Three Death Watch Kom’rk fighters closed in triangle formation, engines screaming, tearing toward Kurt’s Viking like a trio of iron vultures diving on prey.
They’d clearly seen what the mech had done to the ground forces minutes earlier.
It didn’t matter.
Death Watch pride — and their fury at the “heretic” flying that machine — left no room for hesitation.
“Locking onto me?
That’s suicide.” A sharp light flashed behind Kurt’s eyes as the Viking’s sensors caught the enemy radar lock.
He hauled the stick back, and the fighter tore upward in a near-vertical barrel roll, three green bolts screaming past close enough to feel.
“It’s fast!” One of the Death Watch pilots hadn’t expected that kind of agility out of something so heavy.
The moment the roll finished, Kurt didn’t wait.
His fingers moved across the weapons panel in a blur.
Red light pulsed through the missile bay.
Four missiles streaked free, tails burning, hunting toward the two lead fighters like wasps loosed from a nest.
“Missiles inbound!
Evade!” The warning cracked sharp across the Death Watch channel.
Both Kom’rks broke hard, peeling apart on instinct, releasing flares in bright orange bursts that bloomed behind them, trying to scatter the missiles’ lock.
But the Viking carried tech from a different war entirely, a different universe — its guidance systems shrugged off heat decoys this era had never been built to defeat.
The two missiles wavered for a fraction of a second as they brushed the flare cloud, then snapped back onto target, curving in on sharper angles than either pilot expected.
“What?!” One of the Death Watch pilots stared, horrified, as the missile signature ballooned across his screen.
The sky over Sundari split open in twin fireballs.
One Kom’rk took a direct hit to the engine and came apart mid-air, wreckage raining down.
The other lost a wing entirely, spinning and screaming as it plunged toward the ground, smoke rising from somewhere far below.
The last Death Watch pilot’s eyes went wide with fury.
Watching his squadmates die in the same instant lit something reckless in him.
“For Mandalore!” he roared, slamming the throttle to its limit.
The Kom’rk surged forward on a suicide vector, engines blazing blue, arrowing straight at Kurt.
He’d abandoned ranged fire entirely — he meant to ram him head-on.
Kurt felt the pilot’s desperation through the Force, the vague warning sharpening into something unmistakable — the man was aiming for his engine core.
A collision?
That was the one arena the Viking had nothing to fear from.
“Want it the hard way?
Fine by me.” A faint curve tugged at the corner of Kurt’s mouth.
Instead of pulling away, he flew straight into the closing enemy fighter and hit the transformation switch again.
The Viking twisted mid-collision-course, its hull folding, stretching, reassembling in a shriek of grinding metal.
The incoming pilot could almost make out the helmeted shape in the other cockpit, the total absence of fear in his eyes.
“It’s transforming again!” The warning cracked over the Death Watch channel — too late.
An instant before the two ships would have met, the transformation finished.
A towering steel giant slammed upright into the sky over Sundari, and the momentum carried its massive foot down in a bone-jarring stomp.
The Death Watch pilot’s soul all but left his body.
He hauled the stick back on reflex, trying to climb clear, and the Kom’rk shot past the mech’s leg with barely a hair’s width to spare, its belly nearly scraping the armor plating.
“Now!” This was exactly the opening Kurt had been waiting for.
The mech’s massive head snapped around, both arm-mounted autocannons locking onto the fighter as it flashed past, still recovering from the near-miss.
Thoom-thoom-thoom-thoom-thoom—
A storm of fire poured down at point-blank range.
At that distance, against a target that size, there was nowhere to go.
Armor-piercing rounds tore through the Kom’rk nose to tail like a burning plow through soft earth.
Mandalorian alloy plating, tough as it was, folded like paper against fire built to shred far heavier armor.
Sparks and debris burst from the hull in a chain of muffled internal explosions.
The fighter dropped from the sky like a toy smashed apart mid-flight, engine dead, trailing black smoke, tumbling crookedly down toward the burning districts below — and vanished into the wreckage with a final, distant crash.
The sky went quiet.
Only the low hum of the Viking’s engine and the scattered echoes of fighting below remained.
Inside the cockpit, the all-clear chime pulsed softly.
Kurt sank back into his seat, chest heaving, sweat soaking his brow under the helmet.
The Force, pushed too hard, left a faint dizziness behind.
Every second of that fight had walked the line between life and death — carried entirely by fragile premonition and a machine pushed past its limits.
While the Viking had been holding off three fighters alone above Sundari, Omen had already made it inside.
“Cousin!
What are you doing here?” Ersha Wren gasped.
The rest of Clan Wren froze at the sight of him — their branch of the family had already been stripped bare by Death Watch for refusing to fall in line, and revenge for that was no small part of why they’d taken up arms in the first place.
“We’re here to get you out.
Ship’s right outside.
Move — everything else can wait.” Omen Wren grabbed his cousin’s hand and ran, the rest of the clan close on his heels.
“Meet us at the back door,” Omen said into his comm, alerting the crew left on the ship.
Outside, Death Watch was still trading fire, but by the time Clan Wren finished their retreat, the enemy seemed to have vanished entirely.
“Damn it, go after them — has to be that ship that flew over earlier, picking them up.”
Death Watch scrambled airborne, jetpack missiles aimed at the extraction ship.
By then Kurt had recovered enough to open fire from below, the Viking unleashing everything it had.
Death Watch broke off fast, realizing the mission was already lost — no sense bleeding out further chasing it.
“Smoke cover!
Pull back!” Canisters clattered across the street as Death Watch abandoned the operation entirely.
“Boss!
You’re unbelievable!” Omen’s voice cracked with excitement over the comm, breaking the silence, the scavenger kids erupting into relieved cheers, having watched with their own eyes as that steel giant tore Death Watch’s best fighters to pieces.
“Target’s clear.” Kurt kept his voice level with effort.
“Omen — status?”
“Mission complete.
Only a few minor injuries on our side.
Clan Wren took heavier losses, but we got over twenty kids and women out safe.
The rest of the adults pushed forward against Death Watch.” Omen ran through it point by point.
“Understood.
Let’s pull out — the rest can wait till we’re home.” Kurt, running on fumes, banked away and left.
Back in the center of Sundari, Mandalorian bodies lay scattered through the streets, fighters still locked in pursuit overhead, Saber-class combat tanks trailing black smoke on the ground below — and still, no one on either side showed any sign of wanting this war to end.
“We must ask the Jedi Council and the Republic for help.
Master Yoda — bounty hunters and Death Watch are slaughtering my people across our world without restraint.
They killed my father.” Sixteen-year-old Duchess Satine stood before the Jedi Council, pleading for protection.
“In the Mandalorian civil war, involve itself, the Republic will not.
A treaty, we have with your people.” Master Yoda declined the request.
“So the Jedi will simply stand by and watch my people be slaughtered?
Doesn’t that go against everything your Order stands for, Master Yoda?” Satine’s fury was barely contained.
Yoda exchanged a quiet word with the Council beside him before answering.
“Master Qui-Gon Jinn I will send, and his Padawan Obi-Wan, to guard your safety.
May the Force be with you.”