Chapter 32: Aggressive Negotiations
The vote passed without applause.
Satine felt the moment it happened more than she heard it—the subtle shift in the chamber's posture, the way tension redistributed itself rather than dissipated. Relief existed, yes, but it was thin and brittle, the kind that cracked if you held it too tightly. Mandalore had done what it set out to do. The motion carried. Clone troopers—once property, once secrets—were now citizens under Mandalorian law.
History, she thought distantly, rarely announced itself with fanfare. It preferred administrative confirmation.
She remained seated for a heartbeat longer than necessary, spine straight, hands folded, expression composed into something that could politely be mistaken for calm. Exhaustion pressed behind her eyes, deep and old. This had taken months of argument, of reframing the question until even those who disliked the answer could live with the logic. She had spoken until her voice went hoarse, listened until she could predict counterarguments before they were voiced, and compromised everywhere except where it mattered.
This was the easy part.
Around her, senators began to rise, smoothing robes, activating data-slates, performing the careful choreography of public reaction. Congratulations came quickly—too quickly. Polite smiles, respectful inclinations of the head, words chosen with surgical precision.
"An admirable display of Mandalorian sovereignty," one Republic delegate said, tone warm enough to burn. "We hope this decision won't… complicate future cooperation."
Another offered praise for her courage, which Satine had long ago learned was a synonym for you will regret this.
The Confederacy's representatives remained seated longer than most, their protest filed exactly as procedure allowed—formal objections, jurisdictional challenges, dire predictions about destabilization. No raised voices. No threats. Just a promise, written between the lines, that this would not be forgotten.
Satine acknowledged them all with equal grace. She had learned, painfully, that treating hostility and goodwill the same was often the safest option.
Bail Organa approached her last.
That, too, was deliberate.
"Duchess Kryze," he said, offering a bow that managed to be respectful without theatricality. His expression was kind, but his eyes were tired in a way she recognized. "You have my congratulations."
"And your concern," Satine replied quietly.
He smiled faintly. "I wouldn't insult you by pretending otherwise."
They walked a few steps together, just enough to create the illusion of privacy. Bail lowered his voice. "The Senate will accept this vote. Publicly. Privately… there will be discussions."
"Of course there will," Satine said. "There always are, when someone reminds the galaxy that consent matters."
His gaze flicked, briefly, to the upper galleries. "You should be careful."
"I have been careful," she said. Then, more honestly, "Now I will be vigilant."
Bail nodded, satisfied that she understood the difference. He took his leave with a final look that lingered half a second too long, as if committing her to memory.
When she turned back toward the chamber floor, the sense of unease sharpened.
Security was present—plentiful, even—but not evenly. Satine had spent enough time around Mandalorian guards to recognize patterns, and this one was wrong. Too many near the main entrances. Too few along the upper walkways. A gap where there should not have been one, hastily filled by someone she did not recognize.
Her eyes found Bo-Katan without conscious effort.
Her sister stood near the edge of the chamber, posture loose in a way that fooled no one who actually knew her. One hand rested near her vambrace, fingers twitching slightly, gaze moving in short, precise arcs. Alert. Ready. Bo-Katan had the look she wore before violence—not eager, but resolved.
That alone set Satine's nerves humming.
And then there was Obi-Wan.
He stood with the Jedi delegation, hands folded into the sleeves of his robes, expression serene to the point of artifice. Anyone else might have believed it. Satine did not. She saw the tension in his shoulders, the way his attention kept drifting—not to the speakers, but to her, to the exits, to the air itself, as if he could feel the same pressure building under her skin.
He was trying very hard to be professional.
The absurdity of it—of him standing there, bound by an Order that had taken so much from both of them—suddenly felt intolerable.
She crossed the distance before she could talk herself out of it.
"Knight Kenobi," she said, formal enough for anyone listening. "A moment?"
He inclined his head and followed her two steps aside, just far enough that the murmurs of the chamber became background noise. Up close, she could see the fatigue etched into his face, the lines that had deepened since the last time they'd spoken without an audience.
"You should be proud," he said softly. "This was… no small thing."
She searched his face, looking for disapproval, for caution, for the reminder of consequences she knew he carried like a second spine.
She found none of it.
Instead, she found certainty. And concern. And something warmer, still stubbornly alive after all this time.
"Kriff it," she decided.
She leaned in and kissed him.
It was not subtle. It was not restrained. It was brief, but it was real, and it landed in the chamber like a shockwave. She felt him freeze for a fraction of a second before instinct won out, his hand lifting as if to steady her, to anchor the moment before sense could reclaim it.
When she pulled back, the room had gone very quiet.
Satine met his stunned expression with a tired, unapologetic smile. "If the Order wishes to expel you after everything you've done for them," she said calmly, "then they do not deserve you."
Obi-Wan stared at her, something dangerously like laughter and heartbreak warring behind his eyes. "You do have a talent for escalation," he murmured.
"I learned from the best."
Around them, the galaxy very carefully pretended not to stare.
The vote had passed. Mandalore had chosen its path. And as the chamber slowly resumed its measured, diplomatic rhythm, Satine felt the weight of the future settle onto her shoulders—heavy, inevitable, and already sharpening its knives.
This had been the easy part.
Somewhere beyond the walls of the capital, forces were already moving.
She could feel it.
...
Anakin Skywalker had weaponized literature.
Ahsoka realized this about twelve minutes into what had started as a polite conversation and had since metastasized into an academic hostage situation involving Padmé Amidala, two increasingly pale senators, and a decorative column that had done nothing to deserve this.
"The critical misunderstanding," Anakin was saying, pacing with the manic confidence of someone who had discovered a framework, "is that Plagueis is usually framed as a cautionary figure, when in fact the text—assuming the translation Ben sent me is even remotely accurate—positions him as an inevitability. A systemic response to institutional decay."
Padmé nodded, chin propped on her hand, eyes bright with genuine interest.
"That actually aligns with late-Republic political theory," she said. "Authoritarian consolidation often arises less from ambition than from paralysis."
One of the senators made a noise that suggested he was reconsidering every life choice that had led him here.
Anakin lit up. "Exactly! And if you look at the apprentice—not as a person, but as a role—you can see—"
Ahsoka edged back half a step.
Cody stood beside her, helmet tucked under one arm, expression admirably neutral. Bo-Katan leaned against a nearby pillar, arms crossed, eyes flicking between the exits and Anakin with equal suspicion.
This was going to take hours.
Ahsoka felt it with the same certainty she felt gravity.
Anakin was not in a conversational mood. He was in thesis defense mode. She had seen this once before, when he'd spent an entire hyperspace jump explaining why podracing regulations were an example of soft tyranny. Obi-Wan had nearly spaced himself.
She glanced at the corridor access point down the hall. Restricted. Quiet. Unattended.
Opportunity, the Force whispered.
"Commander," she said softly, touching Cody's arm.
He turned immediately. "Everything alright?"
"Yes," she said. "I just—ah—forgot something. Very important. Jedi thing."
He hesitated, then nodded, professional as ever. "I'll be here."
She offered an apologetic smile and slipped away before he could ask what she'd forgotten.
Bo-Katan caught her eye as she passed.
Ahsoka didn't slow down.
Bo-Katan's mouth twitched, just barely. A knowing look. Good luck, it seemed to say. Or maybe, don't get stabbed. Maybe the meant the same thing to a Mandalorian.
The corridor swallowed Ahsoka whole, the ambient noise of the assembly fading into a distant hum. The lighting dimmed, practical and uninviting. She walked for a dozen paces before she felt it—
—not a disturbance, exactly, but a familiar wrongness. Like a chord played just slightly off-key.
She turned a corner.
Ben Kryze leaned against the wall, arms folded, looking exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. His hair was a mess, his robes wrinkled, his expression carefully neutral in the way that meant he was holding about six disasters in his head at once.
Maris stood beside him, back against the opposite wall, horns catching the light, posture loose and predatory. She looked like she'd just finished a fight and was mildly disappointed there wasn't another one lined up.
No disguises.
No droids.
No theatrics.
Just them.
Ahsoka stopped dead.
For half a second, none of them moved.
Then she crossed the distance in three strides and slammed into Ben hard enough to knock the breath out of both of them.
"You absolute jerk," she said, arms locked around him.
"To be fair, you're the one who left," he shot back, hugging her just as tightly. "You know that Maris was basically my moral compass in your absence, right?"
"It shows! You started your own galactic coup!"
"You don't know that was me… even if it was, which I will not admit, I definitely would have had my reasons if I did it! Which I didn't!"
"Ben. I know you. I know it was you."
Maris cleared her throat loudly.
"I helped. Also, where's my hug? This is discrimination."
Ahsoka released Ben and immediately collided with Maris instead. The hug was shorter, sharper, accompanied by a solid punch to the arm.
"You look terrible," Maris said flatly.
Ahsoka grinned. "You look horny."
"Is that a pun?"
"Maybe. Maybe I'm just calling you promiscuous." It was a big word, and Ahsoka was not very proud of knowing it. But she needed to expand her vocabulary for her growing list of complaints against Padawan Skywalker.
Maris smacked her upside the head.
Ben caught a stray elbow for his trouble.
They stood there for a moment afterward, breathing hard, laughing despite themselves, the tension bleeding out of the space between them like a pressure seal finally released.
Ahsoka leaned back against the wall, suddenly aware of how tired she was. "So," she said casually. "How bad is it?"
Ben didn't dodge the question. He never did with her.
"Pretty bad," he said. "We had to leave the PROXYs running the First Order to come here. They're… competent. Aggressively so. I think they might've developed free will, maybe?"
Maris smirked. "One of them tried to implement tax reform."
Ahsoka closed her eyes for a second, then nodded. "Okay. I'll tell the Council we should probably keep a closer eye on the Outer Rim for… reasons."
She can think of a better excuse for it, later.
"That feels fair," Ben said.
The Force shifted.
All three of them stilled at once.
It wasn't sharp. It wasn't loud. Just a low, crawling hum beneath everything, like the galaxy drawing in a breath it didn't intend to release gently.
Ahsoka straightened. "You feel that."
Ben nodded. Maris's smile had vanished entirely.
"Yeah," Ben said quietly. "Something's coming."
They didn't argue. They didn't linger.
This wasn't a moment for promises or plans.
Ahsoka stepped back toward the corridor she'd come from, pulling her composure back on like armor. "Try not to start a war without me," she said.
"No promises," Maris replied.
Ben watched her go, expression unreadable.
As Ahsoka slipped back toward the noise and the lights and Anakin's ongoing lecture on Sith pedagogy, the hum followed her.
Closer now.
Hungry.
Whatever was coming for Mandalore, it wasn't going to wait for the thesis to be finished.
Small mercies.
...
Jango Fett lay prone on a rooftop that had been chosen for three reasons: clean sightlines, stable stone, and the fact that no one else competent enough to matter had thought to claim it first.
His rifle rested comfortably against his shoulder, weight familiar, balanced. The scope painted Duchess Satine Kryze in crisp detail as she moved through the aftermath of the vote below—serene, exhausted, surrounded by aides, Jedi, and guards who were trying very hard not to look like a firing solution.
She was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Jango adjusted the magnification by a hair and let his breathing slow. This was a simple job. Difficult, sure—Mandalorian capital, active shields, too many Force-users—but simple. He had been paid to remove a political problem. He didn't need to like it. He didn't need to agree with it.
He just needed the Republic to keep the clone army.
Satine Kryze was an obstacle. Not personal. Not ideological. Just inconvenient.
His finger rested alongside the trigger, relaxed.
Then something moved that didn't belong.
Jango's eyes flicked away from the scope for a fraction of a second, scanning the surrounding rooftops, balconies, and access points with the ease of long habit. Motion patterns emerged immediately—too coordinated to be coincidence, too sloppy to be professionals.
Armor silhouettes caught the light.
Beskar. Painted. Gaudy.
Jango felt something cold and corrosive crawl up his spine.
Death Watch.
Of course it was.
He shifted the scope, tracking them now instead of Satine. Three teams, poorly staggered. One high, two low. Their overwatch angles overlapped in exactly the wrong places, creating blind spots anyone with half a brain would exploit.
One of them leaned too far over a parapet, telegraphing his position to anyone who bothered to look up.
Amateurs.
No—worse than amateurs.
True Mandalorians hadn't worn their armor like costumes. They hadn't needed theatrics. Death Watch treated beskar like a uniform instead of a responsibility, and it showed in every careless step.
Jango clenched his jaw.
He adjusted his audio pickup, filtering out the crowd noise and slicing into encrypted comm chatter with practiced ease. Death Watch encryption was… enthusiastic. Overdesigned. Loud.
He caught fragments almost immediately.
"…Vizsla says hold until the signal—"
"…CIS liaison confirmed, support inbound—"
"…Duchess exits through the west concourse—"
That did it.
Jango's mouth tightened into something that wasn't quite a snarl and wasn't quite a smile.
Vizsla.
Pre Vizsla, playing warlord with borrowed ideology and worse allies. Coordinating with the Confederacy. Taking money, taking promises, taking orders from outsiders while pretending it was about Mandalore.
Dar'manda.
Traitors in armor.
Jango exhaled slowly and shifted his rifle again, recalibrating for a different angle. His movements were smooth, unhurried, as if nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
Satine Kryze remained in his peripheral vision, alive and unaware. She could wait. The job wasn't going anywhere. She wasn't going anywhere.
Vizsla, on the other hand, was about to make this mess louder, sloppier, and far more visible than it needed to be.
And that offended him.
This wasn't rage. Jango Fett didn't do rage on the job. This was professional irritation—the same feeling he got when a contractor used the wrong grade of durasteel or mounted a turret six degrees off true.
He watched Death Watch take up their final positions and mentally rewrote the whole operation.
Too many shooters clustered. No proper escape vectors. Their timing relied on spectacle instead of precision. Someone was going to panic. Someone was going to fire early.
Someone was going to get a lot of people killed who didn't need to die.
Jango adjusted the scope until Pre Vizsla filled it.
There he was—posturing, gesturing, giving orders like a man who believed volume translated to authority. His armor was pristine. Untested. His stance was wrong.
Jango centered the reticle on Vizsla's chest and paused.
Satine Kryze was still alive.
The Republic still needed the clones.
Death Watch was about to ruin everything.
He squeezed the trigger.
The rifle kicked once, clean and controlled, the shot cutting across the open air with lethal certainty.
Professional courtesy, after all.
If someone was going to start a war on Mandalore, it wasn't going to be Vizsla's sloppy mess.
It was going to be done right.
...
Satine Kryze had delivered enough public addresses to recognize the dangerous ones.
This one felt finished before she ever began speaking.
She stood at the podium beneath the open canopy of the Parliament concourse, banners hanging motionless in the still air, the city's shields humming softly overhead like a held breath. Delegates were settling. Aides were arranging themselves into neat, obedient clusters. The audience—civilian observers, clone representatives, foreign envoys—waited with the quiet attentiveness of people who believed the hard part was over.
That belief worried her.
She folded her hands lightly atop the podium, posture straight, chin lifted. Composure was a habit now, not an effort. She could feel the weight of the moment pressing in from all sides, but she refused to let it show. Mandalore had voted. History had turned. This address was meant to close the door gently behind it.
"Citizens of Mandalore," she began, her voice carrying cleanly across the concourse, "today, we have taken a step that—"
The calm did not break.
It stretched.
Satine felt it then, a prickling awareness at the base of her spine, the same instinct that had warned her of riots and coups and poisoned chalices dressed up as diplomacy. Nothing had happened yet.
That was the problem.
She continued, because stopping would only confirm fear. "—a step that affirms our values not merely as Mandalorians, but as participants in a wider galaxy—"
The sound cut through her words like a blade.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Precise.
A sharp, flat crack that echoed off stone and metal, distinct enough that every Mandalorian in the concourse recognized it instantly.
Blaster fire.
Or—
No. Two reports, close enough together that they overlapped in the ear, one following the other by a heartbeat. The second carried a faint metallic ring beneath it.
Beskar.
Someone screamed.
Satine's eyes snapped to the periphery of the concourse just in time to see Pre Vizsla jerk violently backward, his rifle clattering from his hands as he staggered against the railing. His armor smoked where the bolt had struck, scorched and dented but intact. If he had been wearing anything else—
He would have fallen.
He would have died.
Instead, he stayed upright, stunned, furious, very much alive.
Chaos arrived all at once.
Mandalorian security surged forward, weapons up, moving with drilled precision that abandoned ceremony without hesitation. Civilians ducked and scattered. Clone troopers snapped into formation on instinct, shields and rifles raised in smooth, terrifying synchronization.
The Jedi ignited their lightsabers.
Blue and green light flared across the concourse, humming through the air like drawn steel. Satine caught a glimpse of Obi-Wan out of the corner of her eye, already moving, already placing himself between her and the threat without looking back to see if she followed.
Someone shouted, loud and panicked.
"Separatists!"
The word hit like an accelerant.
Satine felt the accusation ripple outward, saw heads turn toward the CIS delegation in a wave of suspicion that required no evidence to spread. Nute Gunray was already halfway out of his seat, hands raised, face flushed with indignant horror.
"This is an outrage!" he bellowed, voice amplified and shrill. "The Confederacy categorically denies any involvement in this unprovoked—"
Another blaster bolt scorched the stone near the podium, close enough that Satine felt the heat kiss her cheek.
She did not scream.
She stepped back as guards closed ranks around her, beskar plating interlocking into a wall of moving steel. The world narrowed to motion and noise and the sharp, metallic scent of scorched air.
Somewhere behind her, a clerk's voice—thin, precise, absurdly committed to procedure—cut through the din.
"Formal protest noted," they called out, datapad already glowing. "Time-stamp logged."
Satine almost laughed.
Instead, she gripped the edge of the podium as it was pulled aside, her heart hammering not with fear, but with a grim, familiar understanding.
So this was it.
The vote had passed. The words had been spoken.
And now, apparently, the galaxy had decided to respond.
Not with debate.
But with gunfire.
...
I had exactly three thoughts when Death Watch made their move.
The first was oh good, so this is happening now.
The second was I am going to have to explain this to literally everyone.
And the third—arriving with the cold, clinical clarity of the Force slamming into alignment—was that's Korkie.
The chaos from the plaza hadn't even fully settled yet. Blaster fire echoed off durasteel and stone, alarms screaming as Mandalorian security tried to regain control, Jedi lightsabers igniting in sharp, luminous arcs. People were running. Guards were shouting. Someone was still insisting, at top volume, that the Separatists categorically denied involvement.
Then the Force twisted.
Not subtly. Not ominously. Just abruptly, like someone had yanked a thread that should not have been pulled.
I felt Korkie before I saw him. Fear, sharp and spiking, mixed with stubborn defiance that felt painfully familiar. He was being dragged—no, hauled—by armored figures through a maintenance access overlooking the city, high enough that the wind howled and the drop below disappeared into layered sky traffic and mist.
Death Watch didn't do subtle kidnappings. They did statements.
Pre Vizsla understood optics. I'd give him that.
I moved before the rational part of my brain finished catching up, boots pounding across polished stone, Maris right beside me without a word exchanged. We didn't need one. The Force had already decided for us.
We burst out onto the upper platform just as Vizsla shoved Korkie forward, one gauntleted hand gripping the back of his collar. The city stretched out behind them in all its gleaming, indifferent beauty. Banners snapped violently in the wind.
Vizsla turned, helmet angled toward the crowd below, voice booming through external speakers.
"Behold the cost of pacifism," he announced, theatrical as hell. "Behold what your Duchess has invited into our home."
Korkie struggled, boots skidding against the edge. He didn't scream. That was the worst part. He looked furious, terrified, and heartbreakingly young.
I felt something in my chest go tight and feral.
"This is not how I planned to reunite," I muttered, mostly to myself.
Vizsla continued, because of course he did. "Mandalore has grown weak. It shelters outsiders, grants citizenship to weapons bred for war, and calls it virtue—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He threw Korkie.
There was no dramatic pause. No lingering threat. Just a sudden, violent motion as Vizsla shoved him off the edge like discarded cargo.
The Force surged.
Maris moved faster than thought.
Korkie fell maybe three meters before he stopped—suspended in midair, limbs flailing once before freezing as if caught in an invisible grip. The wind screamed around him, tugging at his clothes, but he didn't drop another centimeter.
Maris stepped forward, one hand raised casually, fingers curled with precise control. Her expression was flat, focused, lethal.
She pulled.
Korkie shot upward, flying back onto the platform and slamming gently—gently—into the deck at her feet. He sucked in a sharp breath, alive, shaking, eyes wide.
Maris looked down at him, unimpressed.
"You're not as cute as your brother," she said dryly.
Korkie blinked. "What—"
Then he noticed me.
"Oh," he breathed. "Oh, stars."
I didn't give myself time to think. Thinking was dangerous. Thinking led to consequences and questions and paperwork.
I ignited my lightsaber.
Green light flared to life in full public view, casting sharp reflections across beskar armor and durasteel plating. The hum of the blade cut through the chaos like a declaration.
So much for secrecy.
Death Watch operatives reacted instantly, rifles coming up, jetpacks flaring as they spread out to form a kill box. They were good. Trained. Coordinated.
Maris exhaled slowly.
Then she moved.
She didn't charge straight in. She never did. She vanished sideways in a blur of Force-assisted motion, boots barely touching the ground as she vaulted onto a railing, then kicked off, twisting midair. A section of deck plating tore free beneath her gesture, slamming into two Death Watch soldiers and sending them sprawling.
Another tried to flank her.
The wall behind him bent.
Not exploded. Bent. Folded inward just enough to trap him there, pinned and swearing as Maris landed lightly nearby and knocked him unconscious with the hilt of her saber.
I stepped forward, blade raised, eyes locked on Pre Vizsla.
He was already turning toward me, Darksaber igniting in his hand with its distinctive, hungry snap-hiss. The black blade absorbed light instead of reflecting it, edges crackling with contained violence.
There it was.
The symbol. The weapon. The entire damn problem.
"So," Vizsla said, voice calm despite everything. "The Duchess's hidden weapon shows himself at last."
I didn't bother responding.
We collided in a blur of motion.
The Darksaber struck hard, aggressive, every blow aimed to overpower and dominate. Vizsla fought like a man used to winning by force of will alone—wide, brutal arcs meant to break guard and morale simultaneously.
I fought to end it.
Our blades met again and again, sparks flying as green light clashed against void-black energy. The impact rattled my arms, but the Force flowed clean and sharp, guiding my steps, tightening my movements.
Vizsla overcommitted.
It was subtle. A fraction of a second where he leaned too far into a power strike, putting everything behind it, expecting me to meet him head-on.
Instead, I stepped inside the arc.
I twisted my wrist, locked his hilt with mine, and kicked his knee out from under him.
The Darksaber flew free.
It skidded across the platform, clattering to a stop at my feet.
Everything froze.
For one perfect, absurd moment, I stared down at the weapon that had defined Mandalorian power struggles for centuries.
I am absolutely going to have to explain this.
I scooped it up.
It felt… heavy. Not physically—emotionally. Like it remembered every hand that had wielded it and disapproved of all of them.
Vizsla scrambled back, rage pouring off him in waves. "That is not yours," he snarled.
"Too bad," I said, breathing hard. "To the victor goes the spoils. Not that you would know."
I slashed the ground between us, forcing him back as Death Watch regrouped. Blaster fire intensified, but Maris was already tearing through their formation, dropping smoke canisters, yanking rifles out of hands, sending armored bodies tumbling.
Vizsla raised his hand sharply.
"Withdraw," he ordered.
His troops hesitated—then obeyed, jetpacks igniting as they fell back in coordinated bursts. Vizsla retreated with them, helmet angled toward me, fury practically vibrating the air.
"This is not over," he promised.
"I know," I replied.
He vanished into the smoke.
The platform fell eerily quiet.
Korkie sat where Maris had left him, staring at the Darksaber in my hand with something like awe and horror. "Ben," he said weakly. "Auntie is going to kill you."
I looked around at the damage. The stunned operatives. The smoking deck. The weapon humming ominously in my grip.
Yeah.
"I know," I said. "I know."
Behind us, the city of Mandalore reeled.
The vote had passed.
The blood had nearly followed.
And now, somehow, impossibly, the Darksaber was in my hands.
This was definitely not how I'd planned to reunite.
...
Bo-Katan Kryze had always preferred clarity.
Not peace. Not patience. Not process. Clarity.
And right now, clarity came in the form of fleeing Death Watch terrorists, jetpacks flaring as they tried to scatter across the rooftops like frightened vermin.
Good.
She launched after them without hesitation, boots hitting the edge of the platform and leaping, jetpack roaring to life as the city dropped away beneath her. The wind tore at her armor, sharp and cold, and she welcomed it. The chaos below—sirens, shouting, blaster fire—faded into something clean and focused.
A target veered left.
Bo-Katan adjusted midair and fired.
The shot caught the man square in the jetpack intake. The resulting explosion sent him tumbling into a rooftop in a shower of sparks and swearing. He didn't get back up.
She landed hard, rolled, came up firing again.
Someone moved with her.
Not Mandalorian. Lighter on her feet. Less weight behind the impact, but faster—Force-assisted fast.
Ahsoka Tano slid into position beside her, blue-white blades flashing as she deflected incoming fire and sent a Death Watch operative sprawling with a precise kick to the chest.
They didn't exchange a word.
They didn't need to.
Bo-Katan took the left flank. Ahsoka took the right. When one of them advanced, the other covered. When a jetpack flared, one shot it out of the sky while the other cut down the landing zone. It was smooth. Efficient. Almost cathartic.
Bo-Katan realized, distantly, that she had really needed this.
Death Watch had trained her well. Too well. She knew their tactics, their escape routes, the way they tried to break contact and regroup. She anticipated their movements before they made them, cutting them off, forcing them into narrow corridors and dead ends.
Ahsoka matched her instinct for instinct.
One operative tried to take Ahsoka from behind.
Bo-Katan shot him without looking.
Another lunged at Bo-Katan with a vibroblade.
Ahsoka's saber took his arm clean off.
They moved on.
"This is therapeutic," Ahsoka said at one point, tone light as she flipped over a low wall and dropped an enemy with the butt of her saber.
Bo-Katan snorted. "You have no idea."
They cleared the rooftop in under a minute.
The survivors fled hard and fast, disappearing into the cityscape, wounded pride trailing behind them like smoke. Bo-Katan slowed at last, chest rising and falling as the adrenaline burned itself out.
That was when she saw him.
Ben stood on the upper platform, still and unreal amid the wreckage, a green lightsaber in one hand and—
Her breath caught.
The Darksaber.
Black blade, humming with restrained violence, held awkwardly in the grip of a child who should not have been able to touch it, let alone take it from Pre Vizsla.
Bo-Katan stared.
Then she laughed. Once. Sharp and incredulous.
Of course.
Of course it was him.
The pieces snapped together instantly. The fight. Vizsla's retreat. The sheer audacity of it. She didn't need an explanation. She understood in the same way she understood battlefield geometry or kill zones.
Pre Vizsla had been beaten.
By her nephew.
She felt a surge of grim, vindicated satisfaction—and then, immediately, a much heavier wave of something else.
Oh. Oh, this was bad.
This was historically catastrophic.
She mentally began cataloging the fallout.
Item one: Death Watch had just been publicly humiliated during an assassination attempt on the Duchess.
Item two: Their leader had lost the Darksaber in single combat.
Item three: The person holding it was the Duchess's secret Jedi son.
Item four: Mandalore was absolutely going to lose its collective mind.
Item five: This was now, somehow, her problem.
Bo-Katan exhaled slowly.
She glanced at Ahsoka, who had followed her gaze and was staring at Ben with wide eyes. "Is that—"
"Yes," Bo-Katan said flatly.
"He's—"
"Yes."
"And that means—"
"Yes," Bo-Katan repeated, rubbing her temple. "Welcome to Mandalorian politics. We're very normal about this."
Ahsoka grimaced. "I'm starting to see that."
Bo-Katan looked back at Ben. He was saying something to Korkie—who was alive, thank the stars—and Maris Brood stood nearby, radiating the kind of quiet menace that suggested several people had made very poor life choices in the last few minutes.
A literal child, she thought, capable of beating Pre Vizsla.
Maybe she had made the right choice leaving Death Watch.
That thought settled, solid and unshakeable.
Whatever came next—civil unrest, power struggles, old symbols dragged screaming into the present—she was on the right side of it.
Bo-Katan straightened, squaring her shoulders as Mandalorian security began to reassert control around them.
Family problems had just become political problems.
And she was going to handle them.
...
Padmé Amidala had learned, over the years, that chaos had a smell.
It was sharp and metallic, threaded with fear and scorched air, the aftermath of violence that had not yet decided whether it was finished. The plaza outside the chamber still rang with it—sirens echoing, boots striking durasteel, voices raised and breaking—but the interior hall where the remaining delegates had been corralled was quieter now.
Too quiet for anyone who understood politics.
Nute Gunray understood politics. He just misunderstood people.
Padmé approached him calmly, skirts immaculate despite everything, posture flawless. The Naboo handmaidens who were not present would have been proud. The Mandalorian guards flanking the corridor watched with open curiosity, helmets tilted just slightly in her direction.
Gunray preened when he saw her coming. He always did. It was reflex, like a tooka puffing itself up before something larger ate it.
"Well," he said, voice oily with false relief, "Senator Amidala. A tragedy, is it not? Such instability. One might even say it proves the Confederacy's concerns."
Padmé smiled.
It was the smile she used for committee hearings, trade negotiations, and people who thought they were clever.
"A tragedy," she agreed softly. "An attempted assassination. A terrorist attack. An open act of violence on neutral ground."
Gunray's lip curled. "And yet, Senator, you cannot possibly suggest the Confederacy was responsible. We, too, were endangered. I myself was nearly—"
Padmé's hand came up and struck his face with a sharp, ringing crack.
The sound echoed.
Gunray staggered, stunned more than hurt, clutching his cheek. The guards did not move. One of them nodded, slow and approving.
Padmé did not raise her voice.
"Do not lie to me," she said evenly. "Do not preen. Do not smirk. And do not insult the intelligence of a woman who has watched you fail upward for over a decade."
Gunray sputtered, indignation flooding in where fear had briefly lived. "How dare you—"
She stepped forward and slapped him again.
This time, she followed through.
Gunray's ridiculous, flared hat—more crown than headwear—was knocked askew. Before he could recover it, Padmé seized it, yanked it free, and stared at it with polite disgust.
"This," she said, turning it over in her hands, "is an appalling design choice."
Gunray opened his mouth.
She hit him with the hat.
Once. Twice. A third time, with precision born of years of suppressed frustration.
The fabric made a soft whump noise against his shoulder and head, deeply undignified. Gunray shrieked and raised his arms to shield himself, backing away until he collided with the wall.
Padmé stopped, adjusted her grip on the hat, and looked at the Mandalorian guards.
"I apologize for the disruption," she said sincerely. "Please be assured this will not affect ongoing negotiations."
One of the guards inclined his head. Another crossed his arms, clearly savoring the moment.
Padmé turned back to Gunray.
"Now," she continued, perfectly composed, "let us be very clear."
She tossed the hat aside. It landed on the floor between them like a fallen standard.
"You will file your protest. You will do so formally, procedurally, and without implication. You will refrain from threatening Mandalore, the Republic, or anyone within arm's reach of either. And you will leave this system peacefully."
Gunray sneered, rubbing his shoulder. "And if I refuse?"
Padmé leaned in just enough that only he could hear her.
"Then I will make it my personal mission to ensure every neutral world hears exactly how quickly you disavowed violence while your allies were still firing," she said quietly. "I will make certain your partners question your usefulness. And I will do it with a smile."
She straightened.
"This conversation," she added, "never happened."
Gunray swallowed. Hard.
Behind her, Anakin Skywalker had gone very still.
He had, moments ago, been preparing to interject—something about due process or restraint or Jedi protocol. That intention had evaporated somewhere between the first slap and the weaponized hat.
He stared at Padmé as if she had just ignited a lightsaber made of sunlight.
She turned slightly, catching his expression out of the corner of her eye.
He cleared his throat. "I just—" He stopped, then tried again. "Are you absolutely certain you're not an angel?"
Padmé glanced at him, one elegant eyebrow lifting.
"Anakin," she said patiently, "if I were an angel, this would have gone very differently."
He nodded. Once. Earnestly. The moment lodged itself somewhere deep and permanent.
Gunray fled soon after, escorted by guards who looked entirely too pleased with themselves.
Padmé smoothed her sleeves, took a breath, and stepped back into the role she had never truly left.
Negotiations resumed.
The galaxy, as ever, continued to spin—slightly more bruised, marginally more honest, and infinitely more interesting.
...
Jango Fett watched Mandalore burn itself into something new.
From a distance—always from a distance—the city looked almost serene. Sunlight caught on beskar towers and glass spines, the sky traffic resuming in cautious, staggered patterns as emergency protocols relaxed. Smoke still curled from a few impact points, but the panic had already begun to settle into something harder.
Resolve, maybe. Or rage. On Mandalore, the two tended to blur.
He lowered the macrobinoculars and let out a slow breath.
Vizsla had run.
Not retreated. Not regrouped. Run—jetpack flaring hot and desperate, pulling his forces with him the moment the balance tipped out of his favor. The moment his authority cracked in public.
Pathetic.
Jango had known Pre Vizsla for years. Not personally—not well—but well enough to recognize the type. Loud convictions. Borrowed traditions. A man who wrapped himself in Mandalorian identity like armor he hadn't earned.
And when it mattered, when a child disarmed him in front of half the system?
He fled.
Jango's jaw tightened behind his helmet.
The Darksaber had changed hands.
That, more than anything else, sat wrong.
A Jedi initiate—barely trained, green blade, too young to carry the weight of what he'd taken—now stood where Vizsla had fallen short. Jango had seen the moment clearly through the scope: the overreach, the correction, the clean disarm. No flourish. No cruelty.
Efficient.
The kind of efficiency Jango respected, even if he didn't like the implications.
And below it all, Mandalore itself had shifted.
The clones—once property, once tools—were being folded into the identity of the planet with alarming speed. Citizens now. Brothers. Armor already being resized. Names being spoken instead of numbers.
A unified outrage had done what decades of ideology hadn't.
It had bound them.
Jango adjusted the rifle on his shoulder and powered it down. No more shots tonight. The window had closed, and not just tactically.
Dooku would not be pleased.
Objectively speaking, the Duchess of Mandalore was still alive because Jango Fett could not stop himself from pulling the trigger on Pre Vizsla first. That was the truth of it. A simple, ugly fact.
If Vizsla hadn't been wearing beskar, the problem would have solved itself.
If Jango had aimed higher—just a few centimeters, bald head instead of armored chest—this would be a different galaxy.
Instead, both targets lived.
And Count Dooku did not tolerate failure.
Jango opened a secure channel and recorded a brief transmission to the Confederacy. No excuses. No explanations. Just confirmation that the contract had not been fulfilled and that circumstances on Mandalore had changed.
He doubted it would buy him much time.
Then he switched frequencies.
The Republic channel took longer to route. More layers. More scrutiny. He waited it out patiently, helmet reflecting the distant glow of the city.
When the connection opened, he left another message—short, precise, and intentionally vague. An expression of interest. A willingness to discuss terms. Nothing binding.
Temporary cooperation.
The phrase sat in his mind, and he almost snorted.
Temporary cooperation with the Jedi. With the Republic. With the same machine that would one day field an army made from his own body, trained to wipe those same Jedi out.
Hilarious.
He sent one final message, this time routed through Mandalorian civilian channels, flagged for the Duchess's staff. Not Satine directly—never directly—but close enough that it would reach her within the hour.
An arrangement, he said. Mutually beneficial. Time-sensitive.
Don't wait too long.
Jango cut the channel, turned, and began the quiet work of breaking down his position. The city behind him continued to settle into its new shape, unaware that another line had just been crossed.
He didn't kid himself. This wasn't loyalty. It wasn't redemption.
It was survival.
And for now, survival meant changing employers.
...
Count Dooku disliked surprises.
He disliked them in the way a man disliked sudden weather—not because they were unfamiliar, but because they implied a failure of preparation. The galaxy was a system. Systems could be modeled. Modeled systems could be controlled.
What had transpired on Mandalore was none of those things.
He stood before the holotable, hands folded behind his back, cloak hanging perfectly despite the absence of wind. The feed replayed again: blaster fire, jetpacks, panic. Pre Vizsla fleeing. A green blade flashing. The Darksaber tumbling, end over end, before being claimed by someone who had absolutely no business holding it.
A child.
A Jedi initiate.
On Mandalore.
Dooku closed his eyes briefly and inhaled through his nose.
He opened a channel.
"Fett," he said calmly.
The line rang. And rang.
No answer.
Dooku's expression tightened by a fraction. He gestured, and the channel cut. He turned slightly, cape whispering as he did.
"Ventress," he said, voice smooth. "Try him."
Asajj Ventress stood nearby, arms crossed, expression already sour. She rolled her eyes and tapped at her wrist unit. "You know, you could just assume he's dead."
"He is not dead," Dooku replied. "He is being discourteous."
The channel rang again. No answer.
Ventress waited a beat longer than necessary, then cut the call. "He's screening you."
Dooku's eyebrow twitched.
"Screening," he repeated.
"Yes. It's a thing. People do it when they don't want to talk to someone."
Dooku turned slowly to face her, disappointment radiating off him like cold. "He is under contract."
"And he's also a bounty hunter with options," Ventress said. "Which you'd know if you had more than—" She gestured vaguely at his immaculate posture. "—one setting."
This was, objectively, the worst possible outcome.
Satine Kryze lived.
Pre Vizsla lived.
The clones—the clones—had sided not with the Confederacy, not even with the Republic, but with a neutral, independent Mandalore. An ideological disaster wrapped in beskar and moral superiority.
And Jango Fett had gone silent.
Dooku turned back to the holotable, replaying the moment where Vizsla broke and ran. He paused the image there, disgust settling into something heavier.
"I should have sent General Grievous," he said at last.
Ventress straightened. "Excuse me?"
"Grievous would have completed the task," Dooku continued, tone academic. "Efficiently. Dramatically. With appropriate finality."
Ventress bristled. "Why didn't you just send me?"
Dooku scoffed before he could stop himself.
"You?" He waved a dismissive hand. "As if you were a match for Grievous."
Her eyes narrowed. "I've killed Jedi Masters."
"With two arms," Dooku shot back.
Ventress blinked. "So have you."
Silence.
Dooku stiffened, affronted on a deeply personal level. "That is not the point."
She stared at him. "What is the point?"
"The point," Dooku said icily, "is that General Grievous has four arms. Four! And he knows how to use a lightsaber with each of them."
He preened.
"I taught him myself."
Ventress looked genuinely puzzled. "You… only have two."
Dooku turned on her, offended. Truly offended. "Do not remind me."
She hesitated. "I didn't know you… wanted more."
"I would have made an excellent Besalisk," he snapped. "Broad shoulders. Commanding presence. Four arms for Force lightning symmetry—"
Ventress raised a hand. "We're getting off track."
Dooku stopped.
He exhaled slowly, collecting himself. She was correct. Annoyingly so.
"The clones were meant to force the Republic's hand," he said, voice regaining its steel. "Instead, they have legitimized Mandalore. Neutrality with teeth. A third axis."
Unacceptable.
"Fett was to remove the Duchess," Dooku continued. "Death Watch was to destabilize. The Republic would respond. The Confederacy would condemn. War would follow."
Instead, Mandalore stood united, outraged, and armed.
"And now," he said quietly, "we are out of subtlety."
Ventress's smile returned, sharp and eager. "So?"
"So," Dooku said, activating a new set of coordinates, "we go ourselves."
Her eyes gleamed. "Finally."
"No more proxies," he added. "No more intermediaries with divided loyalties."
He shut down the holotable and turned, cloak sweeping dramatically as he faced her fully.
"If the Republic wishes to protect Mandalore," he said, "let them do so openly."
He paused, lips curling into something that might have been a smile.
"If you want something done right," Count Dooku said, "do it yourself… with the help of a droid army."