Private This Particular Port in a Storm

[Jerec Asyr]

The final power pack ran down. Jerec slung the hot radcannon across his back and primaried his blaster pistol. Tiland had taught him an old skill called Force Weapon that Jedi Masters used to make their walking sticks lightsaber-proof. Jerec used it to add serious intent to a pistol-whip. It helped him finish the job when blaster bolts didn't quite end any given threat.

This was familiar ground, back near the staircase where he'd first deployed the radcannon. The radiation deflection badge around his neck buzzed with a cautionary pulser: almost expended.

"Depends if the vigilante believes he's the righteous one. Somehow I think you've got more self-awareness."

 

[Cato Fett]

The spawn-nest remained dead and gamma ravaged. They still picked their way gingerly over the still-smoking knots of felled reavers piled and languishing at the foot of the long staircase. Cato gestured for Jerec to lead on, covering their slow rise. Plumbing, wire sheathing, runs of bracketed cable-bundles and installed grate panelling on the smoothed stone walling marked a return to recent civilization. They paused a moment and simply basked under a dirty, yellowed glow-lamp sputtering fitfully.

“Hmn. An armed gunman with a broken conscience killing a pair of rich kids. The path to manda,” Cato muttered. He raised his ragged carbine, replete with aftermarket additions. “D’you know? I despise blasters, Jerec. They’re artless, crude. Any fool can grab a rifle and equalize a fight. Hand and blade, bow and shaft, those I believe in. Not these. Yet I can’t keep up without one. …Anyhow, guns and vigilantism aside, I’ll do a few more purging sweeps. Give me a fortnight or two. Your port will be safeguarded and you can do what you will with it.”

 

[Jerec Asyr]

Jerec snorted through both sides of his horizontal neck. "Call that crude, I'd hate to know what you think of my radcannon. But no, I know what you mean. Not that I've ever used a bow or learned a real sword, but there's a simple authenticity to solving problems with boxers' hand wraps or a nice stun baton. At range...no, there's not a lot of art to guns. Considered bowcasters? Nice solid energy-envelope quarrel?" He snapped his fingers. "Or those bows with force-field propulsion? Great sniper weapons, I hear. Silent as the grave."

As the burnt and bloody stairs gave way to the real world, Jerec turned his face up to Loronar's sullen sky. The urine-yellow lights offered little warmth but plenty of symbolic - and thus tangible - comfort.

"You should talk to Dash Kessler . His shop puts out the most innovative customs I've ever seen. I've still got one of his ion blasters - I swear by it. If anyone can find you a practical option that doesn't feel like you're carting a tumor around, he's the one."

 

[Cato Fett]

A warm, burnt wind pushed wafts of gale-broomed clouds along over the city’s upper spires. Cato glanced and offered Jerec a brief wave, idling on the broken sidewalk and observing the stooped Ithorian ably trundling back into his port offices. The doors sighed shut on cranky servos, left him alone with passing sky traffic. He regarded the snug-nosed rifle weighing in his hands. Blunt and ugly, machined out of mould-cast alloys, tenth-hand bought from a firearm pawnshop tucked away on one of Denon’s lower metropolitan levels, and subsequently modified for extreme close-quarters fighting. It was akin to hobbling with a rebar cane; hideous but so damned necessary for functionality. The samurai grunting in his one ear balked at the thing. The shinobi in the other snickered and chided his traditionality.

He depressed a small thumb-catch under the jaw of his helmet and pulled it free. The t-bar visor swam with monochrome reflections. He watched jumping, receding speeder head and tail-lights beam and vanish in mirror. He paused ruminating enough to feel the wind ripple across his face and hair. Without the helm’s filtering layers of sensory enhancements, AR and HUD overlays, the touch was real, exhilarating, raw as snowy air aching in his lungs. Meanwhile snatches of Jerec’s conversation replayed over memories of Norris Ray and Lawry Rake’s ignoble executions. Ideas of separation from herd mentality, betraying expectations in favour of your own identity. All that Cato was or ever would be, he knew, was tied up in the face of his Mandalorian armour. Mr. Asyr had, through no small pains, found a path that brought, if not absolute happiness, then enough contentment to make each ship modification and transaction enjoyable.

~BGM~​

The tenets of the Resol’nare listed one by one in his mind’s eye. Sturdy, solid directives. Save that when mention of the Mandalore rose, Cato couldn’t keep contempt twisting his face. Ra Vizsla and Yasha Mantis had spoiled that mantle forever. As for the rest, he thought, he preferred the liberty of independence. Gazing at the skyline, where the day’s turn was either raising or plummeting the circle of the sun, he concluded a simple truth: maybe he was just bad at being Mando’ade. Cato refastened his helm and after restocking his munitions, returned to the service hatchway. With Mr. Asyr safely cooped in his office’s locked safety, he went back to hunting.

Long stone vaults, lightless and crowded with scowling, cowled effigies, greeted his returned. Twisted things bled on the edge of his swords. Others were rent to pieces under furious, piercing fire. Cato exhaled the poisonous things siphoning his inner wa, submerged in the joyous rush of good combat. Cut a Sithspawn at the knees and reversed the stroke upwards through belly, sternum, and throat, his carbine clenched hard under his other arm and discharging at the hip, blasting a charging ‘spawn pair to blood-clouded meat chunks. Stuttering shadows gamboled on the walls, twitching, recoiling, dying. Small fires jumped off the flooring, as a phrase repeated on his tongue: Verd ori’shya beskar’gam.

~FIN~​