While the tireless political voice of the group, Preacher, our nickname for Alpha-02, went on playing commander about how the sons of Mando should treat hardship as a test of character, throwing in something vaguely motivational about not caving to adversity, I was busy thinking.
Strip all the padding out of his speech, and the actual point boils down to one thing: it’s time to move.
But his older batchmate, Alpha-01, known as Aur, or just The First, who’s ended up functioning as my second in command thanks to sheer quiet, steady authority, approached carefully from the side and said: “Glare, off to the right.
Ridge, one and a half klicks, elevation three hundred.” Morning light caught our optics with a soft glow.
Meaning someone had just spotted our camp too.
A klick and a half out, elevation roughly three hundred.
Who’s out there being that careless?
“No repeat flash, no movement since.” “Copy that, One.
Grab whoever’s already in camouflage and send them out quietly to check.
Twenty-second, one-fourteen, and ninety-fifth should do it.
Keep them shadowing for a full day, then rotate.
Watch, don’t engage.
Hold on.
Dench, come in.” “Ohhh, what’s this about?” Dench’s bright voice crackled in my ear.
“Couple of guys are headed your way.
Give each of them a thermal charge and one full kit, your quieter model.
They’ll be shadowing a target for the day, looks like we’ve got eyes on us.” “Why’s he need the full kit?” Someone asked, and honestly, listen to how manic he’s already starting to sound.
Well, the full kit means baradium charges, similar to our old directional fragmentation mines but with more punch, plus remote detonators and motion sensors built right into the housing.
Enough to rig up a decent, if slightly improvised, early warning perimeter, which is exactly what I’m counting on.
“You know I love fireworks, Cap, especially the unscheduled kind.” “Copy that, Cap!
We’ll make it a good one!” And for a second I could actually picture the grin on his face, which sent an uncomfortable chill straight down my spine.
“You get all that?” I turn to The First, wait for his nod, and unfold the map.
“Here, under the ledge near the trail down, set something loud but nonlethal.
There might be locals nearby.
If there are, don’t detain them.
Make contact.
Approach calmly.
Offer food.
Make an offer.
Behave.
Comms stay emergency only.” “Understood.
Permission to go with them?” “Granted.” I watched him head off.
There’s something about him, honestly, that reminds me of my old drill sergeant, something dependable, something that just inspires confidence.
Guys like that don’t fail.
Worth keeping an eye on him going forward.
Meanwhile, camp looked like a chaotic swarm of activity.
Deploying fast is easy.
Packing back up cleanly takes at least half an hour.
Covering our tracks…
the grass will spring back on its own eventually, but the broken branches and trampled brush are another story, and given how many of us there are, that adds up fast.
You can call it minor, technically, but it still reads like a herd of animals came through here.
Come on, seriously?
Who trained you idiots like this, honestly, someone should be reprimanded.
Grrr.
“General channel to CT-134!
Attention!
Pack out your own waste, if that’s not possible, bury it properly.
Vibroblade to peel back turf carefully, blade depth only, drop the waste, tamp the hole shut.
Comms off.” Then, quieter, to myself, “clumsy bunch of amateurs…” A disgruntled murmur ripples through the group as Preacher walks up to me.
“Clone CT-134, who authorized you to give orders on the general channel?” Straight into it, official tone and everything.
Fine, you want a fight over rank, you got one.
“Clone AA-02, can you repeat back the order we received right after landing?” Caught him off guard.
Good, keep pushing.
“You didn’t catch it the first time?
I’ll happily repeat it.” Smug, arms crossed, but you should really keep your voice down when you’re trying to undercut the acting officer, since half the platoon’s already tuned into this exchange.
“Execute landing.
Within ten days, reach the specified coordinates undetected.
Leave no trace of your presence.” Right around that last part, it looks like the realization finally lands.
Before he can recover, I press, loud enough for everyone: “So exactly which part of ‘leave no trace of your presence’ gave you trouble, Commander?” Right, take a look around, welcome to the show.
Most of the crowd’s assault troopers, the younger KS series, and nearly fifty of them have gathered near us specifically.
Led by Scar, from that same series, the name I handed him earlier that’s already stuck fast.
One on one, hand to hand, I’d take him apart easily.
Never stopped training, plenty of it’s baked into reflex now, though I could use a real sparring partner, something to figure out later.
Preacher seems to realize authority built purely on speeches cracks pretty easily under pressure.
“Brother, you’re forgetting yourself.” Quieter now, turning to face me.
Except you’re not actually my brother, are you, you overgrown ego with ears.
“I follow orders.
As best I can.” I spit the word “brother” back at him and turn to walk off.
“And how many orders have you actually carried out so far, shiny?” Said just loud enough behind me to land, brave now that I’ve turned my back.
Filed that one away too.
I’ll remember it.
“Ask Fett about that yourself,” I mutter, pushing through the ring of clones that had gathered, hungry for any kind of spectacle.
Ruined the mood, my mistake.
Still…
Oh, finally!
The masterminds running our little chicken farm of a headquarters have finally picked a route.
Now I just need to brief everyone and settle the marching order and pace.
Routine stuff, really.
POV: Agriva Tachimanu, freelance hunter, occasional farmer.
Three full days I’d been tracking this pack of Gnulls.
Told Skavia we shouldn’t have settled out here in the middle of nowhere, but money’s tight, same as always.
Land’s free here though.
The local administration didn’t even blink when I told them I wanted to start a meat farm out in the jungle.
Just grinned.
I knew predators would be a problem going in.
But Skavia, as usual, was sure we’d manage.
A miracle of a woman, honestly.
Some kind of biologist before we ended up out here.
She found the herb blend that masks our scent from them, that was all her.
The Gnulls can’t smell us anymore, and trust me, hiding from those things otherwise, especially during mating season, is nearly impossible.
Now, they’ve headed down into the valley, which makes this easier for me.
I’ll climb higher and take the females out from the ridge.
Break the females and the pack falls apart on its own, keeps our herd safe.
No money for auto turrets out here, and the local security droids can’t keep pace with Gnulls anyway, or so says Carnouch-31, the nearest mining settlement that buys our meat and milk.
What in the world is that.
Mandalorians.
Here?
What could they possibly want out here.
There’s, what, two hundred of them at least?
Look how fast they tore through that Gnull pack.
Better put the scope away.
Should probably warn the miners to keep their heads down.
And I’ll circle back for those Gnull claws later, decent bounty on those.
Mandalorians out here, though, that’s not great news.
A force that size could cause real trouble.
Though Suarri Shant, head of Carnouch Security, did mention something about military exercises recently, maybe that’s all this is.
If so, might be worth approaching them, offer some meat.
Discount, even, if it gets their attention.
And if not an exercise?
Well, if it is one, they’ll already know about our farm and come find us themselves eventually.
Time to head home.
Skavia, love, I’ve got good news for you tomorrow.
Alright, let’s get down from here.
And, wait…
Oh?
What’s this.
Who’s there?
Hey, don’t, ow.
Understood, I’m quiet.
Me?
Just a hunter.
Live nearby.
Not far at all.
Just me and my wife.
Farmers, recently moved out here.
Was tracking that Gnull pack, and you all handled them beautifully, by the way.
What?
Sure, we make bows here.
Wait, you’re taking the rifle?
Th-thank you.
No, I won’t refuse that.
Come on, I’ll show you the farm.
Careful with these ones, serious crowd.
Yeah, I can tell you mean no harm, otherwise you’d have killed me already instead of feeding me.
What’s that?
Sell you some bows?
Hm.
We could use the money.
My wife handles that side of things.
No coin on hand?
A trade then?
What have you got?
Whoa.
Now that’s generous.
Hey now, I’m an honest trader!
Alright, deal.
Baradium mines?
Well…
The First, you clever son of a gun, well played.
You test-tube genius, you.
If I didn’t already know better, I’d swear he was born with this instinct, but now we can dump the heavy gear straight onto our pack animals!
Absolute gift, whether from fate, the gods, or the Force, whatever they call it out here, letting the wagon escort take the gentler slope a hundred kilometers downriver while the rest of us push straight over the ridge with minimal load.
Forced march is the only way we move.
Shame we couldn’t trade for more than a dozen bows, the farmer drove a hard bargain.
Ended up handing over a portable charging station and nearly half our dry rations, meaning our whole recon-and-engineering platoon’s supply, but honestly, worth it.
First thought was ferrying the bows across on the cable line, except they’d never hold that weight.
Then Drill jokingly suggested strapping jetpacks onto them instead.
Pictured it for a second, everyone lost it laughing.
Good thing three ton cows don’t fly.
Or do they?
Right, should probably report in.
Heh.
Good having friends among the officers.
These clones, Dench, Drill, and Scar, I’d genuinely call them friends at this point.
My first real friends in this whole galaxy.
No hesitation, no questions asked.
I said it needed doing, and they just did it, no asking why or when they’d get their gear back, I told them I’d handle it, and they just quietly trusted that.
They’re carrying the heaviest loads of anyone.
Dench looked genuinely moved laying out the mines himself, personally.
Absolute lunatic, but he’s our lunatic.
I’ll hold off reporting until The First gets back with his squad.
Sturdy as a warhorse, tough as backwoods liquor.
Heh.
Meanwhile we’ve been pushing through some genuinely unfriendly jungle for almost a full day toward the rally point and the planned crossing.
Wish you could’ve seen everyone’s faces.
Command’s expression twisted the second I walked into their little “briefing” and announced we now had pack transport.
They’d actually been counting on ditching the extra gear entirely.
Happened right on the approach to the crossing, too.
People were flat out collapsing from exhaustion by that point, so we called a halt.
While everyone stood there, stunned by the sheer novelty of live pack animals, Alpha-02 walked over to The First, who sat perched proudly atop a three meter tall bantha, and immediately stepped straight into a pile of manure.
“What is this?” Zero-Two asked, still dumbfounded, glancing around at everything at once.
Mostly rhetorical, presumably.
“Bantha osik,” some wiseguy off to the side muttered.
The whole group just about lost it laughing.
To his credit, Preacher recovered fast and immediately started handing out instructions.
So, after swapping out the demolition charges for what was supposedly a spare charger, we kept just what we needed on our own backs, freeze-dried rations, portable ammo, first aid kits, a couple grenades, and, of course, the jetpacks.
Everything else got loaded onto the banthas and sent ahead with a combined escort platoon at an easy pace toward the crossing, they’d catch up with the main group tomorrow or the day after.
Solid call.
And banthas, worth noting, aren’t just two meters at the shoulder and nearly three tons of muscle, they can also haul half a ton of cargo comfortably and hit close to forty kilometers an hour on open ground.
Basically a camel.
And a camel, especially compared to a horse in rough terrain, outpaces and outlasts it easily.
Ours are built even sturdier, though a couple of the water crossings ahead might still give them trouble, which is exactly why they’re taking the longer route around, meeting us at the far side.
So yeah, we’ve got time to spare.
For some reason, none of the command staff shared my confidence that we were, in some sense, being guided through all this.
Fine by me either way.
Recon never turned up any sign of hostile presence, visible or otherwise, and honestly, I can’t personally scout every inch of this terrain alone.
And yeah, armor batteries are starting to run low across the board.
Not critical yet, but getting there.
Watching a persistent little bug circling near one of the bantha’s snouts, I felt something shift, no, more like my entire being twisted itself into a solid knot of dread, because I was looking at something I genuinely never expected to encounter again in this galaxy, something I figured would stay buried as nothing more than a memory from back in the Milky Way.
The universal, itch-inducing bane of every warm blooded, hemoglobin having creature with a nervous system.
Mosquitoes.
Judging by the sheer number of them…
No, absolutely not, I am not taking the undersuit off for anything.
I’ll die of exhaustion first before I give these things the satisfaction.
Why hadn’t I noticed them before now?
Simple, we barely ever take our helmets off, even though breathing in them is honestly a genuine pleasure.
Not gas mask filtered air either, there’s actual forced pressurization built in, ready for atmospheric contamination if it’s ever detected.
At Command’s insistence, we just jetpack-hopped straight across the gorge in a single stretched out line.
Stealthy?
Not remotely.
Best I could negotiate was a half hour break once recon cleared out ahead, and crossing only after their all clear came through.
Something in my gut says surprises are waiting on the other side.
I switch over to my platoon’s channel.
“General call.
Continuing advance, marching order three abreast, formation fourteen, thirty meter spacing, stay sharp.
Spread out, people, we can rest when we’re dead.” A chorus of numbered replies and “copy,” “copy,” “moving out” comes back.
No love for this jungle from anyone.
Guess you get used to it eventually.
Seven kilometers out from the landing site.
“So they ran into the Gnulls,” the black-armored Mandalorian said, crouched over the scattered animal carcasses, each marked with clean blaster fire.
“We were camped in the grove.
Plenty of broken branches to show for it,” a woman’s voice, dry and faintly smoke-roughened, filtered through the vocoder.
“We’ll catch up with them near the river then,” the same Mandalorian replied.
“For now, let’s rest.
Halt.” “What’s with all these gifts?” Another figure in red armor asked, clearly baffled.
“Where exactly do they think they’re going with that much cargo?” “Hm.
I think I’ve heard something like this before,” someone muttered off to the side, though nobody seemed to catch it.
com/Hezzario