Introspection

Ebon Hawk

Enroute to Manaan

Canderous

I found that I had missed the Story circle of home more than I would have admitted to someone not of my clans. Zaalbar had made Merdai stew for some of us, with a milder form for the rest. I was not surprised when Danika and Sasha got bowls of it. Danika would have been Mandalore if she had been born right, and Sasha had learned. What did surprise me was the old man Jolee. He filled his bowl, and almost inhaled it rather than chewing. He filled his bowl again, and this vanished almost as fast.

'Real food again!' He said. Sasha watched him, as if afraid he would inhale her next. He looked at me, leaning back from the table. 'You're a big one! What clan?'

'Ordo of Clan Ordo.'

'Ah. I fought one of your ancestors. A guy named Ramius.'

'You fought Ramius Ordo?' I looked at him. 'You don't look to be a hundred years old.'

'Well my age is unimportant. There was a siege before the Sith wars. Your people had landed on a planet named Costigain, and I was sent to negotiate. It came down to adverse discussions-'

'Adverse discussions?' Carth asked.

'Talking with our lightsabers instead of with our mouths.' Jolee replied. 'Of course this was supposed to be a 'peaceful' negotiation, so the only weapons in the room were dress daggers and fists. Well anyway I think it was someone getting angry on the settler side and defaming Ramius' mother-'

'She died when he was a child. A settler on Subreka shot her from ambush then desecrated her body.' I said.

'That would explain why he was so upset. There was only one other Jedi with me, and we had to carry the brunt of the fight. Anyway Ramius cut his way through the others, and saw me. 'You pup! Now you die!' he shouted.

'Well I was a spry one. I finally beat him by running around the room like an out of control droid, until he finally fell so exhausted that he could barely breath. I bounced back, disarmed him, then hauled him over my lap spanked him like a ten year old misbehaving.'

'You didn't!' Mission said, giggling.

'Yep I did. Shocked the Mandalore into stopping. Then I dragged that loudmouth over, and whaled the tar out of him too. Almost made the both of them stand in a corner holding hands the rest of the day.'

'Now I know you're telling tales.' Carth said. He looked at me, and looked confused.

I laughed. No one had ever told that story from the other side before. I had heard it when the ancient Ramius had a little too much to drink. It was at once the high point and low point of his career as a warrior. 'It happened just that way.' I gasped.

'Tell us more about Revan.' Danika asked.

'We fought the Republic over the course of many battle. At the start, they weren't much of a threat. The commanding officers were hesitant and tended to either attack down obvious junctions, or run when they actually found us ready to fight. Oh some were good. Admirals Karath and Dodonna come to mind. But then Revan took command, and things changed.

'The fleets began actually using tactics. Pincer movements mass deceptions, Revan was an acknowledged master when it came to feinting then slamming us to the ground. She abandoned worlds that had little or nothing to defend, using the weapons and ships to make planets we had to capture impregnable. She sacrificed a dozen ships in a feint to draw out our forces in one battle so she could crush one of our fleets against them. She knew how to take risks. I hear she had a way of questioning her commanders. She would pose a hypothetical question, and judge what they should do from the answer.

'We captured a Republic General, and he told us about that. 'You're in a small ship, a snub fighter. There is an asteroid, and you know it will hit a planet of ten billion people, and kill them. There are no other ships in the system, and the planet has no defenses.

' 'Your guns would be worthless; the only weapon you have is the ship you are flying. If you ram your ship into the asteroid, it will be obliterated, and you will die. But if you do no one will ever know what happened to you. The people you die for are unknown to you. Or you can call them and try to warn them. All they can look forward to is a horrible wait as they die. Or you can ignore the rock. No one will ever know that you did, and they will die unawares'.

'We listened; the riddle is a masterpiece if you think about it. You can tell what the man might do in other situations from it. One of our interrogators asked him what he answered. 'I asked her to repeat it. She sent me here'. He didn't understand why we laughed so hard. He was assigned to a supply depot on an unprotected planet, with few troops.

'What would you have done Danika?'

She sipped her tea. 'Aimed at the meteor, and ejected before the ship hit it.'

'Why eject?' Canderous asked.

'Dying would be pointless. If I failed, I can die in shame waiting. If I succeeded, I know I would die at peace.'

'Something Revan would have approved of.' Canderous said. 'In the end Revan proved too much for us.'

'You couldn't have won against the entire Galaxy!' Carth said.

'True.' I admitted. 'But it was so close. It looked like the entire galaxy was in our grasp! There was a fleet at Kasmiri, and a base at Malchior V. If we smashed the fleet, the base would be ours. We struck, and the fleet ran away. We went on to Malchior and fell into the trap Revan had set. She had installed massive gravity generators in all of the asteroids of the system, then boosted those asteroids into orbits as far as a light minute from the planet. Then she took a small fleet and 'guarded' the planet.

'We laughed. The fleet she had was half the size of the one we had routed already, and we could crush it easily. Over two hundred Mandalore ship charged toward a third that number. We tasted victory. Then she sprung the trap. Five fleets came out of hyperspace behind us. Almost a 200 hundred ships now faced us and the gravity generators trapped our fleet in normal space.' I looked from face to face.

'It wasn't your ideals that defeated us that day. Not your men or your ships or your 'fight for freedom' that stopped us there. It was one thing. Revan. She out-thought our best; she stood on a ship being pulverized by our fleet, and calmly directed the other ships in decimating us. Less than thirty of our ships broke free. Mandalore had to order that retreat himself. No one would have dared to give such an order except for him. But we didn't have the strength any longer to resist her advances.

'But you were losing? Why didn't you retreat?' Danika asked.

'It is what we had wanted all along. We wanted to fight a battle against the best the Republic had to offer. A battle that would be remembered throughout history. We got what we wanted.

'What was left of the fleet fell back on our home world. The largest of them was the captured cruiser Vikrant, Mandalore's flagship.

'Then their ships came. Hundreds of them. We braced for an attack that didn't come. Then there was a broadcast. Revan in that battle-mask she wore. 'I am Revan Chadar Bai Echani. I challenge Mandalore to personal combat. Let none interfere'.' I looked at them. 'You see she understood our people better than anyone we had ever fought. She knew that a personal challenge must be answered. And if she won, she would, under our law become Mandalore, and could order us as did all of those through our history.

'Vikrant surged forward, and from their fleet came a ship of the same class. I think it was named Harvest Moon-'

'Tik-harvest Moon.' Carth corrected.

'Yes. The ships closed, and the battle commenced. To an aficionado, it was masterly. Two ships, equally matched, dodging around like massive snub fighters pounding at each other. Mandalore tried to force the issue, closing to point-blank range. The guns ravened, men died as the shields gave enough for weapons to blast through. They swirled in a dance of fire and blood, air bleeding from rifts in the hulls. It looked as if Mandalore might be winning when suddenly Revan fired a brace of concussion torpedoes through a gap in the shields. Vikrant exploded.

'Then the broadcast returned. The bridge of Tik-harvest Moon looked like the antechamber of hell. Yet Revan, still in the mask, looked as if she had not even been disturbed by the slaughter around her. 'As the canons require, I have defeated Mandalore. I stand as your Mandalore now. Does any gainsay my ascension?'

'None could. She had won, and our laws were clear. She ordered us to return to our home worlds, and followed us there. When we arrived, she ordered any ships larger than a customs craft abandoned, and they were taken. Republic troops came down, and under her orders all of our heavy weapons, droids, and all combat equipment that was not personal property were destroyed.

'Then she had our troops marshaled. 'Thanks to those who claim your blood but not your honor, your people for a time will have no honor. Until such time as I release you from this, no honor may be gained. Live with your dishonor. I will not accept honor-death. Those that choose that way to atone go into the darkness bereft. I your Mandalore have spoken.'. For some that hurt even more. It has always been our way that if you cannot have honor in life, you can gain it in death by your own hand.

'Then she left.' I sighed. 'Some could not stand the shame. They went into honor-death, knowing that doing so dishonored them more. Others ran, becoming raiders, little more than thieves, as we know from, Dantooine.

'But one day we hoped that our honor would be returned. That is until Revan fell at Zanebra. Now we are trapped, unable to regain our honor, unwilling to surrender our lives. None can claim the title of Mandalore without ritual combat or the Mandalore's word unless all of the Clans agree, and no leader living now is so beloved.

'We had lost, and Revan won. We don't hold a grudge against her, even against those that fought there against us we have no animus. If she had been Mandalorian, we would have drunk wine in the Republic Senate instead.'

Danika

A short time later, the meeting broke up as we went to bed. I couldn't sleep, so I decided to do some tinkering with the lightsabers and crystals we had collected on our journey. I was passing the mess hall when I heard Bastila's voice.

'Jolee, may I have a moment?'

'Sure.' Jolee sounded tired. As if fighting the same argument yet again.

'There is something I think we need to discuss-'

'Spare me.' His voice was harsh, in pain. 'I don't want to hear the whole 'come back to the order, all is forgiven' argument one more time.'

'I know you have... issues with the order. But you are a Jedi, Jolee. You command the force as do we all. Without the guidance of the order how have you managed to stay on the side of light all these years?'

'Light side, dark side, you know it doesn't even really matter any more. The concept doesn't mean the same thing to you that it does to me. I just wanted to be left alone.'

'So Malak and the Sith can do what they please?' Her voice was sharp, angry.

'Listen, if I can I will help stop Malak and the Sith right alongside anyone that fights them. But I don't have to join the order and kowtow to the council for that. Look at the crew of this ship. Carth, Canderous, Mission, Zaalbar. None of them are Jedi but you trust them to do their part. Put me alongside them if you want, but leave me out of it beyond that.'

'Jolee-'

'Damn it woman, what more do I need to say? It's like Danika.'

'How do you mean?'

'The capacity for good and evil is in every person. Just as using the force is there in everyone if they can touch it. Our non Jedi crew do what they think is right, just as Danika is doing even now. You didn't see the agony she went through facing that damn computer on Kashyyyk, I did. Her inherent honesty got her through that, and I expect everyone who can't touch the force aboard this ship will make their decisions based on what they believe is right. Being a member of the Jedi or even of the Sith will not change a person's basic nature.'

She sighed. 'I can see you are adamant about this. No doubt you had a lot of time to think about what you might say if the discussion ever came up-'

'More than you might think, between dodging animals that wanted to invite me to dinner.'

'I guess it was foolish of me to think that I of all people could sway you in your position just with a reasoned argument.'

'If that's your way of saying that I am old and stubborn, thank you. But I appreciate the effort.' He raised his voice. 'Do you think I lived all those years without knowing when something was watching me, Danika?'

I stepped into the room. 'Get some sleep, girl.' He ordered. 'Leave an old man to his memories.' He looked at Bastila. 'You too.'