Work Text:
One of the first things Mom taught her, before Concord Dawn, before the farm, before Mom married Dad and Boba was born, was this: “If they try to take you, Arla, you fight.“
So when the Death Watch put a blaster muzzle to her forehead, she fought.
It might have saved her life. Mandalorians liked little more than a thing with some fight in it. “Oooh, mandokarla!” the soldier she tried to bite whooped, and instead of killing her he backhanded her across the face so hard she toppled to the ground.
Mandokarla: “the good stuff”. It was the first word of proper Mando’a she’d learned. Perhaps that was a sign.
She remembered it all in snippets:
The soldier grabbed her by the hair and dragged her across the yard. She tried to get to her feet; stumbled, fell facedown into the dirt. She turned her head and found her dad’s eyes, wide-open and unseeing. A singed blaster hole in the middle of his forehead.
Cut.
She sat in the speeder backseat. Tears and snot ran down her face. Sobs clawed out through her throat, she couldn’t breathe, she clouldn’t breathe—!
The fingers of a gloved hand dug deep into her neck. It shook her the way a tooka would shake a rat. A half-mechanical voice shouted something at her. Close… off?
“Shut up!” they repeated in a heavily-accented Basic. “Shut the kriff up! You—“ they descended into a stream of unfamiliar insults.
Cut.
The shuttle was small, had no windows, and stank worse than a strill nest. The pilot was either bad or in a hurry; they lifted off with a sickening lurch and it didn’t get any better. Arla’s stomach flopped. She’d never done more than a short hop between the nearest settlement and the planet’s capital. The shuttle shuddered like a thresher and whichever bit of the ship was supposed to keep them from being flattened by the acceleration was doing a crap job. The world was blacking out at the edges. She swayed and hit something with her shoulder.
Next moment, there was a barrel of a gun at her temple. “You toss—me—, and I—you!“ a high voice roared through the noise in the shuttle.
She wrapped her arms around herself and nodded.
Cut.
They branded her, with a burning iron in the middle of her back. She could just reach it with her fingertips, a red-hot patch of pain between her shoulder blades. What was that even good for? Nobody did that anymore, even cattle got chipped on Concord Dawn!
It didn’t matter to Death Watch that a brand was easy to foul up and its information value was laughable compared even to the cheapest chips. It wasn’t a message to the world, but to the cattle: you’re ours now. Forever.
Cut.
A tiny cell, barely bigger than a fresher; sharp light; noise, constant noise, for hours on end, a few minutes of silence to break the monotony and then noise again.
Sometimes they dragged her out, punched her and shouted questions - in Mando’a, she understood maybe every third word, but they didn’t seem to mind. What did she know, anyway?
The world contracted to this single room, with its walls barely further then her arms spread apart and ceiling half a meter above her head. She thought she had to die or go mad but it kept going, on and on and on—
The door slid open. The noise shut off. A dark figure loomed in the entrance. He stank of smoke, and something sharp and bitter - she hadn’t recognized the tang of blaster-singed plastoid back then.
He knelt down to her. Viszla. The entire left half of his face was a burned ruin, bloody and red like the paint on his armor.
He stroked her cheek with his fingers. “Do you want to know who did this?” he gestured at his face. “Jaster Mereel. The same man who killed your parents.”
You killed my parents!, she wanted to scream at him, but something held her back.
“It’s your father’s fault,” he continued. “If he hadn’t tried to hide Mereel, none of this would have happened.” He ran his fingers into her hair, traced the edge of his wound on her face with his thumb. “You owe me,” he told her. “You will pay for all this.”
“Or.“ He smiled. “You could join me. Join us. Together, we can find our revenge.”
His hand closed to a fist in her hair. He bent her head backwards. “What will it be?”
No. No! She couldn’t - mom, dad, Jango - she wouldn’t—
The animal in her chest howled. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to die!
“Yes! Yes, I’ll do it, I’ll join you, I—“
“Alor.” He shook her. “Yes, alor. It means ‘leader’.”
She knew that. Of course she did, it was in every other stupid holo show. Jango and his annoying little friends shouted it at each other when they played armies in the woods.
Viszla shook her harder. “Say it!”
She gulped. “Yes, alor.“
They left her in the cell. It was deafeningly silent now. She breathed, and breathed, and somewhere the breaths turned into sobs.
“Oh, ad’ika. There’s nothing shameful on wanting to live.”
Her body didn’t wait for her mind to be shocked - she was up, on her knees, scrambling backwards from the voice and jammed into the corner before she realized she’d heard it.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. “This is not how I planned it.”
Arla never believed in ghosts, but here one was: blue-tinted and see-through, like a gauzy curtain. His voice did something odd to her brain; she did not understand his words, but she knew the meaning nonetheless.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
The ghost sat down on the floor opposite her. For a moment, he just looked at her. He reminded her of dad, a little: the same face he sometimes had when he looked out at the fields.
“My name,” the ghost said, “is Tarre Viszla.”
“Bulshit.“
He wasn’t, couldn’t be, not in a cell on a Death Watch ship.
The man’s mouth curled at the corner. “So you’ve heard of me.”
Arla wasn’t a Mandalorian, not the way it counted for anyone in the galaxy, but even she had heard of Tarre Viszla, the legendary Jedi Mand’alor. “How are you here? Why?“
His smile disappeared. “To ask you for help.”
Arla shook her head violently. “Help you? Me?!” Her voice broke on it, a panicky laughter that made her bare her teeth like an animal.
“Yes. You.”
She shook her head again, hid her face in her knees. She couldn’t even help herself. She should have let Viszla kill her.
“Arla. Look at me.”
She did. He had that kind of voice. “What do you even want me to do?”
Again that face, the one that looked at a barren field and hoped for harvest. “I need you to find the Darksaber.”
She dropped her forehead to her knees again. “This is insane.” She stared at her dirty feet, the scuffed durasteel under them. “I’ve lost it. One of the hits in the head gave me brain damage.”
He didn’t say anything. She looked up, expected him to be gone, but no. He still sat there, calm, grave, blue like a cheap holo.
“How could I possibly do that?” She gestured around herself: a cell, a Death Watch ship, a beaten-up farm girl.
“I will lead you,” Tarre Viszla said. “Teach you; protect you as much I can.” He clenched his jaw, shook his head. “I will do that anyway, even if you choose not to help me - I promise you, ad’ika, I’ll do my best to keep you alive. But I do need your help.”
“Why me?” Arla asked, lost.
He closed his eyes, folded his hands in his lap. “Because I have no other choice.”
She said yes. Of course she did. She might be going mad, but it was still something bright in the nightmare that was her life now.
Becoming Death Watch hadn’t changed much in the way they treated her. The living quarters were a bit better, a narrow cabin with four rows of sleeping nooks in each wall, with only six of them occupied when they tossed her in that first day. The food was just as miserable.
The company… she learned quickly to be wary. “Cadets”, the other soldiers - verd’e - called them, but they all came to Death Watch the same way she had, picked up on a raid and given a choice that wasn’t a choice at all. The instructors pitted them against each other, rewarded any hint of camaraderie by punishment and ridicule.
At least she had Tarre. He did as he promised. He was her lookout, her advisor, the voice in her ear that kept her safe. As much as a voice could.
He taught her, even if it wasn’t easy for either of them. Quiet instructions threaded between bellowed commands during hand-to-hand training; lectures about politics and team dynamics when she scarfed her dinner; Mandalorian history when she scrubbed floors or pots in the kitchen.
And then there was the Force. “It isn’t supposed to be like this,” he said, mournful, as she sat in her cot in the middle of the night and tried not to fall asleep. “You would have learned to meditate in a garden. I would have taught you how to find your peace, and through that your connection to the Force; how it threads through everything, how even a smallest weed glows like a sun in it.”
I don’t like weeds, she thought at him. She sent him a memory of untangling purple wines out of their bean plants for hours, bored and grumpy. She’d been so angry with mom… the memory twisted and crumpled into heartbreak.
He put a hand on her shoulder, an almost-there-but-not sensation. He sent back a thread of gentle amusement. “No weeds for you, I’ll remember that. Now, lets try it again. Breathe as I count….”
It took her a while, but she found the hang of meditation eventually. Once she did, she started slipping into it at odd moments: on the shooting range, when she did push ups in the gym.
Is that bad?, she asked Tarre wordlessly.
“No. That’s good, very good,” he said. He still sounded sad about it, though.
Days passed into weeks, weeks into months. It was amazing what you could get used to. Still, she almost lost it when she realized she didn’t know what language she was speaking. Was this word Concordian or Mando’a? The languages slid into each other, three steps sideways and a twist. She couldn’t remember how her mom would have said it.
She couldn’t remember her voice.
“Breathe, ad’ika. Breathe.“
She didn’t want to. But Tarre felt scared for her, and she gave him her word. She breathed.
The verd barged into their cabin four hours into their sleep period. “Fett!” he bellowed. “Up, you rat!”
The lights came on. He tossed a shapeless bag in the middle of the floor. It rattled. “Put this on. You got five minutes, make it or you’re coming in your undies.”
Arla rolled off her bunk. She hit the floor on all four with a thud. The verd startled back and spat a curse word at her. She ignored him. She knew what this was. She upended the bag on the floor. The armor spilled out - scratched up plastoid in an array of clashing colors, held together by faded armor weave.
The helmet stopped at the verd’s feet. He kicked it toward her. “Do you even know how to put it on?”
She bared her teeth at him. “Yes, alor.“ It was only a little lie.
Tarre appeared to her side. He gave the heap a disgusted look. Arla ignored him, too, and started pulling on the bottoms. Five minutes wasn’t a lot.
“Unlatch the knee pads first,” Tarre told her.
Arla did. She didn’t need Tarre to know the armor was a wreck. The greaves didn’t match her boots, the vambraces didn’t even have a grappling hook, forget anything else, and the cuirass was a dumb piece of plastoid with none of the proper electronics. The shape of it almost made her wish she inherited mom’s boobs. At least it might sit properly then.
There was a badly patched hole in the inner thigh of the bottoms, and it was still stained dark down to the knee. It stank, too - tibana, burned plastoid, blood, shit, piss. Someone died in this, probably multiple someone’s. She just had to hope she wasn’t next.
The verd threw a rifle at her and dragged her toward the hangar. Arla slung the blaster over her shoulder and slammed the helmet on. She didn’t want the others to see her face. She’d noticed that a lot of the verd’e, especially the younger ones, almost never took their helmets off. She could see the appeal.
There was only one squad, and the verd who picked her up was the leader. He herded them into a rickety cargo shuttle and sat behind the controls himself.
A raid then. Something ugly settled in Arla’s stomach.
They jumped in an out of hyperspace, it was barely half an hour, and immediately started descent to a planet. She had no idea where they were. Not Concord Dawn or Kalevala, but that still left the entire Mandalore system.
Her stomach didn’t like this shuttle flight any more than her last one. She breathed through it, leaning heavily into the Force. Her breaths echoed inside the helmet.
The shuttle thunked down in a field of… some grain, she thought; about elbow height, millet or sorghum, it was too early in the year to tell. The farmhouse was maybe a hundred meters away. It could have been theirs; the same sloped walls with shuttered windows, the same flight of stairs she tripped up and down a million times every day of her life.
The window shutters were down, though, and when they lowered the ramp in the back and one of the verd’e poked their head out of the hold, they were welcomed with blaster shots.
They all looked at each other.
“Send the new meat first,” one of the verd’e said to the leader, “we could use a shield.”
The leader shrugged. He gave her a push toward the exit.
She stood her ground. “Then cover me,“ she spat at them. She tried to give it Tarre’s tone of voice. It worked, a bit. The verd’e perked up, eight pairs of eyes suddenly on her. She walked past them to the edge of the cargo hold.
She swallowed heavily. Are you here, Tarre?
“Yes.”
Wish me luck?
“You don’t need it, ad’ika.“
She swallowed heavily. Raising a hand, she counted herself off: three — two — one —
She ran.
Blaster bolts zapped left and right. Not only from the front but from the back as well: her squadmates actually did cover her, miracle of miracles. She ducked and weaved, let the Force guide her body without her mind’s input. Ten more meters... six… up the stairs…
She hit the wall beside the door with her back. It was dark under the overhang, but - she checked again - there was no angle for the inhabitants to shoot at her. The house was made to be sturdy, not defended against a siege.
The door now.
“Blast the lock off.” Tarre stood at her shoulder, almost glowing in the darkness.
I know.
“Quick!”
“I know!“ she hissed aloud. The longer she waited, the bigger the chance that the inhabitants got ready for her. She shot the lock. The mechanism hissed and heated up red, but didn’t melt. She kicked the door. Not a budge.
“Reinforced,” Tarre said darkly. “Probably beskar.“
“Kriff.” And they were definitely ready for her by now. She thought she could feel them, just behind the doors. Everyone had stopped shooting by now. Arla could feel the eyes of her unit on her, waiting.
The front door wasn’t the only way to get in though, was it? She’d done it before, when she stayed out late with her friends and wanted to avoid her parents’ scolding.
I’m gonna try something, she told Tarre. Can you hold their attention here for a while longer?
He closed his eyes. “Yes. Not for long, though, so be quick.”
Thank you.
As lightly as she could, she ran to the side of the house. There was a solid wall here, sloped just like the windows. It would be too slick if it had rained recently… but it hadn’t, and it wasn’t. She swung her rifle on her back and ran up the wall. In the last third she jumped and grabbed onto the edge of the roof.
She almost fell off. Her arm hit metal with a clang so loud that it made her heart beat double. “Kriff!” The pipe, she forgot about the pipe, the one that ran along the left side of the roof…!
There was no time now. She had to make it, or she was dead. With her right arm she let go of the roof, and swung herself up to reach the top of the pipe. All the physical training Death Watch put her through paid back. She grabbed the pipe, kicked her legs up, and rolled over it in a movement that might not be smooth, but did its job.
She tore her rifle off her back and aimed, but the roof was empty. She dashed across it to the roof access; the lock here melted after the first blaster bolt and cracked away when she kicked it.
The space inside was a mix of maintenance and storage, just like back home. Arla’s face crumpled when she saw the box of toys, but she forced her eyes open again. Don’t.
She made it half-way down the stairs when a tug in her chest made her hesitate. A blaster bolt shot by and singed the wall, barely a handspan from her head. She imagined the crappy plastoid and her head bursting like a kicked melon.
She didn’t freeze. She couldn’t. She sank into the Force instead, its comforting calm and its clarity. She slid low, burst from around the corner, aimed, pressed the trigger.
Blaster bolts. A scream. Heavy thud.
Steps from the other side. She twisted, shot. From the outside, the sound of more blaster fire - her squad finally joining in.
A warning in the Force. She ducked, swung her rifle, smashed the butt of it into a face. They had a holdout blaster at their belt; she pulled it out and shot off a load at point blank.
They went down.
“Surrender! We surrender!”
The shooting stopped. Arla walked around a corner. A man stood in the middle of the room, hands in the air. He was tall, broad-shouldered, but he still looked soft and vulnerable among the armored figures.
Her squad leader’s rifle didn’t move away from his head. “Oh yeah?”
“Yes. Take whatever you want and leave. We won’t try to stop you.”
Leader pretended to think it over. “Uh huh. Mmm… no. Shouldn’t have shot at us first.”
He looked around. His eyes landed on Arla. “Hey, new meat! Yeah, I’m talking to you.” He gestured her closer.
Something cold ran up Arla’s spine. She could feel it burn on the Death Watch brand. “Yeah?”
“Come here, rat,” he repeated. Then, when she did: “Kill him.”
“What?”
“I said, kill him.” There was a warning in his voice, even through the helmet speaker.
She felt something press into her neck. “That was an order,” one of the other verd’e, the one with green pauldrons, whispered beside her head.
She swallowed. Tarre! she shouted. What do I do!
Silence. The muzzle pushed harder.
She turned and shot.
The body toppled to the floor. The leader’s face twisted into an ugly grin. “Welcome to Kyr’tsad, rat.”
She wished she could say the following years were a blur. It would have been kinder. They weren’t. Some nights she felt like she remembered every single hour: when she got assigned to a permanent squad, when she learned that Jango was still alive and with the Ha’at Mando’ade, when she got her first solo mission.
“I could leave now,” she said aloud, looking down on the sorry town a few clicks downhill from her. It wouldn’t be easy. Kyr’tsad didn’t trust her with a ship; they simply dropped her off with a long-range rifle and instructions for a low-stakes hit done as a favor to one of Viszla’s Republic contacts. But if she stole a speeder and some supplies, crossed the continent, stowed away on a ship from the mining installment on the south hemisphere…
“You could,” Tarre said.
She closed her eyes and held her breath. She imagined it: running away, hiding long enough for Viszla to forget about her. Then…
Then…
She slowly breathed out. “I can’t, can I?” Not if she wanted to find the Darksaber. The Force had told her as much.
She had to do it. It wouldn’t erase everything she’d done, but it was something. She would find it, and she would give it to… someone. Mereel, maybe. Or Kyra Ordo, Force knew she hated Viszla enough. Someone who could follow Tarre’s legacy. The traditionalist clans who sided with Viszla out of respect for his bloodline would leave him, and he’d be left with a crime organization short on credits, easy to wipe out for anyone willing to put their back to it.
Tarre said nothing. She felt his grief, but also his determination. She understood, even if she didn’t know his full reasons. Why her? Why now, and why here? Couldn’t he have gone to the Jedi for help?
She never asked. She was just glad that he was there. If he hadn’t been… some nights she saw herself following Viszla the way she did Tarre, his faithful akk dog always eager for praise. They weren’t her worst nightmares, but they were close.
“Are you ready, ad’ika?”
Yeah. She started down the hill toward the town. Tell me a story?
Tarre huffed. “Alright, but first, give me the names of all the Mandalorian houses and clans you know, starting with house Viszla.”
She rolled her eyes. House Viszla, she recited, clan Viszla, clan Wren, clan Saxon…
Away from Kyr’tsad, Tarre could finally teach her how he wanted - to a point. She did get to meditate in a garden. She didn’t have the heart to tell Tarre that she preferred lifting crates in an empty storehouse, or secretly rearranging cups in an empty flat across the street when she waited for her mark to come home.
He also taught her to fight with a beskad.
“It is what I can teach you best,” he’d told her.
She had to admit, she was a bit dubious at first. “You’re sure? It’s nothing like a lightsaber.” It was heavy; not a vibroblade, just a solid length of beskar.
Tarre’s mouth curled at the corner. “Don’t let Ordo hear you, it’s traditional.” He shook his head. “Maybe it isn’t like a Jedi blade, but I modeled Darksaber after a beskad.” He shifted his legs and raised his arms; in his hands, a ghostly image of the Darksaber appeared from nowhere.
Arla looked at it. She could see it, she thought. “Alright, show me.”
If only finding the Darksaber would be as easy as getting that beskad sword. How will I ever find it?
“It will feel like me,” Tarre told her.
Very helpful. She closed her eyes and let her senses reach as far as they went. It wasn’t very far. She didn’t know if that was normal or if she just was a lousy Jedi. Tarre did not answer when she asked about that, just told her to practice. How many sentients did she sense on the base? Was Viszla here? Where was her squad leader? Where was Pol Reau, Kyra Ordo, Adem Bralor?
She practiced, and she searched. The Darksaber wasn’t on Carlac, or Kalevala, or Krownest; it wasn’t on Phindar, Gala, Telos, Felucia, or even Coruscant, on any of the endless list of planets Viszla’s orders sent her to. Good thing Viszla’s contacts had so many people to kill, she thought in her darker moments, at least she had an excuse to go out and search.
Well, no. In her darker moments, she sat with the blaster in her hands in the darkness and wondered if she’d die before she felt the pain.
Sometimes she imagined how she’d explain herself to Jango. ‘I stayed with Death Watch because the ghost of Tarre Viszla asked me to’. Yeah, right.
He’d probably think she enjoyed it. She didn’t, at least she hoped she didn’t, but she knew she was good at it. Even Viszla could see it: less then a year in and he pulled her out of her regular squad permanently. From then on, he either sent her out alone, or seconded as a sniper to another squad.
Those were the better jobs. The others… she was a good shot, maybe a great one, but under Tarre’s tutelage she turned into a good leader. It took a few years to show up, outside of the usual hierarchy, but show up it did and again, Viszla noticed.
He was quick to exploit it, even as he was wary of it. He gave her a squad, then a platoon. Never permanently and never for longer than a mission, but he did it.
Arla hated it.
She got the dregs - the cowards, the drunks, the bad shots; she pulled them through, sometimes by nothing but the Force in her voice and a lot of creative swearing, and prayed to every god she’d ever heard of that it wouldn’t get her killed.
Sometimes she thought this was some of the payback Viszla promised to draw from her all those years ago.
When she got cadets, it was the lost causes, the ones that outlived the patience of the trainers. She tried to keep them alive as well as she could. It didn’t always work.
She learned the rules of the game: as long as they killed someone on their first mission, they passed. She pushed things around and hedged the odds until there was at least a plausible claim. It was reckless but kriff, if there was something she’d give up on Tarre for, it was this.
She had to give the order exactly once, because Reau was there and breathing down her neck. The kid didn’t do it. Arla screwed her eyes shut behind her buy’ce and thought of the blaster that waited for her at the end of everything.
“Alor?”
“Yeah?”
She had Jango’s eyes, this one. Arla wished she hadn’t; then she might not remember that it was her who killed the girl’s parents and dragged her off to the troop transport.
“Am I staying with your squad?”
“I don’t have a squad,” she snapped. “One of Bralor’s sergeants is a head short, he’ll take you.” She hoped, anyway. Ordo kept her company one step away from the rest of Kyr’tsad, but Bralor owed her a favor. He was a self-important windbag who loved nothing more than drone on about the kriffing glory of his house, but he wouldn’t use the kid as a meat shield, and that was honestly the best Arla could offer.
Jax landed them on the landing pad of the new compound. He was one of the rare verd’e who could fly for shit, Arla hoped she’d get him next time again. He was a mediocre shot and panicked easily, but Arla could work with that.
The moment her foot hit the ground she could feel it. Something was in the air. She sank into the Force and looked for it. The sensations clashed: a threat, but not really; anticipation, eagerness, danger, a warning.
She shook her head to clear it. She sent her squad away and did her duties as a leader: handed the ship off to the hangar crew, got the raided supplies loaded and sent off to the quartermaster, sent a cut-and-paste report to Viszla. He didn’t read them, but they had to be made anyway.
She also needed to inform the head of the trainers that the cadet passed, but she’d wait with that until she’d spoken with Bralor. It was better to put them in front of a done deal… and she wanted a bit more time before she had to look at the kid’s record. There would be a full name, maybe even the names of her parents. She didn’t want to see it yet.
The Force pulled at her, but something made Arla want to drag her feet. She could sense that almost everyone was in the dining hall, but she made her way to the armory instead.
“Why you not at the briefing?” the Phindian in charge asked her.
“What briefing?”
“Oh, something much not interesting. Not so, I lie! Very important!” He grinned at her toothily. “Everyone there now!”
She rolled her eyes at him. “One of these days, Paxxi, you’ll annoy someone with that ‘joke’ of yours so badly that they’ll blow your head off.”
He kept grinning. “Maybe. Not you, though.”
She sighed. “Not me.” She packed the replacement blaster charges and grappling cable she came for. “The briefing is in the dining hall?”
“Yes, there.”
“Thanks.”
She crossed the compound quickly. The meeting had to be really important, the place was completely deserted.
When she got there, the dining hall was closed. She could hear Viszla’s voice through the door anyway. “—and we will finally have our revenge!!!”
The audience roared.
The dining hall doors opened and what looked like a half of the entire Kyr’tsad spilled out. Arla stepped aside no avoid being trampled. Some of the verd’e who noticed her gave her odd looks. The “warning” part of the feeling in the Force strengthened.
“Fett!” Viszla’s voice easily sailed above the heads of the crowd.
Arla suppressed a wince. “Yes, alor?”
“With me.”
Viszla passed out of the dining hall and she followed. He led them to his office. With its reinforced transparisteel ceiling it was the only room in the compound that wasn’t entirely prefab. He raised his head to it now; Mandalore hung in the sky like a white and green fruit, ready for the picking.
His words, not hers.
“Have you heard?” he asked.
“…heard what, alor?”
He turned to her. “The time has come: we are finally moving against the traitor Mereel. My most trusted men are preparing the trap as we speak.”
Well, that would explain why Ordo and Reau are still here, Arla thought wryly. “Do you have orders for me, alor?” Quick, before she had time to really think about it.
“Yes. I need to make sure some of our less reliable allies don’t get any ideas while our eyes are turned away.” He handed her a holo projector. “Here are the names. Light hand, please; I want them spooked, not dead.” He smiled at her: a distorted image of a kind leader, and not because of the scar. “Of course, I know I can count on you.”
“He doesn’t want you anywhere near that trap.” Tarre appeared beside them. He looked up through the ceiling as well. She wondered what kind of simile would he have for Mandalore.
No shit, she thought at him. She didn’t want to be anywhere near it, either. How old was Jango now, fourteen, fifteen? Osik, he might be the same age as the cadet from this morning. Did Mereel let them fight that young?
To Viszla, she bowed her head. “Yes, alor.“
He looked at her. She pointed her eyes slightly over his shoulder, and waited to be dismissed.
For a man who prided himself on his patience, he cracked early. “Take one of the Jai’galaar fighters and go right away.”
“Yes, alor.“
She left the room with a live Mand’alor staring at her back, and a dead one with his eyes still on the sky.
She hurried to the hangar. Until she was in hyperspace, Viszla could still change his mind. If her easy agreement made him think she was a sure thing… he might decide to throw her in Mereel’s face: the child he didn’t save. He might order her to kill Jango. Kriff, she’d rather eat the blaster there and then.
She didn’t get much time to brood on it, thankfully. The Jai’galaar scared the wits out of her every time she flew it, even with the Force at her back, and she gladly put all her attention to making it into the orbit in one piece.
“Wait.”
Arla took her hand off the hyperspace lever and obediently settled the fighter back to follow the curve of the moon. “What is it?” she asked Tarre.
He was silent for the longest time. “Look for the Darksaber here,” he said finally.
She felt a cold wave rush through her body. “What?”
“Do it.”
She reached out. It will feel like me, he’d said. It did. Down on the surface, slowly sliding backwards from her…
“It’s in the base.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Does Viszla have it?” Of course Viszla had it, who else?
Still, silence.
She turned the fighter back. She landed it at the far edge of the landing platform and followed her senses. It was so obvious now, how had she never noticed it before? Probably because Tarre was always with her.
Probably because he never kriffing told her.
She found the Darksaber in Viszla’s personal quarters, at the bottom of his clothing chest. It was in an unmarked wooden box padded with crumpled up fabric. She took it out. It really did feel like Tarre - as if a part of him sat within the piece of dark metal.
“Why.”
“You weren’t ready,” Tarre said.
Ready for what? “And now I am?”
“Do you have a choice?” he asked.
She clenched her teeth. “Why would he hide it?” But she already knew the answer. The traditionalists couldn’t dispute Viszla’s name, but if he held the Darksaber…
“I see,” she said quietly.
“You know what to do.” Tarre’s voice was heavy, like a beskad blade.
“Yes, alor.“
She felt how it cut. Good. Now it was both of them who hurt.
“Viszla!”
Every single head in the dining hall turned to her. The voices petered out. The akk dogs smelled danger.
Viszla turned to her. “Yes, verd’ika?”
“I found something.” She lifted the hilt in front of her with her fingers, mindful not to obscure the shape. The silence got, impossibly, deeper.
Viszla’s lip curled. “That belongs to me.”
“Well, I suppose,” Arla said lightly, “it was on the bottom of your footlocker, hidden under your undies.”
A wave shuddered through the crowd. At least thirty blasters pointed at her head, Viszla’s among them.
“Give it back,” Viszla said.
“I challenge you.”
You could hear a nuna chick fart in the quiet. Isn’t there more? No ritual words? She asked Tarre. I could use a dramatic pronouncement.
Tarre didn’t reply.
Viszla’s eyes narrowed. Arla sensed, more than saw, his finger tighten on the trigger.
“Alor?“
Ordo’s question was light, deceptively so. Slowly, the carefully placed traditionalists stood up all around Viszla. Full armor, some with their helmets on.
Genuine fear flashed in Viszla’s eyes. Had he not noticed, Arla wondered.
Kyra Ordo did not move. She was where she always was, one step behind and one step to the right of Viszla. Her hands laid in her lap, lose and open.
“Alor?“ she asked again.
Viszla bared his teeth. “I accept.”
Ordo stood up and walked over to Arla. “Return the weapon.”
Arla shot her an incredulous look. “Really?!”
“This is the way it is done,” Ordo said.
Arla tightened her grip on the lightsaber hilt. She could still feel the echo of Tarre in it.
She forced her fingers to loosen. With an easy underhand throw, she tossed the saber to Viszla. He caught it; for a moment she thought he’d do something, but he holstered the blaster and switched the Darksaber to his right hand.
The crowd parted around them like a flock of spooked nerfs. This was a terrible place to fight; the tables and benches were bolted to the floor and littered with plates, bottles, cutlery. There was a corridor between the two rows, maybe two arm spans wide; it would tempt her into a linear advance-retreat fight if she wasn’t careful.
Viszla slow-walked down the corridor. He was taller then her, bulkier, heavily armed. His stupid red half-cape swung behind him. Spotless, she noticed; he must have replaced it when she’d been gone. He wore no helmet. The scarred tissue looked shiny in the overhead lights.
He activated the Darksaber. The blade looked darker in reality than it had in a ghost’s hand, more solid.
“It won’t cut beskar,” Tarre spoke in her ear. “Your blade, your vambraces and helmet - but leave the last two as a last resort, the longer they stay a secret, the better. Let him underestimate you.”
She knew that. He’d explained that to her before, during training, when he spoke about the Mandalorian wars. How did she never think that was odd?
She unsheathed her sword. The Darksaber’s ligtht glinted off of the blade.
Viszla gave the beskad a dark look. “So this is how you pay back my mercy. I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
Arla ignored him. Her mind desperately ran through every fight she ever won or lost, every tactic Tarre walked her through. Viszla was bigger and stronger, but she had the Force to prop up her muscles. How openly could she dare to show it? The lowlifes didn’t give a damn, but if it turned the traditionalists against her, the fight would be lost even if she won.
Viszla charged. He tried to overpower her with an overhead slash that rattled her arm all the way up to her shoulder. It left his front wide open - but of course he didn’t have to worry about that, not in full Mandalorian armor.
Arla pulled her blaster and shot at his thigh anyway. The underlayer absorbed the energy, but it heated up as it did, and Viszla jerked with a pained hiss. She slipped the blade lock and went for his left underarm; he spun away and the tip of her sword scraped uselessly at his chest plate.
The Force screamed at her and she went down. She felt the Darksaber swish above her head. She flipped over and slashed at his elbow; the sword slammed against the armor weave but before she could drag it down and do some damage, Viszla jumped back out of reach.
He was rattled though, and his sword arm hurt. Arla shot at his head. Too obvious; he ducked, but he didn’t try to block with the lightsaber. Of course he didn’t - he wasn’t Tarre, he didn’t have the Force to guide his arm where it needed to be.
Her joy was short-lived. Viszla swung the saber at her off-hand and her animal instincts had her pull back like a complete di’kut. Instead of taking the hit to her kriffing beskar vambrace, she almost lost her hand to the Darksaber. The Force was with her and she kept all her fingers, but the blaster ended up in two smoking pieces on the floor.
She scrambled back to her feet. Viszla and a room full of Kyr’tsad now stood between her and the exit. Not that she could run, anyway. If she tried she wouldn’t make it out of the hall.
“Give up, kid. You don’t have a chance against me.”
Arla shifted her stance. She had, though. She could taste it in the Force. Viszla was uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to the Darksaber, and while she’d seen him train with a vibrosword, it wasn’t his favorite weapon by any means. Sure, a lightsaber and full beskar was laughably better than a beskad and crappy plastoid, but she could do it. Blade to the neck, vibroknife to the thigh or the side of his chest, kriff, she could steal his own blaster if she got close enough. The idiot didn’t even have a helmet!
Viszla attacked with a flurry of slashes she struggled to block. Sure, she could do it, if he didn’t kill her first.
She disengaged and retreated a few steps. She took a deep breath, and on the exhale let the tangle in her head stream out into the Force the way Tarre had taught her. She slipped into the calm of meditation. The Force embraced her, like it always did.
Arla waited. Viszla charged and she was ready for it; jumped up on the desk to her right, turned, slammed the sword down on his head with both hands.
He blocked her in time, but he stumbled under the attack. She landed on the floor, crouched, slashed at his ankles. The blade clanged against the greaves, but it further unbalanced him. He flailed with the Darksaber in a wild arc down toward her. She blocked it with her vambrace and slashed at his unarmored side.
He swore something filthy in Mando’a and grabbed at her sword. His fingers wrapped around the crossguard and he pulled at it. Given the choice between keeping keeping the beskad and letting the Darksaber at her unprotected neck, Arla let go. She pushed the saber blade away and scrambled back.
Fuck.
Viszla bore down on her with the Darksaber and she blocked with the vambrace again. She pulled a vibroknife from her boot and went for his elbow, but this was bad. Without the blade she didn’t have the reach. She’d have to get close, and… she could do it, but Viszla was a brawler and she wasn’t - if he pinned her down she was dead. Kriff, he wouldn’t even have to hold her long, all he’d have to do was grab her, turn the Darksaber and slice.
To prove her worries, Viszla stepped in and punched her in the head with his left fist. It rang like a bell, and even with the padding Arla felt her brain rattle. She jumped to her feet, pushed the Darksaber away and bounced backwards. She put Force into it as well, then used it to steady her knees.
Well, there was a thought. She could get her blade back, Ka’ra knew she’d trained that a million times with Tarre. If she could get close to Viszla and use it as a surprise…
Viszla went for her head again. Arla was lucky: he didn’t trust the blade; wouldn’t let it close to his body or use anything else in his off-hand.
Her beskad laid under the table by his left side, but blocking the Darksaber and avoiding Viszla’s fist forced Arla to the right. Almost into the table, and that gave her an idea.
She jumped back when he tried to stab her, threw the Darksaber blade to her right and spun away from it. Viszla tried to chop her head off on the backswing; she flopped back onto the table, let the blade pass above her, kicked out at his other arm and landed on her feet.
He swung at her back. She turned and slammed her vambrace down onto the blade.
The plasma snarled, but the durasteel held. Arla opened her palm, let the vibroknife fall to the ground, reached out into the Force, and pulled.
The sword sailed through air. She felt the shock ripple through the hall but she didn’t pay attention to it. Her hand closed around the beskad’s hilt and she slammed the blade down on Viszla’s wrist.
Viszla screamed. The Darksaber’s blade sputtered out. She swung the beskad forward, up and down, and chopped it deep into Viszla’s neck.
Everything went still.
She closed her eyes against the blood that gushed out of the wound. There was a lot of it. The body slumped down to her feet; Viszla’s head lolled against her legs, smearing blood all over her.
She could see the white of his spine in the gore.
Her stomach revolted. She stumbled back, propped herself up on the table. Her fingers hit something; she closed her hand around it more from instinct than anything else.
The feeling in the Force made her choke. She opened her eyes and stared at the Darksaber in her hand. She could feel her arms shake. Tarre…
A delicate cough. Arla looked up. Kyra Ordo stood at the other end of the table, her eyes fixed on the hilt in Arla’s hand. There was a look of a starving akk dog in them.
Not just her. The surroundings slowly filtered back into Arla’s awareness. Reau and his side of Kyr’tsad watched her, or Ordo, or Viszla’s carcass. The traditionalists all stared at the Darksaber.
Arla made a step back. She let her hand with the Darksaber hang by her side, straightened her spine, raised her chin. “Ordo?” she asked lightly.
Kyra Ordo met her eyes. She shook out her shoulders and folded her arms behind her back. For a moment longer she looked at Arla with an unreadable expression. Then she bent her head. “Mand’alor.“
...wait. No.
The word made its way around the hall: the traditionalists, but then the rest of the verd’e as well. Arla didn’t move, only her eyes followed it.
No. This wasn’t the plan. She clenched her fist around the Darksaber. This wasn’t the plan! She’d give it to Ordo…
…she couldn’t, could she. The splatters of Viszla’s blood slowly crusted on her visor. The sword doesn’t have power, she remembered Tarre’s words, the story does. Ordo would have to fight her for it. Force knew why she didn’t go for it; maybe she didn’t want to risk it now that she knew Arla had the Force.
Tarre!!! she screamed. Tarre, what do I do?!
His blue figure appeared beside Ordo. He didn’t answer, just shook his head.
He folded his arms in front of him and bowed. “Mand’alor.“