Gett touched his glove to his brow and shot off down the ladder to the deck, sliding the last three meters on the handrails. It was delightful to see the mix of armor-yellow-striped commanders and pilots, plain white troopers, and the motley mix of commando colors-drawn together in one ancient Mandalorian ritual, every face the same.
Etain felt adrift, excluded.
She had never truly felt this degree of bond with her Jedi clan. The connection in the Force was there, yes, but … no, the real strength here was attachment, passion, identity, meaning.
She thought of Master Fulier, the man who insisted she have a second chance as a Padawan and not be consigned to build refugee camps because she lacked control. The man who was also passionate and prone to taking on causes: the Jedi who lost his life because he couldn’t stay out of a fight when Ghez Hokan’s militia roughed up the locals on Qiilura.
Etain thought that wasn’t such a bad sort of Jedi to be. Not textbook, but centered on fair play and justice. The clone soldiers were worth that, too.
She was suddenly aware of Darman looking up at her, grinning, and if it hadn’t been for his armor and surroundings he could have been any young man showing off his prowess to a woman. She smiled back.
She still envied him his focus and discipline, especially as he had somehow managed not to lose it after being exposed to a galaxy that didn’t quite resemble the ideal he had probably been taught about on Kamino.
But Kal Skirata had largely been responsible for his training. She didn’t know Skirata yet, but one thing she was certain of was that he was-just like a Jedi-a pragmatic man who dealt in reality.
The Dha Werda went on for verse after repeated verse. Then the klaxon sounded and the pipe came over the address system.
“Port duties men close up. Damage and fire control parties to stations. Prepare to dock.”
Commander Gett broke out of the ranks and came bounding back up the ladder, wiping sweat from his face with a neatly folded piece of cloth.
“General, will you come to the bridge to see the ship alongside?”
“I won’t be much help, but I’d like that, yes.”
It was as if she were leaving a ship after a long association, a retiring captain. She was only a temporary officer, but still Gett treated her as if she actually had some importance to the crew, and she found that touching. She stood at the command console and watched as the docking grapnels and platforms slipped past the viewscreen and the crew maneuvered Fearless on instruments. Gett had the con. “Stop reactor.”
“Stop reactor, Commander … reactor stopped.”
Fearless’s secondary propulsion shivered into silence. The vessel slipped gradually into dock on the power of tugs bringing her alongside port-side-to, as Etain had now learned to call it. She walked slowly across the bridge to watch the dockside team getting a brow in place to disembark those members of the crew being transferred and to allow maintenance and replenishment teams to board.
There was the slightest of jarring sensations as the ship came to rest against huge dock fenders. Fearless was back safely in her home port-for the time being.
Etain held out her hand to Gett. “Gloves off, my friend.”
He shrugged, smiling, and slipped off the entire gauntlet. They shook hands as equals. Then she pressed a key on the console, opening the public address system that reached every cabin and flat and hangar and mess deck in the huge warship.
“Gentlemen,” she said. “It’s been an honor.”
6
In five millennia, the Mandalorians fought with and against a thousand armies on a thousand worlds. They learned to speak as many languages and absorbed weapons technology and tactics from every war: And yet, despite the overwhelming influence of alien cultures, and the absence of a true homeworld and even species, their own language not only survived but changed little, their way of life and their philosophy remained untouched, and their ideals and sense of family of identity, of nation, were only strengthened. Armor does not make a Mandalorian. The armor is simply a manifestation of an impenetrable, unassailable heart.
-Mandalorians: Identity and Language, published by the Galactic Institute of Anthropology
RAS Fearless, upper dock, Fleet Support Depot, Coruscant, 370 days after Geonosis
The ramp went down, and for once the scene that greeted Fi wasn’t hostile droid-infested territory and red blasterfire.
But Coruscant-impossibly high towers and deep canyons of skylanes-was every bit as alien as Geonosis. Fi had seen it once before, all too briefly, on the way to break a siege at the spaceport. It had been an exotic, exciting lightscape at night, but in daylight it was breathtaking in a totally different way.
“Can we have a run ashore?”