Chapter 17 Pt 2

Mandalore, Royal Palace

Korkie Kryze

Shaking my head I stood outside of one of the Palace's meeting rooms, listening to aunt Satine talk to various public officials about White Silver's announcement. By the sounds of it they were arguing about what to do and the general consensus was no one knew what to do.

Being openly hostile could cause a civil war, while letting them just do whatever they want was even more worrying.The fact of the matter was Gargon was on the periphery of the Mandalorian Sector and it had not really integrated into the economy since the New Mandalorians took over. So there was an argument being made to just ignore them. And to be fair, that argument sounded like it was winning since no New Mandalorian wanted to engage in an open war against any other Mandalorian.

Sighing, I shook my head and stepped away, heading towards the gardens. I could not feel more annoyed at being vindicated. A few years back Tanya had said that the Silver people were different from the warmongers of ancient times. Well it looks like Tanya was wrong, something that didn't happen often but I was happy to be proven right this time. Just wish it didn't come with the potential for a war.

Entering the garden I found someplace to sit and look at the city taking a breath to try and center myself. I really wasn't sure what Satine was going to do about my sister. She pretty much openly flirted with the ideology of the Silver Warmonger and nearly got me to go along with it as well.

I didn't like the ancient warmongers and their ideology was the reason I didn't know my parents, but if my sister was willing to defend something with such passion, I was willing to give it a read at least. And what I had read wasn't terrible and it did seem to take the emphasis off of war and more on defense and the economy. But of course, that was all a front wasn't it, something to sucker people into the ideology so that they would go along with the Silver Warmonger's plans.

"Korkie." Satine's voice called from over my shoulder, causing me to look in her direction.

"Auntie Satine," I said with a smile as she walked over to take a seat next to me on the bench.

"Been a busy day isn't it?" she commented looking out over the city. "Thought you'd like to know that Tanya's on her way home, she was apparently a bit embarrassed about getting in that fight a few weeks ago and decided to do a working vacation by visiting a few worlds in the Mandalorian Sector before coming home."

I smiled at that, even if I was annoyed with her political leanings I would be happy to have my sister home. Though, I was sure Auntie Satine was going to give her an earful for that whole fight situation.

I've been in the room when that had popped up on the news and Satine had been drinking one of her teas at the time. The moment that popped up on the news she nearly choked on her tea and had to spit it out and before immediately trying to contact Tanya.

"That's good, it'll be good to find out what she's been up to," I said with a smile. Ha, I was more curious about what she had been up to that ended up with her getting in a fistfight in an alley. From what footage I found on the hall it looked like she's been there with several people including Vai.

"Yes, she'll be here in a little more than a month or so, I just hope that this whole Silver nonsense is wrapped up before then." She said, sounding concerned.

I leaned in over to give her a hug saying, "Everything would be alright auntie."

Gargon City Outskirts

Fenn Rau

"Well, this is not how I thought this mission would go," I muttered as I ducked lower as a series of blaster bolts fired over my position. I tracked the second Silver Codex back to this planet rather quickly. And then I'd go about getting myself to this planet to continue the investigation, find out who was responsible, and bring them to justice if need be.

Being prepared for what I thought was every eventuality from nomadic warlord to gangster pirate. What I had not prepared for was a corporation-owned army and for the creator of the Silver Codex to literally announce his position as declaring independence.

I had also not been prepared for them to seize all the ships in the landing area or to seize the holo communications station.

The information coming in and out of Gargon was, at this point, completely under his control. Which meant I was on my own. Being on my own was not good for my odds of survival. There was no doubt someone would figure out that one of those ships belonged to a member of the royal guard and would start hunting me. So I went about improving my odds, I got as far away from the city as possible and joined up with the local nomads. The nomads of this world were a lot more religious than most Mandalorians, still back in the olden days with many other practices. They weren't Concordia-sect religious, demanding that you never take off your helmet if you want to consider yourself a Mandalorian. But they did tend to revel in the fighting of war. So the moment I had told them that Gargon was declaring war on the Mandalorian sector, they had asked if they could help the Mandalore vs Mandalore war.

If I was not a member of the Royal Guard and my family had not been serving the rulers of Mandalore for generations I might have made the classic mistake of saying "well there is no Mandalore vs Mandalore war. As Duchess Satine refused that title." But I was someone who'd been a part of the Royal Guards for a long time. So I immediately said 'yes they could,' that 'we needed to keep this fake Mandalore from attaining more power.'

Which is how I got into this situation ducking behind rubble on the outskirts of Gorgon as black-clad troopers fired their blasters with pitiful accuracy but plenty of volume at myself and the various colored nomadic Mandalorians who for the most part are using slug throwers and are much more accurate.

This little fight had been going on for about 20 minutes now and it was taking that long mainly because the nomadic Mandalorian in charge of stealing the speeders had apparently not been able to unlock the warehouse they were stored in.

Said speeders were military grade and most likely were going to be used by the fake Mandalore for whatever conflict he intended to unleash on the sector. A speeder with a cannon mounted on a tripod on the back could do a lot of damage. Which is why I wanted us to have them, as we could probably keep the fighting going a good long time if we had them. The nomads were not entirely animal riders, most of them rode around on speeders so it was not like they didn't have the tech know-how to operate these machines.

We just needed to get them out of here first which was getting harder and harder as more and more of the enemies seem to be popping up.

Taking a stand I unleashed a volley of fire from my carbine sending two of the, what I could best guess, were durasteel armored Mandalorians who had been trying to make their way across the open square to whatever gods they believed in.

But before I could duck back down I got shot in my shoulder causing me to tumble out of sight, probably for the best as more shots rang out through where I had been standing.

Checking myself over to make sure I had no permanent damage, I looked at the nomadic Mandalorian on my right and said, "Do we have any other plans in case we can't get those doors open?"

Amanda Lauren, a nomad, looked at me and then held up a grenade, "When all else fails just blow it up."

Well, I couldn't deny that was not a bad plan, if we couldn't have it, deny it to the enemy. So I didn't and instead said, "How long till we are forced to use the 'blow kriff up' plan?"

She reloaded her slugthrower with ammunition before loading it by moving the lever at the trigger before saying, "We're having a good little bit of fun fighting these Dar'manda pretending to be Mando, if things get a little bit more desperate after like 20 minutes maybe, then we'll call it but until then just enjoy sending these fake Manda to their graves."

Said Mandalorian nomad then popped up and fired off a few shots while another took a shot to his helmet. He fell back stunned for a moment but then he rolled over and got back into a sitting position next to me, giving a thumbs up.

I just shook my head with amusement before getting ready for my own attempt at popping up the fire off a few rounds when I heard an explosion in front of us.

Said explosion was quickly followed up by an increase in fire from behind the enemy's position. Popping my head up I saw a third unknown force had appeared, not wearing the black armor of the fake Mandalorians, instead wearing several variants of color mostly sorted around browns.

There was one Mandalorian there that had a more flashy colored armor that was dual-wielding pistols, a Mandalorian in red jetpack flew over the black-clad troopers and fired shots directly from above, killing several of them before landing closer to our position. They began backing us up, continuing the rain of fire at the black clad troopers who were starting to panic by looks of it, several of them already running full sprint in the other direction.

As soon as the enemy force gave up the fight and ran, the figure slotted their pistols into their holsters and turned towards us.

"Howdy boys and girls, sorry if you didn't need the help but well I'm not a fan of these fake soldiers pretending they're Mandalorians." The figure said, stepping towards us.

Shaking my head I stood up fully and said, "Bo Katan, I did not expect to run into you here."

Bo Katan stopped and looked in my direction, probably with a look of confusion on her face before she recognized the armor.

"I know I did not expect to see real Mandalorian Royal Guard armor, guess we're two for two on that." She said walking in my direction, "What are you doing here Royal Guard?"

"The duties of any Royal Guard, preventing upstarts from causing problems for the leadership of Mandalore. What about you? What are you doing here Bo Katan?" I said with some suspicion.

"I was asked to do a little bit of investigation as to who was publishing this False Silver Codex. But once I found out who they were, they seized my ship, and well they kind of got on my bad side. So I've been working with some of the local gangs to cause issues for False Silver here since I had nothing better to do."

"Ahuh, and who requested that you do this investigation?"

"Probably the same person who requested you to do your investigation. Kind of annoyed that they didn't trust me to get the job done but you know how it is. I'd say the fact that we're both here says we at least can confirm this is the jackass that put out the second codex."

I nodded at that, and shrugged, "Well it seems we have an aligned goal. Care to work together to, as you say, screw with this jackass." I said offering a hand.

"Sure, why not, the more hands on deck, the better." Bo Katan said, taking my hand and giving it a shake.

Concordia, 'Abandoned' Mine

Zum Murdoc

"Well, Zum old buddy you've made a fuck up of this." I'm uttered looking at the contract that had appeared on my desk a few years back when I first got access to a functioning base of operations to work on armor again.

All those years ago I was a little bit desperate, so desperate that my droids had actually been ransacking the place when we first showed up looking for anything of value that we could either sell or meltdown to be sold.

All these years later my financial position was a bit better thanks to various contracts I had taken over the years but the first contract was… well first if you don't count the one to produce armor for the young Lady Kryze. The first one was to an individual who needed a large portion of armor created to arm his Garrison of self-defense force for Gargon.

I had simply thought nothing of it at the time since it was an opportunity to make armor again. Apparently, it was a bit more than that as my client was now declaring the independence of the Mandalorian sector and stirring up a nest of radicalism.

"I sure know how to pick people to work for," I muttered as I looked at the contract again. I had produced quite a bit of armor and had helped a bunch of other armorers move their gear to that planet to produce more and now, now I'm an accessory to what is this? Treason? Terrorism? Whatever it is, it's not good for me.

I just had to help the man responsible for this, I'll either end up dead or out of the picture enough that I wouldn't be cast as a main villain in whatever plot he was putting out there or at least wouldn't tell people that I was the one who had been arming him with armor and weapons.

Weapons probably being the bigger deals as armor was a self-defense thing, everyone was okay with that now, but weapons were still up in the air. Granted all I've been doing was smuggling a few rifles here or there from stash piles I knew about from the last Civil War and the Clan Wars and all the gear was frankly really out of date or pretty beat up.

But the laws tended to not care if the things were already in the sector when it came to moving weapons around, in fact, they tended to lean towards punishment even if they were already in the sector. That's why I had been up to this point mostly selling the weapons outside the Mandalorian sector, moving them out of the sector in hopes that if I was ever caught I'd get a slap on the wrist since I was demilitarizing the Mandalorian sector. I should have stayed with that mentality, if I did I would probably not be in this situation.

Fine, I stood up and grabbed the contract, wondering if I should destroy it or stash it somewhere in case of evidence that could be used to keep me from a short drop with a sudden stop. Actually, I should probably check and see what the New Mandalorians use for executions. I hadn't really paid attention to that particular part of the justice system they set up I only knew that the Traditionalists had preferred hangings and firing squads for dealing with people who are given the death sentence and that was usually enough to keep people in line unless they were a mad murderous psycho.

Shaking my head I considered my options, maybe going under the radar and leaving the sector till this all blew over was the right direction to go. Or perhapsI should reach out to Satine, she has been more reasonable in recent years. Maybe she'd be willing to hear me out on why this was a terrible misunderstanding that had led me to the wrong side of the conflict and would like to make it right somehow.

Yeah, she's been getting more reasonable but as I thought about it I didn't think she'd be that reasonable, not yet at least. The day she called me to make armor for her was the day that she'd be reasonable enough to accept an apology for something like that and I don't think that would ever happen. She was too sold on the idea of the pacifist ways to ask for armor to ever be built in her name.

As I sat back trying to think of a way out of this situation I heard a beeping from one of the panels on the upper decks of the mining facility where I stayed and where most of the security systems were located. I set down the datapad that had the contract on the table and walked up the stairs to see what the beeping was all about. I wondered where Bo had gone to, I hadn't seen her since I had gotten back 2 days ago. But then again I wasn't her father, I was just an old friend of the family. She could run off and do whatever she wanted and I didn't need to be paying that much attention to it.

Looking at the screen I quickly realized what the beeping was about, it was detecting three ships entering the atmosphere. And on a direct course for the mining facility, all three of them appear to be Lancer Pursuit Craft…

And like that, I was moving, heading to get to my ship in hopes of getting out of here quickly. Why were three Lancers landing at this mining facility? Those ships were only used by the Royal Guard, as far as I was aware, so that means it was on Royal Guard business. Well according to all information I knew, the only people who knew about this facility were both Bo Katan and Tanya, both of whom were close to Satine to various levels. And it was not without reason to think they had turned me over after recognizing some of the armor I'd created in the forges below as the same kind of armor being worn by whatever Gargon army was in control of said planet.

I'd just managed to get outside as the first of the three ships landed on the three remaining landing pads, the other two soon joined quietly sitting down in front of me. At that moment I had two options, run for my ship or try and talk my way out of this till I got a position to get to my ship without getting shot. I decided that to try and talk really was the only option that probably wouldn't get me shot.

At least that's what I thought till the doors opened on two of the ships and a couple droids stepped out and started doing checks of the vessel. If the Royal Guard were doing a 'smash and grab the evildoer' I was sure the droids would stay on the ship till the guards were out. The third vessel opened and out stepped Tanya, Vai, and a retinue of Royal Guards.

"Zum, wonderful you're exactly where I thought you would be." She said with a cheery tone.

I blinked a couple times confused before saying, "Lady Kryze, to what do I owe the pleasure of your arrival and security detachment."

Tanya simply smiled and said, "If I were to ask you to make five suits of armor to a set of specifications I provided, would you keep silent about it?"

"You need me to reforge your armor?" I asked to be curious as to where this was going.

"No no, these are new sets of armor, fresh sets and they will need to be as polished as you can get them."

"You want silver armor?" I asked incredulously, "Tanya, I know there's a thing called a rebellious phase but running off to join a madman and his pursuit of a corporate empire is a bit much I think."

That got a laugh from everyone in front of me though I didn't find this very funny.

Tanya simply smiled and said, "No we won't be joining the False Silver, I will be dealing with him very harshly in fact."

I blinked and looked at the Royal Guard Captain, "It's your job to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't get killed right? Are you okay with her implication that she's going to go out there and try and kill Bresug Gerr and his attempt for an empire?"

"No, but we've had three weeks on that vessel and I've tried to break her of this through every form of training I can come up with. She just keeps coming back. I find it rather respectable the amount of determination she's put into dealing with this 'False Silver' so I'm going to help her with it to make sure she comes out of this alive."

"Why do you keep saying False Silver?" I asked before 2 + 2 became 4 in front of my eyes, "Tanya, did you write the Silver Codex?" My head turned from looking at the Royal Guard as my finger still pointed towards him.

"Correct armorer," Tanya said as a droid stepped out from behind the Royal guards and opened a briefcase presenting quite a substantial amount of credit chips. "X4 has kindly donated profits from one of his ventures to help in our operation to undo the False Silver's influence. This should be enough to purchase any materials you need for the armor we want constructed and a little bit extra to keep silent about who the real White Silver is."

I stood there taking this in thinking for a moment trying to figure out if I'd lost my mind or if this was really happening before I decided, screw it. Nodding my head, I took the suitcase and shut it, and said, "You have a deal, six suits of silver armor coming right up."

"Six?" Tanya said, sounding confused.

"Let's just say I have a personal score to settle with your so-called False Silver and this is a great opportunity to settle it." A great opportunity to kill the witness to my mistakes and keep my family from suffering any ill reprisals from the New Mandalorian government.

Turning to head inside I said, "I probably have all the resources inside to make the armor you need. Any fine details we can talk about as we're working though I will expect you folks to help out around here while we get this sorted." Also, I turned towards the group, "Six armors counting me, but there's nine of us here. What's the deal with that?"

"Vai and two of the other guards will be taking one of these ships on to make appearances around the Mandalorian Sector over the next month or so. Just to build an alibi for my location during these events."

I nodded "Seems reasonable. Alright, six sets of silver armor coming right up. Do you want them all the same or semi-customized?" I called stepping into the darkness of the mountain.

"Really customized," Tanya said following with the majority of her guards as Vai and two others started moving materials from one ship to the other, I assumed that was their luggage.

Concordia, Wilderness

Rahm Kota

Being assigned to guard over a bunch of jumped-up farmers with the Force was in my opinion not the best use of my abilities. But I had gone along with it because the order had asked me to look after them. And because I had always heard stories about how fearsome and terrifying Mandalorians were on the battlefield. Having served in prolonged conflict for most of my life I kind of was interested in seeing what was so terrifying about these Mandalorian warriors.

In some ways, I was impressed by what I had found. Their whole culture seemed to vibrate with a knowledge that fighting was a natural state of the world and thus they must be ready to fight at any moment. But then, I was disappointed to hear some people's descriptions of Mandalorians, they were simply monsters and no better than the Hutts. From what I had seen by traveling this world they were just people, proficiently trained in the ways of combat, but people nonetheless.

I was sure that in another life I would count many of these people as friends as I found many of the Mandalorians compatible with my sense of duty. And it was this sense of duty that pushed the need to send a letter via cargo transport back to the Jedi Order, telling them that I was going to investigate the ongoing insurrection on Gargon.

I probably should have used the holo-net to inform them of this, but they probably would have told me no. The Jedi were always focused on preserving the stability of the Republic, but I swore they were a bit slow to take action sometimes and I was sure that if I told them I was going to do it through holo-net they would say no due to my job being one of guarding the farmers with Force powers in the Agricorp. However if I sent it through cargo transport and simply said the holo-net was down when I made the decision, I would have enough leeway to get away with doing what I thought was right and that was to try and handle this situation before it became a threat to the stability of the region.

Of course, how I was going to get to Gargon was a bit of an issue. Simply put, I have not been given a vessel for the trip to this moon, which is why I could probably get away with not having a holonet connection. But in times like these, I fell back on the most trusted tool in my possession. I let the Force guide me. However, I do say the Force had guided me into the middle of nowhere this time.

And traveling for two and a half weeks to end up at some old mining base by the looks of it. Well, off any known roads and quite in the middle of nowhere, even middle of nowhere Concordia.

I would question if the Force had made a mistake if there weren't two ships landed in front of the mining base and a crew of Mandalorians in silver armor currently loading up the smaller of the two vehicles for what looked like a space flight or fights as there were quite a lot of weapons being loading as well.

There were four males, two female Mandalorians, and a droid slowly loading up the ship. One of the females appeared younger by the slight shortness she had compared to the others and was acting more in an observation role. The auburn-haired girl was observing the others as if she was the leader and making sure that everything was loaded. A strange thing and she looks so young, I would assume the larger individual with a heavy pauldron on his left shoulder was the leader just from how Mandalorians usually work, their command structure usually centers around the toughest being the one in control. I wondered what that could be about before I noticed that the girl had stopped and started looking in my general direction. No, I was far enough back in the tree line that there was no way she could see me and I was having to use vision-enhancing binoculars just to make out some of the details. So how she had such a reaction was intriguing and I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew why the Force had sent me here.

Smiling, I got up from where I had been laying down and started moving out of the tree line toward their general direction wondering what would happen. I was not afraid they'd shoot me or anything like that, if they tried I was pretty sure it would be an even fight but I raised my hands nonetheless to show I was no threat.

The moment I came into view the girl immediately grabbed her helmet and shoved it on top of her head obscuring her identity. She then said something to the other Mandalorians who immediately grabbed their own helmets and turned to face my general direction, some of them raising their weapons.

Smiling as I approached, I said, "Good morning."

The second-largest individual was pointing a blaster in my general direction and said. "Good morning Jedi, may I ask what you're doing out in the middle of nowhere?"

"Would you believe me when I say that I'm out for a walk?" I said with a smile. But when none of them chuckled or gave any other impression other than 'we're going to shoot you if you don't give us the answers we want' I continued with. "I believe you've heard about the whole mess going on in Gargon, a very terrible thing in my opinion. I have the distinct feeling it will destabilize this region quite a bit and the Jedi Order exists to stop such violent upheavals. But I don't have an easy way to get to the planet so I thought I'd let the Force guide me and the Force led me here."

The Mandalorians shared a look between each other that I couldn't understand, considering their helmets were rather featureless. Though I somewhat assumed that they might have some sort of internal communication system and were having a bit of a conversation in a way that I couldn't hear them.

The shortest of the group, the auburn-haired girl who'd hid her identity spoke up next. "Well, your Force seems to have been directing you in the general direction of us as we are going to Gargon, though I'm not sure about letting you onboard our ship for this trip. We can't exactly be seen as being working with the Jedi for the operation that needs to be done."

"Well, the Jedi Order hasn't exactly sanctioned my mission to deal with this problem. I'm sure they will get around to it eventually."

The shorter figure pressed her palm to her helmeted face and then appeared to continue whatever conversation they were having through whatever back channels those helmets afforded them. After a bit, she finally said, "Fine you can come along, but you're expected to pull your own weight. "

"Sounds reasonable, Miss?" I asked, fishing for a name.

"White Silver will do."

I blinked then looked around me at the other silvered armored Mandalorians. Before looking at the figure again noting she had put out her hand to shake.

"Strange, aren't the problems going on on Gargon related to someone calling himself White Silver?"

"A thief and pretender," Silver said, still holding up their hand. "We intend to make sure that thievery is undone and that is all we will do, not try to take this person's attempt at destabilizing the sector and push it on if that's what you're concerned about."

I nodded my head understanding the implicit implication, that what mattered was that our goals were aligned not why we were doing it so I took her hand and shook it, "Sounds like a deal then."

Nodding her head she looked to the droid and said, "Silver X, escort the Jedi to a room he can stay in."

"Yes, mistress." the droid said, stepping forward before saying to me, "Please follow, Master Jedi."

Laughing and I started to follow but not before saying, "So why do you all have code names around the word silver?"

"And white." White Silver said matter of factly, before turning to look at her Mandalorian warriors most likely having another private conversation that I couldn't hear since I didn't have a helmet.

Shrugging, I followed the droid into the ship.