At the sound of the voice, Kurt spun, scanning the dark around him.
The Force gave him nothing — no warning, no sense of danger anywhere close.
“No need to look.
I’m the Hyperion’s AI executive officer.
It’s an honor to meet you.” The voice paused.
“There’s a message left behind by the previous commander.
You should see it.” A holographic recording flickered to life above the console.
“Hey, kid.
Jim Raynor.” The figure in the projection stood loose-shouldered, thumbs hooked in his belt.
“Wherever you are, it’s probably a long way from the Koprulu sector — that’s where I am right now.
Sent this old girl out using some Protoss tech, since the war that was mine to fight is over.
Kerrigan and I are off touring the sector these days.
So she’s yours now.
Take care of her.
Let her keep fighting for freedom out there in your neck of the galaxy — because if you don’t, Matt’s gonna have words for you.” The image cut out.
Kurt stood frozen, mind entirely blank.
He had no idea what to say to any of it.
The sudden inheritance of an entire battlecruiser had just derailed every plan he’d ever made for his own future.
He’d meant to go to Coruscant for Jedi training once the civil war ended, wait out the rise of the Empire, hunt down the Darksaber, and stand beside Luke on the day the Death Star fell — the last Mandalore, dying well.
But now — now he could build something of his own.
He was still too young, still too small a piece on the board.
But the Mandalorian civil war gave him cover.
He could gather people quietly, without anyone watching.
“Commander, how should I address you?” the AI asked.
“Kurt Vizsla.
Kurt’s fine.
And go ahead — give me a rundown of everything currently on the Hyperion.”
“Understood, Commander Kurt.
Compiling current inventory now.”
“Air assets: six Vikings, twelve Wraiths, four Banshee bombers, four Medivacs.”
“Ground assets: two Goliaths, four Hurricanes.”
“If you need additional weapons or equipment, I’d recommend locating a habitable world for modular construction — though that will require resources well beyond what’s currently aboard.
Outside basic maintenance reserves, the ship is running close to empty.
This should be addressed as soon as possible.” The AI laid out both the arsenal and the road ahead in the same even tone.
Kurt’s mind blanked out a little further with every sentence, until by the end he’d stopped absorbing words entirely, swaying on his feet like a man about to beat Qui-Gon Jinn to the Force by several decades.
“Officer — can you hide yourself for now?” Kurt steadied his breathing.
“As things stand, just owning you makes me a target.
Power down, go dormant, and get yourself to my territory.
I’ll send the coordinates and star charts from my own ship first.”
He remembered the moon.
His inheritance — a patch of nothing that no one ever bothered to visit.
He transmitted the sector map along with the coordinates: a small moon orbiting the gas giant Shukut, deep in Mandalorian space.
Vadiira.
An undeveloped rock, valued at essentially nothing, which was exactly why his father had left it to him rather than letting the rest of Clan Vizsla claim it.
“Understood, Commander Kurt.
Once you’ve departed, I’ll relocate there and begin a survey.
I’ll allocate what limited resources we have toward building a team of mining mules, for sustainable extraction going forward.”
“Then it’s all yours, officer.
I hope it’s not long before I see you again.” Kurt turned and left, hauling a Viking fighter back with him on a tractor beam, returning to the base on Mandalore.
The children still at the base heard he was back and came running to see what he’d hauled home this time — food and water weren’t the problem these days, but weapons, armor, and flyable ships were always in short supply.
Scavengers like them couldn’t afford more repair droids or more ships outright.
Salvage sold for scrap was their only income, and it never stretched far enough.
“Boss is back!” An eight- or nine-year-old pointed up at the Kom’rk fighter and the Viking trailing behind it on a tractor beam.
“There’s another ship!”
“It’s practically new!”
The fighter settled slowly into the base.
Kurt climbed out to a crowd already closing in around him, grinning.
“I’m back.
And we’ve got new firepower now — more coming.
We’re going to protect our own.
Our friends, our families.
No more repeats of what happened to you, to me.” He gestured behind him at the Viking.
“So today we fight for tomorrow.
We fight for Mandalore.
And we fight for ourselves.”
“Boss Kurt!”
“Everyone eleven and older, gear up, grab your weapons.
We’re hitting Death Watch.
Omen’s cousin’s family is trapped in Sundari, under attack right now.
This is the first step of pushing back — and it won’t be the last.” Kurt’s head was already racing ahead to everything he could build from this, blind to anything but the momentum of it.
Omen and the others over eleven were already geared and waiting; they’d known he’d say yes the moment he got back.
The younger girls stayed behind to watch the smaller children — someone had to, or the little ones would starve the first time things went wrong.
Twenty of them in all, Omen included, filed toward the Kom’rk fighter.
Kurt climbed into the Viking instead, eager to see what the new hardware could really do.
He wasn’t worried about handling her — every Force-sensitive in the galaxy could fly practically anything put in front of them.
They left the base at a dead run, barely back before leaving again — a rescue didn’t wait.
By the time they reached Sundari, the New Mandalorians and Death Watch were already locked in a fight over the spaceport.
Their ships slipped past overhead, unnoticed, and dropped into the southern district, where Death Watch troopers were tearing into the buildings with backpack-mounted missiles and wrist-flamers.
“Omen — this the place?” Kurt’s voice crackled over comms from inside the Viking.
“This is it.
Last distress signal came from right here.” Omen was watching the tracker.
A Death Watch channel cut in from below.
“Who sent you here?
This sector’s ours.
We don’t need backup.”
Kurt didn’t answer.
Missiles answered for him, and the shriek of laser fire.
“Damn it — return fire!”
The Death Watch trooper’s curse vanished under the roar of the explosion.
Kurt’s Viking struck first.
A pair of missiles streaked from under its wings, trailing fire, and slammed dead-center into the cluster of Death Watch troops below.
Fire bloomed skyward — three, four, five blasts in a row.
The shockwave tore through the street in a wave of white dust and shattered stone, flinging troopers off their feet, their blue-gray armor buckling and twisting in the heat.
“Scatter!
Find cover!
Air strike!” A Death Watch squad leader threw himself behind a half-collapsed wall, wrist-launcher already swinging skyward, firing back blind.
“Omen!
Cut in from the west!
Suppress their jetpacks!” Kurt’s voice over comms was flat, controlled — nothing in it sounded like a teenager.
The Viking slid sideways in a tight, practiced arc, dodging a spray of bolts from the ground.
He felt it now, the sheer weight of what this machine could do — raw firepower, a speed no standard Mandalorian fighter came close to, armor plating built for war on a different scale entirely.
“Copy that, Boss!” Omen’s voice carried an edge, but it was resolve more than fear.
The Kom’rk dropped low, belly turret opening up, a wall of green energy bolts pouring down like rain.
Death Watch troopers trying to lift off or reposition scattered under the barrage, bolts sparking off armor plating without quite finding a kill.
The moment the ground cleared, Omen’s squad poured out of the Kom’rk in a tight formation.
“On me!
Target building’s ahead!” Omen shouted into the comm.
Twenty scavenger kids in patched-together, mismatched Mandalorian armor moved like desert lizards through the rubble, using the smoke and broken walls for cover, closing fast on the west side.
Their Westar-35s barked out shot after shot — wild, mostly missing, but enough to keep Death Watch heads down.
Death Watch was better trained, better equipped, and it showed.
The initial chaos didn’t last; they regrouped fast.
Jetpacks flared.
Several troopers punched skyward, closing on the low-hovering Viking or diving straight for the children pushing through the street, wrist-flamers and blaster-cannons opening fire together, streaking deadly lines across the air.
“Going airborne?
Not that easy.” Kurt’s eyes narrowed, fingers already moving across the Viking’s controls.
The massive fighter snapped into a hard stop mid-air, the hull groaning faintly with the strain, and folded — wings and fuselage reconfiguring, plating shifting, the entire craft rising into a towering humanoid war machine.
“What in the hell—” A Death Watch trooper, just airborne, froze mid-flight at the sight of the metal giant unfolding in front of him, his face going slack with disbelief behind his visor.
The Viking’s mech arms rose.
Its autocannons opened up with a roar that shook the street.
Thoom-thoom-thoom-thoom—
A curtain of armor-piercing rounds swept through the airborne troopers like a scythe.
Mandalorian iron — solid as it was — folded like paper under fire that close, that dense.
Armor shredded, troopers screamed and dropped from the sky like severed kite strings, torn metal trailing behind them.
(Author’s note: Mandalorian iron, not beskar.)
“Nice shooting, Boss!” The comm channel lit up with cheering from the squad below.
“Eyes forward!
We’re here to save people!” Kurt barked, already stomping the mech forward, each step punching a crater into the street.
The machine’s sheer bulk became a wall of cover for Omen’s advancing squad, shielding them from fire coming in from the east.
The mech’s shoulder pod opened again, missiles screaming out to obliterate a Death Watch heavy-blaster position pinning down the street ahead.
Omen’s squad reached the target building — scorched black, its outer wall pocked with blaster fire, the door sealed shut.
Somewhere inside, a child was crying, and blaster fire was still going.
“There’s fighting in there!
It’s Clan Wren!” one of the boys shouted, pressed flat against the wall, recognizing the sigil painted on a second-floor window.
“Blow it!” Omen didn’t hesitate, pulling a charge off his belt and slapping it against the reinforced door.
Beep-beep-beep-beep — boom.
The door tore open in a ragged hole, heat rolling out in a wave.
“Go!” Omen led the charge in, the rest close behind, and the building erupted into gunfire, bolts ricocheting through the tight corridors.
The Death Watch troopers inside clearly hadn’t expected an assault this fierce, or this strange, from outside — their resistance came apart into confusion.
The scavengers were outgunned but not outnumbered, and desperation carried them the rest of the way — they knew every inch of ruins like this by heart.
The fight collapsed fast into brutal, close-quarters chaos.
Kurt held position outside in the mech, a wall of steel standing sentinel, sweeping the perimeter, cutting down any Death Watch reinforcements that tried to close in.
The Force stirred beside him — a warning, vague but insistent.
Something stronger was coming.
A better-equipped squad, maybe.
Maybe worse.
“Omen!
Move it!
We’ve got company!” Kurt’s warning came fast and sharp over comms.
Then the mech’s radar screamed a warning of its own.
Several fast-moving contacts, inbound from the city center.
“Kom’rks.
Death Watch.” Kurt’s pupils narrowed.
“At least three.”
This was the real test.
He drew a breath, fingers already flying across the controls, the Viking groaning through its transformation back into fighter mode, engines flaring a bright, furious blue as the machine climbed.
“C’mon, trash.” Kurt wet his dry lips, something bright and tense flickering behind his eyes — equal parts nerves and something close to hunger.
He shoved the throttle forward, and the newly reformed Viking surged to meet the incoming fighters, missile racks already locking onto their targets.