The Mandalorian way

Vandoran III part I

  He watched the lights fly past almost faster than the eye could see. He was always captivated by hyperspace. The feel of being pulled, the way the ship jerked and moved with the immense speed, and the sometimes quiet and sometimes loud engine of ships all added to the experience.

"You'll never get tired of the lights will you Ezra?" He shook his head. "Ya know, Alor asked me that once too. He liked to meditate while in hyperspace, we can feel all the life flying past us. It's an experience, to say the least."

"You two actually got close, didn't you?" He nodded, turning to face her. "Yeah, after we fought our way out of Nor'iis forty-two, an asteroid colony turned to an illegal fight club where slaves and exotic animals fight to the death. He told me he'd mark me as terminated in his system. From there, we were ready friends."

He let out an odd mix of a sigh and light laugh. "I remember the first time we fought. I was in disguise as an Imperial officer. He pulled my saber from my belt and challenged me to a duel."

"In disguise? I thought you only met him after you were kicked out of the rebellion." He nodded. "You're right. I was meeting with an Imperial technician I was hoping to get info from. She wasn't having any of my bad pick-up lines so I was buying the drinks. She had just ratted out her boss to me when he took my saber."

Her glare was sharp and accusing. "Don't worry Sabine. We're in the same boat, you were my first. No one had me when you weren't looking." She huffed and crossed her arms. "That's right, I'd have to kill her." He took her hand in his. "And Sabine, I was still aiming for you. You don't have anything to worry about."

She seemed to be caught up in her thoughts for a minute, trying to work something out. "Ezra, what happened between you and Sato for him to kick you out?" Leaning his head back onto the chair he sighed. "We were disagreeing about how to raid an imperial storage facility. He wanted stealth and I wanted to openly raid it."

"I could see the advantages of the stealth op. But why an open raid? It's way riskier." He looked up at the ceiling. Annoyed at the old memories.

"If we fight out in the open there'll be more imperial's. Our men will get more experience and better morale after winning. More Imperials means more dead Imperials. That means we'll wind up on the holonet and people will join us and before long we'll have the momentum to take planets and not just steal from and terror bomb the empire." He sighed and looked back at her, making sure she was listening.

"We came back so weighed down with supply we had to put ten men in five men bunk rooms. We almost ran out of fuel in high orbit above Chopper base because we were so weighed down. We, fifty men, killed a hundred and twenty-five and blew the whole place up when we left."

She was surprised when he trailed off with a faraway look in his eye. "So it all went well. Why'd Sato have a problem with the raid then? Kill someone important?" He nodded, eyes downcast. "The commander, some guy called Vytrel, he was possibly going to turn and be a fulcrum agent." Her head cocked to the side, surprised at that. Not many were willing to be a fulcrum agent.

"I didn't see the point in him. He was a low-level commander of a low-level installation in the outer rim. He wouldn't have been good for anything." She sighed at his reasoning. "Well, he could have likely supplied the rebellion. So, he would have been of more use alive than as just another raid target."

He shook his head as he sat up straighter in his seat. "Wars are meant to be fought, Sabine. We'll only turn the people against us if all we do is terror bomb-buildings here, kidnap a senator there and assassinate a councilor over there. That's what terrorists do."