspace, not without Buir!

Unnoticed by the cockpit’s occupants, the child crept a bit through the cockpit door, focusing on the lever Buir always used right before the stars became bright lines. The child took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and reached. He wasn’t sure if he could do this, but he had to. Buir was counting on him!

The child concentrated with all his might, and the lever slowly started to shake, tiny bits of metal inside the control panel groaning and shifting. He shut his eyes tighter, and squeezed. His eyes snapped open as he heard a pop and grinding sound. Was that it? Had it worked?

“What was that?” said one of the bounties, glancing around. The child hurried back for the ladder.

“What was what?”

“That sound...holy druk, what is that?”

The child slid down the ladder and darted past the armory toward the storage crates by the side exit platform.

“What? What’d you see?”

“Something just went down the ladder, like a little Kowakian or something—”

“You think that cushion thing was for a Kowakian? Aww, does the big bad Mando have a wittle pet?”

“Will you both SHUT UP, I can’t plot a course with you two yapping!”

“I’m telling you, I saw something!”

“Please, there’s nothing here—”

“There is!”

“Fine, then go deal with it—”

The child tucked himself between the storage crates just as one of the bounties, the dark green one, tumbled down the ladder, shouting as his back hit the floor. Carefully, ears lowered to hide them, the child peeked around the corner of the crate.

The bounty got to his feet, sending a scowl back up the ladder. He poked his head in and out of the refresher and bed compartment.

“Anything?” came a dry voice from the cockpit.

“I’m looking, I’m looking!” snapped the green bounty. The child ducked back just as he turned to survey the rest of the ship.

“Here, waki waki…” The child heard him press the armory controls, then make a disgusted noise when the doors didn’t open immediately. He thumped on the doors, but the lock held them fast.

Thinking quickly, the child bunched up some of the netting on the crates and burrowed into it, pressing his ears even flatter to his head. He played hide-and-go-seek with Buir all the time (“stealth training,” Buir called it), and he was really good at it, but this was a lot scarier.

“Here, waki waki…”

The green bounty kept moving. He cast a cursory look in the child’s direction, but his eyes swept right over the clump of netting the child was hidden behind. He kept heading for the back of the ship, where the empty carbonite freezer stood.

Now was his chance! The child crept out from behind the crates and padded silently after the bounty, keeping close to the wall. When he had come up even with the bounty, he pulled out his vibroblade.

“Aruetti,” the child said in his best low growl, just loud enough to hear, and the bounty whirled, looking about two feet above the child’s head before dropping his gaze down.

The bounty blinked at the tiny, armed being before him. “What the—”

The child shoved his free hand forward and pushed with all his might. The bounty stumbled back into the carbonite freezer at the same moment the child flung his vibroblade with perfect accuracy straight at the activation button. A rush of fog hissed out of the machine, and the green bounty’s startled yelp abruptly cut off.

“Harre? You okay? Did you find it?” came a voice from the cockpit. The child skittered back toward the crates as a pair of legs descended the ladder.

Then another voice let loose a frustrated scream. “The lever’s jammed! I can't activate the hyperdrive motivator!"

The legs on the ladder paused, then reascended, and the child used this opportunity to hook his claws into the netting on the storage crates and start climbing. Buir always said to seek higher ground when possible.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we can’t get to hyperspace! This piece of junk ship—”

The child reached the top of the crate and pried the corner open. With a little magic push, he slid the lid open further and started to rummage through the top crate. Some old food jars (gross), a big broken glowrod, a bundle of mostly-gone camping supplies, two half-empty rolls of medical tape, water pouches, some medical kits, some tool kits, some short-circuited droid arms, a few spare grappling hooks with spools of wire rolled tightly for easy loading into a vambrace. The child dug a little deeper.

“I told you we should have taken the other one!”

“That one probably had trackers on it, and even if it didn’t, it would have been detectable by the New Republic or any koochoo with a half-decent scanner! It had to be this one!"

The arguing continued as the child grinned to himself. He’d found one of Buir’s spare flamethrower canisters. It was mostly empty and needed a refill, but he could hear a bit of fluid still sloshing inside. The child leaped off the crate and landed lightly, some choice supplies in hand as he scurried haphazardly through the ship. Buir had said he was in charge of guarding the ship. Time to do his job.

The two bounties carried on, and there was a lot of yelling and banging as they tried to fix the console.

The child busied himself, levitating jars with sorcery, stringing up grappling hooks, and taping stuff down. He couldn’t empty the freezer—his vibroblade was stuck in the controls, and he couldn’t reach the release latch and didn’t have the strength to remove the slab by himself. So he needed to find some other way of getting the other two bounties out of the cockpit so he could turn the ship around and go back for Buir.

A few minutes later, the yelling from above was quieting into pointed jabs rather than shouts. The bounties would be coming back down soon.

The child placed the blowtorch he had pulled from the tool kit on the floor, then surveyed his work. Buir always said a good Mandalorian had at least one plan and one backup plan before going into any operation. And the child did, sort of, so this was going to work. Right?

He could do this. He was a Mando’ad, and a Djarin, and he was going to prove it. The child took a deep breath and moved to get into position.

“...your fault we ended up caught in the first place!”

“Me? The whole score was Harre’s idea!”

“...Where is Harre anyway? Tell that bantha brain to get back up here and unjam this thing. Or see if there’s an override control down there for the hyperdrive motivator or something.”

“Ugh.” The legs on the ladder were finally joined by the rest of the body as the blue bounty lowered himself down. “Harre?”

The blue bounty’s foot slipped off the next ladder rung, which was now covered in bacta. Unfortunately for the bounty, the sudden weight shift to his arms made his grip on the higher rungs break, sending him plummeting down, chin banging against ladder rungs on the way to the floor.

The floor that was covered in tiny broken transparisteel and plastisteel fragments of an old glowrod.

The resulting howl covered the child’s giggling from his safe vantage point on top of the storage crates, halfway between the carbonite freezer and the cockpit ladder.

“What now, you wastoid!” came the angry voice from above.

The bounty on the floor groaned as he gingerly got back to his feet. “Something messed with the ladder—” He cut off with a scream as the human bounty started to climb down the slick ladder, slipped, and plonked on top of him.

They both got to their feet, hurling insults at each other, before the blue man jabbed a finger down at the other, shorter man. “Harre’s gone, Meerv! Something on this ship...ate him or something.”

“Pft. He’s not gone, he’s probably just using the vactube.”

“This vactube?” The blue man gestured at the refresher.

“Oh, come on, there’s other places—” The human man pushed on the console buttons near the refresher, and the sleeping compartment door wooshed back open, empty of Harre or anyone else.

“Well, look at this.”

The child craned over the edge of the crate to see what the human bounty was picking up, then gasped in anger. They had his stuffed mudhorn! That was his, don’t touch it—

“Is that the Mando’s?”

“Huh, you think a guy like him curls up with an ugly whatever-this-is every night?”

“Harre did say he saw a Kowakian.”

“Kowakians don’t need toys...Maybe…”

“What?”

“I think there’s a kid onboard.”

The bounties looked at each other, grins slowly spreading across their faces.

“Is that right?” the human called.

The blue man turned and started rummaging through the bed compartment’s blankets and tossing pillows. “Not here.”

They both looked down the ship’s length intently. The child ducked back away from the edge of the crate, ears tucking down.

The blue man moved steadily forward. “You can come out, kid! We won’t hurt you...much.”

The human man smacked the blue man’s arm. “Don’t scare it.”

They both passed the armory, moving like hunters stalking their prey. The child waited, careful to be very, very quiet.

“Where do you think it’s hiding?”

“Same place Harre ended up probably. Some smuggling compartment. There’s got to be a hidden latch or something. It’s not a big ship. We’ll find them.”

Finally, the bounties advanced through the archway, nearing the crates the child had hidden on top of.

The child yanked the cord of his jerry-rigged trap. A heavy jar of old food swung from a grappling cable in a wide arc, straight into the human’s head and sending him to the floor.

“AAAGH!”

The blue man whirled, mouth agape, before another jar plowed into him, catching him in the throat.

“GUHK!”

The human man recovered first, propping himself up on his elbows, eyes sweeping the archway, the corners, and finally, the top of the crates.

“Look! Look, up there! It’s a tiny green thing—”

“What is it?”

“Just get it!”

The child yanked another cord, and another jar swung straight into the human’s head. The blue man had just gotten back to his feet when another jar cracked on his skull, knocking him back down.

The child leaped from the crate, landing on the blue man’s back and running up his spine. When he reached the bounty’s raised head, he took a running leap, smooshing the bounty’s face back down into the floor, and vaulting over the next trap. He landed in a tight roll and made a mad dash for the last archway near the carbonite freezer and the blowtorch he had left there.

The human snarled as he returned to his feet. “I’m gonna kill you, you little—”

His ankle caught on a grappling wire strung taut across the archway, and he toppled with a yelp into a puddle, flat on his face.

The blue bounty belly-crawled forward and pulled at his companion’s shoulder. “C’mon, Meerv, he’s right there—”

The human bounty propped himself up on his elbows, splashing more of the puddle everywhere, and jabbed a finger at the child. “You’re dead, kid! Dead!”

The child blew a raspberry at him in response, then went back to concentrating on the blowtorch controls. He’d seen Buir use this before, but the tool was unwieldy in his tiny hands, and the button that he’d thought turned it on wasn’t working.

The blue man shook the human man’s shoulder again and pointed at the carbonite freezer. “Meerv! Meerv, it’s Harre, he’s in carbonite! The kid froze him in carbonite!”

The bounties both slowly looked back at the child in horror, just as the child finally managed to turn the blowtorch on. He aimed it at the thin puddle of flamethrower fluid at his feet...which led to the larger puddle the bounties were currently lying in.

Flames erupted from where the child stood, engulfing the screaming bounties while the child circled around and made a break for the cockpit ladder. The flames wouldn’t last long—there hadn’t been much fuel left in the flamethrower canister.

The child peeked back at the bounties when he reached the ladder. The flames had already died out. The blue man had stopped moving, but the human bounty was groaning and rolling over, clothes and hair singed. He spotted the child on the ladder and started to get back to his feet.

The child’s heart swelled with panic. Plan A hadn’t worked all the way. Plan B was to open the armory, but he didn’t have enough time to unlock it again. The human bounty was almost upon him.

He closed his eyes, reached out his hand, and pulled with all his might. All of the crates tied securely to the Crest’s wall ripped free. The human bounty threw up his arms to protect his face as the heavy crates smashed toward him.

The child stumbled for a moment, gripping the ladder for support. He’d used his powers quite a bit today, and his head was starting to feel floaty. But he didn’t want to be tired, he wanted to rescue Buir!

Summoning up his remaining energy, the child leaped and pulled himself up each rung of the cockpit ladder, avoiding the booby-trapped ones, and raced toward the pilot’s chair. The chair spun to face the controls as he climbed up to peer over the console. He watched Buir fly all the time, so he could definitely do this. He didn’t even have to take off! All he had to do was tap the screen a couple of times, then take one of the steering joysticks and turn the ship around, and then it would fly right back to Buir. And the child knew what buttons to push to land. Mostly. So this would be easy!

But when he grabbed the joystick and guided it to the right, the whole ship shuddered and spun wildly. The child got dizzy almost immediately. He straightened out the lever again and peered out the window. Had the ship turned around all the way? Had he gone too far? The stars looked different, so he must have turned the ship around. Were they going in the right direction now?

“There you are,” came a growl from behind him.

The child whirled. The bounty was crawling up the ladder, his cheekbone bleeding, his eyebrows burned off, his glare filled with pure hatred. The child turned back to the control panel frantically, trying to remember which button closed the cockpit door. But Buir didn’t shut the door very often, and he didn’t remember! Maybe that one?

He felt angry hands seize him before he could press it.

More pain than the child had felt in years spiraled through his head as he was slammed back against the windshield. The human bounty shook him and screamed mean things in his face so loud the child’s ears hurt. His chest struggled to expand as the bounty squeezed tighter and tighter, malicious grin spread wide at the child’s fruitless kicking and flailing.

“Aww, you gonna cry? You gonna cry, you ugly little rat?”

The child sniffled despite himself. He tried to wriggle or push back with his sorcery, but his head hurt and he couldn’t move. He had maybe one or two more big sorcery pushes left and then he would pass out, and Buir always warned him against that, said it left him vulnerable. The child already felt vulnerable. He really, really wanted his buir.

Something jolted the ship, like they’d been hit by another object, but the bounty didn’t seem to notice and didn’t lose his grip. He flicked the child’s forehead painfully hard with his fingers.

“You know what I’m going to do with you? I’m going to cut your little fingers off, one by one, and sell them to the highest bidder. Bet someone would pay a lot to eat you. Maybe I’ll try it myself. Maybe I’ll make you eat the fingers.”

He yanked at the child’s ear with his free hand and twisted it, making the child screech.

“But first I’m going to rip your little legs off and stuff them in those stupid big ears of yours. I’m going to make you wish you were dead. And then—”

The bounty froze at the quiet, furious clang of beskar on the cockpit ladder. All the color drained from his face in an instant.

The child winced as the bounty whipped him around to face the cockpit door, just as Buir emerged from the ladder. Hope swelled in the child’s chest, and he flailed against the bounty’s grip even harder. Buir was here, armor gleaming in the starlight, amban rifle in one hand and blaster in the other, aimed directly at the bounty, and everything was going to be absolutely fine in just a few moments.

Then the bounty’s other hand clamped around the child’s skull, flattening his ears.

The bounty spoke like he was trying to project confidence, but every other syllable cracked with terror. “You want the kid, Mando? Put the blaster down.”

“Put him down first.”

“No, no, no, I let him go, you kill me. Put down the blaster, or—” the bounty’s hand tightened on the child’s head, and he whimpered—“I snap his neck.”

Buir’s visor met the child’s eyes for a moment before focusing on the bad man again. He paused for a long moment, finger tightening almost imperceptibly on the blaster’s trigger before he finally crouched and let his blaster drop to the floor.

The child jiggled as the bounty’s knees continued to tremble. “And—and the rifle! Drop it!”

Buir carefully laid the rifle next to him on the floor before straightening slowly, hands up and fingers splayed wide. The child raised his own hand as if in imitation, looked at the rifle on the floor, then back at Buir questioningly. Buir tilted his head ever so slightly and gave the tiniest of nods in response, slowly rotating his wrist until his palm faced the floor.

The bounty’s grip relaxed as he straightened, some of his bravado returning. “Yeah! Yeah, that’s right, huh? I got you! Now you’re going to take me to—”

The child clenched his eyes shut and yanked. The amban rifle zoomed straight up into Buir’s hand, and in one fluid movement Buir snatched it and smashed the stock straight into the bounty’s arm with all the force of a rampaging mudhorn.

There was a clean snapping noise followed by a howl as the pressure around the child’s middle and head went slack. The child dropped to the floor and rolled under the console, gasping for breath.

He heard a second smack of stock into bone, and blinked away tears just in time to see Buir spin the rifle back around and shove the barrel’s end into the bounty’s chest.

The man gurgled as blue streaks of electricity lit him up for a very brief moment, and then he dropped, limbs twitching and blood leaking from his broken nose.

In the time it took Buir to reholster the rifle, the child crawled back out from under the console and then threw himself at his father’s leg. Buir bent down to catch him, arms lifting him up and enveloping him in a not-quite-smothering hug. The child’s ears brushed Buir’s chin as he burrowed against the beskar chestplate, cool metal soothing and familiar.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Buir asked softly.

The child’s response was muffled. “Scared.”

“Heh. Me too, kid.”

They stayed there for a long moment, neither speaking, the child clutching fistfuls of the fabric bunched at Buir’s neck, Buir running a gentle hand over the back of his head and ears. Buir was solid and loving and here, and surrounded on all sides by beskar and his father in it, the child finally, finally, felt safe.

Din clutched his foundling tightly, adrenaline finally beginning to taper off. The kid was safe, and in his arms, and he seemed fine. A bit shaken up, and a little woozy from overuse of his powers, but okay. Din still needed to make a more thorough investigation of the lower level, but it looked like the kid had somehow taken out two of the prisoners by himself. Best-case scenario, Din had thought the kid would hide, not put up a fight, much less take them out. The part of him not inwardly flailing in panic was impressed.

Din had about had a heart attack when he had paired Vyrdon’s ship onto the underside of the Crest and stormed aboard, weapons drawn and ready for war, only to see that the ship had been torn apart. A lot of the storage crates had been ripped away from their bindings and tipped over. A faint smell of smoke drifted through the air. Something gooey was splattered on the floor and on the ladder to the cockpit. The carbonite freezer had someone in it. Someone else was facedown, their limbs sprawled motionlessly, tiny little footprints stamped on the back of their charred jumpsuit.

Din had had two seconds to take all of this in before he heard the sound of someone threatening his kid in the cockpit, and, well. The rest was a foregone conclusion, even if he had decided against the risk of blasting the prisoner in the face. The amban rifle was a lot more painful than a blaster shot to the head, anyway.

Although it wasn’t always fatal. Din considered the prisoner at his feet. There was a very slight chance he was still alive. Electrocution at close range was finicky. He should probably check on the prisoner, and the one downstairs, but he didn’t want to put his foundling down just yet. Or possibly ever again.

Din compromised by carefully shifting the child into one arm.

“Guard ship?” the kid said hopefully, clearly seeking approval.

“You sure did. You were very, very brave.” The kid beamed as Din raised a hand to his helmet to activate his HUD.

The prisoner was still alive, just barely. Too bad for him. Din honestly hadn’t planned to bring any of these prisoners back alive, but he was willing to turn them over to Vyrdon if they happened to still be breathing. Din thought he might be willing to stay to watch these executions. Just this once.

“He go…” the kid wiggled his fingers and enthusiastically imitated the sound of static.

“Yeah.” Din pulled his cuffs from his belt and one-handedly cuffed the man’s arms. He spotted the overturned booster seat on the floor and the kid’s stuffed womp rat under the control panel, and his blood boiled all over again for a moment. The kid had fun making more staticky noises while Din secured the shredded cushion and the booster seat in the copilot chair and placed the toy back in the seat as if handling something fragile.

The kid was okay, Din reminded himself yet again. More than okay, given his current excitement levels, even though he was clearly tired and showing signs of sorcery-exhaustion.

Din kicked the prisoner’s limp form a few times toward the ladder. The unconscious man flopped down to the lower level with a pleasing thump, which made the kid giggle and made Din feel slightly better.

The kid watched very closely as Din programmed in the route back to Vyrdon’s fortress. He pointed at the screen and looked back up with curious eyes.

“I’m programming a new route,” Din explained automatically. “Putting in the coordinates so the ship will fly to the correct destination. It’ll take us a bit longer to get back, because we have to tow the ship I came in too.”

The child tilted his head, eyes lighting up like something had clicked in his head, even though Din was pretty sure he didn’t understand much of that. Then the kid pointed.

“Broke it.”

“You didn’t, it’s not broken.”

“Broke it!” the child insisted, pointing at...the hyperdrive lever?

The child kept jabbing at it until Din finally gave it a little tug. The lever was stuck. He could hear bits of it grinding inside, even though it had definitely been working when they landed in Vyrdon’s fortress.

Huh. That explained a lot. Din hadn’t thought he’d be able to catch up to them before they reached hyperspace. He’d been fully prepared to ignore Vyrdon’s time limit and track the prisoners and his foundling for weeks, possibly months, throughout the entire galaxy. Seeing the Razor Crest out the windshield of Vyrdon’s ship had seemed like a miracle.

“You did this?”

The kid nodded.

“Smart move. That made it a lot easier for me to find you.”

“Find bounties!”

“That too.”

"I helped?"

“Yes, definitely. You were a big help.”

Din climbed only a bit down the ladder before dropping the rest of the way (That was going to be such a pain to clean later) and inspected the trashed second level again. The kid whined and wiggled until Din finally relented and reluctantly set him down on the floor. While Din checked on the remaining prisoner, the kid toddled over to where his stuffed mudhorn lay near the armory and scooped it up in a consoling hug.

Din found life signs, so he cuffed the Omwati prisoner and dumped him next to the human one while the kid scurried to return his toy to its rightful place in the bed compartment. The tension in Din’s shoulders loosened just a bit more. All hostile parties secure, and the kid really was safe.

The kid clambered back over to him and tugged on his pants leg, eyes gleaming with excitement. What followed was several minutes of Din indulgently following as the kid raced around the messy ship, pointing at various bits and bobs and babbling about how he’d set up this trap and that one and that one and what he’d thought about doing but didn’t have the materials for and the look on the bounties’ faces and so on. Every time he proudly pointed at something, Din felt his fond grin grow a little wider.

I helped, the kid had said. And he really, really had. It struck Din that this child, his child, had been trapped by himself, without parent, without allies, against three enemies ten times his size, and he had defeated two and from the sound of it, nearly defeated the third. He had kept the ship from going to hyperspace and attempted a (misguided) rescue mission, and when help had arrived, the kid had assisted in his own rescue.

Din was so, so proud, yes, but also so relieved.

Din had always worried for his foundling, not only about the dangers of being a tiny Force-sensitive baby in a world where Moff Gideon and Imperials existed, but what the Armorer had once told him when he’d brought up the idea of training the kid.

He is too weak. He would die.

That was why he’d been tasked with reuniting the kid with his kind in the first place, even though none of the leads Din had chased through the years had really panned out. (And if he were honest with himself, after a while, his heart just wasn’t in the search. He was the kid’s kind now.)

But if this terrifying experience didn’t prove the kid was a true Mandalorian, what else possibly could?

By the time the kid’s enthusiastic explanations tapered off, Din’s mind was made up. The kid needed more experience and more training. They’d have to be very, very careful, but the kid had proven himself up to a challenge.

“You showed a lot of mandokarla today, verd’ika. Looks like you took down your first bounty. Two bounties. How about we go get your credits?”

The kid’s eyes lit up like the flames of a beskar forge.

Din stood tall, surrounded by armed guards, blaster in one hand and amban rifle in the other, ready to attack in an instant. Atop his pauldron, the child kept a tight grip on his buir’s helmet as his long-eared head swiveled around, taking in the room and its occupants and, as instructed, watching carefully for any signs of attack. At their side was a floating carbonite slab with two handcuffed bodies draped over it.

“You always do deliver,” said Vyrdon, who kept glancing at the rifle and doing a poor job of hiding his nervousness. “Are they—”

“Alive? Yes,” Din replied, watching the room for the slightest indication of ill will. Guards, guests, and attendants were all openly staring at the child. The kid stayed quiet and focused as Din had instructed, but Din could tell he was absolutely basking in the attention, beaming proudly from his buir’s shoulder and looking just a tad smug.

“Good, good,” Vyrdon continued. “I must admit, I didn’t expect them to make it back here in one piece, but I’m delighted they did.”

“They wouldn’t have if I had gotten there first.”

“First?”

Din smiled wryly under his helmet. “My son had two of them down by the time I got there. I thought you’d like a matching set.”

Anyone in the room not staring at the child was doing so now. The Zeltron guard actually backed away a bit in alarm.

“Yes, I...appreciate that,” Vyrdon said, eying the child like one might eye a live explosive.

The kid looked back at the crime lord and tilted his head thoughtfully. There was an air of threat in the gesture that really should not have been possible coming from a being that was barely two feet tall. Din fought back a laugh when he realized the kid was imitating him.

But he kept his composure, and pushed on. “You mentioned a handsome reward. Two-thirds of it is his, and the other third is mine. We’d like that now.”

“Er...yes. Klouz!”

The same woman as before stepped forward cautiously, guiding a small floating cart of three camtanos of credits, then hastily retreated. Din handed the child his blaster to free his hand to key the cart into his vambrace and release the carbonite slab. The child took it with aplomb, shifting so that he had a good angle on anyone who decided to attack his buir from behind, ears flicking in concentration.

Credits secure, Din gave the slab a little nudge to slide the bounties over to the attendants and turned to the door.

“Do you...want to stay for the executions?” asked Vyrdon, who could not make it more obvious he was terrified of the possibility.

“I have other matters to attend to.”

“Ice cream,” the foundling whispered loudly, holding the blaster like Din would hold a large rifle and staring the nearest guard down.

“Yes,” Din deadpanned. “Ice cream.”

The guards nervously shifted to let them pass as Din swiveled his attention from their boss to each of them in turn. Atop his shoulder, the child copied his buir, watching with a determined focus for any attack.

Neither Djarin relaxed until they were back on the ship, credits in hand, and the planet was long behind them.

Four hours later…

The Razor Crest drifted through hyperspace in night mode, interior lights off. Had they been awake, the only sounds the ship’s occupants would have heard would be the gentle rumbling of the hyperdrive.

Tucked into Din’s arms, belly full of ice cream, the child dreamed of armored adventures. His ears twitched as he rolled over, lost in an epic dream-battle.

The movement was enough to make Din’s breath catch as he stirred.

“Y’still ’sleep?” he slurred blearily, unvisored eyes still half-closed. The child only snuggled closer, face pressing into Din’s skin.

Din smiled and ran his thumb over the child’s head, eyes falling back shut as he drifted once more into his own sleep.

Both Djarins slept on, as a million stars streaked by outside.