Sins of the Father/Part 17

"I can take them," Arykr said.

Busy digging into the Aran'verd Kal ' s computer archives, Damis did not look up. "So you've said."

"You think I can't?"

Damis took his hands off the keyboard, laid them flat on the desktop, and lowered his head in a long sigh. Turning his chair to face his younger companion, he said, "They're both Force users. Rican's young in some ways, but she's seen battle, and you saw her with that Rodian—she'll strike too hard before she won't strike enough.  Who knows what Hadan has taught the little Twi'lek witch.  And you'd have to take them on together."

"At the same time," Arykr corrected. "They might kill each other before they even worry about me."

"Or they might double-team you because you're the weakest one there, then sort each other out when you're dead," Damis countered.

"I have just as much training as you do, brother, and I've learned from our people's history. Mandalorians have killed plenty of Jedi and Sith."

"Have you?"

Damis knew the answer. Of all living Mandalorians, he could count on two hands those who had killed Jedi Knights or Sith Lords. Their number did include San Pavac, but Damis had not seen the Pyke in more than a day, and he would rather return to Mand'alor in failure—he would rather not return at all—than ask the dar'manda for aid.

Arykr crossed his arms, his face darkened with annoyance and the pride Damis thought might defeat him. The Human had no lack of courage, and he very well might be Damis's equal in battle, but Damis was not on that rarified list of Mandalorians who had proven the equal of Jedi and Sith either. And there were other concerns…

"Did you find anything out?"

"If you'd be quiet for five minutes, maybe I could," Damis grumbled. Turning back to the computer, he gave up on Mandalorian and tried transliterating into Aurebesh instead. "Kobokya no Jangpa?"

"Koboskya no Jankpa," Arykr said; whatever else age and experience might have given Damis, Arkyr's Huttese pronunciation was better.

The Aran'verd Kal had aboard a data library for Mand'alor's personal agents and couriers, including an archive of the thousands of conflicts throughout galactic history, both those in which the Mandalorians had fought and those they had only learned about to study, and thereby dominate, their enemies. Arykr had jokingly called it Ori'miit'gehat'ik be Kyr'amad—The Big Book of Killing. It was certainly comprehensive, but that very exhaustive nature meant it had to sort through a lot of data just to narrow the search down to the Hutts.

Eventually, though the database returned a result, and Damis read aloud, "The Koboskya no Jankpa was a Hutt ritual contest of champions, in which disputing parties or families settled their grievances by selecting champions to fight out the matter, the question being decided by which champion remained alive at the end. The Hutt issuing the call for the Koboskya no Jankpa chose the ground of the contest, but was compelled to choose his champion first, allowing other parties to select their champions to counter the first Hutt's strength."

"So who's Runganna's champion?" Arkyr asked.

Damis snorted. "Why would she bother with one? She wants somebody to buy the damn thing, she just wants to weaken whoever loses.  The tradition of the Koboskya no Jankpa derives from—"

Arkyr put a hand down in front of the screen, forcing Damis to look at him. "This is our second chance—you get that, don't you? We could never have outbid the Republic.  Without conquests, we don't even have the slaves or the resources to compete with Hadan; she'd sell every Twi'lek on Ryloth and lease the ones in the rest of the galaxy if it'd get her a little more power.  But fighting?  This is something we can do, Damis—this is what we're good at!  Rican, the Twi'lek…they're children.  Powerful children, I get it, but they won't beat me."

Damis sat back in his chair and gazed up at his comrade. Arykr was much stronger than even the Zygerrian, and he was in the prime of manhood, the mid-twenties when a Human male was strongest. He was not the crack shot Damis was, perhaps, but he had more than enough skill to gun down an enemy twenty meters away, and the Jedi and the Sith would both have to get much closer than that to use their lightsabers. They had not worn their jetpacks to the palace yet, but they had them aboard, and a jetpack would go a long way to balancing out Forceful acrobatics.

Maybe Arykr could kill them both. But still…

"Maybe," Damis said aloud. "Maybe you can beat them. But maybe if you do, we still lose."

Arykr frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You know as well as I do how much depends on their fear of us—fear of the name Mandalorian, and all the history it carries. But if we start killing Jedi to take weapons of mass destruction…what if the Republic decides it's angrier than it's afraid?  Or that it's more frightened by us than of us?  What happens when the Republic sends Mali Darakhan and a war fleet down on Mandalore, and sees what our forces have been reduced to?"

"We're Mandalorians—we fight."

"And we die."

Arykr gritted his teeth. "You don't know that."

"Why do you think Mand'alor wants a weapon like this?"

"It's not our job to think about it. Didn't you say our clans obey, so we obey?"

"Wasn't it you who said we need to ask questions?" Damis retorted. "I think Mand'alor wants another deterrent, one last line of defense for when all the others fail. And I think she wants it because she knows those other lines will fail if we're attacked.  Do we risk bringing Sith Knights or Republic battle fleets to our home for one bomb?  Is that what Mand'alor would want?"

"Mand'alor…" Arykr started, but he hesitated, and after a moment he paced away, patting one armored thigh with his hand. "Call her. Get new orders."

"I have the scanner running," Damis said, pointing toward the cockpit. "Should've rung ten minutes ago. The s-threads out here are crap."

"So we go with our last orders," Arkyr said. "Obtain the weapon."

"No matter the cost?"

"If we get the bomb tomorrow—"

"—and need to use it next week?"

"What would Mand'alor want?"

Damis frowned, looking at the data past Arkyr's arm. What indeed…