Private Dha Werda

[Kael Werda]

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.

TAG: Avela Wren

 

[Avela Wren]

Dah Werda​

Ord Mantell smelled of hot metal, engine coolant, and old lives.

The scrapyard stretched as far as I could see. A graveyard of broken hulls waiting for someone stubborn enough to believe they could fly again. Freighters stripped to their frames rested beside gunships bearing fresh weld seams, while cranes lumbered overhead carrying pieces of yesterday’s battles towards tomorrow’s bargains. Nothing here was ever truly discarded. It simply waited for another purpose. I understood that more than I cared to admit.

The ramp lowered with a familiar hiss, and I lingered for a moment before stepping out into the dry air. Another world. Another handful of credits that would disappear almost as quickly as I’d earned them. I had long since stopped pretending I travelled because I enjoyed it. I simply hadn’t found anywhere that felt worth staying.

The Creed still lived within me. Every lesson my clan had ever taught me remained stitched into the way I carried myself, the promises I kept, and the people I chose to protect. Yet somewhere along the journey, I’d realised I no longer knew where I belonged amongst it all. Every contract seemed to ask the same question in a different voice.

If I wasn’t simply a warrior, then who exactly was I?

The answer never seemed to arrive. Instead, I kept moving. Perhaps I’d hoped that the galaxy would eventually tell me.

The cantina was much as I’d expected. Exactly the sort of place he would have picked. Loud enough for conversations to dissolve into the constant growl of departing freighters. Dim enough that nobody paid much attention to strangers. The sort of place where everyone minded their own business because asking questions usually led somewhere unpleasant.

My eyes wandered instinctively across the room before I took another step. A habit I was determined to keep. A pair of dockworkers were arguing over credits. A Rodian was slumped across the bar in a booze induced sleep. Two men were playing sabacc with expressions far too careful to suggest they were only gambling. Then…

Him.

He hadn’t changed very much. The untouched drink. The booth against the wall. The careful position that allowed him to watch the entrance without appearing to watch at all. Some habits survived every corner of the galaxy. I found myself smiling. Not because of where we were. Because he was exactly where he said he would be. I loved that about him. His predictability. He would vehemently deny it if I ever so much as even suggested it, but I loved it all the same.

People had called him many things since we’d first met. Murderer. Exile. Dar’Manda. I’d learned a long time ago that labels were a poor substitute for knowing a person. I’d met good people capable of terrible decisions. I’d met terrible people hiding comfortably behind honourable reputations. Neither had taught me much about the soul standing beneath the armour.

He had.

The messages between us had been frequent. Sometimes one of us passed along information about a pending contract. Sometimes it was little more than a few words confirming the other was still somewhere amongst the stars. Neither of us had acknowledged why those messages mattered. Neither of us needed to.

Crossing the final few steps, I slid into the seat opposite him with the easy familiarity of someone who had shared enough dangerous work to leave formalities behind. There was a silent moment in which I simply looked at the untouched drink in his hand before lifting my gaze to meet his.

A slight grin settled across my face.

“Still breathing.” It wasn’t a question, it never had been. Somewhere beyond the battered transparisteel, another salvaged ship roared to life, climbing slowly into the Ord Mantell sky.

For the first time in a long time, I’d found myself quietly glad someone had been waiting for me when I’d landed.​

Kael Werda​

 

[Kael Werda]

LOCATION: Ord Mantell | WEARING: xxx | EQUIPMENT: x | x

The corner of my mouth pulled into something that almost qualified as a smile.

"Depends who you ask."

The answer disappeared into the rhythm of the cantina as naturally as if it had always belonged there. Somewhere near the bar a mechanic tried to convince an impatient freighter captain that replacing a cracked fuel manifold would cost less than watching it explode in orbit. The captain argued anyway. People always did when the bill arrived before the consequences. Neither man expected to change the other's mind, but both seemed content to let the conversation fill the room while life carried on around them.

I had spent enough years in places like this to know that every port eventually developed its own cast of regulars. Some chased work. Others chased trouble. Most couldn't remember when one had become the other. Every arrival believed they were passing through, yet every cantina had someone who'd been planning to leave for the last decade. There was always one more contract worth taking, one more debt worth settling, or one more favor that couldn't wait until tomorrow.

My attention drifted back across the table.

Time had done what it always did. It had left its mark without asking permission. There were a few more scratches worked into Avela's armor than I remembered, and a little more certainty in the way she carried herself. The galaxy had a habit of sanding away whatever didn't matter. Whatever remained afterward usually deserved to.

I found myself wondering if she'd noticed the same changes in me.

The first contract we'd shared had never been meant to become anything more than a paycheck. We were professionals. The work ended, the credits changed hands, and the expectation had always been that we'd disappear into separate hyperspace lanes without looking back. Somewhere along the way that quiet understanding changed without either of us acknowledging it. A message asking if the other was still alive became another a few months later. Information about a worthwhile contract turned into a warning about a bounty hunter asking the wrong questions. Sometimes there wasn't much reason to send anything at all beyond the simple fact that it had been too long since the last transmission.

It was an odd sort of friendship, built almost entirely on distance, yet it had endured longer than most partnerships I'd trusted with my life. Looking at her now, it struck me that we'd spent more years keeping in touch than we'd ever spent working together. Somehow that felt right. Neither of us had ever demanded more than the other was willing to give, and perhaps that was why neither of us had ever found a reason to walk away.

The untouched glass sat between my hands, gathering more attention from the bartender than it deserved. He'd stopped asking whether I wanted another drink sometime during the second week. I considered that progress. Good bartenders learned their customers. Great bartenders learned when curiosity wasn't worth the answer.

Ord Mantell rewarded that kind of thinking.

The planet had a reputation for selling broken things, but that was only half the story. What it really sold was optimism. Every buyer who walked through the scrapyards believed they were about to find the one hull everyone else had overlooked. Most left with expensive lessons disguised as bargains. A few walked away with fortunes. The difficult part was accepting that the difference between the two usually came down to patience rather than luck.

"I've been wasting a lot of time."

The admission carried less weight than it sounded.

"I just didn't realize it until I got here."

For years I'd measured success by whether the next contract paid better than the last. It seemed reasonable enough at the time. Better jobs led to better equipment. Better equipment led to better jobs. It was a comfortable circle, provided you never stopped to ask where it was taking you. Somewhere between Nar Shaddaa and Ord Mantell I realized I could keep making that same trip for another twenty years and end up exactly where I'd started, only older and carrying a few more scars than I had the year before.

That wasn't much of a future.

My attention drifted toward the viewport where another transport settled onto a distant pad beneath the guidance of half a dozen orange signal wands waving in three different directions. The pilot ignored four of them, followed the fifth, and landed without incident. Nobody seemed surprised.

"I've been watching that yard every day since I landed."

Not because I'd intended to.

Because I ran out of reasons not to.

"You notice strange things after a while. Which crews finish early. Which supervisors care enough to double-check the manifests and which ones sign whatever lands in front of them. Which berths stay busy and which ones everybody walks past without a second glance."

I rested my hand against the datapad inside my jacket for a moment before drawing it free and setting it between us. The worn casing carried more scratches than either of us had picked up on the job that first brought us together, and probably a few less than it deserved.

"I've spent enough time watching that yard to know she doesn't belong there."

I slid the datapad across the table until it stopped in front of Avela.

"She's too intact to have been forgotten, too valuable to have been abandoned, and she's been sitting in the same berth long enough that everyone has stopped seeing her. That usually means one of two things. Either somebody made a mistake, or somebody thinks they've got all the time in the galaxy to come back for her."

My gaze drifted toward the viewport before returning to Avela.

"I don't intend to wait long enough to find out which."

The corners of my mouth lifted slightly.

"I've already decided she's worth taking. What I haven't decided is whether she's worth building a future around, and those aren't the same question."

I let the thought settle for a moment before continuing.

"I didn't ask you here because I wanted another opinion. I asked you here because I trust your instincts, and I'd rather hear you tell me I'm wrong now than after we've got a cruiser in orbit and a crew depending on both of us."

Was she in?

TAG: Avela Wren