Character
LOCATION: Ord Mantell | WEARING: xxx | EQUIPMENT: x | x
Ord Mantell taught me something a long time ago.
There was always more money to be made after a war than during one.
Every wreck abandoned in orbit eventually found its way here. Every freighter written off by an insurance company, every gunship left drifting after a battle, every forgotten hulk too expensive for some government to recover eventually ended up in the hands of salvagers who could look at twisted durasteel and still see profit. Some ships were stripped to their frames. Others disappeared into repair docks and emerged a few weeks later beneath fresh transponder codes with captains who had no interest in discussing where they had come from. Nothing on Ord Mantell was ever truly dead. It was simply waiting for another owner.
That was true of ships.
It was true of people.
The shadow port occupied the edge of the scrapyards where legitimate business quietly gave way to everything else. Aging landing pads stretched between warehouses assembled from mismatched hull plating while cranes shuffled broken vessels from one berth to another like sabacc cards changing hands across a table. Patrols rarely ventured that far from the civilized districts, and customs officials had long since learned that asking questions usually created more problems than answers.
Nobody paid much attention to the collection of ships resting outside the cantina. A polished luxury yacht sat three berths away from a gunboat held together by mismatched armor plating. Bulk freighters wore fresh weld seams where hidden compartments had been added or removed depending on who had owned them last. Ownership was a fluid thing on Ord Mantell. Leave a ship sitting long enough, and eventually someone else flew away with it.
The cantina matched the district.
It had probably tried to be respectable once. If it had, the years had beaten the idea out of it. Blaster scars marked the support columns, patched transparisteel distorted the view of the docks beyond, and the bartender polished glasses that should have been replaced years ago. Nobody came for the drinks anyway. They came because conversations disappeared beneath the constant growl of freighters lifting from the landing pads, and nobody cared enough to remember your face unless you owed them credits.
That suited me just fine.
I took the booth against the back wall where I could watch both entrances without advertising that I was watching at all. My helmet rested beside me. The drink in front of me remained untouched. Watching was easier than drinking.
The nervous pilot near the bar checked the entrance every few seconds. Two Weequay argued quietly over a datapad beside the sabacc tables. The woman dealing cards never looked down at the deck because she didn’t need to. Ord Mantell rewarded people who noticed details before someone else noticed them first.
Beyond the viewport another battered cruiser disappeared behind the blast doors of the impound yards. Most people looked at those hangars and saw dead ships waiting to become scrap. I saw something else.
Steel didn’t care whose colors it carried yesterday. A good hull didn’t mourn the captain who abandoned it, and it certainly didn’t concern itself with whether its next owner had signed the proper paperwork. Give a ship enough time, enough parts, and someone stubborn enough to believe in it, and it’d fly again. Maybe that was why I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
I understood abandoned things better than most.
Once, my name had opened doors. Clan Werda carried weight wherever Mandalorians gathered, and I’d grown up believing honor was measured by the choices a warrior made when no one else possessed the courage to make them.
In the end, it was. The difference was that honor and belonging didn’t always survive the same decision. The day I killed my Alor, I lost more than my place within the clan. I lost the only life I’d ever known. Verd I’d trained beside stopped speaking my name. Warriors who had once trusted me at their backs decided I no longer deserved theirs. My armor was still forged from beskar. My blood was still Mandalorian, but none of it mattered. To many, I had become Dar’manda.
The word followed me farther than any bounty ever could. At first, I hated it. I spent years wondering whether there had been another path, another choice that ended with fewer ghosts. Eventually I stopped asking. The dead stayed dead, and I could still sleep at night knowing why I’d drawn my blade. Some prices were worth paying. Even when you spent the rest of your life paying them.
Ord Mantell never cared what I’d been called, neither did Nar Shaddaa or Rishi, or any other forgotten port where a man’s reputation lasted only as long as the credits in his pocket. Places like these became home because they demanded nothing except that I settle my debts and mind my own business. It wasn’t much, but after a while, it was enough.
The cruiser represented something different. I was tired of living one contract at a time. Every job kept fuel in the tanks, ammunition in the lockers, and food on the table, but none of them built anything worth keeping. That ship wasn’t simply another score. She was the chance to stop surviving and start building something that belonged to me. Not a clan. Not an army. Just a crew held together by trust instead of obligation.
Stealing her wasn’t the hard part…
…keeping her would be.
A few years ago another contract had thrown me together with Avela Wren. We expected nothing more than a temporary partnership, but hard jobs have a way of introducing people faster than polite conversation ever will. When the credits were paid, we went our separate ways, yet the messages never really stopped. Sometimes one of us had information worth passing along. Sometimes it was only a reminder that the other was still breathing.
That mattered, more than I ever admitted.
She knew exactly who I was. She knew what I’d done. More importantly, she understood why. Most Mandalorians saw the judgment before they ever bothered looking at the man standing in front of them. Avela never did. She measured me by the choices I continued to make instead of the sentence someone else had handed down. Respect earned that way carried more weight than loyalty freely given.
The galaxy had no shortage of pilots, mechanics, guns, or slicers. Finding people worth trusting was another matter entirely. Before I could build a crew, I needed someone I trusted to help me choose one. There had never been another name to contact first.
The blast doors rolled open.
I looked up.
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Avela Wren
Avela Wren