CRC 7935 (BBY 42)
A long, long time ago, in a distant galaxy, within the outer ring space of the Mandalorian system, a sudden flare-up of clan warfare on Mandalore swallowed the entire Sundari region whole.
It began when someone struck down Adonai Kryze while he stood guard over Sundari.
The moment word reached her on Coruscant, Satine Kryze abandoned her studies and raced home to Sundari to claim her father’s title and the leadership of the New Mandalorian faction.
Nearly a thousand years before, the Republic had carried out a cleansing that turned almost the entire surface of Mandalore into a bleached wasteland, leaving only a handful of dome cities and desert oases where life still clung on.
Near one such oasis stood an abandoned shipyard — home to a band of Mandalorian scavengers who drifted between the stars.
Most were children who had lost parents or loved ones to the civil war, and Kurt Vizsla led them.
There was no old Mandalorian creed here, no New Mandalorian pacifism preached from a podium — only children fighting to stay alive, and Kurt Vizsla fighting to keep them that way.
The white sand hissed under a merciless sun, the bleached remnant of a cleansing a thousand years gone.
For Kurt Vizsla, it was the shape of a double nightmare.
In body, he was a boy the Vizsla clan had cast out at eleven years old, the Force humming quietly beneath his skin.
In soul, he was something else entirely — a wanderer from a distant world, his mind stitched together from fragments of a galaxy’s future.
He remembered Star Wars: the epic battles, the legends who rose and the villains who fell, empires built and broken.
But those memories sat behind glass now — smudged, jumping, occasionally contradicting themselves.
He knew Palpatine for the Sith wolf hiding inside a senator’s robes, but here, now, that future emperor was still just a calculating councilman from Naboo, nothing more.
He knew the Clone Wars were coming to tear the galaxy in two.
But right now, the fire in front of him was the Mandalorian civil war, and it was hell enough.
He knew the names — Darth Maul, Yoda, Anakin Skywalker — but they belonged to him the way myths belong to anyone: distant, untouchable, too far away to matter yet.
What cut deepest was what he remembered of his own family.
His cousin Satine Kryze, only sixteen now, would one day become the peace-bringing leader of New Mandalore — and would die for it, murdered in a grab for power.
His younger cousin Bo-Katan Kryze, barely five and just learning to hold a blaster, would one day wield the Darksaber and lead the Mandalorian people through storm after storm.
And him?
Kurt Vizsla?
In every scrap of story he remembered, his name appeared nowhere.
He was a nobody, an exile history had buried under its own dust.
But that was before.
Now everything was different.
He would carve his own future — and leave a mark on the history of Star Wars that no memory of his had ever recorded.
For now, though, he was watching a knot of children and a repair droid crawl over a battered Kom’rk-class fighter, salvaged from somewhere deep in this dead shipyard.
It was close to flight-ready — old, worn at the edges — but more than good enough for scavenging the void.
Before long the repair droid rolled up, datapad in hand.
“Maintenance complete, Boss.
Ready for departure to Mandalore.”
Kurt nodded, checking the pair of Westar-35 blaster pistols holstered at his belt.
Satisfied, he pulled on his helmet and started for the ship.
“Boss.” A boy of about ten fell into step beside him.
“The fighting between the true Mandalorians and Death Watch — it’s spread across the whole planet.
My cousin’s family’s still out there.
I’m worried.”
Kurt looked at him and set a hand briefly on his shoulder.
“Omen.
We don’t leave family behind.
Ever.
When I get back we’ll head for Sundari together.
Get the others geared up, and make sure the little ones are settled first.”
He kept walking, boots crunching toward the fighter.
Inside the cockpit, he dropped into the pilot’s seat.
The ship lifted slowly, wings leveling, and tore free of the base, climbing out through the smoke hanging over war-torn Mandalore.
He’d barely cleared the atmosphere when two more Kom’rk-class fighters closed in on either side, a comm request blinking on his console.
Kurt opened the channel.
“State your name and clan.
Your ship carries no identification.”
“Kurt Vizsla.
Scavenger.”
Laughter crackled from the other fighter.
“You’re that Kurt Vizsla — the one the Vizsla clan threw out.
Didn’t expect you’d still be breathing.”
“You’re Death Watch, obviously.
But whether I’m breathing isn’t something you need to worry about.” Kurt had no patience to spare for them — he had a graveyard of century-old wreckage waiting.
“Fine.
Next time, remember to run your identifier, kid, or we’ll mark you down as New Mandalorian trash and treat you accordingly.”
“Sure.
Sure.” Kurt peeled away fast, steering toward the old battlefield near Mandalore, a hundred years dead.
He switched on the fighter’s floodlights and drifted slowly through the ship graveyard, scanning hull after broken hull for anything worth hauling home — a refit, or at least scrap worth melting down.
Then a signal flickered weakly across the radar screen.
And vanished, just as fast.
“What the hell — I just recalibrated this thing.” Kurt froze.
This was the dead center of the Mandalore system; no other scavenger with any sense would come within a parsec of it.
Death Watch and the true Mandalorians weren’t a joke out here — even a Jedi would think twice.
“All right.
Let’s see who’s poaching my salvage in my own system.” He banked the fighter hard toward where the blip had shown.
The Kom’rk crept closer, weapons systems humming to life, radar sweeping wide and sharp.
“There!” Kurt’s breath caught.
The floodlight swept across the wreckage ahead and landed on a Behemoth-class Battlecruiser — a ship that had no business existing anywhere in this galaxy.
If the name meant nothing on its own, its most famous sister ship might: the Hyperion.
Heavily modified now, barely recognizable — but still unmistakably Behemoth-class underneath it all.
“I have to see what’s inside.” Kurt eased his fighter forward, hands steady despite the pulse hammering in his throat, and guided it slowly into the battlecruiser’s open dock.
The fighter settled into place on its own.
Kurt climbed out into darkness — no lights, no hum of power anywhere.
“Looks like the whole ship’s gone cold.” He flicked on his helmet lamp, lowered his rangefinder, and drew a blaster pistol, moving forward one careful step at a time.
A row of Wraith fighters sat silent along the bay wall.
“If these were mine, I’d never have to scrape by again.” He kept his voice low, almost to himself, easing further in.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”
A sealed blast door stopped him cold.
He pressed the panel beside it.
Nothing.
“Open.
Open up.” He reached out, fingers curling toward the door as if the gesture alone could pry it loose, his mind fixed on nothing but the door swinging wide.
It gave — wrenched open by something he couldn’t see, the corridor beyond falling open before him.
“The Force really does come in handy.” A low, satisfied breath escaped him.
He swept through half the ship, careful and slow.
No sign of life anywhere — but weapon after weapon, crate after crate of hardware, more than he could carry in a dozen trips.
Another door gave way to what looked like the bridge.
He worked his way through the consoles, hunting for whatever might wake this giant from its sleep.
It took him the better part of an hour.
Then, under his palm, a single control clicked, and the lights came alive in a cascading wave down the corridor, power humming somewhere deep in the hull.
A voice rose out of the dark, from everywhere and nowhere at once.
“Welcome, Outsider.
Welcome aboard the Hyperion.”